This is a continuation of a lecture we gave previously on the nature of what we denominated as four paths. We talked about fakirism. We talked about monasticism, yoga, and the Gnostic path, Gnosticism. We explained previously how these paths―individually, by themselves, the first three: the fakir, the monk, and the yogi―are incipient. They are deficient in themselves.
These previous paths only develop one aspect of the psyche at the exclusion of the others. The fakir only develops willpower over the body, to dominate instinct by lying on a bed of nails, sleeping in the storm, sleeping under the weather, and trying to dominate the physical body, thinking that it is a way to God. We also discussed how the monk, through prayer, develops the heart, but at the exclusion of the mind and the motor center, our instinctuality, our sexuality, etc. Then we talked about the yogi who only studies and develops knowledge of the mind, who performs pranayama and exercises to develop mind. So we discuss how those paths by themselves are inefficient, and that we need to follow a synthetic teaching, a synthetic path, which is the Gnostic path. The Gnostic path incorporates all three. Now, in this lecture we are going to explain how there are three three ways, in the positive sense, by which we walk this path, by which we attain union within our Innermost, our inner God. In these images we have Christ, the Master Aberamento, teaching and performing works. He is teaching the multitude on the left as a mystic. In the middle, we have Jesus as a Gnostic who is assisting Mary Magdalene. We have on the right Master Jesus the Christ who is being tempted by Shaitan, Satan, the demon, his mind in the wilderness. In this lecture we are going to explain how the path of mysticism, Gnosticism, and yoga are an integral science. Previously we discussed how the fakirism, monasticism, and yoga, by themselves, are inefficient. They are not complete. We are going to explain the best of these systems and how they apply to the Gnostic path, how they apply to our work, and this lecture really is about one quote that the Master Samael Aun Weor gave in a book called Igneous Rose. Christ taught three ways in order to reach a union with the Innermost (our inner Buddha, our inner God). When he was preaching to the multitudes, when he was mystically exalted, he showed us the way of Ramakrishna, Kempis, and Francis of Assisi. This is the path of Anthony of Padua and Teresa of Jesus (or Avila). This is the mystical path. When Christ was walking with Magdalene, the repentant prostitute, when he was among publicans and sinners, fishermen and wine drinkers, he showed us the Gnostic path. When he retired to the solitude of the desert for forty days and forty nights, he then taught the way of oriental yoga. The seven rays of cosmic evolution are synthesized in these three ways that the Nazarene showed. ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose 
The Three Brains and the Three Ways
To elaborate, we have this image or graphic of the human being with a symbol of the holy eight, which is the circuitry of energies and the makeup of our inner constitution. This explains these three paths in synthesis and how they really are one.
We explained how the path of yoga develops the intellect. We have the path of the monk which develops the heart, mysticism. And then we have the sexual center, which is Gnostic in its totality. Fakirism, as we explained, is only the work of movement and instinct. Now, we talk about in esotericism how we have three brains, three centers: intellect, emotion, and motor-instinctive-sexuality. We synthesize the last three, movement, instinct, and sex, because they really constitute the field of action within our psyche. So the path of the fakir only develops instinct, to dominate the sensations of the body, whereas the Gnostic is very different, and works to control instinct, motion, and sexual energy. In relation to the three brains, the three paths we are explaining in synthesis, the path of yoga, the path of the yogi develops the mind, which we need in our work. We need also to develop mysticism, following the path of the monk in harmony with the other centers. We also need to develop the sexual center, the sexual brain, through the Gnostic path. Question: Can an individual accomplish that without the belief of God? Instructor: Yes, because we don't believe in anything. We seek to know. So to think something is true or to think something is not true, that is intellectual or emotional. But to really know something with certainty is to have Gnosis. Therefore, there are certain things that I might believe in, but there are many things that I know for fact from my experience by working with these three paths. Question: Do you think there is a benefit if you do have true belief in God? Instructor: Blessed are those who believe, yet who do not see, for then in their belief they will work, like Master Jesus taught, and by following the three paths of yoga, mysticism, and Gnosticism, then we come to know God directly. Now, we are going to elaborate on this in relation to the mystical path. But in order to explain this lecture, we need to understand the three brains, because as we see in this image, we have three centers and usually in the field of psychological self-observation, in the beginning it is very difficult to ascertain from where thoughts come, where emotions emerge, and how do sensations arise. These three aspects of ourselves constitute one unity as symbolized by the holy eight. This symbol is a symbol of the infinite, meaning that God is within us, is infinite. In order to understand God, we need to know how our three brains function and how to develop them positively. Question: So it's like a channel. You are trying to bind to that channel? Instructor: Yes, and that channel is developed precisely by working with mind, with emotion or heart, and with sexuality, or the yoga, the mystic, and the Gnostic paths. 
Mysticism: The Path of Spiritual Experience
In this image, we have Christ who is mystically exalted, and it is important to note that when we talk about mysticism, what the term actually means. The word mysticism comes from mystery or mysterion in Greek, which originates from the root word myein, which means “to close one's eyes.” Meaning: to close one’s physical eyes to the exterior world, to really become reflective. This relates to mystikos which means “initiate,” somebody who begins a new way of being, because if we don't know how to close, first, our physical eyes to the exterior world, and then if we don't learn how to close the illusory eyes of our perception to illusion, then we cannot know God.
For as it is stated in The Voice of the Silence, which is a scripture translated by Blavatsky: Before the Soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion. ―H.P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence
We talk many times about this term mystikos, mystery, mysterion, mysticism, because genuine mysticism is establishing a new way of being in this moment.
As Samael Aun Weor states: Initiation is life itself, lived intensely, with rectitude and with love. ―Samael Aun Weor, Practical Astrology: Manual of Practical Magic
If we are not paying attention and we are not being intense in our efforts to self observe, it means that we are asleep. It means that we need to continue to remember our Being, to observe our three brains and to learn to receive the impressions of life in a new way. That is what it means to close one's eyes to illusion. It doesn't mean that we ignore things. It means that we cease to perceive life as we previously perceived it, and that occurs here and now, meaning that we forget the past. We don't think about the future. We close our eyes to all illusion and we really just focus on this moment, because we need to be the child of this moment.
I would like the quote for you some of the teachers mentioned in that quote I mentioned. The first is is Ramakrishna, where he explains the path of mysticism and the nature of belief, implicitly. He was a great yogi, a great master, highly venerable, a great initiate who practiced sexual magic with his wife. He gave a very profound doctrine that we are going to cite here, and we are going to quote in relation to the mystical path some of those teachers that Samael Aun Weor mentioned. In relation to the mystical path, we need to really develop the heart, because most of us are dead emotionally, where it is very difficult to feel a genuine inspiration in our psyche towards God, to overcome those negative influences in our mind. This is why we began the lecture with that prayer, the Pater Noster in Latin, in order to invoke that energy in the heart, because if any of us need anything most of all, it is to develop the heart. This is why we begin with the mystical path, because if the heart is pure, then we will know God. If it is impure, we will not know God and we will suffer. This is why Prophet Muhammad taught in the Hadith, the Muslim oral tradition: For everything there is a polish, and the polish for the hearts is the dhikr (remembrance) of Allah. There is nothing more potent in saving a person from the punishment of Allah than the dhikr of Allah. ―Prophet Muhammad
So Prophet Muhammad taught that the path of jihad is the monasticism of the Muslim. Jihad is the war against our animal desires. It is the struggle against our mind, which we are going to explain in the path of yoga. And so Muhammad was explaining how the path of the monk is the path of striving, because mujahidah means “striving.” They translated it as “holy war,” but it really means “to strive,” “to make effort” against one's ego.
Question: The mystical path, that is the monk's path? Instructor: Yes, and with all this, we are explaining the positive aspect of this―not the past practices exclusively, alone, but how they all integrate. All these are really synthetic. They apply to each other and they overlap. 
Knowledge of Divinity
So in the beginning, all of us struggle to know God. We want to have that experience where we communicate with a master or with our Being. There are four stages that Ramakrishna explains on the path of mysticism or the path of God vision, because as we explained, mysticism means to close one's fleshly eyes to illusion, but to open our spiritual sight.
M: Sir, what is the meaning of the realization of God? What do you mean by God-vision? How does one attain it?
So as we were mentioning, blessed are those who believe who don't see. This is us groping in the dark, feeling in the psychological depths of our mind, seeking God. We say, “No, this is not him.” We have that longing, that aspiration to know God. But he who seeks shall find. So if you continue in your path, to persist, and to practice, to experience God, it will happen as a law of nature. If you seek you will find. So it is a groping in the dark of our mind until finally through our discipline and meditation, we experience God in samadhi.
So we are practicing “Neti, neti, not this, not this.” Question: But do you believe that in scripture, in John, that it is up to God to enable you? Instructor: There is a Sufi saying by Bayazid Bastami. He said: "For thirty years I sought Allah. But in reality it was Allah that was the seeker and I the sought." So the one who pushes us is our Being, to seek Him, because “God is a treasure that wishes to be known,” as it says in the Qur’an and thus he made the universe and man so he could be known. He is a treasure that needs to be discovered in us, and the one who pushes us to work is Christ, Allah. Question: Samael Aun Weor mentions this word “disquietude.” When that occurs, it is part of the inspiration? Instructor: Yes, and spiritual inquietudes is precisely neti, neti. We are looking in our mind. We want to know God, but we haven't experienced Him yet. So we seek. We seek. We feel that disturbance in our heart. Question: What is it called? Instructor: Spiritual inquietudes. You can say disquietude too and inquietudes. It is mentioned in The Great Rebellion. There is a chapter on it specifically. Question: Does it mean what it sounds like it means? Like the opposite of quiet? Instructor: It doesn't mean disturbance. It means the heart or the soul is impassioned and yearning for God. Question: Is that like the goat or Fool in the Tarot? Like a goat is pushing you... Instructor: Yes, you can see that God is trying to ride His donkey, which is us, our mind, and that He is trying to lead us in the direction He wants. But if we disobey, then we don't seek him. But if we yearn for Him in the mystical path, we are seeking, and every experience in meditation or out of the body―any type of phenomenon we experience―we say, “Yes. This is interesting, but I know it is not God!” Until, finally arriving at the experience, when we communicate face-to-face with Christ, with our Innermost, and then we know. That makes us a siddha. So, before when we enter the path, we are pravartaka. Those who are practicing for some time who are performing “Neti, neti,” are sadhakas. Then those who experienced God are siddha, but there is another stage beyond that. There is another type, known as the siddha of the siddha, the "supremely perfect." It is quite a different thing when one talks to the master intimately, when one knows God very intimately through love and devotion. A siddha has undoubtedly attained God, but the "supremely perfect" has known God very intimately. ―Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
It says in the Qur’an, “And they honor not God with the honor due Him” (6:91). Or: “Allah is not estimated as he deserves to be estimated,” which the Sufis translate as “He is not been known as He deserves to be known.” So there are those who know God to a degree, but then there are those who know God very intimately, who have incarnated the Lord. That is very high, as exemplified by the great masters of mysticism.
So that is what we seek: first to know God in meditation and out of the body, and then to constantly develop that and cultivate that. Or as Samael Aun Weor stated quoting Blavatsky’s Voice of the Silence, "Be humble in order to attain enlightenment, and upon having attained enlightenment, be humbler still." It doesn't mean that one has fully attained enlightenment. It means there are degrees, where there is always a cycle and fluctuation of experiences we have and don't have. It happens as a type of gradual process. It can't be rushed. It happens like the unfolding of a rose, and when the rose is exudes its beauty, it’s because the disciple has been cultivating that for many years. 
The Imitation of Christ
The way that we cultivate this mystical path is in the next graphic. We are going to quote Thomas à Kempis, a great monk, a great mystic, who actually was Samael Aun Weor in a past incarnation, as he stated in his books. When Samael Aun Weor was incarnated as this monk, he was really developing under the ray of monasticism: the spiritual influence of the Christian Church. We have this image of Christ exalted mystically, teaching the multitudes. I am going to quote for you from his book The Imitation of Christ, which is a powerful work, especially for developing the heart, spiritual emotion, conscious devotion to God. It is very divine. So this comes from “Four Things Which Bring Great Peace” (this is Christ speaking to the bodhisattva):
My child, I will teach you now the way of peace and true liberty.
So, our ego does not want to do any of that. When we seek to do the will of others rather than our own, the mind struggles, contradicts, argues, debates, justifies. If we remember these axioms in relation to another person trying to resolve a conflict, then we will have peace. Instead of doing our will, we do the will of others, even if it hurts our pride. This is really the meaning of wearing our crown of thorns, or the crown of thorns that the Master Aberamentho wore in his Passion. Our desires want to act out, and yet we restrain our mind. The mind suffers. It bleeds. It cries out. It wants consolation. But out of love and compassion, as exemplified by Jesus, we have to bless those who curse us, who cause us pain, egotistically. We have peace when we cease to try to do our own will, but the will of others.
Question: But to achieve that, isn't it of great importance to open your heart first, because if you try to go in that route immediately, isn't it forcing it against everything? Instructor: We have to begin where we are at, meaning: never try to take on any type of difficulty that is beyond one's capacity. Instead, we have to be compassionate with our current circumstances. Comment: It just grows... Instructor: It grows by performing it, by renouncing our own and doing what is good for others. In that way, our Being may decide: “Now it is time for you to take the next step” and to provide extra help, extra difficulties. Question: I feel like sometimes I get confused when people are being verbally abusive. That they should just take it. But that is not what it means either right? Instructor: Right. It isn't the opposite. Mercy and justice, Chesed and Geburah, need to be balanced. Question: But what do you mean? Like if someone's verbally abusive to you? Another Question: Yeah, like I was telling that at work someone was being verbally abusive to me and I was confused. Do I just say, “I am so sorry,” or “whatever you want”? Or, do you stand up for yourself? How do you know what to do? Instructor: Real Christian compassion and mercy doesn't mean complacency with crime, because we need to learn to do the will of others, but we also had need to know limits. If being complacent in a situation in which we need to act is going to harm ourselves, but also harm the other person, then it means that we need to do something. Comment: I had a situation like that, many actually, where I try to observe why they are the way they are being, but it's usually not you. I never try to return the abuse. I just try to understand them. Instructor: And the way that we do the will of others is by working for their happiness. Now if they are abusive and they are creating problems in a workspace, then we need to bring attention to authorities and other people if it is something serious and harmful. Now, we always choose to have less rather than more, meaning less material goods, less attachments, to material goods. Now, in relation to the what we were discussing, "always wish and pray that the will of God be fully carried out in you." That doesn't mean that we are like a doormat. It means that we take responsibility for the well-being of others. So yes, in one sense we need to do the will of others, try to make them happy. But if that is not working, then we need to be realistic, not resentful, but to fulfill the will of God within us, which might mean to confront the issue with the other person, but without hatred, without anger. Question: Can't it be also part of our karma? Sometimes some of the situations that we have... Instructor: Yes, in many situations, it is recurrence, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we allow karma to swallow us alive. It means that we learn to negotiate it for the benefit of others and ourselves. Question: When you say we must work to make others happy, does that mean more like true happiness, not what they think will make them happy? Instructor: Exactly! Question: If someone is obsessed with money, giving them money isn't loving, right? Instructor: Exactly. We want to do what is good for the being of that person, which can make them very resentful and angry and derogatory, but you see how Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:24). He is crucified and he said that on the cross. Comment: This presumes that they are receptive. Instructor: And even if they were not receptive, learn to give love regardless. Always seek to do the will of God above all things. Seek to make others happy. Be satisfied with less rather than more, and always pray that God's will will always be done within us, and that usually will mean contradicting other people. But we need to learn how to not act with anger or resentment. So the way that we do that is cultivating our psychological sense of peace, which is developed through devotion and mysticism. 
The Enlightenment of Christ
We have the image of the ascension of Christ on the right, and on the left we have a quote I am going to relate to you from Thomas à Kempis. It is a prayer he gave in order to calm the mind, to develop devotion, precisely relating to what we are discussing.
Enlighten me, good Jesus (meaning enlighten me, my inner Christ, my Intimate Christ) with the brightness of internal light (―so what is that internal light? It is direct cognizance through self-observation on the defects we wish to work on―) and take away all darkness from the habitation of my heart. Restrain my wandering thoughts and suppress the temptations which attack me so violently. Fight strongly for me, and vanquish these evil beasts―the alluring desires of the flesh―so that peace may come through your power and the fullness of Your praise resound in the holy courts, which is a pure conscience. Command the winds and the tempests; say to the sea: “Be still,” and to the north wind, “Do not blow,” and there will be a great calm. ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind
So what is that sea and storm? The sea is our sexual passions, the waters of sexuality, which are disturbed by lust in the mind, fornication, desire. The storm in the mind, the intellect, are all the churning of thoughts and desires which drive one, literally when we are observing ourselves, seemingly to the point of desperation.
Send forth Your light and Your truth to shine on the earth, for I am as earth, empty and formless until You illumine me. ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind
This is a kabbalistic teaching. This is the meaning of the first book of Genesis, “The earth was formless and void,” תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ tohu vay-bohu in Hebrew (Genesis 1:2). That earth is our psychology. That is, if we look inside, we see that we have a lot of darkness, chaos, anger, resentment, that is churning constantly. And so in the Book of Genesis, the ר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God, our Innermost, floated above those waters, and it is through initiation that we calm the storm of the mind and that we calm the lake of our passions.
Pour out Your grace from above. Shower my heart with heavenly dew. ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind
What is that heavenly dew, those waters? It is sexual, and dew is a result of rain from a previous night or morning, which has an alchemical teaching. We find an alchemical teaching even in nature. When there is heat in the soil, the water evaporates and rises upward. Likewise, through sexual magic, when man and women are united, sexually speaking, they develop heat, which raises the the waters of sexuality into steam, energy that rises up the spinal column. This is symbolized in alchemy as the athanor, which is boiling certain substances to purify the mind, to transform the lead of our passions into the gold of the spirit. When the water evaporates into the sky, it creates lightning, storms, which water the heart. So the dew is precisely the pure energies of our Christic energy, the semen, which are residing in the heart that have been transmuted. Through alchemy, we raise the water into steam, which forms a storm, we could say, in our mind, and the lightning of Christ emerges, is born in us.
The dew is precisely, like the flower of the heart, the pure seminal essence of our transmutations, which creates calm and peace. But it seems like when we begin transmutation, things are chaotic. We see a lot of evilness in our mind, that is seems unstoppable and uncontrollable. This is what it means that we have a storm in our mind. We start transmuting and suddenly we realize we are in a hailstorm. We are in a chaos. Question: In other words, it is not like you are possessed. You are just going through that storm? Instructor: You are just bracing the storm and you are seeing the mind for what it is. What happens after the storm, the dew resides in the heart and there is peace. The thing is to persist in transmutation and not to be discouraged if the mind is crazy and chaotic and disturbing. But it will pass. The more we transmute and let the light of God illumine us through transmutation and alchemy or pranayama and mantra, and by meditating, then the storm calms by the grace of Christ. Open the springs of devotion to water the earth, that I may produce the best of good fruits. ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind
So again, the springs of devotion to the Divine Mother is sex: the fountain of life in which, if we never waste it, it will be regenerative in nature and we will never thirst again.
Question: I know you are not supposed to think of time. What is the time difference of going through that storm? Instructor: It is a process. Time, we could say, is illusory, but we also say, practically, that it is a process. We say, sometimes it takes years to develop real discipline, but that discipline starts every day in this moment. So we don't need to think that, well, with time we are going to change. It means we have to work now, but we have to also be practical and understand that it is a process. Nature does not take leaps. The rose grows gradually from the compost heap of our sins, to rise up into something pure. So these good fruits that are watered through devotion are precisely the virtues of the soul. We say the sexual organs of a plant is the fruit. That is the consummation of its regenerative and alchemical process in its growth. So water, "open[s] the springs of devotion (through transmutation) to water the earth (our physical body, that it can be regenerated and that the virtues of the soul may flourish) as good fruits." Lift up my heart pressed down by the weight of sins, and direct all my desires to heavenly things, that having tasted the sweetness of supernal happiness, I may find no pleasure in thinking of earthly things. Snatch me up and deliver me from all the passing comfort of creatures, for no created thing can fully quiet and satisfy my desires (or my longing to know God). Join me to Yourself in an inseparable bond of love; because You alone can satisfy him who loves You, and without You all things are worthless. ―Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: A Prayer for Enlightening the Mind
What is that ultimate devotion for God? When a man and woman are united sexually―that is where the couple can show genuine love to God by not fornicating, not reaching the orgasm, by not behaving in sex as a beast. Because as Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a great Sufi master, taught us, that the way that we have sex is the way that God will be with us. If we have sex like animals, God will be with us as the avenger, as justice―to punish us for our crimes, for indulging in negative behaviors and causing harm to others. But if we are in sex as a pure being, trying to develop chastity and sexual moral purity, God will be with us as mercy.
We have the two pillars of the Tree of Life: mercy and justice. If we want to follow God, we go to the right in sexuality, meaning: we go towards the right pillar trying to follow transmutation. The left pillar can represent the energies going down, because if we behave as animals in sex, then those energies go down Klipoth, to hell, and that is how God will be with us, if that is how we have sex. So Rumi is affirming what Thomas à Kempis or Samael Aun Weor taught.
Now, the way that we help to curtail the negative aspects of our mind, of our psychology, we have to learn how to pray for others and learn forgiveness, to not take accounts towards other people, to not justify our behavior, but to really become selfless. Mysticism really begins with transmutation, developing the heart. We cultivate this compassion for others with our transmutative work by developing compassion for others. We say bodhichitta, which in Sanskrit signifies the heart-mind of wisdom: the empty nature of all phenomena, how things are impermanent, and also compassion and love for others. 
St. Francis of Assisi
We have this image of Saint Francis of Assisi, and we included his famous prayer from his teaching. You see that he has a skull at his knees, meaning all the garbage of the intellect is dead. It is in the grave. You notice in this image that he is praying up to the heavens, almost up towards his own middlebrow, which is where we have the atom of the Father, the spiritual atomic intelligence: Atom Anu.
It is through death of our own desires that we really develop true love for humanity, and we cease to be interested in our own welfare alone. Mysticism is founded on this. The way that we develop ourselves is by helping others. By learning to work for the benefit of all beings, we in turn benefit ourselves. This is a reciprocal law of nature. But the problem is, as soon as we want to do something that is selfless, the mind reacts, fights. What will help calm that storm is developing willpower. So as Francis of Assisi taught us: Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Question: Part of this is concentrating to observe your defects on this mystical path. Part of it is that?
Instructor: Yes, for the one whom God loves, whom Allah loves, as stated in the Sufi scriptures, there is no rest. For the one who fears God, there is no rest. So it is a constant battle. Always. This moment. Never losing one's guard. The way that we can help understand our own defects is by studying these teachings: the prayers of the great prophets and saints, because they teach us anecdotes and axioms that help us reflect on our selfish nature so that we can transform it into a selfless nature―egoless. 
Redemption on the Gnostic Path
Now what is necessary, in order to develop mysticism, we need to develop the Gnostic path within, which, as we mentioned, is precisely to work with sexual energy, but there is much more involved to it, which we are going to elaborate.
In this image, we have the resurrected Jesus before Mary Magdalene, and the Gnostic path precisely works with the sexual brain, the sexual center. I am going to read for you this quote from Samael Aun Weor, who explains the meaning of the archetype or symbol of Mary Magdalene. This is from The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled: “’And Jesus, the compassionate, answered and said unto Mary (Magdalene): “Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren.’ ―Jesus, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia
Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, as the story goes. So what does Magdalene represent? The word mag in Indo-European language means “priest, magician, mage.” So a priest, a real magician, is one who works in alchemy, who is transforming the prostitute of the body, into something holy. As we discussed about the Sabbath, ב Beth is the house of the body. The fire of Christ is שׁ Shin. Together you spell שַׁבָּת Shabbat. To keep the Sabbath holy is to make one's body holy, meaning, we don't orgasm. We don't waste our forces, and we purify this body that we have. Mary Magdalene also represents the soul, because all of us are prostitutes, deep down in our psyche. We have all sinned against the Holy Ghost, the white swan mentioned in Wagner’s Parsifal that was wounded to death by an arrow.
Now, the way that we practice alchemy determines our purity, and from the great sinners are where great repentants are born. There is more joy for a great demon to repent then there is one who has never committed so much evil. It doesn't justify their action, but it shows the mercy of God. That if we repent, if we as psychologically speaking as prostitutes, as Mary Magdalene, we will be more exalted in heaven than all the angels have never been to such depths as we have. Comment: Relating that... Victory is much sweeter after defeat... Instructor: So all of us have committed sins against the Holy Ghost, have committed fornication. And as Samael Aun Weor states: Mary Magdalene gleams, and will gleam terribly divine. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled
So the way that we gleam is the work as a mag, a magician, a mage, a priest, with our spouse, with our partner. That is ultimately how we will be redeemed.
Question: I have run into individuals who are extremely strong in their faith and most of them are Christian and some believe, and there is no reason to doubt... They have abilities to heal their own children. There is no doubt their faith is extremely strong. They don't know and they don't practice what truly is the perfect matrimony. How is it possible for them to achieve some of these things? Instructor: Grace of God, mercy, and also karma. In certain temples, it is well documented that the devotion of the congregation has been able to produce supernatural phenomena like statues moving, gaining life, bleeding sculptures―things of that nature. They don't necessarily know this science, but they have a love of God, which is sincere. But their love would be even more powerful if they were alchemists. Question: If they are so close to God, why isn't something directing? Even if I were to go out, and I don't because I can see, it would create turmoil in a relationship. Why can't they just believe it? Because I did it to one individual and everything that came out of my mouth was blasphemy. Instructor: The thing is that they are at a certain level, a certain understanding. Samael Aun Weor taught that we need to learn to respect the will of others. So in your case, you have to learn to do the will of the other person, meaning to not challenge their faith. That's really the most respectable thing to their God, because they are at a certain level, a certain understanding, but not as high as you are because you have been giving a deeper teaching. So the thing is you cannot, as in Buddhism, one should not give the greater Dharma to one of lesser Dharma because they are not mature. As we are going to explain, if you try to put new wine into old wineskins, the skin will break, which we will elaborate upon. 
Christ with Publicans and Sinners
So in this image, we have Christ among the publicans and sinners, which constitutes the Gnostic path where he elaborates a very profound teaching about the righteous and the sinners.
And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.
So to have mercy and not sacrifice, meaning: we don't sacrifice our neighbor by criticizing them, by criticizing their beliefs. That's very challenging, especially when we want to share this type of knowledge with them. We want to help them, but to them it is criticism. We have to learn to respect the level of being of that person. So Jesus says, “I want mercy, not sacrifice.” Like Nietzsche said, many Christians don't know how to love their God except by sacrificing man, by crucifying man, and that is what we all do on a daily basis. With anger, we crucify, and so we need to learn mercy: to respect the will of of being on the other person and to know that if they want to enter this path, they have to recognize how they really are sinners, because many of them think they are very righteous, that they are holy. “Oh, I believe in Jesus and this is my path.” Really, what they think is that they are righteous even if they say that they are sinners. To really know that one is a sinner is to have comprehension of one's defects.
Comment: Because they truly believe trough the crucifixion of Jesus Christ that they are righteous immediately, and that they will forever be righteous because that is the reason God gave up his own Son. Instructor: They read things literally. They don't understand that Christ is an energy that needs to be incarnated within the soul. Comment: So many of them say, “I believe in it. You must believe in it.” There are no practices as far as meditation, but they believe they have faith. Instructor: Which is why James in the scriptures said, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). So they don't work with meditation. They don't have anything. So we have to learn to respect their level of being. Comment: You can't because they get very recalcitrant. When they get that in their brain, better you back off. Instructor: Sometimes that is the only thing we can do. Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? ―Matthew 9:14
So this is relating to how many people who follow the literal tradition of Judaism or any faith criticize the initiates, criticize those who are trying to walk the path of initiation.
And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast. ―Matthew 9:15
The disciples of the exoteric traditions confront us as and say, “Why don't you fast physically?” But Jesus says that isn't the meaning of fasting. He talked to them on an internal level. It means that when God is with us at some points and then retracts, and then we fast in one's soul. So many people confront, can confront us saying, “Why don't you do as we do, follow our tradition, our path?” And Jesus spoke to them as well―it is a psychological work. It isn't about external things, just raising one hand and saying, “I believe in Jesus.” It isn't about that. That isn't real mysticism, because faith without works is dead.
In relation to people being able to receive this type of teaching, we have this quote, one, of my favorites, by the Master Aberamentho. No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. ―Matthew 9:16-17
The wine of Gnosis, the wine of alchemy, the wine of transmutation, is this science and teaching. You cannot put this wine into a mind that is really degenerated and is attached to its own beliefs. People who say, “I want your wine, but let me pour it in my preconceptions, filthy bag of theories, this wine bag,” which is old and rotten. You pour the wine in and then the bottle breaks―having arguments and conflict with people because the wine is not appropriate for them.
We want to give them new wine, then they have to have a new wineskin, meaning: they have to have an entirely new type of mentality. You can't put this type of teaching into someone who is antithetical to it. You can't also put an old piece of cloth on a new garment. You are going to ruin both. So in order for people to accept and follow this teaching, they need to learn to be receptive, meaning, like in Tsong Khapa's teaching in Buddhism in his Lam Rim Chen Mo: the bowl has to face upward. If it is facing down, you can't give anything. Question: If you were to pray in the constant presence of Jesus Christ and you just don't ever speak to your Divine Mother, what are the consequences? Instructor: One thing is: whom do we mean by Jesus Christ? Comment: Christ, the love, God... Instructor: When we pray to our inner Christ, we pray to our Being, we can pray to our Divine Mother too, and with it because within Christ is the Divine Mother. Within the Divine Mother is Christ. So these are aspects of our inner divinity, which become integrated through this work that we are doing. So we can pray to all or or one or the other, but follow your heart in terms of what part of your Being you wish to address, because a child doesn't need a formula to speak to God. 
