The 1966 Congress of Messina wrongly defined “gnosis” as “knowledge of the divine mysteries reserved for an elite.” This mistake has been widely repeated.
Gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge. It is an intuitive process of knowing, an acquaintance with an object. It is a mystical experience—ineffable, more like feeling than intellect. It is not knowledge of something, but a direct encounter with Ultimate Reality.
Gnosis has a noetic quality. As William James notes, mystical states resemble feelings but are experienced as knowledge. They yield intuitions, a knowing beyond knowing.
Such experiences cannot be sustained indefinitely, nor produced on demand. They are initiated by God—an act of grace we can prepare for but never cause.
We must distinguish mysteria—mystic secrets for the initiated—from gnosis. The mysteria are truths communicated ordinarily but requiring spiritual illumination. Gnosis is not knowledge about God; it is the experience of Ultimate Reality, meeting the Divine in the heart.
Thus, “knowledge of divine mysteries for the elite” refers to mysteria. Gnosis is the awareness of the Divine presence when Reality manifests to the spirit. It is not knowledge about, but acquaintance with the Divine.
