Everything we have explained in this course of Beginning Self-Transformation is preliminary. The most essential principle for transforming and elevating our psyche is the divine feminine.
 
All religions bear a profound respect and veneration of the divine feminine, the Divine Mother. It is really the Abrahamic traditions that have lost sight of this and have adulterated the significance of Her presence in the spiritual work. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam reject any femininity in divinity as an effort to distance themselves, to define themselves against the so-called “pagan” religions.
 
The reality is that God, the Being, is not entirely masculine, but feminine as well. This is a profound fact, which confounds and scandalizes religious fanatics, people who are accustomed to a patriarchal anthropomorphism, who fail to recognize that God, the Being, is not a person, but a force, an energy.
 
Divinity is an intelligence. Divinity is within nature, and more importantly within our consciousness, with distinct qualities, principles, characteristics that can really be qualified, classified, and defined as masculine and feminine, yet, not in accordance with modern societal mores, beliefs, ideologies.
 
The reality is that divinity has masculine and feminine polarities of expression. Yet these principles are not merely limited to just physical gender. They constitute archetypes, forces, blueprints for creation, the expression of the Spirit.
 
We can say that the divine masculine is projectivity. It is symbolized by the positive polarity of electric charge. It is force, magnetism, assertion, willpower. It is the energy that initiates, which commands, that organizes and even impregnates, engenders, disciplines, and forces.
 
On the other hand, the divine feminine is receptivity. It is the negative polarity of electric charge. It is the force of conception, gestation, of nurturing, the sustenance that develops a child, the development of youth under the auspices of maternity.
 
All religions, every ancient tradition teaches, that the world's animals, human beings, and the Gods are the consequence of sexual union: the harmonization of masculine and feminine. Every single cosmogony teaches this: how masculine divinity cannot create, cannot develop, cannot manifest without the help of the feminine divine. Therefore, it is really ignorant to reject the divine feminine because of theological, theosophical, or vain beliefs.
 
The divine feminine is a cosmological reality, which we the Gnostics experience, which we develop through our meditations.
 
A masculine God cannot create anything without the feminine goddess, just as a man cannot have a child without a woman. As above, so below. The Father, our innermost God, unfolds Himself into the Divine Mother. She is the derivative expression of our innermost Being. Through Her, He is able to create life and create it in abundance. Through Her, divinity is able to sustain worlds, awaken the soul. As Gnostics, we never forget the worship and respect, the veneration of the Divine Mother, the divine feminine. Because just as we have a physical mother to whom we owe life, likewise, we must show respect and profound adoration for our Divine Mother Kundalini if we wish to change, because She is the force that awakens us. She is the one who elevates the soul, who brings us to spirituality, who provides us with astral experiences, profound samadhis, conscious experiences in the Tree of Life, the superior worlds of the Kabbalah. She is the one responsible for us because She is the one who raises us from suffering. Without Her, we would be lost in this work.
 
She is the one who initiates, who develops, and who completes this work, especially in relation to the disintegration of the ego.
 
So, today we are going to elaborate on who She is and Her unique role in the work, in this Gnostic path of self-transformation. 

Yet, to do that, we need to comprehend and understand the principles of sacred sexology.
 
The reality is that just as a man and a woman are needed to create a physical child, both sexual polarities, material and energetic, are needed to create the soul. This is stipulated throughout the Gnostic writings of Samael Aun Weor. It is simple. It is not elaborate. God creates both physical and spiritual life through sex, but that depends upon our intention, our mental state, our behavior—whether it is pure or degenerate, conscious or egotistical.
 
Sex creates. It engenders. It develops. These principles are within every religion: how man and woman, husband and wife, can use the creative sexual energy in order to give birth to their spirituality. That creative energy is the Divine Mother, and therefore, She creates in us when we know how to use the polarities of sex, male-female.
 
As above, so below. It is a law. It is the Dharma, the sacred knowledge of alchemy.
 
We can believe whatever we want. But if we wish to create a child, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. To create a solar awakened consciousness in its full capacity, to realize our full potential as a perfected divine being, an angel, a man needs a woman and a woman needs a man, through conscious love and sexual cooperation.
 
This is because birth is a sexual problem. It is not a belief. And therefore, the birth of the angel, the inner human being, the second birth cited by Jesus, is no exception. Through what is known as tantra, alchemical union, the harmony of masculine and feminine sexes, that energy, which is usually expelled through desire, for procreation, can be converted, can be conserved, sublimated, transmuted, transformed, so that the charged sexual forces of man and woman create a synthesis. This is the child of God, the Son of Man in Christianity, the Christ child or Egyptian Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, the golden child of medieval alchemists, the Platonic Logos, the Kundalini Shakti power of the great yogis of Sahaja Maithuna, the Shekinah of the Kabbalists, the Brazen Serpent of Moses, which is a metallurgic amalgamation of copper—a symbol of Venus, the woman—and the metal tin, the planet Jupiter, or the man.
 
Both polarities, physical genders, are needed to create physical and spiritual life. However, we need to clarify. Gender is not a construct. It is not a concept, a morality, and accepted code of expectations in society imposed by patriarchy, by institutions—something to be rejected or deconstructed by subversive logic. Gender is a material reality. It is based upon our generative organs and the secondary sexual characteristics they attribute to our personality and expression.
 
While our physical sex bears specific characteristics to our terrestrial personality, the divine principles of the Father and Mother are archetypical. They are abstract. They are profound states of being. There are correlations between both sexes, but they are not rigid. We can say that the Divine Father is wisdom, instruction, paternity. The Divine Mother is love, elevation, subsistence. In a perfect matrimony, the man embodies the principles of the Divine Father and the woman embodies the principles of the Divine Mother in body, speech, and mind.
 
So what is the purpose of transformation as we have been explaining throughout this course? We seek to realize the true self. Who is the Divine Father and the Divine Mother? They are within us. They are our true identity, our Being. But we can only reach them through the three factors we explained in the previous lecture on the revolution of the consciousness.
 
While the Divine Father and Divine Mother are distinct in us, this is not to say that they don't share or embody the same principles, that there are rigid correlations here or correspondences. It is not the say that the Father does not characterize love, or the Divine Mother, wisdom. Knowing the nature of divine masculine and divine feminine is a profound matter of experience in the consciousness—to go beyond our culture's conceptions of sex, humanity’s subjective perceptions about gender, about gender roles in society. 

What matters in these studies is that we appreciate and work with our sexual energy, whether it is masculine or it is feminine. We do so through complementarity, to complement ourselves: a man for a woman and a woman for a man. But why?
 
If you look in this graphic, you see husband and wife holding hands and their sexual organs symbolized by two triangles. There are the ovaries of the woman and the testicles of the man, as well as the vagina of the woman and the phallus of the man. The sexual organs are a battery. It is the most profound form of energy we carry within. One gonad has a positive electric spiritual charge and another gonad has a negative receptive feminine charge. In order for electricity to flow, you need both a positive and a negative. This is the essence of tantra. For these energies to flow perfectly, masculine and feminine must reconcile. Notice that when you join these two triangles together, when the sexual organs of male-female join, you create the Star of David: the Seal of Solomon, the seal, the perfection of the solar man, a true master who has conquered the creative energies and has perfected him or herself.
 
The masculine and the feminine compliment. They help each other to arrive at a synthesis, to generate light of a spiritual conscious nature. So these principles are extremely beautiful. Ancient mythologies teach us very profound and beautiful truths, and to frame our discussion, we can find the principles and qualities of the Divine Father and the Divine Mother reflected in a beautiful poem by Victor Hugo. He is the author of Les Miserables, a very famous text, a humanist novel, relating to the French Revolution, and Samael Aun Weor quotes a poem of his in The Perfect Matrimony called “Man and Woman.” I will read it at length.
 
Man is the most elevated of creatures,
Woman the most sublime of ideals.
God made for man a throne; for woman an altar.
The throne exalts, the altar sanctifies.
Man is the brain,
Woman, the heart.
The brain creates light, the heart, love.
Light engenders, love resurrects.
Because of reason, Man is strong,
Because of tears, Woman is invincible.
Reason is convincing, tears, moving.
Man is capable of all heroism,
Woman of all martyrdom.
Heroism ennobles, martyrdom sublimates.
Man has supremacy,
Woman, preference.
Supremacy is strength, preference is the right.
Man is a genius,
Woman, an angel.
Genius is immeasurable, the angel indefinable. The aspiration of man is supreme glory. The aspiration of woman is extreme virtue.
Glory creates all that is great; virtue, all that is divine.
Man is a code,
Woman a gospel.
A code corrects; the gospel perfects.
Man thinks,
Woman dreams.
To think is to have a worm in the brain, to dream is to have a halo on the brow.
Man is an ocean,
Woman a lake.
The ocean has the adorning pearl, the lake, dazzling poetry.
Man is the flying eagle,
Woman, the singing nightingale.
To fly is to conquer space. To sing is to conquer the soul.
Man is a temple,
Woman a shrine.
Before the temple we discover ourselves, before the shrine we kneel.
In short, man is found where earth finishes,
Woman where heaven begins.
—Victor Hugo, “Man and Woman”
 
We speak about both Divine father and Divine Mother together to preface our focus on the role of the divine feminine. She is essential to the birth of our soul, and that we would not have existence without our mother. The same goes for our spirituality. 

The eternal feminine exists in every religion. Both aspects of our Being have been represented throughout every religious tradition, without exception.
 
The Divine Mother is represented by a sacred cow. But why? We nourish our body with the milk of a female cow. In the same manner, we nourish our consciousness with the milk of wisdom, virtue, creative energy, transmutation, and the remembrance of our Divine Mother's presence.
 
Even milk as a substance resembles semen. It is the seminal energy, which nourishes our infancy and helps us to become a spiritual man or woman. The Divine Mother's love is so pervasive and so vast, that she has been represented by the sacred cow of Hinduism, within the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian Taurine mysteries, and the life of Gautama Buddha Shakyamuni and Krishna, both cowherds.
 
In Islam, the longest surah of the Quran is Al-Baqarah, “the Cow,” a symbol of divinity's power to resurrect the soul, because in that scripture Prophet Muhammad relates the magical and power, the influence of a cow whose leg can resurrect the dead. That is a symbol of the power of the divine feminine who raises us from the death of our spirit to the heights of realization.
 
In Islam, the Qur’an is sung. The power of the Divine Mother Cow is in the verb and in sex: the stone or Kaaba of the Muslims. How we speak, as we stated in the lecture “The Spiritual Power of Sound,” determines how we spend energy, either for liberating the soul or enslaving it—whether we produce beneficial action or bring about our own damnation, our own suffering.
 
To spell “the cow” in Spanish is La Baca. Baca backwards is Kaba. All of this synthesizes through the Kabbalah, the mysticism of Judaism, which we have been exploring: the Tree of Life. We worship our divinity, the sacred cow, through working with our creative energy, which is represented by the blackened stone of the Kaaba.
 
We need to purify this stone to make it whitened, pure. We do this through eliminating the ego. So even in Islam, which in its exoteric form strictly denies any femininity in divinity, teaches an esoteric doctrine which is known and practiced secretly by the Sufis. Therefore, people who say that God is only masculine are really half atheist, because they reject the creative maternal feminine principle of divinity in themselves.
 
We have Isis above. We have Miriam, Mary, holding the Christ child. We have Athena, great matron and defender of the solar Greek heroes. And we have Durga, slayer of demons within Hinduism. These images represent a few of the infinite forms of our Divine Mother Kundalini, because She takes on any form to teach us something practical in ourselves. Every religion and culture has expressed that principle in different artwork, paintings, statues, architecture, and forms. 
 
But why make these points? Why do we draw upon so many correlations in religion? We study all the mythologies and religions of the world out of love for Divine Mother. She is our own Being. She is the root of our most divine expression. She is the mediator for us between hell and heaven, the inferior worlds and the superior states of consciousness. She is the one responsible for elevating us out of suffering.
 
Athena rescued Odysseus in the great poem of Homer. The Virgin Mary raised the Christ child so that he could perform his mission. And Durga brought balance to humanity, restored the kingdoms of the Gods when slaying the buffalo demon within the Hindu mythologies. And Isis restores the dead Osiris, the divine principle the Father in us, to bring back together his parts, which were quartered and drawn by the demons Seth. These are beautiful symbols about how the Divine Mother integrates the psyche, how she liberates us and performs religion, reunion.
 
We have to learn to work with our Divine Mother, instant by instant, moment by moment. There is no progress without love for our Divine Mother, because She is the one who gives us strength, who gives us courage to face ourselves, to self-observe, and to not run away from what we see. She is compassion for all beings, even demons or people we do not like. She is virtue and all the most elevated qualities of the Soul and our Being.
 
She is the superior aspect of us, and sadly, despite this fact, many of us do not know Her or recognize Her presence. The reality is that we forget who She is whenever we identify with anger, with pride, with lust, gluttony, laziness, greed, envy, the ego. We have to learn to restrain the mind, as we are emphasizing again and again, because when we restrain our mind with intelligence, with remorse, with comprehension, our Divine Mother is present with us. We are remembering Her because She is perfection.
 
She is profound equanimity—deepens serenity—the resilience of virtue. She is virtuous action. She can only work through us when we establish an altar for Her in our heart.
 
So examine your heart. What do you find inside there? Observe it. Look at yourself. Not with physical eyes, but with the sense of imagination, of perception. What do you see? Do you see love of humanity there? Do you see selflessness? Do you see conscious love for one's spouse, for one's family, for one's enemies? Or are we filled with hatred, with wrath, with violence, with despair?
 
Many Gnostics write to us asking, “How do I experience my Divine Mother?” as if she is far away. The reality is that She is, to quote the Qur’an, “closer to you than your jugular vein” (50:16). She is within our psyche, but we do not recognize Her presence if we are not looking, if we are not awake, if we are not perceptive about what is going on externally and internally.
 
Some people think that to experience the Divine Mother is only through an astral experience, in some tremendous samadhi in the clouds. There is a reality to this. But more importantly, the Divine Mother appears to us in dreams, in different forms, to teach us something about our life, about our physical behavior. For an example of this, I will relate my own experience.
 
Very recently my wife and I went traveling out of the city of Chicago to go hiking. We wanted to get away from people and this situation with COVID-19. And we realized that we would have less exposure going out into nature than being in the city, so we arranged to travel a couple hours outside of Chicago, and in our trip we were driving to a Starbucks. There was a huge line of cars waiting to go to the drive-through, and I was driving and at that moment I had cut off a person who was in line, who was angry at me. And he said some things which were not pleasant.
 
That morning before we left our home, I had an astral experience in which I was driving my car in the dark. It was 4 a.m. in the astral plane and I was driving along a major road in the city of Chicago. Suddenly I stopped, intuitively, in the middle of the street, because there were no cars present, and I saw my physical mother in the dream approach the driver's side window and with a lot of love, she gestured for me to step out of the car and to let her take the wheel. I did. I went into the passenger seat, and then she drove the car and that was the end of the dream.
 
I knew when I woke up physically that this was something prophetic. Something would happen in relation with my Divine Mother. So physically, when we are in the Starbucks line and the person I cut off was angry and spoke negatively towards me, I suddenly felt egos of anger, self-esteem, pride and anger and violence emerge from my psyche. And I was really surprised, because I have been observing myself and I never knew that I had these defects in this situation. So my wife who was in the passenger side of the car said, “Let me take the wheel because I can see that this is getting dangerous for you.” So I got out of the car physically. She took the wheel and I sat in the passenger seat and started to breathe deeply, and pray to my Divine Mother. I was begging Her, “Please help me to comprehend this rage that is emerging in my psyche and is threatening to take over!”
 
I breathed very profoundly, inhaling, with all my capacity in my lungs, holding the breath for 10 seconds and exhaling for 10 seconds, and just introspecting in me, asking my Divine Mother “Help me to have serenity, to understand the culprits in my mind!” And suddenly, I gained comprehension, and I realized and remembered the dream I had that morning. My Divine Mother figuratively was driving my car, which is my three brains. By relaxing and praying, going into my mind, going into my heart, I was able to relax and let my Divine Mother take control of my psychological car. After my meditation, I comprehended a lot. I understood those defects that emerged, which I later prayed for annihilation.
 
This is a very beautiful teaching, very simple. I know we like to think of having experiences with our Divine Mother in the highest degrees of initiation, the highest sephiroth or spheres of the Tree of Life, but in reality, she comes down to us. She teaches us how to live so that we do not commit insanities, because I was really angry. I was really surprised by how angry I was and so I was begging my Being to help me control this animal and she gave me strength.
 
But of course, remembrance of our Divine Mother is a learned skill. We have to work very hard. We have to recite mantras. We have to breathe deeply. We have to do pranayamas, transmutation, energy exercises, whether in our mind or out loud, so we can feel Her presence; so we can recognize Her. We do so by observing from our pineal gland and our heart.
 
The pineal gland is the seat of perception within our brain. It is where our Essence sees from its energetic and conscious seat. It is the focal point of perception. We have to self-observe our three brains, looking into our intellect, our emotions, and our motor brain through this perspective, in a spiritual conscious way. But we must not only observe to see and gather data about the ego in the three brains, but we have to remember the presence of our Divine Mother within our pineal gland, within our heart: the seat of our soul. We also experience intuition, prescience, presentiment, premonitions in the heart: the altar and temple of the inner goddess Kundalini.
 
In the example I provided, I was observing from my pineal gland into my three brains to understand the thoughts, the feelings, and the will of anger, of self-esteem, of pride, of wrath. Because each ego has three brains. It has its own ways of thinking, feeling, and doing. I was looking at that in myself and praying, “Help me to separate from this Divine Mother! Help me to comprehend so You can eliminate!” And I immediately, intuitively felt Her presence: a beautiful quality of serenity, of strength. 

She is a tremendous force. She does not use exertion of any kind. Instead, She opens the jaws of the beast with perfect equanimity, and equanimity is the most profound strength. So we have to feel Her in our mind and our heart. How can a child forget its mother? In the same way, we have to recognize Her presence, Her identity in us again and again. She is the voice of conscience. She is the voice of right action, such as in the experience I provided. I knew the right thing to do, but my mind was really trying to destroy my life, and I fought with my mind, and I would not have been able to relax if I did not have Her, my Divine Mother—and also, the Divine Mother of my wife, who expressed in that moment and saved me, helped me to rectify the situation.
 
So let your Divine Mother drive your car. Let her drive your soul, your Being—even if it means that you need to recollect yourself—whether you need to breathe deeply, do mantras, do prayer, walk out in nature. Take time to develop that stability of mind, to deepen your serenity. Because that is how you connect with Her, not through agitation, not through exertion, but through comprehension.

As we explained, the Tree of Life is a map of the consciousness. It is a map of the Being. From the most elevated spheres or סְפִירוֹת sephiroth, the plural Hebrew term for “emanations,” to the most dense and material at the bottom.
 
This is a distinct and clear map for meditation and our internal experiences, which can clarify our understanding of where we are at in our work and where we must go.
 
The sephiroth also reflect different expressions of the Divine Mother.
 
So as I stated, the Divine Mother is universal. She is formless. She is an energy, and yet She can manifest within the different spheres or sephiroth in order to help us. And Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition, provided five distinct unfoldments or expressions of Devi Kundalini that we need to understand and which we can relate to the Tree of Life.
 
At the top of the tree, above Kether, the Father, the Crown, you have the Absolute, which in Hebrew is  אין Ain, אין סוף Ain Soph, אין סוף אוֹר Ain Soph Aur: the Nothing, the Limitless, and the Limitless Light.
 
In the Absolute, in Ain Soph, the Divine Mother is the Unmanifested Prakriti.
 
When the Divine Mother unfolds and expresses within the universe, within creation, we find that she manifests as Binah, intelligence, the Holy Spirit. She is the chaste Diana, Isis in Egypt, Tonantzin amongst the Aztecs, Maria, Miriam, Mary in Christianity, or better said, the mantra RAM-IO, a profound Mantra to invoke our Divine Mother Binah, intelligence. So these sephiroth are different qualities of consciousness. They are different modalities and expression of the divine. 
 
We also have something very important in relation to the death of the ego, which can relate to the sphere of Geburah, Justice, the severity of God. This is the Divine Mother Death. The Divine Mother Death relates to the justice of the Being, who punishes the ego and annihilates it. She is represented as the terrible Hecate amongst the Greeks, Persephone, Coatlicue, Queen of the infernos and death, the terror of love and law. She is the terror of the ego and the love of divine law, of order, of equilibrium, of karma. So in our former lectures on Karma, we explained how the divine hierarchies are managed by divine beings, with intelligence, with love. Knowing that law and loving that law is how we gain balance, and the Divine Mother Death removes the impurities so that we can be balanced, harmonious beings, integrated beings.
 
We also have the special individual Mother Nature relating to Malkuth, the physical body, who is the originator and architect, the creator of our physical organism. Our body is an amalgamation of many elements. Mother Nature relates to our body as well as our environment and our body is dependent upon Mother Nature outside, but our internal Divine Mother Nature relates to our physicality, our body, which we need to sanctify.
 
And lastly, the Elemental Enchantress to whom we owe every vital impulse, every instinct, relating to Yesod, the sexual creative energy, the foundation of our spirituality 
 
Let us explain each aspect of the Divine Mother in more depth. 

The Unmanifested Prakriti, the Ain Soph, is the nothing, the limitless. Prakriti signifies nature. Mula in Sanskrit indicates “root,” as in the “root of something,” such as phenomena, consciousness, experiences.
 
We find mula in our root chakra, Muladhara, which signifies the “root place,” the root chakra. We use the term Mulaprakriti to refer to the Ain Soph, the abstract absolute space, the root nature of our consciousness, which is cosmic and eternal, a profound form of space. The Divine Mother has no form, but that energy takes on form within the astral plane in order to teach us, the Essence, important things.
 
Samael Aun Weor also refers to the Divine Mother Prakriti as the Unmanifested Kundalini. This is understandable when we comprehend how the Divine Mother above and the heavenly cosmic space, the Mulaprakriti, is reflected in our Muladhara Chakra. So that cosmic space, that force, that energy, when it manifests into the universe, it becomes the Tree of Life, the different sephiroth, becoming more dense and material as it descends into different unfoldments or dimensions.
 
The Ain Soph is beyond any universe. It is within the abstract space, the cosmic consciousness, the selflessness of perfect Seity.  The Divine Mother above, Mulaprakriti, is the same energy that descends and becomes the serpent in our Muladhara Chakra. 

Even Ricard Wagner in his Ring Cycle [The Ring of the Nibelungen] which is an Opera tetralogy, depicts the Goddess Urda, the mysterious Ain Soph, or Devi Kundalini, with the same musical motif, the theme song, as the sword Nothung: the weapon of the great solar hero Sigmund, which is the Essence, the soul, who wields the Kundalini, the sword Nothung, in order to battle his enemy, Hunding, a symbol of the ego.
 
Nothung, no-tung, reminds us of “nothing,” the Nothing, the space, the Abstract Absolute Space: Ain Soph.  And we have explained in other lectures and courses that the Ain Soph is a star, a supra atomic point, the synthesis of our real Being. It is a light that shines within that space with perfection. It is known as the Glorian, the origin of universes. So this Mulaprakriti, is the womb of the Nothing, which is not understandable to the intellect, but is comprehended through experience.
 
It is the origin of worlds, suns, galaxies, the infinites. All cosmic units are sustained, are born, are gestated, and they are destroyed and absorbed again throughout the great cosmic rhythms of activity and repose, known in Hinduism as Mahamanvantaras and Mahapralayas. These are “great” cosmic days and nights, respectively (for Maha signifies “great”): periods when universes emerged from the Ain Soph, and when it is time, those universes return back to the Nothing, to enter a period of absorption and repose.
 
This is the significance of many Qur’anic verses. "You came from Him and unto Him you shall return." Even the Arabic name Allah hides many mysteries. The syllable “Al” means “the,” the indefinite article. And “La” can mean “No,” negation. Allah traditionally represents or translates as “The God,” but literally is “The No,” the Nothing—that which is not related to anything in existence, because it is unmanifested. This is why in Islam there are no statues or figures representing Allah, because you cannot anthropomorphize space. You cannot characterize the divine feminine in Her most abstract reality.
 
The Unmanifested Divine Mother never enters the universe without taking form, so that we can comprehend and receive insight in our work. The universe emerges from her universality. She is absolute, cosmic, perfect. Her center is everywhere and Her periphery, Her circumference, is nowhere. She is the source that we aspire to. She is perfect liberty, a state of being that is so vast and expansive that it terrifies the ego. 

And so “the Nothing,” “the No,” the Unmanifested Divine Mother is the complete negation of our self, because in that selflessness, one becomes the universe, the stars, the planets, the gods. It is cosmic, absolute, eternal. She is the starry heavens or Egyptian Nut in that respective mythology, who shelters the heroes and the gods, those masters of meditation who have perfected themselves.

In the universe, when the light of divinity manifests and expresses, that unitary light of the Ain Soph, descends and particularizes, individualizes. The top trinity of the Tree of Life relates to the trinitarian unfoldment: an expression of the Being in the most rarefied and subtle levels. Our unique consciousness, our divine Being, is a perfect unity. Yet to create life, She expresses, or that light expresses as three principles, since the law of three is how everything is created.
 
These are forces, qualities, principles, archetypes. They are blueprints of any universe. They are not three people that constitute one anthropomorphic God. These three creative forces are known as Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. Every religion reflects these principles but in different ways. It is one light that can express as three, so as to gestate worlds and human beings.
 
So going back to that description of the principles of sex, man is the affirming, positive force; woman is negating, receptive force. And together they provoke and promote the synthesis, reconciliation, which is the birth of the solar Christic consciousness.
 
That synthesis is בִּינָה Binah, the intelligence of God in Hebrew. So our particular, individual Divine Mother is the intelligence of divinity, because She is the synthesis of all universal wisdom, which governs creation in every level. She is the spouse of Shiva in Hinduism, known as Shakti. Or, Brahma and Sarasvati in Hinduism—or to define its equivalent in the Bible, you have Abraham and Sarah. Brahma-Abraham and Sarasvati-Sarah in the Bible. These are all symbols that reflect truths that we need to experience.
 
The reality is that in accordance with Gnostic Kabbalah, Binah is dual, because Binah is reflective of masculine and feminine principles. Because remember that when you have affirmation and negation, masculine-feminine, positive-negative, you produce the synthesis. And in the terms of having a child, the synthesis of a husband and wife, the child reflects the qualities and characteristics of its parents. So you find both principles there, but of course, manifested as a boy or a girl. But it takes the qualities of both male-female, father-mother, in order to create something beyond itself.
 
Binah, the synthesis is dual. It is masculine-feminine, Father-Mother. In Hebrew, it is known as אב Abba and אם אלהים Aima Elohim in Hebrew. The sacred name of God, of Binah, is יהוה אלהים Jehovah Elohim. אלהים Elohim is a synthetic word. אל El in Hebrew is God. אלה Eloah in Hebrew is Goddess. ים Iod-Mem or the letters “-im” is a masculine plural ending. אלהים Elohim truly signifies “Gods and Goddesses.” 

Our particular, individual Divine Mother is Diana, the huntress, as we see in this image. 

She is the Virgin Mary, Miriam or Mar-IO or Ram-IO, which is a powerful mantra, as I stated, of working with the divine feminine. מרים Miriam in Hebrew means to raise. She is the wife of the masculine aspect of the Holy Spirit, because the trinity is Father, Son, Holy Spirit—three forces as one light. We can receive profound instruction from our own intelligence, the Divine Mother in Binah. She takes on forms within the astral plane to teach us like in the example I provided.

But let us also talk about the Divine Mother Death relating to Geburah, the justice and severity of God.
 
This aspect of the Divine Mother is perhaps the most important. It is referenced constantly throughout the writings of Samael Aun Weor. Divine Mother Death is responsible for annihilating the ego. She is Kali, as we see here. She dances upon those couples who know how to harness the sexual fire of alchemy. Meaning: man and wife use their sexual energy, conserve it, and direct it towards the death of desire to liberate the soul.
 
So of course, this image is terrifying. She has a necklace of many heads, representative of all the egos she has slain in the initiate whom she stands upon. She is the power of the serpent Kundalini, which you find coiled around the left arm of the man whom she has conquered. Of course, that symbol relates to the left pillar of the Tree of Life or the serpent Ida, the energetic feminine current that rises from our sexual gonad up to our head, which is the contrast of pingala, the solar electric sexual serpent that rises from the other gonad to the brain within the vital body.
 
The Divine Mother Death, despite her fearsome appearance, should not be feared. She is the liberator of our soul. She pulverizes the ego. She extracts the Essence through successive profound comprehensions. So She only decapitates those ego we have fully comprehended in our meditations. If we are single, we can pray to her using the mantra KRIM, prolonged such as this:

We imagine those defects we have comprehended and that She decapitates them, impales them, disintegrates the egos we wish to remove. If we are married, we can have more force by which to annihilate those egos. But if we are single, we can still work with the Divine Mother Death.
 
So this is very beautiful topic because Kali, the Divine Mother Death, is the power of sex, that which creates the soul and destroys the ego. She is the slayer of demons. She is Athena, who in the Greek myth of The Odyssey helps Odysseus return home in order to battle the many suitors who have tried to take his wife Penelope. In the Greek myth, Odysseus invented the Trojan horse during the Trojan War, conquered the city, and when trying to return home, he was lost for 20 years. And so, many men thought he was dead and tried to marry his wife, who remained faithful to him: a symbol of the soul waiting for the reunion of Odysseus, the solar man, the initiate.
 
When he returns home finally, he finds that his whole island has been ransacked by suitors—all these figures and people trying to marry his wife and eat off his land. But Athena warns him saying, “You must disguise yourself and discover your enemies. You must find out who is your friend and who is your foe.” And so she disguised him with magic as a beggar that he, in this form, went around trying to investigate these people. Finally, in a great battle scene at the end, he reveals himself and with the help of Athena, with the help of Kali, kills all of those infidels.
 
This is not a literal history. It is a symbol of working against the ego. And so Odysseus conquered and returned to his home, but only with the help of the Divine Mother Death. So She is very important in the work and we could talk about more of the practices involved in working with this force, this liberatory energy.

We have the Divine Mother Nature who is the creator, sustainer, and maintainer of our physicality. Divine Mother Nature helps us in jinn science, in magic, in theurgy, in the act of placing our physical body into the fourth dimension. This is jinn science.
 
She is the lever, Divine Mother Nature, or fulcrum of Archimedes who said, "Give me a lever of support and I will move the universe." So, jinn science, unlike astral projection, is when you, in a sleepy state, meditate upon your Divine Mother Nature, the originator of your physical body, so that she can take you in your physical body into the internal planes. So rather than leaving your body behind, you enter the fourth dimension, traveling in hyperspace.
 
This is the significance of many myths in different world traditions where monks, priests, prophets, masters, were seen flying, traveling through the air, passing through walls, appearing and disappearing, levitating. Every world tradition and religion teaches these symbols or these truths, which are not in fact a symbol, but how through tremendous discipline and work with the Divine Mother Nature, one could conquer the fourth dimension, enter those states. 

The most memorable of them all that comes to mind, to my memory is the Prophet Muhammad, who was meditating at the stone of Kaaba, Mecca, in which he fell asleep and was taken with his physical body upon a mystical creature called Al-Buraq, which had the form or body of a donkey, the wings of a great bird, the tail of a peacock, and the face of a woman.
 
If you are familiar with the Egyptian sphinx, with the paws of a lion, the hooves of a bull, the wings of an eagle, and the face of a man, or a woman better said, you find that the Egyptian sphinx is paralleled in the ascension of Prophet Muhammad. And that is a symbol of Divine Mother Nature. She is the one who organizes the elements in our psyche and in our body. The fire of our heart, our emotions; the air of our thoughts; the waters of our sexuality; and the earth of our body.
 
This is a feat that we can accomplish in ourselves if we work with jinn science. And we have practices that we are going to relate in some resources we have available online.

We have the Elemental Enchantress relating to Yesod, our vital energies. She is known as the Eemental Instinctual Female Magi. She is our Divine Mother that works with Yesod. We can invoke Her and work with Her to perform sexual magic, which is alchemy, which is tantra, transmutation.
 
Samael Aun Weor mentioned in The Three Mountains how he saw his Elemental Enchantress in the form of a pygmy, the form of a fairy: a beautiful elemental soul. So all the elements have soul, including minerals, plants, animals, and the Divine Elemental Enchantress, our Divine Mother. This aspect of our Divine Mother works with the creatures of nature and She is the sexual force. She aids us in becoming elemental in nature: purified, simple. She also helps us to enter back into Eden. עֵדֶן Eden is a Hebrew word that means “bliss.” It is the state of the soul that we lost when we created desire, by disobeying the commandments of our Being.
 
This female magi helps us return to Eden, which we do so through alchemy, sexual knowledge, transmutation. She helps us with different forms of magic such as ceremonial magic, relating to the astral body, Hod on the Tree of Life, the emotions. She also helps us with elemental magic relating to Netzach, the mind, the souls of plants. And She helps us with sexual magic, Yesod.
 
Magic is the ability of the consciousness to exert will upon nature, to influence it. It doesn't mean that we pull rabbits out of hats. It means that we control all of the components of our psyche.
 
The elementals of nature, in relating to the plant kingdom, never left Eden. Those souls that enter the animal kingdom eventually lose Eden in themselves because of desire, the animal method of procreation. This is why in Gnosis we work with plants. We work with plant magic. We command the souls of plants to vibrate with our level of being and to elevate ourselves, but also to help humanity, because every plant in nature is a mechanism that can reflect divine force. All plants have their purposes. This is very well known in different forms of medicine: Ayurveda, holistic forms of treatments. But in Gnosis, we study plant magic, because it is extremely effective for influencing humanity in a conscious and beneficial way.
 
I invite you to reflect upon some of the resources we have available in order to learn to work with our Divine Mother. Pretty much all the books of Samael Aun Weor teach us how to work with Devi Kundalini. You can learn about jinn science, especially in The Yellow Book. But alchemy is covered extensively in The Perfect Matrimony, The Mystery of the Golden Flower.
 
At this point in time, I would like to invite you to ask questions. 

Question: If we have had experiences when our Divine Mother will not see us in the astral plane, does that mean that we have too much lust?
 
Instructor: I think that might depend on the person, but in my experience when my Divine Mother has not been able to find me it is because I am too asleep. I had an experience, also a long time ago, in which my Divine Mother approached me with a radar in her hand, and She said with a lot of concern, pointing towards the screen, “I can't find you!” So usually in radar, you see a green line that goes around the circumference, the radius spins like a wheel, and there is a little blip that will appear when you find some kind of naval ship or aircraft or whatever. So my Divine Mother was showing me this symbol and saying, “I can't find you” because I wasn't being awake enough.
 
So obviously it could be in relation to lust, because obviously any ego puts us to sleep. But most especially if we give in to lust, desire, fornication. It could mean that we are very asleep, because we waste the energies that are going to awaken us.
 
Question: Is the word Devi relating to the word divine?
 
Instructor: Yes, there is that their connotation. Devi also relates to deva, goddess, such as the devas of nature, the great elemental queens who govern the plant kingdoms, all those divine intelligences of the physical and internal worlds.
 
Question: Is the Innermost, inner Being, both the Divine Mother and the Divine Father?
 
Instructor: In Kabbalah, strictly speaking, the Innermost, our Being, is the Divine Father, known as חֶסֶד Chesed in Hebrew. Chesed is the seventh sephirah from the bottom to the middle of the diagram. Chesed means “Mercy” and he is the spirit, the immortal spark of divinity in us. The Innermost is a child of the Divine Mother, Binah, the Holy Spirit. So in very intuitive logic, we can say that Osiris and Isis in Egyptian mythology represent Father-Mother within Binah, masculine-feminine, and their synthesis or child is Horus—Horus, the light, because in Hebrew אוֺר Aur means “light.” Horus is the gold of the spirit, because even in spanish, oros means “gold.” So the Spirit, Chesed, emerges from Binah, the Holy Spirit.
 
Question: Is it possible that our Divine Mother is guiding us, but we are unaware of it?
 
Instructor: Absolutely! I would say in reality that, in our work, She is with us all the time, but we just don't see Her. We are not aware of Her because we are not paying attention. The way that you figure that out is by awakening in meditation and also learning to remember that presence in yourself, moment by moment. Obviously astral experiences can help us to have more clarity, because then we recognize the same intuitive principle or feeling. That premonition we have in dreams is the exact reflection of our daily life. That is something that gives us faith. We start to see more and more that our Divine Mother is really with us all the time, but we are just stubborn. We don't recognize Her presence because we don't pay attention. In the example I provided of my Divine Mother getting in my car, you know, I didn't even realize what was happening, even when physically I got out of my car and got into the passenger seat. And hen immediately afterward, I understood the symbolism of that experience, and the same quality that I had in the dream related to what I was going through in that ordeal physically. That gave me a lot of inspiration, a lot of joy, even when my mind was terrible. So She is with us all the time, but we have to learn to recognize Her.
 
Question: Can you please elaborate on this prayer? “Be thou O Hadit, my secret, the Gnostic mystery of my Being, the central point of my connection, my heart itself, and bloom on my fertile lips made Verb!” Also, what is the significance and the best time to use this prayer?
 
Instructor: So who is Hadit? Hadit in Egyptian mythology can relate to the Holy Spirit, who is our “secret,” the thread, the intelligent intuitive guidance of our conscience, “the Gnostic mystery of our Being,” who is infinitely profound and “the central point of our connection.” So remember that when you are self-remembering and self-observing, you have to remember the connection of your spirit within your pineal gland and your heart. Self-remembrance is a thread that you have to hold on to. It is the thread of Ariadne in the Greek mysteries, when I believe Theseus went into the labyrinth to fight the Minotaur, and it was a vast labyrinth in the caves of that underground kingdom, so that he could find his way back because the thread would point to him where he came from. That central thread or point is our Divine Mother, because we have to remember the thread of our experiences: the continuity of our self-remembrance, our mindfulness, the state of self-remembrance and being moment by moment.
 
That is our heart. It is what gives us life, following our intuition, not our intellect, but our heart. In that way She can bloom our lips made fertile, made verb. To be fertile in lips is to be transmuting your sexual energy. Our speech is empowered by the sexual creative force, and She manifests in our words when we are intuitive, when we reflect on Her qualities in our daily life moment by moment. We can use this prayer anytime we meditate. It is especially wonderful in sexual alchemy when you remember the presence of your Divine Mother, when you approach the forge in which the Kundalini is tempered and awakened.
 
Question: When we take a spouse, are we unifying the divine and masculine energies in a way that affects or breaks the heart of the Divine Mother, when we realize that we are not in the right marriage? Are we affecting these divine forces?
 
Instructor: Obviously, adultery is a very painful thing, but also, being that we are asleep, we do make mistakes. Anytime we mix sexual energy with people of the opposite sex, we adulterate our consciousness and we weaken our conscience. So knowing who your partner should be or whom you should be with, the thing to remember is that we have to make good choices, to not get in those situations, to not jump into relationships without prudence, without testing our grounds.
 
