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Many students within the Gnostic movement often complain and write to us through emails, through letters, that they lack internal illumination. They lack experience. They want to know God, the Being, the truth, and despite their efforts, adapting and adopting many practices, exercises, still fail to truly experience that which religion teaches in its fundamental heart.
We always write back to our students and explain to them that in order to have illumination, light, one must remove the darkness within the mind. That darkness is the ego, desire, craving, aversion, the self. If we do not comprehend and eliminate anger, resentment, pride within our daily states, we cannot have the light of internal experience, such as through samadhi, in meditation. The body is at rest and we as a soul go out into the astral plane, the mental plane, Nirvana. Or even putting the physical body in a jinn state, traveling in the fourth dimension, things that Samael Aun Weor writes extensively about, in which, when people read, become inspired, or inspire them to want to have these experiences. Yet, they write to us asking for the way to have that knowledge. What we like to ask, in being direct, is, “Have you comprehended [and eliminated] your anger within the day, or recently? Lust? Desire?” People want to have knowledge and light but are not willing to face the great ordeals relating to the 13th Arcanum, which signifies immortality. Lucky Number Thirteen
So the number 13 in our present epoch is considered very unlucky. In many buildings within the city, the 13th floor is absent. Likewise, the Apollo 13 mission which was sent out to space was a failure, and the men riding that ship nearly lost their lives. People look at the number 13 and are horrified of it, or feel that it is somehow jinxed, ignoring that Arcanum 13, the number 13, is actually a very lucky number for those who know the spiritual work, who know the path.
For an initiate who wants to know the light, the work on the elimination of desire, the death of the ego, is a very essential dynamic that one must practice if what one wants is illumination. Within the ego is light trapped, but inverted in the inferno, within desire. If you extract the light from those elements, you free the genie in Aladdin's lamp. You break the lamp, and then you have the pure consciousness, which naturally has the ability to read thought, to travel in the jinn state, to speak face-to-face with one's inner God or the masters of the White Lodge. The number 13 therefore, for someone who is working on the ego, is a very lucky number, very positive, because through the death of the mind, of negativity, is the immortality of the soul, its rebirth. People do not like the number 13. They do not like the topic of death. Physically, it is unpleasant for many people to speak and to think about one's own demise, one's end. But even more so for people who are attached to alcoholism, drugs, fornication, to speak about the death of the ego is even more blasphemous for them, very painful, because people are attached to rage, desire, egotism. They don't like the Buddhist annihilation, in which, if we wish to marry our own Divine Mother Goddess Kundalini, we have to fully eliminate everything that isn't pure. Physically, death is unpleasant for people, especially in the West. In the East, it is different. But for North Americans, talking about one's death is definitely not cafe conversation, not pleasant. But when you teach people about Buddhist annihilation, death of ego, people run away, obviously. The reason why churches, mosques, cathedrals, synagogues, Buddhist temples are filled with millions of people, is because they do not teach the death of the ego. Of course, to speak about this directly creates resistance, because the ego does not want to die. Desire wants to continue on into the next life into some utopian heaven in which one can attribute all of one's evilness and not renounce all the garbage we carry psychologically, just to believe that we are going to ascend to some higher plane of consciousness with all the baggage we carry. But, as a fundamental law of nature, we gravitate to different spaces based on our psychological quality, our behavior, our manners, our mind. So today we will talk about this very powerful card, how the soul becomes immortal through death. We will talk about physical death, but more importantly, we will talk about esoteric death, the death of desire, the end of the tyranny of the mind. As I said, 13 is a very good card for initiates because synthetically, 1 + 3 = 4. The death of desire produces spiritual progress, immortality. We know that the 4th Arcanum of the Tarot: The Emperor, the spirit, is born through this arcanum. If we want to be spiritual people, we have to eliminate all that is diabolic, to comprehend it, and to work very diligently with the Divine Mother Kundalini, our inner goddess. 
The Description of the Card
So let's look at the actual glyph.
The most notable feature is a hierarch of the law with a scythe harvesting the grain. We see flowers that are blossoming, a representation of the beginning of life, but also of virtue, the emergence of pure psychological qualities of the soul, which we engender through this work. The wheat is the full manifestation, maturity, and perfection of those virtues. Obviously, the scythe is reminiscent of the angels of death who use a scythe and a funereal image of black clothes, a hood, a skeletal appearance, in order to portray to those who are dying that their time has come, and that the process of their life has ended. Also, they will enter a new existence, possibly. We will talk about this progress of the soul through different states in this arcanum. But the fact that this hierarch of the law is reaping the wheat, symbolizes how through maturity in this work, through the elimination of desire, of the ego, we harvest the full perfection of the soul, its immortality, its beauty, its development. The wheat reminds us of the Eucharist, the grain, which has been used in many indigenous cultures as a symbol of the reception of Christ into the body, into the mind, because the grain receives the solar light. In the East, the Christic substance, the Eucharist, the body and flesh of the Lord has been signified by rice. Among the Aztecs, it has been corn. In other cultures, in Europe, wheat, because that element absorbs all the life of the stars, of the Sun, and we ingest those substances through the Eucharist itself in order to receive solar energies that rejuvenate the heart of which we'll be talking about, the practice of the Eucharist in Arcanum 14: Temperance, the next lecture. The fact that this man or this hierarch of the law, of karma, is scything, reaping, harvesting, indicates that through the finality of that action, life has ended. Our death is merely the culmination of all of our past actions and should not be a deterrent or something to fear, especially if we are working in this work, in this path, psychologically, eliminating fear, resentment, pride, anger, pain, because by our actions we receive help. Right now, we may be in the flowering of our life, young, or in our old age, but this should be no cause for fear, especially if we are sincere and working in this path, because the hierarch of the law, of karma, aids those souls who are working on the ego, on the mind. One is always assisted. At the end of our life, we reap the fruits of all of our actions. So all of our past deeds emerge within the consciousness and we review our existence. Many people talk about seeing their life in flashes in the moments of death. That process for many people can be painful, especially because we tend to carry many attachments, many fears, many uncertainties of the unknown. But for someone who is awakening consciousness in this life, who is learning to die in the ego, is awakening more light, not only physically, but in the astral plane, when the body is asleep and we are in the world of dreams. In those states, we basically gain the confidence and the knowledge of where we are going, where we are, where we will be. So, someone who awakens and dies to the ego, who dies to the ego and awakens, has no fear. Death is merely a transition, a process, because by dying to desire, we experience immortality, new life within the soul. 
Psychological Capital and the Three Brains
This reaping of wheat also refers to what we call in the Fourth Way school of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky as the Bobbin-Kandelnosts, which is a term used to denominate vital values. By vital values or capital, we mean a type of energetic money that is deposited within each of the three brains: the intellectual brain, the emotional brain, and the motor-instinctive-sexual brain. These vital values are fuel, and depending on how we use these three brains in daily life determines how we live and also how we die.
Whoever has small grains, less vital values, has a shorter life. But someone who has a lot of that force deposited in their three brains lives longer. Those values are given to us by divinity and are also based upon our karma, which explains why some people live young, die young or live to an old age. Those values are not something static, but something dynamic, changing. We can prolong our life based on how we use our energies in our mind, our heart, and our body. We state in esotericism that one lives in thirds and dies in thirds. People tend to abuse the energies, the Bobbin-Kandelnosts in this day and age, which is why we see many sicknesses develop. People who abuse one brain over the other, those who squander the vital capital of the mind, develop insanity, schizophrenia, delusions, disorders of the mind, which are very traumatic and sad, because people who use the intellect too much develop sicknesses in the mind. Their mind deteriorates and therefore, those people died in the intellect. They have no fuel left to function properly, which is why many of these people will take chemicals, antipsychotic drugs, to try to find some kind of equilibrium in that center, because they have wasted all of their vital capital. But what about people who abuse the emotions, like many actors and actresses? They develop many disorders of the heart. People who are filled with violence, with anger, with negative emotions, develop cardiac illnesses as well as many other diseases relating to emotions, bipolar, depression. Likewise, those types of sicknesses are treated in our modern era with chemicals because that sickness has so condensed in the physical body from within the internal planes, from the astral body into the into the physicality, that some type of physical treatment is needed, may be needed. Likewise, we have people who abuse the motor brain, their instincts, their sexuality, their movement, such as with boxers, sports addicts, people who engage in a lot of physical activity, bodybuilders, people who exercise the body so much that they deplete their vital values in their motor brain and they become paraplegic, paralyzed, incapacitated, needing to exist in a wheelchair. You see that with many football players who have abused their bodies so much that some of them cannot even walk. So we find that people live in thirds and die in thirds based on their energies. We will explain more about the Bobbin-Kandelnosts in this lecture. 
The Duality of Death
So this card is a card of death, but also card of life. It embraces two aspects: physical death and esoteric death. We see this card is related to Gemini in the bottom left. Gemini is an interesting astrological sign associated with duality. Two brothers: Castor and Pollux, Pollux being immortal, Castor being mortal. In the myth, Pollux was the son of Leda, likewise, Castor. The difference between their lineage is that Castor was born from King Tyndaris of Sparta. Jupiter was the father of Pollux who married or wedded or copulated with Leda in the form of a swan, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, because Jupiter can relate to בינה Binah in Kabbalah.
