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The purpose of meditation is to acquire information which is not readily accessible to the senses. As a fundamental rule, direct knowledge of divinity, reality, the truth, can only occur once the psychological conditions that trap our perception are removed.
All of us in Gnosis long for intimate wisdom, the radical transformative experience of speaking directly with the divine. However, while we may engage in deep prayer, calling out intensely for guidance, asking for instruction, the reality is that we cannot receive the message, the response, when our minds and hearts are distracted and afflicted. It is like comparing our prayers to a broadcast, like an SOS call, an emergency signal. We desperately yearn for truth, for knowledge, for wisdom, and we pray. We supplicate. We ask for help, and yet, metaphorically, psychologically, we have the radio playing at full blast. Many people know how to pray, to talk with the divine, to supplicate, to beg, and may even be very eloquent at it. However, the reality is that nobody knows how to listen: to receive the essential message of divinity, which is not apprehensible to our cloistered, negligent, conditioned consciousness. If we are honest, we will see that our lives are filled with noise. I do not mean just while we drive our car or listen to our iPod. The truth is that our mind is constantly thinking. We are always conceptualizing, debating, arguing, projecting associative thought, ideas, lectures, sermons, warnings, onto the screen of our existence, to the point that we don't even have any awareness of our surroundings. We talked about this briefly in the lecture on awareness, being present in the moment, absence and presence, paying attention. We tend to be very lost. The mind is not concentrated on what we are doing. We are consciously asleep. We are not awake. It is in the stillest moments in our lives when we acquire the most clarity, even when such realizations are startling and often times disturbing. In the silence of discontent, in the inquietudes of our heart, in our most intimate longings, we have received a secret impetus, an insight, a divine intuition. As Al-Junayd stated about retreat: Sufism is sitting for a few moments without cares and worries with God. ―Al-Junayd
Divinity always speaks to us. The problem is that despite our prayers, we do not know how to abandon identification, anxiety, despair―to be capable of perceiving and even understanding the reply. We do not know how to listen, to receive.
Divinity speaks in the form of intuition: to know without having to think about it. Rationalization and our over-reliance on concepts, intellectual processes―this is the obstacle. This is the lock on the door that leads to divine experience, genuine wisdom. We have to make a very clear distinction between the mind or intellect, and the consciousness. Hopefully in this series of lectures, you have grasped the thread about this distinction and the different qualities inherent within our innate capacity to perceive: the consciousness, the Essence. Consciousness is the capacity to see, to perceive. It is not thought. It is not the mind. Humanity likes to think that our essential nature is thought. But this is not true. The French philosopher Descartes was wrong when he said, “I think therefore I am.” To think is not to be, to be present, to be watchful. You could be listening to this lecture, but if your mind is chattering, you are not present. You are not being here and now. You are dreaming. Consciousness is very dynamic. It is a very broad spectrum that is beyond the conditions or limitations of thought. This can be very evident through a traumatic experience. I am sure some of us might have been in a car accident before: some kind of danger in which your consciousness was shocked into being present. In a single instant of danger, a person confronted with the split-second decision of to be or not to be, can respond appropriately to a crisis without needing to think at all, without needing to rationalize. You can be driving your car, and then you can turn away from oncoming traffic, because in the moment prior, you were distracted. You were not paying attention. It is only much later after the heat of an ordeal like that that we even begin to think about the calamity that was avoided. This indicates to us that thought is a very slow process. It is not quick. We have other functions in our psychology that are much more expedient, fast. A lot of people like to deify the intellect. Academics, scholars, intellectuals, defend and acclaim the mind. They believe that it is superior to all else, and this is wrong. This is limited. Consciousness is the potential to experience and respond to life with lucidity, with judgment, which can operate much quicker than thought can, than any type of intellectual deliberation, like in the example I offered you of driving a car. You didn't have to think in the moment. You just acted because you knew what you needed to do to survive. Thought is a projection, and if you study Tibetan Buddhism, especially the writings of Padmasambhava in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, in the chapters on the nature of conscious awakening [Introduction to Awareness], he explains very beautifully how the mind, the intellect, the self, is always projecting its thoughts onto experience, and it doesn't see the reality. The mind constantly projects its films upon the screen of existence, and we, hypnotized, simply follow its thread, its associations, its connections, not recognizing that this is a form of conditioning. It is a type of agitation and movement that is contrary to meditation. It is not stillness. Our minds are constantly in a state of hypertension, we can say. We tend to be very agitated in the West, North America, over-excited by many distractions in life, and yet, while the mind is constantly in tension, this does not mean that our consciousness is awake, that it is comprehensive, that it is understanding of what is happening in our daily life. Understanding or comprehension is a distinct characteristic of the consciousness, but this can only emerge if we perform a very fundamental shift in our psychological sense and center of gravity. Where we are within our behavior and our conduct? Where do our actions come from? We have to observe this. We have to question this. We have to analyze. In truth, we must make the consciousness active and the mind passive. This is a tremendous turn in direction within our psychology, because right now our mind is active and our consciousness is asleep. If you do not believe me, you can reflect on a moment in your life in which you weren't paying attention, perhaps like in your car, and perhaps learning a hard lesson that you nearly died because you weren't remembering yourself, where you were, what you were doing. Our mind currently dominates everything we do, and of course, anybody who studies meditation recognizes this as a fact or to a point. We realize that the mind is a source of our problems. It is not the panacea. It is not the solution, regardless of what our culture and society believe. It is easy to see and to reflect on how overthinking, constantly worrying, daydreaming, and ruminating about a problem, only makes us worse. It makes us suffer, and this is something we want to avoid. But better than avoiding the problem, it is better to look at it with clear and untainted eyes―a serious examination of our mental stream. The truth is that when the mind is receptive, when it is calm, lucid, it becomes an amazing instrument, an intelligent vehicle through which we can work for divinity and humanity. The mind can be a wonderful gift if it is balanced, if it is harmonized, if it is in equilibrium with all the other centers of our psychology. 
It could become like a lake. It can reflect within its crystalline waters the starry heavens. When it is still, it is profoundly deep, reflective, intuitive.
Comprehension and understanding are the direct apprehension of the consciousness without having to think, without having to rationalize. Thinking is a disturbance in the mind. It is like when you thrash in a lake. You are swimming, or you throw a stone into the depths. Thought is like that. It is a rippling of the waves of our mind. Our mind ripples with reactions, in an egotistical way, from the center of our existence to the periphery, which is our senses. Although lot of people do not recognize this fact, it is possible to comprehend life without relying on thought. Thought is a disruption within the flow of existence. Thought itself can flow serenely without having a rippling effect, leaving its wake within our interior psychology. You can do this by watching yourself: allowing existence to flow through you through the path of concentration and serenity, which we are explaining today. 
