Experience and the Three Minds

We are going to perform a meditation before we have a lecture, and I invite you to find a comfortable position and establish the preliminaries we always rely on. Firstly, ensure your body is very relaxed; relaxation is what allows the consciousness to escape the confines of the body. If the body is complaining because it has discomfort, tension, then the consciousness remains conditioned and so we will be unable to enter the state of meditation. Please take a few moments to relax and withdraw from physicality and in that process of relaxing for today's exercise, it is particularly important that you cultivate drowsiness.

We are going to do a visualisation practice and for that to be effective for you, you need just enough drowsiness that you are approaching the dream state, so that when you imagine things, the images arise easily. If your body is stressed or tense or uncomfortable or if your mind is agitated then this becomes difficult, if not impossible. So take a few moments now to concentrate, relax and become a little bit drowsy but don't lose awareness of yourself, just withdraw into your awareness and become very attentive, very present and very relaxed...

Meditation

Now, as you proceed with relaxing yourself and withdrawing from the body, I am going to give you the instructions for this meditation exercise. The instructions are very simple: I am going to read to you from a scripture and, as we read the scripture, simply allow your imagination to show it to you; do not correct it, do not let your mind interfere, get out of the way and just allow yourself to imagine it the way you used to do when you were a child, allowing the story to become real in your imagination. When I have finished reading this passage from the scripture, you will simply recollect what you imagined while concentrating on that; reviving the scenes and the images and relaxing deeper and evoking that balance of drowsiness that allows you to perceive the imagery, but not fall asleep. The scripture is as follows:

...And Jesus answered and said unto his disciples "It came to pass when Pistis Sophia was in the thirteenth aeon and the region of all her brethren and the invisible that is the four and twenty emanations of the great visible. It came to pass then by command of the first mystery that Pistis Sophia gazed into the height she saw the light of the veil of the treasury of the light and she longed to reach to that region and she could not reach to that region but she ceased to perform the mystery of the thirteenth aeon and sang praises to the light of the height which she had seen in the light of the veil of the treasury of the light. It came to pass then when she sang praises to the region of the height that all the rulers and the twelve aeons who were below hated her because she had ceased from their mysteries and because she had desired to go into the height and be above them all but this caused then they were enraged against her and hated her as did the great triple powered self-willed that is the third triple power it was in the thirteenth aeon he who had become disobedient inasmuch as he had not emanated the whole purification of his power in him and had not given the purification of his light at the time when the rulers gave their purification and that he desired to rule over the whole thirteenth aeon and those who are below. It came to pass then that the rulers of the twelve aeons were enraged against Pistis Sophia who was above them and hated her exceedingly but the great triple powered self-willed whom I have just told you joined himself to the rulers of the twelve aeons and also was enraged against Pistis Sophia and hated her exceedingly because she had thought to go out to the light which was higher than her and he emanated out of himself a great lion-faced power and out of his matter in him he emanated a host of other very violent material emanations and sent them into the regions below to the parts of the chaos in order that they might there lie in wait for Pistis Sophia and take away her power out of her because she had thought to go to the height which is above them all and moreover she had ceased to perform their mysteries and lamented continuously and sought after the light which she had seen and the rulers who abide or persist in performing the mystery hated her and all the guards who were in the gazes of the aeons hated her. It came to pass then thereafter by command of the first commandment that the great triple powered self-willed who is one of the three triple powers pursued Sophia in the thirteenth aeon in order that she should look towards the parts below so that she might see in that region his lion-faced light power and long after it and go to that region so that her light might be taken from her. It came to pass then thereafter that she looked below and saw his light power in the parts below and she knew not that it in that of the triple powered self-willed but she thought that it came out of the light which she had seen from the beginning in the height which came out of the veil of the treasury of the light and she thought to herself I will go into that region without my pair and take the light and there out fashion for myself light aeons so that I may go into the light of lights which is in the height of heights. This then thinking she went forth from her own region; the thirteenth aeon and went down to the twelve aeons, the rulers of the aeons pursued her and were enraged against her because she had thought of grandeur and she went forth also from the twelve aeons and came into the regions of the chaos and drew nigh to that lion-faced light power to devour it. But all the material emanations of self-willed surrounded her and the great lion-faced light power devoured all the light powers in Sophia and cleaned out her light and devoured it and her matter was thrust into the chaos it became a lion-faced ruler in the chaos of which one half was fire and the other was darkness that is Yaldabaoth of whom I have spoken unto you many times. When this befell Sophia became very greatly exhausted and that lion-faced light power set to work to take away from Sophia all her light powers and all the material powers of self-willed surrounded Sophia at the same time and pressed her sore and Pistis Sophia cried out most exceedingly, she cried to the light of lights which she had seen from the beginning in which she had faith and uttered this repentance..." - The Pistis Sophia

[MEDITATE]......

