The Oracle motioned to the Temet Nosce sign behind him saying, “It’s Latin. Means Know Thyself.”
Gnosticism, the know thyself religion
Temet Nosce may have been popularized recently by The Matrix, but it’s an old Gnostic saying. In Greek, it’s spelled Γνῶθι σαυτόν as pictured above.
We’ve all heard the term Agnostic which literally means “without wisdom” (a-gnostic). It generally means we know something’s up, but we don’t claim to know what it is. Gnostic, on the other hand, literally means “having wisdom.”
The Gnostics believed that humans are gods who have been (somehow) stripped of their memories and sent to live on Earth in ignorance of their true selves. The Fable of the Pearl is an ancient Gnostic tale of breaking out of this trap.
“Ye are gods.”
Jesus, John 10:34 quoting Psalm 82:6
Who stripped the gods of their self-knowledge? How could this have happened? Was it maybe voluntary, and if so, why would we do that to ourselves? Does it matter? There’s nothing preventing any of the forgotten gods from waking up besides ignorance.
The earliest of starting points
To understand how any of this got here, we have to understand what it’s all based on. What was god like in the beginning? Abraham always says it wasn’t exciting enough to talk about. Ramtha goes into much more detail.
In the very beginning, god was everything (as always), but everything wasn’t very much. There was nothing to know and nothing to be. It was a vast nothingness and the dullest awareness. In fact, there was nothing to be aware of. Literally nothing. No where. No when.
Eventually and somehow, god became aware of itself. That self-reflection meant there was finally something to ponder. A point of focus. Something to do! But most of all, a second point of perspective meant there was now a vague sense of growth.
Before, there was nothing. After, there was a flurry of growth, experience, and creation. One might even describe that point as some kind of a big bang. While it’s a cute analogy, the physical verse’s big bang came “later.”
Enter the humans
From the very beginning, god evolved by creating new formats of expression, occupying those new perspectives, and growing as a result. In order for this to provide any value, the new formats had to have certain freedoms built in to enable expression. Also, the perspectives had to (somehow) be separate from each other to provide unique vantage points.
Since there was literally nothing else to do (except “death” through stagnation), god did this a lot. A LOT. Many new perspectives were created, and from those new perspectives, many many more were created. It’s like one big family tree of perspectives occupying various forms of expression.
In the beginning, it was like a solo chess player who would play both sides of a chess board. Before long, there were near-infinite consciousnesses constantly expressing in (humanly) unimaginable formats. Eventually, the physical verse we call home was dreamt up and inhabited for yet another format of experience and expression.
How we fell asleep
Humans are here to grow god. We occupy unique perspectives and only think we’re separate from each other and our source. The question now is whether or not those unique perspectives ever knew of themselves as gods.
Gnostic dogma says the demons stripped us of our self-awareness and sent us to live here to keep us under control. Maybe that kind of hand waving was all good 2,000 years ago, but we’re not at all satisfied with that drivel.
Seth says we did eventually forget our divine nature at some point in our history (if anyone finds it in the books, please say in the comments). While unfortunate for us, this belief system we occupy has turned out to be tremendously useful from non-physical perspective.
Ramtha adds that the only way to know what it means to be a god is to experience what it means to be non-god. Since it’s not possible for any of us to actually be a non-god, the next best thing is to simply forget. To forget at least until we remember.
Wake up and know thyself
It’s time to start playing the actual game according to the actual rules. Look to models of physical reality that foster allowing. Allow the answers to come. Resensitize yourself to how you feel.
Our libraries contain many examples of folks who have woken up. Jesus. Buddha. Moses. Ramtha. There are lots of examples on Spalding‘s expedition. St Germain. Honestly, it’s almost surprising that any of these examples survived in print since we tend to discard anything that doesn’t fit whatever model or narrative is popular at the time.
For every dramatic example above, there are thousands of less dramatic examples of miracle workers in various fields of study.
Hack the Verse and all the books linked above are fantastic starting points, but anyone who’s serious about waking up can also meditate and ask their inner being for guidance.
This post superficially covers a lot of big questions in a rather dense way to describe Gnosticism. We’ll eventually break out some of the individual concepts into their own posts to give them the attention they deserve.