Comprehension is the capacity to know with a receptive mind, an intuitive mind. You simply know the answer to a problem. You direct your attention. You allow your mind to rest. You let it receive. It waits. It is like a chalice, and in the Christian symbology, the Holy Grail partly represents this: the chalice that receives the blood of Christ, the energies and principles of the divine. But of course, you must clean the inside of the cup and not be like a Pharisee, only worrying about the exterior: your college degrees, your job, your career, if this is something that really matters or is on the forefront to you.
Instead, our psychological purity is what matters. We can intuit, we can comprehend, we can understand when the consciousness is engaged with life, and the consciousness is only engaged when our personality, our habits, all those customs relating to our language and culture, our racial identity and heritage, our concepts of mother flag and nation, when our traumas cease, when they no longer dominate our states. The mind and the personality, which are necessary, need to become passive. They have to serve as a vehicle and not the operator. But learning to distinguish this is very difficult. This is why we practice concentration in the beginning, to develop the consciousness, to separate from the lower qualities of our self, which must be examined. The consciousness in truth can direct the mind, or the ego can, نَفْس nafs, selves, conditions. The consciousness, when it is in command of the centers of our psychology, knows how to manage energy for the Spirit, for upright action and even the betterment of humanity. This signifies a very profound state of perception―continuous, consistent, clear. It is unconditioned by a sense of self, physically, materially, culturally, etc. When the “I,” the ego, is absent, then the consciousness experiences the plenitude and silence of God. Silence and serenity is the spontaneous, natural state of our Being. The problem is that we have smothered all this, all our good qualities, within attachments, cravings, ignorance, mechanicity, reactions, fear. This is why we don't understand or receive clear messages from the Being. This is why we have so much delusion in our lives, why we are confused. Despite our most cherished beliefs, we can learn to understand and receive the messages of the Being with great efficacy, with clarity, with facility, with ease, when we adopt the appropriate training. While meditation schools, lectures, and books can provide instruction about the form, the spirit of serenity, it is only understood from experience. This is why Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi stated the following: Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation. ―Rumi 
The First Stage of Worship
All schools of meditation teach how serenity, internal silence, is the prerequisite for meditation. Prophet Muhammad was known to have said in the Hadith, the oral tradition of Islam, that “an hour of contemplation is better than a year of prayer.” Yet what is contemplation?
We explained previously that the Arabic term is مشاهدة mushahadah: to witness the truth, to perceive new information about reality. Contemplation is the state of meditation. When you bear witness in a court of law, you are verifying what you have seen, heard, and experienced to the best of your ability. The same with contemplation of your innermost divinity. Witnessing and experiencing the truth obviously occurs in degrees. It has many levels of experience. It is multi-dimensional in relation to the universe and our own inner constitution. Consciousness and truth have infinite potential for expression and investigation of the physical and even the internal worlds. However, to even begin to have a space for contemplation, whether of a book, a scripture, a teaching, an event in your life, a virtue you have experienced in yourself or an ego you have self-observed, we must acquire some initial stability of concentration and internal serenity. Which is why Prophet Muhammad stated: The first stage of worship is silence. ―Prophet Muhammad, Hadith
In our example of sending out an emergency signal from the radio, you cannot receive, let alone understand the codes, the response, if you are distracted.
So as I said, many people already know how to pray. People go to church and synagogue, to mosques, to Buddhist temples, to monasteries. They have many formulas they use to pray and they are all very beautiful and necessary. Yet the reality is that few people know how to receive. This is why there's so much absence in many people's hearts. Very few people know how to listen within. This is because distraction is our common state of being. If you sit to examine your psychology, not in the future, but here and now, even if just for 10 minutes, you will directly perceive that your mind is all over the place. You may be spacing out. There are discursive, fragmented thoughts, memories, everything pulling you in many directions. It may be due to fear, pride, hatred, lust, desire, ego, س nafs. Silence, on the contrary, is a psychological space in which we can actually learn to understand and directly communicate with divinity without vagueness, without: “Maybe I did and maybe I didn't.” No ambiguity. No abstraction. No theory. No belief. You simply know. It could be good to have external silence when you are seeking to cultivate a meditation space or practice, since a very welcome or warm and calm environment is conducive for beginning meditators to really actualize the first steps of their discipline, which is equanimity, dispassion, serenity, clarity. 
Outer and Inner Silence
The Sufis explain this very well, that there are two forms of silence: external and internal.
Silence has two parts, outer quiet and the quiet of heart and mind. ―Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
This is from Al-Qushayri's Principles of Sufism. Let us recall that just as there are levels of instruction, teaching, and practice with in Sufism, within Buddhism, Gnosticism, etc., likewise, our degree, our intentions, and the depth of our silence is characterized in distinct categories and grades.
There are levels to serenity. It is not like we are just going to sit and practice and suddenly the mind is completely blank instantaneously. There are gradations to different states of inner silence. We can examine two categories according to the Sufis, the one who trusts in God and the Gnostic who has already had some experiences with divinity. Al-Qushayri states: Someone who trusts in God stills his heart as a way of laying claim to his sustenance. The gnostic stills his heart in acceptance of destiny through the quality of harmony with God. ―Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
If you have been following the sequence and practices of this course, you will see that mystical experiences, astral projections, dream yoga visions, etc., are the natural result of working with Gnostic practices, including mantra, pranayama, sexual alchemy, transmutation, runes, sacred rites for rejuvenation, jinn state exercises, many exercises. If you have tasted such experiences and verified them through a consistent discipline, you naturally gain trust in divinity. You become familiar with divinity to your degree, in accordance with the level of your practice.
Therefore, we have confidence in the practical reality and consequence of a still mind, of a silent intellect, a balanced heart distinguished by its equanimity. We practice so as “to lay claim to our sustenance,” which is why Samael Aun Weor stated that “meditation is the daily bread of the wise.” It is our food, our nourishment. It is what gives us strength, and when we verify those states, it encourages us to practice further, which is what the Sufis are stating. Likewise, the Gnostic, the initiate, stills his or her heart, enters internal silence and accepts whatever mystical state arrives spontaneously within the screen of his or her consciousness. But how do these two, the one who trusts, and the Gnostic, defer? We can examine further in this quote: The one relies upon the fineness of His work. The other is content with the totality of His decrees. ―Al Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So as beginners, we rely on the refinement of His work, which signifies ethical discipline. We restrain negative behaviors and, in turn, we enact virtuous behaviors, which are known as ethics, precepts. These help us to conserve energy so that we can awaken our consciousness. By refining our actions, our Essence, our soul, becomes stronger and empowered. This is the meaning of the doctrine of شريعة shari’ah, the law, the divine commands.
