Today we have arrived at the ninth lecture in our series on the esoteric astrology of Gnosis. The number nine is definitive. This number indicates a very profound science related to the ninth sphere. But to understand what the ninth sphere is, we have to understand something about Kaballah.
The ninth zodiacal sign is Sagittarius and the image or the symbol utilized to represent the zodiacal influence of Sagittarius is a centaur. A centaur is an ancient symbol from Greek mythology and beyond, which depicts a creature that has a torso of a man, and from the waist down he is a horse. This symbol represents a profound understanding of the nature of the path to the self-realization of the Being. It is vital for students of the path to understand the nature of self, and to do so we have to understand and remember the symbol of the centaur.
Often, when we arrive to any esoteric group to study any religion or mystical science, we are confronted with the instructors, the guides - those people who teach, who instruct, who organize groups and who explain the nature of their religion or science, whether we call them shaman, priest, lama, or teacher. All of these people receive projected onto them the ideas and assumptions of the students. So when we arrive to any school, we tend to come with our own set of values, our own set of images, that we project onto those teachers, priests, or lamas. Typically we see them as something pure, something holy. There is nothing wrong with this. Anyone who has within them their own essence, their own consciousness, their own spark of divinity, has that element of purity and deserves respect and deserves honor. Unfortunately, in many schools this projection of the student is taken advantage of by instructors, by priests, by lamas, and is utilized in order to keep the student loyal, worshipful, subservient, often under the pretext of what we might call guru yoga, or worship of the teacher or guru. We have to understand that the worship of the guru is important. The respect of the teacher is important. But we also have to always remember the symbol of the centaur. The centaur is half man and half beast.
There are many lamas, teachers, masters - people who call themselves masters -who are very sanctimonious. They project the appearance of sanctity, the appearance of purity, who act holy, who dress a particular way, who use certain kind of mannerisms., who project an image of a saint. But inside they are not. Inside they are what the Master Jesus pointed out in the Gospels: we are clean on the outside, but inside are full of filth and rottenness. We are whitened on the outside, like a grave or a tomb, which is a beautiful appearance, very pure and white, but inside is filthy.
Truly, all of us are like that. All of us have that contradiction; we are something pure with something impure. And unfortunately, we love to maintain the image of purity, of supposed sanctity, and this projection is very insincere and a cause for suffering.
To understand this matter in its depth we have to investigate our own self, our own mind and heart, and it helps if we understand something of the nature of the Tree of Life.
The Kaballah or Tree of Life is a very sophisticated map, a diagram consisting of ten spheres, organized in a pattern of three triangles of three, with the tenth fallen and hanging from the bottom of the lowest triangle. These spheres represent values of the consciousness, qualities of the soul. They are not concrete in the way that our mind tries to make them. It is common when students study the Tree of Life they try to assign definitive attributes or definitive concrete meaning to each sphere, but this is a limiting tendency. In reality, each sphere represents a world, one component of a large structure, which can be viewed from different angles and in different ways according to the need. For example, we can see that the tenth sphere, called Malkuth (which means kingdom in Hebrew) represents the physical world, this third dimension, but it also represents our physical body. It also represents the lowest aspect of the descent of the ray of creation in terms of the way energy functions and manifests. Malkuth is symbolic, just like all the other spheres on the tree. But we describe the tree and its spheres from certain points of view in order to understand our psychology, in order to understand the nature of energy in matter: how energy and matter interrelate.
The Illuminating Void
When we are discussing the soul we discuss how the Ray of Creation descends. It descends from the Absolute. The Absolute is a vast, unmanifested entity, or non-entity; it is incomprehensible to our mind. It is uncreated light, that potential for manifestation but not manifest.
The Absolute can also be called the emptiness. But this does not mean that it is nothing. It is something; but it is nothing like what we know. We can call it nothingness but that does not mean that it does not exist. It is existent but without an existence that we understand.
In Buddhism, the absolute reality is called Shunyata. We can also call it the void. In his writings, Samael Aun Weor spoke often of the illuminating void.
If you consider that term carefully, you see a very beautiful symbol. It is a void. A space without space. It is a vast emptiness that is yet full. It is something but it is nothing. But it is illuminating; it is irradiating, and that irradiation, that illumination is called the Ain Soph. This is the purest, most immaculate light. It is yet nothing, because it is part of the Absolute. But that illuminating void, the light, is what manifests, bursts forth and creates. This is the ray of creation - also called the Cosmic Christ, Quetzalcoatl, Okidanokh, Kwan Yin.
It is important to understand the nature of the void. But true understanding of it can only arise through direct experience, not through the intellect. This is vital to grasp. In the esoteric traditions, it is stated that the one who experiences the void, consciously, is changed. Such a person becomes different, becomes distinct, becomes a person unlike other people, because the nature of that experience is so penetrating; it is as if you are struck by lighting. It transforms the consciousness and provides a kind of comprehension that is distinctly different from creatures that have yet to experience the nature of emptiness.
