All of creation comes from three forces: a masculine projective force, a feminine receptive force, and the union of those two forces, a neutralizing force, which is sex. Even this manifested universe in which we all live was created through the union of masculine and feminine principles.
In the beginning there was the परब्रह्मन् Parabrahman, a Sanskrit term for “the highest Brahman,” the Absolute or universal self, the deification of a masculine principle. That masculine principle interacted with the मूलप्रकृति Mulaprakriti, a Sanskrit term meaning “the root substance,” which is the abstract, deific, feminine principle, in order to create all levels of manifested reality. Samael Aun Weor teaches us about the Mulaprakriti in his writings on Kundalini Yoga. He wrote: Mulaprakriti is a Christonic semen from which the universe emerged. We have Mulaprakriti in our sexual organs, and from it springs up life. Therefore, we see that hermetic principle, “as above, so below.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga
The power to create life is Mulaprakriti, Christonic semen. That force is also within us, within our sexual organs. That energy gives us the power to create life, and we see this in a common way that it is through sexual union that we can create a physical child. But that sexual energy has tremendous potential for our spiritual life. That sexual energy gives us the ability to give birth to the soul within, and that is why this energy is so important for understanding how we can do the Gnostic work.
It is only through the use of our sexual energy that we can achieve our highest spiritual potential. Division of Sexual Energy
Samael Aun Weor wrote that sexual energy can be divided into three distinct types.
The first, as was mentioned, is the energy having to do with the reproduction of the race and the health of the physical body in general. This is what gives us the ability to maintain our vitality and physical life, and also to give birth to children. But many people do not realize that the sexual energy is also the energy that has to do with the spheres of thought, feeling, and will. It is through that creative energy that we think, that we feel, that we have willpower. We might have experienced this, that when we have a sexual attraction, we can develop an extremely strong will in order to pursue that other person. In fact, sexual energy is willpower, and if we learn to harness sexual energy in the correct way, we can have tremendous willpower, not just for chasing a temporary physical sensation of lust, but for developing our soul. That is why the third division of sexual energy is the energy that is found related with the divine spirit of man. We need to be born again of water and spirit. In the beginning, the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2), and those waters were the Mulaprakriti, the sexual waters within the higher states of manifestation, but also within our own body. When we are born again, it is from that same sexual water. There is an esoteric secret practice through which we can use that energy to be born again that was not taught publicly. It is something that is now taught publicly through the teachings of Samael Aun Weor as part of the Aquarian Era. For a long time, it was kept secret because of its potential to create harm as well as its potential to develop the soul. 
Creating Higher Bodies
How can we use sexual energy to develop the soul? The esoteric teacher Gurdjieff wrote about the sexual substance, the semen, which is the sexual Mulaprakriti in both men and women, the sexual waters, the sexual humidity in a woman and the semen in a man.
Gurdjieff wrote: This sacred substance arises in the presence of all beings […] in order that by its means they may consciously or automatically fulfill that part of their Being-duty which consists in the continuation of their species. ―G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
So, this, as we have mentioned before, relates to the role of sexual energy to perpetuate the human race, but Gurdjieff goes on to explain another purpose for this sexual energy:
But in the presence of three-brained beings (like us) it also arises in order that they may consciously transform it for coating their higher being-bodies for their own being. ―G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Those higher being-bodies are what we call in this tradition solar bodies. They are vehicles of the soul which have been consciously created through sexual transmutation. To mutate means “to change form,” “transmute,” to take the sexual energy from its raw form and to convert it into a higher form, to sublimate it, to take it out of a liminal state―where it is between its potentials―and to bring it up into a higher state, so it may become sublime or divine.
Many of us know that we can use the sexual energy to create a baby, but very few people, usually only people who have been esoterically initiated, are aware that it is that same sexual energy, used in a different way, which can give birth to the bodies of the soul. This is why we learn in Christianity, “With patience ye will possess your souls” (Luke 21:19). We do not have solar bodies yet. Many of us are aware that we have an astral body of emotions and a mental body of intellect, but we are not aware that those bodies are created by nature. They are what are called lunar bodies, and unfortunately when the physical body dies, those bodies will be lost to nature. If we want immortal bodies, bodies that are capable of transmitting the light of divinity―which is a very high potency energy―and also bodies which are capable of surviving after physical death, then we need to consciously create the solar bodies by transforming sexual energy. This is not an automatic work. That means that not everyone will become a possessor of a soul. Only those who apply the science will be able to develop the soul. The Dangerous Power of Sex
The Gnostic work has at its foundation sexual transmutation as the cornerstone, because that stone of sexuality is what is required to give birth to the soul. Our goal, our aim, is to develop our highest spiritual potential, but we should be careful because as Samael Aun Weor taught us:
…within sex is a major force that can liberate the human being, but also a major force that can enslave the human being. ―Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah
Sex has a dual potential. It can create, but it can also destroy. We can see that people who have abused sex can destroy their minds, their hearts, and their bodies very quickly. Unfortunately, sex is a very potent power, and because we have not been taught how to use it properly, it has caused a lot of pain, sexual crimes, sexual degeneration, on our planet.
But now we have the key, the sexual mysteries, the great arcanum (divine secret or law, from the Latin arcanus) in order to use sex to liberate us, to create the soul and to liberate us from our enslavement.
When man is the master of sex, he is the upright pentagram. The head which is the top of the star is dominating the sexual organs, which are between the two legs of the star. That upright pentagram is a representation of the perfection of the human being. We need to have our mind, our own willpower, aligned with divine will, in domination of our sexual impulses. But for many people, it is that sexual force which enslaves the mind and the body.
We have talked before about the three brains. We have an intellectual brain and an emotional brain and a motor-instinctive-sexual brain. The intellect is the slowest brain, and the emotional brain is a little faster, but that motor-instinctive-sexual brain is the fastest of the three.
When you are in a life-threatening situation, your instincts will immediately come out to preserve your life. It will react without any thought, before you can even emotionally feel what kind of situation you are in. Your instincts will respond to the situation. The sexual energy is even faster and more powerful than that, because while our instinct urges us to preserve our life―we have an instinct for survival―our sexual energy can urge us to act in ways that are even contrary to our own survival. A mother will risk her life to protect her children. A man may risk his life in order to woo a woman that he is in love with. We see that sexual energy has the power to dominate us, but precisely because of its tremendous power, if we learn how to harness it, to transmute and sublimate that force in accordance with our will and the law of divinity, it can become the greatest power, the power of a master. It can become the power which emanates the light of Christ into manifestation.
We see here the 16th Arcanum, which we know in our tradition is the Fulminated Tower. When that pentagram of the upright, perfect human being falls, the two legs, the sexual organs, rise above the mind. The inverted pentagram is the fallen human, and just like that, we see in this tower that the fall of man comes when we have a sexual fall, when we are dominated by sexual passion rather than in control of sexuality.
Manly P. Hall wrote about this in relation to this card specifically, the 16th Arcanum: The Tower. He wrote: The divine nature of humanity is depicted as a tower. When his crown is destroyed, man falls into the lower world and takes upon himself the illusion of materiality. Here also is a key to the mystery of sex. ―Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Why is Manly P. Hall associating sex with the divine nature of humanity? This tower? The tower is our spinal column upon which rests the crown, the crown chakra. At the base of that spinal column are our sexual organs. That sexual energy needs to flow upward, up the spinal column into the mind, into the crown chakra, in order to nourish the entire organism, as well as the internal bodies: the vital body, the astral body, the mental body.
How Do We Use Our Sexual Energy?
When that sexual energy is expelled out of us, specifically through orgasm, when we lose that vital force, that is when the tower becomes fulminated, and man falls to ruin. We become slaves to materiality. We begin to believe the illusions of egotistical desires, mundane ambitions, and we become trapped in this temporary world, unable to create our souls, because we have lost the very energy of the soul itself.
It is very, very important that we understand these two outcomes of sex, one which is liberation and birth and one which is destruction, enslavement. When we use sexual energy wisely, when we conserve it and transmute it, we can reach the highest states of human potential. When we lose that sexual seed in men and in women, when we orgasm, we lose that energy. We short circuit the organism, and through that process, we slowly or sometimes quickly destroy our bodies, our emotional center, our mental center, and we lose the potential to give birth to the soul. Each of us has to ask ourselves, “How do we currently use our sexual energy?” Throughout much of history, we were taught to repress the sexual energy, that sex was something dirty. We were not publicly taught this sacred and tremendous potential of sex to give birth to the soul. Unfortunately, through that kind of teaching, many people learn that they should repress all of their sexual instincts. But the sexual energy is a powerful current that cannot be dammed up like a river. If you try to hold it back without giving it the proper outlets for its expression, it can destroy the organism. It can destroy the mind, the heart, and even the body. Those who only repress sex and do not understand how to use it in a divine way will unfortunately develop grave mental and emotional imbalances, and sometimes go on to commit horrible sexual crimes. We understand that repression is not the proper use of sexual energy and can have very harmful outcomes. Conversely, indulgence in sexuality can also result in the destruction of our organism. Those who abuse the sexual energy through fornication, masturbation, adultery, and other forms of sexual degeneration, will also destroy their minds, their hearts, their bodies over time. Through the loss of their vital force, that loss of sexual energy in orgasm, they are going to destroy the organism, because that energy has proper channels through which it should flow. Unfortunately, the orgasm short circuits all of those channels and creates a sort of depletion within the organism. Since many of us have been orgasming for much of this lifetime and even in past lifetimes, unfortunately we have psychological and physical conditioning to feel like that behavior is needed, like that behavior is normal, although it is not. In fact, on this planet in particular, it is one of the outliers in which sexuality is abused in this way. 
Proper Spiritual Circuitry
The natural functioning of the sexual energy is to be transmuted or sublimated up the spinal column and into the brain, so it can nourish the physical body and the energetic bodies, and so that it can coat those bodies and crystallize into a higher being-body, a solar body through which a high potency of divine energy can begin to express, and also a body, a solar body that can outlast the physical body, that can become immortal and survive after death.
We see here possibilities: the outcome of orgasm will create destruction, but the outcome of transmutation or sublimation of sexual energy will lead to the birth of the soul. This is the proper use of sexuality. When we feel that restlessness, that stimulation of our sexual energy, that sexual heat that feels the need to express, there are certain practices that we can work with, and I will talk about those in a moment. We do need to use that energy, but in a divine way, in a sacred way, in order to preserve it and use it for spiritual purposes. Unfortunately, for many of us, we are accustomed to orgasm, to expelling the energy and to losing it. Samael Aun Weor writes that: Within the organism there are certain canals, nadis, through which this powerful energy must normally circulate. When this energy infiltrates the delicate mechanism of other functions, failure is the violent outcome. In this case, extremely delicate centers in the human organism are damaged, and in fact, the individual becomes an infrasexual. ―Samael Aun Weor
Infra, meaning, “under, below,” those who are dominated by sex rather than those who dominate their sexual energy. Infrasexuals can engage in all those various forms of sexual perversion that we see abundantly on this planet and in these times, and while many people consider that to be normal behavior, it is unfortunately leading to the degeneration of our entire species.
We need to learn, relearn, the proper, natural channels through which we can raise that sexual energy. Practice for Sexual Transmutation
Within this tradition, we teach a practice called pranayama. This is taught in many other traditions, and there are various forms of pranayama. However, we caution you to be careful when using pranayama as taught in other traditions because it may or may not be a helpful form of pranayama.
In fact, some pranayamas that are taught are actually taught in a way that expels the vital energy, that causes that harmful effect that we are trying to avoid. We encourage you to use pranayamas taught within this Gnostic tradition, especially in the beginning, because these are practices that we know and that we can endorse, that will transmute the sexual energy in the proper way. 
One such pranayama practice which is very simple, which I have used for many years, is the Ham-Sah pranayama. We can see in this image three channels that lie around and over the spinal column. The middle channel is the Shushumna and on the left and the right are the Ida and Pingala canals. Those are masculine and feminine channels.
Within us when we use pranayama, we are harnessing the vital force. That vital force is prana, and yama means, “to restrain.” We are using breath and this breathing technique in order to harness the vital force that is within our own sexual organs and to raise it up through these three channels into the brain into the crown chakra. This practice is especially useful for single people who do not have a partner. When we feel a lot of sexual stimulation, we can use this practice to transmute that energy and to raise it up to nourish our bodies. Also, married people can use this practice if they feel that they have a lot of Chi, a lot of sexual energy, and they need some of this practice to cool themselves off and to bring that energy into harmony. The first step of the practice is to inhale deeply and slowly through your nostrils while mentally pronouncing the mantra Ham:
Of course, because we are breathing in through the nose, we have to mentally mantralize. While we are inhaling, we visualize the sexual energy rising up these two channels Ida and Pingala that wrap around the spinal column into the brain. That is the first step: breathing in and mantralizing Ham while visualizing energy rising from the sexual organs through these two canals into the brain.
The second step is to retain the breath as long as comfortable while we visualize that energy like a light saturating into the brain, the glands, the crown chakra, the third eye. We visualize that light nourishing and stimulating our consciousness, especially the pineal gland which is the root of the soul. Then in the third step, after retaining the breath, we exhale quickly through the mouth vocalizing Sah, like a hiss.
We visualize the energy moving from the brain into the heart chakra and nourishing the heart.
You can perform this as many times as needed, but I encourage you to do it at least ten to fifteen minutes every day. Women should not practice any transmutation or mantralization while they are on their menstrual cycle. During that one week per month of your period, you should not practice this transmutation, because it is a time of cleansing, of removing negative energies out of the body, and unfortunately, if you try to transmute your energy at that time, you will be retaining those unclean energies and raising them up into your body, which is counterproductive. Women should rest during that one week. The rest of the time, every day, we can use this practice, and especially if we are accustomed to orgasm, we should should be using this practice in the beginning before we try any of the other more advanced sexual transmutation practices with a partner, because this allows us to work individually without that stimulation of a partner, in order to master our sexual force. In ancient times, when monks and nuns were initiated, they would work with a practice like this, as a single person for many years, before they would be given a partner with whom they could practice the more advanced stages of sexual transmutation, and so, because we are not monks and nuns and because many of us have lived with bad sexual behaviors and misused our sexual energy, it is even more important that we work with a practice like this, to begin to get back in control of our body. If you notice that you are losing energy, then you want to work with this practice longer and longer each day. There is no maximum limit through which we can work with pranayama. It is a great practice to use every day and as often as needed. Pranayama will help us to awaken consciousness, because as I mentioned before, that vital force, that sexual energy, is very potent, and can give us the energy we need for those practices like self-observation throughout the day that can help us to maintain awakened consciousness. Pranayama can also help us to harness sexual energy for disintegrating ego. If you remember a previous lecture, Consciousness, Ego, and Personality, we discovered that much of our free consciousness is within egotistical, false identities, desires that are repetitive, habitual, desires that are related with mundane satisfaction, sensation. Unfortunately, the only way that we can escape out of those desires is through disintegrating them, and we can only disintegrate them through this power of Mulaprakriti, our Divine Mother, the divine, feminine force of our sexuality. This practice of pranayama is very powerful for awakening consciousness and also for disintegrating ego. 
Sexual Magic: The Science of Love
However, if we do have a partner, if we are in a legitimately constituted marriage with our lifelong partner, we can practice sexual magic, which will have an even higher result, even greater effects.
Sexual magic is the practice that we use to create the solar bodies. All creation requires a masculine and feminine force, to unite through sex, and the creation of the solar bodies is no different. Unfortunately, single people alone can not create the solar bodies. We need a man and a woman, to unite sexually through love, through marriage, to retain that sexual seed, renounce orgasming in the sexual act, and through that process they can create the soul. Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Perfect Matrimony: The sexual act is the real consubstantiation of love in the tremendous psycho-physical reality of our nature. Something is created when a man and a woman unite sexually. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
As we mentioned earlier, what is created are those higher being-bodies, vehicles of the soul.
Manly P. Hall also wrote that marriage is what is needed for us to develop our highest potential. He wrote: From this point of view, marriage is regarded as a companionship in which two complete individualities manifesting opposite polarities are brought into association that each may thereby awaken the qualities latent in the other and thus assist in the attainment of individual completeness. ―Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Sexual magic is the great arcanum, the greatest secret of all of the esoteric mystery schools. This has the power to give birth to the soul. But unfortunately, if used unwisely, sexuality also has the power to destroy us and to convert us into demons, if that sexuality is used in the wrong way. If we engage in orgasm, we will become infrasexuals, we will become slaves of sex, instinctive desires, and we will never be able to develop the soul in alignment with divine will.
The orgasm is what breaks our connection to divinity within, and sexual transmutation can regenerate us and can restore the connection and the covenant with our inner divinity. I will read a brief description of the practice of sexual magic from the esoteric teacher Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller, in which he describes how the sexual act is performed between a husband and wife when we are working to retain and transmute that sexual energy. He wrote: Instead of the coitus which reaches the orgasm, sweet caresses, amorous phrases and delicate touching should be lavished reflectively, keeping the mind constantly separated from animal sexuality, sustaining the purest spirituality as if the act were a true religious ceremony.
That is the practice between husband and wife that can give birth to the soul.
Sexual union―in which each partner represents those two polarized forces, masculine principle and feminine principle―magnetizes the couple so that a circuit is created, in which the sexual energy is fully charged, magnetizing with both polarities and giving birth to the soul. Without that union, we can still perform transmutation within ourselves and achieve a certain degree of spiritual development. But it requires a partner to reach the highest levels of spiritual development and the birth of the immortal solar bodies. That is why sexual transmutation is the foundation of the Gnostic work. The cornerstone, the sexual stone, is the foundation upon which our spiritual development depends. If we can not harness the sexual energy and use it for these kinds of purposes, unfortunately we do not have the necessary foundation for spiritual development. Psychological Attitudes Towards Sex
It is very important too that we begin to cultivate a different psychological response to sex. We have been extremely conditioned in our contemporary culture to view sex and the opposite sex in a very lustful way, all about stimulating more sensation, more physical desire, but sex is a sacrament. Sex itself is marriage, according to nature. The union of man and woman through sex is marriage, a natural law. It is a very, very sacred act. Unfortunately, when we go to engage in that sexual act, our minds are very polluted with lustful thoughts like animals.
It does take time for us to develop purity, psychological purity, in the sexual act. We begin as animals, but through transmuting that force and conserving that force, generally, over time, we can begin to change our psychology―regenerate―to bring that fallen inverted pentagram back into the upright position where the mind dominates sex, and the mind can become united with divinity. I wanted to read a passage from Samael Aun Weor in the book Sexology where he describes how we should look at the opposite sex. He begins writing about the male sex, but then he goes on to describe for females as well. Here is what he wrote: We males are fascinated by a beautiful painting, or are enchanted by a beautiful sunset, or are captivated when observing an eclipse through an observatory. But the woman immediately provokes in us the craving of possessing her, the urge of becoming one with her, the drive of integrating with her, in order to participate in the plentitude of the universe. 
We see depicted here the two pillars of the temple, which represent the masculine and feminine principles. That space between us is space for divinity, for light, for Christ. In the sexual act, if we become totally identified with sensation, we are no longer observing ourselves and remembering divinity. Each time we enter the sexual act to perform sexual magic or sexual alchemy, we need to remember that this is a sacrament. We need to leave the space for divinity to be present. Divinity is present when we feel true love, and love is distinct from lust.
As I mentioned, we do begin the sexual act in an animal way and lustful way, because that is our current state. But through transmutation over time, we can convert that lust into chastity, into purity, which is the substance of love. 
The Three Factors for Spiritual Revolution
We need sexual energy to perform the revolution of consciousness, and the sexual energy relates with the factor of birth. As I mentioned, birth of the soul depends on the proper use of sexual energy.
We also use the sexual energy in the process of death, death of the ego. Much of us is trapped in a false sense of self, in crystallized desires and patterns of behavior which are harmful. We are slaves to those desires, but we can become liberated from those desires through transmutation of sexual energy, and that process is a process of death. That is how sex can give birth in a positive way, birth of the soul, and can destroy also in a positive way, because it is destroying that which is false and giving birth to that which is true. The third factor for the revolution of consciousness as taught to us by Samael Aun Weor is sacrifice―birth, death, and sacrifice. Sacrifice relates to sexual transmutation because especially in the beginning, it is very difficult for us to sacrifice our desires, and sexual desires are some of the most powerful desires we have. Over time as the organism is renounced and the psychological person becomes accustomed to working with sexual transmutation, we experience the benefits of that practice. We experience the serenity and the joy and the vitality that is given to us by that practice. Most importantly, we experience how conserving and transmuting the sexual energy reconnects us to our inner divinity, granting us mystical experiences, and granting us the return of our conscience so we know how to act in difficult situations. That gift is so precious that no physical moment of bliss, no physical sensations, are worth sacrificing it. 
To Learn More
There is much more to sexual transmutation than we can discuss in one short lecture, and so I urge all of you to read the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, because this book contains many of the mysteries across religions throughout time in which the sexual teaching was hidden. It also describes various practices that you can work with, aside from the two that I have mentioned today, in order to transmute your sexual energy, whether as a single person or as a married couple.
As you can see from our turnout tonight that, this is a pretty compelling topic. But there are also many misunderstandings that are often associated with these principles. In a theological sense especially, we often think of fate as in fatality, and we think of free will in terms of our limited experience.
We will talk a lot today about the nature of fate, free will, and divine forgiveness, not from a theoretical perspective or from a philosophical standpoint. We will talk about it from an experiential perspective, because in our studies, the term γνῶσις gnosis in Greek means “knowledge from experience.” It is what we live. It is what we verify. We will mention many writers, even theologians on this topic, and some points of view that have been documented in our world’s literature, poetry and scripture, about the nature of fate, free will and mercy. I hope by the end to leave you with some understanding of the principles of these truths that can inform how we navigate life. More importantly, these principles are practical. There is something that we can experience within our very being, within our consciousness, and not merely leave it as a theory, as a belief, something to uphold in the mind or a conviction in the heart, but without evidence. 
Our Focus
We will talk about destiny. Our focus will be precisely about some fundamental principles. We will examine the relationship between fate and free will, which obviously, we know from our humanity’s legacy from scripture, writings, and philosophy, is often very tense. There is a nuance and dynamic relationship between the nature of destiny and also our agency.
We will also talk about the very famous term karma. We will talk about its nature, its notoriety. Basically, in synthesis, we can say it is cause and effect, action and consequence. We will talk about the often misunderstood principle of spiritual action and its results in our life. We will also talk about grace from a divine perspective, and the role of the human individual in developing a personal relationship with divinity. Also, it is about expanding our own agency, how we act, what we can do in the particulars and challenges of our own life. Lastly, we will explain what real freedom is, what it means to have divine intercession and the famous term redemption, from a psychological and spiritual perspective. 
Destiny or the Divine Law
Now when we talk about destiny, we talk about divine law. We talk about realities that are beyond belief―not in the superstitious sense―but realities that are eternal, that belong to nature, to the cosmos, to the individual.
