by Nuvoadam
In October 2003, the Usenet group alt.religion.gnostic was debating whether mystical experience could be tested empirically. A participant named Jonathan challenged whether any meditation technique could truly verify the difference between a "mundane mental state" and genuine spiritual ascent. Nuvoadam — a regular contributor whose posts synthesized Gnostic, Buddhist, Kabbalistic, and Egyptian mysticism — responded with this essay. Rather than defending the position philosophically, he described the practice itself: the Gnostic technique of meditative ascent, in which the practitioner's heart and breath slow to a near-death state while the Nous — the divine intellect — travels freely through what he calls the Eternal Now.
The essay moves across traditions with unusual fluency. Jesus calls it "prayer" and the "first death" that leads to the "second birth." The Essenes called it the YAHOD — a unity of consciousness, a telepathic internet of all enlightened minds across time and space. The Kabbalists located it in Adam's Skull. The Egyptian priests named the awakened son the Benben, the son of the Sun. For Nuvoadam, these are all the same practice: the voluntary dissolution of ego-ignorance, the sending of the inner spark upward into the dark womb of the mind, and the birth of the Christ-mind, Buddha-mind, Melchizedek-mind.
The post responds to a question about empirical verification of mystical states. Nuvoadam's answer is that the test is not a philosophical one — it is a practical one. You go in, and then you get out. The technique is described here in the cross-traditional language of the Western Gnostic tradition.
We don't have to die for this kind of "test." Jesus, Rumi, Siddhartha and other masters have spoken of the meditative death, where one sends part of their mind up into the mental realm. Normally this only happens when we die, but we can learn how to do this while alive. The effect on our bodies is much the same. The heart and breath slows until others see us as having died. We are not in a trance. We are not lost in our thoughts. We are not here in this world, experiencing the mundane.
It could be loosely said that we are in a mental state, but more accurately, having discovered the techniques which will allow us to send our minds out of the bondage of the material body, we have "grown wings" (Jesus) and flown up to a place where we can commune with other enlightened minds. Some call this meeting place a Nirvana, others a Heaven, and still others a Pleroma. A popular name for the initial meeting places is The Eternal Now: a place where all enlightened, self-realized minds from every point of time and space can meet. The being next to you may be from across the Universe and living 1 Billion years in the past, or from the same planet, only a Million years in the future.
Jesus called this meditation "prayer," and also the "first death" which leads to the "second birth." When we eject part of our Nous or mind from our bodies, we are giving birth to ourselves. The Gnostic, having gathered knowledge and understood what is wisdom or Sophia, has become pregnant with Sophia. She is Mother. The Gnostic aspirant is Father, for we are sending part of our mind into our own self. We are looking within our own dark skulls like a womb and sending a spark of light up into this womb.
Here this spark will — through continuing meditation — impregnate us, and a new child will grow, fed by the fires of our own thoughts. When our minds catch fire we are like a newly risen Sun: the Morning Star, as Jesus put it. Before we send part of our Nous outside of our bodies we must unite with Sophia as Shiva and SHVH do with Shakti and JHVH does with Shekinah. Having become the primordial spiritual hermaphrodite, we then give birth to our own son. As the son of the Sun, this is what the Egyptians called the Benben — the son of the Sun. This other part of ourselves is what Buddhists call Buddha-mind, what mystic Christians called Christ-mind, what the Essenes called Melchizedek-mind.
It was, is, and will be a Unity of consciousness: a telepathic internet, a coadunant collectivity, what the Essenes called the YAHOD or YAHAD — the real God.
For the Kabbalist meditators it is Adam's Skull where all the action is. Adam searched for God in his dark mind. Here is what Jesus called the Wedding Chamber, where the medieval Gnostics called the Dark Forest where the initiate as the hairy wild-man was to find a unicorn and a white dove. The seeker being the hairy wild-man, the unicorn's horn begins to form when they send their kundalini snake twisting up into their own minds — hence the horn's location over the pineal gland. When the white dove lands on the horn it is the same as when the dove landed on Jesus' head during his water baptism.
That was just Jesus' way of showing John the Gilead Tishbite that he had already attained the Baptism of Light, or the spiritual Eucharist.
Eve is Sophia, or Shiva. When she was removed from Adam's side, it was really Shiva being removed from Adam's sight. When Adam finds Eve again in his inner sight, he becomes united with her as in the days of old. Adam becomes God — Kad, united with man — mon. Hence Adam Kadmon: the new or Nuvo Adam.
Colophon
Written by Nuvoadam and posted to alt.religion.gnostic on October 15, 2003. Message-ID: [email protected]. The post responds to a challenge by "Jonathan" about whether mystical experience can be empirically verified; Nuvoadam's answer is the description of the meditative death technique itself. Nuvoadam was a regular contributor to alt.religion.gnostic from 2003 to 2004, producing a series of cross-traditional essays synthesizing Hermetic Gnosticism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, and Eastern mysticism.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
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