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There's been a resurgence in our current media, a fascination with psychological abilities.  People have been listening or watching the UFO / UAP disclosures. There has been a common consensus and mentioning about psychological or psychic capacities. While this is captivating people's attention, what I think people fail to realize is that these types of abilities require a lot of responsibility.
 
Unfortunately, as evidenced by the military projects like remote viewing, where people would use their imagination to perceive people, places, and things for the government, we see that this is an unethical use of a power, and that these types of abilities that religions have taught and spoke about are sacred.
 
They are not meant to be used with pride, anger, espionage. So, they require a lot of responsibility. So, while Samael Aun Weor and many authors talk about these types of abilities, the reality is that to cultivate these things, we need to be ethical people. We shouldn't just be trying to develop abilities for their own sake.
 
So, while chakras are good, the ability to perceive the non-physical, the reality is that we need a further development in ethics, which is moral responsibility. Really, people who have these abilities and are helping humanity do not announce themselves. They are very quiet. This runs contrary to your local tarot reader or new age crystal shop. But, the reality is that these faculties, when cultivated responsibly, have tremendous weight. The people who really have these abilities don't talk about them. They help without letting other people know. 

​Spiritual empowerment is precisely what we seek on the path of sanctity, which is the upright human connection of the soul with divinity. We will talk about and define what these inner powers are, what spiritual perception is, and what it mean to be responsible in managing them, because there are plenty of people who develop abilities who end up very sick. They confuse psychic abilities with psychosis. Very common.  
 
We will explain how these mystical abilities must be tempered, primarily with intelligence. They have to be controlled. They cannot be spontaneous, sporadic, at one's whim―things that just happen to a person, but not willingly. That is the distinction between someone who has mastered these abilities and someone who is maybe dabbling or is developing the inversion of these forces.
 
We will talk about the need for virtues like prudence, humility, ethics. We will elaborate on the practical dimension of a psychological work, because while we talk about these elements, like chakras and perceptions, we always keep it in relation to the psychological practices of purification. There is a context by which we develop these things, not merely for its own sake.  
 
Also, psychic capacities are not commensurate with virtue. They are basically subordinate to it. They are not equal. Power should help to enliven our consciousness, our soul, to do what is upright, and to have a better relationship with divinity, as a result. That is the purpose.
 
We will also give some essential guidelines for maintaining harmony, how to be dispassionate, not craving or wanting these things, but developing them disinterestedly, with objectivity.
 
Then we will give some principles and practices, pragmatics for how to balance knowledge with being. That is really the key thing that Gurdjieff taught and that Samael Aun Weor emphasized: knowledge and being have to be balanced, study with practice, understanding of the purpose of these abilities, and then their proper use.
 
We will just emphasize what these chakras are. The Book of Revelation refers to them as the churches of Asia in the New Testament. The Sanskrit term for चक्र chakra means “wheel,” or “circle.” Basically in the physical body, we have what are known as meridians, a vital energy or force that animates, like we know from Qigong or Chinese medicine, acupuncture, that flow and circulate force. It interpenetrates our physical body and gives us life.
 
Whenever you have a meridian or a line, like a river or flow of force, intersecting with another,  you form a whirlpool, a chakra. So, there are not merely our seven chakras, but there are really thousands. But, we study seven main ones because they have the most power and also they have the most potential for real change. Seven main chakras align with our spinal column. They are not physical, but they are vital, energetic, psychological.
 
When these forces are flowing objectively and purely in ourselves, we awaken abilities, whether it is the ability to consciously astral project, to see the dream world, to see things in meditation with our imagination, to understand people better. People sometimes call it telepathy, transience. We also understand and comprehend abstract things that we read in scripture that have a deep application to our life. There are many abilities and they are all very powerful and useful, and we want to awaken these vortices of force with certain practices, so that we are balanced. The key is this―balance―equilibrium. We want abilities by which to solve problems in life and to help other people. That is the orientation.  

​Chakras come from the Sanskrit, but in the Greek, in terms of the churches of Revelations, we find that it comes from ἐκκλησία ekklēsia, which means a “place of assembly,” especially in a religious sense. It is a compound of ἐκ and the derivative of klēsia, which means “to call forth.” People have literally interpreted the Book of Revelations to reference seven churches in Asia, ignoring that Assiah, in the original language, refers to the body. If you study Jewish mysticism they referred to עֲשִׂיָּה Assiah, the world of matter and action. It is our physical body. In our physical body there are seven churches, seven places of worship. When we are working with these forces with wisdom, we worship divinity, and therefore we become a vehicle, a vessel, by which we can better express divinity.

​This goes respectively from the bottom up. The root chakra up to the chakra or fount of wisdom, the seed of omniscience.
 
There are different abilities that we are going to explain in sequence, also in relationship to the virtues necessary to cultivate them. So, “what thou seest, write in the book,” meaning the knowledge of these types of abilities come from experience. When we are practicing things like meditation, retrospection, self-reflection, imagination exercises, astral projection exercises, mantras, or sacred sounds, these things are helping us to basically see internally, psychologically. All the visions mentioned in these scriptures are something psychological. They teach us something symbolic, in an allegorical form, about our own inner development. We can see images, visions, and dreams that teach us these things. Therefore, “what thou seest” in your visions, write in the book of your practice.
 
Your life is a type of discipline, and our story is narrated in our works, our abilities, what we cultivate. So, we write in our book, meaning, we enter initiation. We enter a spiritual development. Then, in this way, by sending it on to the seven churches, by activating these abilities, we help to enter self-mastery.

​But, the conundrum is this: we need responsibility, purity over power.
 
It is actually better not to have powers when corrupt than to be impure and with power, because we want to be able to be responsible. Imagine if a person who is sick, who is angry and violent, who is given a knife. Irresponsible people with no judgment, or who are compelled by intense egotistical drives, create chaos.
 
In the same way, these abilities don't come easily. In fact, they arrive on their own when we don't seek them. But yet, we cultivate in the same way we practice basic hygiene. We do it disinterestedly: brushing teeth, cleaning up, taking a shower. We do not do them because, well, for their own sake, but they help to purify our own life. We do not do them for their own sake. We do them because in the context, we want to be the best person that we can be, so that we can better help others.
 
Selflessness is the key. Selfishness with power produces demons. That term does not necessarily mean people with a red tail or a pitchfork, the characters we see in religion. But, a demon is a person who has abilities, but no conscience―and that is a dangerous thing. In fact, we see a lot of these types of people everywhere: media, religion, politics. People with abilities, that were able to manipulate, but who have no soul, are empty. This is why Samael Aun Weor said in The Major Mysteries:

The word “occult” obviously has a lot of negative connotations. It simply means the “hidden,” to cultivate that which is invisible.
 
Usually, we use the term esoteric because, unfortunately like many groups and movements, a lot of terms have become corrupt, and therefore we want to clarify this meaning within the appropriate contexts. 

​We cultivate the hidden with disinterest. Inner powers are like flowers. Our chakras are like plants that bloom. When we nourish them, we give them water. We give them sunlight. We cultivate these abilities with patience, prudence, and delicacy.
 
In our last lecture (Inspiration, Aspiration, Expiration, Respiration), we talked about saving energy. We talked about pranayama: how to circulate vital and creative force, especially the sexual energy. We talked about prana. Through breath-work and by saving energy, we are circulating that force. Consciously, we are becoming a battery with a lot of charge, by which to enact positive action. But, if we save that battery, that energy, and direct it towards pride, with fear or anger, we make it stronger.
 
That is why it is not enough to just to save energy. We have to be able to cultivate ethics. We do so by being like a gardener.
 
I don't know if anyones gardened here before, but, it takes a lot of time. You have to have a lot of knowledge, but also this dispassion―patient work. You do not see a flower bloom in one day, which is funny because when people approach these spiritual topics, they want to have immediate experiences. They crave samadhi, ecstasy, talking with God, going in the clouds and having tremendous visions. These things can happen, but they are never going to be in the way that we expect or want. They come when they are necessary.
 
“Disinterest” means to do what is necessary for our development, our basic psychological hygiene, and to allow those flowers of the soul to bloom on their own. This is why Samael Aun Weor said in The Aquarian Message:

…meaning, let them. Don't force them. Do not shake the tree for the fruit. Meaning, “I want this,” but it arrives when the causes and conditions have been cultivated and they are proper.

It is this nature of humility which is really important. I believe there is a saying by Blavatsky in the scripture known as The Voice of the Silence:

So, who has the true spiritual power? Obviously, we picked an image of Jesus as an example of a master who embodied these abilities, one of many who developed their full potential.
 
In this tradition, we talk about our inner Being. There are many names in different traditions to reference the nature of divinity. We all have our own inner divinity inside, our own spark of the divine. We call that the Innermost. Some traditions refer to that as Christ―different levels, aspects, or manifestations of a state of our own identity, which is not tarnished by personality, by name, race, culture, habits, beliefs, or egotism. It is the spark of consciousness and being which is not mixed with impurity, and which we want to reunite with. But because we have ego―anger, lust, defects―we cannot fully develop that or unite with that.
 
Real power comes from divinity. Real abilities come from the divine. They come into the soul that is prepared.  
 
You see in many religions, not merely Christianity, masters who have the ability to walk on water, walk through stone. In Buddhism they have the same thing―traversing through mountains, the abilities to confront dire physical circumstances with tremendous intelligence. Those powers are really infinite. They are universal, and they are accessible to anyone who is able to prove their candidacy in their spiritual work.
 
The immolated Lamb is obviously the term for Christ, and then Christ came to represent an internal principle inside of us. Our Intimate Christ, who is not merely a figure in history or a statue to worship, is our own light that comes from the source. Jesus represented that in his life. Christ really is the highest power in us.
 
The term that Samael Aun Weor gives is the Glorian, which is the name for Glorian Publishing. It is an inner name for the light which emerges from the unknown void. 

​If you look at the Tree of Life or kabbalah, the Christ emerges from the abstract space and enters the universe to create. But, also we need to learn to enact that light in us, to create spiritually. So those powers come from the Sun, and we are like a candle, at least in the beginning. We are trying to cultivate abilities, some understanding, intuition, perception, patience, humility, whatever qualities we are seeking to master. All those abilities are pale in comparison to the full expression of our full mastery, which is available to us, but we need to develop.  
 
He says in The Aquarian Message:

​We mention this because, unfortunately, when people start to have experiences based on these types of practices, they may start to see things or perceive mystical experiences. But, then their mind begins to interpret, and the mind is the greatest deceiver. The mind is a useful instrument when it is in the service of the divine. But, on its own, it is a problem. So, people may have these experiences. Maybe they enter the Tree of Life, the dimensions of nature through astral projections, and they have beautiful samadhis. But then they come back to their physical body and they immediately declare, “I am a master.” They become filled with Pharisaism, mystical pride, ignoring that that was just a vacation.
 
It is not permanent citizenship. You can travel in these higher worlds for a day or two, or a week, depending on your work. But, we have to come back to this jail cell of a body in order to basically face the reality. So, those experiences are really meant to teach us something about our potential. It can inspire us to go up, but they cannot necessarily do the work for us. So, there has to be a balance. Awaken to our real nature. See these things personally. Know what mastery is, and then strive for it. Develop it. 

​The real master is our inner Being. No physical person is the master, or a guru, or a saint. The soul can develop and do its part, and really, when you meet people physically who actually do have this level of development, basically, they do not proclaim themselves to be initiates, or gods, or whatever. They are very humble―at least the authentic ones. They do not go announcing to the world, “I am the master so-and-so. Jump on the bandwagon!” Instead, they are very humble and recognize that the real master is their inner Christ.
 
We see here an image of Christ washing the feet of his disciples. He represented humility. We really venerate the Master Jesus―a high master. But, he also was not afraid to humble himself. He ate and dined with people whom most of society rejects, criticizes, and despises. He was willing to help even Mary Magdalene, and people who were apparently too fallen for the Pharisees’ consideration.
 
Therefore, he represented an attitude that we all need: strive for purification and work. Abilities emerge, and then renounce them. Renounce them. Do not crave abilities. Divinity is the only master. Therefore, we cannot claim any type of ownership for ourselves.
 
As Samael Aun Weor continues:

​Harsh, but true. We have to acknowledge our shortcomings and accept when we are wrong. 

​But, unfortunately we all, to some degree or another, may have this tendency to want to make a myth of the mind.
 
There is a term that Samael Aun Weor gives in this tradition called mythomania. When you break it down―myth of मनस् manas, a Sanskrit term for “myth of mind,” to believe that the mind is godly, the intellect.
 
Unfortunately, this type of attitude permeates pretty much every religious tradition, school, teaching, and group. None of us are exempt from the influence of the intellect. A person who has mastered the intellect completely is someone who is fully perfected, and therefore they have no inkling of self. That is a very high ideal to strive for. But, we all have this tendency to believe our self-image, what we see ourselves to be and what we want others to see ourselves to be. That can be a spiritual apparel. It can be whatever.
 
Unfortunately, some of the worst posturing occurs in spirituality. Therefore, we have to be very careful, because we may have experiences, like I said. But at the same time, rather than helping to elevate our level of being, they become and obstacle. That is when divinity withdraws those experiences, because they are not helping anymore. They are harming, building too much pride.
 
Our inner divinity may be a master of some level. Maybe we have attempted this work before and acquired some abilities, but then we lost it due to mistakes. Even though our divinity may be a hierarch of tremendous ability, we are not. This is why Samael Aun Weor was very severe and why, especially in this book, The Aquarian Message, people have a hard time digesting his directness, his forthcomingness. He is very severe because it is important to understand the dangers that infect everything―every type of movement, political or spiritual, whatnot. This is why he says:

Obviously, he is not talking about physical death. He is talking about the death of the ego: the death of pride, the death of fear, the death of lust, the death of avarice, and selfishness. When those elements die, we extract soul, and then we integrate the parts of the soul that belong to divinity. In that way, we are here, but we approach the horizon of our potential.

​So as a preface, now we can talk about some of the actual chakras and what are the virtues needed to develop them, but first off it is necessary to explore the requirements of spiritual awakening. We have been going back to this idea of humbleness, as he says in The Aquarian Message:

​We will talk about these chakras.
 
The Church of Ephesus, in the Book of Revelations, is the Chakra Muladhara. It has four petals. It is the root at the base of our spine. This chakra relates to the force known as the Kundalini. But, unfortunately, this term Kundalini is very misconstrued. The word Kundalini comes from kanda, relating to the base of the spine, or this triangle known as the Triveni, which is where we embody what is known as the sexual force.
 
Kundalini is a term that references the intelligence of the Divine Mother. These images that you see here on the slides are from this chakra poster of the Divine Mother (from Glorian Publishing, which can be purchased through their online store), the eternal feminine, the sacred. She is another aspect of our inner Being, our divinity. She has been known by many names: Miriam in Hebrew, meaning “to raise,” or Mary in English. She is Athena. She is Durga and Kali in Hinduism. She is the force and intelligence of the divine that learns to create, and She creates because She is the feminine force. She is precisely the serpent that heals the Israelites in the wilderness, as opposed to that serpent of temptation that pulls people down.
 
So that Kundalini force is very specific. It is the force of power that connects the soul with divinity, especially when that force awakens in the root chakra, Muladhara, and rises eventually, gradually, vertebra by vertebra, in the spine to the brain, and then will descend to the heart. That is a very slow process. It is not instantaneous. It is not automatic. The Divine Mother is not mechanical. She is very specific and demanding. She has rules. She has laws by which the soul must practice to awaken that potential in order to create spiritually in us.
 
She only works in a couple, in a marriage, between a husband and a wife, between a married man and woman who are in love. There must be an affinity in their thought, feeling, and will. They conserve the power of sex and use it purely, conserving it, and with sacred sounds and mantras and love, redirect that force. Instead of going outward to the orgasm, it is retrained and flows inward. It is the fountain of life, by which we are born again.
 
To be born again is a sexual problem. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). The sexual act is the Church of Rome, and the Church of Rome, the Gnostic Church, and our physical body, is precisely here in Muladhara―the Church of Ephesus.  
 
Samael Aun Weor explains an experience he had in the Church of Ephesus in the internal worlds, which anybody can verify. In meditation, you descend into the earth to a cavern filled with immense darkness, until finally, a writing on a small square pad of stone―a cubic stone, illuminated by a four-petalled lotus of blue light. Around that blue light is a tranquil pool of water, in the caverns of the earth. This is described in The Aquarian Message, and something that we can verify, because these experiences are objective. They are not merely a projection of the mind, but something that you can see.
 
In meditation and dreams, you can ask, “take me to the Gnostic Church in Egypt,” for example. Egypt, מצרים Mitzrahim in Hebrew, means “the place between the waters,” and those waters are the creative force of sex from which the Divine Mother or Venus is born.
 
Aphrodite emerges from the foam, or better said, the foam that emerged from the sea when Uranus (heaven) was castrated by Kronos―a Greek analogy or mythology. Kronos (Saturn) is the masculine aspect of the Holy Spirit, the force of death. By working with the power of Uranus, which is the sexual force, the sexual polarity, we give birth to Her in the spine.
 
Therefore, she awakens between the couple who is practicing for years. She is not mechanical, as I said. She cannot hurt the soul. She will not, but we can hurt ourselves.
 
Unfortunately, people conflate Kundalini with its opposite, Kundabuffer. Gurdjieff talked about Kundabuffer. Kundabuffer is the force of the serpent, the sexual power, that descends from the base of the spine down to hell. That produces psychosis, drug-induced delirium, madness.
 
People are reporting all sorts of things that they say is Kundalini because there are people who teach that they are awakening the positive serpent, but they are fooling themselves. Unfortunately, they do not understand that to awaken Her is to work with the power of God, and that God does not reward the irresponsible. She demands it in according to the ethics of our heart. Those ethics in our heart are patience, long-suffering, and tenacity―to work for however long it takes to awaken Her and to wait for the moment in which She does (for more about how many people conflate Kundalini with Kundabuffer, see the next lecture: Kundalini Awakening? Think Again! How Most People Experience Kundabuffer Instead).  
 
If you want an example of what that is like in music, listen to Turandot by Puccini. You find that Puccini knew this and represented it in that opera. He was a freemason when that tradition was still pure. You hear this grandiose music of Turandot being awakened when he strikes the gong. The prince who wants to marry the divine Princess of China strikes the gong three times, because that serpent Kundalini is sleeping coiled 3 1/2 times in Muladhara, and by awakening with the gong, power of our prayer, and mantra, and dedication, She rises, but only in accordance with the virtues of our heart. Likewise, the three strikes of the gong refers to three forces: man, woman, and sexual act, without which Turandot-Kundalini cannot emerge. 

​We also can awaken the Church of Smyrna, or the Chakra Svadhisthana. This is the prostrate or uterine chakra.
 
In this chakra, relating to more so to the sexual glands, you find the element water again. So, the root chakra is more of the earth, but it is the earth that is imbibed by the waters: מצרים Mizrahim―Egypt between the Nile and the waters, to use sacred, symbolic geography. But, this Chakra Svadhisthana has six petals and relates to the powers of the lunar force, the moon. This chakra can grant us the ability to astral project because when we control the waters of sex, we control the ability of the mind to be calm.
 
This is a very important thing that many people miss and ignore. We may attempt spiritual practices, but lead a life that is unethical in relation to our sexual energy. When we use energy in the wrong way for passion or just for carnal desire―kinks, fetishes, attachment for addiction―we do not awaken the positive force. Instead, those abilities are harnessed when we are, first off, willing “to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (to quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
 
Samael Aun Weor, interestingly, states that this chakra related to the prostate or uterus is awakened through tribulation and poverty. I do not really think he means this in the physical sense, literally. But psychologically, we definitely need to face poverty, the feeling that we may not be progressing. We are uncertain. We are struggling in the mud, and we are in a lot of pain, and we do not know what to do. But, with faith, we continue to practice in a marriage.
 
