In Gnosis we always seek to study the laws that govern the expression of the psyche, the soul, of our consciousness. We seek to understand our place, in a cosmological scale, in relation to God and to our current physical existence. It is important to know that γνῶσις gnosis as a Greek term that signifies direct knowledge. It does not mean theory. It does not mean something that is interesting intellectually, or something to debate. It is not a philosophy to be argued for or against. Instead, it pertains to our direct knowledge of fundamental laws within the universe. And so, it is by understanding these laws and how they apply to our physical life, is that we will be able to advance in spiritual life.
Today we’re going to discuss what people typically call “reincarnation,” and we are going to clarify many misconceptions about the term and about how it applies to our present level of being. We use the terms return and recurrence in replace of what people typically denominate reincarnation. Most individuals believe that reincarnation is the reincorporation of the psyche within different bodies. But in truth, within Gnostic esotericism, reincarnation has a much more rigorous application to spiritual development. Reincarnation means to willingly choose one’s body, to be cognizant of one’s incarnation within a certain physical circumstance or situation. It also refers to the manifestation of Christ, the supreme deity, divinity, the energy of God, within a specific individual or initiate that has fully prepared him or herself through development. Typically what people denominate reincarnation or the transference of the soul within different bodies, we call that return, because all of us typically do not remember where we came from, because we lack cognizance. We don’t typically have that direct knowledge of who we were in past lives. Instead, we have returned to a new body without any cognizance or remembrance. In the Greek myth, I believe that’s referenced by the river of Eunoe, in which the souls would drink the water of hell and they would forget what had happened to them. Specifically, if we don’t have cognizance of where we came from, who we were, where we have been, what was our past personality and identity, name, culture, it means that we have mechanically returned to this body. It means that we have not chosen our specific incarnation. Recurrence is another matter pertaining to cyclical events within one’s physical life: the repetition of circumstances. We are going to explain these three terms more in depth, in terms of our relationship to these laws. In synthesis, we have this image known as the Bhavacakra within Buddhism. We have a beautiful course online on gnosticteachings.org, which specifically explains this symbol, which is essential to Buddhism. We’re not going to explain all the intricacies of this image because we have a course available and it would take many lectures to explain it. In synthesis this image is a wheel, pertaining to the cyclical manifestation of beings within different levels of existence. We see that there is a figure gripping this wheel with his teeth. This figure is known as Yama, which means “death.” In the center we have six levels or modes of existence. We have the humans, the demigods, the gods, the animals, the demons, and the hungry ghosts. These are different types of psychology, psychological ways of being. Because bhava means “becoming,” a way of being, a level of being, as we say in these studies. People have typically denominated this image as the Wheel of Samsara, which is mistaken. It is really the Bhavacakra: “wheel of becoming,” because, depending on our psychological state, depending on our attachments, or lack thereof, will determine whether or not we cycle through these different states of being. These beings within this wheel of suffering, within different states of attachment, cling to a mistaken sense of identity. The essential tenant of Buddhism, which we will explain in relation to this study, pertains to how one’s psychological way of being attracts one’s life. Our psychological state determines our life, for as Buddha taught in the Dhammapada: “Mind proceeds phenomena. We become what we think.” And this determines our life. If we perform good actions, then good results will follow, like the cart following an ox. And if we perform bad deeds then likewise bad results will follow. This is particularly relevant in the doctrine of karma, which we are going to explain. In synthesis, this image portrays how all of us, all beings within this universe, cycle within this ever-recurring and ever-rotating wheel of becoming. There is no freedom from suffering within these realms. In particular relation to us in the human state, it is easy to determine and look to see how the beings of the demon realm obviously suffer. Human beings with many problems suffer. It’s challenging to understand the other realms of “being,” such as the gods or the demigods, but even they have a type of attachment―attachment to states of bliss, which for them is suffering. To comprehend these states we need to awaken our perception, awaken our consciousness. Now, all beings within these realms are subject to laws of nature, in which they have no control. Typically, it is our lack of cognizance which produces our suffering. Because whether we are in a humanoid state or we have many blessings―such as the demigods or the gods within our life, because these don’t only represent realms of different universes or realms of being, they also pertain to states of psychology that every person possesses―whether or not we have many blessings, many gifts, or many types of comforts, these in the end will be lost. These in the end will be reduced to dust. Therefore we have to analyze our psychology and really determine what is it that is important to know. This why we study return, recurrence, and reincarnation, because we seek to understand the laws in which we are subjected. Because if we are ignorant of these laws, then we cannot change our way of being. But if we are cognizant of these laws and experience, and how we, due to our state of mind, cycle within different types or states of being, of suffering, it is by knowing these things that we can change it, that we can transcend this wheel. As we see in this image, there is a figure of a buddha or a bodhisattva, an illuminated initiate or being that has transcended this wheel, has escaped these different states of being, these levels of being, and has transcended these cycles of manifestation of being and of cyclical existence. So again, this is not a theory. This is something we need to verify with experience. Typically when we think of reincarnation or return, we think of Hinduism or Buddhism, and typically do not acknowledge that this doctrine of transmigration of souls has existed even within Western doctrine. Sadly, it has been manipulated or taken out of the scriptures and the teachings of Christianity, especially. 
The Greek Mysteries of Transmigration
We find the Greek figure Pythagoras, who is a great master of the White Lodge: those souls that have transcended that wheel of becoming and have entered into a perfect state of peace and cognizance. Some people call them supermen, initiates, bodhisattvas. Pythagoras is precisely such an individual who taught that all beings and all things cycle and manifest in cyclical ways. As a result of that they suffer.
Now what’s interesting to note in this image we have Pythagoras. The name Pythagoras comes from pythios―which means or signifies the name of Apollo. Ἀπόλλων Apollo, in Greek, is “Christ,” a figure of the solar god, the sun deity. Pythagoras also has the name Agora which means “market,” marketplace. The serpent of the market, we could say, if we have studied German esotericism, we find the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who also knew this science, in which he explained how he tried to give this type of doctrine of the eternal return, which we are going to explain, to the public by teaching in the marketplace. Pythagoras precisely had the wisdom of the serpent in his teaching, the wisdom of sexual alchemy. As we explain, the serpent pertains to the divine Mother Kundalini. He was a great master who taught amongst the markets, teaching and gathering disciples, through the wisdom of the serpent, like Nietzsche did fictionally through his Iranian Prophet in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The word metampsychosis―if we break the word down―comes from the Greek μετεμψύχωσις, metempsychousthai. Meta refers to “after” or “beyond.” And empsychos means “to animate, so that which is beyond our animated form. Anima, in Latin means “soul,” as well. It pertains to how the soul animates different bodies within different existences, before and after one’s current state of knowledge. Meta also related with em, “to be within the soul,” psyche, metempsychosis. I’ll quote for you some early documentation about the teachings of Pythagoras which elaborates the doctrine of transmigration. On the subject of reincarnation Xenophanes bears witness in an elegy which begins `Now I will turn to another tale and show the way'. What he says about Pythagoras runs thus: Once they say that he was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said, "Stop, do not beat it. For it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue." ―Diogenes, Laertius 8.36
This is from Diogenes in his book Laertius, Book 8 Verse 36. So this is an early documentation about the teachings of transmigration. And now we’ll be specific to state that metempsychosis or transmigration pertains to the manifestation of the soul within different types of bodies, not just human body to human body. Because that pertains to return, and we’re going to explain more deeply.
A transmigration, first, is how the soul manifests from different elemental kingdoms of nature within different bodies, whether from the mineral state, the plant state, to the animal state, and then to the humanoid state. This cycle of how the soul migrates within different kingdoms of nature, through forces of evolution. It pertains to transmigration: how the soul migrates within different bodies, different types of bodies. Return pertains to how one manifests again and again within a specific type of body, whether mineral, plant, animal or humanoid. So return pertains to one’s return to the same type of body within a specific type of kingdom. We’re going to elaborate about these kingdoms more specifically. Pythagoras also teaches, or his doctrine was elaborated by Porphyry, in his Life of Pythagoras. None the less, the following became universally known: first, that he maintains that the soul is immortal; second, that it changes into other kinds of living things; third, that events recur in certain cycles and that nothing is ever absolutely new; and fourth, that all living things should be regarded as akin. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to bring these beliefs into Greece. ―Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 19
Those people who are of the Western type of mentally, who reject the doctrine of reincarnation or return, should study Pythagoras, because as a great master of the Greek doctrine, he explained and firmly taught these laws within nature.
It is interesting that we have this document here. It states that the soul is immortal. Einstein said energy is neither created or destroyed. It simply changes form. Energy becomes matter, matter becomes energy. The soul can change types or states of consciousness and form, but it is never lost. It simply migrates. Second, that it changes into other kinds of living things, like we mentioned. Third, that events recur in certain cycles and that nothing is ever absolutely new. This pertains to the doctrine of recurrence, how, in our life, certain states of being or mentality, our mind, our heart, or physical circumstances around us, constantly recur. In our physical life, we have many things that appear psychically and that we need to become aware of. This is recurrence. Return pertains to how the soul enters into new bodies within a specific kingdom. Return for us is a return into a new humanoid body. Return for animals is a return into a new animal body, whether it is an eagle or a serpent or whatever variety that exists. Return for plants pertains to animating new plant bodies. Even the minerals have a soul which transmit the vital forces of the earth. They too have physicality, body, within the minerals and metals. We say that the minerals and metals are the nervous system of the planet and that they too, have soul. 
You take a look at the Kirlian camera, I believe it was a Russian scientist, photographed how minerals and plants and animals have aura, have light, have an energy. Likewise, it is important to note that minerals have a type of life and soul and that we know them an gnomes and pygmies within different ancient-lore or Irish folklore, different traditions. And that the souls of plants also, or elementals of plants, have life and that they animate those physical bodies that we see as trees or flowers or different plants. Likewise, animals have soul, because the word anima means “soul.” People who affirm that animals don’t have a type of soul like many fundamentalist think, are completely mistaken. They should study the teachings of Pythagoras since Christianity is founded upon Greek dialectics and Greek teachings.
The Four Kingdoms
As we are explaining, there are different kingdoms within the department of nature. We use this image to explain the different kingdoms of elemental consciousness. This wheel or this diagram portrays those different kingdoms that I’ve just mentioned. When the soul first animates a new body, or manifests from the absolute source―we call it the Absolute; we call it the ocean of Christ, the light―the soul emanates down what we call the Tree of Life and Kabbalah, as different stages or degrees of matter, energy and consciousness, also reaching the physical plane, and the physical plane in that soul enters into mineral states.
That soul, or anima, animates mineral states. The minerals are of a very simple type of consciousness. But they are the life force of this planet. This mineral kingdom is needed to sustain our world as we know it, in terms of all the vitality and forces that plants receives, that the vitality of the water we drink relates to how the mineral forces are saturating this planet The soul transmigrates between these different kingdoms, initially though the force of what we call evolution. Evolution is “progression, development, growth.” The souls that are in the mineral kingdom need to gain experience within that kingdom, learning to transmit forces of Christ within the mineral and metal state for the benefit of the universe and of humanity. Once the soul has developed as a mineral, it can progress and evolve, enter or transmigrate into the plant kingdom, into plant states or plant forms. Likewise, the souls of plants also transmit energies. If we look at the trees or the flowers, how they reach up toward the space, it is because the energies of life are now initiating a return upward towards the source. Plants, the elemental souls of the plant kingdom, help transmit vital forces that are necessary for this planet. Once the soul has evolved and developed cognizance and mastery of the level of the plant kingdom, that soul transmigrates to the animal kingdom. It evolves to that state. Now in the animal kingdom, something unique happens. In the animal kingdom, the souls of the animals are given instinct. They receive a new type of psychology. They’re engrained with a type of instinctual force, given to them by gods, the angels or Elohim, that the Bible speaks of. This is a necessary stage within the evolution of the soul, because there are certain forces that are transmitted by the animals that are necessary for the planet. And now animals, they learn in this kingdom to perform what we call fornication. Fornication is the expulsion of the sexual energy. So in animals, that is natural. They obey the laws of nature. When they feel excited sexually, they copulate with their partner in order to procreate the species. This is a very natural tendency amongst animals. Now animals, they do so and they propagate their species and they gain experience within their consciousness, at that level. Now once they have finally progressed and gained a higher degree of consciousness within the animal kingdom, they can then enter or transmigrate into a humanoid body. Now what’s interesting to note is we don’t call this the human kingdom, as ironic as that might sound. We say humanoid, because really, all of us are animal souls that have reincarnated into human bodies. Again, remember that the word anima is “soul.” The special gift that the humanoids receive is the intellect. Now the intellect is a machine or vehicle that will allow us to learn to differentiate between good and evil. Animals, plants and minerals don’t know that difference. They don’t have intellect. They have a type of mind, a type of understanding or perception. But it is not intellectual. There’s no rationalization there. There’s no thesis/antithesis, theory/anti-theory, concept/anti-concept. That is a specific demarcation, the demarcation between the humanoid kingdom with the previous kingdoms. It is precisely that we have that intellect, and this a gift, that we need to learn how to use for divinity. That is why Samael Aun Weor, the founder of this tradition, stated, with clarity, that really, we are intellectual animals. Meaning: we are souls with intellect. We have not yet entered into what we call the “Human Kingdom.” 
If you look in this image, we find a diagram or a path leading upward from the humanoid kingdom toward what we call “the heavens,” the superior kingdoms, represented as the Tree of Life as we have in this book available here. Now, the word hum-an is interesting. The word hum is “spirit.” The word man is “manas” or “mind.” Being refers to divinity. So a human being is an individual that has incarnated into their being, has incarnated God, a mind that is fully united with hum, the spirit, divinity.
As we are now, we are not that. It is necessary to recognize this fact because, if we mediated, examined our mind, what we will find are a lot of disordered thoughts, worries, preoccupations, fears, frustrations, anger, resentment―negative psychological elements which had emerged initially from the animal kingdom. Now animals, due to the active fornication, the active expelling of that energy, the sexual force, in order to procreate, they develop what we call ego. But to a very minor degree. They develop a type of psychological element, sense of self, as a result of that act, because the sexual energy is creative. It needs to, in animals, it is used to create life, physical life. Likewise, this energy creates animal mind, or ego to a minor degree. The problem is once we have entered into the humanoid kingdom, we carry these animal tendencies within our psyche. Notice that in the Bible when Adam and Eve, symbol of primordial humanity, were in the garden, they were told specifically, told by Jehovah Elohim, in Hebrew meaning the Tetragrammaton of Gods and Goddesses, the Holy Spirit, “In this Tree of Knowledge you shall not eat, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die. The trees of the Garden you may freely eat from, the Tree of Life.” Symbolically, it is representing how the soul on that level initially knew God and experienced the entire Tree of Life, representing the human being in his totality, reflecting the light of God. But humanity, using the intellect to justify animal passion, did not obey that commandment given by divinity towards that ancient humanity, which is lost within our memory within these times, but is well documented within ancient traditions. Humanity indulged in that forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which we precisely state is the sexual energy, the most powerful force that we carry within our psyches, and within our bodies, in our spirit, in our mind. This energy, which has been evolving progressively through the inferior kingdoms, has complicated itself and manifested itself finally into a humanoid body, in which the souls have finally entered into humanoid state. The problem is that with the intellect, human beings have used it to justify animal passion, as I stated, which is the expulsion of that sexual energy. This in itself fortifies those animalistic elements called ego: anger, pride, vanity, laziness, lust, etcetera. The human beings of the superior kingdom, the angels, the Elohim, obey the sixth commandment of Moses, “Though shall not fornicate.” Meaning: to use that energy in purity. The angels told that ancient humanity, “Well, previously you used that energy to procreate as animals. Now you can’t do that anymore if you want to enter into the higher kingdoms.” 
Evolution and Devolution: The Mechanicity of Nature
Notice that evolution, as a process or development of the soul, takes the soul and transmigrates from these different kingdoms to the humanoid state through the process of evolution, meaning: there’s no effort involved. It is mechanical. It is a way that’s taking one up like a wheel, or a ferry ride, or a Ferris wheel. At the top, the soul has a choice: to follow superior laws or to continue with animal passion, to indulge in those negative psychological elements and fortify them. As we see in this image, we have a devolving current, meaning a retrogressive descent, back into those inferior kingdoms.
The force of devolution pertains to destruction, or disintegration, retrogression: to go backwards. Those souls that don’t enter into the human kingdom, the kingdom of the angels, let themselves be swallowed by the devolving forces of nature, because if those souls do not want to enter the kingdom of the human beings, the angels, if they don’t willingly want to destroy their defects by working with tantra and alchemy, to ascend inward and upward, to God, unfortunately they have to be disintegrated in the process known as hell. Now hell refers to not only to a place, but a state of suffering. What religions call hell is really a type of, we can call, recycling plant, as a type of analogy. It’s not an eternal place of damnation where no one ever escapes. That is a ludicrous interpretation. Instead, it’s a retrogressive decline back into animal bodies, into plant bodies, into mineral bodies as the soul transmigrates back down towards the interior of the earth. This is known as the submerged mineral kingdom, or the abyss, hell, Avitchi, Tartarus, the infernos, given different names in different traditions. That’s in order that the soul can be liberated from the ego that has swallowed it, that has encapsulated it, because ego takes the soul and conditions it in a shell. This is the meaning of the Genie of Aladdin’s lamp. You break the shell, you break the lamp, you free the genie, which is the soul that can produce miracles. But sadly, those who don’t want to disintegrate their ego, well, actually as an act of compassion by divinity, those souls are retrogressively sent down into the inferior kingdoms, descending down into the interior of the earth, in order to be disintegrated. We’re going to elaborate on this further. But that’s in order that the ego can be destroyed. That’s in order that those negative psychological elements can be eliminated so that the soul, the genie, can be liberated, and released back into nature. Now this is a cycle that I mentioned to you. Many souls, they ascend through evolution up the different kingdoms and achieve a humanoid body, but choose to follow the devolving path, to let themselves be swallowed by nature, and therefore they retrogress and go back towards these inferior kingdoms until entering into the abyss or hell to be disintegrated. When the soul is liberated, it enters again into a mineral state and the cycle continues. This is a type of repetition or transmigration that we need to be aware of, not just intellectually, but from experience. 
The Path of Revolutionary Self-Transformation
Now, we study the laws of the superior kingdoms. If we are in these studies, or interested in these studies, it is because we are tired of suffering, of repeating cyclical events in life. And deep down in the soul, we yearn not to be swallowed by nature, to be disintegrated in the inferior kingdoms, or the kingdoms of the abyss. Now to escape that, we need to follow the commandments of Jehovah Elohim, which is in the Bible, “Thou shall not fornicate,” and to willingly work on ourselves with the practices given in this tradition so that we can ascend towards heaven, through our practical work.
Now, this teaching was also given by the Sufi initiates such as Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi, or simply known as Rumi in the West. And many Sufis are not aware, not many individuals are aware, that we find this even in Middle Eastern doctrine, the esoteric teachings of Islam. Rumi explained this: I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
Then he elaborates that if we want to ascend towards God, we need to transcend the state of the humanoid person, the humanoid, in order to become an angel. This path that we discussed previously is the path of revolution. It means that it takes a particular effort on our part in order to actualize divinity within us and to develop it.
Yet once more I shall die as Man, (or humanoid, human person) to soar with angels blest; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
We are interested in becoming angels, and the angels are interested to coming closer to God, but that’s another level and would take other lectures to discuss. But here we’re just discussing how we want to transcend this wheel of return―transmigration, better said. And later Rumi says:
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence (meaning the absolute from which we emerged, that great source of divinity from which the gods emerged) proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return (which is a very famous teaching in Islam). ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi 
Ego, Essence, and Personality in the Bible
Now, in the next graphic we have what we denominate the three aspects of gnostic psychology, which we’ve been discussing already. It is important to understand what in us returns into new bodies and what in us needs to be worked on and eliminated if we want to unite with divinity. The Bible talks about three principle characters, which are essential to understanding our psychology.
As I’ve been mentioning, we have the ego, which we can call Cain, in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. From what happened in the original story was that Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, meaning they abused of that sacred sexual power and did not use it for divine purposes and therefore, they were expelled. Literally the word Eden means “bliss.” All the many theologians and philosophers have argued that it was God who expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden. The truth is that we expelled ourselves. Literally there is an expulsion of energy, the expulsion of the energies of bliss, when there is an orgasm, when there is the abuse of the sexual power. So willingly, as a result of following our animal passion, we continued along the path of procreation as animals instead of using that energy to create the soul within. When Adam and Eve were expelled, we had this excerpt from the Book of Genesis, chapter 4 verses 1-2. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from יהוה (Jehovah, Allah, the Lord). And she again bare his brother Abel (Habel). And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. ―Genesis 4:1-2
So “Adam knew his wife.” This means, to have knowledge of one’s wife is to engage in the sexual act, whether as animals or as angels, because the angels are born from sex, the same way that a physical body can be born from sex. The soul can also be created through that energy, and this is the teachings of tantra. Now if we abuse of that energy, we create Cain. So, these are not just people who live in the past, but archetypes: symbols of elements within our interior that we need to understand. Through the act of fornication, of abusing the energy, we heavily fortify the mind, the intellect, and strengthen animal passion.