Only after truly defining ourselves for many years in meditation does one learn “to be content with the totality of His decrees,” which have to do with very profound mystical states: the exaltation of our Being, whether in daily life, or especially in the dream state. It is also indicated and indicates an acceptance of His states, whether of absence or presence, as we discussed previously. Al-Qushayri concludes here: With this meaning they have said: His misfortunes came over you, And the cares of your inner being were relieved. ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So with familiarization and acculturation to these principles of serenity and silence, we gain greater confidence in the Being. This is faith. This is knowing. There is no doubt there. You know what consciousness is and you know what the Being is because we act ethically in each moment.
When we establish this training, we can face extremely difficult hardships and ordeals relating to the path of initiation, and this is because divinity is testing us to determine: What are our states? What have we developed? What is our level of being? Despite all these challenges, we remain at peace. This is a great victory. We also related in prior lectures how when we remember the presence of divinity, even in a tragedy, in a deep trauma, amongst cataclysms like that are happening today, we don't suffer. We know we are protected or guarded. We are defended in times of need, so that our deepest longings for instruction and guidance are fulfilled in practical life. I have to say that this pandemic has definitely been very terrible for many people, and in my case, I know as a result of my work that I have been blessed by divinity, have been aided in many of my needs, so I am very grateful for that. I have that faith. It is what I have experienced not only physically, but internally, in the internal worlds. So this is what confidence is. We know, and yet to know this security, this confidence, this humility in divinity, it is necessary to really master the power of speech, which is the science of silence. The Eloquence of Wisdom
All meditative traditions emphasize the wisdom of silence. Samael Aun Weor, the founder of our tradition even stated that “silence is the eloquence of wisdom.” But what does this mean?
We learn to receive wisdom through physical and psychological silence, through having a mind in a profound state of receptivity, dedication, and respect for divinity. We learn from others, the world, and our teachers through having a humble, silent, and receptive mind. Passivity of the personality, the tongue, and the mind are the prerequisite of learning. No matter any field of study, one has to listen. One has to engage with the consciousness to understand, so that the consciousness is awake, so that it is reflecting its brilliant character, its lucid attention, its diligent activity and its penetrative engagement with life. Have you ever listened to a lecture or a person and found that your mind is talking while they are? This type of internal chatter has to cease if we really want to gain a genuine appreciation of reality and others, especially. In Buddhism, the bowl of our consciousness must be up to receive whatever arrives. Samael Aun Weor dedicated an entire chapter in The Revolution of the Dialectic that detail these principles. I'd like to read to you the following, “The Defamation of the Word”: The explosion of a cannon destroys the glass of a window. On the other hand, a soft word pacifies anger or wrath. Nevertheless, an insulting, inharmonious word produces anger or melancholy, sadness, hatred, etc.
So in synthesis, speech can serve divinity and ennoble humanity, or it could destroy and sabotage our happiness and the happiness of others.
Sufism and the Qur’an speak abundantly about the need to show respect in our verb. Gossip and slander have really destroyed spiritual movements, political movements, as we are seeing now, today. The foundation of genuine spirituality is the ethical and conscious expression of our words, which have the power to unite communities, or it can destroy them, as we are seeing abundantly today. Let us read some excerpts from this chapter from Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism: A wise man said that the human being was created with only one tongue, but with two eyes and two ears so that he may hear and see more than he says. Ibrahim bin Adham was invited to a banquet. When he sat down, the guests began to gossip. He remarked, "It is our custom to eat the meat course after the bread, but you have begun by eating the meat!" (He was pointing to the saying of God, "Would one of you like to eat the dead flesh of his brother? No, you would abhor it" (59:12)). ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
To enter meditation, we have to really conserve our energy. This includes our mind, our emotions, our vitality, and our will. Negative words waste energy and waste our potential, the ability to awaken consciousness. This is why the Sufis spend a lot of time focusing on verbal discipline, the chastity or purity of the tongue.
Al-Qusharyi continues: A Sufi said, "Silence is the tongue of forbearance." Another said, "Learn silence as you have learned speech. Speech will guide you, and silence will protect you." It is said, "The chastity of the tongue is its silence." And it is said, "The tongue is a beast of prey. If you do not tie it up, it will attack you.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So this is verifying what Samael Aun Weor wrote. Chastity, while the sexual principle of conserving and transforming energy, applies to our speech. For as Samael Aun Weor explained, we modify our sexual energy based on our words, our qualities. If our speech is lustful, negative, degenerate, we will radically fortify our desires, our ego, our نَفْس nafs. When we have purity of speech, dignified words, and harmonious communication with others, we empower the soul and the Spirit of our neighbor.
However, there are degrees of psychological, of ethical, of verbal, of conscious purity, which is studied within the three-tiered structure of Sufi and Gnostic meditation. The Degrees of Silence
We discussed extensively regarding the three stages or degrees in meditation: introductory, intermediate, and advanced practice. Or شريعة Shari’ah, طريقة Tariqah, and حقيقة Haqiqah / معرفة Marifah: the divine law, inner meditation, and mystical experience, respectively.
Silence has levels of application within different contexts and even refers to states of initiating development within spiritual schools. In the beginning, meditators struggle to control their tongue: to not indulge in vain conversation, to not talk about politics, debates, argumentation, disputes, words filled with anger or resentment. This is due to the fact that we waste a lot of energy on these things, especially when we speak with ego. Remember that we also spoke a lot about the nature of breath: the three types of soul mentioned in Kabbalah and the Qur’an, which relate to the degrees of silence on the spiritual path. Let us review these:
Our egos are نَفْس nafs, nafas, which translate as “breath.” We even find in the opening of Ecclesiastes, chapter 1 verse 2, how through the breath we indulge in vain things. We waste our potential, our energy, our dynamism: Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. ―Ecclesiastes 1:2
The Hebrew term for vanity is הֶבֶל habel. This is the original name for Abel in the Bible who was killed by Cain. This is a symbol of how through the wrong use of speech, whether it is vulgar expressions, nonsense, inconsequential, meaningless words, incoherence, negative emotions, desire―we kill Abel, הֶבֶל Habel, our consciousness.