When we talk about divine law, we mean precisely in the same way we talk about gravity. There are laws that govern nature, the universe, and our psychology. There are laws that relate to how divinity acts within humanity, within all the infinite and the many infinites. This can help clarify some common misconceptions about the nature of divine agency, especially when we are examining our own life and how to develop that personal relationship with divinity. That knowledge of experience of the truth is gnosis, the Greek term for divine wisdom, what we live. When we experience what divinity is, such as through practice like meditation and awakening in dreams, we perceive that there are laws that operate within divine reality and divine realms. They are profound and eternal. They do not waver. They do not conform to our prejudices, our preconceptions, what we want. They simply are. In the same way that these laws exist, in terms of how we can navigate life or in the sense of gravity, how we exist in this world. There are laws that once fulfilled within our consciousness, within our practice, within our efforts, they result in the divine fruition of experience: a deeper connection with profound divine states like compassion, altruism, faith (which is knowledge from experience), real love, real patience. These are psychological and spiritual qualities that resonate with higher principles. These laws, the divine law, is precisely what any spiritual seeker strives towards in any religion, no matter what culture or creed. It is an aspiring towards these higher laws that we seek to change our mistaken ways of being. Now, in the west we have a common misconception that divinity somehow can, in a sense, basically do what he wants or do what she wants, depending on the tradition, eastern or western. But the reality is that even divinity obeys the laws set forth within the higher regions of nature or higher ways of being. In this process of seeking divinity in our own life and overcoming the causes of suffering and seeking to improve our lives, we come to recognize that we have a choice. In relationship to higher laws, ways of being, ethical conduct, superior ways of acting in life, we have to make a choice, not in the future or in the past, but now. We have a choice, moment by moment, when we are criticized, slandered, hurt, or betrayed. We must watch and examine our heart. What will we do? How will we behave? What will we accomplish in such a moment? This is free will. Obviously, we have a choice. The very fact that we have the potential to choose in moments of great crises, emphasizes to us the nature of a compassionate divinity, because a divinity that would simply have us do what he wills or she will―we call divinity the Being in our gnostic studies―if the Being were to force the individual to do what it wants, it would be merely a tyrant. There would be no relationship. We would be like a robot, a machine. Really, divinity is a conscious state of being that is very free, very profound, very unlimited, and very dynamic. Moment by moment, we can learn to access that. So, again the choice is ours. Do we learn to follow the inclinations of the heart, an intuitive understanding that knows right from wrong, conscience, or do we follow our own whims, our personal desires, our habits, our attachments? There is an epic poem in English called Paradise Lost. I’m sure some of you have heard about this work by John Milton. It is a very famous work of literature which many people have studied for centuries. It is very beautiful and profound, really a poetic narration of the fall Eden, according to the Bible, and is the foundation of many Judeo-Christian worldviews. Even in Islam they talk about the fall of the rebel angels and the fall of humanity in a foregone time, which are very beautiful symbols of internal psychological and spiritual truths. John Milton, particularly in Book 3 of Paradise Lost, explains the nature of a divine and compassionate creator. This creator is not something foreign or outside of us. This divinity or this law, this conscience, this voice of real wisdom, which speaks in the silence of the mind and the heart, is internal. This law, this truth, this way of being, which is profoundly intelligent and wise, gives us the choice, whether to follow it, or our desires. Book 3 of Paradise Lost explains, in the voice of the Father―in Milton’s depiction―the voice of divinity speaking to a host of angels about the nature of choice, and the autonomy of the soul, and that without freedom to choose, there would be no virtue. There would be no opportunity to grow. There would be no wisdom. Divinity would be a tyrant, as I said, and there would be no freedom to be. What better response is there than to be given a choice, than to be told what to do all the time? We should be persuaded by our own conscience, to follow the freedom of the heart, yet which is freedom born from following the divine law. It’s a funny paradox, right? Our conscience is like a law. It tells us what to do, and if we obey it, we find freedom. You know it in your conscience and your being when we do what is right. We feel strength. We feel fulfilment. We feel peace, and when we break that law, we suffer. We enter anarchy, chaos, and pain. So, the Father in those lines from Book 3 of Paradise Lost explains the nature of free will and that we have to decide what we want, because people obviously blame God, right? You hear people from some church, synagogue, mosque, or any faith, in which they feel traumatized, whether by a war, persecution, the failing of the clergy, spiritual trauma, abuse, and betrayal. People look at religion and say there is no divinity, because we see the poor example of religious and spiritual people what should not be. The Father here in the poem explains and abdicates Himself of, really, the failures of the human individual. In talking about the fallen angels, He says: So will fall, he and his faithless progeny: whose fault?
So, to kind of break down the English here, He is basically saying that, yes, as divinity, the divine is omniscient and sees all, understands everything, and has foreknowledge that can anticipate what will come. But despite knowing what will happen in a sense, divinity says, “You have a choice. You have your will, and real growth occurs when we align our will with divinity willingly, voluntarily in our life.” Otherwise, as it was explained earlier in these verses, how is it possible to show real allegiance and love?
Love does not grow under the whip. One has to be willingly devoted to our inner divinity. But obviously, you know, people criticize these verses, especially in universities, especially if you take a course on Milton, where people are very jaded, sour, morbid. They think, “Well, why didn’t divinity just force me to do the right thing?” Well, this is why. We cannot be forced. We have to choose. We have to act because we have a spark of divine agency, which must learn to grow, develop, and be nurtured, to be fed. So, instead of looking at fate as something fatal or mechanical, it is really managed with intelligence. He continues: So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Really, simply put, when we are infatuated by our own desires, we judge mistakenly, and we become the author of our own pain. But we have the potential, the freedom, until we enthrall ourselves. We become hypnotized by what we want, a priori―our prejudices, our attitudes, our appetites, our desires.
Divinity cannot break this law. Divinity established the law for a reason, these higher principles. Really, to force the unwilling, in a sense, is to revoke the high decree, which is unchangeable. It is eternal, which basically allows the potential or an opportunity for real freedom. But we enter suffering because we choose to. 
The Fates
In a practical sense, we can relate this all to what are the Fates according to the Greek myths.
We have three women who are symbols of divine law. We have Clotho the Spinner, Lachesis the Allotter, and Atropos the Unturning. Often, the Fates are associated with these women or female figures who spin yarn, and that this thread is a life of individual beings. Even the gods are measured by the Fates, and this is very interesting. So, in the myth, you have Clotho who spins the yarn, Lachesis who measures the length of the thread, and Atropos who cuts. This is a symbol of a person’s life span. We obviously have a measurement of life in terms of the length of the cloth, and the cutting is death. Now in the myth, it is often related that Zeus is the only one who sometimes has the same authority of the Fatea, but all the other gods are subjected to these three women. This is very profound. It corroborates what Milton taught: divinity cannot break his own laws. It operates in accordance with cause and effect. It is by understanding cause and effect, how our actions produce our life, where we can develop real wisdom, in which, we can consciously manage our situation. “And rather than suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” to quote Hamlet (Act 3.1), we can “take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.” We do so with intelligence. We take advantage of our life, and we learn to operate under a higher law. Now what is interesting is that these Fates, these women, represent divine intelligence. The Fates are not some arbitrary dispenser of blind justice, and that they are simply choosing “willy nilly,” in a metaphorical sense, who lives and who dies at a certain time. Really―and this is a very complex issue―these things are governed by intelligence, with wisdom. In fact, fate, what may happen or what could happen, or what should and will happen, is consciously managed. In that way we can understand that, as we are going to explain a little bit later, fate or karma―the Sanskrit word for cause and effect, action, the law―can be negotiated. It can be negotiated because there are intelligences behind all the happenings of life. These are not merely some superstitions. This is something that we can verify. We can experience. Now in the plethora of life’s events, we are faced with a lot of options, right? We have challenges, ordeals, and crises even: maybe at our job, maybe in our marriage, maybe in our career, in our family, with friends. There is a sea of potential. 
How Do We Face Potential?
This is symbolized in the 69th arcanum of the Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah.
You may notice from our lectures that we build on a lot of traditions, because we are trying to get at the heart of what they all practically mean, and how we can apply their principles for really improving our lifestyle. So, the tarot is often depicted as Egyptian symbols, cards, right? Unfortunately, we have inherited a tradition that historically has been abused, passed on in terms of fortune tellers and all that. But really, as we see here from the Eternal Tarot deck, available through Glorian Publishing, we have art and iconography that is very beautiful and profound. It relates to the notion of fate. As you see in this image, we have a male figure in a kind of a tunic or a cloth holding his hands over his eyes, and he is trying to feel his way blindly. This is us. In our life we may feel blind. We may not know divinity. We have a problem, a situation we do not know how to solve. We have difficulty at work, a conflict, maybe. We are being challenged. We feel lost. We look for answers. We look to spirituality. We look to books. We look to scriptures to teach us how to resolve the problems of daily living, and surrounded by a sea options, as I said, we become very overwhelmed. We are in chaos. We are in the arcanum of chance. However, what is very beautiful about this image is that you see the Egyptian Goddess Nuit reclining over the initiate or disciple. She is a representation of the divine feminine, or the Divine Mother. Of all the religions, you can call her Athena, Diana, Shekinah, Kundalini. She has many names: Miriam, Mary. She is not something outside of us. She is inside our heart. She is the divine presence or intelligence of our conscience, who guides us through the heart. As we walk blindly, She still protects Her child. She protects Her child as he or she wanders, trying to feel for a solution. So, the question is, how do we face potential? This card has some very interesting explanations that are pertinent to this discussion. Every arcanum or law, better said, is the Latin term for, for these higher realities, divine law. Arcana means plural for “laws” themselves. Each arcanum has some explanations related to them, that can offer us insight. Chance as a law known by the instinct. Symbolizes the human virtue of transcendental knowledge.
“Chance as a law known by the instinct.” This is very interesting, right?
We know situations in our life instinctually when we are really up in the air, and this is the emotional feeling we get when we receive this card, such as through a reading in our homes, in meditation, or in dreams. We sense there is a lot of potential out there, and we know by instinct, just by a reaction that there is a lot at stake, you know? We are looking for a solution. We are trying to solve it, but we can’t. The solution is in the next verse, which “symbolizes the human virtue of transcendental knowledge,” right? That is why we go to books, scriptures and everything, because we want some higher knowledge to teach us about what to do. But importantly in relation to this card, this transcendental knowledge is not from a book. It is from meditation. It is when you reflect on how your own life relates to a certain struggle, and you seek, in a state of serenity, for the solution, for the insight. That knowledge can come to us when the mind is still, and we could receive through images, in our imagination, with clarity, what to do [study and practice To Meditate is to See]. Now, kind of corroborating some of the earlier points about the Divine Mother, we find that in terms of this card, “it is associated to the planet Venus, the letter M, and the number 6.” Venus is obviously the goddess of love, our Divine Mother, the letter M, Mary, מרים Miriam in Hebrew. 
The number 6, if you studied the tarot, you know that the 6th Arcanum is Indecision, right? Another disciple is caught between two women, looking left, ignoring the Divine Mother on the right.
We are stuck with a choice. This card relates to chance, relates to indecision. You have many options. You don’t know what to do. You are indecisive. So, really, those moments we have to rely on our Divine Mother, our heart, our conscience. This is because it represents “the principle of the primary faculties as guidance in the way of life.” What are these primary faculties? Intuition, discrimination, discernment. It is not an intellectual faculty. You have a problem. Your mind tries to wander and get scared, thinking up solutions, panicking, “What am I going to do? How do I solve this?” The intellect is not a primary faculty. It is not the most important. The heart is more important. The heart can resolve problems easily, if we calm the mind, if we listen and wait. This is because in relation to the transcendental axiom, this law, this arcanum, cause and effect, is certain. What we do will have consequences, and those consequences will have later causes as it says here: “There is a fruit in any labor, and there is a labor in any fruit.” ―Transcendental Axiom of Arcanum 69: Chance
So, the chance is, you know, we may make a mistake, but the real labor is following our heart.
This card also emphasizes some points about forecasting, so what is interesting is that every arcanum has an element of prediction, kind of tells you what may happen, maybe in a future moment in relation to a problem or situation, especially if you do a reading. As an element of prediction, it promises retributions, compensations, satisfactory changes, opportunity for ranking ascension, success in real estate properties, thoughtless accomplishments of wishes, fortuitous attractions. ―Forecasting Element of Arcanum 69: Chance 
Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around?
Basically all this is pointing is the nature of cause and effect. कर्म Karma is the Sanskrit for “action and consequence” (from कर्मन karman,” to act”). It is certainty. It is knowing that in our heart, the right way of acting in a situation will produce compensation, positive rewards, many retributions, obviously, right?
Nothing is always good or bad, but a mixture. There is good in the bad and bad in the good, according to Samael Aun Weor, the founder of our tradition. So, cause and effect, right? When we hear of karma, we think of “You are going to get what you deserve.” Or “What goes around comes around.” You know that person was a real jerk at work, so they are going to get what’s coming to them. In a sense, it is true, because people talk, reputations spread, and people know. You find out pretty quickly or over time, the person’s true character, not merely just the gossip. But in essence, when we talk about karma, we are talking about those laws that govern everything: our relationships, psychology, countries, humanity, worlds, infinites. More important than just physical action is the state of our mind, which is the most important thing to think about when we examine the nature of cause and effect, of fate. I know we think of it as blind retribution, that karma is something blind or unjust, arbitrary. There is some credence to this feeling, because there are some pretty bad things that happen to people who are good and there are some pretty good things that happen to people who are bad. We look at the situation in our current life, and we think, “Why is this? Why does this happen? Why are the just punished and the criminals get away?” In reality, our perspective is very limited. We do not see the full picture. We talk a lot about in our studies how our consciousness can expand, awaken, and develop to a degree that we are able to investigate the root of certain situations, examining and understanding the causes of certain effects in life. This is not merely from this physical existence, but something even deeper like in dreams, visions, and meditation, even previous existences. It does not have to be something theoretical or a belief, but something we investigate, something we look for. There are levels to cause and effect. More importantly when we study karma, we are not studying it as some negative thing. It applies to all causes, conditions, and effects. We study karma because, in truth, we want to fulfill superior action and to understand why we are in this situation that we are in in life. No one can tell us that. No one can teach us that. That is something that we have to discover. Why do we suffer in a certain relationship, situation, illness, or whatever it may be? We could investigate the root cause of these phenomena and understand where we are at and also where we need to go. The Five Principles of Karma
Now, more importantly, when we study karma, cause and effect, this has to do with our own individual agency. I know we talked about fate and being in a certain situation in life. Maybe we want to understand why we are here. The way that we discover this is by understanding five principles of karma.
The first four were given by Tsongkhapa in his Lam Rim: Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. It is a great Tibetan treatise of Mahayana Buddhism. He is a very great master of that tradition. He initially explains how these four principles are what help us understand the nature of cause and effect. It is not just something physical. This is something psychological as well, because our mind and our thoughts really determine everything. We become what we think. If we have a negative state of mind, we are going to produce situations and consequences for ourselves which are going to be problematic. The reason why we study these five principles especially is to know how to act more appropriately, to follow our conscience, our heart. By understanding the laws of karma, the principles of karma, better said, we will have more strength, honestly. Just as these principles can apply to bad behavior, more importantly, they also apply to good behavior and can result in better outcomes for ourselves, because we always follow the trajectory of our own actions, even in our mind stream. The five principles of karma are:
In a sense, by following and understanding these five principles, we can learn to develop a deeply personal relationship with our inner divinity, because we understand how our own behaviors affect the world. 
The Certainty of Karma
The first is the certainty of karma: actions produce related consequences.
We have an image here of a domino effect. In a sense, when you knock over the domino, it is going to fall and hit the others. Likewise, we know if we get angry at someone, we are probably going to make them angry, right? We know this, but do we understand that it is wrong. We may know to a degree, until we actually tell ourselves, “Yeah, I really should not have said that negative thing to my family member or spouse.” We may feel a tinge of remorse. Cause and effect is certain. Most likely, you punch someone, you are going to get punched back in a very basic level. It is certain. What we do not understand, in our depths, is how certain psychological behaviors are going to produce consequences for ourselves. If we understood, then we would not do it. You would comprehend it. It is not just knowing something is wrong. An alcoholic can know that their addiction is bad but continue to be an addict. Knowledge is very superficial. It is of the intellect. The mind may know something is wrong, may label it, may theorize, but if the heart is not in it, there is no understanding. Then we continue to do things that are harmful. Maybe we do not feel the results of our actions in this life, but we will feel it. Karma is certain. It is like an imprint in the film of nature. Think of life as like a photographic film. You may have heard of akashic records. Some of you may have heard of this, how every action in life is recorded in higher realities or higher dimensions. We have talked about some of this in our dream yoga course [see Navigating the Internal Worlds]. The Qur’an talks about how every action will be written in a book. It is the same metaphor, that divinity sees all action and that our actions will produce consequences, maybe not immediately, but it will come to fruition at some point. If we wish to cultivate a psychological space of serenity, we should learn to stop performing harmful actions, because karma is certain. There are effects. We do not live in a bubble where we can think and feel whatever we want. We affect everyone. You know this when you go to a meeting or you are talking with someone who is very angry. They may not say anything, but you feel it. Think of this: certainty of karma. Cause and effect is certain. 
The Magnification of Karma
But there are also other laws, the magnification of karma.
Contrary to common belief, the consequence is actually greater than the action. This may seem strange. We think of Newtonian physics, like every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but the truth is that every action is magnified in nature. Think of it like dropping a stone in a lake. The ripples reach out to all of the pond and every living thing in it feels the disturbance. In the same way, we have a politician, or an angry person gets on a podium speaking very negative things. Their words are recorded on X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it now, Youtube, podcasts, media. Those words are magnified because they reach more people, and that one angry person now becomes millions of angry people. The consequences are by far greater than the initial action. Actions expand. Now, more hopefully for us is that this is not something just negative but, you do a good deed, it reaches out to people. Our communities are benefited when we are upright. We perform things that are of benefit to our immediate members, our clients, whom we work with, our families. When we are performing good deeds and acting uprightly, that has a ripple effect. It reaches out. It expands. It is contagious. 
The Compensation of Karma
Also, we have to understand the compensation of karma. We have an image here of a pendulum, right? In essence, you cannot receive the consequence without committing its corresponding action.
Some people think, mistakenly, that if karma can be shared, this negates the principle of individual agency. If the husband commits murder, does the wife go to jail? It’s like, other people cannot pay our karma for us. It is something individual, strictly speaking, in a fundamental sense. Other people cannot basically pay our karma for us. We have to do so willingly. We cannot receive the consequence without committing its action. It is like you hit a pendulum. It goes back and forth. In the sense that we propel the action, the action comes back to us. It is very important to understand this principle because, I know some traditions teach that other people or someone else can save us. This is very much a Christian dispensation, but in reality, no one can save us but our own actions. We have to fulfill the necessary requisite causes for our own redemption, for our own change. Our own inner divinity, represented as or symbolized by Christ, can save us, but not any outside person. It is inside. We have to fulfill the law, because we are compensated based on our actions. If we do it, we will reap the benefit. If we do not, only we suffer the consequences, but obviously we can bring others down in the meantime, if we are really quite sour, morbid. 
The Permanence of Karma
Karma is permanent. Once an action is performed, the consequence cannot be erased. This has both good and bad connotations.
You cannot take back a bullet. You fired the gun. You cannot take it back. Likewise, a negative word cannot be retracted or redacted. If we do something wrong, we have to suffer the consequences. It is permanent. You cannot forget it. Maybe you do forget it, but in a sense you cannot erase it. It happened. This should give us pause: what actions on our part are we willing to live with? Really, should we live with the consequence of saying a hurtful thing to the people we love? Or should we be patient, understand our own agitation, and seek to be the best person we can, promote the wellbeing of our own community, of our loved ones? However, this also has a positive connotation too because if you do a good deed, it is permanent. People will remember. People always remember the person who is kind, who is altruistic, who is patient, who is giving, consistently. That is permanent. You cannot erase those consequences unless you really work hard at going against that. 
The Transcendence of Karma
More importantly, to go beyond Tsongkhapa’s explanations about karma, we have a fifth principle that is related to us by Samael Aun Weor, especially in his book Tarot and Kabbalah.
He explained that a superior action overcomes an inferior one. This is very beautiful and profound. Given that karma is permanent, it might sound fatal, like you do something wrong and you cannot erase it. You cannot take it back, but in a sense, there is redemption within the law. A superior way of being always overcomes an inferior one. Say for example, you hurt someone with your speech. Later you were genuine. You feel remorse. You go back and you apologize. Not only that, you do something good for that person. You act for their benefit. We are really repentant, and you mend the relationship. You heal it. You make it grow, and someone who was once an enemy can really become a friend. This is the really the real meaning behind Christian transcendence or redemption. This is an action that is represented within all religions, but we find especially and beautifully represented by Jesus―how a superior law can overcome an inferior one. “An eye for an eye” is replaced with mercy. In a sense, we all think this because, we have many faults. We need a higher power, a higher principle to guide us. That superior action comes from within the heart when our own inner divinity is expressing through us, when we empty our mind and our heart, our preconception, our appetites, our desires, and become still. Even if but for a moment, the real Being can express, the real power of divinity. That is the power of transcendence, because our own inner divinity, our own conscience knows how to act and even to mend our mistakes. So, there is a higher law, and it is this higher law that guides us when we are trying to change. 
Grace, Works, or Both?
We have an image of St. Paul and St. James. They have varying perspectives that we are going to synthesize here. Both are right, but unfortunately within some Christian denominations, there is a great argument about whether or not one is saved just by grace or is saved just by works.
In truth we need both. It is a very interesting interplay of principles that is something we can only verify through our own practice. I believe James said that we have to do certain works. There is cause and effect. There is karma. We have to put certain causes in action that are going to produce the changes that we want. Mere belief, without the fruit of effort, is dead. As he says: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. ―James 2:26
Here he means belief, just thinking a tradition or a scripture is true, but not really living it within the heart. If we do not act upon what we learn, study, or meditate upon, our spirituality is ineffective. It does not produce anything. That is the measurement.
Also, as we are working on ourselves, there is also the element of grace too, right? We need forgiveness. That forgiveness is not from someone outside, but from our own inner God, our Divine Mother or the Divine Father, the Being. Grace is an interesting concept, really, but in practice it is when we receive help. We cannot fundamentally change our deepest habits, errors, and mistakes on our own. We do our part, and it is a major part, but it is not everything. We need grace. We need blessings from our own inner Being, strength within our heart, guidance, insight. That grace often comes in the form of dreams. If you studied our course in dream yoga and astral travel, we teach how to meditate, put the body in a state of suspension, relax, awake the consciousness, fall asleep physically, but maintain your mindfulness. Then in the screen of your imagination, you start to see images. You start to dream, but consciously. You can start to see things that are beyond the physical world. You receive help from your own inner divinity, through certain visions or symbolic experiences. We need these visions to inspire us. There is a balance. We need to work for them, to change what we can in our daily life, but also learn to be meditators and to change psychologically, so that in the clearness of our mind, we can get superior guidance. This why Paul of Tarsus states in Ephesians: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith―and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God―not by works, so that no one can boast. ―Ephesians 2:8-9
It is a delicate, nuanced things. These two verses seem to contradict each other, but we need both. We have to work to have faith, develop conscious experience within ourselves of what these realities are practically. This is not belief, to think or feel something is true, but to know. We have to learn to have those experiences, patiently, so that we get guidance, in that you know we cannot do this on our own. We need help.
