Peter Jones on Gnosticism

Peter Jones, of CWIPP, was interviewed in World Magazine regarding the gnostic roots of of the DaVinci Code here. He defines gnosticism thus:

Gnosticism is formed from the Greek term gnosis meaning knowledge, but it means here a particular form of knowledge, namely "spiritual experience." Like all pagan spirituality, so-called "Christian" Gnosticism engages in "sacred technologies" to access the higher, spiritual self, the self that is part of God.

In this essentially out-of-body experience, all physical and this-worldly restraints, like rational thinking and a sense of specific gender, fall away. In a word, the experience of "enlightenment" is both the rejection of the goodness of the physical creation and an acquisition of the knowledge of the divinity of the human soul.

This sounds very much like the sort of stuff advocated by the DVD I listened to mentioned in a previous post. Though I have to say that the gnostic conception of god is very different to the more orthodox view of God portrayed by the speaker.