So who are these two brothers? Two types of soul. We have one that is immortal and one that is mortal. Two qualities of the consciousness, תפארת Tiphereth, as we have explained many times in our previous lectures. So, why is Gemini relating to immortality or to death? Because in the myth, Castor died and Pollux pleaded unto Jupiter, out of grief, that his brother be raised from death in order to join him in the heavens, in the constellations, in which petition, Jupiter acknowledged, obliged. The soul can die in two ways. The ego can be eliminated through conscious works, through initiation, or the ego can drag one into the abyss, into the realms of Pluto, the inferno, in order to experience what is called the second death, because people who don't work on the ego consciously, are taken by the forces of nature into the infernal planes, as we explained in Arcanum 10: Retribution. So there is a duality in relation to death. The consciousness can die within the infernal worlds, or ascending through the path of life. The two pillars of the Tree of Life also find their equilibrium within Gemini, within the two brothers or the two pillars, we can say. We also find that people abuse the energies of the three brains through the dualism of the intellect: thesis, antithesis; concept, anti-concept. Likewise, the heart: passion, rage; love, hate, and within sexuality either through attraction or repulsion. So the three brains work in relation to duality, but if we know how to be balanced, if we learn to conserve our vital forces, our Bobbin-Kandelnosts, our energies, we find immortality, perfection, balance. This card also relates to Mercury, relating to the waters of sexuality associated with the Hebrew letter מ Mem, as we see in the top right of this graphic, of which will be talking extensively today. Who or What Dies?
According to many traditions, death is considered the entrance into a new womb, a new existence. What we call the psychic values of the consciousness are what return to new existences, new bodies of which we talked extensively about in our lecture The Transmigration of Souls.
There are different ways that physical death corresponds to our material life, and there are three things that enter the grave when one dies: the physical body, the vital body, and the personality. Obviously, the physical body we know. But also the vital body itself, the 4th dimensional aspect of our physicality, also enters the grave when one is dead. The personality also does not continue. Many people who study transmigration, who study reincarnation, get confused. They think that when they physically die, that their personality and all the qualities of their terrestrial existence continue. But we know from personal experience that this is false. It is an assumption. The personality is merely an energetic vehicle, a mask, because persona means “mask” in Greek, I believe, which we wear existence from existence, lifetime to lifetime, in accordance with the cycle of a hundred and eight existences in the path of transmigration, or 108 humanoid existences as we explained previously. The personality develops between the ages of 1 and 7, which is where we adopt mannerisms, language, culture, name, things that relate to time and die in time. So there is no future for the personality. Neither the vital body. The vitality is merely a battery, which gives life to our physical organism, and that too will deplete. When the person dies, the physical body enters the grave, likewise with the vitality, which hovers like a ghost above the graves of the deceased. The personality, as Samael Aun Weor explains, is what people call ghosts. People who are very psychic, who are sensitive, go to graveyards and they see a ephemeral images, movement, specters, and people think that these are the souls of those who had died, but they don't understand that that is the personality. People who have a very strong personality in their existences tend to leave behind these type of specters, which sometimes take centuries to dissolve because so much energy was invested in that specter, that element, that personification of oneself. But that too is not eternal. It doesn't continue. What continues is the consciousness, the vital values of the soul, the conscious values, better said, psychic energy, energy of the psyche, along with the ego. The ego also, in its plurality, returns. It is sad that our consciousness is trapped in desire. This is something we have to recognize in ourselves, that the real Essence of our humanity is encaged within hatred, within rage, deception, all of the negative qualities of the ego, all of the diabolic nature of our mind. So, because the consciousness in most people is trapped in the ego, those elements continue. Based on karma, our past deeds, may reincorporate into new bodies. As I said, we are given a 108 humanoid existences, typically. But that may be more or less based on our moral caliber. Depending on how well we use our life for the benefit of others, we can be prolonged and given new bodies depending on our virtues, if we are sincere in this work. Some people who are very diabolic, who are negative, have their term cut short because of their actions of being so evil, perverse, which the law of karma punishes. It is important to remember that because we have the ego, because we have desire, we are not immortal yet. People like to believe in Jesus and think that when they go to the grave, that on the call of the trumpet, they are going to be resurrected with their physical body, with all of its imperfections. They ignored that the soul is not immortal yet. It is interesting that we state that the soul, in some cases, is immortal and in most people it is not, because most people do not have what we call soul. As Jesus taught, "With patience possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19). It has to be created. We have spoken extensively about the solar bodies, the solar bodies, the vehicles of the solar physical, vital, astral, mental, causal bodies, which can transmit the light of the divine within us, which are created through alchemy. The consciousness needs to be freed, needs to be liberated. In order to work in alchemy, the path, and by eliminating the ego in meditation and through transmutation, through alchemy, we gain immortality. When we create solar bodies, we have vehicles that belong to Christ, that are eternal, and which exist in those higher dimensions that we have explained previously in the Tree of Life. The Essence continues. The ego continues. So it is sad when people commit suicide. They think that by ending their life, they will end their suffering, but the truth is that desire continues. It reincorporates from existence to existence based on the law of causality. 
The Angels of Death
The angels of death are very divine beings, very pure beings who take on, as I said, a funereal appearance on the deathbed of those who are reaching the termination of their life.
These angels belong to the Ray of Saturn in spiritual studies. We know that there are seven rays, seven manifestations or occupations relating to Christ, different types of qualities relating to the seven rays, which are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The angels of death are typically depicted as evil creatures because people fear death. They do not understand that these beings are divine. Personally, I have met the head of the Ray of Saturn, who is Orifiel, and he didn't come to me in the form of a scythe, a skeletal appearance with black cloak and hood and wings. I invoked him because I remember waking up in the astral plane in my old home, where I was speaking to my grandfather. I knew in that moment that my grandfather had died years ago. So I awoke consciousness in the dream state. I was talking with my parents and they were communicating with my grandfather who was dead. They did not know where they were, that we were in the astral plane, that he was deceased. I said to them, very alarmed, “But he is dead and we are dreaming.” But of course, being asleep and being the fact that my family has no interest in these type of studies, they ignored my statements and laughed at me. I went outside feeling very sad, because I wanted to know the fate of my grandfather. I love him very much in this life. I looked up to the sky and I invoked, “In the Name of Christ, by the Power of Christ, for the Majesty of Christ, Orifiel!” Orifiel came down. I invoked Orifiel, head of the Ray of Saturn and he appeared in the form of a woman, a beautiful woman with long hair, angelic, and the light that it radiated from his eyes was so pure that I sobbed. I was crying because I was so overwhelmed by how beautiful this angel is. That gives me a lot of faith in the angels of death. That they are not evil. They are not malicious creatures. They are angels. They are perfect. When they are not working, they take on the image of children, innocent, because through the death of ego is purity, innocence. We return to the lost Eden that we had forsaken many years ago, many lifetimes ago. 
Notice that in this image, we chose an angel of death who is looking at a rose, because life and death are synonymous. They are two aspects of the same thing. Therefore, why be attached to one side of the coin and reject the other? Death is merely a transition, and people who become conscious of this fact, do not fear death. In fact, those who are working in meditation, on the death of the ego, look forward to it―not to rush it, not to postpone it. But to use Nietzsche's term, “Die at the right time,” and he says in that book Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
It is funny. It sounds funny, this doctrine of dying at the right time, not in a morbid sense of ending one's life, but recognizing that it is inevitable. One should prepare because if we eliminate the ego, we create better circumstances for us in the future. We can enter a new birth in a Gnostic household, where parents who know these studies can teach us at a young age and we continue our work. It happens many times. It is happening. The angels of death, like in this image, have all the beauty of love, the rose. Life and death are two aspects of the same thing, as I mentioned. Samael Aun Weor mentions in his books that the path of life is formed by the horse, or the hoof prints of the horse of death. In order to experience a higher spiritual life, we have to die as an ego, so that when we physically die, we are prepared, and naturally we know where we are going to go. We can talk to Anubis, the Lord of Karma, face-to-face, and negotiate and say, “ These are my virtues. These are the works that I have done in my life. I ask that you help me to continue my work.” They will help you because we have earned it. 
The Silver Cord of the Astral Body
The angels of death use a scythe in order to demonstrate to the soul that is transitioning, that we are going to reap now what we have sowed (Galatians 6:7). They also use the scythe to cut what is known as the Antakarana thread, which connects the internal bodies, the soul, with the physical body. So you may have an experience in the astral plane or may have read about this in which we find that there is a silver cord from our umbilical center, the telepathic center of the Chakra Manipura, which connects to the physical body, to our astral body. I remember one experience, I was helped by an angel or a group of angels, who helped me to awaken consciousness. They told me, “First you are going to go back to your physical body before you come back later this night, so we can teach you things.” I remember being pulled by my Antakarana thread for many miles over a swamp, over some landscapes. So I returned to my body.
I visually saw this thread. That thread remains intact while one still has physical life. But when the time comes, they cut the thread, not a moment later, not a moment sooner than what is determined by karma, cause and effect. That thread can extend out into the infinite as far as one wants. It is a very interesting element within us. The Skies of Being
So the angels of death, as I said, are not evil. They actually can teach us many things in relation to the death of the ego. I remember when invoking Orifiel, I saw clouds in the sky and many times I have had that experience of asking, what is my level of being? What do I need to work on?
