Mayan Mysteries of the Cosmos

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As you can see from our turnout tonight, this is a pretty interesting and compelling topic.
 
It is important to preface this discussion with a disclaimer. Obviously when people approach the study of ancient civilizations, they do so with certain methodologies, that which is studied in university or history courses. Our perspective on these ancient civilizations is very different. We do not approach the Mayans or the ancient civilizations as merely a list of information, like dead facts, or some kind of knowledge that we can compartmentalize within our box, information that we can recall or remember and cite with authority. What is different about our tradition is that we really try to extract the practical essence of real spiritual wisdom from these ancient cultures, not merely to look at them like artifacts, like a corpse.
 
We want to live and breathe the mysteries of these ancient civilizations, which in many ways are far superior to our own.
 
It is also important to emphasize too that when approaching the study of the Mayan past that, like our culture today, is a very broad and rich spectrum of different attitudes, ideas philosophies, perspectives, traditions. Just in the same way that we would not look at our current era in a homogenous view, but instead looking at the particularities, the intricacies, and diversity, we also recognize that the Mayan mysteries themselves are very diverse and complex. In fact, they are so profound and rich that we fail to understand them, and this is very evident by the methodologies, approaches, perspectives, and interpretations that some scholars have of the ancients. 

​Our Focus

​So part of what we will do today is demonstrate how the Mayan mysteries illustrate a universal path, that what they taught is not a dead thing. They spoke in the allegories of stone, in their pyramids, in sculptures, a path of initiation into a higher spiritual way of being, a form of development and even perfection.
 
Today we will talk about the Mayan mysteries, but also we are going to tie it into the Jewish cosmology as well, because these different traditions share the same roots. They merely have different perspectives, and, despite distance in time, reveal that which is eternal.
 
We are also going to explain how, why, and in what manner our soul acquires necessary experiences so that we can properly and profoundly know divinity, no matter what the name, no matter the language. In our Gnostic tradition, we are not interested in debating which cultural form is the most true or is the true, authentic, and accurate representation. We look at everything together, because divinity, which is formless, takes on forms throughout time to convey deep truths.
 
So we will talk about how to know that divinity for ourselves, because that is really where the practical essence of real religion is hidden.
 
We will also identify, illustrate, and synthesize the process by which consciousness emerges, transmigrates, and returns to the divine. We will especially correlate such principles to the wisdom traditions of the ancient Mayans and even to modern Mayan mysticism. 

​The Destiny of Mayan Initiates

​It is important to recognize that as with any religion, sacred geography is very deep. We know that in the Bible, the Judeo-Christian text, there are many places of great import like Sinai. As with any religion there are many myths about great prophets, heroes, saints, rising up a mountain in order to receive the revelation of God.
 
Obviously, a mountain is a metaphor. It is about the spiritual path that leads to divinity, no matter what the name. But obviously,, that path is very difficult, very challenging, and arduous. People who climb mountains, obviously in our current era, have certain tools and things that they use to do so. But if you think from the perspective of the ancients who sought to climb this path, it is very hard, both literally and spiritually. This is why the Mayan initiates referred to the Andes as a description or representation of the path itself.
 
Even the term Mayab from the Mayan language is very significant and represents a symbolic significance to sacred geography. The syllable ma means “no,” and Yaab means “many.” The Mayab is the land of the few, or better said, the chosen ones. You look at any religion, any culture, any ancient civilization, and many stories represent or relate that there have been few luminaries embodying the light of the highest ethical caliber, in wisdom, so that they may, through their actions and guidance, teach those who are ignorant, who are suffering in this, we could say, valley of tears. There have been few properly prepared individuals who learn to embody the highest truths within religion, and the Mayans were no different.
 
Therefore, they represent the land the Mayab, the land of the few, because if you look at humanity even today, you find that there are few masters and perhaps many believers, many imitators. There are few initiates, few of those who really live the essence of religion, of wisdom, of yoga, of reunion.
 
There is also a type of destiny that guides individuals who are initiated into this type of work, and the Mayan mysteries especially condense much of that information in a very beautiful way. They taught in their mysticism that the way to spiritual elevation and the overcoming of suffering is through what we call in our studies the Divine Mother.
 
The Mayab referred to her as the sacred Princess Sac-Nicte. We can see that divinity, as we are going to relate later in this lecture, takes on different forms, and is really a principle within us, a form of being which we can experience if we know how to climb, if we are willing to climb. The sacred Princess Sac-Nicte is the Divine Mother, and her spouse is the Divine Father, the great hidden lord from the sacred kingdom in the Mayab, the mountains of profound beauty and wisdom.
 
There is a destiny that leads those who seek to understand the real heart of who and what we are, to explore and to be willing to question our mind, why we suffer, why we are in pain, and the Mayans referred to her as the gateway: the one who elevates the soul. She is the divine feminine of all religions, the Virgin Mary, Athena, Minerva, Coatlicue among the Aztecs, Tara among the Tibetan Buddhists. She is Shekinah among the Hebraic Kabbalists. She is the one who frees the exiled soul and returns the chosen ones to the promised land Israel, to use the Jewish biblical metaphor.
 
So a person who seeks to understand the mysteries of the Mayab seeks to explore the mystery of themself, to no longer be a divided individual or a divided person, conflicted amongst multiple desires, a state of confusion, a state of lacking integrity. That destiny teaches one to understand our place in the universe and how it is that we have a part to play with our humanity, and that we do not leave others aside, but better said, work for the spiritual elevation of our neighbor, of our family, of our friends, of our spouse, of  the stranger.
 
There is a book called The Flight of the Feathered Serpent, which is a more contemporary or, better said, modern work of Mayan mysticism. I would like to relate some verses about this.

