We are initiating a new course on The Voice of the Silence, an ancient manual of esoteric instruction. This work was translated by the eminent Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, whose scholarly and spiritual achievements cannot be easily estimated. This brief mystical text is a collection of fragments from The Book of the Golden Precepts, an obscure and rich scripture from which The Secret Doctrine was inspired.
The Voice of the Silence was not fully translated, since it would have required Blavatsky many years just to organize her documents, let alone translate the work in its totality. She also mentioned that much of this scripture is too sacred and profound to be understood by her students. This is a powerful statement, one that should not be overlooked. This guide, she said, is for serious practitioners who are awakening consciousness. Although The Voice of the Silence is brief, it is dense, and therefore difficult to interpret. As with any deep work, it requires an awakening consciousness to decipher, apply, and realize. Despite the brevity of this work, it synthesizes the entire path to liberation. This is no small feat. The origins and translation of this work has often been contested and disputed. However, the Panchen Lama affirmed its authenticity. In case you do not know, the Panchen Lama is second in command to the Dalai Lama within the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. As he stated in 1925: It is the “only true exposition in English of the Heart Doctrine of the Mahayana and its noble ideal of self-sacrifice for humanity.” ―The Panchen Lama (1925)
This brief work is a condensation of many rich spiritual truths, which not only inform Tibetan Buddhism, but even Judeo-Christian and Western esoteric traditions. This might seem erroneous, especially for those who are very familiar with Blavatsky. She is well known for her expositions on Eastern mysticism, not so much with Western spiritual thought. However, we will demonstrate how both Western and Eastern mystical traditions can provide a deeper understanding of The Voice of the Silence. We will do so by juxtaposing and clarifying it with the writings of Samael Aun Weor.
Samael Aun Weor wrote about γνῶσις gnosis, the personal, experiential knowledge of divine reality. While this is a Greek term, gnosis is not the sole property of the Greeks. Different religions have different terms for this type of mystical experience, which are based on the language, culture, and idiosyncrasies of distinct messengers and time periods. Samael Aun Weor’s particular gift to humanity, given the ambiguity of many spiritual writings, is his clarity. He is direct, profound, insightful. More importantly, he is practical. He gave many keys for understanding the roots of all traditions. The root of all traditions, he emphasizes, is mystical experience.
What is the Voice of the Silence?
But what is the Voice of the Silence?
This title or principle is a paradox. How can a voice be silent? Who is speaking? To whom? More importantly, what, how, and why? What voice does one hear in the silence? What silence are we referring to? The Voice of the Silence refers to mystical experiences. In meditation, we can receive direct guidance from divinity. By their very nature, such experiences are paradoxical, especially to our sensual and materialistic mind. How can one possibly experience divinity? How is this even possible given our current limitations or state? How can one perceive without the physical senses? The root word for mysticism is the Greek myein, to close one’s eyes to illusion, so as to perceive inwardly, psychologically, spiritually. These are perceptions we experience even within dreams. Myein is also the root word for mystikos, an “initiate,” someone who has learned to develop their full conscious potential. An initiate is someone who perceives and understands realities beyond the body, heart, and mind. These are people who have some level of self-mastery over the causes of suffering, and therefore can immediately access knowledge from divinity. This scripture emphasizes that we are yet to awaken to reality, to divinity, to the truth. Blinded by our passions, appetites, fears, sensuality, desires―we do not see reality. We do not perceive the truth of our situation. We also do not perceive clearly when we dream. As stated in The Voice of the Silence: Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion. ―The Voice of the Silence
This verse is exceptionally compelling. Perception is dual. While gradations and distinct qualities of perception exist, there are really two fundamental modalities of being. We either see divine reality or we don’t. We either perceive and comprehend, or we do not understand what we perceive. In the worst case, we don’t even perceive things at all, because we don’t pay attention. We are often blinded and confused by our own sense of self, our identity, which fluctuates, is impermanent. However, by transforming ourselves, we can not only experience, but unite with divinity through a state of perfection. This is the fundamental argument of this scripture.
So what harmony must be attained so as to perceive as a soul? What must we do to unite with our divine Being, the truth, the Voice that speaks in our inner silence? 
How Do I Hear the Voice of the Silence?
This harmony is psychological, internal. To use the technical language of meditation, harmony is serenity of mind, unwavering concentration on one thing without becoming distracted.
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that there are nine degrees of serenity or meditative concentration. These lead the disciple to the ultimate apprehension of reality. In the beginning of meditation, we do not perceive spiritual states easily, because we are distracted. But with gradual work in concentration, we do. The ability to exclusively focus on one object of meditation implies calmness of mind, silence of thought. Silence is the natural state of the consciousness. What is abnormal is our current state. How we see is usually obscured and filtered, conditioned, whether by pride or anger, negative thoughts, fear and desire. By observing thought and letting it subside, to cease in its activity, we access our true nature of being. This is why The Voice of the Silence teaches: Silence thy thoughts and fix thy whole attention on thy Master whom yet thou does not see, but whom thou feelest. ―The Voice of the Silence
In the beginning of our studies we may experience this. We may feel a pressure in our heart. We have a hunch or intuition about a teaching. We do not have all the evidence, but we are inspired to practice, experience, to know. This inner voice in our heart, this voice that speaks in the silence of our mind, the solitude of our practice, is conscience. It is knowing right from wrong, even if we lack an intellectual justification or explanation. This voice is the call of our inner divinity, who seeks to inspire us, to enter the spiritual path that leads to our true origins.
It is this spiritual inquietude in our heart that drives us to approach spirituality and religion, to seek answers to our deepest problems and sufferings. It is also the voice of inner judgment, the voice of inner discrimination. It is intuiting right from wrong behavior. By performing right action, we avoid suffering. We develop inner clarity. This is the prerequisite for awakening consciousness and experiencing the truth. This sense is developed the more we answer its needs, especially through daily meditation. Samael Aun Weor explained the following about this: The human being who allows that which is called self-judgment or inner-judgment to express itself in a spontaneous manner within will be guided by the voice of the consciousness. Thus, he will march on the upright path. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic
This is the key. Such an inner voice, inclination, or inspiration is spontaneous. It is not premeditated, planned, conceptualized. It lacks suffering. It is spiritual action free of desire, of attachment, fear, craving, aversion. It is intuition: knowing how to act without having to think. It is like lightning. But while brilliant and astonishing in its novelty, it is oftentimes followed by the rumbling thunder of doubt, thought, negativity, maybe even despair.
The clarity of that insight emerges the more we reflect upon ourselves and question our intentions, our impulses, motives, thoughts. We must sift through the mud of passion to find the lotus of virtue. Here is a compelling metaphor: when the lake of the mind is serene, it can reflect heaven upon its tranquil, clear surface. This is known as the faculty of imagination. This is when we perceive psychological images with great detail and depth. When our imagination is muddied, we see through impurity. When our imagination is pure, it reflects the revelations of heaven. Samael Aun Weor also explained this in The Revolution of Beelzebub: The intuitive person knows how to listen only to the voice of the silence. Thus, within his serene mind, the eternal truths of life are reflected with splendid beauty. The reasoning person converts his mind into a battlefield filled with prejudices, fears, anxieties, fanaticism, and theories, and his conclusions are always favorable to him. Yet, such a turbulent lake can never reflect the sun of truth. The mind of the intuitive one serenely and silently flows very far away from the black struggle of antithesis and from the storm of exclusivity. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of Beelzebub, “The Mind and Intuition"
Reasoning can provide false certainty. Our desires always feel justified. However, genuine mystical experience does not conform to our preferences, our prejudices, fears, anxieties, fanaticism, theories. The beginning of hearing the Voice of the Silence is abandonment of self. This requires conscious judgment.
Intuition or inner judgment can be intentionally strengthened. We do so through following the three levels or trainings of any meditative discipline. 
The Three Trainings
These three trainings have different names in different traditions. They represent the path through which our consciousness conquers suffering and realizes its divine nature. These three trainings also structure The Voice of the Silence in its three fragments.
Every religion has three levels of knowledge and practice: introductory, intermediate, and advanced. Buddhism outlines three schools or movements corresponding to these levels: Shravakayana, Mahayana, and Tantrayana respectively. Shravaka means “hearer.” Yana means “vehicle.” It is therefore the vehicle of instruction in which we hear about or learn religion for the first time. This level of knowledge is based in ethical discipline. Here we learn to not lie, kill, steal, lust, adulterate, consume drugs or intoxicants, envy, gossip, criticize, blame, hurt, or commit harms in any way. This is because negative actions pollute our mind stream. They make us confused, weak, disconnected from our inner divinity. These behaviors distance us from the voice of the divine. They condition our consciousness and cloud our ways of seeing in the world. They even affect our dreams. They put our consciousness to sleep and activate negative ways of being. Such individuals cannot see reality, because they are not willing to let go of their desires, whether for sensations, praise, fame, money, drugs, respect, security, status, etc. When practitioners have mastered some level of ethical discipline, cultivating a spiritual space within their bodies, hearts, and minds, they can begin working for the spiritual benefit of others. The more we recognize our sufferings and limitations, and the more we understand how and why people suffer, we become inspired to help them. This is compassion: selfless love based on the understanding of impermanence. Nothing in existence is eternal, including our appetites and desires. We often chase after sensations, experiences, satisfaction, ignoring that our very cravings and aversions control us. However, they are not permanent. They always change. When we don’t get what we want, we suffer. When we get what we want, we want more. We are never satisfied. But when we realize the futility of desire and how it produces pain, that nothing lasts, we also see how our own behaviors make others suffer, which is a great inspiration to change. Tibetan Buddhists uses a very specific term for compassion, guided by insight into reality. They call it bodhichitta. This is the awakening heart-mind of boundless compassion. This is a spiritual principle that focuses on liberating others from suffering, precisely because one understands the nature of selflessness. Therefore, we work to not only edify our own spirituality, but that of others. Mahayana is the Greater Vehicle (since Maha means “great”). This level of religion is where we actively work for the benefit of all beings regardless of our own desires. This is a superior way. However, it is not the most profound, expeditious, or powerful. The advanced level of religion is known as Tantrayana, the “Diamond Vehicle” or supreme way. This is divine sexuality. Tantra literally means “continuum,” whereby the consciousness conserves, harnesses, and elevates the most potent energies of the body for the spirit: the creative sexual force. 
(Padmasambhava to his consort Yeshe Tsogyal:
"Lustful people do not enter into the path of liberation.")
Tantra is often represented in Buddhist iconography with various buddhas, masters, prophets, or gods in a state of sexual embrace. This has nothing to do with lust, but love. Some people get confused. How can one have sex without lust? Lust must gradually be eliminated so that the sexual act becomes a sacrament, a sacred ritual. This is why years of training prepared disciples for this level of knowledge, because sexual power without responsibility produces problems.
When a couple conserves and transforms the sexual energy with supreme adoration, purity, and love, never allowing the continuum or flow of forces to leave the body, then they radically awaken the consciousness. This power allows married men and women to develop the deepest insights, since the power to create life, the creative energy, awakens their full potential. The Voice of the Silence addresses all three levels of religion. It is therefore a complete teaching, despite the fact that Blavatsky didn’t transcribe everything from her original source: The Book of the Golden Precepts. 
The Three Essential Spiritual Sciences
But what else must we study to better understand this scripture? We must look to the three essential mystical sciences of antiquity. These are:
Kabbalah can mean “tradition” or “knowledge.” It also comes from the Hebrew term קבל kabbel, which means “to receive.” This secret wisdom was originally transmitted from mouth to ear, from master to disciple. It more importantly signifies how we as a consciousness receive spiritual experiences. Kabbalah is often synonymous with the Tree of Life, a map of consciousness, the universe, and divinity. The Tree of Life shares its roots, biblically speaking, with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, otherwise known as alchemy. Alchemy, or اللّٰه Allah-χημεία Khemia, is an amalgam of Arabic and Greek wisdom, otherwise translated as “the chemistry of God.” Khemia means to “fuse or cast a metal.” Allah is the Arabic name for divinity. Traditionally, alchemy is associated with superstition, the belief that dense metals can be transformed, like lead into gold. Trans means “to carry over,” and mutation indicates how an inferior substance becomes a superior one. This is a symbol. By conserving and transforming energy, we become fully developed beings, masters or gods, with complete knowledge of good and evil. Psychology is understood today as the study of the mind. But etymologically, psychology is the relationship between psyche (the consciousness) and logos (the Word, the Being, divinity). By mastering our minds in meditation, we connect with and realize the truth. Many will argue that kabbalah and alchemy have nothing to do with The Voice of the Silence, since kabbalah supposedly originated in 13th century Spain and alchemy in medieval Europe, with roots in Pre-Islamic Arabian mysticism. These are Western, not Eastern esoteric traditions. When we reference kabbalah and alchemy, we do so in accordance with their principles, not to their appearance or moment in history. Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, is a map of consciousness. It is a map of our very being. These realities have always existed and will always exist, before and after medieval Judaism. Just in the same way that Sir Isaac Newton didn’t create, but documented gravity, likewise the medieval Jews documented the Tree of Life and didn’t originate it. Likewise, Eastern traditions taught the same truths, but in different forms, including Bhavachakra and Kalachakra. Therefore, the principles of kabbalah are universal. Also, alchemy, the transformation of personality―the dense lead of selfhood into the gold of spirit. This is much older than medieval Europe. This law of transformation predates even our known universe. It is eternal. There have always existed individuals who, once common and ordinary people, worked in this alchemical science to become buddhas, angels, perfected beings. Likewise, there will always exist beings in future cosmic scenarios who will enter the path of liberation and fully unite themselves with divinity. The same with psychology. Consciousness is inherent to life. Our psyche, our soul, when inspired to study spirituality, seeks a deeper, more personal relationship with divinity, the Voice of the Silence. There are levels to experiencing the Voice of the Silence. There are also levels of development whereby an individual unites with, realizes, and fully expresses that Voice. This is known through the path of initiation. The Voice of the Silence is based on their universal principles. Therefore, it is useful to explain the essence of kabbalah, alchemy, and psychology with this scripture, since they complement the text. Eastern symbols can become more clear through context. By looking at the root knowledge of these traditions, we can gain greater confidence into this scripture’s meaning. 
Initiation into Authentic Spirituality
However, to fulfill the requisites of these three sciences, we need absolute dedication and application. We call this the path of initiation.
Initiation refers to the beginning of something, or the conferral of recognition or membership to a group, such as through ceremonies celebrating coming of age, or entering adulthood, or even joining a secret society. Initiation is the spiritual process whereby we enter, gradually, the community of enlightened beings. As with any process of initiation, our candidacy for membership is tested. We receive challenging situations or ordeals. We must prove our ethical caliber. By overcoming ordeals, we develop the spiritual capacity to experience, and act, through the divine. Through meditation, through the three spiritual sciences, we hear, more and more, the Voice of the Silence. This means, we experience, in meditation and visions, more and more, the nature of divinity. We also see the way to transform our suffering into wisdom. This is obviously no easy task, which is why The Voice of the Silence states: Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become the Path itself. ―The Voice of the Silence
Samael Aun Weor also iterated this fact in one of his most famous sayings:
Initiation is life itself, lived intensely, with rectitude and with love. ―Samael Aun Weor
This is not some distant reality. To experience divinity, we must transform our minds. We must transform our states, and actions in daily life. Daily life is a theater, whereby the drama of initiation is played. We are both the audience and the actor, since we both act out and watch our life, our states. We must reflect upon and observe our psychology during great crises, so as to catch our most hidden defects, to gather data about them, to understand them.
We must become conscious agents of our destiny. We decide, based on our choices, whether to fulfill selfless, enlightened action, transforming our communities for the better. Or, behaving with selfishness and desire, we condemn ourselves, and others, to suffering. If our spirituality is merely theoretical, if it does not impact our state of suffering in lasting and permanent ways, if we are repeating the same circumstances without changing our attitude or state of mind, if we are not eradicating suffering at its roots within our psyche, if we are not performing genuine service to our fellow human beings, it means we are not working effectively. This is why Jesus of Nazareth taught, “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20). 
Why We Enter Initiation
But why enter initiation? Why intentionally take on a work that will initially provide tests, ordeals, challenges, and sufferings?
Many people enter our tradition and begin practicing it. However, they soon realize that their life is falling apart. Difficulties emerge in their personal, economic, professional, marital, or family life, seemingly without explanation. Things get so hard that many give up, saying, “This teaching is hurting me!” However, they don’t realize that they are getting exactly what they asked for. They are entering a probationary period whereby they must prove themselves to the work. Genuine spiritual practice catalyzes latent karma. Karma is often associated with a blind law of retribution, with suffering bad consequences for wrong action, or “What goes around comes around.” In truth, karma is not a blind law. It is intelligently managed by divinity. We will explain how and why. Karma comes from the Sanskrit karman, signifying “cause and effect.” We always follow the trajectory of our own actions and behaviors. We always receive the consequences of our former actions, including before our birth and after our death. What must happen will happen. But the question becomes: When? How, and why? Certain karma or results of former deeds are latent. They only activate when the time is ripe, such as when a wave rises in an ocean to finally crash upon the surface. Such an influence emerges from the depths. The same with karma. What happens is that we are asleep. We don’t see the source of these influences. Neither do we realize that such karma would happen regardless of whether we enter this work or not. To not work on ourselves is to magnify disaster, for if we are not striving to unite with divinity, if we do not help ourselves, if we do not act properly, then no one can help us. Divinity, out of compassion, seeing our sincerity, gives us challenges to bring us closer to Him. Also, when we suffer, we are more inclined to seek God. When in ease, we become complacent and lazy. We also get doses rather than the whole payment all at once, despite what some people might believe. This intelligent manager of affairs ensures that we do not receive more than we can handle. It’s the same karma, but it is parsed in relation to the totality of what we owe. Initiation, therefore, is the path of paying all our karma, all our debts, with intelligence, wisdom, and good deeds. All of this is managed by divinity, because if we had to pay karma unwillingly, unconsciously, we will only exacerbate the situation, acting out of retaliation and spite, blaming others, blaming God for our situation. This obviously does not improve things. It makes it worse. However, at times karma becomes more intense, because ordeals help us to burn away psychological impurities, to pay grievous debts from our past. By transforming ourselves in difficult circumstances, we pay what we owe. Oftentimes these karmic situations become intense because we need to learn valuable lessons as a consciousness. They also help us purify our mind stream. By dying to our defects, we become free. This is why The Voice of the Silence teaches: Strive with thy thoughts unclean before they overpower thee. Use them as they will thee, for if thou sparest them and they take root and grow, know well, these thoughts will overpower and kill thee. Beware, Disciple, suffer not, e'en though it be their shadow, to approach. For it will grow, increase in size and power, and then this thing of darkness will absorb thy being before thou hast well realized the black foul monster's presence. ―The Voice of the Silence
The scripture also states:
Kill thy desires, Lanoo, make thy vices impotent, ere the first step is taken on the solemn journey.
Some have also pointed out an apparent contradiction or paradox. How is this the path to liberation from suffering, and yet we must necessarily suffer? How is it that Samael Aun Weor stated that pain is Satanic, and yet we need to face karma and pain in order to grow?
Let us be very clear. Voluntary suffering is distinct from mechanical suffering. It is a difference in attitude. The first is by choice. When you choose to work on yourself, you diminish your pain through insight and will. By consciously taking on ordeals, we gain joy and happiness, because we know this is the way to pay our debts and do good deeds. It sounds strange, right? Why be happy when things go South? In reality, by perceiving our defects during the worst times, we can eliminate them. This recognition brings true joy. It is a strange dynamic to observe in oneself. The second, mechanical suffering, is unintentional. We experience hardship and we react, making things worse. By initiating this work and willingly taking on “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” comprehending it and eliminating its roots in us, we in turn end strife. It is true that the self, the ego, our defects, suffer when unsatisfied. However, the soul, that which connects us with divinity, knows how to experience peace even in great turmoil. What matters is our psychological center of gravity. Are we situated in the consciousness, or the ego? In the soul, or desire? Wherever we direct our attention, we spend creative energy. When we face conflict, do we give into our reactions, or do we respond with intelligence? There is a major difference between these two modes of being. Following the Voice of the Silence in such crises will get us through them. Ignoring what we must do in the moment guarantees our failure. The path involves pain because we have defects that produce it. However, the true nature of the consciousness is serenity, understanding, and bliss. These strengthen the more we follow the Voice of the Silence, our intuition, our Innermost God. Therefore, examine your mind. The more we strive and intuit the voice of divinity in our heart, the more we align ourselves with our conscience within the silence of our being, the more proper our conduct―the better the results will be in our life. 
The Tree of Life: Solar and Lunar Nature
As we learn to eliminate defects, we awaken consciousness. We experience and come to inhabit the superior dimensions of the Tree of Life.
This diagram has ten spheres, known as sephiroth or “emanations” of the divine, from the most abstract and spiritual above to the most dense and material below. The Voice of the Silence speaks of seven important steps for developing spiritually. These lower seven spheres, along with the sacred Word, the Trinity or three spheres above, constitute the ten sephiroth of the kabbalah. These spheres are not only dimensions or places within nature, but also qualities and levels of being, and even vehicles that we inhabit in order to operate within those regions, whether physically or in dreams. We access these higher regions when we sleep, if we are removing defects, conserving energy, and creating vehicles that help us operate in the superior regions of nature. Blavatsky wrote extensively about the kama rupa or body of desires, the famous astral body of Hod. We also have an inferior manas or mental body, which we use to subsist within the world of Netzach, the mental world. What many don’t realize is that these two vehicles do not belong to divinity, but mechanical nature. They are lunar because they are given to us by nature and must return to nature, willingly or unwillingly. They relate to the moon in that the moon is mechanical, cyclical. It repeats. It does not have any autonomy or will of its own. It obeys nature’s laws. The problem is that our consciousness, trapped in defects and desires, is asleep. It also inhabits the kama rupa and inferior manas. When those lunar bodies must eventually be disintegrated within lower spheres, within inferior dimensions, within the hell realms (because it belongs there, to inferior nature), our consciousness will also go through that process or purification within lunar nature, within the inferior worlds, because the consciousness is trapped. Until our defects that trap consciousness are eliminated, then we will never be free. The problem is that this mechanical process is very painful, involving involuntary or mechanical suffering that does not produce enlightenment. The other way is to enter initiation. Destroy desire. Free the consciousness. Create superior vehicles. We call them the legitimate solar astral and solar mental bodies, along with superior manas, the solar causal body of Nirvana. These are solar bodies because they belong to the matter and energy of divinity, represented by the solar light. The power of life and generation is sexual. It is solar. It is creative and life sustaining. We create these bodies through tantra, through the sexual union of husband and wife, within The Perfect Matrimony as explained by Samael Aun Weor. Marriage is where we can harness the power of a sun, the solar logos, the divine. Nature is dual. It is lunar below, mechanical, impure, but heavenly, solar, pure, conscious above. We gravitate to places in nature in accordance with our level of being. The Voice of the Silence teaches: Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.
We create superior vehicles through harnessing the sexual energy for the spirit. This is the true meaning of being born again.
Initiations of Fire and Light
Only married couples, husband and wife, joined through conscious love and affinity in multiple levels of being, can use the creative sexual energy and give birth to superior bodies. This occurs when the sexual fire known as the Kundalini rises up the spinal medulla of each of the seven lower bodies of the Tree of Life. These bodies allow us to become conscious citizens and inhabitants of those regions. They also allow us to approach and even incarnate divinity.
The Kundalini is symbolized in the Torah, specifically Numbers, whereby Moses erected a brass serpent upon a pole. Whenever anyone gazed upon it, they were healed of their fiery afflictions, the biting serpents of passion. Remember that the Israelites disobeyed divinity and were punished by fiery serpents. The Israelites are the parts of our consciousness who seek divinity. By going against our conscience, we become afflicted by passion. As Moses wrote in the Book of Numbers: And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. ―Numbers 21:9
What is brass? It is an alchemical symbol. It is an amalgamation of copper and tin. Copper relates to Venus, woman, and tin represents Jupiter, man. Through pure tantra, the couple heals and elevates their souls, raising the fire and intelligence of the Divine Mother Kundalini, whose intelligent power only rises in accordance with the merits of the heart.
When the Kundalini rises throughout the spine to the mind, and reaches the heart, we acquire an initiation of Major Mysteries. These initiations are steps for approaching the Voice of the Silence, our Being. There are five Major Mysteries or Initiations of Fire, relating to each of the lower bodies or sephiroth below. 
The first initiation relates to Malkuth, the physical body.
The second initiation relates to Yesod, the vital body. The third initiation relates with Hod, the astral body. The fourth initiation relates with Netzach, the mental body. The fifth initiation relates with Tiphereth, the causal body. The divine soul, Geburah, and the Innermost Being, Chesed, never fall into temptation, and therefore have the creative fire already present in them. However, what few realize is that raising the first five Kundalini serpents within the lower spheres of the Tree of Life are just the beginning. Beyond the serpents of fire are the serpents of light. This is the Son of Man, our particular, individual, intimate Christ, the Logos, the Word, the Voice of the Silence. Christ is not a person, but a cosmic energy, universal, impersonal―a divine intelligence that can incarnate within any properly prepared initiate who has solar bodies. Without those bodies and without sacrifice, without a Mahayana attitude of bodhichitta, the Voice of the Silence, the sacred Word, our true Being, the Cosmic Christ, cannot enter, since solar bodies are the conduit through which this terrifyingly divine energy can express. Likewise, one needs true love for humanity and sacrifice for others to necessitate His incarnation. When a disciple achieves the Fifth Initiation of Major Mysteries, has raised the Kundalini within the physical, vital, astral, mental, and causal bodies, he or she has a choice to make: to stay in heaven (Nirvana) and forget about the sufferings of humanity, or to renounce happiness and return to Malkuth (the physical world) to serve others selflessly, til the end. Those who renounce Nirvana to serve humanity, and who have developed the Mahayana essence of bodhichitta, who embody selfless love and compassion for mortals, can enter what is known as the straight path, the path of renunciation, and therefore incarnate Christ. Upon incarnating Christ, the initiate becomes a बोधिसत्त्व bodhisattva. बोधि Bodhi is “wisdom,” and सत्त्व sattva is “essence.” Wisdom in kabbalah is חכמה Chokmah, the Second Logos of kabbalah, our Intimate Christ. Therefore, a bodhisattva is the essence of Christ, a master in the beginning of development. Only Christ can help the bodhisattva fully eliminate the ego and pay all their karma, even in one life. One continues by now raising the serpents of light, by raising Christ, the Son of Man, the solar light, within the spine of the lower sephiroth of the Tree of Life. These Venustic Initiations―relating to Venus, conscious love, Christ―are symbolized by different episodes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who exemplified the entire path to reaching and perfecting the Voice of the Silence in oneself. As stated in the Book of John 3:14-15: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. ―John 3:14-15
Eternal life is the intimate Self-realization of the Being, the full perfection of our internal master within our psyche, the union of the soul with the Verb, Christ, divinity, the Voice of the Silence, through the path of initiation.
The Four Noble Truths
The Voice of the Silence is a remarkable scripture that emphasizes the essential tenets of Buddhism and Christianity. The following verses emphasize the reality and application of the Four Noble Truths, which elaborate upon and demonstrate the esoteric truths we have expounded:
Hast thou not passed through knowledge of all misery – Truth the first? (Ku)
We begin to hear the Voice of the Silence, to receive hunches, insights, inner judgments, through recognizing our state of suffering. We also gain more clarity in ourselves when we recognize how our desires manifest in relation to diverse circumstances, assembling or manifesting within the screen of our inner awareness. By observing ourselves, we begin to gather data about our defects.
Meditation is the third truth, whereby we go deep in concentration, reflecting upon our errors, vices, defects, desires, egos, so that by comprehending them, we can eliminate them. This is the path of initiation, the path of Tau, the Tau Cross, the Hebrew ת Tav, or the Tao, wisdom beyond dualistic notions and concepts. Bodhi is Sanskrit for “wisdom.” This is Christ, the Being, the true life of any initiate. We meditate and receive wisdom from the Bodhi tree, the Tree of Life in us, the totality of our consciousness, which must be perfected and integrated. The Bodhi tree can also represent the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, alchemy, since through transforming the sexual energy and giving it to divinity, we gain wisdom about the nature of positive and negative, solar and lunar, man and woman. This energy awakens us to Samadhi, mystical experiences free of ego, perfect, lucid revelations from the divine. 
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: The Stillest Hour
We will conclude with a chapter from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This excerpt synthesizes everything we shared today.
Nietzsche at one point knew the path of initiation. Here he relates, through his fictional depiction of the Iranian Prophet Zarathustra, how one enters meditation to communicate with the Voice of the Silence. One must enter a drowsy state to access the internal worlds, to meditate in the threshold between waking and dreaming. Also, he relates the difficulties and burdens that such a voice necessarily demands of us in the spiritual work. To give birth to the Voice, to the Word, to Christ, the Superman or Superhuman, we must die to our impurities, radically. Zarathustra refers to the Voice of the Silence as his angry mistress, his Divine Mother, who reprimands him for his hesitation and faltering in the path. This voice of conscience is oftentimes severe and demanding us our best. Here is what Nietzsche wrote: What happened to me, my friends? You see me distracted, driven away, unwillingly obedient, prepared to go―alas, to go away from you. Indeed, Zarathustra must return once more to his solitude; but this time the bear goes back to his cave without joy. What happened to me? Who ordered this? Alas, my angry mistress wants it, she spoke to me; have I ever yet mentioned her name to you? Yesterday, toward evening, there spoke to me my stillest hour: that is the name of my awesome mistress. And thus it happened; for I must tell you everything lest your hearts harden against me for departing suddenly. Questions and Answers
Question: Sure, I got two questions. This path of initiation, currently, at some point you emphasized the path of initiation into the Major Mysteries. Then you briefly talked about initiation into the Christic mysteries, the path of the light, and then also, going back to the Minor Mysteries for those of us who are single. Can you just go into a little more detail about how those three paths relate to each other?
Instructor: Great. We have the Three Mountains poster. The First Mountain is Initiation. In the beginning of the path, as we are single or even if we are married, we have to enter probation. We have the Minor Mysteries, nine in total. Single people take much longer than married couples in the nine Minor Mysteries. A Minor Mystery has to do with facing yourself in the beginning of the path. We learn for the first time that we are filled with ego. We realize that we are fallen, demonic, and so we may have experiences in the astral plane where you are being told, “Descend into the earth.” You may have the vision where a master might say, “Go down.” 
This is symbolized in the first arcanum of the Tarot with the Magician pointing his finger up with his right hand and pointing down to the earth with his left. This means that if you want to go up, you have to go down first. Face yourself. It’s probation because the divine lodges are looking to see whether we are going to be serious, you know? The way that we get serious is if we look at our defects and become accountable.
