This had a great impact on early Christianity and spawned much of the ascetic movement. Western Christian mysticism was a product of the monastic world and its search for spiritual release. As we mentioned, Christianity was early affected by the in-roads of Gnostic dualistic thinking in which a heavy emphasis was placed upon the antithesis of matter and spirit, body and soul. The Fall, according to Gnosticism, was not from innocence into disobedience, but from pure spirit to physical bodies. Self, being imprisoned in this material world, is in a battle between light and darkness, spirit and matter.
Salvation means escape from the body and the physical world.
One must be inner-directed and not subject to creeds, doctrines, rituals, sacraments, or any people or structures of authority. Experiential rather than liturgical or doctrinal forms of public worship are promoted. The leaders of the movement were those who claimed to have secret knowledge of divine revelation. Gnostics believed that whatever happened to them in their own private experience was the final court of appeal. True spirituality was inner, experiential, and mystical.