Man has forgotten that there isn't a destiny which is entirely individual, but he who looks for and receives the kiss of the sacred Princess Sac-Nicte, and listens to the silent voice of the Great Hidden Lord in the highest of the sacred Kingdom of the Mayab, becomes undivided and leaves aside individual illusion and does not look for another destiny, save the one which the destiny of the Mayab. ―The Flight of the Feathered Serpent

​What is that silent voice? It is intuition. It is conscience. It is our heart that says , “this is right and this is wrong.” Following the heart is what opens the door to climbing this mountain and discovering our place in the universe, why we are in pain, and why we are asleep, why we dream daily, ignoring who we are or what we could become. 

​Christ’s Mayan Proclamation on the Cross

There have been many prophets and masters from different religions not only amongst the Mayans but also throughout humanity who taught this type of work. We even have a saying from the master Jesus of Nazareth, who is an embodiment of really the highest ideals.
 
What few know or realize is that Jesus knew the Mayan mysteries. In fact, many of the teachings he gave in his Gospels, in his parables, embody and encode teachings that the Mayab gave many centuries ago. There is basically a famous saying of him on the cross which is traditionally translated in the Hebrew way "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," which people have translated, at least the Hebrews and those witnessing his crucifixion, as "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The truth is that his phrase is actually Mayan. "Heli, Heli, lamah zabac tani " which translates "I am now immersing into the predawn of thy presence."
 
We mention this example of Jesus in relation to Mayan mysteries because what the Mayans taught, what Christ taught, what many masters have taught, is the same. It is a universal doctrine. It is a profound, practical wisdom, and so we seek to become like these great initiates, but we have to learn to die to what is impure in us, as exemplified by the Passion of Christ, so that we can create light of a spiritual nature and immerse ourselves in the eternal. 

​The Destiny of the Masses

​So what this path involves is a transcendence of what we currently are. In a certain Mayan text, a Mayan initiatic work called The Flight of the Feathered Serpent, an initiate explains how we are men and women of clay, and clay is born from the mud.
 
Our current life, we can say, is characterized by mud. We mean so in a psychological sense, in a spiritual sense, if we are willing to look at the reality of the facts. Our humanity is increasingly more confused, embroiled in conflicts, in hatred, in separatism, in flags, in pride. Humanity is only interested in superficial things, never asking the really deep questions about why we're in this mess of suffering that we see everywhere and which seems to be intensifying with greater acuity. What we seek is to take the mud of passions―perhaps it is our anger, our lust, our animal desires, our egotistical qualities that make us suffer, make others suffer―but to transform that, to shape it, to bake it in the fire of divinity, to form what the Mayans referred to as the amphora of the soul.
 
We are like clay in the sense that we are not formed yet in what we should and could be. We could become something even more transcendental and superior, divine, and this has been taught and exemplified by all the luminaries we have received as a humanity, no matter the culture, no matter the time, because this knowledge, the predawn of eternity, is immutable, transhistorical, beyond our material senses.
 
What we commonly have in our modern era is people who are only concerned with themselves. They only focus on the illusion of their own destiny and have many words and theories and beliefs about how we are isolated, separate, distinct, and that everyone else is wrong, and yet we fail to ignore that our own actions and our own desires keep us writhing down below, without seeing that we can elevate ourselves to a higher destiny. In this sense, The Flight of the Feathered Serpent provides a metaphor, a beautiful doctrine which we are going to elaborate in the next slides. 

In the man of clay, there is only an illusion of individual destiny. That is why he speculates with beautiful words and with foolish words, which only makes him see himself isolated and separated from everything that surrounds him, and everything that common destiny is weaving. And this destiny in which what is “below” always tends to unite itself with what is “above,” and in this way he lives under the law called Of Good and Evil. For in this destiny the serpent drags itself along the earth and only sees ahead and behind, and it does not have the plumage of a condor to lend it wings to take flight beyond the summit of the Andean mountains. ―The Flight of the Feathered Serpent

​So we are trapped in our notions of good and evil, ignoring that what is good is what is convenient for us and what is evil is what is inconvenient. We fail to see beyond the lens of morality, of traditions, of codes, to study and experience the law of our own heart. It is in this mental dualism that we are hypnotized. We only see ahead and behind, not up, that there is a higher way, but for that the serpent must don the plumage of a condor according to the Mayan metaphor. 

​Fundamentals of Mayan Spirituality

​This is the feathered serpent Kukulcan. There is even a temple in South America, Chichén Itzá which I believe on the vernal equinox, due to its position on the planet and during the equality of day and night, there is the famous serpent of light ascending up the steps of this pyramid.
 
The Mayans were profoundly intelligent and prophetic. They built in stone what we must build within the stone of our heart. We must transform ourselves from a petrified being to a being like a serpent, one that has wisdom, the prudence of the serpent and the innocence of a dove (Matthew 10:16).
 
Kukulcan is feathered serpent, and they believe that this profound deity liberates the soul. Kukulcan has been given many names in many religions. Obviously in the Hindu yoga, it is Kundalini, the fire and intelligence of the Divine Mother, the sacred Princess Sac-Nicte, Shekinah in kabbalah. It is the bronze serpent raised upon a staff in order to heal the Israelites in the wilderness (Numbers 21:6-9). It is the power of God. It is the energy of the divine. It is the power of life.
 
Most of us do not know what Kukulcan is because what instead we have is the inverted serpent, not the serpent that ascends, but the serpent that falls. Obviously in the biblical allegory there are two serpents, one that heals and one that tempts. They are very different. Kukulcan liberates. The inverted serpent, the temping serpent only creates pain [See Kundalini Awakening? Think Again! How Most People Experience Kundabuffer Instead].
 
But the Mayans emphasize that in order to work with the feathered serpent―which is basically the energies of God that rise up the spine to form the wings of the spirit―we have to follow very specific procedures and live the most ethical life, because the wisdom of the sacred Princess Sac-Nicte, the Divine Mother / feminine, does not reward wrongdoing, even in the mind.
 