Now we conclude the meditation, and we will proceed with our lecture.

The Nature of Experience

Today's lecture is called: Experience and the Three Minds. As you already know, the most important thing in your life is your experience; it is what defines us, everything about us. It is worthwhile for us to study this word, particularly in relation with our spiritual life. The actual meaning is of experience is "observation as the source of knowledge; actual observation an event which has affected one." It comes from Latin, experientia, “to trial, proof, experiment, knowledge gained by repeated trial.”

When you examine your own experiences, you can see quite clearly that any experience must be perceived. It is an experience of perception. Any perception that we have is related with some types of facts and the most valuable experiences we have are always rooted in undeniable facts; facts that can be proven and facts that can be repeated or demonstrated or accessed by someone else.

Spiritually speaking, religiously speaking experience is something that modern people do not take seriously, because in modern religions and in modern spirituality experience is considered something that is had only by prophets and saints of the past. It is believed in modern times that if you have an experience of God you are crazy and you have lost your mind... We need to understand why this is, because it is a very significant component in our own psychology as spiritual people, as people who aspire to know something of the truth of divinity.

We have an enormous obstacle to experience the divine and that obstacle is called fear. Fear of rejection, fear of being mocked, fear of being ridiculed, we may not be conscious of that, but it is very widespread in the mentality of people today and in analysing experience, it is very important for us to study ourselves in relation with the universe.

In our current condition, our experience, the potential range of our experience is very limited. We are in our physical bodies, which on this image, is symbolised by the Sephirah at the bottom called Malkuth, which means “kingdom” in Hebrew and that represents physicality; the physicality outside of us, and our own physical body.

We who are here now, listening and studying this subject, are perceiving and experiencing through the senses of the physical body and for most people that is the limit of their potential experiences. We may long to know about heaven, we may be afraid of hell—these are both symbolised on this graphic, above and below Malkuth—yet we have no experience of them, or if we have had some experience we cannot repeat it at will, we cannot control it.

We may believe in heaven or hell, we may have many theories or a very beautiful structure in our mind that helps us conceptualise heaven and hell, but the experience of heaven and hell remains unknown. The Tree of Life symbolises for us all the realms of potential experience. It symbolises all of nature, every potential corner of nature; not just physically, but in all the subtle levels of existence. That is what all these spheres and dimensions represent: nine heavens, nine hells or seven heavens if you like, or seven dimensions... there's many ways to study this simple map, but the synthesis of it, the thing to understand is that this is you. It is a map of ourselves and it is a map of the natural realm that surrounds us and is within us, and at this current moment, our perception is limited to physicality, because we are in the physical body, unless we have developed other capacities. Capacities you may have heard about, read about or that you have perhaps experienced that we can call powers or spiritual abilities, clairvoyance, going out of the body, visions, these types of things. Some people have those and cannot control them. Most people that have clairvoyant vision or the perception of non-physical imagery may see things, but do not understand what they see. But, if you study this graphic, this map, you will come to understand it. The main thing to know is that all of this graphic is an emanation of divinity; it symbolises for us nature and everything that exists, as the body of divinity, as an expression of divinity in levels and levels and levels.

So, if we are here in the physical level, in this very dense aspect of nature, within that are more subtle levels, ascending or deepening into more and more subtle forms of energy, matter and consciousness, until you reach the very top, that first sphere at the top which is called Kether in Hebrew, which the Christians simply call the Father. That, itself, is an emanation of something more subtle which we can call unmanifested, which we call the absolute, an abstract potential which is divine which has no measurement, length, base, numbers; it is beyond conceptuality.

That trinity at the very top—Kether, Chokmah, Binah—in Greek is called Logoi, the Logos; in Christian terms they call it the trinity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and in Asia they call it Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Trimurti or they call it Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya in the Buddhist tradition. Every religion has symbols for that fundamental trinity and from that unfolds everything else.

