What are the Gnostic Gospels and more importantly what is Gnostic belief?  

Also called the Gnostic Bible, the Gospels are a series of religious texts that were discovered accidentally by two farmers in 1945 in Egypt near Nag Hammadi, and therefore, also go by the name the Nag Hammadi Library. What makes these texts interesting in relation to Christianity is that they are estimated to date back to between the 2nd and 4th century AD, which puts them very close to the time of Jesus and right in the time of early Christianity.

Knowing this the next question is: what did these early Christians believe in that was so dangerous to the Church that their belief had to be banned as heresy? Here is an excerpt from Chapter Three which explains what Gnosis is:

   Gnosticism – to be a Gnostic - comes from gnosis, which means “knowledge” as opposed to agnostic, which means “not-knowing.” Now, it can of course be argued that it is not humble to claim to know about the ultimate reality; an agnostic would say that we cannot know anything about this reality at all. Before my Near Death Experience, as an atheist, I would probably have agreed with this view, but today after my experience, I believe like Gnostic belief that we can know something about this ultimate reality. Just as my experience of this reality was the experience of my true self, so too does gnosis involve the process of knowing oneself—our true identity.

   In a world where we are still in search of truth whether we believe it exists or not, I agree with the Gnostics that we should look for our own truth. For me, knowing our essence as our true nature is the ultimate reality and this is how we become resurrected in life and in death.

   Pagels offer us this conclusion: “Only those who come to recognize that they have been living in ignorance, and learn to release themselves by discovering who they are, experience enlightenment as a new life, as ‘the resurrection.’”

   She is thereby letting us know that,

The “living Jesus” of these texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament. Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual understanding.

Pagels concludes that, “Achieving gnosis (knowledge) involves coming to recognize the true source of divine power – namely, ‘the depth’ of all being.” Here I see this “depth” and “ground of being” as fitting with the mind, consciousness, or the self. It is clear that if God is being itself—I am—then the true nature of God can only be found through realizing our true self, and not through others who tell us who or what God is.

The point in self-knowledge is that only we can realize our own true nature. No one can tell us our own truth; we have to find it by ourselves. The Bhagavadagita says of self-knowledge: “Neither the gods nor the demons understand your manifestation. You only know yourself by yourself.”

   In her foreword to The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels quotes the Gnostic teacher Monoimus as saying the same thing.

Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.”

To learn more about who it is within you, please look at the section about Who am I?