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(The sacred mantra Om Mani Padme Hum carved on a Nepalese rock)

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​(Avalokiteshvara, a depiction of divinity's boundless and enlightened compassion, extends his thousand arms to alleviate the afflictions of confused and suffering beings.)

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So, thank you all for coming out on a Labor Day weekend, especially. It is good to see you all, new people as well.
 
We have been talking a lot about the nature of psychology, what makes up our constitution. Primarily we are thinking about our spiritual life. We study psychology from the perspective that we want to understand how to better relate to our communities, our family, our friends, our spouse, our humanity, and I think a lot of the ways we sabotage our own efforts is because we lack the energy to be able to do these forms of work.
 
We may be inspired by a tradition, by a religion, by a faith, and yet when we implement a certain practice, we lack the energy and the zeal to follow through. We all know about New Year's resolutions, basically. So, the same thing with our spiritual work―we tend to initiate a kind of practice, but then we face the resistance, and a lot of times that is because we do not know how to empower our spirituality, our spiritual action, the way to act consciously.
 
We have discussed this very deeply, what consciousness is, and we have been explaining that the consciousness is that part of us which is really authentic, beyond thought, feeling, will―the ability to perceive and to understand. We want to develop that, but unfortunately, we often lack the energy to first initiate that type of awakening, that state of perception or being, and then more importantly, we lack the energy to sustain it. More difficult is that we lack the energy to take it to a new octave. You think of like a musical scale, going up in a crescendo of  music on a piano, the notes we hit. Each note is a psychological state, to reference Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

​What we are going to talk about today is how to empower our real nature, so that it can act effectively.
 
We will identify and define and elaborate what the role of energy is in the work.
 
We will also talk about how various types of energy can empower our spiritual practice, especially when we feel depleted or weak.
 
But, also, we will study the behaviors we enact in the day which waste energy, because we want to seal, psychologically, our potential. We often waste energy in the way we interact with the world, at our jobs and careers, or with family, or with arguments.
 
So, the thing is, we will distinguish between what proper and improper use of energy looks like and how energy can strengthen virtue and conquer vice.
 
Lastly, we will give you some practices. After the lecture today, if you want to stay after, you are welcome to perform one of these exercises, which we will explain.

​We often talk about in our modern culture the need to feel joy and enthusiasm in life, and that we should feel a sense of purpose in what we do. Enthusiasm deeply relates to energy, and if we have more or less energy, that may determine our enthusiasm, especially as we get up in the morning to go to work (if you are not much of a morning person). But, enthusiasm is a deep word that ties specifically into empowering our true nature, because the soul or the true nature of ourselves, the consciousness, its natural state is enthusiasm, is joy, is happiness, contentment, inspiration: the ability to face obstacles and to overcome them.
 
It comes from the mid-16th century, the late Latin enthusiasmus, meaning “inspiration” or “frenzy.” What is more interesting is that it comes from the Greek enthousiasmos, from enthousiazein, “to be inspired or possessed by a god,” in a sense, really, to be enthused, and to have theos (God) living in us.
 
That is really the purpose of our spiritual work. We want to bring divinity into us. We want to manifest our true nature, which is not only the soul, but really the Being, which was a term we give to in these studies to the divine. We want to be present, and we want Being to be expressed in our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds. To be in communion with that, in remembrance of that state, is to be enthused, and we need energy, obviously, to activate that state, but also maintain it, because oftentimes we waste energy.
 
Now, there is a quote from Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, which is a great scripture from Mahayana Buddhism, that emphasizes the nature of enthusiasm and the nature of energy. There is even a virtue, they call it paramitas in Sanskrit, related to diligence: the ability to work, not merely a physical job, but psychological work. He emphasizes that we cannot change if we have no energy:

​In a sense, whatever direction we take in our spiritual life depends on what energy we put into it. Action is obviously more powerful when there is more force. But, how do we maintain or manage that energy is one thing, because real virtue does not exist unless there is a type of work in ourselves that we are doing practically every day. 

The way that we examine how energy works and how it empowers spirituality is through what we call the Tree of Life. So, this image, many of you are familiar with is the kabbalah: the map of our nature from the most material and dense at the bottom to the most spiritual and abstract above. These are gradations of potential and force, of matter, energy, and experience. These are places in nature, psychologically, but also places that we inhabit in our mind and emotions and being. Specifically, we can also divide these spheres we call sephiroth, meaning “emanations,” as energy.
 
When we study the gradations of energy from the more material to the more subtle and spiritual, we have a tool that helps us digest and dissect our life when we analyze it. What types of energy are we using? How are we using that force? Do we have more or less of it in certain times of the day? Do we have more or less of it than other people? Do we have more or less of it in our youth or old age? What behaviors use or waste certain forms of force? More importantly, how do we use these forces in us in a balanced way, so that we can incorporate them into an integral self, so that we know how to master them and not be their slave?
 
At the base, we have physical energy. This is our mechanical body, what allows us to have movement in our muscles or breathing, our endocrine system, movement, muscular strength.
 
Intimately related to this is our vital energy. We can say that these two are deeply married, because the physical body would not exist without vital force. This vital force, some people have called it ether, Akasha. It is a vital energy that animates the physical body. If you study Qigong or Chinese medicine, they study a lot about the nature of a vital depth, meridians, energy circuits, which are vortices or points of flow where vital force operates, and when those channels are clean and flowing, well, we have a lot of vitality in youth. But, when we are sick and depleted or if we lack that force or if there are obstructions of some kind, impurities, then our body gets sick.
 
Our physical body is healthy in determination of how we use our vital force, and really, you do not have one without the other. That is how closely married they are. When we physically die, it is because we lose all our vital energy. There is no more life force animating the body. We will talk really in detail about what this energy is like and how we use it, especially in terms of how do we empower our spiritual work. 
 
But, above that we have emotional energy, feeling. If we examine perhaps our daily life, you can determine that there are perhaps moments in our day where our emotional energy is more active. Perhaps in a relationship or an argument or conflict at work, we feel stirred up emotionally, agitation, maybe anger or fear.
 
Depending on how we use emotional energy shows or relates to how do we interact with people. How well do we gel with others?
 
Emotional energy is the fuel that allows for dream yoga experience. So, certain forms of energy help with different parts of a spiritual work. Vital energy helps us to be alive physically, but emotional energy helps us to be awake in the astral plane. So, if you study dream yoga, astral travel, waking in consciousness in dreams, we call it Hod in the Tree of Life. We dream when we go to bed at night and we inhabit those dimensions when we physically sleep. Our consciousness leaves the body and we actively engage with that space, usually in an unconscious way, and because we waste emotional energy throughout the day, we do not have the surplus there to be able to activate the consciousness, to see what is going on, and therefore, we do not really see the full potential, reality, at that point.
 
Now, what is interesting is that we also have mental energy related with intellect, the mind. Some of us have more intellectual jobs, careers, where we have to think a lot. Sometimes if we really abuse the intellect or abuse the heart, but also abuse the body, we use up too much of that energy, we either feel tired, depleted, and then perhaps after a long day of work, we go home and we remember, “I have to do my spiritual practices” (unless people are more disciplined, they get up in the morning to do that too). But, the thing is, whatever time we practice, the reality is that if we do not have these forces available to us, our consciousness has nothing to work with.
 
But obviously, consciousness too is not mental force. It is not emotional force. It is not our vital energies, how much fuel we have in our body when we get up for the day. It is not determined by our physical body. These levels of energy are necessary through there. But, consciousness is something else. 
 
More subtle than thought is volitional energy, willpower. In the Greek we refer to it as Thelema, and Thelema is the motto of the Gnostics, meaning, willpower that knows how to obey divinity above, but also to integrate the lower forms of force and energy that we have available.
 
We obviously have these forms of energy. We need them. We need them to exist. These forces are like the fuel we put into our car. You run out of gas, you can't drive. Now, physically, you may not not be able to stay awake emotionally and may be too tired to talk. Or, intellectually, we feel foggy. If we are studying at a university, maybe one reads too much, especially (this is our modern world). One can't really function at their optimal self. But obviously, what happens is that with that surplus of force available under our willpower, we have a drive that can really help us to awaken to our full potential. 
 