I always go out in the astral plane from my old house. I have a lot of attachments there and I would look up to the sky asking that question, and they would show me, whether through clouds that my mind was obscured, or through heaven, stars, showing the elevation of the Being. I remember Orifiel came down and there were clouds parting from him as he was moving with his wings outstretched. Those clouds were crumbling and deteriorating or dying. He was showing me that if you want the heavens of your mind, your intellect to be clear, remove the clouds, remove the ego, because the ego relates to the air, the mind, intellect. The Master Orifiel and many other masters relating to the Ray of Saturn can teach us divine things. They work under Proserpine, the Mother Goddess of Death, and we often talk in these studies about the Divine Mother Death: Kundalini. She is death of the ego, which of course terrifies the mind because she signifies profound love for the soul. It is interesting, as Samael Aun Weor mentions, that She loves Her children in a very odd way. By loving them, She kills them, meaning, kills the ego in order to free the soul, free the consciousness. Where Do We Go When We Die?
We talked about what dies: the personality, the vital body, the physical body. The soul is conducted into the higher planes by the angels of death in order to decide, based on karma, what the fate of that soul will be.
In many cases, people or the consciousness and the pluralized ego enter into new bodies. The ego, as I said, does not go to the grave. It reincorporates. It can either enter a new humanoid existence, or it can enter into the infernal worlds based on judgment. Sometimes the ego can be, or certain egos, be taken into the bodies of animals because they are very degenerate. They are separated from the soul in order for the human consciousness to have the opportunity to continue working, because that element or those elements are very heavy. They need to be separated. The ego can also can return within the seed of our descendants, within our own lineage. Many times we are born into certain families based on the fact that our ego is very strong, related to certain people. We tend to be reborn in the same family over and over again, according to recurrence, with karma. The way to escape all that is to annihilate the ego, so that we no longer repeat the same tragedies, dramas, and comedies. When the body dies, the consciousness can also experience a vacation, and that means temporarily leaving behind the body, a new existence, in which the soul, based on its virtues, can have certain blissful experiences within Nirvana, the heavenly realms. The world of תפארת Tiphereth in kabbalah, meaning “beauty,” is Nirvana. Personally I have experienced Nirvana. It is a heavenly realm. People who have worked very hard in their life performing good deeds can get a vacation, in which they are temporarily, based on their virtuous actions, are amongst the gods, the angels. But when that karma is exhausted, the Lords of the Law say, “Now it is your time to return to a new body to pay the rest of your karma, of what you owe.” I remember a story a missionary told me about a friend of his who died, who precisely experienced this vacation. His friend had died physically and his family members were grieving. Then this student came up to the missionary in question and told him in the astral plane, “I am up in Nirvana right now and my family down there is grieving for me.” The fact that they were crying and weeping so much over his death or the death of this student, that grief was pulling him away from the higher planes down back into the lower dimensions. He asked this missionary, “Please tell my family not to grieve for me because I am happy here. I am at peace, and they keep dragging me down into the lower planes.” So he said, “Okay, I'll talk to them.” People think death is something traumatic. It can be, but personally I have experienced Nirvana and I would very much like to have a vacation there. It is better than going to Hawaii or elsewhere. Really, there is no comparison. 
Death and Balance in the Three Brains
Let us talk about death and the three brains. As I mentioned to you, we live in thirds and we die in thirds. The Bobbin-Kandelnosts are precisely the vital values relating to our three brains, represented in this image by the intellectual, the emotional, and the motor-instinctive-sexual brains. You can also break down the motor brain, the brain of action, in relation to movement, instinct, and sexual impulse.
How we use our energy determines our life. We are given vital values as a type of money. “Vital capital” is the word that Samael Aun Weor uses. If we save our money, like any in life, as any mature adult would do, likewise we can save the vital values of our consciousness, of our three brains, so that we prolong our life. We do not waste it. We do not destroy it. We do not cut ourselves short. You can think of people like certain rock stars, people who engage in a lot of degenerate behavior. They die young. It comes to my mind the movie The Doors. Jim Morrison was an example of someone who, using drugs, and you know, feeding his ego, died young, destroyed himself, because those vital values were wasted through lust and other negative elements. As I said, when people use their intellectual capital and have no money left in the mind, they develop neurasthenia, idiocy, schizophrenia, madness, or mania. In the emotional brain, one can develop depression, bipolar, psychopathic emotions, nervousness, cardiac disease. People who abuse the motor-instinctive-sexual brain become paralyzed. They develop muscle sicknesses, paraplegia, and also many joint, spine, and knee problems. We mention this again because the three brains have to be balanced. They have to be equilibrated, harmonized. Think of your three brains like three engines. If you have maintained those engines in a car or in a vehicle, they are going to last long. You give it good fuel. We eat good food, think good thoughts, develop positive emotion, and get balanced in our body. Through exercise in moderation, in a good amount according to our needs, we learn to prolong our life. We find equilibrium, balance, equanimity. It is stated by Samael Aun Weor that there are monasteries in Asia in which the monks live to be 300 years old, primarily because they practice the death of the ego and the development of the three brains in a harmonious way. So what that wastes the vital capital? It is the ego. The three brains are merely a machine, which, like a car, can be driven by the consciousness, or by the ego. The ego is what squanders the energies of the mind, the heart, the body. Anger takes the vital values of the intellectual center in order to project evil thoughts and through the emotional center, directs its rage, and through the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, acts in the physical plane, even to the point of committing violence against another person. The ego uses these centers, these brains, and depending on how we spend our money determines how much of a reservoir we have in our karmic bank. We think of karma as cause and effect. We have certain money in the three brains, and if we waste all our money, then one dies in those centers, psychologically speaking. So as I said, some people have more vital values than others. They are born based on karma, their past actions, into bodies, that will either have more or less of these values. If we want to learn how to preserve and prolong our life, it is good to balance these centers. If we are very intellectual, it is good to listen to good music, use the emotional brain to balance the mind. Or, if we are very emotional people, we tend to have that dispensation, it is good to balance it with intellectual study of scripture, of good elements, good teachings, good books. The motor-instinctive-sexual brain can be balanced by learning to use the other centers. It is important that we learn to live life more consciously, because if we feed the ego less and less, we save more of those values. The ego begins to die, and instead of losing those vital currencies, we instead extract the light that is within the ego by annihilating it, so as to obtain immortality. Esoteric, Voluntary, or Initiatic Death
In order to become immortal, as represented by Jesus' resurrection, one needs to die as an ego.
Death is the crown on the path of life. It should not be feared, but awaited for with consciousness. By learning to die in the ego in this life, we become prepared. In order to explain this dynamic, I would like to relate to an excerpt from a book by the Sufi Master Ibn ‘Arabi who talks about what is called voluntary death―to volunteer the death of the ego―so that one is prepared for the state of the afterlife. The Qur’an speaks very beautifully about this in that scripture, in a very detailed way, how by living a virtuous life, one will live with greater happiness in the next. This Sufi initiate explains that by preparing ourselves here and now, we volunteer to return to God consciously, not out of accident or lacking our will, but consciously, by awaiting the moment. The voluntary return to God is something for which the servant is most thankful. God said: "The whole affair is returned to Him" (Qur'an 11:123). So since you know that, return to Him willingly and you will not be returned to Him by compulsion. For there is no escaping your return to Him, and you will surely have to meet Him, either willingly or against your will (Referring to the Being. We can either return consciously through meditation or when we physically die we have to come face-to-face with our inner God, to take atonement or be judged for our actions). For He meets you in [the form of] your attributes, nothing else but that―so examine yourself, my friend! [The Prophet] said: "Whoever loves to meet God, God loves to meet him; and whoever is averse to meeting God, God is averse to meeting him...”
So we don't have to wait to our physical death in order to talk with God. This is how many people think, that physically, you go to the grave, and then you have some meeting with God and say, “Hey, my Lord! What's next?” But, the truth is by learning to meditate, we talk face-to-face with our Being and get guidance. We are dying in this lifetime so that we know, when the time comes that our physical body is exhausted of its vital capital, we can consciously negotiate with the Lords of Karma, because we have been doing this our whole life, consciously. Therefore, there are no surprises. We know what to expect.
And ours was the case [mentioned in the hadith above] of "those who meet Him while loving to meet Him" [so that He loves to meet us].
So what does that mean? Our certainty will not change, because we already know from talking with our inner Being what is going to happen. There is no ambiguity there.
For we tasted no death but the first death, which we died during our life in this world, because our Lord protected us from the torment of hell as a bounty from your Lord; that is the Supreme Achievement (Qur'an 44:56-57). [As the Imam] 'Alî said: "Even if the veil were removed, I would not be any more certain." ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, Chapter 351: “Voluntary Death"
Because the veil physically, or the body, is a veil of the internal planes. When you are physically not in your body in the dream state, astral projecting, we experience a type of death. Remember that Thanatos and Hypnos in Greek myth were brothers. So death and sleep are the same. But if we as a consciousness are active, then when the physical body is gone, we are conscious in the internal planes. But if we don't do any work, then we are just going to go with the flow of our karma, mechanically, without any knowledge.
So the person who returns to God in this way is among the blessed, and he does not even feel the inevitable, compulsory return [of physical] death, because it only comes to him when he is already there with God. The most that what is [ordinarily] known as death can mean for him is that his soul, which is with God, is kept from governing this body that it used to govern, so that the soul remains with God, in its same condition, while that body reverts to its origin, the dust from which it was formed (Qur'an 3:59, etc.). For it was a house whose occupant has traveled away, then the King established that person with Him in a firm position (Qur'an 54:55) until the Day they are raised (Qur'an 23:100, etc.). And his condition when he is raised up will be just like that: it will not change insofar as his being with God is concerned, nor with regard to what God gives him at every instant. ―Ibn ‘Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, Chapter 351: “Voluntary Death”
So what is esoteric death? The death of the ego. This is beautifully represented by the myth of John the Baptist's beheading. And why is the head being decapitated for the purposes of desire? I believe it is Salome in the Christian Gospel. We have to die to the mind, the intellect, which is the home of desire, of the ego―to die to worldliness, to materialism, to attachments, which are in the intellect, the mind.