As we are discovering ourselves and eliminating defects, we may finally find a partner. Some people do find this path when they are already married and they can begin where they are at. With more fire, the quicker you go. So the Minor Mysteries can be accelerated. But obviously with the Forge of Hephaestus, which is the god of fire and smithery in Greek mythology, or Vulcan in Roman teachings, we take the fire of a matrimony and go up the Mountain of Initiation. What happens is that you enter the Major Mysteries. We say that there are five that are more important for us. When you raise the Kundalini up the physical body, you receive the First Initiation of Major Mysteries. When you raise the fire up Yesod, the vital body, the Second Initiation. Likewise with Hod, the astral body, the Third Initiation of Major Mysteries. Netzach, the fourth, relating to the mental body, Fourth Initiation, and then finally, the Fifth Initiation of Major Mysteries in Tiphereth, the causal body, superior manas. At that point―really because in the higher spheres the fire is always present within Geburah and Chesed, which never fall, the spirit and divine soul, Atman-Buddhi―you have a decision to make. When manas is united with Atman-Buddhi through initiation, the soul has a choice. Do you decide to fully eliminate the ego and even incarnate Christ, pay all your debts in one life? Or take a slower path, the spiral path, which you see in this poster people going onto the left and entering a spiral development, which is allegorized in The Voice of the Silence especially, I believe, in the second fragment that Blavatsky wrote. You must choose between the paths of liberation and renunciation. In the spiral path, you have, really, like a vacation. You get to enjoy Nirvana. You are in that level of nature. You are with the gods. Everything is easy. You drink ambrosia all day. You are happy. Many of the Nirvanis (you call them Nirvani Buddhas), they slowly enter development over many cosmic days, mahamanvantaras, up a path that leads eventually to the source, but involves very little hardship. They may incarnate physically, periodically, here and there. There are a number of them who stay true to that path and they are happy. It is a good work. But the straight path is different. It means you return to the physical world. You renounce your powers. You renounce happiness. You pay everything that you owe and you suffer the maximum. But as a grace, you receive Christ. You receive the Verb, the Voice of the Silence. That is when Christ is born in the manger, right? Because in Malkuth we have many animals surrounding us in our mind. Christ is born as a baby. It has to grow up. At that point, in the process of Christ growing up and developing in us, you have to raise what are known as the serpents of light. That is represented by the path of Jesus. As you see from the Gospels, that is a very tumultuous way. That is part of the First Mountain still. If you decide, if you have reached the Fifth Initiation of Major Mysteries, you descend down back into the physical world, you abandon Nirvana, you enter the path of renunciation, you return to serve humanity―then you can receive Christ, the Verb, the Logos. Then you have to raise the serpents of light up these bodies. But again, that is just the First Mountain. So as elevated as that might be, after you have raised the serpents of light―we call them the Venustic Initiations―you enter the Second Mountain. Now Venus, the Venustic Initiations is when Christ incarnates in the soul. It is related to Venus because it is the path of love. The Second Mountain is total death of the ego. Kill even the shadow of desire as Blavatsky taught. Fully eliminate the Tree of Zaqqum, the tree of death. You descend down into your hell realms, nine of them in total, and after annihilating all of the egos related to the inverted first sphere, the moon, you go up one initiation. You enter the higher worlds. Likewise you annihilate the egos relating to the mercurial hells, you go up one heaven. Likewise you descend into all these lower spheres relating to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and you ascend up those heavens after you fully clean out your inner hell realms. Then, at the very height, what happens is that you pay all of your karma, usually in the form of an incurable sickness, a disease. The physical body will die and the soul will resurrect. There are some masters like Jesus who resurrected with their physical body. But others choose like Samael Aun Weor did, or Joan of Arc, to resurrect with the body of liberation, Yesod, the perfected vital body. So that is a very extreme path, very difficult, very powerful. But it is really the one that leads to the Absolute, the source of all things. To get to there, you have to pay all your karma, have no ego, and then at that point you’re on the Third Mountain. This is even more daring because those are levels of perfection that relate to the top trinity of the Tree of Life, which are very incomprehensible for us. But that level is a path relating to masters who are resurrected, so even they have to work. Long path. I know we say it is short but in a sense it feels like long because we face suffering. It can be intense. Nirvanis in the spiral path see how much the masters of the straight path suffer. We call them bodhisattvas. They incarnate Bodhi, the light of “wisdom,” the essence of wisdom or Christ. Wisdom in Hebrew is Chokmah, the second sphere in the Tree of Life. The Nirvanis say, “Don’t take the difficult path. It is very challenging. You will suffer.” The gods tempt the bodhisattvas. This is a decision that we should not make on our own. It is something that your inner Being will decide. If the Being says, “I want this,” then you do it. Ambition is one thing, like “I want to be more spiritual, go to these higher levels,” but really the one who decides that is your Innermost. Your Being can show you in meditation or experiences what He wants. Hopefully that is a very concise explanation of the three mountains. If you want to know more about the path in its totality, you can study The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor. When we study The Voice of the Silence, we are going to break that down in more detail. Question: Yes, a second question. You mentioned briefly that the Bodhi tree, if I caught it, is related to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, correct? Instructor: It can be. Usually the tree of wisdom is the Tree of Life. But it is ambiguous because, where do you get wisdom from but the sexual energy? When you raise the energy up your spine. You know the tree is like a Christmas tree. When you put the lights on it, you have wisdom, Chokmah, Christ manifest. The Bodhi tree is our Tree of Life that is illuminated by the Tree of Knowledge. They share the same roots. You can say that it is the Tree of Knowledge too. There is a duality of interpretation. The thing about kabbalah, even with Eastern mysticism―which may not be distinctly Jewish, but symbolic―that language is abstract. You can be fluidic with your interpretation because there is a lot of dynamic potential in a symbol, whether it is Eastern or Western. So there are levels of meaning. Question: I appreciated what you said about the gods tempting bodhisattvas. Could you explain a little more about that? Because it seems mischievous, right? It’s gods and bodhisattvas, which are also good factors in themselves. Instructor: Right. The Nirvanis have eliminated some level of defects. They have a level of purity which is very sacred, but they’re not perfect. They have one foot in heaven but still have much of their consciousness that is trapped in ego, in hell. While part of them is enjoying the bliss of Nirvana, they also don’t have their full consciousness developed. It is interesting. Samael Aun Weor mentioned that the temptations of the Nirvanis are worse than demons because they offer you solace and comfort with good things. “Stay with us! You won’t be hurt. You’ll be happy here. You’re peaceful. Forget about the world. Forget about humanity.” This is the opening lesson of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where his fictional Prophet Zarathustra goes to the mountain cave to meditate for ten years, a symbol for how he worked in Malkuth, meditating in his cave. He said, greeting the Sun: “Behold, you great star! (Ain Soph, the origin we wish to return to). For what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine! For ten years you have climbed to my cave.” Ten years, Malkuth, the tenth sphere. “You would have tired of your light and of the journey had it not been for me, and my eagle, and my serpent.” Kundalini, Kukulcan amongst the Mayans, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, the fires of the Holy Ghost rising up the spine as the wings of the spirit. In the opening of that book, he decides, “I must descend from my mountain, to go down to the valleys, and to teach the people who are lost there.” This is because he is a bodhisattva. But as he goes there, and he is leaving his cave and going down the mountain, he encounters a hermit, a person in solitude. He says, “Why do you go to the people, Zarathustra? They will laugh at you, and mock you, and shame you. They will spit in your face and condemn you. Why do you not stay in nature among the birds and the flowers and the trees? Here the bears and the animals will be your companions.” And Zarathustra says something like, “What is a hermit doing out here in the wilderness?” The hermit says, “I hum. I sing. I do mantras, prayers in the wilderness, and I am happy here.” Zarathustra replies, “Let me leave from you now so that I do not take something from you.” Then the two old men laugh at each other jovially and Zarathustra goes on his way. He then says the famous line that Nietzsche got in trouble for: “Doesn’t this hermit know that God is dead?” Really, God is dead in us if we do not descend, kill all the ego, take energies out of hell and return it as the Superman, the Superhuman. But the hermit tempts him, “You’ll be happy here.” In some ways, Samael says, this is worse than demons, because demons attack you or are suffering a lot and it is easy to say “no,” because it is obvious. But with the gods, the level of nature among the heavens, if you have an experience in Nirvana, it is very beautiful. You don’t want to leave. You see in the causal plane the trees and the waters moving and rippling with cause and effect like a perfect symphony, and the masters of Nirvana with their robes of heaven welcoming you. They treat you with a lot of love. But the bodhisattvas have to renounce that because there are higher levels beyond good and evil (even to use the title of one of Nietzsche’s books). So it’s really interesting. I mean, what’s worse? A temptation from someone who is a drug addict, saying, “Come take drugs with us”? Well, it’s obvious. But what about those who tempt you, but are kind? “Join us! Stay with us.” But that will open up to us if we first of all reach that point. It’s a decision we don’t make now. You have to become a master of Major Mysteries, incarnate your soul. Question: How many people accomplish all three of these mountains in one lifetime? Realistically, are we going to do it in one life? Instructor: Probably not. I mean, a few people do it. Question: So how many lifetimes would it take an average person? Instructor: It depends on their will, and karma, and what the Being manages. You know, you look a someone like Padmasambhava―one life. Joan of Arc, Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, or Samael Aun Weor, you look at the life that they lived, how intense it was. It is really… all that suffering from multiple lifetimes they accumulated are now condensed in the span of like twenty years, thirty years, forty years―very intense. Are we really willing to take it? If our Being says, “This is what I want for you,” so be it! It is not something we wish upon ourselves. Nobody likes the straight path. Question: When you say Being, who are you referring to? Instructor: So the Being has many levels. We obviously talk about the first lower five spheres relating to the soul. But above that we have Geburah, the divine consciousness known as Buddhi in Sanskrit, and then we have Atman, Chesed in Hebrew, the spirit. Atman-Buddhi is our Inner God. The spirit, Chesed, which is the light mentioned in the Light Surah of the Qur’an. “Allah is a light within a lamp.” Chesed, the spirit, and the lamp is Geburah from which the light of Nur, or Aur in Hebrew, Nur in Arabic, the top trinity, Christ, to use Gnostic terms. So we have Atman-Buddhi―which is the spirit and divine soul―never falls, really, the spirit and intuitive consciousness. But above that we have even more refined levels: Kether, Chokmah, Binah―Father, Son, Holy Spirit―or the supremacy, wisdom, and the intelligence of God, which are really just one light. They are a unity. But they are not people, which is why especially in the Muslim tradition, Prophet Muhammad denounced the degeneration of the Trinity because many Christians had devolved their faith, thinking these are three people. It is really one light. Just different expressions. Question: So when you say אהיה Eheieh, which means “to be,” which sphere does that term relate to? Is that the Being? Instructor: Kether. Question: The highest? Instructor: אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh, “I Am That I Am,” is really the Father of the supreme light from the Absolute above the Tree of Life, the top, managing and governing the rest. There are different names in Hebrew and also in Arabic as well that relate to the Tree of Life. We have the ten spheres themselves, which are referenced in the Bible, the Old Testament, with sacred names of divinity. In Kether you have אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh, “I Am That I Am.” You have יהוה Iod-Chavah within Chokmah. יהוה אלהים Iod-Chavah Elohim in Binah. אל El in Chesed. אלהים גיבור Elohim Gibur in Geburah. אלוה ודעת יהוה Eloah Va Da’ath Iod Hei Vau Hei in Tiphereth. יהוה צבאות Iod-Chavah Sabaoth in Netzach. אלהים צבאות Elohim Sabaoth in Hod. שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai in Yesod, and אדני הארץ Adonai Ha’aretz in Malkuth. That’s one way of looking at things. It’s very deep, and obviously different traditions map out the names of divinity in different ways along with the Tree of Life. But the Being is really these top five spheres. These parts of the consciousness never fall. They are perfect, but they gain wisdom and understanding of their true nature when we are working and cooperating. Question: So you’re saying when we reach the highest sphere, when someone reaches that sphere, so there is no way of falling from this sphere, going down? Instructor: The soul can fall, but the Being never does. Question: So if there’s a being, so we really reach that level where we are one with the Being? Another Instructor: That level already exists within us. All these levels are already there. So when we say that the sphere of Kether never falls, what we mean is that level of divinity which is already present in us cannot fall. So the person who is doing the work to try to redeem itself, or ourself, is Tiphereth, the sphere that has fallen. So would you say that Tiphereth reaches Kether, or that Tiphereth comes to know that aspect of Kether that is already present within us? But Tiphereth can still fall again. We have seen masters like Jesus, Aberamentho, that had fallen multiple times even after completing the whole work. They fall and they have to do it all over again. Question: As Ibn ‘Arabi said, “The soul is a mirror.” The soul, if it is perfected and polished, will reflect the light. The light never falls. It is eternal. But whether or not we reflect that truth is another thing. We can enter the Absolute and know really the Ain Soph. We can return to that star of heaven. But so long as we have our foot in the door of the universe, within creation, we can fall, and that is a very delicate thing to think about. But masters at that level don’t fall because of lust. They are way beyond that, even way beyond love. Like Zanoni, in the book of his name by Edward Bulwer Lytton, he was Chaldean Master with a resurrected body. He was a resurrected master living in France right before the French Revolution. He fell in love with an actress from Naples, and he fell, with full knowledge that he was forbidden to do that. He fell because he loved this woman. Samael Aun Weor fell in Lemuria because he fell in love too. They said it was forbidden to him because when you reach those heights, sex is already conquered. You don’t need to use it anymore. You’re way beyond that. And so to abandon or go down from your first love, the Divine Mother, She says, “You can’t do that, unless the Father commands you to descend.” That’s another thing. But many masters fall because they fell in love and in the act they couldn’t control the energy. What happened with Zanoni is that as punishment he was decapitated in the French Revolution because he had more responsibility. You know, you’re a god, an immortal, you have a job to do. Then the law says, “OK.”
You find this symbolized in Hector Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique. In the fourth movement you hear the French Revolution and the drum roll as the guillotine is decapitating the aristocrats. You find one part at the end of the fourth movement like a flute playing of a pleading, begging nature, where Berlioz was teaching how Zanoni was praying, “Please, forgive me!” Then, the drum roll as he is decapitated.
That is a level of responsibility. You’re the god of a planet, a cosmos, a galaxy, whatever it is, and if you fall, it is serious. There are more consequences for that level of knowledge. That is why in Ecclesiastes it states, “For in much knowledge is much grief. He who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (1:17-18), especially for those masters who were perfected and then they abandoned it. Trying to rise again is then very difficult. They have to pay a lot. 
It is always good, at the beginning of lectures, to be present, to be aware of our mind, our mental state, our thoughts, but also our emotional qualities or mood, to take a moment, to get centered. If we are at home, if we’re driving, wherever we’re listening, we should become present, here and now, to listen with profound attention, to set aside analysis, interpretation, the mind, to learn to receive, with a pristine and clear cognition, to listen with our heart.
It is in this way that we can learn to perceive the new, and if you’ve been following the sequence of this lecture series, you’ve been given many practices that teach you how to perceive the novel, the unusual, the original, that which is sparkling and new, something we’ve never seen before, and which escapes the mind, that which cannot be confined to a label, a category, a box. The intellect is useful for storing information. But it can only compare. It cannot discern the profound reality of the thing, the experience. If you’ve ever looked at a sunset, our concepts cannot equate with the beauty and the reality of that pristine moment. It is something unusual and rare. It escapes definition. This is the quality of conscious astral projections: a state of reality that is beyond the body, that is so clear, colorful and vibrant, that it is more real than our physical existence, our physical states. It is this innate beauty that attracts us to the study of dreams. It is what draws us to remember dreams, which was the focus of our last lecture. Now we are going to take a close examination of how to consciously enter the dream state, to make something mechanical, unconscious and unintentional into something conscious. So rather than looking at a sunset and getting lost in our own approximations or estimations of that beauty, we merely see the dream for what it is, our illusions, our attachments, and instead, we can access something more, beyond the limits of the mind. I will say that there are some advantages to being mechanical. We’ve talked a lot about this, how we often react to life without understanding. We don’t really understand the roots of our behaviors. We’re not really conscious of ourselves. Mechanicity is something that can be utilized for our spiritual development in the sense that our own behaviors, mind, and states are predictable. We can learn to anticipate and recognize the novelty of the moment by first becoming aware of our own psychology, to recognize the patterns of our daily life. When we do that in our waking state, we will do it within dreams, and in this way, we will start to see more. We can even experience recurring dreams. We remember them because they emerge within our interior, boldly, and with great impact. These recurring dreams are useful. We can take dreams, we can focus upon them, and we can become conscious of them, so that by entering the dreaming state willingly, we learn to enter the astral world, and then to depart from the dream itself, to be awake, to see the reality, to see the internal dimensions. We will talk a lot about this―recurring dream symbols―how we can use them to our advantage, how we can become aware of how we dream all the time, and how we can learn to see them for what they are, to enter them, to understand them, and then to transcend them. We will give you some techniques for this particular practice. Preliminaries for Tantric Dream Discipline
There are a couple of preliminaries that I would like to review for you, briefly, so that we can have some context for why we are studying this discipline.
As we emphasized before, it is important to remember and document all dreams. We do so so that we have some material by which to study ourselves. We don’t want to forget our inner experiences within the astral world. We want to have enough data to look for the new. We want to profoundly watch for unusual or anomalous dream experiences, because when you are documenting your dreams, you will start to see recurring themes, much in the same way that you will find a narrative in your own life: the things we tell ourselves at our work, in our relationships, in our homes, in our travels. We want to study that which repeats, so that we can transcend it, and when we document our dreams, we may find that something new emerges within our experience. This constant awareness, this study of ourselves, is known as tantra within the Tibetan Buddhist sense. Tantra means “continuum.” It is the infinite. It is the continuity and comprehension of consciousness that we develop within ourselves through practice. It is a state of awakening that is constant. It does not rest. It is the state of awareness that does not sleep, but is present even in dreams, that can begin to understand the new, to see what is unusual. Also by documenting our dreams, we can learn to distinguish a gradual progression of dream experiences. We see that there is a type of thread uniting all of it. In the beginning we may dream vague, incoherent, crazy states, though with time we begin to see there is more cohesion. Our dream states become more integral. They are less dispersed and fragmented amongst confused and delusional states. We should also discriminate the distinct qualities, moods, and impact of our dreams, especially the dreams that have the most significance for us, even if we don’t know what they mean. The mood, the quality and the impact of the dream is really important to analyze within ourselves, because if a dream has a great influence on us―perhaps in a positive or a negative sense―it means that it is going to have some type of deeper significance and impact, a greater consequence for our spiritual life. Now, to really begin to use our dreams to our advantage, to learn to take a dream and to learn how to enter it willingly, we have to really identify recurring dreams. We have to document them. When you find that pattern, it is like a key that can open up the door to the internal worlds. It is a doorway into our inner reality. Usually, recurring dreams which have a spiritual flavor come in the form of symbols. They arrive from the spiritual world and condense within the astral dimension to teach us something profound. When we see those symbols, we can learn to consciously concentrate upon them, to imagine them, and then to enter them by falling asleep in meditation. In the process of this we have to revere and aspire through such divine archetypes, these allegories of the spirit. To revere and to aspire mean to feel a sense of beauty and awe before the new. In the conglomeration and messiness of our dreams, we find patterns that make sense. So, we can utilize them as a source of religion, of yoga, of reunion, because we know they come from God, and they help us to yearn for the truth. They are a rope that can pull us out of the abyss, into the heights of understanding. 
The Divine Mother
The source of all that wisdom is the Divine Mother Kundalini. She is a symbol of a profound core reality of our Being, our inner divinity.
Many people talk about the divine feminine, and all religions pay homage to her. She is an expression, an enfoldment, a quality of God. We have an image here of the Virgin Mary, a representation of the divine feminine that gives birth to something spiritual within us. Some people get caught up in the names of different religions, different traditions, rather than looking at what the sign points towards. You have many flags, many nations, with their symbols. Like diverse countries and states, all religions are like flags, with their symbols that represent the unity of the divine. The Divine Mother is our inner goddess. She is part of us. She is profound compassion, serenity and love, and she, the truth, is the one who inspires us within dreams. The Tibetan Buddhists call her Tara. She is the one who creates order within us, equanimity, dispassion, peace. She is the light that illuminates our astral experiences when they are objective and real, and she can teach us within dreams, how to awaken. Amongst the Aztecs, and I believe the Maya, she is known as Tonantzin. Tonantzin is an honorific title like “Our Lady” or “Our Great Mother.” This title has been used to designate the Goddess of Sustenance, the Snake Goddess, the Bringer of Maize, Mother of Corn, and the Honored Grandmother. These are not literal representations. They are symbols, just as dreams are symbolic. Likewise, there are symbols within religion that are oneiric. They are condensed and compacted within the language and parables of dreams. She is the one that gives us sustenance, who gives us hope, who gives us food for our soul. She feeds the consciousness with wisdom through astral experiences. She heals the broken heart, and she teaches through the inspirational symbols of dreams. So she may arrive in many forms, whatever is conducive for our development, like the snake, the serpent, which in its positive sense, is the divine energy of her, the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness of pain. She is a balm for all suffering, and that her energy, her wisdom, kills that which is impure within us. She is known as Teteoinan, “Mother of the Gods” coming from Teteoh, plural of Teotl, “God,” and innan, “their mother.” This is another name for Quetzalcoatl, from coatl, “snake,” and icue, signifying “she who has the skirt of snakes.” Beautiful symbols with profound meaning, which make sense to us the more we awaken within the astral world where those symbols unfold magically before us. She is the serpentine energy of Kundalini, mentioned in Hindu yoga, and we work with her through Tantric Buddhist practice, through the continual awakening of the soul, in order to see reality. We call upon her because she is the one who helps to organize our inner experiences. She is the one who creates integrity within the soul, and when in our dreams, when they are chaotic, futile, incoherent, strange, illogical, instinctive, animal, she comes to us like a breath of fresh air, with a quality that is so distinct that the soul knows that this is from our own divinity. Recurring Dreams: The Initiator or Unifying Element
So as we are exploring our dreams, as we are documenting them, we begin to find patterns, as I said. We start to see recurring dreams. There are dreams that begin to repeat which no longer have the flavor of something subjective, illusory, or egotistical. They speak to our heart, even if we don’t understand what they mean. However, there is a way to learn to understand what they mean.
When you have a recurring dream, when something appears amongst the chaotic and formless expression of your own unconsciousness, you will start to see a state or a symbol, a situation, color, a sound, a person―anything that hits us and inspires us and makes us question what is really going on here. What is being taught to me? What am I seeing? What is happening here? This is known as the initiator or unifying element of dreams. People call it recurring dreams. We call it the initiator element. It is the initiator element because it is the symbol, the key, the entrance to the internal worlds. It is a symbol or a message that is giving us some type of clue regarding our own psychological states, our situation in life, our sufferings, and also the solution. It is also a symbol that can be utilized to initiate a very particular type of spiritual work. We call it the unifying element because out of the plethora and plurality of conflicting and disparate desires and dreams, we find a symbol that makes sense, even if intellectually we don’t have a definition or an explanation. But there is something there that is very deep. It is a unifying element. All of our chaotic dreams begin to unify in a sense, within our attention, by this recurring dream. The symbol both initiates us, and we can use it to initiate conscious awakening. As I said, when you recognize a pattern in your life, you can begin to find a solution to things, whether it is in your daily states or within your dreams. So when you learn to become conscious of a recurring dream, you can begin to utilize that for your understanding. When that recurring dream happens again and you recognize it, you immediately know that you are in the astral world. You are shocked. You are sparked to attention. You are alert and aware that you are not in your body. You are present. This unifying element is really like a thread, Ariadne’s thread within Greek mythology, that leads us out of the labyrinth of our mind. It is a rope given to us by divinity, for by concentrating upon it, by imagining it, by focusing on it when we fall asleep, we can start to initiate the conscious awakening of our soul within the astral dimension. We can say that the initiator element symbolizes what we need to comprehend most in ourselves. More particularly, it relates to how we must change, how we must stop dreaming physically, daydreaming, letting the mind wander, not being concentrated, not being awake, alert in our daily life. This initiator element or recurring dream can teach us something about our essential problem in our life, what keeps us hypnotized. What is the repeating behavior that we continue to enact that makes us and others suffer? Because without rectifying that, we will not awaken. We will be dreaming all the time. This initiator element helps us to make sense of physical events. Dreams are merely the internal reflection of our physical reality. If our dreams do not coincide with physical facts, then we have to discard them as illusory. But the initiator element, the recurring dream, helps us to recognize our problem, what we need to do, what we must work upon. Now it is possible to possess more than one initiator element. What qualifies them is that they are impactful and that they recur. They have a very distinct quality, mood and even prophetic element. They can predict for us things that are going to happen in the daytime. Whatever situations of life hit us, they can teach us about what is going on. 
An example of a recurring dream can be the sky. This is something that many people have experienced. We have in this image a citadel floating upon an island in the clouds. On the left we see the rising sun, and on the right, the moon. A young girl walks towards the horizon, contemplating both paths. Oftentimes, the sky in our dreams is showing us, by divinity, the state of our mind, the qualities of our mind.
If the sky is full of clouds, if they are obscured, it means that we are very asleep: physically and internally, in a spiritual sense. We do not understand where we are at, where we came from, or where we are going. If the sky is clear, if the sun is rising, that is something very positive, because something is being born in you, something spiritual: virtues, humility, patience, compassion. The full moon will often reflect moral pain because it is related to the lunar forces. We know that the moon, physically, is mechanical, and it has great influence on our planet in terms of menstruation in women, the flowing of the tides, and a lot of animal life on our planet is regulated by the moon. Even crimes rates are deeply affected by the lunar influence. We even have the term “lunatic,” relating to those people whose minds are very diseased. The moon is a symbol of suffering, and depending on how full it is, this determines for us the magnitude of whatever suffering we are going to experience. These are warnings from divinity, not meant to punish or put fear in the soul, but to help us be conscious, to be prepared for life. If a person is sick with cancer, it is important that he or she knows the diagnosis from the doctor. Our doctor is our Divine Mother, and she shows us within dreams what is most necessary for us, what we need to be cautious about, to be prepared for, to be watchful. Some people, their recurring dream might be their childhood home. Maybe you wake up in your old house where you grew up. You see your parents there, your family. These can also be a recurring, initiator, unifying symbol. Your divine parents often come in the form of your physical parents, and seeing them is important. We need to see divinity, who often takes the form of our physical parents, to teach us something symbolic. Another recurring dream could be something like a car, an object. Some people dream of cars. A car is a symbol of knowledge. It is a vehicle of the mind. How you drive is how you drive your mind. So if you’re being shown a car in your dreams, it could be teaching you about how you’re using your mind in your daily life. Are you driving off the cliff? Are the wheels falling off? Or are you on the road, arriving to your spiritual destination, with your loved ones, your friends, with your spiritual family? Beautiful symbols. They repeat depending on the person. Not all people will have the same recurring dream, but these are some common ones, some interesting ones. The car can also symbolize the internal bodies: our emotional body, the astral body, the mental body, the causal body. Beautiful symbols. So when you recognize what that recurring dream is, you can take it, concentrate upon it, imagine it, and enter it willingly. This is often very useful for after you’ve just woken up from bed. Maybe you wake up in the middle of the night after having a recurring dream, something vivid, something profound, and you want to go back to sleep. You want to re-enter that dream. You want to enter it consciously. You want to see it for what it is, to confront it, live it, experience it more, and even transcend it for something more divine. So the first clue is to not move your body when you wake up. We talked about this in How to Remember Dreams. Don’t open your eyes. You wake up. You are in bed again. You just returned to your body, perhaps early in the morning, 3 or 4 am. This is very common for people. Close your eyes, concentrate, and relax. Remember the dream you just left. Before, you had the dream. You experienced it. You brought the memory back into your physical brain. Now when you wake up in bed, you want to try to maintain the lucidity of that state, the clarity, the magic, and then, you are going to focus on it. You are going to imagine it, and you are going to fall asleep. In principle you are going to meditate on it. 
Meditation in the Sacred Arcana
This process is beautifully symbolized by The Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah. You see the first 3 arcana, the first 3 laws of the sacred tarot represented here. These 3 cards represent this entire practice, the essence of meditation, the essence of becoming conscious in dreams.
These are beautiful symbols from the Egyptian pantheon, but they’re not exclusive or limited to Egyptian mythology. They are eternal principles related to the consciousness. The tarot are often depicted with Egyptian symbols because it is most convenient for our understanding, particularly within Western esotericism. It is not to say that the tarot themselves, what they represent, is literal to the cards themselves. We use art to reflect consciousness, and these beautiful art forms show us something very luminous and spiritual. They are archetypes. They are principles and forces. They represent the qualities and states of divinity, and how we must practice if we want to enter consciously into dreams. Numbers are in themselves something intuitive. Rather than just being mere quantities, they are qualities of the spirit. They represent forces, eternal truths. 
The first card of the tarot is The Magician. He is a masculine principle. He is the Divine Father that initiates spiritual life. The staff in his hand is a symbol of willpower, and he stands above a cubic stone, mastering the stone of our energies, the foundation of our spiritual life, our vital force. Our vital energy, the vital body, is really the foundation of our spiritual practice. If you want to know more about how to work with the vital energy, you can study The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor.
In synthesis, this magician stands upon a stone, because his foundation is in the work of conserving and transforming energy. By saving psychological, emotional, physical, vital and spiritual energy, we empower our consciousness. We learn to stand spiritually. We are no longer weak people, vulnerable, victims of circumstances. We can concentrate on anything and not get distracted. We learn to see life for what it is, symbolized by the eyes of Ra or Horus, seen above the Magician, in the top third of the card. These eyes of the spirit are the sign of the infinite, the continuum of conscious awareness, remembering ourselves physically and when we sleep. Those stars behind the Magician represent illuminated spiritual qualities when the mind is very serene and clear, calm, dispassionate. If you have dreams of seeing beautiful stars in the sky, that is very positive, because it represents that the Divine Father is present with you. There are objects on the card: a vase and a sword. These are deep symbols, representing the duality of sexuality, which is also talked about in The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. They represent masculine and feminine energies that we can learn to work with, to develop concentration. So with concentration, you are bringing to attention the dream that you just experienced. You focus on it. You remember it. But looking at it, unwaveringly without distraction, is not enough. You have to see it with deep, vibrant clarity. That is the quality of imagination, the next card: The High Priestess. 
She is the Divine Mother Kundalini who holds an Ankh cross above her breast, a symbol of spiritual life. She feeds her children with wisdom, from an open book, and her dress is a mantle of stars, signifying her absolute perfection.
She represents for us, sitting there, the passive quality of the consciousness. Or better said, the passivity of our mind. She is active, reading a book. She is looking from behind her mysterious veil, because she sees through illusion. She is the quality of imagination: the ability to take an image, such as from a dream, and to see it, to look at it with a lot of depth, range, color, hues. She has a profound, penetrative insight, the ability to see internal images, to see them for what they are. With imagination we are looking and seeing―with our mind’s eye, with a calm mind and an active consciousness―the dream itself. The Magician is active because in the beginning it takes a lot of willpower to concentrate. But with imagination, with the Divine Mother, we learn to receive wisdom. That is why she sits on a throne. She is passive, not in that she allows bad things to happen, or doesn’t act, but she is perfect stillness of the lake of our mind. When the lake of our mind is calm, it can reflect images. If the surface of our waters, if our mental states are agitated, we will only see chaos. So the more equanimitous and calm we are in mind, the more we will see. This is why it is very beautiful, wonderful, and opportune to wake up from a dream, and to have it fresh within our mind. We can go back to sleep, we can concentrate upon the dream, we can imagine it, so that we can awaken. 
This is the third card of the tarot: The Empress. The Empress is the perfected soul. She has 12 stars above her head, relating to the Zodiac, the laws of eternity, and many beautiful spiritual archetypes.
A beautiful bird representing the Holy Spirit flocks to her. She sits on a cubic stone of perfection, a symbol of the purity, the clarity, and the magnitude of awakening. She is the ruler of our spiritual kingdom, and she represents for us the fact and quality of going back to sleep, and reliving the recurring dream. When you concentrate upon it and imagine it with clarity, hold it with your attention and fall asleep, you will awaken again in the dream. You will relive it in full activity. This is the opportunity, when you awaken, to go from that dream to explore the astral dimension. 
Separating from Dreams
Now, the initiator element is useful for this practice. But it is not the only dream we can use. This principle can be used with any dream experience. It just takes practice, takes some skill. But with patience, it can be done.
So, initiate the dream. Begin it again and relive it. The next step, when you’re within the dream, is to know how to separate from it. Some people can do the first step, but not the second, and for that, we need meditation. Meditation teaches us how to separate from illusory dreams, to discriminate what is true and what is false. We can train the consciousness within the daily state of our existence to not react to the different impressions and external stimuli of life. We often go through life asleep, mechanically, with the five centers of the human machine, reacting to different situations, but not really comprehending them, understanding them, seeing them for what they are. So in meditation, we pray to our Divine Mother. We ask for strength to awaken within a dream, and have the strength necessary to depart from it. Oftentimes people will relive the dream, but then become unaware again. Then a few hours pass, they return to bed, and they lost their chance. If you train yourself within your waking life to not get caught up in dreams, when you learn to meditate on your dreams—your thoughts, your emotions, your movements, your habits, your desires—you can see them for what they are, and no longer feed them the precious energy of your consciousness. We don’t waste energy. We examine dreams and how our ego keeps us asleep and steals that precious part of us that we need to cultivate. Part of this practice in meditation involves becoming drowsy. Become drowsy. Let your body rest. Introspect. Concentrate and remember the events of your day. Examine and imagine the moments of your day in which you were interacting with other people, when you were at different places, when you were involved with life, and look at the ways that you dream. At what moments did you get distracted? When does your mind become confused? When do your emotions make you bewildered, vulnerable and weak? Where do you desires take control of you? If you can’t see those instincts and impulses and thoughts for what they are, and separate from them, it will be very difficult to do this practice, to do the return practice. The return practice is taking the initiator element, concentrating and imagining it, falling asleep, and entering the dream willingly, to return to your dreams, to consciously enter dreams. If you want to be able to enter the dream but then to leave it, at will, you have to train yourself. Achieve the very delicate balance of wakefulness and sleep, when your body is drifting off but you’re very clear. You maintain continuity of remembrance, and look at the ways, in your daily life, that your ego keeps you pulled and dispersed and distracted, pulled in multiple directions. You will gain more strength if you practice this: reviewing your day, retrospecting your day, remembering your day. Look at yourself, find your weaknesses, and comprehend them. In this way you take your initiator element willingly. You have a robust attention, a very well-developed imagination, and you can enter with great ease into your dreams, and then leave them if you wish to explore the astral world. 
Four Blessings: Steps for Entering Dreams
As you are practicing this exercise, you will experience what is known in Tibetan Buddhism as the Four Blessings. These are the different steps for entering dreams.