Above that we have the consciousness, which is really that part of us that knows how to perceive and to understand. That can happen in any level of nature, not merely in our physical body. You may be able to be conscious, perceptive and understanding of what is going on in the higher dimensions of nature, the Tree of Life, because these are not only forms of energy, but places that we go to when we dream, to clarify. They are spaces, psychologically, and they represent parts of our energy in our body too. 
 
Spiritual energy is obviously the most refined. That relates to our divinity. Our divinity is a force, which is very potent, and we can access and learn how to perceive and understand through exercises like meditation. But, I mentioned these levels of energy because oftentimes in New Age circles, we have this kind of a dogma that one should feel good energy, maybe perhaps in an abstract or not a very nuanced sense, and it us very much about developing energy, acquiring energy, cultivating it. But, the reality is that there are different forms of energy, they are very distinct and there are certain forms that we want to work with more than others. That also depends on our particular idiosyncrasy, our constitution, our health, but also what our weaknesses are. 

​How do we waste energy most?
 
It is important to remember this because energy empowers all forms of action. Wherever we direct attention, we spend energy.
 
So what is that attention? In a sense, there is a lot of things going on psychologically when we pay attention to something. Perhaps we are walking down the street and a car comes up. Suddenly, barely perceiving in the periphery, they are about to hit us. So, instinctually we jump out of the way. We perceive the situation, the problem. We act mechanically, kind of a reaction, and then afterward, we feel emotionally, really, scared, followed by the thought: “That was really close.” Maybe anger, fear, and resentment for the person who was driving the car. So, these are all forms of reactions that are very intricate that happen perhaps in a moment. Some of these types of reactions have certain speeds. They are quicker.
 
Now, what is important is that when we are examining attention, attention is a form of energy, and how we act psychologically, maybe in that example or in something as mundane as going to work, we spend energy. So, we always have an amount in our bank, so to speak, of money, or in this sense, spiritual currency. If we think too much or we feel too much or we do too much out of balance with our disposition, we get sick. We feel perhaps disempowered.
 
The question becomes, how are we spending our energy? When we pay attention to something, are we doing it with anger? Maybe we are listening to a loved one present a different point of view, we get angry. We are listening because we want to react and to feed our anger. That is a combustion of our emotional fuel, so to speak, and we are burning it out. When we act emotionally out of anger, we are like burning our fuel. The forces that we could use to awaken within dream yoga are lost.
 
Now, intellectually too, if we are directing our mind towards some kind of reading like study, which is good and balanced, we might waste too much intellectual energy. Or, physically we do too many sports. But, more importantly, how we react to situations determines how we use energy in all those seven gradations and forms. 
 
As Samael Aun Weor stated:

​This is a very powerful word, creative energy, because energy can create something. By definition, it is a movement of matter and potential which becomes actualized in accordance with will. In a sense, this is the definition of real magic, where consciousness is able to act on nature, not in a David Blaine sense of the word, but magic. But, I mean magic from being able to mend a difficult relationship with wisdom and patience and state of mind. A state of mind is really the best weapon we have in life, a correct psychological state.
 
So, that energy can create something. It can create our spirituality or it can create hell, depending on how we use it. 

The real question becomes, who or what is using our energies?
 
In our first lecture in this series we talked about personality, ego, and Essence in this order. Personality, we mentioned, is like the mask we wear in life. It is our culture. It is our name. It is our language. It is our race. It is our religion that were born with. It is our traditions, our habits, the way we talk. It is our mannerisms. It is the mask that allows us to subsist in this world, to effectively be able to to live in society. 
 
Now, as a recap, personality is not something permanent. We get it when we grow up. We acquire one when we are born and then afterwards it develops. We become educated, we go to school, and eventually it will decay and die when we die. Due to the process of transmigration―which, we have explained, is the process of reincorporation and is improperly called reincarnation, because we don't choose to be here―we return mechanically unless we wake up.
 
Personality is something that we develop when we are young and we are born in a new body. We have had many personalities―many―in different times and places throughout history. What is funny about personalities that it is only effective in a certain time and place, because if you took a Roman soldier and you time traveled a couple hundred years ago and brought them to New York, near Broadway or Times Square, they would not be able to survive. They make comedy movies about this, because this is personality. Our personality is something temporary.
 
Sometimes our personality could be using all our energy. It is good to have personality in balance. We want to cultivate personality as we are developing, especially when we are young because we need to be able to have a job, a career, to live with friends, to know how to relate to people. But, obviously personality is something malleable. Our personality can change when we get a new job, because there are different cultures and different workspaces. But, our formative years are usually between zero and seven, especially.
 
Is it our personality that is using our energy? Meaning, people like in Hollywood―you think of people like Robin Williams who was charismatic and funny and very bold. He had a very strong personality, had a lot of energy channeled through the personality to be able to be so successful in that sphere. So, do we use personality like that? It is a question.

​Also, ego, our defects. We picked an image of a monster because this really reflects our our defects like our anger or pride or fear or lust. These are the elements that act through our personality. So, while we have a certain appearance, name, language, custom, culture, our emotions, our negative thoughts, our defects, act through the personality in a sense, because our ego tends to be so fat in this day and age. I mean ego in the esoteric sense, not the pop-culture sense, but self, “me, who I am,” the totality of that, what we usually experience. That sense of self tends to be very much fused with the personality, because the two really deeply relate. 

​Is it our defects using our energy, or could it be our Essence, our soul? The Essence is the consciousness, as indicated by Gurdjieff and Samael Aun Weor. The Essence is the reality, and we chose this image of a galaxy within the heart of a human being because Samael Aun Weor made a statement that the soul or the divine within us, the real true beauty of our spiritual nature, belongs to that, to the heavens, the heights. Our Essence we want to cultivate, to use our energies properly, so that our ego and our personality are not so active.
 
Obviously, in the beginning, personality tends to dominate our life, ego as well. But, with our spiritual practices, we learn to activate the Essence and empower our true spirituality, our true self, so that the Essence is the one that is active, not asleep. Then, the personality is just a tool. We use it as we need to, and it becomes a useful instrument for humanity. 

​So, how do we waste our creative energies? We mentioned just a few.
 
Obviously, fantasy is one, and I don't mean the literary genre of fantasy (God bless Tolkien because of his great, creative imagination and beautiful stories). But, fantasy in the sense of, if someone cuts us off, when we are driving, are we thinking things about what we wanted to do to that person? Or, get into an argument and we fantasize and imagine what we would do to that person, that no one else we think can see, but we think we can indulge in without repercussions? The reality is that our divinity sees everything. We want to act in our mind as we would act in our body, and these are not just Buddhist injunctions, but also Christian. For example, Christ said, "You heard it said of old, thou shalt not commit adultery, but even if you lust after someone in your mind or your heart, you have already committed adultery with them." So, not word for word, but it is in the Christian Gospel (Matthew 15:27-28).
 
It is the same thing in Buddhism. We become what we think. If we invest our energy, our creative energy in negative imagination, negative states, we deplete ourselves. We become very, you know, fat in our ego too, because the ego feeds off of that type of perception―daydreaming, associative thought, wandering.
 
Lust is a big one, and perhaps this is the biggest defect that most of us face in the spiritual work, which is why you hear throughout many traditions that saints and the monks and great nuns, or perhaps great prophets, were people who were very chaste―not in the sense of not having a partner, but being pure in their sexuality. The creative energy is most potent. The creative energy really is our sexual force.
 
Now, this term chastity or purity does not mean abstention from sexual relations. It means purity in sexual relations. It means knowing how to take the most powerful force of the body, the creative energy, the vital force, and to direct it with the soul, to know how to use it for our spirit. You have heard it said of old, “you must be born again. That which is of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:3-7).
 
Birth of a spiritual type is an energetic problem. It is a sexual problem, and that energy in truth, which can give birth to a child, when it is conserved and transformed and cultivated by the spirit, it gives birth to the soul. It creates our true power, our true strength. Really, the term virility is the origin of virtue, Virya, the strength of a warrior in Sanskrit. Virtue is born, real power and ethics, is when we cultivate the proper use of sexual force.
 
