A little from each chapter
CHAPTER ONE THE PROBLEM
Gnosis: Knowledge; to know. Gnosis is sophisticated and profound knowledge of
spiritual subjects, especially those subjects that are esoteric,
secret, hidden, or difficult to comprehend. Gnosis is a special revealing
knowledge intended only for the competent few or an inner group capable
of understanding abstract or complicated concepts. Gnosis is a superior
understanding that transcends even the most developed rational
capacity, and is accessible only through individual illumination.
Deep within the conscious being of every individual there is an insatiable
longing to know, to discover (or perhaps to rediscover) the unknown, to
excavate the
depths of memory and the subconscious with the hope that hidden therein may lie
the forgotten knowledge concerning existence and destiny. If this kind of
knowledge was obtainable, then more competence and skill could be developed for
the pursuit of a richer life and a better destiny. Throughout known human
history this insatiable longing has motivated all serious investigations
concerned with the perennial questions of philosophy and science, and the often
obsessive entanglement with the ideas of religions.
If we are to consider ourselves as credible persons, we cannot create or
re-create any humbug of a “spiritual philosophy” or theoretical ideology. That destroys
the creativity of the “spirit”. We must go forth to penetrate the total individual and collective psyche; to
create and sustain a freedom of enquiry toward the
ultimate that a human being can possibly achieve – enlightenment. We cannot justifiably pursue a motivation to confine anyone’s intelligence in a format of
dogma or theory; we must free our intelligence from all such imprisonments. We
must free our consciousness, first at the individual level and then move to
help other sentient beings to desire and accomplish this freedom.
This is a difficult task awaiting anyone who may be in the pursuit of a better
existence and destiny. There must be found an answer to the “purpose of life”,
what this purpose really is, or even if there is a purpose. If there is a
definite purpose then anyone who comes into harmony with the general purpose of
existence will automatically transcend most of what is unwanted in life or hard
to deal with. How to think and how to act in harmony with existential purpose
is
knowing what to do and avoid doing. It is impossible for anyone to proclaim
truly that they know what they are doing unless they understand the purpose of
existence. Most people think they know what they are doing, but it is only a
surface recognition, not any sort of insight into the reality of things. What
is really
relevant is knowing what to do and avoid doing in a context of harmonious accord
with the real purpose of Being itself. To be out of harmony with what’s really
going on is to invite discord which will result in turmoil and conflict. Perhaps
these kinds of problems are needed in order to activate the motivation for
development of reason in the individual’s thinking. The existence of the universe apparently provides for this, and we
will explore this further on.
The operations of the phenomenal realm of nature, when these structures and
patterns are conscientiously investigated, indicate an inherent intelligence
within the order of things and events we observe. Data from both past and
present science, philosophy, and religion seem to wantonly bypass or ignore the
implications of pattern and the indications of intelligent order and operation
in nature. Such data in its partiality supports commonly held theories,
beliefs, and
dogmas which tend to disregard the crucial importance of finding true and
complete answers to the most important questions. Because of the persistent
hard
fact that humankind still has no definitive, conclusive answers to these
questions of origin, existence, or purpose, it must be admitted that the human
race is
yet encumbered with ignorance. It is ignorance that inevitably results in all
problems, afflictions, and conflicts of life, and the honest recognition of
ignorance is
the central valid basis from which a potentially productive search must proceed.
The acknowledgment of ignorance is the first evidence of possible emergence
from it and from its effects.
We know about the many characteristics of things and their many details, but we,
as conditioned selves identified as body-mind objects perceiving other
objects, cannot sensually experience any thing or know just what any thing is
really, or what any event is really – in itself. Through the dialectical consideration
of our lack of total knowledge of any one thing, we can know one thing – ignorance. Ignorance is an absence of knowledge and not something we can
actually
think about clearly. But we can know what ignorance is, directly and
intuitively, as that which is prior to knowledge. We cannot seek to know or to
inspect
existence or Being in the conventional way of getting knowledge because
existence cannot be inspected from a viewpoint outside of existence. Likewise,
consciousness cannot be inspected from a prior or separate position.
Consideration and contemplation of such things helps to relax the aberrant mind
from its
chronic dualistic conceptualizations and enables us to bypass dualistic thinking
for just an instant, so to get a glimpse of another way of “seeing”.
The wall of ignorance is not insurmountable, and once beyond it we will enter
into the light of Gnosis. Ignorance obscures the perception of the reality of
things
and situations just like a wall is impossible to see through. Even if a small
hole is put in the wall, vision will be severely restricted and most of what is
on the
other side will still remain hidden and unknown. When ignorance remains in the
mind, then everything associated with ignorance can be expected to arise.
What we don’t know can hurt us, but when ignorance is absent the potential for what is
hurtful is also absent and herein lies the beginning of intelligent search
for real answers to meaningful questions. But almost everyone already realizes
this, more or less, so what we need to investigate into is just what it is that
keeps us in our ignorance, and this is not generally realized.
