What are Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism?
By Lee and Steven Hager
Gnosis
Gnosis has played an integral role in spirituality for thousands of years, but the 1945 Nag Hammadi discovery of a group of texts labeled the Gnostic Gospels, has made gnosis a popular subject. And like most popular subjects, conflicting information quickly accumulates that can become confusing. Let’s sift through some of the popular misconceptions as we define gnosis, gnostic and Gnosticism.
Recently, the word gnosis has been associated with ‘awakened’ or ‘higher’ consciousness. To reach these levels of consciousness, many teach that purification of the mind and body are necessary, which usually requires adherence to a specific practice and/or set of values. Others teach that gnosis necessitates a series of steps that begins with initiation and promises to culminate in full spiritual understanding. These steps are generally associated with acquiring secret knowledge that becomes progressively more arcane, and is restricted to a chosen few. Others associate gnosis with anything magical or metaphysical, such as astral travel and out of body experiences. But is this what gnosis actually is?
Returning to the original Greek, we find that gnosis actually means ‘knowing’ or ‘knowledge,’ but this is where some of the confusion begins. This is not the sort of knowledge that we attain through intellectual pursuits or esoteric information. Gnosis is a form of knowing that is strictly experiential; it comes only through a direct, personal experience. From that standpoint, we can compare gnosis to riding a bicycle. You can read instructions and watch others ride, but you will ‘know’ what riding is all about only after having the direct experience yourself. Experiential knowing is always personal; once you have acquired this ‘knowing,’ it’s impossible for you to transfer your ‘gnosis’ to anyone else. You could describe the balance and momentum needed to keep a bicycle upright, but another person won’t ‘know’ what you have experienced until they’ve had the experience too.
The word gnosis could be applied to anything that requires our direct, personal experience to understand. However, in the purest sense of the word, it means a direct, personal experience of Divine Presence. In a world where most religions and spiritual philosophies claim that either a long period of preparation or a mediator in the form of a savior or guru is needed to approach the Divine, gnosis may sound presumptuous. However, the perennial philosophy has always included the concept that the life-giving intelligence that permeates everything in existence not only wants to be known, but can be known by each of us.
OM Times Magazine » syndicated
