Laboratory Work
“He who does not seek it is not likely to find it.” —Paracelsus
In the previous lectures of this course about Alchemy, we described how the elements are related to our spiritual growth. We discussed the four primary elements, or four basic elements, which are: air, fire, water and earth. In all the ancient mystical traditions it has been symbolized that these four elements are just particularizations or condensations of a single element, of one root substance. That one root substance has had many names as well, many symbols and veils. In India it is called Akash, while it can also be called Prakriti. In the West it has been called Ether and Quintessence, which literally translated means the “fifth element.” Quintessence refers to that primordial substance at the base of all things.
What all the ancient traditions said is that any compound element, any aggregated thing — which includes everything about us — if that aggregated thing is destroyed, its substances return back to the primordial root. We see that is true of physical matter: when the body is destroyed, its elements return back to nature, back to its original elements. When a tree dies, when an animal dies, nature breaks it down. It casts out impurities and recovers the energy in order to create something new. We see this cycle in all things, in all levels of nature. These four elements are destroyed, purified, and returned back to the Quintessence.
On a purely mechanical level, this is happening constantly; it is happening now as you breathe. As you digest food and liquid, your body is performing this process, constantly. All of the cells and organs in your body are engaged in this process. This is symbolically represented in different symbols as cycles of life and death, cycles of evolution where energy and matter interact to create forms (“bodies”), and gradually evolve (becomes complicated) then are maintained for a brief period (which we call “life”) and then die, are destroyed, devolved, broken back down to the source elements. So we see this cycle in all things, this is the function of nature, this is how nature works. This is the Arcanum Ten.
Therefore, it is important to recognize that the forms adopted by the elements are impermanent. Our bodies are impermanent! No matter what you do or believe, nature will take your body back.
Our mind is also impermanent. We have a lunar mind that belongs to nature.
At our current level of development, everything that we perceive and interact with is impermanent, because we are asleep. We do not have cognizance of anything lasting or permanent. We lack such cognizance, such perception, because we are filled with impurity. Stated in another way, our mind is constructed of elements that are improperly formed.
Our lunar mind does not have true longevity. Our lunar mind is highly unstable, highly unreliable, subject to very easy influence from negative forces. We are very quick to become angry, very quick to become stressed, anxious, afraid, inflamed with passion, depressed, elated. Our mind is highly unstable, highly unreliable, and it has no longevity, no strength.
The lunar mind is composed of the four elements. Remember, these are not physical elements, but psychological, spiritual. That is why in an earlier lecture we described how in the process of spiritual development we work with these four elements to understand them, to comprehend them, and to learn to master them, so we can become stable, capable of withstanding the influence of the elements, in fact becoming capable of commanding the elements and no longer controlled by them: nd that is both physically and psychologically, but especially psychologically. That is the basis of this work. It is to work in our laboratory.
In this image the alchemist is in his laboratory, seated before the athanor, the furnace, the alchemists’ oven. It would be absurd for an alchemist to work with an oven that was cold, that had no heat, no fire. The fire that needs to fill that oven is not the fire of this particularized aggregate of fire or, the element fire, because that element fire is not permanent, it is a crude form of fire, it is not the quintessence. The quintessence, the Akash, is the root of all four elements and thus it is all the elements.The Akash is fire, that is liquid (water), highly mobile (air), and it has stability and longevity of earth. The Akash has all the four elements perfected; it is a perfect fire. The Quintessence is the fire that burns in the furnace/oven of the alchemist.
He stimulates that fire with a bellows, with air, that is also Akash, but in this case that air is called prana. It is not physical air, but the energy of the air, which in Tibetan it is called Lu, Lung, and in Sanskrit is the root of Vāyu', the wind: not physical wind, not the breath in the body, but the energy in the wind and breath, the prana.
The alchemist here is not a terrestrial person; this image is symbolic. The alchemist here, being bearded, being an old man, is our Innermost, our inner Buddha, our inner God, who drives the fire, who gives it wind, who gives it energy, in order to perform his work in the laboratory.
In the symbolic images from alchemy, we see workers with complicated devices, accompanied with very confusing and enigmatic phrases that bewilder the intellect. It was all encoded to hide a great power, a terrifically divine science. These images are not literal. These workers do not represent physical people working in a physical laboratory. Rather, they represent elemental forces that are working inside of those who are on the path.
The vessels, ovens, alembics, and different tools represent transformative processes in those who are transmuting energy. They represent the organs in our body. All of those alembics, vials, and vessels are in the shapes of your heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, endocrine glands, sexual organs, brain...
All of these forces and energies that are at work in the symbolic laboratory represent the forces and energies that are in work in your body and in your mind: this is the real meaning of Alchemy. Your laboratory is yourself. The alchemist is your Innermost, who applies forces and energies to us in order to derive a particular result, in order to create, in order to perfect us. Unfortunately, we do not cooperate.
The oven with the rounded vessel, with the fluted top, represents our body and mind. That stove at the bottom is our sexual organs filled with fire, with heat of the Akash. It is heated and tempered by following the advice of Hermes Trismegistus, who said in his Emerald Tablet:
“With a gentle heat, with much attention...”
That gentle heat is the fire of Akash that emerges in white tantra, pure sexuality that rejects animal lust, and instead tempers the sexual heat to gently warm the water in our glands, heart, brain. The gently warmed “water” creates “steam,” a mixture of water and air, in other words what Jesus said:
“To be born again of water and spirit (air)”.
The “steam” is how the elements rise up the chimney: the spinal column. In Asia they call this rising elemental force Kundalini, Tummo or Candali.
Here we see in that vessel Ida and Pingala, Od and Obd, the two channels of energy that move alongside the Caduceus of Mercury, and in the center is the spine itself. These are Adam and Eve working in harmony with the forces of red and white, these two channels, solar and lunar. And the heating of that water and the containing of that energy in the vessel, sealed, to let no energy escape, causes a process of awakening where the energy becomes concentrated and rises. These symbols represent ourselves, not vessels in the physical laboratory but the vessel of the body, the vessels of the organs, of the mind and of the heart. You see in each case that these vessels are well sealed: nothing is escaping. There are no openings anywhere for the energy to leave. We are not like that; we waste energy everyday, and that is why at the end of every day we are completely exhausted. The point of our studies is here in this statement of Samael Aun Weor, who wrote in his book, Fundamentals of Gnostic Education:
“The revolutionary psychology of all Gnostic movements is based on the study of the different types of energies that operate within the human organism and within nature. [...] Evolving, devolving, and neutral forces exist within the psycho-physiological laboratory of the human organism; these forces must be studied and profoundly comprehended.”
