“Gnosis lives in deeds, withers away in abstractions, and is difficult to find even in the noblest of thoughts.”

Gnosis is a word of Greek origin which means knowledge, knowing, to know. It is wisdom that is apprehended through direct inner experience. Gnosis is the perennial philosophy that illuminated Shakyamuni Buddha, Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, Christ Jesus, Pythagoras, Moses, Socrates, Plato, Mohammed, Orpheus, Quetzalcoatl, Krishna and many other great Avatars and teachers of humanity. While Gnosis has been expressed in many different forms throughout time, in diverse cultures and civilizations, through different symbols and structures, nevertheless, beyond this illusory veil of differences exists the golden thread which unites them all, Gnosis—the pure and universal expression of Love and Wisdom. Gnosis is the path of self-realization through direct inner experience. With the awakening of consciousness and the realization of all the possibilities that lie dormant within man, we can achieve a direct experience of the truth within us.

“Oh man, know thyself and thou shalt know the universe and the gods.”

-- The Oracle at Delphi
Gnosis is: Science, Art, Philosophy and Mysticism. In order to capture the profound significance of these Four Pillars upon which Gnosis rests, we must allow our consciousness to function. Genuine Gnosis is not of the mind or the intellect, but of the heart and soul. Truth is what we experience within ourselves. Only the consciousness can experience truth. The language of the consciousness is symbolic, intimate and profoundly meaningful, and only by awakening can we grasp it. At the Maine Gnosis Center we study the theory of the Four Pillars of Gnosis and seek to truly understand them through the practice of meditation which, if properly employed, will lead to the gradual awakening of the consciousness. Both theory and practice are applied. Some of the many subjects investigated include: Meditation and the Yoga of One-Pointedness of Mind, Gnostic Esoteric Psychology, the Yoga of Dreams, the Occult Anatomy of Man, Holy Alchemy and Sacred Sexuality, Gnostic Anthropology and the spiritual Origin of Man, the Science of Mantra, Hermetic Gnostic Astrology, the Gnostic Kabbalah, etc. The Maine Gnosis Center is a gnostic school of mysteries in the tradition of Samael Aun Weor.
The three-dimensional world is not everything, and is certainly nothing more than a leaf on the tree of life. That which universal Gnosticism calls “pure science” is only possible for the awakened consciousness and has nothing to do with intellectual speculation. Therefore, when we speak of Gnostic Science or the Objective Science of the Being, we think for example of that which is expressed in the Aztec Calendar or Solar Stone; we think of the pure science of the Medieval Alchemists; we think of the enigmatic Sphinx and the pyramids of Egypt, etc.
It is Gnostic Art that we encounter in all the archaic pieces, in all the ancient works of art: in the Pyramids and all the ancient Obelisks from the Egypt of the Pharaohs, in ancient Mexico with the Maya, in the archeological relics of the Aztec, Zapotec, Toltec, etc. There is Gnostic Art in the hieroglyphs and bas-reliefs of ancient Egypt, in China; in the old manuscripts of the Middle Ages; with the Phoenicians, Assyrians, etc. There is Gnostic Art in the paintings and sculptures of Michelangelo, in the Gioconda of Leonardo da Vinci, in the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt and Wagner; in the works of universal literature such as the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, the Divine Comedy of Dante, and many others that contain the same principles of universal wisdom that are merely expressed in different ways. All the ancient works of art are hidden behind the veils of philosophical symbolism.

“There is Gnosis in the Buddhist Doctrine, in the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet, in the Zen Buddhism of Japan, in the Chan Buddhism of China, in the Sufi tradition, in the Dancing Dervishes, in the Egyptian, Chaldean, Pythagorean, Greek, Aztec, Mayan, Incan Wisdom, etc. If we study carefully the Christian Gospels, we will see in them Pythagorean mathematics, Chaldean and Babylonian parables, and the formidable Buddhist ethics.”

--Samael Aun Weor
Religious principles are living cosmic formulae, but religious forms are the different systems or ways to teach these principles. We study religiosity in its deepest form. Gnosis studies the science of religions. Gnosis goes to the foundation of religion. It seeks the Religare: the uniting of the soul with the Real Inner Being, with the divine that dwells deep within us. This implies some great super-efforts. The sages of antiquity said that it is only in this way that the Religare is possible. Our concern is to know ourselves; our concern is self-gnosis. An authentic religion in itself joins together philosophy and science. Also, an authentic science includes philosophy, religion and art. A religion that opposes science and a science that opposes religion is equally false. It is evident that an anti-religious science falls into dogmatic materialism and that an anti-scientific religion develops purely in the external, exoteric aspects, having as a foundation the intellectual speculations of theologians. The experience of gnosis allows the sincere devotee to know himself and to integrally self-realize. Self-Realization is to be understood as the harmonious development of all the infinite possibilities of the human being.
Samael Aun Weor [Victor Manuel Gomez Rodriguez, 1917-1977] authored nearly seventy books, delivered thousands of lectures, and spoke at countless seminars and international conferences on gnosis and the esoteric path. He is called the Master of Synthesis and Emphasis due to his ability to explain and unveil the essentials of the great mysteries and the ancient wisdom, imparting them with the force and clarity needed to guide the sincere aspirant of gnosis. The Gnostic teachings of Samael pertain to a logic that has been forgotten over many centuries, the logic of the Being, the transcendental logic of the objective consciousness. The purpose of the work of Samael Aun Weor is to restore the true Gnosis over the face of the earth, allowing any sincere aspirant to attain his or her own intimate self-realization.

Writing in his Christmas Message of 1954, Samael Aun Weor speaks of his esoteric collaboration with his wife, Litelantes:

This lady-adept enjoys continuous consciousness, and through innumerable incarnations has achieved the development and invigoration of certain occult faculties which, among other things, allow her to recall her past lives and the history of this planet and its races. She has been the esoteric collaborator of the Venerable Master Aun Weor, discovering the Jinn States mentioned by Don Mario Rosa de Luna and Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller. She collaborated in the scientific investigation of the elementals of plants studied in the Treatise of Occult Medicine.

Venerable Master Litelantes was given sole direction of the Gnostic Institutions after the disincarnation of V.M. Samael Aun Weor in 1977. Litelantes is one of the 42 judges or administrators of the Law of Karma. For twenty some years she led the Gnostic Movement with an austere authority. Master Litelantes disembodied on February 5th 1998, and at that time passed on sole direction of the Worldwide Gnostic Institutions to her son, Osiris Gomez Garro.
American Institute of Gnostic Anthropology