Human perceptual capacities are obviously inefficient and lacking clarity.
Problems which perpetually remain unsolved are the unceasing evidence of
undeveloped and deficient reason and clear thinking. Unclear thinking based on
incomplete or partial data produces only speculation and conjecture, and all
such theoretical presumptions are in some degree . . . . .
CHAPTER TWO THE ANALYSIS
Ignorance is a mental condition, a simple lack of meaningful knowledge, wherein
an individual remains in a bewilderment due to an absence of understanding.
Ignorance is non-knowledge that prevents a proper mental grasp of the reality of
things, just as an absence of air would prevent breathing. Ignorance is a lack
of comprehension that obscures the functions of perception and intelligence. The
only way to properly conceive of ignorance is to relate it to an absence of
knowledge, wisdom, or intelligence. The fullness of perceptive clarity is
opposite to ignorance; it is lucidity, sanity, and clear intelligence.
Ignorance cannot be equated with the many varieties of false knowledge and wrong
knowledge, for whatsoever form knowledge may exist in, it is still
knowledge. False knowledge is the effect of mistaking a falsehood for a truth;
wrong knowledge is the effect of a complex aberration of the faculty of
discernment wherein a person gets confused by accepting partial evidence as the
whole truth, or unverified assumption as fact. Wrong knowledge is an
accumulated collection of information that has not been correctly discerned.
False and wrong knowledge are conceptual presumptions and ideas that simply
are not true in some degree, from partial untruth to complete untruth. Whether
partial or complete, the deviation from truth is an outcome of irrational or
defective discernment. Irrationality is the basis for the sustenance and
continuity of all wrong knowledge and false views.
False views are incorrect conclusions determined through faulty reasoning
processes. False views always result in the continuation of habitual delusive
thinking, the flow of mistaken perceptions and judgements, chronic mental-sets,
and all the associated consequences. The only way to eradicate false views is
to understand their falsity and replace them with truth; this can be
accomplished only by the development of unflawed reasoning. Faulty reasoning is
the result
of unsound and inaccurate observation and its consequent defective discernment.
These are the mental conditions always antecedent to any and all
subsequent incorrect conclusions made in thinking. If these obstructive mental
conditions were absent, thinking would be purified and irrationality would
disappear. In contrast, correct observation, the recognition of things
as-they-really-are, and correct discernment, the clear perception of the
qualities of things,
is the state of lucidity.
All correct conclusions are the product of rational determinations founded upon
verified facts and established evidence. Facts are verified and evidence is
established through direct knowing experience rather than through rash
inference, theory, or belief. Rash inference is reckless assumption, a habit of
misperception that evolves from deficient, distorted, or incomplete observation.
A theory is a speculative formulation of ideas based on observed phenomena
or upon past theories and conjectures. If the observations are unsound or
partial then discernment will be defective. Accepting something as a belief is
the
mistake of getting theoretical assumptions, inferences, and hypothetical
conjectures confused with what is real, factual, and true. Thus, the whole
process of
thinking can get clouded and obscured, some degree of delusion always pollutes
the function of reason, and then what is correct and true cannot be properly
determined.
Passive acceptance without verification through sincere inquiry, and in the same
way, rejection without inquiry and verification, is the activity of delusion.
Delusion is the activity of mistaken thinking with lack of reason, believing or
accepting that something is true when it actually is not. With reason and clear
judgement the contradictions in errant thinking could be . . . . .
CHAPTER THREE BREAKTHROUGH
The conflict nexus eventually begets the rational mind and this marks a critical
point of breakthrough toward the emergence of individuated holistic
intelligence. Some individuals are thoughtful enough to be curious about their
existence and its purpose, or to inquire into whether or not there may even be
a
purpose. Neither searching for nor finding answers to basic questions regarding
purposeful existence, and thus not satisfying their primal curiosity and
longing, individuals fall into distress, bewilderment, and all the
unsatisfactory conditions of anxiety which ignorance sustains. Any individual
who is curious
about the real implications of purposeful existence must eventually comprehend
that all confusions and doubts are rooted in that ignorance. Symptomatic
stresses such as frustration and anxiety are generally submerged in the lower
subconscious levels of mind and memory where they cannot be confronted or
examined clearly. So, in a bewildered attempt to counter the effects of
frustration and anxiety, individuals and groups become attracted and attached
in
identity with various formats of false or partial values, false religions,
superstitious beliefs, misconceptions of all sorts, and the inevitable delusive
compulsion
will further beset them. The pursuit of the false, the insignificant, and the
valueless produces thereafter a morose and unhappy life. Those with undeveloped
capacity for reason cannot understand the difference, in some cases, between the
true and the false, or between the significant and the insignificant. Only
through the development of a rational mind can recognition of verities and clear
understanding progress. The continuity of conceptual delusion negates any
possibility for reason or rationality to be developed; it is the absence of
rational thinking which nourishes and sustains the motivation to believe in the
dogmatic
suppositions of religious theories or pseudo-science without relying on proven
facts and established evidence.
