Gnosis 1: The Gnostic Sect

This is the first part of a two-episode series in which I am going to talk about the Gnosis, a doctrine in which I believed and which I practiced for seven years, but which I discovered to be tremendously dangerous. This discovery was a very personal experience and it happened as a result of an anxiety crisis I suffered in 2017, which I will narrate in detail in another episode.

In this episode I will tell the tragic story of a mother who, under the influence of the gnosis, killed her own 6-month-old baby. I will explain what the gnosis is, why it is so attractive, and I will tell you the incredible story of its greatest leader, Samael Aun Weor, who became the most influential religious leader ever born in Colombia, affecting the lives of millions of people around the world, mainly in Latin America.

On August 27, 2015, Olga Herrera, of Chilean origin, and her husband Rafael Herrera, born in Venezuela, traveled from Germany, where they lived, to Santiago de Compostela together with their little daughter Verónica, the sad protagonist of this story, who was only 6 months old. (The names were changed to protect the identity of the protagonists of the story)

The couple had moved to the mythical Galician town, immortalized by Paulo Coelho in his best seller "The Alchemist," because that is where an international congress of the Gnostic Institute of Anthropology "Samael and Litelantes" would be held, one of the many organizations in the world that observe and promulgate the teachings of Samael Aun Weor, the late Colombian spiritual leader whom I have already referred to on several occasions in this podcast.

The trip had begun with a lot of joy and expectation for the young couple, who for the first time ventured on a trip outside Germany with their first baby. However, there was something murky that threatened the harmony of the Herreras. Rafael was not entirely convinced that Verónica was his daughter.

Everything began in June 2014. Olga and Rafael had been together for about 5 years, and both were committed to their path in the gnosis. They diligently followed the practices in which Samael had instructed his disciples supposedly to achieve the liberation of consciousness and the development of psychic powers: fasts, meditations, ceremonies, but the most important: practicing sex frequently but avoiding at all costs that Rafael ejaculate, something that for the gnostics is the equivalent of a capital sin for Christians.

Probably they wanted to have a child, but doing it within the Samaelian doctrine: According to the gnosis, the cosmic couple could not conceive through ejaculation like the rest of mortals, but they had to practice Sahaja Maithuna, a technique derived from the tantrism of India, which could be described as a marathon of sex of at least an hour, without strong movements, without positions other than the missionary one, without displays of lust or passion, reciting mantras, making prayer, and above all: without ejaculating a single drop of semen.

Following this practice, the gnosis says, the initiated can receive the incarnation of a superior spirit of light, which would descend from the cosmos, would take the form of a single spermatozoide of pure light, and would travel to the uterus of the wife to fertilize an ovule and thus form an ascended being, a Bodhisattva, even perhaps a prophet.

But there are those couples who would dare to fornicate, which was the word Samael used to refer to the simple act of ejaculating. By conceiving a child in this way, couples ran the risk of bringing to the physical plane a demon or the incarnation of a spirit without consciousness, or even an evil being.

I know from personal experience that these sentences can generate enormous pressure on the mind of whoever accepts them as truth. No doubt Olga and Rafael lived many moments of anguish at failing in the improbable goal of passionless, languid, mystical, static, marathonic, routine, dry and complex samaelian sex.

But everything would be complicated in that summer of 2014, when Olga, alienated by all these esoteric dogmas and apparently also affected by mental health problems not yet diagnosed, had a crisis that led her to abandon her partner and embark on a dangerous adventure.

According to her testimony, during her ceremonial practices to go out in astral body — one of the gnostic doctrines that, according to Samael, every initiate should master in order to advance in their spiritual path — Olga received messages from superior beings who had been telling her that she had an important redemptive mission to save humanity.

In one of those lucid dreams, the young woman saw a white cross, which she immediately associated with the flag of Switzerland. The next morning, convinced of her mystical predestination, Olga left her house in Germany and, without telling Rafael anything, took a train to Switzerland, but along the way, she kept receiving mystical messages, so she changed trains and ended up in a train that took her to the station of the German city of Stuttgart.

At that station, something grave happened, because the exact events of the five days she spent in Stuttgart were erased from her mind. The little she said she remembered was that she had been kidnapped by a vagabond who raped her. After that, the health services found her unconscious in the station and hospitalized her in a psychiatric hospital in the city for 10 days.

