Knowledge Dictionary

Manas, Kama (Sanskrit). Lit., "the mind of desire." With the Buddhists it is the sixth of the Chadayatana (q.v.), or the six organs of knowledge, hence the highest of these, synthesized by the seventh called Klichta, the spiritual perception of that which defiles this (lower) Manas, or the "Human-animal Soul", as the Occultists term it. While the Higher Manas or the Ego is directly related to Vijnana (the 10th of the 12 Nidanas) - which is the perfect knowledge of all forms of knowledge, whether relating to object or subject in the nidanic concatenation of causes and effects; the lower, the Kama Manas is but one of the Indriya or organs (roots) of Sense. Very little can be said of the dual Manas here, as the doctrine that treats of it, is correctly stated only in esoteric works. Its mention can thus be only very superficial.

(See also: Manas, Kama , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

 Jnana:

knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge

(See also:  Jnana , Body Mind and Soul)

Adhyatma-vidya (Sanskrit) (from adhi over, above + atman self + vidya knowledge from the verbal root vid to know, perceive, learn)

Knowledge of the supreme atman or self; used interchangeably with adhyatma-jnana.

(See also: Adhyatma-vidya , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Bodha (Sanskrit) (from the verbal root budh to acquire understanding, awaken, know)

Wisdom, knowledge, perception, consciousness. As an adjective, knowing, understanding, awakening; as a proper noun, knowledge personified as a son of Buddhi.

(See also: Bodha , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

OCCULT: to conceal and hide away knowledge from the uninitiated. Latin: occulere; The secret knowledge of the ancients is considered hidden from the profane.  You are very very very close now.

(See also: OCCULT , Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

atharva veda:

'knowledge of Incantations', the fourth veda

(See also: atharva veda , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

precognition

Psychic knowledge of future events

(See also: Precognition , Body Mind and Soul)

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS - 1. a term used to describe the sentient connection of all living things, past and present. It is synonymous with the terms “deep mind” and “higher self”. This is believed to be the all knowing energy source that contains the entire sum of human knowledge and experience which is tapped through divination.

2. universal storehouse of knowledge with everyone (Jung) (NAD)

(See also: COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

The Taste Process

The first subjective experience of a substance on the tongue is taste (rasa). A short time later, one feels heating or cooling energy (virya). Finally the substances have an action on urine, faeces and sweat (vipak). For instance, for hot chilli peppers, one immediately experiences its pungent taste and heating energy; observing a burning sensation in the faces and urine the next day.

Virya – Heating or Cooling Energy

When any medicinal herb or food substance is put in the mouth, the first experience is its taste. Later, and in some cases immediately, you feel its heating or cooling energy, either in the mouth or stomach. This change is all due to its action or potent energy called Virya.

By experience, one can form general rules about what a taste "feels like" in the body. For example, the sweet taste has a cooling energy, due to its heaviness. This action provokes kapha and is pleasing to pitta and vata. But there are occasional exceptions to this rule. Honey and molasses are sweet but have heating energy. This unexpected effect is termed Prabhav. In this same way, sour taste is usually heating expect in the instance of lime, which is cooling.

Vipak – Post-Digestive Effect

The final post-digestive effect of the taste on the body, mind and consciousness is called Vipak. While sweet and salty taste have a sweet vipak, sour taste has a sour vipak, but that of pungent, bitter and astringent tastes are all pungent. Knowledge of the energy and post-digestive effect of food or medicinal herbs makes understanding of its action on bodily system easy. This knowledge being essential for both healing and cooking.

Prabhav – Specific Unexplained Action

When two substances of similar taste, energy and post-digestive effect show entirely different action, it is called prabhav. There is no logical explanation for this. Ghee (clarified butter) in doses of two teaspoon with a cup of milk is laxative but in smaller dose, like half a teaspoon, is constipating. Why? The answer is prabhav. All gem stones, crystals and mantras aid healing due to their prabhav.

Prabhav is therefore the specific, dynamic, hidden action of the awareness present in the substance.

(See also: Taste Process , Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Dictionary, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Gnosticism

(from Gk. gnosis, "knowledge")

A pre- Christian category of religions which emphasizes that a personal experience, or knowlege, is essential to salvation.

