Self-Gnosis, or Individual Enlightenment
In her work, "The Gnostic Gospels", Mrs. Pagels introduces us into the field of the Gnostic aspiration to the grace of Enlightenment, which has been offered -since ancient times- by Patriarchs, Envoys, Prophets, Saints and also by the very Messiah, Jesus Christ, in the Sermon of the Mount:
The Gnostic Movement has common points with the contemporary methods of the Being's exploration. These common points are related to the psychotherapeutic techniques. Both, Gnosticism and psychotherapy are based on the knowledge, on the self-knowledge, that is to say, on the intimate perception. Both agree on the following point: Without the self-knowledge, one feels that is driven by impulses that one does not understand. Valentinus expressed this fact with the aid of the myth. He relates the way in which the world was born when wisdom, the mother of all beings, took it out from its own suffering. The four elements -earth, air, fire and water- which make up the world, according to Greek philosophers, are the outcome of the experiences of wisdom:
Thus the Earth appeared from confusion, water from terror; air from the consolidation of its pain; and fire was inherent to all these elements, the same as ignorance lay down hidden in these three sufferings.
In this way was the world born from suffering. The Greek word "pathos" which is translated as suffering, also means “the passive receptor of the experience”, but not the initiator of that experience. Valentinus or one of his followers narrates a different version of that myth in the Gospel of the Truth: "Ignorance produced anguish and terror. And the anguish became solid like fog in such a way that people could not see anything. For this reason, the error is powerful... Therefore, most people live in the forgetfulness or, in order to say it in contemporary terms, in the unconscious. Those who are unaware of their own being, do not have roots. The Gospel of the Truth describes it as a nightmarish existence. Those who live that nightmarish existence will experience terror and confusion, instability and doubt and division, and they end up trapped in a lot of illusions. Thus, according to the passage called the nightmare's parabola by the scholars, those people
lived as if they were deeply asleep, and living in disturbing dreams. Either they flee towards a place, or they return very weak after chasing somebody, or they hit somebody, or they are hit by other people, or they have fallen from tall places, or they soar through the air although they do not have wings. Sometimes, they feel as if somebody was killing them although there is nobody chasing them, or they kill their neighbours because they are stained with blood. When those who go through these experiences awaken, they do not see anything, they do not see all the people who were causing them all that disturbance, because that disturbance is nothing. The same happens to those who have driven the ignorance and dreams away from themselves, leaving the works of ignorance behind, away in the night... This is the way in which everybody has acted when he was ignorant, as if he was asleep. And this is the way in which the knowledge has arrived, as if one would have awakened.
The Gnostics said that such a person lives in the deficiency -the opposite to satisfaction- because deficiency consists of ignorance: "The same as ignorance vaporises itself when someone realizes of his own ignorance, or the same as the darkness disappears when the light appears, in the same way the deficiency is vaporised by the satisfaction. The ignorance of oneself is a form of self-destruction. According to the Dialogue of the Saviour, those who do not understand the elements of the universe and themselves, are destined for their self-annihilation.
If one does not understand how the fire was set on, one will burn oneself, because one does not know the root of fire. If one does not understand the water, one does not know anything. If one does not understand how the wind that is blowing was born, one will be blown away. If one who does not understand how his body was born, one will perish with it. The one who does not understand how he came, will not understand how will leave...
How or where should one look for the knowledge of oneself? Many Gnostics agree with psychotherapy in another important premise: Both state -in opposition to the orthodox Christianity- that the psyche carries within itself the potential for its self-liberation or its self-destruction. Few psychiatrists would disagree with the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you.
Such a perception will gradually carry, through the effort, to the following point: Understand what is in front of your eyes, and that which is occult will be revealed to you. Such Gnostics knew that the search of Gnosis places the person in a solitary, difficult process, because one has to struggle against an internal resistance. This resistance to Gnosis was characterized as desire to sleep or to be drunk, that is to say, to remain unconscious. For this reason, Jesus -who says in other part of the text: I AM THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH- states that when he came to the world:
I found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. My soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see, for they came into the world empty, and they also seek to depart from the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk.
The Gospel of Thomas also warns that the knowledge of oneself brings inner confusion:
Jesus said: Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all.
Similar warnings about the acquisition of the enlightening self-knowledge are done by the Founder and President of the Contemporary Gnosis, Mr. Samael Aun Weor:
The SELF-GNOSIS, that is, the GNOSTIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE BEING, thanks to the Anthropological knowledge of the Pneuma or Spirit, definitely can save us.
