There have existed alternative forms of Christianity, which have very recently gained recognition amongst scholars, although much of that criticism applies only to the past. What many are not willing to recognize is the existence of a modern esoteric Christianity. This term “esoteric” or “esotericism” implies that which is hidden, secret, obscured from the public. The roots of this esoteric Christianity are very ancient. They are even older than Christianity itself, the first Christian sects.
The reason for our studies is to approach the science by which we can experience the truths contained within religion. However, for modern scholasticism, the tendency amongst many spiritual groups is to compartmentalize knowledge, to label things within easy categories, within labels, within a structure, and there is credence and value to this. But the reality is that individuals, groups, and systems are complex. They are subtle. They are nuanced. The tendency to approach religion with our assumptions, our preconceptions of what is there, really demonstrates for us the fundamental nature of belief, which really constitute a set of values, philosophical approaches, for making sense of life. Beliefs can create a sense of order in a world that is falling apart. However, we have to recognize that beliefs have a very limited utility when it comes to practical spirituality. Due to this tendency, many have approached modern Gnosticism as another such system of belief, but I would like to present something different, and to ask us to reflect on a very important principle, as is demonstrated by the Gnostic scriptures themselves, their mere existence, the Gnostic teachings. We find that this wisdom strikes at the heart of what it means to believe, but more importantly, what does it mean to possess knowledge from experience, to know divinity? ― not from a theory, not from an idea, or what we have read, or a conviction without evidence. Instead, it has to do with facts. Gnosis is a living tradition. It was made, and is made of many mystery schools, which had gone underground primarily to avoid persecution, and corruption when exposed to humanity. It is a natural law. When the divine provides exceptional and expedient knowledge for transformation, eventually when exposed to humanity, to degeneration, to vices, traditions become adulterated. They fall apart when the adherents of those disciplines no longer enact and fulfil their requisite values upon which such traditions are based. While this occurred even with early Christianity, this dynamic persists even today. This is why the real keys for unlocking such knowledge, such enigmatic writings, were never giving to the public for millennia, and there is a very good reason for this. Humanity with its prejudices, its biases, its assumptions, translates and interprets according to the conditioning of our psychology. Therefore such wisdom was only given to those who had earned it, not to the uneducated, the inexperienced, or we could say, the uninitiated, because these scriptures lose their essential message when we lack the key, and more importantly when we are not willing to reflect upon their significance within our own life, with full objectivity and self-criticism, with analyisis, with investigation. This knowledge is now being given openly out of compassion. Before, to really receive these kinds of teachings and instructions, scriptures and knowledge, one had to be part of a group in the physical world for a very long period of time, but now we are in a very different era where scriptures that were once hidden, and unavailable to the public, are now immediately present. You can pick up your iPhone and find the Gnostic Gospels. You can find teachings that were obscured for thousands of years―for a long time―with ease. This kind of reality is unprecedented in our history, but it is also important to remember that while we have a bunch of scriptural knowledge, the task is incumbent upon us to know how to interpret. When approaching these studies, it is also important to examine our motives. Do we sincerely seek to understand the causes of our suffering, and more importantly, the suffering of others? Are we willing to sacrifice behaviors and views that produce conflict, discord? Or do we approach spirituality with ambition, with vanity, with selfishness, to impress others with obscure knowledge, or to acquire power? The Esoteric Gnostic Christian tradition has methods and practices, procedures by which we can comprehend all of this, how to become better people, to change, to help others, and in that process of embodying the most elevated ideals of humanity, we approach divinity from experience. We investigate these divine truths through experimentation, through analysis, through inquiry, through investigation, but first in order to do this, one must understand that which conditions our psychological states, so that by understanding them, we can remove them. In the process of self-transformation, Gnostic scriptures become very useful. But when isolated from the core teachings that inform their being, their genesis, their secrecy, these texts become elusive at best, and even useless. Understanding gnosis, the Gnostic Gospels―without exception―requires initiation into the codes by which such scriptures were written, which specifically are known as Kabbalah and Alchemy. We are going to elaborate on what these two sciences are today, because without an understanding of what these principles are, it is impossible to understand what the Gnostics were referring to, because those were the codes in which those scriptures were communicated. Just as appreciating Shakespeare requires a strong knowledge of English, likewise interpreting the Gnostic scriptures requires facility with the symbols, the methods, the allegories, the parables, the mystical language in which they were written, in which they were disseminated. We will examine today the necessity for evaluating our concepts, especially regarding the Gnostic traditions, in what manner the Gnostic Gospels were composed and why. We are also going to examine why the Esoteric Christian tradition was forced underground only to remerge to the public in the 1950’s. I cannot emphasis enough―the Gnostic Gospels are truly compelling. They are practical writings for those who are initiated into its systems. We will take some time to elaborate on the practical roots of Gnostic scriptures, because they challenge our millennia-old beliefs, our assumptions, our theories, as well as the limitations of such beliefs. 
Who Were the Gnostics?
The term γνῶσις gnosis is not well understood today. While literally indicating “knowledge,” gnosis is not limited to a particular geography, or history, or denomination. Just as water has many names, but is prevalent throughout all cultures, likewise gnosis, which is the experience and the knowledge of divine truth from personal testimony, is eternal. Many messengers, many prophets, many luminaries, taught humanity about the origin of spiritual life, but their languages are different. The symbols and codes they use are unique to a given culture. However, the essence of what they taught is the same.
As a tradition, Gnosticism constitutes the secret doctrines of Christianity, which precisely stipulate the following, as stated in the Gospel of John: Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. ―John 8:32
Many modern scholars and students of religion are really fascinated by the early Christians, the Gnostics, because their teachings differ greatly in terms of their content, and especially their pedagogy, in relation to modern Christian dogma. Rather than exclusively believe in the personality of Jesus, the Gnostics taught, and teach, how Christ is an internal principle, something that must be developed, and that salvation does not depend upon following a system of belief. It is found by awakening to our true nature, by comprehending and eliminating the obstacles to our own redemption.
Gnostic Christianity teaches a personal, experiential relationship with the divine. It does not require mediation from a priest, from a rabbi, from an imam, from any theology, from any idea or group. Gnosis is what we know from our own investigations based on facts. Some have argued traditionally that Gnostic Christianity interpreted their mysteries through pagan symbolism, and there is some credence to this. However, Gnosticism extends very far beyond any particular geography, including the Middle East, the Holy Land, any particular language, any individual messenger, any historized or localized group. Through studying and applying these principles, we can verify this truth for ourselves, the universality of diverse spiritual traditions. We begin to see the essential thread that unites them, which is direct experience of the truth. The Gnostic tradition, like many other mystical traditions, was maintained within secret societies, or esoteric schools, which was only accessible by certain candidates who had demonstrated their maturity, their ethics, their dedication, specifically to transforming themselves so that they can benefit humanity. Therefore much scholarship and modern interpretations surrounding the essential nature of Gnostic doctrine is wrong. Most scholars of Gnosticism even admit this. What little history we have, acquired regarding the first Christian groups and their teachings, has some problems. First, it is obscured by a lack of material. We cannot really construct a comprehensive picture of their faith. We have ideas. We have assumptions. We have correlations. We have studious analyses of different texts by scholars and renowned academics, but the truth is that there is a lot that is missing, and because universities and scholars do not have access to methods and means for investigating these on a deeper level, in a spiritual sense, their judgments are incipient, insufficient. They have not received training within the mystery schools that are living the teaching. Therefore they cannot comment. It is beyond their scope. Secondly, the knowledge that we have is filtered. We have many biases and assumptions, many ideas as I said, but we have to remember that what little that we possess of Gnostic treasures have been pieced together. The essential knowledge of the Gnostics was never written down. It was written in code, what little we have. Most of that knowledge was transmitted orally through a secretive chain of transmission between master and disciple. Therefore what remains of their doctrine is very limited. It is like a door without a key, since a lot of their teachings were destroyed, as evidenced by this statement by Manly P. Hall in The Secret Teachings of All Ages: The entire history of Christian and pagan Gnosticism is shrouded in the deepest mystery and obscurity; for, while the Gnostics were undoubtedly prolific writers, little of their literature has survived. They brought down upon themselves the animosity of the early Christian Church, and when this institution reached its position of world power it destroyed all available records of the Gnostic cultus. ―Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Therefore to truly understand the Gnostics, one has to be an initiate. One has to be a member of the initiatic, living mystery school. Now this statement can seem problematic. We are not referring necessarily to a physical group or school, because there are many Gnostic institutions that teach what we are teaching. When I refer to the living mystery school, I am specifically referring to states of consciousness that are beyond mere physicality. We practice the science of meditation, so that we can withdraw the senses and enter into profound introspection, and learn to experience our internal reality.
Some people may be familiar with dreams. Some people call it astral projections, astral experiences, lucid dreaming. We are going to be giving a course very soon on this topic [Dream Yoga and Astral Travel], but I just like to synthesize for you that there is knowledge accessible to us beyond the physical body, and that the consciousness can learn to gain lucidity, clarity, confidence, familiarity, skill, efficacy, abilities within the dream state, so that we are no longer dreaming there, and we can learn to access knowledge that is far beyond which is conceivable with our materialistic theories. The living mystery schools and the Gnostic Church are within these internal realities, these internal worlds. It is something that we can verify and experiment with, to test, to know, to witness. It is important we learn to approach this knowledge without believing or disbelieving, but merely experimenting with it, testing its principles, its hypotheses, so that we can learn from facts what is the reality here, because physical senses are very limited. Intellectual knowledge that we gather from books does not really gives us the full picture of the reality of a thing. Intellectual knowledge is useful in its place, but it is not the core purpose of why we approach this type of spirituality. Comprehension and understanding is born from experience. It is not acquired by merely reading a book, or attending a lecture. It is something much deeper than that. So we have many practices that we provide so that you can verify these things if that is your wish. Now in relation to the Gnostic Gospels, some have referred to them as the Apocrypha, from the Greek apokryptein, “to hide away.” We can hear within this etymology the word “cryptic,” that which is indecipherable, archaic, obscure. This term includes religious scriptures not included within the standard cannon. It can apply to biblical books from early Christianity, such as the Greek version of the Old Testament, which is not included in the Hebrew Bible. Apocrypha can also signify texts which are considered of doubtful authenticity, which despite their prevalence, may be questionable, even if they are accepted commonly. For the purpose of our studies, we are examining these apocryphal texts, because they challenge us. They challenge well-established assumptions about the essential nature of Christianity, of Christian dispensation, about faith, about reality, about experience, about investigation, about knowing. Many have tried to prove these scriptures false because it is truly frightening, if you think about it, to conceive that we in the West, our Western culture which prides itself on its magnificence, its worldly materialism and glories, really stands on mistaken foundations. This is why we study meditation very deeply and practice it, so that we can verify and test these truths, to discriminate with knowledge, with insight, with intelligence. 
The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
The Nag Hammadi scriptures are Coptic texts. They were discovered in 1945 by a group of Egyptian peasants in upper Egypt. They were digging for fertiliser near a boulder when they discovered a sealed jar. Thinking that they might have found gold, and overcoming the fear of unleashing a Jinn, which is a bottled spirit. They broke the jar and found the codices written in Coptic. Coptic, which was influenced by Greek, originally descended from ancient Egyptian language, the former having been superseded by Egyptian Arabic. Coptic is a form of the Egyptian language that was used, I believe, from the Roman period up until more recent times.
The Nag Hammadi scriptures are approximately 50 different gnostic texts, constituted by 13 leather-bound papyri, bound books which are not scrolls. A lot of supposition has been spread and focused upon the origins of these texts. They were most likely buried in the second half of the 4th century CE, and while originally written in Greek during the early centuries of the Christian movement, such texts were translated into Coptic, possibly by early Christian monks. This is what scholars like Marvin Meyer and Elaine Pagels believe. Supposedly these monks translated these texts despite the accusations in Spring of 367 by Athanasius, the archbishop of Alexandria, who was calling for believers to reject what he called heretical, “illegitimate and secret books.” Instead the texts were conserved in a jar. They were buried, and then they were miraculously found 1600 years later. 
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were surrounded in mystery as well, a deep history that you can read about especially on Deadseacrolls.org.il. They were initially discovered by a treasure seeker group of Bedouins in Qumran, by a nomadic group of people near the northern end of the Dead Sea. They were excavations of various documents, papyri, which were written on goat and sheep skin scrolls. Many of these were mostly written in Hebrew, but also in Aramaic. I am going to present to you most of the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so that you can have a sense of what exactly was found before we go in to a deep analysis of the Gnostic Gospels themselves.
There were biblical scriptures, all except the Book of Ester. These are the oldest existing copies of these texts, so you can imagine that this is a huge find for archaeologists. There were translations of scripture in Greek and Aramaic, which was a language commonly spoken in the Holy Land 2000 years ago. 
There were תפילין tefillin, which are prayer parchment slips. If you are familiar with the Jewish tradition, when praying in a synagogue, one wears תפילין tefillin, which are phylacteries, black leather straps around one’s arm, and a black box with prayer parchment slips as you see in the word תפילין tefillin themselves, which a placed in the black box that you wear on your forehead between your eyebrows, a representation of how we have to wrap ourselves within prayer, deep devotion, especially of our mind, controlling our mind, devotion to divinity.
There are מזוזה Mezuzot, prayers that are placed on the door post of houses. Usually you find a cylindrical object that has the Hebrew letter ש Shin, representative of שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai, the Almighty Living God within Hebrew, a sacred name. מזוזה Mezuzot are prayers written by rabbis that are placed within these מזוזה Mezuzot, which are situated on the door posts of Jewish homes. We also have אפוקריפה Apocrypha. These are Catholic and Eastern orthodox cannons, not a part of Hebrew and the Protestant Bible. This includes Ben Sira, the Book of Tobit and the Epistle of Jeremiah. We also have calendrical texts, which are solar rather than lunar calculations, which document the festivals, the ceremonies, and the priestly courses of those communities, sometimes written in cryptic script. There are exegetical texts, which are explicit analyses and interpretations of biblical works. If you have gone on our website you find we talk about many scriptures. We provide exegeses, which are commentary on different obscure verses within various traditions. Here in the Dead Sea Scrolls you find that they were many exegetical texts about the Bible, including פשר Pesher, relating to biblical prophecies that are applied to historical moments. You also have historical texts, which are numerous historical events with theological and moral commentary, and there are also legal texts as well, rabbinical Halakah, which means the Jewish laws and customs of those communities relating to the Bible. If you have read the Old Testament you are probably familiar with Leviticus, and Deuteronomy especially, which outline a lot of the Jewish law, which mystical texts like the Zohar comment upon. There are parabiblical texts retelling expansions and embelishments of biblical stories, or legal texts. There is poetical and liturgical texts: hymns and prayers that people use in synagogue, or in many ceremonies relating to biblical poetry. There is sapiential texts relating to wisdom or knowledge. It is a continuation of the wisdom tradition of Proverbs, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, some Psalms, Ben Sera, and the Wisdom of Solomon. There are also sectarian texts which interest a lot of scholars, which are the unique theology, world view, and history of the Essenes, or Yahad, “the community.” There is a lot of obscurity about who the Essences were. Their history is very hidden from materialistic science and archaeology, but this is something that we can investigate within our meditations, to go deep into learning the history of these groups, if that is our wish. What is at Stake?
Now, the question becomes: “What is at stake by studying the Gnostic Gospels?”
Despite their novelty within the context of Christianity’s evolution in the public sense, the presence of Gnostic scriptures asks us to revise our assumptions, our convictions, our beliefs, which for many obviously can be source of discomfort. There is a lot at stake for mainstream Christianity when studying their origins and the significance of their tradition. This is why many people simply dismiss the Gnostic Gospels as heresy, as inauthentic, as satanic, but regardless or not whether they are true, their presence asks us and compels us to present an uncomfortable question: “What do we really know? What do we know about Jesus? What do we know about ourselves and divinity?” We are basically asked to question what it means to believe, and what it means to know. While it is difficult even to believe in a tradition today, as evidenced by the prevalence of Atheism in the West, especially North America, it is even more difficult to experience religion, simply because for the modern mind, which is conditioned by its own scepticism, such possibilities do not exist for it. It is incompatible with the materialistic dogma that has perpetuated, and conditioned our Western world view, but the reality is even if we are in a religion, we may be very materialistic, primarily because we deny that it is even possible to experience these things. When someone says they have experienced divinity, we look at them like they are crazy, but it is sad that this is the general outlook and attitude, because all religions are teachings from individuals who experienced divinity. If you look at scriptures such as the Qur’an, there are really many Surahs that simply are of the Prophet Muhammad contesting with the unbelievers who reject his testimony, much like the ancient Christian prophets and masters, or the Hebrew rabbis, the enlightened ones, who constantly had to contend with very doubtful people. So there is nothing new under the Sun here. But rather than dismiss the Gnostic Gospels, it is better to really examine the situation, rather than follow the easy, dismissive, and unscientific path of just rejecting what does not fit our world view, that which is not palatable for us. We can really come to the conclusion that there must be reasons why we do not have this knowledge. I am not talking about from a book, or from a scripture, but from experience, from verification, from meditation. Part of why we do not know these things is due to our inherent tendencies, such as mechanically taking in information. We always like to compare data that we receive with our memories, with our knowledge. Perhaps you are listening to this lecture and comparing what I am saying with what somebody else said, or to a book you have read, or to a lecture you heard, or to a scripture you are studying. The mind can only compare thesis and antithesis, point A and point B. It can only look at the corelations between them. It can store data. It is useful for basically storing information, but when it comes to trying to experience what these scriptures entail, the mind, with its overdependence on rationalization, tends to become the obstacle, a very chatty, distracted, and disorientated mind. We tend to project our thoughts onto the reality before us, and therefore we do not really see what is new. We also like to compartmentalize information we have heard, so that it will fit a certain box, an a priori assumption, and most people get stuck there. They do not go any further, and it is unfortunate, because there is really more to life and experience, as evidenced by the Gnostic Gospels, than is merely assumed, or lived, or believed. Rather than see a phenomenon for what it is, we tend to just merely interact with our concepts, and we can say that this is really a profound state of sleep, spiritually speaking, unconsciousness, not really knowing ourselves, not really knowing our full potential or what we could do. The reason why this happens is that there is comfort within structures. There is complacency within belief systems. They provide us with a sense of order. They give us cohesion when we approach a world that is really afflicted, and afflictive, with a society that is really backwards, upside down. You just simply have to look at the news to see what is happening, even in the Middle East right now, or in different cities. It is distressful, and the truth is that if you look at the conflict going on in Israel right now, you find that people have their firm convictions and beliefs why the enemy is wrong. Beliefs do not change anybody. Our religion, our attitudes, our beliefs do not really affect a lasting, profound, and deep spiritual realization. If you do not believe me, you can simply examine your own life. We can think and feel one day that something is true, and yet that changes. Our ideas change. Our political parties change. Our religions change, and yet we continue to suffer. People change religion and political parties, ideas, like changing clothes. These tend to be very superficial, and worn like regalia, or a costume, in order to fit in with a specific group. But unfortunately that does not really penetrate the depth of the consciousness, of really altering the fundamental trajectory of our life, of examining what behaviors we enact that really produce problems for ourselves and for others, and learning to change them. We can change our political affiliations and ideologies, and yet we can continue to be unhappy, to be burdened with problems, with pain. Therefore if these are impermanent, the question become: what is not? What is permanent? What is real? Is it not facts born from experience the most real thing that we can come close to, that we can approximate, that we can agree upon? But unfortunately when it comes to spirituality, we have many assumptions and vague notions about what spirit, what divinity, what Christ is, because if people’s basic terminologies and definitions completely differ from one another, then it is not factual. It is a belief. It is not based in evidence. It is not the raw experience of a thing. So this is why knowledge, when it is divorced from practice, is really useless. Studying and accumulating information in the intellect, but not deeply changing our daily states, is a waste of time. We can use scriptures, and these teachings, and the Gnostic Gospels to inform the basis of an ethical lifestyle, but without the effort and the will to work, it will not get us anywhere, unfortunately. If our knowledge does not rectify our suffering, then it is necessary to revise our method. What is the common saying? It’s the definition of madness is to keep repeating the same thing expecting a different result. This is why Gnosis exists. But traditionally this knowledge has been so revolutionary that it had to go underground, because most people cannot accept it. Whether you are new, or have studied these teachings for some time, you can simply go on the internet to realize this fact, how many people do not get it, but that is ok. People are at their level. They have their beliefs and we respect them. As for our personal life, we work with what is effective, and try to provide clarity for those who need it, who want it. Some people merely hear this knowledge, about this type of instruction, and then they dismiss it because it does not fit preconceptions, and there is some truth to that. It is a natural sentiment to not want to feel challenged in one’s beliefs, our identity. We feel offended when someone criticizes perhaps even our taste in music, or our religion. It is a natural reaction or instinct, but if we want to go deeper in our understanding of these principles, it is important to question that reaction. This is why this wisdom traditionally was only given to people or candidates who proved their willingness, their maturity. To understand who the Gnostics were really requires initiation, meaning, entering the discipline, into tradition that they practice, which has to do with our inner experiences, by practicing meditation, by verifying these truths within oneself. Now contrary to popular assumption, this tradition has indeed thrived throughout many centuries in very different ways―sometimes subversive, always hidden, but always adapting to the social, the cultural, the religious climate of different periods in history. There have been many figures throughout history who have known and practiced Gnosticism, yet many of them never announced their allegiance, because it was risky. We now live in an era of information, as I said, that is unprecedented. We have access to knowledge that was veiled for millennia. However, since there is so much confusion surrounding it, humanity has been granted access to this knowledge so that they can gain clarity, orientation. This is the purpose of the Gnostic Gospels and the Gnostic teachings. These are the teachings of a mystery school, but as I mentioned, what is a mystery school? Some people only like to think that they are groups far removed from the past, but the truth is that they are a living entity that sustain, emerge, and last in accordance with the work of the individual practitioners who belong to those groups. So there are physical groups as I said, but more importantly, the Gnostic Church is within the superior, internal worlds, which we access when we physically go to sleep. We enter deep meditation and we awaken in those states. This is not a theory. It is not a belief. Personally for me, this is not what I believe. This is something I practice, and so I invite you to study and enter that discipline yourself. So as we said, scholars often have not been initiated into gnosis, specifically the practices that allow aspirants to really acquire this knowledge for themselves. What we are providing here is verifiable through experience, through study and practice. It is not a belief. If some people wish to make Gnosticism into a another belief system, that is ok. That is their path. They can do that, but that is personally not why we at this school are providing these lectures. That is not a reflection of the reality and purpose of this teaching. We can only really understand this through study, and looking at some of the historical trends, but more importantly living this esoteric knowledge. 
Esoteric and Public Christianity
But in order to kind of emphasize and provide a distinction between the different forms of Christianity that emerged, I am going to relay to you some quotes from Dion Fortune who wrote in her book The Training and Work of an Initiate about some of the history of the early Gnostic Christians, because her analysis is very eloquent and very deep.
She emphasizes that there is a great tendency in humanity. People want to adhere to an outer religious form without really understanding its inherent mysteries. So there has always been a division between two spheres―outward religious forms and inner mystical meaning. This is a binary that has been studied and documented by many scholars, some very renowned individuals like Gershom Scholem, who was a German Israeli philosopher. He made Kabbalah very popular for academics, some valuable history that one can learn, but obviously one has to discriminate what the scholars assume, but also what we have known from experience, because they are different. These domains constitute the esoteric and public religious forms―the secret meaning of a tradition and its outward symbols. So classes of people have developed in relation to this binary, one which is made up of dogma and the other from direct experience. In other words, one group has been initiated into these mysteries, and the majority merely adhere to a structure, a code, a ritual system, a belief system without verification. I will read for you her quote at length: There naturally sprang up a keen rivalry between the two types of Christians; those who had accepted the teaching of Our Lord without any previous Mystery-training depended entirely upon spiritual intuition and good works; those who were already accustomed to the methods of the Mysteries sought to express the Christian truths in the language of the esoteric philosophy of their day. The first chapter of the Gospel according to John is an excellent example of the process whereby men already highly trained in mystical knowledge correlated the new teaching with that which was already familiar to them. In this Gospel we see the influence of the Greek Schools of initiation, but in the Apocalypse we see the influence of Qabalistic thought.
For those who are not familiar, Kabbalah constitutes the mystical teachings of esoteric Judaism, which can inform our understanding of Gnostic Christianity, its inception, its meaning. This is because Christianity has Jewish roots. Jesus was a rabbi. He was an Essene, as we are going to examine in later quotes. Therefore, if we want to understand the Gnostics, the esoteric Christian tradition, we need to know the esoteric Jewish tradition from which it sprung, without exception.
Likewise, Dion Fortune also emphasised something very interesting, that Gnostic Christianity was formed by initiates from different esoteric groups. These are people who already possessed knowledge. They had spiritual development. Therefore they recognized within the newly emerging esoteric Christian traditions their inherent mysteries. These were encoded, these were conveyed, and they were taught within the new religious movement. As is the tendency of modern humanity, many new adherents to Christianity did not want to engage with the difficult task of learning Kabbalah: the Jewish mystical science which informs esoteric Christianity. The study of Kabbalah consists of the archetypal nature of the Hebrew letters, their symbology, what they represent, divine numerology, and many intuitive symbols. Instead, certain followers of public Christianity either ignored or they removed such roots. They wanted to make their tradition more acceptable, and as a result, they sterilized Christianity. I will read for you Dion Fortune again: In the struggle between the two types of Christians, the initiates and the non-initiates, the latter eventually gained the day, and forthwith the order for persecution and abolition went forth against the Mysteries of Jesus. The orthodox element then gradually developed, as was inevitable, something of a Mystery System of their own in the sacraments, which are ritual magic pure and simple, as is agreed even by such an authority as Evelyn Underhill.
Christianity, as with all religions, is composed and conveyed through the language of symbols, abstractions within philosophy, within allegory, within archetypes. If you do not believe me, look at the verses of the Bible, in the New Testament, where Jesus says he speaks in parables for those who understand, for those who are initiated. Modern Christians interpret their scriptures literally, and they perform and observe rituals without really comprehending the deeper reality, the significance, what their teachings and rituals communicate in a spiritual level, on a psychological level, more importantly.
For Gnostics, rituals are really powerful. They are a medium for developing and awakening our full potential. We have ceremonies that we practice, which encode, empower, and which represent the path itself, within its mystical allegory. Now what some have denominated magic is the capacity of the consciousness to exert divine influence upon humanity. This term magic is often denigrated today. People do not understand its original roots. It comes from the Indo-European root word mag or magush, meaning “priest.” A real magician is a priest, and there are also in the Gnostic Church priestesses, because men are not the only source of authority, of spiritual guidance, of wisdom. In fact, a real priest needs his priestess in order to be a priest. This has to do with the Gnostic Mysteries of Chastity, which is the next lecture in this course. Now real magic is learning how to influence others through divinity for a positive purpose, to elevate the soul of others. Through training of spiritual practices, we can develop this capacity. We can develop the intuitive capacity for comprehending scripture, and we can also strengthen our ability to express a superior way of being―real compassion―not the hallmark cards of holidays, gifts, and sentimentalism, but loving so much that we even forgive our worst enemies, like Jesus on the cross. We can really express states of compassion and love, which are facilitated through Gnostic ritual, ceremonies and practices that we have in our tradition. But unfortunately for many Christians, their tradition has been sterilized, as I said. They are really infertile. Many Christians like to say that they are born again, but really if you look at their teaching, which is divorced from its Jewish roots, there is really is not much fertility there, especially in relation to sexual aspects of this knowledge, which are studied in relation to Alchemy, as we are going to explain. Their traditions no longer convey effective methods for bridging the divine and the personal worlds. Many who find intellectual, emotional, or practical deficiencies in Christianity flee to other religions. They run away, and this is really sad, because there is something within Christian dispensation for Westerners which is valuable, but when that teaching no longer reflects its original patrimony, its essence, then people become disillusioned. They leave. Now rather than abandon one’s Christian heritage if one grew up Christian, one can learn to appreciate it deeply. One can find sustenance through the rich intellectual and spiritual sciences of Kabbalah and Alchemy which inform its heart. As Dion Fortune states: Consequently there is an unbridged gulf in our modern Christianity between the mysticism of its deep spiritual truths and the symbolic and magical ceremonial of its ritual. This gulf it is the task of the modern Mystery Schools to bridge. These, however, have in many cases re-illumined their fires at an Eastern altar, so that the bridge they build does not lead to the Christian contacts of the West. Those of their followers who seek initiation, instead of having revealed to them the deeper issues of their own faith, have to change their religion and follow other Masters. 
The Tree of Life: Christian Kabbalah
Kabbalah is one of the primary codes in which the Gnostic Gospels were written, represented in the Book of Genesis and the Gnostic Gospels as the Tree of Life in Eden.
It is a map of our internal and external universe. It is the structure of consciousness within every dimension. This knowledge flourished secretly within Jewish mystical circles, but Judaism is not its sole patrimony. Each spiritual tradition contains the same elements. Some of these predominate within a specific culture, within a given time or place or language. The Jewish tradition delved very deeply within the Kabbalistic teachings, just as Buddhism flourished with its analytical insights into meditation. However this does not mean that Buddhism is devoid of Kabbalah, or Kabbalah is devoid of meditation. Each tradition encompasses the other. They embody the same principles, much in the same way as water changes shape within different cups. The water is the same. Christianity has its roots in Judaism, but since its roots were removed from it, Christianity has lost its soil. Kabbalah is the practical tool for navigating spiritual experience. It is a way to understand our reality and our relationship with divinity. Dion Fortune states in her book The Mystical Qabalah: It [the Tree of Life] is a glyph, that is to say a composite symbol, which is intended to represent the cosmos in its entirety and the soul of man as related thereto; and the more we study it, the more we see that it is an amazingly adequate representation; we use it as the engineer or the mathematician uses his sliding-rule, to scan and calculate the intricacies of existence, visible and invisible, in external nature or the hidden depth of the soul. […]
This map depicts ten spheres. These are known as סְפִירוֹת sephiroth in Hebrew, “emanations,” which emerge from the transcendent divinity, or as the Gnostics denominate, Agnostos Theos: the Unknowable God, from the most rarefied states of being to the most condensed and conditioned, material states.
The Gnostics refer to the origin of spiritual life and light as Barbelo, from the Aramaic language. Bar means “son,” while Bel signifies “sun.” Christ, represented by Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the solar divinity, is therefore the embodiment of heavenly light, of compassion, which permeates all the spheres, the eternal realms, the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth or the aeons, and the later which can also signify any inhabitant of such dimensions, those who have mastered those realms. Barbelo can also be referenced as the Solar Absolute: the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur above this Tree of Life, which means the Limitless Light, the Uncreated, the Unmanifested potentiality to be. It is the source and origin of all existing, manifested things, represented by these ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, or spheres, these heavens. All of this emerges because of the essential and eternal compassion of Christ, which is that light, the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, Barbelo. Gnostics have referenced the Absolute, above this diagram, as Pronoia: the “forethought of God,” which is a pure, cosmic abstraction which is not yet materialized. It is not yet in manifestation. The Jewish mystics have referred to the unmanifested divine as Aelohim, and the creator demiurge as Elohim. This duality between the unmanifested cosmic potential and an intelligent but often denigrated creative host or demiurge, is very often depicted in the Gnostic Gospels. Each sphere relates to different dimensions of nature, in accordance with the densities and the materiality of them. The most subtle and rarefied are at the top, and the most dense are below, as you can see with מלכות Malkuth in Hebrew, the “kingdom,” the physical world, our physical body. Above that we have different realms and spheres which are more subtle to perceive, but are able to be verified through meditation. I will not go through the meaning of all of these סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, because that will be the purpose of this course. We will be unpacking Gnostic scripture in relation with Kabbalah and Alchemy. So we can access these higher realms when the physical body is asleep, when we experience dreams. But rather than enter such states with a fragmentary awareness or just complete unconsciousness, the Gnostics learn to enter those realms with lucidity, with full awareness, with complete intentionality, with development, so that we can take advantage of those states, of such perceptions, in order to receive divine wisdom. We can learn to speak with the divine, including all of the masters of these celestial realms, the aeons, the divine hierarchies, who can grant us the capacity for transcendence, or make us pay what we owe before the archons, the hierarchs of the Law, which in eastern traditions are known as the Lords of Karma. They work with the creative demiurge, the host of gods and goddesses that manage and manifest all of the laws of nature, whether for good or for ill. Just as there are physical and societal laws, divinity also enforces superior laws that we have to learn to comprehend and follow if what we want is to achieve liberation, like Sophia in the Gnostic myth ascending up thirteen repentances, towards the source, which is the אין Ain, the Nothingness in Hebrew. Notice that you have ten spheres, and you have three realms above that, so that makes a total of thirteen―the thirteen repentances of Pistis Sophia if you have read The Gnostic Bible. So all of that relates to the Tree of Life. It is very deep, very important, and all of it is mapped. To really become skilled meditators, we use this graphic to help us understand our experiences and to know what to do in our path. 
Alchemy: The Tree of Knowledge
Kabbalah has its twin sister. This is Alchemy. It is the other tree of the Garden of Eden.
The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge―Kabbalah, and Alchemy―are not specific, literal trees in Mesopotamia. These are symbols. In scripture, geography has often served as a code for deeper spiritual realities, in order to escape detection, persecution, and death, as we saw with the Spanish Inquisition. Alchemy is a rich tradition that encodes a lot of knowledge, but it is not a literal science of transforming lead in to gold. It is a symbol of how we use energy, how we transform the densities of our suffering personality into the lightness and gold of a liberated Essence, a pure consciousness. There are some interesting correlations between the Tree of Life and the Nag Hammadi scriptures, which we are going to examine some of the etymologies here. The term nag or naga reminds us of a serpent, from the Sanskrit नाग Naga, which in Buddhism are renown as elemental beings of nature who live within and empower nature itself. They are depicted as having a lower body of a snake and a humanoid torso. They often dwell in bodies of water and lakes, rivers especially. My wife, who before coming to Chicago, she was often praying to the Nagas by the rivers where she lived, in order to receive internal assistance. They have a very concrete reality. They are very beautiful souls that can help us. But importantly for us in this lecture, we are talking about the serpentine form of these elemental creatures, and the serpent is an ancient symbol. They can refer to our creative energy, which has the power to enliven our spirituality or to damn it, to destroy it. We find this evident in the duality of the tempting serpent, and the serpent of bronze that healed the Israelites in the wilderness. Nag spelt backwards is גן Gan, ג Gimel- נ Nun, which is a garden. Such a garden of Eden, the Hebrew term for bliss, is not a literal place. It is a psychological and spiritual state of being. حمادي Hammadi in Arabic means: “praiseworthy,” “one who praises God,” with roots in أحمد ahmad orمحمد Muhammad, the “praised, commendable, laudable.” Therefore, the Nag Hammadi scriptures are the esoteric knowledge of the serpent, of “the praiseworthy serpent,” the bronze serpent of Moses that can heal the soul. These are symbols. That energy, which is very subtle and terrifying for many, can be trained and elevated within our physiology in order to empower our consciousness. Rather than exclusively represent an evil tendency to be shunned, which is done by many superstitious people, the serpentine creative energies, when harnessed and controlled with love, provides happiness and a genuine awakening. What matters is that we utilize, symbolically, the metals of bronze. This is an amalgamation of copper and tin. Copper is feminine and tin is masculine, Venus and Jupiter when corresponding astrologically to those planets related to those metals. This demonstrates how a woman and a man within the Edenic bliss of sexual union, within a marriage, can overcome temptation. They can perform actions, sexual behaviors, that are praiseworthy before God. This is the original meaning of Adam and Eve in the garden. A man and a woman naked in a garden before God―obviously this is very sexual. But it is emphasizing that there are two paths that open up for the primordial couple, the archetypical man and woman. This is science has been designated at sexual alchemy, known as sexual magic within our tradition, where a couple, who are married, can utilize their union to achieve genuine religion. They can achieve return, reunion with divinity. 
Water into Wine
Now Gnosticism is a specific doctrine of the initiates, primarily Kabbalah and Alchemy as I stated. All religions contain the science of these two trees, although they are in code. These sciences are the absolute synthesis of religion. When you really reduce a religion to its core, you arrive at a sexual trope. Everything else is extemporaneous.
This spiritual knowledge is represented by water, and knowledge (water) is fluidic. It flows like a river, and often times in history, especially in the past ages, this esoteric, secret Christianity was often flowing like a ripple, often still, unperturbed, like in a reservoir underground. But now this knowledge is being given openly like a torrent, very fierce, which we find in writings by the author Samael Aun Weor. He wrote about Gnosticism since the 1950’s and was really the first to explicitly discuss teachings about early Christianity, about Buddhism, about all religions, that were previously prohibited to discuss. His most prevalent thesis is that all religions have a sexual basis, a sexual essence, which is the most expedient method for intense spiritual transformation. It is found precisely in the relationship between husband and wife. This is known as sexual alchemy, how a martial union grounded in divine love, with an ethical fulfilment, within the highest spiritual ideals, within discipline, within purity, within compassion for suffering, this results in the creation of an angel, a master, a prophet. Some have qualified Samael Aun Weor’s work as neo-Gnostic, in that his writings are an innovation, yet this is a pleonasm. His teachings regarding the essential practices of the Gnostics are not new. They have been presented throughout all religions without exception. To recognize this fact merely takes study, but unfortunately people do not want to. It is even more evident when you really practice and experience this science for yourself, and then, really, a lot of clarity emerges in relation to abstract symbols and religious allegories, which might seem very superficial and dumb in a literal sense, but really is the spirit of the letter that vivifies. Some people reject Samael Aun Weor because his work is not just isolated to the first Christians, but is extensive to all religions. Many people do not except the universal religion at the heart of all faiths, which Samael Aun Weor denominated as Gnosis. It is the experience and knowledge of divine truths from witnessing for oneself. He explains the following in his lecture “The Gnostic Institutions”: There is Gnosis in the Buddhist doctrine, in the Tantric Buddhism from Tibet, in the Zen Buddhism from Japan, in the Chan Buddhism of China, in Sufism, in the Whirling Dervishes, in the Egyptian, Persian, Chaldean, Pythagorean, Greek, Aztec, Mayan, Inca, etc., wisdom. If we carefully study the Christian Gospels, we will find in them Pythagorean mathematics, the Chaldean and Babylonian parable, and the formidable Buddhist moral. ―Samael Aun Weor, “The Gnostic Institutions”
The highest form of spiritual knowledge is Alchemy. This was conserved in secret. This knowledge was kept hidden, was maintained secretly amongst the early Christian groups, because it is volatile. It is powerful. It is controversial. It is a practice that requires the renunciation of our deepest, egotistical, and sexual drives, transforming sexual instinct into something divine, into something pure, into something sacred, creative, divine. We now have the opportunity to explain and learn knowledge that was reserved for the most developed and earnest of practitioners.
This knowledge was represented in the Bible in symbols, in relation to Alchemy. Was not Christ’s first miracle, in transforming water into wine, at a marriage? Christ taught sexual alchemy―to be born again. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” Everybody knows this. But the same sexual act, but transformed, elevated, “that which born of the spirit,” through that transformed act, “is spirit.” This is how common intercourse can become spiritual, how lust, which is contrary to love, is transmuted and transformed into divine compassion, conscious love, our soul. This is the basis of Gnosticism in all religions. Some people might ask, “How is it that Gnosis is in all religions, yet should not be adulterated?” We can say that the sexual teachings constitute the synthesis of all religions. The religious forms have died, but if we have the synthesis, the key, we can unlock these traditions and give them vibrancy, give them life. Religious authorities have expunged this synthesis as best it could, not knowing the full import of certain religious symbols that were retained within the Bible, within scripture. They passed censorship, especially in books like the Book of Revelations, which is so Kabbalistic and symbolic that the censors just did not get it. But because they did not want to remove the teachings of the Lord, they kept it in the Bible even though it is very difficult and impossible to understand without this key. Therefore to approach traditions without this basis is mistaken. Samael Aun Weor continues: The system of teaching which was adopted by Jesus was the system of the Essenes. Certainly, the Essenes were one hundred percent Gnostic.
So Gnosis is within all religious forms, but not all forms have retained their essence. All religions have degenerated, unfortunately. Therefore it can be difficult to discern their original teachings if we lack an education in this studies, and especially with practical training in its methods.
Gnostic Controversies
So despite the fact that Gnosticism is flourishing again, there have been many disagreements among and about Gnostic groups since the times of Jesus, including today in Samael Aun Weor’s movement. For example, the Nazarenes were, according to Blavatsky:
The same as the St. John Christians; called the Mendaeans or Sabeans. They designate Christ “a false Messiah” and only recognize John the Baptist, whom they call the “great Nazar.” ―H.P. Blavatsky
You also find the following from The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor:
The Nazarenes were known as Baptists, Sabians, and Christians of Saint John. Their belief was that the Messiah was not the Son of God, but simply a prophet who wanted to follow John. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Three Mountains
And also from the lecture “Alchemical Symbolism of the Nativity of Christ”:
In those days, there were disputes among the Baptists, the Essenes, and others. ―Samael Aun Weor, Alchemical Symbolism of the Nativity of Christ
There is great diversity even today in so called Gnostic groups, whether from Samael Aun Weor or not. Many of them fight with each other. They denominate the others as heretics, much like Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Athanasius, and other heresiologists towards Christians whose doctrinal purity they questioned. For example, Irenaeus and Hippolytus were heresy hunters. They wrote against the Gnostics, yet what is interesting is that Samael Aun Weor refers to them as Gnostics. This can get confusing, right? But rather than becoming confused by this apparent or glaring discrepancy, or merely reject Samael Aun Weor, it would be better to really re-evaluate our definitions, our lexicon, our knowledge about what a Gnostic is.
Scholars had even argued whether to really call the Nag Hammadi scriptures Gnostic, since they do not reflect one ideology or group, but different Gnosticisms or movements. The traditions from which ancient Gnostic texts emerged were highly varied and unfamiliar to modern scholars, because certain bishops really sought to dismiss and erase any viewpoint that conflicted with their own. Although the term Gnosticism was appropriated to refer to heretically-designated sects, the term gnosis is different for others. Whether elements of teachings or truths were throughout different schools, it really is disingenuous to assume that there is a homogeneous world view to a constellation of very nuanced groups and systems. For example, many believed Gnostics were dualists, who thought the world was created by an evil power, with a very fatalistic view of its god or demiurge. However, this philosophy is only a small range of knowledge within a spectrum of Gnosis , and it does not really constitute the entirety of its teachings. This is because every religion possesses gnosis, direct personal testimony of divine reality. Even within any given religion there is a tremendous range of knowledge, a tremendous range of practice, let alone varying messengers who all founded different schools. This had occurred even with early Christianity, which was composed of various doctrines or Christianities (plural), many of whom were competing with one another, like basically all religions today, and especially Samael Aun Weor’s Gnostic movement. Many groups are competing with one another. Now this does not mean that we should condemn, that we should shun, that we should ignore those with whom we disagree. But we should not go to the other extreme as well. We should not elevate Gnostic initiates on a pedestal, on a palanquin, on a throne where we can admire those who are really riddled with flaws. Likewise, we should not reject these people, these individuals, because they still were vehicles, however imperfect, of divine teachings. This might mean disassociating with certain schools that are not maintaining ethical discipline, and finding a Gnostic institution that resonates with us. But sadly, some potential students perceive the hypocrisy of certain groups and thereafter they leave. They often associate Samael Aun Weor with the failures of his students. This has happened with every religion, without exception, to the point that now many individuals have traumas that are associated with the prophets. We can say that this is really a tremendous crime against the soul. Therefore, if we are instructors or missionaries providing guidance to others, we have a tremendous responsibility to maintain in our body, in our speech, in our mind. Also there is the need to remove the psychological tendency to think that only one group is real or authentic and that the rest are wrong, as if instructors, or people, as if aspirants are not complicated, as if we are not struggling, as if we are not afflicted despite our best intentions, our most noble ideals. Until we overcome our own karma, our delusions, our assumptions, our egotism, our beliefs, even to a minor degree, we cannot even begin to understand or appreciate reality. Since we have ego, we are all susceptible to liability. We make misinterpretations. We make mistakes, no matter how authentic our teachers may be, because we are fascinated by desires, and we cannot see the truth in that way. So there is value to be taken from many Gnostics instructors and scriptures, even though there are going to be different nuanced interpretations, often open disagreements between them. We have to remove the fanaticism that dictates, within a rigid, false dichotomy, that only one organisation has it right and the rest are condemned. Now we have to avoid extremes. Neither blind adherence to a dogma, nor its vehement rejection, means that we have arrived at wisdom. In fact, it is the opposite. If we are not examining our position, if we are not scientifically investigating these things through personal inquiry, then we are not making any ground. There is a saying amongst the Sufis that was documented in Al-Qushayri’s Al-Risalah: The Principles of Sufism, that when the Sufis disagree with one another, the harmony and the unity of the group is maintained, since each believer helps the other. As mentioned in the Hadith: A believer to another believer is like two hands. One washes the other, correcting each other. ―Hadith
However, when the Sufis all agree, then there is a problem. Often this occurs in the form of a dogmatic conformity. So a balance has to be reached. You have to follow your heart, your intuition. What matters is that you rely on your conscious experiences, your knowledge, your meditations to discern and guide you.
Initiation is deeply personal. It is not found in a group. It is found within yourself. It is necessary to study from proven and pure sources, but for that, you need to awaken, to personally verify their efficacy, whether or not they are expedient or effective, whether or not they are worthy. Study from those masters who are proven, the founders of different religions. We have to be very careful with what we ingest, spiritually speaking. Now even if we tell you that certain scriptures are pure or not, only you can really evaluate and understand these truths from experience. As Samael Aun Weor rightly indicated: The Gnostic must not be a fanatic. We must study everything in order to reject the useless and accept the useful. Gnosis is not against any religion, school, order, or sect. We have fought for the moral purification of many religions, schools, orders and sects. We have never been against any religion, school, or sect. We know that humanity is divided into groups and that each group needs its own system of particular instruction. All religions, schools, orders, and sects are precious pearls that are strung on the golden thread of divinity. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Yellow Book: "Order and Esoteric Discipline" 
Conclusion
We will conclude with a reference to the book The Major Mysteries, which we invite you to study if you wish to learn more about esoteric Christianity, the path of initiation, and a foundation for approaching the Gnostic Gospels. We conclude with this statement by Samael Aun Weor:
If the Lord had not been crucified, the destiny of the Western world would have been another. We would now have sublime enlightened rabbis everywhere, preaching Christic esotericism. The union of Christic esotericism, secret Jewish Kabbalah, and holy alchemy would have completely illuminated and transformed the entire world. Yes, the mysteries of Levi would have shone with the light of Christ. Gnosis (Da’ath) would have magnificently shone everywhere. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
If you have any questions, I invite you to ask them.
Questions and Answers
Question: Do you hold events on specific sexual transmutation practices? I have been practicing for several years and I am looking to go deeper. Thank you!
Instructor: If you go on to Glorian.org there is a course called the Distance Learning Course, which if you have not registered with that, you should. We have practices and exercises that we do as a group online right now due to the pandemic, but also for the students that are long distance, where you can participate in different sexual transmutation practices. There was recently one given by my wife for Ham-Sah Pranayama. So you could study that exercise that was uploaded to our website under Guided Practices specifically. But yes, we do have online practices that we do where you can participate and ask questions of instructors in case you want to go deeper into the exercises themselves. Question: Can you expound on the meaning of the demiurge and the archons? Instructor: I was hoping someone would ask that. I have intended to really talk about this topic in future lectures especially, but I can relate to you some basic understandings of the demiurge and the archons. Now the term demiurge is from the Greek language. It means “worker” or “craftsman.” The demiurgos or “the artificer” is an architect who supposedly, in accordance with Gnostic Gospels, built the universe. Even the Freemasons derive the meaning of “Supreme Architect” from this word. Plato even talked about it in the Timaeus, about the creator God. The Gnostic Gospels speak very negatively about the demiurge, and this has produced some confusion for people, because in our tradition we talk very highly about the demiurge. Now in order to explain how our Gnostic tradition refers to the demiurge, or creative architect of the universe, in contradistinction with the transcendent unmanifested deity as we explained, I will relate to you some excerpts from Samael Aun Weor in his writings. This is from The Three Mountains: Esotericism admits the existence of a Logos, or a collective Creator of the universe, a Demiurge architect. It is unquestionable that such a Demiurge is not a personal deity as many mistakenly suppose, but rather a host of Dhyan Chohans, Angels, Archangels, and other forces. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Three Mountains
He also states in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled:
It is impossible to symbolize or allegorize the Unknowable One (or in Gnostic terms, Agnostos Theos, the Unmanifested or the Absolute within Kabbalah, the Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur). Nevertheless, the Manifested One, the Knowable Elohim, can be allegorized or symbolized. The Manifested Elohim is constituted by the Demiurge Creator of the Universe. [...] The great invisible Forefather is Aelohim, the Unknowable Divinity. The great Triple-Powered God is the Demiurge Creator of the Universe: Multiple Perfect Unity. The Creator Logos is the Holy Triamatzikamno. The Verb, the Great Word. The three spaces of the First Mystery are the regions of the Demiurge Creator. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Pistis Sophia Unveiled 
So if you studied the Kabbalah, you know that the creator is precisely the top three סְפִירוֹת sephiroth of the Tree of Life: כֶּ֫תֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah―Crown, Wisdom, and Intelligence. These are the Trinity of Christianity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which are not people, but forces within divinity. All of the masters and angels who have perfected themselves are the demiurge. They created the universes, the solar systems, the planets, the stars, the galaxies, the infinites. Those are divine beings who are perfect. They are beyond good and evil. They are a perfect, multiple unity. They are individual masters who are in charge of governing the mechanical laws of nature.
Now what confuses people when Samael Aun Weor mentions this is that the Gnostic Gospels, such as the Nag Hammadi or the Dead Sea Scrolls, refer to the demiurge as a tyrant God, as negative, as oppressive, and this is really interesting. It reveals something very nuanced that we have to examine in ourselves. People, in truth, do not like divinity. In fact, we all like to blame God to some degree. Our egos and our defects, and our vices and errors, do not want to take responsibility for their culpability, for their errors, and so we like to externalize. There are many people―I am sure from our own experience, whom we know, whether in social circles―who blame God for everything, or blame divinity. There are people in the Gnostic movement who blame Archangel Sakaki for the fall of humanity, and many other things. People blame God for everything, for the state of the world, for humanity’s failure, for its degeneration, without willing to accept one’s own responsibility for our own situation. We have our own agency. Yes, there are other influences in nature which are detrimental, that are mechanical, that are oppressive, but at the same time, those can only influence us so long as we subject to them. Now the Elohim or the demiurge, the gods, the divine, the angels, the masters, the prophets, they are beyond good and evil. They are beyond the mechanical forces of nature, which are represented by the lower סְפִירוֹת sephiroth on the Tree of Life, and because we are subjected to those laws, such as evolution and devolution, mechanical ways of being, we suffer. We are oppressed. Now the demiurge, or the creative host of the Elohim, they manage those forces, whether for good or for evil. They are beyond good and evil, so to speak. Now what is interesting is that the demiurge, the creative host of Elohim, manage everything. Even the hell realms are governed by the angels and the gods. So it is interesting that the Gnostic Gospels, they blame the demiurge for the fall of humanity, and there is some credence to that, but in the sense that they are only mangers of forces that we choose to fulfil in ourselves. So we are fully responsible for our own errors. We cannot blame anyone else, but the tendency of people in spiritual circles is to blame divinity. This is why the Gnostic Gospels sometimes depict the demiurge as a very negative and oppressive figure. As someone mentioned in the chat box, it is like a judge. But it is true that as we are judged by the divine, he also teaches, trains, and tests us, so that we can grow spiritually. Now the archons is a different term. It comes from archeus, the Law (arcanum), laws (plural: arcana), the word like archangel have this prefix which relate to the rulers, the different habitants, judges, or lords of the different aeons: the different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth of the Tree of Life. In our tradition, we refer to them as the Lords of Karma. Now in the myths of the Gnostics scriptures such as the Pistis Sophia, which Samael Aun Weor commented upon, explains the path of the soul ascending back to the origin, to the Absolute, to the divine, and in that process one has to answer and repent before the different archons, who are the different Lords of Karma who basically help us to be accountable for our deeds. So for many people, it is a very painful situation spiritually when you want to enter the higher realms of divinity but you are obstructed by the Law, which is cause and effect. We reap what we sow, and as we repent and change, we learn to transform our situation and receive the blessings of those different beings. So they are kind of like the guards of the different gates, or the different spheres of this diagram of the Kabbalah. Archons are the Lords of Karma, but there is also a dual significance to this too, which we have to be very careful about. Now, there are some beings that call themselves archons, which are not divine. Instead of being heavenly divinities, cosmic hierarchs, angels or gods within the pure sense, they are beings who are hierarches of the hell realms and infernal states. We call them, in our studies, black magicians, and personally I have even met many beings like that who refer to themselves are archons. So that term can be dual. When you read the Gnostic scriptures, it is very important to be very flexible and intuitive, because different gnostic authors, or originators of those scriptures wrote in accordance within a specific context, and many layers and dimensions of meaning, so it is very deep. One of the essential themes of Gnostic scriptures is that there is a duality. There is the unmanifested divinity and the manifested divinity, and that the reason why we are in this big mess is because we are struggling to reconcile the manifested with the unmanifested. So if you want to learn more about some of the philosophical nuances of that teaching, which of course will take a very long time because it is very profound and difficult, study The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, which was commented upon by Samael Aun Weor. We have that available at Glorian.org. Question: Are the archons considered evil or just misunderstood by our limited human understanding? Instructor: Again, it is both. We often confuse our helper with our enemy. When life gives us difficult situations or circumstances, karma, challenging ordeals, the most instinctual reaction is to complain and to resist it, even though we are just receiving a situation or ordeal to help us, often given to us by the Lords of Karma, the archons, the heavenly beings. But because they are difficult situations which are meant to test us, to help us grow, we should learn to appreciate karma and not to blaspheme, because if we complain, suffer, and blame others, we exacerbate the issue. The karma is deepened instead of being rectified. So the archons in that sense are really divine beings, but also we misunderstand them, those heavenly angels, because of our conditioned state. We do not recognize that they are helping us. But there are also beings that call themselves archons but they are really of the lower realms, the inverted Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. We are going to go very deeply within these nuances with different scriptures in this course, but I invite you to study again the works of Samal Aun Weor, especially The Gnostic Bible. One other point to make in relation to this duality, we have to remember that nature is dual. There is good and evil in nature: “Eat or be eaten.” “Conquer or be conquered.” There is an oppressor and opportunity. If you study the opera The Magic Flute by Mozart, you find this exemplified in the Queen of the Night. She provides the flute and the magic bells for Tamino and Papageno, the heroes of the opera, in order to save the daughter of the Queen of the Night. She is representative of the forces of nature, which nourish and support us in the beginning. But if we are not comprehending and conquering those forces within ourselves, we are in danger of becoming its slave. So I invite you to study especially that opera that eventually we are going to have on our website, as well in the course: The Secret Teachings of Opera. It deeply relates to this topic. Thank you all for coming!
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Welcome everybody to this introductory lecture on Yoga for the Aquarian Era!
In this talk, we will discuss some important parameters for understanding and experiencing what many have called spiritual awakening. We are going to talk a lot about how to initiate and sustain such a state, how to work with our own psychology, our own bodies, our hearts, by harnessing the energies that we carry within, specifically through spiritual exercises that awaken our full potential. It can be good to examine what spiritual awakening is because there are many concepts and beliefs, many ideas, many theories, which conflict with each other, which compete with other perspectives, and even paradoxically contradict their own foundations. If you ask a person what is spirit, you will get many answers. People have varying opinions of what spirit is. If those accounts do not concur, they do not agree, they oppose one another, then we can arrive at some basic fundamental facts that such perspectives are flawed, primarily because genuine spiritual experience is real, factual, scientific. It is precise. Divine mystical spiritual experiences are based on facts, repeatable, verifiable, and consistent. The spirit is our own innate reality at our most hidden depths, in the synthesis of who and what we really are. But unfortunately, that knowledge tends to be very obscured within most people. We can have a lot of intellectual debates, arguments, assumptions, and concepts that seek to label and approach these realities, and yet those projections of our own idealism tend to miss a very important point. That point is that reality is, no matter what our beliefs, convictions, language, labels, culture, customs, and habits. People do not agree on what spirit is, and therefore we have to be very blunt and honest, that such conflicting perspectives do not approach the facts of what spirit is, because it is an objective, spiritual, and real state. We say in our studies that spirit is divinity, the divine, the truth within a person. But as I said, because we have many concepts, assumptions, desires, and more specifically, conditions of mind, we do not tend to see what is in front and within us. Some people think that spirituality is limited to intellectual study, as if reading books, listening to lectures, studying scriptures and accumulating knowledge, terminology, and wisdom in the mind, constitutes being a spiritual person. However, this type of predisposition fails to take into account that there are other forms of apprehending reality. There are people who approach spirituality from the heart, from emotions, from sentiments, believing that having a dogma―or a positive or whatever sentiment in the heart―qualifies as being spiritual, that devotion is spirituality. However, this is also very limited in its scope. It does not capture the full dynamic range of spiritual expression and our full human potential. There are those who also think spirituality is merely adhering to rituals, doing many practices, working with the body, performing austerities, physically. But also, this is only one part of a larger whole that should be addressed, that should be taken into context. The truth is that there are many valuable teachings in the world, different spiritual movements, teachings, and instructions that provide guidance in accordance with the dispositions or idiosyncrasies of the student, but also the teachers. While it is good to have intellectual knowledge and that it is wonderful to develop the heart, but also to engage with positive practices that exercise the body and keep it healthy, none of these dynamics in themselves should be isolated from the others. Therefore, a balanced human being incorporates every aspect of what we are because it is important to develop everything in our constitution. It is not enough to merely exercise the intellect with profound study, or cultivate the heart, or merely work on the body, because that implies a deficiency. It is like going to the gym and only working out your right bicep and ignoring the other muscles in your body. It would be absurd, obviously, in this example, but this is what we do spiritually. We approach spiritual topics, the mysteries of divinity, of life and death, of mysticism, with a particular idiosyncrasy or psychological crutch. We think that being spiritual is with the intellect, or the heart, or the body, typically at the exclusion of everything else. But in our studies, we like to be very holistic. We like to approach the study of the complete human being because a balanced human being is necessary in order to really express the divine, the spirit, what we in our studies call the Innermost Being, God, according to some traditions. We cannot be a temple of divinity, the divine cannot officiate within us, express, if we are not properly prepared, which is what the purpose of many spiritual traditions have been about, to train humanity in certain skills, habits, and practices that create a harmonious space within one's own psychology, so that we can realize what religion, what yoga, have taught, what mystical states are, what awakening is. 
What is Awakening?
It is good to also examine the term awakening because there are also many incongruent analyses of this truth, experience.
There are really many types of experiences one can have, but some people have traditionally associated spiritual awakening as some type of inclination towards a teaching, towards metaphysics, towards a religion or mysticism, due to an experience. Some of us might have had some type of vision within dreams, an awakening of consciousness within the dream state or even as simple as a sudden realization that we are more than our body, that we are alert, aware, and amplified within our consciousness. We have a magnified perception or perspective of life. But what these experiences indicate is not that we have reached some permanent state of enlightenment, but instead, these are states that are temporary and fleeting. So because we are inspired by such realizations, we seek religion. We seek out teachers and teachings to help guide us to understand what these experiences are. It is also important to reflect and remember that awakening occurs in levels and for most people who have had some type of realization or inclination to study religion or spirituality, to want to know the spirit, the divine, are not able to initiate and sustain such states at will. This is the fundamental difference between an aspirant and an initiate: someone who has begun and cultivated a new way of being. Now we mention that we tend to approach traditions based on our conditioning. Perhaps we are more intellectual. Perhaps we are more emotional. Perhaps we are more instinctive: we like to do things, to move, to act. But we have to remember and take into account that in order to really awaken our full potential, we have to be harmonious. We have to have equilibrium. We have to have balance. This is why we practice many types of exercises that we are going to touch upon today that can aid you in awakening your real capacities for qualities like divine compassion, conscious love, philanthropy, patience, perseverance, diligence, and endurance, purity of mind, heart and body, which are the requisites for really entering in a competent, efficient, expedient way, into these mysteries, into these realities, so that the spirit does not become merely a concept. It is something that we verify through scientific facts, and then when we study different traditions we can verify our own experiences within those teachings, and therefore we develop what we call genuine faith. It is confidence born from experience. It is not adhering to a concept in the mind, or a belief in the heart, or by merely performing by rote certain rituals that are at the forefront of our inherited religion, or perhaps adopted one. Instead, through awakening our real potential that is in a dormant, sleeping state, we come to actualize and really witness profound mysteries that escape people who never even attempt to approach these studies, who are not inspired. We also talk a lot about spiritual inquietudes: a longing and yearning in the heart. The founder of our tradition, Samael Aun Weor, wrote in The Great Rebellion, a chapter dedicated to this reality: how we go through life in a state of slumber. We can be physically active with our body. We can be engaged with our life. We can be thinking, memorizing, studying, engaging with others with our emotions, acting physically in the world, and yet we are not really aware of what we are doing. You can examine this in your own life. Why is it that people get into car accidents? They may be driving but they are thinking of something else, or you are on the train, and you are ruminating in your heart. You are stewing in negative emotions about an event that happened earlier in the day where you were suffering a lot, and then you miss your stop. You forget yourself. You are not present. You are not awake. You are not conscious of what you are doing, what you were thinking, feeling, doing, where you are at, what you were doing, basically. We are in a profound state of slumber, psychologically speaking. Any time we daydream, fantasize, memorize, or immerse ourselves in memory, ruminate while we are washing dishes, it means we are not present. We are not washing dishes. We are lost in the mind. We are distracted. There are many types of distractions within our own psychology, which is something that we address in these studies because our consciousness is not fully integrated. It is not directed at will, with intentionality and purpose, towards specific endeavors. We tend to do many things being in the era of multi-tasking, in which we do not really focus on one thing, but we are scattered in our attention. We are not really aware. Spiritual discipline in practice helps us to rectify this issue so that we are no longer sleeping as a consciousness. We are paying attention. We are developing our capacities for concentration, for comprehension, attention, diligence, real beauty and virtue of the soul. This is what we seek to awaken because the consciousness in its normal state, now, is not present. It is not developed to its full potential. I know that we do have some level of consciousness in our physical bodies when we are in the world, but what we perceive of life tends to be very filtered and obscured by many conditions of mind. It is this condition which we seek to transform, so that we can liberate consciousness, develop ourselves into enlightened beings, into a master of one's psychology, so that with those alert, intuitive senses, we can really apprehend the nature of our spirit, the divine, and no longer have any theories or beliefs about it. It is a reality and fact for us. 
The Definition of Yoga
What are some of the methods that we employ in order to achieve a state of being that is conducive to experiencing the spirit, the divine?
Many have heard of yoga, but there are many misconceptions of what it really constitutes in its full gamut, its complete range, its many methods. We like to often think of yoga as physical calisthenics, or twisting and distorting the body into different postures to gain flexibility and strength. These are very useful exercises and are helpful within the context of a larger spiritual work. Hatha Yoga is a type of yoga that people are already familiar with. It is appropriate within a specific endeavor, when we are practicing many other principles associated with the tradition, not merely just trying to have a young, healthy, and attractive body, because that by itself does not really produce change in a psychological sense. There are health benefits. It is useful. It is good to get those endorphins moving, but, it should be utilized with intelligence and remembrance with its overall context. In truth, according to Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, you find the following: Yoga is the stilling of the modifications of consciousness. ―Patanjali, Yoga Sutras 1:2
The term योग yoga from Sanskrit, युज् yug, means “to reunite.” It means to unify the consciousness with the divine. This is the same meaning as the term religion from the Latin religare. Real yoga is stilling the modifications of the consciousness. As I mentioned, our consciousness is very conditioned. Examine a moment in your life perhaps in the morning when you get up. What is your routine? What are the thoughts, feelings, and habits that you engage with on a day-to-day basis?
As I said, we tend not to be very alert and aware of our surroundings. We go through life in a hypnotized state. Our consciousness is modified in accordance with the level of our own psychological conditioning. We have many elements that produce agitation or conditions, modifications of a pure perception, because the consciousness in its original form is clear, lucid, liberated, and pristine. It does not involve thought. It is not a churning of emotion. It is not necessarily needing to have to move the body and engage in countless activities in life. We can have a simple experience of free consciousness by simply being alert, perhaps in a moment while watching a sunrise, in which we apprehend the profound beauty of that moment without having to label it, without having to fit it into a box, a category, because that labeling, categorizing, and compartmentalizing kills the moment, destroys the beauty and the novelty of watching something as miraculous as that. Our consciousness is modified. We are conditioned by many elements like anger, pride, fear, anxiety, vanity, lust, desire, appetites. In life we tend to go through our routine, feeding our desires, giving ourselves what our body wants, seeking emotional security in our relationships and affirmation of our thoughts and ideas. These tend to be very subjective in their own states. They are not necessarily objective and real. But we have these psychological apparatuses of thought, feeling, and impulse. In truth they tend to be very limited. We go through life, again as we said, trying to saturate ourselves with the different impressions of life, without realizing that we are conditioning ourselves even further. By identifying with the problems and circumstances of life, we have a mind that is really churned and stirred up. If you do not believe me, try to sit to meditate for five minutes after a hectic day. You find that your thoughts are all over the place. Your feelings may be overpowering, debilitating. Maybe you have a trauma, maybe a difficult situation occurred in the day, at work or with a loved one, where the body cannot sit still. We have to scratch an itch. We have a pain in our leg. We feel like our shoulders are going to fall off. The beginning of real spiritual practice is learning how to still modify consciousness. We have to let the mind, heart, and body settle. It is like a container, or a jar filled with water and sediment. If the jar is shaken up, all the different mud and particles and debris will flow and scatter and obscure the water itself. It becomes cloudy. It becomes murky. It becomes distorted. However, if you allow the jar to sit still, you find that the water rises to the top and the sediment will begin to stratify into layers. This is the same principle that applies to our mind. If we can learn to take advantage of the challenges of life without identifying with those problems, without investing our psychological energy into them, without wasting energy through fear, paranoia, despair, uncertainty, and doubt, we will begin to find the contents of our mind, those conditioned, limiting factors, begin to calm. They rest. Therefore, when the water is clear of debris, you can see clearly in yourself. This is the beginning of yoga, of genuine spirituality, of religion. It is the stilling of the modifications of consciousness. When the waters are clear, calm, serene, and tranquil, you can begin to reflect images within their contents. This is the nature of water. It is a beautiful element and allegory. It is necessary for life. It is also necessary for spiritual life. The mind is like a lake. If it is distraught, turbulent, and violent, you cannot see the heavens reflected within the surface. Therefore, if you want to attain knowledge of spirituality, of the spirit, first we enter tranquility. This is why Swami Sivananda, a great yogi, a great master of spirituality, taught that real yoga is precisely this: how we work with the mind, how we understand how and why it functions, and the path and methods for alleviating its tensions, letting it acquiesce, to calm. He states in Practical Lessons of Yoga: Patanjali defines Yoga as the suspension of all the functions of the mind. As such, any book on Yoga, which does not deal with these three aspects of the subject, viz. (namely), mind, its functions and the method of suspending them, can be safely laid aside as unreliable and incomplete. ―Swami Sivananda, Practical Lessons In Yoga
There are different schools of yoga that teach exactly what Swami Sivananda provided. He opened many schools through his students. They opened many schools within the United States where there are hatha yoga classes, learning to work with posture and the body, and that is a kind of a fish hook to try and capture people, so to speak, to get people interested in the real, deeper mysteries and knowledge of yoga. It is good to have a healthy body because that helps to have a healthy mind, but merely working on the body, as a path in itself, is unreliable and incomplete. This is why we study forms of yoga that we are going to talk about today.
Yogic Traditions and the Dawn of Aquarius
Yoga has a very rich history and tradition. It comes from the Hindu pantheon, the Hindu mysteries. It will be interesting to examine and analyze its development within the West.
It is true that many great accomplished yogis like Vivekananda came to the United States in 1893 in order to plant the seeds of yoga, of spiritual discipline of mind. He spoke at the World Parliament of Religions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1893, but it is interesting that those teachings did not really blossom in his era, because there were many other practitioners that came to provide spiritual teachings of an eastern type to a western disposition. 
For example, in 1920, Yogananda, who provided the Self-realization Fellowship Society, also taught. As well as in 1957, a disciple of Swami Sivananda, his name was Vishnudevananda Saraswati came in 1957 to teach. Those teachings only really came to fruition around February 4 of 1962, and it is interesting to examine why.
When we study yoga and spirituality, we also study many of the energetic and cosmic influences that penetrate the mind at a subconscious and unconscious level. There are many elements in nature that affect us psychologically, spiritually, and physically that we are not aware of, that we are not knowledgeable of from experience, in a deep, spiritual, objective sense. What is interesting about February 4, 1962, is that this was the moment, between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, in which our solar system entered within the astrological influence and dominion of the sign of Aquarius within the zodiac. It was around this time that many changes occurred, within diverse traditions, amongst religions, within politics, within sexual relationships, within many things. Pretty much every level of society has been affected, around the 60s, with a profound revolution. If you do not believe me, you can just look at history, the times before the 1960s and 1950s, in the way life subsisted at that time. Now people of a materialistic attitude do not really look deeper than what can be seen with physical senses. In fact, many people reject the influence of zodiacal energies and forces within nature, which enter within us psychologically and are transformed in accordance with the level of our conditioning or our developed spiritual consciousness. We might say that such influences are not real, but the truth is that we are affected by nature all the time. We are influenced by the weather. We can be in a really bad mood because it is raining and damp out, or we did not get enough sleep. Perhaps there is an influence of the weather, as I said, in which we get sick. We get a stomach ache. We feel nauseous, whatever it may be. We are heavily influenced by our environment. The same is true of levels that we do not readily perceive in a materialistic sense, but these forces are real and we can look at history to determine this fact from a zodiacal sense. Now we previously existed within the Era of Pisces, which is a very different flavor and force in a psychological and spiritual level, in terms of its influence and dimensionality. Pisces is traditionally associated with conservatism, with social hierarchies and structures, institutions that have lineages and bear deep, long, and extensive history. You find this in religion, politics, and in every aspect of human life. You find that in the way many spiritual traditions used to exist, in which it was required of a disciple, in order to learn these teachings, to submit to a guru, and after proving their candidacy, after many decades of trials, tests, experimentations, ordeals, challenges, and experiences, they are really given the most profound radical and transformative practices that are at the heart of all religions and yogas. Now that the Era of Aquarius is very different. Since the 60s, this stellar, celestial, or zodiacal influence is defined by its revolutionary character. It is a rebellion. It is a profound and intense energy that has entered, as I said, within every aspect of society in order to shake things up. It is about transformation. It is about rebelling against institutions and dogmas, against conditions. 
