The word “gnosis,” which appears in this book and in our previous works, refers to supra-rational, and thus purely intellective, knowledge of metacosmic realities. Now this knowledge cannot be reduced to the Gnosticism of history; it would then be necessary to say that Ibn ‘Arabi or Shankara   were Alexandrine Gnostics; in short, gnosis cannot be held responsible for every association of ideas or every abuse of terminology. It is humanly admissible not to believe in gnosis; what is quite inadmissible in anyone claiming to understand the subject is to include under this heading things having no relation – whether of kind or of level – with the reality in question, whatever the value attributed to that reality. In place of “gnosis,” the Arabic term ma’rifah or the Sanskrit term jnana could just as well be used, but a Western term seems more normal in a book written in a Western language; there is also the term “theosophy,” but this has even more unfortunate associations, while the term “knowledge” is too general, unless its meaning is made specific by an epithet or by the context. What must be emphasized and made clear is that the term “gnosis” is used by us exclusively in its etymological and universal sense and therefore cannot be reduced to meaning merely the Graeco-Oriental syncretism of later classical times; still less can it be applied to some pseudo-religious or pseudo-yogic or even merely literary fantasy. If for example, Catholics can call Islam, in which they do not believe, a religion and not a pseudo-religion, there seems no reason why a distinction should not also be made between a genuine gnosis having certain precise or approximate characteristics and a pseudo-gnosis devoid of them. [GTUFS: UIslam, The Path]

In gnosis, there is first of all the intellective knowledge of the Absolute – not merely of the “personal God” – and then self-knowledge; for one cannot know the Divine Order without knowing oneself. “Know thyself,” says the inscription over the portal of the initiatory temple at Delphi; and “the kingdom of God is within you.” Just as the ether is present in each of the sensible elements, such as fire and water, and just as intelligence is present in each of the mental faculties, such as imagination and memory, so gnosis is necessarily present in each of the great religions, whether we grasp its traces or not. We have said that the driving force of the path of gnosis is intelligence; now it is far from being the case that this principle is applicable in a spiritual society – unless it is not very numerous – for in general, intelligence is largely inoperative once it is called upon to hold a collectivity in balance; in all justice, one cannot deny in sentimental and humilitarian moralism a certain realism and hence a corresponding efficacy. It follows from all this, not that gnosis has to repudiate socially its principle of the primacy of intelligence, but that it must put each thing in its place and take men as they are; that is precisely why the perspective of gnosis will be the first to insist, not upon a simplifying moralism, but upon intrinsic virtue, which – like beauty – is “the splendor of the true.” Intelligence must be not only objective and conceptual, but also subjective and existential; the unicity of the object demands the totality of the subject. [GTUFS: HaveCenter, Gnosis Is Not Just Anything]

Gnosis, by the very fact that it is a knowing and not a willing, is centered in “that which is” and not in “that which ought to be”. [GTUFS: LSelf, Gnosis, Language of the Self]