Obviously, it is a very controversial topic, but I am just introducing it in a very synthetic way, because how we use energy determines our spiritual life. The beauty of Samael Aun Weor's writings, especially―the founder of our tradition―is that he spent a lot of time explaining that. So, obviously, if you want to know more, I have books and references that you can look at.
 
But, oftentimes we waste energy through lust. Sometimes it is through fantasy or desire, and obviously, through the expulsion of the sexual energy. So, what we want in these teachings and what is very demanding in this teachings, and something that is a personal lifestyle choice, is that one can conserve the sexual force and never expel it through orgasm. That is the primary prohibition of the initiatic spiritual colleges of the great mystery schools from the ancients. This was always a secret that they kept, because it obviously is something, a tool that has a lot of potential to elevate or to harm, if people don't know how to use it well.
 
But, obviously, we are in different times where this knowledge is open to everybody. Desire, obviously is not merely just sexual desire, but also the desire for money, the desire for acquisition, the desire for praise, the desire for security, the desire for acceptance, the desire for a certain person. Desire is what we call ego. Desire is synonymous with ego. I know in our modern culture we always like to talk about following our passions, following our desires, and unfortunately, I think the language misses the point, because while we want to aspire with our soul towards higher virtues and to fulfill our deepest longings in life, to empower our real potential, we have to eliminate desire if we want to be virtuous.
 
Or, we must understand desire, how it functions, not run away from it, not repress it, not feed it, but understand it, so that you can transform it.
 
We take the ego, our defects, our desires, we break the shell, and you free the soul. Therefore, virtue is a component of our psyche. It integrates with our divinity, and we are then truly empowered, because real power comes from divinity. But, divinity cannot mix with our impurities.
 
Repression is another problem. Again, when people think of chastity, they think like monks and nuns who go to the monastery and avoid the world, or perhaps Catholic priests who repress their sexual force. Obviously, we know from the news that this causes great problems, because repression does not deal with the issue of desire in the mind. Avoiding sexual situations does not mean that one transcends and overcome them. It would be better if, like the Gnostic priesthood of the past, that certain missionaries or priests would learn to get married or would learn the science to get married, fall in love, and with their wife would learn to take that power and to cultivate it spiritually, to overcome their own passions, because in this work that we are talking about, is by understanding the use of sexual energy. Also as a couple, one can have the force necessary to change and to become a spiritual master.
 
But obviously, in synthesis, you can study the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor. He goes into great detail about that.
 
Identification is a term we use, again from Gurdjieff, about whenever we have a defect emerge in our mind, in our heart, in our body, we just go along with it. We feed it our energy. So it is like we just react to situations and then our identity, our sense of self, is just stuck in that reaction, and we just get sucked into that problem or moment. That all wastes energy. 

​But how do we master our creative energies? How do we actually empower our spiritual work?
 
Conservation is the beginning. Conservation means to take the sexual force and to never waste it, never expel it physically through orgasm, just to be very clear. But, conservation is not enough. There are people who do not waste their sexual energy outwardly, but they waste it in many other things.
 
Conservation does not mean chastity in the real Gnostic sense of the word. Chasity means, to first, not waste the energy, but then to transform it. It has to be used or directed willingly, otherwise, if you just save up energy and do not know how to use it. you end up, unfortunately, like some priesthoods, with real problems, like sexual perversion and molestation of children―people using these energies, whose desires are rampant, but not faced directly.
 
In the same way that you were to leave your car filled with gas for like three or four months without driving it, that fuel will degrade. The same thing with the sexual energy. It breaks down, and then it deteriorates the mind and the heart when it is saved and then not used. Then it is a problem. So, we agree with some of the scientific definitions of this in certain studies, that repression is bad, but some scientific studies have not really explored what it means to sublimate, and that is a whole other science. They do not have active studies measuring this (and I hope that they will), but it is also hard to get people in these studies to have their life put under a microscope and studied for what are the actual effects, although, that is another thing.
 
Sublimation means to take that which is beneath and to raise it. Liminality means like a threshold space, in between, and so our creative sexual force, which can empower our spirituality, is obviously beneath our body, or in the creative organs themselves. To sublimate is to take that energy from our creative glands and to raise them up the spine to the mind, and then to the heart. That is the flow of the eternal fountain of youth that flows from the belly, according to Jesus in the Gospels, as an eternal spring of life. 

​Or, the shepherd's staff, which is the spine, which rises up to the head, and then curves to the heart― that is the spinal column. That spinal column is where the energies can rise, and there are circuits that we will talk about that rise up our spine to our brain, and then there are channels that go from our brain to our heart where we can really actively direct that energy willingly.
 
This helps to empower our ethics. We master our energy by learning to become real, decent people in the sense of comprehending our anger and our fear and our defects, and eliminating them. That is how virtue is empowered by not only saving energy, but acting consciously.
 
One point about that too is that we often hear in New Age circles about awareness and mindfulness, and that this is a beautiful thing, and it is a necessary skill, but mindfulness is not enough. Comprehension is essential. It is not enough to be mindful, because someone could be mindful of committing murder, but how we use that energy and direct it with virtue is another thing. 

​Creative energy empowers also our spiritual senses. So, if you have ever studied yoga, Hinduism, we have the chakras. A chakra, simply in Sanskrit means “wheel,” and as I mentioned to you about the meridians of the vital body, the energetic circuits, they run throughout our vital depth and they interpenetrate our physical body to give it life.
 
Whenever certain number of meridians meet, you have a chakra. It is like a whirlpool. If you take two currents of water, you have the whirlpool when they meet, and the same thing with the chakras, how the energies work.
 
The chakras, we have seven main ones in the spine, but really there are over thousands and thousands of them wherever we have meridians. So, we talk about seven because those are the main centers by which we have spiritual activity, and also spiritual ability.
 
Now, it is also important to remember that these chakras will only activate and spin when there is proper energy. Right now in most of us, these flowers are asleep. They are folded. They are not blooming, and they are not active because we do not have the surplus of energy saved or transformed or developed to activate them.
 
Now, single people who are doing the exercises like energy work and prayer and mantra can awaken sparks of their creative force, so that for a few moments or for maybe at night and in a dream, the chakras open, and suddenly you see the the dream state clearly. That is a temporary experience, but to make that permanent requires a lot of force, and the most force that we could ever have for our spiritual work is in a marriage.
 
When husband and wife can unite and conserve their force and to transmute it, you have the power of a sun. You have the power of a Logos, the divine. It is the fire of a planet. It is intense. Obviously, sexual fire is the most powerful force. It can give birth to a child, but “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
 
We want to raise the energy of the base of our spine, some people refer to the Kundalini, but obviously, this force of the Divine Mother, the sacred divine feminine, which sleeps in the base in the Muladhara chakra, can only awaken when we have earned it with our heart.
 
So, there are ethical requirements to work with this energy. But, in synthesis, when we follow the divine laws―like the virtuous qualities of the scriptures in whatever tradition we follow, and we never waste the sexual force, but conserve it and transform it and work on our mind, and by the virtues of our heart―that fire of the Divine Mother rewards us. 

​That fire is the fire of life, the serpent of brass that Moses raised upon a staff in the wilderness to heal the Israelites. It is also the serpent or the serpent with the wings of a great bird: Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs, Kukulcan amongst the Mayans. That serpentine power, when it rises, is the one that heals.
 
Unfortunately for us, because our energies are abused, that energy goes downward and forms what we call the tail of the demons, not in the physical body (fortunately). I mean, it is in the astral body, in the astral world. People have that. We have that, but that can change, and that rising serpent that heals is the force of the Divine Mother, the sacred feminine that we talked about in the lecture, Remember Your True Self.
 
When She rises, She activates these chakras and these flowers open, and then there are certain abilities and powers that are acquired. But obviously those powers are given to us with responsibility and by earning it. This is what we call the path of initiation.
 
We have the chakra Muladhara at the base of the spine;
 
Svadhisthana related to the sexual organs;
 
Manipura related to the abdomen or solar plexus;
 
Anahata related to the heart;
 
Vishuddha related to the throat;
 
Ajna related to the third eye;
 
…and we can say about Sahasrara at the crown.
 
Those are asleep in us, but they can be activated and awakened. I believe Rumi even mentioned in a poem―he is a great Sufi mystic that said―a water mill cannot turn without water. He is talking about the chakras, about the waters of life conserved in us. We cannot make that energy active and make our circuitry flow.
 
