The Hebrew letter ב "Beth" is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the Hebrew alefbet.  The first letter is א Aleph, the letter A and the number 1, which we studied in the previous lecture.  The letter Beth represents the number two and is the extension, or vehicle, of א Aleph.

To understand ב Beth, you have to always remember א Aleph, because ב Beth is that through which א Aleph speaks. ב Beth in this sense is like a mouth, and in its shape you can imagine this.  The breath (the Aleph) emerges through ב Beth.  The emergence of the breathe of God is the emergence of life.  The breath of God is the Neshemah (the soul).  The breath is creation, emerging through ב Beth.  This is why Beth is the very first letter of the entire Bible; the entire Torah or Tanach begins with ב Beth.  The significance of this letter is underscored by this simple fact.

The understanding of the entire Judeo-Christian mysticism rests in the letter ב Beth. If we have not understood the letter ב Beth, we have not understood the Jewish or Christian religion.  This is why it is so important for us to understand the Hebrew letters.  Even the Christians who claim to have a doctrine of truth yet who reject the study of the Hebrew letters are in fact rejecting the teacher, Yeshua Krestos, Jesus Christ, because he stated explicitly that he did not come to abolish the prophets or the law, but to fulfill them. As a master of Israel, as a rabbi, he knew the Hebrew letters and the Kabbalah very well.  His teachings are entirely Kabbalistic.  Therefore any true Christian must know the Kabbalah and the Hebrew letters.  All the teachings of Jeshua Crestos come from Kabbalah and refer to the Hebrew letters: we must know that.

ב Beth is the first letter of the first word of the Bible. That word is בראשית "Bereishit."

It is from the letter ב Beth that the entire Bible emerges as an expression of that א Aleph, the breath of God.  This is why we call the Bible "The Word of God."  The Word in Greek is "the Logos."  It is the expression of something that is inexpressible.  This is part of the importance of these Hebrew letters.  They encode and symbolize a form of knowledge that is inexpressible and is incapable of being symbolized.  So, each letter has multiple meanings and a depth of significance that is far beyond the intellect.  To grasp the real meaning of the letters requires the intuition to be active and receptive.  With intuition, we can grasp the full depth of the meanings of these letters.

The House of God

The letter ב Beth represents a tent or a house, and you can see that in the shape of the letter.  The Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, are full of references to the House of God, to the temple, to the tents of Israel, and all of these are related to Beth.  In fact, to write the word "house" in Hebrew, you write  ביתBeth (pronounced BAH-yeet).

The word בית Beth is spelled with the letters ב Beth, י Iod, and ת Tav, and we see these three letters in the word Bereishit - the first letter and the last two letters.  Between those three letters are three more letters: ר Reish, א Aleph, and ש Shin.  This has an importance because Reish, Aleph, Shin spells ראש which means "chief, ruler, or king."  Beth (spelled בית Beth-Iod-Tav) is the house. When the King (ראש Rosh) comes to inhabit that house (and you insert the letters ראש into בית) it spells בראשית = ב + ראש + ית Bereishit; creation, Genesis.

In other words, when the King, the Being, God, comes into our house, which is ourselves, then בראשית (Genesis) can happen.  Genesis (to generate) really means creation - the creation of the man in the image of that King, or the image of God.  This is the very fundamental basis of religion:  the union between ourselves and God.  Religion comes from the Latin "religare" which means “to reunite.”  This relates well to the Sanskrit word Yoga, coming from the root yug, which means “to yoke or unite.” The true root of Yoga, the real meaning of yug is to unite oneself with the truth, and that singular truth is in the Aleph, the first letter, the breath of God, that wind that hovers over the waters of creation.

The knowledge of the existence of this union implies the existence of a duality, philosophically speaking, spiritually speaking, that there are two parts - the lower man, the terrestrial man, and the superior man, or celestial man. St. Paul wrote about this in his writings, but it has been poorly translated as “the natural man and the spiritual man.” The union of these two is called “realization of the self,” the fulfillment of religion, the awakening of the consciousness, the eruption of the void, enlightenment, liberation.  All of that is represented in Beth.

