Transcription not yet available.

Transcription not yet available.

Transcription not yet available.

We are initiating a new course on The Voice of the Silence, an ancient manual of esoteric instruction. This work was translated by the eminent Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, whose scholarly and spiritual achievements cannot be easily estimated. This brief mystical text is a collection of fragments from The Book of the Golden Precepts, an obscure and rich scripture from which The Secret Doctrine was inspired.
 
The Voice of the Silence was not fully translated, since it would have required Blavatsky many years just to organize her documents, let alone translate the work in its totality. She also mentioned that much of this scripture is too sacred and profound to be understood by her students. This is a powerful statement, one that should not be overlooked. This guide, she said, is for serious practitioners who are awakening consciousness.
 
Although The Voice of the Silence is brief, it is dense, and therefore difficult to interpret. As with any deep work, it requires an awakening consciousness to decipher, apply, and realize. Despite the brevity of this work, it synthesizes the entire path to liberation. This is no small feat.
 
The origins and translation of this work has often been contested and disputed. However, the Panchen Lama affirmed its authenticity. In case you do not know, the Panchen Lama is second in command to the Dalai Lama within the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. As he stated in 1925:

​This brief work is a condensation of many rich spiritual truths, which not only inform Tibetan Buddhism, but even Judeo-Christian and Western esoteric traditions. This might seem erroneous, especially for those who are very familiar with Blavatsky. She is well known for her expositions on Eastern mysticism, not so much with Western spiritual thought. However, we will demonstrate how both Western and Eastern mystical traditions can provide a deeper understanding of The Voice of the Silence. We will do so by juxtaposing and clarifying it with the writings of Samael Aun Weor.

Samael Aun Weor wrote about γνῶσις gnosis, the personal, experiential knowledge of divine reality. While this is a Greek term, gnosis is not the sole property of the Greeks. Different religions have different terms for this type of mystical experience, which are based on the language, culture, and idiosyncrasies of distinct messengers and time periods. Samael Aun Weor’s particular gift to humanity, given the ambiguity of many spiritual writings, is his clarity. He is direct, profound, insightful. More importantly, he is practical. He gave many keys for understanding the roots of all traditions. The root of all traditions, he emphasizes, is mystical experience.

But what is the Voice of the Silence?
 
This title or principle is a paradox. How can a voice be silent? Who is speaking? To whom? More importantly, what, how, and why? What voice does one hear in the silence? What silence are we referring to?
 
The Voice of the Silence refers to mystical experiences. In meditation, we can receive direct guidance from divinity. By their very nature, such experiences are paradoxical, especially to our sensual and materialistic mind. How can one possibly experience divinity? How is this even possible given our current limitations or state? How can one perceive without the physical senses?
 
The root word for mysticism is the Greek myein, to close one’s eyes to illusion, so as to perceive inwardly, psychologically, spiritually. These are perceptions we experience even within dreams. Myein is also the root word for mystikos, an “initiate,” someone who has learned to develop their full conscious potential. An initiate is someone who perceives and understands realities beyond the body, heart, and mind. These are people who have some level of self-mastery over the causes of suffering, and therefore can immediately access knowledge from divinity.
 
This scripture emphasizes that we are yet to awaken to reality, to divinity, to the truth. Blinded by our passions, appetites, fears, sensuality, desires―we do not see reality. We do not perceive the truth of our situation. We also do not perceive clearly when we dream. As stated in The Voice of the Silence:

​This verse is exceptionally compelling. Perception is dual. While gradations and distinct qualities of perception exist, there are really two fundamental modalities of being. We either see divine reality or we don’t. We either perceive and comprehend, or we do not understand what we perceive. In the worst case, we don’t even perceive things at all, because we don’t pay attention. We are often blinded and confused by our own sense of self, our identity, which fluctuates, is impermanent. However, by transforming ourselves, we can not only experience, but unite with divinity through a state of perfection. This is the fundamental argument of this scripture.
 
So what harmony must be attained so as to perceive as a soul? What must we do to unite with our divine Being, the truth, the Voice that speaks in our inner silence?

This harmony is psychological, internal. To use the technical language of meditation, harmony is serenity of mind, unwavering concentration on one thing without becoming distracted.
 
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that there are nine degrees of serenity or meditative concentration. These lead the disciple to the ultimate apprehension of reality. In the beginning of meditation, we do not perceive spiritual states easily, because we are distracted. But with gradual work in concentration, we do. The ability to exclusively focus on one object of meditation implies calmness of mind, silence of thought. Silence is the natural state of the consciousness. What is abnormal is our current state. How we see is usually obscured and filtered, conditioned, whether by pride or anger, negative thoughts, fear and desire. By observing thought and letting it subside, to cease in its activity, we access our true nature of being. This is why The Voice of the Silence teaches:

In the beginning of our studies we may experience this. We may feel a pressure in our heart. We have a hunch or intuition about a teaching. We do not have all the evidence, but we are inspired to practice, experience, to know. This inner voice in our heart, this voice that speaks in the silence of our mind, the solitude of our practice, is conscience. It is knowing right from wrong, even if we lack an intellectual justification or explanation. This voice is the call of our inner divinity, who seeks to inspire us, to enter the spiritual path that leads to our true origins.
 
It is this spiritual inquietude in our heart that drives us to approach spirituality and religion, to seek answers to our deepest problems and sufferings. It is also the voice of inner judgment, the voice of inner discrimination. It is intuiting right from wrong behavior. By performing right action, we avoid suffering. We develop inner clarity. This is the prerequisite for awakening consciousness and experiencing the truth. This sense is developed the more we answer its needs, especially through daily meditation. 
 
Samael Aun Weor explained the following about this:

​This is the key. Such an inner voice, inclination, or inspiration is spontaneous. It is not premeditated, planned, conceptualized. It lacks suffering. It is spiritual action free of desire, of attachment, fear, craving, aversion. It is intuition: knowing how to act without having to think. It is like lightning. But while brilliant and astonishing in its novelty, it is oftentimes followed by the rumbling thunder of doubt, thought, negativity, maybe even despair.
 
The clarity of that insight emerges the more we reflect upon ourselves and question our intentions, our impulses, motives, thoughts. We must sift through the mud of passion to find the lotus of virtue.
 
Here is a compelling metaphor: when the lake of the mind is serene, it can reflect heaven upon its tranquil, clear surface. This is known as the faculty of imagination. This is when we perceive psychological images with great detail and depth. When our imagination is muddied, we see through impurity. When our imagination is pure, it reflects the revelations of heaven.
 
Samael Aun Weor also explained this in The Revolution of Beelzebub: 

​Reasoning can provide false certainty. Our desires always feel justified. However, genuine mystical experience does not conform to our preferences, our prejudices, fears, anxieties, fanaticism, theories. The beginning of hearing the Voice of the Silence is abandonment of self. This requires conscious judgment.
 
Intuition or inner judgment can be intentionally strengthened. We do so through following the three levels or trainings of any meditative discipline. 

​These three trainings have different names in different traditions. They represent the path through which our consciousness conquers suffering and realizes its divine nature. These three trainings also structure The Voice of the Silence in its three fragments.
 
Every religion has three levels of knowledge and practice: introductory, intermediate, and advanced. Buddhism outlines three schools or movements corresponding to these levels: Shravakayana, Mahayana, and Tantrayana respectively.
 
Shravaka means “hearer.” Yana means “vehicle.” It is therefore the vehicle of instruction in which we hear about or learn religion for the first time. This level of knowledge is based in ethical discipline. Here we learn to not lie, kill, steal, lust, adulterate, consume drugs or intoxicants, envy, gossip, criticize, blame, hurt, or commit harms in any way. This is because negative actions pollute our mind stream. They make us confused, weak, disconnected from our inner divinity.
 
These behaviors distance us from the voice of the divine. They condition our consciousness and cloud our ways of seeing in the world. They even affect our dreams. They put our consciousness to sleep and activate negative ways of being. Such individuals cannot see reality, because they are not willing to let go of their desires, whether for sensations, praise, fame, money, drugs, respect, security, status, etc.
 
When practitioners have mastered some level of ethical discipline, cultivating a spiritual space within their bodies, hearts, and minds, they can begin working for the spiritual benefit of others. The more we recognize our sufferings and limitations, and the more we understand how and why people suffer, we become inspired to help them. This is compassion: selfless love based on the understanding of impermanence.
 
Nothing in existence is eternal, including our appetites and desires. We often chase after sensations, experiences, satisfaction, ignoring that our very cravings and aversions control us. However, they are not permanent. They always change. When we don’t get what we want, we suffer. When we get what we want, we want more. We are never satisfied.
 
But when we realize the futility of desire and how it produces pain, that nothing lasts, we also see how our own behaviors make others suffer, which is a great inspiration to change. Tibetan Buddhists uses a very specific term for compassion, guided by insight into reality. They call it bodhichitta. This is the awakening heart-mind of boundless compassion. This is a spiritual principle that focuses on liberating others from suffering, precisely because one understands the nature of selflessness.
 
Therefore, we work to not only edify our own spirituality, but that of others. Mahayana is the Greater Vehicle (since Maha means “great”). This level of religion is where we actively work for the benefit of all beings regardless of our own desires. This is a superior way.
 
However, it is not the most profound, expeditious, or powerful. The advanced level of religion is known as Tantrayana, the “Diamond Vehicle” or supreme way. This is divine sexuality. Tantra literally means “continuum,” whereby the consciousness conserves, harnesses, and elevates the most potent energies of the body for the spirit: the creative sexual force. 

(Padmasambhava to his consort Yeshe Tsogyal:
"Lustful people do not enter into the path of liberation.")

Tantra is often represented in Buddhist iconography with various buddhas, masters, prophets, or gods in a state of sexual embrace. This has nothing to do with lust, but love. Some people get confused. How can one have sex without lust? Lust must gradually be eliminated so that the sexual act becomes a sacrament, a sacred ritual. This is why years of training prepared disciples for this level of knowledge, because sexual power without responsibility produces problems.
 
When a couple conserves and transforms the sexual energy with supreme adoration, purity, and love, never allowing the continuum or flow of forces to leave the body, then they radically awaken the consciousness. This power allows married men and women to develop the deepest insights, since the power to create life, the creative energy, awakens their full potential.
 
The Voice of the Silence addresses all three levels of religion. It is therefore a complete teaching, despite the fact that Blavatsky didn’t transcribe everything from her original source: The Book of the Golden Precepts.

But what else must we study to better understand this scripture? We must look to the three essential mystical sciences of antiquity. These are:
​

• קבלה Kabbalah
• كيمياء Alchemy
• ψυχολογία Psychology

Kabbalah can mean “tradition” or “knowledge.” It also comes from the Hebrew term קבל kabbel, which means “to receive.” This secret wisdom was originally transmitted from mouth to ear, from master to disciple. It more importantly signifies how we as a consciousness receive spiritual experiences.
 
Kabbalah is often synonymous with the Tree of Life, a map of consciousness, the universe, and divinity. The Tree of Life shares its roots, biblically speaking, with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, otherwise known as alchemy.
 
Alchemy, or اللّٰه‎ Allah-χημεία Khemia, is an amalgam of Arabic and Greek wisdom, otherwise translated as “the chemistry of God.” Khemia means to “fuse or cast a metal.” Allah is the Arabic name for divinity. Traditionally, alchemy is associated with superstition, the belief that dense metals can be transformed, like lead into gold. Trans means “to carry over,” and mutation indicates how an inferior substance becomes a superior one.
 
This is a symbol. By conserving and transforming energy, we become fully developed beings, masters or gods, with complete knowledge of good and evil.
 
Psychology is understood today as the study of the mind. But etymologically, psychology is the relationship between psyche (the consciousness) and logos (the Word, the Being, divinity). By mastering our minds in meditation, we connect with and realize the truth.  
 
Many will argue that kabbalah and alchemy have nothing to do with The Voice of the Silence, since kabbalah supposedly originated in 13th century Spain and alchemy in medieval Europe, with roots in Pre-Islamic Arabian mysticism. These are Western, not Eastern esoteric traditions. When we reference kabbalah and alchemy, we do so in accordance with their principles, not to their appearance or moment in history.
 
Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, is a map of consciousness. It is a map of our very being. These realities have always existed and will always exist, before and after medieval Judaism. Just in the same way that Sir Isaac Newton didn’t create, but documented gravity, likewise the medieval Jews documented the Tree of Life and didn’t originate it. Likewise, Eastern traditions taught the same truths, but in different forms, including Bhavachakra and Kalachakra. Therefore, the principles of kabbalah are universal.
 
Also, alchemy, the transformation of personality―the dense lead of selfhood into the gold of spirit. This is much older than medieval Europe. This law of transformation predates even our known universe. It is eternal. There have always existed individuals who, once common and ordinary people, worked in this alchemical science to become buddhas, angels, perfected beings. Likewise, there will always exist beings in future cosmic scenarios who will enter the path of liberation and fully unite themselves with divinity.
 
The same with psychology. Consciousness is inherent to life. Our psyche, our soul, when inspired to study spirituality, seeks a deeper, more personal relationship with divinity, the Voice of the Silence. There are levels to experiencing the Voice of the Silence. There are also levels of development whereby an individual unites with, realizes, and fully expresses that Voice. This is known through the path of initiation.
 
