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The Three Ways of Christ

1/29/2020

This is a continuation of a lecture we gave previously on the nature of what we denominated as four paths. We talked about fakirism. We talked about monasticism, yoga, and the Gnostic path, Gnosticism. We explained previously how these paths―individually, by themselves, the first three: the fakir, the monk, and the yogi―are incipient. They are deficient in themselves.

These previous paths only develop one aspect of the psyche at the exclusion of the others. The fakir only develops willpower over the body, to dominate instinct by lying on a bed of nails, sleeping in the storm, sleeping under the weather, and trying to dominate the physical body, thinking that it is a way to God.

We also discussed how the monk, through prayer, develops the heart, but at the exclusion of the mind and the motor center, our instinctuality, our sexuality, etc.

Then we talked about the yogi who only studies and develops knowledge of the mind, who performs pranayama and exercises to develop mind.

So we discuss how those paths by themselves are inefficient, and that we need to follow a synthetic teaching, a synthetic path, which is the Gnostic path. The Gnostic path incorporates all three. Now, in this lecture we are going to explain how there are three three ways, in the positive sense, by which we walk this path, by which we attain union within our Innermost, our inner God.

In these images we have Christ, the Master Aberamento, teaching and performing works. He is teaching the multitude on the left as a mystic. In the middle, we have Jesus as a Gnostic who is assisting Mary Magdalene. We have on the right Master Jesus the Christ who is being tempted by Shaitan, Satan, the demon, his mind in the wilderness.

In this lecture we are going to explain how the path of mysticism, Gnosticism, and yoga are an integral science. Previously we discussed how the fakirism, monasticism, and yoga, by themselves, are inefficient. They are not complete. We are going to explain the best of these systems and how they apply to the Gnostic path, how they apply to our work, and this lecture really is about one quote that the Master Samael Aun Weor gave in a book called Igneous Rose.

“Christ taught three ways in order to reach a union with the Innermost (our inner Buddha, our inner God). When he was preaching to the multitudes, when he was mystically exalted, he showed us the way of Ramakrishna, Kempis, and Francis of Assisi. This is the path of Anthony of Padua and Teresa of Jesus (or Avila). This is the mystical path. When Christ was walking with Magdalene, the repentant prostitute, when he was among publicans and sinners, fishermen and wine drinkers, he showed us the Gnostic path. When he retired to the solitude of the desert for forty days and forty nights, he then taught the way of oriental yoga. The seven rays of cosmic evolution are synthesized in these three ways that the Nazarene showed.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

The Three Brains and the Three Ways

To elaborate, we have this image or graphic of the human being with a symbol of the holy eight, which is the circuitry of energies and the makeup of our inner constitution. This explains these three paths in synthesis and how they really are one.

We explained how the path of yoga develops the intellect. We have the path of the monk which develops the heart, mysticism. And then we have the sexual center, which is Gnostic in its totality. Fakirism, as we explained, is only the work of movement and instinct. Now, we talk about in esotericism how we have three brains, three centers: intellect, emotion, and motor-instinctive-sexuality. We synthesize the last three, movement, instinct, and sex, because they really constitute the field of action within our psyche. So the path of the fakir only develops instinct, to dominate the sensations of the body, whereas the Gnostic is very different, and works to control instinct, motion, and sexual energy.

In relation to the three brains, the three paths we are explaining in synthesis, the path of yoga, the path of the yogi develops the mind, which we need in our work. We need also to develop mysticism, following the path of the monk in harmony with the other centers. We also need to develop the sexual center, the sexual brain, through the Gnostic path.

Question: Can an individual accomplish that without the belief of God?

Instructor: Yes, because we don't believe in anything. We seek to know. So to think something is true or to think something is not true, that is intellectual or emotional. But to really know something with certainty is to have Gnosis. Therefore, there are certain things that I might believe in, but there are many things that I know for fact from my experience by working with these three paths.

Question: Do you think there is a benefit if you do have true belief in God?

Instructor: Blessed are those who believe, yet who do not see, for then in their belief they will work, like Master Jesus taught, and by following the three paths of yoga, mysticism, and Gnosticism, then we come to know God directly. Now, we are going to elaborate on this in relation to the mystical path.

But in order to explain this lecture, we need to understand the three brains, because as we see in this image, we have three centers and usually in the field of psychological self-observation, in the beginning it is very difficult to ascertain from where thoughts come, where emotions emerge, and how do sensations arise. These three aspects of ourselves constitute one unity as symbolized by the holy eight. This symbol is a symbol of the infinite, meaning that God is within us, is infinite. In order to understand God, we need to know how our three brains function and how to develop them positively.

Question: So it's like a channel. You are trying to bind to that channel?

Instructor: Yes, and that channel is developed precisely by working with mind, with emotion or heart, and with sexuality, or the yoga, the mystic, and the Gnostic paths.

Mysticism: The Path of Spiritual Experience

In this image, we have Christ who is mystically exalted, and it is important to note that when we talk about mysticism, what the term actually means. The word mysticism comes from mystery or mysterion in Greek, which originates from the root word myein, which means “to close one's eyes.” Meaning: to close one’s physical eyes to the exterior world, to really become reflective. This relates to mystikos which means “initiate,” somebody who begins a new way of being, because if we don't know how to close, first, our physical eyes to the exterior world, and then if we don't learn how to close the illusory eyes of our perception to illusion, then we cannot know God.

For as it is stated in The Voice of the Silence, which is a scripture translated by Blavatsky:

"Before the Soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion." ―H.P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence

We talk many times about this term mystikos, mystery, mysterion, mysticism, because genuine mysticism is establishing a new way of being in this moment.

As Samael Aun Weor states:

"Initiation is life itself, lived intensely, with rectitude and with love." ―Samael Aun Weor, Practical Astrology: Manual of Practical Magic

If we are not paying attention and we are not being intense in our efforts to self observe, it means that we are asleep. It means that we need to continue to remember our Being, to observe our three brains and to learn to receive the impressions of life in a new way. That is what it means to close one's eyes to illusion. It doesn't mean that we ignore things. It means that we cease to perceive life as we previously perceived it, and that occurs here and now, meaning that we forget the past. We don't think about the future. We close our eyes to all illusion and we really just focus on this moment, because we need to be the child of this moment.

I would like the quote for you some of the teachers mentioned in that quote I mentioned. The first is is Ramakrishna, where he explains the path of mysticism and the nature of belief, implicitly. He was a great yogi, a great master, highly venerable, a great initiate who practiced sexual magic with his wife. He gave a very profound doctrine that we are going to cite here, and we are going to quote in relation to the mystical path some of those teachers that Samael Aun Weor mentioned.

In relation to the mystical path, we need to really develop the heart, because most of us are dead emotionally, where it is very difficult to feel a genuine inspiration in our psyche towards God, to overcome those negative influences in our mind. This is why we began the lecture with that prayer, the Pater Noster in Latin, in order to invoke that energy in the heart, because if any of us need anything most of all, it is to develop the heart. This is why we begin with the mystical path, because if the heart is pure, then we will know God. If it is impure, we will not know God and we will suffer. This is why Prophet Muhammad taught in the Hadith, the Muslim oral tradition:

"For everything there is a polish, and the polish for the hearts is the dhikr (remembrance) of Allah. There is nothing more potent in saving a person from the punishment of Allah than the dhikr of Allah." ―Prophet Muhammad

So Prophet Muhammad taught that the path of jihad is the monasticism of the Muslim. Jihad is the war against our animal desires. It is the struggle against our mind, which we are going to explain in the path of yoga. And so Muhammad was explaining how the path of the monk is the path of striving, because mujahidah means “striving.” They translated it as “holy war,” but it really means “to strive,” “to make effort” against one's ego.

Question: The mystical path, that is the monk's path?

Instructor: Yes, and with all this, we are explaining the positive aspect of this―not the past practices exclusively, alone, but how they all integrate. All these are really synthetic. They apply to each other and they overlap.

Knowledge of Divinity

So in the beginning, all of us struggle to know God. We want to have that experience where we communicate with a master or with our Being. There are four stages that Ramakrishna explains on the path of mysticism or the path of God vision, because as we explained, mysticism means to close one's fleshly eyes to illusion, but to open our spiritual sight.

“M: "Sir, what is the meaning of the realization of God? What do you mean by God-vision? How does one attain it?"

MASTER: "According to the Vaishnavas the aspirants and the seers of God may be divided into different groups. These are the pravartaka, the sadhaka, the siddha, and the siddha of the siddha. He who has just set foot on the path may be called a pravartaka. He may be called a sadhaka who has for some time been practicing spiritual disciplines, such as worship, japa (mantra recitation), meditation, and the chanting of God's name and glories. He may be called a siddha who has known from his inner experience that God exists. An analogy is given in the Vedanta to explain this. The master of the house is asleep in a dark room. Someone is groping in the darkness to find him. He touches the couch and says, 'No, it is not he.' He touches the window and says, 'No, it is not he.' He touches the door and says, 'No, it is not he.' This is known in the Vedanta as the process of 'Neti, neti', 'Not this, not this'. At last his hand touches the master's body and he exclaims, 'Here he is!' In other words, he is now conscious of the 'existence' of the master. He has found him, but he doesn't yet know him intimately.” ―Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

So as we were mentioning, blessed are those who believe who don't see. This is us groping in the dark, feeling in the psychological depths of our mind, seeking God. We say, “No, this is not him.” We have that longing, that aspiration to know God. But he who seeks shall find. So if you continue in your path, to persist, and to practice, to experience God, it will happen as a law of nature. If you seek you will find. So it is a groping in the dark of our mind until finally through our discipline and meditation, we experience God in samadhi.

So we are practicing “Neti, neti, not this, not this.”

Question: But do you believe that in scripture, in John, that it is up to God to enable you?

Instructor: There is a Sufi saying by Bayazid Bastami. He said: "For thirty years I sought Allah. But in reality it was Allah that was the seeker and I the sought." So the one who pushes us is our Being, to seek Him, because “God is a treasure that wishes to be known,” as it says in the Qur’an and thus he made the universe and man so he could be known. He is a treasure that needs to be discovered in us, and the one who pushes us to work is Christ, Allah.

Question: Samael Aun Weor mentions this word “disquietude.” When that occurs, it is part of the inspiration?

Instructor: Yes, and spiritual inquietudes is precisely neti, neti. We are looking in our mind. We want to know God, but we haven't experienced Him yet. So we seek. We seek. We feel that disturbance in our heart.

Question: What is it called?

Instructor: Spiritual inquietudes. You can say disquietude too and inquietudes. It is mentioned in The Great Rebellion. There is a chapter on it specifically.

Question: Does it mean what it sounds like it means? Like the opposite of quiet?

Instructor: It doesn't mean disturbance. It means the heart or the soul is impassioned and yearning for God.

Question: Is that like the goat or Fool in the Tarot? Like a goat is pushing you...

Instructor: Yes, you can see that God is trying to ride His donkey, which is us, our mind, and that He is trying to lead us in the direction He wants. But if we disobey, then we don't seek him. But if we yearn for Him in the mystical path, we are seeking, and every experience in meditation or out of the body―any type of phenomenon we experience―we say, “Yes. This is interesting, but I know it is not God!” Until, finally arriving at the experience, when we communicate face-to-face with Christ, with our Innermost, and then we know. That makes us a siddha. So, before when we enter the path, we are pravartaka. Those who are practicing for some time who are performing “Neti, neti,” are sadhakas. Then those who experienced God are siddha, but there is another stage beyond that.

“There is another type, known as the siddha of the siddha, the 'supremely perfect'. It is quite a different thing when one talks to the master intimately, when one knows God very intimately through love and devotion. A siddha has undoubtedly attained God, but the 'supremely perfect' has known God very intimately.” ―Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

It says in the Qur’an, “And they honor not God with the honor due Him” (6:91). Or: “Allah is not estimated as he deserves to be estimated,” which the Sufis translate as “He is not been known as He deserves to be known.” So there are those who know God to a degree, but then there are those who know God very intimately, who have incarnated the Lord. That is very high, as exemplified by the great masters of mysticism.

So that is what we seek: first to know God in meditation and out of the body, and then to constantly develop that and cultivate that. Or as Samael Aun Weor stated quoting Blavatsky’s Voice of the Silence, "Be humble in order to attain enlightenment, and upon having attained enlightenment, be humbler still." It doesn't mean that one has fully attained enlightenment. It means there are degrees, where there is always a cycle and fluctuation of experiences we have and don't have. It happens as a type of gradual process. It can't be rushed. It happens like the unfolding of a rose, and when the rose is exudes its beauty, it’s because the disciple has been cultivating that for many years.

The Imitation of Christ

The way that we cultivate this mystical path is in the next graphic. We are going to quote Thomas à Kempis, a great monk, a great mystic, who actually was Samael Aun Weor in a past incarnation, as he stated in his books. When Samael Aun Weor was incarnated as this monk, he was really developing under the ray of monasticism: the spiritual influence of the Christian Church. We have this image of Christ exalted mystically, teaching the multitudes. I am going to quote for you from his book The Imitation of Christ, which is a powerful work, especially for developing the heart, spiritual emotion, conscious devotion to God. It is very divine. So this comes from “Four Things Which Bring Great Peace” (this is Christ speaking to the bodhisattva):

“My child, I will teach you now the way of peace and true liberty.
Seek, child, to do the will of others rather than your own.
Always choose to have less rather than more.
Look always for the last place and seek to be beneath all others.
Always wish and pray that the will of God be fully carried out in you.
Behold, such will enter into the realm of peace and rest.
―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: 23. Four Things Which Bring Great Peace

So, our ego does not want to do any of that. When we seek to do the will of others rather than our own, the mind struggles, contradicts, argues, debates, justifies. If we remember these axioms in relation to another person trying to resolve a conflict, then we will have peace. Instead of doing our will, we do the will of others, even if it hurts our pride. This is really the meaning of wearing our crown of thorns, or the crown of thorns that the Master Aberamentho wore in his Passion. Our desires want to act out, and yet we restrain our mind. The mind suffers. It bleeds. It cries out. It wants consolation. But out of love and compassion, as exemplified by Jesus, we have to bless those who curse us, who cause us pain, egotistically. We have peace when we cease to try to do our own will, but the will of others.

Question: But to achieve that, isn't it of great importance to open your heart first, because if you try to go in that route immediately, isn't it forcing it against everything?

Instructor: We have to begin where we are at, meaning: never try to take on any type of difficulty that is beyond one's capacity. Instead, we have to be compassionate with our current circumstances.

Comment: It just grows...

Instructor: It grows by performing it, by renouncing our own and doing what is good for others. In that way, our Being may decide: “Now it is time for you to take the next step” and to provide extra help, extra difficulties.

Question: I feel like sometimes I get confused when people are being verbally abusive. That they should just take it. But that is not what it means either right?

Instructor: Right. It isn't the opposite. Mercy and justice, Chesed and Geburah, need to be balanced.

Question: But what do you mean? Like if someone's verbally abusive to you?

Another Question: Yeah, like I was telling that at work someone was being verbally abusive to me and I was confused. Do I just say, “I am so sorry,” or “whatever you want”? Or, do you stand up for yourself? How do you know what to do?

Instructor: Real Christian compassion and mercy doesn't mean complacency with crime, because we need to learn to do the will of others, but we also had need to know limits. If being complacent in a situation in which we need to act is going to harm ourselves, but also harm the other person, then it means that we need to do something.

Comment: I had a situation like that, many actually, where I try to observe why they are the way they are being, but it's usually not you. I never try to return the abuse. I just try to understand them.

Instructor: And the way that we do the will of others is by working for their happiness. Now if they are abusive and they are creating problems in a workspace, then we need to bring attention to authorities and other people if it is something serious and harmful. Now, we always choose to have less rather than more, meaning less material goods, less attachments, to material goods.

Now, in relation to the what we were discussing, "always wish and pray that the will of God be fully carried out in you." That doesn't mean that we are like a doormat. It means that we take responsibility for the well-being of others. So yes, in one sense we need to do the will of others, try to make them happy. But if that is not working, then we need to be realistic, not resentful, but to fulfill the will of God within us, which might mean to confront the issue with the other person, but without hatred, without anger.

Question: Can't it be also part of our karma? Sometimes some of the situations that we have...

Instructor: Yes, in many situations, it is recurrence, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we allow karma to swallow us alive. It means that we learn to negotiate it for the benefit of others and ourselves.

Question: When you say we must work to make others happy, does that mean more like true happiness, not what they think will make them happy?

Instructor: Exactly!

Question: If someone is obsessed with money, giving them money isn't loving, right?

Instructor: Exactly. We want to do what is good for the being of that person, which can make them very resentful and angry and derogatory, but you see how Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:24). He is crucified and he said that on the cross.

Comment: This presumes that they are receptive.

Instructor: And even if they were not receptive, learn to give love regardless. Always seek to do the will of God above all things. Seek to make others happy. Be satisfied with less rather than more, and always pray that God's will will always be done within us, and that usually will mean contradicting other people. But we need to learn how to not act with anger or resentment. So the way that we do that is cultivating our psychological sense of peace, which is developed through devotion and mysticism.

The Enlightenment of Christ

We have the image of the ascension of Christ on the right, and on the left we have a quote I am going to relate to you from Thomas à Kempis. It is a prayer he gave in order to calm the mind, to develop devotion, precisely relating to what we are discussing.

"Enlighten me, good Jesus (meaning enlighten me, my inner Christ, my Intimate Christ) with the brightness of internal light..." ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind

So what is that internal light? It is direct cognizance through self-observation on the defects we wish to work on.

“…and take away all darkness from the habitation of my heart. Restrain my wandering thoughts and suppress the temptations which attack me so violently. Fight strongly for me, and vanquish these evil beasts―the alluring desires of the flesh―so that peace may come through your power and the fullness of Your praise resound in the holy courts, which is a pure conscience. Command the winds and the tempests; say to the sea: “Be still,” and to the north wind, “Do not blow,” and there will be a great calm.” ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind

So what is that sea and storm? The sea is our sexual passions, the waters of sexuality, which are disturbed by lust in the mind, fornication, desire. The storm in the mind, the intellect, are all the churning of thoughts and desires which drive one, literally when we are observing ourselves, seemingly to the point of desperation.

"Send forth Your light and Your truth to shine on the earth, for I am as earth, empty and formless until You illumine me.” ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind

This is a kabbalistic teaching. This is the meaning of the first book of Genesis, “The earth was formless and void,” תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ tohu vay-bohu in Hebrew (Genesis 1:2). That earth is our psychology. That is, if we look inside, we see that we have a lot of darkness, chaos, anger, resentment, that is churning constantly. And so in the Book of Genesis, the ר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God, our Innermost, floated above those waters, and it is through initiation that we calm the storm of the mind and that we calm the lake of our passions.

"Pour out Your grace from above. Shower my heart with heavenly dew.” ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind

What is that heavenly dew, those waters? It is sexual, and dew is a result of rain from a previous night or morning, which has an alchemical teaching. We find an alchemical teaching even in nature. When there is heat in the soil, the water evaporates and rises upward. Likewise, through sexual magic, when man and women are united, sexually speaking, they develop heat, which raises the the waters of sexuality into steam, energy that rises up the spinal column. This is symbolized in alchemy as the athanor, which is boiling certain substances to purify the mind, to transform the lead of our passions into the gold of the spirit. When the water evaporates into the sky, it creates lightning, storms, which water the heart. So the dew is precisely the pure energies of our Christic energy, the semen, which are residing in the heart that have been transmuted. Through alchemy, we raise the water into steam, which forms a storm, we could say, in our mind, and the lightning of Christ emerges, is born in us.

The dew is precisely, like the flower of the heart, the pure seminal essence of our transmutations, which creates calm and peace. But it seems like when we begin transmutation, things are chaotic. We see a lot of evilness in our mind, that is seems unstoppable and uncontrollable. This is what it means that we have a storm in our mind. We start transmuting and suddenly we realize we are in a hailstorm. We are in a chaos.

Question: In other words, it is not like you are possessed. You are just going through that storm?

Instructor: You are just bracing the storm and you are seeing the mind for what it is. What happens after the storm, the dew resides in the heart and there is peace. The thing is to persist in transmutation and not to be discouraged if the mind is crazy and chaotic and disturbing. But it will pass. The more we transmute and let the light of God illumine us through transmutation and alchemy or pranayama and mantra, and by meditating, then the storm calms by the grace of Christ.

"Open the springs of devotion to water the earth, that I may produce the best of good fruits.” ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind

So again, the springs of devotion to the Divine Mother is sex: the fountain of life in which, if we never waste it, it will be regenerative in nature and we will never thirst again.

Question: I know you are not supposed to think of time. What is the time difference of going through that storm?

Instructor: It is a process. Time, we could say, is illusory, but we also say, practically, that it is a process. We say, sometimes it takes years to develop real discipline, but that discipline starts every day in this moment. So we don't need to think that, well, with time we are going to change. It means we have to work now, but we have to also be practical and understand that it is a process. Nature does not take leaps.

The rose grows gradually from the compost heap of our sins, to rise up into something pure. So these good fruits that are watered through devotion are precisely the virtues of the soul. We say the sexual organs of a plant is the fruit. That is the consummation of its regenerative and alchemical process in its growth.

So water, "open[s] the springs of devotion (through transmutation) to water the earth (our physical body, that it can be regenerated and that the virtues of the soul may flourish) as good fruits."

“Lift up my heart pressed down by the weight of sins, and direct all my desires to heavenly things, that having tasted the sweetness of supernal happiness, I may find no pleasure in thinking of earthly things. Snatch me up and deliver me from all the passing comfort of creatures, for no created thing can fully quiet and satisfy my desires (or my longing to know God). Join me to Yourself in an inseparable bond of love; because You alone can satisfy him who loves You, and without You all things are worthless.” ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind

What is that ultimate devotion for God? When a man and woman are united sexually―that is where the couple can show genuine love to God by not fornicating, not reaching the orgasm, by not behaving in sex as a beast. Because as Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a great Sufi master, taught us, that the way that we have sex is the way that God will be with us. If we have sex like animals, God will be with us as the avenger, as justice―to punish us for our crimes, for indulging in negative behaviors and causing harm to others. But if we are in sex as a pure being, trying to develop chastity and sexual moral purity, God will be with us as mercy.

We have the two pillars of the Tree of Life: mercy and justice. If we want to follow God, we go to the right in sexuality, meaning: we go towards the right pillar trying to follow transmutation. The left pillar can represent the energies going down, because if we behave as animals in sex, then those energies go down Klipoth, to hell, and that is how God will be with us, if that is how we have sex. So Rumi is affirming what Thomas à Kempis or Samael Aun Weor taught.

Now, the way that we help to curtail the negative aspects of our mind, of our psychology, we have to learn how to pray for others and learn forgiveness, to not take accounts towards other people, to not justify our behavior, but to really become selfless. Mysticism really begins with transmutation, developing the heart. We cultivate this compassion for others with our transmutative work by developing compassion for others. We say bodhichitta, which in Sanskrit signifies the heart-mind of wisdom: the empty nature of all phenomena, how things are impermanent, and also compassion and love for others.

St. Francis of Assisi

We have this image of Saint Francis of Assisi, and we included his famous prayer from his teaching. You see that he has a skull at his knees, meaning all the garbage of the intellect is dead. It is in the grave. You notice in this image that he is praying up to the heavens, almost up towards his own middlebrow, which is where we have the atom of the Father, the spiritual atomic intelligence: Atom Anu.

It is through death of our own desires that we really develop true love for humanity, and we cease to be interested in our own welfare alone. Mysticism is founded on this. The way that we develop ourselves is by helping others. By learning to work for the benefit of all beings, we in turn benefit ourselves. This is a reciprocal law of nature. But the problem is, as soon as we want to do something that is selfless, the mind reacts, fights. What will help calm that storm is developing willpower.

So as Francis of Assisi taught us,

"Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.”
―Saint Francis of Assisi

Question: Part of this is concentrating to observe your defects on this mystical path. Part of it is that?

Instructor: Yes, for the one whom God loves, whom Allah loves, as stated in the Sufi scriptures, there is no rest. For the one who fears God, there is no rest. So it is a constant battle. Always. This moment. Never losing one's guard. The way that we can help understand our own defects is by studying these teachings: the prayers of the great prophets and saints, because they teach us anecdotes and axioms that help us reflect on our selfish nature so that we can transform it into a selfless nature―egoless.

Redemption on the Gnostic Path

Now what is necessary, in order to develop mysticism, we need to develop the Gnostic path within, which, as we mentioned, is precisely to work with sexual energy, but there is much more involved to it, which we are going to elaborate.

In this image, we have the resurrected Jesus before Mary Magdalene, and the Gnostic path precisely works with the sexual brain, the sexual center. I am going to read for you this quote from Samael Aun Weor, who explains the meaning of the archetype or symbol of Mary Magdalene. This is from The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled:

“’And Jesus, the compassionate, answered and said unto Mary (Magdalene): “Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren.’ ―Jesus

“Mary Magdalene is the repented sinner, Kundry, Gundrigia, the indispensable woman for the Great Work.

“In Wagner’s drama, Parsifal totally transforms the tempter Kundry after she submits to him.

“A man needs a Mary Magdalene in order to work in the Ninth Sphere (Yesod) and in order to obtain the resurrection (meaning, complete death of ego and to be fully united in Binah, the Holy Spirit).

“What is magnificent is to be saved, and to save Kundry, Magdalene.

“Tempter Gundrigia, Magdalene, Kundry, you will be perfected in all mysteries of those of the Height, more than all your brethren. […]” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled

For as it states later in this text:

“…In the cathedral of the soul there is more happiness for one repented sinner than for a thousand righteous ones who do not need repentance.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled

Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, as the story goes. So what does Magdalene represent? The word mag in Indo-European language means “priest, magician, mage.” So a priest, a real magician, is one who works in alchemy, who is transforming the prostitute of the body, into something holy. As we discussed about the Sabbath, ב Beth is the house of the body. The fire of Christ is שׁ Shin. Together you spell שַׁבָּת Shabbat. To keep the Sabbath holy is to make one's body holy, meaning, we don't orgasm. We don't waste our forces, and we purify this body that we have. Mary Magdalene also represents the soul, because all of us are prostitutes, deep down in our psyche. We have all sinned against the Holy Ghost, the white swan mentioned in Wagner’s Parsifal that was wounded to death by an arrow.

Now, the way that we practice alchemy determines our purity, and from the great sinners are where great repentants are born. There is more joy for a great demon to repent then there is one who has never committed so much evil. It doesn't justify their action, but it shows the mercy of God. That if we repent, if we as psychologically speaking as prostitutes, as Mary Magdalene, we will be more exalted in heaven than all the angels have never been to such depths as we have.

Comment: Relating that... Victory is much sweeter after defeat...

Instructor: So all of us have committed sins against the Holy Ghost, have committed fornication. And as Samael Aun Weor states:

“Mary Magdalene gleams, and will gleam terribly divine.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled

So the way that we gleam is the work as a mag, a magician, a mage, a priest, with our spouse, with our partner. That is ultimately how we will be redeemed.

Question: I have run into individuals who are extremely strong in their faith and most of them are Christian and some believe, and there is no reason to doubt... They have abilities to heal their own children. There is no doubt their faith is extremely strong. They don't know and they don't practice what truly is the perfect matrimony. How is it possible for them to achieve some of these things?

Instructor: Grace of God, mercy, and also karma. In certain temples, it is well documented that the devotion of the congregation has been able to produce supernatural phenomena like statues moving, gaining life, bleeding sculptures―things of that nature. They don't necessarily know this science, but they have a love of God, which is sincere. But their love would be even more powerful if they were alchemists.

Question: If they are so close to God, why isn't something directing? Even if I were to go out, and I don't because I can see, it would create turmoil in a relationship. Why can't they just believe it? Because I did it to one individual and everything that came out of my mouth was blasphemy.

Instructor: The thing is that they are at a certain level, a certain understanding. Samael Aun Weor taught that we need to learn to respect the will of others. So in your case, you have to learn to do the will of the other person, meaning to not challenge their faith. That's really the most respectable thing to their God, because they are at a certain level, a certain understanding, but not as high as you are because you have been giving a deeper teaching. So the thing is you cannot, as in Buddhism, one should not give the greater Dharma to one of lesser Dharma because they are not mature. As we are going to explain, if you try to put new wine into old wineskins, the skin will break, which we will elaborate upon.

Christ with Publicans and Sinners

So in this image, we have Christ among the publicans and sinners, which constitutes the Gnostic path where he elaborates a very profound teaching about the righteous and the sinners.

"And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

“And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

“But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

“But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” ―Matthew 9:10-13

So to have mercy and not sacrifice, meaning: we don't sacrifice our neighbor by criticizing them, by criticizing their beliefs. That's very challenging, especially when we want to share this type of knowledge with them. We want to help them, but to them it is criticism. We have to learn to respect the level of being of that person. So Jesus says, “I want mercy, not sacrifice.” Like Nietzsche said, many Christians don't know how to love their God except by sacrificing man, by crucifying man, and that is what we all do on a daily basis. With anger, we crucify, and so we need to learn mercy: to respect the will of of being on the other person and to know that if they want to enter this path, they have to recognize how they really are sinners, because many of them think they are very righteous, that they are holy. “Oh, I believe in Jesus and this is my path.” Really, what they think is that they are righteous even if they say that they are sinners. To really know that one is a sinner is to have comprehension of one's defects.

Comment: Because they truly believe trough the crucifixion of Jesus Christ that they are righteous immediately, and that they will forever be righteous because that is the reason God gave up his own Son.

Instructor: They read things literally. They don't understand that Christ is an energy that needs to be incarnated within the soul.

Comment: So many of them say, “I believe in it. You must believe in it.” There are no practices as far as meditation, but they believe they have faith.

Instructor: Which is why James in the scriptures said, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). So they don't work with meditation. They don't have anything. So we have to learn to respect their level of being.

Comment: You can't because they get very recalcitrant. When they get that in their brain, better you back off.

Instructor: Sometimes that is the only thing we can do.

"Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?” ―Matthew 9:14

So this is relating to how many people who follow the literal tradition of Judaism or any faith criticize the initiates, criticize those who are trying to walk the path of initiation.

"And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.” ―Matthew 9:15

The disciples of the exoteric traditions confront us as and say, “Why don't you fast physically?” But Jesus says that isn't the meaning of fasting. He talked to them on an internal level. It means that when God is with us at some points and then retracts, and then we fast in one's soul. So many people confront, can confront us saying, “Why don't you do as we do, follow our tradition, our path?” And Jesus spoke to them as well―it is a psychological work. It isn't about external things, just raising one hand and saying, “I believe in Jesus.” It isn't about that. That isn't real mysticism, because faith without works is dead.