But also, the thing to remember is that if one is in a committed relationship and one feels that doubt, that pain, or that sentiment or feeling that one is in a wrong relationship, one should really meditate profoundly, because any type of sexual connection is very serious, is very profound. It creates a type of signature in the astral plane, a type of marriage of forces which we can't ignore, which is eternal. I would say, anytime we disobey our Divine Mother, especially in sex, yes, we make Her suffer a lot. We have made our Divine Mother suffer tremendously by having so many partners and not waiting for the one person to work with in accordance with our karma or with the law. So that is a very delicate thing to discriminate and understand and it is always going to be very personal. While I can't give you a thorough answer in terms of who is the right partner for you, obviously, that is something you have to spend a lot of time reflecting on. So yes, we do affect our divine forces when we enter a sexual relationship without love, because love is what regenerates the soul, not lust.
 
Question: Why is Ram-IO such an important mantra? Especially in relation with masculine and feminine energies?
 
Instructor: Mary in Hebrew is Miriam. You spell Mary backwards, you have RAM-IO. RAM or the RAM, is a symbol of Christ: the sexual creative fire that anoints the initiates, which particularizes and develops the pure unity of the soul. Mar or mer in French means “sea,” the sea of IO, or the ram of IO, the child of the Divine Mother. RAM-IO is an important Mantra because it works with Christ, the solar energies, and with our waters. It transmutes, we could say, or invokes very high forces in us, because mar or mer is the sea from which the solar gods emerge. And IO, if you studied Greek mythology, has many representations as a beautiful feminine figure, whom I believe Zeus pursued out of desire and love. Many kabbalistic symbols there, which you can study on our websites, but in synthesis RAM-IO is important because it is a seed mantra: IO, that works with the Divine Mother.
 
Question: You said that our Divine Mother can manifest in other ways besides in our dreams. Does this mean that she can take form in other people from time to time when facing ordeals? Can you elaborate on that?
 
Instructor: The answer is yes. Samael Aun Weor mentioned many times and asks this question: How many times has your Divine Mother appeared unto you, O disciple, without you even knowing it, even physically? In the example I provided where I was in the car at Starbucks, my wife was expressing her Divine Mother and even my Divine Mother too, because She is universal, in order to guide me and say, “Let me take the wheel.” My Divine Mother and the Divine Mother of my wife was acting physically, so she became the vehicle of expression of that, so that I could face the ordeal and pass it, to comprehend it. She can take form in other people and manifests anywhere, everywhere, at any time, because she is universal. She is space, but she can appear and manifest in any human being that is either prepared or has enough space to reflect that principle.
 
Question: Is there any prayer to the Divine Mother that you prefer during sexual magic?
 
Instructor: Well, that is obviously going to be personal to each one of us. Obviously if you are practicing in alchemy, you and your partner—or if your spouse is not into Gnosis—that is something that you will have to gauge in yourself; but obviously, if both partners are practicing in alchemy, they should work and could work with other mantras that help with different functions, such as Kandil Bandil Rrrrr: the mantra to awaken the Kundalini. Or, IAO to transmute the sexual energy. 

Or to annihilate the ego, Krim, to invoke the Divine Mother Death. So I invite you to experiment if you are married. Try the different mantras to see what helps you most at a given time, because different mantras have different purposes.
 
Question: Please discuss the origin of the reference to Mother Nature. And what is your perspective on why certain religions dismiss the significance of the Divine Mother and or cast blame like the Adam and Eve story?
 
Instructor: So, Mother Nature is the originator of our body. Even the word in Latin, mater, meaning mother, is the matter of our body. So the spirit, the divine masculine, impregnates matter in order to give birth to Christ; the pure virgin matter or mother who represents the body that is purified through transmutation, so as to give birth to a perfect soul, the Christ, the Son of Man. So these are symbols that represent different degrees and steps in the path of initiation, which you can read about in the course The Path of Initiation on Glorian.org, but also what you can study in our course on Chicago Gnosis called The Secret Path of Initiation.
 
As for why religions dismiss the significance of the Divine Mother, it is because religions degenerate with time. And those who are in power were men. Therefore, those men decided to make religion reflect their tastes. So that is why many beautiful traditions, which are very rich and profound and even feminist, in a sense that the divine feminine is respected, those aspects of those traditions were gutted out, because it did not, or better said, it was a basis of interpretation for persecuting and discriminating against women, which is sad. But when you know Kabbalah, you don't get confused, and do not let any type of patriarchal narrative or dogmatic patriarchy influence our readings.
 
Question: Could you elaborate on the Kali Ma? Is this an aspect of Kali?
 
Instructor: Kali Ma, or better said Kali, is the goddess of death. And Kali is dual. In heaven above She is the Divine Mother Death who eliminates desire, the ego. But if we fornicate, if we adulterate, if we expel the creative energies, then that force of Kali produces the death the soul through Kali Ma, the queen of the infernos. She becomes the tail of the demons, the inverted serpent Kundabuffer.
 
So there are two ways to die: through initiation or through the second death. The ego must be eliminated either way. But if you wish to acquire development in our spirit, we work with the Divine Mother Death in the positive sense, removing the ego here and now in meditation, through alchemy, so that we can ascend the Tree of Life. But those people who don't want to eliminate the ego on their own, let themselves be swallowed by nature, meaning by hell, so that they are recycled and disintegrated by the devolving serpent Kali Ma, the inverted aspect of the Divine Mother Death in hell.
 
Question: What can we do to be good children to our Divine Mother? How do we take care of Her?
 
Instructor: We are a good child when we perform the three factors with fidelity. Comprehend the ego, eliminate it, act virtuously, and serve humanity. That is how we earn graces from our Divine Mother Kundalini, and we take care of Her when we are chaste. If we are not saving our sexual energy, we are abusing the Divine Mother, committing a crime. So take care of Her by conserving your sexual energy, transmuting it through many beautiful exercises such as pranayama, runes, sacred rites of rejuvenation, meditation. Take care of Her by working on your mind, eliminating desire.
 
Question: Is our personal Divine Mother or Father working in collaboration with other people's Divine Mothers and Fathers in order to put us in the situations we need for a development?
 
Instructor: The answer is yes. Obviously divinity is at a level that is omniscient. All of the divine beings of the Absolute in the Tree of Life, those who have already done the work in past lives, obviously those monads are developed and know how to work in an intelligent manner. But our Divine Father and Divine Mother, even at a level of a beginner, works with the law, works with karma, negotiates karma for us and works with other solar divinities in order to help us. So all of that is determined with intelligence, because Binah is the intelligence of all the divinities in the universe. So that universal intelligence is pervasive, is cosmic. So, that wisdom is universal, not particular, within in one person only, but is manifested in many masters.
 
Question: I have had experiences with my Divine Mother in lucid dreams. I have also had experiences in this three-dimensional world that reminded me of my Divine Mother. Can our personal Divine Mother work through others or precipitate in the three-dimensional world, or is this a different aspect of the Divine Mother?
 
Instructor: So yes, the Divine Mother, our individual Being, Binah, can work through other people. Like in that example of being in the car at Starbucks, my wife, like in the dream I had that morning, said “Let me take the wheel.” So my Divine Mother and her Divine Mother were working together to help me get out of a mess, to help me not make a mistake. So I am deeply indebted to my Being. And the Divine Mother can manifest physically in a material form. But that is usually performed through certain exercises of invocation and high magic which you can read about in Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic.
 
Question: Do these personal Divine Parents have their Divine Mother and Father?
 
Instructor: We can say that the Tree of Life describes the different hierarchies of being. Our inner Father is Chesed, the spirit, the Innermost In Kabbalah. His Divine Father and Mother is Binah, the Holy Spirit. And so, whether or not Binah has a father and mother, we could say in a very profound sense, yes, because the trinity of the top of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life emanates from the Ain Soph. Samael Aun Weor even mentions that the Ain Soph is Father and Mother, in profound synthesis. So there are levels of hierarchy of light, which is why the Qur’an states in Surah Al-Nur, "Light upon light!” Levels of Being—different unfoldments of one perfection.
 
Question: Can you speak about the secret path of the heart? How can someone who is highly intellectual begin to open their heart? Is it essential to return to childhood trauma? As a man, I find it difficult to cry sometimes and show emotion. What can I do to heal? Is crying necessary? I am often encouraged to by my loved ones. What are your thoughts?
 
Instructor: The secret path of the heart unfolds through sincerity. Usually with our intellect, we like to justify or repress our psychological state, to not look at the reality and the facts even if it is very traumatic. We know from counseling and trauma that early childhood trauma has an energetic impact, conditions the psyche. And because it is so painful to look at that event, the mind defends itself and represses or hides that experience within the subconsciousness. And I would say yes, in reality, to understand trauma and overcome it, one has to cry, because there is a tension in the psyche that is so painful and so enmeshed that it manipulates all of our actions in our conscious mind, usually without our awareness. But in order to really confront our defects and those traumas, we have to really be willing to break apart, whether it is from remorse, or whether from comprehension, because Samael Aun Weor mentions that in the work of the death of the ego and the work upon trauma, if we really understand our defects in depth, we will cry, because it is painful.
 
So it's necessary. We have a course on Chicago Gnosis that is going to elaborate more and more upon how to work practically with trauma. It is called Spiritual and Mental Health. We have one lecture up there already where you can learn from some professional as well as spiritual advice, about how to work practically with facing these types of conditions and the ways to heal. So there are many practices that explain how to do that.
 
Question: If we have an experience in nature particularly with animals, which aspect of the Divine Mother is that? Nature or Enchantress, or both?
 
Instructor: I would say both, because animals belong to nature, but really, animal nature is defined by instinct: the Elemental Enchantress. So it is important not to think of the Divine Mother as separate from these different aspects. They are really expressions and unfoldments of one light, our divine feminine nature. So there are different principles that manifest in different ways in accordance with the sephiroth and the internal bodies, but all of it interrelates and connects with each other.
 
Question: Are there specific practices or mantras that coincide with each vice? If so, can you list one routine for each one?
 
Instructor: I wouldn't say that we have separate mantras or practices necessarily for different defects. Really the best practice to comprehend and eliminate our vices is retrospection meditation. But there are exercises that help to gain enough stability and concentration and serenity by which to work effectively in retrospection. For example, if your heart is afflicted with anger, it is good to work with the mantra O, to saturate the heart with positive force. Or if we are afflicted with lust, we can transmit our sexual energy so that we have enough control and stability by which to approach lust in our mind. So I wouldn't say there's a practice for each of the seven vices, we could say, but you do find throughout the literature of Samael Aun Weor different practices to help treat anger. For example, like I related about the Starbucks experience: I was doing deep breathing to control my anger. That is something that the master gives in the book Introduction to Gnosis: the lessons he provides there, so that you can let anger subside so that you can work on the mind, which is what I was doing in that experience.
 
Question: If we experience the ordeal of Direne and failed, will this mistake cause our Divine Mother and Father to renounce us for the rest of this lifetime?
 
Instructor: That really depends. That depends upon the magnitude of the fault. How much energy is invested in lust. Obviously, if one fails the ordeal of Direne and commits adultery, obviously, there is going to be a lot to repair, if that can be repaired at all, in terms of a relational standpoint with one's spouse. Because if divinity asks you to work with one partner and we betray our spouse, obviously, there is going to be a lot of karma involved that it is going to be more difficult to unfold. Whether or not that will be forgiven is something particular to each case, because karma is very intricate and particular to each person. That is something that only your Divine Mother and Divine Father could show you from experience.
 
Question: I have had many experiences in my time on this path, often times when the experiences begin, my mind truly struggles to understand, how it is possible, or whether I am worthy to experience these things? What could be done to help this?
 
Instructor: Well, the solution is: reflect on your heart and your sincerity. Sincerity is the virtue that opens the door to experience. When we truly repent of our errors, not because we want to have samadhis or experiences out of craving and desire, but because we want to change our behavior, when we change our ethical behavior and conduct, we start to see results in our daily life. That is when we become worthy to receive very high initiations or experiences. It is something that has to be earned.
 
Now all of us without exception feel despair at times, where we feel the pain and realization that we are so afflicted with ego that we don't know what to do. And this is a trial and trauma of the soul, a great drama or path of difficulty every one of us has to face. All of us have our own cross to bear, but the reality is that there is forgiveness in the law and it is possible. But we have to really earn it, and that means suffering a lot to the extreme, if necessary. Because when we go through pain and hardship, and feel that this work may be beyond our reach, and we realize that if we don't change, that we are going to suffer more, then we work regardless of the result. We do it because of love, without attachment to the fruit of our deeds. It is when you act in this way, without expectation, and practice in this way without expectation, that is when we really start to receive help internally. We gain experiences. So it is possible.
 
Personally, from my past lives, I do not deserve to be helped. I have committed terrible crimes, and I remember them with lucidity. So it is painful, and I have had to really weep a lot and pray for my Divine Mother to help, because without Her we are lost. But it is precisely at that breaking point in which she enters as light, and we have to be willing to receive that intelligence, primarily by facing extreme hardship. We face and overcome defeatism by meditating on those egos that complain that say, “I can't do this work. I am not good enough. I'm not worthy.” Your Divine Mother knows best, so rely on Her judgment, not on doubt. Doubt is one thing. Despair and morbidity is one thing, but remorse is something else. So all doors are closed to the unworthy except the door of repentance, and we show repentance by our deeds, our actions.
 
Question: Can you speak about how to use the rune Yr and how that works with our Divine Mother when working in sexual alchemy?

Instructor: So the rune Yr is the opposite of the rune Man, and if you are familiar with the hippie symbol of peace, it is the rune Yr. The rune Man  is upright and Man is a representation of the masculine sexual force. So when you join those two runes together, Yr and Man, you form the rune Hagal, and Hagal is a swastika, the cross in motion. And that cross in motion works profoundly when we are married, working in alchemy.
 
So, about different prayers you can do, mantras associated with the rune Yr. I believe you mentioned some of them: "Terrifying king of the sea, thou who has the keys of the floodgates of heaven and who does, can find the subterranean waters within the cavern of the earth. " There are some beautiful prayers that relate to different teachings, but in simple forms, you work with the rune Yr and Man together when you are working in alchemy, because man and woman together form the six pointed star, the cross in motion. We do it by considering the sexual force and circulating it through mantra.
 
Question: How is the mantra KRIM used for help with breaking down food? Does this transmute the sexual energy from the food? 
 
Instructor: The mantra KRIM is the force of destruction. It breaks down elements to extract the synthesis. So in the same way that you break down food when you masticate, eat the food and break down the material so that you can extract its nutrients, the mantra KRIM also helps us to annihilate the ego. So it takes the sexual power and directs it towards the annihilation of the self.
 
Question: Hey, good evening. I wanted to ask you about that experience that you told us about at the Starbucks. And I understand like how you said, that you became aware of your anger, but I was kind of wondering, if you could or would share how or explain a little bit about how for you specifically, you had some comprehension? Because, a lot of times I am aware of a lot of things in myself, but I don't comprehend them and I don't understand, kind of, what it is to comprehend them. But I wish I could give you an example right now of what I mean, but I just was wondering if you could explain a little bit about how that felt to you, like to comprehend that moment?
 
Instructor: Great question. Comprehension is a spark. It is really a profound state of being in which we say, “Aha!” in the sense, like, “I finally see something I never saw before!” It is alert novelty. Comprehension is a type of energy that is like a lightning bolt. It shocks the consciousness, not in a detrimental way, but in an elevating way. When we comprehend an ego, we are liberated in the moment, because we see how that fault operates and conditions us. When you comprehend an ego, you are extracting the essence trapped in it, and then through prayer, the Divine Mother can eliminate it.
 
So in the example I gave you about being at Starbucks, what happened was that when my wife took the car, the wheel, when I got in the passenger seat, I suddenly understood in an instant, with a great shock, that I am going through exactly what I dreamed about this morning. And it was a really brilliant moment of lucidity, of clarity, and inspiration, because when we comprehend our dreams and how they relate to physical life, you feel inspired. So while I was struggling against my own mind to control it, I realized that I was being helped in this ordeal. And in that way, I felt enough peace and serenity to continue working on my mind in that instant because, you know, I knew that my Divine Mother was with me.
 
That is an understanding and a confidence you develop through alert novelty: being aware of the instant, but also paying attention to your dreams and reflecting on their meaning. And sometimes, the comprehension emerges without thinking about it. You do not plan it or expect it. It just suddenly comes to you when your mind is clear, when you are observing. When your imaginative screen of awareness, your intellect is at peace, you can reflect the insight in your superior intellectual center. It just comes to you. But we have to be receptive as an intellect and active as a consciousness as we explained in our former lecture, if that makes sense.
 
Question: Yeah, so comprehension doesn't necessarily mean that you understand why you are doing what you are doing. It's just more that you kind of are just very conscious of the moment and the choices and the ability to take control again or something like that? Or to make different choices? You know what I mean?
 
Instructor: Yes, there are levels of comprehension. So in that moment, I understood that I needed to get into the passenger seat and to meditate right there, so that I can go deeper and understand those egos that acted. So I knew in the moment that I had to continue being serene and then, when I was really concentrated, I understood four egos that I needed to eliminate. So, light upon light, level upon level, if that answers your question. 
 
Audience: Yes. Thank you. 
 
Instructor: You're welcome.
 
Question: Thank you for the lecture. I was wondering about... So I am looking at Deuteronomy 11. This is the part where Moses is recalling, asking the Israelites to recall everything that has happened as they go into the land of Canaan or into the new lands, and this happens many times. I am just going to use one verse. This happens many times throughout this whole section. “You must love the Lord your God and always obey his Commandments, decrees, regulations, and requirements to create regulations and commands.” When “you mentioned his requirements,” is this an interpretation of the Bible where “his” has been... that's not what the Hebrew meant, or is this referring to Chesed, which is a masculine aspect? Because of many “He” and “His”  in this section. 
 
Instructor: Yeah. I am not entirely familiar about the Hebrew in that passage, but if you go into the actual Hebrew transliteration, you will find more answers. You know, this is the value of knowing Kabbalah, so that when you look at the original Hebrew script, you can interpret what names of God are being used. So obviously, אל El  in Hebrew is Chesed, the spirit, and there are degrees of expression of divinity, which are mapped out by the different Hebrew sacred names of God, which we study in our courses of Kabbalah. So if you are familiar with that you can go through those verses and see what name of God is being used. So every time you see God mentioned in English, you should look towards the original language to see what sacred name of divinity is really being referenced here, to get more clarity. If that make sense. 
 
Audience: Here in a paragraph it's like "He" is mentioned like five, six times. In actuality this could be five different references that go beyond just the word "He." 
 
Instructor: Yeah, that is why we have to know what the Hebrew is telling us, because that original script is going to give us the most depth of understanding. So you have to really meditate and judge what you are reading from the original. 
 
Audience: Okay. Thank you. 
 
Instructor: You're welcome.

The term initiation has not been well understood, especially in the West.

According to the dictionary definition, initiation pertains to “formal admission or acceptance into an organization or club. Adult status in one's community or society,” etc. This relates to “ceremonies, rites of admission, rites of passage.”

You may be familiar with Judaism, Bar Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, ages in which youth come into adulthood, or certain groups like the Masons who would initiate a student into their order in order to become a member, an aspirant of the path.

But, more formally, these terms do not adequately represent the reality of initiation itself. In fact, initiation means to begin. To initiate, and as we find in this beautiful image, a knight being knighted by a beautiful female figure, it represents the reality of spiritual initiation.

This woman is known amongst the Hebraic Kabbalists, the mystics of Judaism, as Neshamah, the divine soul, which represents a part of us. Some people call it Geburah, strength, justice, and the human counterpart known as Tiphereth in the Kabbalah, is will―the will to change, really a representation of us, human soul, consciousness, that part of us that needs to work in order to be initiated, in order to enter those divine hierarchies among the gods.

And this is of course a personal work. It is doesn’t mean that in order to be coronated by this divine figure, we need to belong to a group, because real initiation is our life. It is what we do in our daily work upon ourselves. The work upon our mind, our faults.

And so this beautiful divine soul, which is usually represented as a feminine principle, is honoring the hero. And who is that hero? It has to be us. Because in reality, in our life, we face many hardships. Many sufferings. Many conflicts, tragedies, pains. And if any one of us is attending a group of this nature, it is because deep down in our heart we have a longing to know divinity and to enter initiation. To initiate the entrance, the door, into true happiness, known by all of those beings known as angels, prophets, buddhas, Elohim, gods.

Those beings like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, were once like us, and they decided that in order to genuinely know divinity, they had to work. They had to renounce their faults: anger, resentment, pride, fear, hatred. And by removing those qualities in themselves, they initiated a new way of life. Because among the gods, there is no anger. There is no fear. There is no suffering. But to reach those heights, they had to change. They had to renounce those qualities in themselves that produce their pain and made others suffer.

And so those beings taught humanity through religion, through yoga, how to enter that path, which is never easy. Because if we wish to be honored by divinity, we first have to face great trials. We have to become heroes. It is heroic to change and to face and take responsibility for our own faults. Our own anger, our own lust, our own faults, errors. To take responsibility for our own life. Not to blame others, but to change.

We can change, and by eliminating our own anger and defects, we naturally irradiate light, beauty, compassion, and that is how we become like this knight who is initiated. Not by some external force, but by his own divine soul, the divine principle of Geburah, because in the mysticism of Judaism, kabbalah, this woman or this figure of justice represents the law of divinity, the law of balance.

There are causes and conditions that can produce suffering and there are the causes and conditions that produce happiness. Divinity weighs the scales, but we determine what coins we place on either end, whether for good or for ill. Therefore that law naturally gives unto us what we have earned.

So we cannot blame others for our suffering. We have to balance the scales. This is known in the east as karma. Or in the Bible, there is a statement, “Do you not know that you shall reap what you sow?” We receive the consequences of our own actions.

And so we must learn to balance this scale in ourselves and before the divine hierarchies of this law of karma, we learn to cancel suffering. We learn to pay our debts, whether from this life or, if we have studied the doctrine of reincarnation, from other lives. And this is not something theoretical. It is something conscious when we experience it.

Personally, I do not believe in reincarnation. I know of it because I have meditated and I have awakened in the astral plane and investigated these things for myself. Knowing where I come from and why I am in the situation that I am now.
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So this is how we really know initiation. It has nothing to do with reading a book, attending a lecture, or believing in a scripture. It has to do with what we experience. And so we can become like this hero, to initiate, to enter those degrees of knowledge through experience. Which is why Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition stated, "Initiation is life itself, lived intensely, with rectitude and with love."

Our life can become like a beautiful rose, immaculate with the fragrance of God, a purity that is so refined and strong that, in the face of any adversity, we can transform conflict, remediate disagreements, and transform our life into something beautiful.

But of course we have to face the thorns, as the allegory goes, and that has to do with our own personal path, because initiation is individual to you. Your life is unique and your karma is unique and your sufferings are unique. And the way that you resolve them depends upon your inner divinity, which is also unique to you.

We do this path by living intensely. It does not mean to become a daredevil. What it means is that our consciousness is so awake, is so heightened, that we learn to become aware of any situation and all the minute details, all of its struggles, so that we can transform it profoundly, and to live with rectitude, ethics, and these ethics are within any religion: compassion, kindness, altruism, love, sacrifice, but not as a moral code to believe in, but as a quality of mind, as our former lecturer mentioned in the previous discussion in this course.
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The preparation for initiation is based on the quality of our heart. Our heart is what determines whether we will enter and be among the angels, or to be among the fallen.

So those are the two ways. We learn to enter this path through love. Really when we love humanity and love others more than we love ourselves, because that is how we become someone like Jesus, whose whole life was based on the well-being of others, even when he was being nailed to the cross. He said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Truly, Jesus of Nazareth represents the highest ideals an initiate can embody, and in fact he is the patriarch of the Gnostic Church. He is the head of the cosmic hierarchies of the divine. And we find his life representing the path of initiation itself, which he was the only one to physically represent that drama in flesh and bone―where you find in his birth, ministry, passion, crucifixion, resurrection―a teaching about our own individual nature.

While he physically lived these things, his life is a representation of what we have to follow in us. And in this course, we are going to discuss what those stages are in depth. But primarily he represented a type of will that any initiate needs in order to really be successful, because of course, we find in his life, tremendous conflict, tremendous struggle. People against him. Being betrayed. And that has to do with the fact that anyone who enters initiation has to pay all of their karma in one life. They have to pay everything that they owe, and because they love divinity so much, they do it gladly, even though it means that their life will be intense.

But they do it with compassion, and that willpower is known as telesis. It is a Greek term meaning “perfection or progress that is intelligently planned and directed.”

So if we have read the Gospels, we find that Jesus, his life and his path, was intelligently planned by divinity or in, Kabbalah, Kether, the Father. And we all have our own inner Father inside who intelligently plans and directs the course of our life, our own individual path.

But of course we have to do our part. We have our own will that could either follow heaven above or our own inner hell below.

It (telesis) is also “the attainment of a desired end by the application of intelligent effort.”
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It is the will of Christ incarnated in a human being, and that Christic force is not a person, but an energy, which we work with. So we learn to attain the end of initiation by applying certain practices and techniques on a daily basis so that we transform our situations, which are intense, full of suffering, into understanding. And when we have understanding we have peace. To pay what we owe, but to do so with wisdom and not to merely go through the sufferings of life, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” according to Shakespeare's Hamlet. But, “to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.”

And that is how we enter amongst the gods, represented in many cosmogonies and paintings as the illuminated masters or angels, ascending and ascending up into the unknowable divine.

I remember one experience many years ago in which I invoked, in the astral plane, Samael Aun Weor, who is a great prophet, a master of our tradition. I looked up in the sky in the astral plane and I started to call, “In the name of Christ, by the power of Christ, for the glory of Christ!” And when you pronounce these sacred mantras, or invocations, or prayers, suddenly I saw the clouds, in the atmosphere open and I saw this image. Immaculate light. And I saw millions of angels moving and looking down at me with a lot of sympathy and compassion.

So I said, “Samael Aun Weor!” And I invoked him and he came down. And if you have seen his pictures on the internet from his times in Mexico, he came down and was teaching me many things, was helping me. And he had a lot of compassion for me because I was suffering a lot in my work.

I said to him, “I am having difficulty in my path,” and he simply said, very sweetly, but strong, "But there is always difficulty." Then I returned to my body.

So he was teaching me, “You wish to become and perfect yourself as an initiate, you have to remember that this path is not like what religion teaches. That you simply believe, belong to a church, mosque, or a synagogue, say your prayers, go to bed, and then you'll be fine when you die. That has nothing to do with reality. In fact, initiation is earned. We do it by working with telesis, with will.” 

So this is the hidden wisdom within any religion that has not been taught openly.

“We speak wisdom [σοφία, sophia] among them that are perfect [τελείοις, teleios] (because through divine will, human effort, we become perfected), yet not the wisdom of this world [αἰών, aeon], nor of the princes [ἀρχόντων archons] of this world, that come to nought:

“But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery [μυστήριον, mustérion], even the hidden [ἀποκρύπτω, apokruptó] wisdom [σοφία, sophia], which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” ―1 Corinthians 2:6-7

Paul of Tarsus was a great initiate who taught in his scriptures the symbolic language of Kabbalah.

So what does it mean to be entering into the mysteries? μυστήριον, mustérion, from the Greek mystikos, meaning “initiate,” myein, the root word, meaning “to close the eyes” to illusion in order to see internally.

It means to become a practical meditator. We physically close our eyes, we go into our mind. We examine the qualities of our heart. We work on what we have observed in ourselves, our faults throughout the day, and then at night we work consciously to understand our defects, which we call in this tradition, ego. But in the Bible they call it Shaytan, the devil (Hebrew for adversary).

Our own anger, fear, lust, hatred, pride, laziness, is demonic. It does not belong to God. Therefore we have to eliminate all of it. But we do it by closing our eyes to illusion. It doesn't mean to close one's eyes, as if one is being naive or to be manipulated. Instead it has to do with learning the science of meditation itself, so that we could have experiences like this in which you are face to face with God, and you can receive help about your work.

And so this is the hidden wisdom, ἀποκρύπτω, apokruptó, from the Greek reminding us of apocalypse. If you are familiar with the Book of Revelations, it is a very controversial text written in the language of Kabbalah. It is symbolic. If you want to have revelations of divine experience in yourself, you need to face great ordeals, because revelations is all about cataclysms, tremendous suffering, conflict.
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But, it has nothing to do, in the most important sense, with what is going to happen to this physical world. That is one level of meaning. More importantly, it refers to, as we are entering initiation, we have to face our own apocalypse where we face moments of crisis in which we are tested to the extreme. We have to make the decision: will we act virtuously or selfishly? And how we act determines our trajectory, which is why we examine two forms of initiation.

This is a painting by Hans Memling, the Last Judgment, in which you see Jesus with his right hand up in the form of the pentagram. Three fingers up,  two fingers down, which is a gnostic symbol. And, a beautiful wreath and flowers stemming from or levitating above his hand.

Towards his right we find many initiates entering into the temples of the mysteries, entering into the White Lodge.

The White Lodge is a term used by Samael Aun Weor to refer to the hierarchies of the divine. It refers to the purity of the soul. And on the left of Jesus we find he has a sword levitating towards his left and his hand extending downward to reject the tenebrous, or the initiates of the black path.

It is important to remember that white and black has to do with initiation and that there are many people of many races in the White Lodge. There are many people of many races in the Black Lodge. White and black has to do with the quality of the soul. Physicality has nothing to do with initiation. 

So we have the Angel Michael weighing the scales of cosmic justice in which the souls are evaluated whether they will enter into happiness and bliss, or they will enter into suffering.

Many religions talk about hell, damnation, heaven, in a very tyrannical, fearful way. It is better to think of these things not as places, but as qualities of the heart. When we are afflicted with anger, with pride, with sarcasm, we are in hell. And if we feed those elements, we initiate ourselves in hell and we develop further and further as a demon.

So what is a demon? People like to think of this caricature of a person with horns, long tail, wings. Somebody who disobeyed God many millennia ago as a type of comic-book figure, which has no basis in reality. It is a symbol, as we see in this image. These are symbols of qualities of the soul and all of our defects, which we find represented by all these evil qualities like jealousy, lust, desire.

But on the right or towards the right of Jesus, our left, we have Saint Peter initiating those souls into a better way of life, a superior way of life, which is based upon and predicated on virtue.

Notice that he has the keys of heaven in his hand, silver, gold. And we'll talk more explicitly about these symbols. These silver and gold keys represent alchemy among some traditions. The work with the stone of Peter, Patar, or the work with energy. Silver, feminine. Gold, masculine. And we'll talk about this specifically in relation to The Perfect Matrimony, which is a book that Samael Aun Weor wrote that clarifies these symbols.

So we can either become initiated into the divine hierarchy or as a demon, and what most people talk about in this time when they say, “Join our group, we will initiate you.” It has to do with the black path, the negative path, because while those schools may teach about purity of mind, love, and brotherhood, we find that through their actions, their behavior, their character shows everything.
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How many times have we heard of groups speak of beauty and harmony in which they excommunicate their members, curse their members, betray their members? This is very common. You find this in many groups, not only in many world religions, but esoteric groups. Even in gnosis too. It is sad, but we have to remember that initiation is our own character, our life. What we do on a daily basis. 

Which is why John Milton and his epic poem Paradise Lost explain these principles. He was an initiate who taught about these truths in his poem, in his works. Many people love, and sadly, they don't renounce their own causes of suffering, which is pride, hatred, defects.

People love to feed animality, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, qualities that perpetuate suffering, and you find that many aspects of our culture in North America, which is infecting the whole planet, is addicted to behaviors that cause pain. And it's sad. People make a heaven of hell. They justify lust, pornography, elements that produce a lot of conflict and degeneration. And this is how people are initiating themselves as a planet into the black path, into hell, into the infernal dimensions, which is why Milton, knowing this truth stated, through the lips of his character Lucifer (who was the angel that fell from heaven and became the head of the the Black Lodge).

​He states:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
“Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.”

And unfortunately when the qualities that are needed to enter initiation are taught, people hate it. People do not like virtue. Compassion is not rewarded in this era. Kindness is looked down upon as a weakness, and so people make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

“What matter where, if I be still the same,
“And what I should be, all but less then he
“Whom Thunder hath made greater?”

So he is contemplating what will I be now that I am fallen. And he is referring to the divine who exiled him from heaven for his transgression.

“Here at least We shall be free (meaning in hell. In the infernal dimensions); th' Almighty hath not built
“Here [the Abyss] for his envy, will not drive us hence:
“Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
“To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
“Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.”
―John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, ll. 254-263

This is the mentality of advertisement, politics, government. People think that they can behave as if there is no divinity watching. People justifying extortion, crime, sexual degeneration, poverty, affliction, all the problems that afflict this country, humanity, this planet. People justify the worst crimes in the penal code, in the human rights codes, all because they say "Is it not better that we reign in hell than serve in heaven?" Because as Paul of Tarsus stated, or I believe one of the initiates of the Bible stated, how the initiates of the white path are looked down upon as if they are weak, because it seems that the devil has more power.

“The wisdom of the Secret Enemy is seemingly far greater than the wisdom of the Nous atom. As a great prophet once said, ‘The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’” ―Morya, The Dayspring of Youth
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So this is the mentality of many people. They feel that there is no consequence. 

We find this paralleled in the story of Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Diogenes is a very interesting figure in Greek philosophy. He was known as the cynic, the doubter. He was known to live in a barrel, was a beggar, and lived away from society primarily because of this reason. He felt that the society around them was degenerated, was evil, and therefore he chose to live away from cities, culture, and all the means by which people perpetuate false ideals.

Samael Aun Weor mentioned that Diogenes was a great master. He would walk around the daytime with a lamp, a symbol, going door to door asking people if he could find a man. And when obviously people in the house would say “Yes, there are many men around in the city!” Diogenes would say “No. These are not men. These are pigs, vulgar creatures.” And so obviously he made many enemies.

People didn't understand that he was looking for a real Hum-Man from the Sanskrit Hum, spirit, and man or manas, mind.  A real hum-man, or individual man or woman, is a mind of the spirit, that emulates qualities like that of Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, etc.

So Diogenes was saying, “I am looking for an initiate, but I don't see any here.” And so obviously he was creating many problems for the people around him, because he was very radical and was making a statement, and symbolically represented through his life these truths.

There is one moment mentioned in his history where Alexander the Great came to him and saw him lying in agony underneath the sun ,and asked him kindly, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Diogenes very curtly stated, dismissively, "You can get out of the way of my sun. You are blocking the light." Alexander the Great was so shocked that he had no other choice but to walk away.

Who else could have that type of power to dismiss a person who owned pretty much half the world in power. It is an initiate, because he demonstrated through his quality of heart, not his physical material life, where real virtue is. So Diogenes was poor, physically had nothing, but his heart was in God. Alexander the Great had all the materialism and life of this world, but no soul.
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This is why Homer stated, “It is better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the empire of shadows.” He was the author, originator of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

So Diogenes represents a symbol known in the Tarot, the ninth arcanum, the ninth law, as The Hermit. A wandering beggar. One who is in solitude. That hermit is an initiate, somebody who works with the staff of the spine in the lamp of wisdom.

Diogenes literally was representing with his life, choosing to live in poverty to show a truth, sacrificing everything to teach something symbolically for us. For people who would understand it at a later date.

That lamp of wisdom is the lamp of hermetic science, which relates to the God Hermes or Mercury within the tradition of alchemy. Hermes refers to being hermetically sealed, and that has to do with saving energy. The basis of that is, we save energy when we renounce defects, anger, lust, pride, etc., because if we act on anger, we waste energy, and if we have no energy, we cannot awaken consciousness.

That is the beginning of initiation. We work on our faults so that we can have light. That light is fire, is energy, is force. We have no light, no fire, no force. The lamp is dark. We can't see the path. And if we are serious about this work, we can learn to save enough energy so that we awaken what is known as Kundalini, which rises up the staff of our spine, symbolized in this ninth arcanum, and of course that has to do with the work with energy, which we are going to be talking more explicitly in our forthcoming lectures.

So “If you want to initiation, write it upon a staff,” says Samael Aun Weor in The Perfect Matrimony. "Whosoever has understanding, let him understand because there is wisdom within."
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Initiation is when we are working ethically upon ourselves, so that that force, the Kundalini, can rise up the spine to the mind, to the heart. 

That path was taught by Jesus. It is known as the second birth. He said:

"Verily I say unto you Nicodemus, you must be born again of water and spirit. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” ―John 3:5-6

People typically think this has to do with belief. That “If I believe in Jesus, if I get physically baptized, I enter the kingdom of heaven, I am initiated.” But, his teaching was very much more secretive. He never publicly taught the meaning of that verse.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Meaning, physical birth is born and predicated on the sexual act in the common ordinary way. But “that which is born of the spirit” through the same sexual act transformed, “is spirit.”

This is known in the East is Tantra, sacred alchemy. The practice between husband and wife in order to conserve their vital forces and to elevate them.

When that sexual energy is conserved, it is transformed. We give birth to the fire of the Holy Ghost in the spine that rises, and gives birth spiritually. If people engage in the sexual act that is commonly known, you give birth to a physical child, but through specific procedures, by conserving the waters of baptism, that energy rises up to our mind and coronates us so that we can receive Christ, the energy, which is born through birth.

Nobody is born through theory, through belief. Everyone is born in this world through sex. And so when we learn to use that energy in a spiritual way, we enter initiation, which is why Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Major Mysteries:

“Every initiation is a spiritual birth. Whosoever wants to be born has to enter into the feminine womb in order to be gestated; thus, this is how the right to be born is acquired by the one who wants to be born. Initiation is totally sexual, thus if we want to be born, we need to practice sexual magic with our spouse.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries

Sexual magic or alchemy refers to, again, teachings given in Buddhism, in the highest levels of practice. Here we see Padmasambhava with his consort Yeshe Tsoygal, where he is depicted in the sexual act with his wife. And many people become confused by this, because they say, “How is it that this Buddhist master says you have to renounce lust, and yet he is having sex with his wife?”

And this is clarified very simply by his statement:

“Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation."  ―Padmasambhava

So the reality is, the answer is, he was having sexual connection with his wife, but without lust, without ego, without desire, without animality. Instead, he learned to use the sexual act with love, with chastity.

​People think this term chastity has to do with not having sex or being in an abstention. Chasity simply means “purity, immaculateness.” It means to not emit the sexual seed, which is why Yeshe Tsoygal said:

“Practice to perfection the skill of retaining your seed essence…” ―Yeshe Tsoygal

…the seminal matter, because that life force if it is expelled, it is wasted, either through giving birth to a child or through animal pleasure.

Instead if you conserve that seed, you can let it germinate into spiritual powers: clairvoyance, telepathy, clairaudience, astral travel, jinn experiences. That seed power, which can give birth to a child, is the power of God, and if you conserve that force and transform it, you give birth to the soul.

And so one must learn to use that force without lust. So in the beginning, male-female, husband and wife, are obviously going to struggle because, of course in us, we have a lot of lust, a lot of desire. But the beginning of initiation is based on this principle. Renounce desire. Renounce lust. Renounce the animal spasm. The orgasm. That is known as the original sin in the Bible.