The Voice of the Silence is based on their universal principles. Therefore, it is useful to explain the essence of kabbalah, alchemy, and psychology with this scripture, since they complement the text. Eastern symbols can become more clear through context. By looking at the root knowledge of these traditions, we can gain greater confidence into this scripture’s meaning. 

​However, to fulfill the requisites of these three sciences, we need absolute dedication and application. We call this the path of initiation.
 
Initiation refers to the beginning of something, or the conferral of recognition or membership to a group, such as through ceremonies celebrating coming of age, or entering adulthood, or even joining a secret society.
 
Initiation is the spiritual process whereby we enter, gradually, the community of enlightened beings. As with any process of initiation, our candidacy for membership is tested. We receive challenging situations or ordeals. We must prove our ethical caliber. By overcoming ordeals, we develop the spiritual capacity to experience, and act, through the divine. Through meditation, through the three spiritual sciences, we hear, more and more, the Voice of the Silence. This means, we experience, in meditation and visions, more and more, the nature of divinity. We also see the way to transform our suffering into wisdom. This is obviously no easy task, which is why The Voice of the Silence states:

​Samael Aun Weor also iterated this fact in one of his most famous sayings:

​This is not some distant reality. To experience divinity, we must transform our minds. We must transform our states, and actions in daily life. Daily life is a theater, whereby the drama of initiation is played. We are both the audience and the actor, since we both act out and watch our life, our states. We must reflect upon and observe our psychology during great crises, so as to catch our most hidden defects, to gather data about them, to understand them.
 
We must become conscious agents of our destiny. We decide, based on our choices, whether to fulfill selfless, enlightened action, transforming our communities for the better. Or, behaving with selfishness and desire, we condemn ourselves, and others, to suffering.
 
If our spirituality is merely theoretical, if it does not impact our state of suffering in lasting and permanent ways, if we are repeating the same circumstances without changing our attitude or state of mind, if we are not eradicating suffering at its roots within our psyche, if we are not performing genuine service to our fellow human beings, it means we are not working effectively. This is why Jesus of Nazareth taught, “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20). 

​But why enter initiation? Why intentionally take on a work that will initially provide tests, ordeals, challenges, and sufferings?
 
Many people enter our tradition and begin practicing it. However, they soon realize that their life is falling apart. Difficulties emerge in their personal, economic, professional, marital, or family life, seemingly without explanation. Things get so hard that many give up, saying, “This teaching is hurting me!” However, they don’t realize that they are getting exactly what they asked for. They are entering a probationary period whereby they must prove themselves to the work.
 
Genuine spiritual practice catalyzes latent karma. Karma is often associated with a blind law of retribution, with suffering bad consequences for wrong action, or “What goes around comes around.” In truth, karma is not a blind law. It is intelligently managed by divinity. We will explain how and why.
 
Karma comes from the Sanskrit karman, signifying “cause and effect.” We always follow the trajectory of our own actions and behaviors. We always receive the consequences of our former actions, including before our birth and after our death. What must happen will happen. But the question becomes: When? How, and why?
 
Certain karma or results of former deeds are latent. They only activate when the time is ripe, such as when a wave rises in an ocean to finally crash upon the surface. Such an influence emerges from the depths. The same with karma. What happens is that we are asleep. We don’t see the source of these influences. Neither do we realize that such karma would happen regardless of whether we enter this work or not. To not work on ourselves is to magnify disaster, for if we are not striving to unite with divinity, if we do not help ourselves, if we do not act properly, then no one can help us.
 
Divinity, out of compassion, seeing our sincerity, gives us challenges to bring us closer to Him. Also, when we suffer, we are more inclined to seek God. When in ease, we become complacent and lazy.
 
We also get doses rather than the whole payment all at once, despite what some people might believe. This intelligent manager of affairs ensures that we do not receive more than we can handle. It’s the same karma, but it is parsed in relation to the totality of what we owe. Initiation, therefore, is the path of paying all our karma, all our debts, with intelligence, wisdom, and good deeds. All of this is managed by divinity, because if we had to pay karma unwillingly, unconsciously, we will only exacerbate the situation, acting out of retaliation and spite, blaming others, blaming God for our situation. This obviously does not improve things. It makes it worse.
 
However, at times karma becomes more intense, because ordeals help us to burn away psychological impurities, to pay grievous debts from our past. By transforming ourselves in difficult circumstances, we pay what we owe. Oftentimes these karmic situations become intense because we need to learn valuable lessons as a consciousness. They also help us purify our mind stream. By dying to our defects, we become free.
 
This is why The Voice of the Silence teaches:

​The scripture also states:

​Some have also pointed out an apparent contradiction or paradox. How is this the path to liberation from suffering, and yet we must necessarily suffer? How is it that Samael Aun Weor stated that pain is Satanic, and yet we need to face karma and pain in order to grow?
 
Let us be very clear. Voluntary suffering is distinct from mechanical suffering. It is a difference in attitude.
 
The first is by choice. When you choose to work on yourself, you diminish your pain through insight and will. By consciously taking on ordeals, we gain joy and happiness, because we know this is the way to pay our debts and do good deeds. It sounds strange, right? Why be happy when things go South? In reality, by perceiving our defects during the worst times, we can eliminate them. This recognition brings true joy. It is a strange dynamic to observe in oneself.
 
The second, mechanical suffering, is unintentional. We experience hardship and we react, making things worse.
 
By initiating this work and willingly taking on “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” comprehending it and eliminating its roots in us, we in turn end strife. It is true that the self, the ego, our defects, suffer when unsatisfied. However, the soul, that which connects us with divinity, knows how to experience peace even in great turmoil.
 
What matters is our psychological center of gravity. Are we situated in the consciousness, or the ego? In the soul, or desire? Wherever we direct our attention, we spend creative energy. When we face conflict, do we give into our reactions, or do we respond with intelligence? There is a major difference between these two modes of being. Following the Voice of the Silence in such crises will get us through them. Ignoring what we must do in the moment guarantees our failure.
 
The path involves pain because we have defects that produce it. However, the true nature of the consciousness is serenity, understanding, and bliss. These strengthen the more we follow the Voice of the Silence, our intuition, our Innermost God.
 
Therefore, examine your mind. The more we strive and intuit the voice of divinity in our heart, the more we align ourselves with our conscience within the silence of our being, the more proper our conduct―the better the results will be in our life. 

​As we learn to eliminate defects, we awaken consciousness. We experience and come to inhabit the superior dimensions of the Tree of Life.
 
This diagram has ten spheres, known as sephiroth or “emanations” of the divine, from the most abstract and spiritual above to the most dense and material below.
 
The Voice of the Silence speaks of seven important steps for developing spiritually. These lower seven spheres, along with the sacred Word, the Trinity or three spheres above, constitute the ten sephiroth of the kabbalah.
 
These spheres are not only dimensions or places within nature, but also qualities and levels of being, and even vehicles that we inhabit in order to operate within those regions, whether physically or in dreams.
 
We access these higher regions when we sleep, if we are removing defects, conserving energy, and creating vehicles that help us operate in the superior regions of nature.
 
Blavatsky wrote extensively about the kama rupa or body of desires, the famous astral body of Hod. We also have an inferior manas or mental body, which we use to subsist within the world of Netzach, the mental world. What many don’t realize is that these two vehicles do not belong to divinity, but mechanical nature. They are lunar because they are given to us by nature and must return to nature, willingly or unwillingly. They relate to the moon in that the moon is mechanical, cyclical. It repeats. It does not have any autonomy or will of its own. It obeys nature’s laws.
 
The problem is that our consciousness, trapped in defects and desires, is asleep. It also inhabits the kama rupa and inferior manas. When those lunar bodies must eventually be disintegrated within lower spheres, within inferior dimensions, within the hell realms (because it belongs there, to inferior nature), our consciousness will also go through that process or purification within lunar nature, within the inferior worlds, because the consciousness is trapped. Until our defects that trap consciousness are eliminated, then we will never be free. The problem is that this mechanical process is very painful, involving involuntary or mechanical suffering that does not produce enlightenment.
 
The other way is to enter initiation. Destroy desire. Free the consciousness. Create superior vehicles. We call them the legitimate solar astral and solar mental bodies, along with superior manas, the solar causal body of Nirvana. These are solar bodies because they belong to the matter and energy of divinity, represented by the solar light. The power of life and generation is sexual. It is solar. It is creative and life sustaining. We create these bodies through tantra, through the sexual union of husband and wife, within The Perfect Matrimony as explained by Samael Aun Weor. Marriage is where we can harness the power of a sun, the solar logos, the divine.
 
Nature is dual. It is lunar below, mechanical, impure, but heavenly, solar, pure, conscious above. We gravitate to places in nature in accordance with our level of being.
 
The Voice of the Silence teaches:

​We create superior vehicles through harnessing the sexual energy for the spirit. This is the true meaning of being born again. 

​Only married couples, husband and wife, joined through conscious love and affinity in multiple levels of being, can use the creative sexual energy and give birth to superior bodies. This occurs when the sexual fire known as the Kundalini rises up the spinal medulla of each of the seven lower bodies of the Tree of Life. These bodies allow us to become conscious citizens and inhabitants of those regions. They also allow us to approach and even incarnate divinity.
 
The Kundalini is symbolized in the Torah, specifically Numbers, whereby Moses erected a brass serpent upon a pole. Whenever anyone gazed upon it, they were healed of their fiery afflictions, the biting serpents of passion. Remember that the Israelites disobeyed divinity and were punished by fiery serpents. The Israelites are the parts of our consciousness who seek divinity. By going against our conscience, we become afflicted by passion. As Moses wrote in the Book of Numbers: 

​What is brass? It is an alchemical symbol. It is an amalgamation of copper and tin. Copper relates to Venus, woman, and tin represents Jupiter, man. Through pure tantra, the couple heals and elevates their souls, raising the fire and intelligence of the Divine Mother Kundalini, whose intelligent power only rises in accordance with the merits of the heart.
 
When the Kundalini rises throughout the spine to the mind, and reaches the heart, we acquire an initiation of Major Mysteries. These initiations are steps for approaching the Voice of the Silence, our Being. There are five Major Mysteries or Initiations of Fire, relating to each of the lower bodies or sephiroth below. 

​The first initiation relates to Malkuth, the physical body.
 
The second initiation relates to Yesod, the vital body.
 
The third initiation relates with Hod, the astral body.
 
The fourth initiation relates with Netzach, the mental body.
 
The fifth initiation relates with Tiphereth, the causal body.
 
The divine soul, Geburah, and the Innermost Being, Chesed, never fall into temptation, and therefore have the creative fire already present in them.
 
However, what few realize is that raising the first five Kundalini serpents within the lower spheres of the Tree of Life are just the beginning. Beyond the serpents of fire are the serpents of light. This is the Son of Man, our particular, individual, intimate Christ, the Logos, the Word, the Voice of the Silence.
 
Christ is not a person, but a cosmic energy, universal, impersonal―a divine intelligence that can incarnate within any properly prepared initiate who has solar bodies. Without those bodies and without sacrifice, without a Mahayana attitude of bodhichitta, the Voice of the Silence, the sacred Word, our true Being, the Cosmic Christ, cannot enter, since solar bodies are the conduit through which this terrifyingly divine energy can express. Likewise, one needs true love for humanity and sacrifice for others to necessitate His incarnation.
 
When a disciple achieves the Fifth Initiation of Major Mysteries, has raised the Kundalini within the physical, vital, astral, mental, and causal bodies, he or she has a choice to make: to stay in heaven (Nirvana) and forget about the sufferings of humanity, or to renounce happiness and return to Malkuth (the physical world) to serve others selflessly, til the end.
 
Those who renounce Nirvana to serve humanity, and who have developed the Mahayana essence of bodhichitta, who embody selfless love and compassion for mortals, can enter what is known as the straight path, the path of renunciation, and therefore incarnate Christ.
 
Upon incarnating Christ, the initiate becomes a बोधिसत्त्व bodhisattva. बोधि Bodhi is “wisdom,” and सत्त्व sattva is “essence.” Wisdom in kabbalah is חכמה Chokmah, the Second Logos of kabbalah, our Intimate Christ. Therefore, a bodhisattva is the essence of Christ, a master in the beginning of development.
 
Only Christ can help the bodhisattva fully eliminate the ego and pay all their karma, even in one life. One continues by now raising the serpents of light, by raising Christ, the Son of Man, the solar light, within the spine of the lower sephiroth of the Tree of Life. These Venustic Initiations―relating to Venus, conscious love, Christ―are symbolized by different episodes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who exemplified the entire path to reaching and perfecting the Voice of the Silence in oneself.
 
As stated in the Book of John 3:14-15:

​Eternal life is the intimate Self-realization of the Being, the full perfection of our internal master within our psyche, the union of the soul with the Verb, Christ, divinity, the Voice of the Silence, through the path of initiation. 

​The Voice of the Silence is a remarkable scripture that emphasizes the essential tenets of Buddhism and Christianity. The following verses emphasize the reality and application of the Four Noble Truths, which elaborate upon and demonstrate the esoteric truths we have expounded:

​We begin to hear the Voice of the Silence, to receive hunches, insights, inner judgments, through recognizing our state of suffering. We also gain more clarity in ourselves when we recognize how our desires manifest in relation to diverse circumstances, assembling or manifesting within the screen of our inner awareness. By observing ourselves, we begin to gather data about our defects.
 