Aquarius is defined as the water barrier. It is the zodiacal sign in which knowledge of a spiritual type is being given openly for free, without demands, without coercion, without strict attendance or affiliation with one group, in the sense of having to adhere to a dogma, an unbreakable faith belief system. It is said that Aquarius is the knowledge given freely to all. This is why if we look at the 1960s, you find that there is an explosion of information, of knowledge that has been given openly to society, to all. It is a form of divine generosity and it is also revolutionary because it is the force that inspires independent thought, self-reliance, self-verification, personal experience of the truth without having to adhere to a lineage or a dogma.
This influence really reached its dawn on February 4, 1962, when you find that the planets of our solar systems were in almost perfect alignment. This was a true conglomeration of worlds, of celestial bodies and influences, that mark the beginning of a new age, in which the forces of Aquarius predominates. But that influence also came even earlier, maybe by a decade or two, because just in the same manner that you watch a sunrise, the light doesn't really peak at the horizon until the moment the sun appears. The light spreads gradually, such as in the 50s you find, and even earlier, the efforts of yogis and practitioners to spread spirituality in America. But that really did not come into fruition until the 50s and 60s.
On February 4, 1962, the real beginning of the influence emerged upon the horizon of our consciousness. So, we study this influence because it helps to explain different traditions in the past and also where we are at now, and what we can do and what we can become. There have been different periods of instruction for humanity, in accordance with Piscean influence, especially in the last age, which was marked by its conservatism, in which knowledge was not given openly, but had to be earned. Now, the knowledge is being given openly in Aquarius without needing to be earned. It is given for free because unfortunately humanity is not in a very good place. We find a lot of suffering and affliction on this planet, a lot of chaos, primarily because of our egotism, our conditions, our selfishness, which are accelerating. The influence of Aquarius is very revolutionary. That force is channeled in accordance with our level of being. If we are negative, angry, violent people, inside, then that energy is going to bring it. But without the proper tools or techniques to channel this force and harness it with intelligence and wisdom, we often will destroy ourselves, and we can see this happening simply by looking at the news. Many events are occurring in which this is a reality. This is a fact. The Aquarian Influence
By learning how to employ the instructions of mastering this influence, we in turn have a force and impetus that produces an expedient and radical change, very quickly, if we know the methods, the techniques of this era, to capitalize on that influence.
There is a saying by the author M., in The Dayspring of Youth, where he describes this Aquarian influence. He calls it the Dayspring of Youth. Samael Aun Weor referred to that influence as the Dionysian wave, the influence of Dionysus who is considered the god of wine and revelry. This is a very interesting symbol because since the 60s, which is known for its bacchanalias, or sexual revolutions, its free love initiatives and movements, we find that people have been indulging in that power, that potency, but through desires. However, there is another way. It does not necessarily have to be about engaging with and feeding one's desires, habits, and lust. Instead, one can take that energy and use it to create a different type of inebriation, a different type of wine, so to speak, since Bacchus or Dionysus, within the Greek and Roman traditions, is the same symbol. They represent how the force Aquarius can be harnessed in two ways, whether for our spiritual development or for our deepened conditioning and suffering. Of course, in accordance with each cosmic era, there are different periods of instruction. The author M. states the following in The Dayspring of Youth: At the beginning and end of each age there is a pouring forth of hierarchical cosmic streams of energy, and as they intermittently enter the earth’s atmosphere and unite we find in this radiation that instruction best fitted for the time. Thus there is brought to birth a new period of discovery for the world.
If we learn how to cultivate his energy, we develop clarity, perception, awakening, in a positive sense, in which we have greater understanding and intuition of how to solve the problems of our life. We do not have confusion. We don’t have pain, or despair. It is such a powerful force that any opposition within the atmosphere of the mind can no longer imprison them within its rebellious aura.
Right now, our mind is a prison, if we are honest. We tend to be afflicted by many sufferings, but there is a way to rebel against our own innate failures and incipience, our own defects, our own problems, so that we can gain real happiness, not only for ourselves, but for others. We do it through this practice of yoga, this Aquarian yoga. By attracting certain spiritual or atomic energies, which are very fine in nature, we transmute the consciousness. The term transmutation refers to the prefix trans, which is “to carry over,” “across,” to move, to redirect. Also, mutation to mutate, “to change one form to another.” So our conditioned consciousness can be transmuted through this energy. We can clarify our perceptions so that we develop a very rich spiritual life. 
Using Expedient Methods
It is important that to do so we work with expedient methods. The Piscean influence before the 1950s especially, as I said, is marked by its conservatism, lineages, and disciplines in that one had to earn the truly revolutionary methods that we are going to explain here in this course and lecture. They had to earn the right to learn those teachings, and because the Piscean influence is very much dedicated to that dispensation, different texts of yoga and spirituality were appropriate for that time.
The founder of the Gnostic tradition, Samael Aun Weor, explained in different texts, especially Kundalini Yoga, how the Piscean influence has been replaced by the Aquarian, and that many methods that apply to the Piscean Age, which are appropriate for the descending forces of Pisces into the earth, were beneficial in that context. Now what is interesting about the difference between Pisces and Aquarius is that in the Piscean influence, spiritual practitioners had to work and become more attuned to their body in terms of the spiritual involution or influx of forces down into more material states. So, Pisces is known by forces entering into our physical nature, and so that we can learn to master that aspect of ourselves, in terms of the overarching arc of cosmic evolution. But the influence of Aquarius is different. It is now a revolutionary return back towards a spiritual origins. There are many practices like the mudras, hand positions and postures, bandas, which were appropriate for the descending evolutionary arc or involuting forces into materiality, but now since we are returning back to a more subtle and etheric, energetic plane, those practices are no longer necessary. I know some people can be very attached to doing certain mudras or hand postures while meditating. It is still acceptable to use them, but it is good to remember that we have other practices that we can use that are appropriate for taking advantage of the current that is now influencing humanity. For example, there are many forms of yoga that are appropriate for teaching children how to walk. There are different skills, teachings, instructions, and techniques that are appropriate for helping beginners to learn how to crawl, to walk in a metaphorical, spiritual sense. But walking alone cannot take you across the ocean to Japan. Neither can it take you to other worlds in the solar system. Instead, you need a rocket or spacecraft to do so. You need the appropriate vehicle. This is what we are going to emphasize today. Samael Aun Weor mentioned in his book Kundalini Yoga that: Many books have been written about Oriental Yoga. Yoga means “union with God.” All the books that were written about Oriental Yoga before now are antiquated for the new era of Aquarius, which began the 4th of February 1962 between the hours of two and three in the afternoon. ―Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga
So those exercises in many schools in yoga are a kindergarten for entering a deeper knowledge. We can use them if that is our level of being. However, we need to learn deeper aspects about religion, since there is a greater and more profound application of these teachings, which are much more expedient and radical, if that is our wish to utilize them. It is good not to be attached to traditions, but to seriously examine and analyze what we have benefitted from a given practice and to see and analyze and evaluate whether we have arrived at what we have sought for.
This is what it states in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ―1 Corinthians 13:11
So Samael Aun Weor in Kundalini Yoga corroborates this:
All Mudras and Bandhas are totally useless for the new Aquarian Era. ―Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga
So it is good to use specific tools in order to get specific results. If we want to achieve the real heights of divine knowledge, we can enter the Aquarian door. We no longer have to be constrained by conservative, Piscean dogma.
Aquarian Yogas
So let’s examine what some of these yogas are. There are many forms of yoga divided within different schools and we are touching upon a number of them that are very profound and beautiful, which have an Aquarian application and flavor.
We study mantra yoga, which is the work with sacred sounds, chakras, and powers. We work with raja yoga, which is the royal path of meditation. We work with jnana yoga, which is scriptural study. We work with bhakti yoga devotion, prayer, and worship. We work with karma yoga, which is selfless service. We also work with kundalini yoga, which is sacred sexuality, as well as yantra yoga, the sacred rites of rejuvenation. Lastly, we will talk about runic yoga, the Nordic runes. All these practices complement each other. Here we are breaking them down into different methods, but which really have one unified purpose. By working with these exercises, we can balance ourselves. If you notice some of the explanations here or the titles of these yogas, we find that these exercises develop specific aspects of our psychology. As I said before, some people may be more predisposed towards concepts and intellectualism. Therefore, they like jnana yoga, to study scriptures, or some people are more emotional. They like to develop emotion in the heart through prayer and worship, through bhakti yoga. Some people are more action-oriented, moving with the body and serving their communities, which is why we also study karmic yoga, which is selfless service. Now these yogas work together to, again, provide a synthesis, which is the expedient awakening of our conscious potential. So we are going to analyze what these are separately. 
Mantra Yoga
Mantra yoga is the work with sacred sounds. The term mantra comes from the Sanskrit मन्त्र Man, which is “to think,” and manas, which is “mind,” and trai, which is “to protect” or “to free.” Mantra literally means “mind protection,” or “to free the mind” through sacred sounds.
We see here an image of a man in full lotus with seven energetic centers that are lined up in accordance with his spinal column, which are the different chakras or centers of energy within the human body, physiology, and energetic constitution. These chakras from the Sanskrit refer to wheels or vortices of forces, which exist within our subtle interior physiology. There are many levels and aspects of our body, heart, and mind that is not accessible by the mere physical senses. There are instead energies that animate the physical body. There are certain channels or nadis, we say in the Hindu tradition, that circulate vital force and energy throughout our body and permeate every aspect of who we are. Energy is very important. We even know this by having enough energy when we get up from rest to subsist and to act in the day. There is a certain energy that is needed to be awake physically, in the conventional sense. Likewise, we learn to work with energies, within our subtle interior psychology and inner constitution, so that we can activate spiritual perception. These chakras or vortices are named in respective ways, in alignment with the spine, as I said. We have Muladhara chakra at the coccyx. We have Svadhisthana near the prostate or the uterus. We have Manipura, which is the solar plexus. We have Anahata relating to the heart. We have Vishudda, which is the throat. We have Ajna relating to the third eye between our eyebrows. Then we have Sahasrara, which is the crown. These are important chakras or the main seven that we really study and practice with. This does not mean there are no other chakras in the body. There are many others that are important in order to develop stability and homeostasis, equilibrium within our mind, heart, and body in order or us to function, because that energy has to circulate and flow in an unconditioned and pure way. Anytime a nadi or energetic current crosses another, it forms a chakra, because that is an intersection or crossroad in which those forces meet, and therefore they spin and create a type of vortice or wheel of spiritual energy, of psychic, psychological, and energetic forces. We study these main seven because they are important for really navigating our spirituality, the spiritual worlds, even our physical life. Each of these chakras have different qualities associated with them, different powers and abilities that grant us access towards spiritual reality. It is important to understand that each chakra vibrates in accordance with a certain sound or vibration because certain vowels relate to our chakras themselves. They activate those dormant centers because right now, as in most people, those chakras are like closed flowers. They are not open yet. Through spiritual discipline and working with certain mantras, sacred vibrations, and sounds, we open them. We activate them. We begin to circulate energy in accordance with those strata, those seven levels, so that we really actualize our full potential. Some people may be a little averse to mantras. Some people think it sounds really weird or unusual. It is important to reflect, to remember that mantra such as “O,” relating to the heart, is based on a very simple law of cause and effect, which we can verify and correlate with our own speech. We can say that there are certain words that are afflictive and harmful, which produce conflict with our relationships. Using vulgar speech or speaking hatefully towards them is directing a very powerful, negative energy towards others. But likewise, our speech can be harnessed to speak words of compassion, kindness, and love. This demonstrates to us that our speech and vocal cords have a tremendous utility. We can use speech for harm or for good. It depends on the quality of our mind. The same thing applies to mantra. Now sacred sounds help to protect our minds from negativity. They help us to defend our spirituality against corrosion, by negative qualities of mind like anger, pride, ambition, fear, or uncertainty, whatever it may be. If we feel negative in our mind and heart and bodies and we are agitated, we can work with sacred sounds. It is good to vocalize for an hour out loud, especially, because that sound or vibration activates physically in our bodies, those energy centers. When you perform mantras, you're entering a state of mental and psychic purity. You approach the mantra as a tool. This sound is meant to create a type of flow of energy and vitality and creativity within you. It is that energy that is going to give your consciousness the power, the force, in order to work against your own conditions like anger or resentment, etc. This is why we work with a mantra. We want to protect our spirituality from our own negative habits. This is the meaning of mantras or mantra. It is mind protection. So vocalizing these mantras out loud is really good. It helps to calm the body, and you are activating not only your energy centers and your body, your vitality, but also you are working with the glands of your endocrine system, which is very important for spiritual development. If you are interested in learning more about how the endocrine system complements our spiritual practice, you can read a book by Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology. His basic thesis is that by working with these glands and developing them, we gain greater insight into our problems. It is good to have energy. You can also vocalize mentally. Some say that saying a mantra in the mind alone is even more powerful than physically pronouncing it. But it is good to work with both techniques, because in one method, by vocalizing out loud, you are pronouncing sacred sounds and working from the outside in, the physical world into the internal worlds. But when you work with silent mantra or Japa (mantra recitation) in your mind, you are working from the inside out. So, both are really good. Personally, I like to do a lot of mantras out loud in the day, and when I am doing other activities, I also pronounce mantra in the mind. With enough training and skill, you learn to work with these sacred sounds―whether verbally or mentally, or even within the very core of our consciousness―we learn how to maintain a state of continual remembrance of our divinity, our own spiritual presence, and that gives us the strength to transform many difficult and negative situations. This is how we protect ourselves. We learn to have a calm and kind psychology, a heart and mind that are very alert, compassionate, and considerate, so that we do not create harmful situations for ourselves because “Mind precedes phenomena,” according to the Buddha. “We become what we think.” If you can confront the problem at its roots in its moment by using mantras, whether verbally or mentally, it is good. If you are at work, obviously, I would not go mantralizing out loud in your office, or wherever you may be, because people will think you are crazy. But you can do it mentally, and when you get home to your own sanctuary, temple, monastery, home, whatever you make of it, you can practice out loud, especially if you will not be disruptive towards neighbors. It is important to work with mantras because these energies will help us to stabilize our consciousness and perceptions. It is important to remember that having energy by itself is not the main point. It is good to have energy to awaken our faculties, our perceptions, our spiritual conscious powers and abilities. But merely having energy within one’s psychology is not enough because chakras are not the end all be all. They are a conduit and a method by which we can access higher states, but merely having active chakras is not going to guarantee a successful spiritually. Some people get really proud of having chakras awakened, abilities, and powers, but that is kind of unusual and funny because it is like a person getting really proud and self-conceited by having a lot of fuel in the tank of their car. It is good to have a lot of fuel in your car so you can drive places, but what matters is how you drive your car, which is your body, heart, and mind. So, ethics and compassion are the essential point. A Mantra for Protection
There are certain mantras you can use. I will introduce one of them for you that is very effective for counteracting negativity. There’s a video available by Glorian Publishing or Glorian.org. It is called Klim Krishnaya. This mantra is very potent for removing negative emotions. So if you find you are afflicted by very distraught and conflicted feelings, if you are saturated with a lot of sourness, if you are heavy with a lot of negativity, pronounce and sing this mantra in your mind. You can also do it verbally if you want, but obviously being in solitude is the best way to pronounce it verbally. But if you are in a place or you are dealing with people who are very challenging for you, you can use this mentally.
I use and continue to use this mantra many times in my daily life, and with enough training, you can pronounce this mentally and get the most powerful effects, so you cannot be tempted to act in a mistaken way. The mantra is sung, and you can click on the video. It is sung basically like this: 
Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga: The Eight Stages of Meditation
We also study meditation. We can say that this is probably the most important practice we engage with in our studies. Meditation is known by different names in different faiths and different religions, and all are valid. Here we are giving an excerpt from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, or the path of royal raj yoga.
Meditation is the capacity of the consciousness to apprehend phenomena, to ascertain the nature or truth of a thing, its inherent reality. We do so by first restraining our mind. Harkening back to the previous slide, we can use mantras to help us restrain our negative reactions to life. Yama means “restraint,” “to yoke.” It means that in a moment in your day in which you are tested―perhaps you have a difficult client you are working with at your job or a family member who is producing a lot of negative emotions in you―you learn to restrain your mind. You do not act out of anger and pride. Instead, you learn how to fulfill ethical discipline or precepts, which is known as niyama. Yama means restraint. Niyama means “precept.” A precept is as simple as some like: love your neighbor as you love yourself. Do unto others as you would have done onto you; to be patient in trials and temptations or ordeals; to work diligently for the benefit of others; to be inspired and compassionate and to aid those are less fortunate than you. Thus if you are afflicted by anger, you can respond with love. This is precept. Once you have developed a very profound and rich ethical life, you can learn to really enter deeper states of meditation. It is important to reflect and understand that these are ethics. These are not morals. What is moral is acceptable in one country and time and place and not in others. Ethics are universal. There are certain habits and behaviors that produce happiness in any context when done with a compassionate state of mind. This is something to bear in mind. We are not here to follow rules that someone gave us and to do them because we have been told. That is a Piscean attitude. Here in the Aquarian knowledge and teachings, we learn to take what is useful and reject what is useless. In this sense, ethics is really the most important thing. It is knowing how to act consciously so we no longer suffer and no longer make other people suffer. This is the fundamental definition. When you are really mastering restraint and precepts within yourselves, your body gets calm. Some people approach meditation, and they cannot sit still. They cannot rest because their mind and heart are agitated from wrong behaviors. After you have cultivated a harmonious space in your mind and your heart, you can sit to practice an asana (a posture) and enter a profound state of relaxation at will, where it is not difficult to do. Without ethics it is really challenging to really have a calm state of being. That is the essential point. When you are in a posture you can begin to work with energy. We work with an exercise called pranayama, which we will also discuss in the sacred rites for rejuvenation, in which you work with your breath to circulate vital creative energy within your body, heart, and mind. Prana is energy and yama means “yoke” or “restraint,” “to harness.” Notice that yama or restraint is the first stage of raja yoga. Likewise, pranayama is learning to restrain and harness our creative, energetic volatility. All the energies of our mind, heart, and body we learn to conserve and circulate, and to harness with conscious intelligence and will. That is how we really enter deep states of calm and withdrawal, not in the sense of being off a drug or basically disassociating from the world in a psychological sense. Instead, pratyahara means “to suspend the senses.” Yes, it is a withdrawal in the same manner we do not pay attention to external stimuli. Instead, we enter our internal psychology, but not out of a negative type of mental dissociation, which is associated perhaps with mental health conditions. Instead, withdrawal in this sense is like a tortoise withdrawing its head within its shell. We go inside, and you cannot do that unless you have energy, to activate your consciousness so you can relax and go within and see what is there. So, energy helps to calm and silence the mind. It helps us to relax, so that like in the example with the jar of water and the sediment, the sediment stratifies into the bottom, so that you can see clearly what is inside of you. Without that basis, you cannot really develop serenity of mind, which is dharana or concentration: to be able to focus on one thing without being distracted. In that sense, when you are not distracted―you are able to focus on one thing with serene, clarified attention and directed will―you learn to access meditation which is dhyana. Meditation is learning to receive new information with spiritual, psychological senses. You understand through inner experiences what the essential nature of reality is for the given object of our focus, whatever you are meditating upon, whatever the goal is that you sit down to practice and do. In this way you enter samadhi, ecstasy. The word ecstasy comes from ecstatuo in Latin, which means “to stand outside oneself.” It is in this state you enter real bliss of a conscious and spiritual type. These are divine inner experiences in which you stand outside your normal range of perception in order to really witness and know the truth. Raja yoga is very deep and beautiful. There are different teachings available on Glorian.org, which address this path of meditation itself, specifically the lectures associated with Gnostic meditation. We talk about these eight steps of Ashtanga Yoga in depth, the eight-limbed yoga or the eight principles and levels of working with mediation. 
Jnana Yoga: Knowledge
We also have Jnana Yoga, which is the study of scripture. As I said, it is useful to study intellectual knowledge, lectures, to receive wisdom from books, but what is commonly neglected in our common culture, era, and ways of thinking, is the manner by which we read, study, and apprehend what a book or lecture is indicating to us.
Now what is interesting about the way that many disciples of past traditions have studied is that they would take a small passage of a book and really meditate deeply on its contents. Perhaps they would take a sentence and reflect only on that. Our habit nowadays is to read fifty books in two weeks. I know that this is an exaggeration, but there are probably people who spend a lot of time like that. Jnana yoga means “knowledge yoga.” It is what we apprehend from the written word. It has a very beautiful and useful place within our spiritual discipline because the teachings of the different masters of religion and spirituality have provided their personal inner experiences within diverse scriptural forms. If we learn to really read with an alert and awakened consciousness, with intuition, not relying so much on reasoning but with our heart, we gain access to inspiration, knowledge, and insights that are really transformative. In this way we learn to appreciate what these different masters taught, these different luminaries. Instead of reading book after book and compartmentalizing and categorizing what we have read in a certain label or box in our mind, instead we learn to look at things with a fresh view. The best way to study is again, like I said, to take a small passage and read a sentence or two that is really challenging for you, or really deep and inspirational, even if you don't know the meaning, then focus and meditate on that. This is how many spiritual schools have studies and are studying now in our institutions. We do not want to necessarily want to fill up our minds with knowledge, by memorizing what different teachers have said, and what terminology means, and what the language is indicating such as with commentaries. Instead, we want to really witness the realities of what is written from personal experience. This is why we have to meditate in combination with study. Now study can be very profound and deep. I recommend taking the time to really digest what you put into your mind, because the problem with many westerners, especially is that being very intellectual, is that we take a lot of knowledge into our intellect, yet we do not transform it. We do not understand what we read. This leads to psychological constipation, in which we do not digest what we put into our mind, and therefore it can become a great source of doubt, skepticism, or pessimism. This is a very unfortunate thing that has happened to many people. However, if you take the time to really practice and try to experience what you read, then you gain a lot of faith, and faith simply means confidence born from verification and experience. You see that your spiritual experiences are talked about in different books by certain masters. In this way, you really verify and understand that you are not alone in your experiences and that these are objective realities. This is also why it is important to study from pure sources. Study from those that really have been established, whose teachings resonate with your consciousness, and what we can really testify to from facts, such as the founders of many religions, but also in our tradition we study the works of Samael Aun Weor. Personally, I have had many blessings and been able to meditate on certain passages that he wrote, even having spiritual internal experiences that I later read about in his books, which confirmed and validated my own personal testimonies. That is really inspiring and a wonderful yoga to enact, the knowledge of spiritual teachings. 
Bhakti Yoga: Devotion
We also study Bhakti Yoga, which is the devotion of the heart. Perhaps the greatest bhakti yogi we have known in the West is Jesus. He demonstrated with his life the profound teachings of yoga, meditation, and prayer. He was so dedicated to his spiritual work that he allowed himself to be crucified physically, to be condemned and persecuted, to be spat upon, to be beaten, to be ridiculed, and yet he only responded with love. This is a profound devotion.
Now what is interesting about his example is that when we really know divinity from experience, our own inner spirit, we develop great love, great compassion, because we understand all beings have divinity inside, and not only do we respect our own innermost spirit, but we also respect the spirit in others, so that we tolerate their mistakes because all people are afflicted with anger, resentment, negativity, doubt, and hatred. By learning to access superior emotional qualities, which have nothing to do with sentimentalism or hallmark cards, we open the doors to genuine mysticism. We can say that the intellect in itself is very useful but tends to predominate in many western people. Instead, what we have is a very giant head stuffed with a lot of books and knowledge but a very deficient and weak in the heart. Bhakti Yoga is important for westerners especially, but it can be very difficult for beginners because some people find devotion very foreign to them, very alien, very confusing, very difficult, because how can you have devotion to something you have not experienced? The truth is we develop devotion in our innermost intuitive faculties when we learn to follow our conscience, our heart, the heart that says that a certain behavior and action is wrong. The whole world can agree with it and yet we know that for us that trajectory is harmful, that position, that direction. Personally, what led me to spirituality was following my heart. I did not have a school, a group, or a spiritual scripture, teaching, a lecture to guide me. Instead, what happened was that I was suffering a lot in life, and I was not willing to face at that time that my own behaviors were harming me. But eventually I began to follow my own innermost conscience, which is the voice that says, “This is right” and “this wrong,” even though our intellect and our reasoning can fight and argue and claw against us. It is a very painful process, but as in my example, I was very dedicated to understanding the nature of my own reality and my sufferings, so that I would find an answer. I dedicated myself with a lot of devotion to searching and looking for spiritual instruction until finally I did find Gnostic teachings, which helped to explain and confirm what I had been doing already, and that gave me faith, a lot of conviction. Sometimes Bhakti Yoga may be simple as again praying, in some people's eyes, towards a statue or to a divine figure, a painting, a master, a prophet, and our own innermost divinity, but again that can be foreign for some people, difficult to apprehend and to swallow, because we have inherited a very material culture, which has conditioned us. But the beginning is in following your heart, listening to your own conscience, what is right and what is wrong. As you verify more and more that your superior positive actions transcend negative states of suffering, you gain real faith, real verification, and conviction that these teachings work, that they are practical, that they are transformative. It is in this way that we begin to experience superior emotions, which for most people is very difficult to comprehend, like conscious love, really loving our neighbor, especially loving one's enemies. It is something we have to aspire to and to develop gradually because it is not easy, but the way we do it is by relying on our heart and consciousness, so that by accessing our intuition of knowing right action from wrong, without having to think about it, we open the doorway to real experience and witnessing of divine reality. The more you experience that divine principle in you, the greater your devotion and compassion for others, of serving others, and working for their benefit. 
Karma Yoga: Action
This is why we study Karma Yoga. Karma means “cause and effect” in Sanskrit. Some people think of karma as a punitive law of retribution: “You get what you deserve” according to Western philosophy. But this is a mistaken attitude because karma simply means causality. Every action has a consequence, and that there are superior actions and inferior actions. Therefore, they produce superior or inferior results.
Karma Yoga is based on helping others, helping our communities. We all have different qualifications and skills, different idiosyncrasies and talents that are necessary in this world. When we discover what our unique talents are, we can capitalize on them. In that way, we learn how to better help humanity with whatever level or qualification or skill set that we have. Karma Yoga is especially important within the study of Aquarian Yoga because if we really wish to overcome our own suffering, we have to alleviate the suffering of others. This is a universal, divine law. If you are sick, help the sick. If you are lacking knowledge, give knowledge to others. If you are lacking spiritual experience, teach others how to experience it. It is in giving that we receive, says St. Francis of Assisi from the Christian tradition. By learning how to serve others, especially those who are difficult and challenge us and create pain within our interior, we learn how to transform our own pain. We do not focus so much on ourselves. If we are really in a rut, we are suffering a lot, we do not know what to do, we are confused, it is important that we reflect on the needs of others because our own selfish desires keep us hypnotized. You want to break the shell of selfishness and despair? Learn to help those who are less fortunate than yourself. For some people it can be teaching, giving knowledge, giving instruction of a spiritual type. For some people it is supporting their school, communities, serving others, helping the poor, the homeless and sick, whatever it may be. If we want to not be so hypnotized by our own self concepts, anxieties, and needs, we should cater to the needs of others. This is a great, powerful tool that helps dispel a lot of the fogginess that can afflict us. This is a fundamental law of nature: by giving to others, we receive. So if we want to receive a certain object of spiritual benefit, we should give that in return, and not expect anything as a reward. This is selfless service. It is compassion. This is the reason why spiritual teachings exist, because by giving to others, we help ourselves, but not in a selfish sense. I know in the beginning it is easy to want to do good deeds so that we can benefit, but with training you begin to lose that selfish attitude and really give from an uncorrupted and genuine heart 
Kundalini Yoga: Sacred Sexuality
We also study Kundalini Yoga, which is a very popular science today or teaching, in which there are a lot of theories and beliefs, and unfortunately a lot of misconceptions.
Now we have in this image Padmasambhava with his consort Yeshe Tsogyal who are in the sexual act. What is important to reflect upon is that as an image of Tibetan Buddhism, it constitutes one of the highest teachings of that tradition, and pretty much any religion itself, at its core. It is how a married couple, man and woman, can combine their creative sexual forces in a state of ritual purity and conscious love, in order to harness those energies and to awaken divine, spiritual capacities. Some people have called it Kundalini. Some people have called it the fire of Pentecost. Some people have called it the Holy Spirit. Some people have called it the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl within the Aztec mystical tradition, or Kukulcan among the Mayans. This is the energetic force of our divine feminine reality that awaken within practitioners who are properly prepared. It is important to not just look at the image with a lustful mind, although this is where people begin. Padmasambhava made a point about this essential practice of tantra, sexual union, or the harnessing of a continuous flow and influx of energy without ever releasing it. This is tantrism. The meaning of tantra is continuum, continuity. It is how we take those forces and conserve them. He said that in order to do that one cannot have any lust, any passion, any animal desire. He said, “Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation.” So some people get very confused when they study this aspect of religion. They say, “How is that Padmasambhava can be sexually united with his wife and yet he says that lustful people cannot enter the path of liberation?” The answer is really simple: Do not engage the sexual act out of lust, desire. Instead, enact it with love. Very different quality. Lust says, “I want to satisfy my desires,” and love only wants the happiness and spiritual edification of the other. When we learn to harness and conserve that creative potential and to activate it through sexual union between husband and wife, man and woman, by conserving that power and living an ethical life, we can awaken what is called Kundalini. It is the power of the divine feminine. It is the Divine Mother of all religions. You can study the lecture The Divine Mother in the course Beginning Self-Transformation. We talk about how the divine feminine is represented in many religions. The important thing to remember is that She is the power and the intelligence of love, of creation, of the universe. Therefore, She only rises up the spine of those practitioners that have proven their worth, who are really dedicated to their ethics and purifying their viewpoint, who perceive life with selflessness, with altruism, with compassion, understanding that life is transient and interdependent and that nothing is permanent and stable except for the reality of love. Now, there are many people who have attributed psychoses, addictions, or mental imbalances to Kundalini, and this is really fundamentally mistaken. We disagree with this, because the Divine Mother Kundalini can only empower those souls who have really upheld the highest ethics. It does not happen in people who are wasting their creative potential or squandering the sexual energy. It is a very specific science. It is really deep. We practice this if we are married. It is an important aspect of genuine Aquarian Yoga, and we are now giving this sexual teaching very openly to humanity because people need it. It is very easy to go on the internet to find sources that are very impure and that help to produce a lot of suffering for humanity. We are now being really explicit with this knowledge. You can learn more about this teaching in a book called The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, where we learn how to master the creative intelligence of God, so that our love blossoms from a state of ritual purity, of verification of spiritual states―very deep, very transformative. Yantra Yoga: Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation
We are going to explain a couple of exercises or what is known as Yantra Yoga. Now Yantra Yoga is commonly known as the Tibetan rites or sacred rites for rejuvenation. With these exercises, we harness the creative energies of our bodies, mind, and heart in a form of ritual. There are six rites in which we basically harness our conscious energies. We can ask for certain results or petition to divinity, our Divine Mother Kundalini, so that we can receive healing, insights, and understanding of our own defects, perhaps even to help us to eliminate certain faults that we have understood in our meditations.
Sacred rites for rejuvenation are very powerful. They can help us to heal sick organs and help us to gain flexibility, vitality, and health on a mental, emotional, and physical sense, but also spiritually speaking. When we work with the sacred rites for rejuvenation, we begin by crossing our hands over our heart, our right hand over our left, and we petition and pray to our Divine Mother Kundalini, the divine feminine within us, who basically can intercede for us on behalf of Her husband, the Divine Father, the Holy Spirit within certain traditions. We invoke the divine feminine because She is the intercessor, the reconciliator between our terrestrial personality and the severity of the divine. The Holy Spirit, as sometimes mentioned in many other traditions, has the power to heal but we have to know how to work with creative energy first, conserving and transforming it. We work with our Divine Mother, to beg Her, “Please intercede for me on behalf of your divine husband, the Holy Spirit, in order to accomplish this goal.” We can ask for healing of a sick organ or the awakening of a chakra, the understanding or intuition to a certain problem, the elimination of defects. There are many uses we can apply to the sacred rites. It is a form of ritual with our body, in which we take certain postures and positions in order to invoke the aid of our inner Being. 
Rite 1: Rotations
With the first rite after you made your petition, you begin to spin from left to right. You have to be very careful not to spin too fast so that you don’t become disorientated and lose balance.
You can place your right up, your left hand facing down. Extend out as in this image. Keep your eyes open when you spin, so you don't lose your equilibrium. When you spin from left to right―you want to do it twelve times―you spin in the same direction you turn a steering wheel to the right. We do this because this positively activates the chakras. In this position, posture, or movement, we are circulating the vital forces of our chakras themselves so that we awaken those powers. When we spin, we pray to our divinity. We can say either verbally or mentally: Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
We are commanding our sick organs to work, to be healed by this divine Aquarian energy influence, the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can gain happiness, balance, and health.
There is a mantra that goes along with this it is very popularized today: Open sesame!
Unfortunately, this saying has been abused today. It is actually a very powerful mantra. It comes from The Arabian Nights, the story of البابا Alibaba and the forty thieves. What is interesting about this myth is that البابا Alibaba goes to a cave and commands the stone that is blocking the entrance to move. He says, “Open sesame!” This mantra has the effect of opening the boulder, of pushing it aside, so that he could go into the cave to try and save treasure that was trapped there from forty thieves.
It is interesting if you ever studied the teachings of kabbalah, especially the number forty is very significant. These forty thieves relate to our own defects who try to steal the treasure of our soul, the energies of our consciousness. So البابا Alibaba goes into the cave in order to extract the treasures, which is a symbol of going into our own mind to extract the truth, into the subconscious caverns of our own occult behaviors, that which is not readily accessible to our senses. It is interesting that the term البابا Alibaba from the Arabic is translated into Hebrew as אלי אבא Eli Abba, which means “My God the father.” So this is a beautiful symbol of how we pray to God the Father and Mother within us in order to perform a magical healing, to work with the treasure of our creative energies. So we spin twelve times saying: Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
When you are done spinning twelve times―0r you can do more if you like, but be careful not to fall over―you bend your knees. Keep your legs and feet shoulder length apart. Place your left hand on your thigh to try to get your balance, and then you bend your knees. Your thumb, index and middle finger―place these three fingers on your third eye, between your eyebrows. You put some pressure there because as you are somewhat bending down, you are helping to gain balance so that you do not collapse after spinning (which gets easier and better with practice), but you are also taking those circulated forces from your spinning and concentrating them upon your third eye and that way you basically awaken that chakra really deeply.
Rite 2: The Cross and Viparita Karani Mudra
The next part is by laying in the form of the cross. You continue to pray, identifying your supplication, whatever is you want to work on. You can imagine whatever sick organ in your body needs healing or imagine the desired result that you long, for comprehension. You can imagine above you, floating in your vicinity, a white dove of immaculate fire descending into you, giving you life and vitality and force. This is the power of the Holy Spirit. Pray deeply:
Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
Command your consciousness to work for you, in whatever sick organ you are trying to heal, but whatever you are asking of the Holy Spirit to be giving, that gift, perhaps an awakened chakra, power, or faculty.
Afterward you perform what is known as the Viparita Karani Mudra. With the legs lifted up in the air, you can place your hands behind your knees. Engage in this posture and continue to pray out loud, verbally or mentally, if you wish. 
Rite 3: Pranayama and Lean
In the third rite, you kneel and perform pranayama. Going back to Raja Yoga, of working with energy, you are doing interchangeable nostril breathing, in which you are circulating the vital winds in your mind, body, and heart.
Close your left nostril with your right index finger. Keep your right thumb out and inhale through the right nostril. Concentrate on the forces that are entering into you. You can imagine that the energies are circulating down from the base of your spine up to your brain and then into your heart. Close your nostrils with your right thumb and index finger. Imagine this energy being retained within you, and then exhale through the left nostril, so that the forces are done circulating up into your heart. With inhaling through one nostril, you are sending the energy down through an energetic channel from your nose down into your coccyx, because there are two channels that intertwine the spine. We call them Ida and Pingala in yoga. When you work with each nostril, you are working with each separate cord in your spine. The left nostril relates to the right testicle or ovary, and the right nostril relates to the left testicle or ovary. So they are intertwined. They interchange. The forces of your creative sexual energy rise up from your coccyx in your sexual organs, into your brain and then into your heart through energetic nadis. When you work with the interchangeable nostril breathing, inhaling through your right nostril while closing your left with the index finger, you breathe in the vital forces. You hold them, closing your nostril with your right thumb and your right hand, retaining that force, and then exhaling through your left nostril so that energy flows in you. Then breathe through the left nostril. Inhale to repeat the same procedure. Close your nostrils with both your fingers, the thumb and index finger, and then exhale through your right nostril. That constitutes one pranayama. You want to perform three total. Pray to your Divine Mother to help you work with this force consciously. Afterward you perform a posture in which you lean back. You kind of let your abs do the work―great for keeping your physique up. Hands at your side. Arch your back. Keep your head up titled and continue to pray using the invocation: Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
If you find that verbally pronouncing is difficult, you can do it mentally. Sometimes the posture can be difficult to perform.
With any of these exercises, you do not want to strain your body, buy do it gently. Do not force any of these postures on yourself if they are harming you. Instead, these are rites for rejuvenation. They are not meant to hurt you. So you need to be careful when you practice. 
Rite 4: The Table
For the next posture―as you are training your body―you extend your feet outward, close together, heels together, hands behind about shoulder length, and you arch your back in a backward direction. Keep your head tilted up and continue to pray:
Be healed! Be healed! Be healed!
You can visualize as well make sure you are praying from your heart.
The next posture is the table. You send your back upward. Make sure that your arms and legs are spread far apart so you are not straining your body too much. You do not want to lean too far backward or forward. Instead, keep a good balance. Continue to visualize and deepen your prayer. 
You then repeat the pranayama three times, breathing through your right nostril, closing both, exhaling through the left. Inhaling through the left, closing both nostrils, exhaling through the right. You want to do this process three times.
Rite 5: Lizard Pose
You are going to perform the fifth rite. You look like you are doing a push-up. Your head is extended upward, your torso is above the ground, your feet are shoulder length, and your hands are shoulder length. You alternate positions between bending your torso down towards the ground without touching, and moving your head slightly down to the chest, and then extend outward, with your head up and torso away from the ground. Do this for as many times as you like.
Afterward you make an arch. Continue to pray, visualize, supplicate, and deepen your prayer. The important thing to remember is that these positions are meant as a form of communing with divinity. Your prayer and conviction and dedication and devotion are what is most important in order for this to be effective. In this posture, you basically arch up upwards. You can lift your heels up towards you as you are moving, so you can arch far enough, but again, do not strain yourself too much. 
Viparita Karani Mudra
The last rite is mentioned in Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation by Samael Aun Weor. It is known as Viparita Karani Mudra, in which, like the previous postures you did before with your hands behind your knees, you can do this against a wall where you lay back with your feet up. You pray to your Divine Mother to beg the Holy Spirit to transfer the energies of your mind into your heart, your solar plexus, and the solar forces of your solar plexus to your mind. In a manner of speaking, we have forces that relate to our intellect, which are, we can say, lunar in nature. They tend to be more negative forces. Our mind tends to be very cold and conditioned.
We have a lot of forces in our solar plexus that we can transfer through the help and the intelligence of the Holy Spirit, by having them circulate in the form of the Holy Eight, or an infinite, from the solar plexus over to the head. The solar forces of the sun of the abdomen rise up to the head and the lunar silvery atoms or the moon-like lunar atoms of the mind go into the solar plexus.
The solar plexus is like a reservoir of energy that is like a battery. We carry a lot of force in our abdomen. This is where we get the source of many gut instincts and feelings that we tend to be very unconscious of or mechanical with. We can learn to take that reservoir of force from our abdomen and take it to our mind so that we have a spiritually illuminated intellect. The good thing about the Viparita Karani Mudra is that the blood flows towards the head so that we are more oxygenated in the brain. This helps to activate certain faculties and abilities. If you want to learn more about that you can study the Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation. Here we are just giving a summary. There is also a sixth rite known as the Vajroli Mudra, which we do not have the time to cover today. The book explains it extensively. 
Runic Yoga
Runes are the Nordic yoga, which we have some videos available online that you can study. These are postures in which we place our body while vocalizing certain mantras in prayer. In this way, we vibrate with the forces of nature. The Nordic language or Futhark relates to certain postures and positions that are conducive for accumulating solar divine energy from nature. It is good to perform these runes outside in a park, or in one’s backyard if you have one, in the forest, woods, or by the ocean, so that you can assimilate more divine energy and prana from your environment.
If you want to learn how to practice the runes, we have a book called Magic of the Runes but also a video on the seven vowels that you can study and apply to your daily life. The runes are very effective for charging yourself with divine force. There is a course on Runes on glorian.org. If you want to go more into depth, practicing daily is very helpful. Resourceful Books
I know we covered a lot, but I would now like to open up the floor to questions.
Questions and Answers
Question: You mentioned you need energy to withdraw and see from a clearer state of consciousness. Could you expound on this more because this is the first time I have heard of this idea? I have noticed in my own life that if I do not have enough energy, I do not feel like engaging in my spiritual practices. I am curious why there is a connection between our energy and withdrawing and approaching things from a higher consciousness. Is it just because our body is not relaxed and thus not receptive?
Instructor: Think of it like how a vehicle operates with better fuel. If you put the wrong type of fuel in a car, you can destroy it. Also, if you put the most fuel-efficient energy into your vehicle, it will operate better. It will drive better. The same thing with our consciousness. Our consciousness has a profound capacity to perceive life which is beyond any limitation of thought, feeling, and impulse. But in order to really enact that conscious state from experience, we need to save energy. We have to save emotional energy. We have to save mental energy. We have to save creative energy. It is impossible to light a lamp if you do not have the fuel or the wick there. In the same way that a light on a lamp has more clarity when the container it is in is washed and clean, likewise our consciousness can reflect greater light based on the purity of our mind. We need energy in order to awaken, first off, to be able to learn to experience and perceive our inner reality from an objective sense. But in order to do that it is important to not only have energy but to learn how to use it well. When you direct energy intelligently, consciously, and withdraw from distractions of the mind and external senses in meditation, you learn to fully engage in your own conscious interior. You can purify your vision, so to speak. Obviously, if you do not have energy like in physical life, you cannot live. You cannot work. Someone who has insomnia has a very difficult time being physically awake, but still not being able to sleep. It has a serious effect upon one's psychology when we do not have enough energy present. We even find that if we abuse our intellectual energy, we can develop illnesses like schizophrenia, mental illnesses, paranoia, delusions, because the mind, which can operate like a vehicle in its own respective orbit, is deficient in fuel. It has lost its vital values and therefore the engine breaks down and stops working. You find these people who are very engaged in the intellect without balancing the other parts of themselves. Likewise, the heart. If it is exhausted of its emotional and vital principles, it creates illnesses like depression, morbidity, bi-polar disorder, many emotional illnesses and diseases. Even the physical body can deteriorate and fall apart when it is not fueled by sufficient, creative, vital energy. People who abuse themselves through boxing, sports, and other difficult activities can become paraplegic or damaged in their body. In the same way we need energy to exist in life, we need those forces to harmonize and balance, to use the conscious well. As you said, if you do not have enough creative energy, you cannot engage in spiritual practices. You are just not inspired or will not be there. But saving energy, directing it well with consciousness, that begins to clarify perception, so that day by day, we perceive more and more. I invite you to study Meditation Essentials on glorian.org. It explains how when we use energy, we clarify our perceptions. Question: I am very curious to know what you think of Christianity. I relate to many values in the Bible, but most Christians seem quite mind-controlled to me. I feel Christianity needs to integrate to other broader religious ideas like yoga, reincarnation, and more. What are the merits and limits to Christianity even when people are striving to live a righteous selfless life? Instructor: We explained in other courses that there is a public tradition and an esoteric tradition. Every religion has a public, exoteric domain, which is followed by millions of people, and then there are hidden, secret, esoteric teachings within those teachings that were never given publicly. In relation to the Piscean era, that knowledge was underground, but now we are given in the Aquarian Era this esoteric knowledge freely for all. Christianity as a teaching is a very beautiful tradition. It has very deep symbolic roots, which many practitioners and adherents do not necessarily understand or follow. Just as many people of a religion may adhere to a faith out of dogma, they also contradict the values that are embedded in their faith. I have met many great Christians, many bad Christians; many great Muslims, some bad Muslims; many good Gnostics, but also many bad Gnostics. Just because you adhere to a tradition does not mean one is spiritual. In fact, what is spiritual about a person is that they are working to eliminate defects and work compassionately for others, to serve others. Christianity as a tradition has an esoteric dimension known as gnosticism, which we are giving a course on our website about The Gnostic Gospels. You can study that course if you want to learn more about Esoteric Christianity. But also Glorian.org has the course Esoteric Christianity that studies the heart doctrine of that faith. The esoteric version is very different from the public, where in Esoteric Christianity you find reincarnation and spiritual ideas are integrated very beautifully and are supported and sustained by scripture more importantly. Any religion like Christianity and faith can be limited when we only follow it blindly, when we use it as a paradigm and a dogma to interpret what we perceive without actually helping us to experience reality objectively. Morality is useful in its place, in the sense that having some values can help orientate certain people into living a more ethical or more kind and compassionate life, but merely sticking to an outward form but without experiencing its inward principles is not enough. It is deficient. Question: With Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation, if the petition choses does not heal an organ or awaken a chakra after a session, do we keep only asking for that particular healing until it heals with the practices or change the petitions? Should we? Instructor: I have known instructors practicing sacred rites who would perform one petition for two months, not changing it, because results come with time, practice, and consistency. I would recommend sticking to one petition for at least two months. If you really want to go deep into it, keep going with it, but this applies to many practices such as the elimination of egos as well, where we focus on one ego or defect over a long period of time until we gain results in comprehension. It is good to focus on one thing and to really practice it deeply, extensively. Question: If we keep only asking for one thing and nothing happens for a long time, what do we do then? How do we know what we are asking for is what we really need or can even be allowed to be granted? Instructor: There are many factors that go into play in terms of working with the sacred rites. Some people practice for a long time and do not get results. They can often become filled with morbidity and despair and doubt that this even works. It is important to take into account that the quality of our practice is not determined by merely sticking to a schedule, but it has to do with the quality of our heart, how sincere we are, how dedicated in our consciousness in terms of our attitude for approaching divinity. Sometimes we can approach divinity with ambition, and that is never rewarded. Some people get frustrated because they ask for something and they do not get it, and often become frustrated, confused, disoriented and doubtful. So what to do then? If you are not getting what you ask for, I would reflect on what you are asking and how. Our divinity knows what we need before we even ask or even know for ourselves. Sometimes it can be good to practice the rites to gain experiences and insights into what you need to work on, to help guide you and even initiating and sustaining a certain practice. Divinity grants unto us what we need, not what we want. But it is also difficult to ascertain in our own experiences, the difference between need and greed. What is it that we crave, like spiritual experiences, and what is it that we need to really to benefit in our daily life? I recommend that you focus on goals that will help you orient yourself in daily life, specifically, or even opening your heart and asking from divinity, praying, “Please show me what is that I need. Please help me!” and performing the rites in that way. Sometimes if we ask for a healing for a sickness that is not going away, we have to take into account certain contexts and karmic forces at play that we cannot necessarily alter or control, but with a lot of patient work. Be patient and persist. If you know that there is something that you need in your daily life that you have to aspire to, then keep asking for it. Do not give up. Do not flag, but be careful about what your attitude is and how you approach divinity, because the sacred rites are a ritual. They are very sacred. They are very divine. They are a way of communicating with the truth. We have to make a distinction between ambition and need. Pray for healing, be dedicated, and be consistent. Question: Otherwise, will not the practice become redundant if we find ourselves asking for something that can never be granted with the sacred rites? Instructor: This is why other practices are essential. We have to meditate deeply and investigate within our comprehension what our situation is. I know sometimes when we have difficult problems in life, it is very difficult to ascertain what reality is, the truth, the right way of acting. This is why we combine these different yogas together. We work with them in conjunction with one another. If you find that you are not getting the results you want, if you feel you are practicing in a redundant way, then analyze what you are doing―reevaluate. Some people need to practice sacred rites at certain periods in their life. They do not necessarily do it all the time. But we work with certain yogas in conjunction with the understanding that these practices fulfill a specific need. If it is not granted, be patient. Meditate upon what it is that you want. Comprehend what your desires are for that longed-for objective and ask divinity to show you in your meditation what is going on, and in that way, you can have some comfort and conviction about what it is divinity wants from you and what divinity has planned for you. Question: You said exhaling through the left nostril affects the heart. What does exhaling through the right nostril affect? What was the name of the video you mentioned about the runes? Instructor: In terms of exhaling and inhaling through the nostrils, just to clarify, when you are inhaling through either nostril, you are imagining the vital force and winds entering through that nostril and descending in a circuitous way, in a form of entwined serpent, moving across the spine in the form of the infinite, or like a curving line, like a light wave (if you’ve studied physics), a radio wave, down into your coccyx. When you retain that energy, when you close your nostrils, you are imagining that the energy is mixing within your sexual glands, is being retained and even rising up your spine to your head. When you exhale through the other nostril, you send the energy to your heart. That is one visualization you can do. That is not specified specifically in the book Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation. He just gives a very basic pranayama, so you do not have to go deeply with your visualization. The important thing is that you feel that energy circulating within you and that you interchange your breathing through your nostrils. Open your right nostril. Close the left nostril with the index finger of your right hand. Inhale, close with your thumb the right nostril, retain the energy, lift the index finger, and exhale through the other nostril. Do the same for the other nostril as well―inhaling, holding / retaining, and exhaling. Your prayer is what is going to be most efficacious or best. It is what is going to work and cause the energies to flow in you.
In terms of the video for the runes, specifically, you can access those videos on Glorian.org or go onto YouTube and look up Glorian Publishing for the Seven Runic Vowels.
We talk about seven vowels in relation to our spinal column, the seven chakras, because these seven sounds activate the seven main chakras of our spinal medulla. These vowels are explained in the video: I, E, O, U, A, M, S… seven vowels, which if you study the literature we provided as well, it goes very deep into that.
Any other questions? I know we covered a lot. We appreciate you for asking questions and listening in. We will definitely have a lot more practices and exercises to share with you in relation with course. So I thank you all for coming 
When we look out at the events of the world today, we probably see many scenes that frighten, confuse, or anger us. So, the goal of this lecture is to learn how we can understand the meaning of these events, and more importantly, the meaning of all the experiences that we have personally in our lives. This is part of the course Conquering Virtue, Conquering Vice that we have been giving, to help people with practical steps when you begin seriously trying to apply the Gnostic teachings to your daily life. So, the goal of this lecture will be practical, and also build upon other introductory lectures that have been given by various instructors leading up to today’s lecture.
How can we use life experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, for our own spiritual growth and transformation? How do we come to learn from our life in a spiritual way? We commonly interpret our life through a worldly lens, because we are really identified with our terrestrial self: “my name, my job, my education, my family, my race,” etc. But when we approach these teachings, we are really trying to come into contact with our eternal self, our soul, our spirit, our inner divinity, and for that we need to take a different approach than we commonly take when we view our lives. There is a really great verse in the Bible, 8th chapter of Romans, verses 5 through 7. Paul of Tarsus stated: For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. ―Romans 8:5-7
What Paul is pointing out for us here that when we are so concerned with the things of flesh―providing for our physical life, for our physical comfort, taking care of our material needs, and also, adding all those things that we want that bring us pleasure materially―they are not necessarily the things that we need. We are actually in a state of death, spiritually speaking. This is not going to the extreme, saying that we do not need to worry about getting food or providing for our families, nor taking care of the deeds that are our responsibilities in our worldly life. But when we shift to a spiritual mindset, we are able to do those things in a harmonious way, with our spiritual development, and that is why Paul states so clearly that to be carnally-minded is death of our soul, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.
When our soul is awakened, when our Essence―which has been mentioned before, the seed of our soul, our consciousness―is active, we are able to experience a deep sense of peace even if we go through our lives doing all the necessary things that we have to do. Even as we see the tremendous events that are taking place on the world stage, we have the life within us. We have the serenity of God’s law in our heart. That is what gives us the ability to remain peaceful even through events that would cause most people to become extremely anxious, irritable, or angry. 
We know in this teaching that we exist in four bodies of sin. These are the physical body, the vital body, which provides the energy that animates our physical body, the astral body, which is the vessel for our emotions, and the mental body, which is the body of our thoughts.
It has been talked about in previous lectures. But to recap, each of these bodies are subtle. Aside from the physical body, which is a dense body, the subtle bodies are not something that we can see directly with our physical eyes, but they are something that all of us are experiencing continually throughout the day. We are constantly thinking, in most of our cases. We are also feeling, moving around physically, and that vital energy is continually spreading throughout our body to keep us alive, to keep our heart beating. We call these the four bodies of sin because we refer to these as lunar bodies. They are bodies that are given to us by nature, and they are subject to the laws of nature. That is why Paul of Tarsus points out that the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, because this mind, the lunar mental body, is subject to the laws of nature, the basic laws of karma, physical and energetic, cause and effect. But that law of God is a law of spiritual growth, of eternal life, of development and compassion for all beings. It is a kind of eternal wisdom that our carnal mind, our common, worldly mind, is not able to access. Our carnal mind is always selfish and seeking for our own worldly benefit, even when it hurts the people around us. That is not in accordance with the higher law of divinity, which is mercy, compassion, and penetrating spiritual wisdom. I want to also talk about the ego, which has also been mentioned in other lectures, because the ego is what inhabits these lunar bodies. The ego is what causes us to no longer be aware of God’s law and aware of what our own inner divinity wants us to do and wills to be done. Instead, the ego is aware of all the various, contradictory desires that we might have. So, we might be experiencing gluttony, greed, envy, lust, all forms of selfishness, which are related to our worldly life: “How can I get more, more, more for me, me, me?” But this is enmity against God because God is the source of all light of all beings, and when we separate into a false self, an ego, we are using all of the beautiful vessels of nature―that we have been given―to sin, to act in ways that are inharmonious, especially when we sin against the law of chastity, the preservation of the sacredness of sex. We are also showing enmity towards God because sex is the source of all life, just as God is the source of all life. So, in this teaching we really need to change our mindset to, “How can we perform acts that are spiritually beneficial for us?” In order to do that, to break from the habit of worldly mindedness, we need to awaken that Essence, that seed of our soul, to extract that spiritual meaning from life’s various experiences. How to Develop Attention
In order to start to awaken into this new kind of conscious vision of our life, we need to develop the capacity of attention. Gurdjieff, who is a famous esoteric teacher preceding our tradition, but which we have a lot of correlation in our tradition in our tradition as well, gave us the following example. He stated:
An aspiring pianist can never learn except little by little. If you wish to play melodies without first practicing, you can never play real melodies. It is the same with psychological ideas. To gain anything, long practice is necessary. ―Gurdjieff
So, in order to awaken this conscious and profound state of being, we need to start with the little things, with attention. We need to begin by developing the capacity for attention, because most of us now a days, sadly, have the attention of a goldfish. We receive a lot of external information from the news, television, movies, music, text messages, phones, computers, etc. So, all the time, our attention is constantly distracted and moving from one thing to the next. So, we need to develop a sort of permanence of attention that is the foundation which we can go to a more profound state of self-awareness and observation of what is happening within us, as well as what is happening outside of us in our lives.
Gurdjieff was asked by one of his students: Student: “How can we gain attention?”
Gurdjieff is using these kinds of unconscious movements, these fidgets, so to speak, as a way to point out that we do not have control over our body. We are not consciously aware that we are moving around all the time. So, in order to first become aware of the way that we move and gain some control over our body and be conscious of that, we have to focus our attention on one thing. He gives the example of these kinds of nervous movements. But you can also focus on your breathing. Always be conscious of your physical breath, because our physical bodies are a wonderful place to focus on, continually throughout the day, as we are moving around. By watching your breath continually, you will gradually strengthen your attention, and then after that attention is strengthened, you will begin to discover that a new kind of consciousness emerges while you act throughout the day. So, you will be focusing on your breath and also talking to a friend or maybe working at your job. Through this division of your attention between the outer world and yourself―in this case, your breath―a new kind of consciousness emerges in that middle space. That is just a case of conscious awareness that we need for really profound self-observation. This is the foundation in which we can expand attention to observe our three brains.
The Three Brains
What are the three brains? They are three centers that process different information, different stimuli, and different kinds of energy. The first is the intellectual brain, which we can consider it the thinking center. The intellectual center of course is associated with our physical brain and is where we often process all kinds of intellectual information. Some of us are really intellectual people and so we feel very comfortable with thinking things through, reasoning through life. We like to read a lot of books or theorize often and that might be the tendency that we have.
However, there are two other brains that we also use. The second is the emotional brain, the feeling center. This is associated with our heart, and often we feel this energy in the solar plexus area. If you ever felt an emotion of fear, you might feel that sinking in your gut. That is the emotional brain. So, for those of us who are imbalanced in the emotional brain, we might be constantly overwhelmed by emotions. We really like social dramas, romances, or watching television shows that really stimulate our emotions, and we might have trouble coming to a conclusion about how to take action or being reasonable in a time when we are very emotionally agitated. The third brain is the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, the motor center. This is responsible for animating our physical body, all of the unconscious processes of the body like heartbeats, or the sexual instinct, or your impulse when you are burned―you pull away from the fire. For those of us who are imbalanced in this center, we might be very active people, always on the go, loving sports, and do not take time to nourish our emotional brain or to really think things through. All of us have these three centers and we are using them all the time, but we need to be aware of when we might be out of balance, because if we are out of balance, we are often stealing energy from some of the brains and channeling that energy to a brain in which we have a predisposition. So, if I am a very intellectually centered person, then I may be stealing all of the energy from my physical body, or even some emotional energy to keep my mind always active, always studying, always thinking through new things. As a result, I might become sick physically or I might develop some kind of mental imbalance such as schizophrenia. In the emotional brain people who are investing too much in that center can develop emotional illnesses like depression or anxiety disorders. People who abuse their motor-instinctive-sexual brain might overuse their physical body to the extent in which they can develop a lot of physical disabilities that can create problems for them later on in life. Samael Aun Weor teaches us in the Fundamentals of Gnostic Education: The balanced and harmonious function of the three brains results in the saving of vital values and, as a logical consequence, the prolongation of life. ―Samael Aun Weor, Fundamentals of Gnostic Education
These vital values are distributed among our three brains in different proportions. So, we can say, for example, our intellectual brain has twenty vital values, and our emotional brain might have thirty vital values, and our motor-instinctual-sexual brain has fifty vital values. The more that you use one brain, the more that you use up those values. But preserving these vital values is essential to prolong our life, our physical life, and preserving these vital values is also essential to awakening our consciousness and prolonging our spiritual awareness of what is happening throughout our daily life.
So, we really need to learn how to balance these brains. If we are too intellectual, how do we engage in activities that develop our emotional center and motor center? And if we are imbalanced physically, how do we do different activities to develop our mind and heart? If we are imbalanced emotionally, how do we do activities that help to develop our mind and keep our bodies strong and healthy? Samael Aun Weor stated that the ancients knew how to intellectually cultivate the three brains. They did this through classical art, music, poetry, dance, theatre, and opera. We think about that kind of information which stimulates the mind, heart and body in different ways all at once. We might realize that it is very different from the education that we received in school. Most of us in the West are very intellectual because we received that training throughout our school life. So, we need to take a conscious effort into redeveloping all three centers in harmony at the same time. I encourage you to find classical art, music, poetry, dance, theatre, and opera that inspires you, that you have a spiritual affinity towards. Begin to extract the spiritual meanings from these art forms as you look at a painting or you watch a play, or you listen to classical music. Try to extract with your consciousness the spiritual significance that is embedded into those art forms. As you gain the ability to analyze art in this way, you will also be able to develop the ability to analyze your own life experiences as scenes in a spiritual drama in which you have to learn the various personal lessons that your inner God has provided for you. Everything in our life is controlled by karma, the law of cause and effect. Our inner divinity, very intelligently, organizes the experiences of our life in such a way that they become a gymnasium to strengthen us psychologically and spiritually. When we see a scene in an opera, in which the hero of the opera is really struggling with a profound emotion, and we come to understand what that scene signifies for the development of one’s soul, then we might take a moment of turmoil in our own personal life and reflect on it in meditation to see what this means in the overall arch of our development [learn more by studying The Secret Teachings of Opera]. Many of the experiences in our life help us to see our own ego. So, we have to experience difficult situations in order to see the imbalances that come out in our intellect, our heart, that will cause us to act in an egoic way, in a worldly mindset, against God’s will. These are things that cause us to hurt other people or even cause harm to ourselves, because we are not thinking in accordance with the harmony of God’s wisdom. Gurdjieff talked about this when he said that there was a sort of lamp of consciousness, and this lamp requires energy in order to continue burning. As we try to observe or pay attention to ourselves, our physical body, our emotional or intellectual center throughout the day, we often run out of energy. Those vital values are exhausted. Part of this is because when we act in an egoic way, we are expending too much energy. So, to act in a lustful way or a greedy or envious way, wastes a lot of our vital energy and causes us to become intellectually, emotionally, and physically depleted. Then we just do not have any energy left to be consciously aware of our breathing or our emotional, intellectual, motor-instinctive-sexual brains, right? 
Balance in the Three Brains
How do we act in a way that is peaceful, harmonious, and balanced in the three brains, in order to prolong that attention? Gurdjieff gave us an example of a lamp as well as the example of a small accumulator, which today we can compare to an electric battery. We know that when a battery is depleted, the lamp runs out, right? Gurdjieff explains that the intellectual mind is like a very small battery with little energy, which is not sufficient to maintain our conscious attention. So, when we are very identified with our intellectual mind during the process of self-observation, we are often not able to pay attention to our body, or our heart, and we are usually not able to self-sustain our self-attention for very long. We are focusing on our mind in a very intellectual way: “What am I thinking? What am I doing now? What is the other person saying? How do I feel in my heart?” We are too identified with the mind. We have to remember that we are not just a mind. We are not just brains with legs to carry our brains around, right? We have a heart. We have a body. We have a soul. Throughout the day, we have to observe the heart and we need to balance ourselves, because the heart and the body, the emotional and the motor centers, often have much more vital energy than the mental body.
In order to stay self-aware for longer periods of time, we need to really incorporate the energy of all three brains simultaneously. This is difficult. In the beginning, remember that we are focused in just one aspect of our physical life throughout the day, continually, to develop our attention. Then we begin to expand that awareness to the emotional and intellectual center. We do not do this in an intellectual way. We do this in a conscious way. Just observing, not intellectually analyzing: “What is my body doing? I am moving my hands,” but rather we are observing the movement of our hands. We are feeling it with all of our conscious being. We are feeling the emotions of our heart. We are observing our mind without meaning, to interpret those thoughts, just observing those thoughts on the screen of the mind. It takes time to develop this skill, just like any aspiring pianist needs to begin with very simple skills in order to be able to play beautiful melodies. We begin with the basic skill of attention and we gradually expand it towards the three brains in order to really reach this profound state of self-observation. Self-observation is a very essential skill for our spiritual development, because when we observe ourselves, we are not so identified with our life experiences. If somebody says something critical towards me, usually I am so focused on what they say that I mechanically react to them in a very instinctual, carnal-minded, way―acting from an ego, a sense of pride, maybe, and I am not at all aware of my intellectual, emotional, or motor brain. I am acting in a total, unconscious way, just as someone who unconsciously fidgets when they are nervous without even noticing it. When we have self-observation, we can observe the outer world. In this example of someone criticizing us, we can see simultaneously what emerges in our mind, in our heart, and in our body to react to that person, and then we have the conscious awareness to be able to, hopefully, choose in that moment if we want to respond in the instinctive way or if we want to respond from a more conscious place in accordance with God’s will. It is not easy to develop this skill, but it is essential, and it will benefit you in so many ways. Developing the ability to live harmoniously and not waste our vital values through these egoic states, we are able to prolong our physical life. But more importantly, we are able to develop our spiritual life and to perceive new aspects of consciousness, new sides of life that we never saw before. In his book Fundamentals of Gnostic Education, Samael Aun Weor offers us this beautiful example of what one might experience during self-observation. He states: The revolutionary psychology of the new age teaches that three distinct psychological aspects exist within each person. Thus, we crave a thing through one part of our psychic essence, yet we desire a decidedly different thing with another part, and we do a totally opposing thing through the third part. I.e., in a moment of supreme pain, perhaps the loss of a beloved relative or any other intimate tragedy, our emotional personality can reach even to desperation, while our intellectual personality asks itself the “why” of such a tragedy, whilst the personality of movement only wants to run away from the scene. ―Samael Aun Weor, Fundamentals of Gnostic Education
We can all relate to having an experience like this, right? That is the key to the beginning, to digest our life experiences. When we experience a situation like this, we use the steps that we just talked about. We awaken our consciousness through the attention. We balance the three brains to see in a harmonious way, and then we observe ourselves: “What is happening in my body right now? What is happening in my heart right now? What is happening in my mind right now?” That allows us to perceive life from the spiritual mind instead of from the carnal mind. That allows us to really understand ourselves and see what is inside of us, to observe a new ego of pride, or fear, lust, or jealousy that comes out in such a moment. That is why all the experiences in life are more useful to us than any chapter in a book, because if you were able to be conscious and observe one experience in your life and later meditate on it to extract spiritual insight and wisdom in that moment of your life, it can teach you how to evolve spiritually. It can show you who you are in this moment, psychologically speaking. It can unveil to you how God can transform you. God does transform you in a moment like this when you are awake.
If we experience a moment of losing a beloved relative or losing something precious to us in an unconscious way, all we do is suffer and we react mechanically, often causing more suffering. If we experience the same situation in a conscious way, we feel that grief, but we are able to understand it as a spiritual lesson about life, about the impermanence of life, or the value of our human relationships, and we are also able to provide comfort to the people around us instead of becoming lost and self-absorbed in pain. That is the value of this process: attention, balancing the three brains, and self-observation. Meditating on the Three Brains
Meditation is really the final key to gain the most insight of our lives. When we meditate on a situation that we experienced today, we can see the reactions in our three brains and observe them in a state of serenity, and then we can penetrate into a deeper insight about those situations. I give the following as a suggestion for your meditation practice, to do each night as you are working throughout the day, to observe yourself and the three brains.
First become physically comfortable. You need to find a physical, comfortable position for you in which you can sit without falling asleep, and maintaining attentiveness throughout your meditation. Then become aware of your three brains: “Am I experiencing any disequilibrium in my physical body or in my vital body right now? What am I feeling emotionally right now? What kind of thoughts are passing through my intellect?” That awareness will help us to calm down, to settle the three brains. We especially need these three brains to be balanced and in harmony when we are meditating. Take the first part of your meditation just to relax. Breathe deeply. Become aware of your three brains. Then when you feel like you are in balance, when you feel like you are relaxed, but attentive and consciously awake, then you can reflect on a difficult life experience, whether one from that day or the past. Watch it on the screen of your mind. In the beginning, it is really challenging not to get identified with that experience. We need to be able to maintain serenity and observe what comes up in our three brains when we reflect on this experience, without then fueling more energy into those responses. So, if I reflect on an experience where I was rejected by someone that I loved, then I feel pain and anger coming up in my heart. I am thinking critical thoughts about that person, and even my body is even clenching and clenching my fists. Then that is not what we need. We need to be able to then breathe, relax the body, relax the emotions, relax the mind and stay in balance as we observe, see and feel what is happening in our three brains: “Ok, I am observing this feeling, this feeling of hatred in my heart. I am observing these critical thoughts. I am not continuing to fuel that hatred or continuing to think more critical thoughts. I am just observing them and praying to my inner divinity to show me myself as I really am.” That is what it means to observe these reactions with equilibrium, conscious awareness. Remember, that situation cannot hurt you in that moment during meditation because it is not happening. It is not the present moment. So, do not get re-identified with it and bring it back to life. Just observe it. Study it, and see yourself, because that situation is a mirror which will help you to observe yourself and what you truly are. We might think we are a great person and always trying to do our best for others, but a moment like that can show us that we really do have a part of ourselves, an ego, that is very ugly, that is filled with hatred that wants to criticize and hurt other people. That is the valuable information that life can give us, that we cannot learn by reading a book about somebody else’s life, right? If we are able to, we can go to a deeper state of relaxation and observe new insights. This takes time, but to those who are skillful with meditation and have been meditating for a long time, they can then enter into this deeper state of relaxation in which the mind is blank, but open to new perceptions. Some images may come into screen of perception and that image can encode a message from your inner divinity, which relates to the situation that you were just observing. You can write down those images or any observations that you had about your three brains in a spiritual diary, whether in that meditation or subsequent meditation. You can reflect on those new insights that you gained, then try to go deeper into them. If you are particularly meditating on a traumatic experience or maybe a set of traumatic experiences that are related, this is not something you are going to fully comprehend in one meditation sitting. So, you need to continue to record these observations in a diary. At least that is my recommendation. Then each time, meditate deeper and deeper. Keep going. Our first meditation will be very superficial. We might see a superficial, egotistical quality in one of the three brains, but then if we meditate on that quality and go deeper into it, we see that behind that there is a deeper suffering, a deeper pain. Each layer takes us deeper into the inner states of our psychology. With this meditation, we are going to really extract meaning from our lives that will really transform the whole way that we experience life. Before applying Gnostic teachings to my daily life, I was so confused and suffering all of the time. Most of the time I did not think that there was any meaning to my suffering. I had a very nihilistic approach to life, that suffering is just meaningless, and life does not have any purpose. But little by little, by applying these teachings, I began to understand a really profound and magical significance to the things that happened to me, to the experiences I had, to my relationships with other people. I saw that within each one of those experiences, my inner God is giving me a profound lesson: the need to change, to improve myself, to grow as a spiritual being, and also destroy my ego, eliminating it through the power of my inner divinity, to be purified, to become a spiritually minded person who is in equilibrium with my inner divinity. Therefore, God can act through me in a harmonious way that helps others, instead of my ego acting through those four bodies of sin and causing pain for myself and other people around me. 
