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 What is Gnosis?

Gnosis and Self-Knowledge

The deeply anthropological character of Universal Gnosticism is evident.

The Gnostic Science is essentially anthropological. The study of man is central in Gnosis, since the human being represents one of the greatest enigmas, which needs to be urgently solved.

In practical terms Gnosis is Self-Gnosis, in other words: Self-Knowledge... following the Greek maxim engraved on the threshold of the temple at Delphi:

'O man, know thyself.'

This profound philosophical Anthropology has as its starting point in the questions that Theodotus, a disciple of Valentinus, posed in his Excerpta almost two thousand years ago, when he said that 'to possess the Gnosis is to know who we were and what we have become; where we were and into what we have been thrown; where we go and whence liberation comes to us; what the birth is and what the rising is.'
 
Or, in the words of Samael Aun Weor:

'Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we living for? Why are we living?'

The Science of Self-Knowledge rests on perennial laws and principles, based on a profound analytical Psychology.

Unlike official Psychology, Gnostic Psychology is dynamic and transformative... it seeks the psychological emancipation of the human being, and can be defined as:

The study of the principles, laws and facts intimately related to the radical and permanent transformation of the individual.

In this respect, Gnosis invites us to understand that every human being - it does not matter how old he or she is - is unfinished or uncompleted, but has infinite possibilities of inner development (known in the genuine Gnostic schools as Intimate Self-Realization of the Being).

These possibilities are normally lost and left unrealized, due to a series of factors which Gnosis invites us to understand, the chief of them being one of the greatest evils of humanity: Ignorance - against which every human being should fight with all their strength in order to start a process of genuine self-dignity and psychological liberation.