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The sacrament of baptism is the beginning for the initiate, for the aspirant to the light.  In order to understand this sacrament, to understand the ancient ritual of baptism, it is important that you have listened to and understood the previous two lectures called the ‘Sacraments of the Gnostic Church,' because it is there that you will be informed about and instructed in the nature of the Gnostic Church. Only from understanding what the Gnostic Church is and is not, can you then understand the sacraments of that church.

To remind you of the content of those lectures, let me just say that the Gnostic Church is not of this world.  The supreme head or patriarch of the Gnostic Church is Aberamentho, who this humanity knows as Jesus the Christ or Yeshua.  When he descended into a physical body some two thousand years ago, he instituted a great form of help in order to aid the souls who are working on themselves in the physical world. The help that he instituted and established through his great works and through his disciples are precisely the sacraments.  It is through the sacraments of the Gnostic Church that the consciousness can aspire towards the light, to incarnate that light, to manifest it.

Baptism is an ancient ritual which belongs to the Gnostic Church, but it is a ritual that is far older than this current Aryan race.  It is a ritual that has been present throughout all of the races that have inhabited this planet and those that inhabited the planets previous to this one.  It has been known by many names, and in the many branches and faces of the Gnostic Church, baptism has always been present.   When, in times of our development as a race, the Gnostic Church has delivered its teachings in the lands of India or the Middle East or in Egypt or in Tibet, the ritual of baptism has always been present, although, of course, in those cultures and times and places it was not known by that particular name. This is why when we perform a comparative analysis of the various world traditions or world histories, we can always find rituals related to water, related to purification and initiation.

Baptism as a term and as a ritual is most identified in these times with Christianity and with its many varieties:  Roman Catholic, and Orthodox, and Protestant.  But all of those forms of baptism are derived from the same source, which was taught by Jesus when he was incarnated on this planet two thousand years ago. The baptism that he taught in his gospels, that was performed by John, was a ritual that he acquired and learned in Egypt-a ritual that was performed in Egypt, and has been performed since ancient times in India.  This is why when you observe the practices and traditions of India you will see many varieties of baptism--how yogis or disciples will be blessed with water by the priests of whatever temple.

We see the rituals of baptism in Buddhism.  We see it amongst the Mayans. Amongst the Mayans, it is particularly striking, because young children are brought to the priest who exorcises them of evil spirits and blesses them with blessed water when the children are ready to enter into puberty.  This ritual was in place before the Christian religion was brought to the Americas. This has a very deep significance.

We also find baptism in other forms; for example in Roman culture, we see the sacred bath, or in the Jewish culture with the Mikveh, the sacred bath where the person will go to be purified by bathing themselves.  We find these sacred baths in every culture:  in the Greeks, amongst the Turks, amongst all the ancient traditions.

mikvah

Baptism is a universal symbol.  The physical practices of baptism, the physical rituals, are symbolic, and they are given generally to children. "Children" is also a symbolic term.  In the Christian churches, babies are brought to be baptized, and this is symbolic of the babies of initiation:  neophytes, disciples, people who are spiritually young in the teaching, who want to be initiated into that teaching, enter into that teaching.  They receive the baptism of the waters. In the Christian churches, the priest exorcises the evil spirits by performing prayers to reject the evil spirits that inhabit that child's body.  This is symbolic of the very purpose of baptism, and when that water is placed upon the head of the child, this is a symbol that we need to understand.

The common theme amongst all forms of Baptism has two aspects:

  1. it is a blessing by means of water
  2. it is a purification

The ritual of baptism symbolizes how through the blessings of the waters, we can become pure, we can become clean of psychological and spiritual impurities, and this is why it is so prevalent in all of our world traditions.

But in relation with the Gnostic Church, our purpose in this lecture is not to analyze and compare all these various traditions.  Instead our purpose is to get at the root and to understand the practical significance of baptism and its importance as a sacrament, as something sacred.

In Hebrew, water is symbolized by the Hebrew letter מ Mem.  Mem is the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  Mem, as a character or as a letter, can represent the number thirteen, but also can represent water as a force, as an element.  This is very, very significant, because the entire basis of the Jewish or Hebrew tradition and the entire basis of the Christian traditions rest upon an understanding of the Hebrew language. The authors, the deliverers, the patriarchs, who gave these traditions were masters of Kabbalah. The Hebrew language is the symbolic script that encodes the teaching of Kabbalah.  So to understand baptism, whether as the Jewish or Hebrew Mikveh or the Christian baptism, we look back to the root, which is Hebrew, and we have to see the significance of water.

Daath: Knowledge and the Waters of Creation

If you have studied any world religions, you will know that water is always in the beginning of any creation.  In every world tradition, we find water at the beginning. In Egypt:

Nu represents the primeval watery mass from which all the gods were evolved, and upon which floats the bark of “millions of years” containing the sun [Christ]. This god’s chief titles are ‘Father of the gods,’ and ‘begetter of the great company of the gods.’ - The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani, by E. A. Wallis Budge [1895]

In Genesis, or Bereshit, the first scripture of the Christian and Jewish traditions, we find that water is in the very first sentence, as the root, as the foundation from which everything emerges.  The Bible says:

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim

which is usually translated as :

In the beginning, God created the heavens...

The words "heavens" is שמים shamayim, which is usually translated as heavens, but the literal meaning is "superior waters."  This is very important:

schamayim
  • shamayim: superior waters

When you read in any English Bible, "heaven," really you are reading, "superior waters."

So, it is here, in the very first phrase, "God creates the superior waters and the earth."

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets.

The earth [ארץ] symbolizes you and me, that which emerges, in other words, matter. The "earth" is a symbol; the philosophical earth, or the body. This is reflected in our physical birth: our earth (physical body) emerges from the waters (womb) of our mother.

The next sentence says:

The earth was without form and empty, with darkness on the face of the depths, but God's spirit moved on the water's surface.

What is important to understand here is the nature of "God's spirit."  Hovering above these waters (which are yet to be formed) is the spirit, the רוח Ruach, which also means "breath, the wind."  This is the "wind of God" or the "breath of God," the Ruach Elohim.

  • רוח Ruach: spirit, wind, breath
  • אלהים Elohim: אל el (masculine god) + אלה eloah (feminine goddess) = elohim

It is very interesting when we compare this to Hinduism. When we look into to oldest, largest scripture that humanity knows, which is the Rig Veda, we discover that the basis of creation is a great river called Sarasvati, and these waters are the waters from which all creation emerges. Floating upon that river is Hamsah, the swan; it is a sacred bird who is pure and white. Hamsa is the sacred bird of Sarasvati.  Sarasvati is the Divine Mother.  So these waters symbolize her womb, the life giving waters of the womb of the Divine Mother upon which floats the spirit, the bird, the breath, the hamsah.

sarasvati-hamsa

Sarasvati, it is important to note, is the goddess of knowledge in Hinduism. Knowledge, or intelligence, is very significant in the Bible and in every tradition.  Knowledge in Hebrew is Daath, and that is what we are studying (Gnosis, Daath, knowledge).  Intelligence in Hebrew is Binah, which is the third sephirah (sphere) on the Tree of Life, and we know that the Divine Mother is the spouse of Binah; She is the feminine aspect of Binah.

It is from Binah that the Holy Spirit (ruach) divides into Abba and Aima (Father-Mother) in order to create in Daath (knowledge). This is how creation occurs.

We study Gnosis, which is Greek for "knowledge," and that is Daath, the waters of creation, the very body of the Divine Mother.  Her essence is that.

So then, in the Bible, it says that the Elohim (Father-Mother) divides the heavens above from the waters below, divides the waters into two waters.

God [Elohim, which is plural] said, 'There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and it shall divide between water and water.'

God [Elohim] made the sky, and it separated the water below the sky from the water above the sky. It remained that way.

God [Elohim] named the sky 'Heaven.' It was evening and it was morning, a second day.

In Hebrew, the word here for sky is actually רקיע Rakia, which literally means 'spread' or 'expanse' and is usually translated as 'firmament.'

