Gnosis

Gnostic knowledge is the knowledge of the soul. Its aim is not to prove or to explain the soul but to transform it. It is based on an insight into the strict correspondence between knowledge and being, through which knowledge or thinking is inseparable from being and vice versa. Between believing and knowing there is a third mediating function associated with inner vision. Cosmologically this is effectively an intermediate and mediating world (forgotten by official philosophy and theology), namely the imaginal world, the world of the soul or psyche. Gnosis is then the cultivation of the soul as a source of knowledge. It is not a question of distinguishing between faith and reason but rather between consciousness of one's own states (whether derived from reason or emotion) and the unconscious reactions (whether of thought or emotion). The focus is therefore on self-attention. Gnosis is a salvational, redemptive knowledge, because it has the virtue of bringing about the inner transformation of man. In contrast to theoretical learning, it is knowledge that changes and transforms the knowing subject. The intensity of the search for knowledge itself becomes an ontologically transforming force. From this perspective salvation results in nothing for there is not something to be acquired as a possession, rather it is an event within the soul. However that soul is also the soul of the world. Salvational knowledge is thus equally concerned with resouling the world. It is a recollection, a remembering of a worldly soul and of an ensouled world. It is a process of allowing the world to be.

Historically, gnosis constitutes the esoteric element in the official or exoteric religious traditions of the world. As such it should be distinguished from gnosticism. Gnosticism is a purely historical phenomenon, whereas gnosis is phenomenological. Gnosis, as a lived practice, can exist without gnosticism.