Meditation is the third truth, whereby we go deep in concentration, reflecting upon our errors, vices, defects, desires, egos, so that by comprehending them, we can eliminate them. This is the path of initiation, the path of Tau, the Tau Cross, the Hebrew ת Tav, or the Tao, wisdom beyond dualistic notions and concepts.
 
Bodhi is Sanskrit for “wisdom.” This is Christ, the Being, the true life of any initiate. We meditate and receive wisdom from the Bodhi tree, the Tree of Life in us, the totality of our consciousness, which must be perfected and integrated. The Bodhi tree can also represent the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, alchemy, since through transforming the sexual energy and giving it to divinity, we gain wisdom about the nature of positive and negative, solar and lunar, man and woman. This energy awakens us to Samadhi, mystical experiences free of ego, perfect, lucid revelations from the divine. 

​We will conclude with a chapter from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This excerpt synthesizes everything we shared today.
 
Nietzsche at one point knew the path of initiation. Here he relates, through his fictional depiction of the Iranian Prophet Zarathustra, how one enters meditation to communicate with the Voice of the Silence. One must enter a drowsy state to access the internal worlds, to meditate in the threshold between waking and dreaming.
 
Also, he relates the difficulties and burdens that such a voice necessarily demands of us in the spiritual work. To give birth to the Voice, to the Word, to Christ, the Superman or Superhuman, we must die to our impurities, radically.
 
Zarathustra refers to the Voice of the Silence as his angry mistress, his Divine Mother, who reprimands him for his hesitation and faltering in the path. This voice of conscience is oftentimes severe and demanding us our best. Here is what Nietzsche wrote:

​Question: Sure, I got two questions. This path of initiation, currently, at some point you emphasized the path of initiation into the Major Mysteries. Then you briefly talked about initiation into the Christic mysteries, the path of the light, and then also, going back to the Minor Mysteries for those of us who are single. Can you just go into a little more detail about how those three paths relate to each other?
 
Instructor: Great. We have the Three Mountains poster. The First Mountain is Initiation. In the beginning of the path, as we are single or even if we are married, we have to enter probation. We have the Minor Mysteries, nine in total. Single people take much longer than married couples in the nine Minor Mysteries.
 
A Minor Mystery has to do with facing yourself in the beginning of the path. We learn for the first time that we are filled with ego. We realize that we are fallen, demonic, and so we may have experiences in the astral plane where you are being told, “Descend into the earth.” You may have the vision where a master might say, “Go down.” 

​This is symbolized in the first arcanum of the Tarot with the Magician pointing his finger up with his right hand and pointing down to the earth with his left. This means that if you want to go up, you have to go down first. Face yourself. It’s probation because the divine lodges are looking to see whether we are going to be serious, you know? The way that we get serious is if we look at our defects and become accountable.
 
As we are discovering ourselves and eliminating defects, we may finally find a partner. Some people do find this path when they are already married and they can begin where they are at. With more fire, the quicker you go. So the Minor Mysteries can be accelerated.
 
But obviously with the Forge of Hephaestus, which is the god of fire and smithery in Greek mythology, or Vulcan in Roman teachings, we take the fire of a matrimony and go up the Mountain of Initiation.
 
What happens is that you enter the Major Mysteries. We say that there are five that are more important for us. When you raise the Kundalini up the physical body, you receive the First Initiation of Major Mysteries. When you raise the fire up Yesod, the vital body, the Second Initiation. Likewise with Hod, the astral body, the Third Initiation of Major Mysteries. Netzach, the fourth, relating to the mental body, Fourth Initiation, and then finally, the Fifth Initiation of Major Mysteries in Tiphereth, the causal body, superior manas.
 
At that point―really because in the higher spheres the fire is always present within Geburah and Chesed, which never fall, the spirit and divine soul, Atman-Buddhi―you have a decision to make. When manas is united with Atman-Buddhi through initiation, the soul has a choice. Do you decide to fully eliminate the ego and even incarnate Christ, pay all your debts in one life? Or take a slower path, the spiral path, which you see in this poster people going onto the left and entering a spiral development, which is allegorized in The Voice of the Silence especially, I believe, in the second fragment that Blavatsky wrote. You must choose between the paths of liberation and renunciation.
 
In the spiral path, you have, really, like a vacation. You get to enjoy Nirvana. You are in that level of nature. You are with the gods. Everything is easy. You drink ambrosia all day. You are happy. Many of the Nirvanis (you call them Nirvani Buddhas), they slowly enter development over many cosmic days, mahamanvantaras, up a path that leads eventually to the source, but involves very little hardship. They may incarnate physically, periodically, here and there. There are a number of them who stay true to that path and they are happy. It is a good work.
 
But the straight path is different. It means you return to the physical world. You renounce your powers. You renounce happiness. You pay everything that you owe and you suffer the maximum. But as a grace, you receive Christ. You receive the Verb, the Voice of the Silence. That is when Christ is born in the manger, right? Because in Malkuth we have many animals surrounding us in our mind. Christ is born as a baby. It has to grow up.
 
At that point, in the process of Christ growing up and developing in us, you have to raise what are known as the serpents of light. That is represented by the path of Jesus. As you see from the Gospels, that is a very tumultuous way.
 
That is part of the First Mountain still. If you decide, if you have reached the Fifth Initiation of Major Mysteries, you descend down back into the physical world, you abandon Nirvana, you enter the path of renunciation, you return to serve humanity―then you can receive Christ, the Verb, the Logos. Then you have to raise the serpents of light up these bodies.
 
But again, that is just the First Mountain. So as elevated as that might be, after you have raised the serpents of light―we call them the Venustic Initiations―you enter the Second Mountain. Now Venus, the Venustic Initiations is when Christ incarnates in the soul. It is related to Venus because it is the path of love.
 
The Second Mountain is total death of the ego. Kill even the shadow of desire as Blavatsky taught. Fully eliminate the Tree of Zaqqum, the tree of death.
 
You descend down into your hell realms, nine of them in total, and after annihilating all of the egos related to the inverted first sphere, the moon, you go up one initiation. You enter the higher worlds. Likewise you annihilate the egos relating to the mercurial hells, you go up one heaven. Likewise you descend into all these lower spheres relating to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and you ascend up those heavens after you fully clean out your inner hell realms.
 
Then, at the very height, what happens is that you pay all of your karma, usually in the form of an incurable sickness, a disease. The physical body will die and the soul will resurrect. There are some masters like Jesus who resurrected with their physical body. But others choose like Samael Aun Weor did, or Joan of Arc, to resurrect with the body of liberation, Yesod, the perfected vital body.
 
So that is a very extreme path, very difficult, very powerful. But it is really the one that leads to the Absolute, the source of all things. To get to there, you have to pay all your karma, have no ego, and then at that point you’re on the Third Mountain. This is even more daring because those are levels of perfection that relate to the top trinity of the Tree of Life, which are very incomprehensible for us. But that level is a path relating to masters who are resurrected, so even they have to work.
 
Long path. I know we say it is short but in a sense it feels like long because we face suffering. It can be intense.
 
Nirvanis in the spiral path see how much the masters of the straight path suffer. We call them bodhisattvas. They incarnate Bodhi, the light of “wisdom,” the essence of wisdom or Christ. Wisdom in Hebrew is Chokmah, the second sphere in the Tree of Life. The Nirvanis say, “Don’t take the difficult path. It is very challenging. You will suffer.” The gods tempt the bodhisattvas.
 
This is a decision that we should not make on our own. It is something that your inner Being will decide. If the Being says, “I want this,” then you do it. Ambition is one thing, like “I want to be more spiritual, go to these higher levels,” but really the one who decides that is your Innermost. Your Being can show you in meditation or experiences what He wants. Hopefully that is a very concise explanation of the three mountains. If you want to know more about the path in its totality, you can study The Three Mountains by Samael Aun Weor.
 
When we study The Voice of the Silence, we are going to break that down in more detail.
 
Question: Yes, a second question. You mentioned briefly that the Bodhi tree, if I caught it, is related to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, correct?
 
Instructor: It can be. Usually the tree of wisdom is the Tree of Life. But it is ambiguous because, where do you get wisdom from but the sexual energy? When you raise the energy up your spine. You know the tree is like a Christmas tree. When you put the lights on it, you have wisdom, Chokmah, Christ manifest. The Bodhi tree is our Tree of Life that is illuminated by the Tree of Knowledge. They share the same roots.
 
You can say that it is the Tree of Knowledge too. There is a duality of interpretation. The thing about kabbalah, even with Eastern mysticism―which may not be distinctly Jewish, but symbolic―that language is abstract. You can be fluidic with your interpretation because there is a lot of dynamic potential in a symbol, whether it is Eastern or Western. So there are levels of meaning.
 
Question: I appreciated what you said about the gods tempting bodhisattvas. Could you explain a little more about that? Because it seems mischievous, right? It’s gods and bodhisattvas, which are also good factors in themselves.
 
Instructor: Right. The Nirvanis have eliminated some level of defects. They have a level of purity which is very sacred, but they’re not perfect. They have one foot in heaven but still have much of their consciousness that is trapped in ego, in hell. While part of them is enjoying the bliss of Nirvana, they also don’t have their full consciousness developed. It is interesting.
 
Samael Aun Weor mentioned that the temptations of the Nirvanis are worse than demons because they offer you solace and comfort with good things. “Stay with us! You won’t be hurt. You’ll be happy here. You’re peaceful. Forget about the world. Forget about humanity.” This is the opening lesson of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where his fictional Prophet Zarathustra goes to the mountain cave to meditate for ten years, a symbol for how he worked in Malkuth, meditating in his cave. He said, greeting the Sun:
 
“Behold, you great star! (Ain Soph, the origin we wish to return to). For what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine! For ten years you have climbed to my cave.” Ten years, Malkuth, the tenth sphere. “You would have tired of your light and of the journey had it not been for me, and my eagle, and my serpent.” Kundalini, Kukulcan amongst the Mayans, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, the fires of the Holy Ghost rising up the spine as the wings of the spirit.
 
In the opening of that book, he decides, “I must descend from my mountain, to go down to the valleys, and to teach the people who are lost there.” This is because he is a bodhisattva. But as he goes there, and he is leaving his cave and going down the mountain, he encounters a hermit, a person in solitude. He says, “Why do you go to the people, Zarathustra? They will laugh at you, and mock you, and shame you. They will spit in your face and condemn you. Why do you not stay in nature among the birds and the flowers and the trees? Here the bears and the animals will be your companions.”
 
And Zarathustra says something like, “What is a hermit doing out here in the wilderness?” The hermit says, “I hum. I sing. I do mantras, prayers in the wilderness, and I am happy here.” Zarathustra replies, “Let me leave from you now so that I do not take something from you.” Then the two old men laugh at each other jovially and Zarathustra goes on his way. He then says the famous line that Nietzsche got in trouble for: “Doesn’t this hermit know that God is dead?”
 
Really, God is dead in us if we do not descend, kill all the ego, take energies out of hell and return it as the Superman, the Superhuman. But the hermit tempts him, “You’ll be happy here.”
 
In some ways, Samael says, this is worse than demons, because demons attack you or are suffering a lot and it is easy to say “no,” because it is obvious. But with the gods, the level of nature among the heavens, if you have an experience in Nirvana, it is very beautiful. You don’t want to leave. You see in the causal plane the trees and the waters moving and rippling with cause and effect like a perfect symphony, and the masters of Nirvana with their robes of heaven welcoming you. They treat you with a lot of love. But the bodhisattvas have to renounce that because there are higher levels beyond good and evil (even to use the title of one of Nietzsche’s books). So it’s really interesting.
 
I mean, what’s worse? A temptation from someone who is a drug addict, saying, “Come take drugs with us”? Well, it’s obvious. But what about those who tempt you, but are kind? “Join us! Stay with us.” But that will open up to us if we first of all reach that point. It’s a decision we don’t make now. You have to become a master of Major Mysteries, incarnate your soul.
 
Question: How many people accomplish all three of these mountains in one lifetime? Realistically, are we going to do it in one life?
 
Instructor: Probably not. I mean, a few people do it.
 
Question: So how many lifetimes would it take an average person?
 
Instructor: It depends on their will, and karma, and what the Being manages. You know, you look a someone like Padmasambhava―one life. Joan of Arc, Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, or Samael Aun Weor, you look at the life that they lived, how intense it was. It is really… all that suffering from multiple lifetimes they accumulated are now condensed in the span of like twenty years, thirty years, forty years―very intense. Are we really willing to take it? If our Being says, “This is what I want for you,” so be it! It is not something we wish upon ourselves. Nobody likes the straight path.
 
Question: When you say Being, who are you referring to?
 
Instructor: So the Being has many levels. We obviously talk about the first lower five spheres relating to the soul. But above that we have Geburah, the divine consciousness known as Buddhi in Sanskrit, and then we have Atman, Chesed in Hebrew, the spirit. Atman-Buddhi is our Inner God. The spirit, Chesed, which is the light mentioned in the Light Surah of the Qur’an. “Allah is a light within a lamp.” Chesed, the spirit, and the lamp is Geburah from which the light of Nur, or Aur in Hebrew, Nur in Arabic, the top trinity, Christ, to use Gnostic terms.
 