Adam and Eve were in the garden when a snake came by and told Eve, “Eat this apple because it will make you like a God.” Eve ate, tempted Adam, they fell, and they were kicked out of the garden by God.
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People read this story literally. It is a symbol. What else is that but a symbol of a naked man and a naked woman in a garden, who are tempted by a snake, which is of course, the serpent, but inverted. So that is the tempting serpent, or lust, or desire, which pulls people down into suffering. And of course, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the sexual energy in the wrong way, they were kicked out.
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But of course, if we want to re-enter the garden of Eden, we have to learn to conserve the energies, primarily because the word for Eden in Hebrew means “bliss” or “voluptuousness.” It can refer to sexuality.

What is the sword mentioned in the great myths of the heroes? It is the Kundalini. It is the sword of the heroes. It is the fire of the Holy Ghost that rises victoriously from the base Chakra Muladhara, to the mind.

Samael Aun Weor mentioned in Tarot and Kabbalah:

“Without woman, no initiate can receive the sword."

Or no male initiate, because every man is a priest, every woman is a priestess. Together they work in the greatest priesthood, which is alchemy. Male-female, positive-negative, moon-sun. Together they work to transform these energies represented by Adam Eve, solar-lunar.

These physical polarities are necessary because together they form the serpent, the sword. Moses raised a brazen serpent upon a staff in the wilderness made of the amalgamation of copper and tin, to use metallurgical science, metallurgical terminology.

Copper is Venus, woman, the feminine. Tin is Jupiter, masculine, the male. Together you form the bronze serpent, which rises upon the spine, to the mind, to the heart.

Together, man and woman in matrimony can enter initiation.
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But of course, matrimony, doesn’t have to do with paperwork. It doesn't have to do with going to the judge down the circuit court and then filing for a marriage, saying “I want to marry this person.” This paperwork has nothing to do with the reality of the couple. Real marriage is between man and woman when they sexually connect. That is the only thing that God judges, because sexual connection is a marriage. It is religion, “religare.” To reunite Adam and Eve, those principles, before they fell. So together, they enter back into bliss. And the way that we do so is by studying the tradition of alchemy, which we will be explaining progressively in this course. 

We have an image here of Vitriol, a teaching about this precise science. Samael Aun Weor mentions that in order to enter initiation, we have to work with this energy known as the stone of the Masons.

So we mentioned previously about Patar, Peter, the Church or the rock upon which the Gnostic Church is founded. That is a symbol of Kabbalah. In Kabbalah, we refer to in this Jewish mystical teaching, the stone upon which we base ourselves.

That stone is known as Vitriol among the alchemists. It is known as the Ka’aba amongst the Muslims: the blackened stone of our sexual energy that must be purified. That doctrine, which has a physical component and an esoteric component, represents these truths. We have to learn to pray towards Mecca where the stone is. Meaning: work with that energy.

So here we are mentioning something that not a lot of people understand spiritually because those teachings were lost. That stone is the creative force, and even in terms of slang we find that a person's stones has to do with their sexual organs. Either the testicles or the ovaries.

As the Old Testament [Deuteronomy 23:1] states, "He who is wounded in the stones or has his privy member cutoff shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Because, that energy is fundamental. That is how we build our church. Build our spirit. That is how we create.

Vitriol is one of the clues of the Gnostic alchemist. The word signifies:

“Visitam Interiorem Terre Rectificatum Invenias Ocultum Lapidum.”

Visit the interior of the earth which through rectifying, you will find the occult stone. 

What is the earth in Kabbalah? Our body. Our physical body is the earth, which has all the elements inside: fire, air, water, earth. All those forces are necessary for our development.

Fire relates to our emotions. Air to our mind. Waters to our seminal sexual force. And the earth is the well that contains all of it.

We have to visit the interior of the earth, meaning, meditate. Go into yourself. Examine how the sexual energy works in a spiritual way, and through practices, we learn to enter initiation.

We have to first work with the stone so that we can open the doors for ourselves of the path. 

What is interesting too is that amongst these symbols you find the seven planets, and the stone relating to “corpus.” There is an arrow pointing down towards this figure. It has as the letter of Saturn (♄) represented there.  
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Saturn, astrologically speaking relates with death. It means death of desire. The death of animality. If you wish to work with your stone, we have to remove the impurities so that we can give birth, as we see in this image on the top left, to anima, the soul. At the top right spiritus, the spirit. And when we work more on our faults, our defects, we enter the actual path and we have to face certain trials and ordeals. 

In this next slide we see an image of the Guardian of the Threshold, which is mentioned many times in the writings of Rudolf Steiner. Many other initiates talk about this ordeal. Samael Aun Weor spent a lot more time explaining these things in a very clear way. Some of the other authors were a little bit more ambiguous.

So, if we are very serious about entering the path, we will face a certain trial. It has nothing to do with having attended the lecture, but more so internally, when we are practicing. We are working with the creative energy. We are meditating, trying to work on our egos and our faults.

This experience is internal, where, when your physical body is asleep, you may be awakened in the astral plane in which you have to face yourself. This guardian is a representation of you. It represents all of your defects from this life and all your past lives. So this figure usually takes on a demonic figure. Very monstrous, huge, because our defects are very great.

This guardian is of the threshold because that is the threshold of entering the mysteries. If we wish to really advance towards the light, we have to face our own darkness.

Personally, if I am telling you about this is because I remember facing my guardian. A huge monster. Very hideous, and I had to keep invoking and invoking again and again because I kept failing and I felt so much pain not being able to face this monster in myself, because I desperately do not want to fail. And personally, in my case, it was very severe, because I was told internally that the White Lodge would end my life if I didn't succeed, because my karma was very severe.

I was at the time physically very sick. I was actually hospitalized, and I later found out from medical reports afterward that I could have died. And I was told during that time internally, “If you do not face yourself now, it'll be over for you and you'll go down.” And so, I had to fight again and again and again.

​The time that I succeeded was when I told myself, “I will have no fear. I will not be afraid of myself.” And then I decided..."So be it!" Locked, hand in hand, with this monster, conjured it and defeated it. And I remember at that time there were a group of black magicians, sorcerers of the evil path, who were watching the whole time to see what my fate would be. They looked at me with horror because the light of Christ was in me, and I said unto them, "It can be done."

I looked at them because they were afraid and I told them that, “You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to run away from yourself.” Because, those demons, they feed the Guardian of the Threshold. They worship it. It is their fears and anger and all their faults. When they saw that I had completely renounced that, at that level, they were scared.

But of course, that was one ordeal. In the path you face many ordeals, but when you succeed in facing certain ordeals internally, the angels welcome you. I remember being helped by certain Cherubim, masters who were very happy, and celebrated my achievements internally. This is why we have this image of these angels represented there, because when you conquer ordeals internally, they appear to you in the form of children.
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Only those who are like little children shall enter the kingdom of God, meaning: to have the mind, the simplicity of an infant. It doesn't mean to be stupid or to be ignorant, but to be pure.

We also face the four deals of the elements: fire, air, water, and earth, which we will be talking separately, giving a lecture on each element, I believe around July. 

What are the ordeals of the fire? It has to do with criticism: somebody or people in our life speak ill about us. We feel heat, pressure. We feel that we are burning. We are being provoked to act negatively, with resentment, anger, sarcasm.

But in order to conquer the ordeal of fire, we have to be sweet, kind, compassionate. To really not identify with their criticism, but to respond with love. It doesn't mean that we pretend to be kind, but to really do it. It is very difficult, but if you transform the fire of that situation, you reach equanimity, calm.
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Personally, I work at a job in which I get a lot of fire. It is a good element to work with, in which I have clients that are very difficult to work with. Very troublesome, who constantly may criticize, and so they have really given me a blessing, taught me to respond with love, and when I have worked and acted kindly towards my clients, it dissipates everything. It transforms the situation. 

We also have the ordeals of the air, relating to the mind. You know the saying, when we are “up in the air.” It has to do with financial situations. Maybe we feel like we lost a job or reach a crisis in our life in which we don't know where to go. We literally feel like we are falling in life. We don't know where we are going to land. It has to do with mobility. The virtue of this element is mobility. To be able to move. To adapt. To know how to control our own fears. The air of the mind that always thinks, “How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to live? What am I going to do?”

​Likewise we have the ordeal of water, relating to fluidity. Sometimes in life we feel that we are drowning. Again, it can relate to finances, to problems, conflicts where we are in a big storm. The water is pulling us down and we have to learn to swim against the current. We feel our depression wants to pull us in, to give up. But if we swim against the current, do what no one else does and be heroic, we end up on top.
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So the virtue of water has to do with, we can say, confidence, strength: to swim against the waters that are seeking to pull us down into the whirlpool.

Lastly: the earth. In life, we may feel like we have a mountain collapsing on us. We are being crushed. The situation in our life is fearful. We feel that we are being buried beneath a rock, and that we can't escape the situation. If we cry out in fear, we fail. But if we show constancy, stability, confidence, we succeed. 

So these elements not only relate to our physical life, but even internally, you may have those ordeals in the astral plane. We get tested in the physical world, but also in the internal planes as we enter initiation.

I remember one time I woke up in the astral plane and I found myself lying on my back in the dark, in some room. I knew I was awake, and then I suddenly heard a lot of voices around me laughing. At that time, I knew this was a test and I was really happy about it, because I knew that the beings around me were angels, but they were secretly testing me.

I heard them laughing and mocking me, calling me names, criticizing me, slapping me, pouring water on me, doing all sorts of things. The funny part was, I even had one of them sit on my head and fart on my head, trying to get me to react, and I felt my ego at the time was trying to come out and was getting really angry.

But I knew, “I am not going to act on my anger, because I know this is an ordeal and that they are helping me to show me my ego.” To work on it.

And after I conquered the ordeal, the lights turn on, and a group of these angels from the previous graphic, like Cherubim, celebrated. They all cheered, and I remember looking in their eyes and seeing the beauty of heaven there. The purity of soul.

They invited me into their children's chamber where they taught me many things. That was a great victory, but to reach those celebrations, we have to work with the elements. Conquer fire, our anger. Conquer the air, our thoughts. Conquer the water, our creative energy. Conquer the earth, our physical life.

This is how we work with this science, which is synthesized in the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life is a beautiful glyph known as the Kabbalah, the Jewish mysticism, which relates to the body.
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This Tree of Life is a map of consciousness. It is made up of three trinities. Above, middle, and below, followed by a separate sphere known as Malkuth, which is the physical world. It is a diagram of the soul, from the highest levels of divine expression, to the most dense. 

At the top we find Kether, Chokmah, Binah, which are energies of God known in Christianity as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Known in Egypt as Osiris, Horus, Isis. Amongst the Nordics: Wotan, Baldur, Thor. Or in Buddhism, we have Nirmanakaya, Binah; Sambhogakaya, Chokmah; and Dharmakaya, Kether. 

All these religions are synthesized by this glyph. We can interpret any tradition based on this diagram, because it is a map of the soul, and all religions have the same roots. We use the Jewish mysticism to interpret the scriptures, but also to understand our meditative experiences.

We also have Chesed, our inner God, the spirit; Geburah, the divine soul, Neshamah; Tiphereth, the human soul, the heart, which is where we determine everything.

So as we spoke about Telesis, willpower, the will of the initiate, it is based on the qualities of our heart. So, if you take this image and map it on yourself, we find this represented.

The qualities of a heart determine initiation. It is how we enter the path, because these five sephiroth or spheres of God above, these emanations, because the word sephiroth means “emanations, jewels” or qualities of God, these represent the most divine in us. But below Tiphereth, we have Netzach, the mind, Hod, the emotions, Yesod, our sexual energy. Likewise, Malkuth, the physical body.

These lower spheres, these four lower sephiroth, are what are infiltrated by ego, which we have to purify.

It is interesting also that Yesod on this glyph relate to the sexual organs. It is the secret science in Hebrew. יסוד Yesod means foundation. It is the stone. The basis upon which we build our temple to God.

Interestingly enough, you take the Hebrew letters of יסוד Yesod and reverse them, take this letter י Yod and put it at the end, and you spell סודי, which means “secret.” It is the path that has never been taught openly until as recently as 1950 in the writings of Samael Aun Weor.

As it states in The Major Mysteries:

“The Tree of Life is represented in our physical body by the spinal column, and the Tree of Knowledge is represented by our sexual organs; these trees of Eden even share their roots.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
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So we study these two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge in order to understand the path itself, but more importantly to walk it. This Tree of Knowledge is known as Da’ath, knowledge, alchemy. Amongst the Sufis and Muslims, it is Mari’fah. Amongst the Greeks it is Gnosis. So, I invite you to ask questions about anything we have discussed.

Question:  You talked about Kundalini awakening at one point. How common would you say that is in the gnostic world?

Instructor: Yes, well for those who are really serious about chastity and purity, they do it. I know many people who are working seriously. Internally, I have investigated them and verified their level. So yes, there are many people who are doing it, but commonly what people talk about Kundalini awakening, it could be a variety of things. Two primarily.

There are people who know the doctrine, who knew about transmutation, chastity. Whether they are gnostic or not. They may be working with the creative energy, conserving it, because in many schools of yoga and Buddhism, they teach you: don't lose your energy.

They may be practicing pranayama, such as in the teachings of Sivananda, who is a great master of yoga and Hinduism. They could be awakening sparks. Through breath work, they are beginning to flame the coals in their spinal column so to speak. So they may have sparks of light which emerge that rise up the spine and give them spiritual experiences.

Personally, before I was married, I remember years ago, since being in this teaching, I practiced pranayama very diligently and I remember having many, very powerful, samadhis, spiritual experiences, because of working individually with that force.  But you know, when being married, finally there is more fire available, more energy available. That energy is more consistent.

But, there are people who can awaken those experiences through pranayama, which is breath-work. Controlling your breath is known as interchangeable nostril breathing. You close one nostril, inhale through the left, close, send the energy the prana or life force to your coccyx. Exhale to the other nostril, send that energy to your mind, to your heart.

Then do the same thing with your other nostril, right, close, exhale through the left.

So you can have many experiences like that, but people who don't study confuse their pranayama, as a single practitioner, with Kundalini awakening. It is true that you can only have experiences when the Kundalini is awakened, but is that a spark, or is it a sun?

Because when working individually, you can have sparks of fire. But if you are married, it's like having the power of a sun.

So I know many people whether single or married who have experiences. But only those who are working in a matrimony can awaken the Kundalini, because She is the power of Durga in Hinduism. Kali, Miriam, Mary. She is the Divine Mother of Jesus.

When we talk about the birth of Jesus, he was born through an immaculate conception, but doesn't mean that Mary just believed and was impregnated by the Holy Ghost through theory. In fact, Jesus the spiritual son, is born in an immaculate conception, meaning, to conceive without orgasm. To be pure, because you can't create without sex.

If you want to create the Christ child in you, you have to be married. This is what Jesus taught, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” You need both polarities.

Question: What about people who claim to have a sudden Kundalini awakening? What is going on there?

Instructor: A variety of things. Some people, genuinely, because they are practicing pranayama, they have the experiences. There are people who may just start to study these type of teachings and because they start to have some kind of internal dreams or experiences that they don't decipher or comprehend, they attribute it to Kundalini.

Sadly, I know a lot of people too, and my wife and I have worked with many people who are mentally ill, who attribute spiritual experiences with Kundalini, when their life and their character demonstrate that they are ill, unfortunately.

This is why in initiation, we are very rigorous, we are very demanding. Initiation is born and founded upon ethics. Qualities of purity of mind. Balance. If we are imbalanced, that light cannot be generated but, people also attribute those experiences with Kundalini because they may be working with meditation and spiritual practices, but they are not working with chastity, and therefore, because they are expelling their energies and trying to meditate, they are damaging themselves and they start to awaken powers in the ego, which is initiation of the black path.

Question: What about people who think they are working with Kundalini but really they are not chaste? They are having experiences, is that black magic or what is wrong with that case?

Instructor: Yeah, people who are having experiences, but they are fornicating...

Question: So if it's not Kundalini, then what is it?

Instructor: It is the inverted serpent. You can have powers with the superior serpent Kundalini or, Kundabuffer, the tail of the demons.

So initiation is written upon a staff. It either ascends or descends.
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If we conserve the sexual energy, it will rise up the spine as the brazen serpent of victory, but if we give in to fornication and lust, expelling those forces, feeding desire, it becomes the fallen serpent that tempted Adam and Eve. 

It is the seraphim, the fiery serpents that bit the Israelites in the wilderness when they betrayed Jehovah. So that is when Moses stepped in to save them. He told Moses “Raise a serpent upon a staff, so whoever looks upon it will be healed.”
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It is a symbol and the Israelites are a representation of the soul. Isis-Ra-El. Isis the Divine Mother. Ra, Osiris-Ra, the Christ. El, the Spirit. It's all Kabbalistic and when you work with the brazen serpent, you heal your soul.

Question: So you can only come to this kind of knowledge through hermetics? Everything is a process and if everything is a process then you have to go through the physical self in order to get to the point where spirituality or the Christ spirit can be born within you. So, can you do that by way of working your way through organized religion and then coming through it?

Instructor: Oh yes. 

Comment: (paraphrasing) Because I was ready to take my daughter and walk out... Because I know all this stuff have touched upon, all this stuff, I have experienced all the stuff. I did not know that that woman was who you said she was. She was always there. I would know that something was coming up because she would be there. You know the one with the sword. “Not now, I got other things to do!” We don't have time for this one, you know, so I know at times for years she was always around. She was always around.

I was always being told I was too loud when I would, you call it the astral plane. See, it never occurred to me that I was up on the astral plane when I would be you know, you know, somebody better talk to me right now and tell me what's going on. That kind of thing because things in my life would be so intense.

But for you to tell me that I could get to this, through the many, many, many, many, many sufferings and rejections of religion, and constantly taken off one snake skin, for lack of a better word; yes, taking off one snake skin, and then being told that “Yeah, you got to get through this this...” There is no way you can do that in one lifetime and then to get it through and then to be told, “Well, no. We need to get through all that muck and mire before we could get you here.”

So for you to tell me that... I have been doing this on my own all these years because I knew that it had to be real. Something's got to be real. Everything in life can be... So, take this and focus on this. But that's not really what I was doing. I was just being allowed to announce to myself that this is the path you are on. You are going to stay on this path no matter what, and if you try to get off, we are going to slice you in two. That's pretty much happened and that is what the suffering is. Because I was like “No, no, no please let me off. I want to be off. I want to be wonderful!” No, no, you are not going to be any of those. You are going to grow spiritually. 

Instructor: Yes, and Samael Aun Weor mentions that there are many people who are not attending any group, any religious institution, not following any creed, and those people are actually closer to initiation than many people who say they are holy, so to speak. 

Comment: (paraphrasing) Well, I don't go there, I certainly don't know with that, but I just came through an initiation. That made me say, “Oh my God... am I going to die?” That is how bad initiation was. But I was like, “Am I going to die? Am I going to make it through this?” I did but it was very long. It was like three or four years. 

Instructor: Yes, and as we'll talk in the future lectures, there are initiation of Minor Mysteries and there are initiations of Major Mysteries. There are many people who enter the Minor Mysteries who are working with the energies of sex and who don't have experiences internally about it. They may be asleep consciously-speaking, and be entering the Minor Mysteries and working at that level.

To enter the Major Mysteries, the highest initiations is a work of alchemy and involves a certain type of telesis or will.

But yes, obviously, there are many people who enter through life and enter the path seemingly without knowing it. They don't necessarily have those astral experiences, where in dreams, they are face to face and having that direct communication.

But the purpose of our studies to be specific. So, while in the beginning we have a certain level of faith, we want to develop it even further. We want to be able to have that face-to-face conversation with a master of the White Lodge in dreams, awake, so that we have even more knowledge. But of course, level upon level, “Light upon light,” says the Qur’an. Degree upon degree.

There are levels of initiation. There are beginning levels of initiation. There is mastery and then there is even higher, perfection in mastery, like Jesus, Buddha, and all of them. So, there are levels and degrees, and it's good to know…

Comment: (paraphrasing) That's hard for me to get my head around that. You know I was taught for sixty-six years, probably in the womb, that you can be a Christian. “Try to do the best with what you can,” and that's it. And then for somebody standing in front of me at the age of sixty-six years… No, no, you can talk to these.... I mean and and that's how I get through life.

I have no one I can talk to, so I had to, you know, somebody needs to teach me, how to have humor, because I ain't going to get through this, and they did. They gave me a sense of humor, I guess. I mean she hates it, so it works for me... So for you to tell me, “Yes, you can get to that point,” I never thought that. That never entered into my mind.

I remember that, twenty-five years ago being exposed to Samael Aun Weor, initially through Gurdjieff and him saying “You are a lazy human being, wake the heck up!” That led me to Samael, but that was too advanced for me... Now after all that time, maybe six, seven, eight initiations, I can understand exactly what you are saying. The Pistis Sophia, I have had that. I understand that. But for you to say that you can see Jesus face to face, again, it never occurred to me that it would ever be possible.

Instructor: If you enter higher degrees of initiation, you can speak to him, because I have personally been with him in the astral plane. He is the highest initiate we know of, and personally, he gave me some teachings that were very profound. I don't want to relate them here, but definitely, when you have that awakened consciousness, you can have greater access to real knowledge, because the master Samael Aun Weor says that a real occultist is someone who knows how to travel in the astral body. In the dream state. Because in that way, we find the occult wisdom, the hidden wisdom.

Comment: I thought that this was not real, and now I am here. This is real. I told myself, “I never heard of this group,” but I'm going to see what's happening...
 
Question: On the topic of the transmutation of sexual energy. In relation to Kundalini and the necessity to reach that level, how would you say you approach it, in the sense of, sometimes you are saying, seed energy, sometimes maybe you are supposed to expel it. What is the balance? I can't imagine saying that you can never ejaculate it. 

Instructor: For the initiations, we say never, because as Yeshe Tsoygal said, “we must always perfect the practice of retaining the seed essence.” Of course, in the beginning it's difficult, because through this lifetime or even previous lifetimes, we have been forcing our mind and are used to that act.

So, we have always been out of Eden, exiled. But to enter the straight and narrow gate is precisely when husband and wife unite. The straight path mentioned by Jesus. The narrow way, physically, even relating to sexual copulation, but also a psychological type of work is needed.

In the beginning it is difficult, because the mind is full of lust. The body is trained to expel, but with training, you never lose any energy.

Personally, this has been my path. I don't lose my energy even while practicing alchemy, because I have trained myself to that degree never to lose it.

Question: What about reproduction?

Instructor: Now, interestingly enough, there are ways to conceive a child without orgasm. As partly allegorized in the birth of Jesus, you know the immaculate conception. But of course, people think that myth is silly because they think it has to do with Mary not having sex with a man, and then she gave birth to a child. That is the conventional belief of that story.

But really the truth is that Joseph and Mary were alchemists, and we have procedures where if a gnostic couple wants to have a child, they can perform certain prayers and practices while conserving their energy, because only one sperm is needed to procreate.

It is not necessary to expel millions of sperm for that conception. It is a more profound form of conception because what the Holy Spirit does, the conceiver of Christ, this intelligence takes one seed in order to create a superior child. Because a child born from fornication obviously has many problems physically. That is why in most people their bodies get sick. They may have certain conditions or ailments.

But the Holy Spirit, which is the force of intelligence, is the force of our inner God that can take one sperm and, through prayer and intelligence and wise copulation, take that energy create one child.

Question: Why do doctors tell us orgasm is healthy and what about women and orgasm?

Instructor: Because they like fornication. The doctors. Most people have never been initiated in this science, so they don't know any better. Unfortunately, when you do try to introduce... I have known people try to introduce this science to doctors, many people can be very skeptical and they laugh at it because they have a materialistic mind. But I do know other doctors and people in our tradition who have learned the benefits of this practice, because transmutation promotes our health.

There are even some scientific studies that show how transmutation or alchemy as we teach, promotes health, life, longevity, the health of our endocrine system, the health of our emotional center, our heart, and the mind. It is well known that the greatest artists, philosophers, and teachers were traditionally known as celibates, but they actually new alchemy.

They kept that life private because people would criticize. Beethoven. Mozart.  Beethoven was known to be single for you pretty much his whole life, but he had an amazing brain because he had parts of his mind active from working with that energy that people couldn't explain. But he was an alchemist. He knew the science.

Question: Do women lose energy? 

Instructor: Yes, women can lose their energy too because orgasm, whether from male or female, emits the seed. Women can lose their seminal waters, which is semen.

Semen in esoteric language has to do with not only just the physical matter, but force.

So, either men or women can lose their seed. We have to conserve it because those are the waters that we transform into our baptism. That requires that we renounce the adversary, shaitan, our ego. The lust that says, “I enjoy engaging in sex in this way.”

This is the meaning of Judas in the Bible. Judas is a symbol of an ego that we have. Loves religion. Loves spirituality. Loves Christ, but loves fornication more. So we may believe that we are spiritual and that we love divinity and all these things, but our actions prove otherwise.

If we give in to fornication and we enjoy emitting the energies, then we have no water by which we can baptize ourselves.

Judas represents that. He betrays Christ. Gives away the Lord for thirty pieces of silver: a symbol of pleasure for a few moments, or like Esau in the Bible. Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of lentils. Same symbol.

It is very strict, obviously, but this is the way. You need energy, water to baptize yourself.

I promise you that if you are serious about it, you will find the benefits of it and naturally you will have more energy, more vitality, more enthusiasm. You have the energy by which you empower your virtue. Your compassion, your happiness. Less anger. Less violent emotions.

I have known people in this science who even suffered mental illness and yet by practicing alchemy, they were rejuvenated. They were no longer sick. It is the healing power of the Holy Spirit. It is the creative force of God.

Swami Sivananda wrote in one of his books about the benefits of pranayama, and even we could say, synonymously, alchemy. Skin is lighter or more rejuvenated. More vitality, more health, suppleness, strength, everything, because that energy, that matter, is transformed into force.

When it goes up the spine through those energetic channels known as the Caduceus of Mercury in medicine, it fills the brain and rejuvenates the endocrine system. Heals the heart, everything. It empowers us. So, we need those energies if we want to awaken spiritually.
 
Question: Just as a single person, would you recommend a specific practice? I know there are multiple pranayamas...

Instructor: You have to experiment and find the ones that work for you. I mean, we have an abundance of practices for transmutation in The Yellow Book, Kundalini Yoga, and others.

You could work with one that is very easy to work. It is Ham-Sah.
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You in-inhale through your nostrils. First you pray to your inner divinity, your Divine Mother, “Please awaken my consciousness. Help me to work with this force!” 

Inhale through your nostrils, and you imagine that there is light ascending from your sexual glands up the spine to the channels of your back, which are known as Adam and Eve. Od and Obd. Ida and Pingala in different traditions.

Imagine that light saturating the brain and as you are inhaling with the breath, you pronounce mentally the mantra, “Haaaaaaammmm!” in the mind.

The breath should be more prolonged with the inhalation because you are raising the energies of sex to your mind.

And then imagine that light going to your heart. A very brief quick exhalation, “Ssssaaaaahhh!”

This is because your breath relates with your sexual energy. In the Bible, the spirit of God, the wind of God, hovered above the face of the waters in order to create the planet from the fathomless abyss.

A symbol of working with this force. You create your spiritual earth through your stone, the sexual force.

Likewise, you imagine that circulation in yourself. “Ssssaaaaah!” That is how it should sound, but mentally the mantra Ham, takes a force up to your brain, saturates it.

It is a very easy practice. You can even that if you are married. Or practicing alchemy, but that's a very good practice you can initiate with.

Question: I am just curious. You mentioned you have reached the status of being able to talk to Jesus, so if a person is not religious and if you reach that status, what will he see?

Instructor: Personally, I remember when I had talked with him that for a long time, I was atheist. I was a very pessimistic, morbid person, very sad. Felt like I had no meaning to my life.

Eventually when I met him, he was in the astral plane, he came to me because I invoked him and at least the symbol that he gave to me was very beautiful. He saw me, obviously, but what he saw in me was my own ego, and he was trying to show me how to get out.

I remember that experience. It was a outside my house. It was a very dark night, cloudy sky, which of course, your dreams are symbolic. So, darkness or cloudiness represents the mind. The cloudiness of the ego that obscures the light of God in you. So, I invoked him, begging him, “please teach me!” I remember he came up to me and the way that he was described in one of Samael Aun Weor's books, in The Revolution of Beelzebub, I saw him exactly like that.

[Editor's Note: Samael Aun Weor wrote the following describing Master Aberamentho, Jesus of Nazareth: "Then, I kneeled and prostrated myself before the most powerful Hierarch of the cosmos, who is called by the Tibetans “the Mother of Mercy” or “the Melodious Voice Oeaoeh.” He is the Only Begotten, the great universal Word of life, whose body is all of the sounds played in the infinite. His beauty is ineffable. He bears a crown with three points, and his very long cape is carried by the Elohim. They carry the long train of his cape."]

So if you read that book, that is how he appeared to me and I remember at that moment I was watching him and I was being filled with fear. Obviously, he is a great being and suddenly he gave me a supra-conscious experience. He gave me light. I saw myself in third person. He took my vision expanded it and I was standing on the lawn of my house and he just shot up as a beam of light into the sky in the clouds. They parted and I saw in the atmosphere beautiful stars. A galaxy, and he just vanished. I just stood up looking at him like this… and then I woke up.

He was teaching me that “You want to be like me, with freedom, going beyond to the infinite? You have to clear your mind. Clear you ego,” and was very humbled by that.

He is very difficult to comprehend. He is a level of master that is so high that not even the gods understand him, because he has gone beyond. Even beyond an angel. So, there are hierarchies and hierarchies and levels.

Another Instructor’s Comment: So, there are many masters, some whom work anonymously or have worked anonymously on earth, so we can meet a master internally and not even realize it. The case for people who are not religious is often you know that they'll be receiving some kind of guidance, in particular the Divine Mother.

Interesting that you mention Her. She has the ability to take a variety of forms and, in my experiences, I have seen my Divine Mother in different forms, and She will take different aspects, but She appears to you in order to teach you something. Masters as well can appear to you as a symbol, like a butterfly or something, when you invoke them, because they are teaching you something in the way that they can appear to you.

So regardless of what religious tradition we come from, or if we don't come from any religious tradition, we can sense in our heart the power and the purity of that master. We can understand that guidance, even if the form that they take is unknown to us, or we don't recognize them for who they are.

Sometimes they will show themselves in a form we can recognize, of course, so that we will understand, and you know, develop that relationship, but God itself is formless, and many different beings have worked to purify themselves to become vehicles in which the light of God can express. But the light of God itself is beyond form. So, I feel, you know, that many people will experience what they call their inner voice, their conscience. Many times, that is a manifestation of our Divine Mother, always present with us at any time.

Comment: (paraphrasing) I had one experience where, this was when I was first working with transmutation when I was younger. I didn't know what to expect. Didn't know if it was divine or something, but was walking down the road, like a state park or something. There was a man with a very well-trimmed beard, buttoned-up shirt. I was sitting there blaming the system for my problems, like this and that. He said “You just need to lighten up,” and patted me on my shoulder.

I guess what I learned from that experience is that we have help and we have brotherhood. So in this path, it isn't so lonely and miserable. There has to be a point, being called to service, so that we can grow and find truth together. So it just it's a small experience that I had. It doesn't have to be Jesus Christ. It doesn't have to be this magnificent experience. It could just be walking through a park and a tap on a shoulder from a friend. 
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Instructor: Samael Aun Weor also mentions that the greatest joy of the gnostic is the discovery of one of his or her defects, because a discovered defect is a dead defect. Which is why in this course, we will be talking about how to practice that self-observation, comprehension, elimination. The work on the ego, because when you comprehend the ego, eliminate those faults, you free light, and in that way we enter initiation.

Today, we are going to discuss the nature of consciousness, the nature of mind as it is explained within the gnostic doctrine, as well as its relation to the famous solar bodies of esotericism. We are going to elaborate on how mind, or consciousness, is related to the vehicles of the soul.

The solar bodies are well mentioned throughout the literature of Theosophy. And we are going to address the nature of the solar bodies in relation to the path, which is the path of the Self-realization of the Being and the complete development of the human being.

This path and the solar bodies are well explained within the Christian, Buddhist, Sufi doctrine, through all the world religions. As we are going to elaborate today, Master Jesus of Nazareth, Master Aberamentho, explains the nature of the solar bodies, in detail, in his gospel.

We also have in this image, Padmasambhava, who is known as the Second Buddha. He originally brought Tantrism to Tibet. Now he is recognized by having documented The Tibetan Book of the Dead. He taught the nature of Dzogchen, which means the Great Perfection.

So, we have here, in this image, Padmasambhava with his consort, the force of the vehicle of Tantra. Sexual union is how we create the soul. Let us remember that Master Jesus never taught that we have soul. He said: "With patience will possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19). The soul or the solar bodies are vehicles through which God can manifest and express. These are only created precisely through tantra: pure, pristine, chaste sexual connection or union, and the transformation of one's vital principles.

When we talk about the solar bodies, we also need to talk about the nature of mind, because there are many misconceptions in spiritual circles between the consciousness and the solar bodies. We emphasize that the solar bodies are merely vehicles that can transmit light, in the same manner that a lightbulb transmits light.

The bulb is the vehicle. The light is Christ. So, in the path of Self-realization, we need to create the solar vehicles. We need to become solar beings, pure souls that can transmit the light of Christ, without blemish. This path has been taught in all the religions. And we have a saying by Padmasambhava about he nature of this path.

“Dzogchen is the secret unexcelled cycle of the supreme vehicle of tantra, the true essence of the definitive meaning, the short path for attaining buddhahood in one life.” —Padmasambhava

When we talk about the solar bodies, we emphasize there are many steps in the process of Self-realization. There are many who think that when creating the solar bodies, one is done. But that is a mistaken concept. Because the solar vehicles are merely a footstep in order to enter into the higher stages of initiation. 

So, again we have a description of the solar bodies in relation with the Egyptian mysteries. In this image, we have the Tree of Life, kabbalah. On the right, we have the Tree of Life transposed on an egyptian god, Ptah, which is where we get the word Patar, Father. So, this father is our Inner Christ, our Inner Lord. And notice that his body is made of gold. Gold is the symbol of Christ, the light of the Being, the light of our real identity or Innermost God.

Solar bodies are created intentionally. Human beings do not possess them by nature. And that is why we discussed elsewhere in the lectures; we find that the only way to create the soul is by revolution. Not against other people, but ourselves. The requirements are very specific.

We typically possess what we call lunar vehicles, which we are going to explain in relation to the Christian Gospels. But speaking in general about the solar bodies, we are referring to the kabbalah, the Tree of Life.

Here, we have in the bottom Malkuth, which means “Kingdom” in Hebrew. This is our physical body, which we receive as a gift of nature by the procreation of our parents. Above it, we have Yesod, which is the vital body. And our vital body is the origin of all our chemical, metabolic, catabolic processes—reproduction. It is our energy and vitality.

Our physical body would not be able to exist without Yesod, our “Foundation.” After creating the Ssolar bodies like Ptah, Patar, the Father, as it is represented in gold, we can reach the Father—if we want to work with Yesod, our foundation, our vital forces, specifically our sexual energy, which, as we elaborate in the scripture, is the foundation of all genuine spiritual Self-realization.

Above that we have Hod, which means “Glory.” This is our emotional body, our astral vehicle. That is what we commonly have when we go into the astral plane when we dream.

What we typically possess is not a legitimate astral body, but a lunar phantom known as kama rupa, meaning “desire body.” This in relation to the theosophical teachings, as well as the Hindu scriptures.

In the right, we have Netzach, which means “Victory.” This is typically referred by theosophists as the mental body. But we know from esotericism that we do not possess a solar mental body, but manas or lunar mind. Sometimes, we say kama manas. Kama means “desire” and manas, “mind.”

So, our mind is animal, in desire and nature, as evidenced by the fact when we observe our psychology from moment to moment. We are constantly afflicted by negative thoughts and discursive elements which keep the consciousness enslaved.

Above that, in the middle of the Tree of Life, we have Tiphereth, which means

“Beauty” in Hebrew. This is our willpower. We call this human soul, which is not developed in us. As Jesus taught:

“With patience will possess ye your souls.” —Luke 21:19

We have to develop Tiphereth into a fully illuminated human being. But Tiphereth, as it is, is merely our willpower, which is typically channeled through our mind and desire, mind and emotions, which are subjective in nature.

We do not possess yet what is the called a solar casual body, a solar vehicle that only knows how to express the will of Christ. And which all the great initiates have developed.

So, in emphasis to this point, we explain that we are not yet human beings. Because the human being is made to the image of Elohim, God. Or better said, “gods and goddesses.” When we refer to the human being, we refer to the Hum (Sanskrit for) the breath, the wind, the spirit and man, manas, mind. So, the real human being is man or mind, not exclusively of the male sex, that is united with Hum, spirit.

​Our image of Ptah represents a human being with his bodies of gold that are only created with alchemy, the science of perfect matrimony.

Above that, we have in the left, Geburah, which means “Justice,” severity, in the kabbalah. We call this our consciousness, divine soul.

To the right, we have Chesed, which means “Mercy,” our Innermost God, our inner Being.

Now, notice above we have the trinity, which is known as Christ: Kether, the Father; Chokmah, the Son; Binah, the Holy Spirit.

Understand that the top three sephirah [Hebrew for “emanations,” spheres, “jewels”] are Christ. The trinity is Christ.

Chesed and Geburah, the Innermost and divine soul, are God within us. It is our inner Lord. God never enters into degeneration, meaning: God has not fallen. His human soul, Tiphereth can obey God or fall down into the abyss, Gehenna mentioned in the scriptures.

The problem is this: the willpower obeys the inferior quaternary, the inferior four bodies, which are elementally, lunar vehicles in most of us. Because in order to create the solar vehicles, one needs to work in alchemy, in a matrimony.

Speaking about the lunar bodies, what we typically possess, if we examine them in the internal planes, they are of a phantasmic nature. They are of a ghost-like appearance. They are not substantial.

Question: The four lower bodies, those are the lunar bodies, the four lower ones?

Instructor: In most of us.

What we need to accomplish in alchemy is to create the solar vehicles, which are represented by the Tree of Life. But for most individuals who are not human beings yet, but intellectual animals, souls with intellect, our mind, emotions, vitality, as well as our physicality, are vehicles of the ego. We do not yet have the conduit, which are the solar bodies, in order to reflect the light of God and return it back into its source.

Question: So you’re saying our willpower over the ego at this stage?

Instructor: Our will typically follows our mind or emotions, which are the expressions of the ego.

Question: So if you’re able to astral project and stay conscious in the astral plane, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you created that solar body, right?

Instructor: It does not necessarily mean that, but, at the same time, individuals that did practice alchemy in the past are basically recapitulating their work.

So, some individuals who do already have those bodies, tend to have experiences as a grace of God, to bring those souls back to the path. But just because one has experiences in the internal worlds, that does not mean that one has the solar bodies yet. The way to verify that is to learn to astral travel, to communicate with our God.

For most of us, we do not have those vehicles. And Samael Aun Weor stated solar bodies are a luxury which can only be created through the work alchemy. It is Master Jesus that taught us we typically have what we call the lunar bodies.