Conclusion
There is a final verse from the Bible that I would like to share with all of you because it gives me a lot of strength through moments of tribulation, and I use this verse quite often for meditating, to set the right mindset when I reflect on something painful that has happened to me.
Paul of Tarsus wrote: Therefore, we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. ―2 Corinthians 4:16-18
This process of self-observation and meditation helps us transform our mind from that carnal mind, we talked about in the first slide, to the spiritual mind. We can begin to see new aspects of life that we can never have witnessed before because our consciousness, as a faculty, as a sense, opens up new inner worlds to us. Our dreams at night become much more vivid and much more meaningful. The experiences that we have in dreams can also be analyzed in meditation just in the way that our physical experiences can be analyzed.
The symbols of our dreams can also enlighten us to learn how to experience the symbolic significance of things that happen to us in our life. That is why art, drama, and scripture are so valuable for us to learn spiritually. When we learn to interpret something spiritually, an opera, or a play, or a beautiful work of classical music, on a spiritual level, then that gives us the ability to apply that same method of spiritual, conscious analysis to our own daily life. If you have any questions, I would be happy to take them now. You can type them in the chat if you need to, or we might be able to take those questions by unmuting you if you raise your hand. Questions and Answers
Question: Do you think dreams could be precognitive, or represent our insecurities and fears?
Instructor: That is a really wonderful question, because just as we experience life in an unconscious and mechanical way, we often experience dreams in that same way. So, yes, we do have a lot of egotistical dreams which are just showing us that we have some sort of emotional turmoil that we are experiencing, or that we are afraid of some situation. Maybe we have a dream in which we really see our envy, towards another person, in a symbolic way. That is why we need to interpret and dissect the meaning of these dreams through meditation, because if we just look at them in a superficial way, we are not going to see what egotistical qualities of ourselves that they are trying to reveal to us. We also have dreams or visions that are very awakened, in which they have a much more spiritual and conscious significance to us and teach us profound wisdom from our inner divinity. It is also good to distinguish if this is an egotistical dream, which is just “my ego acting out.” It is valuable because it shows us an ego of ourselves that we need to see and analyze, recognizing its in there, in activity. But there are also valuable dreams that are much more profound. You can also become lucid in your dreams at night and ask your inner divinity to teach you and give you insight about something that you are struggling with. You will often be answered in a symbolic way, which is why we need meditation and the ability to extract the spiritual significance of those symbols. Question: How do you cope with challenges remembering your dreams? Instructor: Another great question. Yes, especially in the beginning, because we are very unbalanced and we are depleting a lot of energy from our three brains through out the day, then we do not have any vital energy left to be conscious in our dreams at night. So, if you have trouble remembering your dreams, I have a few suggestions. Of course, the first is that you really have to try and re-balance your three brains and not waste a lot of energy and vital energy throughout your day. Do not get overwhelmed emotionally or do activities that deplete you of energy, like unnecessarily theorizing and reading a lot of intellectual books. If you have a job and you have to do that, do what is necessary, but do not over deplete yourself. Do not watch a lot of television shows in which you waste a lot of emotional energy. Do physical activities that keep you healthy, but not too much physical exertion which will deplete the energy. That is all related to the first strategy: to save and preserve your vital force. Secondly, there is a special kind of diet that you can have in which each morning. You take nuts―I like to use almonds, honey, and citrus fruit, like orange juice or oranges. A few things that are helpful before sleeping is a prayer to the maiden of our memories. This is found in the Gnostic Prayer Book by Glorian Publishing. The prayer to the maiden of our memories is from Samael Aun Weor’s teaching, and it is a prayer that will ask our inner divinity to take the maiden of our memories out of our physical body in order to remember everything that happens when we are asleep. Then in the morning when you wake up, you can use the mantra Raom Gaom...
…over and over to remember your dreams. You can also recite this mantra mentally if you have a partner you might wake up by doing it physically. You do not want to move around a lot. You want to recite the mantra and allow the dreams to come back to you. That is Raom Gaom.
Finally, performing a retrospection meditation before you go to bed, where you review the events of your day, starting from that moment going back to the very moment that you woke up that day, or start from the moment you woke up to the present moment. In my experience, I find that has been so helpful. It activates my conscious memory. It awakens my consciousness, and it allows me to reflect in all of the events of my day, but it also strengthens my ability to remember my dreams that I have through out the night when I wake up to do the Raom Gaom mantra the next morning. So, those are some recommendations and strategies for remembering dreams. Question: What realms do we experience nightmares in? Instructor: Nightmares are in what we call the inferior astral plane. So, if you ever seen the image of the tree of life, there are many higher planes of existence above us that we experience consciously when we are having a real, conscious, divine, awakened vision, but most of the time, in those dreams we are in very egotistical states, like running away from a monster. Things like that are in the inverted astral plane and in this inferior astral plane is where all of our egoic qualities live. The things that we see in those realms are real, but they are subjective. They are things that are only real because of our ego. They are egoic states. Like I said, experiencing those lower dimensions of reality, the hell realms, the infernal realms, is valuable because it shows where we really are, where certain aspects of our consciousness are trapped in ego. Question: I just had a question referring to the four bodies of sin. When in those bodies, when consciousness is taken from those bodies, and perceiving not with sin of those bodies, is that something? Is it a different body that is moving, extracting consciousness from those bodies, or is it something within the bodies themselves that it is not of sin? Or is it both? Are those perceptions outside the bodies of sin or within them? Instructor: That is a great question. Thank you so much. So, in this case, it is actually another body, not a body of sin, but another body called the causal body which is the body of willpower. It is really our soul. So, that body is often acting through the four bodies of sin: physical, vital, astral, and mental. That body of willpower, when it becomes trapped in self-will, in ego, is perceiving everything in a self-centered way, but that self is a false self. It is an illusion. That is why we call them the bodies of sin because they are bodies in which we are able to sin against the will of God and to perform actions that are inharmonious. Sin, we can think of it not in the stigmatizing way, but as an action that is inharmonious with God’s will. So, when we experience something consciously, as you mentioned in those higher levels of nature, we are able to go in our consciousness, not necessarily bringing our body of sin with us, but yes, sometimes we are experiencing, through our lunar astral body, something conscious. That body itself does not have to be a vehicle through which we are always experiencing things egotistically, but is a vehicle through which we might be able to go internally to a higher dimension, a higher astral plane, if our inner divinity wills it, to see something consciously. Question: So, is it like the spirit is extracting, or purifying it? Instructor: What we are talking about here is we experience everything through the consciousness. The consciousness for most of us is 97% ego. So when we experience something consciously through our body, a physical, astral, or a body of sin, 97% of the time we are often seeing though the filter of the ego. But there might be 3% of the time when we are able to experience that through a body of sin, like the astral body through the internal planes, or in the physical body in the physical life, 3% of the time our consciousness can be pure. It can see that exactly as it is. The lunar bodies will eventually be dissolved by nature, and if we perform the entire Gnostic work, the three mountains, we create solar bodies to replace the lunar bodies. The lunar bodies are just temporary vehicles and are subject to the laws of nature. So, they cannot become internal vehicles. Yeah, in a sense, we purify those bodies of sin as we eliminate ego, but we are not so concerned with purifying the lunar astral body as we are concerned with purifying the consciousness itself, because the consciousness can then perceive through any body, astral, mental, causal, physical body, without ego. Question: With meditation, do you seek guidance, like a prayer, or wait for the spirit to speak to you? Or both? Instructor: Yeah, I always pray before I meditate. Sometimes you are just observing things as they are and then, as I stated, when you go into a deeper state of meditation, that is when you try to allow the mind to become blank and see if some new images or new insights appear to you. So, in that case, you can sit down, and you can pray: “Inner divinity, help me understand this situation.” Then observe. In the deepest state of relaxation, in the deepest state of meditation, you will receive that guidance, or hear. Most of the time I receive it through a visual image, a symbol that helps me to understand what my inner divinity wants me to know about that situation. Question: Any advice for the instinctual center? There is not much information about it, but It helps to observe it. Instructor: So, if we have an over imbalance where we are spending too much instinctual, physical, sexual energy, then we need to preform activities with the other brains, something emotional like listening to classical music, or something a little more intellectual like studying a scripture, bible study. That can help us to balance it. Question: My over arching emotion right now, as I anticipate my dad’s death, is anger and judgment towards those who have not taken the COVID precautions we have been asked to. Are you saying meditate on that, and it will take me deeper and deeper into the lesson? Instructor: Right. So, there is a lot of chaos happening in our world right now, and a lot of us feel upset about that right? Everything happening in the world right now can be meditated on. So, you can meditate on the COVID-19 pandemic. What I find more valuable is that you can meditate directly on your anger and judgment of those people. Most of the time we see pride. We see a sense of entitlement. Now, this is also related to a lot of pain and suffering that you feel about your dad’s passing. In this case, you might need to wait a little bit after the situation and until you have really developed this skill of equilibrium and meditation in order to go deeply into finding those answers. Meditate on it a little bit every day and observe those emotions as they come up, like when you turn on the news and you feel that kind of anger. Observe that demand that other people be up to the standards that we want other people to live by. That can be something that helps us to go deeper into that understanding of our own ego. Question: When observing emotions, when you are in a situation when you cannot meditate immediately, how do we meditate on it later? I find that my emotions and thoughts are different when I wait to meditate. Instructor: Sometimes that is a good thing. If you are in a situation where so much is happening, where someone is yelling at you for example, that you cannot maintain your conscious equilibrium in that moment, you might be good to wait until your emotions calm down a little bit and then to observe it. Even when your thoughts and emotions are different when you meditate, just see what is there and try to really visualize very clearly that event, and it should bring out some of the emotions that you felt in that moment. This is also about observing through our three brains simultaneously in meditation, as I talked about, because if we are meditating in a very intellectual way, then we are just thinking, “Oh, I remember I felt angry. I felt really annoyed with that person. I felt impatient…” That is really superficial. That is intellectual type of meditation. We really want to bring that feeling into our heart by replaying the scene on the screen of the memory and see that feeling in our heart. Like I said, it is a delicate balance. It is very hard to maintain equilibrium, because that emotion, you will feel it come up again in your heart, and you do not want to fuel more energy into it. You just want to observe it. Let it pass, and then reflect on what you just observed on coming out again in your heart or in your instinct or in your mind. It is very difficult to maintain that balance, so do not be frustrated if you do not get it right away. It might take some time. Comment: Some dreams are just projections of our fears... Instructor: But they are also real, in a sense, because your ego has a form of matter. It is just not objectively real. It is not something created by divinity. You have used your energy to create a false identity, which is the ego. At night when you see a dream that you are filled with fear, that dream is showing you something real in your in subconscious mind, in your own ego. It is real. It has matter. But it is not permanent. It is not eternal, because the ego will be destroyed eventually, whether by nature or by us consciously, in collaboration with our inner divinity. Question: Is there a method to identify if we are following our intuition versus ego? Instructor: I am so glad that you brought this question, because I forgot to say something in my lecture which is exactly about this. So, another instructor stated that when we are in harmony in the three brains, when we feel that peace and we are observing something in our life, but we feel that the three brains are acting in harmony with one another, then we know that we are conscious. That is the consciousness. That is our intuition. That is our real conscious Being, our soul, that can be active in that moment. When we feel that the three brains are in complete disarray and acting in different ways―we want to run away, but also feeling a lot of fear and agitation, our mind is trying to reason, “What should I do next?” ― that kind of agitation in our three brains helps us to identify that we are in an ego. It is best in those moments, if we are able to, to calm down. Calm the three brains. Breathe deeply. Meditate if you can, and through that state of equilibrium, you will be able to observe that same situation without seeing it through the filter of ego. Question: When we meditate on an ego that we observe during the day, is it good to feel conscious remorse and even be crying while praying to our Divine Mother for help in comprehension of the ego that we want to eliminate? Instructor: Great question! I do not think it is necessarily good, but I think it is fine. It is ok to feel that conscious remorse and to cry deeply from our soul. That happens to me often when I meditate on painful situations, especially in ones which I did something evil towards another person. So, yes, it is a good quality of the soul to feel conscious remorse and to cry during meditation. That is fine. Of course, pray to the Divine Mother for help and to comprehend that ego, because we deeply, really want to change. We do not want to continue hurting people and hurting ourselves through these kinds of egoistical actions. So, our Divine Mother, and that prayer to our Divine Mother to come and help us, is our strength. When I say inner divinity, I mean, Divine Mother, Divine Father. Pray to get them to help you. That is essential in meditation. I am glad you all are asking these questions because I do want to emphasize prayer during meditation. Question: Do these three brains correspond to the neocortex, mammalian, and reptilian brains? Instructor: They have more of a relationship with the three nervous systems. Another instructor talks about how they relate to the central nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the sympathetic nervous system, etc. Or If another instructor knows those three, feel free to chime in. Another Instructor: We have the cerebral spinal system relating to the intellectual brain. We have the grand sympathetic system relating to the heart, and we have the parasympathetic system relating to our sexuality and our instincts. We have to remember that these nervous systems are form of intelligence. As they process energies and forces, they help to create our experience, but they are also the channels by which the vital values can flow and whether our consciousness or ego can act. We need to remember, as the lecturer was explaining, to use these nervous systems well, we should be conscious of their processes. So, our nervous systems have that correlation, and while some other people may refer to reptilian, mammalian brains… We use these three brains and nervous systems distinctively in this way. Most importantly, we need to remember that the brains themselves, the intellect, the emotions, and our motor-instinctive-sexuality, is merely a machine. It is a means of operating and existing. You can look at those resources online. We will give you some links. Question: Can a person defeat all of their egos or can it take many lives to do so? What is the worst ego of them all? Instructor: Great question! So, for most of us it is going to take more than one lifetime to do this work, but it is possible if someone has tremendous willpower and is very dedicated to performing this work every day. A very serious person could eliminate all the egos in one lifetime. For this question I really recommend reading The Three Mountains, by Samael Aun Weor, which is available on Glorian.org, because that talks about eliminating all the egos in one lifetime. What is the worst ego of them all? My initial answer to this is lust, because through lust we lose a lot of vital forces that are very sacred and are very necessary for us to continue eliminating more egos, to continue to develop the soul, and to develop solar bodies, also, to really connect with our inner divinity. Lust is very serious. It is a very difficult ego to tackle, but every day we should be working on lust. We should be eliminating that ego little by little, weakening it, so we can gain more conscious strength, because our vital sexual energy is directly related to our willpower. The more we lose that energy, the more willpower we need to keep up in this work. We lose a lot of energy through that. Question: Can you speak a bit on actively participating in life or the human experience as a opposed to observing life, or the human experience as a watcher? ― meaning, some spiritual speakers speak of the spiritual realm that one becomes far removed from the human experience as a spiritual being. Instructor: Yes, it makes sense. Great question. As I mentioned, most of the time we are fused with our physical life, that we do not have any kind of inner spiritual life that we are conscious of. That is the first step: to separate from the physical life enough that we have energy, and we become aware of our own psychology and what is happening inside of us instead of what is just happening outside of us through out the day. But you are right. Sometimes people try to use spirituality to escape from life. We are trying to use spirituality as a way to live our life more consciously, to perform God’s will in our lives. So, I gave an example, grieving a loss of a family member, a loved one, and how, if in that moment we are unconscious of our inner state, we can very easily become overwhelmed by our selfish suffering, our anger, and our pain. That is very common, right? But if we become conscious of that pain inside of us and we observe whatever egos are reacting to the situation, then we are able to kind of eliminate that ego and maintain that balance. Then we can more meaningfully engage with the other people who are suffering in our life. So, you see how we are using that conscious awareness of ourselves to be more invested in a spiritual way with other people. But this kind of spiritual mindedness versus carnal mindedness is that a spiritual minded person realizes that what happens in life is temporary, transient, and always changing. In that sense everything that happens to us is an illusion. That is not an excuse to do whatever you want because everything in life is an illusion and nothing lasts. But it is showing us that we need to act from a deeper, eternal place, a place of spiritual, conscious wisdom, in order to use this lifetime to perform actions that really develop our own soul and other people, and actions that will provide a lasting meaning, instead of actions that gather a bunch of wealth for us in one lifetime that we lose when we die. Spiritual acts, virtuous actions, gather a kind of spiritual wealth for us that we never lose. We actively participate in life through good deeds that are part of our conscious states. So, when we are more conscious, when we are more awake, when we observe within us as well as what is happening outside of us, then we participate in life in a meaningful way that is in alignment with the will of our inner divinity. That is how we should actively participate in life, in ways that serve other people, and for the purpose that our inner God has for us in this lifetime, which we can only know as we go deeper and deeper into meditation and conscious awareness. Question: How can one relate to what is called bi-polar and the three brains in relationship with someone who is diagnosed as bi-polar? Instructor: Bi-polar is an emotional illness. We are born with psychological illnesses, or at the least pre-dispositioned to develop an illness at one point in our lives, because of actions that occurred in previous lifetimes. It could be that in this lifetime, someone might have overused their emotional brain and then they develop bi-polar, this really strong imbalance where the emotions are extremely manic and overwhelmingly happy. But in a way, it is not really reasonable when we relate it to their actual life, being overwhelmingly depressed and overcome with morbidity. That could be the result of abuse, overuse of the emotional brain, whether in this lifetime or in a previous lifetime. If we have bi-polar for example, and we are trying to regain balance, we need stability, in some cases that might require, depending on the severity of the condition of that person, some medication just to get to a point of stability. Then you can work one of the egos that produce those imbalances. If we have a less severe case, we might be able to meditate on those egos directly and see what it is causing us to become overwhelmingly emotional. This could be related with egos of pride in a lot of cases. Question/Clarification: We know what is good for the emotional brain, intellectual, sexual brain, but for the instinctual body, reactions with fear, etc., it is not very clear how to transform it. Instructor: So, there may be some kinds of martial arts like Aikido, in which you can develop instinct, in the body, in a way that is really a spiritual practice. A lot of ancient martial arts, or ancient dance as well, could be really good for developing the instinctual center, especially with martial arts, because the instinct is very active in the moment when you are reacting to somebody’s attacks. Question: What exactly is the Guardian of the Threshold? Is this a demon or our egos? Instructor: It is the full embodiment of our egos. There is a whole lecture on The Guardian of the Threshold that I gave recently. The Guardian of the Threshold is the embodiment of all of our egos, every deed that we have done, every emotion we have felt, and every ego that we have developed, embodied into one gigantic beast that we may see in an astral experience, when we begin this work very seriously, and that we need to conquer. Even though we cannot eliminate our ego in one fell swoop, we can subdue our ego enough that we develop some conscious equilibrium in which to work. That conscious equilibrium is really necessary to start eliminating the egos one by one. That is a process, but as I talked about, this all begins with attention. If you feel that you are not getting that equilibrium, look at how you are losing energy throughout the day. What are you doing each day that is using up instinctual energy, motor energy, sexual energy, emotional and mental energy? What are you doing through out the day that could be wasting all of those energies? What can you change in your daily behaviors to save some energy? Also, work on developing attention with the practice that I mentioned earlier. Question: How do we comprehend and stay conscious when someone has extremes swings of emotions? Instructor: Just in the same way we have to comprehend and stay conscious in any, very overwhelming situation. So, if you can imagine being at a place where there is a fire, and you are stuck in the building near the fire, in that moment, your instincts are going to take over your whole body and you are probably not going to maintain conscious awareness. I hope you will. At least maintain your consciousness physically. In that moment, you just will not have the bandwidth. You will not have the capacity of conscious stability or conscious energy to maintain that. It is the same way when we are dealing with a person who really has extreme swings of emotion. We may just not have the capacity of conscious stability cultivated yet or developed yet in order to really stay conscious with them in that moment. That is why it is a gradual process. Start with the little things first. Start with a small situation, and if you need to, you can walk away from this person, if possible, when they are getting too overwhelming for you, and go meditate on exactly what you are experiencing in that moment, with that person, right away if possible. Over time, you are going to be able to stay more conscious in more overwhelming, or stimulating situations, right? So, we should continue to just keep developing more and more over time, and not expect that right away we are going to be to do this. It is a long process, and it involves what I just talked about today. Keep meditating on it day after day, on what egos are coming out during that situation with that person, because those egos are what are putting you to sleep, consciously speaking, so that you are not able to maintain your equilibrium when you are interacting with them. Question: Is there a good example of what it looks like what one should be feeling, thinking, and acting like to be in balance with the three brains? Instructor: The most powerful example we think about the crucifixion of Jesus. He was, of course, suffering tremendously there. But he was conscious. In the Catholic tradition, there are these Stations of the Cross where you see these different acts that Jesus did while he was carrying the cross and heading to his crucifixion, and in each one of those acts, you see a tremendous amount of conscious wisdom and compassion for the people around him. So, if we are acting in a way really filled with love for the people around us, feel very awake, and we are able to really do actions that sacrifice for other people, then that is an example that we would know when we are acting consciously and not through ego. Study the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ if you want the best example for what it looks like when one is conscious and acting in balance with the three brains. It looks like that was the last question. Thank you everybody for attending and we look forward to seeing you at the next lecture! 
We introduce this topic recognizing that while appealing to a broad audience in name, it is quite controversial and unpopular content, once you get to the nuts and bolts about what genuine spirituality really is. It is understandable that humanity does not like the Gnostic teachings, specifically the necessity for chastity, as we have explained in previous lectures, because it is a war against commonly held assumptions, dogmas, habits, beliefs. It is ironic that different spiritual communities abhor the very principle of sexual magic upon which their religions are based. It is an unusual paradox to be attracted to the secret mysticism of religion, while at the same time being repulsed by it.
Chasity really violates a very precarious sense of self. This teaching goes against the grain, and anyone who begins to seriously practice this knowledge, comes to confront within him or herself the reality of desire, its struggle, its conflict. Despite the fact that many dislike the sexual aspect of these teachings, it is a general rule of thumb that the more people agree on a belief, the greater the probability that it is wrong. In the words of Jesus of Nazareth: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
It is also important that when approaching this subject of spiritual warfare, we do so from a point of humility. This is because we should not assume that we are great students, instructors, or missionaries. We should not assume that we are warriors of God, because it is all too common to present ourselves to others in the best light, which tends to be primarily for selfish reasons, if we are to be honest, if we examine ourselves. It is rare to really want to edify the spirit of another person, to really uplift our neighbour, and not for ourselves.
We likewise should also learn in this path to not assert our will, our beliefs upon other people, but to learn to be a student to everyone, especially one’s enemies. We also tend to ignore our weaknesses. It is an instinct, because the mind does not like us to be conscious of our mistakes, and this is the principle upon which spiritual warfare is realised. As we are changing psychologically, fundamentally, working against our own defects, we naturally attract negative forces that seek to obstruct our development. This is a defence mechanism, our own mind, which Samael Aun Weor referred to as resistance or countertransference, which is when the ego evades responsibility. We make an error, and the mind tries to hide its mistakes. It fights. It resists analysis, observation, and comprehension. The ego knows its life is threatened, and that it will die through this work, and so it comes up with many excuses, justification, evasions, and escapism whenever we observe ourselves and look inside. While it is difficult to look at ourselves fundamentally and honestly, we state many times that Gnosis is lived upon facts, it withers away in distractions, and is difficult to find even in the noblest of thoughts. We have to be very sincere of our own culpability, our own mistakes, because there is a tendency in people, in spiritual movements―whenever approaching the study of white and black magic―to blame the oppressor, to condemn sorcerers, to hate one’s persecutors, and this is really wrong. We do not transform a situation, a conflict, by reacting with ego, by being filled with fear, with hatred, with antagonism, thinking that we are the representative of God, and we need to punish the evil doers, when in fact this sentiment is precisely the fulcrum upon which this struggle subsists, and is no end. The reality is that if we wish to overcome black magic, within ourselves especially, we have to understand our own weaknesses, our own faults. We have to be very sincere. Look at the facts! None of us a really special, and none of us are really spiritual, because to be spiritual person really signifies someone like Jesus, who when he was crucified, only blessed his enemies, and did not complain. We cannot even handle a sly comment at work, an offhand remark, without our entire psychology churning with revenge. To be spiritual is to be a god with the consciousness and power of a planet, a sun, a solar system, a galaxy. We are not divinity. We are the shadow of divinity. We are really demons, because anyone who has one ego has perdition inside, and therefore we must resolve to die to everything that is false. In truth, the soul is a warrior, yet better said, the Innermost is the warrior. Our inner divinity fights against our own defects so that we can change, and the more we yield to His response, the greater His effort and force, His realisation within us. In the process of becoming perfected we must confront our own flaws, but at the same time we need to be very careful. We must be considerate and cautious. If we approach the subject of white and black magic, of spirituality, from the perspective that we already know, then we enter a really serious risk, that eventually we are going to learn a very hard, and irredeemable lesson, once the time and conditions are right. So let us not think anything of ourselves, to assume, to believe. Instead, let us rely on proven principles for self-defence in the spiritual realms, the psychic realms, but also techniques that really transform who we are. These are principles that we are going to relate today that are very effective. They are expedient. They are powerful, and they allow the soul to really go to task against the obstacles we carry within. I hope that you will find these helpful, and that you find them impactful and practical for you. 
What is a Spiritual Warrior?
Many great spiritual warriors have existed throughout world mythologies. We have Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: The Song of The Lord. We have Perseus, Theseus, Aeneas, and Odysseus amongst the Greeks. We have Rama or Ramayana the Hindu Epic. Within many Buddhist monasteries we find the Dharmapalas: the guardians of the sacred Buddhist doctrine who were once demons, but by transformation through divine compassion, have become the servants of the law. We also have the Prophet Muhammad of Islam who defended himself in Arabia against the black magicians who sought to kill him. There are many examples throughout our history and mythologies.
These narratives are symbols of internal truths, of internal principles. They are archetypes. They are blueprints for the creation of the soul. These are not literally exclusive of some type of history to believe in. Instead, these are conscious truths and symbols that express the language of the consciousness. Despite the diversity of religious forms, characters, names, situations, dramas, conflicts, we find a unifying thread that unites all of these heros that fight on the path of love. They defend themselves not only through skilful means, but through profound wisdom and conscious love for humanity, compassion. Wisdom is the power to perceive. It is the ability to see in an unfiltered way, to be free of desire, to not have the ego present, to see objectively, clearly, precisely. Conscious love is the understanding of our true nature, our real Being, because when we know who our real Being is, and experience the presence of our inner divinity, we feel great love for those who really cause us to suffer, and therefore we endure for them. The real spiritual warrior combats their own inner defects while respecting the will of others. It is not a battle against other people and their beliefs. It is not about arguing and coercing others to think like we do. It is not about attacking the black magicians who seek to harm us and pull us from the path. This spiritual war is about our own relationship to ourselves. They are two forms of holy war in Islam, which unfortunately have truly degenerated, but their esoteric principles are very unique, but also universal. We have Jihad al-Asgar: the lesser holy war, and Jihad al-Akbar: the greater holy war. It is said that the Prophet Muhammad was speaking to his companions after a battle. He said, in the oral tradition of Islam: The Prophet said to those returning from a battle, “You have returned from the lesser jihād to the greater jihād.” When asked what the greater jihād was, he said, “A servant’s jihād against his passions.”
It is impossible to defend oneself from black magic when we ourselves continue to act unconsciously, asleep, without awareness of who we are, what we are doing, where we are at. Some people become very afraid when they hear these terms, especially Jihad, in the propaganda of both East and West. This word simply means “striving,” “to go against,” “to combat.” It is said by the Prophet Muhammad that “the best striving is a word of truth.” It is not about hurting those who do not follow our religion. This is a deviation.
What is that great spiritual war? It is learning to confront our own problems with efficacy, with clarity, with wisdom, with patience, and then we teach others how to change, not based of coercion, suppressing or violating the minds of others, by arguing on internet forums, and social media. It is about giving the example of the teachings by our own fruits, the blossoming of our own consciousness, our soul, our ethics. So true spiritual warfare is realised from a point of humility, and in order to achieve that rare virtue, we have to be humiliated. Humiliation before honour: this is the principle of initiation. There is a saying from the Hindu tradition, from the Bhishma Parva. I believe it is the Mahabharata. This is stated by Sanjaya: They that are desirous of victory do not so much conquer by might and prowess, as by truth, compassion, piety and virtue. Fight without any arrogance, for victory is certain to be there where righteousness is. ―Sanjaya, Bhishma Parva
Or stated in the book of Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 4:
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain. ―Isaiah 40:4
People often reference the archetype of the peaceful warrior. It is very common on the internet, which bares credence to esoteric principles. The human soul, or consciousness, is a warrior. In Kabbalah he is the root of our Essence, or soul, who has to fight like Lancelot against the dragon, which is our own mind, our lust, our desires, our passions. תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth must overcome great adversity, not with aggression, but with perfect serenity. In a state of equanimity and dispassion we learn to be like Christ. Samael Aun Weor wrote in his book on Sexology:
Christ does not react against calumnies, slaps, mockeries, threats, whippings, etc. Christ overwhelms because of his terrific serenity. When crucified Christ said only, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The “I” does not exist inside the Christ; this is why he neither reacts nor judges anybody. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology 
The Myth of Achilles
Let us examine some principles, or a myth that demonstrates these essential qualities. We have a very famous Greek myth of Achilles from the Iliad of Homer. In the myth, Achilles’ mother Thetis was concerned about her child’s mortal state. She tried to confer upon him immortality, and so she burnt him over fire while anointing his wounds with ambrosia. Afterword she dumped him in the river Styx, which are the waters of divine immortality and invulnerability. However, when she did this, as you may be familiar, she held him by the heels, and did not wash him there, which made Achilles invulnerable everywhere except for his heels, which is where we get the Achilles heel within anatomy. But what does this represent?
Burned by temptations, and ordeals, any initiate like Achilles can be healed with the divine ambrosia, which is a symbol of chastity―the sexual energy, the creative force. It is really this energy that can heal our greatest wounds, which can really give us strength. It can really make us powerful, because that power, which can give life to a child, is instead conserved, and transformed to give birth to a god. The heel in Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, represents יסוד Yesod. It is an internal symbol of how we walk the spiritual path. So if you have dreams about shoes, it is in relation to your sexual life. This is why Moses in Exodus could only approach the burning bush, the Tree of Life, without his sandals. He had to show purity and respect for God in his sexual conduct. So the water of chastity are the powers of transmutation, and is the limitless powers of the gods. If you have ever studied cosmogonies, you find water at the center, the foundation and basis. There is no religion, or narrative about divinity, without water. It is irrefutable, but it takes familiarity, and study, and great meditation to go at the heart of what these symbols relate. So here we are just giving one to emphasis these factors. So Achilles was known for being very terrifying. His ferocity was immense. When he went in to battle, he was unconquerable. A lot of scholars interpret this as blind rage, but the symbol is that it is the intensity of force, the severity of Mars, the spiritual force of love that knows how to go to battle for what is right. Some people like to think of Aries, the god of war, Samael, as someone hateful, but they mistake severity with anger. The Martian force is disciplinary. It is harsh, and hard to the ego, but it is done from a place of great compassion, a love that is so profound that it resists and endures all types of conflict in order to enact the will of divinity. In the myth of the Iliad, we find that Achilles even fights a river. Some scholars have laughed at this, ignoring its Kabbalistic symbol. This is a symbol of his battle, or any initiate’s battle, with their own lust, because desire works within the waters. 
So in the myth of Achilles, his armor was made by Vulcan, Hephaestus, the god of smithery and fire, and so all the great heroes have received armor from the Vulcan, which is a symbol of a marriage, because in the fires of matrimony, the sexual, igneous forces are harnessed and transformed to give birth to superior vehicles, which are the solar bodies that Samael Aun Weor mentions all throughout his writings. Vulcan is the Holy Spirit, the creative power of sex. It is the energy that can give the armory to the soldier of divinity. It is a force and vehicle that allows Christ to express.
So what is very interesting about Achilles in the Iliad is the emphasis placed on the artwork of his shield, and a lot of scholars and academics argue about what these represent, because you have a figure of great severity and strength, a great warrior, and then you have images of peace, and many icons that would seem to contradict his purpose, which is to fight the Achaeans and win back Helen of Troy, and so Achilles’ shield is embossed with sacred iconography. You see the earth, sea, sun, moon, and constellations. These are representations of mystical states, as we have explained in the lecture on Striving and our Sufi Principles of Meditation Course. You see beautiful cities, and countries filled with people on his shield, a wedding, or a court case, which represents our psychology, the psychological country wherein are always roaming about, usually lost within our own mind, going from defect to defect, identity to identity. We also see a court, or a wedding, which is a symbol of karma, the law. You also see a seed, or a feuding army, an ambush, a battle. This has to do with our own psychological warfare against our own faults, because as a former lecturer mentioned at the beginning of this course, as soon as we begin to conserve our energies, the mind resists and fights to retain and take back the very energies that gave it life. We are starving the mind, and so therefore the battle ensues. 
We also see on the shield a field that is ploughed for the third time, according to the Iliad. This is a representation of Arcanum 23 of the sacred tarot: The Plower. Why is the plower plowing for the third time? because three relates to the Holy Spirit within Hebraic mysticism, within Kabbalah, the third force of reconciliation, the force that balances all conflict within.
According to the description of the sacred tarot we find the following verse: The plower is in the act of cultivating the earth and his consciousness. Symbolizes the virtue of a human’s self-realization. ―Arcanum 23: The Plower
Every arcanum has a transcendental axiom, and for this one it is:
My mill is grinding flour for me and flour for my neighbor. ―Arcanum 23: The Plower: Transcendental Axiom
It is how we work in this world to produce physical and spiritual benefit for others.
We also see a harvest of a king’s estate. This signifies: we reap what we sow. Likewise, a vineyard with grape pickers, a very explicit symbol of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine of the Gnostic Unction, the Eucharist: how the soul receives Christ. We also see a sheep farm, and a heard of straight horned cattle, which represent the solar values of the lamb, the Christ, and the bull the Egyptian Apis: the Holy Spirit within Egyptian mysticism. There is a dancefloor of men and women, and what greater dance is there between any species or beings, except the perfect matrimony, when all seven levels of the human being are consummated? We also and finally see a stream from a great ocean on his shield. It is the spiritual path of chastity that leads to the ocean of the Absolute, the uncreated light. All these images represent the archetype of the peaceful warrior, the individuals who strive within themselves, to express the highest ideal of humanity and divinity. Serenity is the ultimate defence. It is the armament and shield we wield in order to endure karma. As Samael Aun Weor said in the Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology: The best weapon that a human being can use in life is a correct psychological state. ―Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology 
Our Greatest Weaknesses
To better understand what spiritual warfare is, we have an interesting case of a German initiate by the name of Fredrick Nietzsche. He is very controversial, especially among the Gnostics, because he was a Gnostic much in the same manner that Hitler was a Gnostic.
Initiates fall because of weaknesses. Hitler’s fascination with the occult is very well documented, and this demonstrates how often our curiosity for the arcane, for the esoteric, the obscure, the novel, gets us in to trouble. Hitler knew and practiced sexual magic, before a Tibetan from the black lodge came and converted him, precisely because this Tibetan initiate was able to exploit Hitler’s weakness, which was pride. While Nietzsche also knew the path, and provided valuable teachings, he made tremendous mistakes, grave errors that led him to insanity. We have a saying from one of his books Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Invulnerable am I only in the heel. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: The Tomb Song
Nietzsche meant to say he was invulnerable only in chastity, which was arrogant of him, because he eventually fell sexually and that led to him to deteriorating his mind. While some people can really benefit from his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we must approach him with caution, with distance. It is interesting that Samael Aun Weor mentioned in The Perfect Matrimony, in his chapter about “The Two Rituals,” chapter 12, I believe, how the wise author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra stated:
Write with blood, and you will understand that blood is spirit. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
There is wisdom to be taken here, some valuable knowledge that we can extract, and we will provide and excerpt from this book to demonstrate how a real spiritual warrior has to find inspiration from any source, knowing how to discriminate for advantages and its weaknesses. We accept what is useful and reject what is useless. Therefore in this way we avoid fanaticism. We can read from this book, and learn from it even though Nietzsche fell, much like we continue to utilize the Invocation of Solomon even though this solar king fell into black magic.
We highlight Nietzsche because we emphasis the point that people from every spiritual group ignore. While we all like to think and declare on social media that we are spiritual warriors, we often ignore that even the greatest warriors have been slain in battle. The question is not how, but why? The reality is that the enemy found a weakness and exploited it. In this way, the black lodge sees a vulnerability in our mind, in our defects, which we tend to overlook and ignore, and this is how they capitalize on our mistakes, to accelerate devolution, to push us in that way, in that direction. How many myths have related this truth? Look at Samson! Look at Hercules. What about Achilles? Despite how great Achilles was in battle, the myths relate, in Dante’s Inferno I believe, that he is in hell. So what about our boasted spirituality? It really does not mean anything if we remain with flaws, which we can gloss over and repress, and hide from, and label with the intellect, but not really comprehend. What is even worse for a lot of people is that we can believe that our greatest mistakes are in fact our best friends, our greatest virtues. This is how black magicians think. They do not think they are evil. It is very scary when you think about it, and so we must be cautious, and concerned. Therefore, as evidenced by Nietzsche’s quote: “Invulnerable am I only in the heel” ― what we think or perceive to be our strength is in fact our greatest weakness. What is our psychological image? How do we approach ourselves? How do we relate to ourselves? How do we think about who we are? How do we represent ourselves to others? What is our image, the ideal we carry within? The following is from The Revolution of the Dialectic: We need to undergo a total revolution and a definitive change in this matter of image, values and identity.
We will comment that, if we are experiencing a lot of attacks of black magic, it is because our ego is attracting those situations. It is due to karma. So if we want to change the situation and overcome the problem, we need to understand what in us is evoking that influence. We do so by developing the image of our inner self, the spirit, divinity. Samael Aun Weor continues:
Self-image is different; it is the inner K-H, the Kosmic Human, the Kosmos Human, our divine prototype, the Real Being.
Some people may resist this statement, but we ask you to analyze. Nietzsche thought he was strong in his chastity, but how did Samson fall? ― he trusted Delila. Why did Troy burn? ― because they mistakenly accepted the Achaeans sabotage as a gift.
We do not really have the time and opportunity to be complacent, to lack prudence, to be very smug with ourselves. We should not assume that we know everything. In fact, it is better the lean on the side of caution because there is too much at risk. This does not mean we become paranoid, fanatic, fearful, morbid. It means to be critical of the ego, to be severe with ourselves, but also to have patience with ourselves. 
On War and Warriors
Let us examine a few quotes from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to take out what is useful for our work. I am going to provide some commentary on these verses.
We do not want to be spared by our best enemies, nor by those whom we love thoroughly. So let me tell you the truth! ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
Honestly and self-criticism, we can say, in the beginning, is essential. It is how we approach self-transformation. We can learn from those who oppose us, who do not agree with us, who do not flatter us, who tell us our errors, especially when we do not like it. We must not spare our ego, our vanity. We have to learn to accept humiliation, to accept when we are wrong, and in this way, we enter initiation.
My brothers in war, I love you thoroughly; I am and I was of your kind. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth! ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
Are not the Gnostic missionaries, we could say, or the masters of the White Lodge, our worst enemy? Samael Aun Weor mentioned many times that people resisted him in his lectures. They fidget. They move. They scratch an itch. They become very uncomfortable, because he spoke openly about the death of the ego. The collective unconsciousness and the egoistical desires of his listeners knew that their existence is threatened by the doctrine. Therefore, people and students do not like the teaching. It is why you have synagogues, mosques, and churches filled with millions of people, because they do not teach how to die to desire.
Nietzsche continues: I know of the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Be great enough, then, not to be ashamed of them. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
In the beginning we are filled with a lot of ego, which can be very discouraging. While we are not great enough to be pure and innocent, wise as serpents and harmless as doves, we must be great enough not be filled with morbidity, with shame, with pessimism for being fallen.
Remorse is a different quality. It is important to have repentance and recognition for our faults, but it does not mean that we become filled with the opposite of pride, which is inverted pride, which is shame, pessimism, self-doubt, self-flagellation, etc. We must not identify with negative emotions, egos, which are repressive. We must comprehend them, not to be identified. And if you cannot be saints of knowledge, at least be its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such sainthood. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
Earlier in this book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche explains how, or it is implied that sainthood is mastery, the fifth initiation of fire, which is demonstrated when Zarathustra meets the hermit at the very beginning of this text. If you cannot be a master of Major Mysteries, then at least learn to fight in the way of truth against your faults.
I see many soldiers: would that I saw many warriors! "Uniform" one calls what they wear: would that what it conceals were not uniform! ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
It is very common for people to proclaim themselves to be mighty soldiers of God, because they believe in a religion. However, what Nietzsche is critiquing here is the tendency in people to wear their religion, their spirituality, or their political affiliations like a badge, a uniform, which is pride. However, the apparel does not often proclaim the man, or the woman, which is a contradiction of Polonius’s advice in Shakespeare Hamlet. People wear and adorn themselves with all sorts of things, religious apparel, regalia, customs, observances, attitudes, platitudes, thinking that this makes them strong. However if our adherence to religion is all that we are, if we are not awakening in the internal planes to know these truths, then it is the fact that we are barely cleaning the outside of the cup. We need to clean the inside, stated Jesus in the Gospels, to not be a Pharisee, fanatic of any tradition.
You should have eyes that always seek an enemy―your enemy. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
We need adversities. We do not like it. It is not pleasant. We complain about it. We do not like it when things in our life go wrong, especially when we start Gnosis, but that is a realization that these teachings are working. It is karma that enters our life to test us. We need hardship. We need situations that contradict who we are, otherwise, we are never going to grow. That is why Rumi states beautifully in one of his poems:
How can you become polished like a mirror if you resist every rub? ―Rumi
Samael Aun Weor, when he was advancing in the later stages of his work, when he was really annihilating the totality of his defects, he often sought people in life who were very averse to him. He intentionally went out of his way to find people who would condemn and criticize him, so that his most hidden defects would emerge, but that is something for a very psychologically clean person to do. I do not advise you to go out of your way to look for problems, because honestly, we do not have the capacity to transform it, but we should learn to accept our situation and our karma, because our Being knows what we can handle and what we can do, and therefore manages the situations with intelligence.
Here is a statement from Nietzsche that is somewhat controversial: And some of you hate at first sight. Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage―for your thoughts. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
So we wage war against our own mind, and for the realization of our most divine principles, which is denominated as "thoughts" here.
And if your thought be vanquished, then your honesty should still find cause for triumph in that. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
We have to be very severe with our ego, but also be very patient, because we are going to make a lot of mistakes. If we do not live up to the principles of this tradition, then the honest reflection of our failings should be a cause of triumph, because by recognizing our errors we can change them. This is humility.
You should love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
So what war is he talking about? I mean, obviously, people read it literally as a physical battle, but instead it is a war with oneself. According to Samael Aun Weor, he stated in The Great Rebellion, in a chapter called Decapitation:
The worst circumstances of life, the most critical situations, and the most difficult deeds are always marvelous for intimate self-discovery.
Therefore, “we should love peace as a means to new wars,” more ordeals, so we can radically change, and “the short peace rather than long.”
To you I do not recommend work but struggle. To you I do not recommend peace but victory. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
Work is mental exertion. It is when the mind exerts some effort to accomplish a task, and of course, this type of direction of energy does not produce a lot of deep results. Instead struggle, which relates to the Arabic striving, Jihad, is precisely how the consciousness exerts energy and effort, and enforces the will of divinity against the ego. This is the striving the Muslims advocate. In Prophet Muhammad’s words in one of the Hadiths, the oral tradition, this is Jihad al-Akbar.
Or as you see in this image of a samurai, or Japanese bushido, the way of the warrior, which in its ancient roots was a divine teaching, but unfortunately like any mysticism and spiritual code, devolved. We find when the samurai would commit seppuku, which is a literal interpretation of a symbolic function, of how we must kill our own ego, but when that tradition degenerated, obviously, we see the results that common history would have us believe, or better said, what the samurai had become.
So peaceful moments, and a lack of hardships are not really conducive for this work. If you really want internal discovery and realizations, we must face adversity, but do not seek it out. Let it come to you. Your Being knows what you can handle, what you can manage, as I said. Let your work be a struggle. Let your peace be a victory! One can be silent and sit still only when one has bow and arrow: else one chatters and quarrels. Let your peace be a victory! ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
What does it mean that your peace be a victory? You have to be serene when the hammer of karma falls on the anvil of your mind. It is not pleasant to face friction and fire, contradiction and paradox, condemnation and humiliation, uncertainty, doubt. However, if you are serene, you can really forge something beautiful with yourself, with your soul.
You can only be silent and still, concentrated and in remembrance of divinity, when you work with the bow and the arrow. These are symbols of self-observation. The arrow represents concentration. When you stretch a bow unto you to fire an arrow, you are introspecting your inner worlds. When you aim at a target, you are aware of your surroundings, and you are focused on your immediate environment. These are the main principles of mental gymnastics, or dynamics, how we comprehend defects. If we do not have knowledge of both the internal and external reality, we cannot comprehend the link of our conditioned self in relation to external impressions. This results in comprehension and transformation, when you understand the interdependence of all things, your mind with phenomena, and phenomena with your mind. If you want to know more about the transformation of life and impressions, you can study the last lecture in our course Beginning Self-Transformation, Transform Your Life it is called. You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
Nietzsche’s language obviously is very provocative. He intentionally plays with people’s assumptions in this book. People think that a noble ideology justifies physical bloodshed. If we look at any history book, to look at any political or economic system, patriotic systems or beliefs that are propagated in different eras, it does not matter which side of the political spectrum that you follow, because according to the subjective logic of the mind, any ideology can be used to glorify violence, and of course this is wrong.
However, if you read between the lines here, “It is the good war that hallows any cause.” What war are we talking about, or better said, what cause are we supporting? We use Gurdjieffian terms: it is the Being Parktdolg duty, the self-realization of the Being. You hallow that cause in you when you really engage with yourself, and do not run away from the facts. War and courage have accomplished more great things than love of the neighbor. Not your pity but your courage has so far saved the unfortunate. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
If you really study this book, you find that Nietzsche is really very much against complacency, admiring our neighbor’s ego, loving our neighbor’s ego. I believe he states elsewhere:
Myself I sacrifice to my love, and my neighbor as myself. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
This is a play on the Christian doctrine, which unfortunately has been misinterpreted to believe that we should love our neighbor’s defects. We should love the soul of other people, the spirit of other people, the Christ within other people. You can only do that when you have “the courage to save the unfortunate,” by not letting their ego manipulate your ego, to not act in a mistaken way. We act consciously with our neighbors, so that we can teach others through our example, not pitying others, or having better said, complacency with wrong, feeling bad for someone because they are unfortunate. It is really not enough. We must comprehend others, to have compassion for others.
This is quite different from pity, not to look down on someone because we think we are in a better position. This is the ego that Nietzsche was criticizing here. We must have the courage to do what is right, what you comprehend from your experiences, especially in the superior worlds, even when people hate you for it. Now this next line obviously gets Nietzsche into trouble here: "What is good?" you ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say, “To be good is what is at the same time pretty and touching." ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
Especially later on in Nietzsche’s works, he is misogynistic. To give him credit, at least in this book, before he went off the deep end, here he references woman in relation especially to Kabbalah, in relation to the lunar, mechanistic nature of the mind, and we have to have solar willpower in order to combat our mistakes. This is a statement that Nietzsche gave in a chapter called “Little and Old Women,” and Samael Aun Weor clarified for students because people were confused. Nietzsche stated:
“You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!" ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On Little Old and Young Women”
Samael Aun Weor clarified that Nietzsche was intentionally provoking people who do not really know, who do not study the doctrine. He played with words. In reality, what was meant here was that if men are going to their wives, a husband to his partner, they have to dominate their lust with the whip of willpower, not because, obviously, someone is going with a whip to be oppressive.
They call you heartless: but you have a heart, and I love you for being ashamed to show it. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
People think Samael Aun Weor and these teachings are very cruel, that they are unsympathetic. However, the initiates and alchemists have a heart, and they are honorable because they do not allow their own pain to obscure the message.
You are ashamed of your flood, while others are ashamed of their ebb. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
So masters have restraint because they are humble. They do not want to make others feel ashamed for their lack of Being. If you want to draw comparisons here, there is a line from King Lear by Shakespeare:
Have more than thou showest
People often become very concerned about their appearances, and while we should always dress well out of respect for our neighbor, we should not feel shame for our body, or our features. Remember according to Nietzsche, his funny reason why the Greeks sent Socrates to death was because they thought he was so ugly. It is a funny anecdote, but we must remember that Socrates is an initiate who gained a huge following because of his sublime character, his transmutation, his work in alchemy.
And when your soul becomes great, then it becomes prankish; and in your sublimity there is sarcasm. I know you. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
We often get the question, that people in Gnosis never laugh or joke around, or they are people who are just serious all of the time. Now the greatest masters have the greatest sense of humor. It is funny that people can think that Jesus could never tell a joke, who is the inhabitant of the highest dimension known to us, the realm of complete liberation and happiness.
People who are working seriously in this path need a healthy dose of humor. We have to find joy even in hardship, because we see the results even though they seem sporadic or withheld. We have to learn not to be infected with morbidity, pessimism, with sourness. If you are dark or negative, we have to examine our application of the teaching. In reality, this really stems from not maintaining chastity, for most people―sublimating the energy, becoming sublime, become holy. When you learn to really be faithful to your transmutation practice, you will understand divine humor, like The Divine Comedy of Dante. Nietzsche continues: In sarcasm the prankster and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand each other. I know you. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
A weak person is sarcastic with ego, is coercive, is cruel with his or her words. The initiate knows how to have fun, to be awake and happy, to be balanced. These two are very distinct from each other. They do not agree: the humor of an initiate, and the humor of Eddie Murphy, his stand-up shows, which are a very different quality of mind.
You may have only enemies whom you can hate, not enemies you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the successes of your enemy are your successes too. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
This is a very difficult statement, but let us read between the lines here.
If you despise someone, you think that you are superior. You think that you have nothing to learn from them, but if you have the ego of hatred or enmity manifested there in your relationship, we recognise that this person is provoking our ego, and this should inspire us to work upon our mind. If we lack respect for our enemies, or those who provoke our vanity or pride, we are not going to be open to learn from them; and really, according to Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, the greatest jewel that one can receive is an enemy, someone who can really bring out your faults. Without confronting them, we cannot really change. Recalcitrance―that is the nobility of slaves. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
So recalcitrance means stubbornness. To be attached and addicted to suffering is to be a slave as a consciousness to the mind. To not have any will to change makes us stubborn, makes us animals.
Your nobility should be obedience. We can say that our real nobility of character comes when we obey our intuition, our inner divinity, our inner Being. Your very commanding should be an obeying. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors”
So when we act with conscious willpower, with comprehension, with remembrance of the divine, the truth, it is because we obey our inner God from our heart, from our intuition.
To a good warrior "thou shalt" sounds more agreeable than “I will.” And everything you like you should first let yourself be commanded to do. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
A spiritual warrior obeys the divine law, which is chastity, “Thou shall not commit fornication, adultery, covetousness of our neighbor’s goods, etc.” We have to leave behind personal will and enact Christ’s will. We let our Being command us in the right moment through intuitions, through haunches, through guiding us in the moment, inspiring us in what to say, do, think, and act in a given circumstance.
Your love of life shall be love of your highest hope; and your highest hope shall be the highest thought of life. Your highest thought, however, you should receive as a command from me―and it is: man is something that shall be overcome. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
What is the highest hope that he mentions? It is the self-realization of the rebel Christ, the intimate Christ of the Superhuman within us. This should be the source of our highest thoughts and aspirations. So this path is learned and predicated upon one principle: it is that our current state as intellectual animals is but a bridge to the divine, a means to an end.
Thus live your life of obedience and war. What matters long life? What warrior wants to be spared? ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On War and Warriors"
So why should we want to be attached to a long life of debility, of complacency with wrong, of ego? What warrior wants to spare his ego? He or she instead has to fight a very difficult battle, a cruel war to the death, in the words of Samael Aun Weor.
I do not spare you; I love you thoroughly, my brothers in war! 
Collective Mind and Individuality
We are going to examine a couple of principles that are very important when we want to ground ourselves, in evaluating our internal state, as well as examining certain faults and errors that we can rectify even on a basic level.
We have the collective mind. These are distinctive types of thinking within individuality, in which we can find numerous examples within humanity. Any type of group thinking, a collective of thoughts, especially that which we can find in religions and political ideologies, relates to tendency of the animal mind―to belong to a group. However, merely going along with the flow of others does not guarantee that we know where we are at, or we know what we are doing. Religions tend to be very popular, because, as I said, they do not teach you the Buddhist Annihilation: they do not teach the death of the self. We find collective mind in relation to any type of school or system, we can say, and of course we can find it in Gnosis too, as with any spiritual group where we attend, because we feel a sense of belonging. Of course, the spiritual community is beautiful and necessary, but it important to transcend that. We have to learn to become individuals. An individual evaluates, discriminates, and understands diverse teachings, diverse paths, knowledge, wisdom. It means to really understand the anatomy of one’s inner Being. Individuality is a very sacred thing, says Samael Aun Weor. Right now, we have a multiplicity of mind. In one moment, our anger emerges. We feel pride, then vanity follows with its own thoughts, feelings, and impulses. Suddenly we are overtaken by fear, instinct, desire. Our life tends to be pushed and pulled around by multiple aggregates. So in truth, because we have a multiplicity of conflicting desires, we can state with clarity that we do not yet possess individuality, and this is something very important to recognize from experience, not merely to accept as a belief, but to accept as a crude reality. So long as we are not integral, in that we do not unify parts of the consciousness that are trapped in these different defects, it means that we are not going to be unified in our will, in our efforts. We are 97% ego according to Samael Aun Weor. We have 3% of consciousness that is free, which needs to be freed and awakened, so that by working on the rest of our faults, we begin to awaken more and more consciousness, from conditioned self to unconditioned perception. In this way, we start to become unified, singular, whole. When we are a multiplicity, our minds become diverted and diluted through attachments, through prejudices, through beliefs, through concepts of mother flag, of countries, of schools, of religions, orders, and sects. Humanity is very invested in belonging to a group, even though their ideologies they think, are contradicting others, or aggressively assert dominance over others. This is animal tendency that you find in the animal kingdom. It is not a quality of a real human being. Human beings respect the will of others. One does not assert their way of thinking, feeling, and acting upon any other individual. This is very important, because without recognizing the multiplicity of our distractions, we become fascinated. The most a spiritual school can give you are teachings and practices that can really help you to change, to acquire knowledge for yourself, experience for yourself, to learn to think, and feel, and understand for yourself. Therefore we do not believe in anything. We are not here to teach you to believe in these principles. These are something you can verify from experience. It is a fundamental axiom in nature and reality, but in order to do that we have to overcome many ancestral prejudices and fears. The fear of “I won’t belong if I teach, or study, or practice this type of knowledge.” This is a very common sentiment for a lot of people. In a chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it is spoken about very beautifully, in probably the best writing of his book, called On the Way of the Creator. You can access the article on our website, where you feel the pain when really entering in to yourself, reflectively and changing your errors, how people around you see that you are not who you used to be, and so that can become a real source of conflict, of struggle. But it is important to reflect upon our experiences, our consciousness, to merely not accept, or to believe, or disbelieve anything, but to verify, to experiment, to evaluate, to perceive, to know. 
Bodhichitta and the Paramitas
So spiritual warriors are not defined by their prowess, their skill, and their ethics, but by their virtue. We must understand that it is not enough to love somebody, to have compassion for somebody, to really feel for someone who is suffering. You have to have effective methods that rectify the problem. Therefore real initiates are examples of humility and of love, conscious love. They have the inspiration to help. You cannot help others if you do not know how. You can have the inspiration to do so, but if you are not trained in expediate means, in their skillful application, in their utility in different contexts, then even our greatest love for others cannot do anything.
You cannot apply such methods when you lack in compassion and are lacking understanding of other people’s suffering. Otherwise, we have selfish motives. We are not seeking to edify the spiritualty of others but seeking to enthrone and idolize our vanity and pride. This is why we study Buddhism especially, specifically bodhichitta and the paramitas. These are essential tenants of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. बोधिचित्त Bodhichitta means the “enlightened, awakened heart and mind of compassion.” बोधि Bodhi means “enlightened” in Sanskrit: “wisdom,” “awakened,” “awakening.” धित्त Chitta means “mind,” “heart,” or “aim.” This traditionally has to do with in Buddhist studies, the divine aspiration to work for self-realization, perfection, to bring others out of suffering, and the पारमिता paramitas are the principles and the laws that help one to achieve that in a very systematic, divine and practical way. We recommend reading The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva especially, or The Path of the Bodhisattva of Course, on Glorian.org. In truth these पारमिता paramitas refer to “that which has reached the other shore.” It is the quality of consciousness that one has to really enact in order to have power over oneself, one’s spirit, one’s soul. The first is generosity, to have the longing and the aspiration to help others, to have love for others in a conscious way. However, this has to be developed with ethics. This is why we study many religions and traditions, because we learn not to steal, not lie, not to kill, not to fornicate, not to adulterate. While these are codes that apply to physical life, they also apply to our mind-stream. So even though we might not killing people physically, we kill with a sarcastic look, or a sardonic smile. We can commit fornication or adultery through our gaze. Even Jesus said, “You shall not commit adultery, but anyone who looks after a woman, or the opposite sex out of lust, has already committed adultery within their heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). It is a psychological teaching. Ethics has to do with restraining your defects, and understanding them, but of course, as you working to fulfil these principles, we need patience. It is not easy to endure the reality of our mind. It can be very horrifying. Many people when they see themselves for what they are, they want to run away, and many do. However, when you learn patience, you are enduring your own ego, and also the afflictions of other people, recognizing that other people are not necessarily responsible for their actions. We are all asleep. We all make mistakes. We are not really conscious of what we do. None of us are self-observing and remembering divinity in what we do. We have to recognize that other people are afflicted by a conditioned state of mind, and therefore we have to have compassion for them, and endure their criticism, or their sorrow, or their sarcasm. As you are patiently enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you learn to enact a heroic effort, diligence, practicing every day, doing your best, studying what you can, applying as much as you can, looking at your mistakes, your faults, but not to be filled with morbidity and shame, but learn to act with superior laws. Heroic effort has to do with willpower, Christ, superior will, divine will. As you are applying your consciousness to different endeavors in life, and you endeavor in concentrative meditation, we focus on one activity or thing without thinking of anything else. This allows us to develop penetrating wisdom or insight, comprehension of a given problem. Study the paramitas. They are very deep. We are going to give a course on the Way of the Bodhisattva at some point, but here we are just giving a brief overview. 
Psychological Equilibrium
What is psychological equilibrium? It is the conscious management of our three brains―the intellect, our emotions, and the motor-instinctual-sexual center. Balance, equanimity, and serenity is necessary if we really want to disarm very unpleasant situations. However, while it is beautiful to develop this and acquire it, maintain it, inner equilibrium is the platform on which genuine insight can arrive.
Without clarity of attention, we cannot perceive clearly. Psychological equilibrium is necessary for true magical operations of self-defense. Obviously we are not going to be perfect in the beginning, but you learn through trial and error how to maintain stability of concentration, and remembrance of divinity as you face different circumstances, different difficult situations. The purpose of the conjurations and the prayers is to stabilize your mind, your emotions, your body, your impulses. You do not begin with perfection, but when you consistently apply these principles when you need them, you learn to balance yourself. Sometimes prayers, and conjurations, and incense are really needed more than other instances of life. However, when you are consistent, we accumulate, and saturate our psychology, our atmosphere, our home, with positive energy. This makes it much easier for us to work. It is like a vacuum in which we can really put in to it our deepest longings, and our home should reflect our spiritual life. We should really make our home like a temple. These energies really support us when we need them most, but learning to balance ourselves takes time. We reach our goals in accordance with the consistency and depth of our practice. So if we get angry or upset throughout the day, we are wasting energy. We lose our balance, even only for a moment. We really have to rely on ethics. We have to curtail desires, thoughts, negative emotions, negative attachments, because we recognize from experience how these certain behaviors make us suffer, make other people suffer. So do not run away from pain. Look at it. You gain balance by looking at it calmly, serenely, and not identifying with it. This is a very delicate skill that takes a lot of time to master, so do not think you are going to get it in a few days, or a few years. But gradually with time, you begin to retrospect and see how your state of being has changed, and this gives us genuine faith. So conscious control is necessary. We should not suppress or justify our ego. Comprehension is a third force. It is when you look at something without giving in to it, or pushing it away, but to fully understand its function, this is equanimity, serenity. If you break your ethical discipline and you get mad―as we all do―when you should be kind and considerate, we need to reflect on those egos that manifested in those moments. This is why retrospection meditation is essential. So we need some degree of discrimination, of understanding how to apply the techniques in order for them to work. But just like you are riding a bike, it takes time. It takes practice. You are not going to be perfect. We learn to balance ourselves so that we do not make serious mistakes, and often your divinity will guide you in that process. Without psychological equilibrium, we cannot respond appropriately to life, so this is something that we have to verify for ourselves. When dangerous or difficult situations arrive, we can use the prayers or conjurations of this teaching to protect ourselves. 
Meditation
Meditation is fundamental. We have given different courses on meditation on this site, and also on Glorian.org. We have a variety of different teachings that discuss how to meditate. This is the daily bread of a Gnostic. I am just going to summarize a brief teaching, which gets to the heart of why we practice this science. They are three principles and stage of meditations: discovery, judgment, and execution.
Discovery has to do with identifying our weaknesses. We can only do that when we are observing ourselves actively, looking within as the different impressions of life stream within our consciousness, and we learn to observe our different egos that arrive spontaneously, without expecting it in the moment. We have to see that we are separate from the ego, separate from desire. We need to discover that when you are not the ego, when you are not desire, you gain a quality of joy, because you recognize that fault, which you can meditate upon later, or even then―depending on your circumstances―so that you can enter into judgment. Judgment is when you close all your senses. You introspect within to ask, invoke divinity. You can do mantras or pranayama, transmutation exercises to calm your mind, and you visualize the different events of your day. You review them. You retrospect so you can look at the facts: what defects emerged in a certain situation. Examine the ones that you discovered, and in this way, as you are reflecting upon them, praying for inner guidance and understanding, your Divine Mother can provide you with judgment, discrimination, conscious understanding of the fault. When you have comprehended an ego you ask for elimination. You pray for it. You can do so within the meditation itself or within alchemy if you are married. Study The Revolution of the Dialectic, and the Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology as well as The Great Rebellion. These books explain this process very beautifully. 
Transmutation
Transmutation is also essential. The preservation of the lifeforce is the source of virtue. So the word virility, sexual potency, relates to virtue, to become a वीर्य virya, the Sanskrit term for a warrior. You cannot really go against your defects if you are feeding them, and the main one is lust.
This is why within the teachings we speak very openly and clearly about the need to refrain from orgasm, to refrain from lustful activities, but also not just only conserving that energy, but also transforming it, directing it with will. It is not enough to be abstinent, to retain the sexual energy and not do anything with it. If you put gasoline in a car and do not drive it for three to six months, eventually the gasoline will degrade, and the same thing happens to people spiritually. When that energy is not in use, is not flowing up the spine through intentional practices, or deep devotion, and listening to classical music and prayers, then that energy is going to devolve. Conserve that energy. Raise it up your spine. You can use mantras and vocalizations of the chakras to direct that energy towards those centers. You can do pranayama, sexual alchemy. We also have some resources at the end that you can rely on, to study more deeply about this, but transmutation is simply how we carry over and transform the brute entity of our sexual matter into a spiritual force. It is what gives us virtue. It is virility, the very essence of a spiritual warrior. If you lose the energy, then you have lost the battle, so to speak, or lost the skirmish, depending on the magnitude of the fault. But if you wish to become like a Valkyrie, a warrior of Valhalla, according to Nordic mythology, we learn to drink the ambrosia form the horn of the gods, which is a symbol of sexual potency. 
Cleanliness and Health
We should also take care of our body, our home, and our cleanliness. It is important to get enough exercise in our day, and to manage our diet well, to be as balanced as we can, to engage in constructive activities. I would like to relate some words for you from The Yellow Book by Samael Aun Weor where he explains some principles about this which are simple but very effective, very important to realize:
The Gnostic must be temperate. He must not slander people. He should not be gluttonous or lazy.
Specifically, our diet, our needs, our temperament are going to be unique, but we have to find what works for us in terms of a regiment, health, cleanliness, and balanced diet. We need purity of mind, body, and heart. Take care of our home. Let our home be a temple. Every time you come home, it should be a place of inspiration and comfort for you. If it is disorganized, in disarray, if it is chaotic―change it. Take small steps. Start with one room. Tidy it up in accordance with your time and ability, and make the effort to create a space where you can really thrive.
Take care of your health. Do not smoke. Do not drink alcohol. Obviously, do not do drugs, because these elements condition the consciousness. They do not awaken the free consciousness but awaken that which is trapped within defects. So this is an obvious thing. 
Harmony with Superior Laws
It is also important to be in harmony with superior laws. We have to understand how karma works. We need to remember that actions create related consequences, that there is certainty with cause and effect. If we act with an inferior state of mind and being, we will suffer, and make others suffer.
Likewise, the consequences are greater than the action. This is the second principle of karma. Sometimes we like to think that our actions are meaningless, and we may feel doubt, but the truth is that just as you throw a stone in to a lake, your action reverberates within nature. It expands towards other beings, and so the consequences are going to magnify and amplify. For example, if we have an angry person speaking to an audience on television, you can have millions of people become upset, and this is very easy to see when looking at the news where we see politicians and political figures who say what they say and provoke the multitudes and the consequences thereof. So, the consequences are greater than the actions. If we act positively, then are our actions will produce beneficial results. It will magnify. It will amplify. A third principle of karma is that you cannot receive the consequences of something without its corresponding action, and this is important, because if you want to be in harmony with your Being, you have to fulfil the causes for their fruition. You cannot realize divinity if you do not practice, if you do not really make efforts in daily life, if you do not fulfil ethical conduct. The fourth principle of karma, which is the last which Tsongkhapa gives in his Lam Rim Chenmo: Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, states: “Once an action is performed, a consequence cannot be erased.” So we cannot take back the bullet. It is impossible. When an action is performed, it is permanent. However, there is a superior law, which is forgiveness, which is mercy. A superior law transcends an inferior law. So even if we make a mistake, really, if we have a lot of remorse and repentance, we can rectify it if we act consciously, and in this way we can avoid many consequences that are painful. We can avoid the law of retribution, of coercion, of pain. 
Intellectual CultureWhosoever works in realization of the Self is liable to do foolishness. ―Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah
It is important that when we study these teachings that we have a broad and deep sense of the different aspects of this knowledge. While Samael Aun Weor mentioned how we should avoid intellectualism and overly relying in the mind, it is important that we study different aspects of this teaching in relation to our spiritual life. We can read in our life, but we can apply and meditate on its meaning. People who do not have an intellectual sense of what these teachings involve create a lot of problems. This is evident in many spiritual communities where people, who only study a partial aspect of this doctrine or their religion while neglecting the rest, can become very fanatical and judgmental.
It was very common in Western esoteric traditions where people were developing clairvoyant powers: the ability to see into other people’s minds, especially―imagination we could say. The problem was because people did not study the teachings, were not educated, they saw things in people that were very blasphemous and disturbing, and therefore judged those people physically. Sometimes there have been people who have had dreams about their neighbor. Mistaking their dreams for reality, they ended up slandering that person in the physical world, condemning them as a black magician, a criminal, an adulterer, or a fornicator etc.―even when these people were completely innocent. We have to learn how to question what we perceive, but the only way you are going to do that is when we know what the diverse prophets and teachers emphasized in the scriptures. For us, we use Samael Aun Weor’s writings because they are most explicit, but even then they are people who do not read what Samael wrote, and they teach and practice this doctrine, but continue to gossip to other people, referring to them as sorceress, demons, and black magicians. This type of behaviour has destroyed many groups. It is very sad. The truth is that someone who is educated in ethics and Theosophy, and Rosicrucianism and compassion, principles and truths and scriptures, not from an intellectual position alone, but from experience, that person is not going to be fooled easily. By looking at a certain phenomenon through someone’s imagination or clairvoyance―without the influence of the ego, but with the remembrance of the advice of the prophets―one gains comprehension that is very deep, and therefore does not really attack others. I believe there is a saying by Ibn ‘Arabi. He is one of many Sufi masters, the greatest of his tradition, who said that even if you know that someone is a devil, a demon, Satan, it is wrong to go out into the public and condemn them. “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16). You cannot judge anybody. I do not go around calling people black magicians. I do not go around publicly doing that, even though I have had experiences with certain people and certain groups where black magic was very common. It is important not to judge people. If you are waking up consciously, then study the teachings. You are not going to be fooled easily. Instead, we develop an intellectual culture. I would like to read a few quotes from the book Sexology by Samael Aun Weor, where he explains these principles very beautifully, explicitly, in that the clairvoyant is not responsible for seeing people as demons: The clairvoyant is not to blame for those errors. The cause of all those errors is the lack of intellectual culture and the lack of respect towards our neighbor.
Our perceptions can be easily influenced by other people. An example of this is when a family member can relate an experience they had with a former friend. We can even hear such a narrative and we even crystalise such an image in our mind about such a person. Therefore, we see them as bad, unethical, etc. Therefore, we have many bad impressions of people that we have never met, or have never known, and this is a very common phenomenon. All this is unconscious.