So we have Atman-Buddhi―which is the spirit and divine soul―never falls, really, the spirit and intuitive consciousness. But above that we have even more refined levels: Kether, Chokmah, Binah―Father, Son, Holy Spirit―or the supremacy, wisdom, and the intelligence of God, which are really just one light. They are a unity. But they are not people, which is why especially in the Muslim tradition, Prophet Muhammad denounced the degeneration of the Trinity because many Christians had devolved their faith, thinking these are three people. It is really one light. Just different expressions.
 
Question: So when you say אהיה Eheieh, which means “to be,” which sphere does that term relate to? Is that the Being?
 
Instructor: Kether.
 
Question: The highest?
 
Instructor: אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh, “I Am That I Am,” is really the Father of the supreme light from the Absolute above the Tree of Life, the top, managing and governing the rest.
 
There are different names in Hebrew and also in Arabic as well that relate to the Tree of Life. We have the ten spheres themselves, which are referenced in the Bible, the Old Testament, with sacred names of divinity.
 
In Kether you have אהיה אשר אהיה Eheieh Asher Eheieh, “I Am That I Am.”
 
You have יהוה Iod-Chavah within Chokmah.
 
יהוה אלהים Iod-Chavah Elohim in Binah.
 
אל El in Chesed.
 
אלהים גיבור Elohim Gibur in Geburah.
 
אלוה ודעת יהוה Eloah Va Da’ath Iod Hei Vau Hei in Tiphereth.
 
יהוה צבאות Iod-Chavah Sabaoth in Netzach.
 
אלהים צבאות Elohim Sabaoth in Hod.
 
שדי אל חי Shaddai El Chai in Yesod, and אדני הארץ Adonai Ha’aretz in Malkuth.
 
That’s one way of looking at things. It’s very deep, and obviously different traditions map out the names of divinity in different ways along with the Tree of Life.
 
But the Being is really these top five spheres. These parts of the consciousness never fall. They are perfect, but they gain wisdom and understanding of their true nature when we are working and cooperating.
 
Question: So you’re saying when we reach the highest sphere, when someone reaches that sphere, so there is no way of falling from this sphere, going down?
 
Instructor: The soul can fall, but the Being never does.
 
Question: So if there’s a being, so we really reach that level where we are one with the Being?
 
Another Instructor: That level already exists within us. All these levels are already there. So when we say that the sphere of Kether never falls, what we mean is that level of divinity which is already present in us cannot fall. So the person who is doing the work to try to redeem itself, or ourself, is Tiphereth, the sphere that has fallen. So would you say that Tiphereth reaches Kether, or that Tiphereth comes to know that aspect of Kether that is already present within us? But Tiphereth can still fall again. We have seen masters like Jesus, Aberamentho, that had fallen multiple times even after completing the whole work. They fall and they have to do it all over again.
 
Question: As Ibn ‘Arabi said, “The soul is a mirror.” The soul, if it is perfected and polished, will reflect the light. The light never falls. It is eternal. But whether or not we reflect that truth is another thing.
 
We can enter the Absolute and know really the Ain Soph. We can return to that star of heaven. But so long as we have our foot in the door of the universe, within creation, we can fall, and that is a very delicate thing to think about. But masters at that level don’t fall because of lust. They are way beyond that, even way beyond love. Like Zanoni, in the book of his name by Edward Bulwer Lytton, he was Chaldean Master with a resurrected body. He was a resurrected master living in France right before the French Revolution. He fell in love with an actress from Naples, and he fell, with full knowledge that he was forbidden to do that. He fell because he loved this woman.
 
Samael Aun Weor fell in Lemuria because he fell in love too. They said it was forbidden to him because when you reach those heights, sex is already conquered. You don’t need to use it anymore. You’re way beyond that. And so to abandon or go down from your first love, the Divine Mother, She says, “You can’t do that, unless the Father commands you to descend.” That’s another thing. But many masters fall because they fell in love and in the act they couldn’t control the energy.
 
What happened with Zanoni is that as punishment he was decapitated in the French Revolution because he had more responsibility. You know, you’re a god, an immortal, you have a job to do. Then the law says, “OK.” 

​You find this symbolized in Hector Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique. In the fourth movement you hear the French Revolution and the drum roll as the guillotine is decapitating the aristocrats. You find one part at the end of the fourth movement like a flute playing of a pleading, begging nature, where Berlioz was teaching how Zanoni was praying, “Please, forgive me!” Then, the drum roll as he is decapitated.
 
That is a level of responsibility. You’re the god of a planet, a cosmos, a galaxy, whatever it is, and if you fall, it is serious. There are more consequences for that level of knowledge. That is why in Ecclesiastes it states, “For in much knowledge is much grief. He who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (1:17-18), especially for those masters who were perfected and then they abandoned it. Trying to rise again is then very difficult. They have to pay a lot. 

Transcription not yet available.

Transcription not yet available.

Transcription not yet available.

Transcription not yet available.

Transcription not yet available.

For many people, we associate chastity with celibacy, which is the total avoidance of sex. For centuries, many religious organizations have taught us that sex is shameful, that sex should be avoided except in the cases of marriage or to procreate children. For many centuries, this teaching has been propagated that sex is something shameful or dangerous, precisely because of its tremendous power and the sacred nature of the sexual act. It is in sex that we have the power to create life, and God, divinity, also has that power to create life, and has given us the ability to do that through the unity of a man and a woman in sex.
 
We see in sex the principles of creation. There are always three factors involved whenever life is created. There is a masculine principle that is projected. There is a feminine principle that is receptive. Uniting them, there is the holy conciliation, sex, through the Holy Spirit if you are familiar with the Christian teachings.
 
Today’s lecture will be an introduction to the Gnostic mysteries of chastity, and we will be studying a gnostic text, a scripture from almost two thousand years ago called Acts of Thomas in India.
 
This scripture is generally considered to be a teaching of celibacy by many mainstream scholars, and that is because at that time, the true teaching of chastity―how to harness our sexual energy and how to work in the sexual act in accordance with God’s highest commandments―was not taught publicly.
 
For many centuries, sex has been relegated to the private sphere, and what happened in people’s private, sexual lives was not talked about openly. Perhaps it is for this reason that many people have associated sex with shame and fear, but the reality is that sex has a dual potential. It has a potential to bring us into greater suffering, to create pain, for who could deny that sexual abuse, sexual crimes that are committed, are among the most horrible abominable acts that we see today?
 
Sex also has a beautiful potential, a spiritual potential. Chastity is the teaching about how we can use sex and our sexual force in accordance with God’s commandments. Those familiar with Christianity know that two commandments directly concern sex. One of them is that “Thou shall not commit adultery.” We should not have sex with multiple people. That is a commandment from God. The other commandment is “Thou shall not fornicate.” Fornication is the misuse of sex, whether outside of a marriage or within a marriage―if sex is used with impurity, with lust, with desire, for selfish pleasures, in forgetfulness of divinity, which is always present with us―especially in the sexual act when we have that power of creation illuminated.

​There are two doors related to sex. When we go through the act of sex in one direction―which is what we know about today in our public media, in our television shows, in music―we experience all of the sexual sensations with a tremendous desire. We go around seeking more and more of those sensations. We watch videos. We read articles. We find partners and go to places intending to find sexual partners, and that is the modern idea of sex, that sex is something to be enjoyed.
 
Ever since the sexual liberation movement around the 1960s and 1970s, we had so much public content shared about sex. There has been medical research, lots of movies, television shows, in which, in the very first few moments, you see very graphic content that several decades ago or even just a few years ago would not have been permissible.
 
Sex is unavoidable in our modern culture, and that is why in this teaching of chastity, we have finally been granted access to how to use sex in accordance with God’s law, knowledge that was not given publicly before the 1950s, knowledge that was preserved for centuries and millennia by true initiates of mystery schools, of genuine temples, of religion. Only those who were properly prepared, who had purity of mind and heart, who had willpower and self-control, were able to understand and learn the true secret of chastity: how to perform the sexual act with purity.
 
That is why when we study ancient gospels like Acts of Thomas, we see that sex can be veiled, can be a hidden mystery, something that must be discovered. Anyone who remembers being a child, before they had exposure or had much understanding about sex, it was a great mystery. It was something that, when encountered for the first time, it produced a tremendous reaction and tremendous effect in all of us. Anyone who has experienced some form of sexual trauma can tell you that sex is much more than of mere physical act, that sex is psychological, and has tremendous power to shape our life. Each of us, if we are sincere and examine our psychological relationship with sex, can see that this is an important aspect of life, and sex is a natural part of life. But if that act produces pain or produces joy is truly dependent on the psychological state that we bring to that act. That is why we seek to understand, through scriptures, the mysteries of how to become pure, how to become chaste, and gain all of those rewards that are spoken of regarding the chaste saints that I read earlier from this scripture, Acts of Thomas. 

In order to properly approach this teaching today, we have to set aside the concepts, the ideas, even the experiences or preferences that we may have regarding sex, to encounter this teaching with an open mind, for it is a mystery to most of us, a very new teaching to many of us, that has not been heard about before. For those who have never heard of chastity before, it may be surprising. It may be offensive to your ideas about what sex is, and since we have been exposed to a large amount of propaganda in our culture regarding sex, it is difficult to approach it with humility and open-mindedness when we already have strongly held positions and opinions about our sexuality.
 
So, I encourage you to take the mindset of a child, and if you are able to, return to that state of innocence before you had much knowledge of sex, what it really signified, and to have an open mind as you hear this teaching today. For Jesus taught us in the Gospel of Matthew that we must be changed and become as children. Through chastity, we are able to become again like children, like virgins, new to sex. 

​If we really want to enter into heaven to know the mysteries of divinity, to experience the bliss of Eden from which we have been cast out by our abuse of sexuality, we must have that innocence, that purity, that humility and reverence of a child when we approach the topic of sex. 

We also need the two esoteric sciences of Gnostic Christianity that allow us to interpret scripture according to the principles of the initiates. People who are initiated into the mystery schools or the highest levels and temples of genuine religion were taught Kabbalah and Alchemy.
 
The first, Kabbalah, is related with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, because Kabbalah can unveil to us the mysteries of the universe, of nature, of ourselves. Kabbalah is like a map of divinity, and for those who have not studied it before, I strongly encourage you to study the course on Glorian.org.
 
This course on Kabbalah relates to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and has a corresponding course related to the twenty-two arcana of Tarot. These twenty-two letters and twenty-two arcana of tarot are one in the same, and that each one encodes a spiritual principle, a mystery about our universe, our existence, our spiritual journey, and how we can return to divinity. That code is very deep, and it requires much more study than what I can provide to you today, but we will apply it in a basic way through kabbalistic numerology, to give you an introduction on how we must apply this science to spiritual scriptures.
 
Similarly, Alchemy is essential for understanding scripture and we would be remiss not to apply Alchemy to this particular scripture, Acts of Thomas, for it is an extremely sexual and alchemical text.
 
Alchemy comes from two roots, Al, El, God. אל El is God in Hebrew and Al-, the + ilah, God, الله Allah, “The God” relates to the Arabic name of God. Chem, or Khem is from χυμεία Kimia (Greek), this means “to fuse or to cast metal.” Those of us who are familiar with the tradition of Alchemy from medieval times will understand why they encoded Alchemy through symbols of converting lead into gold, that one must take a very heavy, dense, and dark material and transform it through a scientific procedure into gold, the most pure and rarified and noble of the metals. That science encodes how we can use sex, as a procedure, through which we can convert the base lead of our personality, of our corrupted psychology, into the pure gold of the spirit, and give birth to Christ within our own physical body.
 
It is very important to understand Alchemy was written in code and that the masters who wrote about it, just like the great masters of all religions, kept the sexual teaching hidden, so it would not be abused by people who approached it with ambition, with pride, with lust, with little spiritual understanding. Only now, because our society has become so open, because we have entered the era of Aquarius where sexual liberation is abundant, we are able to speak publicly about mysteries which were never revealed to the profane.
 
Though Alchemy, sexual Alchemy, we are able to fuse ourselves with divinity. Alchemy is the science to fuse the human soul with Christ, God, divinity. Christ is a principle, a force, an energy, an intelligence that is permeating every atom of life in our universe. Christ is far beyond one terrestrial person, but Christ has the ability to manifest physically in our world through a properly prepared individual. That is why Jesus Christ, the greatest master this planet has ever known, is given that title of Christ, because he was incarnating Christ into the physical world, so that infinite force of love, compassion, and wisdom could teach humanity how to live in accordance with the laws that divinity has set into our nature―laws like chastity, which forbid fornication and forbid adultery, so that sex can only be used in purity, in accordance with divinity, in mindfulness of the divine nature of that sacrament. 

​So, in order to understand the basics of these two sciences―Kabbalah relating to the Tree of Life and Alchemy relating to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden―we will study the location of this scripture.
 
Acts of Thomas in India is about an apostle, Judas Thomas, who is sent on a mission to India. While scholars generally accept that this was truly a real man who traveled to the actual location of India around the Indus river, in that region at that time, establishing Christian churches, we must also know that this text is symbolic. It encodes a greater truth, a spiritual truth, a secret, a mystery, hidden in its symbols.
 
The first symbol is India because India is far more than a literal place in this scripture. India indicates the setting or the environment in which this apostle is going to bring his teaching, the teaching of Christ, the teaching of chastity. This is why we need to analyze India in accordance with Kabbalah, this divine science that can help us to understand the nature of God and also the path to return to divinity.
 
