BOOKSANTRHOPOLOGY GNOSTIC OR J�ANA
Since Gnostic studies have substantially progressed in recent years, no one would make the naive mistake � as in the past � of ascribing the Gnostic teachings to an exclusive Spiritual tendency.
Although we must certainly take into account the Hellenistic, Oriental elements of any Gnostic system, and the ones coming from Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, India, Palestine, Egypt, etc., we cannot ignore the Gnostic principles present in the sublime religious cults of the Nahuas, Toltecs, Aztecs, Zapotecs, Mayans, Chibchas, Incas, Quechuas, and others, in Pre-Columbian America.
Frankly speaking, let us say that Gnosis is a very natural function of the Consciousness; it is a philosophia perennis et universalis.
Gnosis is certainly the knowledge of divine mysteries that illuminates and this is reserved for an elite.
The word Gnosticism conveys, in its grammatical structure, the idea related to systems or currents dedicated to the study of Gnosis.
Gnosticism implies a set of clear, coherent and precise elements, which can be verified throughout the mystical, direct experience: the curse from a scientific and philosophical viewpoint; Adam and Eve of the Hebrew Genesis; the original sin and the departure from Paradise; the mystery of the Nahua Lucifer; the death of the self; the creative powers; the essence of the Salvator Salvandus; the sexual mysteries; the Inner Christ; the Igneous Serpent of our magical powers; the descent to the infernos; the return to Eden, and Mephistopheles� gift.
Only the Gnostic doctrines that comprise the ontological, theological and anthropological foundations cited above are part of authentic Gnosticism.
Pre-Gnostic is the system that, in a concrete, specific and evident way, presents features� that can be found in Gnostic systems; it is rooted in a concept that is in toto foreign to Revolutionary Gnosticism. This thought, nevertheless, is, and is not Gnostic.
Any Gnostic system in an incipient and germinal state is Proto-Gnostic; its dynamics is similar to the one that characterises definite Gnostic currents.
The adjective Gnostic may be wisely applied to concepts that, in one way or another, relate to Gnosis or to Gnosticism.
The meaning of the term Gnosticizing is close to Pre Gnostic. Indeed, this expression strictu sensu relates to intrinsic aspects that are somehow similar to universal Gnosticism; they make up, however, a tendency not defined as Gnosis.
Once these semantic clarifications are done, let us accurately define the term Gnosticism.
We would like to make clear in this treatise that Gnosticism is a religious process that is inner, natural and profound.
It is authentic and profound esotericism that develops from instant to instant with very vivid mystical experiences, its own doctrine and ritual.
It is an extraordinary doctrine, which fundamentally adopts mythical and, sometimes, Mythological forms. It is ineffable and magical liturgy, which provides vivid information to the superlative consciousness of the Being.
Gnostic knowledge, unquestionably, always avoids the usual analysis of subjective rationality.
The innermost feeling of the person or the Being correlates this knowledge. The raison d��tre of the Being is the very same Being. Only the Being can know himself. The Being, therefore, knows himself in Gnosis.
The Being � when he redeems and knows himself � is Auto-Gnosis. The latter, in and
of itself, is Gnosis. The Being�s self-knowledge is supra-rational dynamics; it relies on him and has nothing to do with the intellect.
The abyss that exists between the Being and the �I� is impassable. This is why the pneuma, the Spirit, recognises itself, and this recognition is an autonomous act for which the intellectual mammal�s subjective reasoning becomes inefficient, insufficient and terribly poor.
The urgent and undelayable work of the annihilation of the �I� precedes the acquisition of self-knowledge or Auto-Gnosis.
The ego or �I� is composed of additions and subtractions of subjective, inhuman and bestial elements that have a beginning and an end. The Essence, the Consciousness, which is enclosed, bottled up, imprisoned painfully within the diverse elements that make up the myself, the ego, unfortunately acts by way of its own conditioning.
When the �I� is dissolved, the Essence, the Consciousness, awakens, acquires illumination and frees itself. Then, as a consequence, self-knowledge or Auto-Gnosis is acquired. Authentic revelation has irrefutable foundations in Auto Gnosis.
Gnostic revelation is always immediate, direct and intuitive. It excludes � radically � all intellectual operations of a subjective kind. It has nothing to do with the experience or with any set of fundamentally sensorial data.