But there are people who exist, black magicians who know how to influence the mind of others. They know how the mind functions, and therefore they have a lot of tactics and utility to impact, to manipulate people consciously, in evil. So be careful. But at the same time, do not be paranoid. Study the teachings. Apply them, and do not judge other people by what you can see, because even if so-and-so may be a black magician attacking you, causing you harm, you have to look inside your own mind to see if you are sinless, because “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). 
White and Black Magic
Finally, we will talk about white magic. People who are in military training study different disciplines to be well-rounded. When they study combat training, they may study a verity of fighting martial arts disciplines, exercises, so that they can be skilled, to apply different remedies in certain situations so that they can neutralize threats.
The important thing to remember is that these practices are not a game. They are very powerful, and when you apply them with energy and consciousness, you get results. These rituals are exceptional, and it is important to bear in mind that we need to treat them with respect. The following is from Samael Aun Weor in The Perfect Matrimony: All rituals have to do with blood and semen. Ritual is a double-edged sword that defends and gives life to the pure and virtuous, but hurts and destroys the impure and tenebrous. Ritual is more powerful than dynamite and the knife.
Testing and experimenting just for the sake of doing it does not really produce anything, so we have to work with exercises consistently, daily, like with elemental magic, ceremonial magic, and even sexual magic (just once a day if you are married). We do not get results if we are intermittent, but if we are disciplined. All these practices help to accumulate the Christic force, nuclear energy, so that when we are conscious and wielding those force with intelligence and wisdom, we really procure the benefit and healing of humanity.
Conclusion and Resources
In conclusion we have a few books. If you want to know more about the role of these exercises and how to really go against your own mind, study The Revolution of the Dialectic, but also The Major Mysteries by Samael Aun Weor. These teach you about a lot of practical techniques, and ritualistic exercises, especially in The Major Mysteries, that when combined with meditation, produce marvellous results, so that we can really advance quickly, with patience and with love.
So at this point and time I would like to open up the floor for questions. Questions and Answers
Question: Can you speak a bit on not allowing yourself to be a doormat for abuse, but practicing patience with those who are aggressive?
Instructor: It is a great question. There is a fine balance to be found in each circumstance. It is important to remember that we need to forgive other people, even when it is very difficult, when it is painful. Samael Aun Weor mentioned how our progress is determined based on our forgiveness for others. Now we have to forgive people, to have compassion for them, to understand why they acted in ways that are harmful and mistaken ways, and we have to learn to patient, to learn how to endure certain situations that we cannot change. But if there is something that we can do, then we should definitely act, not with anger, not with pride, not with aggression, not with coercion. We have to learn “to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16) according to the Gospels. To be wise as a serpent means to learn how to direct the sexual energy, without harming others. That is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. If you find that a situation or a relationship is very toxic for you, it would be good to end it, but you have to really meditate and understand what the consequences are thereof. But there are situations that you cannot change no matter what: your job, or what life may be leading you towards. We can learn to patiently endure the abuses of others when we have understanding of their situation. Now being a doormat is one thing. We can really yield to people, and attempt and work to perfect a space within ourselves so it is not afflicted by all of this, but if you find that you cannot transform the situation well, that it is creating more problems for you, then it could be good to give yourself some space if you need to or try to. But if there is nothing that you can do, obviously, we must endure it. But if there is something we can do, then it is contingent on us to act appropriately, with the love and respect, that we would long for another person to give to us in the same situation if we were the aggressor. So if there is physical violence, then you need to get out of the situation, obviously. That is a serious problem, but in terms of emotional abuse, too, that can be challenging. You must gauge your heart. What does your Innermost want you to do in such a situation? That is why meditation is so essential. There is not a perfect answer for every single circumstance, but you want to gauge in yourself your own capacity for transforming a situation, and if you cannot, then find some space, time, and ability in which you can, and go to your Innermost to guide you in how you can approach such a person in the physical world. Your Innermost can show you in meditation what you need to do. Rely on the wisdom of your Being, because He can provide you, really, a lot of comfort. When you know what divinity wants from you the situation dissolves, there is no pain there. It is usually when we are uncertain about what we need to do in life that we struggle, and churn in the mud, so to speak. I hope that answers your question. Question: Can you speak a bit on the ego? What is it exactly, and how to use it in its proper form? Instructor: We explained in the courses on psychology how the ego is all of that which we identify with. It is a conditioned state of being. It is anger, pride, vanity, lust, envy, laziness, defects―everything that is wrong that creates problems for us. The consciousness is the soul that, for most of us, is trapped in large proportions within the ego, desire. The ego says: “I want, I need, I desire.” It acts selfishly. The consciousness knows how to act for the benefit of others. It is constituted by the virtues of our inner divinity. I recommend that you study Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, especially. That will help clarify for you what the ego is, what the self is, what is the consciousness, and what is the personality, especially. You can also study The Great Rebellion, which is a wonderful companion book by Samael Aun Weor, to the text I mentioned. Question: When you speak on judging others, can you elaborate more on judging others, versus recognising others by their actions? Would that not be then a form of judging? Instructor: Yes, it is a very good question. It is a very nuanced thing. You have to examine your mind. Obviously, we can make observations about people that are very accurate, and obviously, people can make observations about us that are even more accurate, because in truth, people tend to see us and other people more accurately that we see ourselves. We tend to be very blindsided by our own predispositions, character traits, habits etc. The ego judges people, makes a concept, an idea, a belief, an assumption, an attitude of another person based on a perception, but those perceptions tend to be very flawed. They are not objective. They are usually conditioned by our own defects like anger and pride, which might see a fault in others that is not necessarily there, and in truth it is a common thing where the very fault that we project in others is really a reflection in our own mind that we refuse to see in ourselves, and that which we label onto other people. However, a clairvoyant like Christ, or Buddha, or Muhammad, masters who really annihilated all their ego, they are able to see people very objectively, clearly. They do not judge people. They do not judge other people. They do not criticise them, or assume such and such is a demon, or a sorcerer or a black magician. It is one of those qualities that Christ, as a mentioned in an earlier quote, does not have an “I,” and therefore does not judge or slander people. Now we have to judge ourselves, judge our own defects, and be very critical with our own selves, not as an ego saying: “I am such a bad person,” feeling shame, but looking objectively with our own conscious abilities, our own conscience. But in reality, a master who has no ego, seeing other people clearly for who they are, they do not judge them. This is why Jesus said to the Pharisees and Mary Magdalene, when people were trying to stone her: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” He said to Mary Magdalene when the Pharisees left: “I do not judge you, but go and do not sin again.” That is comprehension. That is love. One can be strong and severe with another person, but without judging them, but that takes a lot of development and skill, and unfortunately with a lot of us it is not something that we can manifest. Question: Did you say that married people can benefit from having sex once a day? Instructor: Married couples can practice sexual alchemy only once a day, no more. So there is a certain pause that needs to be fulfilled, a Creative Magnetic Pause in which the couple’s energies settle, subside, rejuvenate, and regenerate after practicing alchemy. You can study that in The Mystery of the Golden Flower by Samael Aun Weor. People who enter the sexual act more than once a day, more than once every 24 hours, they create a great crime. They violet the law of the Holy Spirit, which is chastity, because one can only practice once a day. Those energies must stabilize, and balance, and harmonize, especially when it has been transmuted by the couple. Study The Mystery of the Golden Flower, that explains that concept really well. Comment: I realize that in the war against myself, my lack of willpower against lust, I feel like I am on a roller coaster going up and down. Instructor: That is very common for people in the beginning, but with consistent practice and application, when you really begin to renounce lust and eliminate its causes, you gain a temperance and stability which is really profound, and that begins to emanate, pervade, and penetrate every aspect of your life. So be patient. Do not give up. You can develop serenity, temperance, and stability when you really commit to chastity, and if you make mistakes, obviously rectify them. Change them, but more importantly, prevent them. In that way you really avoid the roller coaster going up and down. Things begin to settle in your mind stream, even to the point that when you have difficult situations in life, you do not get phased by them. You can confront them with dispassion, and conscious will. Question: When you say the Being cannot give you more than you can handle, I do not see how this is true when many people have fatal tragic ends, such as all those who commit suicide. How can one reconcile these opposites? Instructor: The sad reality is that people, first off, do not have the teaching. This is changing, obviously, because of different websites, and different videos, and lectures given openly to humanity. So this knowledge is more accessible now than it ever has been. But also there is more conflict, more pressure, more suffering on this planet than there has ever been. When I was referring to the fact that the Being gives us what we can handle, I am referring to when people are really diligent with chastity. That energy is the conduit, the key that allows your Being to act within you. It might seem blasphemous, but divinity cannot help us if we cannot help ourselves. If we do not have that foundation with the creative energy, then obviously we cannot be guided. That sexual energy is the power to create, and when we give it to divinity, He and She has the power to handle our situation, and therefore can handle our karma in a way that is really intelligent, because really, we are a part of divinity, the Being. We are a consciousness that has the ability to follow divine will, or the egotistic will, but without that foundation, divinity cannot really enter into us. We have to suffer the consequences of our actions, and obviously people who commit suicide are suffering terribly, have suffered terribly, but people have a choice in how they behave ethically. The solution is if people are suffering that type of trauma or feel suicidal, obviously, they need to get professional help. I have known instructors and people with whom I teach that have some professional backgrounds in mental health, who have given a course on Spiritual and Mental Health on our website. We are going to talk more in depth about these types of problems, but people who commit suicide, because of really big egos, have really disconnected themselves severely, and therefore, because they cannot connect themselves with divinity, they squander the energies that can really give them divine communion. Therefore, they feel very lost. Therefore, they have killed themselves, commit many errors. This is very sad. The way to resolve this issue is to teach people how to work with the energy that gives life, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, spiritually. Once you work with the creative energy, then divinity handles your circumstances, takes it upon Himself to manage the karma that inevitably you would have to pay with pain. Question: Could you speak with a bit more detail on how to reach the Jinn state, and a reference to any instructors who have had any success? Instructor: The Jinn state is a practice in which, similar to astral projection, we enter the internal worlds. With astral projection, it is something very common. People do it all the time, but unconsciously. Physically, you go to sleep, and your consciousness leaves the body and enters the world of dreams: the fifth dimension in the Kabbalah known as הוד Hod, the astral world. However, people tend to go into that dimension unconsciously to experience their dreams, projections of their subconscious state, and upon returning to the body, either remember nothing, or have some scattered recollection of an inner experience or dreams, which tend to be very conditioned and dimmed. Jinn science is much more different. Actually, we could say in Jinn science, you take your physical body in to the astral world, the internal worlds. You enter, with your body, hyperspace, the fourth dimension. Now, the fourth dimension relates to the etheric world, יסוד Yesod in Kabbalah. It is the vital, sexual creative energy. It is the energetic potential that permeates all of space and is the functionality of time itself. The fourth dimension is time and space: hyperspace. It is the energy that permeates all physical matter, which is reflected in even the mountains such as the blue color of the earth, which is the etheric, vital aura, the vital depth of the physical earth itself. All our physical bodies have a vital body as well. It is what gives us chemistry, vitality, metabolism, catabolism, digestion, circulation. All the life and vital forces that we have in our body is the realisation of our vital depth, and certain medicines like the Taoist practices, or acupuncture, study the vital body very well. But in a deeper sense, you can learn how to integrate your physical body through the vital conduit of your vital double to enter the fourth dimension with your physical body. 
There are different practices that you can do. Primarily, you rely on your Divine Mother and faith. This is something that is usually considered with a lot of doubt by people, because it sounds very fantastic, but in a sense, Jinn science is in the story of Prophet Muhammad who ascended the seven heavens with his physical body. He travelled from Mecca to Jerusalem by meditating on the stone, which is a symbol of working with that vital energy, the sexual creative force, and he went physically. This is a commonly accepted belief amongst the Muslims, but it is something we must verify through experience.
Jinn science is something very sacred, and it is not displayed to the public because it is a very private thing. People are very sceptical and have very materialistic doubts about how one can travel with the physical body into the internal worlds, something that seems very outlandish. But if you study and practice the techniques given by Samael Aun Weor, in which he provides ways of approaching this science―all of which come from working with the creative sexual energy―you can experience these realities. Personally, I have worked with Jinn science, and I have had results. I am not going to talk about what I have experienced because it is too sacred. But it works. Question: How can I strengthen my willpower against lust? 
Instructor: I recommend that you work with the Rune Dorn. Study the runes, such as the Magic of the Runes by Samael Aun Weor. The Rune Dorn is exceptional, and it is the rune, or the energetic yogic exercise, by which you adopt the posture of your right hand on your right hip, heels together in a military style, left hand to the side.
You pray to your inner divinity to give you strength, to teach you willpower, of Christ’s divine will, so as to help you overcome lust. This rune helps you transmute sexual energy. It helps you to accumulate a Christic force: atoms of a high voltage that charge your physicality, your vitality, your mind, your heart, your willpower. Your arm forms like a hammer relating to Dorn, the god of war, who is Thor in Nordic mythology, but also the Holy Spirit. He is the god of war against desire.
You do the mantras: Ta, Te, Ti, To, Tu, prolonged. Prolong the mantras and focus on the vibration in your chakras. Study especially that book Magic of the Runes. Those exercises are exceptional for helping you train your body, your mind, and your heart to work against lust.
Question: Are you able to speak of the Wim Hoff method as a breathing technique? Is it a form of moving energy, and also the cold therapy to learn from your body how to manage instincts? Instructor: I know some people who practice the Wim Hoff method. I personally have not myself, so I cannot really comment. I know there is some similarities in other teachings such as Tummo yoga where people learn to maintain their physical heat despite cold weather and adversity. There are some really tangible examples of how that is actually fulfilled, but as for Wim Hoff, it is not something that I personally practiced with, so I cannot comment. Question: As we seek answers from our Being, how can we differentiate answers of our Being from our ego? Instructor: It is a good question. I just gave a lecture for the Sufi Principles of Meditation course called Certainty and Insight, where one of the quotes that really stands out from the writings of the Sufis is a saying that is something along the lines of: “The first intuition that arrives in to your consciousness in relation to an experience is the answer.” If your mind and ego struggles and debates about it, then it is probably a projection of your mind, in relation to the first question, the first concern. We learn to differentiate the messages from divinity from our ego by reflecting on the experience we are considering, especially, and experience in dreams. We have to analyze:
What are the archetypes present in the dream? What are the symbols and the dramas associated with those symbols? This is why we need to study the doctrine, because we learn the general significance of certain internal representations and archetypes, so that when we experience them, and we feel that natural longing in the soul that there is something deep and meaningful here, then we can learn to interpret without the interference of the ego. But the only way you can discriminate and differentiate what you perceive is by putting your ego completely aside. If you are struggling to understand your inner experiences, you should learn to suspend your senses. Really develop serenity first. Calm the mind. Establish equanimity. Let your mind settle, and abandon your body, heart, and mind. Let them all be still, and then direct your will and visualize the experience. When you are looking at the experience without any type of anticipation or projection of the mind, any type of aversion, the insight, the intuition, emerges spontaneously, usually in combination with another experience, so that it can compound and add to your understanding of the dream. But also you gain insight by putting everything subjective aside. There is no other way. Be patient because it takes practice. When you really learn the suspension of the senses, suspension of the mind, and the heart, and really concentrate will with serenity and peace, you can start to see things in a new way. Question: How does one work with their sexual energy when they are celibate, and one does not have a partner? Instructor: We have many exercises for single people. I know many people get concerned when they study The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor where he talks about how a marriage is necessary for entering the higher stage of initiation, but this does not mean that single people cannot begin to work. Celibacy itself, merely restraining the sexual energy, is one thing that a lot of people do practice in traditions of yoga, but unfortunately what is lacking from those methods is the key practices to transmute the energies that one is conserving. You can study The Perfect Matrimony especially, by Samael Aun Weor. You can also read The Yellow Book where you can learn practices of pranayama. Pranayama is the method where you interchangeably breathe through your nostrils to circulate the sexual energy. So as a single person you can practice this daily for as long as you want. There is no danger in that. In fact, the more the merrier. The more energy you have, the more calmness of mind you will experience, especially when you are working and you are controlling your ethics. The Yellow Book especially is good. Kundalini Yoga by Samael Aun Weor is exceptional for that, for single people, and you can also study a lecture that we called Pranayama and Sexual Transmutation. It is in the Gnostic Meditation Course. Question: Could you speak about the difference of discrimination and judging another, and letting another know what you observe in them for their benefit? Instructor: I think the important thing to remember is that we should be very judgmental of ourselves, and we should be very cautious about how we approach other people. If we have even a tinge of desire in our action, it is going to be corrupt, even if our observation is right. We need to learn to balance our interactions with people with internal work. We can only really benefit another person when we know how to communicate with them in relation with their inner world. Nietzsche even said something very beautifully in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The smallest [narrowest] cleft is the most difficult to bridge.” And he was talking about relationships with people. We may not be far away from someone. We may be face to face with someone, and our minds can be worlds apart. Since our minds are 97% ego, we need to be very cautious. We are probably going to be judging the other person, even if we do see things that are objective, but if you have the time, ability, and circumstance to help someone, and if they ask you for your help especially, then offer your observations without coercion―just being open, and honest, and sincere, but following your intuition. It is your heart that will tell you the right way to behave, not your mind. Question: If divinity cannot help those who cannot help themselves, how do we help them, and hold compassion without becoming an ailment? Instructor: With these teachings we can learn to become vehicles of divinity, and through our example, we help others learn to become vehicles for their divinity. So if someone is suffering, and because we have the knowledge and training with these methods, we can learn to be really efficacious with these people. We have to have compassion for people, but also to know effective ways if helping others. Obviously, we have different careers, and I know people who have worked in different jobs where helping people is very difficult, because certain circumstances are disastrous and catastrophic. Compassion does not mean complacency. When you really love someone and you are really affected by it, we do not enable people to commit harm, meaning: we act in ways where we enable their consciousness to act virtuously, to speak to people’s soul. If we are just watching people suffer and not doing anything about it, obviously there is a problem, but if you want to know about how to help people best, it really depends on whatever the circumstances is, whatever the problem is. This is why we have to really put our mind aside, and we have to develop conscious clairvoyance, understanding others by understanding our own internal world first. But in many cases, the divinity of a person cannot help them because there is so much ego. There is so much conditioning there, but let me remind you of the story of Beelzebub, and how Samael Aun Weor helped convert him. You can read it in The Revolution of Beelzebub, where Samael Aun Weor communicated with the Innermost of this prince of demons in the internal worlds, and the inner Being of Beelzebub said that he is trying to help His soul because he is not listening to Him, therefore he needed help from Samael Aun Weor to help teach that soul. So we can become a vehicle in which our divinity speaks to another person, but in order for that, we need to get out of the way. Let divinity act through us. In that way, we do not enable people, and we do our best to diminish harmful circumstances. There is an add on to that question… Question: I am specifically referring to the mentally-ill, of the population which is growing wider by the day. Instructor: So yeah, that is a very challenging job. I know of one Gnostic instructor who was actually a mental health coach, a counsellor, who eventually made the decision to leave that type of job because it was very draining. It can be very challenging, but if it is a person’s mission to do that type of work, obviously there is more honor in that, especially if it is a very humiliating and difficult job. People who are mentally ill obviously have to be treated professionally, but also we have many methods that we use in our tradition that can help. Study the book Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology by Samael Aun Weor, but also you can study our ongoing course on Spiritual and Mental Health, where we are going to approach this issue more didactically, because there is a lot of people who are working in these fields that need help. There is a previous question about: how do we discriminate between judging another person and letting another know what you observe in them for their benefit? This question continues… Question: I ask because since we are generally 97% ego, we would not have great progress in discrimination. Sometimes a situation does not allow us to have comprehension in all 49 levels of the mind. Is this where we have to forgive and be patient with ourselves, acknowledging the sincere desire to help, but also acknowledging that egos are functioning in that as well? Instructor: Yes. Be patient with yourself. Do not beat yourself up. If you made a mistake, OK. Learn from it. Make the changes that you can. We have to be hard on the ego, but we also have to know when to really be calm in our mind and heart, to forgive ourselves for our errors. Question: How do we grow and keep faith in our Being, and to keep hope despite the darkness, especially when we are so blind, deaf, and ignorant? Having real hope and strength to keep going is hard when our Being has isolated us from others, and we cannot see the changes in us that we intuitively know that we need, and we are struggling. Doing deep ego work is exhausting, realizing how we lie to ourselves. Was it an attempt to help ourselves and look for love etc.? But of course the ego can never do this. It is the cause of our problems. When we have too little to no contact with others, not of our own choice, but keeping faith and help is hard, even with bread and wine: the Eucharist, the ritual of the Gnostic Unction is difficult. The work hurts, and realizing all of our mistakes, our foolishness and pain is difficult, etc. Instructor: My suggestion is that whenever you become very morbid, filled with pessimism, and doubt, and pain, shame or loneliness, or a feeling of incipience or inadequacy, we have to go into meditation, not because it is something that we are told to do, but from the necessity. We gave a lecture in the Sufi Principles of Meditation called Repentance. We talked a lot in that lecture precisely about that question, how when we feel pain, and when we see no light at the end of the tunnel, we have to recognize and remember certain principles in relation to repentance. Having remorse is one thing. It is necessary, but having shame and morbidity is something else. It is an egotistical quality. The truth is that when you discover egos in yourself, and that they are separate from you, the consciousness feels joy. There is great happiness in the cathedral of the soul of the one which repents, because the person who has never made a mistake, cannot celebrate as one who failed before and then changed. There is a great joy when we recognize our faults from the consciousness, not from an ego, not from the mind labelling it and calling it a horrible defect, and “I am a horrible person,” or “I am a failure as a Gnostic,” “or I am not good enough for these teachings etc.” That is all lies. Do not listen to your mind. Study the chapter in the Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology called Negative Thoughts. It is a powerful chapter that address everything that you talked about. So usually when we are alone by ourselves, the worst egos emerge. The only resolution that you will find, the only peace you will find is by remembering God. If you just focus on your defects, on your aggregates, on your own desires, and faults, and failings, then we become one-sided. We have to reflect on both sides of the issue. Reflect on your issues, reflecting on those things that you do well. Meditate on compassion. Meditate on love. Meditate on happiness, contentment, even despite adversity. Reflect on your consciousness, because if you just focus on your own negative states of mind, we become very imbalanced, and this is harmful. So, focus on both, in balance and harmony. Question: Where can we find details regarding the Vajroli Mudra energizing exercise? Instructor: You find that in Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation by Samael Aun Weor. Any more questions? I thank you all for attending, and I wish you a wonderful rest of your night! 
It is my pleasure to serve as your instructor for Defense Against the Dark Arts. While a serious topic, we begin with an amusing reference to Harry Potter to emphasize two things. While white and black magic have captivated audiences in our popular media, entertainment, and movies, the reality, despite its cute and intriguing representation, is a crude reality. But more importantly when studying this topic, we should always maintain our humor.
Too many people, when approaching the study of light and darkness, white and black magic, have been filled with intense fear, anxiety, paranoia, or even morbidity, anger, distress. Ironically, people who experience psychic attacks often become very enraged, filled with hate for their persecutors. What such people ignore fundamentally that these are weaknesses, which are exacerbated and utilized by negative forces. We can only be manipulated so long as we have the ego, so long as we have conditions of mind. Therefore, to overcome temptations and attacks, we must conquer our own vulnerabilities, our own psychology. The purpose of this lecture is to identify various types of psychological attacks, but more importantly, what the remedies are. But let us provide some contexts. Within the literature of Samael Aun Weor, who is the founder of the Gnostic Tradition in which we study, countless initiates like him make ample references to what are known as black magicians, black magic, demons, sorcerers, witches, warlocks, etc. In truth, there have always existed and always will exist two lodges, which are constantly in eternal struggle: the white and the black. The White Lodge is constituted by beings who develop and express divinity for the benefit of humanity. The term white does not refer to race, but to the conditions or purity of the psyche, whereas the Black Lodge is a reference specifically to the dullness, the heaviness of desire, conditions, impurity. What is the Black Lodge? In truth, it is both collective, but more importantly, it is individual to us. There exists Black Lodges where people dedicate themselves towards what is known as mystical fornication, which is the expulsion of the sexual energy for the egotistical acquisition of power. We are also a Black Lodge as individuals, as people. This is due to the fact that our own subconsciousness, our own unconsciousness, our own infraconsciousness affects us without even knowing. So, while we maybe interested in these studies, the truth is that we have the ego. We may not be aware that we carry these tendencies, but that does not mean that they are not there. If you are seriously working with the practices of this tradition, you will start to see how we all carry affliction within, the causes of suffering that many people like to blame others of possessing. As we strive for spiritual edification, ethical advancement, there are many obstacles that present themselves. These are always, in most cases, of a psychological nature. Anyone who studies and practices gnosis eventually faces hardship. It is inevitable because the neophyte aspires to perfect him- or herself. The law of karma provides ordeals. These are situations that are very difficult, which tests our sincerity, not out of punishment, or out of blind retribution, but to help us discover our defects. Without hardships, you cannot discover your faults, the secret causes of pain. In truth, many scriptures relate this process. They always describe how divinity always tests the disciple. Yet for most people, facing hardship becomes an excuse to leave the teachings, to run away, much like the character Gilderoy Lockhart in the Harry Potter series. People do not like challenges. They do not want to be afraid, to face uncertainty, to be in struggle. People see how their life is falling apart. Maybe they lose their job, or their spouse, family members, friends, and then they blame gnosis. They say, “This is ruining my life!” However, what people ignore, or what those people ignore, is that the teachings are working. Without challenges, we cannot grow. As Rumi stated: How can you be polished like a mirror if you resist every rub? ―Rumi
This is why we learn spiritual self-defense. It is inevitable that when we awaken positively, our consciousness, as we seek to understand ourselves, we begin to perceive a terrible dichotomy. It is a struggle between two opposing factors: our unconditioned, free consciousness, the Essence, and our own conditions of mind, desire, animal ego, pluralized selves, defects, vices, etc. The manner in which our own negativity, our defects, our egos, obstruct our development is known with the term resistance. I will read for you a quote from Samael Aun Weor in The Revolution of The Dialectic:
Resistance is the opposing force. Resistance is the secret weapon of the ego. Resistance is the psychic force of the ego that is opposed to us becoming conscious of all of our psychological defects. With resistance, the ego tends to leave on a tangent and postulates excuses to silence or hide its error. Due to resistance, dreams become difficult to interpret and the knowledge that one wants to have about oneself becomes clouded. Resistance acts upon a defense mechanism that tries to omit unpleasant psychological errors, so as not to have consciousness of them. In this way, one continues in psychological slavery. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic
Resistance occurs specifically when we practice chastity. As the former lecturer in this course mentioned, the moment you start to save your creative energy and use it for a spiritual purpose, you immediately face the opposing force, which is resistance, opposition. When we starve our animal impulses and desires, they fight. They do not want to die. They want to feed and to stay alive. The mind has many excuses: “We should fornicate, orgasm, masturbate, sleep around, commit adultery, watch pornography, and do every behavior that feeds and fortifies lust.” Even if we know that these behaviors―if we study these teachings for some time―are mistaken, even from a fundamental understanding and experience in our life, we still have the force of contention within our interior, which still pushes and fights to be expressed, to be nourished, to manifest. This is very painful to see in oneself.
In order to face this resistance, we learn different techniques, which is the purpose of this lecture. The ego knows it is going to die through this work. It is threatened. So it does everything it can to dissuade the sincere aspirant. But not only do we mislead ourselves and are filled with internal conflict, but there are entities and people within the physical and the internal worlds who dislike what we are doing. They do not like the audacity of the aspirants in this teaching, because it is a threat to their agenda. We call these entities―who have developed power in conditioned consciousness, the ego or hell realms―demons. They have power and abilities, but through desire. They have strengthened the cage of their mind. The fortify hatred, pride, vanity, lust, greed. They have abilities. They can travel in the astral plane. They can travel in the fourth dimension. They can manipulate elemental souls of nature. They can influence and coerce the minds of others. They have power and abilities, which for the lay person are very attractive, primarily because we are so hypnotized by our own desires. Likewise, we may assume and feel that we want those abilities, but usually it is for selfish reasons. This is something that is capitalized upon by sorcerers. It is very easy to fool us, because we are so asleep. So these entities see that we are working to eliminate desire and develop abilities within divinity. Obviously, that is a threat. It is the opposite of what they do, and so they push very hard to pull the candidates for initiation away from the path of chastity. So, how do we combat these forces? How do we face them when we are being influenced, manipulated, deceived, coerced? We use prayers. We use our consciousness most especially. We must comprehend and eliminate our own defects. But most importantly, we need to develop the art of happiness. As Samael Aun Weor states in Aztec Christic Magic: Do not worry; cultivate the habit of being happy. ―Samael Aun Weor, Aztec Christic Magic
This is advice from a man who, ever since he entered again upon the path of initiation, has been assaulted by legions of demons, black magicians. The founder of this tradition, Samael Aun Weor, his innermost divinity is the archangel of the planetary influence of Mars. He has been known in Greece by the name Aries, or the God of war against corruption and egotism. The bodhisattva or human soul of the Master Samael Aun Weor, the terrestrial person, was working to achieve self-realization again. In his lifetime, he received death threats, imprisonment and even assassination attempts, many times. He would give congresses and teaching publicly, and the Black Lodge would send many of their disciples and adepts to kill him. However, he always maintained his serenity, his happiness, his composure, and most importantly, his compassion. He knew that sorcery is overcome through conscious love, which is evidenced by his success in converting the demon Beelzebub into a master of the White Lodge. You can read The Revolution of Beelzebub for more details.
At these congresses, where black magicians were sent to murder him, Samael Aun Weor would foil their efforts. He would use the power of his compassion and his serenity. He would greet his enemies and his friends by covering his solar plexus with his left hand and extending his right hand in the form of the gnostic pentagram, saying: “Paz inverential!” or “Inverencial peace!” “Peace unto your innermost Being!” We know from these studies that this is a form of conjuration, to conjure, to invoke divine forces in order to elevate the souls of people around us, towards the divinity, towards the Being. He would always do this at the beginning of lectures and congresses, which practically was a means of disabling these entities, these people, and because the force emanating from his inner Being was so strong, like a battleship moving forward and immovable, these assassins were terrified. They refused to touch him.
We, on the other hand, like to think that we are so strong, are really very weak, because our ego constantly reacts towards criticism and persecution. But in reality, the Intimate Christ responds with love. As Samael Aun Weor states in the book Sexology, the Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology: The “I,” the myself, does not exist within Christ. Christ does not react against calumnies, slaps, mockeries, threats, whippings, etc. Christ overwhelms because of his terrific serenity. When crucified Christ said only, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The “I” does not exist inside the Christ; this is why he neither reacts nor judges anybody. Christ is a perfect clairvoyant who knows how to see with comprehension, without judging, without translating, because he does not have the “I.” Christ is the clairvoyant who sees, comprehends, and knows. Christ is the universal spirit of life incarnated inside Jesus of Nazareth. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
This is the fundamental skill, the basis of spiritual self-defense. If you have listened to the first lecture or have read the transcription, you see that the lecture mentioned how your state of mind is the most important key, the essence of protecting yourself. If you respond with consciousness, you can transform even the worst situations into wisdom.
White and Black Magic
Black magic is very common today. We like to believe that witches are an exception of few, who perform some very strange satanic rituals with a complex or obscure liturgy. While true in the internal planes, we experience attacks of black magic all the time. It is so pervasive and prevalent, that we no longer see it, because it is a part of our society and culture, which we are expected at all times to never question, to never confront. To do so is to be ostracized, to be condemned, like on social media or other outlets in which communication is very open.
People think that these studies are irrational, superstitious, insane, or even cultish. But let me give you some examples of what we are talking about. When someone directs their anger at you, when someone attempts to manipulate or confuse you, to control or confound you, presenting words that do not match with their intentions, he or she is performing black magic. Any action of a person that seeks to direct or inspire you towards egotistical behavior is an act of sorcery. By this definition we can see very clearly that all of us, without exception, are black magicians, sorcerers, demons. In synthesis, magic is merely the influence of the mind, the consciousness, the spirit, over matter. It has nothing to do with circus performances, or public stunts, like making people disappear in a cloud of smoke, or cutting a person in half on stage. Magic constitutes some of our most venerated traditions. It comes from the 5000-year-old Indo-European term magh, which means “priest.” This priesthood is about manifesting the power, an energy, of divinity, to help humanity elevate its consciousness. Specifically, white magic calls upon divinity to influence matter, energy and consciousness in harmony with divine law. It is pure. It is simple. It is not mixed with conditions or desires. Examples of such white magicians includes Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, all the angels, all the prophets, the masters, the buddhas, the gods. They have power to influence nature for the benefit of others, not for circus tricks, or to impress people, but because they are manifesting divinity in their actions, which is selfless love, kindness, philanthropy, altruism, patience, aspiration, faith. The Bible speaks abundantly about the innumerable supernatural powers of these masters over nature. You simply have to look at the New Testament of Jesus walking on water, or Moses utilizing white magic to free the Israelites. Black magic, on the other hand, is the opposite. It calls upon egotism, selfishness, desire, to intensify the conditions of matter, the conditions of energy and the conditions of perception. So, this is the question that everyone likes to ask: “Who are examples of black magicians?” The truth is that they are everywhere. They are within politics. They are within business. They dominate our movie industry. They work in advertisement. They run our governments, and our religions especially have been influenced by many of these people. We like to think that black magicians are some perverse figures in robes, capes, tunics, tattoos, piercings, and spiked hair. The reality is that black magicians look like everyday people. They often have very sweet and pleasing appearances. Many of them are very kind and have very amiable personalities. This is why it is very difficult for people to discern who is really on the black path. It has to do with the ignorance of knowing our own psychology and not being able to understand the psychology of others. This ignorance is of great advantage and utility for such people, because if you do not suspect the existence of these types of influences, then you will not protect yourself. So, how do you recognize that there are black magicians? As Jesus said: “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20). Where do they get their power? Where do they get their influence? Is it from within? Or is it from others? Black magicians always seek to gratify their desires by stealing energy from people, because they do not create with the sexual energy in themselves. They seek to gain power. They seek energy. They seek attention by manipulating, coercing, and deceiving people. In truth, a black magician is very weak, because they only have power and influence if we consent to give it to them, if we acquiesce our energy and will. A white magician respects the law, respects our will, and therefore does nothing to violate the harmony of nature. But the reality is that black magicians do not think their practice is harmful, and this is the scary thing. They are very ignorant. They say that they give people what they want. They say: “We respect the law because it is an exchange. It is equal.” The reality is that this is a false logic. Feeding one's desires is a violation, because when you condition yourself and others, you create a disharmony, an imbalance within the law. So, while listening to this, knowing the difference between white and black magic can be very tricky. Samael Aun Weor fortunately gave us a very simple clue, a very obvious one, but it is effective. If you want to know the key for discrimination, ask these individuals if they practice chastity: the conservation and sublimation of the sexual energy. Anyone who advises the orgasm is a demon. It does not matter how much they speak of morality, of ethics, of God, of love. If they are expelling their sexual energy, then they have no energy by which to express divinity. They are instead manifesting desire, and if you study the Laws of Manu, the oldest scripture on the planet, or one of the oldest scriptures, it states that desire is never eliminated by feeding it. It only grows stronger like butter added into a fire. So, when you feed desire, it gets stronger. It needs more force, more energy, more attention, and therefore it becomes insatiable. This is a demonic quality. These people or entities, because they expel their own sexual energies, they have to steal it from other people. They cannot create. So this is a futile attempt to balance what they lost. It is very simple. People become very confused. How can someone who speaks eloquently of divinity, of yoga, of Catholicism, of Judaism, of gnosticism, of religion and spirituality, be a black magician? In truth, the weapon they use to mislead people is the intellect. They justify behavior that produces suffering. There are many people who call themselves priests of divinity, and yet they are exercising their will upon others. They violate the freedom of their neighbor's mind. They pollute the minds, the hearts, and even the bodies of their followers. This is very common today. If you look at many religions of the world and see the behavior of the priesthood, it is very shameful. This is because all religions have really divorced themselves from this essential practice, not only to conserve the sexual energy, but to transform it, to use it, to direct it. Abstinence is not enough. We have to conserve that energy and use it with the consciousness, otherwise it builds up and it will feed our own repressed desires. It becomes a big problem, a monster, a demon. So we can act with unconditioned consciousness, which always produces harmony and cohesion. If we act with desire, the ego, the conditioned self, we influence others to act in the same way. Have you ever heard of mob mentality? Rioting? Lynching? Did you hear what happened recently in Washington DC? Crowds impelled by violence. Black magic works upon the collective mind. It uses the noblest ideas to justify hell. Some people hear the term conjuration and they think that “So-and-so, a witch, was conjuring me,” as an example, “so I conjured her back.” Some people have a misconception that this has to do with when a black magician uses very elaborate demonic prayers to hypnotize or influence us. As white magicians, we use prayers to protect ourselves in response. This is true especially in the internal worlds. Physically, it can be a little different. Conjurations have more meaning than a set of words, a sequence of mantras, sacred sounds, or prayers. To conjure comes from the Latin conjurare, “to swear together or bind by oath.” This means simply to influence another to resonate at a particular level of being, whether positive or negative, unconditioned or conditioned, superior or inferior. With this definition, I hope that it is much clearer because there are a lot of misconceptions about what black magic is and what the struggle is in the moment. Struggles between white and black magic occur when a person, intentionally or not, attempts to influence your conditions of mind to get you to act a certain way, to react with pride, with anger, with fear, laziness, resentment, and most especially without you even knowing it, especially the defect of lust. That is the one defect that is capitalized and utilized by our media, television shows, and by the Black Lodge.
Pornography is a huge business which had misled millions of people. It is actually the primary weapon that the Black Lodge has used since the inception of the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. Samael Aun Weor was told internally that after writing The Perfect Matrimony the Black Lodge was going to retaliate, so he waited many years, looking at the news and waiting for someone to talk against him. But in truth, the way that the Black Lodge is fighting against chastity is through that industry, pornography.
So, we have to eliminate these temptations from our daily life, if you really want to be serious, to change, because lust is a cause of suffering. It does not bring harmony and peace with oneself. So, with conjurations especially, there does not to be some sophisticated exchange, or a battle with mystical mantras and words, which is often caricatured in modern media and films like if you’ve seen the Harry Potter series, like Dumbledore versus Voldemort―something fantastic. There is that reality in the internal planes. But more practically for us, this has to do instead with, whether or not we respond to egotistical impressions with cognizance, intelligence, and wisdom. “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” says the Bible (Matthew 10:16). Conjurations do not need to be a specific formula, although the best protection that we do have is the Conjuration of Four, the Conjuration of the Seven, the Invocation of Solomon, and Fons Alpha. In order for these conjurations and prayers to work, we have to be awake. We should memorize these prayers, these formulas, because they have a lot of power. They are an emergency distress call to divinity. They grant you access, like a smart phone, to an unlimited access of all sorts of wisdom, of protection, of knowledge. They have a lot of utility. But for any of them to work, you have to be alert and trained in their use. Anyone can pick up a knife, a sword, or a gun. But the question is, are you trained to use them effectively in combat? The same is true with conjurations and prayers. Just because you repeat these prayers, does not mean they will work. In truth, their success lies exclusively in the quality, the precision, the clarity of their application. Specifically, chastity is the power of prayer. If you have no sexual energy cultivated, you simply cannot empower your consciousness. It is like trying to drive a car without fuel. Or you are driving a vehicle and you are asleep at the wheel, and you are not attentive in what you are doing. You simply cannot do it without getting hurt. In truth, your consciousness is the best weapon against any negative influence. In synthesis, conjurations occur when two or more entities encounter each other. They form a type of matrix, a combination or influence of psychological atmospheres, emotional atmospheres, mind, mental influences, whereby a choice is made, whether to follow the conditioned psyche, or unconditioned perception. It is a pact that is made between two people. A psychic battle then, or struggle occurs, when these two different entities meet, one who seeks to manifest the unconditioned consciousness while the other seeks to evoke the conditioned consciousness. So they seek to influence the other person to swear an oath, to make the other person resonate at a particular level of being. Ever been in an argument? What is it like when you assert your will, your beliefs, on someone else? Or what is it like to be attacked in a debate, even if but verbally? You ever had a verbal struggle with someone? I know we like to think that we live in a psychological bubble where we can think and feel whatever we want, seemingly without consequences, because no one else can know our thoughts and desires. This is an illusion, and it serves the agenda of many witches and sorcerers, because their crimes cannot be registered according to materialistic skepticism and the penal code. How can the law condemn something it does not accept, whose existence it rejects? So, based on material criteria, the law ignores how a vast majority of crimes are committed beneath the radar, because there are psychological and energetic methods to which a person can be influenced, extorted, manipulated, harmed. Judges, especially in western countries, are very skeptical, and black magicians know it, so they use their ignorance to advantage. If you do not believe me that we are interconnected on a psychological level, I will pose you some questions. Have you ever felt someone looking at you, even if your physical eyes have not seen them? If you are a woman, have you ever felt the lustful stares of men, without physically seeing them? Or when someone is angry at you, but says nothing? You know their intentions, even if there is no apparent evidence. These are psychological senses, which for most people in us tend to be very blunted. They are dull and atrophied. The ability to sense another person’s mental and emotional psychology is known as telepathy, which for most of us is unconscious. It tends to be mechanical. It can happen spontaneously, sometimes against our voluntary will. It is not conscious or intentional, mastered, developed. We tend to go on life on auto pilot. We sense people’s feelings and know their instincts, maybe their desires, but we do not have much clarity or depth. We do not really comprehend other people because we barely even understand our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own impulses, because our psychology is muddled. We do not really perceive external danger when there is, when it is prevalent. However, when you practice self-observation and self-remembrance, you begin to notice the ways in which people, consciously or not, intentionally or not, exert influence upon our own psychological states, for good or for ill. This is why martial arts like Aikido―it is a Japanese form of self-defense―the best technique is to be relaxed and to be aware. If you are tense, if you are agitated, if you are afraid, you can make a mistake. Likewise, you can get injured if you are not aware of your surroundings, if you are not paying attention to yourself, if you are not conscious of the technique, and if you are not aware of your opponent. Let us give some examples in how this relates to our psychology. Perhaps as a man, a beautiful woman approaches you, gives you a compliment. If you are not vigilant, you may not be aware of how your own lust, your own pride, your own vanity emerges in reaction to this impression. It is only when your self-observation is unfiltered that you are going to perceive an interchange of egotistical desires, an exchange of forces, the influence of attention, an influence of energy. However, self-awareness is really not definitive. You can be completely aware of committing a murder. A lot of people like to deify awareness as if it is a new thing, as if it is the end-all-be-all of spirituality. In reality, you can do many mistakes with awareness, commit them with profound attention and concentration. Obviously, this does not make it right. The problem with many new age sophisms is that they think that simply being mindful, being aware of your surroundings and yourself, that you are advancing. It is not true. It is not enough. Be aware. Be attentive. Be vigilant. But more importantly, be very deliberate in how you respond to life. You need superior action in these circumstances, so that we do not complicate our karma and create problems. This is why Samael Aun Weor states in Fundamentals of Gnostic Education: Wherever we direct attention, we expend creative energy. ―Samael Aun Weor, Fundamentals of Gnostic Education
So the question is, where is our attention moving? Where is our energy flowing? A lot of people become fascinated with energy. They identify with it. They glorify it, not understanding that it is merely the cosmic currency, the energy, the vital values, that can be used for consciousness or ego. Having a lot of fuel in your car does not make your car better. It simply gives it the capacity to drive. How you drive is what matters. So, are we using our energy for our consciousness, to stay on the road, to obey the rules of the road? Or are we drunk with desire, and therefore we get someone killed and get ourselves hurt? This is our spiritual situation, because when we act upon our own defects, we create a lot of suffering for ourselves and for others. People who intentionally commit black magic, or even unconsciously do so, create a lot of suffering. So we have to be mindful of this.
In the case of the example I gave you, the man who receives the compliment will most commonly saturate and feed his desires, will not question his lust, will not discriminate or analyze it, but simply get indulge in it, mechanically, because it feels good. People give in to desire because it is strong in us, but more importantly it is difficult to separate. Sensations are very convincing for people. But we have to get beyond sensations, whether physically or psychologically. Through self-observation and remembrance of divinity, we recognize the qualities of pure consciousness from the desires of lust, animal satisfaction. If you are really observant, you will see a transaction like a bank exchange. You see multiple egos that want to react to the situation. They all want to satisfy their desires, to expend creative energy, to feed lust. So, this is conditioned perception, and it goes contrary to unconditioned perception, which is the Essence. When you identify with desire, when you feed it, when you go along with it, you give it strength and energy. You condition yourself, and this is the problem. This is what must change if you really want to protect yourself and really begin learning how to transform your situation. We have to make a choice. I know a lot of people like to think that we do not have agency. The truth is that while we have a lot of conditions of mind, we still have the opportunity. We have 3% free consciousness that can work. 97% of it is conditioned, according to Samael Aun Weor. If you give power and space to your free consciousness to act without desire, then there is an internal transformation. A transformation of impressions occurs. So, instead of acting with vanity and lust, the man in that example would maintain his chastity, with purifying the energies, not reacting out of desire, but acting with purity and kindness, equanimity and dispassion. In fact, by acting in this way, by restraining the mind, we conserve and liberate energy. We create a reservoir for our consciousness. So, in most cases for most of us, this is very difficult to do. We tend to ignore our heart, our intuition, our conscience that knows right from wrong, and this is what we have to follow in all circumstances. If you sense a situation is wrong, is problematic, you should probably really reflect on that and act according to your intuition. The intellect will debate, argue, theorize, label, and chatter in accordance with associative thinking, not really looking or having an answer. Do not use the intellect. Rely on your heart, about how you must behave in life, on how you must work, how you must change, how you must behave. Our Being can influence our experiences for the benefit of everyone. But also our ego can assert its cravings and desires upon others to get what it wants. This usually happens when we do not listen to our conscience. This always occurs at the cost and expense of others’ wellbeing. Therefore, demons attempt to control others for the fulfillment of desires. That is basically it. They think that their desires are helping people, but they are not. They seek to control through conditioned perceptions the will of others. Here is a very clear demarcation between white and black magic. It is very subtle, but it is very beautiful. White magic is persuasion. We offer solutions, valuable options to problems, while respecting the will and freedom of other people. A black magician uses coercion. They always seek to gratify their desires, no matter what the cost. They violate the will of others and do not respect other people’s will. So examine your mind. How do you behave in certain situations? Do you act with altruism? Do you give to others without wanting for yourself? Are you patient when you are humiliated? When people deride you? Are you humble when you did not get that job promotion, when your neighbor did? Do you feel compassion for the person who crucifies you? Are you being selfless? Or do you try to get what you want in any way you can, even if in the mind? Even if under the banner of friendship, of neutrality, and even friendly advice? Selfishness, desire and ego have very distinct qualities. The “me,” “myself,” or “I” is characterized by a density, a heaviness. It is a state of suffering. It is hell. The ego is hell. The more selfless your actions, the more unconditioned and pure they are, the more compassionate, the more loving and philanthropic, the more kind, the lighter your states. You experience more freedom, more happiness, more contentment. You feel inspired when others succeed in life. You do not wish for their downfall, even in your mind and even if you tell yourself when you do not. You can access greater serenity, peace and equanimity, even if the world is falling apart around you, as we see today. So you cannot learn to defend yourself spiritually from negative forces when your level of being does not change. If you are unaware of how your own defects, your own egos, your own desires produce suffering for yourself and others, then there is no basis by which you can defend yourself, because you are going to be an aggressor. Unfortunately, we are going to be black magicians in this case, a demon, not a defendant. So demons will not bother you when you are acting on your desires, and especially when you are not practicing chastity. Such entities only try to obstruct you when you are making fundamental changes in your psychology, in your behavior. If you are not changing your level of being, or if you are not practicing chastity, then they are going to see you as one of them. So you are a perpetrator, not a victim in their eyes. 
Attacks During Dreams
Let us talk about some particular ways that black magicians attack us in the gnostic path, and also the remedies. In most cases, when people are assaulted psychically, it is in the internal worlds. So physically you go to sleep, your consciousness leaves the body and enters the world of dreams, known as the fifth dimension or הוד Hod within the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life. It is the astral plane, or better said, the lunar astral plane, because there is a superior astral plane and an inferior astral plane.
I know we like to think that we are spiritual, but in reality, because of our ego, we gravitate towards those places in nature that resonate with our level of being. So, there is a superior astral world for those angels, and buddhas and gods, which we can access when we free our consciousness, when we eliminate the ego. Those are very elevated and pure states. But for most of us, we tend to enter what is known as Limbo. Limbo is the inferior astral world, which is where we tend to gravitate at night. It is the first sphere of hell within Dante's Divine Comedy. It is the lunar sphere within the inverted Tree of Life, the Kabbalistic diagram. Because we are filled with desire, we tend to go toward these inferior levels of nature, because of our conditioning, and because of this, as we are beginning to awake our consciousness, we start to perceive ourselves in these realms. We wake up where we are at. We start where we are at. We do not begin in heaven, because that is the goal. Instead, we have to learn to walk on our two feet in our current situation, our current psychology. So a lot of attacks occur at night when the body is asleep and when your soul, or consciousness is within the internal worlds. These are mostly achieved through erotic means. There are Black Lodges who exists in the astral world where they have tenebrous members that are sent to make gnostic students fall sexually. This is the cause of many wet dreams of disciples. You are starting to practice transmutation, conservation of the sexual energy, you learn the value of the sexual energy and seek to work with it. But these entities know that if you lose your sexual force, you become weak, and therefore that is their primary target by which they seek to pull people, to mislead them or to discourage them. They know that when a student loses the sexual energy, they become disempowered, and when they have the kundalini risen to a degree, in accordance with alchemical work, that serpentine fire descends down the spine in accordance with the magnitude of the fault. 
The Mantra Belilin
So there are many remedies that we use to protect ourselves in dreams and even before we go to bed at night. The first one we will talk about in defending your home, whether before you go to sleep or when you are in the astral plane, is the mantric prayer Belilin. We have an image of an angel, representative of Aroch, who Samael Aun Weor states was the master who delivered this conjuration and prayer. Angel Aroch is an angel of power, and בלילין Belilin is a beautiful word which has Hebrew and even Aramaic roots. Bel refers to the light of divinity. Belilin invokes the forces of the region of Barbelo, within the gnostic esoteric cosmology.
We know from esotericism that the angels create from the power of the verb. Therefore, when we speak with intentionality and with focus on sacred sounds, we create a conduit or channel by which divinity can act within us, in accordance with the level of our psychological purity, or sexual purity. We remember that the angels sing at the creation of every cosmos. They did so with profound love and emotion, remembrance of the truth, empowered by the force of chastity and the Holy Spirit. So likewise, when we perform these prayers, these sacred sounds, this song of Belilin which you have to sing, you have to do it with superior emotion, with longing, with concentration, with faith, with an understanding of how this mantra works. It is sung. It is a song, and like with the other conjurations, I will recite them for you, for your understanding. You sing it like this: Belilin... Belilin... Belilin...
If you are awake in the astral plane and pronounce these mantras―you can do them three times, in sequence―you will see a spiritual wind appear, that will, like a hurricane, sweep away all negativity and negative forces from you. It is the force from the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the Limitless Light above the Tree of Life. So in synthesis, we can pronounce these prayers before we sleep, especially when we prepare for bed, or even before alchemy.
So sexual magic trains our body, heart, and mind never to fornicate, and therefore, if we are diligent with using these prayers, nocturnal pollutions will cease. Belilin can protect oneself from these negative, materialistic forces. The amphora has to do with our soul, which receives salvation, or the positive spiritual influence of the solar energy, the “Bel” from Barbelo, Bar, the fire, and Bel, the light of Christ. 
The Conjuration of Jupiter
There is another very powerful prayer we use, a conjuration, known as the conjuration of Jupiter. Jupiter is the father of the gods, יהוה in Hebrew, Christ, the solar power that wields the power of the Holy Spirit, the lightning or vajra of the great heroes, the divine energy, which can really reject any inferior influence.
Jupiter reminds us of IO-Pater, the stone of IO. IO is the Divine Mother, and Patar, Pater, the Father, is the masculine, projective force. This lightning energy is the ray of divinity. It is the ray of justice, according to Samael Aun Weor. It is the power used by Zeus and Indra to punish and reject demons. 
So, when you perform this prayer, you cover your solar plexus with your left hand, and you extend your right hand in the form of the pentagram, which means your pinky and ring finger close to your palm, the middle finger, index finger and thumb extended. So you see often the picture of Jesus who raises his hand in the form of the gnostic pentagram, which is the symbol of the human being in the image of God perfected. You say:
In the Name of Jupiter, Father of all the Gods, I conjure thee! Te Vigos Coslim! ―Conjuration of Jupiter
These words Te Vigos Coslim constitute an internal language, a superior language of divinity, and when you concentrate your will, your consciousness, your attention in this prayer, you are sending out a ray of light or energy from your fingertips. So you extend your hand that is the form of a pentagram towards an entity which is trying to harm you, or whom you question.
I remember once, many years ago in the astral plane, I was being pursued by a black magician who was trying to disguise herself as a sibling or family member of mine. I used this prayer, saying this conjuration, and I remember a beam of light shooting out from my fingertips and it struck her, immediately transforming her appearance and unveiling her true identity, because, when you work with the power of Jupiter, Zeus, יהוה Iod-Havah, you are conjuring, or making this entity resonate with superior forces, so that their identity is revealed. But also, this conjuration can disable and disarm the energy of a black magician. I used it once even on a witch who was trying to tempt me, and many other times you can disable these entities from trying to retaliate and to pursue you further. So it is like being hit with a stun gun almost. It really disorients the entities you trying to protect yourself from. 
The Magic Circle
We also have the magic circle. Before you go to sleep at night, before you meditate or perform any ritual, such as alchemy, you can concentrate on your heart, invoke your Divine Father and your Divine Mother, ask your Being to command your Elemental Advocate, who is a part of your Being, responsible for performing elemental magic or what we are going to rely on today as well. This figure is like an angel with a sword of fire. You imagine this entity, or your inner Being, tracing a circle of fire around you home. You can do it clockwise if you want. There is really no specific direction you can do it, but I always do mine left to right, circling around either my bedroom or my home. So, you trace this circle with your imagination and your willpower, pronouncing the mantras:
העליון מעליון יהוה
This mantra invokes the light of Helios, the cosmic Christ, and Tetragrammaton, to descend in order to trace an energetic field, a barrier, that will not allow for any negative entity to enter your space. So this is particularly good if you want to go deep in your practice and you feel that you are being attacked. More importantly, if you live in an―really―anywhere nowadays, you lock your door at night when you go to sleep, especially in the city. For those of you who live in the country areas where it is safer, you may not lock your doors, but internally, we should lock our home every day, every night, before we go to sleep.
So you should trace this circle with your imagination and willpower, so that no entity can trespass. If you wake in the astral plane, you can see, especially when you trace this circle with a lot of faith, a circle of light, or fire encompassing the area that you have protected. Any entity that will try to get in, will not be able to unless you allow it. The magic circle will break if you physically walk outside the area that you traced, so be mindful that, if you, for example, trace a circle around your bedroom and physically you get up to use the restroom, you break the circle if you leave the area. It is good to remember to retrace it when you go back. Personally I like to trace the magic circle around my entire home, so that when I need to move around to any room or area, I do not break the circle―some practical suggestions. 
The Elemental of the Aloe
You can also work with the aloe plant. Elemental magic is tremendously powerful, because the souls of nature, the souls of plants, are still in Eden. Now, we study what is known as the cosmic transmigration of souls, in which consciousness develops from a very virginal state within the mineral kingdom, graduates through many of millions of years of evolution, in order to enter the plant kingdom. After many millions of years of experience in different plant bodies, the souls of those beings enter into the animal kingdom, graduating into different degrees of hierarchies of existence, in accordance with the complexity and development of elemental perception. Until finally, after many millions of years of existing in animal bodies, the soul graduates to become a humanoid, which is us.
Now, I know a lot of new-age groups like to work with stones, the souls of minerals. But unfortunately, the great majority of those exercises are black magic. Primarily because, if you read the writings of Samael Aun Weor, he says explicitly how the hell realms are the infernal or inferior mineral kingdom. So when souls enter into the black path, when they develop powers in ego, they descend into the internal planes into greater stages of density and suffering, within the inner layers of the earth. This is symbolized within The Divine Comedy of Dante. Minerals, mineral elemental souls, are not really developed. They do not really have as much force or hierarchy in comparison with plants. This is why we emphasize plant magic so much within our studies. When you click on this link for the Aloe plant, you can read a chapter from Igneous Rose, which is a powerful book that teaches how to work with the elementals of nature, the souls of plants, of creation. So the plant of the Aloe is related with reincarnation, according to Samael Aun Weor. If you want to remember your past lives, you can meditate on the soul of this plant. Concentrate and visualize it in your imagination and then fall asleep asking to converse with the elemental of this plant, the soul, so that you can remember your past existences, your past states. Now, specifically for protection, the Aloe is very effective. You can hang a piece of silver or crucifix. Samael mentions you can hang the pot or hang this plant on a wall. It has tremendous solar properties. The beauty of the Aloe plant is that it is very resilient. It can often survive and subsist in homes in which is not much light, because it absorbs the solar light within the atmosphere and within the internal planes as well. So, he also states that the aloe plant is very powerful for rejecting negative influences. You can use the Aloe for many rituals. For healing, for protection, for remembrance of past lives. It is really a very eclectic plant, and we should always have an Aloe in our home, because it purifies our environment, attracts good luck and solar force, the forces of Barbelo, the light. There is a prayer we use when we concentrate on the plant, asking our Elemental Advocate, our inner Being, to command the soul of the plant to work for us. These prayers have to be done daily, consistently. The prayer goes like this: Cross, thou art holy and divine. Sorcerers and witches withdraw from this home. Such persons who intend to arrive here, let it be known that I am with God.
Remember that the Elemental Advocate is a part of our innermost Being, who developed and acquired knowledge when we were evolving through the elemental kingdoms, especially through the plant kingdom. Our inner Being, our Elemental Advocate, or part of our divinity, has a very profound knowledge of how the souls of nature work. Plants are basically like a conduit that can channel certain forces. They have a certain purpose and medicinal purpose, or application. For our purposes, we use for what is known as elementotherapy. We command the souls of these elemental forces in accordance with the will of divinity and in harmony with karma, with the divine law. We do not command the Aloe plant or other souls of nature with selfishness, but in accordance with the balance of divinity.
Attacks During the Vigil State
So there are other ways in which we can be attacked. Many times in the vigil state, or the so-called vigil state, when we are physically in our bodies, we can often be tempted by the opposite sex, sent by the Black Lodge in order to pull us from the path. Now, like in this image, if we have a clouded mind, if we are not paying attention to our own psychology, if we are not aware of our own intrinsic egotistical urges, how they feed, how they manifest, how they interact with the world, we will not recognize the danger and we can fall into lust.
We can use the mantric song Belilin, in order to establish an atmosphere of purity, devotion, chastity, serenity, and faith, to rely on our Being. So if you want to clear your mind of obscurities and negative influences, you can use the mantra Belilin, and the prayer, like a whirlwind, it will sweep up the dust of our psychological and even physical environment―better said―the energies in our home. 
Works of Black Magic
There are other ways in which black magicians can influence us. Very famously within the Caribbean there are examples of voodoo, such as with dolls, in which adepts of the Black Lodge utilize dolls and pins, needles to inflict pain on their victims. They concentrate and imagine with their ego, their desires, and concentrate their hatred towards these people and utilize the pins in order to pass psychic harm upon them.
There are also other ways in which we can be influenced, negatively. There are often, according to Samael Aun Weor, inexplainable black spots which can appear on one’s skin. “Maculae,” he calls them, in which we experience types of sicknesses that we can not explain, even with the best medical treatments. There are also other substances that are used, such as funerary substances according to the master, which are transmitted consciously or unconsciously. This is astral and etheric larvae, which people can pick up from graveyards, or cemeteries. We do not recommend visiting these places, unless you really have to, because they are environments that are filled with pestilences on a psychic level. They are Black Lodges essentially, because black magicians use these polluted and decaying substances within the internal worlds in order to direct them at their victims. So, black magicians can utilize them in order to make us sick, to infect us. 
Organic Illnesses
There are many sicknesses that start in the internal worlds and then they manifest physically. Since our astral and mental vehicles, our vital body, possesses its own energy, its own materiality, its own ultra-physiology, with organs and health, etc. There are many unexplainable sicknesses that occur for people, such as delirium or psychosis, even madness, paranoia. Many students write to us on our website, about having mental illnesses when they start this teaching, and they face many types of perceptions that are very terrifying for them, which traditional medicine would denominate as delusions. Of course there is a certain subjective reality to these perceptions. They are real in the sense that they exist, and that they have a type of experiential dimension, but they are particular and subjective to the conditions of the person’s psyche [see Spiritual and Mental Health to learn how to complement professional treatment with spiritual techniques].
So, many people can get sick. They can become mentally ill, diseased. They have certain obsessions or problems that they cannot resolve. They are afflicted mentally, and even going to the best doctors they cannot be healed. They cannot explain why they are suffering so much. There is a story of one instructor from Glorian who mentioned in his lecture on Compassion and Lust, the first in that series, how he became very sick and investigating internally after the doctors could not help him. After about a week he had the experience of a student of his, or a student he knew, who in the internal worlds was a black magician, one of his egos. He [the student] was unconsciously practicing black magic and therefore was making him [the instructor] sick. So he confronted the issue with a lot of compassion and understanding and eventually resulted, became healed again. 
Exorcisms and Healing
So, there are other ways in which we can heal these types of illnesses if we do not necessarily have enough consciousness to investigate internally. There are different methods that we can use, specifically exorcisms and healing methods. Now the definition of exorcisms is, “to call up or to conjure spirits, or to claim an isolated spirit.” We need to take control of negative influences and also to bring forward positive influences.
Exorcisms are commonly utilized to purify our environment. Our psychology is often filled or made up by four elements: earth (the physical body), air (the mind), fire (the emotions), and water (our creative sexual energy). It is good to utilize exorcisms for the elements in order to heal ourselves, to purify the elements we take in so that we have a better atmosphere in which to work. There are four exorcisms that we will cover in a future lecture, for the earth, air, fire and water. You can access them at the end of this lecture in our resources [see also The Secret Doctrine of Anahuac: “The Elementals”]. Now specifically, it is important that when you recite these exorcisms, we do them in Latin, not English, because Latin is the language that is most in tune with the forces of nature―any of its derivatives, according to the Gnostic Prayer Book. 
Exorcism of Salt
So specifically, one exorcism that we use is for salt when we want to perform healing. So when you have an illness that you want to treat, there is a powerful prayer and method that you can use, that does not have side effects, unlike many other treatments today. Now, if a person is suffering under the works of black magic, like voodoo dolls, funerary substances, organic illnesses, you can work with the exorcism of salt and perform this particular ritual that I am going to explain.
It is important to remember that salt is inherent to life. Salt alchemically represents the brute semen or the entity of sperm and ovum. As Jesus stated in the book of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 13: Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” ―Matthew 5:13
Now, what is this salt of the earth that if it is has lost its savor, it will no longer be good for anything? It has to do with our sexual energy. Now, it is important that we purify our body, our mind, our heart. That is why we practice transmutation. But if you work with the elements of the salt, through a particular exorcism, you can bless salt and use it to purify your home and environment, but also to invoke healing.
So, particularly for the ritual I am going to explain, you will need a table, with a glass of pure water, either for yourself or for any sick patient you want to heal. So, this is where the Master of Medicine will place healing substance within the internal worlds, during and after the ritual you are going to perform. A white cloth should decorate the altar where the water is placed. It is important to have a crucifix and a white candle as well. So, the theurgist or the magician, the exorcist or healer can sit, but personally I like to stand up when performing this, with the prayers and invocations, mostly because it is more assertive, gives more power. Other concerned people you may be related to or whomever you are trying to heal can be present, so long as they possess some level of faith and are not going to mentally effect the patient. You are going to place a metal skillet or heavy pan with rubbing alcohol on the floor. You want to put this away from other objects to maintain safety, because you are going to light a fire. You will need to exorcise salt. It does not matter what kind―really―the purer, the better, obviously, and then you are going to place it within the alcohol. Now, let me recite for you this exorcism of salt. Place your left hand over your solar plexus, your right hand in the form of the pentagram over the salt and perform the Latin prayer: In isto sale sit sapientia, et ab omni corruptione servet mentes nostras et corpora nostra, per Chokmahel et in virtute Ruach-Chokmahel, recedant ab isto fantasmata hylae ut sit sal coelestis, sal terrae et terris salis, ut nutrietur bos triturans et addat spei nostrae cornua tauri volantis. Amen. ―Exorcism of Salt
Basically in Latin, translated, it has to do with purifying the wisdom, the sapience of the salt, so that it is not corrupted, to not serve merely our corporal or bodily needs, but through the spirit, if Chokmah, the Christ, the virtue in spirit of Ruach Chokmael, so that it can purify this element, for the benefit of our body, heart and mind.
Place the salt in the alcohol, and when you are ready, light a match. Drop it into the pan, and then you are going to stand back as the fire ignites and lights up into the air. Now, obviously you want to be careful with how much alcohol you put in it. You do not want to put too much, but enough so that with time and practice you will be able to better gauge it for being able to sustain the fire long enough, so that you can finish the conjurations and prayers that we are going to relate to you now. Basically the power of the salt, that has been blessed, and the fire from the alcohol opens up a conduit. It opens up the atmosphere in the astral plane, so that the Master of Medicine can descend within our home, the masters of healing, and then they can help the sick patient. Now, if you have multiple people that you are trying to heal with this ritual, you want to have a cup for each person. Designate via more than one person you are trying to work with, you should have a cup designated for each individual with clear water, pure water. You should basically have each people concentrate on their glass and on their imagination, to see the Master of Medicine descend from Barbelo, down to deposit the particular healing within the water. Invocation of Solomon
When you are performing this ritual, when the fire is ignited, immediately you have to recite the Invocation of Solomon. So imagine the clouds parting. Personally when I worked with this ritual or even having awakened in the astral plane, I have been able to see that certain prayers like this, you will see in the astral atmosphere the clouds part and the angels, and the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the Limitless Light, looking down. So this is a very practical and very real thing. Imagine these entities healing the patient, healing yourself. Recite the following prayers from the Invocation of Solomon:
Powers of the kingdom, be ye under my left foot and in my right hand!
We study the link in this PDF, you will see the video recited by another instructor, as well as graphic representations of which verse is related to which sephirah on the Tree of Life. Each of the spheres or sephiroth represent different qualities of being, or different classes of angels. So if you work with the Invocation of Solomon, you are calling upon the angels of those different dimensions, of those spheres, to descend down, within the entirety of the Tree of Life. So I recommend you study the link to this prayer. We are going to give entire lecture on this prayer itself, but I want to sum it up for you in synthesis.
Prayer to the Solar Logos
Also, when you finish the Invocation of Solomon, when you are performing the ritual with salt and alcohol, you can perform a prayer to the Solar Logos for healing. This Prayer to the Gnostic Church is also very powerful for when you are doing the runes, as you can see in this image of a woman in the form of the Rune Man, with arms upraised receiving the effluvia or solar energy of divinity. This prayer is also very powerful for healing. I recommend you use it when you work with this ritual. It is recited like this:
Oh Thou, Solar Logos, igneous emanation, substance and consciousness of Christ, powerful life whereby everything advances, come unto me and penetrate me, enlighten me, bathe me, go through me and awaken within my Being all of those ineffable substances that are as much a part of Thee as a part of me.
The Solar Logos is Christ, and that igneous fire, or emanation, that substance and consciousness will descend down in order to enter the water of the glasses which you are asking for medicine, for the Masters of Healing.
Also, for those who are sick and attacked by larvae, you can also, as a medic, or priest, as a Gnostic doctor, perform magnetic passes over a patient's aura. Remember that our psychological atmosphere resonates with our aura, our energy, our expression, and that we often carry within our psychological and psychic environment different elemental substances which tend to be very negative, because our mind attracts these forces. So, if you purify your home with these conjurations and prayers, you can also cleanse your aura by imagining, as you pass your hands over the aura of yourself or a person, that you are grabbing these negative forces, and then you take them and throw them into a lit brazier. You have to have some kind of fire going, like some hot coals or a hibachi grill even, in which you imagine taking these negative auric substances and then throw them into the fire, because the fire, physically, is the vehicle of Christ. It purifies our environment, our home. The Conjuration of the Seven
In order to finish with the Invocation of Solomon as well as the prayer for the salt and alcohol, you can recite the Conjuration of the Seven as well. So, utilize the Invocation of Solomon, Prayer for the Solar Logos, and Conjuration of the Seven when you want to perform the ritual for the salt and alcohol. Now, when we work with the Conjuration of the Seven, this is especially useful for eliminating toxic substances and also purifying our environment. This prayer invokes the seven mighty archangels, who govern the seven spiritual planetary rays: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, otherwise known as Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Michael, Samael, as well as Zachariel, and Oriphiel. So, let me recite this for you, in synthesis:
In the name of Michael, may Jehovah command thee and drive thee hence, Chavajoth!
Recite this conjuration when you are cleaning your aura as well. It helps to reject the seven primary archdemons of the Black Lodge, because they are entities that are so big and malignant and powerful, that the Conjuration of the Four is not useful for that, which I elaborate a little bit later on here. The Conjuration of the Seven is especially necessary when defending yourself, especially when the entity is beyond your capacity. I personally have had many unfortunate encounters with one of these archdemons mentioned in the Conjuration of the Seven. In one instance, this entity appeared much in the form and size of like a Balrog from The Lord of the Rings―huge horns, a big demon. So, there is some relevance to these cultural icons that we find in fantasy films. Pretty interesting and disturbing actually.
The Magic of the Roses
Let us continue with some more prayers. It is important to utilize practices that heal our heart. The elementals of the rose are exceptional for spiritual and emotional healing, to heal psychological and emotional traumas. This prayer invokes a master by the name of Llanos. Samael Aun Weor mentions that we should pray to this master related to the spiritual influence of the planet Venus. You pronounce his name:
Llanos... Llanos... Llanos...
