|
I thought it would be good for the end of the year to reflect on spiritual and mental health. A lot of people, particularly in December, have a lot of stress from the holidays, familial, personal, economic, social, and professional obligations. December tends to be a very stressful month for a lot of people and I thought it would be useful for us, in our studies, to reflect upon a very particular principle within our psychological and spiritual work. It has to do with the state of our mind, our mental and emotional well-being, particularly in relationship to energy.
Psychological health is essential in our gnostic studies. We place a lot of emphasis on the quality of our well-being, the quality of our life. In this lecture we will go into a lot of detail about how our behaviors affect our mental health, and we will approach this study from the perspective of a spiritual lens. So what we’re offering here, obviously, is not professional medical advice. What we are offering here are spiritual techniques which can complement any regimen, which do not have side effects or other consequences. These tools and practices are applicable to any person, of any religion, of any denomination, of any background, of any faith. I invite you to study what we have to offer here and to apply it in accordance with your needs. I hope that as we expound upon some of these pragmatic teachings, that you find something useful for application to your own life. 
What is Genuine Health?
It would be good to emphasize what genuine health is, because in our studies, we have a very particular perspective. We have included some etymology to give us a basic foundation of how to approach our spiritual life.
We have included here some definitions: told English hælþ, meaning “wholeness, being whole, sound or well.” Also from the term hal meaning “hale or whole,” and hælan, “to heal.” It is also from the Proto-Germanic hailitho, from kailo, "whole, uninjured, of good omen,” and the Old English halig, Old Norse helge, "holy, sacred;” heill, “healthy.” What is significant about these definitions is that genuine health pertains not only to a physical state of equilibrium. Obviously with any machine, if one part is corroded, is imperfect, is deficient, then the rest of the system will malfunction. In truth, this statement applies to our psychology, to the quality of our mind, and if we are very sincere with ourselves and we observe ourselves, we will find that on a psychological level we are not whole. We are disparate. We are conflicted and afflicted. Most of us, if we are honest, would admit that we have parts of ourselves that perhaps we don’t like. There is opposition or contradiction to our character, our abilities, our quality of mind. We tend not to be unitary in our psychological experience. In one moment we may be afflicted by anger and the next moment by fear, and the next by intense attachment and desire. We are split among many factors, many desires, many elements, and as a result of this disequilibrium in our paradoxical nature, our conflicting nature, we suffer. We experience pain. It is the purpose of these studies to understand the root of that conflict, to observe it, to see from a conscious perspective the root of our mind, the root of our states, so that we can become whole, we can become healed. The ancients thought of health as something of sacred origin, because we know on a basic level that if we are not healthy physically, it is impossible to perform a deep spiritual work. They knew and they understood that health is sacred, but more importantly, our relationship to our inner divinity is sacred. That is the origin of genuine health, of totality, of peace. 
Health and Our Tree of Life
This is why we study the following diagram. This is the Tree of Life, the kabbalah. It is not the sole patrimony of the Jewish mystical tradition, although this faith had codified a universal strata of symbols, conscious experiences, qualities of mind within a very particular diagram. This image, while it is particular to the Jewish tradition, is something universal. It represents our totality of being from the most mundane, material and dense below to the most abstract, spiritual and refined above. These are eternal truths. They are representations not only of our physical body, but also much more subtle levels of experience, qualities of mind, aspects of our psychology. They map for us in a very detailed way where we are spiritually, and what is the nature of our health.
You see, this Tree of Life, as mentioned in the book of Genesis, is a symbol of us. Real life, real satisfaction is based upon health, and the essence of life is health. But that health manifests in different levels. It manifests in different types of experience. It also reflects what we must do if we wish to understand and obtain real balance and equilibrium in our life. So this image we see has ten spheres. It represents, each level, each Sephirah in Hebrew, an emanation or expression of who we are. Malkuth in Hebrew is the physical body. It is the vehicle we use within this world to exist. It is the most obvious and verifiable for everyone. It is called the “Kingdom” in Hebrew because it is the conglomeration of many elements, many parts, many principles, not only from this physical dimension itself, but from other internal principles within. Above that we have Yesod, which in Hebrew means Foundation. It is our vital force. When you wake up physically in the morning, you have a general register or sense of what your state of energy is, how much vitality you have, how awake you are, how much energy you have to go through your day, and this energy can obviously fluctuate. So, oftentimes, when people think of health, they think of their physical body and they think of their vital energy, how much energy they have to go through the day and to do what needs to be done. But beyond that, we have our emotions, relating to Hod. This Hebrew term means “Splendor.” It refers to our emotional experience, our feelings. It is important to remember too that this diagram of the Tree of Life not only represents our psychology, but also represents different dimensions in nature, which are experiences of matter, energy and consciousness, perception at different levels of subtlety and expression. So whenever we go to dream at night, we find ourselves within the emotional world of Hod. Some people call it the astral plane, the world of dreams, limbo, the third heaven, many names, which we have discussed and explained in our previous course called Dream Yoga and Astral Travel. But basically within this dimension, we operate within a vehicle and body related to that level of nature. It also is the origin of our emotions, our emotional health, our heart. To the right we have Netzach, which means “Victory,” related to the mind, thoughts, and our thoughts originate from this sphere, which is also known as the mental body. When we travel in the mental world, we do so with the vehicle related to that level of nature, because each of these spheres represents vehicles, states of being, qualities of perception, and also matter energy and consciousness. Beyond that, obviously we have more subtle levels of experience. For most people it is easy to register the body, and to sense vital energy, some relative degree of health or momentum in life to be able to move and do. Emotions are obviously real for us, but obviously they are not tangible within the physical body. We sense them,p. We experience them, but they are not made of physical matter. They are made of a different type of element relating to that world of Hod, the astral world. The mind obviously then relates to a different level of matter and perception. It does not originate from our physical brain. 
Thus as we see in the right, these three brains, or these three centers of experience in our physical human body, manifest these qualities from the Tree of Life. So we know we have a physical brain in our head. The brain is not the origination of thought. It is the vehicle of thought, and the heart, which we can also call a brain in itself, is also a vehicle through which emotions express from this world of Hod. Also, our physical body, our spinal column is what manifests our vital force, our vital energy and gives us life. The spine is the Tree of Life in our physical body. So there are many applications in this image, which apply to our spiritual, mental and emotional well-being.
But driving all of this―beyond our thoughts, which are more subtle than emotion and movement―we find will, the will to do, impulse. We say that this sphere of will―known as Tiphereth in Hebrew, meaning “Beauty”―the beauty of the soul. For some people it can be difficult to pin-point what will is, but if you examine your impulse to attend a lecture of this type, you will find that there is something driving you at that level. It is more subtle, more refined, and notice as we ascend up this glyph we find more verified levels of experience. Unfortunately for us, these spheres in us are conflicted. They are also contaminated. Anyone who seriously studies themselves or who perhaps has had some unfortunate diagnosis, perhaps for a condition―whether physical or emotional or mental, a disease of some type―they know from experience that their quality of life in their mind, their heart, and their body is suboptimal. They have sickness. They have disequilibrium. They have disease, unsatisfaction and pain. Where we demarcate from, or diverge from professional medical science, materialistic science, in terms of health, has to do with our perspective. The source of disease, of disequilibrium, of psychological and even physical affliction, originates from within, primarily. Many states of suffering originally come from the mind, but not the brain. The brain is a vehicle for something more subtle and internal. Likewise the heart. Emotional sicknesses or even physical diseases of the heart have their origin within internal causes. Likewise the body with its sicknesses has causes of affliction that originate not only from the physical body, but from within, from these internal principles, from a disbalance between mind and heart, between the body and its energies, and even our will. But obviously as we approach and study ourselves in our relationship with higher ways of being, we study what is known as the consciousness. This is Geburah in Hebrew, meaning “Justice.” It is the equilibrium, the balance, the justice, the harmony of divinity. It is our root perception of what we really are, beyond will, beyond attachment, beyond craving, beyond fear. It is even before the will to do. We sometimes refer to this sphere as intuition. Some of us might have a project we are working on where we walk down the street, we are thinking very deeply about a problem, we cannot seem to find the solution, and then suddenly (snaps fingers) we know. We have received an insight without having to think about it. We let our mind rest for a moment and then suddenly, the inspiration emerges. That is the root of our consciousness. It is knowing without having to think. But obviously what comes later in terms of that project is our will, and using our mind to plan, organize ideas, working in managing our emotions as we struggle through that project, then also using our body to act it out within our physical reality. So notice that from this example, these principles start from within and move out, not the other way around. We start from an idea and then it manifests physically. The same with all these dimensions and levels of being, qualities of being. So obviously beyond the consciousness there is something more profound, which is the spirit, Chesed, which means “Mercy” in Hebrew. This is the real divine principle and spark within. This is our inner Being. For a lack of a better term, we can call it our inner God, the truth, the spirit, which obviously for many people, we have many ideas and beliefs about the spirit, but no experience. It is the purpose of these studies to experience that for ourselves, because our inner divinity is the source of health, of purity of mind, of happiness. So, by working within and understanding this dynamic, we can better understand how to refine our mind, our heart, our energy, and our body by using our will power in service of the divine. That is the essential truth of this teaching and that is where real health can flow within us like a fountain. 
The Goddess Hygeia and the Root of Hygiene
So in this lecture we are going to talk a lot about spiritual hygiene, psychic hygiene, psychological cleanliness. We have already received material explanations about physical health and hygiene. This is very obvious. But the purpose of this lecture is to talk about how we can cleanse ourselves spiritually.
W have this image here of the statue of the goddess Hygeia in Hamburg Germany. In Greek mythology her name is the root of hygiene, from the New Latin hygieina or Greek hygieine (téchnē) or “healthful art.” She was known as the daughter of Asclepius, who is the Greek God of Medicine and son of Apollo, the goddess of sanitation and cleanliness. She is also the sister to Panacea, universal remedy, and also recuperation from illness; Acesco the healing process, and Aglaïa: beauty, splendor, glory, magnificence, and adornment. People have literally interpreted these myths as superstitions of an ancient past, but in the gnostic tradition we like to study these symbols to understand their psychological value. So the goddess Hygeia represents something within us, our relationship with the divine. Throughout many world religions, water is a symbol that is prevalent within all faiths, as a symbol of gestation, of creation, of purification. This has to do with our psychological level of being, and by working with the pure waters of life, symbolically, metaphorically speaking, with our energies, within the totality of everything we are, we learn to become psychologically aligned with the spirit. As we are now our mind, our emotions and our body tend to be very sick. We suffer with anger, with pride, with fear, with laziness, with gluttony, with lust. We suffer from many elements that cause pain for ourselves and for other people. We have many contaminants, in a Buddhist sense, psychic aggregates, states of being which are very harmful, which cause pain for the whole world, for our communities, for our relationships, and so we want to cleanse ourselves of that. But first we have to identify the root of our problem. The more we do so, by observing ourselves, moment by moment, day to day, we discover what real purity is―not as a dogmatic, moral, sterile code of rigid adherence to some doctrine or religion. It is not a belief system. It is a way of life. We learn to have a better relationship with the divine, our spirit, so that divinity can manifest in our deeds. In this way we learn to bring to the world universal remedy. We also can recuperate from many illnesses, because we are no longer propelling our bodies within behaviors that cause sickness. Likewise we accelerate the healing process of our heart, our emotional pain, our mind. We obtain real beauty and splendor of a spiritual type, glory from divinity, magnificence, and real adornment having to do with the virtues and titles that belong to the spirit, to the divine. 
The Dayspring of Youth and the Aquarian Influence
While we explore this topic, we go into great detail about what is known as the Dayspring of Youth. So, we jump into this slide after having talked about the Goddess Hygeia, who presents a fountain of life, and that fountain has a symbolic significance for current, present day culture.
Since the 1960s we have noticed a great revolution. This revolution has impacted social economics, class, religion, belief systems, politics, and more obviously, sexual relationships. The 60s is a period of great turmoil because it was the transition from one period of cosmic activity to a new one. Every serious change within nature is dramatic, can be very apocalyptic in a sense, overpowering, because there are forces in nature that work upon the collective psyche of humanity that has great force. It is the purpose of our studies to take advantage of it, to accelerate and catalyze our spiritual development. The influence that entered the collective mind of humanity from the 60s was known as the Dayspring of Youth, according to Master Morya from his book of that title. Samael Aun Weor called it The Dionysian Wave. It is interesting because Dionysis is the god of wine and revelry, and is also known as Bacchus, which was in the Greek and Roman pantheons. It is a dual symbol. That profound energy can produce the ecstasy of the soul or its intoxication and damnation. This energy is polarizing and that energy polarizes in accordance with our psychological state. Nobody can deny that in this period of time there are great changes. We give a spiritual explanation for its origin, but also more importantly how to take advantage of it, not to be a victim of this energy but to learn to use it spiritually. In just the same way that you put fuel into a car, obviously, you want to learn how to put in the best fuel, so that it operates in accordance with its function. Likewise we are taking in this energy, day to day. It is called the Aquarian influence. We are now currently in the Age of Aquarius, having moved from the Piscean traditions, Pisces, the zodiacal symbol of the fish, to the water bearer, the fountain of life. These influences not only present many changes within our culture and society, but also, more importantly, they initiate a new type of instruction. So different periods of time have always received different messengers, people who teach how to use this force. We are fortunate that in our tradition, as well as throughout the diverse religions of the world, there are instructions for how to master this Dayspring of Youth, so that this fountain of life can purify the mind. Here is what Master Morya had to say about the topic: 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. This new force, called by Initiates, ‘The Dayspring of Youth,’ has been in activity for some time, and they who respond to it and practice this Western Yoga can enter the new era and become its instrument. This force, now working over Western Europe and America, possesses a new vitality and energy that will bring about a severance from past and inherited conditions. Minds that respond to it are clarified, and any opposition within the atmosphere of the mental body can no longer imprison them within its rebellious aura. For practice of this Yoga attracts an atomic energy of a finer nature and transmutes the consciousness. ―M., The Dayspring of Youth
If you study the writings of Samael Aun Weor, he talked all the time about alchemy, transforming the dense lead of our personality into the gold of the spirit. By working with the energies of our body but also of nature, by activating the spiritual power within the atom, we transform ourselves, our mind. Therefore, this energy, which is referenced here as atomic, has to do with spiritual forces, principles, atoms and units of energy that we harness within our bodies, but also our mind and within our being. These are not physical atoms, but they are, more importantly, spiritual principles.
Mental Disorders in the New Age
This also explains why in our current era there seems to be a greater prevalence of mental disorders. There are more cases of people who are suffering mental illness. Now, conventional science would argue that this has to do with the fact that before the 60s, obviously there was a greater stigma attached to mental health concerns, and so many people who were perhaps ill would not diagnose themselves or perhaps seek diagnosis or seek help because it was considered a point of shame. But from a spiritual perspective, we are pointing out that this energy of the Dionysian wave, this energy of the cosmos, of the zodiac, of Aquarius, is producing a great change, and it is essential that we learn to take advantage of it. Otherwise, we will become a victim. That energy will be transformed in the wrong way.
As evidenced by our history, within the last couple of decades we have seen a great deterioration of moral, psychological, and spiritual values. While there has been a great re-birth of spiritual traditions since the 60s, the reality is that we have to look at the consequences and behaviors of their adherents, these participants. What are they actually producing? We see that in our current society there is greater suffering prevalent everywhere and that people can’t seem to escape these conflicts. So, by taking advantage of this energy, we learn to enter a new way of life because this force is quite impactful. Morya states the following: In the future the energy of this new age will inflict upon us a series of mental disorders; for those minds that will not respond to its wisdom and power will recoil from it. The Secret Enemy will have no method of diverting its force, and those who have attracted this new energy will suffer from periods of illusion and depression. But the inspired student will not be affected; he will be in tune with its vibration, and will render it homage and respect. ―M., The Dayspring of Youth
What is the secret enemy? It is pride. It is anger. It is fear. It is lust. It is gluttony―negative psychological states. It is our animal inheritance, our desires, which are the origins and progenitors of suffering. It is a secret to us because if we are not looking actively within our psychology moment by moment, we will not see it, the source of, perhaps, all of our conflicts in life.
When that energy enters us, the Aquarian influence with its wisdom and power, it cannot be rejected. It has to be used. It has to be transformed. But unfortunately, we tend to use it in the wrong way, as evidenced by the social decline that we are witnessing year by year. There is no way to divert this force. One either has to use it consciously or be its puppet, better said, to be a puppet of our own ego, to use gnostic psychological terms, our own defects. In the beginning of our spiritual studies too, when this energy works through us, many people suffer through a period of illusion and even depression, because as we have seen, there is a catalyzation of energy in our life. But students who learn to inspire (and aspire), who learn to use that force willingly, will not be affected. They will render homage and respect to the origin of life within themselves, and they will use it well. 
Psychological Contagion
In relation to the influence of cosmic energies, it is also interesting to talk about psychological contagion. In our Covid era, people are very concerned about physical contamination. But very few people ever consider or concern themselves with contagion of a psychological type, the contamination of mental states, of negative influences.
The truth is that just as there are microbes physically, which can kill, there are also psychological elements which can make people sick. People laughed at those who initially proposed that there are viruses and bacteria which cause illness, but later humanity realized the truth and veracity of these microbes. Likewise there are psychological elements which cause sickness of physical and mental type. So as we are talking about psychic hygiene, we are going to talk about how there are elements within the internal dimensions―not seen physically, but within the state of meditation, but also within the dreaming state―where we can confront and see that there are elements that can cause harm. We should be aware of them. We should be concerned. We should take precautions. But also we should take care of what type of elements we take in with our mind. Samael Aun Weor stated the following in Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology: In this day and age, people speak abundantly about physical culture, yet institutes for psychic culture are more necessary now than ever. We admit to the existence of air currents which are truly carriers of infectious bacteria, yet we ignore the existence of mental currents that are transmitters of sensory microbes capable of damaging, causing illness and even killing their victims. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
We can prove this from experience. Thought is material and energetic. It travels. When we think of someone, whether they are conscious of it or not, they can sense it. I am pretty sure that most people have had that experience where they are thinking about some relative or friend who is overseas or from great distance. Suddenly they receive a phone call from that very person because they were thinking of them at the same time.
Thoughts travel. But more importantly for us, the quality of our thought has tremendous consequences. If we are sending thoughts of anger and malice, or resentment and pride, that force has a negative impact on those around us. We have the illusion that somehow we are separated from other people, that we can think, feel and do what we want, that there are no consequences. This is a lie. In truth, with our actions, with our deeds, we spread contagion. People who have perhaps been in the public limelight of political discourse, of culture wars, are people who, because they are constantly getting attacked by the negativity of others, they get sick. People age quickly. They become ill. They are unwell. I am pretty sure, if you have looked at the images of presidents or candidates who entered office, they look much older than they did when they entered, because they are dealing with psychological contagion, the negativity of humanity, of other people, whether justifiably or not. It is irrelevant. The reality is that this is a very true principle. Mental currents exist. They affect people. They can affect us, and we also can be presenting them and sending them to other people, unconsciously. This has to change. We should be masters of our own psychological nature, so that we don't cause harm. But also, we can learn to protect ourselves and divert harm from ourselves through spiritual methods. 
Overcoming Psychic Infections
In this way, we learn to overcome psychic infections. Samael Aun Weor stated, especially in his book Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, that our level of being attracts our life. Our quality of mind attracts our environment, and the people we associate with, the friends we have, even the family members we are born to, all relate to our quality and level of being, which predates even being physically active, being born. The mind and the heart, our thoughts and feelings, are of a subtle matter and energy in consciousness. They have their own reality beyond the body, although they manifest in our physical body when we are awake, when we’re active.
It is important to remember and reflect upon our quality of mind. What is our level of being? What community do we relate with? Whom do we associate with? What kinds of people do we attract? What kinds of people do we avoid? We have to ask this question and answer it, meditate on it. What is our level of being? Because what we are psychologically determines where we go in nature. It is a law. It is a fundamental reality. If our mind is polluted or saturated with anger, we are going to attract situations of anger, or lust, situations of lust, pride, likewise. Based on this, we can basically determine what is the outcome of our behaviors. Our negative states of mind create what is called psychic infections, and this has to do again with mental currents. We attract in accordance with our level of being, as I said. But if we change our level of being, if we change our quality of life, if we transform ourselves and seek to be spiritual, to be kind, to be compassionate, to be selfless, we attract people and situations that vibrate at that level of nature. It is a law of nature. It is cause and effect. It is important to reflect on this truth. It is very basic, but very hard to realize unless you are really mindful and paying attention to yourself. Now, there are people within different social strata who obviously operate in accordance with their level of conditioning, their level of being. There are some people who are better off, and some people who are worse. We exist in hierarchy, spiritually speaking. There is the same truth. There are beings who are more spiritually developed than us and those who are less fortunate than us. One such example of an inferior type of person―obviously, in a spiritual sense―is a medium. If you are not familiar, mediums are people who channel. They preach that they are speaking or manifesting the voices of the dead, those who have died. Disincarnate entities take over their body, and they give “wisdom” from the afterlife, to those who are physically present. This is an example of a psychic infection within spiritual circles. It is very big problem, because the truth is that no enlightened, spiritual being would ever take over the body of another person, because those masters have their own vehicles. Therefore they do not need another person to manifest themselves here. So, mediums who preach or say that they are manifesting Jesus Christ, or some other enlightened being, are being fooled, because any person can show up at your doorstep, knock on your door and say, “I am Jesus. Let me in!” It does not mean that we are going to open our doors. At least we shouldn’t. We have to be very cautious, spiritually speaking. That is an example of a person who, obviously, whose level of being attracts those entities from the infernal worlds, because there are superior regions of nature and there are inferior regions of nature. We want to protect ourselves from negative influences, to purify our homes, our minds, so that we do not attract these forces, because the problem is that these negative entities or elements―we sometimes call them larvae within our tradition―they attach to our physical, but also internal vehicles, like the astral body, the mental body, and they suck away your life. They steal your energy. They sap you of vital force, and many of these entities even compel you to behaviors that you would not do on a regular basis, unless if you have been working for sometime in a spiritual tradition, trying to become a better person. Perhaps you have had old habits that you are trying to kill, trying to abandon, and yet there seems to be some type of compulsion from some direction, somewhere, that pushes one to behave in the wrong way. This has to do with larvae. They are basically, in the internal worlds, they look like bugs, insects, rodents, spiders, many unfortunate and disgusting features. They are very hard to describe and they are very disgusting. Just as you feel revulsion for cockroaches, you would see these elements internally and be disgusted with them because they are infestations. They are the product of negative states of mind. They are produced by bad behaviors. So, we want to cleanse ourselves of these elements, because they sap us of life force. This is why Morya stated in The Dayspring of Youth: No evil entity can attach itself to us, unless we attract it by thought or by being negative in our actions. The negative medium, easily evoking these lower conditions, causes her astral body to become infected with these parasital forms that drain her vitality. These sap her life force and account for her abnormal appetite. 
Mental Atmospheres and Adaptation
So we will talk about what the Silver Shield is in relation to the mind. We have an image of a man, a silhouette with a colorful halo of light and illumination. No person can really deny that people have an aura. People have a type of atmosphere about them. When we meet new people, we find that we register their quality and character. We try to get an impression of them, a first look, a sense of what their personality and mind state may be like, what kind of person they are. They have “an air about them,” to use conventional language. These common phenomena have to do with mental atmospheres. Physically we do not see, perhaps, the mind of a person, but you can sense a person’s attitude towards you, if you pay attention, if you observe, if you’re awake. People have a type of energy about them, which reflects their thoughts, their emotions, their behaviors, their impulses, their character, and it all registers within what we call the aura, famously speaking.
