This article was really good so I wanted to repost it here. [
movementsofgnostics.wordpress.com]
An Open Challenge to all Committed Members of the Gnostic Movement
Gnosis, we are told, is about investigation.
Investigate, Investigate, don’t believe, experience things for yourself, make your own conclusions.
Gnosis is not a religion, in a religion you believe or don’t believe, you are with them or against them, Gnosis is different we are told, its all about being practical and objective, discovering truths for yourself.
Investigate for yourself is the retort to almost everything, it’s a quick and easy punch line to disarm almost any line of questioning regarding an entrenched religious doctrine that is The Gnostic Movement of Mark Pritchard, much of which it seems has never been investigated much less proven by anyone at all.
So what happens if you investigate and don’t come to the exact same conclusion as a committed student of the Gnostic Movement? You are basically not only disregarded as not having investigated but you are, if you continue to engage the subject, castigated by the other members of the Movement as being against them, being evil, dark, under the influence of the black lodge and other such labeling.
So right away we find that in fact the gnosticism of The Gnostic Movement of Belzebuub, is just like a religion, you are with them or against them. You have the option to investigate, but your findings, must be in whole hearted agreement, or you are a heretic. Why is this any different from the medieval catholic church or the fundamentalist Muslims of today?
We find that what is being offered, is not what it appears to be. It is not an open, philosophical, mystical, investigative, free minded, free spirited, objective discipline of self improvement, rather more it’s a heavy duty, fortified religion. You can investigate but you must agree with the doctrine 100% or you are against them. Catholicism and Islam have plenty of room to maneuver, room for interpretation, but with Gnosticism of Belzebuub, you have no room at all. How do you go about explaining this paradox? On the one hand people are encouraged to investigate but on the other hand their findings must fit exactly into the frame work of what they are told, and what’s more, teachers of The Gnostic Movement of Belzebuub are openly encouraged to move ahead and commit to the organization and start giving classes and opening centers, without actually having proved much at all.
Trainee instructors are told that the experiences will come with commitment and it will all fall into place. Instructors get busy working and teaching and running centers, often times they freely admit that their practical and mystical skills fall behind the theory.
So what does an instructor running a center do when a new student comes with questions and challenges and personal experiences that do not match the Gnostic doctrine of Belzebuub?
The instructor has no choice, he cannot go against the doctrine, even though much of it he has not actually proven for himself. He is forced to extrapolate things he has never proven and insist to the new student that his findings are incorrect. Should he dare to step outside the doctrine that he hasn’t fully proved, he risks being demoted or even banned from the organization, losing his chance to gain credits and verify and investigate further.
You see the conflict of interest going on here? Investigation is just a byword, nothing more. And in this way a religious belief is forced upon both the instructor and the new student. Neither has proved things 100% for themselves, one informs the other only by virtue of theory, the other is deemed to have no experience, and is told his finding is incorrect, despite the claim that everyone should investigate and prove things for themselves. Thus a hard religious belief is formed where apparently we are told initially that Gnosticism of Belzebuub is not about belief.
Take even something simple like the claim that Belzebuub is the messiah, the only living master on earth, the ‘living Christ’, he’s your route to salvation. Well obviously you need in Gnostic Movement speak to investigate this claim. But what does that mean when you move along inside their organization and are expected to at least start paying lip service to “The Master”. What would it mean to an instructor on the committee who has not proved this claim 100%, but jumps when he receives direct instructions from Mark Pritchard ? What would it mean to a new student attending a retreat event for the first time with Mr. Pritchard teaching in person. The student is expected to have a certain attitude, to treat “the master” with utmost respect, to be on eggshells around him.
What’s happening is they are operating under a belief system, a peer pressure system, and acting on things that they have never proved themselves. This is just like any other religion. It’s worse because it claims not to be like a religion when in fact it’s exactly like one. At least if you believe aliens will land and save the human race, you know its an unproven belief, but in the gnosticism of Belzebuub you are claiming to be investigating, whilst in the meantime believing, lock stock and barrel. Its not objective investigation, it’s a total religious belief and devotion while investigating and proving only the things you are allowed and permitted to prove. Anyone can see that this is an upside down logic.
We can find on some of their websites, a few platitudes of lip service to this investigative philosophy, but what do people discuss in reality? What do the students/members of the Gnostic Movement talk about in their personal experiences ? Let’s hear it boys and girls, what have you experienced? Guide me, lead me on, lets hear your stories.
Well frankly the stories are watery at best, no one has anything much to say. I’ve never heard anyone mention astral projecting regularly with their wife or husband. I’ve never heard much about teachers meeting in the astral plane regularly, or groups at retreats all astral projecting together. I’ve never read articles about the students getting into the astral and working all night long tirelessly with the white lodge or the “venerable” Master Belzebuub himself. In short it seems that no one has any real hard experience. No one has proved even 1% of Pritchard’s doctrine.