The Mayans also represented this feathered serpent or this wisdom that intoxicates the soul as the wine of Balché. This is very interesting. Balché is a traditional Mayan ceremonial drink prepared with the Balché tree bark with Melipona honey, the fermented beverage. Obviously there is the physical tradition of making Balché, but in reality this is a symbol.
 
What happens when you ferment something? In a sense, it is a form of decay. Something dies in order to create a new substance. It is alchemy. It is the transformation of a dense lead of personality into the gold of the spirit. Even the Mayab Jesus allegorized the wine of Balché by transmuting it from water at a marriage (John 2:1-11). What this emphasizes is a profoundly deep teaching about how a married couple, husband and wife, work with the tree of knowledge. They create wine. They create the elevation and intoxication of the soul, not of the body.
 
In the Mayan mythology too, you have what is known as the Yaxche tree. This is the Tree of Life. So examine the Mayan mythology and compare it to the Bible. You have the wine of the tree of Balché and the Yaxche tree, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.
 
These are symbols. The Yaxche tree is a map of the multi-dimensionality of our universe, because in the myths of the Mayans, the gods ascend and descend from the heavenly regions down to the roots, from the heavenly realms to our physical world, and then to the hell realms. The heavens are known as the Topan or Ilhuicatl, the heavens, and the hell realms Xibalba or Metnal. These are not physical states. These are places that we access when we dream.
 
Ever have a nightmare? That is our own hell, and our mind belongs to it unless we want to seek a better way.
 
Likewise there were heavenly regions that could be accessed by the dream yogis who know how to harness that state of slumber with vigilance of the soul. 

​Our Divine and Cosmic Origins

​We will also emphasize in relation to cosmology and our divine origins two profound deities within the Mayan tradition, which Samael Aun Weor emphasizes in a book called Kabbalah of the Mayan Mysteries. He refers to the sacred Divine Father, and the sacred Divine Mother―Ometecuhtli, Omecihuatl, lord and Lady of duality.

• Olme: tecuhtli, lord's serpent.
• Olme, “two,” cihuatl, lady eagle.

 
As you can see, this is profoundly deep. You have an eagle and you have a serpent. You have the divine masculine and the divine feminine, and when you join them in a holy matrimony, you become Kukulcan. You ascend. You rise from the mud of the Earth. While this is an allegory of the soul and its creation, its transcendent development, this is also a symbol of how any universe is born because the same laws apply to the Earth, and to the gods, the masters, the prophets, the buddhas, the angels. What is significant is that sacred union between husband and wife is a parallel of how divinity creates except with profound and deep procedures whereby the sexual act of a God is sacred, is divine.
 
Obviously in our current era, this is not the case. We are driven by animality, but that can change and that actually is the beginning, the purification of the soul, whereby we awaken Kukulcan within a marriage―lady eagle, lord serpent. Divinity creates through the power of sexuality. The problem is that with our current mind and our own lust, we only see filthiness in the sexual act and not the sacrament that it could be. Like the gods, we can learn to create as gods, to be born again according to the Mayab Jesus. But that depends upon a discipline.
 
Here we will talk today about how when divinity creates the universe according to the Mayan mythology and also the Hebraic kabbalah, it is only possible because of the union of divine masculine, divine feminine, and that these are eternal. Obviously, the union of man and woman in the physical sexual act has the power to create.
 
Where else do we find the power to create through love than in sex? It is the power of divinity, but we must learn how to maximize and optimize such a work, such an act.
 
The union of the two―Ometecuhtli, Omecihuatl―is Ometeotl, which means “two gods,” the union of Ometecuhtli (also known as Tōnacātēcuhtli) and Omecihuatl (Tonacacihuatl) from them emerges any cosmos. The entire universe emanated from this masculine and feminine dual principle according to Samael Aun Weor, Kabbalah of the Mayan Mysteries. 

​Omeyocan: The Dwelling of Divinity or Ometeotl

​But from where does divinity emerge? That unity, Ometeotl―the union of male-female, divine god and goddess―is from Omeyocan. It is known as the place of duality. Ome meaning “two,” yo, the suffix for abstraction, whereby omeyotl, “duality,” constitutes a “place,” can: Omeyocan.
 
In our studies we refer to Omeyocan as the Absolute. 

​Here we have the image of the Hebraic tree of life. This is the Yaxche tree, to use Mayan [not Nahuatl, Aztec] terms. It is the same teaching. We want to emphasize that the kabbalah is not strictly Jewish, although we are indebted to the kabbalists of the 13th and 14th century of Catalonia, Spain, of France, for codifying the eternal law. In the same way that Sr. Isaac Newton did not invent gravity but merely documented it, in the same way the Jewish mystics documented the Tree of Life and did not invent it. They were merely the vehicle of teaching the structure of the universe, the map of the cosmos from its most divine and abstract and subtle origins to the most dense and material existence below.
 
Notice that above these ten spheres of the Tree of Life, which represent modalities of consciousness, levels of dimensionality, of expression of being, that you have three spheres. We usw the Hebrew terms here: Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur, which in Hebrew means “the nothing,” “the limitless,” and “the limitless light.” This is Omeyocan. Omeyocan was also known amongst the Aztecs as Yohualli Ehectl, “the place of wind and darkness” in Nahuatl. It is the eternal, abstract, supra-divine, cosmic space. It is the zeroth dimension from which every universe, any cosmos, any order emerges.
 
To use the Biblical injunction, "Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Out of nothing came being spoken through the word, the verb as demonstrated within the Popol Vuh, the Mayan Bible.
 