But here we will talk about mental atmospheres. Some people have a very different air about them because of the quality of life they live. Obviously a person who goes to church is very different to the person who goes to a brothel. This has to do with levels of being. We have to pay attention to our quality of mind, what type of atmosphere we irradiate, what state of being do we presently sit with, what places do we go. Every person has their own aura, their own register, and if you’re very intuitive, and perceptive, you can sense this in other people. You can even sense, despite charismatic and kind words, perhaps evil intentions from another person, which creates distrust and suspicion. Our intelligences manifest within our conduct, our behavior, our outward radiation of thought, feeling and will, and so it is important to pay attention to our own unique register, our character. In the beginning of our spiritual studies, as we are learning to experience these things for ourselves, many people often become confused. Many people who begin to work with spiritual discipline―they are working with energy, they are learning to awaken their intelligence, become aware, mindful, perceptive― they start to sense that as they are changing their quality of life, that they no longer relate to or resonate with other people, maybe they are friends, they are family members, they are coworkers. This can cause a great period of disillusionment and suffering, a great state of unhappiness. Many people who, perhaps, were living a one type of lifestyle, who become spiritual, can verify this. Now, what is important to reflect upon is that as we learn to become genuinely awake―spiritually, in connection with the divine, learning practices like meditation, self-observation, mindfulness, being more present in ourselves day to day, moment by moment―we’re gaining skills. We have to be patient, because it islike becoming a child again, becoming innocent of mind, innocent of heart. Part of this has to do with the fact that when we develop ourselves spiritually, we develop what is called the Silver Shield. This is a term given by Morya. It is also talked about by Samael Aun Weor in his books. This Silver Shield is an aura that protects the mind. In the beginning of our studies, as we are becoming spiritual and practicing, we feel that we are becoming awake and aware and perceptive, perhaps seeing negative elements from our exterior world. Now what we do with our aspiration practices, our prayers, our meditations, we give energy and strength to our mental body, the mental vehicle, so that like a shield, this energy protects the mind. It is like armor, and this armor can deflect negative thoughts. You do not become a victim of what other people think, say, and do. You merely observe with a state of serenity and peace, with innocence, without judging or condemning or disliking the other person. You just are awake, aware and understanding of the other person, and even compassionate. This Silver Shield is “silver” because silver, as a color, relates spiritually speaking to the mental body. But this Silver Shield is a great asset, and it basically develops in us through many practices that we are going to explain later on. This helps to protect us from any type of negativity. It helps us be stable, in the mind, in the heart, in the body, so that even when you, perhaps, go to places that would regularly throw off your equilibrium, you remain balanced. This is why Master Morya stated the following in The Dayspring of Youth: Each person has an individual atmosphere and an individual intelligence. When we respond to the new energy and clothe ourselves with our own individuality we will have no affinity to other mental atmospheres. This separation will cause students difficulty at first in understanding people, for once on the Path we become different in thought as well as in ideas. We are again like little children entering another world surrounded by those pure atoms that came and remained with us in the first years of our birth, and, like children, we neither resist nor attract atoms of the Secret Enemy.
So, we will unpack this in a little bit. When you are fortified in your aura, your Silver Shield, your mind, you don't easily get affected by other people. You neither attract to yourself negativity from others, neither do you resist it out of egotistical coercion or anger or reaction. You simply observe with a state of peace, those, perhaps negative states from other people. This is very important to cultivate in ourselves.
As we are doing this, we are developing real, individual, spiritual identity, something that is cultivated and learned through all of our interactions with other people. We learn to adapt to different circumstances of life. But be patient, as you’re experiencing these things. Be patient with yourself, because this is something that is learned with trial and error. 
The Mental Body
So, the mind, according to Morya in The Dayspring of Youth, as well as Samael Aun Weor in his writings, he talks about this vehicle a lot. This is an image included in The Dayspring of Youth that depicts the mental body. He is holding a Caduceus of Mercury, which is a symbol of the mind, and this brilliant aura surrounds him. This is the Silver Shield. Typically our mind is influenced by many negative currents, influences and impressions. In a typical sense, the mind, our mind, is a slave of the exterior world.
This is very easy to prove. Some people can be addicted to television, to the news, to ingesting negative stories, videos and images of hate, of lust. We care about what other people think, how we dress, how we appear to the world, likewise in our thoughts, our feelings and desires to belong, to be accepted, to be praised. Our mental body, our mind, typically is controlled by other influences of the world. But, by learning to practice spiritual discipline by exercises such as yoga, meditation, energy work, we take the energies that we carry within, and also the Dayspring of Youth, and we learn to throw off any negative influence within our mind, within our heart, within our body. In this way we radiate our own individual, original identity, our own real spiritual nature. Therefore, there is no need to fit in, to belong. We radiate naturally compassion, happiness, altruism, love for others. We radiate light from our spirit. This is why Morya states the following in The Dayspring of Youth the importance of this discipline and also the need to throw off the control of the world within our mind-stream: The atmosphere of the mental body is controlled by the atmosphere of this world, but by breathing in the energy manifesting in this new age through Yoga we can throw off this control. By aspiring when breathing we attract the atoms of this new energy into us and slowly conform to their wave-length. These atoms bring us a sensation of joy similar to a morning in Spring. The deeper the student goes the more does he assume an energy and directness unparalleled in his normal state. He will undergo a complete change and realize as never before the possibilities of his future welfare and how indolent he has hitherto been. ―M., The Dayspring of Youth
You may be familiar with pranayama, breathing exercises, in which we take in the vital energy of the air, our breath, and we combine it with our own creative force. We breathe that breath in and we also raise the energies of our creative vital potential within our bodies so that they can elevate to our mind and illuminate our mind. Therefore we experience states of clarity and awareness, mindfulness, that is abnormal in consideration of our normal state of being. We undergo a complete change. Therefore we realize that there are potentials that exist for us, a quality of mental and emotional and physical health, spiritual health, that we otherwise may have not known.
Aspiration and Yoga
Master Morya refers to the practice of spiritual discipline as aspiration. The term yoga he uses does not reference physical calisthenics. He is not referencing poses of the body, although physical health is important. It is useful within a larger paradigm. What he is talking about is the union of the soul with the divine, from the Sanskrit yug, “to reunite.” It has the same meaning as religare in Latin, which means to reunite with the divine.
So, we have very particular practices we use to take in the air in our lungs, and we combine it with prayer, even sacred vocalizations. In a state of mindfulness and watchfulness, we combine that air and vital force into our bodies, so that it cleanses us, and then we elevate that force through our spine, within our sexual organs especially, to the mind. In this way, by adopting a state of selflessness, of consciousness, of prayer, we become a better instrument to manifest divinity. It is not a personal ambition, like, “I want to be spiritual and therefore I am going to do these practices and get these certain results.” That type of attitude does not produce real change. Instead what produces real spiritual benefits is performing exercises for the well-being of other people, for humanity. Therefore we seek to become better so that divinity can manifest within our actions. So real aspiration should be impersonal. Our personal desires, our attachments, attract negative influences, which we want to avoid. We learn these differences by learning to observe ourselves, be mindful, to be attentive, to watch our psychological interactions, our thoughts, our feelings, our desires. As Morya states in The Dayspring of Youth: Aspiration means that longing for the Reality’s presence within one’s own universe. Real aspiration should be impersonal; for personality attracts atomic intelligences of a personal nature besides parasitical and discarnate entities. Within and about us are highly developed atoms, and in our breathing exercises we attract them into our bodies. They then supply our nervous systems with their energies, and as man is the result of his own type of atoms and atmosphere, he is judged by the quality of atoms he attracts, just as he is judged by the kind of people with whom he associates. ―M., The Dayspring of Youth
So again going back to our mental atmosphere, the divine beings evaluate our quality of mind in accordance with what energies we bring in, these atomic forces. Are they pure? Are they refined, or are we saturated with negative qualities? This is something we have to consider.
Creative Energy and Sexual Transmutation
Many people have heard from Samael Aun Weor’s teaching about the nature of transmutation, which we talked about at the beginning of this lecture. The creative energy, the sexual force, is the origin of life, and also the origin of health. How we use this energy determines our spiritual trajectory. Just as you can create a physical child with that potential, when it is harnessed and controlled and conserved, refined―spiritually speaking, through breathing exercises, prayers and the ultimate science of alchemy―this creative energy rises within our spine to our mind. It purifies our psychology. It gives us the energy by which we can really divine spiritual beings, pure of thought, mind indeed.
This energy rises up two channels, symbolized by the Caduceus of Mercury with its seven chakras, as we see here. A chakra simply is a wheel of force. It is where energy circulates, and so we have seven main primary chakras that manifest within our spinal column, which arise from our gonads and then up to our head. When we work with this quality of force within our bodies, they determine our spiritual life. This is why Morya stated: Many occultists are told to conserve their creative energy: to master their lower sex nature. Atoms always find their own level. It is the vapor that rises from the surface of our seminal fluid that gives us this determinative energy in Nature. The demand for personal power will not bring these higher forces into operation. ―M., The Dayspring of Youth
That energy, which can be used for pleasure, instead, is transmuted. It is taken in another form, in substance, in reality. What is interesting is that Morya states that atoms always find their own level. Energies that we accumulate always seek to find their own level of balance. If we are bringing in good energy and we are transforming energy into a positive sense in our interior, they will elevate our quality of life.
The vapor that rises, this energy that rises within our internal vehicles, from the surface of the seminal fluids where it is conserved, gives us the force of determination. It determines where we go in nature instead of creating conflict and problems. Instead of that energy being channeled through desire, through attachments and cravings, we learn to take that force for the spirit. Therefore we vibrate with higher levels of nature. It is a cosmic law, very basic. But we have many exercises that can teach you how to begin working with this force. Personal ambition will not result in any lasting true change. Instead, compassion does. 
Negative Emotions
We will touch upon a few more points, particularly in relationship with negative emotions, because in order to psychically cleanse our emotional, mental temples, our physical bodies, we have to understand the danger of negative emotions. Unfortunately, more people today are becoming more negative emotionally, and what is worse is that these negative emotions are contagious.
If one angry person speaks to the whole world in a television broadcast, that can affect millions. It can incite wars. I am sure we can think of many examples within the last few years where one person infected by negativity saturated the entire collective mind of peoples and brought about great disasters. This is because negative emotions are more harmful than any bacteria. So we should protect ourselves from this. But here is what Samael Aun Weor had to say about the topic: When we are in the very field of psychology, we find many disorders within people. Everyone is being dragged down by negative emotions and this is very grave.
Therefore, we have to understand a basic principle of, we can say, spiritual self-defense, but also, psychological purity of mind. We have to learn how to close our doors, psychologically speaking, to negative impressions. We have to watch what we take in our mind. What kinds of books do we read? What do we watch on television? What do we look at on the internet? What images, videos, impressions do we eat with our mind? Because, we can listen to perhaps certain songs online and our whole mood will change. It can be afflicted or filled with sadness, with grief, or anger.
Many people take great deliberation into what they physically eat, but no consideration of what they psychologically consume. We can eat vegan, all organic food, the best health and nutrition available physically, and yet our minds can be completely poisoned and contaminated with negative elements, because we are ingesting so much garbage. Or we relate to certain people who are very negative and toxic. 
Closing Our Psychological Doors
I am pretty sure that anyone who is approaching this type of lecture is coming from a place where perhaps they know someone or people who are very negative, very difficult to deal with, and have very hard impressions to transform, and so we are going to talk about a principle called closing doors.
Closing doors does not mean we avoid people who are harmful. It might mean in the beginning we have some distance enough to find some equilibrium in our life, spiritually speaking, to know how to relate to that person with wisdom. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for us), perhaps there are relationships with people―say our families, who are very difficult to relate to―and yet we can’t avoid them because they are family. So, I’m pretty sure we all have some similar experience like this. What do we do? Some people may choose to avoid. Other people may learn to interact with that person with greater intelligence, meaning you are with the person physically, but psychologically you do not ingest the negativity they give you. In fact, you look at it. You observe it. You understand it. You transform your reactions. This also relates to the topic of the Silver Shield because if you are doing spiritual practices and conserving energy, you have more potential by which to reject and nullify these influences, and better said, to close your doors psychologically, so that you do not get affected as much and weighed down by, perhaps, this person. They do not control you anymore. They do not exert their influence or push your buttons, so to speak. It important that we learn how to do it. We do so through observing ourselves and by learning meditation, learning what in us is affected by others, and again accumulating good energy, so that we do not become saturated with negativity, likewise, so that we don’t get infected. Samael Aun Weor makes some very powerful points about this in his lecture called “Mental Representations” about the need, the importance and the necessity, the urgency of this. Disgracefully the human being is negative. What would you say for example, now that we are in this room, if we open the door to some robbers, so they can come in. Would it seem correct to you that I should open the door so that these people may enter? What would happen? Nevertheless, we do not exercise such caution with impressions, we open the door to all the negative impressions in the world. These penetrate our psyche and create disasters. They transform themselves into psychological aggregates and develop a negative emotional center within us and at last fill us with mud. Is this correct? Is it correct for a person who is full of negative impressions emanating from his negative emotional center to have this place among us, that we might open our doors to all negative impressions of this person?
So the term psychological aggregates has to do with defects, egos, because a person can be really angry with us, maybe a family member who wants to argue. We may take in that impression, we let it hit our heart, and then we transform that negative energy into a new condition of mind. We create more anger. Therefore we become poisoned ourselves, and therefore we have a positive feedback loop. We react, we retaliate and therefore that person becomes more intense in their anger, and things spiral out of control.
Now, opening and closing doors has to do with how we take in the information through our senses. Closing doors does not mean avoiding people. It means being present, being awake, being aware, and understanding the other person, being patient, watching, being aware, being kind. Impressions are all the information we take in through our senses but also into our mind. What is the emotional quality that we are receiving from this person? What is the mental state that this person is projecting unto us? In that process of being mindful of the other person, we also observe our reactions. We observe what in us wants to retaliate, to become upset, to speak harmfull words, to be negative. Part of psychic hygiene has to do with observing this process in ourselves and learning how to have balance, neither attracting, nor rejecting this influence. It means your energies are present. You have your Silver Shield in your mind. You have a strong spiritual state of awareness, and therefore you do not retaliate. Instead, you learn to treat that person with love. This is very challenging, not easy to do. You are not going to do it on the first day you see your family member. Not easy, but it is basic. Control your emotional center, how you react to this person. Observe it, and if you do need to have some space to transform your own mind―so that you don’t do something you will regret―then take a minute to step away. Be polite, say, “Hey, I need to take a break. Give me a few minutes!” Breathe, but hopefully with these practices that we’re going to elaborate upon, you will have some stability of mind to be able to approach negative situations like this. 
Lies: A Wrong Connection
Part of our psychic health and well-being has to do with how we connect with our inner divinity. The problem is that if we take in negative impressions and we respond with negativity likewise, we would be more inclined to lie, whether we are conscious of it or not.
A lie is a distortion of reality, obviously. Negative emotions, more importantly, transform people into liars. If someone is negative or feels like they are going to create a problem―perhaps with a loved one, a family member, and in a negative state of emotion―one doesn’t tell all the facts. Now the problem is that if we lie, we disconnect ourselves, because our inner divinity, known as the Elder of Days within the gnostic tradition, is truth, is reality, is presence, and is the core principle of our Being. If we wish to connect more with it, we should learn to cultivate honesty, even though it is difficult. But of course, one does not have to commit sins of commission or omission, better said, if one is diplomatic, or “wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” according to Jesus (Matthew 10:16). If we lie because we are in a negative state of mind, we disconnect ourselves. We become fractured. This is why Samael Aun Weor stated in his lecture on “Alcyone and Negative Emotions”: What is most terrible is that negative emotions transform the human being into a liar. The liar produces a mistaken connection, because the energy of the Elder of Days, our Father who is in heaven, the truth, flows harmoniously and perfectly throughout the ten Sephiroth of the Hebraic Kabbalah until reaching Malkuth (or the Kingdom), the physical person or psycho-physical person. The liar connects himself in a wrong way. He intentionally, with his negative emotions, produces a dislocation of his mind, and consequently a lie emerges, which is a mistake in connection. ―Samael Aun Weor, “Alcyone and Negative Emotions”
If you have been studying this teaching and applying it for some time, for those who are more experienced, I am pretty sure you have felt that in a moment where you might have lied or have lied, you feel weak, because the energies of your inner spirit are not manifesting within the moment. They get disconnected. You feel a lack of confidence, lack of ability, lack of cohesion. Therefore, we should learn not to lie, and first off, learn to identify negative emotions, so that we don't have to be in a position like that.
Interior Isolation and Conservation
Part of mental cleanliness or in another sense, the reason why many people feel like they have a clouded mind―perhaps lack a sense of stability in their lives, they feel drained mentally, emotionally―is because of idle conversation.
Part of this work of closing doors to negative impressions has to do with the principle called interior isolation and conservation. In the hermetic traditions it relates to the science of Mercury, Hermes, whereby, for some practitioners, they would adopt a vow of silence, so that they can learn to introspect and understand their own inner world. This is a very useful practice to understand the root origins of many distractions in ourselves, and also the root of many contaminants of mind. Certain elements, psychologically, create a conflict in us. Now a basic practice is adopting a vow of silence. Obviously for religious reasons, people can do so, especially on holidays, or we have done this at retreats as well. Always there is a few people who would talk to you and you are silent because you are practicing mindfulness. This is why at some retreats we would have a little card saying we are practicing a vow of silence so no one would feel offended. But still, people do get upset. It is a useful practice to conserve energy, so that you do not feel tense and strained in merely just speaking out of a lack of mindfulness of what we are doing. Too much idle talk, speaking with no meaning, creates a sense of contamination in the mind too. Silence is like a lake. When stable and pure or limpid and calm, in reality, it reflects deeper states of the spirit, stillness of mind. It can be helped in the meditative state, can be developed in physical silence. So, perhaps, if we don't take a vow of silence, we can learn to practice this in the day, maybe by not taking the time to speak our mind the first instant to prove our point, but instead, saving our energies, conserving our mental force, observing ourselves. Become aware of what we say and do when it is necessary, so that we learn to become more mindful, more pure of heart, more psychically clean. Morya stated the following in The Dayspring of Youth: Negative people seldom render great service to their fellow men, and talk a great deal, and unthinking talk is responsible for much of the worry and anxiety in this world; for it distorts the imagination. Constant conversation often hinders the currents that flow into our system, and this hampers one’s development. Hence the student should not indulge too much in trivial conversation. When he does speak he should endeavor to ennoble the thoughts of others. Some teachers place their pupils under a vow of silence; for by saying little they protect themselves from onslaughts upon their atmospheric sheaths. 
The Purpose of Incense
We will conclude with a couple practices you can use to promote psychic and spiritual hygiene. We often utilize perfume in our tradition, or better said, incense. We will provide some links at the end, but you can basically use a charcoal within a burner, usually a container that you can hold and you can use different resins or even light incense sticks if you prefer. So that the perfume or the smoke will purify your home.
The perfume of incense is very important to use daily, because it helps to reject negative influences, but also promotes spiritual, mental healing. It also cleanses the internal worlds of any type of astral larvae. So there are three uses of incense: cleaning, perfuming and healing. We will talk about each of the three in a bit. Samael Aun Weor stated the following in The Perfect Matrimony: The devotee must purify his bedroom daily with special fragrant herbs. Incense purifies the astral body. A good incense does wonders with the astral body. A good incense attracts the great masters that we need for our work. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
High quality incense attracts the masters, to come to our home to give us their blessings. But also, according to Morya and The Lord God of Truth Within:
Proper incense is a barrier to the approach of entities and elementals from the underworld. ―M., The Lord God of Truth Within 
Sage Smudges
So in terms of cleansing, you can work with sage. You can often find these at Wholefoods even. Many stores have them available, in this form, sage sticks. Light the sage. Pray to your inner divinity to help cleanse your home and your mind, your heart, your environment. You can do certain prayers along with the sage cleansing smoke.
We often use the Conjuration of Four and the Conjuration of Seven in our studies to help remove any type of obsessive thoughts, negativity, or even astral larvae within one's home. You can take the smoke, bathe yourself in it, especially around your head, if you have preoccupations and worries, around your body, around your aura. It is very powerful and useful.
Sulfur Cleanses
If you want to get more radical, if you really want to clean your home, especially if you have not done this before, you can work with sulfur. Now, be warned that sulfur is extremely toxic when it is burned. Use a very little bit. We usually take a charcoal within a burner, we take about a teaspoon of sulfur powder. Make sure there are no living things in the room that you want to sulfur out. You do not stay in the room. Make sure you leave. Make sure you have somewhere else to go, and that the fumes are not going to get out of the room. Make sure the door is close. You can open up the window if you have one in that room.
Sulfur fumes are extremely powerful. Now, they are dangerous to breathe in. They can irritate your lungs, or affect your lungs very severely, if you’re sensitive specially. It is very toxic. You do not want to be around to breathe it. The fumes themselves will, in the internal worlds, clean out any gunk that you have: astral larvae, negative thoughts, anything that may be bothering you. They even reject negative influences from any type of entity that maybe is trying to harm you and your home. If you use the sulfur powder to cleanse it out, you can burn it for three days. Take three consecutive days or nine days if you feel like the environment―you just moved in some place, it feels heavy, feels dense―you feel like the place is just saturated with negative energy. Work with sulfur. Now, make sure again when you light it, do not be in the same room. Leave for a couple hours. Come back later in the day. You can also take sulfur powder, without burning it, you can sprinkle it if you can’t burn it where you’re at. Sprinkle the powder across the room. The fumes in the internal worlds will rise up and clean your home. This could be very effective too. Obviously burning it is more powerful, but literally you can get great results just from the astral and vital fumes from the powder itself. You can also take a sulfur bath. Sulfur clumps in water, so you can take it with a bubble bath, usually about tablespoon of sulfur powder. You can put it in the bathtub with you, but with bubble soaps or whatever you have. The powder itself won’t clump together so much. It will spread out evenly and will dissolve. 
Frankincense
We can also work with the perfume and incense like frankincense. Frankincense is often used to invoke divinity. Here is what Samael Aun Weor had to say about this in the Igneous Rose:
Authentic frankincense is obtained from the olibanum tree. It contains great elemental powers. If frankincense is soaked in water, it has the power to make the elemental creatures of the water concur to our call. When applying frankincense to the forehead, it has the power to make a headache caused by strong mental preoccupation to disappear. The smoke of frankincense has the power to make the masters and angels of the invisible world to assist. Frankincense prepares the environment for the Gnostic rituals. Frankincense is a great vehicle for the spiritual waves of pure devotion. It helps the mystical retreat because it serves as an instrument of devotion. In the ancient temples of the mysteries, those who were ill were surrounded with the smoke of frankincense in order to be cured. ―Samael Aun a Weor, Igneous Rose
It also smells nice. Frankincense opens up the heart, helps you be honest, be frank with someone (kind of a play of words here). Frankincense is very useful for deepening your meditative practice and prayer. But also after a strong use of sage, which can have a pungent smell, you can work with frankincense afterward to perfume the environment and invoke the spiritual masters you seek in your meditative discipline.
Healing through Zodiacal Perfumes
You can also heal yourself from the use of your zodiacal perfume. If you are feeling sick, if you are feeling a little off, not in your best state of mind, work with the perfume relating to your zodiac.