The first is Revealing Light. The second is Increasing Light. The third is Immediate Realization, and the last is Inner Profound Illumination. Every dream manifests through these four blessings. We have to learn to recognize what they are, because they are an eternal process. Every time you go to bed, every time you go to sleep, you go through these stages—consciously or unconsciously. The latter tends to be the case for most people. But if you learn to understand what these are, you can very intentionally comprehend and initiate your dream Tantric Buddhist practice. But it takes a lot of efforts. We have to be very patient with ourselves, and to have some tenacity to try this every time we go to sleep, to try to recognize these states whenever we sleep. These are known as the Four Lights within Tibetan Buddhism. More specifically, we call them the Four Blessings. 
Revealing Light
Revealing Light is perceived during the first hours of sleep. Many people report, when they go to bed, hearing a cacophony of voices or sounds. These are the voices of our different egos. They are residual impressions from our day that are manifesting within our consciousness.
So if you are paying attention as you are resting in bed or sleeping, you will start to hear these sounds. They are like fragmentary, broken expressions of half-truths. Some of them are male voices. Some of them are female. Some of them are animals. These are representations of our own ego, the multiplicity of our defects, which are slowly starting to detach themselves from the physical body. So as you are transitioning into dreaming, and you are trying to become conscious of your dreams, to learn to enter dreams willingly, you will start to see and perceive these things. They are memories, impressions, images, conversations, sounds, lights, and many different thoughts that flow and flux, that churn, through association, and seemingly without order. They emerge from the abyss of our consciousness, and if you’re watching them, you see them emerge, sustain, and then pass. You want to maintain this state when you are entering dreams, to have enough distance from those elements that you don’t get caught up, identified or hypnotized by them. You want to see them for what they are, and just watch, like you are a director making a film and different actors are coming onto the stage and screen of your awareness. These impressions are often very undesirable. Some people get very uncomfortable when they recognize that our psychology is riddled with faults. There may be snippets of conversations from earlier in our day that are tinged with negative emotion: anger, resentment, pride, fear. This Revealing Light is named so because you’re starting to tear the veil to the internal worlds. Such perceptions, coming from our interior, are often qualities that are undigested. They just emerge, and when we look at them and comprehend them, they lose their power and they pass. These egos emerge because as we are entering the astral world, our defects and our desires are beginning to detach themselves from the five cylinders of our human machine. So this is very good if you’re seeing this! It is important. It is necessary. 
Increasing Light
Do not lose your concentration, and your observation. Be present. In this way, you enter Increasing Light.
As your sleep becomes much deeper, the residual impressions and the train of discriminatory thoughts fortunately dissolve. They dissipate. They cease, and in the stillness and vastness of your consciousness, you start to receive a very profound and invigorating astral energy. These are the astral forces that are separating your consciousness from your physical body. Many people report, at this stage, the electrical sensations of departing within the astral body. Your light is increasing, because you are beginning to transition to the astral world. You are about to achieve a conscious astral projection. Some people get very frightened by this stage, because the sensations are often very unusual. If you have not felt or experienced them before, you can be very frightened, mostly because they are unknown. But they are not dangerous! We do this all the time, but we’re just not aware of it. We are not conscious of it. We do not remember it. With familiarity and practice, you will start to look forward to these sensations, these psychic vibrations, and welcome them, because they are indicating to you that you are on the right path. You are about to enter the astral world consciously. You are entering the threshold. Some people get very excited, or fearful, and they may lose the experience. But with meditation, with familiarity, with practice, you can learn to train yourself to experience this state again and again, so that you do not get afraid of it. You do not fear it. You allow it to happen. Just like you breathe, just like you drink water, just like your heart beats, these are a part of you, in order to sustain your physical life. In a sense it is your spiritual life that is sustained. You are allowed to enter the internal worlds so that your body can rest. It is a function of nature. Nothing is dangerous about it, and you will come back to your body when it is time. So, nothing to fear there. So, do not be afraid, and do not get identified. Do not get caught up in it. 
Immediate Realization
In this way, if you maintain your vigilance, and allow yourself to enter the astral plane, to consciously astral project and enter the dream of your choice, you enter Immediate Realization.
With our practice we are going beyond the first two lights to experience two superior lights. This here is the awakened consciousness. It is direct knowledge of the astral world. It is Immediate Realization because it happens in the moment. We are awake. We know that we have entered, and now we can begin to enter the dream, or revisit the dream of our choice, to understand it, and even to go beyond it. So this happens oftentimes, in these recurring dreams, this Immediate Realization, often in an unconscious way. Sometimes we may have a dream or go through a recurring dream, where we are acting in it and seeing it, but not realizing it. Here in this practice, we want to be intentional. We want to be specific. We want to take the unconscious process and become aware of it. We know we are in the astral body. We are seeing things for what they are. 
Inner Profound Illumination
But there is another stage, something much deeper than merely being awake in the astral plane. We have what is called Inner Profound Illumination.
These are the most elevated mystical states that are possible for us. This is when we are guided by our inner God, when we are speaking face to face with divinity, through symbols, through messages, through teachings. Inner Profound Illumination is when the ego is not there. There is only the soul and the Being. So, the recurring dream is useful for this because it helps you enter the astral plane. You relive the dream, then you have the possibility of stepping away from it. You have the Immediate Realization that you are awake in your astral body, and now you have the choice to go explore that dimension and to invoke your inner God. So with Inner Profound Illumination we invoke divinity, and our Divine Mother and our Divine Father can concur to our call to teach us what we need to know. Usually these states that are the most illuminated do not have any type of egotistical element if we’re very dedicated. In the beginning, it will take some practice to get there. Preparation for Death
This process of entering the Four Lights, the Four Blessings, returning to dreams consciously, is really preparing us for death.
Sleep and death are the same process. We have explained this before. If we lack cognizance of our internal life, if we do not see anything, it means that we will be unconscious when we die. So we have to learn to train and awaken ourselves now, to prepare for these states after death. This is the principal tenet of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thödol, and by awakening in the astral, we can investigate superior states and we can talk to people who have died. 
The Four Blessings in themselves help us enter the heavenly realms represented by this diagram of the Tree of Life. These four blessings are a form of conscious death. You learn to willingly enter the dream, enter the dreaming world, the world of the dead, so that we can resurrect within it, to go beyond our dreams, to leave our dreams behind. This is a miniature form of death and resurrection. As stated in the Qur’an, Surah 39, verse 42:
It is Allah that takes the souls of men at death, and those that die not, he takes during their sleep. Those on whom he has passed the decree of death, he keeps back from returning to life. For the rest he sends to their bodies for a term appointed. Verily in this are signs for those who reflect. ―Qur’an 39:42
So awakening to the Four Blessings will allow us to explore the heavenly realms. This is why we practice the return practice.
The Guardian Angel
To consciously enter dreams, to go beyond them and to see the higher realities, and in the process of this, we can work with what is known as the Guardian Angel.
We can work with a part of our Being that can help us to awaken within dreams. The Guardian Angel is very popular within our culture, especially Christianity. But often those symbols are now caricatures of a distant reality. The Guardian Angel has many powers within the soul. It is a part of our inner divinity who helps guard us in our spiritual life, our spiritual path. But more importantly, it teaches us how to consciously access our dreams. So we explained previously how the Being has many manifold expressions that all work in unity with the diverse functions of our being, which become perfected as we transform our psychology. We mentioned a few before like Morpheus and the Maiden of Memories, but the Guardian Angel is very distinct. This Guardian Angel is something very special and unique to us, and can help us maintain continuity of attention within the dreaming state. Once we are there, we can call upon our Guardian Angel within dreams to perform many magical works for us, which are very universal and unlimited. The authentic knowledge of the Guardian Angel was preserved amongst the initiatory Mystery Schools and was maintained within distinct monasteries and orders from antiquity. So we can invoke our Guardian Angel as we are falling to sleep, but also in the dream state itself, when we return to a dream, in order to take us to where we want to go, to go beyond ourselves. Initiates of dream yoga discipline can awaken internally, and when we are clear, awake, ecstatic with joy, we can work with the Guardian Angel. You can learn more about this in The Perfect Matrimony, for other practices relating to the Guardian Angel besides merely transporting yourself in dreams and helping you to guard your spiritual life. Exercises
In conclusion, throughout the day, practice self observation in the Key of SOL.
Before falling asleep, pray to your Divine Mother and Guardian Angel to help you consciously enter the internal worlds. Upon awaking from a dream, concentrate and visualize it while falling asleep again, praying to divinity to help you return to it. Lastly, record your dream experiences in your spiritual diary. Questions and Answers
Question: What are these symbols from the spiritual world and how can we recognize them?
Instructor: We kind of touched on them briefly. You will know them by your heart. What is your mood in relation to the dream? How did it impact you? What did you feel? Is it disturbing? Does it make you worry? Does it fill you with remorse? Does it inspire you? In the next lecture we are going to talk about this in great detail: How to Interpret Dreams. We will talk about inspirational knowledge. Usually, a spiritual symbol hits us with a lot of force. We are inspired in the consciousness by the distinct mood and flavor of the dream. We feel in our soul that there’s something unique about it, something out of the ordinary. It has nothing to do with any murky quality, muddled or confused state which can typify most dreams. It is something that is very profound and penetrative. So we talked about that, but also we’re going to go into a lot more depth in the next lecture about this problem specifically: how to recognize dreams from illusions, or better said, visions from illusions. Question: In the astral plane, I don’t have any doubt that I’m experiencing something very profound, and more real than the waking world. However upon returning to the waking world, sometimes I start doubting my own experiences. Was this part of my own psyche creating these images? Were they really real? These doubts are exacerbated by non-linearity of time and space in the astral plane. Although on a couple of occasions I have seen places that seem to be on another planet, in most cases all objects and places seem to have a quality of the waking world. So I ask myself: how come I never experience or see something I’ve never seen before? I ask myself: if time is relative in the astral plane, then why did people who traveled in the astral plane a thousand years ago not see our time? To see reports of people flying by airplanes, watching TVs and using iPhones? In the same way if time is relative in the astral plane, then why can’t I see our own distant future and technology? Of course I’m not interested in seeing our future, I just want to find a way to validate my experiences in the astral plane. Instructor: So there is a lot going on here, I’ll break down some points. It is common in the beginning to doubt our experiences, to fear that somehow we are going to be manipulated by our own illusions, that our ego and our mind are really projecting the contents of our own subjectivity. This is oftentimes compounded with the difficulty of the real nature of the astral plane, which is eternity, beyond the scope of our material temporality and time. You will learn what is real and what is false by meditating. When you look at your own desires and see them for what they are, and learn to be conscious physically, and when you meditate, discriminating images in the astral world becomes easier, because you are transferring the same skill from your physical life to your internal life. You learn to stop projecting like a film on a screen. When the mind stops projecting, when it is clear and luminous, when you have reached the Immediate Realization of the consciousness, you see reality. Even if you see things objectively within dreams, it is important to have caution—to learn to compare the vision with physical facts, to compare data. What was the dream about? How does it relate to our daily life? If it doesn’t relate, then it is a lie. But if it is teaching you something about something physical, what is going on in your daily experience, teaching you about an ordeal or problem, a challenge, you can be more certain that there is more objectivity there and that you are receiving something spiritual. When you stop projecting your mind onto the screen of the astral world, you can start to see that dimension for what it is—whether it is traveling to other planets, seeing cities and buildings, seeing landscapes, seeing the future, seeing architecture from other eras and ages, whether from the past like in Atlantis, or perhaps even in the future, with the Koradi. All these things can play out within our vision if we have clarified it. So, be patient. You can start to see those things more objectively and more consistently the more you meditate. Turn off the projector of your mind. Do not let it dominate yourself in your daily life. Work hard to differentiate in your waking states what is real from what is false, and in that way you will start to have more clarity and intuition about how to discriminate what your dreams are about. In that way, when you actually see things that are objective, you will not interpret them egotistically, because you could be very awake internally, and yet you are going to be interpreting things in the wrong way. That is a very dangerous place to be. Many people in different movements have made very grave errors, because they mistook an authentic vision which was true, and turned it into a falsehood, giving it meaning that is not there. It is a very deep topic. We will talk more about it in the next lecture. I hope this will suffice. Question: We understand that proper invocation involves spontaneity, sincerity, a willingness to experiment. My question is: in working with invoking the Guardian Angel, do you have suggestions of movements, mantra, prayers, and how? Instructor: Sure. “In the Name of Christ, by the Power of Christ, for the Majesty of Christ, come unto me, my Guardian Angel! Divine Father, bring my Guardian Angel unto me. Help me to perform this magical work.” Speak from your heart. You can call to divinity in that way. The best formula is from your own being, from your soul. You can say, “My Guardian Angel, help me!” when you’re in that state. Often you will get a response if the time is ripe, if you are ready, and if what will be offered is something that you can use for your spiritual benefit. That often happens with invoking our Divine Mother and Divine Father too. Divinity will come to us, or give us an experience, right there. Sometimes the landscape can change. Many things can happen. But really, the best invocation is whatever is most sincere. You do not really need a script. Your heart knows what is best. But if you want something to begin with, you can try that. Question: What is a crab a symbol of esoterically? Instructor: The crab is the symbol of Cancer in the Zodiac. There is a deep relationship there. You may have dreams of crabs. It could be related to the zodiacal sign of Cancer, to the waters. Crabs are shellfish, and in a sense shellfish are a symbol of our ego: lunar forces, lunar entities. My understanding is very limited, so you can take this with some discretion, depending on whatever it is you have experienced. Because only you can really judge and ascertain the meaning of what these crabs may be symbolizing in a dream of yours. It is good to really open our intuition more to our own judgement and wisdom from our meditations, than to perhaps look for explanations online. However, my limited knowledge is that the crab could relate to the Zodiac. If you dream of shellfish, it could represent perhaps egotistical elements, desires that live in the waters. This is why in the Book of Leviticus, I believe in the Old Testament, stipulated for Jewish dietary guidelines not to consume shellfish. Some people interpret this literally, but I like to look at things within the astral language presented in the Old Testament. The shellfish could represent, like lobsters specifically―maybe not crabs, but lobsters―can relate to ego or egos. But there are dual elements and dual relationships within any symbol. There could be positive and negative meanings embedded all at the same time. This is the real mystery of dreams, because while there is a literal narrative within the experience, the symbols can operate on multiple conceptual dimensions all at once. There could be 15 different things happening all at once, in terms of how the symbol plays out in your dream. So rather than looking at someone’s definition of it, it is good to meditate on what was going on in the dream. What was the situation? What was the impact or mood of the experience? How did it play our in your vision? What was the situation? What was your relationship to the situation? How did it unfold? What was the problem or the ordeal or the storyline related to that experience? Because there are a lot of elements that are condensed within a dream, and this is why dreams are so powerful. This is why divinity does not speak oftentimes to us in a very literal way, and when he does, it is often very succinct, because symbols communicante much more than any language physically. So I hope that satisfies your question or curiosity. But that’s just my limited understanding. Question: My dreams have the same recurring element of water. The water is always different, but water is usually present when I can remember my dreams. Should I focus on water as I fall asleep, or a dream that I can remember that had water present? Instructor: You can do both. It is interesting that you dreamed of water. Water is a universal symbol. We often talk about its meaning within the writings of Samael Aun Weor, who explains that water is related to our sexual, creative, vital energies, and the quality of those waters are depicting for us the quality of our psychological states. You can focus on water. You can imagine it, or you can even pick out a dream―which is better, one that you actually experienced―and visualize that quality and its impact on your consciousness. That’s the best approach. Because when you have an internal experience, you can use that and should use those images as meditation symbols, like the recurring dream, the initiator element, the unifying element. They’re showing us something deep and significant. So imagine the image that you saw in your dreams. If you have any other questions, feel free to unmute yourself. Ok, there are no more comments or questions, we will conclude. I thank you all for coming! We will continue I believe in the beginning of October, the lecture on How to Interpret Dreams. So, I thank you all! Much appreciated. 
All religions teach the need for cultivating virtue and conquering vice. However, as we perform a holistic study of various meditative and contemplative traditions, we find that different explanations, different teachings, different principles, were taught in accordance with idiosyncrasy, the skills, the language of their practitioners and messengers, while the outward forms might seem different, particularized to a specific geography or moment in history.
In reality, when we examine the heart of meditation within all religions, we find that they are universal. There is a common thread. There is a synthesis regarding how to establish within oneself an alert, serene, clarified, cognitive state, that has the capacity to perceive the inner depths of a thing. All these traditions emphasize the need to develop the capacities of the consciousness, the virtues of the soul, by comprehending and removing the different psychological contaminants that afflict our daily state. In our tradition, we spend a lot of time and emphasize how to practice meditation. We have received a very beautiful gift from our teacher Samael Aun Weor, whose books and writings offer a profound, practical basis by which to understand and interpret the variety of religious forms that we have been graced with. What is unique about his writings is that they specifically target the core teaching of meditation, the principles, the archetypes, the practices and blueprints by which we generate a new way of being, a virtuous state, a compassionate heart. Likewise, what is interesting is that his writings are very clear. They are very refined because they synthesize thousands of years of teaching about meditation, and so there is a lot of knowledge and wisdom contained in his books. Unfortunately, for many people his writings are difficult precisely because they are given in a language that is directed to the consciousness, not the intellect. We make a very clear distinction between the mind, intellectualism, rationality, and a state of understanding, comprehension, real insight into the problems of life, which if we are honest with ourselves, we can find that our mind creates problems for us. The intellect cannot know anything beyond its domain, which is the acquisition of data: to compare and contrast information, to label concepts upon phenomena. The mind is a useful instrument when it is placed within its orbit, when it is cultivated with a real deep understanding of the virtues of the heart. What is interesting about Samael Aun Weor’s writings is that they are very potent, very refined, very synthetic, as I said. He is often referred to as the Master of the Synthesis. Much in the same way that you can take 10,000 roses to produce a 5 ml bottle of rose oil―which is the size of your thumb―likewise Samael Aun Weor gave us a wonderful gift in which he extracted the essence of diverse religious forms to arrive at a very pure understanding of religion, of yoga, of spirituality, of meditation. Unfortunately, for some people it is too much. His writings are too strong. His teachings are very potent. His name in Hebrew, interestingly enough, means “the perfume of God,” the aroma of divinity: סמאל Samael. It is also the “poison of God” because it is very strong, very direct, and very profound. His message goes to the core of what we are and points out the obstacles of the mind. It is poison to the ego. It is a knowledge that very expediently, directly, and powerfully approaches the fundamental issue of why we meditate, which is to cultivate virtue and to conquer our vices. For some people, when approaching his writings, it is good to understand the context in which he had written and provided this knowledge. What is very useful is to study his books on meditation like The Revolution of the Dialectic, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, and The Great Rebellion in conjunction with proven traditions and ancient methods, so that we understand and have clarity that this is not the teaching of one man. It is universal. So in this lecture we are going to synthesize many points that he made in relation to meditation, practical techniques, the science of knowing oneself. But also, complementing his wisdom are the traditions in which he also studied, extracted, synthesized, and refined that knowledge. You will find many explanations in this lecture regarding Buddhist meditation especially from Tibet, the Mahayana and Tantrayana traditions. In explaining this synthesis, we will touch upon these traditions and how they all connect, so that we can radically achieve a profound state of serenity and deep insight into our daily problems. 
The Purpose of Meditation
We will explore the purpose of meditation, why we meditate, why we reflect, and why we approach spirituality.
Meditation is a science in which we explore our inner reality, our states, our psychological nature, our qualities of mind, so that by separating from the world, the senses, the distractions of life, from the hustle and bustle of modern living, we can begin to gain a clarity and understating of how we produce our own suffering. There are certain things in life that we cannot control. There are certain events in our politics, our society, our culture, that appear to be beyond our scope of influence, things that we cannot change. While there are many problems in life that afflict humanity, and while we may feel overwhelmed by the chaos that has been afflicting many people, we can learn to understand our own agency in this, to comprehend what we can do in this mess, what we can do to change our own daily problems, our confusion, our suffering, our fears, our morbidity, our disillusionment. We practice meditation in this tradition because we really want to understand why we are in pain, but more importantly how to cease suffering. If you have studied Buddhism, you are familiar with the Four Noble Truths, and that 1) in life there is suffering, 2) that suffering has causes and 3) the causes of suffering can cease, but likewise, 4) there is a path known as meditation that leads towards the complete nullification of our conditioned, suffering, and psychological states. Meditation is the process by which we gain information about who we are, about our own psychological contaminants, defects, errors. One has to be very confused to think that one is perfect in life and that we do not possess some type of fault or chip on our shoulder. Most people do recognize that they have errors but do not really know the process by which to actively look at them, confront them, comprehend them, and eliminate them. Meditation will provide us the groundwork by which we can do this, in which we can see within ourselves without confusion, assumption, belief, or preconception about what is really going on. Most people are in a state of perplexity, confusion, disorder, and ignorance, not because we lack some intellectual knowledge, but because we do not understand how our behaviors produce the consequences of our life. It is a law of nature. We follow the trajectory of our actions, our behaviors, of our choices. If we are in a very negative situation and, while we like to blame our neighbor, our community, our spouse, whomever it may be, we have to be honest with our mind. We have to be very direct with ourselves and to really look where we do not want to: at the causes of our present circumstance, of how we ended up, and where we are at. If we are not happy with our situation, then we have to go within. We have to look at our choices and not to defend our sentiments with such vehement emotion, with animal instinct, with terrible fear. We have to look honestly, to observe in ourselves what we have in abundance and what we lack. For some people, meditation is a means of acquiring spiritual experience, and this is very valid and useful. The truth is that even having some blissful state―in which you escape for some moments the conditions and limitations of your own mind―the only purpose of that is to inspire you to look at yourself further, to examine what keeps you encaged. What are the obstacles in our life? What are our repeated, observable, cyclical behaviors? In what way do we keep repeating the same actions, in the same circumstances, and why we should expect a different result? But the common tendency is to ignore our own culpability, our responsibility, our own agency. So, meditation will provide us the means by which we can really reflect on our quality of life, our state of being, our purpose for living. If we are suffering a lot, if we are confused, if we are distracted, but we feel in our heart a deep inquietude, a deep yearning, or uneasiness in our very being, we have to listen to that. That is what guides our meditation. That is what guides our introspection. That is what drives us to understand what spirituality is and what to do. The Natural Laws of Meditation
There are three trainings in diverse traditions. You find this dynamic especially within Tibetan Buddhism. You find it in traditions like the mystical doctrine of the Sufis, the mystics of Islam―three degrees or stages. You find it in Freemasonry. You find it all throughout the world, which proves and emphasizes that there are steps to meditation. It is a scientific approach. These are based on laws of nature. If you wish to enter and develop, to realize a real state of equanimity, of internal divine perception, you have to fulfill the causes and requisites of their fruition.
Believing or not believing, thinking or not thinking, assuming or rejecting with our mind or heart, does not indicate any real change, because psychological transformation is based on the actions that produce them. Just as nature has its laws, likewise, our spiritual life has laws. Divinity has laws. In the East this is known as karma: cause and effect, action and reaction. For every effect there is a cause, and in every cause there is an effect. It is inescapable in the same way that gravity is inescapable. You can believe that gravity will not affect you and therefore leap off a cliff. We can believe whatever we want, but nature does not adhere to our preferences, our assumptions, our ideologies, our concepts. Nature is nature. So in this approach to meditation, we are very factual. While we may have lots of literature, and many concepts that we study intellectually, the real blossoming of the soul is based on enacting superior causes and conditions, superior ways of being, a higher level of being, because if you follow superior actions, you will produce superior results. It is a basic law. In science, they call it invariance, in which if you produce an action, you then must face the consequences of it. Maybe in this lifetime, maybe not in a few days, but eventually you will. So, by enacting superior, ethical behaviors like compassion, kindness, generosity, moral and psychological purity, we produce a conduit or a psychological matrix in which we are generating and activating a real potential. The truth is that we need to create a space within our psychology that is conducive for realizing the spirit, our inner divinity, our inner God. When we lack serenity in our daily states, we cannot see clearly within. This is why ethics is the foundation within all meditative traditions. If you fulfill a horrible action, if you lie, if you steal, if you kill, not only are there physical consequences, societal repercussions, confrontations with the law, we really in turn disturb the waters of the mind. We become agitated. Just like a lake that cannot reflect clearly the heavens upon its surface when it is churned, in the same manner our mind cannot reflect anything positive within its surface. If we are engaging in negative, harmful behaviors, instead what we will have is a whirlpool, a storm, a hurricane, which most people define as our life. Ethics
But there are ways to train. The beginning is to train in ethics (Sanskrit शील sila). Refrain from harmful behaviors. Enact positive, conscious behaviors. We call this self-observation in our tradition. We observe ourselves. We examine, moment by moment, our thoughts, actions, our feelings, our impulses, our instincts, in the same way that a director of a film observes an actor in a scene. The actor is your own mind. It is your own negative emotions. It is your own instinctual, animalistic habits and behaviors. The consciousness, the soul, or what we call the Essence, is the director. We are looking within. We are examining our mind. We are examining our heart, and examining our impulses to be.
In this way, we are learning to distinguish and discriminate what to do in life in the moment. We call that conscience: following the inner judgement of our heart. That is the voice that emanates from divinity. The mind can rationalize and debate, “This behavior is good. I should do this,” and have many justifications, and yet we taste the flavor, the aftermath, the consequences of this―bitterness, remorse, sorrow. It is better to have foresight rather than hindsight. But so long as we are making changes in our daily life, we can in turn progress. We progress based on ethics. Again, acquiring information by observing yourself and by learning to fulfill the intuitions of your heart, the voice of conscience, we learn to navigate the boisterous seas of our life. Things begin to calm. The waters settle. Samadhi
In that way we start to acquire states of समाधी samadhi. This is the word in Sanskrit meaning “bliss,” ecstasy of the soul. We start to experience blissful states of consciousness as we are working with concentration. We are beginning to integrate our mind, which is usually very dispersed, diffused, and distracted amongst multiple activities and obligations. The mind tends to be all over the place. But as you being to learn to observe yourself, remember yourself, and remember what you are doing at any given moment, you begin to integrate your consciousness. You start to strengthen it so that you gain continuity in your alert, novel, perceptive states, so that you can begin to understand something more profoundly in you. As you access that you feel bliss, you feel a sense of joy. You feel inspired. You feel elevated as you begin to recognize you are not anger. You are not pride. You are not fear. You are not resentment. You are not lust. You are not desire. You are something much more than that.
Some people have written to us online with a lot of distress, a lot of unhappiness, saying they have tried these techniques and methods and yet they continue to suffer a lot. They have many negative thoughts, many fears they say they can see in themselves. They recognize they have defects, but they are not changing and just feel very dark and sour. This proves that one does not have ethics. One is not awake. If we are not paying attention and seeing the mind for what it is, then we are identified with it. We are feeding it our energy. We invest ourselves in that self, in that anger, that pride, that morbidity, that resentment, instead of separating it and not feeding it, because when you recognize yourself, you feel joy. You feel happiness. You feel bliss. You feel samadhi to a degree. Some people like to refer samadhi as some elevated mystical experiences within different dimensions, but the truth is that samadhi or bliss has to do with our perception and quality of being here and now. You will recognize a selfless state when it happens, as you are cultivating superior behavior in your mind, in your heart, in your body. Samadhi, the bliss of the awakened consciousness, a concentrated perception, is such that when you are not invested within the different modifications of the different defects you carry within, you begin to subsist within your own true nature, which is the soul, the Essence, the consciousness. Prajna: Profound Wisdom
In this way, as you are established in that state, you then enter profound wisdom, which in Sanskrit is known as प्रज्ञ prajna. Prajna is the capacity for insight, when you really go into the depth of a phenomenon and even within noumena, the truth, the thing in itself, the essence of a given thing. Profound wisdom is the capacity to have profound perceptive understanding and analysis of very obscure things, qualities and states that are not accessible to the physical senses.
They are apprehended by, first, developing concentration, and when that is very strong, we begin to see things, have visions within our meditations. We can even physically leave our body and enter the superior dimensions in nature, which in kabbalah it is known as the Tree of Life. The Integration of the Three Trainings
We need to cultivate all these qualities in ourselves. They are predicated and grounded within one another. As you begin to develop ethics, you begin to establish a state of concentration to a degree, happiness and joy in recognition of your work, your successes, and also your failures, by learning to move ahead so that with enough practice, we develop profound wisdom, by having insight of different experiences of life. But also, within meditation, we begin to feed our ethics even further. These work together. They complement each other. They funnel and feed within each other. These dynamics are deep and are interrelated. You cannot separate one from the other. If you want success in meditation, you have to consider these in their totality.
Types of Meditation
There are different types of meditation. We can talk about two specifically. There are meditations that focus on stabilizing the consciousness and there are meditations that help us to analyze, to develop perceptive, critical understanding of whatever we are focusing on in our practice.
Stabilizing Meditation
When we are stabilizing the consciousness, we are learning to concentrate. In the beginning, right now, our mind is all over the place. Concentration is the capacity to focus our attention on one thing without being distracted. If you sit, close your eyes, introspect, and simply look at your quality of mind, in the beginning of our discipline, we find we are thinking many associative thoughts. There is a chain of compare and contrast, thesis and antithesis, good and bad, memories relating to other situations that relate to something else, and the mind wanders. If we forget that we sat down to meditate, to look within, we can recognize that we lack concentration. We do not remember what we are doing. We are not focused on one thing and being distracted by others.
This quality, concentration, is very important. In the beginning, it is necessary to learn to concentrate. Learn to focus your perception, your consciousness, so that you can focus on one thing and not get lost. If you examine your day, if you take public transportation, you start thinking of other things or daydreaming. Maybe you are listening to your music player thinking about something that happened earlier in the day, not paying attention to your surroundings, not being aware, and then we forget our stop. It means that we are not awake. We are asleep. We are daydreaming. We are not conscious. That has to change. You learn primarily to develop concentration when you are learning to be aware of yourself, your surroundings, and your internal states at all times. If you are learning to self-observe yourself throughout the day, your meditations are going to be very strong because meditation, as a state of being, is based on the capacity to focus throughout the day. This is genuine willpower. Now in the West we like to think of willpower as something aggressive, violent, abrasive perhaps. But willpower is really the effort of the consciousness to place attention to one thing with serenity. Genuine willpower is very gentle. It is not mental exertion: the mind investing in a lot of thinking, or the heart in feeling, or the body in acting. The consciousness is beyond that. Conscious will, it is the capacity to perceive without having to think or to rely on negative emotions or instincts. It is a serene perception and introspection within oneself. It is a state of equipoise. It is quiescence, in which with your willpower, you are learning to observe yourself and not get distracted by anything, to be alert and attentive. 
As you are doing that, much in the same manner as you are riding a boat that rocks with the waves when you are moving, when you sit still and maintain your focus by holding on to the mast of the ship and do not move, eventually, the waters will calm. Then you can start to see things clearly. The storm passes. It is the same thing with our mind. With willpower, we learn to sit still from a state of perception. In meditation, we learn to calm the body, calm the mind, calm the heart, and in that way, you are gaining an understanding of how chaotic your mind was. You do not get identified with it.
This state is known as calm abiding in Sanskrit: शमथ shamatha, or in Tibetan: shyine. It is very important to develop this. You do this with concentration exercises, but also learning to self-observe your self and remember yourself through out the day, to not be inattentive, asleep. Analytical Meditation
We also have analytical forms of meditation which relate to the capacity to perceive with clarity. There are visualization exercises in which you perceive non-physical imagery. If I tell you think of an apple, you can see it. It is not a physical thing, but it is in your mind. That is visualization. It is the capacity to perceive non-physical images, which is important when we learn how to perceive and understand ourselves.
In the beginning, our capacities to visualize tend to be very weak, very dispersed, very clouded, very obscure. But with analytical forms of meditation, like visualization practices, we strengthen the capacity of the soul, the consciousness, to see within. We do this through exercises like retrospection meditation, in which we learn to visualize our day: what we thought, what we felt, what we did. You can review your day from the morning to evening, or evening to the morning. You visualize what you saw in yourself. You rely on facts. In this way you begin to comprehend the different defects that manifest in you from moment to moment. This is how you gain inner vision: internal understanding. You start to see yourself in a new way when you look at the observable facts of your existence, so that you can gain deep, lasting knowledge about what actions are wrong and what you can do to change them. Some people call this faculty clairvoyance. Unfortunately, it is a French term meaning “clear vision” that was created by a group of French initiates who wanted to establish a technical language and flavor to their art, so that the uninitiated would not basically disturb them in their practices. Unfortunately, this term has harmed many people, in the sense that many believe clairvoyance, this visualization capacity, this dynamic, is something only for the exceptional and the few, when in reality, it is merely the faculty of imagination: to see within. That imagination can be subjective, meaning, conditioned by our own internal states, our defects, our defects, or it can be purified and clear meaning conscious, undisturbed, objective. This is known as insight (in Sanskrit: विपश्यना vipassana). 
Qualities of Concentration
Let us talk about some qualities of concentration. I already mentioned a few.