By knowing oneself, one can attain the identification with his own Divine Being.
To understand that you are identical to your "Own Pneuma or Spirit", to directly experience the identification of cognizance with the cognizer, is what must be defined as SELF-GNOSIS.
Ostensibly, this extraordinary disclosure invites us to die in ourselves so that the Being manifests itself within us.
On the contrary, to move away from the Being, to continue as Ego and within the Heresy of separateness, means to condemn ourselves to the submerged Involution in the "Hell Worlds".
This evident reflection leads us to the topic of the Gnostic "Free Will". Unquestionably, a serious Gnostic is a chosen one, but “a posteriori”.
By means of the Gnostic experience, the sincere devotee can entirely attain both the knowledge of himself (or herself) and Self-Realization.
Self-Realization should be understood as the harmonious development of all the infinite human possibilities.
It is neither a matter of intellectual data distributed capriciously nor of mere insubstantial talk in an ambiguous chat.
Everything that we are saying in these paragraphs should be understood as genuine, real and vivid experience.
In the Gnostic streams, “the Dogma of Orthodox predetermination”, which would bound us lamentably within a narrow conception of the Anthropomorphic Deity, does not exist.
The KNOWLEDGE OF THE BEING is a supra-rational movement that depends on the Being, and which has nothing to do with intellectualism.
The abyss that exists between the Being and the “I” is impassable. That is why the Pneuma, the Spirit, recognizes itself, and this recognition is an autonomous act which cannot be done through the intellectual mammal's subjective reason which is ineffective, insufficient and terribly poor in order to reach such a goal.
SELF-KNOWLEDGE, SELF-GNOSIS, implies the annihilation of the "I", as previous, urgent and unpostponable work. The I, the Ego, is made up of additions and subtractions of subjective elements, inhuman and beastly, which unquestionably have a beginning and an end.
Unfortunately, the Essence, the Consciousness, is immersed, trapped, bottled up inside the diverse elements that make up the "Myself", the "Ego", and processes itself painfully according to its own conditioning.
The Essence, the Consciousness, awakens, becomes enlightened, is liberated, by means of dissolving the "I"; then, as a consequence or corollary, comes the SELF-KNOWLEDGE, the SELF-GNOSIS. Undoubtedly, the legitimate revelation has its irrefutable, unanswerable bases in "SELF-GNOSIS".
Gnostic revelation is always immediate, direct, intuitive; it radically excludes subjective intellectual operations, it has nothing to do with experiencing and assembling sensorial data.
Although it is true that the intelligence, also called "NOUS" in its Gnosiological sense, can be the basis of enlightened intellection; we categorically refuse to fall into vain intellectualism.
The Ontological, Pneumatic or Spiritual characteristics of "NOUS" (Intelligence) are perfectly clear.
In the name of Truth, I solemnly declare that the Being is the only real existence, and before its transparency, ineffable and terribly Divine presence, that which is called the “I”, Ego, Myself, Self, etc, is just outer darkness, wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Excerpts from the work entitled "The Secret Doctrine of Anahuac", chapter "Gnostic Anthropology").
In order to clarify this point about self-Gnosis, or self-enlightening, let's allow Mr. Samael Aun Weor to describe how the so called psychic development works within the human being:
Every sensation is an elemental change in the state of the psyche. There are sensations in each of the Six basic Dimensions of Nature and Man, and they are all accompanied by elemental changes of the psyche.
The sensations that we experience always leaves a trace in our memory. We have two types of memory: spiritual and animal. The first keeps the memories of sensations experienced in the Superior Dimensions of Space. The second keeps the memory of the physical sensations. Memories of sensations constitute the perceptions.
Every physical or psychical perception is really the memory of a sensation.
The memories of sensations are organised into groups that associate or dissociate, attract or repel.
Sensations are bipolarised into two perfectly defined streams. The first one refers to the character of the sensations. The second one refers to the time of the sensations' reception.
The total sum of various sensations, converted into a Common Cause is externally projected as an object. Thus we say, this tree is green, high, low, has an agreeable smell, disagreeable, etc. When the perception happens in the Astral or in the Mental World, we say: this object or subject has these qualities, this colour, etc. In this last case, the total sum of sensations is internal, and its projection is also internal, it belongs to the Fourth, or Fifth, or Sixth dimension, etc. We perceive physical perceptions with the physical apparatus, and the psychic ones with the psychic apparatus. In the same way we have physical senses of perception, we also have psychic senses of perception. Everyone who follows the path of Initiation has to develop these psychic senses.