Now, one thing I will emphasize is that married couples can awaken the Divine Mother because the power of sex is the power of life, to be born again. Individual practitioners (single people) can awaken sparks. If you studied Sivananda, he made a really good point: spiritual experiences are impossible to have unless you are awakening the Kundalini. Unfortunately, people have mistaken this to believe that, despite having any experience, you awaken Her fully, in Her complete manifestation, through pranayama alone. She just goes from Muladhara, up through the head, and the person is on the highway to paradise. Then obviously, you look at some of testimonies, the quality of these people’s lives, and you really question, like, “this is very crazy!“ They are in a lot of pain. They are suffering a lot, but not developing wisdom. They are just confused.
 
It is one thing to suffer unconsciously without any growth. But it is another thing to suffer with will and to gain wisdom from it.
 
When he says, “tribulation and poverty,” we should not mistake his inference here, that just by going through a lot of pain and suffering, we are growing. There has to be an understanding and wisdom born from it. This is the nature of remorse, of conscience, where we feel we understand: “here is where I made a mistake, here where I went wrong, and here is how I fix this.”
 
There are mantras that single people can do, even married couples, but single people, if you want to awaken these abilities or gain sparks of Kundalini, you can work with certain mantras. Now, Sivananda also explains that in order to awaken the fire of Kundalini, you need to work with these sacred sounds, these mantras. But, the reality is that as a single person, one can awaken sparks like a candle, and those sparks of Kundalini are not a full flame. They are not a sun. A married couple works with the power of the sun. But, individual people can work with sparks. That one gains certain experiences, does not mean the Kundalini is fully awakened. This is where there is a lot of confusion in some groups where they are attributing a vacation with citizenship.
 
The mantra S, “Sssssssss!” activates the serpentine fire in the coccyx. It is the root chakra.
 
In the prostate or uterus chakra (Svadhisthana) is activated by the mantra M, “Mmmmmmmmm!”
 
[Note: see the Resource section before the Q&A for a video / pronunciations of the seven esoteric mantras or vowels]
 
If you even do these mantras, you can feel them vibrate in those centers. Those chakras help to activate those forces. For single people, if you are not married, you can basically circulate that power and awaken a force to a degree to where you are able to see things. That is important and necessary. But, full mastery is only achieved when you have enough sexual force, which is born through a couple. Our tribulation and poverty are two virtues: the ability to withstand hardship and ordeals with ethics, with patience; and to accept what comes and to not run away from the facts. 

​The Church of Pergamos or the Chakra Manipura relate to the solar plexus. The mantra of the solar plexus is U (as in “you”). When you do these mantras, you obviously sit quietly. You can start vocally and you can also recede, whispering them eventually after a few minutes, or however long, then silently in the mind.
 
Some people say it is good to mantralize for an hour a day, especially if you have a lot of chi, a lot of sexual force and drive, and need to circulate a lot of power. That will help activate that solar plexus, which is the battery of our physiology and our occult anatomy. The solar plexus is precisely this chakra that relates to the conservation of force. 

​If you have seen pictures of Christ in certain paintings, or even if you see Samael Aun Weor in some images, he does a greeting, left hand over the solar plexus, right hand in the form of the pentagram. So, Christ does this greeting in some renaissance paintings, especially artists―two fingers down, three fingers up. That is the pentagram that you see in our poster. It is the symbol of the perfect human being. 

​Unfortunately, that symbol has been appropriated different ways. The meaning we are giving here is that it is the full human being who has reason, spiritual understanding, at his command. It is not the inversion where the head is going down, which is the symbol of the black mass.
 
But Christ does the greeting. Even in certain prayers for protection, we cover our solar plexus with the left hand. We make the sign of the pentagram. We say “Inverential Peace!” It is a Gnostic phrase meaning “peace unto your innermost Being.” In a way, you can even draw upon energy from your solar plexus in certain prayers, known as conjurations, in order to direct force for spiritual defense. In that way, you are using up your reservoir, like you store battery energy and circulate it. But, the solar plexus is precisely that.
 
This church allows us to have telepathy, meaning, to receive thought. This is a phenomenon pretty much everyone has experienced, but does not label it that way. You may be thinking of a friend or you feel like, “I wonder how that person is doing?” Then they give you a phone call five minutes later. Or, you are walking down the street and you sense somebody is looking at you. You feel it in your gut. You feel it in your head. You turn around and look. Maybe you see a co-worker. It gets your attention.
 
Thought travels. Mind interacts because it is matter and energy of a different level of nature. It is not physical matter, but it is psychological force. We experience the world of thoughts and emotions in the world of dreams when we dream at night. It is a level or existence or dimension of nature in which we interact with a world of thought and feeling. The more physically active we are, the so-called astral body is integrated with the physical body and we are here, but emotion and thought travels. You can even sense maybe in a work situation―it depends on wherever you have been―where you can feel the emotions of the person. Maybe someone is filled with intense anger.  They do not say anything, but you sense it. It spreads. It is infectious. In fact, it is almost like a black wave, destructive, just like a flood. Even if you have no words for it, you sense that someone is upset. You can feel it. That is why we say, we do not live in a bubble. We are not isolated. We are constantly interacting with people on many levels. We are just not aware of it.
 
To develop the ability to receive thought, well, basically, telepathy occurs through the reception of your solar plexus. It is a receptive current, and then the other current is in the pineal gland, in the mind. Mind projects. Thoughts travel. But, we perceive thought in the solar plexus. This is why we have terms like, you know, “trust your gut.” You feel something. You intuit. It is not an intuition, per se, but it is a type of a lower, more coarser level of animal instinct.
 
Unfortunately in us, it is egotistical. These chakras can operate positively, or if we are very egotistical, those chakras work the other way. They do not circulate properly. Therefore, their vehicle is more so our animal appetites rather than our virtues. So, there is a duality to these forces.
 
The positive virtues needed for this Church of Pergamos, or the Chakra Manipura, is chastity, psychological purity, loyalty, faith, and obedience to the Father, meaning, our inner God, divinity.
 
Chastity, we have explained before, means to conserve the sexual force, to circulate it consciously with purity, not with lust or desire, but with love. Psychological purity has to do with the quality of our emotional states. Are we defined by anger, resentment, pride, emotions, and reactions to life grounded in negativity? Because that is going to charge us in an inferior way. Where we direct attention and energy, where we direct attention, we spend creative energy. So, what we think matters.
 
Loyalty does not mean loyalty to a group, school, or guru. It means loyalty to our inner God, because our inner God is the one who we have to follow―obedience to the Father. That is how we have real faith. Unfortunately, I think another problem with spiritual movements is that people assume and get caught up in group identity politics. Like, “we are the only authentic spiritual group and everyone else is damned.” I have been in many groups like that. The reality is that the real obedience to any person, loyalty, or good faith for any person is manifested when we follow our inner divinity.
 
What did Polonius say in Hamlet?

​Basically, “be true to your inner Self, and you cannot be false to any man,” anyone. Obedience to the Father is precisely that. Faith does not mean necessarily belief. It means conscious experience, to consciously experience these things and to know the results of our work. Faith is knowing from experience. It is not thinking or feeling something is true without evidence. 

​We also have the Chakra Anahata of the Church of Thyatira, the heart. The mantra associated with this heart chakra is “O.” We all know this. It is basic, “Ooooooooo!” (As in “Oh”). Some people do OM, also another powerful mantra.
 
The heart relates to intuition―the ability to know something without having to think. You instantly solve the problem. You are not thinking of it. It comes to you. The intellect tries to solve problems, deliberates, gets stuck in what is known as the battle of the antitheses: yes or no, good or bad. “This probably is what would happen if I do not do this.” It is a constant back and forth, the mind choosing between options. Samael Aun Weor had a very interesting quote among many, that is very profound:

​It is depressing because we are trying to solve things, but we cannot. We are stuck. But, then suddenly we know, even from basic examples of business executives having a five-hour meeting and not solving anything. They all take a break for five minutes, go wash their hands; go to the bathroom. Suddenly, it comes to them. They are not thinking about it. It arrives. Then they can figure out what to do. That is a very materialistic and superficial example.
 
Bu in our life, intuition develops through meditation―the ability to receive understanding and to know what to do without having to think about it. That comes about when the intellect is quiet. We are able to concentrate on one thing without distraction.
 
The heart chakra allows us to understand the astral world, the world of dreams. If you have dreams that are difficult to interpret, working with the heart chakra can help to understand what those are, because the world of dreams is the world of emotion.
 
This chakra is also developed by chastity, service, faith, patience. Chastity of the heart is the restraint of negative desire, and obviously the chastity of the body is the avoidance of orgasm. That is at a basic level. Chastity of the heart is when we feel anger and resentment consuming us, coming up, and we renounce that, even if we think and know this person probably deserves it. But, we renounce that. It comes up. You are boiling at 100 degrees Celsius, tremendous anger, and then you say, “I do not need to be this way. I forgive this person,” because we have comprehended the person, the situation, and ourselves. It does not mean that we are going to be a doormat and allow certain tendencies to go on, but you can stand your ground if you need to, but without aggression, or as the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata teaches, “Fight, but without anger.”
 
The chastity of the heart is compassion. When things go wrong, we study these elements in ourselves. In fact, there is a very Buddhist attitude in which―when these problems arise and give us grief, like the other chakras with tribulation and poverty―we can learn to understand this person is a gift. It is very difficult to change that attitude because in North America, especially, we have the “tit-for-tat” attitude, but honestly the Buddhist attitude is, when a person becomes an enemy, they really are our jewel, because they are going to show us what is most wrong with us. If we can accept that and be grateful for that problem, we can start to find solutions.
 
Samael Aun Weor wrote:

​This is a psychological attitude. Instead of feeling ingratitude or resentment, we understand, “OK. This person is wrong, but I am also wrong too. Why should I judge them?” That is the nature of patience born from comprehension. Service is to serve even the person who is driving in the hammer and the nails―to use Christ’s crucifixion as an example. Faith again, we talked about―to understand from experience in the heart. But as you can see from all of this, these virtues for the chakras overlap. 

​The Church of Sardis, the chakra relates to the throat. The mantra E (as in Spanish, “eh” as in “bet”), “Eeeeeeeeeh!”
 
This chakra relates to comprehension. A lot of these abilities interrelate and correlate with each other, because the chakras are basically a fountain that influences all the other centers. The same way that a pool of water in one part of the world may circulate and flow, it affects the rest of the planet.
 
Now, the Chakra Vishuddha has to do with the ability to comprehend things, especially the written Word. It is the throat chakra that helps us to basically understand the Λόγος Logos. This is a Greek term for the Word―speech, and also what is behind speech―a thought, the insight, the intuition.
 
Logos is the manifestation (in Greek), of divinity, the expression of the divine. That divinity manifests through words:

​But, obviously, in our modern culture, especially music or literature, we use a lot of bad words―arrhythmical, violent, impassioned, negative.
 
Our speech modifies sexual energy. We know from children or adolescents who are coming of age, when they are developing their hormones, their voice changes. Young boys develop more gravitas, a heavier voice. Women develop or modulate their voice too during puberty.
 
How we use speech determines how we direct sexual force. If we are using our speech in negative ways, not conscious ways, not necessary ways, we harm ourselves and others. We need to learn how to speak when we need to and being silent when we must be silent. Then we take that reservoir force and we are modifying it, we are crystalizing things. This does not mean that we should be afraid to talk, like “I have to judge myself and say the right thing.” It means prudence, intuition, following our heart, and respecting the word, because the voice is a very powerful instrument.
 
It is the instrument that makes society. We exist in society because we are able to talk, and the quality of our speech determine the quality of our relationships, especially, whether you are married or with friends, people. So, this is verbal purity.
 
It also relates to comprehension. To really develop the chakra of the throat, we need to comprehend ourselves. We can also learn to comprehend any sacred book. So, it we are reading a scripture or meditating on a verse from a religious tradition: the Bible, Qur’an, kabbalah, we meditate on what the verse means. We can become quiet internally. We can work with the mantra “Eh.” That chakra helps to understand what is written.
 
It is an interesting dynamic. Intuition helps us to know things with our thoughts, but the Chakra Vishuddha helps us to understand the written word, things that are abstract and obscure, that maybe do not make sense literally. Any scripture is a very subtle thing. There are many levels of interpretation, which is why it is always good to learn about multiple perspectives of a sacred text, because they teach and have different levels of interpretation. They are all useful in levels. Some of them are deeper than others. Vishuddha can help to unlock that.
 
So, what means one thing on one level can be deeper on another. We can go very deep into what a scripture teaches because this chakra helps us to experience it.
 
Rather than just reading about astral projections, we actually experience it. The Chakra Vishuddha helps to understand the relationship between the written word and the symbols of our experiences, when we dream. This is also predicated on psychological death, because if we are identified with our own egotism, our defects, it gets very difficult to discern what is real and what is not.
 
This also relates to dispassion and clear self-judgment, and this self-judgment does not mean shame. It means understanding and remorse. Remorse is the quality of the conscience, which recognizes right from wrong, when we’ve made a mistake. Shame is an ego that is an inverted version of pride, “I am the worst person. I am not worthy.” That is negative. Self-judgment, remorse, is “Yeah, I messed that up pretty badly, but I know what to do now, and I'm going to do it.”

​Dispassion: not favoring, not rejecting, but just looking at it. That is clear judgment, impartiality, which is why in the Egyptian mythology, Anubis, the god of the divine law, is depicted wearing a mask of a jackal, because the wolf or the Jackal is a symbol for karma, and as a hierarchy of divinity, he is judging humanity dispassionately, not as some blind retributive, you know, almost archonic persecution or negativity towards humanity, like the Gnostic archons. Instead, it is conscious law, looking at things fairly and being impartial. One does not show favoritism, not going to reject the person, but just looks at their deeds, to see how they weigh on the scales of cosmic justice. 

​We have the Chakra Ajna, the Church of Philadelphia, which relates to the third eye. This chakra is activated by the mantra I (as pronounced in Spanish, “ee” as in “tree”).
 
Philadelphia―obviously, besides being a city, the city of brotherly love―this brotherly love has to do with the Chakra Ajna, because the ability to see with the third eye, or imagination, or as some people have called, clairvoyance, is precisely founded on love.
 
This term clairvoyance comes from the French, clair-voyance, “clear vision.” It is a technical term that was given to a faculty we already have. It was invented by a group of French esotericists who wanted to obscure the nature of their work. They wanted to make it sound technical and fancy, so that people would leave them alone or find it to be something unique and powerful. It was kind of a bad PR strategy because it confused a lot of people. It is just the faculty of imagination.
 
You notice that there are two petals in this chakra because imagination can be positive, or imagination can be negative. Conscious imagination is willed, controlled, sustained, clear, detailed, conscious. It is the ability to have experiences in dreams, to have visions in meditation, to see spiritual images and understand their meaning.
 
But, negative imagination is fantasy, illusion. It is the desires that want to fulfill or satisfy themselves, like anger that fantasizes about hurting someone or wanting revenge, or daydreaming. Those are all negative. The negative polarity of that chakra is precisely that. It is a delusion. It is not real. Unfortunately, sometimes, actually many times, when we dream, we are conditioned. We usually tend to see things in the inverted way of this chakra. Usually, some dreams can be real nonsense, incoherent. Or they can be very clear and detailed, but there is something wrong about them. They can be very lucid. Just because a dream is lucid and clear, does not mean it is real or objective, or spiritual. That is not the case. You can have many visions that are very profound and aware and detailed, but they are not in the higher dimensions of nature. They are in the hell realms―nightmares―the inversion of the Tree of Life.
 
This is why to develop the positive polarity of this chakra, we need real meditation, internal meditation. In meditation, we learn to discriminate between what is real and what is false, and to judge between them. It also means we return to a state of innocence, because to see clearly, even in conventional parlance, means not to be angry. “Do not let emotion cloud your judgment,” is common saying.  Instead, by being more innocent, we become objective. This does not mean to be naive and gullible. It means to be pure in the mind. It means to have an attitude that is willing to accept things as they are, and not to try to control people. Innocence is accepting humanity, but also offering what is best. In that innocence is a state of selflessness, in which defects do not cloud anything. They do not interfere with what you are seeing.
 
Samael Weor mentions in a book called Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology, that Christ was a perfect clairvoyant because he had no “I,” self, ego, interfering. He could see things and not let his own mind interpret, but actually see the reality of it and understand what to do. That is perfect clairvoyance, perfect vision. To get there, we need prudence, also non-judgment of others, because:

​If we have inner visions, we have to be careful with them because they might be about other people. Sometimes, there is the tendency of people to have experiences and they will talk about them. That can create a lot of pain, because, first off, that vision may be true, but it could also be totally false. It can create a schism in spiritual groups. This is something that happened with Krishnamurti and the Theosophical Society. A lot of people were traumatized as a result of seeing things, but not having judgment of what was being seen. 

​This is why when we talk about the last chakra: Sahasrara or Laodicea, we talk about the need for silence.
 
This chakra is the crown. It is the halo of the saints. This is the capacity of omniscience. The mantra is still the same. The mantra “I” (the vowel “ee” as in “tree”). This mantra helps to activate not only the third eye, but also the crown.
 
This chakra is deeply related to the wisdom of beings like Jesus, Moses, Buddha, whom you all see in the paintings with the halo. It is because the kundalini force has risen all the way up to the mind and then to the heart. They are illuminated by fire, the fire of sex, the fire of the Holy Ghost, the fire of the Divine Mother. They developed it through humility.
 
Omniscience is the ability to know, see things, but also understand them immediately. This is the faculty of the omniscience. Omni-science, scientia―to know, knowledge. Omni: to have fully comprehensive scientia: knowledge. It is the ability to perceive life, matter, and experience in multiple dimensions. This is why someone like Jesus could be approached by a crowd of Pharisees for trying to test him. He could immediately see what they are planning, but also know what to say, saying things that obviously revolutionized religion, because he is not literal, or stuck to the law. But, not a dogmatic law, but also an intuitive understanding of what the law signifies. He could say what is right because he could see in multiple dimensions all at once―thought, feeling, will. He could see the karma of a person. Very awake. Very conscious.
 
So, intuition in the heart helps us to understand experiences. The same thing with Vishudda. The frontal chakra helps us to see things. But, the crown chakra helps us to see and to understand at the same time. You can have an experience and immediately know what it means while it is happening. That is something very elevated.
 
Again, mediation develops this, humility, which is why John the Baptist was beheaded in the Gospels, because he was submitting his worldly mind to the earth and bowing to divinity.
 
The intellect must be subservient to divinity. The intellect in itself is Luciferian. When it is self-sufficient, it thinks it knows more than the Transcendental. and therefore, it is limited. It creates problems. But humility, even though being guided and illuminated, one knows things, but it is not proud or boasting. It is just a fact of their being.
 
This also involves resignation to God―the head metaphor. Also, in Islam, bowing the head to the Earth during daily prayer is the same meaning―Sahasrara, bow before divinity. It also involves the renunciation of passion, attachment, and vices, because to develop real perfection at that level requires giving up a lot. It can be very painful. But, that is why it is a long process. It takes time.
 
Lastly, silence regarding experiences, or better said, we can say, prudence, because in many cases it can be harmful to explain an experience to another person. It may not be useful to them. It could be useful to oneself, but not be useful to the student, or to the other person, or a friend. It could be just to feed pride.
 
Also, when having experiences, one might be in danger of incurring a lot of negativity from another person because, first, they may reject the experience, or it is not useful to them, or they do not understand it. That is why gardener puts up walls, puts one’s guard up.
 
There may be some cases of discretion when it can be prudent to explain an experience to someone because it is relevant to them. But, we have to be conscious of when it is appropriate. Otherwise, it is good to be quiet, because many people have the tendency of―to use Sivananda’s very explicit term―the “diarrhea of the tongue.” One takes a beautiful experience, and mars it with words. In fact, speaking about mystical experiences can create division with people because we are too attached, too attached to maybe degrees or titles, or what not. Samael Aun Weor says that Jezebel, our lustful mind, likes to undress itself before others as a prostitute, to speak about one’s sacred experiences. This is obviously wrong, and shameful.  
 
Samael Aun Weor mentions in The Aquarian Message, we have to be like a garden, a wall. Cultivate your garden, but you do not have to proclaim it to the world. It is not beneficial. 