The importance of creating the solar bodies in order to express Christ is emphasized in the scripture—in Matthew 22:1-3 and verses 8-14, where we have the parable of the wedding garment. The wedding garment are the solar bodies, which can only be created in a matrimony.

“And Jesus answered and spoke unto them again by parables, and said:

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son.

“And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come...

“...Then saith he to his servants: The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.

“Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.

“So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

“And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment.

“And he saith unto him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

“Then said the king to his servants: Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“For many are called and few are chosen.” ―Matthew 22:1-3, 8-14

In order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, we need to create the solar bodies. Because without those vehicles of Christ, we cannot resonate with the divine laws.

Christ needs a vehicle in order to express himself. And the way He does that is through the soul, the solar vehicles. So, with our lunar bodies we cannot enter into heaven.

However, I will emphasize, even creating the solar bodies is the first step. It is not the end. We need to be born again, which fanatic Christians of these times associate with doctrine or belief. They raise their hands and say: "I believe in Jesus and I am saved." And they say, “Well, you are born again.” That is not the case.

To be born again is a sexual problem. We need to use the sexual force in a matrimony. For as emphasized in this gospel: the wedding garment is the result of a marriage. Therefore, individuals who seek to enter heaven through abstinence, or as renunciates, or by rejecting sex, walk the path of error. Because Christ taught us that to be born again is to work in a matrimony, with the sexual power and to use it for Christ.

For as Jesus taught us in the book of John, Chapter 3, verses 3-8, when he talked to Nicodemus:

“Jesus answered and said unto him: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

“Nicodemus saith unto him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?

“Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

“That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is Spirit.

“Marvel not that I said unto thee. Ye must born again.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” ―John 3:3-8

So, we have in this graphic Jesus talking to Nicodemus, where he explains that which is born of flesh, meaning through the animal orgasm, is flesh, physical children. But that which is born of the spirit, through the sexual act, that is conserved and controlled, is spirit.

So, birth is, whether physical or spiritual, the result of working with the sexual power in a matrimony. There is no other way. Master Aberamentho taught this.

We talked about the pneuma, the spirit like the wind, which we are going to elaborate further in relation to the bodies themselves, how to create them. When working with the spirit, we work with the sexual force known as the Holy Spirit, which we mention as Binah in Kabbalah.
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In this image, we have an illuminated spinal medulla and the seven chakras. These chakras awaken when the power of the Divine Mother, known as Kundalini, awakens from the coccyx and ascends up the spine into the brain. 

When that fire awakens in the matrimony, it ascends slowly in accordance to the merits of the heart, never by one’s own whim, but by the intelligence and power of the Divine Mother. She is the one who, as the Weaver in Arcanum 24 in the Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah, weaves clothes for the soul to inhabit.

She is the one in this card who spins the wheel. She elaborates the soul, so that the consciousness can be dressed. When she awakens in the coccyx and ascends up the spine, She awakens all the faculties, the seven chakras. That is a divine fire that you can see in this image. And, when we rise the fire within the different spinal medullas within our lower bodies within the Tree of Life, we create the solar bodies.
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As we illustrate, Kundalini is the sexual force. The seminal energy is the power that gives life or can produce death, if we abuse it. For it is stated many times in the scriptures of the Old Testament, we find one reference in the sons of David, in the Psalms.

“The trees of יהוה Iod-Havah are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.” ―Psalm 104:16-17

So, that is why this sap that the Bible talks about is the semen. The sap is the semen of plants. And we know that semen, physically, in man or woman, is the condensation of blood. So, that sap that fills the cedar tree is precisely our sexual matter, seminal fluids, whether in man or woman, because semen does not only apply to man, but to woman as well.

And the cedar tree relates to this process of creating the solar bodies. The cedar tree represents our spine. And the angels that govern the cedar family can aid us if we practice sexual magic. Even the word Lebanon teaches us a great mystery. Samael Aun Weor explains in Igneous Rose:

“In the word Lebanon (Spanish: Líbano), we find the IAO that permits the angels of the cedars of the forest to open the door of the spinal medulla when we practice Sexual Magic. IAO is the mantra of Sexual Magic.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

IAO in Latin means Ignis, Aqua, Origo; fire, air, spirit; or fire, water, spirit. And Samael explains this is the mantra of sexual magic to create the solar bodies. First, it is the wind of the spirit working with the fire of sex in order to generate the pneuma, the wind, the breath of spirit, which is the essence of the practice of tantra.

So, Lebanon in the Old Testament refers to the science of IAO. This secret mantra is considered the holiest of all mantras amongst the great temples of mysteries. And we know from the writings of Samael Aun Weor that when this sacred name was pronounced in ancient times, they would pound the drums so that the profane outside would not hear the name of this mantra, because it is exceptionally powerful.
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IAO relates in Hebrew to י Iod, ה Hei, ו Vav. And IAO or י Iod, ה Hei, ו Vav is יהוה Iod-Havah, Jehovah. When we work with the sap of our bodies, we practice alchemy and raise those forces upwards, the Kundalini, so that it illuminates the chakras and gives birth to the soul. 

To elaborate this point of our sexual nature, of the creation of the soul, we have the following teaching by Solomon, who is in synthesis a great solar man. He was a great king recognized for his kingdom of gold, meaning: he was self-realized. He was a great master.

He taught in Song of Songs the sexual nature of the spiritual union with God. And it is precisely through sex that solar bodies are created. And what will be relevant in this passage is that we examine this image of Shiva-Shakti, which is the Holy Spirit. Shiva is the Father or Abba Elohim with the Divine Mother Shakti, Aima Elohim. These are the two polarities of the Holy Spirit, which is masculine and feminine.

This is represented in the scripture of the Song of Songs by Solomon. He talks about his wife, who is his sister, which if we interpret it literally, is absurd. Because the fact this great master was practicing incest would be a crime. Instead, these are principles.

Just as Adam and Eve, in the garden, united sexually, they represent man and woman, or brother and sister. They are principles. They are not literal figures. So, Solomon and his wife, his sister can represent Shiva-Shakti, because the same power is male and female. And when we talk about Shiva, we need to talk about Shakti. And when we talk about Shakti, we need to talk about Shiva. Because the Holy Spirit is dual, both powers, male and female.

Question: In Indian philosophy, one of them is the creator and the other is a destroyer.

Instructor: Shiva-Shakti is the power of God that can create the soul or damn the soul, if that energy is expelled through the orgasm. That is our original sin.

And so is represented in this scripture, we will explain how scientific chastity, purity in sex, is precisely which leads to the development of the soul.

As Solomon states:

“Thou art all fair my love; there is no spot in thee (meaning that you are completely chaste with no impurity in you, my Shakti, the sexual force).

“Come with me from לבנון Lebanon, my spouse, with me from לבנון Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountain of the leopards.” ―Song of Songs 4:7-8

What’s interesting with Shiva is that he is typically portrayed sitting on a leopard's skin or a lion's skin, meaning he has conquered animal desire. So, when he talked about being elevated in the mountains, that is the symbol of having looked the path of initiation and that one has conquered desire, like Solomon did.

“Thou hast ravished my heart (which in Hebrew is לֵבָב lebab, similar to לבנון Lebanon, as we are going to explain), my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes (which in Hebrew is עיניים Ayneen), with one chain of my neck.

So, he talks about the heart as לֵבָב lebab and mentions right next the city of לבנון Lebanon. There is a profound relationship there.

We know that in transmutation, we bring the energies inward and upward to our brain, and into our heart. לֵבָב Lebab, as in לבנון Lebanon, is heart. The last part of Lebanon is נ Nun [or ן Nun Sophit, final Nun], which in Aramaic means “fish.” נ Nun is sperm, literally, because our sperm and ovum swim within the waters of sexuality.

Lebanon represents those who practice chastity. As Samael Aun Weor mentions, Lebanon or Líbano is IAO. In order to really dwell in that divine city, one has to transmute the נ Nun, the sperm or the ovum through the spinal column into the brain, and then into the heart, לֵבָב lebab. That is the meaning of Lebanon.

Question: You mentioned נ Nun again. Could you give the description where you mentioned fish?

Instructor: "Nun” in Aramaic means “fish,” and refers to sperm and ovum. The letter N [the Hebrew נ Nun] hides the meaning of the sexual principles.

Now, Solomon says: "Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes (Ayin)."

“How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine! And the smell of thine ointments than all spices.” ―Song of Songs 4:9-10

The word for smell is ריח reyach. ריח Reyach relates, in Hebrew, to רוח  ruach, which is spirit. In the book of Genesis, the spirit hovers over the face of the waters, the אלוהים רוח Ruach Elohim.

Genesis is a work of alchemy. So, by working in a matrimony, the spirit hovers on the waters of sexuality and creates the heavens in the seven days of genesis, which explains the teachings of the solar bodies in depth.

It would take many lectures to explain each component, but here, we are speaking more generally.

And the "smell of thine ointments”—the word “ointments in Hebrew is שמן shemen, which is where we get the word “semen.”

“And the smell of thine ointments,” the רוח ruach of thine ointments, the רוח ruach of thy semen, the spirit of thy semen, is more voluptuous, “delightful than all spices,” meaning: all the common and terrestrial pleasures we typically experience—because the sexual act is the ultimate consubstantiation of love between man and woman, and Christ.

When we talk about the spirit, or the ריח reyach, the smell, which is really רוח ruach, “the spirit of thine ointments,” it talks about, how through alchemy, by being sexually connected and controlling the breath, inhaling profoundly the energy, conserving it, transforming it, bringing it up in the spine, and later into the heart—that is how we enter in the kingdom of Lebanon. I mentioned נ Nun is the sperm and ovum, the sexual matter, and לֵבָב lebab, the heart. He continues:

“Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under my tongue...” ―Song of Songs 4:11

That is honey, which was originally pollen. Through work, the bee transforms that into sweetness. This is the symbol of the soul. Because through the impurity of our daily life, we work on ourselves and transform that garbage into honey, through alchemy, into sweetness of the spirit. And that is ultimately achieved when one is working in a matrimony.

“…and the ריח reyach, the smell of my garments is like the smell of Lebanon.” ―Song of Songs 4:11

So, what are these garments? It is the solar bodies. Here, it is very explicit. The solar bodies are created trough sex. There is no other way. “The smell of thy garments, the ruach of thy garments, is the smell of Lebanon,” meaning heaven. Those initiates who entered the Heavenly Jerusalem, into the Kingdom of God, which is Lebanon or Jerusalem.

Lastly, Solomon states:

“A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” ―Song of Songs 4:12

​So, the Hebrew word for fountain is מַעיָן ma'yan. And, if we look at this graphic, we have the word מַעיָן ma’yan, which is Mem, Ayin, Iod, Nun.

Notice, we previously talked about Solomon, ravished with one the eyes of his sister, his spouse. The word מַעיָן ma’yan is the same word as eye, עין ayin. It just has the letter M in front of them. So, instead of עין ayin, it spells מַעיָן ma’yan. That is fountain.

So, these are the fountains of life that Jesus mentions, which will never allow you be thirsty again. As explained in the parable of the woman at the well, when the woman asks: "Give me the water that springs up to everlasting life." And Jesus says: "Go call thy husband." Meaning that if you want to know how to find the water, work with your husband, because in the matrimony is where the fountain is produced.

These waters of life are precisely the sexual energy. And sexual energy has a profound relationship with our perception, as evidenced in Hebrew: עין ayin, eye; עיניים ayinim, eyes. מַעיָן Ma’yan is the same word, but with מ mem; and מ mem is water.

So, in order to have spiritual perception, we need to work with our water. That means we need to be married in order to begin this process. In order to enter the higher stages of initiation, we need to work with the waters, represented by Mary, מרים Miriam, the Divine Mother. And עין ayin is an eye. [Remember that “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single (pure), thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil (impure, lustful), thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! —Matthew 6:22-23]

So, he says very clearly: "A garden enclosed is my sister. A spring shut up. A fountain sealed." So, we will have the energy of sex, but we need to be sealed hermetically with this force. We must never expel it. It is very well known in tantra, from the teachings of the Dalai Lama. He even explicitly states:

“Sexual energy should never be let out.” ―The 14th Dalai Lama

And this fountain should never be spilled, meaning one should never reach the orgasm, because if we lose that fountain, we cannot assuage our thirst for the kingdom of heaven.

Question: But only in procreation—you would have to. That would be the exception, right?

Instructor: In the past humanities, procreation was accomplished without the orgasm.

Comment: But still, it was a fall.

Instructor: There was never loss of the seminal fluid, but one sperm would be emitted in order to enter the womb of the wife. So, in the past, human beings procreated without orgasm and they had children which were pure.

Question: Is that possible today?

Instructor: Yes. What matters is that we follow the will of our Being, so that he can guide us as when to practice in the appropriate astrological hour, so those forces are conducive for producing a child without pain. It is mentioned in The Yellow Book, specifically.

Question: So, you are saying that if a couple procreated without spelling the semen, the woman would give birth with no pain?

Instructor: Less pain, I would say. When following the divine laws, we avoid pain.

Comment: That’s tremendous pressure on the man, to get to the point that only one cell is emitted!

Instructor: The force that guides that is the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother.

So, we need to be sealed. A fountain that is enclosed. We should never let the energy out. If we want to have children of a divine nature, of a pure nature, we must learn to practice according to the guidance of the Elohim. Because that energy, in a matrimony, should not be expelled. But according to the will of God, one sperm can leave the phallus in order to enter the ovum. But that is in accordance to the will of God [and therefore constitutes what original, esoteric Christianity denominated an “immaculate conception,” sexual generation without impurity, blemish, orgasm].
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Comment: These are spiritually developed people! They will have to be very spiritually developed to do that…

Instructor: In this image, we have the picture of Shiva by an ocean. When explaining the nature of the fountain, the waters of life in Hindu language are Soma. In this image, we see Shiva drinking from an ocean that is being churned by a great battle between gods and demons, which results in the ocean being polluted and poisonous in order to extract Amrita, which is the nectar of the gods, the pure sexual energy. He drinks the poison, which I believe in the myth explains how he came with the blue pigment in his skin. He drinks this drink of Halāhala or Kalakootam. And this represents how the energies of sexuality have to be extracted from impurity. So, the impurity is the poison that is being generated in the battle with our own ego, our own lust.

Soma has a great relationship to the Christian scriptures. Soma or Amrita is the nectar of immortality. This is the substance, the seminal energy or seminal matter which can create the solar bodies.

We find different definitions of soma, “a secret drink of Hindu Gods through ancient Hindu religious texts.” It also refers to the “press of drinks made of juiced plants.” So, the significance of being pressed in order to extract the juice of a plant is very significant in relation to alchemy, because when a man unites with his wife, the organs press together and, therefore, if the breath is controlled, the juice can be extracted, sublimated, and elevated to the brain, and into the heart.

Soma also connotes the God Chandra, who relates to the moon. And we know that the moon relates to the vital forces of Yesod, which is the sexual energy.

Question: Which is in the etheric body?

Instructor: Yes. In Greek, soma signifies “body.” In order to create the solar bodies, we need to work with our own soma, our sexual energy.
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Unfortunately, in modern times soma can also mean hallucinogenic substances, which we do not advocate in these teachings. 

So, as I elaborated in relation to soma, we have this image of the Christ crucified, which someone may find strange in the context of expressing the Hindu teachings. We find the symbol of the cross with the symbol of alchemy: the union of man and woman.

Christ, the force of God, is crucified whenever a man with an erect phallus enters the uterus of his wife. That forms the cross. The vehicle beam is the phallus. The horizontal beam is the uterus.

And we see in this image his crucifixion in which all the impurities of his psyche are annihilated. This is what the crucifixion of Christ represents. And notice how in his right side, he is pierced by the spear of Longinus, in which flows his blood. This ties to the scripture known as Śvetāśvatara Upanishad, Chapter 2 verse 6:

“Where the fire is rubbed, where the wind is checked, where the soma flows over, there the mind is born.” —Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2:6

So, when a man and a woman are united in the cross, the fire is rubbed, as mentioned in the scripture. When a phallus unites with the uterus in holy matrimony, the fire is stimulated. And when the wind is checked, when the breath in the sexual act is controlled, the soma grows and develops. The sexual energy is activated and begins to flow inwards and upwards.

We have two ways of energy flowing in our body: we have centrifugal force when the energy goes from inside to outside, which is what we do not recommend. And then, we have the centripetal flow of forces, which is from outside in, which is the science of transmutation.

When the fire is rubbed in sexual union, and when the wind is checked, the spirit, the breath, ריח reyach, רוח Ruach. When the sSoma flows over, or rather, inside and upwards, then the mind is born, meaning: the Solar bodies can be created in this context.
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When we talk about flow, we talk about tantra. Tantra means “flow, continuum.” That is an eastern term for the nature of this science.

In relation to the solar bodies, we have to talk about mind. We make the distinction between the states of consciousness and the solar bodies of the Being. It is true that solar vehicles can grant us access to higher states of consciousness, but they do not determine a completely awakened state of being. There are many individuals with solar bodies, or could have developed these bodies in the past, and they are asleep. Or, even worse: many of them have fallen into the path of demons.

Do not think that once you have created the solar bodies one is saved. The consciousness needs to be developed further.

When we talk about the mind or consciousness, we need to talk about four states, which we are going to the Christian Gospels as given by Paul of Tarsus. We have four states of consciousness mentioned in Greek, by Plato.

Eikasia is the first state of consciousness and refers to a state of profound sleep, instinctual, animal desire, barbarism, war, violence. There is an instinctual state of being where there is no self-reflection or cognizance.

If we translate εἰκασία Eikasia directly into English, it means “imagination,” which is interesting about this is that, as Master Samael explains, Eikasia is darkness. And yet the translation means “imagination.” What this relates is the fact that, even though we are physically awake, and active, we perceive imagery, sensation, concepts, thoughts, we are in darkness, spiritually speaking. It is a type of perception, but is devoid of any spiritual understanding of the nature of the phenomena.

So, we have Πίστις Pistis, which means “belief.” This is the common state of consciousness of humanity. Pistis is belief, sometimes translated as faith. But here, we are referring to belief and faith in a conventional sense, devoid of any spiritual substance.

Many people have beliefs and concepts of the afterlife, about astral travel, the internal dimensions, the solar bodies, but they have no cognizance of these things. They believe in religion, but they do not practice the esoteric heart of religion.

Humanity tends to gravitate between Pistis and Eikasia: beliefs, fanaticism, and war.

We have a third state of consciousness, which we seek to develop, and which grants us the doorway to really enter initiation. This other state is διάνοια Dianoia. Dianoia, as Samael Aun Weor explains in The Perfect Matrimony, is revision of beliefs. The way we review our beliefs is by awakening consciousness. This is the state of awakened perception. And in order to really develop this state, we need to be, like Solomon told us, a fountain sealed, a מַעיָן ma’yan sealed. Because עין Ayin and מ Mem, perception developed though the waters of transmutation help to awaken us to the state of Dianoia.

Diá means “thoroughly, from side-to-side," which intensifies noiéō, "to use the mind," noús, "mind.” So, when we awaken our consciousness by working with our own fire, with our own fountain of life, we begin to change many concepts that we have about ourselves. This is to revise our beliefs about who we are, what we know, who we think we are, where we are going. Dianoia is the alert state of perception, the alert novelty.

But now, we have a fourth state of consciousness, which can only be fully developed and reached by working in alchemy. It is νοῦν Nous. Nous literally means mind.

Question: Excuse me, sir. Did you say something that relates to the left ventricle of the heart?
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Instructor: There is an atom that relates to the Innermost, a spiritual power, a force relating to the left ventricle of our heart. So, Nous relates to that. The atom Nous is in our heart. And the state of Nous is illuminated perception. It is the consciousness, which is in union with the Innermost, that perceives as the Innermost, that is one with Christ. 

Nous refers to heights of the Tree of Life. From Geburah, Chesed, and above. That is the spirit of the Inner Christ. Those heights can only really be developed, as Samael Aun Weor explains, by working in alchemy, because to develop the spirit is very arduous work related with transmutation, related with the perfection of the psyche.

We explain this in relation to the solar bodies because, in order to work in alchemy, we need to establish ourselves in Dianoia. We need to cease being asleep in Eikasia. We need to cease being hypnotized by our beliefs, our concepts, which is Pistis. To work in alchemy effectively, you must possess Dianoia to be awakening, to develop that state of alert perception through mediation, through self-observation.
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As I mentioned, there are many who have solar bodies, but they forget this fact. They forget this work on the ego. And Nous is fully developed when we have no ego. This path of Nous is represented by the path of the spirit, Pneuma. Nous, our Innermost, relates to that Atom Nous which is connected to our spirit. 

We have in this image, a teaching by a great master. His name is Hilarion IX. He was known as Paul of Tarsus. He was known as a great persecutor of Gnostics until he converted through a revolution in his experience.

Question: He was a tax collector?

Instructor: I do not know what he physically did as work, but what happened to him was very profound. He experienced Nous, an illuminated state of consciousness when he knew Christ directly. The Logos. The force of God. And therefore, he stopped persecuting the Gnostics physically.
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Comment: In the Christian teachings, I think they claim when he was on his way to Damascus, and a lightning bolt hit him that the divine sent. “Paul, Paul, why have you hurt me, betrayed me, deny me,” I think. That was in the Christian teachings as I remember.

Instructor: And the lightning bolt represents the force of Christ which descends from the Trinity, at the top of the Tree of Life down to Malkuth. So, he was struck by an experience, which Christ reprimanded him to change. And, so, he gave a very beautiful doctrine on the nature of the solar bodies. The nature of Nous. The nature of perception.

He explained that the solar bodies are created through sex. But importantly, we need to awake, he says, to righteousness. Meaning to work in Dianoia. If we do not awaken consciousness through meditation and annihilate the ego, we cannot walk to Christ. In fact, we can make the solar bodies and attain development to a degree, but if we do not fully eradicate our own desires, then we will suffer. We will go down.

Question: That means you’re desireless for anything?

Instructor: Desire in terms of ego. Animal lust, pride, vanity. Not longing.

So, Paul of Tarsus taught [in 1 Corinthians 15:34-40; 42-43]:

“Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God (the esoteric doctrine): I speak this to your shame (to those who study, but do not practice).

“But some men will say: how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?

“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die (meaning: you want to create the solar bodies, but those vehicles cannot be fully perfected until you die in your ego).

“And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance or wheat, or of some other grain.

“But God giveth a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed in his own body (so, that is the seed, semen, the sexual force. And so this grain represents the wheat, which has represented Christ. As we have in the Holy Gnostic Unction, the bread and the wine of the Eucharist). ―1 Corinthians 15:34-38

Question: Does that correlate in the Greek mysteries to Ceres, or when they’re talking about grain?

Instructor: Yes, because the grain represents the seed of the sexual force that gives birth to the solar bodies.

Comment: I have to say, you go really well into details. There are so many things that are allegorical that the Gnostics, the way you teach it—for some reason, the others, whether it be the tarot schools, the fish coming up out of the waters, pulling it out through mercury, but they don’t, none of them go behind it like the way you do. I have to say that, I’m finding out things. I thought, “I know this, no!” So much is allegorical, but they do not explain the relationship.

Instructor: So he says, “Every seed to his own body.” Meaning: our body produces the semen. The seed that gives birth to our solar vehicles, which do not manifest fully in the beginning, but they are germinated slowly, in the same manner a child is born in the womb of his mother. Nine months. Nine relatesd to Yesod, the foundation, the sexual force.

He continues in relation to the solar vehicles:

“All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.” ―1 Corinthians 15:39

When he talks about the flesh of men, he means real human beings. Because a real human being has the solar bodies created. Those solar bodies define a real Hum-Man. Because the spirit [the Sanskrit Hum] can only incarnate when one has the solar bodies, and we fully eliminate the ego.

So, the flesh of beasts is really us. We have the flesh of beasts. Our family procreated in an ordinary manner, so to speak, and we are the result of fornication. We have the flesh of animals born through animal desire.

We also have the flesh of another fishes, meaning those initiates who know how to swim in the waters. Who control the waters. Who are beginning on the path develop the seminal energy.

And also we have the flesh of birds, meaning those initiates that know how to fly through the Tree of Life. That is one meaning we can derive from them. He continues:

“There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

“So is also the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.

“It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power...” ―1 Corinthians 15:40, 42-43

So, this topic of resurrection refers to one level, the creation of the solar bodies. One has died to a certain degree and resurrects at a spiritual level. That is the process of the Major Mysteries, of initiation.

​The solar bodies are sown in corruption, meaning: our body is imperfect. We experience many illnesses and diseases because our bodies are degenerated with fornication. But the solar bodies are sown in corruption, because we practice alchemy with this body. And the solar bodies are raised in incorruption, meaning they are pure.
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Just as the same matter in Buddhism, how the lotus flower floats above the muddy waters. That impurity is our mind. It is Eikasia. It is Pistis. However, the lotus is above that. It is pure. It rises above the impurity of the mind. “It is sown in weakness,” meaning we are weak in the beginning. But, when we practice alchemy, the solar bodies are raised in power, with tremendous force. 

The teaching of the solar bodies also relates to Paul of Tarsus and his teaching on the Tree of Life. Here, we have the image of the Kabbalah again. Another way to look at this is in terms of three triangles, which Paul of Tarsus explain in relation to the bodies of the soul.

Within the triangle of the Logos, again as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Kether, Chokmah, Binah.

Within the triangle of the spirit, the pneuma, which is Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth.

Then we have the triangle of the psyche, which is Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. Malkuth is a fallen sephirah.

Question: Is that top triangle, the very apex at the top, that’s smaller?

Instructor: Smaller?

Question: That’s Da’ath?

Instructor: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, the upper triangle is the Logos. The secret sephirah, Da’ath, does not have any image. No representation. It is the secret science of alchemy. So, Da’ath relates to the throat, which relates to the practice of alchemy, uniting sexually with our partner, the mantras we pronounce, “I… A… O…” in relation to sex; we are working with Daath, the Verb. That is how we create spiritually. When we connect sexually, we pronounce the mantras: IAO is the most sacred.

So, the triangle of the spirit is Chesed [pneuma], Geburah, Tiphereth. The bodies of the psyche relate to Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth. Mind, emotions, vitality, and physicality.

Question: Kether is the Father?

Instructor: Kether is the Father.

Question: And Binah is the...

Instructor: The Holy Spirit.

Question: And Chokmah is the Son?

Instructor: Yes. And so, as we show the image of Shiva-Shakti that is also the Holy Spirit. Because Shiva-Shakti is male-female. Or, we say Jehovah Elohim in Hebrew. But that is digressing a little bit.

So, when talking about the solar bodies, we can refer to these triangles in relation to levels of spiritual development. Paul of Tarsus gives a very profound kabbalistic teaching, as he continues:

“It is sown a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body [Soma Psuchikón]; it is raised a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body [Soma Pneumatikón]. There is a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body, and there is a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body.” ―1 Corinthians 15:44-45

Soma means body. Psuchi relates to psyche. Ikón is image. So, we can translate it as psychic-image-body, to be literal.

People think that it usually say terrestrial body in the translations. That is not what the Greek taught us. By terrestrial, I mean relating to our lower personality, whether the terrestrial or they say the heavenly personality, the heavenly Being. So, Soma Psuchikón, the psychic-image-body, the body that bears the image of the psyche, relates to this triangle, as we showed: Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth. This is the lower quaternary, which is what we are. So, Paul of Tarsus states:

“It is sown a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body [Soma Psuchikón]; it is raised a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body [Soma Pneumatikón].” ―1 Corinthians 15:44

Soma is body, as I mentioned. Pneuma is spirit. They usually translate this as celestial body or spiritual body. Again, remember that soma is the sexual energy that gives birth, life to the bodies of the soul.

So in the beginning we create…

Question: Some would be Yesod?

Instructor: Soma relates to the vital force. It is the vital force. And, through this energy of the sex, we give birth to the bodies of the psyche, Soma Psuchikón.

In the later process of initiation, if we are destined to walk that path, we elaborate the Soma Pneumatikón, which is really the solar bodies when they are completed, when they are perfected.

In the beginning, we develop the psychic bodies, which, through intense alchemical transmutations, by destroying our desires, our ego, they become completely perfected and give birth to the bodies of the spirit.

So, first comes the soul. The sSpirit comes next. There are many initiates who forget this detail, like Nietzsche. He thought that all human beings have these vehicles, the psychic bodies, or even have spiritual bodies. But he ignored that these have to be developed through initiation.

Question: So soul is the reflection of the spirit, right?

Instructor: Yes.

Comment: I always get confused by…

Instructor: Yes. The spirit is God and the psyche is the consciousness. The Being is. The soul needs to be created. We do that through alchemy for working with our soma.

Question: So, soul and Being are two different things?

Instructor: Yes. The Being is God. And through this work, the spirit, Pneuma creates the psyche.

Question: So, spirit and Being are the same?

Instructor: Yes. We use different terms, interchangeable. The Being is the Pneuma, the spirit.

So, as Paul of Tarsus states:

“It is sown a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body; it is raised a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body. There is a σῶμα ψυχικόν psychic-image body, and there is a σῶμα πνευματικόν spiritual-image body.

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living ψυχή soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening πνεῦμα spirit.” ―1 Corinthians 15:44-46

To elaborate, first, we create what we know as the terrestrial man. The human being is made through the creation of the solar bodies. Remember that the bodies are meant to project the image of the psyche and the Being.

First comes the psyche. We have to create the soul. Later, we develop the image of the spirit, which is a very long process.
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“The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from οὐρανός (Ouranos) heaven.” ―1 Corinthians 15:47

Notice that psyche is mind (Netzach), emotion (Hod), vitality (Yesod), and physicality (Malkuth).

We can also count Tiphereth. Tiphereth is psyche, human soul. The heavenly man is above, relating to Geburah (divine consciousness), which is the reflection of our own Innermost, our inner God, inner spirit.

Above that, is the triangle of the Logos, Christ. So, first, we need to the develop the image of the psyche trough alchemy. And then, if we follow the path of the Christ, if we incarnate the Christ, He takes us to the development of the higher sephiroth within us.

“As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

“And as we have borne the εἰκόνα image of the earthy, we shall also bear the εἰκόνα image of the heavenly.” –1 Corinthians 15:48-49

What is important to state is that, many Christians say they are “born again,” as if they had these bodies—“I believe in Jesus and now I am saved," whereas [the solar bodies] can only be created through alchemy.

You need a man and a woman [to create, to give birth]. They think they bear the image of the earthy. That is equal to saying that they have the bodies of the soul already developed.

Comment: I’ve been to summer service. They mean well, some of the preachers. Then again, they say, in the emotion of the moment, they place some music in the background. Yeah, because like Dion Fortune said that in that moment, they go to the emotions only, but cannot go above that. So, when they get out onto the street, sure, well enough… (we all have the same defects…) in the emotion of the moment—I’ve also seen that when I was in Georgia—they all really get emotional down there. Some of them have tambourines, the spirit…

Well, they may mean that! At that time, but then they slip back into everyday routines, defects… Maybe they’ve reduced a little, but they’re not reborn…
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Instructor: So, they say “we will bear the image of the heavenly,” meaning they have not entered alchemy to develop the psyche first. First comes the soul and then we develop the spirit within.

So, continuing in relation to this topic about the heavenly man and the terrestrial man, we could refer to Buddhism, which teaches the same thing.

The solar bodies are what grant one the capacity to unite with God. But only with the condition the ego is fully eliminated.

In Buddhism, we have the Inner Being, which is the Buddha, which we call the Contemplation Buddha. These are just Buddhist terms for the same thing, as told by Paul of Tarsus. The heavenly man is the Contemplation Buddha, God.

Question: Who is Adam Kadmon?

Instructor: Adam Kadmon is the heavenly man, which we are discussing.

We also have the Manifestation Buddha, which is the psyche, the initiate who is developing his solar vehicles, and is walking the path to completely express the Being, the Contemplation Buddha.

So, this is just to emphasize this teaching is not only from Paul of Tarsus, about the solar bodies. But it relates even to Eastern doctrines. So, Samael Aun Weor states in Mental Representations:

“Much has been said of the Buddhas. There is no doubt that there are Contemplation Buddhas and Manifestation Buddhas. Manifestation Buddhas are creatures who dominated the mind, who destroyed the ego, who did not let negative emotions enter their hearts, who did not create mental effigies in their own mind nor in the minds of others. Let us remember Tsong Khapa who reincarnated in Tibet; he was the Buddha Gautama previously.

“The Buddha of Buddha Amitabha is another thing, his true divine prototype. Amitabha is the Contemplation Buddha [we can say the celestial man], and Gautama, we could say, is the Manifestation Buddha [the psyche, the soul that is manifesting the Being], the worldly Buddha or Bodhisattva [Bodhisattva means incarnation of light, an expression of Christ]. We cannot deny that Amitabha expressed himself brilliantly through Gautama. We cannot deny that later Amitabha sent Gautama (the Bodhisattva or worldly Buddha) directly to a new reincarnation. Then he expressed himself as Tsong Khapa.

“These are Contemplation Buddhas, they are masters of their mind, creatures who liberated themselves from the mind. [This is the Heavenly Man. This is God above]. The Lords worship the Great Buddha that we also know as the Logos and they pray to him.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Mental Representations

So, again. What is the Logos? It is the Christ. The Buddha that manifests is Tiphereth, the human will, the human soul. That is created after we have raised the fire in Malkuth, the Kundalini force through the spine, in Malkuth, to the brain.

Afterward, one must create the solar vital body through this process of alchemy. After that one, one must create the solar astral body. Once that one is created, the alchemist creates the solar mental body and possesses the solar body of will.

This is beautifully represented in the Wizard of Oz.

We find Dorothy, the consciousness [who needs to return home to divinity].

The scarecrow needs a new mind. He needs a solar mental body.

We have the Tin Man who needs a new heart. He needs a solar astral body.

We have the lion who has no courage. He needs the solar casual body, willpower.

The one that gives them that gift is the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of עץ Otz, the Wizard of עץ החיים Otz Chai’im, the Tree of Life.

So, the wizard is our Innermost, spirit, pneuma. And Geburah is an unfoldment of him.

Dorothy represents the consciousness that has been sent to Malkuth. From Kansas to the Land of Oz.

And we find the golden red road through the spinal medulla, up to the Emerald City, which is the chakra of the crown, which produces the halo of the saints.

And the lower five sephiroth are the Manifestation Buddha, the Bodhisattva, the incarnation of Christ who manifests in the physical plane.

The Contemplation Buddha is the five sephiroth above, which is our Inner Wizard, our Inner Magician.

What is important to state in relation to the nature of the solar bodies, and to put this in context, is to emphasize that that the solar bodies are merely vehicles in which we can express Christ. However, there are many individuals that develop the solar vehicles and do not enter into much higher stages of initiation, and much higher stages of spiritual development.

And we often talk in these studies about different kinds of angels or buddhas. In the realm of Nirvana, which is really Tiphereth, we find many masters. They reflect the spirit to a degree, but they remain at that level. They do not ascend to the higher stages of the path. Because, in order to access the higher sephiroth, which is Christ, the Trinity, they have to enter into a very elevated path of spiritual development.

We call this the Direct Path. So, we talk about the solar bodies and creating those vehicles. They are necessary. We need to create the means by which our Being can manifest himself into our psyche. But, in order to develop the image of the spirit completely, in order to enter the realm of the Logos, we need to enter a very specific path.

In the beginning, one learns to rise the five Kundalini [serpents] within the lower five vehicles in order to give birth to the solar vehicles. But, upon reaching Tiphereth, one needs to make a decision. This really depends on the will of our Being.

Comment: Rudolf Steiner corroborated everything you said now. Some people, you know, they advance so far. They have no desire at that point to really, for whatever reason, whether due to karma. But it’s their option, not that they’re going to be condemned, or anything like that, because they do not want to go any higher. For whatever reason, they chose not to. They develop themselves apparently…

Instructor: We call them Nirvanis, Nirvani Buddhas, Sravakas, or Pratyekas, different terms. They are buddhas that have attained initiation, but they choose to remain in Nirvana to enjoy the blisses of that realm. They forget about the suffering of humanity. They do not descend to help.

Question: Some people call them selfish buddhas too?

Instructor: They are called selfish buddhas, and the thing is that many people think this is a bad path because they forget about the cares of the world. They develop themselves little by little in very long spiral path that leads to the Absolute.

The problem with this is that is a very long path. They manifest according to karma. They are still victims of karma. And the difficulty lies in the fact they can easily fall again when they have to return to a body.

And so, many of them become Nirvanis. They fall again. They become demons. They become Nirvanis. They fall again. They become demons. It is a cycle that repeats itself. This is represented in Buddhism by the Bhavachakra, the Wheel of Samsara. We find different realms between gods, demons, humans, hungry ghosts. A constant cycle of different manifestations.

Question: You’re saying eventually that they will see the light and eventually ascend even higher than Tiphereth?

Instructor: That depends on the Being of that individual. Because there are many buddhas, spirits or monads that say: "Well, we are happy in this level. So, we do not want to go higher." Then, there are sSpirits like Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad, or Krishna. They want to go to the very height which is known as the Absolute.

In order to reach those degrees, one has to incarnate Christ. To enter that path is to walk the Direct Path. Because the Nirvani Buddhas go to the spiral through eternities, to the Absolute. There is nothing wrong with their process. But in this path, we teach the path of the Bodhisattva, which is very revolutionary.

Question: Are these conscious decisions to go in either direction, or is it unconscious?
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Instructor: It is conscious. The Being is the one who decides whether to enter the straight path. And when the Being decides that, one must follow. 

​In order to get to that point, in relation to this topic of the solar bodies, it is important to state that we need to develop a very specific type of consciousness if what we want is to enter the straight path after creating the solar bodies. We call this Bodhichitta.

I mentioned the term Bodhisattva and now I mention Bodhichitta. Bodhi means “light, wisdom, enlightenment.” Chitta means “mind.” So, in this lecture we are talking about the [enlightened] mind and the solar bodies. And to elaborate that, the solar bodies are a step on the path. They are not the end if we follow the Direct Path.

We need to develop something very specific, a state of mind which is the combination of conscious love for humanity and comprehension of the Absolute. It is the union of two things. And Buddhism teaches this very beautifully.

One cannot have real love without understanding the nature of That, the Absolute, which we call emptiness, inconceivable to our intellect.

Neither can we have real cognizance of the Absolute, the source of all the gods, the universes, That which is beyond all concept. We cannot have understanding of That without real love for humanity.

When we comprehend the inherent nature of emptiness, of all phenomena and how human beings suffer in illusion, naturally love is born within our hearts, to want to serve and help others to realize their real, [intimate divine potential, which we call Christ. The Absolute is in the Christ.

Bodhichitta is a state of consciousness in which we comprehend the emptiness of phenomena and how life is illusory. But also, to have that experience in meditation when one approaches to the Absolute.

Bodhichitta is taught in Buddhism as a type of attitude. And it is so powerful when it impregnates the soul, that it goes beyond having the solar bodies. One does not create the solar bodies and develop Bodhichitta necessarily. In fact, what is important is to develop Bodhichitta now, before we even enter the path or developing the solar bodies.

Question: Just define Bodhichitta again? I missed that.