In Hebrew the word for India is הֹדּוּ Hodu. הֹדּוּ Hodu is written with three Hebrew letters. The first is ה Hei, the second is ד Daleth, the third is ו Vav. Just observing the shape of the symbols of these letters, we can see already a hint of their spiritual significance. In the letter ה Hei, we see a shape of a womb, a uterus. That is because ה Hei represents femininity, the divine feminine, and also the physical feminine body and sexual organs. At the end of this word, we see ו Vav. ו Vav is a phallic symbol resembling an erect penis. For that reason, we can understand that on either side of this word, we have the man and the woman present. Uniting this man and woman is ד Daleth, which has the shape of a door. ד Daleth means “door” in Hebrew.
 
Sex can be referred to as the door to Eden, and it is also the door out of Eden through the abuse of sex. We lose the ability to remain in union with Christ, with God. We lose our bliss, for עֵדֶן Eden means “bliss” in Hebrew.
 
That is why initially in this gospel, Acts of Thomas, the apostle is a bit reluctant to travel to the place where he is assigned, because India is not literally a place he is reluctant to go, but symbolically it signifies sex, that door which is so treacherous and can lead us back to God, but it can also expel us away from God and separate us from God if sex is abused. That is why we see this quote from Samael Aun Weor in his book Tarot and Kabbalah:

For those familiar with Tarot, you can see the symbol of the fifteenth arcanum, Passion, commonly referred to as the devil. The fifteenth arcanum relates to the Hebrew letter ס Samech, the serpent biting its tail.
 
That cycle of passion is what can enslave us and convert us unto devils. If we see an attractive person walking by, we may be compelled to act a certain way around them and talk a certain way around them. We may obsess about that person, or conversely, we may try to repress that force and avoid that person, avoid thinking about them. But either way we know that sexual potency is a major force that has an impact on us psychologically, regardless of if we try to indulge it or repress it. It shapes us, and very few are those human beings who can truly master and command their sexual force.
 
Sex is also the key to liberating us, and that is what Thomas will teach us in this Gospel.
 
The reason why we can relate the Arcanum 15 with India, esoterically speaking, is because the kabbalistic addition of the three letters in the word India: ה Hei, being the fifth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, corresponds with the number five; ד Daleth, being the fourth, corresponds with the number four; and ו Vav corresponds with six as the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In Kabbalah we know that there is an esoteric significance to the sum total of any number given in a scripture. When we add 5 + 4 + 6, we receive the kabbalistic sum of 15, the devil.
 
Judas Thomas of Acts of Thomas has the challenging task of going to the realm of the devil in order to convert the people there, who are confused about sex and sexuality, through many interesting parables about sex, back to chastity, so they can become chaste saints, disciples of Christ. 

​Through the study of Alchemy, we can also examine the symbol of India, which relates to the Indus River, a river which gave tremendous life to that region and continues to give tremendous life to that region.
 
The Indus River in Sanskrit: सिन्धु Sindhu, “a large body of water; river, ocean,” derived from Cintu: date palm tree. For those who have studied the course on Kabbalah and Alchemy, they will know immediately that water, especially bodies of water like rivers and oceans, correspond with the sexual force, especially the sexual force in relationship with the Divine Mother, for it is the waters of the womb which create life. The sexual waters of the woman bring life and also the sexual waters of the man, semen, also give life. That is the alchemical significance of water when we see it mentioned in the scriptures, the waters of life.
 
However, it is important to know that water can also bring destruction, and that is why through the floods of Noah, humanity was destroyed for their crimes, for their vices. This is a dual symbol. Sex can bring life and it can destroy life, depending on how it is used.

This teaching is seen very clearly in the Qur’an. The word Sindhu is derived from “Cintu,” date palm tree and date palms, which were abundant in the Middle Eastern region. They are sometimes considered to be the true tree in the Garden of Eden―not an apple tree, but a date palm from which Adam and Eve ate, and that is a very sexual symbol. That is why that is the tree related with Alchemy, the science of fusing oneself with God through sacred sexuality.
 
In Surah 16:67 in the Qur’an, we see that the date palm is mentioned along with grapevines. Grapes are another sexual symbol, which is why Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding, and that miracle was to convert water into wine. We see the relationship here, that water is our potential, and if that water is transformed, it can become the spiritual wine of the soul at a wedding, where two are married. That is the same symbol as converting the lead―the impure sexuality, slowly through a process of gentle heat, through a scientific method―into the gold of the purified spirit and soul. 

Who are the people with spiritual understanding? They are the initiates: the ones with spiritual ears and eyes who can hear and see the mysteries that are hidden behind in the scripture. In this mystery, so beautifully presented to us in the Holy Qur’an, is that from sex, we can see intoxication, obsession, addiction, lust, desire, that has no satiation. We can also see wholesome provision: the ability to bring life, not only physical life of a child, but also spiritual life to regenerate ourselves. 

​The date palm, interestingly, the date resembles the testes, the male sexual organ. The date is considered a sacred food in Islam. We can see why that is sacred, just as our sexual seed is sacred. The sexual water must be conserved, transformed, transmuted through the science of Alchemy.

That is precisely the science that Samael Aun Weor, the founder of the Gnostic tradition, unveiled in the 1950s in his book, The Perfect Matrimony. As today’s lecture is only an introduction into the Gnostic mystery of chastity, I strongly encourage you to read this book, which can be read for free online on Glorian.org or purchased from any bookseller. In this book, Samael Aun Weor extensively teaches us the science of sexual Alchemy, chastity, and also pranayama or transmutation for single persons, who are not yet married and need the science by which they can still harness that sexual force for themselves.
 
For single people, it is important to note that they can conserve their sexual energy and must transmute it every day through practices like pranayama, which you can read about in the book The Perfect Matrimony. If one conserves their sexual energy but represses it, does not transform that energy, one could become a very troubled person. We have seen that the celibacy, the total avoidance of sex, is harmful. It produces psychological imbalances, and in some cases has led to sexual crimes. We do not advocate celibacy in this teaching, but chastity does require that an unmarried person abstain from sex. Until we are married, we should be transmuting that energy, working with prayer, mantra, pranayama, so that force is continually flowing through our body and allowing us to unite with divinity.
 
If we lose that force through vices such as masturbation, we lose our connection to divinity. That is why many feel shame after orgasm, for they know that they have lost something valuable. Yes, on a physical level we can lose thousands of sperm, but for men and women orgasm is harmful, more importantly on a spiritual and energetic level, because the orgasm produces a short circuit in the physical and energetic bodies and destroys those bodies. The orgasm not only affects us energetically and physically, but also spiritually, in that when we expel that sacred substance from our bodies, we are losing the very force of God, the creator within us. That is why we become blind, deaf, and lame, spiritually speaking. That is why when most of us sit to meditate or pray, we see black. We hear nothing because we are dead inside, spiritually speaking, because we have lost the very force of life and creation within our own body. 

Samael Aun Weor states:

​Consubstantiation in Christian terms relates to the teaching that the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Communion, is simultaneously one with the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Con represents “together,” substantiation: substance―they are one substance together, simultaneously. That is the teaching in mainstream Christianity, but Samael Aun Weor taught from an esoteric standpoint and is pointing out that in a psychological and physical reality, sex unites us with divinity.
 
Psychologically and physically, we must be pure. We must maintain that sexual energy within our body and transform it in accordance with God’s guidance, the teachings of chastity. That is the real consubstantiation in which we are simultaneously human and divine. 

In the sexual act when man and woman unite, something is created. What is created? Of course, we know that a physical child can be created when a man and woman unite sexually, and there is a mystery in which one sperm and one egg are needed to create a pure physical child. That is a mystery for another lecture, the mystery of Immaculate Conception, but you can read about it in The Yellow Book by Samael Aun Weor if you are interested in learning more about it.
 
What else is created when we unite sexually? Well, if we reflect on our lives, what have we seen created through sex? We may see some happy marriages, although these are becoming fewer. We have seen much pain created by sex, suffering. That is because mankind has not been taught how to use sex appropriately. Mankind has been taught how to abuse sex, how to indulge in sex, how to go around seeking the next sensations or have multiple partners and masturbate―all kinds of sexual vices which corrupt our psychology. These vices do not just harm our physical body. They harm us psychologically. They create imbalances. They create addictions. They create lunacy. Some of the worst sexual crimes are committed by lunatics who have zero control over their sexual force.
 
Sexuality must be properly understood so that we can use it in balance with divinity. This is a great mystery that can only be known through experience. Anyone who has experienced the suffering, the heartbreak, the loss and sorrow of lust, can understand that there is one doorway that we can pass through with sex that brings an emptiness, a longing that is never fulfilled. Many people believe in the promise of love, of sex as love, but do not know how to bring real love into the sexual act. Love must be brought not only for our spouse and our partner—with selflessness, sacrificing our own selfish desires for that act—but out of love, union with our partner.
 
Love must also involve divinity. Where divinity is not present, there is no love. Christ, God, divinity is love. If you are performing the sexual act or sexual behaviors without divinity, there is no love present there. We need to understand that the very potential for our own heart to love our spouse, to love humanity, to love our children, the potential in our own heart is the spark of divinity. The one who loses their sexual forces, their sexual energies, and their sexual substance, loses that ability to love. That is why lust for the pleasure it can bring, in the short term, never materializes with that eternal happiness that it seems to promise.
 
People spend their whole lives believing that chasing sex will somehow bring them that happiness, will bring them to love. But it is not sex alone which brings us to love. We must bring love to sex, through our inner union with divinity. That is why chastity does not begin just in the sexual union with a partner. Alchemy begins with us, with our willingness to purify our minds and hearts, to become as children, to go sincerely and humbly unto God, and to learn these mysteries from our inner divinity. Divinity will teach you much about chastity and sexual Alchemy if you are open in your heart, in your mind, if you are pure, if you have set aside your pride which thinks it already understands sexuality, that it already knows what sex is about. You allow God to teach you God’s divine mystery of sex. You will see that on the other side of that door that there is a tremendous abundance of sacred mystery that we have barely begun to understand through our modern, contemporary notions about sex.

​So, how does one practice sexual Alchemy with their partner? For those of us who are married, what is the practice of chastity? How do we engage in this sexual act, but do it with purity and do it with full meditative awareness of the presence of divinity?
 
Samael Aun Weor gives the full teaching about that in The Perfect Matrimony, but just to read a little bit for you today from that book―in relationship to a man and a woman, sexually united and experiencing all the bliss of that union―he states the following: 

​God has created a door for us, a door in physical nature through which we can enter Eden, into bliss, or through which we can leave it. Meditate on your experiences with sex. Become prayerful and sincere and see if sex has really brought you lasting happiness, or if you have been abusing that act, forgetting divinity, forgetting love, and if that is the case, then you will understand when he states Cupid leaves crying. Cupid relates to the god Eros, the god of love, one in the same mystery of Christ in the Greek mysteries.
 
Eros leaves us when we orgasm, men and women. Although women may not lose any physical substance through the orgasm, they are losing tremendous substance energetically and spiritually, and that can be seeing through clairvoyance. Orgasm separates us from love and locks us out of heaven. We must become pure like children, like chaste virgins, as we enter into the sexual act every time remaining pure, bringing love for our spouse and love for divinity.
 
If we break this law of nature and we fornicate through orgasm―orgasm and fornication are one in the same, regardless if we are in a marriage or not―we will in the long run experience tremendous suffering because we are losing our connection to divinity. Divinity is what really brings us happiness. Through sex, we strengthen our union with divinity if it is performed with purity, prayer, and love.
 
Before we can perform sacred sexuality, sexual Alchemy with a partner, we have to establish that covenant with our own inner divinity by establishing purity within ourselves. We begin this practice as animals, filled with animal lust and desire, but through willpower, through constant application, we are refining this act and refining our own psychology, meditating on the evils that exist within our own heart, the selfishness, the pride, the greed, the lust, the desires that are never happy, that are never satisfied.
 
How do we free ourselves from that? How do we liberate ourselves from that? It is through sex, working with Kundalini, which is the mystery of the Divine Mother who controls those sexual waters and allows us to become free, to become washed and purified by those waters, if we keep those waters within our body.
 
When we lose that spiritual water, we become inhabited. We open that doorway for evil forces to come into our body. Sex is the original sin, because sex with fornication opened the gates of Eden and expelled us out of union with divinity. Sex is called the original sin, but sex with purity is salvation and redemption of mankind.
 
Acts of Thomas is about many, many individuals who are suffering from the misuse of sex. Today we are only going to talk a little bit about Act I, “The Wedding Feast of the King’s Daughter,” but if you read this scripture, you will see again and again that people are committing sexual crimes, that people are being tormented by sexual demons, that sex is prevalent throughout this act. That is why Kabbalistically and esoterically speaking, India symbolizes sex, the perilous nation in which people are afflicted by sexual impurities, just like each one of us.
 
Whether we have had sex or not, each of us should examine our relationship to sex, our sexual behaviors, our psychological relationship to sex, and ask ourselves if it is pure. Many who fear sex just want to avoid it, never want to think about it, want to repress it, want to be celibate. But that is a false door, because the celibate person never goes anywhere. They never grow. The chaste person, even if they are single, is growing through their own sexual force or through the union of masculine and feminine forces in the sexual act. But the celibate person who refuses to transform that energy, who tries to ignore it and runs away from it, is lying to themselves. Sex is an essential part of nature and human experience. Sex is an essential aspect of our spiritual journey, because without sex, we have no power to get out of the current state that we are in and we have no power to reunite with divinity. 