Concepts are always formed with the memories of perceptions. Thus, the concepts transmitted by the Great Adept founders of religions are due to the transcendental memories of their psychic perceptions. The formation of perceptions leads to the formation of words, and the appearance of language. The formation of internal perceptions leads to the formation of the mantric language, and the appearance of the Language of Gold that is spoken by Adepts and Angels.
The existence of language is impossible when there are no concepts, and there are no concepts when there are no perceptions. Those who toss about concepts of the internal worlds without ever having perceived them, usually falsify the reality although they do so with good intentions.
In the elemental levels of psychic life many sensations are expressed with screams, howls, sounds, etc., which reveal joy or terror, pleasure or pain. This happens in the physical world and also in the Internal Worlds.
The appearance of language represents a change in Consciousness. Thus also, when the disciple has already begun to speak in the Universal Cosmic Language, a change in Consciousness has happened. Only the Universal Fire of the Serpent and the dissolution of the reincarnating Ego can bring about such a change.
Concept and word are one and the same substance. The concept is internal and the word is external. This process is similar in all levels of Consciousness and in all dimensions of Space. Ideas are only abstract concepts. Ideas are much larger concepts and belong to the world of Spiritual Archetypes. Every existing thing in the physical world is a copy of those archetypes. During a Shamadi, the Initiate can visit the world of spiritual archetypes in astral or super-astral journeys.
The mystical content of the transcendental sensations and emotions cannot be expressed in the daily language. Words can only suggest them, indicate them. Actually only the Royal Art of Nature can define these superlative and transcendental emotions. Royal Art was known in every serpentine civilisation. The pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, the millenary Sphinx, the ancient monoliths, the sacred hieroglyphs, the sculptures of the Gods etc., are archaic testimony of the Royal Art that only speaks to the Consciousness and to the ears of Initiates. The Initiate learns this Royal Art during mystical Ecstasy.
Space and its properties are a form of our sensitive receptivity. We can verify this when, through the development of the chakras, we are able to perceive all Space in its four-dimensional form, instead of the three-dimensional form to which we are accustomed.
The characteristics of the world change when the psychic apparatus changes. The development of the chakras makes the world change for the Initiate. With the development of the chakras we eliminate from our mind the subjective element of perceptions. "Subjective" is that which does not have reality. "Objective" is that which is Spiritual, the Real.
With the awakening of the chakras by means of internal discipline, comes an increase of the psychic features. The novelty in the psychic field obscures the changes that are simultaneously taking place in the perception of the physical world. The new is felt, but the Initiate is not capable of logically and axiomatically defining the scientific difference between the old and the new. The result of such incapacity is the lack of perfect conceptual balance. Therefore, it is urgent to achieve conceptual balance, so that the doctrinal exposition of the Initiates may correctly fulfil its intention.
We need cosmic Consciousness: this is the sense of the Consciousness of the Cosmos; this is the life and order of the Universe.
Cosmic Consciousness brings into existence a new type of intellectualism: the Enlightened Intellection. This faculty is a characteristic of the Supermen. There are three types of Consciousness. Firstly; simple Consciousness. Secondly; individual self-Consciousness. Thirdly; Cosmic Consciousness. The animals have the first; the intellectual animal called man, the second; the Gods have the third one.
The most characteristic feature of those individuals prepared to receive Cosmic Consciousness is that they look at the world as Maya (illusion). They have the feeling that the world, as people see it, is only an illusion and they search for the Great Reality, the Spiritual, the Truth, that which is beyond illusion. It is necessary for the birth of Cosmic Consciousness in man to completely surrender himself to the Spiritual, to the Internal.
The previous words by Samael Aun Weor refer to the search of the cosmic consciousness by the human being, and such words find a theological reference in the words expressed by Dr. Serge Hutin in his treatise entitled "The Gnostics", in which we can read the following paragraphs:
It does not matter whether salvation is due to a divine Saviour or not, because the saving Gnosis allows the soul to glimpse the end of its subjection to the darkness: the soul will be able to ascend from heaven to heaven up to reach the Light to which the soul belonged in its origins. Gnosis is reminiscence: it makes the chosen ones to remember their first state, and will help them to recover their supra-material and supra-temporal condition.
If you are made up of life and light, and you realize that this is your nature, then you will come back to the life and to the light.