For Aries you gave the perfume of myrrh. For Taurus the perfume of costus root, an aromatic herb. For Gemini the perfume of mastic. For Cancer the perfume of camphor. For Leo the perfume of frankincense. Virgo has the perfume of white sandalwood. Libra the perfume of galbanum. Scorpio, the perfume of coral. We do suspect that due to a typographical error in some of the very old editions of Samael Aun Weor’s writings that weren’t corrected or caught, he might have been referring to copal, because coral, I have heard from some students, does not burn on a charcoal. Copal does, and it is a very sweet aromatic and cleansing perfume. So you might want to try that if you are a native of Scorpio. We also have Sagittarius relating to the perfume of aloeswood. We also have Capricorn with the perfume of pine extract. Aquarius is the perfume of spikenard. And Pisces the perfume of thyme. You can reference How to Use Incense, an article from Glorian Publishing, which talks about all these incenses that we mentioned, but also, many more. I highly recommend you study it. Apply it in accordance with your needs. Runic Exercises to Strengthen the Silver Shield
If you really want to fortify the Silver Shield of your mental body, work with the magic of the runes. The runic exercises are exceptional. They are a form of yoga in which you position your body to match the runic alphabet, Futhark, the Nordic language, the Nordic letters. With prayer, mantra vocalization, aspiration―inhalation of the vital forces and their elevation within your body―you also assimilate and charge yourself with the forces of nature. It is very good to perform the runes out in the open. If you can go to some place nice like a park, some place quiet, alone, you can do these mantras and runes and practices to charge yourself.
There is also a video available from Glorian Publishing that talks about how to perform seven vowels, seven runic letters from that tradition. Highly recommend it.
Meditation
Lastly, meditation. To really deepen your spiritual and mental health, your well-being, your psychic hygiene, learn to meditate. We have two courses from us. We have Gnostic Meditation but also Glorian has Meditation Essentials. Meditation will teach you how to transform negative impressions. It will teach you how to close doors. It will teach you how to observe your own mental reactions to negative impressions, but also how to cancel them, to not be affected―and also, to understand the root of our own defects, so that by changing them, by eliminating them, and by developing real virtue, we have enough stability and consciousness to really reflect divinity within.
At this point in time I would like to open the room for questions. Questions and Answers
Question: How does visualization relate to this shield or the Silver Shield?
Instructor: You can meditate and imagine this aspect of your mental body, and with enough concentration and visualization, and with focus you can see the actual aura. You can see it internally, within. Perhaps you physically fall asleep and you enter the dream state. You can access what that reality is like. So, visualization relates to the Silver Shield in that any perception of an internal type has to do with your imagination. When you sit to meditate and you imagine something, you are using the vital forces of your creativity, and you are also activating aspects of your psychology, your consciousness, so that you can perceive this energy shield which you develop through this type of practice. There is a deep relationship between imagination and the mind. The mind and imagination are deeply co-related. I think some people get confused and oftentimes dissociate them, primarily because the mind is imagination in different dynamics. To imagine is to perceive, whereas the mind and its function has to do with thought. Now, when the mind is calm, when it is perfectly still, like a lake, then you can imagine more clearly. Therefore you can start to activate the real depth, profundity, clarity and visualization available through the Silver Shield, because the Silver Shield facilitates that process. It protects your mind. It is an expression of your energy, and that energy helps to calm yourself, so that when your mind is still, you start to perceive images internally. They are deeply related. They are oftentimes different aspects, some of the same principles, but we talk about them separately so that we get better understanding, so we can break it down. Question: In The Dayspring of Youth, Morya states that when we activate the solar force, it feels like it can knock one over. Could you elaborate? Instructor: My answer would be: practice the runes. See what I am talking about, or see what he is talking about. I know some people I have seen at retreats that, when we did runes―usually we will have exercises; people would be performing, let us say the Rune Fah, the Rune Dorn―I have noticed some people who felt dizzy, because they have never worked with that energy before. So in the beginning, as you are learning to transmit that force in you, it can be disorienting because it’s something new, but also something very powerful. But also, we have to acclimate ourselves little by little to become better vehicles of that energy. I would not recommend on your first shot to just spend two hours or one hour to do runes. Take ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and learn to experiment, because that energy is the power of life. It is the power of the Sun literally speaking, the solar energy within your own body, within nature, manifesting in you. That is powerful, so take your time with it. With time and training you can do one hour, two hours of runes, even three or more depending on your needs. Question: How do we get out of negative states when we do not want to, when we feel stuck in a negative state? Instructor: Distract yourself. I do not necessarily mean doing things that are trivial or perhaps harmful, but instead, engage in activities that take your mind off of whatever the problem is, whatever you are fixated on. Mental and psychic obsessions can be very intense, especially if you are in a negative mood. It can be very hard to get out. The thing to remember is to take the time to find activities that you like, that help you relax. Some people, when they are moody, they decide to take a walk. Maybe you have a project going on at the time or something difficult that you have to do, preoccupied… put it aside. Distract yourself. Go out for a walk. Take some yoga classes, or better said, do some yoga exercises. You can do the runes. You can pray. You can write. Some people find writing therapeutic. Write poetry. Write some work literature, something that inspires you. Now obviously, not all these examples are going to be, may not be for you, but they are examples of things people have used in the past when they are caught in a rut, or stuck in a negative state that they seem to not get out. What makes it worse is that you fixate. What I find very useful if I am in a negative state of mind, if I am preoccupied with a problem, I take a sage stick, light it, pray, and then perfume my head. I do the Conjuration of the Four and the Conjuration of the Seven. Those prayers along with sage smoke will remove mental obsessions and can help you get out of a negative state. But it takes skill. It takes practice. Maybe getting some exercise would help. If you feel negative, maybe go to the gym. Take a walk. As I said, exercise, and also pray deeply. Pray passionately to your inner divinity, your Divine Mother. Your Divine Mother has the power to take you out. You have to remember Her. But sometimes She works in ways that, you know, through certain activities. She can inspire you. Listen to your heart. Follow the guidelines of your intuition. Whatever you feel might help you, whatever activity, do so with prayer. Remember your Divine Mother in your heart. She will take you out. She can do so by any activities we mentioned, if we are mindful and paying attention, working to take a moment of breath, of rest. Our Being is the one that can take us out. We have to remember Her. Question: How does carbon dioxide pollution affect us spiritually? Instructor: Well, the pollution of the air obviously affects the quality of our energy. The quality of the air, and what we ingest, in our lungs, but also the food we eat and, obviously, the impressions we take in, all contribute to the quality of our creative force―how healthy we are or what potential we have to be more healthy. Now, carbon dioxide pollution, obviously, if the environment is poor, that will affect the health of our lungs, but also in terms of the air we breathe in, it will affect the quality of our creative energy, because our creative energy is literally formed by the combination of many forces: the food we eat, the air we take in, the water we drink, and the impressions we transform with our mind. These all contribute to a grade of potency or impotency of force. So obviously we want to do the best we can with the environment we live in, to be eating as healthy as we can, consuming as much healthy food but also being more conscious of what we breathe. Maybe quitting smoking so to speak. Obviously, this is very basic. But you know, these things do add up. For your spiritual hygiene, obviously your inner spirit will have more energy to work with, to perform transformations in you, if your lungs are cleaner, if your heart is cleaner, if your mind is cleaner. They all add up together. Obviously the cleaner vehicle we are, the greater expression that our spirit can manifest in us. Question: How do we recognize the Dayspring of Youth? Instructor: You recognize it in yourself, not just from some late or some early history from the 60s, by looking at what happened culturally, but you look at how it manifests in you. You see it whenever you do prayers, transmutation exercises. Thr runes are a great way to activate the force of the Dayspring of Youth. That is literally the force of life that manifests in the spinal column, the lungs, the chakras, the mind. When you do prayer and runes and mantras, you sing and vocalize with fidelity, with faith, with joy―you feel re-energized. You feel real youth flowing through your meridians, your vital body, your energetic channel, so to speak. That Dayspring of Youth is your own creative force that is being transmuted in you. It feels like a day in spring, according to Morya, something refreshing. You only sense it by doing it everyday, being consistent, so if you want to activate and recognize that Dayspring of Youth in you―work with the runes. Work with them daily. If you want to get out of a rut, like, I believe your earlier question was about, you work with the Dayspring of Youth. It will help you get out, by praying to the Divine Mother, with the runic exercises, to resonate with a higher level of being. The more you practice it, the more you will see it, recognize it, and become more familiar with it. That is my recommendation. Question: Are there any benefits of moving to the countryside? Instructor: Yes, obviously. Cities are packed and dense and heavy and saturated with a lot of problems. Not to say that the countryside does not have its problems, but at the same time, it is less heavy in terms of atmospheric energy. Many people report that going to the forest outside of any city where walks in nature are very powerful. I just recently took a walk with my wife today. We were out in the countryside enjoying the fresh air, but also the prana, the life force out of nature, so yes there are a lot of benefits of moving to the countryside. But if you can’t live outside the city, then make trips. Take the time. It cleans your mind, literally, cleans your vital depth, your mental body, your astral body, getting out in nature, because those forces are very primordial and raw. They will help you. But you got your karma. You have to live where you have to live. But obviously we try to make choices when we can. Question: Could you elaborate on the solar power of runes? And also, what does Morya mean when he says we get ennobled by the solar force? Instructor: Solar power has to do with the force of life, the force of creation, and the greatest force of creation that we carry within is our sexual glands. We are ennobled by the, or empowered by the solar force, in the sense that this energy awakens the greatest virtues of the soul. We have a greater nobility of spirit, more ethics, more creativity, more compassion when we work with this creative energy in us, the solar force. We find it in our sexual glands. It is the force or life, of creation, of sexual power. When we learn to use it for the spirit, it ennobles us, makes us acolytes within the divine knighthood, the spiritual brotherhood or initiatic hierarchies of the divine―which we talk about in a course called The Secret Path of Initiation―of the white lodge, where there are those beings who are perfecting or have perfected themselves, spiritually speaking. To ennoble yourself with the solar force means to work with that creative energy in you. But also, when you work with the solar power of runes, you are adopting certain postures with your body to accumulate force within nature. You are combining the forces of nature with your prayer and vocalizations, your breath work and combination with the solar power of your own creative vital force. They mix together. They combine and then they become augmented. They magnify. They expand. They enlighten. You are combining fuel and fuel in order to revolutionize your psychology. So work with the energy. Work with that force. It is the true source of real, genuine, divine spiritual character: kindness, compassion, happiness… Question: What happened in the 60s that caused these negative energies in society? Instructor: The energy is a volatile force, the Dayspring of Youth, or the Aquarian influence, the Dionysian Wave. Now, I was mentioning earlier in the lecture that the creative energy is in nature, in the cosmos, is revolutionary. That force, called the Dayspring of Youth, has to act. The problem is not the energy. It is how we use it. So the problem with our humanity is that in the 60s we received that energy in a revolutionary impetus, but we transformed it with our desire. So instead of taking that energy and using it to feed our spiritual values, we corrupted ourselves. We became degenerated. We destroyed and continue to destroy our potential. Society became more intensely difficult and negative, because people did not want to work on their ego. We took in that energy but did not use it consciously. So that’s the difference. This is the polarity of Dionysus. That energy can provide spiritual inebriation, spiritual enlightenment, or the intensification of desire and suffering. It depends on how we use the energy. Question: What exactly are the vital values? The master defines this as a way to live longer. Could you elaborate? Instructor: So, vital values relate to what we call in Gurdjieffian terms Bobbin-Kandelnosts. Gurdjieff was a mystical teacher of the Fourth Way school that later propagated in Russia. He called these vital values or vital capital Bobin-Kandelnosts. This is a language from the internal worlds. 
Our brain, physically speaking, as well as our heart and our spinal column, are three centers of thought, feeling and will with a predetermined sum of vital currency. Every action requires energy, and in order to make a certain action you take out money from the bank, so to speak. The more intellectual action, the more vital values you deplete within your intellectual brain. Likewise with the heart, and our instinctive, motor, and sexual centers, so to speak.
The problem is, if you waste all those energies―like you think too much or you are having too many negative emotions, or you have too many activities with your body―you deplete yourself, and people who get sick, mentally or emotionally or physically, is because they have exhausted all their vital capital. They have basically drawn all their sum capital in their bank. When they have no more money or energy left in that center, that brain deteriorates. It dies. This explains why certain people have perhaps mental illnesses or emotional sickness or physical debilitating conditions, because they have wasted all their energies in those centers. In order to live longer, we can learn to transmute the creative energy. You can put more money in your bank. You can preserve those values too, not only by conserving your life force, your sexual energy, and transmuting it, but also you can conserve what you have already. You can learn to not waste energy, which has to do with earlier in the lecture when we talked about closing doors, for example, by not identifying with negative emotions or thoughts, the toxicity of negative people. We choose to identify or associate with certain people based on our needs, spiritual well-being, or by transforming your relationships in general, by limiting your own defects and desires through meditation, we learn to conserve our energy. Because our own ego or desires waste energy. Anger is obviously an explosion of an atomic force, so to speak. The same thing with lust, especially, or pride or resentment, or fear. These elements waste energy. But if you eliminate those elements in you that waste energy, you save it, and you live longer. You are healthier. So, there is a great incentive to perform this work because it will help us live more balanced and healthier lives, not as sick, not as diseased. Question: Would the Dayspring of Youth be the most potent way to transform one's harmful behaviors into positive attitudes if harnessed correctly through study, prayer, and practice? Instructor: Yes, especially meditation and transmutation. That energy is best used in you when you are working to comprehend your own faults, your own defects, and removing them. When you develop real virtue, when you transform anger into love, pride into humility, gluttony into temperance, lust into chastity―you are developing the virtues of the soul. You do so through works with energy, but also by meditating on your defects. Obviously prayer is important because we have to really commune with God, with the Being. Without that there is no possible way to really establish a deeper connection, and to use those positive influences of the Dayspring of Youth, both without and within, with harmony. Question: If we waste our vital values in one brain, can we restore or recapture it by using this brain virtuously, as sick as it may be? Instructor: That is a good question. The truth is that you can to a degree. We can get help, if we have a sickness, whether mentally or emotionally, we have wasted all the energies of that brain, and have suffered from perhaps a debilitating sickness. The reality is that by working with the creative solar force within our glands, through transmutation, especially through alchemy, that energy can help you to restore the balance of the depleted brain. You can also get help from internal masters of medicine, spiritual healers within the higher worlds, within dreams, who can treat your mental, emotional, or vital bodies, whatever body that is sick, so that you can be restored. So, you do it by acting virtuously. Obviously, you know, whatever behaviors made you sick, obviously stop doing them. Adopt beneficial action. Adopt virtuous practice. Adopt chastity, transmutation of the creative force. In that way, your brain will be more nurtured and vitalized. Or whatever brain is sick, you can heal it. So it is possible. It is also a very patient and difficult process, but one that one can perform with the help of divinity specially. [Note: study and apply the sacred rites of rejuvenation for additional support. See Yoga for the Aquarian Era for more information]. Question: How one should avoid negative influences of certain individuals? How does sacrifice for others fit into this? Instructor: In the beginning you might find it very difficult to relate to certain people. In many cases we may not have the balance to transform the situation. It can be very toxic, very difficult, very painful. You have to rely on your intuition and the guidance from your inner divinity to show you what the right course of action is, and be patient. Be patient for the results and the answers. But other times, because such relationships can be difficult, it is actually an act of sacrifice to take the time to, perhaps, to take care of your needs and your balance to a relative degree, because we cannot help other people if we are incapable, if we are impotent, spiritually speaking, if our intentions do not align up with our actions. If we want to be spiritual and do good for this person, and yet they keep harming us, sometimes the best thing is to take a break. Gain your balance. Meditate on yourself. Sometimes closing doors means creating a little distance, so that―maybe not separation―but at least you gain some time for you to isolate, psychologically speaking. This is why many masters would meditate in solitude. They would take the time to abandon society, to abandon their obligations, perhaps for an appointed time or term in order to gain enough balance and stability to understand themselves, but also, to have enough strength, so that when they did go back to society they knew how to handle it, the trauma or the difficulty there. Many myths teach this. Many religions also show this principle. Some people think that abandoning the world altogether is the necessary thing, and they do it in an indeterminate way, or for indeterminate time. They just abandon the world, and obviously we do not support that argument. We need to be a part of society. But it also means we have to know how to help society. We need to balance ourselves in order to help other people to balance. If you are a trainwreck, you are not gonna teach other people to get their mess in order. You cannot sacrifice for others if you have no stability. So, you can take the time to get your act in order. Get things right, and then, when you are stable and right, and no longer afflicted by so much negativity, you can begin the real work of re-engaging with certain people. I speak from experience. I used to have relationships and people I knew in the past who were very toxic. I had to take some time in the beginning to develop my own practice, but also, when I gained enough stability, to re-engage with the world, or certain individuals. But obviously there is a shock there, and that is an aspect of sacrifice that is very difficult to achieve, because, perhaps, you come back from a retreat. You are energized. You are happy. You are going to conquer the world. You are happy. You are at peace. You have a sense of nobility and purpose. But then you enter the cities, you come back to society, and heaviness hits you, so that you have to learn how to maintain that momentum you gained spiritually from the retreat in order to be able to apply it in your community. That is the real work. Some people, actually, a lot of people, when they come back to the world―they lose it. They forgo their discipline. They forget everything. They easily get swallowed by the moon, according to Samael Aun Weor, by mechanicity, by habits, by conditions. So, it is a difficult balance. You have to constantly negotiate and renegotiate that within yourself. How much space do you need in solitude, isolation, psychologically maybe, or physically too? But, psychologically, in order to be more useful, a better expression of your inner divinity? So that way, when you do choose to associate with certain people, they do not impact you in a negative way. In fact, they might change because of your character. This happened with me, in terms of certain relationships, friendships I had in the past. People I had to distance myself from, but then eventually came back, with a renewed purpose, and the relationship is no longer negative. It is positive because divinity was able to make the correct changes in expressions or manifestations in my life, because I was working on my defects that were causing me problems. So that is how you sacrifice better for others. It is, first: gain your stability, but then, time and again, refine yourself. 
It is always good, at the beginning of lectures, to be present, to be aware of our mind, our mental state, our thoughts, but also our emotional qualities or mood, to take a moment, to get centered. If we are at home, if we’re driving, wherever we’re listening, we should become present, here and now, to listen with profound attention, to set aside analysis, interpretation, the mind, to learn to receive, with a pristine and clear cognition, to listen with our heart.
It is in this way that we can learn to perceive the new, and if you’ve been following the sequence of this lecture series, you’ve been given many practices that teach you how to perceive the novel, the unusual, the original, that which is sparkling and new, something we’ve never seen before, and which escapes the mind, that which cannot be confined to a label, a category, a box. The intellect is useful for storing information. But it can only compare. It cannot discern the profound reality of the thing, the experience. If you’ve ever looked at a sunset, our concepts cannot equate with the beauty and the reality of that pristine moment. It is something unusual and rare. It escapes definition. This is the quality of conscious astral projections: a state of reality that is beyond the body, that is so clear, colorful and vibrant, that it is more real than our physical existence, our physical states. It is this innate beauty that attracts us to the study of dreams. It is what draws us to remember dreams, which was the focus of our last lecture. Now we are going to take a close examination of how to consciously enter the dream state, to make something mechanical, unconscious and unintentional into something conscious. So rather than looking at a sunset and getting lost in our own approximations or estimations of that beauty, we merely see the dream for what it is, our illusions, our attachments, and instead, we can access something more, beyond the limits of the mind. I will say that there are some advantages to being mechanical. We’ve talked a lot about this, how we often react to life without understanding. We don’t really understand the roots of our behaviors. We’re not really conscious of ourselves. Mechanicity is something that can be utilized for our spiritual development in the sense that our own behaviors, mind, and states are predictable. We can learn to anticipate and recognize the novelty of the moment by first becoming aware of our own psychology, to recognize the patterns of our daily life. When we do that in our waking state, we will do it within dreams, and in this way, we will start to see more. We can even experience recurring dreams. We remember them because they emerge within our interior, boldly, and with great impact. These recurring dreams are useful. We can take dreams, we can focus upon them, and we can become conscious of them, so that by entering the dreaming state willingly, we learn to enter the astral world, and then to depart from the dream itself, to be awake, to see the reality, to see the internal dimensions. We will talk a lot about this―recurring dream symbols―how we can use them to our advantage, how we can become aware of how we dream all the time, and how we can learn to see them for what they are, to enter them, to understand them, and then to transcend them. We will give you some techniques for this particular practice. Preliminaries for Tantric Dream Discipline
There are a couple of preliminaries that I would like to review for you, briefly, so that we can have some context for why we are studying this discipline.
As we emphasized before, it is important to remember and document all dreams. We do so so that we have some material by which to study ourselves. We don’t want to forget our inner experiences within the astral world. We want to have enough data to look for the new. We want to profoundly watch for unusual or anomalous dream experiences, because when you are documenting your dreams, you will start to see recurring themes, much in the same way that you will find a narrative in your own life: the things we tell ourselves at our work, in our relationships, in our homes, in our travels. We want to study that which repeats, so that we can transcend it, and when we document our dreams, we may find that something new emerges within our experience. This constant awareness, this study of ourselves, is known as tantra within the Tibetan Buddhist sense. Tantra means “continuum.” It is the infinite. It is the continuity and comprehension of consciousness that we develop within ourselves through practice. It is a state of awakening that is constant. It does not rest. It is the state of awareness that does not sleep, but is present even in dreams, that can begin to understand the new, to see what is unusual. Also by documenting our dreams, we can learn to distinguish a gradual progression of dream experiences. We see that there is a type of thread uniting all of it. In the beginning we may dream vague, incoherent, crazy states, though with time we begin to see there is more cohesion. Our dream states become more integral. They are less dispersed and fragmented amongst confused and delusional states. We should also discriminate the distinct qualities, moods, and impact of our dreams, especially the dreams that have the most significance for us, even if we don’t know what they mean. The mood, the quality and the impact of the dream is really important to analyze within ourselves, because if a dream has a great influence on us―perhaps in a positive or a negative sense―it means that it is going to have some type of deeper significance and impact, a greater consequence for our spiritual life. Now, to really begin to use our dreams to our advantage, to learn to take a dream and to learn how to enter it willingly, we have to really identify recurring dreams. We have to document them. When you find that pattern, it is like a key that can open up the door to the internal worlds. It is a doorway into our inner reality. Usually, recurring dreams which have a spiritual flavor come in the form of symbols. They arrive from the spiritual world and condense within the astral dimension to teach us something profound. When we see those symbols, we can learn to consciously concentrate upon them, to imagine them, and then to enter them by falling asleep in meditation. In the process of this we have to revere and aspire through such divine archetypes, these allegories of the spirit. To revere and to aspire mean to feel a sense of beauty and awe before the new. In the conglomeration and messiness of our dreams, we find patterns that make sense. So, we can utilize them as a source of religion, of yoga, of reunion, because we know they come from God, and they help us to yearn for the truth. They are a rope that can pull us out of the abyss, into the heights of understanding. 
The Divine Mother
The source of all that wisdom is the Divine Mother Kundalini. She is a symbol of a profound core reality of our Being, our inner divinity.