Of Olga's account, only the last part could be later contrasted. The fact is that while she was in Stuttgart, Rafael was looking for her high and low, and had already filed the report for her disappearance before the authorities. The doctors of the psychiatric hospital where she was initially hospitalized issued a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, prescribed the psychiatric medications of the case, and contacted Rafael to coordinate the discharge of his companion.

Despite the sordidness of the episode, especially what was related to the rape by the vagabond who apparently could not be located, Rafael was happy to have recovered his partner, and together they decided to leave the incident behind. Moreover, on those days — coincidentally — the papers they were missing for Olga to be able to divorce her former husband arrived at their house, with whom she had an 11-year-old child whom she had not seen for a long time.

And to complete the happiness, or rather, to complicate it, a few days later, Olga took a pregnancy test that came out positive: she was expecting her daughter Verónica. Rafael, who had been trying and desiring for so long to have a child with his beloved, was overjoyed, but deep down also scared. Even if he did not want to acknowledge it, there was the possibility that Verónica was not his daughter, but of that wretch who raped Olga during her strange outbreak of schizophrenia.

Doubts about his paternity of Verónica came to the surface in some couple's argument. Under normal conditions such a situation would be complicated for any couple, but let us remember that Olga and Rafael were gnostics, so there was much more at stake than an unfortunate extramarital conception. A conception born of an ejaculation and, even more, during an act of pure lust and with a man whom Samael would have called a "rational homunculus erroneously designated Man," could be the vehicle for the incarnation of a being of the shadows or even of the antichrist himself.

With this, the couple decided to set the doubts aside, ignore the prescription of psychotropic drugs, and redouble their spiritual work or the "Great Work," as it is said in the gnosis. The trip to Santiago de Compostela was probably part of this effort to clean up any spiritual impurity that had hung over them and that threatened to destroy the happiness of the young family.

On August 30, after another day of conferences, Olga and Rafael had an argument. There are several versions about what motivated it; Olga says that she became jealous because a woman who had been Rafael's partner appeared at the congress, and he repeated his doubts about the paternity of Verónica and demanded a paternity test. Olga began to feel unwell and argued fiercely with Rafael. Motivated by anger, the 34-year-old woman took her suitcases and the little Verónica, left the hotel, and headed to the city's airport where she tried to get a ticket back to Germany, but the money she had was not enough for the ticket; and probably not for the taxi back either, because she had no choice but to call Rafael to pick them up at the airport.

That night, far from improving, the couple's frictions worsened and the argument repeated itself. Olga, who as she felt more and more anxious continued to receive cryptic messages in her mind and to see signs about her mission in that place, saw that Rafael was scratching his head, and something told her that that was a sign that her partner wanted to do her harm. So the alienated Olga started shouting for help and threw a shoe at Rafael demanding that he get out of the hotel room.

The noises alerted some of the guests, who were also participating in the gnostic conferences, and they went out to see what was happening. Meanwhile, Rafael, who was then at the door smoking a cigarette, confessed to another attendee at the congress that he believed Verónica was not his daughter. That night, he had to sleep outside his room because Olga locked the door with the suitcases and barely passed him some clothes.

Olga did not accept Rafael on Sunday either, for which he occupied himself with a guided visit to the historic center of the city. Meanwhile, at the hotel, Olga called an English couple who were staying in the next room and suggested that they take a walk around the hotel and have a coffee. The other couple had a one-year-old baby, so the five of them went down to the café that was in the lobby, but Olga seemed absorbed, exhausted and sad, according to the British gnostics.

While they were having their coffee, the one-year-old child of the English couple pointed with a little finger at Verónica's left eye, and at that moment, Olga received a new telepathic message that would have irreparable consequences: The voice that was guiding her told her that her six-month-old little daughter was the incarnation of evil, and that the child who had pointed at her was a warrior of light who was waging a spiritual battle against her.

Therefore, according to Olga's declaration, the voice indicated to her that she should kill the girl before she turned one year old to save the world, and that as a reward for her sacrifice, she would be taken by a space ship to travel to the Sirius system, to a planet where the christos who died for humanity live. This, of course, was another teaching of Samael Aun Weor, who said that Sirius was the capital of the Milky Way and the place where ascended beings reincarnate as gods.