Real concentration in the end is effortless. I know that in the beginning if we sit to focus, perhaps on a candle, observing the flame, as one practice you can do, or in the exercise of self-observation, in the beginning, it takes a lot of effort. It is very intense to stay alert, because you find, as you are trying to observe yourself, that you forget. You get lost within the mind. You forgot what you were doing. It takes a lot of energy within the consciousness to be present. But as you really cultivate concentration within yourself, it does not take any effort, because when you establish a momentum and that quality or way of being in life, it is natural. It is serene. It is calm. We make a very clear distinction between mental exertion of the mind and the willpower of the consciousness. The consciousness is serene. It is calm. It happens spontaneously even as you are training yourself, so that you can respond to any situation in life with understanding, with wisdom, with compassion. In the higher stages of concentration, there is no effort involved, when it is perfect. In that way, it is unafflicted by desire, by defects. As I said, concentration relates and can relate to the state of bliss, in which as you are observing yourself, you are not tossed about by the mind. You are not hurt by your own anger, because you have created a space, in the sense of separation, enough that you can look at yourself without getting caught up, being swallowed by the animal. Instead, you confront it. You look at it with equanimity, with calm, and in that way, you are inspired. You have bliss. The greatest joy of the Gnostic is the discovery of one of his or her defects, because a discovered defect will be a dead defect. ―Samael Aun Weor
So, there is joy in that work. It is a continuous process. When concentration is really maintained throughout the day in a continuous, persistent, disciplined manner, gently bringing ourselves back to the present moment, we develop what is known as mindfulness: continuity of attention. Self-observation is the capacity to observe yourself in moment, but maintaining that throughout the day, that continuity, is known as mindfulness: to remember yourself all the time. With practice you gain clarity of yourself. You see and understand your daily states without labels, without conceptualizing what is going on, saying perhaps, “This is pride,” “this is anger,” or “this is fear.” Instead, you just look at yourself. You see yourself.
While it is important in our studies to understand the different qualities of our defects, it is important not to get caught up in terms. Sometimes we refer to the seven deadly sins or the legion of defects to help us have some type of groundwork to approach the complexities of our mind. When we talk about self-observation, you learn how to see how each defect works together, but also individually. Defects are not easy to categorize, if we are really honest and look at ourselves, because anger can be proud. Lust can be gluttonous. Fear can be angry. Vanity can be greedy. Each ego has its unique flavor that we have to comprehend and not to box up in some category in the intellect. This type of perception and concentration we are talking about is not strictly limited to a set of ideas. It is something really deep. As you are observing yourself, you get a more vivid, intense, and stable consciousness. The consciousness becomes more robust as you exercise it, in the same manner that by going to the gym, you get stronger. It is also one-pointed in the sense like if you are really investing your whole heart and concentration within your consciousness, you are able to direct it at one thing at will, and to sustain it at will, for however long you want. This is what it means to be undistracted, and it is that foundation that allows us not to be obscured within ourselves. When you are able to look at something with your consciousness without obscurations, without distraction, you start to understand the inherent nature of that thing. It is selfless. Self-observation, when the consciousness is looking within, does not have a self. It is clear and unconditioned. To be specific, the ego in Latin is a term for “I,” “myself,” “me,” “my desire,” etc. That is the self we need to understand and know so that by comprehending them, we can eventually remove them. But the consciousness does not have a conditioned sense of self there. Consciousness is perception. It is knowing. It is understanding. It is liberated, but it is not based upon a sense of “I.” This is something that you can only understand through experience and through the practices that we are going to elaborate. The Basis of Concentration
So the basis of concentration involves some teachings from the Lam-rim Chen-mo [The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment], Tsongkhapa especially, a great Buddhist master who explained in his writings some ethical foundations and some stipulations that can help us to develop basic concentration.
Ethical Lifestyle
One of them we already mentioned is an ethical lifestyle. If we are killing, stealing, lying, performing sexual misconduct, indulging in alcohol or intoxicants, negative behaviors, extortion, crime, etc., then we do not have basis in which to concentrate, because our mind will be a complete storm. Ethical livelihood, a compassionate lifestyle, is our best defense against negative circumstances in life. As Samael Aun Weor wrote:
The best weapon in life is a correct psychological state. ―Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
Ethics has to do with living appropriately in the given moment. Cultivate your mind and cultivate a better way of being.
Conducive Environment
We also need to cultivate an environment that is going to help us rather than hinder us. A conducive environment has to do with establishing a space in our home or a place to go to meditate. For some people, their home is not an option. Maybe we have roommates, or other people nearby, neighbors, whatever it may be. We need to learn how to cultivate a space or have somewhere to go to practice. It is ideal to have a room in your home that you can dedicate to meditation. Have a well kept space and altar because that devotion to that particular space and environment for practice can charge us with a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of joy to really continue and aspire in these studies.
For some people, a room is not an option, but instead one has a corner in their apartment or home, a park, or temple they go to. Whatever it is, we need a conducive environment that is going to facilitate our capacity to concentrate within. Reducing Desire
In that way, we have to learn to reduce the desire for more. For some people, we have attachments to future expectations or longings for a better situation, better environment, better circumstances. Maybe some people (and it is common in the Gnostic movement) want a Gnostic spouse, feeling and thinking that they cannot meditate and enter the path if they are not married. This is an illusion. Whatever our desires for more or for different situations, we have to reduce our attachments.
We have to learn to become like renunciates, as seen in this image of Buddha Gautama Shakyamuni shaving his hair off before he became an ascetic. He eventually entered the wilderness in order to fully dedicate himself to meditation. Now, we are not advocating that kind of extreme practice, fakirism, or living in the wild to just meditate all day and only eating a grain of rice, which is extreme. Instead, what we are learning to do is be content with our situation. We need to learn to renounce our attachments and our desires for a different situation. We need to learn to accept what we have. We are where we are at in accordance with our actions, our karma. Our situation is a direct reflection of our mental states:
The internal is the reflection of the external. ―Immanuel Kant Contentment
If you want a better situation in your life, we need to learn to be content with what we have and the blessings that we already received, to accept our karma like the hammer and the anvil. It can be painful, yet we have to learn to get comfortable with adverse and difficult situations. If you are changing your mind, transforming your mind, having gratitude for the gift of life, and the fact that we still have a consciousness that can work despite a physical, emotional, or mental illness, we can really learn to transform ourselves. I have known people in these studies who have suffered really terrible illnesses, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I know one person who is suffering from schizophrenia, and by learning to comprehend his own inadequacies and faults, by learning to get treated and helped, has achieved great progress. There are some people who have a physical ailment, or are paraplegic, who cannot walk, who are sick. There is one example of a meditator who was dying of dysentery. If you are not familiar with that, it is very painful, and yet he still developed his meditation practice. So, reduce your desires and accept your situation.
Renouncing Useless Activities
It is not easy, but if you do and learn to renounce useless activities and distractions, we really can radically change.
So, some useless activities that we are probably already familiar with: fsome people, it is television, browsing the internet, doing useless things that really do not produce anything spiritual for us. Yet we tend to gravitate towards these things because our mind is agitated and wants to do something. By reducing and renouncing useless activities, we learn to spend more time in useful activities like meditating and developing concentration. Supportive Posture and Relaxation
We have to have a supportive posture, supporting our spine in a way, relaxing deeply, so that we can calm the body and also forget about it. The important basis of concentration is that our posture has to be adequate enough, in which we can relax it completely and no longer be identified with its itches, scratches, or discomforts. Calm your body. Spend a lot of time relaxing it, and learn a position that is useful for you. It can be full lotus or half lotus. Particularly for Easterners, this tends to be very common. For Westerners, you can sit on a chair or lay on our back. Although I do recommend that, if you are learning concentration for the first time, to do so sitting up on a chair, because sometimes laying on our back can be so relaxing that you forget the practice and you fall asleep. Learn to relax to the point that your body can suspend its activities, your senses calm, and you can look within completely, but without forgetting what you are doing.
Energy
For this we have to learn to work with energy. The consciousness needs energy to work. It cannot be active if we are not working with our vital forces, our mental forces, and our emotional forces. Every action requires energy in life, without exception. If we are wasting energy mentally, emotionally, or sexually―as we explain in our tradition as the most important energy we need to work―then consciousness will be depleted. It will not be able to awaken in a positive, pure, and clear way. We need energy to awaken the soul. If you are interested in learning how to work with creative energy especially, you can study Samael Aun Weor’s The Perfect Matrimony, or books like Kundalini Yoga and The Yellow Book.
Introspection and Withdrawal of the Senses
As you are working with energy, you are withdrawing your senses. You are working with exercises like pranayama, which is the practice of controlling the breath. You circulate the vital forces of your body, and in that way, you are withdrawing your attention from the external world. You are introspecting and entering your own psychology. You are calming. You are entering quiescence, equanimity, dispassion.
Mindfulness and Abandoning Distraction
As you are going within, you are developing mindfulness. You are not forgetting what you are doing. Mindfulness is important when you are developing concentration, as I said. You need to learn to self-observe throughout the entire day, not just for one moment, but for our entire, daily states, our entire life. We already mentioned that it is important to abandon distractions, things that are really pointless, as I said.
Also, abandoning distractions is not only physically renouncing activities, but it is learning to avoid the distractions of our mind. If we are sitting to concentrate upon something and your mind is thinking of something else and wants to go over some minute detail of your day, it can be good to look at it for a moment, but then abandon that distraction and return to the point of your practice. If you are sitting to practice with a specific purpose, I recommend that you fulfill that and stick to your guns, so to speak. Do not do something else than what you intended at the beginning of your practice, so that you have consistency and continuity, because the mind will look for excuses and opportunity to do what it wants, which is to wander in the mind. Vigilance, Awareness, and Self-Observation
Vigilance helps us to establish concentration because, as I said before, with mindfulness, we learn to be awake at all times. To be in vigil means “to not sleep. “ Vigilance also has to do with the clarity and quality of our perception, to really see oneself in greater depth, greater vividness, intensity and purity. Awareness has to do with remembering oneself, being aware of one’s environment, and observing oneself moment by moment.
All of these principles help to establish concentration. If you practice these principles very heartily, you will radically progress. 
Concentration Practices
Some basic concentration practices include focusing on external sensory objects. That is very good for beginners especially.
Upon External Sensory Objects: Breath
We have concentration upon the breath, Anapanasati, in which you only focus on the inhalations, the retention and the exhalations of breath. If the mind starts to think of something else, just focus on the breath. This is a very useful exercise when you are beginning to develop concentration, because grounding yourself in a natural function of your body can help you to gain awareness of yourself and some continuity in your attention. You can inhale for eight seconds, retain the breath for eight seconds, and exhale for eight seconds―however long you need, whatever is natural for your lung’s capacity.
Upon External Sensory Objects: Mantra
We have mantras and sacred sounds, which are vocalized sacred words. Mantra literally means “mind protection.” It is a vibration of sound in which it reverberates within our body, our internal physiology, and within our consciousness. Sacred sounds are a great way to charge your body with energy, and they help you to focus as well. It is good in the beginning to mantralize out loud. It is good to vocalize these sounds because there is a physical benefit to them.
There are practices in our tradition like the runes, which you can study on Glorian.org, in which you adapt postures in your body and vocalize sacred sounds in accompaniment with prayer, so that these energies and vibrations activate different centers of your psychology and physiology. It is also good to pronounce sacred mantras by whispering them throughout the day if you want to maintain your attention and concentration while you are at work. You can also do it mentally if you do not want people to notice. We work with all three aspects: the physical vocalized component, there is a whispered component, and there is a silent recitation in the mind. Swami Sivananda wrote that silent Japa, mental recitation, is the most powerful because it requires the most attention and skill. I recommend that you work with all aspects of this. Spend some time vocalizing out loud during the day, whisper them as well, but also mentally pronounce these mantras when you are engaged in your daily life. This will help you maintain profound concentration and mindfulness. Upon External Sensory Objects: Relaxation, Pulsation, Circulation
You can also concentrate upon the pulsation and circulation of your heart. This helps you to relax. Focusing on your heartbeat is very beautiful. It really grounds you in your own body. It helps you to realize that your heart, your physiology, your body, is a beautiful living thing with intelligence, with life. We often ignore our own body throughout the day. We are tense. We are uptight. We are agitated. By learning to relax your body, by learning to focus on the beat of the heart, you become more aware of yourself. You become more in tune. You relax. Relaxation is key. You want to relax yourself and your body to the point that you can forget about it. With this exercise, if you are really concentrated, your body can fall asleep, and you can have an astral projection through the chakra of your heart. It is very beautiful and very effective.
Upon Internal, Visualized, and Conceptual Objects: Candle or Stone
You can also concentrate upon internal, visualized, and conceptual objects like a candle or a stone. Light a candle. You observe it. You look at its features. You examine it and close your eyes. Then gently you construct the image your mind. Let it appear and show itself within your imagination. You learn to observe that quality in your consciousness, your imagination. You are visualizing the object. If the mind starts to play with the image―which it will―simply open your eyes again. Become observant again. Observe the candle. Look at it. Then close your eyes and visualize again. With practice you will learn to sustain an image with real intensity and vividness, with clarity and longer periods of time. You can also take a stone and simply observe it and visualize it as well in the same way.
The point is not to think of other things or let the mind do what it wants. But on this point, it is also important not to force the mind to do your practice. You do not want to exert tension in your mind. Imagination does not take effort in the sense that you are trying to build something in your intellect. You want to look at the image, close your eyes, gently bring it upon the screen of your attention, your visualization. If you are tense, relax. Open your eyes and look at the object again. This is not a violent repression of the mind. Do not beat it up. Do not beat yourself up. It is very calm and very peaceful. Upon Internal, Visualized, and Conceptual Objects: Sacred Art, Sculptures, Mandalas
If you gain some skill, you can learn to concentrate on sculptures or mandalas, which are sacred art forms. They represent qualities and principles of divinity, which can inspire our practice. It takes more skill to visualize, obviously, more complex images, and we will talk about this in brief in the next few slides.
You can also focus on a plant which is the body of an elemental soul of nature, in which you learn to observe the plants features and visualize its qualities. If you are really deep in your meditation, you are concentrated and fully focused on what you are doing, you can relax to the point of falling asleep, then learn to enter the superior worlds to speak and communicate with the soul, the elemental of that plant. It is a very beautiful experience. Upon One’s Own Mind without Discernment or Distraction
Lastly, you can explore and concentrate upon your own mind without discernment or distraction. This practice is not accompanied with a deeper visualization. What it is, is that you are looking at your internal states, not trying to discern or look at the depths of these defects, but you are learning to just look at the flowing thoughts and distractions of your mind without getting carried away by it. It is like looking at a blue sky in which clouds emerge, they sustain, and they pass. Concentration can be developed in that way. It can be very difficult for beginners, but work with whichever exercises help you most.
Deepening Concentration: Mindfulness
There are ways to deepen concentration once it is initiated. Mindfulness, as I said, is the capacity to remember what you are doing moment by moment throughout your entire day. Concentration is much more robust and strong as you consistently return yourself back to the origin of your discipline
Deepening Concentration: Remembrance
Remember your practice. For some people they like to have alarms on their clocks, watches, or phones set throughout different times of the day, so they can remember to engage their practice in case they forget what they have done or what they have been doing. Their alarm can bring them back. For some people, that can be very useful.
Deepening Concentration: Vigilance
Vigilance, as I said, is the capacity to not sleep, to be aware at all times, to remember yourself. Once you learn to identify distractions in the moment―this takes a lot of discernment and skill)―if you have established some degree of concentration, not forgetting what you are doing, there are other forms of distractions that emerge from the subconsciousness, infraconsciousness, and unconsciousness that ripple upon the surface of our awareness. As the waters are stilling, you can learn to look within with more profundity to learn and see the origins of distractions before they even really manifest upon the surface.
Deepening Concentration: Remedy Excitement and Laxity
Sometimes we can feel excitement or laxity in our meditation practice. You can feel overexcited or agitated, like you want results, or you can feel lax like you are really dull, heavy. You want to fall asleep. You simply enter oblivion, eight hours of unconsciousness where one does not even dream.
The remedy for excitement is to learn to reflect upon your mortality. Reflect on the fact that at one point we will die. Our life will end. Therefore, why be agitated? We have to face the reality of our circumstances, of our life. For overexcitement, some desire for something, we have to curb that by understanding and reflecting that our desires are transient. They are futile. They are impermanent. Reflect on impermanence. Nothing lasts forever in this universe. Therefore, why be attached? 
If you are lax or dull, you can practice a visualization exercise. You can imagine a bright sun in your consciousness, your mind, in your heart, as you see in this image of a buddha meditating towards the sun. Imagine a bright, brilliant, golden sun within your consciousness, so that light can give you strength and inspiration. You can also visualize any image that gives you joy and encouragement from the diverse religious traditions, so that you are inspired to embody those qualities.
Deepening Concentration: Notice an Object’s Qualities as They Are
The important thing is that we need to notice an object’s qualities as they are. We cannot project our assumptions and ideas of what we are seeing. You just have to look at what is there. Do not let the mind label what you are seeing. In that way, you abandon expectations, assumptions, or thinking that your meditation will end up a certain way. Some people enter a meditation expecting a samadhi, an astral projection, a mystical experience, and they ignore that that very desire is what obscures their practice. We have to abandon all expectations. Let the mind settle. Simply be, and if the experiences come, they will do so by their own accord when you are receptive.
Deepening Concentration: Increase Relaxation
You can also learn to increase your relaxation in order to really deepen concentration, because if you are agitated by excitement or feeling dull, you want to relax the body. But again, if you are too tense, you want to let go so much on the strain, so to speak. You do not want to be too tight psychologically.
Deepening Concentration: Unwavering and Effortless Focus
We need unwavering and effortless focus. This is something that happens in the higher degrees of concentration in which you no longer waver from thing to thing. You are no longer distracted. But then as you are becoming more acquainted with that state, it does not take any effort. It is effortless. You simply will it and it is. It is very gentle, spontaneous, intuitive, and a wonderful, blissful state.
Deepening Concentration: Don’t Exert Thought and Energy
Now, if you are forgetting yourself, gently refocus upon the object. I cannot emphasize this enough. Do not exert the mind. Recall your attention. Reflect upon the object, and be gentle. Do not exert yourself with thought and energy. That can be a major obstacle towards the end of your concentration practices, especially as you are advancing towards higher stages. If you exert yourself to any degree, you will lose that state. For some people, they can be meditating or even having an astral projection, in which they are awake in that state, then they become fearful or engage in a thought for the moment or they exert their mind, and then they lose the samadhi, the ecstasy, the experience. Do not exert yourself at that point. Let your mind settle.
Deepening Concentration: Momentary Retrospection
If you forget what you are doing at some point in your meditation, it is good to utilize a momentary retrospection when you lose that mindfulness. So, if you are meditating and you remember your object, but then for a minute you forget what you are doing, it is good to reflect in that moment about what thought led you down that chain of associative thinking, that led you towards distraction.
Qualities of Insight
Some qualities of insight that are really important to reflect upon, as I said, are insight, which is imagination: the ability to perceive internal imagery. In the same way that you dream, you perceive images that are not physical. Likewise, imagination is that capacity. It is direct perception of internal reality.
Dreams occur in a material dimension that is not physical. There is a different form of matter and energy there. There is a reality there that is very concrete, but it is not as concrete as our physical dimension. Likewise, our internal experiences emerge within our consciousness in the form of non-physical images, sounds, visions. This is clairvoyance. But unfortunately in us, our perception tends to be very clouded. It is very conditioned. Most of our time throughout the day, we engage in fantasy. As I said, when we are distracted, we are thinking of our co-worker, perhaps, and an event we had in the day. Perhaps we were angered by their actions, and so we are ruminating about revenge. This is negative clairvoyance, fantasy. It is mechanical. It just happens within the mind, and we simply go with it if we are not questioning ourselves, examining ourselves. That is a negative psychological state in which we are wasting profound reservoirs of energy within our body, heart, and mind. Real clairvoyance, real vision, conscious imagination, pure seeing, is when we are looking at the contents of our experience without any ego there to filter. In the beginning, it is going to be mixed, because we are training ourselves for the first time. We are learning to see ourselves, who we are. But of course in the beginning, we are going to be mixed, as I said. Often times in the beginning, we struggle to visualize. We struggle to see the qualities and colors of an image, and to sustain that within our consciousness. It is important to reflect that there are different forms of visualization or imagination, we can say. I mentioned that there is a negative component, which is fantasy, egotistical, the projections of the ego, mind, or desire. But then there is conscious imagination, which is the soul. Now the consciousness can learn to develop its perceptive qualities by projecting an image. We learn to take a candle, as I said, you imagine it. You visualize it. You are projecting that image within yourself so that you can develop that capacity in you that can see it as it is with your imagination. With practice we also learn how to receive images as well. As you are entering a silent and serene state of mind, your body is fully relaxed. You are fully withdrawn in your consciousness. You are imagining that projected imagine within your awareness, the screen of your imagination. Suddenly without thinking about it or expecting it, you receive something new. Perhaps a situation, a dream, a vision emerges. Often times it occurs in a form of some type of drama in which you are an actor and a participant. You are witnessing yourself doing things, seeing people, seeing landscapes, seeing cities. There is really the infinitude of possibilities here, of different experiences that you can have with your imagination. But the important thing to remember is that when you learn to project images and remain consistent and sustain those visualizations the best we can, we learn to receive images of a new type. This is really meditation: to receive information that you have not known before, to receive something in a new way. This is an unconditioned, conscious, and clarified state. When you receive these visions or experiences, we can start to sense and discriminate that there is a different quality to these images and these perceptions from our daily, egotistical states. For most people, those visions occur very quickly and then they end, suddenly, we are back in our body, in our chair where we are meditating, once again. So, this shows us that our imagination, our perceptive qualities, are not necessarily sustained as of yet, fully developed. We can gain sparks of insight here and there. Those types of perceptions give us a lot of inspiration and joy to continue working. These experiences become more sustained and detailed the more we work with them, to the point that we learn to develop and access supraconscious states. There are many possibilities within imagination. In the beginning, we have small visions or experiences, but with dedication for many years, we can learn to access perceptions, not only of individual consciousness, but of a universal state, of a divine perception. This has to do with our studies of different dimensions of nature, the multidimensionality of our Being called the Tree of Life. You can study many courses in our website, but also Glorian.org, if you want to find out more information about that: the different structures, principles, and spheres of being that exists within and without. Those experiences are very spontaneous, as I said. They come when we do not seek them, but when we establish the requisites and the steps, the foundations for their actualization. These experiences are very factual. They relate not only to our psychological states, but to different events in our life. This is how we can confirm the reality of our perceptions, their validity, their veracity, their truthfulness, when we look at the physical facts and how they relate to what you perceive. Otherwise, we can be clouded by our own subconscious memories, our habits, our own frustrated desires, even our deep infraconscious states, which are deep traumas, desires, or terrors within the deeper qualities of our psychological abysses. We have to be cautious of our own perceptions. Do not take them at face value, but learn to discriminate with the heart. Also, study the different teachings, the symbols throughout various traditions, so that we can learn to interpret with clarity. We have given many courses before about this subject. You can study the Sufi Principles of Meditation on our website. One lecture we talked extensively about how to interpret what we perceive [Awareness, Unveiling, and Witnessing]. You can also study our course Gnostic Meditation where we talk about those same principles: Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. Insight Practices: Visualizing, Pondering, or Discerning an Object
Some practices for insight include visualizing, pondering, or discerning an object―when you take an object to perceive in your consciousness, your visualization, and try to discern, intuit, or comprehend what it is in a deeper level. As you are learning to sustain that visualization and simply imagining it with an open mind, new insights can emerge regarding it, as I said. You start to have experiences. They enfold magically within your perception.
Insight Practices: Visualization and Retrospection of Memories and Dreams
We also have visualization and retrospection of memories and dreams. This is probably one of the most important within our tradition. It really is the bread and butter of our meditations, because retrospection helps us to understand how and why we are thinking a certain way, or dreaming throughout the day, and in our nightly life when we are physically asleep. We review our states so that we can understand interrelations, the connections, and the subjectivities of our own egotistical states, so that we can comprehend the ego and eventually remove them.
Insight Practices: Visualizing and Comprehending a Deity
There is a practice within Tantrayana, Tantric Buddhism especially, in which we visualize and comprehend a deity. This practice involves imagining one’s self as a divine being, not from a sense of megalomania, pride, or vanity of a mystical type. Instead it is about learning to embody the qualities of compassion that we find present in sacred beings, in sacred masters, in sacred entities, the divine.
Insight Practices: Comprehension of Conscious Qualities
Also, we can perform insight practices of comprehension of conscious qualities: comprehending our virtues. I know some people get caught up in the ego and are very distressed by their own mind. We always recommend to meditate on their virtues. Meditate on compassion. Meditate on what it means to love, to sacrifice for others, to be patient, to be diligent. When you recognize those qualities in yourself, you will not be easy to be fooled. You will not give up because you recognize what is real and what is false.
Retrospection Dynamics
In retrospection dynamics or meditation, you need to have some relative state of concentration. We say that typically you want to have enough concentration and continuity in your discipline that you do not forget what you are doing, because you need to remember all the different events of your day. You recall your memories, and you visualize them. Take a part of your day, those that you remember most. You can also start from your earliest moment to the last, or from the last moment of your day when you sat to meditate and reflect on the morning.
Probably in the beginning, at some points you will recognize that there are times in your day in which you do not remember anything. This means that we are very asleep. You can pray to your inner divinity to help you remember what happened. We have a mantra that we use with retrospection, and it is: RAOM GAOM You pronounce it like this:
You pronounce that mantra mentally. You can do it out loud as well, but I recommend doing it mentally, and look to extract the moments, the events that you had forgotten, or that are difficult to ascertain. Those mantras, as Samael Aun Weor states, are like dynamite. You are blowing a hole within your subconscious caves, your mind, so that you can go into the depths to see and shed light there.
It is also important that when you are retrospecting that you observe when your thoughts and emotions arise in connection with visualization. So for example, you are retrospecting your day and suddenly as you are thinking about an argument you had at work or a conflict. You start to feel that anger again. You have thoughts of revenge, animosity, or rage. You have to observe that reaction in you when it is happening, in response or in reaction to your visualization. The important thing is that you look at your reactions because that is in relation to your visualization. So, you can pause a moment in your retrospection and look at that defect that is so adverse in you, to examine it, to discern, to intuit, to understand, to comprehend your mental processes. You look at your reactions. For some people, they can retrospect the entire day, or you can retrospect your week. I recommend you work daily, but you perform retrospection meditation upon events that occurred even in your childhood, or even when you were born. The consciousness can remember if you train it. So, it is important that when you are performing retrospection meditation that you remember that your consciousness is distinct from mental processes. Your consciousness is not the mind. When you are remembering your day, you are not doing it with the intellect. It is a different skill. You need to learn it through practice. Visualization and perception of the events, recollection, recall, attention, is very different from thought. You have to learn to distinguish the two. If you want to distinguish the two, I recommend learn more about self-observation. Practice it n your daily life. Study Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology by Samael Aun Weor. That will teach you the distinction very clearly. 
Visualization of a Deity
When you visualize a deity, you want to achieve some relative level of mental equipoise. We have Padmasambhava here, a great Buddhist master from the Tibetan tradition, a great initiate. You can take an image of a great master, a deity, and imagine yourself as that quality. You want to embody certain aspects of comprehension, compassion, joy, love, of certain divine figures, like Jesus or Virgin Mary. You can visualize those entities or beings and that your consciousness resonates with that, that you are that quality in your most profound depths and recesses of your heart.
Pick an image or figure that really inspires you, an image of a deity, a god, an inner being. You combine this with prayer and deep spiritual longing. You need to feel in your heart, that tremendous love for that being, for that master, for your inner God even. You can take an image of your inner Being―if you have had that experience where you have seen your inner divinity as a figure―because divinity can take any form to teach us. You can visualize that. Visualize your Innermost. That is obviously a much more difficult practice if you have not had that experience. If you do, then in your meditations and internal visions you can reflect on your true nature. Combine it with prayer with longing with joy. We yearn with our heart and beg that we may realize those qualities in ourselves. 
Discerning Mental Processes
When we discern mental processes, we need to comprehend the how and the why of the mind. Serenely perceive the mind’s changing states in the moment. We need to look at ourselves.
How is our intellect? How are our emotions? How is our body changing moment by moment? How is it functioning? Why do we react a certain way? Why do we think certain thoughts? Why do we behave in certain circumstances a certain way? You need to look at this when you are discerning your mental processes in meditation. You are looking within at how your different thoughts are moving about and what they are doing. You are learning to extract and understand what is there. This is a very profound meditation that you can perform in which you are just discriminating the thoughts and emotions from your consciousness. Again, your consciousness is very distinct from thought and emotion. They are separate when you look at their different qualities, their taste. They are as different as water from wine. You learn to acclimate yourself gradually to what is real from what is false. But of course, in that process, you have to learn to not identify with those thoughts, emotions, and fluctuating states. You do it gradually and question yourself on what you think, see, understand, and know, because we need to be very cautious with our own mind. We must not assume that we know what we know, not out of a sense of morbid skepticism, but from a conscious analysis, an inquiry into wanting to understand the reality of our own inner states. When you expand your consciousness, your mental processes will become more subtle, in which thought will seek to evade our radar, so to speak. But in this practice, you are discerning your mental states―just looking at what is there. Do not label with your thoughts or emotions, but learn to see within what each ego, thought, feeling, or memory is doing. Apprehend the phenomenon and the phenomena without conceptualizing your mind, without boxing it up in a category and assuming that we know. Simply look. 
Integrating Concentration and Insight
When you are working with concentration and insight, you are integrating these qualities in a deeper sense. Some principles that relate to this involve the fact that when you have greater concentration, your insight is much more profound. If you are able to focus your attention on one thing without distraction, your capacity to understand it is going to be much more deep than if your mind is fragmentary and dispersed.
As I said, imagination is the perception of non-physical imagery. That quality develops in us as we are working with concentration and stabilizing our perception. We gain greater color, vividness, intensity, sustainability, understanding, and the overall quality and clarity of our vision increases the more we work with it and the more we remove our negative psychological defects. It is important that our consciousness can only understand through perception. It must first perceive before it can understand. You cannot comprehend what you do not see. This is why meditation is fundamental for real change. You may intellectually conceptualize that you have a defect that you want to remove, but unless you see it, you cannot do anything about it. Now, visualization in this process strengthens our insight, our ability to understand something, because when you are learning to visualize, you are granting your consciousness more strength by which to first see more, but also develop and inspire deeper concentration in order for you to practice more, to understand more. It is also important to know that perfect concentration, shamatha, is not necessary to gain initial wisdom. You just need enough concentration so that you do not forget what you are doing, if you really want to develop insight further. Shamatha, or calm abiding, the ability of concentration, without insight, can produce a very temporary state of liberation or bliss. We can feel joy, as I said, in recognizing a state of consciousness that is not identified or limited by distractive thoughts. Obviously, if you are perfecting shamatha and learning to introspect within, you can learn to access even deeper states of bliss. This state of shamatha in which you are absorbed within concentration is not a final state of liberation. It is not the end. There are many degrees of imaginative knowledge, inspirational knowledge, intuitive knowledge that is accessible only when we really abandon all distractions of mind. Having some stability of concentration is not the end, as some schools like to think. We do state that perfect serenity and insight are needed if you do want complete liberation. In the analogies I mentioned to you before, the lake cannot reflect perfect images if there is any ripple there. Both are needed in their fullest forms in order to go really deep. 
Advice for Developing Concentration
Here is some advice for developing concentration.
We recommend that you overcome procrastination, meaning, try to meditate as much as you can, but do not postpone it. Do not delay the practice of meditation. Learn to cultivate some time and period of your day to actually practice, so that you do not enter self-defeatism, when you feel like you are beating yourself up and then you are not getting anywhere because you are morbid, sad, or overwhelmed by the magnitude of this work. Start small. Begin with what you can, and gradually build from there. Also, give up useless activities, because the more time we give up doing senseless things, the more time we have to practice. Also, we should not forget the practice’s instructions, but learn to follow them, meaning, if you are sitting to concentrate but your mind wants to do something else, remember the practice. Do not forget the objective you have established and set down for yourself. Do not follow the whims of your mind, but learn to follow the instructions. Do not forget to practice. When you are doing it, do not forget that you are doing it. Remain conscious throughout. We recommend that you start with two to three short sessions, such as five to fifteen minutes each. Start small but frequently. That is how you are going to go deeper in your exercises. If you are unable to accomplish these or clarify what this all means, we recommend that you really study. Study the resources we have available and reflect on what you really want. Reflect on what you long for by approaching meditation, because when we clarify what we want, we have a greater understanding about how to achieve it. 
Advice for Developing Insight
We also have some advice for developing insight. I recommend that in the beginning, visualize less complicated objects. Do not start with something really intricate that you cannot handle. Start with something small. If you are struggling to visualize with greater clarity, start smaller and simpler. If you have a larger object, you can visualize parts of it to gain clarity or vividness, sustainability, and intensity. If you want to take a mandala, just focus on one aspect of it, whether it be the head of the figure or the bottom. Whatever it is, just focus on that one part. When you master that, move on. Expand your degree of visualization.