Three Ways to Pay Karma
In relation to karma, there are three ways to pay it.
We have a lot of debts, you can say, in a spiritual sense. We have committed many actions in our past, not only in this life. If you have studied this tradition for some time, we have talked about previous lives, so that we can experience, meditate, and verify. We can say that there are three ways to pay karma:
We have an image here of Ganesha. In Hinduism this is the divinity associated or principles associated with obstacles and their remedies. He is depicted as an elephant. There is a key here because he has the key to knowledge, real knowledge, real experience. Our inner divinity gives challenges. How else can we prove ourselves that we want to really perfect our livelihood, our life, our lifestyle, to be a better member of our community? But also, divinity provides the solutions, right? So, Ganesha is both the obstacle giver and solution giver. That is the role of divinity: to teach us how to grow. We need challenges so that we see our own mistakes that we created, so that we can change them. This is a gift from divinity. Samael Aun Weor stated in a lecture called: “False Personality, Patience, Repentance and Forgiveness” about these three ways of paying karma, the residue of our past actions: Karma is not only paid with pain. Karma can also be paid with good deeds; and even forgiveness can be achieved through supreme repentance, and then the causal-egos are dissolved. ―Samael Aun Weor, “False Personality, Patience, Repentance and Forgiveness"
Commonly most people go through life who have no inclination of changing themselves fundamentally. They pay with painful situations. They murder in one life; they are murdered in the next. They steal from someone in one lifetime; someone steals from them in this existence. It is a blind, mechanical, repetitive, cyclical thing, and often times it is compounded and exacerbated by our own anger, fear, and impatience. In the moment, we make things worse. We just continue the cycle.
However, as I was explaining earlier, with the transcendence of karma, karma can also be paid with good deeds. You can negotiate. It is not just something blind you got to suffer through. You can even ask for credit from divinity, and say, “If you provide me with these things of spiritual benefit, I will perform a), b) and c) in return.” Doing good deeds, in a sense, offers us credit. It is like a bank. You pay off your debts, you are relieved (pretty sure people who paid off college can feel the same way). In a spiritual sense, it is the same thing. We pay our karma with good deeds. Lastly, you can even pay karma with eliminating the defects related with the crime or the error. In a sense, if you were to really comprehend and disintegrate anger, for example, that caused a certain marital problem in a past life or a current situation, you do not have to face the karma of what would happen if that anger continued to live like a demon, feeding off your mistakes. There is a way to repent, and that is comprehending and eliminating our errors. Psychologically speaking, we call them egos, defects, vices, desires. In a deep sense, when the causes of those egos are eliminated, you have real peace. That is another way. These are three ways in synthesis. That way, if you pay your debts, we develop a more personal relationship with divinity who manages all of that. 
How Much Free Will Do We Really Have?
Some questions people might have asked in the past is, how much free will do we really have? It is a bit dark, honestly.
Samael Aun Weor mentions that 97% of our consciousness tends to be trapped, conditioned within elements like anger, pride, and fear, and the best part of us is in a sleeping state, inactive, trapped, conditioned. Every defect like anger, pride, or fear is a cage. It traps us in that habit and processes the consciousness in accordance with that condition. So, the consciousness trapped in anger will only act with anger, pride with pride, fear with fear. Since those desires are so strong, we just tend to repeat them. 97% of our mind is like that. There is very little of us that is free still. We say that there is 3% consciousness that is not yet trapped within ego, and this might seem very daunting and pessimistic. It is a very dark thing but look at the story of David and Goliath. 
In the Bible, David (the free consciousness) with a stone and his faith, killed a giant, killed his desires, his defects, conquered himself in battle. It can be done. But we have to learn to activate the will that we still have, the free will left in our disposal to be able to act on the conditioned consciousness and liberate what is trapped there, so that we expand, grow, and develop the capacity to act freely, more and more.
Samael Aun Weor, kind of emphasizes these points in, or the reality of our situation here, in “A Talk on the Mysteries of Life and Death”: “There is a small space of free will, but it is very small. Imagine for a moment a violin inside its case. There is very little space for that violin to move around. That is like the space our free will has to move in, which is almost nothing; so, there is only a small space for free will, almost imperceptible. Yet, if we know how to use it, then it is possible for us to transform ourselves radically and become liberated from the law of recurrence, but it is necessary to know how to take advantage of it. How?” ―Samael Aun Weor, “A Talk on the Mysteries of Life and Death"
The solution is to study our psychology and to understand the dynamics of karma
Resources
If we wish to develop a more personal relationship with our own inner divinity, to expand our potential of free will, to liberate the consciousness, to free ourselves from suffering, we can study two works: Treaties of Revolutionary Psychology by Samael Aun Weor and the book Karma is Negotiable: Destiny and the Divine Power of Love, available at Glorian Publishing. These two books will provide a bases for first, examining our own situations in life, and second, understanding in us what part of us is free and what can change.
These books are very radical, in the sense that they offer a practical basis for approaching the problems of life, so that by learning to endure the challenges of our current existence and by learning to respond to them with efficacy, with ethics, with love, with understanding, we can make great changes and produce causes that are going to be beneficial for us and others, in a deep and lasting way. At this point, I invite you to ask questions. Questions and Answers
Question: When we are exercising making the decisions that you talked about earlier in the lecture, would that be us working with some of that 3% willpower and engaging with that?
Instructor: Yes. All the practices of our tradition are for the 3% consciousness that still can work, since these techniques are meant to help liberate our willpower. Regarding practices for engaging with the 3% really, the most fundamental practice we use, is meditation. There is a specific meditation that we teach from the book The Revolution of the Dialectic especially, by Samael Aun Weor. It is called retrospection meditation or blue time or rest therapeutics, more specifically. In the practice, as we are observing ourselves throughout the day, watching our mind, examining our heart, looking at our actions―not just physically, but in a psychological sense―we are gathering data about our own defects. We watch ourselves. As we are acquiring data about our own habits of mind, we learn to sit down. We relax, calm the mind, calm the body and call upon the screen of your awareness the events of the day. We try to imagine what you saw, what you thought, what you felt. The purpose is not to just relive the experience and get sucked in, right? Not to get angry or upset with the situation, but to watch it dispassionately. You call upon the screen of your imagination the events and what you perceived―factually―not what you assumed or what you wished it could be, but what it was. You imagine it. You could review at night, right before you go to sleep. You sit. You visualize the events of the day from the morning up until that point, and you examine in the screen of your imagination the defects that you witnessed. This is why self-observation, mindfulness, watching yourself repeatedly, moment by moment, every day, is really fundamental, because we are trying to gather food for meditation. Maybe at work you felt angry at someone and then maybe you were sacred, “What if this person rejects me?” These thoughts, feelings, and impulses to act come up. Maybe pride came next, “Oh, I do not deserve to be treated this way,” and there is a transaction of different errors that can come up. We are studying all these interactions in ourselves, but first you got to see it. You got to watch it, discover it in the moment. Later you sit down to retrospect. You call upon the screen of your imagination: what happened? You try to go deep into those specific defects that we saw. With comprehension, with patient application of the technique, we wait for the answer. You look at the ways that maybe this defect is fed. You can even see where it came from, what it wants, how it traps our consciousness, how it relates to other defects, other egos, and then with patient application, we gain deeper understanding about each error and what the benefits would be if we eliminate them. Then we pray to our inner Divine Mother Kundalini to eradicate them. That is a very basic surface level explanation, but I invite you to study on our website the lecture in our series on Gnostic Meditation. The last lecture is all dedicated to this practice. It is called retrospection meditation. If we meditate and eliminate defects, you take the mechanical errors that perpetuate our suffering and you destroy them. You free the consciousness that is trapped there, and little by little, we start to have more free will. We stop being mechanical. We stop repeating the same mistakes, and you know that this is effective when you face the same situations in life and you do not react at all the same way you use to. Personally, I’ve had a job that has been pretty challenging, very difficult, and just working on certain defects of impatience, fear, and anger at the situation, to the point that I do not respond or react the same way I use to. People notice and there’s been a lot of benefits and changes, so we irradiate a quality of more liberated will. So, I’ve had more freedom and freewill as a result of reflecting on certain errors of my own that is the method. Study the lecture: Retrospection Meditation. Very deep. I hope that answers your question. Question: How does one know that one is paying for a karma in a present lifetime or past lifetimes? Instructor: Meditation is really the answer. You have to meditate on what the event is and especially, if it is a very deep suffering, a very deep pain, a problem that repeats, consistently, maybe throughout our whole lifetime, one situation arises from another, there is a recurrence there. Recurrence probably means that we are repeating a very deep error from other lifetimes. As a general principle, we could pay for our karma in our present lifetime, and we will know it when we have visions in our dreams. Especially dreams of being paid money is a very good sign. They are saying that, basically, “Yeah, you are paying for a certain debt. We are actually paying you dharma,” and you can be shown in your inner experiences that it is in relation to paying certain debts. But in terms of karma, really, I would say that the deeper the problem, the more frequent the recurrence. It is something common that happens all the time. It can manifest in many avenues of life. You know that you are paying it when your life is changing, especially if the recurrence is very deep and intense. You know that it is from past lifetimes when or if it is very influential. There are some situations in our lives that are like, someone has a problem with money, or someone has a problem with being angry, and maybe that’s their chief defect, chief characteristic. Some of us have certain defects which are very deeply ingrained with karmic debts. We tend to repeat those the most. Those tend to have deeper roots in other existences because they are very ancient. We fed them a lot, but you could cut them at the roots if you go to the roots, and the consequence will be that you don’t repeat them. Question: Can someone stop being reincarnated to get out of the whole karma thing? 
Instructor: It would be the nice answer to simply get away from it all. We have studied an image called the Tree of Life. Many of you may be familiar with this. It is often associated with Judaism. It is a mystical glyph of ten spheres, from lower regions of matter, energy, perception, to the highest and most divine. These are different dimensions in nature, different levels of being. In a sense, the higher you go, the more divine the realities you reach and the less complexity and suffering there is. In a sense, the further up you go, the more aligned with divine law you are and there is less suffering as a result of karma, less laws.
Now, the ultimate goal of our studies is to eventually pay everything we owe. That is the ultimate, optimal way of being, but it is also very difficult to do. It would be nice to “retire” from life if you could get out of suffering even if for a little bit (i.e. through a spiritual experience in meditation). There are spiritual paths that teach that. There are some yogis and practitioners who have learned to meditate to the point and practice to point that they enter nirvana, higher dimensions. Then they choose not to reincarnate because they want to enjoy that level of nature, which is very pure and divine. We call it the spiral path. But yeah, it is possible. There are some beings who can learn to develop themselves to a point that, rising up the Tree of Life into higher dimensions, they learn to stay there, and they may choose to reincarnate when they want. Usually, it is also temporary, because in a sense, you cannot escape karma. There may be a temporary pause in suffering because you reached elevated states of being, but really, the only way to get out of karma, meaning, to pay all your karma, is to willingly pay it all. We call that the path of the bodhisattva. It is the path taken by masters like Jesus of Nazareth, Padmasambhava, Buddha, Moses, Krishna. It is a very difficult path, because one has to pay all their debts in one life. It is very intense. When that karma is paid, you can go higher and higher and leave behind the world of pain. But in a sense, even the gods cannot escape karma. There is cause and effect even in the higher regions of divinity. It is just different because it is for gods. We are not at that level, so we are here. We have to work with where we are at, and not to avoid it, run away from it, or dream that we are something we are not. It is better to pay karma consciously, and when you pay it, you do not suffer anymore. But also, it could be suffering in the beginning because you take it on voluntarily and it is a challenge. It is a delicate thing. Levels upon levels of work, right? I suggest if you are interested in learning more about this topic of reincarnation, especially, and what does it mean to reincarnate, Glorian just recently came out with a blog and a podcast about it: “Reincarnation is Real, But Very Rare.” I suggest you study that. Question: How do you tell the difference between virtue and people-pleasing? Instructor: Examine your heart. Watch your emotional center. Is It really in a state of giving to the other person to benefit them, or do we feel a subtle prejudice or desire there that wants to be liked? You can only taste it through experience, patiently. Observe it. Watch it. In a sense, no one can tell you when you are being virtuous or not. You have to see it for yourself. What states in you are different, distinct? It is like discriminating between the taste of water and wine. Psychological states are like that. They are very distinct and have a flavor to them. Some leave a sour taste. Some of them are open and expansive, uplifting, virtuous. Watch your heart and then meditate on what you feel. Question: Hi, thank you for the lecture. I had two questions both related to the Fates. The first one, could you just speak a little more on the terms, “The Spinner, The Allotter and the Unturning?” Instructor: The three Fates were sometimes related to past, present, and future, or I believe the Nordic Norns are often associated with the three Fates, in terms of our lifespan, our life, and the moment of death. In a sense, these are eternal laws. These are principles that govern the nature of being itself. Even Richard Wagner in his Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung (Damnation of the Gods) emphasized the nature of these three principles, that they govern the life of any individual and also, any initiate who is working in the spiritual path itself. The three Fates can apply to our own individual life. In a sense we say that some parts of life involve predetermined things, things that will happen in our lifetime, that must happen, because we set causes and the conditions for them, and that they are going to come to fruition at some point. How we negotiate with it in the present is up to us. It is up to our mind, the choices we make, what free will we apply. We also say that in terms of lifespan. Pretty sure you are familiar with Gurdjieff. He talks about what is called, Bobbin-Kandelnosts, right? Life, vital capital. We have certain amount of energies, vital values that allows us to exist, psychologically, physically, and spiritually, in terms of our life span. We can live short lives because we waste our energy, right? Or we can live longer because we save it, in a basic fundamental sense. In a sense, that is a negotiation that we make by living an ethical lifestyle. That could prolong our life, and maybe we were perchance going to die at a certain time due to our former actions. Yet by living an ethical way of being, we prolong our life, especially through the practices we have been teaching in relation to the vital energy, the creative energy itself, like through pranayama and The Perfect Matrimony. It is a process you negotiate it in terms of what action do we fulfill now to procure a better future, that can also relate to the three Fates. Question: The second question I had about the Fates as well, is that directly related to, then, the Three Furies: Megaera, Alecto and Tisiphone? Is that another functioning or are they a functioning of the Fates? Instructor: Yeah, in a sense, there is a correlation. Sometimes it is the Fates, sometimes it is the Furies. They could be denoted as the Furies because in a sense, when a crisis hits, there is a great challenge, an ordeal. Fate is like a fury. We face the consequences of whatever may be. But yeah, there is that connotation too. Question: So, is it safe to say that all suffering one goes through is related to karma, either in this or past lives? There is no suffering that is outside the law? Instructor: Some situations are the recurrence of previous states. Other sufferings might be novel or new. That is something you need to investigate in yourself, especially through meditation and dreams. It is not something theoretical or something to believe in. It is something that you can experience through the techniques given by Samael Aun Weor, especially and some of the meditations we provide. Retrospection meditation, for example, is certain exercise’s you could do. I know there is one mantra we use, Raom Gaom. It is a mantra you could use when you wake up from dreams, to remember what you experienced in the nighttime. Also, you can use this mantra and other mantras to remember the past, way beyond the current spectrum of our physical existence. We will provide a link in the chat for you in a lecture called: How to Remember Dreams. Many of the exercises given there can relate to that. It is something you have to investigate for yourself. Question: Does your inner divinity know who your future spouse is? How can one receive answers to this question without allowing fear, emotional anguish, and impatience cloud these visions? Thank you. Instructor: You know, that is something you can verify. You can see it. You can experience it, but often times they will not come in the form that you like. The important thing is that when we are practicing meditation and looking for deep answers within ourselves to problems such as this, you have to be willing to perceive the experience without attachment. You can have a genuine, authentic experience in meditation, maybe a vision in a dream. It can be fundamentally objective and real, but it is very easy for the mind, for fear, for attachment, impatience, and frustration, to want to interpret in a certain way. There is a very delicate balance to be reached in terms of opening up to that experience, but also knowing how to interpret it with clarity, without prejudgment, without assumption. I recommend you listen to a lecture we gave on the dream yoga course, especially. It is called: How to Interpret Dreams. The important thing is that we have to be willing to receive the answer we do not like and to withhold judgment, assuming that it must mean or we want it to mean a certain thing, but to be dispassionate, to be clear. More importantly than just having any experience is understanding our own mental reactions, our own mind, our own egotism. You overcome that process or that questioning by watching your heart, watching your emotional states, and to be willing to submit to divinity, whatever the answer may be. Be patient, and also be patient with yourself. We have to be willing to be open to whatever comes and to examine: what in us wants a certain answer, right? We want a certain result. We want, maybe, our life to be a certain way. Contentment is a very profound virtue: to accept what we have and to be humble. We get what we need, not what we want. If what we maybe want is a spouse, look at that desire. Where does it come from? How does it feed? What are its thoughts? Where is this fear coming from? What is this insecurity that wants a certain situation in life? Where is this source of pain that you feel? That is more important than getting any answer at all, really. Examine the root of these emotions, thoughts, and states. Look at them. Observe them. Understand them. The more conflicted and confused you are in terms of your emotional states, the less you will be able and clear to reflect that insight that you desperately long for. When the water is clear, maybe the jar is filled with sediment, stone, and dirt, it subsides and calms into layers. It stratifies, and the water rises up, and you could see clearly your situation. But the more we feed into negative emotions and attachments, the more disturbed we get. You cannot interpret your dreams or visions when you are clouded in your mind like that. You have to enter serenity first. Practice serenity: the nine stages of meditative concentration, especially as outlined by Glorian. I recommend you really practice that course to get yourself settled, especially Meditation Essentials on their website. Question: Is karma proportional to the action and knowledge a person has about it? Instructor: You could say that it is proportional in relationship to the energy we invest in it. Some consequences are much more effective, or better said, impactful, because the energy that was put into motion was much more severe or strong. Now whether we have knowledge of it or not is relative. It is relative in terms of our state of consciousness in this moment. You know, examine yourself. How much are we actually conscious of our mental states, emotional states, the root of our problems, the root of our sufferings, where they came from, how they arise, how they feed, how they sustain, how they pass? How aware are we about this whole process? Because in our daily life, we are very, spiritually asleep, very unconscious. We do not remember things. There is a lack of clarity about the source of our psychological states, unless we are actively learning to watch and to observe. However, our actions continue to perpetuate negative situations and often intense suffering. You could have knowledge about it by expanding your consciousness little by little, day by day, through your discipline. That way you can understand, maybe, the magnitude of karma and how it originated in relation into a particular issue. So, obviously we talked about magnification, right? The effects are greater than the cause. In that way, the effects have their origins somewhere in a cause that we have to discover patiently. But to have greater impact, we must now how to invest more energy into the good. Question: How do you know how to pay back your karma? Instructor: There is a very simple practice you can you use. It is in The Magic of the Runes by Samael Aun Weor. We learn to pay back karma and know how to do it through certain exercises such as through the Rune Not. It is one way we learn to negotiate with the law. It is a yogic practice. You adopt a certain posture. You enter a certain form of prayer. You relax, and you can ask from divinity certain credits to receive, certain helps and blessings, in exchange for doing good deeds. In that way you can pay certain karma that would have resulted in a lot of pain. You know, we pay with good deeds. We pay with Christian ethic, the ethics of Christ, to give selflessly. You really pay back karma when you give from a state of selflessness and love, especially in situations that are really provoking you. That is how you know you are being the most generous. There are three ways to pay as we talked about. But you know it when you see your situations change, certain repetitive, cyclical events, certain recurrences in life which are causing a lot of pain―they are gone. They vanish. You can pay with good deeds, or even pay with pain, but you know it is paid when the situation is over. It is done. Question: If an unethical business leader that treats employees badly set up a foundation or makes regular monetary donations to many orphanages, can that pay for the bad karma from unethical deeds? Instructor: It is a good question. Obviously in the Buddhist tradition, it is emphasized that one should have right livelihood or right business: to earn one’s daily bread in an ethical way, because having an unethical business to do ethical things still does not negate, or really does not transcend, its cause. There are still some shady things going on that are made for that purpose. So, no, I would say that our business should be ethical. What we do should be honest and that will align with our conscience. We cannot just do bad business to do good things with the money later, because you are still causing actions which are harmful and which should be evaluated. Question: Is karma responsible for the descent of the human race that is now from the Polar Race up until now, the Aryan Root Race? Instructor: If you studied Blavatsky’s explanations about anthropogenesis, about root races, she explains that there is the karma of the worlds, right? The development of different humanities within different times, which is allegorized in or represented within the Bible especially, especially the Book of Genesis. In a sense, there is karma for worlds, karma for planets, karma for humanities. The individual karma is intertwined with the karma of races, the karma of groups, the karma of religions, the karma of nations, the karma of humanities, and everything that precedes in this present moment came from some past action. There is a connection there. There was, really, a descent of the human race, not merely from the Polar Epoch according to Blavatsky, but Lemuria, which was allegorized in the Garden of Eden, in the fall. I would study on Glorian Publishing’s website, there is a course given by those lecturers, especially called “Cosmic Evolution in the Bible.” It goes into a lot of depth about the development of that karma from the past epochs to the present. There is a relationship there, something to investigate. Question: By studying the tarot do learn about the law? Instructor: Yes, the twenty-two arcana of the tarot, especially the Eternal Tarot that we have available through Glorian Publishing, is related to the divine laws. Arcanum, singular, is law, and arcana means “laws.” There are twenty-two major arcana relating to the twenty-two Hebrew letters of the Kabbalistic alphabet. These cards and these Hebrew letters themselves relate to principles that the individual needs to develop in order to transform their psychology. So, they relate to aspects of the spiritual path, about certain obstacles that we face in our own life, and what to do, how to overcome them. In a way, when you study those principles, you learn about karma. In fact, the 5th arcanum relating to The Hierarch, relates to the law, the divine law of karma. Work with the tarot individually. I do not recommend going to fortune tellers or to performers in a spiritual sense, to learn about the tarot. You learn about it by working with it individually. Study the tarot and you learn about the law. The twenty-two laws and also the fifty-six minor arcana, the minor laws that relate to the development of the psyche too. Question: Does removing oneself from society and being a shut in, or limiting contact or help, reduce karma? Instructor: No, unfortunately. You might suspend certain karmas. Maybe you take a break for a while. You get some rest, some rejuvenation. I know that basically, we go on retreats a lot with our school, and we go to Glorian Publishing retreats as well, where you get some time to relax and to take a rest from the world. In a sense, it is a blissful experience, because you get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. In a way, we learn to gain serenity so that we can face our deepest problems. But in terms of reducing karma, it might pause it for a while, but it will come back because karma is certain, but living in a shut in or cloistered way will not get rid of the causes of our former actions. You can gain some stability in meditation, so that when you re-enter the world or leave a monastery, or place of retreat and worship, that you have more consciousness and strength to transform the karma when it arrives. You cannot get rid of karma through avoidance. It is certain. It is going to happen, but how we face it is what matters. Question: What happens to karma with people who think they are being ethical, but others do not think the same way? Instructor: That is a problem, right? We have to look at our heart and see, are we ethical? Are we really following the law in our heart? Other people may not think that we are being ethical because, unfortunately, to a degree, our modern world is crazy, right? There are prejudices and beliefs that we should be a certain way. In a sense, it is a delicate thing, because we want to be useful to the world, ethical, to know how to thrive in this society which is falling apart. However, other people may think that certain spiritual practices or traditions are not good. It is fine. We respect that people have their opinion, their differences, their traditions, and different ways of thinking. We have to follow our conscience. In a sense, is our spiritual practice improving our relationships? That is an important thing to consider. We want to have a balance here. Our spiritual practice should not be a source of pride, where we think we are being ethical but other people in a sense can see us for who we are―arrogant. There is that reality too. But sometimes, by following the things we are teaching here, we know it is going to offend people to a degree. We have to be open, willing, and patient. Now, the problem is when we think we are doing right, but we are not, and that is not good. That is really where the problem lies with a lot of us. We think we are doing a good thing, but we are attached, so we need to question that. Often times other people can be the barometer for what we are really doing, right? You know, if we are doing it in the right way or not because other people can see us sometimes better than we see ourselves in terms of our worst defects. So, it is a balancing act. In a sense, Samael Aun Weor, mentions in our tradition that we have to be in the world, because human relationships are like a mirror. We see ourselves for who we really are when we are with others―that is the thing. The danger is when we think we know what is right, when we do not, so we have to be humble. Question: Is it wrong to use tarot to help out a person as a guide, to solve a personal conflict? Instructor: Personally, I would introduce the tarot to this individual. Teach them how to use it themselves, because the tarot are meant for the individual. I know that there is a tradition and tendency to go to other people to perform a reading. It is kind of a tradition that has been passed on for a long time, but really, the tarot are most effective when we develop that personal relationship with our own inner divinity. So, use the tarot on your own. That is the thing. Teach them how to do it on their own. That is really the best gift you can give because they will learn the language of God. The tarot will unveil, the divinity will reveal through the cards in the certain reading what they need to do about their personal situation. That is something that we can model for them, how to do it. Give an example. Good teaching is about modeling for others, from example. So, show them how to do it and then they say, “OK, I know how to do it.” Apply it when you need and let other people solve their personal conflicts. It is important to let other people resolve their issues. As instructors too, we often get questions from people, “Can you help me solve this problem?” Honestly, the best advice we can give is to teach you how to meditate and get the answer from your inner Being, because we are limited, really. We have our own flaws. So, I would teach them how to be independent. Question: Is losing the sense of urgency to practice consistently a consequence of karma? Instructor: I would say losing a sense of urgency is a result of a lack of practice in itself. It is a feedback loop. You practice more, you get more inspired. You get more inspired, you practice more. Now, is it karma? I think this is in a general sense, like, as a result of former actions. Losing a sense of urgency can be as a result of identifying too much with certain defects like laziness or dejection, morbidity, despondency. I would not say it is a result of karma, like we are losing hope. That is an individual personal thing. Even in the dark night or what is called dark nights of the soul, in which we feel abandoned to a degree in our spiritual work, we can find inspiration to practice. “Dark nights” happen to everybody. It happened to Beethoven.
