These modern frameworks echo the poetic metaphysics found in early Christian mystical texts, particularly The Gospel of Truth, attributed to Valentinian circles in the second century. In that gospel, creation is not a literal series of events but the unfolding of divine awareness. Humanity's fall is described not as sin in the traditional sense but as a state of forgetfulness—of ignorance regarding one's origin in the divine. Christ is not merely a sacrifice for wrath but the embodiment of divine memory, sent to awaken humanity from its slumber. He comes not to punish but to remind. The cross is not the locus of appeasement but the fulcrum of revelation, shaking the soul out of its amnesia and into the awareness of its source. This mirrors Kastrup’s assertion that our apparent separation is not real, but a dissociation—a compartmentalization within the larger consciousness. Likewise, in Hoffman’s terms, we have believed too literally in the icons we see, taking interface for substance and forgetting the deeper, conscious structures beneath.
But long before these Christian mystical texts were written—and even before Greek philosophy laid the groundwork for idealism—indigenous peoples across the world were articulating similar views through shamanic traditions. Ancient shamanism, found in the Amazon, Siberia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, consistently holds that the material world is not the primary reality. Shamans enter altered states of consciousness—through trance, dance, plant medicines, or dreams—not to escape the real, but to access a more real, spirit-infused realm that underlies and interpenetrates the visible world. In these states, they report encounters with entities, ancestors, and archetypal forces, and they navigate dimensions where thought, symbol, and intention shape the environment. Such experiences support the idea that consciousness precedes matter, and that the material world is a symbolic interface, much like what Hoffman and Kastrup suggest.
Shamanism also shares the core insight found in The Gospel of Truth—that we are beings who have forgotten who we truly are. The shaman does not merely heal the body but retrieves the soul, restores memory, and reintegrates the person into the web of life. These rituals aim to reverse fragmentation, to mend the split between the visible and invisible, between the individual and the cosmos. Kastrup's view of dissociation within universal consciousness closely resembles the indigenous notion of spiritual disconnection as a form of soul loss or imbalance. Likewise, Hoffman’s conscious agents resemble the spirit-beings and intelligences recognized in animist and shamanic cosmologies. These beings are not figments of a primitive imagination, but inhabitants of other layers of the conscious field, accessible through non-ordinary states of awareness.
The prologue of the Gospel of John carries a striking resonance with these themes. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Logos here functions not simply as a name for Christ but as the rational pattern and meaning behind all things—the structure of divine mind. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity.” Life and light—consciousness and awareness—are not accidents of biology but the very essence of being. When John later says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” it is not merely about incarnation but about divine consciousness breaking into human perception. Chapter 17 deepens this mystical theme. Jesus speaks of unity: “That they may be one, Father, as you are in me and I in you… that they may be brought to complete unity.” This is not an institutional unity, but ontological unity. He speaks as though his own consciousness and the Father's are intertwined, and he desires that same experience for humanity. It is the language of reintegration—the healing of the dissociation that Kastrup describes, and the lifting of illusion Hoffman critiques.
Paul’s epistles echo this cosmic consciousness in deeply mystical terms. In Colossians, Paul proclaims, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Christ is not just an individual but a cosmic template, a unifying field. “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Christ is not just an agent but the pattern of divine reality itself. In Ephesians, Paul extends this thought: “There is one body and one Spirit… one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Here, spiritual union is not moral agreement but ontological participation in the divine. The individual ego, separated by fear and survival instincts, begins to dissolve into a larger, luminous unity. This mirrors not only Hoffman’s model of conscious agent networks but also indigenous visions of the great web of life, in which all beings are animated by Spirit and interrelated through sacred reciprocity.
Modern spirituality, then, has an opportunity to synthesize these diverse insights into a cohesive path of awakening. It begins with a fundamental shift: seeing consciousness not as a byproduct of brain chemistry but as the very ground of existence. The illusions of separation—between self and other, divine and human, sacred and secular—can be healed. In this spirituality, prayer is not pleading with a distant deity but aligning with the deeper flow of the one mind. Meditation becomes a tuning of attention back into the divine presence from which we are never truly separate. Ritual, long dismissed as superstition, regains its sacred function: to symbolize and enact inner realities, to realign the self with the rhythms of cosmos and spirit. Shamanic ceremony, Christian sacrament, and contemplative silence all become valid technologies of the sacred.
The story of Christ becomes not a once-for-all transaction, but an eternal drama of remembering, of awakening from forgetfulness. The “kingdom of God within” is not metaphor, but an invitation to rediscover one's identity in the universal consciousness. This is a message as ancient as the drumbeat of tribal medicine men and as contemporary as quantum theory. It bridges the firelit visions of the shaman with the deep exegesis of the mystic. It is the perennial message: you are not what you think you are, you are more, and you have never been separate from the Source.
In this synthesis, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of John, and Paul’s mystical Christ are no longer bound by doctrinal literalism but are seen as poetic revelations of the structure of consciousness itself. Analytic Idealism, as articulated by Bernardo Kastrup, gives a metaphysical framework for this spirituality: the world is real, but it is mental, symbolic, and alive within divine mind. Conscious Realism, as proposed by Donald Hoffman, offers a scientific metaphor: the reality we see is not the thing-in-itself but a dashboard—custom-tailored to our sensory evolution. Indigenous shamanism, often dismissed by modern thinkers, returns to the table as an intuitive, experiential map of the same insight: that the world is sacred, that mind is primary, and that true healing is a return to relational, holistic consciousness. We are the divine, looking through filters, interfaces, and personas, slowly remembering what we always were.
Thus, modern spirituality becomes an act of reconnection. Not through dogma, but through direct experience. Not through fear, but through awakening. It speaks to the mystic, the scientist, the seeker, and the shaman. It honors ancient scripture, not by freezing it in the past, but by decoding its deeper truths in the light of new understanding. In Christ, we see not a gatekeeper, but a guide—calling us out of the dream of separation and into the luminous truth of shared being. In the language of John, we become one as Christ and the Father are one—not by merit, but by nature. In the terms of Kastrup, we awaken as fragments of the One Mind dissolving the illusion of fragmentation. In Hoffman’s vision, we learn not to cling to the icons, but to explore the deeper conscious reality they hint at. And in the heartbeat of the shaman’s drum, we find the rhythm of a world where all is alive, all is interconnected, and all is sacred.
This synthesis is the gospel for a post-materialist age—a gospel of unity, awakening, and inward return. It is the good news that we were never separate, never lost, only dreaming. And now, the dream is thinning, the light is dawning, and the Word that was in the beginning is speaking again—not in thunder, but within. And the Spirit that moved across the waters, danced in sacred fire, and whispered in tribal chants is still speaking in every tradition that dares to remember.