Also, practice short but frequent sessions. You want to gradually increase the time. It is important not to strain or exert your mind. Learn to relax. This is not a strenuous thing where you are trying to scrunch your eye and brow together to visualize something and make it happen. This practice does not require any strain. Likewise with concentration. If you find that you are tense, relax your body, and return to the visualization. Then allow the imagery to sustain itself and hold. Learn to first project that image in your consciousness. Imagine it. Learn to sustain it, and eventually you will start to receive new perceptions and insights without you asking for them, or expecting them, more importantly. 
We have some reading sources available. You can study our course on Gnostic Meditation but also Glorian.org has a wonderful course called Meditation Essentials. We highly recommend it, and also, we finished a course called the Sufi Principles of Meditation where we go into more depth about each individual aspect of this science. We highly recommend that you study them.
At this point in time, I would like to open up the floor to questions. Questions and Answers
Question: One of the things I find happens automatically, if I have been away with my mind somewhere for a fair time, is when I come back to where I am and I become present again, which is a shock. An adrenaline hits, like I have been smacked back into awareness. Any thoughts to this or how to keep it from occurring, as it upsets any calm in the body that was there? Sometimes it is like a smack. Other times I hear a loud sound that hasn’t happened in reality, whether a bell or like a firework bang, or something to that effect.
Instructor: The question is about when coming back to the present moment, it is like having a shock, an adrenaline hit, and that happens when arriving back to awareness in the present moment, that one feels an upset state, no longer calm in the body or in the mind, because one recognizes that one forgot oneself. It is important to distinguish between the capacity of the consciousness to remember itself, to remember divinity, that you remember the moment, but without a sense of self-flagellation or abrasiveness, so to speak. If I understand your question correctly, when coming back to the present moment, it can be a shock. Yes, we can forget what we have done in a moment, perhaps because we were distracted. Personally, in my experience when I had such moments, I felt great joy in remembering “Oh, I am supposed to be remembering what I am doing!” ― to be awake. But not out of a sense of shame or a sense of agitation or negativity. It is very different. The ego is always negative, a conditioned state which can produce a state of agitation in our body, mind, and nervous systems, particularly if we are more sensitive emotionally. In psychology, they refer to it as neuroticism, to be neurotic, more susceptible to negative emotions, and if we have that predisposition, sometimes having a shock of awareness in a moment can really startle us. I recommend if you are struggling to being present in the moment and those shocks tend to disturb you, work with your heart. Learn to shock your consciousness with good energy, with positive superior emotions. You can develop the mantra O, especially, if you want to develop that capacity for yourself, so that your intuition and your conscience guides you, and reminds you, “Hey, you forgot yourself!” Now, you bring yourself to the moment without having to self-flagellate, so to speak, or to feel upset. Question: Can you speak on memory? What is it? What is there in relationship to the Tree of Life or spontaneity of thought? Instructor: Memory is ego, typically. Our mind, our defects, are constantly immersed in the past or projecting ideas into the future. Our psychological conditions are memories. We get lost in thought that associate one event with another, and with another event. That is how the mind projects its images, its contents within the screen of our imagination. It is typically negative, where the mind is projecting its own ideas or fantasies or remembrances about what happened. 
In relation to the Tree of Life, the ego operates within the lower sephiroth or the four bodies of sin. We have Netzach, which is the mind, Hod, which is the emotions, Yesod, which is our vitality, and Malkuth, which is our physicality. Our mind operates those four sephiroth or spheres, and the ego operates within those bodies, those vehicles.
We tend to get caught up in memories within the mind, the intellect, Netzach, and often times have emotional responses to them, our Hod, which wastes and expends creative vital energy, which is Yesod, often times without our body [Malkuth]being aware of it or being agitated by those memories. So, the ego is memories, the past. It is illusion. If you are in the present moment, you can learn to introspect within your own states, to those defects in meditation. There is another type of memory which is much more distinct from our common sense of it. We call it work memory, in which the consciousness can remember what happened factually. Do our memories tend to be more or less accurate? Typically not. They are half-truths, fragments of what happened or what someone said. They are not accurate. Whereas work memory is the memory of the consciousness, to understand intuitively and profoundly what our daily states were, how we behaved, what we said, what we did, what we thought, how we acted. It is work memory because you have to work to get it. You work the consciousness. You exercise it in order to remember and understand in that way, whereas the ego does not work for anything. It just simply is. It is a heavy, conditioned, lethargic, destructive state. It is caught up in the past or is always projecting its anticipations and fears into the future. Our ego operates moment by moment. We have to examine the different trends in our psychological states, to examine what is going on there. What are the interrelationships between our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions? Comprehension is spontaneous. This is something more deeper than thought. Comprehension happens in the moment in which you are brilliantly aware, awake, comprehending any given phenomenon. It can happen without you thinking about it. Thought is much slower. Thought is a machine, but the consciousness is what has to operate the human machine. So, there is a very distinct difference there. If you want to learn more about those differences, you can study our course Beginning Self-Transformation. It goes into great depth about this. Question: How can we transform negative mental vibrations when starring at a candle or plant or person? Instructor: I recommend that if you are overcome by negative mental states, energies, or influences, that rather than focusing on a candle or a plant, you learn to work with prayer and conjurations. We have different exercises that help to protect our mind, such as sacred sounds or mantras from negative influences. We have given a course and are continuing to add to it on our website, which is called Spiritual Self-Defense. You can study those lectures which emphasize different practices in order to defend oneself from negative influences corroding our spirituality, or from influencing us in a negative way. Question: How do we distinguish obsessive thoughts from insights from our higher self, soul, inner Being, especially when those thoughts go against our ethics―sexuality or lust? Instructor: The answer is in your question. Your ego does not do anything in accordance with the law, spiritually speaking. Our ego always goes against our ethics. So, if our thoughts and our desires, our mind contradicts the ethical stipulations of any tradition, it means that we are being driven about our own inner Satan, שטן Shaitan in Hebrew, our adversary, our ego, the devil. So, you learn to distinguish real insight when you are not caught up in your desires. You can only distinguish between them when you establish yourself a space within your interior, a calm, serene, ethical state. You cannot distinguish anything if you are giving into your desires. This is the basis of any religion. If you want to learn to have insights from your inner divinity, you need to not act on your ego, your desires, your lustful thoughts. That is the beginning for anyone. It is very difficult because we have so many conditioned states and a lot of desire, but it is possible. Learn to reflect on the qualities of the prophets, the masters, the divine beings, because they can give us inspiration to want to fulfill their ethical codes of conduct. The second part of this question is: Question: Namely do we simply accept our truth, or do we also change it to make ourself better? Instructor: Unfortunately, most of us do not know what the truth is because we have a lot of desires. Most people want to accept their desires at the expense of religion. This is why you find religions today have degenerated. People are basically giving into their preferences and not really looking at the reality of their actions or what the different religious scriptures actually teach. They are adulterating what they taught. So, we cannot just accept our psychological state, because our mind is not reality. It does not see reality. It does not see the truth. We have a lot of desires, preoccupations, preconceptions, and attachments. If what we want is to enter a state of meditation, we need to learn to confront all of that, to accept the fact that we are at fault. By recognizing our own defects, we learn to change them. We do not necessarily make our own egos better by cultivating more intellectualism, sentimentality, or certain ritual observances without comprehension, but instead, it has to do with removing the obstacles that prevent the realization of our own inner Being within us. That is how we purify ourselves. Question: Can you speak about the importance of having a sense of awe and wonder while observing ourselves throughout the day, and the importance of this sense of the consciousness? I notice that when my consciousness is in a more active state, this sense of awe and wonder is present within me. Instructor: Yes, that is a very beautiful statement and question, because when you are really observing yourself, you are seeing life in a new way. You are seeing like a child. You ever watch a child looking at things, being absorbed within the novelty of the moment, within reality, within the joy of being present? That is a psychological state that we need to cultivate whenever we are observing ourselves, when we have consistent and continuous awe, respect for our own inner divinity, because we are seeing life in a new way. We are not caught up in our own mind, clouded and obscured by thought. When you are actively perceiving and remembering yourself, you are cultivating a real inspiration within you, and that is how you know that you are really doing it. You feel joy in the process. Some people, for some reason, they get very upset, overwhelmed, and angry when they are observing themselves and they see such and such defects: “I am so negative,” “I am so evil,” and feel very morbid and repressive. This is wrong. When you are seeing with your consciousness, you feel inspiration and joy―a very different state. Even though you may be afflicted by defects, you still feel that happiness and alert novelty in the moment by following that intuitive state. Question: Do you have any tips for interpreting dreams or visions? Instructor: Yes. We touched up on some points in the Sufi Principles of Meditation, especially in the lecture called Awareness, Unveiling, and Witnessing. We go into some detail about how to interpret dreams and visions. But also, we are going to be giving a course very soon in person and also broadcast the lectures on Dream Yoga and Astral Travel. We are going to go into a lot of depth and many aspects of that science. Question: When sleeping, I would have some vivid or lucid dreams. I would then sometimes have an intense vibration in my ears, extremely tense with an oscillating vibration. I would try to work through that sensation, but it would ultimately just wake me up. I was also afraid every time this occurred. The vibrations were compounding with increasing intensity. Can you provide any insight? Instructor: When you experience any type of psychic perception, psychic sound, or vision, you also must learn not to identify with it. The important thing is that whatever happens in your meditations, or your dream yoga exercises, practices, that whatever occurs, you do not identify with it. Personally, I have experienced many such sounds like you have mentioned: oscillations, and vibrations in the brain. In the beginning I remember being scared of it, obviously. It is unfamiliar. It is unusual. It is strange. It is uncomfortable because we are just not acclimated to that type of transition, in a conscious sense, from the physical world into the internal worlds. When you become more familiar with them and you let them happen without fighting against them or trying to accelerate their process, you let the astral projection and the experiences unfold magically on their own. Eventually, with practice you will get to a point when that happens to you, you get really excited. You realize, “I about to astral project!” and so, you let it happen and you go about your business in the internal worlds. Just be patient. Do not get fearful. Learn to accept what happens. Look at the psychic impressions that emerge, but do not get filled with fear. Instead, comprehend and meditate on your fears that you do not like in those experiences, because the reality is that those type of vibrations are happening all the time when we go to sleep. The reality is that we do not have any awareness of them. When we go to bed, we experience them every night, but we do not really do so with attention or awareness. Let them happen and be patient. Question: So, what is meant to go beyond duality and become one or whole if we keep having this fight against our animal instincts? Instructor: That is a really good question. I like that a lot, because it helps us to understand or to comprehend the different nuances of diverse spiritual philosophies, but also the practical application of those methods. Now when you are observing yourself, there is a type of separation there. When you as a consciousness are looking within your internal psychology and your thoughts, feelings, and body, you need to have a sense of separation as a consciousness. You are learning to look at the different multiplicity of defects that are in you. You can only do that if you are looking within and examining your relationship of your three brains to your environment. Now the reality as religions teach―like in Islam or even in Hinduism that God is one, but expresses as many―the reality is that our consciousness has the potential to be unified and whole, integral. Yet for now, it is dispersed and fractured amongst multiple defects like anger, pride, vanity, fear, lust, laziness, etc. Our consciousness is trapped within those defects. In the process and path of meditation, we are learning to integrate ourselves more and more, just as you integrate your concentration by learning to focus on one thing and not get distracted. In this path, we learn to integrate the soul, so that it can unify with divinity. Therefore, we become a unity, a perfect being. So, the problem with many people who approach these ideas of duality and wholeness really do so from an intellectual standpoint. They are not comprehending that in order to be unified, you need to have an integral consciousness in a practical sense, in the practical dimensions of life. Fighting one’s animal instincts can be a problem for people because in that sense, when you are exerting mental effort to repress your own mind, you are harming yourself. That is a harmful activity. We are not talking about that. When you meditate, you are not repressing your mind. Some people like to think of meditation like that, where you are just fighting your desires with your intellect, your heart. But that is not the real meaning of real spiritual work, spiritual war. It is the consciousness that has to act. The consciousness has to look at each defect and not give in to them or identify with them. But you do not do so by exerting effort, by fighting or repressing your mind. Seeing something that is negative and then feeling shame―that is just the mind battling the mind. That is duality there. That is the dualism that keeps us hypnotized within unconscious, suffering states. If you want to be integral, you really have to be your unity, which is your consciousness, because we still have some consciousness that is available to us. Traditionally, we have 97% ego according to Samael Aun Weor and 3% consciousness. The problem is that 3% tends to stay asleep and inactive. What happens for most people is that giving into one’s desires, that 3% becomes swallowed within the rest of the ego. That is a big problem. Even though we have 3% consciousness, we can still achieve a lot because that is still what remnant we have left of any integrity or unity within us. It is that unity of our soul that has to work and free the rest of the consciousness that is trapped. This process does not involve a dualistic notion of fighting oneself, in the sense that your ego is fighting the ego. That does not work. The consciousness has to understand all the different aspects of our psychology, so that it can integrate everything. It can integrate the shadow, so to speak according to Jungian psychology. Do not create a duality within yourself in the sense that your mind is trying to fight your mind. You can only recognize what is objective and subjective by learning to see with a serene state of mind. Serenity does not require any type of conflict of intellectual concepts. It is a very subtle thing. It is not very easy to apprehend. I recommend to study Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology and Light from Darkness and Spiritual Power of Sound by Samael Aun Weor. He talks a little bit about how the mind cannot fight the mind. Instead, the consciousness must understand and work upon itself. Question: Do we get tested more often as we work more and more, bettering ourselves? Instructor: Yes. You will get challenged by divinity. Divinity is very demanding. You say you want to enter the path of initiation and spirituality. Divinity says, “Prove it.” So if you want to show that you are a very ethical person, you get tests so that those hidden defects will come out of you, so that you can see what you need to work on. We have talked about this extensively in our course The Secret Path of Initiation, which you can study. Question: So we as a physical being have a role in teaching our own soul and not simply manifesting our soul’s desires? Instructor: I would like to provide some clarity regarding the distinction between the soul and desire. We say that our desire is ego. The ego wants. It craves. It needs. It seeks. It strives. It wants to be fed: “my thoughts,” “my pride,” “my anger,” “my fear,” “my gluttony,” “my lust…” That is desire. The soul is not desire, in strict language. I know some people get caught up in semantics, but the soul does not crave anything. It only longs for divinity. It is a different, conscious quality. It aspires to the heights, not out of ambition or pride, but from humility and love. As physical beings and as consciousness within such bodies, we need to basically train ourselves in meditation so that we can work. The one who teaches the soul is the Being, the Innermost, the divine. In the process of meditation, we need to train our body, heart, and mind to work effectively, consciously. The one who teaches you, that is your inner Being, your divine spirit who manifests his intuitions, hunches, and inquietudes within the heart, within our conscience. So, the conscience, intuition, guide us. Our inner judgment guides us in this process, teaches within our heart what we must apply, in terms of these practices, so that we can effectively change. We need to learn to hear that voice, but also act on it. That is what we need to teach ourselves, how to do, because the divinity within us needs us to respond. We have a choice. We can follow our desires, egos, or follow the intuitions of our heart, which is ethical consciousness of Being. Question: Should we be aware of our three brains during the day? Instructor: Absolutely. That is the beginning of self-observation. You learn to examine the contents of your thoughts, your feelings, and your impulses. The Three Brains:
We need to understand how these brains function, how they operate, what their food is, how they process life within these respective machines, so that we can operate and manage our negotiations with the world. You have to learn to observe how your thinking works, how your feelings and your impulses manifest. The important thing is not only just to be aware of your three brains, in a moment that you have anger boiling inside with these negative emotions, thoughts, and desires that harm verbally, or not. The important thing is to be aware of it first, but also to learn how to act consciously within your three brains. Transform the impression that you received. So, the beginning is awareness. A lot of people are already familiar with this within spiritual circles and movements. It is the kindergarten of spirituality. Be aware of where you are at and your states of mind. It is important not to just get stuck there. Being aware does not guarantee that you are going to act ethically. You can be fully aware of yourself while you are committing murder. You can be fully aware as you are stealing something from someone. Having awareness is not enough. Yes, it is the beginning, but if you are investing your awareness within negative psychological states, it means that we are awakening negatively. We are acting in a destructive way. If you really want to curtail that, first be aware, but then learn to act ethically within intuition, with conscience. The more awareness you invest within transforming negative psychological states and responding to life with the highest ethical caliber, you learn to transform the situation and produce happiness for others. That means when you understand how negative thoughts work, you also understand how superior intellectual understanding emerges. You understand and learn how to work with intuitive mind: knowing an answer without having to elaborate with the intellect, with the slow and laborious process of intellectualism, with theories, with ideas. Instead, your mind can receive an insight, intuition, and then you can act with a superior emotion, with love, with compassion. In that way, you are also training your motor-instinctive-sexual brain, not only to be aware, but to know how to respond to the higher centers of your being, because your sexuality and your motor-instinctive qualities, belonging to your spine, operate vertically in relation to the lower parts of your body. So, they are inferior in a sense, but they are also a foundation of how the other centers work. Be aware of these processes, but you also want to integrate the three brains in your actions, because most people, we can become aware that our thoughts are in one direction, our heart is feeling something else, and our body wants to act in another way. That means that we are split in three. We are not integrated. First become aware of that, but then you learn to integrate your self by learning to act consciously, by transforming impressions, by becoming aware of that process, and also making conscious choices of how you drive your human machine. Question: My question is, how to distinguish the voice of the consciousness and that of the mind, emotions, and call to action by the ego? What does it feel like in the body when the consciousness is communicating with one? Instructor: The only one that can really guide you in that is your own meditation. I can relate to you qualities of my own experiences, which could help inspire you and give you some sense of direction, but knowing the voice of divinity is a very difficult thing, especially because we are so hypnotized by many conditions of mind, many problems, many egos. You will know it in your heart by examining yourself and by reflecting on how your behaviors and your tendencies whether lean toward it or against the ethical law of divinity, which is compassion, ahimsa, non-violence, truthfulness, patience, humility, conscious love, chastity. If your inclinations push you to act against those ethics, you can be sure that you are being driven by your own ego. The problem is our defects become very subtle as we are entering this work, because as we study gnosis and meditation, our own defects acquire a mystical flavor, which is very dangerous. The ego adapts to our studies because it does not want to die. Therefore, the ego wears a mystical robe, adorning fornication with a type of spirituality, where the mind tries to justify committing adultery or looking at the opposite sex with lust. One’s mystical logic, so to speak, can be, “I am a spiritual person. I need to appreciate the beauty in other people.” That is some of the logic that people tell themselves. But really, they are just being demons. It is very subtle. It is a good question, because it is not easy to discriminate what is real and what is false. If we had it down perfectly, it would mean that we have no ego. We would be done. But in the process of changing ourselves, we need to learn to be patient. You learn to discriminate the voice of the silence in you gradually, and often after periods of great disillusionment and despair, such as we feel like we are not communicating with our inner God. We feel lost. We feel disoriented. We feel in pain. But suddenly we can get an insight in the moment, an inspiration, a realization that we can do something about our situation. The more that we acclimate ourselves towards that hunch, those inquietudes, those longings, the greater and strong that voice becomes, but the problem is that we tend to just give into our mind. We do not discriminate what is there. The way that you do it is by meditating. That is the only way. Abandon your senses. Suspend them. Relax. Work with energy. Practice pranayama or alchemy. Work with your vital force. Circulate it. Pray to your inner Being, “Show me what I need to understand.” Empty your mind. Observe it and look. The more you look at yourself and take the time to really meditate, the greater the distinction you will find between your conscience and the ego. You will know it like night and day. Right now, because we are so clouded by our own negative behaviors and our distractions, activities in life, we tend to get very lost. The water is churned, and the sediment is spread out everywhere. This is why we need to learn serenity. Sit still. Calm your mind. Act ethically in the day to the best of your ability. You are not going to be perfect, but you will gradually learn it. As you start to acquire serenity in yourself, the sediment of the jar starts to stratify, becoming layers, and then you can see and start to discriminate what is actually going on there. That is the way. 
To aid us in our discipline, we're going to explore a very important teaching to Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, known as the nine stages of meditative concentration. Specifically, when we address concentration, we do so with a purpose of understanding where we are. We study the following diagram, which is a very famous mural that we find in pretty much every Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the world, in order to understand where we are in our practice.
The purpose of this lecture is to understand where we are: what is our level of being? What is our capability? Our ability when we sit to concentrate, close our eyes, and really reflect inside? This teaching, pertaining to Buddhism, was taught by Samael Aun Weor in a very synthetic manner. He never explicitly detailed the nine degrees of calm abiding, or the nine steps leading to calm abiding―to have a serene mind―instead, he expected his students to really study and meditate on the teachings, and to work to comprehend this methodology in practice. He also spoke, in a very synthetic manner, about these nine stages, emphasized in this image, which we are going to explain in detail. This image explains how, from the beginning of concentration, the mind is disturbed and wild. Then, through gradual training, our practice eventually leads us towards a mind that is completely serene, a mind that is completely still. So, to help us to really understand where we are, and how to effectively concentrate, this map will lead us towards the real gateway to meditation. Everything that we do in these studies, pertaining to runes, mantra, pranayama, transmutation, sacred rites... these in themselves are means to develop concentration. When we sit to practice, we do these preliminary exercises to help us to focus our mind, which is really the beginning of actual meditation; it is not meditation itself. My purpose in elaborating on what this diagram means, in relation to what Samael Aun Weor taught, is to help us be sincere and to examine the nature of our mind and what we need to do to develop concentration. Previously, we were discussing the eightfold steps of Patanjali's yoga sutras, who wrote one of the key scriptures of yoga. When we talk about yoga, we do not refer to the physical calisthenics of the body: Hatha yoga. We are talking about "yug," from the Sanskrit, meaning union with Divinity; or "religare" in Latin, religion. Patanjali taught that there are eight steps, which ties into the eightfold path of Buddhism. We have Yama / Niyama. Yama is restraint of mind from harmful action; Niyama is the precepts, developing real ethical discipline, purity of mind. Yama / Niyama are formed by things like Saucha (clarity), Santosha (contentment), Satya (truthfulness), Aparigraha (renunciation of worldly desires). In other words, these are the ten commandments, anything that we use as a discipline to train our mind: Yama / Niyama, to do or not to do. This is followed by Asana, which is our posture in our body. This is followed by Pranayama, transmutation, mantra, sexual energy, runes―any exercise that we use to work with the vital forces in our mind, in our body. That leads to Pratyahara, meaning, silence of mind, or suspension of the senses. This leads into Dharana, which is concentration, which is what we're going to be explaining, in detail. Previously, in our lectures, we were talking about these preliminary steps: ethical discipline, the need to train our mind, to fulfill the vows of yoga, of religion, of discipline. As well as how to relax our body, in order to fully concentrate. We are discussing the preliminaries that lead to the actualization of learning how to focus the mind. Samael Aun Weor taught that, when we sit to practice, we must stop thinking. This is the beginning, to learn how to concentrate. If we sit down and we examine our mind, and we see that we are thinking all the time, it means that we still have not yet developed Pratyahara, serenity of mind, suspension of the senses. Typically, the impressions of life enter our psyche, and our mind becomes disturbed as a result of not transforming those elements as they enter our mind. For example, we see a provocative image on a billboard, or on television; it strikes the mind; it offends the senses; the mind becomes identified, agitated; it becomes stimulated. We need to really refrain from these types of activities―which I will be elaborating on―as a requisite to developing concentration. We find that our mind is over stimulated with all these impressions: they enter the mind; the mind is not still; we don't know how to transform the experience of life, as it happens in an instant. Without this understanding of mindfulness, and of fulfilling the basic vows―chastity (Brahmacharya in Sanskrit), sexual purity―the mind becomes overwhelmed, agitated; we cannot sit still. 
This is represented by this image. We find here a monk who is chasing after an elephant. That elephant is our mind. The fact that is dark in the very bottom of the image refers to the dullness of our mind, the laxity of our mental states, the lethargy of our consciousness. This monk is chasing after this elephant. You see, gradually, this elephant becomes subdued, and it becomes white, purified, as a result of mind training, the nine degrees that we are going to explicitly detail.
This is precisely the path that we need to take, to realize that our mind, in the beginning, is―in this instant―very chaotic very wild. There is no control or dominance over the mind typically, in the beginning. This path that winds up towards the mountains of the superior worlds is precisely the path of Dorothy, the Wizard of Oz, the winding golden path of Jnana Yoga, which is knowledge yoga, mind yoga. 
It is precisely these higher states where the elephant is tamed and subdued, in which we are free of the mind, and the mind fully obeys our will. We see an image of a monk flying in the astral plane, or in even higher dimensions, Tiphereth, etc., symbolized by the mountains of initiation. For, if we awaken in the internal planes, divinity can show you mountains. A mountain pertains to walking the path of initiation itself.
We want to calm our mind, to develop serene mind, which, as we find that these waters from the mountains descend, the waters of the pure energy of divinity. These waters become turbulent, as they descend toward Malkuth, the physical world, which is represented by this monk leaving a pagoda of three steps. This pagoda is really the body, Malkuth, represented by three floors, which are our three brains: our intellect, our emotions, and our motor-instinctual-sexual dynamics. The waters are turbulent because the waters of our mind are chaotic. We receive impressions in life; we go through our day with our work, with our daily occupations, or with watching televisions; we receive impressions that enter the mind and are not transformed, that are disturbed. Therefore, the mind, the elephant, has no control. We must understand this fact, and really be honest. When we sit to reflect, what is the state of our mind? If we want to really enter the path of what meditation actually is, we need to develop concentration first. When you lack the elements of serenity,
This is the core scripture that Tsong Khapa, a great reincarnation of Buddha, taught in his Lim Rim Chenmo, a Tibetan Buddhist doctrine.
We will explain more specifically each step of this image, in detail. We really must understand what it means to concentrate, if we are going to practice. So, I'd like to quote from you a teaching from Pabongka Rinpoche from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, where, in a very stark and explicit manner, he explains precisely and honestly, a maxim that we really need to contemplate, and to realize: are we actually practicing when we sit down? Are we really focused on what we're doing? No practice will have benefit―pranayama, mantra, runes―if we don't understand the nature of concentration itself. Though you may pretend you are doing a practice, you are not practicing at all if you do not know what is required to achieve single pointed concentration. ―Pabongka Rinpoche from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand
In terms of the nine degrees, this is the eighth. It is the second highest rung of actual concentration itself.
You must definitely achieve single pointed concentration with two features: great clarity together with some stability, and tight image retention. ―Pabongka Rinpoche, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand
So the purpose of developing serenity is that when the mind is perfectly still, we can then begin to meditate and reflect the images from the superior worlds. When we're fully relaxed, the mind is completely still, there are no thoughts, no distractions; we have finally reached the highest degree of concertation, meditative equipoise; then imagery can reflect from our Being, from the internal worlds, into our mind, in our clairvoyance, into the lake of our perception. And, when it is still, it can reflect the superior worlds, and we will explain more about what one needs to do when in that state, in detail.
We need great clarity. If we sit and examine our mind, what do we see, and what do we not see? That is the question. If we don't see anything, if we just experience the sensations or memories of the day, from the events of our life, if they are just surging in our mind, without any order, without any clarity, it means that the mind is very dull; it means that we really need to work very hard to develop that clarity, which is born from acquiring more stability. This is, of course, achieved through self-observation, as we always teach. But, more importantly, mindfulness, as we will elaborate on. When the mind is serene, meditation is easy; images come of their accord. We talk a lot about imaginative, inspirational and intuitive knowledge. Imagination is when we receive images inside. Inspiration is when we feel the soul's reaction or response of an emotional, superior nature, towards that image; we know that it is a symbol that comes from our Being; we are inspired. Intuition is direct cognition, understanding the nature of that symbol. But, imagination, inspiration and intuition, which we will explain next, come as a result of serene mind; if the mind is completely still. If it is not, we cannot develop insight. In Buddhism, we talk a lot about two terms: vipassana (special insight) and shamatha (serenity). Samael Aun Weor explained this very beautifully as imagination and willpower. Imagination is the power to perceive. If the mind is chaotic, if we are not transforming impressions in the moment in which we receive them, we lack that tight image retention, that clarity of mind. First, we develop, through willpower, control of the mind, as the Master Samael Aun Weor explains in Igneous Rose: that we must dominate the mind with the terrible whip of willpower. So, we need effort, especially in the beginning, to control the mind. But, in the higher degrees of concentration, there is no effort. But, as Master Samael also explained and emphasized, Tsong Khapa says: Nowhere does it say anything else but this: if you hope to develop insight (vipassana: comprehension), the training of wisdom, you must find quietude (shamatha / dhyana), that of concentration. ―Tsong Khapa
So, if we want insight into the ego, into our defects, we must develop that stability. If we lack that, then there is no wisdom; wisdom meaning: "the power to perceive."
The teachings that we're presenting here come from Tsong Khapa's text, the Lim Rim Chenmo, known as, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. This is one of the core texts of Tibetan Buddhism and is very useful to study. I know that when the Dalai Lama was fleeing Tibet from the Chinese, he made a special case to take with him his text of the Lim Rim Chenmo, before he escaped from Tibet into India. Prerequisites for Developing Genuine Concentration
This text explains the physical requisites, and the psychological training we need to acquire that stability, if what we want is insight. I invite you to really reflect on the nature of these statements, very deeply:
Dwelling in an Appropriate Area
We cannot meditate if our home is chaotic or cluttered, or if we live with other people who are noisy, who are distracting, especially in the beginning, when we need a sense of quietude, to really focus. To not meditate in a place that is filthy or disorganized. It should be some place that, when we come to sit to practice, we have inspiration to really sit and to relax. Also, if we live in a warzone, we can't meditate; an adept can meditate in any circumstance.
Living in an appropriate area means that we need to leave in a place that there is peace, that there is no threat of our life being in danger. The fact that living here, in this city, in a relatively safe environment, we are fortunate. There are people across the world who cannot even fulfill this requisite, even if they want to meditate. We get this on our forum, people who are writing about this problem. An appropriate area must be clean, peaceful. It doesn't need to be a temple in our own home, but what matters is that we have a space dedicated to practice. It can be simple: an altar, white tablecloth, candle, religious image; or no altar. What matters is that our environment inspires us, and gives us the capacity to really practice. Having Little Desire
This is something that, honestly, most of us don't have. We usually have a lot of desires in our mind that are constantly conflicting, pushing us to do other things other than meditate or practice preliminary concentration exercises; defects which emerge and say, "I want to ride my bike, watch television, take care of this or that responsibility, etc." The mind is surging with this torrent of forces and energies which we have previously put into motion, which formulate into our egos. This is represented by that water in that first image, = descending in torrents from the mountains, into Malkuth, towards the monk in that image. The waters above are very pure, but when these energies of God enter us, into our mind, they become transformed and blackened by desire.
So, we need to have little desire, meaning: curtail our appetite, such as overstimulating foods or elements which may impede us from practicing well. Being Content
The term for this, in Sanskrit, is Santosha. In Patanjali's yoga sutras, Santosha means being grateful for what we have, and not craving things that we do not have. Craving gnaws at the mind and produces the inability to sit still.
Completely Giving Up Many Activities
Meaning, give up fruitless activities, things that are just useless. We all have our habits that we do that push us to do, honestly, dumb things. I am no exception. For instance, Swami Sivananda said, you should give up reading novels, especially things that are just useless―magazines, journal articles, things which do not promote anything in relation to our spirituality. Really, we must abandon that. Typically, in a monastic life, initiates would meditate six hours a day, and study six hours a day. But they would study scriptures that are important, whether in Tibetan Buddhism, the Bardo Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead; in India, the Bhagavad Gita; or the Muslim initiates in the past, with the Qur'an... studying scriptures that matter.
We must abandon useless things, such as watching tv shows, things that fill the mind with garbage. A lot of shows are based on sarcasm and abuse of the mind, or movies that are violent or things that offend the senses. Pure Ethical Discipline
This is probably one of the most important: examining our ethics. In a given day, have we lied to someone? This doesn't mean that we said something, but, internally, in our mind, we may have had the thought.
Ethics begins with restraining (Yama) the mind, the senses, from not physically verbalizing, expressing our ego or defects. Niyama pertains to training the mind, deeper, to not have that reaction inside. This is the internal silence that Samael Aun Weor talks about in Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology. Our ethics must be very pure. We have to examine where in the day we transgressed, in our mind, in our hearts. Completely Getting Rid of Thoughts of Desire
If we have been studying this teaching, and practicing for a long time, this is really the most difficult. Not thinking evil, but even if we have the thought that we don't want to do this, the mind continues to churn and to gestate with these elements.
So, if we really want to develop meditative serenity, we must abandon all of that. To not think, to not conceptualize, for as Samael Aun Weor stated, in Igneous Rose, in the chapter "Esoteric Discipline of the Mind": It is necessary to change the process of reasoning for the beauty of comprehension... ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
Most of the time in the day, we are thinking, and we do not comprehend where our thoughts come from, where they go, what they are doing, how they arise, why they arise. If we are not comprehending those processes in ourselves, in the instant that they happen, we are asleep.