Many people talk about the divine feminine, and all religions pay homage to her. She is an expression, an enfoldment, a quality of God. We have an image here of the Virgin Mary, a representation of the divine feminine that gives birth to something spiritual within us. Some people get caught up in the names of different religions, different traditions, rather than looking at what the sign points towards. You have many flags, many nations, with their symbols. Like diverse countries and states, all religions are like flags, with their symbols that represent the unity of the divine. The Divine Mother is our inner goddess. She is part of us. She is profound compassion, serenity and love, and she, the truth, is the one who inspires us within dreams. The Tibetan Buddhists call her Tara. She is the one who creates order within us, equanimity, dispassion, peace. She is the light that illuminates our astral experiences when they are objective and real, and she can teach us within dreams, how to awaken. Amongst the Aztecs, and I believe the Maya, she is known as Tonantzin. Tonantzin is an honorific title like “Our Lady” or “Our Great Mother.” This title has been used to designate the Goddess of Sustenance, the Snake Goddess, the Bringer of Maize, Mother of Corn, and the Honored Grandmother. These are not literal representations. They are symbols, just as dreams are symbolic. Likewise, there are symbols within religion that are oneiric. They are condensed and compacted within the language and parables of dreams. She is the one that gives us sustenance, who gives us hope, who gives us food for our soul. She feeds the consciousness with wisdom through astral experiences. She heals the broken heart, and she teaches through the inspirational symbols of dreams. So she may arrive in many forms, whatever is conducive for our development, like the snake, the serpent, which in its positive sense, is the divine energy of her, the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness of pain. She is a balm for all suffering, and that her energy, her wisdom, kills that which is impure within us. She is known as Teteoinan, “Mother of the Gods” coming from Teteoh, plural of Teotl, “God,” and innan, “their mother.” This is another name for Quetzalcoatl, from coatl, “snake,” and icue , signifying “she who has the skirt of snakes.” Beautiful symbols with profound meaning, which make sense to us the more we awaken within the astral world where those symbols unfold magically before us. She is the serpentine energy of Kundalini, mentioned in Hindu yoga, and we work with her through Tantric Buddhist practice, through the continual awakening of the soul, in order to see reality. We call upon her because she is the one who helps to organize our inner experiences. She is the one who creates integrity within the soul, and when in our dreams, when they are chaotic, futile, incoherent, strange, illogical, instinctive, animal, she comes to us like a breath of fresh air, with a quality that is so distinct that the soul knows that this is from our own divinity. Recurring Dreams: The Initiator or Unifying Element
So as we are exploring our dreams, as we are documenting them, we begin to find patterns, as I said. We start to see recurring dreams. There are dreams that begin to repeat which no longer have the flavor of something subjective, illusory, or egotistical. They speak to our heart, even if we don’t understand what they mean. However, there is a way to learn to understand what they mean.
When you have a recurring dream, when something appears amongst the chaotic and formless expression of your own unconsciousness, you will start to see a state or a symbol, a situation, color, a sound, a person―anything that hits us and inspires us and makes us question what is really going on here. What is being taught to me? What am I seeing? What is happening here? This is known as the initiator or unifying element of dreams. People call it recurring dreams. We call it the initiator element. It is the initiator element because it is the symbol, the key, the entrance to the internal worlds. It is a symbol or a message that is giving us some type of clue regarding our own psychological states, our situation in life, our sufferings, and also the solution. It is also a symbol that can be utilized to initiate a very particular type of spiritual work. We call it the unifying element because out of the plethora and plurality of conflicting and disparate desires and dreams, we find a symbol that makes sense, even if intellectually we don’t have a definition or an explanation. But there is something there that is very deep. It is a unifying element. All of our chaotic dreams begin to unify in a sense, within our attention, by this recurring dream. The symbol both initiates us, and we can use it to initiate conscious awakening. As I said, when you recognize a pattern in your life, you can begin to find a solution to things, whether it is in your daily states or within your dreams. So when you learn to become conscious of a recurring dream, you can begin to utilize that for your understanding. When that recurring dream happens again and you recognize it, you immediately know that you are in the astral world. You are shocked. You are sparked to attention. You are alert and aware that you are not in your body. You are present. This unifying element is really like a thread, Ariadne’s thread within Greek mythology, that leads us out of the labyrinth of our mind. It is a rope given to us by divinity, for by concentrating upon it, by imagining it, by focusing on it when we fall asleep, we can start to initiate the conscious awakening of our soul within the astral dimension. We can say that the initiator element symbolizes what we need to comprehend most in ourselves. More particularly, it relates to how we must change, how we must stop dreaming physically, daydreaming, letting the mind wander, not being concentrated, not being awake, alert in our daily life. This initiator element or recurring dream can teach us something about our essential problem in our life, what keeps us hypnotized. What is the repeating behavior that we continue to enact that makes us and others suffer? Because without rectifying that, we will not awaken. We will be dreaming all the time. This initiator element helps us to make sense of physical events. Dreams are merely the internal reflection of our physical reality. If our dreams do not coincide with physical facts, then we have to discard them as illusory. But the initiator element, the recurring dream, helps us to recognize our problem, what we need to do, what we must work upon. Now it is possible to possess more than one initiator element. What qualifies them is that they are impactful and that they recur. They have a very distinct quality, mood and even prophetic element. They can predict for us things that are going to happen in the daytime. Whatever situations of life hit us, they can teach us about what is going on. 
An example of a recurring dream can be the sky. This is something that many people have experienced. We have in this image a citadel floating upon an island in the clouds. On the left we see the rising sun, and on the right, the moon. A young girl walks towards the horizon, contemplating both paths. Oftentimes, the sky in our dreams is showing us, by divinity, the state of our mind, the qualities of our mind.
If the sky is full of clouds, if they are obscured, it means that we are very asleep: physically and internally, in a spiritual sense. We do not understand where we are at, where we came from, or where we are going. If the sky is clear, if the sun is rising, that is something very positive, because something is being born in you, something spiritual: virtues, humility, patience, compassion. The full moon will often reflect moral pain because it is related to the lunar forces. We know that the moon, physically, is mechanical, and it has great influence on our planet in terms of menstruation in women, the flowing of the tides, and a lot of animal life on our planet is regulated by the moon. Even crimes rates are deeply affected by the lunar influence. We even have the term “lunatic,” relating to those people whose minds are very diseased. The moon is a symbol of suffering, and depending on how full it is, this determines for us the magnitude of whatever suffering we are going to experience. These are warnings from divinity, not meant to punish or put fear in the soul, but to help us be conscious, to be prepared for life. If a person is sick with cancer, it is important that he or she knows the diagnosis from the doctor. Our doctor is our Divine Mother, and she shows us within dreams what is most necessary for us, what we need to be cautious about, to be prepared for, to be watchful. Some people, their recurring dream might be their childhood home. Maybe you wake up in your old house where you grew up. You see your parents there, your family. These can also be a recurring, initiator, unifying symbol. Your divine parents often come in the form of your physical parents, and seeing them is important. We need to see divinity, who often takes the form of our physical parents, to teach us something symbolic. Another recurring dream could be something like a car, an object. Some people dream of cars. A car is a symbol of knowledge. It is a vehicle of the mind. How you drive is how you drive your mind. So if you’re being shown a car in your dreams, it could be teaching you about how you’re using your mind in your daily life. Are you driving off the cliff? Are the wheels falling off? Or are you on the road, arriving to your spiritual destination, with your loved ones, your friends, with your spiritual family? Beautiful symbols. They repeat depending on the person. Not all people will have the same recurring dream, but these are some common ones, some interesting ones. The car can also symbolize the internal bodies: our emotional body, the astral body, the mental body, the causal body. Beautiful symbols. So when you recognize what that recurring dream is, you can take it, concentrate upon it, imagine it, and enter it willingly. This is often very useful for after you’ve just woken up from bed. Maybe you wake up in the middle of the night after having a recurring dream, something vivid, something profound, and you want to go back to sleep. You want to re-enter that dream. You want to enter it consciously. You want to see it for what it is, to confront it, live it, experience it more, and even transcend it for something more divine. So the first clue is to not move your body when you wake up. We talked about this in How to Remember Dreams. Don’t open your eyes. You wake up. You are in bed again. You just returned to your body, perhaps early in the morning, 3 or 4 am. This is very common for people. Close your eyes, concentrate, and relax. Remember the dream you just left. Before, you had the dream. You experienced it. You brought the memory back into your physical brain. Now when you wake up in bed, you want to try to maintain the lucidity of that state, the clarity, the magic, and then, you are going to focus on it. You are going to imagine it, and you are going to fall asleep. In principle you are going to meditate on it. 
Meditation in the Sacred Arcana
This process is beautifully symbolized by The Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah. You see the first 3 arcana, the first 3 laws of the sacred tarot represented here. These 3 cards represent this entire practice, the essence of meditation, the essence of becoming conscious in dreams.
These are beautiful symbols from the Egyptian pantheon, but they’re not exclusive or limited to Egyptian mythology. They are eternal principles related to the consciousness. The tarot are often depicted with Egyptian symbols because it is most convenient for our understanding, particularly within Western esotericism. It is not to say that the tarot themselves, what they represent, is literal to the cards themselves. We use art to reflect consciousness, and these beautiful art forms show us something very luminous and spiritual. They are archetypes. They are principles and forces. They represent the qualities and states of divinity, and how we must practice if we want to enter consciously into dreams. Numbers are in themselves something intuitive. Rather than just being mere quantities, they are qualities of the spirit. They represent forces, eternal truths. 
The first card of the tarot is The Magician. He is a masculine principle. He is the Divine Father that initiates spiritual life. The staff in his hand is a symbol of willpower, and he stands above a cubic stone, mastering the stone of our energies, the foundation of our spiritual life, our vital force. Our vital energy, the vital body, is really the foundation of our spiritual practice. If you want to know more about how to work with the vital energy, you can study The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor.
In synthesis, this magician stands upon a stone, because his foundation is in the work of conserving and transforming energy. By saving psychological, emotional, physical, vital and spiritual energy, we empower our consciousness. We learn to stand spiritually. We are no longer weak people, vulnerable, victims of circumstances. We can concentrate on anything and not get distracted. We learn to see life for what it is, symbolized by the eyes of Ra or Horus, seen above the Magician, in the top third of the card. These eyes of the spirit are the sign of the infinite, the continuum of conscious awareness, remembering ourselves physically and when we sleep. Those stars behind the Magician represent illuminated spiritual qualities when the mind is very serene and clear, calm, dispassionate. If you have dreams of seeing beautiful stars in the sky, that is very positive, because it represents that the Divine Father is present with you. There are objects on the card: a vase and a sword. These are deep symbols, representing the duality of sexuality, which is also talked about in The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. They represent masculine and feminine energies that we can learn to work with, to develop concentration. So with concentration, you are bringing to attention the dream that you just experienced. You focus on it. You remember it. But looking at it, unwaveringly without distraction, is not enough. You have to see it with deep, vibrant clarity. That is the quality of imagination, the next card: The High Priestess. 
She is the Divine Mother Kundalini who holds an Ankh cross above her breast, a symbol of spiritual life. She feeds her children with wisdom, from an open book, and her dress is a mantle of stars, signifying her absolute perfection.
She represents for us, sitting there, the passive quality of the consciousness. Or better said, the passivity of our mind. She is active, reading a book. She is looking from behind her mysterious veil, because she sees through illusion. She is the quality of imagination: the ability to take an image, such as from a dream, and to see it, to look at it with a lot of depth, range, color, hues. She has a profound, penetrative insight, the ability to see internal images, to see them for what they are. With imagination we are looking and seeing―with our mind’s eye, with a calm mind and an active consciousness―the dream itself. The Magician is active because in the beginning it takes a lot of willpower to concentrate. But with imagination, with the Divine Mother, we learn to receive wisdom. That is why she sits on a throne. She is passive, not in that she allows bad things to happen, or doesn’t act, but she is perfect stillness of the lake of our mind. When the lake of our mind is calm, it can reflect images. If the surface of our waters, if our mental states are agitated, we will only see chaos. So the more equanimitous and calm we are in mind, the more we will see. This is why it is very beautiful, wonderful, and opportune to wake up from a dream, and to have it fresh within our mind. We can go back to sleep, we can concentrate upon the dream, we can imagine it, so that we can awaken. 
This is the third card of the tarot: The Empress. The Empress is the perfected soul. She has 12 stars above her head, relating to the Zodiac, the laws of eternity, and many beautiful spiritual archetypes.
A beautiful bird representing the Holy Spirit flocks to her. She sits on a cubic stone of perfection, a symbol of the purity, the clarity, and the magnitude of awakening. She is the ruler of our spiritual kingdom, and she represents for us the fact and quality of going back to sleep, and reliving the recurring dream. When you concentrate upon it and imagine it with clarity, hold it with your attention and fall asleep, you will awaken again in the dream. You will relive it in full activity. This is the opportunity, when you awaken, to go from that dream to explore the astral dimension. 
Separating from Dreams
Now, the initiator element is useful for this practice. But it is not the only dream we can use. This principle can be used with any dream experience. It just takes practice, takes some skill. But with patience, it can be done.
So, initiate the dream. Begin it again and relive it. The next step, when you’re within the dream, is to know how to separate from it. Some people can do the first step, but not the second, and for that, we need meditation. Meditation teaches us how to separate from illusory dreams, to discriminate what is true and what is false. We can train the consciousness within the daily state of our existence to not react to the different impressions and external stimuli of life. We often go through life asleep, mechanically, with the five centers of the human machine, reacting to different situations, but not really comprehending them, understanding them, seeing them for what they are. So in meditation, we pray to our Divine Mother. We ask for strength to awaken within a dream, and have the strength necessary to depart from it. Oftentimes people will relive the dream, but then become unaware again. Then a few hours pass, they return to bed, and they lost their chance. If you train yourself within your waking life to not get caught up in dreams, when you learn to meditate on your dreams—your thoughts, your emotions, your movements, your habits, your desires—you can see them for what they are, and no longer feed them the precious energy of your consciousness. We don’t waste energy. We examine dreams and how our ego keeps us asleep and steals that precious part of us that we need to cultivate. Part of this practice in meditation involves becoming drowsy. Become drowsy. Let your body rest. Introspect. Concentrate and remember the events of your day. Examine and imagine the moments of your day in which you were interacting with other people, when you were at different places, when you were involved with life, and look at the ways that you dream. At what moments did you get distracted? When does your mind become confused? When do your emotions make you bewildered, vulnerable and weak? Where do you desires take control of you? If you can’t see those instincts and impulses and thoughts for what they are, and separate from them, it will be very difficult to do this practice, to do the return practice. The return practice is taking the initiator element, concentrating and imagining it, falling asleep, and entering the dream willingly, to return to your dreams, to consciously enter dreams. If you want to be able to enter the dream but then to leave it, at will, you have to train yourself. Achieve the very delicate balance of wakefulness and sleep, when your body is drifting off but you’re very clear. You maintain continuity of remembrance, and look at the ways, in your daily life, that your ego keeps you pulled and dispersed and distracted, pulled in multiple directions. You will gain more strength if you practice this: reviewing your day, retrospecting your day, remembering your day. Look at yourself, find your weaknesses, and comprehend them. In this way you take your initiator element willingly. You have a robust attention, a very well-developed imagination, and you can enter with great ease into your dreams, and then leave them if you wish to explore the astral world. 
Four Blessings: Steps for Entering Dreams
As you are practicing this exercise, you will experience what is known in Tibetan Buddhism as the Four Blessings. These are the different steps for entering dreams.
The first is Revealing Light. The second is Increasing Light. The third is Immediate Realization, and the last is Inner Profound Illumination. Every dream manifests through these four blessings. We have to learn to recognize what they are, because they are an eternal process. Every time you go to bed, every time you go to sleep, you go through these stages—consciously or unconsciously. The latter tends to be the case for most people. But if you learn to understand what these are, you can very intentionally comprehend and initiate your dream Tantric Buddhist practice. But it takes a lot of efforts. We have to be very patient with ourselves, and to have some tenacity to try this every time we go to sleep, to try to recognize these states whenever we sleep. These are known as the Four Lights within Tibetan Buddhism. More specifically, we call them the Four Blessings. 
Revealing Light
Revealing Light is perceived during the first hours of sleep. Many people report, when they go to bed, hearing a cacophony of voices or sounds. These are the voices of our different egos. They are residual impressions from our day that are manifesting within our consciousness.
So if you are paying attention as you are resting in bed or sleeping, you will start to hear these sounds. They are like fragmentary, broken expressions of half-truths. Some of them are male voices. Some of them are female. Some of them are animals. These are representations of our own ego, the multiplicity of our defects, which are slowly starting to detach themselves from the physical body. So as you are transitioning into dreaming, and you are trying to become conscious of your dreams, to learn to enter dreams willingly, you will start to see and perceive these things. They are memories, impressions, images, conversations, sounds, lights, and many different thoughts that flow and flux, that churn, through association, and seemingly without order. They emerge from the abyss of our consciousness, and if you’re watching them, you see them emerge, sustain, and then pass. You want to maintain this state when you are entering dreams, to have enough distance from those elements that you don’t get caught up, identified or hypnotized by them. You want to see them for what they are, and just watch, like you are a director making a film and different actors are coming onto the stage and screen of your awareness. These impressions are often very undesirable. Some people get very uncomfortable when they recognize that our psychology is riddled with faults. There may be snippets of conversations from earlier in our day that are tinged with negative emotion: anger, resentment, pride, fear. This Revealing Light is named so because you’re starting to tear the veil to the internal worlds. Such perceptions, coming from our interior, are often qualities that are undigested. They just emerge, and when we look at them and comprehend them, they lose their power and they pass. These egos emerge because as we are entering the astral world, our defects and our desires are beginning to detach themselves from the five cylinders of our human machine. So this is very good if you’re seeing this! It is important. It is necessary. 
Increasing Light
Do not lose your concentration, and your observation. Be present. In this way, you enter Increasing Light.
As your sleep becomes much deeper, the residual impressions and the train of discriminatory thoughts fortunately dissolve. They dissipate. They cease, and in the stillness and vastness of your consciousness, you start to receive a very profound and invigorating astral energy. These are the astral forces that are separating your consciousness from your physical body. Many people report, at this stage, the electrical sensations of departing within the astral body. Your light is increasing, because you are beginning to transition to the astral world. You are about to achieve a conscious astral projection. Some people get very frightened by this stage, because the sensations are often very unusual. If you have not felt or experienced them before, you can be very frightened, mostly because they are unknown. But they are not dangerous! We do this all the time, but we’re just not aware of it. We are not conscious of it. We do not remember it. With familiarity and practice, you will start to look forward to these sensations, these psychic vibrations, and welcome them, because they are indicating to you that you are on the right path. You are about to enter the astral world consciously. You are entering the threshold. Some people get very excited, or fearful, and they may lose the experience. But with meditation, with familiarity, with practice, you can learn to train yourself to experience this state again and again, so that you do not get afraid of it. You do not fear it. You allow it to happen. Just like you breathe, just like you drink water, just like your heart beats, these are a part of you, in order to sustain your physical life. In a sense it is your spiritual life that is sustained. You are allowed to enter the internal worlds so that your body can rest. It is a function of nature. Nothing is dangerous about it, and you will come back to your body when it is time. So, nothing to fear there. So, do not be afraid, and do not get identified. Do not get caught up in it. 
Immediate Realization
In this way, if you maintain your vigilance, and allow yourself to enter the astral plane, to consciously astral project and enter the dream of your choice, you enter Immediate Realization.
With our practice we are going beyond the first two lights to experience two superior lights. This here is the awakened consciousness. It is direct knowledge of the astral world. It is Immediate Realization because it happens in the moment. We are awake. We know that we have entered, and now we can begin to enter the dream, or revisit the dream of our choice, to understand it, and even to go beyond it. So this happens oftentimes, in these recurring dreams, this Immediate Realization, often in an unconscious way. Sometimes we may have a dream or go through a recurring dream, where we are acting in it and seeing it, but not realizing it. Here in this practice, we want to be intentional. We want to be specific. We want to take the unconscious process and become aware of it. We know we are in the astral body. We are seeing things for what they are. 
Inner Profound Illumination
But there is another stage, something much deeper than merely being awake in the astral plane. We have what is called Inner Profound Illumination.
These are the most elevated mystical states that are possible for us. This is when we are guided by our inner God, when we are speaking face to face with divinity, through symbols, through messages, through teachings. Inner Profound Illumination is when the ego is not there. There is only the soul and the Being. So, the recurring dream is useful for this because it helps you enter the astral plane. You relive the dream, then you have the possibility of stepping away from it. You have the Immediate Realization that you are awake in your astral body, and now you have the choice to go explore that dimension and to invoke your inner God. So with Inner Profound Illumination we invoke divinity, and our Divine Mother and our Divine Father can concur to our call to teach us what we need to know. Usually these states that are the most illuminated do not have any type of egotistical element if we’re very dedicated. In the beginning, it will take some practice to get there. Preparation for Death
This process of entering the Four Lights, the Four Blessings, returning to dreams consciously, is really preparing us for death.
Sleep and death are the same process. We have explained this before. If we lack cognizance of our internal life, if we do not see anything, it means that we will be unconscious when we die. So we have to learn to train and awaken ourselves now, to prepare for these states after death. This is the principal tenet of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thödol, and by awakening in the astral, we can investigate superior states and we can talk to people who have died. 
The Four Blessings in themselves help us enter the heavenly realms represented by this diagram of the Tree of Life. These four blessings are a form of conscious death. You learn to willingly enter the dream, enter the dreaming world, the world of the dead, so that we can resurrect within it, to go beyond our dreams, to leave our dreams behind. This is a miniature form of death and resurrection. As stated in the Qur’an, Surah 39, verse 42:
It is Allah that takes the souls of men at death, and those that die not, he takes during their sleep. Those on whom he has passed the decree of death, he keeps back from returning to life. For the rest he sends to their bodies for a term appointed. Verily in this are signs for those who reflect. ―Qur’an 39:42
So awakening to the Four Blessings will allow us to explore the heavenly realms. This is why we practice the return practice.
The Guardian Angel
To consciously enter dreams, to go beyond them and to see the higher realities, and in the process of this, we can work with what is known as the Guardian Angel.
We can work with a part of our Being that can help us to awaken within dreams. The Guardian Angel is very popular within our culture, especially Christianity. But often those symbols are now caricatures of a distant reality. The Guardian Angel has many powers within the soul. It is a part of our inner divinity who helps guard us in our spiritual life, our spiritual path. But more importantly, it teaches us how to consciously access our dreams. So we explained previously how the Being has many manifold expressions that all work in unity with the diverse functions of our being, which become perfected as we transform our psychology. We mentioned a few before like Morpheus and the Maiden of Memories, but the Guardian Angel is very distinct. This Guardian Angel is something very special and unique to us, and can help us maintain continuity of attention within the dreaming state. Once we are there, we can call upon our Guardian Angel within dreams to perform many magical works for us, which are very universal and unlimited. The authentic knowledge of the Guardian Angel was preserved amongst the initiatory Mystery Schools and was maintained within distinct monasteries and orders from antiquity. So we can invoke our Guardian Angel as we are falling to sleep, but also in the dream state itself, when we return to a dream, in order to take us to where we want to go, to go beyond ourselves. Initiates of dream yoga discipline can awaken internally, and when we are clear, awake, ecstatic with joy, we can work with the Guardian Angel. You can learn more about this in The Perfect Matrimony, for other practices relating to the Guardian Angel besides merely transporting yourself in dreams and helping you to guard your spiritual life. Exercises
In conclusion, throughout the day, practice self observation in the Key of SOL.
Before falling asleep, pray to your Divine Mother and Guardian Angel to help you consciously enter the internal worlds. Upon awaking from a dream, concentrate and visualize it while falling asleep again, praying to divinity to help you return to it. Lastly, record your dream experiences in your spiritual diary. Questions and Answers
Question: What are these symbols from the spiritual world and how can we recognize them?