The purpose of Alchemy is to help us perfect ourselves. Perfection implies the removal of all that is impure, and we are filled with a lot of impurity. In order to purify ourselves, we have to study the forces and energies that move in our laboratory, which is psycho-physiological. It is psychological and physical. In order to study how these energies, the earth, the water, the fire, the air, the Akash; evolve and devolve, how they flow, how they move, change, how do we interact with them as a consciousness. This is the purpose of this science. Unfortunately, up until now, we have remained in 100 percent complete ignorance of these energies and forces. We take everything for granted. We are asleep. We think we are very intelligent and very smart, but the reality is we are deepening our suffering on a daily basis in complete ignorance of that fact.
This graphic represents our psycho-physiological laboratory, it is a very complicated machine. We are constantly using it in transforming energy in complete ignorance of how we do it. Be here, right now! Feel the body that you are in, be aware that you have five senses that are fully active and are transforming energy, right now. You are hearing the sound of my voice, that is the energy that is transformed through the sense of sound, of hearing. You are also seeing, looking at the graphic or looking at me, or if you are listening through the radio, looking at the room you are in. That is two senses fully active, with a lot of information constantly coming in. You also have a sense of touch, of which you might not be aware of until it is mentioned, but your body feels a lot, both inside of it and around it. The sense of taste is probably latent, unless you are eating or drinking something, and also so the sense of smell.
All of these senses are constantly engaged, and we remain unaware of them, but there is another sense that we completely ignore, yet it is the most powerful, and that is the sense of imagination. It is the mirror of the mind’s eye. It is where all that sensory data is first reflected, where you contemplate, analyze, and react to the other sensory data that is coming in. If you are uncomfortable in the chair, then in your imagination you are getting the thoughts and feelings,“This chair is uncomfortable, maybe I should move to that other chair.” Then you imagine how that other chair would feel. Or,”My coffee does not taste really good; I need more sugar, or milk.” and then you imagine how much better it would be with sugar or milk. That sensory data is constantly reflecting in the imagination, and all of that information is flowing through the three brains, yet without awareness of it. It moves us, yet without our conscious awareness.
The intellect, where we process thought, the emotional brain, where we process our feelings of like and dislike, joy and displeasure, and also the motor-instinctual-sexual brain, which is where the most base sensations flow. There is a huge process, movement of energy, happening in our three brains in relation with our five senses, constantly from moment to moment, about which we generally have no awareness. I invite you now to become aware of that. Become aware of everything that is happening in your laboratory. Observe all the data that is coming through your senses and is reflecting inside of you, and how you are reacting to it. This is the beginning of the work in the alchemists’ laboratory.
Your laboratory is your body and your mind. The purpose of the laboratory is to transform energy. The question is: who is in charge of the transformation? Who decides how the energy is transformed, who is in charge of our psycho-chemical physiological laboratory? Generally speaking, we are not in charge of our laboratory. We leave the job to a secretary, who does the job automatically for us, and we just let things happen without any real influence over the process or the result. Whenever we are inactive (asleep) in our lives, we are taking in all this sensory data and combining that with the data that we are processing in our imagination, through our fantasies, our daydreaming, through our memories, wishes and longings, and all of that data is fed into our three brains. Of particular importance here is that these three brains are just transformers of energy, they have no inherent intelligence, and they are just machines. Energy is put into them, energy is transformed, that is all. The intellect is just a machine; the only thing the intellect does is compare. It compares ‘A’ and ‘B’, yes and no, black and white. We have this strong tendency now, culturally, to rely very heavily on the intellect, and we flip in this intellectual way in our extremes. Today we love our politician, who says ‘A,A,A,A’ in agreement with all of our ‘A’s, but the moment that politician says ‘B’, our entire perception of that politician flips to ‘B’, and we hate them. We are unable to see two things at once, apparent contradictions to hold things as more subtle, to understand things as deeper, more complicated. We have the tendency now to flip, from one side to the other, this is very intellectual tendency, it is “all or nothing” point of view. A person may have done 100 good things to help us, but when they do one thing that we do not like, we cut them out of our life. We talk bad about them, we criticize them, we gossip about them, we hate them. This is our tendency; we all do that in our own ways.
A similar tendency exists in the emotional center, but it is a little more subtle and not quite as dramatic, and also in the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, we have similar tendency, a pendulum. You have to observe yourself to discover it.
All three brains transform energy. We are constantly transforming and receiving energy, but not in control or aware of how we are transforming that energy. We hear, smell, and taste things, and we measure them based on the reactions of our three brains, and those reactions are determined by what? We do not know! We have no real knowledge of what is happening inside of us, chemically, physically, but especially psychologically, we have no real knowledge of it. To us everything is just happening, and for us life is just about acquiring as much pleasure as we possibly can, physically and psychologically. Our primary interest is to please our sense of touch, taste, smell, sight, sound and to indulge our imagination as much as possible, until we die. That is pretty much how we see life, and that is exactly why the world is falling into complete decay and disorder because that point of view is completely out of balance with nature. That point of view transforms enormous amounts of energy and feeds desire, what in the bible is called רע Rah, in Hebrew. Rah רע means pollution, impurity. Rah רע is the duality of the Tree of Knowledge: Etz Va-da’at Tob Ve-rah.’ {עץ הדעת טוב ורע} the Tree of Knowledge of purity and impurity, of goodness and pollution. When Adam and Eve ate from that tree of knowledge against the commands of the Elohim, they ate of the רע impurity; they indulged in the רע impurity and desire because of curiosity, and the result was suffering, they left Eden, which translated means bliss, and were cast into the wilderness to suffer pain, that is a karmic consequence: cause and effect! That process is happening in us today. Adam and Eve are symbolic, not only of an ancient humanity but of forces that are in our psycho-chemical makeup.
We have told you many times that Adam represents the intellect, the brain, and that Chavah-Eve represents sexuality. Eva-sexuality through the senses tastes of desire and gives that fruit to the brain, to the nervous system and we develop a taste for it and we do not care about the suffering that ensues. This is why Buddha Shakyamuni taught the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth states: There is suffering. Second Noble Truth states: The cause of suffering is desire. We ignore that, we do not care, we want what we want and we do not care about the cost.
A student of alchemy learns instead to see desire for what it is: a temptation, an illusion; elements in motion that are impermanent and unreliable.
A student of alchemy learns to see that this laboratory has the potential to transform energy, but it does not always have to be transformation that results in suffering, it can be a transformation that results in wisdom. It is possible to receive the same energies as everyone else and transform them into something of benefit instead of something that propagates ignorance, craving, aversion.
The student of alchemy learns, just the same as the student of yoga and dharma, that the key is to learn how to deal with sensations. Not only physical or external but psychological sensations, to learn to transform them consciously. Not just to be a machine, addicted to sensations and controlled by sensations but to be a human being who controls the sensations and the relationship with them, this is a great transformation.