The Wine of Spiritual Transmutation
Now in relation to this path of the wine drinkers, the Gnostic path, this wine of alchemy, we have the teachings of Jesus at the wedding of Cana. People think, literally, this is a story about how Jesus transformed physical water into physical wine to get people drunk. We have to understand that this is at a wedding. Man and woman together can produce and transform the water of sex into the wine of God, into the spiritual intoxication that the Sufis speak so abundantly about. We will explain this part of the Gospel:
And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus [meaning Miriam in Hebrew, which means to raise the Kundalini that rises, the serpent of fire that rises up the spinal column. The mother of Jesus] was there:
So this is a Kabbalistic teaching in its depth. They are at a marriage with many people who are fornicators and clairvoyantly, they see, well, Miriam, the Divine Mother, says this person does not have wine, meaning they don't have the serpents raised of fire. Then Jesus said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come,” meaning he cannot incarnate within the soul until that wine is elevated, until the serpents of fire are developed in a marriage.
His mother [Miriam] saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. 
So the number six in Kabbalistic numerology relates to the sixth sephirah, Tiphereth, and the stone represents Yesod.
Question: Which is the heart, right? Instructor: Yes, so Tiphereth is the heart and the stone is precisely Yesod, the sexual power. So the bodhisattva, we can say Jesus, has to transform that water into light, into wine, through Tiphereth and through Yesod, through sex. So Christ is working from above, the Trinity of the Tree of Life through the heart, and then commanding sex, because the fires of sexuality are dominated by the fires of the heart. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.
So what does it mean to keep the wine until later? It means that that development only comes through work. The best wine is saved for last. We have to progressively earn that right to raise the fire by developing the heart and working with Yesod.
This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him. ―John 2:11 
Fishers of Men: Sacrifice for Humanity
So the Gnostic path as the path of transmutation also relates to the teachings of sacrifice for humanity. We have in this image the fishermen following after Jesus where Jesus eventually said "Be thou fishers of men." So this refers to how, as the disciples of this teaching, we seek to help others learn the science. Now, not all of us necessarily may become an instructor or may want to or have that disposition, but many of the great masters who follow the Gnostic path perform this sacrifice. They became missionaries or teachers, instructors. They learn to fish for human beings, fish for students in the sea of life, in order to provide them this teaching. Scripturally, it is states in Mark, Chapter 1, verses 16 to 22:
Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
So what are these nets that people throw out into the world? The theories and doctrines that they have about religion to try to capture people and pull them into their congregation. “We are the chosen ones, the saved ones. Follow us and you are all set.” So Christ is actually against all those terrestrial doctrines, which are really ignorant of the esoteric heart of religion.
And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him. ―Mark 1:20
Or as Jesus taught:
He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he who loves son and daughter more than me is not worthy of me (who does not follow after me). ―Matthew 10:37
It doesn't mean that we disregard our parents or family. It means that we take priority in terms of: who do we love first? Christ. We do what is necessary to incarnate Christ, and then we can love family and neighbor. First, love thy God above all things and thy neighbor as thyself. The problem is people in their traditions and religions, they say they love God and then their brother is next, but really they love themselves. They love their beliefs.
And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught.
Meaning, teaching the doctrine of Christ, he humbly provided higher teaching in which people were shocked. When they hear this type of science, they get shocked, even angry, because it contradicts everything they believe.
Comment: That is one of the reasons the Pharisees were down under him? Instructor: Exactly. The Pharisees are also in our mind. Our egos don't like this teaching, fight against the work of Christ in our interior, our desires. 
To elaborate on this teaching of the fishermen, I'd like to quote to you an excerpt from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, where he plays a bit on this teaching of fishers of men, but it is very insightful in terms of understanding what Jesus taught. So we have this image of the mountains upon which Nietzsche composed his book. So he says:
Why sacrifice? I squander what is given to me, I―a squanderer with a thousand hands; how could I call that sacrificing? ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Meaning, giving knowledge to others. So we talk about sacrifice for humanity, which Nietzsche was familiar with, and the fact that he is teaching his disciples, he says “Well, I don't call this sacrifice that I am giving so much,” and he says, “like a squandered, I am with a thousand hands.” Meaning, “I give what I receive internally in the internal worlds, that I give to my disciples.” This is what Nietzsche is saying. So to have a thousand hands is the symbol of Avalokiteshvara, the Cosmic Christ in Buddhism who has literally a thousand arms.
And when I desired honey, I merely desired bait and sweet mucus and mucilage, which even growling bears and queer, sullen, evil birds put out their tongues―the best bait, needed by hunters and fishermen. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
What is the honey a symbol of? A symbol of alchemy, because the pollen of the flower is transformed, transmuted, into the sweetness of the soul. It is interesting. We know that the bee is a devolving creature that degenerated. Samael Aun Weor explains the history of the kingdom of the bees and the ants. But the bees, the fact that it is a degenerate creature and is able to create something so beautiful like honey, attests to the grace and virtue of this path. That as evil as we are, we can change. We can produce honey, and every day our body produces honey, the semen, that when you transmute it, is the wine of the alchemists.
Question: Because the bees fell? Instructor: Yeah, we say that the race of humanity that devolved into bees, they fornicated, and they produce a very degenerated society, but that is another topic. But the fact is that this honey is mucus and mucilage, that even queer, evil birds, and growling bears who are angry people, are attracted to it. They are people who get angry when you contradict them, but when they see how sweet the honey of the doctrine is, they can't resist. Their soul can't resist. So their ego is fighting against you, but, “Well, this is the way it is,” and people get mad at you for trying to teach them this. Also, evil, queer, sullen birds, meaning black magicians, even they can change. Give them honey. This is the real path. Then if they renounce their old ways, then even they will pull out their tongues: “Give me more.” For if the world is like a dark jungle and a garden of delight for all wild hunters, it strikes me even more, and so I prefer to think of it, as an abysmal, rich sea―a sea full of colorful fish and crabs, which even gods might covet, that for their sakes they would wish to become fishermen and net-throwers: so rich is the world in queer things, great and small. Especially the human world, the human sea: that is where I now cast my golden fishing rod and say: Open up, you human abyss! ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
What is it that the gods might covet? The gods, like we said, “There is more joy for a sinner who repents than a thousand righteous ones who have no need for repentance.” So there are levels of realization involved. The gods covet, they feel love for those who are really ascending higher than them as a result of their work. The sea of life is the abysmal sea, the abyss in which the Gnostic seeks to catch fish.
Open up and cast up to me your fish and glittering crabs! With my best bait I shall today bait the queerest human fish! (In these studies, we meet all sorts of people. We are unique in these studies.) My happiness itself I cast out far and wide, between sunrise, noon, and sunset, to see if many human fish might not learn to wriggle and wiggle from my happiness until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they must come up to my height―the most colorful abysmal groundlings, to the most sarcastic of all who fish for men. For that is what I am through and through: reeling, reeling in, raising up, raising, a raiser, cultivator, and disciplinarian, who once counseled himself, not for nothing: Become who you are! ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
What is that in Hebrew? אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh. “He is the One Who becomes.” So: become who you are, meaning, your inner Kether who is inside you.
Thus men may now come up to me; for I am still waiting for the sign that the time has come for my descent (from Tiphereth down); I still do not myself go under, as I must do, under the eyes of men. That is why I wait here, cunning and mocking on high mountains, neither impatient nor patient, rather as one who has forgotten patience too, because his “passion” is over… ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
This refers to teachers. I mean, we teach for a long time, and then one learns to be patient and not to be impatient about students coming to be able to help them. But we fish and we wait for souls to bite and then they taste the honey. They say, “I want more,” so you raise them up through discipline, through practice, so that they can become who they are, become who you are: your inner Kether.
And verily my eternal destiny does not hurry and press me, and it leaves me time for jests and sarcasm (and joking around and laughing having a good sense of humor), so that I could climb this high mountain today to catch fish. Has a man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even though what I want and do up here be folly (to people who don't know anything about esotericism), it is still better than if I became solemn down there from waiting, and green and yellow―a swaggering wrath-snorter from waiting, a holy, howling storm out of the mountains, an impatient one who shouts down into the valleys, "Listen or I shall whip you with the scourge of God!” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Precisely all the people―the fanatics we are talking about. To fish for disciples on a mountain, that is what the initiates do―teaching and teaching and elevating their level of being, and seeking for others to rise up to their own intimate heights, their own Kether, to “become who you are.”
The Path of Yoga
We are going to speak about the path of yoga next. We have this image of Shiva meditating and a quote from Samael Aun Weor from The Revolution of Beelzebub where he explains how yoga is completely synthesized within Gnostic doctrine.
All of the seven schools of Yoga are within Gnosis, yet they are in a synthesized and absolutely practical way.
So notice how this quote synthesizes everything we discussed about the three brains: upright thought, feeling, and action―how prayer is Bhakti Yoga, the path of the mystic. Sexual magic is the path of the Gnostic. All this is integral, and yoga is essential to the Gnostic path, just as mysticism is to the other two.
We had it before in the image of Master Jesus in the wilderness tempted by the devil. That devil is our mind, our own animal ego, who is constantly trying to lure our attention down to Klipoth, to material things. In the gospels, he says, “Bow to me and I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world.” We have here a quote from John Milton's Paradise Regained―which John Milton is a great master. He composed Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and other classic works of English literature. Question: Did he die young or… Instructor: No, he was he was older. He was around 64 [66 years old] I think when he died, but he was blind. He went blind, a terrible karma he had to pay. He suffered a lot for it, but his poetry he dictated while he was blind―his great masterpieces near the end of his life, in which we are fortunate to have this literature. 
In this image, we have Christ confronted by the devil, and how Christ always points upward, like the pentagram always facing up towards heaven. The quote I am going to read to you is when Satan is tempting him with all the kingdoms of the world, and how he will give them power in Malkuth if he follows him. But this is what Jesus says through John Milton:
“Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
And that might be easier for me because I study a lot of English, but I suggest to study Milton. He is a great master. His literature is profound. He gave a very divine teaching.
The Stages of Meditation
In this image, this graphic, we have Jesus meditating following the path of yoga with the symbol of AUM above his head, which is the mantra of Chesed, the eternal. So yoga―or in Jnana Yoga, as we are going to explain in terms of meditation―really is constituted or practiced in this way. This quote comes from Igneous Rose by Samael Aun Weor:
Oriental wisdom practices meditation in the following order:
With yoga, we don't need to perform the full lotus or half lotus if that is discomforting for our body. We can sit like Maitreya in Buddhism. He is the only Buddha-figure in Mahayana Buddhism that sits in a chair, western-style―whatever posture is comfortable for us to practice.
Comment: He said that those are good for people in most parts of eastern areas. But he said the position is the most comfortable for you. Instructor: Right, because many people try meditating for years and they just spent twenty years trying to learn to sit with their body. They don't get anywhere with their mind. It is terrible. Question: Same with sexual magic. Do you know how there are all these different positions given? Isn't it the same thing? Just whatever is most comfortable for that couple? Instructor: Yes. So there are teachings of the Kama Sutra, which has a lot of degeneration in it, but there are postures that are beneficial. It is really a mixed book, I would say. Comment: Yeah, well especially now. If you try to find that book now, it's pornographic. Instructor: They add a lot of things, but there are certain postures that were not adulterated. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that text. But there are certain postures that Samael Aun Weor mentions in The Mystery of the Golden Flower which are beneficial for different body types. Question: Can we still taste the energy? Instructor: Yes. It also helps maintain one's strength and connection and prolong... Question: Mystery of the Golden Flower? Instructor: Yes, this text. Question: I always heard you say how it benefits sitting upright (regarding meditation), because the spine is sitting upright, but my most comfortable position is laying in bed. Instructor: Yes, so long as you can practice in the beginning, not necessarily falling asleep. I love lying and meditating on my back when I have a lot of energy. But if I am too tired, I know I am going to knock out so, I immediately sit down on a chair so it is easier. Comment: Ok, yeah, because it's evident that I am falling asleep... Instructor: So the solution is work with japa: mantra recitation or pranayama, something to give you energy. You can do runes before you sit to practice so that you have more willpower to sit and not let your body dominate you. Comment: You have to be comfortable but the breath... It relaxes you, but some people hyperventilate. I found it's different for different people. It's a cycle, but it's small, but it is also deep and when it comes up and then concentrating on your heart, there are different ways of doing this. It helps me a lot and you don't go asleep. Instructor: When you are praying, that is to work with the springs of devotion that Kempis mentioned, so that the storm in the mind and the turbulence of the waters are calm. So, asana in the beginning, we need to physically relax―any posture physically that's conducive for us to maintain our attention, but to be completely relaxed. So again, different postures for different people. Comment: A candle works but also a diffuser. So you have frankincense. Frankincense really gets you in an elevated calm... Instructor: If you don't like burning incense in your home, diffusers are excellent. So that can help you relax. I use a diffuser too. I like to use pine, or a company called Young Living, and one product called Thieves, which, if you don't necessarily want to burn incense in your home, you can use essential oils to clean the atmosphere through a diffuser. Comment: On the incense, I did get it but the company burnt Frankincense granules. The company in the past, it was slow burning and it was clean. Now some of these that are coming in very fast burning and is stronger. So that is why I went with the diffuser. It is the same company, but whatever they are using, the charcoal, it just burns fast and strong. Instructor: You want to find one that will burn long and gradually. Sometimes you have to do some shopping. All that will help to calm the body. It is preliminary. Pratyahara is to not think about anything. For most people, the challenge is just finding a posture that's comfortable. But that's not even the beginning, really. The beginning of really entering concentration is to not think. Try not to think. That is the challenge. Don't let the intellect try to deliberate and speculate and think about other things. In order to achieve concentration, which is to concentrate on only one thing, it doesn't mean that we have to have a mind, in the beginning, that is completely silent. There are degrees, like clarity in a storm, in which the clouds part for a moment and you can see the sun. It is an allegory for meditative states. Sometimes the storm is going on. You can see the storm, but the clouds open for a little bit and you have a sense of peace, a type of non-thought, a serenity of non-thought that Samael Aun Weor mentions. Comment: When you feel calm here, in the heart, that will silence the mind at least for me. It is a lightness of heart. Not to have concentration. You know, to be still. None of that. It is a certain lightness in conjunction with the breath. Slowly when you get that conjoined, when you synthesize that, it seems like it silences the mind. Instructor: And one we silence the mind, we need to concentrate on one thing. Focus on an object of meditation, whether it be a line from scripture, a book, a teaching we received, an experience we had, an image. There are many things we can focus on, or as we are going to explain while we are giving classes in our new place, we are going to talk about retrospective meditation. You know we are going to talk about retrospective meditation: to meditate on our day, to focus on the egos we wish to comprehend and to annihilate. So we are going to practice it diligently when we meet. There are many things we can concentrate on in our practice. Dhyana is meditation, when we actually reflect on the content of the object of concentration we wish to understand. Meditation is when we receive new information, new insight. Samadhi is when we are fully conscious and we unite with God. Samadhi is also comprehension. It is a spark of understanding, like a lightning bolt that suddenly, in meditation, we understand something in a way we never understood before, and the mind is shocked and silent. It is a spark, and then afterwards, usually what happens, the thunder clouds come and say, “No, I don't understand what happened. No, that was just your mind, your ego.” But you knew you experienced something objective. That is Samadhi, a minor degree. There are many levels, as many and variant as the dimensions in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. Question: So that is in the physical and that is also in the spiritual realms? Instructor: Samadhi can happen any moment if we are really diligent in paying attention. For as al-Junayd said in a Sufi doctrine: Whoever does not establish awe of duty and vigilance in his relationship to God will not arrive at disclosure of the unseen (unveiling) or contemplation (witnessing) of the divine. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
To establish awe of duty is to meditate, to respect and venerate the tradition in which we are practicing, so that we can cultivate the exercises we wish to work with. To establish vigilance in our relationship to us and our Being, then we can attain unveiling where the mind, the illusions of the mind, are torn and we witness God.
Question: So to get that lightning, that sharp shock that you are talking about, is through meditation? Instructor: Yes, that is how we develop that. Comment: Because that is the only way I can leave my body. I have to have that lightning. Instructor: You have to relax. Relax and develop comprehension of the body and your mental states. Mental states are more important. Question: This can happen during the day too? That shock? Instructor: Yes. When you are walking down the street and you are daydreaming and suddenly... I have had this instant where sometimes I am paying attention, but my mind is wandering and I am losing my focus. And so I get a shock like “wake up!” from my Being, just out of nowhere. Or I am just doing something completely trivial and then, getting shocked. It reminds me of a saying by Mansur al-Hallaj. He was a Muslim Christ. He said, “When God loves his disciple, he will use even his stray thoughts to bring him back to attention.” So he will address your thoughts like “You were just thinking about this and forgetting me.” “I'm sorry,” I say. “ I'm sorry that I disobeyed,” and then keep working. So in the daytime that is the type of Samadhi, a comprehension which is very alarming and provides awareness. It is a clear perception. So: It is necessary to place the body in the most comfortable position (Asana).
Like I mentioned to you, you can be walking on the street and your meditation should be when you are walking down the street. Everywhere we go, we need to be meditating, remembering God, so that insight comes spontaneously.
Question: What were those steps again? Relax, silence the mind... Instructor: Yes. Asana is posture. Pratyahara is no thought. Dharana is concentration on one thing. Dhyana is meditation, when we reflect on the object of our concentration. Samadhi is ecstasy, comprehension. Conclusion: The Seven Rays of Spiritual Evolution
So to conclude, there is the end of the quote from the book I mentioned in the beginning, from the book Igneous Rose. Samael Aun Weor explains how the three paths: the mystic, yogi, and the Gnostic help to develop our own spiritual idiosyncrasy, known as the seven cosmic rays. So this is what Samael Aun Weor mentioned in the beginning, which I am going to reiterate.
The seven rays of cosmic evolution are synthesised in these three ways [the Mystical, Gnostic, and Yogic paths] that the Nazarene showed. ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose 
There are seven mighty rays. Now I am stepping aside from “ways” and talking about the “rays.” In this image, we have the lamb with seven horns and seven eyes mentioned in the Book of Revelation, which symbolizes the energy of Christ that manifests in seven primary fashions, seven primary ways. Every time a new God emerges from the Absolute, a new Spirit unfolding down the Tree of Life, that monad or Spirit, that Being, expresses and enters into one of seven rays. These are influences, or idiosyncrasies in God, in Christ.
So there are seven, because seven is the number or law of cosmic organization and order, just as we know that there are seven main planets in alchemy, seven primary virtues, seven vices, which relates to these influences. I have a quote from Samael Aun Weor. He explains in his book The Seven Words: Each master belongs to a certain ray, for there are seven rays of cosmic evolution. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Divine Science: The Seven Words
And I am going to quote for you also the archangels that govern those rays. So each of us, our Being, belongs to one of the seven rays I am going to mention.
The Lunar Ray [Gabriel]
I reiterate, these rays refer to qualities in our inner God that are unique to that ray and unique to us. There are certain predispositions and qualities that associate with these different rays, which we develop in ourselves by working with the three ways: the mystic, the Gnostic, and the yogi. Samael mentions that our own ray or spiritual influence is developed particular to us by how we practice mysticism, transmutation, Gnosticism, meditation, and yoga.
The Lunar Ray pertains to Gabriel relating to the Moon, to preconception, conception, fertility, growth, the tides, lunar influences, maternity, birth, growth. Those refer to the angels of the Lunar Ray which are governed by Gabriel. Yesod relates to Gabriel. We have the Mercurian Ray, which relates to medicine, philosophy, science, governed by Raphael. So the angels of medicine who heal many sick patients in the internal planes belong follow the Angel Raphael, Mercurial science, hermetic science, philosophy. The Venusian Ray is governed by the Angel Uriel, the arts, love, compassion, music, flowers, poetry, art, literature―things of that nature. The angels of that ray follow Uriel. Question: Uriel, wasn't he assigned to Earth? Instructor: Uriel relates to Venus, but Venus is the one who produces and blossoms and flowers in the Earth. The Solar Ray relates to Michael, relating to high dignitaries, courts, supreme officials. The Solar Ray and the Martian Ray have a close relationship. The Martian Ray relates to the police, karma, the law, severity, the warriors of Mars: the angels or Elohim that are the masters of strength. This ray is governed by Samael, the Angel Samael. So he is an angel of protection like Michael. Michael also relates to power because the sphere Geburah in the Tree of Life is astrologically related to Mars, but also to the Sun. So Geburah, the angels of Mars and the Solar Ray, have a deep connection. The ray of Jupiter relates to politics. So it comes to my attention the 14th Dalai Lama who I suspect probably belongs to this ray because he is very involved with politics. Gandhi and many other individuals. Even Jesus is said to have belonged to the ray of Jupiter, which is governed by Zachariel. Question: Is that why there is a Z with the sign of ♃ Jupiter on top? Instructor: It looks like a Z, yeah, because it is Zachariel. The Hebrew letter ז Zayin can be formed to look like the sign of ♃ Jupiter. Now, the ray of Orifiel relate to the angels of death who are responsible for helping the souls after they disincarnate―also to properties, fortunes, anything related to mortuary science, death. Question: Isn't Pluto in there somewhere? Instructor: Pluto we say is the kingdom of death and relates to hell. So the inverted aspect of Saturn is that. Here we are only speaking about the positive relationship. There is also seven demons related to the infernal aspect, which we conjure with the Conjuration of the Seven, by invoking these angels.
As it says in the Book of Revelation, how Christ manifests in these ways:
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. ―Revelations 5:6
So all of us belong to one of these rays.
Questions and Answers
Question: How do we find out which one we are from?
Instructor: Samael mentions one method. You raise your eyebrows. You count how many transverse lines you have over your forehead. Comment: I have three. Instructor: Technically that should say you are from the ray of Uriel, because one line relates to the lunar. Two lines relate to the Mercurian ray. Question: Which that would be Saturn? Instructor: No. Uriel is the arts. Question: That would be Venus? Instructor: Venus relates to three, the three lines. So the fourth ray, four lines relates to Michael. Five lines, the fifth ray relates to Samael. Six lines relates to Zachariel. And seven lines relates to Orifiel. The problem is if we are old and if we have too many lines, it is hard to tell. Personally, the way that you figure out your ray is by learning to meditate and going out of your body, and then having experiences, because personally I have had many experiences about my ray and things about my Being that I learned from having Samadhis, in which Samael was teaching me, “This is your ray. This is where you belong. This is your path.” The way that I accomplished it, not that I am special, but you know, is just by practicing. By practicing and by being consistent. By practicing yoga, developing mysticism, and following the Gnostic path. It is how are you going to find the secret of your ray and what is the idiosyncrasy of your Being. Question: Can you start working with how the planets are being aligned? And you know how astrology is. Can you work with that in some ways? Instructor: We teach astrology too, to know how to read the stars to understand influences in our life. We have a book available called Practical Astrology, which teaches about that. Now one thing I want to note about the seven rays is that it is eternal. It doesn't change. When your Being emerged from the Absolute and entered into the universe, that Being, that spark entered into one of the seven rays. It never leaves its ray. Question: So life after life? Instructor: Same ray. So even if we have had many different personalities under different zodiacal signs, even though we have developed in certain ways in different lifetimes, different cultures, our ray is eternal. It never changes. So you take it with you all the way to the Absolute and beyond. So there are some theosophists who are saying that a person can change their ray, and that is impossible. Question: Is there a teaching within Gnosticism that if you are a male, you are always a male? Instructor: One is not always a male and one isn't always a female. Because if you are observing your mind, you'll find that you have many feminine egos and male egos. So, I have observed that in myself, like, “Where did this come from? I am not a woman!” But meditating on that you can see that there are connections to past lives. Question: So is there a belief in soul mate? Instructor: Yes, and we say in Kabbalah that our soul mate is Geburah. Question: So whatever your soul mate is, are you opposite no matter what lifetime you are in? Instructor: Not necessarily, and that is a very serious karma. Tchaikovsky experienced that. His closest male friend was his soul mate. They couldn't be together, because to do that would have been a crime. So, he was a great master who suffered a lot because his soul mate, as he represented in Romeo and Juliet, he couldn't be with her because she was in a male body. Question: What happens with the homosexuals then? How come there is no polarity there according to the occultists? Instructor: They are just like leaves. A lot of them were like leaves tossed the wind, sadly. And many don't even consider changing. Question: Is your soul mate the same in every single life, but you just have a different relationship? Instructor: Soul mate? Question: Yeah. If you are married to someone and that is your husband and wife by law, were they your person in every... maybe once they were your son or once they were this?... Instructor: Possibly. The way to investigate that is to really speak to a master of the law of karma and they will tell you. I mean, if you are married to a certain person, that means that you probably know them for a long time. There's nothing new under the earth, but what is new under the earth is that by investigating, you will see, “Okay, who was this person in my past lives?” Different relationships maybe. Question: When you say asking a master, you are talking about internally? Instructor: Internally, yeah. Question: I don't know how to ask this question. Like do you have one soul mate for the whole cycle of eternity and that is like your partner in life? Instructor: Samael talks about soul mates in different levels. He talks about Geburah and Tiphereth as soul mates. He also talks about, in his case, the reason he fell was because he fell in love with a certain woman when he was a god already, and he fell, meaning he didn't control his sexual energy. He had sex with her and he fell. She was, you could say, the first woman he was with even before Litelantes, which was the wife he worked with in order to rise upwards. So there could be variation. It depends on karma. Question: Wasn't he with other women after Litelantes? Instructor: There was one woman he was with. He had certain partners before he married her and eventually after his wife Litelantes he had to practice with another woman. It is mentioned in his life's story. Question: So I guess that makes sense. Instructor: What matters is this: be with a person your God wants you to be with and follow your Being. Nothing else matters. So your God will tell you to be with a certain person that you love. Follow your heart and follow your inner God, the will of your Being. Sometimes, you know, karma is very painful, and many people may get into relationships and they break up, even if they are in a Gnostic relationship. It could be very heartbreaking, but the thing is to follow the will of your God. No matter what, you will be fine. So the one who joins together in marriages and dissolves marriages is the Lord, and we have to always obey the Lord. Pray and hope that we are always with a certain person in our life. If both partners are working seriously and are sacrificing and really working in a marriage, then there could be change, and there can be solidarity and the union is even stronger, depending on the work of the couple. Are there any other questions? Question: I remember you showing me your charm and I was looking for something similar. I don't know, but there is one charm that was just like this and it was made out of copper. But it also said Wiccan on it. So again, my intuition told me no, but I still purchased it and I'll be very honest, it it seemed to harm me more than help me, so I stopped wearing it. Instructor: So the thing is, if you are dubious about the place you buy things, don't buy them from there necessarily. For places like that, I don't buy amulets, because those get charged from the atmosphere of the place they are in. There are other places you can get the Gnostic pentagram and there is a method to consecrate it as we give in the book The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled in which you can bless any pentagram you have such as this one made of silver. Question: There is nothing bad if it's copper, but for some reason that told me something. Instructor: Copper is fine, but typically you want to get a pentagram that has seven metals. Because the seven metals relate to the seven nervous systems of the seven planets. For Mercury, there is quicksilver and then the Venusian ray relates to copper. Gold relates to the Sun, Michael. Iron relates to Samael, the fifth ray, Mars. Tin relates to Jupiter. And then lead relates to Orifiel, the ray of death. Question: So your pentagram has all of those? Instructor: It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a big thing. Question: Is there any store in Chicago? Instructor: I know people I can get it from so I can look into that and try to get some pentagrams for sale. Question: But you are also saying there is another process after that? Instructor: Yes, so in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, you can consecrate a pentagram, an amulet, and it is in the very beginning of that book, the Gnostic Bible, that explains it in detail. Question: Did you say it had lead in that? Instructor: Yes, Saturn. The seven metals relate to the seven rays. So each metal is pertinent to one of the angels. Now, I had an experience internally where my Being told me, “The name Samael is like a metal,” and I reflected on that and, well, iron relates to Samael. Iron is like the nervous system of the planet Mars. So if you go to Mars, just like the Earth, or if go to Saturn, they are just like the Earth, but different constitutions. Mars is red because of the iron content that has predominance. It is the nervous system of the planet Mars. Earth is a mixture, but the different planets relate to the different metals because that's the primary metal that relates, physically, to that planet, but also to the energies of Christ manifested through those worlds. Each archangel is a life force of a planet. All of us are connected to one of the rays, to one of the angels. The thing is to meditate and to discover, “What is our ray?” and to be guided internally. When you learn certain things about your ray, some people ask me, “Why is it important to know my ray?” Well, I ask, “Well, why is it important to know about know your name, your address, your credit card numbers, your social security number?”―things that you consider important that make things work physically. So spiritually speaking, when you know your ray, it is going to tell you about how to work spiritually as it relates to your inner divinity.
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In these studies, within the Gnostic tradition, we seek to understand many mysteries pertaining to religion in symbolism. We explain many archetypes, principles, and meanings associated with the symbolism within the scriptures, whether in the Judeo-Christian tradition, or within Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. Today we are going to explain the secret teachings of anointment as particularly elaborated within Judaism and within Christianity.