Instructor: We kind of touched on them briefly. You will know them by your heart. What is your mood in relation to the dream? How did it impact you? What did you feel? Is it disturbing? Does it make you worry? Does it fill you with remorse? Does it inspire you? In the next lecture we are going to talk about this in great detail: How to Interpret Dreams. We will talk about inspirational knowledge. Usually, a spiritual symbol hits us with a lot of force. We are inspired in the consciousness by the distinct mood and flavor of the dream. We feel in our soul that there’s something unique about it, something out of the ordinary. It has nothing to do with any murky quality, muddled or confused state which can typify most dreams. It is something that is very profound and penetrative. So we talked about that, but also we’re going to go into a lot more depth in the next lecture about this problem specifically: how to recognize dreams from illusions, or better said, visions from illusions. Question: In the astral plane, I don’t have any doubt that I’m experiencing something very profound, and more real than the waking world. However upon returning to the waking world, sometimes I start doubting my own experiences. Was this part of my own psyche creating these images? Were they really real? These doubts are exacerbated by non-linearity of time and space in the astral plane. Although on a couple of occasions I have seen places that seem to be on another planet, in most cases all objects and places seem to have a quality of the waking world. So I ask myself: how come I never experience or see something I’ve never seen before? I ask myself: if time is relative in the astral plane, then why did people who traveled in the astral plane a thousand years ago not see our time? To see reports of people flying by airplanes, watching TVs and using iPhones? In the same way if time is relative in the astral plane, then why can’t I see our own distant future and technology? Of course I’m not interested in seeing our future, I just want to find a way to validate my experiences in the astral plane. Instructor: So there is a lot going on here, I’ll break down some points. It is common in the beginning to doubt our experiences, to fear that somehow we are going to be manipulated by our own illusions, that our ego and our mind are really projecting the contents of our own subjectivity. This is oftentimes compounded with the difficulty of the real nature of the astral plane, which is eternity, beyond the scope of our material temporality and time. You will learn what is real and what is false by meditating. When you look at your own desires and see them for what they are, and learn to be conscious physically, and when you meditate, discriminating images in the astral world becomes easier, because you are transferring the same skill from your physical life to your internal life. You learn to stop projecting like a film on a screen. When the mind stops projecting, when it is clear and luminous, when you have reached the Immediate Realization of the consciousness, you see reality. Even if you see things objectively within dreams, it is important to have caution—to learn to compare the vision with physical facts, to compare data. What was the dream about? How does it relate to our daily life? If it doesn’t relate, then it is a lie. But if it is teaching you something about something physical, what is going on in your daily experience, teaching you about an ordeal or problem, a challenge, you can be more certain that there is more objectivity there and that you are receiving something spiritual. When you stop projecting your mind onto the screen of the astral world, you can start to see that dimension for what it is—whether it is traveling to other planets, seeing cities and buildings, seeing landscapes, seeing the future, seeing architecture from other eras and ages, whether from the past like in Atlantis, or perhaps even in the future, with the Koradi. All these things can play out within our vision if we have clarified it. So, be patient. You can start to see those things more objectively and more consistently the more you meditate. Turn off the projector of your mind. Do not let it dominate yourself in your daily life. Work hard to differentiate in your waking states what is real from what is false, and in that way you will start to have more clarity and intuition about how to discriminate what your dreams are about. In that way, when you actually see things that are objective, you will not interpret them egotistically, because you could be very awake internally, and yet you are going to be interpreting things in the wrong way. That is a very dangerous place to be. Many people in different movements have made very grave errors, because they mistook an authentic vision which was true, and turned it into a falsehood, giving it meaning that is not there. It is a very deep topic. We will talk more about it in the next lecture. I hope this will suffice. Question: We understand that proper invocation involves spontaneity, sincerity, a willingness to experiment. My question is: in working with invoking the Guardian Angel, do you have suggestions of movements, mantra, prayers, and how? Instructor: Sure. “In the Name of Christ, by the Power of Christ, for the Majesty of Christ, come unto me, my Guardian Angel! Divine Father, bring my Guardian Angel unto me. Help me to perform this magical work.” Speak from your heart. You can call to divinity in that way. The best formula is from your own being, from your soul. You can say, “My Guardian Angel, help me!” when you’re in that state. Often you will get a response if the time is ripe, if you are ready, and if what will be offered is something that you can use for your spiritual benefit. That often happens with invoking our Divine Mother and Divine Father too. Divinity will come to us, or give us an experience, right there. Sometimes the landscape can change. Many things can happen. But really, the best invocation is whatever is most sincere. You do not really need a script. Your heart knows what is best. But if you want something to begin with, you can try that. Question: What is a crab a symbol of esoterically? Instructor: The crab is the symbol of Cancer in the Zodiac. There is a deep relationship there. You may have dreams of crabs. It could be related to the zodiacal sign of Cancer, to the waters. Crabs are shellfish, and in a sense shellfish are a symbol of our ego: lunar forces, lunar entities. My understanding is very limited, so you can take this with some discretion, depending on whatever it is you have experienced. Because only you can really judge and ascertain the meaning of what these crabs may be symbolizing in a dream of yours. It is good to really open our intuition more to our own judgement and wisdom from our meditations, than to perhaps look for explanations online. However, my limited knowledge is that the crab could relate to the Zodiac. If you dream of shellfish, it could represent perhaps egotistical elements, desires that live in the waters. This is why in the Book of Leviticus, I believe in the Old Testament, stipulated for Jewish dietary guidelines not to consume shellfish. Some people interpret this literally, but I like to look at things within the astral language presented in the Old Testament. The shellfish could represent, like lobsters specifically―maybe not crabs, but lobsters―can relate to ego or egos. But there are dual elements and dual relationships within any symbol. There could be positive and negative meanings embedded all at the same time. This is the real mystery of dreams, because while there is a literal narrative within the experience, the symbols can operate on multiple conceptual dimensions all at once. There could be 15 different things happening all at once, in terms of how the symbol plays out in your dream. So rather than looking at someone’s definition of it, it is good to meditate on what was going on in the dream. What was the situation? What was the impact or mood of the experience? How did it play our in your vision? What was the situation? What was your relationship to the situation? How did it unfold? What was the problem or the ordeal or the storyline related to that experience? Because there are a lot of elements that are condensed within a dream, and this is why dreams are so powerful. This is why divinity does not speak oftentimes to us in a very literal way, and when he does, it is often very succinct, because symbols communicante much more than any language physically. So I hope that satisfies your question or curiosity. But that’s just my limited understanding. Question: My dreams have the same recurring element of water. The water is always different, but water is usually present when I can remember my dreams. Should I focus on water as I fall asleep, or a dream that I can remember that had water present? Instructor: You can do both. It is interesting that you dreamed of water. Water is a universal symbol. We often talk about its meaning within the writings of Samael Aun Weor, who explains that water is related to our sexual, creative, vital energies, and the quality of those waters are depicting for us the quality of our psychological states. You can focus on water. You can imagine it, or you can even pick out a dream―which is better, one that you actually experienced―and visualize that quality and its impact on your consciousness. That’s the best approach. Because when you have an internal experience, you can use that and should use those images as meditation symbols, like the recurring dream, the initiator element, the unifying element. They’re showing us something deep and significant. So imagine the image that you saw in your dreams. If you have any other questions, feel free to unmute yourself. Ok, there are no more comments or questions, we will conclude. I thank you all for coming! We will continue I believe in the beginning of October, the lecture on How to Interpret Dreams. So, I thank you all! Much appreciated. 
We have discussed many methods for awakening consciousness within dreams. Today we will provide practical techniques for how to remember them. We will first explain why dream recall is important, followed by ways to record our deepest spiritual experiences. By remembering everything we experience, we can cultivate a rich spiritual life.
Subconsciousness and Consciousness
Although we might have great success with awakening in dreams, it is still possible that we do not remember them.
This can sound confusing or contradictory. How is it possible that we can awaken within our dreams and yet not remember them? While surprising, this problem is clearly reflected in our daily life. Do you remember what you ate for breakfast a week ago? Can you recall within your mind the route you took across your neighborhood or city to get to a job interview? Do you remember everything you witnessed, said, and heard? Or are there gaps in your memory, even though you know you were engaged in diverse situations with people? We live in a paradoxical state. We think we are conscious, and yet we cannot recall all the facts of our experiences. We believe we are alert, and yet there is much that we cannot remember despite our interactions with the world. We might remember snippets of conversations, images of people and places in our mind, and yet there are gaps. Memories can be fuzzy. While we can recall whom we met, we might not remember what we thought, felt, or said. We might also forget what we were told regarding minor or even consequential issues. In some cases, we remember nothing at all. Some would argue that it is impossible to remember everything. However, all the world scriptures emphasize the need to know ourselves completely, to remember ourselves in relation to every aspect of life. Likewise, each world religion emphasizes the possibility of becoming something more. The same dynamic applies to our ability to remember and recall our experiences, to bridge our subconscious and conscious worlds. Here is what Samael Aun Weor had to say about this topic: 32. Our head is a tower with two rooms, the cerebrum and the cerebellum.
Possessing a keen memory is important in our Dream Yoga studies. If you cannot remember your dreams upon awakening from rest, you are missing out on an entire world of data. There are entire dimensions or realities to be known. To ignore that is to ignore a huge percentage of your existence.
An average person might sleep eight hours a day, which, as a third of the day, constitutes a third of one’s life. Someone who lives for 75 years spends 25 of them asleep, or 9,125 days. Just as you can imagine, there is a lot of missing time spent in unconsciousness. Yet we also know by experiencing a lucid dream that there is much to be discovered even in a single moment. This is how we can understand the magnitude of being spiritually asleep. Also, if you cannot remember your dreams, it is most likely because you are not conscious of yourself during the day. We have already established the relationship between waking and dreaming life. They are two sides of the same coin. If you want to explore one, you need to know the other. 
Mechanical vs. Conscious Memory
In order to advance this discussion, let us explain two distinct types of memory.
To remember signifies to “keep or bear (someone or something) in mind,” to “retain or preserve unforgotten in the memory.” This is from the Old French remembrer, to “remember, recall, or bring to mind.” The prefix “re-”means “again.” Therefore, to remember is to bring a memory or experience again to one’s attention. Despite these specific definitions, we need to consider how memory recall has diverse qualities. Memory, in the conventional sense, is often unreliable, as you see in the image to the left. Memories can change, fade, or disappear altogether, precisely because they can be impermanent. Or if such memories are significant, we do not tend to see them objectively for what they are. Memories can also fluctuate and morph, primarily through how we narrate them to others. We might hear a story in one way and tell it in another. Stories can change from person to person, to the point that we cannot recognize the originals. This is the basis of gossip, whereby a falsification gains power and influence because it may contain a half-truth, a kernel of reality with the shell of multiple embellishments. Most of our memory is egotistical. By this we typically recall information and experiences through the filter of a self. If we are angry, we recall the injustices we’ve suffered from someone in the past. If we are afraid, we might recall how we grew up in poverty and do not want to repeat its miseries. If we are proud, we relish in the memories of victory and success. These are thoughts, memories, images, or experiences related to some event. It really does not take any effort to attend to such states. It is simply instinctual, mechanical, unintentional. We do not will it to be. It merely arrives through association. Mechanical memory is related to the ego, the self, and our sense of self, as we’ve explained throughout this course, is the origin of dreams. A memory is a form of dreaming. It is a crystallized representation of the past in the mind. When we are engrossed in memory, we tend to ignore the present. This is how we’ve been able to assert that we are dreaming all the time. If we wish to advance in dream yoga discipline, it is essential to develop a different type of memory that is fundamental, accurate, and reliable. What we are referencing is conscious, intentional, objective. It is known as work memory: the perception and remembrance of the real. Work memory is the conscious capacity to accurately recall and factually remember our experiences. The consciousness has a form of memory that is objective and unfalsified. It is the result of putting our Essence, our consciousness, to work, to perceive reality as it is. This means that we do not filter anything through fear, attachment, craving, affliction, identification, or selfhood. We merely recall what is without preference. 
Work memory is developed through conscious imagination, as we see with the image on the right. Conscious imagination is intentional. It is willed. It is purposeful. Such perceptions arrive, sustain, and cease according to our volition. When you imagine something consciously, you see it without an interpreter, without a self. Your imagination clarifies and expands like multiple mirrors augmenting the light of a candle. You perceive more without any distortion or flaw, like a reflective and polished surface.
This clear seeing is often accompanied by a lack of an “I,” or sense of “me, myself.” Since it is pure seeing without an interpreter, one can arrive at an objective assessment of phenomena. We often reiterate in these studies the need to remember the Being. The Being, our divine nature, is impersonal. It is pure perception without a filter. When we remember the Being, we are bringing to our attention, to our awareness, a state of consciousness that is devoid of any “I,” and yet it is characterized by spontaneous joy, profound insight, and perfect serenity. This is what can consistently and precisely recall dream experiences without fault, because it is free from mistakes in observation. Samael Aun Weor also explained in The Great Rebellion how work memory involves psychological photographs of different stages in our development, to visualize and compare how we were behaving in the past to what we are now, followed by what we might become. This can provide inspiration to work on ourselves and change, to possess greater motivation to awaken within dreams. Work memory allows us to recall our dreams, yet this skill is developed through training our consciousness to accurately remember the events of our daily life, and to see the connections between them. 
Atrophy of Memory
The reason why we cannot remember our dreams is because our conscious memory is atrophied.
Any muscle lacking exercise atrophies. If you refuse to engage your body in some type of work, your muscles will become weak. The same with the consciousness. The same with our ability to recall experiences. It is crucial to remember our internal experiences, for as I stated, we tend to go through our physical and internal existences without cognizance. There are possibilities accessible to us when we dream that can inform our daily life, wisdom that is so profound that we do not need to rely on anyone or anything for spiritual guidance. Mystical experiences constitute the ethical compass of the Gnostic. Without this connection, our spirituality is deficient, because we are not aware of the genuine messages we receive from divinity regarding how to live. The fact is that we might be traveling to the temples of the White Lodge to be helped, and yet we do not bring those experiences back with us to our body. This is like the sci-fi television show Severance, where employees at a certain company receive an operation that splits their identities. Whenever they come to work, they are one person and can only remember their life at the job. When they leave the building, they are someone else with a completely different set of memories. Even these two distinct personalities are colloquially termed “innies” and “outies.” This is our reality. We live two lives, a physical and internal existence. Only one who has awakened in dreams is conscious that there is another reality. However, those memories must be brought back for there to be an integration of the psyche. Here is what Samael Aun Weor said about the topic: The ego lives in the internal worlds and travels to different places while our physical body sleeps. There, within the internal worlds, we are exposed to tests many times. It is within the temples of the internal worlds where we receive the initiation. Therefore, it becomes necessary to remember everything that we do outside the body. Thus, with the instructions given in this book, every human being will be able to awaken the consciousness and remember his internal experiences.
Let’s explore why we might not remember our dreams.
Psychological Integration, Equilibrium, and Alignment
Dream recall is facilitated by the full integration, equilibrium, and alignment of the psyche.
We spoke previously about the five centers of the human machine. If our intellect, emotions, movements, instincts, and sexuality are at odds with each other, then we live in a state of psychological confusion. If we think one thing, feel another, and do something contrary to both, we suffer from a lack of inner clarity. For example, if someone insults us, we might be filled with self-justifying thoughts. We also might experience a barrage of desires for retaliation. Lastly, we are also torn between fight or flight impulses. These related but disparate reactions all occur within a moment. However, they demonstrate that our consciousness is fragmented, dispersed. We lack a sense of cohesion, which is unity and peace. We’ve also explained how our consciousness needs to be super active while our personality and mind must be passive. This allows for our human machine to operate optimally, with balance. Memories from the internal worlds flow better into our human machine when it is passive and integrated. If we train our intellectual center to function consciously, alongside our emotions, movements, instincts, and sexual drives, then we will possess a better vehicle for receiving experiences from the higher worlds. 
The best technique for balancing the five centers is meditation. In this way, we can leave our bodies behind to experience the superior states of the Being. While out of the body, we witness and perceive beyond the limitations of the ego. If our human machine is healthy, balanced, and integrated, then such memories of our internal experiences can flow freely down through the silver cord, the Antakharana thread (like in the image to the right), to be permanently established within our interior.
Moving Upon Awakening
Besides a lack of psychological integration, there are other reasons why we might not remember dreams. A major one is that we usually move upon awakening.
This is the first and most important step for dream recall: don’t move. It is very simple, but easy to forget or ignore out of habit. Normally upon awakening, you might feel agitated or antsy after having slept for eight hours. The natural compulsion is to stretch, move, or adjust your position. Despite these tendencies, it is very important to become conscious of yourself and to make the deliberate choice not to move. Why is this, you might wonder? In the beginning, our dream memories, because they belong to the subconsciousness and not the consciousness, can be delayed from transferring into our physical brain. It is normal for dream experiences to take some time to transfer from the astral body into our brain, especially if we’ve never trained ourselves to do this before. Just as you would not click cancel while in the middle of an important download, likewise you should not move upon awakening. This is because the astral body, while a material and energetic vehicle, is more fluidic. Ever watch the reflection of a pool of water after it is disturbed? The images on it its surface become distorted. However, when it is still, water can reflect with perfect clarity, vibrancy, and translucence. The same with the astral body after it returns to our physical body. When you awake in bed, your astral body naturally integrates with your physical body after having been engaged in activities in the astral world. You have basically just gotten back into your car again after a night’s journey outside of it. Now you have the opportunity to transfer any dream memories into your physical brain. You do so by making as little to no movement as possible upon awakening. When the astral body reintegrates, its memories and values are still present in the form of images and experiences. They naturally reside within the translucent nature of the astral body. In such a delicate moment, you can try to remember your dreams by not moving. You will have greater efficiency, accuracy, and sustainability in this, because you do not agitate the fluidic composition of your astral body. When there is no ripple of movement, you make it easier for dream recall to happen. If you move upon awakening, even if you remember some fragments of dreams, it will become increasingly difficult to recall them as you engage in your daily activities. Just as the stars of the night vanish with the rising of the sun, so do our dream memories dissipate as we engage with the responsibilities of life. This is why we have to discipline ourselves not to move upon awakening and to concentrate on remembering dreams before we move in bed. Some people really struggle with this. Perhaps some are too mechanical and feel like they have the move first thing upon awakening. If this is a problem, train yourself and do not beat yourself up if you initially fail. This is a lifestyle. Take your time, but practice consistently so that you make a new habit. Others have difficulty getting up for work and therefore need an alarm. Perhaps this is problematic because it is disturbing to your dream recall exercise. If you make an alarm to wake you since you sleep deeply, set it ten minutes before you need to get up and move. Make sure the alarm is not so annoying that it distracts you, but can wake you up in time for you to try and remember your experiences. 
Retrospection Meditation
While you are awake and bed and have not moved, it is now time for a retrospection exercise.
Retrospection is the conscious review of our memories. We perform this to help us remember what we witnessed and experienced while out of the body. We also perform retrospection meditation daily as a means of strengthening our capacity to remember events during the day, so that our conscious memory is exercised and strengthened. This is thoroughly explained in our course on Gnostic Meditation. I will synthesize this practice for you here. When you find yourself in your body again, concentrate upon any lingering memories that are still present with you since you dreamed. If your dreams are fuzzy, distant, or obscured, concentrate upon the last thought you had as you awoke in bed. This last thought will relate to the last dream you experienced. You want to focus on either the last thought or image you have in your mind and trace it back in sequence, for the latest to the earliest. You may find that if you focus on the freshest memory, you will get a better foothold in the door between the vigil and dreaming states. The earlier dreams will be easier to access. Sometimes it just takes one dream memory to lead into the rest. It is important to balance drowsiness when performing this retrospection exercise. This might not be hard for some people upon awakening, since one has just rested for eight hours. However, it can be easy to fall asleep again if you’re particularly tired, so it might take some discipline to maintain the threshold of drowsiness without falling asleep again. This is something you can only know through familiarity and practice. 
The Mantra Raom Gaom
However, lying still might not be enough. Even after concentrating upon our last thought, image, or memory, the door to the internal worlds can feel shut. In this case, it becomes necessary to work with mantra.
We provided an entire lecture on Mantras for Astral Projection, where we explained how sacred sounds can activate conscious abilities. The following mantra, Raom Gaom, is most effective for dream recall. Samael Aun Weor explained how each word is divided and prolonged into two syllables, like this:
Rrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaa… Ooooooooommmmmmmmm… Gaaaaaaaaa… Ooooooooommmmmmmmm…
Do not worry about whether you can trill the consonant R, because these mantras are performed mentally. You only need to imitate the sound in your mind. We do not vocalize the mantra upon awakening because the vibrations of the sound will agitate the astral body. We instead pronounce Raom Gaom mentally. Samael Aun Weor explained that this mantra is like dynamite. When you mentally pronounce this mantra, you concentrate upon a memory and hold your attention upon it. The mystical sound within your consciousness will, with repetition, sincerity, and prayer, open the caves of your subconsciousness and allow for its contents to come out. If you have absolutely no memory of your dreams in the beginning, then this mantra will be even better for you. Concentrate upon the mantra in your mind. Reflect upon the contents of your mind with serene attention, and then wait. Suddenly, memories associated with your dream experiences will flood into your mind. This often occurs as we simultaneously pray to our Divine Mother to show us the rest of our experiences, to help us remember. We do not need formula, but simply, “Help me, my Mother!” The more natural the prayer, the better. 
Abracadabra
To strengthen our conscious capacity to remember, we can also vocalize the mantra Abracadabra for one hour daily. It comes from the Hebrew אברה קדברה Ebrah K’Dabri, which means "I create what I speak." It has traditionally been used as an incantation and magical seal for amulets, talismans—and now—T-shirts.
This mantra, due to its exposure to humanity, has been greatly denigrated and vulgarized. However, it is exceptionally powerful for strengthening not only our consciousness, but our thymus gland. There are many benefits to this exercise. However, I only want to highlight its contexts for dream yoga, since the vowel A—pronounced as the A in Father—helps to activate the pulmonary chakra, whose power is past life memories and dream recall.
Glorian Publishing produced a video on how to pronounce the mantra, whereby you do so in its entirety, and then subsequently remove a letter off the end of each repetition, prolonging the vowels. For example, Abracadabra becomes Abracadabr, followed by Abracadab and Abracada, and so on, until finally you are reduced to the vowel A. Afterward, you repeat the whole process again with Abracadabra. For more information, you can reference the article and video from Glorian.
People wonder why this mantra is diminutive through each repetition until you are reduced to the single vowel A. The reason is that when you retrospect your dreams or even your life, you are slowly increasing your resolution, reducing your vision to an even more distant and primeval moment in your experience, before all the complications of life eclipsed it. When you perform this mantra to remember distant moments of your past, you sequentially strip away the superfluous aspects of the personality to arrive at the simplicity of childhood, whereby the tendencies for much of our current, everyday life originated. Raom Gaom is great for when you first wake up. But if you still struggle to remember dreams with facility, then you might want to consider using Abracadabra as well. Prolong and sing the mantra with all of your being. 
The Ma Ma, Pa Pa, Ba Ba Mantra
There is another series of mantras to help access memories, especially from one’s childhood. They are the mantras Ma Ma, Pa Pa.
