Do the Gnostic Gospels really say the self is separate from God trapped inside a body?

This is quite interesting in that it is describing one of two possible metaphysics. The one described here as novel and contradictory to Christianity is actually the exact same metaphysics that dominates all Western thought and large sections of the rest of the World's thought.

 It is captured in the Second Treatise of Seth section where the it begins "It was another who drank the gall and the vinegar" and then elements of the crucifixion are described as occurring to different people. The narrator says that this shows that Jesus' spirit was untouched while his physical body suffered.

But this is the normal interpretation of everything. The Cartesian Body/Mind dualism. There is a Soul trapped inside a Body and a material World and the two are separate. 

But this is a very mediaeval sounding view of things. Obviously there is only one world. Who really thinks there is more than one Universe, and even if there is isn't it just parts of a greater Universe. There is just One and nothing else. Where does this split of body/mind happen?

But how then do we account for the subjective feeling experience in an objective inanimate world?

Well that is just us thinking in terms of the dualism of mind and body.

Once we do away with it. There is just One.

So the Gnostic Gospels may (and I need to read) not be saying this.

The other possibility is that the "spark" of life and consciousness and the thing which is special about our "spirit" actually belongs to the world. The parts of the subject that are left are really quite inanimate. The ability to see things and think things and experience things are not so special. Any animal can do this. Even AI can pretty much do this now. All the processes in our brain to process the world and even the decisions we make about our life: all of this is just a machine working. It is not special and it is not "ours."

The really interesting part of this, the bit that is cosmic and transcends the mortal body and all its mundane processes that actually comes from the Universe, not from within anything.

Earlier in the video it quotes the Gospel of Thomas who says:

"When you know yourselves then you will be known."

There is a clear connection between the universal and the "self." That is not possible if the self is somehow cut off from the Universal within the body. The body is the self, and the belief in a self separate from the Universal is the very trap itself. Believing in a spirit and a soul is the very problem.

The truth is that the thing we know is most extraordinary about us is not us. "us" is the mundane physical processes of senses and brain: the seeing things, the wanting things, the working, deciding, feeling, thinking. These are just mundane things. They are not "me". Or at least they are a "me" but a very boring machine me that operates in this world. They are not the me I am really interested in.

The real me is not a separate "me" at all. I channel the Universe into this mundane separate self. It is from the perspective of the Universe that this separate self becomes separate, but I am not this body.

Throwing off this belief that I am a separate thing is the hardest of all things. Because even when I think I have succeeded, the separate me will own this as a badge. Look I am wise and liberated we will think and realise we are still looking at things through the eyes of a mortal machine.

Ignore all this. It will die and it will be useless. So it is useless now.

The spark is already here all around and within and it is the Universe. The things which makes our seeing and smelling and thinking seem so vivid and real and significant: that part, not the actual sensing, is the Universe and it is US right here and now. We know it well, it is obvious.

We might think this is just a simple inversion. So I was thinking the spark of my existence and my being comes from within me. But a little thought shows me that I was born and raised by my parents, every atom in my body comes from the stars, and there is nothing inside that didn't come from outside. So I turn myself inside out and call the stars my self and my body is the world. That also fits the fact that I cannot see inside my body, but I can see the stars.

It is kind of true and is definitely closer.

To really shake free from the body however we see that all this gymnastics is not necessary. It is simple seeing everything mortal--and body and mind like--as processes in the physical body located in the here locality. And the important bit that we called spirit before is the real nature of the Universe that pervades everything local and far making this little here and now significant.

I need read them to decide whether they are just splitting the world into separate selves, or whether they are saying there is just one self.