It is important to note that this science, denominated Gnosis, pertains to all religions. So we find not only the mysteries of anointment within Christianity, we find it also within Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, etc., but we are going to elaborate on many principles pertinent to the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the Hebraic Kabbalah. Kabbalah is the science of Judaism. It is the teachings of the relationship of the human being to God, the structure of the human being in his or her internal constitution in relationship to divine principles. We are going to elaborate many things in relation to the Hebrew letters, because the Hebraic alphabet teaches us many things as you will see. Each letter symbolizes a principle, an archetype we need to cultivate psychologically, spiritually within ourselves, and which pertains to the teachings that Jesus gave regarding anointment. So we find in this image Jesus, his feet being bathed by the tears of the woman from Bethany preceding his crucifixion, his Passion. His disciples were alarmed and disturbed that this woman was in the party washing the feet of the Lord Jesus with her tears and anointing his feet with oil. You find scripturally stated within the Book of Luke, when Jesus is responding to his apostles' reaction: Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many, are forgiven: for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. ―Luke 7:44-47
So the teachings of anointment pertains to redemption of the human being, which we denominate as the studies of soteriology: how the soul is purified, is sanctified, is cleansed in order to unite fully with God, whether we call that entity Christ, which we are going to elaborate upon, Allah, Jehovah, Iod-Havah, etc. So the teachings of anointment specifically relate to the Eastern teachings of Tantra, associated with what we call in this tradition as sexual magic: the work of a couple, man and woman, in order to harness the most potent energies we possess in our interior, which is precisely the sexual energy that we call the Holy Spirit, the sexual force.
In order to elaborate on these teachings of anointment, it is important to note that in this scripture and Chapter 7 of Luke, Jesus is preparing for his Crucifixion, his path of the cross, and we emphasize very clearly in these studies that the cross is a sexual symbol. It is the union of man, the vertical beam, and woman the horizontal beam, within the sexual act, harnessed completely for God. Instead of that energy being utilized in the common carnal passion to engender children, the same energy can be utilized in order to unite with God. The mysteries of an ointment are associated directly with this, because in the Hebraic teachings, the Kabbalah, we talk about what is known as the Tree of Life. 
The Tree of Life is a diagram illustrating ten spheres, ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth (Hebrew: “emanations”). In the center middle of the tree, we have what is known as Yesod, the foundation. If we take the image of the Tree of Life and transpose it on a human being, we find that Yesod pertains to the sexual organs, and that this is the foundation stone of our temple, spiritually speaking―or as Peter, whose name signifies a stone, was denominated the founder of the Gnostic Church, the Gnostic Catholic Church, the Gnostic Universal Primeval Christian Church.
So as a symbol of Yesod, we have what is known as the sandals, because each of these spheres in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalists has a symbol. The symbol of Yesod is the sandals. It is how one walks the path of self-realization of the inner Being. And so the fact that Jesus was anointed by his feet with oil and with tears is illustrating for us how we ourselves need to walk spiritually, because Jesus, the Master Aberamentho, was one individual who incarnated Christ through the power of Yesod. There are many who have incarnated the Christ. The Christ is an energy. It is a force and can become particularized within any individual that is fully prepared through the process we call initiation. Master Jesus was teaching physically with his life what we need to do. We need to anoint our feet, and the feet is a symbol of, we could say Malkuth as well. Because you take the Tree of Life, put it on the human being, Malkuth relates to the feet as well. But the symbol of Yesod is the sandals. How we walk is determined by how we use our energy, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually, in union and harmony. 
The Christ Principle
Now, of course we need to understand exactly what Christ is, because the word Χρίστος Khristos literally means “anointed one.” This is a title. It is not a specific name for one individual in the past. It pertains to a title that any initiate can acquire and we can acquire that ourselves if we walk this path. So we have the Greek god of fire Χρήστος Khristos and it literally means “anointed one,” from the adjective Khriein, “to anoint.” The Greek god Khristos means “fire,” and this fire is not physical, but psychological, spiritual, and is an energy. Many people talk about the Christ force, but none have openly explained how to directly work with this energy inside of ourselves, because the secret of anointment explains this teaching directly.
So we have on the right, an image of a Rabbi who is anointing a disciple with a horn. What is interesting is that the horn―and to elaborate on the sexual nature of this type of teaching―typically, whether in treatment of Taoism or even some forms of acupuncture for individuals who suffer impotence, one remedy they give is the horns of a goat or a type of deer or a type of buck, you could say, because the horns of any animal contain the sexual power of that animal, of the man, of the male. So men who physically suffer impotence are sometimes given treatment if they try alternative medicine such as this. Sadly, this is where the the term “horny” comes from, to explain some terms and the real origin and meaning of that.
Typically, the rabbis would anoint their disciples from a horn, because the horn is a symbol of how the sexual energy of God, when we conserve it and harness it for spiritual practice, how it goes inward and upward up our spinal column: the path of the cross, the Via Crucis that Jesus of Nazareth taught with his physical life. Question: Is there a relationship between what you are talking about and the shofar? Instructor: The shofar relates to that. The שׁוֹפָר shofar, they would blow on holidays because the horn, the rams horn pertains to this teaching, because the ram is a symbol of Christ, the spiritual power of the Verb, sound, vibration. And the horn is the sexual male power of an individual. This energy, we can conserve it, bring it inward and upward up the spinal column to the brain. This is where the horns of the initiates can be found, and not to be mistaken with the horns of demons, which is different. So to explain this teaching even further, the word oil in Hebrew is שמן shemen. We have this quote and we are going to give some more quotes that directly explain this teaching. Thou dost prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies now; Thou has anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. ―Psalms 23:5
The Hebrew word for oil is שמן shemen, semen, literally. And if we break down the Hebrew letters associated with the word oil, we arrive at the meaning. The letter ש Shin―and it is important to remember that each Hebrew letter represents a principle, something we need to develop within ourselves―the Hebrew letter ש Shin looks like a trident. It relates to the three primary forces of nature: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or Christ in unity―the flame, the fire of God within us. מ Mem relates to water, such as in the word Stella Maris: Virgin of the Sea, relating to the Divine Mother מִרְיָם Miriam, the goddess of the waters. And the letter נ Nun, which in Aramaic literally means fish, but it can denote either the sperm or ovum within a man or a woman.
Now, we explained it in these teachings that the sexual physical matter known as semen is a container for powerful forces, which we could use for God, which we can use for Christ within us. We teach that this energy, when it is transformed, when it is conserved and never wasted, but retained in the body and transmuted into a higher substance through the science of alchemy, that this energy will grant us anointment. "Anoint thy head with oil," it says, meaning: we need to take that energy within us, bring it inward and upward, up our spine through the exercises we provide in this tradition, to the brain. Like Jesus carrying the cross, we need to bring that energy, inward and upward, up the 33 canyons, the 33 vertebrae of the spinal medulla represented by the 33 years in the life of Jesus, or the 33 degrees of Freemasonry. So this energy is is sacred. It is the foundation of this science, of union with God, because we need to learn to work with this energy―the sexual power, which some call Holy Spirit, some call Kundalini―if we want to really unite with our inner Christ, our inner Being. To explain the teachings of anointment, it is important to elaborate on the first book of Genesis and explain it from a Kabbalistic point of view. So very famously we remember, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But if we look at the original Hebrew, it gives us a much more direct translation. So we emphasize that a lot of the translations of the Bible are very mistaken, because they don't have a deep Kabbalistic knowledge, many translators, of the meaning of the Hebrew letters and how they teach us things that are not explicit. So the original Hebrew says: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים Bereshit Bara Elohim, “In the beginning Elohim created.” So the word אֱלֹהִים Elohim, they say, is God. But if we look at it literally, breaking it down, אֵל El means God. Eloah or אֵלָה Elah means goddess. And the plural י Iod ם Mem at the end, that is masculine-plural. So it really should read “gods and goddesses.”
We teach that in these studies, in the Gnostic tradition, that when a man and woman unite sexually in holy matrimony, and when this energy is preserved and never wasted, the man and woman become a god. They become Elohim, because they now have the power to create life, whether physical or spiritual. They are a god and a goddess together, because every man needs his wife in order to be fully complemented, and every woman needs her husband in order to be complemented as well, spiritually (and sexually) speaking. In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. ―Genesis 1:1
We have to remember this is not just talking about physical creation of this planet. That is one meaning, but it is very symbolic. On another level, this pertains to how a married couple can create God within themselves, to develop spiritually those archetypes, the teachings of the Hebrew letters within themselves.
If you examine this: “In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth”―we are going to elaborate a lot about what the word “heavens” means. Heavens are שָּׁמַיִם Shamayim or “the Heavens,” הַשָּׁמַיִם Ha-Shamayim, literally speaking. Notice that in this word, and we are going to break this down further, we have the letter ה Hei, the letter שׁ Shin, the letter מ Mem, the letter י Iod, and the letter ם Final Mem. We are going to break this down further, as I mentioned, but הַשָּׁמַיִם Ha-Shamayim means “the heavens.” Heaven is not just some place in the clouds, that we need to somehow behave very well by paying our taxes and being a good husband or wife in order to go there. It pertains to psychological states, archetypes: principles we need to cultivate. As John Milton, the famous author Paradise Lost, said: The mind is its own place, and in itself
So heaven is a state of mind, a state of being, even though there are dimensions represented by the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah that represent higher states of consciousness we can access when we are physically asleep or in meditation. What is important is that we cultivate this in ourselves here and now, fundamentally. So:
אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ
The letter אֵת At here, א Aleph ת Tav are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Or we say in Greek, Α-Ω, Alpha-Omega, beginning and ending, which is why we included in this next line.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. ―Revelations 1:8
So the fact that in the beginning, Elohim created heaven through א Aleph ת Tav, Α-Ω, Alpha-Omega, through all the principles within the human being that make him or her complete. אֵת At is the Word. So we could say אֵת At is another way of saying “of begetting, becoming, creating” through these letters, these principles. Elohim, the spiritual couple, created the heavens and the earth, וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ Vay’at Ha’aretz. הָאָֽרֶץ Ha’aretz is “earth,” the earth, which is our body we could say. Our physical body is an earth. It is its own world in itself that has its own substances and forces.
Now again, remember this is symbolic. The letters represent things for us that we need to comprehend. In the words of וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ Vay’at Ha’aretz, “and the earth,” and then “created the earth,” we have א Aleph ת Tav, again and another Hebrew letter, ו Vav, which is a straight line. ו Vav is our spinal column. So in tantra, we emphasize that the spinal column is important and that we need to raise the sexual power through the spinal medulla, from our sexual organs to our brain because it is the creative power of God. Question: Is that air? Would that be the central column? י Iod, ה Hei, ו Vau? Instructor: Yes, in the sacred name י Iod, ה Hei, ו Vav, ה Hei or יהוה Jehovah is the name, ו Vav is present and the ו Vav represents the spinal column. And so we need to raise these principles א Aleph ת Tav, the beginning and the ending, all the principles of God within us in our body through the science of breathing. So the Book of Genesis is explaining that all of the creative power and potential of the Being, of divinity within us, is precisely within our sexual organs, because it is the only power that can create a physical child, a physical life. There is no other way to create life except when a man and woman unite sexually to create, physically, in the manner that everybody knows. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh. But that which is born of the Spirit,” through the transformed sexual act, “is Spirit” (John 3:6). But here were explaining a superior spiritual teaching for how to use that energy, spiritually. 
The Heavenly Hebrew Letters of Kabbalah
So I mentioned to you, we are going to explain the word heavens or השמים Ha-Shamayim. In this image, we actually have the Tree of Life transposed over a golden figure, which is the Egyptian God Ptah, which is where we get the word pater or father. This is the real human being made into the image of God―the ten sephiroth, the spheres, which are the different aspects of the consciousness within a human being fully illuminated. The fact that this figures made of gold like in the manner of the Egyptian pharaohs emphasizes that psychologically, alchemically, he transformed the brute substance of his body into the gold of the Spirit, into that fully developed human being.
If you are familiar with the tradition of Christmas, the Christmas tree, the lights on the tree illuminated, this is the same symbol. The light of God, the light of Christ, has been elevated inward and upward to the brain, to the heart, and fully illuminating these different spheres, these different aspects of the human being. This the heavens within us. The heavens is השמים Ha-Shamayim and we can also break it down as a ה-ש-מים Ha-Sha-Mim in Hebrew because Hebrew is very dynamic. There is a lot of meaning even in just one word. We can read many things from it. ה-ש-מים Ha-Sha-Mim means “The Names,” precisely these archetypes within the 22 Hebrew letters we wish to cultivate within us. We have “The Name,” השם Hashem, or we can say in Hebrew, יהוה Iod-Havah. Many devout Jews will, instead of saying Iod-Havah, יהוה Jehovah, many times they will pronounce ברוך השם אדני Baruch Hashem Adonai, “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” as a type of honorific or title to God, to be respectful, not to pronounce that name in vain. The word שם shem means “name.” The letter ה Hei is simply, when you add ה Hei in front of any word, it's the indefinite article “the.” So השמים Ha-Shamayim, “The Heavens,” or ה-ש-מים Ha-Sha-Mim: “the Names.” השם Hashem, “The Name.” And then שם shem is literally “name.” What is interesting is that we just discussed the Hebrew letters in שמן shemen. The word שמן shemen has literally the Hebrew letter ש Shin and ם Final Mem which is “Name.” The name of God is hidden within the sexual matter, the substance in our body which, sadly in these times, we think is only useful for pleasure or procreating children, physically speaking. But people have ignored and we are attempting to explain how this same power can be used for spiritual development, that it is really the foundation stone if we wish to transform our psyche. The names of God, השמים Ha-Shamayim or ה-ש-מים Ha-Sha-Mim, or the heavens, meaning all those principles of God we need to cultivate are in us, literally are inside of our body, physically within מ Mem, contained within semen or שמן shemen, which is ש Shin, the fire of God, מ Mem, the waters, because the semen is a fiery water. When a man and woman are united, there is fire, sexually speaking. The question is whether the couple will conserve that fire and never lose it or, or will waste it or expel it. And so, שם shem, the divine name, is precisely within נ Nun, to spell שמן shemen. נ Nun, as I said, literally from Aramaic, is fish. So men have sperm and women have ovum. That is the fish in our waters, literally speaking, in which the principles, the שם Shem: name or השמים Ha-Sha-Mim are contained within. This is really the fountain of youth within us that many explorers were seeking physically, thinking that alchemy was just this fountain of youth of the alchemical teachings is just about transforming physical substances into gold, physical lead into gold, but it is symbolic. This is a symbolic teaching of how the base and dense sexual instinct is transmuted into the gold of scientific chastity, the sexual purity of the gods. The potable gold of the alchemist is within our body. It is our שמן shemen, semen. It is our oil which we need to be anointed with precisely by conserving it and then transforming that energy, that oil into, precisely the השמים Ha-Shamayim, into the heavens: superior internal psychological and spiritual states of being. 
So remember we mentioned in the third graphic talking about Genesis:
In the beginning Elohim created. “In the beginning, gods and goddesses created the heavens and the earth. ―Genesis 1:1
Man and woman together are a god, one Being. They create as Elohim precisely by working with all the archetypes that are found in a chaotic state, in a potential state. As you remember in the Book of Genesis:
The earth was formless and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. ―Genesis 1:2
Psychologically speaking, we are a type of darkness. If we examine our mind, we oftentimes find a lot of anger, resentment, pride, vanity, conflicting emotions, resentment―negative aspects about ourselves that we want to change, that we want to rectify, that we want to know how to remove, so that we can fully illuminate this light of God within us: Christ. But there are many books on self-help and many teachings, but if they ignore that without working with that energy of God, the sexual power, we cannot change and unite with God.
We need that energy, that power that is Patar, the foundation stone. Even in slang―and I am gonna explain some meaning of where certain slang words came from―the word Peter we say is a name for a phallus. It is a stone, Patar, of our temple. So Jesus said, "You will be my stone of my church, upon which I will found my church”―the rock upon which the house was built when the storms came, and it did not blow it away. But those who build their their house, their spiritual house, their beliefs, on theories, the wind, karma and circumstances will knock it down. We need to know what this stone is, Patar, which is the God Ptah in Egypt, and to develop these principles within us. So heaven is within us, is formless and void. So semen is really formless and void, but if the spirit of God hovers upon it, by working with our breath through the רוח אלהים Ruach Elohim mentioned in Genesis, we can transform that substance into light. יְהִי אֹור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור
אֹור Aur is light in Hebrew, and we are going to explain that further. But precisely the name of God, שם Shem or השם Hashem, is within our שמן shemen, in the physical sperm if we know how to use it. We find this symbolism all throughout the Bible.
The Anointment of Biblical Kings
We have in the next graphic שמואל Shemuel or Samuel. Literally, it spells ש Shin, מ Mem, ו Vav, א Aleph, ל Lamed. So those who are not familiar and this is an image of שמואל Shemuel anointing Saul in the Bible. He was the son of חנה Hannah who was barren. A lot of women in the Bible are mentioned that, though she was barren, she became fertile through divine aid. At first she was unable to engender children―and many Jews interpret this literally thinking, well, it is about a physical woman in the past who couldn't have physical children, and amongst the Jewish race and other groups where family is very important, if you are familiar with different cultures like this. It is very intense, where many people are very concerned about having family, procreating, having children and very identified with just having kids. This is not the meaning there in this biblical allegory.
The meaning is that to be barren is, really, what we are psychologically, if we are honest and see that we in ourselves are barren, empty, formless, and void―psychological darkness, ignorance upon the deep of our mind. To be barren is to be sterile, meaning: to not have a lot of sexual, divine, spiritual creative potency. To be sterile is to be impotent, or for a man to be impotent, but barren is not having enough sexual creative energy to engender a child, even physically. But we are looking more at this: the spiritual meaning. We want to engender spiritual children inside of us, the golden child of alchemy or Christ, within our interior. חנה Hannah means “favor” or “grace.” So we have the names like John which is יוֹחָנָן Johannan or the angel אנאל Anael or חנאל Hanael, “Grace of God.” So חנה Hannah means “favor” or “grace,” and the word חנה Hannah is ח Chet, נ Nun, ה Hei. If you translate the נ Nun in the middle to a ו Vav, the letter V or the spinal medulla we mentioned, you spell חַוָה Chavah, Eve. Eve is the “mother of the living” mentioned the Bible. She is the one who engenders and creates children according to physical history. But psychologically and spiritually, חַוָה Hava is the sexual organs of any man or woman, because it is through sex that we create. The problem is that in the times of Adam and Eve, individuals wanted to create, to have children by reaching the orgasm, having physical children, forgetting that that same energy can be used, when it is conserved and not wasted, to create spiritually. So if we wish to become like Hannah, we need to take this middle letter נ Nun, symbolic of the sexual energy within the sperm or ovum, and raise it up our spinal column, the ו Vav. Then you spell חַוָה Chavah: to create spiritually. And so שמואל Shemuel, Samuel―just some history or the tradition associated with him―he was the last judge of pre-monarchic Israel. He was the last judge before the anointment of the Kings Saul and David. According to the rabbinical literature, he was considered the first of the major prophets. So he is very highly regarded within Judaism. But one thing is שמואל Samuel in the past. What he represents is what we are concerned with. שמואל Samuel, we have the latter שם Shem, name, and the Hebrew letter ו Vav, which is the spine in our body. And then אל El is God, as I mentioned, as an אלוהים Elohim―the name of God שמואל Shemuel within the spine, the creative forces of God within our spinal column. We need to find the name of our inner God, because each of us has our own inner Being and our Being has a name. Question: Isn't Samuel [Samael] an angel or archangel associated to Geburah? Instructor: Yes, and סמאל Samael sounds like שמואל Samuel, but it is different. It has different spelling too, since ס Samech is the serpentine fire of Kundalini in profound activity, yet ש Shin, the sexual fires in us, are dormant. But שמואל Samuel is a symbol of how we need to develop the archetypes of God, the names of God within us, the heavens within us, by precisely working with our own שמן shemen, semen. Because שם Shem, the Name, the Name of אל El, needs to rise up our spinal column, which is a precisely the work of alchemy or tantra. Question: You also have mantras. They help also? Instructor: Yes, and when we do mantras, as we explained in books like The Perfect Matrimony, that is how we activate those forces if we are married and working with our spouse. That is the full meaning of how to develop שמואל Samuel within us. That is how we anoint within our interior, the King of our soul. So King Shaul or Saul and David are mentioned. So before ourselves can become kings and queens of nature, we need to develop שמואל Shemuel first, by working with the name of God and cultivate that energy, so that we can receive חנה Hannah, grace from above. By working with חַוָה Chavah below in order to elevate ourselves. 
Sexual Teachings in Psalms and Proverbs
Now, to emphasize the importance of this in relation to anointment and how it is by working with this energy that we achieve salvation, we have the following quotes from the Psalms and then we have Proverbs. So in the Psalm book 45 verse 7:
אָהַבְתָּ צֶּדֶק וַתִּשְׂנָא רֶשַׁע עַל־כֵּן מְשָׁחֲךָ אֱלֹהִים אֱלֹהֶיךָ שֶׁמֶן שָׂשֹׂון מֵֽחֲבֵרֶֽיךָ׃
Or more specifically:
אֱלֹהִים אֱלֹהֶיךָ שֶׁמֶן שָׂשֹׂון מֵֽחֲבֵרֶֽיךָ׃
The Hebrew word for oil is שֶׁמֶן shemen.
There is treasure to be desired in oil in the dwelling of the wise… (or שֶׁמֶן shemen in the dwelling of the wise). ―Proverbs 21:20
So what is that dwelling of the wise person? It is the physical body and our body is really how we can cultivate wisdom.
…but a foolish man spendeth it up. ―Proverbs 21:20
So there is oil, שֶׁמֶן shemen, in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man expels it, ejaculates, it―fornicates.
The word fornication means “to burn,” like a furnace, and then to expel the semen through a few moments of pleasure and then exhaustion afterward. שֶׁמֶן Shemen is precisely that oil that is our treasure. The word for treasure I believe is o’tsar אֹוצָר. So treasure is o’tsar אֹוצָר, which we have the three Hebrew letters that remind us of the Hebrew word אֹור Aur―which is light. אֹ Aleph, ו Vav, ר Resh. We have the word אֹור Aur which means “light.” So: “There is a treasure, there is אֹור light to be desired and שֶׁמֶן shemen in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man wastes it,” expels it through many vices such as masturbation or prostitution, fornication―any act in which that semen is expelled. In all the teachings of religion, the foundational tenet was you should not fornicate according to teachings of Moses, Moshe, the foundations. If we want to change ourselves, we need to understand this precept, because this energy, if it is wasted, we feed desire, we feed animality, we feed lust, anger pride. It is the original sin by which all of our defects manifest. If we want to really grab the bull by the horns and change psychologically, we need to have energy. If we don't have that energy, if we are giving into lust, we are feeding all our defects. So it is light. It is o’tsar אֹוצָר treasure, in the dwelling of the wise, and the foolish man spendeth it up. The word for “spendeth” is בַלְּעֶֽנּו [balenu]. We have three Hebrew letters that are significant. ב Bet, ל Lamed, ע Ayn. You take those three letters, you spell the name of a demon named בַּעַל Baal mentioned many times in the Bible. So, a fool is one who is a demon, who is wasting that energy, feeding desire and creating suffering for him or herself. A demon is not just some guy with horns in some fairy tale with a pitchfork. A demon is any person who has anger, vanity, pride, laziness, gluttony, defects. Question: An archetype? Instructor: Yeah, so we say it we say that a demon is a person who has faults. An angel has no faults―is a perfect human being. If we waste that שֶׁמֶן shemen, that light, then we are formless and void, and then the Spirit cannot hover upon those waters, because there is no water there. There is no light to be created. Then we are left as בַּעַל Baal, a demon. This is why it is mentioned in the teachings of Moses, "Thou shalt not fornicate." Don't waste your energies, because the orgasm is a tremendous waste of energy. You lose everything: concentration, will, the ability to focus, meditate, because there are many people who try meditation while continuing to indulge in behaviors that have been restricted within the foundation of every religion. They don’t progress. If we want to be successful meditators and to change psychologically, we study this foundation: working with this energy and not abusing it.
So to elaborate, we have in the mysteries of anointment, we have this image of Jesus, the resurrected Jesus before Mary Magdalene. And we are going to elaborate upon the teachings of The Perfect Matrimony, the sexual union and cooperation of a husband and wife to take that energy and use it for God.
Comment: Then it certainly impossible for those who are not polarized, specifically homosexuality. There is no way! Instructor: Exactly, which is why every religion, even Buddhism, which seems to be such a tolerant religion―the foundation is: you cannot engage in sexual vices. The Dalai Lama gave a talk to a homosexual community. They welcomed him at first because he's a very tolerant and understanding man. They asked him, "Can a homosexual practice Buddhism?" He said no. And so they got angry at him. They booed and hissed at him. But he was just being honest, you know. You cannot be a Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, if you are adulterating the sexual energy in an abusive way, in a homosexual way. You need both polarities, man-woman, the vertical beam, the phallus―the horizontal beam, the uterus―the cross, to create the cross. However, to avoid confusion, we are not only against homosexual behaviors, but heterosexual behaviors rooted in lust, desire, orgasm. Fornication, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot create the soul. We make this clear, because people today become enraged that the Gnostics teach chastity: purity in sex, and qualify our instructions as hate-speech or oppression against the LGBTQ community. We respect people’s free will and do not promote discrimination or violence against others. We only point out how certain behaviors, sexually speaking, can produce the bane or boon of the soul. For this, we are often accused of lacking compassion. Sadly, people mistake compassion with complacency, that to love others we must accept the behaviors that make them sick, afflicted, and diseased. The compassionate action is to teach humanity how the sexual energy can be used to achieve divine realizations, but for this, one must be pure. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This is why the sexual teachings are rejected by humanity. People find the Gnostic teachings of sex, the stone of Peter, Patar, offensive: Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. ―1 Peter 2:7-8
These sexual teachings are the foundation of religion, to build the temple of our inner divinity within our consciousness. You cannot do that through fornication, whether heterosexual or homosexual. To spiritually create within, you need both sexual polarities, male and female, combined through chastity, pure sexual union. Homosexuals cannot create, just as two men or two women cannot create a physical child together. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). The same sexual act, transformed between man and woman, can create, whether a physical child or the spiritual force of divinity within. It depends upon the couple, if they really want to enter the spiritual path of initiation as given within esoteric―not public―Christianity.
Homosexuals, we could say―and not to to disrespect these persons―but homosexuals have been considered vampires in ancient traditions. This is a symbol, not necessarily a literal accusation that “homosexuals drink other people’s blood,” because that would be an absurd generalization. The reality is that they don't create spiritually. Therefore, they steal energy from others, especially from the same sex in order to feed their desires. Now, that is why vampires were afraid of the cross in ancient traditions. They hate the cross. The homosexuals hate man and woman united, the force of Genesis, generation. They think it's disgusting, because they have lost their innate attraction towards the opposite sex, which is a form of degeneration, a form of abuse. We emphasize, as taught by Jesus, as taught by Buddha, Muhammad, that if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven, we need to take up our cross, as Jesus taught, sacrifice for others, and follow him. Deny oneself, take up your cross and follow him as he taught. So the cross, again, is the work in a matrimony. This is not pleasant for fornicators addicted to lust. Often times the truth appears harsh. As Shakespeare declared through Hamlet: “I must be cruel only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse remains behind” (Hamlet 3.4.181-82). Magicians of the Divine Priesthood
So we have Mary Magdalene with Jesus, and the word mag in Indo-European language means “priest” or “priestess.” A priest of nature has his wife, a priestess, in which, by working with with alchemy, they learn to conquer their own inner nature, psychological, sexual, and spiritual nature, and therefore have power over the elements. This is the meaning of the word magician, mag, as we say. So Mary Magdalene, we say was the wife of Jesus and symbolically. She represents us, because she is a prostitute.
If we examine ourselves, we have a lot of lust, a lot of wanting, desire to look at the opposite sex, a lot of distractions―maybe vices like pornography and addiction of a psychological nature, of a sexual nature. That is our prostitute, our mind, Mary Magdalene. But she is repentant. She doesn't want to be a prostitute anymore. She wants to follow Christ. And so she was the most exalted initiate among those with Jesus, because the farther one falls, the higher one will rise. Jesus said that is why there is more joy in heaven for a sinner who repents than for a thousand righteous ones who have no need for repentance. To elaborate on the teachings of alchemy and anointment, we have this teaching from the Gospel of Philip, which is a Gnostic scripture. No one can know when the husband and the wife have intercourse with one another, except the two of them. Indeed, marriage in the world is a mystery for those who have taken a wife. If there is a hidden quality to the marriage of defilement, how much more is the undefiled marriage a true mystery! ―The Gospel of Philip
So what is this defiled marriage? When a man and woman unite sexually and they reach the orgasm, they defile the bed. If you remember the book of Hebrews, it says:
Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled (meaning, without the culmination of the orgasm, without expelling that energy) but whoremongers and fornicators [prostitutes] God will judge. ―Hebrews 13:4.
To reach the orgasm is to make the body a whore, a prostitute, filthy physically and psychologically.