As the second letter, Beth represents a duality - a twofold nature.  Yet, those two parts are related, and you also see this in the structure of the letter: two horizontal lines joined by a vertical line.  There is, in any duality, a third factor, which is their relationship.  Between a man and a woman, who are a duality, the third factor is that relationship which they have with each other, and this is in the letter Beth.

The first word of the Bible or Tanach is בראשית “Bereishit.” Normally in the English or Latin Bibles, it is translated as, "In the beginning."  But the word does not actually mean that.  This word בראשית "Bereishit" is full of meanings.  It can be approached from many angles, and has many depths. It is a puzzle or anagram within which is contained the whole universe.

As a fundamental basis to religion, ב Beth is the first letter of the whole Bible. ב Beth is also the number two. If we look at  ב Beth as its number, which is two, then we would read the first word of the Bible as:

ב + ראשית

The Hebrew word ראשית (rasheet) means “kingdom.”  So the first word of the Bible could be read as "Two kingdoms." In Hebrew, the sentence would say Bereishit-Bara-Elohim:

Those two kingdoms are the Heavens above and the lower kingdom, which is where we are, which is us.  The superior kingdom is where our Being, our Inner Father resides, and the lower kingdom is where we reside.  The point of religion is to unite these two and make them one.  To put God in charge in charge of our own temple, our house, our בית Beth, that King ראש needs to come and reside inside of us, and unite the kingdoms and make them one.  This is the meaning of בראשית, Genesis, creation. To make the man in the image of God is to make the two kingdoms a perfect reflection of one another.  Of course, we have not accomplished this task.  We have unfortunately made our house a den of thieves.  This is why Jesus said this in the Book of Matthew.

My house (the physical body) shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. - Matthew 21: 13

That house is represented by the letter ב Beth. That house is us; it is our mind, our heart, our soul, our body.

We have filled our house with thieves, desires, egos - thieves who steal the wealth of God, who steal the consciousness, who steal energy, who steal our life.  This is a very easy thing for one to confirm for oneself, if we're serious about self-observation.  If we watch and observe our psychological house, which is our own Beth, we can see who inhabits it.  If we observe our mind, our heart, and the actions of our bodies, we will see a den of thieves.  We will see rampaging pride, which seeks to control our entire psyche in order to sustain itself, who seeks to steal the wealth of God - all the benefits of life, all the fruits of being in a body - in order to feed lust, to sustain resentment, to nourish envy.  These are those thieves who have inhabited the temple of God, and this is why Jesus represented in a symbolic way the fury of Christ against those moneylenders, those thieves who have filled the temple with the desires of merchants, wealth, and all kinds of materialism.  Those thieves are in our own psyche.  Our ב Beth, our temple, our house, is filthy.

None of us can claim to be true Christians, Gnostics, Jews, or Buddhists, because our psychological temple is really filthy.  Until the day arrives that we have purged the temple - when we look into our mind and no lust is present, no envy, no fear, no resentment, no pride, but only humility, charity, chastity, happiness for others, great diligence in the consciousness - when these qualities emerge from within our own Beth, God is happy to inhabit that, because those qualities are within God.  That is the goal of Bereishit, creation.  It is to establish God in is own house, which is us.

The letter Beth also relates to the Sanskrit Bhu, which means "to be, to exist.”  The English word "build" comes from the Sanskrit word Bhu. It is also a very interesting correspondence that the Hebrew word ברא Bara, Beth-Reish-Aleph, the first three letters of Bereishit, means “to create.”  The purpose of Genesis is to create the Man, the Temple, the Temple of Solo-mon, the Solar Man. The temple is built to house the Spirit of God, the Shekinah.

This is why Moses received the command,

And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. - Exodus 25: 8

That sanctuary is our heart temple where we have to place the Aron Kodesh, the Ark of the Covenant which relates with our heart, where the most pure, most sacred, most holy artifacts are kept.  This is not something outside of us - it is inside.  When our heart is purified, our Divine Mother will inhabit our heart.  Our inner Divine Mother is the Shekinah, the Spirit of God: that feminine spirit who holds all the mysteries of creation in her hands.  She is represented by the letter ב Beth.  The letter ב Beth is feminine. ב Beth is the goddess who stands next to א Aleph, the Father.

Beth represents duality. Beth represents the two pillars that stand side by side: Jachin-Boaz.  Those two pillars are the very structure to any temple.  Those two pillars hold up the temple.  If you look at the Tree of Life, you see two pillars on the two sides; these are Beth.

