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.

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