If you have heard his Moonlight Sonata, it especially represents that. It is often the result of, in karma and hard situations that hit and when we have to face the consequences of them, but seemingly without help, and that could be a source of great pain for people. We may feel a lack of urgency in that hardship and many people break under those conditions, but those who achieve success are those who are consistent and strive forward even despite the hardship. So, urgency has to be cultivated like a fire. We have to tend it diligently, patiently, and not let it die out, and even if it dies out, you can bring it back to life, especially when divinity hounds you.
Question: In helping others and getting them out of difficulties, are we not preventing them from learning their karmic lessons? Are we not interfering? Instructor: It depends. You have to follow your heart. You have to know what is in your conscience, what is really going to be beneficial to this person and what is not. In a sense, you cannot prevent people from learning their own karma because divinity is the one managing their situation anyways. They are going to learn no matter what, or not learn. But who is to say that your compassionate gesture is precisely teaching them about their karma and how to resolve it? So, in a sense, we interfere when we let our ego get in the way, our pride, our defects, so that’s the thing. I know we ran over. Thank you very much for your questions! We will be continuing lectures, I believe one next week. It will also be on zoom. So, thank you all for coming! 
2020 is a very strange year for humanity, which very few could predict the consequences and results that are affecting everyone. Our politicians, our governments, our great sages of philosophy, of law, of spirituality, while we respect these individuals, at the same time, not even they could predict the intensity and the trauma that we find afflicting humanity. But the reality is that while on a global scale, we are experiencing great sufferings, the truth is that it should not surprise us, as ironic as that might seem, because humanity ignores a very fundamental law of nature, which we are finding is being fulfilled with exactitude today.
It is the law of cause and effect. Every action has a consequence. What I do as an individual affects humanity and vice versa. In the east we call this law karma, which is not some type of blind law where “you are going to get what you deserve.” It is an infallible, immutable law that every action we produce has some type of impact. There are consequences to behaviors that are either upright and pure, or conditioned and filled with suffering. Humanity today ignores the causes of its current position, and, as we began the meditation, it sometimes takes a great trauma, conflict, wars, violence, pandemics, political disputes, police brutality, racial violence, in order for people to really begin to want to ask this question about why we suffer, about why we are in pain. The reality is that there have been beings like Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, prophets, messengers of the divine, who knew from their own experience the trajectory of humanity, and how certain actions produce consequences of great significance. While this is a law that has governed the rise and fall of societies, in truth this should raise a very profound question for ourselves: how do we produce suffering? Why do we suffer? What are our actions that produce this mess that we see today? Rather than blame the government, the negligence of bureaucracy, of politicians, of political parties, it is better to be practical. How do we in a moment-to-moment basis, in our day-to-day existence, produce suffering, not only for ourselves but for others? Humanity is blind. People ignore this law, that when we act with desire, with conditioned states of being, we become afflicted. Whether one believes in any particular religion or faith does not really matter, unless we look at the facts of why there is so much conflict today. So, sadly, despite the efforts of many messengers, as we mentioned, to teach people how to change, how to alter the trajectory of humanity, their essential message, which is universal, has been adulterated, has been sterilized. They all taught that there is a way out of suffering, a path that in accordance to the religion or the tradition, is distinct to the form of a culture. But, essentially, the message is the same. While it is discouraging to look at the news, the reality is that there is great cause to be inspired, because there is a method and a way to overcome all of this, whether on a collective scale or on an individual scale, which is more important. We have been very blessed. There are methods and instructions and teachings that can really change us, and it does not require any belief. Through experimentation, through practice, through verification from experience, we can lessen our suffering and have a clarity and an insight by which to help others. This science is meditation. To be specific, meditation is not a technique. It is not spacing out or entering into a state of relaxation. All these [calming the body, heart, and mind] are preliminary. Meditation is a state of being, a state of consciousness that is not conditioned at all, that knows how to see and perceive life, reality, in a state of clarity, precision, understanding, with wisdom, with intelligence, with love. This is the essential quality you find in all the great masters of humanity, from any religion, who embody this ideal. They all taught in their synthesis how to access the essential nature of our consciousness, because right now, the reason we are afflicted is because we have many desires, many beliefs, that are split. It is a fracturing. We are fragmented, and if you don’t believe me, we can simply perform a practice in which we examine a moment in our day. Perhaps we have a conflict or a trial, a chaotic moment, in which we feel that our mind, our heart and our body are torn in many directions. The reality is we do not have a singular purpose of will, of direction, because perhaps somebody criticizes us at work, or we simply watch television to see what is going on in the political world, and we have many reactions that emerge in a single instant. We may be filled with anger, the thoughts of resentment towards a certain person. We may feel fear and pulled towards fight or flight, possibly even despair. This is a moment in which we can see multiple reactions, multiple states of conflicted wills. All meditative traditions teach if you want to enter a profound state of serenity and understanding, your will has to be one, perfected, sharp, without any type of obscuration or filter. We call that conditioned sense of self, or desire or will, ego. That is the Latin term for “I, me, myself.” Meditation teaches us how to look at what we are, who we are, without judgment, without labeling, without prejudice, but simply, look at the self, at these different wills, these impulses.
The Universality of Meditation
Meditation has been known by many names. भावना Bhavana in Sanskrit means “mental development” or “becoming.” भव Bhava, in Buddhism, we hear भावचक्र Bhavachakra, the wheel of being, which is a map of different states of consciousness within Tibetan Buddhism especially, which has its symbolic representation in the West in the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, which we will talk about today.
We have the term ध्यान Dhyan or Dhyana which means “to see, to perceive.” This is where we get words like 禅 Chan Buddhism in Chinese or 禅 Zen in Japan. Contemplation in the early tradition of the church fathers was known by the Latin term meditatri, meditation, contemplation. Amongst the Sufis of the mystical tradition of Islam, they refer to it as fikrat: serene reflection, serene perception, which is the synthesis of meditation. Meditation is Direct Experience
A lot of people think that meditation is simply being calm. It is a necessary step and a beautiful thing when we have a state of equanimity and stillness that is so deep that we rest from thought, from emotion, and from impulse, from the body. That is the groundwork by which you can really enter the highest teachings of meditation, which is a state of perception, to receive information about a given phenomenon, whether it be from a scripture, a book, about reality, about ourselves.
That state of reflection, of gaining new knowledge, that aha moment, of understanding, has been known by the term witnessing amongst the Sufis. In Islam they have a very beautiful teaching in their doctrine that is very misunderstood. They pronounce what is called the Shahada (الشهادة). In order to become Muslim, you say: لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ ٱللَّٰهِ
In reality, the Arabic term, شهادة Shahada means to witness: مشاهدة mushahada. It means to see divinity, which is not outside, but inside. To bear witness of something, like in a court of law, you have seen it, you have verified it, you have experienced it, and therefor you have no doubt. There is no belief. There is no ambiguity. There is no conflict of interest. We simply know, and therefore if we bear witness that there really is God, and Krishna is His prophet, Buddha is His prophet, Moses, and many masters like Jesus, were His prophets, it is because we have seen it for ourselves, within.
So to really understand meditation, of course, we first have to relax, that is the first step. But it is much deeper than that. We will talk about these stages themselves. 
But it can be very difficult now, in these times, especially if you live in Chicago, which is where I am from, where literally you see all sorts of violence being perpetuated throughout the country. We see the state of different cities and countries that are in uprising. They are afflicted with great injustices, whether material and even psychological. It is easy to say we really live in unprecedented times, but the reality is that “there is nothing new under the sun,” to quote Solomon from the Bible. Everything repeats. Life is cyclical. Habits are ingrained. The reality is that while these crises that is afflicting this planet are intense and becoming more severe, as I said, it should not surprise us that this is happening.
If we examine our mind, and if we are very sincere, we realize, with great discomfort, that we have many elements, psychologically speaking, that are destructive. We may not believe that, but the question is: have we looked inside of ourselves to examine our own anger, our own fear, our own pride, our own avarice?—qualities that we like to externalize and blame others of possessing in abundance, but in reality, if we are sincere, we see that we have that inside. That can be very disconcerting, very uncomfortable, but that is the reality. Humanity, you can see according to history, operates in cycles. There have been many plagues that have afflicted humanity, whether in Europe, whether influenza. There have been many times in history in which diseases have sprouted and killed many people. But we have the arrogance today to believe that somehow, we are special, that this has never happened before. While this is a terrible reality and does not, in any way diminish or devalue the suffering of people, it is a reflection of a cosmic law. In Buddhism we call it संसार Samsara: cycling, returning, repeating. While this happens on a global scale, in our daily life, which is a snapshot, a microcosm, a picture of humanity itself, we find that we have habits and behaviors and ways of being that we repeat. This is something that we should examine, that we should question. Self-Governance is Real Freedom
Governments have always tried to fix these problems, but they have always failed. The reality is no government, no institution, can change the individual. To quote Krishnamurti, we have to govern ourselves. If we as an individual being were to follow laws of ethics, of compassion, of kindness, of tolerance, of patience, then society would reflect that. But we find that our political institutions and governments smother the problem. They do not know or teach the way for the individual to change, for there to be real equity in humanity.
I would like to read for you an excerpt from a book by Samael Aun Weor, who is the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition. The Greek term γνῶσις gnosis means “knowledge,” and as we are explaining meditation, it is knowledge from experience, without deviation into belief or theory. He wrote in a book called The Great Rebellion about the nature of genuine freedom, what this means for our meditation practice. I will read for you at length: The meaning of freedom is something that has not yet been understood by humanity. 
Freedom, a lovely word, a beautiful term: so many crimes have been committed in its name! (Think of the French Revolution, at least one million people were killed in that event alone.)
So this sense of self we mentioned, ego, is a condition, a shell, that traps our real potential. There is more to us than our language, our names, our culture, our customs, our habits. The essential nature of our being is consciousness, which is altruism, love, happiness, philanthropy, patience, etc., which is the opposite of the self.
Understanding the myself, "my persona, what I am," is imperative if we sincerely wish to attain freedom.
It is very easy to see that we are a slave to what other people think. If they say something negative about our appearance, our habits, our behaviors, we react with anger, with resentment, with pride. It means that any person can push our button and make us react exactly as they want. However, if you comprehend in yourself your own anger and eliminate it, you have serenity. This is why beings like Jesus, when he was being tortured, horribly crucified, was able to say with love, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)
While the "I" exists, the consciousness remains imprisoned. Escaping from that prison is only possible through Buddhist Annihilation (it’s a term that means the dissolution or) dissolving the self, reducing it to ashes, to cosmic dust. —Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion
This is symbolized in many traditions, such as Jesus being on the cross in his Passion, to die to what is impure so that he can be resurrected as a soul, as a perfected being. So, while he literally existed in the past, it also represents something allegorical for us in this individual work of meditation.
The liberated consciousness, devoid of the "I," absolutely absent of ego, without desires, without passions, without cravings and fears, directly experiences true freedom.
And in synthesis we can state:
In life, the only thing of importance is a radical, total and definitive change. The rest, frankly, is of no importance at all. —Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion, “Meditation” Genuine Spirituality is Based on Facts
So meditation teaches us how to gather that knowledge so that we can really go deep into our psychology and to change in a real way, a permanent way, a lasting way. In today’s era we live, we can say, in a period of information. We can find knowledge about any type of study on the internet alone. But it is also true that we live in an era of misinformation. While we have access to knowledge we have never been privy to before, we still continue to be confused.
It is ironic, right? We have more knowledge and more information than we have ever possessed, and yet we are more conflicted, more divisive, and in more suffering than we have ever been. The reality is we need to develop a type of consciousness that has to do with wisdom and not knowledge. Intellectual knowledge is necessary to a point. What matters is the quality of our heart, our ways of being, and so in our studies of meditation, we develop our knowledge of ourselves. We call it gnosis, experiential wisdom about the causes of suffering. Of course, it has nothing to do with theory, with beliefs, with concepts, because we can think that we are a certain way, but if you observe in a very difficult moment of life, the facts emerge. Right? I am sure we have all had an experience where somebody said something really negative to us, or we had a very traumatic moment in which we acted in a way that we did not like. We later reflected and said, “How did I think, feel and behave that way?” Those are the facts. Those are the concrete experiences that show us what we can work on, so we can really develop altruism and compassion and serenity: all these virtues that are really beautiful and our true nature. This is why no amount of theory or belief can change anyone. Gnosis is lived upon facts, withers away in abstractions, and is difficult to find even in the noblest of thoughts. —Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic 
I know that a lot of people, especially approaching many of the world’s events of today, have a lot of conspiracies about what is going on, but rather than focus on any type of external phenomena, it is better if we ask the question, “How does our mind conspire against us?” So, I love this image of a hand holding up a puppet or puppets, which we can associate with either political party or whatever anyone believes, but the reality is that if we have ego, and our government and politicians have ego, then obviously there is going to be fights and conflict, and no type of harmony negotiated at all. Our mind needs to be free of any concepts about life, but rather to just examine with our soul.
Samael Aun Weor states the following in Igneous Rose: There is the need to liberate the mind from every type of school, religion, sect, political party, concept of mother country, flag, prejudice, desire, and fear. There is the need to liberate the mind from the process of rationalization. There is the need to change the process of rationalization for comprehension. —Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
Comprehension is very different from thinking. You do not necessarily have to label anything with the intellect. You simply know it, like you put your hand on a hot stove; it gets burned. That is a form of gnosis, of knowledge, that if you do that again you get hurt, and then you later think “That was very painful.” So that is the mind. The mind is slower than our other capacities as a consciousness. So, there is a very stark difference there.
Freedom has to do with transforming our internal state in the moment, where we are at here and now. This is why all meditative traditions teach mindfulness, awareness, watchfulness: to gather data, to look at the facts of our own behaviors and not to conceptualize anything, but to simply look. It does not require thinking there, and that is how we cut away from the abstractions, from the philosophy, from the theology, from the theories, and we get to what is practical. 
Ashtanga Yoga: The Eight Steps of Meditation
So we will talk about, in synthesis, what meditation is really about, what it involves. This is from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, who was a great master of meditation. In synthesis we have eight profound steps. It is better said if we call them principles. It does not mean that, like a check list, you are going to go through each one: “First I need you to do this, followed by this step, and then next” in a mechanical way. These are very living things, principles, qualities of being, which if you follow in sequence and are really diligent about establishing them in your life, you will find that you will have a great clarity by which to understand any problem that you are suffering and the ways to change it.
Yamas: Restraints
The beginning is yama. These are Sanskrit terms. Yama means “restraint.” It means to restrain the mind. So you are at work or you are with a friend, and someone says something very negative, maybe even political (obviously there is a lot of debate going on today), you feel anger come up, thoughts of “You should not think that! You should not say that” or whatever reactions we feel in that instant, and if we restrain that impulse—not repressing it, not hiding it, not judging it, but simply with your attention direct it in yourself—you see it for what it is, and that if you really act this way, to speak these words of anger, is obviously going to make the other person angry.
In the moment you restrain yourself, you do not act on that behavior, because it is going to create conflict, perhaps even split friendships, cause divorces, and many other problems. Restraint is the beginning. First: retraining your egotistical reactions to life with your consciousness, and that is a state of comprehension in which you see, “If I act as a soul on this lower animal desire, it is going to create problems.” Niyamas: Precepts
But that is not enough. We have to follow what is known as niyamas, precepts. In every meditative tradition and any religion, they teach you: be kind, be patient, be compassionate. Forgive your neighbor. Put other people’s needs first before your own. Show philanthropy. Accept when you are wrong with humility. These are all precepts and virtuous qualities that you find in every scripture, without exception.
It is not enough to restrain bad behaviors. It is necessary to enact good behaviors. This is something only you can judge in yourself, moment by moment. You can memorize the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, the New Testament, the Old Testament, whatever scriptures inspire you, but knowing that knowledge of virtue does not mean you are enacting it. So the knowledge is different, but the application of it is wisdom. I know many people that approach meditation, and they become very morbid because they see a lot of negativity within themselves, and they suffer and they want to get out of it, but they are not reflecting on the virtuous qualities of their consciousness, of their Being, of their divinity. So it is important not to reflect just on the bad, but to contemplate your virtues, those profound ethics of the soul. Asana: Posture
When you have really worked hard at developing restraint and following these precepts in your actions, your asana becomes perfected. It is easy to see if you act on anger and you drain your mind and your heart, deplete your body of energy from getting into an argument, it is very difficult to sit. You cannot sit still. You cannot relax. Your body is tense, filled with pain, discomfort. This is why yama and niyama are essential. If you want your body to be able to obey you and relax at will, you have to learn to act ethically.
So it is important when you are practicing meditation that you pick an asana that works for you. It does not have to be full lotus, half lotus. If you are that flexible, great. Personally, I am obviously more of a western style person. I sit in a chair. You can even lie down on your back if you have the stability of attention not to fall asleep, because that is the important thing. Your body can relax but your consciousness is awake, is vigilant, attentive. 
Pranayama: Energy Work
Once you have found your posture, you can work with energy. In our tradition, we have many exercises to work with energy. Energy is essential to life. We find many forms within our body. If you have studied Hinduism or yoga, they teach you all about the chakras, which are vortices or wheels of vital force that circulate in a subtle form in our body. In our glands, there is energy that flows, and there are certain practices you can use, whether they be through prayer or sacred sounds called mantras. You vocalize or you pray. You can work with energy in your body, circulate it, get it flowing, so that those channels of force, like the chakras, open. Then you can have greater stability of mind, since it helps you to concentrate, helps you to focus.
Everything we do in life, there is energy involved. “Wherever we direct attention, we expend creative energy,” says Samael Aun Weor, the founder of our tradition. So if you have no energy there, if you waste it on anger and pride, and lust especially, desire, you have no energy by which to work. Your consciousness is depleted. You cannot drive your car. You mind will be dull, will be out of fuel. This is why in every level and moment of our life we seek to conserve energy, conserve emotional energy, conserve mental energy, conserve vital energy, in all forms. Pratyahara: Withdrawal
In this way when you have energy, your mind will start to calm, and this is where the crux of meditation begins to really unfold. We call it pratyahara. It means “suspension of the senses,” “to withdraw.” So you can be seated. You can be in a meditation posture. You can work with energy itself, and in those moments you start to find that, with profundity of application and will, you start to withdraw your mind, your senses, from the external world.
Everything goes inside. It is like the flow or ebb of a river that is going towards one source and then the rest dries up. You just focus on your interior. You forget the world. Many people do not get to this point. They do not get past the body. There is an itch, a discomfort. You want to move. You are in pain, and the reality is that you have to forget the body is even there if you really want to go profoundly into meditation. Forget the body. First take care of it. Treat it well. Relax, and when you are really working with your energies, you do not pay attention to anything outside. You go within. There is a stillness there, which, when it is really profound, is the fulcrum by which meditation is experienced, the state of understanding. Dharana: Concentration
When there is silence of mind, when you withdraw from the senses, you can really concentrate on something. These are the preliminaries of meditation that get really interesting. So when your senses are calm and you are relaxed, you can direct your attention at one thing.