So Omeyocan is where we originate. From the void and from within the void is a beautiful divine profound light like a star. If you reduce a human being to their synthesis, you remove everything that is merely superficial, the layers of being up this Tree of Life, as you ascend more to divine states and you strip away the external and go to the core of what we are in our synthesis, we are the Ain Soph. It is a form of light. It is a supra-divine cosmic state of being, a star.
 
The Christians refer to this as the Star of Bethlehem that guided the three magi to the birth of the Mayab Jesus (Matthew 2). This is Ometeotl. Ometeotl is the father-mother, the union which has not yet sent out its light into the universe in order to create.
 
But why does divinity create any universe or unfold within the multi-dimensionality of our current being? It is because divinity does not know himself yet, does not know herself yet. That star does not have cognizance yet of its own divine happiness, and so seeks it by unfolding and emanating a ray. That ray descends into the universe and creates worlds, enters manifestation, enters being, enters the universe, so that in the universe, in materiality, like a mirror, the consciousness can learn to see itself and gain understanding of these different levels and return with wisdom transcending it all.
 
Really, it is the essence of religion. We came from a divine source, and to use the Muslim injunction, "from Him we emerge and to Him we must return" as stated in the Qur’an (20:55).
 
Now here we see a quote from Samael Aun Weor reiterating these points. 

The Absolute does not know itself. The Absolute needs to know itself. Each supra-divine atom (Ain Soph) needs to know itself in order to have consciousness of its own happiness. Unconscious happiness is not happiness. The human being in its last synthesis is just a super divine atom from the absolute abstract space. That atom is known by the kabbalists with the name Ain Soph (the limitless, the limitless joy, the limitless omniscience and being). It is urgent to know that the Ain Soph sends its spirit to the world of matter with the purpose of acquiring that which is called cognizance of its own happiness. When the spirit, after having passed through the mineral, plant and animal states of consciousness, attains the human state, it can return into the Ain Soph and fuse with it. This is how the Ain Soph becomes conscious of its own happiness. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology, the Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology

​In synthesis, the process by which the spirit descends into matter is known as involution. Now obviously, for those who may be familiar with Samael Aun Weor's texts in the original Spanish, he uses the term involution or involución in a bit of an interchangeable way, but in English it translates better as involution in terms of the spirit entering matter. Here we are talking about the English translation.
 
When the spirit involves itself into the universe, into the different spheres of being, enters and unfolds into matter energy and perception at different levels, like a fountain rippling out in different layers, we have the creation of the universe. So we enter―finally through this journey after many, we can say, aeons, even profound cosmic time―we enter and reach the last sphere below, which is known as Malkuth in kabbalah, which in Hebrew means “kingdom.” This is the physical world.
 
We study the descent of spirit into matter in a very synthetic way. We also emphasize very strongly that there are laws that govern nature and that if we wish to understand and transcend these laws―more importantly, understand the laws of nature within ourselves, within our own psychology―we study the descent of the ray of creation. It is the ray of light from the Ain Soph that creates the worlds, descends into matter and energy, enters into being, until finally entering us until we reach our physical body. 

​Density of the Seven Cosmoses or Katuns

​There are laws that govern every aspect and level of nature. There are different cosmoses as well, and “cosmos” in Greek merely means “unity.” Simply put, there are different levels of resolution within the cosmic scheme in terms of our perception of things, where we resonate most, what we currently are.
 
So while there is a cosmic plan that helped to originate the worlds, and there is a journey and trajectory that we took in a very long process of cosmic evolution, we now reach a point where we must learn to understand the laws that preceded us, so that by understanding and working with them, we can return upward and experience the original divine law from which we emanated. What we are implying and teaching regarding the Ain Soph, obviously, is that this limitless joy of divinity is the goal of our studies, to return to our origin with cognizance, with victory.
 
That unity, that light, that limitless absolute, sacred, divine sun, the limitless light of the Ain Soph Aur, we call the protocosmos. It is the first cosmos. It is the world of one law.
 
In our modern era, we think of laws as something prohibitory, like you obey the law so that you don't get in trouble. We tend to have very superficial connotations with this word, but when we refer to divine law, we are not referring to merely a negation, but rather a subsistence, a state, a quality, a way of being. In the world of one law, there is great freedom, obviously less restrictions. It is a unity, and because there is only one law, there is freedom. There is joy.
 
But that joy, that light, needs to know itself, so it descends into the ayocosmos, which refers to all the suns and planets of the universe. This correlates with the top three spheres of the Tree of Life. In Hebrew, it is Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. In a sense, Ometeotl, the one law, the unitary divine, unfolds into two eventually, and manifests as three. So in a sense, you have Father-Mother, male-female, and through the third force, their union, you create even more divine complexity and being. So from these three laws of this trinity, the Christians refer to it as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
 
That light descends into the macrocosmos, which is the formation of a galaxy. Notice that these laws now double to six. So from the one law unfolds three, because with three forces, we create, obviously. Even physically, a man and a woman unite sexually through the third force, the conciliatory act, and they form a child, a trinity. Divinity is no different, except that union of divine love is pure.
 
So from three laws now you have six. You have more complexity. Those three forces unfold and double in order to create the galaxy. This can also relate to the Tree of Life through the Hebrew Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth.
 
When that force descends into the solar system, the world of the deuterocosmos, the twelve laws, you enter metaphorically into Netzach in Hebrew. That force doubles into the planet, the mesocosmos, twenty-four laws, and then finally in the worlds of Yesod and Malkuth, the microcosmos, the human being, we have forty-eight laws. These laws double because the further this light descends into matter and involves itself, in a sense the more it separates from the original presence of divinity.
 
So these mechanistic laws, in a sense, create suffering because we are in more complex states of being and matter with all of its concomitant problems. What we have now is our physical body relating to our vital energies known as Yesod. Malkuth and Yesod, forty-eight laws. What is interesting is that we know we have 46 chromosomes in the body right? Samael Aun Weor mentions that there are two more which are vital and etheric, constituting a total of 48, relating to these 48 laws. So even within our chromosomes, our genetics, we find the laws of nature embodied.
 