Esoteric death means to eliminate desire, to remove the impurities of the psyche, because the ego is imperfection. The ego can never be perfected. The belief in many traditions and religions that by feeding the self, by cultivating the “I,” the myself, the ego, whether it be through education, college, diplomas, or religion, that type of fortification of desire alone will lead one into suffering, because the ego is the result of chaos. It is chaos. It is imperfection. So there are certain schools of Christianity that believe, there is one pastor who talks about becoming a better you. So who is that “you” and who is that “I” that wants to become better? In these studies, we like to be very explicit. We are not trying to become better people in the conventional sense. We are trying to eliminate desire, so that when the ego is fully dead, only in the Being is present, and the Being is perfection, is light, is the harmony of the universe. The ego cannot get any better. It is the source of disorder, whether it be good egos or bad egos. These are the demons of the mind represented as the Red Demons of Seth in Egypt in The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The ego is the source of all of our pain: to want, to crave, to demand. Those impulses are a state of suffering, because when we are afflicted with pride, we want to belittle another person. It can be mixed with anger, which says, “I have been hurt. I need to be justified. I need to be avenged. My pain must be recompensed.” That is a state of profound ignorance, because when we feed that element, it only gets worse. It is never satiated. It is never fulfilled. Spiritual Warfare Against the Ego
This is Samael Aun Weor explains that we have to wage a cruel and merciless war to the death against the ego, in which Gustav Holst in his composition called The Planets depicts in the song relating to Mars, the path of the death of the ego. A great war occurs within the soul for its redemption. The ego must be annihilated, disintegrated, because as we presently are, compared to our past existences, in most cases, we have not gotten any better, but worse, because the ego reincorporates new bodies, new experiences, or new situations, which are basically repetitions. We have new existences, but we keep repeating the same mistakes―the same pride, same lust, the same desires in different stages of our life, mechanically, repetitiously. That is a type of mechanicity that is very lunar, and the moon is the mechanical, or relates to the mechanical forces of nature: repetition, recurrence, return.
In these studies, we want to escape all that, to take the moon of the mind, to annihilate it, so that the light of the sun can be resplendent. That light is a new life, a new way of being, a new way of perceiving within the spirit. Those desires must be eliminated. The temptations of the mind must be overcome, so that by working on those habits, our mechanicity, our behaviors, our habits, our desires, we learn to descend and face all the suffering and causes of our ignorance, here and now, so that we can reascend end with power, with understanding. The moon must be converted into a sun as we explained in the previous arcana. Good intentions do not get us anywhere. We may tend to be a more chaste person, to be better mentally, emotionally, physically. We may recognize we have anger and resentment and all these demonic qualities. We may we say to ourselves, “I am going to change.” But then the moment comes in which we are faced with the same circumstances, the same people, the same problems, and we have to be observant to see―are we going to repeat the same mistakes? Primarily because we have good intentions. But how do we really act when the fire is present? When temptation is present? This is why Samael Aun Weor explains that: Numerous are these people who assume that through good intentions it is possible to attain sanctity. Obviously, as long as one does not work intensely on those “I’s” that we carry within our interior, they will continue to exist beneath the depth of our godly appearance and our upright conduct.
We have to simply look at our life and observe in moments of great crises. What is our moral character? Do we possess all of the sanctity we like to assume we have, or are we really demons?
Personally, I don't think I am very saintly or even much of a gentleman. The ego is very strong. I see that in myself and I feel a lot of remorse as I discover more and more the depths of those desires, which are very ancient, very old. People read this and they obviously run away because nobody wants to say, “Me? A disgrace? A failure?” People like to feed their self, to be self-assured, to feel that they have some guarantee, a first-class ticket to the afterlife without any border crossings, without customs, without scrutiny. It is very dark to observe this, but fortunately, John the Baptist taught us the way to escape from all of this pain and suffering, which is death of the ego. When we learn to die in the ego, we really experience peace that is so profound, a state of being in which we actualize our true potential, which is a state of immortality. I remember… I will give you an experience of one time I was meditating in a temple. I won't say where or which group, but we were praying and performing our practices. I was praying on my knees and meditating very deeply in that state. I felt such a longing to know, understand, why I felt such an antipathy towards another person in the temple. I kept praying a lot and asking for comprehension, for insight, for my Divine Mother. I was concentrating on that moment and praying very deeply, asking, “Show me the way of the path of John the Baptist,” because I recognize that regardless of the moral qualities of this other person, I am more concerned about my own pride, my own anger towards this person, why I feel that way or felt that way. I remember getting an insight. It struck me like a lightning bolt. I understood the ego in that instant because I was introspecting very deeply and I prayed immediately. In the moment, I was praying for annihilation. My Divine Mother decapitated that ego and I felt consciousness. I was liberated. I felt so serene. I was seeing things psychologically that truly demonstrates the state of equanimity. That is the secret way: comprehend our errors. Eliminate them through the help of the Divine Mother, and then we have peace. I remember being over that person, not feeling any antipathy, because that ego was dead. I did not care anymore. I felt respect for the person instead. We talk about mystical pride. Obviously, we all have the pharisee within, but the way to escape being a pharisee, simply a believer in a teaching, feeling very proud, is to be honest. Why should we think or feel that we are better than other people? In truth, all of us are demons. Until we are fully dead as an ego, and we resurrect in בינה Binah, the Holy Spirit, we can't boast of anything. 
The Gospel of Judas: Death, Temptation, and Lucifer
So this path is precisely the work of Judas. Many scholars or scholars of gnosticism are speaking a lot about the unearthed Gospel of Judas, which is very controversial, primarily because it upholds, or puts into upheaval, millennia of beliefs about this apostle.
People do not understand what Judas represents, psychologically. People do not understand even more so how this person in the past, historically, was not evil, did not betray Christ, but merely played a role, a very difficult one for his master. Christ physically came to represent the drama of Christ within the soul. Because Jesus was an incarnation of the light, he came to represent that light and how we, psychologically, need to unite with that truth through death of the ego, through the path of the cross. But the only way to get to that point was through Judas. Physically, Judas is a great master, one of the greatest. He is a crucified initiate who came to represent a part of our psyche that is very difficult, painful, and controversial. People like to assume that they are very saintly, very angelic, very holy, because they attend a group. They go to church. They go to mosque. They love God very much, and yet, they are more attached to sensations, to drugs, to alcohol, to fornication. The Master Judas, physically, was teaching us that if you want to enter the path of initiation, you have to overcome desire, temptation. 
There are different demons relating to the three brains. Pilate is the demon of the mind, the thought or ego that says, “I am not guilty. I wash my hands clean. I absolve myself from action. I justify myself. I am innocent.” Meanwhile, he was a governor. He was the one who allowed Jesus to be crucified. People tend to respect that type of thinking. “Oh, I am innocent. I have done nothing wrong.” Because he was a Roman governor, very well-respected, he represents a type of mentality that everyone follows.
You have Caiaphas, the demon of the heart, demon of evil will, somebody who loves religion very much, but hates Christ, hates the Lord. We have that ego inside, very deep where we may love a certain religion or teaching, but really hate the light of Christ. To see that in oneself is very difficult, painful. Judas represents the demon of desire relating to the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, an ego that says that it loves God, loves to meditate, but is addicted to fornication, to passion, to lust, and sells the Lord for thirty pieces of silver. Remember, we talked about vital currency relating to the Bobbin-Kandelnosts. Somebody who sells the Lord for thirty pieces of silver is basically taking those vital values, that money, and using it through desire, through lust, because silver relates to the moon, mechanicity. The physical Master Judas is one person, a great master who played a drama. He took on a role that he did not want. He was the only apostle who was willing to help Christ portray this cosmic drama in the body of flesh and bones. He wanted the role of Peter, I believe. But Jesus said he is not capable of doing that, but must content himself being Judas. “You have to be Judas.” He didn't want the job. Then we will see from our reading of the Gospel of Judas precisely this truth, which is causing many people to become either confused or outraged, because their centuries of belief are totally turned over. Samael Aun Weor gives an explanation in one of his lectures that this Gospel of Judas is related with the dissolution of the ego. The cosmic drama of Christ would be impossible to represent without the role of Judas; this apostle is then the most exalted adept, the most elevated amongst all of the apostles of the Christ Jesus. ―Samael Aun Weor (1973)
He represents for us not only the ego of desire, but also the part of divinity known as Lucifer, Luci Ferros, “bearer of light.” Lucifer is a part of our Being that gives us temptations and ordeals. Gives us the fire of crises and circumstances, which push the ego to the surface, so that we see everything we need to work on. Without temptation, there is no light. Temptation is fire. Triumph over temptation is comprehension, is understanding, is light.