This means that we are churning in the mind in the battle of the opposites. He often talks, such as in The Magic of the Runes, the sensation of contemplation. We must comprehend what arises in us in an instant. Those who want to enter into the wisdom of the fire must overcome the process of reasoning and cultivate the ardent faculties of the mind.
Comprehension emerges when the mind is still; this is serenity in Buddhism, shamatha. Imagination is the capacity to perceive, vipassana. So, in his terms, he is explaining the same concept that Tsong Khapa taught.
If we do not comprehend the mind in the instant, we can't perceive. Comprehension is the understanding of something without the need to think about it. Master Samael said that to reason is great crime against the Innermost, because God does think. In our everyday affairs, we need to learn to resolve our issues without the ego involved. The ego thinks, puts thoughts into our minds, impulses in our body to act, but comprehension is when we know how to act without thinking. This is the demarcation between an angel and a demon, precisely. So, as we learn how to act without thinking, that is how we enter the path of concentration. I want to emphasize something that Samael Aun Weor stated, which is something that, typically, many students and instructors tend to ignore: 1. The Gnostic must first attain the ability to stop the course of his thoughts, the capacity to not think. Indeed, only the one who achieves that capacity will hear the Voice of the Silence. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
When we sit, we should not think. But, if we are thinking, distracted, we are not even able to enter concentration. That is the important point.
Usually, we will attempt to practice with the mind churning, distraught, agitated. But, in order to really receive that insight―which is the voice of the silence, the direct action of your Being within your psyche, the impulse of your Innermost, divinity within you―you can't let your mind interfere. This is a type of experience in which you do not think, you know. God knows without thinking, God does not rationalize. 
We have here in this image the Buddha, with one hand up and one hand down. This is referring to the need to receive―usually, with the left hand we receive the forces of divinity, and the right hand expresses action. The left refers to the left hand of the body, the lunar receptive nature of ourselves; the right is action. The root word bud, in the word Buddha, means cognizance, awareness, which knows how to receive and knows how to act. But this is not an intellectual process. This is an intuitive process. We must learn how to act from our Being without thinking about it. Usually, the Being gives us a hunch, an insight, and we feel that inclination that comes from somewhere, but we don't know where usually, when we know in our hearts whether an action is right or wrong, and yet, the mind then conceptualizes: "Well, I should do this, because I have this reason," and then the intellect is debating against what we know is right in our heart.
Insight is lightning: you know it's wrong. But, then the mind says, "Well..." and starts to debate. So, the lightning emerges, but the thunder of the mind comes after. This is the demarcation. We can only develop that as we learn to not think. This does not mean that we become stupid, that we don't know how to do our daily obligations and affairs: it means that we do so consciously. We use the intellectual brain under the influence of our Inner God. So, the first step is, don't think; and then, learn to concentrate. 2. When the Gnostic disciple attains the capacity to not think, then he must learn to concentrate his thoughts on only one thing.―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
That is when real concentration comes into play. We need a certain degree of serenity of mind to really concentrate.
It's important to understand that learning not to think is not the same as mindlessness, or inattention. We need to learn to use our personality, according to the will of our God. We need personality to subsist in this society. We need to be trained, to have vocation, to have certain intellectual knowledge. But, this does not mean that we let our defects use that knowledge in a subjective or harmful way. Instead, we let the Being use that insight to direct our course. Our daily life is our practice: that is what we really need to analyze and understand. If we sit to meditate for an hour, yet all day, the other 23 hours, we are daydreaming, arguing, fighting, debating, having conflicts―that is a lot of energy that is going contrary to our practice. This is why Samael Aun Weor said that these activities have to saturate every instant of our life. So, our practice is at work, with an intellectual job, or working with other people in a very tough environment. Our spiritual practice is when we relate to other human beings. Every instant is our spiritual work. If we have the concept that our practices only exist when we sit in our home, isolated from our experience, then we will get nowhere. But, if we let our life be our training ground, in developing genuine concentration, then our understanding will be very robust. So, we develop that capacity to not think, Pratyahara, which leads to Dharana (concentration)―focusing only on one thing. 3. The third step is correct meditation. This brings the first flashes of the new consciousness into the mind. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
Real meditation is when you receive information in a new way, when you understand something spontaneously... no thinking involved. Your insight can come as a concept in the mind, but it is not egotistical. The way to differentiate between the superior messages of the Being from the subjective notions of our ego requires developing a lot of clarity, which is why the Master Samael says that we must learn to carefully separate the smoke from the flames. Flames are insight, the Being, the virtues; the smoke is our mind. We must learn how to sift through that in every instant, if what we want is to really develop the capacity to concentrate.
Then, when we can focus on one element at a time, without being distracted from our purpose, that is when we receive new insight: that is when we are meditating. 4. The fourth step is contemplation, ecstasy or Samadhi. This is the state of Turiya (perfect clairvoyance). ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
This is perception without any filter. It is supra-conscious, no ego involved. We can this experience in our daily life; we don't need to have an experience out of the body, an astral projection, to experience the supra-conscious nature of the Being.
This is perception that is beyond the mind. Swami Sivananda states that one cannot have any experiences without the Kundalini awakened. Now, this does not mean that the Kundalini has to be fully awakened through sexual magic, but you can awaken sparks through runes, through transmutation... and, that energy in motion, which we need, will awaken the consciousness to have that experience. So, we need that force. We cannot do it without the Divine Mother. The Five Flaws to Concentration
Now, to explain the flaws in relation to our concentration, when we sit to practice, I am going to emphasize a teaching from Buddha Maitreya.
Maitreya is a title, but it was given to a certain Master in the past, who gave this teaching of the nature of concentration in his Separation of the Middle from the Extremes. So, we are going to explain a little what the common flaws in what learning to concentrate are, so that we can examine our practice. 1. Laziness
The mind being dull, which is for most people a common problem.
2. Forgetting the Object (of Concentration)
We sit to practice, we forget what we're doing. 20-30 minutes go by, and we don't remember anything. We sit, and we wonder to ourselves what we were doing. We forget what we're focusing on.
3. Excitement and Laxity (of the Mind)
This is the mind that is agitated, with either negative emotions, or laxity, meaning that the mind is dull or that there are certain egotistical elements that are influencing our perception, making it dull, as it relates to laziness.
4. Failing to Apply the Antidotes When Excitement or Laxity Arises
In Buddhist teaching, there are certain remedies that we use that Tsong Khapa explained. When we are concentrating, or if the mind becomes dull, there are certain things that we can focus our attention on, in order to remedy that thought, in the instant that it emerges. Likewise with excitement in the mind. Dullness, apathy, or agitation. The mind must be equilibrated. We will explain more about this.
5. Excessive Exertion
Meaning, when the mind has reached certain degrees of stability, it is pointless to exert effort. This is pertaining to the highest degrees of concentration, in which you don't need effort to attain it. All you need is familiarization with that state.
When we work with breath, pranayama, mantra, that can be an object of our concentration. Those energies, the vital forces, by awakening the sparks of the Kundalini, we can have insight. I am going to explain, precisely this point, in relation to this slide. 
The Eight Antidotes to Flawed Concentration
There are eight antidotes to flawed concentration, that Tsong Khapa explains.
This is an image of Tsong Khapa in meditation, who Master Samael explained was the reincarnation of the Buddha. Floating in the clouds, he is meditating next to his disciples. Above him is the heavenly city of the Gods, the Buddhas, or, the Celestial Jerusalem of Revelations. Below are the waters. We see many flowers, many virtues of the Being. If you have an experience in the astral plane, where they show you flowers, they are showing the virtues of your Inner God, inside you. Beautiful flowers, roses, are representations of virtue, since the plant elementals have not left Eden yet; they transmute their creative energies. We see roses, flowers, immaculate clouds, and the waters. This realization appears as a result of working with our watesr, our seminal force, our sexual energy. And so, one of the best methods to countering laziness, when we are trying to concentrate, is to transmute.
Use your breath to mantralize, "Sssssssssssss," "IIIIINNNNRRRRIIII," or "IIIIIIIAAAAAAOOOOO." There are many mantras that we use to sublimate that energy.
Tsong Khapa explained that, to counter laziness, we need to develop faith, aspiration, effort and pliancy. Faith is in relation, in Buddhist doctrine, to the understanding of the nature of mind; the certainty of the benefits of meditative stabilization. We must really comprehend the benefit of when the mind is really serene, and which we genuinely perceive, from a state of peace, what that state is like. If we don't taste that experience directly, there is no striving. So, faith does not mean in the Christian sense of belief. In Buddhist doctrine, it is understanding of the genuine, pristine cognitive nature of mind, without flaws. We must have faith in this teaching and about the transformation of our mind, otherwise, we will not do it. The mind is lazy. We must really understand that benefits of having a stable mind, and to actually see it. If the mind is chaotic, and we don't see what the benefit is of meditative stabilization, we won't strive and practice to achieve it. Willpower pertains to the need to control the mind, through Tiphereth controlling Netzach. We use our will every time we do runes, pranayama, transmutation, sexual magic... To develop faith in effort in our practice―applying more effort to really concentrate, developing more pliancy in the mind, more stability in the body―we work with aspiration: to aspire. Through inspiration, we inhale the prana in the nostrils, then we bring that energy inward and upward, to aspire, bringing up to our mind, to illuminate it. That develops pliancy. In Buddhist terms, pliancy refers to the flexibility of the consciousness to perceive. This is the dynamic of seeing our mind, as it is, and all the structures of the ego that resist and opposes our effort, because, when we direct our attention towards it, the ego fights back, to not be seen. In The Revolution of the Dialectic, this is known as structural and transactional analysis. We must see the structure of the ego, when they emerge in the mind. Transactions―such as in a bank, depositing cheques, moneys, accounts, etc.―refers to the movement in the mind. Pliancy pertains to understanding those structures in our mind, as they appear and emerge, and how we're flexible in our perception. We're not distracted, like we're practicing martial arts; we have stability in our body, and we're calmly fighting an enemy, with composure. This is pliancy. Effort pertains to having strength in our will, which is pertaining to our consciousness, conscious will.
Some benefits I personally have experienced with effort is, listening to a really powerful piece of classical music. For instance, I listened to Mars, by Gustav Holst, who is a gnostic master. He is explaining the effort the we need as a consciousness to fight against degeneration of the mind. This is the power of Samael, the angel of war, but, also our Being, our Innermost relates to Mars, strength. Our Being can inspire us―when we understand the message―to really make efforts to concentrate.
For forgetfulness, if we are forgetting that we are practicing, we need to develop more mindfulness throughout the day. Self-observation is perceiving ourselves in a given instant. Mindfulness is that self-observation throughout an entire day. So, if we keep forgetting that we are meditating or concentrating, we must really be vigilant in our day to day practice: our daily practice has to be our spiritual practice. When we sit to meditate, and things emerge in the mind, and we become aware of them, then another element emerges saying, "I don't like that," this thought is still subjective. This is excitement of mind: seeing a thought that emerges, that is spontaneous; you don't know where it comes from; it disturbs you, then there is the reaction, "I don't want to see this, I don't want this." This is another ego in the mind. The solution is to develop vigilance. We need to perceive that element as it arises, otherwise, if it passes into the screen of our experience, enters our intellectual brain and has passed already, we have missed the moment. So, we must be in vigil, meaning, awake, not looking at other things, but examining the thought as it emerges. We will explain more about this. Laxity is if the mind is dull, and we feel sleepy as a consciousness. We need greater clarity in our perception. If our internal sight is befuddled, where we have thoughts and memories and desires, but we don't really see their nature, we need vigilance, which is introspection, perception. We must develop our clarity, and the best way to develop vigilance is to exercise that muscle. Transmutation is not enough. You can have energy, but, if we don't know how to harness that energy, then the ego takes it. We need force, but we need to have discipline: energy and will, in harmony. The final antidote to inappropriate application of exertion or effort is equanimity. And, this really applies to the higher degrees to concentration, in which you do not need effort. To exert the mind is to disturb the mind, and you can lose the experience. So, when you have greater stillness pertaining to the eighth and ninth degrees of concentration, you don't need to exert any effort. It is effortless, pertaining to the ninth degree. You need some effort in the eighth degree, which we will explain. Equanimity means to not need to apply anything, any antidote.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Four States of Consciousness
We have included some images of the diagram that we have been explaining. Some of you may be familiar with Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In book seven of his Republic, Master Plato explains the nature of the path to truth and understanding. This is synonymous with this map of the nine degrees or stages of concentration in Buddhism.
Likewise, we have Christ, who is ascended, representing any initiate who has fully mastered that state, such as the Tibetan yogi, who is flying in the clouds. Those of you who are not familiar with The Republic, there is the myth, or Allegory of the Cave, pertaining to any initiate who is ascending from the subconsciousness towards supra-consciousness. In this image, we have people, who should be depicted as being enchained by their necks, legs and hands, to a wall. Behind them is a fire that burns. These people see nothing but darkness, or, at most, they see people who are passing between the fire and the wall, carrying objects on their heads, pottery, clay, etc. These images project their shadows on the wall. These people who are enchained only see darkness, or they see shadows on the wall, and this is all they know. So, to reiterate what these states are, we talk about four states of consciousness in the Gnostic doctrine. We have Eikasia, pertaining to sleep of a barbaric nature: complete unconsciousness, darkness. We look in our mind, we see nothing. We know there is thoughts and feelings and emotions, surges of desires, but we don't really see where they are coming from. This is the darkness mentioned in the Book of Genesis, "And darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Ruach Elohim (the Spirit of God) floated on those waters (to transform them.)" The images on the wall are dreams, Pistis in Greek. Sleep with dreams pertains to the fact that we see images and how we experience life; we have ideas in our mind, concepts; we have thoughts, feelings and expectations, longings, but they are not objective. When we really examine their nature, they are devoid of any substantiality. That is Pistis: people's beliefs about religion, faith, mind, ideas, the way they interact with society. But we see in this image that there is a superior way out of that. There is a person who is unchained, and who is forced to see the fire directly. That fire is the energy of Christ, and it pertains to the third state of consciousness known as Dianoia. Dianoia means revision of beliefs, revision of Pistis. This is the perception of the mind without desire. Dianoia is when we are examining our mind, and we see that we are not the mind; we perceive the mind, that it is something distinct and separate from us, with thoughts, feelings, sensations. But we must be forced to experience that―meaning, divinity pushes us to really examine what the shadows on the wall are, which are our previous conceptions of our self: our ideas, culture, language, our pride, our faith, our hatred, our vanity. And so, this guru takes this initiate out of the cave. This winding path out of the cave is precisely this diagram that we see here. In the Allegory of the Cave, the initiate is forced out of the cave, through a winding path, until finally reaching outdoors, experiencing the starry sky. For the first time, this person who has lived their entire life in the cave, sees the sun and the dawn, which is overwhelming. This is a representation of Nous: a high state of consciousness, super-consciousness. Nous pertains to perception of divinity, to perceive as God perceives. Our God is inside, so, when we unite as a soul with our inner divinity, the soul is one with divinity; it is integral to that. One experiences perception, life, from the perspective of the Being. That is the sun, the Solar Logos. Likewise, in this image, this monk is training to get out of the cave, going up this path, until finally reaching meditative serenity at this stage. And, when walking on this rainbow bridge, one is in Samadhi. Those who are familiar with Richard Wagner, his opera Das Rheingold, which we will watch, the gods tread on this path of the rainbow, to the city of the gods, Valhalla, the hall of the warrior who has defeated himself in battle. The Nine Stages of Meditative Concentration
To explain how this Buddhist glyph pertains to the Allegory of the Cave, we will explain some of the symbols. The fact that this path is winding is the work of Dianoia; we are constantly having to revise our concepts of ourselves. When we observe our mind for what it is, we see that we are not who we thought we were. We must change our self-concept.
Master Samael explains that Dianoia pertains to cultural and intellectual synthesis, spiritual knowledge, revision of beliefs, direct perception of what is real. This is awakened consciousness. Dianoia is when we see ourselves differently from how we used to see ourselves, when we change our beliefs about who we were as a person. We cease to be what we were. But Dianoia, on this path of concentration, also pertains to intellectual knowledge of a superior type. So, when Master Samael explains that Dianoia is a cultural, intellectual, spiritual knowledge, this is not the intellectual knowledge of the ego, but a new type of understanding in our mental center, which is superior, abstract. This is a mind that can conceptualize superior concepts without struggling between the battle of opposites in the mind. This is what epiphany refers to, the spark of joy that the soul feels, the pliancy of the mind, in the Buddhist doctrine of the mind, which is free from distraction. 
We have here this image of a monk chasing an elephant. That elephant is the mind. The fact that it is black in the beginning represents the dullness of our mind. We do not see anything; we don't understand what our mind is.
There is a fire here on this path; referring to the type of willpower we need to dominate the mind. The monk is chasing after this elephant, likewise, there is a monkey, following before the elephant. The monkey is a restless mind. The monkey is always grabbing things; the intellect, our desires, our emotions are always trying to satiate itself, with desire. Notice that this fire gets smaller the further up the path that one goes. This is because the amount of effort or engagement one needs with the mind becomes lessened the more that the mind is controlled. In the beginning, it takes a tremendous effort to remember that we are practicing, that we are concentrating, and to not get distracted. Likewise, the fact that the elephant starts to gain color, becomes white, means that there is gradual purification of the mind. There is greater insight, clarity. Likewise, the monk with the rope in his hand, represents mindfulness, and the hook, vigilance. He gets ahold of the elephant and is starting to turn it towards his direction, meaning, the mind is becoming subdued. What is important to note, is as this process occurs, the elephant becomes purified of its dullness; the monkey is tamed, until the elephant is completely stabilized, and the meditator is fully in control of the mind, entering the superior worlds. We also have, in this image, a silk cloth, representing the sense of touch; some fruit, representing taste; a perfumed conch, representing smell; cymbals representing hearing; and a mirror, representing sight. This is because it is through our five senses that we learn to develop concentration. It is not by running away from life, but by using your daily life to develop that concentration, that we make it rigorous. Until we reach the end, the rainbow path of Valhalla, towards the city of the gods, one can enter into higher degrees of calm abiding. What I am going to explain now, are the nine stages of concentration, that lead to calm abiding. As the Dalai Lama explained, calm abiding pertains to what one attains after the ninth degree of concentration, which is represented by the monk flying in the air, and the monk with the sword, riding an elephant. That sword of fire is wisdom, also representing the Kundalini of any master; it is that energy that gives one the root cognizance of cutting through delusion. So, if you see images of Manjushri in Buddhism, that sword cuts through the distraction of the mind. In that image of Tsong Khapa―I didn't explain―but there is also a sword of fire, to his right. And, there was a book on the left, pertaining to the book of studying one’s life, directly, studying the methods that lead to that insight. So, study, method and wisdom; wisdom is the sword, method is the study. We need a combination of studying the steps of concentration, along with our practical work, the sword, if what we want is to develop that union. In the image, we also see a bunny. The bunny represents laziness, a subtle form of laziness that appears in the mind when we think we know what we're doing, when we're trying to concentrate. I will explain this specific detail. 
1. Mental Placement
The first degree is mental placement, which is the beginning of when we sit to practice and we can't remember that we're concentrating. We sit down, and we know that we should be practicing, but we don't know what we're doing. Before this, you could say is stage zero, which is a wild mind; meaning, there is no control whatsoever. This is the state of every human being on this planet. But, when we begin to start to concentrate, we're placing our mind on the practice, and we realize that we can't concentrate. The elephant is running around, but we notice this fact―that is the distinction here.
So, the monk is chasing after the elephant with a hook, representing vigilance, or wisdom, insight, and the rope, represents mindfulness, remembrance of divinity, moment-to-moment. The elephant of the mind, wandering wildly, is to be securely bound with the rope of mindfulness, to the pillar of the object of meditation, gradually to be tamed with the hook of wisdom. ―Bhavaviveka
Now, the object of our concentration can be a mantra, an image of a Buddha, an image of a master―I have personally meditated on an image of Master Samael, to invoke him. And, when my mind has been stable and clear, I sense him in my home, with me, and in many other places, when I put that image in my mind, I focus on that as an object of concentration, to receive his help. But, you can also meditate on the mind itself, which is a teaching of Dzogchen, or Mahamudra, the great seal or great perfection teachings of the Nyigma tradition of Tibetan Buddhist, in the Gelugpa; there are four schools of Tibetan Buddhism that we talk about.
So, we can meditate on the mind. Let your own mind be the object of concentration. Observe your mind―what is it like? Let that be your focus. You can develop great stability of concentration that way. Or, you can take a visualization of a stone, or pebble, or piece of art. If you are going to choose an artwork, I would suggest something simple in the beginning, nothing elaborate. Usually, to visualize all the details of an object, of a mandala, a sacred painting in Buddhism, or a painting of Christianity, to master the visualization of that image takes a lot of effort. So, I would recommend, in the beginning, start with something simple, and then, as your capacity to visualize and concentrate grows, expand that. Then, choose images that are more complicated. For instance, it comes to my mind, something that could be useful: which is that, when you are concentrating, if you have an experience in the internal planes, of an image, such as you speak with your Divine Mother, let that be your object of concentration. You sit to meditate, imagine your Divine Mother, as you saw her. That would be more personal to you; you'll have more investment in that practice, that way. That is mental placement; we forget that we're meditating. We realize that we can't remember what we're doing. So, the type of engagement that we need, the type of effort that we need to really get in control of this element, of the mind, is tightly focused engagement. It takes a lot of effort to control the mind, to catch up to, to run after that elephant. Buddha Maitreya, who gave this teaching, he explained that there is certain antidotes to each stage. It is important to know what these antidotes are. This is not something intellectual; this is something very practical, to help you understand your own experience, your own practice. He says that, for mental placement, you need to hear the teachings of mindfulness: to really hear them, study them, and apply them, if what we want is to understand what mental placement is. To even realize that the mind is out of control, we need to hear the teachings, in order to change that. 2. Continual Placement, or Fixation with Some Continuity
Notice that the elephant starts to get a little bit white, the monkey too. The dull mind and the restless mind have a slight purification. This is when we are concentrated; we have some flashes of insight, minor flashes. We tend to forget what we're doing, but we are gaining some insight through understanding what the object of concentration is. The monk still has to chase after the elephant, to gain control. There is more forgetfulness than there is remembrance. The flames represent the effort that we need, the type of willpower we need to gain control. So, at this level, the fire is still very intense. But it diminishes the further along one ascends the path.
3. Patched Placement
The monk has finally, with the rope of mindfulness, gained ahold of the elephant, and has turned the head towards him. This means that there are more periods of remembrance and control than there are forgetfulness. This is called patched placement, like putting patches on a cloth, to fix up holes. One is basically "patching" their awareness into the practice―there are still periods of forgetfulness, but there is more remembrance than there is forgetfulness. This is a big improvement. The monkey also becomes more purified, the elephant starts to become more tamed. This is the beginning of it becoming tamed. We remember that we are concentrating more than we are forgetting.
4. Close Placement, or Good Fixation
This is a period in our concentration in which we don't forget what we're doing. If we want to meditate on the ego, to annihilate the ego, we need to develop this. We need to reach at least stability in this degree: when we sit to practice and concentrate; we do not forget what we're doing. The problem with this stage is the rabbit on the elephant, which represents laziness. This means that, when we remember that we are practicing, there is a sentiment or influence of the mind that makes us feel that we know what we're doing. We remember that we are meditating, and there is an interference or distraction from the mind that is subtle, that convinces us that we're practicing effectively, when it is really a distraction. That is what the rabbit represents. Notice that the fire is again diminishing; meaning, the amount of effort we need is becoming less.
For the third and fourth degrees, patch-like placement and close placement, is developing more remembrance, mindfulness throughout the day. This means to self-observe and to remember our Being more and perceiving more. 5. Subduing, Taming, or Becoming Disciplined
At this point, one is dealing more with, rather than the fact that we don't forget what we're practicing, we're dealing with more subtle forms of distraction in the mind. We don't forget what we're doing, but still there is laxity or excitement in the mind, agitation or laziness in the mind in subtle levels, that we need to address. The solution to that―as we see the rabbit there, that is the symbol of laziness, that thinks we know what we're doing―is to develop insight. Specifically, in this stage, referring to awareness or introspection, as Buddha Maitreya teaches, we need to develop our clarity of perception more, insight.
What makes the fifth degree different from the fourth, is that at this point, instead of focusing on the object of concentration, we are focusing on how we perceive. In the beginning, mental placement, we are trying to remember that we're practicing. In the second, we have some brief flashes of insight into the object of concentration. At patch-like placement, we remember to concentrate more than we forget. The fourth degree, we don't forget the object of concentration―this is all about the object, up to this point. At the fifth degree, we are now focusing more on our perception: how do we perceive the object of concentration. We observe how we observe. In studies, we call it meta-cognition. The solution to this, is to develop more awareness for introspection. The difference between introspection and mindfulness has to do with the quality of our perception. Mindfulness is remembrance throughout the day, but introspection is that we're sharpening that, applying antidotes when we need to. When the mind is agitated or relaxed, we direct our attention to that, we turn to the object of concentration. Also, you now notice that the monkey is becoming tame: it is following the elephant, and it is half purity, half dullness, in this image of the elephant. 6. Pacification or Becoming Peaceful
The mind is becoming very crisp. There is greater serenity of mind. One is still dealing with some subtle forms of laxity and excitement, which we must carefully address. At this point, what makes the sixth degree different from the fifth degree is that we must not over-apply the remedy to excitement; we don't want to heighten the mind more. We want it to become more pacified, more clear. By antidotes, we are referring to countering the influences of laziness or excitement. Such as, if the mind is excited, one can reflect on the impermanence or transient nature of the ego that emerges in the mind, or the impermanence of life and death, of fatality, to curb the excitement of that mind. Or, if there is laziness, we apply effort. But, here, we don't want to over-apply the remedy, so that the waters of the mind become agitated. But we do want to become more pacified.
7. Complete Pacification or Becoming Very Pacified
This degree is very important. In the previous degrees, from the third degree to the sixth degree, we were referring to a type of engagement with the mind, which is called, in Buddhist terms, interrupted engagement. Meaning, we are applying effort, but our efforts are always being interrupted by distractions―to one degree or another. Whether, gross, like at the fourth degree, when we don't forget to practice, towards the sixth degree, as we become more pacified―we are still dealing with distraction.
But, at this degree, complete pacification, this is a state of concentration in which you see distractions before they even arise. So, you see a thought before it even appears; you see from where it comes from. This is a very clear and sharp cognizance. The elephant is now following the monk, the monk does not have to use any force. Still, he is using effort to a degree, to lead the elephant after him, but the mind is pacified, meaning, one still has distractions, but one catches them before they even appear. This is going to be very hard to understand. But, you may have had the experience, such as an out of body experience when meditating, when you see the ego before it even projects its films on the screen of our mind. There is a Sufi saying by Al Qushayri that emphasizes this point. It is said, "Silence for the common people is with their tongues, silence for the gnostics is with their hearts, and silence for lovers is with restraining the stray thoughts that come to their innermost beings." ―Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism by Al-Qushayri
At this point, you catch the mind before it even acts. This is very sharp. I have experienced this in different occasions, such as out of the body, receiving teachings where I could sense my ego was about to act, before it even happened. So, this is a very sharp cognizance that we need to cultivate.
8. Single-pointed Attention
I chose the image of a samurai to illustrate this, because the type of attention we need is a sword. One-pointed means that there are no distractions; there is no subtle excitement, no subtle laxity in the mind. If you are familiar with the spiritual culture of the samurai, which is bushido, the way of the warrior, their training was such that, they eliminated all fear or excitement from their minds before they went to battle. This is before this tradition degenerated. For instance, the samurai would symbolically commit harakiri, or seppuku, to kill themselves. When this tradition degenerated, they did it literally. But this is symbolic of the need to die in the ego. So, with one pointed perception, one can deal with one’s mind, one’s enemies, without being distracted, with perfect awareness, or rather, close to perfect, because there is a degree higher than this... The fact that one is in single-pointed attention or concentration, demonstrates that there isn’t even any subtlety or laxity in the mind at all. There are no distractions, but still, it is not perfect, because we need effort to maintain that state.
9. Balanced Placement, Fixed Absorption or Meditative Equipoise
This pertains to the mind that has reached its natural state. This does not mean that the ego has been eliminated. It means that the mind is settled to its original point of being; no distractions. It takes no effort to maintain this state. One just simply must be familiar with how the consciousness functions at this degree.
There is a Sufi quote that explains this very well. According to etymology, the disciple is "he who possesses will," just as the knower is "he who possesses knowledge" because the word belongs to the class of derived nouns. But in Sufi usage, the disciple is he who possesses no will at all! ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So, in the lower degrees, we need effort, we need will, to act to really control the mind. But, in the higher degrees, to really be a Sufi, to be pure in mind―Suf means "purity" in Arabic, referring to wool-like clothing, which is a symbol of purity―we don't need any effort. To be a Sufi, to have that realization, there is no effort involved.
Here, one who does not abandon will cannot be called a disciple, just as, linguistically, one who does not possess will cannot be called a disciple. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So, to reach this point, you need will, effort. But, when you reach that point where the mind is completely equilibrated, you don't need any effort, you just need to be familiar with that state. The elephant is completely tamed at this degree; one just need to be settled at that state.
Now, this ninth degree, meditative equipoise, pertains to Tiphereth in Kabbalah. Tiphereth is the human consciousness or soul, which we call willpower, our human will. It seems ironic that real willpower requires no effort. But it is true. If you are in the internal planes, in a very clear, lucid state, you don't need effort to maintain it, when it is very fully developed. But, if you find that you are struggling to maintain that state, then you need some effort. But all it takes to maintain this state is to be equilibrated. To elaborate on this teaching that Buddha Maitreya taught, I'll relate to you an experience that I had, in the astral plane, many years ago, where my Being taught me this, before I even knew about these nine stages. Specifically, I woke up in the astral plane, and I went outside my home and I invoked my Innermost, my God, and I dove into the Earth, into the crust, to go towards the center of the planet, to be with my Being. The astral plane is material, like the physical plane, but it is a little more subtle in nature. So, you can fly through walls, or go through the Earth, breathe in water, fly through the seas. So, I went into the Earth, and I entered darkness. At that moment, I felt the presence of my Inner Being, and I heard a breathing, and this symbol of the breath pertains to the spirit, because the Innermost is the presence of force, the breath of God, which the Sufi's talked about, Al-Nafs, Ruh, in Arabic, or Ruach in Hebrew. It was a terribly divine presence. In that moment, my God showed me something where, if you can imagine a silent film, such as when a camera lens opens, to see an image emerge from the center of a black screen, to see a scene that immediately played out. There was a yellow car skidding, like a souped-up race car. Immediately, driving off, wildly, toward the distance. And, I knew, intuitively, I had to catch it. So, I flew after it. This was a test from my Being, and it took a lot of effort to catch up to it. I was fighting to catch after it, but then, I saw that the car was starting to slow down, I was gaining ground, I had to put less effort to get to it. And so, eventually, I was victorious, and the car was starting to stop, I came up to it, and the car opened, and a bald man came out. I asked him, "Are you my Innermost?" He said, "No, I am just a representation." And I woke up. So, the car was yellow. Yellow is the symbol of the mental body, the mind, knowledge. That car was my mental body, driving around chaotically, crazily, and it took a lot of effort to catch up to it. The teaching was pertaining to the need for me to catch up to my elephant. It took less and less effort the closer I got, until the point where the car stopped on its own, and I was able to talk to the driver. The fact that the driver was bald is a representation of the ego, because the ego is bald from fornication; baldness is a symbol of the mind that fornicates. So, I caught up with the car, and this is a symbol of obtaining these nine degrees. I am going to provide you this glyph, which is everything we just discussed. It explains here what the characteristics are of each stage, what is the type of engagement that we need when we concentrate, and also the power that is needed. 
We explained how mental placement is when we can't remember that we're meditating. So, we need to use a lot of effort and to really hear the teachings, to understand them.
Continual placement: flashes and moments of comprehension, we still need a lot of force and engagement to catch up with the mind. At this point, we need to contemplate the teachings. Here, we need to really understand the value of the teaching from experience, and not to observe merely intellectually. I won't go through the entire list now, but you have in this glyph everything that we discussed, to help with understanding these stages. Something else I also want to mention, in relation to the ninth degree, meditative equipoise. In this state, we don't need to apply any effort. Another experience that I had, recently, I found myself looking in the astral plane, looking at the horizon. I have been doing a lot of the practice of the mantra S M HON, to clear my mind. I found myself in the astral plane, before dawn, there was some light on the horizon, and there was a sky with barely any patches of cloud, but was otherwise very clear; I saw the stars. To see stars in the internal planes, means that the mind is clear, and that divinity is expressing, present. I didn't need to apply any effort at that point. I was just awake, and they were showing me, that when you're transmuting and clearing your mind, let that be your object of concentration, this is your mental state. To see stars is a good thing. If you see stars, they are showing you that you're being connected with your divinity. Stars pertain to the Divine Mother, Nut in Egyptian mythology. But I also saw something very interesting there, which is relevant to this topic. When I was looking in the stars, I saw a ship, spaceship, like a boat. At first, I was almost going to ignore it. But it was hovering in the horizon, and I saw this ship was just floating there. Telepathically, I asked, "Come take me, I want to be helped." Immediately, the ship came, a magnetic force pulled me on board, and I was on the ship. To be invited on a space ship, in the astral plane, is divinity inviting you to go to a higher level of being, asking you to ascend from an inferior level, like in the Allegory of the Cave, to see the stars for the first time, divinity. This is a state of Noetic consciousness, Nous, where you are perceiving divinity directly. 
