BP
565
. M4
E27
1906
fl/SE A/\^£? rOLLOVl^ THY 0/\EAM
LIBRARY OF
KATHARINE LEE BATES
BEQUEATHED TO
WELLESLEY COLLEGE •y^^grf?
K.JL p .
JLf-try^Pt^
J^.c..^.^ ^
THE GNOSIS
OF ... .
THE MIND. .
WORKS BY THE SAME
AUTHOR
A'et.
Thrice Greatest Hermes (3 vols.) - 30/-
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten - 10/6
Apoli^onius of Tyana 3/6
The Gospel and the Gospei^s - - - 4/6
Did Jesus Live 100 B.C. - - - - 9/-
Plotinus i/-
The Upanishads (2 vols.) - - - - 3/-
ECHOES BY
FROM G. R. S.
THE MEAD
GNOSIS VOL I
E
TH
GNOSIS
OF
THE
MIND
'^^^ LONDON
THEOSOPHICAL AND
PUBLISHING BENARES
SOCIETY 1906
PRINTED BY PERCY LUND. HUMPHRIES 4 CO., LTD.
THE COUNTRY PRESS, BRADFORD;
3, AMEN CORNER, LONDON. E.G. ;
AND 97, BRIDGE STREET, MANCHESTER.
6P^ 2437-10
/
ECHOES FROM THE
GNOSIS,
Under this general title it is proposed to publish
a series of small volumes, drawn from, or based
upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings
of the ancients, so as to make more easily audible
for the ever- widening circle of those who love such
things, some echoes of the my.^tic experiences and
initiatory lore of their spiritual ancestry. There
are many who love the life of the spirit, and who
long for the light of gnostic illumination, but who
are not sufficiently equipped to study the writings
of the ancients at first hand, or to follow the
labours of scholars unaided. These little volumes
are therefore intended to serve as introduction
to the study of the more difficult literature of the
subject, and it is hoped that at the same time
they may become for some, who have, as yet, not
even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to
higher things.
G. R. S. M.
The references in this volume are to the recently-
published work — Thrice Greatest Hermes : Studies
in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis. Being a
Translation of the Extant Sermons and Fragments
of the Trismegistic Literature, with Prolegomena,
Commentaries and Notes, 3 vols. (London, 1906),
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 them-
selves 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
7
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
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 repro-
duction 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 (Theo-
sebeia) in harm.ony — the Religion of the
Mind. It is in its beginning Religion,
8
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
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
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 doubt-
ing mind, opinion,' the counterfeit mind,
may weave its magic of contrary appear-
ances 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 con-
templation of the beautiful sermons of
the disciples of the Master-Mind has
engraved upon my memory.
10
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 com-
menting on that which has already been
set forth by greater minds in greater
beauty centuries ago. The feeling that
arises is one of joy and thankfulness 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
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
II
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
sacred for one who is a " man " and not
a " procession of Fate " ? He who is
coming unto himself, who from the un-
conscious 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
la
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 an3^thing 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 to-
gether in right harmony ; they are as yet
awry, not centred in the perfect whole.
He as yet sees things from onl}^ one
point ;' he has not yet realised that the
Point is everywhere, and that for every-
thing 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
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
13
THB
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
mind, the mind in man, the fate-pro-
cession, 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 Mys-
teries, 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
14
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
THB
GNOSIS
OF THB
MIND.
15
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
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 master-
hood, Master of all ignorance as weU 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
i6
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 inevit-
able 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 imper-
fection ? 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,
tTie full Sonship of the Father. It is
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
17
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
\
there and here and everywhere, for it is
the nature of our very being.
The first glimpse of this Divine possi-
bility is brought to the consciousness of
the prepared disciple by the immediate
Presence and Glory of the Master, accord-
ing 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 instruc-
tion ?
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
i8
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 efhcacious rite
is perfected by his means. The " father "
of this " son " is the link, the channel
of the Gnosis ; the true initiation is per-
formed 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
19
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
Self, and so become Son of the Father
indeed.
What is most striking in the whole
of the tradition of the Mind-doctrine is
its impersonal nature. In this it stands
out in sharp contrast with the popular
Christianity and other saving cults con-
temporary with it. It is true that the
sermons are set forth mostly in the form
of instruction of teacher to pupil. We
learn to love Hermes and Asclepius and
Tat and Ammon, and become friends
with all of them in turn ; they seem to
be living men, with well-marked char-
acters. But they are not historical char-
acters ; they are types. There is an
Ammon, a Tat, an Asclepius, and a
Hermes, in each one of us, and that is
why we learn to love them. The " holy
four " are in the shrine of our hearts ;
but transcending all, embracing all, is
the Shepherd of all men, the Love
20
Divine that through the lips of our
HeiTnes teaches us — as Asclepius or Tat
or Ammon — as we have ears to hear
the words of power, or eyes to see the
gnostic splendour of the teaching.
