Search For Gnosis? By Shane

What is Gnosis? What do the Dead Sea Scrolls mean? Was Jesus a member of the Essenes? What is the Nag Hammadi library and what are the Gnostic Gospels about? What do the statements made by the Risen Christ and the Apostles really refer to?

When I was at Secondary school in England, Religious Education was a topic that held me intrigued. The lecturer was very intellectual and well versed in the different Theologies and had a keen interest in any new archaeological findings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, the Essenes and the Nag Hammadi documents. Although the school classes were thorough there was always something missing and that was a practical real life element. All the lectures were hypothetical theories interpreting what the numerous religious symbols meant and what the different statements made by the Masters or religious founders were about. I memorized what I had to, to pass the exam like everyone else, but was still left with the profound feeling that we had seriously missed something, things like what did the ‘Sphinx' actually represent? What were the pyramids about and who really built them and why? Why did Jesus really let himself be Crucified and what did it really mean? And so on...

We studied the texts of the main Religions, particularly Christianity, and I felt that there had to be a ‘common denominator' amongst them all. I tried endlessly to find these but couldn't make sense of it. The different terms used were too misleading. After leaving school I was sucked into life's routines and forgot about pursuing something that had become a dead end. However, I regularly wondered about a statement that a non-religious, street wise, down to earth person had once made to me and that was ‘There are all these different religions which means they can't all be right!' I read books by Erich von Daniken, that argued that all the mystical and transcendental experiences of ‘burning bushes' and ‘clouds in the sky' throughout the Bible were just UFO's and aliens affecting humanity, as they had done for millions of years, but again this didn't really console me. I read numerous books on Parapsychology, the Paranormal, Supernatural, UFO's, Spiritualism, Rasputin, Crowley, Ghosts, Poltergeists, Kirlian Photography, Steiner, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and so on. I was perplexed by Gurdjieff's statement ‘To write a book for Conscious Man would be easy, but to write a book for donkeys...'. I knew and felt that I and everyone I had met was one of the donkeys he was referring to, but I didn't really know why.

After working through different professions I eventually got to the point in my life when I had to find that elusive ‘answer' as to why I was here and what the purpose of my existence was about. I wasn't content with the comical and worthless answer of ‘42' from Adam's 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy'. I had read books on ‘The Spear of Longinus' and even visited the spear in the Hoffburg Museum in Vienna, but nothing profound happened. It was just a piece of rotting metal. I couldn't imagine how something that had pierced the side of Jesus got turned into a fetish of power to control the world, whether for good or evil. I tried a religion that was a contemporary form of Buddhism that some relatives were hooked on, but in the end felt there was something seriously missing. All the pleasantries and platitudes they used to pour out, along with their flamboyant self-congratulatory behavior, all seemed terribly superficial. They believed that if you chanted certain Buddhist phrases repeatedly then you would change yourself and the world. I only felt that they did it to make them selves feel better and I couldn't see the changes within them that they were talking about. I investigated Dowsing Rods and Pendulums and used techniques to visualize making money and obtaining wealth and possessions and sometimes they did work, but I still felt unhappy with a deep inner emptiness. I joined a Yoga class for a while, but soon dropped out as I felt it had become a middle aged ladies way of keeping fit - I was the only male there so this may have had something to do with it. But beyond this I was looking for more than a keep fit class.

I had listened to Wagner's ‘Parsifal' in a drunken stupor on many lonely late nights, and just couldn't help but wonder what on earth it was really all about. All I knew was that it meant something and the prelude to the Opera always seemed to stop me in my tracks, almost hypnotizing me. Many times I would listen to the Opera or watch different stage performances on video. I would feel the agony and enlightenment of Parsifal, when kissed by Kundry, and only then did he understand the pain of the wound in Amfortas; but I still didn't really know what it was about. I had contemplated the stars during endless wondering nights but my yearning for real experiences still poked me. I had bought books on Pyramid Power and created pyramids to use with Magical symbols for concentration, plus keep razor blades sharp and preserve food etc., but still this didn't console my inner uneasiness. I was intrigued with the elaborate Tarot pack created by Crowley, but whenever I read his books I found them too confusing. The explanations of the Sephiroth and other terms were too jumbled, plus I always had an uneasy feeling about the morality of the man and his sexual exploits. I thought about moving to Latin America and looking for a ‘Don Juan' from Castaneda's books, but realizing this would be highly unlikely, I decided to drop everything I was doing and moved to Australia.