Instructor: Bodhi is light, which refers to Christ. Chitta means mind. So, it is mind or consciousness that has experienced Christ. So, just like Paul of Tarsus had that experience going to Damascus, he developed that lightning spark that illuminated him, in order to recognize he needed to serve humanity, to serve others.

Comment: Well that was an epiphany!

Instructor: Epiphania relates to revelation, to experience the state of Nous that illuminates the consciousness.

Question: That’s what he experienced?

Instructor: Yes.

So, we often talk about Bodhichitta as a very deep topic. But in synthesis, it refers to conscious love for humanity and cognizance of the Absolute. One that has that experience returns to the physical body and then works to serve others so they can experience divinity for themselves.

Question: Just one other thing. You mentioned about the solar bodies, that they’re vehicles. But then again, what are they? Do they refer to the five lower sephiroth, in terms of how the solar bodies relate to the Tree of Life…

Instructor: The lower five sephiroth.

And so, we seek to develop Bodhichitta above all things. And then, if we are married, we work to create the solar bodies. It is more important to develop that aspiration to serve others than to seek to acquire powers and initiations. So, as it is explained in The Voice of the Silence, the nature of Bodhi, the light:

“The Dharma of the ‘Eye’ is the embodiment of the external, and the non-existing.
​
“The Dharma of the ‘Heart’ is the embodiment of Bodhi, the Permanent and Everlasting [which is the Absolute, the Christ].” 

Here is an image of Buddha Maitreya. People think Buddha Maitreya was one individual. They do not recognize Maitreya is a title. As I mentioned, there are many buddhas in nirvana, millions, zillions. You cannot count. However, there are very few who incarnate the Christ. In order to enter the Straight Path that leads to the Absolute, one needs to become a Bodhisattva.

But first, one develops Bodhichitta.

Bodhichitta is that aspiration to help others. And that service comes about as a result of comprehending one's empty states, or the emptiness of phenomena, as well as the Absolute, which is the goal. Many Buddhas do not have Christ incarnated. Because Christ only enters the human being who has shown he has served humanity. And that aspiration and love for humanity is Bodhichitta, cognizance of the Absolute, emptiness.

Question: So, Mother Teresa might be one?

Instructor: I never investigated her, but she embodied Bodhichitta because she really showed sacrifice for others. She said: "You must sacrifice for others to the point it hurts." And always the utmost sacrifice requires pain in our part in order to genuinely benefit others.

Question: Bodhichitta is developed through meditation and transmutation?

Instructor: Yes. Bodhichitta develops when we meditate and we really work to develop compassion and love for humanity. To serve others and to experience God.

Comment Just along those lines, I’m thinking of an article I read about the nurses who work in children’s hospitals. Usually in five years they say that it’s too much. They say the pain and then the relatives coming in, the interaction and the pain. They actually have to put up a shield. It’s too much! They do good, God knows, but that’s one occupation they take them to task there, compassion-wise. Those people who stay on for a couple of years have to balance that. The pain they feel, you can’t help it, since there’s transference.

Instructor: In order to develop Bodhichitta, we need to transform our psyche. So, whatever pain we experience, we transform it as an opportunity for compassion and love for others.

So, Samael Aun Weor continues in a lecture called The Esoteric Path:

“There exist the Transitory Buddhas and the Permanent Buddhas.

“A Transitory Buddha is a Buddha who still has not achieved within himself the incarnation of the Inner Christ.

“A Permanent Buddha or Buddha of Contemplation is a Buddha who has already Christified himself, a Buddha that has already received the Inner Christ within his own internal nature. This type of Buddha is a Buddha Maitreya, since it is a Buddha who incarnated the Inner Christ (this is how the term “Maitreya” should be understood). So, Buddha Maitreya is not a person: Buddha Maitreya is a title, a degree, which indicates any given Buddha who already achieved Christification.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Esoteric Path

So, the Heavenly Man is the one who fully develops Christ is known as a Permanent Buddha. But, one who is a Transitory Buddha, the Nirvanis, they spiral through Nirvana and come back to Malkuth. Maybe they descend. They go back to Nirvana. They fall again. They are in transit. They are never stationary, meaning they never attain the absolute heights. So, a Permanent Buddha is the one who has incarnated Christ.

Question: So, a Transitory Buddha did not really incarnate the Christ [or made preparations...]

Instructor: Transitory Buddhas are those Nirvanis who have not incarnated the Lord yet. They haven’t walked that path. But those who do walk the Straight Path, they incarnate Christ and they walk a dangerous road to fully eliminate the ego in the most profound depths of their own abyss, in order to unite with the Absolute.

Comment: Then they didn’t fully eliminate the ego!

Instructor: So, the Transitory Buddhas are those who have ego. And even Bodhisattvas, those who incarnate Christ, they still have ego. They are only perfected until they fully eliminate desire.

So, the importance of mentioning the solar bodies is the fact there are many who create these vehicles, but they remain in Nirvana. They do not care about helping humanity.

Question: Why do some people say that that’s the end? Some read a book, and don’t go beyond…

Instructor: There are degrees. There are stages of the Tree of Life. There is Nirvana. There is Paranirvana (beyond Nirvana). And we have Parabrahma, which is the Absolute. So, there are degrees.

The problem with many buddhas in Nirvana is that they do not care about serving humanity. They want to enjoy bliss in their realm, but they do not sacrifice themselves in order to incarnate the Lord, Christ. As stated in The Voice of the Silence:

“The Shangna (“initiation”) robe [the solar bodies], 'tis true, can purchase light eternal. The Shangna robe alone gives the Nirvana of destruction; it stops rebirth, but, O Lanoo [disciple], it also kills — compassion. No longer can the perfect Buddhas [Nirvanis], who don the Dharmakaya glory, help man's salvation. Alas! shall SELVES be sacrificed to Self; mankind, unto the weal of Units?

“Know, O beginner, this is the Open PATH [the spiral path of Nirvana], the way to selfish bliss, shunned by the Bodhisattvas of the "Secret Heart," the Buddhas of Compassion.” ―The Voice of the Silence

So, again, just to really get to the point: there are many buddhas in Nirvana. They have solar bodies, but they remain in that realm. They do not work to help others. And unfortunately, they are afflicted by their own karma. They manifest and they return to Nirvana according to the laws of the cosmos. They are not masters over the laws of the universe.

All those who incarnate Christ become lords of all things. In order to get really inspired to that path, we seek to develop Bodhichitta (the aspiration to reach the Absolute for the benefit of others). Working to self-realize, not for oneself, but for humanity. And to clarify what Bodhichitta is, Samael Aun Weor states in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled:

“Bodhichitta is the awakened and developed superlative consciousness of the Being. Bodhichitta emerges in the aspirant who sacrifices himself for his fellowmen, long before the Mercurial [solar] bodies have been created... The one who does not possess Bodhichitta, even when he has created the superior existential bodies of the Being, is still unconscious and absurd.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled

Do not think like many esoteric practitioners, when they create the solar bodies and that is it. That is the path of the Nirvanis. If we really want to enter the path of the Bodhisattva, the path of Christ, it means we have to renounce our own mind and give everything for humanity.

To conclude, solar bodies are necessary, but they are not the end of the path if what we aspire is to imitate the example of Christ.

Comment: You could see that on the Tree of Life where you showed us the five solar bodies. Above it are the other, higher sephiroth, so you can’t stop really from what you’re telling us. You can’t stop there.

Instructor: The one who decides to enter that path is the Being, our own pneuma, our own spirit. If we have attained to the height Nirvana, meaning we reached Tiphereth and we have the solar physical, solar vital, solar astral, solar mental, solar causal bodies, related to the five spheres below, and if our own spirit demands it, if our own Innermost, Chesed or pneuma decides we enter the path of Christ, then we do. That depends on the will of our Being.

Comment: Seems in a way, you might say, that some of these things might be predestined.

Instructor: If your Being is pushing you to practice this science, it may be the chance he wants you to walk the Direct Path. But that path is not necessarily finished in one life, like I mentioned in the beginning of the lecture with the quote from Padmasambhava. There are few initiates who can do it in one life. It is very rigorous. But for most of us it takes many lives.

Comment: This path you are talking about [the Direct Path], going back to… Steiner, on the Tree of Life, what he called the hermetic path, is doable. That was one path. He called it the mystical path, straight up the Tree, like that, but it involved a different type of esoteric practices in a way than you would if you went from sephirah to sephirah like some people do with tarot cards, correlating astrology and all that. Steiner said it had a lot to do with the heart, and he mentioned there a lot of things that were in line with what you’re saying regarding the Direct Path, or the arrow, קשת Qeshet

Instructor: קשת Qeshet in Kabbalah, which is the Hebrew word for “rainbow,” which we see in the Book of Genesis after the flood of Noah. He saw the rainbow, קשת Qeshet. So, that rainbow is the path that Dorothy takes to Oz, from Malkuth with her companions up the straight road, in the middle, to the Father, Kether, who is our wizard, our Inner Magician.

But the only way that path can be reached is by sacrificing oneself for humanity. Because if we only work for our own liberation, we enter the Nirvani Path. But if we work to help others, to help humanity to reach Christ, then Christ would say: "Well, if you reach the Fifth Initiation, I will incarnate in you." Then, you must die completely. The solar bodies are not quickened unless you die. Like Paul of Tarsus said: "We do not perfect those vehicles until we die in our ego."

Any other questions?

Question: Does the Being nudge by putting events on our path?

Instructor: Yes. We can refer to karma specially. We have many events in our life which are the result of past actions, the karmic results of our previous lives. But in many other cases, our Being, in order to help us, changes that, such as finding this type of science. The Being is intervening to help that soul to change.

Comment: Or even meeting someone who is studying esoteric studies, and saying, “Here, read this book!” And then something turns on. It could be when you’re very young, middle-aged, or even old, and say, “I want to pursue this further.” Since you look back on your life and you see that you get resentful, but then they tell you you can’t. You say, “There’s something pushing me. There’s something I have to do.” It could be based on fear too, of the unknown, or the whatever. But it starts you on a metaphysical reading, attending classes, but something happened…

Instructor: Those longings are the impulse of the Being to make that soul work to walk the path of the Self-realization. Now, what is necessary is to cultivate Bodhichitta, that aspiration to serve humanity and attain liberation for the sake of others. We need to develop Bodhichitta if we really comprehend our mind, and work to serve in whatever way possible, whatever is the idiosyncrasy of our Being.

For some people it is teaching. For some people it’s like Mother Teresa, providing shelter for others who are sick. Gandhi was teaching and leading political movements. That is how he worked with his aspiration basically.

Comment: Can I just add one other thing? Just getting back to finding out the meanings behind a lot of those teachings. But the Bible, and Rudolf Steiner said too, in a lot of ways it was a closed document, he wouldn’t go into detail. […] Someone I know who is a member of the Masonic Lodge, Jewish-American fellow, fairly intelligent, he said, “When I was in the Navy I went out and took an eclectic approach.” So he was related to the Jewish religion, but he wanted to find out, you know, he studied other religions. He said, “I used to sit on the fan tail of the ship… by myself and read. The only thing,” and sad in a way, “But Christ spoke in parables. I couldn’t follow that.” That’s another thing. People need experience in the way they see things.

Instructor: We need to know Kabbalah to understand the Christian Gospels. So, we explain in brief the meaning of the teachings of Christ as well as the teachings of Paul of Tarsus.

Comment: There’s just so much, really, is in [parables]… some people think there’s just surface meanings. They quote the waters, but what’s really behind it? And they talk about… in the human being! As it relates to the human being! What are these waters? You never see, I’ve never read this in any esoteric books except in things you’ve explained.

Instructor: What is necessary for us is to meditate. To experience this for ourselves. But personally, when I am talking about the solar bodies and Bodhichitta is because I have studied these teachings, not from a book, but from experience.

So, do not take this at face value, but practice. And awaken your psyche so you can experience your own pneuma. And a practice you can use to develop Bodhichitta is the prayer of Saint Francis. I do not remember specifically every line. "Let me not seek as much to be loved, but to love. To be understood as to understand. To give in order to receive. For in giving, we receive and in death we are born to everlasting life."

Comment: Francis of Assisi, and he, that was interesting, he certainly had an epiphany or an awakening, because he was born, as history tells us, into a very wealthy family in Tuscany, in Italy. And the father wanted him to get married and live well with possessions, but he totally renounced everything…
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Instructor: He is a great Bodhisattva. He fully developed Christ within himself. He was an embodiment or expression of the teachings of the Straight Path. So, meditation and prayer can open a lot of things in terms of how we can help humanity.

So throughout history, divinity has expressed itself to humanity in a variety of forms. We see the world’s great religions. We also hear about many spiritual movements that have taken place across time. And as humanity changes, as languages change, as people migrate to new places, we often lose touch with the old forms, but that light of divinity remains active and alive, and moving. And at different points in time, this light of divinity can become more active in certain places, in certain cultures. Now, that is not to mean that it does not exist in other cultures. It just moves its activity depending on certain contexts.
 
What we know is that God or divinity, however we like to conceive it in our mind, is a very living force. It is a universal force. It is a force of life, and love, and wisdom, and truth.
 
In our Gnostic teachings, we often use the commonly known word of Christ as the title of that universal force. But Christ is not just one individual, Jesus Christ for example, but it is actually the wisdom, and the love, and the intelligence that can express itself through a human being who is properly prepared. And we call these human beings masters or prophets, buddhas, Christs: these titles for an individual who has reached that level of self-realization—to be able to express more purely at their own degree, the love and the wisdom of divinity, the teachings to help humanity.
 
So in the gnostic teachings we have to understand that the light of divinity that touches each one of us, and that reaches out to each one of us is beyond any one form, any school or doctrine. These schools, these movements and these spiritual groups, and religions can be the vehicle through which God can express in multiple times and places. But if we just attend a school and we do not ourselves enter personally into contact and connection with our own inner connection to divinity, we do not experience what we call initiation. 

Initiation is the beginning. To initiate means to start. And when we enter into initiation, we enter into a new birth, a spiritual birth, a spiritual growth. And this is something that does not have anything to do with schools, or titles that are given to you, or sold by different movements. But it is something that is deeply within ourselves. It is a profound growth and evolution of the human soul.
 
And, when we experience that, we change as a person. Not just externally, by acting in a different way, or hanging out with different kinds of people, but actually by our quality of presence, by the wisdom and love that we are able to express, by the way that we encounter situations and respond to them. We will notice that we are deeply changing because we do not force it, but naturally, we are evolving, we are growing as a soul, as a being. In a deeper way than to just externally achieve a kind of social rank, or spiritual title from a given community. 

How do we come into contact with that universal light of divinity? All of us at one point of time have experienced this. Maybe it has been as simple as going outside to a beautiful, natural scene and feeling that awe and that beauty within that is spontaneous to the human soul. Or perhaps is when we truly loved someone, purely and from the deepest part of our heart.
 
That is a form of experience that changes a person. And sometimes this can be little ways that we are changing. And sometimes it can be a more profound spiritual awakening, an experience where we really feel that connection to our inner divinity. Or maybe we have a mystical experience, an out-of-body experience for example, a near death experience, as we hear many people talk about. And that will change people in a profound level.
 
When we experience that, we are actually using a type of sense unrelated to our physical senses. So, we have five physical senses through which we experience the world as gateways that energy can come through and be processed. But there is also a sense within us, a spiritual sense: our imagination, our soul, our intuition, our ability to perceive something divine. And the more we awaken those spiritual faculties, the more that we are able to perceive things that are beyond just the physical level, that are beyond just physical nature, in a more energetic, more spiritual, more subtle and refined levels of nature.
 
These are still material in a sense, but not in the gross, physical material that we are used to experiencing with our physical touch. And so, as we awaken on deeper levels, we can even awaken out of our body. When we go to sleep physically, we can remain awake in the dream state with full consciousness, able to control what we do and where we go.
 
And all these kinds of spiritual gifts are often what people associate with initiation: to be able to awaken spiritual powers like telepathy or clairvoyance or prophecy, to be able to see the future, or to hear the word of divinity within us, so that we can share that light with others or to see what steps we need to take in our own life, to become better people.
 
So, if we want these types of powers, we often go to different schools and different places that promise us that they will enroll us in a certain course, and we will advance through degree to degree to degree, and be initiated and become masters, or become self-realized.
 
But as I mentioned previously, what we really want is the external validation from any other person, but that inner experience, that inner knowledge, that connection with divinity through which we know we are really growing as a soul and that we are really understanding life in a more profound way that decreases our suffering, and decreases the suffering of people around us. So we have the ability to understand other people and to help them. And most importantly is to begin by helping ourselves and understanding ourselves, to touch the truth of who we are. 

In this time, we have these Gnostic teachings as taught by Samael Aun Weor and the instructors and students of his tradition, which we call the Fifth Gospel [which explains the significance and secret meanings of the Four Gospels from the conservative Piscean Era]. This is the same light that has expressed itself throughout humanity’s history through many religions and that is why in this teaching, we discuss various religions and we talk about how their essence is the same. And how their essence is a practical teaching that each of us must strive to experience for ourselves. Not merely to learn it intellectually, or to take it as a belief, but to actually, practically experience it by using those spiritual faculties which awaken when we feel love, or awe for nature, or that genuine intuition within our divinity.
 
That’s why this Fifth Gospel is a very practical teaching. And if we really want to experience initiation, we have to be well prepared. Throughout history, when the ancient mystery schools in Egypt or Greece, or all around the world, in ancient Tibet as well, were going to take an aspirant into the secret teachings, they would prepare them rigorously for decades, to make sure that this person had purity of heart. They had worked to eliminate their vices and to practice virtue, and were skillful in meditation, awakening their concentration and awareness to be able to go deep within.
 
Now, the Age of Aquarius has brought this new doctrine which openly gives the secret teachings, or at least a degree of them, so that anyone can enter into these practices immediately, and that is because all of us are well aware that the state of our world is becoming more chaotic. The crises that are impacting humanity are greater than ever. And there is just not enough time for all of us to go often to the mountains for twenty or thirty years in order to become really prepared.
 
But that puts the burden on all of us: to decide if we are truly going to commit to our spiritual growth. If this is truly something that we want to take seriously, then we have to take serious steps. It is not a practice that can be entered into at a whim. It is a very serious commitment of the soul, which has ramifications whether for good or for bad. So, if we make this decision, we have to work on our own level in order to progress, but constantly being progressing in the direction of improvement of virtue, of getting closer to divinity, and further away from the selfishness and the vice which has characterized much of humanity, and as all of us are well aware, characterizes much of our own lives. 

And so, when we talk about initiation, as I mentioned, we are talking about an essential change, a change in the quality of our soul, and the birth of our soul is only possible when we are working with our own energy.
 
Each day we expend a tremendous amount of energy: emotionally, intellectually, physically and even consciously, our willpower. So, when take the step to become aware of our actions each day, and to meditate or reflect, in the evenings, on what we have done that day, how we are living our lives: are we living ethically, or are we really getting caught up in superfluous things that will pass away and not have much value to us in the future?
 
We can evaluate how we are using our energy. If we want to awaken spiritually, we have to really conserve our energy.
 
The reason that all the great religions taught ethical principles, or commandments, or rules for us to follow, is not because, arbitrarily, we need to do what someone else tells us to do, but because these principles, these ways of living an upright life actually change our energetic quality of being. If you have ever been around an angry person whether they are talking or not, you can feel that quality of their being. And if you have ever been around somebody who is truly loving, maybe they are expressing love to you, you felt that power of their being.
 
This is a spiritual energy that we are trying to cultivate. When we work with principles of honesty, selflessness, charity, chastity, and humility, we are actually cultivating a level of being that conserves energy and transforms it inwardly, to awaken our consciousness.
 
But when we engage in anger and envy, and all these other vices that have to with a false self, a false sense of self that needs to be defended at any cost, but which is just a figment of our own mind, that is when we lose our energy. We compromise our inner values. And we in essence forfeit our soul and our integrity for temporary gains, for that false self. 

Nāgārjuna was a Buddhist teacher and a great master, a great initiate. And we can tell as we look at this image of Nāgārjuna here that he is an initiate. Does anyone know why we can see in this image he is a master? There is a symbolism to this image.
 
Yes, the serpents. So, behind his head we see seven serpents. I am going to talk a little bit later about the structure of initiation. But simply put these seven serpents represent that he has mastered the seven initiations of Major Mysteries. This is a very high level of development. Raising the serpents.
 
Has anyone heard about Kundalini before? So, Kundalini is symbolized as a serpent rising up our spine. And this is because, as an initiate, we learn to work with that energy that we are conserving, to transform that energy up the spine into the brain, into the pineal gland, in particular, to awaken our consciousness. This awakens our spiritual faculties which are innate in all of us. But for many of us have become a bit atrophied over time.
 
This awakens our ability to become wiser, more compassionate to human beings, and to perceive our reality beyond the shell of our mind, and our false self.
 
As Nāgārjuna point out to us here, he stated that:
 
"All philosophies are mental fabrications. There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things." —Nāgārjuna
 
Sometimes people say that this type of statement means, “I don’t need any spiritual teachings. I don’t need to read any books. I can achieve awakening by myself.” And this is true that there are some masters who are illiterate, but for many of us we can actually benefit from practical teachings that guide us and that help us to realize where we may be imbalanced, or which techniques we may be able to use to gain some energy, to gain some strength, to then do our spiritual work, to then enter into the essence of things.
 
But if we just read books or if we go to a church or a temple, and we go through the motions of prayer or spiritual practice, but we ourselves never feel that connection, that power, that inner spark of divinity calling to us, then we are not truly growing internally.
 
We may externally receive some amount of recognition. But when we go to the end of our life, and we evaluate the quality of our quality of being, we may feel empty. We may feel that we have created as Christ said, the whitened sepulcher, which on the outside looks beautiful and holy, but in the inside is dead.
 
And so, what we want is the spiritual birth. We want to enter into the true essence of things, the true essence of ourselves, the true essence of nature and reality, and the true essence of divinity. All of which are essentially one and the same. 

Another great master, Swami Sivananda gave us this practical teaching:
 
“The intelligent or wise one has to discriminate within and advance by himself towards his own goal, his own self, while also searching for the emancipation of others.” —Swami Sivananda
 
It is not about following anyone who claims to be a master, but truly studying in an effort to awaken your own inner discrimination, to find the teachings that resonate with you, that call to you and that awaken your own inner judgment.
 
Many of us have been in situations where we feel a pang of conscience, when we are about to tell a lie and a part of us says: “Mmm… maybe I should just tell the truth!” But then our mind begins to rationalize and to say: “Why? Well, but I’m lying for a good reason. I have a good intention for doing this unethical thing. In the end, I might be able to work things out and brush it over and get away with it.”
 
For some of us, maybe it has been many years since we felt that pang of conscience. But we all have some direct experience of our inner judgment, that discernment. And this is really important as we try to prepare ourselves for initiation. Because, as I mentioned, it is not about any external master saying to you that you are ready. It is about your Internal God, your own inner divinity teaching you, and awakening you, and helping you to grow as a father and mother would a young child.
 
And as a soul, we need to be behaving in a certain kind of way through which we demonstrate the maturity within ourselves to our own inner divinity, that we are willing to learn, that we are humble to learn and to change as people.
 
That is something that only each of us can know. We have guidelines, we have general principles in all the world religions that we are all familiar with and which we can use as a great starting place to gain our bearings, to begin living more ethically. But it is really when we are in a situation and we are observant of ourselves, in the quality of our action, and we act on a vice, and we see the effect of that, and we see how that affects other people and affects us, and create problems in our life. Versus when we do something virtuous, and we see how that ripples towards other people and changes our own quality of being and gives us a sense of peace with ourselves.
 
So, as we begin to evaluate ourselves, regardless of what other people’s judgments about us may be, we have to be very severe with ourselves, and very honest with ourselves. We have to really see in our life: “What are the places where I have compromised myself? And maybe at that time, I did it for what I thought were good reasons. But now I realize that it was really a mistake and that I am missing something of value to me, part of my own soul that I want to reclaim. And what steps can I begin to take to gradually put my life back in order, to get myself back to the place where I feel that I am a person that I can respect, an individual with character that is noble or virtuous?”
 
Or at least striving to that point, because of course, we know this is not something that just happens magically overnight, but it is an effort of the soul that takes tremendous super efforts, day to day, to be continually honest with ourselves and to see where we have shortcomings, where we have anger, greed, gluttony or lust, that is creating problems, that is actually creating suffering. And not because someone else tells us this is creating suffering for us, but because we repeated these behaviors again and again and again and we know that they lead us to the same unfortunate places.
 
When we truly begin to work towards ourselves and understand deeply our own suffering, we begin to see how other people that we love and cherish around us are also suffering. That many people are controlled by their anger or their greed, or their fear, their insecurity and that they live their lives completely controlled by these negative states of mind and they do not understand how to access the power within themselves, to begin to take control over their lives and to access a higher state of being: a state of being that is within the spirit, that has faith not as a mere belief or good intention but truly by directly knowing that what we are doing will produce peace and happiness for themselves.
 
And so this come even more crucial for us as we search for the emancipation of others from their suffering, that we really work to liberate ourselves from our own negativity and our own problematic behaviors and delusional states of mind. 

When I say a delusional state of mind, I mean the mental cage within which we often imprison ourselves. We hold to one belief so strongly. Maybe it is a belief about ourselves. Maybe we believe we are a certain type of person and if someone comes across us who shows us otherwise, who disagrees with us, or who insults us. We cannot help but suffer and be upset and argue or fight, or react in some strong way to that situation.
 
That is all because we have a belief. We have an idea in our mind about who we are. And when we notice challenges, we do not want to see reality. We want to refute reality. We want to argue with reality and observe that this idea that “What I believe is the truth and everyone else is wrong!”
 
And we just do not have ideas about ourselves, but many ideas about how other people are. Maybe many grudges against other people that “Well, you’re always this way. This is just the way that you’re gonna be!” Or ideas about life and maybe some of them are more cynical ideas that really good people don’t make it out in the end. “Maybe it’s only the bad people that really get what they want in life.” Or maybe we have nice beliefs, but that don’t actually produce fruit in our life.
 
So, we have to evaluate our beliefs and we do not necessarily have to throw all them all out right away, but we have to see them for what they are. We must have this discrimination. We must identify how beliefs in our life are a filter through which we are not able to perfectly perceive the reality beyond our mind. 

Anybody who has tried to meditate and silence the mind knows that in the beginning the mind is very chaotic and that is often hard to actually achieve that stability and that quiet of mind through which we can hear any inner voice of the silence as many call that spiritual wisdom.
 
Much of this has to do with how we behave in our physical life. If we are constantly distracted in our physical life for behaving unethically, we are producing imbalances energetically in our mind and in our consciousness. They make it nearly impossible for us to be able to meditate. And we may develop a high degree of concentration, but we may not feel that we are accessing that inner wisdom, because we do not have that balance. We are not vibrating at that level in which we can be in tune with that.
 
It’s really essential for us that we try to not only meditate daily or regular—to an amount that is reasonable for us where we are at—but also that we try to behave ethically and become aware of the way that our mind acts during the day, ad how we become distracted.
 
These are the beginning steps to develop inner discrimination. To be able to see, first of all, our own mind for what it is, and to question our own mind. To separate our own consciousness from the mind. To know that we are not these thoughts, but that we are the perceiver of these thoughts. We are not these emotions, but we are the perceiver of these emotions, and the perceiver of our physical life. And that we have the power to free ourselves from the negative thoughts, and negative emotions, even to have the power to free ourselves from the suffering of our negative life experiences by changing our conscious attitude towards it, and by behaving in new ways that are inspired by our inner wisdom, rather than inspired by our fear or our envy, or anger or greed. 

When we need to awaken this type of judgment, when we realize that we lost the ability to discriminate within ourselves, we have a special practice in the Gnostic teachings that comes from The Magic of the Runes by Samael Aun Weor. But I wanted to read this excerpt for you about the Rune Rita which can you see pictured here, on the slide.
 
“The present runic practice has the power of liberating internal judgment. We need to convert ourselves into judges of consciousness. To awaken the Buddhata (the seed of our own Buddha nature), the soul, is urgent. This rune has the power of awakening the consciousness of the judges. Let us remember what is called remorse, which certainly is the accusing voice of the consciousness.” —Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
 
So, a lot of us have an accusing voice of self-criticism or we are evaluating ourselves according to standards of how others may view us. But this is very different from the genuine remorse of the soul, and the conscience, which tell us right from wrong, which in the moment when we are about to lie tugs at us and say: “Can you behave in a better way? Can you just tell the truth and put this bad behavior aside?” Or whatever that might be. Maybe it is not a lie. Maybe it is something else.
 
But we know that in some cases, what is the right behavior would be the wrong behavior in another circumstance. And that is why is so important to just not blanket a code of conduct, but to really develop our awakened sense of what is right and wrong. To re-awaken it, I should say, because as children I think many of us are more in touch with this. But the more that we act on bad behaviors—and our mind justifies it or gives a really great reason for why we should continue in this route—the further away we get from our  inner conscience.

That is why we want to work with this runic practice, to work with this energy of nature, the energy of our own internal judge, our own inner divinity, which can help us to remember remorse. To remember the part of us that has a great spiritual value, and which suffers tremendously when we compromise it for things which, spiritually, are not of value. Whether that is money or recognition, or relationships, or social status, or a worldly success.
 
It is not that these things are bad in themselves, but if we have to compromise what we believe as right in order to get these things, we are losing a part of our soul. And that part of our soul we may have to work much harder and later on to reclaim. Each of us has to make the decision for ourselves on where we strike that balance of meeting our worldly needs, but doing so in a way that we feel is contributing for something good or a value to the rest of humanity. Or in whatever way we have a particular talent.
 
When we begin to steer off that course, and when we begin to take those steps into a different, which causes us suffering, that we feel that remorse, in order to re-evaluate: “Is this the path that I want to take or are there a variety of other responses that I can bring up, and think of, to this situation, some of which may help me to feel more peace with myself?”
 
And Samael Aun Weor goes on to describe this rune:
 
“Those who never feel remorse are truly very far from their interior judge. Commonly, they are lost cases. People like that must work very intensely with the Rune Rita, thus they will liberate their interior judgement. We need with urgency to learn to be guided by the voice of the silence, that is to say, by the innermost judge.” —Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
 
Within each of us, we have an individualized connection to that universal force of divinity, which as I mentioned earlier, we call the universal consciousness of Christ in this particular tradition. Each of us has our inner spirit, our Innermost God that is our Father or our Mother that is helping us to grow as a soul.
 
When we hear the voice of the silence, we are hearing that powerful, direct experience of our own inner judgment, of our own inner wisdom, which is guiding us in our life. What we need to do next to continue to learn and grow and flourish as a soul, what we need to do is to perhaps make up for the error of our ways.
 
And now, this particular rune, we are going to practice—as I mentioned, if you stick around from the meditation afterwards—we will just try it three times. But simply put, you will stand with your left hand on your hip, and your left leg out to make the shape of an “R.” And then you will repeat:
 
Another Instructor: The mantras RA, RE, RI, RO, RU.
 
Instructor: Each time you pronounce the mantras RA, RE, RI, RO, RU, each of those vowels you are going to hold them for one long breath. What is important is not so much to focus on the vocalization, but to feel that energy, that current within in us, in the spine vibrating throughout our whole body and awakening our consciousness, giving strength to the consciousness, to the soul.
 
Working with this type of energy transforms the forces in nature, takes them into our own body and helps our consciousness to awaken and have more strength.
 
So, we will talk more about his later, but I felt his very important in relationship to preparation for initiation because, frankly, if we do not have our conscience awake, if we do not have to ability to discriminate by ourselves, it is easy to become lost in the sea of life—and in the multitude of spiritual movements and masters, and to no longer have that sight of our inner compass that guide us in our own growth, in our inner development. So, that is why it is truly urgent to awaken that.
 
Additionally, when we do awaken this, we have to act on it. We have to really follow our inner judge, our Inner God, because that will help us to achieve sanctity of our mind and heart. 

The purity of the mind and heart is a prerequisite for spiritual initiation. Now, what we are talking about is an initiation in Christ, in which, degree by degree, we begin to incarnate our own inner spirit more and more, and to express according to our level of development, divinity as it manifests in us. And if we do not have a temple in mind, heart, and body in which divinity can rest, because we are vibrating at an antithetical level of being, then we cannot enter into initiation.
 
Many people are able to develop spiritual powers, to awaken out of their bodies, to work with energy or concentration and all these practices, but they are awakening in a very egotistical way. In a way that strengthens the mind and that strengthens our desires, and many of these desires are desires to overpower other people, to make other people see things the way we want them to be. To gain more influence, to make people like us more or to have more success in our worldly affairs, but not necessarily for good reasons—not to want to have success in our worldly affairs to truly help people, even if that is what we tell ourselves. But maybe our intention on a deeper level is more selfish.
 
And so, that is why each one of us can really determine if we are awakening in a positive way towards God, if we are lessening the sense of our false self and we are really awakening more wisdom and compassion. Or if we are strengthening our sense of self and our sense of pride as an individual, and we are only wanting to accumulate more power and more knowledge in order to gain our selfish ends.
 
And that is why Samael Aun Weor teaches in the book The Major Mysteries:
 
“We need to have the mind of a child in order to enter into the Major Mysteries. We need to be like children in our minds and hearts. We need to be perfect as our Father who is in the heaven is perfect. The great mysteries are not achievable through vain intellectualisms; the Major Mysteries are achievable with the heart of a child.” —Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
 
I know a lot people, a lot spiritual friends who spend much time, whether on the internet or with books, reading and studying about these things. And I myself of course am a very curious person and have read quite a bit about these things, but what is really important is that we can set aside the mental concepts, the intellectual concepts, and we can approach reality as it is, as it presents to us.
 
In order to do that, we do need a purity of mind. As a child, they can see many things which adults have forgotten how to see. If a child is in a room where his or her parents are fighting, they can see that situation and the pain of that situation in a way in which the parents, who may be identified with their particular perspective, are not able to see anymore. Because now they are caught up in the mind, caught up in the sense of self in the tallies of who did what and “What you have done wrong to me,” and “What I deserve,” and all of these ideas about ourselves that we have developed and strengthened into adulthood.
 
And so, we become more aware as adults of the many manipulations and complications of adult life, of our modern world, our society. But oftentimes, we are so caught up in this that we confuse them for reality.
 
Unfortunately, we need to be aware of this in order to navigate society, but society does not have much to do with reality of nature and its existence, and divinity, which is a natural experience that the soul can witness.
 
So, when I talk about simplicity of mind, we have to be able to not totally give up intellectualism, but to set it aside, to put it in his place. To have the mind become the servant of our spiritual goals, rather than to fortify the mind in order to serve the selfish goals of our desires.
 
Really, initiation is achieved by the quality of our heart. It is through the merits of our heart that we raise the Kundalini up each vertebrae of the spinal column and it is through the merits of our heart that our own inner Divine Mother, and our Innermost Father and spirit, judge us and determine whether or not we are worthy of genuine spiritual wisdom, powers and abilities and those types of things.
 
We cultivate this childlike quality the more that we are virtuous and act upon the  genuine ideal that we have for ourselves, a spiritual ideal. If you remember as a child what you thought made up a good person, you may be interested in money or those types of things, but really there is a certain character that you might have strived for. And that is the ideal that we want to re-awaken: the best part of us from our childhood, but now with the wisdom of an adult, with the power of an adult, with the choice of an adult, to be  able to actually give birth to that. 

Also, we have to die in many ways in order to give birth to that inner child.
 
I mentioned about our false beliefs, our false ideas about ourselves, the mental prison in which we live and suffer which causes suffering for us, because we cannot understand reality, we cannot understand other people or ourselves.

This is the part that we have to be willing to let go of. That we have to be willing to change. Maybe it is our addictions, which are not necessarily alcohol or drugs, but our addictions to certain behaviors or ways of thinking and living that we know create suffering for us, but that we just cannot seem to break out of.
 
If we really want to come a more enlightened person, if we really want to work toward the level of development that saints and prophets and masters were able to achieve through their own direct efforts, and through the grace of divinity, then we have to be willing to die to who we are today.
 
You cannot live in both heaven and hell at the same time. This is about our own psychological state of being. We have to be willing to let go of the way that we have lived, the person that we have been when our inner judgment tells us. That that is not taking us anywhere, but into pain. Then we have to be brave and to take those steps courageously into what we believe as right, in order to really have life. To have that inner power and inner life that gives us real meaning and peace.
 
So, Samael Aun Weor writes:
 
“When one enters into gnosis (direct experience of divinity), one has to die in order to live; however, proud intellectual people who have the habit of thinking in accordance to their own whims, vanities and prejudices are not good for these gnostic studies; this is a very difficult enterprise for intellectual people because they only want to stuff their minds with these gnostic studies, and the reality is that gnosis is a very deep functionalism of the consciousness. What we have to do with the mind is to kill it, and thereafter to resurrect it, totally transformed.” —Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
 
We want a new quality of mind. For many of us, mind is out of control. It is going in the same directions day after day, repeating the same thoughts, the same worries, the same problems, seeking the same desires day after day just on repeat.
 
We want to get rid of this old mind, to really fight against it in those moments when we feel that pain of conscience, to not let our mind continue to justify and hypnotize us, but to break free and to allow something new to be born. Because with this new quality of mind, this totally transformed quality of mind, we will have that bright awareness of our experience of life, the quality of mind that can see the best in other people. That can enjoy other people and love other people spontaneously and naturally. That has a wisdom to penetrate into the heart of a situation and to really see its spiritual value, not just its value according to society. 

In order to do this, we do need to work with a very powerful energy, in a very powerful practice. And in our tradition, we call this sexual alchemy.
 
Just as with the practice of the Rune Rita, we are working with our creative energies. We recognize that creativity is born of our sexual energy. And that is why the Kundalini rises from the bottom of the spine where our sexual organs are, and whether male or female, we have physical, sexual seed, sperm or ovum. But we also have an energy within that physical seed which can be transformed, which can be raised into the pineal gland, which will awaken the spiritual nature of our soul which will awaken consciousness, which is beyond the mind and beyond the body. 

Now, as a single person we have the practices which we can use to awaken sparks of that Kundalini energy.  We call these pranayamas, generally speaking, and we can talk more about them [see Gnostic Meditation: Pranayama and Sexual Transmutation], but the one that I primarily teach is just to sit, to focus on that energy, to sit in a meditative comfortable pose, in which the spine is straight or you can lie down if that is more comfortable and to just breathe deeply in trough the nostrils and out through the mouth. And as you are breathing in, visualize that energy as light coming up through the spine into the head, saturating our mind and our pineal gland with that energy, that light, and then breathing out, visualizing that energy moving to the heart.
 
As simple as that, we can harness the breath, we can harness the energy that is within the breath, and within our body and within nature, and begin to strengthen our consciousness that way.
 
But as Samael Aun Weor points out here in his quote, we need sexual alchemy in order to really create the bodies of the soul. This is because nothing in nature, whether physical or spiritual, is born without the union of masculine and feminine principles, the activity of masculine and feminine forces. He writes:
 
“The only objective of the [first] five initiations of Major Mysteries is the fabrication of the solar bodies [the vehicles of the soul]. In Gnosticism and esotericism, one understands that the fabrication of the solar bodies and the incarnation of the Being are known as the Second Birth.” —Samael Aun Weor, Practical Astrology: The Esoteric Treatise of Hermetic Astrology
 
If we truly want to incarnate the force of our inner spirit, of our internal Christ, that is a frequency which is very, very powerful. We have within us currently astral bodies and mental bodies that can transform mental, emotional, and spiritual energies to a degree. But these are relatively weak and dirty vessels and through which the light of divinity struggles to shine.
 
