Perennialism and the primordial tradition

A Traditionalist Perspective on Gnosticism with Charles Upton

Charles Upton’s first books of poetry were published in 1968 and 1969 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Light Books in San Francisco. He was then considered the youngest member of the “beat generation” as he was still in high school. He has subsequently written many books associated with the traditionalist school of spirituality including What Poets Used to Know, The Science of the Greater Jihad, Folk Metaphysics, Alien Disclosure Deception: The Metaphysics of Social Engineering, Day and Night on the Sufi Path, Dugin Against Dugin: A Traditionalist Critique of the Fourth Political Theory, The System of the Antichrist, and Vectors of the Counter-Initiation. His most recent book of poetry is The Wars of Love and Other Poems.

Charles Upton offers a traditionalist critique of Gnosticism, examining its metaphysical assumptions about evil, transcendence, and the nature of the cosmos. Charles explores why Gnostic ideas resonate so strongly in modern culture, particularly feelings of alienation, simulation, and entrapment in an unjust world. From a traditionalist standpoint, Upton reframes Gnosticism as a symbolic diagnosis of ego and spiritual imbalance rather than a literal account of reality.

00:00:01 Introduction: a traditionalist view of Gnosticism
00:04:38 What traditionalism means and where it came from
00:07:58 The primordial tradition and unity of religions
00:15:30 Why Gnosticism is considered heresy
00:17:44 The Gnostic idea of a false universe
00:20:39 The Demiurge reinterpreted as the ego
00:22:31 Four Archons as spiritual distortions
00:30:18 Law, selfhood, chaos, and fate explained
00:39:28 How the Archons reinforce each other
00:59:06 Conclusion

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

(Recorded on January 29, 2025)

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