So, we need to preserve those sexual energies, which are continually coming into our body from above, from our Divine Father and our Divine Mother. We need to preserve those energies, transform them, and use them to build the temple of God in our own bodies. That is why Thomas goes to India, to build a palace for a King. The true king is God. The palace is the temple. The temple of our body can become a palace, a temple of God, but only if we meet God’s requirements, just as divinity demands that there is purity of heart and spirit in the sexual act. That is what we need to understand. If we do not meet the prerequisite, this is the law of nature that states that sex expels you from Eden, or it brings you back into Eden. Abusing sex separates you from God. Sex performed with purity and chastity reunites you with God. That is the law of nature. That is not an idea that someone just made up. That is a law written into nature, and we can experience it, work with it, and verify it directly through our experience.
 
Judas Thomas unwillingly gets sold by Jesus, his master, as a slave, so that he is forced to go to India, sold as a slave who will build a palace for a King in India. Before he is able to build this palace, he is compelled to attend a wedding feast for the local king’s daughter. Why does he have to attend a wedding feast before he can build a palace? Spiritually speaking, this is symbolic. The wedding feast, the consummation of marriage, the sexual act, is the prerequisite through which the temple of God can be built, truly, to create a vessel into which Christ, that profound, tremendous power of wisdom and love, can actually incarnate within a human body. Those vessels are created through sex. That is the only way that anything in nature is created. That is why Thomas and Jesus as his twin teach the mystery of chastity in the bridal chamber. 

​When they are teaching this, Jesus appears to the young couple in the form of Judas Thomas, and they are surprised because Judas Thomas has just left the room after blessing them and praying for them. They asked, “How is it possible that you are still in the room?” and Jesus explains to them that he is not the physical man Judas Thomas, that he is Christ.
 
This again is symbolic. Thoma means “twin.” Thomas is “twin,” the twin of Christ. The physical apostle is the vessel in which Christ manifests and gives that gospel to humanity. Jesus was a literal person, but symbolically, looking at this symbol, we see that Jesus is representing the force of Christ because this gospel takes place after Jesus had died and resurrected. His spirit comes through the vessel of Thomas, his physical apostle, to teach the mystery of chastity.
 
So, what does Jesus teach in the bridal chamber? Acts of Thomas says that Jesus taught the following to the young couple:

Modern scholars who know nothing, who have never been initiated into the deepest genuine mysteries of spiritual teachings, always interpret this scripture as advocating for celibacy, total abstinence form sex. In reality, this scripture very obviously indicates that sex is important, and Jesus spends the whole night there in that bridal chamber with the couple. What happens in that bridal chamber is not explicitly stated in this gospel, for at that time it was forbidden to give this knowledge publicly to the profane, to people who were not properly prepared, who could not handle working with sex in this way.
 
We see that Jesus is talking about two marriages here. One marriage is of foul intercourse, the lustful marriage which brings impulses and pains, seen and unseen. Physical pain, yes, it can bring physical illnesses to us, karmically speaking, in the long term, but also unseen impulses and pain, those addictions, psychological imbalances, the madness that comes when sex is out of control and abused. The other marriage that he mentions is the incorruptible and true marriage, the bride chamber, which is full of immortality and light. When we practice chastity and we are meditating and we are awakening our spiritual senses, our spiritual eyes, we can see the light penetrating around and through our physical bodies. We can see that divinity is present. Angels are present, observing and guiding that sacred sexual act. It is a holy sacrament, and for those who work with it, they can verify this in their experience, but the prerequisite is purity.
 
You will never reach the heights of this chastity of this teaching if you are orgasming. If you are losing that sacred energy, even just now and then, you will never be able to build the temple of God, because it is a law of nature that is required. That is the substance through which the Divine Mother can build a vessel for God within us. Only a fool would spend so much time, effort, and discipline to build a beautiful temple and go in with a sledgehammer and start breaking down the walls, destroying it, and then decide to go back and rebuild it again. We will never get anywhere if we are going back and forth. We must obey the law. We must work with sex. It is absolutely essential, but we must work in accordance with God’s commandments, which forbid fornication. They forbid orgasm and forbid adultery. The person who tries to practice this with many partners will also get nowhere. Love must be present, genuine love that grows and grows and grows as we continue to practice with our spouse, love for our spouse and love for divinity. Love is the substance of divinity and divinity leaves the adulterer. 

Although the sexual act is not explicitly discussed or written down in this scripture, it is clear to us that a marriage has taken place, that Jesus spent an evening with the young couple teaching them and guiding them in the sexual act. We know that something has happened, because the next day the bride and groom are radically transformed. In fact, when the king and queen come down to see their daughter and her new husband, they are shocked, very surprised to see that she has removed her veil, which is called the “garment of shame” in those times, which the woman would wear to hide her shame after having sex. They come down and they ask her and her husband, “Why do you look so happy? Why are you not ashamed? Is it because that you are in such great love with each other that you are not ashamed?” They are shocked because they have never seen a couple come out of the sexual act with a happiness and joy that pervades them in this way, in this level of transformation. So, the bride, the daughter, responds to her parents and says this:

There are many symbols of Alchemy in the bride’s response in this scripture, but even to the uninitiated we can see very clearly that she has experienced, through this teaching, joy, happiness, and is beginning to enter into the true marriage, the marriage of Christ.
 
Many of us are seeking for temporary pleasure when we are lustful. We are seeking after physical sensations, physical experiences. That is temporal and passes away. That leads to lasciviousness and bitterness of soul. But chastity, chaste sexual union, is actually uniting the husband and wife with their inner divinity. The divinity of the wife, the divinity of the husband become one, and that is why it is not a marriage with a spouse that is temporal―not just a union of the physical bodies, but really the union of the immortal souls. That is why there are two marriages: one marriage that is temporary and passes away when the physical body dies, and another marriage through which the souls of the husband and wife become one with the spirit, with Christ. They are re-establishing, rebuilding that bridge, that connection that guides us back to God. That is what gives us conscience. That is what gives us insight, intuition, guidance, visions, dreams that are prophetic. All of that is established through working with our sexual potential, because sex is what can reunite us with God, just as it has separated us from our inner divinity through its abuse. 

​Personally, I prefer the response of the groom even more because the groom, as we can see in his response, is someone like many of us who has been confused, who has been taught many ideas, corruption, impurity, and suffering. We can hear in this response from the groom so much gratitude for how sex has guided him back to his true nature, his soul, reunion with divinity and real love for Christ. In Acts of Thomas, the groom states: 

That is Christ. The disease that is hard to be healed and cured is lust, abuse of sex. We see that there is so much addiction, especially to pornography that is extremely hard to be healed. It leads people to lunacy, suffering, pain, to have affairs, to throw away their marriage. That disease can be healed by Christ. That is a tremendous source of hope. This teaching allows us to change no matter how fallen we are. Even if we are a prostitute, we can be saved through chastity, through being purified and washed by the waters of our Divine Mother. It is an incredible power, a sacrament that should be approached with tremendous respect and humility. Most of us approach sex with impurity, selfishness, disgusting desires, and that is why we hurt ourselves, other people, and that is why we see so much pain and suffering in our society, so much abuse of sex, abuse of children, sexual assault, and rape. Mankind has not been taught how to control his sexual force, and that is because sexuality is so powerful that only the properly prepared have been taught this teaching.
 
Now, frankly speaking, we are in a society, in a time, in which the abuse of sex has become so great that there is really no other option than to give this openly with the hope that maybe a few people will have enough willpower, sincerity, humility, and genuine love for divinity to be able to accomplish this very difficult feat of chastity and sexual Alchemy. It is not easy. It is very demanding, but the rewards are infinite, eternal rewards, the ability to know your God again. We see here that the groom says he knew not God, he knew not Christ, but Christ sought him out. He was not aware of Christ, but Christ took him back to divinity through sex, sacred sexuality.
 
This is just an introduction today to a really deep mystery, and for those who really want to experience this, I encourage you to study a lot, to prepare yourself through meditation, meditating on lust everyday, because with this sexual force, you will have the power of the Divine Mother working within you, and that power can destroy your lust, your greed, your anger, your envy, your hatred, your pride. That is the power of chastity, to regenerate the human being, to purify the human being, to restore the spiritual senses of the soul, so that we can see and hear divinity again, and always be mindful of divinity because divinity will burn like love within us.
 
If we abuse this teaching, if we abuse sex, those waters will drown us. If we pollute those waters with impurity, and we try to work this practice, it will create nothing but extreme suffering for us and the people around us. So, prepare yourself properly, because the groom you are seeking to unite with is Christ. 

​Christ is an infinite beauty, power wisdom, and love. Christ is the force that animates and gives life to every atom in this universe. That is why in Acts of Thomas, the apostle states:

If we love God, if we love Christ, that force of divinity, as much as we love our spouse―which hopefully we love our spouse, because nowadays mankind does not seem to love each other as much as we have the potential to―if we loved God, with the strongest intensity, with which we loved another person, then we would have the power to reunite with God through this sexual practice. Love is sexual. Eros, the god of love through the Greek mysteries, representing the force of Christ, is erotic love. Those two are intertwined. That is why the teaching was given to us in the Bible by Paul of Tarsus―relating to Christ and the church, the church being the Ecclesia―the ones called forth to the assembly, the congregation. The church is not as the physical building, but the church as the community of the followers of Christ who become the physical vessels in which Christ acts and performs his miracles, manifests, and gives his teachings to humanity―through his apostles, through those who work with this science to purify themselves, to create a vessel that can withstand that tremendous energy of Christ within it. That is why in this teaching in Ephesians, Paul of Tarsus directly relates the love of Christ, the union with Christ, to the relationship between husband and wife. It is one in the same mystery. If engage in the sexual act, we renounce orgasm, and we bring the presence of divinity, prayer, and love into that act, that is the path to God. Paul wrote:

So, we see here that when a man and a woman unite, they become one flesh, one flesh with each other, one flesh with divinity, if we are without blemish, if we have been washed by those waters, if we are holy. The church are the true apostles, the true followers of Christ.
 
There are many people, many organizations that claim to be the true church of Christ, but we should examine ourselves: are we a temple of God? Are we the physical body through which God can perform his will? Or are we filled with selfish desires, self-will, egotism? Are we motivated by the guidance we are receiving internally from divinity and acting in ways that help humanity, that heal humanity, that brings happiness unto us and others, and that help us to reunite with God? Are we giving that teaching of Christ? Or are we teaching spiritual things out of vanity, out of pride, out of ambition and seeking for power? Or are we just totally living a life divorced from God, totally about me, myself, and what I want?
 
Maybe we say spiritual things when we are in public streets, and then when we go into the bedroom and whatever happens there, well, that is not of God’s business, we think.  We are fools if we think that God does not see especially that which has happened when we are working with the force of creation, with the power to give life in our own bodies. That is the moment when God is most present and our Divine Mother weeps when we lose and abuse that force.
 
If you work with this teaching, if you work with this practice, I promise you that you will begin awakening consciousness. Then you will see, with tremendous shame, the pain that we have brought to divinity and to other people through lust. So much of the suffering in this world has been the direct result of uncontrolled lust, a lack of willpower, indulgence in lust. That is it. There are many other problems, but lust is the root because in lust we have lost the connection with divinity. We have lost our conscience, which guides us to perform what is right in God’s eyes. You know we truly learn from within, from our conscience, what is good and what is evil, what is constructive and what is destructive. We can read it in a book, in the commandments. The ethical precepts of all great religions are wonderful starting places, and are necessary. We should be following those to purify our psychology, but the real teaching of right and wrong comes in each moment, in the presence of Christ, of divinity within us.
 
But we have to be awakened. We have to have spiritual sight and hearing to interpret those messages. It is one thing to receive a message, to have a powerful dream for example, but if we are foolish and our mind is out of balance, if we are totally controlled by selfish wishes, then we are going to interpret that dream according to our ego, according to our egotism, “What do I want that dream to mean?” Then that spiritual value, that gift that has been given to us, is lost.
 
So, if we want to become the bride of Christ, we have to work very hard with ourselves. Sexual Alchemy is important. Union with a spouse is important. But merely doing this practice with a spouse without any purity, without any love of divinity, without any love of our spouse, is not going to be enough. We should be the bride of Christ, because our physical body can be that receptive vehicle which can receive that projective force of Christ. The spirit can come down into the womb of our physical body and grow, be developed, and channel light here in this physical world, which needs the light of Christ, the teachings, and the presence of Christ more than ever. Because so few people are capable of this, each of us should hold this duty, this obligation to work on ourselves, to purify ourselves, to work with this practice with respect, with humility, to follow the will of our inner God. Humanity needs it now more than ever.
 
We see again Paul of Tarsus teaching us this mystery, that we as the souls of men can become betrothed or married to Christ, that divine spirit. Paul wrote:

​How does one become a virgin? Through virility, through virtue, through chastity. Humanity has fallen, but we can be redeemed. We can be purified. We can become again virginal, virginal bodies, virginal minds, virginal hearts, virginal souls, through chastity, through working with Christ, reading those scriptures, learning Kabbalah, learning Alchemy, studying this, doing these practices, transmuting every day, whether single or in a marriage, finding a way to work with that energy and meditating on our defects to destroy them, and performing good works and sacrifices that help humanity, even in small ways, helping people around us, not for our benefit, not for our pride, not for our ambition, but out of love, because Christ is love.
 
