By Max Gorman
The publication offers an creation to mystical philosophy and the concept that of internal improvement by way of taking a look at a couple of its nice faculties. Mystics concur in announcing that we're in a roundabout way “asleep”—and needs to realize this to evoke. a substantial try and establish the character of this sleep is made within the previous a part of the ebook, with the actual aid of the educating of Gurdjieff. additionally studied are methods of the prior and current, together with the secret faculties, Gnosticism, Alchemy, Zen, the Fourth manner, and how of the Sufi. it's also made obvious that the way in which of Jesus, till it used to be overlaid via Christianity, was understood as this sort of waves or teachings for the advance of person and awareness. The resonance of this instructing with all different mystical teachings is an important subject matter. the aim of the ebook is to encourage the reader to ascend the Stairway to the celebrities.
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Extra info for Stairway to the Stars: Sufism, Gurdjieff and the Inner Tradition of Mankind
Sample text
As the Gnostic teacher, Valentinus, tells us in his work ‘The Gospel of Truth’, recently recovered from the sands of Egypt, ‘He who is a-gnostic lacks, and indeed it is a great thing that he lacks. ’ ‘Completion’ therefore is the Gnostic aim. It is also that of the Sufis who say, ‘Mankind is asleep in a nightmare of unfulfilment. ’ For only the complete can completely play his complete part in the Universe. Only the real can really inhabit reality. ’ Deep above us, say the Gnostics is the Pleroma or Place of Fullness where the sons and daughters of God flower.
While in The Gospel of Truth we are told: * This quotation from the parable of the Prodigal Son is, of course, from the Authorised Version of the New Testament (1611), most of whose poetry, power and meaning springs directly from the poet Tyndale’s inspired translation of 1526. ’ THE GNOSTICS 43 The Father, who withholds within Himself their completeness gives it to them as a return to Himself and a Gnosis, which is Perfection. Gnosis is perfection. But man as he is, as he finds himself in his ordinary state, is imperfect.
Man was thus a ‘stranger’ (‘allogenes’) here. His origin was elsewhere, and to it he must return. And so in the Gospel of Thomas: Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the solitary and elect, For you shall find the Kingdom; Because you came from it, And you shall go there again. ’ Gnostic concept of ‘The Fall’ The Gnostic view of the ‘Fall of Man’ had nothing whatsoever to do with moral fault. It was entirely a fall in perception, a lowering of consciousness. The Gnostics would have shared William Blake’s image of ‘encaverned man … enclosed in his senses five’, which was very similar to their own concept of man ‘in prison’ here below.