The Gospel of Judas teaches us this, how Judas came to represent the tempter, the betrayer, who is a part of our divinity that is, again, very controversial. People don't like Lucifer. They ignore that Lucifer is a name relating to “light and fire,” the Being, part of our divinity, “the psychological trainer,” according to Samael Aun Weor, because without temptation, without facing those problems, we cannot possibly grow. We cannot change. It is sad that people denigrate Judas. People denigrate Lucifer. They ignore that these are essential parts of our Being whom we need to work with. It doesn't mean you should trust your inner Lucifer, because your Lucifer will tempt you. Instead, it means you take advantage of those ordeals and temptations and trials in order to comprehend the ego, to annihilate it. This is from the Gospel of Judas, which explains many of these principles. Jesus Discusses the Prayer of Thanksgiving
So he is showing the apostles that “You can't know my light perfectly,” is what Christ is saying, “because you are attached to your piety. You don't really understand how to go beyond good and evil,” not out of a moral sense, but to be united with the light of Christ is to be revolutionary. Of course, the disciples become angry.
The Disciples Are Angry
He is showing his humility. Judas is saying, “I am going to step forward to represent the path of light, which is lived through temptation,” and all the apostles who are attached to their piety are very scandalized, who find it difficult to really face all the temptations of the abyss, because it is a lot of heaviness and ordeals one has to face when facing the ego. They all said, “We are strong,” but none of them had the daring to really go beyond their piety.
Judas [said] to him, “I know who you are and from what place you have come. You have come from the immortal realm of Barbelo, and I am not worthy to pronounce the name of the one who has sent you." ―The Gospel of Judas, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
What is Βαρβηλώ Barbelo? Bar means “fire,” “sun.” Bell means “light,” I believe, in Chaldean. The light and fire of the Absolute.
In Kabbalah, we have talked a lot about the Tree of Life, but from the Absolute emerges that Tree of Life. The Absolute has three aspects: אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur: the Nothingness, the Limitless, the Limitless Light. Barbelo is that Limitless Light. It is the Unmanifested Absolute from which Jesus came. Christ is that light from the immortal, unmanifested divine, but to enter that higher truth requires overcoming both good and evil, here and now, because the Absolute is beyond duality, relativity.
Many people get scandalized, not understanding how the bodhisattvas who enter the straight path of initiation manage to control over the forces of good and evil in themselves. When amongst demons, they know how to disguise their light, but amongst the angels or the saints, to be a light unto them. Only Judas was the one worthy enough to present himself to say, “I present myself before you as one who is going to enter the Absolute, the Unmanifested.” The Absolute, we have to understand, is only entered through by angels. We here are trying to become angels, אלהים Elohim, gods or goddesses. But the אלהים Elohim strive to become one אאלהים Aelohim, the Unmanifested, which is beyond angel-hood, beyond good and evil, very far from that. That is Barbelo, and Judas is the only one who presented himself to be able to enter that path. This is evident by what Samael Aun Weor mentions in his lectures. He says that Judas right now has been working in the abyss, in those dimensions in the Klipoth, trying to redeem the lost souls, teaching them the solar path. In that plane, he has been ridiculed, laughed at, mocked, condemned, treated with despise, by all those demons in the infernal worlds who think they are doing very well, ignoring that they are devolving. Likewise, many people in the physical plane denounce Judas as a betrayer, as someone who did not love Christ. Therefore Samael Aun Weor said, “Look at this master in the inferno planes. How dead his ego must be!”―because he is condemned everywhere he goes. Then Samael said, if anyone is worthy to enter the Absolute, the goal, it is Judas, because he serves humanity so selflessly―no ego, pure, dead. He is working as a resurrected Master to enter the the Unmanifest or the Unmanifested, which is represented in this Gospel. Judas said, “Master, just as you have listened to all of them, now, also listen to me, for I have seen a powerful vision.” Jesus heard this, then laughed and he said to him, “Oh thirteenth daemon, why are you so excited? Speak your mind then and I'll hear you out.” ―The Gospel of Judas, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
So he is the demon, the daemon, the tempter, the 15th Arcanum: Passion, but he is the 13th daemon because a daemon is a term that can be used as a muse, an inspiration, or a demon. That is a description of what the power of Lucifer is. Within the ego, it is mixed, is demonic, but there is light inside, which seeks to be extracted and purified through Arcanum 13: death of the ego.
Jesus and Judas Discuss a Vision
What is that house? It is the Hebrew letter ב Beth, the אין סוף Ain Soph that we talked about previously. So the אין סוף Ain Soph in kabbalah is the 12th Aeon.
In the Gnostic Tree of Life, we have 13 Aeons, relating from מלכות Malkuth to יסוד Yesod, to הוד Hod, נצח Netzach, תפארת Tiphereth, גבורה Geburah, חסד Chesed. Those are the lower seven sephiroth followed by בינה Binah, חכמה Chokmah, כתר Kether―ten. Above that we have the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the 11th Aeon. Then we have the אין סוף Ain Soph, the 12th Aeon. The אין סוף Ain Soph is our supra atomic star, which whom we seek to reunite with as we explained in Arcanum 2: The High Priestess.
Judas belongs to the 13th Aeon, the אין Ain, which is a path that is treaded by tremendous revolutionaries, bodhisattvas who go beyond good and evil. But many initiates become angels and seek to enter that אין Ain. They reach the אין סוף Ain Soph, the 12th Aeon, but they want to go to the 13th Aeon. It is a higher degree of the development, which we only know that Jesus accomplished, because it is very difficult. [Jesus] answered and said, “Your star has deceived you, Judas.” ―The Gospel of Judas, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
Judas wanted to enter that house, the 12th Aeon, but Jesus speaking from greater knowledge was telling him, "Your star has deceived you Judas,” because you say you want to enter the 12th Aeon, but really you want to go to the 13th. You want to go even farther.”
No person of mortal birth is worthy
Judas says, “I want to go to that realm.” But Jesus says, “No, you are going to go beyond that.” That is a symbol of something internal, but also with the physical Master Judas. He is working to enter the 13th Aeon by doing the work that he is doing now.
Judas Asks About His Own Fate 
The Alchemical Laboratorium Oratorium
We will talk about these 13 Aeons in relation to the Tree of Life towards the end of this lecture, but Arcanum 13 relates to death, relates to the 13th Aeon, the 13th aeons of the Tree of Life, but alchemically speaking we will talk about how our Arcanum 13 relates to certain alchemical knowledge and teachings given by J.D. Mylius from Philosophia Reformata.
Here we see a king and queen, man and wife, who are working in the nuptial chamber. Ravens devour the sun and moon outside of the chamber, which represent the blackening and putrefaction of desire, the ego, the lunar bodies that we spoke about previously. So what are these lunar bodies? They are precisely the mental and astral bodies that we currently possess. So if you wake in the astral plane and see people, most people are very dark. They don't have any light. They are phantoms in which the ego through them acts. But a solar vehicle is an expression of light, of Christ. Those lunar bodies and our egos associated with them, must be destroyed. 
In the same manner that a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis, likewise the shells of the ego must be putrefied, blackened, destroyed, so that the resurrected butterfly, the soul, can be reborn within it.
We also see man and wife joined together in a hermaphrodite body, which comes alive through the dew of the rain, a symbol of the transmitted sexual energy, which rises up the spine to the mind, through the clouds, and descends as rain to the heart, rejuvenating it. Likewise, we see the sun and moon within one body, male-female, because through husband and wife is how the solar and lunar energies give birth to death. That Divine Kundalini force can be directed at the ego to annihilate it on the sole condition that it has been comprehended in its depth, in its totality. You notice also that there is an angel standing to the far right. This angel is indicating that if we want to become perfected like him or her, we must, in a matrimony, become unified. The sun and moon must join in order that we may be crowned, and from the grave, the death of our ego, we can immerse ourselves in the light. This is from the Laboratorium Oratorium, the laboratory of the alchemist. 
The Alchemical Retort
We also spoke about the solar bodies. This image is from S. Trismosin Splendor Solis from London in the 16th century. This is a description of the crucified soul that emerges within the athanor or glass of alchemy, in which one is crowned with glory. We see flowers surrounding it, the virtues of the soul which emerge through the work of transforming the mind from a lunar vehicle into a solar vehicle.
We explained that the embryo of our soul can be developed. We are not immortal yet. The soul is not perfected. It is not generated. We have an embryo of soul, which can give birth to the perfected human being, the angel. This embryo is fed, strengthened, nourished, by working with alchemy: the transmutation of the base elements of the ego, the lead of the personality, into the goal of the spirit. Immortality is given to us first when we incarnate the soul, but in order to incarnate the soul, we have to create a solar astral body, a solar mental body, and a solar causal body, relating to הוד Hod, נצח Netzach, and תפארת Tiphereth―the astral Christ, the Christ mind, and the Christ will. At that point, one can receive their soul because it has been developed, and one has the bodies in order to express that potential within oneself. 
As we are now with our egotistical desires, we are phantoms. It is enough to look in the astral plane and even in our mental daily states or emotional states, that we have lunar phantoms inside, egos, defects. Likewise, the mind with its surging thoughts, its thesis and antithesis, its theories, its beliefs, it is merely a phantom. This is why Nietzsche in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra explained that the human being as it presently is, is like a mixture between plant and ghost. It has no substance because the ego is not divine. There is nothing substantial there, eternal there.