As a spiritual person you may believe in all of that, you may have beautiful concepts about it, you might be able to quote scripture, you might have a fervent devotion in your heart towards the symbols of divinity that you have in your mind, but the memorisation and the devotion are completely distinct from the experience of divinity; to see divinity with your very eye, to speak with divinity, ask a question and get an answer.

Now, you may be feeling very uncomfortable about that very idea. That may make you feel disturbed. Yet, every scripture and every religion in the world is based on someone's experience of God, someone's experience of something beyond physicality and who have then returned and communicated that something to try to encourage us to have the same experience, to know the facts of it for ourselves. However, most of us are too afraid. We prefer to believe or have ideas, than perceive and experience the reality and we need to understand why.

πίστις Pistis

Experience is truth and in relation with that we have a beautiful symbol from the Greek tradition, which is called πίστις Pistis. The word Pistis means; faith or trust.

In the ancient Greek mythology they symbolised the notion of honesty as a woman of great beauty, because they considered truth to be so important and honesty as the sister of truth. This painting represents how that symbol was later adopted by the Christians, but in Greek the name remains the same: Pistis, faith. Unfortunately, as the scriptures of the bible passed from generation to generation, the Greek words translated into English became modified.

As you see in Greek this word Pistis means "faith from experience, knowledge from experience, something observed," something known because one has experienced it and that is why in court, when facing a tribunal and facing judgement the witness would say "I here give faith.” Give faith, meaning, “I am here giving you the truth honestly of what I know from my experience.” Pistis is that: it is the honest expression of what one knows because of experience, of truth. It is interesting that in the Greek mythology, the opposite of Pistis is called; psuedo-logoi. If you remember in the previous image I was talking about the Tree of Life, and at the top there is a trinity called the Logos or Logoi which means, “word or words”; thus, the psuedo-Logoi means false words, lies, falsehoods.

Logoi and Pseudologoi on the Tree of Life

To know divinity, all the scriptures agree, one must have faith and in modern times that word has been changed to mean belief. That is not what faith is. If we understand faith in this way, religion begins to look very different and our study of religion and ourselves becomes very different. If we understand that to know divinity we need faith, and that faith means to know divinity, we must experience divinity, and in order to experience divinity we must be honest.

To be honest means to not lie to oneself; to be honest with oneself firstly. And that is why in the ancient religions we hear this phrase that is put in different ways in different traditions that essentially says this: the first principle of divinity is truth. Christians call that principle the Father, and that is why they say that if you lie you sin against the Father. To lie means to hold on to something that is an illusion and to believe that it is real. To understand that we need to study the three minds.

The Three Minds

In this tradition we talk about three minds, we also talk about three brains, today we are not talking about three brains, that is a separate concept. To understand this, it is useful to know that the word mind is derived from Sanskrit. The word Manas, from where we get the English word man doesn't mean masculine, it means a person and this word Manas in Sanskrit means, “to think.” That is why we associate the word man with thinking. So, the first of the three minds is called the sensual mind and we call it this because it is related with the physical senses.

The Sensual Mind

The dictionary says this: sensual means carnal, carnal means; physical, in other words not spiritual. So, the sensual mind is that part of our psychology that derives everything it knows through the five senses, and it considers the five senses to be the ultimate authority of truth. The world now believes that if something cannot be proven through the physical senses then it is just a fantasy. That is why we see the rise of atheism, materialism, cynicism. Those are the natural outcomes of closing off all of our other capabilities and focusing exclusively on physicality.

Remember that graphic of the Tree of Life: it maps potential experience. But, the person who is devoted to the sensual mind rejects all of that and only accepts information that comes through the five senses. Such a person rejects any story or idea about God; rejects religion, mocks religion, mocks spirituality and uses logic, reasoning and intellect, obviously this is very widespread today and could be seen as the very basis of modern society, the king of the world. But there is another type of mind which is called the intermediate mind.

The Intermediate Mind

Intermediate means, “in the middle” or “between” and this is related to beliefs; meaning that in the intermediate mind you may believe in things that are beyond the five senses, but the person who is relying on the intermediate mind either has never had any experience of that or only very little and certainly cannot produce those experiences at will and so such a person is religious or "spiritual." They may believe there is something after death, that there is some life after death or some heaven or Bardo, or something we pass through spiritually speaking, and they may believe in higher beings, they may even believe in hell. But if you look at the meaning of the word belief, it literally means; conviction without knowledge, meaning conviction without experience.