Cain is the soul that inclines to evil: Nafsu-l-Ammara, which is wrong thoughts, wrong feelings, wrong actions. These all find their synthesis within speech. Speech is a form of alchemy, whether for good or for evil. It combines and expresses the inherent nature of our psychology. When we wish to convey to others our ways of thinking, our feeling, our being―we speak. We create circumstances based on the amalgamations, the combinations, the articulation of words. We empower our speech through the internal content and intent of our psychological state, here and now. Speech is modified by sexual energy, and vice versa, which is why adolescents’ voices change during puberty: the development and invigoration of hormones and sexuality. How you manage your verb is predicated upon sexual energy. To even obtain the beginning stages of serenity, we have to refrain from vulgar speech, from vain words, from excessive discussions, from polemics. We waste a lot of energy this way that is necessary for really entering serenity. It is an act that really agitates the mind, and when you are trying to meditate, it is counterproductive. It is like punching holes in the bottom of your boat when you are out in the middle of the ocean. You are going to sink. Instead, let yourself rest. Let the waves of the ocean calm. Do not churn and stir up the mud. This is all part of ethics. We waste energy through egotistical speech, through vain breaths of desire. In this manner, when we conserve our energies that are usually wasted through explosions of angry words, violent words, we then have the fuel and the power necessary for prayer, for mantras, for vocal exercises that can consciously redirect that storehouse of energy, of psychic power, emotional force, sexual energy, towards a noble purpose, which is the awakening of our consciousness. Inner silence of mind is the foundation of Gnostic practitioners or those who have divine experiences: knowledge of God. 
Rumi stated in the beginning that “silence is the language of God,” the Being, who speaks through hunches, intuitions, here and now. When your mind is naturally, spontaneously quiet, time ceases, like you see here in this image of a Sufi in meditation facing a clock. We no longer think of the future or the past. We are fully engaged within ourselves in the moment.
This is the entry point to receiving objective knowledge. However, you cannot hear or register those intuitive impulses, let alone act on them, if your mind is constantly disturbed, if it's afflicted with noise. That noise is anger. It is the thoughts of pride, fear, laziness, lust, gluttony, etc. Internal chatter is the definite characteristic of ego, of a conditioned self. By restraining ourselves from wrong action, by fulfilling ethical precepts from our religious traditions, we cultivate a psychological atmosphere that is very clean. It is reverent. It is ethical. It is compassionate through patience, direct perception, and insight. We get very strong. We have more happiness in our life. We have more strength. This is the antechamber. It is the precinct. It is the space in which divinity can communicate with you and guide our actions. In this way, this is how we blame ourselves. This is how we work with the self-reproaching soul, Nafsu-l-Lawwama. We learn to discriminate against our defects with our consciousness. We work with meditation. We analyze and critique all the expressions of the ego within our three brains. So when you develop familiarity with these qualities of serenity and inner peace, which is born from intuitive action, we learn to acclimate ourselves. We learn to respond with virtue. We don't react mechanically to life like we used to. This is how we really love and remember divinity, حضور hudur, the presence of the Being, when you really restrain any thoughts that are distracting and distracted, which attempt to pull us away from our connection, the thread and continuity of the moment, of our awareness, of our mindfulness. Beginners restrain their tongues from wrong speech. Gnostics attain silence through intuitive action, when you act without having to think about it. You simply know. This is the quality of the heart, not the intellect. Lovers of God never forget the presence of their Being because they never allow even a fragment or a hair, a distraction the size of a hair’s width, into their consciousness, which is why Al-Qushayri states: It is said, "Silence for the common people is with their tongues, silence for the gnostics is with their hearts, and silence for lovers is with restraining the stray thoughts that come to their innermost beings.” ―Al-Qushayri, Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism
So those masters that never forget their innermost divinity have acquired the soul at peace, Nafsu-l-Mutma'inna. Their silence and serenity is eternal. It is permanent. It is unfaltering.
The Definition of Serenity
Let us explain some more practical dimensions about silence and serenity. We have an image here of the human machine. This is our constitution. It maps all of our processes, psychological level, and even a spiritual level as well.
Right now, the centers, the intellect, the emotions, our movement, our instinct, and our sexual qualities tend to be mechanical, conditioned: fulfilling the impetus and impulses of desire, the ego. Silence must exist with an all five centers if we really want to enter meditation. This is a state of suspension of all activity, whether physical or psychological, where we withdraw our consciousness from the physical senses, and, more importantly, from internal disturbances. In the same manner that the limpid pool ripples from the movement of an insect or a stone, likewise, our psychology ripples with any physical or psychological movement, any disturbance. How do we disturb our body? If we are meditating, we move too much. Maybe we scratch an itch. We adjust our posture all the time. Maybe we feel discomfort or pain. Maybe our bodies are too excited, too tense, agitated. When we sit to practice meditation for however long we resolve, it is important that it is done with the purpose of not moving throughout the duration of the practice. If we are moving during our practice, we are not meditating. Silence and stillness has to exist in our body first. Therefore, we have to resolve to ourselves not to move. I know beginners struggle with this, where after five minutes, one can't maintain one's position. But with training it gets easy. It comes to my mind stories of Samael Aun Weor and even his wife Master Litelantes who would meditate for 4 hours without moving. So, they were very advanced practitioners. It's something that we can cultivate gradually. We must not move. This is why it's really important in the beginning to select the meditation posture that is very conducive for relaxation, so we can concentrate. We can be vigilant and calm. The body has to be able to rest so that it's not a distraction. It’s not an obstacle. We have to be relaxed and sleepy, but not completely drowsy, somnolent, falling asleep while losing our continuity of attention, of our self-awareness. Our spine should be straight. It should promote the flow of subtle energies or winds, the vital forces, which are in our psychology and even our physiology, as we explained on the lecture on Breath. However, our posture should be natural. It should not be tense. Your spine has to be firm enough so that you stay awake, but it's relaxed to the point that you forget the body. You don't forget what you are doing consciously, but you let the body rest, to fall into slumber. But consciously, we are awake. It's a very delicate balance. It is very subtle and something that you can only master with experience, with trial and error. The body has to rest and the consciousness must avoid fascination, dreaming, and sleep: lacking attention. But for this, our movements must cease. The instinct or the impulse to adjust, whether from discomfort or pain, is an obstacle. In the beginning, spend a lot of time figuring out what posture works for you so that you can forget the body. You can