The Secret Sentences of Sextus (Paperback)

Paperback. A book history tried to erase. And the missing link between Jesus and the sages of the East.It passed from hand to hand among the first Christian communities with such authority that Origen of Alexandria cited it as spiritual reading. Saint Jerome tried to discredit it. It was read in Syria, in Egypt, in Armenia. And then, like so many works that taught the inward path instead of outward obedience, it was silenced.When the peasants of Nag Hammadi unearthed from the Egyptian desert the greatest gnostic library ever found, among the proscribed gospels there lay also a fragment of this book. It was no accident.It was called The Sentences of Sextus.The discovery this book revealsEach of these maxims is small enough to fit inside a single breath. And each contains, compressed like a diamond, the same message that burns at the heart of every great tradition of humanity.When Sextus writes that "after God, no one is as free as the wise man," we hear at the same moment Jesus saying that the truth will set us free, the Upanishads declaring that whoever knows the Self fears nothing, Chuang Tzu laughing at the fetters the world calls necessity, and the Zen master pointing at the moon with the finger no one should mistake for the moon.This is not coincidence. This is the missing link - and for two thousand years it lay buried.What you will find insideIn this work, every sentence receives three movements: The sentence in its nakedness - the ancient maxim, without ornamentThe echo of Jesus - where the Master of Galilee said the same thing, often in almost identical wordsThe window to the East - the sage of the Upanishads, the river of the Tao, the discipline of Yoga, the lightning of Zen, and the fire of Tantra confirming the same revelationAnd at the close of every meditation, a key of practice - because wisdom that does not come down into life is merely learned noise.Ten gates to crossSilence and the Word - The Body, Tunic of the Soul - After God, the Sage is Free - Know Thyself - Death and Fear - Desire and Self-Mastery - Giving, Serving, the Good Work - Speaking of God - The Likeness of God - Practice and the Final SilenceThe volume closes with the Method of the Seven Steps - a twenty-minute daily contemplative practice distilled from the ten traditions crossed - and the Twelve Sentences to Carry in Memory, one for each month of the year.Who this book is forFor the reader who has grown weary of the walls of dogma and suspected there was more behind them. For whoever has read the Gospel of Thomas and wanted to go deeper. For whoever sensed, without being able to prove it, that the truth about the human soul is one - and shines under different names in the Sermon on the Mount and the Tao Te Ching, in the Upanishads and the silence of Zen.It was not written to be read quickly. It was written to be breathed - one sentence a day, as one receives a sacrament.May the archons of forgetting have no power over whoever reads.From the author of the Forbidden Gnostic Bible collection, which includes The Forbidden Gnostic Bible, The Gnostic Key, The Code of Jesus, Gnosis and the Tao, and The Word and the Atman.``` **Short alternative** (good for an A/B test after 30 days): ```htmlA book history tried to erase.The Sentences of Sextus circulated among the first Christian communities with such authority that Origen cited them as spiritual reading - and a fragment was found among the gnostic codices of Nag Hammadi. Then they were silenced.Each maxim fits inside a single breath. And each holds the same message that burns at the heart of every traditi Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…