Why Gnostics Observed Silence on the Mysteries
John Lamb Lash
November 24, 2020

Salutations to the Truth Corps, whoever and wherever you may be on the planet. Well, here I am once again. So what’s coming next? Today I have something to say, which is quite special. It concerns the vow of silence that was observed by the teachers and practitioners of the ancient Mysteries. You may call them Gnostics. And I use that term because it’s in the vernacular now. But they didn’t call themselves Gnostics. They called themselves telestai. That’s the plural of the word telestes, which means “one who is aimed.” So the founders and teachers of the Mystery Schools, and the Mystery sects were aimed. They all had the same common purpose. They were all aimed in the same way. They had a transcendent focus, you could say.

Now, I might ask you out there. Do you want to be aimed? Do you want a transcendent and transpersonal focus to guide your life? It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a personal life. But it means that in additional to having your personal life, and whatever desires and objectives you might have, that there is a transpersonal purpose to your life as well. So would you like to be someone who is aimed? If that is so, if that possibility interests you, then you need to ask this question. What aims you? What could aim you in that way, in the way that the teachers of the Mysteries are aimed?

Now, my main purpose in this little talk is to explain to you why those teachers decided to observe a vow of silence about their practices. As far as I know, no one has ever explained this before. On the other hand, it is well known that they did observe a vow of silence. And as a consequence of that nothing is really known about what they did. Nothing is known about the rituals they performed in the sanctuaries of the Mysteries. And the central experience upon which the Mysteries were founded, is a great unknown. All scholars and historians of religion, who have approached this subject, if they are honest, they will admit that to be so.

Now it’s important to note that the vow of silence was not 100% intact. You could say that certain information about the Mysteries was leaked in ancient times. I’ve covered this matter, in close detail in Not In His Image. And I’ve cited those few instances from antiquity when some small clue about what happened in the Mysteries came to be known in the world. And I’ve cited the exact sources of those leaks.

The primary and outstanding fact about the Mysteries reported by certain ancient scholars and as well those who were initiates in the Mysteries was this. In the height of the experience, they encountered a light, they saw some kind of light. I’m not making this up. This is exactly what the ancient records tell us. But regarding the nature of that light, and regarding their interactions with it, they remained silent.

So what I’m going to tell you now is not only what they experienced, but also why they decided to keep silent about it. So here goes. I don’t know what you may have heard or read about the Mysteries of ancient world, the Pagan Mysteries, such as the Mysteries of Eleusis. But whatever you may know, or whether you know anything at all, it’s fair to ask this question. I think it’s a question of common sense. The question that anyone might ask, coming to this subject. The question is, well, what’s so mysterious about the Mysteries, capital M? Why were they called Mysteries? Or to put it in another way, what was the mystery at the source of the Mysteries?

I’ve said what this is already, but I’ll repeat it in this talk. It will be necessary for you to know what they kept a secret about. Can you see that? And once you know what they kept a secret about, well then I can tell you why they kept the secret. But bear in mind, that it was not a secret in the sense of something withheld from the world. They did not practice a vow of secrecy: “oh, we’re not going to tell anyone what we’re doing so that we can keep it all to ourselves, and we can use the power that we derive from our secret experience in order to manipulate and control others.” No, absolutely not! That might be hard to accept at the beginning. But I reckon by the end of this little talk, you may be able to understand that better.

The central experience of the Mysteries was, yes, an encounter with a certain kind of light. And what qualifies the Mysteries to be called mysteries is, in fact, the condition and the presence and the behavior of that light. In other words, it is something profoundly mysterious. And it never stops being mysterious, and it cannot accurately and truthfully be encountered, without the realization that it is mysterious.

So what was so mysterious about the light they saw? You probably know that in the vast range of mystical experiences reported in history all around the world, there are many instances of illumination or enlightenment. And those terms imply obviously the manifestation of some kind of light. Now, it might be considered that this expression is purely metaphorical. For instance, when you say, well, that throws some light on a subject. It doesn’t mean that you actually take out a flashlight and point it at the subject. It’s just a figure of speech. But what I’m going to tell you now is not a figure of speech. It’s a fact of direct experience as palpable and concrete as anything else you experience in normal life.