focus on what's really important, the object of your meditation. Likewise, our desires must be seen. They have to be observed. They have to be understood. Our emotional center has to be at peace. So we spoke about the motor-instinctive-sexual centers, which is really one type of activity. It is the spine located in our body and it's also the mechanism and intelligence of movement, impulse, reactions and sexual impulses that have to calm. But likewise, our heart has to be a peace. We have to learn to have silence not only in our movements, in our instincts, in our impulses, in our sexual cravings. There has to be stability, but likewise our heart. We spend a lot of time talking about sexual energy in the previous lectures. You can't achieve stillness, the spontaneous and controlled relaxation of your body, without the help of the creative sexual energy. There is just no way around it. It is the fuel for conscious empowerment. Again, if you are new to this concept, study our former lectures. We explain these details in great length. When the body settles, you can focus more within your introspection. You can also reflect and relax upon your thinking. There has to be stillness of mind. This means there is a lack of associative memories. There isn't a churning of distractions. There isn't a dispersion of thought, like light being projected into a fog. The clouds must evaporate. Thought must cease. Cessation occurs through an inversion of our psychological state. Right now our mind is very hyperactive, and in other ways, it's also dull. It's heavy. It's clouded. It's not still sometimes. Maybe it's agitated. Or maybe it's too lazy. It lacks vibrancy or lightness. Meanwhile, our consciousness is very asleep. It's passive. It's inactive. It's inert. If you don't believe me, I am sure if you attempted meditation or sat for a few moments trying to experience the state of not thinking, not day dreaming or fantasizing, it is very difficult in the beginning. Perhaps you may select an object of concentration, but you forget the focus. The mind wanders. We forget what we are doing. If we are honest, we can see from experience that this tends to be our daily state. It is a snapshot of what our entire existence is like. So this is the reality for beginning meditators. The mind and the body are obstacles and our consciousness lacks the profundity and the strength, the power to remain focused. However, through practice, this is going to change. Our consciousness must be profoundly active and the mind has to become perceptive, passive, and still. This is why pranayama, sexual energy, is very important. It is the creative waters of genesis that can create the soul. This energy can calm the mind, the heart, and the body. It is the requisite. Consciousness, which is serene perception in its natural state, knows how to see our psychological contents with clarity. It also knows how to maintain continuity without forgetting what it is doing, when we are trained. It's not accessible oftentimes in the beginning, but with discipline it becomes our moment-to-moment state. So consciousness is often characterized by the following qualities: It is peaceful. It is accepting. It is content. It is tranquil. It is a state of equanimity. It is internal silence. In its true form, consciousness is the serene, tranquil, undisturbed and unwavering ability to place attention and to perceive reality but without agitation. It doesn't reject what it sees. It doesn't justify it either. It is not discontent. It is happy, luminous, and clear. It is perception free of the desire for good or ill, from attachment, from aversion, from yes and no, from positive and negative. It perfectly accepts reality. Right now, we don't accept anything that contradicts our desires, if you are honest. Simply look at the politics today. When the world is not the way we want it to be, we suffer. We are conditioned. We are filled with psychological defects. We crave. We have emotional attachments. We have fear. We have aversion or we are in agony, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. Just as we must suspend the thinking process, we also have to rest our emotions, the emotional center, and this can be very difficult to control. Thoughts are much more easier to calm, but negative emotions can be very disastrous. This is why ethics is essential, curtailing negative behaviors, even emotionally; controlling the heart, making it into a temple and offering to our Spirit, to make it clean. Emotions are very volatile. They can be explosive. They are fast and often uncontrolled without training. But with time and practice, it gets easier. So an effective way to achieve serenity and silence is through selecting an object of concentration and focus. Concentration and serenity really go hand-in-hand. To be able to concentrate on one thing, you have to be serene, to not be distracted. But at the same time, serenity is grounded in your ability to focus on one thing: to not let the chaos of the mind take over. Some basic exercises include taking an object of concentration and focus. This is exclusive meditation. You select an object like a stone or a dot on a wall, a mantra, a sacred image, and you dedicate your entire attention upon that one thing. You exclude everything else. This is for the purpose of developing continuity of perception, undistracted attention. If you forget what you are doing, bring yourself back. Don't beat yourself up. Don't be negative or morbid, but simply be gentle. Recall your practice. The Buddha said that if you lose your attention a thousand times in your practice, but regain it a thousand times as well, you performed a very good exercise, a very successful one. Non-exclusive meditation focuses on the mind itself. It's a little bit more difficult. Actually, we could say it's a lot more difficult if we have never trained ourselves to concentrate here and now. It means to observe the contents of our psychology moment by moment, to look at the reality of our thoughts, our feelings, our impulses from a state of serene reflection. We even observe the act of observing. We are within our root nature, looking, examining, not labeling or dividing ourselves in our attention, but simply being. This can be a very profound meditation for great illuminations. In this meditation, we don't exclude anything. You withdraw your consciousness from the world and enter your own clear, pristine luminosity: the sharpness and acute perception of our Essence when it is trained. We look at our mind stream. We see it for what it is. This is the purpose of entering deep states of inner silence, where we can even comprehend very subtle distractions that emerge in the mind that are not perceptible to our ordinary senses. This is self-observation. It is self-reflection taken to a deeper level, which, when you practice it diligently, it can result in illumination. You can have an astral projection. You leave your body because your body falls asleep, but you are perfectly awake as a soul. Very deep. Highly recommend it. 
Tranquility and the Tree of Life
Such experiences of spiritual illumination are mapped here. We have been going back and forth upon the Tree of Life discussing this diagram in detail. Here, we are going to relate it to tranquility in a very powerful verse from the Qur’an. This is from Al-Fath (48:4).
He it is Who sends down the Tranquility (sakīnah) into the hearts of the believers, that they might increase their faith along with their faith―to God belong the soldiers of the heavens and the earth, and God is Knowing, Wise. ―Al-Fath 48:4
The Hebrew term שכינה Shekhinah, according to Jewish mystics, is the power of the divine feminine. She is otherwise known as الْبُرَاق Al-Buraq, the lightning power of the Divine Mother within the Muslim tradition. She is the sacred cow of the longest (and second) Surah in the Qur’an, أل بقره Al-Baqarah. She is the force of intelligence, בינה Binah in Kabbalah. She is the top left sephirah on this diagram. She is the Kundalini, the sexual creative power of God. She is the one who grants tranquility to the meditator.
