Gnosis lessons

This book is written in Dutch.

One beautiful day there was a leaflet in the information cabinet of the library that immediately caught my eye. On offer were five lessons on Gnosis, as an introduction. And, not unimportantly, they were free.
And so it was that I found myself in a beautiful old room behind the Dom church, to hear what Gnosis was all about. I had never heard of it before. The ideas appealed to me right away. Gnothi se Auton: know yourself and you will know the world, was the motto. Awareness, that’s what it was all about. To learn where your buttons are, so if someone pushes them, you can choose to react – or not to react.
From that day on I did the whole course, fifty lessons for free. Because that is a Gnostic principle too: to help others, if you can.
One of the lessons was about the destructive influence that structure can have on shared initiatives: a movement, an association. In Gnosis it is all about your own experience. Other people can help you find your way, but nobody has the authority to tell you how things are or what you should do. The moment there are authoritative rules in a movement, it is doomed to fail.
Yet that was what happened to the Gnostic Movement. After a few years the lessons stopped. The gnostic Movement had followed the path predicted by its own doctrines: to the void. I searched everywhere, but I could not find anything of it anymore. Except for the lessons I had so diligently written down.
Years later I decided to share these lessons by means of this book. It’s a pity I did not write down all fifty lessons of the first cycle, or write every lesson down completely. But what there is I’m describing here to my best effort. If there is something I don’t really get myself, or something that I have some critical thoughts about, I will say so. No doubt you will have some critical thoughts as well, reading this, especially at the repressive outlook on what sexuality should be used for. I had that kind of reactions myself, for sure, but for me the basic principle transcends the possibly obscure sidetracks. And that basic principle is: you always have a choice, you are not a victim of circumstances, as soon as you see what choices you have, as soon as you see how things work for you.
Use it to your own advantage! And hopefully your immortal soul is as glad with it as mine was and still is.