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Students who have been studying our website, lectures, and books etc. find a true encyclopaedia of knowledge, information; there are teachings about everything related to spirituality, religion, philosophy, science, art... all of which we collect together under the title of Gnosis.

This Greek word, which is strictly translated as “knowledge,” actually refers to something a little bit different. It refers to the kind of knowledge that we know for ourselves, not something that we have read or heard about, but something that we have experienced; something that we have confirmed and proven.

In this era, in these days, humanity now has access to teachings that were held secret, held sacred, kept private for thousands of years, and at great cost. Many who encounter these teachings wonder why these teachings weren’t made available sooner, why was humanity not given access to this knowledge before today? In that question they understandably feel compassion and concern for humanity and want humanity to achieve union with the light, but in that question people tend to forget the stewardship, the linage, the great sacrifices that were made to preserve that teaching and the great sacrifices that were made to acquire it and to become part of that lineage to protect  and preserve that teaching.

You see, today we take these things for granted. The different websites that offer the gnostic teachings, the many books, the hundreds of lectures, etc. open doorways to fields of knowledge that before were closed, and for us now to access that is a tremendous thing. Truly, it is a gift of value which we cannot even begin to estimate, who’s true meaning and importance is right now beyond our comprehension. Sadly, students take it for granted. We see it like anything else that we read on the internet, or in any other book that we find, or any type of theory or philosophy that we discover. We fail to recognise, because the state of our consciousness, the difference. Today, I would like to point out that difference. That is why this lecture is out of the norm for our lectures; we have no graphics, we have no quotes, we have no distractions.

Listen for the First Time

What I want to encourage for you as the listener is to learn now how to listen, to actually listen. As if, for the first time you are hearing what this teaching is. Rather than taking in the words and the concepts and comparing them with your intellect, or taking them with your heart and comparing them with your beliefs and seeing if these concepts and notions or emotions that you experience during the lecture feel good or feel bad, judging it based on that... rather than reacting to the concepts, impulses and sensations you experience when receiving this knowledge, instinctively reacting to sensations or how you feel uncomfortable or feel excited or whatever reaction you have on an instinctive level, I want to encourage you to hear it with your consciousness. To state it another way: with your soul, with your being.

In this teaching we talk about the being, you will always hear this word; the being, the Innermost. Sometimes, we say spirit and this is another one of those terms that we take for granted and fail to truly comprehend what it means. To listen with your being, with your consciousness means that you have an open mind, a mind that is not clouded, that is not comparing, that is not stressed, excited, fearful, and anxious, but rather is serene, open and receptive, calm and cable of learning something new.

Recall for yourself for a moment, a memory, a time when you went to school and you knew you did not know and you knew that the teacher knew and the teacher would point to you how you could also come to know, so you - wanting to know - would listen attentively. The state of receptivity that a mind of a child has... that is what a gnostic student needs to have; a mind that is receptive like a beginner, not "full" like an expert.  We need a mind that is open, that has never read anything, that does not assume anything, or presume anything. With an open, receptive attitude, these teachings can plant seeds in your soul; this is their purpose, to plant something in you that can grow and spring to life.

Conscious Life

These teachings are a path to life, to living, L’Chaim, “to life” which is that famous greeting or cheer from the Jewish tradition. That phrase is very meaningful, because that idea or concept "to life" is the basis of all the scriptures in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It is about discovering and entering the path to life, to living.

It also implies that we are not yet living. This is a profound truth. If we were to realise that truth, we would not live how we do now.

The problem that we have is that we already think that we are living. We think we are all already being, when we are not. We have, what we call in this tradition, a conditioned consciousness; what in scripture is called a state of sleep. This is why, throughout the scriptures, we find this call made by the masters to awaken the soul, to be alert. That awakening is not a theory, it is not a concept, it is not philosophical or a matter of debate, it is something that one experiences, not in the past and not in the future, but right now.

To be awake is to be conscious of this moment, of everything that one can perceive, to the limits of that perception and to push against those limits to expand them. This, stated simply, is the purpose of all religions: to expand the consciousness, to awaken it, to bring it out of the dust of the earth, so that it can rise back to where it belongs, which is with divinity, with purity, the Absolute.

It is at this point that many students and devotees of different religions become confused, because we already have this state of being that is clouded, confused believing that it is awake, believing that it is alive and being. We don’t understand what true being is, what true living is; to be awake, to be alive. Yet, I think for most people, if we open our minds and try to remember that sensation of being awake we can probably find some moments in our lives when we truly felt alive, moments that we could not characterise or could not explain to anyone but were moments in which we felt and truly experienced that life is not the way that we normally experience it; that truly we are normally in a dreamy sleepy state and at certain moments of our experience, because of the way the light was coming through the trees or because we have had a strong shock of some kind that suddenly our senses became fully aware, very bright, very clear and we perceived things in a ways that we never perceived them before. And, suddenly the experience was gone just as fast. That type of insight can be provoked, it can be stimulated, it can be grown, it can be expanded and that is why we study meditation. It is the science of meditation that facilitates the expansion of that kind of experience.

What we are describing here in synthesis is the state of our consciousness: it is asleep, but can awaken. Our current state of sleep is not permanent, and moreover it is the same for everyone.

Conscious Perception

Every living thing has consciousness in its level and experiences being according to its condition. So, we, as scientists of life, study a child. Observe a child. You will see that the child is living in the moment, and is truly astonished at things that we don’t even see, things that we don’t even think have any meaning at all. A child sees a cup, a box, a rock, a stick.... and for that child that thing is  amazing. A child sees a bug, a bubble, a cloud and the child is struck with astonishment and has a beautiful smile, as that being reflects in itself the beauty of nature. But, when we become older we lose that, we don’t see it anymore; it is still there, but we do not see it, because we are not looking in the same way. We do not hear, we do not listen in the same way, we do not read, we do not truly perceive what we are perceiving.