If you think of the moment in your life, or the time when you felt the strongest love for another human being, that is Christ―a small taste of Christ. As we work with chastity, we enliven that force. We bring that fire to life in our hearts, the fire of love. The sexual fire becomes pure and it brings us power, but the power of God, power that can only be granted if we are obeying the laws of God.
 
Again, I recommend for those who want to learn more about this sacred mystery of chastity and are interested in applying it as a way to regenerate their souls, return to God, and receive that inner guidance within, to read the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. Study Alchemy. Study Kabbalah. We have a tremendous gift that this teaching is being given publicly for humanity. People for centuries would risk their lives, would dedicate years, decades, in preparation in the temples to receive this mystery, and it is being given to us because we so desperately need it, and because without it, well, we already know the direction that our society is going. We are not progressing. We are crumbling. If that is the outcome we are already headed for, then we have nothing to lose by working with chastity, by applying it, by dedicating ourselves to it.
 
If your sexual behavior has brought you nothing but pain in life, then sacrifice it. Give it up and try this practice. Work with chastity, and see directly, in your experience, the tremendous results that you can receive through consistent, dedicated practice. You will be transformed. You can be purified. You can become converted like a child. There is tremendous power in sexual Alchemy.
 
So, let us conclude from one final verse from Acts of Thomas:

​If you have any questions, please write them in the chat box. 

​Question: How can a single person before marriage identify if a partner would commit to a sex life without orgasm?
 
Instructor: That is a wonderful question. I will let you know that I know many Gnostic practitioners in this teaching who work with chastity with a spouse who does not practice chastity. So, it is possible that we can purify ourselves and unite with divinity by working in the sexual act if there is love in that marriage. Obviously, that has its challenges, right? So, be mindful of it, but if you are performing the law of God, if you are obeying and are chaste, then you will be able to achieve union with your inner divinity, with Christ through sexual Alchemy. The forces are present there. The masculine, the feminine, the Holy Spirit of sex is present there. God can come to you if you are prepared. Of course, your spouse might not like that. That is your karma. That is your situation. That is what God has given you, and so you have to consider very carefully before marriage, is love really present there in that relationship? Or is it desire? Many people have been fooled by desire and ended up in very unhappy marriages.
 
If your spouse is not open to this and you are already married, if there is love present in that marriage, you should not run away from that marriage. Love is the prerequisite for chastity, and those who choose to only marry another Gnostic, only with another person who agrees with what “I” believe, and do so only out of ambition, will get nowhere, because there is no love in that marriage. Of course, if you meet another person that is open to this and wants to practice with you, that is ideal. That is perfect. That is wonderful and beautiful, but only if love is present. So, do not get married out of ambition. Meditate and pray. Let God guide you to the spouse who you are destined for, the one whom you can love, and who can love you, the one who will bring you closer to Christ through that love, through the force of Christ within your hearts.
 
Question: What are the characteristics of chastity in woman versus in men? To be more specific, how does chastity manifest itself in men and women?
 
Instructor: Well, the spiritual work for men and women is the same. So, as a woman, I am required to fulfill all the same requisites of purity, of chastity, abstaining from orgasm, transforming that energy in my body through pranayama, or through sexual Alchemy, meditation, working on my vices every day. It is really no different. One thing I will say for women who practice this though, who transmute, whether married or single: we do not work with our sexual energy when we are on our period. If you are in your menstrual cycle, abstain from working with sexual energy for that time. That is a time of cleansing in which the body is flushing out impurities, and energetically as well. It is a great benefit that women have, that nature purifies our bodies every month, but it means that we should not be transmuting those energies, because that is a time when impurities are being cleansed from us by nature.
 
So, what does chastity look like for a woman versus a man? It is the same. As a woman, you should not be orgasming. Many women say, “Well, I am not losing any seed when I orgasm.” You do not see what you are losing spiritually and energetically in that orgasm. You are losing your vitality, that sexual energy that connects you with divinity, that power of creation in your own body. So, men, woman, it is very similar. I cannot speak too much on the man’s point of view, but at least as a woman I can share that.  
 
Question: What is the name of the bronze statue shown in this lecture with a quote of Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, and is that position the only way to practice? Can you provide terms on what one should do, or how to perform sexual magic in simple terms with detail on the procedure?
 
Instructor: So, that is not the only position which one can practice sexual magic. Generally speaking, the position is really not so important. You can perform this with the man on top of the woman, or the woman on top of the man. What is important is that you are awake. If you are meditative, if you are prayerful, you feel love for your spouse. You feel love for divinity. You are not allowing animal passion to overcome your willpower. You are allowing the heat, the fire, and the bliss of those pleasant sensations to awaken your consciousness, to nourish you, but you are not losing that force through orgasm.
 
I am not familiar with the name of that specific statue, but I have seen many like it. That comes from Tantric Buddhism. Maybe the other instructor might know.

Another Instructor: I am not familiar with that specific statue. There are many symbols throughout the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that describe and show this union. There are many buddhas or many spiritual masters, enlightened ones who are showing that particular act, such as Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal, or his consort, as an example. There are many examples of that practice within that religion specifically. In terms of being the only position or the way to practice, you can study the chapter called The Pancatattva Ritual in The Mystery of The Golden Flower by Samael Aun Weor [see also The Sexual Paroxysm and The Golden Embryo] in accordance with Hindu scripture and ancient text itself.
 
Instructor: Definitely, in these texts you will learn a variety of mantras as well. Mantra is an important part of sexual Alchemy because it allows us to move that energy more effectively in our body. One of the main mantras that is taught in The Perfect Matrimony is IAO, which is pronounced as in Latin:
 
I: (as the ee in “tree”):  
A: (as the ah in “father”)
O: (as the oh in “holy”)
 
Take a breath when you are united with your partner and vocalize the vowel sound:

​Iiiiiiiiii…
 
Then again…
 
Aaaaaaaaaa…
 
Then again…
 
Oooooooooo…
 
That is just one practice to give as an example, but before you enter into this practice you should study the book and you will learn a lot more mantras and much more about how to engage in that practice effectively.
 
Question: As a single person I have verified that these teachings are true through my own experiences with pranayama, prayer, self-observation, meditation, etc. I am totally dedicated to this path. It has given my life the most beautiful meaning and purpose. I know these teachings are true in my heart and are the purpose of life. Ever since I started sincerely practicing these teachings and transmuting my sexual energies daily, about a year ago, I had been experiencing nocturnal pollutions about every two to three months. These are very painful experiences as I observe my consciousness is weakened and I lose my psychic energies. My question is, what is the cause of these experiences? Is it karmic debt from past sexual misconduct? Are these tests in the internal worlds? Is it a lack of comprehension of lust? A combination of all these? Obviously, the goal is eventually find a spouse and enter into the Major Mysteries of sexual Alchemy. Is physical chastity possible like Sivananda and Yogananda?
 
Instructor: What an important question! Thank you for asking. For those who are not familiar with the term nocturnal pollutions, it refers to wet dreams, where―most notably for men, this is obvious―men might wake up and realize that he has orgasmed in his sleep. Women may wake up and realize that their body is orgasming. This can happen for men and women. There are a variety of reasons why this may happen, and we also have a remedy for this: the remedy of the melon drink, which can help you. So, if you are suffering from nocturnal pollutions, I encourage you to drink that remedy frequently until you see that the problem has been lessened.
 
But we need a permanent solution to this problem. The cause of the problem is lust. On one hand, I think that many single people are not transmuting enough, at minimum ten to fifteen minutes a day, but you can practice pranayama as long as you need. If you are a particularly fiery person, if that is your sexual temperament, you might need to perform a lot of pranayama every day. Also, work with runes―another sacred science that we teach in this tradition and you can find a whole course about the runes on Glorian.org. There are also videos of these runes that allows you to transform more energy.
 
So, one cause can be that you have too much sexual energy pent up, and since it is not being transformed, it is leading to that nocturnal pollution. That is a big problem, because you do not want to lose that energy.
 
The other is that we are tempted and tested in dreams. Often our own egos come out in dreams and take the shapes of many attractive people or situations that tempt us, and if we have not developed enough willpower through meditation, then when we are less awake, when we are more hypnotized in the dream state, we are more likely to fail and to engage in some kind of sexual activity in the dream state that causes our physical body to orgasm and to lose that energy. So, do the best that you can. It takes time to train the body. It takes time also to train our psyche.
 
But we should be vigilant. We should meditate on lust everyday, to understand our lust. How does it manifest? What does it want? How does it control us? What provokes it? What tempts it? Some people try to avoid temptation all together, but when we see something in our life, we should not be looking at pornography. We should not try to find ways to test ourselves. That would be foolish. We are not at that level. But things happen in our life. We see people that we feel some attraction to. Do not avoid that. Go home and meditate. Meditate, meditate, meditate. What in you is impure? Sometimes we think we may love a person, but that love is mixed with a lot of impurity. So, even if you are married you still need to be meditating on lust. Lust is always selfish and divinity is selfless.
 
The karmic debt from past sexual misconduct is the creation of lust in our own psychology. So, whenever we commit abuse of sex, we generate a psychological consequence, and that strengthens lust in our psyche, which then causes us to have less control over sexual force in both our physical life and in our dream life in the astral plane. So, the karma is psychological. But we do have the power to overcome that. We do have the power to meditate on that. What did you dream about? Meditate on it. Understand it. Do not just feel like, “I failed. I should be ashamed!” and then not learn anything from that. It is a very humbling experience, and it is a very painful experience. We should learn from that, because when that happens to us, it is an opportunity to understand something about ourselves that we do not understand. Otherwise, it would not happen.  
 
As a single person, we can achieve up to 50% of the elimination of the ego. Right now, in this teaching, we know that most of us in this planet have about 97% ego. That means we are 97% selfish and blind to divinity. We have 3% consciousness free that can perceive things in a new way, that can perceive divinity, that can act spontaneously, and the other 97% of us is conditioned to habitual behaviors, conditioned psychology, that wants to repeat habits again and again―repeat the same anger, repeat the same envy in a new situation, repeat the same lustful sensations. So, as a single person, it is possible to become truly pure.
 
Yogananda is a beautiful example. He made the mistake of believing that he could be married within to his Divine Mother without a spouse, and so he was only able to achieve half of that work, but what a tremendously beautiful soul, like an elemental, very pure, that brought wonderful teachings to humanity! Yes, that is possible for the single person.
 
We should not have such a strong desire for a spouse that we forget about how to live in happiness with what we have. God has put you in that situation for a reason. It is possible that if you found a spouse, but you weren’t properly prepared, that you could generate a lot of pain for you and that person, that it could harm your future lifetimes, that it could create a karmic consequence that could be much more terrible. So, there are worse things than being single. We could use that time as a single person to master our sexuality, to become very comfortable with moving those forces in our body, with transforming, to awaken with purity like a child, to become virginal. Then when the time is right, God will bring a spouse to you and you will know it because you will feel love, real love, not just sexual attraction, but real love.
 
Question: Usually we find “You shall not commit adultery” in the Ten Commandments, yet we do not see, “We shall not fornicate.” Is that a part of the former commandment or is it a hidden commandment that was not taught before the Age of Aquarius openly?
 
Instructor: That is a good question. “Thou shall not fornicate” is not part of one of the Ten Commandments, but we see it repeatedly in the Bible, so I might of misspoke a little bit there. Fornication is frequently talked about in the Bible as a sin against God. Fornicate comes from the same root as furnace, that sexual fire. Is that fire working in a positive way or is that fire destroying us?
 
Fornication is destructive. Chastity is regenerative, revitalizing. Whenever we are expelling the sexual energy, we are adulterating the power of the Divine Mother. In terms of the tradition itself, the commandments, those have been interpreted and even modified in different ways throughout religious tradition, but specifically there is a distinction between “You shall not fornicate” or expel the sexual energy, but also “You shall not commit adultery” or misuse that force in multiple relationships, as the lecturer had said.
 
Question: Could you explain the connection between sexuality and the original sin? Can we say that sexual sin, lust, is the fundamental vice and the source of all other vices?
 
Instructor: Yes, we can. That is the original sin because lust, the orgasm, is what kicked us out of Eden, brought us separation from divinity. When we feed lust, when we orgasm, we become hypnotized. We become confused. A little piece of us or a big piece of us starts to become deluded, and through that delusion, humanity can wander further away from God. The more that that action is repeated, the more delusion humanity enters into, and that delusion can include all other kinds of crimes: anger murder, hatred, theft, greed, pride.
 
So, it is from lust over many centuries, over many lifetimes that we have been committing lustful acts, that all of these other crimes have been able to occur. Now these vices can occur separate from lust as well. Even the gods are said to have spiritual pride, which is a vice, but those gods know how to work with sex in the appropriate way through sexual chastity, using sex with purity. So, while it is the root of all sins, those sins can be manifold. We usually say that there are seven deadly sins, but even within those seven there are so many unique manifestations of those seven deadly sins, and lust is like that. Sometimes lust can be proud. Sometimes lust can be angry. Sometimes lust can be greedy. So, they are all interrelated. If you really want to understand the fall of humanity, the sexual fall of humanity, then I encourage you to read the book The Elimination of Satan’s Tail, which tells the history behind why humanity originally fell out of the Garden of Eden. Really interesting story by Samael Aun Weor.
 