The student of Alchemy, yoga, dharma, learns to be constantly aware of this laboratory, in other words to be: awake, aware of the laboratory, to be in charge of the laboratory, to be constantly watching everything that is coming into the laboratory and to constantly consciously transform that energy though prayer. Through remembrance of the divine, through the knowledge of what is possible for the human being to achieve. Not just to be another animal, addicted with lust, inflamed and consumed by anger and envy, but free of those discursive qualities. Filled instead with chastity, love, patience, humility, great diligence and complete willingness to work to help humanity and become better. That is possible if we learn to transform energy.
That is why in the alchemical images we see that these vessels are perfectly sealed. That represents that all of the energy in the laboratory is kept contained, not wasted and thrown out, not expelled. But every little atom of energy is harnessed, kept in the laboratory and transformed.
In the Mahabharata, which is an ancient scripture of India, there is very beautiful description of this alchemical process. In synthesis it states that instead of being a machine and reacting to, and being enslaved by desire, instead the yogi becomes like a tortoise in a shell who withdraws all of its limbs into the shell, in other words, it draws all the energy through all the senses into itself and holds it there, and remembers God and does not react. Instead, one restrains the senses, controls them and contemplates itself. Does not contemplate its addiction for lust, its desire for sex, for revenge, for profit, for attention and recognition, but instead contemplates its own nature. When those sensations are attacking, instead of being distracted by those sensations and wanting to fulfill the desires of those sensations, the yogi looks at itself and says, “I am here, I am me, I am related to my Being, I am part of my being, why do I need the recognition of others, why do I need envy, why do I need revenge when God is here, perfect fulfillment is here, Eden is inside, Heaven, Nirvana is within...”
Bliss is not found in the senses, it is found in the consciousness.
In another way, the way that the Buddha taught: The dharmic practitioner restrains the senses and controls them, and thereby transforms their experience of life. No longer victimized by sensations, no longer controlled or swayed by them, but instead comprehends them.
The work of the alchemist begins here and now in the moment, receiving all sensations and impressions and remembering itself. Remembering while that might taste good, but what would be result in indulging in that taste? If I eat or drink that sensation that I want, what will it cause to happen in my laboratory, what would be the result of that transformation? This is what we need to be cognizant of.
We need to select the impressions that we bring into our laboratory, because right now we select them mechanically guided by desire. We pick impressions because we want to sustain our lust, nourish our anger, we want to feed our envy, we want to bury our fear or our insecurity, we want recognition, attention and we select our impressions to feed those addictions. The alchemist, the kabbalist, the Gnostic, the practitioner of dharma or yoga, instead says: “If I take that sensation in myself, what will it transform into, what will it become?” We become what we eat, and even knowing that we eat garbage. Even having heard that “you become what you eat”, we still eat junk, food that is not food. But we do it even more with the food that we eat psychologically, through the other senses. We are addicted to our sense of taste, and we know alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, fast-food, chemicals are bad and that pollution is bad, and all the substances that we are easily addicted to and we still eat it. All of those atoms, the energies, the air, fire, water, earth, in those forms of matter are assimilated into our body and become our body and that is why we are sick, weak, and easy to manipulate. We have no strength, even physically. Our food and water supply are corrupted, our air is corrupted, worse we pile on top of that corruption, food that is not food. Food that comes out of boxes and cans; food that has no natural elements that is filled with chemicals which kill us, but we do not care because it tastes good, it is convenient and cheap. Worse than that is, we do it through our sense of scent, sight, sound and touch, and of course imagination. 99 percent of what is on television is psychological food that kills us. Everything in the movies is corrupted food for the psyche. The vast majority of the music is corrupted food for the psyche that stimulates inferior pleasures and desires; it does not stimulate the consciousness towards unity with the divine. Instead it stimulates attraction to materialism, which is death for the soul! Similarly in our interactions with others, we want the impressions through our sight, sound, scent and touch that give us social engagement, appreciation, security, recognition, stature. We have no recognition of the harm of those elements.
In our imagination, we do all of this to an even greater degree. Always indulging in our fantasies for the future, our longings for revenge, redemption socially. How much of the time do we put elements into our laboratory that stimulate our longing for the divine?
Be honest with yourself, and analyze your psychological state. What is it composed of? A lot of stress, dissatisfaction, longings for things that you will probably never have, a lot of empty feelings of disconnection and loneliness, dissatisfaction in your relationships, career, skills, education and in life in general. All of those feelings are precisely a result of the elements that have been put into your laboratory and transformed by you. We want happiness, fulfillment, contentment; we want to feel successful, loved, appreciated, and needed. We do not feel those things because we have not worked in our laboratory in the right way. We have worked instead for selfishness, for sensual pleasure, we have not worked on the right foundation.
In order to acquire the right foundation we need to vastly revolutionize how we work in our laboratory, and that begins with selecting better impressions. Being aware of ourselves and knowing how to change it.
When you are feeling negative, dark, angry, depressed, deflated, dissatisfied, you need to analyze why. What energy has been transformed in your laboratory to cause that state to emerge? It does not happen by chance, it does not happen as a punishment from God, it happens because of how you have transformed impressions. Either with your thinking, feeling or your body, and it is in your hands to change it for a better state.
We learn to select impressions so we can manage the state of our consciousness. When you are feeling negative emotions, you need to take in good impressions. When you are feeling overwhelmed with life, burned with pain, with desires, with your suffering, then take in good impressions, find positive impressions that stimulate the consciousness to activity and that bring serenity to your heart. Go into nature, go to the woods, to the beach, to the countryside, forget your problems. Stop thinking about that thing obsessively, pay attention to what is around you, look closely into the face of your children, your parents, see them for who they are and love them. Look closely at the flower at the tree, at the cloud and realize its beauty. Stop looking so obsessively at your desires, your failures, successes, and grasping onto them! Instead be here and now, and a great deal of your suffering will just evaporate.
Most of what we have as suffering is self-created, self-produced, and completely unnecessary. We do it to ourselves. In the Mahabharata it states:
“Every existent object is dissolved into that from which it is produced.”
That statement is pure Alchemy but it comes from India. The Mahabharata is one of the oldest and longest poems on the planet, it is thousands of years old, and yet here this statement is pure Alchemy, which people think only came in Europe 500 years ago. If you comprehend this statement very well, you will easily learn to select impressions, and to conquer your desires and the chains that afflict you, that you yourself put on to yourself. You will start to understand that this “Every existent object” is not physical objects, it includes them, but it is primarily focused on psychological, spiritual conditions. Our suffering is caused by psychological desires, and those desires are impermanent. They exist because we are sustaining them with our energies every day, feeding those desires, the way we have been doing for lifetimes. To be free from those desires, first stop feeding them, see them for what they are and begin to realize that they are impermanent, they will be dissolved, it is only a question when and how. We can choose not to deal with them now, that is our choice, we have every right to that, God respects our will. But eventually, once those desires, that knot of suffering becomes too heavy, nature has no choice but to dissolve it for us. Out of compassion from God. We call that process hell. It is a process that, all that energy which we have established is taken back by nature and our soul is purified, the impurities are cleansed away, the purities are taken out. It is a great process of fire and heat and pressure, and it is very uncomfortable, but it is necessary. The other option is to do it ourselves; that is what we call the path to liberation from suffering. To consciously dissolve the causes of suffering in our own mind, in our own heart in our own body; through the application of heat and pressure, the application of the Akash, the real fire, learn to harness it.
