Apocryphon of John annotation

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: AppleJack

I think it is more accurate to say that "Gnosis" is a comprehensive understanding that includes several types of mystic experience as well as philosophical (or critical) recognition.

So could a Mystic and a Gnostic come to the same understanding. One on the boat of experience and emotion. While the other on the boat of experience and knowledge?

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: pmcv

AppleJack

So could a Mystic and a Gnostic come to the same understanding. One on the boat of experience and emotion. While the other on the boat of experience and knowledge?

Well, the only thing that defines the "Mystic" is the experience. Some may be emotional about it, others may be against emotion.... it all depends on the movement.

The way you set of the question pits two things against each other that are not at odds. We are not comparing apples and oranges here, but instead apples vs fruit as a whole. Apples (Gnosis) contain every attribute of fruit (Mysticism). Fruit does NOT communicate every attribute of apple, though it contains apple as part of itself.

Some people are happy with fruit of any sort, others want the apple offered to Eve from the hand of the lady herself. The apple knows what it means to be a fruit, but fruit, as a whole, does not know what it means to be an apple in the hand of the lady.

Mystic = experience
Gnostic = experience, emotion, intelectual understanding... all within a particular context.

PMCV

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: AppleJack

The apple knows what it means to be a fruit, but fruit, as a whole, does not know what it means to be an apple in the hand of the lady.
Mystic = experience
Gnostic = experience, emotion, intelectual understanding... all within a particular context.

Lets get into Gnosis for a minute. Gnosis by defenition is

esoteric knowledge of spiritual truth held by the ancient Gnostics to be essential to salvation http://www.m-w.com

To me the experience could be the Gnosis as experience breeds knowledge. Experience dose not come without emotion. I would say the difference would be instead of a intellectual understanding you would only get a personal understanding.

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: pmcv

AppleJack

Lets get into Gnosis for a minute. Gnosis by defenition is

Dictionary definitions are, generally speaking, only meant to get some basic idea across for common usage. Unfortunately that means that they don't tell us much about a technical term as it is used in it's full context. In order to truely define "Gnosis" one would need many pages... which is more than Websters can provide. In other words, the definition provided by this dictionary passage you offer isn't really very accurate. If you want something a little better, try the one on the sticky for this forum called "Lexicon". Even that is just a partial outline, but at least a bit more detailed.

To me the experience could be the Gnosis as experience breeds knowledge. Experience dose not come without emotion. I would say the difference would be instead of a intellectual understanding you would only get a personal understanding.

I understand, but we kind of need to use the word "Gnosis" as it was used in traditional Gnosticism.... otherwise we could all use the word for different things and we wouldn't really be communicating anything. Many things "breeds knowledge", but Gnosis isn't the thing that leads to the knowing.... it is a particular form of knowing in and of itself. Without both the intellectual AND the personal, it isn't "Gnosis", at least not in the meaning of the word used in the Gnostic texts we are talking about.

PMCV