The God that religious people call “the Father” is not exclusively masculine, because to write Father in Hebrew, you write אב Aleph-Beth.  A-B: male-female.  God is male-female.

Creation Starts with Two

God creates through the power of two: male-female.  All creation is made possible by the female aspect. This is why Bereishit starts with Beth, the number two.  Creation happens because of couples.

On every level of nature, everything that is created comes through male-female.  This has been established by God.  This is a law throughout all the universes, throughout all the infinites.  It reflects the nature of God's creation.  So how could God be exclusively male?  Such an idea is illogical.  It is incomprehensible.  A male alone cannot create.  A male needs a female.  God, the Father, needs God, the Mother.  Abba, the Father, needs Amma, the Mother. אב Ab or Abba is Hebrew for “father.”  But this is not only in Hebrew: in Sanskrit, Hindi, Tibetan, all of the world, Abba, Apa, means “father.”  In English we say “Pa and Ma.”  In India, China, and Tibet, they say, “Ama, Apa.”  The deep meaning of these letters is universal.

Creation comes in twos.  Everything reflects this duality.  Our entire temple, our entire Beth, reflects this.  We have two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two halves of the brain, two lungs, two hands, two feet, and all of those organs are creative; all of them.  With our eyes we create, with our ears we create, with our nose when we take breath and exhale, we create.  We create with our hands, our feet, our lungs, our kidneys, our brain.  These are all creative; they all transform energies and create new ones.  They are all masculine-feminine: dual.  But most of all, we create with our sexual organs.  Every male has two testicles, every female has two ovaries.  Yet, alone, they can do nothing.  They can only create through cooperation with each other.

Creation is always from duality.  This is why the Tree of Knowledge [עץ הדעת טוב ורע], Daath, or Gnosis presents two paths: the Path of Goodness and the Path of Pollution.  In the Bible these are called טוב Tob and רע Ra, usually translated as “good and evil.”  The Hebrew word רע Ra means “pollution, impurity.” (This is not the Ra of the Egyptians.) טוב Tob means “purity or goodness.”

Humanity in this time, at this moment, ignores how to create through purity.  Humanity is completely under the power of impurity, רע Ra, the impure spirit, pollution, and that is why humanity has been kicked out of Eden.  This is why humanity fornicates, adulterates, suffers.  Not just physically, but also mentally, emotionally, spiritually.  Jesus said if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you have committed adultery.  It is not merely a physical act.

Fornication is the same.  Fornication is how those thieves in our house steal energy, even just through the mind - through lustful thoughts, lustful fantasy, arrogance, pride, envy, gluttony.  All of these are a form of sexual abuse, because they abuse the root sexual power of the human being.  Those energies are stolen by the ego to seek to feed and sustain itself.  Thus a form of creation occurs, but negative.  The ego uses the powers of God to create negatively.

The job of the true sincere aspirant towards the light is to learn to create in purity, through chastity, not just physically, but also emotionally, mentally, spiritually.  This is a profound mystery related with Beth; how to create the Man - not the masculine "man," but to create the Superior Man, the Soul, the Manas, a Sanskrit word that relates to the mind.

To create the Man is to create the wedding garment which Jesus spoke of in a symbolic form.  It is to create the chariot of Ezekial, the Merkabah the Sahu of the Egyptians, the Boat of Osiris, the Boat of Ra, the Ark, the Aron Kodesh, the Sacred Vessel built by the instruction of God to house the reflection of God, the Shekinah, and carry us across to the other shore: to unite the two kingdoms.

This form of creation can only be done by the power of the Elohim who is within us.  This is why the Bible starts with:

Creation is a work of אלהים Elohim, and Elohim is within us.

Bereishit Bara Elohim is usually translated as “In the beginning God creates.”  In the Zohar, this phrase is translated, "In wisdom Elohim creates."  Why does it say, "In wisdom," and who is "Elohim?"

It says "In wisdom" because of who the Elohim is. אלהים Elohim is a plural Hebrew word.  In the English and Latin Bibles, it is translated as “God,” singular masculine.  But the word אלהים Elohim is not singular masculine.  Elohim is a plural word which comes from אל El, which is “God,” masculine in Hebrew. אלה or אלוה Eloah / Eloha is God feminine in Hebrew. The suffix ים -im is plural. Thus, אלהים Elohim can mean either God and Goddess or Gods and Goddesses.