Although the intelligence or Nous, in its Gnoseological denotation can be the foundation of illuminated intellectualising, it categorically rejects backsliding into the mere intellect. The ontological and pneumatic or spiritual features of Nous (intelligence) are evident and manifest.
In the name of truth, I solemnly declare that the Being is the only [that is] real existence. Before his ineffable and tremendously divine purity, that which we call the I or ego, the myself or self, is merely outer darkness, cries and gnashing of teeth.
Given the anthropological tendency of the pneuma or spirit, the Auto-Gnosis or Auto- Gnostic recognition of the Being turns out to be unequivocally something that saves us.
To know oneself is to have achieved identification with our own divine Being.
To know that one is identical with one�s own pneuma or spirit, to experience directly this identification between the known and the cognisant; this is what we can and should define as Auto-Gnosis.
This extraordinary unveiling moves us to die in ourselves, so that the Being can manifest in us. In contrast, to drift away from the Being, to continue as ego, in the heresy of separateness, means condemning oneself to the submerged involution of the infernal worlds.
This conclusive reflection leads to the topic of Gnostic free choice. The serious Gnostic person is unquestionably a chosen one � a posteriori.
The Gnostic experience allows the sincere devotee to know himself totally, and to achieve self-realization. Here, self-realization must be understood as the harmonious development of the infinite human potential. This is not a matter of intellectual data randomly arranged, neither is it mere unsubstantiated wordiness, or ambiguous chatter.
Everything we say in these paragraphs has to be transformed into living, real authentic experience. The orthodox dogma of predetermination that would imprison us, lamentably, in a narrow conception of the anthropomorphic deity, is absent from Gnostic tendencies.
God in Greek is Theo, in Latin Deus, and in Sanskrit Dev or Deva, a term that translated means angel or angels. Among the most conservative Semite peoples, the most ancient god of light, El or flu, appears in the first chapters of Genesis in its plural and synthetic form, Elohim.
God is not a particular human or divine individual. God is gods. He is The Army of the Word, The Great Word, The Word of St. John�s Gospel, The Creator Logos, Perfect Multiple Unit. Self-knowledge and the realization of the realm of infinite possibilities grant our entrance or return to the Creator Hosts of the Elohim.
This is then, the confidence of Gnostics: the Being is totally unveiled and his marvelous
splendor radically destroys all illusions.
The opening of the pneuma or divine spirit of man has a purely soteriological content. if we possess Gnosis of the great archaic mysteries, it is because some holy men � thanks to their loyalty to a doctrine � were able to approach the revealing dynamics of the Being.
Without the proper information about Gnostic anthropology, the rigorous study of diverse anthropological pieces of the Aztec, Toltec, Mayan, Egyptian and other cultures, would be more than impossible.
In matters of lay anthropology � may the comparison be excused � if we want to get results, let a monkey or ape run free in a lab; observe then what happens.
Mexican codices, Egyptian papyri, Assyrian tablets, the Dead Sea scrolls, strange parchments, as well as some very ancient temples, sacred monoliths, old hieroglyphs, pyramids, millenary sepulchres, and many others, offer us in their symbolic depth, a Gnostic meaning that totally escapes literal interpretations Their explanatory value has never been an exclusively intellectual one.
Speculative reasoning, instead of enriching Gnostic language, weakens it lamentably. Gnostic reports, which are written or allegorized in any artistic form, always lead us to the Being.
In this interesting, semi-philosophical and semi- mythological language of Gnosis, a series of extraordinary variances, or symbols with transcendental esoteric depths � that silently says so much � is presented to us.
Divine and human beings know very well that silence is the eloquence of wisdom.
The features that clearly specify the Gnostic myth, and which mutually complement each other are the following:
1. Supreme Divinity
2. Emanation and Pleromatic fall
3. Demiurge Architect
4. The Pneuma in the World
5. The Duality
6. The Saviour
7. The Return
The Supreme Gnostic Divinity can be manifest as Agnostos Theos, Abstract Space Absolute, The Unknown or Unseen God and The One Reality � from where the Elohim come forth in the dawn of any universal creation.
Remember that Paranishpana is the Sumun Bonum, the Absolute, and therefore, Paranirvan Eventually, everything that apparently exists in the universe will come to real existence in
the Paranishpana state.
Unquestionably, the faculties of human cognition will never go beyond the cosmic realm of the Male-Female Logos, the Creator Demiurge, or the Army of the Voice (The Word).
Jah-hovah, the secret Father-Mother of each of us, is the authentic Jehovah.