These sacred sounds are the first syllables children pronounce. The letter M relates to water and the Divine Mother. The consonant P relates to the Latin Pater, the Divine Father. The vowel A activates the pulmonary chakras, related to past life memories. When children are born, they breathe and cry, since their lungs and chakras come into activity. People ignore why children really cry at birth. We often have a very simplistic view of children, that somehow as adults, we possess greater intelligence and understanding and that children are helpless. In reality, children are conscious, intuitive, awake. They have not been acculturated into society because they have not yet developed a personality. Their Essence is present and alert, since the world has not yet conditioned their capacities for novelty and imagination. In such moments of birth, children can remember their past lives and how they are now reborn. Therefore it is very unpleasant to remember one’s past mistakes and sufferings with the foreknowledge that such circumstances will repeat in a new cycle. Such memories are part of the consciousness, which process and manifest themselves in the form of images. The perception of internal imagery, as we previously explained, has been known by the terms imagination or clairvoyance. Such memories come into activity when we are born because of the pulmonary chakras, the vowel A, which we exclaim whenever we are born into this world. We do not remember such primitive moments because of acculturation, experience, personality, and the gradual sleep of our consciousness throughout time. However, if we wish to remember our dreams and access greater insights into them, it is necessary to reactivate our lost powers. Jesus stated in the Gospels to become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. This does not mean we become naïve and defenseless. It signifies that we reactivate our work memory, that we resurrect the internal images and abilities of our infancy that have been submerged within our subconsciousness. Such capacities are encoded within our psychological energy and are referenced as atoms, not in the literal sense, but as forces and principles that need to be stimulated and manifested again. Here is what Samael Aun Weor had to say about this practice: …the syllables Ma Ma, Pa Pa, Ba Ba are the first syllables that we articulate in childhood. You can start the initiation with these syllables. You must sing these syllables while assuming an innocent and infantile attitude. You can learn the intonation of these sacred syllables when listening to The Magic Flute of Mozart.
We included a link here to the scene in The Magic Flute of Mozart where the mantras Ma Ma Pa Pa are sung. The innocence and purity of childhood is beautifully reflected in this opera. I highly recommend you listen to it to understand the quality of such a state.
I will also pronounce these mantras for your use now:
Mmmaaaaaaaaa Mmmaaaaaaaaa, Paaaaaaaaa Paaaaaaaaa, Baaaaaaaaa, Baaaaaaaaa
Pronounce them with serenity and happiness, so that your inner child is manifested to your consciousness. 
Dream Journaling
As you start to remember your dreams, it becomes essential that you record them.
The act of recording dreams is significant. Having an accurate record with thorough details regarding each dream, no matter how incoherent or vague, is important for three reasons:
Many dreams might be so complicated, abstract, or disjointed that it becomes difficult to discern what to document. If a dream is hazy, write down whatever general feelings or mood accompany it. You can articulate the thought of idea associated with the dream. If the dream is super crazy and sophisticated, then documenting it with as much detail will help you later in deciphering what it all means. It is better to do more than less, because each entry is a proven record of your psychological states when you go to bed. There might be details of your dreams that seem insignificant, but in reality prove to be crucial later in your analysis. Thoroughly recording your dreams with as much possible detail provides greater data points when assessing, month by month, your general progress in awakening consciousness. It also helps to pay closer attention to what is going on. Plus the act of writing or documenting your ideas, whether on a notepad or an electronic device, goes a long way toward helping your memory be more reliable. You will likely find after adopting this practice that if you stop recording your dreams, it becomes more difficult to remember them, even with a retrospective exercise. It’s good to be consistent with writing dreams down, because any lapse can have medium to long term consequences. We might miss out on really important experiences. Also, any missing piece to our dream yoga discipline can corrode our entire efforts, since all these practices come together to form a cohesive whole. 
Nutrition to Develop Memory
Another method to remember dreams is dietary. It consists of consuming, for breakfast, ground almonds with honey and citrus fruit. These foods are packed with spiritual nutrition to help with work memory and dream recall.
Food not only provides sustenance on a physical, biological level, but spiritual as well. The reason why we are nourished by whole foods is their vital elements, the energies and spiritual forces that help animate our physicality. Ground almonds with honey and citrus fruit are particularly condensed forms of spiritual nutrition, since they are packed with atomic principles for the brain and consciousness. Some things to keep in mind, however. You do not need to make this the only thing you eat for breakfast. It can merely complement your current regiment. Also, if you are allergic to nuts, then you will obviously not be able to eat ground almonds for this dietary stipulation. You can try to consume foods with honey, preferably raw and organic, along with citrus fruit if you can. The better the quality food, the better results. 
The Four Ethers
The spiritual forces that animate our body, as well as make up our food, are known as vital or etheric energy.
Our physical body is constituted by four different forms of ether, some of which play a significant role in the quality of our memories, dream recall, imagination and perception. Similar to an astral body, we even possess a vital body that permeates every atom of our physical body so as to animate it with life. This vehicle has often been shown in Kirlion photography, which was developed to document the living aura of people, animals, plants, and even minerals. Our different ethers determines a lot for us, including the quality of our life, health, perceptions, offspring, and memories. The etheric or vital body is like a solar panel that attracts energy into our physicality every time we go to sleep. One reason why we leave in the astral body every time we sleep is so that the vital body can repair the physical body from its daily activities. Once we return and awake in bed, the vital body is done rejuvenating the physical body. The quality of our etheric vehicle determines dream recall. The vital body is an intermediary between our physical life and the astral body. It is like a conduit or channel whereby our internal values can express out into the world. It also, like a mirror, can reflect internal imagery into our consciousness, if it is polished, maintained, and clean. If our etheric body is sick or polluted from harmful behaviors or substances, then it cannot clearly transmit information and memories into our physical brain. This is why we are very careful in our studies regarding what we eat, drink, and, most importantly, think. The quality of our minds determines a lot for our spiritual well being. This is why we work, through the path of initiation, to purify our psychological environment, our mind, so that we can access the internal worlds with more frequency, profundity, and clarity. There are four ethers. Let us relate how Samael Aun Weor described them: The Vital Body is constituted of four ethers:
These ethers are graded on a spectrum, from more base and coarse to more subtle and refined. The ethers associated with our biology and reproductive abilities are obviously the most basic and material. The ethers associated with our sensorial perceptions, imagination and willpower are more abstract and synthetic. While our biology plays a part in how we perceive physically through our organs, the superior two ethers help energize and catalyze our very being in the physical and internal worlds. They are the fuel that animate the car of both our physical and astral bodies, allowing for that relationship to even exist between them.
While the two inferior ethers drive our physical body, the two superior ethers can be separated and imprinted within our astral body through the process of initiation (See The Secret Path of Initiation). This allows the astral body to better retain and transmit our dream memories to our physical body when we awake from rest. Let us continue with Samael Aun Weor: I learned to liberate the two superior ethers in order to travel with them far away from the physical body during the Second Initiation of the Fire.
If your etheric body is healthy and you conserve its vital energies, then the thread that connects your astral body with your physical brain will become enlivened and strong. This way, you will have greater bandwidth and processing of internal experiences within your physical body, so that you don’t forget anything.
The Maiden of Memories
Samael Aun Weor builds off the two superior ethers in his explanation of the Maiden of Memories. She is part of our unique, idiosyncratic divinity, our Being. She is part of us, and also the divine.
Some people get hung up over the idea that there are parts to the Being, or that divinity is male or female. Do not think of parts as some kind of disassociated fragments, but rather constitutive principles and forces that exist within an infinitude of expression. They can be characterized as having either masculine or feminine characteristics. Together they form our perfect Being. When Arjuna asked Krishna to show him His true form, Krishna manifested as an army of people of diverse appearances. A rabbi in the Midrash (or Jewish biblical commentary) related that when divinity spoke to Moses and the Israelites, His laws and commandments were pronounced all at once in a cacophony of voices, which were too powerful and overwhelming to experience. Therefore, the divine unity always manifests as a multiplicity. The Maiden of Memories is one such expression that seeks to help us remember our dreams. She is described as salient, a sapient soul (sapience referring to authentic wisdom). She thrives within our two superior ethers and can be consciously utilized to enter with us in our astral projections, so that she can help us retain our dream experiences and remember the wisdom we receive in the internal worlds. Here is an explanation and practice from Samael Aun Weor to work with the Maiden of Memories: The sapient Soul expresses herself within these two [superior] ethers. She is the beloved Maiden of our Memories. When seen clairvoyantly, this Maiden looks like a beautiful lady within the Ethereal Body.
We previously explained the mantras La Ra S, which we not only use for conscious astral projections, but also to work with our Maiden of Memories. Pronounce the mantras aloud at first. Then whisper them. Finally, pronounce them in the mind as you fall asleep, meditating and praying.
The Primary Colors and Memory
There are other reasons why we might not remember dreams.
In our lecture on Overcoming Obstacles to Astral Projection, we talked about decorating our homes with the three primary colors: blue, yellow, and red. These represent the three primary, spiritual forces characterized by Affirmation (the Father), Negation (the Son), and Reconciliation (the Holy Spirit). These creative forces permeate all of existence, down to the level of the atom up to the magnitude of a galaxy. Even the three forces can relate to the proton, electron, and neutron, respectively. You might already realize this, but colors have profound significance in dreams. Lighter, happier, and pleasing colors bear positive connotations. Dark, shadowy, or foreboding colors set a negative precedent. Neutral colors are indifferent in dreams. Bold reds can signify lust and passion. Luminous white can indicate psychological purity. Now our brain is a receptacle for spiritual forces. Such forces are characterized in the internal worlds by colors. Our vital body can be illuminated by a beautiful spectrum of color. This is why Tibetan Buddhism refers to the perfected vital vehicle as the Rainbow Body of Liberation. When our brain is energized, manifesting a wide range of colors within the vital body, then internal memories are easier to retrieve. Just as light refracts due to moisture in the air so as to form a rainbow, likewise when we work with the waters of our creative energies, spiritual light refracts and forms a healthy vital aura related to the rainbow. Light, when perfected through spiritual practice, augments into many varieties and colors. The same principle applies to our vital body. Sometimes such vital values, represented by distinct colors, are absent within the student. Other times those vital values are spent outwardly within a materialistic lifestyle rather than being conserved through a spiritual discipline. Likewise, people can forget their dreams due to the overall lack of brain health, which can result from bad habits. There are ways to heal the brain so that we can remember all our dreams. One can petition to the spiritual masters of the higher worlds who are responsible for universal medicine, who can visit sick patients within the internal worlds. They work through the Temple of Alden in the astral world. Some of them are renowned in our own history: Hermes, Hippocrates, and Paracelsus are just a few initiates who spent their lives healing people, both physically and internally. They will often appear like terrestrial doctors, whereby they will place you in a chair underneath a light with the three primary colors. This apparatus allows them to examine your internal bodies so that they can diagnose and treat you. Let us reference what Samael Aun Weor had to say about this problem and how to remedy it: 
Also, there exists within the Gnostic Church a lens with which the colors of the disciple can be examined. When the disciple does not carry all of his complete colors, then he cannot bring the memories into his body. Many times, due to daily preoccupations, these colors remain within the physical body. One must perform this action filled with faith, kneeling, praying to heaven, and begging to be heard. Certainly, the material part of the letter is burned, yet the Astral counterpart goes directly to the hands of the Master to whom the letter is meant. Thus, the Master reads the Astral counterpart of the letter and then proceeds to heal the disciple. —Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of Beelzebub: “The Elixir of Long Life”
You can perform this last practice if everything else is failing you, or if you just want to be sure to remember everything you dream. Incense is important, because frankincense is a spiritual aroma that attracts positivity and the help of the masters.
Some people wonder how a burnt letter can get into the hands of a spiritual master. People might wonder why the masters can’t just use Google. In truth, our prayers, amplified through frankincense, deliver the astral contents of our message. This is much more reliable and profound than sending an email. In fact, it is transformative and moving, especially since a hand written letter is more personal and sincere. Likewise, not all of these masters are incarnated. Therefore, the best way to reach them is through the best search engine: meditation. After performing this practice, you have to be patient for the results, because it takes time to heal ourselves. With practice, you might even have an experience where the master you petitioned appears to you internally using the three primary colors to examine your astral body. Exercises
We will now conclude with practices.
At this point, I would like to open up the floor to questions. Questions and Answers
Question: At least in one state or layer of astral projection, there appears to be three kinds of people. There are people who walk around and do not notice me floating above them. If I approach them, or try to interact with them, they do not notice me, or barely notice something (usually a small child). Then there is another group who also walks around and sees me but do not interact. They seem to be on a mission of some sort. The third group are people who like me float around and seem to be discovering their state or whereabouts. They see me and I see them.
The question is, what are the possible differences between these groups and who the initiates should try to contact or interact with? Instructor: Obviously there are a lot of different kinds of people within the world. Most people when they enter the astral dimension do so unconsciously. People who wander the astral plane usually are merely repeating their daily life. Someone who has never trained their consciousness to be awake through the Key of SOL (Subject, Object, Location), will not be aware when their physical body is either asleep or deceased. Plato had said that a man is known by his dreams. If we go to bed and eight hours pass and we do not see anything, it means we are not conscious in the objective sense. Most people are like this. The astral world is often just a repetition of one’s physical existence. So if you work at a bar or serve as a teacher, such people will repeat their occupations within the dreaming state, but they will not be aware of it. But there are people who you can recognize in the astral dimension who are awake. You can see it through their eyes. Descartes said that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Clairvoyantly in the astral dimension, you can look at the eyes of an individual to determine their state, their level of being, their quality. It’s an intuitive process. You have to be very sharp and alert. There are beings who, like us, are trying, people across the globe who want to awaken within dreams, so they are applying these techniques and are getting results. So you can run into many people internally who are part of, say, the Gnostic movement, or other traditions and religions who are being conscious, and you can recognize them by interacting with them. The difference between them is obviously people who train and people who don’t. I don’t recommend spending a lot of trying to wake up people who are really unconscious, who don’t make the effort to know themselves. Samael Aun Weor related an experience how he tried to wake up a person in the astral plane who did not have any type of training. He was with a high master of the White Lodge who attempted with him to stimulate the consciousness of this individual through a spiritual transference of force, because the masters of the White Lodge can provide assistance in that way. They give you a type of light or force, kind of like fanning a fire in order to awaken some sparks, some recognition that one is dreaming. Obviously, someone who has no fire, no light, the firewood is damp, is dead, is dense. It won’t light, and so this master told Samael Aun Weor, “Don’t waste your time. This person is too asleep.” However, people who are working in the physical world to awaken internally are developing fire in themselves. We know from his teachings that one should work with the creative energies of sexuality through exercises like pranayama, sexual alchemy, the perfect matrimony. By working with the fire of our spirituality, the creative force, we awaken sparks and flames, so that it is easier to awaken internally. No fire, no light. So the initiates and the masters do have a preference. They like to work with people who have some semblance of sincerity, who are trying to change in themselves so that they can really better themselves and humanity. It is good to interact with masters internally. It is the best use of our time, not trying to appease lunar people. Question: I rarely understand what my dreams mean and therefore struggle to motivate myself to remember dreams or perform dream yoga. What do you recommend? Instructor: It’s difficult. We talk a lot about spiritual nights where we lack motivation to really do what is in our best interest, spiritually speaking. It can be difficult to motivate ourselves if we feel depressed and we don’t get the results we want. Or we have many dreams that we don’t understand. I think the solution, especially for motivation, is prayer and remembrance. We have to remember those spiritual and psychological states that pushed us to even study this in the first place. Obviously, any person who approaches Gnosticism or dream yoga has had some type of experience, however fleeting, vaporous, abstract, or enigmatic. If we reflect on those moments and reflect on why it is we want to study dream yoga, we can in turn inflame our heart, especially by connecting through prayer to our Being. We have to remember divinity, to remember the presence of the divine. A lot of people might not have had a dream about that or an experience, but in our daily states, perhaps in childhood when we were young and uncorrupted, we tasted that. We tasted what it means to be awakened, to be able to see a mountain in the grain of sand, or through our imagination, to see an ocean in a droplet. There is a type of spontaneity and profound joy that we knew when we were young. In truth, many of us when we were young had very lucid dreams. That might be the reason why a lot of people approach these studies. With age, acculturation, and time, our experiences as an adult often obscure or smother those remembrances. So it is very difficult to even understand our dreams or to be motivated to want to remember them because we are so hypnotized. The mantras we gave earlier, such as Ma Ma, Pa Pa, Ba Ba, as well as Abracadabra, are very powerful for motivation, especially the former, Ma Ma, Pa Pa, Ba Ba. If you struggle to remember your dreams or to be motivated, make the sincere effort by praying to your Divine Mother and working with that mantra. Remember your childhood. Remember what it was like to be awake. Those experiences, when they come to you in meditation, are so profound that they will change your life and what you thought you knew about yourself, about your family, about humanity. When you see those images emerge from within your subconsciousness with that practice, you realize that truly one can enter the kingdom of heaven by becoming like a little child, by recapturing and reconquering that state. So I recommend working with that. When you recognize those superior states of consciousness, you realize that there is more to life than what our television shows, our popular media, our social media would have us believe. There are profound realities that are far beyond our current grasp. In that way, you will be more motivated. You will try harder because you want to experience that. The meanings of dreams unfold even after many years of practice. Some dreams you can experience and understand immediately. But the more you reconquer your intuition, those infantile forces that reside within the subconsciousness, the easier it becomes to access and to push ourselves further in this path. Question: Do you have an experience or insight into what being attacked by a dark entity is like, to the point of feeling your heart or soul being crushed inside of a lucid dream? This experience has not left me since I was a child. Instructor: Yeah. There’s a lot of entities out there. Not all of them are good, but there are ways to protect yourself. Study our course Spiritual Self-Defense. We gave many exercises and practices that you can use to defend yourself spiritually, not only in dreams but also physically, such as preparing your home for meditation, creating a spiritual space to meditate, to perform dream yoga, etc. Don’t be discouraged by such experiences because whenever any negative entity tries to impede our development, it is because we are making some progress. Often times students get pulled away from these studies because of fear. They do not want to experience again being attacked. But that is merely just giving them what they want, and in fact, those beings have little power compared to your divinity. So the practices we gave in that course help invoke the presence of our inner Being so that while awake and clear and alert, we know how to effectively deal with problems. Therefore they just become a little annoying rather than a tremendous sense of terror and uncertainty. Question: This is the first time I have heard about the three primary colors. Can you explain how these came to be? Instructor: Think of light. Light exists in a spectrum, such as the three primary colors and its gradations such as in the rainbow. Light is a metaphor and a quality of being, of divinity. Wherever there is light, there is consciousness. Light, even in quantum mechanics, is known to possess intelligence. Light particles make decisions. Likewise our consciousness is a form of light. The root of that light, that direct perception, that seeing without conditions, is divine. We reference the three primary colors because in a cosmological sense our own particular light, our own spark of divinity, unfolds and enters the world to have experiences, to develop and mature. In the process of the creation of any universe, we can say in a metaphorical sense, that light divides and becomes three, the three primary forces which have been characterized by every single religion throughout the world. The Christians call them the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Other religions have different names, but we use the three primary colors to symbolize or represent those principles that are within us. Those principles have to be activated through dream yoga. So in our dream yoga exercises we are training the consciousness, training ourselves to be present, alert, and aware. In the process, we develop our full potential. It’s a very deep topic. It’s not easy to synthesize in a few sentences. But if you study some of the writings of Samael Aun Weor, especially Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, you will get a good sense about what does it mean to develop light, and especially his book The Great Rebellion and The Perfect Matrimony, he talks a lot about the divine origins of the soul. These are represented by the three primary colors, which we use to qualify parts of our Being. In our vital body, if we are very awake and alert, especially within the internal worlds, we can directly experience the different energies and colors of that vehicle. So they can relate to the three primary colors and the health of our physical brain as well. Question: Is it possible for someone or something to affect me? I had a dream of three old women who were pressing their thumbs into my forehead (the third eye location), saying that they were locking something in me. Was it a real attack on me or not? How do I know? Instructor: Follow your heart. What does your heart tell you? I know a lot of times people are filled with doubt and uncertainty about what they experience. But the way to interpret our inner visions is done through the heart, through intuition. You do not need to think about it. You can discern and comprehend the experience, but it is not an intellectual exercise. Intuition works through hunches, and a lot of dreams that are very impactful or real have a very profound effect. They hit harder than other dreams. Now witches and black magicians or negative entities can try to affect our energies in our physical and internal bodies. So it is possible to that this is a very real experience. Only you can really judge and ascertain that. If you want to be sure and secure and to protect yourself from such influences, you can practice certain prayers in our tradition that we use like in the course we mentioned (Spiritual Self-Defense). They’re called the Conjurations and the Invocation of Solomon. Glorian Publishing provided some videos about that too, but in our lectures and in our course, we do go into a lot of detail about how to protect yourself, but also how to know if you’re being attacked. You got to evaluate your psychological states too. What elements are surging in you in response to the event? Are you experiencing any abnormalities in your daily life? Maybe health related issues, maybe psychological issues, maybe obsessions, maybe fears, unexplained terrors, different emotions, qualities of your psychology that feel very overwhelming. So those are ways that you can ascertain that maybe something is wrong and that you need to take precautions. Part of our dream yoga discipline too is we do a lot of these prayers and invocations before we go to bed. We learn to protect our home through a seal of magical protection provided by our inner divinity. So we gave explanations of those practices in that course. I recommend that you study it and apply them. Comment: I’ve found that if I try to write my dreams as soon as possible, just in the mere process of writing them I recall more and more. I have tried remaining still, but sometimes my mind begins to think and wander, or other times I just feel too lazy and fall back asleep. Not sure if this is a question about this part, but I would like to hear your views on this if any. Instructor: That’s been my experience too, is that writing dreams down helps to remember them more. There is something about the act of writing, whether physically on paper or on an electronic device, that concretizes or solidifies those abstract moments in dreams into something material. It helps to remember, so it is very useful. So it is good to combine this with retrospection and Raom Gaom. Question: Tying back to the earlier question about being attacked by three old women or witches, can I undo that harm? I felt like they predicted my death. Instructor: Yes. There are many ways to undo works of black magic, so there is no need to fear them. Yes, there is a way to protect yourself but also take away any negative harm done unto oneself, whether visible or invisible. Question: I actually remember dreams better when I move upon awakening little by little. What might this indicate? Instructor: It means your memory is stronger. There are levels of intensity of forgetfulness and remembrance. Some people have a very fragile dream memory, which is the case for a lot of people. So you may find that upon awakening you can remember more even after moving because your dream recall is stronger. Some people can remember dreams more accurately, more easily. The connection between your astral vehicle and your physical brain is stronger. Some people don’t have that luxury because of abuse, of wrong behaviors, bad diet, poor psychological habits. So you’re in a good spot, but I suggest that if you really want to go deeper and to remember more, try this exercise. Don’t move. See what it can provide you. Question: How do you get past the vibrational stage? I woke up in the middle of sleeping with the middle of my spine feeling like it was contorting up and I felt vibrations in the palms of my hands Instructor: Some people when they’re dreaming are psychic and sensitive. You might have perceptions within your physical body even that are metaphysical. They’re not normal. You may feel vibrations or sensations. You can even see images, hear mystical sounds even while being partially awake on the threshold of wakefulness and dreaming. You can hear different sounds from the internal worlds manifesting in your physicality. My suggestion is that when you experience such states to not get identified with them. These things are very temporary. As you’re practicing dream yoga, because you’re working with the vital as well as the astral bodies, you start to get more sensitive to energy. Sometimes because of the changes in the vital body, especially because you’re working with the two superior ethers, you are learning to create a new type of dynamic within yourself. So sometimes that can manifest within different types of sensations in the body, where you just sense and see things, and even feel them. They’re not indicative of long-term progress. Neither of them are indicative of any type of harm. They are just phenomena that happen. Some people experience very different things. The important thing is, don’t get identified. Don’t limit yourself to being obsessed with that phenomena, with repeating it or with hiding from it. If you observe yourself and learn to practice meditation, you can be unattached to anything. I recommend you practice meditation as taught within the course Meditation Essentials by Glorian Publishing. It’s a very good course that will teach you how to develop equanimity, serenity, dispassion. Whenever something of this type happens, you observe it as it is and watch it. Observe it. Examine it. The more you examine such states, the more you will find their roots. Your consciousness will show you in meditation, your divinity will show you in meditation, the origin of this phenomenon. It can be related to the vital body, as I said. It may be something deeper. You will have to explore. Question: Are there any plants that you recommend to assist in dream memory retention? Instructor: It’s a good question! I was preparing this lecture and remembering a little bit about the book Igneous Rose by Samael Aun Weor where he talks a lot about elemental magic. He talks a lot about the relationship between the aloe plant and retrospection meditation, but also reincarnation. He explains in that chapter how the soul of the elementals of the aloe plant are intimately related with reincarnation and he hints that there is a connection between that and memory. In order to remember your past lives, you perform a retrospective exercise like we explained with any of the mantras we provided already. However, the aloe plant is a very powerful soul. It attracts a lot of positive energies and vibrations within our home. It’s good to possess an aloe plant for many reasons. It helps oxidize the environment. It helps attract spiritual force, solar light, within the internal worlds. What’s remarkable about the aloe plant is that if you practice with the soul of the plant, there’s things that the elemental can teach you about your past lives, about reincarnation, and about remembering. I know I included a lot of exercises for remembering our childhood. The reason being is that if you’re memory is strong and you can remember obscure moments in your infancy, you will be very equipped to remember your dreams.