The perceptions that flow in to us constantly, instead of being received by the consciousness, by our soul, and experienced in their fullness, instead those perceptions become lost in the chaos of clouded mind, our memories, by our past and everything that we see and hear and read and think and feel. We do not really see where we are, we do not really see who we are talking to, or hear the words they are saying. We only perceive how those sensations are translated by our mind. We do this all day, every day.

Whatever we are doing in the course of our daily lives, we are in a constant process of simply translating impressions in accordance with pre-existing concepts. We do not see the tree, we do not see the car, we do not see our roommate or our spouse, we only see their mirrored reflections of our mind. We have a stored concept of that person as irritable, as annoying, and whenever we encounter that person we are encountering our concept of them, not their reality. We do not even really see the person, because they may not be that way that day, but still we are perceiving them according to our memory.

This is a very profound mechanism that is modifying our every perception, and this is why we are in the state we are in now. It is why this planet is in a state of decay, why society is crumbling because none of us see each other, none of us feel each other. We are each in our own world pursuing our psychological desires.

Stated simply, we are asleep, conditioned by our memories and by our cravings, by our fears, by our pride, by our lust and by our envy, and our mind is caged in a making if its own.

Sadly, we then approach teachings like this, and, being unskilled in seeing clearly, we take those teachings and add them to our cage. We fail to use the teachings to shatter the cage, instead we make our cage more complicated and this is why we see religions and spiritual teachings throughout the world in a state of conflict, preaching harmony trying to guide people towards peace, serenity and insight but instead creating conflict. This is as true in the Gnostic tradition as it is in any tradition in the world.

In this tradition we have the grave responsibility to provide the purest possible teaching that we can, to give souls a chance to free themselves from their self-made cages, but unfortunately all of us are in cages too. All of the instructors and guides are in their own cages, so conflict ensues, complications, misunderstandings, problems. But students—being inexperienced, being asleep, want the spiritual leaders to be completely finished with their work, and to be prophets and saints and resurrected masters—and fail to recognise that all of us on this planet are in the same boat.

The Cage We Built

There are masters here on this planet helping, but they do that anonymously because they know they cannot trust us, because anytime that we find a genuine master we kill them. That is how strong the ego is in us, that is how strong our craving is to remain in the cage. If anyone shows us the cage, we turn against them; we don’t want to hear about the imprisonment that we have created for ourselves. We want someone to tell us that everything is going to be ok and take us out of the cage easily. This is impossible. It cannot happen, nature doesn’t work this way. Cause and effect simply does not allow it. The only way to become liberated is by your own hands, through your own work, and the only way to achieve that is to destroy the cage; that cage is the mind. We call it pride, envy, greed, gluttony, laziness, lust, anger, avarice... There are thousands of names for all the parts and pieces that we have made. Freedom from that can only come in one way, and that’s through the destruction of that cage.

That destruction can only happen through our own efforts and that effort cannot happen in the future, there is no such thing as future, that is an illusion. The only thing that exists is this now and when you can grasp that, not just occasionally, but thoroughly root yourself in being here and now, you can then find the door out of the cage, it is the only way.

In order to succeed, to actually achieve the complete destruction of the cage that traps us we need a lot of help, this is undeniable. We need to know how to do it so we need the teaching, we need guidance because we are very foolish, so we need teachers who are experienced, who can guide us but we need more than that, too. We need divinity. We need to remember that we are not alone, that, even though we created this complicated and insane world, we are not alone in it ever, we have just forgotten that.

That state of being here and now is what gives you access to starting to remember your Being, your Innermost. So you see we are using the same word in two ways and that’s because they are related. Our state of being is the state of our consciousness right now, you can also call this our level of being. This is the condition of our soul is in this exact moment.

What is the condition of our soul? Are we distracted? Are we comparing everything that we hear with the intellect? Is our memory constantly trying to distract us? Is something else distracting us? For example: if we are listening to this lecture, but we are also browsing the internet, then you are not here and now.  If you are listening to this lecture but also doing other things, then you are not present, really listening. If you are reading but comparing with other things, or thinking of other things, then you are not really reading here and now.

This is our habit: we are habitualy distracted. We are so habitual with our state of distraction that we want to feel that way all the time, to be doing more than one thing at a time. To us this feels like an accomplishment but in fact it is a condition of being asleep, it is a state of distraction.

If we can truly be here and now, truly using our senses to the fullest of their power and really be conscious of being alive, that is what gives us access to our Being; in other words, our God, our Innermost. You can call it Buddha, Allah anything, any name... but names don’t matter. That beingness is a portion of the Absolute, of the “everything,” and we come from that.

To self-realise is to realise through direct experience “That” and that doesn’t happen in the future, it happens now, by opening the door. It does not happen in your intellect, it does not happen in your imagination, it does not happen in a book, it does not happen in a temple or in another country or on another planet, where we all want to go to achieve self-realisation, right? We all feel like “I can’t do it here, it is too hard and I need to go somewhere else.” That is a distraction of the ego. The realisation of being depends on only one thing; to awaken and realise reality in this moment. That is all it depends on, but unfortunately for us we have built such a complicated cage around our consciousness we don’t have sufficient energy to have that experience on our own.

Energy for Life

So, we need energy, and now we come to the main thing that we always talk about in these teachings: using energy, saving it, adverting it, transforming it and using it wisely. The energy that we need to awaken is in every atom of our being. For us, here and now in this physical world, the most powerful energy we have access to is our sexual energy. This is why we address it persistently, because that energy has incredible power, but it needs to be understood very clearly.

That energy is not only there in the sexual matter, the physical matter. When you study Tantra and the sacred scriptures, I am talking about the ones that were never made public, they state very clearly that that energy, that root creative energy is in every atom. That is why we call it Christ.

Esoterically Christ means “fire”; but not physical fire. It means the fire that makes something live. Physically, to make something live, you need the sexual act to produce a living vessel so that something can live in it, so that thing, that entity can have its “beingness” in that vessel. Life is made through sexuality, but that life, that fire burns in every atom of that new born thing, not just in the sexual energy. It burns in its mind, in its heart, in its body, in everything and not just physically, but internally.