The Father-Mother places a space or an expanse between the waters.  In other words, in the sixth verse of Genesis, the Elohim divides the שמים shamayim from מים mayim, the superior waters from the inferior waters, and puts between them a space or an expanse.

This forms the basis from which we can understand baptism.  Genesis states that God (the Father-Mother) creates the heaven and the earth; the heavens, in Hebrew, are shamayim, which means superior waters. Upon the shamayim is floating the sacred bird, the spirit, the hamsah swan, which is the Ruach Elohim, in Hebrew, the spirit of the Elohim; the spirit of God, the breath of God. Then God divides the waters.  He places a space between the heavens and the deep:  between the shamayim, the superior waters above, and the mayim, which are the inferior waters, and between them is this expanse or space.

Another name that we could apply to shamayim would be prana, which is a Sanskrit word which means life force, the force of life.  And we say this because it is from this superior water of the shamayim that the force of life will emerge.  Here we have the womb of the Divine Mother which is those superior waters of creation and out of that comes creation itself.

Mayim: The Inferior Waters

In order to really understand the significance of this, we need to look a little deeper into these words, what they are made of, what they are constituted of.  The Hebrew letter מ mem is the symbol for water, and שמים shamayim and מים mayim are made from the letter mem.

mayim

Mayim, or the inferior waters, is mem-iod-mem; this is also very significant.  In others words, the י iod is between two mayims, between two waters.

iodIod is the tenth Hebrew letter. It is the smallest letter; it is a dot, a drop, a speck; it is almost just an atom. The iod symbolizes man.  This is why we have ten fingers and ten toes.

We are that dot in the waters placed there by our father through the sexual act-that sperm that entered into the waters of our mother's womb; and there we were in the mayim, the iod, the seed floating between the waters, between heaven and earth, in Eden.

This is one of the meanings of Eden; the womb is Eden. The Hebrew term Eden literally means "delight, ecstasy, bliss," and when we were in the womb, we experienced that.  While in the womb, we were in bliss.  We were pure consciousness, in bliss, enjoying life in the waters of our mother.  But then we take birth, and enter the physical world, and everything changes.   Afterwards, we are always seeking to restore that bliss that we knew in the womb, and we know that somehow that bliss can be found in sex, but without the knowledge (Daath) of the secret doctrine, we do not find the bliss we seek.

The iod symbolizes the man, and that iod (the tenth letter) is the Tree of Life: the ten spheres of the Kabbalah, which we need to perfect in ourselves, we need to develop in ourselves.

Schamayim: The Superior Waters

שמים Shamayim is mayim with one extra letter at the front of it: ש shin.  Shamayim is spelled shin-mem-iod-mem.  The shin is very significant.  If you have listened to the course about the Hebrew letters, you will know why.

Shin looks like a little trident;  it has three points, and those three points are the three superior spheres on the Tree of Life.  These three are Christ: Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, in one.  Shin represents the trinity.  This is how you can see sha-mayim are those superior waters which exist above, where Christ is.  The three letters of shin, the three arms of shin, in those superior waters.

The Tree of Life itself maps all of this.  When we look at the tree from a macrocosmic point of view, as a map of the universe, we can see those superior waters above, in Daath, which is just below the superior trinity.  And it is in Daath, those superior waters, where those three forces, embodied in shin, create.  From there unfolds all the rest of the tree.

Here we can see the space that exists between the superior and inferior waters, where God divides shamayim from mayim.

"[And Ra said], “I have made the heavens and the earth, I have ordered the mountains, I have created all that is above them, I have made the water, I have made to come into being the great and wide sea, I have made the ‘Bull of his mother,’ from whom spring the delights of love [sex]. I have made the heavens, I have stretched out the two horizons like a curtain, and I have placed the soul of the gods within them. I am he who, if he openeth his eyes, doth make the light, and, if he closeth them, darkness cometh into being. At his command the Nile riseth, and the gods know not his name. I have made the hours, I have created the days, I bring forward the festivals of the year, I create the Nile-flood. I make the fire of life [Christ], and I provide food [manna] in the houses. " - The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani

Yesod: The Foundation of Life

two-edens The mayim are below in Yesod.  Yesod is the ninth sphere on the Tree of Life, and it is the inferior waters, the lower waters, or Eden.  Yesod, the ninth sphere: the word Yesod means "foundation," because it is the foundation of life.

When we look at the Tree of Life, the Kabbalah, from the microcosmic point of view, then we would place this symbol of ten spheres superimposed over the human body.  Then we can see that the superior waters, shamayim, the three top spheres and Daath, are related with the head, with the brain. Around your brain there are very important waters that are very similar in constitution to the waters of the womb and the waters of the sex.  Even more importantly, the pineal gland, the ruler of our endocrine system, is centered in the brain, and is the root of the crown chakra, which is the source of the halo of all the saints.

The inferior waters, Yesod, appear directly over the sexual organs.  Clearly, this is why Yesod means "the foundation."

So now you see the relationship of mayim and shamayim in our physical bodies.

Yesod is the foundation of life.  It is through sex that all life exists: through Yesod, the ninth sphere, through the sexual organs.  And it is here that our own iod, the seed, was placed in the womb of our physical mother and our physical body emerged.  Life is made possible through the foundation of life, Yesod, sex.

2:7     God [Adonay Elohim] formed man [Adam] out of dust of the ground [Adamah], and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life. Man [Adam] became a living creature. [Hebrew: Vayitser Adonay Elohim et-ha'adam afar min-ha'adamah vayipach pe'apav nishmat chayim vayehi ha'adam lenefesh chayah.]

The Hebrew word for ground or earth, Adamah, is related to Adam, the Hebrew word for man. Both words are also cognate to adom, meaning red, and dam meaning blood.

2:8     God [Adonay Elohim] planted a garden in Eden to the east. There He placed the man [Adam] that He had formed. [Hebrew: Vayita Adonay Elohim gan-be'Eden mikedem vayasem sham et-ha'adam asher yatsar.]

It is interesting to know that, in the Bible, Adam was placed in Eden, in Yesod. Yesod, like everything in the Bible, has multiple levels of meaning.  Yesod is Eden, which microcosmically is related with sex, but it is also the fourth dimension, the macrocosmic Eden, and this is where Adam and Eve were originally placed.  But for us, we need to look at it from our microcosmic point of view in order to understand baptism.

2:9     God [Adonay Elohim] made grow out of the ground [adamah] every tree that is pleasant to look at and good to eat, [including] the Tree of Life [Ets haChayim] in the middle of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge [Ets haDa'at] of good and evil. [Hebrew: Vayatsmach Adonay Elohim min-ha'adamah kol-ets nechmad lemar'eh vetov lema'achal ve'Ets haChayim betoch hagan ve'Ets haDa'at tov vara.]

trees Microcosmically (in relation with us, the Iod in the waters) the Tree of Life is us, both spiritually and physically, with specific emphasis on our spinal column, the central column of the tree. We are a tree of life, and we need water to grow and become spiritually fruitful.

Microcosmically, the Tree of Knowledge (Daath or da'at) is centered in our throat, and as you recall from puberty, the throat has a mysterious relationship with sex. Remember, the Elohim create by speaking. "And God said, Let there be light..."

2:10     A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. From there it divided and became four major rivers. [Hebrew: Venahar yotse me'Eden lehashkot et-hagan umisham yipared vehayah le-arba'ah rashim.]

The rivers of life emerge from Eden (Yesod).  When you look into the Bible you see that from the garden come the rivers and it was parted into four heads, into four ways.  This has very deep significance and levels of meaning that we do not have time to explore deeply today.  Yet it is useful to know that these four rivers are related to two channels of energy (Ida and Pingala, Adam and Eve, rasana and lalana) running along the spinal column, two in each parent, making four rivers present at our conception.

Below Yesod we see Malkuth, which is Hebrew for "the kingdom." Our own kingdom is our physical body.

When our physical parents conceived our physical bodies, the waters of Eden flowed from Yesod, the sexual organs, out of Malkuth, the physical body.  Do you see that-the waters of Yesod flow out from Malkuth, and a physical creation occurred.  This is also hidden in the structure of the word mayim-which is the two mems or the two waters of our parents, and the iod (seed or man) between them.  There is a transfer that occurs in mayim and this is related with birth in any level.