​Here is a video for how to pronounce all seven vowels:

​Two books that talk about all of this: Kundalini: The Sacred Fire of Religion, and The Aquarian Message by Samael Aun Weor. If you are going to go for The Aquarian Message, get ready for a ride. He is very severe. He explains the Book of Revelation in detail and explains, in very severe language, the fate of humanity, but also the nature of what is required to develop these abilities.

​Question: Can you maybe better explain when you mentioned that there are some people that get the messages, but then use them to boast and be proud and eventually they just take that in the wrong way? It’s been my experience that people will use their power with anger and pride, and divinity doesn’t seem the take it. For instance, Hitler in the second Sacred Sexuality film by Glorian Publishing (Hitler knew sexual alchemy, but deviated). His power he used for a bitter end, right? The German people were still fighting to the very end. But Hitler was using his throat, his words in bad ways…
 
Instructor: Duality. There is power in heaven and power in hell. Chakras can rotate positively. I believed Samael Aun Weor mentions, “You look at a clock on the wall” or imagine you are at a steering wheel. Positive rotation of the chakras is when you are turning from left to right, like you are driving a car and holding the wheel, turning it right. The negative is the opposite, to the left. Clockwise is positive, same direction in your chakras in front of you. Negative is counterclockwise when transposed on your body.
 
People like Hitler, who obviously knew the occult, developed a lot of power, because initially, he knew the mysteries of the perfect matrimony. But, unfortunately, he was tempted by a black magician from Tibet who taught him, “You do not need to practice that way. You can still develop power, but through lust and power.” Then he deviated to those results.
 
So, divinity takes away power from the initiate: I am talking about when a person is developing conscious objectives, spiritual power as authentic. Then when activating those abilities and rising up spiritually, we make mistakes. Divinity can be like, “OK, it seems like my experiences to you are making you too proud. I am going to take them away from you for awhile.” Therefore, what happens is that you could be on a spiritual diet. That person―knowing enough not to commit wrong, but also not advancing as much as they would want spiritually―suffers. That is part of the virtue of the second chakra, Svadhisthana, or the Church of Smyrna, tribulation and poverty. That is something that everybody faces in this path, when they are consciously working.
 
Divinity will say, “OK! You have had all of these positive and beautiful objective experiences for some time. Your credit is due. You paid on the credit card. We gave you the benefit. Now you have to pay”―tribulation and poverty.
 
So, what happens is it is a state of suffering. You have these visions, experiences, and feel very inspired. You know divinity from experience, but then God says, “We are going to take a break from that for awhile and see how you do, and if you keep up with it, the situation will change.” Samael Aun Weor talked about in the book, The Three Mountains, how he was punished for a certain action of his. He was criticizing certain authors and his divinity told him at that point, “You have caused a lot of pain with your words. Therefore, we are going to put you in prison for ten days,” which is a symbol. For some time, he was unable to astral project. This is a guy who can astral project at will. He said, “Woe! Woe! Woe!” Pain. Being stuck in this body, you know, he would live ethically, but not having that ability to talk with divinity, just blackness, darkness. This is someone who was conscious all day, then goes to sleep at night and basically could, during the hours of sleep, physical sleep, be on in the internal worlds doing things. Now it is was taken away from him because he was too critical. He used his Vishuddha too harshly.
 
That is what we are talking about when God withdraws―in the positive sense. Obviously, people who are developing abilities in the negative sense continue doing what they are doing because they are not obeying the divine law. God says, “OK!” In the Qur’anic sense of the word, “They are blind and they are left to wander aimlessly in their blindness.” They think they are seeing, but they are seeing through hell. They do not see reality.
 
So, those people are like chaff in the wind. They are just going to be pulled by the forces of nature and be disintegrated down in the infernal worlds, eventually, and out of the law of karma, they are allowed to be here, because those kinds of people offer opportunities for us to change. They are going to provoke things in us that―you know, any connections we have to them―we need to die to. It is divinity that allows these things to happen for a purpose. But, their withdrawal of power comes about for initiates who are working consciously, in that sense.
 
Obviously, the war mongers and the powerful demons, and the people, the sorcerers who are doing what they are doing, and they have abilities, well, as the Qur’an says, “They will enjoy a reprieve for a time, but their payment will come.” Fortunately, not by our will, but when the law comes to collect.
 
Question: Has there been historical figures like Jesus or Buddha that awakened their Kundalini only without being in a marriage?
 
Instructor: No. Not fully. There are people who can awaken sparks. There are many people who do this, but the full knowledge of how to awaken that force was never taught to them.
 
Sivananda is a good example, because he is very strict with his teaching. He is against, in his writings, he says that people can not be having sex, or having relationships, and that a yogi should be single, dedicating themselves to their Divine Mother. There were many people like Blavatsky and Sivananda who had a public life, but they also had an internal practice that was not well known. In fact, to publicize that at the time would have been traumatic and contrary to what they were trying to accomplish. It is a big responsibility and also a very radical teaching, like you can be married and still be chaste. It seems contradictory.
 
Blavatsky was with Colonel Olcott. People thought that it was a platonic relationship, at least in their in public life, but they had a private practice. They were together. Sivananda also had his wife, but not public, because people at the time would not have accepted it. But, fortunately, since the 60s, Samael Aun Weor gave The Perfect Matrimony, where he was given authority to teach publicly what was not allowed to be talked about for centuries. He was the first to do it.
 
Sivananda’s tradition is very Piscean, you could say. We talk about astrology, that there are certain currents of influences in humanity that govern the dissemination of knowledge. For 2000 years, during the Piscean era, it was more conservative. That knowledge had to be earned. For example, Samael Aun Weor mentioned that Gurdjieff knew the science and taught Hitler the perfect matrimony. But, only from mouth to ear when he was ready for it. But, obviously, he deviated. Many initiated knew this, but Samael Aun Weor was the first to publicize it, because he was told, “You have the authority now to go teach this because we are now in the Aquarian Era.”
 
Pisces is the age of conservatism. The Aquarian Era is the water carrier. The symbol of knowledge is water, and because we are all thirsty, now the knowledge is open to the public since the 60s, since the advent of Aquarius. It is a different zodiacal influence that has been allowing this knowledge to be public because now people are ripe and ready for it. In fact, now it is a crime not to talk about it because there are so much confusion on the internet in relation to sex that people are really harming themselves. Due to pornography, and all sorts of stuff related to sex that is being consumed in this modern era, it is really our obligation now to teach openly.
 
Obviously, we have to teach it and provide it sensibly. We cannot just give it raw and inarticulate. There has to be context. We explain how through the case of different religions and traditions so that it makes sense. It has to make sense, otherwise (people exclaim), “What is this?” That is the duty of the Aquarian Era for people who know this.
 
But, yeah, are there single people with fully awakened Kundalini? No. Even the Dalai Lama is a master. He was not married in this life, but in his past lives, he did the work in a marriage. So, there are people even in past lives did this work to a degree, rising up on in this Tree of Life to certain levels of mastery. But, the Dalai Lama decided, and he chose to take a break from that. People in this life may have done the work previously.
 
Question: As with my question with Jesus, do we believe that he had a marriage or he was born already with the awakened Kundalini?
 
Instructor: Good question. He was like any one of us, but he had done the work before, many times. Rose, fell, rose again, fell. Samael Aun Weor says, “This is the seventh time he has done the work.” It has been popularized now with the Gnostic Gospels that he was married to Mary Magdalene. She was his priestess. Magdalene, Mag, Magushan in Indo-European, Magushin, Magician, priest or priestess. Every priest has their priestess.
 
Question: It is in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, right? In The Pistis Sophia too?
 
Comment: He is born of the spirit too. He could not have been born of the flesh, like Mary and Joseph…
 
Question: Did they do the Perfect Matrimony, or she was…
 
Instructor: Samael Aun Weor mentions some of that internal life in a book called, The Narrow Way, where he investigated the inner life of Jesus in the time where he studied and practiced. I recommend you study that, since that book explains his initiatic development in detail.
 
Firstly, I do not have the experience to say what the personal life of Jesus was like because I was not there. But, obviously one thing I do know is that, historically, Christ played a role. Just like we talked about in the Gospel of Judas (see two lectures on this, Transcendent Betrayal in The Gospel of Judas and Beyond Good and Evil in The Gospel of Judas). Judas played a role. He did not want the role, but he took it because he had to. Likewise, all the apostles had a role and a drama, and the drama of Christ is the highest drama, where we have to go through the same types of hardships, passion, crucifixion, not physically, but spiritually and psychologically. So we can learn from that too. Obviously, we are curious to know who these masters were like in their real life. Because, obviously, there could be a point of contention. But, for me, and more importantly, if I see him one day, maybe I will say something, but as for now I do not know. 

Happy New Year, everyone! I wish you many blessings to the beginning of this year, especially as we think back to what we have accomplished, also things that we look forward to in our own personal journeys. 
 
Part of what I wanted to start the New Year with today is a discussion about resolution, and how we think of the common parlance of finding a new beginning to things. I think it does apply very well to how we approach life, but more importantly, how do we approach ourselves. I think that we all have the ambitions and the longings to find some deeper purpose in our communities, in our experience, in our spiritual lives, and we seek a type of practice to make it happen.
 
One of the challenges we all face is obviously the resistance. So, we may have an endeavor that we want to solve, a problem, a challenge, and we seek to enact certain conditions to make it happen. But unfortunately (we all know this), we promise to go to the gym—we do not. We think about things we want to do, and yet we do not fulfill them, despite our intimate impulse to seek the new. 
 
The reason why we often get stuck in resistance for ourselves is a lack of energy. We have the inclination to start something, but then we face the friction, whether it is in our families, our communities, our marriage, our relationships. That friction requires a type of energy and a type of understanding. 
 
So, by understanding who we are and what it is in us that is creating the problems we face, we can change the situation. Our level of being determines our life. That has to do with, as a term in this tradition, to psychologically where we are at:
 
Are we defined by problems or anger and resentment? Or are we defined by a more luminous character, embodied by the best teachers of humanity, messengers, prophets, founders of religion, whatever they may be?

​In this lecture we are going to talk about an exercise called pranayama, because it is an exercise in yoga that helps to augment, conserve, and develop energy, and learn how to direct it at will. Because we may face these oppositions in life, but not to have the energy or zeal to continue. 
 
We often feel depleted or drained in our endeavors. This exercise is very well known in Hinduism, but it is something that we also practice in this tradition, the Gnostic tradition especially.
 
We will talk about the purpose of the practice, its role, its efficacy, how it practically demonstrated in our life, and the importance of pranayama for mastering more of ourselves, our potential, because it makes sense, logically. If you have energy, enthusiasm, there is more you can do. Not merely just in a material sense with our jobs, but in developing our spiritual character. 
 
We are also going to tie pranayama into a less known aspect of Hindu yoga. Pranayama is deeply related, in terms of its expression and utilization, with creative energy, the power of sexuality. The power of life is the power of creation. That energy, when it is used spiritually, and with understanding, and with purity of heart, that force can awaken the ability to perceive the spiritual, but also to develop our best qualities, the power of life.
 
We will also tie in how pranayama can develop spiritual inspiration, conscious awakening, and inner development.
 
It is interesting that this term inspiration especially relates to breath, to inspire, “to take in.” The breath physically has a correlation to how the energies of the bodies work, and how it flows. We will talk about that.
 
We will also emphasize the need for pranayama, especially for people who are single. Obviously, we place great emphasis in this tradition on the use of the sexual force, in terms of harnessing the power to awaken the soul. That can be developed in any relationship, in terms of whether single or married, especially. But obviously, single people can use this practice to prepare for marriage, especially. We will talk about that.
 
Lastly, we are going to elucidate how pranayama strengthens and is amplified by ethics. This is something that many people skip over, especially in meditation. 
 
The first steps of meditation and yoga have to do with character. Without a strong foundation and the proper use of our mind, emotions, and body, we cannot achieve insight or stillness, because we are engaging in actions that agitate mind, body, soul. What happens is when people sit to meditate or practice spiritually, they cannot sit still. Irritated. Mind is all over the place. Cannot concentrate.  One is easily affected by problems.
 
Pranayama is a tool for learning meditation, primarily, and meditation proper is the ability to get insight into problems, into issues, into crises, so that we can resolve them. 
 
These ethics are, these actions of our character become magnified when we save energy and learn how to direct it. This is why character and ethics are the foundation of any religion, because with power comes responsibility. 

​So, we could talk about perhaps what might be our potential situation. 
 
Personally, this was definitely me 20 years ago, as I was trying to find my way in the world when I was growing up. I felt that there was something missing in education, in life, in my relationships, in my relationship to myself. I felt that I was deeply in yearning for some stability, some kind of purpose. 
 
Also, as we know from youth, or if we work with youth, or have been in education, people know that especially in the modern era, people are constantly depleted. People lack force. People are tired. They do not have the energy to sit, to concentrate, to listen, to participate, to pay attention, to be a part of something meaningful. By recognizing that, I think a lot of people recognize that, but do not want to make the changes necessary to fix that. This is because we tend to be addicted to these ways of being in life, constantly distracted, identified with fear or problems and suffering, as much as we say we want to avoid it. We still do the things that make us suffer, as we know from the New Year's example. We may feel that we want to do something meaningful, and yet we deviate. 
 
We have a purpose, a goal, an object, and as we strive towards that aim, resistance comes up, and we get diverted. We deviate. We do not follow a linear trajectory from point A to goal. 
 
Now, there is a lot of reasons why we do that, and we might find that we try to initiate a project, a purpose, a goal, and yet we seem to lack the will to do it. A lot of the time, it is because we are depleted. We are wasting energy all the time. 
 
We are not, to use the medieval alchemical tradition, hermetically sealed, like a chalice or like a crucible, in which nothing from the external world can come in and affect one's serenity. The challenge is, when we face the hardships of life, where, to use a medieval symbol, the athanor is boiling, the temperature is rising, we often become so caught up in the emotion that we boil over, we explode. We do not recognize that when the temperature is hottest is when the impurities can be burned, but there is a threshold that has to be mastered there to see how much we can handle. what is the tension in life, what is the emotional crisis we are facing, and also what is our reactions to it. 
 
By facing it, one can be still and to understand what psychological elements in us are producing the problem.
 
So, we may recognize intuitively this is the reality, but we lack the method how. One of them will be pranayama, to gain energy, so that we have enough force to do, to be able to push forward, to gain momentum. 
 
We also see that people today, despite our advancements, are suffering a lot. We have a lot of pain in our communities, a lot of confusion. We often tend to not discriminate between desires, especially in us. We tend not to see what psychological way of being we enact or identify with creates the situations of life.
 
What do we produce? We tend to just react to problems, situations. Does this not mean in life we need not to learn how to respond? But I think a response is much more intelligent and meaningful and profound rather than just reaction, mechanical, like a machine. 
 
We want to be able to stop being mechanical, repeating the same habits day by day, same patterns of life. But if we are searching in spirituality for something to change that wheel or to get off that wheel of Samsara, to use Buddhist terminology, to cut through it, we need force. We need zeal, not religious zeal, but enthusiasm towards a directed purpose, a spiritual goal. 
 
We often tend to get identified with the whims of any thought, feeling, or impulse. We have tried meditation, or especially beginners realize the mind is all over the place. Body cannot sit still, like we are talking about, and emotions can really suck a person down into a pit. 
 
So, pranayama can deal with that and help that. It is also, we may have a deep yearning for internal peace, but the ignorance for not only how to find it, but also, more importantly, how to experience it, and lastly, how to make it intentional, how to cultivate it. 

​So, we will talk about, in the theme of this lecture, the nature of breath, breathwork. Pranayama is the technical term. We will break it down. 
 
Inspiration is interesting from the Latin inspiritus, “to breathe into.” It also means “to excite or encourage or inflame,” and from the 13th century, meaning “the immediate influence of God or a god.”

​This image is by William Blake (the Creation of Adam), when divinity created the human being to the breath of life. A beautiful symbol about how not only physical breath gives life and animation to ourselves physically, but spiritually. By harnessing the breath and saving energy, we can create life in ourselves, which is spiritual experience.
 
We know the term inspiration to feel like a sudden “aha!”  We got it. Something comes to us. It is a revelation. Inspiration is that actual realization of when we resolve a problem. Things come to us not from thinking about them, but by putting the mind aside and letting that revelation appear. Inspiration is that faculty. 
 
It is the influence of divinity. It does not matter the religious terms we give. To divinity, obviously, people come from many walks of life, but divinity is specifically a state of being, a quality of consciousness that is very transcendent and very elusive to the intellect. But it is something that can be cultivated personally through breathwork.
 
14th century theology refers to inspiration as literally “scripture inspired by God,” and, also, to corroborate mid-16th century, “the drawing of air into the lungs.”
 
People have referred to scriptures as inspiration, meaning there were people who were once like us, who through that particular spiritual work, were able to develop themselves spiritually. Therefore, they were directly in connection with divinity, their divinity inside, and were able to document that type of insight to people. That is where you get religion from. 
 
Different communities have different scriptures because divinity is eternal. People are temporal. Therefore, divinity expresses in many places, in many times, to many people, and not just one at the exclusion of the others. 
 
So, there is a universal theme prevalent through these inspirations that these scriptures teach, and so, in this school, we study all of them so that we can get to practice, to understand how the practice of inspiration, literally in our bodies, can cultivate that type of realization and experience. 
 
We find the scriptural reference in the Book of Genesis in Chapter 2, Verse 7, where we see in William Blake's illustration (the Creation of Adam), which we can say is a symbol of creating a real human being. A real human being is a person like Jesus, like Buddha, like Moses, like Krishna, the prophets, people who really developed themselves, because they worked with the power of life in themselves:

​So, in pranayama, prana has to do with nature, and prana is a force. Prana means “life.” It is the vital force in nature, in the air, in the rocks, in the trees, in the stars. It is the vital force that we also carry in our body.
 
Our body is like a tower. We find different centers in which we operate. Psychologically, we are made up of different elements, and we study this diagram called the human machine, because we understand that the body is a mechanism. 
 
There are certain tendencies in the ways we think, feel, and act. We sometimes call these the three brains, because they are modes of operation. Physiologically, with our chemistry, or metabolism, catabolism, vital vitality, breathing, digestion, but also our physical brain, but also our emotional brain. 
 
A brain, in spiritual terms, is not merely just the cranium. It is a center of operation. There are different intelligences informed in each center that we need to understand. By understanding the mechanism or machine of thought, feeling, and will, we can learn to drive our car with intelligence, and get to our destination.
 
Prana (vital force) is found in all these centers, except this force or energy is modified in different levels of density.
 
So, the intellect, we can say, is one of the most dense. It is also very slow apparatus. We know this when we are cooking. We put our hand on a hot stove, and we retract our fingers. We suddenly feel emotional anger or frustration, and then we think how much it hurt. You see that there are different speeds operating here. Our movement and our instincts were quicker, and our thought came later. 
 
Likewise, emotion is really quick. This is why it is also hard to control, especially when we get overcome by emotion.
 
But more importantly, the most difficult force to control is the sexual force, the power of life, and that power is the most volatile. It is also the most powerful. We know it is the power of divinity. Divinity creates through love and through that force to create a physical child. 
 
But to use the injunction of Jesus of Nazareth in the book of John, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). The same energy, but controlled and directed with the intelligence of divinity, is what creates spiritual life, to be born again. It is a sexual problem, and pranayama teaches us, especially for single people who are learning to work with this energy in a spiritual way for the first time, it applies to them.
 
Pranayama, you may be familiar, is breath work. We will do a sample practice after the lecture if you are interested, but it involves breathing through the nostrils interchangeably and directing the force up the spine, to the mind, and then to the heart. In that way, you create like a circuit, a flow, coming from outside to inward. In that process, we are developing and controlling, we are yoking the force of prana in our breath, but also in our bodies, because we find prana in ourselves, but also in nature.
 
It could be good to practice pranayama even in the woods, especially if you have the opportunity, because nature is beautiful, and we are vibrating at a different level of density, much less than Chicago, especially also New York too (I think New York takes the cake above Chicago. Sorry for people who may be New York fans)—but literally prana is “to yoke the wind” (Sanskrit): प्राणायाम prana-yama.
 
यम Yama means “to yoke or restrain.” प्राण Prana is “breath,” but also vital force within and without. 