There are many examples of, many testimonies, of experiencing different kinds of light in mystical states, and you yourself may have had such an experience. But the case of the light encountered in the Mysteries is entirely unique. It stands alone. It stands on its own. And it stands apart from every other mystical experience of light.

What makes it mysterious is that the light beheld in the Mysteries is material, it’s substantial. It’s not just like a flash of lightning, which, by the way, is material. And it’s certainly not some kind of disembodied light. It’s a light that has the properties of a stone. And in that sense, it is identical with the Philosopher’s Stone, which is also called the Grail. So what the initiates did not say publicly outside their circles, what they did not describe was the exact properties of this light, and the way it behaves because the light is alive. It’s a living force, like an animal. And it has properties and behavior of a unique kind, comparable to a living creature.

When you try to describe this light, you find that it is ultimately indescribable. But there are certain things that can be said about it. For instance, I have said that it’s like foam, a luminous foam. And the luminosity of this light is soft, it’s not bright or dazzling. It’s soft and subtle. I’ve also compared it to liquid pearl, or even to marshmallow, because this light has texture. Additionally, there is a property of this light, again, which is very mysterious. And that is its porosity. So I’ve explained that this light has infinite density and zero mass. It is extremely dense, but it’s not heavy. And that is mysterious. It has infinite density and zero mass. The zero mass refers to the fact that it is infinitely porous, and it floats.

Where does it appear? Well, it appears wherever matter appears. In fact, in the Mystery trance if it is conducted and handled correctly, what you see is that everything floats in this light, the light itself floats, and everything that is material and heavy, floats in the light. So when you look around with your eyes wide open, not hallucinating, because these are essentials to the procedure of witnessing the light. When you look around everything you see, rocks, trees, houses, is floating in this light. All matter floats in this light. And this light is alive. It is a living, luminous presence that can be called the Organic Light. It’s called the Organic Light because it’s organically alive. In fact, it’s more alive than anything you could ever see. It is the most alive, and most beautiful sight that a human being can ever see.

I have described in some detail, not only in Not In His Image, but in other writings and talks I’ve given over the past 12 or 15 years, more explicit properties of the Organic Light. And I want to emphasize that everyone who encounters this light, everyone who beholds it, sees the same thing. It produces the same visual effects in everyone. And I have not only seen it myself, but I have seen it with others and others have seen it as well. And they verify that it has exactly the same properties that I’ve described.

So what are some of the other properties of the Organic Light? Well, it’s cool. And it touches you on close encounter. You may at first just behold it. But upon repeated practices, of what in the Mysteries was called the theoria, or the beholding, you actually touch it. You enter it and touch it. And then you find that it’s cool. When it touches your skin, it feels like cool melon. And another characteristic of coming into the presence of the Light is that the temperature drops. This is mysterious, because in fact, the ambient temperature of the setting where you have this encounter, the natural temperature of that place, doesn’t drop. But somehow at the same time it does. And you sense directly when you come into the presence of the Organic Light, that it gets cooler, and you feel a cool, fine perspiration on your skin.

The deeper you go into the Light, the more steadily you hold the presence of the Light, the more you sense this uncanny property of coolness. And when you go deeply into the Light into what I call the Five-Below chambers, you actually see your own breath. And this happens if you’re in a setting where the temperature is above zero, but nevertheless you see your own breath due to being in intimate proximity to the Organic Light.

What are some other properties? What are some other signs that you are really having this mystical experience? There are quite a few. I would say I’ve described maybe a dozen or more of them. For instance, the Light comes to you. It’s a living force. It’s a material presence. It doesn’t dazzle. It’s subtle. And as you approach it, as it surrounds you, it shows you that it likes you. This is a fact. It responds to your presence, like an animal would. And sometimes, you know, animals will lick you, and so it licks you. And you know when it licks you because you have one single pure crystal drop of mucus, clear mucus that comes out of one of your nostrils. It may be the right or the left. But usually it’s the right. And this is a fact. It happens over and over again. It has not only happened to me, but others who have encountered the Light can report the same experience.