What is important for us to understand is that this is birth in the common way.  Baptism is an initiation into another way to be born.

To Carry Water

The word שמים shamayim can be read with another meaning.  Schmayim (heaven or the superior waters) is written shin-mem-iod-mem. Yet, if there is a space between the shin and mayim, then you would read it as ש מים sa-mayim, which means, "to carry water."  And this is very significant:  to carry water.  This is baptism.  Baptism is a process of carrying waters, and relates specifically to the superior waters, schamayim.

What occurs in baptism, but the elevation of the waters from below to above?  In the Christian tradition the priest scoops the water, often from a conch shell or a basin, from the waters below, scoops them up to the head of the child, and pours the waters onto the crown, which is where that chakra is related to the pineal gland which is related to shamayim, the superior waters.  So the ritual of baptism in the Christian tradition symbolizes how we perform "sa-mayim," to carry the waters of mayim to heaven. How is this done and why?

The Fire of Sex

shin Here is where it gets even more interesting.  The secret is in Yesod-because in those waters of Yesod lie latent the powers of shin.  You remember that, in the beginning, God created שמים shamayim, the heavens, but you have to analyze shamayim a little more deeply.  That word is translated as "heavens" but literally means "superior waters," but why are they superior?  Why is shamayim superior to mayim?  Because it has ש shin.  Shin is the Hebrew character for fire.  The shamayim, the heavens, the superior waters, are superior because within them, at the head of them, leading those waters, commanding those waters, is fire, shin: Christ.  The letter shin has three arms or branches that represent the three parts of the trinity. This is why those waters are superior.

I [Christ] am come to send fire [ש shin] on the earth [body]; and what will I, if it be already kindled [negatively, by your lustful sexuality]?

But I [Christ] have a baptism to be baptized with [inside of you]; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division [for Christ cannot mix with the fires of animal passion]... - Luke 12:49-51

God divides the waters between inferior and superior. In the inferior waters we have the iod, the seed, and at the top of the three arms of the shin are three iods. By performing the sa-mayim, the carrying of the water, the initiate who receives the sacrament of baptism, learns how to take the fire of sex and elevate it, to transform it.

Fire is the root of sex.  We know that sex happens in the sexual waters of the man and the woman, the two mems of the mayim.  And when that sexual contact is stirring, the waters boil because within the water is fire,--but it is raw fire, untransformed, unmanaged, without conscious control. That water can burn.  That water can create physically, and it can create in the spirit, and this is what Jesus taught in the Bible.

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

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

Jesus answered, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water [mayim] and of the Spirit [ruach over the schamyim], he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." - John 3:3-6

Within our sexual organs we have heat, fire. This is the basis of a very famous tradition in Asia called "the yoga of psychic heat."  This is Tummo, which is one of the Six Yogas of Naropa, and is one of their main traditions of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.  The basis of that technique of Tummo yoga or inner heat, is that the yogi must retain the sexual energy, must hold that fire, and transform it in the body.  They learn a breathing technique (like pranayama , which means to yoke the wind) to harness the forces of shamayim, the prana; thus, they learn how to generate and manage heat in the body. This is where we get the famous stories about yogis up in the Himalayan mountains, in the freezing cold, wearing nothing but a loincloth, and are not cold.    In fact, they do their breathing exercises and they melt the snow around them.  This is Tummo yoga, and it is all based on the fire in the waters of the sexual energy.

Interestingly, the word Tummo means ‘she who terrifies the ego.' The sexual water is the water of the Divine Mother, and the fire in that water is Durga, Kali, Sarasvati, the Divine Mother who conquers the ego.

When we learn how to harness that fire, we need to learn to control shin, fire.  We control it by willpower.  This is how we learn to unite our own shin with our own mayim, and create shamayim within.  This is how we create the superior waters. The ritual of baptism symbolizes that.  And the book of Genesis is an exposition of that process.

  • Genesis: gen-erate, gen-der, en-gen-der

Genesis is creation, how to create.  The power of creation is in sex, in fire.  And so Genesis, with its seven days of creation, outlines seven steps to create Adam, man. "Man" in this usage does not mean male.  It means Adam: the root, the man, the soul, the perfected man who abides in Eden.  To be the perfect man is to have a perfect mind.  To be a diamond soul, to be a Buddha.  And Genesis explains that; through the days of Genesis we study that.

Baptism is the initiation into that process.  The physical rituals of baptism symbolize the beginning of the creation of the real man within ourselves. Baptism only symbolizes a work that we have to perform inside ourselves, sexually and psychologically.

It is not necessary for you to pass through a physical initiation of baptism.  It is not required; baptism is symbolic.  What is required to enter heaven, shamayim, is to control the fire, the shin, in your own mayim.  And that is why that ritual of baptism was always given.

The Baptism of Jesus

In the Christian Gospels we have a description of the ritual of baptism, which I will read to you, so we can go deeper into understanding of what this ritual means.  In the book of Matthew, chapter 3, it says:

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, and saying, "Repent ye:  for the kingdom of heaven [shamayim] is at hand.

"For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, saying, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."  [The way of the lord here is Christ: shin.]

And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey.  Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region about Jordan and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

Jordan is a river. John the baptizer stands in the river and pours water over all those who would repent of their sins and prepare themselves for the coming of Christ [fire], in themselves.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, [the Sadducees represent the intellectuals who do not do anything but theorize, and the Pharisees represent the believers who do not do anything but believe] he said unto them, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"

"Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

"And think not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father': for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

"And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees [of life]: therefore every tree [of life] which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire [of Christ made negative, inverted, also known as Lucifer, the "bearer of light"].

The tree spoken of here is the Tree of Life (Kabbalah), our own Tree of Life within.  It is necessary for us to bring forth good fruit, otherwise the fire will consume us.  It is easy to see how the fire of sex can "consume us," for in these times, many suffer from this.

What is the fruit?  Everyone knows, in the Bible, that God says, "be fruitful." And how do you grow fruit but from the seed?  And what is that seed?  That is a iod: the sexual seed.  The iod represents the man or the phallus.

In Hebrew, the word for seed is "zera," and it is also the word for semen.

The only way to grow fruit is from a seed. The only seed we have within is the sexual seed. The sexual seed can grow either physical fruit (children) or spiritual fruit (the soul).

We have to grow the fruit from the iod and mayim, which are in Yesod (sex).  The spiritual fruit (the soul) develops when we redirect the river of life that flows from Eden. Instead of that river flowing outwards into the desert, expelling Adam and Even from paradise, we can redirect the flow upwards and inwards into the Tree of Life, and nourish the tree. Then, the tree gives forth all the fruit.

The Book of Revelation says:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life [having no lust or animal passion within], clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God [the waters, which is as much in heaven as in the human being] and of the Lamb [Christ].

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life [the ten Sephiroth], which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads [chakra or church of clairvoyance].

And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light [shin, the fire that illuminates the consciousness]: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

There are twelve manners of fruit, which are related to our twelve senses:  five physical and seven non-physical.  The seven non-physical senses are activated when the seven churches of Assiah (the seven chakras) are awakened. Those fruits are how we interact with all the other dimensions of life.

Adam and Eve in the Bible were able to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and they could see God, and talk with God, and walk with God. They had that fruit in their hands, the fruit of the Tree of Life.  They had not abused of the fruit of knowledge.  The fruit of sex.

So let us continue with the scripture about baptism. John continues:

"Indeed, I baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire..."

John is talking about Christ who is shin, the fire.  He clear states that Christ-shin will come as a result of baptism.  In other words, shin can be managed and harnessed through the practice of "shamayim," to carry the waters from below to above.

Christ is a fire that can create or destroy.  That fire is symbolized in India as Shiva, and if you look at the images of Shiva, he always has a fountain emerging from the crown of his head, from the pineal gland, which symbolizes the transmuted sexual waters which burst forth from the waters of his brain, his pineal gland, the top of the spine.  That fiery water of shamayim is what can purify our sins. The fire can save us.  The fire is superior to the waters of the river Jordan, which is what John baptizes his students with.