So, in this tradition when we talk about transmutation and we talk about chastity, we are talking about the transmutation of all that energy that you have in every cell, in every organ; not just physically,  but emotionally and mentally, in every level of ourselves. All that energy is necessary to transform the entirety of us in to something new. In other words: it is impossible to awaken without energy.

You can easily prove this to yourself; all you have to do is, with a scientific mind, go to all the religions, all the yoga schools and see how they practice and see the results and you will see that in all those places where they waste energy physically, emotionally, mentally they are not awakening towards light, they are not awakening towards life, they have no energy for it.

In the scriptures it states, in the book of Daniel;

“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting shame and contempt.”

This is a very important passage in the Old Testament. It is pointing out that this pathway, which is called religion, is like any other road. You are in the wilderness and suddenly you find the road, and we think all we have to do is get on the road start walking and we will go to God, but it is not that way. That road goes two ways. Any road that you find, if you are in the jungle and suddenly you discover a road you then have to decide; “which way do I go?” But, if you haven’t been there before, you have no idea! Is it not true? How do you know which way to go?

So, what do you rely on, how do you get guided to find the way? Well if there is anybody walking there, you ask them. But, what if most of the people are walking one way, will you go with them? You will think “everybody else is going that way so that must be the right way to go.” That is what we do, and that is because our mind is still at that level.

We think that if everybody is still doing it, it must be safe, it must be ok, it must be right. This is what we call collective mind. This is evidence that we are still animals, because we still move with the herd. So, we get on that road and we move with everybody else. But we don’t really know where we are going. Everybody says, “Oh we are all going to God. To walk this way you have to do it this way and this way, etc etc you have to do what we are doing. We are all going to follow this road and get to God and we are all very happy about it.” But nobody really knows, because nobody has ever been there.

Everybody else on that road came out of the jungle, too, and they don’t know where they are going; but everybody else is going that way, so it must be ok. Every once in a while, someone goes in the other direction and what do all those other people do? They say, “Hey, you are going in the wrong direction, it is not that way! Are you crazy? You should not go that way, it is this way!” And they all tell that solitary person that they are wrong.

It is very obvious what I am pointing towards. These teachings go against the current. They go against the flow of society. They disagree with everything about this world, everything!

To truly reach divinity, everything that does not belong with divinity must be left behind. Material things are completely irrelevant! What matters here are the psychological things. To truly reach divinity, we have to abandon the way towards degeneration and death of virtue. We have to awaken to the way towards life, which is within us.

In synthesis, there are three principles that we must awaken to and live today, and every day:

  • Death of our defects; stop creating harm for oneself and others; observe and eliminate your pride, envy, lust, etc
  • Birth of virtues; adopt beneficial attitudes and behaviors, such as patience, generosity, chastity, humility, diligence...
  • Sacrifice for others; every day, put the good of humanity before your self-interests

Proof is in the Experience

If we are actually applying the principles of the teachings daily, it is unavoidable that we will experience its results.Cause and effect are infallible.

If we are not experiencing the results of the teachings, there are only two reasons why. One is we are doing it wrong and we need to change how we are doing it. The second is karma we may need to pay. In either case the only answer is to keep going! Every day, revise your practice, continually improve your understanding of the teachings, and your application of it constantly. Always be a beginner, and start from zero with an open mind.

This requires that we are very honest with ourselves. We do not have to tell anybody else anything; but with ourselves, we must be honest. The best place to have that honesty and to express that sincerity is in prayer daily. To actually take the time with your heart, with your soul, to reach out to divinity, to speak your heart. To be honest in the face of your own inner being and the presence of your inner being, and facing yourself, to be honest.

That effort is facilitated in a really beautiful way by adding a mirror. Do this type of prayer, looking directly in to your own eyes in a mirror patiently, but looking in to yourself. You don’t have to speak loud, you can speak silently in your mind, in your heart, but when you do it this way something is added. It is not a complicated thing but it can open your heart and show you how you are lying to yourself.

To understand the purpose of all this it is good for us to revaluate these teachings and revaluate our application of them. So, this is why I brought us back to this basic fundamental concepts, because without understanding these things all of the knowledge, terms and symbols mean nothing.

Two Ways to Awaken

We can memorise the books and lectures but it would mean nothing if we are not actually awakening. To actually awaken requires that you know what it is awakening, and to know how you are doing it. That scripture explained very clearly that there are two results. Many will awaken "in the dust of the earth," what is the earth? It is our body, Adamah, and from that dust the being creates the man. Remember, in Genesis it explains this. The man, Adam, our being, which is the primordial perfect being, is created out of the dust; how? Through the process of awakening.

There is two ways to awaken from the dust of the earth. One is to life. That word life is חי Chai in Hebrew. It is spelled with two letters Cheth and Iod. Those two letters have a great significance, and I recommend that you study them. But, in synthesis, that word implies not just physically living matter, it means to be spiritually alive. We know that this is true because of how the word is used in genesis: that Adam is made a living soul, נפש חיה Nephesh Chaiah. That is our goal, but we are not that yet.

We have נפש Nephesh, that is a soul, an animal soul. It is very instinctive, it is ruled by its passions. We don’t rule it, spiritually speaking, physically speaking, mentally, emotionally. All of us on this planet behave and live like animals.  We call ourselves human beings but we have not achieved that state yet. A true human being is נפש חיה Nephesh Chaiah, a נפש soul that has life, חיה Chai, it is alive: conscious, awake. That living state is a state of perceiving God. That is what that means to be a living soul. It means to have life awakened in oneself, to have creative power, Christ, which is what it means to be living.

The alternative is to awaken "to shame and everlasting contempt." The shame is the shame of the soul; it is that soul that has been cast out of the Garden of Eden, which is the fallen Adam. That shame is what you feel every time you know you should not do something, but you do it anyway because you will not resist desire. That simple action proves that we are not Nephesh Chaiah. To do something that you know you should not do proves that we are walking the wrong way on that road, it proves it in your own experience: that is Gnosis. What matters then, is what you do about it. If you continue following the desires of the mind, always trying to make yourself feel happy according to the desires of the ego such as pride, envy etc... Then you strengthen that desire continually.

