THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND.
THE HYMN OF JESUS.
THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND.
For long I have been spending much of my time
in a world of great beauty of thought and purity of feeling,
created by the devotion and intelligence of one of the many
theosophical fraternities of the ancient world. They called
themselves disciples of Thrice-greatest Hermes, and sometimes spoke
of their faith as the Religion of the Mind. They were prior to and
contemporary with the origins and earliest centuries of
Christianity, and they lived in Egypt.
What remains of their scriptures and what can be gleaned of
their endeavour has recently been made accessible in the English
tongue, in such fashion as I have been able to reproduce their
thought and interpret it. The labour of many months is ended; the
task of reproduction is accomplished, and the echoes of the Gnosis
of Thrice-greatest Hermes are audible across the centuries for
English ears in fuller volume than before, and I hope in greater
clarity.
It is no small thing--this Gnosis of ten-thousand-times-great
Hermes, as Zosimus in an ecstasy of enthusiasm calls Him; for it
has as its foundation the Single Love of God, it endeavours to base
itself upon the True Philosophy and Pure Science of Nature and of
Man, and is indeed one of the fairest forms of the Gnosis of the
Ages. It is replete with Wisdom (Theosophia) and Worship
(Theosebeia) in harmony--the Religion of the Mind. It is in its
beginning Religion, true devotion and piety and worship, based on
the right activity and passivity of the Mind, and its end is the
Gnosis of things-that-are and the Path of the Good that leads man
unto God.
Do I claim too much for the Gnosis of Thrice-greatest Hermes?
I do but echo what He teaches in His own words (or rather those of
His disciples) turned into English speech. The claim made is for
the Gnosis, not for the forms of its expression used by its
learners and hearers. All these forms of expression, the many
sermons, or sacred discourses, of the disciples of this Way, are
but means to lead men towards the Gnosis; they are not the Gnosis
itself. True, much that is set forth appears to me to be very
beautifully expressed, and I have been delighted with many a
thought and phrase that these nameless writers and thinkers of
years long ago have handed down to us in the fair Greek tongue; all
this however, is as a garment that hides the all-beautiful natural
form and glory of the Truth.
What is of importance is that all these Theosophists of the
Trismegistic tradition declare with one voice--a sweet voice, that
carries with it conviction within, to the true knower in our inmost
soul--that there is Gnosis and Certitude, full and inexhaustible,
no matter how the doubting mind, opinion, the counterfeit mind, may
weave its magic of contrary appearances about us.
Seeing, then, that I have now much in mind of what has been
written of this Religion of the Mind, I would set down a few
thoughts thereon as they occur to me, an impression or two that the
contemplation of the beautiful sermons of the disciples of the
Master-Mind has engraved upon my memory. And first of all I would
say that I regard it as a great privilege to have been permitted by
the Gods to be a hander-on in some small way of these fair things;
for indeed it is a great privilege and high honour to be allowed in
any fashion to forward the preparation for the unveiling of the
beauties of the Gnosis in the hearts of one’s fellows,--even in so
insignificant a way as that of translating and commenting on that
which has already been set forth by greater minds in greater beauty
centuries ago. The feeling that so pleasant a task has been granted
by the Providence of God as a respite on the way (to use a phrase
of Plotinus’). And so, as in all sacred acts, we begin with praise
and thankfulness to God, as Hermes teaches us.
But when is there (the disciple of the Master will interject)
an act that is not pg sacred for one who is a "man" and not a
"procession of Fate"? He who is coming unto himself, who from the
unconscious and the dead is beginning to return to consciousness
and rise into life, self-consecrates his every act for ever deeper
realisation of the mystery of his divine nature; for now no longer
is he an embryo within the womb, nourished in all things by the
Mother-Soul, but a man-babe new born, breathing the freer spirit of
the greater life, the cosmic airs of the Father-Mind. And so it is
that every act and function of the body should be consecrated to
the Soul and Mind; the traveller on this Way should pray
unceasingly, by devoting his every act unto his God; thinking when
eating: As this food nourishes the body, so may the Bread of Wisdom
nourish the mind; or when bathing: As this water purifies the body,
so may the Water of Life vivify the mind; or when freeing the body
of impurities: As these impurities pass from the body, so may the
refuse of opinion pass from the mind!