Jod, as a Hebrew letter, is the membrum virile (the masculine principle). Eve, Heve, as well as Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth, or Hercules� Olympic bride is the yoni, the divine chalice, or eternal feminine.
The divine Galilean rabbi, instead of paying homage to the Judaic anthropomorphic Jehovah, adored his divine male- female (Jah-hovah), the inner Father-Mother.
The Blessed One, crucified in the Mount of the Skulls, proclaimed in a loud voice:
�Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.� Ram-io, Isis, His Divine Mother Kundalini accompanied him in the via-crucis. All nations� first god or gods were androgynous. This could not be otherwise, since they considered their bi-sexual progenitors or ancestors as divine beings or holy gods � just as the Chinese currently do.
In fact, the misconception of an anthropomorphic Jehovah who is exclusive and independent of his own creation, sitting up above in a tyrannical and despotical throne, throwing thunder and lightening bolts against this unfortunate human-ants nest, is the result of ignorance � mere intellectual idolatry.
This misconception of the truth, unfortunately, pervades Western philosophy and [trusted by] religious people from those sects without Gnostic elements.
Gnostics of all times have rejected, not the Unknown God, one and ever present in Nature, or nature in abscondito, but rather the orthodox dogma � the frightful and revengeful deity of the Law of the Talion (eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth).
The Absolute Abstract Space, the Unknown God, is neither the limitless void, nor a conditioned plenty, but both of these at Once.
The esotericist Gnostic accepts revelation as coming from divine beings, from manifested
lives, but never from the One Not Manifested Life.
The unknown deity is the Absolute Abstract Space, the rootless root of everything that has been, is and will be. This infinite and eternal cause is deprived of any type of attributes. It is negative light, negative existence, and it is beyond the reach of any thought or speculation.
The Gnostic myth of Valentinus that, in a specific way, teaches us about the thirty pleromatic aeons, mysteriously coming forth from the Absolute Abstract Space by successive and ordered emanations in perfect couples, must be used as the archetype or model of the Monist myth. The latter, in a more or less evident form, is present in definite Gnostic systems.
This transcendental topic of the probol� basically leads us to a ternary division of divinity: The Agnostos Theos, the Demiurge and the Pro-Father. The divine world, the glorious environment of the pleroma came forth directly from the negative light, or negative existence.
Finally, the Nous, pneuma or Spirit contains in itself infinite possibilities, which may develop during this manifestation.
The fall and the multiplicity have been born between the extraordinary boundaries of the being and not being of philosophy.
The Gnostic myth of Sophia�s (divine wisdom) fall solemnly allegorises this terrible disturbance in the heart of the pleroma.
Desire, fornication, and the ego�s desire to thrust forward: all these produce disturbance and disorder. This is an adulterated creation � it unquestionably stays outside the divine realm � inside which the Essence, the Buddhata or psychic material of all humans, remains trapped.
The impulse towards the unity of free life in motion can drift away towards the I; in this separateness, it builds up a very bitter world.
The fall of degenerated man is the foundation of all ancient nations� theology.
According to Filolao, The Pythagoric, (V century B.C.), the ancient philosophers said that the psychic material, the Essence, was �buried� in the �I� like in a grave, as a punishment for some sin.
Plato similarly testifies that such was the doctrine of the Orphics, and he himself professed it. Immeasurable desire � the disturbance of the emanation regime � leads to failure.
The desire to stand out as ego always originates disorder and the fall of any angelic rebellion. The author of the world of forms is then a group of mystical creators, male-female or double gods, such as Tlaloc, the god of the rain and thunder, and his wife Chalchiuhtlicue, the one of the jade skirt in the Mayan, Aztec, Zapotec, and Olmec pantheons.
In the word Elohim we find a transcendental key that moves us to reflection. Certainly, Elohim translates as God in various authorised versions of the Bible.
It is an irrefutable fact, not only from an esoteric point of view, but also from a linguistic one, that the term Elohim is a feminine noun with a plural, masculine ending. The proper translation � strictu sensu � of the noun Elohim is gods and goddesses. The Spirit of the feminine and masculine principles moved over the surface of chaos, and creation took place.
A religion without goddesses is, without question, halfway from total atheism. If we truly want the perfect balance of psychic life, we must render homage to the Elohim (gods and goddesses of ancient times), and not to the anthropomorphic Jehovah whom Jesus the great Kabir rejected.