The whole purpose of this is so that our body, mind, and heart, psychology, is a circuit that can connect with divinity. That is the path of religion, religare, reunion, yoga: to reunite. But, obviously in this path of activating these chakras and developing spiritually, we have to develop our virtues. 

​Now, as you see here in this image, there are two serpents. These are two channels of energy. They go from the coccyx to the brain. We call them Ida-Pingala in Hinduism, Adam-Eve in the Bible, Od and Obd in Kabbalah. Two serpents, two energies, which through practices like pranayama, breath work sacred sounds or mantras, or in alchemy (tantra) between husband and wife, you have really the flow of forces from the earth to above. But divinity does not give us this power unless we have earned it, because it is a great responsibility to know how to handle these forces in themselves. They have terrible consequences if they are misused, which is why Samael Aun Weor said in the book Kabbalah of the Mayan Mysteries stated:

​This flies in the face of many common misconceptions about the nature of Kundalini, because really, we should not be focused on developing power. It is beautiful to have astral experiences and to be able to be awake in the dream state. I mean there is a certain blessing or ability to know how to read people―we call it telepathy. It is like knowing how to help people, using that skill without admitting it or announcing it to the world. Really, there is a beauty and power and utility for that, but that should not be the focus. The real focus should be being a better person, because if we develop power and then we renege and act improperly, we have more force by which to harm ourselves and others. That is why initiation is based on laws for that fire to rise from the base of the spine to the head, and then to go to the heart. It requires a lot of sacrifice.

​So, how do we empower our true self? We kind of synthesized a few points already, but if we go back to this image of the seven gradations of energy, there is a quote that Samael Aun Weor gave in The Great Rebellion that basically sums up all these points that we talked about. We can save energy, cultivate it, but if we do not know how to use them properly, we can fail. He says that having a lot of energy spiritually is not enough:

​So, it might seem contradictory, right? We have these energies. We need them, and yet, no matter how much we multiply our mechanical, vital, emotional, mental, volitional, conscious and spiritual energies, we will not awaken, because you can have a lot of energy in your car, but we may not know how to drive it. So, it is a different thing.
 
Energies must be present, and even people who have a certain weakness, maybe mentally, emotionally, physically, with some kind of illness, just do not have a lot of surplus of energy available, they can make great progress if they know how to activate their consciousness.
 
So, the soul has to be awake, to self-remember, to observe oneself, to be present at all times. We have to strive towards that, but the consciousness is the one that can activate the car and know how to use well. This basically contradicts many New Age assumptions about energy. There are many people who believe spirituality is about acquiring energy. But many do not ask how do we use it. 
 
So, upright efforts―the consciousness has to obey the spirit and the spirit is God, our inner divinity, our Being. In a sense, we activate consciousness when we follow our intuition, or better said, our conscience. Sometimes our heart tells us, “I should do this. I shouldn't do this. This is how I should act. This is what I should say. This is what I should think. This is what I should do.”
 
It does not require a lot of analysis. It just comes to you, hits you, and that is at the essence of self-remembering. It is like you have remorse of conscience for mistakes, and you let that part of the heart guide our way of being. That is how we follow upright efforts. When we make the effort to follow the voice of the silence in us, the hunches we get when we do not think, then we get inspired to do what we need to do. 

​We will conclude with a couple practices. I will explain some. These are available on Glorian Publishing. This exercise or series of exercises is given by Glorian and they did a video, so I can physically demonstrate here briefly, but if you need a reference, you can always access on our podcast as well as our website. We will have the PDF available. You can link the video and you can actually practice along with it, but I will just show you briefly.
 
These are the runes. So, we see here the rune poster. We have some images of Egyptian initiates. These exercises are Nordic, and the Nordic runes are a form of yoga. So, you take certain positions and you follow certain prayers, certain vocalizations, certain mantras where by vocalizing sacred sounds, we activate energy. These are exercises that are good to go out into nature to do because you accumulate a lot of force, especially in the early dawn when the sun is rising. 

​So the first series of exercises I will show you are called the seven sacred runes. What you do, if you look at the top of this poster, you see seven runes. 

​You start with Is. You can pray to your inner divinity, your inner God. You close your eyes. Extend your hands above your head. You pray to your inner God to give you the force that you need to do your spiritual work. You follow with a mantra “I” (pronounced “Ee”). It vibrates in the third eye and the crown chakra. 

​Next is the root Eihwaz. Left hand up, right hand into your side, heels together. It works with the throat chakra: “Eh.” 
​
You can step to your right, hand above your head, the rune Otthila, kind of relating to the Opera Attila by Verdi, Thelema, willpower. It develops the heart, the mantra “Oh.”​

​The Rune Ur, you bend downwards in the form of a u-shape, solar plexus, the mantra “Uu” as in “you.” 

​The Rune Ar, right arm under your right side, left foot out, left hand on your left hip or left leg. The mantra “Ah.” Pulmonary chakra, the lungs. 

​The Rune (of the true) Man (Elhaz), the vowel M or the prostate or uterus chakra, Svadhisthana, the vowel M or the mantra M.
​
Now what is interesting is that Samael Aun Weor calls the letter, the consonant “M” a vowel, and obviously in English, this is not the case, but in esotericism, it is. A vowel is a nucleus of a word or a letter, nucleus of a letter that binds consonants together. So, it is basically what combines other letters together to form words. So, we call it a vowel, because the letter M helps to activate this center.

​​We call this practice the seven vowels even though we do not really think of M and S as a vowel, but that is a spiritual explanation. 

​The last one is the rune Sig. You bend your knees, back straight! the letter S like a hiss, “Ss.”

So “S” like a serpent. It is the fire of the Divine Mother, and single people can practice the runes, obviously, to awaken sparks of Kundalini. It does not mean that one is going to awaken it fully, like you need with a marriage, but sparks can help activate, send the forces up the chakras, and then you repeat, so that you activate these centers and keep them flowing. So, you can perform that seven times.

Lastly, there is a practice called Ham-Sah pranayama. So, this is one that we will practice later today when we are done. Basically, you sit in a chair. You relax. Close your eyes. You can pray to your Divine Mother, the divine feminine, your inner God, to help you to circulate the force of the creative power, so that it goes from the base of the spine to the head and then to the heart.
​
First, there are two mantras: Ham-Sah. So, the mantra Ham is prolonged. You pronounce it mentally. You imagine your spine, the two channels Ida and Pingala, going up to the head, and then there should be energy going down to the heart. So, with Ham, you imagine the energy is going up. You pronounce this mentally when you inhale.

​So, however long it takes for you to inhale, pronounce the mantra Ham. So, obviously the inhalation should be prolonged. It should be longer, not forced. It should be relaxed. Some people have practiced Ham-Sah with a lot of agitation like [performs quick breaths]. We want the energy to be smooth, relaxed. The energy should float from outward to inward, and when you inhale in a more prolonged way―when we are doing the mantra Ham―you teach the energies to circulate inwardly, to go up the spine, because right now with our breathing, we tend to be more focused on the exhalations, which send the energy out.
 
Now, it has to be in balance. Do Ham, prolonged, slow, and then, after you have inhaled your lungs to their full capacity in a relaxed way, you send the energies to your heart and do a quick exhalation: Sah. 

​Brief, gentle, calm. I have heard people try to do Sah really prolonged, but it has to be very quick, very gentle, and you just send the energy to the heart.
 
So, basically, stronger, longer inhalation. The mantra Ham prolonged mentally. Then when you send the energy outward to your heart, exhale briefly, Sah.
 
So, later, when we are done, if you want to stay after, we will do a brief practice. You are welcome to stick around, if not, that is okay, but here is just an introduction. 

​For those who want to learn more about the nature of this energy that we talked about, the chakras, as well as the role of a marriage in empowering our true self, you can study the book Kundalini: The Sacred Fire Of All Religions by Samael Aun Weor, formerly published as Kundalini Yoga.
 
Any questions? 