​Now this ties into the theme of aspiration, because pranayama is used to develop our spiritual longings, our yearning. 
 
To aspire comes from the late 14th century aspiration, “a spirant,” which means “uttered with a continuous expulsion of breath.”
 
Now every religion has its practices. Some traditions have mantra recitation, like they call japa in Hinduism. They repeat prayers, rosaries, using the breath to recite or pray, or to evoke a state of yearning for divinity.
 
How we use breath determines a lot of things, not merely just in our physical speech with people, but also through exercise. So, every religion taught how to use the breath, because it is the expression of divinity, and the quality of our words determines the quality of our relationships on one basic level. 
 
Likewise with aspiration, by combining longing and prayer with a mantra, a sacred sound, with pranayama, we have a type of amplification of force. Something happens psychologically when we are focusing on a prayer, asking for assistance, and developing a relationship in our heart to divinity in whatever form. The forms are representations of one abstract reality, which has no form. But when we pray to the divine, something happens when using that force in order to direct it. A channel opens up, the heart opens up, we aspire, we feel longing, and there are many even emotions that can come with that—not hallmark card sentimentality, but real deep in-depthness of the soul, real depth of the soul. 

​You find that range of spiritual emotion reflected in a symphony of Beethoven or a nocturne of Chopin, and these were initiates who taught and knew divinity and expressed it through music. Because we gave a course on this before, The Secret Teachings of Opera especially. But aspiration is deeply connected with how we breathe, but also even if you listen to music like great choral symphonies or choral music, you feel the elevation of the heart, like a yearning up to heaven. 
 
It can be inspiring, but also it is aspiring. Not only do we inspire and breathe in different influences, but how we use that breath determines if we aspire or expire. We will talk about that term more specifically.
 
But to aspire from the 1530s comes from “action of breathing into,” from the Latin aspirationem, a “breathing on, a blowing upon, rough breathing influence, to direct breath to a purpose,” and tying into what we were talking about too, aspirare: “strive for, seek to reach, literally breathe, blow upon”; and the 1600s term, “steadfast longing for a higher goal, earnest desire for something above oneself.”

​It is a seeking and a striving, and pranayama is very good for developing that connection in the heart. I think a lot of people may have realized and have seen in their life, personally for me this has been the case, where life was so much suffering that many people's heart become dead of feeling, like just calloused from all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to quote Hamlet. But there are exercises like this with breath work that can learn to open up and break the shell. They can develop the real subtlety and sentimentality of the spirit, superior emotion, which is not a state of suffering or affliction, but is that yearning and depth of the soul and the consciousness that seeks to experience for oneself what divinity is. 
 
All religions and their foundation teach how to experience divinity, and the most basic method is meditation. But to clarify, meditation is not merely sitting still and not thinking. It is also not spacing out.
 
Meditation proper comes from the Sanskrit term धी Dhi or ध्यान Dhyana, which means “to see, to perceive.” It means to perceive internal images and experiences, like when we dream.
 
Unfortunately, in our case, we tend to be very cluttered in our dream states. We see things, but they are incoherent, fragmentary. There may be a narrative, but it does not make any sense when you wake up. “Why was I talking to Barack Obama? Why did I assume that he was coming to my job to congratulate me?” I mean, honestly, this is like a random example, but you got to think there is a narrative to dreams, and there is a story to dreams that can teach us something about ourselves. 
 
But a dream is something of fantasy. It is an illusion. It is not objective. It is a state or reflection of our psychological reality, but it is not objective.
 
It is not reflecting like a revelation of Moses on Mount Sinai, or Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Many of those stories are revelations from dream experience, but not of a subjective mechanical type of dreaming, but a state of real perception.
 
Meditation, the ability to first calm the body, still the mind, do not think, concentrate on one thing, and to visualize. Visualization is the faculty of the consciousness to perceive divinity, and when the mind is perfectly still, suddenly new images will come. 
 
We may experience something very out of the ordinary, where one has an experience symbolized by all these great stories. Some people take them as literal physical fact, but these are meditation stories. Being on a mountain is the symbol of going up in spiritual elevation to proximity with divinity. It is not a physical story of climbing a mountain. It is a symbol of spiritual work, and then meditation is seeing that for oneself. 
 
But unfortunately, we tend not to have enough energy to perceive. If we do not dream much, it is because we tend to waste emotional energy. This is an energy that fuels our dream experiences, and, also, meditation. 
 
Because meditation, it is not merely just about a silent intellect, but it is also a calm heart. It is fueled by modalities of force, and that emotional energy, when it is conserved, can guide us. 
 
There are levels of energy, and by having energy in the soul, like you put fuel in a car to drive, you have the means to get to your destination. So, meditation is the ability, again, to perceive imagery of an internal type.

​That is fueled by different gradations of force. You might have seen this image before, especially we have here on the wall. This is the Jewish Tree of Life. 
 
It is called the kabbalah. It is a Hebrew term for the map of reality—not merely just physical, like this bottom sphere (Malkuth). It is also a map of our internal spiritual dimension, levels of dimensions in nature, where we go when we dream, but also how do we react and act psychologically.
 
There are states in nature that we gravitate to when we dream, depending on our quality of life, our level of being. If we are dense and filled with negative emotion and anger and resentment or fear, our dreams tend to be not above, but below, metaphorically. That is mapped by the inversion of the Tree of Life at the very bottom. We call that Klippoth.

It is basically the word for Hell, “world of shells.” Going back to the shell analogy, if our negative internal states like anger and pride encage us, we are trapped in hell. We are suffering.


But there is a way to break those shells and free the energies inside them so that we can reintegrate with divinity. That is the purpose of any religious path, what it should be: religion, religare, “to reunite,” or yoga from the Sanskrit yug, “to reunite.” So creative energy can empower all of this.

So this Tree of Life has been mapped in many ways. You can map it out to the body with its different trinities, mapping out the three brains—one trinity superimposed in the head, the heart, and towards sexuality.

You find that the three pillars represent left and right: positive/negative, solar/lunar, man/woman, and the spine, the tree that upholds our body.
 
This map has many correlations and they are very intricate. But I want to emphasize this tree not in terms necessarily of dimensionality, spaces where we go when we dream necessarily, but also energy.
 
What energies exist in us and how do use them?
 
Obviously, our physical body is operated by mechanical energy. Above that, and when you go vertically up in this diagram, you enter less dense states or gradations of force.
 
So, the physical body is the most dense, and the physical energies that operate it are also the most coarse. So the further up you go—not in vertical space physically, but psychological space—you enter a hierarchy of being, more elevated states of spiritual perception. Those forces become much more subtle and refined and pure.

We have vital energy, which is really the sexual force, the power of life. That energy animates our body and our life every day. When we physically get up in the morning—after maybe sleeping eight hours, or you have been lucky on a nice long winter break, maybe from job, vacation, 10 hours if you need it—you are refreshed.
 
You find that you have a certain currency or depository of force by which to be in the day, meaning, you have enough energy to get you through certain obligations. Maybe you have more, maybe you have less. That is deeply integrated with the vital force.
 
This vital force is not merely just in the sexual glands, but it circulates all throughout the body. You know, Qigong or Chinese medicine especially, they study what are called the meridians or currents of vital force, which flow throughout the physical body. They are not physical, but they integrate with the physical body and interpenetrate. You could say that without vital force active, the physical body dies. It degrades.

So, we are deeply interested, when we study and practice pranayama, to conserve this force, to save it, to have a battery housed in the body, so that when you do pranayama, you have enough energy to jumpstart your car.
 
A dead battery cannot operate anything spiritually. If we are wasting our energies all the time, then there is no force by which to develop a circuitry in our physical body, but also to have that spark or connection with divinity, because unfortunately, us, our meridians in our body and our vital energies tend to be out of whack. That creates a lot of problems.
 
We not only have to save vital energy, but also emotional energy, as I was saying. How do we use our emotions to the day? Are we characterized by maybe fear or anger? Do we have certain problems we repeat? Maybe certain relationships, social connections in our life create friction. It is not to say that we avoid these situations, but it means that when we face problems of an emotional type, there is a bit of a separation, not in a sense of dysphoria or unreality, but watchfulness—watching the person, watching their emotional reactions, and understanding what is making us tick, so to speak. By watching and observing all this, we try to see what is our quality of being, what emotions tend to waste energy.
 
We can also learn what emotions save energy, too, because it is not about just avoiding problems or avoiding what's in ourselves, but cultivating the superior, the virtues. When we save emotional energy, we have more energy by which to dream consciously.
 
But also we need to save mental energy, too. Mental energy applies to the intellect. If we overuse the intellect by reading too much, what could happen is that we lose our train of thought. Our energy gets depleted. We feel tired. We lack a type of focus. One thing I will mention, too, is that when we exhaust all the forces available to us, whether through our intellect or emotions or our body, we get sick. So physically we get sick, because internally these forces in our dimensional state of constitution are depleted.

People who lose their mental force and waste it on too many intellectual activities eventually develop illnesses like schizophrenia or mental illness or delusional disorder. They have used their intellectual machine so much or have abused it so much that their physical brain becomes sick and therefore they have an imbalance.
 
Likewise with emotions, we know from even seeing some certain actors and actresses, people who abuse the emotional energy through too much passionate display of reaction become very sick—bipolar, depression, manic depression, whatever it may be.
 
Physically people who abuse the body can lose their ability to walk. For example, you see football players like Ohio State and Texas playing. You see these guys do amazing stunts and maneuvers and you are amazed. But how many of them end up physically destroyed by what they do? Because they abuse the body.
 
Pranayama will teach us how to integrate all that, how to save energy and how to make all the levels of our psyche balanced, because you are redirecting force, you are conserving intellectual, emotional, physical, vital force and you are creating an interconnection with your own divinity, your spirit, your intuition, your conscience, so that you have emotional, mental, psychological stability whenever crisis of the external world enter us.
 
Above that, there are more subtle forces like volitional energy, which is willpower related to concentration, and obviously concentration is necessary to meditate.


But above that, when we learn to concentrate and save our ability to act with intentional  will, not merely desire or whim, but focus, we can become more conscious, which is the ability to perceive and to understand.
 
Beyond that is the spirit, divinity, the spiritual force, and that spiritual potential is what guides the whole process, because the inclinations of the heart are guided by our inner divinity. 

So how to elevate the creative energies? There is a symbol that some of you may have seen in medicine and health. It is the Caduceus of Mercury.

That is a beautiful symbol of how there are energetic currents in the spine that are symbolized by two serpents. So, there are two serpents that rise from the base of the spine and then intertwine around the spine in the form of energy up to the brain. Then there are currents that then go down to the midbrow, throat, and then the heart.

There are wings here because when we save energy and with pranayama elevate those energies to those currents and the vital depth, they go up to the brain. When rising up, they create the wings of angels. Now, it is a symbol of spiritual elevation, like our emotional level of being, our mental quality of being becomes more refined and relaxed, more patient, more compassionate, more serene.
 
When those forces rise, they help to solidify and integrate our spiritual practice. When you do pranayama, the pranayama that we will explain today, you do not necessarily need to visualize. Although with more advanced practitioners, you can learn to visualize these energies, these two currents.

One of them tends to be called masculine, the other feminine in relationship to images of the sun and the moon, meaning there is like a positive charge, negative charge. This does not mean negative in terms of morality, like to look down upon. It means electricity. When you have two conduits (positive/negative), and a reconciliation through the spine, it is like you have a current and now the energies can flow. It is the same thing with the spinal column.
 
When you are practicing pranayama, and you know, obviously these exercises, you can even imagine this imagery of the two energies or the two serpents rising up the spine. Then you can see that, because if you are imagining it and also practicing it, and when you learn to see internally, you can feel and sense the flow of those energies, although that is not necessarily mandatory.
 
So, I think some people do get caught up when they practice pranayama in any tradition, that they get hyper fixated on trying to see the images, but also feel the sensations in the body.
 
The physical body is not a deep predicator or indicator of success. You may have types of perceptions. You may feel like a lightness, kind of electricity in the body. You may feel or even see images, sounds, lights, like you're about to dream, where you get really relaxed, especially. But none of those necessarily indicate that you are, you know, doing anything wrong. It just means that now that the energies are beginning to flow, you are opening up your senses, and so you start to see things.

The important thing is not to get caught up, like, “I need to have this sensation or this experience to know that I am doing it right,” because those sensations and experiences are temporary. They are of the past. They do not last, and so, what you want to do is just return to the visualization if that is necessary and just keep practicing.

The real indicator of success with pranayama is that you have more focus and concentration. You are more serene. You are not irritated as much when you face crisis or crises. You have more patience. You are more intuitive and understanding of people. You comprehend problems and how to solve them. You have greater flexibility in your emotional range. Maybe you feel like, or you have the sense of how to navigate social circumstances with people. Maybe there is a conflict with a person. You learn how to face that without fear and to transform it for what it needs to be.
 
Psychological indicators of success are precisely that. Do not get caught up on sensations. I mean, those things are temporary. They are not necessarily reliable, too. But they happen. They happen to a lot of people. 

One thing to emphasize, too, that we have been talking about is the nature of ethics.
 
So, really the basis of pranayama, especially in the yoga tradition, is the necessity of conserving the sexual force. That is the foundation of any religious practice. It does not mean one abstains from a relationship. What it means is that in the relationship, if one is married, one enacts that protocol.

That has to do with the practice of what is known as the perfect matrimony. There are people who even practice pranayama while married, and it might seem confusing or maybe contradictory.
 
How can a person practice the conservation of the creative force in a marriage? Because those couples, if people are familiar with Karezza, I mean, that is a kind of a kindergarten introduction to this, but they are married couples who can be with their partner, connected, but with purity and with love, not desire.
 
Desire wants to satisfy sensation and wants to use the person to get a sensation. But love is conscious and is spiritual.
 
The couple who practices this can connect sexually, but they never lose the physical sexual force or any force. They learn to train the body to make it flow through breath work in the marriage, through prayer, through devotion, especially to what is known as the Divine Mother in Hinduism.

The Divine Mother is represented, or the sacred feminine in all religions is represented in many ways. She is been known as Athena among the Greeks, Kali, Durga, Mary. Or to use the Hebrew term, מרים Miriam, which in Hebrew means “to raise.”

So couples can learn to use that force, conserve it, still raise it up the spine to the mind and then to the heart. They never lose that force because they train their bodies. It is something that can be learned if one has the inclination or the dedication or the interest. It is very sincere. But not everyone is married and can practice what we call sexual alchemy, the perfect matrimony.

Therefore, single people learn pranayama to learn how to direct that force individually so that when they do get married, they have some stability and learn how to develop that.
 
But it is not always necessary. You know, we are all in our situation in life because that is what we need to be. It is a learning process. So be patient.
 
But obviously in yoga, pranayama is based on what is known as Brahmacharya, and Brahmacharya means the conscious conservation, but not only the saving of sexual force or the physical entity of our life force, the prana, it also means it is sublimation, “to make sublime.”

You have heard the term subliminal, like between two worlds, right? Subliminal messages like people joke about going to McDonald's and hearing those messages on the microphone that say, “eat, order, get out,” and then repeat.
 
So, people just go mechanically. I have heard of stories like that, but no. But sublimation, what I really mean is sublimation has to do with that force which is in a static state usually, or it is, you know, being used with passion and lust. It is in a liminal state. It is beneath.

It is even in physically, you know, in terms of our Tree of Life, located in the sexual glands. It is beneath the heart and the head. It is the foundation.

How we use that force determines how we equilibrate our heart and our mind. Sublimation means to sublimate, is to take that force which is below and raise it, conserve it, make it go inward, upward to the mind, then the heart. In that way, when we transmute that force. The word transmutation means “to mutate” that physical substance into energy through prayer, breath, pranayama, sacred sounds, mantras.
 
We learn to create a circuitry and we save an abundance of force that is our battery for doing spiritual work, because we need a good battery in the body to be able to apply force and get things done, especially spiritually.
 
Pranayama, Brahmacharya, is based on the Hindu tradition. The term Brahma is the Sanskrit name for the creative force, God, and Charya “to be followed in observance.” It has to do with restraint, to restrain an energy that is normally expelled and to redirect that force.
 
The word, even in the term Jordan, like the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized, is a symbol of this, “to be born again” [since ירדן Jordan means “descender,” and pranayama reverses the typical river-like flow of sexual energy, to make it flow instead from outward to inside, spiritually, and not the other way around].

The force which can give life is instead conserved, raised to the head and then to the heart. Baptism, purification of the mind. The force can cleanse the intellect and develop the heart. It is an observance because it is a virtue. It is a practice that these religions taught as the basis by entering into meditation.
 
Now by this I am not saying one needs to be married to meditate, but single people can practice with pranayama and learn that how to use that force so that the mind is not crazy.

The emotions are not like a wild elephant as you see in this image of the nine stages of meditative concentration, which in the beginning is running around crazy. Instead, you want to be like that monk who calms the elephant and purifies it, makes it white. He does that by controlling the fire of his passion and using the rope of mindfulness and the hook of self-observation. I mean, that is one way to look at those tools that he uses.
 
When we conserve and elevate that force, we learn to empower our consciousness. Like I said earlier, with power comes responsibility. With more energy, we have more ability to do. What we do depends greatly on our ethics.
 
What is our quality of character?
 
Are we just saving energy and still acting and reacting the same way as before? Because that is harmful.

Unfortunately, there are many people who abstain from the sexual energy and relations. They save that energy, but they do not transform it. There are many priests in certain traditions who practice abstinence. But unfortunately, what happens is that when fuel is conserved in a car for like three months, it degrades. If it is not circulating or being used, it pollutes. Same thing with the sexual force. This explains why there are people who, they may be putting on the garb of spirituality, but they do things which are contrary to the penal code. People who do not respect physical laws do not respect spiritual laws. So, with sexual power comes responsibility.

When wasting that force, we can see that we expire. So, I know we are tying in the breath work to inspiration to breathe in, aspiration to elevate that force. Expiration obviously has to do with “to breathe out,” expirare.

It is also a reference to the ending point of a formal termination or death. We know that someone has their last words, their last breath, they die physically.
 
But also, since we have wasted energy many times or tend to waste energy, we tend to be very dead inside. I mean, I have already explained that. So, a lot of us may feel like, especially when seeking a lecture of this name and title for inspiration, we may be finding some kind of goal and purpose to do, find some interest in spirituality. Really, inspiration is also really that kind of insight in the mind and the heart of seeing something new and realizing something original or profound, especially deep.

But unfortunately in us, because we waste energy so much, we tend to be psychologically, maybe very dead inside. Spiritually, pranayama can change that. Conserving the life force, circulating it, can help to give inspiration.

But it depends, you know, it depends on if it is our inclination or study, something that even today we can, if you stay after Q&A, get some coffee, tea, take a break, you are welcome to stay for a sample practice of how to do pranayama, especially. We will do that.

​It is important to remember that there are cases when it does not work. It works when we are relaxed, we are calm, we are at peace, we are not agitated. Some people, and I have seen this in certain traditions and certain groups where they will do pranayama like, like really, like they are [super fast breathing like one is hyperventilating]… no, it does not work that way.

You do not want to be agitated. You want to be so still when you are breathing that you seem dead.
According to one instructor, one instructor's wife, would be alarmed because he would be doing pranayama and, you know, even just perfectly still in meditation and breathing so silently and still that his wife thought he was dead, could not hear a sound.
 
We do not want to be exasperated or exaggerated or agitated. We want to be calm because the purpose of harnessing energy is to be still. If we are breathing deeply, we are passionate, that is when the energies go out because we are too excited. We need control, relaxation, serenity.
 
Pranayama does not work if, you know, we are trying to do these exercises but we are wasting energy in life, intellectually, emotionally, mentally, sexually, especially. That is the foundation.
 
That energy is often misused in many ways too. I mean, that is the most obvious, but one way people misuse energy is that we also, well, we do not realize that typically that how we think, feel, and act modifies energy.

Intellectually, if our mind is impure or we are indulging in fantasy, passion, that will taint or color that energy, will corrupt it. Now, I would not say be paranoid, but in the beginning, we learned that we have a lot of defects, a lot of psychological errors that kind of cloud the mind or maybe are dense. But with time, those energies flow and with deep yearning and aspiration, relaxation especially, the mind calms.

