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Nous



Greek νοῦς or νόος, "mind, perception, sense, thought, intelligence."

Nous is a philosophical term for the faculty of perception of what is true or real. Nous is a type of intelligent intuition, a form of perception that sees and understands truth. Nous is not the concrete, sensual mind that we commonly experience. Nous refers instead to Abstract Mind, the kind of mind that is fully developed in a person such as Buddha, Jesus, or Krishna. In esoteric psychology, nous is known as the Fourth State of Consciousness.

"And be not conformed to this aeon: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your nous, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, thelema of God." - Romans 12

“[Nous] is the highest facility in man, through which - provided it is purified - he knows God or the inner essence or principles of created things by means of direct perception. Nous must be carefully distinguished from reason; nous does not formulate abstract concepts or argue them using deductive reasoning; but it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience or intuition. It dwells in the ‘depth of the soul’; it constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart.” - The Philokalia 

"Nous is perfect awakened Consciousness. Nous is the state of Turiya, profound perfect interior illumination. Nous is legitimate objective clairvoyance. Nous is intuition. Nous is the world of the divine archetypes. Noetic thought is synthetic, clear, objective, illuminated. Whosoever reaches the heights of Noetic thought totally awakens Consciousness and becomes a Turiya. The lowest part of man is irrational and subjective and is related with the five ordinary senses. The highest part of man is the World of Intuition and objective spiritual Consciousness. In the World of Intuition, the archetypes of all things in nature develop. Only those who have penetrated into the World of objective Intuition, only those who have reached the solemn heights of Noetic thought, are truly awakened and illuminated." - Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony