Congratulations to the chaste saints. Their souls never condemn them. Having won them, they are never separated from themselves. Congratulations to the spirits of the chaste saints. They have received the perfect heavenly crown from the heavenly sphere assigned to them. Congratulations to the bodies of the chaste saints. They have been deemed worthy to become temples of God, so that Christ may dwell in them. ―Acts of Thomas What is Chastity?
For many people, we associate chastity with celibacy, which is the total avoidance of sex. For centuries, many religious organizations have taught us that sex is shameful, that sex should be avoided except in the cases of marriage or to procreate children. For many centuries, this teaching has been propagated that sex is something shameful or dangerous, precisely because of its tremendous power and the sacred nature of the sexual act. It is in sex that we have the power to create life, and God, divinity, also has that power to create life, and has given us the ability to do that through the unity of a man and a woman in sex.
We see in sex the principles of creation. There are always three factors involved whenever life is created. There is a masculine principle that is projected. There is a feminine principle that is receptive. Uniting them, there is the holy conciliation, sex, through the Holy Spirit if you are familiar with the Christian teachings. Today’s lecture will be an introduction to the Gnostic mysteries of chastity, and we will be studying a gnostic text, a scripture from almost two thousand years ago called Acts of Thomas in India. This scripture is generally considered to be a teaching of celibacy by many mainstream scholars, and that is because at that time, the true teaching of chastity―how to harness our sexual energy and how to work in the sexual act in accordance with God’s highest commandments―was not taught publicly. For many centuries, sex has been relegated to the private sphere, and what happened in people’s private, sexual lives was not talked about openly. Perhaps it is for this reason that many people have associated sex with shame and fear, but the reality is that sex has a dual potential. It has a potential to bring us into greater suffering, to create pain, for who could deny that sexual abuse, sexual crimes that are committed, are among the most horrible abominable acts that we see today? Sex also has a beautiful potential, a spiritual potential. Chastity is the teaching about how we can use sex and our sexual force in accordance with God’s commandments. Those familiar with Christianity know that two commandments directly concern sex. One of them is that “Thou shall not commit adultery.” We should not have sex with multiple people. That is a commandment from God. The other commandment is “Thou shall not fornicate.” Fornication is the misuse of sex, whether outside of a marriage or within a marriage―if sex is used with impurity, with lust, with desire, for selfish pleasures, in forgetfulness of divinity, which is always present with us―especially in the sexual act when we have that power of creation illuminated. The Duality of Sex
There are two doors related to sex. When we go through the act of sex in one direction―which is what we know about today in our public media, in our television shows, in music―we experience all of the sexual sensations with a tremendous desire. We go around seeking more and more of those sensations. We watch videos. We read articles. We find partners and go to places intending to find sexual partners, and that is the modern idea of sex, that sex is something to be enjoyed.
Ever since the sexual liberation movement around the 1960s and 1970s, we had so much public content shared about sex. There has been medical research, lots of movies, television shows, in which, in the very first few moments, you see very graphic content that several decades ago or even just a few years ago would not have been permissible. Sex is unavoidable in our modern culture, and that is why in this teaching of chastity, we have finally been granted access to how to use sex in accordance with God’s law, knowledge that was not given publicly before the 1950s, knowledge that was preserved for centuries and millennia by true initiates of mystery schools, of genuine temples, of religion. Only those who were properly prepared, who had purity of mind and heart, who had willpower and self-control, were able to understand and learn the true secret of chastity: how to perform the sexual act with purity. That is why when we study ancient gospels like Acts of Thomas, we see that sex can be veiled, can be a hidden mystery, something that must be discovered. Anyone who remembers being a child, before they had exposure or had much understanding about sex, it was a great mystery. It was something that, when encountered for the first time, it produced a tremendous reaction and tremendous effect in all of us. Anyone who has experienced some form of sexual trauma can tell you that sex is much more than of mere physical act, that sex is psychological, and has tremendous power to shape our life. Each of us, if we are sincere and examine our psychological relationship with sex, can see that this is an important aspect of life, and sex is a natural part of life. But if that act produces pain or produces joy is truly dependent on the psychological state that we bring to that act. That is why we seek to understand, through scriptures, the mysteries of how to become pure, how to become chaste, and gain all of those rewards that are spoken of regarding the chaste saints that I read earlier from this scripture, Acts of Thomas. How to Approach Sacred Sexuality
In order to properly approach this teaching today, we have to set aside the concepts, the ideas, even the experiences or preferences that we may have regarding sex, to encounter this teaching with an open mind, for it is a mystery to most of us, a very new teaching to many of us, that has not been heard about before. For those who have never heard of chastity before, it may be surprising. It may be offensive to your ideas about what sex is, and since we have been exposed to a large amount of propaganda in our culture regarding sex, it is difficult to approach it with humility and open-mindedness when we already have strongly held positions and opinions about our sexuality.
So, I encourage you to take the mindset of a child, and if you are able to, return to that state of innocence before you had much knowledge of sex, what it really signified, and to have an open mind as you hear this teaching today. For Jesus taught us in the Gospel of Matthew that we must be changed and become as children. Through chastity, we are able to become again like children, like virgins, new to sex. And [Jesus] said, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” ―Matthew 18:3-4
If we really want to enter into heaven to know the mysteries of divinity, to experience the bliss of Eden from which we have been cast out by our abuse of sexuality, we must have that innocence, that purity, that humility and reverence of a child when we approach the topic of sex.
Kabbalah and Alchemy: The Heart of Gnostic Christianity
We also need the two esoteric sciences of Gnostic Christianity that allow us to interpret scripture according to the principles of the initiates. People who are initiated into the mystery schools or the highest levels and temples of genuine religion were taught Kabbalah and Alchemy.
The first, Kabbalah, is related with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, because Kabbalah can unveil to us the mysteries of the universe, of nature, of ourselves. Kabbalah is like a map of divinity, and for those who have not studied it before, I strongly encourage you to study the course on Glorian.org. This course on Kabbalah relates to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and has a corresponding course related to the twenty-two arcana of Tarot. These twenty-two letters and twenty-two arcana of tarot are one in the same, and that each one encodes a spiritual principle, a mystery about our universe, our existence, our spiritual journey, and how we can return to divinity. That code is very deep, and it requires much more study than what I can provide to you today, but we will apply it in a basic way through kabbalistic numerology, to give you an introduction on how we must apply this science to spiritual scriptures. Similarly, Alchemy is essential for understanding scripture and we would be remiss not to apply Alchemy to this particular scripture, Acts of Thomas, for it is an extremely sexual and alchemical text. Alchemy comes from two roots, Al, El, God. אל El is God in Hebrew and Al-, the + ilah, God, الله Allah, “The God” relates to the Arabic name of God. Chem, or Khem is from χυμεία Kimia (Greek), this means “to fuse or to cast metal.” Those of us who are familiar with the tradition of Alchemy from medieval times will understand why they encoded Alchemy through symbols of converting lead into gold, that one must take a very heavy, dense, and dark material and transform it through a scientific procedure into gold, the most pure and rarified and noble of the metals. That science encodes how we can use sex, as a procedure, through which we can convert the base lead of our personality, of our corrupted psychology, into the pure gold of the spirit, and give birth to Christ within our own physical body. It is very important to understand Alchemy was written in code and that the masters who wrote about it, just like the great masters of all religions, kept the sexual teaching hidden, so it would not be abused by people who approached it with ambition, with pride, with lust, with little spiritual understanding. Only now, because our society has become so open, because we have entered the era of Aquarius where sexual liberation is abundant, we are able to speak publicly about mysteries which were never revealed to the profane. Though Alchemy, sexual Alchemy, we are able to fuse ourselves with divinity. Alchemy is the science to fuse the human soul with Christ, God, divinity. Christ is a principle, a force, an energy, an intelligence that is permeating every atom of life in our universe. Christ is far beyond one terrestrial person, but Christ has the ability to manifest physically in our world through a properly prepared individual. That is why Jesus Christ, the greatest master this planet has ever known, is given that title of Christ, because he was incarnating Christ into the physical world, so that infinite force of love, compassion, and wisdom could teach humanity how to live in accordance with the laws that divinity has set into our nature―laws like chastity, which forbid fornication and forbid adultery, so that sex can only be used in purity, in accordance with divinity, in mindfulness of the divine nature of that sacrament. 
Mystical Geography in the Acts of Thomas
So, in order to understand the basics of these two sciences―Kabbalah relating to the Tree of Life and Alchemy relating to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden―we will study the location of this scripture.
Acts of Thomas in India is about an apostle, Judas Thomas, who is sent on a mission to India. While scholars generally accept that this was truly a real man who traveled to the actual location of India around the Indus river, in that region at that time, establishing Christian churches, we must also know that this text is symbolic. It encodes a greater truth, a spiritual truth, a secret, a mystery, hidden in its symbols. The first symbol is India because India is far more than a literal place in this scripture. India indicates the setting or the environment in which this apostle is going to bring his teaching, the teaching of Christ, the teaching of chastity. This is why we need to analyze India in accordance with Kabbalah, this divine science that can help us to understand the nature of God and also the path to return to divinity. In Hebrew the word for India is הֹדּוּ Hodu. הֹדּוּ Hodu is written with three Hebrew letters. The first is ה Hei, the second is ד Daleth, the third is ו Vav. Just observing the shape of the symbols of these letters, we can see already a hint of their spiritual significance. In the letter ה Hei, we see a shape of a womb, a uterus. That is because ה Hei represents femininity, the divine feminine, and also the physical feminine body and sexual organs. At the end of this word, we see ו Vav. ו Vav is a phallic symbol resembling an erect penis. For that reason, we can understand that on either side of this word, we have the man and the woman present. Uniting this man and woman is ד Daleth, which has the shape of a door. ד Daleth means “door” in Hebrew. Sex can be referred to as the door to Eden, and it is also the door out of Eden through the abuse of sex. We lose the ability to remain in union with Christ, with God. We lose our bliss, for עֵדֶן Eden means “bliss” in Hebrew. That is why initially in this gospel, Acts of Thomas, the apostle is a bit reluctant to travel to the place where he is assigned, because India is not literally a place he is reluctant to go, but symbolically it signifies sex, that door which is so treacherous and can lead us back to God, but it can also expel us away from God and separate us from God if sex is abused. That is why we see this quote from Samael Aun Weor in his book Tarot and Kabbalah: …within sex is a major force that can liberate the human being, but also a major force that can enslave the human being.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah 
Tarot, Kabbalah, and the Hebrew Letters
For those familiar with Tarot, you can see the symbol of the fifteenth arcanum, Passion, commonly referred to as the devil. The fifteenth arcanum relates to the Hebrew letter ס Samech, the serpent biting its tail.
That cycle of passion is what can enslave us and convert us unto devils. If we see an attractive person walking by, we may be compelled to act a certain way around them and talk a certain way around them. We may obsess about that person, or conversely, we may try to repress that force and avoid that person, avoid thinking about them. But either way we know that sexual potency is a major force that has an impact on us psychologically, regardless of if we try to indulge it or repress it. It shapes us, and very few are those human beings who can truly master and command their sexual force. Sex is also the key to liberating us, and that is what Thomas will teach us in this Gospel. The reason why we can relate the Arcanum 15 with India, esoterically speaking, is because the kabbalistic addition of the three letters in the word India: ה Hei, being the fifth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, corresponds with the number five; ד Daleth, being the fourth, corresponds with the number four; and ו Vav corresponds with six as the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In Kabbalah we know that there is an esoteric significance to the sum total of any number given in a scripture. When we add 5 + 4 + 6, we receive the kabbalistic sum of 15, the devil. Judas Thomas of Acts of Thomas has the challenging task of going to the realm of the devil in order to convert the people there, who are confused about sex and sexuality, through many interesting parables about sex, back to chastity, so they can become chaste saints, disciples of Christ. 
Alchemical Symbolism of the Indus River and Date Palm Tree
Through the study of Alchemy, we can also examine the symbol of India, which relates to the Indus River, a river which gave tremendous life to that region and continues to give tremendous life to that region.
The Indus River in Sanskrit: सिन्धु Sindhu, “a large body of water; river, ocean,” derived from Cintu: date palm tree. For those who have studied the course on Kabbalah and Alchemy, they will know immediately that water, especially bodies of water like rivers and oceans, correspond with the sexual force, especially the sexual force in relationship with the Divine Mother, for it is the waters of the womb which create life. The sexual waters of the woman bring life and also the sexual waters of the man, semen, also give life. That is the alchemical significance of water when we see it mentioned in the scriptures, the waters of life. However, it is important to know that water can also bring destruction, and that is why through the floods of Noah, humanity was destroyed for their crimes, for their vices. This is a dual symbol. Sex can bring life and it can destroy life, depending on how it is used. 
This teaching is seen very clearly in the Qur’an. The word Sindhu is derived from “Cintu,” date palm tree and date palms, which were abundant in the Middle Eastern region. They are sometimes considered to be the true tree in the Garden of Eden―not an apple tree, but a date palm from which Adam and Eve ate, and that is a very sexual symbol. That is why that is the tree related with Alchemy, the science of fusing oneself with God through sacred sexuality.
In Surah 16:67 in the Qur’an, we see that the date palm is mentioned along with grapevines. Grapes are another sexual symbol, which is why Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding, and that miracle was to convert water into wine. We see the relationship here, that water is our potential, and if that water is transformed, it can become the spiritual wine of the soul at a wedding, where two are married. That is the same symbol as converting the lead―the impure sexuality, slowly through a process of gentle heat, through a scientific method―into the gold of the purified spirit and soul. And from the fruits of date palm trees and grapevines you derive intoxicants as well as wholesome provision. Surely in this is a sign for those who understand. ―Quran 16:67
Who are the people with spiritual understanding? They are the initiates: the ones with spiritual ears and eyes who can hear and see the mysteries that are hidden behind in the scripture. In this mystery, so beautifully presented to us in the Holy Qur’an, is that from sex, we can see intoxication, obsession, addiction, lust, desire, that has no satiation. We can also see wholesome provision: the ability to bring life, not only physical life of a child, but also spiritual life to regenerate ourselves.
The date palm, interestingly, the date resembles the testes, the male sexual organ. The date is considered a sacred food in Islam. We can see why that is sacred, just as our sexual seed is sacred. The sexual water must be conserved, transformed, transmuted through the science of Alchemy.
Harnessing the Sexual Force
That is precisely the science that Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the Gnostic tradition, unveiled in the 1950s in his book, The Perfect Matrimony. As today’s lecture is only an introduction into the Gnostic mystery of chastity, I strongly encourage you to read this book, which can be read for free online on Glorian.org or purchased from any bookseller. In this book, Samael Aun Weor extensively teaches us the science of sexual Alchemy, chastity, and also pranayama or transmutation for single persons, who are not yet married and need the science by which they can still harness that sexual force for themselves.
For single people, it is important to note that they can conserve their sexual energy and must transmute it every day through practices like pranayama, which you can read about in the book The Perfect Matrimony. If one conserves their sexual energy but represses it, does not transform that energy, one could become a very troubled person. We have seen that the celibacy, the total avoidance of sex, is harmful. It produces psychological imbalances, and in some cases has led to sexual crimes. We do not advocate celibacy in this teaching, but chastity does require that an unmarried person abstain from sex. Until we are married, we should be transmuting that energy, working with prayer, mantra, pranayama, so that force is continually flowing through our body and allowing us to unite with divinity. If we lose that force through vices such as masturbation, we lose our connection to divinity. That is why many feel shame after orgasm, for they know that they have lost something valuable. Yes, on a physical level we can lose thousands of sperm, but for men and women orgasm is harmful, more importantly on a spiritual and energetic level, because the orgasm produces a short circuit in the physical and energetic bodies and destroys those bodies. The orgasm not only affects us energetically and physically, but also spiritually, in that when we expel that sacred substance from our bodies, we are losing the very force of God, the creator within us. That is why we become blind, deaf, and lame, spiritually speaking. That is why when most of us sit to meditate or pray, we see black. We hear nothing because we are dead inside, spiritually speaking, because we have lost the very force of life and creation within our own body. 
Spiritual Creation is Sexual
Samael Aun Weor states:
The sexual act is the real consubstantiation of love in the tremendous psycho-physical reality of our Nature. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
Consubstantiation in Christian terms relates to the teaching that the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Communion, is simultaneously one with the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Con represents “together,” substantiation: substance―they are one substance together, simultaneously. That is the teaching in mainstream Christianity, but Samael Aun Weor taught from an esoteric standpoint and is pointing out that in a psychological and physical reality, sex unites us with divinity.
Psychologically and physically, we must be pure. We must maintain that sexual energy within our body and transform it in accordance with God’s guidance, the teachings of chastity. That is the real consubstantiation in which we are simultaneously human and divine. Something is created when a man and a woman unite sexually. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
In the sexual act when man and woman unite, something is created. What is created? Of course, we know that a physical child can be created when a man and woman unite sexually, and there is a mystery in which one sperm and one egg are needed to create a pure physical child. That is a mystery for another lecture, the mystery of Immaculate Conception, but you can read about it in The Yellow Book by Samael Aun Weor if you are interested in learning more about it.
What else is created when we unite sexually? Well, if we reflect on our lives, what have we seen created through sex? We may see some happy marriages, although these are becoming fewer. We have seen much pain created by sex, suffering. That is because mankind has not been taught how to use sex appropriately. Mankind has been taught how to abuse sex, how to indulge in sex, how to go around seeking the next sensations or have multiple partners and masturbate―all kinds of sexual vices which corrupt our psychology. These vices do not just harm our physical body. They harm us psychologically. They create imbalances. They create addictions. They create lunacy. Some of the worst sexual crimes are committed by lunatics who have zero control over their sexual force. Sexuality must be properly understood so that we can use it in balance with divinity. This is a great mystery that can only be known through experience. Anyone who has experienced the suffering, the heartbreak, the loss and sorrow of lust, can understand that there is one doorway that we can pass through with sex that brings an emptiness, a longing that is never fulfilled. Many people believe in the promise of love, of sex as love, but do not know how to bring real love into the sexual act. Love must be brought not only for our spouse and our partner—with selflessness, sacrificing our own selfish desires for that act—but out of love, union with our partner. Love must also involve divinity. Where divinity is not present, there is no love. Christ, God, divinity is love. If you are performing the sexual act or sexual behaviors without divinity, there is no love present there. We need to understand that the very potential for our own heart to love our spouse, to love humanity, to love our children, the potential in our own heart is the spark of divinity. The one who loses their sexual forces, their sexual energies, and their sexual substance, loses that ability to love. That is why lust for the pleasure it can bring, in the short term, never materializes with that eternal happiness that it seems to promise. People spend their whole lives believing that chasing sex will somehow bring them that happiness, will bring them to love. But it is not sex alone which brings us to love. We must bring love to sex, through our inner union with divinity. That is why chastity does not begin just in the sexual union with a partner. Alchemy begins with us, with our willingness to purify our minds and hearts, to become as children, to go sincerely and humbly unto God, and to learn these mysteries from our inner divinity. Divinity will teach you much about chastity and sexual Alchemy if you are open in your heart, in your mind, if you are pure, if you have set aside your pride which thinks it already understands sexuality, that it already knows what sex is about. You allow God to teach you God’s divine mystery of sex. You will see that on the other side of that door that there is a tremendous abundance of sacred mystery that we have barely begun to understand through our modern, contemporary notions about sex. The Prerequisites of Sexual Alchemy
So, how does one practice sexual Alchemy with their partner? For those of us who are married, what is the practice of chastity? How do we engage in this sexual act, but do it with purity and do it with full meditative awareness of the presence of divinity?
Samael Aun Weor gives the full teaching about that in The Perfect Matrimony, but just to read a little bit for you today from that book―in relationship to a man and a woman, sexually united and experiencing all the bliss of that union―he states the following: If man and woman would know how to withdraw without the spasm, if in those moments of delightful enjoyment they would have the willpower to control the animal ego, and if at that point they would retire from the sexual act without ejaculating the semen (neither inside the womb, nor outside of it or to the side of it, nor in any other place) they would have then performed an act of Sexual Magic. This is what is called in occultism the Arcanum A. Z. F.
God has created a door for us, a door in physical nature through which we can enter Eden, into bliss, or through which we can leave it. Meditate on your experiences with sex. Become prayerful and sincere and see if sex has really brought you lasting happiness, or if you have been abusing that act, forgetting divinity, forgetting love, and if that is the case, then you will understand when he states Cupid leaves crying. Cupid relates to the god Eros, the god of love, one in the same mystery of Christ in the Greek mysteries.
Eros leaves us when we orgasm, men and women. Although women may not lose any physical substance through the orgasm, they are losing tremendous substance energetically and spiritually, and that can be seeing through clairvoyance. Orgasm separates us from love and locks us out of heaven. We must become pure like children, like chaste virgins, as we enter into the sexual act every time remaining pure, bringing love for our spouse and love for divinity. If we break this law of nature and we fornicate through orgasm―orgasm and fornication are one in the same, regardless if we are in a marriage or not―we will in the long run experience tremendous suffering because we are losing our connection to divinity. Divinity is what really brings us happiness. Through sex, we strengthen our union with divinity if it is performed with purity, prayer, and love. Before we can perform sacred sexuality, sexual Alchemy with a partner, we have to establish that covenant with our own inner divinity by establishing purity within ourselves. We begin this practice as animals, filled with animal lust and desire, but through willpower, through constant application, we are refining this act and refining our own psychology, meditating on the evils that exist within our own heart, the selfishness, the pride, the greed, the lust, the desires that are never happy, that are never satisfied. How do we free ourselves from that? How do we liberate ourselves from that? It is through sex, working with Kundalini, which is the mystery of the Divine Mother who controls those sexual waters and allows us to become free, to become washed and purified by those waters, if we keep those waters within our body. When we lose that spiritual water, we become inhabited. We open that doorway for evil forces to come into our body. Sex is the original sin, because sex with fornication opened the gates of Eden and expelled us out of union with divinity. Sex is called the original sin, but sex with purity is salvation and redemption of mankind. Acts of Thomas is about many, many individuals who are suffering from the misuse of sex. Today we are only going to talk a little bit about Act I, “The Wedding Feast of the King’s Daughter,” but if you read this scripture, you will see again and again that people are committing sexual crimes, that people are being tormented by sexual demons, that sex is prevalent throughout this act. That is why Kabbalistically and esoterically speaking, India symbolizes sex, the perilous nation in which people are afflicted by sexual impurities, just like each one of us. Whether we have had sex or not, each of us should examine our relationship to sex, our sexual behaviors, our psychological relationship to sex, and ask ourselves if it is pure. Many who fear sex just want to avoid it, never want to think about it, want to repress it, want to be celibate. But that is a false door, because the celibate person never goes anywhere. They never grow. The chaste person, even if they are single, is growing through their own sexual force or through the union of masculine and feminine forces in the sexual act. But the celibate person who refuses to transform that energy, who tries to ignore it and runs away from it, is lying to themselves. Sex is an essential part of nature and human experience. Sex is an essential aspect of our spiritual journey, because without sex, we have no power to get out of the current state that we are in and we have no power to reunite with divinity. 
Building the Temple of God
So, we need to preserve those sexual energies, which are continually coming into our body from above, from our Divine Father and our Divine Mother. We need to preserve those energies, transform them, and use them to build the temple of God in our own bodies. That is why Thomas goes to India, to build a palace for a King. The true king is God. The palace is the temple. The temple of our body can become a palace, a temple of God, but only if we meet God’s requirements, just as divinity demands that there is purity of heart and spirit in the sexual act. That is what we need to understand. If we do not meet the prerequisite, this is the law of nature that states that sex expels you from Eden, or it brings you back into Eden. Abusing sex separates you from God. Sex performed with purity and chastity reunites you with God. That is the law of nature. That is not an idea that someone just made up. That is a law written into nature, and we can experience it, work with it, and verify it directly through our experience.
Judas Thomas unwillingly gets sold by Jesus, his master, as a slave, so that he is forced to go to India, sold as a slave who will build a palace for a King in India. Before he is able to build this palace, he is compelled to attend a wedding feast for the local king’s daughter. Why does he have to attend a wedding feast before he can build a palace? Spiritually speaking, this is symbolic. The wedding feast, the consummation of marriage, the sexual act, is the prerequisite through which the temple of God can be built, truly, to create a vessel into which Christ, that profound, tremendous power of wisdom and love, can actually incarnate within a human body. Those vessels are created through sex. That is the only way that anything in nature is created. That is why Thomas and Jesus as his twin teach the mystery of chastity in the bridal chamber. 
The Teaching in the Bridal Chamber
When they are teaching this, Jesus appears to the young couple in the form of Judas Thomas, and they are surprised because Judas Thomas has just left the room after blessing them and praying for them. They asked, “How is it possible that you are still in the room?” and Jesus explains to them that he is not the physical man Judas Thomas, that he is Christ.
This again is symbolic. Thoma means “twin.” Thomas is “twin,” the twin of Christ. The physical apostle is the vessel in which Christ manifests and gives that gospel to humanity. Jesus was a literal person, but symbolically, looking at this symbol, we see that Jesus is representing the force of Christ because this gospel takes place after Jesus had died and resurrected. His spirit comes through the vessel of Thomas, his physical apostle, to teach the mystery of chastity. So, what does Jesus teach in the bridal chamber? Acts of Thomas says that Jesus taught the following to the young couple: Remember, my children, what my brother spake unto you and what he delivered before you: and know this, that if ye abstain from this foul intercourse, ye become holy temples, pure, being quit of impulses and pains, seen and unseen, and ye will acquire no cares of life or of children, whose end is destruction… But if ye be persuaded and keep your souls chaste before God, there will come unto you living children whom these blemishes touch not, and ye shall be without care, leading a tranquil life without grief or anxiety, looking to receive that incorruptible and true marriage, and ye shall be therein groomsmen entering into that bride-chamber which is full of immortality and light. ―Acts of Thomas
Modern scholars who know nothing, who have never been initiated into the deepest genuine mysteries of spiritual teachings, always interpret this scripture as advocating for celibacy, total abstinence form sex. In reality, this scripture very obviously indicates that sex is important, and Jesus spends the whole night there in that bridal chamber with the couple. What happens in that bridal chamber is not explicitly stated in this gospel, for at that time it was forbidden to give this knowledge publicly to the profane, to people who were not properly prepared, who could not handle working with sex in this way.
We see that Jesus is talking about two marriages here. One marriage is of foul intercourse, the lustful marriage which brings impulses and pains, seen and unseen. Physical pain, yes, it can bring physical illnesses to us, karmically speaking, in the long term, but also unseen impulses and pain, those addictions, psychological imbalances, the madness that comes when sex is out of control and abused. The other marriage that he mentions is the incorruptible and true marriage, the bride chamber, which is full of immortality and light. When we practice chastity and we are meditating and we are awakening our spiritual senses, our spiritual eyes, we can see the light penetrating around and through our physical bodies. We can see that divinity is present. Angels are present, observing and guiding that sacred sexual act. It is a holy sacrament, and for those who work with it, they can verify this in their experience, but the prerequisite is purity. You will never reach the heights of this chastity of this teaching if you are orgasming. If you are losing that sacred energy, even just now and then, you will never be able to build the temple of God, because it is a law of nature that is required. That is the substance through which the Divine Mother can build a vessel for God within us. Only a fool would spend so much time, effort, and discipline to build a beautiful temple and go in with a sledgehammer and start breaking down the walls, destroying it, and then decide to go back and rebuild it again. We will never get anywhere if we are going back and forth. We must obey the law. We must work with sex. It is absolutely essential, but we must work in accordance with God’s commandments, which forbid fornication. They forbid orgasm and forbid adultery. The person who tries to practice this with many partners will also get nowhere. Love must be present, genuine love that grows and grows and grows as we continue to practice with our spouse, love for our spouse and love for divinity. Love is the substance of divinity and divinity leaves the adulterer. The Response of the Bride
Although the sexual act is not explicitly discussed or written down in this scripture, it is clear to us that a marriage has taken place, that Jesus spent an evening with the young couple teaching them and guiding them in the sexual act. We know that something has happened, because the next day the bride and groom are radically transformed. In fact, when the king and queen come down to see their daughter and her new husband, they are shocked, very surprised to see that she has removed her veil, which is called the “garment of shame” in those times, which the woman would wear to hide her shame after having sex. They come down and they ask her and her husband, “Why do you look so happy? Why are you not ashamed? Is it because that you are in such great love with each other that you are not ashamed?” They are shocked because they have never seen a couple come out of the sexual act with a happiness and joy that pervades them in this way, in this level of transformation. So, the bride, the daughter, responds to her parents and says this:
Verily, father, I am in great love, and I pray my Lord that the love which I have perceived this night may abide with me, and I will ask for that husband of whom I have learned today: and therefore I will no more veil myself, because the mirror (veil) of shame is removed from me; and therefore am I no more ashamed or abashed, because the deed of shame and confusion is departed far from me; and that I am not confounded, it is because my astonishment hath not continued with me; and that I am in cheerfulness and joy, it is because the day of my joy hath not been troubled; and that I have set at naught this husband and this marriage that passes away from before mine eyes, it is because I am joined in another marriage; and that I have had no intercourse with a husband that is temporal, whereof the end is with lasciviousness and bitterness of soul, it is because I am yoked unto a true husband [Christ]. ―Response of the Bride, Acts of Thomas
There are many symbols of Alchemy in the bride’s response in this scripture, but even to the uninitiated we can see very clearly that she has experienced, through this teaching, joy, happiness, and is beginning to enter into the true marriage, the marriage of Christ.
Many of us are seeking for temporary pleasure when we are lustful. We are seeking after physical sensations, physical experiences. That is temporal and passes away. That leads to lasciviousness and bitterness of soul. But chastity, chaste sexual union, is actually uniting the husband and wife with their inner divinity. The divinity of the wife, the divinity of the husband become one, and that is why it is not a marriage with a spouse that is temporal―not just a union of the physical bodies, but really the union of the immortal souls. That is why there are two marriages: one marriage that is temporary and passes away when the physical body dies, and another marriage through which the souls of the husband and wife become one with the spirit, with Christ. They are re-establishing, rebuilding that bridge, that connection that guides us back to God. That is what gives us conscience. That is what gives us insight, intuition, guidance, visions, dreams that are prophetic. All of that is established through working with our sexual potential, because sex is what can reunite us with God, just as it has separated us from our inner divinity through its abuse. The Response of the Groom
Personally, I prefer the response of the groom even more because the groom, as we can see in his response, is someone like many of us who has been confused, who has been taught many ideas, corruption, impurity, and suffering. We can hear in this response from the groom so much gratitude for how sex has guided him back to his true nature, his soul, reunion with divinity and real love for Christ. In Acts of Thomas, the groom states:
I give thee thanks, O Lord, that hast been proclaimed by the stranger [Judas Thomas], and found in us [Christ within us]; O Lord who hast removed me far from corruption and sown life in me; who hast rid me of this disease that is hard to be healed and cured and abides forever, and hast implanted sober health in me [chastity]; who hast shown me thyself and revealed unto me all my state wherein I am; who hast redeemed me from falling and led me to that which is better, and set me free from temporal things and made me worthy of those that are immortal and everlasting; that hast made thyself lowly even down to me and my littleness, that thou mayest present me unto thy greatness and unite me unto thyself; […] hast shown me how to seek myself and know who I was, and who and in what manner I now am, that I may again become that which I was: whom I knew not, but thyself did seek me out: of whom I was not aware, but thyself hast taken me to thee: whom I have perceived, and now am not able to be unmindful of him: whose love burns within me… ―Response of the Groom, Acts of Thomas
That is Christ. The disease that is hard to be healed and cured is lust, abuse of sex. We see that there is so much addiction, especially to pornography that is extremely hard to be healed. It leads people to lunacy, suffering, pain, to have affairs, to throw away their marriage. That disease can be healed by Christ. That is a tremendous source of hope. This teaching allows us to change no matter how fallen we are. Even if we are a prostitute, we can be saved through chastity, through being purified and washed by the waters of our Divine Mother. It is an incredible power, a sacrament that should be approached with tremendous respect and humility. Most of us approach sex with impurity, selfishness, disgusting desires, and that is why we hurt ourselves, other people, and that is why we see so much pain and suffering in our society, so much abuse of sex, abuse of children, sexual assault, and rape. Mankind has not been taught how to control his sexual force, and that is because sexuality is so powerful that only the properly prepared have been taught this teaching.
Now, frankly speaking, we are in a society, in a time, in which the abuse of sex has become so great that there is really no other option than to give this openly with the hope that maybe a few people will have enough willpower, sincerity, humility, and genuine love for divinity to be able to accomplish this very difficult feat of chastity and sexual Alchemy. It is not easy. It is very demanding, but the rewards are infinite, eternal rewards, the ability to know your God again. We see here that the groom says he knew not God, he knew not Christ, but Christ sought him out. He was not aware of Christ, but Christ took him back to divinity through sex, sacred sexuality. This is just an introduction today to a really deep mystery, and for those who really want to experience this, I encourage you to study a lot, to prepare yourself through meditation, meditating on lust everyday, because with this sexual force, you will have the power of the Divine Mother working within you, and that power can destroy your lust, your greed, your anger, your envy, your hatred, your pride. That is the power of chastity, to regenerate the human being, to purify the human being, to restore the spiritual senses of the soul, so that we can see and hear divinity again, and always be mindful of divinity because divinity will burn like love within us. If we abuse this teaching, if we abuse sex, those waters will drown us. If we pollute those waters with impurity, and we try to work this practice, it will create nothing but extreme suffering for us and the people around us. So, prepare yourself properly, because the groom you are seeking to unite with is Christ. 
Christ: The Groom and the Church
Christ is an infinite beauty, power wisdom, and love. Christ is the force that animates and gives life to every atom in this universe. That is why in Acts of Thomas, the apostle states:
If man loved God as much as they love one another, they would ask of him all things and receive them, and there would be nothing which would not obey them. ―Acts of Thomas, 128:9
If we love God, if we love Christ, that force of divinity, as much as we love our spouse―which hopefully we love our spouse, because nowadays mankind does not seem to love each other as much as we have the potential to―if we loved God, with the strongest intensity, with which we loved another person, then we would have the power to reunite with God through this sexual practice. Love is sexual. Eros, the god of love through the Greek mysteries, representing the force of Christ, is erotic love. Those two are intertwined. That is why the teaching was given to us in the Bible by Paul of Tarsus―relating to Christ and the church, the church being the Ecclesia―the ones called forth to the assembly, the congregation. The church is not as the physical building, but the church as the community of the followers of Christ who become the physical vessels in which Christ acts and performs his miracles, manifests, and gives his teachings to humanity―through his apostles, through those who work with this science to purify themselves, to create a vessel that can withstand that tremendous energy of Christ within it. That is why in this teaching in Ephesians, Paul of Tarsus directly relates the love of Christ, the union with Christ, to the relationship between husband and wife. It is one in the same mystery. If engage in the sexual act, we renounce orgasm, and we bring the presence of divinity, prayer, and love into that act, that is the path to God. Paul wrote:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. ―Paul of Tarsus, Ephesians 5:25-32
So, we see here that when a man and a woman unite, they become one flesh, one flesh with each other, one flesh with divinity, if we are without blemish, if we have been washed by those waters, if we are holy. The church are the true apostles, the true followers of Christ.
There are many people, many organizations that claim to be the true church of Christ, but we should examine ourselves: are we a temple of God? Are we the physical body through which God can perform his will? Or are we filled with selfish desires, self-will, egotism? Are we motivated by the guidance we are receiving internally from divinity and acting in ways that help humanity, that heal humanity, that brings happiness unto us and others, and that help us to reunite with God? Are we giving that teaching of Christ? Or are we teaching spiritual things out of vanity, out of pride, out of ambition and seeking for power? Or are we just totally living a life divorced from God, totally about me, myself, and what I want? Maybe we say spiritual things when we are in public streets, and then when we go into the bedroom and whatever happens there, well, that is not of God’s business, we think. We are fools if we think that God does not see especially that which has happened when we are working with the force of creation, with the power to give life in our own bodies. That is the moment when God is most present and our Divine Mother weeps when we lose and abuse that force. If you work with this teaching, if you work with this practice, I promise you that you will begin awakening consciousness. Then you will see, with tremendous shame, the pain that we have brought to divinity and to other people through lust. So much of the suffering in this world has been the direct result of uncontrolled lust, a lack of willpower, indulgence in lust. That is it. There are many other problems, but lust is the root because in lust we have lost the connection with divinity. We have lost our conscience, which guides us to perform what is right in God’s eyes. You know we truly learn from within, from our conscience, what is good and what is evil, what is constructive and what is destructive. We can read it in a book, in the commandments. The ethical precepts of all great religions are wonderful starting places, and are necessary. We should be following those to purify our psychology, but the real teaching of right and wrong comes in each moment, in the presence of Christ, of divinity within us. But we have to be awakened. We have to have spiritual sight and hearing to interpret those messages. It is one thing to receive a message, to have a powerful dream for example, but if we are foolish and our mind is out of balance, if we are totally controlled by selfish wishes, then we are going to interpret that dream according to our ego, according to our egotism, “What do I want that dream to mean?” Then that spiritual value, that gift that has been given to us, is lost. So, if we want to become the bride of Christ, we have to work very hard with ourselves. Sexual Alchemy is important. Union with a spouse is important. But merely doing this practice with a spouse without any purity, without any love of divinity, without any love of our spouse, is not going to be enough. We should be the bride of Christ, because our physical body can be that receptive vehicle which can receive that projective force of Christ. The spirit can come down into the womb of our physical body and grow, be developed, and channel light here in this physical world, which needs the light of Christ, the teachings, and the presence of Christ more than ever. Because so few people are capable of this, each of us should hold this duty, this obligation to work on ourselves, to purify ourselves, to work with this practice with respect, with humility, to follow the will of our inner God. Humanity needs it now more than ever. We see again Paul of Tarsus teaching us this mystery, that we as the souls of men can become betrothed or married to Christ, that divine spirit. Paul wrote: For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. ―Paul of Tarsus, 2 Corinthians 11:2
How does one become a virgin? Through virility, through virtue, through chastity. Humanity has fallen, but we can be redeemed. We can be purified. We can become again virginal, virginal bodies, virginal minds, virginal hearts, virginal souls, through chastity, through working with Christ, reading those scriptures, learning Kabbalah, learning Alchemy, studying this, doing these practices, transmuting every day, whether single or in a marriage, finding a way to work with that energy and meditating on our defects to destroy them, and performing good works and sacrifices that help humanity, even in small ways, helping people around us, not for our benefit, not for our pride, not for our ambition, but out of love, because Christ is love.
If you think of the moment in your life, or the time when you felt the strongest love for another human being, that is Christ―a small taste of Christ. As we work with chastity, we enliven that force. We bring that fire to life in our hearts, the fire of love. The sexual fire becomes pure and it brings us power, but the power of God, power that can only be granted if we are obeying the laws of God. Again, I recommend for those who want to learn more about this sacred mystery of chastity and are interested in applying it as a way to regenerate their souls, return to God, and receive that inner guidance within, to read the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. Study Alchemy. Study Kabbalah. We have a tremendous gift that this teaching is being given publicly for humanity. People for centuries would risk their lives, would dedicate years, decades, in preparation in the temples to receive this mystery, and it is being given to us because we so desperately need it, and because without it, well, we already know the direction that our society is going. We are not progressing. We are crumbling. If that is the outcome we are already headed for, then we have nothing to lose by working with chastity, by applying it, by dedicating ourselves to it. If your sexual behavior has brought you nothing but pain in life, then sacrifice it. Give it up and try this practice. Work with chastity, and see directly, in your experience, the tremendous results that you can receive through consistent, dedicated practice. You will be transformed. You can be purified. You can become converted like a child. There is tremendous power in sexual Alchemy. So, let us conclude from one final verse from Acts of Thomas: It is particularly fitting for you to live in holy chastity, for that is favored in God’s eyes and it leads to eternal life. It is the capital city of all good things in the eyes of God. Those who don’t compete in Christ’s stadium won’t receive the prize of holy chastity. Holy chastity was revealed by God: it destroys sexual immorality, overturns the enemy and pleases God, for it is an unconquered athlete, having honor from God and esteemed by many. It is the ambassador of peace, proclaiming peace; if anyone acquires it, that person remains carefree, pleasing the Lord, expecting the time of redemption. It does nothing improper but affords life, rest, and joy to all who acquire it. ―Acts of Thomas 85:3-8
If you have any questions, please write them in the chat box.
Questions and Answers
Question: How can a single person before marriage identify if a partner would commit to a sex life without orgasm?
Instructor: That is a wonderful question. I will let you know that I know many Gnostic practitioners in this teaching who work with chastity with a spouse who does not practice chastity. So, it is possible that we can purify ourselves and unite with divinity by working in the sexual act if there is love in that marriage. Obviously, that has its challenges, right? So, be mindful of it, but if you are performing the law of God, if you are obeying and are chaste, then you will be able to achieve union with your inner divinity, with Christ through sexual Alchemy. The forces are present there. The masculine, the feminine, the Holy Spirit of sex is present there. God can come to you if you are prepared. Of course, your spouse might not like that. That is your karma. That is your situation. That is what God has given you, and so you have to consider very carefully before marriage, is love really present there in that relationship? Or is it desire? Many people have been fooled by desire and ended up in very unhappy marriages. If your spouse is not open to this and you are already married, if there is love present in that marriage, you should not run away from that marriage. Love is the prerequisite for chastity, and those who choose to only marry another Gnostic, only with another person who agrees with what “I” believe, and do so only out of ambition, will get nowhere, because there is no love in that marriage. Of course, if you meet another person that is open to this and wants to practice with you, that is ideal. That is perfect. That is wonderful and beautiful, but only if love is present. So, do not get married out of ambition. Meditate and pray. Let God guide you to the spouse who you are destined for, the one whom you can love, and who can love you, the one who will bring you closer to Christ through that love, through the force of Christ within your hearts. Question: What are the characteristics of chastity in woman versus in men? To be more specific, how does chastity manifest itself in men and women? Instructor: Well, the spiritual work for men and women is the same. So, as a woman, I am required to fulfill all the same requisites of purity, of chastity, abstaining from orgasm, transforming that energy in my body through pranayama, or through sexual Alchemy, meditation, working on my vices every day. It is really no different. One thing I will say for women who practice this though, who transmute, whether married or single: we do not work with our sexual energy when we are on our period. If you are in your menstrual cycle, abstain from working with sexual energy for that time. That is a time of cleansing in which the body is flushing out impurities, and energetically as well. It is a great benefit that women have, that nature purifies our bodies every month, but it means that we should not be transmuting those energies, because that is a time when impurities are being cleansed from us by nature. So, what does chastity look like for a woman versus a man? It is the same. As a woman, you should not be orgasming. Many women say, “Well, I am not losing any seed when I orgasm.” You do not see what you are losing spiritually and energetically in that orgasm. You are losing your vitality, that sexual energy that connects you with divinity, that power of creation in your own body. So, men, woman, it is very similar. I cannot speak too much on the man’s point of view, but at least as a woman I can share that. Question: What is the name of the broad statue shown in this lecture with a quote of Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, and is that position the only way to practice? Can you provide terms on what one should do, or how to perform sexual magic in simple terms with detail on the procedure? Instructor: So, that is not the only position which one can practice sexual magic. Generally speaking, the position is really not so important. You can perform this with the man on top of the woman, or the woman on top of the man. What is important is that you are awake. If you are meditative, if you are prayerful, you feel love for your spouse. You feel love for divinity. You are not allowing animal passion to overcome your willpower. You are allowing the heat, the fire, and the bliss of those pleasant sensations to awaken your consciousness, to nourish you, but you are not losing that force through orgasm. I am not familiar with the name of that specific statue, but I have seen many like it. That comes from Tantric Buddhism. There are many symbols throughout the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that describe and show this union. There are many buddhas or many spiritual masters, enlightened ones who are showing that particular act, such as Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal, or his consort, as an example. There are many examples of that practice within that religion specifically. In terms of the only position or the way to practice, you can study a certain chapter in The Mystery of The Golden Flower by Samael Aun Weor [The Sexual Paroxysm and The Golden Embryo]. There are different positions and postures that one can practice with in accordance with Hindu scripture and ancient text itself. Definitely, in these texts you will learn a variety of mantras as well. Mantra is an important part of sexual Alchemy because it allows us to move that energy more effectively in our body. One of the main mantras that is taught in The Perfect Matrimony is IAO, which is pronounced as in Latin: I: (as the ee in “tree”): A: (as the ah in “father”) O: (as the oh in “holy”) Take a breath when you are united with your partner and vocalize the vowel sound:
Iiiiiiiiii…
Then again… Aaaaaaaaaa… Then again… Oooooooooo… That is just one practice to give as an example, but before you enter into this practice you should study the book and you will learn a lot more mantras and much more about how to engage in that practice effectively. Question: As a single person I have verified that these teachings are true through my own experiences with pranayama, prayer, self-observation, meditation, etc. I am totally dedicated to this path. It has given my life the most beautiful meaning and purpose. I know these teachings are true in my heart and are the purpose of life. Ever since I started sincerely practicing these teachings and transmuting my sexual energies daily, about a year ago, I had been experiencing nocturnal pollutions about every two to three months. These are very painful experiences as I observe my consciousness is weakened and I lose my psychic energies. My question is, what is the cause of these experiences? Is it karmic debt from past sexual misconduct? Are these tests in the internal worlds? Is it a lack of comprehension of lust? A combination of all these? Obviously, the goal is eventually find a spouse and enter into the Major Mysteries of sexual Alchemy. Is physical chastity possible like Sivananda and Yogananda? Instructor: What an important question! Thank you for asking. For those who are not familiar with the term nocturnal pollutions, it refers to wet dreams, where―most notably for men, this is obvious―men might wake up and realize that he has orgasmed in his sleep. Women may wake up and realize that their body is orgasming. This can happen for men and women. There are a variety of reasons why this may happen, and we also have a remedy for this: the remedy of the melon drink, which can help you. So, if you are suffering from nocturnal pollutions, I encourage you to drink that remedy frequently until you see that the problem has been lessened. But we need a permanent solution to this problem. The cause of the problem is lust. On one hand, I think that many single people are not transmuting enough, at minimum ten to fifteen minutes a day, but you can practice pranayama as long as you need. If you are a particularly fiery person, if that is your sexual temperament, you might need to perform a lot of pranayama every day. Also, work with runes―another sacred science that we teach in this tradition and you can find a whole course about the runes on Glorian.org. There are also videos of these runes that allows you to transform more energy. So, one cause can be that you have too much sexual energy pent up, and since it is not being transformed, it is leading to that nocturnal pollution. That is a big problem, because you do not want to lose that energy. The other is that we are tempted and tested in dreams. Often our own egos come out in dreams and take the shapes of many attractive people or situations that tempt us, and if we have not developed enough willpower through meditation, then when we are less awake, when we are more hypnotized in the dream state, we are more likely to fail and to engage in some kind of sexual activity in the dream state that causes our physical body to orgasm and to lose that energy. So, do the best that you can. It takes time to train the body. It takes time also to train our psyche. But we should be vigilant. We should meditate on lust everyday, to understand our lust. How does it manifest? What does it want? How does it control us? What provokes it? What tempts it? Some people try to avoid temptation all together, but when we see something in our life, we should not be looking at pornography. We should not try to find ways to test ourselves. That would be foolish. We are not at that level. But things happen in our life. We see people that we feel some attraction to. Do not avoid that. Go home and meditate. Meditate, meditate, meditate. What in you is impure? Sometimes we think we may love a person, but that love is mixed with a lot of impurity. So, even if you are married you still need to be meditating on lust. Lust is always selfish and divinity is selfless. The karmic debt from past sexual misconduct is the creation of lust in our own psychology. So, whenever we commit abuse of sex, we generate a psychological consequence, and that strengthens lust in our psyche, which then causes us to have less control over sexual force in both our physical life and in our dream life in the astral plane. So, the karma is psychological. But we do have the power to overcome that. We do have the power to meditate on that. What did you dream about? Meditate on it. Understand it. Do not just feel like, “I failed. I should be ashamed!” and then not learn anything from that. It is a very humbling experience, and it is a very painful experience. We should learn from that, because when that happens to us, it is an opportunity to understand something about ourselves that we do not understand. Otherwise, it would not happen. As a single person, we can achieve up to 50% of the elimination of the ego. Right now, in this teaching, we know that most of us in this planet have about 97% ego. That means we are 97% selfish and blind to divinity. We have 3% consciousness free that can perceive things in a new way, that can perceive divinity, that can act spontaneously, and the other 97% of us is conditioned to habitual behaviors, conditioned psychology, that wants to repeat habits again and again―repeat the same anger, repeat the same envy in a new situation, repeat the same lustful sensations. So, as a single person, it is possible to become truly pure. Yogananda is a beautiful example. He made the mistake of believing that he could be married within to his Divine Mother without a spouse, and so he was only able to achieve half of that work, but what a tremendously beautiful soul, like an elemental, very pure, that brought wonderful teachings to humanity! Yes, that is possible for the single person. We should not have such a strong desire for a spouse that we forget about how to live in happiness with what we have. God has put you in that situation for a reason. It is possible that if you found a spouse, but you weren’t properly prepared, that you could generate a lot of pain for you and that person, that it could harm your future lifetimes, that it could create a karmic consequence that could be much more terrible. So, there are worse things than being single. We could use that time as a single person to master our sexuality, to become very comfortable with moving those forces in our body, with transforming, to awaken with purity like a child, to become virginal. Then when the time is right, God will bring a spouse to you and you will know it because you will feel love, real love, not just sexual attraction, but real love. Question: Usually we find “You shall not commit adultery” in the Ten Commandments, yet we do not see, “We shall not fornicate.” Is that a part of the former commandment or is it a hidden commandment that was not taught before the Age of Aquarius openly? Instructor: That is a good question. “Thou shall not fornicate” is not part of one of the Ten Commandments, but we see it repeatedly in the Bible, so I might of misspoke a little bit there. Fornication is frequently talked about in the Bible as a sin against God. Fornicate comes from the same root as furnace, that sexual fire. Is that fire working in a positive way or is that fire destroying us? Fornication is destructive. Chastity is regenerative, revitalizing. Whenever we are expelling the sexual energy, we are adulterating the power of the Divine Mother. In terms of the tradition itself, the commandments, those have been interpreted and even modified in different ways throughout religious tradition, but specifically there is a distinction between “You shall not fornicate” or expel the sexual energy, but also “You shall not commit adultery” or misuse that force in multiple relationships, as the lecturer had said. Question: Could you explain the connection between sexuality and the original sin? Can we say that sexual sin, lust, is the fundamental vice and the source of all other vices? Instructor: Yes, we can. That is the original sin because lust, the orgasm, is what kicked us out of Eden, brought us separation from divinity. When we feed lust, when we orgasm, we become hypnotized. We become confused. A little piece of us or a big piece of us starts to become deluded, and through that delusion, humanity can wander further away from God. The more that that action is repeated, the more delusion humanity enters into, and that delusion can include all other kinds of crimes: anger murder, hatred, theft, greed, pride. So, it is from lust over many centuries, over many lifetimes that we have been committing lustful acts, that all of these other crimes have been able to occur. Now these vices can occur separate from lust as well. Even the gods are said to have spiritual pride, which is a vice, but those gods know how to work with sex in the appropriate way through sexual chastity, using sex with purity. So, while it is the root of all sins, those sins can be manifold. We usually say that there are seven deadly sins, but even within those seven there are so many unique manifestations of those seven deadly sins, and lust is like that. Sometimes lust can be proud. Sometimes lust can be angry. Sometimes lust can be greedy. So, they are all interrelated. If you really want to understand the fall of humanity, the sexual fall of humanity, then I encourage you to read the book The Elimination of Satan’s Tail, which tells the history behind why humanity originally fell out of the Garden of Eden. Really interesting story by Samael Aun Weor. Question: Taoist and other traditions distinguish between orgasm and ejaculation for men. Is this distinction made in Gnosticism? Is the key for men to restrict ejaculation, what many people are calling today semen retention? Instructor: That is a great question and one that comes up often when we give this teaching. Orgasm and the loss of semen are both considered not permitted in the sacred sexual act. So, no. You cannot just retain the semen but indulge in the energetic orgasm. As I mentioned earlier for men or for women, the short circuit of the orgasm is destructive for the physical body and for the vital body, which is the energetic body that animates us, that gives the power to move around, that enlivens our heart and allows it to keep beating. That vital body gets destroyed and that is why illnesses can develop. It is harmful. But spiritually speaking, as I just mentioned in the previous answer, when we indulge in that orgasm, in that sensation, our psychology changes. Our consciousness becomes conditioned, becomes addicted, becomes hypnotized by and wants more, more, and more. So, even if you are only performing the orgasm now and then, or you are only performing the orgasm to have a child, it is harmful for this practice. You should renounce orgasm one hundred percent if you are going to work in chastity and perform the perfect matrimony. That is what we teach, because that law of nature indicates that through that door, we can leave heaven. We can go into hell, into the lower states of consciousness, and that door is directly related with sex, with orgasm. Orgasm opens the door to the lower states of consciousness and allows devilish qualities, evil energies, to enter into us psychologically and spiritually. When we go up through that door, when we transmute that energy from the sexual organs up the spine into the brain, to enliven the pineal gland, the seat of the soul, where our inner divinity can give us guidance, we are going back up to divinity. Orgasm will bring us down. The law dictates that chastity is a prerequisite to go up unto the heavenly realms. Question: Is it possible to over do pranayama if single? Sometimes if I do Ham-Sah too much it seems to build up too much fire, or is it because I am not doing the pranayama correctly? It does not produce much fire with runic vowels, etc. Instructor: It is not possible to harm yourself by doing too much. So, you can do three hours of it a day. You can do five hours of it a day. It will not hurt you. If you say that you are feeling a lot of fire as a result, it is because that sexual fire which was latent has become active, and you need to apply that fire in your meditation. When we feel sexual fire, we are very awake. Our consciousness becomes vigilant. Now when we are conditioned by lust, yes, that lust drives us to become vigilant, seeking sexual sensations, but when we meditate on that lust and seek to understand it, as we are enlivened by that same fire, that fire gives us the ability to be very awake and very aware and go deep into comprehension of that ego of lust. Fire, also transmuted, gives your Divine Mother the power. That fire is Her power to destroy those egos of lust. So, if you are feeling overly stimulated by the practice, yes, you can do some other practice instead to balance it out, but meditate on what is coming up for you psychologically. If you become overwhelmed in your meditation, and the impression is too powerful, you cannot transform it, you are being tempted too much, go outside. Go for a walk. Read a scripture. Do something to calm yourself down, and then meditate again when you are feeling calmer. Question: You have mentioned ambition in spouse selection as an impediment in progressing in the path. You have also said that we should not submit to animal passion in the act. If one is in a loving marriage where the couple is disinterested in Alchemy in one evening, is it best to practice pranayama? Instructor: If I understand the question correctly, you are asking if we have to practice the sexual act every night? No. The most that sexual Alchemy should be practiced is once per day, and again, women should not be performing this act on their menstrual cycle, so there is a magnetic pause during that time. You do not need to practice it every day. It depends on the temperament of the couple. If the couple has a cooler temperament around sexuality, then they might practice this once a month, once a week. That is ok. A very fiery couple will probably practice once per day. If you are not feeling interested in sex, then it is ok to practice pranayama. If you feel particularly lustful one day and you are afraid that you are going to enter into that sexual act and potentially lose your energy, then I would encourage you to practice pranayama first. Meditate first. Wait until you are not feeling that lustful anymore to enter into that act, because it is very difficult in the beginning. We have an animal mind that seeks sensation and that wants more, more, more of that desire, and that is difficult to overcome. So, in the beginning, we usually encourage couples to only connect very briefly, or just to maybe touch, hold each other, kiss, but not to physically connect right away, just to get used to conquering that sensation, and then to connect, just for a few minutes, and to take a break. It depends on your temperament. It depends on how much discipline you have with your mind and pranayama before marriage. If you practiced with pranayama for many years, you might be able to adapt to the sexual Alchemy practice more quickly, but it really varies by individual. Each of us has our own karma which has shaped our psychology. So some of us are more strongly addicted to lust than others, but all of us have lust and all of us need to meditate on it. Question: If the couple is ambitious and decides to engage in the Arcanum A.Z.F., do those creative energies give life to ambition, potentially related to desire? Instructor: Thank you for clarifying. So, just like lust, we should not bring ambition into the act. In the act we should really meditate on our love for our spouse. We should not just be saying, “Ok, let us practice today because I want to have more spiritual experiences and experience divinity!” and that is the motivation for our practice. We should practice because we love God and we love our spouse, and so if you are going to the act with ambition, you are not going to get very far. You are actually going to channel that energy into your ambition, so that desire for more and more spiritual sensations will become stronger. Meditate before Alchemy. Meditate on ambition, or lust, or whatever defect you see coming up in the act to corrupt it, to separate you from divinity. Then pray before that act to your Divine Mother. Use the sexual energy. Use the sacred power to eliminate this ego of ambition, this ego of lust or whatever it may be for you. That will really help your practice. Question: Is it only suitable to engage in sex when both parties are in a state of innocent love for one another? Instructor: As I mentioned before, we might have a partner, a spouse who is not interested in chastity and who is engaging in orgasm. That is a painful situation, but it happens, and we should not leave that person because of that. However, we are going to need to have those hard conversations and discuss to find a way, which out of love, that person can respect your choice to be chaste. That is really specific to the case of the couple. If you have a spouse that is practicing chastity with you and feels particularly lustful one day and says, “I do not want to engage,” then respect them. Have love for them. Support them. Also, if you and your spouse find that lust is coming for you in sex, meditate. In the beginning, there is going to be a lot of lust there. As much as we try to start with an innocent mind, with purity, with love, there will be lust there. So, in that case, again, we should meditate after sex. Meditate on what we saw. In the beginning it is very difficult. That fire is big. It is out of control. It takes time and willpower to learn, so engage for a few moments until you realize that you are starting to get distracted. You are starting to get hypnotized by the sensations and losing your wakefulness, your vigilance, your awareness of God. Love is a very beautiful sensation that comes out in sex. I do not want to encourage people to be afraid, so afraid that they are not able to do this practice. Let your heart guide you, and let divinity guide you. There will be lust present in the beginning and that is why we need this practice to purify ourselves. Eventually, if we are successful, we can become saints free from that torment of lust. We can become masters of our sexuality, and then we command the sexual force to work when we want it to work rather than that sexual force commanding us to be slaves, to be servants of its sensations. It takes time. Question: I am curious on what you mean by orgasm exactly. My experience of raising the sexual energy up the spine and into the brain centers is actually highly orgasmic. The body pulsates in just the way it does during orgasm and a feeling of joy is generated. The same goes for all chakras and dantians. Do you mean that this whole body energetic experience should be avoided in Gnosticism? Instructor: Good question. There are sensations in Alchemy. There is sexual pleasure. There is bliss, the bliss of love, the bliss of Alchemy. So you really have to examine for yourself. But yes, if there is an orgasm in your sexual organs and you feel that, then that is not sexual Alchemy. So, in black magic, they teach you how to perform the sexual act with orgasm and channel that energy in the way that has just been described in the question in order to awaken consciousness. But what happens because of the orgasm and those negative demonic influences that come in, you might experience bliss, but you are also awakening consciousness and developing within the ego, which is separate from God. So, you really have to meditate on yourself, on what is happening there, because there is spiritual bliss, energy, moving in the body in Alchemy, but there is not the orgasm in the sexual organs. It is white Alchemy. White Tantra that we teach here in this school does not permit orgasm because that orgasm short circuits the body, loses the energy. While the sensations of bliss that you might feel in a orgasm―even outside of any spiritual context, of course, orgasm is “blissful” and people feel that sensation of bliss―that is actually not positive, because it is the bliss of that energy, but then that energy is lost and expelled from the body. So we want to keep that bliss, calm and consistent, throughout our practice. Question: Is it true that cardiovascular exercise, running while breathing through the nostrils and out through the mouth, helps to transmute the sexual energies? 
Instructor: Yes. Some exercise, some sports, some martial arts like Aikido, or some that are not too violent, that can be one form of transmutation of sexual energy. However, I caution you not to use that as your only form, because without pranayama, your body naturally is not going to move those energies back up the spine. Pranayama done everyday is cleaning out the two cords which go around the spine, the two channels of Ida and Pingala, and allowing that energy to become accustomed to moving up the spine into the brain and heart. If you are not doing that every day, those channels are going to be very dirty, and they are blocked. If you are just playing soccer with your friends, but you are not performing pranayama, then no, you are probably not transmuting very much energy. So, it can be good to walk and to breathe, but breathe with transmutation, with that visualization coming up through your spine. You can use the Ham-Sah pranayama, if you are familiar with it, throughout the day. I have used it at work silently, just to keep myself awake and vigilant if I notice that I am starting to get unaware of what is happening spiritually, lose my self-observation.
Work with some form of pranayama every day if you are a single person, and if you are married, you can also work with pranayama. It is an option for married people so that you do not have to feel the pressure to work in sexual Alchemy every day. Generally speaking, married people are moving more energy in that sexual connection, so they may not need pranayama on the days that they are not united. It really depends on the couple. You have to investigate, meditate, pray, and watch the answers that you receive in your dreams from divinity. Divinity will tell you if you are going off of the correct path, then guide you on how to get back. Question: Isn’t chastity a cruel repression of the self? Sometimes like a punishment or a sadistic behavior, then when it is released in different ways, it creates suffering everywhere? Instructor: If you are referring to celibacy, as I mentioned earlier in the lecture, it does produce suffering if that energy is not worked with through prayer, through transmutation. Celibacy creates imbalances in the psychology in the same way that lust and orgasm create imbalances in the psychology. In celibacy, that energy sits there like a pool of water that becomes stagnant, and that energy becomes putrid and poisons the mind, and that creates suffering. Chastity is not celibacy. Chastity is learning how to work with sex in a positive way and so it is not a repression of one’s self. It is connecting directly with ones sexuality in a very powerful way, in a very conscious way, and working with that energy in the body. The result of real chastity, if you are practicing this without orgasm consistently, then you will have positive benefits. You will feel more love for your neighbor. You will feel more subtle emotions. You will feel more peace and happiness. You will feel more awake, and more spiritual senses developed, spiritual vision, more powerful dreams. No, I would disagree with that idea. Question: I am getting more confused about orgasm and ejaculation. I always felt through experience that they are one in the same or happen at the same time in my past. How are they different? Instructor: I am not too familiar with semen retention, although I have heard of it. It is the practice by which some retain the semen instead of ejaculating semen, but still experience the orgasm and allow those sensations to move through the body. So, with the orgasm without ejaculation, you are not losing the physical substance, but you are losing the energetic, spiritual substance, because its that short circuit that occurs in the orgasm. That energy moves quickly through the body, then it is lost. So, those moments of bliss, which may be prolonged and may last for certain time, ultimately leave and are depleted. It is the feeling of bliss that the sexual energy is being depleted, which is very different from the feeling of bliss that we have when the sexual energy is being activated and conserved and moved through the body. Both might be considered blissful but have different flavors, but when you work with both those practices you will understand the difference. It is quite popular and a lot of people like that, they can still have the orgasm and feel like they are getting the benefits of non-ejaculating, but it is black magic. Semen retention is black magic, and if you read the book The Perfect Matrimony, you will understand why we consider it black magic in this tradition, because it breaks the law that God has put in nature, and it hypnotizes the psyche. Your psychology becomes imbalanced and addicted to sensations, and while you may feel spiritual doing it, you are actually strengthening ego and you are giving that energy into egoic states, desire, lust, pride. So, you will not experience the benefits of chastity that I have described. Question: If you are doing pranayama with alternate nostril breathing, what is the best mantra to use? Is it acceptable to use an abbreviated Egyptian mantra: Ton Sa Ham? Instructor: We recommend that when you choose one of the practices, you can use the mantras specifically denoted in that practice. So, if you have read the practice in the book about the Egyptian pranayama, you should use the mantras in the way that they are taught in the book. There is a pranayama of alternate nostril breathing that does not require any mantra. That is just focusing, bringing your awareness, breathing in through one nostril as you visualize the energy moving up one side of the spine, up one of those cords, and then through the other one, visualizing that energy moving up the other column up the spine (Ida and Pingala). If you are too burdened by the mantras, then begin with alternate nostril breathing that does not require a mantra.
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There have existed alternative forms of Christianity, which have very recently gained recognition amongst scholars, although much of that criticism applies only to the past. What many are not willing to recognize is the existence of a modern esoteric Christianity. This term “esoteric” or “esotericism” implies that which is hidden, secret, obscured from the public. The roots of this esoteric Christianity are very ancient. They are even older than Christianity itself, the first Christian sects.
The reason for our studies is to approach the science by which we can experience the truths contained within religion. However, for modern scholasticism, the tendency amongst many spiritual groups is to compartmentalize knowledge, to label things within easy categories, within labels, within a structure, and there is credence and value to this. But the reality is that individuals, groups, and systems are complex. They are subtle. They are nuanced. The tendency to approach religion with our assumptions, our preconceptions of what is there, really demonstrates for us the fundamental nature of belief, which really constitute a set of values, philosophical approaches, for making sense of life. Beliefs can create a sense of order in a world that is falling apart. However, we have to recognize that beliefs have a very limited utility when it comes to practical spirituality. Due to this tendency, many have approached modern Gnosticism as another such system of belief, but I would like to present something different, and to ask us to reflect on a very important principle, as is demonstrated by the Gnostic scriptures themselves, their mere existence, the Gnostic teachings. We find that this wisdom strikes at the heart of what it means to believe, but more importantly, what does it mean to possess knowledge from experience, to know divinity? ― not from a theory, not from an idea, or what we have read, or a conviction without evidence. Instead, it has to do with facts. Gnosis is a living tradition. It was made, and is made of many mystery schools, which had gone underground primarily to avoid persecution, and corruption when exposed to humanity. It is a natural law. When the divine provides exceptional and expedient knowledge for transformation, eventually when exposed to humanity, to degeneration, to vices, traditions become adulterated. They fall apart when the adherents of those disciplines no longer enact and fulfil their requisite values upon which such traditions are based. While this occurred even with early Christianity, this dynamic persists even today. This is why the real keys for unlocking such knowledge, such enigmatic writings, were never giving to the public for millennia, and there is a very good reason for this. Humanity with its prejudices, its biases, its assumptions, translates and interprets according to the conditioning of our psychology. Therefore such wisdom was only given to those who had earned it, not to the uneducated, the inexperienced, or we could say, the uninitiated, because these scriptures lose their essential message when we lack the key, and more importantly when we are not willing to reflect upon their significance within our own life, with full objectivity and self-criticism, with analyisis, with investigation. This knowledge is now being given openly out of compassion. Before, to really receive these kinds of teachings and instructions, scriptures and knowledge, one had to be part of a group in the physical world for a very long period of time, but now we are in a very different era where scriptures that were once hidden, and unavailable to the public, are now immediately present. You can pick up your iPhone and find the Gnostic Gospels. You can find teachings that were obscured for thousands of years―for a long time―with ease. This kind of reality is unprecedented in our history, but it is also important to remember that while we have a bunch of scriptural knowledge, the task is incumbent upon us to know how to interpret. When approaching these studies, it is also important to examine our motives. Do we sincerely seek to understand the causes of our suffering, and more importantly, the suffering of others? Are we willing to sacrifice behaviors and views that produce conflict, discord? Or do we approach spirituality with ambition, with vanity, with selfishness, to impress others with obscure knowledge, or to acquire power? The Esoteric Gnostic Christian tradition has methods and practices, procedures by which we can comprehend all of this, how to become better people, to change, to help others, and in that process of embodying the most elevated ideals of humanity, we approach divinity from experience. We investigate these divine truths through experimentation, through analysis, through inquiry, through investigation, but first in order to do this, one must understand that which conditions our psychological states, so that by understanding them, we can remove them. In the process of self-transformation, Gnostic scriptures become very useful. But when isolated from the core teachings that inform their being, their genesis, their secrecy, these texts become elusive at best, and even useless. Understanding gnosis, the Gnostic Gospels―without exception―requires initiation into the codes by which such scriptures were written, which specifically are known as Kabbalah and Alchemy. We are going to elaborate on what these two sciences are today, because without an understanding of what these principles are, it is impossible to understand what the Gnostics were referring to, because those were the codes in which those scriptures were communicated. Just as appreciating Shakespeare requires a strong knowledge of English, likewise interpreting the Gnostic scriptures requires facility with the symbols, the methods, the allegories, the parables, the mystical language in which they were written, in which they were disseminated. We will examine today the necessity for evaluating our concepts, especially regarding the Gnostic traditions, in what manner the Gnostic Gospels were composed and why. We are also going to examine why the Esoteric Christian tradition was forced underground only to remerge to the public in the 1950’s. I cannot emphasis enough―the Gnostic Gospels are truly compelling. They are practical writings for those who are initiated into its systems. We will take some time to elaborate on the practical roots of Gnostic scriptures, because they challenge our millennia-old beliefs, our assumptions, our theories, as well as the limitations of such beliefs. 
Who Were the Gnostics?
The term γνῶσις gnosis is not well understood today. While literally indicating “knowledge,” gnosis is not limited to a particular geography, or history, or denomination. Just as water has many names, but is prevalent throughout all cultures, likewise gnosis, which is the experience and the knowledge of divine truth from personal testimony, is eternal. Many messengers, many prophets, many luminaries, taught humanity about the origin of spiritual life, but their languages are different. The symbols and codes they use are unique to a given culture. However, the essence of what they taught is the same.
As a tradition, Gnosticism constitutes the secret doctrines of Christianity, which precisely stipulate the following, as stated in the Gospel of John: Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. ―John 8:32
Many modern scholars and students of religion are really fascinated by the early Christians, the Gnostics, because their teachings differ greatly in terms of their content, and especially their pedagogy, in relation to modern Christian dogma. Rather than exclusively believe in the personality of Jesus, the Gnostics taught, and teach, how Christ is an internal principle, something that must be developed, and that salvation does not depend upon following a system of belief. It is found by awakening to our true nature, by comprehending and eliminating the obstacles to our own redemption.
Gnostic Christianity teaches a personal, experiential relationship with the divine. It does not require mediation from a priest, from a rabbi, from an imam, from any theology, from any idea or group. Gnosis is what we know from our own investigations based on facts. Some have argued traditionally that Gnostic Christianity interpreted their mysteries through pagan symbolism, and there is some credence to this. However, Gnosticism extends very far beyond any particular geography, including the Middle East, the Holy Land, any particular language, any individual messenger, any historized or localized group. Through studying and applying these principles, we can verify this truth for ourselves, the universality of diverse spiritual traditions. We begin to see the essential thread that unites them, which is direct experience of the truth. The Gnostic tradition, like many other mystical traditions, was maintained within secret societies, or esoteric schools, which was only accessible by certain candidates who had demonstrated their maturity, their ethics, their dedication, specifically to transforming themselves so that they can benefit humanity. Therefore much scholarship and modern interpretations surrounding the essential nature of Gnostic doctrine is wrong. Most scholars of Gnosticism even admit this. What little history we have, acquired regarding the first Christian groups and their teachings, has some problems. First, it is obscured by a lack of material. We cannot really construct a comprehensive picture of their faith. We have ideas. We have assumptions. We have correlations. We have studious analyses of different texts by scholars and renowned academics, but the truth is that there is a lot that is missing, and because universities and scholars do not have access to methods and means for investigating these on a deeper level, in a spiritual sense, their judgments are incipient, insufficient. They have not received training within the mystery schools that are living the teaching. Therefore they cannot comment. It is beyond their scope. Secondly, the knowledge that we have is filtered. We have many biases and assumptions, many ideas as I said, but we have to remember that what little that we possess of Gnostic treasures have been pieced together. The essential knowledge of the Gnostics was never written down. It was written in code, what little we have. Most of that knowledge was transmitted orally through a secretive chain of transmission between master and disciple. Therefore what remains of their doctrine is very limited. It is like a door without a key, since a lot of their teachings were destroyed, as evidenced by this statement by Manly P. Hall in The Secret Teachings of All Ages: The entire history of Christian and pagan Gnosticism is shrouded in the deepest mystery and obscurity; for, while the Gnostics were undoubtedly prolific writers, little of their literature has survived. They brought down upon themselves the animosity of the early Christian Church, and when this institution reached its position of world power it destroyed all available records of the Gnostic cultus. ―Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Therefore to truly understand the Gnostics, one has to be an initiate. One has to be a member of the initiatic, living mystery school. Now this statement can seem problematic. We are not referring necessarily to a physical group or school, because there are many Gnostic institutions that teach what we are teaching. When I refer to the living mystery school, I am specifically referring to states of consciousness that are beyond mere physicality. We practice the science of meditation, so that we can withdraw the senses and enter into profound introspection, and learn to experience our internal reality.
Some people may be familiar with dreams. Some people call it astral projections, astral experiences, lucid dreaming. We are going to be giving a course very soon on this topic [Dream Yoga and Astral Travel], but I just like to synthesize for you that there is knowledge accessible to us beyond the physical body, and that the consciousness can learn to gain lucidity, clarity, confidence, familiarity, skill, efficacy, abilities within the dream state, so that we are no longer dreaming there, and we can learn to access knowledge that is far beyond which is conceivable with our materialistic theories. The living mystery schools and the Gnostic Church are within these internal realities, these internal worlds. It is something that we can verify and experiment with, to test, to know, to witness. It is important we learn to approach this knowledge without believing or disbelieving, but merely experimenting with it, testing its principles, its hypotheses, so that we can learn from facts what is the reality here, because physical senses are very limited. Intellectual knowledge that we gather from books does not really gives us the full picture of the reality of a thing. Intellectual knowledge is useful in its place, but it is not the core purpose of why we approach this type of spirituality. Comprehension and understanding is born from experience. It is not acquired by merely reading a book, or attending a lecture. It is something much deeper than that. So we have many practices that we provide so that you can verify these things if that is your wish. Now in relation to the Gnostic Gospels, some have referred to them as the Apocrypha, from the Greek apokryptein, “to hide away.” We can hear within this etymology the word “cryptic,” that which is indecipherable, archaic, obscure. This term includes religious scriptures not included within the standard canon. It can apply to biblical books from early Christianity, such as the Greek version of the Old Testament, which is not included in the Hebrew Bible. Apocrypha can also signify texts which are considered of doubtful authenticity, which despite their prevalence, may be questionable, even if they are accepted commonly. For the purpose of our studies, we are examining these apocryphal texts, because they challenge us. They challenge well-established assumptions about the essential nature of Christianity, of Christian dispensation, about faith, about reality, about experience, about investigation, about knowing. Many have tried to prove these scriptures false because it is truly frightening, if you think about it, to conceive that we in the West, our Western culture which prides itself on its magnificence, its worldly materialism and glories, really stands on mistaken foundations. This is why we study meditation very deeply and practice it, so that we can verify and test these truths, to discriminate with knowledge, with insight, with intelligence. 
The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
The Nag Hammadi scriptures are Coptic texts. They were discovered in 1945 by a group of Egyptian peasants in upper Egypt. They were digging for fertiliser near a boulder when they discovered a sealed jar. Thinking that they might have found gold, and overcoming the fear of unleashing a Jinn—which is a bottled spirit—they broke the jar and found the codices written in Coptic. Coptic, which was influenced by Greek, originally descended from ancient Egyptian language, the former having been superseded by Egyptian Arabic. Coptic is a form of the Egyptian language that was used, I believe, from the Roman period up until more recent times.
The Nag Hammadi scriptures are approximately 50 different gnostic texts, constituted by 13 leather-bound papyri, bound books which are not scrolls. A lot of supposition has been spread and focused upon the origins of these texts. They were most likely buried in the second half of the 4th century CE, and while originally written in Greek during the early centuries of the Christian movement, such texts were translated into Coptic, possibly by early Christian monks. This is what scholars like Marvin Meyer and Elaine Pagels believe. Supposedly these monks translated these texts despite the accusations in Spring of 367 by Athanasius, the archbishop of Alexandria, who was calling for believers to reject what he called heretical, “illegitimate and secret books.” Instead the texts were conserved in a jar. They were buried, and then they were miraculously found 1600 years later. 
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were surrounded in mystery as well, a deep history that you can read about especially on Deadseacrolls.org.il. They were initially discovered by a treasure seeker group of Bedouins in Qumran, by a nomadic group of people near the northern end of the Dead Sea. They were excavations of various documents, papyri, which were written on goat and sheep skin scrolls. Many of these were mostly written in Hebrew, but also in Aramaic. I am going to present to you most of the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so that you can have a sense of what exactly was found before we go in to a deep analysis of the Gnostic Gospels themselves.
There were biblical scriptures, all except the Book of Esther. These are the oldest existing copies of these texts, so you can imagine that this is a huge find for archaeologists. There were translations of scripture in Greek and Aramaic, which was a language commonly spoken in the Holy Land 2000 years ago. 
There were תפילין tefillin, which are prayer parchment slips. If you are familiar with the Jewish tradition, when praying in a synagogue, one wears תפילין tefillin, which are phylacteries, black leather straps around one’s arm, and a black box with prayer parchment slips as you see in the word תפילין tefillin themselves, which a placed in the black box that you wear on your forehead between your eyebrows, a representation of how we have to wrap ourselves within prayer, deep devotion, especially of our mind, controlling our mind, devotion to divinity.
There are מזוזה Mezuzot, prayers that are placed on the door post of houses. Usually you find a cylindrical object that has the Hebrew letter ש Shin, representative of שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai, the Almighty Living God within Hebrew, a sacred name. מזוזה Mezuzot are prayers written by rabbis that are placed within these מזוזה Mezuzot, which are situated on the door posts of Jewish homes. We also have אפוקריפה Apocrypha. These are Catholic and Eastern orthodox canons, not a part of Hebrew and the Protestant Bible. This includes Ben Sira, the Book of Tobit and the Epistle of Jeremiah. We also have calendrical texts, which are solar rather than lunar calculations, which document the festivals, the ceremonies, and the priestly courses of those communities, sometimes written in cryptic script. There are exegetical texts, which are explicit analyses and interpretations of biblical works. If you have gone on our website you find we talk about many scriptures. We provide exegeses, which are commentary on different obscure verses within various traditions. Here in the Dead Sea Scrolls you find that they were many exegetical texts about the Bible, including פשר Pesher, relating to biblical prophecies that are applied to historical moments. You also have historical texts, which are numerous historical events with theological and moral commentary, and there are also legal texts as well, rabbinical Halakah, which means the Jewish laws and customs of those communities relating to the Bible. If you have read the Old Testament you are probably familiar with Leviticus, and Deuteronomy especially, which outline a lot of the Jewish law, which mystical texts like the Zohar comment upon. There are parabiblical texts retelling expansions and embelishments of biblical stories, or legal texts. There is poetical and liturgical texts: hymns and prayers that people use in synagogue, or in many ceremonies relating to biblical poetry. There is sapiential texts relating to wisdom or knowledge. It is a continuation of the wisdom tradition of Proverbs, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, some Psalms, Ben Sera, and the Wisdom of Solomon. There are also sectarian texts which interest a lot of scholars, which are the unique theology, world view, and history of the Essenes, or Yahad, “the community.” There is a lot of obscurity about who the Essenes were. Their history is very hidden from materialistic science and archaeology, but this is something that we can investigate within our meditations, to go deep into learning the history of these groups, if that is our wish. What is at Stake?
Now, the question becomes: “What is at stake by studying the Gnostic Gospels?”
Despite their novelty within the context of Christianity’s evolution in the public sense, the presence of Gnostic scriptures asks us to revise our assumptions, our convictions, our beliefs, which for many obviously can be source of discomfort. There is a lot at stake for mainstream Christianity when studying their origins and the significance of their tradition. This is why many people simply dismiss the Gnostic Gospels as heresy, as inauthentic, as satanic, but regardless or not whether they are true, their presence asks us and compels us to present an uncomfortable question: “What do we really know? What do we know about Jesus? What do we know about ourselves and divinity?” We are basically asked to question what it means to believe, and what it means to know. While it is difficult even to believe in a tradition today, as evidenced by the prevalence of Atheism in the West, especially North America, it is even more difficult to experience religion, simply because for the modern mind, which is conditioned by its own scepticism, such possibilities do not exist for it. It is incompatible with the materialistic dogma that has perpetuated, and conditioned our Western world view, but the reality is even if we are in a religion, we may be very materialistic, primarily because we deny that it is even possible to experience these things. When someone says they have experienced divinity, we look at them like they are crazy, but it is sad that this is the general outlook and attitude, because all religions are teachings from individuals who experienced divinity. If you look at scriptures such as the Qur’an, there are really many Surahs that simply are of the Prophet Muhammad contesting with the unbelievers who reject his testimony, much like the ancient Christian prophets and masters, or the Hebrew rabbis, the enlightened ones, who constantly had to contend with very doubtful people. So there is nothing new under the Sun here. But rather than dismiss the Gnostic Gospels, it is better to really examine the situation, rather than follow the easy, dismissive, and unscientific path of just rejecting what does not fit our world view, that which is not palatable for us. We can really come to the conclusion that there must be reasons why we do not have this knowledge. I am not talking about from a book, or from a scripture, but from experience, from verification, from meditation. Part of why we do not know these things is due to our inherent tendencies, such as mechanically taking in information. We always like to compare data that we receive with our memories, with our knowledge. Perhaps you are listening to this lecture and comparing what I am saying with what somebody else said, or to a book you have read, or to a lecture you heard, or to a scripture you are studying. The mind can only compare thesis and antithesis, point A and point B. It can only look at the corelations between them. It can store data. It is useful for basically storing information, but when it comes to trying to experience what these scriptures entail, the mind, with its overdependence on rationalization, tends to become the obstacle, a very chatty, distracted, and disorientated mind. We tend to project our thoughts onto the reality before us, and therefore we do not really see what is new. We also like to compartmentalize information we have heard, so that it will fit a certain box, an a priori assumption, and most people get stuck there. They do not go any further, and it is unfortunate, because there is really more to life and experience, as evidenced by the Gnostic Gospels, than is merely assumed, or lived, or believed. Rather than see a phenomenon for what it is, we tend to just merely interact with our concepts, and we can say that this is really a profound state of sleep, spiritually speaking, unconsciousness, not really knowing ourselves, not really knowing our full potential or what we could do. The reason why this happens is that there is comfort within structures. There is complacency within belief systems. They provide us with a sense of order. They give us cohesion when we approach a world that is really afflicted, and afflictive, with a society that is really backwards, upside down. You just simply have to look at the news to see what is happening, even in the Middle East right now, or in different cities. It is distressful, and the truth is that if you look at the conflict going on in Israel right now, you find that people have their firm convictions and beliefs why the enemy is wrong. Beliefs do not change anybody. Our religion, our attitudes, our beliefs do not really affect a lasting, profound, and deep spiritual realization. If you do not believe me, you can simply examine your own life. We can think and feel one day that something is true, and yet that changes. Our ideas change. Our political parties change. Our religions change, and yet we continue to suffer. People change religion and political parties, ideas, like changing clothes. These tend to be very superficial, and worn like regalia, or a costume, in order to fit in with a specific group. But unfortunately that does not really penetrate the depth of the consciousness, of really altering the fundamental trajectory of our life, of examining what behaviors we enact that really produce problems for ourselves and for others, and learning to change them. We can change our political affiliations and ideologies, and yet we can continue to be unhappy, to be burdened with problems, with pain. Therefore if these are impermanent, the question become: what is not? What is permanent? What is real? Is it not facts born from experience the most real thing that we can come close to, that we can approximate, that we can agree upon? But unfortunately when it comes to spirituality, we have many assumptions and vague notions about what spirit, what divinity, what Christ is, because if people’s basic terminologies and definitions completely differ from one another, then it is not factual. It is a belief. It is not based in evidence. It is not the raw experience of a thing. So this is why knowledge, when it is divorced from practice, is really useless. Studying and accumulating information in the intellect, but not deeply changing our daily states, is a waste of time. We can use scriptures, and these teachings, and the Gnostic Gospels to inform the basis of an ethical lifestyle, but without the effort and the will to work, it will not get us anywhere, unfortunately. If our knowledge does not rectify our suffering, then it is necessary to revise our method. What is the common saying? It’s the definition of madness is to keep repeating the same thing expecting a different result. This is why Gnosis exists. But traditionally this knowledge has been so revolutionary that it had to go underground, because most people cannot accept it. Whether you are new, or have studied these teachings for some time, you can simply go on the internet to realize this fact, how many people do not get it, but that is ok. People are at their level. They have their beliefs and we respect them. As for our personal life, we work with what is effective, and try to provide clarity for those who need it, who want it. Some people merely hear this knowledge, about this type of instruction, and then they dismiss it because it does not fit preconceptions, and there is some truth to that. It is a natural sentiment to not want to feel challenged in one’s beliefs, our identity. We feel offended when someone criticizes perhaps even our taste in music, or our religion. It is a natural reaction or instinct, but if we want to go deeper in our understanding of these principles, it is important to question that reaction. This is why this wisdom traditionally was only given to people or candidates who proved their willingness, their maturity. To understand who the Gnostics were really requires initiation, meaning, entering the discipline, into the tradition that they practice, which has to do with our inner experiences, by practicing meditation, by verifying these truths within oneself. Now contrary to popular assumption, this tradition has indeed thrived throughout many centuries in very different ways―sometimes subversive, always hidden, but always adapting to the social, the cultural, the religious climate of different periods in history. There have been many figures throughout history who have known and practiced Gnosticism, yet many of them never announced their allegiance, because it was risky. We now live in an era of information, as I said, that is unprecedented. We have access to knowledge that was veiled for millennia. However, since there is so much confusion surrounding it, humanity has been granted access to this knowledge so that they can gain clarity, orientation. This is the purpose of the Gnostic Gospels and the Gnostic teachings. These are the teachings of a mystery school, but as I mentioned, what is a mystery school? Some people only like to think that they are groups far removed from the past, but the truth is that they are a living entity that sustain, emerge, and last in accordance with the work of the individual practitioners who belong to those groups. So there are physical groups as I said, but more importantly, the Gnostic Church is within the superior, internal worlds, which we access when we physically go to sleep. We enter deep meditation and we awaken in those states. This is not a theory. It is not a belief. Personally for me, this is not what I believe. This is something I practice, and so I invite you to study and enter that discipline yourself. So as we said, scholars often have not been initiated into gnosis, specifically the practices that allow aspirants to really acquire this knowledge for themselves. What we are providing here is verifiable through experience, through study and practice. It is not a belief. If some people wish to make Gnosticism into a another belief system, that is ok. That is their path. They can do that, but that is personally not why we at this school are providing these lectures. That is not a reflection of the reality and purpose of this teaching. We can only really understand this through study, and looking at some of the historical trends, but more importantly living this esoteric knowledge. 
Esoteric and Public Christianity
But in order to kind of emphasize and provide a distinction between the different forms of Christianity that emerged, I am going to relay to you some quotes from Dion Fortune who wrote in her book The Training and Work of an Initiate about some of the history of the early Gnostic Christians, because her analysis is very eloquent and very deep.
She emphasizes that there is a great tendency in humanity. People want to adhere to an outer religious form without really understanding its inherent mysteries. So there has always been a division between two spheres―outward religious forms and inner mystical meaning. This is a binary that has been studied and documented by many scholars, some very renowned individuals like Gershom Scholem, who was a German Israeli philosopher. He made Kabbalah very popular for academics, some valuable history that one can learn, but obviously one has to discriminate what the scholars assume, but also what we have known from experience, because they are different. These domains constitute the esoteric and public religious forms―the secret meaning of a tradition and its outward symbols. So classes of people have developed in relation to this binary, one which is made up of dogma and the other from direct experience. In other words, one group has been initiated into these mysteries, and the majority merely adhere to a structure, a code, a ritual system, a belief system without verification. I will read for you her quote at length: There naturally sprang up a keen rivalry between the two types of Christians; those who had accepted the teaching of Our Lord without any previous Mystery-training depended entirely upon spiritual intuition and good works; those who were already accustomed to the methods of the Mysteries sought to express the Christian truths in the language of the esoteric philosophy of their day. The first chapter of the Gospel according to John is an excellent example of the process whereby men already highly trained in mystical knowledge correlated the new teaching with that which was already familiar to them. In this Gospel we see the influence of the Greek Schools of initiation, but in the Apocalypse we see the influence of Qabalistic thought.
For those who are not familiar, Kabbalah constitutes the mystical teachings of esoteric Judaism, which can inform our understanding of Gnostic Christianity, its inception, its meaning. This is because Christianity has Jewish roots. Jesus was a rabbi. He was an Essene, as we are going to examine in later quotes. Therefore, if we want to understand the Gnostics, the esoteric Christian tradition, we need to know the esoteric Jewish tradition from which it sprung, without exception.
Likewise, Dion Fortune also emphasised something very interesting, that Gnostic Christianity was formed by initiates from different esoteric groups. These are people who already possessed knowledge. They had spiritual development. Therefore they recognized within the newly emerging esoteric Christian traditions their inherent mysteries. These were encoded, these were conveyed, and they were taught within the new religious movement. As is the tendency of modern humanity, many new adherents to Christianity did not want to engage with the difficult task of learning Kabbalah: the Jewish mystical science which informs esoteric Christianity. The study of Kabbalah consists of the archetypal nature of the Hebrew letters, their symbology, what they represent, divine numerology, and many intuitive symbols. Instead, certain followers of public Christianity either ignored or they removed such roots. They wanted to make their tradition more acceptable, and as a result, they sterilized Christianity. I will read for you Dion Fortune again: In the struggle between the two types of Christians, the initiates and the non-initiates, the latter eventually gained the day, and forthwith the order for persecution and abolition went forth against the Mysteries of Jesus. The orthodox element then gradually developed, as was inevitable, something of a Mystery System of their own in the sacraments, which are ritual magic pure and simple, as is agreed even by such an authority as Evelyn Underhill.
Christianity, as with all religions, is composed and conveyed through the language of symbols, abstractions within philosophy, within allegory, within archetypes. If you do not believe me, look at the verses of the Bible, in the New Testament, where Jesus says he speaks in parables for those who understand, for those who are initiated. Modern Christians interpret their scriptures literally, and they perform and observe rituals without really comprehending the deeper reality, the significance, what their teachings and rituals communicate in a spiritual level, on a psychological level, more importantly.
For Gnostics, rituals are really powerful. They are a medium for developing and awakening our full potential. We have ceremonies that we practice, which encode, empower, and which represent the path itself, within its mystical allegory. Now what some have denominated magic is the capacity of the consciousness to exert divine influence upon humanity. This term magic is often denigrated today. People do not understand its original roots. It comes from the Indo-European root word mag or magush, meaning “priest.” A real magician is a priest, and there are also in the Gnostic Church priestesses, because men are not the only source of authority, of spiritual guidance, of wisdom. In fact, a real priest needs his priestess in order to be a priest. This has to do with the Gnostic Mysteries of Chastity, which is the next lecture in this course. Now real magic is learning how to influence others through divinity for a positive purpose, to elevate the soul of others. Through training of spiritual practices, we can develop this capacity. We can develop the intuitive capacity for comprehending scripture, and we can also strengthen our ability to express a superior way of being―real compassion―not the hallmark cards of holidays, gifts, and sentimentalism, but loving so much that we even forgive our worst enemies, like Jesus on the cross. We can really express states of compassion and love, which are facilitated through Gnostic ritual, ceremonies and practices that we have in our tradition. But unfortunately for many Christians, their tradition has been sterilized, as I said. They are really infertile. Many Christians like to say that they are born again, but really if you look at their teaching, which is divorced from its Jewish roots, there is really is not much fertility there, especially in relation to sexual aspects of this knowledge, which are studied in relation to Alchemy, as we are going to explain. Their traditions no longer convey effective methods for bridging the divine and the personal worlds. Many who find intellectual, emotional, or practical deficiencies in Christianity flee to other religions. They run away, and this is really sad, because there is something within Christian dispensation for Westerners which is valuable, but when that teaching no longer reflects its original patrimony, its essence, then people become disillusioned. They leave. Now rather than abandon one’s Christian heritage if one grew up Christian, one can learn to appreciate it deeply. One can find sustenance through the rich intellectual and spiritual sciences of Kabbalah and Alchemy which inform its heart. As Dion Fortune states: Consequently there is an unbridged gulf in our modern Christianity between the mysticism of its deep spiritual truths and the symbolic and magical ceremonial of its ritual. This gulf it is the task of the modern Mystery Schools to bridge. These, however, have in many cases re-illumined their fires at an Eastern altar, so that the bridge they build does not lead to the Christian contacts of the West. Those of their followers who seek initiation, instead of having revealed to them the deeper issues of their own faith, have to change their religion and follow other Masters. 
The Tree of Life: Christian Kabbalah
Kabbalah is one of the primary codes in which the Gnostic Gospels were written, represented in the Book of Genesis and the Gnostic Gospels as the Tree of Life in Eden.
It is a map of our internal and external universe. It is the structure of consciousness within every dimension. This knowledge flourished secretly within Jewish mystical circles, but Judaism is not its sole patrimony. Each spiritual tradition contains the same elements. Some of these predominate within a specific culture, within a given time or place or language. The Jewish tradition delved very deeply within the Kabbalistic teachings, just as Buddhism flourished with its analytical insights into meditation. However this does not mean that Buddhism is devoid of Kabbalah, or Kabbalah is devoid of meditation. Each tradition encompasses the other. They embody the same principles, much in the same way as water changes shape within different cups. The water is the same. Christianity has its roots in Judaism, but since its roots were removed from it, Christianity has lost its soil. Kabbalah is the practical tool for navigating spiritual experience. It is a way to understand our reality and our relationship with divinity. Dion Fortune states in her book The Mystical Qabalah: It [the Tree of Life] is a glyph, that is to say a composite symbol, which is intended to represent the cosmos in its entirety and the soul of man as related thereto; and the more we study it, the more we see that it is an amazingly adequate representation; we use it as the engineer or the mathematician uses his sliding-rule, to scan and calculate the intricacies of existence, visible and invisible, in external nature or the hidden depth of the soul. […]
This map depicts ten spheres. These are known as סְפִירוֹת sephiroth in Hebrew, “emanations,” which emerge from the transcendent divinity, or as the Gnostics denominate, Agnostos Theos: the Unknowable God, from the most rarefied states of being to the most condensed and conditioned, material states.
The Gnostics refer to the origin of spiritual life and light as Barbelo, from the Aramaic language. Bar means “son,” while Bel signifies “sun.” Christ, represented by Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the solar divinity, is therefore the embodiment of heavenly light, of compassion, which permeates all the spheres, the eternal realms, the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth or the aeons, and the later which can also signify any inhabitant of such dimensions, those who have mastered those realms. Barbelo can also be referenced as the Solar Absolute: the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur above this Tree of Life, which means the Limitless Light, the Uncreated, the Unmanifested potentiality to be. It is the source and origin of all existing, manifested things, represented by these ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, or spheres, these heavens. All of this emerges because of the essential and eternal compassion of Christ, which is that light, the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, Barbelo. Gnostics have referenced the Absolute, above this diagram, as Pronoia: the “forethought of God,” which is a pure, cosmic abstraction which is not yet materialized. It is not yet in manifestation. The Jewish mystics have referred to the unmanifested divine as אאלהים Aelohim, and the creator demiurge as אלהים Elohim. This duality between the unmanifested cosmic potential and an intelligent but often denigrated creative host or demiurge, is very often depicted in the Gnostic Gospels. Each sphere relates to different dimensions of nature, in accordance with the densities and the materiality of them. The most subtle and rarefied are at the top, and the most dense are below, as you can see with מלכות Malkuth in Hebrew, the “kingdom,” the physical world, our physical body. Above that we have different realms and spheres which are more subtle to perceive, but are able to be verified through meditation. I will not go through the meaning of all of these סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, because that will be the purpose of this course. We will be unpacking Gnostic scripture in relation with Kabbalah and Alchemy. So we can access these higher realms when the physical body is asleep, when we experience dreams. But rather than enter such states with a fragmentary awareness or just complete unconsciousness, the Gnostics learn to enter those realms with lucidity, with full awareness, with complete intentionality, with development, so that we can take advantage of those states, of such perceptions, in order to receive divine wisdom. We can learn to speak with the divine, including all of the masters of these celestial realms, the aeons, the divine hierarchies, who can grant us the capacity for transcendence, or make us pay what we owe before the archons, the hierarchs of the Law, which in eastern traditions are known as the Lords of Karma. They work with the creative demiurge, the host of gods and goddesses that manage and manifest all of the laws of nature, whether for good or for ill. Just as there are physical and societal laws, divinity also enforces superior laws that we have to learn to comprehend and follow if what we want is to achieve liberation, like Sophia in the Gnostic myth ascending up thirteen repentances, towards the source, which is the אין Ain, the Nothingness in Hebrew. Notice that you have ten spheres, and you have three realms above that, so that makes a total of thirteen―the thirteen repentances of Pistis Sophia if you have read The Gnostic Bible. So all of that relates to the Tree of Life. It is very deep, very important, and all of it is mapped. To really become skilled meditators, we use this graphic to help us understand our experiences and to know what to do in our path. 
Alchemy: The Tree of Knowledge
Kabbalah has its twin sister. This is Alchemy. It is the other tree of the Garden of Eden.
The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge―Kabbalah, and Alchemy―are not specific, literal trees in Mesopotamia. These are symbols. In scripture, geography has often served as a code for deeper spiritual realities, in order to escape detection, persecution, and death, as we saw with the Spanish Inquisition. Alchemy is a rich tradition that encodes a lot of knowledge, but it is not a literal science of transforming lead in to gold. It is a symbol of how we use energy, how we transform the densities of our suffering personality into the lightness and gold of a liberated Essence, a pure consciousness. There are some interesting correlations between the Tree of Life and the Nag Hammadi scriptures, which we are going to examine some of the etymologies here. The term nag or naga reminds us of a serpent, from the Sanskrit नाग Naga, which in Buddhism are renown as elemental beings of nature who live within and empower nature itself. They are depicted as having a lower body of a snake and a humanoid torso. They often dwell in bodies of water and lakes, rivers especially. My wife, who before coming to Chicago, she was often praying to the Nagas by the rivers where she lived, in order to receive internal assistance. They have a very concrete reality. They are very beautiful souls that can help us. But importantly for us in this lecture, we are talking about the serpentine form of these elemental creatures, and the serpent is an ancient symbol. They can refer to our creative energy, which has the power to enliven our spirituality or to damn it, to destroy it. We find this evident in the duality of the tempting serpent, and the serpent of bronze that healed the Israelites in the wilderness. Nag spelt backwards is גן Gan, ג Gimel- נ Nun, which is a garden. Such a garden of Eden, the Hebrew term for bliss, is not a literal place. It is a psychological and spiritual state of being. حمادي Hammadi in Arabic means: “praiseworthy,” “one who praises God,” with roots in أحمد ahmad orمحمد Muhammad, the “praised, commendable, laudable.” Therefore, the Nag Hammadi scriptures are the esoteric knowledge of the serpent, of “the praiseworthy serpent,” the bronze serpent of Moses that can heal the soul. These are symbols. That energy, which is very subtle and terrifying for many, can be trained and elevated within our physiology in order to empower our consciousness. Rather than exclusively represent an evil tendency to be shunned, which is done by many superstitious people, the serpentine creative energies, when harnessed and controlled with love, provides happiness and a genuine awakening. What matters is that we utilize, symbolically, the metals of bronze. This is an amalgamation of copper and tin. Copper is feminine and tin is masculine, Venus and Jupiter when corresponding astrologically to those planets related to those metals. This demonstrates how a woman and a man within the Edenic bliss of sexual union, within a marriage, can overcome temptation. They can perform actions, sexual behaviors, that are praiseworthy before God. This is the original meaning of Adam and Eve in the garden. A man and a woman naked in a garden before God―obviously this is very sexual. But it is emphasizing that there are two paths that open up for the primordial couple, the archetypical man and woman. This is science has been designated at sexual alchemy, known as sexual magic within our tradition, where a couple, who are married, can utilize their union to achieve genuine religion. They can achieve return, reunion with divinity. 
Water into Wine
Now Gnosticism is a specific doctrine of the initiates, primarily Kabbalah and Alchemy as I stated. All religions contain the science of these two trees, although they are in code. These sciences are the absolute synthesis of religion. When you really reduce a religion to its core, you arrive at a sexual trope. Everything else is extemporaneous.
This spiritual knowledge is represented by water, and knowledge (water) is fluidic. It flows like a river, and often times in history, especially in the past ages, this esoteric, secret Christianity was often flowing like a ripple, often still, unperturbed, like in a reservoir underground. But now this knowledge is being given openly like a torrent, very fierce, which we find in writings by the author Samael Aun Weor. He wrote about Gnosticism since the 1950’s and was really the first to explicitly discuss teachings about early Christianity, about Buddhism, about all religions, that were previously prohibited to discuss. His most prevalent thesis is that all religions have a sexual basis, a sexual essence, which is the most expedient method for intense spiritual transformation. It is found precisely in the relationship between husband and wife. This is known as sexual alchemy, how a martial union grounded in divine love, with an ethical fulfilment, within the highest spiritual ideals, within discipline, within purity, within compassion for suffering, this results in the creation of an angel, a master, a prophet. Some have qualified Samael Aun Weor’s work as neo-Gnostic, in that his writings are an innovation, yet this is a pleonasm. His teachings regarding the essential practices of the Gnostics are not new. They have been presented throughout all religions without exception. To recognize this fact merely takes study, but unfortunately people do not want to. It is even more evident when you really practice and experience this science for yourself, and then, really, a lot of clarity emerges in relation to abstract symbols and religious allegories, which might seem very superficial and dumb in a literal sense, but really is the spirit of the letter that vivifies. Some people reject Samael Aun Weor because his work is not just isolated to the first Christians, but is extensive to all religions. Many people do not except the universal religion at the heart of all faiths, which Samael Aun Weor denominated as Gnosis. It is the experience and knowledge of divine truths from witnessing for oneself. He explains the following in his lecture “The Gnostic Institutions”: There is Gnosis in the Buddhist doctrine, in the Tantric Buddhism from Tibet, in the Zen Buddhism from Japan, in the Chan Buddhism of China, in Sufism, in the Whirling Dervishes, in the Egyptian, Persian, Chaldean, Pythagorean, Greek, Aztec, Mayan, Inca, etc., wisdom. If we carefully study the Christian Gospels, we will find in them Pythagorean mathematics, the Chaldean and Babylonian parable, and the formidable Buddhist moral. ―Samael Aun Weor, “The Gnostic Institutions”
The highest form of spiritual knowledge is Alchemy. This was conserved in secret. This knowledge was kept hidden, was maintained secretly amongst the early Christian groups, because it is volatile. It is powerful. It is controversial. It is a practice that requires the renunciation of our deepest, egotistical, and sexual drives, transforming sexual instinct into something divine, into something pure, into something sacred, creative, divine. We now have the opportunity to explain and learn knowledge that was reserved for the most developed and earnest of practitioners.
This knowledge was represented in the Bible in symbols, in relation to Alchemy. Was not Christ’s first miracle, in transforming water into wine, at a marriage? Christ taught sexual alchemy―to be born again. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” Everybody knows this. But the same sexual act, but transformed, elevated, “that which born of the spirit,” through that transformed act, “is spirit.” This is how common intercourse can become spiritual, how lust, which is contrary to love, is transmuted and transformed into divine compassion, conscious love, our soul. This is the basis of Gnosticism in all religions. Some people might ask, “How is it that Gnosis is in all religions, yet should not be adulterated?” We can say that the sexual teachings constitute the synthesis of all religions. The religious forms have died, but if we have the synthesis, the key, we can unlock these traditions and give them vibrancy, give them life. Religious authorities have expunged this synthesis as best it could, not knowing the full import of certain religious symbols that were retained within the Bible, within scripture. They passed censorship, especially in books like the Book of Revelations, which is so Kabbalistic and symbolic that the censors just did not get it. But because they did not want to remove the teachings of the Lord, they kept it in the Bible even though it is very difficult and impossible to understand without this key. Therefore to approach traditions without this basis is mistaken. Samael Aun Weor continues: The system of teaching which was adopted by Jesus was the system of the Essenes. Certainly, the Essenes were one hundred percent Gnostic.
So Gnosis is within all religious forms, but not all forms have retained their essence. All religions have degenerated, unfortunately. Therefore it can be difficult to discern their original teachings if we lack an education in this studies, and especially with practical training in its methods.
Gnostic Controversies
So despite the fact that Gnosticism is flourishing again, there have been many disagreements among and about Gnostic groups since the times of Jesus, including today in Samael Aun Weor’s movement. For example, the Nazarenes were, according to Blavatsky:
The same as the St. John Christians; called the Mendaeans or Sabeans. They designate Christ “a false Messiah” and only recognize John the Baptist, whom they call the “great Nazar.” ―H.P. Blavatsky
You also find the following from The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor:
The Nazarenes were known as Baptists, Sabians, and Christians of Saint John. Their belief was that the Messiah was not the Son of God, but simply a prophet who wanted to follow John. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Three Mountains
And also from the lecture “Alchemical Symbolism of the Nativity of Christ”:
In those days, there were disputes among the Baptists, the Essenes, and others. ―Samael Aun Weor, Alchemical Symbolism of the Nativity of Christ
There is great diversity even today in so called Gnostic groups, whether from Samael Aun Weor or not. Many of them fight with each other. They denominate the others as heretics, much like Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Athanasius, and other heresiologists towards Christians whose doctrinal purity they questioned. For example, Irenaeus and Hippolytus were heresy hunters. They wrote against the Gnostics, yet what is interesting is that Samael Aun Weor refers to them as Gnostics. This can get confusing, right? But rather than becoming confused by this apparent or glaring discrepancy, or merely reject Samael Aun Weor, it would be better to really re-evaluate our definitions, our lexicon, our knowledge about what a Gnostic is.
Scholars had even argued whether to really call the Nag Hammadi scriptures Gnostic, since they do not reflect one ideology or group, but different Gnosticisms or movements. The traditions from which ancient Gnostic texts emerged were highly varied and unfamiliar to modern scholars, because certain bishops really sought to dismiss and erase any viewpoint that conflicted with their own. Although the term Gnosticism was appropriated to refer to heretically-designated sects, the term gnosis is different for others. Whether elements of teachings or truths were throughout different schools, it really is disingenuous to assume that there is a homogeneous world view to a constellation of very nuanced groups and systems. For example, many believed Gnostics were dualists, who thought the world was created by an evil power, with a very fatalistic view of its god or demiurge. However, this philosophy is only a small range of knowledge within the spectrum of Gnosis, and it does not really constitute the entirety of its teachings. This is because every religion possesses gnosis, direct personal testimony of divine reality. Even within any given religion there is a tremendous range of knowledge, a tremendous range of practice, let alone varying messengers who all founded different schools. This had occurred even with early Christianity, which was composed of various doctrines or Christianities (plural), many of whom were competing with one another, like basically all religions today, and especially Samael Aun Weor’s Gnostic movement. Many groups are competing with one another. Now this does not mean that we should condemn, that we should shun, that we should ignore those with whom we disagree. But we should not go to the other extreme as well. We should not elevate Gnostic initiates on a pedestal, on a palanquin, on a throne where we can admire those who are really riddled with flaws. Likewise, we should not reject these people, these individuals, because they still were vehicles, however imperfect, of divine teachings. This might mean disassociating with certain schools that are not maintaining ethical discipline, and finding a Gnostic institution that resonates with us. But sadly, some potential students perceive the hypocrisy of certain groups and thereafter they leave. They often associate Samael Aun Weor with the failures of his students. This has happened with every religion, without exception, to the point that now many individuals have traumas that are associated with the prophets. We can say that this is really a tremendous crime against the soul. Therefore, if we are instructors or missionaries providing guidance to others, we have a tremendous responsibility to maintain in our body, in our speech, in our mind. Also there is the need to remove the psychological tendency to think that only one group is real or authentic and that the rest are wrong, as if instructors, or people, as if aspirants are not complicated, as if we are not struggling, as if we are not afflicted despite our best intentions, our most noble ideals. Until we overcome our own karma, our delusions, our assumptions, our egotism, our beliefs, even to a minor degree, we cannot even begin to understand or appreciate reality. Since we have ego, we are all susceptible to liability. We make misinterpretations. We make mistakes, no matter how authentic our teachers may be, because we are fascinated by desires, and we cannot see the truth in that way. So there is value to be taken from many Gnostics instructors and scriptures, even though there are going to be different nuanced interpretations, often open disagreements between them. We have to remove the fanaticism that dictates, within a rigid, false dichotomy, that only one organization has it right and the rest are condemned. Now we have to avoid extremes. Neither blind adherence to a dogma, nor its vehement rejection, means that we have arrived at wisdom. In fact, it is the opposite. If we are not examining our position, if we are not scientifically investigating these things through personal inquiry, then we are not making any ground. There is a saying amongst the Sufis that was documented in Al-Qushayri’s Al-Risalah: The Principles of Sufism, that when the Sufis disagree with one another, the harmony and the unity of the group is maintained, since each believer helps the other. As mentioned in the Hadith: A believer to another believer is like two hands. One washes the other, correcting each other. ―Hadith
However, when the Sufis all agree, then there is a problem. Often this occurs in the form of a dogmatic conformity. So a balance has to be reached. You have to follow your heart, your intuition. What matters is that you rely on your conscious experiences, your knowledge, your meditations to discern and guide you.
Initiation is deeply personal. It is not found in a group. It is found within yourself. It is necessary to study from proven and pure sources, but for that, you need to awaken, to personally verify their efficacy, whether or not they are expedient or effective, whether or not they are worthy. Study from those masters who are proven, the founders of different religions. We have to be very careful with what we ingest, spiritually speaking. Now even if we tell you that certain scriptures are pure or not, only you can really evaluate and understand these truths from experience. As Samael Aun Weor rightly indicated: The Gnostic must not be a fanatic. We must study everything in order to reject the useless and accept the useful. Gnosis is not against any religion, school, order, or sect. We have fought for the moral purification of many religions, schools, orders and sects. We have never been against any religion, school, or sect. We know that humanity is divided into groups and that each group needs its own system of particular instruction. All religions, schools, orders, and sects are precious pearls that are strung on the golden thread of divinity. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Yellow Book: "Order and Esoteric Discipline" 
Conclusion
We will conclude with a reference to the book The Major Mysteries, which we invite you to study if you wish to learn more about esoteric Christianity, the path of initiation, and a foundation for approaching the Gnostic Gospels. We conclude with this statement by Samael Aun Weor:
If the Lord had not been crucified, the destiny of the Western world would have been another. We would now have sublime enlightened rabbis everywhere, preaching Christic esotericism. The union of Christic esotericism, secret Jewish Kabbalah, and holy alchemy would have completely illuminated and transformed the entire world. Yes, the mysteries of Levi would have shone with the light of Christ. Gnosis (Da’ath) would have magnificently shone everywhere. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
If you have any questions, I invite you to ask them.
Questions and Answers
Question: Do you hold events on specific sexual transmutation practices? I have been practicing for several years and I am looking to go deeper. Thank you!
Instructor: If you go on to Glorian.org there is a course called the Distance Learning Course, which if you have not registered with that, you should. We have practices and exercises that we do as a group online right now due to the pandemic, but also for the students that are long distance, where you can participate in different sexual transmutation practices. There was recently one given by my wife for Ham-Sah Pranayama. So you could study that exercise that was uploaded to our website under Guided Practices specifically. But yes, we do have online practices that we do where you can participate and ask questions of instructors in case you want to go deeper into the exercises themselves. Question: Can you expound on the meaning of the demiurge and the archons? Instructor: I was hoping someone would ask that. I have intended to really talk about this topic in future lectures especially, but I can relate to you some basic understandings of the demiurge and the archons. Now the term demiurge is from the Greek language. It means “worker” or “craftsman.” The demiurgos or “the artificer” is an architect who supposedly, in accordance with Gnostic Gospels, built the universe. Even the Freemasons derive the meaning of “Supreme Architect” from this word. Plato even talked about it in the Timaeus, about the creator God. The Gnostic Gospels speak very negatively about the demiurge, and this has produced some confusion for people, because in our tradition we talk very highly about the demiurge. Now in order to explain how our Gnostic tradition refers to the demiurge, or creative architect of the universe, in contradistinction with the transcendent unmanifested deity as we explained, I will relate to you some excerpts from Samael Aun Weor in his writings. This is from The Three Mountains: Esotericism admits the existence of a Logos, or a collective Creator of the universe, a Demiurge architect. It is unquestionable that such a Demiurge is not a personal deity as many mistakenly suppose, but rather a host of Dhyan Chohans, Angels, Archangels, and other forces. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Three Mountains
He also states in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled:
It is impossible to symbolize or allegorize the Unknowable One (or in Gnostic terms, Agnostos Theos, the Unmanifested or the Absolute within Kabbalah, the Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur). Nevertheless, the Manifested One, the Knowable Elohim, can be allegorized or symbolized. The Manifested Elohim is constituted by the Demiurge Creator of the Universe. [...] The great invisible Forefather is Aelohim, the Unknowable Divinity. The great Triple-Powered God is the Demiurge Creator of the Universe: Multiple Perfect Unity. The Creator Logos is the Holy Triamatzikamno. The Verb, the Great Word. The three spaces of the First Mystery are the regions of the Demiurge Creator. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Pistis Sophia Unveiled 
So if you studied the Kabbalah, you know that the creator is precisely the top three סְפִירוֹת sephiroth of the Tree of Life: כֶּ֫תֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah―Crown, Wisdom, and Intelligence. These are the Trinity of Christianity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which are not people, but forces within divinity. All of the masters and angels who have perfected themselves are the demiurge. They created the universes, the solar systems, the planets, the stars, the galaxies, the infinites. Those are divine beings who are perfect. They are beyond good and evil. They are a perfect, multiple unity. They are individual masters who are in charge of governing the mechanical laws of nature.
Now what confuses people when Samael Aun Weor mentions this is that the Gnostic Gospels, such as the Nag Hammadi or the Dead Sea Scrolls, refer to the demiurge as a tyrant God, as negative, as oppressive, and this is really interesting. It reveals something very nuanced that we have to examine in ourselves. People, in truth, do not like divinity. In fact, we all like to blame God to some degree. Our egos and our defects, and our vices and errors, do not want to take responsibility for their culpability, for their errors, and so we like to externalize. There are many people―I am sure from our own experience, whom we know, whether in social circles―who blame God for everything, or blame divinity. There are people in the Gnostic movement who blame Archangel Sakaki for the fall of humanity, and many other things. People blame God for everything, for the state of the world, for humanity’s failure, for its degeneration, without willing to accept one’s own responsibility for our own situation. We have our own agency. Yes, there are other influences in nature which are detrimental, that are mechanical, that are oppressive, but at the same time, those can only influence us so long as we subject to them. Now the Elohim or the demiurge, the gods, the divine, the angels, the masters, the prophets, they are beyond good and evil. They are beyond the mechanical forces of nature, which are represented by the lower סְפִירוֹת sephiroth on the Tree of Life, and because we are subjected to those laws, such as evolution and devolution, mechanical ways of being, we suffer. We are oppressed. Now the demiurge, or the creative host of the Elohim, they manage those forces, whether for good or for evil. They are beyond good and evil, so to speak. Now what is interesting is that the demiurge, the creative host of Elohim, manage everything. Even the hell realms are governed by the angels and the gods. So it is interesting that the Gnostic Gospels, they blame the demiurge for the fall of humanity, and there is some credence to that, but in the sense that they are only mangers of forces that we choose to fulfil in ourselves. So we are fully responsible for our own errors. We cannot blame anyone else, but the tendency of people in spiritual circles is to blame divinity. This is why the Gnostic Gospels sometimes depict the demiurge as a very negative and oppressive figure. As someone mentioned in the chat box, it is like a judge. But it is true that as we are judged by the divine, he also teaches, trains, and tests us, so that we can grow spiritually. Now the archons is a different term. It comes from archeus, the Law (arcanum), laws (plural: arcana), the word like archangel have this prefix which relate to the rulers, the different habitants, judges, or lords of the different aeons: the different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth of the Tree of Life. In our tradition, we refer to them as the Lords of Karma. Now in the myths of the Gnostics scriptures such as the Pistis Sophia, which Samael Aun Weor commented upon, explains the path of the soul ascending back to the origin, to the Absolute, to the divine, and in that process one has to answer and repent before the different archons, who are the different Lords of Karma who basically help us to be accountable for our deeds. So for many people, it is a very painful situation spiritually when you want to enter the higher realms of divinity but you are obstructed by the Law, which is cause and effect. We reap what we sow, and as we repent and change, we learn to transform our situation and receive the blessings of those different beings. So they are kind of like the guards of the different gates, or the different spheres of this diagram of the Kabbalah. Archons are the Lords of Karma, but there is also a dual significance to this too, which we have to be very careful about. Now, there are some beings that call themselves archons, which are not divine. Instead of being heavenly divinities, cosmic hierarchs, angels or gods within the pure sense, they are beings who are hierarchs of the hell realms and infernal states. We call them, in our studies, black magicians, and personally I have even met many beings like that who refer to themselves are archons. So that term can be dual. When you read the Gnostic scriptures, it is very important to be very flexible and intuitive, because different gnostic authors, or originators of those scriptures wrote in accordance within a specific context, and many layers and dimensions of meaning, so it is very deep. One of the essential themes of Gnostic scriptures is that there is a duality. There is the unmanifested divinity and the manifested divinity, and that the reason why we are in this big mess is because we are struggling to reconcile the manifested with the unmanifested. So if you want to learn more about some of the philosophical nuances of that teaching, which of course will take a very long time because it is very profound and difficult, study The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, which was commented upon by Samael Aun Weor. We have that available at Glorian.org. Question: Are the archons considered evil or just misunderstood by our limited human understanding? Instructor: Again, it is both. We often confuse our helper with our enemy. When life gives us difficult situations or circumstances, karma, challenging ordeals, the most instinctual reaction is to complain and to resist it, even though we are just receiving a situation or ordeal to help us, often given to us by the Lords of Karma, the archons, the heavenly beings. But because they are difficult situations which are meant to test us, to help us grow, we should learn to appreciate karma and not to blaspheme, because if we complain, suffer, and blame others, we exacerbate the issue. The karma is deepened instead of being rectified. So the archons in that sense are really divine beings, but also we misunderstand them, those heavenly angels, because of our conditioned state. We do not recognize that they are helping us. But there are also beings that call themselves archons but they are really of the lower realms, the inverted Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. We are going to go very deeply within these nuances with different scriptures in this course, but I invite you to study again the works of Samal Aun Weor, especially The Gnostic Bible. One other point to make in relation to this duality, we have to remember that nature is dual. There is good and evil in nature: “Eat or be eaten.” “Conquer or be conquered.” There is an oppressor and opportunity. If you study the opera The Magic Flute by Mozart, you find this exemplified in the Queen of the Night. She provides the flute and the magic bells for Tamino and Papageno, the heroes of the opera, in order to save the daughter of the Queen of the Night. She is representative of the forces of nature, which nourish and support us in the beginning. But if we are not comprehending and conquering those forces within ourselves, we are in danger of becoming its slave. So I invite you to study especially that opera that eventually we are going to have on our website, as well in the course: The Secret Teachings of Opera. It deeply relates to this topic. Thank you all for coming! 
Welcome everybody to this introductory lecture on Yoga for the Aquarian Era!
In this talk, we will discuss some important parameters for understanding and experiencing what many have called spiritual awakening. We are going to talk a lot about how to initiate and sustain such a state, how to work with our own psychology, our own bodies, our hearts, by harnessing the energies that we carry within, specifically through spiritual exercises that awaken our full potential. It can be good to examine what spiritual awakening is because there are many concepts and beliefs, many ideas, many theories, which conflict with each other, which compete with other perspectives, and even paradoxically contradict their own foundations. If you ask a person what is spirit, you will get many answers. People have varying opinions of what spirit is. If those accounts do not concur, they do not agree, they oppose one another, then we can arrive at some basic fundamental facts that such perspectives are flawed, primarily because genuine spiritual experience is real, factual, scientific. It is precise. Divine mystical spiritual experiences are based on facts, repeatable, verifiable, and consistent. The spirit is our own innate reality at our most hidden depths, in the synthesis of who and what we really are. But unfortunately, that knowledge tends to be very obscured within most people. We can have a lot of intellectual debates, arguments, assumptions, and concepts that seek to label and approach these realities, and yet those projections of our own idealism tend to miss a very important point. That point is that reality is, no matter what our beliefs, convictions, language, labels, culture, customs, and habits. People do not agree on what spirit is, and therefore we have to be very blunt and honest, that such conflicting perspectives do not approach the facts of what spirit is, because it is an objective, spiritual, and real state. We say in our studies that spirit is divinity, the divine, the truth within a person. But as I said, because we have many concepts, assumptions, desires, and more specifically, conditions of mind, we do not tend to see what is in front and within us. Some people think that spirituality is limited to intellectual study, as if reading books, listening to lectures, studying scriptures and accumulating knowledge, terminology, and wisdom in the mind, constitutes being a spiritual person. However, this type of predisposition fails to take into account that there are other forms of apprehending reality. There are people who approach spirituality from the heart, from emotions, from sentiments, believing that having a dogma―or a positive or whatever sentiment in the heart―qualifies as being spiritual, that devotion is spirituality. However, this is also very limited in its scope. It does not capture the full dynamic range of spiritual expression and our full human potential. There are those who also think spirituality is merely adhering to rituals, doing many practices, working with the body, performing austerities, physically. But also, this is only one part of a larger whole that should be addressed, that should be taken into context. The truth is that there are many valuable teachings in the world, different spiritual movements, teachings, and instructions that provide guidance in accordance with the dispositions or idiosyncrasies of the student, but also the teachers. While it is good to have intellectual knowledge and that it is wonderful to develop the heart, but also to engage with positive practices that exercise the body and keep it healthy, none of these dynamics in themselves should be isolated from the others. Therefore, a balanced human being incorporates every aspect of what we are because it is important to develop everything in our constitution. It is not enough to merely exercise the intellect with profound study, or cultivate the heart, or merely work on the body, because that implies a deficiency. It is like going to the gym and only working out your right bicep and ignoring the other muscles in your body. It would be absurd, obviously, in this example, but this is what we do spiritually. We approach spiritual topics, the mysteries of divinity, of life and death, of mysticism, with a particular idiosyncrasy or psychological crutch. We think that being spiritual is with the intellect, or the heart, or the body, typically at the exclusion of everything else. But in our studies, we like to be very holistic. We like to approach the study of the complete human being because a balanced human being is necessary in order to really express the divine, the spirit, what we in our studies call the Innermost Being, God, according to some traditions. We cannot be a temple of divinity, the divine cannot officiate within us, express, if we are not properly prepared, which is what the purpose of many spiritual traditions have been about, to train humanity in certain skills, habits, and practices that create a harmonious space within one's own psychology, so that we can realize what religion, what yoga, have taught, what mystical states are, what awakening is. 
What is Awakening?
It is good to also examine the term awakening because there are also many incongruent analyses of this truth, experience.
There are really many types of experiences one can have, but some people have traditionally associated spiritual awakening as some type of inclination towards a teaching, towards metaphysics, towards a religion or mysticism, due to an experience. Some of us might have had some type of vision within dreams, an awakening of consciousness within the dream state or even as simple as a sudden realization that we are more than our body, that we are alert, aware, and amplified within our consciousness. We have a magnified perception or perspective of life. But what these experiences indicate is not that we have reached some permanent state of enlightenment, but instead, these are states that are temporary and fleeting. So because we are inspired by such realizations, we seek religion. We seek out teachers and teachings to help guide us to understand what these experiences are. It is also important to reflect and remember that awakening occurs in levels and for most people who have had some type of realization or inclination to study religion or spirituality, to want to know the spirit, the divine, are not able to initiate and sustain such states at will. This is the fundamental difference between an aspirant and an initiate: someone who has begun and cultivated a new way of being. Now we mention that we tend to approach traditions based on our conditioning. Perhaps we are more intellectual. Perhaps we are more emotional. Perhaps we are more instinctive: we like to do things, to move, to act. But we have to remember and take into account that in order to really awaken our full potential, we have to be harmonious. We have to have equilibrium. We have to have balance. This is why we practice many types of exercises that we are going to touch upon today that can aid you in awakening your real capacities for qualities like divine compassion, conscious love, philanthropy, patience, perseverance, diligence, and endurance, purity of mind, heart and body, which are the requisites for really entering in a competent, efficient, expedient way, into these mysteries, into these realities, so that the spirit does not become merely a concept. It is something that we verify through scientific facts, and then when we study different traditions we can verify our own experiences within those teachings, and therefore we develop what we call genuine faith. It is confidence born from experience. It is not adhering to a concept in the mind, or a belief in the heart, or by merely performing by rote certain rituals that are at the forefront of our inherited religion, or perhaps adopted one. Instead, through awakening our real potential that is in a dormant, sleeping state, we come to actualize and really witness profound mysteries that escape people who never even attempt to approach these studies, who are not inspired. We also talk a lot about spiritual inquietudes: a longing and yearning in the heart. The founder of our tradition, Samael Aun Weor, wrote in The Great Rebellion, a chapter dedicated to this reality: how we go through life in a state of slumber. We can be physically active with our body. We can be engaged with our life. We can be thinking, memorizing, studying, engaging with others with our emotions, acting physically in the world, and yet we are not really aware of what we are doing. You can examine this in your own life. Why is it that people get into car accidents? They may be driving but they are thinking of something else, or you are on the train, and you are ruminating in your heart. You are stewing in negative emotions about an event that happened earlier in the day where you were suffering a lot, and then you miss your stop. You forget yourself. You are not present. You are not awake. You are not conscious of what you are doing, what you were thinking, feeling, doing, where you are at, what you were doing, basically. We are in a profound state of slumber, psychologically speaking. Any time we daydream, fantasize, memorize, or immerse ourselves in memory, ruminate while we are washing dishes, it means we are not present. We are not washing dishes. We are lost in the mind. We are distracted. There are many types of distractions within our own psychology, which is something that we address in these studies because our consciousness is not fully integrated. It is not directed at will, with intentionality and purpose, towards specific endeavors. We tend to do many things being in the era of multi-tasking, in which we do not really focus on one thing, but we are scattered in our attention. We are not really aware. Spiritual discipline in practice helps us to rectify this issue so that we are no longer sleeping as a consciousness. We are paying attention. We are developing our capacities for concentration, for comprehension, attention, diligence, real beauty and virtue of the soul. This is what we seek to awaken because the consciousness in its normal state, now, is not present. It is not developed to its full potential. I know that we do have some level of consciousness in our physical bodies when we are in the world, but what we perceive of life tends to be very filtered and obscured by many conditions of mind. It is this condition which we seek to transform, so that we can liberate consciousness, develop ourselves into enlightened beings, into a master of one's psychology, so that with those alert, intuitive senses, we can really apprehend the nature of our spirit, the divine, and no longer have any theories or beliefs about it. It is a reality and fact for us. 
The Definition of Yoga
What are some of the methods that we employ in order to achieve a state of being that is conducive to experiencing the spirit, the divine?
Many have heard of yoga, but there are many misconceptions of what it really constitutes in its full gamut, its complete range, its many methods. We like to often think of yoga as physical calisthenics, or twisting and distorting the body into different postures to gain flexibility and strength. These are very useful exercises and are helpful within the context of a larger spiritual work. Hatha Yoga is a type of yoga that people are already familiar with. It is appropriate within a specific endeavor, when we are practicing many other principles associated with the tradition, not merely just trying to have a young, healthy, and attractive body, because that by itself does not really produce change in a psychological sense. There are health benefits. It is useful. It is good to get those endorphins moving, but, it should be utilized with intelligence and remembrance with its overall context. In truth, according to Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, you find the following: Yoga is the stilling of the modifications of consciousness. ―Patanjali, Yoga Sutras 1:2
The term योग yoga from Sanskrit, युज् yug, means “to reunite.” It means to unify the consciousness with the divine. This is the same meaning as the term religion from the Latin religare. Real yoga is stilling the modifications of the consciousness. As I mentioned, our consciousness is very conditioned. Examine a moment in your life perhaps in the morning when you get up. What is your routine? What are the thoughts, feelings, and habits that you engage with on a day-to-day basis?
As I said, we tend not to be very alert and aware of our surroundings. We go through life in a hypnotized state. Our consciousness is modified in accordance with the level of our own psychological conditioning. We have many elements that produce agitation or conditions, modifications of a pure perception, because the consciousness in its original form is clear, lucid, liberated, and pristine. It does not involve thought. It is not a churning of emotion. It is not necessarily needing to have to move the body and engage in countless activities in life. We can have a simple experience of free consciousness by simply being alert, perhaps in a moment while watching a sunrise, in which we apprehend the profound beauty of that moment without having to label it, without having to fit it into a box, a category, because that labeling, categorizing, and compartmentalizing kills the moment, destroys the beauty and the novelty of watching something as miraculous as that. Our consciousness is modified. We are conditioned by many elements like anger, pride, fear, anxiety, vanity, lust, desire, appetites. In life we tend to go through our routine, feeding our desires, giving ourselves what our body wants, seeking emotional security in our relationships and affirmation of our thoughts and ideas. These tend to be very subjective in their own states. They are not necessarily objective and real. But we have these psychological apparatuses of thought, feeling, and impulse. In truth they tend to be very limited. We go through life, again as we said, trying to saturate ourselves with the different impressions of life, without realizing that we are conditioning ourselves even further. By identifying with the problems and circumstances of life, we have a mind that is really churned and stirred up. If you do not believe me, try to sit to meditate for five minutes after a hectic day. You find that your thoughts are all over the place. Your feelings may be overpowering, debilitating. Maybe you have a trauma, maybe a difficult situation occurred in the day, at work or with a loved one, where the body cannot sit still. We have to scratch an itch. We have a pain in our leg. We feel like our shoulders are going to fall off. The beginning of real spiritual practice is learning how to still modify consciousness. We have to let the mind, heart, and body settle. It is like a container, or a jar filled with water and sediment. If the jar is shaken up, all the different mud and particles and debris will flow and scatter and obscure the water itself. It becomes cloudy. It becomes murky. It becomes distorted. However, if you allow the jar to sit still, you find that the water rises to the top and the sediment will begin to stratify into layers. This is the same principle that applies to our mind. If we can learn to take advantage of the challenges of life without identifying with those problems, without investing our psychological energy into them, without wasting energy through fear, paranoia, despair, uncertainty, and doubt, we will begin to find the contents of our mind, those conditioned, limiting factors, begin to calm. They rest. Therefore, when the water is clear of debris, you can see clearly in yourself. This is the beginning of yoga, of genuine spirituality, of religion. It is the stilling of the modifications of consciousness. When the waters are clear, calm, serene, and tranquil, you can begin to reflect images within their contents. This is the nature of water. It is a beautiful element and allegory. It is necessary for life. It is also necessary for spiritual life. The mind is like a lake. If it is distraught, turbulent, and violent, you cannot see the heavens reflected within the surface. Therefore, if you want to attain knowledge of spirituality, of the spirit, first we enter tranquility. This is why Swami Sivananda, a great yogi, a great master of spirituality, taught that real yoga is precisely this: how we work with the mind, how we understand how and why it functions, and the path and methods for alleviating its tensions, letting it acquiesce, to calm. He states in Practical Lessons of Yoga: Patanjali defines Yoga as the suspension of all the functions of the mind. As such, any book on Yoga, which does not deal with these three aspects of the subject, viz. (namely), mind, its functions and the method of suspending them, can be safely laid aside as unreliable and incomplete. ―Swami Sivananda, Practical Lessons In Yoga
There are different schools of yoga that teach exactly what Swami Sivananda provided. He opened many schools through his students. They opened many schools within the United States where there are hatha yoga classes, learning to work with posture and the body, and that is a kind of a fish hook to try and capture people, so to speak, to get people interested in the real, deeper mysteries and knowledge of yoga. It is good to have a healthy body because that helps to have a healthy mind, but merely working on the body, as a path in itself, is unreliable and incomplete. This is why we study forms of yoga that we are going to talk about today.
Yogic Traditions and the Dawn of Aquarius
Yoga has a very rich history and tradition. It comes from the Hindu pantheon, the Hindu mysteries. It will be interesting to examine and analyze its development within the West.
It is true that many great accomplished yogis like Vivekananda came to the United States in 1893 in order to plant the seeds of yoga, of spiritual discipline of mind. He spoke at the World Parliament of Religions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1893, but it is interesting that those teachings did not really blossom in his era, because there were many other practitioners that came to provide spiritual teachings of an eastern type to a western disposition. 
For example, in 1920, Yogananda, who provided the Self-realization Fellowship Society, also taught. As well as in 1957, a disciple of Swami Sivananda, his name was Vishnudevananda Saraswati came in 1957 to teach. Those teachings only really came to fruition around February 4 of 1962, and it is interesting to examine why.
When we study yoga and spirituality, we also study many of the energetic and cosmic influences that penetrate the mind at a subconscious and unconscious level. There are many elements in nature that affect us psychologically, spiritually, and physically that we are not aware of, that we are not knowledgeable of from experience, in a deep, spiritual, objective sense. What is interesting about February 4, 1962, is that this was the moment, between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, in which our solar system entered within the astrological influence and dominion of the sign of Aquarius within the zodiac. It was around this time that many changes occurred, within diverse traditions, amongst religions, within politics, within sexual relationships, within many things. Pretty much every level of society has been affected, around the 60s, with a profound revolution. If you do not believe me, you can just look at history, the times before the 1960s and 1950s, in the way life subsisted at that time. Now people of a materialistic attitude do not really look deeper than what can be seen with physical senses. In fact, many people reject the influence of zodiacal energies and forces within nature, which enter within us psychologically and are transformed in accordance with the level of our conditioning or our developed spiritual consciousness. We might say that such influences are not real, but the truth is that we are affected by nature all the time. We are influenced by the weather. We can be in a really bad mood because it is raining and damp out, or we did not get enough sleep. Perhaps there is an influence of the weather, as I said, in which we get sick. We get a stomach ache. We feel nauseous, whatever it may be. We are heavily influenced by our environment. The same is true of levels that we do not readily perceive in a materialistic sense, but these forces are real and we can look at history to determine this fact from a zodiacal sense. Now we previously existed within the Era of Pisces, which is a very different flavor and force in a psychological and spiritual level, in terms of its influence and dimensionality. Pisces is traditionally associated with conservatism, with social hierarchies and structures, institutions that have lineages and bear deep, long, and extensive history. You find this in religion, politics, and in every aspect of human life. You find that in the way many spiritual traditions used to exist, in which it was required of a disciple, in order to learn these teachings, to submit to a guru, and after proving their candidacy, after many decades of trials, tests, experimentations, ordeals, challenges, and experiences, they are really given the most profound radical and transformative practices that are at the heart of all religions and yogas. Now that the Era of Aquarius is very different. Since the 60s, this stellar, celestial, or zodiacal influence is defined by its revolutionary character. It is a rebellion. It is a profound and intense energy that has entered, as I said, within every aspect of society in order to shake things up. It is about transformation. It is about rebelling against institutions and dogmas, against conditions. 
Aquarius is defined as the water barrier. It is the zodiacal sign in which knowledge of a spiritual type is being given openly for free, without demands, without coercion, without strict attendance or affiliation with one group, in the sense of having to adhere to a dogma, an unbreakable faith belief system. It is said that Aquarius is the knowledge given freely to all. This is why if we look at the 1960s, you find that there is an explosion of information, of knowledge that has been given openly to society, to all. It is a form of divine generosity and it is also revolutionary because it is the force that inspires independent thought, self-reliance, self-verification, personal experience of the truth without having to adhere to a lineage or a dogma.
This influence really reached its dawn on February 4, 1962, when you find that the planets of our solar systems were in almost perfect alignment. This was a true conglomeration of worlds, of celestial bodies and influences, that mark the beginning of a new age, in which the forces of Aquarius predominates. But that influence also came even earlier, maybe by a decade or two, because just in the same manner that you watch a sunrise, the light doesn't really peak at the horizon until the moment the sun appears. The light spreads gradually, such as in the 50s you find, and even earlier, the efforts of yogis and practitioners to spread spirituality in America. But that really did not come into fruition until the 50s and 60s.
On February 4, 1962, the real beginning of the influence emerged upon the horizon of our consciousness. So, we study this influence because it helps to explain different traditions in the past and also where we are at now, and what we can do and what we can become. There have been different periods of instruction for humanity, in accordance with Piscean influence, especially in the last age, which was marked by its conservatism, in which knowledge was not given openly, but had to be earned. Now, the knowledge is being given openly in Aquarius without needing to be earned. It is given for free because unfortunately humanity is not in a very good place. We find a lot of suffering and affliction on this planet, a lot of chaos, primarily because of our egotism, our conditions, our selfishness, which are accelerating. The influence of Aquarius is very revolutionary. That force is channeled in accordance with our level of being. If we are negative, angry, violent people, inside, then that energy is going to bring it. But without the proper tools or techniques to channel this force and harness it with intelligence and wisdom, we often will destroy ourselves, and we can see this happening simply by looking at the news. Many events are occurring in which this is a reality. This is a fact. The Aquarian Influence
By learning how to employ the instructions of mastering this influence, we in turn have a force and impetus that produces an expedient and radical change, very quickly, if we know the methods, the techniques of this era, to capitalize on that influence.
There is a saying by the author M., in The Dayspring of Youth, where he describes this Aquarian influence. He calls it the Dayspring of Youth. Samael Aun Weor referred to that influence as the Dionysian wave, the influence of Dionysus who is considered the god of wine and revelry. This is a very interesting symbol because since the 60s, which is known for its bacchanalias, or sexual revolutions, its free love initiatives and movements, we find that people have been indulging in that power, that potency, but through desires. However, there is another way. It does not necessarily have to be about engaging with and feeding one's desires, habits, and lust. Instead, one can take that energy and use it to create a different type of inebriation, a different type of wine, so to speak, since Bacchus or Dionysus, within the Greek and Roman traditions, is the same symbol. They represent how the force Aquarius can be harnessed in two ways, whether for our spiritual development or for our deepened conditioning and suffering. Of course, in accordance with each cosmic era, there are different periods of instruction. The author M. states the following in The Dayspring of Youth: At the beginning and end of each age there is a pouring forth of hierarchical cosmic streams of energy, and as they intermittently enter the earth’s atmosphere and unite we find in this radiation that instruction best fitted for the time. Thus there is brought to birth a new period of discovery for the world.
If we learn how to cultivate his energy, we develop clarity, perception, awakening, in a positive sense, in which we have greater understanding and intuition of how to solve the problems of our life. We do not have confusion. We don’t have pain, or despair. It is such a powerful force that any opposition within the atmosphere of the mind can no longer imprison them within its rebellious aura.
Right now, our mind is a prison, if we are honest. We tend to be afflicted by many sufferings, but there is a way to rebel against our own innate failures and incipience, our own defects, our own problems, so that we can gain real happiness, not only for ourselves, but for others. We do it through this practice of yoga, this Aquarian yoga. By attracting certain spiritual or atomic energies, which are very fine in nature, we transmute the consciousness. The term transmutation refers to the prefix trans, which is “to carry over,” “across,” to move, to redirect. Also, mutation to mutate, “to change one form to another.” So our conditioned consciousness can be transmuted through this energy. We can clarify our perceptions so that we develop a very rich spiritual life. 
Using Expedient Methods
It is important that to do so we work with expedient methods. The Piscean influence before the 1950s especially, as I said, is marked by its conservatism, lineages, and disciplines in that one had to earn the truly revolutionary methods that we are going to explain here in this course and lecture. They had to earn the right to learn those teachings, and because the Piscean influence is very much dedicated to that dispensation, different texts of yoga and spirituality were appropriate for that time.
The founder of the Gnostic tradition, Samael Aun Weor, explained in different texts, especially Kundalini Yoga, how the Piscean influence has been replaced by the Aquarian, and that many methods that apply to the Piscean Age, which are appropriate for the descending forces of Pisces into the earth, were beneficial in that context. Now what is interesting about the difference between Pisces and Aquarius is that in the Piscean influence, spiritual practitioners had to work and become more attuned to their body in terms of the spiritual involution or influx of forces down into more material states. So, Pisces is known by forces entering into our physical nature, and so that we can learn to master that aspect of ourselves, in terms of the overarching arc of cosmic evolution. But the influence of Aquarius is different. It is now a revolutionary return back towards a spiritual origins. There are many practices like the mudras, hand positions and postures, bandas, which were appropriate for the descending evolutionary arc or involuting forces into materiality, but now since we are returning back to a more subtle and etheric, energetic plane, those practices are no longer necessary. I know some people can be very attached to doing certain mudras or hand postures while meditating. It is still acceptable to use them, but it is good to remember that we have other practices that we can use that are appropriate for taking advantage of the current that is now influencing humanity. For example, there are many forms of yoga that are appropriate for teaching children how to walk. There are different skills, teachings, instructions, and techniques that are appropriate for helping beginners to learn how to crawl, to walk in a metaphorical, spiritual sense. But walking alone cannot take you across the ocean to Japan. Neither can it take you to other worlds in the solar system. Instead, you need a rocket or spacecraft to do so. You need the appropriate vehicle. This is what we are going to emphasize today. Samael Aun Weor mentioned in his book Kundalini Yoga that: Many books have been written about Oriental Yoga. Yoga means “union with God.” All the books that were written about Oriental Yoga before now are antiquated for the new era of Aquarius, which began the 4th of February 1962 between the hours of two and three in the afternoon. ―Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga
So those exercises in many schools in yoga are a kindergarten for entering a deeper knowledge. We can use them if that is our level of being. However, we need to learn deeper aspects about religion, since there is a greater and more profound application of these teachings, which are much more expedient and radical, if that is our wish to utilize them. It is good not to be attached to traditions, but to seriously examine and analyze what we have benefitted from a given practice and to see and analyze and evaluate whether we have arrived at what we have sought for.
This is what it states in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ―1 Corinthians 13:11
So Samael Aun Weor in Kundalini Yoga corroborates this:
All Mudras and Bandhas are totally useless for the new Aquarian Era. ―Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga
So it is good to use specific tools in order to get specific results. If we want to achieve the real heights of divine knowledge, we can enter the Aquarian door. We no longer have to be constrained by conservative, Piscean dogma.
Aquarian Yogas
So let’s examine what some of these yogas are. There are many forms of yoga divided within different schools and we are touching upon a number of them that are very profound and beautiful, which have an Aquarian application and flavor.
We study mantra yoga, which is the work with sacred sounds, chakras, and powers. We work with raja yoga, which is the royal path of meditation. We work with jnana yoga, which is scriptural study. We work with bhakti yoga devotion, prayer, and worship. We work with karma yoga, which is selfless service. We also work with kundalini yoga, which is sacred sexuality, as well as yantra yoga, the sacred rites of rejuvenation. Lastly, we will talk about runic yoga, the Nordic runes. All these practices complement each other. Here we are breaking them down into different methods, but which really have one unified purpose. By working with these exercises, we can balance ourselves. If you notice some of the explanations here or the titles of these yogas, we find that these exercises develop specific aspects of our psychology. As I said before, some people may be more predisposed towards concepts and intellectualism. Therefore, they like jnana yoga, to study scriptures, or some people are more emotional. They like to develop emotion in the heart through prayer and worship, through bhakti yoga. Some people are more action-oriented, moving with the body and serving their communities, which is why we also study karmic yoga, which is selfless service. Now these yogas work together to, again, provide a synthesis, which is the expedient awakening of our conscious potential. So we are going to analyze what these are separately. 
Mantra Yoga
Mantra yoga is the work with sacred sounds. The term mantra comes from the Sanskrit मन्त्र Man, which is “to think,” and manas, which is “mind,” and trai, which is “to protect” or “to free.” Mantra literally means “mind protection,” or “to free the mind” through sacred sounds.
We see here an image of a man in full lotus with seven energetic centers that are lined up in accordance with his spinal column, which are the different chakras or centers of energy within the human body, physiology, and energetic constitution. These chakras from the Sanskrit refer to wheels or vortices of forces, which exist within our subtle interior physiology. There are many levels and aspects of our body, heart, and mind that is not accessible by the mere physical senses. There are instead energies that animate the physical body. There are certain channels or nadis, we say in the Hindu tradition, that circulate vital force and energy throughout our body and permeate every aspect of who we are. Energy is very important. We even know this by having enough energy when we get up from rest to subsist and to act in the day. There is a certain energy that is needed to be awake physically, in the conventional sense. Likewise, we learn to work with energies, within our subtle interior psychology and inner constitution, so that we can activate spiritual perception. These chakras or vortices are named in respective ways, in alignment with the spine, as I said. We have Muladhara chakra at the coccyx. We have Svadhisthana near the prostate or the uterus. We have Manipura, which is the solar plexus. We have Anahata relating to the heart. We have Vishudda, which is the throat. We have Ajna relating to the third eye between our eyebrows. Then we have Sahasrara, which is the crown. These are important chakras or the main seven that we really study and practice with. This does not mean there are no other chakras in the body. There are many others that are important in order to develop stability and homeostasis, equilibrium within our mind, heart, and body in order or us to function, because that energy has to circulate and flow in an unconditioned and pure way. Anytime a nadi or energetic current crosses another, it forms a chakra, because that is an intersection or crossroad in which those forces meet, and therefore they spin and create a type of vortice or wheel of spiritual energy, of psychic, psychological, and energetic forces. We study these main seven because they are important for really navigating our spirituality, the spiritual worlds, even our physical life. Each of these chakras have different qualities associated with them, different powers and abilities that grant us access towards spiritual reality. It is important to understand that each chakra vibrates in accordance with a certain sound or vibration because certain vowels relate to our chakras themselves. They activate those dormant centers because right now, as in most people, those chakras are like closed flowers. They are not open yet. Through spiritual discipline and working with certain mantras, sacred vibrations, and sounds, we open them. We activate them. We begin to circulate energy in accordance with those strata, those seven levels, so that we really actualize our full potential. Some people may be a little averse to mantras. Some people think it sounds really weird or unusual. It is important to reflect, to remember that mantra such as “O,” relating to the heart, is based on a very simple law of cause and effect, which we can verify and correlate with our own speech. We can say that there are certain words that are afflictive and harmful, which produce conflict with our relationships. Using vulgar speech or speaking hatefully towards them is directing a very powerful, negative energy towards others. But likewise, our speech can be harnessed to speak words of compassion, kindness, and love. This demonstrates to us that our speech and vocal cords have a tremendous utility. We can use speech for harm or for good. It depends on the quality of our mind. The same thing applies to mantra. Now sacred sounds help to protect our minds from negativity. They help us to defend our spirituality against corrosion, by negative qualities of mind like anger, pride, ambition, fear, or uncertainty, whatever it may be. If we feel negative in our mind and heart and bodies and we are agitated, we can work with sacred sounds. It is good to vocalize for an hour out loud, especially, because that sound or vibration activates physically in our bodies, those energy centers. When you perform mantras, you're entering a state of mental and psychic purity. You approach the mantra as a tool. This sound is meant to create a type of flow of energy and vitality and creativity within you. It is that energy that is going to give your consciousness the power, the force, in order to work against your own conditions like anger or resentment, etc. This is why we work with a mantra. We want to protect our spirituality from our own negative habits. This is the meaning of mantras or mantra. It is mind protection. So vocalizing these mantras out loud is really good. It helps to calm the body, and you are activating not only your energy centers and your body, your vitality, but also you are working with the glands of your endocrine system, which is very important for spiritual development. If you are interested in learning more about how the endocrine system complements our spiritual practice, you can read a book by Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology. His basic thesis is that by working with these glands and developing them, we gain greater insight into our problems. It is good to have energy. You can also vocalize mentally. Some say that saying a mantra in the mind alone is even more powerful than physically pronouncing it. But it is good to work with both techniques, because in one method, by vocalizing out loud, you are pronouncing sacred sounds and working from the outside in, the physical world into the internal worlds. But when you work with silent mantra or Japa (mantra recitation) in your mind, you are working from the inside out. So, both are really good. Personally, I like to do a lot of mantras out loud in the day, and when I am doing other activities, I also pronounce mantra in the mind. With enough training and skill, you learn to work with these sacred sounds―whether verbally or mentally, or even within the very core of our consciousness―we learn how to maintain a state of continual remembrance of our divinity, our own spiritual presence, and that gives us the strength to transform many difficult and negative situations. This is how we protect ourselves. We learn to have a calm and kind psychology, a heart and mind that are very alert, compassionate, and considerate, so that we do not create harmful situations for ourselves because “Mind precedes phenomena,” according to the Buddha. “We become what we think.” If you can confront the problem at its roots in its moment by using mantras, whether verbally or mentally, it is good. If you are at work, obviously, I would not go mantralizing out loud in your office, or wherever you may be, because people will think you are crazy. But you can do it mentally, and when you get home to your own sanctuary, temple, monastery, home, whatever you make of it, you can practice out loud, especially if you will not be disruptive towards neighbors. It is important to work with mantras because these energies will help us to stabilize our consciousness and perceptions. It is important to remember that having energy by itself is not the main point. It is good to have energy to awaken our faculties, our perceptions, our spiritual conscious powers and abilities. But merely having energy within one’s psychology is not enough because chakras are not the end all be all. They are a conduit and a method by which we can access higher states, but merely having active chakras is not going to guarantee a successful spiritually. Some people get really proud of having chakras awakened, abilities, and powers, but that is kind of unusual and funny because it is like a person getting really proud and self-conceited by having a lot of fuel in the tank of their car. It is good to have a lot of fuel in your car so you can drive places, but what matters is how you drive your car, which is your body, heart, and mind. So, ethics and compassion are the essential point. A Mantra for Protection
There are certain mantras you can use. I will introduce one of them for you that is very effective for counteracting negativity. There’s a video available by Glorian Publishing or Glorian.org. It is called Klim Krishnaya. This mantra is very potent for removing negative emotions. So if you find you are afflicted by very distraught and conflicted feelings, if you are saturated with a lot of sourness, if you are heavy with a lot of negativity, pronounce and sing this mantra in your mind. You can also do it verbally if you want, but obviously being in solitude is the best way to pronounce it verbally. But if you are in a place or you are dealing with people who are very challenging for you, you can use this mentally.
I use and continue to use this mantra many times in my daily life, and with enough training, you can pronounce this mentally and get the most powerful effects, so you cannot be tempted to act in a mistaken way. The mantra is sung, and you can click on the video. It is sung basically like this: 
Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga: The Eight Stages of Meditation
We also study meditation. We can say that this is probably the most important practice we engage with in our studies. Meditation is known by different names in different faiths and different religions, and all are valid. Here we are giving an excerpt from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, or the path of royal raj yoga.
Meditation is the capacity of the consciousness to apprehend phenomena, to ascertain the nature or truth of a thing, its inherent reality. We do so by first restraining our mind. Harkening back to the previous slide, we can use mantras to help us restrain our negative reactions to life. Yama means “restraint,” “to yoke.” It means that in a moment in your day in which you are tested―perhaps you have a difficult client you are working with at your job or a family member who is producing a lot of negative emotions in you―you learn to restrain your mind. You do not act out of anger and pride. Instead, you learn how to fulfill ethical discipline or precepts, which is known as niyama. Yama means restraint. Niyama means “precept.” A precept is as simple as some like: love your neighbor as you love yourself. Do unto others as you would have done onto you; to be patient in trials and temptations or ordeals; to work diligently for the benefit of others; to be inspired and compassionate and to aid those are less fortunate than you. Thus if you are afflicted by anger, you can respond with love. This is precept. Once you have developed a very profound and rich ethical life, you can learn to really enter deeper states of meditation. It is important to reflect and understand that these are ethics. These are not morals. What is moral is acceptable in one country and time and place and not in others. Ethics are universal. There are certain habits and behaviors that produce happiness in any context when done with a compassionate state of mind. This is something to bear in mind. We are not here to follow rules that someone gave us and to do them because we have been told. That is a Piscean attitude. Here in the Aquarian knowledge and teachings, we learn to take what is useful and reject what is useless. In this sense, ethics is really the most important thing. It is knowing how to act consciously so we no longer suffer and no longer make other people suffer. This is the fundamental definition. When you are really mastering restraint and precepts within yourselves, your body gets calm. Some people approach meditation, and they cannot sit still. They cannot rest because their mind and heart are agitated from wrong behaviors. After you have cultivated a harmonious space in your mind and your heart, you can sit to practice an asana (a posture) and enter a profound state of relaxation at will, where it is not difficult to do. Without ethics it is really challenging to really have a calm state of being. That is the essential point. When you are in a posture you can begin to work with energy. We work with an exercise called pranayama, which we will also discuss in the sacred rites for rejuvenation, in which you work with your breath to circulate vital creative energy within your body, heart, and mind. Prana is energy and yama means “yoke” or “restraint,” “to harness.” Notice that yama or restraint is the first stage of raja yoga. Likewise, pranayama is learning to restrain and harness our creative, energetic volatility. All the energies of our mind, heart, and body we learn to conserve and circulate, and to harness with conscious intelligence and will. That is how we really enter deep states of calm and withdrawal, not in the sense of being off a drug or basically disassociating from the world in a psychological sense. Instead, pratyahara means “to suspend the senses.” Yes, it is a withdrawal in the same manner we do not pay attention to external stimuli. Instead, we enter our internal psychology, but not out of a negative type of mental dissociation, which is associated perhaps with mental health conditions. Instead, withdrawal in this sense is like a tortoise withdrawing its head within its shell. We go inside, and you cannot do that unless you have energy, to activate your consciousness so you can relax and go within and see what is there. So, energy helps to calm and silence the mind. It helps us to relax, so that like in the example with the jar of water and the sediment, the sediment stratifies into the bottom, so that you can see clearly what is inside of you. Without that basis, you cannot really develop serenity of mind, which is dharana or concentration: to be able to focus on one thing without being distracted. In that sense, when you are not distracted―you are able to focus on one thing with serene, clarified attention and directed will―you learn to access meditation which is dhyana. Meditation is learning to receive new information with spiritual, psychological senses. You understand through inner experiences what the essential nature of reality is for the given object of our focus, whatever you are meditating upon, whatever the goal is that you sit down to practice and do. In this way you enter samadhi, ecstasy. The word ecstasy comes from ecstatuo in Latin, which means “to stand outside oneself.” It is in this state you enter real bliss of a conscious and spiritual type. These are divine inner experiences in which you stand outside your normal range of perception in order to really witness and know the truth. Raja yoga is very deep and beautiful. There are different teachings available on Glorian.org, which address this path of meditation itself, specifically the lectures associated with Gnostic meditation. We talk about these eight steps of Ashtanga Yoga in depth, the eight-limbed yoga or the eight principles and levels of working with mediation. 
Jnana Yoga: Knowledge
We also have Jnana Yoga, which is the study of scripture. As I said, it is useful to study intellectual knowledge, lectures, to receive wisdom from books, but what is commonly neglected in our common culture, era, and ways of thinking, is the manner by which we read, study, and apprehend what a book or lecture is indicating to us.
Now what is interesting about the way that many disciples of past traditions have studied is that they would take a small passage of a book and really meditate deeply on its contents. Perhaps they would take a sentence and reflect only on that. Our habit nowadays is to read fifty books in two weeks. I know that this is an exaggeration, but there are probably people who spend a lot of time like that. Jnana yoga means “knowledge yoga.” It is what we apprehend from the written word. It has a very beautiful and useful place within our spiritual discipline because the teachings of the different masters of religion and spirituality have provided their personal inner experiences within diverse scriptural forms. If we learn to really read with an alert and awakened consciousness, with intuition, not relying so much on reasoning but with our heart, we gain access to inspiration, knowledge, and insights that are really transformative. In this way we learn to appreciate what these different masters taught, these different luminaries. Instead of reading book after book and compartmentalizing and categorizing what we have read in a certain label or box in our mind, instead we learn to look at things with a fresh view. The best way to study is again, like I said, to take a small passage and read a sentence or two that is really challenging for you, or really deep and inspirational, even if you don't know the meaning, then focus and meditate on that. This is how many spiritual schools have studies and are studying now in our institutions. We do not want to necessarily want to fill up our minds with knowledge, by memorizing what different teachers have said, and what terminology means, and what the language is indicating such as with commentaries. Instead, we want to really witness the realities of what is written from personal experience. This is why we have to meditate in combination with study. Now study can be very profound and deep. I recommend taking the time to really digest what you put into your mind, because the problem with many westerners, especially is that being very intellectual, is that we take a lot of knowledge into our intellect, yet we do not transform it. We do not understand what we read. This leads to psychological constipation, in which we do not digest what we put into our mind, and therefore it can become a great source of doubt, skepticism, or pessimism. This is a very unfortunate thing that has happened to many people. However, if you take the time to really practice and try to experience what you read, then you gain a lot of faith, and faith simply means confidence born from verification and experience. You see that your spiritual experiences are talked about in different books by certain masters. In this way, you really verify and understand that you are not alone in your experiences and that these are objective realities. This is also why it is important to study from pure sources. Study from those that really have been established, whose teachings resonate with your consciousness, and what we can really testify to from facts, such as the founders of many religions, but also in our tradition we study the works of Samael Aun Weor. Personally, I have had many blessings and been able to meditate on certain passages that he wrote, even having spiritual internal experiences that I later read about in his books, which confirmed and validated my own personal testimonies. That is really inspiring and a wonderful yoga to enact, the knowledge of spiritual teachings. 
Bhakti Yoga: Devotion
We also study Bhakti Yoga, which is the devotion of the heart. Perhaps the greatest bhakti yogi we have known in the West is Jesus. He demonstrated with his life the profound teachings of yoga, meditation, and prayer. He was so dedicated to his spiritual work that he allowed himself to be crucified physically, to be condemned and persecuted, to be spat upon, to be beaten, to be ridiculed, and yet he only responded with love. This is a profound devotion.
Now what is interesting about his example is that when we really know divinity from experience, our own inner spirit, we develop great love, great compassion, because we understand all beings have divinity inside, and not only do we respect our own innermost spirit, but we also respect the spirit in others, so that we tolerate their mistakes because all people are afflicted with anger, resentment, negativity, doubt, and hatred. By learning to access superior emotional qualities, which have nothing to do with sentimentalism or hallmark cards, we open the doors to genuine mysticism. We can say that the intellect in itself is very useful but tends to predominate in many western people. Instead, what we have is a very giant head stuffed with a lot of books and knowledge but a very deficient and weak in the heart. Bhakti Yoga is important for westerners especially, but it can be very difficult for beginners because some people find devotion very foreign to them, very alien, very confusing, very difficult, because how can you have devotion to something you have not experienced? The truth is we develop devotion in our innermost intuitive faculties when we learn to follow our conscience, our heart, the heart that says that a certain behavior and action is wrong. The whole world can agree with it and yet we know that for us that trajectory is harmful, that position, that direction. Personally, what led me to spirituality was following my heart. I did not have a school, a group, or a spiritual scripture, teaching, a lecture to guide me. Instead, what happened was that I was suffering a lot in life, and I was not willing to face at that time that my own behaviors were harming me. But eventually I began to follow my own innermost conscience, which is the voice that says, “This is right” and “this wrong,” even though our intellect and our reasoning can fight and argue and claw against us. It is a very painful process, but as in my example, I was very dedicated to understanding the nature of my own reality and my sufferings, so that I would find an answer. I dedicated myself with a lot of devotion to searching and looking for spiritual instruction until finally I did find Gnostic teachings, which helped to explain and confirm what I had been doing already, and that gave me faith, a lot of conviction. Sometimes Bhakti Yoga may be simple as again praying, in some people's eyes, towards a statue or to a divine figure, a painting, a master, a prophet, and our own innermost divinity, but again that can be foreign for some people, difficult to apprehend and to swallow, because we have inherited a very material culture, which has conditioned us. But the beginning is in following your heart, listening to your own conscience, what is right and what is wrong. As you verify more and more that your superior positive actions transcend negative states of suffering, you gain real faith, real verification, and conviction that these teachings work, that they are practical, that they are transformative. It is in this way that we begin to experience superior emotions, which for most people is very difficult to comprehend, like conscious love, really loving our neighbor, especially loving one's enemies. It is something we have to aspire to and to develop gradually because it is not easy, but the way we do it is by relying on our heart and consciousness, so that by accessing our intuition of knowing right action from wrong, without having to think about it, we open the doorway to real experience and witnessing of divine reality. The more you experience that divine principle in you, the greater your devotion and compassion for others, of serving others, and working for their benefit. 
Karma Yoga: Action
This is why we study Karma Yoga. Karma means “cause and effect” in Sanskrit. Some people think of karma as a punitive law of retribution: “You get what you deserve” according to Western philosophy. But this is a mistaken attitude because karma simply means causality. Every action has a consequence, and that there are superior actions and inferior actions. Therefore, they produce superior or inferior results.
Karma Yoga is based on helping others, helping our communities. We all have different qualifications and skills, different idiosyncrasies and talents that are necessary in this world. When we discover what our unique talents are, we can capitalize on them. In that way, we learn how to better help humanity with whatever level or qualification or skill set that we have. Karma Yoga is especially important within the study of Aquarian Yoga because if we really wish to overcome our own suffering, we have to alleviate the suffering of others. This is a universal, divine law. If you are sick, help the sick. If you are lacking knowledge, give knowledge to others. If you are lacking spiritual experience, teach others how to experience it. It is in giving that we receive, says St. Francis of Assisi from the Christian tradition. By learning how to serve others, especially those who are difficult and challenge us and create pain within our interior, we learn how to transform our own pain. We do not focus so much on ourselves. If we are really in a rut, we are suffering a lot, we do not know what to do, we are confused, it is important that we reflect on the needs of others because our own selfish desires keep us hypnotized. You want to break the shell of selfishness and despair? Learn to help those who are less fortunate than yourself. For some people it can be teaching, giving knowledge, giving instruction of a spiritual type. For some people it is supporting their school, communities, serving others, helping the poor, the homeless and sick, whatever it may be. If we want to not be so hypnotized by our own self concepts, anxieties, and needs, we should cater to the needs of others. This is a great, powerful tool that helps dispel a lot of the fogginess that can afflict us. This is a fundamental law of nature: by giving to others, we receive. So if we want to receive a certain object of spiritual benefit, we should give that in return, and not expect anything as a reward. This is selfless service. It is compassion. This is the reason why spiritual teachings exist, because by giving to others, we help ourselves, but not in a selfish sense. I know in the beginning it is easy to want to do good deeds so that we can benefit, but with training you begin to lose that selfish attitude and really give from an uncorrupted and genuine heart 
Kundalini Yoga: Sacred Sexuality
We also study Kundalini Yoga, which is a very popular science today or teaching, in which there are a lot of theories and beliefs, and unfortunately a lot of misconceptions.
Now we have in this image Padmasambhava with his consort Yeshe Tsogyal who are in the sexual act. What is important to reflect upon is that as an image of Tibetan Buddhism, it constitutes one of the highest teachings of that tradition, and pretty much any religion itself, at its core. It is how a married couple, man and woman, can combine their creative sexual forces in a state of ritual purity and conscious love, in order to harness those energies and to awaken divine, spiritual capacities. Some people have called it Kundalini. Some people have called it the fire of Pentecost. Some people have called it the Holy Spirit. Some people have called it the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl within the Aztec mystical tradition, or Kukulcan among the Mayans. This is the energetic force of our divine feminine reality that awaken within practitioners who are properly prepared. It is important to not just look at the image with a lustful mind, although this is where people begin. Padmasambhava made a point about this essential practice of tantra, sexual union, or the harnessing of a continuous flow and influx of energy without ever releasing it. This is tantrism. The meaning of tantra is continuum, continuity. It is how we take those forces and conserve them. He said that in order to do that one cannot have any lust, any passion, any animal desire. He said, “Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation.” So some people get very confused when they study this aspect of religion. They say, “How is that Padmasambhava can be sexually united with his wife and yet he says that lustful people cannot enter the path of liberation?” The answer is really simple: Do not engage the sexual act out of lust, desire. Instead, enact it with love. Very different quality. Lust says, “I want to satisfy my desires,” and love only wants the happiness and spiritual edification of the other. When we learn to harness and conserve that creative potential and to activate it through sexual union between husband and wife, man and woman, by conserving that power and living an ethical life, we can awaken what is called Kundalini. It is the power of the divine feminine. It is the Divine Mother of all religions. You can study the lecture The Divine Mother in the course Beginning Self-Transformation. We talk about how the divine feminine is represented in many religions. The important thing to remember is that She is the power and the intelligence of love, of creation, of the universe. Therefore, She only rises up the spine of those practitioners that have proven their worth, who are really dedicated to their ethics and purifying their viewpoint, who perceive life with selflessness, with altruism, with compassion, understanding that life is transient and interdependent and that nothing is permanent and stable except for the reality of love. Now, there are many people who have attributed psychoses, addictions, or mental imbalances to Kundalini, and this is really fundamentally mistaken. We disagree with this, because the Divine Mother Kundalini can only empower those souls who have really upheld the highest ethics. It does not happen in people who are wasting their creative potential or squandering the sexual energy. It is a very specific science. It is really deep. We practice this if we are married. It is an important aspect of genuine Aquarian Yoga, and we are now giving this sexual teaching very openly to humanity because people need it. It is very easy to go on the internet to find sources that are very impure and that help to produce a lot of suffering for humanity. We are now being really explicit with this knowledge. You can learn more about this teaching in a book called The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, where we learn how to master the creative intelligence of God, so that our love blossoms from a state of ritual purity, of verification of spiritual states―very deep, very transformative. Yantra Yoga: Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation
We are going to explain a couple of exercises or what is known as Yantra Yoga. Now Yantra Yoga is commonly known as the Tibetan rites or sacred rites for rejuvenation. With these exercises, we harness the creative energies of our bodies, mind, and heart in a form of ritual. There are six rites in which we basically harness our conscious energies. We can ask for certain results or petition to divinity, our Divine Mother Kundalini, so that we can receive healing, insights, and understanding of our own defects, perhaps even to help us to eliminate certain faults that we have understood in our meditations.
Sacred rites for rejuvenation are very powerful. They can help us to heal sick organs and help us to gain flexibility, vitality, and health on a mental, emotional, and physical sense, but also spiritually speaking. When we work with the sacred rites for rejuvenation, we begin by crossing our hands over our heart, our right hand over our left, and we petition and pray to our Divine Mother Kundalini, the divine feminine within us, who basically can intercede for us on behalf of Her husband, the Divine Father, the Holy Spirit within certain traditions. We invoke the divine feminine because She is the intercessor, the reconciliator between our terrestrial personality and the severity of the divine. The Holy Spirit, as sometimes mentioned in many other traditions, has the power to heal but we have to know how to work with creative energy first, conserving and transforming it. We work with our Divine Mother, to beg Her, “Please intercede for me on behalf of your divine husband, the Holy Spirit, in order to accomplish this goal.” We can ask for healing of a sick organ or the awakening of a chakra, the understanding or intuition to a certain problem, the elimination of defects. There are many uses we can apply to the sacred rites. It is a form of ritual with our body, in which we take certain postures and positions in order to invoke the aid of our inner Being. 
Rite 1: Rotations
With the first rite after you made your petition, you begin to spin from left to right. You have to be very careful not to spin too fast so that you don’t become disorientated and lose balance.
You can place your right up, your left hand facing down. Extend out as in this image. Keep your eyes open when you spin, so you don't lose your equilibrium. When you spin from left to right―you want to do it twelve times―you spin in the same direction you turn a steering wheel to the right. We do this because this positively activates the chakras. In this position, posture, or movement, we are circulating the vital forces of our chakras themselves so that we awaken those powers. When we spin, we pray to our divinity. We can say either verbally or mentally: Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
We are commanding our sick organs to work, to be healed by this divine Aquarian energy influence, the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can gain happiness, balance, and health.
There is a mantra that goes along with this it is very popularized today: Open sesame!
Unfortunately, this saying has been abused today. It is actually a very powerful mantra. It comes from The Arabian Nights, the story of البابا Alibaba and the forty thieves. What is interesting about this myth is that البابا Alibaba goes to a cave and commands the stone that is blocking the entrance to move. He says, “Open sesame!” This mantra has the effect of opening the boulder, of pushing it aside, so that he could go into the cave to try and save treasure that was trapped there from forty thieves.
It is interesting if you ever studied the teachings of kabbalah, especially the number forty is very significant. These forty thieves relate to our own defects who try to steal the treasure of our soul, the energies of our consciousness. So البابا Alibaba goes into the cave in order to extract the treasures, which is a symbol of going into our own mind to extract the truth, into the subconscious caverns of our own occult behaviors, that which is not readily accessible to our senses. It is interesting that the term البابا Alibaba from the Arabic is translated into Hebrew as אלי אבא Eli Abba, which means “My God the father.” So this is a beautiful symbol of how we pray to God the Father and Mother within us in order to perform a magical healing, to work with the treasure of our creative energies. So we spin twelve times saying: Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
When you are done spinning twelve times―0r you can do more if you like, but be careful not to fall over―you bend your knees. Keep your legs and feet shoulder length apart. Place your left hand on your thigh to try to get your balance, and then you bend your knees. Your thumb, index and middle finger―place these three fingers on your third eye, between your eyebrows. You put some pressure there because as you are somewhat bending down, you are helping to gain balance so that you do not collapse after spinning (which gets easier and better with practice), but you are also taking those circulated forces from your spinning and concentrating them upon your third eye and that way you basically awaken that chakra really deeply.
Rite 2: The Cross and Viparita Karani Mudra
The next part is by laying in the form of the cross. You continue to pray, identifying your supplication, whatever is you want to work on. You can imagine whatever sick organ in your body needs healing or imagine the desired result that you long, for comprehension. You can imagine above you, floating in your vicinity, a white dove of immaculate fire descending into you, giving you life and vitality and force. This is the power of the Holy Spirit. Pray deeply:
Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
Command your consciousness to work for you, in whatever sick organ you are trying to heal, but whatever you are asking of the Holy Spirit to be giving, that gift, perhaps an awakened chakra, power, or faculty.
Afterward you perform what is known as the Viparita Karani Mudra. With the legs lifted up in the air, you can place your hands behind your knees. Engage in this posture and continue to pray out loud, verbally or mentally, if you wish. 
Rite 3: Pranayama and Lean
In the third rite, you kneel and perform pranayama. Going back to Raja Yoga, of working with energy, you are doing interchangeable nostril breathing, in which you are circulating the vital winds in your mind, body, and heart.
Close your left nostril with your right index finger. Keep your right thumb out and inhale through the right nostril. Concentrate on the forces that are entering into you. You can imagine that the energies are circulating down from the base of your spine up to your brain and then into your heart. Close your nostrils with your right thumb and index finger. Imagine this energy being retained within you, and then exhale through the left nostril, so that the forces are done circulating up into your heart. With inhaling through one nostril, you are sending the energy down through an energetic channel from your nose down into your coccyx, because there are two channels that intertwine the spine. We call them Ida and Pingala in yoga. When you work with each nostril, you are working with each separate cord in your spine. The left nostril relates to the right testicle or ovary, and the right nostril relates to the left testicle or ovary. So they are intertwined. They interchange. The forces of your creative sexual energy rise up from your coccyx in your sexual organs, into your brain and then into your heart through energetic nadis. When you work with the interchangeable nostril breathing, inhaling through your right nostril while closing your left with the index finger, you breathe in the vital forces. You hold them, closing your nostril with your right thumb and your right hand, retaining that force, and then exhaling through your left nostril so that energy flows in you. Then breathe through the left nostril. Inhale to repeat the same procedure. Close your nostrils with both your fingers, the thumb and index finger, and then exhale through your right nostril. That constitutes one pranayama. You want to perform three total. Pray to your Divine Mother to help you work with this force consciously. Afterward you perform a posture in which you lean back. You kind of let your abs do the work―great for keeping your physique up. Hands at your side. Arch your back. Keep your head up titled and continue to pray using the invocation: Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
If you find that verbally pronouncing is difficult, you can do it mentally. Sometimes the posture can be difficult to perform.
With any of these exercises, you do not want to strain your body, buy do it gently. Do not force any of these postures on yourself if they are harming you. Instead, these are rites for rejuvenation. They are not meant to hurt you. So you need to be careful when you practice. 
Rite 4: The Table
For the next posture―as you are training your body―you extend your feet outward, close together, heels together, hands behind about shoulder length, and you arch your back in a backward direction. Keep your head tilted up and continue to pray:
Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
You can visualize as well make sure you are praying from your heart.
The next posture is the table. You send your back upward. Make sure that your arms and legs are spread far apart so you are not straining your body too much. You do not want to lean too far backward or forward. Instead, keep a good balance. Continue to visualize and deepen your prayer. 
You then repeat the pranayama three times, breathing through your right nostril, closing both, exhaling through the left. Inhaling through the left, closing both nostrils, exhaling through the right. You want to do this process three times.
Rite 5: Lizard Pose
You are going to perform the fifth rite. You look like you are doing a push-up. Your head is extended upward, your torso is above the ground, your feet are shoulder length, and your hands are shoulder length. You alternate positions between bending your torso down towards the ground without touching, and moving your head slightly down to the chest, and then extend outward, with your head up and torso away from the ground. Do this for as many times as you like.
Afterward you make an arch. Continue to pray, visualize, supplicate, and deepen your prayer. The important thing to remember is that these positions are meant as a form of communing with divinity. Your prayer and conviction and dedication and devotion are what is most important in order for this to be effective. In this posture, you basically arch up upwards. You can lift your heels up towards you as you are moving, so you can arch far enough, but again, do not strain yourself too much. 
Viparita Karani Mudra
The last rite is mentioned in Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation by Samael Aun Weor. It is known as Viparita Karani Mudra, in which, like the previous postures you did before with your hands behind your knees, you can do this against a wall where you lay back with your feet up. You pray to your Divine Mother to beg the Holy Spirit to transfer the energies of your mind into your heart, your solar plexus, and the solar forces of your solar plexus to your mind. In a manner of speaking, we have forces that relate to our intellect, which are, we can say, lunar in nature. They tend to be more negative forces. Our mind tends to be very cold and conditioned.
We have a lot of forces in our solar plexus that we can transfer through the help and the intelligence of the Holy Spirit, by having them circulate in the form of the Holy Eight, or an infinite, from the solar plexus over to the head. The solar forces of the sun of the abdomen rise up to the head and the lunar silvery atoms or the moon-like lunar atoms of the mind go into the solar plexus.
The solar plexus is like a reservoir of energy that is like a battery. We carry a lot of force in our abdomen. This is where we get the source of many gut instincts and feelings that we tend to be very unconscious of or mechanical with. We can learn to take that reservoir of force from our abdomen and take it to our mind so that we have a spiritually illuminated intellect. The good thing about the Viparita Karani Mudra is that the blood flows towards the head so that we are more oxygenated in the brain. This helps to activate certain faculties and abilities. If you want to learn more about that you can study the Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation. Here we are just giving a summary. There is also a sixth rite known as the Vajroli Mudra, which we do not have the time to cover today. The book explains it extensively. 
Runic Yoga
Runes are the Nordic yoga, which we have some videos available online that you can study. These are postures in which we place our body while vocalizing certain mantras in prayer. In this way, we vibrate with the forces of nature. The Nordic language or Futhark relates to certain postures and positions that are conducive for accumulating solar divine energy from nature. It is good to perform these runes outside in a park, or in one’s backyard if you have one, in the forest, woods, or by the ocean, so that you can assimilate more divine energy and prana from your environment.
If you want to learn how to practice the runes, we have a book called Magic of the Runes but also a video on the seven vowels that you can study and apply to your daily life. The runes are very effective for charging yourself with divine force. There is a course on Runes on glorian.org. If you want to go more into depth, practicing daily is very helpful. Resourceful Books
I know we covered a lot, but I would now like to open up the floor to questions.
Questions and Answers
Question: You mentioned you need energy to withdraw and see from a clearer state of consciousness. Could you expound on this more because this is the first time I have heard of this idea? I have noticed in my own life that if I do not have enough energy, I do not feel like engaging in my spiritual practices. I am curious why there is a connection between our energy and withdrawing and approaching things from a higher consciousness. Is it just because our body is not relaxed and thus not receptive?
Instructor: Think of it like how a vehicle operates with better fuel. If you put the wrong type of fuel in a car, you can destroy it. Also, if you put the most fuel-efficient energy into your vehicle, it will operate better. It will drive better. The same thing with our consciousness. Our consciousness has a profound capacity to perceive life which is beyond any limitation of thought, feeling, and impulse. But in order to really enact that conscious state from experience, we need to save energy. We have to save emotional energy. We have to save mental energy. We have to save creative energy. It is impossible to light a lamp if you do not have the fuel or the wick there. In the same way that a light on a lamp has more clarity when the container it is in is washed and clean, likewise our consciousness can reflect greater light based on the purity of our mind. We need energy in order to awaken, first off, to be able to learn to experience and perceive our inner reality from an objective sense. But in order to do that it is important to not only have energy but to learn how to use it well. When you direct energy intelligently, consciously, and withdraw from distractions of the mind and external senses in meditation, you learn to fully engage in your own conscious interior. You can purify your vision, so to speak. Obviously, if you do not have energy like in physical life, you cannot live. You cannot work. Someone who has insomnia has a very difficult time being physically awake, but still not being able to sleep. It has a serious effect upon one's psychology when we do not have enough energy present. We even find that if we abuse our intellectual energy, we can develop illnesses like schizophrenia, mental illnesses, paranoia, delusions, because the mind, which can operate like a vehicle in its own respective orbit, is deficient in fuel. It has lost its vital values and therefore the engine breaks down and stops working. You find these people who are very engaged in the intellect without balancing the other parts of themselves. Likewise, the heart. If it is exhausted of its emotional and vital principles, it creates illnesses like depression, morbidity, bi-polar disorder, many emotional illnesses and diseases. Even the physical body can deteriorate and fall apart when it is not fueled by sufficient, creative, vital energy. People who abuse themselves through boxing, sports, and other difficult activities can become paraplegic or damaged in their body. In the same way we need energy to exist in life, we need those forces to harmonize and balance, to use the conscious well. As you said, if you do not have enough creative energy, you cannot engage in spiritual practices. You are just not inspired or will not be there. But saving energy, directing it well with consciousness, that begins to clarify perception, so that day by day, we perceive more and more. I invite you to study Meditation Essentials on glorian.org. It explains how when we use energy, we clarify our perceptions. Question: I am very curious to know what you think of Christianity. I relate to many values in the Bible, but most Christians seem quite mind-controlled to me. I feel Christianity needs to integrate to other broader religious ideas like yoga, reincarnation, and more. What are the merits and limits to Christianity even when people are striving to live a righteous selfless life? Instructor: We explained in other courses that there is a public tradition and an esoteric tradition. Every religion has a public, exoteric domain, which is followed by millions of people, and then there are hidden, secret, esoteric teachings within those teachings that were never given publicly. In relation to the Piscean era, that knowledge was underground, but now we are given in the Aquarian Era this esoteric knowledge freely for all. Christianity as a teaching is a very beautiful tradition. It has very deep symbolic roots, which many practitioners and adherents do not necessarily understand or follow. Just as many people of a religion may adhere to a faith out of dogma, they also contradict the values that are embedded in their faith. I have met many great Christians, many bad Christians; many great Muslims, some bad Muslims; many good Gnostics, but also many bad Gnostics. Just because you adhere to a tradition does not mean one is spiritual. In fact, what is spiritual about a person is that they are working to eliminate defects and work compassionately for others, to serve others. Christianity as a tradition has an esoteric dimension known as gnosticism, which we are giving a course on our website about The Gnostic Gospels. You can study that course if you want to learn more about Esoteric Christianity. But also Glorian.org has the course Esoteric Christianity that studies the heart doctrine of that faith. The esoteric version is very different from the public, where in Esoteric Christianity you find reincarnation and spiritual ideas are integrated very beautifully and are supported and sustained by scripture more importantly. Any religion like Christianity and faith can be limited when we only follow it blindly, when we use it as a paradigm and a dogma to interpret what we perceive without actually helping us to experience reality objectively. Morality is useful in its place, in the sense that having some values can help orientate certain people into living a more ethical or more kind and compassionate life, but merely sticking to an outward form but without experiencing its inward principles is not enough. It is deficient. Question: With Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation, if the petition choses does not heal an organ or awaken a chakra after a session, do we keep only asking for that particular healing until it heals with the practices or change the petitions? Should we? Instructor: I have known instructors practicing sacred rites who would perform one petition for two months, not changing it, because results come with time, practice, and consistency. I would recommend sticking to one petition for at least two months. If you really want to go deep into it, keep going with it, but this applies to many practices such as the elimination of egos as well, where we focus on one ego or defect over a long period of time until we gain results in comprehension. It is good to focus on one thing and to really practice it deeply, extensively. Question: If we keep only asking for one thing and nothing happens for a long time, what do we do then? How do we know what we are asking for is what we really need or can even be allowed to be granted? Instructor: There are many factors that go into play in terms of working with the sacred rites. Some people practice for a long time and do not get results. They can often become filled with morbidity and despair and doubt that this even works. It is important to take into account that the quality of our practice is not determined by merely sticking to a schedule, but it has to do with the quality of our heart, how sincere we are, how dedicated in our consciousness in terms of our attitude for approaching divinity. Sometimes we can approach divinity with ambition, and that is never rewarded. Some people get frustrated because they ask for something and they do not get it, and often become frustrated, confused, disoriented and doubtful. So what to do then? If you are not getting what you ask for, I would reflect on what you are asking and how. Our divinity knows what we need before we even ask or even know for ourselves. Sometimes it can be good to practice the rites to gain experiences and insights into what you need to work on, to help guide you and even initiating and sustaining a certain practice. Divinity grants unto us what we need, not what we want. But it is also difficult to ascertain in our own experiences, the difference between need and greed. What is it that we crave, like spiritual experiences, and what is it that we need to really to benefit in our daily life? I recommend that you focus on goals that will help you orient yourself in daily life, specifically, or even opening your heart and asking from divinity, praying, “Please show me what is that I need. Please help me!” and performing the rites in that way. Sometimes if we ask for a healing for a sickness that is not going away, we have to take into account certain contexts and karmic forces at play that we cannot necessarily alter or control, but with a lot of patient work. Be patient and persist. If you know that there is something that you need in your daily life that you have to aspire to, then keep asking for it. Do not give up. Do not flag, but be careful about what your attitude is and how you approach divinity, because the sacred rites are a ritual. They are very sacred. They are very divine. They are a way of communicating with the truth. We have to make a distinction between ambition and need. Pray for healing, be dedicated, and be consistent. Question: Otherwise, will not the practice become redundant if we find ourselves asking for something that can never be granted with the sacred rites? Instructor: This is why other practices are essential. We have to meditate deeply and investigate within our comprehension what our situation is. I know sometimes when we have difficult problems in life, it is very difficult to ascertain what reality is, the truth, the right way of acting. This is why we combine these different yogas together. We work with them in conjunction with one another. If you find that you are not getting the results you want, if you feel you are practicing in a redundant way, then analyze what you are doing―reevaluate. Some people need to practice sacred rites at certain periods in their life. They do not necessarily do it all the time. But we work with certain yogas in conjunction with the understanding that these practices fulfill a specific need. If it is not granted, be patient. Meditate upon what it is that you want. Comprehend what your desires are for that longed-for objective and ask divinity to show you in your meditation what is going on, and in that way, you can have some comfort and conviction about what it is divinity wants from you and what divinity has planned for you. Question: You said exhaling through the left nostril affects the heart. What does exhaling through the right nostril affect? What was the name of the video you mentioned about the runes? Instructor: In terms of exhaling and inhaling through the nostrils, just to clarify, when you are inhaling through either nostril, you are imagining the vital force and winds entering through that nostril and descending in a circuitous way, in a form of entwined serpent, moving across the spine in the form of the infinite, or like a curving line, like a light wave (if you’ve studied physics), a radio wave, down into your coccyx. When you retain that energy, when you close your nostrils, you are imagining that the energy is mixing within your sexual glands, is being retained and even rising up your spine to your head. When you exhale through the other nostril, you send the energy to your heart. That is one visualization you can do. That is not specified specifically in the book Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation. He just gives a very basic pranayama, so you do not have to go deeply with your visualization. The important thing is that you feel that energy circulating within you and that you interchange your breathing through your nostrils. Open your right nostril. Close the left nostril with the index finger of your right hand. Inhale, close with your thumb the right nostril, retain the energy, lift the index finger, and exhale through the other nostril. Do the same for the other nostril as well―inhaling, holding / retaining, and exhaling. Your prayer is what is going to be most efficacious or best. It is what is going to work and cause the energies to flow in you.
In terms of the video for the runes, specifically, you can access those videos on Glorian.org or go onto YouTube and look up Glorian Publishing for the Seven Runic Vowels.
We talk about seven vowels in relation to our spinal column, the seven chakras, because these seven sounds activate the seven main chakras of our spinal medulla. These vowels are explained in the video: I, E, O, U, A, M, S… seven vowels, which if you study the literature we provided as well, it goes very deep into that.
Any other questions? I know we covered a lot. We appreciate you for asking questions and listening in. We will definitely have a lot more practices and exercises to share with you in relation with course. So I thank you all for coming 
Welcome everybody! We have arrived at the seventeenth lecture, the final one of this course on the Sufi Principles of Meditation.
We have covered many exercises, many practices, so that we train and stabilize our consciousness. We have learned to withdraw our perception from distractions, and we also learned how to awaken the consciousness so that it can perceive without filters, without obscurations, so that it can understand what it sees. While we have spoken about spiritual insight and comprehending our experiences, we are now going to go a little bit deeper. We have to understand what consciousness is. Where does it come from? What is its ultimate root? What is the synthesis of a human being? In our studies we speak a lot about the Being, our Innermost. Some have called it spirit. Some have called it God, in accordance with the language, the culture, the scriptures, the customs of a given people, the idiosyncrasies of a given messenger. But what is the Being? What are its qualities? How do we recognize its states? More importantly, how do we subsist within it? Many people have approached spirituality from having some type of mystical or spiritual experience. They call it an awakening, but the reality is that such a state has often appeared or emerged seemingly by accident, and the beginning aspirant does not yet know how to activate that quality of being at will. God, divinity, reality, we can say, is our primordial root, fundamental nature, but what is and what are the qualities of divinity? Sufism explains this very beautifully. Perhaps the poet Rumi, the most notable Sufi initiate from both east and west, in terms of popularity, had characterized the nature of divinity very simply and very profoundly. That nature is love. That quality is bliss, is ecstasy, is conscious love and compassion, infinite joy. Some people argue that the real nature of a person is anger, pride, hatred, vanity, lust, but this is mistaken. When you really sift through and remove that which is extemporaneous, superficial, artificial, acquired, learned within a person, when you peel away the layers of conditioning, of misapprehensions, of half-truths, of assumptions and beliefs, ideas, religious values, culture, name, language, heritage, etc., you arrive at love. Love is truly a principle that escapes definition and even words, and yet it is the fundamental impulse that permeates everything, and which drives our actions, spiritually speaking, within its most obscure, mysterious currents. As I said, some people think our true nature is hatred, anger, or violence, because these are qualities that are very prevalent in humanity, and yet the question becomes: what do we value most? Is it coercion? Is it manipulation? Deceiving our neighbor? Lying to our family and friends, betraying our loved ones? The truth is that although a person can torture us, afflict us with great pain, they cannot compel us within our very being. There is a resistance in relation to qualities and states like pride, anger, violence, oppression. Persuasion, from conscious love for others, is a truly dynamic force. It motivates people to be inspired, to change, to be a part of communities, to want to listen to others, where its opposite, which is coercion―a type of violence upon the mind and body of others―produces a type of agitation, friction, conflict. Therefore, love is a truly penetrative and motivating force. It is the reason why there are communities, groups, schools, teachings. It is the reason why human beings commune and share and break bread. It is the reason why we have these teachings for how to change, how to overcome suffering, and how to become truly divine, to really strip away all that is wrong, illusory, false, and superficial, so that we can go into the depths of our own innate, true nature. Love is the fundamental reality of divinity, and yet people do not understand what it is, and more importantly how to develop it even further, with intentionality, with conscientiousness, with dedication. So, this quality of being―we have to make a very clear distinction―does not have an individual self. There is no “I,” no “me,” no “myself” within the Being, within the divine. This confuses people because we grasp at a sense of self, an identity, in accordance with our external customs, our name, language, culture, appearance. We say, “This is me. This is who I am. This is what I am,” and yet none of that exists within divinity. What we have are desires, cravings and attachments, impulses, نَفْس nafs according to the Sufi initiates, egos according to the Gnostic initiate Samael Aun Weor. Our desires are precisely that which keep us encaged, trapped, not seeing reality, not seeing what is there in front of us. If you have been following the sequence of exercises in this course, you would have begun to see with direct experience that the more you observe as a consciousness your psychology, the more you begin to understand that the consciousness, the Essence, the soul, does not have a sense of “I” or self there, but it is a distinct quality. It is perception, apprehension of reality, but without labels, without any type of projection or naming what is being seen, what is being experienced with our psychological senses. It is a state of selflessness, and when there is no self, when there is only the consciousness present, the Being can act within. It is those moments of pristine clarity, in which we are not identified with a self, whereby we are filled with the abundance, the plenitude of the Being, the presence of being here and now―not projecting our thoughts into the future or fearing the past. We are simply being here and awake, alert, as if we are watching a rain pouring upon a cobblestone street, in which we do not have to label what we are seeing, but are filled with that yearning and astonishment of the new. That state is selfless, and where there is no self, there is the plenitude of God. The Being is love, but the Being has no desire or self. Often, people read the poetry of the Sufis and can be confused by this because the Sufis speak of God’s desire for the soul and the soul’s desire for God. In Arabic you have مراد Murad, “the desired,” which is the Being or الله Allah, while مريد Murid, “the one who desires,” is the consciousness. The soul desires God, and God desires the soul. We are a little bit more specific in our language. This desire the Sufis speak of is yearning, longing, aspiration, intimate inquietudes within the heart. So, we use the term a little bit differently, as desire is an ego, because that is typically what constitutes our psychology: an attached sense of self or identification with external factors. Heaven is a state of being. It is a quality of consciousness in which there is no “I,” in which we are empty. There is a saying within Gnosis: God searches the nothingness in order to fill it. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message
But likewise, when our mind is filled and conditioned with multiple conflicting factors, divisions, contradictions, fragmentations, we suffer, and God cannot enter there. Divinity cannot subsist or be within us when our consciousness is shattered, and in this way we cut ourselves on the broken mirror of our soul. We do not reflect a perfect image of the peace, serenity, and beatitude of the divine.
Hell is our own mind. It is our defects, our نَفْس nafs, our psychological aggregates, and as long as we are attached to a sense of self, we are not perceiving heaven. Wherever the delusion of your selfhood appears―there’s hell. Wherever “you” aren’t―that’s heaven. ―Abū Sa’īd
The ego must not be present. It must be absent to the self so that we can experience divinity, which is selflessness, which is pure love. If you do not believe me that love is selfless, look at the life of Jesus. Look at the prophets, the great masters and luminaries of humanity who taught through their example how to serve others and to not expect a reward.
We state that love is the goal of our studies. However, it cannot blossom in us naturally, spontaneously, unsolicited, when our heart is not cultivated, when it is filled with weeds. Therefore, we have to simplify our psychology. We have to become simple. It does not mean that we have to become stupid. It means that we remove the complexities and the confusions and paradoxes of our nature: our egotistical, selfish nature. Right now, our mind is really complex. If you sit to meditate and you examine yourself, you will see that the mind is all over the place. Hopefully, it is not by now if you have been practicing these exercises, but when you meditate, you begin to perceive this in the beginning. Meditation reduces, it strips away, it removes everything about us that is illusory, unnecessary as Rumi taught: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ―Rumi
So, the soul has been referred to as a mirror by many Sufi initiates, including Ibn Arabi, who is Sheikh al-Akbar, “the greatest of Sufi Masters.” He wrote in a book called Kitab al-Ahadiyyah (Treatise on the One Alone) that only divinity can know Himself and that the soul is a mirror. It can reflect a perfect image, or it can be distorted. Unfortunately for us, our mirror, our consciousness, is polluted. It is contaminated. It is rusted with afflictions. We do not see what is really inside, our true nature, which is divine. We do not perceive divinity because we have obscured, have dirtied the mirror, which can truly reflect qualities like love in a unfiltered, unobstructed, unhindered way, because when we grasp at a self, we do not see reality. We do not see the truth.
Our sense of self is dependent upon many extemporaneous influences: the impressions of life which enter our psychology, such as a cup of coffee. Therefore, our defects emerge. They seek gratification of the senses through those impressions, from any type of food or drink. We may have gluttony or the food of lust, which is to look at sexual images and feed desire, degeneration. We have the food of pride, which are the sensations or impressions of being praised. We have anger, which is frustrated desire, which is an aversion to the impressions of life which it cannot control, and therefore it protests. The same dynamic applies to all our egos. Our sense of self craves its nourishment, its food: the impressions of life which enter the senses in our psychology and produce reactions, and because we are identified, we do not perceive this interchange or exchange of different selves. We are never the same in any given moment. We are conflicted. We are all over the place, as we mentioned many times in this course. Therefore, we have to annihilate the complications. We have to simplify ourselves, integrate the soul that is trapped―free it, liberate it. Stop feeding defects. Stop giving it food, and in this way, you tame the beast. Annihilation of the ego is the foundation and basis of religion. However, everybody avoids it. Nobody wants to polish the mirror and look at their own face, which is why Rumi taught: How can you become polished if you resist every rub? ―Rumi
These are different circumstances and ordeals in life. These are situations that produce a lot of friction in our life, in which we begin to perceive all the multiplicity of errors we carry within, all our faults. We need those challenges so that we can change, so that we can have real knowledge, γνῶσις gnosis or معرفة Ma’rifah of the truth in Arabic. You cannot give testimony of divine unity when you do not possess psychological unity, without integrating the soul, without performing an alchemy with the consciousness.
We have to take all of those conditioned selves and remove them: free the essence that is trapped, the soul. Take those multiplicity of desires and make them one. In the words of Rumi: I once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know you all else melted away. ―Rumi
This is transmutation in a psychological sense. It is a form of alchemy. We transform the density of our conditioning into the purity and light of divine perception.
So in this lecture, we are going to talk about a really essential point, that to know divinity we need expedient methods. We also need to understand selflessness, the emptiness of phenomena, that nothing is really intrinsically existing in of itself, but that everything depends on other factors, for everything is transient, in transit. It is changing. As we begin to understand the interdependent nature between all phenomena and understand our own attachments and desires, we begin to perceive that our sense of self really does not have true basis, that divinity, the plenitude of the Being, is compassion, is love born from this understanding, this perception, this wisdom. 
Conventional and Ultimate Views
We will also study the Tree of Life, the kabbalah, very deeply, because it is a map of love, of consciousness, of Being, in order to tie these principles together, so that we can subsist, to return to our innermost divinity.
The Tree of Life is a map of the self from the most dense and conditioned below to the most subtle, pure, rarified, and beautified above. The higher you ascend this glyph―which is not a map of vertical space, but of internal states―the more selfless and happy we become. The further we descend towards the shadow beneath the Tree of Life, beneath מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, the physical world, the greater one’s suffering and attachment to self. This is the Tree of Life within the book of Genesis, within the Abrahamic traditions. Beneath the Tree of Life we find the hell realms, the inverted סְפִירוֹת sephiroth or spheres of consciousness, which are trapped in conditions, egos, selves, نَفْس nafs. The Qur’an refers to this as the tree of زقوم Zaqqum, which in Arabia is an actual tree whose leaves are really bitter to taste. Therefore it is a symbol of inferior states of consciousness that are acquired and experienced by those who fail. We can refer to these spheres as dimensions, as aspects of consciousness. These are also places in nature to which we gravitate based upon our quality of being. If you remember the lecture on Stations of this course, we talked a lot about these spheres, these סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. In Hebrew, the term סְפִירוֹת sephiroth means “emanations.” These are states and qualities of being that emanate from the divine, from the Absolute, الله Allah, which in Arabic is the Nothing, the No. It means “the God” literally, but if you look at the syllable لا la in Arabic, it means “No,” negation. This is a term used for the abstract absolute space, which is the womb of cosmic potentiality, of being that is not yet realized. It is selflessness. It is pure, divine, supra-divine happiness without conditions, without self, and yet it is the true, legitimate, fundamental nature of reality, when you go to the very heart and core of any phenomena. The Absolute is known in Hebrew as אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the Nothing, the Limitless, and the Limitless Light. From that nothingness, that cosmic space, emerges a profound, beautiful light, which is the sephirah כֶּתֶר Kether in Hebrew. That sephirah means crown. It is the supreme light of divinity that emerges from an eternal seity, the space. That light is pure consciousness within the material universe. Now, while I am using some Hebrew terms, the Sufis and the Muslim initiates referred to different qualities of being, these different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, by Arabic names, because kabbalah as a map and science of being is within all religions. It is mapped out within Judaism, Jewish mysticism, Jewish spirituality, in a very deep way, and we can use this tool and glyph to help us understand what all religions are talking about in their fundamental synthesis. Now the light of the divine is known as الْحَقُّ Al-Haqq: The Truth: כֶּתֶר Kether, the crown, the supremacy of divinity, a profound, abstract, rarefied, pure being that is known in manifestation. That light, because it wants to create, expresses in multiple ways, and therefore that light emanates out and becomes חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is Hebrew for “wisdom.” In the Qur’an there are many references to ٱلْرَّحْمَـٰنُ Ar-Rahman: the Compassionate. Every Surah of the Qur’an except for Surah 9 begins: 
Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim
חָכְמָה Chokmah is the wisdom, the penetrative insight of divine consciousness. It is very elevated. It is a perception in which one or one’s experience is within all beings and there is not an individual self, but all beings are one within this state.
That light also wants to create something and therefore it expresses as الخالق Al-Khaliq: the Creator, which in Hebrew is בִּינָה Binah: Intelligence, that force of intelligent expression that knows how to manifest the universes, to create them with understanding. These three principles כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah, the crown, the wisdom, and the intelligence of God, constitute one light that expresses in three ways. In terms of relating to previous religions such as Christianity, this glyph or principle of forces can be known as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. In Islam, they reject the Trinity as stated in the Qur’an. That is because the Christians had degenerated their tradition and have confused the Trinity as three people, anthropomorphizing God, and that is impossible and wrong. Instead, these are one force that expresses as three so that all the worlds and universes can be sustained, created, harmonized, equilibrated, manifested. الخالق Al-Khaliq: the Creator, is the force of בִּינָה Binah, and there are many names of God in Arabic, but these names that we are using in this glyph are some of the most obvious that can apply to the Tree of Life, because each sephirah has a sacred name of divinity within Judaism, within mystical kabbalah, but we can also apply the Arabic kabbalah as well. The Arabic, divine names represent the same principles, the same truths. These three principles are very divine, and most people know nothing of them from experience. Instead, we are down below in מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, and as we have learned the practices of meditation, we have discovered what the lower four סְפִירוֹת sephiroth are, especially the fifth from the bottom up. In meditation, we learn to take our physical body מלכות Malkuth―which is the “kingdom” that contains all the forces from above―willingly to relax that body. Adopt a posture, relax, and introspect. We learn to work with energy, יְסוֹד Yesod, the foundation of our spiritual discipline. That is through exercises like mantra, pranayama, prayer, runes, sacred rights of rejuvenation, sexual alchemy. We are learning to transform the subtle currents of our body so that we can gain control of our heart, which is הוד Hod, Hebrew for “splendor,” the splendor of the compassionate heart. We likewise put our mind in a state of suspension, relaxation and calm, נצח Netzach, and by doing so we obtain victory. The way that we do this is by willpower, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth: the human consciousness, human willpower, because our human will, the beauty of the soul, has to learn to control thoughts, feelings, sensations, and energy. By doing so we begin to learn to activate the consciousness with intuition, with wisdom, which is גְּבוּרָה Geburah: Justice in Hebrew, the religion and conscience of the soul, so that in dedication and practice we can begin to experience our own inner spirit חֶסֶד Chesed: Mercy in kabbalah. In Arabic the name of God for חֶסֶד Chesed in kabbalah is ٱلْرَّحِيْمُ Ar-Rahim: the Merciful, our innermost spirit, روح Ruh in Arabic, or רוּחַ Ruach in Hebrew. Notice that the further you ascend up this graphic in terms of conscious experience, we begin to become less selfish. Obviously, below we are identified with our own mind, emotions, instincts, and our physicality, and with willpower―which is much more subtle, refined, directed with will under the conscience, our divine soul―we can begin to access the spiritual realm, our spirituality, and perhaps even much higher than that. These are degradations and levels of nature. The forces of divinity express themselves within the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. 
We have included some of some of the Arabic names as well. The physical body is the most manifest aspect of who we are. ٱلْظَّاهِرُ Az-Zahir: the Manifest, is a sacred name of الله Allah, divinity. In Hebrew it is אדוני הארץ Adonai Ha’aretz, Lord of the Earth, because our physical body must become sacred.
We do so by learning to contain the sexual creative potency of יְסוֹד Yesod. We do that through ٱلْوَدُودُ Al-Wadud: the Lover (the Loving). It is really interesting that in Arabic, the name ٱلْوَدُودُ Al-Wadud, is spelled و Waw د Dal و Waw د Dal, which its equivalence in Hebrew is ו Vav, ד Daleth, ו Vav, ד Daleth―two spinal columns from two dervishes, man and woman, male and female, Adam and Eve. Together they work by taming the creative energies within a marriage in order to establish their religion, to glorify divinity, ٱلْمَجِيدُ Al-Majid: the All Glorious, within the heart, to conquer the mind through ٱلْقَهَّـٰرُ Al-Qahhar: the Conqueror, in order to become an initiate, ٱلْمَـالِكُ Al-Malik: the King, in תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, the fifth initiation of Major Mysteries as we have explained in the lecture on Stations. We have to, of course, follow our conscience, ٱلْحَكَمُ Al-Hakam: the Judge, גְּבוּרָה Geburah. Another term for גְּבוּרָה Geburah is دين Din, which means “judgment” and “religion.” Our real religion and spirituality is based on how we judge our own defects, our own errors, in balance with the mercy and blessings of divinity, ٱلْرَّحِيْمُ Ar-Rahim. There are many names of God in Arabic. They apply in many ways in the Tree of Life. This is just one way of approaching it. It is really inexhaustible how profound these principles are, but this is the map. This is who we are in our full constitution, in our multidimensionality and being. If you have noticed from the Absolute, אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, emerges the Tree of Life, the universe, which is manifested reality and which emerges from unmanifested potentiality, الله Allah, the Nothing. It is interesting that in Islam, it is against the tradition to anthropomorphize divinity. There are no statues promulgated in that tradition, of divinity, because you can not anthropomorphize space. You can not characterize it through a statue. In reality, الله Allah, the Nothing, the Nothingness, the true Being, is only represented within Arabic calligraphy, which is a very beautiful and rich tradition that developed in the Muslim faith as a result of this distinction. From that nothingness emerges light and that light condenses in levels of matter, perception, and consciousness. We are in מלכות Malkuth, and we are learning to enter into states of meditation so that we can access reality, which is more accessible and real the further up this diagram you ascend―again, not in vertical space, but in states and levels of being. There are more elevated states of being and there are more inferior states of being based upon our actions. The Sufis refer to the experience of the divine, which is basically גְּבוּרָה Geburah, חֶסֶד Chesed, בִּינָה Binah, חָכְמָה Chokmah, כֶּתֶר Kether, and beyond, as witnessing, to witness the truth, to experience it, to know it. They call this contemplation, مشاهدة mushahada. When we really are in the outskirts of entering into this knowledge, we are in מלכות Malkuth listening to this lecture, hopefully with a calm body, a receptive heart, and an open mind, and with willpower, and full attention, so that we can comprehend with judgment, real understanding, the reality of what is being taught, and therefore to extract its spiritual nature. All of these phenomena are manifested. They are what can be experienced in the universe, but the heights of divine experience are not within this universe, really, at the heights of this tree, this trinity, of this Logoic Triangle: כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah, the light of divine continuity and consciousness. As we meditate, we begin to gain glimpses of these realms. We can have access to them when we go to sleep. The body is at rest and the soul travels within the internal worlds, which are these different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. If we are working seriously, we can access much higher states than we can normally perceive had we not practiced. These are the stations of the Sufi path, the degrees of development and initiation. There are a couple verses from the Sufis. Ibn Karbalā’ī stated something interesting relating this dynamic: manifested reality and ultimate reality. If you studied Buddhism, you will be familiar with how there is conventional and ultimate views. In the conventional sense, we know that we have a physical body. We have energy. We have emotions. We have mind and in a more subtle degree, we have will, to act. To experience the real nature of our inner spirit, our divine consciousness requires abandonment of self, attachments, our terrestrial identity, this conventional sense of “who I am,” “what I think,” “what I feel, my likes, dislikes, attachments, my cravings, my aversions, my ignorance,” etc. Ultimate view is when there is no “self” obstructing it, in which you perceive directly, from an unobstructed height in a spiritual sense, which is why the Sufis stated the following: When the seeker realizes the station of contemplation (mushāhida), which is witnessing God’s Essence comprehending and encompassing all phenomena (which is really all of the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth that emanate from that divine source, and as we experience the selfless nature of emptiness, the Being, Allah, we perceive that divinity has knowledge of all things, perceives all things, experiences all)―“Does not your Lord suffice, since He is witness over all things” (41:53)―he continually witnesses lights from the mundus invisibilis. From such a mystic’s perspective, this world and the hereafter are one and the same. This can only be realized by a vision that is all heart and spirit, not a view bound by mere mud and mire. ―Ibn Karbalā’ī, Rawdāt al-janān, II 164
These סְפִירוֹת sephiroth can emerge within our consciousness and can visit these different dimensions through perceptions, through experiences in meditation: the invisible world, the mundus invisibilis. It is from that direct witnessing of higher states in which, as a mystic, we perceive that this world and the hereafter are one in the same. In truth מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, the kingdom, the physical world, is merely the expression of internal principles and actions. Our physical body obeys its energies, יְסוֹד Yesod, how we react with our emotions, and how we think. However, we are clouded by these lower סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, these lower spheres of being, and in truth, we have to clarify our perception, so that we perceive with the spirit ٱلْرَّحْمَـٰنُ Ar-Rahman, the omniscient, objective, and real, the heart, which in this sense, we can say, it is ٱلْحَكَمُ Al-Hakam: the Judge, our divine soul, and not by mud and mire: egotism, selfishness, attachments. Reality is experienced when the mind is receptive, and the consciousness is active―not the other way around.
The Requirements of Gnosis
What does it mean to worship divinity? What does this worship involve? From an esoteric Gnostic, Sufi perspective, there is a saying in the Qur’an:
Worship God, and ascribe not partners unto Him. ―Al-Nisa 36
Unfortunately, in our times we have a lot of theories, a lot of terminology, a lot of labels for spiritual states in accordance with different theological structures and theories, ideas, and assumptions. We have many beliefs about religion. We have many ideas about spirit, and the truth is that if you ask many people what spirit is, what God is, they all have different definitions. Therefore, that indicates that they are wrong, because they are not agreeing on reality. They all have different opinions of what reality is. That is because they do not see it. They do not experience it. They do not know it. Instead, what we have are lineages based upon ascription, ascribing ideas unto divinity. We can think what we want. We can believe what we want. We can theorize, assume, and worship in accordance with our concepts, ideas, and convictions. We can ascribe to divinity many of our own ideas, and, again, assumptions, but in truth it must be experienced. This is the demarcation between Gnosticism and many exoteric traditions.
The Sufis and the Muslims have a very interesting term between this dynamic of projecting concepts onto divinity, ascribing partners unto divinity, holding equal certain things with divinity and that has to do with projecting our ideas. They call it شرك shirk. They call it idolatry. They call it polytheism, worshipping many gods, but how is this so? When we value our concepts over reality, we are idolaters. We are mistaking our desires and assumptions for what is actually there. We are not experiencing what is there. We can say that any concept and belief that we ascribe to with our conviction at heart, which is not based in direct perception of the truth, constitutes شرك shirk, polytheism. So, what is genuine worship? It means to practice without a self, without an identity, without labeling, but allowing the mind and heart to be in a tranquil state so that we can perceive clearly the Tree of Life, divinity. Tranquility allows us to have inner exploration of our psychological and spiritual unity. It might seem odd that we are relating conceptual beliefs and ideas with شرك shirk, with polytheism, idolatry. It is because we have many ideas that are all over the place, conflicting, paradoxical, unsubstantiated. We have many multiple ideas and assumptions, but are they really rooted in facts? If it is a fact of life and experience, we do not need have any beliefs about it, because we know. So, we need to integrate the consciousness. We do so through a state of tranquility, serenity, repose. There is a couple of statements from Al-Qushayri from the Principles of Sufism, which relate what is necessary in order to really worship divinity, to have knowledge (γνῶσις gnosis in Greek, معرفة Ma’rifah in Arabic) of one’s inner Lord, one’s inner divinity, which requires we abandon our ideas, our most cherished convictions, and theories. In general, it is to the measure of one’s alienation from one’s own ego that one attains direct knowledge of one’s Lord… I heard Abu Ali al-Daqqaq say, “One of the tokens of the gnosis of God is the achievement of deep awe and reverence for God. If someone’s realization increases, his awe increases.” And I heard him say, “Gnosis requires stillness of heart, just as learning requires outward quiet. If someone’s gnosis increases, his tranquility increases.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
We have to be alienated from the ego to really treat our defects, our pride, our vanity, our hatred as our worst enemy, to let it go, to not invest so much energy into this self, because once you abandon the self, you really perceive the majesty of the Being and have reverence, deep awe, and respect for your inner God, because you know divinity is always present with you. It is stated many times in the Qur’an:
And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to you than your jugular vein. ―Qur’an 50:16
The more we realize divinity, the more respect, awe, joy, inspiration, and happiness we experience. It increases, but this is based upon meditative practice requiring stillness of heart, in the same manner that learning requires outward quiet, and the more realization one acquires, the more peace and certainty one has.
The Definition of Love and Will
This is based upon an understanding of love and will. In synthesis, the Sufis taught about alchemy, الله Allah-χυμεία kimia from the Arabic and the Greek, which means “to fuse or cast a metal,” χυμεία kimia, with الله Allah: to fuse oneself with divinity. We do so by making a profound distinction between love and desire.
In synthesis, we can say selfish actions produce sorrow, whereas selfless actions produce happiness, because they emerge from love, which is not concerned with oneself, but the other. Conscious will is the soul’s capacity to focus attention upon an object and to perform deeds of love, compassion for others, even for one’s enemy. Samael Aun Weor referred to this as Christ’s Will, (he even wrote a book with that title), which is the perfect, heavenly expression of superior action, to really sacrifice oneself for others, to respond selflessly to any situation―not for our own benefit, but for the blessings of others, the benediction, the sacrifice for others. Desire is selfish will. It is the opposite of the consciousness, because the former is a mechanical reaction to life while the latter is a deliberate, intelligent response. The Sufis corroborate this point that our common, ordinary, selfish will has to be overcome. Al-Qushayri states the following: In scholarly usage, love, mahabbah, means will, iradah, but the Sufis do not mean will when they speak of love. For human will does not connect to the Eternal―unless one understands it as the will to draw close to Him and glorify Him. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Genuine love is pure, and of course in Gnostic studies we have emphasized many times that pure love is chastity. Chastity is not the mere restraint of sexual energy, but refers to restraint and purity of the mind and heart as well, in which we do not act out of lust, ambition, adultery, pride, selfishness, vanity, extortion, etc. Selfish will is desire. We have to transmute our desires, our defects into love, from selfishness to selflessness.
Some say that hubb, love, is a name for purity of affection, because the Bedouins when speaking of the pure whiteness and regularity of someone’s teeth use the expression habab al-asnan. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
There are many sexual alchemical symbols in this paragraph. The mouth is always a symbol of secret knowledge, because דעת Daath in Hebrew, معرفة Ma’rifah in Arabic, γνῶσις gnosis in Greek, was once only given by mouth to ear. It was never written down explicitly because the science of alchemy or the perfect matrimony is extremely powerful and transformative. If you want to understand that principle, you can study the lecture given recently called the Gnostic Mysteries of Chastity.
This science or the transformation of the soul is how we purify and utilize our energies in order to expand our consciousness. We also find a lot of symbols relating to water here, which is a representation of the sexual energy that cleanses the mind and flows abundantly within those who know how to circulate it with intelligence, with understanding. The quote continues: Others say that since hubab is a word for the excess water that results from a heavy rain, mahabbah came to mean the heart’s boiling and stirring with the thirst and excitement of meeting the Beloved. Still others say the word is derived from habab al-ma, the greater part of a body of water, because love is the object of most of the heart’s concerns. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
As we explained in the lecture on renunciation, water is creative, symbolic, literal. Those creative waters are the seminal forces with which we become baptized and initiated. That body of water, the over-pouring of the soul, emerges from the Absolute, which is a great ocean. If you awaken your consciousness in meditation and approach the Absolute, you perceive the emptiness like a great, dark ocean, but there is a profound, dark light hidden there, a rippling, an abstract movement and repose, which is the full negation of all manifested things, but is the real state of Being. It is the ocean within which we must drown ourselves in love, to be fully immersed, encompassed, and inoculated by that.
Another derivation draws the word from necessity and fixity, for one says ahabba al-baghir of a camel that kneels and refuses to stand. In just this way the lover’s heart refuses to leave the remembrance of his Beloved. Hubb is also said to come from hibb, an earring. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So, another symbol here. We are referring to a type of willpower in order to know divinity, to seek without faltering, without giving up, to advance out of necessity and fixity.
The poet says:
As I said, the mouth is a symbol of alchemical knowledge because we pronounce sacred sounds within a matrimony, in sexual union, to promote elevation of our creative force, but also the ear relates to this mystery of alchemy, معرفة Ma’rifah, divine knowledge, so that we can receive that teaching from mouth to ear, listening in to secrets which were never written down until as recently as 1950 with The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor.
That serpent is a dual symbol. We have given many courses and explanations about this allegory, which represents basically this: How our sexual purity can grant us knowledge of our true nature, or our sexual impurity can eject us from Eden, from happiness, from bliss, from love. What matters is how to use this energy well, or we condemn ourselves because that force has to act. It can act in a polluted, selfish way, or it can be harnessed with intelligence, with wisdom, with patience, with understanding. 
The Three Gates of Gnosis
To access the heights of these mysteries, we work with that energy, with the science of alchemy, especially, الله Allah-Kimia: to fuse one’s self with the Being. We find that this direct knowledge is symbolized even in Islamic architecture. You see this image, which is the Mecca gate number thirty-seven from Al-Masjid an-Nabawī, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. This mosque is also known as Al-Haram, or Al-Haram al-Madani, and Al-Masjid an-Nabawī. It was built by the Prophet, and it constitutes one of the largest mosques in the world. It is the second holiest site in Islam after Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca.
The Arabic inscription shows the name of Prophet Muhammed followed by his title: Apostle of God. This door signifies the entrance to genuine wisdom, which we experience by living through the alchemical mysteries of the prophets. This is דעת Daath in Hebrew or معرفة Ma’rifah in Arabic, the doorway to the highest mysteries. It is because that force has the potential to transform us radically, to open the doorway into those higher states of being. If you are not working with the creative energies, you will not access selfless states. Instead, you will access the opposite, which is harmful. Let us examine what these three gates of this mosque represent. They represent the three gates of gnosis according to the Sufi master Abdullah Ansari of Heart, and it is very beautiful that this mosque contains this tradition and this teaching. We can learn a lot from its symbolism in terms of the kind of work that we need to perform if we really want to obtain the highest degrees of mystical experience. There is the Gate of Mercy: باب الرحمة Bab ar-Rahmah to the south, the Gate of Gabriel: باب جبريل Bab Jibril, to the west, and the Gate of Women: باب ٱلنساء Bab an-Nisa to the east. Let us read these quotes for a deeper understanding of this mosque, but also how it applies to our spiritual work. From the field of Wisdom the field of Gnosis is generated. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
Remember the word wisdom in Hebrew is חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is the kabbalistic symbol for Christ, Christic perception, selflessness, the power of Vis-dom: the power of divine vision. From this vision, the field of gnosis is generated.
God, the Most High, says, ‘[And when they listen to the revelation received by the Apostle] You will see their eyes overflowing with tears, for they recognize the truth’ (5:83) 
We have to study the Tree of Life in order to understand the three gates, in relation to four directions mapped out by the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life has many angles in which we can approach it. A lot of different mysticisms and teachings relate to four directions, north, south, east, and west, within scripture. Often times, those references are indicating certain aspects of this diagram in order to teach something very intuitive. So, while it might seem very complicated and difficult, when you have meditated on what these directions symbolize in relation to the Tree of Life, after study and practice, it will become much more clear to you.
Now specifically, the north relates the right pillar of the Tree of Life, which is the pillar of mercy, with qualities like חָכְמָה Chokmah: Wisdom, חֶסֶד Chesed: Mercy, and נצח Netzach: Victory. We have the south relating to the left pillar of the Tree of Life, which is בִּינָה Binah: Intelligence, גְּבוּרָה Geburah: the divine soul, Justice, and הוד Hod: the emotions, Glory. The middle pillar, towards מלכות Malkuth, is going towards the west, while the top of the Tree of Life towards כֶּתֶר Kether, the higher sphere or point to this glyph, is the east. What is significant about these directions is that they relate to qualities of being, tendencies, and manners of conscious expression, whether in conditioned states or unconditioned states. The east is where the sun rises especially. We can say that כֶּתֶר Kether is the Far East because that is the highest, at the top of the Tree of Life. We can say תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth is the middle of this diagram and is governed astrologically by the sun and Venus, the star of love. We can call that the Middle East. It is interesting because many scriptures take place in the Middle East. It is midway between the top and the bottom of this diagram, but is also pointed towards the east because astrologically, the sun relates to תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, the beauty of the soul, the solar, divine, creative volition. The west is related to where the sun sets, to those principles of divinity that go down into the infernal worlds, that descend into darkness, because the further away we are from the light, symbolically, the less understanding and intuition we have. The north relates to spiritual forces, because the right pillar, Mercy, is divine, related to חָכְמָה Chokmah: Wisdom, חֶסֶד Chesed: Mercy, and נצח Netzach: Victory. The south, the left pillar, its forces descend down towards מלכות Malkuth, and down towards the infernal worlds, the negative states of consciousness. 
What is interesting is that as the right pillar, those forces descend into יְסוֹד Yesod in order to be harnessed by our spiritual practice. When we abuse of the creative forces of judgment, גְּבוּרָה Geburah: divine consciousness, it descends into the hell realms. If you have studied yoga, and pranayama especially, you know about the two energetic currents on the spine. The Tree of Life relates to your spinal column as well. The right pillar is precisely mercy, the solar creative force, Pingala in Sanskrit, and the left pillar of severity relates to Ida, the feminine creative polarity within our spine. We have a masculine polarity, which is Pingala, the solar force, but also a feminine, lunar, receptive force known as Ida, and that energetic current―Ida, in most people―is fallen. It does not rise up to the brain from the coccyx, but instead descends to the hell realms.
So, this relates to why, according to some mythologies, demons have tails, because that serpentine fire of Ida is descending. It has “gone south,” so to speak. If you have heard the term, when things go really bad, you are going south. It originates from this. There is some credence to that saying in a kabbalistic sense. If we want to understand the Tree of Life in relation to our spiritual work, we study these four directions. You can also learn more about the four directions in the kabbalah, especially by studying operas such as Turandot. We have a course The Secret Teachings of Opera where we talk about that specific composition by Puccini, which talks about the four directions in more detail. We can study the three gates, specifically, of the mosque we were talking about, Al-Masjid an-Nabawī: The Prophet’s Mosque in relation to this teaching by Abdullah Ansari of Herat. Gnosis of the first gate is the foundation of Islam; gnosis of the second gate is the foundation of faith, while gnosis of the third gate is the foundation of sincerity. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
We have explained previously that the first gate, which is the knowledge of being, of unity, of unique peerlessness, is the foundation of Islam: submission to divinity. This is related to the Gate of Mercy: باب الرحمة Bab ar-Rahmah, to the south. If we wish to access the unifications of our soul, the unique peerlessness of the Being, we have to control the left pillar in us. It is necessary to receive divine mercy and to enact that blessing in us by working to control that fallen current within us, Ida: the lunar, creative, serpentine fire in our spine. It is the Gate of Mercy related to the left pillar because with our fallen and mistaken actions, we create suffering. We create problems for ourselves, and therefore we have to submit to divinity by controlling the creative energies. There is no escape from this. It is fundamental in a kabbalistic, alchemical, initiatic, and Sufi sense.
We submit to divinity because our Being is merciful and wants us to change, and therefore directs his attention towards the south, which is the Gate of Mercy, because the left pillar of the Tree of Life, by learning to work and stabilize our consciousness with those forces, we attain equilibrium. The second gate, which relates to God’s power, His omniscience, His beneficence, is the foundation of faith. This is the Gate of Gabriel: باب جبريل Bab Jibril, to the west, relating to מלכות Malkuth, the physical body. So, the former left pillar really is governed by גְּבוּרָה Geburah, severity. Divinity can be very severe with us because of our wrong actions from the past, but we do receive many blessings and intercessions as a result of our sincerity, of submitting ourselves to divine law, and not selfish law. מלכות Malkuth relates to the west, the foundation of faith, the Gate of Jibril. 
We can say that God’s power, His omniscience, His blessings, come from جبريل Jibril, which in Hebrew is spelled גבריאל Gabriel, related to the Nordic runes, Gibur, and the Egyptian Ra and the Hebrew אל El. It is the power of sexuality, because the crossing of man and woman within the physical world is what forms the strength, Gibur, of God. In Hebrew we say אַתָּה גִּבּוֹר לְעוֹלָם אֲדֹנָי Attah Gibor Le’olam Adonai (AGLA אגלא): “You are Almighty Forever Oh Lord” as a mantra or sacred prayer within kabbalah. When you combine man and woman as a cross of forces and energies in מלכות Malkuth, they spin. They rotate like our chakras. They vibrate. They move. They flow. They form a swastika, which unfortunately was a symbol that was misappropriated by the Germans in World War II, even though that knowledge was applicable to all ancient traditions. The movement of the cross is the force of sexual power, which people like Hitler and his cronies abused, but the original meaning has to do with גְּבוּרָה Geburah, the forces of the strength of God, Gibur-Ra-El, גַבְרִיאֵל Gabriel, גְּבוּרָה Geburah in Hebrew. That sexual strength descends from the left pillar down into מלכות Malkuth to give us force, in order to perform alchemy.
It is the Gate of Gabriel because in the physical world is where we need to practice if we are married, if we are in a matrimony. By mastering the cross, we rise out of the west into the east, towards heaven, towards the Middle East, and beyond if we are serious. That force of the Gate of Gabriel is precisely in the west. Nobody can enter heaven without working through Gabriel. If you have remembered all the stories of the prophets in the Bible, they are all announced by Gabriel. Likewise, the Prophet Muhammed was announced a prophet because of جبريل Jibril. He received the first recitation of the Qur’an upon جبل النور Jabal Nur, the “mountain of light,” and that mountain is in תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth. It is in the Middle East where the sun rises, where he would go meditate and receive divine teachings from جبريل Jibril, which are symbols, representations of alchemical knowledge, his sexual creative work within the perfect matrimony. The third gate, which relates to knowledge of charitable works, loving in close intimacy, is the foundation of sincerity. This is the Gate of Women: باب ٱلنساء Bab an-Nisa, the east. Personally, I find this the most compelling because as Samael Aun Weor mentioned in Practical Astrology, The Manual of Practical Magic: Humans came out of Paradise through the doors of Eden, and Eden is sex itself
She is the gate to Eden and man is gate to Eden for woman.
So, this sexual power of Eden, of bliss, is loving in close intimacy with divinity. We really show love for الله Allah when we really learn to be chaste in the sexual act, when we are transmuting diligently. Specifically, because if you look at the Arabic calligraphy in the name of الله Allah, you have four letters: أ Alif, ل Lam, ل Lam, ه Ha. The letter أ Alif is a straight line. It is phallic. It is the masculine, creative, projective, positive symbol of man. ل Lam is like a tongue upon which the Word is gestated, the Verb, the creative expression, in which, by mantras in the sexual act, we transform and transmute that fire. We have the ل Lam or ל Lamed in Hebrew, of a man or the ل Lam or ל Lamed of a woman. Then you have ه Ha, which is like a womb, the feminine, creative, negative, receptive, sexual organs. That is the power of الله Allah: when husband and wife work together in remembrance of divinity. That is the door to paradise to the east. We face the east, the rising sun, when we pray to Mecca, towards the Kaaba, the sacred stone of יְסוֹד Yesod towards the east, which is rising above מלכות Malkuth, the west. When we raise that sexual force of יְסוֹד Yesod up to our mind and to our heart, we are really sanctifying the Gate of Women: باب ٱلنساء Bab an-Nisa, to the east. We face the rising sun, which reminds us of the Germanic Easter, Eostre, as we mentioned in the previous lecture. Why is this the gate of sincerity? Because if we are not really honest with our sexual behavior, we are not going to be honest with ourselves or divinity. We cannot access profound knowledge without that humble basis: acknowledging where we are at, what are behaviors are, and what we must change. 
The Three Pillars of Gnosis
The three ways of gnosis also relate to the top of the Tree of Life. As we mentioned extensively, these are principles, energies, lights, forces―one intelligence, one divine unity that expresses and manifests as three. This is توحيد Tawhid: the unity of God. These three expressions of one light can be understood by the Sufis’ demarcation of three degrees or levels of school, of esoteric, Gnostic, Sufi instruction.
We have شَرِيعَة Shari’a, طريقة Tariqa, حقيقه Haqiqah. معرفة Ma’rifah is דעת Da’ath, the creative knowledge, which, when this image is placed upon a human being, relates to the throat―again, the mouth, the Verb, the Word, the secret knowledge that was only given through oral transmission to candidates that proved their discipleship, their worth. These three pillars, we can say, relate to what Al-Hujwiri said in Revelation of the Mystery, that the Essence of divinity is known as כֶּתֶר Kether in Hebrew, the crown. חָכְמָה Chokmah: Wisdom, are the Attributes of divinity, the divine qualities of the Being. Divinity’s Acts are בִּינָה Binah: intelligence. Here is what this Persian Sufi master had to say about this topic: The Knowledge of the Truth (Ḥaqíqat) has three pillars―
Who are those capable of knowing the Unity, the Essence of divinity, כֶּתֶר Kether? It is those who have reached puberty, whereby the sexual potential is developed and mature. This indicates how individuals whose sexual energy is activated can begin working with transmutation, so that such energy provides a basis for comprehension.
Divinity is not localized within one particular space, but is space itself, the absolute abstract space wherein any universe is gestated. In this way, the Sufis agree how divinity does not have wife nor child, which is a response to the degeneration of the Christian Trinity. The Father, Divine Mother Mary, and Christ child were taken to represent literal, anthropomorphized figures, which is missing the point regarding the symbology of scriptures. Biblical characters, while having literally lived in the past, more importantly represent principles that apply to our own inner work. As for our imagination and intellect, only those who possess the seed, the sexual essence or synthesis, can awaken genuine intelligence and perception. This is because, as we explained previously, the Qur'an refers to initiates as "possessors of seeds" or "kernels," ulu'l-al-bab, which is often translated as "possessors of intellect." In Sanskrit, intellect is बुद्धि Buddhi, or in Hebrew, גְּבוּרָה Geburah, the Arabic دين Din. Initiates possess the secret of sexual knowledge, the sexual seed, the kernel of life, and are therefore known as intuitive kabbalists, whereas the intellectuals, the intellectual kabbalists, only possess the shells, the appearance of diverse doctrines. Al-Hujwiri continues: Knowledge of Divine Attributes requires you to know that God has attributes existing in Himself, which are not He nor a part of Him, but exist in Him and subsist by Him, e.g. Knowledge, Power, Life, Will, Hearing, Sight, Speech, etc. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
Samael Aun Weor explained that the best atoms belong to חָכְמָה Chokmah as the attributes of a universal consciousness. We can access such infinite states in deep meditation and learn to subsist within them through familiarity and training. While they "are not He nor a part of Him," such divine qualities or states of Being exist within His fundamental nature, which can be realized in us when we are properly prepared.
Al-Hujwiri continues: Knowledge of the Divine Actions is your knowledge that God is the Creator of mankind and of all their actions, that He brought the non-existent universe into being, that He predestines good and evil and creates all that is beneficial and injurious. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
Again, בִּינָה Binah is the creator, the empowerment of all actions, especially our sexual behaviors. If we do not awaken consciousness through the positive use of the sexual force, it becomes channeled through ego, animal desire. However, בִּינָה Binah, divine action, allows for the emergence of uncreated things, the materialization and manifestation of the abstract within the concrete. He provides both good and evil because בִּינָה Binah is beyond good and evil, דעת Daath or معرفة Ma’rifah: the Tree of Knowledge beneath the Logoic Triangle on the Tree of Life.
Here we are using kabbalistic explanations for Sufi doctrine in order to clarify. شَرِيعَة Shari’a: the law, divine instruction, relates to how we act, how we receive the teaching, how we apply it with intelligence, with understanding, so that divinity can be cultivated within a space in our hearts, in our consciousness, so that we can walk the path of wisdom طريقة Tariqa, or חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is wisdom. In this way, we begin to experience and understand, from direct experience, what the attributes of divinity are: compassion, altruism, philanthropy, chastity, patience, humility, faith, wisdom, diligence, perseverance. Then we have حقيقه Haqiqah, the truth, relating to the Essence of divinity: the supreme qualities of the Being. الْحَقُّ Al-Haqq: The Truth. So, we accomplish that by working with معرفة Ma’rifah or דעת Da’ath in Hebrew, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which allows us to become pure, as the Qur’an teaches and emphasizes many times. The Three Ways of Gnosis
Let us relate some more quotes from Abdullah Ansari of Heart, which break down this structure for interpreting conscious experiences, mystical instruction, but also our direct experiences.
The way that leads one through the first gate is envisioning the Creator’s providence (בִּינָה Binah, the sexual force) in the opening and closing of (human) handiwork. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, what is the creator? As I said, الخالق Al-Khaliq relates to בִּינָה Binah, the intelligence of how divinity creates through sexual union with our partner, within alchemy. It is the opening and closing of human handiwork. This relates to knowledge of Being, of unity, of peerlessness.
There are a lot of references in the Qur’an, which refer to the handiwork of humanity that are symbols of divine expression. For example, the Qur’an mentions how God made the ships of the sea, iron, weaponry, vineyards, date palms, which are nourished by rain as signs and symbols for those with understanding, intelligence. These are all representations and symbols of how divinity creates in us, creates the soul through the iron of weaponry, which is willpower, and the ships of the sea. The sea, as I said, is a sexual symbol. We cross the sea of temptation through the great ark, so that we are not drowned in the flood of destructive passions. We perceive divinity's influence in our lives through our handiwork, our sexual path, our discipline, which has to be handled with intelligence, with בִּינָה Binah. We can experience בִּינָה Binah in a sense, in our level, as we are working through transmutation exercises. That is the power and energy that grants us understanding for interpreting what the diverse religious scriptures have to say in their synthesis, in their fundamental root. It also is the way and the gate that leads us towards experiencing who the creator is in us. Let us continue reading: The way that leads through the second gate is the contemplator’s own interior recognition of the wisdom (חָכְמָה Chokmah) of divine Providence within himself. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, these are inner states, inner qualities of the being. Divine providence is the manifestation of compassion, which is חָכְמָה Chokmah, wisdom, which we recognize in ourselves as we learn contemplation, selflessness. If you meditate deeply and penetrate within this sephirah, as Samael Aun Weor and others have mentioned, we can experience being multiple people, multiple individuals, experiencing a state of omniscience in which you are witnessing yourself. For example, there was one Gnostic instructor who mentioned that he perceived, in this sephirah, Krishnamurti teaching a group of students, and he saw himself, with a lot of love, providing beneficial knowledge for humanity. He returned to his body, and he was very alarmed, wondering if he was Krishnamurti, but the truth is that he penetrated in to the sephirah חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is wisdom, omniscience, divine consciousness. Let us continue:
The way that leads through the third gate is the perception of God’s Mercy (כֶּתֶר Kether, the Mercy of Mercies) that recognizes [the worth of] praiseworthy works and overlooks sins. This final and last gate is the field of the gnostics, the alchemy of lovers, and the way of the Elect; it is the way that beautifies the heart, increases one’s joy and expands the feeling of love. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
This also relates to knowledge of charitable works, loving in close intimacy, which is increased as we are intimate with our partner with divine love, with chaste love, with pure love. It beautifies the heart. It is the alchemy of lovers. It is the field of the Gnostics. In this state, we can really receive divine aid.
Subsistence in God
What is subsistence in divinity? We talked briefly about how some of these states can be experienced in meditation, can be mapped by this diagram, can relate to scripture, teachings, and systems of thought, but it would be good to understand what it means to subsist in divinity, which is baqā in Arabic.
As we mentioned, we can have fleeting experiences related to the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth of the Tree of Life, but knowing how to sustain them requires training, knowing how to subsist and to be in those states. What is subsistence specifically? To define it for you, it is: The state or fact of subsisting; the state or fact of existing; the providing of subsistence for support; the means for supporting life, such as a living or livelihood. It is the source from which food and other items needed to exist are obtained. ―Dictionary.com
For the meditator, divinity is our livelihood. It is our nourishment. It is our subsistence, our substance. In philosophy, subsistence relates to existence, specially of an independent entity. It is the quality of having timeless, abstract existence, which again relates to the trinity of the Tree of Life. It is abstract for us. It is very difficult for us to ascertain as concepts, but can be intuitive and known through experience. It is “a mode of existence by which a substance is individualized" (Dictionary.com). It is the meaning of subsistence.
We want to make our consciousness an individuality, as I said. Right now, we are a multiplicity. By integrating our consciousness from its multiple defects and eliminating those faults, we individualize ourselves. We integrate the soul so it can reflect the perfect unity within. There is no other way to return to divinity but to eliminate all that is false. It is the radical axis upon which Gnostic and Sufi teachings are based in their esoteric origin. This is why we talk a lot about the annihilation of the ego, which, of course, is a difficult topic for people, because we are all attached to ourselves. It is a fundamental quality of our experience, that we do not like to perceive our faults, to eliminate and change them, but this is the basis of religion. The Sufis referred to annihilation as fana. Without it, we cannot be within God. From the field of Annihilation the field of Subsistence in God comes. God, the Most High, says, ‘God is the Best, the most long-lasting and Subsisting’ (20:73).
These are reasons why we should really work seriously in ourselves to understand our own faults. Death will arrive. Our means of subsisting in life will vanish. The limits will be broken as we enter into the internal worlds after death and are forced to confront our past. Understandings will be eliminated. What we thought was factual, but was illusory, will have to be addressed.
As it is mentioned in the Qur’an, the unbelievers will be given their account within a book. It is a symbol of retrospecting one’s life after having deceased. History will fade away. Knowledge of the world will be useless. Allusions are transient. The information in our head will be wiped out because we do not remember how we came into this world, where we are going, and where we are now. So, all these things are transient, but God eternally exists, and he exists in His ultimate unity. Unification is the goal. Purification of the consciousness is our objective. 
The Day of Alast
I would like to relate a brief excerpt from the Qur’an, which teaches something very beautiful and profound about our relationship with divinity.
Before the soul had emanated from the Absolute into the manifested universe, in order to begin a specific spiritual work, the Sufis referred to this conversation between the soul and divinity as a type of profound revelatory moment that had to be reinitiated again by the soul that is learning to return to divinity. We emanated from the Absolute into the universe and now we must return to the Tree of Life with knowledge, with wisdom. The moment of communication with divinity, we can say, the moment we left the Absolute, is known by the Sufis as the Day of Alast. It is the covenant of divinity with the soul. When we talk about the Absolute, we pay close attention towards the אין סוף Ain Soph, which Samael Aun Weor clarified in his book Tarot and Kabbalah is our own particular synthesis, an atomic, super-divine force of Being which is like a point of light within the abstract absolute space from which we emanated. It does not have knowledge yet of its full, divine happiness and potential. Therefore, it sends down its knowledge towards the Tree of Life in order to enter מלכות Malkuth and hopefully to return upward and back towards the source. This is the meaning of the verse from Hadith Qudsi: Allah says, “I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created a creation (mankind and the Tree of Life), then made Myself known to them, and they recognized Me.” ―Hadith Qudsi
So, divinity is that beautiful treasure we seek to uncover within our meditations, to know divinity, to recognize divine intelligence, and divine expression within our dreams, within our meditations. The following verses from the Qur’an relate and apply, basically, how the power to witness divinity is born from our seed, our creative sexual matter. We will relate and explain this to you:
And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny and made them bear witness concerning themselves, “Am I not your Lord?” they said, “Yea, we bear witness―lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, “Truly of this we were heedless,” or lest you should say, “[It is] only that our fathers ascribed partners unto God beforehand, and we were their progeny after them. Wilt Thou destroy us for that which the falsifiers have done?” Thus do We expound the signs, that haply they may return. ―The Heights, Al-A’rāf 172-174
Samael Aun Weor mentions that we return to the Absolute by working with alchemy, within a marriage in מלכות Malkuth, and then rising up the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth to the heavens, back towards our אין סוף Ain Soph. It is interesting that this verse is found within Al-A’raf: The Heights within the Qur’an, because we have to return to the heights of this diagram, the superior states.
We bear witness through the sexual seed. This is the fundamental teaching that Samael Aun Weor gave in his books. It is the sexual seed that grants the energy, the capacity, the knowledge, the wisdom by which to access this reality within its multidimensional grandeur and splendor. It is interesting that in the Qur’an, the word progeny translates from ذرية dhurriyyāt, which derives from a root that literally denotes “small particles, atoms, seeds,” which are scattered, and this is very interesting. This word also means “progeny” or “offspring” in many other verses from the Qur’an. These atoms belong to יְסוֹד Yesod specifically, but all the different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth contain particles that are sexual energy in seed. Those forces and potentialities can grant us the capacity to return to divinity. In the path and process by which we return to the Absolute, we create the soul. We create vehicles that relate to each of these lower סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, so that we can have it and experience, know, and understand the forces of those levels of nature, becoming more rarefied and beatified as we ascend. In the end of the work, what is really interesting is that after having perfected ourselves within the ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, we can enter and emerge to return into the אין סוף Ain Soph, but at this point, as Samael Aun Weor mentions in Tarot and Kabbalah, we enter the אין סוף Ain Soph as our unity: that super-atomic point or star, that synthesis of our real Being, the real Being within, and we abandon all vehicles below. They dissolve. What is extracted as a type of synthesis or essence of those lower ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth is a seed, a germ. Those ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth are reduced to a single point, a single atom within each individual sephirah. You have ten, and they enter the Absolute, so that when the soul is united with the perfect plenitude of divinity, whenever the master that is self-realized wants to enter the universe, he can put those seeds, that progeny into activity, in order to manifest anywhere at will. Such a monad or unity, such an אין סוף Ain Soph, has knowledge of its own perfection. Therefore, those seeds have to be gathered. They are scattered in us. This is the meaning of “to bear witness from their loins,” or better said, the Lord took from the children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny, their seeds, those atomic spiritual essences that relate to the Tree of Life, and made them bear witness concerning themselves. You bear witness of reality through divinity, through working with those forces and mastering them, so that in the end, we dissolve, in a form of annihilation, in order to subsist within God, within the אין סוף Ain Soph Paranishpanna, an atomic, super-divine star of our Being that shines with great glory and splendor in the absolute abstract space. This is الله Allah, the root of all Being. In relation to the Tree of Life, if you have studied the books of Samael Aun Weor, he mentions creating solar bodies. We create vehicles through the sexual seed, which are solar, material vehicles or means of expressing the perfect light of divinity within the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth themselves. These solar bodies are known as the Wedding Garment of the soul in Christianity. You also have in Arabic, لباس التقوى libas al-taqwa, the garments of reverence within the Qur’an, the vehicles of the soul, the pure, energetic, divine, spiritual vehicles that we can have within the world of dreams, within the internal dimensions, so that we can navigate in those spheres consciously, with intentionality, with lucidity, with consistency, with continuity. These are vehicles that are created within a marriage. You can study The Perfect Matrimony for more elaboration on those points. Here we are only synthesizing how when you work with the sexual seed, you are using the energy that can grant you witnessing of the truth, as stated in the Qur’an, so that we can return to our divine origin. What is interesting about the solar bodies or these vehicles of the soul and spirit within Islam are mentioned again here: O children of Adam, We have bestowed upon you raiment to conceal your private parts and as adornment. But (the clothing of chastity) the raiment of reverence (libas al-taqwa)―that is best. That is from the signs of Allah that perhaps they will remember. ―Al-A'raf 26
The Arabic words لباس التقوى libas al-taqwa can be translated as “armor” due to the fact that reverence, which is the Arabic تقوى taqwa, comes from the word attaqa, which means “to shield oneself,” and it is a reference to, as mentioned many times in the Qur’an, how one has to defend oneself against the punishment of hell fire, against our animal passions. Likewise, this raiment of chastity guards one’s private parts, which we utilize the creative potential for divine will. Study The Perfect Matrimony for better understanding of alchemy, The Mystery of the Golden Flower, and also Tarot and Kabbalah by Samael Aun Weor. These dynamics are explained very deeply. Here we are relating this synthesis to the Qur’an.
Dissolution within Love
In the end, after you have extracted all the seed essences of all the different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth within you, you dissolve within the Absolute and achieve true, genuine liberation and subsistence.
We end this slide with Abdullah Ansari of Herat’s statements. We talked about the ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, the ten spheres, which can also be ten stations, which can also be signified as 100 stations or levels and degrees of initiation relating to the Tree of Life. Each of the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth is a station in itself. All these one hundred stations are dissolved in the field of love (mahabbat); the field of friendship is the field of love. God, the Most High, describes how He will produce a ‘people whom He loves and who love Him’ (5:54), and ‘Say: if you love God, follow me’ (3:31). But friendship has three stations: it begins with truthfulness, its middle is drunkenness, and it ends in non-existence. Praise be to God, the Beginning (al-awwal) and the End (al-ākhar). ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
The אין סוף Ain Soph, our true divine Being, is real love, limitless being, divine expression and freedom.
We have some poetry from Rumi, I would like to relate to you in terms of these concepts. Now, while we have given explanations of a kabbalistic and abstract type, which can be very challenging and difficult, these principles become understood through deep meditation and a lot of experience. Rumi, the great Sufi poet, mentioned some of the principles relating to love, and really knowing this from factual experience is a matter of conscious awakening and not just mere study of the intellect. I invite you not to receive this knowledge in the intellect but to really grapple with it in your heart. We need to take a lot of time to meditate on its contexts, because this is a result of many years of study, experience, and work in relation to this topic. Rumi says it best: No matter what I say to explain and elucidate Love, shame overcomes me when I come to Love itself.
That Water of Life is our sexual creative force. Therefore, it is the seed, the kernel of love, that opens the mysteries that cannot be divulged by mere speech, because its expositions are beyond the written and spoken word. Often times those meanings become obscured from too much intellectualization.
One other thing that we want to remember or bear in mind is that our actions are really the best predicator of spiritual life. Our words, our concepts, can be very hypnotizing, such as “I hope,” “I promise,” “I will do this,” “I believe in this,” “I wish,” “I have faith in these teachings or concepts,” but without action they are really quite useless. We can live our whole life ascribing partners unto God, unto divinity, hoping that one day we will be spiritual, but the reality is that we fulfill these in us when we enact selfless, compassionate action. It is in this way that we really fulfill شَرِيعَة Shari’a in Arabic, divine law, the divine commandments, and that way we walk the path طريقة Tariqa, which is meditation, entering deeper states of tranquility, insight, and learning to focus and concentrate upon one goal. In this lecture, for this meditation specifically, we learn to enter inside the Being, to penetrate the world of the Being. We can have many words for these concepts, but what is important is the reality, the experience. This is only accomplished through actions, through daily consistent discipline, and by working with the three factors of the revolution of consciousness as we have explained before. 
Practice
For this final lecture in this course, there is a simple practice you can use in order experience what these principles are about.
Adopt a meditation posture and completely relax. Withdraw from the senses and enter a state of equanimity and internal silence. Pray to your Being to grant you illumination, wisdom, and inner experience. While falling asleep, maintain vigilance, مراقبة muraqaba, and attentiveness, concentrating upon the presence of your Innermost to grant you the comprehension you seek. You can utilize one of the following two powerful mantras:
There is the mantra from Prajnaparamita sutra: Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Swaha!
The mantra known in Arabic as هو Hu, which is pronounced with an elongated breath. What is interesting is that Samael Aun Weor related the same mantra, but in the Chinese, Chan Buddhist way, in many of his books, specifically Magic of the Runes. It is the mantra Wu, pronounced like breath, the same sound prolonged like a hurricane:
It is the same mantra, the same teaching. The Sufis pronounce: الله هو Allah-Hu, repeatedly prolonging its vowel sounds, its syllables, and even going inside mentally, pronouncing it internally until falling asleep, entering through astral projections into higher dimensions to experience these for oneself.
At this point in time, I would like to open the floor to questions Questions and Answers
Question: Are the mantras pronounced mentally? Do you do the microcosmic star as well?
Instructor: You can pronounce them physically, and it is good to perform the microcosmic star before you physically sit to practice and to get yourself in the right state of mind, to enter into a state of serenity. You can pronounce the mantras verbally. Focus on the sounds. Let yourself recite these sounds first out loud, then dropping your volume and then enter doing it silently in the mind until you fall asleep, consciously letting that mantra totally engage you. The important thing is that we immerse ourselves within the mantra, in its vibration, internally. This is most powerful and most effective. In that way, like any other mantra from astral projection, you learn to separate from your physical body so that you can access those internal worlds, specifically in a deep, profound, and penetrative way. Question: How do Christian saints attain sainthood since they are mostly celibate? Instructor: So, as with any saint within the various religious traditions, they attained sainthood through a marriage, and of course, that knowledge was not given publicly. It had to be kept secret because it is controversial even now today, with the internet and openly teaching about these things. It is even difficult for people now to appreciate, understand, and to even want to practice and experiment with this science. Now, those saints from different traditions, whether they be from the Christian faith or from the Muslim and Sufi traditions, they all achieved initiation by working with the seed. Some masters had already worked with transmutation and alchemy in previous lives like the present Dalai Lama. He worked with alchemy, tantrism in his past existences. He reached sainthood, which we can say is the fifth initiation of Major Mysteries, the fifth initiation of fire or the peak of sainthood. Now, perfection, prophecy, and mastery are a very deep topic, which one acquires by entering the Venustic initiations as explained in the courses of kabbalah, Tarot and Kabbalah and The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor. We also gave an article called “Who is a Master” where we talked about specifically the different degrees within Sufi mysticism, sainthood, mastery, and prophethood. Saints, we can say, have acquired the fifth initiation of fire, but they do so through alchemy. In the case of the Dalai Lama, he already reached the fifth initiation of fire and was working as a single person in this existence. In order reach mastery, one has to be married, but it does not mean that those saints had done it in that current lifetime in which they became recognized for their sainthood. Question: What is the best way to die in your desire? I do not know if I have comprehended or not. It is my yearning for my Divine Mother to decapitate it. Do I have to break it down to my different desires? Instructor: The best way to die in desire is to comprehend. Our comprehension unfolds in layers, in levels. What we understand today, we will go deeper in tomorrow. This is a moment-to-moment work in which we examine our present state. If you really want to eliminate egos, we have to go deep inside and comprehend the root. If you eliminate the branches, the branches can grow back if you are not careful, but if you go for the roots, you can extract the tree of زقوم Zaqqum, the inverted tree of קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth, the hell realms. If you are not sure if you have comprehended it, or not, it means that you have not comprehended it. If you comprehend it deeply, you understand where the ego originated, how it sustains, how it feeds, how it works, what its food is, what its triggers are, what other egos does it relate to, etc. If you comprehend it a little bit, it is good to ask for elimination, especially, to pray for our Divine Mother to give us strength to resist it, comprehend it, and to not feed and give it what it wants. If you really want lasting, deep change, you have to go into the profundities and that often means we face the very thing that we do not want to face. This could be very difficult and very challenging. It can also help you to break down certain events in your life: visualizing it in retrospection meditation, to perceive what moment you reacted or mistakenly behaved, whether physically, verbally, or just mentally. Whatever you comprehend, you can pray for annihilation, but to understand that to be radically free from those tendencies, our comprehension has to be very robust. Your Divine Mother will give you the challenges and experiences for that ego to come up. If you do not comprehend it, those ordeals are going to keep repeating. It is important to repeat them because if we do not learn our lesson, then we got to go through it again. The important thing is not to exacerbate the karma that is repeating itself in that situation, but to take advantage of it. Learn to suffer consciously. Be patient. Allow ourselves some space and time to grow, not to be shaking the fruit from the Tree of Life out of ambition, but to let it blossom and let the fruit ripe on its own so that it falls on your hand when the moment comes. That is what comprehension is like. When you are meditating and you are not expecting any answer, when you just silence yourself and do not think―not as a blank, foggy, amorphous state, but as a pristine, sharp, lucid clarity―suddenly understanding emerges. It can appear in a form of experience, an intuition, a vision, and that understanding is enough when it is really profound, when you finally have intuited it, discerned what is going on in that situation. You can cut out the root. Remember that the term Samsara in Sanskrit means “cycling.” It is repetition and repeated, egotistical, psychological patterns that we go through again and again. When you really understand the root of it, you cut through it. That is nirvana. It is cessation. It is peace. So, study yourself and be patient. Do not rush. Take the time to understand one ego at a time. Analyze it profoundly, and when you least expect it, the understandings will emerge on their own. Question: How can we gauge our current progress in Gnosis? Instructor: Some people think it is mystical experiences, but that is not a guarantee of real development and change. Instead, you know you are changing and progressing when you no longer repeat the same mistakes. For example, perhaps at work you may have colleagues that are very negative. They gossip a lot. Perhaps they may even speak badly about you, and you might overhear this. Suddenly, you feel rage, anger, despair, fear… different egos that might emerge in the moment. You find that you are progressing when those situations repeat as a form of testing you and you do not psychologically react at all. You do not repeat the same reactions to the situation. You are not selfish there. There is no “self” present in those moments. You can be criticized and condemned by the same people, for as before you felt great eversion and suffering, you do not feel that anymore. You understood those faults in you and what kept producing that pain. Yes, you can have internal experiences in the superior worlds, the astral dimension where divinity will show you the level of your work. To see yourself in a coffin going into the fire in the astral plane is a symbol of eliminating certain egos, being dead psychologically. Those experiences can emerge and give us some gage and guidance, which is really beautiful, but also you find that you are not repeating the same mechanical behaviors. You are more conscious, and you are not reacting with the same egos. In fact, you are responding with patience and love like the example that I provided. It is how we respond to life, not react. That is a strong measurement of what we are doing. Question: What is the purpose of the circle movement that we see in the Sufi dances? Or what is its significance in relation to meditation? Instructor: We have a very similar practice within gnosis. We call it the Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation, in which we spin from left to right in order to activate certain latent psychological, energetic centers known as chakras. The Sufis do not refer to them in the Hindu sense, but they refer to it as اللطائف الستة Lata’if-e-Sitta, which are relating to certain organs of perception within Sufi psychology. They are energetic centers that allow for deeply experiencing our internal worlds. Part of the spinning process is to activate those centers, those forces in a significant and dynamic way. We can perform those dances, which are very sacred and beautiful. They represent and replicate the movement of the planets and spheres around the sun as a form of divine love, divine conscious realization. When we perform the sacred rites of rejuvenation, we also spin left to right, the same direction as we are turning a steering wheel in front of us, in order to perform certain spiritual works. There are different ways we can approach this practice, such as comprehending egos, activating chakras, healing sick organs, praying for divine assistance, and the Sufi dances parallel this as well. They are deeply integrated. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for attending this course. I hope you enjoy and study it deeply and apply it to your life. We wish you many blessings. Inverential Peace! Or as we say in Sufism: ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ As-salamu Alaykum! 
Spiritual retreat holds a very special place within every single tradition of meditation, whether in Sufism through the lodges, khanqahs or khaniqahs, monasteries within the Christian tradition, the temples of the Jews, the Buddhists, the Hindus. Meditation retreat signifies the abandonment of the world, to dedicate more time, more effort, more energy, more seriousness, more study, to the spiritual path that leads to the liberation of the soul.
Retreats are a wonderful reprieve. They allow us to abandon the hustle and bustle, the chaos of our modern society, the world. While this was true, even in the times of the prophets, it is even more pertinent today in our modern world through the advent of the internet, smartphones, social media, Facebook, exponentially improving technology. This is made life in the West (and it is now spreading into the East) even more accelerated, hyperactive―we could say―distracted from, really, the point of life, the purpose of existence. In our world, we believe that our bank account, our job, our career, our television shows, our entertainment, our media, constitute the reality of who we are and what is of value. Obviously, if we are studying meditation and spirituality, we understand that this type of lifestyle has flaws. In essence, it is superficial. There is not much depth in a life of games, of sitcoms, of jobs that do not really fulfill our deepest sentiments, our greatest uneasiness and longing. Because people do not like to introspect, to be serious, to analyze the causes of suffering inside, people look to the external world for their panacea, their healing, their drug. In the history of humanity, it is never been more difficult to really develop a spiritual life than today, because there has been a fundamental shift in the psychology, the pace, the momentum of modern living. Gnosis or Sufism, Buddhism, Judaism, the meditative traditions, the contemplative sciences, teach us that we need to slow down. Our life is hectic. We have many responsibilities and duties, obligations in life, and we are constantly running around pulled in so many directions that, really, it is very difficult to get a hold of and a grasp on our existence, with the Essence, with the consciousness, which knows how to live life intensely, with rectitude and with love for humanity. The Essence is the most beautiful part of us that can really blossom into a profound, deep, penetrative wisdom. Our Essence knows how to live fully without distraction, to be aware, to be attentive. But as we mentioned in the previous lecture, to do that we have to renounce a lot of superfluous activities, things that over engage and distract the mind. Our culture is very much hypnotizing, seductive, manipulative. It is based upon drawing and stealing our energy into avenues that really are a dead end. This is why every spiritual tradition emphasizes so much the need for retreat, to leave behind all the temptations, all the seductions, all the illusions of society, the world, even if but for a very brief time. This is so that we can really dedicate our efforts to really create the soul, enliven it, to empower it. While it is been very difficult to practice retreat due to this pandemic, we can, if so willing, fulfill our own meditation retreat in our home. It really does not involve much. We are going to provide you some parameters, some guidelines, and some suggestions that can help you if you are able and willing to perform retreat, and hopefully if this pandemic clears, sooner rather than later, we would love to have another retreat as provided on our websites, so that we can really cultivate spiritual force in our efforts and practices, to awaken the consciousness. But of course, if this is not possible, we still have the exercises and the teachings. We can gain a lot of inspiration, a lot of profound changes by applying the principles of meditation and of retreat, and so we are going to outline what some of those are according to the Sufi tradition, the Gnostic traditions. The Purpose of Retreat
Why emphasize retreat in this course? It is because life wants to swallow us alive. We have obligations. We have duties, responsibilities, work events, family gatherings, engagements that really lull us to sleep, which, while a necessary part of living in society, tend to put us on autopilot. They also prevent us from really deepening our awareness of the present, our quest of the consciousness to reach the divine.
It is important that we really feed that spark of inquietude in the heart, that dissatisfaction, that uneasiness we feel in our moment-to-moment life in relation to a problem, in relation to our trajectory―perhaps a career change, our existence, our family, our marriage. We feel a hunch in our core being that something must change. This is really the essence of why we begin meditation and spirituality. It is also the reason why we enter retreat, because we need to comprehend something more. It is the intuitions of the soul, the language of divinity, the intimate silence of our inner God. We receive that impulse through our heart, through hunches, and because that is usually very weakened in us, or better said, we feel that flame in the heart and yet we have so many distractions outside of us, that candle flame tends to get snuffed out. But again, and again, if we are really persistent in this path, we find that we continue to feel that inquietude, that yearning for something more. This is why Samael Aun Weor stated in The Great Rebellion in the chapter called “Inquietudes”: Trivialities and nonsense, while having no particular transcendence, still have the power at any given moment to extinguish that first spiritual disquietude, that intimate longing, that insignificant spark of light, that hunch which unsettles us for a moment without our knowing why.
Retreats really gives strength when we are with like-minded people. When we practice retreat, when we meet other aspirants of this teaching who are really sincere and are working effectively in themselves, we gain strength for our own path.
Retreat is like a chorus in a musical performance. The instructors are the conductor. The composer is the guru of our tradition: Samael Aun Weor. His music are the writings and teachings that we have, and the mighty chorus, that resounds like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, is the voices of the initiates who work together in harmony, who create that synthesis, that profound alchemy in which forces mix, commune, and work like a conduit, in order to receive divine aid at a greater magnitude, profundity, impact. Also, it is important that when we have retreats, we can study some essential principles that help us to take advantage of the small time that we have. Obviously in our past retreats we only have so much time, and really by the time people get used to the exercises and the lectures and the practices and are really ready to go deeper, it is already time to leave. So what's important is that we gain knowledge and inspiration, but also we go home into the world, back to society, in order to practice these principles, deeply, with greater momentum, so that whatever hardships we face, we conquer them with intelligence and wisdom. While renunciation teaches the student to abandon psychological attachments to life, retreat is the method and the medium for perfecting and enlivening the flames of our spiritual longing. This is why Al-Junayd stated the following: Sufism is sitting for a few moments without cares and worries with God. ―Junayd Principles of Retreat and Seclusion
Let us examine the principles of retreat and seclusion:
Khalwah, retreat, belongs to the purified, while uzlah, withdrawal from the world, marks the people of union. The seeker needs to withdraw from his own kind in the beginning stages. Then, in the last stages, he needs to retreat in order to confirm himself in intimacy with God. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Retreat is a means of purifying the Essence. For those of you who have attended Gnostic retreats, we have many exercises to work with energy, to work with concentration, to work with imagination. These are our faculties that we develop in ourselves so that we can gain knowledge of the causes of our suffering, and so that we can gain intimate wisdom, experiential knowledge of our Innermost Being. As beginners, we work to develop purity, level by level, degree by degree, and it is important that if we have the time and opportunity, that we make the sacrifice in order to meet others, to learn from others, to share our own knowledge, our experiences, because this is a very beneficial influence upon the psyche. It can really give us a lot of strength to help us understand what purity is.
In the beginning of Sufism, many initiates practice retreat, but also the great masters, the prophets, learn to withdraw from the world. These are the people of union―very high levels of initiates. And while it is easy to read this verse as something physical, in a profound sense, as we have been reiterating again and again in relation to hermetic silence, this has to do more with a psychological separation, a distance from oneself with the illusions of the world. The masters of meditation prepare for union with divinity through the heights of initiation. Who are examples of the masters of union? What does that involve? Prophet Muhammad was in the habit of traveling to جَبَل ٱلنُّوْر Jabal al-Nur, the “mountain of light” in Arabic, where he would perform meditation retreat. He would leave for extended periods of time in order to really deeply practice introspection. While this is a physical and a literal history, which is very commonly known in Islamic circles, Sufi circles, more importantly for us, this is a symbolic teaching. How do we climb the mountain of light: جَبَل ٱلنُّوْر Jabal Nur (because in Arabic, نور nur means “light,” or, the Hebrew אור aur)? And what is that light? It is cognizance. It is awakened perception within the superior worlds. It is intelligence. It is the awakening of the consciousness. It is referenced many times how Prophet Muhammad was meditating on جَبَل ٱلنُّوْر Jabal Nur when he received his first teaching from the Angel Gabriel. Gabriel spoke to him in what we can say is an internal experience, an astral, a prophetic, superior experience of the consciousness. The Angel Gabriel taught Prophet Muhammad the Qur’an. If you know the tradition of Islam, Prophet Mohammad was reportedly illiterate. He didn't know how to read and write Arabic, but historically there are some scholars who state that this is inaccurate, primarily because Prophet Muhammad was a merchant, and to make trade deals, he would need to know how to read and write. But symbolically for us, what does it mean that the Prophet was illiterate? This is a very famous teaching within Islam, how an illiterate man became an illuminated initiate who was able to provide the miracle of the Qur’an القرآن, that beautiful scripture, “The Recitation” in Arabic. What is interesting is that in a spiritual sense, what this represents for us, is that we are all illiterate. We do not have the principles of divinity inscribed within our soul, which is represented through Kabbalah, the science of numerology, of numbers, of the Hebrew, but also the Arabic letters, because Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages that share the same roots. They have the same meanings, esoterically speaking, archetypically speaking. 
Prophet Muhammad was able to speak the Qur’an as a miracle, to recite the teachings of divinity within him. But he only did that because he climbed the mountain of light. This is a symbol of what we call initiation, of the mystical, internal Gnostic work. To climb a mountain in the astral plane signifies that we are entering initiation, degrees, higher levels of consciousness. But of course, how does one achieve this?
This is beautifully allegorized in many of the names of this story. For example the word nur spelled in Arabic: ن nun, و waw, ر ra. Or, נ nun, ו vav, ר reish in Hebrew. It is a beautiful teaching, how the light of our consciousness emerges from נ nun. In Arabic and in Hebrew, this letter signifies a fish. Or better said, in Aramaic, the word nun is a “fish”: a symbol of the sperm and ovum within our sexual creative waters. That is where the light emerges. When you conserve that energy and transform it, you raise it up the mountain of your spinal column so that it illuminates your head. You can receive wisdom from Gabriel, or in Arabic, جِبْرِيل Jibril.
In the Nordic language, the runes, which have a profound relationship to these names, you find within the named גַבְרִיאֵל Gabriel, Gibur-ra-el. The Rune Gibor is a swastika, a symbol of a cross in motion that unfortunately was misappropriated by some very mistaken people during World War II and before. That is a symbol of the creative sexual power that circulates within the initiate as they are learning to work with these exercises: mantras, prayer, runes, sacred rites for rejuvenation, imagination exercises, concentration exercises, retrospection meditation―many practices that we use in this tradition and on our retreats in order to develop the soul.
Symbolically speaking, we receive the Word, the Verb, the divine, the Qur’an, the recitation, the perfect expression of God in us, when we learn to raise the light from our sexual organs up to our head. That is how we climb the mountain. That is how we overcome adversities, because if you study this symbol and this extended metaphor deeply, you find that climbing a mountain is very difficult, especially when it is very high―and the mountain of initiation is extremely high, very arduous, very difficult. But we achieve those heights when we are working with energy, with chastity, with introspection, with visualization, with serenity, with the Essence. Prophet Muhammad was an alchemist. He knew the science of الخيمياء Alchemy: Allah-Kemia. He was married to his first wife Khadijah, whom he worked with sexual magic, his priestess, so that he could raise that light up his spine in order to receive what we call the Venustic Initiation within our tradition. He received the Intimate Christ in Gnostic terms. Divinity entered in his soul and it is symbolized by the Annunciation of Gabriel: how Gibur-Ra-El, the power of the divine, or we could say the Holy Spirit in Christian terms, inflamed his consciousness. It is the force of ? Ra, the solar fire within Egyptian mysticism and אל El in Hebrew, the Spirit, the Innermost, the Merciful: ٱلرَّحِيمِ al-Rahim. We can all receive our own wisdom, our own particular Verb, when we climb the mountain of initiation, which is something inside, internal. We have to remember that in the Muslim mythology, the Muslim narrative, Prophet Muhammad was commanded by Gabriel to recite and he said, “I cannot.” Gabriel said again, “Recite!” And Prophet Muhammad replied again, “I cannot. I do not know how.” And finally a third time, “Recite!” And the Prophet said, "What shall I say my Lord? What shall I recite?" This is a beautiful teaching of the three brains. We have an intellectual brain, an emotional brain, and a motor-instinctive-sexual brain. We may be familiar with the story of Peter denying Christ. It is very difficult to really develop these forces in ourselves consistently, practically, in order to really affirm divinity in ourselves. The mind fights, the heart fights, but in the third brain, the brain of action, if we are transmuting the sexual energy, working upon جَبَل ٱلنُّوْر Jabal al-Nur, the mountain of light, we achieve the synthesis and the real work of the path. It is how we learn to recite the Word of God, which is to really reflect the Spirit inside. Beautiful symbology, alchemical-Kabbalistic wisdom. Retreats are helpful for deepening this knowledge, for learning the different meditative traditions, but also really defining ourselves, really practicing deeply. Traditionally, many schools of Buddhism and many Sufis would abandon the world for months or even years. In our retreats, we spend a week. We have sometimes done more. The important thing is whatever time we can dedicate, the deeper our results will be, obviously. Very beautiful practice. It is for masters. It is for beginning disciples. It is for all students who really wish to deepen their knowledge. But of course, retreat as we've said, is a way to really confirm our intimacy with divinity. Intentions for Retreat
When we enter retreat, it is important to really reflect on our intentions. Many misconceptions about retreat exist. People often want to get away from the world. We want to avoid the negativity of our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, our spouse, or whomever. While true, we really carry the seeds of discord within our ego. Let us read a quote in relation to this from Al-Qushayri's Principles of Sufism:
If the servant chooses to withdraw, his intention must be to separate himself from people so that they will be safe from his evil― he must not be looking to protect himself from their evil. For the first of these attitudes come from thinking little of one’s own ego, while the second comes from making oneself out to be better than other people. A person who thinks little of himself is humble, while a person who sees himself as better than anybody else is arrogant. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So it is arrogant to think that we have to protect ourselves from the evils of other people as if we are saints, like we are martyrs, people who should not dirty their hands in society.
So what does it mean to be humble? To really think little of ourselves. To realize that with the ego alive, we are dangerous, negative, people, and learning to associate with other spiritually like-minded people can give us humility. It can give us faith, because we learn from the experiences of others. We share. We break bread together. We study together. We inspire one another, and we receive knowledge of a superior type, because there is a lot of energy being channeled there if the practitioners are really serious, are really dedicated, because everyone is like a part of a concert, really. Everyone has their own instruments that they play, and when they play in harmony, they create a beautiful, profound wisdom. So, let's also remember that we should enter retreat because we want to become better people, not because we want to avoid others. The reality is that to think in this way is to proceed mistakenly. We have to learn how to protect other people from our own ego. That is why we enter retreat. We enter retreat because we want to sacrifice better for humanity. We want to become better suited for our Being, to purify ourselves so that we can prevent our own lower, carnal soul, nafs al-ammara, “the soul that inclines to evil,” from inflicting damage, from influencing others negatively. The Rules of Retreat
So, retreat has basic rules. Let's read some.
One of the rules of withdrawal is that whoever goes into seclusion must acquire the knowledge that makes his commitment to unity (tawhid) firm, so that satan cannot seduce him through the imagination. Then he should acquire enough knowledge of the divine law that he is able to fulfill his religious duties so that his undertaking maybe built on definite and sure foundations. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
The doctrine of unity is central to Islam. It is very profound, subtle, and sophisticated, and beautiful. This is a topic that is very misunderstood and confused by theologians and skeptics alike.
What is unity? In a perfect sense, the Being is unity. Our ego is a multiplicity. We know from Gnosis that our consciousness is trapped in multiple, conflicting, competing, desires. We have to free the consciousness and liberate it from desire, from the ego, so that it can reunite with divinity when it is pure. The quality of the Essence is very unique and is a very specific flavor that can only be experienced again and again through repeated trial and error. We are not going to be perfect in learning how to discriminate our true nature from our false nature, because our desires are many, vast, and are constantly competing and fighting to steal our energy. The Essence is beautiful action, as we have emphasized again and again. It has infinite virtuous qualities, like altruism, compassion, conscious love, chastity, happiness for others, inspiration, motivation, diligence, patience, endurance of suffering and ordeals, sacrifice for others at one's own expense, one's own pride, humility. And also, the severity and justice of the consciousness that knows how to weigh a situation with mercy and equilibrium, with splendor. There are infinite virtuous qualities, but they are all united by a single thread which is the continuity of perception, of consciousness. This is very different from our desires, from our ego. Our ego in its multiplicity, is a fracturing, a dissonance, a sour taste within the mind. If we are really dedicating ourselves to separating from the ego, we begin to see more and more how egotistical states are very problematic. They produce problems. This is the multiplicity of the mind that is the obstacle and the enemy, and why we enter retreat, primarily because the ego in itself, again, conditions our potential. In Islam, the ego and its multiplicity are the polytheists mentioned in the Qur’an. Or, الْكافِرُون al-Kafirun, the unbelievers, the infidels. All of our cravings, aversions, fears, wants, desires, etc., do not obey or believe in the will of divinity in us. So how do we understand this dynamic? We may read and learn and study how altruism, how giving is a very profound virtue, and yet, when we have the opportunity to do so, we examine our mind and we find that we don't want to donate, perhaps in a certain situation, to give of our time and energy. We feel resistance. These are the unbelievers. Or, we learn about compassion, empathy, conscious love in a situation in which someone is really criticizing us. We start to see that constant fluctuation and dynamic of anger, of resentment, of hatred, of pride, with all of its cacophony of thoughts and desires and impulses pulling in multiple directions. When you observe that in yourself, you really understand that we don't have any unitary will. We may direct our efforts to promoting and fulfilling these precepts, and yet we find that our desires fight against us. This means that we are not really spiritual people. It means that we are infidels, because we have so much desire within, conditioning, egos, نَفْس nafs in Arabic. If you really want to be sincere, we have to learn and understand what unity is. When you taste it, you will know it. It is a very clear, cognizant, vivid intense state of clarity, of perception, of altruism, of giving. It is intuitive action. It is right action. It dissipates discord. It brings harmony within situations and conflicts. It knows how to understand the solution to a difficult issue through the heart, not the intellect, not through debating or theorizing or intellectualizing what one must do, but simply knowing it and acting for the welfare of others. Unity is a profound teaching. It is really the heights of realization. There are levels to understanding what unity is, the integration of the soul. But in order to really understand that particular state and quality on a consistent, experiential basis, we learn to work with the practices of our tradition, specifically by having knowledge of the divine law. This is the ethical conduct of the initiates, but also our religious duties, which is our exercises: the practices that we fulfill, such as works with concentration, serenity, or imagination. It would seem that the Sufis are speaking badly about imagination, that Satan seduces one through visualization, because we have to remember that imagination is dual. It can be conditioned or it can be liberated. It could be negative or it could be positive, liberated, free. Our desires project through imagery onto the senses, seeking to fulfill their desires. But visualization practice, working with positive imagination: the ability to hold in one's concentration with vivid intensity, non-physical imagery is an essential skill we learn to master, because that quality of consciousness allows us to access the internal worlds. This capacity to perceive non-physical imagery has to be done at will, not mechanically, not through associative thinking or daydreaming, mind-wandering, in which we have no control over what we see. The imagination that we speak of is very specific. By learning those practices we could really go deep in our work. Ethical Conduct
So as we have emphasized again and again, the practical foundations of meditation include shari'a, ethical conduct. This is something that we can learn. We read about it. We listen to lectures. We read scriptures. We do book studies. We talk about the teachings. We learn them. We gain an intellectual understanding and appreciation of the different precepts of religion as we have emphasized again and again, such as non-violence, non-stealing, sexual purity, charity, pilgrimage, such as in the Muslim faith.
There are even five pillars within Islam that constitute the divine law, practices that can help develop our potential, our compassion, our ethics, our kindness. This is different in different religions, but they all share the same root, which is how to work with liberated consciousness, how to curtail negative behaviors so that we don't infect our heart, our conscience. We don't make ourselves sick, spiritually, because people who are filled with hate, who live within an atmosphere of wrath, are very depleted of energy, and they suffer incredibly. They make others suffer, which is worse. Silence and Insight
So divine law helps to curtail all of that. This is so that we can enter silence or samt, equanimity, serenity. When you learn to act ethically with precepts, you calm your mind, naturally. Through the work of self-observation and learning to respond to life consciously, to transform the impressions of life as they enter our consciousness, our mind naturally begins to settle, to become serene, to become calm. But this only happens when we separate from the mind. We look at it for what it is. We don't try to label anything we see, to justify it, or to hide from it. Simply look. Perceive what is in your heart, your three brains, your thoughts, your feelings, your will. This is how we gain insight, firasah in Arabic. This is clear perception. This is the faculty of imagination, visualization. It is the ability to see not with physical eyes, but with psychological and spiritual senses.
If I tell you to imagine an apple, you can see it. It appears in your mind. That is visualization. Now, insight or imagination, comprehension born from seeing, occurs when we learn to develop that capacity intentionally, not mechanically by hearing about some associative word like an apple and then you see it in your mind, but instead learning to cultivate the capacity to perceive with imagination, with different exercises, such as taking a candle, imagining the flame. Observe it. Look at the colors and the fluctuation of the flame, the wax, and then imagine it with clarity, in detail. You can only learn silence and insight through practice. You can learn about the concepts, but it won't have any substance unless you have experienced it. Witnessing Unity
When you really develop silence and insight, serenity, and visualization or, concentration and imagination, the ability to focus serenely and to perceive it clearly in your consciousness, that is how you witness unity. This is التوحيد al-tawhid. This is witnessing the truth. This is samadhi, ecstasy, mystical experience. This is the unity and integrity of the soul, the integration of the consciousness. Literally, it is when the soul abandons illusion, the ego, even if for a few moments, in different levels of nature.
This can occur physically, but also in the internal planes, in the Tree of Life, in the different dimensions. We could be sitting to meditate and suddenly we start perceiving an experience, not with physical senses, but with the consciousness, in which we receive symbols and messages and understandings and dramas that we are both witness and spectator. We receive insight, or better said, symbols through our Being, through living dramas, allegories, that have to be interpreted with the consciousness.
When we learn to understand these messages, we really march in the path towards unity, unifying our consciousness. We do so through one-pointed will. We learn not to be distracted. Whatever you sit to practice meditation upon, whatever you focus your concentration on, don't think of other things. Don't get distracted. Renounce distractions, whether they are physical, energetic, through sensations or lights and sounds and mystical experiences, things that are really captivating and interesting but really are just temporary. Let them go. Don't be fascinated by what you perceive. Also, do not be hypnotized by emotions, especially negative emotions, because we have a lot of that. We have to renounce negative feeling, but also the churning of thought, intellect. And by concentrating our willpower, and letting it rest in equanimity, with meditative equipoise, we can receive the light of unity. This is how you proclaim the Shahadah, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad” or any Prophet “is the Messenger of Allah,” the divine. So unity is something that occurs in levels. That perfect unity of the Being has many qualities and virtues. It is infinite. We study the Tree of Life to understand all those dynamics in detail, the relationships between those principles, the ten sephiroth, the lower seven bodies, the trinities. Everything is a unity that expresses a multiplicity. So therefore, the bridge between monotheism and polytheism should be understood, because sadly, the exoteric public doctrine of Islam rejects many religions because they are interpreted to be polytheist. Many of them do not understand what Kabbalah is, that it is a map and structure the soul, the unity of God, how divinity expresses in levels. Or as the Qur’an teaches, “Light upon light!” (24:35)―level upon level of being. There are more rarefied levels of being and more manifest, concrete levels of being. So, the Being is a unit, is perfected, is divine. We are multiplicity because we have egos. We are polytheists, whether we consider ourselves Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or whatever, Gnostic. We are infidels because we have the ego. We are fractured. We have no integrity, no unity of will. We have a multiplicity of wills. So, comprehend what unity is. Learn about that state of being, the perfection of your Innermost through experiences. Through that vision of the consciousness, you can see that really, in the depths of all traditions. They are all the same. They teach the same principles. Those are different archetypes and qualities of divinity expressed amongst the cultures and religions of the world. They all share the same roots. The Essence of Seclusion
It is also important to remember that the essence of seclusion is more than just leaving society behind. It is an internal psychological work. It means to hermetically seal our energy.
People who waste energy never awaken. The question is, how do we waste energy? Let us seriously investigate our life. What types of activities drain us? What relationships, events, cyclical occurrences, behaviors, mechanical habits, tend to take away our vitality, our ability to really dedicate to spiritual practice? We have to learn to answer that question, personally, through reflection. The question also becomes: how do we learn to seal ourselves, our psyche, from losing energy, whether it be mental, emotional, sexual, especially? How do we lose energy? How do we save energy? Let's examine some quotes that can help us understand this, from Al-Qushayri's Principles of Sufism: Withdrawing from the world does not mean going away from inhabited places. The essence of seclusion is to isolate blameworthy traits in order to substitute the divine names for them. Thus it was asked, "Who is the gnostic (arif)?" and they replied, "A creature distinguished," that is, someone who appears to be together with people, but is inwardly separated from them. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Separation is key. Do not be attached to your actions, to your desires, to what anger wants, to what vanity desires, to what greed clutches on to. Non-attachment does not mean dysphoria, in which we don't have a sense of orientation or self, meaning: one is disassociated in a clouded obscured, amorphous state. That is not what we are talking about.
Non-attachment is clarity. It is vivid attention. It is expansive awareness. It is the identity of our Essence with its virtuous qualities, the ability to act ethically with precision and with compassion. That is non-attachment. We give. We act for the benefit of others, not being attached to what may happen. We give from the qualities and the treasures of our heart. This is how we save energy. This is how we transmute energy. You take the sexual energy; you conserve it. But also we have to learn how to direct it with the Essence. When you empower your consciousness through pranayama and runes, especially alchemy, you learn to direct that force in an intelligent way. But if we do not save energy, we invest ourselves within desire, within nafs. We have to separate from the ego in order to see it. This is what it means “to substitute blameworthy traits with divine names.” In Hebrew, we have a name called hashim, which relates to השם Hashem, “the names,” and you find this even in Arabic have the same pronunciation even. Hashim, Samael Aun Weor mentions, are the igneous particles of the consciousness, the energies of the psyche. When we perceive and not act upon negative states, egos, we learn to transform hashim within us, the names, the particles of the soul, which usually are trapped in ego, in desire. 
So in Muslim mysticism, they emphasize that there are beautiful names of Allah, and this can be graphed in different ways upon the Tree of Life, which we have mentioned some correlations before, specifically such as with ٱلرَّحِيمِ Al-Rahim, the Merciful, which is Chesed, the Spirit of Kabbalah. The Compassionate, الرحمان Al-Rahman, can relate to Chokmah, Wisdom.
These divine names relate to principles and forces in us that we have to understand. When we learn to not invest ourselves within desire, we learn to substitute blameworthy traits with the divine names, with the hashim, the forces of God, so that you are cultivating a space in yourself that allows for meditation to exist, because when the mind is chaotic, you cannot meditate. If you are burning with hatred all day and you sit down to introspect, you are not going to attain anything. Instead, curtail your negative habits. Seclude your psyche from attachments. The seclusion that we seek is internal. That is the beginning. Inner Seclusion and Intimacy with God
Real seclusion, retreat, is internal. It is dependent upon our level of being. Our heart has to be secluded. It has to be separate from any ego, any naf, any desire. You cannot look to externals to know the truth, whether from teachers, from lectures, from scriptures even, from books, but from your own consciousness. That is how we really develop, and that is how seclusion, retreat, becomes fruitful, is with this basis, with hermetic sealing, with hermetic silence.
Let's read some quotes from Revelation of the Mystery, Kashf al-Mahjub by Al-Hujwiri that relate to these principles. It is related that [Al-Qarani] said, "Safety lies in solitude," because the heart of the solitary is free from thought of ‘other,’ and in no circumstances does he hope for anything from mankind. Let none imagine, however, that solitude (wahdat) merely consists in living alone. So long as the Devil associates with a man’s heart, and sensual passion holds sway in his breast, and any thought of this world or the next occurs to him in such a way as to make him conscious of mankind, he is not truly in solitude; since it is all one whether he takes pleasure in the thing itself or in the thought of it. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
So we can be in retreat but occupied mentally with other things. We have to avoid associating anything with Allah.
It is a very beautiful teaching with Islam. The Qur’an teaches we should not associate with anything other than God, but how do we associate with anything other than divinity? That is when we are distracted. Remember that Al-Wasiti said, "The greatest form of worship is watchfulness in the moments," primarily because we don't learn to associate with anything other than Him. Meaning, don't get lost in thought, with thinking. Do not be distracted. Instead, enter silence, concentrated. Al-Hujwiri continues: Accordingly, the true solitary is not disturbed by society, but he who is preoccupied seeks in vain to acquire freedom from thought by secluding himself. In order to be cut off from mankind one must become intimate with God, and those who have become intimate with God are not hurt by intercourse with mankind. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
So we can be solitary or unitary in our consciousness but involved in the world. We cannot enter real retreat if our mind is always preoccupied with other things, and where we are at or what we are doing.
Intimacy with God occurs in levels. We gain intimacy with divinity in accordance with our level of being, through our efforts, our practices. These are different experiences we can have and levels upon the Tree of Life. These are levels of remembrance, levels of witnessing, whether in dreams or in meditation. Two Kinds of Seclusion
There are some points emphasized by Ibn ‘Arabi in The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed which reiterate the points we have made. There are two types of seclusion: internal and external. These are both very valuable to know and it is important to know the relationship between them. Ibn ‘Arabi states:
Seclusion leads to silence for man, since one who withdraws from human company has no-one to talk to, and that naturally leads to silence of the tongue. There are two kinds of seclusion: firstly, the seclusion of the aspirants (murīdūn), which consists of not associating physically with others; and secondly, the seclusion of the verifiers (muhaqqiqūn), which consists of having no contact with created things in one’s heart: their hearts have no room for anything other than the knowledge of God, exalted is He, which is the witness of the Truth in the heart that results from contemplation (mushāhada). ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So the seclusion of the aspirants has to do with not being around a lot of people. It is even good on retreats to practice silence physically. On some of our retreats, but also in many others that I have attended amongst different Gnostic groups, have beautifully implemented silence of the tongue. So we could be surrounded by other students or teachers in this tradition eating and dining with people, but not talking physically.
Of course, this is very difficult because, obviously, when you are with a group of Gnostics, you want to share and learn and commune with your brothers and sisters in this path, but there is something very valuable about learning not to talk physically. You begin to understand and perceive in yourself your different egos, which want to socialize or be funny or be impressive, to look really spiritual amongst others, to really show off. These are things that we can see in ourselves if we practice this, and this is the value of physical silence, the seclusion of the aspirants. But what is even more beautiful than that is the seclusion of the verifiers (muhaqqiqūn). What does it mean to verify? It means to know from experience those mystical states in which we don't have any contact with creative things in our heart. Our heart is not focused on anything else but their quality of remembrance of the Being. There is no other room except knowledge of God, and this results from mushahada, which means “contemplation, witnessing, meditation.” Examine your heart when you sit to practice. Be sincere. Is your mind thinking of other things? Is your heart churning with emotion? Is your impulse to do anything else but meditate? Are you preoccupied with anything other than the knowledge of your Being? It is something only you can evaluate. Only you can really know. Three Motives for Seclusion
In synthesis, Ibn ‘Arabi states that there are three motives for seclusion. Let's examine these in depth:
The people of seclusion have three motives: (1) the fear of the evil of other people affecting oneself; (2) the fear of one’s own evil affecting others―this is a higher perception than the first, as in the first case one thinks badly of others, while in the second one thinks badly of oneself, and thinking badly of oneself is better since you are more knowledgeable of yourself… ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
Al-Hujwiri made the same points that Ibn ‘Arabi is emphasizing. This is very common knowledge among Sufis.
(3) the preference for the company of the Master from the Sublime Assembly―the most elevated of men is one who parts from himself out of preference for the company of his Lord. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
Seek company of the divine prophets through your experiences. Specifically, learn to project into the astral plane. Awaken your consciousness from dreams. Learn to consult with your inner God, who has all the knowledge that you need to rectify any issue.
Divinity is wise. We can go upon the [Glorian Publishing] forum and ask for help for certain issues. Really, the most that instructors can do is really teach how to practice, primarily so that people learn to become independent. Learn how to receive help inside, to seek company of God. Divinity is a much more profound intelligence and wisdom, really, than any physical person can provide, so learn to practically experience this for yourself. Verify for yourself through dream yoga. One who prefers seclusion to the company of others prefers his Lord to that which is other than Him. And no-one can know what gifts and mysteries God showers upon the one who prefers his Lord. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So what are these gifts? These are samadhis, dream experiences, astral consciousness, wisdom from the mental world, from the Buddhic world, from the Nirvanic worlds, from the heavenly world, the جنّة Jannah, the superior dimensions. No one could really measure their infinite profundity, their expansiveness.
Seclusion never happens in the heart unless the heart feels an estrangement from that which one is separating from, and an intimacy with the One with whom one is secluding oneself, which is what drives one into seclusion. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So the question is, what is our قِبْلَة qiblah?
We have mentioned before that in mosques, they have a niche within the walls pointing towards the Middle East, towards Mecca, towards the Kaaba, the holy stone. One prays in that direction, قِبْلَة qiblah, when one is in deep prayer within the tradition of Islam.
Esoterically speaking, قِبْلَة qiblah has to do with your concentration. Upon what do you concentrate? What is the quality of your concentration? Is it sustained for long periods of time, or is it spotty? Sometimes attentive, sometimes not? Are there more degrees of attention or less degrees? Are we more inattentive than we are attentive? قِبْلَة qiblah really has to do with the quality of our concentration in our prayer. The more sincere we are and analyzing our level of being and focusing on the object of our concentration, of our dedication, will determine what we are focused on, will determine our trajectory. For most people their قِبْلَة qiblah is in television, movies, TV shows, violence, extortion, crime, etc. Therefore, what is our قِبْلَة qiblah? What is our motive? What is our center of gravity? Because Samael Aun Weor mentions that we have a psychological center of gravity, which is typically in the ego. We have to develop a permanent center of gravity within the Essence. This is our قِبْلَة qiblah. So, examine that. Meditate on that. What do you more focused on in life? What do you contemplate more than other things? What is your focus, whether physically or in your mental states, especially? Examine the relationship. Inner Silence
What is real silence?
Spiritual retreats have often been silent with the exception of instructions and directions during meditation. This helps us to curtail negative internal chatter, to force the practitioner to be aware of oneself in relationship with the world or with others. Many people enter retreat and while silent with the tongue, continue to chat very loudly in the mind, commenting on everything one sees. Let's look at what Ibn ‘Arabi has to say about this in his Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed: Seclusion has no need of the extra condition of silence, as silence is necessarily included within it, insofar as it is silence of the tongue. As for silence of the heart, seclusion does not necessarily lead to it, since one could converse with oneself about other than God and with other than God, exalted is He. This is why we have considered silence to be one of the pillars (arkān) on the Way in its own right. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So how often does our mind wander? This is something we should evaluate and examine. Reflect on this quality of being, how attentive you are, because our internal chatter tends to be very focused on specific psychological songs.
Many people, when they drive their cars or listen to the radio do so by listening to music or favorite songs. Some people even have a very specific unchanging order. They have a music playlist, whether on their iPhone, iPod, whatever it may be. And so, while we may listen to music or not, everybody has a psychological song. What is a psychological song? It is our narrative that we tell ourselves. It is our life story. It is our epic Mahabharata, our own tale in which we are the great center, the protagonist, the hero, the martyr, upon which all of our circumstances gravitate. We tend to tell ourselves that we are wronged, victimized, blamed, whatever our particular idiosyncrasy may be. We are the great hero, while everyone else is the villain. We were right, but we were wronged, etc. We tend to repeat our own song like a broken record. And of course it is going to be different for each person. For some people, it may be self-pity, feeling inadequate that they can succeed in life, that they have always been cheated, lie to, abused, etc. Some people sing songs of vanity that they are always great, they are wonderful, and that people don't appreciate their integrity or compassion or altruism, whatever it may be. We repeat our songs, even if no one wants to hear it, because in honesty, everybody else has their own psychological song. Everybody sings their own tune, so to speak. Internal chatter, this psychological repetition of mental verbiage, has to be curtailed and ended. You don't do it by pushing the mind away or telling the mind to shut up. When you learn to observe and separate from the mind, it starts to calm. When you observe the mind and it is talking at you and chattering, but you are not giving into it, you are not feeding it, you are learning to enter silence and seclusion―real retreat. So you could be physically at your job but learning to really enter, psychologically, an attitude and a space of meditation and retreat. This is really the foundation and the key. Separate from the mind. Self-observe your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. Stop giving your energy into desires, conditions of mind. This is because in solitude even, we have a lot of negative egos, a lot of painful temptations. When we are alone, we are by ourselves, oftentimes the worst egos emerge. This is why Samael Aun Weor stated the following in Treaties of Revolutionary Psychology: It is indispensable to observe oneself when alone in the same manner as when associated with people.
I am pretty sure that most people, after a while, get very tired of listening to the same tune. But ironically, in our life experience, this is not true.
We sing our songs how we are victimized and harmed and blamed and betrayed, whatever it may be, whatever our tendency is, whatever egos we like to feed most of all. We have to examine what that chatter is, what that language is, what the results are, because if you invest your energy in defeatism or vanity or whatever it may be, we don't change the situation. We have to learn to sacrifice our own sufferings. Give up pain. Give up our attachments to pain, to egotistical states. Let's not express our suffering so much. Obviously, if there's something really traumatic and difficult, it is good sometimes to talk with people, especially when we need guidance, but that is something you have to evaluate on your own. So it is important to remember that, like animals, our culture has us domesticated, very well-trained. We are taught to adopt behaviors and beliefs and ideologies that are contrary to our spiritual nature. These are simply beliefs, attitudes or perceptions of how life is that really don't have any basis. This is the reason why our society and our world is such a mess, because people believe reality to be a certain way. However, they don't really have any basis in experience of the consciousness. Because we have different beliefs that conflict with reality, with our experiences, with each other, we suffer. This is because the egos of different people sing their psychological song. Everybody thinks that they are the victim. Simply look at different conflicts throughout the world where everyone, both sides of different issues, say that they are the victim, not the perpetrator. So they justify their behaviors, and likewise, we too justify everything we do. And this is the problem. We sing our songs articulately or inarticulately to ourselves. This is something that keeps us very asleep. So, it’s something to consider. The Witnessing of Unity
What is the witnessing of unity? Some profound teachings from Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Sheikh al-Akbar, who is considered the greatest of Sufi teachers, he emphasizes some points that we have mentioned already, but which I'd like to emphasize here:
One who makes seclusion their practice grasps the mystery of the Divine Unity (wahdāniyya). In terms of knowledges and mysteries, this brings to him the secrets of the Uniqueness (ahadiyya) insofar as it is a quality. The true spiritual state of seclusion, whether it be that of the seeker or the verifier, is to be transcendent of all attributes. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So what is the uniqueness? This is الأحد al-ahad in Arabic, the unity. Or this is where we get the Shahadah, where we declare the unity of God:
لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ ٱللَّٰهِ
This is paralleled within the Jewish tradition by the Shema.
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד׃,
…الأحد Ahad in Arabic or אֶחָֽד Echad in Hebrew, unity.
What does it mean when we are a verifier or seeker to experience the spiritual state of seclusion? It means to be transcendent of all attributes, meaning: egotistical qualities. We have to give up our identity as an ego. To experience the clarity of the Essence, we have to be selfless. Again, not from a state of dysphoria, of obscuration, of mental dullness, of confusion, but a state of awareness and attention and the identity of the consciousness. Let us continue: The highest state of seclusion is retreat (khalwa), for it is a seclusion within seclusion, and its fruit is stronger than that of ordinary seclusion. One who makes seclusion his practice must have certainty regarding God, exalted is He, until he has no thought that will distract him and take him beyond the confines of his seclusion. If he lacks certainty, then let him prepare himself to be strong enough for seclusion, in order that his certainty may be strengthened by what is revealed to him in his seclusion. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So we have talked previously about what certainty is: اليقين Al-Yaqin.
There are three forms of certainty within Islam or Sufism:
Knowledge of certainty means we understand the teachings and the scriptures, the doctrine, the wisdom, from the intellect. But the seeing of certainty has to do with when we experience these truths for ourselves, through personal, living knowledge, not through belief or from reading a book, from listening to a lecture, from reading a scripture. It is what we know through experience, through facts. The truth of certainty has to do with when we really receive wisdom from God. We receive visions and insights from divinity that are indisputable, that are factual, without illusion, without question. This is how we really make use of seclusion. We have to have certainty of the practices. Obviously, if we don't really understand what these teachings are about and we try to enter retreat, it can be very difficult; obviously, learning it for the first time. So we need to have some kind of development or understanding of the teaching so that we can really go deeper. By understanding the science and the method of the practices of meditation, we have no thought that will distract us and take us beyond the confines of our seclusion. Meaning, we don't really get lost in the practices. If we lack certainty, then let us prepare ourselves to be strong enough, meaning, in this case, some meditation retreats practiced by the Sufis were very extensive, very long, very arduous, not really recommended for beginners. If you come to one of our retreats, you'll find that we have it pretty easy compared to many of the traditions, especially. There is no other way. This is one of the firm preconditions governing seclusion. Seclusion bequeaths knowledge of this world (dunyā). ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Adornment of the Spiritually Transformed
So, we gain knowledge of the world, our ego, through meditation, as we have explained in relation to retrospection meditation especially.
Retreat Schedule
So in synthesis, I'd like to relate to you and provide to you a resource: a retreat schedule that you can adopt. You don't have to use it strictly in this manner. It is simply a guideline that you can use, that you can modify at will to help really deepen your spiritual life.
It is divided into morning, noon, and evening practices―some simple time frames that you can use if you have the time and the energy and the dedication to do so. If you look at these links, you'll find different books or practices, references, resources that you can study in relation to these exercises, whether from our own Gnostic Meditation course or Meditation Essentials, the Nordic Runes, working with energy, the seven vowels, recitations at dawn, specifically, when we invoke energies of divinity, of Christ, through mantralizing, performing prayers through the Nordic yoga. Also, there is time for lectures and scriptural study―free time, of course, but also sacred rites of rejuvenation, dream yoga, Jinn practices, etc. I won't go through all of this in detail, but you can use this resource to help you if you are willing. Recommended Sources for Meditation and Spiritual Practices
Alchemy Techniques for Married Couples
Dream Yoga Exercises
Jinn Science Mantras and Prayers for Protection
Meditation Courses and Resources
Pranayama for Single Practitioners
Runes Sacred Rites of Rejuvenation So in synthesis, it is important to understand what seclusion is. To synthesize everything we have stated, the most important principle is that if you want any type of meditation or retreat to be effective for you, learn to cultivate a space of serenity and insight. This is something that you can only do through daily consistent discipline, moment to moment awareness. I would like to open up the floor to questions. Questions and Answers
Question: What does it mean to sacrifice our own sufferings if you want to transform ourselves?
Instructor: Oftentimes, our pain is self-chosen, to quote Khalil Gibran in his poem The Prophet. We like to waste energy. Oftentimes we have a problem in life, a situation, and it becomes very difficult to resolve. We don't see a solution. We see that we are in darkness. We have a lot of uncertainty, a lot of pain. But stewing in the filth of our mind, by letting ourselves boil in the heat of our own negative emotions, it is not going to resolve the problem. When you give your energy unnecessarily into wrong mental states, we deepen our suffering. Instead, it is better to step away from the problem, to separate from it, to separate from the mind, to not give your energy to negative emotion, because in reality, negative emotions are very infectious. They make ourselves sick. They make other people sick. So you have to consider that if you are very upset with a problem, it is not going to be easy to resolve it if your mind is clouded. Therefore, we must sacrifice our sufferings. Meaning, if you're in a lot of pain and you feel like you want to just vegetate, to vacillate, to not act in a situation, to not respond in any way, to not really introspect in yourself, it can be really useful to spend that time to practice. Sometimes, if we are in a negative emotional state, it can be very difficult to meditate. Therefore, we could do something like runes, prayer, pranayama, walks in nature, some exercise to distract our mind from the problem, and we can learn to invest our attention in a worthy cause, which is the transformation of our pain. When I have been in very difficult, moral, ethical suffering in relation to different problems in my life, I have deepened and intensified my practice. I remember I worked at one job that was very difficult. I had a very hard time transforming the negative emotions of my clients, and I was suffering a lot because I felt inadequate to really help them. So what I would do is, when I was in a lot of pain, I would do hours of runes. I mean literally, one to two hours, sometimes even more. I would really dedicate myself to spiritual practices so that I can stop or cease my own suffering. By providing good energy into my psyche, I was able to calm down and to face my problem with equity, with clarity. This is just one method we can use. Use the practices in our tradition that can help you, whatever is going to resonate most with you that helps you ease your pain so that you can really focus on what's important. If there is something you can't change that you are suffering about, then why suffer about it? There is no solution. But if there is a solution, then you can act effectively to change it. This is how we sacrifice our pain, because pain is not necessary. We don't have to churn in the mud, so to speak. Question: When I am doing a concentration imagination exercise, is it okay to mantralize at the same time to clear the mental chatter, like AUM?
Instructor: Yes, it takes some skill. You know, obviously a mantra like Aum is very useful for charging our psyche with good energy. Now, if you are concentrating on the mantra, that's really good. But also, you can visualize light and energy in your heart, especially. So those can go hand-in-hand.
There are different dynamics to different practices, different mantras. Some mantras are provided with certain visualization exercises. So I recommend that whatever practices you are doing that, you know, you really fulfill them with fidelity, whatever those stipulations are in the writings of Samael Aun Weor, but if you do the mantra AUM or OM, you can visualize light in your heart, concentrate on the vibration of that mantra. So when you perform a mantra, it is not merely just saying or reciting some sounds, but it is concentrating on the energy. It is visualizing that force in you. It is developing your focus, your perception. It is a very dynamic thing. Question: The next question is, I try to imagine my inner Father or my Monad as a tremendous light that descends from the heavens above. Is there a more accurate vision like the light descending from the crown of the head? Instructor: There are different visualizations. The best visualization practice is going to be any state or experience you have had internally. For example, in many cases I have meditated on my Innermost, mantralizing while imagining my Being, remembering my inner God as I perceived Him in the astral plane, even beyond.
You can visualize the Father as a light in the heart. You can even visualize that energy descending from your crown to your body. In certain runes like the runes Tyr and Bar, work like that. You are invoking the Divine Father to enter your head as you are bringing your hands downward, mantralizing the vowels Tyr, and then Bar.
So different practices have different orientations, but the important thing is that follow your intuition, what you need to work with. You can imagine a light in your heart, the mantras like O or Om, etc., but also you can imagine the light descending from the crown of the head, especially with certain mantras like INRI or the practice with Ares, if you studied the book Practical Astrology [Editor's Note: See also the mantras INRI, ENRE, ONRO, UNRU, ANRA for developing the chakras]. Question: One of my biggest temptations has been my ego constantly pushing me astray when it comes to furthering and deepening my practices. What is the best way to supplicate the higher forces to help develop will? Sometimes, conjurations work well for me, but sometimes I feel that I fall and allow my intellect to remove me from it and I fall back again into not intensifying my work and developing my will. Instructor: I find some of the best practices for developing willpower are the runes, especially the Rune Dorn. You can stand facing towards the east when facing the sunrise or early morning hours are good for this. Place your heels together, left hand on your left side, right hand on your right hip. Pray to your inner Being to grant you the will of Christ. 
Do the mantras: TA TE TI TO TU. You prolong them. Feel the vibration of those forces in you. Pray to your Divine Mother Kundalini and the Holy Spirit to empower your Essence so that it can fulfill the will of Christ.
Remember, in the story of Prophet Muhammad when Gabriel said, “Recite!” and Prophet Muhammad said, “I can’. I don't know basically how to read and write,” and Gabriel said again, “Recite!” and he says, “I do not know how,” and then the third time, Gabriel said, “Recite!” and then Prophet Muhammad said, “What shall I recite my Lord?” This is precisely a symbol of what you are talking about: how in the path we struggle to really fulfill divine will. We struggle in our practices. We feel that we are disconnected. You can work at the Rune Dorn, especially. That is how we recite the word of divinity so that we can receive blessings from divinity above, from Gabriel, Gibur-Ra-El: our own Spirit.
You can work with the vowels or any of the seven runes, especially, for as long as you need. An hour or more if you need to. That is a very great way to energize your practice, to give you a lot of force to do other things as well, to meditate profoundly. Question: Do you believe people can pull energy from one person to another? Instructor: Personally, I don't believe that. It is something that I know from experience. We call those people witches, sorcerers, black magicians. They steal energy from people because they cannot create on their own. They reject the Holy Spirit, the creative power of divinity within sex. They don't learn how to cultivate their own energy, and because they are vampiric, they need to thrive off the psychic energy of others. And there are many ways that they steal vital energy from people. This is why we learn practices of conjurations and prayers to protect ourselves. You can study our lecture called Basics of Spiritual Defense on our website, especially the course Spiritual Self-Defense to learn how to protect yourself. Question: Sometimes one feels strong when around worldly activities, such as dealing with problems and traffic, but sometimes it all seems unbearable and one feels an urgent need of solitude. Do you find this fluctuations to be normal on the path to total inner silence? Instructor: Yes. Obviously, you have to gauge your own level of being and your needs. It can be very difficult to be around the cities for a long period of time or to be in difficult situations. This is why people enter retreat in different traditions. When we are depleted of our energy, we feel like we need to recharge. It is good to go out in nature and enter retreats or practice with like-minded people so that we can gain more force. So yes, there are periods in which it is very difficult to walk this path. It is very normal. The important thing is that we are consistent with our practices and that we can make sacrifices so that we can practice more effectively, but also get out of the world, or better said, get out of the hustle and bustle of our modern society. Question: Thank you for this series of lectures on Sufism. Would you please introduce a few books that I can fundamentally learn more about Islam, Sufism, and contemplate and understand the link between Gnosis and Sufism? As a Muslim, I know that there is a root. All mysticism should direct to the same point. Any recommendations or suggestions would be helpful in this regard. Instructor: So probably the best book to understand the heart of every single religious tradition is The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. He explains some points in which the mysteries of alchemy and sexual magic that he teaches so openly, is represented within Islam and Sufism, especially. He makes some comments in certain chapters about the Muslim initiates, especially. That's the best book that I know of that really explains the secret key within every tradition, especially Islam and Sufism. Once you know the writings of Samael Aun Weor very deeply, especially that book, as well as The Mystery of the Golden Flower, you can pick up Sufi manuals of retreat and spiritual practice and understand what they are talking about. Some Sufi texts that I really recommend besides the Qur’an, especially, are Revelation of the Mystery by Al-Hujwiri, Principles of Sufism by Al-Qushayri, and The Stations of the Sufi Path by Abdullah Ansari of Herat. If you want, you can email us and we'll send you a link to those texts. But if you look at the PowerPoint presentations, the PDFs that we are going to upload to our website, you'll find that we have constant references to these three books, especially those three Sufi texts. They are Persian Sufism, the best of Sufism, especially. Samael Aun Weor states in The Perfect Matrimony that the best of Sufism comes from Persia. So it is a very deep statement. I recommend you study those texts, especially. Question: I recently have been struggling with pranayama. When I do it for over five minutes, my body jitters. It feels very uncomfortable. Do you recommend walking for a while before pranayama? Instructor: Yes. It could be really good to do that. You might want to get some exercise, especially, primarily because when you start to work with your creative energies, your whole chemistry changes, literally. Your body and processes fluctuate, change. Personally, since practicing transmutation, I have experienced many changes, even in my appetite, my ability to engage in heavy work, even manual labor―you know, getting a lot of strength from the creative impulse. Sometimes, in the beginning, it can be very difficult to adapt to the vibrations of the sexual energy. They are very powerful. Sometimes with pranayama, we can feel very charged to the point that we become jittery, like you are drinking a very big cup of coffee or an espresso. So, I recommend do short practices. You know, get some physical exercise, especially. Maybe even walk in nature if you can. Ham-Sah is very good for when you are walking out in the middle of the woods, if you have the opportunity. I like to do that when I take a long hikes since it helps me to keep my body and blood circulating, but also circulate the energies as well. Or you can practice in more short spurts. If you feel that you are getting uncomfortable, take a break, but later jump back into the practice so that you can acculturate your body. Learn to make your body adapt to that inward and upward flow of force. Question: Also, this person said that I feel the energy to be overwhelming. Do you recommend cutting down on meat? Instructor: Yes, if you find that you have too much fire (the Tattva Tejas from The Panchatattva Ritual) and it is difficult to control, cut down on meat. Limit your meat intake. Sometimes a change in diet can help with that. Question: When you are in a state of remembrance of the Being, do you put your attention on your heart, breath, or imagine something? Instructor: Remembrance is a very profound and beautiful quality that is very dynamic. This is something that we are going to dedicate an entire lecture to in this course within the coming weeks. When you are remembering your Being, when you are self-observing yourself throughout the day, you should be aware of your pineal gland, especially. This is the seat of the soul. This is where we look out into our external world, but also our internal world. Remembrance of the Being is also a quality of the heart. You are observing from your third eye or the pineal gland, especially, introspecting within and perceiving within your internal states in relation to external events. So you are perceiving through the senses, but also you are exercising your internal senses, your psychological sense of understanding thought, feeling, and will. 
Remembrance, more importantly, is a quality of your superior emotional center, and this has to do with emotions that are very subtle and pure. Obviously, in the beginning we struggle to understand or taste that state, but is something that you can learn to cultivate by doing pranayama, working with breath, in which your body settles. Your mind settles. Your imagination clarifies.
You can sit down in your practice of visualization, but also mantra, pranayama. You are concentrating on your breath and you are visualizing the energy flowing in you. In this way, you are remembering your Being. You are becoming aware of the energies of God in you and how they flow inside. So this is dynamic. This is a very integral process. We sometimes teach these practices in different ways because people have different needs and also because the capacity of the consciousness is very broad and spatial. It is vast. When you get adept at imagination exercises and remembrance of divinity, you can learn to focus on your breath, your heart, your third eye, and your body at the same time. But in the beginning, it could be good to focus on one or the other, so that you have enough stable concentration to focus. Sometimes focusing on the breath is enough. It is very easy to do that with practice and it is difficult in the beginning because we haven't been trained yet. So whatever exercise you adopt for concentration, it could be very good to simply focus on your breathing with pranayama or do an imagination exercise such as the candle, or mantralize the vowel O. Be aware of your breath, but also imagine a light in your heart. These are all states of remembrance. When you are really focused, when you are really in prayer, you are obviously going to be engaging different practices throughout the day, but the most consistent practice in the state of remembrance is self-observation, self-remembrance. You do that by focusing on your pineal gland, but also learning to respond to life ethically. Remember your heart, your conscience. Question: Regarding laziness, I sometimes feel I have so much energy to practice, to read, to contemplate, etc., etc., but some other time it happens that I have not much energy to do the practices, although deep inside I feel so much need to practice meditation. What is your opinion about this so much back and forth? Instructor: It is the ego, the resistance of the mind. Our desires know that their life is threatened through this spiritual work, and so we face resistance of the mind. We know what is best. We know what we need to do. We feel the inquietude in our heart to practice deeply. However, because the ego knows that through these exercises it is going to be eliminated, it fights. We feel laziness. We feel depleted. We don't feel enthusiastic. We feel uninspired, etc. That is because the mind. Our own inner satan knows that its life is threatened. And so it challenges us at every step. The solution is to comprehend where that laziness is coming from. Look within to see where it is in you and what activities your mind avoids. Sometimes not being inspired has to do with a lack of energy. This is why I like to do runes, especially. They give you a lot of force, a lot of power. They can push you to really meditate deeply, which is why we emphasize those practices again and again in this course, but also especially in our resources in this lecture, especially. You know, sometimes the way to resolve the problem is to put more fuel in your car. If you want to drive to a certain destination, you got to fuel up. You do that with working with the creative energies. That is how you are going to have the strength necessary to overcome obstacles. Question: Must all runes be performed with a specific accompanying physical posture or can vocalizations be made like mantras while seated in a meditation posture? Instructor: There are certain mantras that you can do on your own when you are seated, but the real benefit of the runes is that they are engaging forces in nature as a result of our physical position. They are a form of yoga, and when combined with prayer, concentration, awareness, attention, and remembrance, we learn to cultivate energy in our body, in our mind and heart. Question: Also, where can I find the best description or perhaps video instruction about the runic postures and mantras? And also I am finding the runes that are paired with others? Instructor: There is a video on Glorian Publishing’s website that show the seven vowels, especially. That is one of the primary practices we do, but perhaps in the future we will have other instructional videos that teach how to do all the runes. That would be something very useful for people, I think. The best way to perform the runes is as described in The Magic of the Runes by Samael Aun Weor. That book explains how the runes are paired, which practice has to do with what, and how to do them in very clear and simple directions. 
All religions and mystical traditions that teach meditation always emphasize the need for a very difficult principle: renunciation. However, like striving or holy war within Middle Eastern mysticism, renunciation is very misunderstood.
Renunciation is typically recognized as giving up material possessions, abandoning society, in order to pursue a life of spirituality, seclusion, introspection, inner peace. In the Gnostic tradition we are very different, distinct, when we use this term. We emphasize that true renunciation is a psychological attitude. It is non-attachment, regardless of one’s material possessions, one’s external life. The truth is we can be physically very wealthy, and yet be true renunciates, or extremely poor and very attached to this world. Renunciation is a state of being. It means to be perfectly sealed within oneself, to not waste any energy of the psyche, and this is really important when we talk about the principles of meditation, specifically because in the path of striving, we are learning to concentrate, to focus our will, our attention, to remember the presence of divinity at all times, without exception. It is impossible to do this if we do not give up bad behaviors, activities that drain us, attitudes and desires that create conflict, agitation, impatience, and a lack of presence with where we are at and what we are doing. We have to save energy, and this is really important, this is essential. There are many people who practice meditation, but who do not renounce behaviors and activities that produce pain. When we invest ourselves into anger, into resentment, into pride, and especially lust, we basically have no energy left to experience reality, the Truth within ourselves. It is impossible to experience the divine, al-Haqq, the Truth, our Innermost Being, the divine, if our mind is afflicted with cravings, with desires, with attachments. All of this obscures our perception. These are conditions of mind we have been emphasizing again and again. This is the lower soul, نَفْس nafs, which in the Gnostic tradition we denominate ego, or egos, that multiplicity of conflicting and contradictory desires and selves which all strive for dominance in our interior. So long as we do not renounce negative thinking, negative emotions, which are so problematic for humanity, and negative actions, we cannot know the Truth, and this is precisely what we want in Gnosis. In any mystical tradition, we want to know divinity to have experiences, to know the truth of heavens, hells, the soul, of God, of masters, angels, prophets, Elohim, gods, buddhas, whatever we want to call those beings who were once like us, who in reality reached those heights of attainment because they renounced the ego, the self, conditioned psyche. Those beings are perfect, but the reality is that they were once like us, and we have that potential to be a pure perfect expression of God, to really know divinity from personal experience, not from belief, not from accepting a dogma, but from facts, from witnessing the truth within oneself, one’s experience, one’s consciousness. How do we know that desire leads to suffering and that this is the reason why people do not have any knowledge of the Innermost, of God, of the Being, of الله Allah, whatever name we want to give to our divine source? The reality is that people spend their entire life chasing after desire. We are told by society to fulfill our passions. And it is interesting, we think that following our dreams, our passions, is what will lead us to a plateau of eternal happiness, a vague and amorphous heaven that has no grounds in experience. If we spend our lives chasing after passions and desires, which is really egotistical, if we are serious and analyze our own psyche, we find that these elements do not produce any type of cohesion, integrity, and divine knowledge. The word passion, even in the literal sense, can refer to the Passion of Christ or the Master Aberamentho within the Gnostic tradition. Really the term passion means “suffering.” So when people tell us follow your passions, follow your desires, follow your dreams, we are really telling each other to be hypnotized, because most of our desires, behaviors, internal states, are conditioned, are negative, and we know this from the writings of Samael Aun Weor especially. We are ninety seven percent ego, afflicted with problems, with pain. All of that has to be renounced if we really want to enter religion, but people do not want to give up greed, backbiting, envy, and especially lust, sexual craving, attachment to sensations that do not last. People chase after desires their entire life without really knowing why, nor realizing that to suffer in the acquisition of wealth is to suffer under the fear of losing it. Our society is based upon accumulation of everything: sensations, alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, sarcasm, amusement. This is why the Qur’an teaches that really, the life of this world is transient and has no real basis in spirituality, and if we are honest we see that most of our behaviors are precisely this. We crave something. We work to get it and if we get what we want, we suffer because we are afraid we can lose it, perhaps that job, that career, that spouse, that we fought so hard to achieve. Even Jesus said this truth in the book of Mark 8:36: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? ―Mark 8:36
We can pursue a life of materialism, of wealth, of worldliness, of being successful in society, but if that is all we are focused on, if that is our internal quality of being, it means we have a very superficial life. Even Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It is vain. It is empty of any profound significance, and if anyone studies religion or meditation, it is because they want to know something more. This is why we study the principles of meditation so that we can know the truth for ourselves, to have a life that is vibrant and filled with happiness and compassion for others, of contentment, because we know divinity and experienced the Truth.
The Truth is a form of bliss and treasure that is wealthy to the soul, but that can only be obtained when we give up our psychology, our psychological attachments, a craving for this or that, the constant churning of the mind, the agitation of the mind that only wants to accumulate sensations and impressions and to go to the grave. Real wealth is spiritual. It is internal. These have to do with qualities of consciousness like altruism, which binds communities together, with selfless love, conscious love even for one’s worst enemies and persecutors; patience under ordeals and hardships that are excruciating and incomprehensible. Real virtue is the foundation of a spiritual existence, of being. You cannot experience the virtues of the Essence, the soul, the consciousness, if we do not remove the impurities, if we do not abandon activities and behaviors that take the energy of the consciousness and squander it. This is why we study ethics in the beginning of any meditative science, especially within Sufism and Gnosticism. This is why Jesus also taught in the book of Matthew 6:19-21: 19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
People can steal your possessions, can burn your home to the ground, can take your family away, can imprison you, can humiliate you, can cause you physical harm, and yet nobody can take your virtue away from you but yourself. Virtue is like a shield that protects us from many bad situations. But of course, divinity guides the process by which we learn by facing hardships. This is why we studied the path of striving in the former lecture. But with renunciation we are learning to deepen our effort, our willpower, our work so that we are very defined, very precise in our practice and our intentions, in our actions.
No one can steal away from you your consciousness. Only we can give away our soul by giving into behaviors and activities that create pain. We are responsible for our own psyche. No one else is responsible for why we suffer. If we had no ego, we would be an angel. We would be perfected in bliss. But the reality is we invest our identity too much within a multiplicity of desires, and this is why we suffer: we are conflicted, we are split. Whatever you treasure, whatever you value most, that is where your heart will be. If your satisfaction is based on material things, when you lose them you will suffer. This is the fundamental law of causality. But if we place our value in divine states, in mercy, forgiveness that is based upon conscience, knowledge of the law, the law of divinity, شريعة Shari’ah, then we will have happiness even if situations outside are very arduous, difficult. There is nothing worse in terms of suffering than a wounded conscience. Even Friedrich Nietzsche stated in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra that “the bite of conscience teaches men to bite.” Really, if we fulfill the law within ourselves of divinity, of ethics, conscience, judgment, الْدِّين al-Din, “the religion” in Arabic or גבורה Geburah in Kabbalah, the justice of the divine, we will march upon the path of intuition, success, knowing how to navigate the reality of life without confusion, without unnecessary pain. The Being is a true treasure. Knowledge of divinity from experience is to possess the greatest gift that one could ever possess in life, which is why the Hadith Qudsi states the following: Allah says, “I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created a creation (mankind), then made Myself known to them, and they recognized Me.” ―Hadith Qudsi
Spiritual poverty in this lecture means to be a beggar of the spirit, to really recognize that we lack the qualities we admire so much in masters like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Muhammad, Samael Aun Weor. We are really destitute, if we are honest. We have a lot of conflict, and pain, and sorrows and afflictions, and this is why we are interested in spirituality, because we want a solution, how to rectify our own errors to cease suffering. This means one has to become like a beggar, really yearning for the truth, aspiring for knowledge with that longing like a fire that burns, even with pain, but it is the fire that gives us light in our daily states, the inquietudes of our own soul that long to return to the Being. Jesus said in the book of Matthew 5:3:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ―Matthew 5:3
This is from the Beatitudes. Now I think some of the translations given in the Bible are very inaccurate, as with many scriptures. “Poor in spirit,” in Greek is πτωχός ptōxós. It means: “to crouch or cower like a beggar.” It is a “descriptive quality of begging, to be bent over, to be deeply destitute in a figurative sense.” Really this verse should say:
Blessed are the beggars in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. ―Matthew 5:3
We have to recognize that our life really does not have much value if we do not know divinity, and this is a type of sincerity and honesty one has to come to in relation to one’s own experiences, otherwise one is not going to be interested in wanting to change. Jesus in this statement was pointing out a very profound teaching: that we need the psychological attitude of receptivity, of striving, of yearning, to receive from the Being and know from the Being, to receive the Spirit from mystical experiences like astral projections, out of body experiences, awakening in the dream state, as we have come back to many times in this course. This is why Homer taught:
It is better to be a beggar on Earth than a king in the empire of shadows. ―Homer
We are in this world begging for wisdom. It is better to be a beggar in this spiritual path than to have all of the wealth, materially, physically like many other people in society who really are just demons, people with power, influence, but through egotism. It is better to be a beggar of the spirit, because the real treasure is in the soul, not in the external world.
This is the seminal pearl that the merchant of the biblical parable sought to acquire by selling all of his goods, so that he could really enter heaven. This is not a literal story. It reflects a psychological truth, a fundamental shift in our attitude. Do we practice meditation sometimes? Do we spend our time in superfluous activities? How much of our time and energy our will, our actions, our activities, our behaviors are really invested in spiritual things? Do we study a little bit, practice a little bit, but the rest of our day indulge in hatred, pride, vanity? How much are we willing to really give up, to direct towards spiritual practice, to really achieve wisdom, the happiness and freedom of the soul we long for? These are some questions we will come back to, that we will analyze and reflect upon. Rumi summed up these principles very deeply: When you enter the world of poverty and practice it, God bestows upon you kingdoms and worlds that you never imagined. You become ashamed of what you longed for and desired at first. ―Rumi Piscean and Aquarian Spirituality: Renouncing Distractions
So some people feel that if they renounce certain behaviors and activities that they will have nothing, but the reality is that the kingdom of the soul is so vast and incomprehensible, the states of the Being in our experience are infinite. The Truth is infinite, is “the unknown from moment to moment,” says Samael Aun Weor. Therefore, if we give up our conditioned cage and have the courage to step out of prison, we can know that liberation for ourselves.
It is often documented how people who have been in prison for a long time are afraid of leaving because they do not know anyone else. The same is true of our psychological state, but renunciation is precisely having the courage and the will to give up mistaken psychological states. So, what is a worldly life? Typically, people define this as having a job, or a career, going to school, having friends, indulging in entertainment, travelling, watching television shows, going to religious services, etc. It was necessary in the past within the spiritual evolutionary arc of humanity to abandon society, to focus exclusively within. This was known astrologically as the Piscean era. It was the abandonment of the world for the sake of inner development. This is a conservative influence that sought to conserve the best values for the sake of the individual. So people who wanted to know this knowledge had to find a school of initiation and prove themselves over many years before they would be admitted. That knowledge was only given by teacher to student―very conservative, based off of lineages, hierarchies, and tests. 
We are now in the Era of Aquarius, an Aquarian spirituality. This has to do with the immersion of the individual within society for the sake of spiritual development of self and other, specifically through expedient methods. Aquarius is symbolized by the Water Bearer, the water carrier. This has to do with how this mystical knowledge is now public. It is now available to everybody without exception.
It is not necessary today to live in a khanqah or خانقاه khaniqah (Persian), a Sufi retreat lodge or center, to go to a temple, a monastery, a place of refuge, away from the world, because the esoteric knowledge of the transformation of the self is now completely available to everyone, to the public. Most meditative traditions today are still very Piscean, conservative, especially the Sufis. This greatest knowledge is kept secret by a guru, a master, a teacher, a sheikh, until the student has passed even decades of tests to prove their candidacy. The Era of Aquarius began in the 1960’s and was initiated by the writings of Samael Aun Weor. This is very significant. We use his writings specifically because they are very clear. They provide a practical basis of understanding and applying the principles of meditation and religion. We use this, his teachings, for their pragmatism, their practicality, and their lucidity, as compared to many Piscean writings that are very cryptic. However, as you have noticed, we use a lot of the different scriptures and teachings from the past, the Piscean knowledge, explaining it through the mysticism of the Aquarian Era. We know both teachings. They are really one science given in two different ways: one conservative and one liberated, free to the public. In the Era of Pisces, renunciation had to do with people abandoning their home, their life, their job, to live in solitude, to practice austerities. And if you are familiar with Sufism, a lot of the great Sufi masters lived that life precisely. They were very renowned for their life of renunciation, giving up many distractions, activities, and things that really did not have any importance. In the Aquarian Era, renunciation is life in the world, but to not be of it. This is very profound and very distinct. It is much more difficult than leaving one’s country or leaving one’s home city to go live in the mountains of Tibet to meditate. Renunciation in the Aquarian Era is much more profound and radical. It is also completely transformative and expansive, because the wisdom we can acquire from living in society while renouncing the ego will provide much more lasting and penetrative wisdom. We find the fuel and food for meditation in our daily life. This is very well known in the Fourth Way School of Ouspensky. We do not have to live the life of a monk or a yogi, a fakir sleeping in the wilderness on a bed of nails, but we can learn to develop the best qualities of those paths in balance. This is known as the Fourth Way. This is the Gnostic path. It is much harder to work in this way upon ourselves, but the results are going to be much more solid, stable. Anybody can abandon the world and gain a lot of abilities: concentration, clarity of mind, focus, perception, imaginative knowledge, inner experiences. They can do so by attending a monastery and dedicating themselves to practice, for a period of time, sometimes months or years in certain traditions. However, the reality is that when these people return to the world after being away from society, its chaos, its energy, its density, they become distracted again. Many people have related how after a meditation retreat, they come back to the cities and they feel like they lost all their development. It is because it is very difficult to develop consistent willpower when we are surrounded by so much distractions, so many impressions of life that really pull us in a lot of directions, keep us very fractured in our attention. This is why many people become confused again. They feel lost especially after having attended a retreat. Therefore, Aquarian spirituality is definitive. If you can learn to meditate in the big cities, on a train, on a noisy bus, in an apartment where your next door neighbor is blasting music, if you learn to help humanity and annihilate your ego under those pressures, your spirituality is going to be much more robust, very flexible, very firm, strong, like a well-tempered sword. Sadly, though, despite the fact that we have this knowledge, we have a lot of leisure time, in the West especially, we waste much of our time and energy and our enthusiasm in things that really do not have much value. We are really in an era of information, as symbolized by the Water Carrier. This knowledge has been catalyzed through the internet, through multimedia, by film, by technology, but sadly, while there is this knowledge, there is also a lot of knowledge that does not produce real fruit. As much as we are in an era of information, we are also in an era of misinformation, and so we can be very attracted to spirituality, but we use our time poorly, whether too much internet, television, entertainment shows, Facebook even, social media. Some people spend hours playing games and which really do not develop any type of comprehension in our soul. They are really distractions. The reality is that as much as we may want to practice Gnosis, because we invest our energy in activities that waste energy, when it comes time to meditate, we feel too tired, strained, or overwhelmed, or we feel incapable, and it is because we did it to ourselves. Real renunciation is giving up that which diverts us from spirituality in every instant of our life. We do not have to give up our job, to travel to Nepal, to go to the East to visit a mosque or a masjid or temple and to travel to Jerusalem, the holy city, to find ourselves and find God. The reality is that we have to find divinity in our daily life, amongst the most mundane and difficult circumstances. And so the Qur’an as a scripture of very profound wisdom elaborates some beautiful points in relation to what we have just stated: And the worldly life is not but amusement and diversion; but the home of the Hereafter is best for those who fear Allah, so will you not reason? ―Al-An’am 32
The reality is that when we live in balance and harmony within our three brains, our intellect, our emotions, and our motor-instinctive-sexual actions, divinity will provide for us. This is scripturally emphasized in the Qur’an such as surah 6 verse 160:
Whoever brings a good deed will get a tenfold reward for it. ―Al-An'am 160
Or from surah 57 verse 11:
Who would give Allah a handsome loan so that He may give him a manifold reward? ―Al-Ḥadīd 11
Through living with wisdom, we can create a life of spiritual and material wealth, of bounty. There are really two parts of the spiritual equation:
1. Knowing how to live in this world, fulfill our responsibilities and 2. To do so with conscious ethics. One without the other does not work. You need both. When we become spiritual and use our wealth for the sake of spirituality, to use our time and energy and abilities in a conscious way, we receive a lot of help from divinity. We become spiritual when we use our wealth for the sake of our spirituality, and it is not the other way around. Nothing wrong with having possessions, yet there is something wrong if we simply are possessed by materialism, when this is all we think about and do.
Renunciation on the Tree of Life
We study the Tree of Life to understand what renunciation is, where we came from, where we are, and where we are going.
So renunciation is predicated on the former station, especially repentance. Repentance relates to the Ninth Sphere, as we have related the ninth surah of the Qur’an, Tawbah, or ٱلتَّوْبَة al-Tawbah, “the Return,” or the repentance relating to יסוד Yesod. In Hebrew this is the foundation. This is the work with the creative sexual energy. Repentance is the Ninth Sphere. We really show remorse and sincerity in our work when we are working effectively with our creative energies, the force of life, spiritually and physically in us. Renunciation relates to מלכות Malkuth. מלכות Malkuth means “Kingdom” in Hebrew. It is the physical body, our physicality. The path of striving is a bridge from מלכות Malkuth, our physical body, to יסוד Yesod, our creative, vital, sexual energies, even to תפארת Tiphereth, the sphere of beauty, beautiful action, the human consciousness, willpower, the soul. Notice how we ascend this Tree of Life, we enter spheres, aspects of reality that are more subtle. They have materiality and energy, consciousness even, but at more subtle levels of experience. From the top to the bottom we have the most rarified, simplified, and pure, relating to divine states. And when that force of divinity descends, down this graphic, it becomes material, dense, and more manifest. We are in מלכות Malkuth the physical world, the physical body, and יסוד Yesod, we sometimes denominate the vital body, the vital energies, the chi within holistic Eastern medicine, such as Chinese acupuncture and many other sciences that study the vital energies that permeate and saturate our physical body. The fourth dimension is יסוד Yesod. Our energies reside in a different level of nature. Above that we have הוד Hod and נצח Netzach, meaning “Splendor” and “Victory” in Hebrew. This is the fifth dimension. This is where we go to dream. This is a reality, a dimension, in which we have actual experience. It is a real state and quality of perception. It is a real place outside of the physical body. It is the world of emotions and thought. Even though physically we cannot see thoughts or emotions, we sense them. This is הוד Hod and נצח Netzach at our level, in this physical body, in this physical existence. But when we go to sleep at night, the physical body rests and the Essence, the soul with our thoughts and feelings, our will, enters those dimensions. The problem is that we are unconscious. We do not have any knowledge or remembrance of those states. We may have some dreams here and there in the beginning, but we do not really remember what we were doing within those states. This is why within the Greek tradition, Hypnos and Thanatos, sleep and death, were brothers. If you want to know how conscious you will be when you die, examine those hours when you go to sleep. This is the meaning of the Greek teaching. And the Qur’an also emphasizes many beautiful teachings about how Allah takes the souls of the disciples at night and returns them to the body at a term appointed, a direct reference to how we enter those states although unconscious (Qur’an 6:59-60; 39:42). This has to become a conscious experience, to awaken in those dreams, to stop dreaming. We do so by learning to be awake in the physical world, vigilant as a consciousness, working with our energies, יסוד Yesod, and learning to observe our thoughts and feelings and impulses to act without investing our energies into negative thinking, negative feeling, and negative action, the ego. תפארת Tiphereth is the sphere of willpower, we have mentioned many times. It is the beauty of the soul. It is beautiful action. It is the power of the Essence that is developed. It is concentration. It is the will of God when it obeys the higher five סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth, a Hebrew term for “emanations.” גבורה Geburah is “Justice,” the law, شريعة Shari’ah, the conscience of our soul, the divine soul, الْدِّين al-Din, the religion. It is the law, that which tells us what is right and what is wrong in our heart. And usually with our willpower we either obey it or ignore it. In most people we tend to ignore our deepest inquietudes of a spiritual nature and follow our thoughts our thoughts: נצח Netzach, our feelings: הוד Hod, or our instincts within יסוד Yesod or even the physical body. In order to overcome suffering, we have to learn to follow our conscience, inner judgment, which knows how to act in life with comprehension and ethics. This really has to do with our consciousness, גבורה Geburah. Beyond that is חֶסֶד Chesed in Hebrew meaning “Mercy.” The Bible refers to חֶסֶד Chesed, the Spirit, as the רוח אלהים Ruach Elohim, the spirit of God that floated upon the face of the waters of existence in order to create life. This is in the book of Genesis. In Arabic, حيم Rahim, or ٱلرَّحِيمِ al-Rahim, is “the Merciful,” is the spirit of God, compassion, divine love. Above that we have a trinity representative of three forces that expresses one light: כֶּתֶר Kether, the “Crown,” חָכְמָה Chokmah, “Wisdom,” and בִּינָה Binah, “Intelligence.” These are not three people, but intelligences and forces within our interior. This force is known as Christ amongst the Gnostics, or Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is the light of Allah, the unity. The problem and division amongst Muslims and Christians has to do with the misunderstanding of this point. Kabbalah clears away the confusion. The Christians are wrong that the trinity is three people as one God. These are not anthropomorphic figures in the clouds. These are forces, principles, archetypes, blueprints for the creation of any existence. These are very rarified and beautiful divine states. This is why in Islam, in that tradition, God cannot be depicted in any form because divinity is formless. These three forces are formless. They are intelligences, principles. Above that we have the Absolute from which that light emanates, the Nothing, “the No,” الله Allah in Arabic, the negation of all manifested existence. It is the potentiality of every created thing that rests until activated, until it enters manifestation, which is the Tree of Life. Why study the Tree of Life in relation to renunciation? Because the whole point of spirituality is to renounce lower states of being in order to achieve higher states as mapped out by this graphic, especially the two wings on the sides of the two pillars of the left and the right. It is the wings of pleroma amongst the Gnostics, the entrance into heavenly states. The physical body and the etheric, vital, creative body of יסוד Yesod are really two aspects of the same thing. They penetrate each other. Likewise, with the other סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth. These spheres are not in some vertical point in space, but exist in us here and now within our experience. When you sit to practice meditation, you may find that the body is agitated. Your energies are active, flowing within you. This is יסוד Yesod in מלכות Malkuth. We could be surging with emotion, which is הוד Hod. Our mind can be racing, that is נצח Netzach. And our willpower is weak and unable to concentrate on one thing, and that is תפארת Tiphereth. The path of striving teaches us how to overcome נצח Netzach, the mind, הוד Hod, the emotions, יסוד Yesod, our instincts, and מלכות Malkuth, the body. Perfect concentration, striving in the path has to do with reaching תפארת Tiphereth. Our willpower is never distracted by anything, not by thoughts, feelings, desires, at all. And it also does not take any effort when it is perfected. This is תפארת Tiphereth, the beauty of the human soul. Concentration is important: the ability to focus on an object serenely and clearly―with concentration, without being distracted by anything. This is fundamental. We do this by learning to renounce wrong ways of thinking, wrong ways of feeling, and desires. So the principles of renunciation integrate with striving and repentance. These are different aspects of the same thing. We are studying these principles, separately, but also together because they can give us a lot of insight into where we are at. If you sit to practice meditation and you find your mind is all over the place, your emotions are surging, your energies are depleted, you are going to find that it is very difficult to concentrate at all. This is why we renounce lustful actions, especially fornication, or known as the orgasm, because that energy which can be given to the soul is wasted, expelled for a few moments of pleasure or sensations. We explain this in synthesis in the lecture on repentance. With renunciation, we learn to give up lower states of being to achieve higher ones. As Samael Aun Weor stated throughout his writings, “We must become what we are not.” We have to learn to renounce egotistical consciousness in order to obtain liberated consciousness. The best way to do this is by working with the creative energy יסוד Yesod, the foundation. Notice that it is the center of this glyph. It is the middle pillar, the pillar of equilibrium. You will obtain the greatest solidity and focus in your practices by working with your creative sexual energy, without exception. It is the waters of renunciation. As Samael Aun Weor stated in The Aquarian Message: Whosoever wants to die in the Lord must wash their feet in the waters of renunciation. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message
This is very beautiful, very profound. By learning to renounce animal sexuality, we adopt human and divine sexuality, which means that the creative sexual impulse is never expelled. It is the energy of bliss, of עֵדֶן Eden, and we can learn to cultivate that whether we are single or married.
Notice that renunciation does not have to do with becoming celibate, living in a monastery and avoiding any kind of sexual temptations. Most people who enter monasteries and try to control the sexual energy, but return to society, lose their stability, their balance, because those impressions are the most difficult to control, and yet it is the entrance to renunciation. We have to learn to renounce animal passion. The Sufis beautifully explained this many times in their writings, that desire is the origin of suffering and that it is شَيْطَان Shaitan, שָּׂטָן Satan in Hebrew, the adversary or el-Nafsu-l-Ammara, the lower animal soul that inclines to evil. Evil has to do not with a moral sense of indignation, but impure states of the ego which produce suffering. If you really want to enter the path of meditation, calming the body (מלכות Malkuth), equalizing the heart and its emotions (הוד Hod), stabilizing and calming the mind (נצח Netzach), we need willpower that knows how to use this sexual energy. It is the power of life. You can create a god within you, divinity within you, the truth, when your willpower knows how to direct יסוד Yesod up, especially within the spinal column. 
So this Tree of Life maps out the body as well. We have three trinities which relate to our three brains. The top trinity with our head, the middle trinity with our heart, and a lower trinity with our sexuality. And מלכות Malkuth can relate to our feet. Our spine has energetic currents that raise the creative impulse up to our mind and then to our heart to produce the wings of the angels, the masters.
To become a master means to master everything about our psychology, including the sexual impulse. If we do not do that, if we ignore sexuality, if we try to justify it or repress it, that energy will act, but in subversive and destructive ways. It is better to learn how to understand one's impulses and to redirect them with intelligence, with wisdom, with the supremacy of the divine, the will of divinity in us. An Astral Experience of Renunciation
This quote reminds me of an experience I had many years ago that I hope will be very useful for you.
Whosoever wants to die in the Lord (to die in one’s ego) must wash their feet in the waters of renunciation. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message
I remember in the astral plane, a long time ago, I awoke and was exploring the backyard at my old home. I was being followed by an entity that I knew was a witch, a practitioner of black magic, a demon: a being that has awakened powers within desire, within ego. This person had disguised herself as a sibling of mine that I have in the physical world, and was spying on me and trying to get close.
When this being got close to me in this astral world known as הוד Hod in the Tree of Life, I decided to defend myself to make this being reveal her true form. We do this through prayers and conjurations, exercises that invoke divinity in order to make whatever entity we confront, to vibrate with the higher dimensions or סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth on the Tree of Life. So I was performing a conjuration, “In the name of Jupiter, Father of all the gods, I conjure you!”―with the mantras “Te Vigos Cosilim!” I covered my solar plexus with my left hand and extended my right hand outward and the form of the pentagram, and I saw a spark of energy emerge and shoot out, which, when it touched this entity, this witch, suddenly I was surrounded by a group of sorcerers. It was about four of them, mostly female disciples. One of them was a huge witch. She was a giant figure who stood in the circle with me and grabbed me by my solar plexus and lifted me up in the air. And of course, we know that if we don't protect our solar plexus, we can be disabled in the dream state. The solar plexus is where we store our creative energy. It is like a battery, and if you are exposed in that way, you can be disabled or drained. This master of the Black Lodge did not steal my energy, but merely incapacitated me. I remember looking at this group and they were studying me. I felt a lot of sorrow when looking at the eyes of this hierarch of the Black Lodge, a very awakened witch, which if you look at the eyes of these entities in the astral plane, you can see the depths of קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth, which if you look at this Tree of Life, has to do with the nine inverted סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth beneath מלכות Malkuth, the hell realms. I could see the darkness of her state, a very profound painful, impure quality, but very awake, very alert―alert as a demon. I felt a lot of sorrow for this being before me and for this group for feeling proud that they had incapacitated me. The only thing I could do was speak to them. I said, firmly, and with strength, “Get thee hence! Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and only Him shalt thou serve!”―from Matthew 4:10. When reprimanding this master of the Black Lodge, I saw, within the depths of her abysmal psyche, a pang of remorse, so lost and smothered within the cage of her ego, to which she hissed at me vehemently like a gigantic and fierce cougar. I remember, after speaking with them briefly, this witch set me down and let me walk away. And I remember looking back as I was walking across the neighbor's property in the astral plane, seeing this group of witches rejoicing, feeling that they had accomplished some kind of victory. Feeling a lot of sorrow and pain in my heart, I suddenly realized what I needed to do. I looked up to the sky and I invoked, “In the name of Christ, by the power of Christ, for the Majesty of Christ! Venerable Master Samael Aun Weor.” Every time I called out to Christ, a divine bell, beautifully imitated within the cathedrals and churches of the physical world, resounded with its metallic power throughout the infinite. And I remember those witches suddenly disappeared. They were gone. They vanished into the underworld from my sight, and Samael Aun Weor was standing close to where they were previously, this group of witches. He looked at me with a lot of compassion and gestured for me to walk over to him. He said, “Come quickly!” I approached him flying that short distance to reach his proximity and he showed me on the ground a pool of pristine beautiful water and two children washing their feet in those waters. I soon awoke and after meditating for many years on this experience, I have comprehended again and again this statement from The Aquarian Message: 
Whosoever wants to die in the Lord must wash their feet in the waters of renunciation. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message
Unfortunately, like many of us in the Gnostic movement, I have ties to the Black Lodge that I am working to remove, to comprehend, to overcome. It is a very painful process, to recognize that we have those defects of perdition, of witchcraft or sorcery. It is very rare to find someone in the movement who does not have this. But the symbol is very interesting: two children washing their feet in beautiful waters―to renounce.
We have to learn to renounce the ego, whatever ego is really defined by our most negative qualities. We do so by purifying our consciousness, by becoming like children, innocent―giving up states and qualities that are detrimental to ourselves and others. The way that we do so is through meditating. Conserve your energy. Work with יסוד Yesod, because the waters of יסוד Yesod are precisely the energy that will give you the capacity to change. When you work with pranayama, with Ham Sah, with alchemy, certain runes, sacred rites of rejuvenation, etc., we learn to purify our psyche. Everything in this Tree of Life gravitates towards יסוד Yesod. There would be no Tree of Life without the sexual energy, without the foundation of our spiritual temple. You cannot balance your heart and emotions, your mental states, or even relax your body well if you are not working with these waters, daily. So that experience really humbled me. It showed me what I needed to do. Those are the same waters, really, cited in stories like The Wizard of Oz, even, in its symbolic folklore. In such childhood tales of the Wicked Witch of the West being disintegrated by the waters of renunciation, in order to liberate, in that story, in a symbolic way, the Winkies: the winged monkeys that are a symbol of the desires that have trapped our soul in hell. You liberate your consciousness by working with this force. It is the force of purity. It is the force of ablution within Islam. 
Muslims, before they perform prayer, wash their hands, their face, parts of their body, in order to be suitable for prayer and remembrance of divinity. Ablution (Arabic الوضوء al-wudu) really has to do with working with the sexual energy in its most esoteric sense. You purify yourself with this force. This energy is what grants you the capacity to ascend. You cannot renounce the lower seven סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth without this foundation.
So no matter how difficult your particular path might be, if you are a person who committed a lot of wrong in this life, perhaps, even you were a black magician in past lives, you can change by working with the waters of renunciation, by working with prayer and purity. Learn to renounce the lower seven סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth in order to ascend in your meditations. Let your body, your physicality, rest. Work with energy (יסוד Yesod), your vital forces, whether through mantras, prayers, vocalizations, pranayamas, or even alchemy. Withdraw yourself from your emotions, those negative emotions which creates so much pain. Renounce them. Do not give them your attention. Do not invest yourself in them. Observe and relax your heart. Likewise, your thoughts. Let your thoughts calm by observing them. And when you are perfectly in a state of equanimity, when you are concentrated within, not distracted, but serene and clear, you can begin to experience perceptions related to the top of the Tree of Life; from the consciousness, from גבורה Geburah and even from the Spirit , חֶסֶד Chesed, الرحيم Al-Rahim, the Merciful, and even beyond. This is why Samael Aun Weor stated in The Narrow Way: We need to die, to die, and to die within ourselves, and to renounce, renounce, and renounce, and to cease existing within all of the seven cosmos in order to have the right TO BE within the Absolute. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Narrow Way
This is a very famous meditation within the writings of Samael Aun Weor, especially Igneous Rose and other books, in which we abandon the lower vehicles by renouncing them, these lower spheres in order to enter higher states. You can study Igneous Rose, especially the chapter “Esoteric Discipline of Mind,” which relates this, but I also believe in the book Aztec Christic Magic [see the chapter "Meditation"].
Life’s Impermanence
I'd like to relate some quotes that emphasize these points, what renunciation is, how we achieve it, how we understand the transience of life for our own benefit.
Abu Bakr said: "Our abode is transitory, our life therein is but a loan, our breaths are numbered, and our indolence is manifest." By this he signified that the world is too worthless to engage our thoughts; for whenever you occupy yourself with what is perishable, you are made blind to that which is eternal; the friends of God turn their backs on the world and the flesh which veil them from Him, and they decline to act as if they were owners of a thing that is really the property of another. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
In synthesis, do not be attached to the fruits of your actions. Life is transitory. Even in serious practitioners, we have a lot of laziness. I believe the Dalai Lama even stated that he gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning every day to meditate, and even he says “I have a lot of laziness in me.” So we are indolent. It is manifest when we really look, when we examine ourselves.
Do not engage your thoughts in distractions, but learn to occupy your concentration upon the eternal within states of being. We learn such practices by developing concentration, when we no longer let ourselves identify with worldly impressions or negative states that veil or obscure our perceptions of the presence of our Being. Turning our back on the world means to reject the beliefs of humanity. Those beliefs that say, “You will be happy when you do this and have a bank account and a car and a job and a career, a family.” We can have all these things and learn to be renunciants. It just means that we are not attached. We do not identify and waste energy in external things. To be veiled is to be asleep as a consciousness, to not perceive divinity within our own actions because the consciousness is obscured. It is conditioned. We have to remember the presence of God. The quality of God and our states here and now, for divinity is always with us, even if we do not see Him. As stated in Surah 50 verse 16, or the Surah al-Qaf: And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than his jugular vein. ―Qur’an 50:16
Divinity knows all of our thoughts, what our ego whispers within our three brains, to act and to be fed. And if we really pay attention to this internal dynamic and interchange of thinking, feeling, and acting / impulses, we can learn to see that we are not thought, feeling, or impulse, instinct. We see that divinity is closer to us than we thought. We perceive qualities of being as we have explained in this course.
The quote continues from Al-Hujwiri's Revelation of the Mystery: And he said: "O God, give me plenty of the world and make me desirous of renouncing it!" This saying has a hidden sense, viz.: "First bestow on me worldly goods that I may give thanks for them, and then help me to abstain from them for Thy sake, so that I may have the treble merit of thanksgiving and liberality and abstinence, and that my poverty may be voluntary, not compulsory.” ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery 
Lawful and Unlawful Renunciation
Our psychological attitude is what matters. It comes to mind Krishnamurti. He was a great renunciate. He made a lot of money from his lectures. He lived wealthfully, yet, he was not attached to his career, his possessions, his car, his home. So, we can learn to be the same if that's really what divinity wants for us.
There is nothing wrong with having possessions. What matters is that we are not addicted to them. We are not distracted by them. We are not wasting our time with too many activities. We should learn to minimize them. This relates to Sufi teachings on what is lawful and unlawful within Islam. This is a very common term used to relate to how divinity allows or supports certain material or even spiritual things. You can even think of the حلال halal, the term meaning, food that is pure: to be حلال halal. To be praised. הלל Hilel in Hebrew, or حلال Halal in Arabic, such as not eating impure foods like pork, not drinking alcohol. These are things that are unlawful amongst Muslims and Sufis, and really even among Gnostics, because those elements will condition our consciousness. If you want success with these studies, you must neither drink alcohol, nor smoke, nor eat too much red meat. Do not worry; cultivate the habit of being happy. ―Samael Aun Weor, Aztec Christic Magic: “Coatlicue”
And so we avoid eating unlawful food, even. This is the meaning of the term. Lawful is that which will purify the consciousness. Unlawful is that which conditions it, in synthesis.
Having wealth through upright living, in a lawful way, in a beneficial way for oneself and others, is a stipulation of the Aquarian teachings. The Sufis relate some beautiful points about this: The Sufis have differing opinions in the matter of renunciation (zuhd). Some of them say that one need only renounce the unlawful, because the lawful has been made permissible by God Most High. When God benefits His servant with lawful property and the servant in turn worships Him with gratitude for it, it is not preferable for him to leave it with his own will rather than keeping it with God’s permission. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So having wealth for the sake of supporting a spiritual community, for helping humanity, is beautiful, is wonderful, and even necessary. Let us remember three factors for effective spirituality: death, birth, and sacrifice. Meaning: annihilate the ego, die to the ego, and create the soul through virtuous action, to give birth to our spiritual consciousness by giving birth through the sexual creative energy. And lastly, serving humanity selflessly in whatever capacity we have. In Sufism, this is known as فناء fana, annihilation; بقاء baqa, subsistence; and زكاة zakat, charity.
The Sufis emphasize that in order to really be in the Being, to be present, to subsist in God, we have to eliminate the impurities through annihilation (فناء fana) and that way, our actions are much more charitable, profound, impactful. Samael Aun Weor spoke abundantly about the rights of Canchorrita. When we practice the teachings these three factors, we will by law of Karma receive food, clothing and shelter from divinity. 34. We must be content with the rights of "Canchorrita."
It is a law of cause and effect. If we renounce behaviors that are animal and destructive, if we renounce unlawful behaviors and activities in accordance with divinity, we will be provided for a space to live, to meditate, to work happily.
Our level of being attracts our life. Do you want better circumstances? Then renounce the ego. Do not engage in unlawful behaviors, and I am not talking about physical laws in different countries, but in terms of the law of the soul, of the Being. What is ethical? Behaviors that produce happiness or pain? Let us choose to follow our conscience. We elevate our level of being by renouncing lower levels of being. This is the key, especially we want to have stability in meditation, consistency in our meditation, focus, concentration, deeper serenity, peace. The Virtue and Obligation of Renunciation
Renunciation also exists as we learn to be content with what we have, no longer desiring through the disease of “more.”
Desire is fundamentally the cause of suffering. It is a virtue to be content with what we have. People have many beliefs about life and spirituality, and yet they suffer a lot. We can have wealth and yet be the most miserable people on the Earth. There is a statistic that states that if you earn fifty thousand dollars a year or more, you are among the top 5% wealthiest people in the world. Sadly, even though people have abundance, we tend to suffer from internal lack. Therefore, to be attached to worldliness, to perishable things, is absurd. Renunciation exists when we cease chasing after superfluous things, concentrating seriously on meditation each day, giving ourselves more time to practice, to deepen our awareness, to deepen our states. There is virtue even when we have abundance, but we can learn to even give what we have, to our degree, so that others can benefit. This is how we really refine our spiritual life, to sacrifice for others through compassion. Let us read some quotes in relation to the writings of Al-Qushayri, The Principles of Sufism, who explains these principles very beautifully about the virtue and obligation of renunciation: Other Sufis say that renunciation of the unlawful is an obligation, while renunciation of the lawful is a virtue. From this point of view, as long as the servant is patient with his state of little property, satisfied with what God Most High has apportioned for him, and content with what he has been given, he is more perfect than one who lives richly and comfortably in the world. God Most High has urged people to abstain from the world by His saying, "Say: The provision of this world is but small, while the next is better for whoever is God―wary" (4:77) and in many other verses that may be cited disparaging the world and recommending abstention from it. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So how is renunciation relevant to the study and practice of meditation?
There are many people who complain that they cannot meditate. Their environment is loud. They have a difficult economic situation. Some people complain that they live in a big city, are surrounded by noisy people, obnoxious neighbors, loud dogs, loud children, a small apartment, a difficult roommate, no physical teacher or school guru, missionary, group involved or nearby; one has a difficult spouse or feels they are having conflict in their marriage, their relationship, not having a separate meditation space. While having a separate meditation space is good, while it's good to have a clean home, while it is beneficial to have spiritual companions or spouse that one can work with in life, a partner, people fail to recognize that if they want better circumstances, they must fundamentally change their level of being. There are many people who think that they can only advance in meditation if they are married, if they have a Gnostic spouse―and this is not true. What matters is our quality of being. We will receive what we need and accordance with the law, which is karma, the divine law شريعة Shari’ah. Now, having a home that is conducive for meditation, some people can do it, some people cannot. It is important that if this is your situation, that you have a space where you can find, whether at a temple or nature, some space where you can practice, is good. It is necessary, because if one's home life is very disorganized and difficult, it can become very challenging to really deepen one's meditative discipline. So, sometimes one's home life can be challenging because we have neighbors or people who are loud. The reality is that we can renounce our own attachments to a different situation. I believe Dion Fortune from the Western esoteric tradition stated that a person does not know how to meditate if they cannot meditate on a bus or a noisy train. We really learn to develop profound concentration when there are distractions, and obviously it is good to have a home that is silent and clean and pure in which one could really dedicate to these exercises. But if there are difficulties in relation to one's home environment, make the changes that you can and learn to renounce what you cannot change. The fact is whether there is 5G or not, whether the neighbors are loud, or one's economic situation is difficult, we can still meditate. It is about renouncing distractions in our psyche, not giving your body that itch or scratch, that pain, adjusting oneself all the time and moving and not really focusing within. Renounce many of the problems that really have no basis. Stop investing your energy into them. Simply be. Relax. It could be difficult, but the more you renounce negative thoughts, feelings, and instincts, we learn to change our quality of life, fundamentally. So learn to renounce discomfort, dissatisfaction, the internal dialogue of the ego that says “I can only do this if I have A, B, and C.” We have to learn to renounce suffering, misery, envy, ego. In that way, by changing our psychology, we learn to receive from divinity. We learn to receive help at our level, at our degree. 
Renunciation of the Heart
Renunciation is really of the heart. These are some more verses that explain everything we have been stating so far, how it is a psychological attitude:
I heard Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami say... that Sufyan al-Thawri said, "Renunciation of the world means to give up placing your hope in it, not to eat coarse food or wear the robe of an ascetic.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So, stop believing and chasing after dreams that one day we will be spiritual “when I get my own home, find a spiritual group, and marry a Gnostic partner.” We have to stop putting our hopes in external things, because if our psychology does not fundamentally change, then having all these beautiful things will not help. In fact, we will suffer and make a lot of problems for ourselves. What matters is our quality of being, our level of being,
I like to relate some quotes from Samael Aun Weor's book, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, in which he really beautifully summarizes how renunciation is internal, psychological. He states the following in his chapter, “The Internal State”: …when people review their lives, unfortunately, they only think that their life is exclusively constituted by external events...
It is important that to really be effective with renunciation, we learn to combine internal states with external events. What this means is that in relation to the appropriate situations, we learn to enact intuitive will. Our conscience may push us to say something compassionately to a co-worker. Perhaps we are at our job and we see that our co-worker is suffering a lot. Part of us may feel shy and may not want to respond in the moment: to keep silent because we are at a work meeting. And yet, our intuition and heart tell us to respond and comfort this person. We learn to renounce or should learn to renounce our own insipid qualities: fear, anticipation, anxiety, in order to do what is helpful for that other person. This is an example of renouncing the ego and learning to enact virtuous qualities of the soul.
So, combine the appropriate state with the external event. Knowing what to do in the moment is the quality of intuition: knowing what to do without having to think about it. We simply comprehend beautiful action, compassionate action. But if we do not renounce our own ineptitudes, our ego, we create suffering in our situation, our circumstances. This is a moment to moment effort. Let us continue with a quote from Al-Qushayri's Principles of Sufism. And I heard him say... Sari al-Saqati said, "God strips the world from His Friends, denies it to His purified ones, and removes it from the hearts of those He loves because He is not satisfied with that for them.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Beautiful verses that relate different levels of being, as we have been going back to again and again in this course. Who are the friends of divinity, of God? These are the masters, saints, and initiates who renounce the world with the advent of resurrection. Meaning: they fully eliminated the ego and they are preparing to renounce everything below in order to return to the divine through the death of their body. Those who purify their psyches face hardships because of divinity, as a test. We may be denied certain blessings because of difficult situations. They force us to confront our psychology, our stubborn attachments, our own pain. Without challenges, we can't grow.
So, in those cases, we need to learn to renounce our own sorrows, to really develop peace of mind. When divinity really loves His disciples, He removes love of this world from their hearts. This is a very subtle reading. It does not mean that we become very dark, sour, masochistic people immersed in morbidity. Instead, we learn to be in life enjoying and experiencing the diverse situations of life but remembering their contexts. Remember that when we die physically, our bank accounts, our social security number, our cars, our home, our family, our beloved spouse, our children won't go with us. But, we can learn to love them. Be happy with them and for them, but remember in the context that life is fleeting. It is transient. What matters is our level of being, our internal state, not so much what is outside. We really demonstrate our intelligence when we learn to navigate life utilizing the right psychological state and correct response to the impressions of life. But for that, we have to renounce reactions, because the mind always wants to react to the impressions of life. Renunciation has to do with not letting the mind react mechanically, habitually. To do that is to repeat problems. Instead, one has to be conscious. This is why Samael Aun Weor states the following, again, from the same chapter from the Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology. Those who know how to consciously combine the external event with the appropriate interior state are very rare. Types of Renunciation
Let's explore different types of renunciation.
God, the Most High, says, ‘That which is left for you by God is best for you’ (11:86). Renunciation lies in three things: renouncing the world, renouncing people, and renouncing oneself. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path The Three Types of Ascetics
Let's examine what each type of renunciation involves because it is very in―depth, if we have been studying the sequence of lectures in this course. Abdullah Ansari of Herat states:
Whoever does not refuse the wealth of this world to his enemies is an ascetic vis-à-vis the world. ―Abdullah Ansari of Heart, Stations of the Sufi Path
We should give even unto our worst enemies. We do so by acting compassionately. When we give indiscriminately to others, in whatever capacity we have, we become ascetics: people who are disciplined in this path, the Gnostic work. Samael Aun Weor and the Fourth Way schools reject Fakirism, which is commonly associated with asceticism, such as people sleeping on a bed of nails, living out in the weather, the cold, performing acts of physical austerities, etc. We learn in the Gnostic path to develop our willpower and develop our spiritual life by fulfilling our obligations, our responsibilities in society, by doing what is best for others.
If you want your meditations to be profound, work compassionately and ethically for others. An unethical mind is agitated. It is not at peace. It is not serene. So, don't refuse your wealth even unto your enemies, meaning your spiritual wealth as well―not necessarily physical things, but your time, your energy, your conscious love: to learn how to give even to people whom you feel are every difficult, who challenge you, who create struggles and pains and difficulties for you. This is the meaning. The quote continues: Whoever does not allow his shame over what people may think about his piety coax him away [from worshipping God] is an ascetic vis-à-vis people. ―Abdullah Ansari of Heart, Stations of the Sufi Path
Some people get very embarrassed about being in Gnosis or a spiritual group, such as family members or people who criticize or gossip about us, friends who may misinterpret our actions or the teachings. However, to continue to do what we know is best for spiritual life, we become ascetics in relation to people. We are willing to renounce what other people think of us. We learn to practice alchemy, transmutation, chastity, regardless if all the doctors of the world, people who are very materialistic and conditioned, think that it is wrong. We do not feel shame about the teachings, about the practices, about the work.
Lastly: Whoever does not behold himself with self-congratulation nor look upon himself with approval, is an ascetic vis-à-vis himself. ―Abdullah Ansari of Heart, Stations of the Sufi Path
This is most important. We have to not have Illusions about who we are, our quality of being in relation to divinity. We have to see ourselves and the practical facts. This is why we perform retrospection meditation.
We visualize the events of our day in which certain egos acted. We learn to go deep into our psychological states, reviewing the day, how we saw the world and what we think of ourselves, to renounce any Illusions about who we are or what we think about ourselves―to simply observe. Observe the facts. Self-observe. Gather data, and then in retrospection meditation, review your day and examine the different defects you saw. This is how we renounce the ego. This is how we become an ascetic of the Spirit: to not congratulate ourselves or think that we are worth anything, really. The only thing that is worthy of praise is our Being, which is why in Islam we say, ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ, al-Ḥamdu lillāh: “All praise is to God,” the Being. Our inner God is worthy of all praise, but we are just the servant. Therefore we should not accept any type of adulation for ourselves. The Signs of Renunciation
In this final slide, we will talk about the signs of renunciation.
Renouncing the world and remaining an ascetic in the world has three signs: remembering death, being content with one’s sustenance, and seeking the companionship of the dervishes. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
In many schools of meditation, we learn in the beginning to contemplate our own death. This does not mean that we are dark people, sick people, or we think it is cool, but because it provides seriousness in our work.
We really do not know when we will die. Therefore, should we waste our time, our lives with meaningless things, or should we develop our consciousness? Again, learn to give up activities that waste time, that do not really feed your spiritual life. If you know that going out to drink with friends is going to make you very pessimistic, very heavy, very sick, mentally, emotionally, then renounce that. Who cares what anyone thinks? In reality, when we renounce a lower level of being, we ascend to a higher one. We learn to associate with more spiritually like―minded people, such as the companions, the dervishes. This is a symbol of any spiritual group, really, who is practicing poverty, renunciation: giving up psychological attachments. Companionship with other Gnostics can be very helpful, very beneficial, being with people who are like-minded who study the same thing. This is why every spiritual community in the world is necessary. But, it is not definitive. We will not progress simply because we attend a group. It's good to associate with other initiates, and really the best way to associate with the initiates is in the internal planes, because when you awaken in the Tree of Life, you can learn to communicate with the gods, with the angels. Those really are the dervishes: people who have really mastered this work before, in whom many don't have physical bodies. You can meet them internally by renouncing negative behaviors. But also, we should learn to be content with our own sustenance, what we have. In the West, we really do not have many excuses to not really practice. If we are in a war zone, that is very different. Obviously, it is going to be very difficult if you have bombs going off in your neighborhood. But typically, in North America, the West, or Western civilized countries, we have a lot of privileges that the world around us envies, and it is really absurd to waste our leisure in stupidities. Let us continue with the quote: Renouncing people has three signs: understanding that the command of God precedes everything else, understanding that providence is firm and established, and seeing that people are helpless and vulnerable. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
God's command is right, even if it is against what everybody believes: what people cherish and hold dear. And what is the manner by which we understand God's will?
There are many millions of people who preach that they know God. If you seriously ask them and investigate to see whether they are awakened in the astral plane, the internal worlds, the reality is that they are asleep. They believe in divinity, but they do not know. As the Qur’an teaches, "For truly, they are a people who don't know," who do not experience, since “Are those who know equal to those who know not?" (Qur’an 39:9). God's commands are found through understanding the principles of ethics, conscious ethics, especially chastity. Humanity does not like chastity, purity, and sex. In fact, humanity fights very diligently to preserve lust and desire at the expense of other people's well-being. If you do not believe me, look at the pornography industry where people are exploited and violated. It is very serious. Desire does not produce a harmonious society. It creates chaos. Therefore, we should learn to understand divinity's commands, especially like in the example I gave you where Samael Aun Weor was showing me that to be effective in my work I had to work with the waters of renunciation. So this teaching is very practical for me. You can learn to have those experiences by working with the exercises in our tradition, especially, as we have been outlining in this course. Our path is firm and established when we work seriously and ask for help, inside. When we receive experiences, we have genuine faith. We learn to renounce again and again, continuously, different states that create problems. This is faith: knowledge born from experience. People, despite their best virtues, are not necessarily reliable. Only God is reliable, the Being. So, we are helpless before divinity, vulnerable, weak. It is impossible to change without the help of our own inner Being. Even masters who are preparing for resurrection are helpless before God. They are really striving and working hard to obtain those degrees, which are very elevated. But even they are helpless. Therefore, why should we be so arrogant to think that we can do this on our own? We need help from our inner divinity through experiences and through enacting ethical behavior. Lastly, the following quote: Renouncing the self has three signs: recognizing the deceit of the devil, realizing one’s weakness, and seeing the darkness of being lead on by the lure of passion (istidrāj). ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So who is the devil? We can point our finger at witches and sorcerers or sorceresses in the astral plane and even physically, but really the devil is our own ego. As I had stated in the previous lecture, we should not be concerned with other people so much but rather our own interior states.
We are 97% ego. Therefore, we are weak. We gradually train ourselves to strengthen our Essence, but this is only achieved when we are honest. Temptations must be seen and overcome, seeing the darkness of our own egotistical states and really understanding them; meditating, reflecting at the end of your day, visualizing a certain event in which you perhaps acted wrongly and trying to understand it and ask for wisdom about what would have been the correct behavior, so that you can renounce whatever egos were manifesting in that part of your day. Temptations are necessary. This is how we define ourselves. Temptation is fire. Triumph over temptation is light. We overcome these problems when we remember the qualities of our own conscience, our heart. In synthesis, these are some principles relating to renunciation that can feed our meditation practice, because without giving up harmful ways of being, we cannot enact superior ways of being. So at this point in time, I'd like to open up the floor to questions. Questions and Answers
Question: It seems from your lecture that one way to understand renunciation is in the myth of Heracles and the Hydra, which dwells within the murky waters. It is not enough to implore God and cut off a head, but one must use the fire of transformation to keep the head from growing back. So take alcohol. If one has energy invested towards drinking and decides to renounce it, energy is released. But the reason for the drinking might not be comprehended so the negativity manifests elsewhere.
Instructor: So all the mythologies of the world correlate. The great war of the heroes, such as within the Roman and Greek myths, or any biblical cosmogony, even relates with the مجاهدين mujāhidīn, those who strive in the way of God within the Qur’an. All that teaches psychological truths about how we wage war against our own egos, our defects. 
In the myth of Heracles, who is the action of the soul, the beauty of the soul (תפארת Tiphereth), has to fight a many headed beast, the Hydra, which is a representation of our multiple defects. It is not enough to beg God to eliminate, but we have to comprehend with the fire of understanding, with intelligence. We only do that through meditation.
All of our habits and desires, in the beginning, we can learn to renounce what we see in the beginning. Renunciation is based off comprehension. If you just give up a certain way of being without understanding it, then the quality of your ethics is not going to be that deep. Really, if we give up mistaken ways of being, it is because we comprehend from experience how they create problems. So that Hydra, that beast, dwells in the waters of יסוד Yesod, because our own lust, anger, pride, hatred, vanity, lives within those energies, steals the energies of יסוד Yesod for their own purposes. In the beginning, you have to learn to renounce and not give your energy to the ego in the moment. Perhaps you are with friends and they want to go drinking. You are with them at a bar, but you make the conscious decision not to feed your own egos of drunkenness. So we are not investing our energy into that habit. Instead, we are saving energy that we would have otherwise spent through desire. But that is not enough. What is important and more necessary is to go home, close your eyes, relax. Retrospect that moment in which you were tested, tempted, to behave in a way that you knew was wrong. You have to visualize the scene as it happened: what egos came up, what you said, what you did, what you thought, what you felt, even how you behaved internally without showing anyone. Ask for comprehension for whatever egos you saw in that moment. Ask to go deeper. Work with the waters of renunciation. Work with your creative energy, through the powers of יסוד Yesod through pranayama, mantra, runes, sacred rites of rejuvenation, alchemy, and with that energy present circulating in you, you can go deep with the fire of your energies, because the fire of creativity is in the waters of sex, the waters of Genesis. It is that water, the fiery waters, that can learn to disintegrate any ego you have comprehended. But first, you need to comprehend what happened. It is only in that way that you really can eliminate at all. Renouncing behaviors or repressing what we see without comprehending is going to create problems. Instead, be cognizant of yourself. Be aware. It is important to remember that in our daily experience, what wastes energy is ego, whether through the intellect, our emotions, our movements, our instincts, and our sexuality, which has to do with our thoughts, feelings, and will. We have to learn to study the mind: all the different egos that take the energies, the waters of sexuality, and waste them. Desire takes the energies of creativity and abuses them. Without that energy present, you cannot really renounce anything, comprehend anything. In our exercise in retrospection, we learn to first see the ego in action and then later, comprehend how the energy steals life from our spirituality. I will give you a concrete example. I remember working at one job in which I was greatly criticized by certain clients of mine. I remember being criticized by a person, in which egos of anger, pride, and resentment emerged. I observed the different thoughts, different feelings, the different impulses to act, but first, rather than give in to that moment, to what my desires wanted, I renounced those mechanical, repetitious, reactionary behaviors, because I understood in the moment that if I did that, I would suffer and make other people suffer. Instead, I learned to transform the situation by being calm, present, and kind. Later, I went home, meditated on each defect, visualizing each aggregate I perceived, spending perhaps ten to fifteen minutes on each ego, asking my divine Being to show me the depth of each desire. When I found that I had comprehended my anger, what it wanted; my pride, my resentment, how they functioned, how they interrelated, how they fed themselves, where they came from, how they emerged, how they sustained, how they acted in my mind―I prayed for annihilation, asking for disintegration from the divine feminine, my Divine Mother Kundalini, or البقره Al-Baqarah within Islam, the sacred cow. Or الْبُرَاق Al-Buraq, the lightning of the divine feminine who annihilates any aggregate we have comprehended and removed. So, this is a synthesis we have kind of come back to again and again, but is an essential practice we need to understand. You can also look at a lecture we gave called Retrospection Meditation on our website and a course called Gnostic Meditation where we explain this in the seventh lecture at the end, in depth. Question: I have been struggling with learning to let go of personal success, growing a business. Is it bad to own a business? Instructor: No, not bad at all. Now, do we do our business with egotism or with ethics, with conscience? There are many wealthy people who learn to act ethically and there are many wealthy people who are completely unethical. Nothing wrong with the business. In fact, if we have a business that really helps people, then we could really do a lot of good for humanity. But the problem is that people are very materialistic-minded, and therefore, they let their ego run the show, and that is where suffering and problems exist. Any other questions? Question: I have noticed that as I deepen my practices in the three factors, I have experienced more dreams and the infradimensions, the hell realm, so to speak. This makes me feel sad as I am unconscious in them and cannot control my behaviors. These are actions that I would never perform in the physical dimension. Why would this happen to a devoted student? Instructor: Because there are levels of being, levels of renunciation. We can be very chaste, devout, pure renunciates in the physical world, very dedicated to Gnosis, and yet, if we examine our dreams and our ordeals in the astral plane, we will perceive egos and aggregates that are very deeply lodged within our unconsciousness, our subconsciousness, our infraconsciousness. There are 49 levels to the mind according to Samael Aun Weor. The physical body is merely one level. Or better said, there are seven levels within each of the lower seven סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth of the Tree of Life. So there are seven in מלכות Malkuth, seven in יסוד Yesod, seven in הוד Hod, seven in נצח Netzach, seven in תפארת Tiphereth, seven in גבורה Geburah, and seven in חֶסֶד Chesed. We can understand certain egos in the physical world and be very serious in this path, and yet, in the more hidden layers of our own psyche, there are demons that really cause us pain. And this is a very necessary thing that happens to every student who is serious. We discover that we have a lot of iniquity, and it causes a lot of pain, and this is essential. Now, the next step is, once we have perceived this in ourselves, we have to learn to go deeper into our psyche in order to eliminate those hidden defects. The best way to do it is by, in meditation, renouncing our body, not identifying with the sensations of our physicality. Don't move. Breathe deeply. Relax. Work with energy, your vital depth, your vital forces, so that your heart, through prayer and concentration, can calm and be filled with positive emotion, superior emotion. Remember the qualities of your Being, retracting, withdrawing your attention from your thoughts, learning to renounce thinking―not thinking so much, not worrying about how bad we are or what a big demon we are. It is the reality, but it doesn't benefit us by stewing in the mud. Instead, it is better to relax and to remember that we have God within. No matter how impure our ego is, we have divinity inside who is pure and beautiful and divine. We have to reflect on the qualities of our Being. So if you feel very overwhelmed by how bad the mind is, by hidden dreams that are very disturbing, remember what your Divine Mother is like. Renounce your pain. It is very difficult because we feel that great remorse and sorrow for what we really are. And personally, I have had this many times where I've seen egos in myself that fill me with so much pain that I could not stop weeping. But, the reality is that we have to learn to renounce even our deepest pains, and in that way, withdrawing our senses, learning to concentrate within in a silent state of equanimity, we learn to await the answer from our consciousness, our Spirit. By achieving serenity and renouncing the lower סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth, we can learn to receive help, the guidance we need and the comprehension we need to eliminate those really deep egos. This is the method. This is the process so that we can enter the internal planes with clarity. Question: From our renunciations, do these teachings become more sacred to us? There is so much information, it is easy to treat the teachings like other information. Instructor: Yes, obviously if you have experienced this knowledge personally, you learn to have faith, which is knowledge from experience. It is what you know. Not what you believe, not what you think, not what you hypothesize, but what you know from facts. And that gives you strength and courage to renounce things and information and activities that are really useless. And obviously, in this era of information, it's very easy to look at this type of knowledge and to disregard it like everything else because there are just so many teachings and instructions and schools and religions out there, that it becomes very confusing to discriminate what is of value. We invite you to study the practices of our tradition, especially, and learn to experiment. Do not anticipate what you might have, what you might experience, or to reject them completely, but really test them, so that you can learn to verify from your own knowledge and heart what is true. In that way, you gain confidence of what is real, not from adhering to a group or following anyone or any group or teacher, but really knowing from your awakened consciousness, your soul, and that is something that cannot be taken away from you no matter how much the mind fluctuates or vacillates or changes. The Essence of the soul stays the same. That wisdom is never lost. It belongs to the Being, to God. Question: Master Samael says that if we sacrifice every element of pain that we feel throughout our life, if we made this our work, whenever we experience even the most insignificant pain, we would die with a completely awakened consciousness and no karma. Can you talk about renunciation and separation? Instructor: Yes, oftentimes in the words of Kahlil Gibran, the great Sufi Christian poet, “much of our pain is self-chosen.” We choose to suffer because we feel that we were wronged. We were offended, slighted, betrayed, lied to, dishonored, singled out. We have many excuses why we should invest all our energy in singing our psychological song, where we are the great martyrs of humanity. We have been honest and truthful and kind and compassionate, and yet, everybody else is wrong and we have received the bad end of the stick. This is how many people think. We all sing our own internal psychological songs. Some of us, you know, sing the same songs again and again: the same tragedies, comedies, and stories in which we are the center of our own moral universe in which we are the righteous ones. This type of attitude does not benefit us, and moreover, it does not benefit anyone outside. 
We have to learn to separate and renounce from this type of thinking. The way that we do so is through self-observation. Learn to separate as a consciousness from your three brains. Learn to see within your three brains. Look at them, at the thoughts, feelings, and impulses that emerge within the moment. This is مراقبة muraqabah (vigilance) in Arabic, or محاسبة muhasabah, in Arabic signifying “inner accounting,” to take account of our defects, to see them for what they are and not give them our energy. If we were to sacrifice our pains in this way, and these psychological songs that waste so much energy and do not produce any benefit, we will radically transform our situation. We would learn to take on very difficult situations with grace and efficacy.
Most people, and even many of us in Gnosis, we have one slight difficulty and then we complain. We choose to be in suffering in many cases. The ego does not get what it wants and therefore we feel a great crisis in ourselves. Now, that type of conflict is necessary, to feel those egos emerge in us so that we can see them and work on them. But you cannot really renounce the ego if you don't see it for what it is. How can you give up that what you don't know? You have to see the ego in action. Observe it clearly without judging or labeling it right away, but simply look. Gather the data. Gather the facts. And then when you go home at night or you’re meditating on your day, reflect on what you saw, and be sincere. Be honest. You can't renounce negative ways of being if you don't understand what they are and how they are fed, how they are situated, how they cause problems, how you feed into them. You have to see it. And when you see it, you can learn to comprehend it. Remember that if you learn to overcome the most insignificant pain with awareness and attention, not investing yourself in it, you learn to overcome many situations and problems that would be very difficult to handle. This is what it means to become hermetically sealed within the alchemical western tradition. Do not give your energy to the mind. Be sealed. Do not let your energy out, but conserve it by not acting negatively, but learning to act ethically. This is really how we should proceed if we really want to die with a completely awakened donsciousness and no karma. Question: When you say renounce the lowest סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth, do you mean מלכות Malkuth? Instructor: Yes, that's part of it. So in one meditation, you can basically observe the body, become aware of the body, relax deeply, and then renounce the physical body. Go deep into meditation, relaxed, in a state of concentration and clarity, equanimity, and you can learn to abandon your physicality as a consciousness. Likewise, you can abandon יסוד Yesod, the vital body; הוד Hod, the astral body; נצח Netzach, the mental body; תפארת Tiphereth, the causal body; גבורה Geburah, the divine soul, and reach חֶסֶד Chesed, the Spirit. And even you can abandon חֶסֶד Chesed to renounce the lower סְפִירוֹת Sephiroth in order to enter the higher spheres of the Tree of Life, and even the Absolute. It is a form of meditation we can perform, very difficult for beginners, but something that one can master through a lot of patience and experience, through practice. In synthesis, some books and texts that can help you in this process of renunciation include the book Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, especially the chapter called The Observer and The Observed, as well as Individuality. Practice with self-observation, learn to observe your quality of mind, thought, feeling, and action from moment to moment by learning to see our own defects in action. By separating from the mind, egotism, desires (nafs), we can gather data about our essential qualities of being, so that we can change and renounce behaviors that are negative, and learn to enact positive virtuous action. 
Everything we have explained in this course of Beginning Self-Transformation is preliminary. The most essential principle for transforming and elevating our psyche is the divine feminine.
All religions bear a profound respect and veneration of the divine feminine, the Divine Mother. It is really the Abrahamic traditions that have lost sight of this and have adulterated the significance of Her presence in the spiritual work. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam reject any femininity in divinity as an effort to distance themselves, to define themselves against the so-called “pagan” religions. The reality is that God, the Being, is not entirely masculine, but feminine as well. This is a profound fact, which confounds and scandalizes religious fanatics, people who are accustomed to a patriarchal anthropomorphism, who fail to recognize that God, the Being, is not a person, but a force, an energy. Divinity is an intelligence. Divinity is within nature, and more importantly within our consciousness, with distinct qualities, principles, characteristics that can really be qualified, classified, and defined as masculine and feminine, yet, not in accordance with modern societal mores, beliefs, ideologies. The reality is that divinity has masculine and feminine polarities of expression. Yet these principles are not merely limited to just physical gender. They constitute archetypes, forces, blueprints for creation, the expression of the Spirit. We can say that the divine masculine is projectivity. It is symbolized by the positive polarity of electric charge. It is force, magnetism, assertion, willpower. It is the energy that initiates, which commands, that organizes and even impregnates, engenders, disciplines, and forces. On the other hand, the divine feminine is receptivity. It is the negative polarity of electric charge. It is the force of conception, gestation, of nurturing, the sustenance that develops a child, the development of youth under the auspices of maternity. All religions, every ancient tradition teaches, that the world's animals, human beings, and the Gods are the consequence of sexual union: the harmonization of masculine and feminine. Every single cosmogony teaches this: how masculine divinity cannot create, cannot develop, cannot manifest without the help of the feminine divine. Therefore, it is really ignorant to reject the divine feminine because of theological, theosophical, or vain beliefs. The divine feminine is a cosmological reality, which we the Gnostics experience, which we develop through our meditations. A masculine God cannot create anything without the feminine goddess, just as a man cannot have a child without a woman. As above, so below. The Father, our innermost God, unfolds Himself into the Divine Mother. She is the derivative expression of our innermost Being. Through Her, He is able to create life and create it in abundance. Through Her, divinity is able to sustain worlds, awaken the soul. As Gnostics, we never forget the worship and respect, the veneration of the Divine Mother, the divine feminine. Because just as we have a physical mother to whom we owe life, likewise, we must show respect and profound adoration for our Divine Mother Kundalini if we wish to change, because She is the force that awakens us. She is the one who elevates the soul, who brings us to spirituality, who provides us with astral experiences, profound samadhis, conscious experiences in the Tree of Life, the superior worlds of the Kabbalah. She is the one responsible for us because She is the one who raises us from suffering. Without Her, we would be lost in this work. She is the one who initiates, who develops, and who completes this work, especially in relation to the disintegration of the ego. So, today we are going to elaborate on who She is and Her unique role in the work, in this Gnostic path of self-transformation. Sacred Sexology
Yet, to do that, we need to comprehend and understand the principles of sacred sexology.
The reality is that just as a man and a woman are needed to create a physical child, both sexual polarities, material and energetic, are needed to create the soul. This is stipulated throughout the Gnostic writings of Samael Aun Weor. It is simple. It is not elaborate. God creates both physical and spiritual life through sex, but that depends upon our intention, our mental state, our behavior—whether it is pure or degenerate, conscious or egotistical. Sex creates. It engenders. It develops. These principles are within every religion: how man and woman, husband and wife, can use the creative sexual energy in order to give birth to their spirituality. That creative energy is the Divine Mother, and therefore, She creates in us when we know how to use the polarities of sex, male-female. As above, so below. It is a law. It is the Dharma, the sacred knowledge of alchemy. We can believe whatever we want. But if we wish to create a child, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. To create a solar awakened consciousness in its full capacity, to realize our full potential as a perfected divine being, an angel, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man, through conscious love and sexual cooperation. This is because birth is a sexual problem. It is not a belief. And therefore, the birth of the angel, the inner human being, the second birth cited by Jesus, is no exception. Through what is known as tantra, alchemical union, the harmony of masculine and feminine sexes, that energy, which is usually expelled through desire, for procreation, can be converted, can be conserved, sublimated, transmuted, transformed, so that the charged sexual forces of man and woman create a synthesis. This is the child of God, the Son of Man in Christianity, the Christ child or Egyptian Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, the golden child of medieval alchemists, the Platonic Logos, the Kundalini Shakti power of the great yogis of Sahaja Maithuna, the Shekinah of the Kabbalists, the Brazen Serpent of Moses, which is a metallurgic amalgamation of copper—a symbol of Venus, the woman—and the metal tin, the planet Jupiter, or the man. Both polarities, physical genders, are needed to create physical and spiritual life. However, we need to clarify. Gender is not a construct. It is not a concept, a morality, and accepted code of expectations in society imposed by patriarchy, by institutions—something to be rejected or deconstructed by subversive logic. Gender is a material reality. It is based upon our generative organs and the secondary sexual characteristics they attribute to our personality and expression. While our physical sex bears specific characteristics to our terrestrial personality, the divine principles of the Father and Mother are archetypical. They are abstract. They are profound states of being. There are correlations between both sexes, but they are not rigid. We can say that the Divine Father is wisdom, instruction, paternity. The Divine Mother is love, elevation, subsistence. In a perfect matrimony, the man embodies the principles of the Divine Father and the woman embodies the principles of the Divine Mother in body, speech, and mind. So what is the purpose of transformation as we have been explaining throughout this course? We seek to realize the true self. Who is the Divine Father and the Divine Mother? They are within us. They are our true identity, our Being. But we can only reach them through the three factors we explained in the previous lecture on the revolution of the consciousness. While the Divine Father and Divine Mother are distinct in us, this is not to say that they don't share or embody the same principles, that there are rigid correlations here or correspondences. It is not the say that the Father does not characterize love, or the Divine Mother, wisdom. Knowing the nature of divine masculine and divine feminine is a profound matter of experience in the consciousness—to go beyond our culture's conceptions of sex, humanity’s subjective perceptions about gender, about gender roles in society.
What matters in these studies is that we appreciate and work with our sexual energy, whether it is masculine or it is feminine. We do so through complementarity, to complement ourselves: a man for a woman and a woman for a man. But why?
If you look in this graphic, you see husband and wife holding hands and their sexual organs symbolized by two triangles. There are the ovaries of the woman and the testicles of the man, as well as the vagina of the woman and the phallus of the man. The sexual organs are a battery. It is the most profound form of energy we carry within. One gonad has a positive electric spiritual charge and another gonad has a negative receptive feminine charge. In order for electricity to flow, you need both a positive and a negative. This is the essence of tantra. For these energies to flow perfectly, masculine and feminine must reconcile. Notice that when you join these two triangles together, when the sexual organs of male-female join, you create the Star of David: the Seal of Solomon, the seal, the perfection of the solar man, a true master who has conquered the creative energies and has perfected him or herself. The masculine and the feminine compliment. They help each other to arrive at a synthesis, to generate light of a spiritual conscious nature. So these principles are extremely beautiful. Ancient mythologies teach us very profound and beautiful truths, and to frame our discussion, we can find the principles and qualities of the Divine Father and the Divine Mother reflected in a beautiful poem by Victor Hugo. He is the author of Les Miserables, a very famous text, a humanist novel, relating to the French Revolution, and Samael Aun Weor quotes a poem of his in The Perfect Matrimony called “Man and Woman.” I will read it at length. Man is the most elevated of creatures,
We speak about both Divine father and Divine Mother together to preface our focus on the role of the divine feminine. She is essential to the birth of our soul, and that we would not have existence without our mother. The same goes for our spirituality.
The Divine Mother in Different Myths
The eternal feminine exists in every religion. Both aspects of our Being have been represented throughout every religious tradition, without exception.
The Divine Mother is represented by a sacred cow. But why? We nourish our body with the milk of a female cow. In the same manner, we nourish our consciousness with the milk of wisdom, virtue, creative energy, transmutation, and the remembrance of our Divine Mother's presence. Even milk as a substance resembles semen. It is the seminal energy, which nourishes our infancy and helps us to become a spiritual man or woman. The Divine Mother's love is so pervasive and so vast, that she has been represented by the sacred cow of Hinduism, within the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian Taurine mysteries, and the life of Gautama Buddha Shakyamuni and Krishna, both cowherds. In Islam, the longest surah of the Quran is Al-Baqarah, “the Cow,” a symbol of divinity's power to resurrect the soul, because in that scripture Prophet Muhammad relates the magical and power, the influence of a cow whose leg can resurrect the dead. That is a symbol of the power of the divine feminine who raises us from the death of our spirit to the heights of realization. In Islam, the Qur’an is sung. The power of the Divine Mother Cow is in the verb and in sex: the stone or Kaaba of the Muslims. How we speak, as we stated in the lecture “The Spiritual Power of Sound,” determines how we spend energy, either for liberating the soul or enslaving it—whether we produce beneficial action or bring about our own damnation, our own suffering. To spell “the cow” in Spanish is La Baca. Baca backwards is Kaba. All of this synthesizes through the Kabbalah, the mysticism of Judaism, which we have been exploring: the Tree of Life. We worship our divinity, the sacred cow, through working with our creative energy, which is represented by the blackened stone of the Kaaba. We need to purify this stone to make it whitened, pure. We do this through eliminating the ego. So even in Islam, which in its exoteric form strictly denies any femininity in divinity, teaches an esoteric doctrine which is known and practiced secretly by the Sufis. Therefore, people who say that God is only masculine are really half atheist, because they reject the creative maternal feminine principle of divinity in themselves. We have Isis above. We have Miriam, Mary, holding the Christ child. We have Athena, great matron and defender of the solar Greek heroes. And we have Durga, slayer of demons within Hinduism. These images represent a few of the infinite forms of our Divine Mother Kundalini, because She takes on any form to teach us something practical in ourselves. Every religion and culture has expressed that principle in different artwork, paintings, statues, architecture, and forms. But why make these points? Why do we draw upon so many correlations in religion? We study all the mythologies and religions of the world out of love for Divine Mother. She is our own Being. She is the root of our most divine expression. She is the mediator for us between hell and heaven, the inferior worlds and the superior states of consciousness. She is the one responsible for elevating us out of suffering. Athena rescued Odysseus in the great poem of Homer. The Virgin Mary raised the Christ child so that he could perform his mission. And Durga brought balance to humanity, restored the kingdoms of the Gods when slaying the buffalo demon within the Hindu mythologies. And Isis restores the dead Osiris, the divine principle the Father in us, to bring back together his parts, which were quartered and drawn by the demons Seth. These are beautiful symbols about how the Divine Mother integrates the psyche, how she liberates us and performs religion, reunion. We have to learn to work with our Divine Mother, instant by instant, moment by moment. There is no progress without love for our Divine Mother, because She is the one who gives us strength, who gives us courage to face ourselves, to self-observe, and to not run away from what we see. She is compassion for all beings, even demons or people we do not like. She is virtue and all the most elevated qualities of the Soul and our Being. She is the superior aspect of us, and sadly, despite this fact, many of us do not know Her or recognize Her presence. The reality is that we forget who She is whenever we identify with anger, with pride, with lust, gluttony, laziness, greed, envy, the ego. We have to learn to restrain the mind, as we are emphasizing again and again, because when we restrain our mind with intelligence, with remorse, with comprehension, our Divine Mother is present with us. We are remembering Her because She is perfection. She is profound equanimity—deepens serenity—the resilience of virtue. She is virtuous action. She can only work through us when we establish an altar for Her in our heart. So examine your heart. What do you find inside there? Observe it. Look at yourself. Not with physical eyes, but with the sense of imagination, of perception. What do you see? Do you see love of humanity there? Do you see selflessness? Do you see conscious love for one's spouse, for one's family, for one's enemies? Or are we filled with hatred, with wrath, with violence, with despair? Many Gnostics write to us asking, “How do I experience my Divine Mother?” as if she is far away. The reality is that She is, to quote the Qur’an, “closer to you than your jugular vein” (50:16). She is within our psyche, but we do not recognize Her presence if we are not looking, if we are not awake, if we are not perceptive about what is going on externally and internally. Some people think that to experience the Divine Mother is only through an astral experience, in some tremendous samadhi in the clouds. There is a reality to this. But more importantly, the Divine Mother appears to us in dreams, in different forms, to teach us something about our life, about our physical behavior. For an example of this, I will relate my own experience. Very recently my wife and I went traveling out of the city of Chicago to go hiking. We wanted to get away from people and this situation with COVID-19. And we realized that we would have less exposure going out into nature than being in the city, so we arranged to travel a couple hours outside of Chicago, and in our trip we were driving to a Starbucks. There was a huge line of cars waiting to go to the drive-through, and I was driving and at that moment I had cut off a person who was in line, who was angry at me. And he said some things which were not pleasant. That morning before we left our home, I had an astral experience in which I was driving my car in the dark. It was 4 a.m. in the astral plane and I was driving along a major road in the city of Chicago. Suddenly I stopped, intuitively, in the middle of the street, because there were no cars present, and I saw my physical mother in the dream approach the driver's side window and with a lot of love, she gestured for me to step out of the car and to let her take the wheel. I did. I went into the passenger seat, and then she drove the car and that was the end of the dream. I knew when I woke up physically that this was something prophetic. Something would happen in relation with my Divine Mother. So physically, when we are in the Starbucks line and the person I cut off was angry and spoke negatively towards me, I suddenly felt egos of anger, self-esteem, pride and anger and violence emerge from my psyche. And I was really surprised, because I have been observing myself and I never knew that I had these defects in this situation. So my wife who was in the passenger side of the car said, “Let me take the wheel because I can see that this is getting dangerous for you.” So I got out of the car physically. She took the wheel and I sat in the passenger seat and started to breathe deeply, and pray to my Divine Mother. I was begging Her, “Please help me to comprehend this rage that is emerging in my psyche and is threatening to take over!” I breathed very profoundly, inhaling, with all my capacity in my lungs, holding the breath for 10 seconds and exhaling for 10 seconds, and just introspecting in me, asking my Divine Mother “Help me to have serenity, to understand the culprits in my mind!” And suddenly, I gained comprehension, and I realized and remembered the dream I had that morning. My Divine Mother figuratively was driving my car, which is my three brains. By relaxing and praying, going into my mind, going into my heart, I was able to relax and let my Divine Mother take control of my psychological car. After my meditation, I comprehended a lot. I understood those defects that emerged, which I later prayed for annihilation. This is a very beautiful teaching, very simple. I know we like to think of having experiences with our Divine Mother in the highest degrees of initiation, the highest sephiroth or spheres of the Tree of Life, but in reality, she comes down to us. She teaches us how to live so that we do not commit insanities, because I was really angry. I was really surprised by how angry I was and so I was begging my Being to help me control this animal and she gave me strength. But of course, remembrance of our Divine Mother is a learned skill. We have to work very hard. We have to recite mantras. We have to breathe deeply. We have to do pranayamas, transmutation, energy exercises, whether in our mind or out loud, so we can feel Her presence; so we can recognize Her. We do so by observing from our pineal gland and our heart. The pineal gland is the seat of perception within our brain. It is where our Essence sees from its energetic and conscious seat. It is the focal point of perception. We have to self-observe our three brains, looking into our intellect, our emotions, and our motor brain through this perspective, in a spiritual conscious way. But we must not only observe to see and gather data about the ego in the three brains, but we have to remember the presence of our Divine Mother within our pineal gland, within our heart: the seat of our soul. We also experience intuition, prescience, presentiment, premonitions in the heart: the altar and temple of the inner goddess Kundalini. In the example I provided, I was observing from my pineal gland into my three brains to understand the thoughts, the feelings, and the will of anger, of self-esteem, of pride, of wrath. Because each ego has three brains. It has its own ways of thinking, feeling, and doing. I was looking at that in myself and praying, “Help me to separate from this Divine Mother! Help me to comprehend so You can eliminate!” And I immediately, intuitively felt Her presence: a beautiful quality of serenity, of strength. 
She is a tremendous force. She does not use exertion of any kind. Instead, She opens the jaws of the beast with perfect equanimity, and equanimity is the most profound strength. So we have to feel Her in our mind and our heart. How can a child forget its mother? In the same way, we have to recognize Her presence, Her identity in us again and again. She is the voice of conscience. She is the voice of right action, such as in the experience I provided. I knew the right thing to do, but my mind was really trying to destroy my life, and I fought with my mind, and I would not have been able to relax if I did not have Her, my Divine Mother—and also, the Divine Mother of my wife, who expressed in that moment and saved me, helped me to rectify the situation.
So let your Divine Mother drive your car. Let her drive your soul, your Being—even if it means that you need to recollect yourself—whether you need to breathe deeply, do mantras, do prayer, walk out in nature. Take time to develop that stability of mind, to deepen your serenity. Because that is how you connect with Her, not through agitation, not through exertion, but through comprehension. 
The Divine Mother and the Tree of Life
As we explained, the Tree of Life is a map of the consciousness. It is a map of the Being. From the most elevated spheres or סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, the plural Hebrew term for “emanations,” to the most dense and material at the bottom.
This is a distinct and clear map for meditation and our internal experiences, which can clarify our understanding of where we are at in our work and where we must go. The sephiroth also reflect different expressions of the Divine Mother. So as I stated, the Divine Mother is universal. She is formless. She is an energy, and yet She can manifest within the different spheres or sephiroth in order to help us. And Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition, provided five distinct unfoldments or expressions of Devi Kundalini that we need to understand and which we can relate to the Tree of Life. At the top of the tree, above Kether, the Father, the Crown, you have the Absolute, which in Hebrew is אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אוֹר Ain Soph Aur: the Nothing, the Limitless, and the Limitless Light. In the Absolute, in Ain Soph, the Divine Mother is the Unmanifested Prakriti. When the Divine Mother unfolds and expresses within the universe, within creation, we find that she manifests as Binah, intelligence, the Holy Spirit. She is the chaste Diana, Isis in Egypt, Tonantzin amongst the Aztecs, Maria, Miriam, Mary in Christianity, or better said, the mantra RAM-IO, a profound Mantra to invoke our Divine Mother Binah, intelligence. So these sephiroth are different qualities of consciousness. They are different modalities and expression of the divine. We also have something very important in relation to the death of the ego, which can relate to the sphere of Geburah, Justice, the severity of God. This is the Divine Mother Death. The Divine Mother Death relates to the justice of the Being, who punishes the ego and annihilates it. She is represented as the terrible Hecate amongst the Greeks, Persephone, Coatlicue, Queen of the infernos and death, the terror of love and law. She is the terror of the ego and the love of divine law, of order, of equilibrium, of karma. So in our former lectures on Karma, we explained how the divine hierarchies are managed by divine beings, with intelligence, with love. Knowing that law and loving that law is how we gain balance, and the Divine Mother Death removes the impurities so that we can be balanced, harmonious beings, integrated beings. We also have the special individual Mother Nature relating to Malkuth, the physical body, who is the originator and architect, the creator of our physical organism. Our body is an amalgamation of many elements. Mother Nature relates to our body as well as our environment and our body is dependent upon Mother Nature outside, but our internal Divine Mother Nature relates to our physicality, our body, which we need to sanctify. And lastly, the Elemental Enchantress to whom we owe every vital impulse, every instinct, relating to Yesod, the sexual creative energy, the foundation of our spirituality Let us explain each aspect of the Divine Mother in more depth. 
The Unmanifested Prakriti (Ain Soph)
The Unmanifested Prakriti, the Ain Soph, is the nothing, the limitless. Prakriti signifies nature. Mula in Sanskrit indicates “root,” as in the “root of something,” such as phenomena, consciousness, experiences.
We find mula in our root chakra, Muladhara, which signifies the “root place,” the root chakra. We use the term Mulaprakriti to refer to the Ain Soph, the abstract absolute space, the root nature of our consciousness, which is cosmic and eternal, a profound form of space. The Divine Mother has no form, but that energy takes on form within the astral plane in order to teach us, the Essence, important things. Samael Aun Weor also refers to the Divine Mother Prakriti as the Unmanifested Kundalini. This is understandable when we comprehend how the Divine Mother above and the heavenly cosmic space, the Mulaprakriti, is reflected in our Muladhara Chakra. So that cosmic space, that force, that energy, when it manifests into the universe, it becomes the Tree of Life, the different sephiroth, becoming more dense and material as it descends into different unfoldments or dimensions. The Ain Soph is beyond any universe. It is within the abstract space, the cosmic consciousness, the selflessness of perfect Seity. The Divine Mother above, Mulaprakriti, is the same energy that descends and becomes the serpent in our Muladhara Chakra. Even Ricard Wagner in his Ring Cycle [The Ring of the Nibelungen] which is an Opera tetralogy, depicts the Goddess Urda, the mysterious Ain Soph, or Devi Kundalini, with the same musical motif, the theme song, as the sword Nothung: the weapon of the great solar hero Sigmund, which is the Essence, the soul, who wields the Kundalini, the sword Nothung, in order to battle his enemy, Hunding, a symbol of the ego. Nothung, no-tung, reminds us of “nothing,” the Nothing, the space, the Abstract Absolute Space: Ain Soph. And we have explained in other lectures and courses that the Ain Soph is a star, a supra atomic point, the synthesis of our real Being. It is a light that shines within that space with perfection. It is known as the Glorian, the origin of universes. So this Mulaprakriti, is the womb of the Nothing, which is not understandable to the intellect, but is comprehended through experience. It is the origin of worlds, suns, galaxies, the infinites. All cosmic units are sustained, are born, are gestated, and they are destroyed and absorbed again throughout the great cosmic rhythms of activity and repose, known in Hinduism as Mahamanvantaras and Mahapralayas. These are “great” cosmic days and nights, respectively (for Maha signifies “great”): periods when universes emerged from the Ain Soph, and when it is time, those universes return back to the Nothing, to enter a period of absorption and repose. This is the significance of many Qur’anic verses. "You came from Him and unto Him you shall return." Even the Arabic name Allah hides many mysteries. The syllable “Al” means “the,” the indefinite article. And “La” can mean “No,” negation. Allah traditionally represents or translates as “The God,” but literally is “The No,” the Nothing—that which is not related to anything in existence, because it is unmanifested. This is why in Islam there are no statues or figures representing Allah, because you cannot anthropomorphize space. You cannot characterize the divine feminine in Her most abstract reality. The Unmanifested Divine Mother never enters the universe without taking form, so that we can comprehend and receive insight in our work. The universe emerges from her universality. She is absolute, cosmic, perfect. Her center is everywhere and Her periphery, Her circumference, is nowhere. She is the source that we aspire to. She is perfect liberty, a state of being that is so vast and expansive that it terrifies the ego. 
And so “the Nothing,” “the No,” the Unmanifested Divine Mother is the complete negation of our self, because in that selflessness, one becomes the universe, the stars, the planets, the gods. It is cosmic, absolute, eternal. She is the starry heavens or Egyptian Nut in that respective mythology, who shelters the heroes and the gods, those masters of meditation who have perfected themselves.
Involution: The Descent of Divine Force
In the universe, when the light of divinity manifests and expresses, that unitary light of the Ain Soph, descends and particularizes, individualizes. The top trinity of the Tree of Life relates to the trinitarian unfoldment: an expression of the Being in the most rarefied and subtle levels. Our unique consciousness, our divine Being, is a perfect unity. Yet to create life, She expresses, or that light expresses as three principles, since the law of three is how everything is created.
These are forces, qualities, principles, archetypes. They are blueprints of any universe. They are not three people that constitute one anthropomorphic God. These three creative forces are known as Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. Every religion reflects these principles but in different ways. It is one light that can express as three, so as to gestate worlds and human beings. So going back to that description of the principles of sex, man is the affirming, positive force; woman is negating, receptive force. And together they provoke and promote the synthesis, reconciliation, which is the birth of the solar Christic consciousness. That synthesis is בִּינָה Binah, the intelligence of God in Hebrew. So our particular, individual Divine Mother is the intelligence of divinity, because She is the synthesis of all universal wisdom, which governs creation in every level. She is the spouse of Shiva in Hinduism, known as Shakti. Or, Brahma and Sarasvati in Hinduism—or to define its equivalent in the Bible, you have Abraham and Sarah. Brahma-Abraham and Sarasvati-Sarah in the Bible. These are all symbols that reflect truths that we need to experience. The reality is that in accordance with Gnostic Kabbalah, Binah is dual, because Binah is reflective of masculine and feminine principles. Because remember that when you have affirmation and negation, masculine-feminine, positive-negative, you produce the synthesis. And in the terms of having a child, the synthesis of a husband and wife, the child reflects the qualities and characteristics of its parents. So you find both principles there, but of course, manifested as a boy or a girl. But it takes the qualities of both male-female, father-mother, in order to create something beyond itself. Binah, the synthesis is dual. It is masculine-feminine, Father-Mother. In Hebrew, it is known as אב Abba and אם אלהים Aima Elohim in Hebrew. The sacred name of God, of Binah, is יהוה אלהים Jehovah Elohim. אלהים Elohim is a synthetic word. אל El in Hebrew is God. אלה Eloah in Hebrew is Goddess. ים Iod-Mem or the letters “-im” is a masculine plural ending. אלהים Elohim truly signifies “Gods and Goddesses.” 
Our particular, individual Divine Mother is Diana, the huntress, as we see in this image.
She is the Virgin Mary, Miriam or Mar-IO or Ram-IO, which is a powerful mantra, as I stated, of working with the divine feminine. מרים Miriam in Hebrew means to raise. She is the wife of the masculine aspect of the Holy Spirit, because the trinity is Father, Son, Holy Spirit—three forces as one light. We can receive profound instruction from our own intelligence, the Divine Mother in Binah. She takes on forms within the astral plane to teach us like in the example I provided. 
The Divine Mother Death (Geburah)
But let us also talk about the Divine Mother Death relating to Geburah, the justice and severity of God.
This aspect of the Divine Mother is perhaps the most important. It is referenced constantly throughout the writings of Samael Aun Weor. Divine Mother Death is responsible for annihilating the ego. She is Kali, as we see here. She dances upon those couples who know how to harness the sexual fire of alchemy. Meaning: man and wife use their sexual energy, conserve it, and direct it towards the death of desire to liberate the soul. So of course, this image is terrifying. She has a necklace of many heads, representative of all the egos she has slain in the initiate whom she stands upon. She is the power of the serpent Kundalini, which you find coiled around the left arm of the man whom she has conquered. Of course, that symbol relates to the left pillar of the Tree of Life or the serpent Ida, the energetic feminine current that rises from our sexual gonad up to our head, which is the contrast of pingala, the solar electric sexual serpent that rises from the other gonad to the brain within the vital body. The Divine Mother Death, despite her fearsome appearance, should not be feared. She is the liberator of our soul. She pulverizes the ego. She extracts the Essence through successive profound comprehensions. So She only decapitates those ego we have fully comprehended in our meditations. If we are single, we can pray to her using the mantra KRIM, prolonged such as this:
We imagine those defects we have comprehended and that She decapitates them, impales them, disintegrates the egos we wish to remove. If we are married, we can have more force by which to annihilate those egos. But if we are single, we can still work with the Divine Mother Death.
So this is very beautiful topic because Kali, the Divine Mother Death, is the power of sex, that which creates the soul and destroys the ego. She is the slayer of demons. She is Athena, who in the Greek myth of The Odyssey helps Odysseus return home in order to battle the many suitors who have tried to take his wife Penelope. In the Greek myth, Odysseus invented the Trojan horse during the Trojan War, conquered the city, and when trying to return home, he was lost for 20 years. And so, many men thought he was dead and tried to marry his wife, who remained faithful to him: a symbol of the soul waiting for the reunion of Odysseus, the solar man, the initiate. When he returns home finally, he finds that his whole island has been ransacked by suitors—all these figures and people trying to marry his wife and eat off his land. But Athena warns him saying, “You must disguise yourself and discover your enemies. You must find out who is your friend and who is your foe.” And so she disguised him with magic as a beggar that he, in this form, went around trying to investigate these people. Finally, in a great battle scene at the end, he reveals himself and with the help of Athena, with the help of Kali, kills all of those infidels. This is not a literal history. It is a symbol of working against the ego. And so Odysseus conquered and returned to his home, but only with the help of the Divine Mother Death. So She is very important in the work and we could talk about more of the practices involved in working with this force, this liberatory energy. 
Divine Mother Nature (Malkuth)
We have the Divine Mother Nature who is the creator, sustainer, and maintainer of our physicality. Divine Mother Nature helps us in jinn science, in magic, in theurgy, in the act of placing our physical body into the fourth dimension. This is jinn science.
She is the lever, Divine Mother Nature, or fulcrum of Archimedes who said, "Give me a lever of support and I will move the universe." So, jinn science, unlike astral projection, is when you, in a sleepy state, meditate upon your Divine Mother Nature, the originator of your physical body, so that she can take you in your physical body into the internal planes. So rather than leaving your body behind, you enter the fourth dimension, traveling in hyperspace. This is the significance of many myths in different world traditions where monks, priests, prophets, masters, were seen flying, traveling through the air, passing through walls, appearing and disappearing, levitating. Every world tradition and religion teaches these symbols or these truths, which are not in fact a symbol, but how through tremendous discipline and work with the Divine Mother Nature, one could conquer the fourth dimension, enter those states. 
The most memorable of them all that comes to mind, to my memory is the Prophet Muhammad, who was meditating at the stone of Kaaba, Mecca, in which he fell asleep and was taken with his physical body upon a mystical creature called Al-Buraq, which had the form or body of a donkey, the wings of a great bird, the tail of a peacock, and the face of a woman.
If you are familiar with the Egyptian sphinx, with the paws of a lion, the hooves of a bull, the wings of an eagle, and the face of a man, or a woman better said, you find that the Egyptian sphinx is paralleled in the ascension of Prophet Muhammad. And that is a symbol of Divine Mother Nature. She is the one who organizes the elements in our psyche and in our body. The fire of our heart, our emotions; the air of our thoughts; the waters of our sexuality; and the earth of our body. This is a feat that we can accomplish in ourselves if we work with jinn science. And we have practices that we are going to relate in some resources we have available online. 
Elemental Enchantress (Yesod)
We have the Elemental Enchantress relating to Yesod, our vital energies. She is known as the Eemental Instinctual Female Magi. She is our Divine Mother that works with Yesod. We can invoke Her and work with Her to perform sexual magic, which is alchemy, which is tantra, transmutation.
Samael Aun Weor mentioned in The Three Mountains how he saw his Elemental Enchantress in the form of a pygmy, the form of a fairy: a beautiful elemental soul. So all the elements have soul, including minerals, plants, animals, and the Divine Elemental Enchantress, our Divine Mother. This aspect of our Divine Mother works with the creatures of nature and She is the sexual force. She aids us in becoming elemental in nature: purified, simple. She also helps us to enter back into Eden. עֵדֶן Eden is a Hebrew word that means “bliss.” It is the state of the soul that we lost when we created desire, by disobeying the commandments of our Being. This female magi helps us return to Eden, which we do so through alchemy, sexual knowledge, transmutation. She helps us with different forms of magic such as ceremonial magic, relating to the astral body, Hod on the Tree of Life, the emotions. She also helps us with elemental magic relating to Netzach, the mind, the souls of plants. And She helps us with sexual magic, Yesod. Magic is the ability of the consciousness to exert will upon nature, to influence it. It doesn't mean that we pull rabbits out of hats. It means that we control all of the components of our psyche. The elementals of nature, in relating to the plant kingdom, never left Eden. Those souls that enter the animal kingdom eventually lose Eden in themselves because of desire, the animal method of procreation. This is why in Gnosis we work with plants. We work with plant magic. We command the souls of plants to vibrate with our level of being and to elevate ourselves, but also to help humanity, because every plant in nature is a mechanism that can reflect divine force. All plants have their purposes. This is very well known in different forms of medicine: Ayurveda, holistic forms of treatments. But in Gnosis, we study plant magic, because it is extremely effective for influencing humanity in a conscious and beneficial way. I invite you to reflect upon some of the resources we have available in order to learn to work with our Divine Mother. Pretty much all the books of Samael Aun Weor teach us how to work with Devi Kundalini. You can learn about jinn science, especially in The Yellow Book. But alchemy is covered extensively in The Perfect Matrimony, The Mystery of the Golden Flower. At this point in time, I would like to invite you to ask questions. Questions and Answers
Question: If we have had experiences when our Divine Mother will not see us in the astral plane, does that mean that we have too much lust?
Instructor: I think that might depend on the person, but in my experience when my Divine Mother has not been able to find me it is because I am too asleep. I had an experience, also a long time ago, in which my Divine Mother approached me with a radar in her hand, and She said with a lot of concern, pointing towards the screen, “I can't find you!” So usually in radar, you see a green line that goes around the circumference, the radius spins like a wheel, and there is a little blip that will appear when you find some kind of naval ship or aircraft or whatever. So my Divine Mother was showing me this symbol and saying, “I can't find you” because I wasn't being awake enough. So obviously it could be in relation to lust, because obviously any ego puts us to sleep. But most especially if we give in to lust, desire, fornication. It could mean that we are very asleep, because we waste the energies that are going to awaken us. Question: Is the word Devi relating to the word divine? Instructor: Yes, there is that their connotation. Devi also relates to deva, goddess, such as the devas of nature, the great elemental queens who govern the plant kingdoms, all those divine intelligences of the physical and internal worlds. Question: Is the Innermost, inner Being, both the Divine Mother and the Divine Father? Instructor: In Kabbalah, strictly speaking, the Innermost, our Being, is the Divine Father, known as חֶסֶד Chesed in Hebrew. Chesed is the seventh sephirah from the bottom to the middle of the diagram. Chesed means “Mercy” and he is the spirit, the immortal spark of divinity in us. The Innermost is a child of the Divine Mother, Binah, the Holy Spirit. So in very intuitive logic, we can say that Osiris and Isis in Egyptian mythology represent Father-Mother within Binah, masculine-feminine, and their synthesis or child is Horus—Horus, the light, because in Hebrew אוֺר Aur means “light.” Horus is the gold of the spirit, because even in spanish, oros means “gold.” So the Spirit, Chesed, emerges from Binah, the Holy Spirit. Question: Is it possible that our Divine Mother is guiding us, but we are unaware of it? Instructor: Absolutely! I would say in reality that, in our work, She is with us all the time, but we just don't see Her. We are not aware of Her because we are not paying attention. The way that you figure that out is by awakening in meditation and also learning to remember that presence in yourself, moment by moment. Obviously astral experiences can help us to have more clarity, because then we recognize the same intuitive principle or feeling. That premonition we have in dreams is the exact reflection of our daily life. That is something that gives us faith. We start to see more and more that our Divine Mother is really with us all the time, but we are just stubborn. We don't recognize Her presence because we don't pay attention. In the example I provided of my Divine Mother getting in my car, you know, I didn't even realize what was happening, even when physically I got out of my car and got into the passenger seat. And hen immediately afterward, I understood the symbolism of that experience, and the same quality that I had in the dream related to what I was going through in that ordeal physically. That gave me a lot of inspiration, a lot of joy, even when my mind was terrible. So She is with us all the time, but we have to learn to recognize Her. Question: Can you please elaborate on this prayer? “Be thou O Hadit, my secret, the Gnostic mystery of my Being, the central point of my connection, my heart itself, and bloom on my fertile lips made Verb!” Also, what is the significance and the best time to use this prayer? Instructor: So who is Hadit? Hadit in Egyptian mythology can relate to the Holy Spirit, who is our “secret,” the thread, the intelligent intuitive guidance of our conscience, “the Gnostic mystery of our Being,” who is infinitely profound and “the central point of our connection.” So remember that when you are self-remembering and self-observing, you have to remember the connection of your spirit within your pineal gland and your heart. Self-remembrance is a thread that you have to hold on to. It is the thread of Ariadne in the Greek mysteries, when I believe Theseus went into the labyrinth to fight the Minotaur, and it was a vast labyrinth in the caves of that underground kingdom, so that he could find his way back because the thread would point to him where he came from. That central thread or point is our Divine Mother, because we have to remember the thread of our experiences: the continuity of our self-remembrance, our mindfulness, the state of self-remembrance and being moment by moment. That is our heart. It is what gives us life, following our intuition, not our intellect, but our heart. In that way She can bloom our lips made fertile, made verb. To be fertile in lips is to be transmuting your sexual energy. Our speech is empowered by the sexual creative force, and She manifests in our words when we are intuitive, when we reflect on Her qualities in our daily life moment by moment. We can use this prayer anytime we meditate. It is especially wonderful in sexual alchemy when you remember the presence of your Divine Mother, when you approach the forge in which the Kundalini is tempered and awakened. Question: When we take a spouse, are we unifying the divine and masculine energies in a way that affects or breaks the heart of the Divine Mother, when we realize that we are not in the right marriage? Are we affecting these divine forces? Instructor: Obviously, adultery is a very painful thing, but also, being that we are asleep, we do make mistakes. Anytime we mix sexual energy with people of the opposite sex, we adulterate our consciousness and we weaken our conscience. So knowing who your partner should be or whom you should be with, the thing to remember is that we have to make good choices, to not get in those situations, to not jump into relationships without prudence, without testing our grounds. But also, the thing to remember is that if one is in a committed relationship and one feels that doubt, that pain, or that sentiment or feeling that one is in a wrong relationship, one should really meditate profoundly, because any type of sexual connection is very serious, is very profound. It creates a type of signature in the astral plane, a type of marriage of forces which we can't ignore, which is eternal. I would say, anytime we disobey our Divine Mother, especially in sex, yes, we make Her suffer a lot. We have made our Divine Mother suffer tremendously by having so many partners and not waiting for the one person to work with in accordance with our karma or with the law. So that is a very delicate thing to discriminate and understand and it is always going to be very personal. While I can't give you a thorough answer in terms of who is the right partner for you, obviously, that is something you have to spend a lot of time reflecting on. So yes, we do affect our divine forces when we enter a sexual relationship without love, because love is what regenerates the soul, not lust. Question: Why is Ram-IO such an important mantra? Especially in relation with masculine and feminine energies? Instructor: Mary in Hebrew is Miriam. You spell Mary backwards, you have RAM-IO. RAM or the RAM, is a symbol of Christ: the sexual creative fire that anoints the initiates, which particularizes and develops the pure unity of the soul. Mar or mer in French means “sea,” the sea of IO, or the ram of IO, the child of the Divine Mother. RAM-IO is an important Mantra because it works with Christ, the solar energies, and with our waters. It transmutes, we could say, or invokes very high forces in us, because mar or mer is the sea from which the solar gods emerge. And IO, if you studied Greek mythology, has many representations as a beautiful feminine figure, whom I believe Zeus pursued out of desire and love. Many kabbalistic symbols there, which you can study on our websites, but in synthesis RAM-IO is important because it is a seed mantra: IO, that works with the Divine Mother. Question: You said that our Divine Mother can manifest in other ways besides in our dreams. Does this mean that she can take form in other people from time to time when facing ordeals? Can you elaborate on that? Instructor: The answer is yes. Samael Aun Weor mentioned many times and asks this question: How many times has your Divine Mother appeared unto you, O disciple, without you even knowing it, even physically? In the example I provided where I was in the car at Starbucks, my wife was expressing her Divine Mother and even my Divine Mother too, because She is universal, in order to guide me and say, “Let me take the wheel.” My Divine Mother and the Divine Mother of my wife was acting physically, so she became the vehicle of expression of that, so that I could face the ordeal and pass it, to comprehend it. She can take form in other people and manifests anywhere, everywhere, at any time, because she is universal. She is space, but she can appear and manifest in any human being that is either prepared or has enough space to reflect that principle. Question: Is there any prayer to the Divine Mother that you prefer during sexual magic? Instructor: Well, that is obviously going to be personal to each one of us. Obviously if you are practicing in alchemy, you and your partner—or if your spouse is not into Gnosis—that is something that you will have to gauge in yourself; but obviously, if both partners are practicing in alchemy, they should work and could work with other mantras that help with different functions, such as Kandil Bandil Rrrrr: the mantra to awaken the Kundalini. Or, IAO to transmute the sexual energy.
Or to annihilate the ego, Krim, to invoke the Divine Mother Death. So I invite you to experiment if you are married. Try the different mantras to see what helps you most at a given time, because different mantras have different purposes.
Question: Please discuss the origin of the reference to Mother Nature. And what is your perspective on why certain religions dismiss the significance of the Divine Mother and or cast blame like the Adam and Eve story? Instructor: So, Mother Nature is the originator of our body. Even the word in Latin, mater, meaning mother, is the matter of our body. So the spirit, the divine masculine, impregnates matter in order to give birth to Christ; the pure virgin matter or mother who represents the body that is purified through transmutation, so as to give birth to a perfect soul, the Christ, the Son of Man. So these are symbols that represent different degrees and steps in the path of initiation, which you can read about in the course The Path of Initiation on Glorian.org, but also what you can study in our course called The Secret Path of Initiation. As for why religions dismiss the significance of the Divine Mother, it is because religions degenerate with time. And those who are in power were men. Therefore, those men decided to make religion reflect their tastes. So that is why many beautiful traditions, which are very rich and profound and even feminist, in a sense that the divine feminine is respected, those aspects of those traditions were gutted out, because it did not, or better said, it was a basis of interpretation for persecuting and discriminating against women, which is sad. But when you know Kabbalah, you don't get confused, and do not let any type of patriarchal narrative or dogmatic patriarchy influence our readings. Question: Could you elaborate on the Kali Ma? Is this an aspect of Kali? Instructor: Kali Ma, or better said Kali, is the goddess of death. And Kali is dual. In heaven above She is the Divine Mother Death who eliminates desire, the ego. But if we fornicate, if we adulterate, if we expel the creative energies, then that force of Kali produces the death the soul through Kali Ma, the queen of the infernos. She becomes the tail of the demons, the inverted serpent Kundabuffer. So there are two ways to die: through initiation or through the second death. The ego must be eliminated either way. But if you wish to acquire development in our spirit, we work with the Divine Mother Death in the positive sense, removing the ego here and now in meditation, through alchemy, so that we can ascend the Tree of Life. But those people who don't want to eliminate the ego on their own, let themselves be swallowed by nature, meaning by hell, so that they are recycled and disintegrated by the devolving serpent Kali Ma, the inverted aspect of the Divine Mother Death in hell. Question: What can we do to be good children to our Divine Mother? How do we take care of Her? Instructor: We are a good child when we perform the three factors with fidelity. Comprehend the ego, eliminate it, act virtuously, and serve humanity. That is how we earn graces from our Divine Mother Kundalini, and we take care of Her when we are chaste. If we are not saving our sexual energy, we are abusing the Divine Mother, committing a crime. So take care of Her by conserving your sexual energy, transmuting it through many beautiful exercises such as pranayama, runes, sacred rites of rejuvenation, meditation. Take care of Her by working on your mind, eliminating desire. Question: Is our personal Divine Mother or Father working in collaboration with other people's Divine Mothers and Fathers in order to put us in the situations we need for a development? Instructor: The answer is yes. Obviously divinity is at a level that is omniscient. All of the divine beings of the Absolute in the Tree of Life, those who have already done the work in past lives, obviously those monads are developed and know how to work in an intelligent manner. But our Divine Father and Divine Mother, even at a level of a beginner, works with the law, works with karma, negotiates karma for us and works with other solar divinities in order to help us. So all of that is determined with intelligence, because Binah is the intelligence of all the divinities in the universe. So that universal intelligence is pervasive, is cosmic. So, that wisdom is universal, not particular, within in one person only, but is manifested in many masters. Question: I have had experiences with my Divine Mother in lucid dreams. I have also had experiences in this three-dimensional world that reminded me of my Divine Mother. Can our personal Divine Mother work through others or precipitate in the three-dimensional world, or is this a different aspect of the Divine Mother? Instructor: So yes, the Divine Mother, our individual Being, Binah, can work through other people. Like in that example of being in the car at Starbucks, my wife, like in the dream I had that morning, said “Let me take the wheel.” So my Divine Mother and her Divine Mother were working together to help me get out of a mess, to help me not make a mistake. So I am deeply indebted to my Being. And the Divine Mother can manifest physically in a material form. But that is usually performed through certain exercises of invocation and high magic which you can read about in Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic. Question: Do these personal Divine Parents have their Divine Mother and Father? Instructor: We can say that the Tree of Life describes the different hierarchies of being. Our inner Father is Chesed, the spirit, the Innermost In Kabbalah. His Divine Father and Mother is Binah, the Holy Spirit. And so, whether or not Binah has a father and mother, we could say in a very profound sense, yes, because the trinity of the top of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life emanates from the Ain Soph. Samael Aun Weor even mentions that the Ain Soph is Father and Mother, in profound synthesis. So there are levels of hierarchy of light, which is why the Qur’an states in Surah Al-Nur, "Light upon light!” Levels of Being—different unfoldments of one perfection. Question: Can you speak about the secret path of the heart? How can someone who is highly intellectual begin to open their heart? Is it essential to return to childhood trauma? As a man, I find it difficult to cry sometimes and show emotion. What can I do to heal? Is crying necessary? I am often encouraged to by my loved ones. What are your thoughts? Instructor: The secret path of the heart unfolds through sincerity. Usually with our intellect, we like to justify or repress our psychological state, to not look at the reality and the facts even if it is very traumatic. We know from counseling and trauma that early childhood trauma has an energetic impact, conditions the psyche. And because it is so painful to look at that event, the mind defends itself and represses or hides that experience within the subconsciousness. And I would say yes, in reality, to understand trauma and overcome it, one has to cry, because there is a tension in the psyche that is so painful and so enmeshed that it manipulates all of our actions in our conscious mind, usually without our awareness. But in order to really confront our defects and those traumas, we have to really be willing to break apart, whether it is from remorse, or whether from comprehension, because Samael Aun Weor mentions that in the work of the death of the ego and the work upon trauma, if we really understand our defects in depth, we will cry, because it is painful. So it's necessary. We have a course that is going to elaborate more and more upon how to work practically with trauma. It is called Spiritual and Mental Health. We have one lecture up there already where you can learn from some professional as well as spiritual advice, about how to work practically with facing these types of conditions and the ways to heal. So there are many practices that explain how to do that. Question: If we have an experience in nature particularly with animals, which aspect of the Divine Mother is that? Nature or Enchantress, or both? Instructor: I would say both, because animals belong to nature, but really, animal nature is defined by instinct: the Elemental Enchantress. So it is important not to think of the Divine Mother as separate from these different aspects. They are really expressions and unfoldments of one light, our divine feminine nature. So there are different principles that manifest in different ways in accordance with the sephiroth and the internal bodies, but all of it interrelates and connects with each other. Question: Are there specific practices or mantras that coincide with each vice? If so, can you list one routine for each one? Instructor: I wouldn't say that we have separate mantras or practices necessarily for different defects. Really the best practice to comprehend and eliminate our vices is retrospection meditation. But there are exercises that help to gain enough stability and concentration and serenity by which to work effectively in retrospection. For example, if your heart is afflicted with anger, it is good to work with the mantra O, to saturate the heart with positive force. Or if we are afflicted with lust, we can transmit our sexual energy so that we have enough control and stability by which to approach lust in our mind. So I wouldn't say there's a practice for each of the seven vices, we could say, but you do find throughout the literature of Samael Aun Weor different practices to help treat anger. For example, like I related about the Starbucks experience: I was doing deep breathing to control my anger. That is something that the master gives in the book Introduction to Gnosis: the lessons he provides there, so that you can let anger subside so that you can work on the mind, which is what I was doing in that experience. Question: If we experience the ordeal of Direne and failed, will this mistake cause our Divine Mother and Father to renounce us for the rest of this lifetime? Instructor: That really depends. That depends upon the magnitude of the fault. How much energy is invested in lust. Obviously, if one fails the ordeal of Direne and commits adultery, obviously, there is going to be a lot to repair, if that can be repaired at all, in terms of a relational standpoint with one's spouse. Because if divinity asks you to work with one partner and we betray our spouse, obviously, there is going to be a lot of karma involved that it is going to be more difficult to unfold. Whether or not that will be forgiven is something particular to each case, because karma is very intricate and particular to each person. That is something that only your Divine Mother and Divine Father could show you from experience. Question: I have had many experiences in my time on this path, often times when the experiences begin, my mind truly struggles to understand, how it is possible, or whether I am worthy to experience these things? What could be done to help this? Instructor: Well, the solution is: reflect on your heart and your sincerity. Sincerity is the virtue that opens the door to experience. When we truly repent of our errors, not because we want to have samadhis or experiences out of craving and desire, but because we want to change our behavior, when we change our ethical behavior and conduct, we start to see results in our daily life. That is when we become worthy to receive very high initiations or experiences. It is something that has to be earned. Now all of us without exception feel despair at times, where we feel the pain and realization that we are so afflicted with ego that we don't know what to do. And this is a trial and trauma of the soul, a great drama or path of difficulty every one of us has to face. All of us have our own cross to bear, but the reality is that there is forgiveness in the law and it is possible. But we have to really earn it, and that means suffering a lot to the extreme, if necessary. Because when we go through pain and hardship, and feel that this work may be beyond our reach, and we realize that if we don't change, that we are going to suffer more, then we work regardless of the result. We do it because of love, without attachment to the fruit of our deeds. It is when you act in this way, without expectation, and practice in this way without expectation, that is when we really start to receive help internally. We gain experiences. So it is possible. Personally, from my past lives, I do not deserve to be helped. I have committed terrible crimes, and I remember them with lucidity. So it is painful, and I have had to really weep a lot and pray for my Divine Mother to help, because without Her we are lost. But it is precisely at that breaking point in which she enters as light, and we have to be willing to receive that intelligence, primarily by facing extreme hardship. We face and overcome defeatism by meditating on those egos that complain that say, “I can't do this work. I am not good enough. I'm not worthy.” Your Divine Mother knows best, so rely on Her judgment, not on doubt. Doubt is one thing. Despair and morbidity is one thing, but remorse is something else. So all doors are closed to the unworthy except the door of repentance, and we show repentance by our deeds, our actions. Question: Can you speak about how to use the rune Yr and how that works with our Divine Mother when working in sexual alchemy? 
Instructor: So the rune Yr is the opposite of the rune Man, and if you are familiar with the hippie symbol of peace, it is the rune Yr. The rune Man is upright and Man is a representation of the masculine sexual force. So when you join those two runes together, Yr and Man, you form the rune Hagal, and Hagal is a swastika, the cross in motion. And that cross in motion works profoundly when we are married, working in alchemy.
So, about different prayers you can do, mantras associated with the rune Yr. I believe you mentioned some of them: "Terrifying king of the sea, thou who has the keys of the floodgates of heaven and who does, can find the subterranean waters within the cavern of the earth. " There are some beautiful prayers that relate to different teachings, but in simple forms, you work with the rune Yr and Man together when you are working in alchemy, because man and woman together form the six pointed star, the cross in motion. We do it by considering the sexual force and circulating it through mantra. Question: How is the mantra KRIM used for help with breaking down food? Does this transmute the sexual energy from the food? Instructor: The mantra KRIM is the force of destruction. It breaks down elements to extract the synthesis. So in the same way that you break down food when you masticate, eat the food and break down the material so that you can extract its nutrients, the mantra KRIM also helps us to annihilate the ego. So it takes the sexual power and directs it towards the annihilation of the self. Question: Hey, good evening. I wanted to ask you about that experience that you told us about at the Starbucks. And I understand like how you said, that you became aware of your anger, but I was kind of wondering, if you could or would share how or explain a little bit about how for you specifically, you had some comprehension? Because, a lot of times I am aware of a lot of things in myself, but I don't comprehend them and I don't understand, kind of, what it is to comprehend them. But I wish I could give you an example right now of what I mean, but I just was wondering if you could explain a little bit about how that felt to you, like to comprehend that moment? Instructor: Great question. Comprehension is a spark. It is really a profound state of being in which we say, “Aha!” in the sense, like, “I finally see something I never saw before!” It is alert novelty. Comprehension is a type of energy that is like a lightning bolt. It shocks the consciousness, not in a detrimental way, but in an elevating way. When we comprehend an ego, we are liberated in the moment, because we see how that fault operates and conditions us. When you comprehend an ego, you are extracting the essence trapped in it, and then through prayer, the Divine Mother can eliminate it. So in the example I gave you about being at Starbucks, what happened was that when my wife took the car, the wheel, when I got in the passenger seat, I suddenly understood in an instant, with a great shock, that I am going through exactly what I dreamed about this morning. And it was a really brilliant moment of lucidity, of clarity, and inspiration, because when we comprehend our dreams and how they relate to physical life, you feel inspired. So while I was struggling against my own mind to control it, I realized that I was being helped in this ordeal. And in that way, I felt enough peace and serenity to continue working on my mind in that instant because, you know, I knew that my Divine Mother was with me. That is an understanding and a confidence you develop through alert novelty: being aware of the instant, but also paying attention to your dreams and reflecting on their meaning. And sometimes, the comprehension emerges without thinking about it. You do not plan it or expect it. It just suddenly comes to you when your mind is clear, when you are observing. When your imaginative screen of awareness, your intellect is at peace, you can reflect the insight in your superior intellectual center. It just comes to you. But we have to be receptive as an intellect and active as a consciousness as we explained in our former lecture, if that makes sense. Question: Yeah, so comprehension doesn't necessarily mean that you understand why you are doing what you are doing. It's just more that you kind of are just very conscious of the moment and the choices and the ability to take control again or something like that? Or to make different choices? You know what I mean? Instructor: Yes, there are levels of comprehension. So in that moment, I understood that I needed to get into the passenger seat and to meditate right there, so that I can go deeper and understand those egos that acted. So I knew in the moment that I had to continue being serene and then, when I was really concentrated, I understood four egos that I needed to eliminate. So, light upon light, level upon level, if that answers your question. Audience: Yes. Thank you. Instructor: You're welcome. Question: Thank you for the lecture. I was wondering about... So I am looking at Deuteronomy 11. This is the part where Moses is recalling, asking the Israelites to recall everything that has happened as they go into the land of Canaan or into the new lands, and this happens many times. I am just going to use one verse. This happens many times throughout this whole section. “You must love the Lord your God and always obey his Commandments, decrees, regulations, and requirements to create regulations and commands.” When “you mentioned his requirements,” is this an interpretation of the Bible where “his” has been... that's not what the Hebrew meant, or is this referring to Chesed, which is a masculine aspect? Because of many “He” and “His” in this section. Instructor: Yeah. I am not entirely familiar about the Hebrew in that passage, but if you go into the actual Hebrew transliteration, you will find more answers. You know, this is the value of knowing Kabbalah, so that when you look at the original Hebrew script, you can interpret what names of God are being used. So obviously, אל El in Hebrew is Chesed, the spirit, and there are degrees of expression of divinity, which are mapped out by the different Hebrew sacred names of God, which we study in our courses of Kabbalah. So if you are familiar with that you can go through those verses and see what name of God is being used. So every time you see God mentioned in English, you should look towards the original language to see what sacred name of divinity is really being referenced here, to get more clarity. If that make sense. Audience: Here in a paragraph it's like "He" is mentioned like five, six times. In actuality this could be five different references that go beyond just the word "He." Instructor: Yeah, that is why we have to know what the Hebrew is telling us, because that original script is going to give us the most depth of understanding. So you have to really meditate and judge what you are reading from the original. Audience: Okay. Thank you. Instructor: You're welcome. 
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 states: Initiation is life itself, lived intensely, with rectitude and with love. ―Samael Aun Weor 
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" (Luke 23:34). 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 τέλεσις 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
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:
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
This is why John Milton and his epic poem Paradise Lost explains 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
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,
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
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. ―Homer
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. If you want to initiation, write it upon a staff. Whosoever has understanding, let him understand because there is wisdom within. ―Samael Aun Weor in The Perfect Matrimony
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 Tsogyal, 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 Tsogyal said: Practice to perfection the skill of retaining your seed essence… ―Yeshe Tsogyal
…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. ―Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah
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. ―Deuteronomy 23:1
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.
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 Tsogyal 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. (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. 
Throughout history, divinity has expressed itself to humanity in a variety of forms. We see the world’s great religions. We also hear about many spiritual movements that have taken place across time. As humanity changes, as languages change, as people migrate to new places, we often lose touch with the old forms, but that light of divinity remains active and alive, and moving. At different points in time, this light of divinity can become more active in certain places, in certain cultures. Now, that is not to mean that it does not exist in other cultures. It just moves its activity depending on certain contexts.
What we know is that God or divinity, however we like to conceive it in our mind, is a very living force. It is a universal force. It is a force of life, and love, and wisdom, and truth. In our Gnostic teachings, we often use the commonly known word of Christ as the title of that universal force. Christ is not just one individual, Jesus Christ for example, but it is actually the wisdom, and the love, and the intelligence that can express itself through a human being who is properly prepared. We call these human beings masters or prophets, buddhas, Christs: these titles for an individual who has reached that level of self-realization—to be able to express more purely at their own degree the love and the wisdom of divinity, the teachings to help humanity. In the Gnostic teachings we have to understand that the light of divinity that touches each one of us and that reaches out to each one of us is beyond any one form, any school or doctrine. These schools, these movements and these spiritual groups and religions can be the vehicle through which God can express in multiple times and places. But if we just attend a school and we do not ourselves enter personally into contact with our own inner connection to divinity, we do not experience what we call initiation. The Definition of Initiation
Initiation is the beginning. To initiate means to start. When we enter into initiation, we enter into a new birth, a spiritual birth, a spiritual growth. This is something that does not have anything to do with schools, or titles that are given to you or sold by different movements. It is something that is deeply within ourselves. It is a profound growth and evolution of the human soul.
When we experience that, we change as a person. Not just externally, by acting in a different way or hanging out with different kinds of people, but actually by our quality of presence, by the wisdom and love that we are able to express, by the way that we encounter situations and respond to them. We will notice that we are deeply changing, because we do not force it, but naturally we are evolving, we are growing as a soul, as a being--in a deeper way than to just externally achieve a kind of social rank or spiritual title from a given community. Contacting and Experiencing Divinity
How do we come into contact with that universal light of divinity? All of us at one point in time have experienced this. Maybe it has been as simple as going outside to a beautiful, natural scene and feeling that awe and that beauty within that is spontaneous to the human soul. Or perhaps is when we truly loved someone, purely and from the deepest part of our heart. That is a form of experience that changes a person. Sometimes, this can be in little ways that we are changing. Sometimes, it can be a more profound spiritual awakening, an experience where we really feel that connection to our inner divinity. Maybe we have a mystical experience, an out-of-body experience, for example, a near-death experience, as we hear many people talk about. That will change people on a profound level.
When we experience that, we are actually using a type of sense unrelated to our physical senses. We have five physical senses through which we experience the world as gateways that energy can come through and be processed. But there is also a sense within us, a spiritual sense: our imagination, our soul, our intuition, our ability to perceive something divine. The more we awaken those spiritual faculties, the more that we are able to perceive things that are beyond just the physical level, that are beyond just physical nature, in more energetic, more spiritual, more subtle and refined levels of nature. These are still material in a sense, but not the gross, physical material that we are used to experiencing with our physical touch. As we awaken on deeper levels, we can even awaken out of our body. When we go to sleep physically, we can remain awake in the dream state with full consciousness, able to control what we do and where we go. All these kinds of spiritual gifts are often what people associate with initiation: to be able to awaken spiritual powers like telepathy or clairvoyance or prophecy, to be able to see the future, or to hear the word of divinity within us, so that we can share that light with others or to see what steps we need to take in our own life, to become better people. If we want these types of powers, we often go to different schools and different places that promise us that they will enroll us in a certain course, and we will advance through degree to degree to degree, and be initiated and become masters, or become self-realized. But as I mentioned previously, what we really want is not the external validation from any other person, but that inner experience, that inner knowledge, that connection with divinity through which we know we are really growing as a soul and that we are really understanding life in a more profound way that decreases our suffering, and decreases the suffering of people around us. Then, we have the ability to understand other people and to help them. Most importantly, we can begin by helping ourselves and understanding ourselves, to touch the truth of who we are. The Practicality of Aquarian Gnosis
In this time, we have these Gnostic teachings as taught by Samael Aun Weor and the instructors and students of his tradition, which we call the Fifth Gospel [which explains the significance and secret meanings of the Four Gospels from the conservative Piscean Era]. This is the same light that has expressed itself throughout humanity’s history through many religions and that is why in this teaching, we discuss various religions and we talk about how their essence is the same. Their essence is a practical teaching that each of us must strive to experience for ourselves—not merely to learn it intellectually, or to take it as a belief, but to actually, practically experience it by using those spiritual faculties which awaken when we feel love, or awe for nature, or that genuine intuition within our divinity.
That’s why this Fifth Gospel is a very practical teaching. If we really want to experience initiation, we have to be well-prepared. Throughout history, when the ancient mystery schools in Egypt or Greece, or all around the world, in ancient Tibet as well, were going to take an aspirant into the secret teachings, they would prepare them rigorously for decades, to make sure that this person had purity of heart. They had worked to eliminate their vices and to practice virtue and were skillful in meditation, awakening their concentration and awareness to be able to go deep within. Now, the Age of Aquarius has brought this new doctrine which openly gives the secret teachings (or at least a degree of them), so that anyone can enter into these practices immediately. That is because all of us are well aware that the state of our world is becoming more chaotic. The crises that are impacting humanity are greater than ever, and there is just not enough time for all of us to go off into the mountains for twenty or thirty years in order to become really prepared. But that puts the burden on all of us to decide if we are truly going to commit to our spiritual growth. If this is truly something that we want to take seriously, then we have to take serious steps. It is not a practice that can be entered into at a whim. It is a very serious commitment of the soul, which has ramifications whether for good or for bad. So, if we make this decision, we have to work at our own level in order to progress, but constantly be progressing in the direction of improvement of virtue, of getting closer to divinity, and further away from the selfishness and the vice which has characterized much of humanity, and as all of us are well aware, characterizes much of our own lives. The Conservation of Energy and Spiritual Awakening
When we talk about initiation, as I mentioned, we are talking about an essential change, a change in the quality of our soul, and the birth of our soul is only possible when we are working with our own energy.
Each day we expend a tremendous amount of energy: emotionally, intellectually, physically and even consciously, our willpower. So, when take the step to become aware of our actions each day and to meditate or reflect in the evenings on what we have done that day, we can evaluate how we are using our energy. How are we living our lives? Are we living ethically, or are we really getting caught up in superfluous things that will pass away and not have much value to us in the future? If we want to awaken spiritually, we have to really conserve our energy. The reason that all the great religions taught ethical principles, or commandments, or rules for us to follow, is not because, arbitrarily, we need to do what someone else tells us to do, but because these principles, these ways of living an upright life actually change our energetic quality of being. If you have ever been around an angry person, whether they are talking or not, you can feel that quality of their being. If you have ever been around somebody who is truly loving, maybe they are expressing love to you, you felt that power of their being. This is a spiritual energy that we are trying to cultivate. When we work with principles of honesty, selflessness, charity, chastity, and humility, we are actually cultivating a level of being that conserves energy and transforms it inwardly, to awaken our consciousness. But when we engage in anger and envy, and all these other vices that have to do with a false self--a false sense of self that we feel needs to be defended at any cost, but which is just a figment of our own mind--that is when we lose our energy. We compromise our inner values, and we in essence forfeit our soul and our integrity for temporary gains, for that false self. 
The Role of Kundalini, Initiation, and Spiritual Knowledge
Nāgārjuna was a Buddhist teacher and a great master, a great initiate. We can tell as we look at this image of Nāgārjuna here that he is an initiate. Does anyone know why we can see in this image he is a master? There is a symbolism to this image.
Yes, the serpents. Behind his head, we see seven serpents. I am going to talk a little bit later about the structure of initiation, but, simply put, these seven serpents represent that he has mastered the seven initiations of Major Mysteries. This is a very high level of development: raising the serpents. Has anyone heard about Kundalini before? Kundalini is symbolized as a serpent rising up our spine. This is because, as an initiate, we learn to work with that energy that we are conserving, to transform that energy up the spine into the brain, into the pineal gland, in particular, to awaken our consciousness. This awakens our spiritual faculties, which are innate in all of us, but for many of us have become a bit atrophied over time. This awakens our ability to become wiser, more compassionate to human beings, and to perceive our reality beyond the shell of our mind, and our false self. As Nāgārjuna points out to us here, he stated that: All philosophies are mental fabrications. There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things. —Nāgārjuna
Sometimes people say that this type of statement means, “I don’t need any spiritual teachings. I don’t need to read any books. I can achieve awakening by myself.” Well, it is true that there are some masters who are illiterate, but for many of us we can actually benefit from practical teachings that guide us and that help us to realize where we may be imbalanced, or which techniques we may be able to use to gain some energy, to gain some strength, to then do our spiritual work, to then enter into the essence of things.
But if we just read books, or if we go to a church or a temple and we go through the motions of prayer or spiritual practice, but we ourselves never feel that connection, that power, that inner spark of divinity calling to us, then we are not truly growing internally. We may externally receive some amount of recognition, but when we go to the end of our life, and we evaluate the quality of our quality of being, we may feel empty. We may feel that we have created as Christ said, the "whited sepulcher," which on the outside looks beautiful and holy, but on the inside is dead. What we want is the spiritual birth. We want to enter into the true essence of things, the true essence of ourselves, the true essence of nature and reality, and the true essence of divinity—all of which are essentially one and the same. Conscience, Discernment and Internal Judgment of the Soul
Another great master, Swami Sivananda, gave us this practical teaching:
The intelligent or wise one has to discriminate within and advance by himself towards his own goal, his own self, while also searching for the emancipation of others. —Swami Sivananda
It is not about following anyone who claims to be a master, but truly studying in an effort to awaken your own inner discrimination, to find the teachings that resonate with you, that call to you and that awaken your own inner judgment.
Many of us have been in situations where we feel a pang of conscience, when we are about to tell a lie and a part of us says: “Mmm… maybe I should just tell the truth!” But then our mind begins to rationalize and to say: “Why? Well, but I’m lying for a good reason. I have a good intention for doing this unethical thing. In the end, I might be able to work things out and brush it over and get away with it.” For some of us, maybe it has been many years since we felt that pang of conscience, but we all have some direct experience of our inner judgment, that discernment. This is really important as we try to prepare ourselves for initiation, because, as I mentioned, it is not about any external master saying to you that you are ready. It is about your internal God, your own inner divinity teaching you, and awakening you, and helping you to grow, as a father and mother would a young child. As a soul, we need to be behaving in a certain kind of way through which we demonstrate the maturity within ourselves to our own inner divinity, that we are willing to learn, that we are humble enough to learn and to change as people. That is something that only each of us can know. We have guidelines, we have general principles in all the world religions that we are all familiar with and which we can use as a great starting place to gain our bearings, to begin living more ethically. But it is really when we are in a situation and we are observant of ourselves, in the quality of our action, and we act on a vice, that we see the effect of that. We see how that affects other people and affects us and create problems in our life—versus when we do something virtuous, and we see how that ripples towards other people and changes our own quality of being and gives us a sense of peace with ourselves. As we begin to evaluate ourselves, regardless of what other people’s judgments about us may be, we have to be very severe with ourselves, and very honest with ourselves. We have to really see in our life: “What are the places where I have compromised myself?” Maybe at that time, we did it for what we thought were good reasons, but now we realize that it was really a mistake and that we are missing something of value to us, part of our own soul that we want to reclaim. Then ask, “What steps can I begin to take to gradually put my life back in order, to get myself back to the place where I feel that I am a person that I can respect, an individual with character that is noble or virtuous?” At least we can be striving to that point, because of course, we know this is not something that just happens magically overnight, but it is an effort of the soul that takes tremendous super efforts, day to day, to be continually honest with ourselves and to see where we have shortcomings, where we have anger, greed, gluttony or lust, that is creating problems, that is actually creating suffering. Not because someone else tells us this is creating suffering for us, but because we repeated these behaviors again and again and again, and we know that they lead us to the same unfortunate places. When we truly begin to work towards ourselves and understand deeply our own suffering, we begin to see how other people that we love and cherish around us are also suffering. Many people are controlled by their anger or their greed, or their fear, their insecurity, and they live their lives completely controlled by these negative states of mind. They do not understand how to access the power within themselves, to begin to take control over their lives and to access a higher state of being: a state of being that is within the spirit, that has faith, not as a mere belief or good intention, but truly by directly knowing that what they are doing will produce peace and happiness for themselves. So this becomes even more crucial for us as we search for the emancipation of others from their suffering, that we really work to liberate ourselves from our own negativity and our own problematic behaviors and delusional states of mind. 
Identity, Illusion, and Conflicts with Reality
When I say a delusional state of mind, I mean the mental cage within which we often imprison ourselves. We hold to one belief so strongly; maybe it is a belief about ourselves--maybe we believe we are a certain type of person. Then, if someone comes across us who shows us otherwise, who disagrees with us, or who insults us, we cannot help but suffer and be upset and argue or fight, or react in some strong way to that situation. That is all because we have a belief. We have an idea in our mind about who we are, and when that is challenged, we do not want to see reality. We want to refute reality. We want to argue with reality and assert this idea that “What I believe is the truth and everyone else is wrong!”
We just do not have ideas about ourselves, but many ideas about how other people are. Maybe we have many grudges against other people that “Well, you’re always this way. This is just the way that you’re going to be.” We have ideas about life, and maybe some of them are more cynical ideas that really good people don’t make it out in the end. “Maybe it’s only the bad people that really get what they want in life.” Maybe we have nice beliefs, but that don’t actually produce fruit in our life. So, we have to evaluate our beliefs. We do not necessarily have to throw them all out right away, but we have to see them for what they are. We must have this discrimination. We must identify how beliefs in our life are a filter through which we are not able to perfectly perceive the reality beyond our mind. Meditation, Introspection, and Inner Discrimination
Anybody who has tried to meditate and silence the mind knows that in the beginning the mind is very chaotic and that is often hard to actually achieve that stability and that quiet of mind through which we can hear any inner voice of the silence as many call that spiritual wisdom.
Much of this has to do with how we behave in our physical life. If we are constantly distracted in our physical life for behaving unethically, we are producing imbalances energetically in our mind and in our consciousness. They make it nearly impossible for us to be able to meditate. And we may develop a high degree of concentration, but we may not feel that we are accessing that inner wisdom, because we do not have that balance. We are not vibrating at that level in which we can be in tune with that. It’s really essential for us that we try to not only meditate daily or regular—to an amount that is reasonable for us where we are at—but also that we try to behave ethically and become aware of the way that our mind acts during the day, ad how we become distracted. These are the beginning steps to develop inner discrimination. To be able to see, first of all, our own mind for what it is, and to question our own mind. To separate our own consciousness from the mind. To know that we are not these thoughts, but that we are the perceiver of these thoughts. We are not these emotions, but we are the perceiver of these emotions, and the perceiver of our physical life. And that we have the power to free ourselves from the negative thoughts, and negative emotions, even to have the power to free ourselves from the suffering of our negative life experiences by changing our conscious attitude towards it, and by behaving in new ways that are inspired by our inner wisdom, rather than inspired by our fear or our envy, or anger or greed. 
Exercise to Awaken Inner Judgment
When we need to awaken this type of judgment, when we realize that we lost the ability to discriminate within ourselves, we have a special practice in the Gnostic teachings that comes from The Magic of the Runes by Samael Aun Weor. But I wanted to read this excerpt for you about the Rune Rita which can you see pictured here, on the slide.
The present runic practice has the power of liberating internal judgment. We need to convert ourselves into judges of consciousness. To awaken the Buddhata (the seed of our own Buddha nature), the soul, is urgent. This rune has the power of awakening the consciousness of the judges. Let us remember what is called remorse, which certainly is the accusing voice of the consciousness. —Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
So, a lot of us have an accusing voice of self-criticism or we are evaluating ourselves according to standards of how others may view us. But this is very different from the genuine remorse of the soul, and the conscience, which tell us right from wrong, which in the moment when we are about to lie tugs at us and say: “Can you behave in a better way? Can you just tell the truth and put this bad behavior aside?” Or whatever that might be. Maybe it is not a lie. Maybe it is something else.
But we know that in some cases, what is the right behavior would be the wrong behavior in another circumstance. And that is why is so important to just not blanket a code of conduct, but to really develop our awakened sense of what is right and wrong. To re-awaken it, I should say, because as children I think many of us are more in touch with this. But the more that we act on bad behaviors—and our mind justifies it or gives a really great reason for why we should continue in this route—the further away we get from our inner conscience. That is why we want to work with this runic practice, to work with this energy of nature, the energy of our own internal judge, our own inner divinity, which can help us to remember remorse. To remember the part of us that has a great spiritual value, and which suffers tremendously when we compromise it for things which, spiritually, are not of value. Whether that is money or recognition, or relationships, or social status, or a worldly success. It is not that these things are bad in themselves, but if we have to compromise what we believe as right in order to get these things, we are losing a part of our soul. And that part of our soul we may have to work much harder and later on to reclaim. Each of us has to make the decision for ourselves on where we strike that balance of meeting our worldly needs, but doing so in a way that we feel is contributing for something good or a value to the rest of humanity. Or in whatever way we have a particular talent. When we begin to steer off that course, and when we begin to take those steps into a different, which causes us suffering, that we feel that remorse, in order to re-evaluate: “Is this the path that I want to take or are there a variety of other responses that I can bring up, and think of, to this situation, some of which may help me to feel more peace with myself?” And Samael Aun Weor goes on to describe this rune: Those who never feel remorse are truly very far from their interior judge. Commonly, they are lost cases. People like that must work very intensely with the Rune Rita, thus they will liberate their interior judgement. We need with urgency to learn to be guided by the voice of the silence, that is to say, by the innermost judge. —Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
Within each of us, we have an individualized connection to that universal force of divinity, which as I mentioned earlier, we call the universal consciousness of Christ in this particular tradition. Each of us has our inner spirit, our Innermost God that is our Father or our Mother that is helping us to grow as a soul.
When we hear the voice of the silence, we are hearing that powerful, direct experience of our own inner judgment, of our own inner wisdom, which is guiding us in our life. What we need to do next to continue to learn and grow and flourish as a soul, what we need to do is to perhaps make up for the error of our ways. And now, this particular rune, we are going to practice—as I mentioned, if you stick around from the meditation afterwards—we will just try it three times. But simply put, you will stand with your left hand on your hip, and your left leg out to make the shape of an “R.” And then you will repeat: Another Instructor: The mantras RA, RE, RI, RO, RU. Instructor: Each time you pronounce the mantras RA, RE, RI, RO, RU, each of those vowels you are going to hold them for one long breath. What is important is not so much to focus on the vocalization, but to feel that energy, that current within in us, in the spine vibrating throughout our whole body and awakening our consciousness, giving strength to the consciousness, to the soul. Working with this type of energy transforms the forces in nature, takes them into our own body and helps our consciousness to awaken and have more strength. So, we will talk more about his later, but I felt his very important in relationship to preparation for initiation because, frankly, if we do not have our conscience awake, if we do not have to ability to discriminate by ourselves, it is easy to become lost in the sea of life—and in the multitude of spiritual movements and masters, and to no longer have that sight of our inner compass that guide us in our own growth, in our inner development. So, that is why it is truly urgent to awaken that. Additionally, when we do awaken this, we have to act on it. We have to really follow our inner judge, our Inner God, because that will help us to achieve sanctity of our mind and heart. 
The Sanctity of Mind and Heart
The purity of the mind and heart is a prerequisite for spiritual initiation. Now, what we are talking about is an initiation in Christ, in which, degree by degree, we begin to incarnate our own inner spirit more and more, and to express according to our level of development, divinity as it manifests in us. And if we do not have a temple in mind, heart, and body in which divinity can rest, because we are vibrating at an antithetical level of being, then we cannot enter into initiation.
Many people are able to develop spiritual powers, to awaken out of their bodies, to work with energy or concentration and all these practices, but they are awakening in a very egotistical way. In a way that strengthens the mind and that strengthens our desires, and many of these desires are desires to overpower other people, to make other people see things the way we want them to be. To gain more influence, to make people like us more or to have more success in our worldly affairs, but not necessarily for good reasons—not to want to have success in our worldly affairs to truly help people, even if that is what we tell ourselves. But maybe our intention on a deeper level is more selfish. And so, that is why each one of us can really determine if we are awakening in a positive way towards God, if we are lessening the sense of our false self and we are really awakening more wisdom and compassion. Or if we are strengthening our sense of self and our sense of pride as an individual, and we are only wanting to accumulate more power and more knowledge in order to gain our selfish ends. And that is why Samael Aun Weor teaches in the book The Major Mysteries: We need to have the mind of a child in order to enter into the Major Mysteries. We need to be like children in our minds and hearts. We need to be perfect as our Father who is in the heaven is perfect. The great mysteries are not achievable through vain intellectualisms; the Major Mysteries are achievable with the heart of a child. —Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
I know a lot people, a lot spiritual friends who spend much time, whether on the internet or with books, reading and studying about these things. And I myself of course am a very curious person and have read quite a bit about these things, but what is really important is that we can set aside the mental concepts, the intellectual concepts, and we can approach reality as it is, as it presents to us.
In order to do that, we do need a purity of mind. As a child, they can see many things which adults have forgotten how to see. If a child is in a room where his or her parents are fighting, they can see that situation and the pain of that situation in a way in which the parents, who may be identified with their particular perspective, are not able to see anymore. Because now they are caught up in the mind, caught up in the sense of self in the tallies of who did what and “What you have done wrong to me,” and “What I deserve,” and all of these ideas about ourselves that we have developed and strengthened into adulthood. And so, we become more aware as adults of the many manipulations and complications of adult life, of our modern world, our society. But oftentimes, we are so caught up in this that we confuse them for reality. Unfortunately, we need to be aware of this in order to navigate society, but society does not have much to do with reality of nature and its existence, and divinity, which is a natural experience that the soul can witness. So, when I talk about simplicity of mind, we have to be able to not totally give up intellectualism, but to set it aside, to put it in his place. To have the mind become the servant of our spiritual goals, rather than to fortify the mind in order to serve the selfish goals of our desires. Really, initiation is achieved by the quality of our heart. It is through the merits of our heart that we raise the Kundalini up each vertebrae of the spinal column and it is through the merits of our heart that our own inner Divine Mother, and our Innermost Father and spirit, judge us and determine whether or not we are worthy of genuine spiritual wisdom, powers and abilities and those types of things. We cultivate this childlike quality the more that we are virtuous and act upon the genuine ideal that we have for ourselves, a spiritual ideal. If you remember as a child what you thought made up a good person, you may be interested in money or those types of things, but really there is a certain character that you might have strived for. And that is the ideal that we want to re-awaken: the best part of us from our childhood, but now with the wisdom of an adult, with the power of an adult, with the choice of an adult, to be able to actually give birth to that. 
Psychological Death: The Initiatic Path of Life
Also, we have to die in many ways in order to give birth to that inner child.
I mentioned about our false beliefs, our false ideas about ourselves, the mental prison in which we live and suffer which causes suffering for us, because we cannot understand reality, we cannot understand other people or ourselves. This is the part that we have to be willing to let go of. That we have to be willing to change. Maybe it is our addictions, which are not necessarily alcohol or drugs, but our addictions to certain behaviors or ways of thinking and living that we know create suffering for us, but that we just cannot seem to break out of. If we really want to come a more enlightened person, if we really want to work toward the level of development that saints and prophets and masters were able to achieve through their own direct efforts, and through the grace of divinity, then we have to be willing to die to who we are today. You cannot live in both heaven and hell at the same time. This is about our own psychological state of being. We have to be willing to let go of the way that we have lived, the person that we have been when our inner judgment tells us. That that is not taking us anywhere, but into pain. Then we have to be brave and to take those steps courageously into what we believe as right, in order to really have life. To have that inner power and inner life that gives us real meaning and peace. So, Samael Aun Weor writes: When one enters into gnosis (direct experience of divinity), one has to die in order to live; however, proud intellectual people who have the habit of thinking in accordance to their own whims, vanities and prejudices are not good for these gnostic studies; this is a very difficult enterprise for intellectual people because they only want to stuff their minds with these gnostic studies, and the reality is that gnosis is a very deep functionalism of the consciousness. What we have to do with the mind is to kill it, and thereafter to resurrect it, totally transformed. —Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
We want a new quality of mind. For many of us, mind is out of control. It is going in the same directions day after day, repeating the same thoughts, the same worries, the same problems, seeking the same desires day after day just on repeat.
We want to get rid of this old mind, to really fight against it in those moments when we feel that pain of conscience, to not let our mind continue to justify and hypnotize us, but to break free and to allow something new to be born. Because with this new quality of mind, this totally transformed quality of mind, we will have that bright awareness of our experience of life, the quality of mind that can see the best in other people. That can enjoy other people and love other people spontaneously and naturally. That has a wisdom to penetrate into the heart of a situation and to really see its spiritual value, not just its value according to society. Kundalini Yoga or Sexual Alchemy
In order to do this, we do need to work with a very powerful energy, in a very powerful practice. And in our tradition, we call this sexual alchemy.
Just as with the practice of the Rune Rita, we are working with our creative energies. We recognize that creativity is born of our sexual energy. And that is why the Kundalini rises from the bottom of the spine where our sexual organs are, and whether male or female, we have physical, sexual seed, sperm or ovum. But we also have an energy within that physical seed which can be transformed, which can be raised into the pineal gland, which will awaken the spiritual nature of our soul which will awaken consciousness, which is beyond the mind and beyond the body. 
Now, as a single person we have the practices which we can use to awaken sparks of that Kundalini energy. We call these pranayamas, generally speaking, and we can talk more about them [see Gnostic Meditation: Pranayama and Sexual Transmutation], but the one that I primarily teach is just to sit, to focus on that energy, to sit in a meditative comfortable pose, in which the spine is straight or you can lie down if that is more comfortable and to just breathe deeply in trough the nostrils and out through the mouth. And as you are breathing in, visualize that energy as light coming up through the spine into the head, saturating our mind and our pineal gland with that energy, that light, and then breathing out, visualizing that energy moving to the heart.
As simple as that, we can harness the breath, we can harness the energy that is within the breath, and within our body and within nature, and begin to strengthen our consciousness that way. But as Samael Aun Weor points out here in his quote, we need sexual alchemy in order to really create the bodies of the soul. This is because nothing in nature, whether physical or spiritual, is born without the union of masculine and feminine principles, the activity of masculine and feminine forces. He writes: The only objective of the [first] five initiations of Major Mysteries is the fabrication of the solar bodies [the vehicles of the soul]. In Gnosticism and esotericism, one understands that the fabrication of the solar bodies and the incarnation of the Being are known as the Second Birth. —Samael Aun Weor, Practical Astrology: The Esoteric Treatise of Hermetic Astrology
If we truly want to incarnate the force of our inner spirit, of our internal Christ, that is a frequency which is very, very powerful. We have within us currently astral bodies and mental bodies that can transform mental, emotional, and spiritual energies to a degree. But these are relatively weak and dirty vessels and through which the light of divinity struggles to shine.
Now through the cooperation of male and female, retaining that energy in the body, we are able to create spiritual bodies, spiritual vehicles: a solar physical body, a solar vital body, a solar astral body, a solar mental body, a solar causal body through which divinity can express on all levels. Now what is important is when we talk about sexual alchemy, we have to retain the sexual, so seed whether male or female, we have to refrain from orgasm, and to transmute that energy upwards. We know that when we let that physical energy out of the body, we produce a physical body. But to harness this energy and to move it inward into the soul, into the consciousness, we can create a spiritual body, a spiritual vessel which is talked about in the Bible as the terrestrial man and the celestial man. We want to create a new type of individual, and so we work with this very powerful energy. The warning here is that we talked about white initiations, which are initiations into divinity, into the light of Christ, and black initiations through which we awaken in ego. We become demons. Now, we may be convinced that we have good intentions, and that we are awakening power because we are really becoming great people. But we have to trust our inner judge to determine if we are walking on an egotistical path or the path of light. When we practice White Sexual Alchemy, we are trying to come into connection with our Inner Christ, our inner divinity. And we are working with a very powerful energy. The outcome of this type of practice is either an angel or demon. So, we will either awaken our own spiritual potential and give birth to our soul, or we will awaken powers, but powers that are demonic, that are entirely engaged in the prison of our false self which grows, and grows, and grows in intensity and increases the suffering of us as an individual and also in others. So we have to really be prepared and really establish our own ethical center before we step into initiation. So, we will be talking a lot more about sexual alchemy and what is involved with that in the rest of the course, which will be talked about by the other instructors. 
The Structure of Initiation
But simply put, to give you an outline, for what initiation is—as we teach it here—this outline is just a framework. Of course, the experience of it is something internal, which is experience in our daily life. In fact, Samael Aun Weor says that “Initiation is life itself intensely lived with rectitude and with love.” It is an inner experience, the development of the hero within our own heart, within our soul. But it is something that we create by the way that we face the ordeals presented to us in physical life.
Sometimes in astral experiences, in our dream state, we may experience ordeals, symbolic ordeals that strengthen us. But many times these are conflicts that we are having in our physical life, or problems which challenge us, exactly in the way that we talked about before, in which we are very tempted to go in a behavior, which we have repeated many times, but which we have the opportunity now to face ourselves, to understand ourselves, to understand why we have gone in wrong direction before, and to take a step in a more positive direction as we see fit. The Guardian of the Threshold
I separated this chart into four levels or four parts to enter the Major Mysteries. The first is the Guardian of the Threshold. Now, this is described in many traditions as a terrifying beast, which we know in our tradition is the form of our own inner defects. If we looked at ourselves as we truly are, we would see there is a monstrous beast in the mental plane or the astral plane, that we have many vices and many problems, and a lot of suffering within us that we cultivated in and fed our creative energy to throughout this lifetime and even previous lifetimes.
And so, when we face our own ego, we face the Guardian of the Threshold, we are actually breaking our ties with all of the vices that we carry within. Sometimes, this is described, as in Hinduism, as going to battle with our own beloved relatives. Because our vices and our defects are part of ourselves that we very much cling to. And that feels very comfortable for us that we like a lot. And in Hinduism, Arjuna has to go to battle with his own family members who are doing wrong behaviors. And Krishna, which is in Hinduism the representation of Christ, comes to him an says: “You must do your duty. You must go to battle here.”
When we face the Guardian of the Threshold, when we begin to enter into initiation, we begin by breaking all of our ties to the Black Lodge, the Black Lodge being a representation of the black path of initiation, which is the path of vice and selfishness. And we make a commitment to really go against ourselves because we are own worst enemy. So, this is about taking on and battling ourselves. And if we defeat the inner guardian, we have not fully destroyed, but if we defeat it, then we become the master of our energy. We begin to be able to have more power, more self-control in situations. But if we fail in this ordeal, then the Guardian of the Threshold becomes our master and our ego dictates how we will live our life, and creates more suffering for us. Of course, we can battle again, and again, and again. So, we have to be persistent if we fail. 
The Four Ordeals of the Elements
The next step is the four ordeals of the elements: air, fire, water and earth.
These elements come to us through many situations in our life. Air is often associated with instability, with the loss of what one loves, maybe the loss of the job, in which we face a total uncertainty in life and this forces us to develop a quality of consciousness which is unattached, which is able to continue on even in spite of losing stability. We have a lot of movement. And this develops and helps us to balance our consciousness in that area. And the next area in which we need to balance our consciousness or our state of being will be fire, which causes in the ordeals an emotional pain. Criticism from others is often a common ordeal of fire in which we have to respond with the right temperature. Sweetness in many cases is hard to develop in the face of criticism. And so, after we balance our nature to be firm when we must be firm. And to be soft, and gentle, and sweet when we must be. And to not be completely controlled by how other people behave or what the external situation is, but to really have a level of being in ourselves in which we have control over our response. The next area in which we balance the consciousness is water, which is often a very emotional ordeal in that we feel overwhelmed. We are thrown into social circumstances in life, which overwhelm us or force to adapt. Or radically adapt: maybe after moving to a new place, and really radically being able to adapt to a new situation. And finally earth, which helps us to develop the stability and the perseverance of the soul in response to obstacles and difficulties in our life. 
The Initiations of Minor Mysteries
After we have made the commitment to the path, and the Guardian of the Threshold in that battle, and then we balance our own consciousness in the four ordeals of the elements, then we begin the initiations of the Minor Mysteries.
Now, there are nine initiations of the Minor Mysteries which relate with nine spheres of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, if you are familiar with Judaic mysticism. But what is important is to understand that these Minor Mysteries are different ordeals in our physical life, which may have these qualities of the different elements, but which ultimately test our ability to persevere and to remain true to our spiritual goal, in spite of many temptations and challenges which call us off of the path. It is often called the probationary path because we must pass this before we truly enter into the initiations of the Major Mysteries in which we are giving birth to the soul. Now, a single person can progress through all of three of these parts of the initiatic path [the Guardian of the Threshold, the four ordeals of the elements, and the Minor Mysteries]: the entrance into the initiatic path. But in order to enter into the initiations of the Major Mysteries, in which we give birth to the solar bodies, the solar vehicles, we must be married. We must be working with our spouse in Sexual Alchemy. As I mentioned, we are going to talk a lot more about that, and all of these different faces of initiation in future lectures. Conclusion
What I really want to emphasize and summarize in this preparation for initiation is that is completely up to us to enter into initiation. Each person, regardless of their culture or their religious background, or their upbringing, or their current physical situation in life, has within the main connection to their inner divinity—has a spark of conscience which can be fed and strengthened. And each of us has within us an inner Father and Mother that want us to grow spiritually.
The whole purpose of our existence physically is for us to realize a certain spiritual truth about ourselves: to have an understanding of nature, and reality, and divinity, and ourselves. And oftentimes we are so distracted and hypnotized by the many things that we must keep up with in society, that we forget about the real reason why we are alive. So, to take the time to really assess our current situation in life in meditation, and to really evaluate the different areas of our life that we spend most of our time and energy and to see where we have compromised our values, and to begin to take steps back to where we really believe we are leaving our spiritual dignity and integrity as a person—that is the preparation for initiation. And when we couple that with preservation and the purity of our sexual energy through transmutation, then we are really knocking on the door to enter into initiation. And our inner divinity, and all of these masters—that we have talked about in religions, which still exist in the spiritual nature of our reality—will come. The masters of the White Lodge, the prophets, you know, whichever spiritual master that you resonate with can help you, can aid you in this journey because it is very difficult, but that will come from within. We can be in spiritual groups and we can be in spiritual schools, and we can read spiritual books. And these can be of help to us if we are awakening our own inner discernment. But we must be careful not to get caught up in the politics of many religions. And to not get caught up in problems that will distract us from the real growth of the soul, and from cultivating within us that type of being and spiritual potential that we are really capable of. Does anyone have questions? Questions and Answers
Question: How do we know when you have created solar bodies?
Instructor: Some people have created solar bodies in previous lifetimes, although this is pretty rare, speaking for humanity. And so, if that is the case you would know because you will be awakened in the astral plane, in the mental plane, in the causal plane, depending on which solar bodies were used, and not just a moment of awakening which every person can experience, but continuous awakening and being able to consciously project oneself out of the body and travel at will. Now, if one has created these bodies in past lives and but then fell, for example, lost their sexual energy or behaved very unethically and lost that level of development, the spirit still maintains that degree of initiation. The initiations never belong to the human person, but always belong to the inner spirit. And so, that spirit can never fall, but the soul can fall. So, the soul will have to recapitulate and re-go through all of these steps of initiation in order to re-gain access to those solar vehicles. Question: When the Kundalini rises according to degrees… Instructor: According to the vertebrae… Question: If it doesn’t do that, it just rises? Instructor: We can have sparks. We can have very vivid experiences in which all at once you now feel this fire, this illumination. But if that experience passes, and we’re back with the same problems that we always have in life, if we haven’t fundamentally shifted as a person in our quality of being, the essence of who we are hasn’t really grown and developed. That was just an experience meant to help us and to teach us that we actually have to do the hard work. Just as physical body is important in a day and develops over many months, so with our soul do we have to go through the pains of labor, so to speak, and develop those growing pains of the soul, in which we struggle against ourselves in order to become upright individuals. Question: So that’s almost better though? Instructor: Well, nature doesn’t take leaps. So, naturally speaking, there are certain people who say you can pay us twenty thousand dollars and we’ll awaken your Kundalini and they will produce some sort of energetic experience for you, but that’s very different from what we’re talking about initiations into the Christic Path, actually incarnating our own Being happens degree by degree. Question: Kind of going back to the topic of Kundalini. So, you’re saying that in the Minor Mysteries, the Probationary Path, that’s when you’re moving up the Tree of Life, correct? Instructor: You are actually cleaning out the parts of you that are submerged in the inferior Tree of Life. So the Tree of Life has a shadow in the hell realms. And we actually have each time to clean out the parts of us that are trapped there. Question: So at that point you’re starting off from Malkuth (the Kingdom)? Instructor: Sure, actually, I guess it would be the inverted Yesod. Not much is written about the Minor Mysteries. Experientially, you are experiencing parts of yourself that are very rigid, psychologically speaking, that are very hard to work against. Perhaps you have an answer to this if you start in the inverted Kether or if you start in the inverted Yesod. Another Instructor: So Dante talks about the nine inverted hell realms, spheres of Klipoth, which is the Hebrew term meaing, “shells” or the world of ego, which exists as they mentioned within the interior of the Earth. If you physically go into the terrestrial crust, you will find caves or caverns, but not people, because the infraconscious dimensions are in the astral plane, but inverted. And as part of the Minor Mysteries, we need to transform ourselves. So, we start to perceive internally experiences about our own inner hell. Because the White Lodge, the Christic Lodge is showing us what you need to work on in order to change. So, yes, to go up you first will go down. Every ascension is preceded by a descent. This is why in every cosmogony or epic the hero has to enter the hell realms first, which is why Aeneas, from The Aeneid by Virgil, has to descend in order to find the truth that is hidden in those realms. Because our soul is trapped. Part of our consciousness is conditioned in ego, which belongs to those dense regions of nature. 
Then, if you want to go up, to ascend the Tree of Life, you progressively must go down, to see and investigate parts of yourself: your anger, pride, lust, fear, laziness, ego. So that by working on those false and understanding them, we can extract light. So, first as Dante depicted in The Divine Comedy, you want to go to Paradiso, Paradise. He states that if you first descend Inferno, relating to initiation, because every type of exaltation in divinity, every type of progress is stipulated upon what we have worked on eliminate the Guardian. Maybe in that way, you get started into higher stages of the path, such as Purgatory, and then, at the end to experience all the bliss.
Unfortunately humanity, whenever people enter religion, or spiritual studies of this type, we all want to go the Paradise first. But the truth is, if you enter the Major Mysteries, you will have astral experiences where the masters of the White Lodge will come to you and will show you: “you need to descend first.” Personally, when I first started this teaching, I had an experience in which I was being attacked by a demon in the astral plane. And so, I was of course, in the beginning, terrified. Then, a master came up to me from the White Lodge and said, “Descend into the Earth!” He started to conjure this demon and kept him away from me. So, I obeyed these orders and went down through many layers within this internal dimension. 
Finally I came to a cavern where found sepulchers, tomb with the bones, debris. I intuitively got that I had to go out of that cave and in that experience I eventually found myself in Egypt in the astral plane, where I saw the temple of Giza, which physically is an ancient piece of architecture, which is a cadaver.
But in the internal planes the temple of Giza is active, and that temple was, I remember looking at the three pyramids and seeing the light of Christ there. The Egyptian masters opened the doorway and let me in. I remember having many other teachings they gave me related to this process. But the simple reality is that they were showing me: “You want to enter this temple, like the great masters before in antiquity, but first go into your Earth, descend down into your own mind. Confront yourself!” The term descent simply means to face the results of our previous actions, our mistakes. So, you can have experiences like that, that show you what the Minor Mysteries are. There are many other ways to verify where you are at through symbols, which is why we study the Kabbalah, which is Jewish mysticism, the language of the internal planes. Every religion has its symbolism. The cross of Christianity or Jainism, many traditions have the same symbols, which is why we balance the study the different religious traditions and accompany them with our meditation, so that we can verify and understand: “This is where I am at.” First, you have to face that which conditions us first, and when you free consciousness then, they say, “Enter our temple, and let us help you.” In the beginning we get a lot of help, because, as we are now, we need light. And sometimes those masters will come to you and awaken your consciousness with the [snaps fingers] spark, when you are working with energy exercises, such as pranayama, mantras, runes, sacred rites of rejuvenation, which we have available in books, but also on the websites. When you start to spark that energy in yourselves, the sexual energy, conserving it, transforming it, you start to have the fire that is going to empower your soul. And that is the beginning, to initiate. So, you can awaken sparks of Kundalini; it does not rise immediately, but you are, so to speak, fanning the flames. The coal is heated, so you have a spark, so you could have ecstasies, experiences, but to do that you need to descend, not only to the Earth, but literally into your physical life. Because Malkuth in Kabbalah, the bottom sphere of the Tree of Life, is our body. In the internal planes or in the cavern so to speak, you have to discriminate what is happening physically, in our jobs, in our homes, in our bedroom, looking at our behaviors. Because if we act egotistically, we are wasting energy. And then, if you have no energy, you cannot see. I mean if physically you waste energy or expend energies, you feel tired. The consciousness also goes to sleep if we have no force, which is why in the beginning of religion: ethics. If you want to enter the Minor Mysteries, train your mind. Save your energy. And when you build that up, and you are changing your physical life, your behaviors, and no longer performing actions that harm yourself or others, then you have a reservoir [of energy] which you can start to see. Instructor: So, as you can tell, that is why we will be continuing with this course because there is much to say on each of these different parts. And even more beyond this. This is just the beginning. There are initiations of fire and initiations of light. Many things are already written on the books, so this will be an ongoing course in which we have a lot more to say. 
Welcome everybody! We wish you a Happy Easter. We are going to explain some principles related to this sacred day. A lot has been written and disseminated on the internet regarding the pagan roots of this tradition. While here are many beautiful correlations, stories, symbols and narratives, what we hope to convey, by the end of this lecture, is the practicality of these myths, these symbols, these allegories.
To begin, we can discuss some of these correlations to more ancient traditions that precede Christianity. Easter comes from Ostara, the Germanic Goddess of fertility, of spring, the rising sun, from Eostre, which means “East.” You get words from Austre or astral, pertaining to the stars, the heavens, the divine. Basically in a nutshell, the goddess of spring represents the resurrection of life, especially during the spring equinox, which is when the day and night share equal hours, from the Latin equos meaning “equal” and nox meaning nights. We can compare this to the summer and winter solstices, the Latin sol meaning “sun” and sistere meaning “to stand still.” In the winter solstice, we know that there are greater hours of night than there are daylight, and in the summer solstice this is the opposite, in accordance with the axis of the earth and its rotation around the sun. Now the question becomes: why is this the focal point, the fulcrum, upon which pagan mythology and even Christian teachings, gravitates? What is its practical purpose for us as we are striving to become spiritual? ― to aspire towards greater development and wisdom in our lives, to overcome suffering in our daily circumstances? This dynamic in nature parallels our internal life. There is a symbology to this myth of how life returns in the spring and dies in winter and fall. These represent for us something very concrete. While we see how the solar light gives sustenance to all beings without distinction through the processes of nature, we also find that in our own particular development there are periods of growth, resurrection, and even death. This also applies, the process of genesis or birth, life and death, and then rebirth, even to religious traditions and forms, in terms of their progression throughout history. We can say that religions are born, they live, and they die, but more importantly for us in our study of Gnostic Esoteric Christianity, we look to understand the transfiguration of religion: how different religious forms, after their death, have been resuscitated, have been transformed, have become new. This is because divine principles always emerge in relation to a given time, place, culture, language, and identity. The different religious forms that have been given to humanity across time have always been done in accordance with the needs of a given society, in accordance with the level of being of the messengers. The teaching is the same, the essence of rebirth, spiritually, is universal. You find this teaching within all mythologies, without exception. All religions teach a type of death and rebirth. But unfortunately, these forms themselves, through exposure to humanity, to its greed and avarice, its destruction, have corrupted the essential teaching, the practical dimension of how to be born again, to give birth to something truly divine within us. But fortunately for us, even though religious forms and traditions die, they are transmuted in a form of alchemy towards new meanings and new understandings for the different contexts in which this knowledge is now being given. We have the Gnostic teachings, which are an explanation, a transformation, and a transmutation of these different religious forms. We explain what they mean, practically for us. The term transmutation, you might have heard before. The word trans is a prefix for “movement,” “to carry over,” to pass over,” as in transition, transportation. It is a movement and a flow, a redirection. Mutate, as in the term, mutant, is something that changes form, something that fundamentally has a new appearance. This is directly applicable to Christianity in relation to the previous traditions from which it originated. It is because when these traditions die, so to speak, they lose their practical value for how to change fundamentally. They ferment, and from that fermentation different messengers come to humanity to resurrect those essential meanings again. This has happened with Judeo-Christianity and Islam. Even Nietzsche said very infamously that “God is dead.” It is because the core of that teaching within the Judeo-Christian religion had been lost. But now as Nietzsche says, we want the superhuman to live, to resurrect―symbols, allegories, principles, archetypes―but what do they mean? How are they valid? I know a lot of times, people who might have a Christian dispensation may look at the previous religions and traditions with scorn, with derision. This is very unfortunate, because such a perspective fails to take into account how the principle of Christ, the divine, is within those faiths, albeit in a symbolic form that is obviously different to the palate of modern Christians and maybe adverse for them. It is also unfortunate that people who tend to be very materialistic, and also, unfortunately, superficial, we can say, look at religion from a historical perspective, ignoring that there is an experimental dimension to their tradition. We find this evidenced in modern Abrahamic traditions, which reject the different faiths before, primarily due to a misinterpretation of idolatry, an idol, such as thinking the ancients were stupid, and that they worshipped statues and stones, which are not the true faith or true god. It is the purpose of this lecture to emphasize a core teaching within Christianity that applies to all religions without exception, and that we are going to explain the symbols of this mystery that is greatly misunderstood today. In terms of idolatry, we can say that this is a misapprehension of symbols, taking things literally. People like to mistake the symbol for reality, and this is fundamentally mistaken. For example, what do you think of when you look at an American flag? Do you think literally that there are 50 stars somewhere along with its red and white stripes, literally in some place in time, in history? It is absurd. We understand these are representations of something deeper on a conceptual dimension and even a historical definition, in that case. The same thing applies to religious forms. When we literally believe in the iconography of any faith, without understanding its practical application to us, we are committing idolatry. We are worshipping an idea, a statue, a concept in the mind, which tends to make us very petrified, stone-like, rigid. We find this type of mentality amongst many people who have a very strict adherence to a dogma, and who are not able to look at some of the deeper currents that course throughout these traditions. Therefore, why should we venerate the resurrection of Christ from the dead? Is it not true that nature resurrects every spring and that the sun gives us life (s-u-n), but also son, (s-o-n) if we go deeper? This is because even the pagan traditions worshipped Christ. They recognized that the force of life, the sun, is a direct representation and manifestation of a divine truth, and that the Christians reappropriated that symbolism to fit a new context, history, language, culture, and way of being. The forms are not at fault because the principles are within them, because the sun gives life to all traditions. That solar light, which we find in our sun, gives sustenance and equilibrium to everything in every level of our existence. It performs a sacrifice for all beings without distinction, which we find paralleled in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who was an incarnation of that light, that spiritual effluvia and Being. We even know from quantum mechanics that light has consciousness. Light makes decisions, even on the subatomic level of particles. Light is not an inanimate, lifeless thing. It is the essence of life, and the ancients knew this before our scientists could even verify this. So, the previous cultures of humanity were not as ignorant as we may like to think of them. We are going to explain some archetypes and some principles within the Bible whose genuine roots have been condemned and expunged from public Christianity. However, we are going to demonstrate that there has always existed an Esoteric Christianity, a heart teaching within the Christian faith that is practical. It is born from conscious experience. We are going to explain some of these practical symbols for us, the purpose of divine narrative, not to relate some type of history, but to guide us in our internal development. 
The Real Meaning of Faith
It is important to reflect on what it means to have faith―especially since many people have faith in Christ, Jesus, the physical personality who lived 2000 years ago―and to understand what this word really implies. What does it mean to have faith in the resurrection from the dead?
The original word for faith, which has been erroneously translated throughout time, is Πίστις pistis. It means to have “faith,” “to trust,” “to have knowledge from observable experience,” derived from Πειθώ peitho, “to prevail,” “to grow in confidence or persuasion” ― such as power like in the term Pistis Sophia, which is the Gnostic Bible, wisdom-power, the power of wisdom. The original Greek term has been mistranslated into belief. The term belief today really does not have much value, if we are honest. Belief is a conviction in the heart and mind based on an idea or a feeling, but without verification from experience. There are many people today who have many beliefs throughout diverse traditions. You find it any conspiracy culture or fringe culture, people believing in flat earth or other ways of thinking, which have been disproven by factual, scientific evidence and even one’s experience. People believe in many things. They have confidence in many things. They are persuaded. They are even eloquent with their language when transmitting certain ideas, but where is the proof? Where are the facts? Upon what do we trust? What do we perceive? Is it not a conviction in the heart of some higher power? Is it a sentiment and emotion? It is true that morality, we can say, having some type of religious values, is useful in its orbit. We can believe in many things, but it does not mean we really know? Of course, the great divide between Gnostic Christianity and public Christianity is based on this. Within the public doctrine there is the belief that one must have faith, in the blind sense of not knowing, in order to be redeemed from pain, to resurrect into a new life. But the hidden Esoteric Gnostic Christianity, which has been underground for millennia and which is now being taught openly today, explains that faith is direct experience of these principles. It is not a belief. It is not thinking something is true or feeling something is true. It is knowing through action. Πίστις Pistis, faith, has been terribly abused. There are many verses in the Bible which help to explain what we are emphasizing. We can say that this lack of distinction between faith and belief―knowledge from experience and assumption and convictions based on a lack of experience―is the failure of modern Christianity, in which many philosophers like Nietzsche critiqued. We can say that one of the main chasms within the Christian tradition especially is the lack of systematic methods for understanding these principles, because those teachings were taken out. They were not conducive for certain power structures that existed in the path, certain types of mentality that did not want to introspect, but sought to externalize religion as a projection of the mind, an idea, but not really looking at reality. Meditation was removed from the Bible even though Jesus meditated for 40 days and 40 days in the wilderness when facing temptations. We can go to confession and believe we are redeemed, and because people do not look within, they do not practically examine themselves for the root of their sufferings, they think that religion is about some external adherence to a program. We can go to confession and beg for forgiveness, but the psychological tendency towards those wrong behaviors will continue to exist in the mind, in our subconsciousness, our unconsciousness, infraconsciousness. There needs to be practical works if our spirituality is going to be effective. We offer many tools and techniques in this tradition so that we can develop genuine faith. I am going to read some verses for you from the Book of James that are very profound and elaborate these points: What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him (or better said, can belief save him)?
There are practices and exercises like meditation that help us to experience what our religion is talking about. These are practical exercises, methods and meditations that allow us to verify what Christ is, what divinity is, how to know from facts, from experience, not beliefs.
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well… ―James 2:19
It is not a bad thing to appreciate that there is a higher power in one's life, a higher force, that there is a higher influence, because this can give us some type of comfort and guidance, and an ethical foundation. However:
…the devils also believe, and tremble (because they know the existence of divinity as well, but they are not working to change).
Here is an example that is interpreted very historically in relation to the founder of Judaism, we can say Abraham, one of the patriarchs of that tradition.
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
So, in this myth he was told by divinity to sacrifice his son Isaac but as he was about to draw the knife, filled with terrible pain within himself, an angel stopped him and gave him a goat to sacrifice in his stead as an offering to divinity. This is a symbol of how we need to renounce our attachments, our beliefs, our most craved ideals, our assumptions, our identity, even like a father to his son, to give it up for something superior, for a higher principle, because we have many beliefs, ideas, but they are just that. They are not verified, if we are honest, but because in this story, Abraham was so dedicated to knowing the truth and to practice in himself, to know these things, he was given direct guidance, and instead was given an animal to sacrifice.
What is that animal? It is pride. It is lust. It is anger. It is envy. It is greed. It is jealousy. It is wrath, morbidity, fanaticism, fear, despair―all those qualities that are our lower animal psychological conditioning, and in which keep us trapped in beliefs and ideas, but not really knowing, because fear and these defects and anger cannot know the truth. They are the aspect of our psychology that has to be cleansed and removed if we really want to commune to our divinity. We are going to reference a lot more excerpts that explain this especially. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith (or belief) only (merely thinking or feeling something is true, but actually employing certain conditions and practices that are the preconditions of knowing and accessing the truth)? Energy and Action: The Causes of Faith
Now practically for us, faith is realized through actions, through doing, but what actions do we need to employ, to give birth to something superior in us?
In synthesis, the resurrected Master Morya, who wrote The Dayspring Youth, explained the nature of real faith, but also what is commonly denominated faith or belief. He emphasizes how faith is really our conscious application of energy for a spiritual purpose through techniques. It is not merely by sitting back on the couch and letting life happen to us and thinking, “If I just have my convictions and belief in divinity, then everything is going to be fine.” I will relate to you what he stated: Here we think a note upon faith should be of interest. Initiates say that its meaning has been misunderstood. Faith, as the world uses it, possesses no spiritual nature; though in the secondary system… (meaning in relation to our creative energies: the force of life we carry in our body, which really establishes order within our psychology as well) …it means power and energy applied to action. All success in Yoga (from the Sanskrit yug: reunion, the Latin religare, religion) comes from this application; for the true quality of faith is a Solar force that illumines the mind and attracts to it atoms of power and energy (these are not physical atoms but spiritual, energetic forces). More human wrecks have resulted from the misconception of this quality than man realizes. ―M. The Dayspring of Youth 
The Intimate Christ
It is important that we understand the symbology of the sun. What is solar force? What is the solar light? What is that spiritual atomic energy that can empower our soul, so that it can be reborn through the death of its impurities? We call that energy Christ, and to understand what this holy day is, we have to understand what Christ is.
The term יהשוה Yeshua in Hebrew, read right to left, has many meanings. You can look at the individual letters to understand a deeper comprehension of this symbol or this archetype, this blueprint for some type of creation within us. If you want to learn more about what the individual Hebrew letters signify in a deeper level, you can study the course Alphabet of Kabbalah on glorian.org. We are going to explain a few things today to give you an introduction, and even a correlation with Christian doctrine, because the Jewish religion, the Kabbalah, mysticism of Israel, is the foundation of Christianity, and to study Christianity without a knowledge of Kabbalah is to approach it mistakenly. יהשוה Yeshua is י Iod-ה Hei-ש Shin-ו Vau- ה Hei. You find the same four-lettered of God, י Iod-ה Hei-ו Vau- ה Hei, or יהוה Jehovah in Hebrew. We pronounce it Jah-Chavah. יהשוה Yeshua has an extra letter ש Shin in the middle. If you study the meaning of this term, יהשוה Yeshua, you go deep into what the letters signify. The letter ש Shin is fire. It even looks calligraphically like a three-pointed candle or candelabra, with a diacritical mark on top, on the right hand candle, itself, of this letter. יהשוה Yeshua means “savior” and ש Shin is fire. This is evidenced by the Greek Χρήστος Khrestos, read left to right. Khrestos is the Greek god of fire. So, it is a title. It also means “anointed one.” יהשוה Yeshua Χρήστος Khrestos is the savior fire. It is not a name of one specific individual in history. It is a title given to any individual, any human being who really perfects him or herself, who receives the energy of that solar creative divine force, which as a fire, cleanses everything. It renews one psychological nature. Just as the solar light in nature resurrects all living things in spring, we find that this energy can give a rebirth in us if the impurities of our mind die. We find the term INRI, which is a mantra we can pronounce, a sacred sound we can prolong and meditate upon its vibration within us, because sacred sounds, or the verb, is the creative power of the logos, divine word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ―John 1:1
The verb, the creative expression of our energies, is a solar generative energy. We create with our speech, but unfortunately with us, we tend to take our energies and use them in the wrong way. We do not renew our psychological states with how we tend to communicate in the world, how we use our breath, our force. But when we learn to use sacred sounds in meditation, using our speech in the right way, and by conserving our energy and transforming them within us, we renew our psychological nature profoundly.
The term INRI is an acrostic. From Latin, it has two meanings that are pretty significant:
Ignis Natura Renovatur Integram
There are many verses in the Bible that refer to God as fire. Can you remember the Burning Bush that Moses saw? ― or from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 24:
For יהוה thy אֱלֹהִים is a consuming fire, even a jealous God אֵל. ―Deuteronomy 4:24
That fire is a form of life, an energy, an intelligence which permeates and governs all of nature. That light is so jealous for our wellbeing that it sacrifices itself like the sun in order to give life to everything. That energy within us is also very jealous. It wants the integration of all the different parts of our consciousness that are fractured, trapped, conditioned within defects like anger, pride, lust, vanity, and shame. That fire needs to renew us, that force, that power, to give birth to something truly sacred inside.
In the Book of Luke, Chapter 12, verse 49, we find: I [Christ] am come to send fire on the earth... ―Luke 12:49
Also in the Book of Acts we find many references to sacred fire, especially within Chapter 2, verses 1 through 4:
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
It is sad that in modern Christianity that they want to divorce their tradition and this symbolism from the Eastern traditions, especially the mystery of the Kundalini, the sacred fire, which is Pentecost, which is in the energy that resides in the base of our spine, within the sepulcher of our body, in order to rise up and eliminate the impurities we carry within, and to illuminate the head and mind. This is the Holy Spirit of the Christians. It is the Christic energy, the fire, which the Eastern mystics call Kundalini.
Of course, there are a lot of misconceptions of what Kundalini is and how to work with it. It is only achievable through the path of initiation, which we are going to elaborate today as well. Pentecost symbolically is initiation. It is the entrance, a beginning into a new way of life, a new way of being, which has its laws and stipulations, codes of conduct and methods, that are written in books like The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor and many of his other books, which teach the science on how to work with this energy. In this symbol, those sounds from heaven that the apostles heard, are internal experiences we can have in meditation, when we control our vital winds, the energies of our breath, which is known in the East as prana, through exercises like alchemy, transmutation, and even pranayama, to a certain degree. 
Speaking in tongues does not mean babble or gibberish, as many modern denominations assume, that the apostles were speaking different languages or even nonsense, gibberish. That is the tower of babel in the Bible. That is not the intelligence of the Holy Ghost, the wisdom of the Christ within oneself, because that is just an intellectual theory, an idea. Instead, that fire of Pentecost is an intelligent wisdom, a balanced, inspirational fire, that allows the individual to have greater wisdom and intelligence in navigating the wilderness of life. It is the capacity for comprehension in a deep way, in a spiritual way, to understand that spirit behind the written word.
We can read any scripture and interpret it with wisdom and understanding. Behind the letter that kills through its literal dogma is the spirit that is hidden within it that vivifies, that gives life. This is why Jesus spoke in parables, in symbols, in archetypes, so that people who were educated and taught within these mysteries, who are conserving their creative energies themselves, could understand it. As stated in the Book of Matthew Chapter 13, verses 10 and 11: And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
So there is an esoteric dimension to Christianity that has not been made public. This is what is implied here. This knowledge was originally given from mouth to ear through a very conservative and highly protected tradition, and only given to those candidates who had proved their worth by entering certain schools of initiations or mysteries, where they could learn the proper application and methods of this science: how to work with that fire of Christ within one's own body, particularly within a marriage, a matrimony.
Christ is Within
Historical narratives encode a divine allegory, parables, symbols. This is the grammar of consciousness―archetypes, stories and narratives that hide deeper truths, a wisdom that is applicable to our daily life, here and now.
Christ is an internal principle. He was a person who lived, a great master who is continuing to guide humanity today in secrecy, who represented for us something very profound, which we need to understand from experience within. This is why in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 13, verse 5 we have the following statement: Examine yourselves, whether ye be in πίστις pistis (faith from experience), prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ (יהשוה Yeshua Χρήστος Khrestos) is in you, except ye be reprobates? ―2 Corinthians 13:5
Have we examined our minds in the face of temptations in life? Are we looking at our own desires, which crave and seek pleasure at the expense of our heart, of the happiness of others? Are we looking inside to see our own defects, our anger, our pride, our vanity, our lust? Are we looking at that daily, moment by moment, examining our hidden defects? Faith, πίστις pistis, is confidence born from experience. It does not mean to have conviction without verification. It is what we perceive within our own consciousness. So are we certain that we do not possess defects or elements in our own mind that make us reprobates, reprehensible―we can say―demonic, evil?
It is easy to assume we are very saintly people. It is a belief, but it really does not hold much weight if we examine the facts of our own life and our suffering, that we continue to engage in behaviors that produce suffering for ourselves and others. We can have faith in Christianity, in Christ, to believe that we are going to be saved by following a dogma, and yet there are many verses in the Bible that do not validate this assumption, because so long as we have any defect in our mind, we cannot enter heaven. Here is what is stated in the Book of Matthew by Jesus: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart (obviously, this applies to the opposite sex as well). ―Matthew 5:27-28
What constitutes our level of being, our psychological state? Are we examining ourselves and our states to see what is conditioned and what is free? Do we discriminate our inner perceptions, our thoughts, feelings, and desires to see their roots, to see that we have adultery in our mind? We cannot enter heaven with those faults, which is why it is stated in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 9 and 10:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. ―1 Corinthians 6:9-10
So long as we contain these psychological contaminants, we cannot go to heaven. This is directly from the Bible. People believe that they are going to be saved because they have faith or belief in Christ, that he died for our sins, the literal, historical person. However, the reality is that for most of us if we look inside, we do not find Christ there.
Who is active in our mind, our heart and body in a given moment? Who is behaving and thinking and feeling and doing? ― because God and the devil cannot mix. The Being, Christ, divine principle within us―and our desires, our egos, our defects, or Satan in the Bible―cannot mix. They are incompatible. They are like oil and water. The word Satan in Hebrew means “adversary,” שטן Shaitan. What greater adversary is there within us when we want to fulfill these divine principles of compassion and purity, and yet our mind drives us to commit acts that are truly destructive, truly reprehensible? We have to have a radical honesty with ourselves, to look at that, to examine it. Are we bringing forth beneficial action, or what is detrimental? We have to look! Look inside your internal world. Discover yourself. Look to see if selflessness is there, Christ is there. The truth is we have the potential for Christ to manifest in us, but for most people, that it is not developed. There are many initiatic symbols and stories that relate to the progressive development of that potential and to someone who is capable of incarnating that intelligence. You can study in relation to The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, the path of initiation, specifically. However, the truth is that for most of us is that we have a seed that can grow into something fully and truly human, like the birth of Jesus in the manger, which are the different animal egos we carry within, our defects. So most of us tend to kill that potential, from even initiating that process, but for that we need to see ourselves for who we are, and that Christ precisely is a type of perception inside, in which there is no self, in which you perceive the inherent emptiness of intrinsic identity, in which you are perceiving life and your psychological states and world, but without any conditioning filter. There is no individual self like anger or pride blocking it, or filtering it, obscuring it. Is it not true that when we are angry, we can only see and think and feel through anger? We do not rationalize. We do not really see reality. We can only see our desire that is frustrated. We feel pain and we want others to feel pain as well. We have to purify ourselves of that, to become like Christ, a perfected being that is luminous and has a brilliant character, an inspiring and noble attitude, a divine philanthropy that really works to act for the benefit of others and not for oneself at all. That is why Jesus stated in Matthew 6:22-23: The eye is the illumination of the soma (the Greek σῶμα sōma literally means body, but it could also indicate the soul or self). If thine eye be singular (if your perception be ἁπλοῦς aplous: clear, simple, uncomplicated, pure), thy whole self (σῶμα sōma) will be full of light. Yet if thine eye be impure (πονηρός ponēros), thy whole self (σῶμα sōma) shall be full of darkness. Therefore, if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. ―Jesus, Matthew 6:22-23
What does it mean that our eye needs to be simple, clear, uncomplicated, pure? It is not a literal eye as many people misinterpret. It is how we perceive psychologically. Your perceptions from your consciousness, which is seeing through your mind, your heart, your body―is perceiving and receiving the impressions of life, but also needs to look inside to see our psychological impressions―that is the eye that can illuminate us. If it is not clear and simple and uncomplicated and pure, it means that we are seeing in the dark.
It is a strange and paradoxical principle: if that light be darkness how great is that darkness. Is it not true, as in the example of anger, that if you are filled with rage, you are perceiving life through that condition? It is darkness though. It is pain. It is suffering. Our lives and our way of seeing the world and ourselves tend to be very complicated. We are fractured. We are split. We have many psychological conditions, egos, and defects, which do not make our way of seeing the world clear, simple, pure. We need to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven, to have an innocent attitude, to receive a life in a new way, moment by moment, to perceive without any lens that colors what we are perceiving. That light when it is unconditioned and pure, when it is selfless, when it is perfect, is Christ, in its ultimate sense. Of course, we have to develop that potential where we are at in the beginning, with a lot of care, nurture, and attention, a lot of diligence, because how we perceive is exactly the cause and conditions that produce the pain of the world. Christ said: I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. ―John 8:12
Christ as an energy is compassionate. It is a state of being. Here in the verse, he is talking about how our eye needs to see clearly without conditions, and then he is seeing, “I am the light of the world.” He is that energy of being and perceiving, but for us, we have taken that light and adulterated it. In beings like Jesus of Nazareth, that light is perfect. There is no fault, and is no fault in him, but the truth is that any person can become like him, the Master Jesus, or in his esoteric name, the Master Aberamentho as stated within The Gnostic Bible, his real spiritual name. Anyone can become like that, can resurrect from the dead, of a sterile, painful life, into something very sacred and holy, but it requires training. It requires work.
Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. ―Luke 11:35-36
So light is understanding. It is intuition. It is reconciliation. It is patience. It is insight, which emerges from the fire of life within our body, the fire of Christ, which is in ourselves, not only without. However, as I said, we carry the fire of life, that energy which gives us vitality and the ability to exist, to be―but we abuse it.
The Three Traitors
This is the meaning of the light of the Christ being betrayed. Just as the historical Christ underwent his Passion and Crucifixion, likewise our consciousness must experience the bitterness and solitude of Golgotha, a path and process that is very difficult, because it is not easy to eliminate everything that is wrong about us and within us. Now we have to understand the three traitors in the biblical story of Jesus, because it is too easy to historicize, to merely condemn three people who were the axle upon which this whole drama gravitates.
The three traitors are symbols: Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas. There were apostles and people in history who existed, who represented a drama, a symbol, a story, that applies to us now, not in the past, nor in some remote history, but in our very being. This is why in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, in a great scripture known as the Zohar, Rabbi Simeon said the following about the Old Testament, which can also apply to any scripture: Rabbi Simeon says: "Woe to the man who says that the Torah came to relate stories, simply and plainly, and simpleton tales about Esau and Laban and the like. If it was so, even at the present day we could produce a Torah from simplistic matters, and perhaps even nicer ones than those. If the Torah came to exemplify worldly matters, even the rulers of the world have among them things that are superior. If so, let us follow them and produce from them a Torah in the same manner. It must be that all items in the Torah are of a superior nature and are uppermost secrets. ―Zohar
Let us explain what these traitors signify for us, primarily because if we wish to understand and experience the resurrection of Christ in us, we have to understand what the death of our faults and defects implies.
We have Pilate, who is a roman governor of the Jews in history who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus, but what does he represent? He is an official, an authority figure, someone who is very respected, who people go to for advice and commands, someone who has a very strong reasoning, deliberation, analytical mind. Pilate is the mind itself. It is the intellect that can either justify or excuse itself with reasons. Many times, we commit mistakes and Pilate in us, that figure that wants to have authority and to command, justify its action with many reasons. It excuses its own culpability and washes its hands clean of the crucifixion of Christ. This is our mind. Our mind justifies many things. We can feel in our heart that we are really suffering from our conscience because we know we did something wrong, and that sentiment is something superior, and profound, and deep. It is the voice of the consciousness. The heart knows from hunches, intuitions, knowledge, without having to reason, but it is the intellect that tends to overpower the heart, much in the same way it is that קַיִן Cain in the Bible killed הֶבֶל Abel. The mind kills the heart. The intellect or desire rationalizes and excuses itself for its wrongdoing, and therefore הֶבֶל Abel, our soul, dies. This is not something in the past, but it is now. We do it every day when we do not follow our conscience, our hunches. There are other figures. We have Caiaphas, who is a high priest that is very devoted to his religion, Judaism, his tradition, his dogma, his faith, at the expense of killing Christ, persecuting that principle in us which can truly revolutionize our way of being. That energy is so transformative and so radical, that the mind and the heart fight, because it is a dethronement or a deposition of a type of mentality and way of being that has been held onto for a long time, a type of conditioning within us. Caiaphas is the heart consumed by fanaticism. This can signify a devotee of any tradition or religion, whose devotion to an ideal or concept blinds him or her to reality. Caiaphas is really evil will. It does not want to do what is right, because it is attached to what others think of it and how others perceive it. It wants to be in power through adherence to a system, a political belief, a religion, a dogma. Even in science you find Caiaphas very strong, where people are not able to see reality because they are attached to their beliefs. Caiaphas is any person of blind adherence to a tradition who does not have any experiential verification or conscious basis. People conform to dead traditions. They despise whatever does not fit into a prescribed dogma. They persecute whatever and whomever does not fit a given paradigm. If you do not believe me, just go and look at social media and look at all the political craziness going on in the world. You find this in religion. You find this in every faith, where that ego sees its tradition as the only authentic one, and therefore everyone else is dammed. You find this within the Gnostic tradition as well. It is very sad to see it, but it happens. It is because of Caiaphas, that tendency. However, who is it that starts this entire process of Christ’s imprisonment? Is it not Judas? Who is Judas? He is a mystical devotee, someone who really loves religion, who loves divinity, who loves God, who loves spirituality, who loves to share spiritual axioms on the internet, forums, and different mediums, who even teaches with a lot of faith and conviction, and yet loves desire more, loves lust, loves fornication, sexual degeneration, more than divinity. Judas is the desire for pleasure, the desire for sensations, for sex, for drugs, for children, for money. This is why Judas was paid 30 pieces of silver, which is a symbol of the opposite of Christ. These are lunar values. What are lunar values or mind? It is all the mechanical ways of being in the world, which keep the world running in the way it is now. The sun, which is creative, gives life. It is original. It provides the substrate of all existing things, the foundation for all life. It is the creative potential that expresses within all the divine masters. Its opposite is mechanical ways of being, the moon. The moon governs many mechanical processes in life, whether menstruation in women, plant life. You find it in crime rates when there are full moons. The moon governs many things in a cyclical way. It is a repetitive cycle, in which people―who are attached to all these negative things like money and drugs and sex, sensations and pleasures―keep repeating those habits, and they prefer that more than to generate something new inside. What is the ultimate betrayal of Christ? It is the desire, to give into pleasure. This is the temptation one faces. If we wish to celebrate the Easter Resurrection, these traitors within us have to die. They cannot exist. They have to be crucified. They have to be eliminated. However, most people do not want to eliminate their tendencies. They want to repeat the same behaviors and merely believe that their devotion, authority, or mysticism is going to save them. These are the three traitors. They blind us to reality. It is important to reflect specifically what penance is, what redemption is, what purification is, because this is the groundwork in which we can really give birth to the spirit inside. 
The Esotericism of Lent: Ishtar’s Descent into the Underworld
The path of purification is mirrored in nature, whereby the fire of the sun descends into hell, symbolized by winter, in order to be born again like the phoenix in spring.
In public Christianity, Lent signifies preparation, purification, and penance before Easter Sunday. If you study the holy calendar, the Holy Week, the last week of Lent is obviously Holy Week. It starts with Palm Sunday, or the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Christ celebrated the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and was crucified on Good Friday, undergoing Holy Saturday or the confrontation of Christ in hell, resurrecting on Easter Sunday. It is notable that Christ’s crucifixion occurred on Good Friday, which is the day of Freya amongst the Nordics―Friday, Venus, the goddess of love, who is in Mesopotamian mythology, Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Easter. So how do we conquer desire? How do we conquer the three traitors? We do so through love. I know in the West we do not distinguish between the two, but lust and love are incompatible. You cannot combine them. They are polar opposites. Venus, the force of love, symbolized by Mary, מרים Miriam, the Divine Mother, is very pure. However, we have converted her and our Christic energy into a whore, through desire, through animal pleasure. So, what do we need to do if we want to celebrate Easter? We have to understand what Ishtar signifies, who is the goddess of beauty, love, sex, and even war, because the great spiritual heroes fight against their defects and desires out of love. They sacrifice their animality because they do want to make others suffer. Therefore, they enter their path of the cross, the crucifixion, which is a sexual symbol. 
The vertical beam is the phallus of the man. The horizontal beam is the uterus of a woman. Through their union―performed with love and not lust, by conserving that precious energy of creativity, volatility, of genesis―they give birth to something truly divine. This is the Resurrection, in one degree. There are many levels of resurrection, but we are just giving an overview, a synthesis, what is more practical for us, typically, for beginners. We use that energy to eliminate our faults.
Christ symbolized that path of eliminating defects by descending into hell, our hell realms, which are our defects, our mind―for all practical purposes―our inner psychological iniquities. So the myth of Ishtar is the same narrative of Christ descending into hell, so that through conquering desire, ego, defects, faults, the consciousness can achieve resurrection and rebirth within divinity. In synthesis, she descends into the underworld to confront evil. On the way, she is forced to strip away different articles of clothing each time she approaches an internal gate. There are seven gates, which is very significant. If you study numerology, Kabbalah, you know that seven is a very significant principle, referring to seven different degrees of spiritual initiation. It could also refer to eliminating seven principal defects, but also giving birth to seven principal virtues, seven vices and seven virtues. Ishtar does so until she arrives completely naked before her sister Erishkegal, who is the queen of hell, who attacks Ishtar furiously because Ishtar wanted to end evil. Ishtar is imprisoned and she is afflicted with sixty diseases, which is also very significant, the number six relating to the sixth commandments, “Thou shall not fornicate,” meaning: “Do not waste your creative sexual energy. Do not lose that force,” because you need to give birth, to create on the inside with it. This is symbolized by water. If you study the Bible and many mythologies, water is the source of life, not just physically, but also spiritually. It is a symbol of our creative, Genesiatic, spiritual, sexual energy. It is what can give the potential creation into something actual, realized. Ishtar is imprisoned until Enki, or Ea, the Akkadian god of water, sends an emissary to provide Ishtar with the water of life, with which she is revived, and she returns victoriously back to the world through the infernal gates, and every time she ascends, she is clothed again in a successive order. 
In a symbolic way, the consciousness descends into matter, into different states of being, which are more dense, and have return to the divine source. That return is initiation. It is to enter the path of the Passion, the suffering of facing one errors, to die to them and to resurrect ,and then to ascend. This parable has many levels of meaning.
When we raise the fire of Pentecost―the fire of the Holy Spirit within the spine, within successive octaves, within different internal bodies, we can say, vehicles of the soul, which operate within the different dimensions of the Tree of Life―that energy helps us to crucify our ego, and this is the Kundalini serpent fire which Moses raised upon a staff within the wilderness, the bronze serpent, which is the power of the Holy Spirit. In that way, a person resurrects within fire, that creative energy. When you raise the creative force―if you have studied the writings of Samael Aun Weor extensively and The Perfect Matrimony, especially―you find that that fire gives birth to spiritual bodies, spiritual vehicles, which we can operate with when we physically go to sleep and enter the internal worlds. These are vehicles much in the way a light bulb is a vehicle for expressing light. So, if you wish to express Christ within you, it is good to work with that energy so that you can create those vehicles. We call them solar bodies. These are the vestures or vestments that Ishtar puts on when she ascends out of hell. Solar bodies are vehicles of a Christic force. They are a matter of energy that do not belong to mechanicity. They belong to divinity, and therefore they are able to transmit and transform the power of a sun. 
After Ishtar descends into hell, it is interesting that all sexual activity ceases in the world. Before the Ascension of Christ, he appeared many times to his disciples. When before the holy women, Christ stated:
Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God. ―John 20:17
As I said, resurrection occurs in degrees. There are different initiations related to the creation of spiritual vehicles inside. Specifically, Samael Aun Weor, in his book The Seven Words, in that text specifically, gives a very detailed account of what resurrection looks like with the astral body, the Chrestos: a solar vehicle that allows one to navigate within the astral plane with consciousness, lucidity, intentionality, with clarity, and with awareness. In that process of working with that astral body or creating the astral body―which is a form of resurrection and rebirth to that degree―the initiate undergoes a process that is explained in the Bible and in this myth of Ishtar. Samael Aun Weor stated the following:
This is how, before the Ascension, the Initiate has to descend to the submerged worlds in order to destroy the most intimate roots of evil. 
The Resurrection of Our Chrestos: The Solar Astral Body
We will elaborate a few specifics relating to the resurrection of the astral body. Approaching this topic of resurrection, this is perhaps the most introductory and accessible for people who are learning to work with the perfect matrimony and who are seeking to create the solar vehicles themselves.
It is interesting that Samael Aun Weor provides an explanation about the meaning of Lent in relation to Easter, which is very misunderstood. In the creation of the astral body, one has to face temptations within the infernal worlds in the submerged states of the consciousness, in the hell regions known as קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth in Kabbalah. These are the inferior regions of our consciousness and psyche, but also there are levels of nature which are inferior to our own, beneath our physical world within the infernal regions and layers of the earth, but in an internal dimension. I’ll read for you at length what Samael Aun Weor wrote: During these forty days that precede the Ascension [of the Astral Body, the Khrestos] (the vehicle that allows us to fully manifest Christ at that level), the Initiate is totally prohibited from all sexual contact, since he must maintain his aura totally luminous and serene, free of any passionate waves. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Seven Words
As we explained in many different lectures, we work with the perfect matrimony, in which a married couple combines their sexual force with purity and love, transforming it and conserving it and raising it within the spine, in order to give birth to the soul. In the process of conserving and raising that energy―especially within the third octave, within the astral body, because one is working with different levels of initiation, from the physical, vital, and astral, the third initiation, we can say, from the bottom up of the Tree of Life―one is working with that alchemical marriage. In the process of perfecting that initiation, one has to abstain from sexual contact, much in the same way that in the myth of Ishtar when she descended into hell, all sexual activity in the world ceased. It has the same meaning here, the mystery of Lent.
Only after the forty days, can the Initiate continue practicing his rite of Sexual Magic. But during those forty days preceding the Ascension, the Initiate must transmute his sexual energy through the mind. During these forty days preceding the Ascension of our Astral Body, we have to inevitably descend into the abyss in order to definitively cut off all relationships, all roots, all ties with the creatures of evil. 
Ishtar in Hebrew, Kabbalah, and the Tree of Life
We explained a little about the Tree of Life. In synthesis and relation to the myth of Ishtar, this divine force of life descends from the physical world מלכות Malkuth within the internal worlds, within the subconscious regions of nature, which are the hell realms we just mentioned, infernal states, in order to confront all of our past history within those regions, our past karma, we can say. But we need to re-initiate that journey upward from מלכות Malkuth to כתר Kether and even beyond. These are ten spheres, ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, the Hebrew term for “emanations,” which relate to different states of consciousness, qualities and modalities of being.
We are currently in מלכות Malkuth, the physical world. Above that we have יסוד Yesod, the vital energies, the foundation of our spirituality, the sexual creative force. We have הוד Hod, which is the astral vehicle or emotions. You have נצח Netzach relating to the mind, victory. Above that we have more rarefied state of beings, like תפארת Tiphereth, which is our willpower. Beyond we have גבורה Geburah, which is our divine consciousness, our divine soul, and the spirit, חסד Chesed, which is mercy, our inner particular god, אל El in Hebrew. Above that we have the trinity of Christianity and also the trinity of all religions: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah; Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya―many names for these principles. The Tree of Life is a map of our consciousness, but also teaches us the different gradations and levels of nature. If you wish to study more about Kabbalah, we have different courses and materials you can reference, especially Tarot and Kabbalah by Samael Aun Weor. Kabbalah is the basis for interpreting the diverse religious traditions of the world. It is not only the sole patrimony of Judaism but is a map that can explain many mythologies and teachings. 
אישתאר Ishtar is precisely the fire of a man and a woman because the sexual creative energy is the power to create. The word איש Ish in the Bible signifies “fire” or “man,” and אשה Isha is “woman.” In the Book of Genesis, you have man and a woman, who are אדם Adam and חוה Eve, who textually are referred to as איש Ish and אשה Isha, fire of a man and fire of a woman. Together they can create something superior within themselves.
As we mentioned many times, sexual energy is a form of fire. When a man and woman combine their creative sexual fires, taming them through conscious love, you form אישים Ishim. We have a prayer in the Invocation of Solomon the wise that states: אישים Ishim, assist me in the name of אל שׁדי El Shaddai! ―Invocation of Solomon
What is אל שׁדי El Shaddai in Hebrew? Christians are familiar with this term of the Almighty Living God. It is the Holy Spirit, and the strength of שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai is the Almighty Living God. It is the power that can give life, the power that can create not only physically, but spiritually, more importantly. The word אל El in Hebrew means “God,” and שׁדי Shaddai can mean “devil.” The Hebrew name שָׂדֶה shadeh derives from the word שׁדד shadad meaning to destroy. Likewise, שָׂדֶה shadeh is a field, where the most subtle beast of creation has dwelled, the serpent, in the opening of Genesis, chapter 3. What is interesting is that שׁדי Shaddai or אל שׁדי El Shaddai means “God, my destroyer,” but why is that? The sexual force is not only the power that can create life, but is also the power that can destroy. It is associated with the serpent, with the devil, of all things. How is that energy of both God and the devil? This is the mystery of sacred sexuality. If we examine sexual behavior in society and humanity, we can find that lust and desire, like prostitution, is the source of great pain. It destroys the potential of spiritual life. Why is the sexual power a destroyer? We know it relates to the Tree of Knowle |
