✨ Gnosticism vs. Similarity Theory
A Reflection on Ancient Cosmologies and a Modern Framework
By Simon Raphael
📜 What Gnosticism Believes
Classical Gnosticism (2nd–4th centuries CE) was not one religion but a family of spiritual movements. Despite their diversity, they shared certain themes:
The Flawed World: The cosmos was not made by the highest God but by a lesser, ignorant, or hostile being (the Demiurge). Matter was seen as flawed or deceptive.
The Trapped Soul: Within humans lies a spark of divine light — a fragment of the higher realm (the Pleroma). But this spark is imprisoned in flesh, trapped in cycles of birth and death.
The Archons: Cosmic rulers or powers (archons) stand between us and the divine, enforcing ignorance and fate.
Salvation through Gnosis: Liberation comes not through ordinary faith but through gnosis — direct knowledge of one’s true origin and the way back to it.
For the Gnostic, life was exile, and salvation meant remembering your source and refusing to be fooled by the world’s illusions.
🔮 Modern and Neo-Gnostic Currents
In recent centuries, “Gnosticism” has been blended with New Age thought, Theosophy, and Eastern concepts. These reinterpretations often add:
Life Review as Trap: After death, the “life review” is sometimes described as a trick — a way of convincing the soul to return and suffer again.
Karma as Control: Borrowed from Eastern thought, karma is re-cast not as justice but as a device to keep souls cycling.
Reincarnation as Imprisonment: Life after life is not progress but a cage.
This modern Gnosticism paints a stark picture: the cosmos as a farm, and humanity as livestock.
🪞 Similarity Theory’s Response
Similarity Theory honours Gnosticism’s insight but moves far beyond it.
Truth within Frames: If Gnosticism is right, then it is “true” inside its own frame. But Similarity Theory holds that all truths are contextual — they describe patterns at one level, not the total story.
Common Origins: Unlike Gnosticism, which divides beings into divine vs. flawed, Similarity Theory insists that all beings come from the same source.
🐑 Sheep Analogy: It doesn’t matter if you are a shepherd with a flock of sheep, and you fleece them and kill them — that doesn’t make your existence magical while the sheep’s is not. Both came from the same origins. Power is temporary; essence is shared.
Tools for Liberation: Gnosticism often leaves salvation to special revelation. Similarity Theory offers universal tools: awareness of patterns, time, and consciousness. With these, a soul can choose not to return.
Beyond Escape: Where Gnosticism seeks flight, Similarity Theory offers integration. Even rulers evolve. The “trap” is only a phase within a larger spiral of becoming.
🐦 The Bird in the Cage: The Problem of Conditioning
Here is a challenge to literal Gnosticism: if souls are endlessly recycled for harvesting, why do they not eventually become docile, like a bird kept too long in a cage?
When first caged, a bird tries to escape. But after years of confinement, even if the door is left open, it hesitates.
If Gnosticism were wholly true, after 20, 100, or thousands of lifetimes, souls should have been conditioned into compliance. Rebellion should vanish.
Yet history shows the opposite: revolts, mystics, prophets, and visionaries arise in every age. Awakening does not disappear. This undermines the idea of a perfect, closed recycling system.
🔥 The Spark That Cannot Be Extinguished
This raises a deeper question about the resilience of consciousness itself.
The persistence of rebellion and awakening suggests something profound:
Consciousness is not like a bird whose wings can be clipped forever.
It is more like a flame: it can flicker low, even seem extinguished, but it always retains the potential to blaze again.
This explains why solitude magnifies the soul, why prisoners sometimes awaken, and why near-death experiences flood people with liberation rather than docility.
If the Gnostic trap exists, it is never absolute. Consciousness itself is of a different order than control.
🌀 Technology and the Question of Evolution
If the purpose of reincarnation were only to harvest energy, why allow humanity to evolve technologically and spiritually? Wouldn’t it be easier to freeze us in one repeating frame?
Instead, we see:
Breakthroughs: fire, writing, industry, digital, AI, and beyond.
Revolts: prophets, philosophers, and scientists who break every boundary.
Self-disclosure: the universe revealing its own code — from physics to DNA to quantum mechanics.
This spiral of advancement suggests either:
The “rulers” are themselves learning, not static jailers.
Consciousness carries an inbuilt drive to evolve beyond any cage.
In either case, technological and spiritual growth contradicts the idea of a perfectly stable prison.
🌌 Similarity Theory as a Meta-Framework
Here is the decisive difference:
Gnosticism frames reality as a dualism: jailers vs. prisoners, matter vs. spirit.
Similarity Theory frames reality as a spiral of nested patterns. Everything, even traps, is part of the larger whole.
Thus, Similarity Theory can:
Accommodate both views. Yes, souls could be recycled. Yes, they could also transcend. Both belong to the universal pattern.
Treat imagination, dreams, and myths as real. Not just what we measure, but what we dream, believe, or fear is part of the cosmic pattern.
Distinguish plausibility. Within its wide net, Similarity Theory can still say: some explanations fit reality better than others. And logically, the persistence of rebellion, growth, and breakthrough makes the transcendent view more plausible.
“Similarity Theory accommodates both possibilities: a world where souls are recycled under hidden rulers and a world where consciousness evolves beyond every trap. Within this framework, myths and fears of entrapment are valid expressions of reality, yet the pattern of evolution, revolt, and awakening suggests that consciousness is not endlessly docile but inherently expansive.”
🪐 Reality, Myth, and Thought
Every myth — even Gnosticism itself — is a partial truth, woven into the spiral of becoming. But this extends beyond myth: every thought, every moment of imagination is also part of us, and we are part of the universe. Our thoughts and imaginations are not unreal; because they exist, they are real within the universal pattern.
To discard a myth or a thought as “not real” is a mistake. Everything that arises participates in reality at some level. What changes is how it is real — how it manifests for different beings. Reality for humans may be myth for others. A rock cannot comprehend what a plant experiences, and a plant cannot comprehend what a human experiences. What we call “real” is always filtered through our own frame of perception.
Similarity Theory acknowledges this as dimensional reality: dreams, archetypes, myths, and even fears belong to the same cosmos. They are not illusions but genuine dimensions of consciousness. What is concrete for us may be myth for another order of being, just as our myths may be reality elsewhere. In Similarity Theory, existence itself makes a thing real — whether tangible object, thought, or dream. All are woven into the spiral of becoming as dimensions of the universe.
✨ Conclusion
Gnosticism rightly names our sense of exile and the suspicion that powers exploit us. But Similarity Theory shows the wider pattern:
All beings share the same origin.
Power does not equal superiority.
Consciousness is a flame that cannot be permanently extinguished.
Technology and mysticism alike point to transcendence, not permanent captivity.
Every myth, including Gnosticism, holds partial truth — yet Similarity Theory weaves them into the spiral of becoming.
Where Gnosticism ends with despair or narrow escape, Similarity Theory begins with hope, integration, and the promise that no trap is final.
📚 References
The Apocryphon of John (Nag Hammadi Codex II, 1).
The Gospel of Truth (Nag Hammadi Codex I, 3).
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion. Beacon Press, 1958.
Hoeller, Stephan. Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing. Quest Books, 2002.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. Vintage, 1979.