If lust is bothering you and you are always satisfying that lust, that lust is only strengthening; lust does not weaken that way.  In the same way that you find a baby animal in your trip to the jungle and you begin to feed it, it is going to grow and get strong; and the more you feed it the stronger it will grow. If it is a wild animal (it came from the jungle, so it will be) when it gets strong enough it will consume you. You may think it is your friend, you may think it is your protector, but it is an animal that belongs to the jungle. It will eat you. That animal is pride, envy, lust, greed, gluttony... all of those elements that we have in our psyche. That is the path humanity is on. This is also easily proven. Simply take a walk anywhere on this planet, see how hard it is to find true generosity, selflessness. See how hard it is to find chastity, sincere chastity. Or diligence, people who work hard for the love of working for others, expecting nothing in return. See how difficult it is to find that. How hard it is to find true patience...

If you can’t go around the world to discover that, look within yourself. Observe your co-workers, your family, observe the programming that the media is constantly shoving down our throats. What is celebrated there? Violence, murder, greed, lust, envy... there are no virtues celebrated anywhere.

Anger is celebrated as a virtue on this planet. It is seen as virtuous to be a person who is violent and who belittles and criticises other people. We admire those who are sharp with their tongue, and able to skewer other people with criticism and sarcasm. This is what we admire on this planet.

We admire the lustful ones, we admire the arrogant. We worship the greedy. Who do we elevate as saints in our era? Those who are most self-obsessed: the wealthy, the celebrities, and the politicians. People do not worship the selfless ones, the truly generous. We worship those who want more money, which is very odd.

All of this is pointing towards how we are related to it. Our own state of being is at the centre of everything. Why is the planet the way it is? Why is our life the way it is? Why is our job the way it is? These are the questions that we have when we come to these teachings.

Work on the Roots of Suffering

We have problems, we have complications, we have questions, we have suffering. We want to know: is there a way to not suffer with this monotonous job I have to do, with this awful routine? Is there some other way to be, to live other then to just grow up, get pregnant, have a bunch of babies and die? Is there more to life than that? When we look around, it is hard to find anything more than that. Many distractions, but no meaning. The answer is in our level of being.

What we need to comprehend is that our experience of life is directly because of our beingness. We experience life because of how we are inside, that is all there is to it. If we change how we are inside, our experience of life will change.

In a very superficial way , this is very easy to see: if you wake up grumpy, and you go through your day grumpy, you will have a miserable day. Yet, we fail to recognise that our whole life is like that!

We set the tone ourselves. If we always go through life feeling unfulfilled, unappreciated, it is because we have set the tone because of desire. Unfulfilled? Why? What is it we want? Do we feel unfulfilled because we don’t have a Mercedes, is that why? Well let me tell you a secret: you will get a Mercedes, you will like it for ten minutes or a week, but then you will not like it any more and you will want something else. This is the nature of desire. It is never satisfied. Unfortunately the condition of humanity is that: never satisfied! If we continue the way we are, we will never be satisfied.

The same is true of our approach to religion. Many come to these type of studies, they get very excited and read everything and stuff themselves with as many lectures as they can, but then they get psychological indigestion; they do not digest it and they feel sick and uncomfortable and say “Ahh this is no good it doesn’t work.” Then they go and find something else that makes them feel better. Is it the fault of the teaching or the fault of the person? Who set the tone? Whose attitude created that scenario? If instead we learned how to take from each moment the truth, to really experience each moment consciously, we would truly digest those sensations and impressions and make gnosis of that.

In the book “Revolution of the Dialectic,” Samael Aun Weor states that each moment is a child of gnosis. In other words, you can acquire knowledge simply by perceiving accurately in the present moment. That type of perception, to be awake, is how you change your beingness, and thereby change your experience of living.

Our experience now is determined by how we are. If we are a grumpy person, and we are always complaining about everyone else being grumpy, all the time it may be because we are grumpy all the time and we make them grumpy. You might be surprised to find that is actually what is happening. I know someone who does that. Everybody in the room is totally happy and in a good mood, but then this person comes into the room and it effects everybody. Then everybody is upset and then this person complains “Why is everybody grumpy all the time! Why can’t you guys be happy?” Not realising that person is the one who changed it! We all do that.

This points out something very important in a lecture that Samael Aun Weor gave called Alcyone. In that lecture he states something very important: that negative emotions, negative feelings are more contagious than any other disease on this planet, and we all like to blame everybody else. We think we are saints, and we go around with a good attitude all the time, and we do not realise how much we infect others with our negative feelings.

Self-analysis

So, do an analysis of your life. Are you discontented? Are you unhappy? Are you unfulfilled? Then look at why that is, what is it in you that wants something, what is that want, who wants it and why? Does it really have any importance, spiritually speaking?

Go deeper. If you discover there are patterns in your life, situations that repeat, events that continually reccur, fights, problems, you are unable to succeed in certain endeavours or you are always being stopped in a certain way or having certain types of problems again and again, life is not the problem. We attract circumstances according to how we are. If our life has a different quality, it is because we have the quality that attracts it.

If we want to change life, we must change how we live it. This is very difficult and to do it requires that we transform how we perceive, looking at things differently.

What I am showing you is that consciousness is not a fixed thing; it is not a permanent state, it is constantly changing. It is infinite.

What is consciousness? It is the ability to be alive and to perceive. We know that is true for us because we are somewhat self-aware and we develop the term, the concept and the dictionary that explains it; consciousness, to perceive, to be aware. Animals as well, more sophisticated than plants, but not yet at our level; yet, not that different. Not as complex, not as expansive. Minerals also, all living things have consciousness at their level, even light, even water because they are living things, they have life. We have not recognised that scientifically yet, broadly, even though many experiments have shown that that is what will eventually be realised by scientists: all living things have consciousness.

So, if we can understand that on this planet that there is a huge range there for the potential of consciousness to experience living, we understand that scientifically.