When we look at the Bible as it was intended to be read, as a manual of spiritual development, the first three words tell us, בראשית ברא אלהים Bereishit Bara Elohim:

In wisdom your Elohim creates.

Your Elohim is your inner Father-Mother ( אל El + אלה Eloha = אלהים Elohim), and they create in you “through wisdom.”  In Hebrew, “wisdom” is חכמה Chokmah. Chokmah is the second Sephirah on the Tree of Life, which relates with the letter Beth, the number two.

Chokmah: Christ

Chokmah is the Hebrew word for “wisdom.”  Chokmah is Christ.  Chokmah is a level of nature in which there is no individuality.  Chokmah is unity, purity, law, which is love - love as sacrifice, not love as attachment.

In the previous age, the most beautiful representative of the force, the energy, the brilliance of Chokmah was Yeshua Krestos, which, by the way, is not a name.  Jesus Christ is not a name.  It is a title.  Yeshua means savior.  Krestos esoterically means “fire.”  Yeshua Krestos means “Savior-Fire.” It is a title. The great Master Jeshua Chrestos is an expression of Chokmah (wisdom), the pure force of sacrifice, and this is beautifully represented in the symbolic story of his life, and in his teachings.

What did he teach?  The way to the light.  The way to the truth, which is through the Son.  That Son is Chokmah, Christ, who must be born within us.  When he was giving his teaching, the religious powers of his day - who knew the Kabbalah but rejected his teaching - were outraged that he was giving the knowledge openly, to everyone.

It says in the Bible that he said to them,

We heard him (the Solar Christ) say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. - Mark 14: 58.

Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of (Beth) the temple of His body. - John 2:19-21

That temple of the body is the teaching of Jeshua - how to build it.  Yet, the Jews knew this teaching. It is reflected in the Zohar:

We are taught by tradition that all which Solomon wrote in the "Song of Songs" has reference to the King of Peace who, though he rules below, yet has his kingdom on high and thus is king of both worlds. This is occultly signified by the letter B [ב], whose numerical value is two, placed at the beginning of the word חכמה Chokmah in the Scripture, "ב חכמה be-hochma, by wisdom is the house built" (Prov. xxiv. 3) - Zohar

Jesus (an incarnation of Chokmah) explained in detail how to build that temple and what was his instruction?  It is very simple, very beautiful, and almost everyone knows it, but no one knows what it means.  He said

Therefore whosoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock...

Who is the wiseman?  A wiseman is one who has wisdom, Chokmah, Christ.  This is not to have a belief, this is to have incarnated that; to be a wise man.  In Greek terms it would be Pnuematikos:  to be one with the Spirit, to have the Spirit, to have Christ.

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock...

That rock figures significantly throughout the teachings of Jeshua, not only in the teachings of Jeshua, but throughout the Old Testament.  Jakob rested his head upon the stone and saw the visions of the Angels.  All of the great mystical traditions depend upon a stone, a rock, which forms the basis, the foundation of the temple.

The word "foundation" in Hebrew is יסוד Yesod, the Ninth Sphere.  This is the foundation upon which we have to build our temple.

Imagine a letter ב Beth on the Tree of Life and we see the two kingdoms, Beth Rasheet.  We see the whole temple of God, the whole Beth is the entire Tree of Life. Imagine the top line of the Beth is in the upper triangle. The bottom line of the letter Beth relates with Yesod.  It is the foundation of the temple and if we superimpose this Tree of Life over our physical body, Yesod corresponds to our sexual organs.

The foundation of our temple is sexual.  This is why marriage is sacred.  This is why chastity is a requirement.  This is why "thou shalt not fornicate."  This is why "thou shalt not commit adultery."  Because if you do these things, you are building your temple on sand.

And every one that hears these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. - Matthew 7: 24-27

On the social level, we are witnessing this today.  The winds have come, the rain is pounding the house of humanity, and our house is crumbling.  This society is completely unstable.  It is built on sand.  It will only take a feather falling upon it for the entire house to crumble, and we all sense it.

