In the modern gnostic movement of Samael Aun Weor the teachings are facilitated by individuals known as missionaries. Also called gnostic instructors, the missionaries organize and run the gnostic schools and are responsible for upholding the teachings and practices within it.
Accountability
Gnostic missionaries are accountable to the higher ethics of the gnostic path, and to their own inner Being. They are accountable to other missionaries as fellow stewards of the light of gnosis.
They are responsible for guiding students to their own inner path, not to generate followers for themselves.
Pilgrimmage
The mission is to live the path within oneself and thereby transform into a vehicle of service for God and humanity. And like the flame of a candle that joyfully spreads to light more candles, the missionaries share the gnostic teachings. The mission transforms mundane life into a journey full of hope through sacrifice and selfless service.
Though the term “missionary” has connotations with imperialism and colonialism, it is only meant to refer to the humble path of the gnostic work. A term that might be used as well is pilgrim, one who leaves everything behind to journey to new lands to connect with a higher meaning and purpose.
A missionary is not a special person with mystical powers anymore than a doctor or an artist is. Just someone who is deeply dedicated to their work and hoping that others may benefit from it.
The Work of the Gnostic Missionary
“Putting aside the prizes that attract humanity, utterly selfless, highly trained, taking great risks, these invisible workers come and go about the world, known only to their brethren. Moved like pieces upon the chessboard by Those upon the Inner Planes whom they serve. There is no apparent organization or cohesion among them upon the mundane plane; it is only the long series of opportune coincidences that attend their operations which point to something more than a fortuitous sequence of chances.
They are men and women, with no outward appearance of celebrity, who seek to avoid rather than to attract attention. He is instructed to live an abstemious and simple life, but not an eccentric one, and he is counselled not to diverge in his habits so far from the customs of his culture as to break his connection with the group-mind. He is distinguished from the unenlightened, not by his clothes and personal habits, but by his mentality. Two qualities characterise him, his serenity and his courage; these are the sine qua non of an initiate.
His training is designed to make of him a man of steel with a heart of compassion. He is tried in the furnace of sorrow and suffering until his nature undergoes the flux of the soul and can be remade. Then he is forged on the anvil of discipline by the hammer of danger. Out of that forging he comes as a steel blade. That blade may be a lancet, or it may be a sword, but nevertheless it is a blade. [ ]
The character of the adept may be summed up in one brief phrase: he is a soldier-scholar dedicated to the service of God.”
–Dion Fortune, Sane Occultism
Missionary Vocation
“We need patient men and women, capable of enduring the most arduous disciplines, friends of culture, and true aspirants of pure science. We want that our missionaries have the sentiment of artists, who love science, philosophy and mysticism. Missionaries who vibrate deliciously with the Corinthian columns of Greece, lovers of beauty who feel in there heart the mysticism of Francis of Assisi and who truly yearn for the wisdom of Egypt.
We want missionaries who truly shine within the beauty of the spirit and the forces of love. Missionaries like this who can be scientific as well as poetic, who can investigate the atom and stop to meditate at the feet of the ruins of Athens or ancient Rome. Missionaries who know how to admire the chisel of a Praxiteles, missionaries who know how to truly love the entire humanity.
Missionaries who can dress in the tunic of sanctity, missionaries who know how to place the rug at the feet of the Guru to receive sacred precepts, missionaries who yearn for the deep Chistification and who truly feel the beauty of love which brother Saint Francis felt in his heart.”
–Samael Aun Weor