Nay, more than this ; such instruction,
beautiful and true as it may be, is not
the highest teaching of the Mind. They
who are born in Mind, are taught by Mind
by every act and every thought and
every sensation. The Mind eternally
instructs the man through body, soul
and mind ; for now the man begins to
know through all of these, for he is
changing from the little mind and soul
and body that he was to the Great Body
and Great Soul and Mind of the Great
Man. He no longer seeks a teacher,
for all things teach him, or rather the
One Teacher teaches him through all.
All that there is transforms itself for him
mto the nature of the Gnosis of the Good.
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
21
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
No longer is he a hearer, but the Hearer ;
for he has ears on all sides to hear the
voice of Nature, Spouse of the Divine,
in everything that breathes and all that
seems to have no life — the simultaneous
winter and summer of the Lord.
No longer is he a seer, but the Seer ;
for he has eyes on all sides to see the
beauty of the whole, and fairest things
in things that are most foul.
No longer is he a doer, but the Doer ;
for all he does is consecrated to the Lord
who dedicates Himself to acting in the
man.
And so all of his senses and his energies
are set on the Great Work of self-initiation
in the Mysteries of God ; his life becomes
illumined by the glory of perpetual
perfectioning, and he no longer thinks
that he has ever been other than now he
is. For memory is ever present with him,
and the memory of Jhe.. Mind is of_ tlie
22
nature of eternity, which transcends all
time, and sees all past and future and all
present in the instant that endures for
evermore.
And what does the Religion of the
Mind teach us of God, the universe and
man ? It teaches us many things of
great solemnity and joyous presage ;
but one thing especially it seems to teach,
and that is the impossibility of human
speech to tell the mystery. For^ every
man is but a letter in the language of
the Gods ; so that all that a man may
write, no matter how well stocked his
mind may be with systems of the world
or of theology, or with the science of the
human state, no matter how exactly he
may reproduce his thought and trick
it forth in fairest human language — ^^all
that he can express is but a single letter
of his Word. The Words of God are
written with the general purposed acts
23
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
of men, and are not uttered by their
individual spoken speech or penned with
written words. The Words of God are
spoken by the energies of Nature, and
are not written on the surfaces of things ;
the surfaces of things are scribbled over
with the false appearances that men
project from their unknowing minds.
How then can men describe the uni-
verse, except by their inscribing of
themselves upon the fields of space ?
To describe the universe as it is they must
become the universe, and then they will
describe themselves ; and to describe
themselves they will be able to discover
no better way than that in which the
universe gives utterance to itself. It
speaks perpetually the Language of the
Gods, the Universal Tongue, for it is
God for ever givmg utterance unto
Himself.
The Tongue of the Eternal is the Mind
24
of God. It is by Mind, the Reason of His
Self-subsistence, that He perpetually
speaks forth all things.
Thus we learn that the Religion of the
Mind is pre-eminently the Religion of the
Logos, and throughout the whole of our
Trismegistic tractates no name comes
more frequently before us than the word
Logos. For the Logos is the Word of
God, not in the sense of a single Word,
but the Word in the sense of the Universal
Scripture of all worlds and of all men.
And so it is that Hermes is the Scribe
of the Gods. Not that Hermes is one of
the Gods who is a scribe for the rest, as
though they could not write themselves ;
but Hermes is the Logos of God, and the
Words he writes are Gods.
W^e men are letters of our Word or our
God ; for man has the glorious destiny
before him, nay, the actuality even now
in his universal nature, of being a God, a
25
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
Divine Being, of the nature of Gnosis
and Joy and Subsistence. That Word
has written itself manj^ times in the
world, now one letter and now another ;
it spells itself in many ways, in sequences
of lives of men, and of other lives as well.
And time will be when each and every
God- Word, in its own proper turn, will
sound forth in all its glory, not letter by
letter, but the whole Word simultaneously
on earth ; and a Christ will be born and
all Nature will rejoice, and the world of
men will know or be ignorant according
to the nature of the times and the manner
of the utterance of the W^ord.
Such are some of the ideas aroused
by some of the leading conceptions of
the Religion of the Mind, or the Pure
Philosophy, or Single Love, as the
disciples of Thrice-greatest Hermes called
their Theosophy some nineteen centuries
ago.
26
The most general term, however, by
which they named their science and
philosophy and religion was Gnosis ; it
occurs in almost every sennon and
excerpt and fragment of their literature
which we possess. The doctrine and the
discipline of Mind, the Feeder of men
and Shepherd of man's soul, are summed
up in that fairest word — Gnosis.
Let us then briefly consider the mean-
ing of the name as the followers of this
Way understood it. Gnosi^^is.^KnaW"
ledge ; but not discursive knowledge of
pmi i » «* T i l '
the nature of the multifarious arts and
sciences known in those days or in our
own. On this " noise of words," these
multifarious knowledges of the appear-
ances of things and vain opinions, the
followers of the True Science and Pure
Philosophy looked with resignation ; while
those of them who were still probationers
treated them with even less tolerance,
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
27
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
declaring that they left such things to
the " Greeks "; for " Egyptians," of
course, nothing but Wisdom could suffice.
At any rate this is how one of the less
instructed editors of one of the collections
of our sermons phrases it. For him
Egypt was the Sacred Land and the
Egyptians the Chosen Race ; while the
Greeks were upstarts and shallow
reasoners. The like-natured Jew of the
period, on the other hand, called the
body "Egypt," while Judsea was the
Holy Land, and Palestine the Promised
Land, and Israel the Chosen of God ; and
so the game went merrily on, as it does
even unto this day.
But the real writers of the sermons
knew otherwise. Gnosis for them was
superior to all distinction of race ; for
the Gnostic was precisely he who was
reborn, regenerate, into the Race, the
Race of true Wisdom-lovers, the Kinship
28
of the Divine Fatherhood. Gnosis for
them began with the Knowledge of Man,
to be consummated at the end of the
perfectioning by the Knowledge of God
or Divine Wisdom.
This Knowledge was far other than the
knowledge or science of the world. Not,
however, that the latter was to be
despised ; for all things are true or
untrue, according to our point of view.
If our standpoint is firmly centred in the
True, all things can be read in their true
meaning ; whereas if we wander in error,
all things, even the truest, become
misleading for us.
The Gnosis began, continued and ended
in the knowledge of one's self, the reflec-
tion of the Knowledge of the One Self,
the All Self. So that if we say that
Gnosis was other than the science of the
world, we do not mean that it excluded
anything, but only that it regarded all
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
29
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND,
human arts and sciences as insufficient,
incomplete, imperfect.
Indeed it is quite evident on all hands
that the writers of the Trismegistic
tractates, in setting forth their intuitions
of the things-that-are, and in expressing
the living ideas that came to birtli in
their hearts and heads, made use of the
philosophy and science and art of their
day. It is, in very deed, one of
the stories of their endeavour that they
did so ; for in so doing they brought the
great truths of the inner life into contact
with the thought of their age.
There is, however, always a danger in
any such attempt ; for in proportion as
we involve the great intuitions of the soul
and the apocalypses of the mind in the
opinions of the day, we make the ex-
position of the mysteries depart from the
nature of scripture and fall into the
changing notions of the ephemeral.
30
Human science is ever changing ; and if
we set forth such glimpses of the sure
ideas and living verities of the Gnosis
as we can obtain, in the ever-changing
forms of evolving science, we may,
indeed, do much to popularise our glimpse
of the mysteries for our own time ;
but the days that are to come will accuse
us of clothing the Beauty of the Truth
in rags as compared with the fairer
garments of their own improved opinions.
The documents that have been pre-
served from the scriptoria of the Tris-
megistic tradition are by many hands
and the product of many minds. Some-
times they involve themselves so closely
with the science of their day that the
current opinion of the twentieth century
will turn from them with a feeling of
contemptuous superiority ; on the other
hand they not infrequently remain in the
paths of clear reason, and offer us an
THB
GNOSIS
OF THB
MIND.
31
THE
GNOSIS
OF THE
MIND.
unimpeded view of vistas of the Plain
of Truth. But even when they hold
most closely to the world-representa-
tions and man-knowledges of their own
day they are not without interest ; for
it may be that in their notions of living
nature — the very antipodes of our modern
day opinions based on the dead surfaces
of things — they may have been with
regard to some things even nearer the
truth than we are ourselves in this so
boasted age of grace and enlightenment.
Be this as it may, there are many
examples of clean and clear thinking in