John continues:

"Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

What he is describing here is the process by which the fire of Christ purifies.  It descends and purifies to cleanse the temple of the Lord.  This is why it is so important for us to understand the nature of shin (sexual fire) in ourselves.

Shin is sexual fire.  When we misuse our sexual fire, we become consumed by it.  This happens in many ways:  sometimes we become addicted to sex, to the sensations of sex, which causes us to seek more intensity and thus people enter into more degenerated sexual practices until eventually they destroy themselves through too much fornication, through disease, through depleting themselves of all energy.

We know that power is in the sexual energy:  force. This is why warriors and fighters since ancient times were always told, "Before a battle, do not lay with your wife," because they knew that the warrior who expelled his seed would be weak on the battlefield. This is why boxers, fighters, and athletes in these times also observe continence before they have a big match, because they know that sexual energy gives them strength.  It is interesting to look into the root of the words virile (having sexual power) and virtuous (having moral purity); they come from the same root:

  • Viirya: (Sanskrit) "vitality, enthusiasm, semen," the root of the words "virile, virtue, vira (warrior)."

The story continues:

baptism-jesus Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.

But John forbade him, saying, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?"

And Jesus answering said unto him, "Suffer it to be so now: for it is becometh us to fulfill all righteousness (virtue)."  Then he suffered him.  And baptized him.

To understand this properly we have to refer to the Tree of Life.  If you have studied the course The Path of the Bodhisattva, the meaning here will be perfectly clear to you.

The actual name of John is Jah-hanan.  It is not John; John is an English or Latin name.  His real name is Jah-hanan.

  • Jah has three letters, and represents the supernal triangle, the Logos, which is Christ.
  • Haran means "grace."

The grace of Christ is the Bodhichitta.  Bodhichitta is Sanskrit word that has very deep meanings.

On the surface it means "the wisdom of the awakening mind."  Bodhi is wisdom; chitta is mind.  But in Tantra, Bodhichitta is a blind, a veil; it is a mask to hide something deeper. In Mahayana and Tantrayana Buddhism, Bodhichitta is "the aspiration to be a servant of others."  And this is why they pray: "As long as space endures, may I continue to exist in order to aid others."  It is a pure act of selfless service. Bodhichitta is pure Christic love.  Bodhichitta is pure love, conscious love.  That is the surface level translation.

In Buddhist Tantra, Bodhichitta means "sexual energy."

This is why John, Jah-hanan, is in the river Jordan, in Yesod.  Jah-hanan represents the Bodhichitta:  that pure, perfect, compassionate, force of Christ, which stands in the sexual waters of life, in order to baptize the initiates who would become one with Christ.

Bodhichitta is a psychic energy, a psychological force that expresses itself through the bodies of the soul, the seven bodies. That is why the name Jah-hanan can be disarranged as IEOUAMS: the seven vowels.  Those seven vowels symbolize the seven primary chakras, the seven bodies, the seven notes.

So Bodhichitta is a very deep symbol.

John in this story represents the initiate, the man, the complete man made into the image of God, and that is why he says that he is not worthy to even hold the shoes of Christ, Jesus.

Jesus (Yeshua: "savior") comes from above.  Jesus, in the path of the Bodhisattva, can descend and incarnate in the Bodhichitta, in the man who is prepared.  But before that, Yeshua (Christ) cannot enter, because that energy is too intense.  Only the Bodhichitta that is developed is prepared to receive that incredible energy and can receive Christ and incarnate Christ and express Christ.  Baptism symbolizes that process, and that symbolism is based upon:

  1. to elaborate the lower mayim, raising the waters to the crown
  2. from that mayim of Yesod, to create the man: the solar man, the vehicle of Christ, Herakles, the Bodhisattva
  3. once that man is created, then Christ can descend into the river Jordan and be incarnated inside of the soul. This is the baptism--baptism by water and by fire

This is all synthesized in this very brief story. It has levels and levels and levels and levels of meaning.  Baptism is not one single thing.  In this lecture, we are speaking in synthesis.

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightaway out of the [lower] water [Eden / Yesod]: and, lo, the heavens [shamayim / Daath] were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God [Ruach Elohim] descending like a dove.

And who is the dove but the Hamsah swan?  That is the swan of purity, the bird of the Divine Spirit, the Divine Mother, Sarasvati. That is the Kala-hamsah swan, as it is also called, or "the swan of time."  Hamsah means "swan," and kala means "time."

Kalachakra Tantra

kalachakra You may know the term kala from a tradition called Kalachakra.  Chakra means "wheel," so Kalachakra means "the wheel of time."

Kalachakra is a Tantra, a scripture, which was given by the Buddha and has been preserved in Tibet for a long time.  In recent years, the fourteenth Dalai Lama has been conducting many rituals to initiate people into the Kalachakra Tantra. This is very interesting for us to know about, because in the process of being initiated into Kalachakra, the ritual lasts thirteen days. Do you remember the Hebrew letter mem?  It is the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and symbolizes water.

Within those thirteen days, the disciple who is being initiated into Kalachakra passes through seven initiations.  Remember the name John, Jah-haran, is disarranged into seven vowels related to seven chakras and seven bodies. In each of those seven initiations, the disciples receive a blessing of water.  The lama, the priest, sprinkles water on the disciples and dabs water on their chakras to prepare them for the practice of Kalachakra.

It becomes more interesting when you understand that the main image of Kalachakra is a great painting of the father and mother in sexual union. The father is called yab in Sanskrit; the mother is called yum. Their union is Kalachakra, the wheel of time, from which creation emerges.

The disciples of Kalachakra are required to take a series of vows.  The main vow?  To never release the sexual energy.  The initiated practitioner of Kalachakra is told that their entire success in realizing and practicing the ritual and secret practices of Kalachakra depends upon never emitting sexual energy from the body, never having an orgasm.  This is the basis of the tradition. If they lose that energy, it is called a fault, a breaking of the vow, and it stops their progress. So you can see in Kalachakra what we teach here in Gnosis.  The Kalachakra is a form of baptism.

But let us return to our story about John and Jesus:  when that dove (the Kala-hamsah swan) came down and lit upon Jesus (illuminating him in the pineal gland), that is the power of shin, the spirit, the Ruach: the breath of life that fills the soul with life, light, illumination.

And lo a voice from heaven, said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

The son is Christ. A Bodhisattva is a Son, because a Bodhisattva incarnates Christ.

So this story is deeply symbolic. What we see in the story - in synthesis - is how by performing the sha-mayim, the carrying of water, we enter into shamayim, heaven.  John symbolizes the soul, the initiate himself, who by his own effort, scoops the waters of the river of life, the sexual water, and brings it up to his head (through sexual transmutation) and baptizes himself. This is how Christ emerges within us.

Sexual Transmutation

The practice of sexual transmutation is done in a number of ways.

A single person can transmute their sexual energy. A single person cannot create the man, the soul.

A single person can be baptized and can enter into the mysteries related to baptism. When they receive that ritual (from whatever tradition), what they are receiving and agreeing to is a pact with the Gnostic Church, with Christ; it is a pact of sexual magic, or priesthood, because remember, "magic" comes from "mag," which is priest.  The pact of baptism is a promise that the initiate will fulfill the requirements of sexual magic, which are to transform the fires of sexuality into shamayim:  the fiery waters of heaven.

To complete that transformation requires that we are married.  Only a man and a woman united can fully activate and develop and control and transform the waters of sex.  Only a man and a woman united in sex can conceive and give birth, whether physically or spiritually.

A single person has only one polarity, either male or female, thus they cannot create life.

It is in the connection of the two mems of mayim wherein the iod can be transformed. As I told you, the letter iod represents the man.  So if we write the letter iod, we see the man, or in other words, Adam. In order for the man (Adam) to complete the sha-mayim, to elaborate the shin (fire), he needs a woman. He needs to approach the Tree of Knowledge: sex, which is the domain of Jah Hevah: יהוה IHVH. Jah-hevah (iod-hei-vav-hei) is Adam and Eve.

y-hvh
  1. י Iod: phallus or man
  2. ה Hei: uterus
  3. ו Vav: man or spine
  4. ה Hei: woman

Also:

  • י Iod: man (Adam)
  • הוה Hei-Vav-Hei: Eve

Here we see Adam and Eve, man and woman. In order for these two, man and woman, to enter shamayim (heaven) they need Christ.  No one comes to the Father but through the Son.