These prayers and mantras invoke this master of the ray of Venus in order to help heal our heart. Specifically with these prayers and practice, you place three glasses of pure water on a white table, or a clothed altar. Place a rose in each glass. Trim each so that the flower blossoms upon the water line. You bless and you consume each glass before drinking. Before breakfast you drink the glass facing east, before lunch the glass facing north, before dinner the glass facing west. So this follows, this sequence, the trajectory of the sun, the Solar Logos, which astrologically relates with Venus within the kabbalistic sphere of Tiphereth.
When you do this, you have to pray for emotional healing, whatever pain you are feeling. It is important that, when you are performing the magic of the roses, that you really ask for help. Now often times we protect ourselves against negative influences, we have to make sure the quality of our heart is pure as well. So, the magic of the roses is especially great for fortifying superior conscious, superlative emotions, compassion, conscious love. 
Trapping Witches
There is another technique we can use. We can trap witches and stop them from harming us within the physical and also the internal planes.
We know from the writings of Samael Aun Weor that witches, or female sorceresses, often travel through hyperspace, known as the fourth dimension. They place their body within the inverted, inferior vital world, the fourth dimension, in order to travel across the world or globe to affect students, like vampires. They steal the energy of their victims. There is a lot of literature throughout the world that relates this reality. Especially, you can read the book The Mystery of the Golden Flower by Samael Aun Weor. He explains this. Now, these witches often come and attach themselves, and even copulate with their victims, to extract their energy by hypnotizing and manipulating them. These are the images of hags, or old women, who rejuvenate their health and youth through vampirism, as I said earlier. All these beings cannot create on their own, so they steal force from others. 
We can defend ourselves from them by placing black mustard seeds and steel scissors open as a cross. So, we have to remember that the seed is the sexual energy. Black mustard seed has very powerful potencies for trapping witches when you combine them with steel scissors, especially in the form of a cross, like you see in this image. This works to cut and severe their abilities to travel in the fourth dimension. So, usually we keep scissors underneath our beds. You can do it in a box and fill it with seeds, black mustard. You can also place small vials of black mustard seeds and place them in the corners of your home, like the four corners of your bedroom, or throughout the perimeter of your house, your home. It is very effective. It will neutralize their ability to affect you.
Psychic Obsessions
There are other ways in which we can be affected. We can become obsessed with fixed ideas. People are often filled with mania and lust, and oftentimes, people who attend séances filled with mediums tend to be infected with astral larvae, which make people obsessed over ideas or actions and behaviors. Most notably, one of them is lust, especially pornography and fornication. So, while a person can remove these temptations from their physical life, they may have the impulse and desires for that state internally, and this can be influenced by witches and sorcerers.
The Conjuration of the Four
The best way to defend oneself from breaking these obsessions, purifying one's aura especially, is the Conjuration of the Four. Now, the Conjuration of the Four, unlike the seven, works with the four elements: earth, air, fire, water―mind, heart, body and sex, and specifically as the Conjuration of the Seven rejects the seven primary archdemons of the Black Lodge, the Conjuration of the Four rejects their legions.
We can use smudges of sage and rue while reciting the Conjuration of the Four. So, remember that if you feel obsessive over something, a behavior or a idea, or you feel like you are being influenced negatively, if you are heavy of mind, you can calm down by using this conjuration and smoking yourself with sage and rue. I will recite this conjuration briefly. Most of it is in Latin and the translation you can access via the PDF. Caput mortum, imperet tibi dominus per vivum et devotum serpentem!
* At this point you can do the sign of the cross, left hand on your solar plexus, right hand in the sign of the pentagram. Trace the cross by gesticulating by your head, your heart, and then down towards your sexual organs, then raising your hand up to your left shoulder and crossing over to your right shoulder. So this sign is the sign of the cross, for protecting ourselves. When you perform the Conjuration of the Four, you are working with the cross, the four elements, to balance your mind, heart, body, and sex.
Writhing serpent, crawl at my feet, or be tortured by the sacred fire and give way before the perfumes that I burn in it! 
The Gnostic Pentagram
It is also important to have pentagrams in our home. You can place them before entrance ways, especially if you feel like being attacked. You place the bottom, two legs towards the entrance of the door, so that when you are coming into a room, the point of the head is facing inwards towards the home or towards the area that you want to protect. So the pentagram should be upright.
The Gnostic Pentagram is the human figure with four limbs, and one unique apex which is the head. The sign of the Pentagram is also called the sign of the Microcosm. It represents what the Kabbalist Rabbis of the book Zohar call the Microprosopos. When the superior point of the Pentagram is aiming upwards towards the sky, it represents the Savior of the world. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled
And it rejects the legions of demons where you are protecting yourself from. So, utilize the pentagram in your home diligently. Protect the entrance of your home, as well as your bedroom.
The Microcosmic Star
You can perform the microcosmic star as well, in which, if you watch this video, you see exactly how to perform it. After rituals you seal your energy, or after alchemy you can do the same, because the pentagram, when you perform it with your body in combination with imagination, visualization and prayer, you seal your psychic forces. It is good to do it after runes and especially alchemy.
Enmities
Now black magicians also influence us through enmities. They try to make us the enemies of others, and if we do not master self-control, overcoming and restraining our own mind, we can leave the path easily by getting into a conflict or argument, a really negative situation. The solution is to relax and meditate. You can concentrate on the heart of your enemy, or someone who is giving you particular struggles and imagine that their heart is a treasure trove of love. You want to see the area between the enemy’s eyebrows and place your image there, filled with compassion, conscious love. You have to really feel love for them, otherwise this will not work.
Elemental Magic of the Maguey (Agave Americana)
But if the conflict still persists, you can work with the Agave Americana, the maguey plant. This plant is exceptionally powerful for disintegrating negative thoughts and psychic ties to people. So, with this plant, you can get in a greenhouse or garden shop especially, although it is more common in Latin America especially, you trace a circle from right to left about eight hand-spans radius. You can use a branch or a sword for rituals.
You want to pray, cut the leaf or needle of the plant, by blessing it. Then you keep the needles of the stems in your hands, in you palms, that you want to carry with you in some kind of bag or pouch, in order to invoke the elemental in order to protect you whenever you need it. Imagine this elemental disintegrating the evil thoughts of the person who is harming you. You want to perform the mantras: Libib Lenoninas Lenonon
Recite it and sing it.
A Prayer for Protection
In combination with the maguey you can work with the mantras Klim Krishnaya Govindaya Gopijanavallabhaja Swaha. The mantra Klim attracts solar force and invokes Christ into the body of our earth. Krishnaya reminds of Krishna, the Christ, relating to our sexual waters. Govindaya is “he who is famous on the earth and in the Vedas, and amongst the seraphic cows.” So Christ tends to the sacred cow, or the divine feminine and this mantra relates to the fires of our heart. Gopijanavallabhaja literally means “he who entrances the Gopis.” It is the feminine divine, the spirit of love in Christ, and this is accomplished through the air, the domination of our mind. Swaha seals the energies of Tiphereth, the divine truth. This pentagram, or this mantra performs, or creates the solar pentagram in the astral planes, which rejects negative forces. You can listen to the audio of this by clicking the link.
Vices
There are many ways in which we can be tempted, whether through drugs, alcohol, fornication, smoking, even movie theaters and very poor art, degenerated art. As I said, fornication and pornography really sway people easily. The foundation of Gnosis is to abandon lustful activities. Without this, there is no understanding.
Smoking also pollutes the body. So, in our teachings we want to be pure, in our sexual energy especially. Smoking essentially corrupts our capacity to assimilate prana, the force of life. We also know, very commonly, that alcohol is a poison. It is also unnecessary for self-realization. Yet even one drop can make us leave the path, can lead to many things. Samael Aun Weor mentions in the book Logos, Mantra, Theurgy how there are certain initiates who are very strong, who know how to, at a party or social gathering, have a little bit of alcohol, and he is very specific here and I will recite the verse for you. But to drink more than a certain amount is to break the law, to create an imbalance in us. Regarding social gatherings: those initiates who have strong will, sometimes politely allow themselves to sip or to taste up to three small quantities of liquor or up to three small quantities of beer. They never go beyond three; if they do, they violate the law. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Divine Science: Logos, Mantra, Theurgy
They never go beyond three, because if they do, they violate the law. Alcohol can resuscitate dead egos. It is a poison for the body, the mind and the heart. It is also responsible for 50% of murders. So, there is nothing really good about it, but our society and culture glorifies it. Yet, we should avoid it.
Movies are, as I said, are in control by the Black Lodge especially. Now there are a lot of lustful images in films especially, and also in movie theaters which infect the mind. Now, people who go to lustful films, or watch pornography as I said, the lustful images enter the psyche and then they become mental formations in our own mind, in which the student will copulate with within the mental world when the physical body is asleep. This is how nocturnal pollutions occur. So, also the astral environment of theaters and cinemas have a lot of larvae. They are very dense and heavy. So we should abstain from these two. He also mentions that nightclubs are a big problem. These are environments that are very lustful and heavy, perverse specifically. So, if we want to purify our psychological environment, it is important to be mindful where we spend our time.
The Prayer of the Lord
We can also work with the Prayer of the Lord, the Our Father. If you are really tempted, whether by desire to drink, smoke, look at pornography or lustful things, to do things you know you should not do, you can pray the Pater Noster.
The Pater Noster is especially very powerful in Latin. I will not recite this prayer for you, you can basically access it via the link, which is a lecture from Glorian Publishing about this topic.
Culture
There are also many other means of culture which can influence people. We state in these studies that intellectualism is one of the biggest ways in which people are pulled from the spiritual path, because people have reasons and justifications for the behaviors that are wrong, especially lust, why chastity or transmutation are repressive, or not expressing our true being, our true potential, but the reality is that such people do not discriminate between their desires and their soul.
We have to follow our conscience. In reality, we have to analyze if these behaviors really bring us joy, or do they just bring pleasure. So, we have to meditate and reflect on the voice of our own heart, our conscience, to find our soul, and our intuition, not the mind, because the mind is mechanical, and only operates in according to prescribed dualistic mechanisms, theses and antitheses, good and bad, yes and no. It is a machine. It does not have real intelligence or autonomy, like the consciousness. We have to learn to use the intellect, but not with desire. But unfortunately, our culture and society today is very much saturated with imagery and impressions that feed the intellect, and feed desire. It is important to learn how to discriminate what we perceive in life, the impressions in the world, and also our own psychology. 
False Prophets
Another great means that people are lead away from the path is false prophets. We will be very brief with this, in that anyone who advises or justifies the orgasm is a demon. As Jesus stated: by their fruits you shall know them. Such people may have a lot of power and abilities, can control people and influence others, but if they are not following the law of ethics, of transmutation and chastity, it means that their powers are within desire. Therefore, we should really consider avoiding or not associating with such people. They can really manipulate and influence us towards negative behaviors.
Elementaries
So, the last way of self-defense in this lecture is elementaries.
Elementals in nature are not good or bad. They are not evil or positive. They are really neutral. They are innocent. They do not know morality or ethics, or good and bad. They simply are innocent creatures that obey the forces of divinity, or even the influences of black magicians. So, there are many types of elementals that black magicians use. Even the black cat has a terrible reputation, especially today, primarily because of medieval witchcraft and the Inquisition and all sorts of persecutions that occurred against people who utilized the black cat, which is an innocent elemental, a beautiful soul, with a lot of magical properties. That is why white and black magicians can utilize them. The obey whoever commands them, but we have to learn how to command those souls with love, and with respect for others, with respect for the law. Otherwise we create harm for ourselves. There are elementals that are sent to harm others, like the elementaries or energetic larvae as well. Elementaries can relate to different types of psychic larvae as well, like bats, incubi, succubi, dragons. You can read the book The Elementals by Franz Hartmann for more information. Now, we have to remember that masturbation engenders incubi and succubi. These are what push one to fornicate. They drain our vitality. So our environment has to be purified with asafetida smudges especially. You can put sulfur powder in your shoes, to cleanse your psychic aura and we can burn sulfur in our homes as well, but you have to be mindful that you do not have plants or living things present in the areas that you are cleansing. The perfumes are toxic. So if you burn sulfur there is a danger of toxicity, but if you put it in your shoes there is not. So, if you do not want to burn sulfur, you can trace powder in your room or in your home that you want to cleanse. The perfumes in the astral plane will rise up and purify it. I remember once I was in an environment where I was not allowed or able to burn sulfur, because of neighbors and people, so I took sulfur powder and spread it across certain rooms, and I remember seeing in the astral plane the wind blowing on the ground, and out of the dark, I could see the carcasses of dead insects, which were the dead larvae that were killed by the sulfur fumes that emanated from the dried sulfur powder. Obviously, when you burn sulfur, it is going to be much more powerful, because the fire renews nature incessantly, according to Samael Aun Weor. So if you want to learn more about elementaries and elementals you van study the book The Elementals by Franz Hartmann. 
Elemental Magic of the Lemon Tree
The best practice you can use to defend yourself and really cut your ties with the Black Lodge is the elemental of the lemon tree. It is used in the book The Major Mysteries, at the end. I will read for you how to work with this plant.
Now specifically, the elemental of the lemon tree is exceptionally powerful. It is very wonderful, and you should use it as a last resort if all other options are not working for you. If you are still being attacked consistently and heavily and severely, this is the best way to really cut your ties. So I read for you the directions from the book The Major Mysteries. This chapter is called Invocations. On the ground, trace a circle around a lemon tree. Near the tree, dig a small hole and firmly insert nine small wooden sticks (distributed into three groups of three) inside the hole, and thereafter fill it with water, making a small puddle. You must also light a fire (in a portable grill, such as an hibachi). You will then beg the elemental of the lemon tree to serve you (each lemon tree has its soul which has a remarkable power). Using the following procedure, you must throw nine lemons into the fire, one by one: look fixedly at a lemon, then pick it, and repeat until you have three in hand; throw them one by one into the fire; gather three more and repeat, until you have thrown nine lemons in the fire. If a lemon explodes (producing an explosion), it is because the black magicians are performing sorcery on you. So, command the elemental of that lemon tree to defend you. When fallen into the fire, each one of the nine lemons will explode in the astral plane like a bomb, destroying the works of sorcery from the black magicians. Thereafter, the elemental will come out of the lemon tree and, shapeshifting itself into the form of a dog, will go and attack the tenebrous ones. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries, “Invocations”
I used the lemon tree in different occasions and had exceptional results.
I will relate to you one story to conclude here, how there is one instructor I know at one of our retreats who was being consistently attacked by a group of black magicians, who came and were affecting people negatively. He decided to do the ritual of the lemon tree and stated that the next day, after performing this practice, one of the members of those black magicians in that group, had all sorts of bite marks on his body―visibly, like visible bite marks all over his skin, and obviously that coincides with what Samael Aun Weor mentioned about the elemental of the lemon tree, which is like a canine, like a dog, that will attack the tenebrous ones and bite them to reject their negative influences. It literally manifested in this person’s skin. So, very real and very effective. 
Resources
In conclusion we have a book called The Divine Science, I have quoted it in part, especially certain chapters in order to give this lecture. This is the best manual you will find on self-defense against the dark arts. It is a manual literally written from the God of War, Samael Aun Weor, who is the bodhisattva of the archangel of Mars, who is the God of strength and severity and justice.
So, I open up the floor to questions. Question and Answers
Question: Doesn't one have to be cognizant in the astral plane to be able to defend against black magic in that plane? How does one develop that technique? Instructor: Yes. If you want to neutralize a threat, you have to be conscious. So, if you are in the astral plane and you are unconscious and asleep, eight hours go by and then you wake up in the morning, it means that we do not know what is going on, and that is the scary thing. We have to be very attentive and conscious and awake. Now, we have different resources on our website. We are going be giving a course about Dream Yoga and Astral Travel especially, but Glorian also has a course, for free, about astral projection and dream yoga, which you can study. There is a book which is called Dream Yoga, which is a compilation of writings of Samael Aun Weor, where he explains how to astral project consciously and to be awake in that dimension. So, if you want to use these techniques we explained today in the astral plane, of course, you have to be awake in order to use them. So you develop that perception yourself, by learning to awaken your consciousness. Study the book Dream Yoga. That will tell you how to learn to develop awareness in that dimension. 
Question: How is the sign of the pentagram performed with the right hand?
Instructor: So, you want to have your pinky and your ring finger folded into your palm―your middle finger, your index finger and your thumb extended out. So if you look at your right hand, you want your thumb, index finger and middle finger extended up. So those are three points. Those are the head and the two arms of the pentagram, and the lower two feet are the pinky and the ring finger that fold into the palm. That is how you perform the symbol of the pentagram with your right hand.
Question: You have discussed the fifth dimension and also on another occasion the inverted fifth dimension. What are they, and more specifically, what is the inverted fifth dimension?
Instructor: So, the fifth dimension is divided into a superior and inferior aspect, which has to to with the qualities of our perception. Now, the superior fifth dimension is known as הוד Hod on the Tree of Life. If you look at the Tree of Life, it is the first sephirah on the left pillar, referring to Splendor, the astral plane, the superior astral dimension. That is where solar initiates go, where they are projected to. It is a conscious plane which is very positive, that has superior symbolism, and which is part of the lighter densities of the Tree of Life. When you ascend, you go towards more heavenly states. When you descend down into the infernal worlds, the inverted sephiroth, or Klipoth, you enter into the hell realms.
The inverted fifth dimension is the lunar sphere. It is beneath the Tree of Life. The inferior astral plane is the surface of the earth. Most people wander there when they go to sleep and when they die physically. It is called Limbo. Dante defines it as Limbo in The Divine Comedy, specifically. Now, we tend to go towards the inverted fifth dimension, the lunar sphere, the lunar astral world, which is the sphere of demons and asleep souls, because we have ego. But if you learn to awaken your consciousness, especially, and eliminate your defects, you can learn to vibrate with the superior astral world, and learn to have positive, conscious, unconditioned and mystical experiences in those states. So, you learn the differences by tasting them in meditation and also when you project there. Question: How to protect specifically against nocturnal pollution? Instructor: Utilize the prayers and conjurations, like Belilin, Conjuration of the Four, Conjuration of the Seven, Invocation of Solomon, before you go to sleep every night. Seal you home with the magical circle for protection. Now, these are preventative measures, and very helpful, but the sickness of nocturnal pollutions is caused by lust. If you are not comprehending your own lustful desires that produce those pollutions themselves, then you cannot be healed. So, the solution is to observe and comprehend those defects, and to eliminate them in meditation, deeply. Also, if you are working with alchemy, that can help to redirect the sexual energy so that you do not spill when you have a lustful dream. With enough training in alchemy, you retrain your body to transmute the sexual energy, so that it flows from outward to inward, and not the opposite―from inward to out. In that way, even if you have a lustful dream, you will have more control and you not necessarily make a mistake, but it is still possible. So, the best solution is to comprehend your lust. Meditate and annihilate the egos of nocturnal pollutions. Avoid filling your mind with media and images that are lustful. This also provoke pollutions as well. Question: There are angels that work with the pentagram? Could you explain their part? Instructor: Yes. Samael Aun Weor refers to the angels of the pentagram as the first five archangels of the seven spiritual rays―Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, and Mars. He refers to them in the Gnostic Bible as the five helpers: Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Michael and Samael. When we bless the pentagram or necklaces, we work with those five angels especially, because they represent the five points. Now, the archangels are in charge of many legions of initiates and beings, which are summoned when you work with the pentagram. So, when you work with the upright pentagram, you are developing those superior energies in yourself, because you are asking to channel, or basically become a conduit for Christ in yourself. The pentagram is especially useful as a medallion of the seven metals especially, because those metals represent the energetic life force of the seven planetary rays, the spiritual archangels. I mentioned that we often do not use minerals in our rituals and practices because those tend to be black magic, but in the case that we do use metals in our practices and rituals has to do with having the pentagram with the seven metals especially, which are silver, mercury, copper, gold, iron, tin and lead, relating to those archangels. The metals are the nervous systems of these given planets. We can invoke those angels, the five helpers, the pentagram, when we fashion medallions or purchase one and bless and consecrate them. Question: Is the magical circle traced counterclockwise when doing the maguey plant? Instructor: Now, when you do a circle of protection around yourself, it does not really matter which direction you point. I know a lot of students presented this question to Samael Aun Weor and he said it does not matter, basically, if you do it from left to right or right to the left. Now for the Agave Americana, he does get specific and say: “trace the circle from right to left about eight hand-spans-width, or radius.” So, the important thing is your concentration, your prayer, visualization and remembrance of your inner divinity. So, be mindful of that. That is the important thing when you seal your home. When he is specific in terms of his direction for a particular practice with the plants or rituals, I suggest you follow them, because they are very mathematical and precise. Rituals have a lot of power. They are dynamic. They are explosive and they are very volatile. You have to learn how to control them with perfect serenity, concentration and imagination. Therefore it is important to adhere to any directions or stipulations that he gave, so that we have the best results. Question: What is the number one reason that someone who has had many conscious travels in the astral and leaving the body, could revert back to unconsciousness? I have not had a real conscious experience in about a year. Is there a lesson here? Instructor: Yes! This has to do with the fact that awakening and spiritual development does not occur in an evolutionary arc. It happens as a result of individual efforts here and now, and there are periods of ebbs and flow, in terms of spiritual experiences. Study the Sufi Principles of Meditation. We gave a lecture on Contraction and Expansion, different principles of meditation, as well of Absence and Presence, which really talk about a lot of these details in a synthetic way, in terms of our meditation practice. Now, while consciousness fluctuates in terms of unconditioned and conditioned states, because obviously we have periods when we have a lot of light, and periods when we have a lot of darkness. But the important thing is that we remain consistent during our spiritual nights, in which we do not have that vision ready. We feel that we are alone and wandering spiritually in the dark. That happens to everybody. It happens even to the greatest masters, especially, because they have to face temptations and trials in order to develop themselves. So, oftentimes we revert to unconsciousness because we are not trained. We are weak. But fortunately we have techniques and tools that we can use, and the important thing is to practice regardless of whether or not we see the end goal in sight. So, be patient. Remember your experiences. Have faith in them. Do not lose sight of them, but also do not be attached. If you are craving those experiences, we are attached as a result of desire, because we have a condition of our ego that is creating our suffering. But having that longing is a normal thing. It is a natural sentiment of the soul. But do not strain yourself. Work hard. Train yourself in meditation, and eventually the light will come back. If we received all the light from our Being immediately, without enough development and a gradual process of training, we would be annihilated, because the light of divinity is so powerful. That is why we have gradual awakenings and experiences here and there when we need them, not when we want them. Question: When the home is sealed, do you have to reseal every time you go out and return? Instructor: Yes. So, you seal your home physically, with your imagination and visualization, and perhaps you leave the area that you sealed. If you go out of your home, or perhaps you seal your bedroom and leave, in the middle of the night, you should reseal it when you get back. Now, personally I like to imagine my entire home, when I visualize and seal, because I do not want to have to keep resealing when I am getting up, sometimes at four in the morning if I have to use the restroom or something. Practically speaking, you do not want to keep having to do that, so just seal your home, I recommend a head of time, so that you do not have to move about later. When you need to leave your home, you can . You do break the seal when you leave, so you do need to reseal it if you want to protect yourself again. Comment: I noticed, the more you work with your own inner God, you have more protection, even with not doing so much in this way of protection, as long as I am doing the inner work and being sincere. The only time I have noticed being able to be attacked is when my Being allowed it to happen, either due to karma, or specifically as a learning experience, for me to learn my weaknesses, or to learn who, why and what is attacking me, to make me aware. Instructor: Yes, that is a really good point. Now, one thing I will mention is that our nightlife―not going to clubs or bars―but when you physically go to sleep, and perhaps eight hours go by and we do not remember anything, that is a barometer of our psychological state in the day. That means that we are very asleep. Now, we may feel that we are, to a degree, safe and protected, which we do receive that as a result of sincerely working on ourselves. The reality is that we do face those conflicts in accordance with karma and the will of divinity, as even stated in the Qur’an that all good and bad comes from الله Allah. Now, most people who are interested in Gnosis have some degree of ego developed in black magic. It is inevitable. The reality is that if we are interested in these types of studies, it is because we probably delved in witchcraft in a previous life. Some of us may have done it to a greater degree, some of us less, and so we receive those types of experiences as a result of karma, meaning, we have to face certain situations and learn from them. That is a very good, valid point that you made. Now one thing I will mention is that just because we do not sense anything does not mean that it is not there. So that is the scary thing we have to be mindful of―not to be paranoid or really afraid―but it is important that we are cautious and that we take precautions against certain effects or influences in a preventative way. That is the best approach to have. So I mean, if you feel like you are not being attacked, it is good that you do take measures to energetically seal your home and psyche because when the moment does come, when you do have that experience, you will be much more prepared. Question: My question was basically: how do I go about talking to somebody who may have a demon possession or something or another, in that fashion, without them getting provoked and angry and lashing out in the simple act of talking about it? Instructor: I would say that the best way you can help someone is to be conscious and to have love for them, compassion. You know, sometimes, unfortunately, a lot of our motivations tend to be driven by selfishness, even if it is in in spiritual matters, especially. Whether you are teaching Gnosis or some other spiritual path, or having studied something like this for some time, we do have defects of mystical vanity and pride, which we have to be cautious against. But the real solution to help such people is to approach them with love and understanding. If they are suffering a lot, we can offer solutions like the ones I’ve been mentioning. You know, they have to be open to it! That is the difficult thing. If someone is really suffering a lot and is possessed by these negative entities, they may feel like there is no solution or that they cannot be help, or what we offer them may not be of benefit. Now we have to respect the will of others, especially, but it doesn’t mean we do not make the effort to offer them help. But also, we have to be patient regarding the response because sometimes people can react and think, “Oh, this is just a bunch of crazy stuff! This is a bunch of cultish behavior, or superstition, or whatever!” We have to respect people’s viewpoints. Now if they really want help, we have to reach them by giving them our compassion, especially. That is a psychological attitude that you can only develop when you are really meditating on your own defects and are eliminating, especially, pride and anger. When we are really genuine, when speaking from our heart, people can sense it and it has a remarkable influence on others. Question: What does it mean that I do not remember my dreams at all for years, but my brother can remember every dream, and astral and lucid dream, but can actually dream about what I am doing in my waking hours? Does there seem to be a way to the path of sevens (or the seven spiritual influences)? Instructor: Some people in the past or in past lives have developed psychic abilities. I know a lot of times we like to think that certain people are gifted, that they received some kind of boon from the gods, but the truth is that, usually, people who have a lot of dream recall and memory and astral experiences is because they once worked with certain spiritual teachings that developed that. Now if we cannot remember our dreams or we struggle to remember what we are doing in our waking hours, it is because we are very conditioned by our own psyche. We have, in many cases, obscured our own potential. But those are rectifiable. We can change that. We can develop our own abilities again or recapitulate our past development by working again with these methods. It is important not to be jealous of people who have those types of abilities, and I am not saying that this is necessarily your case, but often times we may get frustrated with our own selves because we feel like “Other people are doing it, but I am not.” The reality is that we are all at our own level of being and we all have our own karma to pay. Some people may have the right to have those experiences, but we may have to work and earn and even maybe suffer a bit in order to have it. But we should be patient with our circumstances and learn to work effectively with where we are at. That is the best way in order to really ascend the spiritual path and work with the seven primary virtues, because remember that the law of seven, according to the Tarot, relates to seven archangels, but also the seven demons, as I said, but also the seven capital sins, but also the seven virtues. So it is important to remember those virtues, but also to eliminate the seven primary sins or defects so that we can give birth to genuine love, virtue, chastity, compassion, altruism, philanthropy, humility, faith in ourselves. Continuing with the former question… Question: Thank you! I also want to know: how can I remove demons from other people because the simple act of talking about demonology brings these people to rage and anger, and they lash out? Instructor: Yes, obviously people have their own presuppositions and beliefs, and we have to respect them. If people are open to learning, we can offer these teachings. Obviously, we can not necessarily remove a person’s demons that are afflicting them. Now, it is a subtle teaching in relation to exorcisms and conjurations. I know there is the conventional belief that a person who is possessed is influenced by external demons, which can be true, but the only reason that a victim can be hurt is because they have their own egos that allow for that. That is the weakness that black magicians capitalize upon in order to inflict harm. So while we can protect their environment and cleanse their aura through certain prayers and conjurations, through exorcisms, through cleansings, that is basically like giving them a shower after they have been dirty for a while. That is a very external thing, but while it might seem superficial, obviously hygiene is important for many things. We feel better, even physically with taking regular showers ― you know, hopefully! ― people taking care of themselves, and brushing their teeth, doing what they need to do, because these are ways that we respect other people in society, through cleanliness, but it also has to do with keeping a positive state of mind. Now you can do all these things, whether even physically through routines and health and hygiene, and even through psychological or psychic and spiritual hygiene by doing prayers and conjurations, but that is not going to remove the fundamental problem of a person’s psychological afflictions. We cannot remove the ego of another person. We can purify their environment and help them not be influenced by other entities, but so long as that person has pride and anger and envy and hatred and lust, they are going to hate whatever we may have to say, especially, whether it is about demonology or other things. So we have to respect other people and approach them with conscious love, with compassion, and offer solutions when they are open to it, not by forcing our own way of thinking on others. I know we are eager to really help people by teaching these types of things because it really changes who we are in a positive way. But the best way we can help others is by example, not by being, according to the Biblical narrative of the Pharisees of the temple who become very proud, and I know we may have good intentions, but our ego we have to be very careful with, because our good intentions can be the impetus and the mask by which we harm other people. This is why Samael Aun Weor stated that “Crime often hides itself within the perfume of prayer.” We have to be very critical of our own desires, and when we are more selfless, we can help people more effectively. Question: How do we define lying? If I am honest, that is just my opinions. I do not know the real truth, and I would just insult people, probably. If I go about telling everyone my intentions, I could get manipulated by more selfish people. Is there a line between untruths and lies? Instructor: Lying has to do with, in esoteric terms, not representing reality. Obviously, there is some gray area in terms of what we determine is real, primarily because we have 97% subjective reasoning or ego. The ego or self only sees reality in accordance with its desires. Therefore, in a truly disturbing statistic, we can say that 97% of the time, we are invested with lies, and this is the terrible reality that we have to be facing in ourselves and to confront. Now, we lie when we, in truth, don’t perceive the truth. The force of the Father in the intellectual brain―we can say in Gnostic psychology―relates to the Father, the Truth. When we understand reality as it is to whatever degree possible, and when we do not represent that accurately, we lie. We distort our honest perceptions and our experiences of life, no matter how flawed or unconditioned they may be. Now when you lie, whether saying something that is not accurate in representation to a certain phenomenon or event, we are in truth distorting the energies the Father within our intellectual brain. People who lie a lot, who do not really have any honesty or integrity with themselves, end up having lots of problems, whether socially, maritally, emotionally, psychologically, especially. The word integrity means “to integrate,” to be one, to be unitary. The consciousness is unitary. The Being is unitary, but our multiplicity of defects are not. So our multiple selves and egos, aggregates, desires, lust, pride, vanity, anger, hatred, morbidity, shame, selfishness, etc., that constitutes a multiplicity of identities. There is no integration there. It is not a unified whole, but a multiple, imperfect unity, the multiple expression of many defects, a legion of demons, we can say. We have many legions in our psychology, and so any time we act on an ego, we are, in a sense, lying, in the ultimate, objective meaning of the term. But we have to begin this path where we are at. We cannot begin like saints. The liar becomes a saint by being honest with him or herself, confronting what is real and objective and perceptive, unconditioned, and what is just conjecture, what is opinion, what is a half-truth that the mind tells us, and this is how people become easily manipulated. It is because they do not discriminate their own psychology, what is subjective to their own reality or perception, and what is objectively real, spiritual, we can say. I know sometimes we may feel hesitant to tell our intentions to people, and obviously we have to be careful of not expressing our ego, so that we do not get manipulated. So we can say that an untruth or a lie―there really is no demarcation between. They are the same thing. You learn how to follow truthful action by following your conscience, your heart, your intuition. Any other final questions? Question: Yes. I just wanted to say thank you. It was very―there is so much in this lecture, just lots of nuances of feeling and experience. So it was very helpful. I just want to ask one small question. I have some elder friends in their 80’s, one of them who watches my dog in the day, and cuddles with them for an hour, and her husband is really sick. I was wondering when you are praying for those who are struggling with their health and stuff like that, do they have to know? I do not think they would really be so into like a lot of the things I just experienced tonight with you with some of the prayers. I think they would think it was witchcraft and crazy even though they are Christians and everything. So when you are praying for others, do they always have to participate and know, or is it being, like, not having respect for their will if they do not know that you have that intention for them and willingness to accept it? How does that work? Instructor: Great question! You can perform those rituals and practices without them knowing. Now, whenever I perform any type of ritual for healing or protection for myself or others, I always pray to my inner divinity to help the person in accordance with the law, in accordance with His will, not mine, primarily because our will cannot be trusted. But if you perform the practice for healing, you have to do it in the remembrance that this person has their own process in accordance with karma and that they are going to face whatever they have to face, regardless. But if our own compassionate understanding and love for them, our conscious love, can be of benefit, obviously our prayers are going to be effective. Now we can pray for their wellbeing and perform the ritual for them in secret, and they do not have to know anything about it physically. Personally, I do not tell people when I do certain practices when I want to help certain relationships. You know, I just do it in silence, in secret because those things may be judged. They may be labeled as witchcraft or whatever, you know, due to people not being educated or experienced, but “by their fruits you will know them.” Look at the results. We have to give our consci0us efforts and works for humanity but without expecting any particular results but allowing divinity to take care of it. Hopefully we can become a better vehicle for that facilitation and that healing. Comment: Thank you! Instructor: You’re welcome! Any other questions? Comment: I found reading the story of the Buddha was really helpful as there are lots of living examples of concepts that have been a great help, comprehending how we lie to ourselves and all the ways we do it, why we do it, and what we think it gives us, versus what we were hoping it would do, enables us to begin understanding what lying is and how not the do it, etc. This helps us to see how others lie and to understand as well and have more compassion for ourselves and others. The more inner work we do in comprehending the ways we do lie to ourselves gives us experience of truth. We slowly gain comprehension of the wisdom we are yearning to comprehend. Instructor: I agree with you. The more ethics and development we have in working on our own defects and egos, the more understanding of others we can have in ourselves. Yes! Question: Hi again! I have another question. I really loved hearing the singing because I know I have heard in lots of classes about that some things should be sung, but I really do not know how to sing it, and so sometimes I just do it on my own, but it is always kind of experimental and awkward and takes away from my focus. Maybe that’s ok that it should be just experimental in my own ways, or maybe it should be a certain melody that is particular to the prayer? I was just wondering, I tried to sing along with you and take voice memos of some of the things I was able to do, but not others, but is this recorded somewhere so that we can listen to it again, or is there somewhere where like the Belilin prayer is sung somewhere that we can listen to again? Instructor: Sure! This is going to be in the course Spiritual Self-Defense. You can also access on our website, there is a section for practices that we have recordings of certain mantras and prayers, at length, so you can access all of that online. I will include a link for that in the chat box. Comment: Ok. Thank you! Instructor: You’re welcome. Any final comments or questions? So I thank you all for coming! Appreciate the attendance. I know we ran over a lot, and I am really appreciative of the questions you put forth because they help us go deeper into these subjects. 
Today's lecture is about spiritual self-defense, and it is the first in a course that will be ongoing, about how do we defend ourselves from the various challenges, obstacles, and attacks that we might face as we engage more seriously in our spiritual work.
The most important question I want to begin with is, what is black magic? For many of us who are new to this path, we hear it mentioned, and it might evoke some fear or uncertainty. So I want to clarify upfront a simple basic understanding of what we mean when we talk about black magic. Yes, black magic does include demons and individuals who are in physical bodies out there, performing rituals and cultivating energy, whether through sexual practices or other rituals― that we don't teach in our school, specifically―in order to be able to gain more power over other people and in the internal worlds. However, to clarify, the power that those people are gaining is fortifying their ego, which means that they will have power in the internal dimensions of the inverted Tree of Life, what we call the hell realms, the infernal dimensions. Our goal on the white path of initiation is to enter into the higher levels of consciousness, to enter into the divine and heavenly realms, and it is important to know that black magicians, as much power as they may have in the lower realms, do not have power in the higher realms in which the divine law reigns. Some say that in the hell realms, whatever is the divine law is inverted, meaning that what is against the law in the divine realms becomes “the law,” the mandatory law in the hell realms. So if fornication and adultery is against divine law, in the hell realms, it is mandatory that everyone must fornicate. Everyone must commit adultery. This is a basic example to give us an understanding. Additionally, we have to realize that all of us on this path are trapped between the two realms. We have a bit of our consciousness which is free, which is longing for the divine, which is virtuous, with many beautiful spiritual qualities, and we also have a large percentage of our consciousness that is trapped in infernal psychological states. It is that part of our consciousness through which black magicians can manipulate and control us. And so, whenever someone is trying to control the will of others, to steal energy from them, by getting them to lust after them, to envy them, to worship them, whenever a person is trying to dominate others, confuse others, manipulate others, or hurt others, this is black magic. As you can tell with that general explanation, many of us in many points in our lives have used black magic. We have used our mind and our cleverness in order to try to manipulate or harm others, but at the same time we have also tried to get others to lust after us or to be envious of us, to make others feel that we are better than them. These are all forms of black magic. And so while yes, we are looking out for black initiates, individuals out there who have actually been initiated into black paths and are working with black tantra, magical forms of energy manipulation and control of the elements, in order to gain power and steal power from others, our biggest weakness, when it comes to self-defense, is that we ourselves are very egotistical and we are very easily controlled. The Buddha Gautama said that “It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him into evil ways.” About a year ago, I was watching the opera Parsifal, which many of us know from the books of Samael Aun Weor, specifically the book Parsifal Unveiled, and in the particular rendition that I was watching, there was a powerful scene when Parsifal, who represents the pure but foolish young initiate on a quest to save his Lord, has to enter into the kingdom of Klingsor, representing our egotistical foe. And Parsifal, once entering this kingdom, has to pass through a garden filled with beautiful and seductive women. Because of his purity of heart he is not seduced by these women and is able to enter into the chamber, in which he meets the temptress Kundry, and what happens from there, you'll have to watch the opera to learn the rest. But as I watched the scene, it struck me that Parsifal did not need any weapons to defend himself from these beautiful and seductive women, because he in his mind was strong. If we have a fantasy in our own mind of a attractive man or woman, and then that person comes into our physical life and begins to try to seduce us, manipulate us, get our energy, or get us to lust after them, make us fall off the path, so to speak, we are very easily manipulated and able to fall in that case. But if in our mind we have already seen the truth of this person, we have no temptation towards lust for them, and then they come and approach us with the same lustful behaviors in an attempt to seduce us, we have nothing to fear, because it will be much more difficult in that case for them to be able to control us. Our best self-defense is cultivating the purity of mind, heart, and body that makes it impossible for any black magician to be able to manipulate us. I think that this quote from Samael Aun Weor in his book Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology sums this example up perfectly. He wrote: The best weapon that a human being can use in life is a correct psychological state. One can disarm beasts and unmask traitors by means of appropriate internal states. Wrong internal states convert us into defenseless victims of human perversity. You must learn to face the most unpleasant events of practical life with an appropriate internal uprightness. You must not become identified with any event. Remember that everything passes away. You must learn to look at life like a movie; thus, you shall receive the benefits. You must not forget that if you do not eliminate mistaken internal states from your psyche, then events of no value could bring you disgrace. ―Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
We need to know that in order to defend ourselves, our best weapon is to be conscious, to be awake in every moment, to be self-observing what is happening inside of us, and to be self-remembering our inner divinity, so that we behave with internal uprightness.
We behave according to our own conscience. This is not worrying about morality or what others will think of us, but knowing in our own heart we are doing what is right in God's eyes. And this is based on our own inner relationship with our own inner divinity that we cultivate through daily meditation and prayer. If you are meditating, you will have a better sense of what is a correct psychological state, because in certain moments in one's meditation practice, one can access this. What is my psychological state when I am, for a few moments, free of ego? And then when I sink back into an egotistical state, when I become identified with some defect, like pride or anger lust or envy, what is the change that I witnessed there? Because if I am self-observing, then I know if my consciousness is truly free and being guided by divinity, or if my consciousness is conditioned by a certain egotistical element in myself that I still need to further comprehend and eliminate. If we break down this passage, which is filled with very deep wisdom, we see that it is possible for us to disarm beasts and unmask traitors by means of appropriate internal states. This means that if we are awakened, if we are self-observing, have our consciousness active and free of ego, we can see exactly how another person might be trying to manipulate or harm us. And rather than reacting with anger or with fear towards this person, we can become conscious internally of what is the correct response in order to protect ourselves, to guard ourselves in this situation. When we have wrong internal states, we become defenseless victims of human perversity. If we have truly meditated in this tradition for quite some time, we are aware of the depths of perversity within our own mind. How often we wish to harm or control or dominate other people? And so we must have compassion for the human perversity that exists in others and be aware of it. The best way to protect ourselves is not to let our own lust or anger or pride seduce us into wrong behaviors. As I mentioned in the example before, if we see an attractive man or woman and we are cultivating a fantasy, a lustful fantasy of the day that they will come and talk to us or ask us out and we are really putting a lot of energy, conscious energy into that fantasy, it is our own mind which has already set the trap for us. And when that person shows up in our physical life and begins to talk to us, it does not take much effort on their part in order to have a profound level of control over us. Many times in our lives, perhaps we have had our heart broken or we felt betrayed, and the other person may not even have willingly done so to us, but it was our own mental state which set us up for that scenario. We have to recognize that as a consequence of karma, we have many ties to other people and each of these will play themselves out, and we must accept that because we have done wrong in this lifetime and in previous lifetimes, we will suffer. But, if we suffer consciously, and if we take those situations of pain and we transform them into an opportunity to learn about our own inner defects, to cleanse ourselves internally, to respond with more love and strength of heart towards the difficulties of life and towards our problems with other people, we will truly become an initiate, a warrior on this path, which is what we need. It's a very difficult work. It's a work of a lifetime and not something easily achieved and not easy to follow through with. That is why these temptations come along in order for us to go to battle, to prove whether we are going to be defined for the will of God or whether we are going to fall fulminated at the feet of our own inner egos and defects. Temptations are a chance for us to purify ourselves. However, most of the time we become identified with an event. We look at other people at our life situation as very real and as something that demands for us to react to it with a lot of self-esteem. When other people come along and insult us, or when life is not going the way that we had desired, we get identified. We have a lot of pride that comes out and says, “I don't deserve this. These people shouldn't be talking about me like that. They are so much worse.” Or “this situation shouldn't be happening to me. I am great and I have done all this hard work,” etc., etc. This is becoming identified with an event, and we will suffer much more through that identification. It is much better to take a step back, to calm down, go for a walk or do something that calms us down, and then enter into meditation. Separate from our identification with the event and reflect on it serenely, allowing God to show us not what is wrong with the other person or what is wrong with the situation, or how can I change other people and situations to make them more the way that I want them to be, but rather, “what is it in me that is incorrectly responding to this circumstance?” By understanding ourselves, which is truly the only thing that we can change, we will be able to find more peace. We will be able to radically change inside, and as we change inside, we know that the outside world will begin to reflect more and more our inner level of being. This is a process of alchemy, of transmutation, radical transformation of oneself from darkness, unconsciousness, and egotism, into light, selflessness and consciousness, unity with divinity. That is what we are doing. We are taking a heavy base metal like lead and transforming it into the purified gold of the spirit. This is a long work. Events of no value, such as an argument with someone, which in the moment feels very serious and very real and causes a lot of anger in us, can bring us a lot of disgrace if we respond with that anger. However, if we transform that state, we feel peace with the situation. We accept it. We express kindness or compassion for the other person involved, then that event passes away. Everything passes away, is what Samael Aun Weor is writing here. If we keep that in mind, no matter how much we burn in the moment, we can find a rope to hold onto, a continuity of consciousness so that we do not lose our integrity over an event of no value. 
Chastity: God’s Covenant
Most importantly, in maintaining the purity of our state of mind and of our soul, is chastity. For anyone who has been in this doctrine for some time, you know that we speak repeatedly about chastity as the renunciation of orgasm and the practice of sexual magic with one spouse, or the practice of pranayama: to transmute one’s sexual energy in a pure way for single people.
Chastity is our covenant with God, and when we break that covenant, we lose the divine protection which that covenant grants us. It is a very serious covenant to make, and I recommend that when you make that choice to commit to chastity as part of your spiritual practice, as part of your life, that you don't go back on it―that you fight with all of your being to preserve that chastity, because when one falls, depending on the severity of the fall, the consequences are very severe. So we have to be very serious about chastity, when we take that step, because it offers us a lot of protection. What chastity does is it strengthens our inner connection with our inner Father, what we call the Innermost, related with Chesed on the Tree of Life, in Kabbalah, and with our Divine Mother, both of whom want us very much to succeed. This doesn't mean that difficulties will never happen to us because, of course, we have karma, and because we need to face our karma in order to develop our soul and to become strong souls to purify ourselves. But it does mean that we will have the comfort of the Holy Spirit with us in those moments, because our sexual energy is our direct connection with the Holy Spirit. And when we are transmuting and raising that energy up the spine, and conserving it in our body without ever letting that energy out, we are creating a hermetic seal in which our connection with God becomes stronger and stronger, and is never broken. Years ago when I first took this step, I was seeing in a vision, in meditation practice, God's covenant with Abraham, and I realized that this symbol is about our sexual chastity. If you are familiar with the story from the Bible, God makes a covenant with Abraham that his seed will be as numerous as the stars. And this covenant is made because Abraham, at the time named Abram, was lamenting that he was childless. This is our situation. We want to give birth to the soul. We do not want to be just an Essence, just the seed of a soul. We want to give birth to that child, that Christ child within our own soul. And so we go to God and we pray, “Give us a chance to achieve this work,” which is very sacred, and God says to Abraham that he must perform a sacrifice, an animal sacrifice. Abraham does so, cutting the animals in two. Sometimes this is known as the covenant of the pieces. For us, it is important to realize that the sacrifice of the animal is the sacrifice of our own ego, all of those drives that cause us to become identified with situations in life: lust, anger, hatred, pride, gluttony, greed―all of these animal defects in us which are constantly controlling us and causing us to perform wrong actions that create more and more problems for us and for others. This is what we must sever, and of course the greatest example of the animal instinct is lust. When we commit to chastity and we are renouncing orgasm, we are severing our ties with that animal. We are taking the animal instinct and we are taming it through sexual magic, or through pranayama if you are a single person. And we are transforming that animal into knowledge, into the power of God, the willpower of God. And this work takes time. Also, the covenant that God made with Abraham required that all of his children and Abraham himself becomes circumcised. Obviously, this is a symbol of chastity: the circumcision while, yes, it is performed literally and physically, is truly about circumcising our own mind, our own animal instinct, and becoming pure in the way that we approach sex and sexuality. This takes time, and I recognize that preserving chastity is a challenge for many people, but it is the most important front in which we begin to define ourselves. That is why I have listed here that we must master self-control. If you are tempted in a moment to look at pornography or to engage in some lustful fantasy of a person, to engage in behaviors that you know are directly counterproductive to your spiritual work that you are attempting here, you have to develop ways to control yourself, most importantly to control the mind. We often describe the mind as a donkey which must be whipped and controlled. This does not mean to repress and to beat oneself up, but merely in the beginning, find a way to redirect your mind. If you are at home and you have access to things that will feed your lust, get rid of them, or go for a walk or read a spiritual scripture. Find a way to control yourself, and later on when you have calmed down, enter into meditation, and without becoming identified with what you are meditating on, pray for your inner divinity to help you, to keep your covenant. If you cannot control your own mind, then of course you are at great risk for black magicians or demons to control you. When we engage in orgasm, we are opening up the doorway into the infernal worlds, and we are allowing lots of negative atoms into our inner bodies. So energetically, emotionally, mentally, we are filling ourselves with toxins and weakening our ability to be strong in our chastity. That is why we have to be very serious on this point, and why I put it so early on in this lecture. This is really the foundation of our work, and this is the way that people are so commonly swayed into the black path. In many of the schools of black magic, they preach virtue and godliness and purity, and many of the same things that we teach in this school, but the defining difference between a white path and a black path is the orgasm. Samael Aun Weor says that if you are ever awakened internally in the astral plane and you believe that the person, the master who is talking to you may be a black magician, to ask them what they think of chastity, what they think of renouncing the orgasm. And without fail, if the person says to you that orgasm is good or orgasm is okay, then you know that this is someone of the black path and you need to protect yourself. We will get into ways of how you can protect yourself in an encounter like that in a few moments. But the seriousness of preserving chastity just cannot be overlooked. Temptations come along to force us to define ourselves. If you fail when you are facing a temptation, learn from it. All of us fail when facing temptations, but this is not an excuse to give up or to just continue in bad behaviors. If we fail, we should feel genuine remorse, and we should meditate seriously on that circumstance or that failure, praying to God with our whole heart, day after day, for comprehension, and really creating the circumstances in which that comprehension can come to us, by meditating and separating ourselves from bad influences. Additionally, even when we can physically preserve our chastity and maintain that in our physical lives, sometimes we are attacked internally and we may be seduced, whether by men or women, in the internal planes. And this can cause us to lose our energy, what we refer to as wet dreams or nocturnal pollutions. This can happen for both men or women.
So if you wake up and you know that you have experienced an orgasm or a wet dream, there is a remedy that you can make, the melon drink remedy. And I have a link to it in the resources that I mentioned earlier, also at the end of this presentation. So that link has a beautiful video which illustrates exactly how to make that melon drink, and to continue to make it until you are able to recover from that.
So if this happens and you lose your energy, continue to transmute, continue to practice pranayama everyday. Do runes every day if you feel that you have a very fiery sexual temperament. You may need to perform runes in addition to pranayama. There is no limit on how much pranayama you can do. You can perform as much of it in a day as you need to. So if you are feeling particularly tempted, go outside. Go for a walk. Take a break. Come back and perform pranayama for as long as you need until you have calmed down. Conjurations
Okay, so this bit about knowing the conjurations is really your homework. If I were to give you an assignment on how to protect yourself, it would be to begin today memorizing these conjurations.
Choose one. Pray it every night before you go to sleep, and whether you have written it down or you are reading it, the more that you pray it, the more familiar you will become with it. And just as you had to memorize things in school, some of these conjurations will be a little bit difficult to memorize at first, but it is possible. And truly, of all the ways to defend yourself, memorizing these conjurations is one of the easiest and most valuable to do. Now the first one that I have listed here is not exactly a conjuration, but more a mantra for protection. Klim Krishnaya Govindaya Gopijana Vallabhaya Swaha. There are videos related to all of these mantras and conjurations at the end in the resources section. So as I mentioned before, I am not going to go in depth into every resource, but give you an overview of where you should be looking, and then you will be able to refer to the videos and the articles on these very powerful prayers, in order to understand the true depth and meaning of each one of them. 
Mantras of the Flaming Star
Now, Klim Krishnaya Govindaya Gopijana Vallabhaya Swaha will project a pentagram, a flaming star, in the astral plane.
This is also a mantra that you can repeat in your head internally, mentally, whenever you are feeling threatened in the physical world. Sometimes during the day, I do not feel threatened by other individuals, but I feel that my own mind is becoming sleepy or perhaps angered by a situation, and so in order to conjure my own mind, I will use this mantra mentally. No one else knows that I am doing it, but it truly helps me to focus. I notice more brightness of consciousness coming in as I use this mantra. It is very helpful.
So while it may sound a little complicated to memorize at first, it's one of the easier mantras that can really be helpful in many, many moments.
About Pronunciations
Additionally, with all of these mantras, which are often in other languages such as Hebrew or Latin, it is okay if you are mispronouncing them. Yes, the videos give us an opportunity to know how they should be pronounced, and there are some audio clips as well of one of the other instructors pronouncing them, but what is most important is the sincerity of your heart and prayer, your inner connection with divinity, your purity. So do not get caught up over whether or not you are mispronouncing it. There are some conjurations, which I realized I was slightly mispronouncing a word for some time and then I corrected it, but even before correcting that mispronunciation, they still brought a lot of force and power. So do not let the mispronunciation piece become a barrier for you.
The Conjuration of the Four
Next is the Conjuration of the Four. This refers to the four elements, and this conjuration is used to reject all of the legions of demons, which can manipulate the elementals in order to attack us. And so this is usually the first conjuration that one would say before going to sleep at night.
The Conjuration of the Seven
Additionally after completing the Conjuration of the Four, one would then say the Conjuration of the Seven. This conjuration invokes the seven archangels in order to reject the seven archdemons. And so, for demons which are more powerful and not able to be rejected with Conjuration of the Four, we can use the Conjuration of the Seven.
The Invocation of Solomon
And finally, the third prayer that one would use before going to sleep would be the Invocation of Solomon. So with these three, we can protect ourselves before we go to sleep and enter the astral plane. The Invocation of Solomon actually works with the entire Tree of Life to be able to draw the forces of God to protect us.
Fons Alpha et Omega
In addition to these, one of my favorites is the Fons Alpha et Omega. This is actually a variety of mantras combined into one conjuration, and it is very powerful for rejecting negative forces. It also can help us to penetrate the meaning of a dream or a vision, so you can say it when you are sitting to meditate and asking for greater clarity on an experience that you have had. This conjuration can be used to mirror back the attack that someone has directed at you.
So we have heard it said that one who lives by the sword falls and dies by the sword. If an individual is directing harm towards you and you use the Fons Alpha et Omega, this actually will redirect that energy back at the creator of that conjuration.
So in that sense, we must be very careful that we are not trying to use these prayers to harm anyone, but are keeping compassion for the ones who might be attacking us in our hearts whenever we are using them.
Belilin
Finally there is a song that we can use before bed, which many like, which can invoke the Angel Aroch. So Belilin is a song which we must sing as we are falling asleep, and the Angel Aroch will come to protect us and be with us.
All of these prayers that I mentioned in the slide are in A Gnostic Prayer Book, which is sold in the Gnostic Store on Glorian.org. As well, I have linked the Gnostic Store and the Gnostic Prayer Book in the resources section of this lecture, so that if you want to find copies of these prayers and have them all in one place to be able to memorize them, you can do so through that book.
So we will use these conjurations a lot in protecting our home and our body, and that is why I felt it was important to assign it to all of you as homework, that you really need to be memorizing them one at a time. And if you only have one memorized, go ahead and start using it all the time when you are praying. If you are walking around through the day and you are trying to strengthen your self-awareness, you can repeat that conjuration in your own head to give you strength of consciousness and to reject your own ego, your own defects within. 
Gnostic Pentagrams
Additionally, in our home we want to include pentagrams. So a pentagram can be drawn with a charcoal pencil, which is something that does not leave a permanent, lasting mark on the floor, if you are worried about that. We also have some wonderful pentagrams which are very affordably priced on the Gnostic Store as well. So I have linked the Gnostic Store in the resources section for those who would like to buy them.
A pentagram should be placed on one's altar, and I will talk a little bit more about the altar. In addition to the altar, we should have a pentagram above our bed where we sleep at night and we should also have a pentagram at the doorway of our bedroom. When you place a pentagram in a doorway, you want to put the two feet facing out of the door so that if you were to stand that pentagram up on its two feet, it would be standing in the doorway. If we mistakenly reverse that, then we would be summoning negative forces into the bedroom. So it's very important that when you place it on the floor, you have the two feet facing out of the bedroom and the top point facing into the bedroom to reject the negative forces. 
In addition to this, we have clear pentagrams, which you can place in windows. Some people as well like to place a pentagram in front of the doorway to their home. So again, with the two feet facing out of the doorway and the top point facing into the home. You can cover it with a rug if you are not wanting any visitors to see it. Clearer pentagram stickers can also be great for your car if you want a little bit of extra protection there.
A lot of those are optional, but the three main ones that we stress that Samael Aun Weor indicated are to have a pentagram on your altar, in the doorway of your bedroom, and above your bed. Personal Space and Altar
Now I recognize that not everyone has their own personal space in which they can be displaying pentagrams. In which case I advise you to do what you can with all of the practices and techniques and strategies that I am giving in this lecture, and if it is something that is not possible for you because of your relationship with your roommates or significant other, then choose other ways to protect yourself. You don't need to do all of these. I advise all of them as best practice for those who are able, but of course, I recognize that not everyone will have the opportunity to do so, and that's okay.
If you do choose to draw the pentagram with charcoal, again, it's important that in the doorway, you have the two feet facing out of the door. In addition to the pentagram we would like to create an altar. An altar is a space where we can pray and meditate, do our conjurations at night and this is where we can cultivate a lot of spiritual force. We can do runes there and practices, whatever we feel is our sacred practice in order to strengthen our connection with divinity. It is great to have an altar. This can be a plain table. It doesn't have to be something elaborate, but it is a wonderful thing to do if you have the opportunity. So to give you a little more context on this altar, we are going to read directly from one of the resources that I linked. Here are the Basic Elements for a Gnostic Altar: A Gnostic altar should be a table or stand of some kind covered with a fine cloth, usually white. Some even cover this with glass. While you can make the altar from anything humble and inexpensive, the best altar will be made from scented wood such as cyprus, cedar, sandal, etc. (On the altar you should also include) a copy of the Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled by Samael Aun Weor, and representations of the four elements.
For the element of water you can have “a bowl or a glass of water.” Keep this water clean. So you may need to refresh it over time.
To represent the air you can have “a feather,” and to represent the Earth, you can have flowers, a stone or something else of significance for you. Some people like to have a dish of soil. In addition, on one's altar, we would include “a pentagram” as was already mentioned, and we would use “perfumes, incenses, or scented oils.” I highly recommend that you use incense regularly. This draws a lot of positive forces into your home and it rejects negative forces. 
Essential Oils
So while we can of course use incense, if you are worried about the scent or you have a partner who does not enjoy the smell of incense, you can use essential oils. You can find a diffuser in which you can mix a few drops of essential oil with water and diffuse that scent through the home. Or you can of course put the essential oil directly on your skin in a small amount.
With essential oils, we recommend therapeutic grade. A lot of essential oils that are cheaper on the market have been diluted and are not pure qualities. So therapeutic grade is really the best that you can get when it comes to essential oils. 
Beautiful Images and Sacred Environments
In addition, when we are trying to cultivate a spiritual atmosphere in our home, we want to have images, sacred images, like images of the Buddha, Christ, or any type of religious or spiritual master that really inspires you. This can be really powerful, and these of course can go on one's altar. You can put other sacred scriptures like the Qur’an, the Bible, the Sutras.
You can put sacred symbols like the cross or the menorah, and sometimes people like to include a symbolic blade, sword, or knife to represent the psychological work: to cut through the illusions of our own ego. 
In addition, Samael Aun Weor wrote this about the home of Gnostic initiates:
The home of Gnostic initiates must be full of beauty. The flowers that perfume the air with their aroma, beautiful sculptures, perfect order and cleanliness, make of each home a true Gnostic sanctuary. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
This is from the Perfect Matrimony and in The Yellow Book, he again emphasized that:
Flowers, perfumes, symbolic pictures, and beautiful music contribute to creating an environment filled with wisdom and love. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Yellow Book
When we talk about beautiful music, we are talking primarily about classical music that elevates the soul, not popular music of nowadays.
Prayer to the Aloe
In addition to be able to protect one's home, there is a prayer that one can do with the aloe plant. Again, this prayer is written down in the Gnostic Prayer Book. I believe it is also in Igneous Rose.
So the prayer to the elemental fairy of the aloe vera plant is beneficial in order to protect against negative forces. Every Gnostic home should have an aloe plant. Use this prayer to invoke its assistance. Cross, thou art holy and divine. Sorcerers and witches withdraw from this home. Such persons who intend to arrive here, let it be known that I am with God. Sovereign God, set me free from treason and from ruination. Blessed be the most Holy Mary and the consecrated host. ―Gnostic Prayer
After you say the prayer, bless the aloe plant with the sign of the cross.
Elemental Magic of the Maguey
Similarly, there is a ritual for a maguey plant (Agave Americana) that is very powerful to cut one's ties with the Black Lodge and to be able to conjure or reject any forces from a direct attack, if you suspect that a person is attacking you internally, and that prayer can be found in the book The Divine Science: “White Magic and Black Magic” if you are interested in learning about that.
Black Mustard Seeds
Mustard seeds can be used to protect us from psychic attacks. So you can purchase online small tiny jars with a cork to put in the top, and then mustard seeds are available again from the Gnostic Store. You fill four little jars with mustard seeds and you place them in the four corners of your home where they will be able to create a sort of force field in order to protect you from psychic attacks. This can be helpful if you feel that when you are sitting down to practice or as you are falling asleep, you are being attacked psychically.
The Circle of Protection
And finally, the circle of protection is very powerful for protecting one's home and can be done every night before going to bed. If you are living in a home with other people, you can also perform the circle of protection directly around the room in which you sleep. If you get up in the middle of the night and you leave the circle for example to use the restroom, then come back in and draw the circle again before you go back to sleep.
So the circle of protection can be drawn by circling the room three times with a sword, which again is an item that some keep on their altar, a sword or a blade or with the sword of one's own imagination. So when I do this mantra, I will chant the mantra “Helion Melion Tetragrammaton” three times as I am imagining the fiery light circling around my room.
This mantra along with that entire practice can also be found in the Gnostic Prayer Book which is linked at the end.
Pentagram Medallions
Now to protect one's body, you can wear a pentagram. Pentagrams I have seen available in ring form and also in a form of a pendant, which you can wear around your neck. Those pentagrams have to be consecrated through a ritual that have linked again at the end in the resources, so you can find more information about that.
If you are interested in buying one of these metal pentagrams, we have some contact info for someone who makes them in seals of metals in the back of a gold pentagram, and you can contact us at help@chicagognosis.org if you are interested in that. However, if you are not able to buy one of these nicer pentagrams, then you can go and buy a simple silver or gold pentagram, and that should be helpful as well. 
Sulfur Powder
In addition to wearing a pentagram, you can put sulfur in your shoes. If you are going to a place, for example a bar or restaurant for a work event or a family event that you feel you need to be present, then you can put sulfur in your shoes, and this will help to keep astral larvae off of you and negative influences so that you will be able to stay cleaner, psychically-speaking, throughout that day. And of course each day, you might want to put sulfur in your shoes, especially if you live in a big city.
Spiritual Strength through Blessed Food and Drink
The Eucharist is a very powerful ritual which can be performed using bread and grape juice, as symbolic wine, every day after you finish transmuting your energy. So if you are a couple, you can perform this ritual after sexual magic, and if you are a single person, you can also perform this ritual after you are transmuting with pranayama. This is extremely powerful in awakening your consciousness. This ritual is actually invoking atoms of Christ to come into your system and to protect you not only from forces outside of you, but also within you. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and so that as well as linked in the resources section of this.
The Microcosmic Star
We have an excellent video which demonstrates how you can form the pentagram, also known as the microcosmic star, with your body to invoke the Holy Spirit, to reject negative forces. And this can help you to protect your physical body.
Juniper Berries
And finally, juniper berries are a way that we can protect ourselves from contagion. I think that in a time like this, this is particularly relevant. So one can chew on juniper berries after blessing the berries and praying that that they will protect one from any contagion. And so if you bless the berries each day, that's sufficient.
Sage
Another great way to purify your home and your body is with a spiritual cleanse. The most common is a sage smudge. You can see it pictured here on the background of the slide. The sage smudge can be bought on the Gnostic Store, in any metaphysical book shop, and even Whole Foods sells sage. So it is pretty common and it's a good way to come home at the end of the night, after being out and about in the city or at work, and to be able to pray the Conjuration of the Four and the Conjuration of the Seven while you bathe yourself in the smoke of the sage. So you can light it, begin to pray and bathe yourself in that smoke by moving the sage smudge around your body. You can put out the sage smudge in a small bowl of sand and then you can use it again the next day.
Camphor
Camphor is also an easy way to purify your environment. You can buy camphor incense sticks and you can burn them. This is a great purifying incense if you burn them around your home, whenever you feel that the energy is becoming a little bit too dense.
Rue, Sage, and Mugwort
A more powerful cleanse can be done with rue, sage, and mugwort. So these three herbs you can buy online or in a metaphysical bookshop. You would probably need to use a mortar and pestle to be able to grind them up into a powder. And from that point, you would use a charcoal censer, which is, usually in most cases, a small iron pot into which you can place a small hot burning charcoal. After a few minutes when the charcoal is heated up, you can place a little bit of the powder of the rue, sage, and mugwort mixture onto the charcoal. You can go around your home using the Conjuration of the Four and the Conjuration of the Seven, trying to move the smoke into the shape of a cross, in order to purify and bless your home.
I have heard it recommended that when you move into a new home, you can perform this cleanse for 14 days after moving in and then again every 14 days or every month, in order to keep the impurities out of your new home. Burning Sulfur
You can also burn sulfur if you are leaving for a few days. This is one of the most powerful cleanses. However, it is very dangerous to breathe sulfur in. So if you do burn sulfur in your home, make sure that you are going to be away for at least the rest of the day, if not for a weekend, and to keep a window open so that some of that smoke can get out of the home. If you breathe sulfur in directly, it is toxic and can harm your lungs. So be very careful with that.
If you would like to use sulfur in another way, you can take a little bit of sulfur powder, mix it into your warm bath, and bathe your body into that sulfur bath and be able to purify your body in that way. 
The Egg Cleanse
Additionally, there is an egg cleanse. What you can do is you can begin with one egg and you can use two or three if you feel that you have a lot of impurities to remove. You want to rub the egg around your body in circular motion. All the parts of your body: your head, your arms, or legs, etc. And as you are using this egg, you are praying to your elemental advocate to work with the element of the egg in order to suck all of the toxins and impurities out of your internal body, your astral body, your mental body, your vital body. And then that egg, which is very gelatinous, will actually suck up the toxins from those inner bodies, and you should throw the egg onto a fire to destroy those toxins and expel them.
Some Gnostics like to say that the louder that your egg explodes, the more toxins that you had within you, so that can be an interesting twist on that cleanse as well. So as you might have noticed with many of these cleanses, you are going to be using the Conjuration of the Four and the Conjuration of the Seven. If you don't have those memorized you can try to use another conjuration as well. 
Relationships and Environments
In addition to all of these practical steps that we can take to protect ourselves, we should also be very aware of our relationships and our environments, and what types of elements we are inviting into our environments and into our relationships.
So, natural and religious sites can have a pure psychic atmosphere. This is what I find when I visit very old churches or temples. For those who were at the retreat in the Buddhist temple, I am sure you're aware of the very elevated conscious atmosphere of that place. Nature as well. Some say that God's temple is nature, so that can be a way to purify your mind, to purify your heart, to get away from the city for a little bit if you live in a crowded place, and to be able to invite some of those higher vibrations into your life. Being aware that those environments are positive and healing and can be good places to visit on a regular basis. 
Conversely, places like bars, clubs, cinemas, cemeteries, etc., attract astral larvae. So astral larvae, we say, are like little bugs that will latch onto you and suck away your energy. They are attracted to a lot of Gnostic students because we are conserving so much energy through our transmutation practice. You can say that on the astral plane, we are glowing like candles with the amount of energy that we are conserving, and that is why the more serious you are in your chastity and in your practice, you may attract certain attacks. If you go to places like this because you are unable to avoid them for some reason or other, put sulfur in your shoes and cleanse yourself with sage or another form of a cleanse soon as you get home, if possible. This is the best way to try to keep your inner bodies clean if you are exposed to those types of places. But if possible, just try to avoid them altogether.
Additionally, we do not recommend seeing spiritualists, such as mediums, people who communicate with the dead, hypnotists, fortune-tellers, and people of that ilk. These types of people, even if they have good intentions, are many times letting in negative forces. Channelers as well come to mind. So while these people may think that they are communicating with positive entities and beings, talking a lot about Jesus or positive energies and things like that, much of the time, they unfortunately are being manipulated by other entities that are not so kind―entities that actually want us to fortify our desire rather than to become free from desire and to guide ourselves internally with the guidance of our own inner divinity. You don't want to put your own mind and consciousness under the influence of another person. So if you go to a hypnotist, that is exactly what you are doing. Hypnosis means sleep. So we don't want to go and give someone else control over our mind. We want to develop the strength of our own soul and consciousness so that we can go and investigate any questions that we have internally. With the help of our inner divinity, we can pray and beg to our Being to take us to find the answers that we need. I do not recommend going to places like that because interacting with individuals like this may expose you to negative entities, which can come internally and attack you. More commonly, you should use conjurations mentally if you feel attacked. So I mentioned before using the mantra Klim Krishnaya Govindaya Gopijana Vallabhaya Swaha, whenever I feel a little bit uneasy with my own ego manipulating me. But also, if you feel that someone else is trying to manipulate you, or confuse you, or dominate you, you can try to center yourself in your Being, and you can be able to use that conjuration to protect yourself. It is really, really important that you are not using conjurations out of fear or anger. We should be trying to use these conjurations out of compassion for the ones who are attacking us. People who are trying to control others many times think that they are doing what is right, that they are benefiting other people, and so we have to have compassion for their level of being and for the harm that they are causing. This individual who is attacking someone is cultivating a lot of bad karmic consequences, things that will come back to hurt them in the future. And so we have to really have compassion for them, and by protecting ourselves, we are actually preventing them from cultivating more negative consequences for themselves. In addition, we should try to develop relationships with morally sound people. So these don't have to be necessarily spiritual people. I know many people often complain that they don't have enough spiritual friends who are into this. What is really important is that you have people in your life who are living with integrity, who are honest, hard-working, exemplifying virtues that you can learn from. This is excellent. Sometimes people involved in spiritual movements can be some of the least virtuous people, so do not depend strictly on someone's point of view on spirituality to determine whether or not they are going to be a good influence on you. The best way to find out if someone is a good influence in your life is to meditate on the experiences that you have with them, and to see if they are someone who is really helping you to cultivate your own character and your own integrity, or if they are someone that is constantly dragging you into problems and negative states of being. There is a careful distinction there. If somebody makes you angry, that does not necessarily mean they are a bad person. It could mean that you just need to see your anger and that person is really helping you to see your anger, which could be a good thing. So meditation will reveal the truth. But especially, I cannot stress enough, that your intimate relationships with people, your romantic relationships, should be with people that you consider morally sound, ethical people, people who are living an ethical life style. The choice to have a sexual relationship with someone, which is considered by the law and by nature as a marriage, whether or not we call it a marriage, is a powerful connection to that person, which will have ramifications for future lifetimes. So the quality of the person that you have a relationship with is really essential to determining the future lifetimes that you will have. So if you are serious about overcoming suffering and elevating your level of being and your consciousness, you may have to make some hard choices about who you choose not to have in your life. Sometimes this means that you have to love people from a distance. We may have friends whom we care for but whom we know are not particularly good influences on us. So if we have friends who are, perhaps, always inviting us to bars and clubs, we could invite them to do something like go for a hike in nature or do something that is less negative. Or we may just have to distance ourselves from them. This doesn't mean to lose compassion towards them, but rather just to create an environment that is more conducive for our spiritual work. Obviously, this is a very personal decision and none of us can tell you how to cultivate your own relationships. This should be something that you are continually reflecting upon, meditating on, and asking for guidance from your inner divinity. Because it can be very difficult to lose relationships, but in the long run, if we have relationships that are really draining us energetically and bringing us into bad behaviors and we really don't want to live that way anymore, by changing our own level of being, by changing our behaviors, we can attract relationships that will guide us into the direction that we have consciously chosen to go. So just be conscious of your environments that you are traveling into and be conscious of your relationships that you have with other people. It's important when you are thinking about protecting yourself. Our Greatest Enemy
Finally circling back to that original quote, our greatest enemy, our greatest danger to ourselves, is our own mind, is our own ego.
