Looking inwards for enlightenment

A favourite passage from The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels.

The Gnostic writings were a favourite source of inspiration to Jung, and it’s easy to see why. They were, in many ways, depth psychologists, but didn’t have the label 🙂

 

Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort.
 
 Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. (Self Knowledge)
 
 Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.”
 
 Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate.
 
 Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, rests without willing, becomes angry without willing, loves without willing.
 
 If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him/her in yourself.
 
 Quoting Gnostic teacher Monoimus,
 

 

 also quoted by Hippolytus of Rome, Refutationis Omnium Haeresium, 8.15.1-2, as translated in The Gnostic Gospels (1989) by Elaine Pagels, Introduction, page 18 (2006 edition, Phoenix publishers).

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Related: hermetic view of human potential

🦉 © Peter Fairbrother @pjforguk www.pjf.org.uk  🌄