In relation to people being able to receive this type of teaching, we have this quote, one, of my favorites, by the Master Aberamentho.

“No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.” ―Matthew 9:16-17

The wine of Gnosis, the wine of alchemy, the wine of transmutation, is this science and teaching. You cannot put this wine into a mind that is really degenerated and is attached to its own beliefs. People who say, “I want your wine, but let me pour it in my preconceptions, filthy bag of theories, this wine bag,” which is old and rotten. You pour the wine in and then the bottle breaks―having arguments and conflict with people because the wine is not appropriate for them.

We want to give them new wine, then they have to have a new wineskin, meaning: they have to have an entirely new type of mentality.

You can't put this type of teaching into someone who is antithetical to it. You can't also put an old piece of cloth on a new garment. You are going to ruin both. So in order for people to accept and follow this teaching, they need to learn to be receptive, meaning, like in Tsong Khapa's teaching in Buddhism in his Lam Rim Chen Mo: the bowl has to face upward. If it is facing down, you can't give anything.

Question: If you were to pray in the constant presence of Jesus Christ and you just don't ever speak to your Divine Mother, what are the consequences?

Instructor: One thing is: whom do we mean by Jesus Christ?

Comment: Christ, the love, God...

Instructor: When we pray to our inner Christ, we pray to our Being, we can pray to our Divine Mother too, and with it because within Christ is the Divine Mother. Within the Divine Mother is Christ. So these are aspects of our inner divinity, which become integrated through this work that we are doing. So we can pray to all or or one or the other, but follow your heart in terms of what part of your Being you wish to address, because a child doesn't need a formula to speak to God.

The Wine of Spiritual Transmutation

Now in relation to this path of the wine drinkers, the Gnostic path, this wine of alchemy, we have the teachings of Jesus at the wedding of Cana. People think, literally, this is a story about how Jesus transformed physical water into physical wine to get people drunk. We have to understand that this is at a wedding. Man and woman together can produce and transform the water of sex into the wine of God, into the spiritual intoxication that the Sufis speak so abundantly about. We will explain this part of the Gospel:

“And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus [meaning Miriam in Hebrew, which means to raise the Kundalini that rises, the serpent of fire that rises up the spinal column. The mother of Jesus] was there:

“And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

“And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.

“Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” ―John 2:1-4

So this is a Kabbalistic teaching in its depth. They are at a marriage with many people who are fornicators and clairvoyantly, they see, well, Miriam, the Divine Mother, says this person does not have wine, meaning they don't have the serpents raised of fire. Then Jesus said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come,” meaning he cannot incarnate within the soul until that wine is elevated, until the serpents of fire are developed in a marriage.

"His mother [Miriam] saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

“And there were set there six waterpots of stone [the work with Yesod through Arcanum 6], after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.” ―John 2:5-6

So the number six in Kabbalistic numerology relates to the sixth sephirah, Tiphereth, and the stone represents Yesod.

Question: Which is the heart, right?

Instructor: Yes, so Tiphereth is the heart and the stone is precisely Yesod, the sexual power.

So the bodhisattva, we can say Jesus, has to transform that water into light, into wine, through Tiphereth and through Yesod, through sex. So Christ is working from above, the Trinity of the Tree of Life through the heart, and then commanding sex, because the fires of sexuality are dominated by the fires of the heart.

“Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

“And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.

“When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

“And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.” ―John 2: 7-10

So what does it mean to keep the wine until later? It means that that development only comes through work. The best wine is saved for last. We have to progressively earn that right to raise the fire by developing the heart and working with Yesod.

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.” ―John 2:11

Fishers of Men: Sacrifice for Humanity

So the Gnostic path as the path of transmutation also relates to the teachings of sacrifice for humanity. We have in this image the fishermen following after Jesus where Jesus eventually said "Be thou fishers of men." So this refers to how, as the disciples of this teaching, we seek to help others learn the science. Now, not all of us necessarily may become an instructor or may want to or have that disposition, but many of the great masters who follow the Gnostic path perform this sacrifice. They became missionaries or teachers, instructors. They learn to fish for human beings, fish for students in the sea of life, in order to provide them this teaching. Scripturally, it is states in Mark, Chapter 1, verses 16 to 22:

"Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

“And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.

“And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

“And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.” ―Mark 1:16-19

So what are these nets that people throw out into the world? The theories and doctrines that they have about religion to try to capture people and pull them into their congregation. “We are the chosen ones, the saved ones. Follow us and you are all set.” So Christ is actually against all those terrestrial doctrines, which are really ignorant of the esoteric heart of religion.

"And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.” ―Mark 1:20

Or as Jesus taught:

“He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he who loves son and daughter more than me is not worthy of me (who does not follow after me).” ―Matthew 10:37

It doesn't mean that we disregard our parents or family. It means that we take priority in terms of: who do we love first? Christ. We do what is necessary to incarnate Christ, and then we can love family and neighbor. First, love thy God above all things and thy neighbor as thyself. The problem is people in their traditions and religions, they say they love God and then their brother is next, but really they love themselves. They love their beliefs.

"And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught.

“And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.” ―Mark 1:21-22

Meaning, teaching the doctrine of Christ, he humbly provided higher teaching in which people were shocked. When they hear this type of science, they get shocked, even angry, because it contradicts everything they believe.

Comment: That is one of the reasons the Pharisees were down under him?

Instructor: Exactly. The Pharisees are also in our mind. Our egos don't like this teaching, fight against the work of Christ in our interior, our desires.

To elaborate on this teaching of the fishermen, I'd like to quote to you an excerpt from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, where he plays a bit on this teaching of fishers of men, but it is very insightful in terms of understanding what Jesus taught. So we have this image of the mountains upon which Nietzsche composed his book. So he says:

“Why sacrifice? I squander what is given to me, I―a squanderer with a thousand hands; how could I call that sacrificing?” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Meaning, giving knowledge to others. So we talk about sacrifice for humanity, which Nietzsche was familiar with, and the fact that he is teaching his disciples, he says “Well, I don't call this sacrifice that I am giving so much,” and he says, “like a squandered, I am with a thousand hands.” Meaning, “I give what I receive internally in the internal worlds, that I give to my disciples.” This is what Nietzsche is saying. So to have a thousand hands is the symbol of Avalokiteshvara, the Cosmic Christ in Buddhism who has literally a thousand arms.

"And when I desired honey, I merely desired bait and sweet mucus and mucilage, which even growling bears and queer, sullen, evil birds put out their tongues―the best bait, needed by hunters and fishermen." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What is the honey a symbol of? A symbol of alchemy, because the pollen of the flower is transformed, transmuted, into the sweetness of the soul. It is interesting. We know that the bee is a devolving creature that degenerated. Samael Aun Weor explains the history of the kingdom of the bees and the ants. But the bees, the fact that it is a degenerate creature and is able to create something so beautiful like honey, attests to the grace and virtue of this path. That as evil as we are, we can change. We can produce honey, and every day our body produces honey, the semen, that when you transmute it, is the wine of the alchemists.

Question: Because the bees fell?

Instructor: Yeah, we say that the race of humanity that devolved into bees, they fornicated, and they produce a very degenerated society, but that is another topic.

But the fact is that this honey is mucus and mucilage, that even queer, evil birds, and growling bears who are angry people, are attracted to it. They are people who get angry when you contradict them, but when they see how sweet the honey of the doctrine is, they can't resist. Their soul can't resist. So their ego is fighting against you, but, “Well, this is the way it is,” and people get mad at you for trying to teach them this. Also, evil, queer, sullen birds, meaning black magicians, even they can change. Give them honey. This is the real path. Then if they renounce their old ways, then even they will pull out their tongues: “Give me more.”

"For if the world is like a dark jungle and a garden of delight for all wild hunters, it strikes me even more, and so I prefer to think of it, as an abysmal, rich sea―a sea full of colorful fish and crabs, which even gods might covet, that for their sakes they would wish to become fishermen and net-throwers: so rich is the world in queer things, great and small. Especially the human world, the human sea: that is where I now cast my golden fishing rod and say: Open up, you human abyss!” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What is it that the gods might covet? The gods, like we said, “There is more joy for a sinner who repents than a thousand righteous ones who have no need for repentance.” So there are levels of realization involved. The gods covet, they feel love for those who are really ascending higher than them as a result of their work. The sea of life is the abysmal sea, the abyss in which the Gnostic seeks to catch fish.

"Open up and cast up to me your fish and glittering crabs! With my best bait I shall today bait the queerest human fish!” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In these studies, we meet all sorts of people. We are unique in these studies.

"My happiness itself I cast out far and wide, between sunrise, noon, and sunset, to see if many human fish might not learn to wriggle and wiggle from my happiness until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they must come up to my height―the most colorful abysmal groundlings, to the most sarcastic of all who fish for men. For that is what I am through and through: reeling, reeling in, raising up, raising, a raiser, cultivator, and disciplinarian, who once counseled himself, not for nothing: Become who you are!" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What is that in Hebrew? אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh. “He is the One Who becomes.” So: become who you are, meaning, your inner Kether who is inside you.

"Thus men may now come up to me; for I am still waiting for the sign that the time has come for my descent (from Tiphereth down); I still do not myself go under, as I must do, under the eyes of men. That is why I wait here, cunning and mocking on high mountains, neither impatient nor patient, rather as one who has forgotten patience too, because his “passion” is over… " ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

This refers to teachers. I mean, we teach for a long time, and then one learns to be patient and not to be impatient about students coming to be able to help them. But we fish and we wait for souls to bite and then they taste the honey. They say, “I want more,” so you raise them up through discipline, through practice, so that they can become who they are, become who you are: your inner Kether.

“And verily my eternal destiny does not hurry and press me, and it leaves me time for jests and sarcasm (and joking around and laughing having a good sense of humor), so that I could climb this high mountain today to catch fish. Has a man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even though what I want and do up here be folly (to people who don't know anything about esotericism), it is still better than if I became solemn down there from waiting, and green and yellow―a swaggering wrath-snorter from waiting, a holy, howling storm out of the mountains, an impatient one who shouts down into the valleys, ‘Listen or I shall whip you with the scourge of God!’” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Precisely all the people―the fanatics we are talking about. To fish for disciples on a mountain, that is what the initiates do―teaching and teaching and elevating their level of being, and seeking for others to rise up to their own intimate heights, their own Kether, to “become who you are.”

The Path of Yoga

We are going to speak about the path of yoga next. We have this image of Shiva meditating and a quote from Samael Aun Weor from The Revolution of Beelzebub where he explains how yoga is completely synthesized within Gnostic doctrine.

“All of the seven schools of Yoga are within Gnosis, yet they are in a synthesized and absolutely practical way.

“There is Tantric Hatha Yoga in the practices of the Maithuna (Sexual Magic). There is practical Raja Yoga in the work with the chakras. There is Jnana Yoga in our practices and mental disciplines which we have cultivated in secrecy for millions of years. We have Bhakti Yoga in our prayers and Rituals. We have Laya Yoga in our meditation and respiratory exercises. Samadhi exists in our practices with the Maithuna and during our deepest meditations. We live the path of Karma Yoga in our upright actions, in our upright thoughts, in our upright feelings, etc.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of Beelzebub

So notice how this quote synthesizes everything we discussed about the three brains: upright thought, feeling, and action―how prayer is Bhakti Yoga, the path of the mystic. Sexual magic is the path of the Gnostic. All this is integral, and yoga is essential to the Gnostic path, just as mysticism is to the other two.

We had it before in the image of Master Jesus in the wilderness tempted by the devil. That devil is our mind, our own animal ego, who is constantly trying to lure our attention down to Klipoth, to material things. In the gospels, he says, “Bow to me and I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world.” We have here a quote from John Milton's Paradise Regained―which John Milton is a great master. He composed Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and other classic works of English literature.

Question: Did he die young or…

Instructor: No, he was he was older. He was around 64 [66 years old] I think when he died, but he was blind. He went blind, a terrible karma he had to pay. He suffered a lot for it, but his poetry he dictated while he was blind―his great masterpieces near the end of his life, in which we are fortunate to have this literature.

In this image, we have Christ confronted by the devil, and how Christ always points upward, like the pentagram always facing up towards heaven. The quote I am going to read to you is when Satan is tempting him with all the kingdoms of the world, and how he will give them power in Malkuth if he follows him. But this is what Jesus says through John Milton:

“Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
The wise man’s cumbrance if not snare, more apt
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
What if with like aversion I reject
Riches and realms; yet not for that a crown,
Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns,
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights
To him that wears the regal diadem,
When on his shoulders each man’s burden lies;
For herein stands the office of a king,
His honor, virtue, merit and chief praise,
That for the public all this weight he bears.
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men or head-strong multitudes,
Subject himself to anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him which he serves.
But to guide nations in the way of truth
By saving doctrine, and from error lead
To know, and knowing worship God aright,
(meaning to really teach them this science that we are practicing, so that they can know God, not to rule physical kingdoms)
Is yet more kingly; this attracts the soul,
(like the honey, the mucilage that Nietzsche mentions)
Governs the inner man, the nobler part,
That other o’er the body only reigns,
And oft by force, which to a generous mind
So reigning can be no sincere delight.”
–John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book II: ll. 453-480

And that might be easier for me because I study a lot of English, but I suggest to study Milton. He is a great master. His literature is profound. He gave a very divine teaching.

The Stages of Meditation

In this image, this graphic, we have Jesus meditating following the path of yoga with the symbol of AUM above his head, which is the mantra of Chesed, the eternal. So yoga―or in Jnana Yoga, as we are going to explain in terms of meditation―really is constituted or practiced in this way. This quote comes from Igneous Rose by Samael Aun Weor:

“Oriental wisdom practices meditation in the following order:

Asana (posture of the body).
Pratyahara (thinking in nothing).
Dharana (concentration on only one thing).
Dhyana (profound meditation).
Samadhi (ecstasy).

“It is necessary to place the body in the most comfortable position (Asana).” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

With yoga, we don't need to perform the full lotus or half lotus if that is discomforting for our body. We can sit like Maitreya in Buddhism. He is the only Buddha-figure in Mahayana Buddhism that sits in a chair, western-style―whatever posture is comfortable for us to practice.

Comment: He said that those are good for people in most parts of eastern areas. But he said the position is the most comfortable for you.

Instructor: Right, because many people try meditating for years and they just spent twenty years trying to learn to sit with their body. They don't get anywhere with their mind. It is terrible.

Question: Same with sexual magic. Do you know how there are all these different positions given? Isn't it the same thing? Just whatever is most comfortable for that couple?

Instructor: Yes. So there are teachings of the Kama Sutra, which has a lot of degeneration in it, but there are postures that are beneficial. It is really a mixed book, I would say.

Comment: Yeah, well especially now. If you try to find that book now, it's pornographic.

Instructor: They add a lot of things, but there are certain postures that were not adulterated. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that text. But there are certain postures that Samael Aun Weor mentions in The Mystery of the Golden Flower which are beneficial for different body types.

Question: Can we still taste the energy?

Instructor: Yes. It also helps maintain one's strength and connection and prolong...

Question: Mystery of the Golden Flower?

Instructor: Yes, this text.

Question: I always heard you say how it benefits sitting upright (regarding meditation), because the spine is sitting upright, but my most comfortable position is laying in bed.

Instructor: Yes, so long as you can practice in the beginning, not necessarily falling asleep. I love lying and meditating on my back when I have a lot of energy. But if I am too tired, I know I am going to knock out so, I immediately sit down on a chair so it is easier.

Comment: Ok, yeah, because it's evident that I am falling asleep...

Instructor: So the solution is work with japa: mantra recitation or pranayama, something to give you energy. You can do runes before you sit to practice so that you have more willpower to sit and not let your body dominate you.

Comment: You have to be comfortable but the breath... It relaxes you, but some people hyperventilate. I found it's different for different people. It's a cycle, but it's small, but it is also deep and when it comes up and then concentrating on your heart, there are different ways of doing this. It helps me a lot and you don't go asleep.

Instructor: When you are praying, that is to work with the springs of devotion that Kempis mentioned, so that the storm in the mind and the turbulence of the waters are calm. So, asana in the beginning, we need to physically relax―any posture physically that's conducive for us to maintain our attention, but to be completely relaxed. So again, different postures for different people.

Comment: A candle works but also a diffuser. So you have frankincense. Frankincense really gets you in an elevated calm...

Instructor: If you don't like burning incense in your home, diffusers are excellent. So that can help you relax. I use a diffuser too. I like to use pine, or a company called Young Living, and one product called Thieves, which, if you don't necessarily want to burn incense in your home, you can use essential oils to clean the atmosphere through a diffuser.

Comment: On the incense, I did get it but the company burnt Frankincense granules. The company in the past, it was slow burning and it was clean. Now some of these that are coming in very fast burning and is stronger. So that is why I went with the diffuser. It is the same company, but whatever they are using, the charcoal, it just burns fast and strong.

Instructor: You want to find one that will burn long and gradually. Sometimes you have to do some shopping. All that will help to calm the body. It is preliminary.

Pratyahara is to not think about anything. For most people, the challenge is just finding a posture that's comfortable. But that's not even the beginning, really. The beginning of really entering concentration is to not think. Try not to think. That is the challenge. Don't let the intellect try to deliberate and speculate and think about other things.

In order to achieve concentration, which is to concentrate on only one thing, it doesn't mean that we have to have a mind, in the beginning, that is completely silent. There are degrees, like clarity in a storm, in which the clouds part for a moment and you can see the sun. It is an allegory for meditative states. Sometimes the storm is going on. You can see the storm, but the clouds open for a little bit and you have a sense of peace, a type of non-thought, a serenity of non-thought that Samael Aun Weor mentions.

Comment: When you feel calm here, in the heart, that will silence the mind at least for me. It is a lightness of heart. Not to have concentration. You know, to be still. None of that. It is a certain lightness in conjunction with the breath. Slowly when you get that conjoined, when you synthesize that, it seems like it silences the mind.

Instructor: And one we silence the mind, we need to concentrate on one thing. Focus on an object of meditation, whether it be a line from scripture, a book, a teaching we received, an experience we had, an image. There are many things we can focus on, or as we are going to explain while we are giving classes in our new place, we are going to talk about retrospective meditation. You know we are going to talk about retrospective meditation: to meditate on our day, to focus on the egos we wish to comprehend and to annihilate. So we are going to practice it diligently when we meet.

There are many things we can concentrate on in our practice. Dhyana is meditation, when we actually reflect on the content of the object of concentration we wish to understand. Meditation is when we receive new information, new insight.

Samadhi is when we are fully conscious and we unite with God. Samadhi is also comprehension. It is a spark of understanding, like a lightning bolt that suddenly, in meditation, we understand something in a way we never understood before, and the mind is shocked and silent. It is a spark, and then afterwards, usually what happens, the thunder clouds come and say, “No, I don't understand what happened. No, that was just your mind, your ego.” But you knew you experienced something objective. That is Samadhi, a minor degree. There are many levels, as many and variant as the dimensions in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah.

Question: So that is in the physical and that is also in the spiritual realms?

Instructor: Samadhi can happen any moment if we are really diligent in paying attention. For as al-Junayd said in a Sufi doctrine:

“…whoever does not establish awe of duty and vigilance in his relationship to God will not arrive at disclosure of the unseen (unveiling) or contemplation (witnessing) of the divine." ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism

To establish awe of duty is to meditate, to respect and venerate the tradition in which we are practicing, so that we can cultivate the exercises we wish to work with. To establish vigilance in our relationship to us and our Being, then we can attain unveiling where the mind, the illusions of the mind, are torn and we witness God.

Question: So to get that lightning, that sharp shock that you are talking about, is through meditation?

Instructor: Yes, that is how we develop that.

Comment: Because that is the only way I can leave my body. I have to have that lightning.

Instructor: You have to relax. Relax and develop comprehension of the body and your mental states. Mental states are more important.

Question: This can happen during the day too? That shock?

Instructor: Yes. When you are walking down the street and you are daydreaming and suddenly... I have had this instant where sometimes I am paying attention, but my mind is wandering and I am losing my focus. And so I get a shock like “wake up!” from my Being, just out of nowhere. Or I am just doing something completely trivial and then, getting shocked. It reminds me of a saying by Mansur al-Hallaj. He was a Muslim Christ. He said, “When God loves his disciple, he will use even his stray thoughts to bring him back to attention.” So he will address your thoughts like “You were just thinking about this and forgetting me.” “I'm sorry,” I say. “ I'm sorry that I disobeyed,” and then keep working. So in the daytime that is the type of Samadhi, a comprehension which is very alarming and provides awareness. It is a clear perception.

So:

“It is necessary to place the body in the most comfortable position (Asana).

“It is indispensable to blank the mind before concentrating (Pratyahara).

“It is urgent to know how to fix the mind on only one object (Dharana).

“Then, we profoundly reflect on the content of the object itself (Dhyana).

“Thus, through this way, we reach ecstasy (Samadhi).

“All of these esoteric disciplines of the mind must saturate our daily life.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

Like I mentioned to you, you can be walking on the street and your meditation should be when you are walking down the street. Everywhere we go, we need to be meditating, remembering God, so that insight comes spontaneously.

Question: What were those steps again? Relax, silence the mind...

Instructor: Yes. Asana is posture. Pratyahara is no thought. Dharana is concentration on one thing. Dhyana is meditation, when we reflect on the object of our concentration. Samadhi is ecstasy, comprehension.

Conclusion: The Seven Rays of Spiritual Evolution

So to conclude, there is the end of the quote from the book I mentioned in the beginning, from the book Igneous Rose. Samael Aun Weor explains how the three paths: the mystic, yogi, and the Gnostic help to develop our own spiritual idiosyncrasy, known as the seven cosmic rays. So this is what Samael Aun Weor mentioned in the beginning, which I am going to reiterate.

“The seven rays of cosmic evolution are synthesised in these three ways [the Mystical, Gnostic, and Yogic paths] that the Nazarene showed.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

There are seven mighty rays. Now I am stepping aside from “ways” and talking about the “rays.” In this image, we have the lamb with seven horns and seven eyes mentioned in the Book of Revelation, which symbolizes the energy of Christ that manifests in seven primary fashions, seven primary ways. Every time a new God emerges from the Absolute, a new Spirit unfolding down the Tree of Life, that monad or Spirit, that Being, expresses and enters into one of seven rays. These are influences, or idiosyncrasies in God, in Christ.

So there are seven, because seven is the number or law of cosmic organization and order, just as we know that there are seven main planets in alchemy, seven primary virtues, seven vices, which relates to these influences. I have a quote from Samael Aun Weor. He explains in his book The Seven Words:

“Each master belongs to a certain ray, for there are seven rays of cosmic evolution." ―Samael Aun Weor, The Divine Science: The Seven Words

And I am going to quote for you also the archangels that govern those rays. So each of us, our Being, belongs to one of the seven rays I am going to mention.

The Lunar Ray [Gabriel]
The Mercurian Ray [Raphael]
The Venusian Ray [Uriel]
The Solar Ray [Michael]
The Martian Ray [Samael]
The Jupiterian Ray [Zachariel]
The Saturnian Ray [Orifiel]

―Samael Aun Weor, The Divine Science: The Seven Words

I reiterate, these rays refer to qualities in our inner God that are unique to that ray and unique to us. There are certain predispositions and qualities that associate with these different rays, which we develop in ourselves by working with the three ways: the mystic, the Gnostic, and the yogi. Samael mentions that our own ray or spiritual influence is developed particular to us by how we practice mysticism, transmutation, Gnosticism, meditation, and yoga.

The Lunar Ray pertains to Gabriel relating to the Moon, to preconception, conception, fertility, growth, the tides, lunar influences, maternity, birth, growth. Those refer to the angels of the Lunar Ray which are governed by Gabriel. Yesod relates to Gabriel.

We have the Mercurian Ray, which relates to medicine, philosophy, science, governed by Raphael. So the angels of medicine who heal many sick patients in the internal planes belong follow the Angel Raphael, Mercurial science, hermetic science, philosophy.

The Venusian Ray is governed by the Angel Uriel, the arts, love, compassion, music, flowers, poetry, art, literature―things of that nature. The angels of that ray follow Uriel.

Question: Uriel, wasn't he assigned to Earth?

Instructor: Uriel relates to Venus, but Venus is the one who produces and blossoms and flowers in the Earth.

The Solar Ray relates to Michael, relating to high dignitaries, courts, supreme officials. The Solar Ray and the Martian Ray have a close relationship.

The Martian Ray relates to the police, karma, the law, severity, the warriors of Mars: the angels or Elohim that are the masters of strength. This ray is governed by Samael, the Angel Samael. So he is an angel of protection like Michael.

Michael also relates to power because the sphere Geburah in the Tree of Life is astrologically related to Mars, but also to the Sun. So Geburah, the angels of Mars and the Solar Ray, have a deep connection.

The ray of Jupiter relates to politics. So it comes to my attention the 14th Dalai Lama who I suspect probably belongs to this ray because he is very involved with politics. Gandhi and many other individuals. Even Jesus is said to have belonged to the ray of Jupiter, which is governed by Zachariel.

Question: Is that why there is a Z with the sign of ♃ Jupiter on top?

Instructor: It looks like a Z, yeah, because it is Zachariel. The Hebrew letter ז Zayin can be formed to look like the sign of ♃ Jupiter.

Now, the ray of Orifiel relate to the angels of death who are responsible for helping the souls after they disincarnate―also to properties, fortunes, anything related to mortuary science, death.

Question: Isn't Pluto in there somewhere?

Instructor: Pluto we say is the kingdom of death and relates to hell. So the inverted aspect of Saturn is that.

Here we are only speaking about the positive relationship. There is also seven demons related to the infernal aspect, which we conjure with the Conjuration of the Seven, by invoking these angels.

As it says in the Book of Revelation, how Christ manifests in these ways:

"And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.“ ―Revelations 5:6

So all of us belong to one of these rays.

Questions and Answers

Question: How do we find out which one we are from?

Instructor: Samael mentions one method. You raise your eyebrows. You count how many transverse lines you have over your forehead.

Comment: I have three.

Instructor: Technically that should say you are from the ray of Uriel, because one line relates to the lunar. Two lines relate to the Mercurian ray.

Question: Which that would be Saturn?

Instructor: No. Uriel is the arts.

Question: That would be Venus?

Instructor: Venus relates to three, the three lines. So the fourth ray, four lines relates to Michael. Five lines, the fifth ray relates to Samael. Six lines relates to Zachariel. And seven lines relates to Orifiel.

The problem is if we are old and if we have too many lines, it is hard to tell. Personally, the way that you figure out your ray is by learning to meditate and going out of your body, and then having experiences, because personally I have had many experiences about my ray and things about my Being that I learned from having Samadhis, in which Samael was teaching me, “This is your ray. This is where you belong. This is your path.” The way that I accomplished it, not that I am special, but you know, is just by practicing. By practicing and by being consistent. By practicing yoga, developing mysticism, and following the Gnostic path. It is how are you going to find the secret of your ray and what is the idiosyncrasy of your Being.

Question: Can you start working with how the planets are being aligned? And you know how astrology is. Can you work with that in some ways?

Instructor: We teach astrology too, to know how to read the stars to understand influences in our life. We have a book available called Practical Astrology, which teaches about that.

Now one thing I want to note about the seven rays is that it is eternal. It doesn't change. When your Being emerged from the Absolute and entered into the universe, that Being, that spark entered into one of the seven rays. It never leaves its ray.

Question: So life after life?

Instructor: Same ray. So even if we have had many different personalities under different zodiacal signs, even though we have developed in certain ways in different lifetimes, different cultures, our ray is eternal. It never changes. So you take it with you all the way to the Absolute and beyond. So there are some theosophists who are saying that a person can change their ray, and that is impossible.

Question: Is there a teaching within Gnosticism that if you are a male, you are always a male?

Instructor: One is not always a male and one isn't always a female. Because if you are observing your mind, you'll find that you have many feminine egos and male egos. So, I have observed that in myself, like, “Where did this come from? I am not a woman!” But meditating on that you can see that there are connections to past lives.

Question: So is there a belief in soul mate?

Instructor: Yes, and we say in Kabbalah that our soul mate is Geburah.

Question: So whatever your soul mate is, are you opposite no matter what lifetime you are in?

Instructor: Not necessarily, and that is a very serious karma. Tchaikovsky experienced that. His closest male friend was his soul mate. They couldn't be together, because to do that would have been a crime. So, he was a great master who suffered a lot because his soul mate, as he represented in Romeo and Juliet, he couldn't be with her because she was in a male body.

Question: What happens with the homosexuals then? How come there is no polarity there according to the occultists?

Instructor: They are just like leaves. A lot of them were like leaves tossed the wind, sadly. And many don't even consider changing.

Question: Is your soul mate the same in every single life, but you just have a different relationship?

Instructor: Soul mate?

Question: Yeah. If you are married to someone and that is your husband and wife by law, were they your person in every... maybe once they were your son or once they were this?...

Instructor: Possibly. The way to investigate that is to really speak to a master of the law of karma and they will tell you. I mean, if you are married to a certain person, that means that you probably know them for a long time. There's nothing new under the earth, but what is new under the earth is that by investigating, you will see, “Okay, who was this person in my past lives?” Different relationships maybe.

Question: When you say asking a master, you are talking about internally?

Instructor: Internally, yeah.

Question: I don't know how to ask this question. Like do you have one soul mate for the whole cycle of eternity and that is like your partner in life?

Instructor: Samael talks about soul mates in different levels. He talks about Geburah and Tiphereth as soul mates. He also talks about, in his case, the reason he fell was because he fell in love with a certain woman when he was a god already, and he fell, meaning he didn't control his sexual energy. He had sex with her and he fell. She was, you could say, the first woman he was with even before Litelantes, which was the wife he worked with in order to rise upwards. So there could be variation. It depends on karma.

Question: Wasn't he with other women after Litelantes?

Instructor: There was one woman he was with. He had certain partners before he married her and eventually after his wife Litelantes he had to practice with another woman. It is mentioned in his life's story.

Question: So I guess that makes sense.

Instructor: What matters is this: be with a person your God wants you to be with and follow your Being. Nothing else matters. So your God will tell you to be with a certain person that you love. Follow your heart and follow your inner God, the will of your Being. Sometimes, you know, karma is very painful, and many people may get into relationships and they break up, even if they are in a Gnostic relationship. It could be very heartbreaking, but the thing is to follow the will of your God. No matter what, you will be fine. So the one who joins together in marriages and dissolves marriages is the Lord, and we have to always obey the Lord. Pray and hope that we are always with a certain person in our life. If both partners are working seriously and are sacrificing and really working in a marriage, then there could be change, and there can be solidarity and the union is even stronger, depending on the work of the couple.

Are there any other questions?

Question: I remember you showing me your charm and I was looking for something similar. I don't know, but there is one charm that was just like this and it was made out of copper. But it also said Wiccan on it. So again, my intuition told me no, but I still purchased it and I'll be very honest, it it seemed to harm me more than help me, so I stopped wearing it.

Instructor: So the thing is, if you are dubious about the place you buy things, don't buy them from there necessarily. For places like that, I don't buy amulets, because those get charged from the atmosphere of the place they are in. There are other places you can get the Gnostic pentagram and there is a method to consecrate it as we give in the book The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled in which you can bless any pentagram you have such as this one made of silver.

Question: There is nothing bad if it's copper, but for some reason that told me something.

Instructor: Copper is fine, but typically you want to get a pentagram that has seven metals. Because the seven metals relate to the seven nervous systems of the seven planets. For Mercury, there is quicksilver and then the Venusian ray relates to copper. Gold relates to the Sun, Michael. Iron relates to Samael, the fifth ray, Mars. Tin relates to Jupiter. And then lead relates to Orifiel, the ray of death.

Question: So your pentagram has all of those?

Instructor: It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a big thing.

Question: Is there any store in Chicago?

Instructor: I know people I can get it from so I can look into that and try to get some pentagrams for sale.

Question: But you are also saying there is another process after that?

Instructor: Yes, so in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, you can consecrate a pentagram, an amulet, and it is in the very beginning of that book, the Gnostic Bible, that explains it in detail.

Question: Did you say it had lead in that?

Instructor: Yes, Saturn. The seven metals relate to the seven rays. So each metal is pertinent to one of the angels. Now, I had an experience internally where my Being told me, “The name Samael is like a metal,” and I reflected on that and, well, iron relates to Samael. Iron is like the nervous system of the planet Mars. So if you go to Mars, just like the Earth, or if go to Saturn, they are just like the Earth, but different constitutions. Mars is red because of the iron content that has predominance. It is the nervous system of the planet Mars.

Earth is a mixture, but the different planets relate to the different metals because that's the primary metal that relates, physically, to that planet, but also to the energies of Christ manifested through those worlds.

Each archangel is a life force of a planet. All of us are connected to one of the rays, to one of the angels.

The thing is to meditate and to discover, “What is our ray?” and to be guided internally. When you learn certain things about your ray, some people ask me, “Why is it important to know my ray?” Well, I ask, “Well, why is it important to know about know your name, your address, your credit card numbers, your social security number?”―things that you consider important that make things work physically. So spiritually speaking, when you know your ray, it is going to tell you about how to work spiritually as it relates to your inner divinity.

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The Energy of the Consciousness

1/27/2020

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Today we are going to discuss more in depth the nature of energy in relation with the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, and how the energies of our psychology, of our mentality, of our spirit, in different gradations, how they effect and influence conscious perception. So we are going to discuss what consciousness is. We discussed the science of consciousness, meaning: the methodology for awakening spiritual perception. Today we are going to talk about how energy plays a role, in its different levels, to spiritual awakening.

In this image we have Ptah, who is an Egyptian god. His body is made of gold. We have transposed the image of the Tree of Life in this graphic over this great figure. Ptah relates to Patar, which is the “Father.” We chose this image precisely because, to emphasize a certain point, that the purpose of these studies is to develop the solar human being, made into the image of the Christ, the Christ energy, the Christ force.

So, a real Hu-Man being, is a manas, a mind, a man (whether man or woman) united with Hum, which is wind, which is the spirit, which is רוּחַ Ruach, which is the breath, which is God. So a human being that is solar in nature, has fully developed the ten sephiroth of the Tree of Life, which is the map of our consciousness and different gradations of energy.

A solar human being is one who has incarnated the Christ energy, and has manifested that force within the different sephiroth. Sephiroth means "sphere" or better said, "emanations,” emanations of consciousness, expressions of God, a map of our cosmos but also our inner constitution.

Ptah, the Father, is the ten sephiroth fully realized within us. The Father is an energy, is a force, and if we wish to understand what consciousness is, we need to deeply understand the nature of energy.

Many people conflate energy with consciousness, and do not understand that there is a distinction.

Also, in relation to this topic of the energies of the consciousness, we are going to explain the different paths that have existed in tradition, in order to develop specific types of energy. We are going to discuss specifically the paths of the fakir, the monk, the yogi, and the Gnostic.

We explained that the consciousness is a type of energy. It is a type of force, and when we discuss this energy we talk about the Tree of Life. This is a map of the human being. We have placed this graphic, in the next slide, to discuss the different gradations of matter, energy and perception. Consciousness is a force. It is a spiritual intelligence that is markedly different from the common and current everyday perception that we have. Specifically, it is not mind. Consciousness is not thought, although thought is a type of energy. Consciousness is not emotion. It is not desire, craving, aversion: these relate to the heart. The consciousness is not emotional energy. The consciousness is neither sensation in the body, meaning it is not related to our mechanical or vital energy.

To explain in clarity, we are going to talk about seven types of energy, and how they relate to consciousness, and how we need to use these forces in order to awaken our consciousness within the Being, within the Christ force.

Consciousness and the Sephiroth

Above in this tree, we have the top triangle. You notice in this image of the Tree of Life of the Kabbalists that we have three triangles. Above is the triangle of the Logos, which in the center-top of the pillar, we have Kether, which is the Father, or Patar. We have on the right Chokmah, the Christ, the Son. To the left we have on the top of the left pillar of the Tree of Life, we have Binah, which is the Holy Spirit.

Christ is a force, is an energy we need to develop. In order to understand what Christ is, we need to understand the lower seven sephiroth. Without a knowledge of how we function in this physical plane, which is Malkuth, at the bottom of the tree, we cannot even begin to understand how vital energy works, how emotional energy works, how the mind, our willpower, our consciousness and our spirit work.

To understand Christ, we need to understand how Christ acts in us through different forces, different energies. So Kether means "Crown.” It is the supreme energy of the lord. As we have mentioned in other lectures, Christ comes from the Greek Khrestos, which means "fire," the Greek god of flames. On the right we have Chokmah, the Son. Chokmah means "Wisdom," and it is interesting in relation to this topic, on the nature of perception, wisdom means “the power to perceive.” This is also the meaning of the Hindu name Vishnu, which means “he who penetrates” within every atom of the cosmos. Then Binah means "Understanding," the Holy Spirit, or we could say Jehovah Elohim, in the Bible.

We have on the right, the seven sephiroth counting from the bottom of the tree. So sephiroth is plural for "emanations," sephirah is singular―a sphere of consciousness and of energy. On the right we have the Spirit, which is our Inner Being, our Inner Buddha, and when we perform the prayer of the Lord, the Pater Noster, we are also praying to our Spirit, which is the spiritual energy of the Being within.

To his left we have the consciousness, which is the sixth sphere counting from the bottom of the tree. It is a conscious energy, and this is an energy that most deeply concerns us, because it is the consciousness we seek to awaken and to develop fully within ourselves.

Now, beneath the consciousness we have willpower, relating to Tiphereth, the human soul, the human mind, the superior manas, superior mind. The Hebrew terms for this are Chesed for the Spirit, Geburah for the consciousness, Tiphereth for the human soul, or willpower.

Willpower is in the center of the Tree of Life because our will can either follow the consciousness, from the Being above, or can descend down and follow the animal mind, the ego, desire.

We refer to the next four sephiroth below as the lower quaternary, or the four bodies of sin. So in our previous lecture we discussed the nature of mind and solar bodies, and how each of these spheres is not only a type of energy, but a type of matter, and we talked about the different bodies related to the Tree of Life.

We could say with Chesed is the spiritual body, or spiritual energy. With the consciousness there is the body of consciousness, or conscious energy. In the middle we have the body of willpower, the causal body, or the energy of volition. Beneath that we have four lower bodies, four lower vehicles through which our consciousness can express.

In the physical plane we have to understand that typically these four bodies express through our anatomy, which we are going to be discussing. In the bottom right we have, in Hebrew it is Netzach, which means "Victory," and this is the mental body, or the energy of the mind, mental force.

To the left we have Hod, the third sphere from the bottom, which is "Glory," and as you remember from the Prayer of the Lord, "Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory." Glory is Hod.

The power of God is the vital energy, which is the second sphere from the bottom. Again, the bottom left is Hod, which is emotional energy, psychic energy, the energy of the psyche. Beneath that in the very center of the tree near the bottom is the foundation, Yesod, the vital energy, which as we are going to explain is essential to actualizing the power of Christ within our interior.

Beneath that is Malkuth, the physical body. Malkuth in Hebrew means "Kingdom," and again Yesod is "Foundation."

When we say in the Prayer of the Lord, "Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory," we are referring to Malkuth, the “Kingdom,” the "Power" of Yesod, the sexual force, and the "Glory" which is the astral vehicle, or better said the solar astral body, which we need to develop in sexual magic.

These are gradations of different bodies in which the soul can act, in which the energies of the Lord can manifest. Specifically, in the same way that a vehicle drives with fuel, so to do these vehicles function in accordance with the appropriate energies within them. Therefore, if we want to know these vehicles within our interior, we need to know about these energies, and we need to know about what consciousness is.

As you can see from this glyph, the consciousness, the sixth sphere from the bottom, is neither willpower, volition. Neither is it mental energy. Nor is it emotional force, desire, craving, aversion within the heart. Neither is it vital force. Neither is it our physicality, mechanical energy. Consciousness is the ability to perceive, and extends beyond mind, emotions and sensation, relating to, we can say, the mental body, which correlates to our physical brain. Neither is the consciousness limited to the emotional body, relating to our heart. Neither does sensation, relating to our physicality, our motor center, relating to sex―that is also not consciousness.

Question: Can you give me an example of consciousness?

Instructor: Consciousness is what occurs before we even think, before we even feel, before we experience sensation. For instance, if you are examining your mind, you will find there is a constant fluctuation of thought, of emotions and sensations. The very fact that you are observing this fact in yourself, is demonstrating a type of consciousness, to a minor degree. It needs to develop.

What will deepen that perception is by working precisely with the energies we are going to be explaining. Consciousness is the ability to perceive. An example is, if you are observing yourself, different thoughts emerge, different emotions, and we experience different sensations. We are not those elements. We are not those phenomena that we experience. We are neither mind. We are neither emotion. We are neither sensation, but the ability to perceive is something very distinct. It extends far beyond what we commonly experience.

Usually in our day we are identified with our thoughts, our preoccupations, our projects in the mind. Also, we have certain expectations. We feel happiness, joy or pain in our heart, and we experience sensations when we eat, when we follow our everyday activities.

Question: So with the fifth sphere, which is will, correct?

Instructor: Yes

Question: As you live your life, and utilize that willpower, it helps with your perception as you observe your defects and the different things about you?

Instructor: Good question, we are going to be explaining that, precisely.

Consciousness needs to control the lower sephiroth, so we cannot have our mind independent from consciousness, doing its own thing. That is typically what is our common experience. Our mind is always thinking, projecting, theorizing, debating, arguing, even if towards ourselves and our mind. It never follows a discipline. What we need is the consciousness to control the mind, precisely through our own willpower. Again, our will is our intention, whether we want to follow our being, the consciousness above, or if we follow animal will, which is ego, the animal intellect, or our emotions, or identifying with sensation in the body.

Consciousness, as I said, is the ability to perceive, and we need to, as a consciousness, control the lower sephiroth, the mind, the emotions, our vital energies precisely through willpower.

Question: So could consciousness also be when you know that you are doing something wrong, you are perceiving and knowing that you are doing something wrong, you are observing yourself doing something wrong, but you are still doing it, but that consciousness knows when you are doing something wrong as opposed to when you are doing something right?

Instructor: Yes, and that is exactly symbolized by Jiminy Cricket, in Pinocchio, where the cricket is telling him "Don't do that!" Pinocchio's mind, his mental body, is telling him "No, you should follow your desires and do whatever you want."

Question: So the cricket is the consciousness?

Instructor: It is the consciousness, and also it is very small. It needs to be developed. Pinocchio again is from the Tuscan language, Pinocchio, "pine tree" or "pine seed," a seed that can become a Tree of Life, which is the Kabbalah, עֵץ הַחַיִּים Otz Chayim [literally: Tree of Lives]. We need to follow our consciousness, our own Jiminy Cricket, in order to enter the path. We need to understand that consciousness, again, is not these lower energies. These are energies that can be used by consciousness, if we are disciplined, if we use our willpower.

Question: Going back to that question that he just asked, let us just say your will tells you, "You shouldn't do this," you decide not to, but deep down inside you wanted to. How do you go, what is happening to you as an individual, where I decide not to do the action, but I wanted to?

Instructor: That is what Paul of Tarsus referred to in the Epistles. He said, "That which I want to do, I do not, and that which I do, I should not" (Romans 7:15). I cannot paraphrase it word for word, but he is explaining that if we do not follow the will of our consciousness, we suffer the consequences. We experience the negative effects of our actions.

Our willpower, every time it follows the consciousness, if we act according to the will of the Being and not our own self will, we can start to develop consciousness.

Question: Doesn't it get a little confusing though, because can't you also have egos that tell you something is wrong? You know what I mean? Can't guilt also come from an ego that is dressed up as if it were...

Instructor: The only way to know is to observe. The only way to know is to awaken, to know the difference between what is good, meaning an ego that wants to do good things, but is selfish, and a mind that only wants to do evil. So, we need to awaken the psyche, the consciousness, in order to differentiate.

Question: Through meditation?

Instructor: Through meditation.

Samael Aun Weor explains how consciousness cannot be awakened exclusively by developing the energies below. What we mean by exclusively is, with specific focus and intention to develop these forces through certain practices, which we are going to explain in relation to the paths of the fakir, the monk and the yogi.

Samael Aun Weor explains in The Great Rebellion, the requisite for developing consciousness, in relation to these energies:

"No matter how much we might increase our strictly mechanical energy, we will never awaken consciousness.

“No matter how much we might increase the vital forces within our own organism, we will never awaken consciousness.

“Many psychological processes take place within us without any intervention from the consciousness.

“However great the disciplines of the mind might be, mental energy can never achieve the awakening of the diverse functions of the consciousness.

“Even if our willpower is multiplied infinitely, it can never bring about the awakening of the consciousness.

“All these types of energy are graded into different levels and dimensions, which have nothing to do with the consciousness.

“Consciousness can only be awakened through conscious work and upright efforts." ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion

No matter how much we may control our physical body, choosing what we eat in our diet, that will never awaken our perception. Even if we perform a lot of mantra and pranayama, conserving our energies, if we do not know how to work with our own perception, by working with our consciousness, then that vital energy cannot be used for the awakening of the consciousness. Even if we are very devoted in our heart, we pray, we go to church, we develop the emotional energies of our emotional center, that will not awaken the consciousness, exclusively. Even if we have studied many books, read vast amounts of literature, and have tremendous discipline with our mind, the way we study, that will never awaken the consciousness. Even if our will, if we develop willpower by dominating our body, which we are going to explain in relation to the path of the fakir, that willpower alone cannot awaken consciousness. Only conscious perception, work within itself by the pressure of the Spirit, can the consciousness awaken.

Do not mistake that, by this quote, the consciousness can awaken without these energies below. That is not the meaning of the statement. Conscious works implies controlling and developing all the energies of our psyche below, in harmony, in union. If we just develop our mechanical energy alone, we cannot awaken; the same thing with vital force, emotional energy or psychic energy related with the astral body, mental force, willpower. These things alone do not awaken the consciousness. Only the consciousness that is disciplined through meditation, by learning to perceive through self-observation, can control the lower energies below, and thereby use them for the awakening of the consciousness.

Energy and the Three Brains

So these energies of the Tree of Life relate to what we call three brains. Some people might be surprised to think that the human being is actually three-brained, instead of one-brained. We have to understand that a brain is a center for physiological and psychological activity. It is a center for action, in which we can process different elements of our psyche, but also our body.

We talk about three brains in relation to the Tree of Life, and this Tree of Life you can see, can be transposed upon the human being in this image. The image of the Kabbalah, the three sephiroth above, relate to the head, relate to what we call the intellectual brain, which is where we process thought: thesis, antithesis, ideas, concepts, projects.

The triangle beneath in the center, which is the triangle of the Spirit, relates to the heart, or the emotional brain, which is where we process desire, craving, aversion, sentiments of the heart, attachment of an emotional nature.

Then the third triangle, near the bottom of the tree, relates to the motor-instinctive-sexual brain. That is a brain that processes all of our movement within our body, our instinct and sexuality.

So a brain, again, is a center for activity, like a machine. As a machine, they process energies, that we need to understand in relation to our body. The way to overcome attachment and to understand how to overcome craving, aversion, relating to our three brains, we need to study our three brains. This is the art of self-observation.

All of our likes and dislikes are processed through these brains. We like certain foods; we dislike certain foods. We like certain people; we dislike certain people. We like certain concepts; we dislike others. The three brains are caught within this duality: like, dislike; craving, aversion; and they process this in accordance with energy.

We say mental energy relates to the intellectual brain, emotional energy relates to the emotional brain and vital energy relates to the motor-instinctive-sexual brain.

The vital force pertains to how our physicality functions. Without the vital energy we physically cannot exist. We would not have biochemistry within our organism. We would not have metabolism, catabolism, digestion, the breaking down of fats, and all the chemical processes in our body. The physical body operates precisely due to the vital energy, the vital force.

You will also notice that this image has three Hebrew letters, and pertain to the different energies of the Tree of Life, which are very important to understand in relation to the energies of our psyche.

Question: What letter is that in the motor?

Instructor: The motor center is מ Mem. Above in the brain we have א Aleph, the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. ש Shin, which is the twenty-first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, relates to the heart. מ Mem is the thirteenth letter, and relates to the waters. So א Aleph literally means "wind, breath."

Question: Does the letter ש Shin have any relation to the trident?

Instructor: Yes, the ש Shin is fire, the three primary forces of God. ש Shin is the flames of the heart, the emotional energy, which comes down from the Tree of Life. Notice that we can transpose the top three spheres of the Tree of Life, as well as the three triangles of the Tree of Life to our three brains.

א Aleph relates to the Father, related to our intellectual brain. The energies of God, when they enter our physical organism, they are channeled in specific ways, in order to grant us the ability to exist in this physical plane. The power or the energies of the Father, enter into the intellectual brain in order to grant us the capacity to do the spiritual work. It encompasses the processes of mental energy. Unfortunately, in us our mental energy is used in an egotistical way, whether through the projection of negative habits, like even pornography or filthiness in the mind. That mental energy is abused.

The power of ש Shin relates to Chokmah, the Christ. That sphere, that sephirah relates to the heart, because we have Christ, the Son, in the heart. It relates to the fires of the emotional center, which unfortunately in us is abused through hatred, through pride, through vanity, and instead, we need to develop the energy of the heart with the purity of Christ within, the purity of the Being.

מ Mem relates to the Holy Spirit, which is precisely the sexual energy, the waters of life. We get the word מים mayim, which begins and ends with מם Mem, related to the motor-instinctive-sexual brain. מ Mem, the waters, is precisely the vital energy we can use to balance the other centers, when we transmute that force, when we work with that energy precisely through either a matrimony, or through the sexual transmutation we teach.

As I mentioned that these energies relate to the three brains, we state this with the emphasis that in order to awaken spiritually, we need to conserve these forces. We need to use these energies in accordance with the will of the Being. So the mind, the primordial energy of א Aleph, the Father, needs to be used for the Being. Typically in us, we abuse it, and those who squander the energy of the mind, the intellectual brain, and who do not develop spiritually, using their mind for spiritual purposes, they end up insane. Individuals who abuse the mind either develop dementia, schizophrenia, delusional disorders, many types of psychological or mental ailments. When those energies are exhausted, those people become mentally sick.

Likewise with the different brains: if there is no energy in those brains, the car cannot run. So if the emotional energy is exhausted, such as with many actors or actresses, who abuse the emotional brain, they in turn develop many emotional sicknesses, sometimes manic depressive disorder, bipolar, diseases related to the heart.

Then related to the sexual brain, the motor-instinctive centers, those who fornicate, meaning: ejaculate the waters of life, develop many illnesses like cancer, which are incurable, because these are crimes against the Holy Spirit. You remember from the Gospel, "the sins against the Son may be forgiven," relating to the emotional brain, "but the sins against the Holy Ghost are not forgivable," meaning they have to be paid with pain. All of us have, we could say, killed the white swan of Wagner's opera Parsifal. The beautiful swan that is the Holy Ghost, the energy of the Lord, which manifests in the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, within our sexual center as מים mayim, as water.

It is important to know that we study these energies so that we can develop consciousness. The consciousness cannot manifest within the three brains if we are exhausting our energies everyday. If we use our mental, intellectual brain, our mental center too often, we incapacitate our ability to express God through superior concepts, superior understanding related to the Being. Likewise if we abuse the heart we then in turn destroy our ability to experience positive spiritual emotion, related to Christ, the Son. If we abuse our sexual center through fornication, meaning the ejaculation of the waters of life, then we develop many sicknesses. Those also who abuse the motor brain, such as through too many sports, they end up paraplegic, unable to walk, they destroy their capacity to move physically. So that also relates to the motor-instinctive-sexual brain. Or even boxers, they abuse their instinctual center, because they are always fighting.

Question: So we are supposed to keep a nice balance of the three?

Instructor: Exactly.

Question: So take for instance, someone who, the emotional state is worried about something. You could go ahead and balance it out with the motor by going to work out...

Instructor: Yes.

Question: Which will in turn help out the consciousness, correct?

Instructor: Yes, so we want to balance these three brains. If we are using one brain too much, we need to balance those centers by performing other activities, as you mentioned. If we have no energy, we cannot perceive, meaning, if we fail to conserve the forces of our three brains, then we cannot control those elements within us. If we have energy, we can control it with our perception. That entails working with self-observation, self-remembering.

The Four Spiritual Paths

As I explained, there are certain illnesses related to the three brains, but also there are certain paths which exclusively develop one of these three brains at the exclusion of the others. These are the paths that I am going to explain to you, related to the fakir, the monk, the yogi and the last, which is the Gnostic. It is important to understand the energies of the three brains, the energies of our mind, of our perception, because without understanding how these energies work in us, we cannot fully develop our potential as a consciousness.

There are those in this world who only develop, we could say, their willpower, who develop their ability to control the sensations and instincts of the body, the impulses of pain and pleasure. Individuals who dominate their physical body in a very extreme way, we call them fakirs. Individuals who, like in this image in the next graphic, sleep on a bed of nails, or like certain Sufi sects which have degenerated, they impale themselves with swords to show their ability to heal, and supposedly the power of God. This is a type of extremism which we do not recommend. Fakir literally means "poor person."

I am going to explain to you these three paths in accordance with the wisdom of a certain German initiate, a man who at one point was not an initiate [because he fell]. His name was Friedrich Nietzsche. He explained in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, about the Persian prophet, or Iranian prophet, how these three paths have existed in the world, and how we need to be educated about these paths, so that we understand: how do we function in our three brains? How do we develop our three brains? How do we develop these energies within us, so that we can walk the path of the Gnostic?

You are going to find that his style is very, you could say, condemnatory towards these practices, and he is justified because these three paths do not fully develop the potential of God within.

The Path of the Fakir

So the path of the fakir only develops the motor-instinctive brain, we can say, the motor center, the ability to control pain and pleasure. Unfortunately this path, as Nietzsche is going to explain, does not create the soul. We talked about previously in a lecture called The Solar Bodies and Bodhichitta, how the solar vehicles, as expressions of the Lord, the Being, can only be created through sexual magic, through the perfect matrimony. Fakirs seek to develop their willpower thinking it is going to take them to God, but they are ignorant, because even though one develops willpower infinitely, if one does not work with the consciousness, and also the vital sexual energy, one cannot create the solar body of causal will.

Nietzsche says the following to these fanatics of Fakirism:

"I want to speak to the despisers of the body. It is their respect that begets their contempt." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”

So when he is talking about respect, he means these fakirs they have a respect for tradition, and their respect for spiritual things does beget their contempt of their own body.

"What is it that created respect and contempt and worth and will? The creative self created respect and contempt; it created pleasure and pain. The creative body created the spirit as a hand for its will." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”

What is this creative self? It is our Inner Buddha, the Being who creates within us, if we know the science. The Being created our longings and respect for these type of teachings, and our own contempt, we could say, of that which is filthy and degenerate. It also created pleasure and pain, because those energies manifest in our physical body and we experience sensation through the vital force, as an emanation of the Spirit down the Tree of Life.

“The creative body created the spirit as a hand for its will.” So what is this creative body? It is our physical body. We know we have the Kundalini force within our coccyx, and the body needs to create spiritually. We need to create the spirit within us, if we know the science; if we know the method. So he is telling these fakirs, "You want to develop your willpower and create your solar body of will, but you do not work with sexual magic. You do not know how to create with your own body, because you disrespect your body, your temple, for God [the Superhuman]."

"Even in your folly and contempt, you despisers of the body, you serve your self. I say unto you: your self wants to die and turns away from life. It is no longer capable of what it would do above all else: to create beyond itself. That is what it would do above all else, that is its fervent wish." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”

The Being wants to create the solar bodies, but that individual needs to work in alchemy. So these fakirs, because they do not want to get married, they think that the physical body, by dominating with their own willpower, is going to create the soul. They fail in their development. In fact, they do not get anywhere. So he is saying that “your Being wants you to do this above all else,” to die in your defects in meditation, through comprehension, and “it wants to create beyond itself,” create the solar vehicles, which are bodies in which the energies of Christ can manifest, as we have mentioned in the previous lecture.

"But now it is too late for it to do this: so your self wants to go under, O despisers of the body. Your self wants to go under, and that is why you have become despisers of the body! For you are no longer able to create beyond yourselves." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”

So he is saying, their Inner Being wants them to go under, meaning, as he mentions elsewhere in this text, the Being wants the soul to die in those egos that we all carry within, so that the Being can create within. Because they are no longer able to create through sexual alchemy, they do not want to get married, the Being is not able to create in them. They develop willpower over their body, but they do not awaken anything.

"And that is why you are angry with life and the earth. An unconscious envy speaks out of the squint-eyed glance of your contempt." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”

What is the Earth that he repeatedly mentions? It is Malkuth, in Kabbalah, the physical body. He says they despise the physical body. They do not use the physical body as it should be used, through purity, through sexual magic.

"I shall not go your way, O despisers of the body! You are no bridge to the Superman!" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”

What is the Superman? It is Nietzsche's term for the Christ-man. Nietzsche never used the term Christ, but he talked about the Superman, or we could say―as we mentioned in the beginning of the lecture―Ptah, the solar man, in the image of the solar bodies created from the work with alchemy.

The Path of the Monk

He not only condemns the fakirs, but he also condemns many of the monks. This also deserves analysis.

Here he talks about the path of the monk. We have an image of a somber, solemn individual in black, in the next slide. You could say that Nietzsche had the most antagonism for the priests of his time, and justifiably so, because these priests are devoted with their heart to God, but sadly they do not know God. The God they believe in is dead―to quote Nietzsche, this is why he says very famously "God is dead," and many atheists say, "Oh Nietzsche is a prophet for us, because he does not believe in God." He did not say that. He said "God is dead," meaning the Judeo-Christian God that most people worship in their heart, is false, does not exist.

He says elsewhere, "God is dead, now we want the Superman to live." In a lecture by Samael Aun Weor, someone asked him, "Do you believe in the Christ that people worship in these times?" and he said "No," because people worship an effeminate, castrated, weak Christ―an effeminate figure that is stripped of any sexuality. The teachings of his work in alchemy were stripped from the Bible. So Samael said, "We do not believe in that Christ. We follow the rebel Christ, the Red Christ, the Warrior of Mars, who works in alchemy."

Nietzsche even said in one of his books that he is the anti-Christ. Samael Aun Weor said nearly the same thing: how the Gnostics follow the Superman, not the dead statue of Christ that is so adored by the fanatics of religion.

Question: So they are taking his words in their own view?

Instructor: Yes, because in this book, it is a very esoteric book, and we are going to show you especially towards the end...

Question: What is the name of the book?

Instructor: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and you are going to see in the end one of the slides that I have, you will see exactly what he knew, and how irrefutable it is.

So he talks about the path of the monk, and how devotion by itself does not take one to God, or towards the Being, or the Superman:

"Behold these huts which these priests built! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves. Oh, that falsified light! That musty air! Here the soul is not allowed to soar to its height. For thus their faith commands, ‘Crawl up the stairs on your knees, ye sinners!’

“Verily, rather would I see even the shameless than the contorted eyes of their shame and devotion! Who created for themselves such caves and stairways of repentance? Was it not such as wanted to hide themselves and were ashamed before the pure sky?" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

What is that pure sky? That pure sky is the Being, because if you awaken in the internal worlds, and any master shows you your level of Being, they show the Being through the sky. If you see a cloudy sky in the internal worlds, it means that you are asleep, that there is darkness in your mind. But when the clouds are clear and the sky is reflecting the heavens, the galaxies, the stars, that means that you are awakening. The Being relates to the stars. So the pure sky is relating to God, the purity of the psyche, the purity of א Aleph―again the air, the wind, the breath―relating to the Father, Patar.

"And only when the pure sky again looks through broken ceilings and down upon grass and red poppies near broken walls, will I again turn my heart to the abodes of this god." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

So meaning, when all the broken remnants of their doctrines which are empty of any spiritual meaning, when they are finally exposed by the Spirit, maybe I will look at their teachings again.

"They have called ‘God’ what was contrary to them and gave them pain; and verily, there was much of the heroic in their adoration. And they did not know how to love their god except by crucifying man." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

Just look at the crusades, their devotion―they are developing the heart and they are praying and meanwhile they are killing other human beings, supposedly in the name of God.

"As corpses they meant to live; in black they decked out their corpses; out of their speech, too, I still smell the bad odor of death chambers." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

So why are they dead? They are the living dead that the Bible talks about. They are corpses because they do not work in transmutation. They do not work with the power of חַיָה Chaiah, the life of the body.

"And whoever lives near them lives near black ponds out of which an ominous frog sings its song with sweet melancholy. They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer: and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

The redeemer that people believe in does not exist. They believe in, as I said, a "castrated Christ," without any of the sexual teachings manifested in them. So truly, the disciples would have to look more redeemed, like they are actually making any progress, but they are not.

"Naked would I see them: for only beauty should preach repentance." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

So notice that Nietzsche did not reject repentance outright. He says, "Naked would I see them," meaning without their false beliefs of the heart. Naked and innocent, like in the Garden of Eden, “for only beauty should preach repentance." “Beauty” in Kabbalah is תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, which is the human soul, which is willpower, united with God. So only that type of will that follows the Being should preach repentance.

"But who would be persuaded by this muffled melancholy? Verily, their redeemers themselves did not come out of freedom and the seventh heaven of freedom. Verily, they themselves have never walked on the carpets of knowledge." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

What does it mean to walk on the carpets of knowledge? To walk the path of Gnosis, the Gnostic path.

Question: Consciousness?

Instructor: Yes.

"Of gaps was the spirit of these redeemers made up; but into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Priests”

What does this mean? "Of gaps of knowledge was the spirit of these redeemers made up." Meaning: the parts of the Bible they can’t explain, they put their delusion in it, and they call that God, meanwhile they have no experience. They develop a lot of devotion, the energies of the heart through prayer, but they do not walk on the path of knowledge, Gnosis. In Hebrew it is דעת Daath: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The Path of the Yogi

Lastly Nietzsche talks about the path of the yogi. Here we have in the next slide, an individual performing austerities in the wilderness. We see him covered in soot and he is dirty, with a thick beard and a holy appearance.

The path of the yogi is the development of the mind. The fakir develops the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, or the motor brain specifically, by developing willpower, to control mechanical forces within the body. The path of the monk only develops the heart, the emotional energies through prayer. The path of the yogi exclusively develops the mind, but also the vital energy. But understand that vital energy and mental energy by themselves do not awaken consciousness. Only conscious work does, by being disciplined in our consciousness, by following the impulses of our Being.

Nietzsche makes fun of and really criticizes the yogis too, who think they are very holy, living in the woods, eating grapes and berries, seeds and thistles, but they do not get anywhere.

Nietzsche says the following about the yogis:

"One who was sublime I saw today, one who was solemn, an ascetic of the spirit; oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness! With a swelled chest and like one who holds in his breath..." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Those Who Are Sublime”

Meaning: performing pranayama.

"…he stood there, the sublime one, silent, decked out with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn garments; many thorns too adorned him― yet I saw no rose." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Those Who Are Sublime”

What is the sublime one? Somebody who practices sublimation, who even by practicing pranayama, working with vital energy, tries to control the mind. But to live in the woods, abandoned from society is, we say, a mistaken way [we now live in the Age of Aquarius, an era of confraternity and cooperation, not isolation from humanity]. So we see this individual, he is covered with soot and dirt thinking he is attaining great realizations, studying the Vedas, the scriptures, studying very diligently, and trying to control his mind.

But we have to understand that only the consciousness can control the mind. Only the consciousness can understand the mind. The vital force by itself, pranayama, is not enough. Working with energy is not enough. We need to awaken consciousness by developing our perception through self-observation.

So he says, "many thorns to adorned him―yet I saw no rose." This is also a Kabbalistic teaching. In the Tree of Life, according to Dion Fortune, we have different symbols related to the sephiroth. Relating to Netzach, the mind, is the rose [Samael Aun Weor also wrote a book dedicated to the Fourth Initiation of Major Mysteries, related to the fires of the solar mind: Igneous Rose]. So, Nietzsche is saying, “I see these yogis trying to control their mind, yet I do not see any rose in them. I do not see any real development or beauty in them.” All they have are thorns―they just suffer a lot with their mind, not able to control their mind, because they do not work with the consciousness. They have not been taught better.

"As yet he has not learned laughter of beauty." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Those Who Are Sublime”

So again, he says "beauty." So first he talked to the monks: “Only beauty should preach repentance," and now he is saying of the yogis, "As yet he has not learned laughter of beauty." Meaning: that joy that emerges in the human consciousness, our willpower, when it is following God.

"Gloomy this hunter returned from the woods of knowledge." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Those Who Are Sublime”

Or we could say Jnana yoga, which is the path of the yogi.

"He came home from a fight with savage beasts; but out of his seriousness there also peers a savage beast―one not overcome." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Those Who Are Sublime

Meaning he lived in the woods with animals, but he cannot control his own ego, because he is not awakening his consciousness. He is not overcoming himself.

"He still stands there like a tiger who wants to leap; but I do not like these tense souls, and my taste does not favor all these who withdraw (meaning: into the woods)." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Those Who Are Sublime”

The Gnostic Path of the Balanced Human Being

So again, the yogi only develops the mind and vital energy. The monk only develops the heart, and the fakir only develops willpower. We have to understand these three paths in order to explain the Gnostic path. So, we have what is known as the path of the Tao, or the path of Gnosis, which is known as the path or the way of the balanced human being. Notice that the three paths work with the different brains at the exclusion of the others. The Gnostic path is one that encompasses the development of all three brains, in harmony, in unison.

We have an interesting graphic on the right, which is known as the law of the scale. We use this scale to explain the different types of human beings, or different types of humanoids that exist. We have the seven notes, starting from the bottom, "Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si.” This is very well discussed in the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. They were the teachers of the Fourth Way School. The Fourth Way is the path of the Gnostic.

Notice in the bottom we have, for number one, the note "Do," the instinctive human being, meaning fakirs, who only work to control their instincts, their physicality.

Above that we have the note "Re," the emotional energy, the monks who only develop the heart.

Above that we have the intellectuals or the yogis, who only develop the mind according with the musical note "Mi."

Above that we have the note "Fa," which is known as the fourth type of human being, the path of the Gnostic.

The path of the Gnostic equilibrates the three brains. Notice that in this diagram we have a shock in between these notes, leading from "Mi" to "Fa," because that shock is a sparking of consciousness. That shock only occurs in us when we are developing our perception, when we are learning to pay attention. That shock is the alert state of novelty in which we see life in a way we have never seen before, and every moment of our existence should be like that. That is the teachings of self-observation and self-remembering.

Above that we have other types of human beings, which relate to the lecture we previously gave called The Solar Bodies and Bodhichitta, in which, above, the balanced human being, there are superior types of human beings: individuals who possess the solar bodies.

Above the note "Fa" we have the creation of the solar astral body, relating to the note "Sol" or sun.

The note "La" above relates to the creation of the solar mental body, a Christ mind.

Above that we have what is known as the solar causal body, relating to the note "Si."

Again there is another shock associated with reaching that type of development, because it is a very different type of perception to awaken within Nirvana, so to speak, the causal world, to develop the causal body. This is a superior work. It would take another lecture to explain that.

But here we are talking in synthesis in relation to the Gnostic path.

We need to balance our three brains, work with the energies of our three brains, and use them for the consciousness.

In the Gnostic path we take what is the best from all of these traditions and we discard what is useless. This is why it is known as the path of balance, the path of harmony. So Samael Aun Weor explains in The Perfect Matrimony:

"The Universal Christian Gnostic Movement has a school and a religion. We experience the first path (meaning the path of the fakir) "in practical matters, learning to live with rectitude.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

So this means that instead of lying on a bed of nails to develop our willpower, we simply go to our job, take care of our family, do our daily activities―that is how we develop willpower, by fulfilling our obligations with rectitude, with love and ethical discipline.

"The second path lies within our church (the path of the monk). Our Gnostic Church has its sacraments, rituals, and its convent life. The third path has to do with occult practices (or the path of the yogi). We have our esoteric practices, special exercises for the development of the latent powers in the human being. Within the fourth path, which is ‘the Path of the Astute Man,’ we live practically in the most complete equilibrium." ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

So why is it called the "Path of the Astute Man"? Sometimes Master Ouspensky said, "It was the path of the sly man”―sly or clever―because the fourth type of human being takes what is good from these other paths, discards what is useless, in order to attain very quick development, without having to renounce one's lifestyle and live in the woods or live in a convent.

"We study Alchemy and Kabbalah (in the Gnostic path). We work on the disintegration of the psychological ‘I.’” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

Again, the path of alchemy is the path of sexual magic. Here we are also explaining the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life―in synthesis, the Gnostic path. So within the fourth path, again as I said, we take what is best for our development.

The Disharmony of the Three Brains

We have the next graphic, which also explains, according to P. D. Ouspensky, the nature of the three other paths that we just discussed, in relation to the fourth. You might be familiar with some of these images of Alice in Wonderland, in which we have the Mad Hatter in the top left, the white rabbit on the right, and the Queen of Hearts below. These figures in Alice in Wonderland represent the three brains, in disharmony.

The motor-instinctive man, the instinctual human being is the White Rabbit, he is always looking at his watch, "I'm late, I'm late for an important date!" He is always running off and doing things. Never thinks about what he does. He is always impelled by mechanical and instinctive forces, meaning: a very brutish and unconscious type of individual.

So we find individuals who are obsessed with work, who do not have any emotional interests or intellectual pursuits, people who just have their job and they live their life making money, thinking life is about having a job, a career, having kids and then dying. This is an instinctive type of person. This is the White Rabbit.

Beneath we have the Queen of Hearts. This is a person who is very emotional. It is always cursing and condemning others with the heart, abusing the emotional energies of the emotional brain. I believe in the Disney cartoon she is always saying "Off with her head! Off with his head!" because in our emotional brain we are always trying to kill others with our emotions. We may not say criticism, but we feel in our heart a type of negativity in which we want to condemn others.

Then we have the Mad Hatter, which is the abuse of the intellectual brain, somebody who makes no sense. These are all of the scholars and college professors in the world, because they read so much and they know so much intellectually, but even in some practical matters they have no sense, and Nietzsche, really condemns these individuals. He calls them "the scholars," who have taken every knowledge; they take any knowledge and they grind it to whiteness, to adopt it to their super-intellect. These types of people are really, you could say, crazy in the head. They have a lot of ideas but their intellectual brain is totally imbalanced, because they use the intellect too much.

The fakir relates to the White Rabbit, always developing, is always controlled by instinct, or trying to control instinct. The monk is the Queen of Hearts, relating to the abuse of the emotional brain, developing the heart at the exclusion of the other centers. The Mad Hatter is the yogi, taken to the extreme, trying to develop the mind at the exclusion of the other centers.

So Ouspensky gave a very interesting analysis of these paths, and explains them in relation to the fourth:

"Although in many respects these ways are very efficient, the characteristic thing about them is that the first step is the most difficult. From the very first moment you have to give up everything and do what you are told. If you keep one little thing, you cannot follow any of these ways. So, although the three ways are good in many other respects” (because they do develop, and to a certain extent they can develop certain capacities within us) they are not sufficiently elastic (they are not broad; they are not eclectic). For instance, they do not suit our present mode of life. The Fakir is an exaggerated No. 1 man (meaning an instinctive individual) with a heavy predominance of instinctive-moving centre. The Monk is an exaggerated No. 2 man (the emotional center) with the emotional center developed and the others underdeveloped. The Yogi is an exaggerated No. 3 man with the intellectual centre developed and the others not sufficiently developed. If only these three traditional ways existed, there would be nothing for us, for we are too overeducated for these ways." ―P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way

So it is important to understand these paths because it tells us how we work with energy, and the fourth path balances these energies, through conscious attention, conscious work. When Samael Aun Weor talks about conscious efforts and conscious works and upright efforts, he means the consciousness needs to control the different energies in our three brains.

The one that squanders the energies of the three brains is the ego. We as a consciousness need to control our three brains. We need to be in control of our machine, because the human body is a machine. The psyche is a machine, that channels forces and we need to be aware of these energies, so that we can drive our car, to lead us to, we could say, the land of Oz, as we have discussed many times, following the yellow brick road that leads to the heavenly city.

Ouspensky continues in his book called The Fourth Way, someone asked him a question:

"Q. Does the Fourth Way embrace the three other ways?

“A. No, this is a wrong description, because the Fourth Way does not have many of the things which enter into the first three ways, and it has many other things that do not enter into the three ways. The idea of the Fourth Way is that it discards from the three ways all that is unnecessary in them, because besides the necessary things the three ways have other things which have remained there purely through tradition, imitation, and so on. In the Fourth Way all the sides can develop, develop at the same time (meaning we develop all three brains in harmony) and this makes it different from other ways where you first develop one side and then go back and develop another, then again go back and develop a third side. In the Fourth Way all the four centres must be more or less alive, on the surface, open to receive impressions, otherwise long preliminary work to open them is necessary before one can begin." ―P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way

We find here in this image a man who is praying, he is meditating, and he is studying, and he is sitting in a firm posture like a fakir. We picked this image because we see an individual performing the three paths. He is meditating as a yogi, studying; he is praying up to heaven; and he is controlling his body. That is the essence of the Gnostic path. We need to understand the Fourth Way because it is different from the others, as Ouspensky taught.

With the other paths one would have to discard their family life, live in the woods, live as a monk in a convent, or sleep on a bed of nails. As Ouspensky said, we are over-educated for these paths, because we know better. We need to develop all three brains in balance.

The Fourth Way: The Path of the Cross

The Fourth Way was taught by Jesus, as we see in the next graphic: the path of the cross. Remember that Samael said, "In the Gnostic path we study Alchemy and Kabbalah. We also disintegrate the psychological 'I,' the ego." These are the three sciences of Alchemy, Kabbalah and Psychology.

The Fourth Way, as taught by Master Aberamentho, the Christ, as his name is given in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled. He taught that we do not necessarily have to abandon our life as it is, but to quote Shakespeare, "Take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." Meaning, face our current everyday problems, and work with them, not to abandon them.

So what makes the Fourth Way different is that we do not need to abandon our current way of life. Instead we need to take on our present conditions, and use them for our benefit, because these are precisely the best scenarios we need for our spiritual development.

Ouspensky continues:

"But there is a Fourth Way which is a special way, not a combination of the other three. It is different from others first of all in that there is no external giving up of things, for all the work is inner. A man must begin work in the same conditions in which he finds himself when he meets it, because these conditions are the best for him. If he begins to work and study in these conditions, he can attain something, and later, if it is necessary, he will be able to change them, but not before he sees the necessity for it. So at first one continues to live the same life as before, in the same circumstances as before (meaning we keep our job, our family, our career, everything). In many respects this way proves more difficult than the others, for nothing is harder than to change oneself internally without changing externally." ―P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way

By far, it is a thousand times more difficult to live in this current society we are in, than to abandon everything and live as a yogi, despite what the yogis, fakirs and monks think. It is more difficult to take on one's circumstances, to change oneself psychologically, so that we can develop the consciousness.

Jesus taught this in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, verses 37 to 39:

"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." ―Matthew 10:37-39

What does this mean to not love father and mother? It does not mean that we abandon father and mother. It means we overcome our attachments to family, to career, to everything, and we follow Christ. It means to follow the path of the cross, which, as the cross is an image of four points, it is the union of the four paths.

The Kabbalistic Symbolism of the Rose Cross

So again, we are going to talk about the cross, the path of Tao. We did not mention, but the word Tao is very interesting, and has a lot of Kabbalistic symbolism. The "T" is the cross, which is the union of man and woman united sexually: the vertical phallus with the horizontal uterus. Then we have, or better said the letter "T" the cross is fire, we could say Ignis, combined with the vowels "A-O.” “I-A-O" the Lord, or יהוה Iod-Havah, י Iod ה Hei ו Vau, in Hebrew.

So Tao, as in Taoism, refers to , י Iod ה Hei ו Vau: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or Ignis, Aqua, Origo. Ignis is fire, Aqua is water, Origo is spirit.

What is interesting if you look at this diagram of the Rosicrucian cross, we have the twenty-two Hebrew letters in the center. In the very middle we have the three primary mother Hebrew letters of Kabbalah. א Aleph, ש Shin, מ Mem. א Aleph again is water, air, Origo, wind. מ Mem is water, Aqua. Fire is ש Shin, Ignis. So we have it synthesized as "I-A-O," or the Tao path.

The path of the Tao is working with the three brains in union, in harmony. Now we look at this graphic, we find there is principally five sections of the cross, relating to the four elements and the ether. The ether is the sexual power of God, or Akash, plus the four elements, represented by these different colors: the earth, the air, the fire and the water.

So the cross, the blossoming of the rose of spirituality, is the direct result―as we see in the Rosicross, in the center―of working with all three brains. So remember that Nietzsche said, "I saw on this yogi many thorns, but no rose." The rose can only develop, the igneous rose of God, the solar Christic mind, is only developed through alchemy, through the cross.

Samael Aun Weor explains the following in The Perfect Matrimony:

"The Tao Path includes three paths, and Tao itself is the fourth. Much has been said about the four paths. We Gnostics travel along the fourth path in full Consciousness. During the sexual act, we transmute the brutal instincts of our physical body into willpower (so that is the path of the fakir, controlling the physical body, transmuting instinct into consciousness, into will, solar conscious will) the passionate emotions of the Astral Body into love (the path of the monk, controlling emotional desire and uniting it with God) and the mental impulses into comprehension (which is the path of the yogi. So we need to control all of these energies with consciousness. We cannot just develop all of these energies by themselves; we need to have conscious, cognizance of how these forces function, and to use them for our Being). As Spirit, we perform the Great Work (so again he says, in alchemy we work with the three brains, and then lastly we work as Spirit). We do not need to become fakirs for the first path, neither monks for the second, nor scholars for the third. The path of the Perfect Matrimony permits us to travel the four paths during the sexual act itself." ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

Sexual Magic in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I mentioned that I was going to quote again Nietzsche for you, and this is just to demonstrate that Samael Aun Weor was not the only one who talked about sexual magic. Master Samael was the only one to explain it explicitly, clear for everybody, but we find many initiates in history were talking about the nature of sex, and how it is the Gnostic path of controlling the three brains.

This is probably my favorite quote by Nietzsche. Here we have in this image, in the next slide, where he talks about the Gnostic path of Alchemy, we have the lion, which is a great symbol in his book for the Superman. The lion is the Lion of the tribe of יהודה Iehudah, Judah. Judah is י Iod ה Hei ו Vav ד Daleth ה Hei. We have the name יהוה Iod-Havah, Jehovah, the Lord, with ד Daleth. ד Daleth in Hebrew signifies the Kabbalah; it represents דעת Daath, which is qlchemy. So to realize the lion or the Superman within us, we need to perform the work of qlchemy in a matrimony.

He even emphasizes the other paths that we just explained. He uses the word "sex.” This is in one translation, some translations translate it as "voluptuousness," which is another word for Eden, and Eden is the garden of sexuality, the garden of knowledge:

"Sex: to all hair-shirted despisers of the body (meaning the fakirs), their thorn and stake, and cursed as ‘world’ among all the afterworldly because it mocks and fools all teachers of error and confusion." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

Who are these "afterworldly"? These are the monks who believe in another world, a vague incipient and nonsensical afterlife. Nietzsche calls them the "afterworldly." So all those monks that say, "Oh sex is bad, you should not have sex. It is filthy” because they are filthy in their mind. That is all they see in it. Like Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi stated, "When you look at the cup of water, you thirst for Allah, but if you only have your own desires, you only see your own reflection in it." So that water is מ Mem, the sexual energy.

The priests they cursed it as "world”, worldly, filthy. “You should not have sex," and the fakirs they absolutely despise alchemy.

"Sex: for the rabble, the slow fire on which they are burned; for all worm-eaten wood and all stinking rags, the ever-ready rut and oven." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

Who are "the rabble"? These are the fornicators, people who are common everyday people, they think the orgasm is good and they degenerate themselves.

"It is the slow fire in which they are burned.” Their mind is "worm eaten-wood," filthiness, filled with fornication, "and all stinking rags," meaning their lunar bodies―they do not have the solar vehicles of God. They have never worked in Alchemy. Instead, they have lunar bodies: kama rupa, the lunar astral body; they have the manas, the lunar mind―that is how they travel in the internal planes, and when they sleep. Their rags stink, because their ego is so penetrated in their lunar bodies that they are filthy, and when we see them in the internal planes, they are very filthy people, filled with a lot of lust, and they smell [with animal desire].

On the contrary:

"Sex: for free hearts, innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, the future's exuberant gratitude to the present." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

What are these "free hearts"? These are the alchemists, who look at sex and they see that it can be used for purity, for God. So if one is innocent like a child, one can look at sex for what it is, as a pure communion with Christ, the energy of God. It is "the garden happiness of the earth," the Garden, Eden, resides in our physical body, Malkuth, the earth. Sex is "the future's exuberant gratitude to the present," meaning the future, meaning: when we fully develop Christ one day in us, is gracious, is grateful for the initiate to be working, "the future's gratitude to the present."

Question: So when you are talking about sex, are you referring to Tantric sex, because obviously that is different than, I guess you could say a lustful type of sex?

Instructor: Yes, we are talking about sexual magic here. Sex to the common people is just filthy, "stinking rags," is for "the rabble," "the slow fire on which they are burned." That is the fornicative sex that everybody knows, but now we are talking about what Nietzsche is talking about: sexual alchemy, in which we conserve our semen. We do not spill it. We preserve that Garden of Eden within, so that we do not lose our forces.

"Sex: only for the wilted, a sweet poison..." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

What is this "wilted," like a flower that is dying, decaying? The virtues of the soul in the internal planes are represented as flowers, and when one is losing one's virtues, they wither. Also, "sex is a sweet poison, for the wilted," meaning the orgasm is very sweet, but it is poison to the mind. It destroys the soul.

Sex:

"…for the lion-willed, however, the great invigoration of the heart and the reverently reserved wine of wines." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

What does it mean: "invigoration of the heart"? When we transmute, we are bringing the energy up the spinal column to the brain and to the heart. This is what we explained in The Solar Bodies and Bodhichitta. What is this "reverently reserved wine of wines"? Meaning the wine, the waters that can be transmuted into wine by Christ in the marriage of Canaan. We have to reserve our wine. We cannot spill it. You spill your wine, you are a wilted flower, and a part of the rabble in which the slow fire burns oneself.

"Sex: the happiness that is the great parable of a higher happiness and the highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage..." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

So many people, when they grow up, "you need to get married, get a partner," but "for to many, marriage is promised, and more than marriage," meaning more than the marriage that people commonly experience, a marriage in which the couple does not waste the energy, does not orgasm. That is rare. So that is what it means for it to be promised more than a marriage, more than a typical wedding that people commonly support.

"…to many who are stranger to each other than man and woman. And who can wholly comprehend how strange man and woman are to each other?

Sex―but I want to have fences around my thoughts and even around my words, lest swine and swooners break into my garden!" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Three Evils”

Who are these "swine"? Meaning the intellectual fornicators. So they are reading Nietzsche's book and they say "yes, he is an atheist," and they see what they want in his text. Meanwhile Nietzsche is saying "I am putting fences around my words. I cannot explain this openly," because it is sacred. The only one who explained it openly was Samael Aun Weor, in these times. So, Nietzsche is saying, "I do not want the fornicators to read this, because they are just going to mock it."

So the lion-willed, again, as he mentioned "for the free hearts," the image of a lion, represents Christ. We need to have the will of Christ, a will that only obeys the Being, a type of willpower that follows the consciousness.

Question: When people talk about the higher self, is the Inner Being the higher self? Is this just semantics?

Instructor: Yes the Being is the inner self, we could say Atman, we could say Christ.

Question: He is the higher self, right? Since that is a term that is used so often…

Instructor: Especially by Theosophists, and they talk about Atman, the Innermost, the Being.

Question: Is that the Inner Being, Atman?

Instructor: Yes the Inner Self, we could say.

Comment: It is the higher self...

Instructor: And Christ is even beyond the Innermost, as we mention in the Kabbalah.

In the next graphic we are going to explain a little more about the Gnostic path. We have an image of Moses, Moshe, where he explains in Leviticus, precisely the requisites of alchemy. This is important to understanding the Gnostic path, because in order to equilibrate our three brains, to conserve our mental energy, our emotional energy, our physical energy, we need to conserve our vital forces, and we need to sublimate them, whether in alchemy as a married couple, or pranayama or mantra as a bachelor.

But exclusively, in order to develop as a Gnostic, to develop that type of self-knowledge from God, is to conserve the semen. For it says in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4:

"Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." ―Hebrews 13:4

What does it mean "undefiled"? A bed that does not have semen all over it. So, a marriage is honorable, but when one fornicates, there is no honor in it. One spills and wastes the energy. These are the "swine and swooners" that Nietzsche was against, and if you even read the chapter on "The Rabble" you see he talks exclusively about that, and very beautifully how we need to ascend up the mountain of initiation in order to escape all of the fornication in this physical world, to breathe the pure air of the Spirit, the pure sky, the א Aleph, the breath of God.

Question: As man and wife practice, and it continues after a long period of time, do they in some ways become one? Thoughts… emotions?

Instructor: Yes, when you unite sexually, you become one being, because man is אל El, woman is אלה Eloah, man and woman together is אלהים Elohim: Gods and Goddesses. So sexually connected, the husband and wife are one flesh, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave into his wife, and they shall be one flesh," as mentioned in the Bible. So Adam unites with הוהHavah (חַוָה Chavah), man and woman, to make יהוה Iod-Havah, the power of Christ. The Lion of Judah, because Iod-Havah is the same letters as יהודה Iehudah, except with the Hebrew letter, the ד D, which is the science of ד Daath, alchemy.

So that is what it means when Nietzsche is saying to have a "lion will," to practice alchemy with the will of a lion, to not ever waste that wine, to reserve it, and to revere it.

It says in Leviticus, chapter 15, verses 16 through 18, what happens if one has an orgasm:

"And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him (or even the woman's as well), then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.

“And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.

“The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even." ―Leviticus 15:16-18

The Jews typically interpret this as being something physical, but they ignore that the waters are symbolic. If one has an emission of semen, one needs to first clean up, and then transmute the energy that was lost, meaning: after a loss of that force, one needs to work with the waters again to regenerate, because depending on the magnitude of the fault, we need to recuperate, if we have an accident.

What does it mean to be "unclean"? To be psychologically filthy, to be "worm-eaten wood and all stinking rags," mentioned by Nietzsche. So what are these "stinking rags," well, any of the lunar bodies fortified with ego, meaning: "And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed," meaning our inner bodies have become filthy―have become "stinking rags" that need to be purified. The only way we purify those bodies, annihilating the ego, is through the Gnostic path.

What does it mean to be "unclean until the even"? "Evening" is hell, so one will be unclean until one descends into hell and annihilates the ego, otherwise one will always remain impure. So the Gnostic path again is to work with these energies in a matrimony.

On Child and Marriage

The last graphic, we are going to finish with another quote from Nietzsche, where he synthesizes pretty much everything we have discussed. This is an image of a famous painting of Nietzsche on the mountain, as the wanderer, so often cited from Zarathustra.

Again, marriage is honorable and all, but the marriage of the many is superficial and filthy. So, if we want to have the energy in order to awaken consciousness, we cannot be fornicating. We say that explicitly. I know some people do not like to say it openly, but really, Samael Aun Weor was very clear. He expressed it very publicly in his books.

The very first thing is to not fornicate. We need to save the energies of our three brains so that we can awaken our psyche. The Gnostic path as the path of balance, working with energy, is the direct result of conserving these forces.

If we want to create the solar bodies, we need to have the energies related to those bodies. So even if we are conserving our energies, we are transmuting through mantra and prayer, if we waste our emotional energies, we cannot create the solar astral body. The solar astral body is created through sex, but we need to work with emotional energy as well. Likewise, the solar mental body is only created when we have mental energy. If we are constantly exhausting our mind, even we transmute, then we are disbalanced. The path of Gnosis, the path of Tao, is the path of balance.

Question: So overworking your mental energy, could that just be doing too much of something?

Instructor: Yes exactly, and that tends to be it. Or it could just be a very bad habit. Some people, they look at pornography, and that takes the energies of sex and destroys the mind, because the mind is fantasizing these sexual images, and Samael Aun Weor explained that the result of watching pornography is impotence, because when those individuals, those men who are watching so much pornography, they are in the moment when they are going to have sex, they cannot get an erection because they lose all of their energy through masturbation.

They destroy their mind as well, because now they have all of these images in the intellect associated with filthiness. These are the "stinking rags" that we mentioned, by Nietzsche. So if you want to create the solar bodies we need energy, that is the Gnostic path.

Question: What about some people who are just devoted to, nothing say, sexual, but, I have met people where just about every thought in their mind was to find a new way or creative way to make money?

Instructor: That is the path of the fakir.

Question: That is the fakir?

Instructor: Because they just want to control material means, mechanicity. I know many people who, they have no spiritual emotions, no emotions, they are not even interested in reading; they just want to make money. They only do anything to make a living, and so these instinctive types of people are very unconscious. They go nowhere.

Question: So they are wasting...

Instructor: They are wasting their time. Same thing with the fakirs, and also the monks develop the heart, but they have no cognizance of God. Therefore, they have all of these beliefs and that is their stopgap, like Nietzsche said. They impregnate the religious teachings with their beliefs, and they just have a lot of emotional energy, but they also, unfortunately, they fornicate. They squander their energies. They cannot create anything. And the yogis, they try to control the mind, but if there is no comprehension, then they are just wasting their time as well.

Question: I also know people who think and theorize a lot and love conspiracy theories. They seem to love God but they just think so much. Is that an imbalance of the mental brain?

Instructor: Yes, the mental body, when there is too much thinking, the mental body gets disfigured. Meaning: the anatomy of the mental body, the aura gets impregnated with a lot of filthiness, especially the individuals that are masturbating, that are abusing the sexual force.

So too much reading, too much theorizing, intellectualizing, that destroys the mind. Too much negative emotion destroys the heart, and fornication totally destroys everything, because the different energies of the three brains are different modifications of sexual energy, different manifestations of the energies of God.

I would like to conclude with a quote from Nietzsche, where he emphasizes the main points we discussed. This is on a chapter called "On Child and Marriage":

"You are young and wish for a child and marriage. But I ask you: Are you a man entitled to wish for a child? Are you the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the commander of your senses, the master of your virtues? This I ask you. Or is it the animal and need that speak out of your wish? Or loneliness? Or lack of peace with yourself?" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Child and Marriage”

So he is saying, "you want to be married," those who are single, but one should be more concerned with being a conqueror of one's own mind, a conqueror of one's own emotions, and a conqueror of instinct. Control the three brains, and therefore be a "master of your own virtues," and the "commander of your senses." So, these are the three paths, synthesized.

"Let your victory and your freedom long for a child. You shall build living monuments to your victory and your liberation. You shall build over and beyond yourself, but first you must be built yourself, perpendicular in body and soul.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Child and Marriage”

So what does this mean, "build living monuments of victory and liberation"? These are the solar bodies, because that is the step we need to take in order to be liberated. Victory in Hebrew is Netzach, which is the solar Christ Mind. "Let these be living monuments to your victory,” dominating your mind “and your liberation."