When the waters are no longer stirring, you can see what is in the cup or in the glass and whatever layers or stratification of soil and dirt and mud just becomes still in layers. You can see what is in the contents of the cup. But if we are in life just constantly shaking the contents of our inner psychology, whether it is through fear or anything that is super intense, you know, defects we talked about, emotional reactions, we are agitated. We cannot see clearly.

We already talked about excessive loud and fast breathing, performed with agitation, excitement, lust, passion, or fear. But also, a lot of religions talk about avoiding intoxicants too as a baseline because in yoga practice, for people, the goal is to not add more conditions to the mind.
 
If you let the mind settle, you direct energy, you do not add anything in—no garbage, no unnecessary fuel and elements, nothing that does not belong there, then the waters will become clear of their own accord.

They will just rest and everything will become still… baseline. I mean, we have a lecture or we have an article on our website too about this topic especially.

I will not go into too much detail right now. But if you are interested in knowing more about how those certain elements or substances can affect our spirituality, it is on our website under the articles section [How Do Drugs Affect Our Spiritual Development]. 

Lastly, respiration, from the Latin root, respire, respirare, re- “to meaning again” and spirare “to breathe.”

This term comes from Milton, “the act of returning to life,” “to breathe again.” So, obviously in our body, we inspire. We direct that force. We breathe out, and then we do it again—respire, return.

To breathe again is to make this practice consistent and stable, to do it every day. It comes from the Anglo-French spirit, old French esprit, “spirit, soul,” 12th century modern French esprit, the Latin spiritus, “a breathing of respiration,” also of the “wind, breath.” Again, going back to inspiration, breath of a God, hence inspiration, breath of life.

So we included this image of, I guess you could say, an angel of death with the flowers of life, because by eliminating the impurities of the psyche by working with pranayama, we give birth to virtue when those forces are flowing in us, and then we make it a consistent practice.

​Now pranayama does not work if you practice 10 minutes once a week, five minutes once a month, or inconsistently.

It builds stability and momentum and ground when we do it every day. So, if you practice every day, even beginning with 10 minutes as a simple practice, that develops consistency and stability. Depending on your needs or inclinations, you can also deepen the practice and continue with it.

So I do not recommend people go on a spiritual binge where it is like they get inspired by tradition or practice, and then they say, “I am going to meditate for eight hours now. I am just going to jump right in.” People burn out.

Do I try it for a day or two? Then they do not have the energy or the ability to. So that is why monks and many traditions, like in Buddhism especially, would basically practice meditation in short spurts, and then would develop that. We will do it frequently.

So if you begin practicing, keep it short, and if you want to do more, make it more frequent. Then that is how you build stamina. Otherwise, people do burn out. 

​So, the basic pranayama, very simple. It comes from a book called Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation by Samael Aun Weor, the founder of this tradition.

With your right hand, you take your two fingers, your thumb, point / index finger. You close your left nostril (with your index finger), and then you obviously close your eyes, you relax.

You inhale the breath into your lungs, the right nostril. Close and retain for however is comfortable (with your thumb now closing your right nostril). Some people can do longer, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. Then release your index finger and exhale through your left nostril.

The point is not to strain the body. As you are retaining that vital breath, you are in a state of prayer. You are praying to your inner divinity, “help me to circulate this force.”

You can pray to the Divine Mother, because she is that energy itself, who circulates. She is the intelligence of God, to use a term of kabbalah. They refer to Her as this top sphere, בִּינָה Binah, which means Intelligence. She is that force.
 
She knows how to manage our energies with intelligence. So, she never harms Her child. So if you feel uncertain, like “am I doing this wrong?” Or “am I not visualizing correctly?” This meditation does not require visualization, but it does teach how to get the circuitry going.

You got to remember that divinity is intelligent and does not harm anybody. So just putting that faith in our inner divinity, our Being, to do this practice, we are fine.

So from the beginning: Inhale through the right nostril. You retain by closing both nostrils. Exhale to the other nostril, the left. And then repeat [breath through the left nostril, retain, exhale through the right nostril]. Slow, prolonged, relaxed. Do not strain.

However many seconds it takes to fill your lungs. You want to fill your lungs, but do not feel like you are straining, like you are trying to maybe fill too much above your reach, your diaphragm, right? You do not want it to be tight. You want your body to relax.
 
When you inhale through the right nostril, close your left nostril with your pointing finger, index finger. Retain the air and close both nostrils, with your thumb on the right. Then exhale through the left nostril. Repeat by breathing in through your left nostril, retain by closing both nostrils, then you exhale to the right nostril. That constitutes one Pranayama.
 
Inhale, close, retain, exhale. Inhale, close, retain, exhale. (One Pranayama).
 
Formula: Inhale, close, retain, exhale. Simple.
 
You do not necessarily have to learn visualization for this one. And 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it is good.
 
Learn to ride the bicycle, so to speak. So that, later on, when learning how to master this energy, one has the ability to ride a motorcycle, or ride a spaceship, which is kind of what a marriage can do, you know. Just do not crash, because, you know, with power comes responsibility.

​There are two books from this tradition, written by Samael Aun Weor, available from Glorian Publishing, which talk about pranayama. One of them is called Kundalini: The Sacred Fire of All Religions. The last one is The Yellow Book: The Divine Mother, Kundalini, and Spiritual Powers.
 
They both give exercises about how to use pranayama. The one I recommended is from, or just demonstrated, is from the book Sacred Rites of Rejuvenation too, but these two books also have additional types of pranayama, which have their own rules and principles of how to do it. I suggest that if you try one pranayama, stick to whatever the directions are.
 
Do not mix it up. Some people think: “Well, this pranayama is a little different, should I do both?” No, just stick to one.
 
It is like, they are different techniques. Like you train in martial arts, it is not like you are mixing techniques, but you are learning different kinds to see which ones are developing your own strengths, rather than get caught up or confused by which ones apply.
 
Any questions? Sure…

​Question: I remember the pranayama for women, it is the opposite, right? We start with the right finger and then we switch it, right?
 
Instructor: That is for the Christian-Egyptian or Christic-Egyptian Pranayama from The Yellow Book. So, there is a specific pranayama in that book where there is a very intricate visualization where those two currents in the spine, based on being masculine and feminine. There are currents that rise up the spine in men, differently from women, because women are the opposite polarity. So, for men, the right side is solar, left side is lunar, in terms of how those two serpents flow.
 
In women, it is reversed because women are the complement to men, physically, energetically, sexually. So, they are opposites because that way, when they meet, then the energies can circulate in a marriage.
 
So, that Egyptian-Christic Pranayama practice teaches different breathing for, different order of nostril breathing for men and women, because of the intricacy of those visualizations. So, women start with a different nostril than men, but same effect.
 
Question: Okay, can we do pranayama to wear as women on their period, too, or?
 
Instructor: No. So, women, especially, should not practice transmutation on their period, and here is why. During a cycle, the body is naturally releasing toxins, elements from the body, and that is the time for the feminine body to process and release build up of force from the body, so that it can stay clean, physically, I mean, spiritually more especially.
 
When one is transmuting, if they transmute on their cycle, those energies, when they are going out, are going to get recirculated. So, it is good to take a pause from pranayama [and alchemy] on one's menstruation cycle and dedicate more to prayer and meditation. I mean, there are other practices you can do, too, but pranayama should be left aside.
 
Question: Would that be the same, then, if you are, like, maybe fighting off some kind of illness?
 
Instructor: I mean, yeah, it could depend. I mean, you got to gauge your body, because if you are feeling too sick where, like, you cannot breathe, obviously take a break, you know. Do what you can. It is not fear-mongering, like: “Oh, I cannot do my practice! What am I going to do?” Give your body a rest, and you gauge yourself if you are able to do it, if you need to. Some people are too sick to. Especially in a marriage, some couples want to practice but get sick, and therefore they should abstain from alchemy, too, because the body has to heal. Let it recalibrate.
 
Question: On that list of when not to do pranayama, what is an example of an expelling creative force?
 
Instructor: Orgasm. Yeah. So that is the definition, strictly speaking.
 
The thing is, well, there is a lot of scripture, there is a lot of teachings about why that is the case, and it is a very deep topic. I recommend, if you want to understand why that is the case, I mean, there is stories such as the Garden of Eden, especially, and the first act that kicked Adam and Eve out of paradise. It is a sexual symbol because it is about literally a naked man and a naked woman in a garden, and there is temptation. So, there is a sexual trope to this story.
 
Good book about it is a book called The Secret Teachings of Moses, which is available not from Samael Aun Weor, but it is a book explaining why that is the case. So obviously, we do not expect people to take this at face value.
 
But to understand what are the narratives and stories that teach this in an implicit way. Now we are in a different time where we can explain what these stories mean and symbols mean so that people are not just like: “Why cannot I do that? Or why should not I do that?”
 
Question: Are they saying do not do it during sex, or do not do it after an orgasm, or do not do it while they are having sex?
 
Instructor: Ever. So, in strict guidelines for The Perfect Matrimony is another book, too, which talks about this. Couples who want to practice what is known as alchemy, sexual alchemy, never lose their energy physically, never orgasm, never expel it.
 
It is a very strict practice, but one that is very deeply rewarding if one is serious about it. That book is good, too. The Perfect Matrimony and The Secret Teachings of Moses talk about the stories that explain why that is the case.
 
We do not have the time to kind of go into too much detail here, because I want to respect people's time, but we have a lot of resources about why that is the case. But all religions taught chastity, and not meaning necessarily sexual abstention, but purity of sex.
 
Question: So, if you have sex in the morning, should you do the breathing act that day? You kind of get more into the practical part. If you are going to have sex later on that night, do you do the breathing in the morning?
 
Instructor: Well, it depends on what we mean by the sexual act, but that is what I recommend [do not orgasm and mix lust with spiritual practices ]. Study, also, The Perfect Matrimony because that really clarifies very deeply what do we even mean by this. Obviously, people who are practicing pranayama can practice that as much as they want, any time of day.
 
But the work of sexual alchemy is only performed at most once a day, primarily because the couple's bodies need to recharge, recalibrate, balance, because it is the power of life. It is the most powerful force we carry in ourselves. To do more than once a day is to infringe on the natural body's cycles, to recalibrate, relax, and become stable.
 
But yeah, The Perfect Matrimony is a great book. I believe we might have it available, but Secret Teachings of Moses is good, too, especially about pranayama.
 
Question: Like practicing alchemy and having an ideal partner for that. You know what I mean? Someone would say there: “Okay, I'll try it, but what makes...”
 
Instructor: It has to be based on love. There are people who want to get with a partner in this tradition because they are enticed by the idea, but then they have the ambition, and ambition does not create love. That is why in the book The Perfect Matrimony especially, the first chapter, I think one of the first chapters is called On Love, and literally it explains when you are getting married or before you get intimate with someone physically, that here are some advice to consider when you are choosing your partner. It is a very beautiful, poetic, deep... I do not have the memory or the eloquence to relate it all word for word, but it is very profound, and basically emphasizes that your partner should be someone who is in affinity with you in three ways:
 
There is thought, feeling, and will.
 
Obviously, chemistry is one thing. Couples need... There is a level of attraction with couples, and that is an important thing, but not the signifier of compatibility.
 
So, people obviously in our modern culture are very much indoctrinated by, if you have chemistry or desire for the person, then you should be with them. But unfortunately, the problem is that while one part of the psyche is aligned, three others are not, and that creates problems. If we want a long term, stable, monogamous, healthy relationship, one that's very integrated and profound, there must be affinity in these three spheres of thought, feeling, and will.
 
Emotions have to be in line, like couples share sentiments. Maybe their thoughts are aligned. They do think similar. Obviously, you do not want a partner who thinks just like what you think, but you want to be challenged and to be pushed to a level to be your best. That can only come about with someone who can see your flaws and who will help you show them to you. If they are really great, they will communicate it to you, but not everyone knows how to do that, unfortunately.
 
Mind has to be balanced or aligned, and then more importantly, willpower. The same will, at least in the same general direction that the couple wants to go, because people who may be emotionally or mentally aligned to a degree, maybe they have the same religion or have the same types of compatibilities, but their will is in different directions. Their marriage is, to quote Samael Aun Weor, that I do remember, “that marriage, instead of being a true paradise, would be a true hell.” So, if the will does not align, that is the worst.
 
You know, disagreements and conflicts. So, those three are basic, and because when the will especially is aligned, it aligns with the spirit.
 
You can even look at this in the Tree of Life.

​Chemistry with our vital energies, below, with the Yesod and Malkuth, emotional energy with Hod, mental energy with the Netzach, Tiphereth is will, which is the direction that people take. Then above that, when people's wills tend to be aligned in a marriage, it often happens because the spirit and the soul of both members of the couple are in agreement, and that there are cases where divinity has agreed to work with this person.
 
Often what happens is that happens in accordance with what we call karma. There is a form of destiny. But to understand it, and to experience it, and to know it, and to really align with it, obviously is our will, because we are down here, in this physical world, Malkuth, which means the Kingdom in Hebrew, and the spirit is above.
 
But yeah, ambition is not good. Love—love to the point that you are willing to sacrifice your life for that person. If it meant that you had to die so they could live, you would do it without flinching. He says in the book, “to shed even the last drop of your blood.”
 
That is kind of demonstrated by the Passion of Christ, the Christ story, as a metaphor of that.
 
But yeah, single people, practice pranayama. That is a good way to begin working.
 
Obviously, in terms of finding that partner, you also got to think: “what is my level of being? And what kind of person do I want to be married to?” So, think like: “do we want a person, or do we want to attract a person that is going to ennoble our best efforts, and is going to inspire us towards a higher level of being?”
 
Because if we do not change psychologically, then we will attract what we are inside. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to find that ideal based on desire and passion. When the person does not match up with that, the ideal slays the couple.
 
But if we change psychologically, and if we are humble, and we work on our poorest defects, then by improving our quality of mind, we attract a partner that is going to reflect that. There will be more stability and a greater Eden, or return to Eden, so to speak. But yeah, we have to be patient and to accept what is it divinity wants for us, because divinity is managing the circumstances that apply to our situation.

Welcome everybody to this introductory lecture on Yoga for the Aquarian Era!
 
In this talk, we will discuss some important parameters for understanding and experiencing what many have called spiritual awakening. We are going to talk a lot about how to initiate and sustain such a state, how to work with our own psychology, our own bodies, our hearts, by harnessing the energies that we carry within, specifically through spiritual exercises that awaken our full potential. 
 
It can be good to examine what spiritual awakening is because there are many concepts and beliefs, many ideas, many theories, which conflict with each other, which compete with other perspectives, and even paradoxically contradict their own foundations. 
 
If you ask a person what is spirit, you will get many answers. People have varying opinions of what spirit is. If those accounts do not concur, they do not agree, they oppose one another, then we can arrive at some basic fundamental facts that such perspectives are flawed, primarily because genuine spiritual experience is real, factual, scientific. It is precise. Divine mystical spiritual experiences are based on facts, repeatable, verifiable, and consistent. 
 
The spirit is our own innate reality at our most hidden depths, in the synthesis of who and what we really are. But unfortunately, that knowledge tends to be very obscured within most people. We can have a lot of intellectual debates, arguments, assumptions, and concepts that seek to label and approach these realities, and yet those projections of our own idealism tend to miss a very important point. That point is that reality is, no matter what our beliefs, convictions, language, labels, culture, customs, and habits. People do not agree on what spirit is, and therefore we have to be very blunt and honest, that such conflicting perspectives do not approach the facts of what spirit is, because it is an objective, spiritual, and real state. 
 
We say in our studies that spirit is divinity, the divine, the truth within a person. But as I said, because we have many concepts, assumptions, desires, and more specifically, conditions of mind, we do not tend to see what is in front and within us.
 
Some people think that spirituality is limited to intellectual study, as if reading books, listening to lectures, studying scriptures and accumulating knowledge, terminology, and wisdom in the mind, constitutes being a spiritual person. However, this type of predisposition fails to take into account that there are other forms of apprehending reality. 
 
There are people who approach spirituality from the heart, from emotions, from sentiments, believing that having a dogma―or a positive or whatever sentiment in the heart―qualifies as being spiritual, that devotion is spirituality. However, this is also very limited in its scope. It does not capture the full dynamic range of spiritual expression and our full human potential. 
 
There are those who also think spirituality is merely adhering to rituals, doing many practices, working with the body, performing austerities, physically. But also, this is only one part of a larger whole that should be addressed, that should be taken into context. The truth is that there are many valuable teachings in the world, different spiritual movements, teachings, and instructions that provide guidance in accordance with the dispositions or idiosyncrasies of the student, but also the teachers. While it is good to have intellectual knowledge and that it is wonderful to develop the heart, but also to engage with positive practices that exercise the body and keep it healthy, none of these dynamics in themselves should be isolated from the others. 
 
Therefore, a balanced human being incorporates every aspect of what we are because it is important to develop everything in our constitution. It is not enough to merely exercise the intellect with profound study, or cultivate the heart, or merely work on the body, because that implies a deficiency. It is like going to the gym and only working out your right bicep and ignoring the other muscles in your body. It would be absurd, obviously, in this example, but this is what we do spiritually. We approach spiritual topics, the mysteries of divinity, of life and death, of mysticism, with a particular idiosyncrasy or psychological crutch. We think that being spiritual is with the intellect, or the heart, or the body, typically at the exclusion of everything else. 
 
But in our studies, we like to be very holistic. We like to approach the study of the complete human being because a balanced human being is necessary in order to really express the divine, the spirit, what we in our studies call the Innermost Being, God, according to some traditions.
 
We cannot be a temple of divinity, the divine cannot officiate within us, express, if we are not properly prepared, which is what the purpose of many spiritual traditions have been about, to train humanity in certain skills, habits, and practices that create a harmonious space within one's own psychology, so that we can realize what religion, what yoga, have taught, what mystical states are, what awakening is.

​It is good to also examine the term awakening because there are also many incongruent analyses of this truth, experience.
 
There are really many types of experiences one can have, but some people have traditionally associated spiritual awakening as some type of inclination towards a teaching, towards metaphysics, towards a religion or mysticism, due to an experience. Some of us might have had some type of vision within dreams, an awakening of consciousness within the dream state or even as simple as a sudden realization that we are more than our body, that we are alert, aware, and amplified within our consciousness. We have a magnified perception or perspective of life. 
 
But what these experiences indicate is not that we have reached some permanent state of enlightenment, but instead, these are states that are temporary and fleeting. So because we are inspired by such realizations, we seek religion. We seek out teachers and teachings to help guide us to understand what these experiences are. It is also important to reflect and remember that awakening occurs in levels and for most people who have had some type of realization or inclination to study religion or spirituality, to want to know the spirit, the divine, are not able to initiate and sustain such states at will. This is the fundamental difference between an aspirant and an initiate: someone who has begun and cultivated a new way of being. 
 
Now we mention that we tend to approach traditions based on our conditioning. Perhaps we are more intellectual. Perhaps we are more emotional. Perhaps we are more instinctive: we like to do things, to move, to act. But we have to remember and take into account that in order to really awaken our full potential, we have to be harmonious. We have to have equilibrium. We have to have balance. This is why we practice many types of exercises that we are going to touch upon today that can aid you in awakening your real capacities for qualities like divine compassion, conscious love, philanthropy, patience, perseverance, diligence, and endurance, purity of mind, heart and body, which are the requisites for really entering in a competent, efficient, expedient way, into these mysteries, into these realities, so that the spirit does not become merely a concept.
 
It is something that we verify through scientific facts, and then when we study different traditions we can verify our own experiences within those teachings, and therefore we develop what we call genuine faith. It is confidence born from experience. It is not adhering to a concept in the mind, or a belief in the heart, or by merely performing by rote certain rituals that are at the forefront of our inherited religion, or perhaps adopted one. Instead, through awakening our real potential that is in a dormant, sleeping state, we come to actualize and really witness profound mysteries that escape people who never even attempt to approach these studies, who are not inspired.
 
