- Gnosis in general
- Gnosis (Gnosticism) the esoteric religion

Gnosis in general
Although Gnosis is usually thought of as an aspect of "religion", it in fact differs from religion or "Faith" in one extremely important respect.� With Religion, knowledge of higher things is not realised intuitively, but rather enforced as a body of knowledge - a dogma or revelation - imposed from without, e.g. Bible, Koran, Gita, etc.� In the more extreme forms of religion, the so-called "fundamentalist" tendency, the believer is expected to accept this revelation without question.

With Gnosis, one may indeed be inspired or stimulated by external teachings and revelations, but the essential knowledge comes from within.� What this means basically is that there are as many Gnostic teachings as there are Gnostics, and vice-versa.� A�modern-day gnostic may be (and in fact usually is) a part of some tradition (Sufi, Kabbalistic, Tantric, Christian, etc), but he/she will always interpret that tradition in an individual way.

If one could sum up the differences between "Western" materialism, religion, and Gnosticism and also "Eastern" religion and philosophy, one could say that the "Western" position is more concerned with the "Manifest", with the creation, nature, and ultimate purpose of the cosmos and of man/woman.� This is so both in the case of exoteric or conventional religion - Judaism, Christianity,� Islam, Baha'ism, and the secular religion of Marxism - and esoteric gnosis - Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Manichaeism,� Ishraqism,� Sufism, Kabbalah, Theosophy, and�Anthroposophy.� In contrast the "Eastern" position is more concerned� with the� "Unmanifest", with the Transcendent and how to attain It.� Of course, putting things simply in� this way is to be guilty of gross over-generalisation, and I would add that there are very many exceptions to the rule on both sides.

Gnosis (Gnosticism) the esoteric religion
"Gnosticism" in the academic and usual sense of the word, is a blanket term used to embrace various esoteric cosmologies and spiritual teachings which developed in the syncretic Hellenistic� civilisation in the centuries immediately after Christ.� The famous Nag Hammadi codexes are a late (early 4th Century C.E.) and degenerate expression of this.� These uniformly described a complex unfolding of Divine Powers (called "Aeons") from the unknowable Godhead; the Cosmos as the result of a pre-creation error or crisis, and therefore evil; and the fall of the Light - the essence of the Spirit or Divine soul - into the Darkness of matter, where it remains trapped until liberated by saving knowledge (Gnosis).� In Christian Gnosticism, Jesus is described as the Divine messenger, the one who brings gnosis to man/woman.� In non-Christian Gnosticism, the messenger may be Seth (a Biblical figure), Zostrianos (a corruption of "Zoroaster" or Zarathustra, the prophet of the ancient Persian religion of� Zoroastrianism), or a totally mythological or symbolic figure.

Basically, the Gnostics followed a dualistic metaphysic.� Above and beyond the Cosmos, they said, was the transcendental Spiritual-Divine Reality, the Pleroma or "Fullness".� What distinguishes Gnosticism and other Western esoteric cosmologies from comparable Indian philosophies are their complex accounts of the nature and the unfolding of the various Divine emanations, the Aeons: literally "Eternities" or "Worlds", which in their totality constitute the transcendental Pleroma or realm of Light.� Rather than being a featureless or qualityless Absolute, as in the Eastern conception of Nirguna Brahman or Shunyata, the Pleroma was actually� made up of a number of distinct spiritual entities or divinities, Aeons or "Eternities".� These Aeons - the heavenly prototypes of the higher� phenomena in this world (e.g. "Word", "Life", "Man", "Church", etc) had themselves originated from an� even more transcendent original principle, and it is this latter which has the same characteristics as the Absolute of Indian Monism.