Also this is not the end of the ray of creation, because obviously we have our physical body, but it is possible to descend into even more complex states of matter energy and perception. We call this the tritocosmos. This is the inferno, the Mictlan, Xibalba amongst the Mayans, the hell realms.
 
These nine inverted spheres of the hell realms go from 96 to 864 laws because in every sphere descending down into inferior states of being, the law doubles. There is more complexity. That is why it is hell. It is more laws, more suffering.
 
Now we will talk about its purpose within cosmic scheme, but here I would like to emphasize some points given in The Flight of the Feathered Serpent which talk about these seven cosmoses, because the Mayan initiates knew these laws and worked with them. The whole point of this text is really to understand our universe, where we are at, and how to return, and they referred to these layers and levels of nature as Katuns. Really it means “times.” Each dimension, each level of nature is like a different time, a different way of being. 

For the ETERNAL ONE, the highest one, the one of A Sole Age, wanted to make Descendants of Seven Generations and this one is the Great Descendant (Malkuth, the physical body, which embodies and encodes all the forces above as stated here) which contains and maintains all the small descendants so that they maintain themselves between them. ―The Flight of the Feathered Serpent

​In a sense, without all these levels and layers of nature, there would be no universe. If there were no mechanicity, the machine could work, but obviously that machine is governed by intelligence, and so we also seek to govern our own mechanicity with intelligence so that we could become a very different being (a virile Mayab.) Now obviously from these verses you see here the strength of a Mayan initiate is precisely the work in a matrimony with virility, the source of real virtue. 

If you are a virile Maya and if you are proud of your Mayab, humble yourself in secret and in silence when elevating your thought to HIM, to the ETERNAL ONE, to the one of A Sole Age, which is His own Katun and who made all the katuns and who also made you, and who who made you in his likeness a small alike with everything that HE is even with His Infinite Creative Word saying:
 
"For I am, for I am God." ―The Flight of the Feathered Serpent

​So what we want is to take the forces even in our chromosomes, the 48 laws, our creative energies, and to elevate them. But first to know that, we must understand the laws that keep us in suffering. 

​The Laws of Evolution and Devolution

​We study what is known as evolution and devolution. So in nature we find two processes: growth and decay, birth and death, gestation and disintegration, creation and destruction. These laws permeate everything in this universe, and in fact mostly constitute our whole life here physically.
 
Notice that the forces of evolution and devolution apply to our physical body, but also infernal states of being known as the hell realms, which are these inverted nine spheres of the Tree of Life, the Yaxche tree. We call them Klipoth in Hebrew, the hell realms. Now Xibalba is a state of being in which forces are destroying the imperfections of the psyche. 

​So what happens is that in our cosmic evolution, we enter first in lower states of being. When the consciousness first emerged from the Ain Soph and entered matter, especially within the higher dimensions of being, it started as a mineral, entering mineral bodies, mineral states, metals, stones. Our consciousness was once elemental. It was elemental. It was rudimentary. It was primordial, not developed, innocent, and that consciousness needs to learn to gain experience through different kingdoms of being. It does so through evolution, the forces of creation, of gestation and development.
 
When consciousness gains enough experience operating within mineral bodies, it eventually transmigrates into the plant kingdom having evolved to a superior state. The plants have their own processes, knowledge, wisdom of how to work with nature, because there is consciousness even in plants, even in stones. Consciousness exists anywhere where there is life. Consciousness is life.
 
Eventually when the consciousness gains development and experience in the plant kingdom, it can graduate and go to the animal kingdom, and likewise after many, many years, aeons, the soul enters the humanoid kingdom. It is in the humanoid kingdom, having a human body, where we have the potential to transcend and revolutionize ourselves, to enter the kingdom of angels.
 
We are not yet where we should be. This is the mountain of the Andes, which we must climb. There is a form of conscious evolution that is accessible to us if we know the methods, but if we do not take advantage of our human body in order to become an angel, we devolve, we decay, we regress, we degenerate, and if you look at humanity today, you can clearly see that we are degenerating rapidly. We are more destructive, more cruel, more inconsiderate, more blind, more fearful and uncertain about our future than ever before.
 
Destruction and decay are part of nature. This is the inevitable consequence of evolution followed by its sister devolution. We cannot have one without the other, because all of nature is sustained by the balance of these two forces. Everything that is created, that is born, must die. Likewise all the imperfections and defects we created in our psyche have to die, but if we do not do so willingly, with intelligence, with wisdom, then nature will do it for us, and that is what hell is. It is a recycling plant. It is a state in which the soul, because it does not wish to progress spiritually, is taken by the forces of devolution down back into inferior bodies of the animal kingdom, then the plant kingdom, then the mineral kingdom, mineral states.
 
This occurs not merely just physically, but when the physical body dies, the soul transmigrates to inferior states of consciousness. Eventually, if the soul descends at that point to the very bottom of the universe, the lowest spheres of the infernal regions, eventually the consciousness will be extracted and freed from its defects, but as an innocent elemental in order to reinitiate the journey again.
 
Now obviously that takes a long time, which is why we emphasize that if we wish to get out of this wheel of mechanicity, we can enter a higher path, the path of revolution. Even Jalal-uddin Muhammad Rumi, the great Sufi poet stated this:

I died as a mineral and became a plant. I died as plant and rose to animal. I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying, if once more I shall die as man to soar with angels blessed? But even from angelhood I must pass on. All except God doth perish. When I sacrifice my angel-soul I shall become what no mind ever conceived. O, let me not exist! for Nonexistence proclaims in organ tongues, to Him we shall return. ―Jalal-uddin Muhammad Rumi

So there are two forms of death here regarding the death of our imperfections. Nature can do it for us, or we can do it willingly. By doing it willingly, we climb the mountain of initiation and ascend toward the sacred kingdom the Mayab, gaining wisdom and light. This is known as the path of revolution. 