The idolatrous cult to the anthropomorphic Jehovah in place of Elohim is clearly a powerful hindrance to the achievement of supra-normal states of consciousness.
Gnostic anthropologists, instead of sceptically laughing just as lay anthropologists do � at the representations of gods and goddesses of various Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, Toltec, Inca, Chibcha, Druid, Egyptian, Indian, Chaldean, Phoenician, Mesopotamian, Persian, Roman, and Tibetan pantheons, we prostrate ourselves to the feet of those divinities. In them, we recognise the Elohim-Creator of the Universe.
Someone who laughs at what he does not know is on the path to idiocy. The Creator Demiurge�s deviation, the antithesis, fatalism, is the propensity toward egotism, the real origin of so much bitterness.
The egoic consciousness identifies with Jahveh, who, according to Satumus of Antioch, is a fallen angel, a genie of evil.
The Essence, the Consciousness, bottled up in the ego, painfully proceeds in time, depending on its own conditioning.
This situation � not very pleasant indeed � is ceaselessly repeated in Gnostic accounts of the pneuma. Needless to emphasise The Law, the world and the abyss; all these cruelly submit the latter.
The weakness and impotency of the poor intellectual mammal, mistakenly called man, to rise up from the mud of the earth without the assistance of the divine, is evident. There is a common saying: �God helps those who help themselves.�
Only the imperishable Igneous Ray, enclosed in the depth of the obscure, rigid and formless substance, can reduce the ego to cosmic dust in order to free the Consciousness, the Essence.
Passionately, we state that only the Divine Breath can revert us to Truth. This, however, is possible only by means of conscious works and voluntary sufferings.
The possession of Gnosis is always associated with some attitude of astonishment or marvel before this illusory mayavic world.
The authentic Gnostic wants a definite change, feeling within the secret impulses of the Being. Anguish, rejection and embarrassment, before the diverse infrahuman elements which compose the �I�, ensue.
Whoever longs to merge in the Being carries the curse and dismay of the horrors of the self.
To contemplate oneself as a moment of totality is to know oneself infinite and to reject with all the forces of the Being, the disgusting egotism of separateness.
Two psychological states are open to the resolute Gnostic:
a) The Being�s [state] transparent, crystalline, impersonal, real and truthful. b) The I�s [state] a set of psychic aggregates that personify defects, whose only reason of existence is ignorance.
The Superior �I� and inferior �I� are only two sections of one thing, they are different aspects of the self, facets of hell.
The sinister, malevolent and tenebrous �I� � be it superior, middle, or inferior � is an addition, subtraction and continuous multiplication of inhuman psychic aggregates. The so-called superior I is certainly a trick of the self, an intellectual ruse of the ego, who seeks getaways to continue its existence; it is a subtle way of self-deception.
The �I� is a horrid book of many volumes, it is the result of innumerable yesterdays, a fatal knot to be detached.
Egoic self-praise, the cult to the I, the over-esteem of the self: this is paranoia, idolatry of the worst kind. Gnosis is revelation or unveiling, refined aspiration, conceptual synthesis, paramount achievements.
Through phenomenology, Gnosis and grace � in essence, as well as in part � are identical. Without divine grace, without the extraordinary assistance of the Sacred Breath, Auto-Gnosis, SeIf-realisation of the Being is impossible.
Auto-salvation is best. This demands absolute identification of the one that saves with the one that is saved. The Divinity that dwells in the depth of our souls, the authentic and legitimate cognitive faculty, annihilates the ego and absorbs the Essence in its parousia and saves it through total illumination. This is the theme of the Salvator Salvandus.
The Gnostic that has been saved from the waters has closed the cycle of infinite bitterness, has crossed over the boundary that separates the Pleroma �s ineffable realm from the inferior regions of the universe. He has courageously escaped the Demiurge�s grip because he has reduced the ego to cosmic dust.
[After] the journey throughout various worlds, the ensuing annihilation of the inhuman elements secures this return to the Sacred Absolute Sun. Then, having become exceedingly divine beings, we go beyond good and evil.
Gnosis is par excellence Wisdom revealed to an Elite.
Gnosis is the supreme knowledge of AVALOKITESHUARA.
Gnosis Divine Synthesis that amalgamates and it par excellence contains supreme conscience, religion synthesis Philosophy, art Divine.
Gnosis or J�ana that is absolute true "PARANISPANA."
SAMAEL AUN WEOR
KALKI AVATARA DE AQUARIUM