My Searching

As soon as I landed I started visiting all the different New Age shops and searching through all the Occult and Spiritual magazines and schools in Sydney, including the Theosophical library to see what I could learn and how I could experience something real and get my own 'gnosis' (knowledge). The first place I joined was a Spiritual Church in Sydney. I paid small amounts of money each time I went and then the group sang some songs followed by the leader going into a mild channeling trance and telling me and everyone else in the audience that ‘so and so' was with us/me and says ‘x'. We did some practices to start developing our psychic faculties, like holding objects and sensing who they belonged to and if they had any physical problems and so on, but I soon felt that even with a few developed faculties there was still a great deal missing. I attended some talks, put on by different groups, at the Theosophical Society but was disenchanted by people toying with Dowsing Rods and singing hymns with artificial glee and joy. I felt they were taking ‘kindergarten' stuff for the ultimate conscious state and I didn't believe that seeing Auras was the only answer. I listened to some groups trying to entice people to join their own communities or natural communes away from the disgusting pollution and urban concrete jungles, but I still wasn't convinced. They were very attractive propositions but something was still missing, I felt it would have been too easy to hide away in the country and live happily ever after.

The second school I joined was for free and this had become one of my main criteria for finding a Spiritual group to join. The reasons for this was because I didn't have much money but also, over the years, I had spent lots of money on ‘New Age' books, tapes and gadgets which I eventually felt ‘ripped off' about. These included self-hypnosis tapes, Hemi-Sync tapes, Subliminal tapes and so on. I had bought different tapes to learn Astral Projection but none of them worked and I felt defrauded, it was clear some people were making a lot of money from selling these things. They may have worked for some people but not me. I read many books that dealt with the different brain frequencies and which ones were associated with meditation and astral experiences, like lucid dreaming and remote viewing; the alpha and theta states and bought a light-machine to flicker at these frequencies, but it still didn't really help. I felt that I was not prepared to spend any further money on something that I knew in the end would be down to myself to experience and therefore how could someone charge for this? Next I joined another Yoga group that believed that Bob Marley plus other ‘questionable' individuals were Self-Realised and had fully awakened the Kundalini. Some members of the group also believed they had fully awakened the Kundalini, simply because they had experienced something from someone waving their hands around their back at a psychic fair. I left this group after a short while as I knew something was amiss and the real path to Self-Realisation and 'Gnosis' was not so easy. I decided to look for a free 'Magical' group like the 'Golden Dawn' or a Gurdjieff group, or possibly join a Masonic Lodge, or any group that would help me to experience other dimensions, so I could know things for myself.

One day I received a phone call from a group that I had forgotten all about. A New Age library in Sydney had given their telephone number to me and I had phoned them months before to make inquiries. They held courses on Esoteric subjects for free and I had contacted them to see if they do any practices. They did so I left my details, even though they said they wouldn't be starting a course for a few months. I didn't expect them to phone back but they did. They gave me the details for an Introductory Lecture that was going to be held a few weeks later. I went to the lecture and was intrigued so I kept going back. Bit by bit I realized that what was being said to me was effortlessly slotting into place, answering many of my burgeoning questions and making complete sense, plus I was given practices to do at each lecture and as a homework.

The practices taught included Astral Projection, Relaxation, Concentration, Meditation, Self-observation, Tantrism, the Dervish Dance and techniques to Awaken the Consciousness. These along with many other Esoteric topics were something I could experience. The explanations given regarding our psychology made sense of all the words of Jesus and other religious Masters and I could now use this information to change my life in a very real and practical way. The name of the group was The Gnostic Movement.

Samael Aun Weor

I learnt that the teachings being given for free emanated from Samael Aun Weor (Victor Manuel Gomez Rodriguez 1917-1977) a man who had been born with an Awakened Consciousness and was, therefore, able to do what I could not, which was to investigate all the world Religions consciously. Samael effectively pieced the puzzle together, finding the ‘common denominators' as I called them. He spent his life studying and directly investigating in the higher dimensions what he had learnt, going through the Akashic records and seeing history as it really was/is. This completely eliminated subjective interpretations of Religious Scriptures. The Bible, the Gnostic Gospels etc. finally began to make sense. This was another man who referred to people as ‘Intellectual Animals' or the 'Human Machine' and not true Men, similar to the way Gurdjieff had described people and now I started to understand why.