It’s just a Chinese whispers. Everyone passes down everything to the next person, and the belief system remains intact under the guise of investigation. That’s all there is. People like myself who finally lose patience playing a musical chairs game with the truth, finally leave and aren’t supposed to talk about it ever again, because that would be ‘betraying the master’.
And on top of this, whatever investigation has actually been done is always done under and within the frame work of the doctrine. Much like the global warming scientists that recently got busted for cooking the data and manipulating their results to prove global warming, students of the Gnostic Movement of Pritchard investigate things with a preordained result in mind.
Now if manipulated results can happen in real earthly physical tangible science, how much more likely are they to happen when we move into the esoteric, intangible, realities of the mind and soul? Lucid dreams can be created, the astral is very fickle, your subconscious plays tricks on you. How can you approach investigation of that, with a preordained result in mind, and worse, under the umbrella of an organization that will castigate you for asking too many questions that challenge their doctrine? It is no surprise then that Pritchard’s students claim to have called him and seen him in the astral plane – he himself says that in the astral you see what you want to see.
Anyone can see that this is not investigation; this is just a belief system. It’s a mind game and a clever trick, nothing more. Any serious mystic should immediately quit the Gnostic Movement of Pritchard, and conduct their own unbiased, neutral investigations themselves. You only need a few techniques for the astral. Get those going on and the rest should all take place in the higher realms… that is if they are what they are claimed to be………… If we look at the story books, the ancient mystics were always loners, solitary individuals, carving out their own reality. The Chinese mystics, The Shamans, the Samuri, well even Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed for that matter, all solitary people, mavericks and rebels. What does that tell us about organized religion?
Once you strip away a rather clever veneer that is placed over the Gnostic religion of Belzebuub you see that you don’t have very much left, other than a herd mentality where people flock together and all behave in the same way, feeling as if they are taken care of and protected by their common goal in life, and having removed the need to be self directed by adopting an all knowing, all seeing leader. They say that religion is hollow and missing the true mystical part. I’d say that if the mystical part exists and you want to investigate it, being a part of any earthly physical organization, beyond picking up a few techniques you can read in a book, can only hinder your progress and give you a distortion and bias.
So where is the Gnostic goal in action ?
Lets see some real articles about the amazing truths and mystical knowledge you’ve uncovered and how you have verified the doctrine of Pritchard. Let’s hear how you spent all night, several weeks in a row, working alongside Belzebuub and Edith in the astral plane with the angels of the white lodge. Unfortunately I think the reality is quite different. Probably you are exhausted working on the PC all night running the website. You have to work to raise money to pay the rent on the center . Giving classes all the time, doesn’t give you the focus for your own practices, you are making a sacrifice. It is very unfortunate that the very thing you are teaching about is so alien and removed from your daily reality……..
What would you say of a karate instructor that just teaches theory…. he doesn’t have time to train and is out of shape and chronic fatigued because he’s working so hard on the theoretical side?…. It would be a joke wouldn’t it….
And how do I know all this ?
Because I was an instructor myself for some years, with no experience and having proved almost nothing, I was dealing with new students and basically forcing my belief system onto them, without even realizing it.
OK, so I was the bad apple in the bunch, the fish that slipped through the net…. Lets do some counting, how many other committed ex-gnostic instructors do I know of ? I can think of more than 20 off the top of my head that all did the exact same thing as me, some were on the International Committee telling people what to do, some traveling the world creating new centres, and all freely admit, now outside of the philosophical jail that is Belzebuub’s Gnostic Movement, that they never experienced anything significant at all….. They did it all on a kind of trust and what you might call philosophical credit, they believed the knowledge and experience would come if they gave it their best shot. But this is tantamount to fooling yourself, like a student with a credit card that buys nice things and will pay it back when he gets a good job from his degree, he’s just fooling himself. Sure there are benefits to practicing techniques like meditation, awareness, self-observation but these have been taught for millennia and certainly don’t belong to Pritchard.
It gets worse though, because those 20 or so people I knew, constituted the entire core of the Gnostic Movement for the first few years after its formation. All of those people, except one or two, have now left and all admit they never experienced or proved much at all. They all laugh at themselves for being so dragged along with peer pressure.
So come on….. devoted Gnostics… take a good hard look…. Your organization was built on an unproven fairy tale by 20-30 people that I know personally and have mostly left now…. Take a serious look at what you’ve really proved and compare it with how many amazing fairy tales for adults you are believing in…… Look at Mark Pritchard and followers behavior in regard to our site – spiteful hate websites.