If there is a hidden quality to the marriage of defilement, the marriage that everyone knows today, how much more so is the undefiled marriage a true mystery? Meaning: the teachings of alchemy that we are teaching. Question: In order to create a human being, there has to be an orgasm, so how can that be defilement? Instructor: There are children as a result of sexuality without the orgasm. This is a form of immaculate conception. Children in the past, in a time so ancient that it's impossible to imagine given our current archaeologists and the study of anthropology, but the humanity of the past used to create physical children without orgasm. This is called immaculate conception, in which the Holy Spirit of an individual can guide one sperm from the phallus of a man into the uterus and guide it to an ovum without the necessity of spilling millions and billions of spermatozoa. But the way that people engender children today, that was the fall of Adam and Eve, which is a symbol of an ancient humanity that disobeyed these precepts from Elohim, from God, deciding that they want to have children of their own, to eat the forbidden fruit, without following the laws of nature. This is why in the Book of Genesis, it says: And יהוה אלוהים Jehovah Elohim said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life… ―Genesis 3:14
That energy now is being used for pollution, the serpent, the sexual power going down. And then Jehovah Elohim tells Eve, “You will suffer child pains in childbirth” (Genesis 3:16). Humanities in the past did not suffer that. There was no pain, because they procreated by immaculate conception, sexually uniting, but without wasting the seminal force. They engendered children in accordance with superior laws. Immaculate conception does not mean to not have sex, or that Mary was suddenly impregnated by some figure called the Holy Spirit and then she had a child. You can have children by copulating with your wife in a chaste, pure, clean way, because chastity means cleanliness, and to engender children without orgasm. It's very possible. The one who decides that is the Innermost, because if we are married and we want to have children, we petition to our Being and ask the Holy Spirit that we wish to engender a child in a pure way. If it is in accordance with karma and the forces are correct and divinity wants it, then it will be. But if we want children of our own accord, that is why humanity started at procreating like animals.
Question: So the whole point then, I have heard this before, to give control in any way, you are just instilling your will in the universe in any way, is considered somewhat sinful. Is that true? Instructor: We say that sin is a psychological quality pertaining to our mind. Defects like anger, pride, lust, desire toward certain impressions, which are transitory, seeking fulfillment through those transitory impressions, is a form of suffering. We say that it is sin in Christian terms.
But to sin is an archery term. Meaning: when you are aiming your bow, to go to the left, and in Kabbalah, the left pillar relates to how the forces from heaven go down to hell. That is why in traditions they say that the left hand is bad but the right hand is good. The right relates to the sun, the left to the moon, but to follow sin is to follow our own desires, our defects. To follow divinity, to be chaste, is go to the path to the right, shoot to the right, to aim one's efforts in meditation and concentration and contemplation towards eliminating our desires, our defects.
Desire, any desire, is an attachment. But just to say that by eliminating desire one is dead to the world, it doesn't mean that. In fact, we have a greater appreciation of life as a result. But that pertains to what we call the study of the ego, or desire, defects, synonyms for the same thing. All of that is fed depending on our sexual behavior. That is the foundation. First, stop behaving in a negative sexual manner and use those energies in a pure way for God. That is how we learn to cultivate a serene mind, because if we give in to desire, the waters of the mind are disturbed. But if we anoint ourselves with that energy every day, we learn to cultivate a serene mind. So this undefiled marriage is a true mystery. It is not fleshly, but pure. It belongs not to desire, but to the will. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So this is going back to what you were asking. Desire is an attachment or craving or an aversion to a certain phenomena and impression, whether it is people or food or friends or whatever. It is our psychological attachments to what we experience from life. Now, will is different, real willpower, meaning: to be united with our inner Being, our inner God, to do only His will and Her will, because we have a Divine Mother and a Divine Father.
It belongs not to desire but to the will. It belongs not to the darkness nor the night (meaning ignorance) but to the day and the light (comprehension, cognizance). If a marriage is open to the public, it has become prostitution and the bride plays the harlot not only when she is impregnated by another man (in the common way), but even if she slips out of her bedroom and is seen. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So what does this mean that one's marriage has become public? Look at the world today. The institution of marriage as is commonly practiced, where by signing papers, a couple continues to engage in sex in an animal fashion, people engage in the way of prostitutes. The bride also plays the harlot, not only when being impregnated in the lustful way without immaculate conception, but when she shows herself. Many women do this and men too, show off their bodies in a lustful way. So this is everywhere, because modesty is dead. This parallels the type of degeneration we have in our world today.
Let her show herself only to her father and her mother and to the friend of the bridegroom and the sons of the bridegroom. These are permitted to enter every day into the bridal chamber. But let the others yearn just to listen to her voice and to enjoy her ointment (שֶׁמֶן shemen, her oil, lusting after her energy that makes her so attractive) and let them feed from the crumbs that fall from the table like the dogs (like animals). Bridegrooms and brides belong to the bridal chamber. No one shall be able to see the bridegroom with the bride unless he becomes such a one. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So a lot of Christians interpret and they are right that the bridegroom is the Christ and that the bride is the soul that needs to be married. Brides and bridegrooms are symbols of alchemists: initiates who transform the sexual energy into the power of the soul, the anointment of the divine spiritual kings who have conquered themselves.
But how does one get married to Christ? By working with the cross, as we mentioned. 
The Symbolism of Baptism
In the next graphic, we have Jesus being baptized and anointed with water. It is the same symbol, same meaning. It was at this moment in which Christ, through anointment, Jesus of Nazareth incarnated his Intimate Christ, his own light, his own ray from which he emanated. And to explain further how sexuality can either be pure or sensual, we have this continuation from the Gospel of Philip.
A bridal chamber is not for the animals, nor is it for the slaves, nor for defiled women; but it is for free men and virgins. ―The Gospel of Philip
What is the bridal chamber? It is the mysteries of alchemy that we are teaching: how to sexually unite with our partner, husband and wife, and to use that energy completely for God. That is the bridal chamber.
We are saying that these mysteries of alchemy are not for animals. People who want to continue having sex in a defiled way, in a lustful way, alchemy is not for them―not for animals, nor is it for slaves: people who are a slave of anger and resentment and pride and defects. Alchemy is not for slaves either. It is not for defiled women, women who are prostitutes― meaning all of us, really, who are defiled, psychologically speaking. To be defiled, the body, to be defiled as a prostitute is to constantly engage in masturbation or homosexuality or the ejaculation of the שמן shemen, the oil of God. "But it is for free men and virgins." So a virgin doesn't necessarily mean someone who doesn't have sex. It means to have sex in a chaste way. To be a free man is to have enough potential to really change, because there are some people in this world, they don't care about changing themselves psychologically. They don't care about learning how to better themselves. Instead, they want to fornicate, drink alcohol, and destroy themselves. So alchemy is for free men, people who still have some potential, some freedom left to study and meditate and practice and who really want to change, and for virgins, pure initiates, who want to be chaste and clean. We are born again through the Holy Spirit, and we are conceived through Christ in baptism with two elements. We are anointed through the Spirit, and when we were conceived, we were united (so again talking about how the Holy Spirit is sexual). No one can see oneself in the water (מים mayim) or in a mirror without light (אור aur), nor can you see yourself in the light (אור) without water (מים) or a mirror. So it is necessary to baptize with two elements, light (אור), and water (מים), and light is chrism. ―The Gospel of Philip
So אור Aur and light and water are synonymous. As I mentioned, if you expel your treasure within you, your o’tsar אֹוצָר, and your שמן shemen, you lose light. Instead, that energy can be used to give light within us. In order to see spiritually, we need water and light, meaning we need to transform our waters into the light, into comprehension, because that energy is the most potent creative force in the universe. There is no greater power than God, and God is a sexual power. God gave man to have a woman and a woman to have a man in holy matrimony.
Question: אור Aur, light, you would need water and fire right? Instructor: Yes, so the fire is in the water, the sexual matter. The light is in the fire and the water contains all that. So to elaborate and we are going to explain what chrism is. It is the mystery of anointment, the oil, the Christ within the oil. 
There were three buildings specifically for sacrifice in Jerusalem. The one facing the west was called "The Holy.” Another, facing south, was called "The Holy of the Holy.” The third, facing east, was called "The Holy of the Holies," the place where only the high priest enters. ―The Gospel of Philip
So what is a priest? A mag, a magician. Every magician husband has his magician wife.
Baptism is "the Holy" building [and relating to Kabbalah, it is Malkuth]. ―The Gospel of Philip
“The Holy” is our physical body, which we need to make our physicality a holy vehicle for God. As Paul of Tarsus taught:
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? ―1 Corinthians 6:18-19
So make your body holy. Whoremongers, adulterous prostitutes who abuse sex, they will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
But our body is “the holy.” So “redemption is the Holy of the Holy [Chesed].” So we say that is our inner Being, Chesed, because as the founder of this tradition, Samael Aun Weor, taught, that the opposite of our physical body is our Spirit above, Chesed in Kabbalah. The Holy of the Holies is the bridal chamber (דַעַת da’ath, these sexual mysteries that we are teaching, alchemy, alchemical science). Baptism includes the resurrection and the redemption; the redemption takes place in the bridal chamber. ―The Gospel of Philip
Literally, when a man is uniting sexually with his wife and fighting their lust, to contain their lust and eliminate their desires by using that energy, that is where redemption is found. It says “the redemption takes place in the bridal chamber.” So literally in the sexual act is really where the redemption of the human being or the damnation of the human being occurs.
Question: As the Kundalini rises, can't that spiritual act also raise the vibrations of the etheric body? Instructor: Yes, so when we work with a marriage, that is how to awaken Kundalini, the Divine Mother שכינה Shekinah in Kabbalah. And so when we wake that fire in a matrimony, that energy makes the physical body vibrate at a higher level of being, and the ethereal body, etheric body saturates the physicality much deeper. It makes it even holier. It makes it holy. 
In this next graphic, we are going to explain more about the Kabbalah. This is the Tree of Life, and we explain that to the West is the Holy, Malkuth, the physical body. And that to the North we mentioned Chesed, the Spirit, the Innermost. And then to the East, Daath. The South is Geburah, judgment, the divine soul.
So this symbol of Kabbalah teaches us, can explain many scriptures for us, because this is a map of the human being made into the image of Christ. To synthesize, we have Malkuth, our physical body; Yesod, our vitality, our energy, our vital body. We have Hod, our emotions or astral body. We have Netzach, our mind, our intellect, the mental body. We have Tiphereth, will power, the soul or human soul. We have Geburah, divine soul relating to God. Chesed is our Spirit, our inner God. And then above is Christ, the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit: Kether, Chokmah, Binah. Our willpower can either follow heaven or follow our own desires, as we mentioned previously. Question: What is the role of Da’ath again? 
Instructor: דַעַת Da’ath, again if we transpose this image on a person, this Logoic trinity relates to the head, this ethical trinity relates to the heart, this magical trinity relates to sex. Da’ath relates to the throat, the verb. So we teach that in alchemy, when a husband and wife are united, we can pronounce sacred mantras to activate the sacred fire, awakening the snake of Kundalini inward and upward, to begin the path of the cross.
Question: So mantras would be associated with Da’ath? Instructor: Yes, because Da’ath relates to the throat and the verb. Da’ath is precisely the Holy of the Holies. Now in explaining this, the previous scripture in the Gospel of Philip, it says that to the West is the Holy, which we said is Malkuth. Imagine that we are standing in Tiphereth, because we are using our willpower here: imagining that our will is situated in the center of the Tree of Life. To the East is above, towards heaven, because the Sun, when the Sun rises, represents the birth of Christ within us. So the East refers to going up towards heaven. The West refers to darkness relating to our body. So if we can imagine this transposing ourselves in our situating ourselves in Tiphereth, to the West is our physical body, to the South of Tiphereth is Geburah, the divine soul; to the North is Chesed, the Spirit, the Holy of the Holy, and then to the right, to the east above us is Da’ath, the Holy of the Holies, because it is through alchemy that God creates within us. 
The Elements of Redemption
We had this following scripture from Gnostic teachings where Jesus is addressing his disciples.
Truly I tell thee that I have brought nothing to this world but Fire, Water, Wine and the Blood of Redemption. I have brought Fire and Water from the place of the Light, from there where the Light is found. ―Gnostic Ritual
So in Kabbalah, we explain that water relates to Chesed, the Spirit, because the Spirit, of our inner God, works with our waters. So in the Book of Genesis, it says that the Spirit of God hovered about the face of the waters. That is Chesed that is performing this work here. But wine in spirituality relates to His divine soul. The divine soul, we have to remember that these five sephiroth above is God. Beneath is the human soul. We are part of Tiphereth. We are a fraction of that Soul needing to be developed that wants to follow God.
Question: Is that the abyss above Tiphereth? Instructor: There is an abyss relating to Da’ath, relating to other studies of the Kabbalah, but the abyss refers to how we need to cross an abyss. How do we do it? By working with alchemy, by working with our Spirit. But we have to remember that these five sephiroth above never fall into degeneration. God never falls, but the human soul, which is us in potentiality, has fallen into abuse of mind, emotion, sexuality, and our physicality―to synthesize. The wine of spirituality relates to our divine soul, we say in Kabbalah, because if you are familiar with the Book of Revelation, how: …out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God [שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai]. ―Revelation 19:15
And the winepress, the wrath of God, the strength of God is Geburah, our divine soul, which needs to be united with our Innermost.
So where is the region of the light from which the water (Chesed) and the wine (Geburah) emerge? Above, that light is the trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, which we also call the region of Barbelo, region of the light of Christ. And I have brought the wine and Blood from the dwelling of Barbelo. After some time has passed, the Father has sent me to the Holy Spirit in the form of a White Dove. But listen: The Fire, the Water and the Wine are for the purification and the forgiveness of sins. ―Gnostic Ritual 
Meaning, by working with our Spirit in alchemy, our divine soul, and working with our willpower represented by blood, Tiphereth, the soul, that is how we purify ourselves, because Tiphereth, if you transpose this image on a person, this is the heart, our human soul. We follow the will of God through our heart, and the heart circulates the blood and the blood contains many powerful archetypes that we need to develop, spiritually. So sex and blood is synonymous, because the blood gets charged with sexual power, with spiritual force by working with alchemy. That is how we achieve redemption by learning to work with these forces.
The Blood that was given to me as a symbol of the human body, I received in the dwelling of Barbelo, of the great Strength of the Universal God. ―Gnostic Ritual 
The Sexual Mysteries of the Holy Grail
So anointment pertains precisely to this teaching of working with the chalice as we see in this image. So we related the Gnostic scriptures that I just mentioned to talk about how redemption is by working with our Spirit, our inner God and with the archetypes, which are found in a potential state within sex.
And so in this image, we have a woman or even Mary Magdalene holding the Holy Grail. So the Grail is a symbol of the feminine sexual organs, the uterus, the chalice. The spear, the lance of Longinus, is a symbol of the phallus in the grail mysteries. So anointment pertains precisely to these mysteries of the Holy Grail. So we have this explanation from the Gospel of Philip. The cup of prayer contains (יין) wine and (מים) water, since it is appointed as the type of the (דם) blood for which thanks is given. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So wine in Hebrew is יין yayin, and water is מים Mayim since it is appointed as the type of the blood, דם Dam in Hebrew, for which thanks is given.
So we know from science that it takes 80 drops of blood to make one drop of semen. So individuals who ejaculate their semen lose vitality. They literally are expelling their blood from their body in a grotesque manner. We need to charge our blood with spirit. The way that we do that is by working with our breath, the sexual exercises of transmutation we provide so the blood becomes saturated with with divine forces, becomes wine, spiritual wine. So the word blood is דם Dam in Hebrew. You add the letterא Aleph, the wind, the spirit, and the name אל El or אלה Eloah or אלהים Elohim, God, add that letter דם Dam and you spell אדם Adam. So Adam is the first man made in the image of God, which if we work with our own breath, א Aleph, mantra, pranayama, sexual magic if we are married, we start to create the human being within us. And so this cup is elaborated in terms of anointment. It is full of the Holy Spirit and it belongs to the holy perfect man (or woman we could say). When we drink this we shall receive for ourselves the perfect man. The living water (מים mayim) is a body. It is necessary that we put on the living man. Therefore, when he is about to go down into the water (מים mayim) he enclothes himself in order that he may put on the living man. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So this relates to baptism, anointment. So what happens when a person who wants to baptize themselves in any tradition, they take off their clothes and they go into the water. This is a symbol of alchemy. When a man is with his wife, they take off their clothes and they purify themselves with those waters if they know this science.
Question: How does this relate to the מקווה mikvah? Instructor: It's the same meaning. The מקווה mikvah in Hebrew or Judaism refers to ritual bathing or cleansing of the rabbis. So traditionally it was a symbol of how to clean oneself psychologically by working with that energy of God and to purify the mind. They would take their clothes and dip themselves in the water as a form of anointment, baptism. Question: Some just take their shoes off. Instructor: Yeah, there are different ways of doing it in different cultures, but in explaining this in this scripture, you know, a man takes off his clothes because when he is with his wife, they are intimate. That is how they may put on the living man, or as Paul of Tarsus talks about the celestial man and the terrestrial man. Howbeit that was not first which is πνευματικός pneumatic [spiritual, relating to Chesed], but that which is ψυχικός psychic [carnal, animal]; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. ―1 Corinthians 15:46-49
Just as we bore the image of the earthly, meaning if we were working to create a certain archetypes within ourselves, we can then bear the image of the heavenly: the living man mentioned in the Gospel of Philip.
The Significance of Chrism
So we have this image of Jesus with a heart of thorns. So we are going to elaborate on the water in the fire. So precisely we are going to explain a little bit more about what chrism is. See here in this image, Christ is illuminated. His heart is illuminated. The blood of his heart is purified, emanating light, אֹור Aur, precisely because he worked with his waters.
So the thorns gripping the heart refers to how we need to restrain our animal passion, and it is painful. The mind does not want to give in. It wants to indulge in its desires and always fights against us to think bad thoughts or feel negative emotions or to identify with lust and is that pain we feel, that conflict when we are struggling against ourselves. But here he is showing a lot of peace, showing that it is through the power of the cross in his heart, by taking the cross of sex, the energies of the Kundalini up the spinal column to the brain and then to the heart, is how one can attain redemption. Soul and Spirit come into being from water (מ Mem) and fire (ש Shin). The attendant of the bridal chamber (we can say any initiate working in alchemy) has come into being from water, fire, and light (the Hebrew word is אֹור Aur for light). Fire is chrism. Light is fire. I do not mean ordinary fire which has no form, but other fire (which we say in these studies is astral light, INRI, Ignis Natura Renovatur Integra in Latin, or Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews), which is pure white in appearance, beautifully bright and imparting beauty." ―The Gospel of Phillip
The Hebrew word for beauty is תפארת Tiphereth, as we explained previously, the heart, the soul.
So what is chrism? It is that oil we have in our body, with which we can be anointed spiritually. We have another word, which unfortunately is a very vulgar term, which we are going to elaborate where the meaning comes from. In Hindi it is not so vulgar or commonplace, referring to the body or female sexual male organs, the vulva of a woman or the penis of a man. The Hindu word is जिस्म jism, and the word chrism is the same thing―the same energy, which emanates from our sexual glands. So I hate saying the term, but you know it elaborates, it explains for us, provides clarity. Where did this term come from? I was doing some research and people are not sure where this word comes from. Well, it comes from chrism, the light of Christ within our semen. And it also means seminal fluid in Hindi, or energy and strength. 
The Astral Light and Fire
So what is that energy that we need to develop? In this image, we have Moses with the brazen serpent upon a staff, and I'll quote from the Master Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition, who explains the significance of the astral light―what chrism is―what the seminal power of God is.
The astral light is the deposit of all of great nature's past, present, and future forms. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
So if we awaken in the astral plane, we can investigate many things within the astral light in the world of dreams, where, upon that etheric and astral atmosphere, we can perceive many things clairvoyantly, by invoking our Being to show us the memories of nature. This is known as the akashic records.
The Astral Light is the deposit of all of great Nature's past, present and future forms. The Astral Light is the Azoth and Magnesia of the ancient Alchemists, Medea's Flying Dragon, the Christians' INRI, the Tarot of the Bohemians. The Astral Light is a terrific sexual fire springing from the Sun's nimbus and is fixed to the Earth by the force of gravity and the weight of the atmosphere. The Sun is the one that attracts and repels such an enchanting and delightful light. The Astral Light is Archimedes' lever. The old sage said: "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the universe. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
This is the fulcrum by which we can move mountains, with “faith the size of a mustard seed” (Matthew 17:20). Really, the seed relates to the semen. You can move a mountain or any ordeal.
The semen is the human being's Astral liquid. The semen is the Astral Light. The semen is the key to all powers and the key to all empires. The Astral Light has two poles, one positive and the other negative. The ascending serpent is positive. The descending serpent is negative. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
So we have Kundalini above and then we have Kundabuffer. The serpent above is the brazen serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness, the serpent of brass. Brass is an alchemical symbol referring to tin, Jupiter, the man; and copper, Venus, the woman. So copper and tin united is bronze, teaching us that in order to awaken the serpent that will heal us from all our sufferings, the people of Israel within us, we need to raise that serpent on the staff, which is our spine. And really, the staff is also here depicted as a cross―sexual union of man and woman. The other serpent that goes down as the tempting certificate of Eden: fornication, lust, homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, all those vices that awaken that fire downward.
Question: What about these poor souls? What do they call them, transgendered? Instructor: Transgendered or transexual individuals―they commit a great crime against their bodies, against their Being, and it is very sad that people want to destroy themselves in that way. So those individuals become barren we can say. They lose their potential to change, because they physically destroy their organs in such a way. They want to become the other sex because of abusing their creative energies. They no longer find attraction for the opposite sex, and become confused regarding their sexual identities due to the negative polarization of the sexual fire. This is due to the fact the sexual energy must act: it is creative. This energy must create something, but if it is utilized by lust, produces conflicts, confusion, and negativity. People are welcome to do what they want with their sexual lives and behavior, but well, there is a price for that. They activate and develop that inverted fire in such a way. So we seek to develop Kundalini in a marriage, not Kundabuffer. Kundabuffer is the serpent that descends into hell. It is the tail of Satan which you can perceive in certain individuals in the astral plane. 
The Second Birth
We want to be born again. We want to be anointed, as mentioned in the teachings of Jesus, and so to raise that sexual serpent of the spinal column is precisely the meaning to be born again, because the spinal medulla is a womb in which we can engender the sacred fire of Kundalini, the Shekinah, amongst the rabbis of Israel. So Jesus is teaching Nicodemus. He says:
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born (ה) of water (מ) and [of] the Spirit (ש), he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. ―John 3:5
For the Word to be born relates to the letter ה Hei, which is a womb. If you see this image it looks like a womb. It represents the uterus.
Question: ה Hei is water? Instructor: No, ה Hei relates to, in this case, the womb: to be born, to be gestated. מ Mem is water and ש Shin is Spirit, the fire. Take those three letters together and you spell השם Hashem. To be born again is to precisely to work with השם Hashem, our God, our שם Shem, the Name of our being, our שמן shemen. And beneath that we have―if you take the same letters and reverse it―you spell המש Moshe, Moses―to develop the archetype of Moses within ourselves, because Moses represents for us the need to develop Tiphereth through willpower is how we are born again, precisely through working with the tantra. In this image, we have Christ on the cross some other scriptures to relate his teaching of being born again. Philip the apostle said, "Joseph the carpenter planted a garden because he needed wood for his trade. It was he who made the cross from the trees which he planted. His own offspring hung on that which he planted. His offspring was Jesus, and the planting was the cross." But the Tree of Life is in the middle of the Garden. However, it is from the olive tree that we got the chrism, and from the chrism, the resurrection. ―The Gospel of Philip
So, what is that Tree of Life? It also refers to our spine. And Joseph or IO-Cephas or Io-Soph, Cephas means “head” or “stone,” and IO as in the name Jupiter, IO-Patar, Father-Mother united, man-woman united. So Jesus is really the initiate who is incarnating Christ, hangs upon the olive tree, and that tree is precisely the crucifix and the crucifix is a work with alchemy, by which, working in a matrimony, we work to eliminate our defects. We hang up on that cross. The ego dies in a very painful manner. It is a also a representative of how the initiate needs to pay certain karma, patiently.
But the garden, the Garden of Eden is precisely sexual. Man and woman united are a garden, is beautiful, bliss, divine. And the tree that is in the middle of the Garden of Eden is our the Tree of Life, our spine, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the olive tree. Ever wonder why an olive tree represents sexuality? Olives have the form of ovaries or testicles, producing oil that is wonderful for one’s health. He same with the sexual energy. How do we develop knowledge, Daath, Gnosis? It is by working with energy, the sexual force, which is precisely of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in sex. So those two trees share the same roots. Question: Do you have any knowledge in raising the Kundalini? Also, in the spinal column there are chakras, would that add to knowledge because once they spin you see certain phenomena? Instructor: Yes, so the chakra is developed as a result of raising that fire and that is how our garden begins to blossom. The chakras are flowers, and if you see in the internal planes, you see many beautiful flowers in a dreams where you ask, How am I doing?”―they will show you flowers that are very beautiful and divine. It means that you are awakening your spiritual senses because you are raising that energy upward. 
Truth and Nakedness
So the Garden of Eden is precisely that, and in this next image we have again Adam and Eve represented in paradise. So, this is again, from the Gospel of Philip and it elaborates on much that we have explained how the scriptures are symbolic, Kabbalistic.
Truth did not come into the world naked but in symbols and images. The world cannot receive truth in any other way (because as the Zohar mentions, people don't understand it. They would be outraged to hear it literally. But now times are different. We are giving it publicly). There is rebirth and an image of rebirth (to be born again, Hashem) and it is by means of this image that one must be reborn (precisely in parentheses through sexual magic, alchemy with one's partner). What image is this? It is resurrection. Image must arise through image. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So what is image, being, referring to? It could either mean virtues or defects. Any defect in the mind is a type of image, an idol, a false idol that we all worship whenever we identify with a defect, desire. But we need to destroy those idols in order to liberate the soul that is trapped in them, to create spiritual images, to create the virtues of the soul. This is resurrection. By dying in those defects and liberating the soul, it resurrects like the Phoenix from its ashes.
By means of this image, the bridal chamber (which also we could say is the physical body) and the image (psychological image of we say of the initiate) must approach the truth. This is restoration (or we could say is spiritual and sexual regeneration. So to restore ourselves back to the kingdom of heaven, we need to work with the bridal chamber, work with our bride, or if a woman, then working with her husband, bridegroom).
Very literal, very very direct.
The apostles called this the power of the right and the left. ―The Gospel of Phillip
So what is this power over the right and the left? It is Adam and Eve. We know from the symbol of the spinal medulla that the Caduceus of Mercury in medicine, that there is a spinal medulla and that there are two energetic channels which rise inward and upward, intertwining up the spine to the brain. To the right we have Adam, the solar sexual current, the solar masculine energy rising up.
Question: Is that Ida and Pingala? Instructor: Ida and Pingala in Sanskrit. On the left is Havah, Eve, lunar, the lunar energies. This doesn't mean good and bad. It just means that we have a polarization, like magnetism. We have a magnetism in our body and how those forces operate. So in men, the solar sexual current rises from the left testicle and then goes to the right nostril and the lunar energy goes from the right testicle to the left nostril. The left side relates to the moon, the lunar sexual current, the right to the positive solar current. It is saying here that this power is given to the right and to the left, meaning we have those two energy channels. We call them the Two Witnesses in Book of Revelation, in which that energy can rise inward and upward to those channels, to the chalice of the brain, and then to the heart. Question: Does it have anything to do with the alternate breathing? Instructor: Yes. So we teach pranayama and that exactly relates to working with Ida-Pingala, Adam-Eve. Or in Hebrew עד Od and עבד Obd. Different names for the same currents. This person, so the apostles call this power of the right, Pingala, and left, Ida, the two currents. And those who raise the energy, we can say, "This person is no longer a Christian, but it is Christ." So that is how we become Christified. It is how the soul, the bridegroom, marries the bride. 
The Three Brains
So in this image we have, again, those two currents, Ida and Pingala represented by the holy eight. We referenced a little bit previously. We have three brains or three centers of activity. We have our intellectual brain where we have thoughts. We have the emotional brain relating to the heart and then the motor-instinctive-sexual brain or the sexual brain related to sex―three spheres by which we process our experience: thought, feeling, and action.
The sexual energy has to rise through these two channels to the brain in the form of the holy eight. And we didn't mention it in the beginning, but you know, the Hebrew letters are associated with the physical body. א Aleph is the air and it relates to the mind, thoughts that float, insubstantial. ש Shin, fire, in the heart relates to the blood, because if we have love or hate, it is fire in our interior. Then the waters relate to sex. So א Aleph, ש Shin, מ Mem, you can say, spells Ashem or השם Hashem, the Name of God. So we elaborate on the points we made from Book of Revelation, book 3 Verse 18: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine (עיניים) eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. ―Revelation 3:18
So what does it mean to buy gold tried of fire? In the sexual act, the fire is present, and if we control it, we can incinerate our defects. It is explained in The Perfect Matrimony and The Mystery of the Golden Flower. So that we can be rich spiritually and white raiment, meaning to create the soul. The soul is a vesture that we need to wear by creating it. As Jesus taught, he said "In patience possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19). He didn't say that we have a soul yet. It means that we need to develop it.
And that “the shame of thy nakedness do not appear,” meaning we don't feel ashamed of being naked in front of God after having fallen. But now we wish to “anoint thine eyes,” our perception with the oil of God. Our spiritual sight is illuminated by working with that energy. And this is the wine which in Hebrew is יין yayin, and the words for eyes is עיניים ayni’im, so the wine of spirituality helps to see clearly. But the wine of fornication makes us very drunk and we stumble into the abyss, if that is what we choose. So eye salve is that that oil, that ointment that can allow us to see. And we are going to give a little practice briefly and how to work with that eye salve. Question: What is that relationship with the letters (א Aleph, מ Mem, ש Shin) with the mother letters? Instructor: Those are the mother letters. So we have three primary Hebrew letters in Kabbalah that are the basis of all Kabbalah. א Aleph in the mind, ש Shin in the heart, and מ Mem in sex. So those three letters are the foundation of Kabbalah in terms of the study of the Hebrew letters, and they relate to our three brains. It is interesting how they correlate. 