If you go to any church, temple or mosque in the world you can find millions of people who rely on their intermediate mind and that is the limit for them. They have a lot of beliefs, perhaps very beautiful beliefs and they may sincerely want to do good and want to serve divinity and be a better person, yet their knowledge is extraordinarily limited because they don't go beyond mere belief, they have no experience of reality, of truth of divinity, of what happens after death.

The Inner Mind

Fortunately there is a third mind and it is called the inner mind and this mind is related with the awakened consciousness, the ability that we have to experience reality, directly perceiving reality. It is beyond the five senses to directly perceive the astral world or the mental world or the hell realms or any of the other dimensions, that are here, right now, but we simply lack the ability to see it.

The inner mind is a mind that is not conditioned. It cognates, meaning that it it is able to perceive and understands what it perceives; it may not be with thought, it may be with intuition, it may be with abstract thought. Nevertheless, the inner mind is related to what we call objective reasoning, meaning that it is a type of perception and cognition that is far beyond the mere intellect of the sensual mind, or the emotional aspects of the intermediate mind that believe. The inner mind sees past the five senses and understands what it sees; it sees divinity and knows that and is not afraid.

So, obviously it is in our best interests if we really want to understand religion, if we really want to be prepared for death, we need to know about this inner mind, not merely as a concept and not merely as a belief in our intermediate mind, but as something we ourselves can experience.

The Leavened Bread

Thus, we arrive at today's meditation. Now I admit that I didn't give you much time; I didn't give you that much time to access your inner mind, I admit that, I take responsibility for that, we did not have much time for meditation. Maybe if I gave you another hour you might have done it, but let us invoke the spirit of Pistis in ourselves and honestly evaluate our spiritual skills, our spiritual level.

When we were reflecting on that story that we read before the meditations did, we experience one of these aspects of mind in ourselves or all of them or only one of them or two of them, what did we ourselves experience? Were we struggling with the senses, unable to separate ourselves from the five senses? Were we conditioned by the body the whole time, and unable to visualise the story? Were we able to visualise something and have it conflict with our ideas or with our beliefs? Perhaps we were raised Christian and we hear the story that Jesus is telling about Sophia and we think to ourselves, “I never heard of that, this must be apocryphal, this must be something that is not part of the accepted canon of Christianity” and we become very fearful. Did we have our mind racing to explain it with concepts, with associations of thought; “well that story must relate to this tradition, it must be this symbol and that symbol.” The intellect in us otherwise is very engaged, or, were we capable of opening our inner mind and perceiving the symbols of that story and understanding them? Don't answer, just reflect on it, but reflect on it knowing this: everyone of us has the capability to open the inner mind. It is in our inherent nature, it is part of our true nature that part of us that connects with divinity. The problem is we are too afraid and we are too conditioned to access it we need to learn how. Jesus explained it, in the Gospels it says:

..."In the kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and mingled in three measures of flour till the whole was leaven, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees which is hypocrisy"...

In relation with today's lecture, we need to understand this: on the Tree of Life we looked at that graphic and we saw the physical world at the bottom, between the heavens and the hells, and superior to that physical world are all the heavens, those are inside of us as Jesus explains this:

..."The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven"...

In case you are not a baker, this is yeast. When you make bread, you take flour and you add a little bit of yeast and then you add water and salt and you let it sit, and if you let it sit for a long time then that bread will double in size. It will expand through what is called fermentation. Fermentation is alchemy. It is a beautiful chemistry in nature. He is not talking about literally making bread, but he is using this as an allegory, as a teaching story to help us understand that the kingdom of heaven is like that yeast which a woman took and mingled in three measures of flour till the whole was leaven. Those three measures of flour are three parts of ourselves and that yeast that causes that self to rise, the meaning of that is revealed in the next passage of the scripture:

..."Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees which is hypocrisy"...