The mantra for the elemental of the aloe is the letter M. You prolong it, singing it. You can pray to the aloe plant, “Help me to remember myself. Provide me with spiritual support. Teach me about the mysteries of reincarnation.” You can meditate and fall asleep, imagining the plant to the point that you see within the internal worlds the soul of the plant. You can speak to the elemental. They often appear like children with little tunics of different colors. In a way, by working with this elemental, you are accessing a part of yourself that is subconscious and relates to memory. They can teach you things related to memory, what it means to remember. That is one recommendation.
Any other questions? OK. If there are no other questions, we will conclude. I really appreciate the turnout. We will continue with this lecture series next month. So I thank you all for coming! 
Any person who has been applying these techniques faces an inevitable problem. Better said, there are many impediments to consciously astral projecting. It is the purpose of this lecture to explain what these are, but more importantly, how to apply effective remedies.
There are two primary obstacles. The first is a lack of effective methods, and the second is our own mind. The first problem is easily fixable, although there are some issues. Anyone who explores this topic, searching on the internet, discovers a multitude of teachings. There are many astral projection techniques, theories, and instructions. It is so easy to get lost by the interpretations and the novelties of diverse knowledge. It is incumbent upon the student to discriminate the real from the illusory. But for beginners, this is not easy. It is not easy to discern what is true and what is not. But there is a way to know what is effective and what is not. It is the lived experiences of the teachers. People have to live what they teach to a more or less degree. It is important that when we study from a school that we can verify or determine that whatever is being taught is experiential and has been experienced. Unfortunately, there is a tendency in spiritual schools to teach what one does not know. In fact, many people make a business of the divine. They take the teachings that have a tremendous potential and merely leave it in the intellect. Personally, I have known groups that teach about astral projection, even when the instructor has never had that experience. It is really sad, and it unveils the necessity to experiment and to test, to know. My purpose in teaching these lectures is because I have had many experiences about the techniques, so I can teach from my own faith that this is real. However, even though any missionary can give you knowledge and offer promises, can provide any type of wisdom, the reality is that it is necessary for the student to know what is being taught. The only way to know is to practice daily for many years until the results you long for become a reality. 
Obstacles to Astral Projection
But of course, there is a major problem: the mind.
The mind is an obstacle. Even if the techniques are genuine, it is our own conditioned states which prevent the actualization of conscious astral projections. The tendency of the mind to be distracted is the fault, is the ultimate impediment. Anyone who has been following this series of lectures, perhaps studying the last lecture on mantras, has experienced that the mind wanders. You may be lying down, very relaxed and yet your mind is all over the place— thoughts appearing and disappearing, cycling, churning, and fleeing from one idea to another or in a chain of associative thinking, never on the goal. These mantras and techniques work, but only in accordance with the discipline of our mind. We can give an example. A carpenter has tools: hammers, saws, rulers and whatever is necessary to do the job. But a carpenter cannot do anything, cannot build anything, if he does not know how to apply the tools. You have to be concentrated on what you are doing. You also have to know how the techniques work and the purpose of the tools. You cannot take these items and create anything real if you do not have the knowledge of their effectiveness and purpose. For example, an astronomer cannot study the stars with a microscope, nor could a biologist study the microbes with a telescope. These techniques have a purpose, and the only way that they work is if you are fully immersed with your whole Being into them and that your mind is not thinking of something else. I know that the analogy may not be perfect, because someone who is very experienced in carpentry may be thinking of something else and doing one thing, but the reality is that people who do a really good job are fully focused. Their whole Being is there. They do not think of other things. They are not distracted. So, if we lack the ability to serenely observe ourselves, to be present, to know what we are doing, then we cannot enter the astral dimension with awareness. Samael Aun Weor gave a quote in The Aquarian Message which emphasizes these points: Before anything else, comprehend that in order to consciously travel in the astral body, the process of thinking is an obstacle. We have given many clues in order to travel consciously in the astral body. However, we have seen in practice that those people who cannot quiet the mind, not even for an instant, who are accustomed to hopping from school to school, from lodge to lodge, always inquiring, always preoccupied are not able to astral travel. —Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message
It is the tendency of the mind to be superficial, to move from thing to thing. I do want to mention that from this quote, that Samael Aun Weor made a very profound point. He is not talking about going form school to school not learning about objective spirituality. He was a student of many teachers, many religions, many groups. But he did not approach each school or each religion with a superficial attitude. He had his own discipline of mind, his own character development, his own meditation, so he was able to learn from all of these diverse teachers and schools about how to perform this work. But most people when they go from idea to idea do so without a ground, without a foundation, and it is this foundation that is at the heart of spiritual success.
Litelantes and Simplicity
In this next slide we see the Venerable Master Litelantes, the wife of Samael Aun Weor. She is a great master. I say this not because I read about it, but because I have met her. The first time I met Samael Aun Weor was with this initiate in the astral plane in an Aztec temple. She is a very awakened master. She has knowledge of reincarnation from experience. She is a judge of the law of destiny in this solar system. She is one of the forty-two judges of the hierarchs of karma. She helped Samael Aun Weor rise. She is a severe but profoundly loving master, and despite all of her achievements, what is most remarkable, is that she was illiterate.
She could not read. She is very simple, but unfortunately in our Western culture, we think of illiteracy as stupidity, and this is wrong. There are many people who are not literate who have profound memory, imagination, understanding, but also intelligence. Real intelligence is spiritual. It is the ability to know how to navigate life with selflessness and love. Sadly, in our modern era, the intellect predominates. The intellect has been used to create the atom bomb. That is not real intelligence. That is stupidity. So why mention this master? It is because in astral projection, it is the heart that matters. The intellect is secondary. People who are very intellectual, who have a head like a library but have no sentiment, and no heart, are polarized in a very negative way. The intellect divorced of the spirit is detrimental, because the intellect is used for cunning, for sophistry, for articulate sarcasm, for cruel words, for manipulation and deceit. If we want to be really successful with astral projection, it is important to develop the heart, superior emotion, and qualities of the Being. Samael Aun Weor stated the following in The Perfect Matrimony in a chapter called “The Flying Serpent”: In practice, we have been able to prove that people who are very intellectual, full of bookish culture (the library book worms) do not manage to go out at will into the astral body. On the other hand, people who are simple, humble peasants, poor servants of families can do so perfectly. This has made us think a great deal about the matter and we have carefully investigated the problem. The fact is that traveling in the astral body is not intellectual. Rather, astral travel is more aligned to sentiment and to superior emotion. These qualities are related to the heart and not to the brain. The intellectual polarizes himself in the brain in an exaggerated fashion and abandons, in fact, the world of the heart. The result of his lack of equilibrium is the loss of the psychic powers of the Soul. —Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, “The Flying Serpent” 
Balancing Mental and Spiritual Faculties
We need balance, like in this image. We have Anubis judging the mind and the heart of the defunct, and above are the Egyptian gods of judgment, the lords of karma, who are ascertaining the moral caliber of the student, of the initiate. This feather represents the mind, and obviously the heart represents superior emotions.
Sadly in this era, most people do not know what superior emotion is, but we have had rare glimpses: perhaps a mother to her child, who sacrifices herself despite her faults and imperfections; to be kind, to be pure, to be compassionate; also comprehension, understanding and the building of communities. These qualities unfortunately, for most people, are very rare. We do not genuinely identify ourselves with the best, primarily because we are afflicted with ego, by pride, anger, lust, resentment, and fear. When the heart is heavy with emotion of the negative type, of the ego, the scales tip and therefore we have an imbalance. Any imbalance between the mind and the heart results in failure. If we really want to be effective with conscious astral travel, astral projections, the mind needs to be in balance and the heart needs to be calm, present, and still. Anytime we exercise a faculty, we strengthen it. For most of us in the West, we have a mind that is very filled with knowledge and our hearts tend to be depleted and deficient. Wherever we direct attention, we expend creative energy. Therefore, whatever actions we perform strengthens the machine that is facilitating it. If you use your intellect more than other faculties, it becomes, in a sense, more experienced, more developed, like a muscle. However, the intellect must be balanced. You would find it strange to go to the gym and see a person who only works out their right bicep at the expense of all of the other muscles. It would be absurd, but in our Western culture, which is so intellectual, requiring intellectual responses to life, to stimuli, we tend to have the mind very fat, ignoring other qualities of our Being, and because of this, there is a problem. In our Western world, we need the intellect. We need it, but it should not predetermine everything we do. The connection between the mind and the heart has to be established because there is a fine connection and thread which is our own Being, our own Essence. By this we are not stating, because of the faults of the mind, that we should be illiterate or should not have the intellect. For most of us who are in North America or Western countries, this is where we begin, because of our education, our personality, our background or our experience. Now it is more important that we learn to reunite the mind to the heart. Samael Aun Weor stated in The Perfect Matrimony, “The Flying Serpent”: Unfortunately, a faculty cannot be acquired without the loss of another. Whosoever wants to develop the intellect does so at the expense of the psychic facilities. This problem is serious because we can in no way approve ignorance and illiteracy. It is logical that the intellectual culture is necessary. Ignorance leads to very serious errors. —Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, “The Flying Serpent”
So by this statement, it might seem that, well, if he argues against illiteracy, what about his wife Litelantes who was illiterate? For her, she was already awakened before she was born. She had a type of consciousness or has a type of consciousness that is very distinct, very alert, comprehensive, intuitive, and awake. She was already awake before she was born. Therefore, she had a faculty in her early years that allowed her to navigate existence. But for most of us, we are asleep. We lack knowledge of our past lives, of our previous states, and of who we really are.
Blavatsky and Illuminated Intellect
We begin where we are at, and because we are hyper-intellectual in the West, we have to develop ourselves kind of like this master, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. We included her in this slide because she is a perfect example of both a scholar and a master. Anyone who reads her Isis Unveiled or The Secret Doctrine can immediately ascertain her facility with knowledge. But that is not all where she left it off. She had an illuminated intellect, and she knew how to use the mind in balance. There is a quote by Samael Aun Weor in Igneous Rose, the chapter called the “Esoteric Discipline of the Mind,” which explains what that type of illuminated intellect is.
We must learn to think with the heart and to feel with the head. —Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose, “Esoteric Discipline of Mind”
This is something you have to experience. Understanding is a distinct quality from rationalization. The mind that thinks, that theorizes, that debates, that argues, that churns, that stews, is not comprehension. Comprehension is a light. It sparks in you when you know in your very core the meaning of something, and therefore, you do not have to think. You do not rationalize. The real solar mind, the divine intuitive mind, receives knowledge and wisdom in a receptive way. The consciousness is hyper-active, but the mind is still. This is how the images of the internal worlds enter into the psyche. When the mind, the intellect is in perfect equanimity, when these surfaces are clean and still, then wisdom emerges. But to do that, we have to become like children, as Jesus says in the Gospels.
I will emphasize another quote again by Samael Aun Weor about what we must do if we want to be experts at astral projection: Now the interesting thing is to know how to reconquer the lost psychic faculties. A man with a brilliant, illuminated intellect and with all of his psychic faculties in full activity is really in fact, by his own right, a true illuminated one. The occultist needs to establish perfect equilibrium between the mind and heart. When the mind has become excessively frozen in the brain, leaving at will in the astral body becomes completely impossible because there is imbalance. It is urgent then, that the intellectual occultist re-establish the equilibrium between the mind and the heart. Fortunately, there is a technique to re-establish the lost equilibrium. This technique is inner meditation. —Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, “The Flying Serpent” Dream Yoga Discipline
We are going to talk about some practices that you can use to develop all of this. Dream Yoga becomes our lifestyle. We will give some techniques, some guidelines you can follow. We are going to elaborate upon them now so that by learning techniques like meditation and introspection, we can become more intuitive. Samael Aun Weor states in The Secret Doctrine of Anahuac:
Those candidates who sincerely long for physical direct experience must unquestionably begin the dream yoga discipline. The Gnostic must be very demanding with himself and to learn to create favorable conditions, to remember and understand all these inner experiences that always occur during sleep. —Samael Aun Weor, The Secret Doctrine of Anahuac 
Preliminaries
Let us talk about this discipline. Here are the preliminaries. In this image, we see in the top left a woman whose face is transposed beyond her own, looking at herself. We chose this because it is a perfect illustration of self-reflection. When you go to bed at night and even throughout the day, how often do we see ourselves? How often do we actually look at what we are thinking, at what we are feeling, our state of mind, our quality of perception, how we see, how we react, how we behave?
Self-observation is essential, but many people get stuck in this. It is easy to consider this an intellectual exercise, thinking: “I am now looking at my surroundings and at myself. I see anger in me or I see pride. I see fear.” The mind can label but it cannot understand, unless it is in a passive state. The consciousness must be hyper-active, but the mind must be calm, equilibrated. But before you go to bed, especially, examine your state. Do not go to bed angry. Do not go to bed with negative emotions. It is better, like in the bottom right of this image, that we meditate. It is better that we really comprehend why we behave the way we do, why we suffer. Look at it. If you had a problem with a family member, an ordeal with someone, look at the emotion. Look at your thoughts. Look at yourself, and do not struggle with it or suffocate it or suppress it, but look. See it. This is psychological judo, real, spiritual martial arts. When you see something in yourself that you may not like, look at it and look at your reactions. Look at your mind. The mind struggles. The soul can disarm our own psychological opponents, which are our own defects, and as you are doing this, we learn to develop superior emotion. When you recognize that you are not your thoughts, not your desires, not your hatreds, you can begin to see that you are a spark of the divine, the Divine Mother Kundalini, the Being. In moments of stillness, we access our true nature, and when you taste that, it will give you joy. It gives us happiness, because we realize that we are not the mind. We are not our pain, our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities. We are something more, and that we are a spark of Her. This develops prayer. When you connect with that, you ask, “Help me, my God, to not be what I am, but to be something more, to be united with you!” 
Exercise, Diet, and Mood
In the process of introspection, we can develop our lifestyle.
Exercise is important. If you live a sedentary life, if you do not work out or get some type of exercise, consider it, because if you go to bed with tension, pain in your body, inflexibility, it is going to make it very difficult to practice astral projection. You will not be able to relax. It is very simple. You may find an exercise regimen that is conducive to your schedule, your needs. Some people do martial arts, or they do exercise in the gym. Some people run. Some people walk. Find our what works out best for you. Also, it is good to work daily with our sexual energy. We see this woman on the top left performing pranayama. Pranayama, especially for single people, is essential. Transmute every day. Conserve your energies. That is the power that is going to awaken you and give you insights. Also, listen to good music. We often recommend classical, especially, primarily because the works of initiates like Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky originated from the Being. This kind of music awakens the heart, the superior emotion. It inflames the soul. I have had experiences about Beethoven’s music, especially his Ninth Symphony. What was very startling for me was that when I had this samadhi, I later listened to his symphony, and I immediately recognized what I experienced. It scared me. I did not know how someone could articulate perfectly within music every sentiment and movement of that vision. Therefore, music can inspire our spirituality and help us to work, opera especially. We have given a course which is ongoing, which is The Secret Teachings of Opera, where we study operas such as Turandot by Puccini. There are many works. They educate the mind but also the heart. So, if you are looking for a practice that will equilibrate your psyche and also teach you kabbalah, study opera. Our diet should be light at night. It is not good to eat heavy foods before we go to bed. You might find it difficult to practice. Too much food in the stomach at night can cause indigestion and then nightmares, especially from red meat in the evenings. If your diet is very heavy in that, consider diminishing it or limiting it. Your last meal of the day should not encumber your body. It should help you feel balanced, because when your stomach is filled with food when you sleep, you activate, especially with red meat, the chakras of the abdomen, which are infernal, that could awaken you down in the infernal planes. It is very common. This is well documented in science or the study of dreams, that indigestion causes nightmares. So, eat lightly at the end of the day. 
Home and Environment
Something to consider, too, is that our home or our environment should be conducive to our practice. Our bed should have, like in this image on the top left, good support for our body, our neck and our spine. Our bed should be comfortable. It should not be so rigid or hard that you cannot sleep. If you cannot fall asleep, you cannot practice, or if you cannot maintain your awareness when going to bed, then consider adjusting your environment. Beds with springs that are creaking or noisy are very discomforting.
You should make your home a temple. On the top right we see a bedroom or a bed with the three primary colors: red, blue and yellow. These three colors represent the three primary forces, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Having these colors in your room can help you awaken, in a sense that if you are conscious of your environment and what the colors represent, they help to create beauty in our home. It is very difficult to relax if our home is a mess, or if it is in disarray. We should take care of our temple. Our environment or our nest should be comfortable, inspiring and uplifting. The three primary colors are beautiful for that because they represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now your bed does not have to look like this but you may find ways to decorate your home. For example, some people use the Tibetan prayer flags which have these colors. You can adjust this principle to suit your needs. Every night, keep a journal nearby, a dream journal, so that first thing when you wake up, you write down what you experienced. Remembering your dreams and documenting them is essential. We will give a whole lecture on how to remember dreams in the future. But the important thing is that you have some notepad or some way to document what you dreamed about before you wake up. There is something about the act of writing which helps us to remember things. Many people have documented that they remember things more when they write about what they experienced. The same thing with a dream journal. So, you may find that if you get up in the morning and you are rushing to work, it could be easy to forget your dreams. But if you wrote them down after performing some preliminary retrospection exercises to recall what you saw, you might not forget. So, journal it. Write it down. Your journal does not have to be super detailed. However, much time you have, whatever you can commit to paper, do it. Make sure you include enough information that it will help you recall things. Also, we should incense our home daily. Perfume it. Whatever incense or smells help you to relax, that help you feel at peace, use that. You can even incense your pillows with your favorite perfumes. There is something about aromatherapy and smells that help elevate our mood. If our mood is positive, you can enter the dream yoga practice with more enthusiasm. Also, cleaning your home of astral larva with sage or other incenses that I mentioned before can help for more cleanliness, psychologically speaking, and this goes a long way to help our practice.
Morpheus, Northern Magnetism, and Astral Projection Postures
You may find that astral projection can be very difficult and there are other remedies you can use to help cultivate your spiritual life.
You can lie down in the posture of the lion. This is the Buddha that has his legs, his left leg over his right, the knees bent, his right hand holding up his head. The left hand on the left hip. This is a very effective posture for astral projection. You may find that it may help you to relax, but also be attentive, and that is the key to any exercise, that you are able to relax but also stay awake long enough that you remember what you were doing. So, finally by hitting that balance, you knock on the door to the internal worlds. For some people, this posture may be difficult, and that is fine. You can do Chac Mool or other exercises. You can lie on your back. The key thing is that you have to be relaxed but attentive. You have to be aware of what you are doing at all times. But you will hit a transition point where, as you are entering sleep, you perhaps start to experience sounds, visions, colors, and images, and almost in a sense, it comes upon you without you really being aware of it. It just happens, and when you recognize it, that is the moment that you can get out of your body, get out of your bed, and do a test. Pull your finger as we explained previously, to see if it will stretch or jump in the air, to see if you float. The postures are helpful. You can try this, the lion’s posture. You can also lie down on your bed with your head facing North. Northern magnetism helps with astral projection. The planet is an energetic and even psychological and spiritual body. It channels forces and energy thoughout the globe that effect our psychology. Magnetism especially influences the astral body, and the Northern pole helps to orient and align our state of mind with the higher worlds. I know we mentioned in previous lectures that certain spiritual authors associate the North with the spiritual worlds, like the mountains or the cold. So, if you lay down with your head towards the North and fall asleep, that magnetism can help you make astral projections more frequent because the astral body is a fluidic vehicle. It is material in the sense that it has its organs and capabilities, but at the same time it is organized and dominated by different laws that are more energetic and subtle. We also have the God Morpheus, who is a part of our Being. Anyone who has seen The Matrix films knows about Morpheus and the analogy of how we need to awaken from illusion. So, Morpheus is actually the god of dreams in Greek mythology. He represents part of our Being. There is a part of our Being that helps us to awaken within the astral plane. You can concentrate on Morpheus and pray to your inner God to help you to enter the astral dimension consciously. Morpheus is a part of us. Some people often think of divinity as singular, but the truth is that there are many parts of the Being which we are learning to work with and unite. It is all the parts of our inner consciousness which have their roles. Morpheus is that part of our Being that helps us to awaken within our dreams. So you can pray to Morpheus. You do not need formulae. Simply pray: “Help me get out of my body,” or whatever comes naturally to us. 
The Lunar Influence
You can also take advantage of the lunar influence. People often report more vivid dreams and astral projections during the full moon, and this is because the astral body is lunar. It relates to the lunar-mechanical influences of nature.
There is both a positive and a negative aspect of the Moon. We know that women are naturally influenced by the lunar cycles, such as with menstruation. The tides of the Earth are regulated by the Moon. But in a negative sense, we find that there are more crimes on a full moon. We even get the term “lunatic” from the word luna. But because this is a mechanical influence that is a part of nature, but also a part of us, we can take advantage of it, take something mechanical and make it intentional. When there is a crescent, waxing moon or a full moon, we can dedicate more intensely to our astral projection exercises because the lunar influence will help us, help us to awaken. The Moon has both a material and a psychological, spiritual influence on our mind and heart, so we should use it to our advantage. 
Gemini
It is fortuitous also that we are now in the astrological sign of Gemini, as of today, May 21st to June 20th. Gemini is the zodiacal constellation associated with the brothers, the twins, and is intimately related to the sign of Mercury, the planet Mercury. There are masters in the internal planes associated with the planet Mercury. Samael Aun Weor calls them the lords of the mind. They are masters in the internal planes who can teach you how to astral project. In the sign of Gemini, they work more intensely, because the influence of that zodiac is entering our planet and is accelerating certain spiritual influences. If you become conscious of them and work with them, you can really intensify your dream yoga experiences.