Even at this stage there seems to be a lot of difficulty for people, because our mind is all over the place. We are thinking of many things. We are distracted. We have associative thoughts: good, bad; yes, no. We think of a friend that we talked to earlier in the day and what they said, and that brings on a whole discussion in our mind, and then our mind is just replaying the day, but it is foggy. It is dull. There is no clarity or crispness there. Real concentration knows how to look at one object, focus, and not get distracted. In many traditions, they teach you how to take a stone or a candle, to observe a flame or to do a mantra, a sacred sound, and just focus on that one thing at exclusion of everything. If you are sincere, in the beginning you find you cannot focus on that object. Your mind starts doing other things, so you got to gently refocus yourself. Bring it back to that one object of concentration. I suggest that when you begin a meditation, whatever your focus is, stick to it. If it is just to concentrate on the candle flame, just do that one thing. Then the trick is when you get distracted, bring yourself back. It is not forceful. It is not violent. You are not gagging the mind. You are gently redirecting your attention, to the focus. The Buddha Shakyamuni stated that if you forget yourself a thousand times and you remember a thousand times to return to the practice, it means that you have practiced really well. So when you are able to concentrate on one thing, then you can really enter meditation itself. Dhyana: Meditation
So all this is just preliminary. Meditation is when you are able to extract information about that object. For example, maybe you are concentrating on a scripture you read, or a book. You want to understand a certain verse or line. You read it. You reflect on it. You enter the stages of meditation. You relax, withdraw, and concentrate on that meaning. In meditation you can have experiences, in which the senses are shut down, but internally, as a consciousness, you experience, such as in dreams, different forms of knowledge that are inaccessible to the senses. Some people call it lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, dream yoga, astral projection. It is when your body goes to sleep, but you as a consciousness are fully lucid, and so you abandon your physicality and you enter the internal worlds, your inner psyche.
Then you can start to get knowledge about things that certain prophets wrote about, that they hinted at, but not many of them really spoke openly about the meaning. That is how you really get knowledge. That is real wisdom. In that state, you can talk directly with divinity just as I am talking to you—nothing vague there, nothing amorphous, nothing ambiguous. It is a clean, clear, pristine state of being in which you can gain information. Samadhi: Ecstasy
Even beyond meditation there is one more step. This is the synthesis of everything. When your consciousness is fully lucid and focused, as receiving information, you can escape from the limitations of your mind and any type of conditioning that has kept you in suffering and pain, etc. You escape. You get out of it. That consciousness gets extracted from the ego.
I’m sure you are familiar with the story of Aladdin and his lamp. That lamp is your ego and the Genie, the Djinn, an Arabic term for spirit or an enlightened being, you could say, is your own wisdom, your consciousness. You break the lamp. You destroy the ego permanently, then the Genie is free. You can perform miracles. This is where you get figures like Moses and many prophets performing supernormal things, because they liberated their consciousness from conditioning. They are able to control nature even. Very powerful and beautiful.
The Tree of Life: A Map of Being
But there is more than just examining those eight stages. There are a lot of principles involved. When you are having those experiences with divinity, you can study what is called the Tree of Life.
On the right you see a map of ten spheres. From the top you have the most rarefied states of being, which are very divine. Notice in this glyph you have three trinities. Kabbalah in Jewish mysticism, this map, this Tree of Life, is really an expression of us and our totality, in the multidimensionality of our being. It is a road map for who we are and where we are at and where we need to go. So any experience in meditation can be mapped by any one of these spheres. On the top trinity we have qualities of being and consciousness that are extremely divine, beyond our comprehension at this level. It has to do with what religions call Father, Son, Holy Spirit in Christianity. In Hebrew we call it כֶּתֶר Kether, חָכְמָה Chokmah, בִּינָה Binah, which means “Crown,” “Wisdom” and “Intelligence.” This is the supremacy, the wisdom and intelligence of divinity, which is inside our true nature, liberated, and is with us here and now. We just do not perceive it because we have so much other conditioning that we see represented by these lower spheres. Beneath that we have חֶסֶד Chesed, גְּבוּרָה Geburah, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, or you could say “Mercy,” “Justice,” and “Beauty.” We could say is our inner divine spark, our inner Buddha we could say, our divine soul and our human soul, our human will. It is the beautiful action of a perfected being, and we are really a part of that. Part of us, known as the consciousness, emanates from this sphere, תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, and descends down into the lower conditioned states of being: נצח Netzach (Victory), הוד Hod (Splendor), יְסוֹד Yesod (Foundation) and מלכות Malkuth (Kingdom). מלכות Malkuth is the physical world that we live in. יְסוֹד Yesod is our vital energy, sometimes known as the etheric world, the vital world. It is where we have all the forces that animate our body. If you study the Kirlian camera, amongst Russian scientists, they even take pictures of people, stones’ and animals’ aura. So the vital force is יְסוֹד Yesod, which is the aura, the living being. We have הוד Hod which relates to our emotions, נצח Netzach relating to our mind. This is a beautiful map of meditation because it teaches us that if our will power, our consciousness, is conditioned by thought, by feeling and by desire, instincts, it means that we are attached, not only to our physical body, but even to lower realms of being. The map that is below is called the tree of death. It is the shadow of the Tree of life. It is known as the hell realms. So you can call this map a reference point of external realities and even our internal states. There is a relationship there, different dimensions of expression and being. Above we have superior levels. Below we have inferior ones. In our moment to moment awareness, from our birth to our death, we have an opportunity in this instant in which to ascend. This is why we do practices of concentration, prayer, meditation. All these things help us to purify this will, that is at the center of the Tree of Life, so that we can obey and follow our own divinity within. This sphere תִּפְאֶרֶת Tiphereth, in Hebrew meaning beauty, is the essence. It is the beauty of our soul that knows how to act uprightly. But unfortunately for us, we are conditioned by negative thoughts, negative feelings, and negative impulses, desires. So we have many books and courses that explain this glyph in great detail and I invite you to study them. But in synthesis, this is just the map of who we are and where we need to go and what we need to do. Types of Meditation
There are also two very profound principles we have touched upon. In some schools they talk about stabilizing and analytical meditation and often refer to both of them as complimentary.
When you are working to concentrate your will on one thing, you are learning to stabilize the mind. You are developing serenity. You are developing focus and equanimity. It is when you can look at something clearly without wavering at all. We call that faculty, in the Gnostic tradition, concentration. In Buddhism they call it shamatha. Amongst the Sufis they call it silence, in which your mind does not talk. I am sure when we practice meditation today you probably experienced a chain of thought and thinking, even at a very subtle level. When you learn to go deep, you can enter states in which there is no thought involved and you are able to focus on one thing without distraction. That can stabilize our attention and there are many practices to do that. But there is another skill we need to develop to really enter meditation. We call it imagination. Imagination is the ability to receive non-physical imagery. So when I related to you certain examples, talking about having inner experiences, like you have dreams, those are forms of images that exist in your mind, in your interior. They are real. They exist. The problem is that we tend to go through that inner world without any awareness of it and not discriminating what is really real or conditioned or unconditioned by our own egotism. It is easy to see that we have dreams of hatred and violence. We are projecting our own mind into that world. But if you learn to pay attention and clarify your perception, you can perceive those worlds, that Tree of Life, as it is, in its real, fundamental expression. When you are able to imagine, amongst concentration, the ability to visualize certain images, you develop the full dynamism and potential of the consciousness. So imagination in us tends to be very conditioned. If I say, “imagine an apple” (snaps fingers) you can see it. It is not physical, but it is internal. That same capacity, when it is developed intentionally, whether you take a candle and visualize a flame or something really difficult and ornate, like a Buddhist mandala or painting, something very intricate, that develops the capacity of the consciousness to perceive with great depth, with great width and clarity. In Buddhism, they call that faculty, Vipassana. Amongst the Sufis it is insight. When you combine those two faculties, concentration and imagination, you can really enter meditation. So we need both. We need the ability to stabilize the consciousness so that it is calm, but then we also need the ability to see, and that is insight. When you combine the two, you gain knowledge. That is how you really enter the higher stages of real religion, of mystical experience. I know these are very synthetic principles. They are very deep and you could basically spend a lot of time studying what these practically entail. We have a lot of resources that you can research on your own. We have courses. We have books that talk about all of these principles in depth. I wanted to just survey them and provide an outline, so that you have a picture of where to start. Resources
So whether you are interested in learning basic concentration or equanimity, you can study courses like Meditation Essentials and Meditation without Exertion on Glorian.org. We also have some courses based on Gnostic principles, Gnostic Meditation, and even Sufism; we are giving a course about meditation taught within the Sufi teachings, the mystical teachings of Islam [See Sufi Principles of Meditation]. These outline for you how to develop concentration, serenity and insight.
We also have some books you can study as well to learn the basics of self-reflection: Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology and The Great Rebellion by Samael Aun Weor are perfect for this. You can learn the basics of how to examine, observe yourself, so that you can begin to gain knowledge and enter the path that is culminating in meditation. You can also study The Elimination of Satan’s Tail and The Revolution of the Dialectic, as well. These are very profound books, very practical. If you have any questions, I invite you to ask them. Questions and Answers
Question: Being in a time of an election year and all these things going on and we really need to separate ourselves from all these different concepts, is the goal to be passive with all this stuff and not be involved, and sit back and observe what is going on in the world and not get identified with it?
Instructor: Sure. I would state the important thing is not to identify psychologically. Whatever a person believes politically, that is a personal choice. But the important thing is to approach this situation with clarity. It does not mean we necessarily have to belong to any party, either one or the other, or take a middle stance. You know personally, I do not really get involved in politics, because you see the type of behavior that is being propagated, and the confusion and the anger and the resentment that people feel. I think the important thing to remember is that regardless of anyone’s political beliefs, in these studies we like to be more effective. Regardless of anyone we vote for or who you favor or whatever we believe in, the important thing is that we have a good heart. We change our own psychological states, because the world is going to be what it is going to be. I know we like to think we have a lot of agency in our political system, but I think a lot of people are realistic in saying that these things are going to happen regardless, because you see the state of humanity. People on an individual scale are not changing, and so, what result can we expect? And that is the fundamental irony of people, being shocked by what is happening, because this is just the consequence of wrong action on a global scale from everybody. I invite us to really reflect upon our own psychological states, because that is something we can change. That is something we can alter and remedy. But the direction of this country and humanity, in a sense, we have to be humble, to accept there are certain things that we cannot change, but there are certain things that we can do. That is better evaluated on an individual basis. Question: From what I have learned through time from this Gnostic tradition, I have noticed that sexual alchemy is not the central practice—meditation is. Alchemy is more like the foundation of a practice. So the question is: Buddhist and Hindu traditions are the only religions that teach how to meditate. Why have the religions in the West not spread this light? Why did Jesus teach only how to believe in him and why did Muhammad teach only how to believe in Allah? And Moses mainly taught how to follow laws and nothing about meditation. Why is that? Instructor: That is a good question. The reality is that they all taught it. If you look at the different traditions that developed in their original sources, their scriptures, the reality is they all taught the same thing. You study the Sufi teachings of Al-Qushayri, Al-Hujwiri, Rumi, many other Muslim mystics, they all, even Ibn ‘Arabi especially, they all teach meditation, but maybe not as explicitly as we find today. The path of Jesus is the path of meditation, especially. He taught by fasting forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, how to overcome your own devil, the mind. We find meditation in all teachings. The problem is that due to the cultural palate of certain people, they adulterated, they sterilized, they castrated the teaching. So people adulterate the wisdom of the prophets with time and therefore the religions of today do not resemble anything they used to. Now there are certain remnants we can pick and extract and gain knowledge from, and this is important. But it is important to remember that these religions and teachings have died. The form is what is left. The essence and the spirit have long left these traditions. You find this cyclically repeated in this humanity or humanities and different cultures. Every religion has a birth, life and death. Comes to mind even a saying by a certain Sufi mystic in Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism, this is around 1000 AD. He said, “In this time Sufism is dead.” So back then even that tradition had long been eclipsed, because these traditions have life and are sustained based on the qualities of the practitioners. Divinity works in different places and times and periods, and reinitiates that effort among different faiths throughout the course of history, because time, with exposure to humanity, obviously people’s interpretations and conditions of mind pollute the original doctrine. This is why Jesus said, “Beware the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 16:6) who take the original bread of knowledge and inflate it so that it is more palatable and “tasty” to the public. The reality is nobody likes the original teachings of the mystics and the meditators and the prophets, because it goes contrary to what people believe. But if you really examine, in synthesis, what these different traditions teach, they all teach meditation, but in different ways. You find meditation in Kabbalah, in the Jewish mystical traditions. You find it in Sufism. You find it in the Bible. But of course with time, people take out what they do not like. So I do not know, maybe we can say in the West we like to be hyperactive and not really sit still in the moment. In the East, a lot more people, as part of the culture, practice meditation. So we study all traditions in synthesis. Question: When meditating on an ego, what is the best way to visualize it during meditation in order to comprehend it? Instructor: So for those of you who are not familiar with that type of meditation, we call it psychoanalysis, where you are sitting and performing these preliminary steps: relaxing, working with energy, withdrawing your senses, concentrating upon your consciousness and even your inner divinity, your Being. You can also imagine. We practice what is called retrospection meditation. You visualize in a day, with your vision itself, what happened. Perhaps you had a moment at work in which you faced a conflict. In that work, you saw certain reactions emerge that work together. Maybe it was anger, resentment, pride and fear. Four different egos you could say, different senses of self, different wills, manifested in you as you were observing your mind, your heart and your body. In the day you were gathering data about those qualities as they emerged. But when you are sitting to meditate and go deeper, to gain more understanding, you can just simply look at those states. Visualize what happened, and the trick is when you start to visualize that scene, your ego, your defects, will start to emerge. They will want to feed on that memory. They will want to repeat those behaviors and thoughts and desires, etc. You have to separate enough from yourself that you can look at that internal mechanism and to see it for what it is. When you are concentrating and visualizing, you look and you examine the taste of that conditioned self. You have to look at the flavor it brings into your mind, but have enough separation that you do not identify. If you identify with resentment, pride, fear, anger, you get sucked into memories and then you are not even meditating any more. You are just lost in a chaos. You are just churning with those sentiments. So the best visualization, obviously, occurs in levels. You have to follow your heart in terms of what you need to study. Your conscience will tell you what you need to work on. If you feel that anger was a big problem in your moment to moment experience, focus on that and look at it. You can pray to your inner divinity to help you understand. We call that divinity the Divine Mother, the feminine aspect of our inner Being, symbolized by Mary and many other feminine figures in world mythologies. She is a part of us that helps us work on those faults. You can pray to Her and ask Her show you about this particular ego you need to understand. If you really go deep and you are concentrating very profoundly, you can have an experience in the astral world or the internal world of dreams. Your Divine Mother will show you what this ego is, how it works, what it looks like, what are its thoughts, and you will intuit the meaning if you are very vigilant. You will know and understand where it came from, why it behaves, what it does, how it feeds, how it sustains itself, how it relates to other aggregates and different egos. The best visualization is going to be based on your conscience. Follow your heart. If you feel you need to focus on a specific ego, one by one, do that. And focus and ask your divinity to help you understand. The next step is just do not identify with it. Do not feed it. Do not give it your energy, because when you start to conserve your energy and not spend it on negative behaviors, it is like starving a lion. So obviously, anger and fear and all these different defects are going to come up in your life wanting to feed, because you are starving them. They are starting to get weak. So look at the ego and have a receptive mind. Wait for the answer, and when you are really in a state of silence and insight, the experience will unfold on its own. This is the magic and beauty of meditation. It is never the same moment by moment. There are always different experiences that reflect a huge range, an infinite range, of experiences, but that is the result. When you gain insight, you may ask for elimination, to remove that ego, when you really understood what it is, how it works, how it traps you, how it repeats. Pray to your Divine Mother and visualize that defect to be killed, and then you free the soul that is trapped in it gradually, little by little, as your comprehension goes deeper. I hope that answers your question. Question: So you were explaining earlier about freedom and the way you were explaining it also reminds me of what is going on in life right now, for example looting and stealing. So where I am coming from is, the people who are committing these atrocities, right, they are acting for freedom, but in reality it is fear. So how can we even identify? Like, you said you see these people that are doing these things, they are the extension of who we are already, so how come within us, how can we identify the sense of freedom with the sense of fear and discern that and act accordingly? Instructor: Sure. Gnosis is lived upon facts, withers away from distractions, from theories and beliefs, and it is difficult to find in even the noblest of thoughts. The way that you are going to figure out what is from the soul and what is from the ego, what is fear and desire, what is true from what is false, is by looking. It means that we approach our mind and our heart without trying to label what we see. You will learn to discriminate that quality based on experience. It is not easy to learn how to sift through the mud so that you can find the gold of our soul. It is a qualitative state. Through observation and repeated verification of that state, you find that there are qualities that are pure and conditioned, and sometimes mixed. That is why we meditate so that we can discriminate, because it is not easy in the moment. When you are having a scene in life, or like seeing the looting and violence going on, like in Chicago, where people are screaming for freedom and are destroying so many people’s properties and homes and lives, the abstraction of freedom is not enough. Real freedom is when you do not act on anger. You have to look at your anger and what it wants and what it thinks, and have the strength to not repress it, to hide from it, or justify it. But when you look at it with clarity, meaning, you are seeing it for what it is, you notice how your own anger wants to feed, how to act. You only learn that through trial and error, by repeatedly training yourself. It takes time and training, and I always say that this superior knowledge is beyond time. You are not looking to the past or future, but it takes experience to verify what is right and what is wrong. You have to follow your conscience, your heart. I know, for example, when I trained in martial arts for many years, you do not really learn to do the techniques well until after a very long time of just repeated trial and error and even maybe getting hurt. That is our struggle. We suffer a lot as we are trying to change. But the purpose is not to get discouraged. You are going to feel pain and suffering as a soul by making mistakes. But by repeated effort and struggle against yourself, that is going to take some repeated experience. It is a war, you can say. This is why in Islam they talk about Jihad, holy war, but not against other people, against people who do not follow your faith. It has to do with the struggle against your desires. The only way that you are going to really conquer is if you do not give up. If you just give into anger, then it is very painful. But it is a struggle to learn how to acculturate our mind and heart to taste that quality of being that we know is from God and that is not unfiltered by anything. If you have doubts about certain experiences or actions you did, and you feel in your heart that there is something you need to investigate, then that is what you need to meditate on. Because that moral pain, the pangs of conscience, the intuition of the heart is what is going to really direct you. Follow that. Question: So a lot of us are surrounded by people who are acting with fear. So in a practical manner, what is the best way not to scold them, more with comprehension, but how can we aide? Because we are surrounded by them. It could be a family member. It can be a friend. It can be a co-worker. So how can we assist them? Instructor: Love. It has been demonstrated throughout historical movements, whether Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, ahimsa: non-violence, is the key. We show violence towards people even with our thoughts. We think that violence only occurs physically, but if you have an argument with someone, you disagree, if you want to coerce someone to think like you, if you create a division whereby, “I am a democrat and you are a republican,” or “I am a Jew and you are a Muslim, or a Buddhist,” Krishnamurti says that is a form of violence, because we are saying that we are separate. I like what the Dalai Lama said, is that we are all individuals, human beings. We all have the same longing for happiness and the same aversion towards pain. Everyone is like that, regardless of your theological position or beliefs. We show love for others when we respect their ways of thinking. We may know that they are ignorant, or you may feel that sentiment in a subtle way that wants to say, “Oh, they do not know any better,” and yet we have resentment of our own, that is our problem. Often times we do not reach people and we are not effective because we have our own ego, our own desires that think they know better. That is the problem with abstractions, with the ideologies and ways of thinking that convince us “they are wrong. I am right.” But the reality is that they think the same way. So rather than take a position, you can show them love. But this does not mean that we accept behaviors from their part that are wrong. It also does not mean that we are forceful, or we are imposing on their free will. Persuasion is much more elegant and eloquent than coercion. Coercion is when you want someone to think like you according to your ideologies. But persuasion is when, from your Being and your conscience, you offer a solution. From that threshold you are offering something as an olive branch to that person, to help them from your heart, and not expecting that they are going to follow it, nor demanding that they do, but simply offering it. That is the type of space that is really powerful. It comes from divinity, from really cultivating that. We have to respect people’s free will. The reason why this political race and state of humanity is so crazy is because no one respects each other’s will. Everybody thinks they know the answer and therefore they are arguing, debating. Arguments, we can say, are really satanic, honestly—one person against another, who thinks they know better, and their pride is just a big battle. It is violence. It is like watching people box. It is really sad. Instead, the reality is we need to approach a person with love, and that love knows how to set boundaries even for oneself, while respecting the will of the other person. That respect for others only comes when we respect our inner divinity, who knows right from wrong. When you intuit that, you know that, you can offer it to a person. But you cannot expect that people are going to follow that. Look what happened to Jesus, and he’s a great master, and look what humanity did. So we have to be willing to face the consequences of our ethics. If people do not like it, that is fine. We do not expect that people are going to respect what we have to say, and we have to be fine with that. Question: Are psychological identification and karmic circumstances the same thing, or is non-identification the way out of our karmic situation into real freedom? Instructor: Our karma is based on what we do, whether you are identified with the situation or not. So, in strict language, identification has to do with when you, as a consciousness, feel and think and behave that you are the desire, the condition: fear, pride, resentment, anger, laziness, gluttony, whatever defect. The quality of your mind in this moment determines your trajectory, where you go, whether in life or in nature. So if we act with a polluted mind, then obviously we are going to experience pain. But if we act with purity, then the logical consequence is that we bring harmony, in our situation, in our politics, in our humanity, in our life. Your karma is based on the quality of your mind. You receive what you do. You reap what you sow, in synthesis. So if you want better states and experiences in life, act with ethics. Show compassion. Have love for others even if it hurts, and basically, even Shantideva said it, “All happiness in this life comes from wanting the happiness of others, and all pain in this life occurs because we wish happiness for ourselves.” Simple dynamic, but very profound. It is the essence of Tibetan Buddhism. So if you want better circumstances, act ethically. Do not identify with your egotism, your pride. In fact eliminate it, if you want to have radical changes. Question: Once you accept yourself from squandering energy, what steps should one take next? When one achieves equilibrium, it can be challenging to accept the sustained energy. Many experiences occur, for instance premonitions, past life experiences, and consistently receiving messages. This can be overwhelming. What can one do to adjust to this new experience instead of being cast out due to the fatigue that arrives, with mitigating the mind’s inability to explain this new experience logically? Instructor: Be patient. When you have experiences, obviously it can be very alarming. I know when I first started meditating and practicing these kinds of principles, I had a lot of experiences in my dreams, especially, which obviously in the beginning, you can get freaked out, or you can feel like a messiah and be like, “Oh, I know the mysteries of life and death” and tell everybody, right? I suggest that if you find when you are working with energy and you feel perhaps overwhelmed by it, you can minimize that if you need to. It is good to work with energy, but more importantly, it is good to have self-control. I suggest if you are overwhelmed by these types of things, it is important to learn to, in a simple sense, have fun. You do not have to ruminate over the state of humanity. Being morbid or in a state of suffering is not going to help anybody. Being concerned for humanity—yes. If you are overwhelmed, it is normal in the beginning, but you gain stability through practice. So I suggest meditating on your own discomforts and uneasiness even. But also it is good to have a community of people you can socialize with too, who hopefully study these things and who are spiritually like-minded. Have fun. Relax. It does not mean you are going to go crazy, like drinking, sleeping around, and doing drugs, but just to help settle your mind with healthy and balanced activities. Recreation is a necessary quality to a degree, according to Swami Sivananda. You cannot just be serious. It is good to be serious in this work, but if you become morbid, that is a problem. If you become over agitated, filled with fear or anxiety, it is an issue. So learn to recreate, whether it is painting, sculpting, getting exercise, doing yoga. Some people like to do yoga classes. Meditation is especially helpful. Going out in nature, hiking is especially something I like to do. So it is important. Question: I have some questions on non-exclusive meditation or Mo-Chao, a few questions about that. In that mode of meditation, is there division between observer and observed? Is there imagination involved when you are just observing in the screen of your mind the images, the thoughts, the conversations, the problems, the preoccupations, and all of that? Would you recommend that we get really good at one-pointed meditation to get better at non-exclusive? Instructor: Good questions. In synthesis with non-exclusive meditation, you examine your state of mind as it is, which we began our practice today to a degree using that. If you find you are not able to maintain enough stability, to remember that presence, your own innate observation, it is good to return to a concentration practice where you can just focus on an object and let that be your anchor. Now imagination is in all things. That is a beautiful teaching about consciousness. Every living thing, even the atom, in an electron, sub-atomic particles, have consciousness. This is something that has been verified by quantum physicists. They have studied the behavior of light and that even light makes choices in experiments, depending on who is observing and what is going on. Imagination is the capacity to perceive. So we have imagination at our level. Now when you are developing imagination with, say, non-exclusive meditation, you are looking in yourself and not dividing yourself, making these separations in yourself about what you are perceiving. That is a very deep, profound state of perception, when you are looking in, which that state of looking is not conflicted between “Am I observing or am I not observing?” because as soon as you do that, then you lose the state. But if you are really deep in that perception, you do not make any false divisions, which Samael Aun Weor states, some people make the mistake of dividing themselves between a superior “I” and an inferior “I,” ignoring that it is two sides of the same coin. When you are looking at yourself, you do not want to make those divisions. Do not identify when the ego starts to divide itself. It makes the mechanism of superior “I” or inferior “I.” There is division, dualism there. That is the problem. What sees synthetically into the nature of any phenomena is when your consciousness is clear, and you just look at the state of your being, where you are at. But if you find that it is difficult to maintain that continuity, it is important to do concentration exercises to build that. They call that mindfulness. So people make a blurred definition of mindfulness and awareness, very commonly, today. Awareness is being present in the moment, where you are at, what you are doing, what you are thinking. Paying attention is when you are directing your attention on one thing. Awareness is when you are expanding you consciousness outward and perceiving all the details of life. Mindfulness if the continuity of that perception, in which you do not forget that you are watching. That is vigilance. When your consciousness is not sleeping, you are paying attention. So if you find it difficult to practice non-exclusive meditation where you are just observing what is going on in your mind, you cannot maintain that continuity, then return to concentration. It can help you regroup yourself until you have that stamina, so to speak. Question: Could you speak a little bit about grief? Because I know a lot of people are suffering and a lot of people have lost loved ones due to COVID or cancer, and when you are in that deep state of grief, it just depletes your energy and you are really kind of thrown off track. How to get yourself back to a state of equanimity? Instructor: We have many practices in this tradition to help with depression. One of them is relying on prayer, especially. We have a book called Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic. There are some exercises in which—when we are developing the powers of the consciousness, which is the ability to perceive and to concentrate, to pray and to influence nature—we can work with the souls of plants. We call it elementotherapy. There are ways to work with, for example, the essence or soul, or really the spirit of a plant, you can say. Now every living thing has consciousness at its level, some in less evolved degrees and some more evolved. Plants have a certain power and potency which is very much studied in Latin American countries, but we have practices in our traditions where we can work with the soul of the rose. Obviously, the rose is a prominent symbol of love and romantic relationships, but people do not understand too that the rose has the power to heal sicknesses. It does not require anything more than taking three roses and placing them in three glass cups, or three glasses of pure water. There is a sequence where you pray to the soul of the plant or your divinity, “Help me to work with the soul of this plant, the rose,” which is like a queen, really, in the elemental kingdom of souls, progressing in their development towards entering a humanoid state. They are very pure and innocent. They are like the purity of Eden. Those souls have not left paradise, so to speak, unlike us.
