http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/09/bbc-television
At the same time I was musing on how gnosis was the only really important thing. I was thinking of saying to an interviewer - maybe even him - that above all political comment, all art, all efforts to find justice, all criticism of neo-Darwinism and of the philosophical arguments for God´s existence this was really the only thing that mattered: direct experience of the Divine.
Spiritual consciousness.
Gnosis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis
When I had my first experience of higher consciousness, in June 1986, I found, as I reviewed it immediately afterwards, the Elkie Brooks song No More the Fool was playing in my head.
The gnosis I sought I now had.
I knew... and for the rest of my life would be a knower.
I thought of an image that had come to me before re our efforts to bring a corrupt guru to justice, i.e.
cops rushing into a house as they are notified that a dangerous criminal is upstairs. On the ground floor they note, out of the corners of their eyes as they dash past, some magical happenings. But they are Police officers and have not been summoned to the premises for any reason other than to investigate or even apprehend a criminal, and hurry upstairs... but so they miss the point.
The only real point.
I then read further on in the Paxman interview until I read something which had been invisible before:
"I suppose as one gets older - I would have described it at the age of 21 as the process of selling out, but another way of looking at it is to say, actually, the world is not a very simple place, and that as you get older simple-minded solutions seem less attractive."
Paxman will turn 60 next year. It is hard to say what he deeply believes in, and I doubt this is due entirely to a public obligation of neutrality. The opinions he offers tend towards the banally mainstream: Tony Blair was an "amazing phenomenon"; the "end of ideology" makes this political generation less exciting; "professional politicians" have seen off Westminster's great characters, and so on. His books hint at a vaguely middlebrow sentimentality. He began going to church 20 years ago, but stopped a decade ago, when he lost his faith in faith.
"Is that something I don't want to talk about?" he ponders, when I ask where he stands on God today. "Yeah, it probably is." For a moment it is as if he is talking to himself. Then, suddenly earnest, "I mean, it is the only important question really. Is there a purpose? And I've not got an answer to that. And to suggest that I have a hard and fast position on this matter implies a degree of certainty that I don't have, and I wish I did. Life would be much easier if you knew."
Se Paxman at 22:25 here debating Pascal´s Wager with Christopher Hitchens - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-s9AyNQyCw
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