Ham-Sah: Mantras for Sexual Transmutation
So we have an exercise called Ham-Sah, in which we learn to control our breath, our respiration, so that we can take that energy inward and upward, up these two currents in our spine, to our brain and then to our heart.
When we inhale, we mentally pronounce Ham, very prolonged:
As we inhale, imagine that energy rising from our testicles or the ovaries, inward and upward, up the spine through the two channels to the brain. You do not vocalize Ham aloud. It is silent, internal, mental. This is because we are focusing on our inhalation, drawing the sexual energy up the spine to the mind. We mentally pronounce the powerful mantra Ham, which has the functionality of a suction pump. The pump is the mantra Ham combined with our inhalation, the pipes are the energetic channels or Two Witnesses of our spine, and the water is the creative sexual energies of Genesis.
When the air is fully inhaled, through prayer, and concentration, we bring that energy to our mind to illuminate our mind, we pronounce the mantra Sah, very light, and then imagine that energy going to the heart:
Ham is solar, meaning we are trying to change the flow of forces in our body to go inward and upward, because most of us, through bad education and or miseducation from our childhood, learning to masturbate or fornicate, those energies go from inward to outward, from inside to out. Our breath relates to how those forces fluctuate inside of ourselves.
We learn to reverse the momentum using our breath, breathing inward and accentuating, mentally, Ham, really focusing on the retention of the breath with that energy going from the sexual organs to the brain, and then we visualize the energy going in our heart. So Ham is more exaggerated, internal, mental, silent. Our exhalation, pronunciation, is a light Sah. I know people who try to do it very fast, very fast rhythm, and it is not supposed to be labored like that. It is very relaxed. The body must have no tension. What is important is one's concentration and faith, and by imagining the energies working with our breath, the א Aleph, the wind, the spirit of God. So Ham-Sah is important in this tradition. It is an exercise that Samael Aun Weor gave in different lectures. Question: Sah goes to the heart? Instructor: Ham is solar, meaning inward and upward. Sah goes out, lunar. It goes to the heart. There is a four-part lecture given on Glorian.org called The Transmutation of Sexual Energy, which is where you'll find a more elaborate explanation about HAM-SAH from the Master Samael Aun Weor [see the fourth part or section in this series of lectures from the founder of our modern Gnostic tradition]. So we have this following quote from Blavatsky in explaining this image. So Ham-Sah is the Kalahamsa swan of Hinduism. This is the famous swan that was killed by Wagner's Parsifal in his opera. If you watch that opera, because Wagner was a master who knew this science, you will clearly see that he taught how the redemption of the human being is in the bridal chamber. You see very clear in that opera how he needs to take the spear back from the evil magician, meaning his ego, and to wage war against him. But he does it precisely by conquering a woman, who is trying to tempt him into hell. Her name is Kundry, or Kundabuffer. We could say the tempting serpent. But Blavatsky, another great Master, she says in her Secret Doctrine: …[Kala Haṃsa] is an important symbol, representing, for instance, Divine Wisdom, Wisdom in darkness beyond the reach of men. For all exoteric purposes, Haṃsa, as every Hindu knows, is a fabulous bird, which, when given milk mixed with water for its food (in the allegory), separated the two, drinking the milk and leaving the water; thus showing inherent wisdom―milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter. ―H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: “Primeval Radiations from the Unity”
So the shemen, the oil, we need to extract the soul from the substance so that we can illuminate our psyche. That is the mystery of alchemy, of transmutation. And we drink the milk of wisdom from the waters of sex. Milk is a very prevalent symbol within different religions, even Islam, the paradise of milk and honey where many houris or divine virgins serve one with cups of alabaster, or cups of divine Amrita. Or the Arabic word is Almizcle when transliterated into Spanish.
Question: Is that the same as turning the water to wine? Instructor: Yes, so same meaning. Jesus' first miracle was at a marriage. It is really a symbol of anointment. In a wedding, where men and women are celebrating their sexual union, he turns water into wine. People interpret it literally thinking it's about Jesus trying to get some people drunk, and that is absurd. But the real meaning is these mysteries of anointment that we are teaching. Questions and Answers
Do you have any questions?
Question: I was wondering the Hebrew behind fornication. Today, people think of fornication as sex outside of marriage and so too the Hebrews. They use the Ten Commandments. Does that tell us the real meaning? Instructor: People think that the sixth and the ninth commandment are the same. “Thou shalt not fornicate,” sixth commandment, and then “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Why would Moses, who was a great initiate, say the same thing twice? It really is incongruent, because fornication is 'to burn' as a furnace, from the Latin fornix. And adultery means to mix and make impure. So they are related. But to commit fornication is to burn with passion. And what comes to my mind, I believe is the second day of Genesis where it says: Let there be lights in the heaven of the firmament in order to divide the heaven from the superior waters from the inferior waters. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
The word for lights in heaven is מְאֹרֹת me’orot. It has the word אור Aur in it. If you ejaculate your אור Aur, your light from those waters, you have the Hebrew word מוות muut, which means “death.” So מְאֹרֹת me’orot is like lights in heaven. You want to have lights in heaven, your Christmas tree―your spinal column needs to be illuminated. Work with your waters to divide the inferior waters with the superior, so that you can create lights in your head, your heaven, your pumpkin gourd, like in the mysteries of Halloween. Get that gunk out and put a candle in it so that you are spiritually illuminated. So that is the same meaning of dividing the waters. Now again, to fornicate is to burn that fire and then to ejaculate it. So the light מְאֹרֹת me’orot just becomes מוות muut death. One is dead spiritually through that act.
See also in the word מוות muut that you have two ו Vavs. These are the spinal columns of two fornicators, two people who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit: the sexual energy, within themselves, through expelling their light. Those two ו Vavs are empty of light, cavernous, dark, without illumination. This is the esoteric definition of fornication. But the question is why would Moses say the same thing twice? This doesn't make sense. Or like the fact that there is a line in the Genesis that says "be fruitful and multiply." The original Hebrew says be fruitful and rabau, be fruitful and be a master, rabbi. And we have a whole series of lectures just about that line or those series of lines on our website from one of the other lecturers. But Hebrew tells us that fornication is really one thing. Adultery is to commit fornication outside of marriage. Or really, adultery pertains to simply looking at a member of the opposite sex with lust. Jesus said: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. ―Matthew 5:27-28
That is adultery. Fornication is actually to burn, is a furnace of passion, desire.
Question: So instead of the burning you transmute that into light? Instructor: Yes, so we need to learn to work with fire, to steal the fire from the devil in a matter of speaking. Steal fire from your defects. The way the best way to do that is when you are united with your wife sexually. That is the moment of “To be or not to be.” You are going to control that fire or you are going to let it control you. One either enters עֵ֖דֶן Eden (Hebrew for sexual bliss) or is expelled from it through eating he forbidden fruit of the orgasm. So that is what it means to make light out of the darkness, and to really sanctify marriage, make it something holy. Question: A lot of people, religious people too, they don't realize what you are saying here. They have sex then they go all the way to orgasm. There is nothing wrong with that. They could be religious people too. Go to church... Instructor: And many Jews say “Be fruitful multiply.” The Bible says we can have kids. It does not mean that. It says: And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply [וּרְבוּ U’Rabu], and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. ―Genesis 1:22
Or be fruitful and rabbi, be fruitful and a רַב rabbi, be a master, but the esoteric tradition in the scriptures was not given openly. The thing is, these books were not meant for the public. But they were taken and then they were used and interpreted literally for millennia.
But the reality is, why would God need to command beings to procreate in the animal way? No one needs to be told how to do it. It is instinctual. Rather, to learn how to transmute the sexual energy requires instruction and practice, to multiply the virtues of the soul through chastity. So we need to learn how to see things in a very scientific matter and not approach it blindly. Yeah, people think that casual sex or just having... they think it is a game. Audience: Recreational sex... Instructor: They think it is something to be mocked and to have fun with, and really, it is a tremendous crime. The crime against the Son, Chokmah in the heart, can be forgiven: anger, pride, vanity… you can be forgiven of that. But crimes against the Holy Spirit in sex, you have to pay with pain. Many people are getting sick nowadays of cancer and all sorts of diseases because they abused that energy. They don't anoint themselves. Question: Have you heard of Wilhelm Reich? Instructor: No Comment: ...This was something he was saying. He was the guy who came up with the orgone energy. He came up with apparatuses to measure chi or Holy Spirit, whatever you are calling it, and really study... He made like a box and everything and he attributed illness to channeled sexual energy.... Instructor: Chi is precisely Christ. Chi is Christic energy that we need to learn to control. So yeah, there are a lot of scientists who are developing apparatuses to measure psychic phenomena like the Kirlian camera, photographs of auras. Those are Russian scientists who invented that. But yeah, mischanneled sexual energy… anyone who ejaculates, it is an explosion of energy, and the circuitry of the body fuses, burns out. But it can be healed and regenerated through a lot of patience, a lot of persistent work with this force. We have many many exercises we use to heal ourselves from our previous actions. Any more questions? Question: You mentioned about the stone and the foundation. Are there several words for that? I heard the word Aben or Eben… Instructor: אֶבֶן Eben is Hebrew for stone and we get names like בנג'מין Benjamin. You have a famous movie בן חור Ben Hur or בן האור Beni-Ha-Aur, “son of the light.” Beni means “son” and the son emerges from the stone. A child emerges from the stones of a man and a woman. Comment: It is interesting you say that because they have that colloquial phrase: “Don't cross my stones." I wonder where that originated from? Instructor: It comes from that because it's the stone. It is slang, but it's funny when you look at it. That is where the meaning comes from. Any more questions or comments or else we will conclude. We have a many exercises that help us to really experience and understand these principles from direct experience. So Gnosis is pertinent towards developing conscious knowledge of religion, what religion teaches. We are explaining some of the meanings behind different scriptures, but the real meaning is only really open to us as we learn to work within ourselves. This is a very practical teaching. So we gave a lot of theory and we explained many things, but really, that will come to fruit in our own understanding by studying and by practicing. I invite you to really study some of the literature we have available and study our websites for other lectures and materials that might be interesting to you. That is how understanding will blossom more and more. So we explained a lot about Kabbalah today and how it pertains to our development as a as a soul. The most important thing we need to do is to practice, to apply what we learn. Otherwise, as James the Apostle said, "Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). So I thank you for coming. 
Today we are going to discuss the fundamental aspects of gnostic psychology in relation to the study of ourselves, because in the gnostic doctrine, we seek to understand who divinity is within our psychological interior. We seek to really grasp from experience what religions have taught symbolically. We do not look to divinity as some anthropomorphic figure, an old man in clouds. Instead, we refer to the very root cognizance of perceiving reality, from the physical level as well as a spiritual level, on a more subtle plane of experience. We are going to explain precisely what it means to have gnosis.
The word γνώση gnosis is Greek, meaning “knowledge.” But people think that term denotes intellectual scholasticism, something to be studied and debated. Instead, it pertains to the experience of divinity, the experience of reality. It was never meant to be limited to a book, to a theory, to a school of philosophical thought. Instead, it pertains to our direct knowledge, our direct experience of the divine inside of us, no matter what name attributed to that force, in accordance with religion. Now specifically, in order to really know divinity, we need to know ourselves. There is a traditional statement given by the mystics of Islam, who taught that “He who knows himself, knows his Lord.” This is attributed to the Muslim Prophet Muhammed, who knew and taught gnosis, just as Moses, Buddha, Jesus embody the fullest expression of the divine truths within them. Specifically, in order to understand divinity, we need to know who we are, and in this way, we study psychology. People normally attribute psychology to the study of mind, the intellect. But we are going to explain how psychology—really, etymologically—we break it down as psyche and logos. ψυχή Psyche means “soul” or “consciousness” and λόγος logos is the divine, or it literally translates from the Greek, “the Word.” As the Bible teaches us, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). It is a force, a vibration, an energy, not merely limited to physical matter, but specifically permeates all of nature and governs all the laws of gravitation, cohesion, magnetism, electricity. But on a spiritual level, we find precisely how this energy that we call Christ, in gnostic terms, pertains to the root energy of perception itself. So logos is precisely that force inside of us, that divine being within our heart, which we seek to access through many disciplines, such as meditation, such as prayer. We are not solely focused on the theory. We are going to explain theory today, but I invite you to really absorb and listen to what it means to experience these concepts. So we are going to talk about the structure of our psychology, as taught in Gnosticism, but also it is very well elaborated within the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old and the New Testaments are, as we are going to elaborate, demonstrate for us symbols, spiritual and psychological archetypes, principles, that pertain to our development as a soul. 
In this way we are going to talk very extensively about kabbalah, which is the mystical science of Judaism, in order to elaborate and explain very lofty concepts. You see in this image that we have a buddha, Buddha Gautama Shakyamuni. Of course, in gnosis we teach that all religions are one, whether we are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. This image of the Buddha has one hand up and one hand down, and this is pertaining to the need to study both the superior worlds, the superior aspects of divinity and nature, and our physical, psychological, terrestrial nature itself. The word “Buddha” means awakened one, to awaken. We are going to elaborate on what it means to awaken itself and the need to awaken spiritually.
The word budh, from the word Buddha, translates as “cognizance,” “to be aware.” Therefore, a real Buddhist is one who is aware of his or her genuine spiritual nature. We are going to talk about divinity, and we are going to talk about the Essence, which is our soul itself. We are also going to talk about the obstacles that prevent us from knowing our soul and our divinity. Also, we are going to talk about the personality, which keeps us imprisoned in a subjective form of thinking, of psychology. 
The Essence
We have this image in the next slide, the Andromeda Galaxy and a couple of Hebrew quotes from the book of Genesis, of which we are going to elaborate in depth. You also see a quote from the modern gnostic tradition. His name is Samael Aun Weor. He teaches that:
The Essence or the soul, that each one of us carries within his interior comes from above, from Heaven, from the stars. —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
To elaborate on the nature of our soul, we are going to talk about where our soul comes from. What is it that we call consciousness? This is from the real heart of religion, so we are explaining it in the Hebrew way. You find this in Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. But we are going to explain it particularly in the Hebraic way, the kabbalistic way, the mystical science of Judaism, due to its relevance to our culture in America.
We see that we must elaborate that the Bible is symbolic. Kabbalah is science of numbers, but is also associated with the science of symbols and to our psychology. We point out the nature of divinity particularly by showing the galaxy, which is interesting, particularly because the soul emanates from divinity, and divinity we call Christ. It is that energy that governs every cosmos, every universe, every galaxy. We say that divinity is what the gnostics call Christ or Chrestos. It is a fire, a force, which was particularized in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But really any master, a genuine initiate such as Buddha or Moses, had incarnated that light, just in different names. This light or energy is what empowers any atom, any galaxy. It governs all of creation and really is a force that we need to learn how to internalize. We say that light is consciousness, that the light (physical light) is a form of perception. We say that light, in an allegorical sense, relates to consciousness, the soul. What is interesting is that even in quantum mechanics, the study of subatomic particles, that light particles, even physical light particles, have intelligence, make choices and decisions. There was an experiment in which a wall with two entrances were opened. On the left, or one side, there was a lead plate, and on the other, there was no plate. They would shoot particles at this wall towards these two holes in which light particles should pass through. When the particles hit the lead plate, they were blocked and stopped. But the fact that afterward all the light particles immediate chose to go around that plate, after having encountered that element, demonstrates that light has intelligence, and demonstrates teachings that were given in Buddhism 2,500 years ago: that to be awakened spiritually, to have the development of the soul, is to experience light as a divine principle. Also, physical light is the embodiment of Christ, which is why in many traditions we find, such as in Platonism (the doctrine of Plato) how the highest good is represented by the Sun. Jesus of Nazareth, who embodied that divine Christic force itself, said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The Christ taught through Jesus. Our soul really emanates from that, from that divine force, which in Hebrew we call יחודה Yehidah. This is a Hebrew term that means “unity.” We see that in the universe or any cosmos, from a galaxy or an infinite (which is a collection of billions of galaxies) we have a form of unity in space. The universe is not governed by chaos, but by divine forces and intelligences. We see specifically that all the conglomerations of galaxies, stars within the infinite, is a form of unity, is a cosmos. κόσμος Cosmos means “unity.” So, in the macrocosmos (the greater universe) we see reflected what needs to be developed inside, spiritually, because just as divinity governs all the stars of any universe, we too need to be able to reflect that spiritually. What is interesting is that, as the Sufis taught: “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” He knows that energy: Christ, Allah, the Buddha, which permeates all of space. We must really question and examine ourselves to really see what is it that we know about divinity, because if we sit to close our eyes when we practice in meditation, we observe, psychologically inward, we see that we in turn do not see divinity particularly with our spiritual sight. Usually, we see darkness in our mind. This reflects for us, if we really are honest and confront this within ourselves, whether we know divinity directly. The truth is that we come to understand that if we are seeking and studying spirituality, it is because we want to know divinity. It is because we do not know what that energy or force is. The truth is that if we want to know what divinity is, we have to know what our soul is. Where does it come from? It is from experience. Light is consciousness. It is perception, which in us is in potential. It needs to be developed. For as Jesus taught, “With patience possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19). He did not say that we have soul. He says that we need to develop soul. The Bible and the scriptures often teach the need to awaken that development and potential in us, which is demonstrated in the very first lines of the Hebraic Bible. We find here: יְהִי אֹור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור
The word for God is אלהים Elohim, divinity. The phrase “Let there be light,” the word “light” in Hebrew is אֹור Aur, which is a term that we are going to look at and examine in relation to the study of psychology.
What is this light inside that we want to develop? The words “Let there be” is יְהִי Yehi, coming from Hebrew word יחודה Yehidah, which means “unity.” So the fact that God says, “Let there be light,” the Bible indicates that this light that we need to develop is inside, psychologically. While it pertains to the birth of any universe—really, more importantly—the Bible pertains to how we develop our soul. How do we create that perception of God inside? So אלהים Elohim or God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.יְהִי אֹור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור Yehi Ha-Aur Va-Yehi-Aur. The word יְהִי Yehi means “Let there be,” “Let there become,” “Let there develop.” What is interesting is that this is the very opening of the Jewish religion but also the foundation of Christianity. It says that this darkness is our mind and that we need to develop the soul, the light inside. It is one of many scriptures that emphasizes that we need develop that light, to give us that peace and serenity that we typically long for in our religion, education and families, but which can only really come from God itself and herself: that force within us. We find the following teaching by Jesus again. יהשוה Yeshua (in Hebrew, which relates to יחודה Yehidah, the unity of the light that expressed through Jesus) said: The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single (simple, pure), thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! —Matthew 6:22-23
So again, this is talking about how the nature of light is spiritual perception, to see divinity, to know divinity as a form or presence, as a form of experience inside of us. If we are egotistical, meaning that if we are attached to anger or negative emotions like fear, those elements obscure the light inside of us and prevent us from experiencing that purity inside. He who develops that spiritual sight, as Jesus taught, knows happiness, peace, and harmony in the genuine experience of divinity.
Light is consciousness, as we demonstrated through the example of quantum mechanics. We also find another quote that is very telling and interesting. On the right we see a reference to the 14th verse of Genesis, which says: And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” —Genesis 1:14
People literally interpret it as the creation of stars in heaven being the physical heavens, but we need to create these lights inside as a type of spiritual experience, a type of understanding of what divinity is, inside. The word for “lights” is מארת me’orot, which has the word אֹור Aur in it, which means “light.” If this seems complicated, challenging, or difficult, then we are going to explain how it relates to our practical experience and is very scientific or simple.
We use these languages to really get at the heart of the meaning of these teachings, particularly because they are very profound. English is not the perfect medium for expressing these concepts or scriptures. Our soul emanates from that energy called Christ, which is that energy that governs all of creation. Christ emanates from Himself. The soul emanates particularly from the galaxy or the forces that govern on a spiritual level this entire unity, this cosmos in itself. Samael Aun Weor explains further: Unquestionably, the marvelous Essence (or soul that we carry within) emanates from the note La (the Milky Way, the galaxy we live in). —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
I am going to elaborate on the law of seven, known as the musical scale. We find in music that there are seven notes in nature. Likewise, in the constitution of any universe, we find seven forms of cosmoses, types of units that correlate with the organizational patterns of the number seven.
We have the infinite as a form of cosmos containing billions of galaxies, which is governed by that energy Christ. Christ governs that cosmos. Likewise, we have the individual galaxy relating to the note La. We find that the musical note “Si,” as “Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si” in music, is the infinite, billions of galaxies. The galaxy itself is governed by the note La. Sol, even in Spanish, means “Sun.” It pertains to the solar system, and likewise, the note Fa pertains to our planet itself. Mi is our physical body, a form of a cosmos. So, we find different structures or levels of creation which divinity manages and from which our soul finally emanates. We have the note Do, which is the source of that light יחודה Yehidah. It is called Christ, which creates and governs any infinite. There are billions of galaxies under its domain. Christ governs any infinite. Likewise, we find a galaxy, with the note La. The marvelous Essence emanates from the note La, the Milky Way in which we live. The precious essence passes through the note Sol, the Sun, and then passes through the note Fa, the planetary zone, and then enters this world and penetrates our own interior. —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
The note Mi relates to our body, so we even when we say, “me,” we typically refer to ourselves, which we mistakenly believe is our body. But we have to understand the soul is something that animates the body. It gives it life. This is something we want to know directly and intimately.
The Innocence and Development of the Soul
We see in the next graphic an image of a child, which is a beautiful depiction of the soul or the Essence.
When a child is born, usually between the ages of 1 and 7, that child exudes great beauty, great presence. When one holds or looks at a child, one feels innocence, longing, or happiness, because that child emanates a force which is very pure. The soul or Essence is manifest within a child between the ages between 0 and 7. Sometimes it is even younger now, such as around 4, since some children mature faster. We are going to explain the significance of that. We see that this child is like a cherub, is innocent. As the Christian Gospels teach us, we must become as innocent as children to enter the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus taught. What does it mean to be innocent? It does not mean to be ignorant, or to not be able to spell, or to lack knowledge of an intellectual. It means to have a type of being that is very pure: kindness, love, and compassion that are manifest in a child very early. We must learn to develop this soul. Really our Essence is a child. It is in an embryonic state. It needs to be developed. Between the ages 0 and 7 that soul is manifest, and later as the child begins to mature and acculturate to the physical world, it loses that innocence and purity, and begins to manifest defects, errors, vices like anger, pride, vanity, which we are going to explain in depth. We put this image of a child as a cherub precisely in relation to the previous graphic, which we showed the galaxy and stars. Typically in religious paintings, we see the cherubim, the angels, those masters who are purified and manifest that light of God called Christ, that energy. Truly, we must learn to be innocent in mind, heart, pure—to not have anger, violence, hatred, or resentment in our core, but really to change those elements. This is precisely how we develop our soul itself.
To give a deeper understanding of divinity in relation to the soul or the nature of יחודה Yehidah, that unity of God, I can refer you to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. If you are familiar with hearing the Ninth Symphony, the choral movement, classical music has many profound teachings for us. We find that beautiful theme resonating throughout that piece, in the fourth movement, where the German says:
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
If you are familiar with that piece, you see that theme running throughout the rest of the fourth movement and is a choral piece, so there are many voices that are in that one harmony. This is a representation of Christ that Beethoven was demonstrating his music. Specifically, because if you think about it analytically, the chorus is one harmony. It is one unity, but composed of many voices, many singers. Each singer is an angel, a being that has perfected him or herself and is united with that light. That great theme, that unity within the cosmos— from which all the voices are one beauty and harmony—is called Christ.
There is a famous line in that symphony which ties into this graphic. Specifically, they say, “And the cherub stands before God.” If you are not familiar with the piece of music, I would have to play parts of it for you, but there is a very famous line, “And the cherub stands before God.” It is a very titanic moment in which the chorus emphasizes the word “Gott” in German. What is that cherub? It is the soul that has been purified and is now uniting with that unity, that march, that voice, which is one but many, many voices but one deity. We could compare it to the light of the Sun. Each being in the universe is a ray of light that unites with the Sun, and any Sun is an expression of Christ, as we demonstrated. So we must learn become like little children, like a cherub. As we saw in this very famous Gnostic text, the Gospel of Thomas, in which Yeshua (Jesus, or יחודה Yehidah, the unity of the light of Christ) says: A person old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. —The Gospel of Thomas
So what does this mean? Scriptures are symbolic. We find that a person who is old in days does not mean physical age, but refers to the state of ignorance, to not have experienced the youth and beauty of divinity inside. But also, we find a child at seven days old, going back to the nature of the seven scales of any cosmos, seven notes. The soul in its journey, to gradually returns inward and upward to divinity, goes through the musical scale of different levels of dimensionality, which we call kabbalah, the Tree of Life. So the seven notes have to be lived inside of us. An old person must ask a child who is seven days old about the place of life, and the person will spiritually live. It means to live spiritually.
What is a child? It is really a being that fully emanates that light of divinity inside. And again, this is not physical light, but spiritual light, perception, the ability to see through any difficult problem and to really navigate the existence that we live in with integrity. We emphasize as Beethoven taught, “And the cherub stands before God.” We find that if we wish to be before divinity, then we need to change psychologically, to become innocent and purified, which requires a type of discipline on our part. We see here on the bottom right that we put a reference to the Hebrew word תִפאֶרֶת Tiphereth. Tiphereth means “beauty.” תִפאֶרֶת Tiphereth is the Hebrew name for the soul. Notice that the word תִפאֶרֶת Tiphereth in Hebrew contains within it the word אֹור Aur, Tiph-Aur-Eth. Tiphereth can mean “splendor, beauty, radiance,” and the Hebrew word for “light” is אֹור Aur. So as God said: “Let there be light,” יְהִי אֹור Yehi-Aur,
It is referring to the soul that is created seemingly out of the darkness of our current existence, of our daily problems, of our suffering. So that light inside we need to develop, within our consciousness, within ourselves. Really, as I mentioned to you, it is between the ages of 0 and 7, when a child exudes that light. Or if you look at a flower and really examine its beauty, such as if you go to a botanic garden or any world-class garden, you see really the flowers in their Edenic state exuberate that purity of the light of divinity, that purity that the soul can be developed inside of us. But we need to confront and examine ourselves: what is preventing us from accessing that direct perception of God, divinity?
We are going to talk about what we call the “ego, the self,” and really discuss this in detail. So again, as I mentioned, if we examine ourselves and really observe from our experience that we genuinely do not know what this divinity is, and instead when we typically see our perhaps our struggles and emotional conflicts, pain of an emotional type, of a psychological type, fear, anger, different sentiments, then usually we have to understand that really by examining ourselves we will come to understand the obstacles that prevent us from knowing the light of divinity. The Ego
We talk about the ego. Ego in Latin means “I,” “myself,” and so we ask ourselves this question: “Who am I in this moment?” This is an interesting question because usually we say that we know ourselves.
When someone asks us, “Who are we?” we say, “I am... this is my name, this is my race, my gender, my culture; this is my education; this is where I grew up; this is who I am as a person; this is the type of sentiments or experiences that I have on a daily basis.” But speaking from a religious standpoint, the real self and true human being inside is not our name. It is not our language. It is not our culture. As I said, it is that energy that emanates within all the cosmos. The divine force that is a type of happiness is really beyond expression. Instead, if we find, if we learn to observe ourselves and see what is occurring in our psychological states on a given moment, we find typically we are stressed with work or problems, challenges, ordeals. If someone insults us, we feel perhaps resentment, followed by a sense of indignation. If we are criticized, we criticize back. If we are accused, we defend ourselves. We find that in life we are constantly going through a series of reactions and states that are fluctuating. In one moment, we could be happy and in another we can be sad. Usually, if we are honest, we see that usually that the on the smallest basis, a single moment can destroy a person and change a person’s life entirely. We want to really be honest and examine the fact that we are in a very fragile state. We have to understand why. If someone asks us, if we knock on the door and says, “Who is there?” We say, “It is me.” We have to really understand who this me is that we are talking about. Who is this “myself?” because if we do not know ourselves we will not know divinity. This religious maxim teaches us if we do not know divinity, it means that we have not fully comprehended ourselves in our totality. This is why study the nature of ego, the “self.” 
We show this graphic. This is from a medieval painter by the name of Hieronymus Bosch. He depicted a very disturbing landscape with fires, chaos, and a town with a small shrine, and the figure Saint Anthony who was a holy person, a saint, trying to purify his mind.