This light, the root, unfolds itself through the wisdom of Daath, which is the hidden sphere in the Tree of Life, and all of creation ensues. We see upon this Tree all the levels of being, all the levels of life, all the dimensions, the many worlds, the myriad of creatures that exist within each atom. Within each particle is a connection to the Ain Soph - a portion, a particle, a link.
Interdependence
In simpler terms, we can examine the nature of our own physical body. This is something we can observe with our own sensual mind, this mind that depends upon the five senses. We perceive that we now are within a physical organism which has certain attributes, certain qualities - capacities to move, to function, most of which occur without our conscious intervention, such as digestion, circulation, the function and development of the endocrine system, breathing. But any scientist of this day and age will tell you that your physical body is not in its core not what it appears to be. The physical body is just a collection of components. This physical body is active, providing a home for our consciousness to function within because it has a very delicate balance of components present. We have the capacity to breathe, we have a heart, which is pumping blood, drawing that breath. We have all of the many organs: the skin, the bones, the veins, the glands, all of which function in this miraculous way, which we hardly comprehend, much less remain aware of moment to moment. Nonetheless, we depend upon it to exist, to think, to love. We use this vehicle to perform all of our activities, and yet we remain unaware of it. Looking deeper we can see that if we remove any one piece of this puzzle of the physical body we would cease to exist as we are now. If we remove the heart, the brain, the lungs, the spinal column, the liver, any one of these pieces, that body will cease to function, and then what? We don’t know. Existence continues, but we don’t know about it because we are not conscious of that. So from this point of view we can say that our existence in this moment is dependent upon conditions. Meaning, our physical body does not exist independently of itself. It exists because it is an accumulation of components that are necessary in their precise balance for it to function and remain functioning.
In Buddhism this is called dependent origination. In its more elaborate explanation it is represented by the twelve Nidanas, which are these twelve interlocking sections encircling the wheel of Samsara. Dependent origination states simply that nothing exists independently. Everything is dependent on something else. But we need to comprehend the nature of that statement from the point of view of the emptiness, the void. The void itself exists, but not in a form we understand, and all things that are in creation exist from that fundamental ground of the Ain Soph.
Our own self-nature is the same. We believe that we have the self. Firstly, many people think that the physical body is what they are, and that’s it. Then the question is: when our physical body is sleeping, and you dream, who are you? Your physical body is there in the bed but you are somewhere else, you are in another place. And you can have conscious experiences while being in this other place: touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, hearing, in the same way you would in the physical body, but you are not in the physical body. And you know that because you can fly, you can stretch, you can become another shape. You can become invisible. You can walk through walls. You can breathe underwater - many things that the physical body cannot do. How is that? Who is that self? Some religions, some traditions state that that is the real self. That it is the dream aspect that they are calling the spirit or the soul. But religion in its depth does not state that.
The Buddha explained it the best. The Buddha taught a very clear and precise understanding of what the self is. Unfortunately, in these times he is grossly misinterpreted. Many people nowadays have the mistaken impression that the Buddha said there is no self. That is not what he said. The Buddha said that there is no independently existing self. When you understand in terms of the emptiness and dependent origination, you can comprehend this statement.
But students of Gnosis will say, “How can that be? We study Gnosis and we study that we have a real inner Self, a real inner Being, our own inner God, our Atman, our own particular Divine Mother and Divine Father. What about them? Aren’t they our real self?” Yes and no. This is the difficulty for the intellect, our beliefs, and our assumptions.
Truth
There are actually two truths. There is the conventional truth and there is the ultimate truth. Conventional truth is what we all have the capacity to confirm right now. For example, we can confirm that we exist. We are here physically with some degree of awareness of that. And we can confirm and discuss the existence of the physical body. Each person can say “yes, I am here in a physical body.” This is conventional truth. That person who has confirmed that level of conventional truth can easily say I don’t believe in astral projection or astral travel. I don’t believe in other dimensions because they have not experienced that. So their degree of comprehension, of conventional truth, is limited to the physical world in Malkuth. And they can’t be blamed or criticized for that. That is their degree of understanding.
But someone who has had a conscious experience out of their physical body, who has been awake in another dimension, who has flown, or floated or passed through a wall or a ceiling, or has traveled across the Earth to distant places consciously - that person knows in their own experience, no matter what anybody else says, that their experience was real. And that those types of experiences are real in spite of what the scientists say. They know it is real. So for that person their understanding of conventional truth has expanded. Now they have confirmed something about other dimensions. They have an understanding beyond just the physical truth. The same is true through each sphere of the Tree of Life.
When we teach Gnosis, when we study Gnosis, we always talk about our real Being, our real Self. Often we talk about that real being as Chesed (Atman in Sanskrit), our own particular Divine Father. And from the point of view of that sphere, He is indeed our true Being, our real Self. This is more or less what the Brahmans were stating in India when the Buddha arrived. Unfortunately, the Brahmans stopped there. They thought Atman was it, the ultimate self, a concrete self, indivisible and independent of anything and this is what the Buddha corrected. The Buddha said that Atman is not the real self. He taught the doctrine of Anatman (an: no; atman: self), the doctrine of “no self.” He said that there is no independently existing self. So how do we understand this in Gnosis?