So this stop trinity in this map expresses the most subtle aspects of divinity known as כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, which in Christianity is denominated Father, Son, Holy Spirit. These are not people. According to Prophet Muhammad, the Christians had degenerated their tradition and literally believe that the trinity are three people, and this is wrong. Instead, they are forces and principles that are one. It is unitary. It is one light that expresses in many ways―three ways specifically, as we see the number three paralleled in this diagram below in the three trinities of this glyph. Kabbalah is the science of numbers, numerology, as we explained. בינה Binah, Shekhinah, the tranquility, سكينة sakīnah, the Divine Mother, is the spiritual, the electromagnetic, the sexual creativity of divinity. This is the power that can grant you intelligence, inner peace, tranquility, cognizance. Our willpower, תפארת Tiphereth, the human soul, is إحسان ihsan, as we explained previously. It is beautiful action. It is willpower, concentration, the Essence fully developed when it obeys divinity above: the five sephiroth, above the middle center of this glyph, תפארת Tiphereth. תפארת Tiphereth is beautiful action. It is the focal point for manifesting and governing or expressing the top trinity above. It is also the perfection, the splendor of expression from גבורה Geburah, divine justice, and חסד Chesed, the mercy of our Spirit. When we utilize these intelligent principles, the sexual energy, it stabilizes the סְפִירוֹת sephiroth [emanations] below: נצח Netzach, the mind, הוד Hod, the emotions, יסוד Yesod, vitality, and מלכות Malkuth, the physical body. When we do this, our willpower is very strong. It is also very serene. It is the center of this whole diagram because through willpower is how we determine everything, whether we follow egotistical qualities below or we ascend above to higher states. Real serenity is penetrative. It is serene. It is the ability to maintain an unwavering attention upon the object of our concentration, without forgetting our purpose or the clarity of our seeing. It is the foundation for meditation. And with practice, it eventually doesn't take any effort. In the beginning, it's very hard, but with practice, when you are familiar with it, you enter it at will. This is the Zen statement of entering a state of meditation without effort, without exertion. It is the effortless effort. Our willpower, our concentration, our attention, when it is guided by the intelligence of the Divine Mother, the wisdom and supremacy of the Being, it knows how to acquire genuine faith in the teachings and to learn how to be a soldier in the Army of the Voice, according to Samael Aun Weor, which are the Elohim, the Gods, the buddhas, the masters, the prophets, the enlightened ones: those who have reached perfection through this path. The compelling intelligence and energy of tranquility, serenity, and sexual creativity allows the consciousness to experience freedom, freedom from conditions of mind. But how is this accomplished we may ask? Abdullah Ansari of of Herat states the following in his Stations of the Sufi Path: Tranquility is peace that God pours into the heart of His friends so they taste freedom. Tranquility of the heart is found in three things: in devotion to divine unity, in service, and in certitude. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path Unity, Service, and Certitude
Let us examine how to experience tranquility, serenity, according to Abdullah Ansari of Herat, the Sufi Persian initiate.
Tranquility found in the devotion to divine unity brings about three effects in the heart: fear for a day that has not yet come, knowing God who one has not yet met, and loving God whom one has not yet seen. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So as we explained previously, divine unity is a state of spiritual and psychological integrity. It means that our consciousness is unitary. It is not fragmented among so many different aggregates, egos, desires, نَفْس nafs. When we free the consciousness and unite it with divinity, we perform religion, from the Latin religare, “to reunite.” This is also in Arabic دين, din: judgment, to judge ourselves, so that we can unify our states, perfect them.
As we annihilate egos, we gain greater reverence. We even gain expectancy of future events, prophetic visions, which detail the coming destruction of humanity according to the Abrahamic traditions. We also gain confidence in and fidelity to the teachings. When we see that we are really, at the beginning, a multiplicity of defects, a consciousness that has the potential to become spiritual, we become encouraged when we realize the facts of our practice, that we are changing, even if we don't have any supreme ecstasies or samadhis, states of the soul that are very deep. They're wonderful and beautiful, but we are not driven by attachment for experiences. This is a common problem amongst meditators. It is learning to practice without craving the result. We also love divinity and the doctrine, the state of His qualities and virtues within ourselves, even if we don't witness Him through the highest degrees in the Tree of Life. There are levels upon levels of experience. “Light upon light,” says the Qur’an [24:35]. We have to work with where we are at and be humble, to accept what divinity provides but to always strive and work without craving, without attachment. The Sufi master continues: And the tranquility in service brings about three things in the heart. It leads the wayfarer to act according to the Prophetic tradition so that he tastes wealth even in poverty. It helps the heart of the wayfarer to trust the people of this path so he becomes free from obsession and temptation. And it helps the heart of the wayfarer to forget people so he becomes free from hypocrisy. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So through tranquility or serenity, we learn to follow the example of the prophets, the great masters, the luminaries: people who have really established great traditions, who are perfect in their character. This is so that we can have an abundance of divine qualities of the consciousness, even when we recognize that we are really poor, spiritually. We tend to be very afflicted. We suffer a lot. We are degenerated, and yet, we do have virtue inside, and this is our anchor that keeps us committed and dedicated.
Tranquility also teaches us to rely on the group, the teachings, the sangha, the spiritual community, to commune with other spiritual aspirants who are very humble and sincere, those who are really working effectively and seriously upon themselves. We gain trust. We gain communities. We gain the perfume and honorable association of real friendship. But also tranquility teaches us not to worry about other people. We don't gossip. We don't slander others when they are not present, and even when we are in front of them. This is so that we are not hypocrites. Abdullah Ansari of Herat continues: And the tranquility of certitude also brings about three things in the heart: contentment with what one receives as one’s portion from God, so one becomes free from being deceptive; next is valuing gain and loss equally, so one becomes free from being defensive; and third is acceptance of God’s guardianship, so one becomes free from all attachments. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
So certainty of the truth will arise from tranquility when we are silent and still, when we learn to accept our current circumstance as a reflection of our karma, our past actions, because we reap what we sow. In this way, we don't deceive ourselves. We don't lie to ourselves that we deserve more, but we accept the facts with humility.