I helped build the Gnostic Movement from nothing. I have every right, more right than most to ask questions. You are castigating individuals who have done nothing more than laid out their experiences of your organization and asked questions that they have every right to ask. Investigate, Investigate but if you want to be a member of the Gnostic Movement make sure you agree with Pritchard110%. And remember if you don’t agree, then you are under the influence of demonic forces.
As a final note, lets see what Mark Pritchard has to say about us for our honest peer review of his teachings and organization :
“Poor betrayers, poor falsifiers of truth, poor hanasmussens, they achieve fame by taking the role that Judas symbolized.”
Let’s debunk this nonsense.
Firstly we are not betraying anyone, we are simply stating our experiences so anyone interested in the Gnostic Movement can judge for themselves and have the other side of the story. Betrayal involves some kind of injustice, its not injustice to have a peer review and some critical comments made about you, it’s just a fact of life. Sorry, no betrayal here.
Second, we are not falsifiers of truth, what we state is only and simply our true experiences. We tried to make it clear, and we tried although it’s hard, to be free from exaggerated emotion. We just wanted to leave a permanent record behind us, so others are not as drawn in and don’t waste their time and money as we feel we have done.
Third, what is a Hanasmussen? It’s Mark Pritchard’s term to describe anyone who tries his Gnostic path and doesn’t like it. It’s his term for Heretic. We are heretics for speaking our experiences for other people to judge the Gnostic Movement for themselves. Hmm… you see the fanatical similarity here between other cult groups and madness like the Spanish Inquisition. You are with us or against us. We make the rules, we decide, we are the judge and jury, we know everything and you are a heretic. You see how dangerous this is. The Gnostics of Belzebuub claim we are persecuting them for an honest cross examination and peer review of their organisation, yet with the same hand they go as far as to use invented terminology, label us as demonic persons committing acts of betrayal… now I ask you again… who is persecuting who here ?
And finally apparently “we achieve fame by taking the role the Judas symbolized”.
Look at the egoism in this statement.
Let’s get one thing clear here, we don’t want any fame, we never set out to achieve fame by taking on Mark Pritchard or his crumby Movement. If we wanted fame there would be much better ways to achieve it than exposing a little heard of, badly run cult group. Most of the people writing here are well educated, among them we count working relationships and contacts to fortune 500 business leaders, eminent professors, celebrities, well known artists and musicians and politicians. Funny isn’t it how the retort is to accuse us of trying to take his place. Trying to steal his fame for ourselves. What is the one and only ‘living Christ’ as he calls himself so worried about? We don’t want it Mark….. we don’t need it, we are not the egoists here.
Mr. Pritchard on the other hand, he certainly wants your attention. He claims that from 7 Billion people on planet earth he is the only one, THE ONLY ONE, charged with bringing humanity to salvation. Beelzebub, Belzebuub, however you want to spell it…. Saved from the damned and changed to an angel. No one is much interested which explains why his organisation only has a handful of people involved and is little heard of, but none the less look at the narcissistic, messianic claim going on here. And if you don’t believe it 100% immediately, if you ask a few hard questions, say about misappropriation of assets, sexual harassment, mismanagement, manipulative over bearing psychological attitudes and double standards within his organisation… you are THE JUDAS, the one that is against him, against THE ONLY MESSIAH of all the world. Evil, Demonic, Heretic Betrayer and, as he says, condemned to the lowest levels of the abyss….
Come on pull the other one mate…..
So I challenge members of the Gnostic Movement to look at what you actually know and balance the scales with what you are just believing in and taking on faith, putting aside for future investigation.
If the astral plane is so important to you, then why do you need a physical organisation. Why do you need physical board meetings, online chat, retreat sessions, etc. etc. It could all be done in the astral instead. The Real Gnostic Movement should exist only in the astral plane, with a few committed people physically explaining the very basic techniques to people physically, so if they are interested and committed they can join them in the astral….. . Nothing more is needed…. This will separate the men from the boys…. Problem is it will probably kill the entire thing dead… that’s the truth isn’t it Mark….. ?
So I challenge Mark Pritchard, sorry….. let me correct that, Venerable Master Belzebuub… shut down your organisation that is riddled with fanaticism and nonsense, reduce it to some simple classes and how to astral project and all the rest should take place in the astral plane. There is no need for massive donations, retreat property funds for real estate that never gets purchased, committee members of religious believers committed to your cause….… There’s no need for all this online warfare and aggressive attacks against anyone who speaks out against your organisation. No need for any of it……
Just close down the GM and reduce it to what it should be, which is a mystical school that exists in the mystical. Anyone who is interested will come along in the astral…………no doubt is there?