Hermetic gnosis and psychedelic gnosis

"Ecstatic or altered states (…) [are] a theoretical framework for making sense of late-antique Hermetism." (Hanegraaff, 2008. p. 161)

"Ineffability. – (…) The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It must be directly experienced. It cannot be departed or transferred to others.

States of feeling rather than states of intellect." (James, 2002. p. 295).

The first quote is part of the conclusions section in Wouter Hanegraaff’s work titled Altered States of Knowledge (2008), which analyzes transcendental claims of knowledge within the Corpus Hermeticum, which the author interprets as reports of an ecstatic state of mind.

According to Hanegraaff (2008), the frequent references in the Hermetica about profound but ineffable salvational insight received during ecstatic states have been dismissed by some scholars as "literary fictions," while others have taken the claims more seriously as possible ritual practices in hermetic communities, for which the highest possible knowledge, gnosis, can only be attained during ecstasy. Hermetic teachings are grounded on doctrines that aim to take the hermetic initiate from rational discourse to the attainment of trans-rational, direct experiential knowledge (Hanegraaff, 2008).

In the corpus of texts analyzed by Hanegraaff, the so-called "problem of language" surfaced as the "ultimate vision of divine reality" would only be attained in a state of "divine silence."

"Supreme knowledge cannot be taught," which expresses the paradox of using language to convey a message that will ultimately fail to be conveyed. These claims share with the data analyzed in the previous chapter, the problem of the inadequacy of language to express what has been felt.

As I finish this report I know that there is a lot missing, a lot unsaid, things which I unintentionally left out and things I could never even put to words.

(Q, 2001)

The complex relationship between narrative and ineffability is expressed in the paradoxical fact that both the practitioner uses written language as the tool to make sense of and reconstruct the event. Ineffability is, thus, a common trait between mystical experiences and psychedelic trip reports.

One particular aspect of Hanegraaff’s analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum is the fact that before the visionary teaching (gnosis) there is a stage of diligent instruction on philosophical and theological thought. As the author states:

"Before initiating his pupil into higher knowledge, Hermes Trismegistus reminds him of the ‘progress he has made thanks to the books’ and after the initiation he instructs him to make a report of it and write it down in hieroglyphs on steles of turquoise" (W. Hanegraaff, 2008, p. 137)

On the one hand, the previous quote is an example of the paradox between ineffability and report as the initiate is instructed to "write [the experience] down in hieroglyphs on steles of turquoise." On the other, bridging such diligent study with the cognitive mechanics of insight as reviewed by Laukkonen (2020) for whom the moments of insight by "experts" in their fields, are thoroughly informed by the expertise of the individual. Again, given that the claims of transcendental knowledge are not verifiable (an unavoidable part of the concept of gnosis), and therefore cannot be approached as confirmations of a factual nature, it does not hurt to entertain for a moment and wonder, what if the expertise of that who has a moment of profound insight, is on a philosophical level? Or what if it is a sort of religious expertise that we see in Hanegraaff’s rendition of Hermes Trismegistus?

within an embodied aspect of knowledge that is yet to be understood as the disenchanted West allows itself to contemplate other potentialities, in the epistemological conundrum that would imply the attainment of knowledge via alternative modes of consciousness.

Returning to Hanegraaff, the author describes as the initiate in the Corpus Hermeticum is pondering about the creation of the world in his visions, he is shown how everything begun. If for a second, we would entertain the idea that such visionary states were, in fact induced by a psychedelic, it becomes clear, how, taking into account psychedelic’s sensitivity to context, a practitioner with such set and setting would have visions of the like. In other words, if a practitioner read extensively about philosophical and theological thought and then in an ecstatic state of mind directly asks, or has the intention, to understand how the world came to be, then we can understand the content of his visions being related to a cosmogenesis. Nonetheless there is no record of the use of a particular substance or technique for the alteration of consciousness in these accounts, therefore this can only be stated as a suggestive comparison.

Figure 2 Wouter Hanegraaff - "Psychedelics as Rejected Knowledge" conference presentation. ICPR. 26 September 2020.

Retrieved by the author.

Wouter Hanegraaff’s presentation during the Interdisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Research (ICPR), which took place in September of 2020, addressed the very issue at hand. In his presentation "Psychedelics as Rejected Knowledge," he pointed to the deliberate omission by standard academic scholarship on the preparation of narcotic plant ointments in the Mithra’s Liturgy. As professor Hanegraaff recounted the story of a visionary state in which the female practitioner travels to the sun and visits the sun god Mithra, in his slide show, he presented a picture of the snake-like gods and mighty bull heads who gave way to the Sun god. In a well-argued and yet subtle idea, professor Hanegraaff’s picture looks like a psychedelic vision.

Understanding such reports of visionary states as being induced by a narcotic or a psychedelic-like substance would be a rational interpretation for the visions in these liturgies: a lived experience of an alteration of consciousness, were ineffable realities beyond normal awareness become readily accessible to the practitioner.

Descriptions of ecstatic visions that reveal paradoxical yet profound messages about perceiving the vast and all-encompassing All, in which the edges between concepts appear to dissolve and take with them the distinction between subject and object, in Hanegraaff’s description of the attainment of gnosis in the Hermetica are, to say the least, reminiscent of a psychedelic experience.

Situating narratives as culturally and historically situated objects prevents the scholar from claiming that the narratives in the Corpus Hermeticum and the narratives of ayahuasca experiences are, in fact, interacting with the same transcendental reality. Additionally, having assessed the cognitive mechanics of insight adds a layer of analysis by defining such events as a piece of information that appears to the individual imbued with a sense of profundity and truthfulness. In that sense, the claims of transcendental knowledge recounted by practitioners such as Vegan can be understood as the product of an enquiring mind with particular interests,

In conclusion, Vegan's story is a clear example of psychedelic gnosis. An ayahuasca-induced claim of direct yet transient experiential knowledge about the true nature of the cosmos.

"I had tears running down my face from the realization… from the beauty of such knowledge. The universe was an open book for me to read its mysteries. (…) That was absolute beauty, understanding of everything, contemplating the ultimate answer and explanation of the universe. And then, in a second, it was gone. I still had tears on my face and yet, I didn’t

know anymore." (Vegan, 2006, p.4)

6 Ayahuasca Insightfulness

To answer the research question, we focused on two different aspects. First, how a specific context or setting affected an ayahuasca experience, and second, the types of insights ayahuasca yielded.

This project has carefully reviewed five different narratives of ayahuasca experiences from practitioners who partook in the brew within different contexts. They all carried different cultural backgrounds, different interests, and various reasons to drink ayahuasca, and their narratives are examples of complex human thought product of highly complex psychedelic experiences.

Is there a correlation between the place and time of an alteration of consciousness and the experience's content? And is there a correlation between the context of an experience and the content of a psychedelic insight? The simple answer is yes.

Practitioners are immersed in cultural and historical references that ultimately guide their meaning-making process as every individual is circumscribed to a social context to report and understand their experience. The narrative of the experience reflects the storyteller's larger cultural values: their religious beliefs, the terms in which they comprehended who the ritual expert was, as much as their interests and their anguishes. And yet, there appears to be a common human experience of attaining metaphysical knowledge by means of accessing a non-ordinary state of consciousness.