We also talk a lot about spiritual inquietudes: a longing and yearning in the heart. The founder of our tradition, Samael Aun Weor, wrote in The Great Rebellion, a chapter dedicated to this reality: how we go through life in a state of slumber. We can be physically active with our body. We can be engaged with our life. We can be thinking, memorizing, studying, engaging with others with our emotions, acting physically in the world, and yet we are not really aware of what we are doing. 
 
You can examine this in your own life. Why is it that people get into car accidents? They may be driving but they are thinking of something else, or you are on the train, and you are ruminating in your heart. You are stewing in negative emotions about an event that happened earlier in the day where you were suffering a lot, and then you miss your stop. You forget yourself. You are not present. You are not awake. You are not conscious of what you are doing, what you were thinking, feeling, doing, where you are at, what you were doing, basically. 
 
We are in a profound state of slumber, psychologically speaking. Any time we daydream, fantasize, memorize, or immerse ourselves in memory, ruminate while we are washing dishes, it means we are not present. We are not washing dishes. We are lost in the mind. We are distracted.
 
There are many types of distractions within our own psychology, which is something that we address in these studies because our consciousness is not fully integrated. It is not directed at will, with intentionality and purpose, towards specific endeavors. We tend to do many things being in the era of multi-tasking, in which we do not really focus on one thing, but we are scattered in our attention. We are not really aware.
 
Spiritual discipline in practice helps us to rectify this issue so that we are no longer sleeping as a consciousness. We are paying attention. We are developing our capacities for concentration, for comprehension, attention, diligence, real beauty and virtue of the soul. This is what we seek to awaken because the consciousness in its normal state, now, is not present. It is not developed to its full potential.
 
I know that we do have some level of consciousness in our physical bodies when we are in the world, but what we perceive of life tends to be very filtered and obscured by many conditions of mind. It is this condition which we seek to transform, so that we can liberate consciousness, develop ourselves into enlightened beings, into a master of one's psychology, so that with those alert, intuitive senses, we can really apprehend the nature of our spirit, the divine, and no longer have any theories or beliefs about it. It is a reality and fact for us. 

What are some of the methods that we employ in order to achieve a state of being that is conducive to experiencing the spirit, the divine?
 
Many have heard of yoga, but there are many misconceptions of what it really constitutes in its full gamut, its complete range, its many methods. We like to often think of yoga as physical calisthenics, or twisting and distorting the body into different postures to gain flexibility and strength. These are very useful exercises and are helpful within the context of a larger spiritual work.
 
Hatha Yoga is a type of yoga that people are already familiar with. It is appropriate within a specific endeavor, when we are practicing many other principles associated with the tradition, not merely just trying to have a young, healthy, and attractive body, because that by itself does not really produce change in a psychological sense. There are health benefits. It is useful. It is good to get those endorphins moving, but, it should be utilized with intelligence and remembrance with its overall context. 
 
In truth, according to Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, you find the following:

The term योग yoga from Sanskrit, युज् yug, means “to reunite.” It means to unify the consciousness with the divine. This is the same meaning as the term religion from the Latin religare. Real yoga is stilling the modifications of the consciousness. As I mentioned, our consciousness is very conditioned. Examine a moment in your life perhaps in the morning when you get up. What is your routine? What are the thoughts, feelings, and habits that you engage with on a day-to-day basis? 
 
As I said, we tend not to be very alert and aware of our surroundings. We go through life in a hypnotized state. Our consciousness is modified in accordance with the level of our own psychological conditioning. We have many elements that produce agitation or conditions, modifications of a pure perception, because the consciousness in its original form is clear, lucid, liberated, and pristine. It does not involve thought. It is not a churning of emotion. It is not necessarily needing to have to move the body and engage in countless activities in life. We can have a simple experience of free consciousness by simply being alert, perhaps in a moment while watching a sunrise, in which we apprehend the profound beauty of that moment without having to label it, without having to fit it into a box, a category, because that labeling, categorizing, and compartmentalizing kills the moment, destroys the beauty and the novelty of watching something as miraculous as that. 
 
Our consciousness is modified. We are conditioned by many elements like anger, pride, fear, anxiety, vanity, lust, desire, appetites. In life we tend to go through our routine, feeding our desires, giving ourselves what our body wants, seeking emotional security in our relationships and affirmation of our thoughts and ideas. These tend to be very subjective in their own states. They are not necessarily objective and real. But we have these psychological apparatuses of thought, feeling, and impulse. In truth they tend to be very limited. We go through life, again as we said, trying to saturate ourselves with the different impressions of life, without realizing that we are conditioning ourselves even further. By identifying with the problems and circumstances of life, we have a mind that is really churned and stirred up.
 
If you do not believe me, try to sit to meditate for five minutes after a hectic day. You find that your thoughts are all over the place. Your feelings may be overpowering, debilitating. Maybe you have a trauma, maybe a difficult situation occurred in the day, at work or with a loved one, where the body cannot sit still. We have to scratch an itch. We have a pain in our leg. We feel like our shoulders are going to fall off.
 
The beginning of real spiritual practice is learning how to still modified consciousness. We have to let the mind, heart, and body settle.

​It is like a container, or a jar filled with water and sediment. If the jar is shaken up, all the different mud and particles and debris will flow and scatter and obscure the water itself. It becomes cloudy. It becomes murky. It becomes distorted. However, if you allow the jar to sit still, you find that the water rises to the top and the sediment will begin to stratify into layers. This is the same principle that applies to our mind.
 
If we can learn to take advantage of the challenges of life without identifying with those problems, without investing our psychological energy into them, without wasting energy through fear, paranoia, despair, uncertainty, and doubt, we will begin to find the contents of our mind, those conditioned, limiting factors, begin to calm. They rest. Therefore, when the water is clear of debris, you can see clearly in yourself. 
 
This is the beginning of yoga, of genuine spirituality, of religion. It is the stilling of the modifications of consciousness. When the waters are clear, calm, serene, and tranquil, you can begin to reflect images within their contents. This is the nature of water. It is a beautiful element and allegory. It is necessary for life. It is also necessary for spiritual life. The mind is like a lake. If it is distraught, turbulent, and violent, you cannot see the heavens reflected within the surface. Therefore, if you want to attain knowledge of spirituality, of the spirit, first we enter tranquility.
 
This is why Swami Sivananda, a great yogi, a great master of spirituality, taught that real yoga is precisely this: how we work with the mind, how we understand how and why it functions, and the path and methods for alleviating its tensions, letting it acquiesce, to calm. 

He states in Practical Lessons of Yoga:

There are different schools of yoga that teach exactly what Swami Sivananda provided. He opened many schools through his students. They opened many schools within the United States where there are hatha yoga classes, learning to work with posture and the body, and  that is a kind of a fish hook to try and capture people, so to speak, to get people interested in the real, deeper mysteries and knowledge of yoga. It is good to have a healthy body because that helps to have a healthy mind, but merely working on the body, as a path in itself, is unreliable and incomplete. This is why we study forms of yoga that we are going to talk about today. ​

Yoga has a very rich history and tradition. It comes from the Hindu pantheon, the Hindu mysteries. It will be interesting to examine and analyze its development within the West.
 
It is true that many great accomplished yogis like Vivekananda came to the United States in 1893 in order to plant the seeds of yoga, of spiritual discipline of mind. He spoke at the World Parliament of Religions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1893, but it is interesting that those teachings did not really blossom in his era, because there were many other practitioners that came to provide spiritual teachings of an eastern type to a western disposition. ​

For example, in 1920, Yogananda, who provided the Self-realization Fellowship Society, also taught. As well as in 1957, a disciple of Swami Sivananda, his name was Vishnudevananda Saraswati came in 1957 to teach. Those teachings only really came to fruition around February 4 of 1962, and it is interesting to examine why.
 
When we study yoga and spirituality, we also study many of the energetic and cosmic influences that penetrate the mind at a subconscious and unconscious level. There are many elements in nature that affect us psychologically, spiritually, and physically that we are not aware of, that we are not knowledgeable of from experience, in a deep, spiritual, objective sense.
 
What is interesting about February 4, 1962, is that this was the moment, between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, in which our solar system entered within the astrological influence and dominion of the sign of Aquarius within the zodiac. It was around this time that many changes occurred, within diverse traditions, amongst religions, within politics, within sexual relationships, within many things. Pretty much every level of society has been affected, around the 60s, with a profound revolution. If you do not believe me, you can just look at history, the times before the 1960s and 1950s, in the way life subsisted at that time.
 
Now people of a materialistic attitude do not really look deeper than what can be seen with physical senses. In fact, many people reject the influence of zodiacal energies and forces within nature, which enter within us psychologically and are transformed in accordance with the level of our conditioning or our developed spiritual consciousness. 
 
We might say that such influences are not real, but the truth is that we are affected by nature all the time. We are influenced by the weather. We can be in a really bad mood because it is raining and damp out, or we did not get enough sleep. Perhaps there is an influence of the weather, as I said, in which we get sick. We get a stomach ache. We feel nauseous, whatever it may be. We are heavily influenced by our environment. The same is true of levels that we do not readily perceive in a materialistic sense, but these forces are real and we can look at history to determine this fact from a zodiacal sense.
 
Now we previously existed within the Era of Pisces, which is a very different flavor and force in a psychological and spiritual level, in terms of its influence and dimensionality. Pisces is traditionally associated with conservatism, with social hierarchies and structures, institutions that have lineages and bear deep, long, and extensive history. You find this in religion, politics, and in every aspect of human life. 
 
You find that in the way many spiritual traditions used to exist, in which it was required of a disciple, in order to learn these teachings, to submit to a guru, and after proving their candidacy, after many decades of trials, tests, experimentations, ordeals, challenges, and experiences, they are really given the most profound radical and transformative practices that are at the heart of all religions and yogas. 
 
Now that the Era of Aquarius is very different. Since the 60s, this stellar, celestial, or zodiacal influence is defined by its revolutionary character. It is a rebellion. It is a profound and intense energy that has entered, as I said, within every aspect of society in order to shake things up. It is about transformation. It is about rebelling against institutions and dogmas, against conditions. ​

Aquarius is defined as the water carrier. It is the zodiacal sign in which knowledge of a spiritual type is being given openly for free, without demands, without coercion, without strict attendance or affiliation with one group, in the sense of having to adhere to a dogma, an unbreakable faith belief system. It is said that Aquarius is the knowledge given freely to all. This is why if we look at the 1960s, you find that there is an explosion of information, of knowledge that has been given openly to society, to all. It is a form of divine generosity and it is also revolutionary because it is the force that inspires independent thought, self-reliance, self-verification, personal experience of the truth without having to adhere to a lineage or a dogma.

​This influence really reached its dawn on February 4, 1962, when you find that the planets of our solar systems were in almost perfect alignment. This was a true conglomeration of worlds, of celestial bodies and influences, that mark the beginning of a new age, in which the forces of Aquarius predominates. But that influence also came even earlier, maybe by a decade or two, because just in the same manner that you watch a sunrise, the light doesn't really peak at the horizon until the moment the sun appears. The light spreads gradually, such as in the 50s you find, and even earlier, the efforts of yogis and practitioners to spread spirituality in America. But that really did not come into fruition until the 50s and 60s. 
 
On February 4, 1962, the real beginning of the influence emerged upon the horizon of our consciousness. So, we study this influence because it helps to explain different traditions in the past and also where we are at now, and what we can do and what we can become. There have been different periods of instruction for humanity, in accordance with Piscean influence, especially in the last age, which was marked by its conservatism, in which knowledge was not given openly, but had to be earned. 
 
Now, the knowledge is being given openly in Aquarius without needing to be earned. It is given for free because unfortunately humanity is not in a very good place. We find a lot of suffering and affliction on this planet, a lot of chaos, primarily because of our egotism, our conditions, our selfishness, which are accelerating.
 
The influence of Aquarius is very revolutionary. That force is channeled in accordance with our level of being. If we are negative, angry, violent people, inside, then that energy is going to bring it. But without the proper tools or techniques to channel this force and harness it with intelligence and wisdom, we often will destroy ourselves, and we can see this happening simply by looking at the news. Many events are occurring in which this is a reality. This is a fact.

By learning how to employ the instructions of mastering this influence, we in turn have a force and impetus that produces an expedient and radical change, very quickly, if we know the methods, the techniques of this era, to capitalize on that influence. 
 
There is a saying by the author M., in The Dayspring of Youth, where he describes this Aquarian influence. He calls it the Dayspring of Youth. Samael Aun Weor referred to that influence as the Dionysian wave, the influence of Dionysus who is considered the god of wine and revelry. This is a very interesting symbol because since the 60s, which is known for its bacchanalias, or sexual revolutions, its free love initiatives and movements, we find that people have been indulging in that power, that potency, but through desires.
 
However, there is another way. It does not necessarily have to be about engaging with and feeding one's desires, habits, and lust. Instead, one can take that energy and use it to create a different type of inebriation, a different type of wine, so to speak, since Bacchus or Dionysus, within the Greek and Roman traditions, is the same symbol. They represent how the force Aquarius can be harnessed in two ways, whether for our spiritual development or for our deepened conditioning and suffering. 
 
Of course, in accordance with each cosmic era, there are different periods of instruction. The author M. states the following in The Dayspring of Youth:

If we learn how to cultivate his energy, we develop clarity, perception, awakening, in a positive sense, in which we have greater understanding and intuition of how to solve the problems of our life. We do not have confusion. We don’t have pain, or despair. It is such a powerful force that any opposition within the atmosphere of the mind can no longer imprison them within its rebellious aura.
 
Right now, our mind is a prison, if we are honest. We tend to be afflicted by many sufferings, but there is a way to rebel against our own innate failures and incipience, our own defects, our own problems, so that we can gain real happiness, not only for ourselves, but for others. We do it through this practice of yoga, this Aquarian yoga. By attracting certain spiritual or atomic energies, which are very fine in nature, we transmute the consciousness. 
 
The term transmutation refers to the prefix trans, which is “to carry over,” “across,” to move, to redirect. Also, mutation to mutate, “to change one form to another.” So our conditioned consciousness can be transmuted through this energy. We can clarify our perceptions so that we develop a very rich spiritual life. ​

It is important that to do so we work with expedient methods. The Piscean influence before the 1950s especially, as I said, is marked by its conservatism, lineages, and disciplines in that one had to earn the truly revolutionary methods that we are going to explain here in this course and lecture. They had to earn the right to learn those teachings, and because the Piscean influence is very much dedicated to that dispensation, different texts of yoga and spirituality were appropriate for that time. 
 
The founder of the Gnostic tradition, Samael Aun Weor, explained in different texts, especially Kundalini Yoga, how the Piscean influence has been replaced by the Aquarian, and that many methods that apply to the Piscean Age, which are appropriate for the descending forces of Pisces into the earth, were beneficial in that context. Now what is interesting about the difference between Pisces and Aquarius is that in the Piscean influence, spiritual practitioners had to work and become more attuned to their body in terms of the spiritual involution or influx of forces down into more material states. So, Pisces is known by forces entering into our physical nature, and so that we can learn to master that aspect of ourselves, in terms of the overarching arc of cosmic evolution.
 
But the influence of Aquarius is different. It is now a revolutionary return back towards a spiritual origins. There are many practices like the mudras, hand positions and postures, bandas, which were appropriate for the descending evolutionary arc or involuting forces into materiality, but now since we are returning back to a more subtle and etheric, energetic plane, those practices are no longer necessary. I know some people can be very attached to doing certain mudras or hand postures while meditating. It is still acceptable to use them, but it is good to remember that we have other practices that we can use that are appropriate for taking advantage of the current that is now influencing humanity. 
 
For example, there are many forms of yoga that are appropriate for teaching children how to walk. There are different skills, teachings, instructions, and techniques that are appropriate for helping beginners to learn how to crawl, to walk in a metaphorical, spiritual sense. But walking alone cannot take you across the ocean to Japan. Neither can it take you to other worlds in the solar system. Instead, you need a rocket or spacecraft to do so. You need the appropriate vehicle. This is what we are going to emphasize today. 
 
Samael Aun Weor mentioned in his book Kundalini Yoga that:

​So those exercises in many schools in yoga are a kindergarten for entering a deeper knowledge. We can use them if that is our level of being. However, we need to learn deeper aspects about religion, since there is a greater and more profound application of these teachings, which are much more expedient and radical, if that is our wish to utilize them. It is good not to be attached to traditions, but to seriously examine and analyze what we have benefitted from a given practice and to see and analyze and evaluate whether we have arrived at what we have sought for. 
 
This is what it states in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 11:

​So Samael Aun Weor in Kundalini Yoga corroborates this:

So it is good to use specific tools in order to get specific results. If we want to achieve the real heights of divine knowledge, we can enter the Aquarian door. We no longer have to be constrained by conservative, Piscean dogma. 

So let’s examine what some of these yogas are. There are many forms of yoga divided within different schools and we are touching upon a number of them that are very profound and beautiful, which have an Aquarian application and flavor.
 
We study mantra yoga, which is the work with sacred sounds, chakras, and powers.
 
We work with raja yoga, which is the royal path of meditation.
 
We work with jnana yoga, which is scriptural study.
 
We work with bhakti yoga devotion, prayer, and worship.
 
We work with karma yoga, which is selfless service.
 
We also work with kundalini yoga, which is sacred sexuality, as well as yantra yoga, the sacred rites of rejuvenation.
 
Lastly, we will talk about runic yoga, the Nordic runes.
 
All these practices complement each other. Here we are breaking them down into different methods, but which really have one unified purpose. By working with these exercises, we can balance ourselves. If you notice some of the explanations here or the titles of these yogas, we find that these exercises develop specific aspects of our psychology.
 
As I said before, some people may be more predisposed towards concepts and intellectualism. Therefore, they like jnana yoga, to study scriptures, or some people are more emotional. They like to develop emotion in the heart through prayer and worship, through bhakti yoga. Some people are more action-oriented, moving with the body and serving their communities, which is why we also study karmic yoga, which is selfless service. 
 
Now these yogas work together to, again, provide a synthesis, which is the expedient awakening of our conscious potential. So we are going to analyze what these are separately.

​Mantra yoga is the work with sacred sounds. The term mantra comes from the Sanskrit मन्त्र Man, which is “to think,” and manas, which is “mind,” and trai, which is “to protect” or “to free.” Mantra literally means “mind protection,” or “to free the mind” through sacred sounds. 
 
We see here an image of a man in full lotus with seven energetic centers that are lined up in accordance with his spinal column, which are the different chakras or centers of energy within the human body, physiology, and energetic constitution. These chakras from the Sanskrit refer to wheels or vortices of forces, which exist within our subtle interior physiology.
 
There are many levels and aspects of our body, heart, and mind that is not accessible by the mere physical senses. There are instead energies that animate the physical body. There are certain channels or nadis, we say in the Hindu tradition, that circulate vital force and energy throughout our body and permeate every aspect of who we are. Energy is very important. We even know this by having enough energy when we get up from rest to subsist and to act in the day. There is a certain energy that is needed to be awake physically, in the conventional sense. Likewise, we learn to work with energies, within our subtle interior psychology and inner constitution, so that we can activate spiritual perception.
 
These chakras or vortices are named in respective ways, in alignment with the spine, as I said. 
 
We have Muladhara chakra at the coccyx.
 
We have Svadhisthana near the prostate or the uterus.
 
We have Manipura, which is the solar plexus.
 
We have Anahata relating to the heart.
 
We have Vishudda, which is the throat.
 
We have Ajna relating to the third eye between our eyebrows.
 
Then we have Sahasrara, which is the crown.
 
These are important chakras or the main seven that we really study and practice with. This does not mean there are no other chakras in the body. There are many others that are important in order to develop stability and homeostasis, equilibrium within our mind, heart, and body in order or us to function, because that energy has to circulate and flow in an unconditioned and pure way.
 
Anytime a nadi or energetic current crosses another, it forms a chakra, because that is an intersection or crossroad in which those forces meet, and therefore they spin and create a type of vortice or wheel of spiritual energy, of psychic, psychological, and energetic forces. 
 
We study these main seven because they are important for really navigating our spirituality, the spiritual worlds, even our physical life. Each of these chakras have different qualities associated with them, different powers and abilities that grant us access towards spiritual reality.
 