So, Eve said, “I have gotten a man from Jehovah” because יהוה Jah-Chavah is sexual energy. The power of Christ is within the sexual matter. She said, “I gave birth to Cain as a result of my energy.” And she again bore his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of the sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Now it is important to know that within alchemy Adam is not just representing man within the past, but refers to the brain. Eve, or חַוָה Havah, literally means “mother of the living.” It refers to the sexual organs, whether in man or in woman. So, Adam and Eve represent aspects of our physiology and our psychology, the mind, Adam, and Eve, Havah. It is precisely through this energy, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, because it was Eve that took fruit from the tree, meaning the sexual organs indulged in passion, in lust, and expelled that energy: ate from the forbidden fruit. She then gave it to Adam, to the brain, and said, “This feels wonderful. Taste this. Taste the orgasm.” So the brain is the one that received the effects afterward and then justified, “Oh this is a good feeling.” However, they realized that they were naked, meaning: they lost their connection with their divinity and they felt the absence of God within them. This is the esoteric meaning of Genesis. So later, I mean they were expelled by Jehovah Elohim, by Jehovah. Then Adam knew his wife again, Eve. And through that energy again, created Cain. Cain is the type of mind that we have in these times, which is solely based on the senses, is very materialistic. This is what it means to be a tiller of the ground: only concerned with physical things, our job, our money, our career, our family, supporting ourselves physically, being identified with the senses. All of us are tillers of the ground. We are occupied with physical things. We are typically not keepers of sheep. Sheep, in esotericism refers to, “the lamb of Christ”―sheep, lamb, ram. Jesus is referred to as the sacrificial lamb. To be a keeper of sheep is to work with the energy known as Christ. Those of us who entered into these types of studies, we work with mantra, and if we’re married, we work in alchemy, conserving the energies in order to become keeper of sheep, to develop those principles of Christ within us. If we remember the story, Cain killed Abel. This refers to how our own ego, our own anger and pride and vanity and lust, kills the soul. Whenever we identify with any negative element in our mind, our heart, our body, we kill our soul. We destroy our consciousness. We deepen our suffering. We feed our consciousness and trap our soul within the cages of the ego, the mind. It is important to understand these principles, because our ego is the shell that cages our soul and prevents us from knowing God. Likewise, we study these principles because it is the ego and the Essence, or the ego and the soul, Cain and Abel, that constantly reincorporate into new bodies. When we ask ourselves, well, what is it that returns to a new humanoid body? It is our ego and our soul, constantly returning to new bodies. Whenever we enter a new body, or have entered into new bodies, we develop what is called a personality. Personality pertains to one’s customs, language, name, heredity, culture, things that are extrinsic, particularly relating to physical things. That develops typically within the years four to seven within a child, and it is by developing a personality, which the Latin word persona means “masks,” we relate to the world. That’s how the ego can reincorporate. The ego needs its personality in order to manifest in the physical body, which is explained in books like Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology. But in synthesis, we talk about ego and essence and personality. Now in the Bible, personality pertains to a figure known as Nimrod. Now Nimrod was the one who built the Tower of Babel, or we know it as the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel represents all the gibberish that we find in our planet, whether in politics, systems that state that they promote freedom and equality for all, but in fact are degenerate and destructive. We find this type of babble and incoherence within religions that teach that one is easily saved without having to work on oneself. We find this type of babble in the personality, in all the wars that have existed on this planet with our humanity. The reason why, or let me explain further, in the myth, Nimrod was building this tower of Babel to heaven. And God, indignant, confounded humanity, and humanity then separated into different languages, and customs, and types of people, groups. Because in the past, it was stated in the Bible that “Humanity spoke one language.” When humanity was pure, they spoke only the language of God, called the “Pure Golden Language.” As a result of entering into fornication, the mind, or one, creates anger and all of these negative psychological elements, the ego. That in turn, creates division, and later manifests and propagated itself within different groups and cultures, where people began to experience a greater sense of separation. Different languages developed. Different customs and culture developed. That’s personality. Personality is a type of energy, and its crystalized within our body, within our psyche, within ourselves, here and now, so that we learn how to interact with the world. Either the soul or the ego can use the personality. Now we want to use our personality, our ways of dealing with the world, our customs, our job, our language, in a conscious way, using it with the soul. But typically what happens is that our ego complicates things, fortifies things. Therefore, the personality becomes very degenerated as well. And really, we create our own towers of babble. In each life that we enter into, we create new problems for ourselves, just in a different language, maybe or a different type of culture, a different type of existence. We have here in this, the book of Genesis, Chapter 10 verses 8 through 10: And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before יהוה: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before יהוה. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. ―Genesis 10:8-10
So what does it mean that Nimrod, the personality, is a mighty hunter? It means that with our personalities we are always constantly hunting after things. People, comedians, politicians, have very strong personalities and people feel attracted to that. Now, the personality is something that is born in one life and is disintegrated when that soul disincarnates. That soul reincorporates into a new body. The personality is something that is not immutable. It is something that is transient. People who are very clairvoyant and who look in graveyards, they often will see the personalities of the dead, mistaking them as the soul, or consciousness, or ghost of that person. They see the really the energy of that person, which is the personality. When that personality is very strong, it can even move physical things. Many people have documented this type of phenomenon. But a personality is born in life and then it dies in the grave, basically. The personality does not return. There’s always a new building. There’s always a new Tower of Babel that we create in each life, which creates problems for ourselves.
The doctrine of return was taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. He explained in the scripture how it is really the ego, and the soul, the consciousness or Essence, that reincorporates into new physical bodies. Now in these studies we teach that we are granted 108 opportunities within humanoid bodies, in order to perform this work that we call self-realization, to enter the path of tantra, to follow the commandments of Jehovah Elohim, so that, like in the Bible, we can create Seth. So if you remember the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve begot Cain and Abel. Abel was killed and later Adam and Eve, Adam knew his wife again, and begot Seth. Seth is an archetype referring to working in alchemy, but it would take another lecture to explain the meaning of that. 
Zodiacal Influences
But here we are discussing how the soul and the ego reincorporate and that we have 108 opportunities within humanoid bodies. The reason being is that we have 12 zodiacal signs. We incorporate within each zodiacal sign 9 times. 9 refers to, in Kabbalah, the secret teachings of alchemy, or Yesod, the foundation, the sexual energy. In order for us to gain experience with different types of personalities, learning about different ways of being, we are born 9 times within each zodiacal sign, so that we gain experience and become more rounded as a psyche. The problem is that we typically are not aware of where we came from or where we’re going. Therefore, we need to learn to meditate, so that we can comprehend where it is we came from. Yes?
Question: I have a question. What about this esoteric astrology? Where do they say that, at least in this incarnation, a competent astrologist says, think Steiner said it “This is the math of the soul”? Instructor: These are certain tendencies that are manifested within certain horoscopes. I don’t suggest, as you know, the pop-horoscopes that people propagate. But esoteric astrology, which is very profound, there are certain tendencies we can learn about the type of personality that we develop in relationship to the zodiacal sign of which we belong. That will guide us to certain understandings of how to relate to the world. Question: What happened in a previous incarnation? Is there a link there? Instructor: The truth is, say for instance, if we’re in the sign of Libra, it probably means that we’ve already been in that sign many times. So, we have the zodiacal influences within ourselves here and now. We’re just not aware of it. It just happens to be that in this current incarnation, we are manifesting a specific tendency. So it is important to understand what is that chief characteristic, tendency, that we’re manifesting through the zodiac in which we are born in this life. It does relate to our past lives, because we’ve all developed under different zodiacal signs and they all relate. And we need to comprehend them. Yes? Question: Isn’t it true too that, regardless of what your suns sign is in a particular life, in the books they talk about “your ray,” one of the seven, and that’s the continuous thing. Is that what you belong to? Instructor: Yes, and we talk about in these studies the seven rays, which relates to God. Here we’re talking about the personality, which is transient. We develop many personalities. We discard them in each life. The spiritual way pertains to our inner divinity within, which is eternal. Question: So are you saying that the zodiac sign influences your personality, or your ego? Or both? Instructor: It pertains to our personality, but also, certain egos relate to certain tendencies in the personality. Because when we are all masked at a party for instance, I’m not sure if you studied Shakespeare, but there’s a certain play where characters were dressed in masks and they’re playing a role as a result of the mask that they wore. So they were exhibiting certain tendencies as a result of the performance they’re doing. Persona is the mask of the personality in how we relate to others. It does relate to certain egos that we have. Also, there’s certain positive influences in the zodiac that pertain to the soul. In the book Practical Astrology, the soul can manifest certain tendencies which are superior, relating to a zodiac. So it relates to all of that, but for us, we want to know how that relates to our personality, because our personality is very centered on the negative influence of our zodiac. Comment: Just want to add to that. People say “I’m this” and that’s a big generalization. People have studied these prominent astrologies. There’s so much to it. I mean, what they call aspects, what they call planet in the sign, how it relates in the sextiles―and it gets complicated. So the sun sign is general. Then they’ll have what they call the moon sign, which is very important. Then the rising sign. Those are key. From what I read, I’m just giving you a consensus to what they’re saying. But then when you get into what they call the aspects, the good things, the negative things in other words, in math, that’s why these competent astrologers, they take some time. It gets involved. That’s all. Instructor: And it’s a deep science, which would take many lectures. It would take a whole course to explain it. But in terms of our personality, and our ego, and our essence, the zodiac― we are born in each zodiac. We need to study our zodiac, because its just going to tell us about our personality, certain tendencies that we have. Now in each life, we return to a certain zodiac and we’re granted, as I said, 108 lives―opportunities―in order to enter the path of self-realization. 
Return in the Bhagavad-Gita
So, the Master Krishna spoke to our Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, teaching this:
18. These bodies of the embodied Self (Atman, the Innermost Being, who is our own Father within), which is eternal, indestructible and immeasurable, are said to have an end (meaning the bodies are said to have an end). Therefore, fight, O Arjuna! 19. He who takes the Self to be the slayer and he who thinks He is slain, neither of them knows; He slays not nor is He slain. ―Bhagavad-Gita 2
He is giving a teaching here about the need to enter the path of self-realization, because the body will die, but the soul and ego will continue on. If we don’t develop our consciousness by working on the ego, by disintegrating it through meditation, by working with sexual energy, whether in mantras or working in a matrimony, we cannot enter into that straight path mentioned by Jesus, the path of revolution of the consciousness, to return to God and ascend to the higher kingdoms.
Krishna continues with atman, the spirit, our inner God: 20. He is not born nor does He ever die; after having been, He again ceases not to be. Unborn, eternal, changeless and ancient, He is not killed when the body is killed, 21. Whosoever knows Him to be indestructible, eternal, unborn and inexhaustible, how can that man slay, O Arjuna, or cause to be slain? 22. Just as a man casts off worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so also the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters others that are new (so like Rumi said, “Why worry?” in a sense. People are terrified of death, physically. They ignore that they may be given an opportunity to return to a new body depending on karma).
And as I said Rumi mentioned the same thing, “When was I less by dying?”
What is important, this teaching by Krishna, if we don’t constantly work to destroy our defects, then nature will come and swallow us, because in order to be saved in Christian soteriology―the doctrine of salvation―we need to eliminate our defects so that we can return to God. This is the path of the cross taught by master Jesus. The other option is to allow oneself to be swallowed by nature. At the end of one’s 108 humanoid bodies, if one still has not made any effort to change, then there is no other choice but for that soul within the ego to be disintegrated, or the ego, that person, to be disintegrated by nature. Disintegration within Hell
As representative in The Divine Comedy, the Inferno, where Dante, taken by his master Virgil, descends through the different inferior spheres of the Klipoth―the interior dimensions of the earth. This doesn’t mean that physically there are people in the earth suffering, but within the interior dimensions of nature, there are different beings that suffer.
If you remember the image of the Bhavacakra we showed, there are the hell beings who are trapped within that realm, being disintegrated by their own passion and by the forces of nature, which are exerting themselves, which are like the earth crushing coal in order to eliminate its impurities to produce a diamond, the liberated Essence.
Dante here in this image, is with Virgil looking at the lost souls with the ninth sphere. So there’s nine heavens and nine hells we say in the Kabbalah. In the ninth sphere, we see souls that are disintegrating within the interior of the earth. They’re frozen at their neck up, or their bodies are lodged in place being destroyed, and the forces of nature are slowly disintegrating their ego.
We didn’t mention previously, but we elaborate that in relation to the development of the soul within the forces of evolution, upon entering the mineral kingdom, the soul receives certain bodies. Now, not only does the soul receive a physical body as a mineral, but also what we call internal bodies, or lunar bodies. These are gifts of nature that allow that soul to exist in superior dimensions, known as heaven, which we can access in the dream state. The souls develop within their lunar bodies, those vehicles that belong to nature, in order to progress up the different kingdoms. Those lunar bodies develop and grow as a result of those forces. Even upon entering the humanoid kingdom, we have the lunar bodies. And the problem is that our soul manifesting in those bodies, if it does not make the effort to change, the ego really integrates with those lunar bodies and nature, in a sense, swallows her own children, as in the law, “To eat or be eaten.” Those forces take those bodies, along with the soul, down into the interior kingdoms to be disintegrated. So what we see here are the souls within their lunar bodies being disintegrated. These are vehicles for the soul to manifest. Question: Does that have anything to do with, Saturn devoured his children or something? Comment: Kronos. Yes Saturn is Kronos too. Question: That’s the same analogy you’re making here? Instructor: Saturn is death. Really we can say that mother nature really attempts to swallow her own children. This is the meaning of the Goddess Kali in Hinduism, the inverted aspect of Kali, which is the one who devours her children. Shakespeare had a play called Titus Andronicus, and which, if you’re not familiar with it, a man gets revenge on this woman, his enemy, by secretly killing her children and then feeding it to her. Symbolically hidden in that is that she represents Kali eating her own children, eating her soul. Now, this path devolving and entering into inferior states, those lunar bodies are disintegrated along with the ego, by the forces of nature. Comment: You said right now that Dante, in some of the books, was translated in the Italian language, it’s the same thing though when you translate it. It’s kind of really depressing. He was a little more graphic the way he described it in this book. A dry comedy. It was a sign, a cave with fumes coming out, and over the top was written in Latin: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Instructor: Right. But there’s hope for us. The truth is even the souls that really want to change can be helped. Even though it says “abandon all hope,” well, there are many who are completely lost. But there are some that can be saved. As evidence, if you read a book called The Revolution of Beelzebub, a prince of demons repents. So even demons can change. Question: Is the 108 lives strict, or if someone was really trying to change and ran out of time, is there any mercy for people? Instructor: Yeah, there’s mercy. The law of karma is mercy and severity. There’s always opportunities if the soul is working. If they reach their 108th life and they’re showing, they’re demonstrating they want to continue on the path, they’re going to get another body. They’re going to be helped. Also, the soul is granted extra help by creating the solar bodies too, particularly in the relationship with the solar astral body, which we are going to explain. Now Homer said: It is better to be a beggar upon earth than a king in the kingdom of darkness. ―Homer
And Samael Aun Weor, states the following about this path of transmigration in his book The Magic of the Runes:
Therefore, the descent into the tenebrous worlds is a backward trip through the devolving path. It is a downfall into an always increasing density, within obscurity and rigidity. It is a return, a repetition of the animal, plant, and mineral states, in short, a return into the primitive chaos. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
And that chaos is within the interior of the earth, in the inferior dimensions, in which we find precisely, the soul is disintegrating as in this image, where lost souls are being dissolved, such in the lake of the ninth sphere, the frozen lake where they’re being disintegrated.
To continue: The souls of the abyss are liberated with the Second Death. These souls receive the token for their freedom when the ego and the lunar bodies are reduced to dust. The souls who are coming from the interior of the earth, who are marked by the frightful subterranean trip and covered with dust, convert themselves into gnomes of the mineral kingdom, then later into elementals of the plant kingdom, further into animals, and finally they reconquer the lost human state. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
So the second death mentioned in the Book of Revelation, pertains to when the lunar bodies and the ego are disintegrated in the ninth sphere. But it doesn’t mean, like religion says, that there is eternal damnation, that one is in hell forever. It doesn’t mean that. It refers to eternity. Eternity is a circle, and that eternity has its own sense of temporality, of time―not linear, but circular. To suffer eternal damnation means to suffer within eternity. It doesn’t mean it is punishment without end. That would be ludicrous, because divinity is merciful.
The second death is necessary to free those souls from the hell realms, so the souls can evolve again up the elemental kingdoms. This is the wise doctrine of Transmigration taught in foregone times by Krishna, the Hindustani Master. Millions of souls who died within the inferno are now playing as gnomes upon the rocks. Other souls are now delectable plants, or are living within animal creatures and longing to return to the human state. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes The Aeneid and Roman Esotericism
It should not be surprising, that this teaching should not necessarily be for scholars of religion, something that is unusual. Because we find this teaching of return, or reincorporation, of transmigration, and the descent into the inferior kingdoms explained in many cosmogonies and theologies, especially within The Aeneid by Virgil, which is probably one of the most well-read documentations of Latin literature.
In the poem―describing Aeneas, the Trojan paladin who escapes the burning of Troy in order to found the kingdom of Italy, or Lavinium, to propagate his people―it represents how the soul is entering into the superior path, performing the exodus, we could say, like Moses, ascending up back to the Promised Land of Jehovah, the Tree of Life. In the poem, Aeneas comes upon an island where they’re ripping off the branches to perform a ritual, a ritual ceremony for fire, one of the trees starts to bleed and a voice cries out from it. The soldiers and Aeneas are alarmed when they hear this proclamation from this soul within the tree. Why do you tear my poor flesh, Aeneas? Take pity now on the man who is buried here and do not pollute your righteous hands. I am not stranger to you. It was Troy that bore me and this is not a tree that is oozing blood. Escape, I beg you, from these cruel shores, from this land of greed. It is Polydorus that speaks. This is where I was struck down and an iron crop of weapons covered my body. Their sharp points have rooted and grown in my flesh. ―Virgil, The Aeneid 
In this image we have, again, a picture from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The tree, the people who are the souls that are trapped within the bodies of trees, are suffering in these forms, tormented by the harpies―which are, what we say “witches” or “sorceresses” who take on the form of birds. With their humanoid faces intact, they are inflicting suffering on these souls that are devolving within these trees, within these elemental forms, within hell. Samael Aun Weor states the following in The Magic of the Runes:
Since the ancient times of Arcadia, when worship to the gods of the four elements of the universe and to the deities of the tender corn was still performed, the old hierophants, with their hair growing white with wisdom, never ignored the multiplicity of the “I.” Is it then rare, perchance, for any one of these many entities that constitute the ego to seize itself to life with much obsession and to be re-born in a tree? ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
The ego is not singular, but multiple. Each negative emotion in itself is an ego, a sense of self that can either reincorporate into new bodies, or as a gift of divinity, can be sent down into the infernal kingdoms to give help to the soul to which the ego belongs.
The ego is multiple, and when we examine our mind, each negative type of thought or feeling or emotion is separate. It’s a different type of entity. As taught by the great masters, we have this understanding that the ego is multiple and that, as a gift of grace, not all of our egos will manifest within the same body that we have. Sometimes, when reincorporating into a new humanoid body, certain egos are lost. Certainly, the most perverse egos are sent down into the inferno to be disintegrated as a gift of mercy. 
This particularly relates to the myth of the centaurs. Now, we have in this image, I believe it’s Athena or Minerva, her Romanized name, soothing or trying to ease the suffering of a centaur. A centaur is half human half animal. That’s really us. We are half humanoid. We have, really, the physical body of a human, but our mind is animal.
Another meaning of centaur is a being that has divinity within, has created what we call the solar bodies, but still has the ego to eliminate. A centaur is really a split being. We call them hasnamussen, beings with a split-polarity, one with development in God, but still the ego has not been fully eliminated. So, Minerva is offering grace to this being. Certain beings are given that, really, I would say all of us are given, that help. When we’ve reincorporated into a new body, certain egos are lost, and the less perverse egos are given into our body in order for us to work on them. Samael Aun Weor states the following in The Magic of the Runes, elaborating on the points we made: Another case comes into my memory, that of Pythagoras and his friend who was reincorporated into a poor dog. But, is it not perhaps true that the centaurs are assisted? What are the legends of the centuries telling us? These epic warriors (centaurs) who fell bleeding among the helmets and bucklers of those who gloriously died for the love of their people and their country, receive a well-deserved extra help when they return into this world.
It’s an act of mercy, really. If we really had all of our egos, especially the worst ones, manifesting in our psyche at the level in which we are, we would be suffering a lot more. In many cases, really, we are given help. The centaurs, those initiates who develop the solar bodies or the superior vehicles of the soul, have received a special grace. Lunar bodies pertain to bodies given by nature. Solar bodies signify what is meant by Jesus to “be born again,” precisely through tantra, the path of the cross, to create spiritual vehicles that can manifest divinity within which relates to reincarnation, that we’re going to explain.
Recurrence and Karma: The Infallible Law of Causality
In this image we have the wheel of fortune, the wheel of the centuries, the wheel of karma. Everything we’ve been explaining pertains to transmigration, or return: how the soul migrates into different bodies, into the different kingdoms. Now we’re going to talk about the laws that relate to our current physical life, pertaining to karma, which we also call recurrence. The law of recurrence pertains to karma.
In this image, we have the wheel of fortune, which can also be equated with the Bhavacakra, as well. In this image we have fortune that is blind, is rotating the wheel of destiny, in which the poor are elevated and the rich are denigrated, they descend.
Carl Orff beautifully represented the suffering of this mechanical wheel in his Carmina Burana, a great initiatic work of art. It is a choral piece.
People often think fortune is some blind law that is controlled or managed by some outside external being, some external entity. They say, “Well, Justin emis blind. God is blind. It is causing my suffering and it is ignoring my pain and has no mercy.” This is an ignorant perspective to take, because the one that is blind in this image is us. The truth is we all have power over our own destiny if we take control of it. As Hamlet stated in, or as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them” (Hamlet Act III, ll. 57-61). Either to be swallowed through nature, devolving into hell or to revolt against those forces, in order to unite with God―to be or not to be. All of us are constantly receiving the results of our past actions, whether in this life or in previous lives. Recurrence pertains to the cycle or manifestation of events that have their roots in past lives and past actions, as well. कर Karma in Sanskrit literally means, “deed.” Coming from the root word क kri, which means “to do, make, cause and effect.” The word karman means “to act.” It refers to cause and effects, causality. It does not mean a blind law in which we suffer a lot as a result. It refers to the equilibration of forces as a result of our past actions. So, if we were evil in a past life, we will receive the results of our actions of that life. If we inflicted harm on another person, that person will return and come back in our life as a recurrence and will inflict that same harm on is. This is the law of the Talion. Now typically, we identify too much with our situations, the recurrent themes of our life, and we have many psychological songs in which we justify our suffering. We all have that to a degree. The thing is to realize that we are the ones responsible for our own actions and therefore we can receive superior results if we learn to fulfill what we call Karma Yoga, helping others do good deeds, so that we can cancel out our past karma, and also recurring events that are negative in nature. This law is fundamental even within Christianity, Judaism, and a Islam, not just Hinduism or Buddhism. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ―Galatians 6:7.
So recurrence pertains to, say for instance, if we committed adultery in the past, in a past life. When meeting that partner again, karma will be in action and that individual may commit adultery against us as a type of equilibration of forces. If we did evil, we have to receive evil. Whatever we do we receive the result. Therefore, if we are not in control of our own mind, as we stated in the beginning about the Dhammapada, “mind precedes phenomena, we become what we think.” If we don’t comprehend this law in action, then we are always going to suffer as a result of our mistake and actions.
Question: What about your thinking? Instructor: Exactly. What we are internally determines our life and also attracts our life. Events constantly repeat themselves so long as the ego is there. The ego that is responsible for certain crimes or conflicts in our lives, relating to past lives, is constantly fulfilling its own, enacting itself according to its own conditioning. Now, if we let ourselves be controlled by our mind, then we receive the results. The ego is an actor. Samael Aun Weor states in Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology how we are constantly playing the same dramas, tragedies, comedies, etc., on the screen of life. If you kill the actor, the drama is over. If you kill the actor, there’s no more comedy. Instead, you have a superior way of life. So, we need to comprehend the ego and annihilate it, so we cease to repeat life in a mistaken way. 
The Three Eternals
The Buddha said that there are three eternal things in life that pertain to this doctrine of recurrence, and karma, as well as cosmological teachings. There is the law, karma, which is eternal; there is nirvana; and then there is space. These are eternal things within nature.