When your mind is illuminated, if you are clear, the natural state of the mind is stars, divinity. So, if you see that, it means that they're showing you your level. In the astral plane, if you ask, "How am I doing?" And you see the sky, the nature of the sky is the nature of your mind. If it is cloudy with storms, that is your mind churning. But, if you see stars, that means that your mind is so clear that, for once, your divinity can help you. But the fact that I was invited by this ship demonstrates that if you really want to get help, you have to reach that state. That is the point of me relating this experience. The thing is, we receive help all the time, but we don't see it. But, when you're in the ninth degree of concentration, which is seeing the stars, clearly, then you can receive even more help. This is represented by the image at the top of the Tibetan mural. If we really want to be aware of who is helping us, to have that clarity, reach the ninth degree, in which you don't need effort or exertion, and in which you see clearly. So, it is from the ninth degree of concentration in which you can enter higher degrees of understanding in the internal planes.
The Myth of Proteus
The Buddhist doctrine, and the teachings of Plato are not the only ones that explain this. We find this teaching in the Odyssey, by Homer, the Greek poet.
In the Odyssey, after the Trojan war, Menelaus―who we see in this image―the King, was returning back to Sparta. He was stranded at sea without wind, and he was trying to discover which God was punishing him, so that he could make appeasement in ritual, to produce his return home. He was confronted by Eidothea, a sea goddess, a sea nymph, who explained to him that, "My father, the God Proteus, will help you return, and prophecy for you, if you catch him." So, in this poem, there is a scene where King Menelaus was disguised as a seal, a creature of the sea, in order to ambush Proteus and to wrestle him to the ground, to get him to provide answers to his questions. Menelaus states to Eidothea, the daughter of Proteus―Proteus is a God of the sea, who could shapeshift, and Eidolthea, the daughter says, if you want to get the answers you need, you have to catch Proteus: Proteus is going to shapeshift on you, change the sea creatures into beasts, into fowl, into all sorts of serpents and creatures... and no matter what he turns into, you have to hold on to him. This relates to how, when we are concentrating and controlling our mind, the mind shapeshifts: desires, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, concepts―Proteus, in our mind, is always shifting. But, if you want to get the answers you seek, you must hold on for dear life, and use that will, until finally, Proteus will give in. And, when your mind is completely controlled, then the Gods can speak to you; such as the stars in the experience I provided. Menelaus says to Eidothea: Show me the trick to trap this ancient power, or he’ll see or sense me first and slip away. It’s hard for a mortal man to force a god. ―The Odyssey, IV. ll. 442-444
Samael Aun Weor says, when you're with your Being in meditation, you must be demanding with your God. It sounds blasphemous... but, the thing is, when you're concentrating, you must be so dedicated that, no matter what happens, you're never going to forget what you're doing. Then, you will demand to your Being, "Show me and teach me, so that you can give me the insight that I need."
So, Menelaus was describing, in his story, how he caught Proteus: Now there was an ambush that would have overpowered us all―overpowering, true, the awful reek of all those sea-fed brutes! ―The Odyssey
So, Proteus was surrounded by sea lions, and many other animals that smelled terrible: that is our mind. Lust smells awful; it is a psychological characteristic which hypnotizes the mind and is filthy. When we try to meditate on our lust, that element fights to feed itself and is really overpowering. The solution is given by Eidothea, which was a kind of ambrosia, applied under the nose.
Who’d dream of bedding down with a monster of the deep? But the goddess (Eidothea) sped to our rescue, found the cure with ambrosia, daubing it under each man’s nose―that lovely scent, it drowned the creatures’ stench. ―The Odyssey, IV. ll. 495-501
What is that ambrosia? It is our transmutation. When you transmute the sexual energy, you can confront your mind with strength, the lust of the sea animals that we carry within.
…but we with a battle-cry, we rushed him, flung out arms around him―he’d lost nothing, the old rascal, none of his cunning quick techniques! First he shifted into a great bearded lion and then a serpent―a panther―a ramping wild boar―a torrent of water―a tree with soaring branch tops―but we held on for dear life, braving it out until, at last, that quick-change artist, the old wizard, began to weary of all this. ―The Odyssey, IV, ll. 509-517
You must control your mind, even if it shapeshifts. We need pliancy of the mind to control it, no matter what distraction it provides, as Homer teaches.
So, the higher levels of shamatha, which is really what calm abiding is, pertains to superior consciousness in the internal planes.
The nine degrees of concentration we were explaining lead to this point, which is a kind of concentration in which we become very skilled in the astral world, and beyond. So, the image of the top of the Tibetan mural, being above the mountains, represents the superior dimensions of the Tree of Life.
We emphasize, in brief, the nature of Kabbalah. We have on the left an image of Arik Anpin, the celestial man, divided into four worlds. Likewise, the Tree of Life on the right, divided into four worlds, which are Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah. Assiah is the world of action, matter, energy; Yetzirah is the world of formation; Briah, creation; and, Atziluth, archetypes. So, the simple way in which we can break this down is, on the Tree of Life, the world of archetypes, which are very abstract, the nature of Christ, is Atziluth, which is Kether-Chokmah-Binah, Father-Son-Holy Spirit. In the world of Briah, we have the Innermost, Chesed, the Divine Soul, Geburah, and the human soul, Tiphereth. So, everything that we have been talking about in relation with concentration, pertains to how we use our willpower. In the higher levels of shamatha, we are in the world of Briah, represented by the rainbow, as well as the world of Yetzirah, which is the mental world, Netzach, the astral world of Hod and the vital world, Yesod. Everything that we are describing here, pertains to Assiah, at first; how we, in our physical body, learn to meditate. Then, when we develop concentration here, we can investigate the world of Yetzirah, the world of formation, the astral world, the mental world. Yetzirah is governed by angels; Briah is governed by Archangels, like Samael, Orifiel, Gabriel, Raphael, etc. Atziluth pertains to direct influence of God within the Tree of Life. We will explain more about this image in another lecture, how the Tree of Life is represented in each of these four worlds. We use this glyph of the ten Sephiroth as a map of our consciousness, or the higher levels of concentration too, in which each Sephiroth has four aspects; Atziluth, in which God acts directly; Briah, in which the forces of divinity work through the Archangels, in the different Sephiroth; Yetzirah, the angels working under the Archangels, the Cosmo-Creators; and, Assiah is our physical plane. In a more complicated sense, we say that there are forty spheres, but we talk about ten in synthesis. I point this out because, we're at the feet here, Malkuth. We're trying to concentrate, and we must work with our waters, control our earth, then we can enter into the superior worlds, represented by the Solar System, the genitalia of the celestial man, and likewise up the Tree of Life. So, there are degrees of how we develop cognizance. Lastly, to emphasize the points we made, I'd like to quote a Sufi teaching, from Al-Risalah, Principles of Sufism, a teaching by Al-Jurayri. [Al-Jurayri] said, "Whoever does not establish awe of duty and vigilance in his relationship to God will not arrive at disclosure of the unseen or contemplation (mushahadah) of the divine." ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
What is divinity on the Tree of Life? Allah, the top of the Tree of Life, Kether-Chokmah-Binah, Father-Son-Holy Spirit, light of divinity, manifested on the Tree of Life. This is the Being. Da’ath is the secret sphere in the throat, pertaining to knowledge, sexual knowledge: how we work in transmutation. It is with the throat, by using mantra, is how we work with our creative potential in our vital body, specifically.
So, if we do not establish "awe of duty" meaning, we don't feel that awe and fear of divinity, and the fear that, if we don't practice, we will degenerate. It is only by developing that awe of our practices that, really, the respect that we have towards the tradition, the exercises we use to develop vigilance, in relationship to ourselves and our Being, we can obtain disclosure―meaning, to tear the veil, to see the internal planes and to develop contemplation, cognizance, like when you see the stars in the astral plane. Contemplation, in Arabic, is mushahadah, which relates to the Arabic pillar of faith, the Shahadah, which is, "I believe in Allah, Allah is Allah, and Muhammed is His Prophet." A real Muslim is someone who has really experienced divinity, who has cognizance of the divine. We can only reach that if we develop our capacity to concentrate, then, once you develop concentration, insight will come, spontaneously. That is the next stage we are going to talk about. Questions and Answers
Audience: Samael Aun Weor said, more or less, you're not going anywhere in meditation unless you develop serenity first... that's really high up there on that diagram. Personally, I've found that, to progress on that path, getting serenity first, is related to the breath, rhythmic breath, is what leads to serenity.
Instructor: Right. Transmuting, working with Da’ath, is how you clear your mind; especially with something like the mantra S M HON, I have found that very effective, personally, to illuminate the sky of the mind. You can also do vowel Sssss, which is great for that; you can do INRI, Om Masi Padme Yum, Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Swaha; Klim Krishnaya Govindaya Gopijana Vallabhaya Swaha, and many other mantras that you can use to train your mind. This is basic. We should do that every time we practice, so that the mind is clear. Then, we can develop that serenity that we need. Audience: I find also that, when you do concentration on mantra, more and more it is effective at knocking out those extraneous thoughts. There is just no room, and I concentrate on that vibration, and it is a serene state of mind; that is what is helping me more. There is no room for those crazy thoughts, because I am concentrating on the mantra. Instructor: The thing is, if you're not experiencing any distractions, that pertains to a state related to the ninth degree, in which the mind is not distracted; there are no elements perturbing the mind: there is serenity. And, there are degrees. Sometimes, that ninth degree for one person maybe different for another, even within a single individual. It will fluctuate. So, don't think that, by describing these nine stages, that you go from one to the other, strictly, like a checklist. There is fluctuation. In one meditation session, you can go from the first degree to the sixth, or the fourth degree to the ninth, and back again. You can have an experience, lose it, and go back to a wild mind. It is dynamic; pertaining to our effort of will, and our work, as well as what our Being wants. Audience: That is what I was going to say about what Samael Aun Weor said about emptying your mind. It seems that, we must practice with ethics, and with an object in meditation and that is going to get us closer to the point when we can empty our minds of thoughts. But, it's not like it is going to just happen step by step―it is going to be a combination of steps, and that's how it feels to me. Instructor: Yes, and that is why Samael Aun Weor said that there are many students of, say Krishnamurti ―Krishnamurti is a great Master, taught a lot of valuable things about the mind. But, the problem with his students is that... well, first off, Krishnamurti did not teach chastity. He was not allowed to teach that. So, he did not teach it openly. Therefore, students study him very intellectually, meanwhile, they fornicate. Therefore, the mind of the one who does not practice chastity has no purity of mind, no pure ethical discipline―the mind is chaotic. So, these people who study these doctrines, but fornicate, they're not fulfilling the very basic requisite of religion, of yoga; which is Yama / Niyama, restrain the mind, restrain the body... that is basic. Many people try to meditate, for twenty years, thirty years or more... but they fornicate. They are just wasting their time. It really is tragic. People try to skip steps. They think, "Oh, I don't need to practice Brahmacharya." But, Patanjali says that this is basic; Buddha said that you need to be chaste, Jesus the same thing, "You must be born again of water and spirit." Here is the thing, like Sivananda said, if you fulfill the basic requirements of ethics in your daily life, your concentration will be very strong, and meditation will be easy. So, try to apply ethical discipline and purity in mind, body and heart, moment by moment, day by day. Then, when you concentrate, it will be much easier. The mind will be stable. Then, you can practice the higher degrees of meditation itself. But the firmer we are in our foundation, like in that image of the pagoda, then we can ascend towards the superior worlds. Audience: Who painted the image of the Allegory of the Cave? Instructor: I don't know. Audience: So, that's not all symbolism, right? There is so much random stuff in there. Instructor: I think in that painting, there is people looking at iphones, televisions, etc. I chose that image in particular because that is typically what we do. Personally, if I watch television, I try to watch opera, or films that are meaningful. But the fact that people are hypnotized by the television screen... they don't see the light. Eikasia, in Greek, literally translates as "imagination." But, Samael calls it darkness. So, there is an interesting dynamic here. With Eikasia, we can be visually very awake, perceiving images and light, physically, but, psychologically, we can be completely asleep. So, we have perception, but, it is not conscious. With television, people typically get hypnotized. The world really is what the book of Genesis says: "The world was formless and void, darkness was upon the face of the deep." That is our elephant, that is sitting in front of the television, our distractions. One of the things that the Buddhists teach is the need to refrain from the paths of distraction. Meaning, part of our ethical discipline should be avoiding, say, going to movie theatres, where in the astral atmosphere, there is a lot of filth. Audience: You mentioned dance halls once… Instructor: It depends. Brothels, places like that, bars, are filled with larvae and filth. However, ethical discipline is to avoid places like that. I always recommend, for students, don't go to those places, if you want your mind to be clean. It is good to feed our mind with healthy impressions. If you watch a movie, watch an opera―which we will be doing more of here―something positive. That gives you good impressions in the mind, that can inspire you to really connect with your Being. Whereas, watching the movie Seven, or something about violence or bloodshed, or films that are very offensive to the sight... Audience: More and more, they're not innocuous at all. They're graphic... Instructor: Feed your mind with good impressions. I personally try to avoid that kind of thing. Audience: Going back to that painting about the Allegory of the Cave, did you see the peeker? The eyes behind the bench? Is there symbolism behind that? Instructor: We could say that, that person is someone on the other side of the wall, and has the opportunity to see the light, but, such a person doesn't care; that is my interpretation of that image. But, the fact that their faces are like zombies... that is really our daily life. In order to change, we must work with the fire, which is Daath, the sexual energy, to give us light. And then, when you are transmuting, watch what you eat. The Muslims say, eat only what is lawful, in Sufi scripture. This doesn't pertain to merely physical food―not eating pork is one thing. Pork is a food with a lot of degenerative elements, that can feed our lust. To eat what is lawful is to eat the right impressions, meaning, what you feed your mind. It is avoiding consuming garbage, whether television, books, or visiting bad places. Audience: I was wondering if you could go over the first rite of rejuvenation again? It's after the first one, when you spin? You said that, after completing that, and shutting your eyes and standing there, you did some other thing? Instructor: You bend your knees. Take your three fingers, put them on your third eye... this is partially to gain your balance, but, you're also taking all that energy that you accumulated through that gyration, and sending it to your third eye. You close your eyes, gain your balance, and you focus that energy, that chi, that ki, in the third eye, to awaken your clairvoyance. Audience: You don't say any mantra at this point? You just focus? Instructor: No, you just focus. The only other mantra you need to do in that practice is, "Open Sesame." And, that mantra, is something that we need to accomplish, symbolically. We need to open our mind, to receive the solar light. So, again, to concentrate, the runes can help us, the sacred rites can help us. Thank you for coming. 
This is the second lecture in the course that we have initiated on meditation—discussing the requisites, as well as the necessary steps we need in order to really understand how to meditate, how to acquire information about any given phenomena.
We previously discussed the nature of the Eightfold Path of Yoga as taught by Patanjali, namely: Yama-Niyama, which is ethical discipline, restraint, "to do or not to do," literally speaking. We also spoke about asana, which is posture. We talked about pranayama, the work with sexual energy, transmutation, moral purity. We also talked about pratyahara, which is the suspension of the senses: to withdraw the mind from the external sensorial perceptions, to have silence of mind. We also spoke about dharana (concentration): to focus the mind on only one thing. And, we spoke about dhyana, which is actual meditation: to receive information about an object, to perceive the new, and to comprehend any given object of our meditation. And then, samadhi, which is ecstasy, comprehension: it is to perceive without the filters of the ego. In this lecture, we are speaking about Yama and Niyama. We are speaking about the necessity to curtail negative habits of body, speech, and mind. We're going to talk about the foundations of meditation, precisely in how we cultivate genuine ethics and discipline, so that we can make our practices effective. On this subject of ethics, we always speak about karma, because karma comes from the Sanskrit, karman, which means cause and effect. It pertains to the fact that whatever actions we produce will necessarily produce certain results. Likewise, interdependence, which is a Buddhist concept, but that we find in all traditions. It is how all phenomena are inextricably linked. Internal states, external events, constitute two dynamics of one thing: our relationship to each other, to humanity, to ourselves. The importance of ethics cannot be underestimated. It is ethical discipline, following what is called the ten commandments of Moshe [Moses], the ten meritorious actions of Buddhism, is how we purify our mind, in which we have the stability of consciousness in order to genuinely enter the higher stages. For instance, we have yama and niyama, which precede asana. It is impossible to sit down with one’s posture to meditate if, throughout the day, we committed fornication or adultery, or we stole... people who have bad habits, who lack moral discipline, if such people try to approach the science of meditation, it is impossible for them to sit still. We cannot sit still if we have had an argument or have been angry in some way. If we want to be able to have a stable, firm and relaxed asana (posture), we first need to, throughout the day, be very disciplined in how we act. As the Buddha Gautama Shakyamuni taught us, in the Dhammapada: Mind precedes phenomena; we become what we think. ―Buddha, Dhammapada
If what we think is evil, then our actions will be evil. But, if what we think is pure, then good results will follow, as the Buddha taught.
In this lecture, in talking about ethics, we are going to discuss a lot of the Muslim and Sufi teachings, specifically from Al-Risalah, by Al Qushayri. We are going to talk a lot about Hinduism and Buddhism regarding the law of karma and interdependence as well. Here, we have a quote from Rumi which really emphasizes the necessity for the curtailing of wrong habits, wrong views. Let’s ask God to help us to self-control:
When we awaken in the internal planes, the peacock can symbolize pride, vanity, one’s appearance, how we make ourselves visible to others. The tail, with its colors, is, really, our enemy: this illusion of self that we typically carry within, which we need to curtail through ethics.
The world is the mountain, and each action, the shout that echoes back. ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
This is karma. If we speak wrong words, if we are vulgar, if we are rude to another person, that will produce its corresponding consequence.
This is such a basic concept, but it really is essential, especially as we relate to other people. What we are internally affects what experience externally. If we carry any type of negativity in our internal states, that affects others, even though it may not be visible to us on the surface. This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
This is an alchemical statement. "This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace," in which our psychological elements can be burned. Particularly, if we are married and working in alchemy, this is our furnace. The silver is a metallic element representing the sexual energy: the lunar forces. The dross is our psychological, egotistical impurities, the shells that are discarded as we extract consciousness from each ego. In order to do that, we first need ethics, discipline, and we need "rough treatment," meaning, we need to be treated badly. This is the difficult thing that we don't want to encounter; we don't want people to insult us, or to say harmful things, or be negative. But, when people do that for us, they are doing us a favor, if we are wise...
When people are condemnatory, prejudiced, this is how our egos emerge. If we act on that defect or ego, then as a result, we make the other human being suffer, and it becomes the law of the talion: "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth." The law of retribution. But, there is a superior law we need to develop within, which is the law of mercy. So, this is our furnace, the psychological gymnasium that Master Samael Aun Weor speaks about so frequently, which relates to three social spheres: how strangers may be rude to us so that we might perceive our egos, that are not necessarily the subtlest and deeply rooted in our psyche. We also have friends and family, which is typically more stressful. And, lastly, the most difficult ordeal is our own partner: our wife or husband, for those who are married. It is precisely from this psychological pressure which exerts itself on our psyche, to stimulate and boil the waters at 100 degrees Celsius, so that those elements that need to be destroyed will emerge and can be worked on. We need difficulty. It is important that we must face these challenges. As Friedrich Nietzsche, author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, taught: "Is not the greatest thing, the most difficult thing that the spirit of the renunciate seeks to develop, is to take on challenges in order to exalt in its own strength?" Oftentimes, we look at ordeals and problems and we don't want them. But, we really need them. We need to be challenged, so that we can really flex our spiritual muscles and grow. Those elements are boiling in those waters, in either temptation or conflict, so that we can see them for what they are, to observe them. This is key. This is how one becomes an angel: through difficulty. 
This image is of an Elohim, or angel, crowning a woman. That woman is our soul. If we want to be crowned, to receive the crown of life, we must be faithful unto death, as the book of Revelation teaches us: be thou faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. The crown is precisely Kether, Chokmah and Binah, Father-Son-Holy Spirit, the three energies of the Lord in one, the Tri-unity. This is represented by the angel, it is our Inner God, who crowns us if we are faithful unto death, meaning: every day we work on our pride, our anger, our lust, meditating on those defects that were boiling when someone said something insulting to us. We must remember that, in order to really work on that ego, on those defects, we cannot act on those defects. If in the moment we react to the external impressions of our insulter, then, we in turn strengthen our ego, our defects. But, if we restrain our mind, we respond with kindness, we're developing virtue.
Swami Sivananda teaches that every time an ego of anger emerges, when someone insults us, if we curtail and restrain our mind from reacting and behaving in a negative way, we strengthen our virtue. In turn, we give more force to our soul. But, every time we identify, even mentally with our chatter—psychologically in the intellectual center, our negative feelings in our emotional center—then we strengthen our habits, terribly. In order to really work effectively on the ego, we must catch that defect, as soon as it arises. Observation is restraint. As we observe ourselves, we are learning how to not act on our desires. It is that restraint that is really the essence of discipline. If we do not restrain our mind, it is like feeding the lion. 
In this image, we have Sufis dancing at Sama, which is a spiritual concert. We find this quote from Al-Qushayri, a Sufi Master and scholar, who wrote a book called Principles of Sufism. He explains the following:
It is related that Ibn al-Mubarak said, "We have greater need of a little bit of refinement than a lot of knowledge." ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
It is good to read books, to study this doctrine intellectually, but we have a greater need of even a little bit of psychological purity, than having mere intellectual knowledge. This is not to downgrade the necessity for studying books and lectures, receiving help and clarification that way... what is more important is applying the teachings. That is the only time that is becomes real, when we apply them practically. For, as we say, this teaching is really a dead letter, that only the spirit can vivify. Meaning, the letter kills, if we just leave it at the level of the intellect, the soul is dead. But, when we fully enact it, then, any scripture or book becomes living: it becomes part of our soul.
So, we need more refinement in our habits than we do for reading books. That is the important thing; study is important, but practice is essential. I heard Muhammad bin al-Husayn say… that bin al-Mubarak said, "We sought for right conduct once the teachers of right conduct had left us." ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
This is explaining a common habit in spiritual groups, where individuals often may be taught by a master... and when I say master, I am talking about a master of the Major Mysteries, who has reached the Fifth Initiation of Fire, raising the Kundalini up the physical, vital, emotional, mental and causal bodies. Someone who has reached Tiphereth in the center of the Tree of Life, and has incarnated Christ, as a Bodhisattva. Many times, Bodhisattvas come to teach humanity, but, people do not really get the message, because people tend to intellectualize, read too much, and not practice.
So, once these teachers leave, such as in the case of Samael Aun Weor, he taught right conduct and he disincarnated and is working with initiates in the internal planes. Then, people start looking for their teacher... well, we have his books, but now we seek the right path after we have received the teachings. This emphasizes a dynamic or quality within disciples. We need to really take advantage of the practice, of this discipline. It is said that if one has three traits, one is never a stranger. They are avoiding doubters, behaving well, and restraining oneself from causing harm. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
What does it meant to be a stranger? We find in the Old Testament, oftentimes in Judaism, the stranger is associated with the gentiles—those who are not Jews. This does not literally mean those who are not of the Jewish race or culture; it refers to initiates, those who are not initiated and who have not received the crown of life, because Yew, or Yehudah, Iod-Chavah, Judah and Jehovah, and Yehu, all have the same letters associated with each other.
To be a stranger is to be unconscious and asleep; it is to not be an initiate. It is to not have development with the creative energies of God, and through discipline. We need to avoid doubters, meaning, it is not good to necessarily associate with people who are very skeptical, and who are negative. Negative emotions are more infectious than any disease. If someone is angry, and they give a speech to a group of people, they infect other people with that anger. This is not ethics at all. Many religious teachers, preachers, of different denominations and traditions—whether in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, even in Buddhism—who are filled with skepticism and cynicism, infect students. This is a crime, because that creates doubt. Once people are filled with fear and dependency on a group, or doubt about a teaching, about how to change, that is a terrible karma. There are terrible consequences for misleading people in that way. Doubters are really people who try to pull us away from our practice. We need to be very disciplined. If we must associate with certain people, then we have to multiply our diligence and our ethical state of mind. Behaving well is necessary. When we talk about behaving well, we are talking about, as in Buddhism, the trainings of body, speech and mind. In other words, our three brains, in the Gnostic doctrine. Body is the motor-instinctual-sexual brain; speech is usually related to our emotions, because as Jesus taught: Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
It doesn't really matter what you consume, but really what comes out of your mouth, is what he said. Speech relates to the heart, because what is in our emotional center expresses through our speech. If we are negative and evil, if we cultivate that in our mental states, our emotional states, we will speak degeneration, and that affects others. Usually, when people are very negative, we should avoid them and not open our doors to receiving impressions which we know will infect our heart. Part of our ethics is to be wise in our relationships, and to curtail our mind, for again, as Nietzsche said in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "For some people you may not give your hand, only your paw, and I desire that your paw should also have claws." So, we must learn to establish boundaries with people. Being compassionate does not mean being a doormat, for people to walk all over and abuse us. Compassion is knowing how to establish boundaries for the benefit of oneself and others.
This relates to speech, because how we speak determines to how we relate to other human beings. When we work with our emotional brain, we are really dominating our tongue; these two things are intimately related. Finally, we have mind, which is our intellectual center. In Buddhism, we talk about avoiding the sins of body, which is fornication, using intoxicants or drugs, alcohol, etc. Likewise, for the abuse of the heart, we talk about restraining anger, pride, resentment, calumny, envy. And, with the intellect, we seek to avoid wrong views, specifically talking in regard to the Buddhist doctrine. This is really the center of our problem, with how we negotiate our internal realities with the external world. We typically have mistaken views about who we are as a psyche. And, the only way to rectify that is to observe. Every ego, every defect has its own viewpoint—its own thoughts, its own ideologies, its own sentiments, its own way of acting. But, in order to behave well, we need to understand what in us is mistaken in our perceptions. The only way to do that is to separate your psyche from the ego, and to observe it, and then restraining oneself from causing harm—even if you feel consumed with passion or lust or anger, to restrain yourself and to not engage in that habit, because the more we give into it, the less energy we have for our work. The more we restrain our mind, the greater strength we have. 
The Role of Ethics in Concentration and Meditation
This is an image of Swami Sivananda, who is a great resurrected Master, meditating on a leopard, I believe. I am not sure when in his life this was taken, but he was an adept, who had no ego; he fully eliminated his defects, which is symbolized by him meditating with this beautiful smile on his face, over this dead skin of an animal. The animal is our ego. With ethical discipline one controls, one annihilates those defects, and then like Shiva, can meditate and show that he or she has conquered their animality.
Swami Sivananda gave very practical and essential points in his books, which we study. He says in the book, Concentration and Meditation, regarding the need for ethics: Some foolish impatient students take to concentration practice―this is preliminary concentration, not real meditation yet―without in any manner undergoing any preliminary training in ethics. ―Swami Sivananda, Concentration and Meditation
So, let us step back and emphasize this. Concentration is to focus on one object, such as a mantra, or a visualization, an object, without thinking about other things. Meditation is when we are extracting information about what we are concentrating on. So, they are different things. But, in order to have real concentration, we need to really be ethical: meaning, don't fornicate, don't drink, don't steal, don't commit adultery, don't indulge in anger, lust, pride, etc.
This is a serious blunder. ―Swami Sivananda, Concentration and Meditation
Meaning, those who do not develop ethics, before entering concentration, will achieve nothing.
Ethical perfection is a matter of paramount importance. Concentration without purity of mind is of no avail. There are some occultists who have concentration, but they do not have good character. That is the reason why they do not make any progress in the spiritual line. ―Swami Sivananda, Concentration and Meditation
We are going to talk a little bit about Islam, and how, basically, there is a Sufi master that was approached by a student, who told him, "So-and-so can fly. So-and-so can walk on water, in the air." And, then the Sufi master said, "Well, does he follow the Qur'an?" And the answer, of course, was obviously no. So, he said, "Shun that man. Don't have anything to do with him."
This is because, those who have powers and abilities, and concentration, can do things through the ego. The difference is, in terms of our ethical discipline, we seek to curtail the habits of our defects, of our mind, but, a black magician takes those egos, such as anger, and concentrates that force through that anger. And so, they have a lot of concentration as well, but, within that anger; it is conditioned concentration. The type of ethics we seek to cultivate is by extricating our free consciousness, so that there is no filter, no conditioning; it is liberated. That is really the meaning of ethics, but many people develop powers in their ego, because they keep strengthening the shell, the conditioning, which has them act and perceiving in that subjective way. 
Here we find an image of a Sufi meditating. In order to explain the necessity for ethics, in terms of how we practice, as well as the importance of having experience in developing cognizance, we are going to discuss a teaching associated with the Muslim doctrine.
In Islam, we talk about Shariah, Shariah Law, which in the Middle East is associated, typically, as the culture and customs of Muslims. But, that is not the Shariah that we are talking about. In this case, we are talking about ethical discipline: don't fornicate, don't lie, don't indulge in anger... etc. We call this the Divine Law, or as we say in Hebrew, the Torah, or in Sanskrit, Dharma. It is the instruction that teaches us how to really die in our errors, and to be reborn in our Being. Shariah Law became, literally, a cultural thing, rather than a conscious teaching. Shariah is really the foundation of how we practice, using the Arabic terms. But, if we were to use the Hebrew terms, we would call it Torah, the Law. So, in Sufism, we have four stages. We have Shariah, which is the basic law or instruction, how to be disciplined in meditation. Tariqah, which is the path—literally translating as a "path in the desert"—is how we walk the path, how we practice. Then we have Haqiqah. A Sufi Master by the name of Ibn Husayn Mansur Al-Hallaj said, "Ana al-Haqq (I am the truth)." Haqq means truth: this is God. Anyone who has no ego can manifest the truth within themselves, like Sivananda or Al-Hallaj. Haqiqah is the truth, the way of knowledge. Marifah (knowledge), really, is the same thing; these are two aspects of the same higher teaching. Marifah is Gnosis, in Greek terms: direct perception of divinity. The divine Law commands one to the duty of servanthood. The Way, the inner reality is the contemplation of divine lordship. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
This excerpt emphasizes how, if we want to have internal experiences, we need to follow the law. I do not mean terrestrial laws, but the laws pertaining to the development of the consciousness, the laws of initiation. The path, the way to the inner reality is contemplation of divine lordship. Contemplation, a term that we will revisit, is in Arabic called, "Mushahida." This is the word from which we get the Muslim declaration of faith, the Shahadah, which we will elaborate on.
Contemplation is meditation. So, the way to the inner reality is when we are meditating and speaking with our God, face to face. Outward religious practice not confirmed by inner reality is not acceptable. Inner reality not anchored by outward religious practice is not acceptable. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
There are many Muslims that follow the outward religious practice of their tradition, or Jews, or Christians, yet, they do not have any experience. This is useless. Neither should we rely on inner experiences, if we are not cultivating, in our daily physical life, ethics. So, like the example of the individual who is flying through the air and walking on water, but not following the Qur'an, really emphasizes this point. If someone has powers but is not practicing chastity, moral purity, restraint, then, they are obviously a demon, a black magician. So, our inner reality should always be anchored by our ethics, our religious discipline.
Divine Law brings obligation upon the creation, while the Way is founded upon the free action of the Real. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
When we talk about how the divine law brings obligation upon the creation, really, when the Qur'an talks about "the creation," it is referring to the Tree of Life, the ten Sephiroth of Kabbalah. The Divine Law brings obligation upon us; we are the bottom of the Tree of Life. But, the Law requires of us that, if we want to enter into the superior dimensions, we need to follow the laws that pertain to those higher worlds. It is our obligation to do so. Or, as Gurdjieff taught, "Being-Partkdolg-Duty" meaning the necessity for God to know himself, to acquire cognizance, by developing the Tree of Life, descending as energy down through different modalities of matter, consciousness, energy, until reaching our physicality. It is our spiritual duty to follow those laws, and return inward, and upward, to the source, with knowledge, so that God can know himself, through us. The soul is like a mirror which can reflect the image of God, inside.