The Revolution of the Consciousness

​This is conscious work and involves taking on suffering voluntarily, not avoiding it.
 
This suffering does not mean physical pain. Not exclusively does it mean that by entering this path, some one is going to physically live a life like Jesus with a physical crucifixion. Obviously, we go through our own sufferings, our own passions, our own ordeals, because this type of work is very different than a tradition or belief. Revolution is the path in which we as a soul make effort to understand our own defects, and to work on them consciously, so that by working on our own errors, we can extract light. We gain light by working on our own defects, desires, imperfections. We call them egos, ego itself. We elevate our spiritual level of being and ascend up the Yaxche tree, the Tree of Life the kabbalah. In this way we overcome inferior laws and return to the spirit. This is the synthesis of religion, the return.
 
What this practically means for us is that as we are learning practices like meditation, mindfulness, self-awareness, understanding, and removing and eliminating our own faults, we gain more insight and knowledge. We awaken within dreams. We no longer dream. We see the realities of internal worlds with clarity and we rise up to higher states more and more through progressive works, progressive initiations and developments, until returning to the Ain Soph, Ometeotl. That is just the synthesis of what this teaching embodies. 

​Resources

​If you wish to know more we have some teachings given by Samael Aun Weor, two books especially we have covers for: Aztec Christic Magic, and The Secret Doctrine of Anahuac, which talk about the ancient American mysteries. We also have a book called Kabbalah of the Mayan Mysteries. These books are all available online. You could read and access and learn more about the mysteries of the South Americans, especially what they taught.
 
We are going to continue this particular series explaining more in these conferences we are initiating today. We will talk about the immortality of the soul [The Mayan Path to Immortality] according to the Mayan mystics, how by working progressively up the Tree of Life, the Yaxche tree, we gain knowledge. We gain wisdom and we can understand step by step what is the path itself in synthesis.
 
So at this point in time, you are welcome to ask questions. Feel free to type them in the chat, and we will read them off.

​Questions and Answers

Question: To what sphere on the Tree of Life is characterized by military generals, seriousness, turquoise, and gold?
 
Instructor: The sphere of military generals, of war, is Geburah. It is Mars, מַאֲדִים Madim in Hebrew. The sphere of Geburah is the judgement of divinity. It is the strength of God in relation to how divinity provides conscience and justice in our life. It is also in a sense serious because the strength of Mars is a profound and divine love. We often associate Mars with the metal iron especially, but we know astrologically that Geburah is also associated with gold, the sun, because from the strength of the warrior, by fighting for the truth spiritually within ourselves, we extract gold. That is the power of the angels of Mars, the strength of the spiritual warrior. As for turquoise, not so sure, but I know that iron and gold and the color red especially relates to Geburah, Mars, military intelligence, the spiritual militia, the divine beings associated with fulfilling the justice of divinity.
 
Question: How do we investigate these mysteries directly?
 
Instructor: In synthesis, meditation and dream yoga. We give courses on our website we will provide in the chat, one called Gnostic Meditation, the other called Dream Yoga and Astral Travel. In those two courses we describe how to meditate, how to investigate those higher states of being within a state of meditation, combining drowsiness and sleep with cognizance.
 
Honestly I think Glorian publishing's course on Meditation Essentials is even more practical more straight forward too. I would recommend that course too, but if you study the dream yoga and astral travel course, we give we give the practices that you can follow so that you can learn to awaken within dreams and investigate these things for yourself, step by step, very pragmatically.
 
Question: You mentioned the emanation entering matter or the realm of matter. Where did or does the realm of matter come from?
 
Instructor: That is a deep question. In a sense, the Tree of Life of the kabbalah are levels of matter. They are levels of materiality and being, just in different subtleties. When we dream, we are in the world of Hod, the astral plane. When we dream, we interact with matter. It is not physical, but it is a form of substance, of being.
 
This is why in the world of dreams you can fly. You are governed by different laws. You can enter through stone. You can pass through walls. You can fly over seas. You can pass through a window, through different objects, because that matter is not as substantial as our physical plane, but it is a form of matter. Otherwise, why would we interact with it or believe it in the moment when we're dreaming, right? I know we wake up sometimes and say, “oh, that was just a dream.” But in reality, why was it just a dream? In essence, because was it just not real, because why did we believe it in the moment? Because we are not really discriminating consciously throughout our day, understanding what is going on all the time, and that is why we continue with those mechanical habits when we go to sleep.
 
But really, those dimensions have a matter, energy, and perception that is not physical, and that matter really starts from the most subtle from the top of the Tree of Life and becomes more complex in different worlds of the spirit until finally entering in the physical plane.
 
We will also include a link to a lecture called the Omnipenetrating Ray of Okidanokh given by Glorian Publishing, which talks about this in more detail, but we just tried to synthesize a few points that matter is a very complex thing. Physical matter is not all there is to see. It originated from the spirit in the higher levels of nature and became more complex until finally manifesting physically from those higher worlds. So that is the synthesis.
 
Question: Could you explain deeper the Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur?
 
Instructor: Literally there are really many, many lectures on Glorian Publishing that go into a lot of detail about the Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur. Probably the best source I would say is Samael Aun Weor's book Tarot and Kabbalah where he talks about in a chapter for each section about each of these aspects of the Absolute in great detail. In synthesis, the Ain is the cosmic space, the womb, the matrix from which all life emerges. The Ain Soph is our inner star and the light, the protocosmos from which all being emerges is the Ain Soph Aur, the limitless light. When that light finally materialized into the universe, it becomes physical light, but it originates from this sacred absolute sun.
 