The law pertains to the law of equilibrium. Scientists call it “invariance,” in which any energy that is enacted from a certain point of origin must always return to that point of origin in order to balance itself. Therefore, psychologically speaking, we need to understand how this applies to us, because if we constantly argue with our friends, our family, our spouse, feeding our anger, that energy that we expel outward is going to come back at us. Therefore, we have to receive the results of our actions. Now what we need to understand is nirvana, because nirvana in Sanskrit means “cessation.” Cessation pertains to the elimination of the causes of our suffering, which is heaven. Heaven is a state of being. It is also a place, the superior dimensions of nature. But more importantly, it refers to here and now as a psychological state. We need to understand cessation and the causes of our suffering, according to Buddhism, if we want to enter a superior way of life. Then there’s space, which is the eternal root origin of our Being. We call it the Absolute. We call it the emptiness: shunyata. We call it Allah. We call is Christ, the source of all creation of all beings. It’s emptiness is not an abstract nihilism, nor is it a complete negation of all things. Instead it is a type of being that can only be comprehended through meditation and experience. In relation to this Buddhist doctrine, understanding the impermanent nature of phenomena is how we learn to comprehend our ego, because when we see how our egos’ physical sense of self is transient, how anger emerges in concurrence with causes and conditions and then disappears, how certain emotional states come and go, how they recur, how they repeat themselves, it is by comprehending this relationship to external phenomena that we comprehend that our internal states are really empty, and that anger is not eternal. It’s a transient emotional state, a mistaken perception of self, which traps our consciousness and makes us suffer. When we comprehend that it is intrinsically really empty, that no ego is independent of anything else, there’s nothing eternal about it. There are certain causes and conditions, certain karmas, that propel and enact that ego to manifest within a certain situation. We understand that that sense of self is really empty, and this is how we learn to comprehend the ego―comprehending that no defect is intrinsically existing of itself. There’s always causes and conditions upon which is depends. 
Spiritual Creation through Liberated Will
Nietzsche, who was a German initiate at one point, explains this teaching in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra, precisely the concepts we’ve been discussing. In this image we have the Iranian Prophet, Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, holding in his right hand the staff of the initiates with a golden orb and serpent rotating around it. That serpent is the power of the Divine Mother and the staff represents the spinal column upon which the Kundalini rises in the teachings of alchemy, as we teach. What is interesting is that in his with his left hand, he’s performing in Buddhism what’s known as the vitarka mudra. Nietzsche is very famous for postulating in his book, the Doctrine of the Eternal Return, which we are going to be explaining.
Now, in Buddhism, this mudra, hand posture, is supposed to represent the transmission of a teaching from the Buddha, or from any buddha really. What is interesting is that we have a circle formed by our index finger and our thumb, which relates to the cycle of recurrence, or return. Then, with the three fingers, representing the three primary forces of nature, the power of Christ: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Or in Kabbalah: Kether, Chokmah, Binah. The trinity is the light of God that manifests from the Absolute, and it is through this trinity that we learn to create a spiritual life. These are not people, anthropomorphic figures, but energies. In order to overcome the wheel of samsara, or the wheel of becoming, the eternal return in the circle, we need to work with the three primary forces, which is what we do when we practice alchemy. Man and woman united, masculine, feminine, affirmative force, negative force, and then the sexual act, reconciliation, the synthesis, are the three forces in action. That is how we create spiritually. Nietzsche talks about this very beautifully in his book, particularly in the section called, “Upon the Blessed Isles”: Creation―that is the great redemption from suffering and life’s growing light. But that the creator may be, suffering is needed and much change. Indeed, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators. Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
Creation is redemption from suffering. Meaning: to create the soul precisely through alchemy in the higher stages of the path. It is also “life’s growing light.” We generate light precisely by working with our sexual energy to create spiritually. But in order for the creator to be, we need to suffer, meaning, we need to willingly take on and be responsible for our own suffering, the causes of our own afflictions, to take responsibility for what we did in the past, in order to recognize our faults. Karma comes back at us for past actions, whether in this life or in previous lives, and we learn to take it with a sense of rectitude. Instead of complaining about it, we use it to see those egos that manifest within a given psychological circumstance, so that we can die in those defects. Indeed, “there must be much bitter dying in your life.” He didn’t say that the path to salvation is easy. Instead, we need to suffer a lot so that ego emerges that’s causing our suffering, and comprehend it in meditation so that we can annihilate it.
“Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence.” So the doctrine of impermanence― same thing Nietzsche is teaching here―is how nothing is stable in this universe. Everything is dependent on something else, and it is by recognizing the empty nature of phenomena that we cease to be so attached to external phenomena, so that our ego has less power over us. It is in that way, by comprehending the ego, that we annihilate it, gradually. To be the child who is newly born, the creator must also want to be the mother who gives birth and the pangs of the birth-giver. Verily, through a hundred souls I have already passed on my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth pangs (people who see that Nietzsche was an atheist at one point are mistaken. This is really teaching that, well, he’s been in many bodies, has been through many cradles and birth pangs). Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heart-rending last hours (because at one point, before he deviated, he was developing a lot of understanding in himself. He remembered his past lives and was explaining these teachings about the return of all things). But thus my creative will, my destiny, wills it. Or, to say it more honestly: this very destiny―my will wills.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
So what does this mean, “my creative will”?
Creation pertains to the trinity above. So the Kabbalah, if you look in this diagram, we have ten spheres, ten sephiroth. Above is the trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. In the middle, in the center of the Tree of Life, we have the sphere known as Tiphereth, which is willpower. Creative will pertains to how Christ manifests within the soul, within the heart. Because if we take this image and transpose it on a human being, the middle sephirah, or sphere, relates to the heart, Tiphereth. So creative will, he’s speaking Kabbalistically, how the trinity, the will to create manifests within the soul, within the human psyche.
This is important to understand in relation to his teaching, “Thus, my creative will, my destiny wills it.” The fact is that he is entering this path, “Or, to say it more honestly: this very destiny―my will wills.” Most of us talk about destiny as its some kind of outside thing that is influencing us. Few people have really exemplified how with their own willpower they can create their destiny. Karma is not a blind law. It can be overcome. It can be reconciled if we are working in the right way. Question: What’s the relationship between the two again? There must be a relationship. You talked about willpower and the heart, which sounds like mantra. Instructor: In sexual knowledge, sexual alchemy. Question: But it’s also, mantra would originate here? Instructor: The word is gestated from the throat. In alchemy, when we combine, when we sexually unite with our partner, we pronounce sacred mantras. Our own Yesod, our own Tree of Knowledge, when a man and a woman are united forming the cross―Yesod, the energy of God, ascends up the spinal medulla as we find in this staff of Zarathustra, and the serpent is ascending as result of working with those fires. With mantra we work with our willpower and our heart, following the creative will of God, the trinity above, in order to create spiritual life. So that’s a Kabbalistic relationship to the body. It is working in this way that we overcome our destiny, our karma. We pay our karma with good deeds, by dying in those egos that are responsible for our mistaken actions. Whatever in me has feeling, suffers and is in prison; but my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and liberty―thus Zarathustra teaches it. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
So how do we overcome our suffering? With our willpower, we take arms against a sea of troubles, meaning: we fight against our ego. We cease to be cyclically recurring and reenacting all those tragedies, dramas, and comedies of the past. We try to initiate a new way of life. Not living life mechanically, but transcending that wheel of suffering.
Willing no more and esteeming no more and creating no more―oh, that this great weariness might always remain far from me! In knowledge too (in Da’ath, in Gnosis) I feel only my will’s joy in begetting and becoming; and if there is innocence in my knowledge, it is because the will to beget is in it. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
So, what does it mean “In knowledge too, I feel only my will’s joy in creating”? Meaning: in alchemy, in tantra, in the sexual act, using it for purity, using it for God. One feels only the joy of creating the soul, “and if there is innocence in my knowledge,” meaning if there is innocence in Da’ath, “if there’s innocence in me working in alchemy, to perform the sexual act without lust,” “it is because of my joy of begetting and becoming.” The wheel of becoming, you know becoming is bhava, as we mention in the Bhavacakra. This is a way of becoming in a mechanical means, but we can also become something spiritual by transcending that wheel. Nietzsche says something also very interesting and controversial, like many things:
Away from God and gods this will has lured me; what could one create if gods existed? ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
In us, God is not active. God is not manifested in our bodies. God is not incarnated, or better said, reincarnated. Instead, we have to create God within us. We have to create the development of the soul so that God, the Superman, can be creating through us.
Question: How do you reconcile that? I believe someone said it, perhaps you said it, we are all, since we’re part of God, which we’re sparks of the divine plane. The spark is still there! Instructor: That’s the spark, but it’s not the bonfire. So that spark can be fed and developed into a bonfire. That bonfire is the lord, Christ. And so how can “one create a god if a god existed already?” And said, if you want to create a higher level of being, you need to develop that spark so it becomes a giant flame. Question: So either you nurture it, or if you’re going to ascend, or if you destroy it, then...? 
Instructor: Then that fire is extinguished in hell. We need to transcend this wheel of suffering, and in this next graphic we are going to talk about the solar bodies. In this image, we have an angel or Malachim. מלכים Malachim in Hebrew means “angels.” Malachim are kings. So, a king of nature is one who has conquered the animal state, the mineral state, the plant state, and even the humanoid state. What we are interested in these studies is to overcome our defects and the recurring cycles of life wherein we suffer mechanically, as a result, so that we can transcend those karmic situations and reconcile our past. That way we can initiate a new way of being.
Comment: That can be tricky too. I think in a way you have to analyze. You have to find your defects, but most of use at one point or another, we have certain desires. Then you have to qualify it perhaps as being not a good desire, and there’s a line. Instructor: And its language. Desire, we say, is typically ego. But longing is the soul. Longing belongs to Habel, Abel, who follows the way of God. Cain is the desire of the mind to till the earth, and to fulfill material things. But in a poetic sense, we can say the soul has desire for God, like the Sufis teach. Now, we want to transcend our karma and enter into the path of what we call epigenesis. The ability to originate new circumstances because as Gurdjieff taught us, “Man does not know how to do.” Instead, we just repeat actions from the past. We don’t do anything new. We are like a train on a train track going one direction. But with effort we can divert that, and it is precisely by developing conscious will, to be in harmony with Christ, the trinity, is how we become, to beget, like Nietzsche says. Epigenesis and the Solar Bodies
So we’re going to talk about the solar bodies, which I mention to you as the vehicles by which God can manifest and express. These pertain to the Tree of Life, Kabbalah, and pertain to what we call the astral body, the solar astral body, the solar mental body, the solar causal body, or solar emotional body, which can manifest superior emotions of God; solar mental body, that can manifest the abstract concepts and understanding of Christ; and the solar causal body, which is the body that can express the will of God, that can originate new causes. Samael Aun Weor states the following in Cosmic Teachings of a Lama:
It is clear, obvious, and manifested that the clairvoyants from some pseudoesoteric and pseudo-occultist systems also become lamentably mistaken about this body [the causal body or body of conscious will]. This is due to the fact that they confuse the Essence with the causal body (so the Essence is the soul, but the causal body is the means by which the soul can act. Don’t mistake the person for the car, in synthesis).
It is enough to really analyze our life to see if this is true. I mean, do we have control over whether we’re going to get yelled at or someone in the street is going to honk at us? Or are we going to get upset, by simple daily things that we think we have control of, but we don’t?
Each time that the ego returns into this valley of Samsara it repeats exactly all of the acts of its previous lives, sometimes in elevated spirals, sometimes in lower spirals.
We say that in order to escape, we can say, the limitations of 108 lifetimes, or humanoid existences, we can create the solar astral body, in a marriage, in alchemy, so that we are submitted to superior laws. Therefore, we’re not necessarily limited to having 108 existences to do this work. Instead we transcend that law.
Reincarnation: Divine Manifestation within the Consciousness
In order to incarnate God, we need to create the solar bodies, the causal body, specifically. This is beautifully represented in the life of Jesus. You’ll see in this next image we have John the Baptist, baptizing the master Jesus, the Christ. So really, reincarnation, we can say in context, in this lecture, pertains to when God manifests in the soul, to incarnate. It does not mean entering into new bodies. That is return, but reincarnation is an act of will, an act of creation, in which God, decidedly, decides to perform a mission within a certain human being and enters into that soul that has created those bodies.
Think of the solar bodies as a type of electric circuitry that can manifest high voltage. If you have poor wiring and you send a tremendous volt of energy through that circuitry, it’ll fuse. It will break. Christ is an energy and can only manifest in the circuitry of a human being that has those vehicles, because if the Being were to try to enter into a person with just the lunar bodies, with a lot of ego involved in it, that human being would be annihilated instantly, because Christ is the energy of life, the cosmos. So in order to reincarnate the Being, we need to work on initiation. We need to work on sexual alchemy, which is described in The Perfect Matrimony and The Mystery of the Golden Flower. Samael Aun Weor states the following in The Mystery of The Golden Flower: Reincarnation is a feat accomplished only by the great illuminated souls, in which they consciously choose to be born in a particular time and place… (in other words, they choose to incarnate the Being in a new physical body. Only beings with conscious development can do this).
And we find this scripturally stated in Book of John, Chapter 1 verse 14
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. ―John 1:14
Then, the book of Matthew:
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. ―Matthew 3:16-17
The waters refer to the sexual waters, in which the Holy Spirit can baptize the energy of God. So the incarnation of Jesus, the Christ within Jesus, is an act of reincarnation, but also many masters have incarnated the Christ. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus was the only one. Because in fact, Muhammad, received the Qur’an upon Jabal al-Nur, the mountain of light in the Muslim tradition. He received the teachings from Gabriel, meaning he incarnated his inner law, his inner Qur’an [Arabic for “recitation,” the Word] from the Angel Gabriel, and Gabriel relates to procreation, the forces of the moon, the sexual energy. But also, Krishna also incarnated with Arjuna within the Bhagavad-Gita.
Question: What about Buddha? Buddha is a great master who incarnated Christ. Zarathustra, many masters, they incarnated that fire because they entered into initiation and developed those bodies. Here we have the Bhagavad-Gita, where Arjuna, who represents the solar causal body, is speaking to the Christ, Krishna. There’s a couple more things we’ll explain in relation to the nature of these paths as we discussed, in accordance with Hinduism. I would like to give you two phrases, first, specifically, explain two paths as we’ve been mentioning. Krishna stated the following to Arjuna: The Being is not born, does not die, nor does it reincarnate; it has no origin; it is eternal and changeless; it is the first of all, and does not die when the body passes away. ―Bhagavad-Gita 2:20
Now this would seem to contradict the following statement:
…As one sets aside worn out clothes and puts on new ones, so the embodied Being leaves its spent body and enters other new ones. ―Bhagavad-Gita 2:22
Now what is interesting is that they seem to contradict. The Being doesn’t incarnate, but it does incarnate within certain beings.
What is not explicitly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita, or at least clearly, esoterically, is how when one follows a path of initiation, one incarnates the Being. But in lunar people, people with lunar bodies, they do not incarnate the Being. Those two paths are open there. The solar path, extending up the path of revelation to God, or the lunar path of being swallowed by nature. Now actually, the Bhagavad-Gita does explain this, but it elaborates upon this point: Upon leaving the body, taking the path of the fire, of the light, of the day, of the luminous lunar fortnight and of the northern solstice, those who know Brahma, go towards Brahma. Upon death, the yogi who takes the path of smoke of the dark Lunar fortnight and of the southern solstice, reaches the Lunar sphere (the astral world) and is then reborn (returns, re-embodies). These two paths, the luminous and the dark, are considered permanent. Through the first, one is emancipated, and through the second, one is reborn (returns).” ―Bhagavad-Gita 8:24-26
So in the solar path we incarnate God, but in the lunar path we continue to rotate in samsara, in synthesis.
When the Lord (the Being) acquires a body, or leaves it, He associates with the six senses, or abandons them and passes like the breeze which carries with it the scent of flowers. Directing the ears, the eyes, the organs of touch, taste and smell as well as the mind, He experiences the objects of the senses. The deluded do not see Him who departs, stays and enjoys; but they who possess the eye of knowledge behold Him. ―Bhagavad-Gita 15:8-10
Those who are not familiar with reincarnation, should study the Bhagavad-Gita. Specifically, I’d like to quote for you what reincarnation really means, as according to the Hindu gospel, we can say:
The supreme personality of God (which is Vishnu, or Krishna, speaking to Arjuna) said: “Many, many incarnations both you and I have passed. I can remember all of them, but you cannot, O subduer of the enemy! (Meaning: subduer of his own egos). Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I incarnate dominating my Prakriti and appear in my original transcendental form; serving my self of my own maya. Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion―at that time I descent Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to re-establish the principles of Religion, I advent Myself millennium after millennium. One who knows the transcendental nature of my appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My external abode, O Arjuna! ―Bhagavad-Gita 4:5-9
So Christ only incarnates within an initiate. Reincarnation only occurs within the Gods. People, we, common human persons, human beings, we can say out of polite and respect, we just return. We don’t reincarnate. We don’t remember where we came from or where we’re going.
Question: Do we have lunar bodies? We have lunar vehicles and we are subjected to the laws of nature, but we need to develop the solar bodies so that we can transcend this wheel of suffering. Those who incarnate God are not recognized as God we can say. Those who incarnate the Christ, people don’t see the Christ, even though many times we may have walked past such a being. The first stage in the Bhagavad-Gita, when the Lord, the Being, acquires the body, or leaves it, he associates with the six senses, or abandons them and passes like the breeze, which carries with it the scent of flowers, directly in the ears, the eyes, the organs of touch, taste, and smell, as well as the mind. He experiences the objects, the senses. The diluted do not see him who departs, stays and enjoys. But they who possess the eye of knowledge, gnosis, Da’ath, only they behold him. Nietzsche’s Eternal Return
We need to incarnate the Being if we want to be liberated from suffering, if we want to attain a higher state of perception. We’ve been explaining what reincarnation means in context in terms of return and recurrence, studying the Pythagorean teachings, as well as the Muslim teachings of Rumi, and a little bit of Nietzsche. I’d actually like to conclude with the teachings of the eternal return as given by Nietzsche. I think its especially relevant to this discussion, since just as we mentioned the teachings of the Hindustani master, Krishna, the very same things that the German philosopher Nietzsche talked about are in the Bhagavad-Gita, or taught by Pythagoras, or taught in Buddhist doctrine, and the points that he makes are very poetic and beautiful. I think they will be very beneficial for you to hear. I’m going to read for you exactly what Nietzsche taught in his book about the eternal return, accompanied next to Jesus, of course. In this chapter, I’m not going to read the entirety. It is called “On the Vision and the Riddle,” where the fictional Zarathustra, the Iranian prophet, is speaking to a group of sailors about a vision he had, meaning: an astral experience.
Not long ago, I walked gloomily through the deadly pallor of dusty―gloomy and hard, with lips pressed together. Not only one sun had set for me. A path that ascended defiantly through stones, malicious, lonely, not cheered by herb or shrub―a mountain path crunched under the defiance of my foot. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
Now a mountain in esoterism refers to initiation, to ascend up the mountain, the path that leads to God, the Superman. It is only attempted by those who are defiant, meaning: his step is crushing the stones defiantly in order to go up, seemingly against the forces of gravity
Striding silently over the mocking clatter of pebbles, crushing the rock that made it slip, my foot forced its way upward. Upward―defying the spirit that drew it downward toward the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch enemy. Upward―although he sat on me, half dwarf, half mole, lame, making lame, dripping lead into my ear, leaden thoughts into my brain (this is the ego telling us we can’t enter into initiation. It’s always telling us things).
So what he’s talking about is the philosopher’s stone. The stone relates to alchemy, the secret of Yesod, the foundation stone of Solomon’s temple, which is the sexual energy, our body is the temple, and our stone is the sexual energy.
This is talking about how, like many initiates, he tried to throw his stone up, to take that stone up the mountain, to return it to God, so that he can finally unite with the Being, the Superman. But the ego is always there saying, “You threw your stone up high. You can’t follow this path. You’re going to drop your stone like Sisyphus.” Meaning: you’re going to let yourself fall sexually, fall to animal passion, desire. “Oh Zarathustra, you philosopher’s stone, you slingstone, you star-crusher. You threw yourself up so high; but every stone that is thrown must fall. Sentenced to yourself and to your own stoning―O Zarathustra, far indeed have you thrown the stone, but it will fall back on yourself."
What does it mean abysmal thought? The fact that he wants to descend into his own hell in order to take the stone up the mountain, because our soul is trapped in hell. We need to liberate it through our creative will.
Then something happened that made me lighter, for the dwarf jumped from my shoulder, being curious; and he crouched on a stone before me. But there was a gateway just where we stopped.
So, Krishna said there are two paths: the solar path that leads to Brahma, and the lunar path that leads down, backward. These are the two paths that Nietzsche is talking about, and that eternally they go on. This constant drama of souls within the universe is always repeated, is eternal.
Question: Is he using the force of Tiphereth to carry Hod? Instructor: Yes, and that’s willpower. Zarathustra is willpower. He says “my courage is what conquers. My creative will. My destiny wills it.” "All that is straight, lies.," the dwarf murmured contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is circle.” (Albert Einstein said our illusions of linear time are illusory. Time itself is a circle. Eternity is a circle. Nothing goes on from one trajectory to another. It’s really a cycle, cyclical).
This is referencing to the fact that many individuals have walked the path of initiation before but they fell. Though they are trying to rise up again, they had crushed their star, were “star-crushers,” meaning: they killed the perfection of their Ain Soph Paranishpanna, their supra-atomic star, within themselves. So they have walked this path many times before. It happens.
“And this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things―must not all of have been there before? And return and walk in that other lane out there, before us, in this long dreadful lane―must not we eternally return?” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
If we are in this type of classroom, it means that we’ve probably studied this science before. I remember having an experience with my Innermost in the astral plane. He told me, “97% of the people you meet you knew them before.” This is because 97% of our psyche is ego, according to Samael Aun Weor, so this is something I verified.
Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts. Then suddenly I heard a dog howl nearby. Had I ever heard a dog howl like this? My thoughts raced back. Yes, when I was a child, in the most distant childhood: then I heard a dog howl like this. And I saw him too, bristling his head up, trembling, in the stillest midnight when even dogs believed in ghosts―and I took pity: for just then the full moon, silent as death, passed over the house; just then it stood still, a round glow―still on the flat roof, as if on another’s property―that was why the dog was terrified, for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard such howling again, I took pity again. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
So, what is the moon referencing? The lunar path, the path of devolution, the path of the destruction of the soul within hell. So, it haunts us. Those who are really seeking to know God, to set up the path to Christ, we suffer because the moon is always haunting us.
Where has the dwarf gone now? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming then? Was I waking up? (Or: “Was I experiencing these things directly in meditation?”)
So it is that shepherd, Christ.
Nietzsche didn’t use the term Christ, because Christianity is degenerated. People worship a statue and not the terrible reality of the Intimate Christ, the Rebel Christ, the Superhuman. He talks about Superman. A Superman is an individual who has fully perfected God within, manifesting the three sephirah above: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, within the heart, the human soul. A shepherd, like the keeper of sheep, pertains to the one who is walking the path of initiation. But this is the Superman who takes on our own evil to annihilate it. Question: That’s Abel, right? Instructor: Habel relates to that, but this is even beyond Habel. This is Christ. The shepherd, however, bit as my cry counseled him; he bit with a good bite (meaning with the mouth, or with the throat, the science of Da’ath, we kill the snake that is leading us into hell. We conquer animal passion).
He’s talking about how Christ, the Superman, really, incarnates in the human being, to fully eliminate the ego. That is the path of reincarnation.
Questions and Answers
Question: That symbolism is really something else. I would wonder what Carl Jung, I don’t think he was mentioned anywhere, and he’s very much into symbolism, the subconscious mind… I wonder if that scenario, so to speak, that scenario you just were talking about, I wonder if Jung had made any?