When we create a solar causal body, likewise with the lower vehicles, we can possess Christic will that knows how to obey the divine ordinances of Christ, which is not some commandments from outside, but the guidance of our inner Being, here and now in this life, in this instant. Most of our desires, if we are honest, tend to be egotistical. We want something. We seek to get it. We crave something. We have the will to go out of our way to get what we desire. That is evil will, desire will. This image explains for us how through the alchemical crucible, we boil the elements of the ego in order to present the Christified soul, that is born in us when we create these three solar bodies and during the initiations of fire within the physical, vital, astral, mental, and causal vehicles. This prima matter of the alchemist is the semen, as we have explained many times. The seminal matter can be transformed from its volatile state to give birth to these bodies. It can create Christ will, and Samael Aun Weor explains that this essence of the great work, the prima matter, the semen itself, is volatile and flexible, because it can either give birth to desire or to the chaste mind, the perfected soul, the Christic will. How does one know that one has these bodies? People who create a solar astral body know how to astral project very easily. They awake in the astral plane many times, sometimes without even willing it. They had that ability in themselves they developed in past existences. Likewise, how does one know that one has a solar mind? You can have the experiences in the astral plane if you worked in alchemy previously. A solar mind is a mind that knows how to understand scripture very intuitively, instantly. It doesn't have to deliberate or doubt, but knows intuitive concepts, principles. A causal body of Christic will is possessed by those bodhisattvas or those masters who reached the Fifth Initiation of Fire. To have that body is to know how to do the will of Christ because one is connected at that level. But to get to that point, we have to discard the impurities of the mind, like the chrysalis from which the resurrected soul is born. As I said, we are presently like a phantom in the etheric, the astral, the mental, and causal planes. We have to learn to discard those lower bodies that are mechanical, that were given to us by nature, by giving birth to the soul in alchemy, the solar bodies. In order to create a solar astral body, we have to raise the fire of Kundalini from the physical spine up to the brain. Likewise with the vital body, and then within the astral phantom, raise the sacred fire of Kundalini up the thirty-three vertebrae of the spine to the mind and then to the heart. From that blackened sepulcher of the astral body emerges the solar Christic vehicle, which emerges from that phantom. The same process occurs within the mental phantom in which we create a solar mental body, a Christ mind, and then within the embryo of the soul emerges the solar causal body. Levels of Death and Resurrection
So what is resurrection? There are levels of resurrection, which we will talk about in Arcanum 20: Resurrection. The soul resurrects in the fire in the light, the serpents of fire and the serpents of light, as we have explained and mentioned previously, especially in Arcanum 7: Triumph, I believe.
But resurrection also applies to those masters who are fully dead to the ego, because you can reach levels of resurrection in yourself, annihilating the ego to a certain degree and being reborn in a certain level or dimension. When you create a solar astral body, you are a immortal in that plane. You can astral travel. You are awake in that state. You know that dimension well. Likewise with the mental plane, the solar mental body. There is a form of resurrection there, being reborn at that level. Likewise the causal plane, the world of תפארת Tiphereth, human will. But resurrection in its most strict sense applies to the soul when the ego is fully dead. When the ego is fully dead, then the consciousness can reunite with the Being. Even the physical body can be brought up, which is a process that happens with many masters and has occurred with the Master Jesus, in which the physical body enters the higher planes. One becomes immortal like Babaji and Mataji, Nicholas Flamel and Perenelle, Count St. Germain, Cagliostro, Quetzalcoatl. So these are masters who escaped death physically because they received what is known as the elixir of long life, of which we'll talk about in Arcanum 20. So to become a resurrected master is to become a superman, a super human being beyond good and evil, and is a being that is very different from all others, because that light is fully manifested. Psalm 119
We will talk about the mysteries of the Hebrew letter מ Mem, which relate to the death of the ego. Psalm 119 verses 97 through 104 begin with the Hebrew letter מ Mem, the mysteries of מים Mayim, the waters of sex.
מה־אהבתי תורתך כל־היום היא שיחתי׃
“Oh how I love your law; it is my meditation all day. You make me wiser than my enemies by your commands; for they are forever mine. I have more wisdom than all my teachers; for your testimonies are a meditation to me.” So why have more wisdom than all of one's teachers? These teachers are from any religion, any group, any school, whether it be spiritual or whatnot.
“For your testimonies are a meditation to me.” What does it mean to testify, to bear witness? To bear witness means to know because we see the truth for ourselves, from experience, and that way, we are in a constant state of meditation, always self observing, self remembering. “I understand more than the aged; for I keep your precepts. I have kept my feet for every evil way, to keep your word. I turned not from your judgments, for you of taught me. How sweet are your words to my palate! More than honey to my mouth. By your precepts I know; so then I hate every false way." So why all this mention about the false way in relation to men? Because the waters can either lead you on the path or can drown you. If one is chaste, one knows to bear testimony of God because one has the energy available to experience the light of your Being. But if one is a fornicator, one follows the path of רע Ra, “impurity.” The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is עץ הדעת טוב ורע Otz Ha-Da’ath Tob Vay Ra, the Tree of Purity (טוב Tob) and Impurity (רע Ra) to be more strict in our etymology. “I understand more than the aged for I keep your precepts,” meaning people who have abused or have used up their vital values, who may not have known the teachings. “I have kept my feet from every evil way to keep your word. I turned not from your judgments, for you have taught me,” and “how sweet are your words to my palate more than honey,” because honey is a symbol of alchemy. The bee takes, through its mechanical behaviors, the elements of the pollen, transmuting it into the sweetness of the soul. This symbolizes all of us because we are like bees. When we learn transmutation, we are like an insect, insignificant, small, and pure, but can give birth to something much more higher than ourselves. 
The Waters of the Two Edens
We see here the Tree of Life transposed with the four rivers of Eden mentioned in Genesis. We have the upper Eden associated with the secret sephirah דעת Da’ath, alchemical knowledge, along with the Hebrew word שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim: ש Shin, מ Mem, י Iod, מ Mem.
Below in יסוד Yesod we have the lower Eden formed by מ Mem, י Iod, מ Mem: מים Mayim. Notice that מ Mem has two versions, the open-ended מ Mem and the closed ם Mem. The closed ם Mem is known as Sophit, the final ם Mem, which some letters in Hebrew have a beginning and ending version or graphic, which are different depending on whether it is at the beginning of a word or if it is at the end. So what is מים Mayim? It means water. שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim means “fiery waters,” because we explained that heaven, שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim, relates to ש Shin, fire; מ Mem in water. In the beginning of the first verse of Genesis we find: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ
שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim is translated as “heavens,” and in the scripture it says, “In the beginning,” or “In wisdom, Elohim created the heavens (שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim) and the Earth (מלכות Malkuth).” So what is בְּרֵאשִׁית Bereshit? We explain it is an acrostic that can be broken down in many ways. Bereshit can refer to ברית אש Brit Esh, “pact of fire,” which is the pact of chastity between the human soul and the divine. So the “pact of chastity,” בְּרֵאשִׁית Bereshit or ברית אש Brit Esh, “created,” ברא bara, “Elohim.” So chastity created the gods, the angels. אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם Et Ha-Shamayim, “and the heavens,” וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ Vay’at Ha'aretz, and the Earth (solar bodies).
What are those heavens? The mysteries of the virtues of the soul born from דעת Da’ath, alchemy. That is השמים Ha-Shamayim, because it literally means “fiery water,” because when you learn to control your waters in the matrimony and through pronouncing mantras, you create fire. That creates the heavens in you, your Being. It also creates הָאָֽרֶץ Ha’aretz, the Earth, which are the solar bodies we have been explaining. We must raise the fire of the waters from יסוד Yesod through our physical body, our vital body, the astral body, the mental body, the causal body―מלכות Malkuth, יסוד Yesod, הוד Hod, נצח Netzach, תפארת Tiphereth, respectively. So “and the Earth” וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ (Vay’at Ha’aretz)… בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ
We explain that א Aleph-ת Tav in that sentence refers to א Aleph-ת Tav in Hebrew, the first and the last letters of Hebrew, which are the Α (Alpha) and Ω (Omega) of Christ. All the principles of God are contained within אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם At Shamayim, “the heavens,” “the fiery waters” of דעת Da’ath, and וְאֵת Vay’at, through the spine of ו Vav, we raise those principles up from sex to the head in order to create הָאָֽרֶץ ha'aretz, the Earth, the solar bodies.
The Bible refers to the two Edens. We have the upper Eden and the lower Eden. The upper Eden relates to the fiery elements of דעת Da’ath, which are the powers accumulated through alchemy. The lower Eden refers to those waters that are in our sexual glands, יסוד Yesod. So מ Mem, the upper Eden in Kabbalah, waters the lower. The water descends down the Tree of Life within our body through the cerebral spinal fluid and many other elements, but also within the higher dimensions into the lower. We can say that שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim, the “fiery waters,” the transmuted sexual energy, descends from above when we are with our wife, when husband and wife are together in alchemy. Those waters become transmuted into fire. מים Mayim becomes שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim through mantras, through דעת Da’ath, through pronunciation of the sacred verb. Those fires descend, those heavenly waters within the cosmos, also descend from the higher dimensions down from the open מ Mem. ש Shin is the top trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The waters of דעת Da’ath, the heavenly fiery waters of the open מ Mem, those waters descend down through the four rivers of Eden symbolized in Genesis, in order to be received within the vital body, the vital energies. מ Mem is the river of שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim, the upper Eden, which waters the Garden of יסוד Yesod, because we receive all the powers and potentiality of the spirit from the higher dimensions, but also within our physical body. The open מ Mem above, שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim, is the ש Shin of the trinity, the fiery logoi, the three logos: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, which is known as the world of אצילות Atziluth in Hebrew. 