​Question: What is the fine line between endurance and limiting yourself? You talk about being wasteful with physical, mental, and emotional energy. Where is the line in terms of developing endurance? For instance, in the first year of my job, using my brain a lot, after work I would be zombified. But now as I am a few years in, I am starting to develop endurance, and so after I am done with work, I can’t read. I can still use my intellect. But what should I do with my mind? Should I be resting? Is it in splotches? Do I really want to use it?
 
Instructor: You have to find your balance, and based on a read of your own mind and body, to see what is it that you can do reasonably and establish reasonable goals. So, Gurdjieff said, and this is true of every one of us, is that you cannot expect from a weak person what a strong person can do. You know, we all have weaknesses. We are riddled. So, some things we can try and then see, maybe that is too much, so you take it down a notch. The goal is to be able to build up the practice, but we have to find first what practices work and resonate most with us and gauge your body. Gauge your mind. Gauge your heart.
 
Some things are going to be too much, and we should not feel the fear of, “Oh God, I have to do the spiritual practice because what will people think of me?” Some people have that fear. Some people have the assumption when they join a religion or group. It is like, “what if I don't follow the practice or do certain things?” The reality is that we want to experiment first. See what exercises we really need, because when Samael Aun Weor gave his books, which have, really, thousands of practices, we cannot practice all of them. We work with the ones that are most essential.
 
One of them is basically Ham-Sah pranayama. Now, obviously, I would recommend to build endurance. We start with 10 minutes a day. That is good enough. Start small. See what you can do, and I wouldn't beat myself up over it. I know in the beginning, when I first started, I would feel, “I have to do this, this, and this,” and it was overwhelming. But in reality, it is like with time, you say, “Okay, there are certain practices for our mental and spiritual hygiene we should do, like practice meditation, especially work with our creative energy in some degree.” For some it may be mantras, which is why I gave the runes. For some of us, it may be Ham-Sah, and really Ham-Sah is a really good start.
 
The fine line between endurance and when is it too much, you can only gauge that by trying, and if it is too much, then okay, step back for a bit. Give yourself some grace, and be patient, because this science is very difficult. I mean, it is difficult at first in the beginning, to judge, like “What are my weaknesses?” We all have blind spots about what we really need. Most of us do not want to consider or look at the places that we need the most change in. That is a natural quality of our psychology as a species, and that is also the resistance of the ego that doesn't want us to see. You know the mind fighting back, right? But, you gauge your capacity through experimentation and looking at, what are your limits? Then, saying, “Okay, maybe it is too much.”
 
Enthusiasm grows when we see the benefits. When you sit up trying to do six hours of meditation, and I tried this in the beginning because I was so excited and gung-ho, but trying six hours of meditation in the beginning actually burned me out. So, what I did was take it down a notch. I started with 20 minutes, built up to 21 minutes the next day. 22... and, as I saw the benefits, extended it. It was not forced. It wasn't like, “Oh, I am straining myself.”
 
It is a fine line between strain and endurance. We also want discipline, but it does not mean that we push ourself so much that eventually, “This is too much,” and then we gave up the practice. So, you have to gauge. You'll find out. You gauge your limit and when you feel the enthusiasm and joy from a certain practice, you wil be able to extend it if you need to.
 
Question: I am trying now to go back again. So, how do you find the inspiration to go back again, because I got a little bit more busy. Has this happened to you or how do you get motivated to continue?
 
Instructor: So, the question is, how do we get ourselves motivated when we initiate a practice but then we face the resistance? And then, how do we get over those hurdles? 

​Samael Aun Weor referred to this as the dark night of the soul. Beethoven depicted it in his Moonlight Sonata as the the sorrow of the soul, that you feel you are in darkness or you feel like you do not have much insight or inspiration or joy. Samael Aun Weor said the remedy for that is meditation. So, even if we do not want to meditate, for however long it takes, just take 20-30 minutes, whatever you need―you still do it. That is the endurance piece.
 
Obviously, we have to find joy in the practices and actually feel that alert novelty and inspiration, because that is what the practices should be. A good practice, we can identify a good practice when we see something new and feel a bit of a spark. We feel more happiness and enthusiasm. We all face this where we lack enthusiasm or joy to continue forward. 
 
Comment: Most of the time I get distracted from outside noises, or I want to go out. Or I live with other people who are sensitive to noises. There are just too many obstacles.
 
Instructor: With vocalizations, if you do not have a living condition that is is a conducive for that like you cannot do mantras out loud, do them mentally. They are just as effective. Swami Sivananda said that physical vocalizations are good, whispered are even better, and silent is the best, because it requires the most concentration. In the beginning, if you need to start with whispering because it is too disruptive, then you can try that, but you can also do it mentally.
 
Many yogis have mentioned that it is good to do a mantra mentally in the day. So, not just when we sit down to meditate, but it can also be a practice where you are at work and maybe you feel a little off, like you feel you are not as concentrated or on your best game―mentally do a mantra. 

​Sometimes the more complicated mantras are the best ones, because they require a lot more focus. It is easy to do “O,” right? But it could be a little bit more tricky but powerful to do O A O Kakof Na Khonsa, which is the mantra for the Divine Mother.
 
I like that mantra, especially if I feel like I need to be more focused, like I am at work, working with people. It is like a lot of things going on, challenging job. It is like, “Okay, let me do a mantra to bring myself back.” With training and time and by being consistent, even if it is hard to feel maybe that spark in the beginning, we pass the ordeal if we are persistent.
 
This is a necessary challenge that we all have to face, that we feel like perhaps divinity has withdrawn or stepped back, but that is a necessary testing ground to see, “Okay, can you find joy even when you feel like you are abandoned?” That is what the injunction from Christ on the cross was about: Eli Eli Lama Sabachtani (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), which has different meanings in Nahuatl or the Mayan language. It really means “Into the pre-eternal dawn of your presence I return.” So, what people interpreted as a statement of suffering, actually Christ overcame that in his ordeals by remembering God.
 
I think in terms of enthusiasm, what can help is performing the third factor: sacrifice. So, today we talked about birth: how do you give birth to the soul with energy. Later on, we will talk about death (Liberate Your True Self), which is death of the defects or desires, and then we will talk about sacrifice, which is service. Actually, we talked about service last time (Serve Your True Self).
 
Sometimes, personally, for me to get out of my own suffering, I try to help people, whether it is in my job, or it is here, and that gives me joy spiritually, psychologically, and gives me more impetus to work on myself. So, it does not mean that if you are going to serve or sacrifice that you are going to be teaching Gnosis, but it can mean that you are helping in an authentic way in whatever way you can. That can really get you out of the pain, especially, or get you to practice more.
 
Question: In our daily life, we encounter maybe negative thought, negative emotions, negative desire, when we catch it before we act on it, what is something we can do to transform that into a positive?

Instructor: So, it is a really tricky dynamic, because the mind is pretty deceptive and sometimes if we are not really alert or aware, we do not have the reaction time to transform it. Now, I kind of mentioned briefly that in terms of the gradations of energy, there are different psychological speeds. Thought processes are actually the slowest aspect of our human machine. Emotions are much quicker; movement as well. Instincts are much faster. You just react without thinking, and sexual energy or desire is the quickest. It could be hard in the beginning for our consciousness to operate at that kind of speed, to be able to first perceive the threat; second, not react to it; third, not give it what it wants; but also fourth, not repress it.
 
Then, the challenge really becomes, how do we understand it in the moment? That is a delicate skill that we call transformation of impressions. It is a very fine line and is the razor's edge. In a sense, we can only learn it by doing it. But I would say one strategy, if you can, is separate from your ego. Say you are in a situation where perhaps you do need to respond quickly and not react, and you feel that you have negative emotions boiling up. It is pretty quick. It just takes over. In a sense, we almost do not even see it, and if it has already invaded our heart, it is more difficult to separate and look at it first off. See it and separate from it. That is the first step.
 
I think that skill is only developed when we continually face challenges and ordeals in our life. In that case, if you feel like in a moment you need to react, or better said, respond, sometimes wait time is good. Sometimes it is possible that you are talking to someone, and I know with my clients I work with, I deal with some pretty angry people at times and I will collect myself and examine my heart and listen to my intuition. There is a certain ability to that, a certain power to that where someone is trying to pull our attention outward, where we are going to react in a bad way. You can pull your attention backward to your heart and not necessarily indulge in emotion, but just observe. It is like a turtle retracting its head into its shell, and unfortunately, sometimes we may not have the opportunity where we can have that wait time. So it is hard. It can be hard.
 