This house of humanity, this society, is so fragile.  It is but a breath away from utter chaos and collapse, and we know this.  We all feel it.

We as children of this humanity are responsible for it, no one else.  We have made this.  Yet, it also in our hands to change it.

This society is an extension of who we are as individuals.  If we build our own house on rock, the rock of God, the Patar, Peter, the doctrine of chastity, we can make a fit vessel for the Spirit of God to inhabit by means of which we receive the guidance of God, the protection of God, the insight, and from that place we can help our brothers and our sisters, but first we have to build our temple.  We have to establish our own ב Beth, our own house.

Unfortunately, humanity is not interested in the establishment of the inner temple.  So if we become serious about this teaching, whether we call ourselves a Gnostic, Christian, Jew, or a Buddhist is irrelevant.  If we do the work, humanity will punish us.  Do not expect humanity will love you for it, because they will not.  During the life of Yeshua, when he was born in Bethlehem (the “house of the bread,” the bread of wisdom, the Manna) the ruling powers were so threatened by his presence that they wanted him killed.

The ruling powers are symbolized by Herod, the king who sought to have all of the firstborn children of Israel slaughtered.  This is but a repeat, a recurrence, a repetition of what happened in Matzarim, in Egypt, and what happened in many other lands in many places in many other times, because they all reflect the story that will happen in our own lives when we take up the true path - that our own ego will fight tooth and nail against this teaching.

Initiation

Herod of the Gospels represents our mind; he is our inner Pharaoh, the one who has been in charge of the kingdom and who will not relinquish it.  This is the world, the humanity, the society that will fight against us: it is our own inner society.  We might see that reflected in the outside world if we take up this path and our spouse, family or friends do not understand, but the only reason that those types of situations can be painful to us is because our egos are pained by it.

We tend to blame the outside force, and say "I can't enter the path because my spouse won't accept it, my family won't accept it, my friends won't accept it."  We use those outside circumstances to hide the truth that what will not accept it is the pain that our ego feels when our pride feels like our friends won't accept us, when our fear feels like our spouse might leave or might reject us, when our envy says "I won't be like the rest of my friends, they won't like me, I won’t be able to have what I want."

The ego, Herod or the Pharoah, is very clever and uses outside circumstances to mask itself, to prevent the consciousness from seeing the truth.  The reality is that our consciousness needs this doctrine.  This is why it is being given.  Our soul is longing to be saved from the clutches of Pluto.  Eurydice symbolizes the soul trapped in hell who Orpheus has to descend in order to redeem.  These two parts of our consciousness symbolize this struggle of that part of us who longs to enter the path and return to the light, and to do so must descend into our own infernal abyss in order to redeem our soul from the thieves who inhabit our temple.  But that fight is terrifying, because we have to descend into all that uncleanness whose existence we prefer to ignore.

This is also symbolized in ב Beth; two levels, this duality.  A great cosmic truth states, "For any exaltation there must be a humiliation.  In order to ascend you must first descend."  The meaning here cannot be elaborated by the intellect fully, but it implies that in order for us to ascend upwards we have to descend downwards and clean the mind.  In order to receive the blessings of God, to rise upwards towards God, we have to humble ourselves, to lower ourselves, to bow; to prostrate in the temple, to be humble.

This descent also specifically relates with Yesod.  We have to descend into the Ninth Sphere.  This also has a great significance.  To descend into the Ninth Sphere is to face the greatest ordeal, the most difficult challenge, the most profound work that any human being can face.  That descent is to enter into the path of chastity, to become Hercules, Orpheus, Aeneas, Odysseus, Theseus, Perseus, Dante.  All of these great heroes had to descend and conquer in order to rise.  The descent is psychological and it is sexual.

The Ninth Sphere relates with Yesod but it also relates to the lowest levels of the mind.  The Klipoth, hell, the infernos, are represented as nine hells, which are depicted throughout world religions and mythologies, and those nine hells reflect the nine heavens.  Behold the two kingdoms, behold the duality of nature.  Nine above, nine below, and in the middle is the physical world.  Nine Heavens, nine Sephirah; nine Hells, nine Sephirah.  The great duality.