We also understand that to perceive is a matter of using light, we know that is true with our eyes, but that perception, that consciousness is a light. It is energy, but it is a light that you don’t perceive with your eyes physically, but you can perceive it.

If you are sitting in a room with a lot of people and suddenly you feel something and you turn and look at someone who is looking at you, how did you know it? You felt it. You can feel it when someone is looking at you because energy is hitting you, but you do not know how you sense it, right? It is not the physical senses that pick that up, it is the consciousness that does that. That proves that that energy functions in that way. That is a very small example of its potential.

The consciousness is infinite, not only to the heights but towards to depths. That light, if it is pointed towards life, if we truly enter into that path we can become angels, we can go beyond angels. Any human being can become what we call a god and some of them have been on this planet and have created a huge shockwave. We named them Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Quetzalcoatl, Krishna; these are what we can call mutants, they are changed. The word mutate means change. They are no longer like us, they once were like us. That is the potential of what is inside every one of us. The difficulty though, is the state that we are in now.

How to Awaken Consciousness to Life

The consciousness cannot be awakened by any physical mechanism. It cannot be awakened forcibly by any mechanical tool of any kind, this is stated in the book The Great Rebellion by Samael Aun Weor: the consciousness cannot be awakened physically or by any mechanicity.

That means we cannot go on the internet or in a store to buy some little device that makes lights and sounds and that will awaken us. This is a joke, someone is just making money of the naivety of souls and that is a crime against humanity. Likewise it means no drug will awaken the consciousness towards life.  A drug awakens the conditioned consciousness, the trapped consciousness. That is why those who drink excessively or take drugs have visions that they see; those visions are perceptions of hell.

It also means no physically repeated pattern can awaken consciousness. This is a difficult one for many people to accept. Many people believe that “If I pronounce this mantra one hundred thousand times my soul will be liberated and I will be awake.” This is a fallacy and it is not true. Many people think that, “If I go to this school, this group or this ritual or give this amount of money to this person then I will get my astral body or I will get my Kundalini or I will awaken and become an angel.” These are all lies.

You want to see how that is the case? Think about it deeply. What is it to awaken, to awaken to life? It is to become a vessel for the living power of divinity, like Moses or a Buddha. It is to be an incarnation of the very power of the gods, with the ability to create living things and to destroy them. Do you honestly think that any being with that power would give it to you because of your money, or because of how many books you have read? Or because of how many mantras you have said? That would be extremely irresponsible. A god would only provide that power to another god, to someone who has earned it, who is trustworthy. We are not trustworthy, and the evidence of that is the state of the planet, the state of our lives, the state of our families, the state of our communities. We are selfish and self-obsessed, lustful, angry and proud. We are filled with envy and fear. If we had the power of god in our hands we would make a great deal of destruction. If, with the power that we already have, we are creating so many problems, how many more problems would we create if we had more power? The situation on this planet would be far worse. This is why divinity only gives that power only to those who deserve it and requires the death of lust and pride and envy, greed and everything else.

That is the difficulty of this work. It is not easy and it does not come easy, but it can happen and it can be earned.

That passage that I read to you from Daniel has another sentence after that that says;

“And they that are wise shall shine as the Zohar of the firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the kowkabim ככוכבימ (“stars”) forever and ever.”

This phrase is in Hebrew, which means of course that it relates to Kabbalah, and to “be wise” means to have wisdom. To have wisdom means to have “Chokmah” which in Hebrew means wisdom. Chokmah is the sun, the Christ, Life, to be a living soul, to be on the path of life, to be awakening towards life:

“And they that are wise shall shine as the Zohar of the firmament...”

That word Zohar in Hebrew means Splendour. What is splendour? The beauty of light. If we look into our own souls do we see that? When we look into our experiences, from moment to moment, do we see light in us? When we are walking in the street and dealing with others do we respond with spontaneously, naturally and continually outpouring of love? Or do we see in ourselves continual conflict, anger, resentment, craving, fear, worry, stress, tension, wanting and wanting? That is not light, that is darkness.

“And the wise shall shine as the Zohar of the firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars or mercury’s forever and ever.”

That word kowkabim in Hebrew means stars, but it also means mercury. Mercury, of course, is the secret of Alchemy. Mercury is that fire in us that must be transformed and purified.

Those that are wise, that have life, shine resplendent like the stars, like mercury, the God who flies in the heavens unfettered by anything, able to go to the heights and to the depths. This is the great gift that Hermes, the mercury has. He can go anywhere, awakened. That is the state of a living soul. A living soul is not trapped in a physical body like in prison. A living soul is not trapped in a monotonous decaying life, but instead is able to escape that physical body and go to the heavens and go to the hells, in order to continually not only awaken more, but to help others.

That is what it means to be actually on the path to life, to be achieving those states. I point these things out because it is very important that we are very clear about how we approach these types of studies.

These teachings are not a game: they are not for fun and they are not a distraction or a theory to play with. They are in fact very dangerous. The one who plays games with these teachings will be punished by the gods, and the evidence for that is throughout history. Even awakened masters who mistakenly went against the will of their own being suffered the consequences. So, when we approach these types of teachings we need to have a great deal of self-awareness, of what we are doing and why, constantly revising ourselves and checking ourselves.

Questions and Answers

Audience: So you talked a little about how there is no mechanical way to awaken the consciousness and I would like to recount a tale that I heard from my friend. He bought one of those machines that are said to awaken consciousness and apparently it sends some electrical impulses into the brain or whatnot. So he used this machine and he was very thrilled with the results. So I am recounting the things he said to me, he said he experienced things like hyper-awareness of the environment, single pointed concentration, astral projection all these sorts of things that we associate phenomenally with an awakened consciousness, how are we to understand this?

Instructor: It is a very good question and I am glad you asked. What I stated or what I attempted to say was that it is impossible to awaken the consciousness towards the life, to the light with those types of mechanical approaches. Those can awaken consciousness, those machines, just as drugs can. But, they awaken conditioned consciousness.

