Gnosis – Rays of Light Past and Present takes the reader on an impressive and unexpected journey, the journey of the Gnosis in Europe and the Near East, the effects of which have been felt in many parts of the world. This journey is impressive due to the fact that the Gnosis Meer...surfaces precisely in times of change. In those moments of change, human deficiency shows itself: deficiencies in light, in consciousness, in wisdom and inner knowledge; in other words, deficiency in Gnosis. This book deals specifically with that light and with that consciousness. It is the tale of the liberation of the spirit, of the other one in the human being. The author sketches the circumstances that were important in this respect before the beginning of our era, in the time of the so-called cosmicmythic consciousness. Then he describes how, in the first centuries of our era, the gnostic idea of the two nature orders acquired form and content. People pass before the mind's eye as they were involved in the growth phases of groupconsciousness progressing toward self-consciousness, whether they experienced this development in independent groups, schools, or churches. Persons from long ago are brought to life again, modest and at the same time heroic individuals
who lived for the Call (as this impulse has also been called) and who more often than not had to die because of it. 
The reader learns of the spiritual drive behind the work of liberation of the light-soul. The latter part of the book reveals the birth of the modern spiritual consciousness, demonstrating its necessity. Finally, with lively descriptions, it describes the lines along which the modern Gnosis has taken shape in the International School of the Golden Rosycross.
 
Art historian Peter F. W. Huijs was born in 1951 in
The Netherlands. He has written extensively about the
Rosicrucians and is the author of 'Called by the World's Heart'.
He is associated with the Lectorium Rosicrucianum and is the
editor of its periodical, 'LOGON'.