We need to create a lifestyle of spiritual protection. The conjurations, the incenses, and the mantras: these are great tools for us to use, but what is most important in determining the circumstances of our lives is our karma. Karma is cause and effect. Whatever we do today, we will reap tomorrow. If you are practicing black magic, if you are going around trying to manipulate and confuse other people, trying to exert your own will on other people to get them to behave how you want them to, trying to dominate others to gain their respect, or force others to think the way that you think, even if it is about Gnosis or about spiritual topics, and you think that you are benefiting the other person, this is harmful. This is black magic. We must respect the free will of all people. If we are abusing others, this is the number one sign that we ourselves will attract that type of manipulation from other nefarious entities. So be careful about the way that you are living your life. Are you living ethically with remembrance of divinity? At the end of your day, ask yourself that question. “How did I live today? Did I remember my Divine Mother? Did I remember my Being? Did I live in a way with consciousness of what I was doing? Am I learning from my mistakes? Am I truly seeking to be virtuous and to sacrifice for others?” This is the best protection we can ever have. When someone is angry at you, when they are insulting you, and when you take in those impressions and you transform those impressions into understanding of the pain and suffering of the other person, and you respond with sweetness, with kindness, and with love, you have protected yourself from that anger. And who knows, you may have radically transformed that situation into a very positive relationship with the other person. So the best tool that we have is to be conscious, to be aware, to transform our situations. How do you respond to life's events? If life's events come at you and you have a lot of negativity about them, you have a lot of negativity about other people, then meditate on that. Of course, we all need to start where we are at, and it is not good to just repress your negativity and pretend to be kind to everyone. You should act kindly to everyone, and then if you are feeling like being unkind, meditate on what is causing that. Is it anger? Is it jealousy? Is it lust? What is driving your response to life's events? We should be less concerned and identified with what is going on outside of us and more concerned with what is happening inside of our psychological world. How are you feeling, thinking, and behaving towards other people? Conclusion
To conclude, I will say that we have a duty to protect ourselves. If we are really working on this path, it is because we believe that there is a way to really serve God and help humanity in the process. And so when other entities try to seduce us, to manipulate us, to attack us, we have a right to protect ourselves and we have a duty to protect ourselves, because the work that we are doing at this time is very important.
Many many people are suffering and the work that we are doing to become better human beings, to connect with divinity, to follow the will of God, the guidance that we are receiving internally, is very important, because as we see every day on the news, this planet is going through an intensifying period of suffering. So the more that we are doing to preserve our covenant with God and to work with the three factors to strengthen our consciousness, to live ethically, to follow the guidance of our own inner divinity, the better it will be for us, for everyone around us, and for humanity as a whole. So take spiritual protection seriously, and do what you can, but most importantly, know that by purifying your own mind through daily meditation and following God's guidance and comprehension, that is the best protection that you can have. At this point I will open it up for questions. Questions and Answers
Question: Thank you for the lesson. My question is with the sulfur. When you take a bath and or when you put it in your shoes, can you use it in your shoes every day?
Instructor: Yes. So what I what I usually do is, I put the sulfur directly in my shoe, and then I put a sock on. However, my husband puts it directly into the sock. I will say, though, if you wash your laundry, try to wash the sulfuric socks separate so that all your clothes don't end up smelling like sulfur. Question: Then, how much? Instructor: I just use a pinch in my socks. When you take a sulfur bath, again, you can use again just a pinch. If you feel like you are quite dirty, then you might want to add a little bit more, but it doesn't take a lot. Question: Can you do that with your hands? You can just pinch it with your hands? Instructor: Yes. To touch it with your skin is fine. You just don't want to burn it and breathe the smoke. That is when it's toxic. That's a great question. Question: So the first question is what is your advice or experience with salons, such as massages or waxing salons? Instructor: Personally, I do find that it's challenging to find a place where you feel that it's a good person cutting your hair or touching your body, especially with massage. People can definitely steal energy through massage, through touching you. In general, if you feel that someone around you may be trying to steal energy from you, don't let them touch you. Especially don't let them touch your back, your spine. That can be a way that people, black magicians, can steal energy. So yes, you have to be cautious with this. I have been able to kind of feel out different places and find places where I think the individual is, you know, at least a decent person, but if you go to a place and you feel very uncomfortable, then yes, you should probably not go back. I know my husband in particular doesn't advise massages. But let's say that you have an injury and massage therapy is going to be helpful for you, just look around to find someone that you don't get a bad feel from, is my advice. I know that's still a little vague, but really, the longer you have been practicing, you might have a better sense of people's energy. Question: Would having a pentagram at my door prevent demonic or possessed persons from gaining entrance? There's an unusual smell that comes about once or twice a week now for a month. It comes with headaches and pain elsewhere, but it goes away when I do the conjurations. Could this be a spiritual attack? Instructor: Yes, it could be a spiritual attack, especially if it's going away when you're doing conjurations. That can be a sign that there's some kind of entity or attack going on there. So, again, protecting your home in the ways that we talked about can be really important if this smell, this entity is coming into your home. Physically, a person may still be able to come into your home if they are a possessed person and you have a pentagram at the door. But energetically, it's going to prevent those demonic and possessed people from gaining entrance. Question: The sword. When you said to go in a circle. Does it matter the direction of the circle, you know in your room? Instructor: Yes, I would visualize the circle around the floor. You would want to go clockwise. So if you are visualizing that circle being drawn around the floor of your room, then you would mentally visualize that circle being drawn clockwise, or you would spin clockwise around the room. So turning towards your right around the room in that way. Question: If you are using our imagination, do you point if you don't have a sword, or just your imagination is fine? Just envisioning a circle, is that what you do? 
Instructor: You can point. In fact, if you'd like to use the pentagram with your hand, what you can do is you raise your hand, you raise your thumb, index, and middle finger up, representing the three upward points of the star, and you would put your ring finger and your pinky finger facing downwards.
Using this pentagram, you can reach out and draw the circle as you would with a sword or a blade. However, if you are in a position where you can't physically draw that because maybe other people are in the room, then absolutely, you can imagine a point of light with your imagination, moving around the room and creating a flaming circle or a circle of light, circle of protection around the room. You don't need to physically point in that case. Question: For egg cleanses, does it matter the source of the egg, for example a natural egg or a GMO egg? Instructor: I would say with most things, we try to go with a more natural, organic egg. But in this case, whatever egg you are able to get a hold of should be okay. Question: Is there a video on how to properly consecrate a pentagram? Instructor: No, there is not. So you simply have to read the article. The article here in Daily Life on the Path, that is going to list I think five or six different articles. For example, one about the Eucharist, one of them will be about pentagrams and how to consecrate a pentagram (See Chapter One of The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled). We have also had that question on the forum, and so you can log into the forum and read about that question as well. And you know if there is a certain point about that that you are not sure, then you can also log on to the forum and check. Question: If I am being attacked and I asked an elemental if it is an alignment with divine will to heal the attacker, is that considered black magic? Instructor: No. We can do healing rituals. As long as we have a center of compassion, then any conjuration in a sense is a healing ritual. If we are considering someone who is attacking us and we are really trying to reject the negative forces in them, we are really conjuring their ego, not their soul, so to speak. So we are really trying to help them, but this again shouldn't be done in a way that has a lot of hate. Question: I do not feel I have any enemies or anyone out to harm me that I am aware of. Should I still take all of these precautions? Also related, are there groups of black magicians who are attacking the general populace? If so, how common are these groups? Instructor: Okay, with the first question, I would say yes, and be conscious of if you notice a difference. If you take these precautions and you do notice that you feel a little bit more energized or more conscious of yourself, less susceptible to your own vices, then that could be a sign that there might have been some energy being drained away from you that you just weren't aware of. In addition, the cleanses are good for everyone. I would say, try doing a sage cleanse at least, once a week, or some form of cleanse once a week if you can, because in our world, anywhere we go, we are probably picking up astral larvae. So it's good to do that to protect ourselves. Are there groups of black magicians who are attacking the general populace? Yes. In fact, you know a common example of black magic is advertising, right? We are trying to get others to agree with our will. We want someone to buy our product, not because it will help them, but because we want their money. We see black magic all the time in cinema and on television and many places, when we see sexual degeneration or pornography, things like that. That is all tapping into the entire population's energy. And so I think we can see that it's pretty abundant in our society. Right now the Black Lodge has a lot of power in the physical world. This isn't a need for us to suddenly be afraid and paranoid all the time, but to just be aware that the work that we do to keep ourselves pure―and to not try to manipulate and control others, and also to think for ourselves, to follow our own inner conscience, our own connection to divinity―is very important, because there are not many people in the world you can trust. Even Samael Aun Weor said, “Do not follow me. I am just a signpost.” What we are trying to teach in this tradition is really to be reliant on our own inner divinity. But in order to connect with one's inner divinity, we have to strengthen that connection through the practices and the steps that we have outlined in many courses. Question: So are we not our own best pentagram? Instructor: So yes, the human body is the shape of the pentagram, and when we do the microcosmic star, which is linked spiritual protection with the microcosmic star right there, that video, you can see exactly how to make a pentagram with your own body. Question: So now mentioning cemeteries?… Instructor: This is an interesting question. So, sometimes cemeteries, because of the corpses and the decaying bodies, can attract a lot of astral larvae and negative influences. Certain groups do practices of black magic in cemeteries. They can just be not good places to hang out. However, of course, if we have a loved one in a cemetery and we would like to go see them and leave some flowers, you know, that is a very personal decision. I just mean maybe not hanging around in them, and using the sulfur in your shoes and purifying yourself afterwards, that can be a good practice. Comment: I have had my job and been at work like usual, and things were changing, and I know people are suffering, and things kept escalating, and I kind of had this little emotional meltdown at work, because I started feeling like they are going to come and get me and try to force me to take a vaccine, you know, like I started really freaking out about it, and my sister's really into all the conspiracy theories. It is not that I don't believe it, but I generally don't let it get to me. But some people were laid off and then I was thinking, “Oh my God, this is really going!” I mean, this is really serious, you know. Not that I didn't think it was serious, but... Instructor: It's hitting close to home now. Question: It's hitting close to home. Yes, that's true. And that's the one thing that sends me over the edge. I am just wondering, out of all the things that you mentioned, when you start spiraling out of control, like nothing does it for me better than the thought of like... can you imagine having a world where your vehicle or body to go back to divinity is, you know, ruined, because they are forcing you to take things that are toxic, that have mercury or aluminum, that can ruin your neurological functions? You know? Instructor: Samael Aun Weor said certain vaccines destroy the internal bodies. So this is a popular question. We have been getting this on the forum lately. Our best advice on the vaccines question is, sometimes you have to accept a lesser evil over a greater evil. Ideally, none of us would want to take the vaccines that have been contaminated, but in many cases, it would be impossible for you to get a job, or you know, if there is a public health requirement for us to protect the community, we have to accept vaccines. Regardless of our personal beliefs, we have to make a difficult choice there. Are we going to be able to support our livelihood depending on our profession? Are you able to avoid vaccines because your profession allows that or not? Because sometimes through our job, we do a lot of good for humanity, and it would be worse for us to kind of selfishly avoid the vaccine and then lose our opportunity to serve. But that doesn't mean that if we do choose to avoid vaccines that there aren't other ways that we can serve. It is a very personal choice, but that's our best advice we have given so far. Comment: To me, this is like a frontal black magic attack if I have ever seen one. Instructor: It is a good point that you are bringing up here, because I think as as we see more and more of this, we see that sentiment going around in society. Many people are confused. “What am I supposed to believe, and especially with politics and things like that?” This goes back to the earlier question about, are there groups of black magicians really out there trying to attack the populace? We can see that many of the structures in our society are centered around money, power, sex―all of these ways that people are continually manipulated, and in response to your question, I do not think that any situation or any crisis on this planet is unaffected by ego. The egos of people in power, the egos of people oppressed, the egos of everyone caught in the middle. So we have to be really conscious of ourselves, because while we go out there and we try to do the right thing, if we become consumed with negativity about what the people in power are doing, or all of these other horrible things that are going on, we become unable to help anyone. I, myself, am a pretty sensitive person, and there are many times when I weep at the state of humanity and how much pain and suffering is going on. And all of that we know has its root in ego. Until we can address the root of ego within ourselves, we will not be able to overcome ego as it manifests in our societies and in our civilization. First we have to conquer ourselves, and that can be very difficult. Sometimes it's easier to point the finger and to get upset with the way that others are behaving, but it's most important and most useful to start changing ourselves. And then we will cultivate more power and more consciousness to be able to make a change in society. I am by no means trying to blame anyone for getting upset with the way that things are in this planet. It is the worst on this planet that it has ever been, even in past root races like in Atlantis and Lemuria. It was never as bad as it is now. We have become extremely materialistic, turned against the true divinity so that even many religious institutions merely use divinity as a pawn for power, and they will be able to really take Christ and betray Christ in that way. More than ever, it is important that we find a way to protect ourselves from our own negativity, from the negativity of the world, and each day be conscious of what good we can do, in what good we can bring to others. With any type of controversy where we feel divided, who draws the line and who is right? God is right and God draws the line, and many times nature draws the line. For us, like I said, it is most important that we focus on understanding in us what is causing our reaction to those situations, but it is best not to seek a physical person to tell you what is wrong and what is right. When it comes to making your everyday decisions, yes, we try to make our best educated guess, but in terms of misleading information in the world, no matter which side of that debate that you fall on, there is a lot of misinformation. Even with the best intentions and the greatest intellectual knowledge, many people can really do a lot of harm, because they are rooted in a very materialistic view of the world and the way that things work. Science unfortunately has become dogmatic and quite separated from the spiritual aspect. And when we look just at the materialistic effects, the physical effects of certain things, we sometimes do not become aware of the internal, energetic, emotional, mental, and spiritual effects of those processes. So I advise you whenever you have to make a personal decision based on a controversy, rather than watching hours of YouTube videos or reading lots of news pages, or checking what your friends are writing on social media, the best thing to do is to meditate and ask your inner divinity to send you a dream or to send you a vision in meditation over the next few days to guide you on that. Question: You answered my question a bit earlier, but you do have all this information going on like a circus, and all those things, but when you say you should go meditate on it and go to your inner divinity, then that is extremely difficult though, because you have like all these aggregates. You know, you are trying to kill that part of yourself. I find it is easier to write first and then go into meditation and try to make it a bit easier for myself, because when you do meditation, you are kind of just jumping right off a cliff. My issue right now would be like the mask issue. I believe my side of the view is right. So is it better like to sacrifice your point and just go with other people on it? Or how would you differentiate that? Instructor: That's a great question. I am so glad that you asked, and of course, it is very difficult in the beginning. So you are talking about being able to write out your ideas, and I often do that. I have a spiritual journal where I write down what I am struggling with, and it helps me to kind of clear my mind and calm myself down, and see on paper the different elements in me that are getting frustrated or upset, and then entering meditation and reflecting on that. So that is a great idea. Sometimes the noble thing to do is to sacrifice one's pride and to do what everyone else is doing. And sometimes the noble thing to do is to do what you know to be right in your heart and not go with the crowd. So, of course, my advice to you is that only you can know what to do, and none of us can give you advice whether about wearing a mask or any other issue. I feel that it is most important for us, the ethical integrity of our action, regardless of what we do. What is most important is the quality of our heart. If we are doing something out of fear or out of pride, thinking we are smarter than others on either side, because everybody on one side says, “We are smarter than the people not wearing masks,” and then the people who are not wearing masks say, “We are smarter than the people who are wearing masks.” Regardless of which side we fall on, we have to recognize what is driving us. And that is something that we really only can find in meditation. So again, neither me nor any other physical person, whether in the news or YouTube or anywhere can tell you what is the right action for you. But I will say that sacrifice, when we talk about sacrifice in this tradition, sacrificing of one's own ego, is often painful. When Abraham went to the altar to sacrifice his son Isaac: can you imagine the tremendous psychological and emotional struggle that he was going through to do that? But he knew that that was what his inner God had commanded to him and he knew it to be right. Now, of course at the last moment, he was spared from making that sacrifice. When we sacrifice our own ego, in my experience, many times leading up to that action can be very stressful and painful and hard, but after the ego has been sacrificed, feeling joy and relief, and not understanding why that was so difficult. To give a basic example, let's say you are really mad at someone, and you know from your meditation and in your heart that the right thing to do is to go and apologize to them for how you acted. But you are mad. And it would mean: sacrifice your anger and your pride and what you think the other person should do for you. If you went and apologized, all the way leading up to that apology, you might really be struggling with pushing yourself. That self-control that I mentioned early on in the lecture is to do what is right, to overcome the temptation to be angry and to be cruel to this other person, and to do what is right, to humble yourself and apologize. But after you have apologized and your friend smiles and hugs you and is happy, you see how that situation was really of no value, as Samael Aun Weor says in his quote, and that overcoming your anger is such a greater gift than any action could ever be. Regardless of what physical actions we are taking, we need to be concerned with psychological integrity. For what motive are you doing that action? I am less concerned with what you do versus why you do it. If you are being driven by an ego, by a sense of self, which is a delusion and which is false, then that is probably a harmful action. But if you are being driven by your conscience, by your inner divinity, by doing what you know is right and beneficial for you and for others, then that is a positive action. Question: What is astral larvae? Instructor: Astral larvae, I kind of described it as a little energetic bug. And in fact, you can see them in the astral plane. They look like grubs and bugs, and they can basically attach to you, your astral body and suck energy out of you to feed themselves. So if you are in places that are filled with a lot of negativity, a lot of lust, a lot of greed, a lot of violence, these places would have a lot of these bugs sucking up the energy, because that is what they get drawn to. And in places like that, which we call filthy, energetically-filthy places, it is just a breeding ground for astral larvae. Question: Since Gnostics strive to see objectively, can Gnostics be on different sides of an issue, like needing a vaccine, but also may be needing a vaccine for our livelihood? Who draws that line and who's right? Instructor: Of course we can be on different sides of an issue, because as we are, we are striving to see objectively, but at this point we are caught between our own ego and our own confusion. It is said that when the gods want to punish humanity, they confuse them, and that is exactly what we see. We ourselves feel very confused. Our entire humanity is confused and arguing and fighting over many things, some things which don't really matter, some things which seem much more consequential. But again, I want to refer back to this quote towards the beginning of the lecture. Remember that everything passes away. That's the heart of it, even as painful as the suffering and the level of suffering on this planet right now, it will pass away. What we want to do is make sure that as we are living our lives and moving through it, we are taking this opportunity to take what's beneficial from a human existence, and that, we can obtain by comprehending ourselves first. As we come to know ourselves, we will be able to then see more and more objectively the outside world. But as long as we are not aware of our own internal states, which can confuse and manipulate us―the illusions of our ego―then how can we cut through the illusions of the external world? On any issue that you feel divided on, you can meditate. See what in you is trying to control you. Are you being controlled by fear that does not want the vaccine? By pride that says, “I am smarter and I am not going to fall for this trap”? Or conversely, are you being manipulated by fear that says, “I have to take this vaccine for my livelihood to be able to keep my job.” Much of the time it is fear. And so at the end of the day, what is going to be more important than whether we receive a vaccine or whether we don't receive a vaccine is going to be what have we done with the reaction that was created in us in response to that stimulus. So if the case is a vaccine or a certain take on what is going on with the coronavirus in our world right now, use that circumstance not to try to make judgments about what is the truth in the outside world, but use it as a circumstance to see “What is the truth of myself?” and “Can I use this as fuel for my own transmutation?”―to become a wiser and better individual. As II mentioned before, as horrible things as the Black Lodge can do and is doing in our society and to us as individuals, what is much worse is our own state of slumber and delusion. And if we don't clean up our own mind, wake ourselves up, and get rid of the illusions that are keeping us hypnotized and asleep, then we are sheep on the way to the slaughter, so to speak, in terms of any attacks from the Black Lodge. Question: I have two quick questions. The first is while you were talking, I felt inspired and I drew two pentagrams for myself for the bedroom and altar, and I was just wondering, because you specified how to have the pentagram at the at the bedroom door, is there a certain way to use it on the altar? How it should be positioned or to use it? Instructor: Yeah, that's a great question. I can't believe I missed that. Thank you so much. Of course, when we position the pentagram above our bed or on the altar, we might pin it to the wall against or upright above the altar for example, or prop it up on the altar. You want to make sure, again, that those two feet are facing down to the floor and that the top point is facing up to the ceiling. Okay? Question: Okay. The other question was in the Gnostic Prayer Book, I sometimes look at the healing prayers and there is the exorcism of salt that is performed. Two things on that one, because you mentioned how with the sword you use your imagination and use the fiery sword in your room. I often use my imagination for the exorcism of salt and seems like that's okay. Do I need to go put salt in a tray and get the alcohol and do it physically? Instructor: It's best if you can do it physically. Of course, you know fire indoors can be challenging for some people. I myself bought a small bronze pan that was relatively inexpensive, where I can put a little bit of alcohol so that when I light the salt on fire that it doesn't get out of control. But of course, as I mentioned before, I recognize that not all of these things are possible for everyone, and when we do it with sincerity in our heart and our imagination, that's better than not doing the ritual at all, if you understand what I mean. Question: Is there a certain type of alcohol? Instructor: I use rubbing alcohol. Audience: Okay, cool. Thank you. Instructor: Actually, this reminded me of another point. You know, with my first altar, I wanted to put up some pictures of sacred images, sacred masters that inspired me, and at the time being a very poor student, I actually went to the school library where I was able to print and print off those images and just tape them up to the wall. So if there are ways like that, that you can find a way to make your home personalized and inspiring for you, and really bringing divinity's presence into your home, that can be great. It doesn't have to be going all out and spending hundreds of dollars on these different steps that are mentioned. Just do what you can and bring your own soul into it, because the soul has a beauty and an art to it that the mind could never have. Question: Is there a link to nicer pentagram necklaces? Instructor: No, unfortunately, but I will send you the email here: help@chicagognosis.org. Just email us and we will get that information to you if you are interested in the pentagram. Resources and References
2020 is a very strange year for humanity, which very few could predict the consequences and results that are affecting everyone. Our politicians, our governments, our great sages of philosophy, of law, of spirituality, while we respect these individuals, at the same time, not even they could predict the intensity and the trauma that we find afflicting humanity. But the reality is that while on a global scale, we are experiencing great sufferings, the truth is that it should not surprise us, as ironic as that might seem, because humanity ignores a very fundamental law of nature, which we are finding is being fulfilled with exactitude today.
It is the law of cause and effect. Every action has a consequence. What I do as an individual affects humanity and vice versa. In the east we call this law karma, which is not some type of blind law where “you are going to get what you deserve.” It is an infallible, immutable law that every action we produce has some type of impact. There are consequences to behaviors that are either upright and pure, or conditioned and filled with suffering. Humanity today ignores the causes of its current position, and, as we began the meditation, it sometimes takes a great trauma, conflict, wars, violence, pandemics, political disputes, police brutality, racial violence, in order for people to really begin to want to ask this question about why we suffer, about why we are in pain. The reality is that there have been beings like Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, prophets, messengers of the divine, who knew from their own experience the trajectory of humanity, and how certain actions produce consequences of great significance. While this is a law that has governed the rise and fall of societies, in truth this should raise a very profound question for ourselves: how do we produce suffering? Why do we suffer? What are our actions that produce this mess that we see today? Rather than blame the government, the negligence of bureaucracy, of politicians, of political parties, it is better to be practical. How do we in a moment-to-moment basis, in our day-to-day existence, produce suffering, not only for ourselves but for others? Humanity is blind. People ignore this law, that when we act with desire, with conditioned states of being, we become afflicted. Whether one believes in any particular religion or faith does not really matter, unless we look at the facts of why there is so much conflict today. So, sadly, despite the efforts of many messengers, as we mentioned, to teach people how to change, how to alter the trajectory of humanity, their essential message, which is universal, has been adulterated, has been sterilized. They all taught that there is a way out of suffering, a path that in accordance to the religion or the tradition, is distinct to the form of a culture. But, essentially, the message is the same. While it is discouraging to look at the news, the reality is that there is great cause to be inspired, because there is a method and a way to overcome all of this, whether on a collective scale or on an individual scale, which is more important. We have been very blessed. There are methods and instructions and teachings that can really change us, and it does not require any belief. Through experimentation, through practice, through verification from experience, we can lessen our suffering and have a clarity and an insight by which to help others. This science is meditation. To be specific, meditation is not a technique. It is not spacing out or entering into a state of relaxation. All these [calming the body, heart, and mind] are preliminary. Meditation is a state of being, a state of consciousness that is not conditioned at all, that knows how to see and perceive life, reality, in a state of clarity, precision, understanding, with wisdom, with intelligence, with love. This is the essential quality you find in all the great masters of humanity, from any religion, who embody this ideal. They all taught in their synthesis how to access the essential nature of our consciousness, because right now, the reason we are afflicted is because we have many desires, many beliefs, that are split. It is a fracturing. We are fragmented, and if you don’t believe me, we can simply perform a practice in which we examine a moment in our day. Perhaps we have a conflict or a trial, a chaotic moment, in which we feel that our mind, our heart and our body are torn in many directions. The reality is we do not have a singular purpose of will, of direction, because perhaps somebody criticizes us at work, or we simply watch television to see what is going on in the political world, and we have many reactions that emerge in a single instant. We may be filled with anger, the thoughts of resentment towards a certain person. We may feel fear and pulled towards fight or flight, possibly even despair. This is a moment in which we can see multiple reactions, multiple states of conflicted wills. All meditative traditions teach if you want to enter a profound state of serenity and understanding, your will has to be one, perfected, sharp, without any type of obscuration or filter. We call that conditioned sense of self, or desire or will, ego. That is the Latin term for “I, me, myself.” Meditation teaches us how to look at what we are, who we are, without judgment, without labeling, without prejudice, but simply, look at the self, at these different wills, these impulses.
The Universality of Meditation
Meditation has been known by many names. भावना Bhavana in Sanskrit means “mental development” or “becoming.” भव Bhava, in Buddhism, we hear भावचक्र Bhavachakra, the wheel of being, which is a map of different states of consciousness within Tibetan Buddhism especially, which has its symbolic representation in the West in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, which we will talk about today.
We have the term ध्यान Dhyan or Dhyana which means “to see, to perceive.” This is where we get words like 禅 Chan Buddhism in Chinese or 禅 Zen in Japan. Contemplation in the early tradition of the church fathers was known by the Latin term meditatri, meditation, contemplation. Amongst the Sufis of the mystical tradition of Islam, they refer to it as fikrat: serene reflection, serene perception, which is the synthesis of meditation. Meditation is Direct Experience
A lot of people think that meditation is simply being calm. It is a necessary step and a beautiful thing when we have a state of equanimity and stillness that is so deep that we rest from thought, from emotion, and from impulse, from the body. That is the groundwork by which you can really enter the highest teachings of meditation, which is a state of perception, to receive information about a given phenomenon, whether it be from a scripture, a book, about reality, about ourselves.
That state of reflection, of gaining new knowledge, that aha moment, of understanding, has been known by the term witnessing amongst the Sufis. In Islam they have a very beautiful teaching in their doctrine that is very misunderstood. They pronounce what is called the Shahada (الشهادة). In order to become Muslim, you say: لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ ٱللَّٰهِ
In reality, the Arabic term, شهادة Shahada means to witness: مشاهدة mushahada. It means to see divinity, which is not outside, but inside. To bear witness of something, like in a court of law, you have seen it, you have verified it, you have experienced it, and therefor you have no doubt. There is no belief. There is no ambiguity. There is no conflict of interest. We simply know, and therefore if we bear witness that there really is God, and Krishna is His prophet, Buddha is His prophet, Moses, and many masters like Jesus, were His prophets, it is because we have seen it for ourselves, within.
So to really understand meditation, of course, we first have to relax, that is the first step. But it is much deeper than that. We will talk about these stages themselves. 
But it can be very difficult now, in these times, especially if you live in Chicago, which is where I am from, where literally you see all sorts of violence being perpetuated throughout the country. We see the state of different cities and countries that are in uprising. They are afflicted with great injustices, whether material and even psychological. It is easy to say we really live in unprecedented times, but the reality is that “there is nothing new under the sun,” to quote Solomon from the Bible. Everything repeats. Life is cyclical. Habits are ingrained. The reality is that while these crises that is afflicting this planet are intense and becoming more severe, as I said, it should not surprise us that this is happening.
If we examine our mind, and if we are very sincere, we realize, with great discomfort, that we have many elements, psychologically speaking, that are destructive. We may not believe that, but the question is: have we looked inside of ourselves to examine our own anger, our own fear, our own pride, our own avarice?—qualities that we like to externalize and blame others of possessing in abundance, but in reality, if we are sincere, we see that we have that inside. That can be very disconcerting, very uncomfortable, but that is the reality. Humanity, you can see according to history, operates in cycles. There have been many plagues that have afflicted humanity, whether in Europe, whether influenza. There have been many times in history in which diseases have sprouted and killed many people. But we have the arrogance today to believe that somehow, we are special, that this has never happened before. While this is a terrible reality and does not, in any way diminish or devalue the suffering of people, it is a reflection of a cosmic law. In Buddhism we call it संसार Samsara: cycling, returning, repeating. While this happens on a global scale, in our daily life, which is a snapshot, a microcosm, a picture of humanity itself, we find that we have habits and behaviors and ways of being that we repeat. This is something that we should examine, that we should question. Self-Governance is Real Freedom
Governments have always tried to fix these problems, but they have always failed. The reality is no government, no institution, can change the individual. To quote Krishnamurti, we have to govern ourselves. If we as an individual being were to follow laws of ethics, of compassion, of kindness, of tolerance, of patience, then society would reflect that. But we find that our political institutions and governments smother the problem. They do not know or teach the way for the individual to change, for there to be real equity in humanity.
I would like to read for you an excerpt from a book by Samael Aun Weor, who is the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition. The Greek term γνῶσις gnosis means “knowledge,” and as we are explaining meditation, it is knowledge from experience, without deviation into belief or theory. He wrote in a book called The Great Rebellion about the nature of genuine freedom, what this means for our meditation practice. I will read for you at length: The meaning of freedom is something that has not yet been understood by humanity. 
Freedom, a lovely word, a beautiful term: so many crimes have been committed in its name! (Think of the French Revolution, at least one million people were killed in that event alone.)
So this sense of self we mentioned, ego, is a condition, a shell, that traps our real potential. There is more to us than our language, our names, our culture, our customs, our habits. The essential nature of our being is consciousness, which is altruism, love, happiness, philanthropy, patience, etc., which is the opposite of the self.
Understanding the myself, "my persona, what I am," is imperative if we sincerely wish to attain freedom.
It is very easy to see that we are a slave to what other people think. If they say something negative about our appearance, our habits, our behaviors, we react with anger, with resentment, with pride. It means that any person can push our button and make us react exactly as they want. However, if you comprehend in yourself your own anger and eliminate it, you have serenity. This is why beings like Jesus, when he was being tortured, horribly crucified, was able to say with love, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)
While the "I" exists, the consciousness remains imprisoned. Escaping from that prison is only possible through Buddhist Annihilation (it’s a term that means the dissolution or) dissolving the self, reducing it to ashes, to cosmic dust. —Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion
This is symbolized in many traditions, such as Jesus being on the cross in his Passion, to die to what is impure so that he can be resurrected as a soul, as a perfected being. So, while he literally existed in the past, it also represents something allegorical for us in this individual work of meditation.
The liberated consciousness, devoid of the "I," absolutely absent of ego, without desires, without passions, without cravings and fears, directly experiences true freedom.
And in synthesis we can state:
In life, the only thing of importance is a radical, total and definitive change. The rest, frankly, is of no importance at all. —Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion, “Meditation” Genuine Spirituality is Based on Facts
So meditation teaches us how to gather that knowledge so that we can really go deep into our psychology and to change in a real way, a permanent way, a lasting way. In today’s era we live, we can say, in a period of information. We can find knowledge about any type of study on the internet alone. But it is also true that we live in an era of misinformation. While we have access to knowledge we have never been privy to before, we still continue to be confused.
It is ironic, right? We have more knowledge and more information than we have ever possessed, and yet we are more conflicted, more divisive, and in more suffering than we have ever been. The reality is we need to develop a type of consciousness that has to do with wisdom and not knowledge. Intellectual knowledge is necessary to a point. What matters is the quality of our heart, our ways of being, and so in our studies of meditation, we develop our knowledge of ourselves. We call it gnosis, experiential wisdom about the causes of suffering. Of course, it has nothing to do with theory, with beliefs, with concepts, because we can think that we are a certain way, but if you observe in a very difficult moment of life, the facts emerge. Right? I am sure we have all had an experience where somebody said something really negative to us, or we had a very traumatic moment in which we acted in a way that we did not like. We later reflected and said, “How did I think, feel and behave that way?” Those are the facts. Those are the concrete experiences that show us what we can work on, so we can really develop altruism and compassion and serenity: all these virtues that are really beautiful and our true nature. This is why no amount of theory or belief can change anyone. Gnosis is lived upon facts, withers away in abstractions, and is difficult to find even in the noblest of thoughts. —Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic 
I know that a lot of people, especially approaching many of the world’s events of today, have a lot of conspiracies about what is going on, but rather than focus on any type of external phenomena, it is better if we ask the question, “How does our mind conspire against us?” So, I love this image of a hand holding up a puppet or puppets, which we can associate with either political party or whatever anyone believes, but the reality is that if we have ego, and our government and politicians have ego, then obviously there is going to be fights and conflict, and no type of harmony negotiated at all. Our mind needs to be free of any concepts about life, but rather to just examine with our soul.
Samael Aun Weor states the following in Igneous Rose: There is the need to liberate the mind from every type of school, religion, sect, political party, concept of mother country, flag, prejudice, desire, and fear. There is the need to liberate the mind from the process of rationalization. There is the need to change the process of rationalization for comprehension. —Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
Comprehension is very different from thinking. You do not necessarily have to label anything with the intellect. You simply know it, like you put your hand on a hot stove; it gets burned. That is a form of gnosis, of knowledge, that if you do that again you get hurt, and then you later think “That was very painful.” So that is the mind. The mind is slower than our other capacities as a consciousness. So, there is a very stark difference there.
Freedom has to do with transforming our internal state in the moment, where we are at here and now. This is why all meditative traditions teach mindfulness, awareness, watchfulness: to gather data, to look at the facts of our own behaviors and not to conceptualize anything, but to simply look. It does not require thinking there, and that is how we cut away from the abstractions, from the philosophy, from the theology, from the theories, and we get to what is practical.
Ashtanga Yoga: The Eight Steps of Meditation
So we will talk about, in synthesis, what meditation is really about, what it involves. This is from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, who was a great master of meditation. In synthesis we have eight profound steps. It is better said if we call them principles. It does not mean that, like a check list, you are going to go through each one: “First I need you to do this, followed by this step, and then next” in a mechanical way. These are very living things, principles, qualities of being, which if you follow in sequence and are really diligent about establishing them in your life, you will find that you will have a great clarity by which to understand any problem that you are suffering and the ways to change it.
Yamas: Restraints
The beginning is yama. These are Sanskrit terms. Yama means “restraint.” It means to restrain the mind. So you are at work or you are with a friend, and someone says something very negative, maybe even political (obviously there is a lot of debate going on today), you feel anger come up, thoughts of “You should not think that! You should not say that” or whatever reactions we feel in that instant, and if we restrain that impulse—not repressing it, not hiding it, not judging it, but simply with your attention direct it in yourself—you see it for what it is, and that if you really act this way, to speak these words of anger, is obviously going to make the other person angry.
In the moment you restrain yourself, you do not act on that behavior, because it is going to create conflict, perhaps even split friendships, cause divorces, and many other problems. Restraint is the beginning. First: retraining your egotistical reactions to life with your consciousness, and that is a state of comprehension in which you see, “If I act as a soul on this lower animal desire, it is going to create problems.” Niyamas: Precepts
But that is not enough. We have to follow what is known as niyamas, precepts. In every meditative tradition and any religion, they teach you: be kind, be patient, be compassionate. Forgive your neighbor. Put other people’s needs first before your own. Show philanthropy. Accept when you are wrong with humility. These are all precepts and virtuous qualities that you find in every scripture, without exception.
It is not enough to restrain bad behaviors. It is necessary to enact good behaviors. This is something only you can judge in yourself, moment by moment. You can memorize the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, the New Testament, the Old Testament, whatever scriptures inspire you, but knowing that knowledge of virtue does not mean you are enacting it. So the knowledge is different, but the application of it is wisdom. I know many people that approach meditation, and they become very morbid because they see a lot of negativity within themselves, and they suffer and they want to get out of it, but they are not reflecting on the virtuous qualities of their consciousness, of their Being, of their divinity. So it is important not to reflect just on the bad, but to contemplate your virtues, those profound ethics of the soul. Asana: Posture
When you have really worked hard at developing restraint and following these precepts in your actions, your asana becomes perfected. It is easy to see if you act on anger and you drain your mind and your heart, deplete your body of energy from getting into an argument, it is very difficult to sit. You cannot sit still. You cannot relax. Your body is tense, filled with pain, discomfort. This is why yama and niyama are essential. If you want your body to be able to obey you and relax at will, you have to learn to act ethically.
So it is important when you are practicing meditation that you pick an asana that works for you. It does not have to be full lotus, half lotus. If you are that flexible, great. Personally, I am obviously more of a western style person. I sit in a chair. You can even lie down on your back if you have the stability of attention not to fall asleep, because that is the important thing. Your body can relax but your consciousness is awake, is vigilant, attentive. 
Pranayama: Energy Work
Once you have found your posture, you can work with energy. In our tradition, we have many exercises to work with energy. Energy is essential to life. We find many forms within our body. If you have studied Hinduism or yoga, they teach you all about the chakras, which are vortices or wheels of vital force that circulate in a subtle form in our body. In our glands, there is energy that flows, and there are certain practices you can use, whether they be through prayer or sacred sounds called mantras. You vocalize or you pray. You can work with energy in your body, circulate it, get it flowing, so that those channels of force, like the chakras, open. Then you can have greater stability of mind, since it helps you to concentrate, helps you to focus.
Everything we do in life, there is energy involved. “Wherever we direct attention, we expend creative energy,” says Samael Aun Weor, the founder of our tradition. So if you have no energy there, if you waste it on anger and pride, and lust especially, desire, you have no energy by which to work. Your consciousness is depleted. You cannot drive your car. You mind will be dull, will be out of fuel. This is why in every level and moment of our life we seek to conserve energy, conserve emotional energy, conserve mental energy, conserve vital energy, in all forms. Pratyahara: Withdrawal
In this way when you have energy, your mind will start to calm, and this is where the crux of meditation begins to really unfold. We call it pratyahara. It means “suspension of the senses,” “to withdraw.” So you can be seated. You can be in a meditation posture. You can work with energy itself, and in those moments you start to find that, with profundity of application and will, you start to withdraw your mind, your senses, from the external world.
Everything goes inside. It is like the flow or ebb of a river that is going towards one source and then the rest dries up. You just focus on your interior. You forget the world. Many people do not get to this point. They do not get past the body. There is an itch, a discomfort. You want to move. You are in pain, and the reality is that you have to forget the body is even there if you really want to go profoundly into meditation. Forget the body. First take care of it. Treat it well. Relax, and when you are really working with your energies, you do not pay attention to anything outside. You go within. There is a stillness there, which, when it is really profound, is the fulcrum by which meditation is experienced, the state of understanding. Dharana: Concentration
When there is silence of mind, when you withdraw from the senses, you can really concentrate on something. These are the preliminaries of meditation that get really interesting. So when your senses are calm and you are relaxed, you can direct your attention at one thing.
Even at this stage there seems to be a lot of difficulty for people, because our mind is all over the place. We are thinking of many things. We are distracted. We have associative thoughts: good, bad; yes, no. We think of a friend that we talked to earlier in the day and what they said, and that brings on a whole discussion in our mind, and then our mind is just replaying the day, but it is foggy. It is dull. There is no clarity or crispness there. Real concentration knows how to look at one object, focus, and not get distracted. In many traditions, they teach you how to take a stone or a candle, to observe a flame or to do a mantra, a sacred sound, and just focus on that one thing at exclusion of everything. If you are sincere, in the beginning you find you cannot focus on that object. Your mind starts doing other things, so you got to gently refocus yourself. Bring it back to that one object of concentration. I suggest that when you begin a meditation, whatever your focus is, stick to it. If it is just to concentrate on the candle flame, just do that one thing. Then the trick is when you get distracted, bring yourself back. It is not forceful. It is not violent. You are not gagging the mind. You are gently redirecting your attention, to the focus. The Buddha Shakyamuni stated that if you forget yourself a thousand times and you remember a thousand times to return to the practice, it means that you have practiced really well. So when you are able to concentrate on one thing, then you can really enter meditation itself. Dhyana: Meditation
So all this is just preliminary. Meditation is when you are able to extract information about that object. For example, maybe you are concentrating on a scripture you read, or a book. You want to understand a certain verse or line. You read it. You reflect on it. You enter the stages of meditation. You relax, withdraw, and concentrate on that meaning. In meditation you can have experiences, in which the senses are shut down, but internally, as a consciousness, you experience, such as in dreams, different forms of knowledge that are inaccessible to the senses. Some people call it lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, dream yoga, astral projection. It is when your body goes to sleep, but you as a consciousness are fully lucid, and so you abandon your physicality and you enter the internal worlds, your inner psyche.
Then you can start to get knowledge about things that certain prophets wrote about, that they hinted at, but not many of them really spoke openly about the meaning. That is how you really get knowledge. That is real wisdom. In that state, you can talk directly with divinity just as I am talking to you—nothing vague there, nothing amorphous, nothing ambiguous. It is a clean, clear, pristine state of being in which you can gain information. Samadhi: Ecstasy
Even beyond meditation there is one more step. This is the synthesis of everything. When your consciousness is fully lucid and focused, as receiving information, you can escape from the limitations of your mind and any type of conditioning that has kept you in suffering and pain, etc. You escape. You get out of it. That consciousness gets extracted from the ego.
I’m sure you are familiar with the story of Aladdin and his lamp. That lamp is your ego and the Genie, the Djinn, an Arabic term for spirit or an enlightened being, you could say, is your own wisdom, your consciousness. You break the lamp. You destroy the ego permanently, then the Genie is free. You can perform miracles. This is where you get figures like Moses and many prophets performing supernormal things, because they liberated their consciousness from conditioning. They are able to control nature even. Very powerful and beautiful.
The Tree of Life: A Map of Being
But there is more than just examining those eight stages. There are a lot of principles involved. When you are having those experiences with divinity, you can study what is called the Tree of Life.
On the right you see a map of ten spheres. From the top you have the most rarefied states of being, which are very divine. Notice in this glyph you have three trinities. Kabbalah in Jewish mysticism, this map, this Tree of Life, is really an expression of us and our totality, in the multidimensionality of our being. It is a road map for who we are and where we are at and where we need to go. So any experience in meditation can be mapped by any one of these spheres. On the top trinity we have qualities of being and consciousness that are extremely divine, beyond our comprehension at this level. It has to do with what religions call Father, Son, Holy Spirit in Christianity. In Hebrew we call it כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah, which means “Crown,” “Wisdom” and “Intelligence.” This is the supremacy, the wisdom and intelligence of divinity, which is inside our true nature, liberated, and is with us here and now. We just do not perceive it because we have so much other conditioning that we see represented by these lower spheres. Beneath that we have חֶסֶד Chesed, גְּבוּרָה Geburah, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, or you could say “Mercy,” “Justice,” and “Beauty.” We could say is our inner divine spark, our inner Buddha we could say, our divine soul and our human soul, our human will. It is the beautiful action of a perfected being, and we are really a part of that. Part of us, known as the consciousness, emanates from this sphere, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, and descends down into the lower conditioned states of being: נצח Netzach (Victory), הוד Hod (Splendor), יְסוֹד Yesod (Foundation) and מלכות Malkuth (Kingdom). מלכות Malkuth is the physical world that we live in. יְסוֹד Yesod is our vital energy, sometimes known as the etheric world, the vital world. It is where we have all the forces that animate our body. If you study the Kirlian camera, amongst Russian scientists, they even take pictures of people, stones’ and animals’ aura. So the vital force is יְסוֹד Yesod, which is the aura, the living being. We have הוד Hod which relates to our emotions, נצח Netzach relating to our mind. This is a beautiful map of meditation because it teaches us that if our will power, our consciousness, is conditioned by thought, by feeling and by desire, instincts, it means that we are attached, not only to our physical body, but even to lower realms of being. The map that is below is called the tree of death. It is the shadow of the Tree of life. It is known as the hell realms. So you can call this map a reference point of external realities and even our internal states. There is a relationship there, different dimensions of expression and being. Above we have superior levels. Below we have inferior ones. In our moment to moment awareness, from our birth to our death, we have an opportunity in this instant in which to ascend. This is why we do practices of concentration, prayer, meditation. All these things help us to purify this will, that is at the center of the Tree of Life, so that we can obey and follow our own divinity within. This sphere תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, in Hebrew meaning beauty, is the essence. It is the beauty of our soul that knows how to act uprightly. But unfortunately for us, we are conditioned by negative thoughts, negative feelings, and negative impulses, desires. So we have many books and courses that explain this glyph in great detail and I invite you to study them. But in synthesis, this is just the map of who we are and where we need to go and what we need to do. Types of Meditation
There are also two very profound principles we have touched upon. In some schools they talk about stabilizing and analytical meditation and often refer to both of them as complimentary.
When you are working to concentrate your will on one thing, you are learning to stabilize the mind. You are developing serenity. You are developing focus and equanimity. It is when you can look at something clearly without wavering at all. We call that faculty, in the Gnostic tradition, concentration. In Buddhism they call it shamatha. Amongst the Sufis they call it silence, in which your mind does not talk. I am sure when we practice meditation today you probably experienced a chain of thought and thinking, even at a very subtle level. When you learn to go deep, you can enter states in which there is no thought involved and you are able to focus on one thing without distraction. That can stabilize our attention and there are many practices to do that. But there is another skill we need to develop to really enter meditation. We call it imagination. Imagination is the ability to receive non-physical imagery. So when I related to you certain examples, talking about having inner experiences, like you have dreams, those are forms of images that exist in your mind, in your interior. They are real. They exist. The problem is that we tend to go through that inner world without any awareness of it and not discriminating what is really real or conditioned or unconditioned by our own egotism. It is easy to see that we have dreams of hatred and violence. We are projecting our own mind into that world. But if you learn to pay attention and clarify your perception, you can perceive those worlds, that Tree of Life, as it is, in its real, fundamental expression. When you are able to imagine, amongst concentration, the ability to visualize certain images, you develop the full dynamism and potential of the consciousness. So imagination in us tends to be very conditioned. If I say, “imagine an apple” (snaps fingers) you can see it. It is not physical, but it is internal. That same capacity, when it is developed intentionally, whether you take a candle and visualize a flame or something really difficult and ornate, like a Buddhist mandala or painting, something very intricate, that develops the capacity of the consciousness to perceive with great depth, with great width and clarity. In Buddhism, they call that faculty, Vipassana. Amongst the Sufis it is insight. When you combine those two faculties, concentration and imagination, you can really enter meditation. So we need both. We need the ability to stabilize the consciousness so that it is calm, but then we also need the ability to see, and that is insight. When you combine the two, you gain knowledge. That is how you really enter the higher stages of real religion, of mystical experience. I know these are very synthetic principles. They are very deep and you could basically spend a lot of time studying what these practically entail. We have a lot of resources that you can research on your own. We have courses. We have books that talk about all of these principles in depth. I wanted to just survey them and provide an outline, so that you have a picture of where to start. Resources
So whether you are interested in learning basic concentration or equanimity, you can study courses like Meditation Essentials and Meditation without Exertion on Glorian.org. We also have some courses based on Gnostic principles, Gnostic Meditation, and even Sufism; we are giving a course about meditation taught within the Sufi teachings, the mystical teachings of Islam [See Sufi Principles of Meditation]. These outline for you how to develop concentration, serenity and insight.
We also have some books you can study as well to learn the basics of self-reflection: Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology and The Great Rebellion by Samael Aun Weor are perfect for this. You can learn the basics of how to examine, observe yourself, so that you can begin to gain knowledge and enter the path that is culminating in meditation. You can also study The Elimination of Satan’s Tail and The Revolution of the Dialectic, as well. These are very profound books, very practical. If you have any questions, I invite you to ask them. Questions and Answers
Question: Being in a time of an election year and all these things going on and we really need to separate ourselves from all these different concepts, is the goal to be passive with all this stuff and not be involved, and sit back and observe what is going on in the world and not get identified with it?
Instructor: Sure. I would state the important thing is not to identify psychologically. Whatever a person believes politically, that is a personal choice. But the important thing is to approach this situation with clarity. It does not mean we necessarily have to belong to any party, either one or the other, or take a middle stance. You know personally, I do not really get involved in politics, because you see the type of behavior that is being propagated, and the confusion and the anger and the resentment that people feel. I think the important thing to remember is that regardless of anyone’s political beliefs, in these studies we like to be more effective. Regardless of anyone we vote for or who you favor or whatever we believe in, the important thing is that we have a good heart. We change our own psychological states, because the world is going to be what it is going to be. I know we like to think we have a lot of agency in our political system, but I think a lot of people are realistic in saying that these things are going to happen regardless, because you see the state of humanity. People on an individual scale are not changing, and so, what result can we expect? And that is the fundamental irony of people, being shocked by what is happening, because this is just the consequence of wrong action on a global scale from everybody. I invite us to really reflect upon our own psychological states, because that is something we can change. That is something we can alter and remedy. But the direction of this country and humanity, in a sense, we have to be humble, to accept there are certain things that we cannot change, but there are certain things that we can do. That is better evaluated on an individual basis. Question: From what I have learned through time from this Gnostic tradition, I have noticed that sexual alchemy is not the central practice—meditation is. Alchemy is more like the foundation of a practice. So the question is: Buddhist and Hindu traditions are the only religions that teach how to meditate. Why have the religions in the West not spread this light? Why did Jesus teach only how to believe in him and why did Muhammad teach only how to believe in Allah? And Moses mainly taught how to follow laws and nothing about meditation. Why is that? Instructor: That is a good question. The reality is that they all taught it. If you look at the different traditions that developed in their original sources, their scriptures, the reality is they all taught the same thing. You study the Sufi teachings of Al-Qushayri, Al-Hujwiri, Rumi, many other Muslim mystics, they all, even Ibn ‘Arabi especially, they all teach meditation, but maybe not as explicitly as we find today. The path of Jesus is the path of meditation, especially. He taught by fasting forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, how to overcome your own devil, the mind. We find meditation in all teachings. The problem is that due to the cultural palate of certain people, they adulterated, they sterilized, they castrated the teaching. So people adulterate the wisdom of the prophets with time and therefore the religions of today do not resemble anything they used to. Now there are certain remnants we can pick and extract and gain knowledge from, and this is important. But it is important to remember that these religions and teachings have died. The form is what is left. The essence and the spirit have long left these traditions. You find this cyclically repeated in this humanity or humanities and different cultures. Every religion has a birth, life and death. Comes to mind even a saying by a certain Sufi mystic in Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism, this is around 1000 AD. He said, “In this time Sufism is dead.” So back then even that tradition had long been eclipsed, because these traditions have life and are sustained based on the qualities of the practitioners. Divinity works in different places and times and periods, and reinitiates that effort among different faiths throughout the course of history, because time, with exposure to humanity, obviously people’s interpretations and conditions of mind pollute the original doctrine. This is why Jesus said, “Beware the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 16:6) who take the original bread of knowledge and inflate it so that it is more palatable and “tasty” to the public. The reality is nobody likes the original teachings of the mystics and the meditators and the prophets, because it goes contrary to what people believe. But if you really examine, in synthesis, what these different traditions teach, they all teach meditation, but in different ways. You find meditation in Kabbalah, in the Jewish mystical traditions. You find it in Sufism. You find it in the Bible. But of course with time, people take out what they do not like. So I do not know, maybe we can say in the West we like to be hyperactive and not really sit still in the moment. In the East, a lot more people, as part of the culture, practice meditation. So we study all traditions in synthesis. Question: When meditating on an ego, what is the best way to visualize it during meditation in order to comprehend it? Instructor: So for those of you who are not familiar with that type of meditation, we call it psychoanalysis, where you are sitting and performing these preliminary steps: relaxing, working with energy, withdrawing your senses, concentrating upon your consciousness and even your inner divinity, your Being. You can also imagine. We practice what is called retrospection meditation. You visualize in a day, with your vision itself, what happened. Perhaps you had a moment at work in which you faced a conflict. In that work, you saw certain reactions emerge that work together. Maybe it was anger, resentment, pride and fear. Four different egos you could say, different senses of self, different wills, manifested in you as you were observing your mind, your heart and your body. In the day you were gathering data about those qualities as they emerged. But when you are sitting to meditate and go deeper, to gain more understanding, you can just simply look at those states. Visualize what happened, and the trick is when you start to visualize that scene, your ego, your defects, will start to emerge. They will want to feed on that memory. They will want to repeat those behaviors and thoughts and desires, etc. You have to separate enough from yourself that you can look at that internal mechanism and to see it for what it is. When you are concentrating and visualizing, you look and you examine the taste of that conditioned self. You have to look at the flavor it brings into your mind, but have enough separation that you do not identify. If you identify with resentment, pride, fear, anger, you get sucked into memories and then you are not even meditating any more. You are just lost in a chaos. You are just churning with those sentiments. So the best visualization, obviously, occurs in levels. You have to follow your heart in terms of what you need to study. Your conscience will tell you what you need to work on. If you feel that anger was a big problem in your moment to moment experience, focus on that and look at it. You can pray to your inner divinity to help you understand. We call that divinity the Divine Mother, the feminine aspect of our inner Being, symbolized by Mary and many other feminine figures in world mythologies. She is a part of us that helps us work on those faults. You can pray to Her and ask Her show you about this particular ego you need to understand. If you really go deep and you are concentrating very profoundly, you can have an experience in the astral world or the internal world of dreams. Your Divine Mother will show you what this ego is, how it works, what it looks like, what are its thoughts, and you will intuit the meaning if you are very vigilant. You will know and understand where it came from, why it behaves, what it does, how it feeds, how it sustains itself, how it relates to other aggregates and different egos. The best visualization is going to be based on your conscience. Follow your heart. If you feel you need to focus on a specific ego, one by one, do that. And focus and ask your divinity to help you understand. The next step is just do not identify with it. Do not feed it. Do not give it your energy, because when you start to conserve your energy and not spend it on negative behaviors, it is like starving a lion. So obviously, anger and fear and all these different defects are going to come up in your life wanting to feed, because you are starving them. They are starting to get weak. So look at the ego and have a receptive mind. Wait for the answer, and when you are really in a state of silence and insight, the experience will unfold on its own. This is the magic and beauty of meditation. It is never the same moment by moment. There are always different experiences that reflect a huge range, an infinite range, of experiences, but that is the result. When you gain insight, you may ask for elimination, to remove that ego, when you really understood what it is, how it works, how it traps you, how it repeats. Pray to your Divine Mother and visualize that defect to be killed, and then you free the soul that is trapped in it gradually, little by little, as your comprehension goes deeper. I hope that answers your question. Question: So you were explaining earlier about freedom and the way you were explaining it also reminds me of what is going on in life right now, for example looting and stealing. So where I am coming from is, the people who are committing these atrocities, right, they are acting for freedom, but in reality it is fear. So how can we even identify? Like, you said you see these people that are doing these things, they are the extension of who we are already, so how come within us, how can we identify the sense of freedom with the sense of fear and discern that and act accordingly? Instructor: Sure. Gnosis is lived upon facts, withers away from distractions, from theories and beliefs, and it is difficult to find in even the noblest of thoughts. The way that you are going to figure out what is from the soul and what is from the ego, what is fear and desire, what is true from what is false, is by looking. It means that we approach our mind and our heart without trying to label what we see. You will learn to discriminate that quality based on experience. It is not easy to learn how to sift through the mud so that you can find the gold of our soul. It is a qualitative state. Through observation and repeated verification of that state, you find that there are qualities that are pure and conditioned, and sometimes mixed. That is why we meditate so that we can discriminate, because it is not easy in the moment. When you are having a scene in life, or like seeing the looting and violence going on, like in Chicago, where people are screaming for freedom and are destroying so many people’s properties and homes and lives, the abstraction of freedom is not enough. Real freedom is when you do not act on anger. You have to look at your anger and what it wants and what it thinks, and have the strength to not repress it, to hide from it, or justify it. But when you look at it with clarity, meaning, you are seeing it for what it is, you notice how your own anger wants to feed, how to act. You only learn that through trial and error, by repeatedly training yourself. It takes time and training, and I always say that this superior knowledge is beyond time. You are not looking to the past or future, but it takes experience to verify what is right and what is wrong. You have to follow your conscience, your heart. I know, for example, when I trained in martial arts for many years, you do not really learn to do the techniques well until after a very long time of just repeated trial and error and even maybe getting hurt. That is our struggle. We suffer a lot as we are trying to change. But the purpose is not to get discouraged. You are going to feel pain and suffering as a soul by making mistakes. But by repeated effort and struggle against yourself, that is going to take some repeated experience. It is a war, you can say. This is why in Islam they talk about Jihad, holy war, but not against other people, against people who do not follow your faith. It has to do with the struggle against your desires. The only way that you are going to really conquer is if you do not give up. If you just give into anger, then it is very painful. But it is a struggle to learn how to acculturate our mind and heart to taste that quality of being that we know is from God and that is not unfiltered by anything. If you have doubts about certain experiences or actions you did, and you feel in your heart that there is something you need to investigate, then that is what you need to meditate on. Because that moral pain, the pangs of conscience, the intuition of the heart is what is going to really direct you. Follow that. Question: So a lot of us are surrounded by people who are acting with fear. So in a practical manner, what is the best way not to scold them, more with comprehension, but how can we aide? Because we are surrounded by them. It could be a family member. It can be a friend. It can be a co-worker. So how can we assist them? Instructor: Love. It has been demonstrated throughout historical movements, whether Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, ahimsa: non-violence, is the key. We show violence towards people even with our thoughts. We think that violence only occurs physically, but if you have an argument with someone, you disagree, if you want to coerce someone to think like you, if you create a division whereby, “I am a democrat and you are a republican,” or “I am a Jew and you are a Muslim, or a Buddhist,” Krishnamurti says that is a form of violence, because we are saying that we are separate. I like what the Dalai Lama said, is that we are all individuals, human beings. We all have the same longing for happiness and the same aversion towards pain. Everyone is like that, regardless of your theological position or beliefs. We show love for others when we respect their ways of thinking. We may know that they are ignorant, or you may feel that sentiment in a subtle way that wants to say, “Oh, they do not know any better,” and yet we have resentment of our own, that is our problem. Often times we do not reach people and we are not effective because we have our own ego, our own desires that think they know better. That is the problem with abstractions, with the ideologies and ways of thinking that convince us “they are wrong. I am right.” But the reality is that they think the same way. So rather than take a position, you can show them love. But this does not mean that we accept behaviors from their part that are wrong. It also does not mean that we are forceful, or we are imposing on their free will. Persuasion is much more elegant and eloquent than coercion. Coercion is when you want someone to think like you according to your ideologies. But persuasion is when, from your Being and your conscience, you offer a solution. From that threshold you are offering something as an olive branch to that person, to help them from your heart, and not expecting that they are going to follow it, nor demanding that they do, but simply offering it. That is the type of space that is really powerful. It comes from divinity, from really cultivating that. We have to respect people’s free will. The reason why this political race and state of humanity is so crazy is because no one respects each other’s will. Everybody thinks they know the answer and therefore they are arguing, debating. Arguments, we can say, are really satanic, honestly—one person against another, who thinks they know better, and their pride is just a big battle. It is violence. It is like watching people box. It is really sad. Instead, the reality is we need to approach a person with love, and that love knows how to set boundaries even for oneself, while respecting the will of the other person. That respect for others only comes when we respect our inner divinity, who knows right from wrong. When you intuit that, you know that, you can offer it to a person. But you cannot expect that people are going to follow that. Look what happened to Jesus, and he’s a great master, and look what humanity did. So we have to be willing to face the consequences of our ethics. If people do not like it, that is fine. We do not expect that people are going to respect what we have to say, and we have to be fine with that. Question: Are psychological identification and karmic circumstances the same thing, or is non-identification the way out of our karmic situation into real freedom? Instructor: Our karma is based on what we do, whether you are identified with the situation or not. So, in strict language, identification has to do with when you, as a consciousness, feel and think and behave that you are the desire, the condition: fear, pride, resentment, anger, laziness, gluttony, whatever defect. The quality of your mind in this moment determines your trajectory, where you go, whether in life or in nature. So if we act with a polluted mind, then obviously we are going to experience pain. But if we act with purity, then the logical consequence is that we bring harmony, in our situation, in our politics, in our humanity, in our life. Your karma is based on the quality of your mind. You receive what you do. You reap what you sow, in synthesis. So if you want better states and experiences in life, act with ethics. Show compassion. Have love for others even if it hurts, and basically, even Shantideva said it, “All happiness in this life comes from wanting the happiness of others, and all pain in this life occurs because we wish happiness for ourselves.” Simple dynamic, but very profound. It is the essence of Tibetan Buddhism. So if you want better circumstances, act ethically. Do not identify with your egotism, your pride. In fact eliminate it, if you want to have radical changes. Question: Once you accept yourself from squandering energy, what steps should one take next? When one achieves equilibrium, it can be challenging to accept the sustained energy. Many experiences occur, for instance premonitions, past life experiences, and consistently receiving messages. This can be overwhelming. What can one do to adjust to this new experience instead of being cast out due to the fatigue that arrives, with mitigating the mind’s inability to explain this new experience logically? Instructor: Be patient. When you have experiences, obviously it can be very alarming. I know when I first started meditating and practicing these kinds of principles, I had a lot of experiences in my dreams, especially, which obviously in the beginning, you can get freaked out, or you can feel like a messiah and be like, “Oh, I know the mysteries of life and death” and tell everybody, right? I suggest that if you find when you are working with energy and you feel perhaps overwhelmed by it, you can minimize that if you need to. It is good to work with energy, but more importantly, it is good to have self-control. I suggest if you are overwhelmed by these types of things, it is important to learn to, in a simple sense, have fun. You do not have to ruminate over the state of humanity. Being morbid or in a state of suffering is not going to help anybody. Being concerned for humanity—yes. If you are overwhelmed, it is normal in the beginning, but you gain stability through practice. So I suggest meditating on your own discomforts and uneasiness even. But also it is good to have a community of people you can socialize with too, who hopefully study these things and who are spiritually like-minded. Have fun. Relax. It does not mean you are going to go crazy, like drinking, sleeping around, and doing drugs, but just to help settle your mind with healthy and balanced activities. Recreation is a necessary quality to a degree, according to Swami Sivananda. You cannot just be serious. It is good to be serious in this work, but if you become morbid, that is a problem. If you become over agitated, filled with fear or anxiety, it is an issue. So learn to recreate, whether it is painting, sculpting, getting exercise, doing yoga. Some people like to do yoga classes. Meditation is especially helpful. Going out in nature, hiking is especially something I like to do. So it is important. Question: I have some questions on non-exclusive meditation or Mo-Chao, a few questions about that. In that mode of meditation, is there division between observer and observed? Is there imagination involved when you are just observing in the screen of your mind the images, the thoughts, the conversations, the problems, the preoccupations, and all of that? Would you recommend that we get really good at one-pointed meditation to get better at non-exclusive? Instructor: Good questions. In synthesis with non-exclusive meditation, you examine your state of mind as it is, which we began our practice today to a degree using that. If you find you are not able to maintain enough stability, to remember that presence, your own innate observation, it is good to return to a concentration practice where you can just focus on an object and let that be your anchor. Now imagination is in all things. That is a beautiful teaching about consciousness. Every living thing, even the atom, in an electron, sub-atomic particles, have consciousness. This is something that has been verified by quantum physicists. They have studied the behavior of light and that even light makes choices in experiments, depending on who is observing and what is going on. Imagination is the capacity to perceive. So we have imagination at our level. Now when you are developing imagination with, say, non-exclusive meditation, you are looking in yourself and not dividing yourself, making these separations in yourself about what you are perceiving. That is a very deep, profound state of perception, when you are looking in, which that state of looking is not conflicted between “Am I observing or am I not observing?” because as soon as you do that, then you lose the state. But if you are really deep in that perception, you do not make any false divisions, which Samael Aun Weor states, some people make the mistake of dividing themselves between a superior “I” and an inferior “I,” ignoring that it is two sides of the same coin. When you are looking at yourself, you do not want to make those divisions. Do not identify when the ego starts to divide itself. It makes the mechanism of superior “I” or inferior “I.” There is division, dualism there. That is the problem. What sees synthetically into the nature of any phenomena is when your consciousness is clear, and you just look at the state of your being, where you are at. But if you find that it is difficult to maintain that continuity, it is important to do concentration exercises to build that. They call that mindfulness. So people make a blurred definition of mindfulness and awareness, very commonly, today. Awareness is being present in the moment, where you are at, what you are doing, what you are thinking. Paying attention is when you are directing your attention on one thing. Awareness is when you are expanding you consciousness outward and perceiving all the details of life. Mindfulness if the continuity of that perception, in which you do not forget that you are watching. That is vigilance. When your consciousness is not sleeping, you are paying attention. So if you find it difficult to practice non-exclusive meditation where you are just observing what is going on in your mind, you cannot maintain that continuity, then return to concentration. It can help you regroup yourself until you have that stamina, so to speak. Question: Could you speak a little bit about grief? Because I know a lot of people are suffering and a lot of people have lost loved ones due to COVID or cancer, and when you are in that deep state of grief, it just depletes your energy and you are really kind of thrown off track. How to get yourself back to a state of equanimity? Instructor: We have many practices in this tradition to help with depression. One of them is relying on prayer, especially. We have a book called Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic. There are some exercises in which—when we are developing the powers of the consciousness, which is the ability to perceive and to concentrate, to pray and to influence nature—we can work with the souls of plants. We call it elementotherapy. There are ways to work with, for example, the essence or soul, or really the spirit of a plant, you can say. Now every living thing has consciousness at its level, some in less evolved degrees and some more evolved. Plants have a certain power and potency which is very much studied in Latin American countries, but we have practices in our traditions where we can work with the soul of the rose. Obviously, the rose is a prominent symbol of love and romantic relationships, but people do not understand too that the rose has the power to heal sicknesses. It does not require anything more than taking three roses and placing them in three glass cups, or three glasses of pure water. There is a sequence where you pray to the soul of the plant or your divinity, “Help me to work with the soul of this plant, the rose,” which is like a queen, really, in the elemental kingdom of souls, progressing in their development towards entering a humanoid state. They are very pure and innocent. They are like the purity of Eden. Those souls have not left paradise, so to speak, unlike us.
You drink one glass in the morning, one glass in the afternoon, and one glass in the evening, before dinner, or before each meal, and it simply involves prayer. It is simple. A lot of people might scorn these types of things because they do not really practice it. But I know when I have had emotional traumas and sufferings, I always go to the roses, and this ritual and prayer that you can do which you find in that book, Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic, [see specifically The Magic of the Roses] because the souls of nature have the power to heal. Each plant in nature has the capacity and the means of channeling certain energies and forces that are conducive for our well-being. You find that type of culture in amongst the indigenous tribes of Latin America, the Maya, the Aztecs, the mamas of the Sierra Nevada, and many other tribes that have ancient traditions, which fortunately we have access to this knowledge.