If you wish to "build over and beyond yourself," create the solar bodies, first you need to be built yourself, "perpendicular in body and soul." Meaning: we need to follow the path of the cross, the path of Tao, balancing our three brains. If we want to create the soul, we need the energies in order to create them. Therefore, you need to be "built perpendicular," meaning you need to have the balance established, the path of the Gnostic.

"You shall not only reproduce yourself, but produce something higher. May the garden of marriage help you in that!

“You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a self-propelled wheel―you shall create a creator." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Child and Marriage”

So literally it says "higher body," solar bodies. What is the "first movement"? It is to initiate. So what does it always mean to be in the first movement? It is to be an initiate, constantly moving, constantly flowing.

The Hebrew word for, we could say, the Spirit, the wind, the breath, is אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh, which is the sacred name of God and Kether in the Kabbalah. "I Am He Who Becomes,” “I Am He Who Initiates”―so a first movement. You should create a higher body in a first movement. You shall initiate. You shall walk on this Gnostic path.

"A self-propelled wheel," meaning the chakras are active, spinning positively left to right, like we are viewing a clock, the same direction on our body, transposed on us, rotating in that direction―that is the proper rotation of the chakras. "You shall create a self-propelled wheel," meaning you have the sexual energy active and your chakras are awakened. Those who fornicate, those who masturbate, who ejaculate the semen, they have no development, and so they have development in hell.

"You shall create a creator," meaning the solar bodies, they generate power in you, solar force.

"Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it (because the solar bodies, the golden child of alchemy, is greater than the two who created it). Reverence for each other, as for those willing with such a will (meaning the will of a lion, will of Tiphereth, following Christ; will with obedience to the consciousness) that is what I name marriage. Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But that which the all-too-many, the superfluous, call marriage―alas, what shall I name that? Alas, this poverty of the soul in pair! Alas, this filth of the soul in pair! Alas, this wretched contentment in pair! Marriage they call this; and they say that their marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous. No, I do not like them―these animals entangled in the heavenly net. And let the god who limps near to bless what he never joined keep his distance from me! Do not laugh at such marriages! What child would not have cause to weep over its parents?" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Child and Marriage”

So this is kind of a reference to the Roman myth, when Vulcan the god of fire, smithing, forging, catches his wife Venus having an affair with Mars. So Vulcan represents, like Samael Aun Weor mentions many times, sexual magic is the flaming forge of Vulcan, in which the solar bodies, the armor of the heroes is built. Like Aeneas in The Aeneid, like Achilles, his armor is created by the gods so that he can wage war and destroy the ego.

So in this myth Vulcan catches his wife Venus having an affair, so he develops a bronze net, puts it on the bed in which they are going to be copulating, and it drops in the right moment when they are together. Vulcan gets all of the gods, and they point towards the couple and they are laughing, they are mocking them.

This is a symbol for how, for instance, bronze is an alchemical symbol. Bronze is the union of copper, which is Venus, the woman, and tin, which is Jupiter, the man. So it is an alchemical symbol of how man and woman should unite sexually. Now when the net drops and the gods are laughing at this couple, this represents how Mars, the man, is having sex with his wife in the wrong way, meaning: they are fornicating, they are abusing the fires of the forge of Vulcan, of sexuality, for perverse purposes. So the gods, they mock that, they mock those people, the fornicators. It is tremendous the disgust they have for that type of activity.

Question: I just want to add, Dion Fortune wrote that if man and woman get together, copulation, their state of mind, the state of spirituality has a lot to do with that―assuming another soul, another partner I guess, resulted in copulation―she mentions drunkards, people on drugs, it definitely effects the child, they give birth in a very negative way.

Instructor: Yes, it destroys the energies of our psyche, and destroys the three brains. Not only for the couple but for the child.

So to conclude, the Gnostic path is the path of balance, balancing the three brains, being a master of our own senses, and master of our virtues. If we do not have control over our intellectual brain, our emotional brain, our motor-instinctive-sexual brain, we will have no energy to create spiritually. So the consciousness, again, is awakened through upright efforts, but again, in order for the consciousness to manifest in our three brains, we need energy, specifically the vital force. If we abuse that energy, if we do not walk the Gnostic path, then well, we are swallowed by nature, so to speak.

Questions and Answers

Do you have any questions?

Question: What if you are single? You are sort of screwed!

Instructor: There are many single yogis and initiates who develop tremendous capacities, even while being single. It comes to my mind Yogananda. Yogananda is a great yogi. This is not to say he did not understand this teaching.

Now one thing I would like to clarify is, typically the paths we see today as the fakir, the monk and the yogi, these are exaggerations. These were divergent. There is demarcation between these paths today, but in the past they were integrated, because they were Gnostic paths at one point. But they diverged and became very extreme in their own ways, only developing one brain at one time.

Now, Yogananda as a yogi, he knew the Gnostic teachings. He knew about sexual magic, but he thought he could self-realize without it. But even so, he was developing a lot of power as an individual, so he comprehended a lot of egos and annihilated many defects, and acquired tremendous power.

Samael Aun Weor says he is a very beautiful elemental. His soul is very pure, but they told him, Samael reprimanded him and said, "Okay now that you have a lot of power here," talking to him in the internal planes, in Limbo, he said "If you want to go higher you need to reincarnate and get married." So Yogananda was reprimanded by the Master of the temple in which they were in [see The Narrow Way, “Limbo” by Samael Aun Weor].

So who knows where he is now. But many individuals, they acquire great power and progress, even while being single. Matrimony is just another―it really just accelerates many processes, so one walks faster. It does not mean that one is damned because one is not married, no. In fact there are many people who are married in the Gnostic teachings or in different religions, and they make their life a true hell. So what matters is one's individual effort.

So remember, when we work with energy, we need to balance our three brains. We need to understand these paths, so that we can understand the Gnostic path. So again, you know, learning to live with rectitude every day in our life, with comprehension, is the path of the fakir. The path of the monk is when we develop our heart through prayer and supplication or mantra. Then we have the path of the yogi in our meditations, controlling the mind and by studying, and the Gnostic path synthesizes that by working with alchemy.

Comment: The one that really, I did not even know that was one of the pathways, but how you, practice and study, that is how I have seen major results.

Instructor: We need to balance. Gnosis is the path of balance, balancing our energies. So to walk the path we need to study, we need to read, but we also need to meditate. We need to balance the two.

Question: Yeah because if I just meditate, I did not see the same results as if I would meditate and study.

Instructor: Exactly, so knowledge, we say Knowledge and Being need to be united in harmony in order to establish comprehension, as stated in Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology.

Because personally, and, people who do not study, who do not really study the path of the yoga, even if they have a lot of experiences, they are not going to understand what their experiences are telling them.

Personally, I remember having experiences in the internal planes related to the Kabbalah, before I knew anything about Kabbalah. So, I saw the Tree of Life. I saw many things related to the Being, that I could not explain until I read the books by Samael Aun Weor, which explained, "This is the Tree of Life." So I studied and I improved my comprehension.

So the way that we develop deeper understanding is by studying and meditating at the same time.

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What is Initiation?

1/18/2020

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The term initiation has not been well understood, especially in the West.

According to the dictionary definition, initiation pertains to “formal admission or acceptance into an organization or club. Adult status in one's community or society,” etc. This relates to “ceremonies, rites of admission, rites of passage.”

You may be familiar with Judaism, Bar Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, ages in which youth come into adulthood, or certain groups like the Masons who would initiate a student into their order in order to become a member, an aspirant of the path.

But, more formally, these terms do not adequately represent the reality of initiation itself. In fact, initiation means to begin. To initiate, and as we find in this beautiful image, a knight being knighted by a beautiful female figure, it represents the reality of spiritual initiation.

This woman is known amongst the Hebraic Kabbalists, the mystics of Judaism, as Neshamah, the divine soul, which represents a part of us. Some people call it Geburah, strength, justice, and the human counterpart known as Tiphereth in the Kabbalah, is will―the will to change, really a representation of us, human soul, consciousness, that part of us that needs to work in order to be initiated, in order to enter those divine hierarchies among the gods.

And this is of course a personal work. It is doesn’t mean that in order to be coronated by this divine figure, we need to belong to a group, because real initiation is our life. It is what we do in our daily work upon ourselves. The work upon our mind, our faults.

And so this beautiful divine soul, which is usually represented as a feminine principle, is honoring the hero. And who is that hero? It has to be us. Because in reality, in our life, we face many hardships. Many sufferings. Many conflicts, tragedies, pains. And if any one of us is attending a group of this nature, it is because deep down in our heart we have a longing to know divinity and to enter initiation. To initiate the entrance, the door, into true happiness, known by all of those beings known as angels, prophets, buddhas, Elohim, gods.

Those beings like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, were once like us, and they decided that in order to genuinely know divinity, they had to work. They had to renounce their faults: anger, resentment, pride, fear, hatred. And by removing those qualities in themselves, they initiated a new way of life. Because among the gods, there is no anger. There is no fear. There is no suffering. But to reach those heights, they had to change. They had to renounce those qualities in themselves that produce their pain and made others suffer.

And so those beings taught humanity through religion, through yoga, how to enter that path, which is never easy. Because if we wish to be honored by divinity, we first have to face great trials. We have to become heroes. It is heroic to change and to face and take responsibility for our own faults. Our own anger, our own lust, our own faults, errors. To take responsibility for our own life. Not to blame others, but to change.

We can change, and by eliminating our own anger and defects, we naturally irradiate light, beauty, compassion, and that is how we become like this knight who is initiated. Not by some external force, but by his own divine soul, the divine principle of Geburah, because in the mysticism of Judaism, kabbalah, this woman or this figure of justice represents the law of divinity, the law of balance.

There are causes and conditions that can produce suffering and there are the causes and conditions that produce happiness. Divinity weighs the scales, but we determine what coins we place on either end, whether for good or for ill. Therefore that law naturally gives unto us what we have earned.

So we cannot blame others for our suffering. We have to balance the scales. This is known in the east as karma. Or in the Bible, there is a statement, “Do you not know that you shall reap what you sow?” We receive the consequences of our own actions.

And so we must learn to balance this scale in ourselves and before the divine hierarchies of this law of karma, we learn to cancel suffering. We learn to pay our debts, whether from this life or, if we have studied the doctrine of reincarnation, from other lives. And this is not something theoretical. It is something conscious when we experience it.

Personally, I do not believe in reincarnation. I know of it because I have meditated and I have awakened in the astral plane and investigated these things for myself. Knowing where I come from and why I am in the situation that I am now.

So this is how we really know initiation. It has nothing to do with reading a book, attending a lecture, or believing in a scripture. It has to do with what we experience. And so we can become like this hero, to initiate, to enter those degrees of knowledge through experience. Which is why Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition stated, "Initiation is life itself, lived intensely, with rectitude and with love."

Our life can become like a beautiful rose, immaculate with the fragrance of God, a purity that is so refined and strong that, in the face of any adversity, we can transform conflict, remediate disagreements, and transform our life into something beautiful.

But of course we have to face the thorns, as the allegory goes, and that has to do with our own personal path, because initiation is individual to you. Your life is unique and your karma is unique and your sufferings are unique. And the way that you resolve them depends upon your inner divinity, which is also unique to you.

We do this path by living intensely. It does not mean to become a daredevil. What it means is that our consciousness is so awake, is so heightened, that we learn to become aware of any situation and all the minute details, all of its struggles, so that we can transform it profoundly, and to live with rectitude, ethics, and these ethics are within any religion: compassion, kindness, altruism, love, sacrifice, but not as a moral code to believe in, but as a quality of mind, as our former lecturer mentioned in the previous discussion in this course.

The preparation for initiation is based on the quality of our heart. Our heart is what determines whether we will enter and be among the angels, or to be among the fallen.

Telesis

So those are the two ways. We learn to enter this path through love. Really when we love humanity and love others more than we love ourselves, because that is how we become someone like Jesus, whose whole life was based on the well-being of others, even when he was being nailed to the cross. He said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Truly, Jesus of Nazareth represents the highest ideals an initiate can embody, and in fact he is the patriarch of the Gnostic Church. He is the head of the cosmic hierarchies of the divine. And we find his life representing the path of initiation itself, which he was the only one to physically represent that drama in flesh and bone―where you find in his birth, ministry, passion, crucifixion, resurrection―a teaching about our own individual nature.

While he physically lived these things, his life is a representation of what we have to follow in us. And in this course, we are going to discuss what those stages are in depth. But primarily he represented a type of will that any initiate needs in order to really be successful, because of course, we find in his life, tremendous conflict, tremendous struggle. People against him. Being betrayed. And that has to do with the fact that anyone who enters initiation has to pay all of their karma in one life. They have to pay everything that they owe, and because they love divinity so much, they do it gladly, even though it means that their life will be intense.

But they do it with compassion, and that willpower is known as telesis. It is a Greek term meaning “perfection or progress that is intelligently planned and directed.”

So if we have read the Gospels, we find that Jesus, his life and his path, was intelligently planned by divinity or in, Kabbalah, Kether, the Father. And we all have our own inner Father inside who intelligently plans and directs the course of our life, our own individual path.

But of course we have to do our part. We have our own will that could either follow heaven above or our own inner hell below.

It (telesis) is also “the attainment of a desired end by the application of intelligent effort.”

It is the will of Christ incarnated in a human being, and that Christic force is not a person, but an energy, which we work with. So we learn to attain the end of initiation by applying certain practices and techniques on a daily basis so that we transform our situations, which are intense, full of suffering, into understanding. And when we have understanding we have peace. To pay what we owe, but to do so with wisdom and not to merely go through the sufferings of life, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” according to Shakespeare's Hamlet. But, “to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.”

The Hidden Wisdom

And that is how we enter amongst the gods, represented in many cosmogonies and paintings as the illuminated masters or angels, ascending and ascending up into the unknowable divine.

I remember one experience many years ago in which I invoked, in the astral plane, Samael Aun Weor, who is a great prophet, a master of our tradition. I looked up in the sky in the astral plane and I started to call, “In the name of Christ, by the power of Christ, for the glory of Christ!” And when you pronounce these sacred mantras, or invocations, or prayers, suddenly I saw the clouds, in the atmosphere open and I saw this image. Immaculate light. And I saw millions of angels moving and looking down at me with a lot of sympathy and compassion.

So I said, “Samael Aun Weor!” And I invoked him and he came down. And if you have seen his pictures on the internet from his times in Mexico, he came down and was teaching me many things, was helping me. And he had a lot of compassion for me because I was suffering a lot in my work.

I said to him, “I am having difficulty in my path,” and he simply said, very sweetly, but strong, "But there is always difficulty." Then I returned to my body.

So he was teaching me, “You wish to become and perfect yourself as an initiate, you have to remember that this path is not like what religion teaches. That you simply believe, belong to a church, mosque, or a synagogue, say your prayers, go to bed, and then you'll be fine when you die. That has nothing to do with reality. In fact, initiation is earned. We do it by working with telesis, with will.”

So this is the hidden wisdom within any religion that has not been taught openly.

“We speak wisdom [σοφία, sophia] among them that are perfect [τελείοις, teleios] (because through divine will, human effort, we become perfected), yet not the wisdom of this world [αἰών, aeon], nor of the princes [ἀρχόντων archons] of this world, that come to nought:

“But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery [μυστήριον, mustérion], even the hidden [ἀποκρύπτω, apokruptó] wisdom [σοφία, sophia], which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” ―1 Corinthians 2:6-7

Paul of Tarsus was a great initiate who taught in his scriptures the symbolic language of Kabbalah.

So what does it mean to be entering into the mysteries? μυστήριον, mustérion, from the Greek mystikos, meaning “initiate,” myein, the root word, meaning “to close the eyes” to illusion in order to see internally.

It means to become a practical meditator. We physically close our eyes, we go into our mind. We examine the qualities of our heart. We work on what we have observed in ourselves, our faults throughout the day, and then at night we work consciously to understand our defects, which we call in this tradition, ego. But in the Bible they call it Shaytan, the devil (Hebrew for adversary).

Our own anger, fear, lust, hatred, pride, laziness, is demonic. It does not belong to God. Therefore we have to eliminate all of it. But we do it by closing our eyes to illusion. It doesn't mean to close one's eyes, as if one is being naive or to be manipulated. Instead it has to do with learning the science of meditation itself, so that we could have experiences like this in which you are face to face with God, and you can receive help about your work.

And so this is the hidden wisdom, ἀποκρύπτω, apokruptó, from the Greek reminding us of apocalypse. If you are familiar with the Book of Revelations, it is a very controversial text written in the language of Kabbalah. It is symbolic. If you want to have revelations of divine experience in yourself, you need to face great ordeals, because revelations is all about cataclysms, tremendous suffering, conflict.

But, it has nothing to do, in the most important sense, with what is going to happen to this physical world. That is one level of meaning. More importantly, it refers to, as we are entering initiation, we have to face our own apocalypse where we face moments of crisis in which we are tested to the extreme. We have to make the decision: will we act virtuously or selfishly? And how we act determines our trajectory, which is why we examine two forms of initiation.

Christic and Demonic Initiation

This is a painting by Hans Memling, the Last Judgment, in which you see Jesus with his right hand up in the form of the pentagram. Three fingers up, two fingers down, which is a gnostic symbol. And, a beautiful wreath and flowers stemming from or levitating above his hand.

Towards his right we find many initiates entering into the temples of the mysteries, entering into the White Lodge.

The White Lodge is a term used by Samael Aun Weor to refer to the hierarchies of the divine. It refers to the purity of the soul. And on the left of Jesus we find he has a sword levitating towards his left and his hand extending downward to reject the tenebrous, or the initiates of the black path.

It is important to remember that white and black has to do with initiation and that there are many people of many races in the White Lodge. There are many people of many races in the Black Lodge. White and black has to do with the quality of the soul. Physicality has nothing to do with initiation.

So we have the Angel Michael weighing the scales of cosmic justice in which the souls are evaluated whether they will enter into happiness and bliss, or they will enter into suffering.

Many religions talk about hell, damnation, heaven, in a very tyrannical, fearful way. It is better to think of these things not as places, but as qualities of the heart. When we are afflicted with anger, with pride, with sarcasm, we are in hell. And if we feed those elements, we initiate ourselves in hell and we develop further and further as a demon.

So what is a demon? People like to think of this caricature of a person with horns, long tail, wings. Somebody who disobeyed God many millennia ago as a type of comic-book figure, which has no basis in reality. It is a symbol, as we see in this image. These are symbols of qualities of the soul and all of our defects, which we find represented by all these evil qualities like jealousy, lust, desire.

But on the right or towards the right of Jesus, our left, we have Saint Peter initiating those souls into a better way of life, a superior way of life, which is based upon and predicated on virtue.

Notice that he has the keys of heaven in his hand, silver, gold. And we'll talk more explicitly about these symbols. These silver and gold keys represent alchemy among some traditions. The work with the stone of Peter, Patar, or the work with energy. Silver, feminine. Gold, masculine. And we'll talk about this specifically in relation to The Perfect Matrimony, which is a book that Samael Aun Weor wrote that clarifies these symbols.

So we can either become initiated into the divine hierarchy or as a demon, and what most people talk about in this time when they say, “Join our group, we will initiate you.” It has to do with the black path, the negative path, because while those schools may teach about purity of mind, love, and brotherhood, we find that through their actions, their behavior, their character shows everything.

How many times have we heard of groups speak of beauty and harmony in which they excommunicate their members, curse their members, betray their members? This is very common. You find this in many groups, not only in many world religions, but esoteric groups. Even in gnosis too. It is sad, but we have to remember that initiation is our own character, our life. What we do on a daily basis.

Addiction to Suffering

Which is why John Milton and his epic poem Paradise Lost explain these principles. He was an initiate who taught about these truths in his poem, in his works. Many people love, and sadly, they don't renounce their own causes of suffering, which is pride, hatred, defects.

People love to feed animality, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, qualities that perpetuate suffering, and you find that many aspects of our culture in North America, which is infecting the whole planet, is addicted to behaviors that cause pain. And it's sad. People make a heaven of hell. They justify lust, pornography, elements that produce a lot of conflict and degeneration. And this is how people are initiating themselves as a planet into the black path, into hell, into the infernal dimensions, which is why Milton, knowing this truth stated, through the lips of his character Lucifer (who was the angel that fell from heaven and became the head of the the Black Lodge).

He states:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
“Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.”

And unfortunately when the qualities that are needed to enter initiation are taught, people hate it. People do not like virtue. Compassion is not rewarded in this era. Kindness is looked down upon as a weakness, and so people make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

“What matter where, if I be still the same,
“And what I should be, all but less then he
“Whom Thunder hath made greater?”

So he is contemplating what will I be now that I am fallen. And he is referring to the divine who exiled him from heaven for his transgression.

“Here at least We shall be free (meaning in hell. In the infernal dimensions); th' Almighty hath not built
“Here [the Abyss] for his envy, will not drive us hence:
“Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
“To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
“Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.”
―John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, ll. 254-263

This is the mentality of advertisement, politics, government. People think that they can behave as if there is no divinity watching. People justifying extortion, crime, sexual degeneration, poverty, affliction, all the problems that afflict this country, humanity, this planet. People justify the worst crimes in the penal code, in the human rights codes, all because they say "Is it not better that we reign in hell than serve in heaven?" Because as Paul of Tarsus stated, or I believe one of the initiates of the Bible stated, how the initiates of the white path are looked down upon as if they are weak, because it seems that the devil has more power.

“The wisdom of the Secret Enemy is seemingly far greater than the wisdom of the Nous atom. As a great prophet once said, ‘The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’” ―Morya, The Dayspring of Youth

So this is the mentality of many people. They feel that there is no consequence.

Diogenes, Alexander the Great, and the True Human Being

We find this paralleled in the story of Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Diogenes is a very interesting figure in Greek philosophy. He was known as the cynic, the doubter. He was known to live in a barrel, was a beggar, and lived away from society primarily because of this reason. He felt that the society around them was degenerated, was evil, and therefore he chose to live away from cities, culture, and all the means by which people perpetuate false ideals.

Samael Aun Weor mentioned that Diogenes was a great master. He would walk around the daytime with a lamp, a symbol, going door to door asking people if he could find a man. And when obviously people in the house would say “Yes, there are many men around in the city!” Diogenes would say “No. These are not men. These are pigs, vulgar creatures.” And so obviously he made many enemies.

People didn't understand that he was looking for a real Hum-Man from the Sanskrit Hum, spirit, and man or manas, mind. A real hum-man, or individual man or woman, is a mind of the spirit, that emulates qualities like that of Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, etc.

So Diogenes was saying, “I am looking for an initiate, but I don't see any here.” And so obviously he was creating many problems for the people around him, because he was very radical and was making a statement, and symbolically represented through his life these truths.

There is one moment mentioned in his history where Alexander the Great came to him and saw him lying in agony underneath the sun ,and asked him kindly, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Diogenes very curtly stated, dismissively, "You can get out of the way of my sun. You are blocking the light." Alexander the Great was so shocked that he had no other choice but to walk away.

Who else could have that type of power to dismiss a person who owned pretty much half the world in power. It is an initiate, because he demonstrated through his quality of heart, not his physical material life, where real virtue is. So Diogenes was poor, physically had nothing, but his heart was in God. Alexander the Great had all the materialism and life of this world, but no soul.

This is why Homer stated, “It is better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the empire of shadows.” He was the author, originator of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

So Diogenes represents a symbol known in the Tarot, the ninth arcanum, the ninth law, as The Hermit. A wandering beggar. One who is in solitude. That hermit is an initiate, somebody who works with the staff of the spine in the lamp of wisdom.

Diogenes literally was representing with his life, choosing to live in poverty to show a truth, sacrificing everything to teach something symbolically for us. For people who would understand it at a later date.

That lamp of wisdom is the lamp of hermetic science, which relates to the God Hermes or Mercury within the tradition of alchemy. Hermes refers to being hermetically sealed, and that has to do with saving energy. The basis of that is, we save energy when we renounce defects, anger, lust, pride, etc., because if we act on anger, we waste energy, and if we have no energy, we cannot awaken consciousness.

That is the beginning of initiation. We work on our faults so that we can have light. That light is fire, is energy, is force. We have no light, no fire, no force. The lamp is dark. We can't see the path. And if we are serious about this work, we can learn to save enough energy so that we awaken what is known as Kundalini, which rises up the staff of our spine, symbolized in this ninth arcanum, and of course that has to do with the work with energy, which we are going to be talking more explicitly in our forthcoming lectures.

So “If you want to initiation, write it upon a staff,” says Samael Aun Weor in The Perfect Matrimony. "Whosoever has understanding, let him understand because there is wisdom within."

Initiation is when we are working ethically upon ourselves, so that that force, the Kundalini, can rise up the spine to the mind, to the heart.

The Second Birth

That path was taught by Jesus. It is known as the second birth. He said:

"Verily I say unto you Nicodemus, you must be born again of water and spirit. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” ―John 3:5-6

People typically think this has to do with belief. That “If I believe in Jesus, if I get physically baptized, I enter the kingdom of heaven, I am initiated.” But, his teaching was very much more secretive. He never publicly taught the meaning of that verse.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Meaning, physical birth is born and predicated on the sexual act in the common ordinary way. But “that which is born of the spirit” through the same sexual act transformed, “is spirit.”

This is known in the East is Tantra, sacred alchemy. The practice between husband and wife in order to conserve their vital forces and to elevate them.

When that sexual energy is conserved, it is transformed. We give birth to the fire of the Holy Ghost in the spine that rises, and gives birth spiritually. If people engage in the sexual act that is commonly known, you give birth to a physical child, but through specific procedures, by conserving the waters of baptism, that energy rises up to our mind and coronates us so that we can receive Christ, the energy, which is born through birth.

Nobody is born through theory, through belief. Everyone is born in this world through sex. And so when we learn to use that energy in a spiritual way, we enter initiation, which is why Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Major Mysteries:

“Every initiation is a spiritual birth. Whosoever wants to be born has to enter into the feminine womb in order to be gestated; thus, this is how the right to be born is acquired by the one who wants to be born. Initiation is totally sexual, thus if we want to be born, we need to practice sexual magic with our spouse.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries

Sexual magic or alchemy refers to, again, teachings given in Buddhism, in the highest levels of practice. Here we see Padmasambhava with his consort Yeshe Tsoygal, where he is depicted in the sexual act with his wife. And many people become confused by this, because they say, “How is it that this Buddhist master says you have to renounce lust, and yet he is having sex with his wife?”

And this is clarified very simply by his statement:

“Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation." ―Padmasambhava

So the reality is, the answer is, he was having sexual connection with his wife, but without lust, without ego, without desire, without animality. Instead, he learned to use the sexual act with love, with chastity.

People think this term chastity has to do with not having sex or being in an abstention. Chasity simply means “purity, immaculateness.” It means to not emit the sexual seed, which is why Yeshe Tsoygal said:

“Practice to perfection the skill of retaining your seed essence…” ―Yeshe Tsoygal

…the seminal matter, because that life force if it is expelled, it is wasted, either through giving birth to a child or through animal pleasure.

Instead if you conserve that seed, you can let it germinate into spiritual powers: clairvoyance, telepathy, clairaudience, astral travel, jinn experiences. That seed power, which can give birth to a child, is the power of God, and if you conserve that force and transform it, you give birth to the soul.

And so one must learn to use that force without lust. So in the beginning, male-female, husband and wife, are obviously going to struggle because, of course in us, we have a lot of lust, a lot of desire. But the beginning of initiation is based on this principle. Renounce desire. Renounce lust. Renounce the animal spasm. The orgasm. That is known as the original sin in the Bible.

Adam and Eve were in the garden when a snake came by and told Eve, “Eat this apple because it will make you like a God.” Eve ate, tempted Adam, they fell, and they were kicked out of the garden by God.

People read this story literally. It is a symbol. What else is that but a symbol of a naked man and a naked woman in a garden, who are tempted by a snake, which is of course, the serpent, but inverted. So that is the tempting serpent, or lust, or desire, which pulls people down into suffering. And of course, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the sexual energy in the wrong way, they were kicked out.

But of course, if we want to re-enter the garden of Eden, we have to learn to conserve the energies, primarily because the word for Eden in Hebrew means “bliss” or “voluptuousness.” It can refer to sexuality.

The Sword of Kundalini

What is the sword mentioned in the great myths of the heroes? It is the Kundalini. It is the sword of the heroes. It is the fire of the Holy Ghost that rises victoriously from the base Chakra Muladhara, to the mind.

Samael Aun Weor mentioned in Tarot and Kabbalah:

“Without woman, no initiate can receive the sword."

Or no male initiate, because every man is a priest, every woman is a priestess. Together they work in the greatest priesthood, which is alchemy. Male-female, positive-negative, moon-sun. Together they work to transform these energies represented by Adam Eve, solar-lunar.

These physical polarities are necessary because together they form the serpent, the sword. Moses raised a brazen serpent upon a staff in the wilderness made of the amalgamation of copper and tin, to use metallurgical science, metallurgical terminology.

Copper is Venus, woman, the feminine. Tin is Jupiter, masculine, the male. Together you form the bronze serpent, which rises upon the spine, to the mind, to the heart.

Together, man and woman in matrimony can enter initiation.

But of course, matrimony, doesn’t have to do with paperwork. It doesn't have to do with going to the judge down the circuit court and then filing for a marriage, saying “I want to marry this person.” This paperwork has nothing to do with the reality of the couple. Real marriage is between man and woman when they sexually connect. That is the only thing that God judges, because sexual connection is a marriage. It is religion, “religare.” To reunite Adam and Eve, those principles, before they fell. So together, they enter back into bliss. And the way that we do so is by studying the tradition of alchemy, which we will be explaining progressively in this course.

The Secret Teachings of Alchemy

We have an image here of Vitriol, a teaching about this precise science. Samael Aun Weor mentions that in order to enter initiation, we have to work with this energy known as the stone of the Masons.

So we mentioned previously about Patar, Peter, the Church or the rock upon which the Gnostic Church is founded. That is a symbol of Kabbalah. In Kabbalah, we refer to in this Jewish mystical teaching, the stone upon which we base ourselves.

That stone is known as Vitriol among the alchemists. It is known as the Ka’aba amongst the Muslims: the blackened stone of our sexual energy that must be purified. That doctrine, which has a physical component and an esoteric component, represents these truths. We have to learn to pray towards Mecca where the stone is. Meaning: work with that energy.

So here we are mentioning something that not a lot of people understand spiritually because those teachings were lost. That stone is the creative force, and even in terms of slang we find that a person's stones has to do with their sexual organs. Either the testicles or the ovaries.