Atman exists because he is a child of his own Father and Mother, Shiva/Shakti. That divine couple, Iod Havah, unite in Daath and from their union emerges a son: Chesed. In Egyptian mysticism, their son is called Horus. Osiris and Isis unite and they have Horus, the Golden Child. So Atman (Horus) does not exist independently, by himself, independent of other things. He comes into existence dependent upon his own parents, his progenitors.
So, we understand that whichever level of Tree of Life we are examining, there is no independent origination - a self originated and independent of all other things. Each aspect of the Tree of Life depends upon others and is there because of others.
If we further investigate each level of the tree, we discover we have to keep going higher. When we look into our own psyche and we start to try to comprehend who we are, we see a lot of contradiction, and in each element we examine we have to penetrate deeper and deeper and deeper. When arriving at the ultimate view, penetrating throughout all the levels of the self, we arrive at the conclusion that the Buddha taught: at the heart of all existing things is emptiness - the void, the Absolute, which is the only thing that is real, and yet it is not real in the way we understand reality.
The Monad
When the Ray of Creation unfolds itself, the light is projected out of Daath, and Horus, (Chesed, Atman, the spirit) is born. This is in the sixth dimension.
Chesed in himself is three in one. He has two souls. He has a Divine Soul, which in Sanskrit is called Buddhi, and he has a Human Soul, which is Sanskrit is called Manas. These “three in one” are called the Monad (from Greek monas, “unity”).
We often discuss the Monad as our real self, and from our point of view, in terms of conventional truth, the Monad is our real self. But even our Monad has a real self.
The Monad, Atman, in order for his own spiritual development to progress - for that child Horus to grow - he has to manifest himself into lower levels of creation to gather knowledge, and he does that through his Human Soul, Manas, This unfolding occurs through the four bodies of sin. And these are what we know of as:
- mind, or intellect, in Netzach
- the astral body, or emotion, in Hod
- the ethereal body, or vital energy, in the world of Yesod
- the physical body
These four bodies become the vessel, the vehicle or the chariot of the self. If you know anything about Hinduism, if you have studied a little bit about the Mahabarata, you know that on the battlefield, Arjuna and Krishna prepare to go to war. Arjuna would be the Human Soul who stands in the chariot. The chariot in this case represents the bodies of the soul. The mind, the mental body, the heart - the astral body, the vital energies which is the vital, or ethereal, body and then the physical body. This is also symbolized in the Mahabarata by the Pandava brothers.
Evolution of the Soul
When the Ray of Creation unfolds the structure, then the spark of the consciousness (the Essence, a little percentage of the Human Soul), descends and enters into the physical world, or in other words the wheel of Samsara. The spark begins to develop itself, to enter into physical bodies, beginning in the mineral kingdom. That essence, the consciousness, is very simple, very pure. It emerges from Atman, from the Self, but is very simple. It needs knowledge, it needs to grow, it needs to gather wisdom. So it enters first into physical bodies of minerals, which we know of as minerals, the elements of the earth. Spiritually. that essence, that particle, is what we would call a gnome or pygmy, an elemental of nature. As we have discussed in many lectures, that conscious spark slowly and progressively perfects itself as it works within a given physical body to perfect it, and little by little is initiated into more and more complex organisms so it can gather more and more knowledge and can interact more and more with the four elements of nature - and can dominate and control them more and more. This happens progressively through the mineral kingdom, through the plant kingdom, through the animal kingdom. The entirety of that progression can take millions of years. It depends on the quality of that essence. But the progression ultimately is driven by the crafting of a mind. The consciousness crafts these vessels, these four bodies, which were given to that soul by nature, by the Divine Mother. But unfortunately, the mind or four bodies are not perfect. They are what we could call lunar bodies, or protoplasmic bodies. They are mind; mind at their level of development.
A plant has a mind at its level. It has consciousness, in its level, the level of a plant. And there are many levels of plants - very simple forms of plant life ranging up to very complex ones. The same exists in the animal kingdom. An animal has mind. And when I say “mind” I am not talking about “intellect.” Instead, I am talking about a vessel for the consciousness, a vehicle through which the consciousness can interrelate and understand. A mind is a transformer of energy. We can see in the animal kingdom that some creatures have very simple minds. They can understand and interrelate with other creatures at a very simple level. But then you have creatures like the dolphin, the whale, the eagle - who have much more sophisticated form of mind. This is not about brain size. The mind uses the brain, but is not limited to the brain.
This process of evolution is a process of developing mind, and when that essence, the soul consciousness, that spark, reaches the ultimate level it can reach on its path through those kingdoms, it is granted the right to enter into the humanoid kingdom. So that soul clothed with its lunar bodies (lunar mind, mechanical mind) enters into the humanoid kingdom.