Jesus saith unto him, "I [Christ: fire] am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." - John 14:6

Fire is the way.

Christ says as much:

"I [Christ] am come to send fire [shin] on the earth [adamah]..."

Christ is come to send fire on the earth, the body.  He is the one who provides that fire of sex.  It comes from Christ.  Therefore, when the man and the woman unite sexually [י + הוה] and harness the power of sex, then the letter shin emerges between in the midst of their union, then you have a new word:

yshuh

יהשוה Yeshua, Jesus, the Christ.

When you put the letter ש shin, the Christ, in the midst of the man and the woman, the yab and the yum, you spell the word Yeshua or Jehoshua, which indicates Jesus, the Christ.  Through sexual union, through sexual cooperation, through the mastery of sexual fire, the savior is born.

It is also worth noting the Hebrew word משיח Messiah, which means "the anointed one":

messiah

This word is constituted by:

  • מ Mem: the waters
  • ש Shin: the fires
  • י Iod: the man or phallus
  • ח Cheth: justice or "to separate" (the waters)

Jesus stated that in order to enter into heaven we have to be born again, of water and Spirit.  We have to be born of mayim (water) and shin: fire.  When we take the pact of baptism seriously and we unite the man and the woman in the sexual act to transform the shin, then that energy (the fire and the water) is transformed and brought up the spinal column towards the brain (schamayim), and this is how the serpent is raised upon the staff, how the son of man is raised up in the wilderness.

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent [kundalini] in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up..." - John 3:14

Christ is raised up from the lower waters to the superior waters and this is called Kundalini: the Pentecostal fire that lit upon the heads of the apostles in the book of Acts.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven [schamayim] as of a rushing mighty wind [ruach], and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost... - Acts 2:2-4

That Pentecostal fire is shin, the fire of Christ.  When that fire rises up the spinal column and fills the brain in our own personal shamayim, the pineal gland is saturated with a very high voltage energy, which is that fire from sex.

Here we see in the microcosm in our body, the relationship between the mayim of Yesod, and the shamayim of the waters around the brain.  Even scientists know that the waters that surround the brain are chemically similar to the waters of sex.  That energy is transferred through vital channels (the rivers of Eden) up the spinal column, and saturates the brain with what in Hinduism is called Ojas, which is fire.

Ojas is transformed sexual energy.  They say in India that a man who has a lot of Ojas in his brain is extremely powerful, magnetic, successful, intelligent, bright, attractive to others, is a prophet.  And this is symbolized in the baptism story, when Jesus rises from the waters, the dove of the shamayim alights on his head and Jesus ascends into the shamayim, Jesus symbolizing that transformed energy.

Living Water

In the Gospels it says,

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus, [Yeshua, the Savior] stood and cried saying, "if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink.  He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

Living water in Hebrew is mayim-hayim. We find references to living water throughout the scriptures in both the Christian and the Hebrew traditions.  The superficial definition of living water is "fresh water," but this is not the real meaning, and it is easy to arrive the real meaning.  Where else can you find "waters of life"-from what waters does life emerge? Obviously, these are the waters of sex: the waters of the womb and the waters of the semen.  When those waters are crossed, life emerges.

Jesus says we must be born again of the water and the Spirit.  "That which is flesh is born of flesh and that which is spirit is born of spirit."  There are two forms of birth: physical and spiritual.  Through harnessing the living water, we are harnessing the Christ within the mayim.  And this is why it says in the book of Proverbs:

Drink waters out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well.  Let thy fountain be blessed and have the joy of the wife of thy youth.

In other words, conserve your sexual energy, and the waters of your own fountain will revitalize your own Tree of Life. We know this is the correct interpretation, because in the book of Leviticus (Vayikra) written by Moshe (Moses), he wrote:

When a man discharges semen, he must immerse his entire body in a Mikvah (a ritual bath), and then remain unclean until evening.

This is very clear.  The release of sexual energy produces uncleanliness, filthiness.  This is called "fornication."

The word "fornication" has been mistranslated and badly defined for hundreds of years.  But when you know the esoteric doctrine, you know that fornication refers to the orgasm.

This teaching is hidden in many scriptures.

Whosoever emits semen in vain deserves death. - Talmud: Tractate Niddah Folio 13a, Chapter II

It is forbidden to emit sperm to waste, and this sin is greater than any other sin of the Torah. - Even Haezer Siman 23

The drops should not be allowed to be ejaculated. - A Practice Manual on the Six Yogas of Naropa:Taking the Practice in Hand by Jey Lama Tsongkhapa

The drop [of sexual energy] that descends [from within to the sexual organ] is to be retained [no orgasm], reversed,
And diffused to the appropriate sites. - Vajra Verses of the Whispered Tradition by Naropa

[For more information, visit Sacred Sex.]

The great consort of Padmasanbhava (Guru Rinpoche), who was named Yeshe Tsogyal, was a princess in Tibet who practiced Karmamudra with him. Karmamudra means "action seal," and is the sacred practice of transmutation between man and woman.  In one of her teachings she said,

"If the seed essence is lost, in actuality the karma of slaying a Buddha is incurred.  At all costs, gain self control."

The discharge of the sexual energy produces pain, produces suffering, produces a loss of vitality or vital energy.  It is how we slay our own inner Buddha, how our own tree is deprived of fruit and will be cut down.

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge (sex), they discovered pain and suffering.

The woman saw that the tree [of knowledge: sex] was good to eat and desirable to the eyes, and that the tree was attractive as a means to gain intelligence [the Holy Spirit]. She took some of its fruit and ate [it]. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate [it].

The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. They sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves loincloths. - Genesis / Bereshit 3:6-7

[...]

To Adam He said, 'You listened to your wife, and ate from the tree regarding which I specifically gave you orders, saying, 'Do not eat from it.' The ground [adamah] will therefore be cursed because of you. You will derive food from it with anguish all the days of your life.

It will bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the grass of the field. - Genesis / Bereshit 3:17-18

[...]

God [Adonay Elohim] said, 'Man has now become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now he must be prevented from putting forth his hand and also taking from the Tree of Life. He [can] eat it and live forever [in sin]!'

God [Adonay Elohim] banished [man] from the Garden of Eden, to work the ground [adamah] from which he was taken.

He drove away the man [Adam], and stationed the cherubim at the east of Eden, along with the revolving sword blade, to guard the path of the Tree of Life. - Genesis / Bereshit 3:22-24

Thus suffering began because of the abuse of sex. Suffering can be removed by using sex properly. In other words, we left Eden (happiness) because of sex. We return to happiness by means of sex.

Some Kabbalists say that the Cherubim are angels of destruction and death. Man can only return to Eden (happiness) by means of death, and before doing so, he must pass by these angels of purgatory (Bachya) and be approved: the causes of the first sin must have been removed completely. Some Kabbalists also say that these angels must approve any approach to the Tree of Life in order to obtain a vision; in other words, the death of sin within us (our egos) grants the boon of inner visions. This is why there are cherubim on the Ark (Exodus 25:18), and in Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 1:5, 10:15).

We need to be healed because all of us are children of fornication.  All of us, without exception. We need to be healed of our past mistakes and enter into the mysteries, and this is why we need baptism.

Through baptism in ourselves, sexually and psychologically, we commit to change.  It is a pact, a vow, to learn to respect the force of Christ, the intelligence (Binah) of God, the Holy Spirit, which is within our own sexual waters.  We have to learn to respect that force and follow the laws of God--the laws that are reflected in every ancient tradition, but obscured and lost by the selfishness of men.

The Healing Waters

jesus-bethesda Regarding this healing we find a scripture in the book of John 5:

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.

Bethesda means "the house of the waterfall."

In these porches lay a great multitude of impotent folk, impotent, weak, powerless, blind, halted, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and stirred the water: whosever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

And a certain man was there which had an infirmity, thirty and eight years.

When Jesus [Yeshua], saw him lying there and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him:  "Wilt thou be made whole?"

