Welcome to the Self-Knowledge

Course offered by Gnostic

Culture

Aristotle, one of the great philosophers of ancient Greece said “Knowing yourself is the
beginning of wisdom”. This tells us that knowing ourselves is a path that leads us to the
peak of knowledge of all things.

The temple of Apollo at Delphi, one of the most important of ancient Greece, had its oracle
and its entrance had an enigmatic phrase ... deep and mysterious: “Man, know yourself and
you will know the universe and the Gods”.

This transcendental axiom of Greek philosophy, is a universal principle taught by all the great
sages of Antiquity, which still waits for you to discover it and prove it to be true yourself.

Again, Welcome to this wonderful course of deep self - knowledge, which starts here, and we
hope it will become a key and a tool for the development of your inner life.

Ok then, Let´s start this journey together to our interior…

Where we are and where we live

The gnostic knowledge teaches us that the human being constantly lives in two worlds, the
first of them is the outer world; This external world, which we all know, that we all perceive
through our physical senses.

What is in this world? Well, without a doubt , you could say that there are people, places,
physical phenomena that give us the sensations of heat, cold , darkness , clarity , there is the
air, the breeze, the moon, the sea, the animals, cities, forests, etc. We know this world and we
know in some way what there is in it, because we can perceive it.

But there is another world in which we live but we don´t know it well, this world is the inner
world.

This world exists, and it is even more real than the outer world, but let´s ask the same
question, what’s in this inner world?

We´ll give you a few seconds to think about it, what’s in there?

What exists there?

What can we find there?

How can we describe it?

We could say that there are thoughts, sensations, emotions, desires, wishes but really all that
is very abstract and difficult to clearly perceive, or to see their forms , or their colors if they
have them or their origin, the place from which those sensations and emotions arise.

We see then, that this world is a world in which we do not have objective clarity, a world
almost unknown to all of us...

But this world exists and is even more real than the outer world..

This leads us to make the next analysis:

Is it dangerous to live in a world without knowing it?

Let’s give some examples:

What would happen if we left a child of a few years abandoned to his fate in a big city?

Undoubtedly, that child would be totally defenceless dealing with all kinds of risks, he would
not know how to behave, where to seek help, where to find refuge, he would be exposed to
problems and danger.

The same thing would happen to any of us if we were abandoned in the heart of a great
forest, we would be defenceless against the dangers of this place, we would not know where
the threats and obstacles are or how to live in that completely unknown environment,
therefore we would have in our life all kinds of hardships, problems, accidents, sickness, and
fears, etc.

All this tells us that living in an unknown world is extremely harmful to any of us. And we
must understand that this is our daily life, we live every day in a completely unknown world
and therefore we are exposed to all kinds of conflicts and problems that are common to the
life of every human being, suffering, pain, anguish, fear, etc.

Now, let’s ask ourselves which of these two worlds is the most important?

Let´s suppose that a person has everything we think he needs to live well in the outer world,
has a home, is comfortable economically, has a family that appreciates him, who wants him,
he has friends, but inside, he is not a confident person, is full of fears and worries and
doesn´t know how to enjoy all those things he has. If he is angry with life itself, if he doesn’t
feel ok with himself or is a person who cannot control certain impulses or vices, he may have
it all externally, but inside he carries those elements that prevent him from really enjoying
what is in the outside . We can have everything externally, but if inside we are not well, we
cannot live in fullness, we cannot enjoy everything that life gives us; we cannot enjoy the
outside world.

Let’s put now, a totally opposite example, suppose that a person lacks certain things of the
outside world, maybe he does not have everything he wanted, maybe life does not smile at
him like at the previous character , but maybe inside that person does not suffer as a result
of that, but has learnt to live with what he has, and feels good about himself. That person
may not have the best external conditions but feels good about himself, he has learnt to live
and enjoy what life gives. A clear example of this is when a person is in love. Remember
when we have been in love, even if it is not at this time, under the influence of love, it makes
us feel full within ourselves, and we can perhaps have external problems or situations that are
not very favorable, but we see everything positively, nothing bothers us, everything is put in
the background, because everything we need, we already have, because it is coming from
within.

THE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH WAS PUT IN TWICE IN THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT

We will never find HAPPINESS outside, because it is something that we feel inside, in our
inner world, but this is just a small example to be able to understand the nature of these two
worlds.

Therefore, we see that the world that defines us is the Inner World, and according to how we
are inside, that is what our life is like. We live in concordance with what we are inside.

Now, one of the main reasons why we know so little about this Inner World, is that basically
nobody has told us anything about it, the education we have received in our homes, in our
schools and universities, is an education that leads exclusively to the outside world, we are
taught traffic laws, our rights and duties, we are taught the geography of our planet, the
history of our world , we are taught biology, physics, chemistry, languages, later we are
taught a profession or a way of earning a living in this physical world.

But. .. How much have we been told about our inner world? , How much has been spoken to
us about our mind and some functionality? about our emotions? About our fears and
complexes? How much have we been taught about how to resolve internal conflicts?

The answer is zero, or in the best of the cases very little. For that reason we live in a world
that we ignore almost completely and that ignorance of ourselves brings us all kinds of
conflicts, pain and suffering in our daily life.

We are asleep

The gnostic teaching, transmits to us that the human being lives his life deeply asleep .... And
that despite having his eyes open he acts mechanically, being a puppet of the circumstances
and of different energies or internal and strange influences that are unknown to him, that
make him a victim of events , he has the sensation and the idea of what he does, but actually
he is not doing anything, everything happens to him and he doesn’t really own his owns
actions, just like a hypnotised person, he acts by obeying external influences that dominate
him.

This, which Gnostic knowledge teaches, is not something new at all, but it is something that,
in all ancient traditions, schools of mysteries and authentic religions has always been taught,
with the intention that man awakens from his dream or illusion.

In the East, nobody is surprised at this, because their old traditions have always taught it;
Buddha, for example, is called: “The Enlightened One”, or “The Awakened”.

The Hindus always taught that the reality that we perceive is “Maya”; that is to say, it is an
Illusion, that is, a shadow, a projection.

But in the West that idea is a bit strange, since we did not know how to interpret certain
teachings given on this side of the world. However, this was clearly taught. In the Christian
gospels, for example, emphasis is placed on different passages of the New Testament with
the idea of “awakening” although this has not been understood.
Through this course we will learn the methodology to know what our Consciousness is, what
elements have made it sleep and how we can awaken it to be able to find and develop that
wonderful inner knowledge that is the Gnosis of the ancient Greeks. The Wisdom of the
mysteries of our inner world and the Universe.

This course is initially composed of 6 classes where we will address different topics that will
guide us in our internal work, we will talk about our psychological world and the aspects that
coexist in our esoteric biology. How to get to know them and how to get in touch with them,
what the universal laws that govern us are, Karma, Reincarnation, Recurrences, Evolution and
Involution, our internal constitution, etc.

We will also learn different techniques and practices to deeply know ourselves, we will learn
to self-observe, we will learn to relax, to concentrate, to meditate, and to vocalize, we will
learn different exercises of introspection that will help us to get in touch with our inner world.

In the next lesson we will talk in depth about Gnosis, its origins and its nature. We will
develop how this knowledge initiates us in life helping us to understand the deep meaning
that it has. We will also get to know the 4 pillars of wisdom and how we can develop them
within ourselves, finally we will begin to see what the reasons and elements that prevent
knowledge interior develops in each one of us are.

We hope you enjoyed this introductory lesson and invite you to participate in our next lesson.
“What is GNOSIS?” We happily await you.