The Pharisees and the Sadducees, their yeast is hypocritical, which means what? iIt is Apistis, it is psuedo-Logoi, psuedo-Logos; it is lies it, is not true. So, who are these Pharisees and Sadducees? Well the graphic here is showing Jesus teaching them; they were the religious authorities, symbolically in the story. So, if their yeast is lies, is hypocrisy, then the positive ones must be truth, it must be reality, it must be honest and naturally that is related with the Father, the spirit of truth, the law, the reality.

Fanaticism

So, when we refer back to our study of the three minds, we see then that the sensual mind is related to the Sadducees or the intellectuals and the materialists and cynics and magicians, and the intermediate mind is related to the Pharisees, who are symbolised in scripture as believers and celibates and followers and the so called faithful. From both of those, the yeast that they fill their minds with, grows something hypocritical, which are the fanatics, that is why we see so much fanaticism in the world today. Not just religious fanaticism, fanaticism of all kinds. What is a fanatic? A person exhibiting excessive, unreasonable enthusiasm and intense uncritical devotion. Do you think we have any political fanatics now, what about racial fanatics? We find fanatics in every aspect of our society not just religion. The type of person who is so hypnotised by the sensual mind and the intermediate mind, who becomes fanaticised by the contents of that mind, the yeast, becomes dangerous a danger to everyone including themselves.

We wonder how it is when a person can take a gun and wander into a church and kill people, or how a person can go to a protest to hurt people, to destroy, to scream and hate in anger; the sensual mind and the intermediate mind. These two qualities of mind, sensual and intermediate, are hypnotic; they draw people in by hypnotising them according to their own psychological idiosyncrasies. Or, if we tend to be a little more intellectual, we get seduced by the intellectualism of the sensual mind, and if we tend to be a little more emotional or a little more action orientated we tend to get sucked in by the intermediate mind, the believer.

So we become a devotee of a political party, of a spiritual group, of a teacher, of a tradition, of an idea, but we have no experience of the reality of it. We only have ideas in the sensual mind or beliefs in the intermediate mind, and thus the result is that we become a fanatic; we have a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of devotion but no experience of reality, or if we have had some experiences we pick and choose the ones that support our current psychological structure. We cannot bear for that to be opposed, and that is partly why, when you study the sensual mind and the intermediate mind in society today, you see in most cases they are all polarised into duality: black versus white, red versus blue, this group versus that group, each one believing they are pure and that they have the best interests of humanity at heart and believing the other one is evil, full of devotion, full of enthusiasm. But wrong, they don't see the reality. That is the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees; hypocrisy, and it is hypocrisy precisely because it is a sin against the Father, the truth.

What we experience in our society today is entirely our own making. We need the awakened consciousness, the inner mind, we need a different type of yeast, a type of Alchemy that expands the mind in a new way that is distinct from the sensual mind and the intermediate mind.

We are not saying that the sensual mind and the intermediate minds are useless, on the contrary we need them, we need our sensual mind to be active in the physical world, we need the physical senses we need to be able to see what we are doing, we need to work physically. We also need the intermediate mind, it is the bridge between the sensual and the inner mind, that is why it is called the intermediate mind; it is the bridge that takes us from the physical to the experience of reality. It is in the intermediate mind that we receive our religious education and we need that, and you can directly observe for yourself that when society rejects religion then that society is on the brink of destruction, it is just about to be destroyed. Any society without religion is immoral and unethical and you can look at the entirety of history and prove that for oneself, and that is what is happening in our world now.

People now are rejecting divinity, do not believe it, can not see it and they reject ethics, thinking, “If there is no God who is going to punish me? I shall just do what I want.” They adopt the way of the demon and pursue desire. So these minds, sensual and intermediate are necessary but they are only tools. As one develops and expands the inner mind, those lower minds become less necessary, less important.

Jesus taught further about this, it says in the Gospel of Matthew:

...Jesus taught them the Pharisees and the Sadducees in their synagogue insomuch that they were astonished and said "Whence has this man this Sophia, wisdom and these mighty works" and they were offended in him and he did not many works there because of their Apistis... (their absence of faith or lack of experience). Matthew 13

In this story of the Gospels, what is written there is not a literal history. It borrows elements from what actually happened but it is not a document of history, it is a religious document, like a Greek myth that uses symbols to display a truth to our intuitive inner mind.