The impotent man answered him, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming another steppeth down before me."

In other words, here is a man who is impotent. We now use the word impotent in relation to sexual weakness, to have no power sexually. Nowadays this is becoming more and more common in women and men, but nobody dares to ask why.  It is because they have been perpetually, addictively, wasting their sexual energy day after day, depleting their own tree of life, so that their own tree of life, their own soul, their own body, is withering, dying, becoming cancerous, sick, and then the fire will come and clean it through death and suffering, so they can try again later.

This impotent man lies by the side of the pool at the house of the waterfall, meaning that he knows something about baptism.  He knows that the waters can cure him, but he has no "man" to put him in the water.  In other words, he has no John the Baptist.  He does not have a baptizer; he does not have  Bodhichitta or a Bodhisattva; he has not created the soul.  So what does Jesus say?

Yeshua, the Savior, saith unto him, "Rise, take up they bed, and walk."

The meaning is explicitly clear:

"Rise [shin in your own waters], and take up your bed [of matrimony, your bed of Tantra, your bed of transmutation between man and wife], and walk [on the path of redemption, back to Eden].

And by that way, you will create the man.

And immediately [by Christ] the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked:  and on the same day was the Sabbath.

You know in the Bible, in Genesis, Sabbath is the day that God rests.  Why?  Because he created the man.

In the Hebrew tradition, the baptism is hidden in the practice of the Mikvah.  The Mikvah is a ritual bath. The Jews and the people who subscribe to that tradition will bathe themselves regularly; throughout their lives they go to sacred pools and bathe themselves and this story reflects that.  Of course, in most cases, the practitioners of that tradition are unaware of the esoteric meaning: that by bathing ourselves in the sexual waters we can be cleansed of impurity.

They have a prayer that they repeat when they go to the bath:

Kuma Adonai Veyafutzu Oyevehha, Veyanusu Misanehha Mipanehha.

Kuma-Adonai

Arise Iod-Havah and let thine enemies be scattered and let those who hate Thee flee before Thee. - Numbers 10: 35

This is of course symbolic.

"Arise, oh Lord." We need the Lord, Christ (Iod, Hei, Vav, Hei), the shin, in our sex, to rise up the spinal column--from the sexual energy, the sexual organs, up the spine to the pineal gland, and in doing that to scatter the enemies of the Lord, which are in our own mind: the ego, our own lust, our pride, our anger, our envy, our sins of adultery and fornication.

"..and let those who hate Thee flee before Thee (and the conquest of the land become instantaneous.)"  The land is the earth, the land is us. We need the Lord to conquer our land, to be the commander-in-chief of our house, to be the priest of our temple.  That is what this prayer is saying and this reveals the relationship between baptism and the forgiveness of sins.

Forgiveness of Sins

There are many Christians who mistakenly believe that as soon as they are baptized, their sins are forgiven and they are done.  They received a baptism, and now they are going to go to heaven.  Simple as that.  Nowhere in the Gospels does it say this.  This is an unfortunate interpretation.  The Gospels state otherwise:  that only the perfect enter heaven.  Christ said:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. - Matthew 5:17

For I say unto you, That except your righteousness [virtue] shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes [intellectuals] and Pharisees [believers], ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 5:20

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. - Matthew 5:27-28

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. - Matthew 5:48

Are we perfect to enter Heaven? Not so long as we have the causes of crime within us: pride, anger, lust, envy, jealousy, etc.

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. - Revelation 21:8

All of us are that.  All of us are fornicators and adulterers and thieves and murderers because we know that the Christ said:

Even if you look at a woman lustfully you have committed adultery with her in your heart

...which means you cannot enter heaven. This is true of all the crimes.

We cannot enter shamayim so long as we are committing these crimes in the mind. As long as the potential for crime is within, we are imperfect and we have dis-ease: a sickness of the psyche.

To be forgiven of those sicknesses, to earn the right to enter heaven, we have to become meek and poor, to not be rich psychologically, but to have none of those possessions in the mind.  And this is the great secret of the sexual energy.  This same energy, this fire, that we use to create a physical birth, also creates the sexual birth, the spiritual birth inside.  That same energy is the creator and destroyer.  Shiva is the creator and destroyer god, the Holy Spirit.  That fire of the Holy Spirit can conquer the Egyptians.  Right?  The Egyptians symbolize our own egos, all of our sins, all of our mistakes.  When we harness that fire we learn to utilize it to eliminate the ego.

This is why in the book of Leviticus it says when any man has an emission of semen he should wash himself in the Mikvah, in the sacred bath of transmutation and be unclean until evening.  Evening is a symbol of death.  This is when the sun goes down and darkness comes.  In other words, we will be unclean until the ego is dead.  It does not say that the Mikvah, the bath, the baptism will cleanse you of your sins, it says the evening will.  And the evening is death.  It is only through the death of the ego that cleanliness comes.  The Mikvah, the baptism helps, because it is where we harness that force in order to direct it against the ego.

The Death of the Ego

This death has three essential phases:

1.    Transmutation is the first step.  We need to transmute the sexual energy, to actually endeavor ourselves in our own baptism, to "drink" of those waters spiritually, inside, and recycle them, restore them, regenerate ourselves.

2.    The second step is meditation:  self-reflection, self-inquiry. This is the process whereby we get to know our enemy.  We need to study our enemy, who is our own mind.  Once we know that enemy and we start to see the depths of that enemy, not just the physical, superficial characteristics, but the Klipoth, our own subconscious, unconscious and infra-conscious mind, which are not visible from the physical world, then we can begin to pray for the elimination of those enemies. They cannot be eliminated if we have not understood them.  In other words, if we still hold within ourselves the potential to commit a crime, that sin cannot be forgiven because the cause of the sin still is there.  We need to fully understand the crime and fully understand why we never need repeat it.  When that understanding is complete then that crime can be removed, that source.

3.    Elimination, death. John the Baptist is beheaded. The ego is dead.

What is interesting is that the transmutation of that energy is a practice that has multiple forms.  I mentioned one, which is the union of husband and wife which is called Tantra, Maithuna, Urdvureta, Karmamudra - these different names refer to the practices for couples.

For single people, there are a variety of practices called in Sanskrit Pranayama. One of the main ones we teach in Gnosis is called Ham-sah, which is also the name of that sacred bird, the Ruach Elohim, that floats upon the waters of Shamayim.

When we harness that energy we begin to empower our own Inner Being [the Cherubim] to bring fruit to our tree.  When we are delivering the power of the Shin to our God and empowering this tree and becoming fruitful inside, then our own Inner Being can utilize that energy to destroy our ego, and this is how Christ becomes our Savior.  "No one comes to the Father but through me" means no one come to the Father but through Shin, through fire, through Christ, through sexual energy.  And that energy destroys the ego and liberates us from suffering.

This explains the story of the god Indra in the Rig Veda.  Indra has in his hand a Vajra, which means "thunderbolt," but that thunderbolt symbolizes a phallus, the sexual organ, and that Vajra is the main symbol of  Vajrayana, which is Tantra in Tibet.  The thunderbolt, the phallus, is the Hebrew Iod; this is Indra's main tool, the Iod, the sexual force.  Now in the Rig Veda, the demon Vritra has stolen all the waters from the earth. In other words, the ego has stolen our sexual water. So Indra, who is related with this superior triangle above, kills the demon Vritra by using the Vajra.  And when he does so, all of the waters are returned to the earth and life flourishes again.

What this implies for us is that we have to work; this is not something that can be achieved overnight.  It requires a great deal of effort.  We are not saved just because we believe in something.  We have to transform ourselves.  This is why baptism, which is related with Yesod, is the foundation of the temple.  Yesod means foundation.  Baptism is the foundation of the Gnostic Church.

In order to enter into the Gnostic Church, you must be baptized.  This does not mean that you have to pass through a physical ritual; it means you have to be baptized inside, sexually.  In other words, you must become chaste, and enter into the path of chastity, and from that, you knock on the door of initiation, and can enter the Gnostic Church.

On that note we will end the lecture with a short scripture from the Rig Veda.  But to understand this, let me explain one last point.  In the Rig Veda, Shin is called Agni, which means fire.