Instructor: Well, I don’t know too much about Jung, but I know that many of the German initiates knew each other. Rudolph Steiner was the disciple of Nietzsche. Nietzsche was the disciple of Richard Wagner, who is a great master. They were all interrelated, and they all knew each other. They taught the doctrine of the Superman. In conclusion, we seek to escape the laws of return and recurrence by developing our will in harmony with Christ, so we can kill the snake that tempts us into sin, which is our own inverted sexual fires, which we need to tame like Moses did, or we need to work with the positive serpent―the cross, as mentioned in Exodus, the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness. Question: That was the negative serpent you are talking about? Instructor: The negative serpent that the shepherd bit, that was the inverted aspect, the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve. Comment: It is interesting, its like a sign, from when I read from Scorpio, they talk about the good and the eagle, which is sacred. They refer to the serpent as the negative one: “Get out of the way!” Instructor: It is dual like the serpent Kundalini that Moses raised on the staff in the wilderness. The cross of man and woman, or the bronze serpent, the two metals of copper, representing woman, and tin, representing man, sexually united, and when that serpent is controlled, the energy is harnessed. The bronze serpent rises up the spine and can heal the Israelites. The serpent then that Nietzsche talks about is in the negative aspect. But in the beginning, and many times in that book, he mentions the positive serpent that works with the eagle―the serpent that rises up the spinal column, Kundalini, and the eagle’s wings flourish and take one up to the Absolute. Question: So the bronze serpent, or I’ve always heard that Moses just healed the Israelites, but what about being bit by serpents?... Instructor: Yes, exactly, thank you for bringing that up. The other serpents, there were fiery serpents that were biting the Israelites and causing them pain. Those fiery serpents are all of our animal passions that afflict us: anger, pride, vanity―as we’ve been mentioning, the ego, the inverted fire. And the only way to heal that ailment is to work with the solar serpent, the bronze serpent, in order to heal the Israelites. The Israelites are not just, in the Bible, a reference to people in the past, in the Middle East. It refers to archetypes, symbols, parts of us that we need to liberate and free. The same serpents that were biting the Israelites were biting the Superman, but the superman just bit it up, spat it out, and laughed. That is something only a god can do. And we all have God within―we need to reincarnate Him within us, to escape the return and recurrence of all things. Any questions? Comment: Just a comment on epigenesis, the ability to change ourselves. It can be correlated to physicality, too. You know, in the medical community, there is compelling evidence, that through, one example, physical activity versus drug ages, we can change our genetic expressions. If someone has a pronation toward some disease, that can be halted, inhibited. Now, this was always possible, but as I was listening actively and such, I’m thinking Jesus and Moses could’ve had smartphones, but they were just not at that point in time where it wasn’t known, or you know the laws were not exact in such a way, or realized in such a way, that they couldn’t have smartphones. It was just impossible. Instructor: They had much better communication than our smartphones. I mean, if you meet a Superman like that in the internal planes, really, they are incomprehensible to us. But it is true that genetically our actions can affect our genes, and our genes are the inheritors of karma. The very physical body that we have, our tendencies, our habits, our illnesses that reoccur cyclically, are in our genes. And those genes are formulated as a result of our karma, our past actions. Now we want to perform positive action in order to rectify that. That is a good point because it is by changing ourselves psychologically that we change our genes. We have many practices in this tradition where we work with energy, like alchemy, in which the genes change. The genes of an intellectual animal is what we are. We can change into the genes of a Superman or superwoman, basically. Comment: Bruno Gröning, not sure if you have heard of him, but he is from Germany. Died in 1953. But he talked about an agent. It was Heilstrom, he called it. It is the prana and everything. That is what they were emphasizing. If you could get a nice state away, you could bring this force into your body through the bread. They have had healings, and this group is international. I went to one of the meetings. It was packed. It was on River Road. They had a German interpreter and a lot of Polish people were there. He says its not that complicated. It’s spiritual. We were talking about spirituality, but they were doctors by the way, that were there from Europe. It was getting in that state… you mention the genes. They’re doing something, where they had healings. If they were able to get into that relaxed state, it was like prana basically. Heilstrom is what the Bruno Gröning calls it. But vital force, if you could concentrate it somehow… Instructor: The greatest healing is to work with alchemy, in sexual union. But we have many methods in this tradition that work with healing methods as well, such as in a book called Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic. There are many other schisms and teachings and things that work. Some of the teachings that we work with are ancient, older than this universe really. They’re eternal. Comment: I’ve reflected a little bit on what you said a minute ago, in regards to time and evolution of technology and things like that. The real technologies is regeneration and development of faculties. Because if you actually paid attention to the New Testament, where its talking about the life of Jesus, he’s going around telepathically understanding what people are thinking, saying, “I saw you over there in the bushes with that woman, and you’re not going to stone her to death today,” and that sort of thing―communication. So, something like cell phones, would be completely irrelevant, obsolete. Because if someone had developed the kind of faculties like Jesus had, you wouldn’t need something like that. So time frame and time relevant, it’s something that ancient history had better technology than we did and we just don’t understand that fully yet. Instructor: And I remember one of our other instructors mentioned, we have a technology better than Google inside. That’s meditation. We can investigate anything we need to. Question: Going back to what you were saying, with karma. If a couple, the woman, had been an adulterer, then in the next life that same couple, that man would do the same thing? I’m just so confused by what, and I’ve already talked to you about this, by what in the person who was the victim the first time, what in the next life makes them know that they should do that? And then are they following God’s will by doing that? Instructor: It is not God’s will. It is our own self will. The one that commits adultery and decides to do that is the ego. Particularly, the ego in a person, or, typically in our case, we’re compelled by so many egos and forces that we have no cognizance of the fact. We don’t see how we are just performing the same dramas, comedies, tragedies, that we’ve been doing for many lifetimes. It’s not God’s will. God does not say to us, “Okay, now you have to commit adultery to the other person.” This superior law, in fact, that person, if the couple is Gnostic, knows this science and is working, when those egos emerge that are of an adulterer’s nature, and that will happen with every couple―where certain karmic recurrences happen where partners from a past life come to one’s forefront in order to test us and tempt us. The law is testing us, is saying, “Do you want to follow the superior path or the inferior path?” If we give into our adulterer’s ego and we commit adultery, then we fail. But the couple that’s working Gnostically speaking, takes advantage of those circumstances in order to gain comprehension. Then those egos are annihilated and there’s greater love in the couple. It’s an ordeal Samael Aun Weor calls the Direne Ordeal in the book called The Three Mountains. Question: Well, it is because you said that it has to do that to reach equilibrium. So say a Gnostic couple experiences that and that had happened in a past life, and then the woman transcends that, and does not act on that ego, are things out of whack? Instructor: No, things are reconciled. In terms of balance, there’s an inferior way and a superior way. If we try to relate it to physics, if you punch a punching bag, it is going to move, then it will come back at you. So that force has to come back. Now, whether we decide to continue punching and foiling at it, that’s the problem. If you just punch it once and the force comes back to you, you grab it, and can hold it still. You comprehend that, well, you are too tired to keep up the monotony of hitting the bag and want to stop. In the same way, you realize that you can’t continue feeding those egos. When you comprehend that, you stop propelling that karma. Comment: Because if you did punch it again, then it would have to come back and repeat the same thing over and over. Instructor: Exactly. It is going to repeat, and to do that is to suffer and continue along that cycle of samsara. Question: I have a question. You mentioned at the beginning of the lecture, a little bit about how, as you said, teachings on return, recurrence, reincarnation, sort of the whole subject matter here is taken, maybe not so much Western, but Christianity. Are there any examples of that you can elaborate or allude to? The only thing I can think of offhand is years ago, when I read the Old Testament and Book of Job in particular, and other scant places, in the Old and New Testaments, but particularly in the Book of Job, certain passages, led me to sort of see the possibility that Job, or the ones he was associating with had a notion of God… Instructor: Yeah, that relates to recurrence. I’m speaking specifically about the doctrine of transmigration: the soul entering into different bodies. Now we have remnants of that in the Christian doctrine where the man who is possessed by many devils, those taking place in the souls of the bodies of pigs. It refers exactly to what I was referring to in relation to when we reincorporate into a new body, certain egos that are definitely criminal have to be taken out of us and put into different bodies like trees, animals, plants, cats, or dogs, or different beasts, to enter into devolution, as a type of mercy. The one who does that is Christ. Also, Christ referred to John the Baptist as the return or reincarnation of Elijah (Matthew 11:13-14). You can also reference the return of Elijah in Malachi 4:5-6. Comment: I rarely think of it in that context, because we think of casting out of demons and going somewhere else, on another level that’s like talking to… Instructor: On one psychological level, it pertains to how we need to clean our temple. On another hand it talks about how certain psychological elements can reincorporate into animals. And its in the Bible, but people don’t really read deeply into it. Now, in Christianity, we find that a lot of things were taken out of the Bible, like Mary Magdalene’s role with Jesus as his wife―things of that nature―that he practiced alchemy with her. Question: Not long ago I studied some of that with my father. Instructor: Yeah, in the Bible a lot of things were edited or taken out. But you find it more common, the doctrine of transmigration, you find a lot in Buddhism and Hinduism. I wanted to point out how Pythagoras, how even Nietzsche, talked about the same thing. But many scholars of Nietzsche are saying, “No, he didn’t talk about reincarnation or reincorporation.” But in esotericism it is very clear. Comment: Context. Instructor: Exactly. So, a lot of those scholars they don’t know anything about an esoteric doctrine. They interpret things in a very literal manner. Comment: Just as an aside, in India, they use the cow, I think for healing too, where they bring people to the cow and they touch the cow. Instructor: The cow represents the Divine Mother. And there even was a five-legged cow that was found in India that Blavatsky wrote about. Now the cow is a sacred symbol of the Divine Mother Kundalini. Even in the second surah of the Qur’an, you have Al-Baqarah, which means “The Cow,” which is the longest surah of the Qur’an, which traditionally, in the Muslim tradition, one would sing the Qur’an, to recite. Qur’an means “recitation.” The cow is really the power of the verb, the Divine Mother. The cow, like in the myth of Mithras slaying the bull, he stabbed the bull in the throat, meaning to conquer the animal passion you have to work with Daath, sexual alchemy to kill that beast, that devolving serpent. Also, the way we do that is with the cow, the Divine Mother. Now traditionally, they would say the cow was supposed to have five legs. There was a cow found with five legs, literally, in India. There are five aspects to the Divine Mother that I mentioned in the books that we have, which you can read more about. But the cows relates to Devi-Kundalini [see the lecture The Divine Mother from Beginning Self-Transformation]. Comment: The healing also… Instructor: Exactly. And the way that we heal is by working with our cow, by mantralizing, by working with that sacred power, and like Mithras, killing the animal ego so that we can unite with God. Yes? Comment: As I’m listening, don’t know if anyone has a frame of reference, preacher Dan was quite a famed Jesuit priest, based on Catholic order, known for his metaphysical pendants. I happen to get offered two tapes of his from his retreat, and its pretty profound. I mean back in 1955 on Easter Sunday, and its really good. The reader was saying how he was inhibited by the hierarchy of the church, that they actually did not want him to go and speak of these things because of the truth. Maybe they didn’t even know, I don’t know. But he was really held back and inhibited. And he had a message and here it is. Like in some cannon of knowledge somewhere, and I buy this tape, you know, about the cosmos and such. Comment: Have you ever heard of Giordano Bruno? They burnt him to a crisp, the so-and-sos in the Vatican. This was during the Renaissance. He traveled all over Europe, and it was right along the same lines with this tape, same thing, only he was lucky. He was born 500 years before they would have burned him. They burnt Giordano Bruno and they burnt Savonarola. Instructor: A lot of times, these were people, there were many initiates who had to keep silent about these things about return and reincarnation, especially within Christian doctrine, for fear of the Inquisition. It is a science that is well documented. Many of us don’t accept this at face value, but really investigate this understanding of our past lives, really investigate within meditation, but also in the astral plane. I remember, for instance, I was with the Master Samael Aun Weor in the astral plane, where I was trying to get help from him, and he kept telling me, “You need to remember your past lives.” And I was complaining, I was kind of whining that I don’t remember, and this was years ago. He said it doesn’t matter. You need to know your past lives now because it is going to tell you about your current situation. Everything we have physically now is a result of our relationship to the past. Yes? Question: You said, alchemy must be completely absent of lust, but with so much ego isn’t it really hard to not even have like a lustful thought pop up? Instructor: We want to strive to not have lust in the sexual act. In the beginning that is the way it is because we’re 97% ego. Question: Is that a waste of energy then? When you avoid the fornication but you do have lustful thoughts that pop up? Instructor: We have to work at our level. Wherever we’re at, we have to work at, we have to understand that we’re not going to be pure. We’re not going to perform the sexual acts like saints. We gradually train ourselves to do it like that. So in the beginning, yeah, there is a lot of lust. I would say practice in short increments to train the body and the mind. Then prolong the act so long as one can retain the energies. Question: Do you have to be at the same level, spiritually, mentally, and spiritually? Because if one is more inclined to, you mentioned, the erotic order, then there’s no balance there. You have to be on the same… Question: You mean the two people? Comment: Yeah. Comment: Because I was asking about that, and about a master who practiced with a non-believer and he rose. And she saw how he was glowing and said now I want to do this too. But I don’t think they need to be equal. Instructor: What is important is that one has the potential to rise to the same level. But at the same time, we are at different levels of being. You can be very high up and your partner can be struggling. There are many stories about that with different initiates, but it really depends on our creative will, how we want to work on alchemy. If our partner is against it, but there’s still love there, we can work. And then by our example, the other person can want to rise to our level. Whether or not one is compatible that is another thing, capable of rising to the same level, basically speaking. Question: We can save our partner through alchemy, right? Instructor: Yes. This is exactly what Paul of Taurus has taught in the Bible. Disbelieving husband, how do you not know that your disbelieving wife can be saved? Or, wife, how do you not know that your disbelieving husband will not be saved? (1 Corinthians 7). It is by being a good example, by working with our creative will, is how we are going to change that. Comment: And that’s a loving couple too. Instructor: It’s a path of sacrifice. Of course, people think that alchemy, when people get married, “Oh, it’s going to be perfect and there’s going to be no problems.” People want to think like that, but it’s a crucifixion, one in which we can redeem ourselves. Question: Well, then along with that, with sexual energy, she was talking about how if you practice all day and then go watch TV, you’ve wasted all the energy you’ve cultivated. So there’s a lot of other ways to waste that energy too, right? Instructor: It depends on our psychological state and how we invest our energy into certain projects. So you can save a lot of energy in alchemy, but within a moment of anger, you say something really hateful, you lose all of that. It’s possible. The thing is to conserve the energy and restrain the mind. Because if we don’t restrain the mind, if we don’t have ethical discipline, then all the energy in the world is not going to save us. In fact, it will make us more destructive, which is symbolized by the centaurs who are in hell. They built solar bodies. They are half human, but have a lot of animal. They didn’t kill their ego entirely, so they fall there. It is very common. Question: Is this from Nietzsche? Instructor: Yeah, from what I know that happened with Nietzsche. He let himself fall intentionally. Comment: That’s why he went crazy. Comment: I was just going to say Rudolph Steiner, wrote about the centaurs, said they were highly intelligent and the natural science was ridiculous. Instructor: The centaur is a symbol. Comment: He said they came out of the universe and they made it with the daughters of men or something like that. Instructor: He’s speaking symbolically, for people who don’t know kabbalah. When centaurs mated with daughters of men, it means certain initiates with solar bodies were mating with the ancient humanities, ancient phenomena that Samael Aun Weor talks about. Any more comments or questions? We’ll conclude. Question: I have one. You mention briefly about spouses or someone you care about that’s suffering, and maybe they need more help. In eastern traditions there’s a lot of stories like in Buddhism, where a family member always burned incense for the Buddha or God or something like that, and then gave a special blessing for the person who, you know, was knee-deep in debt and that cleared a lot of it. There’s always certain things that can be done in that sort of thing, right? Instructor: Well you know, we can say burning incense is helpful for our mental and emotional state. It doesn’t absolve karma. There are some people who think that doing certain things is going to liberate us, “Oh, if you sing this mantra a million times, 101 times, you’re going to absolve your karma.” It doesn’t work like that. It will help you adjust your mental state so that you can face your karma with more strength. Question: Don’t the gods derive a great deal of ecstasy from being around that? Master Samael talks about having incense in your room and things like that. It draws the masters… Instructor: Yeah, it attracts superior forces. I think it was mentioned in The Way of the Bodhisattva. We’ll conclude on this point, The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva. Anyone who begins to walk this path of initiation, who is developing the soul within, the gods [buddhas] look at that and they favor that. They hail that individual, “Finally, another soul is entering into the stream of nirvana.” Many times I have had experiences where I was with certain masters and they were pleased. Lighting incense helps with that. It accentuates. It strengthens one’s prayer. It is something you can verify internally that they’re helping. As soon as you’re working with sexual energy and you’re trying to restrain your mind, they come to you and they will guide you, internally. If there are no more comments and questions we will conclude. Thank you all for coming.
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Today we are going to discuss the nature of occult laws, the nature of spirituality as a scientific method, and the importance of studying esoteric science in conjunction with conventional science. We are going to discuss specifically how this science pertains to our spiritual development. We are going to talk about the nature of consciousness and the nature of occult investigation into the very mysteries of life and death: the way to verify from our own experience the nature of divinity, and particularly the foundations of this scientific method.
So Gnosis, as we have explained before, is a Greek term, meaning “knowledge.” The word science comes from the word scientia, which means “knowledge.” But this type of knowledge is very direct, and pertains to what we can verify with what we call the consciousness, which is a term that is very superficially used in these times, and very common. But as will be evident in this lecture, few rarely comprehend the real magnitude and the real depth of what it means to awaken the consciousness. When talking about occult science to people, they hear the term occult and they think this is something satanic and evil, or something bad. The word occult comes from the Latin cultare, which means “to cultivate.” Occult means the hidden. So in an occult science, we cultivate that which is unseen, and just as there are methods and procedures for verifying the causes and laws behind physical phenomena, likewise do we ascertain that there is a method, a science for comprehending the noumena behind phenomena. Phenomena is appearance, literally speaking. Pneuma is “spirit” in Greek, and noumena refers to the highest state of awakening spiritually. Noumena in Immanuel Kant's philosophy was expressed as “the truth,” things in themselves. So this science pertains to how we directly verify, through our own experience, what religion teaches. As part of this lecture, we are going to discuss the nature of Ether, which is very famously postulated within physics as well as occult science, and even many different traditions. We are going to explain how the Ether, as a substance and energy, can assist us in the awakening of consciousness. Alongside this, we will talk about the nature of parallel universes. The science of consciousness is about experiencing the different realms, known as heavens, known as Nirvana, known as Jannah in Arabic. And fundamentally, we are going to discuss the science of spiritual perception. What does it mean to perceive and how can we perceive the truths contained within religion? 
Science and Religion: The Synthesis of Conscious Investigation
So his Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama states in his book The Universe in a Single Atom, the need for practitioners of science, official science, to study the mystical teachings of Buddhism or religion, which explain many of the phenomena that quantum mechanics or mechanics physicists are discovering now. He explains in this book that it is necessary and develop an occult methodology.
In order for the study of consciousness to be complete, we need a methodology that would account not only for what is occurring at the neurological and biochemical levels but also for the subjective experience of consciousness itself. Even when combined, neuroscience and behavioral psychology do not shed enough light on the subjective experience (meaning what we can verify through our own consciousness), as both approaches still place primary importance on the objective, third-person perspective. Contemplative traditions on the whole have historically emphasized subjective, first-person investigation of the nature and functions of consciousness, by training the mind to focus in a disciplined way on its own internal states. ―The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom ―The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom
This is precisely the demarcation between conventional science and occult science. The conventional physicists and scientists only verify things based on physical matter. They do not investigate what is the activating principles behind matter, because they ignore, unfortunately, that the only way to verify occult phenomena, or noumena, we need to awaken our consciousness, and this relies on a very specific type of work in which we discipline our own mind, in order to truly awaken our spiritual capacities and to verify what religions have taught us.
The Brain, Mind, and Consciousness
Many people think that the mind is the brain. Many scientists affirm that we are just a functionalism [or epiphenomenon] of our brain, ignoring that the mind itself and the consciousness are something that is separate that can inhabit the body or can dis-inhabit the body, as is explained in the science of dream yoga, astral projection, out of body experiences.
Neural science cannot explain many of these occult phenomena and many of these scientists stubbornly reject that there is even the capacity or possibility to experience God, to verify what God is, to know our inner divinity directly. Unfortunately, it is this type of fanaticism and dogmatism in the scientific realm which is blinding many individuals from the study of spirituality, but fortunately due to some recent discoveries, such as in quantum mechanics, the study of subatomic particles, they are discovering that even light has consciousness, that light makes choices. This is a strong revelation on the part of conventional science, that even the smallest particles of matter have a type of awareness. This is something that has been affirmed by the teachings of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, many of the ancient esoteric traditions. It is precisely the fact that we do not rely exclusively on physical means but occult methods that many scientists simply scorn and reject any possibility of investigation, which is sad, precisely because they fail to enact the very scientific methods that they have vowed to verify, to test. But sadly, like a new priesthood, they are blindly enamored by their own ideas and fail to even want to question themselves. It is precisely this type of discrimination and questioning of our own nature that leads us on the path or to the path that leads to that direct realization of Christ, of Buddha, of Allah. Even Albert Einstein, the great scientist, who was very spiritual in his heart, and as may be evident from the quote will be citing, he knew a little bit about this teaching. He states that it is important for any system or methodology to be effective, it has to be verifiable. But also, the fact that any method that is divorced from any type of experiential knowledge is empty of content, empty of real significance or meaning. He also states that it is important that to verify things for oneself in order for a system to be valid, whEther conventional but in our case, esoteric, hidden. There are two ways of regarding concepts, both of which are necessary to understanding. The first is that of logical analysis. It answers the question, How do concepts and judgments depend on each other? In answering it we are on comparatively safe ground. It is the security by which we are so much impressed in mathematics. But this security is purchased at the price of emptiness of content (Meaning: it is just recognizing numbers and knowing relationships, but how does it apply to our physical life or even spiritual life?). Concepts can only acquire content (meaning significance or impact) when they are connected, however indirectly, with sensible experience. (So concepts can only acquire content when they are connected with sensible experience). But no logical investigation can reveal this connection; it can only be experienced. And yet it is this connection that determines the cognitive value of systems of concepts. ―Albert Einstein, The World As I See It: “The Problem of Space, Ether, and the Field in Physics”
Here he is saying that it is not enough just to have theories, but to test it and to verify it. The same thing with occult science. We begin with a theory. We begin with beliefs. We practice. We verify through experience. This is why Jesus said "Blessed are those who believe and yet who do not see," because by practicing we can verify these things.
A system is worthless if it is not verified, if it does not apply to experience. Here, Albert Einstein in his book The World As I See It, the chapter I quoted from, “The Problem of Space, Ether, and the Field in Physics,” he explains that one needs to verify with sensible experience. Here we are talking about occult experience, mystical experience. Conflicts Between Conventional and Esoteric Science
It is important to note that mysticism is a science. The word mysticism comes from the Greek myein, which means “to close one’s eyes” physically, but by closing one’s physical eyes, one learns to proceed with spiritual senses, which is the nature of our intimate divine consciousness. It is unfortunate that many reject outright the capacity to experience different dimensions, different states of being, matter, energy, consciousness. It is this lack of investigation, which is really the emptiness of the physical sciences, which many have been divorced from any spiritual principles. But fortunately, there are many scientists who are realizing that, due to their findings, such as with light making conscious decisions, that they need to rely on more spiritual principles to explain these phenomena.