Now through the cooperation of male and female, retaining that energy in the body, we are able to create spiritual bodies, spiritual vehicles: a solar physical body, a solar vital body, a solar astral body, a solar mental body, a solar causal body through which divinity can express on all levels.
 
Now what is important is when we talk about sexual alchemy, we have to retain the sexual, so seed whether male or female, we have to refrain from orgasm, and to transmute that energy upwards. We know that when we let that physical energy out of the body, we produce a physical body. But to harness this energy and to move it inward into the soul, into the consciousness, we can create a spiritual body, a spiritual vessel which is talked about in the Bible as the terrestrial man and the celestial man. We want to create a new type of individual, and so we work with this very powerful energy.
 
The warning here is that we talked about white initiations, which are initiations into divinity, into the light of Christ, and black initiations through which we awaken in ego. We become demons.
 
Now, we may be convinced that we have good intentions, and that we are awakening power because we are really becoming great people. But we have to trust our inner judge to determine if we are walking on an egotistical path or the path of light. When we practice White Sexual Alchemy, we are trying to come into connection with our Inner Christ, our inner divinity. And we are working with a very powerful energy.
 
The outcome of this type of practice is either an angel or demon. So, we will either awaken our own spiritual potential and give birth to our soul, or we will awaken powers, but powers that are demonic, that are entirely engaged in the prison of our false self which grows, and grows, and grows in intensity and increases the suffering of us as an individual and also in others. So we have to really be prepared and really establish our own ethical center before we step into initiation.
 
So, we will be talking a lot more about sexual alchemy and what is involved with that in the rest of the course, which will be talked about by the other instructors. 

But simply put, to give you an outline, for what initiation is—as we teach it here—this outline is just a framework. Of course, the experience of it is something internal, which is experience in our daily life. In fact, Samael Aun Weor says that “Initiation is life itself intensely lived with rectitude and with love.” It is an inner experience, the development of the hero within our own heart, within our soul. But it is something that we create by the way that we face the ordeals presented to us in physical life.
 
Sometimes in astral experiences, in our dream state, we may experience ordeals, symbolic ordeals that strengthen us. But many times these are conflicts that we are having in our physical life, or problems which challenge us, exactly in the way that we talked about before, in which we are very tempted to go in a behavior, which we have repeated many times, but which we have the opportunity now to face ourselves, to understand ourselves, to understand why we have gone in wrong direction before, and to take a step in a more positive direction as we see fit. 

​I separated this chart into four levels or four parts to enter the Major Mysteries. The first is the Guardian of the Threshold. Now, this is described in many traditions as a terrifying beast, which we know in our tradition is the form of our own inner defects. If we looked at ourselves as we truly are, we would see there is a monstrous beast in the mental plane or the astral plane, that we have many vices and many problems, and a lot of suffering within us that we cultivated in and fed our creative energy to throughout this lifetime and even previous lifetimes. 

And so, when we face our own ego, we face the Guardian of the Threshold, we are actually breaking our ties with all of the vices that we carry within. Sometimes, this is described, as in Hinduism, as going to battle with our own beloved relatives. Because our vices and our defects are part of ourselves that we very much cling to. And that feels very comfortable for us that we like a lot. And in Hinduism, Arjuna has to go to battle with his own family members who are doing wrong behaviors. And Krishna, which is in Hinduism the representation of Christ, comes to him an says: “You must do your duty. You must go to battle here.”
 
When we face the Guardian of the Threshold, when we begin to enter into initiation, we begin by breaking all of our ties to the Black Lodge, the Black Lodge being a representation of the black path of initiation, which is the path of vice and selfishness.
 
And we make a commitment to really go against ourselves because we are own worst enemy. So, this is about taking on and battling ourselves. And if we defeat the inner guardian, we have not fully destroyed, but if we defeat it, then we become the master of our energy. We begin to be able to have more power, more self-control in situations.
 
But if we fail in this ordeal, then the Guardian of the Threshold becomes our master and our ego dictates how we will live our life, and creates more suffering for us.
 
Of course, we can battle again, and again, and again. So, we have to be persistent if we fail. 

The next step is the four ordeals of the elements: air, fire, water and earth.
 
These elements come to us through many situations in our life.
 
Air is often associated with instability, with the loss of what one loves, maybe the loss of the job, in which we face a total uncertainty in life and this forces us to develop a quality of consciousness which is unattached, which is able to continue on even in spite of losing stability. We have a lot of movement. And this develops and helps us to balance our consciousness in that area.
 
And the next area in which we need to balance our consciousness or our state of being will be fire, which causes in the ordeals an emotional pain. Criticism from others is often a common ordeal of fire in which we have to respond with the right temperature. Sweetness in many cases is hard to develop in the face of criticism. And so, after we balance our nature to be firm when we must be firm. And to be soft, and gentle, and sweet when we must be. And to not be completely controlled by how other people behave or what the external situation is, but to really have a level of being in ourselves in which we have control over our response.
 
The next area in which we balance the consciousness is water, which is often a very emotional ordeal in that we feel overwhelmed. We are thrown into social circumstances in life, which overwhelm us or force to adapt. Or radically adapt: maybe after moving to a new place, and really radically being able to adapt to a new situation.
 
And finally earth, which helps us to develop the stability and the perseverance of the soul in response to obstacles and difficulties in our life.

After we have made the commitment to the path, and the Guardian of the Threshold in that battle, and then we balance our own consciousness in the four ordeals of the elements, then we begin the initiations of the Minor Mysteries.
 
Now, there are nine initiations of the Minor Mysteries which relate with nine spheres of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, if you are familiar with Judaic mysticism.
 
But what is important is to understand that these Minor Mysteries are different ordeals in our physical life, which may have these qualities of the different elements, but which ultimately test our ability to persevere and to remain true to our spiritual goal, in spite of many temptations and challenges which call us off of the path.
 
It is often called the probationary path because we must pass this before we truly enter into the initiations of the Major Mysteries in which we are giving birth to the soul.
 
Now, a single person can progress through all of three of these parts of the initiatic path [the Guardian of the Threshold, the four ordeals of the elements, and the Minor Mysteries]: the entrance into the initiatic path. But in order to enter into the initiations of the Major Mysteries, in which we give birth to the solar bodies, the solar vehicles, we must be married. We must be working with our spouse in Sexual Alchemy.
 
As I mentioned, we are going to talk a lot more about that, and all of these different faces of initiation in future lectures. 

What I really want to emphasize and summarize in this preparation for initiation is that is completely up to us to enter into initiation. Each person, regardless of their culture or their religious background, or their upbringing, or their current physical situation in life, has within the main connection to their inner divinity—has a spark of conscience which can be fed and strengthened. And each of us has within us an inner Father and Mother that want us to grow spiritually.
 
The whole purpose of our existence physically is for us to realize a certain spiritual truth about ourselves: to have an understanding of nature, and reality, and divinity, and ourselves. And oftentimes we are so distracted and hypnotized by the many things that we must keep up with in society, that we forget about the real reason why we are alive.
 
So, to take the time to really assess our current situation in life in meditation, and to really evaluate the different areas of our life that we spend most of our time and energy and to see where we have compromised our values, and to begin to take steps back to where we really believe we are leaving our spiritual dignity and integrity as a person—that is the preparation for initiation.
 
And when we couple that with preservation and the purity of our sexual energy through transmutation, then we are really knocking on the door to enter into initiation. And our inner divinity, and all of these masters—that we have talked about in religions, which still exist in the spiritual nature of our reality—will come. The masters of the White Lodge, the prophets, you know, whichever spiritual master that you resonate with can help you, can aid you in this journey because it is very difficult, but that will come from within.
 
We can be in spiritual groups and we can be in spiritual schools, and we can read spiritual books. And these can be of help to us if we are awakening our own inner discernment. But we must be careful not to get caught up in the politics of many religions. And to not get caught up in problems that will distract us from the real growth of the soul, and from cultivating within us that type of being and spiritual potential that we are really capable of.
 
Does anyone have questions?

Question: How do when we know when you have created solar bodies?
 
Instructor: Some people have created solar bodies in previous lifetimes, although this is pretty rare, speaking for humanity. And so, if that is the case you would know because you will be awakened in the astral plane, in the mental plane, in the causal plane, depending on which solar bodies were used, and not just a moment of awakening which every person can experience, but continuous awakening and being able to consciously project oneself out of the body and travel at will.
 
Now, if one has created these bodies in past lives and but then fell, for example, lost their sexual energy or behaved very unethically and lost that level of development, the spirit still maintains that degree of initiation. The initiations never belong to the human person, but always belong to the inner spirit. And so, that spirit can never fall, but the soul can fall. So, the soul will have to recapitulate and re-go through all of these steps of initiation in order to re-gain access to those solar vehicles. 
 
Question: When the Kundalini rises according to degrees…
 
Instructor: According to the vertebrae…
 
Question: If it doesn’t do that, it just rises?
 
Instructor: We can have sparks. We can have very vivid experiences in which all at once you now feel this fire, this illumination. But if that experience passes, and we’re back with the same problems that we always have in life, if we haven’t fundamentally shifted as a person in our quality of being, the essence of who we are hasn’t really grown and developed.
 
That was just an experience meant to help us and to teach us that we actually have to do the hard work. Just as physical body is important in a day and develops over many months, so with our soul do we have to go through the pains of labor, so to speak, and develop those growing pains of the soul, in which we struggle against ourselves in order to become upright individuals.
 
Question: So that’s almost better though?
 
Instructor: Well, nature doesn’t take leaps. So, naturally speaking, there are certain people who say you can pay us twenty thousand dollars and we’ll awaken your Kundalini and they will produce some sort of energetic experience for you, but that’s very different from what we’re talking about initiations into the Christic Path, actually incarnating our own Being happens degree by degree.
 
Question: Kind of going back to the topic of Kundalini. So, you’re saying that in the Minor Mysteries, the Probationary Path, that’s when you’re moving up the Tree of Life, correct?
 
Instructor: You are actually cleaning out the parts of you that are submerged in the inferior Tree of Life. So the Tree of Life has a shadow in the hell realms. And we actually have each time to clean out the parts of us that are trapped there.
 
Question: So at that point you’re starting off from Malkuth (the Kingdom)?
 
Instructor: Sure, actually, I guess it would be the inverted Yesod. Not much is written about the Minor Mysteries. Experientially, you are experiencing parts of yourself that are very rigid, psychologically speaking, that are very hard to work against. Perhaps you have an answer to this if you start in the inverted Kether or if you start in the inverted Yesod.
 
Another Instructor: So Dante talks about the nine inverted hell realms, spheres of Klipoth, which is the Hebrew term meaing, “shells” or the world of ego, which exists as they mentioned within the interior of the Earth. If you physically go into the terrestrial crust, you will find caves or caverns, but not people, because the infraconscious dimensions are in the astral plane, but inverted. And as part of the Minor Mysteries, we need to transform ourselves. So, we start to perceive internally experiences about our own inner hell. Because the White Lodge, the Christic Lodge is showing us what you need to work on in order to change.
 
So, yes, to go up you first will go down. Every ascension is preceded by a descent. This is why in every cosmogony or epic the hero has to enter the hell realms first, which is why Aeneas, from The Aeneid by Virgil, has to descend in order to find the truth that is hidden in those realms. Because our soul is trapped. Part of our consciousness is conditioned in ego, which belongs to those dense regions of nature. 

Then, if you want to go up, to ascend the Tree of Life, you progressively must go down, to see and investigate parts of yourself: your anger, pride, lust, fear, laziness, ego. So that by working on those false and understanding them, we can extract light. So, first as Dante depicted in The Divine Comedy, you want to go to Paradiso, Paradise. He states that if you first descend Inferno, relating to initiation, because every type of exaltation in divinity, every type of progress is stipulated upon what we have worked on eliminate the Guardian. Maybe in that way, you get started into higher stages of the path, such as Purgatory, and then, at the end to experience all the bliss.
 
Unfortunately humanity, whenever people enter religion, or spiritual studies of this type, we all want to go the Paradise first. But the truth is, if you enter the Major Mysteries, you will have astral experiences where the masters of the White Lodge will come to you and will show you: “you need to descend first.”
 
Personally, when I first started this teaching, I had an experience in which I was being attacked by a demon in the astral plane. And so, I was of course, in the beginning, terrified. Then, a master came up to me from the White Lodge and said, “Descend into the Earth!” He started to conjure this demon and kept him away from me. So, I obeyed these orders and went down through many layers within this internal dimension. 

And then finally I came to a cavern where found sepulchers, tomb with the bones, debris. I intuitively got that I had to go out of that cave and in that experience I eventually found myself in Egypt in the astral plane, where I saw the temple of Giza, which physically is an ancient piece of architecture, which is a cadaver.
 
But in the internal planes the temple of Giza is active. And that temple was, I remember looking at the three pyramids and seeing the light of Christ there. And the Egyptian masters opened the doorway and let me in. And I remember having many other teachings they gave me related to this process. But the simple reality is that they were showing me: “You want to enter this temple, like the great masters before in antiquity, but first go into your Earth, descend down into your own mind. Confront yourself!” And the term descent simply means to face the results of our previous actions, our mistakes.
 
So, you can have experiences like that, that show you what the Minor Mysteries are. And there are many other ways to verify where you are at through symbols, which is why we study the Kabbalah, which is Jewish mysticism, the language of the internal planes.
 
Every religion has its symbolism. The cross of Christianity or Jainism, many traditions have the same symbols, which is why we balance the study the different religious traditions and accompany them with our meditation, so that we can verify and understand: “This is where I am at.” First, you have to face that which conditions us first, and when you free consciousness then, they say, “Enter our temple, and let us help you.”
 
In the beginning we get a lot of help, because, as we are now, we need light. And sometimes those masters will come to you and awaken your consciousness with the [snaps fingers] spark, when you are working with energy exercises, such as pranayama, mantras, runes, sacred rites of rejuvenation, which we have available in books, but also on the websites.
 
When you start to spark that energy in yourselves, the sexual energy, conserving it, transforming it, you start to have the fire that is going to empower your soul. And that is the beginning, to initiate. So, you can awaken sparks of Kundalini; it does not rise immediately, but you are, so to speak, fanning the flames. The coal is heated, so you have a spark, so you could have ecstasies, experiences, but to do that you need to descend, not only to the Earth, but literally into your physical life. Because Malkuth in Kabbalah, the bottom sphere of the Tree of Life, is our body.
 
In the internal planes or in the cavern so to speak, you have to discriminate what is happening physically, in our jobs, in our homes, in our bedroom, looking at our behaviors. Because if we act egotistically, we are wasting energy. And then, if you have no energy, you cannot see. I mean if physically you waste energy or expend energies, you feel tired. The consciousness also goes to sleep if we have no force, which is why in the beginning of religion: ethics. If you want to enter the Minor Mysteries, train your mind. Save your energy. And when you build that up, and you are changing your physical life, your behaviors, and no longer performing actions that harm yourself or others, then you have a reservoir [of energy] which you can start to see.
 
Instructor: So, as you can tell, that is why we will be continuing with this course because there is much to say on each of these different parts. And even more beyond this. This is just the beginning. There are initiations of fire and initiations of light. Many things are already written on the books, so this will be an ongoing course in which we have a lot more to say.    

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.”

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. 

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.” 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.

So again, I show Padmasambhava with his consort. He stated very interestingly that:
 
“Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation.”
 
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.

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? 

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 on chicagognosis.org 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.

So welcome everybody to our introductory course on the studies of spirituality within all traditions.
 
In this type of study we emphasize that the human being, as he or she is now, has the potential to become something more, something greater, and profound. Contrary to conventional belief, that the human being as we are now is the epitome or the peak of potential, we state that this is a false assumption.
 
Every tradition in the world has taught or been delivered by all the messengers of divinity, no matter what the tradition. We study in this school all of the teachings of these different faiths, primarily because we want to look at the heart, the essence of spirituality, because it is universal. It is one intelligence; one type of understanding that expresses in accordance with the needs, the language, the culture, the qualities of the students, the time and place in which those teachings were given.
 
But if you really look at the heart of what yoga teaches, Buddhism teaches, Judeo-Christianity or whatever faith, we find that at the heart, there is a science by which one can achieve what people call religion. The word religion in Latin means “reunion,” religare. In the East, it is yoga, from the Sanskrit yug, “to reunite.” And all these traditions have taught that the human being is a seed, has potential to become something truly divine and magnanimous, beautiful.
 
Different religions called this seed consciousness. The Buddhists call it Buddhadhatu, the seed of a Buddha, an awakened one, a master.
 
The Christians and Muslims and Jews have called it soul, and there are many names for that quality of being in those faiths. In this study, we call it the Essence. It is the pure potential to reflect divinity, and this is something that we can experience for ourselves when we know the science of meditation and when we practice it.
 
We can develop that potential in ourselves and have the experience of what different traditions have called divinity. That knowledge amongst the Greeks was called gnosis, but not intellectual knowledge. A lot of people in the West, especially in academies, like to think that gnosis was isolated to the first Christians, but that experiential wisdom of knowing divinity has nothing to do with theory, with believing, with a concept. It is what we know by experiencing the awakening of our Essence.

They are very vivid experiences which have been allegorized in all the scriptures. You have Moses on Mount Sinai, you have Krishna, like in this image, manifesting all of his qualities to the meditator, known as Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita. You have many faiths, many stories. The Greek mysteries, the Buddhist teachings, they are all symbols of internal truths. It is not literally that Moses went on a physical mountain and saw God, that it was a physical experience. It is a spiritual and psychological experience, something we witness in meditation, inside.
 
We can verify these things for ourselves through experimentation, through practice and therefore we don't need to believe in anything, to follow an institution, a religion, a dogma, a belief system. We like to be very practical in this type of studies.
 
But of course, it is a very difficult thing to do. It is not easy to experience divinity, to conquer in ourselves the causes of suffering, to understand that which in our own life really conditions and makes us suffer, because there is a reason why we may not know God now or divinity or Brahma, Christ amongst the original Christians, which is not a person. It is a type of consciousness that is universal, which different traditions call by different names and have been symbolized by all the beautiful paintings of any tradition.
 
These are not literal people. These are qualities of being, and in this image we see the Lord Krishna who is the Hindu Christ, that divine consciousness that is not personal to just one individual, but is universal to all beings. We see that he is a child seated with one hand facing up, the other down, and he is surrounded by millions of figures. This is a beautiful painting about the experience of the meditator Arjuna who asked Krishna, “I want to see You in Your true form. Show me in my consciousness, in my meditations, what You are.” And then Krishna, or divinity, manifested in a form of images―not physical images, but images we can see in meditation or in dreams.
 
This is very beautiful experience that was depicted in this scripture. And you see that all these multitudes of figures represent all the universal qualities of divinity, which are inside: compassion, divine love, selflessness, patience, compassion. But to really develop these qualities in us is not easy. If it were easy, then all of humanity will be a very different state of being. This planet would be a very different place.
 
So this indicates to us that these qualities are not developed in a permanent sense, are not realized in our own daily life, and so in these studies we like to be very practical. We like to analyze certain methods of meditation that teach us how to have that experience, and how to develop and maintain that state. I am sure any one of us who studies any type of meditation or is attracted to religion or any type of faith, they really deep down want to have that experience. They want to escape suffering. 
 
This difficult path of meditation has been discussed in all religions. It is not easy to confront in oneself negative states like anger, resentment, pride, fear, laziness, lust, desire. All traditions teach that it is these negative qualities of mind that trap us. They enclose our potential in a static state. It is not active because in us, that potential is not active or developed. It has to be freed. It has to be worked upon very intentionally.
 
So in the beginning some people practice meditation and they may have an experience seemingly by accident, but the reality is that there are certain causes and conditions that brought about that state. One may not be aware of how and why. Some people call this spiritual awakening, insight. It happens. But if we want to be permanently established in that state, it is important to put forth the causes and the conditions that produce that reality in a permanent way. 
 
So this is called self-realization amongst the Hindus, the realization of our true identity, which is divine. It is the awakening of consciousness. But of course, developing that is challenging, primarily because of the difficulty of our own conditions of mind, which is why in the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 7, verse 3 state:
 
"Among thousands of men (or women, practitioners) one perchance strives for perfection (to realize that perfect divinity inside. As Jesus of Nazareth stated, "Be perfect as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.") Even among those successful strivers (those who are really working to experience that truth) only one perchance knows me in essence."
 
So again, these are levels of consciousness. I believe even the 14th Dalai Lama stated that consciousness has the potential to expand to an infinite degree―so other levels of knowledge, levels of understanding.

This tradition or this statement has been paralleled in the Christian Gospel by Jesus, who was an incarnation of Christ. He manifested that divinity in himself, and with his life was allegorizing certain steps and stages about the spiritual path. 
 
He also said, "Enter by the narrow gate." Enter into the meditative path that awakens your full potential, your seed, your Essence of soul. "For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it by are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to spiritual life, and those who find it are few." ―Matthew 7:13

Think of an analogy of a tree. A pine tree has thousands and thousands of seeds. How many of them actually become a full tree when they land on the Earth? You may have a handful, or one or two. A few. So spiritual development is no different than nature. Things happen progressively in steps, when the causes and conditions are ripe. In order for a seed to develop into a pine tree, it needs water. It needs appropriate soil. It needs sunlight. It needs the conditions that give birth to that full development of a tree.
 
But of course, many seeds are lost, and this is the sad reality. Our true potential is not a guarantee, that it will develop into something fully perfect and divine.
 
And this is very evident by the state of humanity today. We can look at the news and simply see the state of crisis in which people are afflicted: wars, violence, acts of destruction, which are truly horrendous. It is evident by the state of our culture and this planet that people are not developing the seed of their spirituality. It is a difficult fact to realize. It is very unpleasant. If that seed were fully manifested and developed, there would be no wars, because divinity is compassion. It is love. So it's evident that this seed of humanity is not generating into a tree. It is degenerating. It is not being developed. And so any person who looks at the news and feels that horror of what this planet is in, evidently feels inspired to want to know the reason why, and as well to escape that type of destruction, which is very prevalent.
 
And so how do we develop that seed? There are beautiful stories and many scriptures that can teach us about that development. The Bible is one of them, which is a very misunderstood text, read very literally, dogmatically. People don't understand that scriptures like the Bible are telling parables through stories. They represent principles and truths which are psychological, spiritual. We have a very famous statement in the Book of Matthew, chapter 13, verses 31 to 32 about the development of that perfect seed, how the seed of the human being can become a god, an angel, a buddha, a deva, a jinn―whatever name we want to give to that fully self-realized and perfected individual.
 
“Another parable put he forth unto them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge and the branches thereof." ―Matthew 13:31-32
 
Individuals like Jesus or Krishna, Moses, were once like us, a seed. But because of certain discipline of mind and training, they became the individuals that we emulate, in which millions of people follow, who are inspired. We like to think in this culture or even for thousands of years that those were just exceptional people. It had nothing to do with people like us, that somehow they receive the grace of God and were able to have those experiences, which is true to a degree. But the reality is that they worked to become them.
 
They were once like us, people afflicted by fear and distress and anxiety and suffering. But because of their tremendous compassion and their work ethic, they were able to become enlightened beings. And like a tree, they can house through their teachings and their instructions, all of the birds of heaven, all the saints, all the students of meditation who really want to become like that. 

You have many myths and stories throughout the world that teach and allegorize, whether in art or religious scriptures, stories that all teach the same thing: that we are a seed. We could become like divinity into a fully developed Christmas tree. If you are familiar with the Christmas tradition or the Christian tradition, people like to decorate a pine tree with many stars and globes and luminous objects and a star the very top. It s a very ancient symbol of this concept. The soul became a fully developed master of meditation and has lights illuminating that tree. It is a symbol of what we can become, as performed on the Nativity of Christ, the birth of Jesus, who symbolizes the birth of divinity in our hearts through practice and specific methods.
 
There is a very ancient teaching in the Aztec and Mayan religions that also point towards this concept. Samael Aun Weor who is the founder of the modern Gnostic tradition of which we study, wrote in a book called The Great Rebellion:
 
“One codex of Anahuac states that, ‘The Gods created humans of wood, and after having created them, fused them with divinity.’ But later adds, ‘Not all humans achieve integration with divinity.’” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion
 
So what does it mean that the gods made people made of wood? A very interesting concept which anthropologists like to laugh at and read literally, thinking these are very superficial people or ignorant people who believe that, literally, people were made of wood by the gods.
 
Unfortunately, that materialistic view point misses the point. There is something symbolic here. 

Even in art, amongst the Greco-Roman tradition, Renaissance art, European art, they reflected these concepts in their images. But people who are very materialistic like the thing that God is a person, physical. They don't understand that it is a representation of something spiritual and conscious, psychological. This is the creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel: a beautiful symbol of the development of or creation of the soul.

Some of you may be familiar with a story called Pinocchio, which also hides this truth. It was written by Carlo Collodi, who was an Italian author, and wrote about the story of a wooden boy that wanted to become a human being. It is a symbol. His writing was intentionally veiled in the form of a children's tale so as to avoid persecution. He was writing for a very select group of people who are studying this type of knowledge that was at the time forbidden to unveil or convey, primarily because people would not understand it and would create problems, because this type of thinking goes against the grain of institutionalized dogma. We can only think of the inquisition as an example.
 
So “Pinocchio, Pinoccoli or Pinocchio is the Tuscan Florentine word for pine nut or pine seed.” It is a symbol of us. We are a seed in a potential state that may want or feel inspired to become a fully developed human being, a person of flesh and bone, a fully developed being, a spiritually enlightened one. 

There is a lot of teachings in that story which are very beautiful and profound, symbolic. And if we read it from the knowledge of three types of science, we can gain a lot of understanding.
 
Those three sciences are known in different cultures and traditions, which we study in synthesis here. The word esoteric means “secret, hidden,” that which has not been taught publicly. These esoteric sciences, while some aspects of these traditions have been conveyed to the public, they were never fully explained until very recently, through the effort of many authors throughout different traditions, such as the Western Esoteric Tradition: the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy of Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner's writings, from Anthroposophy, and many other teachings.
 
We study these three sciences called Kabbalah, alchemy and psychology, in order to develop our full potential. Kabbalah, alchemy, in the Book of Genesis, in the Old Testament, are called the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. These are symbols, practical methods and ways of study that can awaken the seed and develop it. These are not literal trees in the Middle East, that people think a single man and a single woman existed in a garden in Mesopotamia many millennia ago. That is a very literal teaching or interpretation.
 
What people don't recognize is that these sciences permeate all of the language of the Bible, but because people have not been instructed about the symbolic nature of those types of teachings, they of course read it like a newspaper. They don't really see the real value and depth of that instruction.

קַבָּלָה Kabbalah is the Tree of Life. These Hebrew letters read from right to left. The word קבל kabel in Hebrew means “to receive.” You may have heard many Jews study Kabbalah in this time. Real Kabbalah, in its spiritual sense, is knowledge that we receive from divinity, from direct experience. We can study Kabbalah intellectually and read books, but it doesn't equate with the actual personal verification of meditation for ourselves.
 
Kabbalah is a beautiful teaching that is symbolic and helps us understand all the parables and stories of the Bible, because the Hebrew letters themselves represent numbers, which are spiritual. They represent things, qualities of consciousness, and these letters also represent qualities of soul, which we study very didactically in our courses of Kabbalah, which we have on our website chicagognosis.org, or you can study also on gnosticteachings.org.

We also have the science of alchemy, or the Arabic الكيمياء: Allah-Khemia. The word Al or El in Hebrew is God. Khemia is a Greek term meaning chemistry: to fuse or cast a metal. Many people have heard of alchemy as being a medieval superstition of people literally trying to transform lead into gold, out of greed, and there are people who were like that, who misinterpreted this tradition to think that they could actually accomplish this feat. But the real depth and knowledge, the spiritual symbol of alchemy, is transforming the lead of the personality, our own negative states of mind into the gold of the Spirit. It is also the work with energy, working with all the energies we have in our body, in our heart, in our mind, so that we can fuse like a metal with divinity. 

And then lastly we have psychology. This is the Greek (ψυχολογία psychologia) read from left to right. Psychology in these times is divorced from spirituality. People think psychology is simply the study of the mind, the brain. If you look at the original etymology, psychology is actually something very dynamic.
 
It comes from psyche, logos. Psyche is soul. It is consciousness. It is the essence of a person. It is not just the intellect, because truly in our depth, we are more than just a mind. We have a heart. We have a body. The consciousness is not just thinking. It is the ability to perceive, even beyond thought. So psyche and logos or logos, in its original term, means “word.” You may be familiar with the Book of John: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Greek word is logos. “In the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” These are symbols or qualities of being.
 
So what is genuine psychology and it's real root? It is how the soul, psyche, through meditation, unites with logos. Very simple. It also has to do with studying the obstacles in our own mind that create conflict for us.
 
We develop the seed of our potential through these sciences, and we will explain about these three in synthesis today.

So the word seed has a very interesting connotation. A seed is the sexual synthesis of any being, whether from plants, from animals, from human beings. That seed of a person, of a soul, can be developed, very intentionally, when we learn how to work with all the energies that we carry within―not just our heart or mind, but even our creative potential.
 
That seed, which is sexual, our creative sexual potential, can give birth to a human being. We know this. The seed of a man and a seed of woman can unite to create a child, but people do not know that that very same seed, that energy or power that can create a human being, can create the soul, can fully empower it, because it is the power of life.
 
It is the most powerful creative power a human being possesses. It is how all societies are run. People are born through the seed. They have life. And just as physically we can have life with this body, the generation of our physical temple, we can also learn to transform the sexual seed through specific practices, transform that seed into energy, because creative sexuality is a tremendous power and a powerful responsibility. It is a tremendous responsibility to give birth to a child. It is very serious. But even more so, to give birth to a child within us, our full spiritual development, is even a greater responsibility. It has more power.
 
We can do that by learning to work with our energies. Some people may be familiar with Buddhism, of tantra, spiritual union, sexual union of husband and wife, working to connect from a state of purity of mind in order to transform everything that they have into developing their spirituality. This is why all traditions and all religions have really fought and explain that marital union, the love between husband and wife―not in a legal sense or in terms of paperwork, but from a conscious standpoint―has tremendous power, tremendous responsibility. The Bible relates some of these teachings in a very symbolic way, which people have interpreted, again, literally, but we'll explain some of the alchemical significance of these lines. 
 
"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made..." ―Galatians 3:16
 
If you are familiar with the Old Testament, Abraham is one of the patriarchs of Judaism, the founding fathers. His people, the Jews, were promised by divinity that they would receive help. This is the fundamental, literal meaning. But if you look at this in a symbolic way, there is something more interesting.
 
"He saith not, And to seeds, as of many." ― Galatians 3:16
 
Meaning: individual people, because every person is a seed. When they are child, they grow and become a human being.
 
"But as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." ―Galatians 3:16

So what is that seed that is mentioned in the Book of Galatians? We could look at this image of a elderly man with a sun emanating from his genitalia, a book in his hand, a staff of power in his left. This is from the medieval tradition of alchemy. So many alchemists, who knew the science of uniting with divinity, taught their truths through art. They didn't explain this explicitly, because they would face many problems and persecutions, many scandals.
 
So they taught through art, and this is a very beautiful image representing an elderly man who is a symbol of our own inner divinity, the figure Jehovah amongst the Jews. He holds a book in his hand, referring to study, the need to study oneself, one's life. He also has a staff in his hand, representing a weapon, a type of will that is needed in order to achieve genuine religion. We have a sun emanating from his sexual organs because, just as the ancient people knew that the sun gives life to all things, they made the connection and knew that our own sexual seed is the power of generation.
 
The sun generates all life in every level. We could not exist on this planet without light, and so the ancients knew that this seed is a type of solar force. It is a solar energy. It is a power that can give life. And even Plato and many Greek masters knew that the ultimate divinity is the sun, the Platonic Logos. Or like Jesus, and the great paintings has a halo of light around his head, because he has used his own seed to transform that, and to develop the light of the saints. He is a Christmas tree with light, with spirituality.
 
There is a statement by Samael Aun Weor in the book The Great Rebellion. He states that:
 
“The Sun has deposited the seeds within the sexual glands of the intellectual animal in order to germinate a Human Being.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion
 
Some people get offended when they hear this term. But if you look at the story of Pinocchio, he was a wooden boy. He wanted to become a real, fully developed human being made into the image of divinity. And what is an animal? It comes from the Latin anima; to animate, to have life. If we look at humanity, we find that all the violence and wars and bloodshed and poverty and affliction is not the result of our own humanity, but that which is animal in us: anger, violence, prostitution, hatred, lust, envy. These are qualities that are animalistic, instinctive, and we all possess those elements.
 
But unfortunately, it is a very difficult thing to see how our own states of mind are the cause of our suffering. These are animal qualities. And because we have the intellect, we can rationalize. We are anima, souls, with intellect. But an intellectual animal is any one of us who has the seed and who can develop into a perfectly enlightened being, like in this image.
 
And what is a real human being? You can look at the Sanskrit: hum-man. Hum means “spirit.” Man or manas means “mind.”  It is a mind that is united with hum, the spirit. And what is that Spirit? Like in the previous image, we saw Jehovah pointing his finger towards Adam, creating the soul, a symbol of creating the perfect being, not a literal history. That represents how the spiritual force of divinity is fully perfected in manifested in us. That is a real human being, hum-man, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna. They fully manifested all the qualities of the Spirit in a perfect way. That is a real human being.
 
But when we are criticized and we respond with anger and say very negative things, it indicates to us that we have much from the animal kingdom inside. Science and popular culture likes to defend that which is animal. You see it in our television, in our movies, in our cinemas, in our sports, in our fighting for power, in our politics, in our religions. These are animal qualities: competition, fighting, debating, arguing, inflicting harm.
 
But a human being is beyond that. Has transformed the seed into something perfected and we can do that by working with our energies through the science of alchemy.
 
“Obviously, such seeds can develop or be ultimately lost.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion
 
Going back to the quote of Jesus and the Book of Matthew or the gospel of Krishna.
 
“If we want those seeds to develop, it is essential to cooperate with the efforts that the Sun is making in order to create Humans.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion

We have other images in this graphic, a lion beneath the genitalia of this elderly figure. You may be familiar with the Christian tradition of the Lion of Judah. It is a symbol of the strength and power divinity. You have also figures below who are fighting, grappling each other with swords and weapons, doing acrobatic acts, playing games. That represents all of humanity, people who don't really take spirituality seriously, their conscious life seriously, because they choose to engage in frivolities and wars.
 
So what is the way to escape the circus of humanity, the chaos? It is by studying ourselves like in this open book, and using our staff, which is a symbol of willpower, of daily effort. 

Since we are explaining about the seed of generation, we find a very beautiful teaching in the story of Jesus talking to Nicodemus. It is very common knowledge amongst Christians, or the belief that one is born again through belief. This is from the old scriptures of the Gospels, a very famous teaching that is not very well understood.
 
“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” ―John 3:5
 
People commonly interpret this as baptism, a ceremony or ritual in the church that one has received the water of spirituality and is blessed and then is saved.
 
Unfortunately, this type of thinking does not really address the practical problems of our sufferings. We may believe in divinity, in an institution or a church. We may be inspired by our groups. This is all necessary and beautiful, but belief does not change suffering. We continue to suffer whether we think something is true or not. The way that one overcomes suffering is through action, through work. But in a more deeper level, this scripture hides something very interesting that relates to alchemy, spiritual birth, the birth of the soul.
 
That which is born of the flesh is flesh. Obviously people do not need to be taught how to generate a physical child. But that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Through the matrimony or union of man and woman, one can give birth to a physical child, but that which is born of the Spirit through the same union, can give birth to the Spirit.
 
But of course, there are very specific procedures involved. When the couple works in their marriage or their union―and when I mean marriage, I don't mean papers, but a real marital union is the union of two souls that love one another perfectly, that are selfless and working on themselves, fully investing all their energy and love and potential, not only for their own benefit, but for the benefit of others. So that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
 
Birth is a sexual problem. In order to give birth physically we need male-female. But Jesus was indicating symbolically how through the same connection, but done with purity and with specific methods, one can give birth to the soul, the Spirit. And this is symbolized in some of the Kabbalistic meaning, the language of this scripture, which if you see these letters:
 
“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born (ה) of water (מ) and of the Spirit (ש), he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” ―John 3:5
 
This is Hebrew. We can look at the meaning of these individual letters, transpose over certain aspects of his explanation. This letter is called ה Hei. It is related to birth. It is even shaped like a womb. The letter ה Hei refers to birth, genesis, the divine feminine. The next letter is water relating to מ Mem, and מ Mem has two forms. There is an open Mem (מ) and there is a closed Mem (ם). Sometimes in Hebrew, when a letter is at the end of a word or name, it takes on a different configuration, but it is the same letter, the same meaning. Now water is מ Mem. You have very famous references in the Bible to water: the water of life, the fountain of youth, the waters of Genesis, how the world was made and life came from the waters. 
 
Again, the book of Genesis is not literal, a literal history, but refers to the birth of the soul. Those waters are our own sexual fluids, the creative waters of life, which, when they are conserved and transformed, can generate a lot of power, to give strength to our spirituality and make us truly warriors, those who really work out of compassion for others and generate all the beautiful qualities of the soul.
 
So “except a man” or person “be born of water and Spirit,” and the word Spirit relates to this letter called ש Shin. ש Shin has three prongs and refers to fire, but not a literal fire. It's a spiritual force, a power. Remember that Moses saw the burning bush, that Tree of Life, the Being, the divine, our true nature, inflamed with fire and light. Or Krishna with all those figures and light emanating from him. It's fire. It is a type of energy. It is not a literal fire in the kitchen. It is a fire that gives birth and light and understanding to our life.
 
That fire is contained within our own waters, because obviously, when a couple engages sexually, they are inflamed. The organs are inflamed. There is energy circulating, and the Buddhists call this tantra. Tantra is Sanskrit for circuitry. This is the circuitry of God. That fire can be conserved and circulated throughout the body and the mind to give youth. That energy which can create a child can rejuvenate the body and the soul, create harmony in every level. So if one is not born of water and the Spirit, one cannot enter the kingdom of God. This is the meaning of “to be born again.” It is a pure marriage or union. And again, marriage has nothing to do with paperwork. It has to do with love.
 
So you look at these Hebrew letters and the science of Kabbalah teaches this very beautifully. These letters can be reorganized in different ways in order to spell different meanings. You use these three letters to spell השם Hashem, which in Judaism they say ברוך השם אדוני Baruch Hashem Adonai meaning: “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” השם Hashem is a reference to the highest identity amongst the Kabbalists. You also take those letters and switch them around you spell משה Moshe, Moses. 

Moses is a figure in the Bible or was a real person, but can represent something psychological, spiritual. He frees the Jews from this bondage in Egypt, which are psychological parables that teach about freeing the soul from the bondage of suffering and returning all of the parts of our soul to the Promised Land.
 