Individuals who participate in such delusions are seeking to escape from the
turmoils of frustration and from the tensions of anxiety and all the
afflictions
associated with those. People become seekers of a futuristic glorious existence
in a faraway celestial realm because they desire to escape their present world
of anxiety, fear, gloom, and dissatisfaction inherent in the always temporary
and dissolving experiences of seeking an always receding happiness. This is the
common mental-set of the average person who attempts to override feelings of
discomfort and insecurity with replacements of physical, emotional, and
psychological gratifications. All motives for seeking such forms of
gratification are obvious manifestations of pseudo-volition directed toward
egoic security
based on feelings of fear; the seeker wants to counter the fears by adopting
hope – the placebo for fear – all of which is dysfunctional and unevolved concept-
making.
When the individual realizes that his conflict status is nearly perpetual,
broken only by short gaps of pleasure or pleasure-seeking and associated
temporal
fulfillments, then he reaches a critical point in the real progress of his
personal evolution. At this point the individual begins to consciously strive
with
determination to try to understand the real causes and processes which
contribute to his afflicted condition. For him this is a new and purposeful
motivation of
significance which gives birth to a restructuring of thought processes along
lines of rational sequence. Sequential, rational thought is active, linear
concept-
making, and when grounded in established facts and evidence, can correctly
observe patterns of cause and effect. These patterns then become more evident
and familiar, obvious in the sense observations and reasoning of the individual.
Sequential, linear thought eventually matures into the capacity for multi-
referencing matrix thinking that can recognize the integral, interrelated
functioning of the matrix of existence. Thus, the conditions of conflict in the
nexus of the
existential matrix induce the individual to seek relief and escape from
unsatisfactory modes of existence, and this eventually culminates in an
intolerable crisis
which begets the rational mind. This crisis is the realization that
unsatisfactory and painful existence cannot be ended until the foundational
structures and
their operative sequential effects that are creating the conditions of conflict
are recognized and then interrupted or dissolved entirely away. The origins and
structures of any aspect of the conditional nexus can be determined only through
rational thinking. The capacity for rational thinking increases in degrees
diametrically equal to the capacity for maintaining concentrated attentiveness
to specific topics, objects, and events, and how they are related and
interrelated
within conditioned flux in the totality of the phenomenal matrix. In this
manner, skill in purposeful attentive focus is developed, the rational mind
takes its birth,
and. . . . . .
CHAPTER FOUR THE SOLUTION
Our theme is Gnosis, and this is direct primordial enlightenment, so now we
speak directly to you, the reader, as Gnosis is an individual, personal
experience.
You must make a passage from ignorance through learning to wisdom. There must be
an opening away from the profane into the transcendental which is also
the immanent, your immanency. You are this immanency, free already from profane
distortion; you are the most ordinary, functional innate consciousness,
only needing to self-recognize yourself. The divine life is at the very root of
the profane, made profane only by distortions in the thinking and perception as
described before. The innate state of consciousness which you are is not only
the source of your mind but also the source and nature of all the moving
phenomena which come and go throughout all of cyclic existence. This great
blissful consciousness is that generating all beings and things and
environments
– all already pure in essence. As long as you do not understand your own nature,
your own real reality, you will remain a common sentient being; but when
understanding, all becomes clear. You will know what you really are. The
difference between conflict and freedom depends on whether or not you are
obscured about your real reality. It will do no good to keep thinking about it
and trying to figure it out. You must know that when conceptualizing stops,
non-
conceptual awareness is present. You are exactly that in your primal state.
You can simply observe thoughts; this is called mind. If you vigilantly watch
for thoughts to arise, remaining receptive to their potential arisings, they
don’t then
arise. What is watching vigilantly for them to arise is the source from which
they come, your pure essence. The distinction between mind and pure
consciousness has to be made. When thoughts do arise, without following along
entangled in them, they can simply be observed, and upon directly looking at
them, or for them, they dissolve by themselves back into their source. You are
just a knowing mirror, wisdom beyond mind. The relationship between your
inherent wisdom-consciousness and the thought-filled dichotomizing mind is like
the reflective capacity of a mirror and the reflections that continually arise
upon it. You have to learn to work with this movement and get deeply experienced
with it. In pure presence there is no difference between the calm state of
mind and the movements of thoughts. If thoughts come up, be present in awareness
of that; if no thoughts happen to appear, whatever happens, be presently
aware of that. Whatever happens, there is a spontaneous presence. . . . . .
. . . .The presence of lucidity is Gnosis. Gnosis is immediate knowing, not
dependent on psychosomatic senses, sensorial impressions,
perceptions, or accumulated mundane knowledge, an understanding not attained
through or dependent upon conceptualization processes. Gnosis
is wisdom that can make intelligent use of conceptual knowledge but is not
confined by it or bound to any supposition generated by it. The
presence of lucidity is the next stage of progress for the consciously evolving
individual. It culminates in Gnosis. . . . . . .