As the Old Testament [Deuteronomy 23:1] states, "He who is wounded in the stones or has his privy member cutoff shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Because, that energy is fundamental. That is how we build our church. Build our spirit. That is how we create.

Vitriol is one of the clues of the Gnostic alchemist. The word signifies:

“Visitam Interiorem Terre Rectificatum Invenias Ocultum Lapidum.”

Visit the interior of the earth which through rectifying, you will find the occult stone.

What is the earth in Kabbalah? Our body. Our physical body is the earth, which has all the elements inside: fire, air, water, earth. All those forces are necessary for our development.

Fire relates to our emotions. Air to our mind. Waters to our seminal sexual force. And the earth is the well that contains all of it.

We have to visit the interior of the earth, meaning, meditate. Go into yourself. Examine how the sexual energy works in a spiritual way, and through practices, we learn to enter initiation.

We have to first work with the stone so that we can open the doors for ourselves of the path.

What is interesting too is that amongst these symbols you find the seven planets, and the stone relating to “corpus.” There is an arrow pointing down towards this figure. It has as the letter of Saturn (♄) represented there.

Saturn, astrologically speaking relates with death. It means death of desire. The death of animality. If you wish to work with your stone, we have to remove the impurities so that we can give birth, as we see in this image on the top left, to anima, the soul. At the top right spiritus, the spirit. And when we work more on our faults, our defects, we enter the actual path and we have to face certain trials and ordeals.

The Guardian of the Threshold and the Children’s Chamber

In this next slide we see an image of the Guardian of the Threshold, which is mentioned many times in the writings of Rudolf Steiner. Many other initiates talk about this ordeal. Samael Aun Weor spent a lot more time explaining these things in a very clear way. Some of the other authors were a little bit more ambiguous.

So, if we are very serious about entering the path, we will face a certain trial. It has nothing to do with having attended the lecture, but more so internally, when we are practicing. We are working with the creative energy. We are meditating, trying to work on our egos and our faults.

This experience is internal, where, when your physical body is asleep, you may be awakened in the astral plane in which you have to face yourself. This guardian is a representation of you. It represents all of your defects from this life and all your past lives. So this figure usually takes on a demonic figure. Very monstrous, huge, because our defects are very great.

This guardian is of the threshold because that is the threshold of entering the mysteries. If we wish to really advance towards the light, we have to face our own darkness.

Personally, if I am telling you about this is because I remember facing my guardian. A huge monster. Very hideous, and I had to keep invoking and invoking again and again because I kept failing and I felt so much pain not being able to face this monster in myself, because I desperately do not want to fail. And personally, in my case, it was very severe, because I was told internally that the White Lodge would end my life if I didn't succeed, because my karma was very severe.

I was at the time physically very sick. I was actually hospitalized, and I later found out from medical reports afterward that I could have died. And I was told during that time internally, “If you do not face yourself now, it'll be over for you and you'll go down.” And so, I had to fight again and again and again.

The time that I succeeded was when I told myself, “I will have no fear. I will not be afraid of myself.” And then I decided..."So be it!" Locked, hand in hand, with this monster, conjured it and defeated it. And I remember at that time there were a group of black magicians, sorcerers of the evil path, who were watching the whole time to see what my fate would be. They looked at me with horror because the light of Christ was in me, and I said unto them, "It can be done."

I looked at them because they were afraid and I told them that, “You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to run away from yourself.” Because, those demons, they feed the Guardian of the Threshold. They worship it. It is their fears and anger and all their faults. When they saw that I had completely renounced that, at that level, they were scared.

But of course, that was one ordeal. In the path you face many ordeals, but when you succeed in facing certain ordeals internally, the angels welcome you. I remember being helped by certain Cherubim, masters who were very happy, and celebrated my achievements internally. This is why we have this image of these angels represented there, because when you conquer ordeals internally, they appear to you in the form of children.

Only those who are like little children shall enter the kingdom of God, meaning: to have the mind, the simplicity of an infant. It doesn't mean to be stupid or to be ignorant, but to be pure.

The Ordeals of the Elements

We also face the four deals of the elements: fire, air, water, and earth, which we will be talking separately, giving a lecture on each element, I believe around July.

The Ordeal of Fire

What are the ordeals of the fire? It has to do with criticism: somebody or people in our life speak ill about us. We feel heat, pressure. We feel that we are burning. We are being provoked to act negatively, with resentment, anger, sarcasm.

But in order to conquer the ordeal of fire, we have to be sweet, kind, compassionate. To really not identify with their criticism, but to respond with love. It doesn't mean that we pretend to be kind, but to really do it. It is very difficult, but if you transform the fire of that situation, you reach equanimity, calm.

Personally, I work at a job in which I get a lot of fire. It is a good element to work with, in which I have clients that are very difficult to work with. Very troublesome, who constantly may criticize, and so they have really given me a blessing, taught me to respond with love, and when I have worked and acted kindly towards my clients, it dissipates everything. It transforms the situation.

The Ordeal of Air

We also have the ordeals of the air, relating to the mind. You know the saying, when we are “up in the air.” It has to do with financial situations. Maybe we feel like we lost a job or reach a crisis in our life in which we don't know where to go. We literally feel like we are falling in life. We don't know where we are going to land. It has to do with mobility. The virtue of this element is mobility. To be able to move. To adapt. To know how to control our own fears. The air of the mind that always thinks, “How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to live? What am I going to do?”

The Ordeal of Water

Likewise we have the ordeal of water, relating to fluidity. Sometimes in life we feel that we are drowning. Again, it can relate to finances, to problems, conflicts where we are in a big storm. The water is pulling us down and we have to learn to swim against the current. We feel our depression wants to pull us in, to give up. But if we swim against the current, do what no one else does and be heroic, we end up on top.

So the virtue of water has to do with, we can say, confidence, strength: to swim against the waters that are seeking to pull us down into the whirlpool.

The Ordeal of Earth

Lastly: the earth. In life, we may feel like we have a mountain collapsing on us. We are being crushed. The situation in our life is fearful. We feel that we are being buried beneath a rock, and that we can't escape the situation. If we cry out in fear, we fail. But if we show constancy, stability, confidence, we succeed.

Ordeals in the Astral Plane

So these elements not only relate to our physical life, but even internally, you may have those ordeals in the astral plane. We get tested in the physical world, but also in the internal planes as we enter initiation.

I remember one time I woke up in the astral plane and I found myself lying on my back in the dark, in some room. I knew I was awake, and then I suddenly heard a lot of voices around me laughing. At that time, I knew this was a test and I was really happy about it, because I knew that the beings around me were angels, but they were secretly testing me.

I heard them laughing and mocking me, calling me names, criticizing me, slapping me, pouring water on me, doing all sorts of things. The funny part was, I even had one of them sit on my head and fart on my head, trying to get me to react, and I felt my ego at the time was trying to come out and was getting really angry.

But I knew, “I am not going to act on my anger, because I know this is an ordeal and that they are helping me to show me my ego.” To work on it.

And after I conquered the ordeal, the lights turn on, and a group of these angels from the previous graphic, like Cherubim, celebrated. They all cheered, and I remember looking in their eyes and seeing the beauty of heaven there. The purity of soul.

They invited me into their children's chamber where they taught me many things. That was a great victory, but to reach those celebrations, we have to work with the elements. Conquer fire, our anger. Conquer the air, our thoughts. Conquer the water, our creative energy. Conquer the earth, our physical life.

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

This is how we work with this science, which is synthesized in the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life is a beautiful glyph known as the Kabbalah, the Jewish mysticism, which relates to the body.

This Tree of Life is a map of consciousness. It is made up of three trinities. Above, middle, and below, followed by a separate sphere known as Malkuth, which is the physical world. It is a diagram of the soul, from the highest levels of divine expression, to the most dense.

At the top we find Kether, Chokmah, Binah, which are energies of God known in Christianity as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Known in Egypt as Osiris, Horus, Isis. Amongst the Nordics: Wotan, Baldur, Thor. Or in Buddhism, we have Nirmanakaya, Binah; Sambhogakaya, Chokmah; and Dharmakaya, Kether.

All these religions are synthesized by this glyph. We can interpret any tradition based on this diagram, because it is a map of the soul, and all religions have the same roots. We use the Jewish mysticism to interpret the scriptures, but also to understand our meditative experiences.

We also have Chesed, our inner God, the spirit; Geburah, the divine soul, Neshamah; Tiphereth, the human soul, the heart, which is where we determine everything.

So as we spoke about Telesis, willpower, the will of the initiate, it is based on the qualities of our heart. So, if you take this image and map it on yourself, we find this represented.

The qualities of a heart determine initiation. It is how we enter the path, because these five sephiroth or spheres of God above, these emanations, because the word sephiroth means “emanations, jewels” or qualities of God, these represent the most divine in us. But below Tiphereth, we have Netzach, the mind, Hod, the emotions, Yesod, our sexual energy. Likewise, Malkuth, the physical body.

These lower spheres, these four lower sephiroth, are what are infiltrated by ego, which we have to purify.

It is interesting also that Yesod on this glyph relate to the sexual organs. It is the secret science in Hebrew. יסוד Yesod means foundation. It is the stone. The basis upon which we build our temple to God.

Interestingly enough, you take the Hebrew letters of יסוד Yesod and reverse them, take this letter י Yod and put it at the end, and you spell סודי, which means “secret.” It is the path that has never been taught openly until as recently as 1950 in the writings of Samael Aun Weor.

As it states in The Major Mysteries:

“The Tree of Life is represented in our physical body by the spinal column, and the Tree of Knowledge is represented by our sexual organs; these trees of Eden even share their roots.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries

So we study these two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge in order to understand the path itself, but more importantly to walk it. This Tree of Knowledge is known as Da’ath, knowledge, alchemy. Amongst the Sufis and Muslims, it is Mari’fah. Amongst the Greeks it is Gnosis. So, I invite you to ask questions about anything we have discussed.

Questions and Answers

Question: You talked about Kundalini awakening at one point. How common would you say that is in the gnostic world?

Instructor: Yes, well for those who are really serious about chastity and purity, they do it. I know many people who are working seriously. Internally, I have investigated them and verified their level. So yes, there are many people who are doing it, but commonly what people talk about Kundalini awakening, it could be a variety of things. Two primarily.

There are people who know the doctrine, who knew about transmutation, chastity. Whether they are gnostic or not. They may be working with the creative energy, conserving it, because in many schools of yoga and Buddhism, they teach you: don't lose your energy.

They may be practicing pranayama, such as in the teachings of Sivananda, who is a great master of yoga and Hinduism. They could be awakening sparks. Through breath work, they are beginning to flame the coals in their spinal column so to speak. So they may have sparks of light which emerge that rise up the spine and give them spiritual experiences.

Personally, before I was married, I remember years ago, since being in this teaching, I practiced pranayama very diligently and I remember having many, very powerful, samadhis, spiritual experiences, because of working individually with that force. But you know, when being married, finally there is more fire available, more energy available. That energy is more consistent.

But, there are people who can awaken those experiences through pranayama, which is breath-work. Controlling your breath is known as interchangeable nostril breathing. You close one nostril, inhale through the left, close, send the energy the prana or life force to your coccyx. Exhale to the other nostril, send that energy to your mind, to your heart.

Then do the same thing with your other nostril, right, close, exhale through the left.

So you can have many experiences like that, but people who don't study confuse their pranayama, as a single practitioner, with Kundalini awakening. It is true that you can only have experiences when the Kundalini is awakened, but is that a spark, or is it a sun?

Because when working individually, you can have sparks of fire. But if you are married, it's like having the power of a sun.

So I know many people whether single or married who have experiences. But only those who are working in a matrimony can awaken the Kundalini, because She is the power of Durga in Hinduism. Kali, Miriam, Mary. She is the Divine Mother of Jesus.

When we talk about the birth of Jesus, he was born through an immaculate conception, but doesn't mean that Mary just believed and was impregnated by the Holy Ghost through theory. In fact, Jesus the spiritual son, is born in an immaculate conception, meaning, to conceive without orgasm. To be pure, because you can't create without sex.

If you want to create the Christ child in you, you have to be married. This is what Jesus taught, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” You need both polarities.

Question: What about people who claim to have a sudden Kundalini awakening? What is going on there?

Instructor: A variety of things. Some people, genuinely, because they are practicing pranayama, they have the experiences. There are people who may just start to study these type of teachings and because they start to have some kind of internal dreams or experiences that they don't decipher or comprehend, they attribute it to Kundalini.

Sadly, I know a lot of people too, and my wife and I have worked with many people who are mentally ill, who attribute spiritual experiences with Kundalini, when their life and their character demonstrate that they are ill, unfortunately.

This is why in initiation, we are very rigorous, we are very demanding. Initiation is born and founded upon ethics. Qualities of purity of mind. Balance. If we are imbalanced, that light cannot be generated but, people also attribute those experiences with Kundalini because they may be working with meditation and spiritual practices, but they are not working with chastity, and therefore, because they are expelling their energies and trying to meditate, they are damaging themselves and they start to awaken powers in the ego, which is initiation of the black path.

Question: What about people who think they are working with Kundalini but really they are not chaste? They are having experiences, is that black magic or what is wrong with that case?

Instructor: Yeah, people who are having experiences, but they are fornicating...

Question: So if it's not Kundalini, then what is it?

Instructor: It is the inverted serpent. You can have powers with the superior serpent Kundalini or, Kundabuffer, the tail of the demons.

So initiation is written upon a staff. It either ascends or descends.

If we conserve the sexual energy, it will rise up the spine as the brazen serpent of victory, but if we give in to fornication and lust, expelling those forces, feeding desire, it becomes the fallen serpent that tempted Adam and Eve.

It is the seraphim, the fiery serpents that bit the Israelites in the wilderness when they betrayed Jehovah. So that is when Moses stepped in to save them. He told Moses “Raise a serpent upon a staff, so whoever looks upon it will be healed.”

It is a symbol and the Israelites are a representation of the soul. Isis-Ra-El. Isis the Divine Mother. Ra, Osiris-Ra, the Christ. El, the Spirit. It's all Kabbalistic and when you work with the brazen serpent, you heal your soul.

Question: So you can only come to this kind of knowledge through hermetics? Everything is a process and if everything is a process then you have to go through the physical self in order to get to the point where spirituality or the Christ spirit can be born within you. So, can you do that by way of working your way through organized religion and then coming through it?

Instructor: Oh yes.

Comment: (paraphrasing) Because I was ready to take my daughter and walk out... Because I know all this stuff have touched upon, all this stuff, I have experienced all the stuff. I did not know that that woman was who you said she was. She was always there. I would know that something was coming up because she would be there. You know the one with the sword. “Not now, I got other things to do!” We don't have time for this one, you know, so I know at times for years she was always around. She was always around.

I was always being told I was too loud when I would, you call it the astral plane. See, it never occurred to me that I was up on the astral plane when I would be you know, you know, somebody better talk to me right now and tell me what's going on. That kind of thing because things in my life would be so intense.

But for you to tell me that I could get to this, through the many, many, many, many, many sufferings and rejections of religion, and constantly taken off one snake skin, for lack of a better word; yes, taking off one snake skin, and then being told that “Yeah, you got to get through this this...” There is no way you can do that in one lifetime and then to get it through and then to be told, “Well, no. We need to get through all that muck and mire before we could get you here.”

So for you to tell me that... I have been doing this on my own all these years because I knew that it had to be real. Something's got to be real. Everything in life can be... So, take this and focus on this. But that's not really what I was doing. I was just being allowed to announce to myself that this is the path you are on. You are going to stay on this path no matter what, and if you try to get off, we are going to slice you in two. That's pretty much happened and that is what the suffering is. Because I was like “No, no, no please let me off. I want to be off. I want to be wonderful!” No, no, you are not going to be any of those. You are going to grow spiritually.

Instructor: Yes, and Samael Aun Weor mentions that there are many people who are not attending any group, any religious institution, not following any creed, and those people are actually closer to initiation than many people who say they are holy, so to speak.

Comment: (paraphrasing) Well, I don't go there, I certainly don't know with that, but I just came through an initiation. That made me say, “Oh my God... am I going to die?” That is how bad initiation was. But I was like, “Am I going to die? Am I going to make it through this?” I did but it was very long. It was like three or four years.

Instructor: Yes, and as we'll talk in the future lectures, there are initiation of Minor Mysteries and there are initiations of Major Mysteries. There are many people who enter the Minor Mysteries who are working with the energies of sex and who don't have experiences internally about it. They may be asleep consciously-speaking, and be entering the Minor Mysteries and working at that level.

To enter the Major Mysteries, the highest initiations is a work of alchemy and involves a certain type of telesis or will.

But yes, obviously, there are many people who enter through life and enter the path seemingly without knowing it. They don't necessarily have those astral experiences, where in dreams, they are face to face and having that direct communication.

But the purpose of our studies to be specific. So, while in the beginning we have a certain level of faith, we want to develop it even further. We want to be able to have that face-to-face conversation with a master of the White Lodge in dreams, awake, so that we have even more knowledge. But of course, level upon level, “Light upon light,” says the Qur’an. Degree upon degree.

There are levels of initiation. There are beginning levels of initiation. There is mastery and then there is even higher, perfection in mastery, like Jesus, Buddha, and all of them. So, there are levels and degrees, and it's good to know…

Comment: (paraphrasing) That's hard for me to get my head around that. You know I was taught for sixty-six years, probably in the womb, that you can be a Christian. “Try to do the best with what you can,” and that's it. And then for somebody standing in front of me at the age of sixty-six years… No, no, you can talk to these.... I mean and and that's how I get through life.

I have no one I can talk to, so I had to, you know, somebody needs to teach me, how to have humor, because I ain't going to get through this, and they did. They gave me a sense of humor, I guess. I mean she hates it, so it works for me... So for you to tell me, “Yes, you can get to that point,” I never thought that. That never entered into my mind.

I remember that, twenty-five years ago being exposed to Samael Aun Weor, initially through Gurdjieff and him saying “You are a lazy human being, wake the heck up!” That led me to Samael, but that was too advanced for me... Now after all that time, maybe six, seven, eight initiations, I can understand exactly what you are saying. The Pistis Sophia, I have had that. I understand that. But for you to say that you can see Jesus face to face, again, it never occurred to me that it would ever be possible.

Instructor: If you enter higher degrees of initiation, you can speak to him, because I have personally been with him in the astral plane. He is the highest initiate we know of, and personally, he gave me some teachings that were very profound. I don't want to relate them here, but definitely, when you have that awakened consciousness, you can have greater access to real knowledge, because the master Samael Aun Weor says that a real occultist is someone who knows how to travel in the astral body. In the dream state. Because in that way, we find the occult wisdom, the hidden wisdom.

Comment: I thought that this was not real, and now I am here. This is real. I told myself, “I never heard of this group,” but I'm going to see what's happening...

Question: On the topic of the transmutation of sexual energy. In relation to Kundalini and the necessity to reach that level, how would you say you approach it, in the sense of, sometimes you are saying, seed energy, sometimes maybe you are supposed to expel it. What is the balance? I can't imagine saying that you can never ejaculate it.

Instructor: For the initiations, we say never, because as Yeshe Tsoygal said, “we must always perfect the practice of retaining the seed essence.” Of course, in the beginning it's difficult, because through this lifetime or even previous lifetimes, we have been forcing our mind and are used to that act.

So, we have always been out of Eden, exiled. But to enter the straight and narrow gate is precisely when husband and wife unite. The straight path mentioned by Jesus. The narrow way, physically, even relating to sexual copulation, but also a psychological type of work is needed.

In the beginning it is difficult, because the mind is full of lust. The body is trained to expel, but with training, you never lose any energy.

Personally, this has been my path. I don't lose my energy even while practicing alchemy, because I have trained myself to that degree never to lose it.

Question: What about reproduction?

Instructor: Now, interestingly enough, there are ways to conceive a child without orgasm. As partly allegorized in the birth of Jesus, you know the immaculate conception. But of course, people think that myth is silly because they think it has to do with Mary not having sex with a man, and then she gave birth to a child. That is the conventional belief of that story.

But really the truth is that Joseph and Mary were alchemists, and we have procedures where if a gnostic couple wants to have a child, they can perform certain prayers and practices while conserving their energy, because only one sperm is needed to procreate.

It is not necessary to expel millions of sperm for that conception. It is a more profound form of conception because what the Holy Spirit does, the conceiver of Christ, this intelligence takes one seed in order to create a superior child. Because a child born from fornication obviously has many problems physically. That is why in most people their bodies get sick. They may have certain conditions or ailments.

But the Holy Spirit, which is the force of intelligence, is the force of our inner God that can take one sperm and, through prayer and intelligence and wise copulation, take that energy create one child.

Question: Why do doctors tell us orgasm is healthy and what about women and orgasm?

Instructor: Because they like fornication. The doctors. Most people have never been initiated in this science, so they don't know any better. Unfortunately, when you do try to introduce... I have known people try to introduce this science to doctors, many people can be very skeptical and they laugh at it because they have a materialistic mind. But I do know other doctors and people in our tradition who have learned the benefits of this practice, because transmutation promotes our health.

There are even some scientific studies that show how transmutation or alchemy as we teach, promotes health, life, longevity, the health of our endocrine system, the health of our emotional center, our heart, and the mind. It is well known that the greatest artists, philosophers, and teachers were traditionally known as celibates, but they actually new alchemy.

They kept that life private because people would criticize. Beethoven. Mozart. Beethoven was known to be single for you pretty much his whole life, but he had an amazing brain because he had parts of his mind active from working with that energy that people couldn't explain. But he was an alchemist. He knew the science.

Question: Do women lose energy?

Instructor: Yes, women can lose their energy too because orgasm, whether from male or female, emits the seed. Women can lose their seminal waters, which is semen.

Semen in esoteric language has to do with not only just the physical matter, but force.

So, either men or women can lose their seed. We have to conserve it because those are the waters that we transform into our baptism. That requires that we renounce the adversary, shaitan, our ego. The lust that says, “I enjoy engaging in sex in this way.”

This is the meaning of Judas in the Bible. Judas is a symbol of an ego that we have. Loves religion. Loves spirituality. Loves Christ, but loves fornication more. So we may believe that we are spiritual and that we love divinity and all these things, but our actions prove otherwise.

If we give in to fornication and we enjoy emitting the energies, then we have no water by which we can baptize ourselves.

Judas represents that. He betrays Christ. Gives away the Lord for thirty pieces of silver: a symbol of pleasure for a few moments, or like Esau in the Bible. Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of lentils. Same symbol.

It is very strict, obviously, but this is the way. You need energy, water to baptize yourself.

I promise you that if you are serious about it, you will find the benefits of it and naturally you will have more energy, more vitality, more enthusiasm. You have the energy by which you empower your virtue. Your compassion, your happiness. Less anger. Less violent emotions.

I have known people in this science who even suffered mental illness and yet by practicing alchemy, they were rejuvenated. They were no longer sick. It is the healing power of the Holy Spirit. It is the creative force of God.

Swami Sivananda wrote in one of his books about the benefits of pranayama, and even we could say, synonymously, alchemy. Skin is lighter or more rejuvenated. More vitality, more health, suppleness, strength, everything, because that energy, that matter, is transformed into force.

When it goes up the spine through those energetic channels known as the Caduceus of Mercury in medicine, it fills the brain and rejuvenates the endocrine system. Heals the heart, everything. It empowers us. So, we need those energies if we want to awaken spiritually.

Question: Just as a single person, would you recommend a specific practice? I know there are multiple pranayamas...

Instructor: You have to experiment and find the ones that work for you. I mean, we have an abundance of practices for transmutation in The Yellow Book, Kundalini Yoga, and others.

You could work with one that is very easy to work. It is Ham-Sah.

You in-inhale through your nostrils. First you pray to your inner divinity, your Divine Mother, “Please awaken my consciousness. Help me to work with this force!”

Inhale through your nostrils, and you imagine that there is light ascending from your sexual glands up the spine to the channels of your back, which are known as Adam and Eve. Od and Obd. Ida and Pingala in different traditions.

Imagine that light saturating the brain and as you are inhaling with the breath, you pronounce mentally the mantra, “Haaaaaaammmm!” in the mind.

The breath should be more prolonged with the inhalation because you are raising the energies of sex to your mind.

And then imagine that light going to your heart. A very brief quick exhalation, “Ssssaaaaahhh!”

This is because your breath relates with your sexual energy. In the Bible, the spirit of God, the wind of God, hovered above the face of the waters in order to create the planet from the fathomless abyss.

A symbol of working with this force. You create your spiritual earth through your stone, the sexual force.

Likewise, you imagine that circulation in yourself. “Ssssaaaaah!” That is how it should sound, but mentally the mantra Ham, takes a force up to your brain, saturates it.

It is a very easy practice. You can even that if you are married. Or practicing alchemy, but that's a very good practice you can initiate with.

Question: I am just curious. You mentioned you have reached the status of being able to talk to Jesus, so if a person is not religious and if you reach that status, what will he see?

Instructor: Personally, I remember when I had talked with him that for a long time, I was atheist. I was a very pessimistic, morbid person, very sad. Felt like I had no meaning to my life.

Eventually when I met him, he was in the astral plane, he came to me because I invoked him and at least the symbol that he gave to me was very beautiful. He saw me, obviously, but what he saw in me was my own ego, and he was trying to show me how to get out.

I remember that experience. It was a outside my house. It was a very dark night, cloudy sky, which of course, your dreams are symbolic. So, darkness or cloudiness represents the mind. The cloudiness of the ego that obscures the light of God in you. So, I invoked him, begging him, “please teach me!” I remember he came up to me and the way that he was described in one of Samael Aun Weor's books, in The Revolution of Beelzebub, I saw him exactly like that.

[Editor's Note: Samael Aun Weor wrote the following describing Master Aberamentho, Jesus of Nazareth: "Then, I kneeled and prostrated myself before the most powerful Hierarch of the cosmos, who is called by the Tibetans “the Mother of Mercy” or “the Melodious Voice Oeaoeh.” He is the Only Begotten, the great universal Word of life, whose body is all of the sounds played in the infinite. His beauty is ineffable. He bears a crown with three points, and his very long cape is carried by the Elohim. They carry the long train of his cape."]

So if you read that book, that is how he appeared to me and I remember at that moment I was watching him and I was being filled with fear. Obviously, he is a great being and suddenly he gave me a supra-conscious experience. He gave me light. I saw myself in third person. He took my vision expanded it and I was standing on the lawn of my house and he just shot up as a beam of light into the sky in the clouds. They parted and I saw in the atmosphere beautiful stars. A galaxy, and he just vanished. I just stood up looking at him like this… and then I woke up.

He was teaching me that “You want to be like me, with freedom, going beyond to the infinite? You have to clear your mind. Clear you ego,” and was very humbled by that.

He is very difficult to comprehend. He is a level of master that is so high that not even the gods understand him, because he has gone beyond. Even beyond an angel. So, there are hierarchies and hierarchies and levels.

Another Instructor’s Comment: So, there are many masters, some whom work anonymously or have worked anonymously on earth, so we can meet a master internally and not even realize it. The case for people who are not religious is often you know that they'll be receiving some kind of guidance, in particular the Divine Mother.

Interesting that you mention Her. She has the ability to take a variety of forms and, in my experiences, I have seen my Divine Mother in different forms, and She will take different aspects, but She appears to you in order to teach you something. Masters as well can appear to you as a symbol, like a butterfly or something, when you invoke them, because they are teaching you something in the way that they can appear to you.

So regardless of what religious tradition we come from, or if we don't come from any religious tradition, we can sense in our heart the power and the purity of that master. We can understand that guidance, even if the form that they take is unknown to us, or we don't recognize them for who they are.

Sometimes they will show themselves in a form we can recognize, of course, so that we will understand, and you know, develop that relationship, but God itself is formless, and many different beings have worked to purify themselves to become vehicles in which the light of God can express. But the light of God itself is beyond form. So, I feel, you know, that many people will experience what they call their inner voice, their conscience. Many times, that is a manifestation of our Divine Mother, always present with us at any time.

Comment: (paraphrasing) I had one experience where, this was when I was first working with transmutation when I was younger. I didn't know what to expect. Didn't know if it was divine or something, but was walking down the road, like a state park or something. There was a man with a very well-trimmed beard, buttoned-up shirt. I was sitting there blaming the system for my problems, like this and that. He said “You just need to lighten up,” and patted me on my shoulder.

I guess what I learned from that experience is that we have help and we have brotherhood. So in this path, it isn't so lonely and miserable. There has to be a point, being called to service, so that we can grow and find truth together. So it just it's a small experience that I had. It doesn't have to be Jesus Christ. It doesn't have to be this magnificent experience. It could just be walking through a park and a tap on a shoulder from a friend.

Instructor: Samael Aun Weor also mentions that the greatest joy of the gnostic is the discovery of one of his or her defects, because a discovered defect is a dead defect. Which is why in this course, we will be talking about how to practice that self-observation, comprehension, elimination. The work on the ego, because when you comprehend the ego, eliminate those faults, you free light, and in that way we enter initiation.

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Arcanum 21: Transmutation

1/12/2020

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The Solar Bodies and Bodhichitta

1/7/2020

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Today, we are going to discuss the nature of consciousness, the nature of mind as it is explained within the gnostic doctrine, as well as its relation to the famous solar bodies of esotericism. We are going to elaborate on how mind, or consciousness, is related to the vehicles of the soul.

The solar bodies are well mentioned throughout the literature of Theosophy. And we are going to address the nature of the solar bodies in relation to the path, which is the path of the Self-realization of the Being and the complete development of the human being.

This path and the solar bodies are well explained within the Christian, Buddhist, Sufi doctrine, through all the world religions. As we are going to elaborate today, Master Jesus of Nazareth, Master Aberamentho, explains the nature of the solar bodies, in detail, in his gospel.

We also have in this image, Padmasambhava, who is known as the Second Buddha. He originally brought Tantrism to Tibet. Now he is recognized by having documented The Tibetan Book of the Dead. He taught the nature of Dzogchen, which means the Great Perfection.

So, we have here, in this image, Padmasambhava with his consort, the force of the vehicle of Tantra. Sexual union is how we create the soul. Let us remember that Master Jesus never taught that we have soul. He said: "With patience will possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19). The soul or the solar bodies are vehicles through which God can manifest and express. These are only created precisely through tantra: pure, pristine, chaste sexual connection or union, and the transformation of one's vital principles.

When we talk about the solar bodies, we also need to talk about the nature of mind, because there are many misconceptions in spiritual circles between the consciousness and the solar bodies. We emphasize that the solar bodies are merely vehicles that can transmit light, in the same manner that a lightbulb transmits light.

