Gnosis Quotes

“It is only by working the rituals, that any significant degree of understanding can develop. If you wait until you are positive you understand all aspects of the ceremony before beginning to work, you will never begin to work.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema

“As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.”
― C.G. Jung, The Essential Jung: Selected Writings

“Cats have gnosis to a degree that is granted to few bishops.”
― Carl Van Vechten, The Tiger in the House: A Cultural History of the Cat

“Standing before the awesome majesty and magnitude of the universe is so intimidating that many of us cry out for mediators—the state, gurus, evangelists with coifed hair—all with their own agendas of gain. The purveyors of the marketplace frequently denounce those who learn to respect their own encounter with mystery as "gnostics." Well, gnosis means "knowledge." If I can learn from my direct experience of the universe, and am haunted by them when I ignore them, then why not live my life according what I have learned directly, rather than what is mediated by others, however sincere their motivation may be?”
― James Hollis, Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives

“Faith is for sissies who daren't go and look for themselves. That’s my basic position. Magic is based upon gnosis. Direct knowledge.”
― Alan Moore, Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths

“The deeper he penetrates into this inner being, the more will he feel inclined to keep the development quite secret. It is becoming too holy to be talked about […] There are some inner experiences which seem too holy to be talked about in public, too intimate even to be talked about with intimate friends, too mysterious to be mentioned to anyone else except a student or a teacher who has passed through similar experiences himself.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“There are certain pivotal moments in life when clarity replaces its opposite in the blink of an eye.”
― Sol Luckman, Cali the Destroyer

“Welcome to the Church of the Serpent. The universe is the Tree of Knowledge. At the top of the tree is the Golden Bough with which we attain Golden Knowledge, the Apex Knowledge of the cosmos. So, we must climb. All the way to the highest consciousness. The Church of the Serpent is devoted to knowledge – ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of existence itself. We must have Absolute Knowledge. Nothing else will suffice. Completion, or nothing. From the top of the Tree of Knowledge, we shall command all knowledge. Like Faust, we will make a pact with any force to reach our goal. Like Prometheus, we will steal from the gods and risk any punishment to secure our ends. Like the Cimmerians, we will travel from the deepest darkness, where the sun never shines, to the brightest light. Like the Hyperboreans, we seek the perfect land where the sun always shines, yet we Hyperborean Apollonians must be able to return to Dionysian Cimmeria to enjoy the intoxication of the dark.”
― David Sinclair, The Church of the Serpent: The Philosophy of the Snake and Attaining Transcendent Knowledge

“Come and join the Church of the Serpent. Learn the philosophy of the snake and slough off the old, failed skin of humanity. Don’t you want to be one of the Prometheans, the HyperHumans, the Faustians? Don’t you want to complete the journey from Cimmeria (Alpha) to Hyperborea (Omega)? Only the Serpent Humans can bring all of humanity to the most precious fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and confer Absolute Knowledge on everyone. Only through the Serpents will you achieve gnosis. Join usssssssssss.”
― David Sinclair, The Church of the Serpent: The Philosophy of the Snake and Attaining Transcendent Knowledge