Neither do we become attached to victory or defeat. We learn to abide within a state of equipoise. There is no need to defend our pride, any sense of arrogance, our position, our desires. We accept the way things are, but strive for the better. Lastly we accept that divinity is truly watching out for us. Not from a belief, from a mere sentiment in the heart, but from experience. We also don't become attached to circumstances because divinity is the unknowable, the truth from moment to moment. Serenity in Capital, Hope, and Love
There also exists some other points for consideration. Let's see them from Abdullah Ansari of Herat:
From the field of Tranquility the field of Serenity is born. God, the Most High, says, ‘O soul made serene’ (89:27). ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
Again, this is el-Nafsu-l-Mutma'inna, the soul at peace, Neshamah, the spiritual soul, which is perfected in us when we reach the end of initiation.
And serenity is peacefulness joined with intimacy. It is of three kinds in the capital with which one is endowed (naqd), of hope, and of love. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
What does it mean to become intimate with God? It means to know His states and His qualities inside through different levels of being, different experiences. This is cosmic capital. It is currency.
If you ever awaken in the astral plane and beg for help from divinity, if you are given money by the masters, by your Being, it is a symbol of receiving Dharma: divine favor, blessings, because it is money and payments by which you have earned through your spiritual work. It means to be endowed with conscious virtues. When we really annihilate the ego and develop patience, serenity, humility, compassion, faithfulness, sacrifice, compassion, naturally, the law is the law. We are rewarded for what we do. The whole Qur’an is based on this, that the unjust will suffer and the just will reap harvests of bounty. It is one of the central themes of the whole Muslim tradition and basically any religion. So if you want cosmic capital, to be endowed with hope and love, learn to perform good actions. Divinity never withhold His blessings for those who do good. This quote continues: Serenity in one’s capital is of three kings: the serenity of the neglectful in respect to possessions, the serenity of the wise in respect to experience, and the serenity of the sincere in respect to confidence of being accepted by God. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
In a basic level, we could become serene in relation to material goods. So we talked a lot about in the lecture on renunciation about this. We may be neglectful at times of certain things, but we don't worry about them. We don't worry about loss, about losing a profit. We are content.
The wise are serene from experience because they know that all trials shall pass. No matter how difficult an ordeal, how painful it is, if you maintain your serenity and patience, it will subside. Life is transient. It is not eternal. As the Qur’an teaches, life is but a distraction from the real work and the Hereafter is really more worthwhile, if we but knew. And the worldly life is not but amusement and diversion; but the home of the Hereafter is best for those who fear Allah, so will you not reason? ―Al-An’am, 32
To be sincere and to know it signifies one's confidence, one's connection with divinity, that one is humble when God grants favor and to not be filled with mystical pride.
This quote continues: And serenity in hope is in three things: the reward earned by one who strives with his heart at peace, the reward given to one who waits expectantly for God with his heart in peace, and the reward granted to one who had severed all attachment to the world with his heart at peace. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
We receive the greatest gifts from the Being when we are striving selflessly in His cause. We concentrate upon him and work on our defects, our egos. This is striving in holy war mentioned in Islam, the war against our defects, not against our neighbor.
We also receive abundant experiences when we have faith from our works, that divinity is with us. For as the Apostle James stated, "Faith without works is dead” (James 2:17). But if you have works, practical disciplines, you will gain experience naturally. We also receive blessings when we no longer have any internal attachments to this world, but interact with it without identifying, to have serenity in that regard. And the serenity of those in love has three signs: being engaged with God’s work rather than one’s own, being mindful and aware of God rather than being aware of oneself, and loving God rather than loving oneself. ―Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Stations of the Sufi Path
In synthesis, one should love humanity more than one loves oneself. We also should be aware of divinity rather than the ego, to be absent. It's better to be absent to the ego and present with the Being, and, to love divinity more than we love our desires.
Practices and Conclusion
In conclusion, we have some practices that you can fulfill so that you can reap the fruits of this teaching.
Each day develop your self-observation or inner accounting. In Arabic, this is محاسبة muhasabah. It means to analyze or to take account of our virtues and our defects. We do this moment by moment. We self-observe. As a consciousness, we are examining our intellect, our emotions, and our body, the three brains of Gnostic psychology or the five psychological centers: intellect, emotions, and the motor-instinctive-sexual centers, respectively. Observe these qualities in yourself. See them. Separate. Look at them, and everyday, develop your meditative concentration. You can adopt a meditation posture, find a position that works for you in which you can relax completely, in which you can focus a hundred percent on the object of your focus, of your concentration. And if you have questions, I invite you to ask them. Questions and Answers
Question: Does developing clairvoyance and working with the mantra related with that gland help one get or experience the illuminating void?
Instructor: Yes, to a degree. Clairvoyance, for those of you who are not familiar, is a French term meaning “clear vision.” We have been discussing in this entire lecture and course what perception is. Clairvoyance was a term given by some French initiates in order to mask the essential nature of their practice, to give it a technical flavor so that they would avoid derision and persecution. Really, clairvoyance is our capacity to imagine, to perceive, to see non-physical imagery. Now, working with mantras to develop clairvoyance, the ability to imagine and perceive non-physical imagery, aids us with many things. I'd say that not only developing the third eye or the pituitary gland, the Chakra Ajna, it is the fundamental requisite for experiencing the illuminating void. In truth, to really enter that divine absolute abstraction―the Absolute Abstract Space, known in the Muslim tradition as اللّٰه Allah, “The Nothing,” “The No,” the negation of this universe―requires that we learn to project and have that experience by going through our crown chakra, more specifically. The crown chakra relates to omniscience, and, if you enter the illuminating void, you pass beyond all universes and relativity, all conditioned experiences. So that chakra is really deeply related to the highest experiences that are really divine. You can do the mantra Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Swaha, which is the the heart mantra from the Prajnaparamita Sutra, very well-known and documented and extensive.
I recommend you practice those mantras and work with your crown. But also, if you work with your clairvoyance, that's good too. You need to learn to see your defects, to observe them, reflect upon them, take account of them, so that you can eliminate them, so that they can die. The more light you free from the cage, the more of the genie that you liberate from the bottle, the easier it will be for you when you really reach the void and you are about to enter, so that your ego of fear doesn't take you out of the samadhi.