After the child pointed at Verónica's little eye, Olga remained for a few minutes in a kind of trance, which she abruptly interrupted by getting up from the table, to go to her room, to nurse the girl, according to her.

The English woman, who also had Portuguese nationality, felt that something was not right and a little later decided to go up to Olga's room on the seventh floor. When she arrived, she found Olga again spaced out. – Where is the girl? she asked her, but she got no answer. Then she crossed the threshold hurriedly, without Olga offering any resistance, and she saw a bundle on the bed, totally covered by a sheet held down by two white stones with black veins.

– “You can't cover the child so much,” she told her, to the motionless mother. Then she pulled back the sheet and found what she feared: it was Verónica, who was no longer breathing.

The woman ran down the stairs to ask for help to her husband, who conveniently worked in first aid in England. The man arrived quickly to the room with another attendee at the congress, and they tried to perform a resuscitation maneuver on the little victim while they waited for the ambulance they had requested.

Olga meanwhile continued seated in silence, until one of the gentlemen who were trying unsuccessfully to save the girl told her “Calm down, maybe she is going to breathe.” They say that then the woman jumped like a spring and threw herself on the little one to squeeze her neck with force.

When the police and the paramedics arrived, they had to drag out Olga between four men because she was resisting. They say that while they were dragging her out, the woman was shouting unintelligible words.

The prosecutor of the case requested 25 years of confinement in a penitentiary psychiatric hospital for Olga, who took advantage of her last statement in the trial to say the following words:

“I have an illness that took from me what I loved most, which was my daughter. It took from me my beautiful girl, it took from me my husband, and now it is going to take 25 years of my life.” “I loved and love my daughter. I want to know where she is buried. Whether I will be able to go see her and bring her a flower… I miss her a lot, there is not a day that I don't think of her. I dream that I take care of her, that I feed her, that I walk with her… I don't know what I am going to do with my life without my daughter”.

The case of Olga and Verónica is obviously an extreme case of the nefastous effects of the teachings of Samael Aun Weor, but sadly, it is neither the only nor the last event in which the gnostic theories that in appearance are noble and benign, have turned into a torment for people or even whole families.

The majority of these cases fortunately do not involve someone's death and for that reason you will not find them in the news, but during the last 15 years, I have heard a good number of stories of divided families, separations of couples, sexual abuses, deceptions and manipulation of the will that can last for years.

My objective in this episode is not to generate fear nor to denigrate the institutions or people who practice or teach the gnosis, but to create awareness of the dangers that certain doctrines and practices hold, so that you protect yourself and avoid going through the tight spots that many people, among whom I include myself, have had to overcome to detoxify ourselves from the frankly destructive ideas that the gnosis inoculates in the majority of its adepts.

I want to start by acknowledging that many of the teachings of the gnosis are positive, the majority are innocuous, but there are some that can cause real tragedies, and those are the ones I intend to explain with the greatest clarity possible. I have read several books by Samael, that is, a small part of the more than 60 books that are attributed to him, and although one finds many repeated things and a style that is sometimes bombastic and convoluted, I recognize the appeal of his work: Samael Aun Weor was a true master of mystical writing and the esoteric imaginary. If you have a mystical intuition, a premonition that there is a reality beyond the physical and something divine within you, and you come across the words of Samael Aun Weor, there is something that clicks immediately, resonates, and you feel a kind of certainty that what you are hearing or reading is something your soul already knew. This has an explanation but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's start with a bit of history, especially for those who are not familiar with this thing of the gnosis. Gnosis or gnosticism are very ancient terms that derive from the Greek noun gnosis, which means knowledge. However, it does not refer to knowledge in general but to a particular type of knowledge: the knowledge or belief in the intuition that human beings have a divine nature, that we have a sublime spark within our limitations that can be liberated and potentiated through work on oneself.

The concept of Gnosis is part of Hellenistic philosophy as the experimental or practical counterpart of epistemology, which in turn deals with theoretical knowledge. In any case, it was a philosophical rather than religious current to group the theories about the human nature in which the divine component was not found outside the being but within each of us.