So all this is very interconnected and very interesting, and there are many connections we can draw between this tradition and many others. I am just providing a very general example that highlights that this is a very intricate and beautiful teaching. Very dynamic, but very simple in synthesis.

And as I stated, birth is a sexual problem. It is born from the Genesis of two human beings, male-female. And Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Perfect Matrimony:
 
“A seed never germinates because of what a person believes or stops believing. An insect is never born because of what a human being thinks or stops thinking. A man is never born from the parchment of theory. This subject matter is sexual and in this, the angel is no exception.” ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony
 
“Unless be you be born again of water and Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God."
 
So this is the highest level teaching given in Buddhism, in Christianity, in Sufism. The mystics of Islam talk a lot about the love of the soul with divinity, but unfortunately people like to extrapolate, and they don't see the connection that we show the highest love of divinity in one's relationship, which is sexual. We show our love not only just with words, but with connection, because that is how the circuitry of God exists, how the energy flow between male-female.

So this is an image of Padmasambhava from the Buddhist tradition, who is showing the highest teachings of yoga tantra, where literally yoga is “union, reunion.” There is no greater power or reunion with divinity than in the sexual act, because men and women can create a child. They  can create life.
 
This is Padmasambhava with his consort, his wife, and he explained that in order to enter the highest teaching, individuals must be prepared through a lot of work in meditation on themselves, because the obvious difficulty of sexual connection is having that energy buildup and losing it. So the foundation of all traditions of meditation always taught chastity. Of course, this is a very misunderstood science today. People think of chastity simply meaning abstention from sex. But chastity has to do with purity. It means immaculate purity. So by conserving that power, one can transform it, raise it through the body, the different centers of energy in ourselves, in our mind, our psyche. And this is how spiritual birth occurs, by working with that energy. 
 
“Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” ―1 John 3:9
 
So the essential component is that the seed remains inside. That energy is never let out, whether it is to procreate a child or for simple animal pleasure. So it is a very specific procedure. That seed is never lost. Instead, it is transformed into energy through certain exercises and prayers. It is done with a tremendous sense of respect and love and purity and honor.

Lastly we will talk a little bit about psychology. So we mentioned a little bit about Kabbalah, the Hebrew letters. We also talked about the science of alchemy: fusing oneself with divinity, working with our most vital principles.
 
In these times, there is a predisposition to believe that we are the intellect. We are the mind. Because we think, we rationalize, we conceptualize. But we emphasized that the mind is not our genuine identity. It is not really the full essence of what we are, because we have perception even before thought. But in these times, people tend to identify very much with intellect, with thinking, with concepts and rationalization, because in the West, especially, that is the foundation of our culture. We are very intellectual people.
 
We do use the intellect for our spiritual studies and we need it. We need it to exist in this society, but it is not the sum total of what an individual is. Consciousness is very different from mind. Consciousness is the ability to perceive, to know, to understand. And we can understand things without having to think.
 
This is very evident by certain experiences of businessmen who go to meetings, as an example, and they think and they think, they think, trying to argue out a problem, to solve a solution. But many of them become tired and they can't figure out what they need to do for a certain proposal. They take a break for five minutes and don't think of anything, and suddenly, they may get an understanding. People come back to the meeting rejuvenated, energized. This is a concrete example that can reflect something in our spiritual life.
 
Understanding doesn't have to be intellectual, a concept, a way of thinking. The mind is not the sum total of what we are. If we put our hand on a hot stove, we burn our hand. We retract in pain, and only later do we have the thought, “That really hurt!” Instead, we had consciousness of the experience and we reacted. We understood the problem where we got injured. And then we thought later about, “Well, I shouldn't do that again.” This actually shows us that the intellect is the slowest aspect of a person. It's not the quickest. It is actually not the most divine either.  It is actually not divine at all. It is just a machine. An intellect can have understanding of concepts. It stores information and then it gives back. We can learn to use the mind in a spiritual way, in a conscious way, in an intuitive way.  But the intellect has also been used to feed qualities like anger and resentment. Anger has its own logic fear, its own logic, ways of thinking. 

And so these qualities of mind, again, are animalistic, which is allegorized in the story of Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He is representing, or what it is representing in that act, how our own inner divinity must conquer the mind and this is what we attempt and practice in our meditations. Don't think so much. Don't worry so much. Don't daydream. Don't fantasize, but just simply be aware and attentive.
 
As we begin our practices of meditation today, we were just doing relaxation: a very basic practice in which we just become aware of our body, because most times we go through our day unaware of even our breathing, or circulation. You may have found that when you are starting to concentrate on certain parts of the body, you may start to daydream or think about other things. It means that the mind is not in control, that the mind is riding us instead of we, ourselves, riding the donkey, because the mind is like a donkey. It is an animal. It can be tamed or it can be wild.
 
Anyone who begins to practice meditation realizes that the mind is very chaotic. It could be a very disconcerting realization to make, but it is not a means or a reason to stop practicing. It is just that we are learning about what our state of mind is. We are just not cognizant of that fact on a daily basis because we tend to be very unconscious, in a spiritual sense. We don't really are aware of the full totality of our life. 

So there is a concept of, “I think therefore I am.” This is from the famous French philosopher Descartes. So anyone of us who study philosophy at universities really takes a lot of time to emphasize that “I think therefore I am,” that the intellect is somehow our true identity. But according to Samael Aun Weor in his book Igneous Rose, he mentions that:
 
“The concept of Descartes,“I think, therefore I am,” is completely false, because the true Man is the Innermost, and the Innermost does not think, because He knows.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
 
Our divinity sees and observes and understands all things. It is a state of consciousness.
 
“The mind thinks, not the Innermost (our innermost true self).
 
“In its current state of evolution, the human mind is the animal that we carry within.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
 
So we can look at our own lives to see examples of this where the mind is animalistic. We can even look on the news. Again, people committing acts of violence which are really cruel, inhumane, we say, demonic.
 
“The Innermost does not need to think because He is omniscient.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
 
He sees and understands all things.
 
We also have a quote from the Book of John:
 
“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” ―John 14:6
 
Of course, people think that one has to believe in Jesus and that one is saved, because he is the way, the truth, and the life, but symbolically, Christ, divinity, was speaking through him, saying that only through your own inner divinity can you reach your inner true development, your potential. “No man cometh unto the Father,” which is a symbol of our own inner divinity, the Innermost, we can say, “but by me.”
 
Christ is an energy. Christ is the seed, a force, which can birth to our soul. So as we are talking about alchemy, we give birth to the soul through that energy when we learn to work with it.

And lastly will conclude with a teaching from the story of Pinocchio, to kind of circle back. There is a very famous part of the story in which Pinocchio is going to school and the Blue Fairy, a symbol of the divine feminine, is teaching him, telling him go to school and learn. It is a symbol of how we go to a certain school or group or meditative school and learn this type of knowledge: how to transform ourselves.
 
That Blue Fairy, the divine feminine, has been called many names in different traditions, symbolized by Mother Mary, Athena amongst the Greeks, Kali, Durga amongst the Hindus, a symbol of our own creative forces that is feminine, inside, and which can help any meditator achieve genuine religion.
 
Pinocchio is going to school, and then he is confronted by a friend who says “Why go to school? Join me come to the Land of Play where we can play all day and never work.” And Pinocchio is tempted. He goes and eventually goes to this place, where eventually he is transformed into a donkey.
 
Of course, later, I believe, even in the film by Disney, which does a very good job of depicting this, in the book he gets out of that state eventually. He has to do a lot of work to reverse that, but it is a symbol of how in life, we come to any kind of school of meditation that teaches us how to change, and yet we then get distracted. Our friends say, “Come out to the bar and drink with me!” or “Come see this movie!” or “Let's go to the Land of Play” in a figurative sense: television or whatever distracts us from attempting the practice of meditation, so that we can be more introspective and spiritual, profound.
 
This is a type of work, because there are a lot of temptations in this society. Our Western society is a land of distraction: sports, media, television, news. We tend to saturate our whole life with all these things, which pull our attention away and makes us very distracted. And so he becomes a donkey, but eventually he gets out with the help of the blue fairy, his Divine Mother we can say. The Divine Mother in Hinduism is a symbol of our own Being, an aspect of our divinity.
 
Divinity is not just male. It is represented as a masculine projective force, but also is receptive and feminine. There is that duality there and we will talk more about that in our studies of Kabbalah (See The Divine Mother from Beginning Self-Transformation).
 
And so we have a teaching from the book Igneous Rose:
 
“The Innermost must flagellate the mind with the terrific whip of willpower.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
 
Flagellation, again, is not literal here, but it is a recrimination. Meaning, we start to act in a mental state of anger in a certain situation or crisis, we want to react in a certain way. But in that moment, we use our will and our awareness, our attention, not to act on that type of behavior, so that we don't cause harm for ourselves or for others. It is a type of willpower. Again, if you look back at the image of the old man with a book in his hand and a staff, he has a staff in his hand and the sun in his genitalia. That staff is a symbol of will, which is why all the shepherds in the Bible had staffs, a symbol of willpower, spiritual willpower.
 
“The one who identifies with the mind falls into the abyss.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
 
One who enters into greater states of suffering, not only just in some dystopian reality or hell realm, according to religion, official religion, but in our own existence. So there are different levels here. We can find that if we act on negative states of mind, we suffer. As the Buddha taught in the Dhammapada:
 
“Mind proceeds phenomena. We become what we think.” ―Buddha, Dhammapada
 
If we think wrong and harm and evil, then the result will be harm for ourselves and others. But if we enact the virtuous qualities of mind, positive qualities of mind, we reap the benefits, and other people obviously benefit too.
 
“The mind is a donkey upon which we must ride in order to enter into the heavenly Jerusalem.”  ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose
 
And the quote from Carlos Collodi from the book Pinocchio:
 
“Boys who do nothing but play end up turning into donkeys.” ―Carlos Collodi, Pinocchio
 
So what is a donkey? It is a stubborn animal. And you may find that in meditation that the body is stubborn. The mind is stubborn. We sit to adopt a posture or an asana and to relax, and yet we start thinking of other things. We start day dreaming of other things. The body wants to shift and move. We want to adjust ourselves. We feel tension or pain, but if we are always moving in our posture, we are not actually meditating. This is why a great Swami from the Hindu tradition of yoga, Swami Sivananda said, “Your asana, your posture, should be like a mountain, firm,” but relaxed. We don't move. And if you resolve in yourself in the beginning: “Don't move,” you'll find that your mind starts thinking over things or your body wants to move. You have an itch. You have a pain in your neck. You want to adjust yourself. That shows us that the body is like a donkey. It is an animal. You have to train it. The mind likewise. And sometimes even our emotions too. Negativity is animalistic.
 
So we hope to conclude with the fact that the soul can develop through these three sciences: alchemy, Kabbalah, and psychology, because that seed can become a tree of life when it is intentionally nourished and developed.
 
Do you have any questions?

Question: Where would you put astrology in all this? 
 
Instructor: Sure. For those who are not familiar with astrology, it is the ancient science of the stars: astros-logos: astros, meaning heavens or stars, Logos meaning divinity. We can say that astrology permeates all three sciences―in the original sense or in the interpretations of astrology that there are 12 zodiacal signs that one is born in. According to Hindu tradition, one is born in a different zodiacal sign in each life, if you studied reincarnation and what those concepts entail.
 
But the zodiac has to do with certain influences in the mind, the heart, the personality, our spirituality too.  There are different levels of influences from nature and the cosmos that influence a person. Of course, astrology today is a caricature. It is very divorced from a lot of the ancient roots and sciences that these astrologers actually knew. Astrology in its real sense is astros-logos: how the soul unites with the divinity of the stars. Every star and every planet has its own intelligence, its own divinities. Real astrology is when, in a state of meditation, we can let the body go to sleep, and the consciousness can awaken in what is called the internal dimensions. Some people call it dreams, astral projection, dream yoga, out-of-body experiences. This is something that you can experience for yourself and provoke at will if you seriously practice this.

In that way, in those dimensions known as the Tree of Life, again, the Tree of Life is a symbol of different levels of dimensions of nature that are psychological, spiritual, internal. And you can have those experiences in which your body is abandoned and you as a soul, in those planes, some people call it the astral plane, world of dreams―and then in that state, with profound clarity and awareness, you can call upon divinity. This is symbolized by Moses talking to God on Mount Sinai.
 
What is a mountain? It is a symbol of climbing that Tree of Life in meditation. A very difficult path, but you can reach the peak, those higher levels of consciousness in those states, and then you can call upon for help in those vivid, conscious, illuminated dreams, lucid dreams, people call it. In that way, you can get help from all the divinities of the stars.
 
If I am telling you this is because this is what I do regularly in my own practices. We receive help. And anyone can do this, because we all have a seed that can develop into that potential. Astrology relates with Kabbalah because when we receive that wisdom from any divinity, help for our physical life, we are performing Kabbalah, kabel, “to receive.” But also we can learn to have those experiences more regularly by working in alchemy, which is the science of The Perfect Matrimony, a book written by Samael Aun Weor, who is one of the founders of this tradition that we study along with many of the books that we have.
 
Astrology is not just the study of charts or memorizing complicated glyphs and numbers, which can have very interesting correlations to our life or not, but more profoundly, real astrology is when we develop our seed through these methods, these three sciences, so that we can receive help from the stars, literally, from heaven. Heaven is not a physical place, but a state of consciousness. You can awaken in the dream state, no longer projecting your dreams, your mind into that dimension, but you can see things as they are. It is not a vague or an amorphous dimension, but it is a material world just manifested by different levels or laws of nature. It's not physical or material like this physical plane. It's something different.
 
But that's real astrology. You can talk with the divinity of the stars. We have a book available called Practical Astrology with the different practices that you can use for each of the zodiacal signs during certain times of the month, where you can experience these things for yourself, receive help from those different influences.
 
Any other questions?
 
So if you are interested, I invite you to see our websites chicagognosis.org. You also can visit gnosticteachings.org. You'll find a lot of resources that teach this science in a very profound way. We have many courses available. The books that we have for sale here are also available online. You can also read every book, every chapter online. But if you want a hard copy, you can always purchase from here too.
 
Everything that we teach here is practical. You don't have to believe in any of it. We don't recommend that you believe in any of it, but in a state of neutrality, experiment and practice and see the results. And as you see results in yourself, that develops what we call genuine faith. People in these times confuse faith and belief. Faith is real knowledge born from experience. When you know from conscious experience that putting your hand on a hot stove burns you, you have faith that if you put your hand on a hot stove, you are going to get burned. It's a concrete experience. But even with those mystical experiences that all the saints of the different traditions taught, you can have that faith too, and you'll know from a state of lucidity and consciousness what those realities are, and then you don't the believe in anything. Belief doesn't change anyone. So again, you are also free to take some flyers and pamphlets if you are interested. We have the books available too, but I thank you all for coming.

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"One can hardly attain to this degree [of vigilance and comprehension of divinity] until one has emptied oneself through muhasabah, self-observation and inner accounting.  The person who has taken account of what he has done in the past and improved his state in the present has attached himself to the path of the Truth.  In this relationship with God Most High, he has learned how to keep a heedful heart.  He has guarded his breaths for God [through pranayama] and turned his attention to God in all his states.  So he knows that God is watchful over him—close to his heart, knowing his states, seeing his acts, hearing his words.  Whoever is neglectful of all this is far from the beginning of contact—how far, then, from the realities of nearness to Him? " —Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism

We’re continuing our course on the science of meditation, specifically outlined within the eightfold steps of yoga as described by Patanjali.

So far we have discussed Yama and Niyama, restraint and observances, as well as asana, posture.  Yama, known as restraint or ethics, signifies “to yoke, harness, or control” the mind.  Niyama means precepts, ethical discipline, trainings or observances by which the consciousness controls the mind and develops serenity.  Stability of mind is achieved when we learn to stop performing harmful actions, which produce disturbances in the mind with all its negative consequences.

To have a body that is suitable for meditation, we must cease agitating the body, and to have a body that is receptive and pliant, suitable for our meditative discipline, we must cease agitating the mind.  Our physicality manifests the conditions and influences of the mind, the psyche.  If our mind is filled with desire, with egotism, with negativity, it will be impossible to learn meditation, since the body will be tense along with our intellectual and emotional centers.

To engage in fruitless activities, to commit theft, murder, acts of violence and anger within our consciousness, disturbs the mind and body.  Hence the need for restraint of mind, to stop harmful mental, emotional, and physical actions. 

Many people do not believe that they kill, but it is very true that when one is consumed by anger, by malice, one is killing one’s neighbor through the emotional center.  Likewise, people may not steal physical things, but energy, attention, to feed one’s vanity.  While many devotees believe that the different commandments of religions focus on outward behavior, such instructions more importantly relate to the consciousness, to psychological states of being, which we must work upon to achieve true change.  Hence the need for precepts, codes of spiritual conduct that help to develop the virtues and positive qualities of the consciousness.

Ethics is developed by comprehending and working with the law of karma: cause and effect.  Negative actions from the ego produce suffering, while positive actions from the consciousness produce equanimity.

It is impossible to meditate with a chaotic mind, and it is impossible to develop serenity if you are feeding your egos every moment of the day through identification.  What does it mean to identify?  It means that you, as a free consciousness, give your energy to whatever defect takes over the five centers of your human machine: intellect, emotions, movement, instincts, and sex.  When anger emerges, you as a consciousness think and feel that you are that anger.  You invest it with energy and power. You fortify and empower it by thinking and saying whatever that sense of “I” wants in a given moment, until another ego emerges in reaction to fluctuating external circumstances.

Feeding the ego produces pain, since the “I,” desire, is a condition, a conglomeration of shells, a state of suffering that traps our full conscious potential. 
​
To restrain our mind from doing what it wants every second of the day is the work with ethics.  It is knowing how to consciously work with the law of cause and effect.  As we explained in the previous lecture on “Ethics, Karma, and Interdependence,” how you behave in body, speech, and mind determines the quality of your life.  Disciplining the lower self, the ego, desires, or nafs within Sufism, is the definition of the spiritual path:

“The lower soul (nafs, which etymologically signifies ‘breath’) is always engaged in inspiring your imagination to pursue evil acts or thoughts, every moment striving to cast you down into the abyss of pride, hypocrisy, and egotism.  Each moment thus demands that you overcome and repulse such evil thoughts and false conceptions, constantly regaining your faith afresh and reaffirming your belief, and never imagining yourself safe from the lower soul’s deceit even for a second.” —Lāhījī, Mafātīḥ

Nafs in Arabic means “breath, vitality, vigor, or soul.”  The egos, nafs, or desires within us have trapped or conditioned our essence, our consciousness.  Every ego, defect, or desire, traps the energy of the consciousness within states of suffering.  Every naf, like anger, pride, fear, laziness, gluttony, etc., squanders the energies of the psyche in atomic explosions of hatred, lust, and desire.

Meditation begins when we learn how to stop wasting energy: mental, emotional, volitional, sexual.  You enact the initial stages of ethical discipline when you, as a consciousness, are observing your mind, heart, and body, your egos, seeing them as something inferior and separate from your consciousness. The deeper part comes through transformation, when you consciously choose not to give your ego what it wants. It is essential to develop the sense of self-observation in a very clear and strong manner, to be able to separate from the “I” in all its tenebrous multiplicity, to see and watch our defects in action, and to not act upon their impulses no matter how strong.

Each ego is a false identity, a false sense of self, which has nothing to do with our spiritual nature. The “I” has nothing to do with the Being, as well as the unconditioned, free consciousness.  Each ego or false sense of self has trapped our consciousness, and now it is our work to extract the consciousness trapped in those errors by comprehending our defects and eliminating them.

The nafs, lower selves, or different “I’s” within us are the infidels mentioned throughout the Qur’an, Islam, and Sufism.

"There are two types of warfare (jihad): outward and inward.  The outer battle is against the infidel (kāfar, or black magicians in the astral and mental planes) while the inner war is waged aggressively against the lower soul (nafs).  Warriors of the sword are threefold: the slayer who is rewarded, the battle-weary vouchsafed forgiveness of sins, and the martyr who is slain.  Likewise, the warriors of the soul are threefold: one who exerts himself who belongs to the just and the pious (abrār), one who excels in struggle who sustains the spiritual hierarchy (awtād), and one who is victorious, who is numbered amongst the apostolic saints (abdāl).  One who wages war against the unbelievers (fornicating black magicians, the infidels) obtains wealth, but one who wages war against the soul is enriched with the wealth of the heart… The Prophet called the war against the lower soul (nafs) the “greater war” because, while one may avoid conflict with an external foe, none is exempt from the struggle against, and combat with, the lower soul.  Peace can be secured from all enemies through negotiation or conciliation, but if one attempts to negotiate and reconcile the [lower] soul, one is doomed to perdition." —Maybudī, Kashf al-asrār, IV 60

Samael Aun Weor wrote that we must be compassionate to all beings, even towards the sorcerers and demons of the black lodge, but merciless to our ego.  If you ever give what your ego wants, you deepen your suffering.  When you do not give your ego what it wants, you experience happiness.  This is karma in action.

When you don’t give your anger what it wants by identifying yourself with its thoughts, desires, and impulses, you save energy; you become hermetically sealed.  Remember that in any moment, a sense of self, a false identity emerges within your mind, heart, and body that wants to push you to think, feel and act a certain way. If you as a free consciousness are vigilant, watchful, you perceive these false, multifarious identities within you.  The more you, as a consciousness, restrain the mind from acting in harmful ways, by learning to see the egos in action, the more psychic energy you save.  Likewise, the less you identify with any ego or defect, the more energy you save, and the more serene your mind becomes.

Energy is essential for spiritual life.  If you are wasting your energy through negative behaviors, thinking, and sentiments, you will never learn to meditate.  But when you restrain the mind and follow the precepts of meditative discipline, you enter the doorway into genuine self-knowledge, because you have energy available to empower the consciousness and relax the body and mind.

Our asana, meditative posture, is based on how we fulfill Yama and Niyama, restraint of mind or ego, and observances.  Swami Sivananda wrote that our asana should be like a mountain, immovable, firm.  If your mind is restless and agitated from desire, your body will not be able to sit still. If you are constantly moving during your practice, then you are not practicing at all, because any physical movement agitates the mind and its energies, preventing you from going deep into the consciousness to receive the imagery of the internal worlds. And if you have no energy with which to meditate, you will fall asleep in your posture if you are too comfortable.

Your posture should help you relax, but to the point that you maintain conscious remembrance of what you are doing at all times.  If your posture is too comfortable but your consciousness not alert enough, then laziness kicks in and you fall asleep, such as when you lie down to practice.  This is not meditation, and this is why we recommend that students in the beginning practice sitting up, either in the Western style, in a chair, or on a meditation cushion in a half-lotus or full lotus, if your body is flexible enough.  The point is that your posture should be relaxed and firm to the point that you are perfectly at ease and can remember what you are doing consciously, that you maintain your ability to focus and remain attentive.  Your asana needs to be comfortable to the point that you can forget the body and work with the subtle energies of the mind and heart.

By fulfilling the restraints and observances of meditative discipline, and to aid in the relaxation of body and mind, we work with pranayama.  By conserving our energies and transforming them, we harness the power of the soul with our breath, since the Arabic word nafs means “soul” as well as “breath,” and is modified into different types of expression in accordance with Kabbalah.
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"Inspiration, nafas—literally “breath,” also “breathing space” or ample room—is the refreshment of hearts by the subtleties from the Unseen.  A person who receives inspiration [from learning to aspire, or inspire, to inhale the vital breath through pranayama] is finer and clearer than a person who is open to mystical states [who is intuitive to a degree, but who does not practice this technique].  The person of the momentary inner experience is the beginning [meaning: the one who practices mindfulness, self-observation, and self-remembering], the inspired person is at the conclusion, and the person of [internal, psychological and spiritual states born from practice] is between the two.  The states are means and inspirations are the end of progressive development.  Moments belong to those who have hearts, states belong to those who possess spirit (ruh) [or Ruach], and inspirations belong to the people of inner being (sirr) [the Innermost Self / Atman].  The Sufis have said, 'The best act of worship is the count the breaths along with God Glorified and Exalted.'” —Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism

This lecture will explain the purpose of pranayama, how to practice it, and how it is taught within the teachings of Sufism, the writings of Swami Sivananda, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and the doctrine of Samael Aun Weor.

To control the mind, we work with its energies, which constitute different modifications of prana.  Prana, in Sanskrit and hatha yoga, relates to the breath, to breathing, the air.  Pranayama etymologically signifies, “to harness the wind” or “yoke” the life forces of the body.

Prana is much more profound than just breath.  It is the force of “life, spirit, energy, and vitality” within air and our physical body.  Prana is the life-force of divinity that we assimilate through our breathing, and which we find condensed and modified within the different elements of the cosmos and of nature.

"Prana is the sum total of all energy that is manifest in the universe. It is the sum total of all the forces in nature. It is the sum total of all latent forces and powers which are hidden in men [and women] and which lie everywhere around us. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism are the manifestations of prana. […] Whatever moves or works or has life is but an expression of manifestation of prana. The prana is related to mind [Hod / Netzach] and through mind to will [Tiphereth], and through will to the individual soul [Tiphereth / Geburah], and through this to the Supreme Being [Chesed / Atman in Kabbalah]. If you know how to control the little waves of prana working thorough your mind, then the secret of subjugating universal prana will be known to you." ―Swami Sivananda

Pranayama also is described within the gnostic tradition by the term transmutation, which is “The action of changing or the state of being changed into another form.” 

Within our body is the most potent force of the universe, the sexual energy, the capacity to create life, which is found in a germinal state within the physical semen.  This physical matter or semen can be used to create a physical child, but in spiritual sadhana, spiritual practice, we conserve the semen and transform this matter into energy, precisely through the exercise of controlling our breath, being fully concentrated, prayerful, and attentive, with the mind restrained.

As described in the book of Genesis, the spirit or breath of God hovered over the face of the waters.  What spirit?  The Ruach Elohim in Hebrew or ruh in Arabic, otherwise known as prana in Sanskrit, the divine forces that generate life.  The prana, the energies of divinity, can be directed to yoke the sexual waters in our body, to transform that water into light.  For as Genesis teaches us, “God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light.”  That light is consciousness and comprehension in meditation.

The word trans is a prefix used with the meanings such as “across,” “beyond,” “through,” and “changing thoroughly.” Mutation comes from mutate, “to change or cause to change in form or nature.”  Transmutation is the science of changing the sexual water into light, carrying it up within our spine to the brain, mutating that semen into energy.  This is accomplished through yoking the vital winds, the energies of our breath, mind, body, heart, and semen.

Prana is not only in the air, but in all the elements of nature and our body, within the aerial nature of our thoughts, the fires of our emotions, and solidity of our physical earth or body, and most importantly within the waters of our sexual organs.  Prana condenses into multiple forms of matter and energy, most importantly sexual, which we transmute from the physical, brute semen, to feed our consciousness with light.

It’s important to remember that it is impossible to develop the consciousness without energy, and that the most important form of energy is sexual.  Sexual energy is prana, the “vitality, power, vigour, and life” that can awaken our full potential.

The word prana bears similar etymological meaning as the Arabic word for soul, nafs, which can be lower [egotistical] or higher [conscious] depending on our work.  How we harness energy is determined by the quality of practicing pranayama.

It’s interesting that the term prana can signify the sexual organs, which demonstrates that to work with pranayama is to control the creative energy and use it for our spiritual development.  This is why chastity is emphasized by Patanjali, the yogis, and all genuine practitioners of every spiritual tradition.  Chasity means restraint and transmutation of the sexual energy, the prana.  This science has been known by the term Brahmacharya in the East, which is a Sanskrit word composed from:

• Brahma: the Sanskrit name of the creative force or divinity;
• Charya: "to be followed" an observance or restraint.

​Everyone in these times want to know how to meditate, but when instructed to restrain and control the sexual energy, to restrain the lower selves, egos, nafs, or desires, they run away.  This is sad, because without harnessing the vital winds, the sexual energy, without going against the grain of one’s habits, one cannot learn meditation.  To feed desire, our egos, lust, through identification, produces suffering.  By expelling the very energies that can give life, we hinder our spiritual life.  Meditation is impossible for individuals who have no prana, no energy, in their body that can empower the consciousness.

"Brahmacharya literally means Achara or conduct that leads to the realization of Brahman or one’s own Self. It means the control of semen [the sexual matter within both men and women], the study of the Vedas (scriptures, as well as the sexual teachings of any religion) and contemplation on God. The technical meaning of Brahmacharya is self-restraint, particularly mastery of perfect control over the sexual organ or freedom from lust in thought, word and deed." —Swami Sivananda

The beginning of the path of meditation is to restrain the sexual energy, to not expel it in any form whatsoever.  This energy must be conserved and transformed to give us spiritual life.  Lustful people who ejaculate the sexual energy have no energy with which to calm the mind and learn meditation. 
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The scripture Siva Samhita describes seminal retention and transmutation as the basis of all meditative realization:

"Ejaculation of semen [orgasm] brings death, preserving it within brings life. Therefore, one should make sure to retain the semen within. One is born and dies through semen; in this there is no doubt. Knowing this, the Yogi must always preserve his semen. When the precious jewel of semen is mastered, anything on earth can be mastered. Through the grace of its preservation, one becomes as great as me [Shiva]. The use of semen determines the happiness or pain of all beings living in the world, who are deluded [by desire] and are subject to death and decay." —Siva Samhita

Feeding desire, lust, only agitates the mind and psyche, for as Padmasambhava explained to Lady Tsogyal:

"Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation."

This is of course the difficult thing, but fundamental to any progress.

"Junayd was asked: "What is union with God [religion, religare, Yoga]?"  He replied: "To renounce passion [fornication: the animal orgasm]," for of all of the acts of devotion by which God's favor is sought none has greater value than resistance to passion, because it is easier for a man to destroy a mountain with his nails than to resist passion [fornication]." —Al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, Revelation of the Mystery

The next steps include controlling lust in the heart and mind, which is of course more difficult.  Students must fight against adulterous and lustful tendencies, the desire to look at the opposite sex with desire. As Jesus taught:

"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." —Matthew 5:27-28
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"The most manifest attribute of the lower soul is lust (shahwat). Lust is a thing that is dispersed in different parts of the human body, and is served by the senses.  Man is bound to guard all his members from it [particularly the sexual organs, to train the body not to fornicate], and he shall be questioned concerning the acts of each.  The lust of the eye is sight, that of the ear is hearing, that of the nose is smell, that of the tongue is speech, that of the palate is taste, that of the body (jasad) is touch, and that of the mind is thought (andíshídan).  It behoves the seeker of God to spend his whole life day and night, in ridding himself of these incitements to passion which show themselves through the senses [by correctly transforming impressions in meditation], and to pray God to make him such that this desire will be removed from his inward nature [through contemplation and comprehension in meditation], since whoever is afflicted with lust is veiled from all spiritual things." —Al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, Revelation of the Mystery

First we conserve the sexual energy, learn to transform it in our body.  With further discipline we no longer entertain lustful thoughts and desires in the heart.  Pranayama is especially important for controlling lust, because if the consciousness has no energy, it has no strength by which to work against the monsters of desire.  Pranayama will help you to acquire energy by which you can comprehend and annihilate the ego.  As described by the ancient teachings of Manu:

"Let the defects be burnt up by Pranayama." ―Manu

Students are therefore taught, within ethical discipline, not to fornicate, and why Buddha taught his disciples that one is no longer a disciple if they do not fulfill the observances and restraints of chastity.  Pranayama and sexual purity, therefore are essential in the eightfold steps of meditation and yoga, since the subsequent principles of meditation are founded on this.  Attempting to perform pranayama without fuel, without sexual energy present, is like trying to pump fuel from a gas station when there is none.  No water, no fuel, no light.  Yet by practicing sexual purity, one can enter very rapidly into the science of meditation.
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“With the practice of Pranayama, the mind of the student is prepared for Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi.” —Samael Aun Weor

The nature of prana must be analyzed, by gnostic students, through the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life.  This Tree of Life maps out for us the varying modalities and condensations of matter, consciousness, energy or prana, the Christic force, which is manifest throughout the entire cosmos, as Swami Sivananda and Samael Aun Weor have explained very well.

This map has ten spheres or Sephiroth, translated from Hebrew as “emanations,” which are organized into three trinities with a single sephirah or sphere at the bottom, named Malkuth, the physical body or kingdom.

Our body is a kingdom with many elements, forces and principles, that we must harness if we want to ascend this graphic, to perceive more refined and profound levels of consciousness, indicated by the higher spheres of this tree.

Don’t think about this glyph as something outside of you, but within.  This image maps out states of perception, in more refined or gross levels, from the most subtle above to the most dense below. This has nothing to do with vertical space, in the true application of this graphic.

The Tree of Life emerges from the Abstract Absolute Space, the Unknowable Seity or Ain. From within the Ain, the Nothingness of cosmic, abstract space, is our own particular supra-divine star, the Ain Soph, the Limitless. And from the Ain Soph emerges the Ain Soph Aur, the Limitless Light, the Cosmic Khrestos or Christ.

This light manifests into the universe as the top trinity of this graphic.  This undifferentiated light of the Ain Soph Aur is the Prana in its most rarified state, which, in order to be developed, needs to enter into the universe to create its diverse regions and forms, unfolding into more material states of matter, energy, and experience.

The top trinity is known as the Logoic triangle, the Christic forces of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, or Father, Son and Holy Spirit in Christian terms.  These three spheres are not people, but energies.  This trinity is the power of creation, genesis, which are three aspects of one light or force; prana, in other words.  Because this power is in a refined state, it is elevated, superior, rarified, yet for that power to develop, it must materialize, condense, descend to the lower regions of this tree, to be worked upon consciously.

Prana condenses into other forms of matter, energy and perception, represented by the Sephiroth below.  To work with prana above, we must work with that energy below, within the lower aspects of our being.  We can analyze the nature and modifications of prana in different ways, especially in accordance with the septenary constitution of the human being, which is:

7. Atman: the Innermost Being, our Inner Buddha or God [Chesed]
6. Buddhi: the consciousness, the Divine Soul [Geburah]
5. Superior Manas: the Human Soul, Willpower, Causal body [Tiphereth]
4. Inferior Manas: the mind, Mental body [Netzach]
3. Kama Rupa: the body of desires, the Astral body [Hod]
2. Linga-sarira: the Vital (Ethereal) body [Yesod]
1. Sthula-sarira: the physical body [Malkuth]
—Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga: The Mysteries of the Fire

Atman, Buddhi, and Superior Manas constitute the middle trinity, the Ethical triangle of the Tree of Life, relating to our genuine humanity and the spiritual principles of our inner divinity that guide us in the work.  This trinity is the real Being or inner spirit [Chesed], divine soul [Geburah], and human soul [Tiphereth], the latter sometimes referred to superior manas, superior mind in Sanskrit. 

Our consciousness is a fraction of the human soul, known as Tiphereth in Kabbalah.  This middle sephirah in the very center of the Tree of Life is known by the term superior manas in Theosophy.

This term mind can be very vague in esoteric and spiritual circles. Superior manas, Tiphereth, is abstract, not concrete.  It is our willpower.  We know it’s there, but it is not materialized, visible.  We can say that a person has tremendous will, because they have internal drive and a means of working, making a living, being disciplined in a specific type of endeavor, etc.  Willpower is very real for us, but hard to pinpoint or concretize.  It relates to a type of abstraction of the psyche, one relating to volition or will.

Our consciousness emanated from Atman-Buddhi-Manas, Chesed-Geburah-Tiphereth, and has entered the lower sephiroth: mind, heart, vitality, and physicality.  This is in order to acquire knowledge and experience. 

Our inner Being, spirit, Buddha, Atman, gives the consciousness intuitions and hunches, as well as inspiration to practice spirituality through learning to control the lower aspects of ourselves, the lower trinity in this glyph.  Tiphereth, superior manas or willpower, must control the lower aspects of the psyche. 

​This is essential in pranayama, because to harness the prana, we must control our thoughts, feelings, and impulses, which are the vehicles of our ego.

The Inferior Manas is our mind [Netzach], which is more concrete.  People have an easier time acknowledging thoughts than they do with comprehending will.

The Kama Rupa or desire / astral body [Hod] is the seat of emotions, which everybody acknowledges to a degree.

The Linga-sarira, or vital body [Yesod], is our vital energies that give life to our physicality.  This vital body is the body of prana.  It is the storehouse of all the prana that descends from the top trinity, descending through the Sephiroth and finally coalescing in our vital body, which exists in the fourth dimension.  This vehicle sustains the chemical, biological, catabolic, metabolic, etheric, and vital processes of our physical body: the Sthula-sarira, Malkuth.  Without the vital body and its circulation of prana throughout the physical body, we would not be alive.

These three lower spheres: Inferior Manas, Kama Rupa, and Linga-sarira, or Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, constitute the triangle of Priesthood.  This triangle is the work with magic, from the Indo-European root word mag, meaning “priest” or “magician.” 

Magic is not pulling rabbits out of hats, or impressing people with clever tricks.  Magic is knowing how to consciously manipulate matter and energy, prana, within our tree of life, through willpower and visualization.

Pranayama is a form of magic, whereby we manipulate creative forces within our mind, heart, and body.  To control the mind, with its racing, uncontrolled thoughts, the heart, with its surging emotions, and the impulses and instincts of the body, constitute the beginning of our meditative discipline.  When you experience a calm mind through pranayama, you come to realize how magical this science really is, since it produces the serenity and clarity of the soul.

The prerequisites of meditation involve stilling the body, the vital energies, the heart, the mind, and our willpower, the lower five Sephiroth of the Kabbalah. Let us be very clear: stilling the mind is not meditation; it is the beginning.  Genuine meditation is about receiving internal information about ourselves and the cosmos, the science of comprehension and understanding.  This is an important distinction to make, because pranayama aids the practitioner in calming the psyche so that the waters of the mind can reflect internal principles.

See here the lower five spheres of the Tree of Life?  These are all different aspects of our psyche, which need to be controlled and calmed through yoking prana.  Mind is a form of prana.  Emotions are a form of prana. And the sexual energy is condensed prana that serves as the foundation for meditation, since prana, the Linga-sarira or vital body, is the foundation of this graphic.

The mind or body of desires are controlled using vital energy, the vital body or Linga-sarira.  Notice how this vital body, Linga-sarira or sphere of Yesod is the very center of the Tree of Life, as well as at its base or foundation.  Yesod literally means “foundation.”  Yesod is the basis of spiritual and physical life.

The word Lingam refers to the sexual organs, specifically the phallus, hence the strong correlation between prana or Linga-sarira and the sexual glands. The yoni in Hinduism symbolizes the uterus, and its union with the lingam represents the highest consubstantiation of divine love.  Prana literally means “vital organs,” and refers to semen, since in certain rituals like the puja, the Hindus pour milk over the symbol of the Lingam-Yoni as an offering to divinity.  That milk is semen, transmuted sexual energy, prana, which are found within the union of the lingam-yoni.

Our physical semen is condensed prana.  It is vital energy in a material state.  Through the science of pranayama, we yoke, transmute, and elevate the energies of sex, so that the body, mind, heart, and will become balanced and prepared for actual meditation.