It is the tendency in the scientific world to ostracize and condemn anyone who rejects their theories or beliefs. As I said, this is a new priesthood, in which there is an indomitable, dogmatic institution that says “We are the distributors of knowledge, and then you have to receive what we tell you.” I would like to quote for you, in relation to this topic, a saying by a great Yogi or a great initiate by the name of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She wrote a text called The Secret Doctrine and she explains in this quote what it is to really investigate occult science and the need to verify things for ourselves, to not take things at face value, but to experiment, to investigate, because this really entails the scientific method. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to talk about the Ether, and she quotes a little bit about this mysterious substance, which, as we will explain, is what can provoke the awakening of our spiritual perception. Blavatsky states: The present writer, claiming no great scientific education, but only a tolerable acquaintance with modern theories, and a better one with Occult Sciences, picks up weapons against the detractors of the esoteric teaching in the very arsenal of modern Science. The glaring contradictions, the mutually-destructive hypotheses of world-renowned Scientists, their mutual accusations, denunciations and disputes, show plainly that, whether accepted or not, the Occult theories have as much right to a hearing as any of the so-called learned and academical hypotheses. Thus whether the followers of the Royal Society choose to accept Ether as a continuous or a discontinuous fluid matters little, and is indifferent to the present purpose. It simply points to one certainty: Official Science knows nothing to this day of the constitution of Ether. Let Science call it matter, if it likes; only neither as akâsa nor as the sacred Æther of the Greeks, is it to be found in any of the states of matter known to modern physics. It is matter on quite another plane of perception and being, and it can neither be analyzed by scientific apparatus, appreciated, nor even conceived by “scientific imagination,” unless the possessors thereof study the Occult Sciences. ―H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Book I, Part III, Chapter III: “An Lumen Sit Corpus, Nec Non?”
So, exactly reiterating what Albert Einstein stated: that we cannot really appreciate the meaning of studying phenomena if the theory does not apply to our cognizant experience, and by verifying through testing, studying, and approaching it. It cannot be analyzed just by scientific apparatus, physical means. We need superior means, but if we ignore our very capacity to experience God, if we reject it with, “Oh, it's not possible," and then we shut the door for ourselves to really knowing what God is. And so, this type of science cannot be conceived by scientific imagination unless, as Blavatsky states, it is occupied under the occult sciences.
We are going to talk later about imagination. Imagination is the capacity to perceive images, whether on the physical level or in the spiritual level, such as in dreams or when we meditate―seeing images or places or people or things. This is occult imagination: the capacity to perceive phenomena on a psychic and spiritual level. We need to comprehend the importance of developing an open mind, the necessity of investigating information in a scientific manner: one of which we do not have bias, where we do not allow our preconceived notions to infect our understanding. This requires that we have an attitude that is open and that we patiently study and contemplate the different religious traditions, as well as what they imply and what they entail. 
Learning How to Listen
This is the teaching of Buddhism, in relation to the bowl of the Buddha, which is a fundamental teaching within esoteric science.
We see here the Buddha with this bowl open waiting to receive knowledge. Saffron robes, his golden colored robes, signifies knowledge within esotericism. If we awaken within the internal planes, if we have an experience with Beings with saffron robes of Buddha, or if we have an experience with the color yellow or orange, it pertains to the mind, the nature of the consciousness. Buddha here is teaching us, in this image, that if we wish to comprehend the higher teachings, we need to have a mind that is receptive: to learn how to receive knowledge and not to instantly compare; to not theorize; to not speculate, but to receive information and to comprehend it. This is the teaching that Jesus gave, the fact that one has to pour new wine in new wineskins, but not to mix it with old wine or old wineskins. Because by pouring the new wine into an old wineskin, the old widescreen will break. This refers to adopting a new type of mind, a different type of mentality in which we can investigate things openly. We need a new attitude. We need to be open like a child, seeing the world for the first time and not instantly wanting to compare or label or debate or argue. Instead, we need a mind that can receive information in order to test it, not to think “This is going to work,” not to say “This is not going to work,” but to adopt the scientific method, the attitude that, "Well, I have my theory about how where this teaching will lead me, but I will be open to whatever occur”―to test, to verify, to experiment, and to see from experience whether it is true or not. We say that when listening to a teaching, that the bowl itself, the mind may have three faults. A vessel might have the following three faults:
This is a teaching given by Tsong Khapa. He was a great Buddhist master. He wrote this in The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, known as the Lam Rim Chen Mo.
…there is no great purpose in your hearing the teachings if you (1) do not pay attention; or, (2) though paying attention, misunderstand what is heard or listen with a bad motivation such as attachment; or, (3) though lacking these faults, do not solidify the words and meanings taken in at the time of hearing but let them fade due to forgetting them and so forth. Therefore, free yourself from all of these faults. ―Tsong Khapa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment: Volume I
So the same thing when we approach occult science, as in the teachings of Buddhism, because we say that Gnosis in itself was manifest in the heart of Buddhism. But as well as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, etc.
We're going to explain some Buddhist principles in relation to occult science, because by understanding the nature of the consciousness, we study the nature of our perception, which relates to Buddhism but also the esoteric teaching. When acquiring new knowledge, it means to approach the study of reality with an open mind. The Fourth Dimension
When we talk about the nature of cosmological laws, we talked about what is known as the fourth dimension. We are going to discuss the nature of Ether. We will discuss different natures of perception. And we are going to discuss the requisites for comprehending these laws in ourselves. So the 14th Dalai Lama continues in the same book, I mentioned The Universe in a Single Atom, and in relation to the study that Einstein provided and the study of the nature of space-time, the 4th dimension which is essential to the study of consciousness:
As I understand it, the most important implication of Einstein’s theory of relativity is that notions of space, time, and mass cannot be seen as absolutes, existing in themselves as permanent, unchanging substances or entities. Space is not an independent, three-dimensional domain, and time is not a separate entity; rather they co-exist as a four-dimensional continuum of “space-time.” In a nutshell, Einstein’s special theory of relativity implies that, while the speed of light is invariable, there is no absolute, privileged frame of reference and everything, including space and time, is ultimately relative. This is truly a remarkable revelation. ―H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom, Chapter 3: “Emptiness, Relativity, and Quantum Physics”
When we talk about consciousness, we need to talk about space and time, because the study of the nature of our experience will lead us to the awakening to superior dimensions of nature. This study that the nature of consciousness is relative and that the different dimensions of nature are relative as well, in relation to our perception of them, is a very profound esoteric statement that is affirmed by Buddhism.
So as the Dalai Lama states: In the Buddhist philosophical world, the concept of time as relative is not alien. Before the second century C.E., the Sautranika school argued against the notion of time as absolute. Dividing the temporal process into the past, present, and future, the Sautranikas demonstrated the interdependence of the three and argued for the untenability of any notion of independently real past, present, and future. They showed that time cannot be conceived as an intrinsically real entity existing independently of temporal phenomena but must be understood as a set of relations among temporal phenomena. ―H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom, Chapter 3: “Emptiness, Relativity, and Quantum Physics”
This is important to understanding our perception. How do we relate to the physical world? Even understanding, how do we perceive? Understanding our relative position of the nature of our universe, because it is this mistake of feeling that oneself is independent of this existence―that is a great delusion. When we perceive that our own mistaken senses of self are relative to us and illusory, we can begin to awaken to a much superior way of life.
Apart from the temporal phenomena upon which we construct the concept of time, there is no real time that is somehow the grand vessel in which things and events occur, an absolute that has an existence of its own. ―H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom, Chapter 3: “Emptiness, Relativity, and Quantum Physics”
So we examine the nature of our relationships to impressions of life from the scientific perspective. We seek to verify and comprehend our own perceptions, our own relationship to the impressions of life, which in truth is multi-dimensional in nature.
Space-Time: The Fourth Coordinate
We are going to discuss the fourth dimension specifically, next, and how it pertains to our conscious perception.
Previously we showed the image of what is known as the Bhavachakra in Buddhism. This image represents the illusory nature of phenomena divided into six realms. We have a course specifically dedicated to the subject on our website [Bhavachakra on Glorian.org], but we mentioned the Bhavachakra in brief because it explains aspects of our consciousness that we need to understand.
All beings who dwell within these six realms, which are symbolic in nature, dwell within suffering, within mistaken notions of self-hood or grasping and aversion to suffering: a psychological attachment that keeps them rotating within the wheel. If you are familiar with Carl Orff, there is a classical composition Carmina Burana, which is where we have the famous piece “O Fortuna.” We find that this cycle or rotation within different realms of suffering, different ways of perceiving, are mistaken notions of self that create suffering.
We study, briefly, the Bhavachakra because in order to awaken to our genuine spiritual nature, we seek to transcend this wheel. This can only come about by questioning our own perceptions, by learning to perceive our mind as we were practicing earlier, as a separate entity, and that we, as a consciousness, are something separate and distinct. Those who have freed themselves from the wheel of suffering are known as bodhisattvas. They have escaped the dualistic mentation of the mind and they have transcended to a superior region. You see them in the top corners of the image. This science of consciousness that we are explaining pertains to understanding our different modes of perception and the nature of what we call space and time, the fourth dimension. Because by understanding space and time, we understand ourselves to a deeper degree. Now people in conventional science have, at least within the past century, affirmed the existence of a fourth coordinate. We studied the nature of the 4th dimension in relation to our consciousness, because it pertains to how we perceive or the illusions of what we perceive. 
So first off we have this image. We have an eye with a clock which we are going to explain. Sand is representing the chronometric aspect of time. So when we talk about the fourth dimension, we talk about two aspects of our perception in this region, because it is this illusion of time, of thinking of the future, worrying about the past, which keeps us hypnotized and not recognizing our current state of being.
So to quote Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition, in his book Cosmic Teachings of a Lama: Length, width, and height are―without any possible doubt (even if these are of a Cartesian type)―the three Euclidean aspects of this three-dimensional world within which, for good or for bad, we live. It is evident that it would be absurd to exclude the fourth factor from our postulations.
In discussing consciousness, we talk about these two factors. The chronometric aspect of time is the illusion that there is a morning and an afternoon, an evening, a day. Or a five o'clock, or afternoon, or twelve o'clock at night. This illusion of time that we commonly experience and sense, that is the chronometric aspect of our perception.
But we also have what is known as the spatial depth of our perception, which could only be developed if we learn to awaken our consciousness, our spiritual capacities. We have this image of the eye with the clock to represent the spatial depth of the fourth dimension. It is important to study the fourth dimension because when we comprehend ourselves, we are learning to perceive our own multi-dimensional nature. We are learning to perceive how we are not just a three dimensional being with length, width, and height. We have actually a much more profound and deeper constitution than is admitted by conventional science. We have our emotions and our mind, which are more real to us than anything else. In fact, we always try to make the physical world concur to our own desires, the way we think and feel. We want our external world and universe to coincide with our concepts, beliefs, our emotions, our attitudes, our cravings. If we want coffee, we make an effort to fulfill our needs. It is not just a physical instinct, but it is an emotional craving. Or in our mind, we have a belief about a certain system or teaching and we strongly affirm it against another person we argue with. Therefore, this is indicating that the mind and the emotions in themselves are more real to us than anything physical. Even the way we physically live is completely contingent upon our thoughts and our feelings and our psychological constitution. Even the way we perceive the illusions of time and our own sense of self depends entirely on how we perceive. It depends entirely upon this question: what is it that we perceive and how do we know? Our multi-dimensional nature is verified even by the existence that we have thought-feeling―if we observe ourselves and analyze: where does it come from? Where do we receive thoughts? Where do emotions emerge? The truth is these elements of our constitution belong to different dimensions of nature, which interpenetrate our physical plane. We are going to be explaining in relation to the Kabbalah, which is known as the Hebrew Tree of Life: a map of the multi-dimensional nature of our consciousness. If we wish to understand the nature of our perception, if we wish to understand the mysteries of life and death, we need to overcome this illusion of time: that there is a tomorrow or that there was a yesterday. The truth is there is only this moment. Our sense of time is dependent upon physical factors and therefore our relationships, obligations family, career, job, physical objects, like home or property, our relationship to all these things create this illusion of what we call time. If we wish to comprehend the more higher spiritual principles, we need to understand the nature of our own illusions of time: to observe here and now; to not think of the future or the or the past, but to be aware of the present moment. And this is, we are going to explain, starts to develop what we know is the spatial depth, which is the ability of the consciousness to perceive physical phenomena in a new way, in a more encompassing way. Even in this physical plane we have many illusions. Samael Aun Weor states in The Doomed Aryan Race [now published as The Narrow Way] in relation to the nature of our three dimensions as well as the fourth dimension: A line is the print that a dot leaves while moving through space. A plane is the print that a line leaves while moving through space. A solid is the print that a plane leaves while moving through space. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Narrow Way
These are our three dimensions, and typically all we perceive are just length, width, and height, in terms of our physical senses: our sight, our capacity to hear, etc. We rarely recognize or are able to perceive the vital depth of a person. This is known as clairvoyance: by learning to perceive energy of people, the chakras.
Clairvoyance in French literally means “clear vision.” Do not think that only a few people have this capacity, or that they are gifted. In fact, we all have the potential to develop these faculties, if we are sincere that our inner Being, our inner God can guide us to awakening what we call the spatial depth, which is clairvoyance. When we learn to awaken our own divine perception, we could begin to perceive life in a new way. All of us have to some degree. If we are approaching this science, we have experienced something to a degree of this type of phenomena, in which we were shocked―in which, in a given moment, we question, “Why am I even here? What am I doing here? Who am I as a person? Where am I going?” Meaning spiritually. “If I die what will happen?” When we question what it is we know and we analyze what is it that we want to know, we begin to awaken. When we learn to develop that, when we follow that hunch, that yearning, we approach the science that leads us towards the development of that capacity within us. We develop the spatial sense, clairvoyance, spiritual perception. We begin to perceive different phenomena. Samael Aun Weor continues: A hypersolid is the print that a solid leaves while moving through space... ―Samael Aun Weor, The Narrow Way
So we are talking about points, lines, and planes, and that when they move through space, they create the different dimensions. When a physical object, when a solid of three dimensions moves through space, it creates what is known as a hyper solid.
Samael Aun Weor states: …it is the fourth dimension of any given body.
So that which people call auras, seeing imagery within the internal dimensions, such as in dream yoga, awakening in the astral plane, speaking to angels, conversing with the Gods: that is conscious perception. Perceiving physical life in a totally new manner, pertains to the awakening of perception and the perception of hyper solids, hyper volume. Because, the hyper solid of a person is simply the vital aura, the energy of a person―what we call the Ether of a person.
The Four States of Consciousness
When talking about the nature of Ether and energies, and how to use energy to awaken consciousness, we need to emphasize that there are really four states of consciousness in this science. If we wish to comprehend the nature of time, if we wish to develop our clairvoyance to perceive the heavenly beings within the superior dimensions when we dream, we need to comprehend that there are four states of consciousness of perception.
Eikasia
We use Greek terms from Plato who knew this science in depth. He was a Gnostic initiate. We have Eikasia (Εἰκασία). Eikasia simply means ironically, “imagination.” This is very interesting. We emphasize that Eikasia is ssleep without dreams: to be asleep as a consciousness and to not even have dreams.
We typically associate this state with being physically asleep and eight hours passing by in the night, and then we wake up and not remember anything. This is one level of meaning to this state of consciousness. But even more directly, if we look at the literal translation, Eikasia means “imagination.” It means perception. It is a type of perception, such as we have now, meaning, we physically we have our sight, our hearing, our touch, etc., and yet we fail to recognize the inherent, intrinsic reality contained within any impression that we receive. We fail to understand that the nature of any given impression of life is illusory. We simply see appearances. We do not really directly see within a person. So we are having a conversation with an individual. Unless we are really awakened spiritually, we do not perceive their thoughts. But we have a general sense of emotion, of experience. Eikasia literally means “imagination,” and it means the type of perception we all have. We are physically awake, but spiritually speaking, we are asleep. We are not aware of our energies, our divine potential on a clairvoyant level, on an observant level. Humanity is caught within this state of Eikasia. People think they are awake, physically, yes, but spiritually no. To be spiritually awake is to perceive the vital forces that animate nature, to see life in a new way, not to be caught up in thought, intellect, theories, debate, which is precisely the second state of consciousness. Pistis
πίστης Pistis, in Greek, literally means “belief.” It means sleep with dreams.
So what is a belief? It is but a dream, an idea, a concept that has not been verified. Many human beings on this globe have many theories, spiritual or scientific, and yet which are not grounded in the actual experience of the truth, that have not been verified through one's own cognizance. Pistis is to dream. If we physically go to sleep and we have dreams, that is Pistis. We are not aware that we are dreaming. We are not aware that we are receiving images on a psychic level within the dream state. Therefore, these are illusory. This is illusion. Eikasia, again, is sleep without dreams, and when we are physically awake, it does not mean that we are spiritually awake. It means that our physical senses are active, but our own consciousness is asleep. It is in a potential state. It is not developed. That can only be developed by learning to learn how to work with energy known as the Ether, as we will explain, and learning to direct our attention. Dianoia
So precisely the state of awakened consciousness is διάνοια Dianoia. Dianoia signifies “revision of belief” and we call this the state of awakening. So do not mistake that being physically awake that one is spiritually awake, because we can be physically asleep and we can be awake in the superior dimensions of nature, known as astral projection or out of body experiences. Or one can be physically awake and yet asleep as a consciousness, or better said, one could be physically asleep and psychologically asleep.
Do not think that consciousness simply means physical activity, or that in our state we possess consciousness. Yes, we perceive phenomena. We perceive images, sensations, thought, emotion; but it does not necessarily mean that we comprehend those phenomena as they exist within ourselves. As you might have noticed from the practice we did at the beginning before the lecture, we were sitting to observe our own mind, as if the mind itself is an actor and that we are a director. If we have seen that our own thoughts come and go without any control on our part, if we can experience that emotions come and go without any direction of our will, it means that we are not in control of our mind. It means that we perceive life, but we do not comprehend it. It is precisely this foundation that we seek to emphasize. Consciousness does not literally mean being physically awake. The consciousness is part of the Being, of God, that needs to be developed. So Eikasia means “sleep.” We are here present, but the question is whether we are paying attention, if we are awake as a spirit, as a psyche. Pistis is sleep with dreams. Meaning: anytime we have an idea, a preoccupation, a memory, we are driving our car but thinking about other things. We are planning our day when we are drinking coffee. Or conceptualizing, theorizing, believing. This is Pistis. These are fluctuating states of experience that do not signify that we as a consciousness, of the part of God, are really awake, vigilant, active, being aware of the thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, perceptions, comprehending them all in this instant. That is Dianoia, because noia or nous means “mind.” Dia means “side to side.” So Dianoia means “to stand aside from the mind” and to look at it for what it is, that it is a machine. It can store information. It can conceptualize. It can rationalize. it can compare things, but it cannot know God. And sadly, Immanuel Kant, a great German philosopher, was rejected because he stated this: that the mind cannot know the truth, and many philosophers were angry with him. They said, “What are you talking about?” Because they use the intellect to try to explain spiritual phenomena. Dianoia a means “to stand aside from the mind” and see it for what it is. But besides this type of perception there is something superior which we call νους Nous. Nous
Nous is illuminated awakened consciousness. It is one thing to stand aside from the mind and see it for what it is, to comprehend that it is like a separate entity in itself. It is another thing for that consciousness to unite with God and to be one with God, to perceive oneself as God, when the Being is fully manifested in that consciousness. This is known in the East among the yogis as samadhi, as experiences in which the consciousness is like a drop of water lost in the ocean of divinity.
Question: What is a yogi? Instructor: Yogi is a person who practices yoga. This teaching is essentially yoga in itself. We are learning to understand the mind and to control our own mind, so that we can attain union, which is the meaning of yoga. Yug, the Sanskrit word “to reunite,” so that we could reunite with God. Question: Is this the Indian language? Instructor: Sanskrit. The Eastern language. Nous pertains to experiencing the consciousness of God, which is very elevated and which we can only really experience through meditation, which is the fundamental teaching or practice of this tradition. If you are familiar with Plato's teaching, he talked about the Allegory of the Cave in his book The Republic. He describes as a group of men or people living in a cave, in which there is a wall, and individuals are chained by their necks in their legs and their arms to that wall facing the darkness. Behind the wall there is a fire, and individuals are carrying clay pottery on their heads and their arms past the light, and it is casting shadows on the wall. Now the individuals who only see darkness in that cave is Eikasia. They sleep. They have no dreams. They see no imagery. Meaning, they do not perceive even psychic imagery, such as if we go to sleep physically and eight hours go by and we don't remember anything. This exemplifies the fact that if this is our common state of being. It means that we are like the prisoner in the cave, unable to see even images. Another of those who see images on the wall, those are dreams, false illusions. Any belief, thought, concept, idea in itself, is an image. It is fleeting. It passes on the screen of the mind. It disappears. That is all we see. Fortunately in the allegory, we have an individual who is freed from his confines: taken, turned around to face the light, the fire in the cave, and is immediately blinded by that light. But when his eyes adjust, he realizes his surroundings and that the clay pottery that was before the light of the fire is projecting its images on the wall. He realizes that what he previously perceived was an illusion. This is Dianoia. He stands outside himself to the side of his mind and says, “Now I see that what I perceived before my ways of thinking, my ways of feeling, my ways of behaving, all that is illusory―and that my perception of these things is in itself something superficial.” But again, the story does not end there. It is not enough just to see the fire in the cave. That is Dianoia. Socrates was a teacher of Plato. Socrates says in Plato's teaching that this individual has to be forced out of the cave, dragged against his will. This is us when we are really beginning to study this type of science and if we are beginning to awaken our consciousness. We have to be dragged out. 
Divinity takes us by the cuff, pulls us out of the cave, and gives us the experience where emerging from the mountainside, one sees the stars. Even at this point, the person's eyes are weak and dim. It cannot perceive the light as it is. Then for the first time in this individual’s life who's been in the cave he sees the sun, the sunrise for the first time.
We know from Christian teachings that Christ is the sun, the solar logos, the fire, the flame of life that animates all beings. So, he sees that light for the first time and is blinded by that luminosity, and it takes them weeks to adjust to that light. And then he realizes when he is in freedom, that he feels such pity for people who are in the cave because they don't understand what freedom is. That experience of the sun for the first time is Nous. To be united with God is Nous. It is the consciousness illuminated by the spirit, by our Buddha, by Allah, by Christ: different names for that energy, that force. We are like that in the cave. We perceive thought, feeling, emotion, sensations, but we do not really comprehend how these in themselves are phenomena. They are constantly changing like the images on the wall of the cave. By learning to work with our energy, precisely the Ether which we are going to be discussing, we can generate our own fire, which is represented by the fire in the cave. In order to perceive light, we need fire. 
The Tree of Life: Our Multidimensional Nature
In spiritual studies, we talked about the need to work with energy. We talked about the need to develop spiritual forces. The nature of energy is described in this image. This glyph is known in Kabbalah as the Tree of Life.