You see that his mind is represented in this graphic. We see all these strange figures who are deformed or animalistic, of an inhuman type. The skill it took to really depict this type of subjective hidden psychology is really remarkable. We say that Hieronymus Bosch knew this teaching very well. He depicted in art a psychological reality that is typical for most of us. So this landscape is precisely our psychological landscape. In order to really know divinity, we have to first know what in us prevents us from seeing divinity. It is logical that if we do not know divinity that there must be some obstacle. There must be something that we must do in order to really know the light of God (יחודה Yehidah), which we find in this image in the shrine. We see the image of Christ crucified in a very small temple. What is interesting about this is that this painter is describing how in the very deep recesses of our Being, of our consciousness, we have Christ inside, our own divinity, which is what we seek and pray to and try to cultivate and know. But outside of this we have our states of anger, desire, affliction, suffering, pain, confusion, which are represented as a multiplicity. Usually, we think in a very common manner in this society and world that we are one self. We attribute all our experiences to oneself, one individual. But in gnostic psychology and the study of the mind, as in Buddhism and in different religions, these traditions teach us that the mind is really multiple. This of course is a very disturbing factor to confront in oneself, particularly because of this idea that we are somehow “one,” that we are individual. But if we examine and simply observe ourselves, we can see our common contradictions that we experience on a daily basis. In one moment, we have the desire to exercise, and then in one moment we want to eat something. In the next, we want to read a book, followed by the impulse to watch television or say something funny to a friend. Or if someone criticizes us, we may turn to anger. These are all multiple states that are constantly changing within our psychological experience. What is important to understand is that these states do not originate from one integral self. But logically each state in itself, which is completely different from the next, is a different type of self. There is a multiplicity. Therefore, we call each self an ego, a defect, a wrong way of thinking, a wrong way of feeling, a wrong way of acting, that religions teach us that we created. When religions talk about the devil, we think of a man in a red suit with horns and pitchfork, somehow manipulating this humanity and causing people to suffer. But we say that, really, anger is an ego, satanic, a defect, destructive. Any psychological state which impels us to speak harm of another person or to be sarcastic or to be violent with words, to be resentful, we denominate in Gnostic terms as satanic, demonic, destructive. So the devil is inside, but God is also inside, and this image beautifully represents that. You see Saint Anthony praying here, who realized in himself that he has all these afflicting desires inside of himself, which he is trying to destroy and remove. Therefore, he wore sackcloth and was doing these penances which symbolize the need to change psychologically. It does not mean that we discover this fact in ourselves that we put on sackcloth or perform austerities of that type. It is a symbol of how we need to understand how we created this landscape that we live in. When we look at life and our problems, we have to understand that these originate from the mind, for as Buddhism teaches us, “Mind proceeds phenomenon. We become what we think.” Therefore, in a given moment, we feel anger and react with anger. In a moment we feel a sense of joy, to a degree, as result of certain causes and conditions outside. We find that if we are observant of ourselves, we see that life is constantly entering our mind with impressions. We are reacting all the time. But in order to know this we have to observe this fact. We talk about in these studies self-observation, the need to observe who we are in a given instant, who we are in a given moment. We find that the ego, as a symbolic term, can mean all our habits, defects, vices, things that occur in a psychological level that are usually very submerged and we do not see unless we learn to observe with the light of consciousness. We have to learn how to see inside of ourselves, who we are in a given moment. This is self-observation. This is how we strengthen our soul, by learning how to look inside psychologically, and to develop this sense that we are not necessarily our thoughts that are constantly churning. We are not necessarily the negative emotional states from time to time. Neither are we the sensations in the body. These things are constantly changing. They are always fluctuating. So where is the permanence in that? Why be attached to this sense of identity that is contingent upon external factors? God is not dependent on other things, but is the source of all life, as represented in this image. The symbol of Christ represents that energy. That force inside is at the very heart of our universe, but we have forgotten that. Instead, what we have are egos and defects. Really, an ego is just a mistransformation of forces in our psyche. In a given moment, we identify with a certain circumstance. We create certain habits or conditions that trap that light inside. The book of Genesis says how light comes from darkness, “And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light’” (Genesis 1:3). We find that darkness is really our egotistical mind. Likewise, every ego is in symbolic terms like a bottle that traps light. Each ego in itself conditions our perception. It is like a shell. If you are familiar with the story of Genie of Aladdin’s lamp, that lamp is an ego, a shell that traps our awareness of divinity. We find that if we break the shell, then you free the light. This is the meaning of “Let there be light! And there was light.” That darkness is precisely that landscape. Samael Aun Weor speaks of this psychological landscape in his book The Great Rebellion, how we need to really observe, to be aware of ourselves in this moment and see what states in us are egotistical, perhaps what those insights or hunches are that we may get, that longing in heart that inspires us to study religion or spirituality. That in itself, in our heart, is that figure of Christ in the heart temple, to which this aspirant of religion is praying to. If you are familiar with the Tarot Cards, which are a form of Egyptian mysticism, it teaches a following maxim which is very profound in relation to this image, “You shall establish an altar within thy heart, but do not make an altar of thy heart.” It means that within us we need to worship divinity. We have to learn to observe ourselves and be aware of what divinity is in us from experience. This is what we in observe ourselves, to exercise that new type of perception about who we are and not to identify with anger or a moment of feeling superior to another person or ambitious, but to see these things in a new light. Each ego, again, is a defect that traps light. It traps perception inside of us. We find that we need to free the light from inside. We say in Gnostic studies that unfortunately 97% of our consciousness is subconscious. It is trapped in ego. The ego itself is subconsciousness, which is a very famous teaching given by Freud in modern psychology. He even knew, and many psychologists know now and accept the fact that we have a subconsciousness. But the extent to how much we are subconscious is something that we really examine profoundly within modern psychology. 3% of our soul is not conditioned yet. We need to learn how to activate that consciousness that is free, but asleep. The Bible teaches us the need to awaken to our genuine divine nature inside, which can give us the happiness that we seek. Instead, we need to learn to be like Jesus, which we are going to see in the next image. I just want to emphasize a quote to you about the nature of the ego from Samael Aun Weor who states in his book Revolutionary Psychology: Indeed, the humanoid does not have a permanent “I,” but instead he has a multitude of different infra-human and absurd “I’s.”
What perhaps do we wish to change in ourselves? We need to really identify our state. The term that Samael Aun Weor gives for this humanity is “intellectual animals.” The word anima means “soul.” We are intellectual souls, and as the Bible teaches us, we are that darkness that God needs to mold and shape into light. Our soul needs to cease being so dependent on intellect, thinking it is our genuine identity—our thoughts, our feelings—but we need to observe ourselves, to see from a higher perspective that we are not necessarily the mind. We are not necessarily the heart. We are not sensations. We are something more profound: a state and presence which can radically change our life. We have to really examine our own changes in our psychology on a moment-to-moment basis. As Samael Aun Weor states:
No person is the same in a continuous manner. Indeed, one does not have to be a sage in order to fully realize the innumerable changes and contradictions of each individual... —Samael Aun Weor, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology
So again, we are changing constantly: different thought, different feelings, different preoccupation, memories, beliefs. In one moment, we may believe in a political party and in the next, we shift. We have many contradictions which occur moment by moment, day by day. The fact that we do have these contradictions emphasizes the multiplicity of factors inside of ourselves, defects.
Christ Exorcising Psychological Demons
The Bible talks about the nature of the ego and its multiplicity. This is a very famous depiction of Jesus driving out demons. I mentioned to you the ego itself is demonic because it is a self-willed creation: anger, pride, vanity, the seven deadly sins that Christianity talks about. These are inside of us.
We see in this image Jesus driving out and exorcising two men and removing these demons that were possessing them. This is a very powerful symbol of how our Inner Christ, the light of our inner divinity inside, needs to expel the impurities that are inside of ourselves. As Samael Aun Weor stated, the different fluctuating states in our psyche constitute disorder. Whereas that divinity inside can give us genuine peace, where we are really in a state absent from fear, pain, and suffering. No matter what happens outside of ourselves, we are filled joy and acceptance and love for humanity. Instead, we have the opposite, which are our defects, these demons inside. The word “Satan” come the Hebrew שטן Shaitan, meaning the “adversary." Who are these demons and adversaries fighting? Divinity in ourselves. God needs to create order inside, “Let there be light. And there was light (from the darkness).” In order to do that, we need to remove what is impure in us, which obstructs us from knowing God. Of course, this requires a very strong and terrible confrontation, which is emphasized by this image of Jesus expelling demons from the man. People in Christianity think that this refers literally to the physical Jesus, and that there were two men who were possessed. He perhaps threw some holy water on them and made a blessing, and that these demons literally left and entered the bodies of pigs. These people do not understand this is a symbol of something psychological, that any aspirant of religion needs to experience and go through. We find this quote from Matthew 8:28: And when [Jesus] was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, (meaning “Jesus” the light of Divinity, יחודה Yehidah) there met him two possessed with devils (or egos), coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. —Matthew 8:28
What are these tombs these men come out? This is a very dark symbol and something that we have to reflect on. While we have many blessings in our life, so long as we are without the real cognizance and communication with our divinity, we find that we in turn, are in a sense, living in a tomb, that death-like and asleep-like state—unconscious.
Usually, if we go through our day and try to remember certain moments, perhaps during lunch on in the morning, if we are honest, we have typically had many gaps in our memory. Not necessarily everything that we did in a certain day, but at the same time we were really not aware of what we were thinking in a given moment, or feeling, or what type of action we took. The fact that we cannot remember all these things emphasizes that we are not fully cognizant. We are not fully awakened, because a person who is spiritually awake is a genuine buddha, who has developed that light inside and is aware of everything, moment by moment, never forgets anything and is perfectly aware of his or her psychological state. This is what the tomb represents, a type of sleep, death. This is a form of spiritual death. Religion and the Bible teaches us allegorically how we need to awaken from the tomb, just like how Jesus resurrects from the dead inside of the soul. That light needs to be developed inside. This precisely occurs after driving out the demons from these men, or egos, how the soul is purified by that divine light inside of us. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? —Matthew 8:29
...because the ego, our anger, does not believe in divinity. In a moment we may feel that we want to act kindly toward another person, but meanwhile they provoke our wrath. That sense of wrath does not want to believe in that moment to listen, to be cooperative. Instead, it wants to present one’s point of view. The ego is like that.
We try to not behave in harmful ways, such as speaking with anger or resentment. We need to listen to divinity inside. So this is what the ego says, “What have we to do with thee?” Our defects have nothing to do with God, who is purity, and the mind that we have is impure and dark. Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.
This is a symbol of how, in the process of purifying the mind, that light expels those defects. The fact that they go into the belly of pigs is because they have traditionally been considered in Judaism and Islam as unclean animals, which why Jews keep Kosher and Muslims keep Halal, referring to the fact that consuming those types of animals has a lot of destructive and devolving energies, forces that are very counterproductive to developing purity. We even know that swine carry a lot of larvae and other elements even on a physical level, let alone on a subtle energetic level. So we avoid pork. This is why the Jews avoided eating pork. The same with Muslims. The fact that these swine accepted these sick psychological elements of the ego and the fact that these swine entered over a cliff down into an abyss and perished in the waters is a symbol of what religions call “hell,” infernal dimensions, or ways of being.
Hell is a place, but not as people picture it, because on a psychological level, it refers to when the soul is being purified. Those defects are being rejected and destroyed, while the soul is being freed and liberated. So these men who are possessed are no longer compelled by those elements. This is something that occurs inside, not outside, that these egos literally go into the bodies of physical pigs and that then they went over a cliff. The Bible is a symbolic language, as we have been explaining. The ego a type of demon, because really, when we feel negativity, it is demonic. It is not conducive for the well-being of others. Christ needs to expel and eliminate that, so that in place of anger there is love. The light and Essence that is liberated is purity and joy for the other person, even if they are mistaken or harmful. Instead, we just irradiate happiness toward that person. The Personality
Lastly, we need to talk about another factor in our psychology that we call personality. So we have been talking a lot about the nature of the soul, the nature of the ego and egotistical elements and defects, but we also have what is called the personality.
As I mentioned to you, the child that is between the ages of 0 and 7 really is innocent until finally, through education, growth, experience with life, they develop what is called a personality. A personality is particular to your culture. Specifically, you find that the personae mean “mask.” It is a way of relating to world. The personality is a necessary element we need to acquire in order to really subsist in this country and world. But the personality is an interface we could say. It is a form of energy and a way of relating to others, which is necessary. We need to have an education, to speak a language, to learn the ways of the world and subsist. As soon as the personality is developed within a child between the ages of 4 and 7, we could say, then that child begins to assimilate what we call the ego. A child in its first years of life is innocent. It does not have ego: no anger, no violence, no hatred, no lust, no pride. It is a pure soul. But gradually as they build up this interface: language, customs, culture particular to a given time, then those psychological elements called “ego,” which are created in previous existences, begin to assimilate into the body and soul. In this teaching we talk about the doctrine of reincarnation. We have lectures and materials about that, something that we can become personally cognizant of, to verify. But a child usually who is very young, typically, will cry at night, seemingly for no reason. The parents think, “Oh, the child is lacking food or wants to be with their parents.” Sometimes these children, when they are in their crib, will see clairvoyantly, being a very awake soul, all these shadows and shapes of their ego trying to enter that. Those elements belong to the child that that person created in another lifetime but cannot assimilate until having that personality. When the child starts to develop that mask around the age of 7, then the ego fully enters, and the child is no longer innocent but develops irritation and can sometimes become very difficult if one is a parent. Personally, I remember being very young. I have the memory of being in a crib and seeing these shadows trying to enter around my crib, and I was terrified. So I cried to my mother. I remember this experience being very young. But then of course later, of course, developing a personality, those elements entered, and the individual becomes what one is. Children see this at very young age. Children are very perceptive. Usually, parents and adult think that they are ignorant. But really, children are more aware than their parents are. Many times, children can remember past lives. In some cases, this os documented in India, where that culture is more accepting of this type of teaching. Likewise, children who are very young do not exhibit problems or defects, but when they get older and develop a personality those defects enter. The child is no longer so innocent, but as parents may say “demonic” in some cases. The Three Components of Personality
What is the personality? Really, the personality is a mask and in relation with three things. We call them genotype, phenotype, and paratype.
Genotype relates to genes, one’s inheritance that we receive in our DNA. This is one factor that helps develop our personality. In genes is a vehicle of karma. People throw this term around, but it means “cause and effect” literally. Or if someone does a bad action, then one will receive bad karma, either in this life or in others, as taught in Buddhism or Hinduism. Really, our actions from our life go to shape our next life in the cycle of change and transience. We find that genes are really the physical manifestation of who we are on a biological level. Our biology shapes many aspects of our culture, such as the different psychologies between men and women, or certain diseases that people incur as a result of having caused harm in other lives. These things can shape one’s personality, how one relates to the world. We also have paratype, which relates to circumstances. We know that certain circumstances in life can really change how one interacts with others, of a traumatic and psychological nature. Likewise, we have phenotype, which is our education, where we go to school, certain language. We learn how to communicate, how to relate to others. These things are all necessary. We need these things, but the soul needs to be the one that is working through the personality, not the ego, because as soon as our defects and egotistical elements manifest through the personality, it really causes problems. We look at our society today and can see that this is manifest. Our society is really bent on a type of media that is engrossed in sensuality and violence, of destruction. People value anger and resentment, and sarcasm over kindness. This is a result of people using their knowledge for egotistical means. 
Instead, we need to use the soul as a solar mask of the personality. In the Greek theater you find that they would present many dramas as a spiritual type: many teachings through theater, of a spiritual nature, by wearing masks to emphasize the nature that we are teaching through our personality.
But here we have many masks, and it prevents us from knowing our divinity, because many people are indoctrinated by their religion, culture, even food type, pertaining to culture. Some people are very attached to their tongue and, instead, do not know how to appreciate others from different perspectives. So really this personality of ours can be an obstacle. As we said, the personality is a form of energy. People who really develop strong personalities, when they die, their personality still hangs around. So, we emphasize in this teaching that when a person dies physically, there are three things that go to the grave: you have the physical body, the personality specifically, and people's vital forces and energies. These things deteriorate. The soul and ego leave, perhaps to enter a new body, life, existence, or not. It depends on the moral qualifications of the soul, or the qualifications of that person in a given light, which we discuss in other lectures. People who are very perceptive and say that they have seen ghosts or spectral images over graveyards are seeing the personality of those people who are dead. The soul and Essence have left that body, and instead what they are seeing are those people who really developed very strong personality. They invested so much energy into the personality itself and have in turn left what are known as specters and ghosts. These personalities are so strong that in haunted houses or places cups and physical objects would move. This is documented. Many people have experienced this. I particularly remember one story of an insane asylum that was shut down many years ago because it was haunted and those people who are mentally sick, their personality was so strong that they were moving things physically. People say, “Oh! This is the soul, the people who are moving these objects.” But we say that the soul is Essence, and the ego and these things leave. But the personality is so strong that sometimes it really lingers over objects, and it deteriorates like a form of psychic matter. Samael Aun Weor state in The Perfect Matrimony: The personality is time. The personality lives in its own time and does not reincarnate. After death, the personality also goes to the grave. For the personality there is no tomorrow. The personality lives in the cemetery, wanders about the cemetery or goes down into its grave.
We say, “the personality.” Why? Because in a given time, we develop a certain personality to subsist in this society that we live in. Now, personalities are necessary. Medieval Europe perhaps, during the Dark Ages, or a Roman soldier in ancient Rome—would have a certain personality that would not fit our current personality. They make movies about this that are humorous. It shows that a personality is in its time—a time, language, way of being, of interacting with others or interactions with others. That is why we develop personalities with each life, in which we have existence. So it’s time. Therefore, it has its birth and its death.
The soul and the ego go elsewhere. 
Cain and Abel: The Ego and Essence
We were talking a lot about the Christian Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, and we are going to emphasize some more teachings about the Essence, ego, and personality, in relation to the book of Genesis.
I do not know how familiar some of you are with the Old Testament, but we find the famous story of Cain and Abel. In the Bible, Cain and Abel were two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain was jealous of Abel, and Cain slew Abel. Cain represents the ego, in gnostic terms. Abel is the soul, the Essence. So we find in the Old Testament, after the expulsion from Eden, the symbolic human being has lost his or her innocence, has lost connection with divinity. Instead, we are cast out of Paradise for disobeying the divine law. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare קַיִן Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from יהוה Iod-Chavah (God).
What does this mean that God favors Abel’s offerings? Cain is a tiller of the ground, and what else is a tiller of the ground except the ego? The egotistical mind is governed by materialism, obsession with physical things. It is a type of pre-occupation with material life devoid of spirituality. Constantly in life, we are tilling the ground, sinking—through economics means, subsisting, working, living in life, perhaps indulging in television or other activities that are related to this world. On the other hand, we have Abel, הֶבֶל Habel, who is the soul that makes offerings to God. The symbol is that he offers sheep unto the Divine.
The symbol of sheep in the Bible is very pertinent throughout the Old and New Testaments. Jesus is the Good Shepherd: we could say a symbol of a person who is becoming moral, pure, is developing the soul inside. The word in Hebrew for lamb צֹאן Tson: צ Tzadi, א Aleph, נ Nun. Or you could say צדי Tzaddi, and that letter also relates to צִיוֹן Zion, the Holy City of the Prophets, which is a kingdom. In the Bible it represents the kingdom of heaven, which is governed by those that are fully purified. So a צֹאן Tson (sheep), one that follows the path of צִיוֹן Zion, is someone that is becoming righteous, צַדִיק Tzaddik in Hebrew. So the Being, our divinity, Christ inside, favors the offerings of the soul, never the mind, never the ego. We find in this story that Cain kills Abel. This is the state of humanity. Anytime that we are identified with negative elements, negative emotional states—fear, worry, pre-occupation, discouragement, despair—these in themselves are killing our soul. The Bible is not some history of the past. It is written and referring to something now. Cain takes a club and kills his brother because he is jealous. His countenance fell because he did not receive favor from divinity. This is the mind, the ego, that does its own will and does his own work, not the work of the soul. We included a very famous quote from Ecclesiastes, the very second verse, where it says, literally: הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, הֲבָלִים הֲבֵל vanity of vanities; all is הָֽבֶל vanity. —Ecclesiastes 1:2
What is interesting is that in Hebrew it repeats:
הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים Habel Habelim… הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים Habel Habelim. The word הֲבֵל Habel means vanity. So vanity of vanities, all is vanity. This is a very enigmatic teaching. Why is the soul called vanity? Because people look at spirituality in these times and think that it is something vain or superficial. They mock the study of the soul. People are very materialistic, like Cain, who tilled the ground and only thought of money. They in turn look at those who seek spirituality with disdain. “This is vanity. This is pointless. This is vain. There is no such thing.” Those that practice seek to know divinity directly. So this is why the soul is named הֲבֵל Habel. It says, הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים Habel Habelim: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Also because, within us, our soul is dead. It needs to be resuscitated. It is in darkness and needs to be awakened through spiritual work, through the light. And יהוה Jehovah (which is a name for divinity), said unto קַיִן Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
This is the Divinity speaking to the mind. If you do well, you will receive good things, if you do good things for humanity, not being pre-occupied with self-will, which is ego, defects, subjective senses of self.
And קַיִן Cain talked with הֶבֶל Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the שָּׂדֶה (shadeh) field, that קַיִן Cain rose up against הֶבֶל Abel his brother, and slew him.
This is everyone today with their egotistical sense of mentality, where the genuine sense of camaraderie and communion, a basis of humanity and just one culture, is really absent.
We find that people do not really support their brother. Instead, we wage war against others. So that is the mind of Cain of many politicians. They say, “Am I my brother's keeper? Do I need to help others in this way?” That is one interpretation that we could take. And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's דָּם blood crieth unto me from the אֲדָמָֽה ground. —Genesis 4:6-10
The Hebrew word for blood is דם Dam, ד Daleth-ם Mem, which hides many meanings and symbols, which are interesting for us to examine. For the word for ground is אֲדָמָֽה Adamah, א Aleph-ד Daleth-מ Mem-ה Hei. It is the same word that you see as אדם Adam, as in Adam and Eve. So why is that? So the word אֲדָמָֽה Adamah, the ground, is a symbol of the mind—a type of hardened, concrete mind that has taken the principles of divinity, the blood of Abel, and absorbed them. Similar to the image we provided of the Genie of Aladdin’s Lamp, we find that the lamp is the ego that traps the soul. So whenever someone identifies with the soul, they kill the soul, and the blood of the soul. Then, really, the soul is absorbed further, is trapped further within the ego itself. This is a Biblical teaching of ego, Essence, and personality.
The Tower of Babel
We are also going to talk about what the personality is. In the Bible, we have the famous story of the Tower of Babel. This is a very famous tower that was supposedly built by King Nimrod to heaven that was so tall that it offended divinity, Jehovah. Thereafter, supposedlydivinity destroyed that tower and dispersed the people of the tower into different languages and cultures, so that they were totally separated, and they could not understand each other. They could not understand each other and spoke different languages. This is a type of historical significance that is superficial, but here we are talking about the psychological aspect.
That tower is really the symbol of the personality. People in these times are building a giant personality, a giant tower, worshipping celebrities or personalities, a type of behavior contingent upon the culture or the time, particularly freed countries. Everyone is building this giant tower, you could say. It is a monument to selfishness of a psychological type. People in these times really worship the personality because we find American Idol, people worshiping the personality of individuals. Everyone wants to become famous, idolized, worshipped. That is a type of personality worship. People develop that part of themselves because they invest so much energy and personality into that. So that is the Tower of Babel. We find here in the book of Genesis: And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a גִּבֹּר (gibur) mighty one in the אֶרֶץ (Haaretz) earth. He was a mighty hunter before יהוה Iod-Chavah, wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before יהוה Iod-Chavah. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of שִׁנְעָֽר Shinar. --Genesis 10:8-10
So what does it mean to be a mighty hunter? People with a very strong personality are always hunting for more, for that next experience, to acquire more fame, more knowledge, more experience. Therefore they are developing this tower that is offensive to heaven, we could say, because that personality as a mask is preventing us from accessing our deeper spiritual states.
David and Goliath: The Essence Slays the Ego
The last image we have here is of David killing Goliath, a very famous story of how a young boy killed a giant warrior. This is a symbol of how the soul needs to kill the ego, how the soul, the Essence, the 3% of consciousness represented by the child, the young boy, must face the 97% of our consciousness that is trapped. It is a very beautiful symbol of how a boy confronts a giant warrior, and simply with a slingshot, a stone, and faith in God, kills this giant.
In this image, we have David conquering Goliath, meaning that this is a master who has conquered all of his defects and is purified. We have to destroy the defect in order to liberate the soul. As represented in the word דוד David, we have three Hebrew letters: ד Daleth, ו Vav, ד Daleth. You read Hebrew from right to left. This is an acrostic. It is a symbol. Acrostics are basically a series of Hebrew letters in a word that represent something else. We can look at the three letters. The first represents דעת Daath, which is another word for Gnosis, spiritual knowledge. דעת Daath in Hebrew is γνῶσις Gnosis in Greek. Tiphereth relates to the sixth letter ו Vav in Kabbalah. It is the letter V. It looks like a sword, literally. The warrior needs to conquer what is impure inside. ו Vav refers to תפארת Tiphereth, and if you add that letter ו Vav in the middle of תפארת Tiphereth, you spell אֹור Aur, תפארת Tiphereth, and ו Vav between A and R in the middle. You have ת Tav, פ Pei, א Aleph, and then add ו Vav with ר Reish, and ת Tav, you have the word אֹור Aur, in the middle. So that light is born in us when we conquer the ego, conquer our own imperfections. The last ד D relates to the last letter יסוד Yesod, which means “Foundation.” We have many books that explain the nature of יסוד Yesod, the work with spiritual energy so as to develop our soul. These are just some Biblical stories that relate and explain this division of our psychology, particularly in relation to that which is pure in us and that which is impure. Questions and Answers
Question: I am not clear between personality and ego. Ego are the seven sins that you have already mentioned, but personality that they develop in life, and some of them, karma. Is that not karma too?
Instructor: The personality is shaped by our deeper limits in our psyche, egotistical. It is a good question because the way to understand is to observe signs, habits, of oneself. Personality pertains to an interface that shapes our personalities, culture, the habits that we have, the foods that we eat. These things shape interacting with the world. But the actual desire to act in certain ways, in accordance with the culture or time, is ego. The way to know the difference is to practice self-observation, and to really observe these elements inside. But on a literal level, our culture and education, and our experiences in life, such as the way were raised, or certain traditions we keep, relate to personality. The other distinction and way of observing is by interacting with one culture and pertaining to another. You see very different ways of interacting. For instance, I have had many Latin American friends who I have simply gotten to know and immersed myself in that culture, and completely in their ways of thinking. It is very easy to see, in that circumstance, developments in their personality that they have that are particular to their culture, as opposed to American, or North American specifically. So we do not really know the difference. You could immerse yourself in other cultures and see. Really, there are stark differences in people and ways that people interact with each other. But knowing the desires and how I want to act through that mask, and the way to act, is to observe, as we teach in Revolutionary Psychology specifically. Question: When you “observe,” you mean observe outwardly, right, not the inside self- observation, right? Instructor: We want to do both, because when you observe your internal states, and the external, it has to be simultaneous. That is going to talked about in our next lecture, how when you to be aware spiritually, you begin to see what is in the external world but also what is inside, and to know simultaneously the relationships between them. It is well documented in a good books called The Great Rebellion or Revolutionary Psychology. To be aware is to be aware of everything, and not to have filters in one’s perception, specifically because it also not so much about being outside as it is inside. Of course, in the beginning this is challenging because usually we see that our intention throughout the day is dispersed. We could be driving, talking on the phone, while listening to music, and our attention is many places. If it is in many places, it means that we are not fully focused on what we are doing. That is a skill that we develop through practice. I would suggest when you are practicing mindfulness, simply do what you are doing and do not do other things. That will give you more practice to do what you are doing in a given moment in relation to being observant. Question: So sometimes the personality is so strong that sometime it stays behind after the life? Instructor: Right. Question: But we need the personality to survive here in the material world, right? Instructor: Right. Question: It is just the ego part that we do not want? Instructor: Right. So we do not want to eliminate the personality yet. But also on a very high level of personality, when the ego is fully destroyed, and that is the only that soul is becoming fully purified, even personality needs to be destroyed. That is really in terms of one’s work, in terms of the path of spiritual realization. Question: I have just been (beginning to be) back as everyone studies. It kind of takes care of its self, the ego. It sort of disappears. It is of no interest. Instructor: We teach that the observation of a defect does not eliminate the defect. Instead, we practice meditation to observe in a day and comprehend more profoundly. Really, in our future classes we will discuss that, but we talk about that in The Revolution of the Dialectic, the practice of sitting down to meditate. After having observed egos in action, we sit down and reflect on what caused certain problems in our day or situation, and we reflect on each defect that we saw in a progressive matter. We work on it to comprehend it, deeply. That relates to the science of meditation: really comprehending ourselves. We say that it is our fundamental practice in this tradition. We have many practices, one of them is called meditation, learning to go deeper into ourselves, observing what conflicts, or certain problems in an event or in our lifetime, so they can be changed. Observation is not enough. We need to become more profound and to work with divinity, as St. Anthony was in that image, specifically. Observation will not eliminate. Instead, we have to learn how to comprehend ourselves first, so that divinity can remove those impurities when we are observing them and working on them. So, observation is the first step, judgment in meditation is next, and then execution as we teach. First observe, then really reflect on and try to comprehend a given element that you saw in action, and then afterward, we pray to divinity to remove that defect. Then we find that if a given circumstance occurs in our life and we do not react with anger or a certain sense of pride, or egotistical behavior, we find that really that defect has been eliminated. We do not repeat mistakes. Instead, if we continue to act the same way, react the same way, it means that we have more work to do. Question: Is it possible that while on that, you are being tested in that process? It is not easy to get over that hump. Instructor: This is the reality that many of the prophets experience in their lifetimes. We likewise have to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. I will just conclude that we have to follow their examples, in which we have to face hardship. So I thank you for coming! 
Welcome everybody! We wish you a Happy Easter. We are going to explain some principles related to this sacred day. A lot has been written and disseminated on the internet regarding the pagan roots of this tradition. While here are many beautiful correlations, stories, symbols and narratives, what we hope to convey, by the end of this lecture, is the practicality of these myths, these symbols, these allegories.