In that sense, gnosis is the counterpart of religion, since if we attend to the etymological origin of the two terms, religion seeks to re-join the human being with the divinity that would be found in the sky, but the gnosis says: “no, the divinity is within each one, so the path is not adoration and praise to achieve the favors of the deity, but internal work to draw out that divine spark and to become a god oneself”.

At the heart of the debate between these philosophies is basically found the dichotomy, which we have already talked about in other episodes, between those who believe that an external God and imposed rules are needed to ensure that human beings do not fall into an abyss of degeneration, and those who instead opine that each one has a seed of the divine justice within themselves and it is enough to promote the adequate practices to achieve the perfection of the human character and to overcome our animal instincts.

This difference arises from the same division that we have already explored between the mental functions of the primary or reptilian brain, which leads us to be more hierarchical, territorial and martial (the religious part), and the limbic system and the cerebral cortex that pushes us to be more social, planners, cooperative and explorers. Behaviors that are better understood with the exploration and praxis that the gnosis offers.

But okay, so the gnosis was philosophy, but by its nature, it inevitably ended up becoming a spiritual movement. Not only that, but it also ended up interweaving with religion, particularly from the emergence of Christianity in the first century AD.

While the Romans saw the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as an opportunity to maintain their decadent empire by turning it into a new Universal religion based on the image of a poor, sacrificed and respectful christ who gives “to Caesar what is Caesar's,” some non-Arabic Jewish sects such as the Essenes, the Copts of Egypt, and other gnostic groups saw instead Jesus of Nazareth as an example of a revolutionary of the spirit, a transformer of the old rules of religion, and willing to destroy the temple of Jerusalem to dictate a new teaching.

And here comes one of the great dangers of the gnosis, which can be seen in the very origin of the Christian gnosis itself, and which, as you will see, has much to do with the tragic story of Olga and Verónica: The gnostics, from their beginnings, have always been mystical interpreters. That is, they base a large part of their worldview on the capacity of human intuition to determine the hidden or secret meaning of symbols, events and acts that for the common people have a secular or insubstantial meaning.

Well, these proto-gnostic Christians devoted themselves to analyzing the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and to “unveiling” the esoteric messages they believed the master of Galilee was leaving hidden to be understood by his initiated followers: “He who has ears, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).

It was in this way that the gnostics began to form a body of esoteric knowledge derived from the sometimes confusing parables and metaphors of Christ, the letters of the apostle Paul, and even more so from the obscure revelations of the book of Revelation. According to the gnostic doctrine – broadly speaking – Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey symbolizing the dominion of cosmic consciousness over the mind (the donkey would represent the mind, probably because of the pejorative use of the word donkey as an adjective for lack of intelligence), then he devotes himself to preaching the Kingdom of Heaven, which would mean the awakening of consciousness, and finally he would sacrifice himself to represent what the gnostics call the drama of the cosmic christ, a supposed inner epic of spiritual training facing the temptation of the flesh, fighting it with fasts and penance, to end up revealing the mystery of the incarnation of the second logos or solar Christ, through the power of sacrifice and suffering.

On that general basis, several schools of initiatic knowledge arise, mainly schools of mystery that go building a parallel Christian cosmogony to the one that the Catholic Church was extending throughout the world with the Bible and the sword, and just as the Church did, the gnostic groups went co-opting pagan knowledge and esoteric initiatic knowledge. Among them there are Celtic, wiccan, Buddhist and Hinduist beliefs, but the most relevant influence for the Samaelian gnosis was from the tantra of Tibetan origin.

The Tantra, which is a millennial knowledge based on the belief in an energetic body formed by vortices of energy, teaches its adepts that the sexual energy that is discharged during an orgasm can be contained, channeled and transmuted to energize that subtle body and to obtain with it all kinds of benefits such as healing of diseases, increase of creativity, physical power, intelligence, but above all the liberation of the divine essence within the being.

These theories are not exclusive to the tantrism, but have been explored by many initiatic cults, including the rosacrucism of Arnold Krumm-Heller, one of the authors who most plagiarized Samael. All these knowledge that have observed, with just reason, that sex is a very powerful force within the human being, and have tried to develop techniques, diets, exercises and other methods to use that force for esoteric purposes. It is understandable for someone who has experienced an orgasm, that the human being consider this phenomenon something metaphysical and even mystical.