So the roses are effective for that. I mean I have had moments in my life where I was really traumatized, not only just by maybe losing someone, but facing conflicts in spiritual groups. There is nothing worse that hurts than the spiritual stab, when you are betrayed by groups of people. When I had that happen to me, I worked with the roses, and you know, I am fine. You can heal. You can do the same thing with traumas too. Question: I have a follow up question. So when it comes to meditation with grief, is grief a defect that we need to meditate on like an ego we need to comprehend, or is it something else, some other part of our experience of life? Instructor: Good question. There are the pains of the soul and the pains of the ego. The ego of shame or grief is really anger, inverted anger. It may not be directed at other people, but directed inside. So it is a form of self-hatred, which can be very deep. But there are types of sufferings in the soul that are also very profound, which have to be healed if we want to advance. But a lot of times when people deal with grief, it can be a mixture. You know, obviously, there is that natural grief and sentiment of loss when we as a soul lose someone. Obviously there is that quality of essence there, that consciousness. But sometimes we may feel grief for things that are really inconsequential. It can be inverted anger where it is hatred, but directed at oneself. This is why certain people become suicidal. Their hatred is directed at themselves. Consciousness is not there. Obviously when people commit suicide, it is a great tragedy, but the reality is they have so much self-hatred that they cannot separate from it. But meditation can teach you how to extract the consciousness from those depressive elements so you can see them for what they are. In that way you do not get caught up in that vortex of suffering. Question: So is grief for someone that we love the problem of attachment? Or is it okay? Instructor: It can be both. You got to examine your mind, because some, in most cases, most of us are very conditioned by attachments where, you know, we obviously suffer, but it is a natural sentiment of the soul to feel that longing for that person and obviously feel upset, but a lot of our attachments, our psychology, is conditioned. We are 97% conditioned perception. So most of the time, if we lose someone, it is going to be mixed with impurities, with attachments, obviously. We have to love people regardless of if they are with us or not with us, and if we really love a person, we have to be willing to love in accordance with their karma, their life, their trajectory, their journey, that they need to go through their process and to respect that. We can still feel sorrow for them and miss them, but it doesn’t mean that we become completely distraught and suicidal. Question: I actually have two questions. One has to do with what you mentioned about grief. I experienced something in my life that was very traumatic, which was the death of my first daughter, and she passed away at a very young age. Even at the beginning of today’s reflection / meditation, you mentioned trauma, and it brought me back to that and it immediately brought tears to my eyes. And it has been years and I will say “I will go back to that when I am ready.” But when you are experiencing such a strong pain in that reflection, how can you combat that, so you are able to penetrate into that trauma and actually see things? So one of my things is, how do I observe what went down that day without getting so identified? And then the follow up question to that is, you talked about reflecting on good qualities, like love, but most of us do not even know what love is, so how can we even tap into that and reflect on something so positive when we have something so strong, which is the ego? Instructor: As for the first question, in the words of Samael Aun Weor, he says that if we really want to annihilate an ego, we have to be willing to break and even weep tears of blood, if necessary, to feel that grief and even just cry, because bottling it up is not good. Sometimes if you have really seen an ego and comprehended it and really understood a pain of a certain moment, really deeply, you will cry. It is painful. But there is a certain type of release that is there when you are able to confront that emotion, because repressing it and numbing it does not get anywhere. If we numb ourselves, it is just going to churn and get stronger underneath the surface. Sometimes when I have seen certain egos and meditated on my own culpability, seeing things I have done wrong in my life, I have wept myself silly. I mean, just really cried, broke into pieces, sobbing. We need that. Sometimes we have to just let ourselves confront that emotion and to experience it, that remorse. Now in terms of the second question, you know the fact that we are so filled with ego that it becomes very difficult to know what is virtuous. As you said in your example, how you lost your daughter, you can reflect on that love that you felt from her and for her, because really, that is a strong bond to share with someone. I know sometimes we like to think that to really know what love is, we have to be very elevated, but we all have our level of experience. As a mother, obviously losing their child, you have that intense love and sacrifice for that person, for your child. So reflect on that. Obviously, all the other emotions and sentiments and confusion, maybe agony and anger and resentment at the situation, it is all circling around one thing—that is the love you feel for her. The ego is secondary. Consciousness is first. That shows us that our essential nature is love, but we tend to distract ourselves from that. So you can reflect on that, especially that bond, that relationship, because it is showing you that everything else is gravitating around that essential quality. There are ways to heal and to regroup, but sometimes it means we really have to break the shell, and it is painful. It is not easy. That is why many people do not stick with meditation. They leave because they do not want to confront this. But when you have the courage to let yourself shatter for however long you need, you can begin to regroup, fit the pieces together. Bottling up is not going to be healthy. Reflect on that love you felt [for more information on this topic, study Trauma and Spiritual Healing]. 
Welcome everybody! We have arrived at the seventeenth lecture, the final one of this course on the Sufi Principles of Meditation.
We have covered many exercises, many practices, so that we train and stabilize our consciousness. We have learned to withdraw our perception from distractions, and we also learned how to awaken the consciousness so that it can perceive without filters, without obscurations, so that it can understand what it sees. While we have spoken about spiritual insight and comprehending our experiences, we are now going to go a little bit deeper. We have to understand what consciousness is. Where does it come from? What is its ultimate root? What is the synthesis of a human being? In our studies we speak a lot about the Being, our Innermost. Some have called it spirit. Some have called it God, in accordance with the language, the culture, the scriptures, the customs of a given people, the idiosyncrasies of a given messenger. But what is the Being? What are its qualities? How do we recognize its states? More importantly, how do we subsist within it? Many people have approached spirituality from having some type of mystical or spiritual experience. They call it an awakening, but the reality is that such a state has often appeared or emerged seemingly by accident, and the beginning aspirant does not yet know how to activate that quality of being at will. God, divinity, reality, we can say, is our primordial root, fundamental nature, but what is and what are the qualities of divinity? Sufism explains this very beautifully. Perhaps the poet Rumi, the most notable Sufi initiate from both east and west, in terms of popularity, had characterized the nature of divinity very simply and very profoundly. That nature is love. That quality is bliss, is ecstasy, is conscious love and compassion, infinite joy. Some people argue that the real nature of a person is anger, pride, hatred, vanity, lust, but this is mistaken. When you really sift through and remove that which is extemporaneous, superficial, artificial, acquired, learned within a person, when you peel away the layers of conditioning, of misapprehensions, of half-truths, of assumptions and beliefs, ideas, religious values, culture, name, language, heritage, etc., you arrive at love. Love is truly a principle that escapes definition and even words, and yet it is the fundamental impulse that permeates everything, and which drives our actions, spiritually speaking, within its most obscure, mysterious currents. As I said, some people think our true nature is hatred, anger, or violence, because these are qualities that are very prevalent in humanity, and yet the question becomes: what do we value most? Is it coercion? Is it manipulation? Deceiving our neighbor? Lying to our family and friends, betraying our loved ones? The truth is that although a person can torture us, afflict us with great pain, they cannot compel us within our very being. There is a resistance in relation to qualities and states like pride, anger, violence, oppression. Persuasion, from conscious love for others, is a truly dynamic force. It motivates people to be inspired, to change, to be a part of communities, to want to listen to others, where its opposite, which is coercion―a type of violence upon the mind and body of others―produces a type of agitation, friction, conflict. Therefore, love is a truly penetrative and motivating force. It is the reason why there are communities, groups, schools, teachings. It is the reason why human beings commune and share and break bread. It is the reason why we have these teachings for how to change, how to overcome suffering, and how to become truly divine, to really strip away all that is wrong, illusory, false, and superficial, so that we can go into the depths of our own innate, true nature. Love is the fundamental reality of divinity, and yet people do not understand what it is, and more importantly how to develop it even further, with intentionality, with conscientiousness, with dedication. So, this quality of being―we have to make a very clear distinction―does not have an individual self. There is no “I,” no “me,” no “myself” within the Being, within the divine. This confuses people because we grasp at a sense of self, an identity, in accordance with our external customs, our name, language, culture, appearance. We say, “This is me. This is who I am. This is what I am,” and yet none of that exists within divinity. What we have are desires, cravings and attachments, impulses, نَفْس nafs according to the Sufi initiates, egos according to the Gnostic initiate Samael Aun Weor. Our desires are precisely that which keep us encaged, trapped, not seeing reality, not seeing what is there in front of us. If you have been following the sequence of exercises in this course, you would have begun to see with direct experience that the more you observe as a consciousness your psychology, the more you begin to understand that the consciousness, the Essence, the soul, does not have a sense of “I” or self there, but it is a distinct quality. It is perception, apprehension of reality, but without labels, without any type of projection or naming what is being seen, what is being experienced with our psychological senses. It is a state of selflessness, and when there is no self, when there is only the consciousness present, the Being can act within. It is those moments of pristine clarity, in which we are not identified with a self, whereby we are filled with the abundance, the plenitude of the Being, the presence of being here and now―not projecting our thoughts into the future or fearing the past. We are simply being here and awake, alert, as if we are watching a rain pouring upon a cobblestone street, in which we do not have to label what we are seeing, but are filled with that yearning and astonishment of the new. That state is selfless, and where there is no self, there is the plenitude of God. The Being is love, but the Being has no desire or self. Often, people read the poetry of the Sufis and can be confused by this because the Sufis speak of God’s desire for the soul and the soul’s desire for God. In Arabic you have مراد Murad, “the desired,” which is the Being or الله Allah, while مريد Murid, “the one who desires,” is the consciousness. The soul desires God, and God desires the soul. We are a little bit more specific in our language. This desire the Sufis speak of is yearning, longing, aspiration, intimate inquietudes within the heart. So, we use the term a little bit differently, as desire is an ego, because that is typically what constitutes our psychology: an attached sense of self or identification with external factors. Heaven is a state of being. It is a quality of consciousness in which there is no “I,” in which we are empty. There is a saying within Gnosis: God searches the nothingness in order to fill it. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message
But likewise, when our mind is filled and conditioned with multiple conflicting factors, divisions, contradictions, fragmentations, we suffer, and God cannot enter there. Divinity cannot subsist or be within us when our consciousness is shattered, and in this way we cut ourselves on the broken mirror of our soul. We do not reflect a perfect image of the peace, serenity, and beatitude of the divine.
Hell is our own mind. It is our defects, our نَفْس nafs, our psychological aggregates, and as long as we are attached to a sense of self, we are not perceiving heaven. Wherever the delusion of your selfhood appears―there’s hell. Wherever “you” aren’t―that’s heaven. ―Abū Sa’īd
The ego must not be present. It must be absent to the self so that we can experience divinity, which is selflessness, which is pure love. If you do not believe me that love is selfless, look at the life of Jesus. Look at the prophets, the great masters and luminaries of humanity who taught through their example how to serve others and to not expect a reward.
We state that love is the goal of our studies. However, it cannot blossom in us naturally, spontaneously, unsolicited, when our heart is not cultivated, when it is filled with weeds. Therefore, we have to simplify our psychology. We have to become simple. It does not mean that we have to become stupid. It means that we remove the complexities and the confusions and paradoxes of our nature: our egotistical, selfish nature. Right now, our mind is really complex. If you sit to meditate and you examine yourself, you will see that the mind is all over the place. Hopefully, it is not by now if you have been practicing these exercises, but when you meditate, you begin to perceive this in the beginning. Meditation reduces, it strips away, it removes everything about us that is illusory, unnecessary as Rumi taught: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ―Rumi
So, the soul has been referred to as a mirror by many Sufi initiates, including Ibn Arabi, who is Sheikh al-Akbar, “the greatest of Sufi Masters.” He wrote in a book called Kitab al-Ahadiyyah (Treatise on the One Alone) that only divinity can know Himself and that the soul is a mirror. It can reflect a perfect image, or it can be distorted. Unfortunately for us, our mirror, our consciousness, is polluted. It is contaminated. It is rusted with afflictions. We do not see what is really inside, our true nature, which is divine. We do not perceive divinity because we have obscured, have dirtied the mirror, which can truly reflect qualities like love in a unfiltered, unobstructed, unhindered way, because when we grasp at a self, we do not see reality. We do not see the truth.
Our sense of self is dependent upon many extemporaneous influences: the impressions of life which enter our psychology, such as a cup of coffee. Therefore, our defects emerge. They seek gratification of the senses through those impressions, from any type of food or drink. We may have gluttony or the food of lust, which is to look at sexual images and feed desire, degeneration. We have the food of pride, which are the sensations or impressions of being praised. We have anger, which is frustrated desire, which is an aversion to the impressions of life which it cannot control, and therefore it protests. The same dynamic applies to all our egos. Our sense of self craves its nourishment, its food: the impressions of life which enter the senses in our psychology and produce reactions, and because we are identified, we do not perceive this interchange or exchange of different selves. We are never the same in any given moment. We are conflicted. We are all over the place, as we mentioned many times in this course. Therefore, we have to annihilate the complications. We have to simplify ourselves, integrate the soul that is trapped―free it, liberate it. Stop feeding defects. Stop giving it food, and in this way, you tame the beast. Annihilation of the ego is the foundation and basis of religion. However, everybody avoids it. Nobody wants to polish the mirror and look at their own face, which is why Rumi taught: How can you become polished if you resist every rub? ―Rumi
These are different circumstances and ordeals in life. These are situations that produce a lot of friction in our life, in which we begin to perceive all the multiplicity of errors we carry within, all our faults. We need those challenges so that we can change, so that we can have real knowledge, γνῶσις gnosis or معرفة Ma’rifah of the truth in Arabic. You cannot give testimony of divine unity when you do not possess psychological unity, without integrating the soul, without performing an alchemy with the consciousness.
We have to take all of those conditioned selves and remove them: free the essence that is trapped, the soul. Take those multiplicity of desires and make them one. In the words of Rumi: I once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know you all else melted away. ―Rumi
This is transmutation in a psychological sense. It is a form of alchemy. We transform the density of our conditioning into the purity and light of divine perception.
So in this lecture, we are going to talk about a really essential point, that to know divinity we need expedient methods. We also need to understand selflessness, the emptiness of phenomena, that nothing is really intrinsically existing in of itself, but that everything depends on other factors, for everything is transient, in transit. It is changing. As we begin to understand the interdependent nature between all phenomena and understand our own attachments and desires, we begin to perceive that our sense of self really does not have true basis, that divinity, the plenitude of the Being, is compassion, is love born from this understanding, this perception, this wisdom. 
Conventional and Ultimate Views
We will also study the Tree of Life, the kabbalah, very deeply, because it is a map of love, of consciousness, of Being, in order to tie these principles together, so that we can subsist, to return to our innermost divinity.
The Tree of Life is a map of the self from the most dense and conditioned below to the most subtle, pure, rarified, and beautified above. The higher you ascend this glyph―which is not a map of vertical space, but of internal states―the more selfless and happy we become. The further we descend towards the shadow beneath the Tree of Life, beneath מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, the physical world, the greater one’s suffering and attachment to self. This is the Tree of Life within the book of Genesis, within the Abrahamic traditions. Beneath the Tree of Life we find the hell realms, the inverted סְפִירוֹת sephiroth or spheres of consciousness, which are trapped in conditions, egos, selves, نَفْس nafs. The Qur’an refers to this as the tree of زقوم Zaqqum, which in Arabia is an actual tree whose leaves are really bitter to taste. Therefore it is a symbol of inferior states of consciousness that are acquired and experienced by those who fail. We can refer to these spheres as dimensions, as aspects of consciousness. These are also places in nature to which we gravitate based upon our quality of being. If you remember the lecture on Stations of this course, we talked a lot about these spheres, these סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. In Hebrew, the term סְפִירוֹת sephiroth means “emanations.” These are states and qualities of being that emanate from the divine, from the Absolute, الله Allah, which in Arabic is the Nothing, the No. It means “the God” literally, but if you look at the syllable لا la in Arabic, it means “No,” negation. This is a term used for the abstract absolute space, which is the womb of cosmic potentiality, of being that is not yet realized. It is selflessness. It is pure, divine, supra-divine happiness without conditions, without self, and yet it is the true, legitimate, fundamental nature of reality, when you go to the very heart and core of any phenomena. The Absolute is known in Hebrew as אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the Nothing, the Limitless, and the Limitless Light. From that nothingness, that cosmic space, emerges a profound, beautiful light, which is the sephirah כֶּתֶר Kether in Hebrew. That sephirah means crown. It is the supreme light of divinity that emerges from an eternal seity, the space. That light is pure consciousness within the material universe. Now, while I am using some Hebrew terms, the Sufis and the Muslim initiates referred to different qualities of being, these different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, by Arabic names, because kabbalah as a map and science of being is within all religions. It is mapped out within Judaism, Jewish mysticism, Jewish spirituality, in a very deep way, and we can use this tool and glyph to help us understand what all religions are talking about in their fundamental synthesis. Now the light of the divine is known as الْحَقُّ Al-Haqq: The Truth: כֶּתֶר Kether, the crown, the supremacy of divinity, a profound, abstract, rarefied, pure being that is known in manifestation. That light, because it wants to create, expresses in multiple ways, and therefore that light emanates out and becomes חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is Hebrew for “wisdom.” In the Qur’an there are many references to ٱلْرَّحْمَـٰنُ Ar-Rahman: the Compassionate. Every Surah of the Qur’an except for Surah 9 begins: 
Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim
חָכְמָה Chokmah is the wisdom, the penetrative insight of divine consciousness. It is very elevated. It is a perception in which one or one’s experience is within all beings and there is not an individual self, but all beings are one within this state.
That light also wants to create something and therefore it expresses as الخالق Al-Khaliq: the Creator, which in Hebrew is בִּינָה Binah: Intelligence, that force of intelligent expression that knows how to manifest the universes, to create them with understanding. These three principles כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah, the crown, the wisdom, and the intelligence of God, constitute one light that expresses in three ways. In terms of relating to previous religions such as Christianity, this glyph or principle of forces can be known as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. In Islam, they reject the Trinity as stated in the Qur’an. That is because the Christians had degenerated their tradition and have confused the Trinity as three people, anthropomorphizing God, and that is impossible and wrong. Instead, these are one force that expresses as three so that all the worlds and universes can be sustained, created, harmonized, equilibrated, manifested. الخالق Al-Khaliq: the Creator, is the force of בִּינָה Binah, and there are many names of God in Arabic, but these names that we are using in this glyph are some of the most obvious that can apply to the Tree of Life, because each sephirah has a sacred name of divinity within Judaism, within mystical kabbalah, but we can also apply the Arabic kabbalah as well. The Arabic, divine names represent the same principles, the same truths. These three principles are very divine, and most people know nothing of them from experience. Instead, we are down below in מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, and as we have learned the practices of meditation, we have discovered what the lower four סְפִירוֹת sephiroth are, especially the fifth from the bottom up. In meditation, we learn to take our physical body מלכות Malkuth―which is the “kingdom” that contains all the forces from above―willingly to relax that body. Adopt a posture, relax, and introspect. We learn to work with energy, יְסוֹד Yesod, the foundation of our spiritual discipline. That is through exercises like mantra, pranayama, prayer, runes, sacred rights of rejuvenation, sexual alchemy. We are learning to transform the subtle currents of our body so that we can gain control of our heart, which is הוד Hod, Hebrew for “splendor,” the splendor of the compassionate heart. We likewise put our mind in a state of suspension, relaxation and calm, נצח Netzach, and by doing so we obtain victory. The way that we do this is by willpower, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth: the human consciousness, human willpower, because our human will, the beauty of the soul, has to learn to control thoughts, feelings, sensations, and energy. By doing so we begin to learn to activate the consciousness with intuition, with wisdom, which is גְּבוּרָה Geburah: Justice in Hebrew, the religion and conscience of the soul, so that in dedication and practice we can begin to experience our own inner spirit חֶסֶד Chesed: Mercy in kabbalah. In Arabic the name of God for חֶסֶד Chesed in kabbalah is ٱلْرَّحِيْمُ Ar-Rahim: the Merciful, our innermost spirit, روح Ruh in Arabic, or רוּחַ Ruach in Hebrew. Notice that the further you ascend up this graphic in terms of conscious experience, we begin to become less selfish. Obviously, below we are identified with our own mind, emotions, instincts, and our physicality, and with willpower―which is much more subtle, refined, directed with will under the conscience, our divine soul―we can begin to access the spiritual realm, our spirituality, and perhaps even much higher than that. These are degradations and levels of nature. The forces of divinity express themselves within the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. 
We have included some of some of the Arabic names as well. The physical body is the most manifest aspect of who we are. ٱلْظَّاهِرُ Az-Zahir: the Manifest, is a sacred name of الله Allah, divinity. In Hebrew it is אדוני הארץ Adonai Ha’aretz, Lord of the Earth, because our physical body must become sacred.
We do so by learning to contain the sexual creative potency of יְסוֹד Yesod. We do that through ٱلْوَدُودُ Al-Wadud: the Lover (the Loving). It is really interesting that in Arabic, the name ٱلْوَدُودُ Al-Wadud, is spelled و Waw د Dal و Waw د Dal, which its equivalence in Hebrew is ו Vav, ד Daleth, ו Vav, ד Daleth―two spinal columns from two dervishes, man and woman, male and female, Adam and Eve. Together they work by taming the creative energies within a marriage in order to establish their religion, to glorify divinity, ٱلْمَجِيدُ Al-Majid: the All Glorious, within the heart, to conquer the mind through ٱلْقَهَّـٰرُ Al-Qahhar: the Conqueror, in order to become an initiate, ٱلْمَـالِكُ Al-Malik: the King, in תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, the fifth initiation of Major Mysteries as we have explained in the lecture on Stations. We have to, of course, follow our conscience, ٱلْحَكَمُ Al-Hakam: the Judge, גְּבוּרָה Geburah. Another term for גְּבוּרָה Geburah is دين Din, which means “judgment” and “religion.” Our real religion and spirituality is based on how we judge our own defects, our own errors, in balance with the mercy and blessings of divinity, ٱلْرَّحِيْمُ Ar-Rahim. There are many names of God in Arabic. They apply in many ways in the Tree of Life. This is just one way of approaching it. It is really inexhaustible how profound these principles are, but this is the map. This is who we are in our full constitution, in our multidimensionality and being. If you have noticed from the Absolute, אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, emerges the Tree of Life, the universe, which is manifested reality and which emerges from unmanifested potentiality, الله Allah, the Nothing. It is interesting that in Islam, it is against the tradition to anthropomorphize divinity. There are no statues promulgated in that tradition, of divinity, because you can not anthropomorphize space. You can not characterize it through a statue. In reality, الله Allah, the Nothing, the Nothingness, the true Being, is only represented within Arabic calligraphy, which is a very beautiful and rich tradition that developed in the Muslim faith as a result of this distinction. From that nothingness emerges light and that light condenses in levels of matter, perception, and consciousness. We are in מלכות Malkuth, and we are learning to enter into states of meditation so that we can access reality, which is more accessible and real the further up this diagram you ascend―again, not in vertical space, but in states and levels of being. There are more elevated states of being and there are more inferior states of being based upon our actions. The Sufis refer to the experience of the divine, which is basically גְּבוּרָה Geburah, חֶסֶד Chesed, בִּינָה Binah, חָכְמָה Chokmah, כֶּתֶר Kether, and beyond, as witnessing, to witness the truth, to experience it, to know it. They call this contemplation, مشاهدة mushahada. When we really are in the outskirts of entering into this knowledge, we are in מלכות Malkuth listening to this lecture, hopefully with a calm body, a receptive heart, and an open mind, and with willpower, and full attention, so that we can comprehend with judgment, real understanding, the reality of what is being taught, and therefore to extract its spiritual nature. All of these phenomena are manifested. They are what can be experienced in the universe, but the heights of divine experience are not within this universe, really, at the heights of this tree, this trinity, of this Logoic Triangle: כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah, the light of divine continuity and consciousness. As we meditate, we begin to gain glimpses of these realms. We can have access to them when we go to sleep. The body is at rest and the soul travels within the internal worlds, which are these different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. If we are working seriously, we can access much higher states than we can normally perceive had we not practiced. These are the stations of the Sufi path, the degrees of development and initiation. There are a couple verses from the Sufis. Ibn Karbalā’ī stated something interesting relating this dynamic: manifested reality and ultimate reality. If you studied Buddhism, you will be familiar with how there is conventional and ultimate views. In the conventional sense, we know that we have a physical body. We have energy. We have emotions. We have mind and in a more subtle degree, we have will, to act. To experience the real nature of our inner spirit, our divine consciousness requires abandonment of self, attachments, our terrestrial identity, this conventional sense of “who I am,” “what I think,” “what I feel, my likes, dislikes, attachments, my cravings, my aversions, my ignorance,” etc. Ultimate view is when there is no “self” obstructing it, in which you perceive directly, from an unobstructed height in a spiritual sense, which is why the Sufis stated the following: When the seeker realizes the station of contemplation (mushāhida), which is witnessing God’s Essence comprehending and encompassing all phenomena (which is really all of the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth that emanate from that divine source, and as we experience the selfless nature of emptiness, the Being, Allah, we perceive that divinity has knowledge of all things, perceives all things, experiences all)―“Does not your Lord suffice, since He is witness over all things” (41:53)―he continually witnesses lights from the mundus invisibilis. From such a mystic’s perspective, this world and the hereafter are one and the same. This can only be realized by a vision that is all heart and spirit, not a view bound by mere mud and mire. ―Ibn Karbalā’ī, Rawdāt al-janān, II 164
These סְפִירוֹת sephiroth can emerge within our consciousness and can visit these different dimensions through perceptions, through experiences in meditation: the invisible world, the mundus invisibilis. It is from that direct witnessing of higher states in which, as a mystic, we perceive that this world and the hereafter are one in the same. In truth מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, the kingdom, the physical world, is merely the expression of internal principles and actions. Our physical body obeys its energies, יְסוֹד Yesod, how we react with our emotions, and how we think. However, we are clouded by these lower סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, these lower spheres of being, and in truth, we have to clarify our perception, so that we perceive with the spirit ٱلْرَّحْمَـٰنُ Ar-Rahman, the omniscient, objective, and real, the heart, which in this sense, we can say, it is ٱلْحَكَمُ Al-Hakam: the Judge, our divine soul, and not by mud and mire: egotism, selfishness, attachments. Reality is experienced when the mind is receptive, and the consciousness is active―not the other way around.
The Requirements of Gnosis
What does it mean to worship divinity? What does this worship involve? From an esoteric Gnostic, Sufi perspective, there is a saying in the Qur’an:
Worship God, and ascribe not partners unto Him. ―Al-Nisa 36
Unfortunately, in our times we have a lot of theories, a lot of terminology, a lot of labels for spiritual states in accordance with different theological structures and theories, ideas, and assumptions. We have many beliefs about religion. We have many ideas about spirit, and the truth is that if you ask many people what spirit is, what God is, they all have different definitions. Therefore, that indicates that they are wrong, because they are not agreeing on reality. They all have different opinions of what reality is. That is because they do not see it. They do not experience it. They do not know it. Instead, what we have are lineages based upon ascription, ascribing ideas unto divinity. We can think what we want. We can believe what we want. We can theorize, assume, and worship in accordance with our concepts, ideas, and convictions. We can ascribe to divinity many of our own ideas, and, again, assumptions, but in truth it must be experienced. This is the demarcation between Gnosticism and many exoteric traditions.
The Sufis and the Muslims have a very interesting term between this dynamic of projecting concepts onto divinity, ascribing partners unto divinity, holding equal certain things with divinity and that has to do with projecting our ideas. They call it شرك shirk. They call it idolatry. They call it polytheism, worshipping many gods, but how is this so? When we value our concepts over reality, we are idolaters. We are mistaking our desires and assumptions for what is actually there. We are not experiencing what is there. We can say that any concept and belief that we ascribe to with our conviction at heart, which is not based in direct perception of the truth, constitutes شرك shirk, polytheism. So, what is genuine worship? It means to practice without a self, without an identity, without labeling, but allowing the mind and heart to be in a tranquil state so that we can perceive clearly the Tree of Life, divinity. Tranquility allows us to have inner exploration of our psychological and spiritual unity. It might seem odd that we are relating conceptual beliefs and ideas with شرك shirk, with polytheism, idolatry. It is because we have many ideas that are all over the place, conflicting, paradoxical, unsubstantiated. We have many multiple ideas and assumptions, but are they really rooted in facts? If it is a fact of life and experience, we do not need have any beliefs about it, because we know. So, we need to integrate the consciousness. We do so through a state of tranquility, serenity, repose. There is a couple of statements from Al-Qushayri from the Principles of Sufism, which relate what is necessary in order to really worship divinity, to have knowledge (γνῶσις gnosis in Greek, معرفة Ma’rifah in Arabic) of one’s inner Lord, one’s inner divinity, which requires we abandon our ideas, our most cherished convictions, and theories. In general, it is to the measure of one’s alienation from one’s own ego that one attains direct knowledge of one’s Lord… I heard Abu Ali al-Daqqaq say, “One of the tokens of the gnosis of God is the achievement of deep awe and reverence for God. If someone’s realization increases, his awe increases.” And I heard him say, “Gnosis requires stillness of heart, just as learning requires outward quiet. If someone’s gnosis increases, his tranquility increases.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
We have to be alienated from the ego to really treat our defects, our pride, our vanity, our hatred as our worst enemy, to let it go, to not invest so much energy into this self, because once you abandon the self, you really perceive the majesty of the Being and have reverence, deep awe, and respect for your inner God, because you know divinity is always present with you. It is stated many times in the Qur’an:
And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to you than your jugular vein. ―Qur’an 50:16
The more we realize divinity, the more respect, awe, joy, inspiration, and happiness we experience. It increases, but this is based upon meditative practice requiring stillness of heart, in the same manner that learning requires outward quiet, and the more realization one acquires, the more peace and certainty one has.
The Definition of Love and Will
This is based upon an understanding of love and will. In synthesis, the Sufis taught about alchemy, الله Allah-χυμεία kimia from the Arabic and the Greek, which means “to fuse or cast a metal,” χυμεία kimia, with الله Allah: to fuse oneself with divinity. We do so by making a profound distinction between love and desire.
In synthesis, we can say selfish actions produce sorrow, whereas selfless actions produce happiness, because they emerge from love, which is not concerned with oneself, but the other. Conscious will is the soul’s capacity to focus attention upon an object and to perform deeds of love, compassion for others, even for one’s enemy. Samael Aun Weor referred to this as Christ’s Will, (he even wrote a book with that title), which is the perfect, heavenly expression of superior action, to really sacrifice oneself for others, to respond selflessly to any situation―not for our own benefit, but for the blessings of others, the benediction, the sacrifice for others. Desire is selfish will. It is the opposite of the consciousness, because the former is a mechanical reaction to life while the latter is a deliberate, intelligent response. The Sufis corroborate this point that our common, ordinary, selfish will has to be overcome. Al-Qushayri states the following: In scholarly usage, love, mahabbah, means will, iradah, but the Sufis do not mean will when they speak of love. For human will does not connect to the Eternal―unless one understands it as the will to draw close to Him and glorify Him. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Genuine love is pure, and of course in Gnostic studies we have emphasized many times that pure love is chastity. Chastity is not the mere restraint of sexual energy, but refers to restraint and purity of the mind and heart as well, in which we do not act out of lust, ambition, adultery, pride, selfishness, vanity, extortion, etc. Selfish will is desire. We have to transmute our desires, our defects into love, from selfishness to selflessness.
Some say that hubb, love, is a name for purity of affection, because the Bedouins when speaking of the pure whiteness and regularity of someone’s teeth use the expression habab al-asnan. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
There are many sexual alchemical symbols in this paragraph. The mouth is always a symbol of secret knowledge, because דעת Daath in Hebrew, معرفة Ma’rifah in Arabic, γνῶσις gnosis in Greek, was once only given by mouth to ear. It was never written down explicitly because the science of alchemy or the perfect matrimony is extremely powerful and transformative. If you want to understand that principle, you can study the lecture given recently called the Gnostic Mysteries of Chastity.
This science or the transformation of the soul is how we purify and utilize our energies in order to expand our consciousness. We also find a lot of symbols relating to water here, which is a representation of the sexual energy that cleanses the mind and flows abundantly within those who know how to circulate it with intelligence, with understanding. The quote continues: Others say that since hubab is a word for the excess water that results from a heavy rain, mahabbah came to mean the heart’s boiling and stirring with the thirst and excitement of meeting the Beloved. Still others say the word is derived from habab al-ma, the greater part of a body of water, because love is the object of most of the heart’s concerns. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
As we explained in the lecture on renunciation, water is creative, symbolic, literal. Those creative waters are the seminal forces with which we become baptized and initiated. That body of water, the over-pouring of the soul, emerges from the Absolute, which is a great ocean. If you awaken your consciousness in meditation and approach the Absolute, you perceive the emptiness like a great, dark ocean, but there is a profound, dark light hidden there, a rippling, an abstract movement and repose, which is the full negation of all manifested things, but is the real state of Being. It is the ocean within which we must drown ourselves in love, to be fully immersed, encompassed, and inoculated by that.
Another derivation draws the word from necessity and fixity, for one says ahabba al-baghir of a camel that kneels and refuses to stand. In just this way the lover’s heart refuses to leave the remembrance of his Beloved. Hubb is also said to come from hibb, an earring. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So, another symbol here. We are referring to a type of willpower in order to know divinity, to seek without faltering, without giving up, to advance out of necessity and fixity.
The poet says:
As I said, the mouth is a symbol of alchemical knowledge because we pronounce sacred sounds within a matrimony, in sexual union, to promote elevation of our creative force, but also the ear relates to this mystery of alchemy, معرفة Ma’rifah, divine knowledge, so that we can receive that teaching from mouth to ear, listening in to secrets which were never written down until as recently as 1950 with The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor.
That serpent is a dual symbol. We have given many courses and explanations about this allegory, which represents basically this: How our sexual purity can grant us knowledge of our true nature, or our sexual impurity can eject us from Eden, from happiness, from bliss, from love. What matters is how to use this energy well, or we condemn ourselves because that force has to act. It can act in a polluted, selfish way, or it can be harnessed with intelligence, with wisdom, with patience, with understanding. 
The Three Gates of Gnosis
To access the heights of these mysteries, we work with that energy, with the science of alchemy, especially, الله Allah-Kimia: to fuse one’s self with the Being. We find that this direct knowledge is symbolized even in Islamic architecture. You see this image, which is the Mecca gate number thirty-seven from Al-Masjid an-Nabawī, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. This mosque is also known as Al-Haram, or Al-Haram al-Madani, and Al-Masjid an-Nabawī. It was built by the Prophet, and it constitutes one of the largest mosques in the world. It is the second holiest site in Islam after Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca.
The Arabic inscription shows the name of Prophet Muhammed followed by his title: Apostle of God. This door signifies the entrance to genuine wisdom, which we experience by living through the alchemical mysteries of the prophets. This is דעת Daath in Hebrew or معرفة Ma’rifah in Arabic, the doorway to the highest mysteries. It is because that force has the potential to transform us radically, to open the doorway into those higher states of being. If you are not working with the creative energies, you will not access selfless states. Instead, you will access the opposite, which is harmful. Let us examine what these three gates of this mosque represent. They represent the three gates of gnosis according to the Sufi master Abdullah Ansari of Heart, and it is very beautiful that this mosque contains this tradition and this teaching. We can learn a lot from its symbolism in terms of the kind of work that we need to perform if we really want to obtain the highest degrees of mystical experience. There is the Gate of Mercy: باب الرحمة Bab ar-Rahmah to the south, the Gate of Gabriel: باب جبريل Bab Jibril, to the west, and the Gate of Women: باب ٱلنساء Bab an-Nisa to the east. Let us read these quotes for a deeper understanding of this mosque, but also how it applies to our spiritual work. From the field of Wisdom the field of Gnosis is generated. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
Remember the word wisdom in Hebrew is חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is the kabbalistic symbol for Christ, Christic perception, selflessness, the power of Vis-dom: the power of divine vision. From this vision, the field of gnosis is generated.
God, the Most High, says, ‘[And when they listen to the revelation received by the Apostle] You will see their eyes overflowing with tears, for they recognize the truth’ (5:83) 
We have to study the Tree of Life in order to understand the three gates, in relation to four directions mapped out by the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life has many angles in which we can approach it. A lot of different mysticisms and teachings relate to four directions, north, south, east, and west, within scripture. Often times, those references are indicating certain aspects of this diagram in order to teach something very intuitive. So, while it might seem very complicated and difficult, when you have meditated on what these directions symbolize in relation to the Tree of Life, after study and practice, it will become much more clear to you.
Now specifically, the north relates the right pillar of the Tree of Life, which is the pillar of mercy, with qualities like חָכְמָה Chokmah: Wisdom, חֶסֶד Chesed: Mercy, and נצח Netzach: Victory. We have the south relating to the left pillar of the Tree of Life, which is בִּינָה Binah: Intelligence, גְּבוּרָה Geburah: the divine soul, Justice, and הוד Hod: the emotions, Glory. The middle pillar, towards מלכות Malkuth, is going towards the west, while the top of the Tree of Life towards כֶּתֶר Kether, the higher sphere or point to this glyph, is the east. What is significant about these directions is that they relate to qualities of being, tendencies, and manners of conscious expression, whether in conditioned states or unconditioned states. The east is where the sun rises especially. We can say that כֶּתֶר Kether is the Far East because that is the highest, at the top of the Tree of Life. We can say תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth is the middle of this diagram and is governed astrologically by the sun and Venus, the star of love. We can call that the Middle East. It is interesting because many scriptures take place in the Middle East. It is midway between the top and the bottom of this diagram, but is also pointed towards the east because astrologically, the sun relates to תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, the beauty of the soul, the solar, divine, creative volition. The west is related to where the sun sets, to those principles of divinity that go down into the infernal worlds, that descend into darkness, because the further away we are from the light, symbolically, the less understanding and intuition we have. The north relates to spiritual forces, because the right pillar, Mercy, is divine, related to חָכְמָה Chokmah: Wisdom, חֶסֶד Chesed: Mercy, and נצח Netzach: Victory. The south, the left pillar, its forces descend down towards מלכות Malkuth, and down towards the infernal worlds, the negative states of consciousness. 
What is interesting is that as the right pillar, those forces descend into יְסוֹד Yesod in order to be harnessed by our spiritual practice. When we abuse of the creative forces of judgment, גְּבוּרָה Geburah: divine consciousness, it descends into the hell realms. If you have studied yoga, and pranayama especially, you know about the two energetic currents on the spine. The Tree of Life relates to your spinal column as well. The right pillar is precisely mercy, the solar creative force, Pingala in Sanskrit, and the left pillar of severity relates to Ida, the feminine creative polarity within our spine. We have a masculine polarity, which is Pingala, the solar force, but also a feminine, lunar, receptive force known as Ida, and that energetic current―Ida, in most people―is fallen. It does not rise up to the brain from the coccyx, but instead descends to the hell realms.
So, this relates to why, according to some mythologies, demons have tails, because that serpentine fire of Ida is descending. It has “gone south,” so to speak. If you have heard the term, when things go really bad, you are going south. It originates from this. There is some credence to that saying in a kabbalistic sense. If we want to understand the Tree of Life in relation to our spiritual work, we study these four directions. You can also learn more about the four directions in the kabbalah, especially by studying operas such as Turandot. We have a course The Secret Teachings of Opera where we talk about that specific composition by Puccini, which talks about the four directions in more detail. We can study the three gates, specifically, of the mosque we were talking about, Al-Masjid an-Nabawī: The Prophet’s Mosque in relation to this teaching by Abdullah Ansari of Herat. Gnosis of the first gate is the foundation of Islam; gnosis of the second gate is the foundation of faith, while gnosis of the third gate is the foundation of sincerity. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
We have explained previously that the first gate, which is the knowledge of being, of unity, of unique peerlessness, is the foundation of Islam: submission to divinity. This is related to the Gate of Mercy: باب الرحمة Bab ar-Rahmah, to the south. If we wish to access the unifications of our soul, the unique peerlessness of the Being, we have to control the left pillar in us. It is necessary to receive divine mercy and to enact that blessing in us by working to control that fallen current within us, Ida: the lunar, creative, serpentine fire in our spine. It is the Gate of Mercy related to the left pillar because with our fallen and mistaken actions, we create suffering. We create problems for ourselves, and therefore we have to submit to divinity by controlling the creative energies. There is no escape from this. It is fundamental in a kabbalistic, alchemical, initiatic, and Sufi sense.
We submit to divinity because our Being is merciful and wants us to change, and therefore directs his attention towards the south, which is the Gate of Mercy, because the left pillar of the Tree of Life, by learning to work and stabilize our consciousness with those forces, we attain equilibrium. The second gate, which relates to God’s power, His omniscience, His beneficence, is the foundation of faith. This is the Gate of Gabriel: باب جبريل Bab Jibril, to the west, relating to מלכות Malkuth, the physical body. So, the former left pillar really is governed by גְּבוּרָה Geburah, severity. Divinity can be very severe with us because of our wrong actions from the past, but we do receive many blessings and intercessions as a result of our sincerity, of submitting ourselves to divine law, and not selfish law. מלכות Malkuth relates to the west, the foundation of faith, the Gate of Jibril. 
We can say that God’s power, His omniscience, His blessings, come from جبريل Jibril, which in Hebrew is spelled גבריאל Gabriel, related to the Nordic runes, Gibur, and the Egyptian Ra and the Hebrew אל El. It is the power of sexuality, because the crossing of man and woman within the physical world is what forms the strength, Gibur, of God. In Hebrew we say אַתָּה גִּבּוֹר לְעוֹלָם אֲדֹנָי Attah Gibor Le’olam Adonai (AGLA אגלא): “You are Almighty Forever Oh Lord” as a mantra or sacred prayer within kabbalah. When you combine man and woman as a cross of forces and energies in מלכות Malkuth, they spin. They rotate like our chakras. They vibrate. They move. They flow. They form a swastika, which unfortunately was a symbol that was misappropriated by the Germans in World War II, even though that knowledge was applicable to all ancient traditions. The movement of the cross is the force of sexual power, which people like Hitler and his cronies abused, but the original meaning has to do with גְּבוּרָה Geburah, the forces of the strength of God, Gibur-Ra-El, גַבְרִיאֵל Gabriel, גְּבוּרָה Geburah in Hebrew. That sexual strength descends from the left pillar down into מלכות Malkuth to give us force, in order to perform alchemy.
It is the Gate of Gabriel because in the physical world is where we need to practice if we are married, if we are in a matrimony. By mastering the cross, we rise out of the west into the east, towards heaven, towards the Middle East, and beyond if we are serious. That force of the Gate of Gabriel is precisely in the west. Nobody can enter heaven without working through Gabriel. If you have remembered all the stories of the prophets in the Bible, they are all announced by Gabriel. Likewise, the Prophet Muhammed was announced a prophet because of جبريل Jibril. He received the first recitation of the Qur’an upon جبل النور Jabal Nur, the “mountain of light,” and that mountain is in תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth. It is in the Middle East where the sun rises, where he would go meditate and receive divine teachings from جبريل Jibril, which are symbols, representations of alchemical knowledge, his sexual creative work within the perfect matrimony. The third gate, which relates to knowledge of charitable works, loving in close intimacy, is the foundation of sincerity. This is the Gate of Women: باب ٱلنساء Bab an-Nisa, the east. Personally, I find this the most compelling because as Samael Aun Weor mentioned in Practical Astrology, The Manual of Practical Magic: Humans came out of Paradise through the doors of Eden, and Eden is sex itself
She is the gate to Eden and man is gate to Eden for woman.
So, this sexual power of Eden, of bliss, is loving in close intimacy with divinity. We really show love for الله Allah when we really learn to be chaste in the sexual act, when we are transmuting diligently. Specifically, because if you look at the Arabic calligraphy in the name of الله Allah, you have four letters: أ Alif, ل Lam, ل Lam, ه Ha. The letter أ Alif is a straight line. It is phallic. It is the masculine, creative, projective, positive symbol of man. ل Lam is like a tongue upon which the Word is gestated, the Verb, the creative expression, in which, by mantras in the sexual act, we transform and transmute that fire. We have the ل Lam or ל Lamed in Hebrew, of a man or the ل Lam or ל Lamed of a woman. Then you have ه Ha, which is like a womb, the feminine, creative, negative, receptive, sexual organs. That is the power of الله Allah: when husband and wife work together in remembrance of divinity. That is the door to paradise to the east. We face the east, the rising sun, when we pray to Mecca, towards the Kaaba, the sacred stone of יְסוֹד Yesod towards the east, which is rising above מלכות Malkuth, the west. When we raise that sexual force of יְסוֹד Yesod up to our mind and to our heart, we are really sanctifying the Gate of Women: باب ٱلنساء Bab an-Nisa, to the east. We face the rising sun, which reminds us of the Germanic Easter, Eostre, as we mentioned in the previous lecture. Why is this the gate of sincerity? Because if we are not really honest with our sexual behavior, we are not going to be honest with ourselves or divinity. We cannot access profound knowledge without that humble basis: acknowledging where we are at, what are behaviors are, and what we must change. 
The Three Pillars of Gnosis
The three ways of gnosis also relate to the top of the Tree of Life. As we mentioned extensively, these are principles, energies, lights, forces―one intelligence, one divine unity that expresses and manifests as three. This is توحيد Tawhid: the unity of God. These three expressions of one light can be understood by the Sufis’ demarcation of three degrees or levels of school, of esoteric, Gnostic, Sufi instruction.
We have شَرِيعَة Shari’a, طريقة Tariqa, حقيقه Haqiqah. معرفة Ma’rifah is דעת Da’ath, the creative knowledge, which, when this image is placed upon a human being, relates to the throat―again, the mouth, the Verb, the Word, the secret knowledge that was only given through oral transmission to candidates that proved their discipleship, their worth. These three pillars, we can say, relate to what Al-Hujwiri said in Revelation of the Mystery, that the Essence of divinity is known as כֶּתֶר Kether in Hebrew, the crown. חָכְמָה Chokmah: Wisdom, are the Attributes of divinity, the divine qualities of the Being. Divinity’s Acts are בִּינָה Binah: intelligence. Here is what this Persian Sufi master had to say about this topic: The Knowledge of the Truth (Ḥaqíqat) has three pillars―
Who are those capable of knowing the Unity, the Essence of divinity, כֶּתֶר Kether? It is those who have reached puberty, whereby the sexual potential is developed and mature. This indicates how individuals whose sexual energy is activated can begin working with transmutation, so that such energy provides a basis for comprehension.
Divinity is not localized within one particular space, but is space itself, the absolute abstract space wherein any universe is gestated. In this way, the Sufis agree how divinity does not have wife nor child, which is a response to the degeneration of the Christian Trinity. The Father, Divine Mother Mary, and Christ child were taken to represent literal, anthropomorphized figures, which is missing the point regarding the symbology of scriptures. Biblical characters, while having literally lived in the past, more importantly represent principles that apply to our own inner work. As for our imagination and intellect, only those who possess the seed, the sexual essence or synthesis, can awaken genuine intelligence and perception. This is because, as we explained previously, the Qur'an refers to initiates as "possessors of seeds" or "kernels," ulu'l-al-bab, which is often translated as "possessors of intellect." In Sanskrit, intellect is बुद्धि Buddhi, or in Hebrew, גְּבוּרָה Geburah, the Arabic دين Din. Initiates possess the secret of sexual knowledge, the sexual seed, the kernel of life, and are therefore known as intuitive kabbalists, whereas the intellectuals, the intellectual kabbalists, only possess the shells, the appearance of diverse doctrines. Al-Hujwiri continues: Knowledge of Divine Attributes requires you to know that God has attributes existing in Himself, which are not He nor a part of Him, but exist in Him and subsist by Him, e.g. Knowledge, Power, Life, Will, Hearing, Sight, Speech, etc. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
Samael Aun Weor explained that the best atoms belong to חָכְמָה Chokmah as the attributes of a universal consciousness. We can access such infinite states in deep meditation and learn to subsist within them through familiarity and training. While they "are not He nor a part of Him," such divine qualities or states of Being exist within His fundamental nature, which can be realized in us when we are properly prepared.
Al-Hujwiri continues: Knowledge of the Divine Actions is your knowledge that God is the Creator of mankind and of all their actions, that He brought the non-existent universe into being, that He predestines good and evil and creates all that is beneficial and injurious. ―Al-Hujwiri, Revelation of the Mystery
Again, בִּינָה Binah is the creator, the empowerment of all actions, especially our sexual behaviors. If we do not awaken consciousness through the positive use of the sexual force, it becomes channeled through ego, animal desire. However, בִּינָה Binah, divine action, allows for the emergence of uncreated things, the materialization and manifestation of the abstract within the concrete. He provides both good and evil because בִּינָה Binah is beyond good and evil, דעת Daath or معرفة Ma’rifah: the Tree of Knowledge beneath the Logoic Triangle on the Tree of Life.
Here we are using kabbalistic explanations for Sufi doctrine in order to clarify. شَرِيعَة Shari’a: the law, divine instruction, relates to how we act, how we receive the teaching, how we apply it with intelligence, with understanding, so that divinity can be cultivated within a space in our hearts, in our consciousness, so that we can walk the path of wisdom طريقة Tariqa, or חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is wisdom. In this way, we begin to experience and understand, from direct experience, what the attributes of divinity are: compassion, altruism, philanthropy, chastity, patience, humility, faith, wisdom, diligence, perseverance. Then we have حقيقه Haqiqah, the truth, relating to the Essence of divinity: the supreme qualities of the Being. الْحَقُّ Al-Haqq: The Truth. So, we accomplish that by working with معرفة Ma’rifah or דעת Da’ath in Hebrew, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which allows us to become pure, as the Qur’an teaches and emphasizes many times. The Three Ways of Gnosis
Let us relate some more quotes from Abdullah Ansari of Heart, which break down this structure for interpreting conscious experiences, mystical instruction, but also our direct experiences.
The way that leads one through the first gate is envisioning the Creator’s providence (בִּינָה Binah, the sexual force) in the opening and closing of (human) handiwork. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, what is the creator? As I said, الخالق Al-Khaliq relates to בִּינָה Binah, the intelligence of how divinity creates through sexual union with our partner, within alchemy. It is the opening and closing of human handiwork. This relates to knowledge of Being, of unity, of peerlessness.
There are a lot of references in the Qur’an, which refer to the handiwork of humanity that are symbols of divine expression. For example, the Qur’an mentions how God made the ships of the sea, iron, weaponry, vineyards, date palms, which are nourished by rain as signs and symbols for those with understanding, intelligence. These are all representations and symbols of how divinity creates in us, creates the soul through the iron of weaponry, which is willpower, and the ships of the sea. The sea, as I said, is a sexual symbol. We cross the sea of temptation through the great ark, so that we are not drowned in the flood of destructive passions. We perceive divinity's influence in our lives through our handiwork, our sexual path, our discipline, which has to be handled with intelligence, with בִּינָה Binah. We can experience בִּינָה Binah in a sense, in our level, as we are working through transmutation exercises. That is the power and energy that grants us understanding for interpreting what the diverse religious scriptures have to say in their synthesis, in their fundamental root. It also is the way and the gate that leads us towards experiencing who the creator is in us. Let us continue reading: The way that leads through the second gate is the contemplator’s own interior recognition of the wisdom (חָכְמָה Chokmah) of divine Providence within himself. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, these are inner states, inner qualities of the being. Divine providence is the manifestation of compassion, which is חָכְמָה Chokmah, wisdom, which we recognize in ourselves as we learn contemplation, selflessness. If you meditate deeply and penetrate within this sephirah, as Samael Aun Weor and others have mentioned, we can experience being multiple people, multiple individuals, experiencing a state of omniscience in which you are witnessing yourself. For example, there was one Gnostic instructor who mentioned that he perceived, in this sephirah, Krishnamurti teaching a group of students, and he saw himself, with a lot of love, providing beneficial knowledge for humanity. He returned to his body, and he was very alarmed, wondering if he was Krishnamurti, but the truth is that he penetrated in to the sephirah חָכְמָה Chokmah, which is wisdom, omniscience, divine consciousness. Let us continue:
The way that leads through the third gate is the perception of God’s Mercy (כֶּתֶר Kether, the Mercy of Mercies) that recognizes [the worth of] praiseworthy works and overlooks sins. This final and last gate is the field of the gnostics, the alchemy of lovers, and the way of the Elect; it is the way that beautifies the heart, increases one’s joy and expands the feeling of love. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
This also relates to knowledge of charitable works, loving in close intimacy, which is increased as we are intimate with our partner with divine love, with chaste love, with pure love. It beautifies the heart. It is the alchemy of lovers. It is the field of the Gnostics. In this state, we can really receive divine aid.
Subsistence in God
What is subsistence in divinity? We talked briefly about how some of these states can be experienced in meditation, can be mapped by this diagram, can relate to scripture, teachings, and systems of thought, but it would be good to understand what it means to subsist in divinity, which is baqā in Arabic.
As we mentioned, we can have fleeting experiences related to the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth of the Tree of Life, but knowing how to sustain them requires training, knowing how to subsist and to be in those states. What is subsistence specifically? To define it for you, it is: The state or fact of subsisting; the state or fact of existing; the providing of subsistence for support; the means for supporting life, such as a living or livelihood. It is the source from which food and other items needed to exist are obtained. ―Dictionary.com
For the meditator, divinity is our livelihood. It is our nourishment. It is our subsistence, our substance. In philosophy, subsistence relates to existence, specially of an independent entity. It is the quality of having timeless, abstract existence, which again relates to the trinity of the Tree of Life. It is abstract for us. It is very difficult for us to ascertain as concepts, but can be intuitive and known through experience. It is “a mode of existence by which a substance is individualized" (Dictionary.com). It is the meaning of subsistence.
We want to make our consciousness an individuality, as I said. Right now, we are a multiplicity. By integrating our consciousness from its multiple defects and eliminating those faults, we individualize ourselves. We integrate the soul so it can reflect the perfect unity within. There is no other way to return to divinity but to eliminate all that is false. It is the radical axis upon which Gnostic and Sufi teachings are based in their esoteric origin. This is why we talk a lot about the annihilation of the ego, which, of course, is a difficult topic for people, because we are all attached to ourselves. It is a fundamental quality of our experience, that we do not like to perceive our faults, to eliminate and change them, but this is the basis of religion. The Sufis referred to annihilation as fana. Without it, we cannot be within God. From the field of Annihilation the field of Subsistence in God comes. God, the Most High, says, ‘God is the Best, the most long-lasting and Subsisting’ (20:73).
These are reasons why we should really work seriously in ourselves to understand our own faults. Death will arrive. Our means of subsisting in life will vanish. The limits will be broken as we enter into the internal worlds after death and are forced to confront our past. Understandings will be eliminated. What we thought was factual, but was illusory, will have to be addressed.
As it is mentioned in the Qur’an, the unbelievers will be given their account within a book. It is a symbol of retrospecting one’s life after having deceased. History will fade away. Knowledge of the world will be useless. Allusions are transient. The information in our head will be wiped out because we do not remember how we came into this world, where we are going, and where we are now. So, all these things are transient, but God eternally exists, and he exists in His ultimate unity. Unification is the goal. Purification of the consciousness is our objective. 
The Day of Alast
I would like to relate a brief excerpt from the Qur’an, which teaches something very beautiful and profound about our relationship with divinity.
Before the soul had emanated from the Absolute into the manifested universe, in order to begin a specific spiritual work, the Sufis referred to this conversation between the soul and divinity as a type of profound revelatory moment that had to be reinitiated again by the soul that is learning to return to divinity. We emanated from the Absolute into the universe and now we must return to the Tree of Life with knowledge, with wisdom. The moment of communication with divinity, we can say, the moment we left the Absolute, is known by the Sufis as the Day of Alast. It is the covenant of divinity with the soul. When we talk about the Absolute, we pay close attention towards the אין סוף Ain Soph, which Samael Aun Weor clarified in his book Tarot and Kabbalah is our own particular synthesis, an atomic, super-divine force of Being which is like a point of light within the abstract absolute space from which we emanated. It does not have knowledge yet of its full, divine happiness and potential. Therefore, it sends down its knowledge towards the Tree of Life in order to enter מלכות Malkuth and hopefully to return upward and back towards the source. This is the meaning of the verse from Hadith Qudsi: Allah says, “I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created a creation (mankind and the Tree of Life), then made Myself known to them, and they recognized Me.” ―Hadith Qudsi
So, divinity is that beautiful treasure we seek to uncover within our meditations, to know divinity, to recognize divine intelligence, and divine expression within our dreams, within our meditations. The following verses from the Qur’an relate and apply, basically, how the power to witness divinity is born from our seed, our creative sexual matter. We will relate and explain this to you:
And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny and made them bear witness concerning themselves, “Am I not your Lord?” they said, “Yea, we bear witness―lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, “Truly of this we were heedless,” or lest you should say, “[It is] only that our fathers ascribed partners unto God beforehand, and we were their progeny after them. Wilt Thou destroy us for that which the falsifiers have done?” Thus do We expound the signs, that haply they may return. ―The Heights, Al-A’rāf 172-174
Samael Aun Weor mentions that we return to the Absolute by working with alchemy, within a marriage in מלכות Malkuth, and then rising up the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth to the heavens, back towards our אין סוף Ain Soph. It is interesting that this verse is found within Al-A’raf: The Heights within the Qur’an, because we have to return to the heights of this diagram, the superior states.
We bear witness through the sexual seed. This is the fundamental teaching that Samael Aun Weor gave in his books. It is the sexual seed that grants the energy, the capacity, the knowledge, the wisdom by which to access this reality within its multidimensional grandeur and splendor. It is interesting that in the Qur’an, the word progeny translates from ذرية dhurriyyāt, which derives from a root that literally denotes “small particles, atoms, seeds,” which are scattered, and this is very interesting. This word also means “progeny” or “offspring” in many other verses from the Qur’an. These atoms belong to יְסוֹד Yesod specifically, but all the different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth contain particles that are sexual energy in seed. Those forces and potentialities can grant us the capacity to return to divinity. In the path and process by which we return to the Absolute, we create the soul. We create vehicles that relate to each of these lower סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, so that we can have it and experience, know, and understand the forces of those levels of nature, becoming more rarefied and beatified as we ascend. In the end of the work, what is really interesting is that after having perfected ourselves within the ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, we can enter and emerge to return into the אין סוף Ain Soph, but at this point, as Samael Aun Weor mentions in Tarot and Kabbalah, we enter the אין סוף Ain Soph as our unity: that super-atomic point or star, that synthesis of our real Being, the real Being within, and we abandon all vehicles below. They dissolve. What is extracted as a type of synthesis or essence of those lower ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth is a seed, a germ. Those ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth are reduced to a single point, a single atom within each individual sephirah. You have ten, and they enter the Absolute, so that when the soul is united with the perfect plenitude of divinity, whenever the master that is self-realized wants to enter the universe, he can put those seeds, that progeny into activity, in order to manifest anywhere at will. Such a monad or unity, such an אין סוף Ain Soph, has knowledge of its own perfection. Therefore, those seeds have to be gathered. They are scattered in us. This is the meaning of “to bear witness from their loins,” or better said, the Lord took from the children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny, their seeds, those atomic spiritual essences that relate to the Tree of Life, and made them bear witness concerning themselves. You bear witness of reality through divinity, through working with those forces and mastering them, so that in the end, we dissolve, in a form of annihilation, in order to subsist within God, within the אין סוף Ain Soph Paranishpanna, an atomic, super-divine star of our Being that shines with great glory and splendor in the absolute abstract space. This is الله Allah, the root of all Being. In relation to the Tree of Life, if you have studied the books of Samael Aun Weor, he mentions creating solar bodies. We create vehicles through the sexual seed, which are solar, material vehicles or means of expressing the perfect light of divinity within the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth themselves. These solar bodies are known as the Wedding Garment of the soul in Christianity. You also have in Arabic, لباس التقوى libas al-taqwa, the garments of reverence within the Qur’an, the vehicles of the soul, the pure, energetic, divine, spiritual vehicles that we can have within the world of dreams, within the internal dimensions, so that we can navigate in those spheres consciously, with intentionality, with lucidity, with consistency, with continuity. These are vehicles that are created within a marriage. You can study The Perfect Matrimony for more elaboration on those points. Here we are only synthesizing how when you work with the sexual seed, you are using the energy that can grant you witnessing of the truth, as stated in the Qur’an, so that we can return to our divine origin. What is interesting about the solar bodies or these vehicles of the soul and spirit within Islam are mentioned again here: O children of Adam, We have bestowed upon you raiment to conceal your private parts and as adornment. But (the clothing of chastity) the raiment of reverence (libas al-taqwa)―that is best. That is from the signs of Allah that perhaps they will remember. ―Al-A'raf 26
The Arabic words لباس التقوى libas al-taqwa can be translated as “armor” due to the fact that reverence, which is the Arabic تقوى taqwa, comes from the word attaqa, which means “to shield oneself,” and it is a reference to, as mentioned many times in the Qur’an, how one has to defend oneself against the punishment of hell fire, against our animal passions. Likewise, this raiment of chastity guards one’s private parts, which we utilize the creative potential for divine will. Study The Perfect Matrimony for better understanding of alchemy, The Mystery of the Golden Flower, and also Tarot and Kabbalah by Samael Aun Weor. These dynamics are explained very deeply. Here we are relating this synthesis to the Qur’an.
Dissolution within Love
In the end, after you have extracted all the seed essences of all the different סְפִירוֹת sephiroth within you, you dissolve within the Absolute and achieve true, genuine liberation and subsistence.
We end this slide with Abdullah Ansari of Herat’s statements. We talked about the ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, the ten spheres, which can also be ten stations, which can also be signified as 100 stations or levels and degrees of initiation relating to the Tree of Life. Each of the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth is a station in itself. All these one hundred stations are dissolved in the field of love (mahabbat); the field of friendship is the field of love. God, the Most High, describes how He will produce a ‘people whom He loves and who love Him’ (5:54), and ‘Say: if you love God, follow me’ (3:31). But friendship has three stations: it begins with truthfulness, its middle is drunkenness, and it ends in non-existence. Praise be to God, the Beginning (al-awwal) and the End (al-ākhar). ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
The אין סוף Ain Soph, our true divine Being, is real love, limitless being, divine expression and freedom.
We have some poetry from Rumi, I would like to relate to you in terms of these concepts. Now, while we have given explanations of a kabbalistic and abstract type, which can be very challenging and difficult, these principles become understood through deep meditation and a lot of experience. Rumi, the great Sufi poet, mentioned some of the principles relating to love, and really knowing this from factual experience is a matter of conscious awakening and not just mere study of the intellect. I invite you not to receive this knowledge in the intellect but to really grapple with it in your heart. We need to take a lot of time to meditate on its contexts, because this is a result of many years of study, experience, and work in relation to this topic. Rumi says it best: No matter what I say to explain and elucidate Love, shame overcomes me when I come to Love itself.
That Water of Life is our sexual creative force. Therefore, it is the seed, the kernel of love, that opens the mysteries that cannot be divulged by mere speech, because its expositions are beyond the written and spoken word. Often times those meanings become obscured from too much intellectualization.
One other thing that we want to remember or bear in mind is that our actions are really the best predicator of spiritual life. Our words, our concepts, can be very hypnotizing, such as “I hope,” “I promise,” “I will do this,” “I believe in this,” “I wish,” “I have faith in these teachings or concepts,” but without action they are really quite useless. We can live our whole life ascribing partners unto God, unto divinity, hoping that one day we will be spiritual, but the reality is that we fulfill these in us when we enact selfless, compassionate action. It is in this way that we really fulfill شَرِيعَة Shari’a in Arabic, divine law, the divine commandments, and that way we walk the path طريقة Tariqa, which is meditation, entering deeper states of tranquility, insight, and learning to focus and concentrate upon one goal. In this lecture, for this meditation specifically, we learn to enter inside the Being, to penetrate the world of the Being. We can have many words for these concepts, but what is important is the reality, the experience. This is only accomplished through actions, through daily consistent discipline, and by working with the three factors of the revolution of consciousness as we have explained before. 
Practice
For this final lecture in this course, there is a simple practice you can use in order experience what these principles are about.
Adopt a meditation posture and completely relax. Withdraw from the senses and enter a state of equanimity and internal silence. Pray to your Being to grant you illumination, wisdom, and inner experience. While falling asleep, maintain vigilance, مراقبة muraqaba, and attentiveness, concentrating upon the presence of your Innermost to grant you the comprehension you seek. You can utilize one of the following two powerful mantras:
There is the mantra from Prajnaparamita sutra: Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Swaha!
The mantra known in Arabic as هو Hu, which is pronounced with an elongated breath. What is interesting is that Samael Aun Weor related the same mantra, but in the Chinese, Chan Buddhist way, in many of his books, specifically Magic of the Runes. It is the mantra Wu, pronounced like breath, the same sound prolonged like a hurricane:
It is the same mantra, the same teaching. The Sufis pronounce: الله هو Allah-Hu, repeatedly prolonging its vowel sounds, its syllables, and even going inside mentally, pronouncing it internally until falling asleep, entering through astral projections into higher dimensions to experience these for oneself.
At this point in time, I would like to open the floor to questions Questions and Answers
Question: Are the mantras pronounced mentally? Do you do the microcosmic star as well?
Instructor: You can pronounce them physically, and it is good to perform the microcosmic star before you physically sit to practice and to get yourself in the right state of mind, to enter into a state of serenity. You can pronounce the mantras verbally. Focus on the sounds. Let yourself recite these sounds first out loud, then dropping your volume and then enter doing it silently in the mind until you fall asleep, consciously letting that mantra totally engage you. The important thing is that we immerse ourselves within the mantra, in its vibration, internally. This is most powerful and most effective. In that way, like any other mantra from astral projection, you learn to separate from your physical body so that you can access those internal worlds, specifically in a deep, profound, and penetrative way. Question: How do Christian saints attain sainthood since they are mostly celibate? Instructor: So, as with any saint within the various religious traditions, they attained sainthood through a marriage, and of course, that knowledge was not given publicly. It had to be kept secret because it is controversial even now today, with the internet and openly teaching about these things. It is even difficult for people now to appreciate, understand, and to even want to practice and experiment with this science. Now, those saints from different traditions, whether they be from the Christian faith or from the Muslim and Sufi traditions, they all achieved initiation by working with the seed. Some masters had already worked with transmutation and alchemy in previous lives like the present Dalai Lama. He worked with alchemy, tantrism in his past existences. He reached sainthood, which we can say is the fifth initiation of Major Mysteries, the fifth initiation of fire or the peak of sainthood. Now, perfection, prophecy, and mastery are a very deep topic, which one acquires by entering the Venustic initiations as explained in the courses of kabbalah, Tarot and Kabbalah and The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor. We also gave an article called “Who is a Master” where we talked about specifically the different degrees within Sufi mysticism, sainthood, mastery, and prophethood. Saints, we can say, have acquired the fifth initiation of fire, but they do so through alchemy. In the case of the Dalai Lama, he already reached the fifth initiation of fire and was working as a single person in this existence. In order reach mastery, one has to be married, but it does not mean that those saints had done it in that current lifetime in which they became recognized for their sainthood. Question: What is the best way to die in your desire? I do not know if I have comprehended or not. It is my yearning for my Divine Mother to decapitate it. Do I have to break it down to my different desires? Instructor: The best way to die in desire is to comprehend. Our comprehension unfolds in layers, in levels. What we understand today, we will go deeper in tomorrow. This is a moment-to-moment work in which we examine our present state. If you really want to eliminate egos, we have to go deep inside and comprehend the root. If you eliminate the branches, the branches can grow back if you are not careful, but if you go for the roots, you can extract the tree of زقوم Zaqqum, the inverted tree of קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth, the hell realms. If you are not sure if you have comprehended it, or not, it means that you have not comprehended it. If you comprehend it deeply, you understand where the ego originated, how it sustains, how it feeds, how it works, what its food is, what its triggers are, what other egos does it relate to, etc. If you comprehend it a little bit, it is good to ask for elimination, especially, to pray for our Divine Mother to give us strength to resist it, comprehend it, and to not feed and give it what it wants. If you really want lasting, deep change, you have to go into the profundities and that often means we face the very thing that we do not want to face. This could be very difficult and very challenging. It can also help you to break down certain events in your life: visualizing it in retrospection meditation, to perceive what moment you reacted or mistakenly behaved, whether physically, verbally, or just mentally. Whatever you comprehend, you can pray for annihilation, but to understand that to be radically free from those tendencies, our comprehension has to be very robust. Your Divine Mother will give you the challenges and experiences for that ego to come up. If you do not comprehend it, those ordeals are going to keep repeating. It is important to repeat them because if we do not learn our lesson, then we got to go through it again. The important thing is not to exacerbate the karma that is repeating itself in that situation, but to take advantage of it. Learn to suffer consciously. Be patient. Allow ourselves some space and time to grow, not to be shaking the fruit from the Tree of Life out of ambition, but to let it blossom and let the fruit ripe on its own so that it falls on your hand when the moment comes. That is what comprehension is like. When you are meditating and you are not expecting any answer, when you just silence yourself and do not think―not as a blank, foggy, amorphous state, but as a pristine, sharp, lucid clarity―suddenly understanding emerges. It can appear in a form of experience, an intuition, a vision, and that understanding is enough when it is really profound, when you finally have intuited it, discerned what is going on in that situation. You can cut out the root. Remember that the term Samsara in Sanskrit means “cycling.” It is repetition and repeated, egotistical, psychological patterns that we go through again and again. When you really understand the root of it, you cut through it. That is nirvana. It is cessation. It is peace. So, study yourself and be patient. Do not rush. Take the time to understand one ego at a time. Analyze it profoundly, and when you least expect it, the understandings will emerge on their own. Question: How can we gauge our current progress in Gnosis? Instructor: Some people think it is mystical experiences, but that is not a guarantee of real development and change. Instead, you know you are changing and progressing when you no longer repeat the same mistakes. For example, perhaps at work you may have colleagues that are very negative. They gossip a lot. Perhaps they may even speak badly about you, and you might overhear this. Suddenly, you feel rage, anger, despair, fear… different egos that might emerge in the moment. You find that you are progressing when those situations repeat as a form of testing you and you do not psychologically react at all. You do not repeat the same reactions to the situation. You are not selfish there. There is no “self” present in those moments. You can be criticized and condemned by the same people, for as before you felt great eversion and suffering, you do not feel that anymore. You understood those faults in you and what kept producing that pain. Yes, you can have internal experiences in the superior worlds, the astral dimension where divinity will show you the level of your work. To see yourself in a coffin going into the fire in the astral plane is a symbol of eliminating certain egos, being dead psychologically. Those experiences can emerge and give us some gage and guidance, which is really beautiful, but also you find that you are not repeating the same mechanical behaviors. You are more conscious, and you are not reacting with the same egos. In fact, you are responding with patience and love like the example that I provided. It is how we respond to life, not react. That is a strong measurement of what we are doing. Question: What is the purpose of the circle movement that we see in the Sufi dances? Or what is its significance in relation to meditation? Instructor: We have a very similar practice within gnosis. We call it the Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation, in which we spin from left to right in order to activate certain latent psychological, energetic centers known as chakras. The Sufis do not refer to them in the Hindu sense, but they refer to it as اللطائف الستة Lata’if-e-Sitta, which are relating to certain organs of perception within Sufi psychology. They are energetic centers that allow for deeply experiencing our internal worlds. Part of the spinning process is to activate those centers, those forces in a significant and dynamic way. We can perform those dances, which are very sacred and beautiful. They represent and replicate the movement of the planets and spheres around the sun as a form of divine love, divine conscious realization. When we perform the sacred rites of rejuvenation, we also spin left to right, the same direction as we are turning a steering wheel in front of us, in order to perform certain spiritual works. There are different ways we can approach this practice, such as comprehending egos, activating chakras, healing sick organs, praying for divine assistance, and the Sufi dances parallel this as well. They are deeply integrated. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for attending this course. I hope you enjoy and study it deeply and apply it to your life. We wish you many blessings. Inverential Peace! Or as we say in Sufism: ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ As-salamu Alaykum! 