The sensual mind, the logical reasoning mind of the senses wants to read the story literally, and the believer wants to believe what the church tells them, but the real meaning that Jesus, who is a real master, symbolises in this story a part of us, Christ; a part of divinity, a force in nature. Jesus is not the only one that experiences and incarnates that force called Christ, and in the story he is teaching the Pharisees and the Sadducees in their own synagogue symbolises that that force, Christ, is teaching our sensual mind and our intermediate mind; intellect, heart. But, the sensual-minded aspects of ourselves and the intermediate-minded aspects of ourselves become offended by the teachings of Christ, because they are so profound, they are so revolutionary, that in society and in ourselves we feel that, “No, it is too much.” And so our psyche, our mind pushes back, pushes against it, feels resistance and that part says "Whence has this man, this Sophia and these mighty works." Do you remember the story that we read and all about Sophia? "And they were offended in him and he did not many mighty works there because of their Apistis," their absence of faith, lack of experience.

So, the story in the Bible says Jesus has tremendous Sophia. Sophia is a symbol, and not just in Latin, in Greek Sophia means wisdom and amongst the ancient Christians, and many of the modern traditions, Sophia represents the wisdom aspects of the Christ.

The Way to Wisdom

In Gnosticism Sophia is a very significant symbol, and the basis of the Pistis Sophia, The Gnostic Bible. But that sculpture on the left is a sculpture of Sophia, the middle represents Lakshmi from Hinduism, who is the same thing, who is the wisdom aspect of divinity, of Christ, and the name Lakshmi comes from Laksha, which means to perceive, observe, know, understand. It is wisdom, it is the same thing and that symbol is also amongst the Greeks as Athena or Minerva, and amongst the Romans as the Goddess of wisdom.

Our sensual mind thinks that these were all just myths invented by the stupid people in the past who did not know any better, and so they just invented gods to give them an excuse, to give them a structure in society and as a way of controlling the populace; that is what the sensual mind says. And the intermediate mind says that these are literal gods in heaven, so the Hindu, with their intermediate mind, believes in a literal Goddess Lakshmi that is in the heavens somewhere and that if that persons does the right mantras, and prayers and rituals that they can gain some help from Lakshmi. Usually that they want money and Lakshmi is also the bringer of wealth. But, if we rely on our inner mind, we open our inner mind, we can understand that these three symbols are but three of a multitude of symbols that all point to the same thing, which is in us, it is part of our consciousness, part of our being; it is a wisdom aspect that connects us directly with divinity. I want to read you another passage from scripture:

“Your Pistis should not depend on the Sophia of men, but on the power (Binah) of Theos (God). as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard (sensual mind), neither have entered into the heart of man (intermediate mind), the things which Theos hath prepared for them that love him. But Theos hath revealed them unto us (inner mind) by his Pneuma (spirit): for the Pneuma searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of Theos. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the pnuema of man which is in him, even so the things of Theos knoweth no man, but the Pneuma of Theos. But the psychikos (sensual) man receiveth not the things of the Pneuma of Theos: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are pneumatikos (spiritually) discerned.” - 1 Corinthians 2

This passage begins, “your Pistis should not depend on the Sophia of men but on the power of Theos.” In the modern English translations it says; “your belief should not depend on the wisdom of men,” but that is not what is written there in Greek. It does not say belief, it says Pistis, which is not belief; it is faith from experience and that power is related with the Tree of Life. Sophia, in Greek, is the Hebrew Chokmah, which is the second Sephirah on the Tree of Life.

"...baptizing them in the name of πατήρ [the Father: Kether], and of υἱός [the Son: Chokmah], and of ἁγίου πνεύματος [the Holy Ghost: Binah]" - Jesus, Matthew 28

The power of Theos is Hagios Pneuma, which is Binah.

Theos is Kether. That is the Logoi, the Logos, the divinity in us.

As it is written; “eye have not seen nor ear heard,” meaning that the sensual mind knows nothing of this, it cannot. “Neither have entered into the heart of man,” the heart is related with the intermediate mind, the believer, because, as you know, when someone becomes a great believer in a political movement or a religion they become very emotional, because beliefs are related to the heart. But, beliefs are conviction without knowledge and that is why it is said; “Neither have entered into the heart of man (intermediate mind), the things which Theos hath prepared for them that love him.” Meaning, to know what God has in store for you, you cannot use your sensual mind or your intermediate mind, you will never find it. If you want to know what god has in store for you, open your inner mind; rely on Pistis, depend on Sophia, wisdom, the power of Binah.