“Every existent object is dissolved into that from which it is produced.”
Everything about us will be dissolved. It does not matter how many surgeries you get to look beautiful, you will decay and die. You can get all the surgeries you want, you can wear all the makeup you want, you can spend all of your time and money on your wardrobe, on your car, on everything about your appearance, but you will age, you will decay, and you will die. And you would have wasted your life, because you will go out of this life worse than when you came in, because you will change nothing truly fundamental about yourself. You will have worsened your karma. Everything is constantly changing, and it is up to you if it changes for better or worse. When you understand that “Every existent object is dissolved into that from which it is produced” you understand that these four compounded elements are returned back to their original source but they are not the same; nothing stays the same. Everything is constantly changing. Once you have had that type of experience, you are forever changed. All of your experiences change you. As many times as you have died and have been reborn, you have never remained the same, because you have acquired new experience, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
When you understand that, you know then that the new age idea that all of humanity will become angels is a lie, it is a fantasy. No one enters heaven automatically. No one evolves into a God because of the action of nature. A God is self-produced. A master is a master of himself and of nature. This is not handed out to us for free, it has to be earned, it has to be fought for. One has to die to receive it, and death is psychological, all the impurity has to die.
This phrase hides something very profound, but the eyes of the flesh cannot see it. “Every existent object is dissolved into that from which it is produced.” But what about the nonexistent objects? What about those things that are made from things that are not impermanent? What about that which always IS? That which cannot be dissolved, that which does not become compounded and then dissolved again. What about that that produces the continuity of all things? If all compounded things emerge into forms and dissolve out of forms, what sustains that? Something must sustain it, there must be a field or an environment or energy or something that allows that to occur, a space, what is that? That is also inside of us, that is also something that we can learn about and taste, and touch and become.
In the Bible, that is hidden in the gospels in the early scriptures, as (אהיה אשר אהיה ) Eheieh Asher Eheieh, in Hebrew, “I am that which is becoming.” It is the name of God, that he speaks to Moses. “I am he who becomes”, “I am becoming”. In Sanskrit terminology this is Shunyata, the Ain Soph, this is the emptiness in Buddhist terms, Samantabhadra in Sanskrit, Adi-Buddha, That which is, that which is becoming, that which is nonexistent, but yet exists. That is why the Buddha said:
“All compound things must be dissolved again. Seek ye for that which is permanent, and work out your salvation with diligence.”
Alchemy is not just restricted to Europe. Alchemy is a universal teaching. The Buddha here is teaching exactly the science of Alchemy. What is permanent? What is compound? Paracelsus explains it this way:
“Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot appear on account of that which conceals it. The good is least good whilst it is thus concealed. The concealment must be removed that so the good may be able freely to appear in its own brightness.”
What is the good? It is the opposite of Ra. Etz Va-da’at Tob Ve-rah.’ {עץ הדעת טוב ורע} The tree of Knowledge of purity and impurity. Tob is goodness in Hebrew, Ra is impurity, evil is how it used to be translated. Good and evil. Really the terms should be pollution and purity. Paracelsus here is addressing that: “the good cannot appear on account of that which conceals it.”
Look into yourself: I know that we all think that we are very good, but let us be realistic, honest, let us look at our lives in the context in what we know about spirituality and religion. If we were good, we would be in nirvana already, if we were truly good we would be in heaven, we would not be here suffering, in spiritual darkness, in ignorance, suffering so many afflictions physically and psychologically. It would be completely illogical for the good to be persecuted “just because.” If we are persecuted, it is because we deserve it; if we are suffering, it is because the causes of suffering are within us. We suffer because we are carrying the causes of suffering. If we free ourselves from those causes we no longer suffer. This is the teaching of every great religion. Paracelsus is saying it here:
“Destruction perfects that which is good.”
How does God help us reach perfection? He destroys our impurities, either with our help or without it.
Right now we are not helping. We are destroying each other, and this planet. We only care about our desires at any cost. We do not care, as long as we get what we want.
“The concealment must be removed that so the good may be able freely to appear in its own brightness.”
Paracelsus is pointing out that in order for us to reach true goodness, we have to remove what conceals it, in other words, we need to remove what we call, the ego, our defects. All of those psychological compounds that trap our potential goodness. In us is a potential master, buddha, angel, alchemist. Potential, but not realized, if we were realized we would have power over the elements, unmistakable power, both inside and outside of ourselves. Let us be honest, do you have it? If you lie to yourself about this, you will never escape the darkness.
To acquire that you need to seek it, and that seeking is inside, it is to find what must be destroyed in order to free the goodness. The entirety of Alchemy is about that, learning to transform energy in order to free the goodness.
We showed you this image which is in Atalanta Fugiens by Michael Maier. This image shows the work that we have to perform. We see five figures, the four on the left represent the four elements: fire, wind, water, earth, those are the compound elements. The one on the right represents the Akash, willpower, that is the club of Heracles, the solar god, solar hero. Heracles in Greek means “the light of Hera,” the goddess. That is what the Akash is, it is the light or fire, the Kundalini of the Divine Mother, Hera. This is willpower; conscious willpower, to look in the face of the elements and to transform them in accordance with the laws of the divine, not in accordance with desire. That is a daily psychological process through which we confront of our impressions and transform them, by will.
Everything that we experience in life, we have to analyze, and transform. If you take this work seriously you will face these elements every day. By seriously I mean you must have a fire in your oven; if there is no fire burning in your athanor, you are not working in this work. That fire is fire of Akash, which is transmuted sexual energy. If that fire is not working in your inner laboratory, in your sexual organs and in your spinal column, then you are not working yet. You are what is called in alchemical language, a “puffer,” a “blower,” someone who blows air but has no heat, no fire, filled with air, vapor. Do not be a puffer. To really work in Alchemy you need to have fire in your oven, transmuting your sexual energy, not wasting it physically, emotionally, mentally, not through imagination, or action physically, but conserving all of it, and transforming all of it. When that happens, you are gathering these forces in your laboratory.
Remember the Akash is the root of all energies, that means when you face these ordeals, challenges in your life related to the elements, which we have explained in the first two lectures, you will have energy to transform them, a lot of energy, more than you have ever experienced and it is a process to learn how to manage it, it is not easy. You have to learn through trial and error, through experience.
We learn to deal with this elements psychologically and spiritually by recognizing their qualities as they act in our lives, in other words related to our situations, to the events and circumstances of our life, we learn to transform the mobility of the air, we learn to transform the temperature of the fire, the fluidity of the water and the solidity of the earth. We learn to do that by always being expansive.