To go deeper into the explanation of our current state of conditioning: when we sincerely do an inventory of our psyche, we discover that somewhere around 97% of our consciousness is trapped, and only a very tiny fraction remains free, unconditioned. That little fraction is our only hope and we find that symbolised in many teachings, for example, David and Goliath. Goliath represents the conditioned consciousness, the beast, that great warrior that is leading the hordes of egos. That battle represents spiritual warfare. David is that child and all he has is his faith in God, and his stone, which is his mercury, but it is enough to overcome the giant.

The problem is humanity is very impressed with big things like following the crowds. So when humanity is approaching spiritually or religion, we always go where the crowds are, and what do the crowds always want? Instant feedback, something for nothing, cheap, free, easy, promises, guarantees. In other words humanity is lazy and wants to go to heaven  easily. That is not possible. It is impossible. So these machines, devices, sounds, mantras, chemicals, plants, many different techniques that you can utilise now days that can supposedly awaken consciousness, they do awaken consciousness but the conditioned consciousness.

The experiences that people have, they see things, but they have nothing to do with god, nothing to do with divinity, nothing to do with awakening to the light. They are illusions that seduce the naive and those that become hypnotised by those types of things and continue to pursue them become black magicians, in other words demons. These are very common, this planet is hugely populated by what you can call demons, witches, sorcerers, those that pursue that way of awakening why? Because it is very easy. It is very easy because 97% of our consciousness is already enmeshed in the underworld, the sub-consciousness, and the infra-consciousness, what we can call hell. What is a demon? Anger personified; lust, envy, those are demonic qualities that we have in abundance. It is easy to awaken the consciousness in those elements. It is very simple: all you have to do is strengthen them more, commits certain types of behaviours, certain types of actions and you will awaken consciousness easily and you will have lots of powers, but that is awakening as a demon and this happens.

I was contacted just recently by someone who had a similar experience, met some people who seemed very serious about spirituality, the person was told to do A, B, C and D. This person did A, B, C and D and had all kinds of different experiences from it. But, fortunately this person still has that 3% free and listened to it and that 3% felt terrified, felt remorse, felt “this is wrong!” And, instead of pursing the desire, they got help with how to fix it and get out of that problem. Unfortunately there is already a karma at play, and that person has to suffer certain consequences because of that curiosity, but the good thing is they have enough consciousness that is not trapped yet and the felt that sense of “I should not do that, this is wrong, I should not do that anymore, let me get out of here.” That is what we have to listen to, that sense of what is right and what is wrong. That is our free consciousness and that is our guide to lead us back and if we really use it and constantly work with it, it grows stronger and stronger. And, the more consciousness we liberate from our ego, it grows stronger and stronger. Good question.

Audience: The two modes of perception you talk about and… {Inaudible}… it is an illusion. Same thing here a lot of people argue that it is an illusion anyway.

Instructor: That is the difficulty, and that is a step for later in the work, when someone is learning how to actually perceive things and that perception deepens and they start to see that things do not actually exist. That is a perception that only exists if you are working persistently in meditation. The next step to realise is that there are two truths and they exist simultaneously and that is why we talk about the Paramitas, especially Prajnaparamita which shows the interdependence of those two truths. That, yes, what we perceive here does not exist as how we perceive it, and that when we perceive with the pure consciousness we see that it doesn’t exist at all.

Nevertheless, it exists and that duality or that seeming contradiction is actually the way things are, but it makes no sense to the intellect. And, to play with that in philosophy results in confusion. It is something that one has to experience through actual comprehension. It is first to experience it, then to understand it.

That is a long process and, philosophically speaking, that is why we are always talking about the two truths because you can easily fall onto one side or the other and say “everything exists as it is” or “nothing exists” and this causes problems. Traditionally that has been a big problem in religions like Buddhism and in Hinduism, because many meditators would start to perceive “well nothing exists, nothing is real” so then they started doing whatever they wanted, killing, raping thinking nothing was real… I am being serious, this is what has actually happened in some of these schools and is actually happening now!

There are people now all around the world who follow certain traditions who say; “Because that is true, because we know the Absolute is there and fundamentally nothing exists, it doesn’t matter what we do, it doesn’t matter about the ego, it is going to get dissolved anyway it doesn’t really exist so let’s all go and get drunk.” They do that, they meditate, then they go and get drunk and they sleep around. They have forgotten the most fundamental thing, the very basis of the entire path and the basis of existence itself which is cause and effect. Sure, things do not exist, precisely because cause and effect ultimately balances it. But, do you really want to go through the process of the balancing? Because if you commit a harmful action you have to undo it and normally that is through pain, there is no exception for that. That is why the Buddha himself said; “Even when you enter into Tantra, never forget the fundamentals of cause and effect.” But these people forget that because their desire has seduced them, and that is the great danger. So, even when we are studying the most elevated aspects of the philosophy we have to always remember that it is always harmonious with the foundation, always.

Audience: So is the recommendation of the lecturer that we cease all ritualistic activity to avoid awakening conditioned consciousness and if so why do you give these practices, if it is so much trouble?

Instructor: We teach how to practice self-discipline, to perform certain practices especially meditation daily; so, utilising mantras and prayers and using incense or using other types of ritualistic or physical means to aid us. The point is do not do them mechanically. Do them with a great deal of awareness of what you are doing, be awake.

As a simple example; in some traditions they believe that if you repeat a certain mantra a hundred thousand times, or half a million times, that right when you reach 499,999 and you say it one more time all of a sudden your spiritual eyes will open and you will see the universe for how it really is…  and that you will be liberated. That is so foolish, but they believe that! It is completely against the laws of nature. It makes no sense. The reality is you can use a mantra once and it can awaken you. In fact you do not even need the mantra. If you have the energy, and you know how to awaken and be fully present, you can perceive. It is a matter of conscious willpower. This is our problem, we do not have it because it is all trapped in our ego.

We have a lot of willpower in our desires. When we want something egotistically, we will work for 50 years to get that retirement package or whatever we are chasing, but when we hear the spirituality is going to take years or a whole life we think “Ahh it is too hard!” Because all of our will and desire is trapped in materialism and sensations, lust, anger etc…

So do the practices, but do them with awareness.