Question: Taoist and other traditions distinguish between orgasm and ejaculation for men. Is this distinction made in Gnosticism? Is the key for men to restrict ejaculation, what many people are calling today semen retention?
 
Instructor: That is a great question and one that comes up often when we give this teaching. Orgasm and the loss of semen are both considered not permitted in the sacred sexual act. So, no. You cannot just retain the semen but indulge in the energetic orgasm.
 
As I mentioned earlier for men or for women, the short circuit of the orgasm is destructive for the physical body and for the vital body, which is the energetic body that animates us, that gives the power to move around, that enlivens our heart and allows it to keep beating. That vital body gets destroyed and that is why illnesses can develop. It is harmful. But spiritually speaking, as I just mentioned in the previous answer, when we indulge in that orgasm, in that sensation, our psychology changes. Our consciousness becomes conditioned, becomes addicted, becomes hypnotized by and wants more, more, and more. So, even if you are only performing the orgasm now and then, or you are only performing the orgasm to have a child, it is harmful for this practice. You should renounce orgasm one hundred percent if you are going to work in chastity and perform the perfect matrimony. That is what we teach, because that law of nature indicates that through that door, we can leave heaven. We can go into hell, into the lower states of consciousness, and that door is directly related with sex, with orgasm. Orgasm opens the door to the lower states of consciousness and allows devilish qualities, evil energies, to enter into us psychologically and spiritually.
 
When we go up through that door, when we transmute that energy from the sexual organs up the spine into the brain, to enliven the pineal gland, the seat of the soul, where our inner divinity can give us guidance, we are going back up to divinity. Orgasm will bring us down. The law dictates that chastity is a prerequisite to go up unto the heavenly realms.
 
Question: Is it possible to overdo pranayama if single? Sometimes if I do Ham-Sah too much it seems to build up too much fire, or is it because I am not doing the pranayama correctly? It does not produce much fire with runic vowels, etc.
 
Instructor: It is not possible to harm yourself by doing too much. So, you can do three hours of it a day. You can do five hours of it a day. It will not hurt you. If you say that you are feeling a lot of fire as a result, it is because that sexual fire which was latent has become active, and you need to apply that fire in your meditation.
 
When we feel sexual fire, we are very awake. Our consciousness becomes vigilant. Now when we are conditioned by lust, yes, that lust drives us to become vigilant, seeking sexual sensations, but when we meditate on that lust and seek to understand it, as we are enlivened by that same fire, that fire gives us the ability to be very awake and very aware and go deep into comprehension of that ego of lust. Fire, also transmuted, gives your Divine Mother the power. That fire is Her power to destroy those egos of lust. So, if you are feeling overly stimulated by the practice, yes, you can do some other practice instead to balance it out, but meditate on what is coming up for you psychologically. If you become overwhelmed in your meditation, and the impression is too powerful, you cannot transform it, you are being tempted too much, go outside. Go for a walk. Read a scripture. Do something to calm yourself down, and then meditate again when you are feeling calmer.
 
Question: You have mentioned ambition in spouse selection as an impediment in progressing in the path. You have also said that we should not submit to animal passion in the act. If one is in a loving marriage where the couple is disinterested in Alchemy in one evening, is it best to practice pranayama?
 
Instructor: If I understand the question correctly, you are asking if we have to practice the sexual act every night? No. The most that sexual Alchemy should be practiced is once per day, and again, women should not be performing this act on their menstrual cycle, so there is a magnetic pause during that time.
 
You do not need to practice it every day. It depends on the temperament of the couple. If the couple has a cooler temperament around sexuality, then they might practice this once a month, once a week. That is ok. A very fiery couple will probably practice once per day. If you are not feeling interested in sex, then it is ok to practice pranayama. If you feel particularly lustful one day and you are afraid that you are going to enter into that sexual act and potentially lose your energy, then I would encourage you to practice pranayama first. Meditate first. Wait until you are not feeling that lustful anymore to enter into that act, because it is very difficult in the beginning. We have an animal mind that seeks sensation and that wants more, more, more of that desire, and that is difficult to overcome. So, in the beginning, we usually encourage couples to only connect very briefly, or just to maybe touch, hold each other, kiss, but not to physically connect right away, just to get used to conquering that sensation, and then to connect, just for a few minutes, and to take a break. It depends on your temperament. It depends on how much discipline you have with your mind and pranayama before marriage. If you practiced with pranayama for many years, you might be able to adapt to the sexual Alchemy practice more quickly, but it really varies by individual. Each of us has our own karma which has shaped our psychology. So some of us are more strongly addicted to lust than others, but all of us have lust and all of us need to meditate on it.
 
Question: If the couple is ambitious and decides to engage in the Arcanum A.Z.F., do those creative energies give life to ambition and potentially related to desire?
 
Instructor: Thank you for clarifying. So, just like lust, we should not bring ambition into the act. In the act we should really meditate on our love for our spouse. We should not just be saying, “Ok, let us practice today because I want to have more spiritual experiences and experience divinity!” and that is the motivation for our practice. We should practice because we love God and we love our spouse, and so if you are going to the act with ambition, you are not going to get very far. You are actually going to channel that energy into your ambition, so that desire for more and more spiritual sensations will become stronger. Meditate before Alchemy. Meditate on ambition, or lust, or whatever defect you see coming up in the act to corrupt it, to separate you from divinity. Then pray before that act to your Divine Mother. Use the sexual energy. Use the sacred power to eliminate this ego of ambition, this ego of lust or whatever it may be for you. That will really help your practice.
 
Question: Is it only suitable to engage in sex when both parties are in a state of innocent love for one another?
 
Instructor: As I mentioned before, we might have a partner, a spouse who is not interested in chastity and who is engaging in orgasm. That is a painful situation, but it happens, and we should not leave that person because of that. However, we are going to need to have those hard conversations and discuss to find a way, which out of love, that person can respect your choice to be chaste. That is really specific to the case of the couple. If you have a spouse that is practicing chastity with you and feels particularly lustful one day and says, “I do not want to engage,” then respect them. Have love for them. Support them.
 
Also, if you and your spouse find that lust is coming for you in sex, meditate. In the beginning, there is going to be a lot of lust there. As much as we try to start with an innocent mind, with purity, with love, there will be lust there. So, in that case, again, we should meditate after sex. Meditate on what we saw. In the beginning it is very difficult. That fire is big. It is out of control. It takes time and willpower to learn, so engage for a few moments until you realize that you are starting to get distracted. You are starting to get hypnotized by the sensations and losing your wakefulness, your vigilance, your awareness of God.
 
Love is a very beautiful sensation that comes out in sex. I do not want to encourage people to be afraid, so afraid that they are not able to do this practice. Let your heart guide you, and let divinity guide you. There will be lust present in the beginning and that is why we need this practice to purify ourselves. Eventually, if we are successful, we can become saints free from that torment of lust. We can become masters of our sexuality, and then we command the sexual force to work when we want it to work rather than that sexual force commanding us to be slaves, to be servants of its sensations. It takes time.
 
Question: I am curious on what you mean by orgasm exactly. My experience of raising the sexual energy up the spine and into the brain centers is actually highly orgasmic. The body pulsates in just the way it does during orgasm and a feeling of joy is generated. The same goes for all chakras and dantians. Do you mean that this whole body energetic experience should be avoided in Gnosticism?
 
Instructor: Good question. There are sensations in Alchemy. There is sexual pleasure. There is bliss, the bliss of love, the bliss of Alchemy. So you really have to examine for yourself. But yes, if there is an orgasm in your sexual organs and you feel that, then that is not sexual Alchemy. So, in black magic, they teach you how to perform the sexual act with orgasm and channel that energy in the way that has just been described in the question in order to awaken consciousness. But what happens because of the orgasm and those negative demonic influences that come in, you might experience bliss, but you are also awakening consciousness and developing within the ego, which is separate from God.
 
So, you really have to meditate on yourself, on what is happening there, because there is spiritual bliss, energy, moving in the body in Alchemy, but there is not the orgasm in the sexual organs. It is white Alchemy. White Tantra that we teach here in this school does not permit orgasm because that orgasm short circuits the body, loses the energy. While the sensations of bliss that you might feel in a orgasm―even outside of any spiritual context, of course, orgasm is “blissful” and people feel that sensation of bliss―that is actually not positive, because it is the bliss of that energy, but then that energy is lost and expelled from the body. So we want to keep that bliss, calm and consistent, throughout our practice.
 
Question: Is it true that cardiovascular exercise, running while breathing through the nostrils and out through the mouth, helps to transmute the sexual energies? 

Instructor: Yes. Some exercise, some sports, some martial arts like Aikido, or some that are not too violent, that can be one form of transmutation of sexual energy. However, I caution you not to use that as your only form, because without pranayama, your body naturally is not going to move those energies back up the spine. Pranayama done everyday is cleaning out the two cords which go around the spine, the two channels of Ida and Pingala, and allowing that energy to become accustomed to moving up the spine into the brain and heart. If you are not doing that every day, those channels are going to be very dirty, and they are blocked. If you are just playing soccer with your friends, but you are not performing pranayama, then no, you are probably not transmuting very much energy. So, it can be good to walk and to breathe, but breathe with transmutation, with that visualization coming up through your spine. You can use the Ham-Sah pranayama, if you are familiar with it, throughout the day. I have used it at work silently, just to keep myself awake and vigilant if I notice that I am starting to get unaware of what is happening spiritually, lose my self-observation.
 
Work with some form of pranayama every day if you are a single person, and if you are married, you can also work with pranayama. It is an option for married people so that you do not have to feel the pressure to work in sexual Alchemy every day. Generally speaking, married people are moving more energy in that sexual connection, so they may not need pranayama on the days that they are not united. It really depends on the couple. You have to investigate, meditate, pray, and watch the answers that you receive in your dreams from divinity. Divinity will tell you if you are going off of the correct path, then guide you on how to get back.
 
Question: Isn’t chastity a cruel repression of the self? Sometimes like a punishment or a sadistic behavior, then when it is released in different ways, creates suffering everywhere?
 
Instructor: Well I wonder if you have really practiced chastity, because if you are referring to celibacy, as I mentioned earlier in the lecture, does produce suffering if that energy is not worked with through prayer, through transmutation. Celibacy creates imbalances in the psychology in the same way that lust and orgasm create imbalances in the psychology. In celibacy, that energy sits there like a pool of water that becomes stagnant, and that energy becomes putrid and poisons the mind, and that creates suffering. Chastity is not celibacy. Chastity is learning how to work with sex in a positive way and so it is not a repression of one’s self. It is connecting directly with ones sexuality in a very powerful way, in a very conscious way, and working with that energy in the body. The result of real chastity, if you are practicing this without orgasm consistently, then you will have positive benefits. You will feel more love for your neighbor. You will feel more subtle emotions. You will feel more peace and happiness. You will feel more awake, and more spiritual senses developed, spiritual vision, more powerful dreams.
 
So, no, I would disagree with that idea.
 
Question: I am getting more confused about orgasm and ejaculation. I always felt through experience that they are one in the same or happen at the same time in my past. How are they different?
 
Instructor: I am not too familiar with semen retention, although I have heard of it. It is the practice by which some retain the semen instead of ejaculating semen, but still experience the orgasm and allow those sensations to move through the body. So, with the orgasm without ejaculation, you are not losing the physical substance, but you are losing the energetic, spiritual substance, because its that short circuit that occurs in the orgasm. That energy moves quickly through the body, then it is lost. So, those moments of bliss, which may be prolonged and may last for certain time, ultimately leave and are depleted. It is the feeling of bliss that the sexual energy is being depleted, which is very different from the feeling of bliss that we have when the sexual energy is being activated and conserved and moved through the body. Both might be considered blissful but have different flavors, but when you work with both those practices you will understand the difference.
 
It is quite popular and a lot of people like that, they can still have the orgasm and feel like they are getting the benefits of non-ejaculating, but it is black magic. Semen retention is black magic, and if you read the book The Perfect Matrimony, you will understand why we consider it black magic in this tradition, because it breaks the law that God has put in nature, and it hypnotizes the psyche. Your psychology becomes imbalanced and addicted to sensations, and while you may feel spiritual doing it, you are actually strengthening ego and you are giving that energy into egoic states, desire, lust, pride. So, you will not experience the benefits of chastity that I have described.
 
Question: If you are doing pranayama with alternate nostril breathing, what is the best mantra to use? Is it acceptable to use an abbreviated Egyptian mantra: Ton Sa Ham?
 
Instructor: We recommend that when you choose one of the practices, you can use the mantras specifically denoted in that practice. So, if you have read the practice in the book about the Egyptian pranayama, you should use the mantras in the way that they are taught in the book. There is a pranayama of alternate nostril breathing that does not require any mantra. That is just focusing, bringing your awareness, breathing in through one nostril as you visualize the energy moving up one side of the spine, up one of those cords, and then through the other one, visualizing that energy moving up the other column up the spine (Ida and Pingala). If you are too burdened by the mantras, then begin with alternate nostril breathing that does not require a mantra.