Unfortunately we do not have the time to really expound on all the depth and beauty of these aspects of the Absolute, but there are many lectures on Glorian, but especially I highly recommend you study the book Tarot and Kabbalah by Samael Aun Weor where he talks about these three aspects of the Absolute in great detail.
 
Question: There was a mass burial pit at the Chichén Itzá or the Mayan temple. Why? In what circumstances were people put there?
 
Instructor: I am not a scholar of Mayan Archeology or Anthropology, but my basic knowledge is that like any civilization, the Mayans had degenerated. There was evolution and devolution within cultures and we are witnessing this now in America. There comes a point in which basically societies crumble, and the Mayans were no different. The Egyptians were no different. All the Greeks and the ancient civilizations were no different.
 
So obviously some of the modern beliefs about the Mayans is that they were sacrificing people and this was the definition of their society, but we ignore that history is complex. Those civilizations did degenerate into sacrifice because eventually that tradition mistranslated the idea that one should sacrifice one's ego, and so they started to sacrifice people. That is devolution there, taking a spiritual teaching and making it degenerated, you know? That obviously happens over a long period of time, but a lot of the civilizations did crumble. I do not know about the mass burial there, but obviously it kind of brings to mind that the Mayans eventually decayed, so that might be an explanation.
 
Question: Is there a Mayan mantra to help you go to the astral?
 
Instructor: Yes, I do not remember at the top of my head, but I believe you can access it in the book Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic by Samael Aun Weor. There are a couple Mayan mantras given in that book where you can invoke those initiates in the internal worlds and even physically to help you. I highly recommend you study that book.
 
Question: Could you elaborate more on why Yaab means “many” and Mayab is land of the few? Is the extra A the difference maker?
 
Instructor: I believe it is just the syllables, right? Ma means a negation. It means “no,” and it is interesting that the word Ma―as in “Mama,” Mother, which a baby or infant speaks―is a representation of the Divine Mother, the sacred Princess Sac-Nicte, and Ma as the universal syllable means “no.” It also means death. So the death of our defects is the power of the Divine Mother, and she is the one who leads us upon the mountains of the Mayab.
 
Now as for the extra A, I am not so certain, as for the spelling of it, but yaab literally means “many” and the negation means “no,” ma. The reason why it is the land of the Mayab is because few do it. It is very challenging.
 
Question: Is the Ain, nothingness, profoundly unknowable to itself, and why is that? Why is entry to physical plane inevitable?
 
Instructor: Think of this. Is there a limit to space, or does it just keep on going? How can one possibly know it all? Really it is a mind-boggling thing. The cosmic space, the Ain, has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere. It is the number zero numerically, kabbalistically. It is unknowable to itself because it is the infinite and even beyond the infinite. It is the Seity. It is Ometeotl.
 
Ometeotl, the being, is a great mystery. Why do some beings not know themselves? Well, that is something we need to discover in ourselves, explore, meditate, experience. Now entering physical matter and energy is inevitable because it is just the laws of being coming to fruition. In a sense we need a physical body to do this work because our physical body, Malkuth, the kingdom in Hebrew, is the amalgam or the concretization of all the forces from above. We need a receptacle. In a sense our physical body is like a chalice, an amphora of clay which we must bake in the fire of divinity through the Mayan language, the Mayan metaphor, to receive the wine of Balché.
 
The physical body is needed because the spirit needs to learn how to master matter. That is why the spirit enters into the universe, because in the Ain, one is free, but has no cognizance, and so the divine wants to know itself. In order to do it, it creates the universes so that it could reflect itself like a mirror. I believe Ibn ‘Arabi, the great Sufi mystic, explained the same thing: that Allah must seek himself through the mirror of the soul, and so the physical body is necessary. We need the matter, the world, so that we could see ourselves.
 
Think of it, if the world gets more complex and more difficult, that is kind of the seed plot or the matrix, the ground, the foundation by which to finally master the worst circumstances in order to go up. So we need that controversy or contrariety, that difficulty, so that through the friction of the spiritual work, by working consciously in ourselves and suffering voluntarily, or perhaps making mistakes and changing our behaviors, we can enter the superior way of wisdom.
 
So some level of temptation or knowledge is needed so that we can overcome matter, and that is the whole point of the universe and the work. This is the continuation of the former comment about how did matter come into being.
 
So what my understanding is, as the emanation expands, matter is created at the same time. Think of the unfoldment of matter like a fountain with many levels, like one of those that has the source in the center and the water trickles down, right? Little by little you see the water in a fountain go down to the second level then the third level then the fourth, in the same way in the universe, and the same thing with matter. When we think of matter, we think of physical experience, what we can touch and feel and see, and when we think of emanations in the spiritual sense, we think of it in the kabbalistic way, because each of the spheres are called sephiroth, which means “emanations.” It means that there is an original divine source and that it sends out its light. In a sense, it is like an expansion but also it is like an involution. That light enters matter itself. In a way when that light enters the universe and becomes matter in different dimensions, it is in a sense that light is almost creating.
 
We know from science that matter is not created nor destroyed, it just changes forms. In the same way that [spiritual] light, which was once unitarian divine, pure, when it emanates and unfolds into different levels of complexity, becomes matter, becomes experience. It is a form of creation, we can say, but in a sense it is just transformation. All creation and destruction, evolution, devolution too, is a form of birth and death. You do not essentially destroy that which makes the thing, because that still exists. Even consciousness exists no matter what the forms it takes, that are created or destroyed, because the soul is eternal, that it can change forms and develop in different levels. As consciousness and light, which are synonymous, divinity enters into the universe and expansion is in a sense a transformation. That light complicates itself, unfolds in itself, so that the universes are born.
 