The humanoid kingdom is a very special place. The Buddha said that the humanoid body is the most precious body we can acquire in these lower kingdoms. The reason is that the physical body of the humanoid is the entry way into the higher kingdoms.
The humanoid body is so sophisticated. All of our science and our medicine today still does not understand the physical body that we have. Still we are grasping to understand it and fail to and still we are using only a tiny percentage of our brain and we think we are so elevated. There are enormous capacities within the physical body which are yet untapped by most people.
The physical organism of a humanoid is a womb. It is a place for the soul to be born into a new kingdom. It is the platform from which angels are born. An angel is a perfected human being. An angel is truly one who has sanctity, who has purity. An animal does not. The animal mind is a mind that has grown and developed under the guidance of instinct and those qualities that are necessary in the animal kingdom in order to develop the understanding of an animal. But to develop the understanding of a human being requires that we stop being animals. We have to conquer the animal nature that we have within.
This is a centaur. You see in a centaur the body of a beast - of an animal - from which is emerging a man. The man is coming out of the animal but he is not a man, nor is he an animal, he is both, he is mixed. That is the problem we have now: we are mixed.
In Greek mythology, the centaur was always described as being really grotesque, foul, filthy, perverted, degenerated, a slave of passion. Who are we? Who are we nowadays? Do we dominate and control our passions? Or does our anger rule us? Does our lust rule us? Do we make decisions in life because of what our inner God wants in us or because of what our envy wants? Because we want what someone else has? We desire what someone else has?
Many in spiritual groups or religions love to believe they are humble, and even project humility. But they are proud of their humility. That is not humility, that is pride. Many in spiritual groups renounce material things but covet spiritual development and are greedy for spiritual knowledge. Many do not steal money but they do steal ideas, they steal time from others, they steal attention, they steal energy. Many claim to walk a path of purity by not eating meat, by wearing white. And yet in their mind they brutalize their fellow man with criticism, with jealousy, with hate. Where is sanctity in that? Where is purity? Do we really have purity in our own hearts, in our own minds? No, we do not. This is the nature of the centaur.
The potential to become human is trapped in the body of an animal. The body in this case, the body of the centaur, is symbolic of our mind. The horse has four legs which represent the four bodies of sin. And those legs are the bodies, the lunar bodies that we, as a psyche, stand on; we do everything based upon our four legs: physical body, vital energy, emotion, and thought - but they are all animalistic.
Our animal intellect reasons and justifies based in desire. If we want or envy something, we justify it with our animal mind and we call it a need. “I need that, I need that new dress, I need those new shoes, I need that person,” when really that need is desire – it is lust, gluttony, greed, it is all cravings for sensation. “I need to get out of this marriage.” It could be fear. It could be hate. It could be lust. What we call “need” is usually a want or a desire. And we justify that with this animal intellect - the lunar mental body.
Likewise with the heart, those needs, those wants, those desires fears, anxieties, resentment - anger toward our parents, friends, our spouse; the animal desire of that lunar emotional body or lunar astral body. That is why in Sanskrit it is called Kamarupa or body of desire. This is the coarse body of illusion, which in Tibetan Tantrism is stated very clearly. It has to be destroyed because it is diabolic. It is diabolic because, while as an animal, we needed certain elements to help us evolve as an animal, but as a human being those elements must be discarded.
When we entered the humanoid kingdom we received the gift of reasoning- the ability to compare A to B and the ability to use some self will, some independence. As an animal we are very much guided by collective mind. And the higher animals you see are becoming more and more independent, more and more singular, like the big cats, tigers, like the eagle. That image of independence is what the humanoid has to ultimately fully cultivate, which is human will. This is the ability to perform right action not from instinct, not from desire, not from habit, but because it is in line with the higher laws of nature. To become a king and queen of nature is to become a ruler over those elements of nature. Those elements are inside of us, but they rule over us. We do not even rule ourselves, much less nature. We do not control our animal mind, yet we always try to control the minds of others.
The reasoning we receive puts us in a position of great responsibility. We have to take responsibility for our actions, where as an animal we didn’t. Someone that is given the capacity to develop individuality also receives the responsibility of individual will. That is why we have karma: the law of cause and effect.
Karma simply measures energy in nature. There are laws in nature that state each thing must return to its point of departure - each element, each energy. If this energy in my left hand becomes too elevated, nature will push it back. This is part of how nature functions. Even the materialistic scientists now confirm this. Karma is a physical law, which Newton stated: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But that applies to emotional energy, too. If you are projecting anger, that energy has to come back. If you are projecting desire, envy, lust, there is karma, consequences. This is why we suffer.
Each action we perform under the guidance of animal desire, whether it is through the mind, the heart or physically, we accrue karma for that. And karma is encapsulated. It isn’t just some idea. Remember what Einstein taught: you can’t destroy energy. Energy becomes matter and matter becomes energy. This is true of qualities of the soul as well.