This is one of the trees that was mentioned in the Garden of Eden, in the Book of Genesis. This tree represents a map of consciousness, from the highest realms of the Being, of God, to the lowest levels of matter, energy, and consciousness. We basically have ten spheres or סְפִירוֹת sephiroth [the Hebrew term for emanations]. Above we have Christ, the trinity above: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Below we have the different manifestations of that light which descends, down into matter and energy. through past periods of cosmic evolution, which is a different topic. But in this image, it explains the multi-dimensional nature of our Being. We all have God within. We all have a spark, a flame that unites us with the source of all creation, which above is known as the Absolute. Here we have at the top trinity. Notice we have three trinities. The top trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew, it is known as כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, and בִּינָה Binah. Below that we have another trinity, which is the trinity of the Spirit: God, our own particular God within. חֶסֶד Chesed, גְּבוּרָה Geburah, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth: we have the Spirit, the consciousness, and what is known as the soul or human soul. Below that we have to the right, mind, נצח Netzach. To the left we have emotions, הוד Hod. Beneath that we have יְסוֹד Yesod, which is vital energy, the foundation of all spiritual practice. Then below that we have מלכות Malkuth, which is the physical body. Notice even in this diagram the mind, the emotions, and the vitality are just the bottom of the real human being. They are not the totality. We have other aspects of being that we need to awaken to. When we talk about the multi-dimensional nature of our constitution, we talk about this glyph, because all of us have Christ within. All of us have our own spirit, that if we unite with in meditation, we can become one with that consciousness―that state of being which is to see the light of day for the first time, like in the Allegory of the Cave. We say that this glyph is divided into different dimensions. Here we are talking about the fourth dimension. We look in this image, this this glyph is divided into seven dimensions. The bottom we have our three-dimensional world Malkuth, the physical body. The fourth dimension is known as Yesod, the vital body. When we talk about bodies and energy, we are talking about vehicles which exist within more subtle levels of nature, of matter, energy, and consciousness that we can access when we know how to awaken in dreams. The way we do that is precisely working with the Ether, known as our vitality, what gives us strength, which gives us the capacity to perceive life in this physical plane. The physical body Malkuth is just an instrument of the vital body. If you are familiar with the Kirlian camera, Russian scientists developed this camera that can photograph the aura of living things. Even minerals have vital depth, vital energy. It is this energy that is going to grant us the capacity to ascend, up this tree. It is the Ether, the light, which illuminates the different spheres, which form the Christmas tree. So that tree is the Tree of Life, fully illuminated by the Ether of our body, of our energies, which, when we work with that energy, it illuminates and creates the Christmas tree, the Christ-Mass-tree, which is a harmony or reunion with the Christ force. 
Question: Do you view that as a ladder then?
Instructor: Yes, we even talk about in the Bible, Jacob's ladder. Question: So we all start at the bottom per say and then we can experientially work up? Instructor: Yes, this is the process of initiation, which is another lecture. Question: Is that why they put lights on the Christmas tree? Instructor: Because that represents the human being, fully illuminated, the different sephiroth to the star, which is the really the goal that we seek, our own inner Being at the heights. So, again, we talk about seven dimensions. The Christ known as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Above they relate to the seventh dimension. This light is the zero dimension. It is the first emanation or light that emerges from that source we call the Absolute. Time does not exist in the source of divinity, the Absolute. However, that energy, that light known as Christ, descends and enters the different levels of matter, energy, and perception. Beneath that we have the sixth dimension, which is where we find the Spirit, the consciousness, and our human soul. This is known as Nirvana among the Buddhists. Nirvana literally means “cessation,” and it means that in order to acquire that state, one needs to acquire the cessation of suffering, a mind that is serene so that one can experience those realms only by controlling the mind. Beneath that we have two sephiroth, two spheres. We have on the right Netzach, which is mind, intellect. On the left we have Hod, emotions, the astral vehicle. The mind and the emotions constitute the fifth dimension, which is beneath Nirvana. The fifth dimension is where we go to dream. We typically travel in what some call the astral body or the mental body, which are vehicles or lunar vehicles. Nature gives us certain vehicle so that we can exist with thought and feeling in those realms. Beneath that we have Yesod, the fourth dimension, which we equate with space and time as well as the Ether. Question: Yesod is the fourth dimension? Instructor: Yes, and in Al-Qur’an, the teaching given by Prophet Muhammad, he said that paradise is a land of milk and honey. So, this is the fourth dimension that he was talking about. Many of the saints who acquire beatitude and sanctification in their life, they enter into paradise, which is Yesod, a voluptuous and blissful state. Then beneath that we have Malkuth, the physical plane. I am going to explain to you just a little bit about from the teachings of Samael Aun Weor, the nature of these different dimensions. We have been told that the fourth dimension is time (in its exclusively temporal aspect).
As I mentioned it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit above.
The intellectual beast… ―Samael Aun Weor, The Narrow Way
…and this sounds very harsh, but the truth is all of us are, we could say animals with intellect. The word animal comes from anima, which means “soul.” So we are souls with intellect, and if we are constantly identified with negativity and anger and pride and passion, it means that we were bestial in a sense, negative, and we use our intellect and create many problems for ourselves.
The intellectual beast is bottled up in Euclidean geometry because he has never awakened his consciousness. The consciousness that slumbers is content with Euclid’s tri-dimensional geometry (meaning: just isosceles triangles and other shapes relating to the physical plane, ignoring that there is a higher mathematics, a higher type of teaching). One-dimensional creatures only possess sensations of pleasure and pain, likes and dislikes, such as for example, the snail. Bi-dimensional creatures such as dogs, cats and horses, etc., possess sensations and representations (they not only feel pain of good and bad, pleasure and displeasure, they also see representations; images such as the person, the master, etc.). The tri-dimensional biped (mistakenly called a human being) [and we will elaborate on this point] possesses sensations, representations, and concepts. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Narrow Way
We talk about the human being made into the image of God. People think the image of God is the physical body, and they are mistaken, because this image is psychological and spiritual. To be made in the image of God is to be a mind united with the spirit, because the word mind in Sanskrit is manas, man. The spirit is hum in Sanskrit. The breath, the wind, that floated above the face of the waters in the Book of Genesis, that inner spirit needs to work with our energies known as Ether, in order to create the image of God within.
A human being is just that: a Christmas tree fully illuminated, because if we take this image and put it on the person, we find it matches with the physical body with the highest aspects of God in the brain. We have the spirit in the heart, and they have our vital energies or forces within sexuality.
The spatial sense can never be developed without the awakening of the consciousness.
This is precisely our goal in these studies, to become what the Bible calls a human being. What is a being is the Christ, the inner Buddha, our spirit within. A hum-man is a mind that obeys God within. So, it is psychological. It is not physical. When we talk about the nature of Ethers, we will explain why.
The fourth dimension precisely is the foundation that leads us towards the path of spiritual development. The Ether in itself is a mysterious substance that was pondered about by physicists, and there has been much speculation about the nature of this substance. They talked about space-time as taught by Einstein, but many really failed to understand that this Ether is what can grant us the capacity to experience the spiritual realms. Notice how even going back to this image, this Tree of Life is centered on this sephirot Yesod, known as Ether, known as energy. It gives our vitality in our body. It is the second to bottom in the very center. It is right above Malkuth. We have here Yesod and then Malkuth below. So, our foundation of the entire Tree of Life, of the unity with God, is precisely by knowing how to work with this energy called Ether. More specifically we call it the sexual force. The sexual energy. Question: Why is the bottom upside down? Instructor: It is a good question. That is known as hell. In Kabbalah, it is called קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth, which literally translates as “shells.” It is the inverted aspect of the Tree of Life. Just as there is heaven, there is hell. Hell refers to our own pride, anger, negativity, vanity, laziness, gluttony, our defects. It is the shadow of the tree that we need to eliminate if we want to illuminate our Christmas tree, meaning our own inner Being, our own higher constitution. Question: Is that why the different areas, sephiroth, are? Like gluttony, vanity... Instructor: Not specifically. You cannot correlate necessarily each of the nine inverted sephiroth with a specific defect. Instead, there are astrological influences that Master Samael explains in books like Hell, Devil and Karma, in which he describes how different planetary influences govern the different spheres of hell, but that's another topic, because hell in itself is not just a place in the internal dimensions where people suffer. There is a place, but instead it more importantly refers to our psychological states. Question: Being in a physical body, that is almost like being in hell itself? Instructor: We can say that, yes, and our body needs to be purified and become a house for God, like symbolized by the Virgin Mary. Mary represents the physical body, the matter, the mother, that needs to be purified in order to incarnate Christ. The way that we work with that is by working with the Ether. Ether: The Sexual Energy
We are going to explain more about this energy and how it applies to our spiritual development. I like to actually quote for you Albert Einstein again from the same book The World As I See it. This is from a chapter of “The Problem of Space, Ether, and the Field in Physics,” explaining how many scientists are debating this concept of space-time, and what is this Ether that is so essential to physics.
The mechanical properties of the Ether were at first a mystery. Then came H. A. Lorentz’s great discovery. All the phenomena of electro-magnetism then known could be explained on the basis of two assumptions: that Ether is firmly fixed in space―that is to say, unable to move at all, and that electricity is firmly lodged in the mobile elementary particles. Today his discovery may be expressed as follows: ―Physical space and the Ether are only different terms for the same thing; fields are physical conditions of space. For if no particular state of motion belongs to the Ether, there does not seem to be any ground for introducing it as an entity with a special sort alongside space. ―Albert Einstein, The World As I See It: The Problem of Space, Ether, and the Field in Physics
There is this big great debate about the nature of Ether and whether it is a different substance from space or if it is one with space. So we talk about, especially in these teachings, how in order to develop our spatial sense, our capacity to perceive life in a completely different manner, we need to work with that energy, that Ether, which is precisely within our sexual organs. It is a vital energy that gives us life.
We have our parents. They copulate it and now we have a physical body. That energy also has the potential to create spiritually if we know how to use it correctly. So here Einstein is explaining that, you know, they are trying to resolve this issue of how does electromagnetism work? How do forces manifest and act through matter? Precisely, the answer is to the Ether, known as the fourth dimension. Question: You are saying that there is a direct link between Ether and our sexual organs? Instructor: Yes. Question: That is where the capacity is to see these forces behind nature?... Instructor: Yes, precisely so. This substance known as Ether, which permeates every atom of our physical body, grants our body the capacity to transmit electricity, energy, forces, biochemistry, such as the different processes of digestion, of excretion, of many processes in our physical body which we take for granted. Our life depends on the health of our vital body. When a person dies, it means that the vital body has lost its energies and it basically separates from the physical body or disintegrates. If the physical body never had its vital depth, meaning, those Ethers or energies present in the body, we would die. Our very life, even our lifespan depends on how we use our energies, whether mental, emotional, or sexual. Remember we talked about the mind, we talked about the emotions, and we are talking about Yesod now, the foundation of spiritual practice as the Ether. 
This Ether also manifests again in different ways. We have it not only in our sexual organs as the vital foundation of life. We also have it within space. It is a substance that permeates all of nature. It allows for the spiritual forces of God to manifest physically. So just as we have it within our body, we have it within the cosmos. As represented by this glyph or this image.
Many people have debated about the nature of Ether from different religions, different traditions, trying to explain what it is. Many having very conflicting and contrary opinions about it. But we explained in synthesis that the Ether as we know it is in our sexual organs. It is a condensation of spiritual forces that come from even from the galaxies, from the stars, from the highest realms of the Tree of Life as we mentioned. This Ether, as we are going to explain, enters into our body and manifest in different ways, the different ways that we can work with this energy in order to awaken our consciousness. I would like to quote again from Blavatsky from The Secret Doctrine. She states: The septenary gradation, and the innumerable subdivisions and differences, made by the ancients between the powers of Ether collectively, from its outward fringe of effects, with which our Science is so familiar, up to the “Imponderable Substance,” once admitted as the “Ether of Space,” now about to be rejected... ―H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Book I, Part II, Chapter III: “Primordial Substance and Divine Thought”
Meaning: people used to think it was a separate substance from space, ignoring that the cosmos, the space, is one with that energy, and through the condensation of forces on the Tree of Life that enters into our body, enters our sexual organs. Then it is a matter of returning that energy inward and upward towards the source. Not only physically, but within our different levels of our constitution represented by that tree. This:
..."Imponderable Substance," once admitted as the “Ether of Space,” now about to be rejected, has been a vexing riddle for every branch of knowledge. The mythologists and symbologists of our day, confused by this incomprehensible glorification, on the one hand, and degradation on the other, of the same deified entity and in the same religious systems, are often driven to the most ludicrous mistakes. (So many people they think this substance Ether mentioned in religion is basically the abode of hell to some. So Blavatsky states:) The Church, firm as a rock in each and all of her early errors of interpretation, has made of Ether the abode of her Satanic legions. ―H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Book I, Part II, Chapter III: “Primordial Substance and Divine Thought”
There is a lot of misconceptions about Ether. They think it is some kind of physical chemical to put someone to sleep or it is some demonic substance that it channels evil forces. The truth is Ether, in itself, in its most unmodified original substance, which we seek to work within ourselves, is known as the Divine Mother Space.
We see in this image, in a Hindu depiction of the Divine Mother, and from Her emerges three figures Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. These are just different terms for the Holy Trinity of Christianity: Brahma the father, Vishnu the Son, the Christ, and Shiva the Holy Spirit. These are energies, not people, but forces.
So the Divine Mother is the space that we find in the universe, which is the habitat of that energy known as Ether, the sacred force. The Hindus give it a different name. They call it Prakriti. They say Prakriti, this energy, is the Divine Mother. When we talk about the Virgin Mary, we are addressing that divinity, which cannot be conceptualized with images necessarily. Question: Is that the same as prana? Instructor: Yes, prana is another term. We say prana is a life force. A lot of these terms are really synonymous. They indicate aspect of the same force. The reason we study this cosmological perspective in relation to the science of consciousness is because by working with these energies, divine forces, we can awaken to superior levels of experience. Prakriti means “nature,” literally, from Sanskrit. We can also call her Mulaprakriti at the same time. Mula means “root.” She is the root of nature, which is the space. Remember in the Book of Genesis, “the spirit of God hovered above the face of the waters.” Or it says in Hebrew, the רוח אלהים Ruach Elohim hovered above the face of the waters, the face of the deep, meaning the space, and then God said “Let there be light, and there was light.” So working with the waters is precisely how God created the light within. Although there is a cosmological relationship to this myth, more importantly it refers to how we develop psychologically, spiritually. The waters are precisely those Ethers, the vital forces of nature, which we have in our sexual glands, and when we know how to work with our inner Being, the Spirit, the Ruach Elohim, God can create light within. God can awaken the consciousness. Again, that light is developed by working with those waters known as Ether. Some call it Akash. It has different names, and we find it precisely within our sexual glands, because if you are familiar with Hinduism, the yogis, they teach the base chakra, the base of the spine is known as Muladhara. It is the abode of Prakriti, they say. It is the abode of the Divine Mother. So relating to Hinduism, the energies of God, the Divine Mother force known as Kundalini, She is Prakriti within us that can awaken and ascend up our spinal column when we know how to work with those energies, known as Ether. Or, we could say Akash, another term for that. Question: How do you exactly work with those energies, so as to activate them? Instructor: To awaken sparks of that force, one can work with mantra, but specifically we refer to the necessity for what we call scientific chastity. People think chastity simply means to abstain from sex. It really means purity within sex. If one is single, one can practice exercises of pranayama. We have them available in our literature [see the lecture Pranayama and Sexual Transmutation], but also mantras help stimulate that energy in order to channel those forces and we can awaken sparks of that fire. The only way to fully awaken the Kundalini is precisely in a matrimony, which we could not explain in depth today, but it is the union of man and woman, sexually speaking, in which the most powerful forces of God, the fires of creation, can give birth to the spirit. As Jesus said, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." Meaning: if one copulates in the normal fashion, one can give birth to a child, a physical child. “But that which is born of the spirit.” In the same sexual act, we can develop the spirit if we conserve that energy and we don't expel it, meaning: to not reach the orgasm, specifically. Question: When a woman is having her cycle or time of the month, it is dangerous to work with the pranayama, right? Instructor: Women, when they are in their menstruation cycle, should not mantralize, should not transmute. Just to meditate, because it is a natural process in the female body that needs to expel negative substances from the body. It is a natural process for women because the feminine body is more receptive and receives energies and needs to purify every month. During that process, women should only meditate. Do not mantralize. Do not transmute. Question: Not even mantralize? Instructor: You can, but physically the vocalization is a special creation that occurs when physically mantralizing. So, not to do pranayama, not to do that, but to pray. One can pray, one can meditate during those times, because the body needs to clean itself basically. So Prakriti is precisely within that chakra known as Muladhara. Dara means “foundation.” Mula means “root.” As I mentioned with some of the exercises, we seek to awaken that fire. So that fire, like in the Allegory of the Cave, can illuminate us, so that we can leave the mountain, leave the cave, and ascend to the highest realms basically speaking. Question: Is the Kundalini force both within the sexual organs and the root of the spine? Instructor: The Kundalini is a serpent fire that is coiled three and a half times in the Muladhara Chakra. It is at the base of the spine. But we have that energy active in our sexual organs basically, and so when we know how to work with the Divine Mother, we can awaken our consciousness. So again, this energy is in space, but we also find this energy within our sexual glands. Samael Aun Weor states in one of his books of astrology: Prakriti, the Divine Mother, is the primordial substance of nature. Several substances, different elements and sub-elements exist within the universe, but all of these are different manifestations of a single substance. The Great Mother, the Prakriti, the Primordial Matter, is the Pure Akasha contained within the entire space (we sometimes say Akasha. We sometimes say Ether. Really they are synonymous). Millions and billions of universes are being born and dying within the bosom of the Prakriti. Every cosmos is born from the Prakriti and is dissolved within the Prakriti. Every world is a ball of fire that becomes ignited and extinguished in the bosom of Prakriti. Everything is born from the Prakriti; everything returns to the Prakriti. She is the Great Mother. ―Samael Aun Weor, Practical Astrology: The Esoteric Treatise of Hermetic Astrology
So just as we have Divine Mother space, we also have the Divine Mother as a serpentine fire within our coccyx.
Again, we have another image of space representing the forces of nature, divine nature.
Question: How does one activate the Merkabah? Instructor: The Merkabah, which is a chariot of the initiates, is a representation of what we call the solar bodies. These are vehicles that can express the energies of Christ here and now. Christ knows that if it tried to incarnate within a person who did not have those vehicles within, that person would be obliterated. Question: Even if they are spiritually awake? Instructor: Even if one develops the consciousness, one is at another point to walk the path of initiation to create what we call the solar bodies. So many people, they talk about the astral body, mental body, but the truth is that as we are now, we typically possess what are called lunar vehicles: vehicles that we inhabit when we dream, that were given to us by nature. But we need to create a superior type of vehicle, which is only possible through alchemy or the perfect matrimony. Question: Merkabah is activated... Is that the same effect as the Kundalini? Instructor: When we awaken the Kundalini and develop it up the spinal medulla, not only within the physical body, but the vital body, the astral body, the mental body, the bodies above, that creates what we call solar bodies. So, the Kundalini force, the Divine Mother can create those vehicles of soul. Question: Even though they are one, but they are still different? Instructor: We could say they are different aspects of ourselves, just in the same way that our thoughts are dealing with our emotions and our body. We have the distinctions, but usually they interpenetrate in such a way that we don't know the difference, but that's why we need to awaken ourselves consciously so that we can differentiate between thought, feeling, emotion, sensation, etc. Question: And the Kundalini expands your consciousness? Instructor: It can give us greater capacities for awakening. Yes. Question: The Merkabah does the same thing? Instructor: The Merkabah: having solar bodies, can give oneself capacities to experience superior dimensions. The Merkabah are the solar bodies, the vehicles that can take us up to God. The way that we develop those vehicles is precisely by working with this primordial root matter. We call it Ether. We call it Akasha. We call it Prakriti. And so, this energy is really the root of all cosmogonies, not only in the physical universe that we know of, but also even in our internal universe. We need to create our own spiritual, we could say world, from the chaos. That chaos is precisely in reference to our own energies in our body that are untamed, and also our mind, because like it says in the Book of Genesis "and the world was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep." That darkness is our own mind. But if we know how to work with the energies―we call Akasha, we call Ether, by working with the breath, the spirit that floated above the waters, working with our breath, with mantra, with pranayama, or working in alchemy in a marriage―those energies can create our inner universe. What is the primordial Chaos but Æther? Not the modern Ether; not such as is recognized now, but such as was known to the ancient philosophers long before the time of Moses; but Æther, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the germs of universal creation. Upper Æther or Akâsa, is the celestial virgin and mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom, as soon as “incubated” by the Divine Spirit [the Ruach Elohim as I mentioned], are called into existence: Matter and Life, Force and Action. Æther is the Aditi of the Hindus, and it is Akâsa. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh facts are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the power of this protean giant―Æther; or whence its mysterious origin? Who, we mean, that denies the spirit that works in it, and evolves out of it all visible forms? ―H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Book I, Part II, Chapter III: “Primordial Substance and Divine Thought”
As I mentioned to you, this energy has created the universe: the worlds, the stars, and we precisely carry the same power within our sexual glands. So as Mulaprakriti in nature, we find as the Hindus teach us, the Prakriti is in the base of our spine and our sexual organs, which when we know how to work with the different practices of the tradition, we can awaken that fire and therefore illuminate our Christmas tree. We could say our spinal medulla as well, because if we take the Tree of Life and you put it on a person, the middle column refers to the spine, because the spine of a person is the Tree of Life. Without that one cannot exist. The spine also refers to willpower. Like we say, if this person has no spine, basically it is a kind of rude condemnation of another person.
Question: When you say illumination, you mean enlightenment right? Instructor: Yes. Question: Does the Merkabah, the Kabbalah bring the same effects as that? Instructor: Merkabah is just a vehicle. It can transmit higher energies. Now, if one has those bodies, one has an extra benefit to be able to transmit more force, but what is necessary is to still, discipline the mind. So, it is a medium that can help. It is not an end in itself. 
The Elements of Nature
When we talk about the Ether or Akash, we talk about how it relates to our physical body as well. We are discussing the nature of this energy within the cosmos, but also within our physicality. This Ether, Akash, is what manifests in this physical plane as the different elements that we experience.