Gnosis

The first thing I learnt in the Gnostic Movement was how to change my negative behavior. This I desperately needed to do (and still do). I learnt how to stop being depressed, angry, fearful, unforgiving, proud, lustful, lazy and how to stop my terrible gluttony and compulsive eating. I learnt how to stop wasting my psychic energy and how to remember my dreams and experiences in the astral plane. In the past I would brood in negative angry states for weeks and now these states got shorter and shorter, till they now only last a few minutes. Gnostic, esoteric Psychology is firmly based on the concepts of the Buddhist/Tibetan Annihilation, the elimination of our negative thoughts, feelings and emotions.

I started to understand what Gurdjieff and other Masters were talking about, and why they called people ‘sleepwalkers'. With this I understood why the possessed man, that Jesus cast demons out of into the swine, called himself ‘Legion'. I also understood how Jesus drove out 'demons' from the body of Mary Magdalene. The Gnostic Movement gave me the keys to destroy my psychological defects and to permanently and profoundly change my Being and life. What I had been looking for and paid for, for many years, was now being given to me for free. With this key I am gradually reaching a profound understanding of myself and of others and gradually acquiring Self-knowledge or Gnosis. With this Key, for the first time in my life, I have begun to experience real Love, Happiness, Peace and Freedom.

"For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depth of the all. So then, you, my brother Thomas, have beheld what is obscure to men, that is, what they ignorantly stumble against." The Book of Thomas the Contender. (Nag Hammadi library).

The second key I learnt was related to sexual energy. I knew from the past that Sexual Magic was somehow related to states of consciousness, but I didn't really know how. Now, with the keys the Gnostic Movement gave me and through my own experience I have started to fully understand what all the symbols like the Sword and the Stone, the Staff, the Cross, the Sphinx, the Pentagram, the Staff of Caduceus, the Lance, the Serpent, plus numerous others, mean. At last I understood the enigma of the ‘Spear of Longinus' and the symbolism in ‘Parsifal' and Mozart's Magic Flute. I finally understood what the ‘Holy Grail' was all about, and the ritual of the Last Supper. The whole story of Adam and Eve finally made sense, the missing key had been revealed to me. I now understood what Noah and the ARK was really about. Without being told this I would never have guessed it, even though it was staring me in the face with endless parables and symbols. The parables of Jesus started to make sense including the whole business of being ‘born again' and the guests without their ‘wedding garments' etc. I also realized why this key had always been veiled in symbolism and why in the end people crucified Jesus. I had finally, after many years of searching, found the keys to Freedom, true Happiness and the Final Liberation from the Wheel of Samsara. With this key I understood the different types of Tantrism or Sexual Yoga between a man and woman. I understood what the Serpent of Bronze, the Kundalini, which is the opposite of what Gurdjieff called the Kundabuffer, is related to and how to truly activate it. With this key the Chakras or Churches become fully activated and the Consciousness awakens, so we are no longer one of the 'living dead'.

With this key I understood the Gospels, which were four treatises written in code by the disciples of the apostles on Alchemy and Kabalah, and numerous other Religious or Esoteric texts. It was this Key that Blavatsky, Steiner, Gurdjieff and others did not openly publicize or did not know. This is the Key to the Great Arcanum, the ‘ARK'. This is the key to transmutation and 'supra-sex' and the formation of the 'Superman'. Freud, the founder of modern psychoanalysis, stated that religions have a sexual origin and this is the missing link in many modern branches of the world's religions. With this key I have started to profoundly alter my life and destiny.

Conclusion

The Spiritual Path is based upon transforming ourselves so we can live 'consciously' forever. Only by practicing, experiencing and living the Path to Self-Realisation do we obtain our own Self-knowledge, our own ‘Gnosis'. The mind, the intellect is useless on its own. We need practice and experience to profoundly alter our consciousness and Being.

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