To begin, we can discuss some of these correlations to more ancient traditions that precede Christianity. Easter comes from Ostara, the Germanic Goddess of fertility, of spring, the rising sun, from Eostre, which means “East.” You get words from Austre or astral, pertaining to the stars, the heavens, the divine. Basically in a nutshell, the goddess of spring represents the resurrection of life, especially during the spring equinox, which is when the day and night share equal hours, from the Latin equos meaning “equal” and nox meaning nights. We can compare this to the summer and winter solstices, the Latin sol meaning “sun” and sistere meaning “to stand still.” In the winter solstice, we know that there are greater hours of night than there are daylight, and in the summer solstice this is the opposite, in accordance with the axis of the earth and its rotation around the sun. Now the question becomes: why is this the focal point, the fulcrum, upon which pagan mythology and even Christian teachings, gravitates? What is its practical purpose for us as we are striving to become spiritual? ― to aspire towards greater development and wisdom in our lives, to overcome suffering in our daily circumstances? This dynamic in nature parallels our internal life. There is a symbology to this myth of how life returns in the spring and dies in winter and fall. These represent for us something very concrete. While we see how the solar light gives sustenance to all beings without distinction through the processes of nature, we also find that in our own particular development there are periods of growth, resurrection, and even death. This also applies, the process of genesis or birth, life and death, and then rebirth, even to religious traditions and forms, in terms of their progression throughout history. We can say that religions are born, they live, and they die, but more importantly for us in our study of Gnostic Esoteric Christianity, we look to understand the transfiguration of religion: how different religious forms, after their death, have been resuscitated, have been transformed, have become new. This is because divine principles always emerge in relation to a given time, place, culture, language, and identity. The different religious forms that have been given to humanity across time have always been done in accordance with the needs of a given society, in accordance with the level of being of the messengers. The teaching is the same, the essence of rebirth, spiritually, is universal. You find this teaching within all mythologies, without exception. All religions teach a type of death and rebirth. But unfortunately, these forms themselves, through exposure to humanity, to its greed and avarice, its destruction, have corrupted the essential teaching, the practical dimension of how to be born again, to give birth to something truly divine within us. But fortunately for us, even though religious forms and traditions die, they are transmuted in a form of alchemy towards new meanings and new understandings for the different contexts in which this knowledge is now being given. We have the Gnostic teachings, which are an explanation, a transformation, and a transmutation of these different religious forms. We explain what they mean, practically for us. The term transmutation, you might have heard before. The word trans is a prefix for “movement,” “to carry over,” to pass over,” as in transition, transportation. It is a movement and a flow, a redirection. Mutate, as in the term, mutant, is something that changes form, something that fundamentally has a new appearance. This is directly applicable to Christianity in relation to the previous traditions from which it originated. It is because when these traditions die, so to speak, they lose their practical value for how to change fundamentally. They ferment, and from that fermentation different messengers come to humanity to resurrect those essential meanings again. This has happened with Judeo-Christianity and Islam. Even Nietzsche said very infamously that “God is dead.” It is because the core of that teaching within the Judeo-Christian religion had been lost. But now as Nietzsche says, we want the superhuman to live, to resurrect―symbols, allegories, principles, archetypes―but what do they mean? How are they valid? I know a lot of times, people who might have a Christian dispensation may look at the previous religions and traditions with scorn, with derision. This is very unfortunate, because such a perspective fails to take into account how the principle of Christ, the divine, is within those faiths, albeit in a symbolic form that is obviously different to the palate of modern Christians and maybe adverse for them. It is also unfortunate that people who tend to be very materialistic, and also, unfortunately, superficial, we can say, look at religion from a historical perspective, ignoring that there is an experimental dimension to their tradition. We find this evidenced in modern Abrahamic traditions, which reject the different faiths before, primarily due to a misinterpretation of idolatry, an idol, such as thinking the ancients were stupid, and that they worshipped statues and stones, which are not the true faith or true god. It is the purpose of this lecture to emphasize a core teaching within Christianity that applies to all religions without exception, and that we are going to explain the symbols of this mystery that is greatly misunderstood today. In terms of idolatry, we can say that this is a misapprehension of symbols, taking things literally. People like to mistake the symbol for reality, and this is fundamentally mistaken. For example, what do you think of when you look at an American flag? Do you think literally that there are 50 stars somewhere along with its red and white stripes, literally in some place in time, in history? It is absurd. We understand these are representations of something deeper on a conceptual dimension and even a historical definition, in that case. The same thing applies to religious forms. When we literally believe in the iconography of any faith, without understanding its practical application to us, we are committing idolatry. We are worshipping an idea, a statue, a concept in the mind, which tends to make us very petrified, stone-like, rigid. We find this type of mentality amongst many people who have a very strict adherence to a dogma, and who are not able to look at some of the deeper currents that course throughout these traditions. Therefore, why should we venerate the resurrection of Christ from the dead? Is it not true that nature resurrects every spring and that the sun gives us life (s-u-n), but also son, (s-o-n) if we go deeper? This is because even the pagan traditions worshipped Christ. They recognized that the force of life, the sun, is a direct representation and manifestation of a divine truth, and that the Christians reappropriated that symbolism to fit a new context, history, language, culture, and way of being. The forms are not at fault because the principles are within them, because the sun gives life to all traditions. That solar light, which we find in our sun, gives sustenance and equilibrium to everything in every level of our existence. It performs a sacrifice for all beings without distinction, which we find paralleled in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who was an incarnation of that light, that spiritual effluvia and Being. We even know from quantum mechanics that light has consciousness. Light makes decisions, even on the subatomic level of particles. Light is not an inanimate, lifeless thing. It is the essence of life, and the ancients knew this before our scientists could even verify this. So, the previous cultures of humanity were not as ignorant as we may like to think of them. We are going to explain some archetypes and some principles within the Bible whose genuine roots have been condemned and expunged from public Christianity. However, we are going to demonstrate that there has always existed an Esoteric Christianity, a heart teaching within the Christian faith that is practical. It is born from conscious experience. We are going to explain some of these practical symbols for us, the purpose of divine narrative, not to relate some type of history, but to guide us in our internal development. 
The Real Meaning of Faith
It is important to reflect on what it means to have faith―especially since many people have faith in Christ, Jesus, the physical personality who lived 2000 years ago―and to understand what this word really implies. What does it mean to have faith in the resurrection from the dead?
The original word for faith, which has been erroneously translated throughout time, is Πίστις pistis. It means to have “faith,” “to trust,” “to have knowledge from observable experience,” derived from Πειθώ peitho, “to prevail,” “to grow in confidence or persuasion” ― such as power like in the term Pistis Sophia, which is the Gnostic Bible, wisdom-power, the power of wisdom. The original Greek term has been mistranslated into belief. The term belief today really does not have much value, if we are honest. Belief is a conviction in the heart and mind based on an idea or a feeling, but without verification from experience. There are many people today who have many beliefs throughout diverse traditions. You find it any conspiracy culture or fringe culture, people believing in flat earth or other ways of thinking, which have been disproven by factual, scientific evidence and even one’s experience. People believe in many things. They have confidence in many things. They are persuaded. They are even eloquent with their language when transmitting certain ideas, but where is the proof? Where are the facts? Upon what do we trust? What do we perceive? Is it not a conviction in the heart of some higher power? Is it a sentiment and emotion? It is true that morality, we can say, having some type of religious values, is useful in its orbit. We can believe in many things, but it does not mean we really know? Of course, the great divide between Gnostic Christianity and public Christianity is based on this. Within the public doctrine there is the belief that one must have faith, in the blind sense of not knowing, in order to be redeemed from pain, to resurrect into a new life. But the hidden Esoteric Gnostic Christianity, which has been underground for millennia and which is now being taught openly today, explains that faith is direct experience of these principles. It is not a belief. It is not thinking something is true or feeling something is true. It is knowing through action. Πίστις Pistis, faith, has been terribly abused. There are many verses in the Bible which help to explain what we are emphasizing. We can say that this lack of distinction between faith and belief―knowledge from experience and assumption and convictions based on a lack of experience―is the failure of modern Christianity, in which many philosophers like Nietzsche critiqued. We can say that one of the main chasms within the Christian tradition especially is the lack of systematic methods for understanding these principles, because those teachings were taken out. They were not conducive for certain power structures that existed in the path, certain types of mentality that did not want to introspect, but sought to externalize religion as a projection of the mind, an idea, but not really looking at reality. Meditation was removed from the Bible even though Jesus meditated for 40 days and 40 days in the wilderness when facing temptations. We can go to confession and believe we are redeemed, and because people do not look within, they do not practically examine themselves for the root of their sufferings, they think that religion is about some external adherence to a program. We can go to confession and beg for forgiveness, but the psychological tendency towards those wrong behaviors will continue to exist in the mind, in our subconsciousness, our unconsciousness, infraconsciousness. There needs to be practical works if our spirituality is going to be effective. We offer many tools and techniques in this tradition so that we can develop genuine faith. I am going to read some verses for you from the Book of James that are very profound and elaborate these points: What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him (or better said, can belief save him)?
There are practices and exercises like meditation that help us to experience what our religion is talking about. These are practical exercises, methods and meditations that allow us to verify what Christ is, what divinity is, how to know from facts, from experience, not beliefs.
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well… ―James 2:19
It is not a bad thing to appreciate that there is a higher power in one's life, a higher force, that there is a higher influence, because this can give us some type of comfort and guidance, and an ethical foundation. However:
…the devils also believe, and tremble (because they know the existence of divinity as well, but they are not working to change).
Here is an example that is interpreted very historically in relation to the founder of Judaism, we can say Abraham, one of the patriarchs of that tradition.
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
So, in this myth he was told by divinity to sacrifice his son Isaac but as he was about to draw the knife, filled with terrible pain within himself, an angel stopped him and gave him a goat to sacrifice in his stead as an offering to divinity. This is a symbol of how we need to renounce our attachments, our beliefs, our most craved ideals, our assumptions, our identity, even like a father to his son, to give it up for something superior, for a higher principle, because we have many beliefs, ideas, but they are just that. They are not verified, if we are honest, but because in this story, Abraham was so dedicated to knowing the truth and to practice in himself, to know these things, he was given direct guidance, and instead was given an animal to sacrifice.
What is that animal? It is pride. It is lust. It is anger. It is envy. It is greed. It is jealousy. It is wrath, morbidity, fanaticism, fear, despair―all those qualities that are our lower animal psychological conditioning, and in which keep us trapped in beliefs and ideas, but not really knowing, because fear and these defects and anger cannot know the truth. They are the aspect of our psychology that has to be cleansed and removed if we really want to commune to our divinity. We are going to reference a lot more excerpts that explain this especially. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith (or belief) only (merely thinking or feeling something is true, but actually employing certain conditions and practices that are the preconditions of knowing and accessing the truth)? Energy and Action: The Causes of Faith
Now practically for us, faith is realized through actions, through doing, but what actions do we need to employ, to give birth to something superior in us?
In synthesis, the resurrected Master Morya, who wrote The Dayspring Youth, explained the nature of real faith, but also what is commonly denominated faith or belief. He emphasizes how faith is really our conscious application of energy for a spiritual purpose through techniques. It is not merely by sitting back on the couch and letting life happen to us and thinking, “If I just have my convictions and belief in divinity, then everything is going to be fine.” I will relate to you what he stated: Here we think a note upon faith should be of interest. Initiates say that its meaning has been misunderstood. Faith, as the world uses it, possesses no spiritual nature; though in the secondary system… (meaning in relation to our creative energies: the force of life we carry in our body, which really establishes order within our psychology as well) …it means power and energy applied to action. All success in Yoga (from the Sanskrit yug: reunion, the Latin religare, religion) comes from this application; for the true quality of faith is a Solar force that illumines the mind and attracts to it atoms of power and energy (these are not physical atoms but spiritual, energetic forces). More human wrecks have resulted from the misconception of this quality than man realizes. ―M. The Dayspring of Youth 
The Intimate Christ
It is important that we understand the symbology of the sun. What is solar force? What is the solar light? What is that spiritual atomic energy that can empower our soul, so that it can be reborn through the death of its impurities? We call that energy Christ, and to understand what this holy day is, we have to understand what Christ is.
The term יהשוה Yeshua in Hebrew, read right to left, has many meanings. You can look at the individual letters to understand a deeper comprehension of this symbol or this archetype, this blueprint for some type of creation within us. If you want to learn more about what the individual Hebrew letters signify in a deeper level, you can study the course Alphabet of Kabbalah on glorian.org. We are going to explain a few things today to give you an introduction, and even a correlation with Christian doctrine, because the Jewish religion, the Kabbalah, mysticism of Israel, is the foundation of Christianity, and to study Christianity without a knowledge of Kabbalah is to approach it mistakenly. יהשוה Yeshua is י Iod-ה Hei-ש Shin-ו Vau- ה Hei. You find the same four-lettered of God, י Iod-ה Hei-ו Vau- ה Hei, or יהוה Jehovah in Hebrew. We pronounce it Jah-Chavah. יהשוה Yeshua has an extra letter ש Shin in the middle. If you study the meaning of this term, יהשוה Yeshua, you go deep into what the letters signify. The letter ש Shin is fire. It even looks calligraphically like a three-pointed candle or candelabra, with a diacritical mark on top, on the right hand candle, itself, of this letter. יהשוה Yeshua means “savior” and ש Shin is fire. This is evidenced by the Greek Χρήστος Khrestos, read left to right. Khrestos is the Greek god of fire. So, it is a title. It also means “anointed one.” יהשוה Yeshua Χρήστος Khrestos is the savior fire. It is not a name of one specific individual in history. It is a title given to any individual, any human being who really perfects him or herself, who receives the energy of that solar creative divine force, which as a fire, cleanses everything. It renews one psychological nature. Just as the solar light in nature resurrects all living things in spring, we find that this energy can give a rebirth in us if the impurities of our mind die. We find the term INRI, which is a mantra we can pronounce, a sacred sound we can prolong and meditate upon its vibration within us, because sacred sounds, or the verb, is the creative power of the logos, divine word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ―John 1:1
The verb, the creative expression of our energies, is a solar generative energy. We create with our speech, but unfortunately with us, we tend to take our energies and use them in the wrong way. We do not renew our psychological states with how we tend to communicate in the world, how we use our breath, our force. But when we learn to use sacred sounds in meditation, using our speech in the right way, and by conserving our energy and transforming them within us, we renew our psychological nature profoundly.
The term INRI is an acrostic. From Latin, it has two meanings that are pretty significant:
Ignis Natura Renovatur Integram
There are many verses in the Bible that refer to God as fire. Can you remember the Burning Bush that Moses saw? ― or from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 24:
For יהוה thy אֱלֹהִים is a consuming fire, even a jealous God אֵל. ―Deuteronomy 4:24
That fire is a form of life, an energy, an intelligence which permeates and governs all of nature. That light is so jealous for our wellbeing that it sacrifices itself like the sun in order to give life to everything. That energy within us is also very jealous. It wants the integration of all the different parts of our consciousness that are fractured, trapped, conditioned within defects like anger, pride, lust, vanity, and shame. That fire needs to renew us, that force, that power, to give birth to something truly sacred inside.
In the Book of Luke, Chapter 12, verse 49, we find: I [Christ] am come to send fire on the earth... ―Luke 12:49
Also in the Book of Acts we find many references to sacred fire, especially within Chapter 2, verses 1 through 4:
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
It is sad that in modern Christianity that they want to divorce their tradition and this symbolism from the Eastern traditions, especially the mystery of the Kundalini, the sacred fire, which is Pentecost, which is in the energy that resides in the base of our spine, within the sepulcher of our body, in order to rise up and eliminate the impurities we carry within, and to illuminate the head and mind. This is the Holy Spirit of the Christians. It is the Christic energy, the fire, which the Eastern mystics call Kundalini.
Of course, there are a lot of misconceptions of what Kundalini is and how to work with it. It is only achievable through the path of initiation, which we are going to elaborate today as well. Pentecost symbolically is initiation. It is the entrance, a beginning into a new way of life, a new way of being, which has its laws and stipulations, codes of conduct and methods, that are written in books like The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor and many of his other books, which teach the science on how to work with this energy. In this symbol, those sounds from heaven that the apostles heard, are internal experiences we can have in meditation, when we control our vital winds, the energies of our breath, which is known in the East as prana, through exercises like alchemy, transmutation, and even pranayama, to a certain degree.
Speaking in tongues does not mean babble or gibberish, as many modern denominations assume, that the apostles were speaking different languages or even nonsense, gibberish. That is the tower of babel in the Bible. That is not the intelligence of the Holy Ghost, the wisdom of the Christ within oneself, because that is just an intellectual theory, an idea. Instead, that fire of Pentecost is an intelligent wisdom, a balanced, inspirational fire, that allows the individual to have greater wisdom and intelligence in navigating the wilderness of life. It is the capacity for comprehension in a deep way, in a spiritual way, to understand that spirit behind the written word.
We can read any scripture and interpret it with wisdom and understanding. Behind the letter that kills through its literal dogma is the spirit that is hidden within it that vivifies, that gives life. This is why Jesus spoke in parables, in symbols, in archetypes, so that people who were educated and taught within these mysteries, who are conserving their creative energies themselves, could understand it. As stated in the Book of Matthew Chapter 13, verses 10 and 11: And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
So there is an esoteric dimension to Christianity that has not been made public. This is what is implied here. This knowledge was originally given from mouth to ear through a very conservative and highly protected tradition, and only given to those candidates who had proved their worth by entering certain schools of initiations or mysteries, where they could learn the proper application and methods of this science: how to work with that fire of Christ within one's own body, particularly within a marriage, a matrimony.
Christ is Within
Historical narratives encode a divine allegory, parables, symbols. This is the grammar of consciousness―archetypes, stories and narratives that hide deeper truths, a wisdom that is applicable to our daily life, here and now.
Christ is an internal principle. He was a person who lived, a great master who is continuing to guide humanity today in secrecy, who represented for us something very profound, which we need to understand from experience within. This is why in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 13, verse 5 we have the following statement: Examine yourselves, whether ye be in πίστις pistis (faith from experience), prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ (יהשוה Yeshua Χρήστος Khrestos) is in you, except ye be reprobates? ―2 Corinthians 13:5
Have we examined our minds in the face of temptations in life? Are we looking at our own desires, which crave and seek pleasure at the expense of our heart, of the happiness of others? Are we looking inside to see our own defects, our anger, our pride, our vanity, our lust? Are we looking at that daily, moment by moment, examining our hidden defects? Faith, πίστις pistis, is confidence born from experience. It does not mean to have conviction without verification. It is what we perceive within our own consciousness. So are we certain that we do not possess defects or elements in our own mind that make us reprobates, reprehensible―we can say―demonic, evil?
It is easy to assume we are very saintly people. It is a belief, but it really does not hold much weight if we examine the facts of our own life and our suffering, that we continue to engage in behaviors that produce suffering for ourselves and others. We can have faith in Christianity, in Christ, to believe that we are going to be saved by following a dogma, and yet there are many verses in the Bible that do not validate this assumption, because so long as we have any defect in our mind, we cannot enter heaven. Here is what is stated in the Book of Matthew by Jesus: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart (obviously, this applies to the opposite sex as well). ―Matthew 5:27-28
What constitutes our level of being, our psychological state? Are we examining ourselves and our states to see what is conditioned and what is free? Do we discriminate our inner perceptions, our thoughts, feelings, and desires to see their roots, to see that we have adultery in our mind? We cannot enter heaven with those faults, which is why it is stated in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 9 and 10:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. ―1 Corinthians 6:9-10
So long as we contain these psychological contaminants, we cannot go to heaven. This is directly from the Bible. People believe that they are going to be saved because they have faith or belief in Christ, that he died for our sins, the literal, historical person. However, the reality is that for most of us if we look inside, we do not find Christ there.
Who is active in our mind, our heart and body in a given moment? Who is behaving and thinking and feeling and doing? ― because God and the devil cannot mix. The Being, Christ, divine principle within us―and our desires, our egos, our defects, or Satan in the Bible―cannot mix. They are incompatible. They are like oil and water. The word Satan in Hebrew means “adversary,” שטן Shaitan. What greater adversary is there within us when we want to fulfill these divine principles of compassion and purity, and yet our mind drives us to commit acts that are truly destructive, truly reprehensible? We have to have a radical honesty with ourselves, to look at that, to examine it. Are we bringing forth beneficial action, or what is detrimental? We have to look! Look inside your internal world. Discover yourself. Look to see if selflessness is there, Christ is there. The truth is we have the potential for Christ to manifest in us, but for most people, that it is not developed. There are many initiatic symbols and stories that relate to the progressive development of that potential and to someone who is capable of incarnating that intelligence. You can study in relation to The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, the path of initiation, specifically. However, the truth is that for most of us is that we have a seed that can grow into something fully and truly human, like the birth of Jesus in the manger, which are the different animal egos we carry within, our defects. So most of us tend to kill that potential, from even initiating that process, but for that we need to see ourselves for who we are, and that Christ precisely is a type of perception inside, in which there is no self, in which you perceive the inherent emptiness of intrinsic identity, in which you are perceiving life and your psychological states and world, but without any conditioning filter. There is no individual self like anger or pride blocking it, or filtering it, obscuring it. Is it not true that when we are angry, we can only see and think and feel through anger? We do not rationalize. We do not really see reality. We can only see our desire that is frustrated. We feel pain and we want others to feel pain as well. We have to purify ourselves of that, to become like Christ, a perfected being that is luminous and has a brilliant character, an inspiring and noble attitude, a divine philanthropy that really works to act for the benefit of others and not for oneself at all. That is why Jesus stated in Matthew 6:22-23: The eye is the illumination of the soma (the Greek σῶμα sōma literally means body, but it could also indicate the soul or self). If thine eye be singular (if your perception be ἁπλοῦς aplous: clear, simple, uncomplicated, pure), thy whole self (σῶμα sōma) will be full of light. Yet if thine eye be impure (πονηρός ponēros), thy whole self (σῶμα sōma) shall be full of darkness. Therefore, if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. ―Jesus, Matthew 6:22-23
What does it mean that our eye needs to be simple, clear, uncomplicated, pure? It is not a literal eye as many people misinterpret. It is how we perceive psychologically. Your perceptions from your consciousness, which is seeing through your mind, your heart, your body―is perceiving and receiving the impressions of life, but also needs to look inside to see our psychological impressions―that is the eye that can illuminate us. If it is not clear and simple and uncomplicated and pure, it means that we are seeing in the dark.
It is a strange and paradoxical principle: if that light be darkness how great is that darkness. Is it not true, as in the example of anger, that if you are filled with rage, you are perceiving life through that condition? It is darkness though. It is pain. It is suffering. Our lives and our way of seeing the world and ourselves tend to be very complicated. We are fractured. We are split. We have many psychological conditions, egos, and defects, which do not make our way of seeing the world clear, simple, pure. We need to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven, to have an innocent attitude, to receive a life in a new way, moment by moment, to perceive without any lens that colors what we are perceiving. That light when it is unconditioned and pure, when it is selfless, when it is perfect, is Christ, in its ultimate sense. Of course, we have to develop that potential where we are at in the beginning, with a lot of care, nurture, and attention, a lot of diligence, because how we perceive is exactly the cause and conditions that produce the pain of the world. Christ said: I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. ―John 8:12
Christ as an energy is compassionate. It is a state of being. Here in the verse, he is talking about how our eye needs to see clearly without conditions, and then he is seeing, “I am the light of the world.” He is that energy of being and perceiving, but for us, we have taken that light and adulterated it. In beings like Jesus of Nazareth, that light is perfect. There is no fault, and is no fault in him, but the truth is that any person can become like him, the Master Jesus, or in his esoteric name, the Master Aberamentho as stated within The Gnostic Bible, his real spiritual name. Anyone can become like that, can resurrect from the dead, of a sterile, painful life, into something very sacred and holy, but it requires training. It requires work.
Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. ―Luke 11:35-36
So light is understanding. It is intuition. It is reconciliation. It is patience. It is insight, which emerges from the fire of life within our body, the fire of Christ, which is in ourselves, not only without. However, as I said, we carry the fire of life, that energy which gives us vitality and the ability to exist, to be―but we abuse it.
The Three Traitors
This is the meaning of the light of the Christ being betrayed. Just as the historical Christ underwent his Passion and Crucifixion, likewise our consciousness must experience the bitterness and solitude of Golgotha, a path and process that is very difficult, because it is not easy to eliminate everything that is wrong about us and within us. Now we have to understand the three traitors in the biblical story of Jesus, because it is too easy to historicize, to merely condemn three people who were the axle upon which this whole drama gravitates.
The three traitors are symbols: Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas. There were apostles and people in history who existed, who represented a drama, a symbol, a story, that applies to us now, not in the past, nor in some remote history, but in our very being. This is why in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, in a great scripture known as the Zohar, Rabbi Simeon said the following about the Old Testament, which can also apply to any scripture: Rabbi Simeon says: "Woe to the man who says that the Torah came to relate stories, simply and plainly, and simpleton tales about Esau and Laban and the like. If it was so, even at the present day we could produce a Torah from simplistic matters, and perhaps even nicer ones than those. If the Torah came to exemplify worldly matters, even the rulers of the world have among them things that are superior. If so, let us follow them and produce from them a Torah in the same manner. It must be that all items in the Torah are of a superior nature and are uppermost secrets. ―Zohar
Let us explain what these traitors signify for us, primarily because if we wish to understand and experience the resurrection of Christ in us, we have to understand what the death of our faults and defects implies.
We have Pilate, who is a roman governor of the Jews in history who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus, but what does he represent? He is an official, an authority figure, someone who is very respected, who people go to for advice and commands, someone who has a very strong reasoning, deliberation, analytical mind. Pilate is the mind itself. It is the intellect that can either justify or excuse itself with reasons. Many times, we commit mistakes and Pilate in us, that figure that wants to have authority and to command, justify its action with many reasons. It excuses its own culpability and washes its hands clean of the crucifixion of Christ. This is our mind. Our mind justifies many things. We can feel in our heart that we are really suffering from our conscience because we know we did something wrong, and that sentiment is something superior, and profound, and deep. It is the voice of the consciousness. The heart knows from hunches, intuitions, knowledge, without having to reason, but it is the intellect that tends to overpower the heart, much in the same way it is that קַיִן Cain in the Bible killed הֶבֶל Abel. The mind kills the heart. The intellect or desire rationalizes and excuses itself for its wrongdoing, and therefore הֶבֶל Abel, our soul, dies. This is not something in the past, but it is now. We do it every day when we do not follow our conscience, our hunches. There are other figures. We have Caiaphas, who is a high priest that is very devoted to his religion, Judaism, his tradition, his dogma, his faith, at the expense of killing Christ, persecuting that principle in us which can truly revolutionize our way of being. That energy is so transformative and so radical, that the mind and the heart fight, because it is a dethronement or a deposition of a type of mentality and way of being that has been held onto for a long time, a type of conditioning within us. Caiaphas is the heart consumed by fanaticism. This can signify a devotee of any tradition or religion, whose devotion to an ideal or concept blinds him or her to reality. Caiaphas is really evil will. It does not want to do what is right, because it is attached to what others think of it and how others perceive it. It wants to be in power through adherence to a system, a political belief, a religion, a dogma. Even in science you find Caiaphas very strong, where people are not able to see reality because they are attached to their beliefs. Caiaphas is any person of blind adherence to a tradition who does not have any experiential verification or conscious basis. People conform to dead traditions. They despise whatever does not fit into a prescribed dogma. They persecute whatever and whomever does not fit a given paradigm. If you do not believe me, just go and look at social media and look at all the political craziness going on in the world. You find this in religion. You find this in every faith, where that ego sees its tradition as the only authentic one, and therefore everyone else is dammed. You find this within the Gnostic tradition as well. It is very sad to see it, but it happens. It is because of Caiaphas, that tendency. However, who is it that starts this entire process of Christ’s imprisonment? Is it not Judas? Who is Judas? He is a mystical devotee, someone who really loves religion, who loves divinity, who loves God, who loves spirituality, who loves to share spiritual axioms on the internet, forums, and different mediums, who even teaches with a lot of faith and conviction, and yet loves desire more, loves lust, loves fornication, sexual degeneration, more than divinity. Judas is the desire for pleasure, the desire for sensations, for sex, for drugs, for children, for money. This is why Judas was paid 30 pieces of silver, which is a symbol of the opposite of Christ. These are lunar values. What are lunar values or mind? It is all the mechanical ways of being in the world, which keep the world running in the way it is now. The sun, which is creative, gives life. It is original. It provides the substrate of all existing things, the foundation for all life. It is the creative potential that expresses within all the divine masters. Its opposite is mechanical ways of being, the moon. The moon governs many mechanical processes in life, whether menstruation in women, plant life. You find it in crime rates when there are full moons. The moon governs many things in a cyclical way. It is a repetitive cycle, in which people―who are attached to all these negative things like money and drugs and sex, sensations and pleasures―keep repeating those habits, and they prefer that more than to generate something new inside. What is the ultimate betrayal of Christ? It is the desire, to give into pleasure. This is the temptation one faces. If we wish to celebrate the Easter Resurrection, these traitors within us have to die. They cannot exist. They have to be crucified. They have to be eliminated. However, most people do not want to eliminate their tendencies. They want to repeat the same behaviors and merely believe that their devotion, authority, or mysticism is going to save them. These are the three traitors. They blind us to reality. It is important to reflect specifically what penance is, what redemption is, what purification is, because this is the groundwork in which we can really give birth to the spirit inside. 
The Esotericism of Lent: Ishtar’s Descent into the Underworld
The path of purification is mirrored in nature, whereby the fire of the sun descends into hell, symbolized by winter, in order to be born again like the phoenix in spring.