You drink one glass in the morning, one glass in the afternoon, and one glass in the evening, before dinner, or before each meal, and it simply involves prayer. It is simple. A lot of people might scorn these types of things because they do not really practice it. But I know when I have had emotional traumas and sufferings, I always go to the roses, and this ritual and prayer that you can do which you find in that book, Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic, [see specifically The Magic of the Roses] because the souls of nature have the power to heal. Each plant in nature has the capacity and the means of channeling certain energies and forces that are conducive for our well-being. You find that type of culture in amongst the indigenous tribes of Latin America, the Maya, the Aztecs, the mamas of the Sierra Nevada, and many other tribes that have ancient traditions, which fortunately we have access to this knowledge.
So the roses are effective for that. I mean I have had moments in my life where I was really traumatized, not only just by maybe losing someone, but facing conflicts in spiritual groups. There is nothing worse that hurts than the spiritual stab, when you are betrayed by groups of people. When I had that happen to me, I worked with the roses, and you know, I am fine. You can heal. You can do the same thing with traumas too. Question: I have a follow up question. So when it comes to meditation with grief, is grief a defect that we need to meditate on like an ego we need to comprehend, or is it something else, some other part of our experience of life? Instructor: Good question. There are the pains of the soul and the pains of the ego. The ego of shame or grief is really anger, inverted anger. It may not be directed at other people, but directed inside. So it is a form of self-hatred, which can be very deep. But there are types of sufferings in the soul that are also very profound, which have to be healed if we want to advance. But a lot of times when people deal with grief, it can be a mixture. You know, obviously, there is that natural grief and sentiment of loss when we as a soul lose someone. Obviously there is that quality of essence there, that consciousness. But sometimes we may feel grief for things that are really inconsequential. It can be inverted anger where it is hatred, but directed at oneself. This is why certain people become suicidal. Their hatred is directed at themselves. Consciousness is not there. Obviously when people commit suicide, it is a great tragedy, but the reality is they have so much self-hatred that they cannot separate from it. But meditation can teach you how to extract the consciousness from those depressive elements so you can see them for what they are. In that way you do not get caught up in that vortex of suffering. Question: So is grief for someone that we love the problem of attachment? Or is it okay? Instructor: It can be both. You got to examine your mind, because some, in most cases, most of us are very conditioned by attachments where, you know, we obviously suffer, but it is a natural sentiment of the soul to feel that longing for that person and obviously feel upset, but a lot of our attachments, our psychology, is conditioned. We are 97% conditioned perception. So most of the time, if we lose someone, it is going to be mixed with impurities, with attachments, obviously. We have to love people regardless of if they are with us or not with us, and if we really love a person, we have to be willing to love in accordance with their karma, their life, their trajectory, their journey, that they need to go through their process and to respect that. We can still feel sorrow for them and miss them, but it doesn’t mean that we become completely distraught and suicidal. Question: I actually have two questions. One has to do with what you mentioned about grief. I experienced something in my life that was very traumatic, which was the death of my first daughter, and she passed away at a very young age. Even at the beginning of today’s reflection / meditation, you mentioned trauma, and it brought me back to that and it immediately brought tears to my eyes. And it has been years and I will say “I will go back to that when I am ready.” But when you are experiencing such a strong pain in that reflection, how can you combat that, so you are able to penetrate into that trauma and actually see things? So one of my things is, how do I observe what went down that day without getting so identified? And then the follow up question to that is, you talked about reflecting on good qualities, like love, but most of us do not even know what love is, so how can we even tap into that and reflect on something so positive when we have something so strong, which is the ego? Instructor: As for the first question, in the words of Samael Aun Weor, he says that if we really want to annihilate an ego, we have to be willing to break and even weep tears of blood, if necessary, to feel that grief and even just cry, because bottling it up is not good. Sometimes if you have really seen an ego and comprehended it and really understood a pain of a certain moment, really deeply, you will cry. It is painful. But there is a certain type of release that is there when you are able to confront that emotion, because repressing it and numbing it does not get anywhere. If we numb ourselves, it is just going to churn and get stronger underneath the surface. Sometimes when I have seen certain egos and meditated on my own culpability, seeing things I have done wrong in my life, I have wept myself silly. I mean, just really cried, broke into pieces, sobbing. We need that. Sometimes we have to just let ourselves confront that emotion and to experience it, that remorse. Now in terms of the second question, you know the fact that we are so filled with ego that it becomes very difficult to know what is virtuous. As you said in your example, how you lost your daughter, you can reflect on that love that you felt from her and for her, because really, that is a strong bond to share with someone. I know sometimes we like to think that to really know what love is, we have to be very elevated, but we all have our level of experience. As a mother, obviously losing their child, you have that intense love and sacrifice for that person, for your child. So reflect on that. Obviously, all the other emotions and sentiments and confusion, maybe agony and anger and resentment at the situation, it is all circling around one thing—that is the love you feel for her. The ego is secondary. Consciousness is first. That shows us that our essential nature is love, but we tend to distract ourselves from that. So you can reflect on that, especially that bond, that relationship, because it is showing you that everything else is gravitating around that essential quality. There are ways to heal and to regroup, but sometimes it means we really have to break the shell, and it is painful. It is not easy. That is why many people do not stick with meditation. They leave because they do not want to confront this. But when you have the courage to let yourself shatter for however long you need, you can begin to regroup, fit the pieces together. Bottling up is not going to be healthy. Reflect on that love you felt [for more information on this topic, study Trauma and Spiritual Healing]. Opening Meditation
I invite you into this meditation to listen with a receptive mind, a heart with equanimity and without judgment. We are going to do a very simple practice within our Gnostic studies. We are going to utilize our capacity for imagination, for visualization. This is the ability of the consciousness to perceive, but not with physical sight. It is to perceive non-physical imagery, the perception of our internal psyche within our mind, within our being. This is a skill that is atrophied in many of us, because we simply never learned how to use it well.
However, all of us have experience with this quality. If you have ever listened to a story narrated to you either by parents or a family member, a teacher, we can visualize and imagine the characters, the dramas, the stories, the events being read to us. This is the very same skill we are going to utilize, but in this case, I am going to relate to you a Gnostic scripture with very profound significance and import. Listen with your consciousness. See the narrative. Imagine it. Let these words enter your mind and allow your heart, your soul, to evoke whatever images or qualities arise spontaneously and natural to you. Let your own consciousness be the thread that allows you to apprehend the beauty, the simplicity, the insight of this passage. The following is from The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, the Gospel of Truth: The gospel of Truth is joy for people who have received grace from the Father of truth, that they might know him to the power of the Word. The Word has come from the fullness in the Father’s thought and mind. The Word is called “Savior,” a term that refers to the work that he has to do to redeem those who had not known the Father. And the term “gospel” refers to the revelation of hope, since it is the means of discovery for those who seek him. What is Gnosis?
Gnosis (γνῶσις) is a Greek word signifying knowledge from experience. This is a very particular form of understanding. It transcends ideas, beliefs, ideologies, cultures, languages, and even identity. Gnosis is the experiential knowledge of an awakened consciousness. It is what we verify. It is what we understand. It is what we interpret beyond the limitations of concepts, labels, and beliefs. It is the wisdom of unconditioned perception without any filter, without vagueness, obscuration, without any appellations or names we give to any phenomenon we experience.
Humanity has become very interested in what is called The Gnostic Gospels, the Nag Hammadi scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls. That passage we read from the Gospel of Truth is one such document of many that reveal an experiential dimension within religion. In this lecture we are going to explain principles and truths that verify what such scriptures teach. While scholars historically attribute Gnosticism to the first Christians, the reality is that Gnosis, Gnosticism, experiential knowledge of truth, has been present within all religious and mystical traditions throughout antiquity. How do we know this? Let us approach this topic with an allegory. 
A Universal Religion
Light is a universal phenomenon. While it exists as it is, people from different cultures use different languages and words to describe light.
Is any culture’s language or words to describe light better than others? Is light by any other name less warm, less brilliant, or less sustaining? Does it matter what we call light? Does it function less as a result of a word, a label, or the terms we give it? Is light any more or less due to conceptual understanding of how light functions? Or does the experience matter most, the fact that all life on earth exists as a result of light? Light is a cosmic principle and reality. It is a fact all life exists due to light, in every single level of nature. Likewise, all life exists due to divinity without exception, and this is evident when we study religion. 
There exist religious forms, movements, and some examples we have represented here by thirteen symbols. Starting at twelve o’clock moving clockwise, we find images of the Baháʼí faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Native Spirituality, Sikhism, Taoism, Unitarian Universalism, and Zoroastrianism. While the language, the customs, the cultures, and the teachers are different and distinct, in synthesis the principles are the same.
Evidence for a Universal Religion
Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition, stated:
All religions, schools, orders, and sects are precious pearls that are strung on the golden thread of divinity. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Yellow Book
Do you want proof of this? Study the lives of the masters, those who founded religion. What do they all teach? What behavior, what conduct do they embody in their thoughts, in their words, in their deeds, even in their last dying breath? How do they respond to persecution, to hatred, to violence, when they were ridiculed, exiled, tortured, and killed?
I am not referring to any complicated, sophisticated, convoluted theology, some conceptual philosophy or sophistry, because in truth that is really secondary to living an ethical, dignified life. The memorization of concepts regarding ethics and morality really does not matter. Our ways of factually responding to life do. Do not luminaries like Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, Muhammed, and others have a brilliant character? Isn’t that what has inspired millions of people to study religion or spirituality, to want to sacrifice for others, to perform good deeds that benefit everyone, including one’s enemies? What draws people to religion? Isn’t it the light of compassion, understanding, the intelligence that these messengers exemplified in every action and state of their being? Was it not divinity expressing through them? Humanity venerates the prophets because their character is luminous, valiant, heroic. Millions of people respect these messengers because they embodied the greatest spiritual discipline and internal work upon themselves. By removing conditions of mind, they became vehicles of divine light. The Necessity for Tolerance and Religion
This light of divinity is universal. The messengers are different. The languages they utilized to teach are different. Certain metaphysical concepts appear different, but how one lives with intelligence, with wisdom, with conscious love, that is the same.
Despite what dogmatic or sectarian people believe, all traditions are necessary. They all communicate the needs, the qualities, the dispositions of different people, different groups. What is appropriate for one type of person might be inappropriate for another, because the language, the customs, the forms might not be palatable to somebody who has specific needs, much in the same way of having a diet. Therefore, it is wrong to criticize people from other religions or traditions. This is why Samael Aun Weor stated the following: We violate the law of the tranquil heart when we criticize others. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Aquarian Message. 
Religious Symbolism: The Language of Divinity
While religious forms differ, the essential principles of divinity are the same. There is contention among skeptics regarding a universal religion, but these differences in religious forms vanish, dissipate, once we study the language of divinity.
This language is symbolic. It is through symbols, as we see in this graphic. This makes sense because people of different languages, different cultures, different experiences learn in their own way, their own level of understanding. Symbols convey tremendous significance, which can either be interpreted in accordance with our conditioned prejudices, or the clear insight, the intuition of awakened consciousness, the mystical apprehension of internal truth. Symbols are utilized in our modern world to convey something deeper. This is the purpose of scripture and religion. In our modern world, we are familiar with branding, advertisements, politics, and we even find symbols in traffic signs. Isn’t it true that without traffic signs, streets would become chaotic? The same with the spiritual development of humanity. Religions are sign posts. They are a map, which, when studied in unison, complement each other. Scriptures contain symbols or allegories that are like that, like traffic signs, that teach us how to navigate life and even in our dreams. Religious symbols convey the wisdom and guidance of the divine. The forms appear different, but the principles they express convey truths that guide us, if we are educated in their universal meaning. Gnosis: The Synthetic DoctrineThe secret science of the Sufis and the Whirling Dervishes is within Gnosis. The secret doctrine of Buddhism and Taoism is within Gnosis. The sacred magic of the Nordics is within Gnosis. The wisdom of Hermes, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, and Quetzalcoatl, etc., etc., etc., is within Gnosis. Gnosis is the doctrine of Christ. The Degeneration of Religious Traditions
While Gnosis is a very pure, pristine, clarified fountain of spiritual experience, perception, the religious forms containing it have degenerated, decayed.
Do not believe me? Look at all the persecutions, executions, excommunications, and wars waged in the planet in the name of religion. Look how divided people are, attached to the concept of “I am a Hindu.” “I am a Buddhist.” “I am a Jew.” “I am a Christian.” “I am a Muslim.” I believe even Krishnamurti even said how we commit violence against our neighbor while we separate ourselves through cast, through religion, through ideology or creed. The degeneration of religion, rather the reuniting communities, has produced dissonance, enmity, and what is even worse, bloodshed. Divinity does not cause division. That is not the work of God. Conflict is a result of people who do not understand the principles of their own tradition, because if they understood their own faith, they would perceive divinity. They would know divinity personally, and they would recognize it within any tradition. It is absurd to adulterate Gnosis with different teachings because the Christian Gospel prohibits adultery. We can drink the wine of Gnosis, (divine wisdom) within a Greek, Buddhist, Sufi, Aztec, Egyptian, etc., cup., yet we must not adulterate this delicious wine with strange doctrines (meaning, the corruption of humanity). ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of Beelzebub
Overtime, each religion has its life and its death. Every tradition is born, unfolds, and decays. This is a natural law, a result of it being exposed to humanity who corrupts the teachings. Therefore, the Gnostic tradition is one such form that explains many traditions, many faiths, the synthesis and the heart of their wisdom.
The solution to religious conflict is not to identify with the exterior of the cup, but to experience and understand the universal principles contained within the pluriversality of religious forms. In this way, we avoid confusion. However, this requires a lot of study, a lot of instruction, and more importantly, the experience, to really have confidence and realization without doubt. Know Thyself
To know divinity, we must first know ourselves. This is a truth that was very well known in ancient cultures. Yet now, it is terribly denigrated.
The great messengers of humanity all taught the reality of reunion with the divine. They did not believe in divinity. They had personal experience, and religion is the form in which their experience unfolded. Sadly, even religious people think that this phenomenon is exclusively situated in a time long past, that only a few special people were privy to. However, all of them taught how to experience the truth within ourselves. People today, even when they say they are religious, they are really skeptics. People may believe in God, but if you told someone that you experienced divinity, talked with divinity, just as with any physical person like I am speaking to you, they would think you are crazy. This experiential dimension of spiritual truth was gutted out of religion primarily due to three things:
Humanity has simply never learned the practices that genuinely develop our full potential. Primarily, this was because this knowledge was very well guarded in the past. It was conserved in secret, and it was only given to those who demonstrated their responsibility, their moral caliber, their trustworthiness. Scriptures are abundant and more available today than they have ever been. Yet this knowledge is obscured within language, within symbols, within ancient codes, which most translators and scholars have simply never been initiated into. They simply do not know, even if they have degrees and very intelligent interpretations of ancient knowledge from a historical or materialistic perspective. Lastly, our lifestyle and our behaviors have conditioned us to the point to where we cannot experience or know divinity at all. Many people, even so-called spiritual people, believe that divinity cannot be experienced or known, and this is really sad. People fundamentally ignore an essential component of their tradition, of their religion, which is blatantly obvious when you perform a very serious inquiry, or analysis. The Difference Between Faith and Belief
In synthesis, the greatest misunderstanding that has ever risen is due to a conflation of belief with faith.
We will be very clear. Belief is not faith. The Greek πίστις Pistis literally means “faith” or “trust,” derived from Πειθώ peitho, meaning “to prevail, to grow in confidence or persuasion.” Pistis used to have a very positive connotation. It was confidence born from experience, the trust of the consciousness towards divinity from personal communication. Due to the conditioning and ignorance of the modern mind, people translated Pistis as “belief,” which basically means to think or feel something, a concept, is true without having experienced it. Adherence to a devotion, concept, a belief without experience, does not signify knowledge of divinity at all. You can believe in light. You can learn the terms. You can be very adept at arguing about light and its existence. You can posses an arsenal of words to defend it, to identify it. You might of studied every nook and cranny of intellectual knowledge and scholarship about light. You may know all of its processes, but unless you have escaped the prison, the darkness your own mind, to see the sun for the first time, you simply do not know what light is. Contrary to conventional beliefs, people like Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammed and many others were just like us―no difference. We idolize them because of their achievements, naturally believing that they were due to a gift of nature or a God. They were born special, we think, but this is not true. This is a modern convention that has no basis in nature. Does a tree spontaneously appear from nothing? Or does it grow gradually from a seed? The same with a perfected being, a living tree of life that can sustain the birds of heaven, as stated in the Christian Gospels. What happened was that they were initiated into a type of knowledge and practice that allowed them to work upon their own conditioning, and thereby they were able to free themselves. In that way, they can show that to others. They had the potential to become enlightened, like a seed, and since they worked really hard, they achieved it. It is a process. The Adulteration of Gnosis
The terrible reality is that this teaching of the prophets runs contrary to humanity’s most cherished beliefs, because humanity worships personalities, terrestrial things, concepts, ideologies. The essential message, the light of divinity, has been diluted. The message has been adulterated. It has been sterilized and even castrated in order to fit the prejudices of fanatics and skeptics.
Since people have never experienced or talked with God, they choose to believe these things. They mix the teachings with novelties and impurities that are manmade. This is why it states in the Gospel of John: The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. ―John 1:5
How do we know that humanity is in darkness? It does not comprehend light. Look at the fate of Buddha, who was poisoned. Socrates too. Look at the crucifixion and assassination of Jesus, Moses’ betrayal by the Jewish people, the persecution of Muhammed. People despise divinity, and sadly, ironically, they even use the words of the prophets while stoning them.
This is the terrible irony of humanity. We both love and hate the prophets for the wrong reasons. In essence, all prophets taught that to experience divinity, we must know ourselves, because divinity is inside, as we find in this graphic. The famous oracle of Delphi stated the following:
Man, know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and its gods. ―Oracle of Delphi
This Delphic maxim or ancient Greek aphorism has been utilized by many people: Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, and many others.
The unexamined life is not worth living. ―Socrates
These teachings are not about believing in ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, admiring our own achievements, to be filled with vanity, arrogance and pride, or that we are spiritual. In reality, it has to do with reevaluating our relationship to ourselves and to humanity.