But the one who is giving us the ordeals is exactly our divinity, and it is good to remember that, especially, because if you feel tempted to act out of anger or pride and its really gripping you, sometimes the skill that Samael Aun Weor gave is that, even if anger is like a lion ripping your arm apart, watch it―just let it do its thing. It is uncomfortable. It is painful. It is difficult. It is unsettling. It is ugly to see that, but just watch. I know I practice with my cat, when they are nibbling on you and just kind of look at the cat like, “Really?” and they have that attitude to be like, “Okay, I do not like to see this in myself, but this is the reality. Let me just sit with the discomfort and the pain of it,” and by following your conscience, your intuition, maybe the moment might require to take a minute and do not say anything. Silence is golden, but sometimes not speaking when we need to speak will cause great pain. That is a line that no one can teach us. You know, we have to figure that out.
 
Actually, the one who can teach us is our inner divinity. He teaches us by giving us those situations that we really hate, do not like, which make us kick and scream, complain about, and yet that is the medicine. So, I would say in the future, we develop the skill, in the Shantideva sense of the word, from The Way of the Bodhisattva: when a snake comes upon our path in the woods, we should finally have the alertness and the ability to just step back and to respond in the moment. But, sometimes we do not  do that with our own mind, but that is a skill we have to practice. But, if the Achaeans have already broken in through Troy [with the Trojan Hors], it is much more difficult. But yeah, we have to be patient, because the way that we empower our true nature is by facing the pain of it. 
 
Question: You think that with the spiritual work, those thoughts don't appear as often? The more we use spiritual work, you know, the easier we can identify and the less it kind of comes to us? It is easier to identify and the less it comes to us. I really like the point you made about the priest, right? Kind of like the having the impression that “This is the holy way” but not knowing that sex is there, but then repressing it so much that it deviates to something worse than sex. I thought that was a really good point.
 
Instructor: Yeah, to add to that, I would say that with practice, it gets easier in the sense that while the thoughts do not predominate, the serenity of mind is established to the point that like a cup of water, if you have a cup with sediment and rocks and stone, you shake, then it it is going to be murky. You cannot see.  But, after time you just let it sit, to repeat it, you face the ordeals and situations, the water will stratify, and the layers will show. Then it is like, “Okay, the ego is not eliminated here, but now I can see what is going on.” That is the baseline that we need. We call it psychological equilibrium, when you can look at yourself and face certain challenges and discomforts in your mind or what you see in your defects, but not be fazed. So, it is symbolized as the fourth state of consciousness or the fourth musical note in Gurdjieff, or the Fourth Way schools. It is like a cross which is really the symbol of a foundation, balance.
 
Question: When we are doing techniques like Ham-Sah or pranayamas, are we using centrifugal or centripetal force? I don't know how to say it in English.
 
Instructor: So, we talk about centripetal force and centrifugal force and please correct me because I mix them up too. Centrifugal, one of them, the forces go from inside to outward. And then, the opposite is when the energies go inward to outward [centripetal]. So we want to reverse it so the energies are going inward. 
 
Question: That is why you call it sublimate as well?
 
Instructor: Yes, it is the beginnings of sublimation. It is like you are redirecting the forces themselves. So, the term, really in the Bible, the River Jordan, Jordan in Hebrew means “descender,” and that means when those forces descend into us, we are trying to make the waters flow back inward and upward. So, it is changing the flow of the current. The forces are flowing.
 
Obviously, since for many years we have been accustomed to our lifestyle, obviously it is going to be very difficult in the beginning. It could take years to train the body so that the energy go from outward to inward. It is a patient process and can be done. It depends on one's interest and commitment to it.
 
But yeah, I mean, obviously even with our breathing, we focus on the exhalations more, but I wouldn't say hyper fixate on breathing so much. I would say that be patient. If you are attempting this practice and you seriously want to commit to it, consider what it can offer, but also be patient with yourself because it takes time for Christ to learn to ride on the donkey rather than the opposite. 

​I think that Rumi even said that the donkey is our mind. It is a symbol and our mind tends to do its own thing in the beginning. But, it can be cultivated and trained like you see in the stages of meditation, the nine stages of meditative concentration where the elephant goes from a wild animal to a docile one. That is our my intellect, our mind.
 
So, that cultivation of serenity is dependent on how we use our energy. So, the more we can make the energy flow inwardly, the more energy we have to calm our mind and control it. So, this can explain too why many people who attempt meditation fail because they do not have the energy there to flow and to calm the mind. It is constantly being expelled and the passions are agitated. The body is not still, and the intellect is just running around because that is desire. But, yeah, there is a course on Glorian called Meditation Essentials which talks about all that. They also talk about how to work with energy.
 
So, if anyone has a final comments, questions, we can conclude. We have coffee and tea if you like. Feel free to hang out. We can do a practice afterward, but I thank you all for coming!

All of creation comes from three forces: a masculine projective force, a feminine receptive force, and the union of those two forces, a neutralizing force, which is sex. Even this manifested universe in which we all live was created through the union of masculine and feminine principles.
 
In the beginning there was the परब्रह्मन् Parabrahman, a Sanskrit term for “the highest Brahman,” the Absolute or universal self, the deification of a masculine principle. That masculine principle interacted with the मूलप्रकृति Mulaprakriti, a Sanskrit term meaning “the root substance,” which is the abstract, deific, feminine principle, in order to create all levels of manifested reality.
 
Samael Aun Weor teaches us about the Mulaprakriti in his writings on Kundalini Yoga. He wrote:

​The power to create life is Mulaprakriti, Christonic semen. That force is also within us, within our sexual organs. That energy gives us the power to create life, and we see this in a common way that it is through sexual union that we can create a physical child. But that sexual energy has tremendous potential for our spiritual life. That sexual energy gives us the ability to give birth to the soul within, and that is why this energy is so important for understanding how we can do the Gnostic work.
 
It is only through the use of our sexual energy that we can achieve our highest spiritual potential.

Samael Aun Weor wrote that sexual energy can be divided into three distinct types.
 
The first, as was mentioned, is the energy having to do with the reproduction of the race and the health of the physical body in general. This is what gives us the ability to maintain our vitality and physical life, and also to give birth to children.
 
But many people do not realize that the sexual energy is also the energy that has to do with the spheres of thought, feeling, and will. It is through that creative energy that we think, that we feel, that we have willpower. We might have experienced this, that when we have a sexual attraction, we can develop an extremely strong will in order to pursue that other person. In fact, sexual energy is willpower, and if we learn to harness sexual energy in the correct way, we can have tremendous willpower, not just for chasing a temporary physical sensation of lust, but for developing our soul.
 
That is why the third division of sexual energy is the energy that is found related with the divine spirit of man. We need to be born again of water and spirit. In the beginning, the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2), and those waters were the Mulaprakriti, the sexual waters within the higher states of manifestation, but also within our own body.
 
When we are born again, it is from that same sexual water. There is an esoteric secret practice through which we can use that energy to be born again that was not taught publicly. It is something that is now taught publicly through the teachings of Samael Aun Weor as part of the Aquarian Era. For a long time, it was kept secret because of its potential to create harm as well as its potential to develop the soul.

​How can we use sexual energy to develop the soul? The esoteric teacher Gurdjieff wrote about the sexual substance, the semen, which is the sexual Mulaprakriti in both men and women, the sexual waters, the sexual humidity in a woman and the semen in a man.
 
Gurdjieff wrote:

​So, this, as we have mentioned before, relates to the role of sexual energy to perpetuate the human race, but Gurdjieff goes on to explain another purpose for this sexual energy:

Those higher being-bodies are what we call in this tradition solar bodies. They are vehicles of the soul which have been consciously created through sexual transmutation. To mutate means “to change form,” “transmute,” to take the sexual energy from its raw form and to convert it into a higher form, to sublimate it, to take it out of a liminal state―where it is between its potentials―and to bring it up into a higher state, so it may become sublime or divine.
 
Many of us know that we can use the sexual energy to create a baby, but very few people, usually only people who have been esoterically initiated, are aware that it is that same sexual energy, used in a different way, which can give birth to the bodies of the soul. This is why we learn in Christianity, “With patience ye will possess your souls” (Luke 21:19).
 