In public Christianity, Lent signifies preparation, purification, and penance before Easter Sunday. If you study the holy calendar, the Holy Week, the last week of Lent is obviously Holy Week. It starts with Palm Sunday, or the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Christ celebrated the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and was crucified on Good Friday, undergoing Holy Saturday or the confrontation of Christ in hell, resurrecting on Easter Sunday. It is notable that Christ’s crucifixion occurred on Good Friday, which is the day of Freya amongst the Nordics―Friday, Venus, the goddess of love, who is in Mesopotamian mythology, Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Easter. So how do we conquer desire? How do we conquer the three traitors? We do so through love. I know in the West we do not distinguish between the two, but lust and love are incompatible. You cannot combine them. They are polar opposites. Venus, the force of love, symbolized by Mary, מרים Miriam, the Divine Mother, is very pure. However, we have converted her and our Christic energy into a whore, through desire, through animal pleasure. So, what do we need to do if we want to celebrate Easter? We have to understand what Ishtar signifies, who is the goddess of beauty, love, sex, and even war, because the great spiritual heroes fight against their defects and desires out of love. They sacrifice their animality because they do want to make others suffer. Therefore, they enter their path of the cross, the crucifixion, which is a sexual symbol. 
The vertical beam is the phallus of the man. The horizontal beam is the uterus of a woman. Through their union―performed with love and not lust, by conserving that precious energy of creativity, volatility, of genesis―they give birth to something truly divine. This is the Resurrection, in one degree. There are many levels of resurrection, but we are just giving an overview, a synthesis, what is more practical for us, typically, for beginners. We use that energy to eliminate our faults.
Christ symbolized that path of eliminating defects by descending into hell, our hell realms, which are our defects, our mind―for all practical purposes―our inner psychological iniquities. So the myth of Ishtar is the same narrative of Christ descending into hell, so that through conquering desire, ego, defects, faults, the consciousness can achieve resurrection and rebirth within divinity. In synthesis, she descends into the underworld to confront evil. On the way, she is forced to strip away different articles of clothing each time she approaches an internal gate. There are seven gates, which is very significant. If you study numerology, Kabbalah, you know that seven is a very significant principle, referring to seven different degrees of spiritual initiation. It could also refer to eliminating seven principal defects, but also giving birth to seven principal virtues, seven vices and seven virtues. Ishtar does so until she arrives completely naked before her sister Erishkegal, who is the queen of hell, who attacks Ishtar furiously because Ishtar wanted to end evil. Ishtar is imprisoned and she is afflicted with sixty diseases, which is also very significant, the number six relating to the sixth commandments, “Thou shall not fornicate,” meaning: “Do not waste your creative sexual energy. Do not lose that force,” because you need to give birth, to create on the inside with it. This is symbolized by water. If you study the Bible and many mythologies, water is the source of life, not just physically, but also spiritually. It is a symbol of our creative, Genesiatic, spiritual, sexual energy. It is what can give the potential creation into something actual, realized. Ishtar is imprisoned until Enki, or Ea, the Akkadian god of water, sends an emissary to provide Ishtar with the water of life, with which she is revived, and she returns victoriously back to the world through the infernal gates, and every time she ascends, she is clothed again in a successive order. 
In a symbolic way, the consciousness descends into matter, into different states of being, which are more dense, and have return to the divine source. That return is initiation. It is to enter the path of the Passion, the suffering of facing one errors, to die to them and to resurrect ,and then to ascend. This parable has many levels of meaning.
When we raise the fire of Pentecost―the fire of the Holy Spirit within the spine, within successive octaves, within different internal bodies, we can say, vehicles of the soul, which operate within the different dimensions of the Tree of Life―that energy helps us to crucify our ego, and this is the Kundalini serpent fire which Moses raised upon a staff within the wilderness, the bronze serpent, which is the power of the Holy Spirit. In that way, a person resurrects within fire, that creative energy. When you raise the creative force―if you have studied the writings of Samael Aun Weor extensively and The Perfect Matrimony, especially―you find that that fire gives birth to spiritual bodies, spiritual vehicles, which we can operate with when we physically go to sleep and enter the internal worlds. These are vehicles much in the way a light bulb is a vehicle for expressing light. So, if you wish to express Christ within you, it is good to work with that energy so that you can create those vehicles. We call them solar bodies. These are the vestures or vestments that Ishtar puts on when she ascends out of hell. Solar bodies are vehicles of a Christic force. They are a matter of energy that do not belong to mechanicity. They belong to divinity, and therefore they are able to transmit and transform the power of a sun. 
After Ishtar descends into hell, it is interesting that all sexual activity ceases in the world. Before the Ascension of Christ, he appeared many times to his disciples. When before the holy women, Christ stated:
Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God. ―John 20:17
As I said, resurrection occurs in degrees. There are different initiations related to the creation of spiritual vehicles inside. Specifically, Samael Aun Weor, in his book The Seven Words, in that text specifically, gives a very detailed account of what resurrection looks like with the astral body, the Chrestos: a solar vehicle that allows one to navigate within the astral plane with consciousness, lucidity, intentionality, with clarity, and with awareness. In that process of working with that astral body or creating the astral body―which is a form of resurrection and rebirth to that degree―the initiate undergoes a process that is explained in the Bible and in this myth of Ishtar. Samael Aun Weor stated the following:
This is how, before the Ascension, the Initiate has to descend to the submerged worlds in order to destroy the most intimate roots of evil. 
The Resurrection of Our Chrestos: The Solar Astral Body
We will elaborate a few specifics relating to the resurrection of the astral body. Approaching this topic of resurrection, this is perhaps the most introductory and accessible for people who are learning to work with the perfect matrimony and who are seeking to create the solar vehicles themselves.
It is interesting that Samael Aun Weor provides an explanation about the meaning of Lent in relation to Easter, which is very misunderstood. In the creation of the astral body, one has to face temptations within the infernal worlds in the submerged states of the consciousness, in the hell regions known as קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth in Kabbalah. These are the inferior regions of our consciousness and psyche, but also there are levels of nature which are inferior to our own, beneath our physical world within the infernal regions and layers of the earth, but in an internal dimension. I’ll read for you at length what Samael Aun Weor wrote: During these forty days that precede the Ascension [of the Astral Body, the Khrestos] (the vehicle that allows us to fully manifest Christ at that level), the Initiate is totally prohibited from all sexual contact, since he must maintain his aura totally luminous and serene, free of any passionate waves. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Seven Words
As we explained in many different lectures, we work with the perfect matrimony, in which a married couple combines their sexual force with purity and love, transforming it and conserving it and raising it within the spine, in order to give birth to the soul. In the process of conserving and raising that energy―especially within the third octave, within the astral body, because one is working with different levels of initiation, from the physical, vital, and astral, the third initiation, we can say, from the bottom up of the Tree of Life―one is working with that alchemical marriage. In the process of perfecting that initiation, one has to abstain from sexual contact, much in the same way that in the myth of Ishtar when she descended into hell, all sexual activity in the world ceased. It has the same meaning here, the mystery of Lent.
Only after the forty days, can the Initiate continue practicing his rite of Sexual Magic. But during those forty days preceding the Ascension, the Initiate must transmute his sexual energy through the mind. During these forty days preceding the Ascension of our Astral Body, we have to inevitably descend into the abyss in order to definitively cut off all relationships, all roots, all ties with the creatures of evil. 
Ishtar in Hebrew, Kabbalah, and the Tree of Life
We explained a little about the Tree of Life. In synthesis and relation to the myth of Ishtar, this divine force of life descends from the physical world מלכות Malkuth within the internal worlds, within the subconscious regions of nature, which are the hell realms we just mentioned, infernal states, in order to confront all of our past history within those regions, our past karma, we can say. But we need to re-initiate that journey upward from מלכות Malkuth to כתר Kether and even beyond. These are ten spheres, ten סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, the Hebrew term for “emanations,” which relate to different states of consciousness, qualities and modalities of being.
We are currently in מלכות Malkuth, the physical world. Above that we have יסוד Yesod, the vital energies, the foundation of our spirituality, the sexual creative force. We have הוד Hod, which is the astral vehicle or emotions. You have נצח Netzach relating to the mind, victory. Above that we have more rarefied state of beings, like תפארת Tiphereth, which is our willpower. Beyond we have גבורה Geburah, which is our divine consciousness, our divine soul, and the spirit, חסד Chesed, which is mercy, our inner particular god, אל El in Hebrew. Above that we have the trinity of Christianity and also the trinity of all religions: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah; Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya―many names for these principles. The Tree of Life is a map of our consciousness, but also teaches us the different gradations and levels of nature. If you wish to study more about Kabbalah, we have different courses and materials you can reference, especially Tarot and Kabbalah by Samael Aun Weor. Kabbalah is the basis for interpreting the diverse religious traditions of the world. It is not only the sole patrimony of Judaism but is a map that can explain many mythologies and teachings. 
אישתאר Ishtar is precisely the fire of a man and a woman because the sexual creative energy is the power to create. The word איש Ish in the Bible signifies “fire” or “man,” and אשה Isha is “woman.” In the Book of Genesis, you have man and a woman, who are אדם Adam and חוה Eve, who textually are referred to as איש Ish and אשה Isha, fire of a man and fire of a woman. Together they can create something superior within themselves.
As we mentioned many times, sexual energy is a form of fire. When a man and woman combine their creative sexual fires, taming them through conscious love, you form אישים Ishim. We have a prayer in the Invocation of Solomon the wise that states: אישים Ishim, assist me in the name of אל שׁדי El Shaddai! ―Invocation of Solomon
What is אל שׁדי El Shaddai in Hebrew? Christians are familiar with this term of the Almighty Living God. It is the Holy Spirit, and the strength of שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai is the Almighty Living God. It is the power that can give life, the power that can create not only physically, but spiritually, more importantly. The word אל El in Hebrew means “God,” and שׁדי Shaddai can mean “devil.” The Hebrew name שָׂדֶה shadeh derives from the word שׁדד shadad meaning to destroy. Likewise, שָׂדֶה shadeh is a field, where the most subtle beast of creation has dwelled, the serpent, in the opening of Genesis, chapter 3.
What is interesting is that שׁדי Shaddai or אל שׁדי El Shaddai means “God, my destroyer,” but why is that? The sexual force is not only the power that can create life, but is also the power that can destroy. It is associated with the serpent, with the devil, of all things. How is that energy of both God and the devil? This is the mystery of sacred sexuality. If we examine sexual behavior in society and humanity, we can find that lust and desire, like prostitution, is the source of great pain. It destroys the potential of spiritual life. Why is the sexual power a destroyer? We know it relates to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that this knowledge or energy can give life of a pure type or an impure type, depending on how we use it. It is enough to look at the news especially to see cases of how people who are addicted to lust, suffer immensely. There was a recent shooting, where a man went into a group of massage parlors and killed many people. Some news outlets reported how the reason why he engaged in that action was because he was frequenting those places to satisfy his desires. He was a sexual addict, and for him, according to his reasoning, to escape from that, he went around and killed many people. It is a terrible tragedy, and the reality is that sexual addiction and desire, attachment to lust and fornication, destroys the mind and psyche. We see in many examples and cases in humanity how this type of action produces pain. But that energy can give something divine or create something divine in us. It is not only the power to destroy, but the power to create life. It is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Bible, the symbol of that. The word שׁדי Shaddai is an acrostic. It hides the phrase: שומר ד'לאט ישראל Shomer D'latot Yisrael, which means “Guardian of the Doors of Israel.” It is a secret science relating to how we use the creative energy of יסוד Yesod, the foundation of spiritual life, because as it states in the Book of Matthew, chapter 7, verses 13 and 14 Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life (חיה Chaiah), and few there be that find it. ―Matthew 7:14
So both אדם Adam and חוה Eve in the original Hebrew are named איש Ish and אשה Isha. Together they form אישים Ishim: a sacred divine being with the power to create if they control the serpent, symbolically speaking. They do not eat the forbidden fruit, so to speak, which we explain very openly is the orgasm, the expulsion of the blissful energies of sex for a few moments of gratification, which is symbolized as the expulsion from עדן Eden. עדן Eden in Hebrew means “bliss,” “voluptuousness,” “happiness.” There are ways to take this fire, to conserve it and to raise it up within oneself, within its conditioned state, within desire, within hell, so that we can form a new being, to give a form of rebirth.
It is interesting that the word תאר Tar, ת Tav, א Aleph, ר Resh, reading from right to left―you have in the middle א Aleph, י Iod, ש Shin, which is איש Ish, then ת Tav, א Aleph, ר Resh, which means “to describe, to depict, to represent, to narrate.” What does it mean to narrate or to describe with fire? Symbolically speaking, we must learn to inscribe the principles of Christ within us, to speak the Word, to live it, to manifest it within oneself. We have to learn to write these divine archetypes or principles, which are like fiery particles, essence or force within our consciousness, we do so through living the doctrine. Samael Aun Weor mentions many times, “It is written with fiery ember in the book of life.” Even Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra explained (as cited by Samael Aun Weor in The Perfect Matrimony: “The Two Rituals”): Write with blood and you will discover that the blood is spirit. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
We can say that this path of initiation, in which we ascend the different sephiroth towards our heavenly sources, is a form of writing, a form of inscription, in which we encode through our practices, combining sacred sounds with our creative sexual energy within a matrimony, in order to manifest our Being, to express divinity. Samael Aun Weor mentioned in The Perfect Matrimony:
Initiation is your own life. If you want initiation, write it upon a staff. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
There are some other etymologies and meanings here that are particularly interesting and significant, relating to אישתאר Ishtar, how we create spiritually. We find the word תאר Tar or Tartarus within Greek mythology, relating to the hell or infernal worlds. We also find Taurus, the zodiacal sign of the bull, relating to the earth element, and also the planet Venus or the light אור Aur. Our body is a form of earth.
So many times in the Bible, there are references to the earth. This is referring to our body. We need to learn to cultivate our body and its energies in constructive ways. We have many exercises like pranayama, transmutation, mantras, sacred rites of rejuvenation, runes, and prayers that we use to cultivate divine force and use it in a spiritual way. This is how we create light from our earth, Taurus, אור Aur, the light. Of course, that light, that understanding, that intuition, that comprehension emerges when we learn to work and handle the fire well. So light emerges from darkness, the Bible mentions many times. The Easter Resurrection emerges, the light is born in us, when the darkness is conquered, when we comprehend and eliminate our errors. It is interesting the word אישתאר Ishtar contains almost the same letters as בראשית Bereshit, “In wisdom” or “In the beginning,” which is the opening line of Genesis. So אישתאר Ishtar only lacks the letter ב Beth, which signifies a “house” or “wisdom,” which is חכמה Chokmah in the Kabbalah, a symbol of Christ, the second sphere on the top of the Tree of Life. בראשית Bereshit is an interesting acrostic with many meanings. It is very deep. You can study many courses on glorian.org, especially, which unpack the meaning of this phrase. It is really a beautiful code which hides a lot of depth and profundities. In synthesis בראשית Bereshit is the first word of Genesis: בראשית ברא אלהים Bereshit Bara Elohim, “In the beginning Elohim created,” את השמים ואת הארץ At Ha-Shamayim Vayat Ha’aretz: “the heavens and the earth,” which are a symbol of psychological states of being within us, this Tree of Life, the heavenly worlds out of the earth, how we cultivate our physicality. בראשית Bereshit is creation, to give genesis, and relates to the path of initiation itself, how we create life within seven lower sephiroth, the seven lower bodies in which we must raise the fires of Pentecost. בראשית Bereshit can be read as ברית אש Berit Esh, “pact of fire.” This covenant with divinity is the work with the creative, sexual fire, the fires of man and woman, איש Ish and אשה Isha. It is through sexual alchemy that we become angels, for ברית אש ברא אלהים Berit Esh Bara Elohim: “The pact of fire created the gods and goddesses,” the angels. אלהים Elohim has a masculine plural ending, י Iod- ם Mem, but אל El is the singular masculine God, and אלה Eloah the singular feminine goddess. Together, אלהים Elohim forms the gods and goddesses, the perfected masters who are transformed through the perfect matrimony. So, א Aleph and ב Beth―the only difference between בראשית Bereshit and אישתאר Ishtar. What is א Aleph? It is our breath, our vital forces, our energy, our wind, we can say. It is interesting that in the Book of Acts, we find that the mighty wind rushed through the chambers in which the apostles were crowned with serpents of fire. That wind is our breath, that spiritual force or Prana in the East. We can use that prana, that vital wind, that breath, harnessing it within our ב Beth, our physical body, our house, which is a temple of God, in order to regenerate, to perform Easter, Ishtar, but we have to know the wisdom and the science and the methods for that. 
Regeneration: The Narrow Way to Life
To elaborate and finalize some points, we want to really emphasize that this teaching is more than just from one man, as we emphasize the writings of Samael Aun Weor, but we find it in a coded way within the Bible―the work with sexuality. Resurrection is related to rebirth, and we find in the Book of John 3:5-6 a very famous teaching which has been unfortunately very misappropriated.
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That water is your seminal energy, your matter, from which if you conserve it and transform it, you can give birth to something spiritual within you.
Birth is a sexual problem. It is not a matter of believing or thinking or following Jesus in our heart. It is a matter of action, of applying energy, that creative force, to specific endeavors, with purity, love, comprehension. This is how we can give birth to Christ in us. I am the resurrection, and the life: he that πιστεύω (pisteo) in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and πιστεύω (believeth, has faith: pisteo) in me shall never die. ―John 11:25-26
Again, that faith is not a matter of concepts and ideologies, but of working practically with our energetic potential. Unfortunately, many people want to follow beliefs, ignoring that there is a sexual component to the esoteric dimension of Christianity. So, this is the straight and narrow gate, which many do not enter, many do not follow, as indicated by Jesus:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life (חיה Chaiah), and few there be that find it. ―Matthew 7:13-14
Many people do not even enter the door that leads to life, which is resurrection, because they refuse to die to their defects and really develop compassion, selflessness. So, humanity often detests the path of life, which is the regenerative faculty of our creative sexual expression, to conserve that power inside; to never lose it; to never waste it; to create spiritually, not as animals, so to speak.
In conclusion: Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. ―John 5:28-29
If you are interested in learning more about the practical dimension of resurrection, and how to enter that path, follow its codes and stipulations, its methods, you can study The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. You can also learn more from the book Christ and the Virgin by the same author.
I hope that with this explanation, you have greater clarity about some of the pagan roots of Easter, but also its essential focus, its direction, which is practical, to learn how to change fundamentally, psychologically, to work with our energies for divine purposes, and to serve others with compassion, with selflessness. Questions and Answers
Question: Earlier you described a quote where God is described as jealous. Can you please explain God’s jealousy? What is that and how does that differ from that vice?
Instructor: The translation of jealousy often is skewed by our own perception of the term. Primarily, our egotistical sense of jealousy, of feeling envious of another person, wanting what they have, perhaps, is very different from the unique description of God as a jealous being. Unfortunately, the tendency in us is to project our ideas, about what God is, onto divinity, onto reality, without really experiencing what that principle really is. Divinity is jealous in the sense that our inner Being demands purity. Our consciousness, as we explained in our lectures on psychology and in different books, is trapped within conditions, which is ego, desires, שטן Shaitan, Satan, the adversary, the enemy of spirituality. Our consciousness is trapped in those different defects; therefore we are not able to act with full capacity, at our highest potential, the highest degree of divine expression within us. Divinity cannot enter and manifest in our actions if we do not eliminate the impurities, because divinity, if we feel a longing and an inspiration to study these types of topics, is pushing to achieve that perfection within us. That is the ultimate longing and goal of divinity, is to fully express within a perfected human being, which is a symbol of Jesus, of Easter, Ishtar. But first you have to descend within hell in order to change, to face and confront your intimate defects and faults, so that we can extract what is pure from the mud and return it to divinity. If divinity was not jealous and did not want to fight over our every single intricate component of our soul that is trapped in defects, we will be lost. Divinity is jealous in the sense that our inner Christ is demanding, wants to achieve perfection of all the different aspects of our psychology within. That is the myth of the Crucifixion, the Passion, of facing all the trials and adversities of our life, all our past mistakes, which in the East is called karma, to fulfill the law so that we can die to all imperfection and resurrect within a higher state. So, it is different from the vice: to be jealous is an ego, that wants something that someone else has and despises the other person for it. But the jealousy of God is the profound will and enthusiasm that divinity has when working on our behalf, pushing us to change, and inspiring us with inquietudes, longing within our heart, to want to inspire towards these mysteries and to experience them. Question: What other stories are there or examples of crucifixion, occurring in other religions who represent Christ, in regards to the symbol of the cross? Instructor: Different mythologies and different religions teach the same principles in different ways. The explicit teaching of dying on the cross was given by Jesus literally with his physical body in the Middle East two thousand years ago. From what I understand, he was really a radical master, Master Aberamentho, to teach that with his life, to sacrifice even his body to demonstrate that drama for us so we can understand a deep message about the narrative. There are different teachings and different faiths relating to the purification of the mind, especially crucifixion. To work with the cross―which is an alchemical symbol of man and woman, working together to overcome their defects and to transform energy―is particularly specific to Christianity, especially with the symbol of the cross. But you do find the cross in many world religions, in Hinduism, Nordic mythologies, the Rune Gibor, so to speak. You find that process mapped out in different ways in Buddhism. You find the Buddha is meditating and comprehending his errors while tempted by Mara while he is meditating beneath the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is the same symbol, using that energy, overcoming temptation, introspecting, manifesting the divine. I think the most profound and elevated message came from Christ, who is a very high master, who really made a great sacrifice, to allow himself to be crucified so we can have that message. It was a great act of compassion and real tremendous sacrifice. If you study The Perfect Matrimony, especially, there are many examples of different traditions that explain the essential mysticism of the death of the ego. Even in Islam you find the war of Prophet Muhammed against the infidels, which is a symbol of working against your own defects. So, they are masked and coded in different ways, maybe not explicitly being crucified on the cross, but there are other examples of meditation and purification that are elaborated within the different traditions. 
Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican Christ, was crucified. You can study sacred texts online, especially. He is another example of a master who carried his cross amongst the streets of the Aztecs, specifically. You can study Aztec Christic Magic by Samael Aun Weor to learn more about the mysteries of Quetzalcoatl. Also, Kabbalah of Mayan Mysteries should have references there too.
Question: What is the descent into hell look like practically? It seems to imply to tolerate defects to a certain degree in order to gather experience about them. If so, this is a very dangerous matter, is it not? Instructor: Yes, it is. Practically speaking, there are levels to entering hell, so to speak. Obviously, a deep example of that is if you physically go to sleep, you are meditating and awaken consciousness within the internal worlds, you can find yourself within the hell regions, where you are outside your physical body, but are navigating those regions. That is one way where you can descend into hell and actually investigate certain defects of yours. But perhaps for many people who may not be proficient or efficient with astral travel, we enter hell many times in our daily life, in our psychological states. When you have an ordeal in life, a conflict in which you have a tremendous, strong sense of self emerge, a defect that is producing a lot of suffering within you―you are in hell. You are descending. You are facing yourself. The term descent, in terms of the initiatic studies, has to do with confronting and evaluating one's psychological states within a given circumstance, where you face a problem and your reaction to it, and the reaction is what is most compelling. How are you looking at yourself? Are you looking at yourself? Are you examining the intricacies and the subtleties of your mind: Pilate, your heart: Caiaphas, or your desires: Judas? Practically speaking, we descend in hell when we face ourselves, when we confront our own iniquities. Now it is important that in a sense, we have patience with ourselves, because it is difficult to practice. Obviously, if you have a challenge and a painful moment in your life, an ordeal, it can be very hard to transform it, especially if we are not training ourselves well enough. We have to have patience with ourselves, to understand we make mistakes, that we identify to a degree, more or less, with our errors. We need to tolerate ourselves in that regard, but we also have to be very firm and have no tolerance with our ego, and really go to war against it, to fight against it, to make the effort to really see what it is. That is how you gain valuable knowledge and experience―when you extract understanding from the different circumstances of life. This is why we mediate. We are observing ourselves throughout the day. We are shining light within our psychological interior, and we are looking for the dark conditions of the mind, which are lurking in the shadows, our defects, egos, so that we gain knowledge about them, by looking at what they are and how they function, think, feel, and do. It is a very intricate and dangerous matter, because if we identify with and give our energy to our thoughts, feelings and desires―thinking that we are thinking and feeling that we are feeling and acting on a negative impulse―obviously we waste energy. We fall down, so to speak, in the path of the cross, in a manner of speaking, in a psychological sense. It is a very dangerous matter, and we have to be very careful. Question: I have always been saying “אישים Ishim, assist me in the name of שׁדי Shaddai” in the Invocation of Solomon. You said it is אל שׁדי El Shaddai. Is that correct? Instructor: You can say שׁדי Shaddai or אל שׁדי El Shaddai. It really is the same power, that you are invoking the power of the Holy Spirit, the Almighty Living God within sexuality. I personally say אל שׁדי El Shaddai. We might have a more updated translation in one of the more recent publications of the Gnostic Prayer Book. Specifically, you can say אל שׁדי El Shaddai. “אישים Ishim, assist me in the name of שׁדי Shaddai” or אל שׁדי El Shaddai. They are both effective. What matters is that you are praying to that aspect of the Tree of Life and to your inner sephiroth to receive divine aid. Question: Easter has become a celebratory holiday. In light of everything it symbolizes, should it be celebrated? Should it still be a holiday for us? What should we be doing? What can we use this time for in a practical sense, or are we just going about our regular inner work?
Instructor: You can perform the Eucharist in remembrance and recognition of Christ’s sacrifice, the Master Aberamentho, but also, to inspire those divine solar forces within you so that you can charge your heart with Christ, that force. We should celebrate Easter. It is a very sacred day. It is a holy day, which we can follow or adhere to by practicing deep meditation, especially the Eucharist, and deepening our psychological work, because that really is the Essence that determines our spiritual trajectory. Our inner work is based on the work of Christ. The energies of the Eucharist are especially powerful for that. You can perform that in your home. You do not necessarily have to do it in a group. That can really give you a lot of strength and encouragement for change.
Question: In this lecture you referenced the sixth commandment, because the number sixty came up in a reading. It made me wonder: how we can make numerology connections correctly? Also, if there are ten commandments, but the numerological tablets only go up from 1 to 9, how do we differentiate the first commandment from the tenth in the text? Instructor: In terms of numerology, to really be adept at interpreting the numbers within scripture, you have to be very familiar with Kabbalah, but also the sacred arcana of The Eternal Tarot. There are different courses online on The Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah and the Twenty-Two Arcana of Hebrew and Tarot, especially, where you can study what these numbers signify. Once you have a very profound knowledge of what those principles mean, it becomes easier when you interpret the scriptures, to understand the correlations and connections. Specifically, the Tarot is the building blocks of the scriptures, from East or West. If you really want to understand what these different scriptures signify, study the synthesis, which is the arcana, the laws of the sacred, eternal tarot. The number six can relate to the sixth commandment, as I said, “Thou shall not fornicate,” which in Hebrew or in Jewish mysticism is very profound. But if you really want to understand in a deeper sense the ten commandments but even the twelve commandments of Moses, there are more than just ten that are commonly propagated in the world. You can go to glorian.org. There is a course about that, The Twelve Commandments of Moses, I believe, where you can study in a very deep way the significance of those laws, which relate to the tarot especially, but also Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, and many forms of mysticism that also complement each other. There are many aspects and layers to this knowledge. I gave a synthesis, but also a brief overview of different myths that relate to numerology and Hebrew and the Tree of Life. In synthesis, it all boils down to your practical work, but if you want to study, you can. These resources will help you to elaborate deeper into the meaning of these numbers’ application to your life. Question: Would you say that נצח Netzach in the Tree of Life is related to Pilate? Can you go into the three traitors and how they relate to the Tree of Life? Is there a polarity of inferior and superior in the sephiroth they represent? Can you please describe their polarities? 
Instructor: Yes, we can relate the Tree of Life to the three traitors, specifically. We say that the Tree of Life relates to the aspects of our Being. The three traitors really belong to hell. They belong to קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth, the subconsciousness, the hell realms, the inferior dimension, the inverted dimension of the Tree of Life. Now our mind is נצח Netzach, which is thought, the mental body, the mental sphere, which in us is abused by Pilate, so to speak, our lunar mind. הוד Hod, the emotions, can relate to the desires of the heart, which, there is correlation to Judas especially, to the moon, because astrologically, הוד Hod is related to the moon, but also to יסוד Yesod, which is desire, sexual energy, sexual force. Judas takes the force of יסוד Yesod and abuses it within hell. Pilate takes the power of the mind within נצח Netzach and abuses it within the inferior worlds. Then Caiaphas, which is our evil will, takes the potential energies of our willpower within תפארת Tiphereth, and conditions and channels them within קְלִיפּוֹת Klipoth, through desire.
While the Tree of Life in itself is pure, in its superior aspects of our Being, we do find those regions reflected within the sephiroth themselves within the infernal planes. You can say נצח Netzach, הוד Hod, יסוד Yesod, and מלכות Malkuth have a polarity, but we use this image of the ten sephiroth and its inversion to arrive at an easier understanding or grasp of what these principles imply. The ten sephiroth above are of the Being, but their inversion is in hell, which is really where the three traitors belong. Yes, they do relate to the sephiroth. They are the shadows of the Tree of Life. They are in Islam known as the tree of زقوم Zaqqum, the tree of death. We find that parallel of hell within all religions specifically. I wish you a Happy Easter, that you enjoy the holiday, in practice and in meditation especially, a reflection upon Christ within you. |
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