Facts
Rather than believe in a concept or a tradition without experience, it is better to examine the daily, practical facts of life. The founder of our tradition stated the following:
Gnosis is lived upon facts, withers away in abstractions, and is difficult to find even in the noblest thoughts. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic
How many of us believe that divinity is real? That we have talked with divinity? That we have concrete factual experience that God is real?
Let me be bold enough to tell you that possessing extensive knowledge of scripture or devotion in the heart towards a tradition does not mean that we know divinity. Attending a temple, a synagogue, a church, mosque, monastery, giving charity and donations, time and energy in a noble cause, this still does not mean that we have experienced God. Presuming coincidences or some startling life changing event also does not mean that we know divinity. This phenomenon is similar to the foam from a crest of an ocean’s waves. They are ephemeral, transient, temporary. They are at surface level of a very deep reality. Concepts are like that. They are at the surface. The ocean is deep, profound, terrifying, and our intellect cannot begin to grasp the profundities of the abyss, the great ocean, an allegory of divinity, the vastness and amazing expansiveness of the divine. Concepts are at the surface. They do not equate with reality. We can have abstractions in the mind about the most subtle nuances, of philosophy, the intricacies of theology, and yet none of that signifies that we know the truth. Confronting this reality can make people very uncomfortable. It can distress people, making them disconcerted. Yet we have to be honest. No matter how noble our intentions, we need to rely on the facts. We have to realize and not pretend that we are something that we are not. Radical Honesty
Therefore, it is important to be honest with ourselves, because if we think and believe that we know, we will never question our circumstances, our situation, our relationship to it. Real experience is born through a logical confrontation and intimate self-reflection, and this can be very painful, even excruciating, when we seriously look at our foundations.
Yeshua said, Seek and do not stop seeking until you find. When you find you will be troubled, when you are troubled you will marvel and rule over all. ―Gospel of Thomas 2
Truly, genuine spirituality is not comforting. It is very disturbing. It is uncomfortable. It is uneasy. But why?
Have you ever wondered why you do not know divinity? Or have a deeper relationship with that principle? Ask this of yourself. Why do we not perceive divinity like the prophets? All the ancient mythologies and narratives teach that Adam and Eve talked familiarly with God. The reality is that we do not know why because we have never been educated about the symbols of mythology, the allegories of scripture, what these teachings and traditions actually mean for us now―not as a literal history, but as a moral compass of how to navigate life, the turbulence of existence. Did you study the Bible? Did not Adam and Eve know divinity but disobeyed? What about Pandora? Did not she get advice from the gods not to the box? Did not Pistis Sophia identify with the lion faced powers, mistaking the thirteenth aeon with the chaos? These are not physical people. These are representations of our psyche, our consciousness, how we once had natural access to states and experiences of the divine, but we chose to engage in behaviors that are contrary to divine law, universal law, immutable laws. Therefore, our once liberated, happy, intuitive perception became conditioned, became caged, became asleep. We expelled ourselves from Eden, the Hebrew term for bliss, for happiness, because we no longer resonated with the laws of the divine. 
The Pearl of Heaven
While the reality of suffering is very unpleasant, we do have the opportunity to learn how to change our conditions of mind, so that we can become free of pain. This is allegorized in every single scripture in different ways, without exception, and this is allegorized in the biblical parable of the merchant who wanted to buy the pearl of heaven. He sold everything he had to purchase this marvelous gift.
You ever wondered what a pearl symbolizes? Do you know where a pearl comes from? This is very meaningful. A natural pearl begins within an oyster shell. An intruder, like a grain of sand, invades the oyster. It enters between the two shells. This enters the protective layer covering the mollusk’s organs. Is not a pearl a pure elegant thing? A beautiful item? Something that is envied, prized, sought after? Something to be amazed and proud of? Yet this pearl emerges form filth, from the slime, from the gross body of an oyster. This is an allegory of us. We are like an oyster, figuratively. We have an external shell, which protects us from the world, which is our identity, our values, our race, our gender, our politics, beliefs, our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting―and yet when that sense of self is invaded, when it is threatened, when it is troubled, we feel irritated. We feel angry. We feel challenged. We feel that our life is in danger. These are moments, crises, ordeals, where we can take advantage of an opportunity to create something greater than ourselves, rather than remain at a level of an instinctive, blind, animalistic creature, an immobile thing that does not know how to move in life with efficacy, with grace. We instead can give birth to something more, the full divine potential of an enlightened being. As the Sufi poet Rumi taught: If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished? ―Rumi
This is why the Gnostic scriptures or the Gnostic scripture The Hymn of the Pearl exists. We recommend you study it. It corroborates what we are saying.
The Tree of Life: Kabbalah
This graphic is known as the Tree of Life. It is a symbol of you in the totality and multidimensionality of your being.
Kabbalah is traditionally known as Jewish mysticism. It is really a map of who we are, where we are at, and where we need to go. It is a tool that we use to interpret different scriptures, different religious traditions, and more importantly, different levels of nature. It is a Western symbol. In the East, you find its equivalent that is Kalachakra, especially within Tibetan Buddhism. You see these spheres? They are known as סְפִירוֹת sephiroth. It is the plural term for “jewels” and “emanations.” So, again, these are like pearls, beautiful qualities, beautiful principles that we must strive towards and realize. The highest sephiroth represent qualities of being that are very rarefied, subtle, and divine. There are also places in nature that exist beyond physical matter and expression. The further down this graphic you descend, the more material, concrete, and dense is the quality of being, of dimensionality, of experience. The Gnostic scriptures refer to these sephiroth as aeons, which emanate and emerge from an unknowable Seity, the womb of cosmic, universal abstraction, the ocean of the uncreated divine. It is the source of all created things at a potential state. It is known as the Abstract Absolute Space. In Hebrew you find these terms, אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, which are Hebrew terms for the Nothing, the Limitless, and the Limitless Light. This is what we strive for in spirituality, the ultimate perfection, the bliss of our true identity, which it is not an individual self, but a cosmic perception beyond duality, beyond suffering, beyond this universe. We are at the bottom, מלכות Malkuth, which means “Kingdom” in Hebrew. This is the physical world and our physical body. Above we have heavens and below we have inferior levels of nature known as hells. All of us to a degree have experienced aspects of this tree and below. Have you ever had dreams? Those experiences are within הוד Hod, the world of “Glory” in Hebrew, the emotional or astral world. When we dream, we exist in that dimension. We interact in that dimension. It is not physical, but it is real. It is matter, energy, perception in a more subtle form. The higher you ascend this graphic, the more subtle nature becomes, the more subtle our perception. To experience those states in a consistent and sustained manner requires development. It requires work, which is why we offer practices in our tradition in order to awaken our full potential [see our course on Dream Yoga and Astral Travel]. Also, we have experiences within the hell realms. This is something that everyone knows. Have you ever had nightmares? Those are experiences, those are living personifications of our own hell. Those are our own states of anger, submerged violence, unperceived murder, terrible crimes, like rape, theft, extortion, etc. What is really disturbing is that these things are real. I know we like to wake up in our bed and think, “Oh, that was just something insubstantial. It was imaginary.” But the reality is that those are qualities of our own consciousness that we do not perceive in our current level. Those are conditions of mind that are very subtle and deep. We fail to perceive or experience them because we do not direct our attention and investigate those submerged regions of our mind. This can be very distressing. In reality, what is hopeful is that in this work we can comprehend our deepest traumas and sufferings. We can eliminate them. This is why we study and practice the science of meditation, which we provide in different courses. This is why every single religion like the Greek mysteries portrays the heroes descending into the hell realms in order to redeem the virgin. Orpheus and Eurydice as an example, a symbol of our own consciousness, our own soul, is trapped in states and conditions like pride, vengeance, resentment, lust, gluttony, etc. We need to learn to confront our own reality in order to redeem ourselves. Every religious scripture depicts the struggle of the soul that is free and trying liberate that which is conditioned, so that we can transform our hell into a heaven. While Kabbalah is a map of our universe, it is especially an expression of who we are, here and now. This is why it states in the Gospel of Thomas: Yeshua said, if your leaders tell you to “Look, the kingdom is in heaven,” then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty and you are poverty. ―Gospel of Thomas 3
If we do not know this Tree of life of ourselves from experience, it means that we are spiritually poor. We do not know our full capacity, our full potential. However according to the book of Matthew:
Blessed are the poor (and the beggars) in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ―Matthew 5:3
Who are these poor or beggars in spirit? It is the meditators. Those who develop their own Gnosis, their own self-knowledge. The term “poor in spirit” is very inaccurate as a translation. Ptōchos, the Greek term of the original New Testament, signifies “reduced to beggary.” It also refers to “begging; asking alms; to be a beggar.” When we learn to beg for knowledge, to receive with an untainted mind, with an attitude of most sincere receptivity, we can really begin to apply methods that are going to revolutionize our experience, our way of being.
Unveiling
This is how we learn to enact practices and disciplines that can transform our conditioned psyche into a liberated, awakened, luminous, and ethical perception. The reality of divinity that once was so distant, becomes prominent and clear.
Yeshua said, Know what is in front of your face and what is hidden from you will be disclosed. There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. ―Gospel of Thomas 5
Resources
We have some resources here at the end of this slide, three books that are very profound: The Great Rebellion, Introduction to Gnosis, and Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology. These are wonderful explanations of the basis of Gnosis: how to acquire that experience for ourselves and how to begin transforming our daily problems, so that we can gain knowledge of the causes of our sufferings so that we can change them. Therefore, we can know divinity perfectly.
At this point in time, I am going to invite you to ask questions. Questions and Answers
Question: Can you say something about Gnosis and Christianity? Is this esoteric Christianity or taking wisdom from other traditions like Baháʼí.
Instructor: That is a very good question. Gnosis is typically associated with the first Christians, as we stated, esoteric Christianity. We do have our physical school where we receive instructions as in the Gnostic Academy of Chicago, and yet we also have our own church which is an esoteric order that any person can be initiated into when they properly prepared themselves and have been properly prepared. You can learn about that in a book called The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. As an esoteric Christian school, we also take wisdom from many faiths, because the essence is the same, whether it is Muslim, Sufi, Buddhist, Aztec, Jewish mysticism, etc. They all really share the same roots. However, we do have particular predisposition towards the Gnostic Church. This is the idiosyncrasy in which it is expressed, but this does not mean that we do not explain, appreciate, or unveil the mysteries of different traditions. So, you will find all of the religious forms explained within Gnosis. Yes, in synthesis we have a school and a church. Study The Perfect Matrimony because that explains that distinction very well. It also explains the wisdom of every single religion in synthesis. I invite you to study that book. It is a great introduction. Question: I want to ask you if there is a way, an order, to read Samael Aun Weor’s books? Instructor: That is a very good question. There is not a particular order because the needs, the idiosyncrasies, the character and skillsets of the students are going to be different. Now, there are certain books that we like to recommend for beginners. I mentioned some books at the end of this presentation that can serve as a beginning. We also have an article on our web site, “Where to Start?” in terms of how one can approach in a systematic way the different writings of our teacher. The important thing is that we have to follow our heart. Whatever our unique needs are, we should listen to that. If you want some suggestions and recommendations, we can definitely offer that to you. Question: You mentioned how we all experience the Tree of Life, like Malkuth, the physical body during the day, and Hod, the astral world, during sleep. My question is, where do demons primarily live? Like those mentioned in the writings of Samael Aun Weor, like Jahve, Beelzebub, Lilith, Nahemah, etc.? Would the lunar fifth dimension be the only exceptional answer to these questions, or could it be the astral world, even the mental world? 
Instructor: So, if you study the Tree of Life, you find it is multidimensionality of the universe. The astral plane is located in the fifth dimension. It is beyond physicality (מלכות Malkuth in Hebrew). It is a subtle state of internal experience and expression. The hell realms belong to the inferior aspect of the fifth dimension.
The third dimension is our physical world, which is length, width, and height―physicality. We only perceive experience in the physical world in accordance with three dimensions. Above that you have the fourth dimension known as the sephirah יסוד Yesod. It is the vital or etheric world. It is the fourth dimension, meaning length, width, height, but also hypervolume, which is how a solid progresses or develops within time. In this dimension, it is beyond physicality. It is the energetic aspect that animates physical life. It is more subtle. It is known as hyperspace, four dimensions. The fifth dimension is Hod and Netzach, the astral and mental worlds. הוד Hod means “Glory” in Hebrew. נצח Netzach means “Victory” in Hebrew. יסוד Yesod means “Foundation” in Hebrew. Really, what we call the hell realms where beings like demons or negative entities reside is the inverted fifth dimension. So, there are positive and negative aspects to this graphic. There are superior states and there are inferior states. One can experience superior awakened dreams within Hod, but also through nightmares and negative experiences one can enter the inverted fifth dimension, which is the hell realms. There is a statement by St. Paul (paraphrased) “for we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in the dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly palaces” (Ephesians 6:12). That is a description of the struggle of the soul in the spiritual path. Yes, while there are other entities outside of us who practice negative arts, in reality, what should concern us most is our own psyche, because we all have our own egotistical conditions of mind like anger, pride, fear, vanity, lust, laziness, etc., which constitutes our own demonic consciousness. So, in our studies we learn to protect ourselves, not only from other people, but also from our own mind, which is more important. This is why we study meditation. For those who are interested in this topic, you can study the first lecture, Basics of Spiritual Defense, in the course Spiritual Self-Defense on our website. 
The reason why many people approach spirituality often comes from the results of organized religion. We often find in popular institutions teachings that, while they resonate with our heart, they are lacking something critical, something profound, and something fulfilling. It might seem unusual that the very thing missing in organized religion is an understanding of sexuality.
People often, on the news and on television, show the results of monastic life, such as in the Catholic Church, which profoundly ignores how sexuality can be used for a divine purpose. In organized religion, they do not know how to utilize the natural expression of the human being, because sexuality is a part of life, and despite what people think, sexuality is also a part of religion, in a genuine sense, not from an institutional dogma. The reason why there are cases of abuse, violence, is because priests do not understand how sexuality should be used and understood, and not repressed. People look at sexuality as something filthy, something perverse, or something to gratify the pleasures of a couple. There are extremes in our culture. In religion, we are taught to reject sex, which has its problems, because as you have seen with institutionalization and the rejection of sexuality, that quality of the human being has to be controlled or understood or worked with, and when people try to repress sexuality, it ends up in forms of perversion, such as molestation of children, deviant sexuality, abuse and degeneration. But we have this other extreme in our culture, where in America, or all throughout the world, people feel that we should indulge in sex. We should acquire as many sensations as we can, pleasant experiences, relationships, and yet, we look at the results in humanity: divorce, suffering, marital conflicts, pain. So it is very clear that when we look at society, people and religion do not understand what the role of sexuality is, from a spiritual perspective, from a divine perspective. Some people think that sexuality is simply a means to procreate, to create children. That is a very noble aspiration, to be a father or a mother, to have a family, but, we do state that that is not the entire gamut of what sexuality is. To procreate the species, that is one part. People don't really understand that sexual expression, as the natural birth right of the human being, can be something divine, heavenly, sacred: not from the Christian perspective, that we are going to use this act as something to create a child, to create a family, but there is another purpose that has been taught in all the ancient schools of religion and mysteries that, unfortunately, have been gutted out, removed―primarily because people face a difficult problem when addressing this issue of sexuality. Sexuality in itself, the creative energy itself, has marvelous potential. It can empower our most divine attributes. It can ennoble the soul, our most divine qualities, because the sexual energy is the ability to create. It always acts. It always has to move, to flow, to work. But the question is how? In what way do we use this energy which resides in our glands, whether male, female? Unfortunately because people have not been educated, we think that sexuality is simply indulging in desire, pornography, prostitution, adultery, and our society worships these qualities and believes that you can indulge in all these actions and think that there are no consequences. But you see the result of what happens to people, the life of prostitutes or adultery. Sexual action is the most profound action a human being can perform. If we push it away, it churns in the subconsciousness and becomes desire that is never satiated, and then it becomes a monster, which is why priests who don't understand how to consciously work with this energy in a divine way―with practices, with exercises, to transform that energy into something creative, into something expressive―that energy then ferments. It rots. It becomes putrid. This is why you see priests committing such horrible crimes against young people. It is really disastrous. So we have to look beyond just the beliefs about what our culture wants us to think. It is better if we can analyze and investigate what this energy is, and the purpose of this lecture is to talk about how the creative energy, in itself, has the potential to develop our spirituality, our true nature, which is the soul. Consciousness and Desire
You might have listened in to previous lectures. We talked a lot about the soul, consciousness, our true nature. Sometimes people think of Buddha nature in Buddhism. It is the pure element of consciousness that can reflect divinity, who is inside, in our hearts and our very qualities of being, qualities like compassion, happiness, serenity, faith, understanding, patience, love.
These are qualities that we have deep down, but unfortunately we have mixed it with impurities: anger, hatred, lust, envy, greed, which religion calls the seven deadly sins. Every tradition has its names for what we call ego, defects, desires. And all that, according to a real meditative tradition, has to be removed. All those negative qualities have to be eliminated. But first we have to comprehend them, understand how our own anger makes us suffer and makes other people suffer, how our own pride injures our neighbor and ourselves at the same time. We don't really understand how our own egotism creates problems for ourselves, and because people do not understand how to work with the mind in an effective way, they take the most powerful energy available to them―the sexual energy―and they channel it through anger, through violence, through perversity. This is how you have all the monsters of today that are very abundant. 
Divine Eroticism and Awakening
So this is a very serious topic and we'll talk about how the soul, known as Psyche in the Greek myth, can be awakened to her true nature through Eros. Eros is the god of love, Cupid, in the Greek myth, which is a symbol. It teaches how our own divine spiritual nature, how through divine love, a divine marriage, the force of Eros, eroticism, awakens our full potential, which is pure, divine.
Different traditions symbolize that work in many ways, but of course, in this lecture we will be very explicit about what these traditions are. You may have heard of alchemy in the Middle East or medieval Europe, Middle Ages. They talk a lot about how we must transform lead into gold. But of course, that is symbolic. It teaches something spiritual, and even psychological. Our egotism, our defects are like lead. They weigh us down. But if we learn to work with energy, the creative sexual energy and learn to direct it with our consciousness, our soul, that energy is going to empower us radically, and with that force we can transmute, transform, elevate, make our egotistical consciousness become a divine consciousness―lead into gold. 
In this image, we have Padmasambhava with his consort, his wife. They are in sexual union, but there are many misunderstandings about what this tradition teaches called Tantric Buddhism. A couple, man and woman, who embody masculine and feminine principles, can combine their energies to work in a very transformative way, and these ancient traditions teach us, whether from the East or the West, how a man and a woman, using the energy that is available to them, and the power and ability to procreate, can take that energy that they awaken within sexual union and transform it, use it to empower and create the soul.
As Jesus taught in the gospel, “that which is born of flesh is flesh” through the common sexual act. But the same sexual act or the sexual act transformed can be utilized for the Spirit, since “that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” So many Christians ignore what this teaching is about. They have no clue, because people haven't been educated. The physical sexual act can create a physical child. Anybody knows this. But with certain procedures, if the couple retains the sexual energy in their union and uses that energy with the soul, it can transform their marriage and make it a sacrament, a holy union. This is the meaning of religion, from the Latin religare, “to reunite.” This is the highest yoga, from the Sanskrit yug, “to reunite.” It is also known as tantra, which is where this image comes from. The medieval alchemists, whom people denigrate today, knew this secret science. It was never taught publicly because it has tremendous power. The sexual energy can create anything, a child. It perpetuates the species. Sexual drive motivates every aspect of society, every aspect of life. Even chemicals, compounds, molecules, electrons, atoms, are driven by sexual propulsion, energy―attraction, rejection, repulsion, combinations of energies, a form of marriage. That energy is everywhere, and in the human being, that most profound force, the ability to create, is in our sexual glands. This energy is so powerful that it can develop a human being to their highest potential. So for many centuries, this knowledge was kept secret, because unfortunately many people would abuse it. But we are living in a very different age now, where this type of knowledge and spirituality, information, is given openly. The doors have been opened by divinity for people to understand this kind of knowledge, so that people who want to transform themselves and have a method to help them attain that goal, can. 
The Symbolism of Alchemy
But of course, the alchemical science was taught in symbols in medieval Europe to prevent persecution, such as with the Inquisition in the Catholic Church, which had completely extirpated the sexual teachings of esoteric Christianity.
Alchemy comes from Allah in Arabic, meaning the God, the name of divinity in Islam. And khemia, the Greek word for chemistry. It is the chemistry of God. It is how a couple, man and woman, using their sexualized polarities, can take their energy, combine them, and restraining the sexual energy, circulate that force, learning to control their egotistical desires, and unite out of love, to dominate their subconscious passions. Those individuals, those couples, can unite with God or divinity, whatever name we wish to give to that impersonal energy or force. 
In Greek, the word khemia can also mean “to fuse or cast a metal.” There are many symbols in the Bible that retained this knowledge. Moses lifted up a brazen serpent on a staff to heal the Israelites wounded by divinity for having disobeyed Him. If you study alchemy, the science of metals, bronze is an amalgamation of copper and tin. Copper in alchemical science relates to femininity, woman, love, Venus. Tin relates to Jupiter, masculinity, man. When husband and wife unite their energies, they can awaken the brazen serpent known as kundalini amongst the Gnostics and the Yogis of the East. That serpent can be raised upon a staff, the spinal column, so as to heal our soul from the afflictions of our daily life.
In the Bible, Moses represents willpower, the power and the will to dominate temptation and desire. It doesn't mean to run away from sex, but to approach the sexual act with respect and veneration, with love, to remove passion and desire and connect out of divine love. So this couple, Padmasambhava and his consort, are not united out of lust, to fulfill their animal desires. Unfortunately, people look at these kinds of images and only think with animality, with satisfying and having pleasant sensations. Pleasure is natural to the sexual act, but it should not be the only basis for which a couple unites. It should be for the couple to really develop their love, their consciousness, to take that energy and, through certain exercises, controlling the breath, even performing sacred sounds like mantras, we learn to circulate the energy. Instead of making go from in to out, to expel it, one makes the energy to go out to in, to circulate it, to control it, to elevate it. 
This is the mysteries of Jesus being baptized in the river Jordan. The word ירדן Jordan in Hebrew means “descender.” That energy that is deposited in our sexual glands is divine. It can create life. It is the power of life. The Jews say לחיים L’Chaim, to life, and the Christians call it the Holy Spirit, even if they don't understand what that energy is.
So that power of life can create spiritual life. The couple needs to learn to take that energy, which usually descends down into us and we expel it through a moment of pleasure or a few seconds of pleasure, which are fleeting―that energy instead of descending, we can learn to make it reascend, to make the river turn its course, which instead of going out, it goes in. It circulates as energy. You have the actual matter or entity of semen, which is physical in either men or women. Sexual fluid, those waters which are symbolized in the Bible as the waters of Genesis, the waters of generation, we can learn to be baptized with that energy, transform it, the substance into divine power through very specific procedures. This is very well documented in every religious scripture in the world, but in allegory. 
Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding, the marriage of Cana. He turned water into wine. People think it is a literal story of Jesus getting people drunk, and they can believe that. But more profoundly, he is teaching a couple who knew this science, to transform the water or entity of semen, into energy, into the wine or ecstasy of the spirit, circulating it. And that is how you are baptized with water. He turned water into wine.
The mystics of Islam, the Sufis speak very beautifully about this too. Very abundantly, they talk about love of God. “Muhammad was in love with God,” and they make it an erotic teaching, which scandalizes many people because people like to separate religion from sex, and don't understand that you show true religion by loving your wife if you are a man, and as a woman, loving your husband. This is a science from Egypt, from Al-Khem. This is a very ancient science that was studied in all the primeval cultures of the world before they degenerated, before people, instead of respecting these types of teachings or laws in themselves, decided to indulge in desire, because sexuality can be for animal pleasure or lust. Or it can be for the soul. It depends, and you have the judge in yourself how that is. This is why we study meditation too. So this is a very deep topic. We are introducing some of the basics, because to really practice like Padmasambhava without lust, united sexually with his wife, takes a lot of work. Because of course, in the beginning we are full of animality, desire. But with training, we can ride upon desire, like a donkey, as Jesus rode up on a donkey into Jerusalem, the heavenly city. Symbols, but not explained for many years. The Sufis also mention that, I believe the poet Rumi, who is the most popular poet in the West today, said that when you look at a cup full of water and you have your own desires, you only see your own face in it. But if you are looking as a result of love of God, you will see God in those waters. He is talking about this. If you are married or husband and wife, male-female, in a relationship that is sexually active, we show our love for divinity in the sexual act. But of course, with training. One has to be educated how to do that. It takes time, but it can be done. Or if one is filled with desire, we look at the sexual act and see just the gratification of pleasure. That is one extreme. Tantra
So this teaching is known as tantra in the East. In Sanskrit, it is a word for “continuum” or “unbroken stream.” It comes from the Sanskrit “tantrum, literally loom, warp.” Hence, it is a “groundwork, a system, a doctrine.”
What is this continuum? When the sexual energy is retained and transformed, it circulates in our body. We have certain energetic channels in our spine, in our body, that can take that energy and circulate it. And we will talk about what that particular aspect of our physiology relates to. But the energy has to be controlled. It has to be contained. That is the only way for energy to circulate. If the energy is released through the orgasm, there is a short circuit. That continuum is broken. So we are very explicit about how tantra works, because there are people who think that tantrism is just about sexually uniting with one's partner, enjoying pleasure, and then reaching the orgasm. There are many people who teach that kind of doctrine, but unfortunately, that type of action feeds desire. In these studies, we are working to remove our imperfections like lust or desire itself. We want to empower the soul but in order for Psyche to waken, we have to work with Eros and retain that power. Even the 14th Dalai Lama explained that in tantra, the seminal force is never let out. We can contain it, conserve it, and make it circulate through mantras or prayer, through breath work. That is how it becomes an unbroken stream. That is how we perform the loom of God. A loom is where we create clothes. When we work with the energy, we create something. If that energy is conserved and worked with for many years, internally we create vehicles of expressing divinity in us. We talk a lot about this in the studies of alchemy as the vehicles of God, the wedding garment of the soul. In the Gospels, it is stated that one cannot attend the marriage of divinity without the wedding garment. So that is the loom. We have to create a type of vehicle in which our soul can act. It is not physical, but it is internal, vehicles that relate to different aspects of our psyche within different dimensions. We will be explaining about what these vehicles are in-depth, but I just want to introduce to you that the energy has to create something. It can create a physical child, or it can create the vehicles of the soul, the soul itself, which is like a wedding garment. Isn't there a saying that you are what you wear? Or “the apparel oft’ proclaims the man,” states Polonius in the play Hamlet. So we weave the soul through this energy. It is a groundwork. It is a system. It is a doctrine, from the word tan, “to stretch or extend.” Of course, this has a sexual significance, as represented by the erection of the male phallus. Tantra refers to “that continuum of vital energy that sustains all things.” So I stated, the creative energy is within our sexual glands, but we find it within everything, from down to the atom, to the galaxy. It is also “the class of knowledge and practices that help us harness that vital energy which can transform us radically, thereby transforming the practitioner.” 
Transmutation
Some people also call this transmutation. You may hear this term a lot within the books of Samael Aun Weor and throughout different lectures on this topic. Tantra, alchemy, and transmutation are the same thing. So transmutation is broken down from trans, which is a prefix we find in words like transcend or transfix. It means to take something “across, beyond or through; to change something thoroughly; to move.”
The word mutate we find relates to “causing something to change in form or nature.” So what is transmutation or sexual transmutation? It means, through practice, to take the actual entity of the semen retained within our body, our receptacle, and with certain prayers, mantras, exercises of breath, we can take that actual matter and transform it into energy, mutate it. I know we are probably familiar with X-Men, mutants, people with power, but people don't want to recognize that Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, and many prophets were mutants. They took that energy of sex and created, or recreated themselves spiritually. They became such great beings because they were married. They had that energy available to them, and through love, they changed themselves. So all those qualities that we admire and beings like the prophets, Jesus, their selflessness, their compassion, they did that because they became mutants. They mutated that matter and became an energy. They carried over that force within themselves, raising it from the sexual glands to the brain, and then to the heart. 
If you are familiar with the shepherd's staff so popular with in Biblical allegory, it refers to that image, the serpent of Kundalini rising from the coccyx to the head and then down to the heart. That is how one leads flocks, spiritually speaking, because they have that energy manifest, at least true teachers, with true prophets or gurus. Therefore, transmutation is “the act of changing, or the state of being changed into another form.”
It is logical that that energy which can create a child can create something inside of us. It has tremendous force. It is power of divinity. Divinity creates through the sexual act, through the sexual energy, but it depends on the quality of our mind. What are we doing with that energy? Are we expelling it out? You can more radically take that force, conserve it, transmute it, make it into something more powerful, because as it is now, it is in a very rudimentary state, but that energy can really grant us access to many things. 
Animal Desire and Divine Sex
So as I said, Krishna was a great mutant. He changed his spiritual form, and he had many powers that are documented in the Bhagavad-Gita, which of course, there was a master in the Hindu Pantheon who actually came many thousands of years ago to represent this principle known as Krishna. He is what is known as the Hindu Christ.
As I said Christ, divinity, is not a person, but an energy. It is impersonal. It is universal. And that energy is synonymous with sex. The power of life, the power of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of divinity, is here. Krishna, who is a beautiful symbol of that force, had power to act precisely because the soul or the person was working with that energy very beautifully, very profoundly. As I mentioned, divinity is the sexual energy. It is a sacred force, which is why even in the Qur’an, the doctrine of the Muslims, some of the sacred names of divinity is Al-Khaliq, “the Creator,” and Al-Wadud, meaning: “the Loving.” And that scripture mentions how, “Did we not create you from a sperm-drop…” which of course can be a literal thing. We are created from the sperm and the ovum, but more profoundly, if you know the science of alchemy, Allah-Khemia, divinity creates in us by taking that very same matter and transforming it, transmuting it, creating the soul, creating life. "And truly it is easy for us if you are but believers." Meaning: people who are not fanatic or dogmatic, but who learn to be through the power of love. Be-lieve. That was the original meaning of the term. Now belief is something just to accept a doctrine with the intellect or to feel something is true, but to not know. So there are a lot of parallels in different scriptures, but I would like to quote from the Bhagavad-Gita, which is a very powerful statement of how Krishna, Christ, is that creative energy. I am the strength of the strong, devoid of काम kama and राग raga. I am धमम kama which is not contrary to धमम Dharma. ―Bhagavad-Gita 7:11
There are a lot of words from the Sanskrit that have a lot of different meanings depending on the context of the phrase. So the same word काम kama in some context can mean, “sex life.” It can mean “lust.” It could be “desire,” or just “pleasure.” On the contrary, it can be “chastity.”
Chastity is an interesting term. People have been miseducated to think that chastity means abstention from sex. It is logical that people came up with this definition, because when people think of sexuality, they think of animal gratification. So what does it mean to be chaste? It means not to engage in the sexual act with the orgasm. Chasity simply means “purity, immaculateness.” And it refers to a couple learning to use their energies. They can be sexually connected, but chaste. No confusion there. People get hung up on the idea of immaculate conception. Was Jesus really born from Mary when she did not have sex with anyone? Obviously, that is a very ludicrous interpretation, because the only way to create is through the sexual act. But the question is: what is the definition of chastity? Obviously, Jesus was born from his parents, and through an immaculate conception, which means through a union that did not involve orgasm. It is not necessary to expel millions of spermatozoon to create a one child, because only one sperm is going to fertilize an egg. It is not necessary. If the couple is working seriously and is working with divinity, if they want to have a child and they are praying to divinity to give them a son or a daughter or a girl, they can concentrate on their divinity and pray and work with the creative energy. If it is accordance with the law of divinity, they can take one sperm out from the man and it can fertilize the egg. That is an immaculate conception. Obviously, it is very magical, you could say, because the sperm that is utilized in that instance is going to be very superior than one ejaculated out of lust. Obviously, there is a psychological quality embedded in the energy, depending on how we use it. If we are chaste and are pure in our minds and hearts, really loving our spouse and being divine or loving divinity, that energy becomes superior, elevated, for concentration and prayer. So: I am the strength of the strong, devoid of काम kama and राग raga. ―Bhagavad-Gita 7:11
Devoid of lust, and the word for raga is “attachment, grasping; to clutch and to pull; to hold.” Pretty sure we can look at our own lives to see how much of our sexual activity was based on attachment, clinging, holding, grasping. We want those experiences. We chase after them. We change our appearance. We model our behaviors so that we can find a partner. We are grasping at sexual pleasure and sensations and being in a relationship and satisfying those desires. That is raga.
Love is something very different, something divine, which is born in the soul when the time is ripe and the appropriate partner is met. But raga is sexual attachment: wanting to indulge in animal pleasure, the sensations of sex, and grasping at those experiences at the expense of our soul. Desire is one thing, but the soul is another. The soul knows how to love, to respect the partner. Desire only wants to satisfy itself. That is the distinction between an angel and a demon. An angel has love, Eros towards Psyche, but desire only wants to fulfill itself at any cost. So: I am the strength of the strong devoid of lust and attachment. ―Bhagavad-Gita 7:11
But then he uses something very interesting here.
I am काम kama which is not contrary to धमम dharma. ―Bhagavad-Gita 7:11
So many people get confused about this statement. How is it that he says I am not kama and yet he says I am kama? Because the word kama is dual. It's dualistic. It can mean lust. It can mean love. It can mean desire. It can mean chastity. So he is sexual drive that is not contrary to Dharma, and Dharma means “religious principles, law, truth, reality, virtue.”
So contrary to popular belief, there is a type of sexuality that is divine. It doesn't have to be animal. And in fact, Krishna is saying that “I am a sexual union of husband and wife, male-female, that is not contrary to the divine law.” It is respected by the gods, because the buddhas or angels or masters or prophets became what they were because of certain causes and conditions, spiritual laws. Like, if you wish to create a physical child, there is a procedure through the common way, through lust. But there is also a divine law that says if you want to create the soul, to be born of the spirit, one can use certain procedures or the science of alchemy. So “I am sex that is not contrary to spirituality.” When we think of laws, we tend to think of laws given by society, by governments. When I mentioned husband and wife, I don't mean marriage papers. People are not married because of a paper or a ritual. Real marriage occurs between a couple when they sexually unite, and that is all that divinity really cares about, because when a couple unites, they are sharing all their mind, their energies, their emotions, their forces. It's a marriage. It is a type of union, but unfortunately, many of us have engaged in relationships or entered the sexual act with many partners without knowing about the Dharma, which is, you know, our situation. But of course, that can be changed and rectified. This is why we give classes on this type of knowledge. So what I mean by law, Dharma, truth, reality, has to do with the causes and conditions that produce our happiness in the soul, our spiritual development, to help us become like Jesus or Buddha or Moses or the prophets. 
Liberation from Desire
So again, I show Padmasambhava with his consort. He stated very interestingly that:
Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation. ―Padmasambhava
Marriage, sexual union, the sexual act, can produce one's greatest happiness and one's greatest damnation, suffering. Look at humanity today, as I mentioned―people engaging in sexual behaviors that produce pain. Of course, people being hypnotized by kama and raga, desire and attachment, always go towards those experiences, grasping at pleasant experiences, and don't recognize that that very same act of lust and desire produces pain. Because once lust is fed, sex has culminated with animal pleasure, it can result in disillusionment pain, suffering.
The sexual act itself, tantra, alchemy, is the narrow way mentioned by Jesus in the Gospels. Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life and few there be that find it. ―Matthew 7:14 
Of course, people think of this path of liberation as something devoid of a sexual flavor, but literally, the narrow way is when husband and wife unite, male-female. This is the symbol of the cross. Vertical phallus. Horizontal uterus. They unite so that those energies accumulate, and when directed by the couple, it can crucify our defects. It is a symbol of Jesus going on His Passion. He lived it literally, physically, but he was showing something symbolic and allegorical and sexual.
That energy which can create life can also destroy impurity. That is the nature of the Kundalini. It is the nature of Shiva-Shakti amongst the Hindus, the creator and destroyer. Shiva is the power of the Holy Spirit or the sexual energy, which in tantra. That energy can be directed at any defect, any fault that we have, that we have understood profoundly through meditation, and to remove it so that the soul is liberated and the soul is united with divinity. That is the path of liberation, the secret path that Jesus taught that few find. It is obvious that humanity does not know the path, because you look at the state that it is in. Lustful people do not enter that path, meaning: they may be married and they may know this teaching and may know about conserving sexual energy and working on the mind, but if they don't actually work on themselves, they don't enter the path from experience. On our websites we talk a lot about Gnosis, from the Greek, meaning “knowledge,” to have experience born from spiritual practice. We cannot have genuine spiritual knowledge, experience of divinity, if our soul is asleep, if Psyche is dormant, but we can awaken the soul by learning to use this energy. Of course, married couples have much more power to work with, but individual practitioners can learn through pranayama, spiritual exercises, how to work with that energy as an individual until, with work and patience, that person may find their partner in accordance with divinity. They may be helped. They may find their marriage. This was originally the meaning of monastic life, which of course lost its true purpose. Monks and nuns would practice individually at their monasteries for many years, learning to circulate and work with that energy individually. When the time came, they would be brought their partner and they would learn to practice alchemy. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church and many groups didn't like the sexual flavor of this type of teaching, because, of course, it scandalizes many people, unfortunately. This is the stone of Peter: the rock of offense upon which we should build our church. “Is it not marvelous?” it says in the gospels (1 Peter 2:7-8). Many teachings hidden there. 
The Caduceus of Mercury
Lastly, we will talk about how that energy can circulate. The Bible calls the circuitry of tantra, those energetic channels that rise from our coccyx to our brain and then to our heart, the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation. It is known as Ida and Pingala in Sanskrit amongst the Hindu yogis. These are the two serpents that entwine a staff on the symbol of medicine, because we heal our soul like the bronze serpent healed the Israelites in the wilderness by working with these two energetic channels in us.
These two serpents are two forms of energy: masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, copper-tin. So whether we are male or female, we have those two energy circuits in our spine. But of course, men will tend to polarize more of the masculine energy and woman the feminine energy in their physicality, which is why it is important that if one is going to work with this energy in a marriage, you need both polarities to create. Physical man, physical woman. Together, just as they can create a child, they can create something more. But we also have those circuits in our spine. As you notice, Adam-Eve in the Bible, male-female, Ida-Pingala, Solar and lunar. We can do certain exercises like in books called Kundalini Yoga, The Yellow Book, even some practices in The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, to work with mantras and prayer and breath work. If we are single, we can take that energy on our own and circulate it, and train ourselves so that we can use that energy to empower meditation. That is the primary purpose of working with that energy, to empower our soul. 
But if one is married, of course, it is more energy, more fire, but more difficulty, because the difficulty that couples face is that they are trying not to eat the forbidden fruit. In the Bible, Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It is a symbol of how they didn't respect the law of divinity, of conserving the energies of God in themselves. They expelled it, or better said: they expelled themselves from Eden, which is a symbol of the state of bliss in spirituality that our humanity once knew before it indulged in desire. This is eating the forbidden fruit, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, of positive and negative, Ida-Pingala: the two witnesses.
That forbidden fruit is, of course, the orgasm. Divinity said, “You shall not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do not take that energy and expel it out of yourselves because the day that you do, you will surely die, spiritually speaking.” This is the foundation of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Of course, the one that tempted them was a serpent, because that serpent above is Kundalini. But if we are filled with egotism and desire, it is the tail of the demons, the tail of temptation We have many practices that can teach you how to work with energy. To really understand how all the different symbols and traditions teach this science takes many years. It is very extensive studying the Bible or the Qur’an or the Bhagavad-Gita and many scriptures. I just wanted to introduce some of these elements for you to see that is very vast. It is a very profound teaching, which you can verify not only through reading books by Samael Aun Weor or other authors, but really examining the original root scriptures of tantra, of alchemy. It takes a lot of time to learn and understand how this science was taught and also more importantly, how we practice it in ourselves. Do you have any questions? Questions and Answers
Question: You were talking about how we can use this energy, how we can eliminate imperfections. Is that only for married couples or is that for single people?
Instructor: Good question. For both. Obviously, a single practitioner is going to have energy to a degree. They can learn to direct that energy through pranayama, mantras, prayer, so that they can eliminate certain defects that they have to a very minor extent. When a person is married, they have available to them the fire of a sun. More power. So when they are sexually united as a couple, they can have more force by which to eliminate defects. So compare a single person to the light of a candle. Compare a married couple to the light of the sun. You can't compare the magnitude of that force. It is truly tremendous. So obviously, individuals can eliminate ego, defect, desires, but married couples can eliminate much more. They can do the totality of the work. So eventually people who are single, if they really want to pursue this type of path, they have to eventually get married. But of course, that is a delicate thing, a long process, and depends on the unique situations of the individual. Question: What is the Buddhist root tantric script? I studied online, and I guess many teach adultery and black tantra in the scriptures. Are there any tantra scriptures that are still in tact that the Dalai Lama uses or any in other tradition? Instructor: Sure. Just to be clear, as I mentioned, there are different forms of tantra. There is positive tantra. There is negative tantra. We call them white and black. White tantra refers to purity in sex, meaning: never expelling the sexual energy in any form or way, whether physically, mentally, emotionally, to orgasm, or through desire. You have black tantra, which is exclusively focused on expelling the energies and even taking that energy and directing it into desire, which of course is not what we teach here. That is something different. That's called black tantra because it is impure. It is the science of demons. People who really feed their lust and desire direct that energy into anger and pride and fear, laziness, to fortify those elements. So obviously in the end, that produces a lot of suffering for individuals and other people. There is also gray tantra, which sometimes a couple unites periodically. Sometimes they conserve the energy. Sometimes they expel it. Gray is in the middle, but eventually gray tantra degenerates into black tantra, because obviously these desires accumulated from indulging in lust. It becomes comes bigger. The Dalai Lama talks a lot about Padmasambhava. He wrote a book called The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Bardo Thodol. A lot is about consciousness and dreams, but is one of the most seminal tantric texts available, which you can read about. It talks a lot about states of consciousness and dream yoga, dream science, which you can learn to take the energies of tantra, transmutation, prayer, pranayama, so that your consciousness can awaken from dreams, which is partially one of the symbols of Psyche and Eros. She awakens from her sleep, meaning internally, even when being in the dream state. She awakens our consciousness so that she can investigate those regions, those realms called heavens, different dimensions, which is where we gravitate to when our physical body sleeps. We go out in the dream state usually hypnotized by our own projections of mind, dreams, but we can awaken from dreams by using that energy. So that is a key text that the Dalai Lama introduces, and I believe one of the most recent publications of that book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the works of Padmasambhava especially are powerful. Tsong Khapa too. It has more Mahayana Buddhism, but you know, he teaches the foundations by which to understand tantra, especially. And of course the study of tantra is very deep. [See also Tsong Khapa’s The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra in three volumes, also a key tantric text]. I just want to just give you a bit of the gamut of what that tradition is like, because people were never introduced to tantra right off the bat. This is a very different lecture than what has been done traditionally for thousands of years, because they would make the student study under a guru or sheikh or teacher or prophet, or whatever, for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, before they taught them, “Now that you know how to work with your energy as an individual, now, I am going to teach you the science of how to practice in a marriage.” So there are tantric texts out there and I can give you some references too to write them down. Question: A lot of tantra from the Dalai Lama, they speak about visualization a lot. To visualize yourself as an enlightened being and visualize a mandala... How does Gnosis combine that visualization? Instructor: You can read The Mystery of the Golden Flower as one book that we have available, where Samael Aun Weor explains how when a couple is united and after they have meditated profoundly, they can work together, and when they are sexually united, they can imagine an event and their day in which a certain defect that they observed in themselves popped up. Imagine that defect. If it's the husband's defect, he explains to his wife, “This is the defect I saw in myself earlier in this day at this moment. This is what I have comprehended. I noticed I saw lust in myself,” as an example. The partner, the wife imagines with him. They both develop their imagination and visualize that defect that they want to eliminate together. They pray. They do mantras, and they work to eliminate that defect through concentrating upon what we call the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother Kundalini is Her name. She can eliminate defects when the couple is working together. Of course, that is a very powerful practice. It just takes a lot of communication and work and support, you know. You can read about that in The Mystery of the Golden Flower specifically. The whole book just talks about how to do that. You imagine the defect you want to eliminate, and because the couple is united, they are like God. They can create. Male-female. Adam-Eve. Or in the Hebrew name: יהוה Jehovah, Iod-Havah. י Iod is masculine, Adam. A הוה Havah is Eve, because the word for Eve in the Bible is חַוָה Chavah. Iod-Havah is our divinity. So the couple has to work together, unite their polarities, and they can visualize together what they want to eliminate in the husband. And then, after the husband and eliminates that defect, together they eliminate that fault because they are sharing that power to create and destroy. They take turns and the wife can present a defect she observed in herself, understood, and meditated upon. They work on that defect together. That is the procedure. Of course, it takes a lot of time to learn that. Actually, you can read about it, but when you are practicing, it is another thing. Question: Can single people do the visualization? Instructor: Yeah, they can visualize whatever defect they have understood in themselves and ask for annihilation through certain mantras like Krim, is one mantra.
The vowel S is another.
We have explained this process of meditation in our course Gnostic Meditation if you want to know how to practice that type of meditation. You can study the last lecture in that course that is called Retrospection Meditation. Any final comments or questions? So I invite you to study, because I know we talked about a lot of different things, but the main purpose is to present the breadth of this science. It is very deep and extensive. It takes a lot of study and practice and understanding. So if you are interested, you can see some of the books we have available that talk about these things. But also, if you want to read these books and scriptures online, you can go to Glorian.org, which has everything available electronically too. |
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