We do not have solar bodies yet. Many of us are aware that we have an astral body of emotions and a mental body of intellect, but we are not aware that those bodies are created by nature. They are what are called lunar bodies, and unfortunately when the physical body dies, those bodies will be lost to nature.
 
If we want immortal bodies, bodies that are capable of transmitting the light of divinity―which is a very high potency energy―and also bodies which are capable of surviving after physical death, then we need to consciously create the solar bodies by transforming sexual energy.
 
This is not an automatic work. That means that not everyone will become a possessor of a soul. Only those who apply the science will be able to develop the soul.

​The Gnostic work has at its foundation sexual transmutation as the cornerstone, because that stone of sexuality is what is required to give birth to the soul. Our goal, our aim, is to develop our highest spiritual potential, but we should be careful because as Samael Aun Weor taught us:

Sex has a dual potential. It can create, but it can also destroy. We can see that people who have abused sex can destroy their minds, their hearts, and their bodies very quickly. Unfortunately, sex is a very potent power, and because we have not been taught how to use it properly, it has caused a lot of pain, sexual crimes, sexual degeneration, on our planet.
 
But now we have the key, the sexual mysteries, the great arcanum (divine secret or law, from the Latin arcanus) in order to use sex to liberate us, to create the soul and to liberate us from our enslavement.

​When man is the master of sex, he is the upright pentagram. The head which is the top of the star is dominating the sexual organs, which are between the two legs of the star. That upright pentagram is a representation of the perfection of the human being. We need to have our mind, our own willpower, aligned with divine will, in domination of our sexual impulses. But for many people, it is that sexual force which enslaves the mind and the body.

We have talked before about the three brains. We have an intellectual brain and an emotional brain and a motor-instinctive-sexual brain. The intellect is the slowest brain, and the emotional brain is a little faster, but that motor-instinctive-sexual brain is the fastest of the three.
 
When you are in a life-threatening situation, your instincts will immediately come out to preserve your life. It will react without any thought, before you can even emotionally feel what kind of situation you are in. Your instincts will respond to the situation. The sexual energy is even faster and more powerful than that, because while our instinct urges us to preserve our life―we have an instinct for survival―our sexual energy can urge us to act in ways that are even contrary to our own survival.
 
A mother will risk her life to protect her children. A man may risk his life in order to woo a woman that he is in love with. We see that sexual energy has the power to dominate us, but precisely because of its tremendous power, if we learn how to harness it, to transmute and sublimate that force in accordance with our will and the law of divinity, it can become the greatest power, the power of a master. It can become the power which emanates the light of Christ into manifestation.

​We see here the 16th Arcanum, which we know in our tradition is the Fulminated Tower. When that pentagram of the upright, perfect human being falls, the two legs, the sexual organs, rise above the mind. The inverted pentagram is the fallen human, and just like that, we see in this tower that the fall of man comes when we have a sexual fall, when we are dominated by sexual passion rather than in control of sexuality.
 
Manly P. Hall wrote about this in relation to this card specifically, the 16th Arcanum: The Tower. He wrote:

​Why is Manly P. Hall associating sex with the divine nature of humanity? This tower? The tower is our spinal column upon which rests the crown, the crown chakra. At the base of that spinal column are our sexual organs. That sexual energy needs to flow upward, up the spinal column into the mind, into the crown chakra, in order to nourish the entire organism, as well as the internal bodies: the vital body, the astral body, the mental body. 

​When that sexual energy is expelled out of us, specifically through orgasm, when we lose that vital force, that is when the tower becomes fulminated, and man falls to ruin. We become slaves to materiality. We begin to believe the illusions of egotistical desires, mundane ambitions, and we become trapped in this temporary world, unable to create our souls, because we have lost the very energy of the soul itself.
 
It is very, very important that we understand these two outcomes of sex, one which is liberation and birth and one which is destruction, enslavement. When we use sexual energy wisely, when we conserve it and transmute it, we can reach the highest states of human potential. When we lose that sexual seed in men and in women, when we orgasm, we lose that energy. We short circuit the organism, and through that process, we slowly or sometimes quickly destroy our bodies, our emotional center, our mental center, and we lose the potential to give birth to the soul.
 
Each of us has to ask ourselves, “How do we currently use our sexual energy?”
 
Throughout much of history, we were taught to repress the sexual energy, that sex was something dirty. We were not publicly taught this sacred and tremendous potential of sex to give birth to the soul. Unfortunately, through that kind of teaching, many people learn that they should repress all of their sexual instincts. But the sexual energy is a powerful current that cannot be dammed up like a river. If you try to hold it back without giving it the proper outlets for its expression, it can destroy the organism. It can destroy the mind, the heart, and even the body.
 
Those who only repress sex and do not understand how to use it in a divine way will unfortunately develop grave mental and emotional imbalances, and sometimes go on to commit horrible sexual crimes.
 
We understand that repression is not the proper use of sexual energy and can have very harmful outcomes.
 
Conversely, indulgence in sexuality can also result in the destruction of our organism. Those who abuse the sexual energy through fornication, masturbation, adultery, and other forms of sexual degeneration, will also destroy their minds, their hearts, their bodies over time. Through the loss of their vital force, that loss of sexual energy in orgasm, they are going to destroy the organism, because that energy has proper channels through which it should flow. Unfortunately, the orgasm short circuits all of those channels and creates a sort of depletion within the organism.
 
Since many of us have been orgasming for much of this lifetime and even in past lifetimes, unfortunately we have psychological and physical conditioning to feel like that behavior is needed, like that behavior is normal, although it is not. In fact, on this planet in particular, it is one of the outliers in which sexuality is abused in this way.

​The natural functioning of the sexual energy is to be transmuted or sublimated up the spinal column and into the brain, so it can nourish the physical body and the energetic bodies, and so that it can coat those bodies and crystallize into a higher being-body, a solar body through which a high potency of divine energy can begin to express, and also a body, a solar body that can outlast the physical body, that can become immortal and survive after death.
 
We see here possibilities: the outcome of orgasm will create destruction, but the outcome of transmutation or sublimation of sexual energy will lead to the birth of the soul. This is the proper use of sexuality. When we feel that restlessness, that stimulation of our sexual energy, that sexual heat that feels the need to express, there are certain practices that we can work with, and I will talk about those in a moment.
 
We do need to use that energy, but in a divine way, in a sacred way, in order to preserve it and use it for spiritual purposes. Unfortunately, for many of us, we are accustomed to orgasm, to expelling the energy and to losing it.
 
Samael Aun Weor writes that:

​Infra, meaning, “under, below,” those who are dominated by sex rather than those who dominate their sexual energy. Infrasexuals can engage in all those various forms of sexual perversion that we see abundantly on this planet and in these times, and while many people consider that to be normal behavior, it is unfortunately leading to the degeneration of our entire species.
 
We need to learn, relearn, the proper, natural channels through which we can raise that sexual energy.

Within this tradition, we teach a practice called pranayama. This is taught in many other traditions, and there are various forms of pranayama. However, we caution you to be careful when using pranayama as taught in other traditions because it may or may not be a helpful form of pranayama.
 
In fact, some pranayamas that are taught are actually taught in a way that expels the vital energy, that causes that harmful effect that we are trying to avoid. We encourage you to use pranayamas taught within this Gnostic tradition, especially in the beginning, because these are practices that we know and that we can endorse, that will transmute the sexual energy in the proper way.

​One such pranayama practice which is very simple, which I have used for many years, is the Ham-Sah pranayama. We can see in this image three channels that lie around and over the spinal column. The middle channel is the Shushumna and on the left and the right are the Ida and Pingala canals. Those are masculine and feminine channels.
 
Within us when we use pranayama, we are harnessing the vital force. That vital force is prana, and yama means, “to restrain.” We are using breath and this breathing technique in order to harness the vital force that is within our own sexual organs and to raise it up through these three channels into the brain into the crown chakra.
 
This practice is especially useful for single people who do not have a partner. When we feel a lot of sexual stimulation, we can use this practice to transmute that energy and to raise it up to nourish our bodies. Also, married people can use this practice if they feel that they have a lot of Chi, a lot of sexual energy, and they need some of this practice to cool themselves off and to bring that energy into harmony.
 