It is a very deep thing, very profound. It is hard―hopefully my explanation is clear―to even approach the topic with some adequacy, but I am suggesting that if you wish to understand what this really means and experience what different dimensions are like and how this process unfolded over many aeons, study dream yoga and astral travel. Awaken within that dream state and learn to experience matter and energy at a different level. In that way you can investigate things which you can't with your physical senses or your intellect, because this spiritual stuff is really only explorable through the consciousness, not the mind.
 
Question: Can you please explain the difference between working on our ego and how modern psychology defines ego sometimes as a positive characteristic?
 
Instructor: We have a very distinct way of using the psychological terms, which obviously diverges from mainstream psychology, and with good purpose. This is not to say that there is no value in the mainstream psychological tradition and the work that psychological professionals are doing, I think that we can get lost in semantics too, because a lot of what many professionals redeem a psychologically healthy sense of self is what we in our studies would call dignity. The consciousness, the soul, and the sense of self-worth is not egotistical, not in a sense of like a grasping a “me and my,” but it is an identity which is truly humble and dignified and pure. So when mainstream psychologists refer to ego like in Freudian terms, you have self or ego and superego, the id, especially which is very common, like the lower animal sex drives and things like that. There is some value and credence to those methods and understanding, but when we talk about ego in our studies, we are trying to emphasize the context within a spiritual work.
 
The kind of work we are trying to do in our gnostic tradition is very different from mainstream psychology, and fortunately there are a lot of people working in modern psychology who are doing great things. I think sometimes what people fail to understand in relation to this tradition is that while we have the id, or anger or pride or negativity, frustration, qualities that we obviously take for granted, people think these are something that is going to be with us forever. In our tradition we go a lot further. We emphasize that elements like anger and pride, animal instincts―things we take as our identity in the context of the spirit―are not real. They exist, but lack substantiality and importance. In context, divinity is the real reality, a state of being which is very sacred and profound and beautiful, but what we call ego is something we wish to transform and transcend. However. mainstream psychology doesn't think you could possibly remove these drives, and that in a sense, repressing or indulging them can be harmful―which we agree with. The difference lies in the fact that there are levels of consciousness and that what we call ego is something very distinct to a particular perspective.
 
If we learn to self-observe ourselves, understand, study our mind in action, and practice some of the techniques of this tradition, like meditation, we can verify and see that really, the ego is really negative―pride and anger and all of that. It is a matter of perspectives, experience. Obviously there is a sense of self that is healthy, that we need, and that real self, that real authentic identity, which is very stable and profound and divine, is the consciousness. So we use the terms differently.
 
There  are two lectures given by an instructor from Glorian which goes into a lot of detail about this especially. I think it is called Gnostic Psychoanalysis. It has two parts on their web site (see Part 1 and Part 2) and they kind of go back and forth describing how we define ego and how the modern psychologists define ego and looking at the parallels, which are very deep. I do not know all of them, but I recommend those two lectures especially to kind of guide you in that.
 
Question: Could you elaborate then what the sphere of Geburah would be characterized by?
 
Instructor: The law is goodness is mercy, the spirit known as Chesed in kabbalah. That is our innermost Being, the spark of divinity, our inner Buddha. That inner Buddha, Gedulah, goodness, is really God, our own particular individual God, put in synthesis.
 
Question: I heard that Mayans were Atlanteans, that they did not become instinctual, just evolved to an upper dimension. Is it true?
 
Instructor: Samael Aun Weor says that the Mayans descended from Atlantis. He also said that there were certain sectors of the Atlantean civilization that, while everybody else was degenerating and destroying themselves, escaped. So some of them had access and technology at that time, which in a sense are inter-dimensional, not really physical anymore. They could travel through the different levels and layers of space, because they had revolutionized themselves spiritually, and were allowed by divinity to be able to continue with those vehicles while the rest of their civilization was drowned. Even the word "atl" which you find as a suffix of many words like Nahuatl, Atlantis means water in Nahuatl, the traditional Aztec language. So there is a deep wisdom there very profound. Study those books that Samael Aun Weor wrote. He talks all about exactly answering your question.
 
Question: Can we say that in essence every galaxy is a resurrected master or a bodhisattva?
 
Instructor: So amongst the masters and the prophets there are levels. Some initiates acquire more knowledge and more wisdom in accordance with their work. So to use the metaphor of the amphora, some amphoras contain more because there is a deeper work there. Obviously it involves more difficulty and challenges. Some initiates rise very high because they were very fallen. The law of divine nature: the further one goes downwards, one could go higher if they repent.
 
So there are different levels of gods, beings, or masters who govern different elements of the cosmos. Some bodhisattvas―they are initiates who incarnate bodhi, the light, or the sattva or essence of Ometeotl―have wisdom and knowledge relating to the Earth or a planet. Some have the knowledge of a star or sun. Some have knowledge of a galaxy, and there are even more rare beings who have knowledge of an infinite, which are many billions of galaxies. So there are layers and levels of accomplishment.
 
We know that Jesus of Nazareth was pretty much the highest that we know of on this planet. He has knowledge of many infinites. That is why he is really incomprehensible, a very divine being, but yeah, the galaxy is governed by beings like the innermost God of a bodhisattva.
 
We have to say that the bodhisattva is not the master. Really, the being that governs any constellation is the Innermost, or in Greek terms, Kristos, Christ, the divine. The bodhisattva or the human initiate is merely the amphora that can reflect the light.
 
I think we have one more question.
 
Question: In terms of the nature of light, is that related to the nature of Barbelo of the gnostic mythology?
 
Instructor: Yes. Barbelo, bar meaning “fire,” and bel meaning “light,” the realm of fire and light, which is the Ain Soph Aur to use the Hebrew terms, but also relating it to the gnostic scriptures.
 
Okay! Thank you all for coming!