While prana means “life,” yama means “restraint” or “death.”  Yama is the deity of death in esoteric Buddhism.  This is very interesting linguistically.

Samael Aun Weor wrote that if the seed does not die, the plant cannot be born.  If you want to experience the entirety of the Tree of Life in meditation, you must give birth to that tree through the sexual seed.  When the seed dies and is transmuted, it becomes a Tree of Life.  This is well known by initiates in the science of alchemy or Da’ath.

Pranayama, therefore, helps to transform the seed, by destroying the matter, to convert it into energy. By this we do not mean that one can give birth to the entirety of the soul through pranayama.  The solar bodies can only be created in a marriage.  Instead, pranayama aids single practitioners in circulating the energies of sexuality, to a certain degree, to stabilize one’s concentration and mind in preparation for dhyana, meditation.

The mind must be united with its Divine Triad, together with the psychic extractions of the astral, vital and physical vehicles.

The inferior Manas together with the Kamas, Prana and Linga, reinforce the Divine Triad by means of fire. –Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

We reinforce the powers of the Being by working with prana.  The inferior manas or mind, the emotions or body of desires, and the prana or Linga-sarira, reinforce the middle Triad through the work with sexual fire.  Mind, emotions, and sexuality help to support the principles above through pranayama.  Atman-Buddhi-Manas are strengthened through yoking the fires of sexuality below, which are contained within the waters of genesis, the sexual matter. 

People who do not work with the creative energies have a weak connection with their inner Being. People who fornicate lose their connection with divinity. However, this connection can be re-established the more we work with transmutation.  This becomes evident through internal experiences in meditation.
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While pranayama works with sparks of fire, the sexual fire must be harnessed or yoked in a matrimony to fully develop the creative energies.

All this work of transmutation is performed with willpower, our human soul, the superior manas or Tiphereth. Our will must exert itself to control the sexual energy through spiritual inspiration, emanating from Atman-Buddhi.  Prana then produces a profound calming effect on the mind, heart, and body below.
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Pranayama, interchanging nostril breathing, requires a form of effort or will to perform.  It also involves imagining the circulation of forces in your body and mind.  This is the superior manas or willpower in action, in combination with our capacities for perception and imagination, known as Geburah in Kabbalah, the sphere of Buddhi, the divine consciousness.
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We must perceive what we are doing in every practice, especially Pranayama and sexual transmutation.  As we are going to elaborate upon in our discussion of “Spiritual Insight,” the capacity to perceive is imagination, to see internal, psychic things, the movement of energies. Pranayama involves willpower to control the energies, through our breath, serenity, and composure.  We also need perception of those forces inside.  These are abilities that the practitioner develops gradually through consistent discipline.

We have an image here of the nervous systems of the body, which become charged with vitality when we learn how to circulate those forces with our willpower and imagination. Hinduism refers to energetic channels in the vital depth, the etheric body of Yesod, as nadis.  There exist millions of nadis in our vital body, which are intimately related with the chakras of our ultra-biology, the latter composed of the internal chemistry of forces and energies that interdependently flow through our physicality and internal vehicles. 

A nadi is a line or current of vital energy, and when two nadis intersect, you form a vortex, a wheel of energy, a chakra.  People believe there are only seven chakras, which is wrong, because wherever two nadis join, you form a vortex or wheel of forces.  While there are seven main chakras connected with the spinal medulla, we really possess hundreds of thousands of chakras throughout our body, each with their own purpose, role, and influence.

The cerebrospinal, grand sympathetic, and other nervous systems are physical conduits for etheric energies.  Therefore, the nadis of the internal bodies, the vital depth, correspond to the physical, vital, and fluidic matter that circulates in our body. The nervous systems function because of the gelatinous and delicate fluids of the nerves, and it is well known in physical science that most of our body is composed of water.  When we learn to conserve the vital waters of our body, the seminal matter and its concomitant energies, we can transmute those waters into another substance, into cognizance, conscious energy, and light. 

Remember that we stated that our sexual waters, our semen, is a gelatinous substance or condensed prana.  Prana, in its unmodified form, is light.  That light descends the Tree of Life and enters Yesod, materializing to form the entity of semen.  Now the work we need to do is to transform or transmute the sexual substance into cognizance, fire, and light with the sacred breath.  This light saturates the brain and nervous systems, flowing within and upward to the brain up the different energetic channels. 

Because the brain and spine are surrounded by nerves, it follows logically that the nadis condense and unite in innumerable spaces throughout the vital body, which penetrates within the material brain, spine, and nervous systems.  Do not make the mistake of thinking that the vital body is separate from your physical body, because the vital depth gives life to your physicality, and is a biological vehicle that penetrates and co-penetrates every atom of the physical body, like a mirror image.  It is made of etheric matter in the fourth dimension, matter which is pliable, elastic, and fluidic, relating intimately with the health of your brain and nervous systems.  Without the vital body, we would not be able to physically exist, since it is the fourth-dimensional aspect of your material, physical, third-dimensional body, since every atom of your etheric body penetrates every atom of your physical body, giving you life. The day your vital depth disconnects from the physical body is the day you die physically, since without ether, prana, we would not have life.

Prana and the etheric body have been well documented by the Kirlian camera, a device developed by a Russian scientist that photographs the vital aura of people, plants, and even minerals.  All living things have prana, even supposedly inorganic matter like metals and earth. This type of science demonstrates how the vital body of any living thing is inseparable from its material, physical form.

The Tree of Life in our physical body is our spine, so while there is a macrocosmic implication to studying the universe, our spine is how we have physical and spiritual life, especially when we learn how to circulate prana in our secondary or sexual system, as described by Master Morya in his Dayspring of Youth.

The two main energetic channels we focus on with pranayama are Ida and Pingala, or the lunar and solar currents.  By the term “lunar,” what we mean are feminine, negative, or receptive forces in the body, whether we are male or female, and by “solar,” we mean the masculine, positive, or projective forces of the body, whether we are male or female.  These forces originate within our gonads, the testicles or ovaries.  In the same manner that an electrical current has a positive, negative, and neutral current, our sexual system likewise has masculine, feminine, and neutral forces and nadis.  Through controlling and directing prana, we circulate vital force through the nadis Ida and Pingala up the spine in the form of an eight, the caduceus of mercury with its two entwining serpents, a representation of the solar and lunar energetic currents. While Ida is feminine and Pingala is masculine, the spinal column is the neutral, grounding current by which masculine and feminine cohabit, unify, and reconcile.  The energetic nadi of the spine is known as Sushumna nadi.

When we learn to harness the energies contained within our waters with our breathing, with pranayama, we can raise and circulate such vital forces from the gonads up the spine, through Ida and Pingala, to awaken sparks of a third force in the base of the spine through the Sushumna nadi.  This third force is known in the East as Kundalini and the West as the fire of Pentecost.

As Samael Aun Weor indicated in his writings:

"The yogi/yogini works with the Great Breath or Cosmic Chrestos that is deposited within the Christonic semen when they are practicing Pranayama. Pranayama (a practice that consists of making profound inhalations of air, and retaining the inhaled air as much as possible, and afterwards exhaling the air until emptying the lungs), also teaches about the poles of the energy: one masculine pole located in the brain (cerebrospinal nervous system) and the feminine pole in the heart (grand sympathetic nervous system).  Thus, as when we form two poles in the space through a magneto, we create new energies and these forcedly are giving birth to a third pole; likewise, we affirm that the third pole is Devi Kundalini, which, from the union of the solar and lunar atoms, is born within the Triveni, situated in the coccyx. These two polarities, masculine and feminine—from the Great Breath—prove the sexuality of Prana and Kundalini. Kundalini is absolutely sexual." —Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga: The Mysteries of the Fire 

Pranayama is absolutely sexual, in the same manner that Kundalini is the sexual potency.  By working with pranayama, single persons yoke their creative energies to a certain, limited degree, while prana is fully activated throughout the spine and nervous systems through sexual magic between man and woman, husband and wife, who are simultaneously working to eliminate their defects through profound comprehension in meditation.

The Kundalini is the sacred sexual fire of the Holy Spirit.  Individuals can awaken sparks of Kundalini within the base of the coccyx up the spine through the exercise of pranayama.  To fully awaken Kundalini, one needs to be working in a matrimony.

Let us be clear about the nature of the Kundalini.  Kundalini is the power of the Divine Mother, the enlightenment of God.  Many people believe that the Divine Mother, the Kundalini, is a mechanical force, one that can awaken randomly and cause numerous psychological and spiritual problems, such as rising in the wrong way, causing delusions or mental imbalances, etc.  People who attribute these phenomena with Kundalini awakening ignore their own destructive habits, ignore the law of karma, cause and effect, because Devi Kundalini harms no one.  What is sad is that such people ignore that the Divine Mother is the wisdom of the universe, the cosmos, which is structured and maintained by divine intelligence. 
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The Divine Mother does not harm Her child.  People hurt themselves, not because of the Divine Mother Kundalini.  Our inner goddess only rewards virtues, chastity, purity, and ethical discipline.  People develop imbalances and psychological problems due to fornication, which the Divine Mother does not reward.  She can only awaken within a couple that is meditating and comprehending the ego daily, working on their defects and praying for their elimination; She emerges within people who develop virtue.  She awakens within a couple that not only conserves and transmutes the sexual energy, but who are following the precepts (Niyama) and ethical restraints (Yama) of religion.  The Kundalini is very demanding, since She only rises within the spine of the couple in accordance with the merits and qualities of the heart.  As Paul of Tarsus stated in Corinthians:

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." —1 Corinthians 6:9-10

Observe your mind. Are you not filled with desire, with fornication, the lustful eye that craves sexual satisfaction with many women, with many men?  Are you truly free from the adulterous eye that wants to copulate with others constantly, even if it is just in your imagination or fantasies?  Are you sure that your mind is pure and filled with virtues, rather than vices?  Do you abstain from alcohol, thievery of stealing of other people’s ideas, energy, belongings, money?  Are you sure that you do not extort others to do what you want, even under the guise of sanctity, kindness, and generosity?  Are you positive that you have never betrayed anyone, including your inner divinity?

Be sure that if you are filled with these qualities, and even when you practice sexual magic, the Divine Mother will not reward you. She only rises within the spine of the couple who are meditating every day on the ego, those who are working to eliminate the “I” first through discovery of defects in self-observation, then their judgment in meditation, followed by their execution through prayer.  This is the fundamental law of action and consequence.

People have a lot of theories about the Kundalini, but none of it is factual or based on evidence, observed facts in one’s daily life.  We mention this because in relation to the teachings of pranayama, ethical discipline is the same: if you want to transmute your energies through pranayama, you must be ethical, practicing restraint (Yama) and following specific observances (Niyama).  While many religions have a lot of explanations about virtues and vices, the best of it all is synthesized in one simple principle: do not give the ego what it wants.  Deny thyself, bear up your alchemical cross of sacrifice, and follow the example of your Intimate Christ, your real Being within you.

You learn to control prana by controlling your mind, by not feeding your egos from moment to moment.  By controlling prana in its diverse modifications, we control the mind and the vital flow of energies in our etheric body.

"Kundalini is intimately related with the Prana that circulates throughout the 72,000 nadis or Astral conduits that nourish the chakras. The chakras are connected with the mind. Yogi and yogini have to christify their mind. Prana is life, and it circulates throughout all of our organs.  Prana circulates throughout all of our nadis and vital canals.  All the 72,000 nadis of our organism have their fundamental base in the nadi Kanda.  The nadi Kanda is situated between the sexual organs and the anus.  The Kanda collects all of the sexual energy that circulates throughout the 72,000 canals of our organism. The sexual energy is Prana, life. […]  …The nadis Ida and Pingala are found side to side of the spinal medulla. These nadis entwine around the spinal medulla in similar shape to the number eight. The heavenly path is inside the nadi Sushumna. The Kundalini ascends throughout the Brahmanadi. The Brahmanadi is found situated inside another very subtle canal that runs throughout the length of the spinal medulla and is known with the name of Chitra. The seven chakras known with the names of Muladhara, Svadhisthana, Manipura, Anahata, Vishudda, Ajna, and Sahasrara are over this nadi Chitra." —Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga: The Mysteries of the Fire

When the Kundalini awakens, it rises within the Sushumna canal within the spinal column and awakens the main chakras of the spine.  Likewise, the 72,000 nadis or circuits of the astral body, as well as the vital body, circulate.  72,000 is a symbolic number, because there exist many more nadis.  72 reminds us of the 72 sacred names of God in Kabbalah.  Likewise, making the kabbalistic addition of 7+2 makes 9, the number of Yesod of Kabbalah.  The ninth sephirah from the top to the bottom of the Tree of Life relates to the vital / etheric body, the linga-sarira.

Given the sexual nature of prana, it is logical that single disciples possess limited capacities for elevating the creative energies, prana, or fires of sex.  A single person can awaken sparks of Kundalini through pranayama, producing certain mystical experiences, whereas married couples can awaken their full potential. 

It’s important to reflect on these things and to clarify some misconceptions regarding this subject.  Swami Sivananda once wrote:

“No Samadhi is possible unless Kundalini is awakened.” —Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama 

Samadhi is conscious experience, in meditation, devoid of the “me,” “myself,” the ego. Many students have misinterpreted this statement of Sivananda to indicate that one cannot have any spiritual experiences without working in the perfect matrimony, which is not true.  What Sivananda explained is that whether single or married, the fire of Kundalini produces ecstasy in different degrees. 

Many practitioners of yoga have also mistakenly attributed their work with pranayama to the full awakening of the Kundalini, because such disciples have many intense, spiritual, conscious experiences resulting from their practice, which they do not know how to explain except that their Kundalini has fully awakened.

Having such experiences is valuable and necessary, but it is not the end goal, nor is it an indicator that one is finished in the work.

Single persons can awaken sparks of that fire, but the full manifestation of the Divine Mother is only developed amongst couples working in chastity, meditation, and selfless service for humanity.

Remember that a man has one sexual polarity dominant and a woman has the other sexual polarity dominant.  If an individual wants to awaken the full potential forces of their respective sex, he or she needs a sexual compliment, the opposite sex, to awaken the reconciliating force. Man and woman, husband and wife, when sexually united and harnessing the creative energy, awaken a third power, the serpent Kundalini, which typically lies dormant in the base of the spine, in the Chakra Muladhara, coiled three and a half times and awaiting the moment of its awakening through the science of love.

This does not undervalue the work of pranayama, but puts it in context.  Single disciples can work with pranayama, can maintain their chastity, through these breathing exercises.  When disciples are married they can take their practice further, applying the same principles of Yama, Niyama, and Pranayama but with the tremendously added force of sexual union, which is known in the East as tantrism.

Single people can light a candle up their spine, but husband and wife can awaken the power of millions of suns.  This is the literal difference.  Single disciples must learn to prepare for a matrimony through pranayama, which is why in ancient schools of yoga, many masters would train their disciples in Brahmacharya before giving them the ultimate secret of sexual alchemy, tantrism, marital union.  This was obviously done in secret to avoid scandals and the fears of sexually degenerate people.
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Once disciples have demonstrated their sincerity, prudence, and dedication to their spiritual exercises, to pranayama, then the master would unveil the higher mysteries.

So why all this explanation about the creative energies in the context of this course of meditation?  If you want to still the mind, naturally and without force, you must practice pranayama and transmutation.  Your mind or mental states are determined by how you use energy.  If you use energy to feed desire, then the mind becomes provoked, stimulated, and distracted.  Harnessing prana helps to calm the mind, and prana is intimately related with your virya or virility.  Virya simply means sexual potency, which is the root word for virile (to possess sexual potency and strength) and well as virtue, since the virtues of the soul are born through the intentional use and practice of pranayama.

"Prana, mind, and virya (sexual energy) are under one sambhanda [connection]. If you can control prana, then mind and virya and controlled by themselves. If you control the virya by remaining as an akhanda bramachari without emission of even a single drop of semen (sexual energy, whether male or female) for twelve years, then mind and prana are controlled by themselves." —Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama

By controlling the breath with willpower, by consciously visualizing the circulation of energies, the prana circulates throughout our nervous systems, stimulating the chakras, in the same manner that electricity flows through a circuit.  These energies stabilize the lake of the mind in preparation for meditation.  As Swami Sivananda explains in The Science of Pranayama:

"Breath is external manifestation of Prana, the vital force. Breath like electricity, is gross Prana. Breath is Sthula, gross. Prana is Sukshma, subtle. By exercising control over this breathing you can control the subtle Prana inside. Control of Prana means control of mind. Mind cannot operate without the help of Prana. The vibrations of Prana only produce thoughts in the mind. It is Prana that moves the mind. It is Prana that sets the mind in motion. It is the Sukshma Prana or Psychic Prana that is intimately connected with the mind. This breath represents the important fly-wheel of an engine. Just as the other wheels stop when the driver stops the fly-wheel, so also other organs cease working, when the Yogi stops the breath. If you can control the fly-wheel, you can easily control the other wheels. Likewise, if you can control the external breath, you can easily control the inner vital force, Prana. The process by which the Prana is controlled by regulation of external breath, is termed Pranayama. Just as a goldsmith removes the impurities of gold by heating it in the hot furnace, by strongly blowing the blow-pipe, so also the Yogic student removes the impurities of the body and the Indriyas by blowing his lungs, i.e., by practising Pranayama. The chief aim of Pranayama is to unite the Prana with the Apana and take the united Pranapana slowly towards the head. The effect or fruit of Pranayama is Udghata or awakening of the sleeping Kundalini." ―Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama

The energetic channels or nadis are typically filthy, blocked and closed in us, which is the source of many illnesses and conditions that make us suffer physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  The circuitry of our vital body tends to be clogged with many negative psychic elements and riddled with impurities caused by unhealthy food, negative environmental influences, and most importantly, degenerated habits in the mind, heart, and body.  Many students experience problems in controlling the sexual energy because the nadis are blocked and polluted.  Such blockages stimulate the creative energies in a way that force them to flow from inside out, from within to outside the body, problems exemplified as nocturnal pollutions and unwilled seminal ejaculation during the sexual act.  Many practitioners, when beginning sexual magic, have difficulty controlling the creative force.  This is due to the poor circulation of vital energies.

As Swami Sivananda indicated, “Just as a goldsmith removes the impurities of gold by heating it in the hot furnace, by strongly blowing the blow-pipe, so also the Yogic student removes the impurities of the body and the Indriyas [the energetic roots of sensation] by blowing his lungs, i.e., by practising Pranayama.”  As we explained, many practitioners in the ancient traditions of yoga would work with Pranayama for many years before working in a matrimony, precisely because to work with sexual magic, the practitioners should be firmly grounded and knowledgeable about how to transmute their energies as bachelors.  It would be absurd for people who know nothing of transmuting their energies, practicing daily meditation, and working on the ego to begin sexual magic all at once.  It is best if such persons learn pranayama in preparation for the greater mysteries of the fire, because pranayama helps to cleanse the impurities of the body and help the energy circulate properly.  When the nadis are clean through the exercise of pranayama, the vital forces flow and rejuvenate the body and mind.  In this manner, the sexual act is easier to take advantage of without risk of spilling the semen.

The word for wind in Sanskrit is Vayu.  Vayu is a term for the element air in the body.  Vayu apana relates to the bodily winds that help with the processes of excretion, urination, and menstruation, associated with the functions of the lower pelvis, the intestines, and the anus. Apana also relates to this part of the body, the energy associated with the abdomen, as well as the elimination of waste products from the body.  Sivananda explained that with pranayama, we are uniting the prana from without with the apana within, mixing the vital energies in our breath with the vital energies of our coccyx and lower abdomen to slowly raise it to the mind.  This process awakens sparks of the sleeping Kundalini.

We’ve included in this graphic an image of the main chakras of the body.  Chakra literally means “wheel,” and the fly-wheels that Swami Sivananda references are the chakras.  The chakras are vortexes of forces that flow by the power of prana, the vital breath or seminal energies.  Chakras literally spin, like a water mill, when there is energy available, which is why Rumi, the great Sufi poet, stated:

"From the heart of the lovers, blood flows like a vast river. Our body is the windmill, and love, the water. Without water the mill cannot turn." —Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, Hidden Music

What waters make it possible for the chakras to spin?  The sexual waters, the seminal energy.  When yoked through pranayama, the chakras turn like a water mill, but if the seminal waters are ejaculated through lust, then the chakras remain dormant, asleep, incapacitated, without energy to circulate within them.

Prana, Christic energy, modifies into the tattvas, which are different condensations of this energy in the form of the main elements composing physical and spiritual nature.  Through alternated breathing of our nostrils, we assimilate these modifications of energy in order to awaken consciousness. 

"The respiration through the right nasal cavity is called Suria or Pingala.  We cause through this respiration the ascension of the solar atoms from our seminal system.

"The respiration through the left nasal cavity is called Chandra or Ida.  We cause through this respiration the ascension of the lunar atoms from our seminal system.

"We reinforce the Three Breaths of pure Akasha [the sacred sound and fires of Christ] with the exercises of Pranayama.  These Three Breaths are combined with the solar and lunar atoms of our seminal system to awaken Devi Kundalini.

"Prana is the Vital Christ or Great Breath [the Ain Soph Aur].  That Vital Christ is modified into Akasha [the superior waters of Kabbalah and the fires of Da’ath], within which the Son, the First Begotten, the Purusha of every human being, is hidden.

"Akasha is modified into Ether, and the Ether is transformed into Tattvas. The Tattvas are the origin of fire, air, water, and earth. —Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga: The Mysteries of the Fire

These tattvas relate to the seven chakras in the following manner:

1. Muladhara: sacral chakra, earth
2. Svadhisthana: prostate/uterine chakra, water
3. Manipura: solar plexus/abdominal chakra, fire
4. Anahata: heart chakra, air
5. Vishudda: throat chakra, Akash
6. Ajna: third eye chakra, Adi Tattva
7. Sahasrara: crown chakra, Samadhi Tattva

There is also the chakra of the lungs as well, but the seven main chakras of the spine are the ones I just listed.

The four elements relate to our mind, heart, vitality, and body, or air, fire, water, and earth, respectively.  Pranayama aids us in controlling the aerial nature of thought, the igneous powers of the heart, the aqueous nature of our vital energies, and the materiality of our earth, our physicality.  While the four elements relate to our three brains and body in this way, the chakras have slightly different correlations as you see in this graphic.

Akasha is the primordial fire hidden within the cosmic space.  Akasha is a force in nature that is divine, and can be designated by sound, light, and cognition.  The power of the Akasha manifests in the throat, the Verb, through the alchemical knowledge of Da’ath.

Adi means light, relating to the prana, the Christic energy, which condenses and accumulates in the third eye chakra, Ajna, to develop spiritual insight, the subject of a future lecture.  Samadhi tattva also relates to prana, since this is the power that grants omniscience and cosmic consciousness at the top of the head.

Conscious breathing, within Sufi schools, is synonymous with light, with illuminating the mind, the creation of the true human being.  Regarding the intrinsic relationship of breath with light, Al-Qushayri wrote the following in his Risalah: Principles of Sufism:

"Abu-l-Hasan al-Nuri was asked, “What is the origin of spiritual insight in the one who has it?”  He answered, “It comes from the saying of the Most High, ‘And I breathed into him (Adam) of My Spirit’ (15:29).

"If someone’s share of this light is more perfect, his vision is wiser and his judgment based on his insight is more truer.  Do you not see how the breathing of the Spirit into Adam made it necessary for the angels to prostrate before him?  For the Most High said, ‘I formed him and I breathed into him of My Spirit, so fall down before him in prostration’ (15:29).”

"…In this mention of the breathing of the Spirit [Abu-l Hasan al-Nuri] was aiming to correct those who say that souls are uncreated.  The situation is not as it might occur to the hearts of the weak.  That to which this breathing (and union and separation) are properly attributed is liable to influence and alteration, which are signs of the transitoriness of created things.  Yet God Glorious and Exalted has chosen the believers for perceptions and lights through which they come to possess insight.  In essence, these are forms of the knowledge of God.  This is the import of the Prophet’s saying, “The believer sees by the light of God”—that is, by a knowledge and inner vision for which God Most High has specially chosen him and by means of which He has distinguished him from others like him.  To call these kinds of knowledge and perceptions “lights” is not an innovation, and to describe that process as “breathing” is not reaching far afield.  What is intended is one’s created nature." —Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism

The sexual energy creates insight, spiritual life.  We create the soul through the sexual energy, a power that can produce experiences of astral projection, awakening within dreams, feats of jinn science, clarified perception, developed intuition and comprehension of problems, detachment from egotistical desires and worldliness, egotism, hatred, lightness of body and mind, health, vigor, etc. These are the different “lights” implied within Sufi language.

The sacred Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads, also teach all this in synthesis.  We are going to provide a commentary for the chapter 2, verses 6 and 8-17 from the Śvetāśvataropaniṣad, to emphasize the points we’ve previously made and to show some of the traditional basis for which this practice is elaborated.

We’ve included an image of Christ’s crucifixion in relation to this topic, because the cross is the sexual union of husband and wife through the vertical, phallic beam and the horizontal, uterine beam.  Through union of masculine and feminine forces, the ego dies through the fire of the Kundalini and gives birth to the resurrected soul.

"Where the fire is rubbed, where the wind is checked, where the soma flows over, there the mind is born." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

When husband and wife sexually unite, their private parts rub and produce erotic fire.  When their breathing is in check, controlled, when the prana is harnessed consciously, the seminal energies are transmuted.

The word soma means many things, such as body or plant juice, the latter being traditionally used as Vedic offerings during rituals.  Soma is sometimes referred to as the drink or nectar of immortality, an ambrosia or milk of the gods. This is none other than the prana, the seminal energies.

The bodies of the soul are created through the alchemical cross, when the soma is flowing within the nadis or Sushumna canal.  Soma literally means body in Greek and can refer to the solar bodies of tantrism.

"If a wise man holds his body steady with its three parts (chest, neck, and head) even, turns his senses with the mind inward to enter the heart, he will then in the boat of brahman [om] cross all the fearful torrents." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

Rubbing the fire of sexuality applies more so to a matrimony, but can refer to how individual yogis, who practice pranayama, awaken sparks of that fire in their spine through profound concentration and deep, unwavering prayer.  In the same manner that a couple controls the breath and transmutes the soma, the prana, a bachelor or bachelorette performs transmutation on their own.

Pranayama must be performed with the chest, neck, and head steady, in a good posture.  You cannot circulate the prana appropriately if your body is not firm, stable, and relaxed, with your head even with your torso and your spine straight.

What are the fearful torrents we must cross through pranayama?  The assaults of lust, which have polluted our nadis and sexual waters.  The boat of brahman is the ark of the covenant, the ark of Noah that carries us above the waters of degeneration in the mind.

"Compressing his breathings let him, who has subdued all motions, breathe forth through the nose with gentle breath.  Let the wise man successfully restrain his mind, that chariot yoked with vicious horses [senses]." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

The Upanishads refer to the mind, emotions, vitality, and physical body as horses which the real Self, Atman, the Inner Buddha or charioteer, must control.  He does this through the reins, his divine and human souls, through willpower.  The senses also relate to the lower Sephiroth as well as how our sensual, material consciousness apprehends life.

"Let him perform his exercises in a place which is level, pure, free from pebbles, fire, and filth, delightful by its sounds, its water, and bowers, not painful to the eye, and is full of shelters and caves." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad
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I have known people who want to begin meditation while living in a filthy and dirty home.  This is very difficult.  The tidiness of our home reflects what we psychologically carry within.  Your home should be your temple where you sit to practice, to devote yourself to God, your Being.  Our practices are amplified when we dedicate a special room for our exercises of pranayama and meditation, since the energies we attract help to produce serenity and peace in our home.  Pranayama cleans the mind and nadis, so to live in squalor will hinder our spiritual work, because the environment affects our practice, and vice versa.

"When yoga is being performed, the forms which come first, producing apparitions in brahman, are those of misty smoke, sun, fire, wind, fire-flies, lightnings, and a crystal moon." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

Students go through many experiences when pranayama is consistently practiced, frequently, every day, for prolonged periods of time. Remember the Sufi scripture I just read, that breathing is synonymous with lights?  Smoke can refer to the cloudiness of the mind, which students apprehend when they initiate pranayama.  They receive experiences from the internal planes that their skies, the mind, is filled with darkness.  This is a crucial step to make, because it shows us what work must be done, and that we must persist in our discipline.

Sun, fire, wind, fire-flies, lightnings, and crystal moons represent different forms of light or insights we achieve through working with the creative energy.

"When, as earth, water, light, heat, and space arise, the fivefold quality of yoga takes place, then there is no longer illness, old age, or pain for him who has obtained a body, produced by the fire of yoga." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

Remember the chakras, the four elements, and the tattvas?  These become amplified through pranayama, which produce longevity, health, youth, and life.  The fire of yoga can relate to Tummo Yoga or inner heat yoga in Tibetan, representative of the work with the Kundalini.

"The first results of yoga they call lightness, healthiness, steadiness, good complexion, an easy pronunciations, sweet odor, and slight excretions. As a metal disc [mirror], tarnished by dust, shines bright again after it has been cleaned, so is the one incarnate person fulfilled and free from grief, after he has seen the real nature of the self [Atman]." —Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

Is your mind dull, torpid, dark, hard to control or perceive?  Work with pranayama.  The mind and heart are a mirror that need to be polished and cleansed through prana. In the words of Prophet Muhammad:

"There is an organ in the body that, if it is righteous, ensures that the whole system will be righteous; and if it is corrupt, the whole body will become corrupt. This organ is the heart.

"There is a polish for everything that takes away rust; and the polish for the heart is dhikr, the remembrance of Allah." ―Prophet Muhammad, The Hadith

“Guard your breaths against God Most High,” state the Sufis. When the mirror is clean, it reflects the genuine image of Atman, the Self, our Innermost God, so that we are free from pain and sorrow. Pranayama will help you with this.

Learning to control our breath aids in the yoking of the vital forces, but while I mentioned to you that prana is in the air and in our semen, our physical breath is only a vehicle for the forces we seek to manipulate.

"Pranayama is not, as many think, concerned solely with the breath; breath indeed has very little to do with it. Breathing is only one of the many exercises through which we get to the real pranayama." ―Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

Circulating prana occurs through our willpower and imagination.  Breathing is the vehicle through which we obtain the transmutation of our energies.  While breath is a powerful and necessary component for our moment to moment existence, even more so are the faculties of perception, concentration, consciousness, attention, and prayer.

If you are performing pranayama but are not mindful of what you are doing, then you will not be successful.  Pranayama involves working with each of the three brains of gnostic psychology, directing the energies consciously.  “Wherever we direct attention, we expend creative energy” stated Samael Aun Weor.  This is essential, since no practice is useful if we are not attentive of what we are doing.

Your mind, heart, and body must be relaxed and in control, which is not a state of rigidity, but calmness, composure, flexibility, and firmness.  You must resolve to yourself to not needlessly move your body around during pranayama, nor let the mind wander to other things.  You also must resolve to not let your heart distract you, but to devote yourself to profound prayer during your exercise.  If you are thinking of other things while you are practicing, then you are not practicing.  Likewise, if your heart is not at peace, if you are not praying to divinity to aid you, if your emotional center is filled with wrath, anger, or sentiment, ignoring the presence of divinity, you will find it very difficult to focus and have a good practice.  Lastly, if your body can’t sit still, if it is agitated and nervous like an animal, constantly moving about, then you will not obtain stillness and the circulation of prana in your system, because the circulation of forces occurs when the waters of the body, heart, and mind are still.

Notice that when you cease throwing stones in a lake, the water gradually achieves stability and equilibrium; the surface becomes calm, whereby it can reflect the heavens above in a limpid, calm, and tranquil way.  The same with pranayama and the mind.  Your mind achieves stillness when you cease agitating it, by not feeding your desires.  Pranayama also works to calm the mind when there is enough concentration and cognizance of what you are doing.

"And they have said, 'God created the hearts and made them mines of understanding of Him.  After that He created the secret inner awarenesses and made them a place for declaring the Unity [which occurs once the multiplicity of egos are dead and the consciousness is unified in the Beloved, the Innermost]. Every breath that occurs without the guide of knowledge of God and the sign of Unity emerges from blind compulsion, and is a dead thing.  The one to whom it belongs is accountable for it.'” —Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism

​Here is how to perform a simple pranayama.  Seated comfortably with your spine straight and neck and head relaxed, close your eyes and pray to your Divine Mother.  Pray that she may help you transmute your energies to your mind and heart, to help you visualize and concentrate.

Imagine in your spine the two nadis Ida (Eve) and Pingala (Adam), connecting your gonads, testicles, or ovaries with your nostrils.

These nadis are polarized differently in men and women, as you can see in the following graphic.

In men:
• The lunar current, Ida (represented by Eve in the Bible), connects to the left nostril, characterized by lunar or silver atoms.
• The solar current, Pingala (represented by Adam in the Bible), connects to the right nostril, characterized by solar or bright, fiery yellow or golden atoms

In women this is reversed:
•  The lunar current, Ida, Eve, connects to the right nostril
• The solar current, Pingala, Adam, connects to the left nostril

These polarities are switched in the different sexes because husband and wife, like positive and negative electrical currents, compliment and compensate for each other.

With your right hand, extend your forefinger and thumb while closing your other fingers into your palm.  Close your right nostril with your thumb and inhale air through your left nostril. Take in as much air as you can without forcing your lungs or straining yourself.  Breath naturally and relaxed.

Now close your left nostril with your forefinger, still holding the right nostril closed with your thumb.  Retain the air as long as possible, again without straining your breath.  Imagine the energy or prana of the air ascending to the brain through the respective nadi you are breathing through, which connects your nostril with the coccyx and gonads. 

After retaining the air as long as possible, remove your thumb from your right nostril and exhale slowly, imagining the prana descending through the nadis connecting your head to your heart, with one nadi on each side of your face leading down to your chest.

Close your left nostril with your forefinger and inhale through your right nostril.  Repeat the process of raising the prana to the brain through your inhalation, raising the energies of that nostril and nadi to the head.  Retain the breath as long as possible by closing both nostrils with thumb and forefinger.  Finally, lift your forefinger from your left nostril and exhale, imagining the prana descending against to your heart through the two nadis connecting your head to your heart, which descend from the face, down the throat, to your chest. 

This process constitutes one pranayama.  Perform seven pranayamas total.  You can do more in accordance with your needs.

Here is some more practical advice for performing pranayama at home by the Master Sivananda:

"Pranayama can also be performed as soon as you get up from bed and just before Japa [mantra recitation] and meditation. It will make your body light and you will enjoy the meditation. You must have a routine according to your convenience and time.

"Do not shake the body unnecessarily. By shaking the body often the mind also is disturbed. Do not scratch the body every now and then. The Asana should be steady and as firm as a rock when you do Pranayama, Japa and meditation.

"Do not perform the Pranayama till you are fatigued. There must be always joy and exhilaration of spirit during and after the practice. You should come out of the practice fully invigorated and refreshed. Do not bind yourself by too many rules (Niyamas).

"Do not take bath immediately after Pranayama is over. Take rest for half an hour. If you get perspiration during the practice, do not wipe it with a towel. Rub it with your hand. Do not expose the body to the chill draughts of air when you perspire.

"You should not expect the benefits after doing it for 2 or 3 minutes only for a day or two. At least you must have 15 minutes’ daily practice in the beginning regularly for days together. There will be no use if you jump from one exercise to another every day." ―Swami Sivananda, Kundalini Yoga

When you perform pranayama, the important aspect of your breathing is retention.  With inhalation, you want your lungs to take in a profound amount of air, in a relaxed and calm way, without forcing the lungs to expand beyond its limits. Your breathing should not be forced and loud, but silent and peaceful.  I’ve known many people who make a lot of noise when performing pranayama, as if they were some kind of hydraulic engine.  But nowhere in the teachings of yoga do we find any support for this tendency.

"Always inhale and exhale very slowly. Do not make any sound." —Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama

Likewise:

“There should be no strain in any stage of Pranayama.” —Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama 

Pranayama is meant to relax the mind, heart, and body.  Straining oneself is counterproductive and inhibits the free circulation of energy.  With exhalation, your breathing should flow through your nostrils without noise.  I know some people like to perform pranayama in a loud way, which is wrong.  Breathing should be calm and natural, without force.  There is more strength in relaxation than there is in bodily and mental exertion.  This might seem counterintuitive for people in a culture that believe that one must conquer things with force.  The opposite is most true for this practice: if you want to be effective in transmutation, tranquility and control is the key.

After your inhalations, you must retain the air as long as possible, again without forcing your lungs.  Retention is the most important part of Pranayama, since this is how we internalize and accumulate energy within our etheric-physical laboratory in combination with willpower and imagination, visualization.

Your life is measured by how you control your breath, and breathing relates to how we modify and use sexual energy, the source of life.

"Regulation of breath is the stoppage of inhalation and exhalation." ―Patanjali

"Kumbhaka is retention of breath. Kumbhaka increases the period of life. It augments the inner spiritual force, vigour and vitality. If you retain the breath for one minute, this one minute is added to your span of life. Yogins by taking the breath to the Brahmarandhra at the top of the head and keeping it there, defeat the Lord of death, Yama, and conquer death. There should be no strain in any stage of Pranayama. Always inhale and exhale very slowly. Do not make any sound. A Yogi measures the span of his life not by the number of years but by the number of his breaths. Pranayama requires deep concentration and attention. Prana, mind, and virya (sexual energy) are under one sambhanda (connection). If you can control prana, then mind and virya and controlled by themselves. If you control the virya by remaining as an akhanda bramachari without emission of even a single drop of semen (sexual energy, whether male or female) for twelve years, then mind and prana are controlled by themselves. No Samadhi is possible unless Kundalini is awakened. The practice of Kumbhaka [breath retention] in Pranayama produces heat and thereby [sparks of] Kundalini [are] awakened and passes upwards along the Sushumna Nadi. The Yogic practitioner experiences various visions." —Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama

To conclude, we will end with comments by Swami Sivananda, who expressed some of the benefits of pranayama. After having explained the technique, which we will practice together today at the end of this lecture, I will conclude with some explanations for why this is beneficial, since many students often write to us asking about some tangible, concrete results for working daily in this exercise.

"This body becomes lean, strong and healthy. Too much fat is reduced. There is lustre in the face. Eyes sparkle like diamonds. The practitioner becomes very handsome. Voice becomes sweet and melodious. The inner Anahata sounds are distinctly heard. The student is free from all sorts of diseases. He gets established in Brahmacharya. Semen gets firm and steady. The Jatharagni (gastric fire) is augmented. The student becomes so perfected in Brahmacharya that his mind will not be shaken even if a fairy tries to embrace him. Appetite becomes keen. Nadis are purified. Vikshepa is removed and the mind becomes one-pointed. Rajas and Tamas are destroyed. The mind is prepared for Dharana and Dhyana. The excretions become scanty. Steady practice arouses the inner spiritual force and brings in spiritual light, happiness and peace of mind. It makes him an Oordhvareto-Yogi. All psychic powers are obtained. Advanced students only will get all the benefits." ―Swami Sivananda, Kundalini Yoga

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