Expansiveness is the quality of space or Akash. In other words, you develop a capacity of conscious attention in the moment that can handle anything, that is so encompassing, so expansive, that you never become disturbed, dis-equilibrated. Whatever impressions arise you see it, you see that it is a compound of different elemental forces more or less mobile, hot or cold, fluid or solid. It is all impermanent and you seek inside of it, its heart, the wisdom the knowledge that you can extract from every experience in your life.
Example: You might be living in a situation where you have no stability, your job is in question, your financial situation is “on the rocks”- this is an ordeal of earth. The solidity of your situation is very unstable and this makes you afraid for your security. And perhaps at the same time, your job is in question because you are being criticized; that is fire, the temperature is hot, people are criticizing you. Perhaps that criticism is floating around in forms of different types, gossip, that is also fire, but that fire moves through the air, it is mobile, it is spreading. That whole situation is making you emotionally very unstable. You are quick to anger, quick to be depressed, highly reactive; that is water. That one stimulant in your circumstances brings all the elements to play, against “you,” and normally what we would do is run around like chicken with her head cut off. Not able to sleep, very tense, trying to convince everybody that we are a good person, that we should keep our job and should not be fired… desperate, we are not looking in the face of the cause of the problem, which is ourselves! Maybe the gossip is right, maybe we did something we should not have done, maybe we should apologize. Whatever the nature of the situation we have to look it honestly in the face. Mostly, we have to keep an expansive attitude that remembers God, and says: “God is in charge; God is giving me this to learn about myself; the criticism is showing me my pride and I need to eliminate that pride because it causes suffering. The situation with my job is showing me that I am attached at materialism and that I do not trust God and that I do not have a spiritual bone in my body.”
So, in real alchemy we learn to take situations and ordeals for what they truly are: the tempering that God applies to the elements to perfect them! And we learn to transform consciously.
If we have a problem, we cannot solve it when our mind is chaotic. The mind gets tied up in knots, and its vision gets more and more narrow. Have you noticed that when you get really angry your vision gets extremely narrow and you can only see through your anger? When you are afraid for your job, your vision gets extremely narrow, you cannot see the whole picture anymore, you are only seeing through your fear. To solve that problem, you have to see past the immediate circumstances, you need an expansive point of view that sees more than your selfish desire, more than your fear, envy, pride, anger. You need to see the totality, see everything, you need to be relaxed. This is why Jesus said: “Observe the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, they do not worry what they are going to eat, or what they are going to wear, and God clothes them, and cares for them perfectly well. How much more does God love you, than birds and flowers? ” God will care for you, will clothe you, will feed you. You are being tested, tempted. When tested, remember God!
Develop expansive consciousness that sees a bigger picture. This is how you awaken, this is how you weaken the power of those elements over you and you develop power over them.
It is not easy. Every day we are tested and we fail, but we succeed by learning what Hermes Trismegistus taught:
“Separate that spirituous earth from the dense or crude by means of a gentle heat, with much attention.” - Emerald Tablet
This is perhaps one of the most important documents of Alchemy, alongside Genesis and Revelation. The spirituous earth – we told that the earth is us, but to be spirituous is to have the spirit inside, that is to be cognizant, conscious, awake, here and now, remembering our divinity.
When you are here and now, remembering divinity, awake, aware you CAN separate yourself, your essence, consciousness, from the dense or crude ego. The four elements condensed into ego of pride, envy, gluttony, greed, fear etc.
“By means of a gentle heat, with much attention.” That heat is the heat of Akash, the heat of transformed sexual energy that feeds the consciousness to be here and now. In other words what you learn is to separate the subtle from the dense. The dense/crude are all of our desires that are very crude impure metals, heavy like pride, envy, lust anger, all of this are very heavy psychologically, they trap us; they are the chains, the cages that bind us. With that gentle heat, with much attention, by facing our ordeals every day and reflecting on them, we start to separate our consciousness from that. This is the nature of real Alchemy.
These two images are nearly identical, but they come from opposite sides of the planet from hundreds of years ago, before there was internet or mail. The image on the left is from a book called “Aurora consurgens” and dates from 1400 or 1500, it is from a book of Alchemy; the drawings represent how Alchemy was taught at that time; it was veiled in a lot of dense symbolism. This image shows a woman in the form of a serpent who bears an axe on her shoulder and she has a six-pointed halo. The six-pointed star represents Venus, the goddess of love, the axe is the symbol of the executioner of death. Her lower body is a coiled serpent. If you have studied Greek mythology you know that this is a symbol of Athena, whose symbol is a serpent. She stands before two bodies lying on the ground, one red, one white, these are Adam and Eve, and they are both beheaded by her axe. The red and the white represent solar and lunar forces in us, and these have many levels of application and importance. Of significance in this drawing, aside from the decapitation, and that she is extracting the elements from these bodies. In the back is a vessel with four flowers that has been heated by a fire. There you see the four elements and the Akash, those four flowers represent the four compounded elements, and the fire that heats them is the Akash, it is the Divine Mother’s fire. This image represents the psychological work of Alchemy. We must pass through decapitation like John the Baptist, to humble ourselves before the will of God so the goddess can take that ego, the “I” the head, and take back the energy that belongs to the divine. That is why these four elements have to be heated in a vessel, so that they can be reduced back to their original source. This is how the pure is extracted from the impure, the subtle separated from the dense; this is a psychological process, a daily process.
The same image is represented here in image from Hindu Tantra, which shows the Divine Mother Kali-Ma who is the wife of Shiva; her name means: “the black one,” which doe snot indicate evilness, but profundity: look at the profound, black night sky above! She is the Divine Mother in the aspect of the Divine Mother Death, who is the aspect we need to kill our impurities to free us from being trapped in suffering. The symbol is nearly identical to the other: two bodies, lying next to each other, she stands next upon them and grasps the severed head in her hand with her sword and her other hand. That Divine Mother is inside of us, she is the Akash, she is this energy, she is Hera, Hekate, the Divine Mother Death, who can purify us of all our impurities if we work with her. That is why in the Hindu image you see that around her neck she wears a necklace of heads, those are all of our defects, she is garlanded with the egos she had successfully consumed. That is why she has blood in her hands and mouth, because she takes that energy to transform it, to consume it, to purify it, out of compassion for us. This is the work that we need to learn to do.
This image is from Europe, from around the same time period mid-1400s, this was prepared by a Franciscan monk who happened to know Alchemy. This is from the “Book of The Holy Trinity”, and the same images are hidden here. In this case we see the Divine Mother as a serpent woman, bearing the spear of Athena stabbing Adam in the heart; Adam represents our mind. Above that we see the soul on the wheel of suffering, being purged, and on this side we see the beheading of the soul in order to be purified and over there the vessel. These teachings have been hidden in our faces for many centuries.