The same thing happens with dreaming. Surely you have had on more than one occasion some dream experience that you could describe as supernatural or at least unsettling, such as prophetic dreams, sleep paralysis, extremely realistic dreams, or lucid dreams. Well, esotericism in general, and obviously also gnosticism, have always given substantial relevance to the analysis and potentiation of dreams.

Well, those two points: sex and dreams would be the basis of the doctrine that the young Víctor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez began to build, a Colombian of middle class born in Bogotá at the beginning of the twentieth century, who since a teenager felt attracted to esotericism. He began his spiritual search in the rosicrucian and theosophical groups of the city, but quickly he was disillusioned with the limited knowledge that was taught in those groups.

Due to this, Víctor Manuel began hunting for esoteric books in the libraries of the city and with esotericist acquaintances, and immersed himself in reading, becoming as he himself recounts in his autobiography "a library mouse." During the years that followed, making use of a prodigious memory and the discipline of study that surely would have been better used in a real science, Víctor began to form his own synthesis of occult and esoteric knowledge, mainly from the theosophy of Madame Petronila Blavatsky, the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, and in general famous authors of the matter such as Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, Count Saint Germain, Paracelsus, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, among others, and even a good number of poets, whose works he paraphrased and accommodated copiously in his books.

Little is known of the following years, but it appears that he became a kind of vagabond traveling through several cities of Colombia in search of esotericist masters and making a living as a fortune-teller, spiritual guide, and whatever he could do with his particular knowledge. With barely 23 years old he married for the first time and had two children, but due to economic lack and lack of medical care, he lost one of them, Luz Esthela, at barely two years old.

A little before turning 30 years old, Victor Manuel, who was in the city of Armenia, met Arnolda Garro Mora, who would become his wife for the rest of his life, after abandoning his first wife and the son he left with her. Arnolda, who was also an esotericist and one of his first disciples, would be the inspiration of the first book that Víctor published, which is not only probably the most known of his works, but the first to declare sex as the only path for the liberation of the Being, and also the first in which he signed with his first alias "Aun Weor".

After the success of The Perfect Marriage, Aun Weor realized that his compilation of esoteric knowledges, to which he added touches of his own invention, was selling like hot cakes. Of course he never gave credit to the original authors of the concepts he was disseminating, but rather narrated them as if they were the fruit of his own discovery, frequently making reference to personal experiences in which he said that he had received a revelation, or that a master of the white lodge had taught him so in the internal worlds.

He also tried the success of the obscure and imprecise references with which he alluded to the reader's instinct, so that, as happened with Nostradamus or the newspapers' horoscopes, his texts seemed to predict future events, divine personal situations of the reader, or corroborate his future writings. However, if one makes an impartial analysis of his books, one finds that they are collections of disordered, confused ideas, and in no few cases, contradictory. I am not going to go into the details of those contradictions, but on the podcast's webpage I share the link to a website in which the most noticeable inconsistencies of his writings are transcribed.

There are some things that I can recognize to Aun Weor's books, in addition to the one I already referenced, his facility for writing narratives with an air of mystical revelation: on the one hand the prolific nature of his imagination and memory, which enabled him to write more than 60 books of medium size in a span of less than 30 years, and on the other hand the creativity that he had for inventing the titles of his works: The Revolution of Bel, Rosa Ígnea, The Yellow Book, The Parsifal Unveiled, and others even more grandiloquent and original.

An important fact of the life of Aun Weor, which in some way ended up having a great influence on my own life as well as on the lives of thousands of others, happened around 1953, while in Colombia the end, or at least a pause, in the era of partisan violence was being celebrated. In that year, Victor Manuel Gómez traveled to the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where he arrived together with his wife Arnolda, who by then was called Litelantes, and the three children they already had, in search of the knowledge of the mamos, who were then famous for their disciplined ancestral spirituality.