The first step of the practice is to inhale deeply and slowly through your nostrils while mentally pronouncing the mantra Ham:

​Of course, because we are breathing in through the nose, we have to mentally mantralize. While we are inhaling, we visualize the sexual energy rising up these two channels Ida and Pingala that wrap around the spinal column into the brain. That is the first step: breathing in and mantralizing Ham while visualizing energy rising from the sexual organs through these two canals into the brain.
 
The second step is to retain the breath as long as comfortable while we visualize that energy like a light saturating into the brain, the glands, the crown chakra, the third eye. We visualize that light nourishing and stimulating our consciousness, especially the pineal gland which is the root of the soul.
 
Then in the third step, after retaining the breath, we exhale quickly through the mouth vocalizing Sah, like a hiss. 

We visualize the energy moving from the brain into the heart chakra and nourishing the heart.
 
You can perform this as many times as needed, but I encourage you to do it at least ten to fifteen minutes every day.

​Women should not practice any transmutation or mantralization while they are on their menstrual cycle. During that one week per month of your period, you should not practice this transmutation, because it is a time of cleansing, of removing negative energies out of the body, and unfortunately, if you try to transmute your energy at that time, you will be retaining those unclean energies and raising them up into your body, which is counterproductive. Women should rest during that one week.
 
The rest of the time, every day, we can use this practice, and especially if we are accustomed to orgasm, we should should be using this practice in the beginning before we try any of the other more advanced sexual transmutation practices with a partner, because this allows us to work individually without that stimulation of a partner, in order to master our sexual force.
 
In ancient times, when monks and nuns were initiated, they would work with a practice like this, as a single person for many years, before they would be given a partner with whom they could practice the more advanced stages of sexual transmutation, and so, because we are not monks and nuns and because many of us have lived with bad sexual behaviors and misused our sexual energy, it is even more important that we work with a practice like this, to begin to get back in control of our body.
 
If you notice that you are losing energy, then you want to work with this practice longer and longer each day. There is no maximum limit through which we can work with pranayama. It is a great practice to use every day and as often as needed.
 
Pranayama will help us to awaken consciousness, because as I mentioned before, that vital force, that sexual energy, is very potent, and can give us the energy we need for those practices like self-observation throughout the day that can help us to maintain awakened consciousness.
 
Pranayama can also help us to harness sexual energy for disintegrating ego. If you remember a previous lecture, Consciousness, Ego, and Personality, we discovered that much of our free consciousness is within egotistical, false identities, desires that are repetitive, habitual, desires that are related with mundane satisfaction, sensation. Unfortunately, the only way that we can escape out of those desires is through disintegrating them, and we can only disintegrate them through this power of Mulaprakriti, our Divine Mother, the divine, feminine force of our sexuality.
 
This practice of pranayama is very powerful for awakening consciousness and also for disintegrating ego.

​However, if we do have a partner, if we are in a legitimately constituted marriage with our lifelong partner, we can practice sexual magic, which will have an even higher result, even greater effects.
 
Sexual magic is the practice that we use to create the solar bodies. All creation requires a masculine and feminine force, to unite through sex, and the creation of the solar bodies is no different. Unfortunately, single people alone can not create the solar bodies. We need a man and a woman, to unite sexually through love, through marriage, to retain that sexual seed, renounce orgasming in the sexual act, and through that process they can create the soul.
 
Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Perfect Matrimony:

​As we mentioned earlier, what is created are those higher being-bodies, vehicles of the soul.
 
Manly P. Hall also wrote that marriage is what is needed for us to develop our highest potential. He wrote:

Sexual magic is the great arcanum, the greatest secret of all of the esoteric mystery schools. This has the power to give birth to the soul. But unfortunately, if used unwisely, sexuality also has the power to destroy us and to convert us into demons, if that sexuality is used in the wrong way. If we engage in orgasm, we will become infrasexuals, we will become slaves of sex, instinctive desires, and we will never be able to develop the soul in alignment with divine will.
 
The orgasm is what breaks our connection to divinity within, and sexual transmutation can regenerate us and can restore the connection and the covenant with our inner divinity.
 
I will read a brief description of the practice of sexual magic from the esoteric teacher Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller, in which he describes how the sexual act is performed between a husband and wife when we are working to retain and transmute that sexual energy. He wrote: 

​That is the practice between husband and wife that can give birth to the soul.
 
Sexual union―in which each partner represents those two polarized forces, masculine principle and feminine principle―magnetizes the couple so that a circuit is created, in which the sexual energy is fully charged, magnetizing with both polarities and giving birth to the soul.
 
Without that union, we can still perform transmutation within ourselves and achieve a certain degree of spiritual development. But it requires a partner to reach the highest levels of spiritual development and the birth of the immortal solar bodies.
 
That is why sexual transmutation is the foundation of the Gnostic work. The cornerstone, the sexual stone, is the foundation upon which our spiritual development depends. If we can not harness the sexual energy and use it for these kinds of purposes, unfortunately we do not have the necessary foundation for spiritual development. 

​It is very important too that we begin to cultivate a different psychological response to sex. We have been extremely conditioned in our contemporary culture to view sex and the opposite sex in a very lustful way, all about stimulating more sensation, more physical desire, but sex is a sacrament. Sex itself is marriage, according to nature. The union of man and woman through sex is marriage, a natural law. It is a very, very sacred act. Unfortunately, when we go to engage in that sexual act, our minds are very polluted with lustful thoughts like animals.
 
It does take time for us to develop purity, psychological purity, in the sexual act. We begin as animals, but through transmuting that force and conserving that force, generally, over time, we can begin to change our psychology―regenerate―to bring that fallen inverted pentagram back into the upright position where the mind dominates sex, and the mind can become united with divinity.
 
I wanted to read a passage from Samael Aun Weor in the book Sexology where he describes how we should look at the opposite sex. He begins writing about the male sex, but then he goes on to describe for females as well. Here is what he wrote:

​We see depicted here the two pillars of the temple, which represent the masculine and feminine principles. That space between us is space for divinity, for light, for Christ. In the sexual act, if we become totally identified with sensation, we are no longer observing ourselves and remembering divinity. Each time we enter the sexual act to perform sexual magic or sexual alchemy, we need to remember that this is a sacrament. We need to leave the space for divinity to be present. Divinity is present when we feel true love, and love is distinct from lust.
 
As I mentioned, we do begin the sexual act in an animal way and lustful way, because that is our current state. But through transmutation over time, we can convert that lust into chastity, into purity, which is the substance of love.

We need sexual energy to perform the revolution of consciousness, and the sexual energy relates with the factor of birth. As I mentioned, birth of the soul depends on the proper use of sexual energy.
 
We also use the sexual energy in the process of death, death of the ego. Much of us is trapped in a false sense of self, in crystallized desires and patterns of behavior which are harmful. We are slaves to those desires, but we can become liberated from those desires through transmutation of sexual energy, and that process is a process of death. That is how sex can give birth in a positive way, birth of the soul, and can destroy also in a positive way, because it is destroying that which is false and giving birth to that which is true.
 
The third factor for the revolution of consciousness as taught to us by Samael Aun Weor is sacrifice―birth, death, and sacrifice. Sacrifice relates to sexual transmutation because especially in the beginning, it is very difficult for us to sacrifice our desires, and sexual desires are some of the most powerful desires we have.
 
Over time as the organism is renounced and the psychological person becomes accustomed to working with sexual transmutation, we experience the benefits of that practice. We experience the serenity and the joy and the vitality that is given to us by that practice. Most importantly, we experience how conserving and transmuting the sexual energy reconnects us to our inner divinity, granting us mystical experiences, and granting us the return of our conscience so we know how to act in difficult situations. That gift is so precious that no physical moment of bliss, no physical sensations, are worth sacrificing it.

There is much more to sexual transmutation than we can discuss in one short lecture, and so I urge all of you to read the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, because this book contains many of the mysteries across religions throughout time in which the sexual teaching was hidden. It also describes various practices that you can work with, aside from the two that I have mentioned today, in order to transmute your sexual energy, whether as a single person or as a married couple.  

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