In the course of this study and practice, we now arrive at a critical point. Everything we explained, about the science of meditation, thus far, establishes a certain foundation, which specifically is the capacity to awaken the consciousness, while placing the mind, heart, energies, and body in a state of suspension, in profound passivity, in deep repose.
When the obscurations that filter our perception are removed, we learn to activate an objective state that knows how to apprehend the essential nature of reality. Most people, however, do not even get past the body. People are identified with sensations, a discomfort in their posture, an irritation, an itch, a scratch, a pain, making many movements and never entering introspection itself. If we are constantly attending to the body, we are not meditating. We have to put our body at a comfortable posture, so that we can relax it, and more importantly, so that we can forget about it. Let it be. Let it go. We also have to harness vital energy, but with attention, so that we can guide it wisely, intelligently, so that it works for us, not the other way around. We explain many times that we must not be fascinated with energy. We need it. We cultivate it. We direct it. It is useful when it is directed within its specific orbit. Unfortunately, there is a tendency in many spiritual movements and schools to identify with the chakras, those vital vortices of energy, to be fascinated by energy itself. But, just as a normal person would not be proud of having a full tank of fuel in their car, likewise, a genuine meditator does not identify him or herself with how much energy they have, with sensations of a psychic type, that they perceive with supernatural sense. What matters is how you drive your car. It does not matter how much fuel you have in it. Obviously, to a degree, we need it. But how you drive, how you manage your mind, your heart, and your body, with conscious awareness―that is essential. We also must not identify or invest energy within feeling, with surging negative emotions, with inferior sentiments, with anger, with vanity, with pride. Associative thought must also be suspended. It must be abandoned, and many people get stuck here. Their mind wonders. Their thoughts race. They think of what happened earlier in their day, and a chain of subjective memories hypnotize the consciousness. We become absorbed in what happened yesterday, and what we should have said, and how we felt, and what we thought. It is important that we are no longer distracted, that we clarify our attention and learn to focus on one thing, to not let it be dispersed or fragmented. As we learn to direct and sustain our attention, we naturally develop continuity. We are in a constant state of self-remembrance. We feel the presence of divinity at all times. We have deepened serenity, and this is where the potential for certainty and insight becomes realized, as we explained in the last lecture. As you concentrate upon one thing, you can develop consciousness. You strengthen understanding and you experience certainty about it. The natural function of the consciousness is to perceive and understand. If you do not perceive a phenomenon, you cannot comprehend it. It is a basic law of causality. However, just because we perceive something, does not mean we understand it, let alone perceive it clearly and objectively. For example, you can perceive a rope in the moonlight and initially believe it to be a snake. You can become filled with fear and terror. Many emotions surge within yourself as you see this object, thinking it is a serpent. It is only when you shine a flashlight upon the object that you perceive and understand what is happening. Magically, then, your fears vanish. This principle applies not only to the exterior world, but to our inner states, our psychological states, our ways of being. We do not clearly perceive our internal worlds. For most of us, it is very muddy world, an obscured reality within ourselves. Situations tend to happen, and we just react. We can know that we are angry. We can feel upset. We can feel proud, or we can think our thoughts, but these are just mechanical reactions to life. They are not conscious. They are not directed with intelligence. We do not really understand or see that our minds are the source of our sufferings. But it is when you shine light through observations of yourself, when you look at yourself, that you gain clarity and peace. Isn’t it true that once you understand a problem, what to do, what the solution is, how it was caused, where it came from, how it was sustained, how it made others suffer and other people involved in the situation, isn’t it true that we find peace? There is a cessation of suffering. Pain extinguishes, like a candle being snuffed out. The problem is that we have not trained our consciousness enough in order to really look at the facts, to not merely react to life, but to understand it, to perceive it in a new way. We often experience a psychological state, but we do not question what we perceive. We are not objective. If we are honest, if we examine ourselves, if we look, we can know that we are angry. But are we observing the anger? It is only when we separate from the ego, when we observe it with an active consciousness, that we can arrive to a very beautiful and magical dimension known as comprehension, real peace, real depth of a spiritual nature. Samael Aun Weor stated in many books, especially Igneous Rose, that comprehension and imagination must replace reasoning. We have explained before that imagination is the ability to perceive nonphysical imagery. It also applies to our sense of psychological self-observation. It is a different type of perception in which we are looking, psychologically, into the sources of our thoughts, our feelings, and our impulses. We examine where they come from, how they emerge, what they feed upon, how they sustain, how they pass, how they make us suffer. Some traditions have called this clear perception vipassana, insight, perception. The Sufis call it vigilance, مراقبة muraqaba. In Gnosis we call it imagination. However, as we begin to perceive nonphysical imagery while we are meditating and during our dreams, we also have to master the science of interpretation―to discriminate what we see, to have certainty about what we see, and certainty about what we understand, what is happening. This establishes the confidence of real faith, not belief. It is not a matter of thinking something is true or feeling it is true but knowing it having seen it. This is the essential fulcrum of Gnostic studies. However, we cannot really begin to understand what all the great messengers have talked about in terms of God, reality, the truth, if we do not practice in ourselves these principles, if we do not develop reverence and awe, real respect for these methods, because they work. We should learn to apply them as a scientist, not expecting a result and not running away from the results when they do emerge, but learning to see with a clear mind―to experiment, to verify, to test. This is why the Sufis, especially Al-Jurayri, in the Principles of Sufism stated: Whoever does not establish awe of duty and vigilance (muraqaba, or awareness: muhadarah) in his relationship to God will not arrive at disclosure of the unseen (mukashafah) or contemplation (mushahadah) of the divine. ―Al-Jurayri
We have explained what some of these Arabic terms mean, in previous lectures. Here we are going to build upon the steps that lead toward comprehension of the truth, contemplation, to witness, which as the Sufis and Muslims state in the Shahadah: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His prophet.”
We bear witness of the truth when we have experience. It is conviction born from perceiving reality and understanding it. The term مراقبة muraqabah is not only known as vigilance, but it is the Sufi term for meditation itself―to watch oneself, to examine one’s thoughts, one’s perceptions. Without this foundation, we cannot really experience the divine and more importantly, understand the message. So, we will talk in this lecture about the stages that lead, specifically, towards not only experiencing these principles but verifying and understanding them, more importantly. 
Three Steps of Initiation
We enter the internal worlds with cognizance and learn to initiate communication with our inner Being by studying three specific steps, three parameters, three principles. We preface this discussion in that these are not rigid plateaus, where you have to master one stage before you enter the next. These principles relate. They interrelate. They integrate. They support one another. They complement each other. While there is a sequence, in turn, and in truth, they represent one profound dynamic, which is self-realization, to know oneself within our multidimensional Being. We can fluctuate throughout these three stages even within a single moment in meditation. Samael Aun Weor states the following in his book, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology:
Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition are obligatory steps of the Initiation. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
If you have listened to other lectures on our website, we have talked extensively about the path of initiation. You can also study the lecture Stations within this course, where we talk about what it means to initiate a new way of being, a path, a method, towards the realization of the divine.
Whosoever has raised these three steps of direct knowledge has reached supraconsciousness (which is the consciousness that is beyond our ordinary perceptions. It is the way that a god perceives, a master, a prophet). The world of Imaginative Knowledge is a world of symbolic images. Inspiration grants us the power of interpreting symbols. In the world of Intuition, we see the great cosmic theater and we are the spectators. We attend the great drama of life. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
We study these principles to provide direction in our work, to give us focus, to give us orientation. You can see in the background of this image a prayer niche facing towards Mecca. You find these within any mosque. It is known as the قِبْلَة Qibla. It is how you direct yourself towards the stone of the الكعبة Ka’ba in the Middle East in order to pray. It is a symbol of your concentration, your focus, and your discipline, specifically with the stone, الكعبة the Ka’ba, יסוד Yesod in Kabbalah, the work with creative sexual energy, as we have mentioned many times.
So, in order to really master these three steps of initiation, to understand the process of experience and how to understand what we perceive, we have to be very dedicated, very prayerful, very devoted. In synthesis, imagination is the perception of nonphysical imagery. Inspiration is the recognition of divine symbolism or iconography. Intuition is the comprehension. It is the understanding or the interpretation of internal symbols and experiences. So, in a moment of meditation, you can be relaxed, entering profoundly into yourself, when you suddenly receive in your mind, that is quiet, a symbol. It arrived to you with clarity, with a perception that is very crisp, dynamic, powerful. You see it not with physical senses, but with psychological senses, with a capacity to perceive images, imagination. We often think of imagination as something fanciful, and ironically, we think of it as something false, when in truth, imagination permeates everything. I know in our Western culture we like to look down upon people who use their imagination, like artists, so to speak. But in truth, the greatest inventors, architects, creators, builders, first perceived something in their mind and then they made it manifest in reality, physically. The problem is that for most of us, our imagination is conditioned. We tend to use it in the wrong way. But when it is purified and perfected, it becomes a vehicle through which divinity can speaks to us, can communicate to us directly. So, you can be meditating and receive an image―not only that, but it arrives clearly and with a lot of vibrant colors, detailed, like a vivid lucid dream. You recognize a symbol and therefore you become inspired. You feel joy because you realize that God is speaking to you. But, the problem with most of us is that even if we have that experience, we get bewildered. We do not understand the message, and then we run to our friends, our instructors, or dream dictionaries, or books to find some kind of answer to a specific message given to us by our inner Being, and the problem is that we get more confused, because no one can interpret your dreams for you. Instructors can give suggestions, but really, we do not understand the karma of a person. We do not see into other people’s minds. Especially over the internet, we get those inquiries online and we see it even on the forum. People ask people or instructors to interpret dreams. The reality is that intuition, understanding of those experiences, will unfold naturally as we meditate. It is good to know symbols and different teachings from the prophets that relate to different symbols, but the truth is that the magical blossoming of realization unfolds when you put your mind aside, when you stop comparing with the intellect. You let your consciousness speak to your heart. The Sufis do not use these terms, but we reference such stages in the following way: Awareness (muhadarah) is the beginning; then follows disclosure (mukashafah), then contemplation (mushahadah). ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
First, we have to become aware of the divine presence inside. We become aware of images, imagination, perceptions, experiences, which unfold beautifully when we do not desire it, when we let our mind rest, and we wait and are open, receptive.
We acquire disclosure when we recognize with inspiration and joy that divinity has communicated with us through symbols, whether in meditation or in dreams. When you have an impactful experience, you feel great happiness. It hits you in your heart, even if you do not intellectually understand it, and the way to understand these messages is not with the intellect. It is with our heart, with our conscience. We can understand that divinity has disclosed, has unveiled a specific message for us, and it now is imperative that we learn how to interpret it with intelligence, without prejudice, without egotism, without desire. When we learn to interpret without the ego, we arrive at intuition, contemplation. We put the self away. You cannot know the truth with your mind, with your intellect. Your mind can only compare data from the senses. You need a different type of understanding, intelligence. Reasoning has to be put aside and this is why people often do not know how to discriminate what they are seeing, and so this lecture will serve to explain that process. 
Imagination
Let us examine the definition and guidelines for imaginative knowledge, from Samael Aun Weor:
For the wise, to imagine is to see. Imagination is the translucence of the soul. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
The question is, is our perception or imagination translucent? Is it clear? Can you take an object and visualize it perfectly? Can you sustain it for a long period of time?
Most of us, if we are honest, will find that the mind will distort the image. We cannot see clearly. We do not see with color, with intensity. We cannot sustain it. This is because our mind is conditioned. Our ego manipulates the practice. So, the solution is to be patient, because this skill, this sense, will only be developed with consistency, with intentionality. We all have the capacity to imagine. We all can perceive. We all have that potential. Some people, unfortunately, have used the term clairvoyance to denominate a term that is natural to anyone. Primarily, this group of people, I believe this is a group of French initiates, wanted to confuse those who were not studying their teachings. Clairvoyance really signifies “clear vision.” They gave a technical term to a natural function. Therefore, people have come to many absurd conclusions about what clairvoyance or imagination is, like it is a gift that only few people have. If I tell you to imagine an apple, you can see it, not with your physical eyes, but with your consciousness. The question is how developed is that skill and its very quality that can really help us to perceive divinity, internally within meditation and within dreams. So, there is positive imagination and there is negative imagination. Positive imagination is free of ego. There is no conditioning there. There is no subjectivity or delusion. It is not mixed with impurity, like anger, or pride, or resentment, or fear, or lust. Negative imagination is the type of fantasies that we have and engage with all day, typically. We think of conversations and things we wanted to say to a person at a given moment, or we indulge in images in our mind related to lust, with pride, with anger, etc. This wastes a lot of energy, and it means that our imagination is not translucent. It is not clear. We purify it gradually with patience. Samael Aun Weor continues: Whosoever awakens consciousness has reached Imaginative Knowledge. This one moves in the world of symbolic images. The symbols that the student saw while he was dreaming he now sees without dreaming, as before he was seeing them with a sleeping consciousness. Now he moves himself among them with an awakened consciousness even when his physical body is profoundly asleep. When the student reaches Imaginative Knowledge, he sees the symbols but he does not understand them. He comprehends that all of nature is a living scripture that he does not know. The student needs to elevate himself into Inspired Knowledge in order to interpret the sacred symbols of Great Nature. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
We have a lot of exercises in our tradition to develop imagination. There are visualization practices to strengthen their capacity, to perceive nonphysical imagery with color, with vibrancy, with intensity, with clarity, with depth, and with sustainability. Of course, our imagination in the beginning is going to be mixed. But, with practice, we transform conditioned perception into unconditioned perception, negative imagination into positive imagination.
It is important also to understand that there are two essential dynamics related to imagination. Visualization practice requires that we project an image. But it also requires that we learn how to receive images as well. With visualization, we take an object. We initiate it. We perceive it. We sustain it. We do it with gentleness. Imagination is a beautiful flower, an immaculate rose, with very delicate petals. It is not achieved through force, with exertions, with strain. It arises from the mud of your psychology with time and patience and great care, with tenderness, with affection, with love. Imagination comes to us when we recollect. We do not force it. We do not coerce the mind. Imagination is translucent and natural, like a cool moon reflected within a pond, within the pristine and limpid waters of a lake. So, if you lose the lucidity of the image that you are trying to visualize, it is good to open your eyes again, look at your object again, then close your eyes and continue. Train yourself. Be consistent. With practice you will begin to sustain images with great accuracy and consistency, and this is the skill that is going to open up the internal worlds when you combine meditation with relaxation. Ever have a dream? Ever enter the dream world consciously? Perceiving images and sounds and places and people and things? This is the doorway to real knowledge. So, when you work with imagination and you develop relaxation, you enter your psychology with concentration. You access knowledge of the superior dimensions: those realities that all the great prophets have called heavens. 
Candle Visualization
So, what are some practices we can do to develop this? We got to remember that as we are practicing, the mind is going to attempt to distract us. It is going to distort what we perceive, and when this happens, it is good to look at the object again and recall the exercise without force.
You can take a candle and observe it. Light it. Look at its qualities and color and details, and then close your eyes gently and visualize the object. If you find that your mind is distracted, it can be good to engage with preliminary concentration exercises, like focusing on the breath or a mantra, or you can open up your eyes again and observe the candle. Bring your attention back gently, without force. Remind yourself, not with recrimination, but with delicacy and confidence. Bring yourself back to the practice, and eventually you will start to sustain your imagination over prolonged periods of time. Start short. Begin with five-to-ten minute practices. Do them frequently, but daily, and then you will find you get better at it. 
Plant Visualization
If you want to get even more profound into this type of exercise, you can visualize a plant. So, if you want this to work, it can be good to go on to google images, to actually own a specific plant, and find pictures that relate to its appearance but also to its internal physiology, this is so that you can understand its constituent parts, what it is made up of, because this is very important when you practice a technique given by Samael Aun Weor in the book Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology.
Our visualization has to be very scientific. We have to know what makes up a plant. We have to be exact if we want it to work. So, you can imagine the form, the figure, the structure, the perfume, the color of the plant. It can be any kind. If you can get an aloe or a maguey, or other plants we use for magical rituals, elemental magic, like in Igneous Rose by Samael Aun Weor, the better. 
The important thing is that we have the plant of our choice and that we have precision with our visualization. You imagine the protoplasm, the membrane, the nucleus.
While maintaining drowsiness, we also reflect upon the four essential elements of the plant: its cell protoplasm, which is a viscous, elastic, and transparent substance, like an egg white. The four elements that relate to the protoplasm are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Perceive the nucleus. It is a miniature solar system, where life palpitates with abundance. It circulates, it flows, like the planets around the sun. Examine the nucleus in your mind eye. Perceive the nuclear juice and the nucleolus, which is covered by a nuclear membrane. The nucleolus is constituted by corpuscles that shine with light. We can also imagine how mineral substances make organic combinations within the plant cellular protoplasm. You can perceive the grains of starch within the luminous chlorophyll, which shines like a green light. Samael Aun Weor explains that we can enter ecstasy when contemplating plant cell nutrition, its relationship, and its reproduction. So, this is a very skilled exercise. It takes a lot of focus, but if you invest a lot of time and energy and work into this, it is very fruitful, very positive. 
So, when you are imagining the reproduction of the plant, and you know its parts, you can observe and imagine the chalice of the flower, which are its sexual organs, and the pollen is the masculine, reproductive element. The pistil or gynoecium is the feminine sexual organ of the plant, with its ovary sac, which is filled with ova, the stylus, and stigma, specifically.
We can visualize the process of fecundation, which is really important, where you see the feminine germs and the masculine gametes, when they meet. After exiting the anther, the pollen, which is the masculine gamete, reaches the ovary of the plant, whereby the feminine gamete waits with longing, with sexual anticipation, with ecstasy. 
It is important to remember that in this stage of the visualization, because we are focusing on the details of the plant, we are now going inside of the evolving and devolving processes of the plant itself. We have to perceive the sprout, the bud, which grows slowly, giving birth the leaves, to flower, and branches.
However, we have to recall that everything that lives must die. It must decay. It must devolve. This is the sister of evolution. Everything has birth, life, and genesis, gestation, formation, existence. But then it decays, devolves, degenerates, dies. You cannot have one without the other, and, as you are imagining the withering, the decomposition and death of the plant, you are perceiving its leaves and its stalk retracting and dying.
Now, what is the purpose of this exercise? We are becoming conscious of these spiritual laws and how they operate with all existing things. This visualization can apply to us as well, and if you go really deep, allowing the mind to settle, to calm, and you are visualizing all this with clarity, you can enter into the superior worlds as your body falls asleep. You enter the internal planes and receive higher knowledge about these processes, because to imagine is to see. It does not mean to fantasize: to project our desires of what we think or want. It means to receive new information. In this practice you are projecting an image and you are sustaining it with accuracy. You are maintaining its vibrancy, its depth, its life. You hold it and you wait. The next step is that if you are patient, if you are serene, if you are concentrated, and you are not expecting anything, the truth emerges. You are going to receive new information. It is going to relate to the object of your practice, and this can occur in the form of a living drama, a scene, an event, a situation, whereby you are both the witness and the participant. If you are meditating on a plant, specifically, you can eventually leave your body and speak face to face with the elemental of the plant. These innocent beings appear with beautiful colored tunics or togas. They are innocent children, very simple and pure. Now, the Sufis refer to this principle of imagination in different ways. They speak about awareness, which can be a very broad and general term. But specifically, we have to become aware of this whole process, of all these principles, of all the details of our visualization. I will read for you a quote from Principles of Sufism by Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah, which explain and corroborate what Samael Aun Weor wrote: Awareness [from the same Arabic root word hudur, presence], is presence of heart, which may be produced by the coming together of innumerable small proofs of what is real. It is still behind the veil, even if the heart is present with the overwhelming power of the practice of remembering God. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
What are these innumerable, small proofs of what is real? There are many people who write to us about their experiences. They are meditating. They achieve a state of quietude, of introspection. The mind is at rest. The body is calm. The energies are circulated through pranayama and suddenly lights emerge, colors, sounds, experiences, visions. This is imaginative knowledge. It is the capacity of the soul to perceive the higher dimensions, which are inside.
Many people have different experiences when they work in Gnosis. This constitutes definite evidence or objective testimony of the truth, of divine states. However, such perceptions are still behind the veil, so to speak, because we can perceive all these things, but we do not understand what we perceive. We feel a powerful divine presence within our consciousness even if we do not grasp the full depth of the vision. Mindfulness
This is why we study mindfulness. The term مراقبة muraqaba is Sufi meditation: to watch oneself, one’s thoughts, one’s desires, one’s precondition or prejudices, assumptions, cravings, aversions, etc.
Our capacity to imagine is strengthened when we self-observe. You need both. If you want your imagination practices to go well, you should be observing yourself all day so that the very sense of perception is strengthened and complemented by your imagination exercises. It is the same capacity to perceive, although they do have their distinct qualities. But when you are working with self-observation, you are working with positive imagination. You are learning to perceive your own inner worlds: your defects, your faults, learning to perceive objectively, learning to act objectively, to be in a state of equanimity. To be successful in these studies, we have to be vigilant. We cannot sleep as a consciousness. It is important to remember divinity in our actions and perceive and understand and observe our psychological process at all times. The word vigil means “to not sleep,” to not lose attention. A vigil often encompasses a ritual in which you are praying over the dead, in which you do not sleep, or other practices in many indigenous cultures where they pray to the divine gods, the masters, the buddhas, the prophets, and renounce physical sleep, even if but for a day. Some people refer to this process as mindfulness, which is the continuity of attention, or being aware at all times throughout our day, and even at night when we are asleep, physically. We learn to be conscious in the internal worlds. We achieve مراقبة muraqaba, meditation, by establishing ourselves within serenity. I will read for you some quotes from Abdullah Ansari of Herat from the Stations of the Sufi Path. He provides some guidelines for developing this introspective quality of perception: From the field of Serenity the field of Mindfulness is born. God, the Most High, says, ‘They celebrate His praises night and day, nor do they even flag or intermit’ (21:20). ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, this emphasizes that one cannot lose their attention even but a moment. It is a difficult process and training ground, but it is essential.
Mindfulness involves striving and is of three kinds: being mindful of service, being mindful of the spiritual moment, and being mindful of the inner consciousness. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
We must engage in selfless activities. We have to learn to serve our communities, families, our loved ones while in a state of vigilance. This is the prerequisite. However, this can only occur when we are no longer anticipate the future, nor ruminate about the past. We have to be present, here and now, as we explained in the lecture called The Present Moment in this course. Inner consciousness reflects our deepest connection, our solidarity and expression of Being. It means that we follow our hunches, our inquietudes, our longings, our intuition, where we know something without having to think about it. We know what to do in a given moment without having to rationalize. The quote continues:
Being mindful of service is achieved through three things: revering God’s command, knowing the Prophetic tradition, and recognizing pretension. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
How do we revere God’s command? We not only study the Piscean and Aquarian teachings, but we reflect upon how they are realized and related to our life. This is when the teachings become really fruitful and not an intellectual exercise. We learn to follow the commands of our being by following our heart. We learn to recognize which psychological states are harmful or beneficial. We do it through observations of the facts through experience, through trials, through errors, through failures.
The prophetic tradition, obviously in Islam, relates to the Prophet Muhammad, but it also refers to the ethical caliber, the lives of any genuine master. For us, as Gnostics of this tradition, we reflect upon the process of Samael Aun Weor, who describes the path of initiation through his example in books like The Three Mountains, which is a spiritual autobiography. We have to also recognize pretension, to identify when we do things with pride or with humility. You can only examine yourself. You have to know this from experience to distinguish the difference. And being mindful of the spiritual and metaphysical moment is achieved through three things: elimination of passion, purification of thought, and being overcome by divine love. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, you master your abilities in the moment by comprehending and eliminating passions: the egos, nafs-al-ammara in Arabic. Purify your mind. We do it by discovering and restraining desire, by judging it through retrospection meditation, and praying for annihilation when we comprehend it fundamentally.
We have to remember the presence of God. We do this when we are tempted and when we do not allow ourselves to be guided by desire. We follow our intuition which knows right from wrong. Lastly: And being mindful of the inner-consciousness is achieved through three things: losing [attachment to] the world, becoming free from the self, and returning to God through intimacy. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
We need to identify how we are attached to impressions, why we crave or possess aversions to certain situations. We have patterns that we repeat. We need to examine this. We have to follow the thread of inner consciousness, like Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth, that Theseus follows in order to escape after slaying the Minotaur―follow the thread, the continuity of your consciousness, to get out of the mind. We do that by examining our impressions, psychologically and externally. We free ourselves from the ego when we realize that we are not ego. This is a profound state of joy, real happiness.
Intimacy is a sexual and alchemical term, which unfortunately many Sufis ignore, often attributing it to realizing divine states, exclusively. However, the greatest intimacy with our Divine Mother is achieved in the perfect matrimony. Study the lecture on our website called Divine Love. It is in The Sufi Path of Self-Knowledge. 
Inspiration
Divinity speaks in symbols, which is always particular to the time, the needs, the interests, the language, the context, and the idiosyncrasies of a given culture. We can see in this graphic a representation of diverse religious forms, which contain esoteric principles. We should become familiar with them.
These 13 symbols starting at twelve o’clock, moving clockwise, are the Bahai faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Native Spirituality, Sikhism, Taoism, Unitarian Universalism, and Zoroastrianism. Different messengers have appeared to provide this wisdom, but since aspirants require different nourishment, possessing unique particularities―we all have different aspirations and tastes―divinity often conveys such truths in a way that it is going to be palatable. It is going to be accessible in a given moment in history. Symbols, however, convey greater meaning than words, which is why internal experiences have always been coded withing divine abstractions, within allegories, within parables, within situations, within dramas. People often ask why God speaks in symbols. In truth, you simply cannot convey that much depth through plain English. As much as we may like Shakespeare, really the most deep truths are abstract and symbolic. A word can convey some variety of meaning, whether its connotative or denotative, implicit, or explicit, the hidden or the literal meaning. However, a symbol can operate on multiple conceptual and experiential dimensions―all at once. For example, you can receive a cross in a dream and overall, it can refer to a state of profound moral suffering, but also the four elements of the ordeals. It can relate to sexual temptations, the crossing of male and female forces, the death of the ego. It can also signify the return to divinity. So, the language of God is intuition. It is a type of grammar. They are the building blocks of meaning, of an intuitive and spiritual type. It is difficult to learn, but if you are patient, you will learn it and it will guide you in your daily life. This grammar is synthesized through religious symbolism, especially the sacred arcana of The Eternal Tarot. These are the archetypes of the spiritual path itself. Each arcanum or law represents a truth that can apply to many different, specific events or problems. These are universal ideas, which become particularized to an event. For example, you can meditate and inquire into a certain problem, visualizing it within your imagination. As you awaken consciousness within the internal worlds, you perceive a drama, which can unfold in relation to a number. This signifies that numbers and their symbolism are intuitive. They are dynamic. They represent principles and forces. They symbolize specific conflicts and struggles, as well the anecdotes and antidotes for change, for remedy, to whatever problem we are facing. When you recognize that these symbols are a direct communication from your Innermost Being, you become inflamed. You become enraptured. You become inspired. You are perceiving something new in your consciousness. It is like a shock. It gives you joy. Literally, the term inspiration, from the Latin inspirare, signifies, “immediate influence of God or a god,” “to breathe upon.” Inspiration is when we recognize, through alert novel perception, that God has answered us. However, while we recognize that divinity has given us an answer, in relation to a symbol or a problem, we have to learn to interpret the message. However, the problem is the ego. People who do not question their perceptions and how they interpret their internal experiences have gone even so far as to commit crimes, literally. For example, we can internally see that our spouse is committing adultery with someone else. We can wake up from the dream and then mistakenly condemn our partner―not realizing how that inner vision was either a projection of our own desires, or if it was objective, a scene from a past life, which our spouse is incapable of repeating again. Internal perceptions have to be analyzed coldly, like you are dissecting a cadaver. You have to do it without superstition, without attachment, without assumption, not allowing any belief, any condition of mind to twist what you see. This is why we study religious symbolism. We study the path so that we do not get confused. We can verify whether or not our experiences are objective when we measure them up to the works of the prophets―not by modern people, but by real initiates who we have verified. If our inner experiences do not coincide with physical facts, with evidence, with verification from scripture, from the teachings, from the instructions, then we can sincerely disregard what we perceived. It will be a projection of the ego. We can be very confident in that. Samael Aun Weor gives a quote regarding this: Inspired Knowledge grants us the power of interpreting the symbols of Great Nature. […] When the “I” interferes by translating and interpreting symbols, then it alters the meaning of this secret scripture, and the clairvoyant (the imaginative one) falls into a crime that can conduct him to jail. Interpretation must be tremendously analytical, highly scientific, and essentially mystical. There is a need to learn how to see and how to interpret in the absence of the “I,” of the myself. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
Inspirational knowledge is uplifting. Its invigorating. It is really a beautiful thing, because we are unveiling the mystery of our Being. We are receiving true wisdom and we are receiving guidance, ethically, about our problems―what to do―how to behave. This is why the Sufis explained:
After this comes disclosure (unveiling, mukashafah) which is presence which has the quality of proof itself. In the condition the heart has no need of pondering indications or searching for the road, nor seeking protection from occasions of uncertainty, and it is not screened from the nature of the Unseen. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
These are different terms than what Samael Aun Weor gave. Unveiling is inspiration. It is when we unveil the mysteries and receive direct proofs of divine reality. We do not question or “ponder” what to do, because we do not need to “search” anymore for “the road,” the path: the way to the answer to an issue. The answer has appeared, so we are no longer uncertain about what divinity wants from us or is guiding us to do. We are no longer “screened from the unseen,” the Being. We feel great inspiration. We feel shock. We can feel awe, because we have successfully communicated with God and that God is speaking to us.
In synthesis, if you want to develop inspirational knowledge, you can meditate on classical music, especially Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart, Puccini, Chopin, Liszt, the great masters. Their music teaches these archetypes and enliven the heart. 
Unveiling
We see here an image of a woman wearing a burka, a face covering, which is an esoteric symbol of how the Divine Mother is hidden from the eyes of the profane, but is visible to those who maintain chastity. We achieve unveiling through working with transmutation, with breathwork, with pranayama. We do so through mantras and sexual alchemy. Abdullah Ansari of Herat continues:
From the field of Breath the field of Unveiling is generated. God, the Most High, says, ‘The heart in no way falsified that which he saw’ (53:11). ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
We have mentioned many times in this course that by harnessing the creating potential, we gain clarity in our perceptions, to the point that we acquire real faith, which is confidence born from experience, not belief. It does not matter if you think or do not think divinity is real, what matters is the experience, to verify, to know.
Unveiling is when the heart sees God, and the signs of such disclosure are three: the heart is drowned in the remembrance of God, the innermost consciousness overflows with His gaze, and the inner heart sees the Reality. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
To be drowned in remembrance is to be totally absorbed within that beautiful inspiration in the heart, because we have received a message, a symbol, and therefore, we are seeing God with the heart, not with the mind, but with the senses of the soul.
To gaze upon divinity is symbolic. God is formless, but divinity takes spiritual and religious forms so that we can apprehend its archetypical and intuitive nature. To see reality is only possible with an awakened and discerning heart. So many people approach spirituality with the intellect and therefore they do not understand mysticism, because it is not an intellectual process of comparing data. The mind can label phenomena, but it is no substitute for experience. The first kind of unveiling involves three things: truthful discourse, fear of people, and inspiration in invocation. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
These are relating to, again, the three stages or degrees of Sufism: شَرِيعَة Shari’a, طريقة Tariqa, and حقيقه Haqiqah or معرفة Ma’rifah.
Here we find the first level of unveiling, which is شَرِيعَة Shari’a―listening to the doctrine, truthful discourse, to be inspired and feel that this teaching is true based off our intuition in the heart and what we hear and receive with gladness. It means to validate and recognize these teachings with a receptive mind and heart that knows how to pay attention. We also feel inspiration or experience unveiling when we recognize how our actions bear consequences, especially when we relate with people. If we act with ego, we affect others, and therefore everyone is interdependent. No one is separate or isolated. In this way we feel great awe. We can feel fear, reverence, respect because we recognize that God is in all people and within ourselves, and therefore we do not act stupidly, intentionally. We should also feel inspiration when we pray or invoke divinity, as we know in our practices and rituals. The second kind of unveiling involves three things: stability of states, firmness in sincerity, and recognizing a higher bliss. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
This relates to طريقة Tariqa: the path of meditation, and it relates to the stability of states and the consistency and temperance of one’s practice. When we are consistent, we receive continual and consistent inspiration. We apply the knowledge daily and practically. We get results, even if but long-term.
We also remain firm in our sincerity, and we continually assess ourselves through inner accounting, محاسبة muhasabah in Arabic, self-observation. Recognition of higher bliss has to do with Samadhi, ecstasies, absorptions, whereby, the soul penetrates the superior worlds and unites with divinity after abandoning the ego. Lastly, relating to the higher paths of Sufism, we have حقيقه Haqiqah, the truth and معرفة Ma’rifah knowledge. And the third kind of unveiling also involves three things: attaining stability and peacefulness, attaining dignity like that of the angels, and attaining steadfastness like that of holy and spiritual people. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
Stability is temperance, to be firm and resolute, and these are developed with serenity, gradually, as we renounce egotism. We can have dignity like the angels, which is nothing like pride. It is humble. It is a recognition of one’s real worth, which does not assert itself upon other people, which learns to respect the will of other people. It offers guidance and solutions to problems without force, without manipulation. We do this by learning to work with the forces of persuasion, not coercion.
While we can maintain our dignity, we learn to establish boundaries with people. Humility does not mean that we necessarily become a doormat but learn to act appropriately with dignity for the benefit of others, even if it contradicts others’ ego. Of course, to distinguish this quality requires a lot of discrimination and analysis of oneself, to not assume we are anything, but to be empty, like a clear sky. Steadfastness, like holy and spiritual people, applies to those who practice meditation and transmutation, even for hours. It was said by Samael Aun Weor that a serious meditator practices five to six hours a day. Of course, this is the level of a master and has to be built towards―very difficult, but, as by his example, it can be done. We have to start with where we are at. With patience we shall possess our soul. 
Intuition
After receiving a divine symbol, we have to comprehend and intuit its meaning.
As we explained earlier, mathematics is divine. It is symbolic. It is archetypical. It is allegorical. It is parabolic. It is symbolic. Each number represents a principle. Each of the divine arcana, the laws of the cosmos, represent higher truths. About this, we find the following verses from Samael Aun Weor: The world of intuition is the world of mathematics. The student that wants to elevate himself to the world of intuition must be a mathematician or at least must have notions of arithmetic. […]. In the world of intuition, we find only omniscience. The world of intuition is the world of the being; it is the world of the intimate. In this world, the “I”, the myself, the ego, cannot enter. The world of intuition is the universal spirit of life. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
So, no self can be present. If you really wish to experience the highest levels and dimensionalities of Tree of Life, we cannot have any ego present. The self must be absent. There must not be any condition there. It does not mean that the whole ego has to be dead right away, but we have to learn to train ourselves to separate from that so that we can go within.
If you wish to understand and comprehend intuitive knowledge, you can meditate on mathematical formulas. Now it is easy to rationalize how 2 + 2 = 4. However, to understand the archetypes behind this, from experience, requires a lot of depth. Now, if you look at the Hebrew language, you find that the four-letter name י Iod ה Hei ו Vau ה Hei represents “man, woman, phallus, uterus” within alchemical terms. It is the synthesis and power of the Divine Father and the Divine Mother manifested within a couple. This synthesis expresses the creative power of God. You can analyze this intellectually, but to understand how a god creates, from experience, is very distinct. Intuition is known by the Sufis as contemplation. It has been called witnessing, مشاهدة mushahada. At this stage, we perceive a symbol, and we understand what it means. As stated by Al-Qushayri: Then comes contemplation which is the presence of the Real without any remaining doubt. Suddenly, the sky of one’s hidden inner being (sirr) becomes clear of the clouds of the veil, and the sun of vision rises in the sign of honor. The truth of contemplation is as Junayd said, “Finding the Real comes with losing yourself.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
With comprehension, contemplation, witnessing, we do not have any doubts about what we perceive. There are many levels of comprehension. We can have it in the physical world. We can even have it in the internal worlds, levels of intuitive knowledge as dynamic and broad and deep, and pervasive as the Tree of Life, which is why we study that kabbalistic glyph many times. However, to really have this type of understanding, the ego, the self, has to be absent, even if but for a few moments.
Some people have the mistaken notion that intuition exclusively applies to having a samadhi, in which you enter the superior worlds and enter a vacation. You leave the physical world behind and have some powerful, tremendously mystical experience. The truth is that intuition is that, but also it is as simple as comprehending an ego, where you perceive that shock in your consciousness, that presence from divinity that showed you right from wrong. It can last a second and then it is gone―but you felt it―you experienced it. It was deep. In this way, we have no doubts about what we perceive. As you see in this image, the sun represents Christ, the Logos, the truth, which arrives when we lose our ego, even if but temporarily. As Samael Aun Weor explained, the “I” cannot enter the intuitive worlds―only the consciousness. Therefore, we have to abandon our mind to experience the Truth, reality. 
The Kabbalistic and Alchemical Significance of the Light Verse
Imagination, inspiration, and intuition are represented in one of the most famous verses of the Qur’an. I will read it for you in brief:
Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is a niche wherein is a lamp ―the lamp is in a glass, the glass as it were a glittering star―lit from a blessed olive tree, neither eastern nor western, whose oil almost lights up, though fire should not touch it. Light upon light. Allah guides to His Light whomever He wishes. Allah draws parables for mankind, and Allah has knowledge of all things. ―Surah An-Nūr [Qur’an 24:35]
The Qur’an is a book of kabbalah and alchemy. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a map of the multidimensionality of our being, from the most divine rarified states to the most dense and crude―our physical body or the earth.
Divinity is a light. It is a form of cognizance, which does not have any form, but can take form. It is clear perception, like within a lamp. If you study the Tarot, you know of the Ninth Arcanum: the Hermit, who bears the lamp of wisdom from which real knowledge is born. Yet, this is not knowledge from any book, but from experience, your own life lessons. Samael Aun Weor often describes our Innermost Spirit as a light within a glass of alabaster, which is buddhi, the divine soul or consciousness. The oil that lights the lamp is the science of Hermes. It is the sexual energy that has to be hermetically sealed and transmuted, as we explained in the lecture on Breath. An olive tree represents the sexual force, since our gonads are two olives, whether two testicles or two ovaries, from which the oil, the Hebrew שֶׁמֶן shemen, which is semen, provides the light of our temple and our spiritual life. That olive tree is neither from the East or the West in terms of physical direction. It is within us. But why is that tree not from the East or the West? People are very fanatic in their religion and think that the truth is only to be found in a certain scripture, in a certain religion, in some certain direction on the earth. But the truth is that you carry knowledge within your sexual glands. It has to be untouched by the fires of lust when we practice chastity. Without this basis, there is no light or understanding. Without the fuel for spiritual experience, we cannot awaken consciousness―period―which is why it states: “Allah guides to his light whomever he wishes.” That light is imagination. It is the capacity to perceive with spiritual sight, insight, certainty. “Allah draws parable for mankind and Allah has knowledge of all things.” These parables are symbols, allegories, archetypes, which inspire us to work, and to have knowledge of all things is to possess intuition, understanding of its meaning.
Contemplation and Witnessing
We have a couple of versus from Stations of the Sufi Path, accompanied by an image of the Prophet Muhammad ascending the seven heavens upon الْبُرَاق al-Buraq, the lightning, the creative power of the Divine Mother. It is that energy that can give us the capacity to perceive the higher worlds. You cannot perceive heaven without it, divine states, which is why this initiate states:
God, the Most High, says, ‘Verily in this is a Message for any that has a heart and understanding or who gives ears and earnestly witness the truth’ [50:37] ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
Unfortunately, in these times, many people do not even have a heart. They cannot understand mysticism because they approach these studies solely with the intellect. It is good to acquire knowledge of the books, and scripture, and teachings, but then it is merely knowledge in the mind. Whether we understand what we have read is another thing. We understand it from experience. To witness the truth, we have to learn to listen with a receptive mind and an active heart, an active consciousness. This verse continues:
Contemplation occurs when the veils between the obedient servant and God are removed. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
What are the veils that obscure perceptions of the divine? It is desire: anger, pride, lust, vanity, greed, avarice, jealousy, skepticism, morbidity, attachment, obsession, pessimism, selfishness, doubt. If we are desiring an experience, we will not have it. If we calm and quiet the mind and await the answer, patiently and with concentration and imagination, then the experience arrives magically.
There are three ways to realize contemplation: The first is to advance from the level of knowledge the level of wisdom; the second is to advance from the level of patience to the level of purity, and the third is to advance from the level of gnosis to the level of divine Reality. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
These three ways are mapped out by, again, شَرِيعَة Shari’a, طريقة Tariqa, and حقيقه Haqiqah- معرفة Ma’rifah, which we are going to elaborate here.
Wisdom, Purity, and RealityA person will advance from the level of knowledge to the level of wisdom through three things: by putting one’s knowledge into practice, by revering the divine commandments, and adherence to the prophetic tradition. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
This is the beginning of spiritual knowledge. We learn how to apply what we learn. Knowledge and being must be balanced. If knowledge is greater than your Being, then you become constipated. There is a lot of data in your mind, but it can be confusing and disorienting. It ferments when we do not actually perceive what we read, and a lot of people become very morbid that way. It is unfortunate. We recommend you study a little bit, but practice a lot, and in that way you gain experience of what is being written here and achieve equilibrium and balance.
Revering divine commandments does not mean to obey a tradition literally because someone told us to, but because we recognize the positive results of our practice. We feel happiness when we enact compassion and ethics and chastity, especially. Adhering to a prophetic tradition refers to living one’s life like the masters, like the prophets. Likewise, a person will rise from the level of patience to that of purity through three things: abandoning disputation (munaqisha’), abandoning self-will and personal deliberations (tadbir), and understanding the necessity of contentment. This is the spiritual station of the contented. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So, on the path of meditation, when we are content with our lot, we rise from the level of patience to that of purity.
It is important to learn to avoid arguments with people. People who want to dispute with us or argue and debate, enter conflict verbally, to violate the minds of others, mentally, verbally, and likewise ourselves, waste a lot of energy, as we mentioned earlier, in this course. It is good to save energy, to be patient, to offer these teachings from a state of humility and understanding, not from fanaticism or dogma, like we want to coerce someone to follow our faith. Persuasion is better, not coercion. Self-will has to be abandoned also, to no longer deliberate with the intellect for solutions to problems, because the mind is a machine. Instead, we should use intuition. It is also necessary to be content with our lot, to overcome the craving, the desire for more, like “I will only be spiritual if I get a partner,” or “I’ve studied this book,” or “received blessings from this master,” or “had this spiritual experience.” We have to start with where we are at. Be patient. You will acquire purity by enduring your karma, in experiencing suffering patiently, with humility, with love. Every valley should be exalted, every mountain and hill laid low, says Isaiah. Lastly, in relation to the path of حقيقه Haqiqah, the Truth, and معرفة Ma’rifah, Gnosis: Likewise, a person will ascend from the level of gnosis to the level of divine Reality through three things: behaving with awe and respect whilst in solitude and retreat, cultivating humility in service, and acting with self-sacrificing generosity to his companions. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
It is important, if we really want to develop intuitive knowledge, we practice these three principles: wisdom, purity, and reality. We should respect and revere divinity and the practices when we meditate. We do so from experience. To blindly accept is not to comprehend, is not to intuit, is not to experience. We should do so when we are alone, but also on retreats, especially.
You can experience this if you come out to our Gnostic retreats that we have, in which Glorian Publishing hosts. Hopefully with COVID, things will settle down so that we can again have retreats in person and practice in company with spiritual people. Respect in reverence. Cultivate an atmosphere of happiness, of elevation, of inspiration, of intuition. Humility is really important when we sacrifice for others, because we have to learn to help others without pride, not thinking we are better than others, that we are sacrificing for people because we are spiritual, and they are not. Condescension and pity do not help anybody. Instead, even being humiliated and shamed by others, but also helping them regardless, is a noble quality. Lastly, we show true generosity when we give to others without self-interest. It can be time and services or skills. For some people its money. For other people its teaching. We have our own unique talents and dispositions that can help. So, these skills can guide you in developing intuitive knowledge, intuition, in accordance with the three stages of the Sufi path. Practices
We always conclude these lectures with practices.
1. Each day, develop your self-observation or inner accounting محاسبة muhasabah from moment to moment. As part of your self-observation, become aware of your use of imagination. Are you using it mechanically? Are you fantasizing about things that are not there, that are not real, that are subjective and relating to your ego? Or are you in a receptive, alert, and cognitive state, perceiving your surroundings and your internal worlds with clarity? 2. Every day, practice meditative retrospection. Recall what you perceived externally and internally from the entire day. Also, more importantly, question the validity of what you perceive. At this point in time, I would like to open up the floor to questions. Questions and Answers
Question: How does one work on the fear of what we are unable to grasp as our Being begins to move and interact with us while unconscious (sleeping) yet conscious?
Instructor: So, from my understanding of the question is the fear of the unknown. As we are experiencing new things, we have perceptions such as in sleep. Some people have become terrified of astral projections. Specifically, the sensations of leaving the body or even having visions internally that are very powerful, profound, and shocking. In relation to that, if I understand your question correctly, fear vanishes as we first become familiar with the phenomenon, but also as we learn to understand what in us is scared. Fear is an ego. It is a condition. It is a self, which traps our attention within a very limited scope. You have to observe that fear when it arises within you. If it takes over and you lose an experience as a result―because those times of emotion pulls us away from samadhi―we have to meditate, to relax, to observe, to introspect, and visualize that event as it happened, not according to our desires, but based on facts. What did we perceive that happened, in relation to the event? Examine the quality of the dream, the vision. Examine your reactions. Be patient. Concentrate and imagine it. Sustain the visualization. Pray to your inner divinity, your Divine Mother, to give you understanding―and then wait. When your mind is still and you are not even expecting it, the intuition or the understanding will emerge about what that fear is doing to you, what it is, where it came from, how it manifested, how it has been fed, how it kept you in darkness. Therefore, when you have deep comprehension of that ego, you can pray to your Divine Mother to eliminate, and She will in accordance with the magnitude of the fault, the depth of the karma involved, but also how much energy you have, because some egos are really gigantic, monstrous, and are not capable of being eliminated on one’s own. So sometimes, in reality, for those really deep-seated egos like fear, which obviously have very deep roots, we will need special help, for the deepest egos. You can eliminate what you perceive at your level as a single practitioner, but married couples can have more force by which to go into the really unconscious, subconscious, and infra-conscious elements of the mind, so that you can really clean your abyss inside. But of course, beginners can start with where they are at and eliminate a lot of ego on their own. So, there is no excuse if one is not married. Question: How does one tell the difference between the mind or with the mind and heart?
Instructor: Now, if you study Kabbalah, Tree of Life, there are four spheres from the bottom to the top, or four spheres especially that should concern us when we study meditation and practice it. You have מלכות Malkuth, the physical body. You have יְסוֹד Yesod, the vital energies. You have הוד Hod, the emotions, and you have נצח Netzach, which is the mind. These are the lower qualities of our psychology, which are impure, conditioned by ego and self.
הוד Hod and נצח Netzach, the emotional and mental worlds, exists within the fifth dimension. Some people have a difficult time distinguishing between the two. Sometimes, even having dreams, one can have a difficult time discerning if they are in the emotional world, הוד Hod, or the mental world, נצח Netzach. It all stems from a lack of discrimination, physically.
We study what is known as the three brains, which are machines that operate within our internal physiology, but also our psychology. We have a physical brain in our head, in our cranium and esoterically, a brain is merely a machine that processes energies and matter and forces. So, we know the intellectual brain obviously, but the emotions of the heart is a brain within itself, how we process feeling.
If you have a hard time distinguishing between the mind and the heart, you can practice certain exercises relating to the heart itself, like the mantra “O,” where you focus on a vibration in the heart center, to fill it with divine energy and force so that it becomes inflamed, awakened, and inspired.
We also have a third brain, which is the motor-instinctive sexual brain. It is a combination of movement, instinct, and sexuality, relating to our spine and its nervous systems. We have to take care of our human machine because the body is a temple that can manifest divine aid and force. You learn how these brains function in you by learning to observe yourself. I recommend you study a lecture called Self-Observation and The Three Brains (these are separate lectures), within the course Beginning Self Transformation. You can also study the earlier lectures in this course, since they will help to clarify that for you. Question: First, is death of the ego an appropriate perspective considering the ego consist of such a significant representation of this reality and conquering, maybe, more responsible? Instructor: So, I will repeat the first question. Death of the ego is the best perspective because our consciousness needs to eliminate our defects, our egos, our faults. So, if I understand your question, we understand reality when, it becomes significant for us, when we die to the self. This means to conquer oneself. We really conquer our inner universe, become kings and queens of our spiritual and psychological nature, when we eliminate impurities like anger, pride, vanity, fear, laziness, lust, gluttony, pessimism, morbidity, shame, etc. If the ego does not die, the soul is not born, because those egos trap and condition ourselves. If you want to have a clarified imagination, really deep and penetrative, objective, you have to remove the ego. The soul and the Being are inspiration. They are states of happiness and joy, which emerge when the ego expires. So, inspiration occurs, when you, as we mention in other lectures too, about working with the breath, to inspire, inhale the vital force, the prana, the life energy of our body, in order to awaken the consciousness. But we also have to expire the ego, or the ego must die. If we do not eliminate the ego, especially those that really prevent us from practicing, we become very degenerated, or better said, expired, so to speak. We lack inspiration, enthusiasm, and happiness. So, yes, we become responsible individuals as we eliminate anger because we know how to relate to others with greater inspiration and joy, with greater understanding and intuition of people. Question: What is crying a sign of within the human being? Instructor: I would have to ask you to clarify the question. Is that in relation to a dream, a vision that you had? If so, you would have to understand and relate the context for what happened, because I will just speak in general about dream interpretation as we are studying this topic of imagination, inspiration, intuition in accordance with the Sufis. In order to understand an experience like a dream, we have to relate it to a lot of different principles. Intuition, inspiration, and imagination are the preliminaries, the basics. As we are going to relate in a course on Dream Yoga and Astral Projection in the future, we also study in our dreams, in relation to the symbols that we receive, four laws which relate to how we interpret inner experiences, or the way that God speaks to us. He does so through contraries, philosophical analogies, correspondences, and numerology. I briefly mentioned the role of numbers and The Eternal Tarot and how we can use that sacred symbology to interpret the hours and dates and times within our dreams, so that we can understand what is going on objectively, what is God trying to tell us. Now, when you examine a dream itself, usually what happens is that there is a situation that unfolds in relation to a specific drama with characters, and usually this represents us, or we can be involved in the drama itself like a participant, but also, we are witnessing like a third person. If you are examining a crying person in a dream, you have to analyze the context. What is happening to the person? What is the situation? What is the drama? because sometimes based on your intuition, your hunches, you might have to relate that symbol in relation to an analogy to something else. It can correspond to certain details in your physical life. It can contradict what you want or what you want to happen. Dream interpretation is very beautiful and dynamic. It is very subtle and intuitive. I invite you, in the meantime, you can go online to Glorian.org and study the course on dream yoga and astral projection. They give you some details about how to work with the four laws, specifically, for dream interpretation. We are going to give a course of our own, eventually, and we are going to talk about that in a lot of depth, specifically. With that explanation, I hope that is a basis for understanding your particular symbol that you are perceiving or have perceived. Question: In the light verse slide, what does the calligraphy signify? 
(A mosque ceiling with Arabic calligraphy: النور An-Nur, "The Light")
Instructor: In Arabic, it is النور An-Nur, which means “the light.” Now, Arabic calligraphy is very beautiful and dense as a tradition, primarily because in Islam, they are not allowed to anthropomorphize divinity, because you cannot. Now, divinity or الله Allah, which is a four-lettered name for God in Arabic, signifies the Absolute. Also, the light that emanates from that unmanifested potential, known as אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, and אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur: the “nothing,” the “limitless,” and the “limitless light” in the Kabbalah. That light, which we call Christ in Gnosis, is an energy that manifests from the void, from the uncreated, from the limitless potential of cosmic abstraction.
So, the Muslims would depict divine truth in relation to Arabic Calligraphy. That light verse is An-Nur, which is very beautiful and very deep. So, that is the basic explanation, especially why calligraphy exists in that tradition. Question: According to Sufi teachings, we cannot eliminate the ego. In fact, we need to utilize it. We can work on the ego, but how can we eliminate? It is not possible. Ego cannot die, correct? Instructor: So, this common confusion can arise when we are not familiar with the different gradations of soul within Sufi Kabbalah. The Sufis talk about نَفْس nafs, which means “breath.” It also means soul or أنفاس nafas can mean “inspiration” as well, to inspire, to breath in. There are levels to the soul, and we explained in a lecture on breath, especially, how there is nafs al-ammara, which is the lower animal soul, which we call ego. Then you have nafs al-lawwamah, which relates to the more conscious soul known as רוּחַ ruach in Hebrew, the Kabbalah, the thinking-emotional soul, the conscience, which knows how to judge and evaluate the conditioned psyche, the lower soul, or ego, in that sense. Then you have nafs al-mutma’innah, which means “the soul at peace,” נשמה Neshamah in Hebrew, the Kabbalah. This the spiritual soul, the divine consciousness, which is never mixed with impurity. So, the Sufis explain that the soul has to be transformed, the lower soul into the pure. It has to be tamed and dominated. Now, we are a little bit more specific in Gnosis, in that, that whole condition itself, the lower animal passions, have to die completely. If you study the poetry of Rumi, especially, it is very obvious that when he talks about the death of himself and the death of desire, the death of myself, he is talking about the lower animal functions of the psyche. So, the ego has to die. That lower animal soul, or the consciousness that is trapped within lower animal qualities, is transmuted. It is a form of alchemy. The soul is extracted from the impurities and the impurities are eliminated. So that the lower soul―the animal soul―becomes a human soul. It could be an issue of semantics. I mean, if you are more specific about a particular verse or teaching from the Sufis, I can clarify that for you. Question: Can you speak a bit more on how to eliminate one’s ego? Instructor: Yes, there is a whole procedure and process we come back to again and again, as we mentioned in this course. But, if you really want to know how to eliminate the ego, you can study on the Gnostic Meditation Course the lecture called retrospection meditation. It is at the end of that course. We have a whole analysis about the steps and stages for dying to the ego. That lecture is based on three books: Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, The Great Rebellion and The Revolution of the Dialectic by Samael Aun Weor. The basic process involves three stages: discovery, judgement, execution, meaning self-observe your ego in the day. Gather data about the facts. When you meditate, you introspect and judge your faults, like you are judging a criminal in a court of law, a spy you have seen in action and have gathered information about. You judge that defect in your meditation and then you eliminate through prayer. Study that lecture on Gnostic Meditation: Retrospection Meditation. That goes into much more depth than we have the time to elaborate here, but it is very thorough. I hope you study it. Question: Can you explain the difference between intentionality and ridding ourselves of self-will, and how to be both intentional and humble, intentional without expectation? Instructor: It depends on what we intend. Who wants what, when, why, and how? You can only know the difference when you are examining yourself, observing with your consciousness in a given instance. Is your ego trying to act in a certain situation or was it your conscience? You have to judge in the moment. Observe the facts, and if it is not clear, especially, meditate on the event. Visualize it. Now, the difference between intentionality and ridding ourselves of self-will, is that our ego, like pride, intends to fill itself, sometimes by belittling others, by harming others―by being angry, even. It intends harm. It has its thoughts, its feelings, and its impulse to act. You have to see it in action. Observe it in the moment. That is the first step if ridding yourself of self-will, because you have to separate from it. You have to look at it and observe it. If you are identified with it and you feeling that you are those thoughts, feelings and will to act in mistaken ways, then we are merely suffering and making other people suffer. The beginning is to be humble and to recognize, in a state of observation, how we are not innocent people. It is easy to blame others for their faults, but difficult to examine our own. You only reach that point of understanding when you are serious about looking at yourself, not with physical eyes, but with psychological self-observation. Now, the soul knows how to act intentionally in any instance of life. That is only determined through conscience, through intuition, following your heart. Your heart will tell you how to behave and act even if it contradicts your mind, and usually, our mind will fight us very hard. But you have to look at the results. Perhaps, for example, you are at work. You see someone who is a coworker that is suffering a lot. You feel inspired to talk to them but maybe you are shy or hesitant. If you listen to your ego, you do not say anything and therefore you miss an opportunity. But, by following your heart, you can speak words of encouragement, even if it is difficult for you. Usually, in those situations that are challenging to fulfill, because the mind resists, those tend to be the right actions. But you have to gauge it in your heart. Examine your conscience. I suggest, if you want to know more about that topic and the difference, study the lecture Spiritual Discipline in our Sufi Path of Self-Knowledge Course. We go into a lot of detail about will and self-will, what does it mean to act with consciousness, and desire―the difference between them. Question: I just had a question in reference to what you were talking about, ego death. Is there a correlation to it in the Bible? It mentioned the fatted calf is the thing killed for the prodigal son―the Son of Man is offered as a spotless lamb? Is that in correlation to the animal soul that as one purifies or works on ego, baser egos, stains, spots, are cleared from that ego, but still has to die, because subtler egos are seen more refined or pure, but there, still must be a sacrifice in the end? Instructor: Sure, so, the calf that we are talking about is the Golden Calf, so to speak, which is out own egotism and idolatry. Now, I am not too familiar with the verse that you are referring to… Question: In the prodigal son story, the fatted calf is killed. It says, “Go and kill the fatted calf for my son has returned home. He was dead and now he is alive again.” It just what you were describing with the animal soul and how even that can seem to be, they are keeping a fatted calf. It is not a sickly calf. The spotless lamb is not a sickly, disabled lamb. It is a pure, healthy thing, but still must die in those cases. Instructor: Yes. In relation to the prodigal son especially, that represents any one of us, who was once wayward, and lost, spiritually speaking, and has returned to divinity, and as a celebration for having returned to our divine origins. Divinity rewards us by hosting a dinner, the banquet of the lamb, the feast of initiation, so to speak, because internally, a banquet or a dinner party, usually with angels and masters, occurs because we conquer ordeals internally, overcoming certain obstacles. There could be some symbolism there in relation to sacrificing one’s ego, killing the ego so that you can really enjoy supper with the lamb, so to speak, with Christ. Question: The reason I thought of it is because it seems like as one works with Gnosis, then powers can be acquired. Experiences can be had, which gives, as you say, inspiration, but it also seems that it doesn’t necessarily mean that one’s sense of self is dead, and Samael says, “Don’t be identified with magical powers.” So there is an ego that must die, but ego is gaining knowledge along with the soul, right? So, in the end, despite all its grandeur, which this process can seem to add a sense of grandeur for oneself, unless discerned, it has to die, even if its grand, which can be very horrifying, to discover you are something great, and must be the lowest, as Christ. You must be the least. Instructor: Yes. That is why it is important that when we are working on ourselves and acquiring spiritual experiences, we cannot become proud. Mystical pride is a terrible problem in spiritual movements where we have experiences about certain phenomena that are very powerful, and then our pride will take what is pure in that experience and attribute that to itself. But it has nothing to do with inspiration. That is the opposite. That is expiration, we can say. We kill our heart whenever we assume that those experiences belong to us, when in truth they belong to divinity, our soul. Our soul is the one that receives initiation, not the self. So, it is important to make a distinction there because the mind will take ownership of experiences that do not belong to it. Therefore, we have to be humble like Christ and to accept the worst humiliations within our ordeals and paths because those are the medicine, we receive so that we learn to keep our feet on the ground, to really understand our perspective in this work. When the ego interferes, we create problems. That is why we have to be patient with our experiences, but to also be humble and recognize that these things belong to God, not to us. Question: What is the meaning of resurrection? Instructor: You can study The Eternal Tarot on our website, where we talk about that Arcanum and the Tarot, specifically, but in one sense resurrection is a card in the Tarot that comes after inspiration. What is interesting is that Arcanum 19: Inspiration relates to how we acquire understanding of symbols and the relationship of interdependent things, how all phenomena interrelate with each other, and that we are a part of a great cosmic whole, and that we feel joy, and inspiration, and happiness when we understand that relationship. Resurrection is a card that relates to when the soul has really perfected itself. The ego is fully dead, and the soul is reborn within the Being. There are many levels of application of this. I invite you to study the Arcanum 20: Resurrection on The Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah course. You can study that whole series even, if you really want to understand the context for resurrection, especially. But, in synthesis, resurrection comes after inspiration. We can say resurrection is a form of rebirth, in which you have a solidified and deepened understanding of higher truths, kind of like the world of intuition. Question: Can you discuss the ego of lust? I have always only thought of it a sexual lust, but I understood that it exists in many other subtle ways, such as in a deep desire for sensations, emotional, intellectual, passion, mental stimulation, or even methods to escape from boredom. This understanding has allowed me to comprehend why I have suffered for so many years. Instructor: Yes, because lust is a desire. Typically, we think of sexual desire, but there is also lust in gluttony. We lust after certain foods and drinks, certain intoxicating substances. We also have lust in avarice, in greed. We lust after material things. We feel jealousy. We lust after a person’s destruction. It is easy to categorize the ego in terms of seven types, like the seven deadly sins. But the reality is that the ego is much more complex than that. We use the law of seven, the seven primary defects, to have a basis for understanding the plethora of conflicting desires we carry within. Now, pride can be lustful. Lust can be angry. Greed can be proud of having position in money and wealth and acquisition. You can only really understand the depths of any ego specifically, by looking at it for what it is and not labelling it, because there is a tendency and danger in us to want to label our inner psychology with the mind and not really looking at it for what it is. The ego is a really complex mess. One label does not describe it. There is a beginning by studying the three traitors, especially: the demon of the mind, Pilate; the demon of the heart, Caiaphas; the demon of desire, Judas, but as well as the seven deadly sins. This can give us some more intuition and basis for going deeper into ourselves. But, yes, lust is really in all things. It is the original sin, and that really explains why all our defects are lustful, in a sense. They crave after certain desires and impressions. Question: Is the Divine Mother really our highest selves or higher self? Instructor: She is the heights of our Being, and the Divine Mother, we can say, permeates the entire Tree of Life. If you want to understand our place in the cosmos and our own psychology and spirituality, we study the Kabbalah.
Now, the Tree of Life maps out our entire Being, and there are many levels to the Being. As the Qur’an states, “Light upon light” (24:35): level upon level of Being. The Divine Mother, we can say is בִּינָה Binah, the Holy Spirit, in Kabbalah. But also, She is the אין סוף Ain Soph, the womb and limitless abstract space from which all beings emerge. She is also related to גְּבוּרָה Geburah, Divine Mother Death, but also our instincts, יְסוֹד Yesod, and even our physical body, the Earth.
So, yes, She is the highest aspect of ourselves, but She permeates the entire multidimensional nature of our Being. So, she cannot be studied in isolation, but has to be understood in relation to the five aspects, which are explained in the book, The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor. You can also study the lecture The Divine Mother in our course on Beginning Self-Transformation. Question: I attempt to self-observe during the day, practice observation and imagination techniques at night. I feel, for the most part, like its mechanical now. How can I change that? Instructor: Examine your habits, how you are doing things, and look for patterns. The solution is, sit and reflect. Empty your mind. Do not think. Do not label anything. Suspend your senses. It can be good to do pranayama, mantras, transmutation. Establish some degree of serenity. If you find that you are very mechanical, it could most likely mean that you are not concentrated enough, or you are doing things unconsciously, which means we have to clarify our observations of what we are actually doing. Self-observation can be mechanical. We can observe ourselves and look at data, see our physical surroundings and our environment, and know that we are feeling certain emotions and thoughts, but we have to learn how to separate from that. It could be good to change your routine so that you do something new to kind of shock you out of the habit of just repeating the same schedule, but not seeing any results in your practice. Self-observation, when its properly performed, is when you see something new for the first time. If you think you are examining things mechanically, examine the examiner. Observe the observer. Who in you is looking? Turn the question back on your own mind. When you observe something, like a fresh rain fall on a cobblestone street, like in Europe or some beautiful place, some ancient city, some immaculate surrounding, you feel great inspiration and joy that you cannot describe in words, a type of sentiment that is very deep or profound. You do not know where it comes from. It is not forced. It is not manipulated. It is not labeled. It is something natural and spontaneous to you. That inspiration is what you should feel like when you are self-observing. You are looking at the world like you have never seen it before. In reality, you have not. Everything is changing. Everything is in flux. All phenomena are interdependent. So, learn to find joy in your perception. Examine what in you is trying to do things mechanically. Turn in on yourself. This is kind of a very Krishnamurtian effort. He talks a lot about observing without a self or an “I.” That is what you need to do. Just keep looking. Keep working at it. It is not going to be perfect in the beginning, because we develop Gnostic egos that want to do the work, so observe those Gnostic egos who are trying to observe in you. In that way you keep things fresh. Question: What are your thoughts on ayahuasca and how it relates to Divine Mother? Instructor: In these studies, we do not use drugs or plant substances like that, like Ayahuasca, or other drugs like marijuana, cocaine, drugs, alcohol, especially. This is primarily because those substances condition the consciousness. They awaken perceptions within the conditioned ego, the self. The kind of inspiration in spiritual experiences we are talking about in these studies do not require any type of outward influence. It only requires a certain inner discipline, and therefore is very pure. We are very pure in our studies and application of these principles. There are a lot of indigenous cultures and traditions that have utilized plants like peyote, ayahuasca, and other substances, but mostly those traditions are degenerations. They have lost the essential value of working with the soul or elemental of the plant, not ingesting it like a drug. The Divine Mother demands purity. There are two aspects of the Divine Mother, we can say, in synthesis. There is the heavenly Virgin Mary and then there is Santa Maria, which is the inverted influence of that divine force. It channels within our ego and becomes demonic. This is what certain entities like black magicians or demons invoke and utilize in their practices, like using ayahuasca and these substances, because they are awakening powers of the Divine Mother, but channeled through hell. They are seeing perceptions and experiences, but they do not question what they see, unfortunately, and mistake hell for heaven. There are infra-conscious perceptions relating to our ego, our conditioning itself. We try to remove conditions from our psyche and therefore do not reply on any substances, and neither did any master of the White Lodge. We have an article on How Drugs affect our Spiritual Development. We go into that question and problem very deeply. So, I invite you to study that if you are interested. Question: Is the Divine Mother experienced in between breath or in between breaths? Instructor: I am assuming this is pranayama or mantras, especially pranayama, you can say, in sexual transmutation, even in alchemy. Now, the inbreath and holding the breath is important because you are learning to circulate the sexual energy to your brain. As for experiencing the Divine Mother as a result of breath, you can experience intuitive sparks of understanding and comprehension any time during the practice. If you are inhaling the energy and really circulating it well and containing it, directing it, you will feel ecstasy in relation to your Being, pretty much at any stage. What matters is your concentration and your awareness of what you are doing. That is how you are going to gain mastery of the practices itself. Any other comments and questions? So, I thank you all from coming. We have one more lecture in this series. It has been a long one. The next lecture will be on Gnosis, Subsistence, and Divine Love. I thank you all for coming! 
This is the fifteenth lecture in a series on the Sufi Principles of Meditation. Everything we have explained so far is the requisite. It sets the stage, the parameters, the foundation of our particular focus today, which is the science of certainty. Any person who approaches meditation, spirituality, religion, longs to have understanding of the truths contained within a tradition, to have profound insight, wisdom and direct knowledge of how to live with efficacy, with understanding, with ethics. Students who have studied this tradition, from the writings of Samael Aun Weor, often struggle with this principle the most. Comprehension is an extremely elusive thing, and yet is the nourishment, the food, the daily sustenance of the Gnostic. There are many different means of meditating, different objects, different focuses, whether on a particular defect, a psychological aggregate, an ego, which specifically is the most important meditation we can do. By understanding our own errors, we can change them. We can transform our daily life into a beautiful work of art―the perfected human being. We can also gain comprehension or certainty of a scripture, especially if we take the time to relax our senses, to reflect on a particular verse within a scripture, especially when its meaning eludes us, when we are confused, when we are uncertain. Now, when we approach this concept, or better said, this principle, we need to remember that while we have a lot of knowledge, perhaps in our intellect, does it really mean that we have consciousness, experience of what we read? This is an important and profound distinction because many people fail to understand this difference. If you do not experience what you read, if you do not verify it with facts, then we neglect a very important part of who we are, a fundamental principle of our own consciousness, which is to understand. Different schools, philosophies especially, movements, educational pedagogies, often speak about metacognition. In layman’s terms, it means to think about the process of thinking, what it entails. What are the structures? Yet in the Gnostic movement we take this principle much further than mere intellectual analysis. Real metacognition, if you look at the prefix “meta,” has to do with understanding itself, how and why we think, and more importantly, how we are present in this moment. We really need to intuit without having to label, with our mind, the very processes of cognizance, how we apprehend phenomena, and more importantly, how do we interpret it, whether those experiences are very mundane like washing dishes, or something really subtle and profound like having an astral projection, a dream, a vision. The intellect fails to understand what we perceive and yet it is a tool |