In Gemini, the forces of Mercury are very powerful. Mercury is related with the mind, the mental body. But these lords of Mercury, these lords of wisdom, can teach us to astral project. So whatever technique we are using, we can also invoke and call upon these initiates. There are many beings throughout the universe not merely from our Earth. Now, in public discourse, we have more openness about extraterrestrials, other humanities. The question is at least being raised instead of being shunned. But we go a bit further, because if you awaken in the internal worlds, you can get help from other humanities. Personally, I have received help from other humanities, not physically, but internally, where certain beings have come, humanoid, that look just like us, to help me get out of my body. The lords of Mercury can do that for you. So, you can intensify your practice during this time in the sign of Gemini. 
Ethical Requisites for Astral Travel
There are also some things we can cultivate in our daily life that can help us promote our practice. Samael Aun Weor mentions the following ethical prerequisites for astral travel in his book Aztec Christic Magic, where he talks about how ethical discipline is really the key to our wellbeing.
He is not talking about morality, or whatever country thinks is good or bad. What is good in one time, is bad in another, and vice versa. We are talking about something more universal, having to do primarily with the cleanliness of the body, the lungs especially, and our sexual energy. If you faithfully practice each one of the exercises that we have taught in order, for these six consecutive days, you will soon project yourself in your astral body, this is if you are a respectable person, that you neither abuse liquors or tobacco, that you do not propagate gossip, that you do not enjoy making fun of your neighbors and that you live and respect every living being. —Samael Aun Weor, Aztec Christic Magic
Obviously, it is difficult for people who smoke or drink liquor, but we know conventionally that these elements toxify the psychology. These elements are also very difficult for our dream yoga practice. If the body is unhealthy, the mind is polluted. If we are sick from consuming these elements, it is going to be very difficult to practice.
On a more subtle note, it is important not to engage in criticism of our neighbor, as difficult as that may be, because negative emotions spread and cause pain. A negative emotion is another obstacle to dream yoga. The important thing is to have compassion for others. This is the ideal. We should strive for it. Tips for Astral Projection
Here are some tips you can use to astral project:
1. Rehearse the practice for 10 minutes beforehand
Before you actually practice, rehearse the practice. You can lay down, imagine, or pronounce the mantra that you are going to use as a kind of test run, so you get comfortable with the process of actually lying down and doing the exercise. If you are practicing, you may find it difficult in the beginning if you are unfamiliar with how to do it. So, if you rehearse it, it can make you more familiar.
2. Do not fear being unable to go to sleep. Practice whole-heartedly.
We should also not fear being unable to go to sleep. Some people do not practice whole-heartedly because they feel like they need to be alert in a ridged sense. Perhaps it is excitement or fear or agitation, or the idea that if I practice astral projection, I will not get any rest and therefore there is the obstacle of not wanting to practice. Do not fear that you are not going to get sleep, but give your self some space. You can practice for ten or twenty minutes, thirty minutes if you want, if you are ambitious, or maybe more but dedicate some time to yourself to figure out how long you want to engage in the exercise. You could do it ten minutes vocally and then ten minutes whispered and then fall asleep.
3. Slowly train the body to adopt a posture.
We also have to train the body to adopt the posture. Some postures like Chac Mool or the lion posture can be difficult for some people, so take some time to practice the postures. Get used to them, and then after a time of actually practicing them, you can always roll over on your side or your back, whatever is most comfortable for you to fall asleep. But do take some time to get familiar with them.
4. Deepen relaxation. Do not force the process. Let it happen.
Also, deepen your relaxation. These techniques only work if you relax. Be attentive but relaxed. It does not have to be tight and ridged. Being alert does not necessarily mean having five cups of coffee and being hyper. As I said, it is about being calm. Real alert awareness is relaxed. Do not force the process of astral projection. Let it happen. The more you try to force it or restrict it, you can jump out of the experience. You can lose it.
5. Gradually increase practice length from 10 minutes.
Gradually increase the time of your practice. Over time you can gradually increase the practice to lying down for ten minutes. Maybe you start with five at first, five minutes vocal and then you go to five minutes whispered and then you go to sleep. You may find that you get more into it or more relaxed and then you can basically extend the practice.
6. Conscious efforts, not mental exertion.
These are conscious efforts, not mental exertion. As we hinted before, the consciousness has to work. The mind must be passive. The personality has to be calm. You will know the difference through experience, through how you apply your perception.
7. Practice consistently and with dedication.
Also, practice consistently with dedication, because if you practice one night but not the other, you loose momentum. Then sleep becomes another reoccurrence of our former habits. We go back to bed and enter oblivion for eight hours and we do not remember anything.
8. Enjoy the exercise and the results of your practice.
Enjoy the exercise and the results of your practice. It is like working out. People do not stick with a workout regimen if they do not enjoy what they are doing. But if you find something that you enjoy doing and you enjoy it, like this exercise, you are going to be more enthusiastic to practice it. So that is something to keep in mind.
9. Maintain equanimity and dispassion.
We should maintain equanimity and dispassion. The more excited you are, the more agitated, the more fearful, the more anxious we are, the more attached to results, the less likely we will consciously astral project.
10. Develop concentration and visualization.
Concentration and visualization are the key, to focus on one thing and visualize what we are doing like with the Fa Ra On exercise we taught about previously. You imagine the pyramids. You see them with as much vivid intensity and color as you can, and you see yourself going there. Or better said, rather than imagining that you are imagining it, you actually imagine the sand, the wind, the heat, and the environment. It is important that we maintain our concentration and visualization exercises, so we have more depth and strength to our exercise or our work.
11. Adopt a prayerful attitude.
Adopt a prayerful attitude where we humbly ask for help and pray, “Show me, Divine Mother, the internal worlds. Help me to change. Help me to experience this for myself!”
12. Take a comfortable position when ready to sleep.
Lastly, take a comfortable position when you are ready to sleep.
Intermittent Sleep
There is another exercise you can do if you want to increase your likelihood for astral projection. We call it intermittent sleep.
You can practice getting up in the early hours of the morning or late at night. You set an alarm, sleep for a few hours, then get up in the middle of the night and you perform a practice. The Qur’an is a perfect example of a scriptural source of this discipline, where in Islam they mention about supererogatory prayer, which are additional exercises or prayers that one performs in the middle of the night or the early hours of dawn. As it says in Surah 17:78-79: Perform the prayer at the declining of the sun to the darkening of the night. And the recitation at dawn—truly, the recitation at dawn is ever witnessed! And keep vigilant prayer for part of the night, as a supererogatory act for thee. It may be that thy Lord will resurrect thee in a praiseworthy station. —Qur’an 17:78-79
You may find that if you wake up in the early hours and you practice and then go back to bed, that you suddenly enter the astral plane with a lot of intensity, a lot of vividness of color and depth. It is because you take the time to awaken yourself even physically to be more alert and aware until finally you take that alert state and go back to the dream world. It is very useful. It is a form of spiritual resurrection, because you are literally coming back from the world of the dead and then entering it again.
But of course, there are some caveats to this. You do not necessarily want to perform intermittent sleep or practices when maybe you have work during the week, or you have a busy schedule. It is not good to do it all of the time, especially if you find that you need rest. But instead, you can basically perform it maybe once in a while or whatever is conducive for your schedule. You can also go to bed earlier. That is important too, to make up any sleep you have lost, but also you do maintain a schedule that is going to be healthy for you. 
Elementotherapy: Nature’s Royal Art
We are going to explain these last few slides, a couple of practices with elemental therapy which is nature’s royal art. There are certain plants that can help us to astral project, especially if we struggle with achieving it.
In synthesis, elementotherapy is a term coined by Samael Aun Weor about working with the souls of plants. Every plant in nature has a soul. It is animated by life, and every plant has a spiritual purpose. So we can work with the intelligences of nature to teach us how to astral project, to help us go out of our body. I will only mention two. 
Elemental of the Angel’s Trumpet
We have a plant called the Angel’s Trumpet. Samael Aun Weor talks about this in Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic, in the chapter on “The Magic of the Angel’s Trumpet.”
So, typically what you do is you concentrate and visualize the soul of the plant. You perform a mantra that activates the plant itself and helps you to facilitate inner experiences. One thing to be conscious of with the Angel’s Trumpet is that it is highly toxic, so there is that caveat. It is important not to consume the plant. What we are working with is the elemental, not the physical substance of the plant itself. Samael Aun Weor, when he mentioned this practice, he mentioned how in his past lives in certain temples of the White Lodges, he would take some of the juice of some of the plant and dab it very lightly on the forehead of the initiates when they would fall asleep so that they, with the combination of mantra and prayer, would go out. But personally, since I am not a master nor am I under the jurisdiction of one in my physical life, and do not have that kind of guidance in my personal existence, I do not recommend doing it for oneself, with the juices. Personally, I do not know the accurate dosing, although he does describe dabbing it. But that is something very easy to abuse, and in fact, there are many indigenous shamanic cultures and traditions that have abused this plant. So, my personal recommendation for this type of exercise is that you work with the plant’s soul. Do not consume or touch the leaves of the juices itself because it could be harmful. But the elemental of the soul of this plant is very powerful. Here is what Samael Aun Weor stated in his book, Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic: Every angel’s trumpet tree has its corresponding elemental, which has to be utilized by those who wish to consciously depart in their astral body. […]
So, it is like a little prick, and we know that ancient blood rituals were performed by Jesus in the Last Supper, where he took a drop of his blood and deposited it in the chalice of the Last Supper, which was shared amongst his disciples or the Apostles. This united the astral bodies of all of the initiates with Christ.
So, blood is a very potent substance which carries the life of our humanity and our spirituality. With this, you take a little bit and connect it within the incision of the tree and it creates a bond where the elemental will vow to help you. Here is what Samael Aun Weor also had to say about this topic: Then the disciple will cut some hair on his head and will hang it on the tree. He will collect a few petals from the flowers of the tree and place them within a little bag and hang it around his neck as a talisman. Hence, from that moment on, the disciple has under his service this humble elemental, who will always assist to his call.
So, again he mentions a dab, but personally it is my recommendation to work with the soul of the plant, because one could abuse it, using too much of it, obviously, and that is a problem.
Elemental of the Peyote
There is another plant which is very controversial, which is talked about in a lot of shamanic traditions. It is peyote. But there are a lot of problems with peyote, even though authentic peyote can produce conscious astral projections. I will name a list of issues, although it is not exhaustive.
To find authentic peyote is very difficult. It is only found in certain regions of Latin America. Not only that, but one has to be educated on how to dose it which is learned by certain indigenous masters within Latin America. But then the problem becomes how to discriminate who is authentic and who is not, or who has maintained the purity of any lineage. Unfortunately, in these times, this is very rare. Personally, when I have met certain indigenous masters, it has been in the internal planes. That way one is not easily fooled, if you are very alert and conscientious. The elemental of the peyote also only works with meditation, and for this, one has to be a practical meditator, not merely learning how to calm the mind or how to concentrate for a few minutes, but actually meditate to experience internal truths. This is based upon chastity. The elemental of the peyote only obeys chaste people, not those who waste their sexual energy. It also requires sanctity, eliminating a lot of ego, because the elementals do not respect people who do not have any ethics. Also, when the authentic traditions of peyote were utilized, they were done so in sacred spaces and temples and even so, most of that has been in the internal worlds. Some people would be surprised how is it that one can work with peyote in the internal worlds. It is because the astral plane is material. It is a plane of spiritual matter and energy. This elemental magic is internal. While there is a physical component, the real work of that magic happens within the spiritual planes. There is also the issue of when to use the peyote, and when it is appropriate. That is based on divine will, in very rare cases, but also knowing what divinity is commanding what to do is obviously difficult for us as beginners. Most people do not discern reality from illusion or reality from desire and attachment. There is also the issue of frequency of use, how frequently to do it, when it is allowed, and how it is allowed, because often this can lead to abuse—and has. Also, it is illegal in many countries. Let me relate some things that Samael Aun Weor stated about this topic. In Mexico, the Aztecs used the buttons of the peyote to astrally depart. Such a cactus is very abundant in Chihuahua. Unfortunately, the peyote that is known in the valley of Mexico does not serve for this purpose. Whosoever wants to obtain the true peyote, has to search for it among the native Tarahumara in the mountain range of Chihuahua. Moreover, they have to learn how to dose it. Those native Indians are the only ones who can teach how to administer that cactus. Many people have wasted their time with the peyote in the valley of Mexico. The people who have obtained this cactus in the North of Mexico did not achieve anything because they do not know how to use it. This is the difficult problem of peyote.” —Samael Aun Weor, Aztec Christic Magic, “The Sephirah Hod”
He also states in a lecture called “Questions About the Path”:
Peyote is not found in the countries of South America or Central America. It is only found in Mexico and with difficulty. —Samael Aun Weor, “Questions About the Path”:
To corroborate on some earlier points, he continues in this lecture “Questions About the Path”:
The elemental of the peyote cooperates, yes, with meditation. It does not create any kind of tendencies. The elemental is very demanding. It demands chastity. In no way will peyote help, for instance, the indecent lustful ones. It has rules. Master Huiracocha talked about peyote. He narrated how the Master Racinchi inside the temple of Chapultepec, used peyote in order to cause an astral projection. This is the only recommended plant with the condition of not the abusing of it, since it is only for the K.H., Kosmic Humans.
So, we mentioned this in this lecture because a lot of people like to rely on certain substances or drugs to have astral projections because they feel blocked. Some people who are very impeded by their own mind, want to rely on other things to help them astral project, and so, they may turn to peyote or other substances to experience that. But we want to emphasize that if one were to use authentic peyote, it would be under very strict stipulations. There are certain difficulties as I listed, which are just some of many problems. So, this is why Samael Aun Weor mentions in Aztec Christic Magic:
We do not recommend the use of this marvelous cactus. Indeed what we recommend is practice, much practice and soon you will act and travel in the astral body. —Samael Aun Weor, Aztec Christic Magic
I know one missionary who was helped by the elemental of the peyote, but it was performed in a ritual in the astral plane. So, as you saw from that list, there is a certain discipline needed to work with certain elementals. This is something to consider, but this person I know was very awakened in that state as a result from receiving help internally. But for most beginners, obviously, we have attachments and weaknesses to consider. What is better recommended is much practice with these exercises, so that we can achieve the results that we want.
Concentration and Visualization of the Heart
We can also develop our concentration and visualization of the heart. Concentration and visualization are essential for astral projection. If you find that it is very hard to astral project, you can work on your concentration and imagination.
Concentrate and visualize. You can take an image of the heart, maybe in minute detail, depending on your interest or needs, and see it. Concentrate on your heartbeat. Meditate and enter a drowsy state. Visualize how the heart functions in you. Be aware of its presence and the life that it gives. See it. Feel it. Imagine it. By working with the two, concentrating on this image or any image of the heart, you can start to access knowledge that is internal, where you actually see how your heart functions, how it is the Sun in your own psychological and physical solar system. But the two, concentration and visualization, are very important. Without these two principles combined together, it is impossible to really enter the astral state with lucidity and ease. Exercise
We will conclude with a practice.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Questions and Answers
Question: In The Yellow Book, Samael Aun Weor speaks about how an obstacle to meditation is a lack of the drowsy or sleepy state. Could that also be an obstacle for astral projection?
Instructor: Absolutely. As we were saying in the lecture, if you cannot relax when you are practicing, when you are meditating, you cannot really access anything profound or deep, because relaxation is the threshold that leads to the internal worlds. It is when you progressively detach yourself from your physical body. So oftentimes when you are meditating and you are entering a drowsy state, you can start to perceive different images, sounds, colors, experiences, which are not physical, but they are within the screen of your imagination. You cannot access that if you are agitated, or you are in your body or identified with your body or if you are tense. The important thing is to really relax deeply. Without that, you cannot meditate. Actually, meditation without drowsiness is harmful. It is because you are very alert, but you are not going into your internal worlds. There is something about drowsiness and relaxation that suspends the mind and that is actually one of the limbs of Ashtanga Yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, where he talks about suspension of the senses is the beginning of yoga, where you let everything get calm, relaxed and become still, whereby, like a tortoise, you retract your attention inward and no longer identify with the body. So, we need to relax. Without that, you cannot access anything authentic or real. Question: Forgive me, but I have forgotten the name of the posture but when we are lying down on our right side with the left leg on the right and our palm of our right hand is on our head, do you spend about ten or twenty minutes hoping to get into the meditative state in the posture and then could you relax on your back afterward? Or would you try to fall asleep in that position? Instructor: Good question. Basically, what you do is rehearse it for a while. Get into the habit of trying to relax in that posture and train your body. In the beginning you may find that you cannot do it for more than ten minutes or so. Therefore, it is good if you are not able to relax fully in it yet, at least get into the practice and habit of doing it. So, with time you will find you will be able to relax more in that position. The more you do it, you train yourself and the easier it becomes until finally, you can get drowsy and relax while doing it. But it takes time. Comment: Time and consistency. Thank you. Question: And on that posture, the lion’s posture, can you do that on your left side as well? Instructor: He mentions it on the right side and that when you finally feel like you are ready to go to bed, you can turn to another side, relax, and then fall asleep. But he does specify the right side, primarily because the right side relates to the lion, the solar forces. The Lion of Judah is the power of the Sun and also the Son. Question: I recently overheard that somebody was saying that they were taking a new heart medication and it caused him to have nightmares. So, what are some obstacles that medication can present? If it is something that you have to take, is there something you can do to overcome that? Instructor: That is really a good question. Personally, I know of students that have suffered a mental illness, therefore, they have to be medicated, for their heart or for something or a condition. It creates certain impediments while also helping to heal the body. If a person’s physical and mental health requires medication, obviously, that takes precedence, but medications that are perhaps causing nightmares or other types of experiences, obviously that is an obstacle. For some, taking medications related to depression or mental illness, those drugs are very powerful and can make a person very drowsy or perhaps clouded of mind, which commonly is the testimony they give and that it does create difficulties in practice. But it does not mean that because there are difficulties that one cannot overcome them. It could be difficult to have to take heart medication that causes nightmares, where that is one of the results of having to take it. Whosever’s health is affected by not taking it, obviously, you have to weigh the pros and cons. What is life going to be without the medication, if you are going to be without the medication? If you are going to die or if it is going to harm a person, then you need to take it and have to deal with the consequences. There are ways to remedy nightmares. You can do runes. Runes are a great way to overcome negative emotion. I knew of one missionary, whose father was a teacher of Gnosis, and while growing up he would have nightmares quite frequently. What his father would do for him was, as soon as he woke up from having a bad dream, they would stand up and do runes for two or three hours. It got rid of the problem. That energy will help elevate the soul. It can counteract some of the negative influences of symptoms of any kind of drug. So, yes there are obstacles, but it means that there is a pro and a con, so to speak, good and the bad. While it is an impediment, it is also possible to overcome it. Question: What role does cerebral spinal fluid play in dreams and in astral projection? If one is deficient in this, can that prevent astral projection? Instructor: Good question. Basically, with our brain and the functioning of our nervous systems, there is a connection between astral projection in the body with the health of our nerves, because when you are physically active, your astral body is integrated with your physical body. It is basically operating within the human machine. It is good to have good health, a good spine and a healthy brain, but of course in this day and age, there are difficulties. It is very rare to find someone who is very healthy, perfectly healthy in this era. Especially in the West, given all our technology, our results of medicine and achievements, and yet still, a lot of people are ill and suffer many conditions. If your car is damaged, obviously there is going to be an impediment to be able to drive around effectively, and there could be different problems with the car. It is the same with the physical body. It is the same with the heart, the emotional body and also the mind or the mental body. Internally, your mind, emotions and physicality can be represented by a car, and if you have dreams about a car, how it is driving and functioning, it is a representation of many things. It could be a representation of, for example, of your mental health, emotional health or physical health. If you ever get experiences of that nature, where you are being shown something about yourself and your health, it is good to consider the guidance of divinity showing that maybe we are being told to take care of our brain, our physicality, to take care of our heart or take care of our mind. We can often get warnings in the internal world, especially in the early morning hours of the dawn, where we can get insights into what we need to focus on. It is important to be healthy, but obviously if we have an illness, because of certain karma, it can be more difficult to do the work. But personally, I have known people who have suffered some kind of injury or condition that they have had to contend with, but because they were so persistent in achieving the results that they wanted, they awakened. It is not easy. It is not simple. Everyone’s situation and karma is different. But it can be done. I have faith in that because I have seen many students and learned about people’s hardships, challenges that were difficult to hear, but we have to do the best that we can given our circumstances. If it means taking care of one’s livelihood or one’s health, one has to do what they need to do. But it does not mean that one is going to fail. What matters is the consciousness, learning to operate with what one has, because what is more important than the car itself is how you drive. So maybe there are certain restrictions on how you drive. But, in the end, what matters more is that you take care of your needs or learn to drive ethically. There are a lot of people who are healthy and have had a life handed to them on a golden platter in terms of their physicality, and yet they are terrible people. They do not appreciate what they have, and therefore maybe in the future they will not have that. So, there is a balance of mind, body, and heart. If you are conscious and you are serious, if someone has a condition that they are dealing with, it can be done. Question: Speaking on the importance of the drowsy state, once I start to see events and hear voices projecting, I tend either to lose consciousness or I cannot control what I am seeing or hearing. How do I control what I see and hear? Instructor: Do not try to control everything. Watch it. Desire wants to modify, to change or to control. When you start to have inner visions or experiences, the thing is not to grip them more tightly. The thing is to let it go and watch. Let it unfold of itself like a clock that is unwinding. Let the mechanism spring and fulfill its own objective, and just look at the results. One obstacle to astral projection is trying to control the process. It is very common to want to accelerate things or to want to run away from the experience. I remember when I was a young kid, one of my first astral projections scared me. I was levitating above my bed, floating in the air with a lot of lucidity and intensity. I called out for someone to help me because I did not know what this was and obviously, I woke up. I wanted to control the situation. I wanted to get out. I did not want to be there. I was afraid of what I was witnessing with myself, levitating above the bed. It was very real, more real than my physical life. Had I not tried to be controlling of the situation or had I not been afraid, I could have prolonged the experience and learned to navigate effectively. The reality is that in order to be more dexterous with astral projection, to know how to do it more effectively, you actually have to relinquish a lot of control. Do not let your mind try to control things. In a sense, let it happen. Watch what happens. Let the images come. See them like you are watching a film. You are trying to learn what is objective and real here. With practice, you will sense that you are starting to lift out of your body, or you are in bed and the visions pass and you feel that you are about to transition, that you are about to step out of your body. When you recognize that moment, that is the moment that you have to act. But this is not a type of mental control. Do not try to modify or control the circumstances. It is about acting when you need to, but discriminating when to do that is going to be difficult in the beginning. You will learn it through time, through familiarity. So be patient. Another Instructor: Another factor that may be at play there is that the consciousness is too dispersed, and one lacks attentiveness. You can work with the practice that was discussed earlier in this course where in our waking state, you meditate on a candle or an object for a certain amount of time each day to strengthen the consciousness and strengthen the ability to focus the attention. Question: A gnostic instructor once advised me to pronounce the mantra “Wu” for calming the mind. How is that pronounced? Instructor: It is like an exhalation of air, like a hurricane. So, the breath sounds like this: (Sound of hurricane wind howling through a mountain’s throat):
Wwwwwwwwwuuuuuuuuu…
It is an exhalation. It is almost like you are trying to whistle but you are exhaling the air, letting it out, followed by the “U” sound. So yes, that is also a very good mantra to calm the mind and can help to train your mind to get ready for astral projection. Any other questions? I thank you all for coming! |
The Gnostic Academy of Chicago
Free online courses, lectures, podcasts, and transcriptions. Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