It is important to understand that each chakra vibrates in accordance with a certain sound or vibration because certain vowels relate to our chakras themselves. They activate those dormant centers because right now, as in most people, those chakras are like closed flowers. They are not open yet. Through spiritual discipline and working with certain mantras, sacred vibrations, and sounds, we open them. We activate them. We begin to circulate energy in accordance with those strata, those seven levels, so that we really actualize our full potential.
 
Some people may be a little averse to mantras. Some people think it sounds really weird or unusual. It is important to reflect, to remember that mantra such as “O,” relating to the heart, is based on a very simple law of cause and effect, which we can verify and correlate with our own speech. We can say that there are certain words that are afflictive and harmful, which produce conflict with our relationships. Using vulgar speech or speaking hatefully towards them is directing a very powerful, negative energy towards others. But likewise, our speech can be harnessed to speak words of compassion, kindness, and love. This demonstrates to us that our speech and vocal cords have a tremendous utility. We can use speech for harm or for good. It depends on the quality of our mind. The same thing applies to mantra.
 
Now sacred sounds help to protect our minds from negativity. They help us to defend our spirituality against corrosion, by negative qualities of mind like anger, pride, ambition, fear, or uncertainty, whatever it may be. If we feel negative in our mind and heart and bodies and we are agitated, we can work with sacred sounds.
 
It is good to vocalize for an hour out loud, especially, because that sound or vibration activates physically in our bodies, those energy centers. When you perform mantras, you're entering a state of mental and psychic purity. You approach the mantra as a tool. This sound is meant to create a type of flow of energy and vitality and creativity within you. It is that energy that is going to give your consciousness the power, the force, in order to work against your own conditions like anger or resentment, etc. This is why we work with a mantra. We want to protect our spirituality from our own negative habits. This is the meaning of mantras or mantra. It is mind protection.
 
So vocalizing these mantras out loud is really good. It helps to calm the body, and you are activating not only your energy centers and your body, your vitality, but also you are working with the glands of your endocrine system, which is very important for spiritual development. If you are interested in learning more about how the endocrine system complements our spiritual practice, you can read a book by Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology. His basic thesis is that by working with these glands and developing them, we gain greater insight into our problems. 
 
It is good to have energy. You can also vocalize mentally. Some say that saying a mantra in the mind alone is even more powerful than physically pronouncing it. But it is good to work with both techniques, because in one method, by vocalizing out loud, you are pronouncing sacred sounds and working from the outside in, the physical world into the internal worlds. But when you work with silent mantra or Japa (mantra recitation) in your mind, you are working from the inside out. So, both are really good. 
 
Personally, I like to do a lot of mantras out loud in the day, and when I am doing other activities, I also pronounce mantra in the mind. With enough training and skill, you learn to work with these sacred sounds―whether verbally or mentally, or even within the very core of our consciousness―we learn how to maintain a state of continual remembrance of our divinity, our own spiritual presence, and that gives us the strength to transform many difficult and negative situations.
 
This is how we protect ourselves. We learn to have a calm and kind psychology, a heart and mind that are very alert, compassionate, and considerate, so that we do not create harmful situations for ourselves because “Mind precedes phenomena,” according to the Buddha. “We become what we think.”
 
If you can confront the problem at its roots in its moment by using mantras, whether verbally or mentally, it is good. If you are at work, obviously, I would not go mantralizing out loud in your office, or wherever you may be, because people will think you are crazy. But you can do it mentally, and when you get home to your own sanctuary, temple, monastery, home, whatever you make of it, you can practice out loud, especially if you will not be disruptive towards neighbors.
 
It is important to work with mantras because these energies will help us to stabilize our consciousness and perceptions. It is important to remember that having energy by itself is not the main point. It is good to have energy to awaken our faculties, our perceptions, our spiritual conscious powers and abilities. But merely having energy within one’s psychology is not enough because chakras are not the end all be all. They are a conduit and a method by which we can access higher states, but merely having active chakras is not going to guarantee a successful spiritually.
 
Some people get really proud of having chakras awakened, abilities, and powers, but that is kind of unusual and funny because it is like a person getting really proud and self-conceited by having a lot of fuel in the tank of their car. It is good to have a lot of fuel in your car so you can drive places, but what matters is how you drive your car, which is your body, heart, and mind. So, ethics and compassion are the essential point.

There are certain mantras you can use. I will introduce one of them for you that is very effective for counteracting negativity. There’s a video available by Glorian Publishing or Glorian.org. It is called Klim Krishnaya. This mantra is very potent for removing negative emotions. So if you find you are afflicted by very distraught and conflicted feelings, if you are saturated with a lot of sourness, if you are heavy with a lot of negativity, pronounce and sing this mantra in your mind. You can also do it verbally if you want, but obviously being in solitude is the best way to pronounce it verbally. But if you are in a place or you are dealing with people who are very challenging for you, you can use this mentally.
 
I use and continue to use this mantra many times in my daily life, and with enough training, you can pronounce this mentally and get the most powerful effects, so you cannot be tempted to act in a mistaken way. The mantra is sung, and you can click on the video.
 
It is sung basically like this:

We also study meditation. We can say that this is probably the most important practice we engage with in our studies. Meditation is known by different names in different faiths and different religions, and all are valid. Here we are giving an excerpt from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, or the path of royal raj yoga.
 
Meditation is the capacity of the consciousness to apprehend phenomena, to ascertain the nature or truth of a thing, its inherent reality.
 
We do so by first restraining our mind. Harkening back to the previous slide, we can use mantras to help us restrain our negative reactions to life. Yama means “restraint,” “to yoke.” It means that in a moment in your day in which you are tested―perhaps you have a difficult client you are working with at your job or a family member who is producing a lot of negative emotions in you―you learn to restrain your mind. You do not act out of anger and pride. Instead, you learn how to fulfill ethical discipline or precepts, which is known as niyama. Yama means restraint. Niyama means “precept.”
 
A precept is as simple as some like: love your neighbor as you love yourself. Do unto others as you would have done onto you; to be patient in trials and temptations or ordeals; to work diligently for the benefit of others; to be inspired and compassionate and to aid those are less fortunate than you. Thus if you are afflicted by anger, you can respond with love. This is precept. Once you have developed a very profound and rich ethical life, you can learn to really enter deeper states of meditation.
 
It is important to reflect and understand that these are ethics. These are not morals. What is moral is acceptable in one country and time and place and not in others. Ethics are universal. There are certain habits and behaviors that produce happiness in any context when done with a compassionate state of mind. This is something to bear in mind. We are not here to follow rules that someone gave us and to do them because we have been told. That is a Piscean attitude. Here in the Aquarian knowledge and teachings, we learn to take what is useful and reject what is useless. In this sense, ethics is really the most important thing. It is knowing how to act consciously so we no longer suffer and no longer make other people suffer. This is the fundamental definition.
 
When you are really mastering restraint and precepts within yourselves, your body gets calm. Some people approach meditation, and they cannot sit still. They cannot rest because their mind and heart are agitated from wrong behaviors. After you have cultivated a harmonious space in your mind and your heart, you can sit to practice an asana (a posture) and enter a profound state of relaxation at will, where it is not difficult to do. Without ethics it is really challenging to really have a calm state of being. That is the essential point.
 
When you are in a posture you can begin to work with energy. We work with an exercise called pranayama, which we will also discuss in the sacred rites for rejuvenation, in which you work with your breath to circulate vital creative energy within your body, heart, and mind. Prana is energy and yama means “yoke” or “restraint,” “to harness.” Notice that yama or restraint is the first stage of raja yoga. Likewise, pranayama is learning to restrain and harness our creative, energetic volatility. All the energies of our mind, heart, and body we learn to conserve and circulate, and to harness with conscious intelligence and will.
 
That is how we really enter deep states of calm and withdrawal, not in the sense of being off a drug or basically disassociating from the world in a psychological sense. Instead, pratyahara means “to suspend the senses.” Yes, it is a withdrawal in the same manner we do not pay attention to external stimuli. Instead, we enter our internal psychology, but not out of a negative type of mental dissociation, which is associated perhaps with mental health conditions. Instead, withdrawal in this sense is like a tortoise withdrawing its head within its shell. We go inside, and you cannot do that unless you have energy, to activate your consciousness so you can relax and go within and see what is there.
 
So, energy helps to calm and silence the mind. It helps us to relax, so that like in the example with the jar of water and the sediment, the sediment stratifies into the bottom, so that you can see clearly what is inside of you. Without that basis, you cannot really develop serenity of mind, which is dharana or concentration: to be able to focus on one thing without being distracted.
 
In that sense, when you are not distracted―you are able to focus on one thing with serene, clarified attention and directed will―you learn to access meditation which is dhyana. Meditation is learning to receive new information with spiritual, psychological senses. You understand through inner experiences what the essential nature of reality is for the given object of our focus, whatever you are meditating upon, whatever the goal is that you sit down to practice and do.
 
In this way you enter samadhi, ecstasy. The word ecstasy comes from ecstatuo in Latin, which means “to stand outside oneself.” It is in this state you enter real bliss of a conscious and spiritual type. These are divine inner experiences in which you stand outside your normal range of perception in order to really witness and know the truth. 
 
Raja yoga is very deep and beautiful. There are different teachings available on Glorian.org, which address this path of meditation itself, specifically the lectures associated with Gnostic meditation. We talk about these eight steps of Ashtanga Yoga in depth, the eight-limbed yoga or the eight principles and levels of working with mediation.

We also have Jnana Yoga, which is the study of scripture. As I said, it is useful to study intellectual knowledge, lectures, to receive wisdom from books, but what is commonly neglected in our common culture, era, and ways of thinking, is the manner by which we read, study, and apprehend what a book or lecture is indicating to us.
 
Now what is interesting about the way that many disciples of past traditions have studied is that they would take a small passage of a book and really meditate deeply on its contents. Perhaps they would take a sentence and reflect only on that. Our habit nowadays is to read fifty books in two weeks. I know that this is an exaggeration, but there are probably people who spend a lot of time like that.
 
Jnana yoga means “knowledge yoga.” It is what we apprehend from the written word. It has a very beautiful and useful place within our spiritual discipline because the teachings of the different masters of religion and spirituality have provided their personal inner experiences within diverse scriptural forms. If we learn to really read with an alert and awakened consciousness, with intuition, not relying so much on reasoning but with our heart, we gain access to inspiration, knowledge, and insights that are really transformative. In this way we learn to appreciate what these different masters taught, these different luminaries. Instead of reading book after book and compartmentalizing and categorizing what we have read in a certain label or box in our mind, instead we learn to look at things with a fresh view.
 
The best way to study is again, like I said, to take a small passage and read a sentence or two that is really challenging for you, or really deep and inspirational, even if you don't know the meaning, then focus and meditate on that. This is how many spiritual schools have studies and are studying now in our institutions.
 
We do not want to necessarily want to fill up our minds with knowledge, by memorizing what different teachers have said, and what terminology means, and what the language is indicating such as with commentaries. Instead, we want to really witness the realities of what is written from personal experience. This is why we have to meditate in combination with study. 
 
Now study can be very profound and deep. I recommend taking the time to really digest what you put into your mind, because the problem with many westerners, especially is that being very intellectual, is that we take a lot of knowledge into our intellect, yet we do not transform it. We do not understand what we read. This leads to psychological constipation, in which we do not digest what we put into our mind, and therefore it can become a great source of doubt, skepticism, or pessimism. This is a very unfortunate thing that has happened to many people.
 
However, if you take the time to really practice and try to experience what you read, then you gain a lot of faith, and faith simply means confidence born from verification and experience. You see that your spiritual experiences are talked about in different books by certain masters. In this way, you really verify and understand that you are not alone in your experiences and that these are objective realities.
 
This is also why it is important to study from pure sources. Study from those that really have been established, whose teachings resonate with your consciousness, and what we can really testify to from facts, such as the founders of many religions, but also in our tradition we study the works of Samael Aun Weor. Personally, I have had many blessings and been able to meditate on certain passages that he wrote, even having spiritual internal experiences that I later read about in his books, which confirmed and validated my own personal testimonies. That is really inspiring and a wonderful yoga to enact, the knowledge of spiritual teachings. ​

We also study Bhakti Yoga, which is the devotion of the heart. Perhaps the greatest bhakti yogi we have known in the West is Jesus. He demonstrated with his life the profound teachings of yoga, meditation, and prayer. He was so dedicated to his spiritual work that he allowed himself to be crucified physically, to be condemned and persecuted, to be spat upon, to be beaten, to be ridiculed, and yet he only responded with love. This is a profound devotion.
 
Now what is interesting about his example is that when we really know divinity from experience, our own inner spirit, we develop great love, great compassion, because we understand all beings have divinity inside, and not only do we respect our own innermost spirit, but we also respect the spirit in others, so that we tolerate their mistakes because all people are afflicted with anger, resentment, negativity, doubt, and hatred. 
 
By learning to access superior emotional qualities, which have nothing to do with sentimentalism or hallmark cards, we open the doors to genuine mysticism. We can say that the intellect in itself is very useful but tends to predominate in many western people. Instead, what we have is a very giant head stuffed with a lot of books and knowledge but a very deficient and weak in the heart.
 
Bhakti Yoga is important for westerners especially, but it can be very difficult for beginners because some people find devotion very foreign to them, very alien, very confusing, very difficult, because how can you have devotion to something you have not experienced? The truth is we develop devotion in our innermost intuitive faculties when we learn to follow our conscience, our heart, the heart that says that a certain behavior and action is wrong. The whole world can agree with it and yet we know that for us that trajectory is harmful, that position, that direction.
 
Personally, what led me to spirituality was following my heart. I did not have a school, a group, or a spiritual scripture, teaching, a lecture to guide me. Instead, what happened was that I was suffering a lot in life, and I was not willing to face at that time that my own behaviors were harming me. But eventually I began to follow my own innermost conscience, which is the voice that says, “This is right” and “this wrong,” even though our intellect and our reasoning can fight and argue and claw against us. It is a very painful process, but as in my example, I was very dedicated to understanding the nature of my own reality and my sufferings, so that I would find an answer. I dedicated myself with a lot of devotion to searching and looking for spiritual instruction until finally I did find Gnostic teachings, which helped to explain and confirm what I had been doing already, and that gave me faith, a lot of conviction. 
 
Sometimes Bhakti Yoga may be simple as again praying, in some people's eyes, towards a statue or to a divine figure, a painting, a master, a prophet, and our own innermost divinity, but again that can be foreign for some people, difficult to apprehend and to swallow, because we have inherited a very material culture, which has conditioned us. But the beginning is in following your heart, listening to your own conscience, what is right and what is wrong. As you verify more and more that your superior positive actions transcend negative states of suffering, you gain real faith, real verification, and conviction that these teachings work, that they are practical, that they are transformative.
 
It is in this way that we begin to experience superior emotions, which for most people is very difficult to comprehend, like conscious love, really loving our neighbor, especially loving one's enemies. It is something we have to aspire to and to develop gradually because it is not easy, but the way we do it is by relying on our heart and consciousness, so that by accessing our intuition of knowing right action from wrong, without having to think about it, we open the doorway to real experience and witnessing of divine reality. The more you experience that divine principle in you, the greater your devotion and compassion for others, of serving others, and working for their benefit. ​

​This is why we study Karma Yoga. Karma means “cause and effect” in Sanskrit. Some people think of karma as a punitive law of retribution: “You get what you deserve” according to Western philosophy. But this is a mistaken attitude because karma simply means causality. Every action has a consequence, and that there are superior actions and inferior actions. Therefore, they produce superior or inferior results.
 
Karma Yoga is based on helping others, helping our communities. We all have different qualifications and skills, different idiosyncrasies and talents that are necessary in this world. When we discover what our unique talents are, we can capitalize on them. In that way, we learn how to better help humanity with whatever level or qualification or skill set that we have. Karma Yoga is especially important within the study of Aquarian Yoga because if we really wish to overcome our own suffering, we have to alleviate the suffering of others. This is a universal, divine law. 
 
If you are sick, help the sick. If you are lacking knowledge, give knowledge to others. If you are lacking spiritual experience, teach others how to experience it. It is in giving that we receive, says St. Francis of Assisi from the Christian tradition. By learning how to serve others, especially those who are difficult and challenge us and create pain within our interior, we learn how to transform our own pain. We do not focus so much on ourselves. If we are really in a rut, we are suffering a lot, we do not know what to do, we are confused, it is important that we reflect on the needs of others because our own selfish desires keep us hypnotized. You want to break the shell of selfishness and despair? Learn to help those who are less fortunate than yourself. For some people it can be teaching, giving knowledge, giving instruction of a spiritual type. For some people it is supporting their school, communities, serving others, helping the poor, the homeless and sick, whatever it may be. If we want to not be so hypnotized by our own self concepts, anxieties, and needs, we should cater to the needs of others. This is a great, powerful tool that helps dispel a lot of the fogginess that can afflict us.
 
This is a fundamental law of nature: by giving to others, we receive. So if we want to receive a certain object of spiritual benefit, we should give that in return, and not expect anything as a reward. This is selfless service. It is compassion. This is the reason why spiritual teachings exist, because by giving to others, we help ourselves, but not in a selfish sense. I know in the beginning it is easy to want to do good deeds so that we can benefit, but with training you begin to lose that selfish attitude and really give from an uncorrupted and genuine heart

​We also study Kundalini Yoga, which is a very popular science today or teaching, in which there are a lot of theories and beliefs, and unfortunately a lot of misconceptions.
 
Now we have in this image Padmasambhava with his consort Yeshe Tsogyal who are in the sexual act. What is important to reflect upon is that as an image of Tibetan Buddhism, it constitutes one of the highest teachings of that tradition, and pretty much any religion itself, at its core. It is how a married couple, man and woman, can combine their creative sexual forces in a state of ritual purity and conscious love, in order to harness those energies and to awaken divine, spiritual capacities. Some people have called it Kundalini. Some people have called it the fire of Pentecost. Some people have called it the Holy Spirit. Some people have called it the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl within the Aztec mystical tradition, or Kukulcan among the Mayans. This is the energetic force of our divine feminine reality that awaken within practitioners who are properly prepared.
 
It is important to not just look at the image with a lustful mind, although this is where people begin. Padmasambhava made a point about this essential practice of tantra, sexual union, or the harnessing of a continuous flow and influx of energy without ever releasing it. This is tantrism. The meaning of tantra is continuum, continuity. It is how we take those forces and conserve them.
 
He said that in order to do that one cannot have any lust, any passion, any animal desire.  He said, “Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation.” So some people get very confused when they study this aspect of religion. They say, “How is that Padmasambhava can be sexually united with his wife and yet he says that lustful people cannot enter the path of liberation?” The answer is  really simple: Do not engage the sexual act out of lust, desire. Instead, enact it with love. Very different quality. Lust says, “I want to satisfy my desires,” and love only wants the happiness and spiritual edification of the other.
 
When we learn to harness and conserve that creative potential and to activate it through sexual union between husband and wife, man and woman, by conserving that power and living an ethical life, we can awaken what is called Kundalini. It is the power of the divine feminine. It is the Divine Mother of all religions. 
 
You can study the lecture The Divine Mother in the course Beginning Self-Transformation. We talk about how the divine feminine is represented in many religions. 
 
The important thing to remember is that She is the power and the intelligence of love, of creation, of the universe. Therefore, She only rises up the spine of those practitioners that have proven their worth, who are really dedicated to their ethics and purifying their viewpoint, who perceive life with selflessness, with altruism, with compassion, understanding that life is transient and interdependent and that nothing is permanent and stable except for the reality of love. 
 
Now, there are many people who have attributed psychoses, addictions, or mental imbalances to Kundalini, and this is really fundamentally mistaken. We disagree with this, because the Divine Mother Kundalini can only empower those souls who have really upheld the highest ethics. It does not happen in people who are wasting their creative potential or squandering the sexual energy. It is a very specific science. It is really deep. We practice this if we are married. It is an important aspect of genuine Aquarian Yoga, and we are now giving this sexual teaching very openly to humanity because people need it. 
 
It is very easy to go on the internet to find sources that are very impure and that help to produce a lot of suffering for humanity. We are now being really explicit with this knowledge. You can learn more about this teaching in a book called The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, where we learn how to master the creative intelligence of God, so that our love blossoms from a state of ritual purity, of verification of spiritual states―very deep, very transformative.