The bulb is the vehicle. The light is Christ. So, in the path of Self-realization, we need to create the solar vehicles. We need to become solar beings, pure souls that can transmit the light of Christ, without blemish. This path has been taught in all the religions. And we have a saying by Padmasambhava about he nature of this path.

“Dzogchen is the secret unexcelled cycle of the supreme vehicle of tantra, the true essence of the definitive meaning, the short path for attaining buddhahood in one life.” —Padmasambhava

When we talk about the solar bodies, we emphasize there are many steps in the process of Self-realization. There are many who think that when creating the solar bodies, one is done. But that is a mistaken concept. Because the solar vehicles are merely a footstep in order to enter into the higher stages of initiation.

So, again we have a description of the solar bodies in relation with the Egyptian mysteries. In this image, we have the Tree of Life, kabbalah. On the right, we have the Tree of Life transposed on an egyptian god, Ptah, which is where we get the word Patar, Father. So, this father is our Inner Christ, our Inner Lord. And notice that his body is made of gold. Gold is the symbol of Christ, the light of the Being, the light of our real identity or Innermost God.

Solar bodies are created intentionally. Human beings do not possess them by nature. And that is why we discussed elsewhere in the lectures; we find that the only way to create the soul is by revolution. Not against other people, but ourselves. The requirements are very specific.

We typically possess what we call lunar vehicles, which we are going to explain in relation to the Christian Gospels. But speaking in general about the solar bodies, we are referring to the kabbalah, the Tree of Life.

Here, we have in the bottom Malkuth, which means “Kingdom” in Hebrew. This is our physical body, which we receive as a gift of nature by the procreation of our parents. Above it, we have Yesod, which is the vital body. And our vital body is the origin of all our chemical, metabolic, catabolic processes—reproduction. It is our energy and vitality.

Our physical body would not be able to exist without Yesod, our “Foundation.” After creating the Ssolar bodies like Ptah, Patar, the Father, as it is represented in gold, we can reach the Father—if we want to work with Yesod, our foundation, our vital forces, specifically our sexual energy, which, as we elaborate in the scripture, is the foundation of all genuine spiritual Self-realization.

Above that we have Hod, which means “Glory.” This is our emotional body, our astral vehicle. That is what we commonly have when we go into the astral plane when we dream.

What we typically possess is not a legitimate astral body, but a lunar phantom known as kama rupa, meaning “desire body.” This in relation to the theosophical teachings, as well as the Hindu scriptures.

In the right, we have Netzach, which means “Victory.” This is typically referred by theosophists as the mental body. But we know from esotericism that we do not possess a solar mental body, but manas or lunar mind. Sometimes, we say kama manas. Kama means “desire” and manas, “mind.”

So, our mind is animal, in desire and nature, as evidenced by the fact when we observe our psychology from moment to moment. We are constantly afflicted by negative thoughts and discursive elements which keep the consciousness enslaved.

Above that, in the middle of the Tree of Life, we have Tiphereth, which means

“Beauty” in Hebrew. This is our willpower. We call this human soul, which is not developed in us. As Jesus taught:

“With patience will possess ye your souls.” —Luke 21:19

We have to develop Tiphereth into a fully illuminated human being. But Tiphereth, as it is, is merely our willpower, which is typically channeled through our mind and desire, mind and emotions, which are subjective in nature.

We do not possess yet what is the called a solar casual body, a solar vehicle that only knows how to express the will of Christ. And which all the great initiates have developed.

So, in emphasis to this point, we explain that we are not yet human beings. Because the human being is made to the image of Elohim, God. Or better said, “gods and goddesses.” When we refer to the human being, we refer to the Hum (Sanskrit for) the breath, the wind, the spirit and man, manas, mind. So, the real human being is man or mind, not exclusively of the male sex, that is united with Hum, spirit.

Our image of Ptah represents a human being with his bodies of gold that are only created with alchemy, the science of perfect matrimony.

Above that, we have in the left, Geburah, which means “Justice,” severity, in the kabbalah. We call this our consciousness, divine soul.

To the right, we have Chesed, which means “Mercy,” our Innermost God, our inner Being.

Now, notice above we have the trinity, which is known as Christ: Kether, the Father; Chokmah, the Son; Binah, the Holy Spirit.

Understand that the top three sephirah [Hebrew for “emanations,” spheres, “jewels”] are Christ. The trinity is Christ.

Chesed and Geburah, the Innermost and divine soul, are God within us. It is our inner Lord. God never enters into degeneration, meaning: God has not fallen. His human soul, Tiphereth can obey God or fall down into the abyss, Gehenna mentioned in the scriptures.

The problem is this: the willpower obeys the inferior quaternary, the inferior four bodies, which are elementally, lunar vehicles in most of us. Because in order to create the solar vehicles, one needs to work in alchemy, in a matrimony.

Speaking about the lunar bodies, what we typically possess, if we examine them in the internal planes, they are of a phantasmic nature. They are of a ghost-like appearance. They are not substantial.

Question: The four lower bodies, those are the lunar bodies, the four lower ones?

Instructor: In most of us.

What we need to accomplish in alchemy is to create the solar vehicles, which are represented by the Tree of Life. But for most individuals who are not human beings yet, but intellectual animals, souls with intellect, our mind, emotions, vitality, as well as our physicality, are vehicles of the ego. We do not yet have the conduit, which are the solar bodies, in order to reflect the light of God and return it back into its source.

Question: So you’re saying our willpower over the ego at this stage?

Instructor: Our will typically follows our mind or emotions, which are the expressions of the ego.

Question: So if you’re able to astral project and stay conscious in the astral plane, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you created that solar body, right?

Instructor: It does not necessarily mean that, but, at the same time, individuals that did practice alchemy in the past are basically recapitulating their work.

So, some individuals who do already have those bodies, tend to have experiences as a grace of God, to bring those souls back to the path. But just because one has experiences in the internal worlds, that does not mean that one has the solar bodies yet. The way to verify that is to learn to astral travel, to communicate with our God.

For most of us, we do not have those vehicles. And Samael Aun Weor stated solar bodies are a luxury which can only be created through the work alchemy. It is Master Jesus that taught us we typically have what we call the lunar bodies.

The importance of creating the solar bodies in order to express Christ is emphasized in the scripture—in Matthew 22:1-3 and verses 8-14, where we have the parable of the wedding garment. The wedding garment are the solar bodies, which can only be created in a matrimony.

“And Jesus answered and spoke unto them again by parables, and said:

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son.

“And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come...

“...Then saith he to his servants: The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.

“Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.

“So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

“And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment.

“And he saith unto him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

“Then said the king to his servants: Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“For many are called and few are chosen.” ―Matthew 22:1-3, 8-14

In order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, we need to create the solar bodies. Because without those vehicles of Christ, we cannot resonate with the divine laws.

Christ needs a vehicle in order to express himself. And the way He does that is through the soul, the solar vehicles. So, with our lunar bodies we cannot enter into heaven.

However, I will emphasize, even creating the solar bodies is the first step. It is not the end. We need to be born again, which fanatic Christians of these times associate with doctrine or belief. They raise their hands and say: "I believe in Jesus and I am saved." And they say, “Well, you are born again.” That is not the case.

To be born again is a sexual problem. We need to use the sexual force in a matrimony. For as emphasized in this gospel: the wedding garment is the result of a marriage. Therefore, individuals who seek to enter heaven through abstinence, or as renunciates, or by rejecting sex, walk the path of error. Because Christ taught us that to be born again is to work in a matrimony, with the sexual power and to use it for Christ.

For as Jesus taught us in the book of John, Chapter 3, verses 3-8, when he talked to Nicodemus:

“Jesus answered and said unto him: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

“Nicodemus saith unto him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?

“Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

“That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is Spirit.

“Marvel not that I said unto thee. Ye must born again.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” ―John 3:3-8

So, we have in this graphic Jesus talking to Nicodemus, where he explains that which is born of flesh, meaning through the animal orgasm, is flesh, physical children. But that which is born of the spirit, through the sexual act, that is conserved and controlled, is spirit.

So, birth is, whether physical or spiritual, the result of working with the sexual power in a matrimony. There is no other way. Master Aberamentho taught this.

Alchemy, Chakras, and Kundalini in the Psalms

We talked about the pneuma, the spirit like the wind, which we are going to elaborate further in relation to the bodies themselves, how to create them. When working with the spirit, we work with the sexual force known as the Holy Spirit, which we mention as Binah in Kabbalah.

In this image, we have an illuminated spinal medulla and the seven chakras. These chakras awaken when the power of the Divine Mother, known as Kundalini, awakens from the coccyx and ascends up the spine into the brain.

When that fire awakens in the matrimony, it ascends slowly in accordance to the merits of the heart, never by one’s own whim, but by the intelligence and power of the Divine Mother. She is the one who, as the Weaver in Arcanum 24 in the Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah, weaves clothes for the soul to inhabit.

She is the one in this card who spins the wheel. She elaborates the soul, so that the consciousness can be dressed. When she awakens in the coccyx and ascends up the spine, She awakens all the faculties, the seven chakras. That is a divine fire that you can see in this image. And, when we rise the fire within the different spinal medullas within our lower bodies within the Tree of Life, we create the solar bodies.

As we illustrate, Kundalini is the sexual force. The seminal energy is the power that gives life or can produce death, if we abuse it. For it is stated many times in the scriptures of the Old Testament, we find one reference in the sons of David, in the Psalms.

“The trees of יהוה Iod-Havah are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.” ―Psalm 104:16-17

So, that is why this sap that the Bible talks about is the semen. The sap is the semen of plants. And we know that semen, physically, in man or woman, is the condensation of blood. So, that sap that fills the cedar tree is precisely our sexual matter, seminal fluids, whether in man or woman, because semen does not only apply to man, but to woman as well.

And the cedar tree relates to this process of creating the solar bodies. The cedar tree represents our spine. And the angels that govern the cedar family can aid us if we practice sexual magic. Even the word Lebanon teaches us a great mystery. Samael Aun Weor explains in Igneous Rose:

“In the word Lebanon (Spanish: Líbano), we find the IAO that permits the angels of the cedars of the forest to open the door of the spinal medulla when we practice Sexual Magic. IAO is the mantra of Sexual Magic.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

IAO in Latin means Ignis, Aqua, Origo; fire, air, spirit; or fire, water, spirit. And Samael explains this is the mantra of sexual magic to create the solar bodies. First, it is the wind of the spirit working with the fire of sex in order to generate the pneuma, the wind, the breath of spirit, which is the essence of the practice of tantra.

So, Lebanon in the Old Testament refers to the science of IAO. This secret mantra is considered the holiest of all mantras amongst the great temples of mysteries. And we know from the writings of Samael Aun Weor that when this sacred name was pronounced in ancient times, they would pound the drums so that the profane outside would not hear the name of this mantra, because it is exceptionally powerful.

IAO relates in Hebrew to י Iod, ה Hei, ו Vav. And IAO or י Iod, ה Hei, ו Vav is יהוה Iod-Havah, Jehovah. When we work with the sap of our bodies, we practice alchemy and raise those forces upwards, the Kundalini, so that it illuminates the chakras and gives birth to the soul.

Solomon and Sacred Sexuality

To elaborate this point of our sexual nature, of the creation of the soul, we have the following teaching by Solomon, who is in synthesis a great solar man. He was a great king recognized for his kingdom of gold, meaning: he was self-realized. He was a great master.

He taught in Song of Songs the sexual nature of the spiritual union with God. And it is precisely through sex that solar bodies are created. And what will be relevant in this passage is that we examine this image of Shiva-Shakti, which is the Holy Spirit. Shiva is the Father or Abba Elohim with the Divine Mother Shakti, Aima Elohim. These are the two polarities of the Holy Spirit, which is masculine and feminine.

This is represented in the scripture of the Song of Songs by Solomon. He talks about his wife, who is his sister, which if we interpret it literally, is absurd. Because the fact this great master was practicing incest would be a crime. Instead, these are principles.

Just as Adam and Eve, in the garden, united sexually, they represent man and woman, or brother and sister. They are principles. They are not literal figures. So, Solomon and his wife, his sister can represent Shiva-Shakti, because the same power is male and female. And when we talk about Shiva, we need to talk about Shakti. And when we talk about Shakti, we need to talk about Shiva. Because the Holy Spirit is dual, both powers, male and female.

Question: In Indian philosophy, one of them is the creator and the other is a destroyer.

Instructor: Shiva-Shakti is the power of God that can create the soul or damn the soul, if that energy is expelled through the orgasm. That is our original sin.

And so is represented in this scripture, we will explain how scientific chastity, purity in sex, is precisely which leads to the development of the soul.

As Solomon states:

“Thou art all fair my love; there is no spot in thee (meaning that you are completely chaste with no impurity in you, my Shakti, the sexual force).

“Come with me from לבנון Lebanon, my spouse, with me from לבנון Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountain of the leopards.” ―Song of Songs 4:7-8

What’s interesting with Shiva is that he is typically portrayed sitting on a leopard's skin or a lion's skin, meaning he has conquered animal desire. So, when he talked about being elevated in the mountains, that is the symbol of having looked the path of initiation and that one has conquered desire, like Solomon did.

“Thou hast ravished my heart (which in Hebrew is לֵבָב lebab, similar to לבנון Lebanon, as we are going to explain), my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes (which in Hebrew is עיניים Ayneen), with one chain of my neck.

So, he talks about the heart as לֵבָב lebab and mentions right next the city of לבנון Lebanon. There is a profound relationship there.

We know that in transmutation, we bring the energies inward and upward to our brain, and into our heart. לֵבָב Lebab, as in לבנון Lebanon, is heart. The last part of Lebanon is נ Nun [or ן Nun Sophit, final Nun], which in Aramaic means “fish.” נ Nun is sperm, literally, because our sperm and ovum swim within the waters of sexuality.

Lebanon represents those who practice chastity. As Samael Aun Weor mentions, Lebanon or Líbano is IAO. In order to really dwell in that divine city, one has to transmute the נ Nun, the sperm or the ovum through the spinal column into the brain, and then into the heart, לֵבָב lebab. That is the meaning of Lebanon.

Question: You mentioned נ Nun again. Could you give the description where you mentioned fish?

Instructor: "Nun” in Aramaic means “fish,” and refers to sperm and ovum. The letter N [the Hebrew נ Nun] hides the meaning of the sexual principles.

Now, Solomon says: "Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes (Ayin)."

“How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine! And the smell of thine ointments than all spices.” ―Song of Songs 4:9-10

The word for smell is ריח reyach. ריח Reyach relates, in Hebrew, to רוח ruach, which is spirit. In the book of Genesis, the spirit hovers over the face of the waters, the אלוהים רוח Ruach Elohim.

Genesis is a work of alchemy. So, by working in a matrimony, the spirit hovers on the waters of sexuality and creates the heavens in the seven days of genesis, which explains the teachings of the solar bodies in depth.

It would take many lectures to explain each component, but here, we are speaking more generally.

And the "smell of thine ointments”—the word “ointments in Hebrew is שמן shemen, which is where we get the word “semen.”

“And the smell of thine ointments,” the רוח ruach of thine ointments, the רוח ruach of thy semen, the spirit of thy semen, is more voluptuous, “delightful than all spices,” meaning: all the common and terrestrial pleasures we typically experience—because the sexual act is the ultimate consubstantiation of love between man and woman, and Christ.

When we talk about the spirit, or the ריח reyach, the smell, which is really רוח ruach, “the spirit of thine ointments,” it talks about, how through alchemy, by being sexually connected and controlling the breath, inhaling profoundly the energy, conserving it, transforming it, bringing it up in the spine, and later into the heart—that is how we enter in the kingdom of Lebanon. I mentioned נ Nun is the sperm and ovum, the sexual matter, and לֵבָב lebab, the heart. He continues:

“Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under my tongue...” ―Song of Songs 4:11

That is honey, which was originally pollen. Through work, the bee transforms that into sweetness. This is the symbol of the soul. Because through the impurity of our daily life, we work on ourselves and transform that garbage into honey, through alchemy, into sweetness of the spirit. And that is ultimately achieved when one is working in a matrimony.

“…and the ריח reyach, the smell of my garments is like the smell of Lebanon.” ―Song of Songs 4:11

So, what are these garments? It is the solar bodies. Here, it is very explicit. The solar bodies are created trough sex. There is no other way. “The smell of thy garments, the ruach of thy garments, is the smell of Lebanon,” meaning heaven. Those initiates who entered the Heavenly Jerusalem, into the Kingdom of God, which is Lebanon or Jerusalem.

Lastly, Solomon states:

“A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” ―Song of Songs 4:12

So, the Hebrew word for fountain is מַעיָן ma'yan. And, if we look at this graphic, we have the word מַעיָן ma’yan, which is Mem, Ayin, Iod, Nun.

Notice, we previously talked about Solomon, ravished with one the eyes of his sister, his spouse. The word מַעיָן ma’yan is the same word as eye, עין ayin. It just has the letter M in front of them. So, instead of עין ayin, it spells מַעיָן ma’yan. That is fountain.

So, these are the fountains of life that Jesus mentions, which will never allow you be thirsty again. As explained in the parable of the woman at the well, when the woman asks: "Give me the water that springs up to everlasting life." And Jesus says: "Go call thy husband." Meaning that if you want to know how to find the water, work with your husband, because in the matrimony is where the fountain is produced.

These waters of life are precisely the sexual energy. And sexual energy has a profound relationship with our perception, as evidenced in Hebrew: עין ayin, eye; עיניים ayinim, eyes. מַעיָן Ma’yan is the same word, but with מ mem; and מ mem is water.

So, in order to have spiritual perception, we need to work with our water. That means we need to be married in order to begin this process. In order to enter the higher stages of initiation, we need to work with the waters, represented by Mary, מרים Miriam, the Divine Mother. And עין ayin is an eye. [Remember that “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single (pure), thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil (impure, lustful), thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! —Matthew 6:22-23]

So, he says very clearly: "A garden enclosed is my sister. A spring shut up. A fountain sealed." So, we will have the energy of sex, but we need to be sealed hermetically with this force. We must never expel it. It is very well known in tantra, from the teachings of the Dalai Lama. He even explicitly states:

“Sexual energy should never be let out.” ―The 14th Dalai Lama

And this fountain should never be spilled, meaning one should never reach the orgasm, because if we lose that fountain, we cannot assuage our thirst for the kingdom of heaven.

Question: But only in procreation—you would have to. That would be the exception, right?

Instructor: In the past humanities, procreation was accomplished without the orgasm.

Comment: But still, it was a fall.

Instructor: There was never loss of the seminal fluid, but one sperm would be emitted in order to enter the womb of the wife. So, in the past, human beings procreated without orgasm and they had children which were pure.

Question: Is that possible today?

Instructor: Yes. What matters is that we follow the will of our Being, so that he can guide us as when to practice in the appropriate astrological hour, so those forces are conducive for producing a child without pain. It is mentioned in The Yellow Book, specifically.

Question: So, you are saying that if a couple procreated without spelling the semen, the woman would give birth with no pain?

Instructor: Less pain, I would say. When following the divine laws, we avoid pain.

Comment: That’s tremendous pressure on the man, to get to the point that only one cell is emitted!

Instructor: The force that guides that is the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother.

So, we need to be sealed. A fountain that is enclosed. We should never let the energy out. If we want to have children of a divine nature, of a pure nature, we must learn to practice according to the guidance of the Elohim. Because that energy, in a matrimony, should not be expelled. But according to the will of God, one sperm can leave the phallus in order to enter the ovum. But that is in accordance to the will of God [and therefore constitutes what original, esoteric Christianity denominated an “immaculate conception,” sexual generation without impurity, blemish, orgasm].

Comment: These are spiritually developed people! They will have to be very spiritually developed to do that…

Soma, Sexual Energy, and the Power of Shiva

Instructor: In this image, we have the picture of Shiva by an ocean. When explaining the nature of the fountain, the waters of life in Hindu language are Soma. In this image, we see Shiva drinking from an ocean that is being churned by a great battle between gods and demons, which results in the ocean being polluted and poisonous in order to extract Amrita, which is the nectar of the gods, the pure sexual energy. He drinks the poison, which I believe in the myth explains how he came with the blue pigment in his skin. He drinks this drink of Halāhala or Kalakootam. And this represents how the energies of sexuality have to be extracted from impurity. So, the impurity is the poison that is being generated in the battle with our own ego, our own lust.

Soma has a great relationship to the Christian scriptures. Soma or Amrita is the nectar of immortality. This is the substance, the seminal energy or seminal matter which can create the solar bodies.

We find different definitions of soma, “a secret drink of Hindu Gods through ancient Hindu religious texts.” It also refers to the “press of drinks made of juiced plants.” So, the significance of being pressed in order to extract the juice of a plant is very significant in relation to alchemy, because when a man unites with his wife, the organs press together and, therefore, if the breath is controlled, the juice can be extracted, sublimated, and elevated to the brain, and into the heart.

Soma also connotes the God Chandra, who relates to the moon. And we know that the moon relates to the vital forces of Yesod, which is the sexual energy.

Question: Which is in the etheric body?

Instructor: Yes. In Greek, soma signifies “body.” In order to create the solar bodies, we need to work with our own soma, our sexual energy.

Unfortunately, in modern times soma can also mean hallucinogenic substances, which we do not advocate in these teachings.

The Śvetāśvatara Upanishad and Sexual Yoga

So, as I elaborated in relation to soma, we have this image of the Christ crucified, which someone may find strange in the context of expressing the Hindu teachings. We find the symbol of the cross with the symbol of alchemy: the union of man and woman.

Christ, the force of God, is crucified whenever a man with an erect phallus enters the uterus of his wife. That forms the cross. The vehicle beam is the phallus. The horizontal beam is the uterus.

And we see in this image his crucifixion in which all the impurities of his psyche are annihilated. This is what the crucifixion of Christ represents. And notice how in his right side, he is pierced by the spear of Longinus, in which flows his blood. This ties to the scripture known as Śvetāśvatara Upanishad, Chapter 2 verse 6:

“Where the fire is rubbed, where the wind is checked, where the soma flows over, there the mind is born.” —Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2:6

So, when a man and a woman are united in the cross, the fire is rubbed, as mentioned in the scripture. When a phallus unites with the uterus in holy matrimony, the fire is stimulated. And when the wind is checked, when the breath in the sexual act is controlled, the soma grows and develops. The sexual energy is activated and begins to flow inwards and upwards.

We have two ways of energy flowing in our body: we have centrifugal force when the energy goes from inside to outside, which is what we do not recommend. And then, we have the centripetal flow of forces, which is from outside in, which is the science of transmutation.

When the fire is rubbed in sexual union, and when the wind is checked, the spirit, the breath, ריח reyach, רוח Ruach. When the sSoma flows over, or rather, inside and upwards, then the mind is born, meaning: the Solar bodies can be created in this context.

When we talk about flow, we talk about tantra. Tantra means “flow, continuum.” That is an eastern term for the nature of this science.

The Four States of Consciousness

In relation to the solar bodies, we have to talk about mind. We make the distinction between the states of consciousness and the solar bodies of the Being. It is true that solar vehicles can grant us access to higher states of consciousness, but they do not determine a completely awakened state of being. There are many individuals with solar bodies, or could have developed these bodies in the past, and they are asleep. Or, even worse: many of them have fallen into the path of demons.

Do not think that once you have created the solar bodies one is saved. The consciousness needs to be developed further.

When we talk about the mind or consciousness, we need to talk about four states, which we are going to the Christian Gospels as given by Paul of Tarsus. We have four states of consciousness mentioned in Greek, by Plato.

Eikasia is the first state of consciousness and refers to a state of profound sleep, instinctual, animal desire, barbarism, war, violence. There is an instinctual state of being where there is no self-reflection or cognizance.

If we translate εἰκασία Eikasia directly into English, it means “imagination,” which is interesting about this is that, as Master Samael explains, Eikasia is darkness. And yet the translation means “imagination.” What this relates is the fact that, even though we are physically awake, and active, we perceive imagery, sensation, concepts, thoughts, we are in darkness, spiritually speaking. It is a type of perception, but is devoid of any spiritual understanding of the nature of the phenomena.

So, we have Πίστις Pistis, which means “belief.” This is the common state of consciousness of humanity. Pistis is belief, sometimes translated as faith. But here, we are referring to belief and faith in a conventional sense, devoid of any spiritual substance.

Many people have beliefs and concepts of the afterlife, about astral travel, the internal dimensions, the solar bodies, but they have no cognizance of these things. They believe in religion, but they do not practice the esoteric heart of religion.

Humanity tends to gravitate between Pistis and Eikasia: beliefs, fanaticism, and war.

We have a third state of consciousness, which we seek to develop, and which grants us the doorway to really enter initiation. This other state is διάνοια Dianoia. Dianoia, as Samael Aun Weor explains in The Perfect Matrimony, is revision of beliefs. The way we review our beliefs is by awakening consciousness. This is the state of awakened perception. And in order to really develop this state, we need to be, like Solomon told us, a fountain sealed, a מַעיָן ma’yan sealed. Because עין Ayin and מ Mem, perception developed though the waters of transmutation help to awaken us to the state of Dianoia.

Diá means “thoroughly, from side-to-side," which intensifies noiéō, "to use the mind," noús, "mind.” So, when we awaken our consciousness by working with our own fire, with our own fountain of life, we begin to change many concepts that we have about ourselves. This is to revise our beliefs about who we are, what we know, who we think we are, where we are going. Dianoia is the alert state of perception, the alert novelty.

But now, we have a fourth state of consciousness, which can only be fully developed and reached by working in alchemy. It is νοῦν Nous. Nous literally means mind.

Question: Excuse me, sir. Did you say something that relates to the left ventricle of the heart?

Instructor: There is an atom that relates to the Innermost, a spiritual power, a force relating to the left ventricle of our heart. So, Nous relates to that. The atom Nous is in our heart. And the state of Nous is illuminated perception. It is the consciousness, which is in union with the Innermost, that perceives as the Innermost, that is one with Christ.

Nous refers to heights of the Tree of Life. From Geburah, Chesed, and above. That is the spirit of the Inner Christ. Those heights can only really be developed, as Samael Aun Weor explains, by working in alchemy, because to develop the spirit is very arduous work related with transmutation, related with the perfection of the psyche.

We explain this in relation to the solar bodies because, in order to work in alchemy, we need to establish ourselves in Dianoia. We need to cease being asleep in Eikasia. We need to cease being hypnotized by our beliefs, our concepts, which is Pistis. To work in alchemy effectively, you must possess Dianoia to be awakening, to develop that state of alert perception through mediation, through self-observation.

As I mentioned, there are many who have solar bodies, but they forget this fact. They forget this work on the ego. And Nous is fully developed when we have no ego. This path of Nous is represented by the path of the spirit, Pneuma. Nous, our Innermost, relates to that Atom Nous which is connected to our spirit.

The Heavenly and Terrestrial Man of St. Paul

We have in this image, a teaching by a great master. His name is Hilarion IX. He was known as Paul of Tarsus. He was known as a great persecutor of Gnostics until he converted through a revolution in his experience.

Question: He was a tax collector?

Instructor: I do not know what he physically did as work, but what happened to him was very profound. He experienced Nous, an illuminated state of consciousness when he knew Christ directly. The Logos. The force of God. And therefore, he stopped persecuting the Gnostics physically.

Comment: In the Christian teachings, I think they claim when he was on his way to Damascus, and a lightning bolt hit him that the divine sent. “Paul, Paul, why have you hurt me, betrayed me, deny me,” I think. That was in the Christian teachings as I remember.

Instructor: And the lightning bolt represents the force of Christ which descends from the Trinity, at the top of the Tree of Life down to Malkuth. So, he was struck by an experience, which Christ reprimanded him to change. And, so, he gave a very beautiful doctrine on the nature of the solar bodies. The nature of Nous. The nature of perception.

He explained that the solar bodies are created through sex. But importantly, we need to awake, he says, to righteousness. Meaning to work in Dianoia. If we do not awaken consciousness through meditation and annihilate the ego, we cannot walk to Christ. In fact, we can make the solar bodies and attain development to a degree, but if we do not fully eradicate our own desires, then we will suffer. We will go down.

Question: That means you’re desireless for anything?

Instructor: Desire in terms of ego. Animal lust, pride, vanity. Not longing.

So, Paul of Tarsus taught [in 1 Corinthians 15:34-40; 42-43]:

“Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God (the esoteric doctrine): I speak this to your shame (to those who study, but do not practice).

“But some men will say: how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?

“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die (meaning: you want to create the solar bodies, but those vehicles cannot be fully perfected until you die in your ego).

“And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance or wheat, or of some other grain.

“But God giveth a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed in his own body (so, that is the seed, semen, the sexual force. And so this grain represents the wheat, which has represented Christ. As we have in the Holy Gnostic Unction, the bread and the wine of the Eucharist). ―1 Corinthians 15:34-38

Question: Does that correlate in the Greek mysteries to Ceres, or when they’re talking about grain?

Instructor: Yes, because the grain represents the seed of the sexual force that gives birth to the solar bodies.

Comment: I have to say, you go really well into details. There are so many things that are allegorical that the Gnostics, the way you teach it—for some reason, the others, whether it be the tarot schools, the fish coming up out of the waters, pulling it out through mercury, but they don’t, none of them go behind it like the way you do. I have to say that, I’m finding out things. I thought, “I know this, no!” So much is allegorical, but they do not explain the relationship.

Instructor: So he says, “Every seed to his own body.” Meaning: our body produces the semen. The seed that gives birth to our solar vehicles, which do not manifest fully in the beginning, but they are germinated slowly, in the same manner a child is born in the womb of his mother. Nine months. Nine relatesd to Yesod, the foundation, the sexual force.

He continues in relation to the solar vehicles:

“All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.” ―1 Corinthians 15:39

When he talks about the flesh of men, he means real human beings. Because a real human being has the solar bodies created. Those solar bodies define a real Hum-Man. Because the spirit [the Sanskrit Hum] can only incarnate when one has the solar bodies, and we fully eliminate the ego.

So, the flesh of beasts is really us. We have the flesh of beasts. Our family procreated in an ordinary manner, so to speak, and we are the result of fornication. We have the flesh of animals born through animal desire.

We also have the flesh of another fishes, meaning those initiates who know how to swim in the waters. Who control the waters. Who are beginning on the path develop the seminal energy.

And also we have the flesh of birds, meaning those initiates that know how to fly through the Tree of Life. That is one meaning we can derive from them. He continues:

“There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

“So is also the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.