Often in these studies, we talk about the Absolute, which is ٱللَّٰهُ Allah, in Arabic, the Christ, the source of divinity within us. The goal of these studies is to return to the Absolute, the emptiness, the Ain Soph. We often talk about the Absolute as the great reality of life, free in its movement. There is always movement involved in returning to that pristine, abstract joy of consciousness, which is pure liberation, without vehicles of any kind. So, the way is that we really comprehend the Absolute, is that we follow the Torah, the Shariah, the Qur'an, the Law. The divine Law is that you serve Him. The Way is that you see Him. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
In the beginning, we do not see God, typically. But, we seek to serve him, through transforming our daily life into something pure. But, "the Way is that you see Him." In the beginning we feel longing, intuition and a hunch about the need to practice, and to change certain habits that are in our daily life, so we are serving God in that way. Whenever we restrain our mind from doing harmful things, trying to create peace and harmony with others, this is how we serve God, Karma Yoga.
But, to take that a step further, we need to perceive God, directly. "The way" is that we are actually communicating with our Inner Being, so that He will direct us further. In the beginning we serve, and we are blind, we do not see anything, but we sense a presence in our heart that we follow and that we want to develop. But, to really enter the path, we need to perceive God directly. In the beginning we serve Him, but, through the way, by entering this path of the Bodhisattva, we have to see God. The divine Law is doing what you have been ordered to do. Haqiqah is bearing witness to what He has determined and ordained, hidden and revealed. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
The Muslims have a saying:
لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ ٱللَّٰهِ
If you look at the word for "bearing witness," which is Shahadah in Arabic, you can also call it Mushahada, which means contemplation, to see. So, to "bear witness" as a Muslim, is to have spoken with God, face to face, like Prophet Muhammad did. Then, when we have that experience, then we can say, "Yes, Allah is Allah, God is God, El is El (in Hebrew), and Muhammad is His Prophet, Buddha is His Prophet, Krishna, Zarathustra, Samael Aun Weor, etc., is His Prophet." To know God is to know the prophets, from experience. To witness is to see, out of the body or in the internal planes, even physically too.
We have two terms in Islam,الظاهر Al-Zahir and الباطن Al-Batin. Al-Batin is the inner, esoteric teachings, and Al-Zahir is the outer, exoteric teaching. These are both names of Allah, the inner and outer, because God is inside, but also outside. We know in Islam that ٱللَّٰهُ Allah has 99 names, which relates to Kabbalah. But "the hidden and the revealed" pertains to internal states and external events. So, we must understand the relationship between the two, the written law and the divine way. I heard Abu Ali al-Daqqaq say that God's saying [in the Opening Chapter, Al-Fatihah] iyyaka nabudu—"You we worship"—preserves the outward practice, the divine Law. Iyyaka nastain—"to You we turn for help"—establishes the inner reality, the Way. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
In one of the seven lines in the opening of the Qur'an, it says, "You do we worship, to you we turn for help." The first part, "You do we worship," refers to our ethical discipline, working with the Divine Law; efforts that we make to worship God. So, to worship our divinity means that we do not act on any egotistical impulse within us. That is the requisite, we must do that first, if we want to receive grace, which is, "To You we turn for help." In accordance with our ethics, we worship the Lord, but then, "To You we turn for help," meaning, we want You [the Being] to help give us an experience, in the astral plane, in the mental plane, in the causal world, in Nirvana, in the world of Chokmah, the Christ, the Absolute even... There are two things there. First, we must practice. Then, we must be patient, in order to receive those experiences. Divine Law, Shariah, is practice, the ethics; Haqiqah is the experience we get by following our discipline.
Know that religious obligation is a spiritual reality in that it was made necessary by His command. And spiritual reality, as well, is a religious obligation, in that the realizations of Him were also made necessary by His command. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
I know many people in this tradition, in different groups that I have been associated with, who do a lot of practices, but, for some reason, because they don't really work with their consciousness, they don't have experiences. But, at the same time, I know many others who developed their practice, with comprehension and cognizance, and they have many experiences.
So, it is an obligation to develop practice, and also to have experiences: they are inter-connected. But, in order to have spiritual reality, we must have religious obligation, meaning, we have to really cultivate purity. The only way to do that, is to observe oneself, here and now. In order to really have experience, every time we sit to practice, we must do it with our consciousness, not with a cloudy mind. In the beginning, the mind is obscured, but, with transmutation and with disciplining ourselves, little by little, we learn to practice better each time. In this way, we will attain to realization. 
This is an image of the Prophet Muhammad, ascending up the seven heavens, on the creature Al-Buraq, which has the face of a woman, the body of mule, and the tail of a peacock. Here, you see Muhammad is veiled, and in Muslim tradition you find that the veil, depicted on the prophet, shows for us that God is veiled, that, to know divinity, we need to tear the veil of Isis, which is the illusions of this world. But, in order to look directly on divinity, which is expressing through Prophet Muhammad, is that fire around him. So, we need to tear the veil of our false perception, so that we can bear witness of Allah, Shahadah. A real Muslim, a real Gnostic, a real practitioner, is somebody who has experienced God, and is cultivating that every day, and knows divinity very well, directly.
This scripture, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism, really teaches us the importance of developing ethics. God Almighty and Glorious has said, "The sight (of the Prophet of the time of his Ascension, from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem up the Tree of Life, the seven heavens), did not deviate nor overstep the bounds" (53:17). This is said to mean, “He maintained the conduct proper to the Divine Presence.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
When we talk about ethics, it is important to realize that, if we self-realize, if we come to know God, our ethical discipline does not end there. Ethics is restraining the mind from producing, causing harm. Even if we have a solar mind—which we often talk about, in these studies, how we need to create a solar mental body, a Christic-mind—even though we might have that vehicle of God, it is a material vehicle which can make mistakes, if we identify with it, and not choose to reflect the inner image of our Being. So, even resurrected masters need ethics: they have no ego, but they are like Prophet Muhammad, knowing God, but even their mind can take them away from the path, which is why we say that even angels can fall. The reason why there are fallen masters is because they lacked ethics. Don't think that by eliminating your ego that you are done with ethics; faithfulness to God is something eternal, to not back away from that. But, that is for resurrected masters.
The Most High also said, “Save yourselves and your families from the fire” (66:6). ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
It is interesting that we find in the sixty-sixth verse of Surah 6 how one has to save oneself from the fire—we find the number 666. The Arcanum 6 of the Tarot relates to the three brains, indecision, being tempted between good and evil, the virgin and the whore, which represents the ego.
According to the commentary of Ibn Abbas, this means, "Teach them the stipulations of the divine law and refined behavior."
Right behavior is understanding our relationship to our Innermost, our Being. We can read about ethics, but, really, this is about our connection, what we learn from God. We cannot learn ethics from any book, but the book of our life, fundamentally. Study is important, so that we are inspired and so that we learn things that we should, but, the actual doing is knowing what rights God Almighty has over us, Allah, our Being, the Christ.
It is reported that the Prophet said, "God Almighty and Glorious had educated me in refined behavior and made good my education.”
In these studies, we often talk about receiving ordeals in the physical, but also the internal planes. If, for instance, you conquer an ordeal of the four elements—the ordeals of fire, earth, water and air—which are given to us by the angels, if we conquer those ordeals, then we receive feasts, banquets, celebrations in the astral plane, with the Cherubim, the angels who appear like children.
The ordeals of fire relate to criticism, if we are slandered and provoked; the ordeals of water are working with difficult circumstances, swimming against the current, of challenges; earth, which is financial troubles or difficulties, like a mountain is closing in on oneself; then, air relates to the mind. So, fire with the heart, water with sex, air with the mind and the earth related to the body. Ordeals relate to these elements, manifest as these elements. But, when you conquer ordeals, then you have a banquet, internally, a maduba, with a group of refined people, which are angels, like Rumi taught, "right conduct created the angels." I heard Abu Ali al-Daqqaq say, "Through his obedience the servant attains to paradise. Through refined conduct in obedience he attains to God.’ I also heard him say, ‘I saw someone who, during the prescribed prayer before God, wanted to stretch his hand to his nose to remove something that was in it. His hand was seized!” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
When we practice, we should not move our body, our asana, our posture, is what this is teaching. We should not obstruct our practice with bad habits, such as that mentioned. But, really, it pertains to how we concentrate. When we sit to meditate and practice, we should not move our body, we should not do other things, we should not think of other things.
Ethics in the Doctrine of Unity
Now, again, emphasizing the nature of the divine law, the ethical discipline, we talk about the doctrine of unity, which in Islam is tawḥīd. Again, this is the saying that, "Allah is Allah, God is one." Or, as the Jews say in their Shema, when they pray in the synagogues, they close their eyes, "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad," which means, "Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One." But, they place the word Adonai in the stead of יהוה Iod-Chavah, which they believe is too sacred to pronounce.
They close their eyes, meaning, like the veil of Muhammad, they do not look directly at God, showing subservience and obedience: "Hear, O Israel: Iod-Chavah is our God, Iod-Chavah is One." In Kabbalah, we talk about how God is a tri-unity: Father-Son-Holy Spirit, which is one light, which is Allah, emanating from the Ain Soph, through different levels of manifestation of that one light. This is a very important scripture, this teaching from Al-Risalah: I heard Abu Hatim al-Sijistani say… that al-Jalajili al-Basri said, "For the testimony of unity (tawhid) to be in force, faith is prerequisite, for whoever has no faith cannot testify to the unity." ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
What do we mean by faith? Faith is not believing in something, intellectually, emotionally, or having instinctual habit in the body. Faith is our direct cognizance of God, in our three brains, and out of the body in experiences.
If we do not have that experience of God, then, we cannot testify to the unity of our God, to know that divine presence as, really, a profound state of being. For faith to be in force the divine law is prerequisite, for whoever does not hold to the divine law has no faith and cannot testify to the unity. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Someone who has no ethical discipline cannot know God. This is sad to see, in spiritual groups, where people are infected with pride and anger and resentment; they gossip, they lie, they speak badly about others. As the Apostle James said, it is really the tongue which produces all the suffering in the world. It is like a little rudder in a ship, which steers such great, giant vessels, such a little thing as the tongue... but, really, it directly influences all things, our relationships. But, those who do not follow the path of ethics cannot have faith. Meaning, those who fornicate cannot have faith; those who steal, who lie, who commit adultery, even if not physically, but in the mind, it means that we do not have faith. But, the more we work on those defects, then we will come to know God.
For the divine law to be in force refined conduct is prerequisite, for whoever has not refined his conduct cannot hold to the divine law, has no faith, and cannot testify to the unity…
Samael Aun Weor says in The Revolution of the Dialectic:
It is as much a crime to speak when one must be silent as it is to be silent when one must speak. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic
This is the same teaching.
Refined behavior is knowing, when we are with others, when to be silent, but also knowing when to speak, when it is necessary; we know this through intuition, following our heart, and being mindful of the commandments that were given to us, for refining our behavior. This is probably one of the most important quotes that we find in this scripture, Al-Risalah: [Al-Jurayri] said that whoever does not establish awe of duty and vigilance in his relationship to God will not arrive at disclosure of the unseen or contemplation (mushahada) of the divine. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
What does it mean to have "awe of duty"? It is to feel that reverence when we sit to meditate, that we have a sense of fear, not egotistical fear, but a sense of longing and yearning for God, that inspires us to practice, every day.
To have awe of duty is to really establish a regiment of practice, and to have reverence for that and to maintain it. Vigilance is self-observation, to not sleep as a psyche, but to observe our relationship to ourselves, to others and to our Being. For, whoever does not do this, will not arrive at "disclosure of the unseen," meaning, to tear the veil that Prophet Muhammad wears, that Isis wears. "Nor will we have contemplation (mushahada) of the divine," meaning, to bear witness of the Shahadah. This is one of the pillars of Islam—there are five pillars in Islam, one of which is the declaration of faith, called the Shahadah. Muslims, traditionally, say, "Allah is Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet," and supposedly they enter into Islam, and become part of the tradition. But, this is not the real esoteric meaning here; the meaning is to know God in meditation, in a samadhi, without any filters to our perception—free consciousness, no ego present. That is mushahada, contemplation, to bear witness. Another important quote regarding what refinement really means: I heard Abu Hatim al-Sijistani say that Abu-l-Nasr al-Tusi al-Sarraj said, "People have three levels of refinement. For the people of this world, refinement largely consists of eloquent speech and rhetoric, among with the memorization of sciences, of the names of kings, and of the poetry of the Arabs. For the people of the next world, refinement largely consists of training the ego and disciplining the body, preserving the limits of the law and abandoning desires." ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Having culture, intellectually... anybody can do that. But, such people do not work on their ego. But, a person of the next world, someone who is having astral experiences, do so because they are training their mind in ethics; disciplining the body to sit in one posture, in order to meditate, and observing the commandments of the ethical discipline we follow, and abandoning desires. This is essential. Renunciation of our desires is the key. Ethics is when, every moment, we do not act on a bad habit; we are abandoning those desires, we stop feeding them. That is really when we are cultivating this sense of self-observation and refinement.
For the elite, refinement largely consists of cleansing the heart of vices (annihilating the ego, with the help of the Divine Mother), guarding inner secrets… ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Meaning, if we have experiences in the astral plane, etc., we do not necessarily share with the whole world, but rather, typically, keep it to ourselves. Sometimes it is good to talk and discuss things, if we have questions. But, really, the most sacred experiences, we should not talk about.
…being faithful to one’s promises… ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
We find that, to be "faithful to our promises," refers to having a continuity of purpose. If you have read Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, you find that the Master Samael talks about the need for continuity of purpose. We have thousands of egos which all have different wills, ideas, which take us in different directions. But, in order to become a unity, tawhid, to express the unity of our God, we need to take that multiplicity and destroy those vices. That means to be faithful to our promises. We promise to our God to serve Him and Her, but, those who are not faithful to their promises, are identified with their defects. We call this, in Arabic, that which is split between God above and our demons below, a Hasnamuss; this is an esoteric term for a being with a split personality, which is all of us. We have God above, in ourselves, but, here we are in the physical plane as a demon... we are split. We need to have faith in our Being so that we can eliminate our imperfections and unite with God. Then, one is not split anymore, between heaven and hell. That is what it means to be faithful to our promise, to our Being, to the mission that our God has, to change.
…protecting the present… ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
To be vigilant, here and now, and to never abandon self-observation.
…not turning aside in thought along with refined behavior in the stations of the search… ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Meaning, we don't let our thoughts distract us from being aware of God, because our God is with us, here and now, and we need to be aware of that. The "stations" refer to levels of development, initiation. As we are searching for God, we continue to develop more and more.
…in the moments of presence with God, and in the stages of closeness to God. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
Even if one is united with the Lord—like I said, even angels can fall. If they are at that level, they still must be ethical, and to not identify with their own mind, but to become one with the abstract Seity, the universal mind or consciousness, which we can only verify and really understand through experience.
The Principles of Karma
In terms of Karma, we talk about four principles. All this talk about ethics pertains to karma. If we produce certain causes, we will get certain effects. Tsong Khapa, who Samael Aun Weor said was the reincarnation of Buddha, came to teach in one of his three books called the Lamrim Chenmo, which is The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. He talks, in the first book, about four principles of karma, which are important to know.
To again emphasize, the word karma comes from the Sanskrit karman, "to act." 1. Actions produce related consequences. This is something that seems simple, but if we analyze ourselves, we find that we typically do not really understand how our actions produce certain results. 2. The consequences are greater than the actions. I know in Newtonian physics, it says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But, the truth is, if you throw a stone in a pool, that one ripple extends outward, and affects the entire lake. So, one positive action can benefit the world; one destructive action can affect everybody. We see this in the news, we hear about school shootings: one person can cause so much chaos. People emotionally distraught and disturbed can affect entire communities. So, the consequence is always greater than the action. The Dalai Lama emphasized this point, when someone asked him, "How can we change the world if there is so much negativity going around?" And this Master Tenzin Gyatso said, "If you think you cannot change the world, think about when you're trying to sleep and there is a mosquito is bothering you. Such a little thing can make a big difference." 3. You cannot receive the consequence without committing its corresponding action. Meaning, you cannot receive a certain karmic result if you did not produce the individual action. This is important to understand in alchemy, because I know many gnostics think that when someone is sexually united with their partner, they share karma. Well, the truth is, if one is married, one shares tendencies, psychologically, emotionally, physically, but, you cannot receive a result, if you did not produce the action. If, for instance, a person commits murder, it does not mean that the wife goes to jail, that is the way to think about it. But, if you produce a certain action, you get the consequences, no one else. 4. Once an action is performed, the consequence cannot be erased. However, there is a superior law, which is grace. In accordance with Gnosticism, as the Master Samael says in Tarot and Kabbalah, a superior law always washes away an inferior law. So, even if we make a mistake, we can rectify it, if we follow our Being, to have upright conduct. From the Bhagavad Gita, we find this teaching of Krishna, the Christ, with Arjuna. He talks about Karma Yoga, and the yoga of renunciation of action, which summarizes many of the points that we've made. Arjuna said:
So, first he talked about banning desires, then, next, yoga, union with God.
The Blessed Lord (the Cosmic Christ, through Krisnha) said:
So, first, we need to learn to how to renounce our bad habits. But, then we need to learn how to act consciously. One thing is to restrain our defects from acting, but, once we have fully comprehended an ego, our Divine Mother annihilates it, and, in turn, we learn how to act in a superior way. A superior law washes away the inferior law. The law of mercy overcomes the law of the talion.
3. He should be known as a perpetual Sannyasin who neither hates nor desires (A Sannyasin is someone with no ego, a real meditator); for, free from the pairs of opposites, O mighty-armed Arjuna, he is easily set free from bondage! ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
Meaning, discipline is when we overcome the battle of the opposites in our mind, the battle of the antitheses; thought/anti-thought, concept/anti-concept, thesis/antithesis, when the mind is constantly struggling in duality, and instead we find unity, tawhid.
4. Children, not the wise, speak of knowledge and the Yoga of action or the performance of action as though they are distinct and different; he who is truly established in one obtains the fruits of both. ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
So, children—people who are ignorant, who have no direct knowledge—talk about yoga and these traditions, without really understanding that they are two aspects of one thing, a conscious principle.
5. That place which is reached by the Sankhyas or the Jnanis (those who have Jnana, knowledge) is reached by the (Karma) Yogis. He sees who sees knowledge and the performance of action (Karma Yoga) as one. ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
Again, knowledge is what we gain directly from restraining our mind, and performing good action: upright thought, upright feeling, upright action in our three brains.
6. But renunciation, O mighty-armed Arjuna, is hard to attain without Yoga; the Yoga-harmonised sage proceeds quickly to Brahman! ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
Brahman is the Absolute, the Christ, another name of Allah.
7. He who is devoted to the path of action, whose mind is quite pure, who has conquered the self, who has subdued his senses (through pratyahara, attaining silence of mind) and who has realised his Self as the Self in all beings (the Innermost Atman, our Inner God as the God within all there is), though acting, he is not tainted. ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
When we learn how to act, in a conscious way—first restraining the mind, then acting to the virtues we develop—we in turn learn to see God within all beings, and we do not commit sin, we do not acquire negative consequences.
So, like the lotus flower that emerges from the swamp, it is pure, not affected by the muddiness of the waters, it is the same thing with our life. Our soul should blossom like a flower above the filthiness of our mind. Every time we act consciously, we stop acquiring negative consequences. 
There is mention of the Blue Race in different traditions, specifically within a book called Gazing at the Mystery by Samael Aun Weor. In this next image, we find three colors: blue, yellow and red. Blue relates to the Father; yellow relates to the Son, the Christ; and, red is the Holy Spirit. So, Krishna is really the three primary forces above, Father-Son-Holy Spirit. But there is a race of blue men mentioned by Samael Aun Weor, it is true. But the deeper meaning is that blue relates to the Father, Kether. So, this is Kether-Chokmah-Binah, with Arjuna on the battlefield of the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, with Arjuna which is Tiphereth, the human soul, our willpower.
8. “I do nothing at all”—thus will the harmonised knower of Truth think—seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, breathing… ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
We must feel that we are not doing anything from our ego; to not act with desire. But, to let our God act through us. In this case, one’s actions come from the Being. So, in a sense, one does nothing, but the will of the Lord.
9. Speaking, letting go, seizing, opening and closing the eyes—convinced that the senses move among the sense-objects.
Here, intellect should really be "Buddhi." They translated it as intellect, which we think of as the intellectual brain, the mind, but, really intellect, in Sanskrit, is a common translation for Buddhi. Buddhi is the Divine Soul, the consciousness, Geburah. Every time we act with purification of the soul, we are controlling our body, mind and soul.
12. The united one (the well poised or the harmonised), having abandoned the fruit of action, attains to the eternal peace; the non-united only (the unsteady or the unbalanced), impelled by desire and attached to the fruit, is bound. ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
So, the non-united, those who are unsteady and unbalanced are identified with ego, desire.
13. Mentally renouncing all actions and self-controlled, the embodied one rests happily in the nine-gated city, neither acting nor causing others (body and senses) to act. ―Bhagavad-Gita: Yoga of Renunciation of Action
Again, "nine-gated" relates to the nine superior Sephiroth, refers to the human being. We find this in the teachings of Ibn Arabi, as well, the Sufi Master, but also here in the Bhagavad Gita.
The fruit is the results of past mistakes, which is the abuse of the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Knowledge represents the sexual energy. To "eat the fruit" is to orgasm, to abuse the energy. The fruit of fornication is bitterness, suffering. Likewise, each action should be one born from purity of mind, of chastity. 
Willpower and Superior Action
We find the image of the Prophet Muhammad, with the veil covering his head, illuminated with fire; meaning, he has raised the Kundalini up to the brain, from the base of the spine, and is fully illuminated with that sexual power.
So, to emphasize how the yoga of renunciation and the yoga of action are united, I'd like to explain another quote from Al-Qushayri, which emphasizes this duality between Being and soul, and how we need to learn to not do our own will, but the will of our Being; to renounce our own habits and desires, and to let the will of the Being determine our actions. Iradah, the will to find God, is the beginning of the path of spiritual travelers, the first title given to those who are determined to reach God Most High (Allah, may he be praised and exalted, as we say in Islam). This attribute is only called iradah because will is the preface to every undertaking. What the servant does not will, he does not carry out. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
We will not produce the necessary consequences, if we do not fulfill the action. Karma is dual; if we behave negatively, we receive negative results, if we act positively, with the consciousness, we receive conscious, positive results.
Since this is the start of the enterprise of one who travels the path of God Almighty and Glorious, it is called "will" by analogy to the resolution involved at the beginning of everything else.
What willpower are we talking about? This is something that we need to observe. Are we following our egotistical desires? Or, are we following the will of our Being? We need to both abandon desire and to act from the will of God, as Krishna taught Arjuna.
Interdependence
It is this understanding of cause and effect in our daily life, that we understand the law of interdependence in Buddhism, which is called dependent arising, or dependent origination:
No phenomena is separate, independent of others. Even our psychology: our psychological states are determined by their relationship to external events or impressions. So, we find that, in Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, we need to develop internal states in relation to external events; to find the relationship between them. When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.
It seems simple, but it is very profound. If we examine ourselves, in our daily life we do not see how our negative habits produce wrong consequences, typically. But, if we are observant of that, and we really understand this principle, fully, we will become an angel. An angel knows good and evil, in balance, in harmony.
To really understand how certain causes produce certain effects, completely, is to be self-realized. Do not think that one day we will simply "get it" and it will be over. Even the gods are balancing those forces, knowing how cause and effect relates; it is an eternal law. So, as I said, ethics pertains even to the gods, but at a very high degree; something that we cannot get at this level, but, if we have experiences, we can get glimpses. [The body and mind] cannot come to be by their own strength,
Every internal state is a response to external impressions. You cannot separate one from the other. Usually, when we identify with our mind, we feel like everyone is outside of ourselves, and that we are separate. We have to become clairvoyant and understand that our thoughts relate to other people, and that other people’s thoughts affect ourselves.
As Samael Aun Weor said in Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, the one who learns to appropriately match internal states with external events marches on the path of success. For, as the Buddha said, in the Majjhima Nikāya: Now this has been said by the Blessed One: "One who sees dependent arising sees the Dhamma (the Dharma, the law, the instruction, the Shariah, the Torah, the commandments); one who sees the Dhamma sees dependent arising." ―Majjhima Nikāya
To really know ethics is to understand our psychological relationship to other things, in every instant, and not to identify with our mind. If you want to live happily, we need to learn how to cultivate our internal states and to make them more appropriate for the external events that we perceive. This is dependent arising: an impression emerges and enters my psyche, and I react egotistically… or I respond consciously, it depends. If an impression of a hurtful word enters one's psyche, anger emerges. That is the reaction; that is the egotistical response. If we curtail that, and separate our psyche from that, and observe that defect in action, and respond with love towards the aggressor, that is developing a superior law, the Dharma.
To know the relationship of cause and effect—internal state, external event—is the work of a master. To be a master is to fully understand that law, to a degree, we could say. There are levels amongst the masters. But, to really understand that law, to be self-realized is to understand how our psychological states effect our external events, and how they relate; especially how we relate to people. This relates to clairvoyance and telepathy: understanding other people’s minds and thoughts, or seeing them directly, with our spiritual perception. 
In this image, we have Nagarjuna, who talked about the fundamentals of the middle way. In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, he discusses that it is understanding of cause and effect within oneself that we find the relation of how phenomena are empty, that they are not independently existing of themselves. When we understand how our internal states are related to external events, and we develop conscious states through ethics, we find that we are in turn understanding how egotistical desires are really empty; they are not substantially real. We have them, but, at the same time, we must understand that these phenomena really do not have any absolute existence. Anger emerges whenever a person insults us; so, that ego is dependent on that impression in order to emerge. Eventually, that anger goes away or disappears, so we can see that it is really not eternal: there is no eternal self there. Only God, Atman is eternal. But, even god is dependent upon the Absolute, we could say.
So, we say that all phenomena really do not have intrinsic existence; they are empty. When we understand this emptiness, the pristine, luminous nature of our consciousness, we see our defects and desires really do not have any substantiality. That which arises dependently
Cause and effect. Ethics is how we understand emptiness, which is God. God is empty of form; it does not depend on anything; the Christ does not depend on anything, but is luminous light, intelligence, perception, without filter. But, to understand how certain actions produce certain results is the work of dependent origination.
Because there is no phenomenon
Impressions are impermanent; they come and go, they are not stable. And, it is by understanding how the instability of our internal states relate to external events is how we develop comprehension, which is emptiness, cognizance; not a nihilism, an abstract negation of one’s existence, but a type of comprehension and perception which is free of conditioning of the mind, free of obstruction.
Lastly, Swami Sivananda, explains the following advice, that I want to relate to you. Do not imagine that you are a great initiate and that you only have to sit in meditation and enter into Samadhi. You will have a terrible downfall. Even after years of practice, you will find you have not progressed an inch forward because there are deep within you lurking desires and cravings which are far beyond your reach. Be humble. Make a searching analysis of your heart and mind.
In order to understand Christ, which is empty of form, we need to have ethical discipline, as we have been mentioning.
It is the preparation that takes very long, but do not wait for perfection in ethics in order to take the higher practices of the path. Try to get established in ethics and at the same time practice the other steps (such as concentration, pranayama, maintaining a relaxed posture, etc.). The two must go hand in hand, then, success will be rapid. ―Swami Sivananda
This is something to think about, in terms of our understanding of our own discipline.
Questions and Answers
Student: This is kind of how I feel. I am not a saint, but I am just working to build up my practice.
Instructor: And, as Michelangelo said, perfection isn’t a trifle. Rumi said, if we can get up early for 40 mornings, to practice, that will contribute to our growing wholeness as a psyche, in development, like an embryo of a child that is giving form. Little by little, we develop the soul: with patience possess ye your souls, as Jesus taught. The way that we develop ourselves is with patient discipline, ethics, restraining our mind, and then meditating; combining those two things. Don't wait for perfection in ethics in order to practice, they go hand in hand, together. Student: So, if I get this right, from this lecture, the most important thing for us to work on is our ethics? Instructor: In conjunction with our practice. Ethics is really the foundation for meditation. If we want to meditate, to have a clear mind, we can't be killing, stealing, or doing other negative things. On the one hand is the physical level of application, but, more importantly there is the psychological aspect: how we react internally, in our mind, in curtailing those habits. First, physically we cannot do those things. Then, psychologically, we need to curtail those habits. Student: I did have a question about the work, regarding the four principles of karma. The third one, which is that the consequence cannot be received by anyone that is not making the action. Does that mean the return consequence of the karma? Because an action can have consequences that expand beyond the person that committed that action. Instructor: Yes. For instance, if you are married, if your wife commits murder, you don't go to jail, she does. Student: Right, but your wife might suffer the pain of you leaving her. Is that a karma that she acquires along the way, or is that just collateral damage? Instructor: It is part of the consequences of her actions. That shows that everything is related; nothing is separate. But, in terms of receiving an illness, disease or punishment as a result of acting wrong, no one else can receive that, but a person who deserves it, who committed those wrong actions. The law is the law, as we say in these teachings; the law is always fulfilled. In order to receive something, you must perform the action. Student: So, the consequence and the action are interdependent as well? Instructor: Yes. Understanding the relationship of right action and wrong action is understanding karma, and, understanding how phenomena are empty, in and of themselves. We must understand the connection between things, especially our internal states and external events. That is how we act well: we stop behaving in mistaken ways. This is the work of self-observation. Student: And that is the superior law? Of getting out of the turning of cause and effect? Extracting yourself from that? Instructor: And, the thing with this is that, it is like when you learn to act in a conscious way, one does not acquire karma; if you do not sin, you will won't be blemished, you won't receive bad actions. But, we will be like the lotus that hovers above the waters, as Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita. Student: Because that's past karma... Instructor: And that is the thing; we must bear that, patiently. We bear it, we're patient, we're disciplined, and we work on those elements that need to be disintegrated, then, we pay our debts and in turn, purify our mind. That is really the purpose of karma; if we receive certain challenges in our life, if we are chaste, it means that we are going to receive that karma in an objective way, in a different way, than someone who is fornicating. Student: But, even the masters suffer greatly, right? Instructor: At a higher level. Student: So, are they suffering because of karma still? Or are they suffering for a different reason? Instructor: The suffering of a god is different from us. One could reach the Ain Soph, in Kabbalistic terms, return to the Being and to the Absolute, to a certain degree, with knowledge, and it is bliss; but at the same time, even angels have to balance their karmic transactions, at a very high level, in order to gain the right to enter into the Ain, the Absolute. There are levels of development. Masters can suffer as a result of wanting and waiting to be admitted into the Absolute. Student: So, their bliss is interdependent on their suffering? Instructor: Their bliss is a result of being united with God to a level. But, suffering, at that degree, is very, very different. It is a difficult thing for me to convey or to explain. It is something that, if you have an experience at that level in a Samadhi, then you may get it. We know that even the gods suffer; but, not like we do. Our suffering is very intense. Student: I was thinking of someone like Aberamentho, who went through that trial. He gave that up himself, right? That wasn't karma for him? That was him willingly walking into suffering, to be resurrected, right? Instructor: And to give an example for what we need to do. He fully conquered suffering. He is a being that went beyond the Law and is an inhabitant of the highest divinity. He is absolutely perfect. He is teaching other masters how to reach that degree, known as a Paramarthasattya. Paramartha means absolute cognizance, and Satya is the essence. So, someone who has full knowledge of many infinites. An infinite is a collection of billions of galaxies, so, Aberamentho is really a rare being. There are degrees among masters and there are degrees among initiates. Some masters suffer because they want more knowledge, even if they are perfect, to a degree. It is a subtle thing, but their suffering is very different from ours, and very difficult to comprehend, unless we really have a Samadhi at that level, and to see what it is like to be at that degree of consciousness. Student: Is there also a type of suffering that the high masters will go through, for humanity, on our behalf? Instructor: It is suffering for a master... for instance, we are going to do a course on The Voice of the Silence; at the end of that scripture, it talks about how, when one self-realizes, one becomes another brick in the guardian wall. Each brick is master which composes an army of angels that really work to help humanity. It is a path of suffering, really, but, also bliss, because after many eternities of helping humanity and suffering for their benefit, to help them to self-realize, they will eventually gain the right to enter into the Absolute. Blavatsky transcribed that scripture from Senzar, an ancient language, and it conveys a lot of suffering on the part of these masters who try to help humanity. Eventually, they'll gain the right, after serving from many cosmic days—if they self-realize, and they keep working and manifesting physically, or internally, to help others attain the state of the angels... but, that is the path of an angel, in order to enter the Absolute. An angel is a self-realized Master, but, they may not have the right to enter into the Ain, which is where a being like Aberamentho (Jesus) entered. He is a Paramarthasattya, he is above an angel. So, there are hierarchies. Those beings like angels suffer because they are serving and serving, but humanity is ignorant. So, they serve many humanities, for different cosmic eras. But, eventually, if they don't let themselves fall, they'll eventually have the right to enter the Absolute. The problem is, many of them fall, because they are tempted. So, that is why ethics does not finish when you have annihilated your ego; even if you have no ego, you can get tempted to do wrong things. The mind is still there. It is not a lunar mind, but a solar mind; it is a different thing. To learn the difference, we must have that body inside and to really know what it is like, and to meditate and to have experiences. |
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