There he learned the ancestral medicine of the Arhuacos, and some say that he received from them the poporo and the aseguranza of the Sierra, similar to the one I received 60 years later. But such was Aun Weor's smoothness and assertiveness, that he ended up convincing some of the mamos to accept his gnostic teachings, telling them that he had the power to enter a state of Jinas, that is, passing through the fourth dimension (…) to the interior of the Sierra Nevada, where the Summum Supremum Sanctuarium of what he called the "Tibet of America" would be found.

Even some of those mamos came to see in Aun Weor the incarnation of an ancient Arhuaco knower that some of his ancestors had prophesied. From then on, a division was generated in the Sierra Nevada between those who accepted Samael as a prophet, and those who saw him as a charlatan. Even though the latter were the majority, the new gnostic mamos kept propagating the esoteric doctrines of Samael, and to this day they remain in force in some few mamos, among them the mamos Andrés and Lorenzo Izquierdo, who were the ones who delivered poporos and spindles to the Muisca-Gnostic of the Pueblo Nación Muisca-Chibcha.

This initial encounter with the indigenous people of the Sierra was an inflection point in the life of the future guru and his gnostic movement, because Aun Weor understood the power of ancestrality in the American collective imaginary, and this was the basis of one of his most enduring strategies for the expansion of gnosticism, and in particular of the cult of the personality of Aun Weor in the future. Also in the Sierra Nevada another important event for him happened, which was what he called the advent of "Samael," a supposed spirit or regent logos of the planet Mars that would have possessed him to prepare the world for the beginning of the age of Aquarius, a confused hypothetical cosmic period whose limits neither astrologers nor esotericists agree on, and which depending on the case is located between the moment of the birth of Christ and February 2021, and which would last about 2,160 years. According to the now re-baptized as Samael Aun Weor Maitreya Buda Avatar Kalki of the New Era of Aquarius, the new era would begin on February 4, 1962.

As soon as Victor Manuel left the Sierra Nevada, he devoted himself to the curanderismo in the nearby city of Ciénaga in the Colombian Caribbean. For offering medical services without a license he was in fact imprisoned for a few days, but according to his accounts, the arrest was for the "crime of healing the sick." He also says that he was charged with indecency for being recognized as the author of "The Perfect Marriage," and although I did not find any reference to the following, I consider, having lived in that area of the country, that it is probable that Samael received death threats from the ultra-rightist and Catholic gamonales of Ciénaga, which may have been one of the reasons that motivated him to leave the country that same year and try his luck in Central America.

The journey, which began in Panama, led the Gómez Garro family all the way to Costa Rica, where their fourth child was born, they continued through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, until reaching their final destination: Mexico, entering through the state of Veracruz. In each of those countries, Samael and his faithful Litelantes were sowing the seed of an International Gnostic Movement, leaving in each country at least one leader who would continue the work and report directly, mainly through letters but also by telephone and by telegrams, to the increasingly famous "Avatar of the age of Aquarius."

Proving the maxim that no one is a prophet in his own land, Samael enjoyed a fame and admiration in Central America that he never even imagined in Colombia — at least not before consolidating himself abroad. In 1955, Aun Weor definitively settled in the city of Mexico, and there his movement did nothing but grow, attracting and enchanting other gnostic leaders who were already there, to go little by little imposing his messianic figure over the others, and his "synthesis" of doctrines through the rain of books that he produced in his new headquarters.

Another thing that would have to be admired to Samael, were it not for his systematic use of deception and emotional manipulation, was the capacity for leadership and execution that he had. Aun Weor was not only prolific in his literary work, but also in the quantity of organizations and acronyms that he gave birth to. Among them the most known were the Universal Christian Gnostic Movement (MGCU) (to which Grandpa Juver belonged, whom I talked about in a recent episode), the Latin American Christian Socialist Party (POSCLA), the Institute of Universal Clarity (ICU), the Gnostic Association of Anthropological and Cultural Studies (AGEACAC), which is, if I remember correctly, the organization to which the grandpas Suagagua and Xieguazinsa Ingativa Neusa belonged.

That's it for today's episode. Next week I will tell you the second part of the story of Samael Aun Weor, I will explain why the Gnosis is so dangerous, and I will venture a theory of what truly happened with Olga, Rafael, and Verónica. Don't miss it.