When you as an individual, someone who is acting on your own will, feed an element of lust, feeling lust for another person, and you give that feeling energy, fuel, something is created in your mind. And that something is called an “I”, its called an ego. That something - lets say it is lust - that lust is constituted by the nature of the way it was created at that moment. Let’s say you saw another person that you felt lust for, desire. That lust has thought in it, it has feeling in it, emotion, and it has vital energy. Three aspects. And the physical body takes those energies and channels them. And the mind and the heart take those energies and channels them according to our will, and the result is those forces channeled through lust create an I, in our own personal psychological hell, our own subconsciousness, our own unconciousness, our own infraconciousness.
When someone criticizes us, and we feel pain, we feel bad about ourselves. That energy is creating an element in the mind. In modern times they call it a trauma. But that trauma is a material element that is produced in more subtle levels of nature. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, has inner relations with matter on those levels of nature.
Successively, through lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, through the humanoid kingdom, we have been doing this from moment to moment. From physical body to physical body, creating new elements, creating new egos, creating pride, envy, lust, fear, laziness, gluttony, greed, hate. And all of those individual pieces are what we call the ego, what we call the “I” - what we mistake as our “self.”
This train of thinking in your mind which you think is you, is not you. It’s the ego. That chatter of constantly flowing, thinking, is the murmuring, the bubbles arising from all these submerged bottles. Submerged within our own mind. This is the beast. We need to conquer the beast within.
Hasnamuss
We walk through our life on our four legs, according to our karma, which is trapped and encapsulated by all these individual “I”s or egos. And because we continue to listen to them and be influenced by them, and be enslaved by them, we continue to create more, so our mind becomes heavier and heavier.
If you observe a homeless person - not all of them - but some of them have lost their equilibrium. They have lost the ability to manage their own mind. The personality has fractured, and these “I”s and elements are escaping and that person is perceiving them and talking to them, having conversations. But they have lost cognizance. They have lost that central point of gravity. And so they are becoming very disequilibriated, very unbalanced. You know what we call this person? A hasnamuss. This is a person with a double center of gravity who can’t keep their balance. But there are more than one kind of hasnamuss, there are many. We are the same as those people; we just don’t see it yet. We think they are different from us but they are not. They are exactly like us, but they had some experience, it could be one thing. Maybe they lost their job. Their own karma put them in a position. Maybe they lost their job or their spouse. Maybe they got sick. So their support as a personality, as a functioning person in society, was broken and that experience was so strong it broke their personality and they became mad. Gnosis points out that all of us are at that exact precipice. It takes only a little push to push us over the edge. One trauma, one thing can go wrong in our lives, and we will lose control. Our personality can shatter and we could go mad. That’s because this ego, this “I” is so heavy. hasnamuss is a word - and I’m told it came from Arabic – that refers to someone with a double center of gravity.
First of all, in this tradition we have different ways of analyzing the Hanasumussen. Hasnamussen is plural for hasnamuss. Samael Aun Weor analyzed the phenomena of hasnamussen in different ways. The way I’m going to look at it today is from his book The Elimination of Satan’s Tail. I chose this particular point of view because it is more directly applicable to us in our daily lives. The other points of view about them are equally valid.
The first kind of hasnamuss is just a degenerated person. Someone who has no real force of will - whose will is weak. Who is just tossed about in life, from event to event. This type of hasnamuss has a double center of gravity because they have a center of gravity in the ego, and they have a little spark still of free consciousness, or essence, the buddhata. They still have a little piece. So this is a weak, degenerated soul with no real force.
Now, regarding the person of the example, like a homeless person, who has lost their mental equilibrium and the personality is fractured, generally speaking we state that this type of person is on their last existence as a humanoid, as an intellectual animal. That is why their suffering is so great. That mind has become so degenerated, so complicated, the karma is so heavy, that nature cannot sustain that psyche in this level of existence. It’s too heavy. So out of compassion, God gives a doorway to cleanse that soul of this karma and that doorway is the doorway of hell, the abyss, the inferno, the Klipoth. That homeless person of our example will die and that soul, that essence, will not incarnate again in a humanoid entity as a person like us but instead they will begin the slow process of devolution back down the wheel. First in animal bodies to dissolve all those animal elements of the mind. To break all those bottles and free the little spark of purity that is inside each one. Little by little the Divine Mother breaks down that “I” until the essence is freed in the second death, which the bible mentions. This is a long process and it is talked about in detail in the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, who was an initiate. This first type of hasnamuss passes through this process relatively quickly, but not easily. It is very painful. If you have ever had a nightmare, you are dreaming in these levels. You are perceiving hell. What is there is there because you have that in your mind – those elements which live there. A nightmare happens because your soul, consciousness, has particles trapped in your own levels of the mind. And you experience that and it is terrifying. Most of us have no recollection most of the time of that happening, but it happens every night.