The Waters of Life

Waters, you are the ones who bring us the life force. Help us to find nourishment so that we may look upon great joy.

Let us share in the most delicious sap that you have, as if you were loving mothers.

Let us go straight to the house of the one for whom your waters give us life and give us birth.

For our well being let the goddesses be an aid to us, the waters be for us to drink. Let them cause well-being and health to flow over us.

Mistresses of all the things that are chosen, rulers over all peoples, the waters are the ones I beg for a cure.

Soma has told me that within the waters are all cures and Agni who is salutary to all.

Waters, yield your cure as an armor for my body, so that I may see the sun (Christ) for a long time.

Waters, carry far away all of this that has gone bad in me, either what I have done in malicious deceit or whatever lie I have sworn to.

I have sought the waters today; we have joined with their sap. O Agni (fire) full of moisture, come and flood me with splendor.

Questions and Answers

Q:  What would you say to the couples who have been together for many years who say "well, you know, we have had orgasms, and we have fornicated, and we are still together, and we love each other, ...and also to doctors and professors who say that orgasm whether through intercourse or masturbation, is a good thing...

A:  Well, we say that they can only know what their physical senses tell them, which is very limited.  They are not members of the Gnostic Church; they have not awakened their consciousness, and they have not entered into initiation.  They know nothing of the qualities of the spirit; they are the Pharisees and Sadducees of the Bible who believe and theorize, but do not know.  There are many theories, and we are free to believe what we like, and use whatever data or reasoning we want to justify our behaviors, but if we want to enter heaven, Shamayim, we have to rely on those who have been there, who know that realm--and those are the great prophets, the avatars.  They all universally teach:  do not orgasm. That is the basis of the teaching, the basis of the tradition.  And many people come up with millions of excuses why they cannot give up orgasm, why they should do it, why it is healthy.  And that is fine; they are free do that.  They just have to bear the consequences of it.  It is sad that they chose to be ignorant of the causes of suffering.

Q:  What would you say of an elevated Yogi like Yogananda who comes and delivers the teachings to the west and never took a wife... Somebody in the west looks at his life and sees that he never took a wife and they get this impression that, ...stay single obviously...

A:  Well, to understand the point of view of the variety of yogis who have taught yoga, we have to keep in mind that there are many levels of the teaching.  Tibetan Buddhism itself is arranged in many, many levels and so is Hinduism.  Yogananda was a practitioner of Kriya Yoga, but he refused the higher teachings; he rejected them.  His instructor, who was married, wanted to initiate Yogananda into the higher teachings and told him, "it is time for you to get a wife," and Yogananda stepped away and said no, he did not want it.  And that was his right.

We all have the right to choose how we want to approach the path, but in that we have to keep in mind: we will only get what we earn, based upon what we do.  We only get the consequences of our actions.  If we want to enter into the highest levels, we have to utilize the highest practices.  It is quite simple.

Naturally, we need to be prepared for working in those levels.  In past ages, humanity was not prepared for these teachings and so they were kept secret and only given to those who were prepared. This is why throughout centuries and centuries, all the students of every tradition, east and west, were required first to awaken their consciousness.  To awaken:  to have conscious capacities beyond the physical senses. Once they developed that, then they could understand this doctrine.

Now the end of the age has come; time is short.  As an act of compassion, the Gnostic Church has authorized the public release of this knowledge, so that those who will take advantage, can, and those who will not, have that free will.  They are free to choose.

Q:  What about the people who practice Tantra, not necessarily within the Gnostic Church, ...what if they do refrain from orgasm, but for other reasons, ..obviously still beneficial, right? but they are probably not gaining... What effects would it have on them?

A:  The question is about those who practice the retention of sexual energy, but more as a curiosity, or as an experiment.

They need to know that God is not mechanical.  God is an intelligence.  The Christ is a great intelligence; the Divine Mother is a great intelligence.  And Kundalini, or Candali, that sacred fire that awakens from the practices of Tantra, is the very intelligence of God.  It is Shin, it is the fire of Christ, which is pure wisdom. That fire will not awaken without specifically satisfying the requirements of it.  It is impossible.  There are a lot of people who write books, and teach classes, and charge money, and travel around, and teach this and that about Tantra and transmutation etc. etc.  And they can do all the practices of Tantra they want, and transmute their sexual energy, they can read as many books as they want, and be initiated into any tradition, but if they do not satisfy the requirements of the Christ, they will never awaken the Kundalini.

The Kundalini is a force of morality, of purity, of sanctity.  This means it awakens in relation to our destruction of our ego, to our ability to consciously come into harmony with the laws of Christ - and by Christ I mean that force, not Christian, not a Christian force, but Christ: Chenresig, Avalokiteshvara, Krishna,  Quetzacoatl, Kukulkan, Kuan Yin, Herakles, Jupiter, these are all names of Christ....

We can be of any tradition and we can practice this technique within any religion, but unless we satisfy the moral requirements, that fire cannot awaken.

There are people who play games, who sleep with different partners, who practice transmutation, but psychologically they are still thieves and murderers and adulterers and liars because the ego is still alive in them.  So in them, there will be no redemption.

Rasputin is a great example of this. Rasputin was a monk in Russia who learned the practices of transmutation and went to Russia and was teaching them and practicing with many women; he awakened a lot of power, but as a demon. This is precisely the great danger of this technique and why it was kept secret; why it was required that people should awaken their consciousness first, in order to see the realities of the ego and the realities of karma.

Karma is real; it is cause and effect. When I say that we have to abide by the law, it is that:  cause and effect.

This technique is extremely powerful, but has to be used in harmony with the law of cause and effect.  In other words, if we start transforming this energy, but we do not direct it to destroy the ego, there is a creation that occurs, there is a birth that occurs:  it is the birth of a demon, a devil.

Q:  So does that mean that... it is really evident now... perhaps that's why it was kept secret for so long, that some people won't want to use it in that right way...

A:  That is true.  This is why in the book The Major Mysteries, Samael Aun Weor stated very clearly:

...from Gnosis one becomes either an Angel or a devil.

After a false step, many continue rolling downward into the abyss and finally the horns grow on them and they become demons. This is the remarkable reality in Gnosis.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow. - Ecclesiastes 1:18

Therefore, stay back, nosey people!

Therefore, stay back, profaners! Gnosis is a two-edged sword, it defends and gives life to the humble and virtuous; yet, it wounds and destroys the curious and impure.

One or the other, no exception, no vagueness, nothing in the middle; there is no middle between them.  You choose one or the other.  If you use these practices, if you use this wisdom, you will awaken, but in accordance with your deeds, in accordance with your works, not your intentions.  And this is a tremendous thing that people overlook.

We all have this personality that believes that when we relate ourselves to the right teaching or teacher, we will be saved and everything will be o.k. because, "I found the real thing and now I am going to be o.k.".  I am sorry, but this is not true!  We will be o.k. in accordance with our works, simple as that. Samael gave some examples of this, in particular, in The Mystery of The Golden Blossom.

Ungrateful to his benefactors, with much work as a knight, nonetheless, Brutus accepted Gnosis and the Sahaja Maithuna...

Without restraining himself in the knowledge of a cause, but turning his back on the Guru (Master), he worked in Vulcan's Fiery Forge in vain because Devi Kundalini never rewards treason...

Even if one works very seriously with Sexual Yoga, the igneous serpent of our magic powers will never ascend the spine of traitors, murderers, adulterers, rapists and perverts...

Devi Kundalini never becomes an accomplice to crime; the Sacred Fire ascends in accordance with the merits of the heart.

Sexual Magic is essential, but without sanctity, spiritual achievement is impossible...

Brutus was lamentably mistaken in thinking Kundalini to be mechanical; the Divine Mother is very exacting...

For the unworthy all doors are closed, except the one of repentance.  Unfortunately, Brutus did not wish to knock on that door, and instead of rising up through the spinal canal, the Sacred Fire was cast down from the coccyx transforming itself into the abominable Kundabuffer organ: Satan's tail...