Not, however, that he should think that anything is in itself
unclean or common, for all is of the divine substance and of
mother-matter; this he already knows in his heart of hearts, but
his lower members are not as yet knit together in right harmony;
they are as yet awry, not centred in the perfect whole. He as yet
sees things from only one point; he has not yet realised that the
Point is everywhere, and that for everything there is a point of
view whence it is true and right and beautiful and good. That
all-embracing point of view is the one sense, all-sense, the common
sense, the sense of the intelligence, in which the sensible and the
intelligible are identical and not apart. It is the little mind,
the mind in man, the fate-procession, that creates external
duality; the Great Mind knows that the without and the within are
twain in one, are self-conditioned complements, the one within the
other and without the other at one and the same time.
In this Religion of the Mind there is no opposition of the
heart and head. It is not a cult of intellect alone, it is not a
cult of emotion alone; it is the Path of Devotion and Gnosis
inseparably united, the true Sacred Marriage of Soul and Mind, of
Life and Light, the ineffable union of God the Mother and God the
Father in the Divine Man, the Logos, the Alone-Begotten of the
Mystery of Mysteries, the All and One--Ineffability and Effability
eternally in simultaneous Act and Passion.
And if you should object to the word Mind as excluding other
names of equal dignity, know that this also has been spoken of
again and again by the disciples of Thrice-greatest Hermes.
He has no name, for He is the One of Many names, nay, He is
the One of all names, for He is Name itself and all things else,
and there is naught that is not He. Nor is He One alone, though He
is the One and Only One, for He is All and Nothing, if such a thing
as nothing there can be.
But we, because of our ignorance, call Him Mind, for Mind is
that which knows, and ignorance seeks ever for its other self, and
the other self of ignorance is Gnosis. And seeking Gnosis, whether
it love or hate its own false view of what it seeks, ignorance is
ever changing into some form of knowing, experiencing some novelty
or other as it thinks, not knowing that it is experiencing itself.
But Mind is not only that which knows, but also the object of all
knowledge; for it knows itself alone, there being nothing else to
know but Mind. It self-creates itself to know itself, and to know
itself it must first not know itself. Mind thus makes ignorance and
Gnosis, but is not either in itself. It is itself the Mystery that
makes all mysteries in order that it may be self-initiate in all.
Thus we are taught that Mind, the Great Initiator, is Master
of all masterhood, Master of all ignorance as well as knowledge.
And so we find the Supreme addressing one of His Beloved Sons, one
who has won the mastery of self, as "Soul of my Soul and Mind of My
own Mind."
The Religion of the Mind is pre-eminently one of initiation,
of perpetual perfectioning. The vista of possibility opened up to
the mind’s eye of the neophyte into these sacred rites transcends
credibility. One asks oneself again and again: Can this be true? It
seems too good to be true.
But how can it be "too good" (the Master smiles in reply)
when the inevitable end of everything is the Perfection of
perfection, The Good Itself?
It cannot be too good, for that which is too good is out of
its own self; but with the Good there is neither too little nor too
much, it is Perfection.
What then, we feebly ask, is imperfection? And in the
Master-Presence we cannot but reply: It is the doubt "It is too
good" that is the imperfection of our nature; we fear it cannot be
for us, not knowing that the "little one" who catches some glimpse
of the vista, the earnest of the Vision Glorious, sees not
something without, but that which is within himself. It is all
there potentially, the full Sonship of the Father. It is there and
here and everywhere, for it is the nature of our very being.
The first glimpse of this Divine possibility is brought to
the consciousness of the prepared disciple by the immediate
Presence and Glory of the Master, according to the records of the
followers of the Religion of the Mind. But who is the Master? Is He
someone without us; is He some other one; is He some teacher who
sets forth a formal instruction?
Not so. "This race," that is to say, he who is born in this
natural way, "is never taught, but when the time is ripe, its
memory is restored by God." It is not therefore some new thing; it
is not the becoming of something or other; it is a return to the
same, we become what we have ever been. The dream is ended and we
wake to life.
And so in one of the marvellous descriptions of initiation
handed on in the Trismegistic sermons, in which the disciple is
reborn, or born in Mind, he is all amazed that his "father" and
initiator here below should remain there before him just as he ever
was in his familiar form, while the efficacious rite is perfected
by his means. The "father" of this "son" is the link, the channel
of the Gnosis; the true initiation is performed by the Great
Initiator, the Mind.
And that this is so may be learned from another sermon, in
which a disciple of a higher grade is initiated without any
intermediate link; by himself, alone as far as any physical
presence of another is concerned, he is embraced by the Great
Presence and instructed in the mystery.
The office of the "father" is to bring the "son" to union
with himself, so that he may be born out of ignorance into Gnosis,
born in Mind, his Highest Self, and so become Son of the Father
indeed.