Beholding the Organic Light, which is the core experience of the Mysteries, is an interactive process. It interacts with you. It’s alive, It’s super alive. And you can address it, you can speak to it, you can even ask it questions. And the Light will respond. How does it do so? It takes control of your NLP of your cerebral circuits. It permeates your cerebral circuits and it forms in your mind answers to questions that you put to it, if you proceed in this practice in the correct way.

The primary purpose of encountering the Organic Light in the Mysteries was just that, to ask it questions. The primary purpose was or may be called, Divine Mathesis, Instruction by the Light. And in their repeated encounters with the Light, the telestai were able to learn Divine matters. Gnosis is cognitive ecstasy. The practice of Gnosis involves entering an ecstatic trance. And in this state of ecstasy, and you do experience ecstasy in the presence of the Organic Light, certain things can be known that cannot be known in any other way.

And that is how those Gnostics learned the extraordinary things that they learned, not only about divine matters, not only about the supernatural, not only about the sublime powers, that have designed this world and sustain it, but they also learned many things about nature. In fact, Cicero, a Roman who was initiated into the Mysteries, said that in the Mysteries you learn more about nature, than you do about God, as such. So yes, the Organic Light is the body of the Goddess Sophia. It is her primary substance body. It is the body that she enjoyed when she was in the pleroma at the center of the galaxy. And even though she turned into the earth and took upon her Light body all of the properties and qualities of the natural world, she still retains her original state of the Organic Light, a soft living, self knowing, self conscious, luminosity. All of that I am describing here is really, really mysterious. And it is also mysteriously real.

Now given that you will accept purely for the purpose of going along with my talk, that I am accurate in describing the core experience of the Mysteries, then you’re ready to consider how they viewed that experience, and why they decided to observe silence about it. To be precise, they decided not to talk openly about it in the external world. The weren’t withholding it as a secret so that they could have the advantage over anybody. They simply committed themselves not to speak, as I am speaking to you now, about the properties and behavior of the Organic Light.

They observed a vow of silence, and I broke that vow of silence. And I publicly announced to the world in Not In His Image what the initiates in the Mysteries experienced in their divine beholding of the luminous material body of the Aeon Sophia. Now, if you can accept that, I realize that you must have or may have reservations and questions. But if you can accept that description for the purposes of what comes next, then I would appreciate your closest attention.

The question now is why did they decide to do that? Well, I assure you that it was a decision they reached after long deliberation. Certainly they did consider speaking openly about the Organic Light. But after a long time discussing it within their inner circles, they came to a unanimous conclusion based upon three considerations, or three deterrents. And here they are.

First, they reckoned that if they talked openly and publicly, as I have been doing now, about the Organic Light to those who had not yet experienced it, it would queer the experience. It would act like a spoiler when you tell someone about a film. Now, let me take a moment to give you an analogy that just came to my mind this afternoon.

Suppose there’s a lake somewhere, and I love to canoe on the lake. And I’ve spent many hours doing so. And I happen to know that there’s an area in the lake which you enter, say, going under some beautiful willow trees that are leaning over the water. And when you come into that area, there are beautiful lotus flowers on the lake, dragonflies are flitting around, and there is a mist in the air, a beautiful mist in the air.

And if you continue to paddle the canoe, you enter into that mist, and eventually, you come to a beautiful little cliff where there’s a waterfall. So the water is falling into the lake, bringing up a mist, the dragonflies are darting about in the mist, and the beautiful lotus flowers are floating on the surface of the lake. Now suppose that you want to take someone there. So you get them in your canoe. You give them a paddle, and the two of you row in that direction, you paddle in that way. But what if you tell them already before they get there what they are going to experience in that exquisitely lovely and magical place of lotuses, dragonflies, and the mist of the waterfall?

What if you tell them? Wouldn’t it be better to not tell them and to let them have the wonderment of discovery all on their own? Well, you see, that’s the first consideration. They knew that if they described the behavior and properties of that exquisite and unique luminosity in the way that I’ve done, it would be a spoiler, clear enough?

So they weren’t withholding anything from those who had not experienced the Organic Light. In fact, they were preserving the possibility for that experience to be a unique discovery of the individual who beholds it. They were honoring and preserving that unique discovery.