You are immortals from the beginning, you are creatures of the eternal life, and you wish to share the death in order to run it out and to dissolve it, so that death dies in you and for you. Because when you dissolve the Cosmos without dissolve yourselves, you will command over the whole creation and over any corruption.
The man who receives the light “separates himself” from the sinister passions with which he was mixed.
Gnosis is the knowledge of the path to the heights and has the means to walk such a path. However, man can only get to the heights if he realizes that he is a small entire world; Man is a microcosm formed with all powers and substances that appear in the macrocosm; man is made up of matter, but man also contains the Logos, the divine living Spirit that reigns over the superior regions of the Cosmos.
One of the most characteristic myths of Gnosis is the one about the ascension of the soul through the planetary spheres: Gnosticism develops the theme of the ascension of the enlightened man towards his original fatherland (either in spirit, during this life, or after death) in several ways. The Gnostic is always a man who wishes to escape from the fatality of the earthly world, in order to recover the luminous condition that he possessed before the fall.
Unquestionably, all this journey of the soul seeking its own original light is a constant in the Gnostic primitive texts. The ancient Gnosis always stated that after attaining the self-Gnosis or intimate salvation, the human entity enters to share an angelic or divine lineage. Dr. Serge Hutin gives us information about this matter in the following paragraphs:
By means of the knowledge can the Gnostic open a way through the inferior worlds to reach the kingdom of Light, the supreme Divinity.
Although Christian Gnosticism introduces the idea of a historic redemption, this salvation, in fact, can be found in the root of existence and history: The plots of light that are prisoners in the cosmos will be set free from their prison; The fate of man is related in an essential way to the fate of the world. Spiritual or "pneumatic" people (from the Greek pneuma, spirit) possess in themselves a luminous spark which has come from the above. These ones will be necessarily saved because the spiritual element that is within them inevitably has to go back to its celestial origin.
We quote here a passage from the Book of Thomas:
Congratulations to those who have been persecuted and underestimated because the love that the Lord put within you. Congratulations to those who cry and are afflicted... for you will set free from any chain and you will no longer remain in the flesh, but you will leave the laces of forgetfulness; you will be chosen and will find rest, and confusion and cry will remain behind you.
My race comes from the Preexistent One, and will return to the realm from which it has come -says a Valentinus aphorism.
The chosen make up a divine race.
And those who are worthy of the mysteries, who inhabit in what is Inexpressible..., they are... members of what is Inexpressible.
Those who meet me cannot but become astonished. Because I am from another race.
Because the Father of the truth has not forgotten me. And He has redeemed me from the beginning.
Each of the perfect ones is destined to finally incorporate himself into the person of Jesus:
He is in me, and I am he.
The salvation of the perfect beings is achieved in an almost automatic way:
It is not because of the work that one enters into the Pleroma, but it is the seed sent from there, like a little child, that becomes perfect here.
There exist two great races of men: Those who know and those who are sunk into ignorance. Only the "spiritual ones", endowed with a natural kinship with the superior world, can, after death, open all the gates of the invisible world and freely pass through all the "veils" and all the "doors". However, the materialists, the "hilicos", they have a so deep affinity with the tenebrous world that they cannot go out of there.
Certain Gnosis -the Valentinus school, for example- introduce another kind on men that are between the spiritual ones -who are destined to become angels, archangels, gods and kings in the transcendental world- and the "hilicos" -who cannot be saved, in principle, because they are firmly anchored in the matter. They are the psychics, who are characterized by an intermediate principle: they are endowed with free will and can attain the salvation by means of the exercise of the justice.
It is pertinent to emphasize that the majority of the Gnostics are very optimistic about the salvation of the souls: The fate of the inferior men, "the hilicos", is desperate, but only in this incarnation; and there is no an obstacle for a "hilico" to become a psychic, and even more, to become a "Spiritual one" in an ulterior earthly existence. In general, Gnostics believe in reincarnation.
Obviously, this is the reason why Mr. Samael Aun Weor emphasizes that all those who manage to develop the self-Gnosis, the Enlightening Cosmic Consciousness, within themselves, they form a select group that in secret makes up what he calls the Conscious Circle of the Solar Humanity:
When the initiate has been enlightened by the Brahmanic fire, he enters the Esoteric or Secret Circle of Humanity. In that Circle we find an ineffable family, made up of those ancient Hierophants who are known in the world as Avatars, Prophets, Gods, etc. The members of this distinguished family are found in all the advanced races of the humankind. These beings are the founders of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Sufism, etc. Actually these beings are few, but despite being so few they are in truth the directors and leaders of humankind.