“This then is the ultimate truth--that in our inmost nature we are anchored in God, inseparable from God, and that the discovery of this heavenly nature is life's loftiest purpose. Even now, already, today, we are as divine as we ever shall be. The long evolutionary ladder which by prophets and teachers, gurus and guides we are bidden to climb toilsomely and slowly and painfully need not be climbed at all if only we heed this truth continually, if we refuse to let it go, if we make it ours in all parts of our being--in thought, feeling, faith, and action.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“He sees the truth as with a jolt. There it is, within his own being, lying deep down but still in his own self. There never was any need to travel anywhere to find it; no need to visit anyone who was supposed to have it already, and sit at his feet; not even to read any book, however sacred or inspired. Nor could another person, place, or writing give it to him--he would have to unveil it for himself in himself. The others could direct him to look inwards, thus saving all the effort of looking elsewhere. But he himself would have to give the needful attention to himself. The discovery must be his own, made within the still centre of his being.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“...to be aware of the miracle entailed in every moment of living...”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“The divinity is there, within you; have faith that it is so and entrust yourself to it.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“The world suddenly vanished from view like a morning mist. I was left alone with Reality.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“1. Do all meditation work with open eyes, with the Buddhic smile. 2. Keep attention inside on the No-thought state and refrain from unnecessary talk. 3. When residual impressions from the last incarnation come in, ignore them. 4. Kill out the mind. Be free from its activity. Stay in the Void.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“As Thomas Merton correctly observes, “Sufism looks at man as a heart. . . . The heart is the faculty by which man knows God”, and so the supreme aim in Sufism is nothing else than “to develop a heart that knows God”. In the words of Rumi, “I have looked into my own heart; it is there that I have seen Him; He was nowhere else.” This leads Martin Lings to observe in his book What is Sufism?, “What indeed is Sufism, subjectively speaking, if not ‘heart-wakefulness’?”. Illustrating this, he quotes al-Hallâj: “I saw my Lord with the Eye of the Heart.” The Hesychast tradition of the Orthodox Church, for its part, speaks repeatedly of “prayer of the heart”, of the “discovery of the place of the heart”, of the “descent from the head to the heart”, and of the “union of the intellect (nous) with the heart”. (p. 5)
– Kallistos Ware, Chapter 1: How Do We Enter the Heart?”
― James S. Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East

“The heart governs and reigns”, state the Macarian Homilies: it is the dominant element in our total human structure, the controlling power. It governs and reigns, more specifically, “over the whole bodily organism”: it is in the first place a corporeal organ, located in the chest, which acts as the physical center of the human being; when our heart stops beating, we die. Yet this is not all. The Homilies go on to say that the heart rules also over the “thoughts”, and that “there in the heart is the intellect”. The heart is not only the physical but the psychic and spiritual center. The Greek word
used here for “intellect”, nous, signifies not only the reasoning brain but also, more fundamentally, a higher faculty of intuitive insight and mystical vision. Elsewhere in the Macarian Homilies it is stated that the nous within the heart is like the eye within the body; in other words, through the use of the intellect within the heart we do not merely reach conclusions by means of discursive
argumentation, but the intellect enables us to see the truth in a direct and unmediated manner. The heart in which the intellect dwells is thus the faculty with which we think, both in a rational and a suprarational way. It is both the seat of reasoning intelligence and also, on a higher or deeper level, the place of wisdom and spiritual knowledge (gnosis). (p. 13)”
― James S. Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East

“„The heart governs and reigns”, state the Macarian Homilies: it is the dominant element in our total human structure, the controlling power. It governs and reigns, more specifically, “over the whole bodily organism”: it is in the first place a corporeal organ, located in the chest, which acts as the physical center of the human being; when our heart stops beating, we die. Yet this is not all. The Homilies go on to say that the heart rules also over the “thoughts”, and that “there in the heart is the intellect”. The heart is not only the physical but the psychic and spiritual center. The Greek word used here for “intellect”, nous, signifies not only the reasoning brain but also, more fundamentally, a higher faculty of intuitive insight and mystical vision. Elsewhere in the Macarian Homilies it is stated that the nous within the heart is like the eye within the body; in other words, through the use of the intellect within the heart we do not merely reach conclusions by means of discursive argumentation, but the intellect enables us to see the truth in a direct and unmediated manner. The heart in which the intellect dwells is thus the faculty with which we think, both in a rational and a suprarational way. It is both the seat of reasoning intelligence and also, on a higher or deeper level, the place of wisdom and spiritual knowledge (gnosis). (p. 13)”
― James S. Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East

“Rather than a cognitive procedure of the intellect alone, Gnostic knowledge is experience, a lived experience of spiritual regeneration. It is a transforming knowledge, whose immediate effect is salvation.”
― Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism

“The type of spirituality the world is going to experience is decentralized. Where everyone and each of us would be a master, teacher, and student.”
― Aiyaz Uddin

“If Today I die I won't regret it,
Jewel of faith I have received now death I won't regret it,

I don't need any path when I have found my destination now death I won't it,

I don't have any expectations nor hope with anything or anyone when I have got LOVE now death I won't regret it,

My search for drunk yard has ended I have found a perfect spiritual master now death I won't regret it,

Now I don't search God in the books when I am drinking from the eyes now death I won't regret it,

To know LOVE I setout myself in the world when I am under the blaze of LOVE now death I won't regret it,

What is the need for any external decoration and beautifying things when you are in my HEART now death I won't regret it,

Don't ask Aiyaz what is LOVE! Who's LOVER I am He is inside my HEART now death I won't regret it.”
― Aiyaz Uddin, The Inward Journey

“Religion can take you from earth to heaven while spirituality can take you to the creator of heavens and the earth.”
― Aiyaz Uddin, The Inward Journey

“Self is pure consciousness without thought. Knowledge is self.”
― Kayambila Mpulamasaka

“That which is revealed to man has been created for him only. That which he thinks he knoweth shall remain hidden until such a time that his eyes are open.”
― Kayambila Mpulamasaka

“We become what we are willing to see.”
― Richard Rohr, Just This

“If Today I die I won't regret it,
Jewel of faith I have received now death I won't regret it,

I don't need any path when I have found my destination now death I won't regret it,

I don't have any expectations nor hope with anything or anyone when I have got LOVE now death I won't regret it,

My search for drunk yard has ended I have found a perfect spiritual master now death I won't regret it,

Now I don't search God in the books when I am drinking from the eyes now death I won't regret it,

To know LOVE I setout myself in the world when I am under the blaze of LOVE now death I won't regret it,

What is the need for any external decoration and beautifying things when you are in my HEART now death I won't regret it,

Don't ask Aiyaz what is LOVE! Who's LOVER I am He is inside my HEART now death I won't regret it.”
― Aiyaz Uddin, The Inward Journey

“And, thus, think from thyself, and bid thy soul go unto any land; and there more quickly than thy bidding will it be. And bid it journey oceanwards; and there, again, immediately ’twill be, not as if passing on from place to place, but as if being there.

And bid it also mount to heaven; and it will need no wings, nor will aught hinder it, nor fire of sun, nor æther, nor vortex-swirl, nor bodies of the other stars; but, cutting through them all, it will soar up to the last Body. And shouldst thou will to break through this as well, and contemplate what is beyond—if there be aught beyond the Cosmos, it is permitted thee.”
― G.R.S. Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis

“It means nothing if I say yes or no. If I say yes, you cannot verify it, if I say no, you are none the wiser. You have no business to believe me. I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World

“Contradicting believers who warn of God’s wrath and judgment, the Gospel of Truth declares that those who really know him “do not think of him as small, or harsh, or wrathful,” as others suggest, but as a loving and gracious Father (Gospel of Truth 42:4–9). Poetic, sometimes lyrical, this gospel declares that God sent his son not only to save us from sins committed in error but to restore all beings to the divine source whence they came, “so that they may return to the Father and to the Mother, Jesus of the utmost sweetness” (Gospel of Truth 24:6–9). Thus to all who wander this world in terror, anguish, and confusion, Jesus reveals a divine secret: that they are deeply connected with God the Father, and with the divine Mother, the Holy Spirit.”
― Elaine Pagels, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

“Many esotericists and gnostics took the perceived metaphysical statements about the gods and archetypes and internalized them into the individual psyche, thus psychologizing them. Alchemy was done this way too, and the alchemical process comes to symbolize instead an inner, progressive realization of godhood.”
― Jay Dyer, Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film