The second type of Hanassmus has a lot of energy, a lot of vitality. This type uses all their energy to feed their desire, to act. This type of person is very consumed with their desires. Lustful desires, desires for sensations through drugs, through greed for money, for power, for fame, for recognition, for material things, for social status. And they pursue those desires aggressively. This type of person has invested a lot more energy in the “I”, the ego, so their karma is heavier. So they too, when they have exhausted their opportunities in humanoid bodies, will be recycled through nature, through the cycle of the second death. It will take longer. It could be a lot longer. They have more karma -more pride, more anger, more fear, more lust. So it takes longer for nature to break that down and once more free that soul so it can try again.
The third type has entered into some kind of occult studies - has done some kind of exploration of what is beyond physical matter, what is beyond the senses. It is likely that if you are studying this kind of information, coming to Gnosis, and studying Gnosis, you are the third type, because you have a predisposition in your psyche to understand religion, to understand the esoteric, to understand the occult, the hidden. But the karma of that, the recurrence of that, from past existences - due to the Piscean age we have just exited - it is highly likely that most of us, in searching for the light, wound up in schools of black magic. In trying to find the hidden, the esoteric, wound up in schools that were teaching the wrong things. And due to that we created egos or elements of the mind that are related to black tantrism, black magic, or other practices using rituals and forces in the wrong way. It may appear perfectly good on the surface, but if it is out of alignment with the will of God, it is wrong, it is black. This third type then has developed a kind of karma, or a kind of responsibility, which is different because they acquired some degree of knowledge, some degree of understanding, so they have more karma, because they misused it. So once they exhaust their opportunities in the physical body, they are recycled by nature and it takes even longer to cleanse that karma, to purify that soul.
Well, then we have fourth type. The fourth type in this particular model, has developed some degree of the soul. What does that mean? The heart of any religion, the esoteric heart, is the science to be born again which is an exact method. Some call it tantra, some call it alchemy, some call it Daath. But it is a form of understanding or knowledge that utilizes all of the forces of the physical body in order to create the perfect human being. To utilize all of our energies, all of our forces, in order to create the soul. To give birth to the soul which is what Jesus was indicating in the gospels, to be born again. That is the science of the ninth sphere. The ninth sphere counting downwards on the Tree of Life is Yesod related to vital energy, or ethereal energy, and is also related to the sexual organs, to the sexual energy. To be born is a sexual problem. Everything that is born is born sexually and there is no exception to that. Every creature, every angel, is born because of the laws that God has put into place. Sex is the law, on all levels. But let us not confuse the sexuality of the animal kingdom with the sexuality of the human kingdom. These are different. That is why the law is given to that entity, that spark of consciousness, when it enters the humanoid kingdom: you shall not fornicate anymore. Because you need to conquer your animal nature so you need to renounce that. Renounce your animal behaviors and become a human being. And those who do that, who begin to harness the sexual forces and begin to understand the how to develop the mind in the right way, begin to create solar mind, not lunar mind. Solar because Sol, the Sun, is related to that light which radiates from the Ain Soph, the cosmic Christ, the light of the world, the son of the sun, and that light, that Ray, has its exponent here in the ninth sphere through the sexual energy, here in Daath- at the level of the throat, through the word. The one who wants to become an angel has to be born an angel through the proper use of sexuality. This is by raising the brazen serpent of Moses: the Kundalini. Transmuting the sexual forces in the physical body, raising the Kundalini in the physical body. Transforming the forces of the ethereal body and raising the serpent of the ethereal body. Transforming the forces of the astral body, and raising the serpent of the astral body. And when that serpent is raised, the serpent of the Kundalini and the astral body, the solar astral body is created.
Symbolically, this is the first coming of Christ in us. Because that creation is Christic energy, solar energy, energy from the sun. It is pure. It is a creation of the Christ, not Divine Mother nature. Which means that the new body does not belong to the lunar forces of Divine Mother nature. Which means that the soul has acquired the very first degree of immortality, the very first element of it. Not true immortality, but the first degree of it.
The solar astral body is not subject to the laws of evolution and devolution, yet the ego is. A split happens in the psyche. That center of gravity that we had before, mostly in the ego, but a little bit in the consciousness, has split a lot. The solar astral body is a new vehicle, a new creation, born of the spirit and the water, which is separate from Klipoth. That soul now has a foot in each world. One foot in the world of the spirit, the soul, and one in hell. This is a very dangerous place to be because those two spheres move in very different ways. It is very easy to lose your balance, very easy to fall. That is why the Master Samael said that you are never closer to becoming a demon than when you are closest to becoming an angel. To balance our psychological elements is very difficult. This is a centaur trapped between two worlds: part beast, part man. This is the fourth type.
The problem here is that is if that soul has managed to reach at least the level of creating the solar astral body, they are in a very precarious position because if they persist to listen to the ego, to the mind, to desire, they will be recycled by nature. The problem is that double center of gravity. If they don’t eliminate the ego quickly, they can become split, torn apart, what otherwise would be called an abortion of nature - with a double center of gravity, with a huge disequilibrium.
