In the latter half of the twentieth century Westerners in substantial numbers turned to Asia to seek spiritual satisfaction and methods of meditation. And many have found rewarding nourishment. As we have seen, in the early Christian centuries the East was probably one of the sources of the Wisdom that found expression in the Gospel of Thomas and in Gnosticism generally. Depth psychologists, especially of the Jungian school, have found in Gnostic writings parallels to their own probings into the human psyche. The Gnostics' way of thinking in paradoxes and searching for the divine within the human psyche have also been their way.
Evil is as real as good.
Few secular writers and cultural critics outside the world of specialized religious scholars have explicitly explored gnostic themes. One such explorer, noted earlier, is the Yale professor of humanities and critic Harold Bloom. He has suggested that gnosis constitutes the distinctive strain of American thought and letters. His firm recorded knowledge soon loses all interest for him. Apparently Bloom sees the emphasis on individual searches for self-knowledge as the distinctive element of Gnosticism that is now to be found in what he calls the American Religion.