“It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power...” ―1 Corinthians 15:40, 42-43

So, this topic of resurrection refers to one level, the creation of the solar bodies. One has died to a certain degree and resurrects at a spiritual level. That is the process of the Major Mysteries, of initiation.

The solar bodies are sown in corruption, meaning: our body is imperfect. We experience many illnesses and diseases because our bodies are degenerated with fornication. But the solar bodies are sown in corruption, because we practice alchemy with this body. And the solar bodies are raised in incorruption, meaning they are pure.

Just as the same matter in Buddhism, how the lotus flower floats above the muddy waters. That impurity is our mind. It is Eikasia. It is Pistis. However, the lotus is above that. It is pure. It rises above the impurity of the mind. “It is sown in weakness,” meaning we are weak in the beginning. But, when we practice alchemy, the solar bodies are raised in power, with tremendous force.

The Psychic and Spiritual Bodies

The teaching of the solar bodies also relates to Paul of Tarsus and his teaching on the Tree of Life. Here, we have the image of the Kabbalah again. Another way to look at this is in terms of three triangles, which Paul of Tarsus explain in relation to the bodies of the soul.

Within the triangle of the Logos, again as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Kether, Chokmah, Binah.

Within the triangle of the spirit, the pneuma, which is Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth.

Then we have the triangle of the psyche, which is Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. Malkuth is a fallen sephirah.

Question: Is that top triangle, the very apex at the top, that’s smaller?

Instructor: Smaller?

Question: That’s Da’ath?

Instructor: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, the upper triangle is the Logos. The secret sephirah, Da’ath, does not have any image. No representation. It is the secret science of alchemy. So, Da’ath relates to the throat, which relates to the practice of alchemy, uniting sexually with our partner, the mantras we pronounce, “I… A… O…” in relation to sex; we are working with Daath, the Verb. That is how we create spiritually. When we connect sexually, we pronounce the mantras: IAO is the most sacred.

So, the triangle of the spirit is Chesed [pneuma], Geburah, Tiphereth. The bodies of the psyche relate to Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth. Mind, emotions, vitality, and physicality.

Question: Kether is the Father?

Instructor: Kether is the Father.

Question: And Binah is the...

Instructor: The Holy Spirit.

Question: And Chokmah is the Son?

Instructor: Yes. And so, as we show the image of Shiva-Shakti that is also the Holy Spirit. Because Shiva-Shakti is male-female. Or, we say Jehovah Elohim in Hebrew. But that is digressing a little bit.

So, when talking about the solar bodies, we can refer to these triangles in relation to levels of spiritual development. Paul of Tarsus gives a very profound kabbalistic teaching, as he continues:

“It is sown a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body [Soma Psuchikón]; it is raised a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body [Soma Pneumatikón]. There is a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body, and there is a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body.” ―1 Corinthians 15:44-45

Soma means body. Psuchi relates to psyche. Ikón is image. So, we can translate it as psychic-image-body, to be literal.

People think that it usually say terrestrial body in the translations. That is not what the Greek taught us. By terrestrial, I mean relating to our lower personality, whether the terrestrial or they say the heavenly personality, the heavenly Being. So, Soma Psuchikón, the psychic-image-body, the body that bears the image of the psyche, relates to this triangle, as we showed: Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth. This is the lower quaternary, which is what we are. So, Paul of Tarsus states:

“It is sown a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body [Soma Psuchikón]; it is raised a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body [Soma Pneumatikón].” ―1 Corinthians 15:44

Soma is body, as I mentioned. Pneuma is spirit. They usually translate this as celestial body or spiritual body. Again, remember that soma is the sexual energy that gives birth, life to the bodies of the soul.

So in the beginning we create…

Question: Some would be Yesod?

Instructor: Soma relates to the vital force. It is the vital force. And, through this energy of the sex, we give birth to the bodies of the psyche, Soma Psuchikón.

In the later process of initiation, if we are destined to walk that path, we elaborate the Soma Pneumatikón, which is really the solar bodies when they are completed, when they are perfected.

In the beginning, we develop the psychic bodies, which, through intense alchemical transmutations, by destroying our desires, our ego, they become completely perfected and give birth to the bodies of the spirit.

So, first comes the soul. The sSpirit comes next. There are many initiates who forget this detail, like Nietzsche. He thought that all human beings have these vehicles, the psychic bodies, or even have spiritual bodies. But he ignored that these have to be developed through initiation.

Question: So soul is the reflection of the spirit, right?

Instructor: Yes.

Comment: I always get confused by…

Instructor: Yes. The spirit is God and the psyche is the consciousness. The Being is. The soul needs to be created. We do that through alchemy for working with our soma.

Question: So, soul and Being are two different things?

Instructor: Yes. The Being is God. And through this work, the spirit, Pneuma creates the psyche.

Question: So, spirit and Being are the same?

Instructor: Yes. We use different terms, interchangeable. The Being is the Pneuma, the spirit.

So, as Paul of Tarsus states:

“It is sown a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body; it is raised a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body. There is a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body, and there is a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body.

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living ψυχή soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening πνεῦμα spirit.” ―1 Corinthians 15:44-46

To elaborate, first, we create what we know as the terrestrial man. The human being is made through the creation of the solar bodies. Remember that the bodies are meant to project the image of the psyche and the Being.

First comes the psyche. We have to create the soul. Later, we develop the image of the spirit, which is a very long process.

“The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from οὐρανός (Ouranos) heaven.” ―1 Corinthians 15:47

Notice that psyche is mind (Netzach), emotion (Hod), vitality (Yesod), and physicality (Malkuth).

We can also count Tiphereth. Tiphereth is psyche, human soul. The heavenly man is above, relating to Geburah (divine consciousness), which is the reflection of our own Innermost, our inner God, inner spirit.

Above that, is the triangle of the Logos, Christ. So, first, we need to the develop the image of the psyche trough alchemy. And then, if we follow the path of the Christ, if we incarnate the Christ, He takes us to the development of the higher sephiroth within us.

“As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

“And as we have borne the εἰκόνα image of the earthy, we shall also bear the εἰκόνα image of the heavenly.” –1 Corinthians 15:48-49

What is important to state is that, many Christians say they are “born again,” as if they had these bodies—“I believe in Jesus and now I am saved," whereas [the solar bodies] can only be created through alchemy.

You need a man and a woman [to create, to give birth]. They think they bear the image of the earthy. That is equal to saying that they have the bodies of the soul already developed.

Comment: I’ve been to summer service. They mean well, some of the preachers. Then again, they say, in the emotion of the moment, they place some music in the background. Yeah, because like Dion Fortune said that in that moment, they go to the emotions only, but cannot go above that. So, when they get out onto the street, sure, well enough… (we all have the same defects…) in the emotion of the moment—I’ve also seen that when I was in Georgia—they all really get emotional down there. Some of them have tambourines, the spirit…

Well, they may mean that! At that time, but then they slip back into everyday routines, defects… Maybe they’ve reduced a little, but they’re not reborn…

Instructor: So, they say “we will bear the image of the heavenly,” meaning they have not entered alchemy to develop the psyche first. First comes the soul and then we develop the spirit within.

The Manifestation and Contemplation Buddhas

So, continuing in relation to this topic about the heavenly man and the terrestrial man, we could refer to Buddhism, which teaches the same thing.

The solar bodies are what grant one the capacity to unite with God. But only with the condition the ego is fully eliminated.

In Buddhism, we have the Inner Being, which is the Buddha, which we call the Contemplation Buddha. These are just Buddhist terms for the same thing, as told by Paul of Tarsus. The heavenly man is the Contemplation Buddha, God.

Question: Who is Adam Kadmon?

Instructor: Adam Kadmon is the heavenly man, which we are discussing.

We also have the Manifestation Buddha, which is the psyche, the initiate who is developing his solar vehicles, and is walking the path to completely express the Being, the Contemplation Buddha.

So, this is just to emphasize this teaching is not only from Paul of Tarsus, about the solar bodies. But it relates even to Eastern doctrines. So, Samael Aun Weor states in Mental Representations:

“Much has been said of the Buddhas. There is no doubt that there are Contemplation Buddhas and Manifestation Buddhas. Manifestation Buddhas are creatures who dominated the mind, who destroyed the ego, who did not let negative emotions enter their hearts, who did not create mental effigies in their own mind nor in the minds of others. Let us remember Tsong Khapa who reincarnated in Tibet; he was the Buddha Gautama previously.

“The Buddha of Buddha Amitabha is another thing, his true divine prototype. Amitabha is the Contemplation Buddha [we can say the celestial man], and Gautama, we could say, is the Manifestation Buddha [the psyche, the soul that is manifesting the Being], the worldly Buddha or Bodhisattva [Bodhisattva means incarnation of light, an expression of Christ]. We cannot deny that Amitabha expressed himself brilliantly through Gautama. We cannot deny that later Amitabha sent Gautama (the Bodhisattva or worldly Buddha) directly to a new reincarnation. Then he expressed himself as Tsong Khapa.

“These are Contemplation Buddhas, they are masters of their mind, creatures who liberated themselves from the mind. [This is the Heavenly Man. This is God above]. The Lords worship the Great Buddha that we also know as the Logos and they pray to him.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Mental Representations

So, again. What is the Logos? It is the Christ. The Buddha that manifests is Tiphereth, the human will, the human soul. That is created after we have raised the fire in Malkuth, the Kundalini force through the spine, in Malkuth, to the brain.

Afterward, one must create the solar vital body through this process of alchemy. After that one, one must create the solar astral body. Once that one is created, the alchemist creates the solar mental body and possesses the solar body of will.

This is beautifully represented in the Wizard of Oz.

We find Dorothy, the consciousness [who needs to return home to divinity].

The scarecrow needs a new mind. He needs a solar mental body.

We have the Tin Man who needs a new heart. He needs a solar astral body.

We have the lion who has no courage. He needs the solar casual body, willpower.

The one that gives them that gift is the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of עץ Otz, the Wizard of עץ החיים Otz Chai’im, the Tree of Life.

So, the wizard is our Innermost, spirit, pneuma. And Geburah is an unfoldment of him.

Dorothy represents the consciousness that has been sent to Malkuth. From Kansas to the Land of Oz.

And we find the golden red road through the spinal medulla, up to the Emerald City, which is the chakra of the crown, which produces the halo of the saints.

And the lower five sephiroth are the Manifestation Buddha, the Bodhisattva, the incarnation of Christ who manifests in the physical plane.

The Contemplation Buddha is the five sephiroth above, which is our Inner Wizard, our Inner Magician.

The Spiral and Direct Paths

What is important to state in relation to the nature of the solar bodies, and to put this in context, is to emphasize that that the solar bodies are merely vehicles in which we can express Christ. However, there are many individuals that develop the solar vehicles and do not enter into much higher stages of initiation, and much higher stages of spiritual development.

And we often talk in these studies about different kinds of angels or buddhas. In the realm of Nirvana, which is really Tiphereth, we find many masters. They reflect the spirit to a degree, but they remain at that level. They do not ascend to the higher stages of the path. Because, in order to access the higher sephiroth, which is Christ, the Trinity, they have to enter into a very elevated path of spiritual development.

We call this the Direct Path. So, we talk about the solar bodies and creating those vehicles. They are necessary. We need to create the means by which our Being can manifest himself into our psyche. But, in order to develop the image of the spirit completely, in order to enter the realm of the Logos, we need to enter a very specific path.

In the beginning, one learns to rise the five Kundalini [serpents] within the lower five vehicles in order to give birth to the solar vehicles. But, upon reaching Tiphereth, one needs to make a decision. This really depends on the will of our Being.

Comment: Rudolf Steiner corroborated everything you said now. Some people, you know, they advance so far. They have no desire at that point to really, for whatever reason, whether due to karma. But it’s their option, not that they’re going to be condemned, or anything like that, because they do not want to go any higher. For whatever reason, they chose not to. They develop themselves apparently…

Instructor: We call them Nirvanis, Nirvani Buddhas, Sravakas, or Pratyekas, different terms. They are buddhas that have attained initiation, but they choose to remain in Nirvana to enjoy the blisses of that realm. They forget about the suffering of humanity. They do not descend to help.

Question: Some people call them selfish buddhas too?

Instructor: They are called selfish buddhas, and the thing is that many people think this is a bad path because they forget about the cares of the world. They develop themselves little by little in very long spiral path that leads to the Absolute.

The problem with this is that is a very long path. They manifest according to karma. They are still victims of karma. And the difficulty lies in the fact they can easily fall again when they have to return to a body.

And so, many of them become Nirvanis. They fall again. They become demons. They become Nirvanis. They fall again. They become demons. It is a cycle that repeats itself. This is represented in Buddhism by the Bhavachakra, the Wheel of Samsara. We find different realms between gods, demons, humans, hungry ghosts. A constant cycle of different manifestations.

Question: You’re saying eventually that they will see the light and eventually ascend even higher than Tiphereth?

Instructor: That depends on the Being of that individual. Because there are many buddhas, spirits or monads that say: "Well, we are happy in this level. So, we do not want to go higher." Then, there are sSpirits like Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad, or Krishna. They want to go to the very height which is known as the Absolute.

In order to reach those degrees, one has to incarnate Christ. To enter that path is to walk the Direct Path. Because the Nirvani Buddhas go to the spiral through eternities, to the Absolute. There is nothing wrong with their process. But in this path, we teach the path of the Bodhisattva, which is very revolutionary.

Question: Are these conscious decisions to go in either direction, or is it unconscious?

Instructor: It is conscious. The Being is the one who decides whether to enter the straight path. And when the Being decides that, one must follow.

Bodhichitta

In order to get to that point, in relation to this topic of the solar bodies, it is important to state that we need to develop a very specific type of consciousness if what we want is to enter the straight path after creating the solar bodies. We call this Bodhichitta.

I mentioned the term Bodhisattva and now I mention Bodhichitta. Bodhi means “light, wisdom, enlightenment.” Chitta means “mind.” So, in this lecture we are talking about the [enlightened] mind and the solar bodies. And to elaborate that, the solar bodies are a step on the path. They are not the end if we follow the Direct Path.

We need to develop something very specific, a state of mind which is the combination of conscious love for humanity and comprehension of the Absolute. It is the union of two things. And Buddhism teaches this very beautifully.

One cannot have real love without understanding the nature of That, the Absolute, which we call emptiness, inconceivable to our intellect.

Neither can we have real cognizance of the Absolute, the source of all the gods, the universes, That which is beyond all concept. We cannot have understanding of That without real love for humanity.

When we comprehend the inherent nature of emptiness, of all phenomena and how human beings suffer in illusion, naturally love is born within our hearts, to want to serve and help others to realize their real, [intimate divine potential, which we call Christ. The Absolute is in the Christ.

Bodhichitta is a state of consciousness in which we comprehend the emptiness of phenomena and how life is illusory. But also, to have that experience in meditation when one approaches to the Absolute.

Bodhichitta is taught in Buddhism as a type of attitude. And it is so powerful when it impregnates the soul, that it goes beyond having the solar bodies. One does not create the solar bodies and develop Bodhichitta necessarily. In fact, what is important is to develop Bodhichitta now, before we even enter the path or developing the solar bodies.

Question: Just define Bodhichitta again? I missed that.

Instructor: Bodhi is light, which refers to Christ. Chitta means mind. So, it is mind or consciousness that has experienced Christ. So, just like Paul of Tarsus had that experience going to Damascus, he developed that lightning spark that illuminated him, in order to recognize he needed to serve humanity, to serve others.

Comment: Well that was an epiphany!

Instructor: Epiphania relates to revelation, to experience the state of Nous that illuminates the consciousness.

Question: That’s what he experienced?

Instructor: Yes.

So, we often talk about Bodhichitta as a very deep topic. But in synthesis, it refers to conscious love for humanity and cognizance of the Absolute. One that has that experience returns to the physical body and then works to serve others so they can experience divinity for themselves.

Question: Just one other thing. You mentioned about the solar bodies, that they’re vehicles. But then again, what are they? Do they refer to the five lower sephiroth, in terms of how the solar bodies relate to the Tree of Life…

Instructor: The lower five sephiroth.

And so, we seek to develop Bodhichitta above all things. And then, if we are married, we work to create the solar bodies. It is more important to develop that aspiration to serve others than to seek to acquire powers and initiations. So, as it is explained in The Voice of the Silence, the nature of Bodhi, the light:

“The Dharma of the ‘Eye’ is the embodiment of the external, and the non-existing.

“The Dharma of the ‘Heart’ is the embodiment of Bodhi, the Permanent and Everlasting [which is the Absolute, the Christ].”

Here is an image of Buddha Maitreya. People think Buddha Maitreya was one individual. They do not recognize Maitreya is a title. As I mentioned, there are many buddhas in nirvana, millions, zillions. You cannot count. However, there are very few who incarnate the Christ. In order to enter the Straight Path that leads to the Absolute, one needs to become a Bodhisattva.

But first, one develops Bodhichitta.

Bodhichitta is that aspiration to help others. And that service comes about as a result of comprehending one's empty states, or the emptiness of phenomena, as well as the Absolute, which is the goal. Many Buddhas do not have Christ incarnated. Because Christ only enters the human being who has shown he has served humanity. And that aspiration and love for humanity is Bodhichitta, cognizance of the Absolute, emptiness.

Question: So, Mother Teresa might be one?

Instructor: I never investigated her, but she embodied Bodhichitta because she really showed sacrifice for others. She said: "You must sacrifice for others to the point it hurts." And always the utmost sacrifice requires pain in our part in order to genuinely benefit others.

Question: Bodhichitta is developed through meditation and transmutation?

Instructor: Yes. Bodhichitta develops when we meditate and we really work to develop compassion and love for humanity. To serve others and to experience God.

Comment Just along those lines, I’m thinking of an article I read about the nurses who work in children’s hospitals. Usually in five years they say that it’s too much. They say the pain and then the relatives coming in, the interaction and the pain. They actually have to put up a shield. It’s too much! They do good, God knows, but that’s one occupation they take them to task there, compassion-wise. Those people who stay on for a couple of years have to balance that. The pain they feel, you can’t help it, since there’s transference.

Instructor: In order to develop Bodhichitta, we need to transform our psyche. So, whatever pain we experience, we transform it as an opportunity for compassion and love for others.

So, Samael Aun Weor continues in a lecture called The Esoteric Path:

“There exist the Transitory Buddhas and the Permanent Buddhas.

“A Transitory Buddha is a Buddha who still has not achieved within himself the incarnation of the Inner Christ.

“A Permanent Buddha or Buddha of Contemplation is a Buddha who has already Christified himself, a Buddha that has already received the Inner Christ within his own internal nature. This type of Buddha is a Buddha Maitreya, since it is a Buddha who incarnated the Inner Christ (this is how the term “Maitreya” should be understood). So, Buddha Maitreya is not a person: Buddha Maitreya is a title, a degree, which indicates any given Buddha who already achieved Christification.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Esoteric Path

So, the Heavenly Man is the one who fully develops Christ is known as a Permanent Buddha. But, one who is a Transitory Buddha, the Nirvanis, they spiral through Nirvana and come back to Malkuth. Maybe they descend. They go back to Nirvana. They fall again. They are in transit. They are never stationary, meaning they never attain the absolute heights. So, a Permanent Buddha is the one who has incarnated Christ.

Question: So, a Transitory Buddha did not really incarnate the Christ [or made preparations...]

Instructor: Transitory Buddhas are those Nirvanis who have not incarnated the Lord yet. They haven’t walked that path. But those who do walk the Straight Path, they incarnate Christ and they walk a dangerous road to fully eliminate the ego in the most profound depths of their own abyss, in order to unite with the Absolute.

Comment: Then they didn’t fully eliminate the ego!

Instructor: So, the Transitory Buddhas are those who have ego. And even Bodhisattvas, those who incarnate Christ, they still have ego. They are only perfected until they fully eliminate desire.

So, the importance of mentioning the solar bodies is the fact there are many who create these vehicles, but they remain in Nirvana. They do not care about helping humanity.

Question: Why do some people say that that’s the end? Some read a book, and don’t go beyond…

Instructor: There are degrees. There are stages of the Tree of Life. There is Nirvana. There is Paranirvana (beyond Nirvana). And we have Parabrahma, which is the Absolute. So, there are degrees.

The problem with many buddhas in Nirvana is that they do not care about serving humanity. They want to enjoy bliss in their realm, but they do not sacrifice themselves in order to incarnate the Lord, Christ. As stated in The Voice of the Silence:

“The Shangna (“initiation”) robe [the solar bodies], 'tis true, can purchase light eternal. The Shangna robe alone gives the Nirvana of destruction; it stops rebirth, but, O Lanoo [disciple], it also kills — compassion. No longer can the perfect Buddhas [Nirvanis], who don the Dharmakaya glory, help man's salvation. Alas! shall SELVES be sacrificed to Self; mankind, unto the weal of Units?

“Know, O beginner, this is the Open PATH [the spiral path of Nirvana], the way to selfish bliss, shunned by the Bodhisattvas of the "Secret Heart," the Buddhas of Compassion.” ―The Voice of the Silence

So, again, just to really get to the point: there are many buddhas in Nirvana. They have solar bodies, but they remain in that realm. They do not work to help others. And unfortunately, they are afflicted by their own karma. They manifest and they return to Nirvana according to the laws of the cosmos. They are not masters over the laws of the universe.

All those who incarnate Christ become lords of all things. In order to get really inspired to that path, we seek to develop Bodhichitta (the aspiration to reach the Absolute for the benefit of others). Working to self-realize, not for oneself, but for humanity. And to clarify what Bodhichitta is, Samael Aun Weor states in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled:

“Bodhichitta is the awakened and developed superlative consciousness of the Being. Bodhichitta emerges in the aspirant who sacrifices himself for his fellowmen, long before the Mercurial [solar] bodies have been created... The one who does not possess Bodhichitta, even when he has created the superior existential bodies of the Being, is still unconscious and absurd.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled

Do not think like many esoteric practitioners, when they create the solar bodies and that is it. That is the path of the Nirvanis. If we really want to enter the path of the Bodhisattva, the path of Christ, it means we have to renounce our own mind and give everything for humanity.

To conclude, solar bodies are necessary, but they are not the end of the path if what we aspire is to imitate the example of Christ.

Comment: You could see that on the Tree of Life where you showed us the five solar bodies. Above it are the other, higher sephiroth, so you can’t stop really from what you’re telling us. You can’t stop there.

Instructor: The one who decides to enter that path is the Being, our own pneuma, our own spirit. If we have attained to the height Nirvana, meaning we reached Tiphereth and we have the solar physical, solar vital, solar astral, solar mental, solar causal bodies, related to the five spheres below, and if our own spirit demands it, if our own Innermost, Chesed or pneuma decides we enter the path of Christ, then we do. That depends on the will of our Being.

Comment: Seems in a way, you might say, that some of these things might be predestined.

Instructor: If your Being is pushing you to practice this science, it may be the chance he wants you to walk the Direct Path. But that path is not necessarily finished in one life, like I mentioned in the beginning of the lecture with the quote from Padmasambhava. There are few initiates who can do it in one life. It is very rigorous. But for most of us it takes many lives.

Comment: This path you are talking about [the Direct Path], going back to… Steiner, on the Tree of Life, what he called the hermetic path, is doable. That was one path. He called it the mystical path, straight up the Tree, like that, but it involved a different type of esoteric practices in a way than you would if you went from sephirah to sephirah like some people do with tarot cards, correlating astrology and all that. Steiner said it had a lot to do with the heart, and he mentioned there a lot of things that were in line with what you’re saying regarding the Direct Path, or the arrow, קשת Qeshet

Instructor: קשת Qeshet in Kabbalah, which is the Hebrew word for “rainbow,” which we see in the Book of Genesis after the flood of Noah. He saw the rainbow, קשת Qeshet. So, that rainbow is the path that Dorothy takes to Oz, from Malkuth with her companions up the straight road, in the middle, to the Father, Kether, who is our wizard, our Inner Magician.

But the only way that path can be reached is by sacrificing oneself for humanity. Because if we only work for our own liberation, we enter the Nirvani Path. But if we work to help others, to help humanity to reach Christ, then Christ would say: "Well, if you reach the Fifth Initiation, I will incarnate in you." Then, you must die completely. The solar bodies are not quickened unless you die. Like Paul of Tarsus said: "We do not perfect those vehicles until we die in our ego."

Any other questions?

Question: Does the Being nudge by putting events on our path?

Instructor: Yes. We can refer to karma specially. We have many events in our life which are the result of past actions, the karmic results of our previous lives. But in many other cases, our Being, in order to help us, changes that, such as finding this type of science. The Being is intervening to help that soul to change.

Comment: Or even meeting someone who is studying esoteric studies, and saying, “Here, read this book!” And then something turns on. It could be when you’re very young, middle-aged, or even old, and say, “I want to pursue this further.” Since you look back on your life and you see that you get resentful, but then they tell you you can’t. You say, “There’s something pushing me. There’s something I have to do.” It could be based on fear too, of the unknown, or the whatever. But it starts you on a metaphysical reading, attending classes, but something happened…

Instructor: Those longings are the impulse of the Being to make that soul work to walk the path of the Self-realization. Now, what is necessary is to cultivate Bodhichitta, that aspiration to serve humanity and attain liberation for the sake of others. We need to develop Bodhichitta if we really comprehend our mind, and work to serve in whatever way possible, whatever is the idiosyncrasy of our Being.

For some people it is teaching. For some people it’s like Mother Teresa, providing shelter for others who are sick. Gandhi was teaching and leading political movements. That is how he worked with his aspiration basically.

Comment: Can I just add one other thing? Just getting back to finding out the meanings behind a lot of those teachings. But the Bible, and Rudolf Steiner said too, in a lot of ways it was a closed document, he wouldn’t go into detail. […] Someone I know who is a member of the Masonic Lodge, Jewish-American fellow, fairly intelligent, he said, “When I was in the Navy I went out and took an eclectic approach.” So he was related to the Jewish religion, but he wanted to find out, you know, he studied other religions. He said, “I used to sit on the fan tail of the ship… by myself and read. The only thing,” and sad in a way, “But Christ spoke in parables. I couldn’t follow that.” That’s another thing. People need experience in the way they see things.

Instructor: We need to know Kabbalah to understand the Christian Gospels. So, we explain in brief the meaning of the teachings of Christ as well as the teachings of Paul of Tarsus.

Comment: There’s just so much, really, is in [parables]… some people think there’s just surface meanings. They quote the waters, but what’s really behind it? And they talk about… in the human being! As it relates to the human being! What are these waters? You never see, I’ve never read this in any esoteric books except in things you’ve explained.

Instructor: What is necessary for us is to meditate. To experience this for ourselves. But personally, when I am talking about the solar bodies and Bodhichitta is because I have studied these teachings, not from a book, but from experience.

So, do not take this at face value, but practice. And awaken your psyche so you can experience your own pneuma. And a practice you can use to develop Bodhichitta is the prayer of Saint Francis. I do not remember specifically every line. "Let me not seek as much to be loved, but to love. To be understood as to understand. To give in order to receive. For in giving, we receive and in death we are born to everlasting life."

Comment: Francis of Assisi, and he, that was interesting, he certainly had an epiphany or an awakening, because he was born, as history tells us, into a very wealthy family in Tuscany, in Italy. And the father wanted him to get married and live well with possessions, but he totally renounced everything…

Instructor: He is a great Bodhisattva. He fully developed Christ within himself. He was an embodiment or expression of the teachings of the Straight Path. So, meditation and prayer can open a lot of things in terms of how we can help humanity.

7 Comments

The Three Ways of Christ

The Three Brains and the Three Ways

Mysticism: The Path of Spiritual Experience

Knowledge of Divinity

The Imitation of Christ

The Enlightenment of Christ

​St. Francis of Assisi

​Redemption on the Gnostic Path

Christ with Publicans and Sinners

The Wine of Spiritual Transmutation

Fishers of Men: Sacrifice for Humanity

​The Path of Yoga

The Stages of Meditation

​Conclusion: The Seven Rays of Spiritual Evolution

Questions and Answers

The Energy of the Consciousness

​Consciousness and the Sephiroth

​Energy and the Three Brains

​ The Four Spiritual Paths

The Path of the Fakir

​The Path of the Monk

​The Path of the Yogi

The Gnostic Path of the Balanced Human Being

​The Disharmony of the Three Brains

​The Fourth Way: The Path of the Cross

The Kabbalistic Symbolism of the Rose Cross

Sexual Magic in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

On Child and Marriage

​Questions and Answers

What is Initiation?

Telesis

​The Hidden Wisdom

​Christic and Demonic Initiation

Addiction to Suffering

​Diogenes, Alexander the Great, and the True Human Being

​The Second Birth

​The Sword of Kundalini

​The Secret Teachings of Alchemy

The Guardian of the Threshold and the Children’s Chamber

​The Ordeals of the Elements

​The Ordeal of Fire

​The Ordeal of Air

​The Ordeal of Water

​The Ordeal of Earth

​Ordeals in the Astral Plane

​The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Questions and Answers

Arcanum 21: Transmutation

The Solar Bodies and Bodhichitta

​Alchemy, Chakras, and Kundalini in the Psalms

​Solomon and Sacred Sexuality

​Soma, Sexual Energy, and the Power of Shiva

​The Śvetāśvatara Upanishad and Sexual Yoga

​The Four States of Consciousness

​The Heavenly and Terrestrial Man of St. Paul

​The Psychic and Spiritual Bodies

​The Manifestation and Contemplation Buddhas

​The Spiral and Direct Paths

​Bodhichitta

Categories

St. Francis of Assisi

Redemption on the Gnostic Path

The Path of Yoga

Conclusion: The Seven Rays of Spiritual Evolution

Consciousness and the Sephiroth

Energy and the Three Brains

The Four Spiritual Paths

The Path of the Monk

The Path of the Yogi

The Disharmony of the Three Brains

The Fourth Way: The Path of the Cross

Questions and Answers

The Hidden Wisdom

Christic and Demonic Initiation

Diogenes, Alexander the Great, and the True Human Being

The Second Birth

The Sword of Kundalini

The Secret Teachings of Alchemy

The Ordeals of the Elements

The Ordeal of Fire

The Ordeal of Air

The Ordeal of Water

The Ordeal of Earth

Ordeals in the Astral Plane

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Alchemy, Chakras, and Kundalini in the Psalms

Solomon and Sacred Sexuality

Soma, Sexual Energy, and the Power of Shiva

The Śvetāśvatara Upanishad and Sexual Yoga

The Four States of Consciousness

The Heavenly and Terrestrial Man of St. Paul

The Psychic and Spiritual Bodies

The Manifestation and Contemplation Buddhas

The Spiral and Direct Paths

Bodhichitta