In the books of Samael Aun Weor, he teaches us how to take the Eucharist at home, a very important and beautiful ritual and it is very powerful to help us. If you do that at home and you do it with a great deal of self-cognizance, very aware of yourself and remembering your being, feeling and reaching out for the presence of the divine, that practice will bring you so much benefit, it truly will transform you, especially if you are persistent and keep doing it. But, if even if you do it everyday for 25 years but only while thinking about other things, like that TV show that you want to watch, or you are thinking about the laundry while you take your bread and wine, it will do nothing; in that case you are just eating plain old bread and wine. What makes the difference is being, it is you!

We ourselves are what makes us awaken, no one else! No teacher can awaken you. Even the Buddha said it; “I cannot save you, you have to save yourselves!” His dying statement was; “Be a light unto yourself” That light is the Christ, that energy that we have to become aware of in ourselves. It is the only way.

So, whatever practice that we do, do it with awareness every time, in everything we do. Whenever you are washing the dishes, do it that way, being fully aware of yourself, fully present. When you talk to someone, be fully present with them. Fully present and aware and kind.

I am telling you that simple shift of being present will change everything, and if you continue to do it constantly you will enter the path towards life and things will change, everything will change. Sometimes you have to pay karma, sometimes it takes a while but it does happen.

Audience: What is true chastity?

Instructor: True chastity is knowing how to use the sexual energy in harmony with divinity, our own inner divinity. We have sexual energy because we need it, and that is what makes a living being. But, unfortunately, we have all learned how to use it through lust, through desire for pleasure. However, sexual energy has a very profound purpose which, is to elaborate the soul, to nourish the spirit. So, when we learn to utilise that energy in that way we develop our soul, we feed and nourish our soul. It is a use of it in a wise way. It is to not waste it. It is a science and we have lots of books about that that explains it.

The basis of it is to restrain that energy, to no longer expel that energy through the orgasm. To restrain it, transform it and to recirculate it, so that energy that was previously used as a stimulant for a brief moment of pleasure then becomes the food that nourishes the soul, to experience the ecstasy of the spirit which you can call Samadhi. It is the same fuel.

So, for anyone who has experienced the sensation of the orgasm and if they renounce that sensation, longing for the spiritual gifts, that same energy is what provides the fuel that springs the soul back to the divine; it is the same force, but purified.

That is why all religions thought that first become a monk or nun, save that energy on your own and then when you are well trained in it, enter the sexual act and do the same thing. This is why Paul said; “be with your spouse though you were still unmarried.” That was the meaning hidden there. Unite as your duty as husband and wife but do not waste that energy; instead, enter into an act of prayer. Transform the energy and it will take the couple back towards the divine, back to Eden. Eden means bliss. That is the bliss of how that energy fuels the blossom of real love that grows in the soul.

So, chastity is that, whether one is single or in a couple: it is learning how to respect the sexual energy and realise that it is the power of god in us. To no longer treat it like something for animal pleasure.

Audience: I guess I just wanted a little clarification with the questioner online, who brought up of one thing about the mechanistic…. And it seems like the 3% and 97% is trapped in all of our egos, so it seems as though if we are doing these practices, if we are not looking at those egos, not comprehending them and disintegrating those egos we are not freeing up any of that 97%?

Instructor: If we are not meditating on the ego, or dissolving the ego, we are not liberating the consciousness.

This is why we emphasis constantly: yes, it is important to transform the sexual energy, it is essential; yes it is important to self-remember, yes it is important to self-observe, it is important to study the scripture, the bible, the Kabbalah, the Sutras, the Tantras... all of these things are necessary, because they provide information, but if we are not dissolving the ego we will accomplish only becoming a devil. Period. End of story.

"Any attempt at liberation, no matter how great it might be, if it does not take into consideration the necessity of dissolving the ego, it is condemned to failure." - Samael Aun Weor

That is the very last sentence of Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology.

These two books fully express what I tried to condense in today’s lecture: reatise of Revolutionary Psychology and The Great Rebellion. Any student of this tradition who is not studying these books regularly is not studying Gnosis. Those books give the central, core clue which is psychology and meditation. To really know what Gnosis is you must understand the psychology very deeply and you must understand how to meditate very well. All these other things are important, that is why we talk about them, but none of them are more important than knowing how to eliminate the ego, none of them; it is the most important thing.

Audience: Yeah what is the difference between awakening in Klipoth, the darkness, and descending into it, in order to understand it?

Instructor:  The truth is we are all already in hell, Klipoth and when we dream and sleep, our dreams are there; that is where our mind is. Our mind is an aspect of hell; it is filled with all of our desires, our fears, our traumas etc… When we begin the process of awakening of consciousness, if we are following the broad and wide path to destruction that Jesus described, then we are awakening as a demon, which means we are awakening the consciousness that is trapped in the ego and we will awaken as an ego, as a devil.

That process is easy and many millions of people are on that path. They awaken, but only in that realm and they think they are awakening positively, they think that they are saints, they think that they are doing good because they are only seeing according to their desires, they do not see reality.

The other thing I mentioned was descending there in order to see it, to understand it and that is what an initiate does who is awakening in the light, awakening in life. In that context we awaken consciousness, but the freed consciousness that can go into the heavens or it can go into the hell realms, in order to investigate oneself. This is necessary, especially when dealing with deeper egos that are harder to see from the physical world. So, we learn to meditate or get out of the body during the night to go into those realms to look at the roots of those egos and to understand them, and sometimes to help other people as well, but in that case we would be awake in the light and not as a demon. We would see reality, not an illusion, and not be a victim to the illusions of that realm.

Audience: So it is a matter of how you are as you enter into Klipoth?

Instructor: It is a matter of the state of your being. Now the tricky part is if you are trying to awaken the free consciousness through the process that we described and then you have an experience where you awaken consciousness in the internal worlds, in the astral world then you do not know, am I in the superior part or the inferior part, am I in the heavenly aspect or the hellish aspect? And as a beginner you cannot tell. It is hard to tell because the consciousness does not have the strength or the energy to cut through appearances and see reality.