This kind of person is extremely untrustworthy, is very dangerous. They have the solar astral body, which gives them capacities to investigate elements in the superior worlds consciously and at will, to consciously and at will go out of body and use the astral body to investigate phenomena of nature as a soul - and they have that right - but the ego is still alive in them; their pride is still alive, their lust, their envy, their anger, their resentment, so whatever they see, whatever knowledge they gather, whatever visions they have, can easily be corrupted by their own mind. And they can come back physically and begin to criticize people, to attack them, to act sanctimonious, to act like a saint and to mislead people. This is so common among initiates that it is absurd.
But this is still not the worst type. Within this fourth type of hasnamussen their are many kinds, many particulars, because the more development that the soul has, developing the solar mental body, developing the solar causal body, or even going beyond that and becoming a Bodhisattva, they are gaining more mastery in the superior worlds, The spirit is becoming a greater and greater entity with more beauty and wisdom. But if the ego is still alive (and it is until resurrection), that split is growing. The inner division of the center of gravity becomes even more precarious.
There is a certain point at which that whole creature becomes an abortion of nature. Master Samael often refers to Andrameleck. Andrameleck is precisely this kind of bizarre formation, a bizarre creation that is both a master of the white and a master of the black at the same time, but has failed. He has failed because the human soul is fallen. That centaur has descended into the abyss, like Chiron. In Dante’s Inferno, Chiron, the great centaur, lives in the seventh circle of hell. If you know Greek mythology, you know that Chiron was the great teacher. He was the exception to all the centaurs. The centaurs were known to be passionate, brutal, violent creatures, addicted to their passions. But Chiron was different. He taught all the great heroes. He taught Theseus, Ajax. He taught them how to conquer and how to be solar gods. He taught them how to create the soul. To create the solar bodies. He was an initiate. But he was a centaur. He had not dissolved his ego. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante places Chiron in Klipoth even though Chiron had these capacities and was respected, he nevertheless belonged to Klipoth because he did not dissolve the ego. And this is symbolic of teachers, of Bodhisattvas, of initiates who develop some level of the soul but do not eliminate the ego. They remain with pride alive, with lust alive, envy, fear, self-hate, shame, anxiety, all of these elements. This is why we always emphasize: follow your own inner Being, because only He is pure. Do not follow “masters” or self-proclaimed “prophets.”
We are all a centaur of some form. It is urgent that we dissolve the ego. This is why we focus on meditation when we study Gnosis. To analyze our mind, to analyze our heart, To change. To sincerely become a good person, not just to act like one. To become one. So that right action becomes spontaneous. Not forced, not assumed, not sanctimonious.
Andrameleck is given as an example because anyone, any student who is investigating occult science of some kind, whether it is in Gnosis or another tradition, may try to invoke Andrameleck, to call Andrameleck. But you never know which one will come: The white master or the black master. And believe me, the black master looks white. He is awake. He knows who he is, he knows what he is. But what Master Samael stated is that the human soul of Andrameleck is fallen. His Being is not. The white master, Atman, has all the virtues and gifts and beauties of a genuine and established master, an angel. But his human soul is a demon. And until that demon is recycled by nature, that master cannot advance, cannot gain more mastery.
“Andrameleck will not have a physical body again! He is a terribly perverse demon. The Internal Master suffered horribly, and of course, he will have to pay a great Karma for having created that demon.” - Esoteric Treatise of Theurgy
That is why that soul is considered an abortion of nature. Because that split is there and until that split is resolved the master can’t walk. You cannot walk with two centers of gravity. You have to have a single centered balance to use your feet to walk. This is why sometimes the centaur is shown with two faces. One pointing in either direction. This is the nature of the hasnamuss. One face is walking the wrong way. One is walking the right way. Neither one can get anywhere. Because they are stuck together, trapped, until their impure part is cleansed. But in the case of Andrameleck or another entity like that, who has created the solar bodies, it takes a millennia. Those solar bodies do not belong to mother nature. Mother nature did not create them and has so also a very hard time destroying them. It takes a long time to cleanse that ego.
The Sagittarian person can demonstrate some of these contradictions - to be very bright, sharp; as a mind, as a heart. They have a lot of heart. But at the same time they are often victimized by their own passions, misled and misguided by their own passions, like the centaur is. They have a hard time controlling lust in particular. Samael Aun Weor stated that. The problem that Sagittarians get hurt most by is their own lustfulness, their own passionate nature. This becomes very painful for them.
The Sagittarian also has a lot of courage, and can fight. That influence of Sagittarius as a celestial force is very powerful. It can give us tremendous strength to overcome adversities. You may witness a person that is a Sagittarian who is in the worst possible circumstances and everyone has thought it is hopeless for them, but they rise up. They overcome it. This is a unique capacity that the influence of Sagittarius can provide to any soul, but particularly to the Sagittarian, the person born under that influence.