Another symbol also from “Aurora consurgens” shows three figures, one dead on the ground and one rising out of a coffin, and about it states:
“Take his soul and return it to him, for the corruption and destruction of the one thing is the birth of the other. This means: rob him of the destructive moisture and augment it with his natural moisture, which will be his completion and his life.”
This phrase hides the same teaching, it is revealed in the nature of the drawing. In the center of the drawing we see a warrior, which in Kabbalah is Tiphereth, the Human Soul, who in the Arthurian mysteries was represented as Lancelot. In Mahabharata he is Arjuna, the warrior who fights on behalf of God, or King Arthur. This warrior or knight has killed himself using the sword of his willpower, the Akash, and through that death you see a soul emerging out of the mouth of the dead man. The knight takes that soul and is feeding it into the same man himself who is in the coffin. This image represents precisely what we are talking about, it is the psychological work.
Through the willpower of cognizant, present attention we observe and analyze our defects, we take the power from them; we take their life from them, we no longer give them energy, we no longer give them chai, Hebrew for life, we give them death. We slay our defects with the sword that the Divine Mother provides to us, the same way she did with Perseus, Theseus and all the other heroes. From that dead psychological element we extract its essence, the knowledge hidden in it, the consciousness, the purity that was concealed in it and we give that to the soul, that which is being born in us, to that which should be enlivened in us, that which is pure, that which will resurrect from the grave.
Likewise it is reflected here, in this image from 1526, 500 years old, but nobody has understood it. There are a lot of explanations written about it but none are true and practical because the real teachings have not been revealed until recent decades. In the middle is Saturn. Saturn in the seventh of the seven spirits before the throne. Saturn is the old man of death, the one who completes the cycle. Cycles are begun with the first of the seven which is the Moon, birth, while death or Saturn is the end. This old man in armor is Saturn. In the Greek mysteries Saturn consumes his children and that is what we see here. Saturn represents those energies or forces in us related with the death of the ego, the death of anything. In this case we see that behind him on his shoulders is a beautiful maiden, this is Buddhi in Sanskrit, Geburah in Kabbalah, Guinevere in the Arthurian mysteries, Helen amongst the Greeks, Beatrice in Dante’s Inferno, she is the Divine Soul, the consciousness not trapped in ego. She is Buddhi, the reflective part of the consciousness that can see the truth. She is weighing the children of Saturn on her scales, the ones waiting to be weighed, up on the top right corner, are in vessels trapped, those are our egos, our energies that should be pure, perfect, but are trapped in those vessels and thus caged. She takes them one by one, weighs them on her scales, analyzes them to properly understand them, feeds them to Saturn, who consumes them to digest them. That is why his sword is through his belly, the sword is willpower, Kundalini, Akash. When he consumes them, he vomits them back out pure, free of the cage, free of the vessel. And they gradually through a process of purification and redemption pass through the fire and emerge in a baptismal font, where they are received by the Elohim, by the Divine Mother and the Divine Father inside of us. They are once again united in their proper place, in our consciousness. This image represents the whole totality of the spiritual, psychological work in Alchemy. And you see what feeds this water? It is the spray of blood from the belly of Saturn, where the sword of the Kundalini has liberated his energies in order to cause the process of awakening. Very profound drawing, hard to read, but if you meditate it is easy to understand. This image shows us the work that we need to do on a daily basis, it is to purify ourselves. The work is simplified in this statement of Paracelsus:
“Q. What is the part of the artist in this operation?
“A. The artist must do nothing but separate that which is subtle from that which is gross.” —Paracelsus, Alchemical Catechism
This cannot be done unless there is fire in the oven. You need a “gentle heat with much attention.”
Questions and Answers
Question: This sword shown in the image, is that sword what we see in Jesus of Nazareth as the Lance of Longinus?
Instructor: It is exactly the Lance of Longinus, the sword Excalibur that is drawn from the stone, the stone is Yesod in Hebrew, or in Christian terms Peter or Patar. It is the stone that the foundation is built upon. It is here at the base of the spine; that is why the sword is there at the base of his spine. And the “side brought forth blood and water” where resurrection occurs, that is what you are seeing here. The blood mixes with the water in this vessel, this vessel is the soul, it is us, and that is how resurrection occurs. After resurrection the body comes out pure and clean and reunites with the divine in Eden. Beautiful, right?
Question: This is in regards with the example you gave about indulging and what happens if I choose to indulge, what will it do to my laboratory if I take that sensation what will it transform into?
Instructor: Everyone has free will, this is a gift from God:
“Do what thy wilt, this is the whole of the law, but know that thy shall have to answer for all of thy deeds.”
You can do whatever you want. Many masters have given us these teachings over thousands of years. They were there, but hidden. Those who worked and earned it gained entry. Now the time is to short, so the doors are open for everyone, everyone who wants it can find it pretty easily now. You are still free to do what you want. You can take the teachings and use them and apply them and liberate yourself from suffering if that is what you want. Similarly you can take these teachings and think about them and continue to indulge yourself in all of your suffering and you will bear the consequences for that. You can indulge in your desires like you always have and you will bear the consequences for that. I will give you a hint: from desires, you will only become a demon; there is no way around it. What is a demon? The first type of demon is like all of us, the soul who is separated from God to a very large percentage, who simply indulges in desire and has no cognizance of the fact, and no desire to change. The second type is the one that knows he is a demon and enjoys it. You can move from the first to the second type in a manner of days. It is very easy. Humanity is so corrupted with ego, with karma. You can go out and in a matter of days become fully fledged demon, what we call a black magician, a beginner in that but nonetheless, awake with powers. And you might enjoy that for a while, because you will have a lot of nice sensations, power, you might get a lot of attention and make money and have a lot of sex, and do all the things that you desire. But there is a consequence for everything that we do. It is the law of nature: every action has an effect, moreover if you study the law of karma, you will discover what we explained in other courses, that every action creates effects that are more powerful than the original action. If you commit harmful action, the consequences are magnified. Similarly if you commit beneficial action, the consequences are magnified, much greater than the original action. But, do what you want, follow your inclination, pursue life the way you see fit to pursue it, and be prepared to reap the consequences of your actions.
If you are considering any path you are well advised to first contemplate its likely outcome. Study the scriptures in detail, study the teachings of those who have gone before you and learn from their experience and you will discover what we have taught you here today.
Desire is the cause of all suffering. If you want to be free of suffering you have to purge yourself from desire, there is no way around that.
Question: How do you spell the Hebrew word Rah?
Instructor: It is spelled ע ר in Hebrew.
Question: Second question, you said in Alchemy in order to dissolve every single thing that is produced you need to work in the laboratory, how to do it?