Question: Sometimes it seems that during the death in motion, asking the Divine Mother to eliminate in the ego in the moment, just doesn't seem to work. What should we do in these moments? Instructor: So that's a good question, because there are a number of people in the Gnostic movement who have the assumption and the belief, or the teaching, that you can eliminate the ego and its deepest roots, little by little, by asking for annihilation moment by moment. You are observing your mind and you look at the egos that have emerged in your interior and ask for annihilation in the moment. It comes to my mind a lecture by Samael Aun Weor. It was a lecture for students of third chamber, of which certain missionaries who propounded the doctrine of the death in motion were not present. This lecture that he gives is available at Glorian.org, “Questions about the Elimination of the Ego,” where Samael Aun Weor had the same question asked of him. He replied that it's good in the moment to ask for removal, but it's not enough. In the moment, if you are being overwhelmed by ego, a defect of anger, of pride, of resentment, of lust, you can ask your Divine Mother to help you, to resist those impulses. In this way, you are asking your Divine Mother to starve this aggregate, to not feed it, but merely observing it in the moment and asking for annihilation, he said it's not enough. It's a flawed method. It doesn't work, because the ego is very deep. It has profound roots that have to be comprehended in meditation. You simply cannot go deep enough with the physical senses and in this physical plane. You have to really abandon the body, introspect, and enact the stages of silence and serenity and go deep within, so that you can observe those aggregates within the subconscious, unconscious, and infraconscious regions of our interior worlds. We have to be very profound, very serious, because a lot of people have made this mistake and have cut out that teaching from Samael Aun Weor, confusing a bunch of people. But in reality if you study that lecture by our guru and teacher, our Sheikh, he is very specific and clear. Meditation is essential if you really want to annihilate the ego. You can't eliminate what's in the puddles. You have to go into the ocean, so to speak. Question: In these times of lock down, a lot of ways to sacrifice and serve others are cut off. Do you have any insights or advice you can share? Instructor: There are a lot of us who need help. Obviously, we have to look at our unique skills and talents, our disposition. But if you have a Gnostic school, especially, that you are supporting, that is good. I know in our school, I have often been asking volunteers to help transcribe lectures, because we found that getting this knowledge out to people, especially in these times, is really important, so that people can be educated about how to live and change their suffering, their states of being. I know some schools ask for donations. Glorian Publishing as well offers the books of Samael Aun Weor, especially. Supporting them is wonderful, so that other people can get access to these teachings. That really is the best gift you can give to somebody. Maybe it's donating a book. Maybe it's volunteering your time. That's something that you have to evaluate. Some suggestions or things you could do, obviously, is support your local school. That is always a benefit, and really, in the path of sacrifice for humanity, we always learn to give up something of value to us, whether it's time or money, energy especially, in order to give to others, and that's never always going to be easy. Real sacrifices are painful, but you give what you can. You do what you can. For me, during the lock down, the most important thing for us has been to teach others, but not everybody is a missionary or a teacher or an instructor or will become one necessarily, but if you go on to visit Glorian.org, especially, you can help us out by looking under a section about volunteering. There are different ways to help volunteer, whether it's writing book reviews for Samael Aun Weor, getting people access to these teachings, especially. There are many ways that you can volunteer your time. Any other questions? Question: Does developing polyvoyance give us the power to see everything and everywhere at once, and how does ubiquity work? How could one person possess two bodies at the same time? Instructor: That's something I don't understand either. You know personally, I remember speaking with Samael Aun Weor in the astral plane, where I invoked him on my property of my old house. He came from the sky, landed in front of me in the form of his bodhisattva, as you see in Mexico, the pictures of him. He was dressed in a suit, a very distinguished gentleman, and he invited me to walk with him. He told me while we were discussing things how he has the power of ubiquity, that he can be in many places at once. Of course, I was just amazed by that because I can barely even be conscious in my astral body or my physical body. From my understanding, with polyvoyance, your ability of the consciousness is really infinite and that one can be conscious of many dimensions at once, not just the physical or one dimension at a time, but everything in unison. Very elevated masters like Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna, Moses, Samael Aun Weor, have that ability, because they developed it. Now, ubiquity is simply the capacity the consciousness to exist in more than one place at once. For us, that is something mind-boggling and for me it definitely is, but from my personal experiences with Samael Aun Weor and other masters, I have been able to evidence and see that they develop their consciousness to such a degree that it's really incomprehensible. God is everywhere. The Absolute has its center everywhere and it's circumference nowhere. So for those masters, it is very easy. They can manifest in many places at once, be seen talking with other people in two different distinct countries at the same time at the same hour. But, you know, that's the faculty of a resurrected master. Those are beings who have really transcended the laws of relativity. They have entered the Absolute to their degree and are able to come back and express to us their knowledge. Very beautiful. Very profound. Something that's really quite amazing. Question: Is it okay to recline on the back of a chair while meditating? I heard it could be bad for your spine. Also, what about involuntary movements, yawning, jerks, while meditating? Do those go away with more experience? One of the quotes was, "and it helps the wayfarer to forget people so he becomes free from hypocrisy." I want to watch the [presidential] debate after this lecture. Are there stages to letting go of the attachments or must they be dropped once and for all? Instructor: So the first question, yes, it's fine. You can lay your back upon the end of the chair where you are meditating. Some people find it more comfortable to sit up with your back straight, not leaning into the chair, so to speak. You have to gauge your own body and your own unique physiology, but also your chair itself. Make sure it's comfortable for you. So you can lean back if you need to. I've had great meditations leaning back in a recliner, in a sofa and a chair. I was able to maintain my attention pretty well. So make the adjustments if you need to and find an arrangement that's going to be conducive for you. As for involuntary movements as yawning and jerks, they do eventually go away. The more you let go of the body and relax and are really concentrated, your body will start to be supple and to obey your consciousness. There is a term in Buddhism called pliancy in relation to really developed stages of concentration and serenity. It means that your body is perfectly still. It is serene and calm and doesn't present any obstacle to your meditation. So in the beginning, yes, it's often that you may yawn or your body may jerk because your energies are settling. Your vital body is settling. So, be patient. As for the quote "and it helps the wayfarer to forget people so he becomes free from hypocrisy," in relation to the debate―of course, obviously we watch what we want, but whatever you see or perceive in life, the important thing is to not be attached to what we see, to not be filled with fear or antagonism or anger or resentment or doubt. Simply look. Observe. I believe also to the last point, the last question, whether one should watch the debate, obviously, I think if we want to be entertained, yes, we can watch what's going to happen. But obviously, in one sense it's important to know what's going on in the world, but at the same time, we shouldn't necessarily condition ourselves too much by all the craziness that's going on. If you find that you're overwhelmed with too much attachment to the news, it can be good to drop it for a while. Obviously, that's a balance you have to strike in yourself. I thank you all for coming!
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