Samael Aun Weor

The history of the gnostic movement has many interesting and heroic personages. Men and women who have contributed to the gnostic movement, none of them stands any higher than Samael Aun Weor. If you type in his name you will get, among others, a Wikipedia entry that runs some 17 pages from my computer. The accompanying article tells you much about him and if you are interested in pursuing his writings further, you can go to schools or read his books as you see fit. Google his name and a wealth of material will result. While I have not studied him, I find that he espouses ideas that I cannot as yet agree with. The old gnostic idea that man is a degenerate animal is one of them. I can accept it metaphorically but not literally. However, studying him is well worth the trip. One of the things that he espouses is that man is a conscious animal. Consciousness is a state of being, he says, and it is closely related to God. This I agree with totally. He says that we are 97% asleep and this sounds about right. His views largely conform to those of G.I. Gurdjieff, but not entirely so. There is a heavy eastern strain in his philosophy. This is unavoidable since the Hindus and Buddhists have done so much in the gnostic area. Personally, I prefer the methods of Deepak Chopra and other writers who use the eastern ideas, but put them in a western frame that is more comfortable to the western reader. We are the product of our own culture, and it makes sense to stick with that until you have mastered the material, which few of us have. All in all, he is well worth pursuing, and I would urge all of you to put him on your list of source material.