...“But Theos hath revealed them unto us (inner mind) by his Pneuma (spirit)”...

The Pneuma in this context is referring to Binah, which in Hebrew is intelligence; the intelligence of God. Binah is the creative fire of divinity. Christians call this the Holy Spirit, in Greek that is πνεύματος ἁγίου Hagios Pneuma, Holy Spirit.

It is that intelligence that has created everything that exists. So, it is not intelligence like we think of it intellectually, this is the intelligence that can create a universe; that is power, that is knowledge, that is intelligence and that power is within us. The knowledge of God, and the knowledge of what God has in store for us, is found that way, through that Pneuma, the intelligence symbolised by Binah, because that is the only thing that can know divinity. That is what the scripture is saying.

Let us look at it this way: we are here physically, conditioned by our physical senses, and we have our little collection of beliefs and we want to know what God has in store for us, we want to know what is beyond the physical senses, what is the reality, is there God? Is there something after death? The scripture is telling you: do not use your physical senses or your beliefs to find the answers because you will not and do not rely on men to give you the answers because they cannot.

The only thing that knows divinity is part of divinity and it is called Pneuma and it is inside of us. The only way for you to see that is to shut the physical senses off and open your inner sight and meditate. Learn to meditate. Learn to watch your dreams, because in your dreams you enter these worlds, but you are unaware of it. However, “the Psychikos, the sensual man receiveth not the things of the Pneuma of Theos; for they are foolishness unto him.” Those who judge everything through the physical senses think meditation is a waste of time. They think astral projection and dream yoga is a joke, they will never accept it. But they can never know it either because those things are only spiritually discerned, pneumatikos, they can only be seen by the Pneuma which is in us and the only way we can see is if we use those eyes, the spiritual eyes, and at our level you cannot access those eyes while your physical body is conditioning your perception, you have to first shut the physical senses.

..."For ye are yet carnal for whereas there is among you envying and strife and division are ye not carnal and walk as men, while one sayeth I am a Paul and another I am an Appollos are ye not carnal, know ye not that ye are the temple of Theos and that the Pneuma Theos dwelleth in you? Anyone defileth the temple of Theos that one shall Theos destroy. That temple of Theos is Holy, which temple ye are. For the wisdom of this world this foolishness with Theos, therefore let no one glory in men"...

We are the temple, we are that Tree of Life; Theos dwells in us. But as long as we remain attached to materialism, to the senses and to beliefs we can never know that and as long as we are attached to people, schools and groups and religions we can never know that. That is why he says here; one said I am a Paul and another I am an Appollos, meaning; I belong to this group, I belong to that group, I follow this teacher, I follow that teacher. That sensual mind has nothing to do with gnosis, therefore let no one glory in men.

“Intellect is not experience. From experience man gains intelligence (which is Binah, Pneuma) but not intellect. From intelligence (Binah, Pneuma) he attains to the greater wisdom (Sophia), but he does not gain the greater wisdom Sophia from the perusal of other peoples experience.”

This is from the master M who wrote 'The Dayspring of Youth' and this quote is from 'The Lord God of Truth Within': There is truth hidden here that your sensual mind and your intermediate mind cannot see, just like the scriptures of the Bible.

It is only possible to understand this quote with meditation.

Questions and Answers

Audience: Any comments on this subject in relation with the moments that we are experiencing now?

Instructor: What we are experiencing now is nothing new, though to us it seems new. The circumstances that our society is experiencing are foretold, and also our repetition of that time has happened before. We have had pandemics before, we have had social unrest before, we have had chaos before and we have had infighting before, so all these things are cyclical, cycles that continue to repeat.

The whole of the lecture that I gave today is precisely the answer to your question, you will not find in the senses the answers to our social upheaval or our medical challenges, you also will not find the answers in beliefs. If you want to understand what God has in store for you in relation with the world, and what is happening around you, you have to go and find it. I have to ask my own Pneuma in order to know what God has in store for me.

The answers that we need are there, in us, but we need courage, we need to practice, we need to be willing to suspend the senses and beliefs, to have an open mind that is incredibly present, open to receiving new things. As we are now, our mind is very closed because of fear, because of uncertainty, doubt and those are all related with the sensual mind and the intermediate mind.