5 years ago I think it is good to keep respect for the living being that died, for the baby, because it is a shame the horrible things that a person can end up doing, and it is important that the guilty person has the corresponding punishment, but I don't understand why the gnosis should be blamed for everything that happened… What fault does the Gnosis have for all that the woman did? At any time did any member tell her to go on a sudden trip without giving notice, or to kill her son? According to the same "article" or post, the answer is no… Not because a person of a group does wrong, it means that the whole group is wrong. Example, not because a soccer player assaults his wife, it means that all soccer players are like that, or that soccer is the guilty one…

It seems to me that the purpose of the publication is simply to propagate hate and to call attention… and a source of information with such a biased view is quite dangerous, especially when it says to be "based on science," which generates a contradictory discourse…

4 Reply manuelr Author Reply to Jean 5 years ago I am glad that you observe that the article shows nothing against the gnosis as a philosophy, but the nefastous effect that sects have on the mental stability of many people. However, to say that the gnostic sects are not to blame for anything that people do by following regressive beliefs would be like saying that Nazism is not to blame for what people do by following its precepts.

0 Reply Dayana 5 years ago The gnosis is a very dangerous sect… Its dogma is a deception. It is a pretext to feed adultery, pride, and to desensitize the practitioner. The argument to justify adultery is that the vessel is not worth it, or that what is important is the self-realization of the being. Such self-realization implies egolatria and self-deception. In truth I do not see the positive side. A large number of gnostic women get involved in espiritism and occultist and mystical movements, the gentlemen with the desire to create the superior bodies of consciousness look for whoever will "collaborate" them in that arcane with grave spiritual and mental consequences, and even negatively affects the family, the economy, and all the areas in which the gnostic practitioner is immersed. The brainwashing is so great, that it makes the practitioner believe that he is a god in potential!!! For 14 years I was a practitioner of this lie. I was convinced, but I thank God for having taken the bandage from my eyes.

6 Reply Alisson Dayane Reply to Dayana 4 years ago I suppose that I have been practicing some things of this knowledge.. from what I know can help me with my inner life… but strange episodes have occurred.. where I argue with my partner… and it seems as if it were not he… who was answering me… but someone else in there…. and in a very rude way…. taking a superior criterion… offensive… and when I claim something with which I don't identify or with which I am 0% in agreement… he denies me everything…. and starts judging me and telling me that I am the one who knows nothing… and that what we have talked about is a lie…. and to minimize me… and that I am manipulating him…

I feel that there is something that is not right…. even… this topic has not been easy for me to assimilate….. I have been in it for a little more than a year and something… and he has been in the practice for much longer….. he has been captured by that knowledge… I sometimes don't know what to do……. nor what to say to him… because he gets enraged….. and I have had clashes with my partner…. because I don't agree with some things…. I have had really crazy dreams…. I have had episodes of depression…. could someone help me? Or to him whom I am answering the message…. please… if you are so kind dayana… if you help me to have information… and what I could do about it…..

0 Reply manuelr Author Reply to Alisson Dayane 4 years ago Hello Dayana, The Gnosis supposedly helps you to improve in things of your life, but it is the opposite. Life is complicated and couple relationships are difficult as it is, so when to that you add having to comply with a quantity of norms that go against your nature and enduring the fear of the fire of hell, well it is easy to lose one's sanity and end up living episodes of depression or anxiety, which is what I think you have. I am not a psychologist and therefore I can only advise you to consult your doctor and/or psychologist about your mental health, but if you need to talk about the gnosis, understand why almost everything it promotes is a lie, and some suggestions on how to leave that sect behind, with pleasure you can contact me on my Telegram https://t.me/manuelricardo

1 Reply María Ester escobar Reply to manuelr 3 years ago Hello, I am María Ester. Regarding the gnosis I don't like it: my son read something and it did him bad, I investigated it and it did many others bad too. Another topic: look at yourself, seek yourself, look at your face