Gnosis / Love: There are various ways of expressing or defining the difference between gnosis and love – or between jnana and bhakti – but here we wish to consider one criterion only, and it is this: for the volitional or affective man (the bhakta) God is “He” and the ego is “I,” whereas for the gnostic or intellective man (the jnani) God is “I” – or “Self” – and the ego is “he” or “other.” It will also be immediately apparent why it is the former and not the latter perspective that determines all religious dogmatism: it is because the majority of men start out from certainty about the ego rather than about the Absolute. Most men are individualists and consequently but little suited to concretely making an abstraction of their empirical “I,” a process which is an intellectual problem and not a moral one: in other words, few have the gift of impersonal contemplation – for it is of this we are speaking – such as allows God to think in us, if such an expression be permissible . . .
God is “Light” “before” He is “Heat,” if it may be so expressed; gnosis “precedes” love, or rather, love “follows” gnosis, since the latter includes love after its own fashion, whereas love is not other than the beatitude that has “come forth” from gnosis. One can love something false, without love ceasing to be what it is; but one cannot “know” the false in a similar way, that is to say knowledge cannot be under illusion as to its object without ceasing to be what it is; error always implies a privation of knowledge, whereas sin does not imply a privation of will. Therein lies a most important application of the symbolism of the Adamic androgyne and of the creation of Eve: it is only after the “coming forth” of love outside knowledge – whence the polarization of “intelligence” and “will” – that the temptation and fall could – or can – take place; in one sense, the rational faculty became detached from Intellect through the intrusion of will, seduced by “the serpent” and become “free” from below, that is to say rendered capable of making choice between true and false; choice of the false having once become possible, it was bound to present itself as a seduction of torrential force; reason, mother of the “wisdom according to the flesh” is the “natural child” issued from Adam’s sin. Here the serpent represents what Hindus understand by tamas, that tendency which is “downward,” “towards obscurity,” “compressive” and at the same time “dispersive” and “dissolving” and which on contact with the human person becomes personified as Satan. The question: “why does evil exist?” amounts, in short, to asking why there is an existence; the serpent is to be found in Paradise because Paradise exists. Paradise without the serpent would be God. . . . Gnosis by the very fact that it is a knowing and not a willing, is centered in “that which is” and not in “that which ought to be”; there results from this a way of regarding the world and life that is greatly different from the way, more “meritorious” perhaps but less “true,” in which predominantly volitive minds regard the vicissitudes of existence. The background of the drama of life is, for the bhakta, the “Will of God” and, for the jnana, the nature of things; the accepting of his fate results, for the former, from unconditional love, from “that which must be”; for the latter, acceptance results from discernment of metaphysical necessity, therefore, from “that which is.” The bhakta accepts all fate as coming from the Beloved; he also accepts it because he makes no distinction between “me” and “others” and because, by this very fact, he cannot rebel against an event merely because it has happened to himself and not to some other person; if he accepts everything out of love of God, he also does so, on this same basis, out of love of his neighbor. The attitude of the jnani, on the other hand, is an impassability founded upon discernment between the Real and the unreal: “The world is false, Brahma is true”; “That art thou” (Tat Tvam Asi); “All is Atma”; “I am Brahma.” Events of life arise, as do all phenomena, out of the indefinitely varying combinations of the three “cosmic qualities” (the gunas: sattva, rajas and tamas); these events therefore cannot but be, to the extent that the world is relatively real; but as soon as that relativity is transcended, they cease to exist and then there is no longer a “good” or an “evil,” nor any karmic causation; the plane of the gunas (“simultaneous” qualities) and of karma (made up of “successive” qualities) is as if annihilated in the undifferentiated serenity of Being or of the Self. And similarly, there is no “juridical” relationship between the astonishments, anxieties and indignations of the soul and the unconditional serenity of the Intellect, or to be more precise, between the logic of anxiety and the transcendence of serenity; the gap is incommensurable and yet the second term is already hidden within the first; it is, so to speak, already within reach. In spiritual life, he who says “to will” says “to will a Good”; “to will a Good” is “to will well,” that is to say to “will through the Good,” or “through God”; instead of “to will” one could say “the Beautiful.” On the other hand, he who says “to know” says “to know that which is”; he who says “to know that which is,” says, in a final analysis, “to be that which knows”: the Self. Gnosis, it must be repeated, is the participation – however precarious and conditional, yet possible since we could not be in every respect absolutely “distinct” from God, since otherwise we would be devoid of reality – gnosis, then, is our participation in the “perspective” of the divine Subject which, in turn, dwells beyond the separative polarity “subject-object,” which however in no way signifies that it does not bear within itself, in a manner conforming with its Essence, the cause of all cosmic polarizations; this means that we can indeed discern something like a polarity in it, but on condition of not seeing there any separation or opposition . . . In one of his hymns to Hari, Shri Shankaracharya says: “Lord, although I and thou make but One, I belong to Thee, but not Thou to me, just as the waves belong to the sea, but not the sea to the waves.” And in another hymn, Shankara expresses himself thus: “That which is the cessation of mental agitation and the supreme peace; that which is the lake Manikarnika and the pilgrimage of pilgrimages; that which is the primordial, most pure Ganges, the river of Knowledge; that is Benares, inborn Wisdom, and that is what I am.” [GTUFS: LSelf, Gnosis, Language of the Self]