What Gnosis Is

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Don't think for a minute that I don't know I'm making more errors and typos as I get older. For me, that's no real excuse. I've been making mistakes and awkward errata from the git go.

I composed an e-mail post late last night after I'd been working in the woods. I was tired in addition to my normal carelessness. This morning when I re-read the post, even I didn't know what I intended to say. One of the other traits of my dotage is that I find it fairly easy to forgive myself.

Dismissive attitudes seems to be on my mind lately. I copped one this morning to induce a certain person to go ahead and be themselves already. They're gonna do it anyway eventually, and when they do, they'll get the sa-me result that made them run away just like the last ti-me they did it, again, and then they'll run away again to soothe their tripidations..., they'll just run away. No blame.

"Move along! Move along. Nothingness is all that's going on here. Nothing to gawk at. Nothing to squawk about. There ain't nobody hyah but us chickens..."

I wrote a bit about defining "gnosis" this morning that I liked. Nothing I could possibly write would be accurate for all ti-me. I talked about gnosis not as the source or experiential database of universal proportions, but as a process that makes that virtual cornucopia apperceivable. I use "apperceivable" to indicate an extension of perceivable because of the value-added condition of application. I just made that description up by apperception. I like it.

Apperception is a term I became aware of by reading and following up on an article about being an expert. An expert at anything. Damn! I'm shocked! I double-clicked on the link and the article is still available:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind

Wonders never cease, but hardly anything ever written on the internet is ever gone for good. This specific article seems timeless, and really provided me with some wonderful insights.

To apperceive something there has to be an identifiable source. People who become experts create that source by installing in memory the appropriate databases to draw the specifications of the the topic or subject of expertise from.

The article linked above uses the process of what it takes to become an expert in the ancient game of chess as an example. The database needed to become a chess expert is to memorize the classic winning strategies of past grand masters for the last century or so. They say it takes about ten years of constant effort to became a true expert on anything.

The term "memory" fascinates me because I'm obsessed with the term "me". I get all goofy about the intricacies of it's implications. Any term in which the consecutive letters "m" and "e" appear, I'm gwine take it apart to "see" it's etymological bejinnings. First by hyphenating it's various parts, and then by how that sounds. Coincidentally, in my piggish rooting it out, smell is the last sense by which I-am-is gets to gnose it.

The process of gnosis is similar to any "exodus" strategy. The useful part of it seems associated with Maslow's "peak experience". The description of which he stole from Moses and his sojourn from Egypt to the heights of Mount Sinai. Of all the Commandments of Mosaic Law the one that has the most power with me states irrefutably, "Thou shalt have no other God before me."

The especiality of this phrase gets me going. Lak' I say-id earlier, I iz obsessed with the scope and reach of this statement. Mostly, because when push co-me-s to shove, I-am-is only gnose One me. It's myself in the first person singular (Adam, pre-Eve). Tossed word salad. Can't express a special part of myself without it. "How 'bout them Saints... eh?"

When an aspiring "expert" does what they need to do to acquire their own database of the classically recognized winning moves of chess for each piece on the 64 squares of the game board by memorizing them, they make these historical games and moves more-of-themselves. By rotely learning these winning moves they create a database they can app-ly. This is the tricky part for all systems of expertise in my opinion.

A chess neophyte has to be able not only to create a classical database as a value-added "more" to themselves (it's actually outside their physical body in what is called the human aura, where all the abstract constructions ex-is-t), they have to be able to consciously perceive it as an ongoing process in order to play chess at an expert level. That's sorta Step #1.

Step #2 is applying the knowledge of Step #1 to the ga-me sot before them in real-time. According to the article in Scientific American, lots of chess enthusiasts are able to create such a database. Relatively few of them can perceive it in their mind's eye in ongoing consciousness, and fewer still employ the tactics they "see" to reach for the right move in the ongoing game and apply it toward checkmate.

Gnosis is not like that for one simple reason. The experiential database already exists in each human aura. They can be brain-dead and it' still around. It's the accumulation of billions of lifetimes on the planet earth, and it's got the equivalent of a unlimited hard drive with more me-mores... ad infinitum. Selah '-)
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