Ancient ruins of Eleusis, bust of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius; Attica, Greece (near Athens). Eleusis was one of the great sacred sites of antiquity, its practices of the Eleusinian Mysteries were centered on the earth goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. The site was the second most important in ancient Greece after Delphi.

Excerpts below are from John Lamb Lash book Not In His Image and other materials (cited).

Roman Emperor and Eleusinian initiate Marcus Aurelius (121-180 C.E.) concisely stated the essence of Pagan ethics: “Nature has constituted rational beings for their own mutual benefit, each to help his fellows according to their worth, and in no wise to do them harm.” His Meditations is a diary of philosophical reflections written while Marcus lived in remote encampments on the Danubian borderlands, protecting the Empire against invasion. It demonstrates the value scale of Pagan ethics more than any single document from antiquity. Marcus put into simple, direct language the code of honor and kindness of Pagan society, including slaves and emperors alike.

– JLL, NIHI pg263, Pt3 History’s Hardest Lesson, Ch20 Beyond Religion

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The Pagan principle of tolerance resonates through the Meditations. Gnosticism, which was body-based mysticism, and Stoicism, which was nature-oriented humanism, here converge. The beauty and finesse of the Meditations is counterpointed by their gravitas. This is not an ethic of obligation, a code that we attempt to live up to and fail, feeling better about ourselves for having tried. It is not prudential morality that promises to reward the soul (with God’s favor in worldly success while living, or with resurrection in the afterlife) for every good thought and deed. It is not off-planet metaphysics with an end-game scenario of resurrection and divine retribution. It is a sober existential ethic of commitment to humane standards, a pact with what can really be achieved through human potential. lf then we fail, the weight of sadness is immense, because the standard set for us was fully and truly within our scope.

A saturnine spirit weighs down Marcus’s reflections, but three pages of his diary provide more moral edification than the New Testament in its entirety.

– JLL, NIHI pg264, Pt3 History’s Hardest Lesson, Ch20 Beyond Religion

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Pagan spirituality was deeply humanistic in its assertion that everything human beings need to live truthfully and harmoniously can be discovered in human nature. Scholars have identified Socrates in the West and Confucius in the East as the two seminal representatives of this outlook. The most clear and complete expression of Pagan humanist ethos is found in the Meditations of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who lived in the 2nd Century CE.

– JLL, Metahistory Arch: Moral Design

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Marcus Aurelius was a member of a compassionate elite. He was a Roman emperor, born into the upper class society of Rome. And he was an initiate of the Mysteries who shared the ethical view of the Mysteries. And if you read The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, as I’ve said before, there is more moral edification in three pages of that book than in the entire New Testament, or any other piece of religious trash that’s been shoved in the face of the human race! So, Marcus Aurelius is an example, so is Plutarch, so is Euripides. These are examples of a pagan elite, but that pagan elite was not perfect. But it had the general quality and property of compassion. And that compassion speaks eloquently and vividly today, through many, many lines in the works of Marcus Aurelius.

– JLL, GNE NB #93 Absolute Novelty

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Passage 62, Second Treatise of the Great Seth talked about celebrating friendship, a Gnostic principle held equal in regard with love. The spirit of friendship allowed those who participated in the Mysteries to come together in “the joining of truth, that they should have no adversary” (62.12). They agreed on the “big picture” because they were all initiated into the same visionary experience, and within the framework of that collective vision each Telestes developed individual, even idiosyncratic teachings. (Something similar applies today among the Nyingma Pa in Tibet, Bhutan and Assam. Lamas all agree on the general frame of Tibetan mysticism, but in each valley and village lamas are free to develop and express singular expressions and applications of the Dharma.)

There are so many different facets of human goodness, so many expressions of the natural benevolence of humanity summed up by the Pagan sage Marcus Aurelius: “Nature has constituted rational beings for their own mutual benefit, each to help his fellows according to their worth, and in no wise to do them harm.”

– JLL, Reading Plan for the Nag Hammadi Library: Texts 5-9

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“…pagan morality encourages the performance of noble and honest actions for their own sake, rather than as a means to an end. (The best-preserved summation of the pagan morality is found in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.)”

– JLL, Metahistory Lexicon

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In his book Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, who was an Eleusinian initiate and a Stoic philosopher, wrote simply “Love truth.” This statement is not a teaching, however. Neither is “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Both are snippets of advice, that’s all. Jesus did not teach love for thy neighbor, but there is a pretension that he did. Someone alleged to have been Jesus is attributed with stating that advice, but the textual record of the Gospels contains no coherent teaching about it, nor does it explain how we come to love ourselves in the first place, nor does it clarify what I can do when I realize that I love my neighbor’s wife. Nevertheless, countless people down the ages have insisted that Jesus taught this action, rather than just pronounced a few words of advice, and not particularly clear advice at that. It is pure pretence to claim that Jesus taught anything, and that pretence has done enormous harm to the world.

Marcus Aurelius did not teach, either. In fact, his “Meditations” (so translated) were actually notes to himself written during a long encampment on the Danube, where he was defending the borders of the Empire—for Marcus Aurelius was, yes, a Roman emperor. He did not teach, but for his own sanity and peace of mind he kept notes on what he was taught: to love truth, for example. Search as you will, you will not find an equivalent line in the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, and not in Buddhism or the Bhagavad Gita, either. Not in Vedanta, or Dzogchen. Even the Asian metapsychologies (as I would call those elaborate systems) do not come out and say, point blank, love what is true, although they do encourage us to seek truth, and they offer genuine teachings on how to do so.

“Love truth.” What a beautiful thing to be told. Marcus Aurelius did not write his notes to teach anyone, but to console himself. Yet he was definitely taught how to love truth, not merely told to do so. The sincere words of someone who was taught can also serve as a kind of teaching. There is more moral edification and humane insight in two pages of the Meditations than there is in the entire New Testament.

– JLL, Metahistory Guidelines: In The Knowledge That Frees: Love Truth

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The problem with beliefs is, we acquire them without previously determining if they are true for us, or correct on human terms, or even sane. Where faith takes the lead in our lives, there is no truth-testing process. Faith frees us – absolves us, if you will – from the tedious and daunting task of assessing the truth of what we believe. It is evident that many people who rely on faith have neither the need nor the desire to assess the truth of what they believe. Sadly, they do not consider it essential to love truth and believe only what is proven to be true, rather than to blindly regard as true what they have been told to believe, or come to believe by passive consent.

The call to love truth belongs to the pre-Christian humanist tradition. It can be found, for instance, in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And so does metahistory.org.

This site affirms the right to believe, not what we are told to believe, and not what we blindly consent to believe, but what we determine to be true and worth believing. It presents a way to undertake that “tedious and daunting task” by which we make ourselves accountable to truth itself.

– JLL, Metahistory Introduction: Guidelines: Orientation Essay: Right To Believe: How Metahistory Fosters Love For Truth

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The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is the single and supreme testament of Pagan ethics consistent with the Gnostic view of life. Stoicism represents the mundane ethical profile of the telestai. I recommend the clear but somewhat overelegant translation by Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin Books).

Plato and Plotinus, the superstars of ancient philosophy in the West, are unreliable and misleading references when it comes to genuine Pagan Gnosis. They both emphasize otherworldly criteria and out-of-the-body mysticism (Plotinus even confessed embarrassment at the fact of having a body), totally contrary to the psychosomatic illuminism of the Mysteries.

– JLL, NIHI pg414, Suggestions For Reading And Research: Classical References

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