To descend into Yesod, to descend into the Ninth Sphere, is to go as a warrior throughout all the levels of our own mind with the armament provided to us by our Divine Mother in order to slay Medusa, the opposite of the Divine Mother.

The Goddess

ב Beth is the Goddess, but Beth is dual.  The Goddess Minerva / Athena is opposed by Medusa, her mirror image.  Durga is opposed by Kali.  The Goddess has her infernal aspect.  Her infernal face represents how her creative power is utilized by the thieves of the ego, the animal mind, the minotaur, the beast in the abyss, the leviathan who captures that energy and creates demons, devils, thieves, egos.  So as a warrior, as Orpheus, Theseus, Perseus, Herakles, Dante, we have to descend and cleanse the mind.

The only way to do that is if we have the weapons, if we have courage, if we have strength.  Those weapons are provided by Beth, the Divine Mother.  Those weapons are the shield, the sword, the helmet; the magical armaments.  Athena / Minerva, goes to Vulcan in order to acquire these weapons for her child, for her son, so that he is properly prepared for his mission.  Vulcan works in a forge, just like Mime in The Ring of the Nibelungen; in the forge of the Alchemist, the forge of the Cyclops, where all the weapons are crafted amongst great heat and pressure.  This is Alchemy, Tantra, where the continuum, the stream of energy, the life force of the Kundalini, the Pentecostal Flame is harnessed in order to build; Bereishit, to create the weapons.

The weapons are conscious tools, the method to comprehend.  It is meditation.  It is self-observation.  It is self-remembering.  It is that spear of Athena, Minerva, the Goddess, the Lance of Longinus, the Holy Grail, Excalibur.  All of these objects represent sacred artifacts that are built to be placed in the Ark, the Aron, the temple, which is us.  They all represent psychological tools that we must receive from our own Elohim - Bereishit Bara Elohim - in order for us to descend, to cleanse, to purify, to create.  This is how we become an image of God, a reflection of God.  There is no other way.  There is no other way but through creation.

Belief creates nothing. We believe one thing today and another thing tomorrow, but fundamentally nothing changes.  We exchange beliefs from moment to moment.  Today we believe in a politician and tomorrow we do not.  Today we believe in a philosophy and tomorrow we do not.  Today we believe in ourselves, and tomorrow we do not.  But what changes?  Nothing.

Real change occurs through action, but that action, in order to create change in the Spirit, has to be action in accordance with the Spirit.  The message that is hidden in Beth, in Bereishit, is how to bring that Aleph, the breathe of God in order to create.

What is in our Beth, our temple, our psychology?  When we analyze ourselves, when we analyze our planet, what is emerging from our Beth?  Filthiness, destruction, violence.  There is nothing of God coming out of our temple, whether as an individual or as a world.  So from where is this Golden Age going to come?  From where is this is enlightenment going to emerge?

If our own Beth is only spewing filth and nonsense, we have to descend moment to moment, day to day, fighting against our own mind, fighting against all of those tendencies towards idiocy, which we all have.  We have to remember that this body, this mind, was given unto us for us to craft it, to prepare it, to create a temple for God.  What have we accomplished?  Each day we should reflect upon this.  What have we accomplished today?  Have we cleansed our temple today?  Did we sweep, did we scrub, did we carry out the trash, or did we bring more in?

This is not a matter of belief or good intentions, it is a matter of the Word.  We are not measured by our intentions, we are measured by our actions and their results.

Therefore whosoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock (the Philosophical Stone of Yesod - Sex). And every one that hears these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand (of beliefs and theories): And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. - Matthew 7: 24-27

Questions and Answers

Audience:  You said earlier that if we work on ourselves then humanity will punish us, but if we work in secret, how can humanity punish us?

Instructor:  Because we have karma.  This work is secret in the sense that the only one who knows if we are doing it or not is us.  Whether we tell all our friends and family, or not, is irrelevant.  The one who really does this work cannot be measured by any external circumstance.  It cannot be seen.  No one can see in an other person if they are really working.  Unfortunately, the students and instructors all think they can tell who is working and who is not.  This is a lie.  But you will know if you are working or not, according to your work.