0 Reply Monica Gamboa 4 years ago The human mind is a very terrible weapon. To blame or to give a name in order to cover up something is very simple. I am a gnostic and I will not point to anyone regarding this. When one develops a doctrine, a religion, or a faith, one must have one's mind well centered and lucid in what one does, because if we are people with traumas or psychological problems and we are not well centered in our beliefs, we can end up badly. Everything should be, I think, carefully evaluated, and each person has the ability to decide and to realize when something is good or bad. Not because I hear a voice that tells me to do this or that, knowing that I am going to harm another being, would it occur to me to do it. For that one must have discernment in every case. If this is so, we would have to blame the great religions too, which gave death in the name of God for many reasons. It is easy to blame others when the truth is in ourselves: we are each the masters of our acts and of our own internal demons. Let us not forget that each being is a different internal world and we do not know what is inside. With this I do not want to blame or cover up anything: what happened is lamentable, without a doubt, because the one who died is an innocent being, but in us lies the ability to see what is correct and what is not, without a doubt. No religion nor belief, I think, has the authority to order the elimination of something that does not please it, much less a life. Not even God himself would do such a thing, attacking or destroying what he himself has created. What happens is that man himself seeks excuses for his own imperfection, giving absurd theories to hide his own truth and reality. It will always be so: finding self-defense and not accepting the facts of his truly auto-destructive nature.

0 Reply Karla 4 years ago Who knows to what Gnostic school you went, but that is not how the gnosis really is. It is lamentable what happened where you went. But they did not practice it in the correct way there. I send you much peace for what you went through 🙏🏽

1 Reply Nathalie 4 years ago I lament that those things happened, but whoever does not know what he carries inside might use this text as reality, when really it is not. This is a very vague description of the gnosis that by no means resembles the wrong decision that is described here. Starting because a true gnostic learns from V.M. Samael Aun Weor. Respect for life: NOBODY GIVES LIFE. THEREFORE NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO TAKE IT AWAY. That includes people, animals, or plants. THAT IS WHAT THE GNOSIS TEACHES. I have known the gnosis for almost 25 years. And I can say that it is false. The only thing I can think is that there are many crazy people out there who misunderstand anything, who make themselves the spokesperson of the gnosis «IN THEIR OWN WAY, FANATICALLY SPEAKING, WHAT IT IS NOT». BY NO MEANS IS THE GNOSIS LIKE THAT.

2 Reply manuelr Author Reply to Nathalie 4 years ago I do not think I inferred that the teachings of the gnosis caused the tragedy: it was a combination of factors that included toxic teachings such as that we have demons, that not having tantric sex can attract demons, and things like that, with the manipulation of inexcusable leaders and the lack of psychiatric medical attention to people who may be experiencing episodes of anxiety, paranoia, schizophrenia and other conditions, which the gnosis frequently diagnoses as people with egos that must be annihilated, instead of going to a medical consultation.

1 Reply Cesc 4 years ago The author of these comments says that Samael made up many things of the gnosis, but in the end he «ventures» to say a theory of what happened in this case that he recounts. And what is true about theorizing? He supposes things that he has not verified? Better I take a glass of water that is real and at least takes away my thirst, and I don't waste time on the occurrences of another, no matter how much he has studies of whatever. It is not real!

0 Reply manuelr Author Reply to Cesc 4 years ago Inventing things or theorizing has no problem at all, and that is why science fiction, poetry and other arts exist. The problem is inventing things like the ones Samael used to invent, and deceiving his followers by telling them that they are mystic revelations or absolute truths. If in his books Samael had said «this is something I believe in, but each one must discover his own truth», I would not hesitate to recommend his books… As mystic fiction, of course!

1 Reply Brenda 4 years ago Hello, I only went to two conferences and I didn't like absolutely anything, it is as if they wanted to impose on you! Besides, I felt a horrible energy 😢!

0 Reply Wilmar Reply to Brenda 3 years ago I, since very young, felt «strange» in my own world, I didn't accept the reality of living in a peasant home full of poverty, lack of affection (paternal and maternal), and at my 8 years of age terrible, dantesque projections used to pass through my mental screen against my own progenitors. I was a shy, rebellious, and sometimes rude child, also with the desire to take my family out of such a languid economical and social situation, through my future scholastic formation. Thank you, señor Manuel, for presenting here another and different point of view about the gnosis and its principal leader Samael Aun Weor. I am not with this message granting him credits for his counterposition to the gnosis nor to its leader, but to me it seems important any different «effort», since it has just validated a concept or belief completely, or likewise delegitimized it.