The oldest oldest known Christian scriptures, The Nag Hammadi Library, are Gnostic. Neither unequivocally Christian, Jewish, Greek, nor Iranian, Gnosticism is not a clearly delineated religion, but rather a specific religious interpretative perspective.

Gnosticism lives mainly in or on the edges of Christianity and Judaism and it bears a number of philosophical, astrological, and magical marks loosely belonging in the Near Eastern and Inner Mediterranean areas.

Common to many Gnostic texts and systems are an emphasis on dualistic speculations (e. g. , light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, the earthly realm vs. the heavenly world, or the Lightworld); a reevaluation of many biblical traditions (especially Genesis and the New Testament) so that the Old Testament God, for instance, becomes an inferior figure ignorant of Lightworld entities above and prior to himself; and a keen interest in the salvation of the human soul, which, due to its Lightworld origin, is opposed to the body it inhabits and possesses a superior knowledge.

Gnostic mythologies offer intricate, detailed speculations on cosmic geographies, provide emotional descriptions of the fate of the soul in its material prison, and, in frequently impressive poetry, describe the soul's journey back to its lofty home.

In brief, Gnosticism exemplifies the common religious and creative response of Late Antiquity to a feeling of alienation toward bodily, material, even social existence, and a burning interest in arriving at a higher, more authentic level of life. Far from leading to paralytic pessimism, this orientation caused Gnostics to create mythologies, ideologies, rituals, and organized communities.

Subversive Gnostic interpretations, especially of the biblical traditions, elicited horrified, swift denunciations from the early fathers of the church, who rightly perceived the Gnostics as a menace to the budding Christian orthodoxy. Much of what we know about Gnostic doctrines and practices comes from these church fathers, but their accounts are unavoidably colored by a strong hostility toward Gnostics.

Direct Gnostic testimonies are available from numerous sources: the Nag Hammadi texts (a cache of fifty-odd documents unearthed in Egypt in 1945); manuscripts found or bought by European scholars in recent centuries; and voluminous texts from two Gnostic groups-the Manichaeans (whose system became a "world religion" stretching from North Africa to China) and the Mandaeans (a still-extant community of Gnostics in Iran and Iraq). Various Gnostic texts show strong affinities with Greek philosophy, Syriac Christianity, and Iranian traditions.

Gnostic speculations tend to pose a "prehistory" to the creation accounts in Genesis, imagining a number of Lightworld angelic (aeonic) beings emanating or springing from one or more original, ineffable entities. A progression of male and female emanations eventually result in the lowest levels of aeons where the Old Testament God belongs. Ignorant of-or rebelling against-his more elevated predecessors, this god (sometimes called Samael, "the blind one") creates the visible, material world, the human body (an androgynous Adam or the pair Adam and Eve), and imprisons the human soul in it.

Having thus separated the supreme god from the creator god, Gnostics give a negative evaluation of the latter and his minions. In parallel, heroic figures in the Bible turn into villains and vice versa, so that the serpent in paradise and Cain become principles of the light and of gnosis, while Noah turns into a collaborator with the ignorant creator. Gnostic ideas about Jesus tend toward splitting his personality, with Christ, the Lightworld aspect of Jesus, escaping crucifixion, while the bodily Jesus, a mere shadow of his real self, is destroyed on the cross.

 The principle of evil originates within the Lightworld itself, results unavoidably from the emanation process, or exists as a separate, anti-Lightworld entity from the beginning of creation. Personified (or hypostasized) evil is in many Gnostic myths portrayed as a tragic figure: he (it is usually male) knows of his wrongdoing and ignorance but seems unable to act differently, though he still hopes for his own, final redemption and return to home in the upper worlds. His mother, personified Wisdom or Error, is likewise tragic, but possesses more insight than her son. Human responsibilities include knowledge about the good and evil principles, the numerous aeonic beings populating the spheres between earth and Lightworld, and a firm sense of cosmic geography so that the ascending soul may know its way home.