The Tree of Life can be divided into different worlds of Kabbalah. The top trinity is אצילות Atziluth, the world of potentiality, of archetypes, in which those forces in a potential state become actualized through the world of בריאה Briah, “creation,” associated with חסד Chesed, גבורה Geburah, תפארת Tiphereth, the middle trinity. The lower trinity is the world of formation, יצירה Yetzirah, in which we give form to the solar bodies. So from אצילות Atziluth, from the principles of the divine, we work with mantra and alchemy, the world of בריאה Briah, in order to actualize the powers of the spirit between husband and wife in the world of חסד Chesed, גבורה Geburah, תפארת Tiphereth. This gives form to the solar bodies: נצח Netzach, הוד Hod, יסוד Yesod, and מלכות Malkuth. יצירה Yetzirah, the world of formation, relates to the mind, the heart, and the vitality, which is all manifested within עשיה Assiah: the world of matter and formation, the world of action and consequence.
It is interesting that in the Hebrew word מים Mayim, the letter י Iod, the tenth letter of Kabbalah, representing כתר Kether, is between two מ Mems, one open (מ), one closed (ם), symbolizing how the power of the Father is between husband and wife. The open מ Mem is the woman, the uterus. The closed ם Mem is the man, the sexual glands of the male, and י Iod is either the sperm or the ovum between the couple, which can give birth to the heavens by working with ש Shin, with fire, through דעת Da’ath, through mantras, through prayers. The Four Rivers of Eden
So let us talk about the four rivers of Eden in relation to the Tree of Life. The four rivers relate to the descent of those fiery forces from above, from the Akasha relating to space, the cosmos, the universe, which manifests in our body. Those four rivers relate, not to physical places, but to forces within our vitality. Max Heindel calls them the four ethers. We have the luminous ether, the reflecting ether, the chemical ether, and the ether of life are the four rivers of Eden, which are represented in the Book of Genesis, chapter 2, verses 10 to 14.
The name of the first is Pison (the luminous ether): that is it which compasses the whole land of Havilah (גבורה Geburah), where there is gold (Christic power); and the gold of that land is good (since גבורה Geburah, the divine consciousness, receives the powers of חכמה Chokmah, the Christ, the solar intelligence). ―Genesis 2:11-12
It is important to remember that when the Bible talks about lands, it is talking about the sephiroth, because each sephirah is a land, a different dimension, a different mode of being, a different place, a different Earth, a different vehicle of the soul. So, גבורה Geburah receives the powers of Christ, the second logos within it. The divine soul receives all the Christic energy because that is why גבורה Geburah, not only relates to Mars but with the Sun, the solar logos.
...there is bdellium and the onyx stone… ―Genesis 2:12
…which are the ethereal fluids relating to willpower and Imagination. And so, these etheric fluids in our vital body, the river Pison, are relating to willpower and imagination, the ability to concentrate and ability to visualize, which is why we work with this ether very deeply in our studies.
And the name of the second river is Gihon (reflecting ether)… ―Genesis 2:13
And what is the reflecting ether? It relates to all the powers associated with sensorial and psychic perceptions. Reflecting ether relates to willpower and imagination. So these two are very deeply integrated, related. So Gihon, the reflecting ether…
…the same is it that compasses the whole land of Ethiopia. ―Genesis 2:13
…which is that dimension related to חסד Chesed, the spirit, a land that is perceptible through harnessing the sensorial and psychic perceptions relating to the senses of sight, hearing, taste, taste, touch, and smell. The spiritual extra-sensorial perceptions belong to חסד Chesed, the spirit. Ethiopia is a land, relates to the sephirah חסד Chesed in kabbalah.
And the name of the third river is Hiddekel (chemical ether, the fluidic ethereal forces) that goeth toward the East of Assyria. ―Genesis 2:14
The East in kabbalah relates to תפארת Tiphereth. The West is מלכות Malkuth, because the sun sets in מלכות Malkuth. The sun rises in the East, and תפארת Tiphereth is associated with Venus and the Sun.
What is that chemical ether? It is the element of our vital body that is associated with our biochemistry: catabolism, metabolism, endocrinology, circulation, the assimilation of forces, the excretion and removal of waste products from our body, digestion, in which we assimilate nutrition that is essential for our physical bodies and internal bodies. And the fourth river is Euphrates. ―Genesis 2:14
…which is the ether of life associated with procreation and the maintenance of the species. The positive polarity of this energy is what performs psycho-genesis, the creation of the soul, because the physical sexual energy can give birth to a child, or if we know how, can give birth to the Christified soul. So the negative pole of Euphrates, relating to the sexual glands, is the waters ejaculated through fornication, through desire.
We talked about these four rivers relating to these different lands, the energies associated with the different sephiroth, which all manifest within מים Mayim, יסוד Yesod, but that water rises up the spine through דעת Da’ath in order to create the heavens in us: שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim, the fiery waters, which are the Akasha. If you are familiar with Hinduism, Akasha is the solar Christic energy within the atmosphere, within the space. I had one experience many years ago where I woke up in the astral plane and I flew up to the sky, looking to invoke a master. I remember passing through a certain layer in the clouds. When I was looking down at my home, I saw babies, large, gigantic children playing with water in the sky. Those are the fiery waters in which the soul, the child of alchemy, can be born. They were showing me that those Akashic waters in the atmosphere that permeate the space and the clouds are a type of water from which, in the cosmological scale of things, spirit descends into materiality in order to create life. The same principle applies to a matrimony where those waters of יסוד Yesod can be inebriated by the fire of love. In that way, you give birth to the child of alchemy, the Soul. מ Mem contains the four rivers of Eden, the waters of life, and also has the potentiality to give birth to the heavens within oneself: שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim and מים Mayim. So the lower Eden is precisely the sephirah יסוד Yesod, which receives all the vital forces from above, because physically, we receive all the powers of the heavens through runes.
Like through the Runes Is, Ehwaz, Othila, Ur, Ario, Man, and Sig. We are bringing the forces down from above, from the Akasha, into our mind, our body, descending down to our coccyx, as we do with the seven runes themselves, and then with the power of “Sssssssss!” or the fire of sex, we return it back to the source.
The Circulation of Spiritual Force
We also have the ten sephiroth in this image transposed with the word מלכים Malachim in Hebrew. So what is a מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech? He is a king as we explained in our previous arcana. We can transpose the Hebrew letter associated with מלכים Malachim, Kings, or Angels, on the Tree of Life. מ Mem is water as we said. That מ Mem also relates to the Unmanifested Absolute, the 13th letter, the 13th Aeon, which is within the אין Ain, the Unmanifested Absolute, from which descends the forces of the Christ through the אין סוף Ain Soph into the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, signified by ל Lamed.
In the 12th Arcanum, we talked about ל Lamed, the descent of the forces from above down the Tree of Life through the hanged man, The Apostolate. כ Kaf is the crown, the head, from which we find כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah. כתר Kether begins with כ Kaf, the crown. Those forces descend down the Tree of Life, entering יסוד Yesod, which is י Iod-מ Mem. י Iod is the sperm or ovum, as we explained previously, and מ Mem is the waters. So all the power of the kings, of the Absolute, descends down our Tree of Life, our spine, into our sexual glands. If we want to become מלכים Malachim, we have to return up those forces. י Iod-מ Mem relates to ים yam, can mean sea, ocean, waters, and is similar to יום Yom, “day.” The words of a (solar) man's mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook. ―Proverbs 18:12
What is that solar man? He is a מלכים Malachim [a מֶ֖לֶךְ melech, singular], a King or Angel who controls the waters of מ Mem, sex, that descends from the Absolute, the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the Limitless Light, into creation, through the world of אצילות Atziluth: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, the Crown, because all the powers of the heavens are within our head of כתר Kether, which we invoke through runes. We are simulating the solar light into our body, into our כ Kaf, our crown. Then, by taking the waters of life, such as through the Rune Man, we take in the waters or energies, circulating it up from below to above and above to below, so that we flow with the current of life.
What are these waters that we need to work with? Again, it is sexual, but also relate to the cosmos. The Qur’an speaks very beautifully about this principle, of how those forces from above descend and then reascend in order to gain knowledge and experience. It is He who sends forth the winds as harbingers of His Mercy. ―Qur’an 7:57
So what are those winds? The prana, the air we breathe when we work in a matrimony, which we pronounce through sacred sounds and mantras through דעת Da’ath. When we learn to pronounce those secret sounds, those mantras, we raise through the heat of copulation the seminal vapors, which rise up the spine to the mind, forming clouds from which the lightning of Christ emerges, to then descend into our heart. Those are symbols of transmutation given in the Qur’an, the mystical doctrine of Islam.
When they bear rain laden clouds, we drive them toward a dead land and send down water on it and with it we bring forth all kinds of crops (like wheat, like the grain, and that dead land, that body that was sterile from fornication, is now rejuvenated with the virtues and health of the soul, through alchemy, through transmutation). We bring forth all kinds of crops, thus shall we raise the dead. Maybe you will take admonition. ―Qur’an 7:57
So as I explained to you, the 13th letter of kabbalah, מ Mem, relates to the 13th Aeon, the אין Ain. The letter מ Mem relates to death and immortality because through the seminal matter is how we are born as a spirit or as we die as an ego, as a soul. The thirteen aeons relate to the אין Ain, which we can experience or approach in meditation, which is a form of space. It is the darkness of the abyss, which to us is darkness, but for those who develop spiritual insight, learn to perceive its true nature, is uncreated light, the light of the Absolute, which is the light of Christ. We will talk more about the 13th Aeon in many other aspects of the Tree of Life in future lectures.