We have Sanskrit terms. When the Akash modifies itself to manifest in the physical world, Akash, when it is petrified, when it becomes solid, it forms the Earth, known as Prithvi. When that Ether condenses as a fluidic substance, it becomes the water, Apas. When the Akash is in an igneous, flaming state, it becomes Tejas, which is fire. When it becomes like fluidic and gaseous, it becomes Vayu, air. This is just one level in terms of nature. We have these principles known as tattvas, modifications of that force, Ether, within nature. Also, importantly, we have these forces in our body, which we need to work with to help us, we could say, awaken our consciousness. These elements relate to different aspects of our body, of our psychology. Prithvi relates to the physical body, is our Earth. Apas, the waters, pertain to our seminal fluid, any fluids in our body, that help with the process of the endocrine system, the nervous systems. The waters that circulate in our body, as in our blood, which is a vehicle of fire, Tejas. The fire relates to heat, even combustion in our body. Many processes like catabolic and metabolic states, breaking down of waste in our body, etc. We also have Vayu related to our breath, which gives us life in every instant. The Akash precisely pertains to a fire that permeates all of that, all these elements within our body, but most precisely within sexuality. We say that the Kundalini is Akash: that mysterious fire of the Divine Mother is Akash. She is the fire of creation. Question: Those are Hindu words, right? Instructor: Yes, we could say Sanskrit, more precisely, but you know, it's not my intention to go much more in depth, but we state that in order to preserve the health of our physical body, we need to consume elements that are beneficial for our psyche, basically. So different foods have different condensation of these forces. Grains have a lot of Prithvi, meaning Earth, or legumes, beans, things of that nature. It is good to consume elements from these different forces, the tattvas, to help balance our psychology, to create a more harmonious energy in our body. We have Apas, which we find in fish, specifically, because the fish of the sea, they channel the waters of the earth and the cosmos. The energies that enter the planet and enter the waters and strengthen those animals, the fish. So, it's good to consume fish in balance in order to consume that element Apas, which helps us to control the waters of our body. Just as the Prithvi, consuming grains in moderation, helps to strengthen our body, we have Tejas, which we find in red meat which, as you know, red meat has what we call fire, because it is energy. It is good to eat in moderation. But if one is vegetarian, that is acceptable. But if one wants to have a little bit more fire, particularly for work in alchemy, the perfect matrimony, one can consume red meat in moderation. Usually, no more than a palm full or the size of one's palm once a week, typically, we say. Then Vayu we find within grape juice. Not alcohol, but it is better to drink grape juice, the non-alcoholic element. This is represented by the eucharist. We consume these elements in our diet because it helps to give us strong energies. Our diet helps feed our spirituality basically, and so in studying the science of consciousness, we study that all these forces manifest in our bodies so as to take advantage of them. Those who are lacking a certain elements should learn to harmonize the body by consuming in a balanced way, these different elements. It is these elements that we consume, the air we breathe, the food we eat, whether grains, meat, fish, legumes, grains, etc., that is going to be transformed in our body precisely as what we call the seminal energy. This energy has the capacity to awaken ourselves spiritually. It is represented as the Tree of Knowledge in the Book of Genesis, that forbidden tree that was commanded of Adam and Eve not to eat, meaning: not to indulge in the passions of sexuality, but to know how to use that force wisely, which we explain is in relation to the doctrine of chastity, purity. So precisely our sexual energies are the Akash, and that energy awakens in us when we know how to work with mantras, vocalizations, exercises like pranayama, working inter-nostril breathing, activating those energies through prayer, meditation, and work with breath, because just as the breath the spirit of God hovered above the waters, so too must we work with our own breath―breathing with sacred sound―in order to activate those forces. 
The Four Ethers
Lastly, we are going to just explain in brief how the Ether can be divided also into four, in relation to our psychological processes, as well as physical.
We talked about how the Ether manifests as the four elements, but also we are going to explain these four ethers as they are explained in the Bible.The Bible talks about the four rivers of Eden. These are what we call the four Ethers. So those four rivers are Chidekel (the Tigris), Pishon, Gihon, and Phirat (the Euphrates) in the Bible. They represent what we call the four Ethers. This is also another way of looking of how the Ether manages our organism: how the Ether in itself can help us to understand our psychology. So we have the Chemical Ether: The Chemical Ether is related with all the processes of organic assimilation and nourishment. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
All of our physical processes in our body, digestion, consumption the breaking down of fats, production of bile, biochemistry in our body, is related to the Chemical Ether.
The Ether of Life is related with the reproduction processes of the race. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
This is the energy that gives life through procreation and creates a child, but we have also two superior ethers related to our perception. They are known as the Luminous Ether and the Reflecting Ether.
The Luminous Ether is related with the processes of sensorial perception. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
How we perceive physically depends on the health of this Ether, which is luminous.
The Reflecting Ether is intimately related with the faculties of memory, imagination, willpower, etc., etc. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology
So Luminous Ether pertains to our physical perception, but Reflecting Ether pertains to our spiritual perception. As I have been mentioning, these ethers and forces, they help us to channel the consciousness. They help us to manifest consciousness, and we mentioned in passing, some exercises that one can use to work with that force in order to awaken the consciousness.
When talking about these four Ethers, if you are familiar with Merkabah, Max Heindel, another occultist, he explained that two superior Ethers need to be separated from the inferior Ethers. This is the meaning of the Bible when God said “Let the waters be divided into a heaven and to the lower firmament.” These two Ethers are separated, or purified or elevated, especially within a matrimony, by working with one's partner, connecting sexually with love, purity, and devotion to God, and never wasting that force, never expelling it through the orgasm, specifically. The Luminous Ether and the Reflecting Ether are strengthened and they help to form what is known as the vital body, or the beginning of the Merkabah, we could say. These energies and forces explain many of our physiological processes, but also, when we talk about these forces, we emphasize that they aid us towards awakening spiritually. We have practices of meditation, of concentration, which are strengthened when we know how to work with these forces within us. Audience: People who have true astral projection, it is mandatory that they separate the higher ethers from the lowers...The lower Ethers must remain in the physical body and your spiritual practices... Instructor: Those higher ethers pertain to our perception and can illuminate us within the internal planes. So if we want to have experiences out of the body, working in the dream state, it is necessary to work with that vital energy. We do it through mantra, pranayama, some of our yoga practice. One thing Heindel mentioned that was a bit incomplete was that he said that in order to create the so called To Soma Psuchikón, the bodies of the psyche, one needs to just separate the ethers. That is one step. There is a deeper process that we have mentioned elsewhere in which one creates these spiritual bodies, but that is another topic in itself. But the ethers are important. We talked about many things, space and time, how our illusions of perception are based on the misperception of our psychological states, but in order to access the higher regions of spirituality, we must learn to conserve our energies and work with them through a spiritual practice, specifically. That energy is what is going to allow us to perceive. Without fire, we do not have that power, the energy. We cannot perceive light. Only from fire comes light, as represented in the myth of the cave by Plato. Questions and Answers
Question: Merkabah… you ever hear of Drunvalo Melchizedek?
Instructor: Someone who calls himself Melchizedek? Question: Drunvalo Melchizedek. He has a school called School of Remembering, and he teaches how to remember, how to activate the Merkabah. Do you know anything about that? Instructor: Precisely we talked about the perfect matrimony in order to develop these vehicles of the soul. The Merkabah is literally a chariot that Ezekiel was taken on in order to experience the highest realms. So those are what we call solar vehicles, which we emphasize are only created in the sexual act. But not in the common way, because as Jesus of Nazareth taught, “You must be born again of water and spirit.” Water is the Ether or Akash, that substance in our body that we can give birth to the spirit―born of the wind and the spirit. The wind is working with our breath, with mantras such as in the perfect matrimony. When uniting with our partner, one is sexually connected and never spills that force. Otherwise if one ejaculates that energy in the orgasm, one is expelled from Eden. As mentioned in the Hebraic myth, Eden is a Hebrew word that means “bliss.” The ultimate bliss between a man and a woman is, sexually speaking, when they are united. But if they do not know how to control that serpent, that fire that is awakened in them, if they expel it, that serpent goes down and forms what we call the tail of Satan. But if that serpent is tamed, that sexual passion is controlled and transformed, it rises up the spinal medulla only in accordance with moral rectitude, work in the heart, controlling and annihilating anger, pride, vanity. The Divine Mother is that fire, that Kundalini force that can create the solar bodies, the Merkabah, but only if we are working on ourselves, meaning: we are meditating and trying to comprehend our faults. Otherwise, we take that energy we feed it to our desires, and that is bad. Question: Does this presume that you have to use some type of force over that energy to negate, again, the erotic element involved? It is common in sex. You have to neutralize that to make sure there is no ejaculation and to keep it spiritual. This could be a test in itself. Instructor: We call that energy Lucifer. People think it is some guy in a red suit with a pitchfork who is living in a kingdom of brimstone and fire. Lucifer literally means luci ferrus, “bearer of light.” The fire is that serpent, that sexual power, which is very tempting to indulge, in that pleasure, and to waste it. But the Lord in the Garden of Eden said, “Do not eat of that fruit,” meaning, do not culminate in the animal orgasm, symbolically speaking. Otherwise, you'll be ejected from Eden. That energy, if we conserve it, if we control it and dominate it, it will rise like in Moses' serpent upon a staff. That staff is the spinal column. When that serpent rises inwardly and upwardly, it forms, it illuminates the Tree of Life, out body, our psyche. That creates the Christmas tree. When Moses, representing the willpower of an of an initiate, who is dominating the sexual energy, he can then go to Egypt and try to free his people. It is not just physically a group of people in the Middle East that existed. Instead, it refers to the parts of our soul that are trapped in ego, in suffering. That energy has the power to create or destroy. Question: You mentioned willpower, which you also said has to do with the heart, Tiphereth, is that correct? Instructor: Yes, Tiphereth in the Kabbalah is the heart, the human soul. Question: When you are saying matrimony, are you meaning a man and a woman married, or two partners in love? Instructor: I am saying in terms of what a real matrimony is, and this is a good question. Samael Aun Weor stated that a real matrimony is decided between the two Beings of the couple and that a marriage only consists when a couple is in love and they live in a legitimately constituted home. Some people have tried to interpret this as: you have physical papers that you are married. But elsewhere he stated, you know, this contrivance of physical papers and marriage papers and all that conflict and all that difficulty, is really superficial and meaningless. When a man and woman unite sexually, when they love each other, that is marriage. They are united sexually through that bond. That energy is so powerful that it unites them through eternity. Therefore, the one who decides the married couple is really God within. If we have our partner and we are living together, but we are not necessarily married and have papers, that is not important. What is important is that the Being within us has decided that this is our partner and that we work with her. A real matrimony is dependent upon the will of God, not on papers. Question: So you are talking about partnerships. Not necessarily a man and a woman being married with papers. Instructor: When we talk about matrimony, we mean sexual connection. To be sexually connected is to be married. That is a bond that cannot be broken. It is very serious. If we have a partner and we want to work with this energy, it is what can unite us with God. As taught by Jesus, the cross is the path of the cross, basically. The phallus is the vertical beam. The uterus is a horizontal beam. It is through that energy in which we can die to our most horrible defects, which is symbolized by the Passion of Jesus bearing his cross and suffering what he did. So that's another topic, but matrimony is really when two beings love each other fully, even if they don't have physical papers―that they're married. What is important is that one has love. If there is no love, then papers mean nothing. Papers are a necessity in these times, you know, for tax purposes, but at the same time, it is not the most essential thing. Are there any other questions or comments? Question: You said that with Merkabah you can experience higher realms of consciousness, right? Does the Kundalini does that as well? Instructor: They are related. So, the solar bodies are precisely when that sexual fire rises up the spinal column to the brain and then to the heart. So when that fire is fully active and manifest within that given body, whether the physical body, the vital body, the astral body, the mental body, or the causal body, that forms the Merkabah. The Merkabah is the vehicle of the soul. In order to express God fully, we need to develop those vehicles through precisely that work with these ethers that we mentioned. So that energy is what creates those vehicles through which God can act, and is literally the fire that illuminates that tree. So that body has fire only because of the Kundalini and that fire creates those vehicles. So that is what the Merkabah is Question: That is why you said Christ cannot incarnate in you without those vehicles. Instructor: As I said, if the Being were to try to incarnate without the person having the vehicles, the person would be obliterated because the Being is the power of a galaxy, of a solar system, of a star. That is the power of Christ. It is that force which, if we want to manifest that, we need to work with that energy precisely. Question: I wanted to talk about clairvoyance because that is something that I am trying to develop too, and I remember a particular time, it must have been a couple of years ago, but I notice that I kind of had the power to read those closest to me. Like their thoughts, and there was a particular time, this was when I was younger, when I was experimenting with hallucinogens and stuff like that in order to see different types of perspective. I remember a time my friend and I were on LSD and I looked him, and his face was melting, and I was a little freaked out and then he told me like a couple seconds later. He's like, it feels like my face is melting, and that really freaked me out, because I think for a split second I was in his mind and I was seeing something that, you know, I was seeing something before he even said something, and that kind of freaked me out. Now was that a kind of moment of clairvoyance, to be able to see or to hear someone else's thoughts? Instructor: We call that in that sense, but because of the involvement of drugs, we call it negative clairvoyance. It is a type of perception, but it is channeled through the mind, through desire. So, we do not suggest the consumption of drugs in any manner, but those substances awakened negative perception. So, like we talked about Eikasia, meaning the lowest state of consciousness, meaning just: sleep without dreams―there are those who take drugs and they awaken their consciousness trapped in the darkness, so to speak. It is a type of Eikasia meaning “imagination.” You are perceiving images, but it is from unconsciousness. It is a type of perception, like animals that see at night, who are accustomed to that type of perception. We say that is negative and that is actually the type of perspective that demons have. Angels have positive clairvoyance. They see things objectively. They see the realities of the different dimensions without confusion and without any obstruction to their perception, but a demon learns the see precisely by using drugs and by alcohol or fornication, especially―the abuse of the sexual energy. They develop power in the mind to see in the mind and so it is another topic in itself, but it explains those types of perception. It is a perception that you have through the mind, but a negative one. Question: But this is perceived through the pineal gland, right? Instructor: We say the clairvoyance relates specifically to what we call the pituitary gland in between the eyebrows. As we mentioned a little bit ago about the physical body, our organs play an intimate role in our own internal chemistry, but also the working of spiritual forces. The endocrine system plays a role in terms of how we can perceive forces. So if we develop our heart we can learn to astral travel. If we develop the pituitary gland between the eyebrows, that can help develop clairvoyance. We have different glands like the thyroid related with throat and can help with we call clairaudience: learning to hear psychic sounds, such as in dreams or out of the body. So that gland relates to clairvoyance specifically. Question: So it’s the pituitary gland that is related to clairvoyance, but is the pineal gland more of a received? Instructor: The pineal gland is a transmitter. When we transmit thought, which is a vibration, it comes from the pineal gland. We receive through the solar plexus. People call it telepathy or transience, the ability to communicate through energy. The brain is the transmitter, the pineal gland. The solar plexus is the receiver of a thought or vibration. Audience: So people on the left hand path, when they want to get you over and over, they go for the solar plexus apparently. That is what you feel when they try to weaken you. There are people who can drain you. Instructor: The solar plexus is where we store energy. It is like our sun basically. A good healthy intestinal tract goes a long way in spiritual studies. It may sound interesting. What does spirituality have to do with the body? But as we have been mentioning, the forces in our body can help us awaken spiritually, so the solar plexus has a lot of those solar energies, which we attempt to use in our practices. Question: You spoke of the fourth dimension. What is that, in the astral plane? Instructor: The astral plane is the fifth dimension. Yes, the fifth dimension is the mind, Netzach and Hod, the heart. The fourth dimension is the vital energy. Above that we have mental and emotional energy, or mental and emotional matter. It is important to clarify, since some people, when they hear of astral projection, they think it is something vague. In fact, the internal planes are as material as the physical plane. They have a type of sustenance or matter or forces, which are tangible. The thing is we do not perceive that because we do not work with our energies, basically, but if we learn to work with transmutation, using our vital energies, the ethers, we can awaken the Luminous and Reflective Ethers, and they can expand in our consciousness, so that we can perceive these things. But the fifth dimension is the astral plane. Above that is the spirit, and Christ is the seventh dimension, beyond. Audience: One more thing I wanted to bring up about the pineal gland. I remember the first time I came here, I was talking about how the presence of fluoride in water and food is, over time, has calcified that pineal gland. So, I did some research and I recently bought this thing. I am not sure you guys are familiar with the site Infowars. It has a site that has alternative news media, you know related to the government exposing the kind of things that goes on, but this thing actually works really well. It is fluoride shields. Its got like a bunch of organic things in here. Its got organic tamarind, zeolites, fulvic acid, shilajit, and organic cilantro, but this has honestly helped me when I try to meditate. Sometimes I cannot focus because I feel like there are too many thoughts. So with the calcified pineal gland, since you said, that is where your thoughts are associated, since it is calcified, it would also mean that it would be harder for you meditate because of all the other thoughts that are in your mind and you can't really think about your one true self because of the calcified pineal gland. Instructor: I would say that a healthy body is a healthy mind, but do not get so worried about, “I can't meditate because my pineal gland is calcified.” If you feel like you have suffered damage to your pineal gland, and most of us have, I do not know so much about the substances you are mentioning, but I do know that when you work with transmutation of your sexual energies, and you raise that energy, inward and upward to the brain, it illuminates the mind, and there are some studies, based on Kellogg, we have available on our website, that explain how the hormones of our body are intimately related with our sexual energy, our sexual matter. So, we conserve the semen, the seminal matter, and transform it into energy, those transform into hormones and can nourish the pineal gland and regenerate the brain. So the greatest composers, artists, musicians, philosophers, they had illuminated minds, meaning that their brain was seminized we could say. Their semen was cerebralized. There is an intimate relationship between the waters of sex and the waters of the brain. This is the meaning of this mysterious name מִרְיָם Miriam, because the letter מ M [in Hebrew] signifies water. Miriam is the Divine Mother, water below and water above in the brain: the two firmaments mentioned in Genesis. So, if you have a healthy body, you have a healthy mind. We all suffer some problems in our bodies because of past mistakes, but the thing is to take advantage of what we have now, and not to fret over it, but to work with that energy within the body called the Kundalini force or sexual energy.
The purpose of this course is to explain humanity’s origins, situation, and trajectory. While discovering and analyzing the facts, we may also struggle to reconcile various narratives about who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we are collectively going as a species.
In this process, it is necessary to question our assumptions about humanity’s past. Since mainstream anthropology does not have definite answers to our prehistoric origins, it is even more important to question and entertain different perspectives as new evidence arises. We should also be willing to re-examine what evidence we do have. Otherwise we risk becoming rigid, inflexible, and dogmatic, only seeing in accordance with our presuppositions, even when others kindly point out our error. 
Göbekli Tepe
A powerful example of this can be found in Göbekli Tepe.
Göbekli Tepe is a Pre-Pottery Neolithic archeological site in Southeastern Turkey. It’s Turkish name means “potbelly hill,” since it is perched atop a limestone mountain ridge. What is most remarkable is that it has the world’s oldest stone megaliths, predating Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. Carbon dating has revealed some of its oldest structures to have been fashioned almost 12,000 years ago. That’s way before hunter gatherers formed pottery, our presupposed ancestors according to mainstream archeological and anthropological narratives. How is it that the people of Göbekli Tepe could fashion stone megaliths while the local hunter gatherers could not even fashion pottery during the same period? This discrepancy should raise serious questions. For example, the main T-shape pillar in the northern plateau of Göbekli Tepe is 23 ft long by 10 ft wide, weighing around 50 tons. That’s right―I said 50 tons. Such stone monuments depict many animal carvings, which some now argue constitute astrological symbols. Some state that Göbekli Tepe was built to align with astronomical and astrological positions in the night sky, based on its stone carvings and overall placement in relation with the stars. How could so-called “primitive” people create such astronomical, astrological, and architectural wonders? How is it that such structures were built before agriculture and farming were instantiated? What happened to the people of Göbekli Tepe? Where did they get their knowledge of stone working? Is it true that the same hunter gatherers were capable of erecting the region’s most ancient and monolithic structures? Or was Göbekli Tepe built by people with more advanced knowledge than the local population? Were there distinct groups of people during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic era, one responsible for creating 50-ton megalithic structures and the other for mere hunting? We have to ask ourselves what is really going on here. Göbekli Tepe was not the working of unsophisticated people. It’s quite the contrary. What this demonstrates is that our conventionally accepted timelines for human development are wrong. What’s annoying about Göbekli Tepe for mainstream anthropologists is that its structures had to be based on advanced knowledge. Such knowledge doesn’t emerge out of nowhere. It has to be cultivated and transmitted, even over the course of thousands of years before they take their incipient form. The Definition of Gnosis
As evidenced by our line of questioning, this is why we rely on our own experience.
The Greek term Gnosis signifies conscious experience of reality. It is direct observation of the facts, based on knowledge acquired from all our senses. This is no different than the technical definition of empiricism, which is a theory of knowledge derived from sensory experience. What we perceive excludes, justifies, or certifies what we fundamentally know. In other words, observation or experience of the facts produces or demonstrates genuine certainty. This is why, in our tradition, we leave speculation, theory, and assumption behind. We verify through experience, validating all forms of evidence. This is why Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Revolution of the Dialectic: Gnosis is lived upon facts, withers away in abstractions, and is difficult to find even in the noblest of thoughts.―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic
The physical senses can provide us with specific but limited domains of data. It is not complete. It is not whole. Nor does it access the totality of all there is to perceive. This is because our psychological senses are more profound, even though they are currently in an embryonic or potential state.
We know that thoughts and emotions exist, even if we cannot see them with physical eyes. We know thoughts and feeling exist because we experience them. We sense them through our psychological senses. Such senses are not physical. They are multidimensional. You can even prove this to yourself. Ever walk down the street and sense someone staring at you? You turn, look and―as you sensed it―there is your friend looking to get your attention. How can you even possibly know? And yet it happens. Likewise, ever have a dream? Why are you interacting with different persons in your dreams if they are not real? If they have no substance, essentiality, or existence? Even dreamscapes can change in accordance with our thoughts, emotions, and impulses. This shows us that our inner thoughts, emotions, and desires have substantial reality. Despite the fact that we think and feel, do we understand the origins of thought? Do we know where emotions emerge? This is not a philosophical question. It is an experiential and practical one. Have you ever observed your thoughts? Have you ever looked at your emotions, where they come from, how they sustain, and how they pass? Do we fully understand the factors that lead us to the expression of the abstract, the undefinable, the psychological? Do we really think, or do ideas merely come to us? I’m sure many of us have had this experience. You are trying to solve a problem. After deliberating for hours, we distract ourselves for a moment until, finally, it hits us. We know. We receive an understanding or solution. Such an example proves to us that the human being is much more than the ability to think. We currently think that thought is the pinnacle of human achievement because animals don’t have it. Even if thought were the ultimate expression of humanity, then we should definitely know it’s origins. We should examine our experience, look to understand the patterns that shape our perceptions, and look to expand and clarify them. Because in reality, all of the ancient traditions across the world have emphasized, like the Oracle of Delphi, that there is more to us than we typically assume or aspire: Know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and its gods! ―Oracle of Delphi 
The Four Pillars of Gnosis
This experiential knowledge of divine truths, as expressed throughout all of the great civilizations of antiquity, can be didactically understood through four components. These are often called the four pillars, because a pillar supports the roof of any sacred temple, such as in Greece. When any one of these pillars is missing, the whole structure falls. They work together, not in isolation. These are the pillars of science, mysticism, art, and philosophy.
All ancient cultures once expressed their knowledge of the universe and the individual in accordance with these four pillars. In truth, such civilizations were essential scientific, mapping and diagramming the stars, while at the same time appreciating such wonders through mystical aspirations, symbols, and language. They even erected great pyramids and sanctuaries, wondrous works of art, which encode―in their symbolic statues, carvings, and edifices―the secret philosophy of actualizing our complete and divine potential. It is only when civilizations degenerate that these four pillars break, corrode, and separate into ruin. Science without mysticism is insufficient. Mysticism without science is blind. A culture without great art loses its moral compass. A tradition without philosophy stagnates. By expanding our own capabilities, by knowing the origins of thought, emotion, and desire, by seeing that which is eternal within the individual, we learn to appreciate, understand, and properly interpret the great megaliths of the ancient world. We learn to intuit the purpose and message of divine architecture. We also learn to access the very same source that inspired such cultures to embody heaven on earth. A Universal Religion
Psychological introspection allows us to see the origins of religion. The original term is Latin, signifying reunion with the divine. This is the Western term for Yoga, which is its Sanskrit equivalent. All religions are expressions of divinity, whose teachings codify in accordance with the particular idiosyncrasies, temperaments, languages, and cultures of their messengers.