One starry night in the superior worlds, while talking with my great friend the radiant Angel Adonai, who now has a physical body, I received an extraordinary piece of news.

"That man (Brutus)," said the Angel, "has awakened in evil and for evil."

I confirmed this some days later upon encountering him in the superior worlds...

This man practiced sexual magic with his wife and thought that simply because of that he will awaken as a prophet or an angel in the internal worlds, as a White Master.  He did awaken, and he did awaken as a master, but in evil, and he did not know it.  He thought he was doing good.  He continued to think he was doing good until the day he died.  And he had awakened consciousness, and he had powers, and he had many followers who still fight tooth and nail to protect his legacy and his teachings.  And it is very sad.

Q:  ..true marriage is a pact...death of the ego...and I have been told for many years you still have to go  . .. customs ...getting married in a church or city hall... could you clarify the whole aspect of marriage?

A:  We are going to get in depth with matrimony, with the sacrament of matrimony, when that lecture comes.  But just in synthesis, the marriage occurs as soon as sexual union occurs.  The Bible says they will be one flesh, and that is marriage.  Simple as that, but the rest of it we will deal with in a later lecture.

Q:  According to the teachings and scriptures that fall under the term Gnosticism, there was this sort of elitist structure that some people were born with spark... and some are not?  How does this teaching respond to that?

A:  It is true; that spark that gives us the capacity to awaken consciousness is that iod, the dot.  But that iod not only is sexual energy, it is the consciousness, it is our essence.  There are people who were born into the physical world who do not have that spark within.  They are what we would call "shells," Klipoth, demons. These are people, physical people, who walk around and do things, but who have no conscience, no consciousness, no sense of right and wrong.  They are there just to act as vehicles of karma.  They are demons in physical bodies. These are people that we see on the news all the time, that walk in our streets and work with us and talk with us, and play games and tease and make movies and television, and do many things, and we worship them as celebrities and as great writers and great authors and musicians and spiritual leaders, and this and that. They look like everyone else, but they have no conscience and they do not know that they are this. But the fact is those are what we call lost, because they have already abandoned their own Inner God and chose crime instead.

The danger is there for us to become like that, too.  The more we persist in producing actions that are harmful, the more we encase our own consciousness in ego, in karma, in lust and anger and pride.  When our consciousness is completely encaged in crime, then our own Inner Being says, "I cannot do anything now,  there is no seed that I can use to grow a good tree." This is why Christ says that he will chop down those trees and burn them. That burning is in Klipoth where the chaff, the shell, that comes off the wheat, is taken away and burned.  Inside of that seed, the wheat, there is the kernel of consciousness, but that soul can no longer redeem themselves, they do not want it.  They are so trapped and enmeshed that, out of compassion, God instituted the abyss.  And those seeds are cycled down through those levels of hell in order to purify away all of that impurity, and then after few thousand years of suffering, they can try again.

Q:  So, those people who are lost... is there a way they can fight it...?

A:  There is always the door of redemption.  There is always the door of repentance.  It is always there.  And that is why we see angels working even in the lowest levels of hell trying to save people. Redemption is always there; but it is highly unlikely, because you have to keep in mind that karma is an energy that moves in a certain direction, and when you have instituted an enormous amount of force driving the consciousness in that direction, which is downwards into more materialism, it is highly unlikely for it suddenly to reverse course.  It can happen, but it takes a lot of force to push it back the other way.  So when we feel ourselves becoming heavier and denser and deeper and descending and getting worse and worse, we have to work twice as hard to return back to the light.

Q:  You said that transmutation and meditation ... transmutation has multiple purposes and aspects.  Is it correct, did you say that one is the elimination of... to know ourselves first of all in order to eliminate the "I's",

A:  Well, what I was giving there were three steps:  transmutation, meditation, and elimination.  Transmutation having different aspects means there are different practices, either as a single person, or in a couple.  And it does have different purposes, both to rejuvenate the body, to create the soul, and also to destroy the ego.

Q:  Could we actually do harm by presenting this knowledge, specifically the key of transmutation to people who perhaps are not ready to receive this knowledge?  Or are we at the times of the end so that we really need to just give it freely?

A: We have entered into the Age of Aquarius and this is the age of the water-bringer. That water is the knowledge embodied in Sarasvati, the Divine Mother, who is the Goddess of Knowledge, intelligence.  This is the time when the knowledge has to be given freely. This is why Samael Aun Weor wrote all of his books and gave all his teachings and lectures, to give this knowledge freely and openly to humanity because they need it.

It is urgent to unveil in order to teach. It is necessary to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom in all the nations of the world. To preach without unveiling is equivalent to not teaching. - The Gnostic Magic of the Runes

It is a great mistake to hide this knowledge.  The hiding of this knowledge belonged to the Piscean era, which ended.  In the Piscean era, the fish hide in the waters.  In the Aquarian era, the waters are poured forth with abundance.

Now, knowing that, we have to also understand how to deliver the water.  You do not want to choke someone on it.  You have to deliver the water to the person to restore them and benefit them, meaning we have to have skillful means of doing so. This is something we have to gauge based on our own temperament, our own idiosyncracy, but most especially, on the capacity of the receiver.

If the receiver has a very small cup, you cannot fit a gallon of water in it, you can only give them a spoonful or a cupful.  And as a teacher or as a student of this teaching who wants to help others, you have to learn to gauge based on your intuition and your best judgment how to approach each person.

This is why Samael Aun Weor wrote a variety of books, with a variety of levels of depth.  Some of them are quite simple and appropriate for people who are prepared for that level.  Some of them are extremely direct and intense because there are people who need that.

In this Aquarian era, in general, we need to give the knowledge, not hide it.  It needs to be made available, because people are searching for it, everywhere. Unfortunately, what they usually find is black magic, lies, pornography, and deception.

Q: ...the meaning of John the Baptist giving the water in the wilderness..

A: This is why in the Gospel that I read, John the Baptist is giving the Gospel of Baptism in the wilderness. He symbolizes the Prophet, the Initiate, the Bodhisattva who teaches others how to transmute.  The wilderness is life, it is Malkuth, it is this world.

It is necessary for us to teach; it is necessary for all of the schools who belong to the Gnostic Church to make this knowledge publicly available; this is the purpose of Christ in this age.  It is not to hide the knowledge any more.  It is to give it out so that as many souls as possible can enter into redemption.

If we withhold the knowledge from people, we commit a crime. That is why I stated explicitly: baptism is the foundation stone of the Gnostic Church:  sexual transmutation.  If a Gnostic Church or Gnostic school (that calls themselves Gnostic) is not publicly teaching transmutation, they are not Gnostic.

Q:  ...teaching it publicly but not teaching the death of the ego...

A:  Well, that is another problem.  When I say transmutation, I mean the entire practice, those three phases:  transmutation, elimination, and meditation.  It is not sufficient just to withhold or restrain the sexual energy: we have to transmute it and then use it. Complete transmutation only occurs as we kill the ego.  It is alchemical; the putrefaction and death of the ego has to happen, otherwise the soul cannot be born.

Q:  ...what about the breathing exercises for transmutation...

A:  Yes, there are many.  That would be the transmutation, the breathing exercises, pranayamas.

Q:  ...are there just the pranayamas, or is that just one breathing exercise?

A:  Well, as I said there are many forms of transmutation; there are many ways to transmute sexual energy.

For a single person, the most powerful is a breathing exercise like a pranayama.  But we also have runic practices and Tibetan practices called Yantra Yoga. A single person who is withholding sexual energy can transmute through many ways, even by consciously listening to classical music or consciously making art, because this is a creative process that can utilizes creative energy and can transform it. Singing mantras is a transmutation practice.  There are many varieties, yet pranayama is the most direct.  This is where we harness the wind through conscious will and recycle it in the body.

Q:  These two mems of mayim might symbolize also the two waters of each gonad of either man or woman, with the iod the sexual organ...

A:  Yes that would make sense.  The point is made that the two mems of mayim can represent the gonads of the male testicles and the ovaries of the woman where the Iod is the sexual organ. Yes, that is true.

And Jesus [Christ] came and spake unto them, saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven [schamayim] and in earth [adamah].

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of [shin]: the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

"Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."