When I say that humanity will punish us, its because as I explained: our ego will react.  We will face circumstances, challenges, ordeals, complications in life, and we will suffer, because we deserve it.  Moreover, we need it.  If we do not see the egos in us that cause pain, we cannot eliminate them.  Ordeals are a help that comes from God.  It is Lucifer, who comes by permission of God, and says "Ok, I see that you're satisfying the basic requirements, and that you want to enter the path, you are knocking on the door.  Fine, here is your first ordeal.  You want to enter into Initiation?  Fix this.  Change this.  This is your ego.  This is your karma."

We need that.  The path is not a path of roses and flower petals.  It is caltrops, thorns, and sharp rocks, and our feet bleed and our burden is heavy. This is represented by Yeshua carrying his cross up to the mount of the skull, the place of death.  We have to die and the process of reaching death is painful.  We are spit upon, we are laughed at, we are ridiculed inside, psychologically, by our mind.  Its not related to external circumstances, except psychologically.  Our external circumstances could be good or bad, or indifferent.  What makes us suffer is our mind, and how we react to things.

When we really take up the path, when we take up our cross and begin to seriously seek after that psychological death that we need, then as a blessing God brings that crowd to spit upon us, to ridicule us.  They come because of God.  They come because we made them, they are those thieves in our mind who we need to kill.  How do we kill them?  By walking up the road.  By continuing our steps up that road.  By not becoming identified.  Very few do it.  Most people hear this teaching, see the truth of it, feel the call.  They begin to try.  They may take some steps, but as their own mind spits upon them, ridicules them, brings them doubt, fear, uncertainty, attachment, lust, and pride, they put down the cross and they go back into the crowd and they disappear.

This path is for the few.  It is only for those who can take it.  This is not related to external circumstances, this is psychological.  Those few who do walk the path have the strength of will to withstand their own mind.  To not become identified, to maintain conscious equilibrium in the presence of doubt, in the presence of lust, in the fear, resentment, gluttony, laziness, everything and to keep one's focus on that cross on the top of the place of the skull, that we must die.  This mind must die.  One one is serious about conquering the desires of the mind, one can tell oneself, “Let the world punish us.  Let the mind rebel.  Let Herod attempt to kill the birth of Christ.  Let the Pharaoh come.”  When we grasp to God and embrace the death of the mind, we will achieve it.

Audience:  When Aleph goes through to Beth it is the Breath of God, but when physically we breathe out it is carbon dioxide, which is poison, correct?  Can you say more about that?

Instructor:  When the Aleph passes through Beth,  it is the breath of God which creates.  But in us, when we exhale, it is a poison, carbon dioxide.  When we breathe out it is poison.  Why? Because we are filled with poison, psychologically.  Physically, this organism is merely a transformer of energy.  But the breath we exhale is beneficial for other creatures, plants, who take that as food, but the same is true of the breath of God.  That breath of God is poison to the ego, but food for the consciousness.

Audience:  The man who builds his house on sand is a fool?  Our job is to build a house on rock?

Instructor:  The man who builds his house on sand is the fool, which is us.  We have built our temple on the sand, which means the shifting circumstances of life.  Our personality, education, country, language, family, beliefs, theories; none of these come from God.  They are all merely circumstantial, and they change.  How can we rely on anything like that to last?  Particularly spiritually.  Most of us who have come to Gnosis have come through other religions, maybe many.  Passing through different belief systems and schools and religions, temples, churches, reflect into your own life how all of those shifting sands have left you with little foundation; a very shaky place.

Obviously we still seek stability, something solid.  But that is not outside.  The foundation that we need, the rock is not outside of us.  It is not in a temple, or in a church.  It is not in a belief, its not in any person, a preacher, a Lama, a Master, it is in your own Elohim, who works through your own Yesod.  The foundation we need is inside.

Audience:  Why is the work in the Ninth Sphere being referred to as  "descending?"  Is it descending from the Absolute?  What is the significance of Dante visiting the Ninth Sphere of Hell regarding to the sexual world?

Instructor:  To fully explain the mysteries of the descent into the Ninth Sphere requires that one walk the path.  It is a very deep and long explanation.  Dante descended into the Ninth Sphere because he was searching for his true love, Beatrice.  And in order for him to reach her, he had to go first through the depths of hell.  It is the same symbol as Orpheus searching for Eurydice, and this is because our own consciousness, our own Beatrice, Helen, is trapped, and that work is sexual because our very nature is sexual.  The very fiber of our Being is sexual.  Creation in any level is sexual.  That descent into the abyss is merely a reflection of how the descent of the Ain Soph Aur occurs throughout all the levels of Nature.