Now there’s a second consideration, and this is a big one. It’s something that I’ve thought about a lot. You see my descriptions of the Organic Light and phenomena attended by beholding it are out there in the world. There are other aspects I haven’t mentioned in this talk. I have said quite a lot. And I have been explicit and vivid in describing the encounter with the Organic Light. Well, that poses a problem.

Because now that the description is out there, someone could come along, read what I have written, and turn around and say, “Oh, yes, I’ve experienced the Organic Light, and I can tell you what happens.” And then they repeat the descriptions that I’ve provided. “Oh, yes, I’ve felt that cool melon, the exquisite sensation on my skin. I felt those filaments,” I didn’t mention that, “those spidery filaments on my face,” which are actually the living filaments, the living tentacles of the Organic Light as it comes towards you. “Oh, yes, and the nasal drop I’ve had that.”

Any charlatan could now make those claims, you see? So it’s an open door for charlatans and phonies. You see that problem? And it even gets worse, because there’s a possibility of self-delusion. The very fact that those descriptions are in the world could prompt certain people to trick themselves or fool themselves into thinking that they had had those exact experiences when in fact, they didn’t. So you see, there’s a great, great deterrent in the second consideration.

Finally, we come to the third consideration. This too, has caused me some soul searching and some long and hard reflection. By the very fact that I’ve described this sublime experience to those who haven’t had it, well, what effect do you think that might have? You see, I’m describing the most beautiful sight that a human being can behold. There is no greater beauty than this. Naturally, you might want to have that experience. You might want to encounter the Organic Light. But suppose you don’t, suppose you can’t? Suppose you can’t practice the telestic method, which is the one sure stable and sane way into that encounter? Suppose you don’t have that opportunity? What effect would that have on you?

It’s possible that people could feel bad. They might feel bad about themselves. They might draw the inference that, “Oh, I’m not worthy of this, or this is some sublime experience that I really believe is true, but for some reason, I haven’t had it and I can’t have it.” I certainly don’t want to prompt those kind of thoughts, those kinds of thoughts, in anybody’s mind. I certainly don’t. But there is an inevitable chance that that could happen, when someone who has not had the experience, hears about it, in the way that I describe it, you see?

There is a saying, a line in Parzival by Wolfram Von Eschenbach, “The Grail selects its own.” Well, that is the Grail. The Organic Light is the Grail. And to behold the Organic Light is to encounter the Grail and to attain it, and it is the only way to attain the Grail. The alchemists, the genuine ones, not the charlatans and the fakes, who spoke about the “white stone” and the Philosopher’s Stone, spoke from a genuine and direct encounter with the Organic Light. And one of the things that you find said, recorded in the materials of alchemy, is this: “Our stone is many, many things. Yet, it is one thing, and one thing only.” Well, how could they say that? Well, they said that speaking from the direct experience, that everything material is produced from the Organic Light and floats in the Light.

You can look at anything, an apple, or rock, a mountain, the wall of a building, a tree, and you can see the Organic Light, but more precisely, you see that that particular thing floats in the Organic Light. One way of describing this effect is by analogy to plaster, white plaster. I’ve used this analogy for a long time. Suppose that you were in a room in which the walls, not only the walls, but the table and the chairs, and all the objects in the room were molded out of pure white soft plaster. But due to the fact that the plaster was tinted or colored, the objects appear to you to be real, a wooden chair, a metal dish, a stone wall, and they all are real. But at the same time, they are simply material appearances floating in the Organic Light. “Our stone is many things. But it is also one thing and one thing only.”

So to conclude, well, how can I conclude? I conclude that the telestai were right in their vow of silence, even though it so happened over the course of time, in the course of history, that it would be my destiny to break that vow.

‘Nuff said, and I’ll be seeing you in the beauty to come.

Video Image: The Hermetic gesture of silence, residual evidence of the vow of silence observed in the Mysteries. From an alchemical manuscript.

CAUTION: This gesture of holding a finger to the lips has been endlessly repeated by celebrities, actors, politicians and other degenerates of our time. Their idiotic mimicry and pathetic attempt at mystification has absolutely nothing to do with the vow of silence described in this talk.