Instructor: The work to successfully dissolve the compound elements in the psyche has two primary aspects, which cannot be separated from each other. First is, in your daily life be in a cognizant awareness at all times. Samael Aun Weor called this self-observation or self-remembering; it is a state of directed attention. One is here and now observing what is outside of us and inside of us simultaneously. To learn that takes a lot of training. We do not have that skill now; we are asleep. That skill has to be developed in combination with the second half which is meditation. It is the same technique of directed attention, but with the external senses cut off. Eyes closed, body relaxed, not listening outside, not seeing outside, not tasting, not touching, not smelling, but all the attention inside, replaying all the experiences of that day and revisiting them to see those compound elements for what they are; we call that retrospection. There are two parts of the puzzle, and they take years of training to learn. They do not come easily. The two halves are one thing: we call this psychoanalytical work, it is the work in the laboratory. The body is the lab, the work is to be in that lab concentrated and observing all the elements at play. Everything in how they work together, inside and outside.
Question: How do elements of pressure and heat work together?
Instructor: When you pass through difficulties in life, you pass through heat and pressure. The difficulties of your life are where the circumstances show you your ego, that brings up heat and pressure in your laboratory; just as an example I gave that you might lose your job. Everything in you starts boiling, in your heart, in your mind, body, in your house, at your workplace. You are boiling, that is heat and pressure. All those forces are shaking you psychologically so that all the submerged elements will become visible.
That is in the case of someone who is working in this work by will, conserving energy and trying to change for the better. The same process happens in those people who are not doing this work. It is happening to the entirety of humanity but slower. All of humanity is getting heat and pressure, society is heating up, the economic situation is getting more difficult, the political situation is getting more difficult, the environmental, with food, and water, everything in society in the planet is getting more intense from year to year and it is going to continue to get more intense, that is that heat and pressure that is rising from karma.
These are the two ways: you do it on your own, yourself, in order to avoid being caught up in the worst, which is the one society is going to face as a whole, it is going to be far worse. Not only because of the suffering involved but because it will be filled with ignorance; no one will understand what is going on, no one will be able to fix it, they will just be purged by nature over a long period. Whereas if you do it yourself, it is intense, difficult, but you do it with knowledge, developing connection with the divine, and you do it knowing and seeing that there is an end, and you will come out of it pure and free of suffering.
Question: Is there a way out of karma?
Instructor: The way out of karma is in the karma itself. The word karma comes from a Sanskrit word that means –Act - Action. All karma says is: for every action there is a reaction, there is result, consequence. For every cause there is an effect. Any effect that exists was produced by a cause. When I say “we have karma” that means we are bearing the consequences of all our previous actions, so how is the way out of that? It is through karma itself, by performing superior actions, actions that produce superior results, the results that we want. If we want a way out of suffering, we have to act in a way that produces a state of non-suffering. We produce good actions, learn instead of acting on lust which creates suffering, we act through chastity. Instead of acting through anger we act through love. In that way we learn to change, and we change the dynamic of our laboratory to produce good results in our life.
And that spreads outward. The law states that for every action the effect is more powerful than the original action. When we produce a harmful action we create a lot of harmful results. It is like the waves in nature. If you throw a stone the action of that throwing is very small, the energy it takes to throw it, but the consequences ripple out; not only through the pond that it hits, but the sound that travels, it affects the whole body of water. The same is true with us psychologically.
Comment: This is like the phrase” Be the change you want to see”.
Instructor: Yes, learn to become that, and you will spread that to others. It is a very powerful way; that is the nature of the path.
Question: Are the expansiveness of the consciousness and the impermanent elements-egos related in any way from a practical standpoint?
Instructor: Absolutely! The application of these elements in our psychological laboratory, the key to unravel compound elements, is the application of the fifth force, which is the quintessence. That is application that applies consciously. When we are dealing with our ordeals in our lives the surest method to transform our ordeals into beneficial circumstances is to have that expansive point of view that comes from the Akash. Awakened consciousness, fire, Kundalini, related to our Divine Mother. When we have that point of view, our consciousness is present, the presence of God is there, our access to wisdom – Buddhi. The Buddha was awakened under the bodhi tree, which comes from budd- to awaken. That Buddhi, feminine force that is here above Saturn is that quintessence that is able to see everything for what it is, that is why she is weighing those elements on the scale. The scale of Tob and Ra. That insight, the vision that we get through that aspect of consciousness is what can perceive reality. To see beyond the compound things and see the truth for what it is. To separate the dense from the coarse. That separation is happening here in Saturn that is a matter of conscious insight. Seeing “this situation with my job is ridiculous” and we reflect on that “ok I may lose my job, I am xx age now, I have never starved, God has always provided for me, I may have suffered but I have gotten by, I have managed…” It is that expansive view that remembers God and that separates the dense from the coarse. When you look at it in meditation, and go deeper, you start to see the roots of how those compound elements recreated in you not only in the immediate situation but also in previous ones even in previous existences. That is how you start to delve into the depths of your own earth to extract all the elements out and to purify them. It is a long process, takes a lot of patience, but it is very powerful. That is when you start to go down into the earth with very powerful tools and pull out all the best elements you have inside in order to cleanse them. They are completely related to each other.
Question: The Goddess Kali has a compass in her right hand or what is it? Can you elaborate on the black crow?
Instructor: The black crow in Alchemy represents the process of death. The crow is the symbol of Alchemy of Saturn. The crow is also related to Odin/Wotan, the symbol of Kether, the Innermost, he who is becoming. The two are related to each other. In the image of Kali, she has embalmer's tool in her hand. Looks like a compass, but it is a tool used to separate the flesh from the bone. It is a symbol of separating the gross from the subtle.
Question: How do we know when to use the expansive view or to take the heat and the pressure, if someone is abusive? When to draw the line?
Instructor: When do you respond or when do you just take it? You draw the line if someone is going to harm you physically, if someone is going to endanger your life or someone else’s life, you have to stop them. For someone who is genuinely working in this type of work we receive protection for ourselves physically. Psychologically, we need the ordeals, and they will get hot and painful, we need that because it pulls out all the impurities so we can see it. We have to do our best to not merely bear it, but to transform it. This is the most difficult part. We have a tendency to swing on a pendulum in our reactions to all things, and this is a great example of that. If someone in your life is giving you a really hard time, persecuting you verbally, emotionally, or passive-aggressive, and creating a lot of problems for you; we tend to react in one of two ways: we try to ignore them and repress our feelings about it and just not deal with it, just bear it or we react angrily to reject them. Both are out of balance in the psychological work. The way to properly manage that type of scenario is to comprehend it, to neither indulge nor avoid, to not crave or repress, but instead to be in the middle and understand. It is most likely that if you really understood the point of view of the person that was persecuting you they would not bother you. In my case I have a person who has been persecuting me and causing a lot of problems for me, it has been very difficult for me to retain my appreciation, patience, and love for that person; my reflection has been on the suffering on that person, putting myself in their position to try to understand what they feel and how they see, not only their own life, but how they see me. Through that process, I have developed a lot of compassion for that person. Now if that person wants to come and beat me with a stick, I do not care. If it helps them to relieve their suffering, I will bear it, because I love them. That is a slow process and painful. That is generally how we need to approach our problems; we need to try to understand other people and not be selfish, to try to comprehend how the others see it. What can happen is quite magical. Whatever our circumstances, when you truly reach that point where you understand it, that person and their point of view and the bigger picture bigger than your own selfish point of view, that situation will change and go away and it will never happen again. Then you have new problems that will be worse. [laughter] That is the way this science works. Do not expect that your life all of the sudden become rosy and easy and you will start wearing white robes and everybody will respect you. No! The further along you go in this, the harder it gets, because you are going deeper and deeper into more dense areas of your mind, so you need more energy to pulverize that earth, to free the elements that are trapped there. It is difficult, but thankfully we have a great helper, which is God. You have the divine on your side, if you can remember the presence of them.