We can say that thought is the means by which such wisdom was articulated. It takes thought to create something. However, thought is a vehicle. It is a means. It is not the origin, the author of creative genius, which in turn gave rise to the multitude of architectural wonders of the world. While thought is the chisel and hammer that shapes the ancestral stone into form―through the planning and design―the initial wisdom or principle guiding the architect is not thought. It is something more abstract and subtle. There are many contemporary persons who believe that thought is divine. They are wrong. Thought is the vehicle by which our inner world expresses and becomes concrete. The divine genius of humanity is not the mind. The mind can plan and orchestrate, but it cannot drive, inspire, or command. Thought is the medium of conscious will, the capacity to do, to act in the world. However, even will is superseded by the intuition, the immediate comprehension or understanding of the truth, which is later eclipsed by thoughts, plans, ideas, speculations. In the example of receiving inspiration, when you receive that sudden knowing, you did not need to think. That insight originated from the divine author within. This principle of divine inspiration is what was fully developed in ancient humanity, hence the magnitude and power of their great social machinery, whether from Greece and Rome, to Jerusalem and Egypt. They not only mastered their own material abilities, but also their psychological and spiritual ones. Therefore they articulated universal wisdom through the particulars of time and place, such as with the Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian religions. 
Anthropology
All religious traditions and cosmogonies speak about the creation of the human being, as we see here Jehovah forming Adam. This painting from the Sistine Chapel is not merely a physical retelling of history. It is a psychological creation story.
The term anthropos signifies “human being.” Logos in Greek indicates the divine Word, the manifested and articulated will of divinity. This word constitutes the suffix -ology within the term anthropology. Therefore, anthropology in its authentic sense is the study of humanity’s relationship with the divine. While we study diverse cultures, societal systems, and ways of life, we do so with the understanding that ancient civilizations strove to express the Logos on earth, within every thought, word, and deed. While we possess the outward form of a human being, it is evident from our psychological and collective behaviors that we have not mastered our complete human potential. This is evidenced by our modern propensities towards deficiency and corruption, exemplified by the last two World Wars and humanity’s growing dissatisfaction with our current state of affairs. It is a mistake to believe that our present humanity is the apex of an ever evolving and perfecting arch. This assumption is based on a misinterpretation of ancient traditions, that we are already true human beings fashioned by divine agency. We have mistaken a symbol of possibility for established reality. 
Evolution and Devolution
The fact of the matter is, we are not the product of evolution alone, but devolution as well.
To explore the origins of humanity, we must deeply comprehend these mysteries. This term evolution signifies progress, advancement, and development. We find evolution within the plant that germinates, grows, and matures. However, it soon experiences the inevitable consequence of its own genesis: decay, disintegration, or devolution. Devolution signifies the return to a primeval state. We emerge from the seed of our parents and eventually return to the earth. When someone becomes old, they devolve, degenerate, and decline. These laws of evolution and devolution are eternal. They apply to the embryo that becomes a human being, then a corpse; and even magnifies in terms of resolution: entire civilizations, ecosystems, planets, stars, and galaxies. Everything that is born must die in accordance with its allotted conditioning and time, no matter the scale. There is no evolution without devolution. There is no birth without death. There is no good without evil. All of this is represented by Yin and Yang in Taoism. We also find this cycle demonstrated by this graphic. All life evolves to a defined point, then devolves and decomposes. In our present state, we have evolved from inferior kingdoms of being. Beneath our present state are inferior levels of nature, mapped by the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. The souls of diverse life forms have progressed and developed throughout these states for many millions of years, acquiring necessary experiences and knowledge in accordance with cosmic transmigration. However, while we are the apex of mechanical nature (since it took no effort for us to get here), we risk entering the opposite dynamic, which is devolution. It is very evident that our present humanity―rather than taking advantage of our human bodies to transcend suffering and master our complete and divine potential―is devolving, decaying. Our society is crumbling because the individual, rather than comprehending and eliminating the causes of discord, is instead exacerbating them. The ancients never ignored these two fundamental principles. 
The True Human Being
This proves to us that we are not complete. The true human being is distinct from us. We utilize this term out of respect for others, even when it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of people who populate the Earth. This is because a real human being is one who’s mind, manas in Sanskrit, is united with Hum, the spirit, the Being, with the divine.
A true human being is a Moses, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, a prophet. To use a Buddhist metaphor, they rose like a beautiful lotus out of the mud of psychological pollution. They are a divine jewel, a precious stone on the crown of the saints, whose minds are purified of all affliction. Their actions demonstrate the unitary nature of perfected being. It is these great masters who inspired the architects, artists, sculptures, painters, and builders of antiquity, evidenced by numerous flood stories depicting the guidance of superior beings who instructed the survivors of great catastrophes. We study their influences throughout the past so as to wisely guide and orient our afflicted hearts. As you can deduce, these prophetic beings are the exception, not the norm. 
Apes and Devolved Species
As evidenced by the kingdom of the apes.
When humanoids degenerate, they devolve. It is true that humanity has a common ancestor with apes. However, science mistakenly assumes that humanoids evolved from apes. In fact, it is the other way around, as demonstrated by the Qur’an: When they were insolent concerning that which they had been forbidden, We said unto them, “Be ye apes, outcast.” ―Al-Araf 166
Apes are devolved humanoids. When any humanity degenerates, when their cultures and societies crumble, their ethics wane, they become decrepit, insolent, cruel. The Neanderthals, among numerous others, are degenerated humans. So are many other anthropoids. This explains how there existed, side by side, advanced cultures like Göbekli Tepe alongside more primitive hunter gatherers. Those humanoids that did not completely degenerate themselves established their civilizations while others entered into decline. Some groups rise, and others fall within the wheel of the centuries.
Cosmology
When we study Gnostic Anthropology, we also consider the name of humanity’s relationship with the cosmos. The Greek word cosmos κόσμος means universe or order. Likewise, the Greek λόγια Logia indicates communications of divine origin.
The reason why ancient cultures depicted open communication with the divine, with the heavens, with the gods, was because they were speaking from experience. They were not superstitious, consulting dead statues through vain ritual observance. Their cultures deeply venerated the gods because they spoke directly with them. How did they do it? They established psychological order within their interior so that through meditation, they could see, perceive, contact, and consult the spiritual masters. By becoming a perfected cosmos or unity within, one has the basis upon which to build a temple of authentic spirituality, whereby heaven and earth commune. The ancients depicted this truth with their architecture, since these represented how a true human being can properly orient his physical body, psychology, and spirit with the highest order of things. 
The Tree of Life
This is why we study the Tree of Life. While commonly associated with Kabbalah, or mystical Judaism, it is a symbol or map of our cosmos, both external and internal. These spheres represent different modalities or being, different levels of nature or perception, from the most material and concrete below to the most subtle and abstract above.
Kabbalah comes from the Hebrew word קבל Kabbel, which means “to receive.” It is a genuine form of experiential knowledge, authentic Gnosis, whereby the consciousness, in meditation, learns to awaken to its true nature and perceive the multidimensionality of the cosmos. We do so through the science of Dream Yoga and Astral Travel. This is how we verify from our experience the realities of divinity beyond our physical limitations. This is how we can investigate the origins of our humanity and countless others, when we develop that very same psychological introspection into the core of our being. 
Advanced Civilizations, Root Races, and Rounds
Many anthropologists and archeologists refute the possibility of previous humanities because it opens the door to a deeply threatening realization: our current civilization is not the most advanced our planet has ever seen.
Gnostic Anthropology describes how our current civilization, while making exponential technological advancements, is not the pinnacle. In fact, while boasting of our contemporary medicine, laws, and materialism, we are in truth primitive in comparison with the ancient societies allegorized and mythologized in the world’s oldest scriptures and traditions. Our humanity is not the most advanced our planet has ever seen. There have existed races and peoples whose entire civilizations were either wiped out or obscured by the distance of the past. Again, the Qur’an and many other scriptures affirm this. Likewise, our earliest humanities have subsisted in different dimensions before condensing into this physical world. This initially explains how modern science cannot find sufficient physical remnants of these past civilizations, all of which are remembered and recited by the ancient religious and spiritual traditions of antiquity. Everyone has heard of Atlantis, some of Lemuria, fewer regarding the Hyperboreans and Polar (Protoplasmic) Races. These are races and histories we can explore within the higher worlds of Kabbalah when we know how. By entering meditation and awakening within the internal dimensions, which we always access when we dream, we open up the door to reviewing the ancient histories of humanity. Likewise, such civilizations existed in other cosmic eras, sometimes referenced as Rounds. We exist in the Terrestrial Round, the universe manifested within physical matter with the purpose of producing genuine, authentic, and perfected human beings. The universe, which is a cosmos or defined order, has the mission to generate integrated and perfected human, divine masters. This is the central goal by which entire spiritual and ancient civilizations thrived, propagated, and subsisted. They knew that we have the potential to become like the divine. Also, by learning about our planet’s true history―not the assumptions or correlations of materialistic hypotheses―we will know how consciously we can understand ourselves. We learn to orient our trajectory as well for the betterment of self and humanity. 
Astronomy and Astrology
Let us get into some of the many avenues or domains by which we study ancient cultures through Gnostic Anthropology.
Göbekli Tepe is an amazing example of how the ancients knew the stars. Its architects were keen to map, diagram, encode, and imitate the language of the skies. They understood that the constellations were the abode of spiritually enlightened beings, not just in our physical dimension, but in higher dimensions. Therefore they demonstrated not only superior navigational capacities of a physical type, but also spiritually: such individuals could astral travel and directly communicate with any sidereal genie or master. Also, many ancient peoples were not as degenerated as we are today. They were more open to accept the reality of conscious intelligences governing any celestial body or entity, because they could directly contact such beings internally. Not only were their physical accomplishments mind-blowing, but truthfully, such feats pale in comparison with the level of spiritual work required to experience and know these realities for themselves. Their knowledge of astronomical science is small compared to genuine astrology: the art of communicating with the Logoi or divinities of the stars.
Architecture
We marvel how the ancient Egyptians could build the Pyramids of Giza. Mainstream anthropology and archeology does not have an adequate explanation for how such structures were built, since a single pyramid stone alone weighs 2.5 tons. We know within the Gnostic tradition that such pyramids are Atlantean, including the Mayan pyramid of Chichen Itza.
Even the Nahuatl language bears the Atlantean prefix -atl, signifying water. This is because the Atlantean civilization was swallowed by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, according to traditional accounts. Atlantis was the root of many powerful civilizations, which some brave individuals are now willingly acknowledging given the preponderance of otherwise unexplainable evidence. The Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans, Aztecs, and many others encoded within their architecture the essential truths of every religion. Every March 20th to the 21st, when the sun begins to go down to the horizon, numerous shadows appear on one of the main faces of the pyramid and Chichen Itza. These are often denominated as the serpents of light of the Pyramid Kukulkan, the feathered serpent. Such a winged serpent has many references within Zoroastrianism, Mexico, and even the Bible. This is because all of these marvels point towards a universal science of mastering ourselves, symbolized by the energy of the serpent Kundalini, the Fire of Pentecost, the brazen serpent that Moses raised upon a staff to heal the afflicted Israelites in the wilderness. 
Sculpture
The Greeks and Romans beautifully depicted the perfection of the human body as correlative of spiritual achievement. The gods and goddesses, like Athena, Zeus, and Hermes, symbolize how divine abstractions, the expressions of spiritual compassion, reverence, and supremacy, come to favor the great spiritual heroes, those that willingly go to war against themselves to embody the highest virtues. They do so through working with Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, or Kukulcan, as we mentioned, synonymous with Athena, the power of the Divine Mother, who helps us resolve the riddle of the Sphinx: what does it mean to be a true human being?
A Sphinx, as we see in Egypt, is the amalgamation of the four elements, which have direct correlations with our psychology and physiology: air (the mind), fire (emotions), water (sexuality), and earth (physicality). As the Egyptians taught, by mastering these elements in ourselves, we in turn become enlightened ones, transforming ourselves for the benefit of humanity. The Sphinx has the face of a man, the hooves of a bull, the paws of a lion, and the wings of an eagle, representing the four elements. By mastering these elements in ourselves, we in turn become divine. 
Art
Here we see images of The Last Supper, The Birth of Venus, the Aztec Sun Calendar, and the Egyptian God Anubis, hierarch of destiny and the governor of souls.
What these diverse artistic works have in common is their articulation of spiritual archetypes. They represent how divinity teaches, instructs, consoles, guides, and governs the spiritual candidate who seeks illumination. Art has always been used to articulate (as even evidenced by this word of speaking into being), the essential truths of religion, reunion, yoga. Like Venus, we must give birth to the force of love. Like Christ, we must endure our Passion. Like the Egyptian defunct entering the world of the dead, we must settle our account before the divine tribunals of cosmic justice. And like the Sun Calendar of Tonatiuh, we must measure and prophesy the future of humanity. 
Drama
We even find Gnosis represented within drama. There are many stories throughout antiquity, even within English Literature and the Greeks, that represent these divine principles.
All the ancient peoples knew that these dramas depict eternal truths. They show us the way to know ourselves and to help humanity through their symbols, allegories, depictions, dramatizations, plots, tragedies, comedies, dramas. They illuminate the way by which a human being becomes perfect. The ancient Greek theaters, the pantheons, the Rose and the Globe of Britain, where Shakespeare’s knowledge was disseminated to the public, represent the secret philosophy of a divine humanity. We study all these forms of art and drama in conjunction because they work together to teach us a unified science, a divine philosophy, a mystical art. 
Literature
We have here an image of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. We study their works, as well as many artists and writers, because their knowledge is refined. It is synthesized. It is profound.
Manly P. Hall mentions in The Secret Teachings of All Ages that William Shakespeare was an initiate. He has other theories too about the origins of this author―and perhaps the pen name “Shakespeare” as being not an authentic individual, but a substitute, a name for someone else, because this knowledge was meant to be given to humanity to teach how to change. We look to the writings of Dostoevsky especially for his deep philosophical, psychological, and mystical truths. Anyone who reads Crime and Punishment clearly sees the moral dilemma of our contemporary humanity, whereby those who feel they are above the law in turn commit atrocities, but never can escape their own conscience, the voice of morality that speaks to the heart of every human being. It is this voice which many suffocate in themselves, who ignore, who do not question or implore within their very being to know origin of truth, the origin of the divine. 
Music and Dance
We also find gnosis within the great works of music, dance, and theater within the ancient world, but also even within our contemporary society. We see here an image of the Sufis, one who is from the Mevlevi Sufi order founded by Rumi playing on a Ney, a wind instrument, a pipe or flute, which represents the longing of the soul to unite with the divine, with the truth.
We also see the ancient dances of Aztec Mexico. Those powerful ritual dances that these initiates of the Aztec pantheon would perform in observance and remembrance of the divine. There are still many Gnostic groups in this day and age who are performing the Aztec dances, which are a sacred form of ritual. They encode in their movements, their dance, their ritual, their liturgy, representations of how the solar divine entities and cosmic abstractions enter within the human heart. They charge the human heart. They inflame the soul. They represent cosmic truths, such as the dancers revolving around the center of the drum, the huēhuētl representing Huehueteotl, who I believe is a sun deity. These dancers dance around the sun, just as the aspiring soul dances and looks to the heights, the truth, for the source of strength and inspiration. Likewise the Sufis when they dance, the Mevlevis as well, they perform many dances that are very sacred. They represent the movement of the planets, how the Earth and many other worlds gravitate around the Sun. Likewise our soul gravitates around the Sun, spiritually speaking. We also see here an image of an opera house because many great composers of the classical traditions have also created works of art embodying the divine. We have given a course on our website called The Secret Teachings of Opera where we explain some pieces representing the eternal truths and secret philosophy mentioned by Manly P. Hall, Samael Aun Weor, and many others. We study all of these forms of art, dance, and music in conjunction, because opera, as well as many other art forms, forms of music, theater, etc., teach us who we really are.
For Further Study
In conclusion, we have two books that you can reference that go into much more detail than we have provided here today. We have Cosmic Teachings of a Lama as well as Gnostic Anthropology by Samael Aun Weor. These two texts will teach you about many essential elements of religion but also how we in our Gnostic tradition study the ancients, how we study ourselves, and how we interpret the great works of art, mysticism, philosophy, and science of the ancient world.
At this point in time, I would like to open up the floor to questions. Questions and Answers
Question: How and why are there different forms of Christ, like beings that appear throughout different religions and mythologies before the birth of Jesus? For example, Osiris’ resurrection story in the Egyptian religion, and other examples reflect this truth.
Instructor: This is because Christ was not only manifested within Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is an eternal principle represented by the Solar Logos, the Sun, but also etymologically S-o-n. There’s a beautiful correlation there. The Christian religion is not the only doctrine that teaches about Christ. Other religions use different languages, different symbols, different forms to teach the same principles. Whether or not people see the correlations or understand them is another thing. Obviously Osiris is a Christ-figure, and many elements of the Egyptian religion were subsumed but also assimilated within Christianity. We know that Christianity as a religious form is the amalgamation of Greek dialectics or philosophy, Egyptian mysticism, and the Hebrew Kabbalah. All these traditions capture, in their respective ways, these mystical truths. They just expressed them in a different way, in accordance with the language, the diction, the symbols, the temperaments, the ideologies, the psychologies of different people. So let us not get caught up with the outward forms. It is better if we look at what they represent. They are like sign posts. They are like flags. You do not literally look at the American flag and say, “There are literally fifty stars somewhere and thirteen stripes.” That would be silly! Many people like to historicize Christ, which obviously he was a living, physical being, but he came to live within his body of flesh and bones the sacred drama of the Inner Christ, which, if you’ve studied the life of Quetzalcoatl within Aztec mythology, has the same teaching. Quetzalcoatl even carries a cross. He bears the same Passion. Bacchus, the god of wine within the Greek myths, was, interestingly enough, transmuted into the symbol of Christian miracle. Jesus’ first miracle was transforming water into wine. I believe Bacchus or Dionysus, according to the Roman terminology, was also born on the same day as Christ on the Winter Solstice. So all of these signs point towards the same road. It is best not to get caught up in the outward forms, but to look at what all of these traditions are pointing to because they are universal. They are a universal religion. Question: As one delves into their own inferno, one may notice certain structures of thought, emotion, and concepts breaking down, sort of like God is working within by breaking down the intellectual animal, sort of like bits of the self are dying or being undone, like air eroding down a stone pillar. Would this be considered part of devolution or involution? Evolution, devolution? All the above? Is each one in each? Clearly something to meditate on, but do you have any insights to share? 
Instructor: Certainly! As we will explain later in this course, the force of involution is when spiritual potential enters into materiality. So going back to the image that we showed about the cosmic rounds and the Tree of Life, the different root races that we were demonstrated for all of you to see, we saw in that symbol how the spirit enters into matter throughout diverse cosmic eras called Kalpas, I believe, or cosmic days: Mahamanvantaras, better said. Involution is when the universe materializes into the physical world, enters into states of matter, complexity, density, and expression.
Evolution is when the consciousness, embodying mineral states, graduates through many millions of years into a plant body. Likewise, after many millions of years, that consciousness evolves within the plant kingdom, and also throughout many ages, the consciousness transmigrates and gains experience, evolving throughout different animal states within the animal kingdom, until finally reaching the humanoid state.
Devolution occurs when the humanoid does not change. Devolution occurs when the humanoid, the intellectual animal to use Samael Aun Weor’s terminology, the intellectual soul, chooses not to remove, from his or her psychology, that which is animal, in order to transcend and enter the kingdom of the divine beings. So basically when the soul degenerates, when it devolves, it enters inferior states, inferior bodies and regresses, going back into its primeval state. This is known as hell within religions. It is a recycling plant. It is where souls who do not wish to willingly remove that which is impure from their psychology must enter, so that they can be cleansed. It is a part of nature. The breaking down of the intellectual animal, when thought, emotion, and desire are deconstructed, are disintegrated, is known as the process of devolution. It takes a long time depending on the magnitude and intensity of that individual’s defects. So that is devolution, and the apes in the animal kingdom are devolved humans. They were once people. That is why there are some remnants of intelligence demonstrated within any ape, any monkey, any orangutan, any gorilla. They are devolving souls. They will eventually be recycled and reprocessed by nature. So that is the difference. Involution: the spirit enters matter. Evolution: the soul develops, learns, and grows within the inferior kingdoms until becoming humanoid. If that soul does not wish to enter the higher dimensions as a spiritually perfected being, they enter devolution, and will disintegrate slowly within the different kingdoms, the soul within the interior of the Earth, until finally becoming a purified soul, an Essence, but virginal, a spark without mastery. 
If the human being decides to become something superior, they have the option to enter the path of the Sphynx, the riddle of the Sphynx, and even if you have studied the sacred arcana of the tarot, you find that in Tenth Arcanum, representing precisely this wheel of destiny, this cycle of evolution and devolution, the initiate, the soul, has the option to transcend that wheel. But first he or she has the answer the riddle of the Sphynx: “What is a true human being?” By conquering the four elements―represented by first, the eagle, which is air, thought; fire, which is the lion, emotion; water, which is the man, sexuality; and the bull, which is earth, the body―only then can one master those elements and become something superior. That is the difference.
Question: How can one find answers to the origins of archaeological structures in the astral plane? Instructor: You can ask your Being. You can say, “My God, my Being, my Beloved, show me what this archeological site is teaching to humanity!” You can even ask your Being to take you to those sites where they will show you internally what they are [through Dream Yoga and Astral Travel]. You can go to Egypt where, internally in the astral plane, the Pyramids of Giza are active. They are not merely dead stone structures as we see them physically. In the internal planes, they are living, luminous, divine temples. They are inhabited by the masters of Egypt who self-realized in the past. They can invite you into their precincts where you will be instructed about their mysteries. Many masters and initiates have entered that temple. Likewise there are many other archeological structures, which have physical ruins in our current dimension, that have a deeper spiritual purpose. You can investigate that by asking your Being to take you to those places, so that you can see what is actually there. You will see things that you will not see physically, obviously. The Pyramids of Giza have a different appearance than they do physically. Obviously, physically they are shattered remnants corroded with time. But internally they are amazing, terrifyingly divine structures. Those places are very sacred, and we have to be very humble in order to receive guidance and to be allowed in. But if you are sincere, you try, you work, you aspire, it will happen for you. Just be patient. Ok! If there are no more questions, we can conclude. I thank you all for joining us, and if you wish to access more lectures on this topic you can visit our website, especially the course Gnostic Anthropology and Cosmology. We will also be discussing more topics that go into greater detail regarding the ancient histories of humanity, the different root races, the different rounds in which our universe is manifested, but also exploring the ancient monoliths and architectural wonders of the world that teach these truths. So I thank you all for coming! |
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