 Anthropological models often correspond to cosmic maps: the upper human component is the spirit, the mid-level is the soul, and the material body roughly correlates with the macrocosm. Gnostic religions undoubtedly possessed a rich cultic life alongside the mythological/speculative component, but except for Manichaeism and Mandaeism-and a few scattered texts from other, less delineated traditions-we have only hazy evidence of the intricacies of Gnostic rituals. Initiations, baptisms, sacred meals, rituals for the dead, and techniques for ecstatic experiences are attested in various traditions. Community ethics, class divisions based on levels of gnosis, and aggressively polemical interests against "normative" Christianity and Judaism testify to organized Gnostic schools and groups eager to define themselves against outsiders and against one another.

(See also: Gnosticism , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Vidya:

Vidya: knowledge (of Brahman); there are two  kinds of knowledge, Paravidya (higher knowledge) and aparavidya  (lower knowledge); a process of meditation or worship.

(See also: Vidya , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Atma Vidya (Sanskrit). The highest form of spiritual knowledge; lit., "Soul-knowledge".

(See also: Atma Vidya , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

ARC

Affinity, Reality, and Communication; prerequisites to knowledge practiced by Scientology

(See also: ARC , Body Mind and Soul)

Vidya: Knowledge; both spiritual knowledge and mundane knowledge.

(See also: Vidya , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

asceticism

(Greek) Science of self-knowledge through discipline of mind and body

(See also: Asceticism , Body Mind and Soul)

Jnana -

(1) knowledge,

(2) knowledge which leads to impersonal liberation: this concerns the atma’s distinction from matter and its identity with brahma.

(See also: Jnana , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ajnana (Sanskrit) (from a not + jnana knowledge from the verbal root jna to know, perceive, understand)

More often absence of knowledge rather than ignorance. An ajnana is a profane, one who is outside the sanctum or inner temples of the Mysteries.

(See also: Ajnana , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Anamnesis (Greek) (from ana back again + mimnesco remember)

Recollection; used by Plato in his theory of knowledge. He taught that the human elements of consciousness sprang from seeds of inherent knowledge in the soul, present in the mind as the result of past experiences of the egoic center or reincarnating ego. Thus the acquisition of knowledge is a process of reminiscence or recollection of former experiences.

(See also: Anamnesis , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

The shuddhashuddha tattvas: Actinodic, or spiritual-magnetic, energy. The seven tattvas from maya to purusha make up the shuddhashuddha (pureimpure) realm.

1.    maya tattva: mirific energy, the "material" cause of the "impure sphere." The category of maya brings into being as its immediate aids the following five tattvas, known as the "five sheaths," pancha kanchuka, of the individual soul, purusha. Collectively they make up the vijnanamaya kosha, or mental body.

2. kala tattva: the phenomenon of time, which divides all experience into past, present and future.
3. niyati tattva: karmic destiny; necessity; order; law of cause and effect; restraint.
4. kala tattva: creativity, aptitude, the power which draws the soul toward spiritual knowledge. Its energy partially removes the veil of anava which clouds the inherent powers of the soul.
5. vidya tattva: limited knowledge, the power which gives the soul practical knowledge in accord with its present life experiences.
6. raga tattva: attachment, the arousal of desire, without which no experience of the objective world is possible.
7. purusha tattva: soul identity; soul connected with subjectivity. Through identification with the five above "sheaths," the soul, atman, becomes a purusha, or bound soul, capable of experiencing the higher Antarloka as a limited individual. This fivefold sheath is called the pancha kanchuka, or vijnanamaya kosha (mental body).

See:tattvas, tattva, atattva, antahkarana, guna, kosha, Siva

(See also: Shuddhashuddha tattvas , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

brahma-jnana - knowledge of impersonal brahma; knowledge aiming at impersonal liberation.

(See also: brahma-jnana , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Trijnana, (Sanskrit). Lit., "triple knowledge". This consists of three degrees

(1) belief on faith ;

(2) belief on theoretical knowledge ; and

(3) belief through personal and practical knowledge.

(See also: Trijnana, , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Brahmajnana (Sanskrit) (from Brahman cosmic spirit + jnana knowledge from the verbal root jna to know)

Divine, sacred, or esoteric knowledge concerning the cosmic Brahman as taught, for instance, in Vedantic philosophy; also spiritual wisdom per se.

(See also: Brahmajnana , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)