But to conclude, we will just mention that in order to become מלכים Malachim, one has to work with the waters and the death of the ego, which we do through exercises of Retrospection Meditation, as we explained in our course on Gnostic Meditation. Do you have any questions? Questions and Answers
Question: So the teaching says that it is better to not desire at all, as opposed desiring being altruistic or good, to just not have any desire? To desire not to have desire?
Instructor: Well, that is a good question, because technically we state that desire is ego. But what does it mean to desire virtue? I think it is better if we use, for the sake of terminology, longing. The longing to be more altruistic, to be virtuous, is a quality of the consciousness. The soul that wants to become better. The soul that wants to become better, not the ego. So I said, like the teachings of some Christian Pastor, I won't mention his name, who say, “Become a better you.” Obviously, conventionally, we do want to become better. We want to be more virtuous. But who wants to become more virtuous? That is the question. Is it the ego or is it the soul? Even the ego desires to learn to do good things, but it is egotistical. If you really scrutinize the mind, you look in yourself and see “What is it in me than wants this?” So it is all a matter of discrimination. But the soul longs to know divinity and to be better, to be more developed... Question: To decipher that would be through meditation, since “your ego wants to be this,” etc.? Instructor: Yes, and to observe what in you is going on, because your Being will show you what real virtue is. Question: You said that we need to eliminate desires. But don’t you eliminate wrong desires? You have to desire something! Instructor: Yeah, in that sense we say, longing is natural, to long for something. When the soul longs to be better or to develop, but it is strictly when we say, “I want,” “I crave,” “I need,” that 97% of the time it is ego. It is desire, egotism. Comment: Another thing which you’ve emphasized so much here through all of your lectures is the need to watch, trying to catch our defects. With that in mind, since we all have these defects to a certain degree, I would imagine, Dion Fortune, the occultist, she said that the true birth chart is the map of the soul. It shows the proclivities, tendencies. That may help, as an aid. She said it, and she wasn’t the only one. You can see it right there. It gets involved: aspects, planets, signs and in what houses. I can speak personally for myself that they are very objective since I’ve been trained in that scholastically. It’s scary. When you get out of the box and look at it, these tendencies were there. This is what happened! Instructor: That relates to the study of Practical Astrology, which we study and practice. Some things you can look at that, explains certain behaviors, because the Zodiac associates not only with the personality or the consciousness, but also the Being. So there are levels of application of those twelve zodiacal signs associated with Arcanum 12: The Apostolate. Question: So as far as balancing the three brains and in order to decipher which ones are imbalanced, I would imagine for me it would be all three. But to decipher which one is more imbalanced than the other, is that just done through meditation also? Instructor: Yeah, and you sense by doing certain activities that you feel like you are at work, typing and I type a lot for my job. I sense my mind getting tired. That is a good indication, that means, “Okay, take a break. Do something else.” Listen to music, do some sports, or do something physically active. Question: So if you are thinking a lot, that is obviously the imbalance is in the intellect? Instructor: Yeah, and the emotions is more thinking through the heart too much, feeling too much, getting too upset, being imbalanced emotionally, feeling insecure, being fearful. Too much activity in the motor brain is when you are physically depleted. You need rest. Some people get that second wind when they work out even though they know they are exhausted. They keep pushing through because they want to train for some kind of olympic sport or whatnot. So you get that sense, sometimes people get second winds when they work with their intellect or their emotions. The problem is that when someone does that, when the energies of the day that are deposited within the intellect, the heart, or the body, when they are depleted, in order to keep functioning, that brain will steal energy from the other centers. So the intellect will start taking sexual energy, which has not been modified through transmutation, and send it to the brain, which will damage it. This is why people, when they work their intellect too much, they get sick mentally. Likewise with the heart or the body. The brain will start to steal energy from the other centers, so that it creates imbalance. The way that you balance your centers is through intuition, being more aware of how you feel mentally, emotionally, physically, and just judging yourself and knowing your body, knowing your mind. You also meditate and you can get a sense of what activities are perhaps a little bit draining. That is why meditation is so fundamental because you learn to silence all three brains. Relax everything, so that you can look inside and see what is going on. I recommend that throughout the day, take the time to pause at work, even if just for a minute. Sit, close your eyes, relax, breathe deep and just examine yourself. Imagine you are examining your mind, your heart, your body. See what is going on. You may feel that, “Okay, perhaps I should take a break from my intellectual work or balance my emotional center with good music.” You know, I have an iPod I bring to work and being that I work with some difficult clients at times, I have certain periods or breaks in my day where I can sit and relax a little bit and examine myself, especially since the work I do is intellectual. So find harmony in that way. You take time to relax. That is why Samael Aun Weor says to take the time throughout the day to relax, breathe, observe. You sense, more and more, with practice, which center you tend to use most. Most of us have a dispensation towards one brain or the other, typically. Some people may be in the intellect, some people are into emotions, some people in the body. 
This is why in Alice in Wonderland, you have the Mad Hatter, someone who abused the intellectual center too much, is insane. Like the Disney cartoon, “A very Happy Unbirthday!” The mind is just so diseased, it doesn't make any sense. You lose the sense of things. It is hard to interpret things, hard to read. That's the intellect.
You have the Queen of Hearts relating to the emotional center, which is always angry all the time. She says in the cartoon or the movie or whatnot, “Off with his head!” She always wants to kill people because the emotions is so distraught. That's the emotional brain that has been abused. Then the the white rabbit is the instinctive type of person, someone who uses the motor-instinctive-sexual brain impulsively. He's always like “I am late. I am late for a very important date!” Always rushing around, running around doing things, never sitting still, the White Rabbit is just so caught up in the body and sensations that he needs to just simply relax. So those are the three types of people that are imbalanced based on the three brains. The way that you find balance, more importantly, is learn to use your three centers well. Use the other ones when you feel that you need to shift gears and work on the ego, because without the death of the ego, the causes of imbalance will always be present. Question: So besides meditation and mantra, you suggest we listen to classical music and reading Samael Aun Weor? Instructor: Good books, good literature, scripture. Listen to good music, classical, and physically you can do the Sacred Rites of Rejuvenation that we have been teaching, as well. Personally I go to a gym. I exercise sometimes. I go run. You know, anything to not use the intellect so much, or the mind, or the heart. Comment: It also matters what we pay attention to, so watching stuff... Instructor: Because that will destroy the mind too. Watching films of great violence and bloodshed and whatnot. Comment: There is so much negative stuff... The more sensitive we are, the more it hurts. Question: So are we the fallen angels? Instructor: All of us are fallen. We are all evil, perverse. We created the ego and our state of suffering. A fallen angel is different. You know, most people never created the solar bodies before. Question: Has Samael Aun Weor ever explained the Book of Enoch? Instructor: He has talked about principles related to the Book of Enoch. But going back to the topic of fallen angels: מלכים Malachim, a מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech is a person who created solar astral, solar mental, solar causal bodies. They worked in a matrimony. Now, they may have still been working in the ego when they fell, so they had to start up their work again from the bottom. They still have those bodies created from a matrimony. They are immortal. They belong to God, but they recreated the ego again. They made it fatter. There are some who finished the entire work, self-realized, reach the אין סוף Ain Soph, were resurrected, and yet when the human soul was incarnated in a body, was tempted again by sex and fell, became a demon again. It happens a lot. Those are fallen bodhisattvas, fallen angels, fallen מלכים Malachim, who are very dangerous because they knew the light and yet they betrayed it. Just because you self-realized doesn't mean that you are safe because as long as one is in this universe, one can fall. But if you reached the 13th Aeon, you go beyond אין סוף Ain Soph, there is no falling there. You just return to the heights. But fallen bodhisattvas are a big topic amongst Gnostic schools because many are curious. They wonder who they were in a past life. Perhaps they ask, “Am I a fallen bodhisattva?” But the way that you figure that out or know that is your Being will show you, give you experiences―if that’s the case. Most people, you don't find many of them amongst most groups. But there are a number of them, and I personally would not advise seeking them out, because they are evil. I mean, they knew the light. They fell. They may be repented and working again, trying to become risen again, and they will rise again, eventually, if the Being wants it. Question: What do you feel is going to happen to those that are worshiping Lucifer and their demons, their ego? Instructor: Well, you know people who worship the fallen Lucifer, which is the ego in every person. They devolve. They go down the lunar way. We don't really worship Lucifer in this teaching. I mean listen―we have to distinguish Lucifer from the ego. Question: We use him as a tool right? Instructor: He is a tool. Remember that Dante and Virgil climb the back of Lucifer to escape from the ninth sphere, because Dante knew that in order to ascend to heaven, you had to climb the back of the spine and conquer your inner ego step-by-step, vertebra by vertebra. So Lucifer is our best friend, but also our worst enemy. You need him to tempt you, but you have to pray, “Lead me not into temptation Father, but deliver me from all evil,” because Lucifer will give you the ordeal and try to trick you, with the obvious purpose of trying to get us to work on the ego, to see what needs to be eliminated. That will be our topic of Arcanum 15: Passion, two lectures from now. Question: You also mentioned the Tree of Life, which is interesting as it relates to Jung. Correct me if I’m wrong, but do the lower sephiroth relate to the etheric or vital body? You mentioned the four rivers… Instructor: The lower trinity relates to the world of יצירה Yetzirah, the world of formation, which is the solar bodies. Comment: In the human being, the four ethers also. Instructor: Right, and those rivers relate to the upper sephiroth but also יסוד Yesod, especially. |
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