We are going to explain a couple of exercises or what is known as Yantra Yoga. Now Yantra Yoga is commonly known as the Tibetan rites or sacred rites for rejuvenation. With these exercises, we harness the creative energies of our bodies, mind, and heart in a form of ritual. There are six rites in which we basically harness our conscious energies. We can ask for certain results or petition to divinity, our Divine Mother Kundalini, so that we can receive healing, insights, and understanding of our own defects, perhaps even to help us to eliminate certain faults that we have understood in our meditations. 
 
Sacred rites for rejuvenation are very powerful. They can help us to heal sick organs and help us to gain flexibility, vitality, and health on a mental, emotional, and physical sense, but also spiritually speaking. 
 
When we work with the sacred rites for rejuvenation, we begin by crossing our hands over our heart, our right hand over our left, and we petition and pray to our Divine Mother Kundalini, the divine feminine within us, who basically can intercede for us on behalf of Her husband, the Divine Father, the Holy Spirit within certain traditions. We invoke the divine feminine because She is the intercessor, the reconciliator between our terrestrial personality and the severity of the divine. The Holy Spirit, as sometimes mentioned in many other traditions, has the power to heal but we have to know how to work with creative energy first, conserving and transforming it. 
 
We work with our Divine Mother, to beg Her, “Please intercede for me on behalf of your divine husband, the Holy Spirit, in order to accomplish this goal.” We can ask for healing of a sick organ or the awakening of a chakra, the understanding or intuition to a certain problem, the elimination of defects. There are many uses we can apply to the sacred rites. It is a form of ritual with our body, in which we take certain postures and positions in order to invoke the aid of our inner Being. ​

With the first rite after you made your petition, you begin to spin from left to right. You have to be very careful not to spin too fast so that you don’t become disorientated and lose balance.
 
You can place your right up, your left hand facing down. Extend out as in this image. Keep your eyes open when you spin, so you don't lose your equilibrium. When you spin from left to right―you want to do it twelve times―you spin in the same direction you turn a steering wheel to the right. We do this because this positively activates the chakras. In this position, posture, or movement, we are circulating the vital forces of our chakras themselves so that we awaken those powers. When we spin, we pray to our divinity. We can say either verbally or mentally:

We are commanding our sick organs to work, to be healed by this divine Aquarian energy influence, the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can gain happiness, balance, and health.
 
There is a mantra that goes along with this it is very popularized today:

Unfortunately, this saying has been abused today. It is actually a very powerful mantra. It comes from The Arabian Nights, the story of البابا Alibaba and the forty thieves. What is interesting about this myth is that البابا Alibaba goes to a cave and commands the stone that is blocking the entrance to move. He says, “Open sesame!” This mantra has the effect of opening the boulder, of pushing it aside, so that he could go into the cave to try and save treasure that was trapped there from forty thieves. 
 
It is interesting if you ever studied the teachings of kabbalah, especially the number forty is very significant. These forty thieves relate to our own defects who try to steal the treasure of our soul, the energies of our consciousness. So البابا Alibaba goes into the cave in order to extract the treasures, which is a symbol of going into our own mind to extract the truth, into the subconscious caverns of our own occult behaviors, that which is not readily accessible to our senses.
 
It is interesting that the term البابا Alibaba from the Arabic is translated into Hebrew as אלי אבא Eli Abba, which means “My God the father.” So this is a beautiful symbol of how we pray to God the Father and Mother within us in order to perform a magical healing, to work with the treasure of our creative energies.
 
So we spin twelve times saying:

When you are done spinning twelve times―0r you can do more if you like, but be careful not to fall over―you bend your knees. Keep your legs and feet shoulder length apart. Place your left hand on your thigh to try to get your balance, and then you bend your knees. Your thumb, index and middle finger―place these three fingers on your third eye, between your eyebrows. You put some pressure there because as you are somewhat bending down, you are helping to gain balance so that you do not collapse after spinning (which gets easier and better with practice), but you are also taking those circulated forces from your spinning and concentrating them upon your third eye and that way you basically awaken that chakra really deeply.

The next part is by laying in the form of the cross. You continue to pray, identifying your supplication, whatever is you want to work on. You can imagine whatever sick organ in your body needs healing or imagine the desired result that you long, for comprehension. You can imagine above you, floating in your vicinity, a white dove of immaculate fire descending into you, giving you life and vitality and force. This is the power of the Holy Spirit. Pray deeply:

Command your consciousness to work for you, in whatever sick organ you are trying to heal, but whatever you are asking of the Holy Spirit to be giving, that gift, perhaps an awakened chakra, power, or faculty.
 
Afterward you perform what is known as the Viparita Karani Mudra. With the legs lifted up in the air, you can place your hands behind your knees. Engage in this posture and continue to pray out loud, verbally or mentally, if you wish.

​In the third rite, you kneel and perform pranayama. Going back to Raja Yoga, of working with energy, you are doing interchangeable nostril breathing, in which you are circulating the vital winds in your mind, body, and heart.
 
Close your left nostril with your right index finger. Keep your right thumb out and inhale through the right nostril. Concentrate on the forces that are entering into you. You can imagine that the energies are circulating down from the base of your spine up to your brain and then into your heart.
 
Close your nostrils with your right thumb and index finger. Imagine this energy being retained within you, and then exhale through the left nostril, so that the forces are done circulating up into your heart. With inhaling through one nostril, you are sending the energy down through an energetic channel from your nose down into your coccyx, because there are two channels that intertwine the spine. We call them Ida and Pingala in yoga. 
 
When you work with each nostril, you are working with each separate cord in your spine. The left nostril relates to the right testicle or ovary, and the right nostril relates to the left testicle or ovary. So they are intertwined. They interchange. The forces of your creative sexual energy rise up from your coccyx in your sexual organs, into your brain and then into your heart through energetic nadis.
 
When you work with the interchangeable nostril breathing, inhaling through your right nostril while closing your left with the index finger, you breathe in the vital forces. You hold them, closing your nostril with your right thumb and your right hand, retaining that force, and then exhaling through your left nostril so that energy flows in you. Then breathe through the left nostril. Inhale to repeat the same procedure. Close your nostrils with both your fingers, the thumb and index finger, and then exhale through your right nostril. That constitutes one pranayama. You want to perform three total. Pray to your Divine Mother to help you work with this force consciously. 
 
Afterward you perform a posture in which you lean back. You kind of let your abs do the work―great for keeping your physique up. Hands at your side. Arch your back. Keep your head up titled and continue to pray using the invocation:

If you find that verbally pronouncing is difficult, you can do it mentally. Sometimes the posture can be difficult to perform.
 
With any of these exercises, you do not want to strain your body, buy do it gently. Do not force any of these postures on yourself if they are harming you. Instead, these are rites for rejuvenation. They are not meant to hurt you. So you need to be careful when you practice. ​

For the next posture―as you are training your body―you extend your feet outward, close together, heels together, hands behind about shoulder length, and you arch your back in a backward direction. Keep your head tilted up and continue to pray:

​You can visualize as well make sure you are praying from your heart.
 
The next posture is the table. You send your back upward. Make sure that your arms and legs are spread far apart so you are not straining your body too much. You do not want to lean too far backward or forward. Instead, keep a good balance. Continue to visualize and deepen your prayer.

You then repeat the pranayama three times, breathing through your right nostril, closing both, exhaling through the left. Inhaling through the left, closing both nostrils, exhaling through the right. You want to do this process three times.

You are going to perform the fifth rite. You look like you are doing a push-up. Your head is extended upward, your torso is above the ground, your feet are shoulder length, and your hands are shoulder length. You alternate positions between bending your torso down towards the ground without touching, and moving your head slightly down to the chest, and then extend outward, with your head up and torso away from the ground. Do this for as many times as you like.
 
Afterward you make an arch. Continue to pray, visualize, supplicate, and deepen your prayer. The important thing to remember is that these positions are meant as a form of communing with divinity. Your prayer and conviction and dedication and devotion are what is most important in order for this to be effective. In this posture, you basically arch up upwards. You can lift your heels up towards you as you are moving, so you can arch far enough, but again, do not strain yourself too much.

The last rite is mentioned in Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation by Samael Aun Weor. It is known as Viparita Karani Mudra, in which, like the previous postures you did before with your hands behind your knees, you can do this against a wall where you lay back with your feet up. You pray to your Divine Mother to beg the Holy Spirit to transfer the energies of your mind into your heart, your solar plexus, and the solar forces of your solar plexus to your mind. In a manner of speaking, we have forces that relate to our intellect, which are, we can say, lunar in nature. They tend to be more negative forces. Our mind tends to be very cold and conditioned. ​

We have a lot of forces in our solar plexus that we can transfer through the help and the intelligence of the Holy Spirit, by having them circulate in the form of the Holy Eight, or an infinite, from the solar plexus over to the head. The solar forces of the sun of the abdomen rise up to the head and the lunar silvery atoms or the moon-like lunar atoms of the mind go into the solar plexus.
 
The solar plexus is like a reservoir of energy that is like a battery. We carry a lot of force in our abdomen. This is where we get the source of many gut instincts and feelings that we tend to be very unconscious of or mechanical with. We can learn to take that reservoir of force from our abdomen and take it to our mind so that we have a spiritually illuminated intellect.
 
The good thing about the Viparita Karani Mudra is that the blood flows towards the head so that we are more oxygenated in the brain. This helps to activate certain faculties and abilities.
 
If you want to learn more about that you can study the Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation. Here we are just giving a summary. There is also a sixth rite known as the Vajroli Mudra, which we do not have the time to cover today. The book explains it extensively. ​

Runes are the Nordic yoga, which we have some videos available online that you can study. These are postures in which we place our body while vocalizing certain mantras in prayer. In this way, we vibrate with the forces of nature. The Nordic language or Futhark relates to certain postures and positions that are conducive for accumulating solar divine energy from nature. It is good to perform these runes outside in a park, or in one’s backyard if you have one,  in the forest, woods, or by the ocean, so that you can assimilate more divine energy and prana from your environment.
 
If you want to learn how to practice the runes, we have a book called Magic of the Runes but also a video on the seven vowels that you can study and apply to your daily life. The runes are very effective for charging yourself with divine force. There is a course on Runes on glorian.org. If you want to go more into depth, practicing daily is very helpful.

• Kundalini Yoga
• ​Magic of the Runes
• Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation
• Spiritual Power of Sound [Republished as Profound Meditation]​

​I know we covered a lot, but I would now like to open up the floor to questions.

Question: You mentioned you need energy to withdraw and see from a clearer state of consciousness. Could you expound on this more because this is the first time I have heard of this idea? I have noticed in my own life that if I do not have enough energy, I do not feel like engaging in my spiritual practices. I am curious why there is a connection between our energy and withdrawing and approaching things from a higher consciousness. Is it just because our body is not relaxed and thus not receptive?
 
Instructor: Think of it like how a vehicle operates with better fuel. If you put the wrong type of fuel in a car, you can destroy it. Also, if you put the most fuel-efficient energy into your vehicle, it will operate better. It will drive better. The same thing with our consciousness. Our consciousness has a profound capacity to perceive life which is beyond any limitation of thought, feeling, and impulse. But in order to really enact that conscious state from experience, we need to save energy. We have to save emotional energy. We have to save mental energy. We have to save creative energy. It is impossible to light a lamp if you do not have the fuel or the wick there. In the same way that a light on a lamp has more clarity when the container it is in is washed and clean, likewise our consciousness can reflect greater light based on the purity of our mind.
 
We need energy in order to awaken, first off, to be able to learn to experience and perceive our inner reality from an objective sense. But in order to do that it is important to not only have energy but to learn how to use it well. When you direct energy intelligently, consciously, and withdraw from distractions of the mind and external senses in meditation, you learn to fully engage in your own conscious interior. You can purify your vision, so to speak. 
 
Obviously, if you do not have energy like in physical life, you cannot live. You cannot work. Someone who has insomnia has a very difficult time being physically awake, but still not being able to sleep. It has a serious effect upon one's psychology when we do not have enough energy present. We even find that if we abuse our intellectual energy, we can develop illnesses like schizophrenia, mental illnesses, paranoia, delusions, because the mind, which can operate like a vehicle in its own respective orbit, is deficient in fuel. It has lost its vital values and therefore the engine breaks down and stops working. You find these people who are very engaged in the intellect without balancing the other parts of themselves.
 
Likewise, the heart. If it is exhausted of its emotional and vital principles, it creates illnesses like depression, morbidity, bi-polar disorder, many emotional illnesses and diseases. Even the physical body can deteriorate and fall apart when it is not fueled by sufficient, creative, vital energy. People who abuse themselves through boxing, sports, and other difficult activities can become paraplegic or damaged in their body.
 
In the same way we need energy to exist in life, we need those forces to harmonize and balance, to use the conscious well. As you said, if you do not have enough creative energy, you cannot engage in spiritual practices. You are just not inspired or will not be there. But saving energy, directing it well with consciousness, that begins to clarify perception, so that day by day, we perceive more and more. I invite you to study Meditation Essentials on glorian.org. It explains how when we use energy, we clarify our perceptions. 
 
Question: I am very curious to know what you think of Christianity. I relate to many values in the Bible, but most Christians seem quite mind-controlled to me. I feel Christianity needs to integrate to other broader religious ideas like yoga, reincarnation, and more. What are the merits and limits to Christianity even when people are striving to live a righteous selfless life?
 
Instructor: We explained in other courses that there is a public tradition and an esoteric tradition. Every religion has a public, exoteric domain, which is followed by millions of people, and then there are hidden, secret, esoteric teachings within those teachings that were never given publicly. In relation to the Piscean era, that knowledge was underground, but now we are given in the Aquarian Era this esoteric knowledge freely for all. Christianity as a teaching is a very beautiful tradition. It has very deep symbolic roots, which many practitioners and adherents do not necessarily understand or follow. Just as many people of a religion may adhere to a faith out of dogma, they also contradict the values that are embedded in their faith.
 
I have met many great Christians, many bad Christians; many great Muslims, some bad Muslims; many good Gnostics, but also many bad Gnostics. Just because you adhere to a tradition does not mean one is spiritual. In fact, what is spiritual about a person is that they are working to eliminate defects and work compassionately for others, to serve others. 
 
Christianity as a tradition has an esoteric dimension known as gnosticism, which we are giving a course on our website about The Gnostic Gospels. You can study that course if you want to learn more about Esoteric Christianity. But also Glorian.org has the course Esoteric Christianity that studies the heart doctrine of that faith.
 
The esoteric version is very different from the public, where in Esoteric Christianity you find reincarnation and spiritual ideas are integrated very beautifully and are supported and sustained by scripture more importantly.

Any religion like Christianity and faith can be limited when we only follow it blindly, when we use it as a paradigm and a dogma to interpret what we perceive without actually helping us to experience reality objectively. Morality is useful in its place, in the sense that having some values can help orientate certain people into living a more ethical or more kind and compassionate life, but merely sticking to an outward form but without experiencing its inward principles is not enough. It is deficient.
 
Question: With Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation, if the petition choses does not heal an organ or awaken a chakra after a session, do we keep only asking for that particular healing until it heals with the practices or change the petitions? Should we?
 
Instructor: I have known instructors practicing sacred rites who would perform one petition for two months, not changing it, because results come with time, practice, and consistency. I would recommend sticking to one petition for at least two months. If you really want to go deep into it, keep going with it, but this applies to many practices such as the elimination of egos as well, where we focus on one ego or defect over a long period of time until we gain results in comprehension. It is good to focus on one thing and to really practice it deeply, extensively.
 
Question: If we keep only asking for one thing and nothing happens for a long time, what do we do then? How do we know what we are asking for is what we really need or can even be allowed to be granted?
 
Instructor: There are many factors that go into play in terms of working with the sacred rites. Some people practice for a long time and do not get results. They can often become filled with morbidity and despair and doubt that this even works. It is important to take into account that the quality of our practice is not determined by merely sticking to a schedule, but it has to do with the quality of our heart, how sincere we are, how dedicated in our consciousness in terms of our attitude for approaching divinity. Sometimes we can approach divinity with ambition, and that is never rewarded. Some people get frustrated because they ask for something and they do not get it, and often become frustrated, confused, disoriented and doubtful.
 
So what to do then? If you are not getting what you ask for, I would reflect on what you are asking and how. Our divinity knows what we need before we even ask or even know for ourselves. Sometimes it can be good to practice the rites to gain experiences and insights into what you need to work on, to help guide you and even initiating and sustaining a certain practice. 
 
Divinity grants unto us what we need, not what we want. But it is also difficult to ascertain in our own experiences, the difference between need and greed. What is it that we crave, like spiritual experiences, and what is it that we need to really to benefit in our daily life? I recommend that you focus on goals that will help you orient yourself in daily life, specifically, or even opening your heart and asking from divinity, praying, “Please show me what is that I need. Please help me!” and performing the rites in that way. Sometimes if we ask for a healing for a sickness that is not going away, we have to take into account certain contexts and karmic forces at play that we cannot necessarily alter or control, but with a lot of patient work. Be patient and persist. 
 
If you know that there is something that you need in your daily life that you have to aspire to, then keep asking for it. Do not give up. Do not flag, but be careful about what your attitude is and how you approach divinity, because the sacred rites are a ritual. They are very sacred. They are very divine. They are a way of communicating with the truth. We have to make a distinction between ambition and need. Pray for healing, be dedicated, and be consistent.
 
Question: Otherwise, will not the practice become redundant if we find ourselves asking for something that can never be granted with the sacred rites?
 
Instructor: This is why other practices are essential. We have to meditate deeply and investigate within our comprehension what our situation is. I know sometimes when we have difficult problems in life, it is very difficult to ascertain what reality is, the truth, the right way of acting. This is why we combine these different yogas together. We work with them in conjunction with one another.
 
If you find that you are not getting the results you want, if you feel you are practicing in a redundant way, then analyze what you are doing―reevaluate. Some people need to practice sacred rites at certain periods in their life. They do not necessarily do it all the time. But we work with certain yogas in conjunction with the understanding that these practices fulfill a specific need. If it is not granted, be patient. Meditate upon what it is that you want. Comprehend what your desires are for that longed-for objective and ask divinity to show you in your meditation what is going on, and in that way, you can have some comfort and conviction about what it is divinity wants from you and what divinity has planned for you.
 
Question: You said exhaling through the left nostril affects the heart. What does exhaling through the right nostril affect? What was the name of the video you mentioned about the runes?
 
Instructor:  In terms of exhaling and inhaling through the nostrils, just to clarify, when you are inhaling through either nostril, you are imagining the vital force and winds entering through that nostril and descending in a circuitous way, in a form of entwined serpent, moving across the spine in the form of the infinite, or like a curving line, like a light wave (if you’ve studied physics), a radio wave, down into your coccyx. When you retain that energy, when you close your nostrils, you are imagining that the energy is mixing within your sexual glands, is being retained and even rising up your spine to your head. When you exhale through the other nostril, you send the energy to your heart. 
 
That is one visualization you can do. That is not specified specifically in the book Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation. He just gives a very basic pranayama, so you do not have to go deeply with your visualization. The important thing is that you feel that energy circulating within you and that you interchange your breathing through your nostrils. Open your right nostril. Close the left nostril with the index finger of your right hand. Inhale, close with your thumb the right nostril, retain the energy, lift the index finger, and exhale through the other nostril. Do the same for the other nostril as well―inhaling, holding / retaining, and exhaling. 
 
Your prayer is what is going to be most efficacious or best. It is what is going to work and cause the energies to flow in you.

​In terms of the video for the runes, specifically, you can access those videos on Glorian.org or go onto YouTube and look up Glorian Publishing for the Seven Runic Vowels. 

We talk about seven vowels in relation to our spinal column, the seven chakras, because these seven sounds activate the seven main chakras of our spinal medulla. These vowels are explained in the video: I, E, O, U, A, M, S… seven vowels, which if you study the literature we provided as well, it goes very deep into that. 
 
Any other questions? I know we covered a lot. We appreciate you for asking questions and listening in. We will definitely have a lot more practices and exercises to share with you in relation with course. So I thank you all for coming