nous

Nous is a faculty, not a mark of identity. Whoever cultivates nous will enjoy god-like enhancement of awareness and perception, not the aggrandizement of self to the status of deity. The goal of Gnostic spiritual practice was, and still is, not to see ourselves as gods but to see as gods see: in rapture, awakened to the divine presence in all things, feeling the shock of the beautiful.   John Lamb Lash

http://metahistory.org/GAIA%20SOPHIA/sacredecology/CocoDeMer1.php