The Ray of Light, the Ray of Creation, Yeshua, Queztlcoatl, Kukulkan - that light bursts forth from the Great Unknowable, and flashes down all the levels of life and existence and penetrates all the way to the bottom of the pit.  It is the essence of life in every level of existence.  When we descend, we follow that path, so that we may ascend.

If our consciousness, our soul is trapped in hell, it cannot ascend to Heaven.  It is bound by laws, by karma, cause and effect.  We are trapped in our circumstances now because we deserve it.  And if we want different circumstances we have to produce new causes, and to do that we have to pay for the causes we have already set in motion.  We have to resolve the effects of them.  We have to remove those effects so that the causes disappear, so that new causes can be created.

This is all a creative process.  No belief can penetrate that.  No belief can create a child and no belief can free the consciousness from hell.  Everybody loves to believe in this or that.  To say “I believe in such and such a master” or “I believe in such and such religion,” is nice, but what comes of it?  What fundamental change comes of that?  How does life fundamentally change?  Through cause and effect.  Therefore if you want your consciousness to be free of pain, to be free of the burden of lust, to be free of the suffering of anger, you have to resolve the cause and effect of that anger.  You have to remove that cause and effect from your temple, and the way you do it is through the Divine Mother, through Beth.  She is the one who provides the weapons, the armaments, the methods, the instruction, the intelligence, the wisdom to do it.  No one else can do that but God.

Audience:  Is it also the Black Lodge that begins to punish us when we begin to do the work?

Instructor:  Well, the Black Lodge is the word we use to represent all those forces that are trapped in the devolving current of life, which is that residue or the consequences of former actions that were out of balance with the law.  Because we have done that, because we have committed crimes, we, ourselves, are the Black Lodge.  Our ego is the Black Lodge and we are 97% more or less trapped in that, so all of us are the Black Lodge.  And when we try to leave that, everybody else who is there doesn't like it.  So of course, they fight.  There are some who are conscious of that; who embrace ego and desire.  There are many levels, some harmless, some very potent, some quite deadly, and they fight against any who try to leave their domain.

This also is represented in Beth, two kingdoms, white and black: the evolving current and the devolving current.  If we try to leave the devolving current it is not easy.  It is very difficult.  Why? Because we owe a lot there.  We have a lot of ties, a lot of debts, a lot of relationships, and moreover we “feel” ourselves there.  We have belonged to that darkness for so long that it feels normal.  It feels right.  It feels natural.  This is why nowadays, physically, all of this degeneration and filthiness that has been submerged in the mind of humanity is emerging in the physical world, as if it is “normal” to be a pedophile, homosexual, or an adulterer.  These things are now embraced, they are celebrated.  Celebrated in music, in movies, in television and books.  We celebrate crime.  We worship criminals.  Look at the movies: they worship killing and crime and how to betray people and how to fool people, how to lie.  Who are the great heroes in all our movies now?  Con artists, criminals, liars, violence.  No virtue, no chastity, no humility.  We like arrogance, we like cruelty, we like lust.  That is all the Black Lodge.  That all belongs to the devolving current.

That is why this humanity will be destroyed.  It is inevitable.  That current only heads for destruction, it cannot create anything good or beautiful.

What good will come of a society that worships violence and lust?  What elevated qualities of the Spirit can come of that?  Nothing.  This society worships stealing, crime, violence, lust, envy.  The result will be pain.

So when we try to come out of that, everything resists it, but the main thing that resists it is our own mind, because it feels weird.

Audience:  Is Bethlehem related to the Eucharist in Beth, the temple, the realm of God?

Instructor:  Yes, the word Bethlehem is clearly related with the Eucharist.  As are many other words:

Important words related to Beth:

• Bethel: house of God
• Bethesda: house of mercy
• Bethlehem: house of bread
• Bathsheba: "daughter of the seven"
• Beth Din: tribunal of justice
• Elisabeth: mother of John

The Eucharist we covered extensively in the series of lectures called The Sacraments of the Gnostic Church.

Bethlehem has significance too deep for us to enter into here.