Question: Please elaborate on the representations of Adam and Eve with the colors red and white.
Instructor: Red and white are very symbolic in Alchemy and Tantra, which are the same tradition. The red and white represent the solar and lunar channels of energy. Between Alchemy and Tantra they are reversed. Somehow in the transmission in those teaching the meanings got switched and in the West the red generally means solar, but in the East generally means lunar. The ultimate is the same thing, they represent Adam and Eve, solar and lunar forces, they are psychological and chemical, spiritual forces.
Question: How to differentiate between humility and negative thinking, submissive behavior, and what is good taste for the spirit/Saturn?
Instructor: What tastes good to the spirit is real knowledge, Gnosis, comprehension. The spirit, our own inner Ruach, wants the knowledge that comes when its original essence is freed from the compound elements. When these defects are radically transformed, Saturn tastes that free element. That is the taste that the spirit wants, it is the freed essence, the freed consciousness. Real knowledge, redemption, resurrection. This is the bread, or לחם lechem, the manna, that nourishes the soul. In the Bible it is stated that the Israelites survived on manna from heaven. That manna, נ מ Mem-Nun, is the seed that is hidden in the water that is trapped here, and that is freed and redeemed through the transformation of those elements in ourselves, spiritually and psychologically. Our spirit is nourished through death. That is why all religious symbolism is based on death. For the redemption of the soul to occur there needs to be death. Jesus, Moses, Mohamed died. All of the great deities die in order for that ultimate redemption to occur.
Question: We have to be observant of the pendulum when it goes on the “good” side, when everything is going great, and there appears to be no problems.
Instructor: In the books that Samael Aun Weor wrote for us, he stated a number of times that easy situations in life are the worst for the work on ourselves. People read that and think “this guy is crazy”, because our desires tell us to cultivate that easy situation and then we can work on ourselves and have the spiritual life. We have it all backwards. We have to be very defined in our purpose in living. If our purpose is simply to acquire possessions and be respected and loved, that is easy. All you have to do is give society what it wants, feed the lust and pride of society and they will love you. But if you want God to love you, you have to be purged of lust and pride, you have to become nothing. Society will not like you, because that runs contrary to society’s interests. Be clear in what you want and understand that once you define yourself you will face that decision constantly, and you have to define yourself again and again. You will be tempted in every way possible. If you have defined yourself for God, to serve your Innermost and to renounce materialism, the world will do its best to convince you otherwise in every way possible. You will see all your friends get rich and successful, your family will criticize you, gossip about you, attack you. You may lose your job, you may be offered very beautiful and wonderful circumstances with lots of money, big house, a lot of fame, to test your resolve. Your mind will tell you “I can do both, I can get rich and self-realized.” The ego is very deceptive, clever. It is very rare for someone to truly hold fast to the divine. It is very easy to serve the world.
Question: When I am humble people abuse me, and it feels unhealthy to allow this?
Instructor: That is wonderful! Sometimes it is unhealthy to allow people to abuse you, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, speak the truth, defend yourself and what you hold as true and important. People will not like it and that is OK. Sometimes you have to be silent and take it and not react out of respect of others. To be truly humble is a beautiful thing, it matters not what anyone thinks of it. The only thing that matters is your relationship with the divine. If you were acting according to the instructions and guidance you receive from your Innermost, let the world condemn you, because God will be on your side. Who cares what anyone says or thinks if God is beside you, who can stand against divinity? We have to be strong.
Question: Question about retrospection and retrospection of the events that happened in past, how to take that trapped energy back?
Instructor: When we are talking about meditation we are not talking about mantra recitation, visualizing an image, or concentration on a dot or any other thing. What we mean by meditation is to get information. It is an investigation, acquisition of knowledge. Meditation properly stated is a state of consciousness that is free of the senses and of the three brains. The state of consciousness in which we are awake but not limited by the five senses, by the body, by emotion, by thought, we are awake and perceiving inside, not in darkness but seeing through the awakened inner eye which we call imagination. We think imagination is made up, it is fantasy because that is why we use imagination for nowadays. The word imagination comes from image which is to see. Some people invented a word for that in France 100s of years ago and called it clairvoyance which means clear seeing in French. Imagination and clairvoyance are the same thing. It is to see without the physical senses.
Proper meditation is where we extract our attention from the motor-instinctive-sexual brain, extracted from emotion, extracted from thought so that we no longer paying attention to the body, to emotions, to thoughts, instead our consciousness is completely engaged with images, imagination. This has nothing to do with the body, with the brain, with anything physical. Someone who is properly trained in this manner will experience what we call Samadhi or ecstasy. It is a state in which the consciousness perceives reality in different levels and is able to penetrate any period of time; past, present or future in order to extract information and to see the truth of any given thing. Anyone is capable to reach and acquire this, it is our natural state, any human being can acquire this ability. We already use it in a negative way every time we lay down and we go to sleep and dream we are using the same technique but without cognizance. In meditation, properly stated, you learn to do it consciously, to leave the body to see reality to gain information. In that way you can investigate all of the compound elements air, fire, water and earth in your psyche in every level in the mind. Your sub-consciousness and un-consciousness, the very dense levels of the mind are all these compound elements that are made up of your memories, of all the experiences you have had in this existence and all of your previous existences in which you were asleep. All of those experiences were compounded and created your sub-consciousness and un-consciousness levels. Liberation from suffering is when you extract the consciousness out of all of that, and it is all destroyed. That is liberation. That is a long process. Meditation is the way you do it, there is no exception. Does not matter what your religion is, does not matter what you call this technique, it is the only way to be freed from suffering; by understanding everything that is in your mind and separating the gross from the subtle. You can use this technique on what happened to you today, yesterday, last month, last year, when you were a child, from your previous body…in fact that is the work itself. We have to start where we are, and we do not have this ability yet because we are not awake, we do not the Akash fully inflamed in awakening all our inner senses, we work here and now starting to acquire energy and save energy and work on ourselves today, and as we awaken and learn to manage this skills and these energies, that expansiveness improves and radiates outward, until our ability to perceive extend far beyond physicality and goes deep into the contents of our mind.