In synthesis, it is vital and necessary that we investigate the nature of our own self. To question the impulses that arise physically, for us to act emotionally, for us to act mentally. To look into every phenomenon that arises in our mind and remember the centaur. If we are investigating or following some spiritual path, do not rest or assume you have sanctity. Do not think you have achieved anything. You always have to look for your own animal aspect, and remain aware of it. For otherwise, you can fall into mistake, such as believing you are a saint, and ignoring the truth that is in your own mind. Further, even if you have the great blessing to have an experience with your own inner divinity, to have a conscious experience with your own Divine Mother, or with your own spirit, with your Divine Father, or even with some component of your soul which you can converse with, always remember the centaur. And remember, God has no form. Even if you experience God, in an experience of some kind, in the astral plane or the mental plane, the causal plane - don’t take that experience for your own self. Because from that you can create an “I”, a false sense of self. And you can remain as a centaur. The one who becomes free of being a centaur kills that animal inside. Like the ancient warriors kill the dragon. The dragon in inside.
Remember Heracles. Heracles encountered the centaurs and dined with them. But they became so enraged and impassioned by the wine that he had to fight them off. And what did he fight them with? His bows and his arrows. But the arrows he dipped in the blood of the Hydra which he had conquered previously. The Hydra, remember, is the many headed serpent, or dragon. Those heads are the egos. Usually there are seven – the seven capital sins. Sometimes there are nine which relate to the nine spheres of Klipoth which is the same dragon from the book of revelation who has seven heads and ten horns. When Heracles kills the Hydra, he dips his arrows in the blood because the blood, the force, that energy is so potent and powerful. And this is the symbol of comprehension, of him taking the forces from the ego – transmuting the sexual energy. And utilizing that sexual force against his own mind, the centaur. So he killed them. And this is what we have to do. We have to conquer our own pride, our own lust, our own envy. And take the forces that we extract and continue to fight against the ego. You see, first he dominates a certain part of the ego, related to the Hydra, then he has to dominate another part of the ego, the centaur, or that split personality- solar and lunar. A lot of wisdom in those myths. They are not just superficial stories. They have initiatic wisdom.
Questions and Answers
Q: What about the arrows pointing to Jupiter?
A: Sagittarius is related to the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is the king, the one who provides the majesty, rulership. When we are working with the forces of Sagittarius, really we are working in the house of Jupiter. So there is that influence there. The Master Samael taught a practice whereby we can harness those forces. The practice is simple. You squat down on your feet, like people in India do or they do in South America, and you put your palms on your knees with your index fingers pointing up. And you meditate, you visualize those forces of Sagittarius flooding you, but particularly to influence the pineal gland. The sign of Sagittarius has a particular influence related to clairvoyance and the capacity to perceive that which is beyond the physical. This is why it is so important for us to develop discrimination when observing ourselves. To be able to discriminate between all the different qualities that arise in our brains. The impulses to act, to think, to feel. We have to apply that same discrimination to what we see clairvoyantly, in meditation, through visions; without that discrimination we can take our visions as concrete facts and we can easily be misled. To see clairvoyantly is natural. But to see objectively without the filter of the ego is something unusual. Normally we are seeing what the ego perceives. At any moment if you are thinking, there are images processing in your mind; that is clairvoyance. But with meditations, with transmutation, and work in this kind of science, that capacity becomes enlivened, enflamed. Your imagination becomes more vibrant, more illuminated. So your capacity to see things is enhances, stage by stage. This is also why the danger grows to be misled and why instructors and teachers can begin to believe they are becoming enlightened. Because they begin to see more. But that doesn’t mean they are seeing the objective truth, the ultimate truth which is Right View, the view of emptiness, or dependent origination. Most of the time we see through the filter of the “I’, even if it is clairvoyant, it is through the filter of the “I”.
Q: Are the levels of clairvoyance related to the levels of the hasnamussen?
A: Absolutely. We know there are five different kinds of clairvoyance. But in general, we group them as two. Objective, which sees the levels of truth free of ego; and subjective, which sees according to the ego. So the first levels of the hasnamuss are going to predominately have their imagination caught in the ego’s desire. So whatever they fantasize, or daydream, or imagine, is going to be related to ego. Whatever they dream is related to ego. Whatever they visualize, imagine, will be projected desires. Some of them may learn to meditate. Any person can learn to meditate and in that process of meditation we are learning to develop a receptive mind in order to receive. But those perceptions remain subjective until the ego is separated from the consciousness. This is called Samadhi. Just because a person has developed that capacity to see without the filter of the ego does not mean they are enlightened. It just means they have experienced the separation of the free consciousness from the egoic consciousness. However, Samadhi has its aspects too. A black magician is able to see clairvoyantly, and see with great concentration, and to see images clearly, but through the filter of the ego. And they call it Samadhi. It is a form of Samadhi because they are perceiving phenomena beyond the physical world and they are perceiving it very clearly, but this is subjective clairvoyance - or infernal. Because what they are perceiving belongs to Klipoth. It may be razor sharp, in full color, but that does not mean it comes from God.