So, for beginners especially, for a long period of time until you develop a lot of experiences, it is really hard to know and that is why we teach the conjurations and prayers those channel forces from our own being to help clarify that atmosphere and to help us see if what we are seeing is our own hell realm or are we seeing the real thing objectively. So there is two ways to see: subjectively and objectively. The whole lecture I was giving was about, how in our daily lives we see everything subjectively, filtered through our desire, filtered through our memories and traumas and I am trying to emphasise that we need to see objectively during the day, to cut through that and really see people for what they are, to see ourselves for what we really are, because then when we go out of the body every night when we sleep, we will start to do it there too. We will start to see that our dreams are just dreams, they are just projections and we will start to really what is going on. That is a gradual process.

Audience: So when you say you see people for what they really are, does that mean you are seeing into their true self?

Instructor: You will see them according to the power of the consciousness that you have. If your consciousness is very weak, which it is for all of us, you will only be able to see a certain amount.  So, for us for an example, if you get into a conversation, notice that when you are having a conversation you are not really listening; you are thinking about how you are reacting to it or thinking about what you want to say next or what else you want to talk about. It is rare that we are concentrated on the other person, on what they say. Usually, we are still in our own world.

So, the beginning is to start to see and really listen; to really see people and really be there with them. And, the more we awaken and the more perceptive we become, the more we gain insight into each other and mostly that comes from having insight into ourselves. Little by little, that starts to give us the ability to really understand what people really mean when they say things. You have fewer disagreements, fewer misunderstandings. We understand each other better. Most of the arguments we have are because we did not understand what another person was trying to say. We misunderstand, we get angry, we get upset and fights start...

Audience: So we are not really present in our conversations?

Instructor: Exactly! We are not, almost never. We are always thinking; “what are they thinking about me?” We are never thinking “Are they really ok, are they really well, what are they trying to say?” We are never really that interested in other people, we are only interested in if they like us, or do they approve of us. And, if they do not like us or approve of us, we are going to do or say whatever we can to get them to like us or approve and us, and once they do then we go… Really that is the gist of most conversations; we are really not interested in each other because we are so egotistical.

So, if we shift that, if we really become interested in the other person and understand them, everything will change. This sounds so easy, but it isn’t. And listen, this is in a book too by Samael Aun Weor, Introduction to Gnosis, he talks about this but none of the Gnostics do it! They all think “Aw that book is for beginners”... We are all beginners. That book explains very clearly, if you really want to succeed in business learn how to listen. 

Audience: In the middle of your lecture you said that nothing on the outside world has anything to do with gnosis at all. I kind of find the more meditation I do, the more and more that is true, and I can’t really ignore it anymore. But do you sometimes wonder where do you draw the line with, because you almost find yourself….. Not disassociating with the world, but we find less in common with a lot of areas and you are almost kind of like shutting off from participating in the world. I always try find a balance and probably always revaluating continuously. I mean where do you come to figure this out?

Instructor: I think you have to strike a balance. I understand what you are saying, because I have experienced the same thing; where, the more you meditate and study yourself and the teachings or you realise that this world is repetitive, not interesting and painful, you do not feel drawn to the things you used to do before, or you want to withdraw a little bit or be separate in some way. I think that is necessary, especially when you need time to strengthen your practices and your comprehension and strengthen your soul.

My advice in those times is try and get out into nature. Try go to places where you can really be back in touch with this planet. Go to the forest, the mountains, the beach and spend time, even if it is only an hour, that time spent, especially really awake and aware, can really nourish your heart. But I think at the same time, all of us have families and responsibilities so we can’t withdraw completely. You know, we need to contribute to society, to the best of our ability, especially the people that depend on us, our families our, co-workers, our employers. Those places we really need to make a sincere effort, even though sometimes we do not really want to be there it can be difficult. It is a balance.

I think, like we have said in other lectures, naturally you come to a place where you realise "I do not need to watch TV like everybody else is watching, I am going to turn it off; I am going to go outside, to the garden or I am going to go for a walk or spend time with my neighbour," doing things that are more contributive to others rather than just being hypnotised by the internet or the television, and also going to parties or family things and all of those social responsibilities they can be cut out. We do not have much time, we do not know how long we are going to be alive. We do not know how much time we have to practice, and any moment we can take to be, and deepen our connection with our innermost, we need to take advantage of that and use it well.

Audience: But, then on the other hand, those same responsibilities with our families are… (Inaudible)

Instructor: No doubt about it. Everything in our life, just like how we said in the lecture, is in our life because of how we are; everything, without exception. If we want to change our life, we change how we are. It means taking advantage of what we have.

Ok, problem number one: “I hate my job.” So, let’s transform our experience of that job. It doesn’t mean you have to change jobs. This is something only you can know. Maybe you need that job, maybe you can’t get another job for some reason, who knows what your own circumstances, are but is it possible that you can simply change your attitude about the job, instead of going there full of resentment, despair and dragging your feet being miserable all the time? Can you go there and treat it like a spiritual service, that the people you work for and with need your help. And, if you provide that help with a different attitude, you might actually start to enjoy it.

It is the same with dealing with our friends our family, and all of our responsibilities that we have. All of those are there because of how we are, if we change our attitude to them and change how we relate to them, everything in life changes. So we are talking about changing our level of being. It begins with that, but the real transformation, the radical one only comes when we destroy the ego. We can have the best attitude in the world but if we have the ego alive we will suffer; others will suffer and we will not achieve liberation.

The ego must be eliminated and this is why we emphasize it every day. We need to, at the end of the day, take time to retrospect on all the experiences that we had that day, and to note the ones that are of particular importance and then to meditate on them, with whatever time we can put in to it. If it is a few minutes, use that. If you have more time do it, if you can sacrifice some sleep, do it. This is the core practice of this tradition. It is not transmutation, it is not runes, it is not anything else: it is to meditate on the ego daily, this is the core. Without that, the rest does not mean anything.