To open the inner mind begins with being conscious, being present always, in all moments; in all experiences to, be here and now. When one is diligently applying the activity of the consciousness in the present moment, the intellect must become passive. If your intellect is very active it means you are not present; you are thinking, your intellect is running. But, if you are focused on being present, actively observing yourself—not just through your senses outwardly but observing your mind—the amount of focus and energy and concentration that takes gathers together your forces. Then you have no choice but to let the mind stop it's crazy activities; it’s worry, stress, tension, fear. And, when you continue that effort of being present into meditation, and you shut the physical senses and you are very present, then your mind becomes open and you can just listen, not with your ears physically but with your inner senses.

Listen, if you are patient and you have that type of open mind you can get answers. In the beginning those answers can be very subtle, very elusive, not that concrete, so you may not quite know is that real: “Is that the answer? Is that true?” It is important to have that sort of doubt about it. Gradually, with experience and with practice, if you practice daily, little by little, the answers become more and more audible, visual or more concrete, more and more memorable; they become something that you can hold on to and start to interpret. Little by little they become more accessible; visions, dreams, experiences.

In this tradition we emphasize facts, focusing on facts, the perception and understanding the facts and that is why we emphasize meditation so much. In meditation, if you practice accurately, you will have experiences; it is inevitable. You also will need to learn discretion and how to interpret dreams. It is easy to be deceived physically, we know this already. If we rely on our sensual mind or our intermediate mind we are very easy to deceive, people can tell us things that sound very logical or reasonable but they are all lies.

Did anyone ever encounter a salesman? They are experts, you know who else is? Politicians, actors, preachers they are experts at convincing people of things that are not true and that is very celebrated in this day and age. The reason they are able to do it is because we ourselves are vulnerable to that. We willingly fall in to that being misled, because we do not develop the capacity to see for ourselves the reality. So, when we start to develop the ability to perceive things, spiritually speaking, we also remain in danger of being misled, we have that vulnerability, we can be misled by our own experiences, visions and dreams and that is why people have dreams where God told me to go and do this or that... did God really say that? I doubt it, it is probably something else, but the person lacks the ability to discriminate.

The story that I read to you for the meditation practice explained how Sophia was in the thirteenth Aeon, longing to rise higher. Aeons are the Sephirah on the Tree of Life. In the story, Sophia represents that aspect of wisdom that is all the way at the top of the structure, and that aspect of our inner divinity wanted to go higher but was fooled, deceived and saw a light that was not the real light and so Sophia fell.

When you study the stages of initiation and the development of the soul, hierarchies of Angels and Archangels and Principalities and Thrones, rising toward the light, even at the very top you can be fooled, you can be tricked, you can fall. It requires reliance on divinity to ascend. That is why the scriptures kept repeating do not rely on men, do not celebrate the glories of people, do not follow anyone and as Samael Aun Weor repeated over and over and over again; do not follow anyone. He said himself directly: "I do not follow anyone therefore no one should follow me" and yet millions still follow, why? Fear. They are afraid because they do not have the connection of divinity within themselves and because they have animal minds that gets comfort being in a herd and it wants to belong to herd and feel safe, so they join a group... they are fooled. Scripture is very clear: rely on God, no one else.

Audience: Inaudible

Instructor: To be prudent means to be wise, which is Sophia. To be prudent means to be restrained. The tools that we are teaching you are unbelievably powerful. If you apply them, you will have experiences. That is why we give you theses warnings: be prepared. Because when you see things, you will want to believe them, but what you see may not be true. You have to discriminate, you have to have prudence, you have to wait, you have to test things.

Sophia fell because of not seeing the reality of the light that she saw, and she was very high on the Tree of Life, but still fell. What about us, here on these dense levels with our sleeping consciousness, full of defects, full of desires? We are so easy to fool, but if we rely on proven structures, proven techniques, proven through our own experience, then we at least can gain some measure of security, some measure of defence against being fooled and that is why we give you these principles. What was the first principle I gave you today? Pistis; honesty, learn to be honest with yourself first of all.

Audience: Inaudible

Instructor: When you study this type of material, you begin with your sensual mind, with your eyes and your ears; reading, listening, developing the intellectual understanding, the concepts, how these teachings work, what is the structure, what are the components, what are all the pieces there is a lot to it. And, as you develop some intellectual understanding, then you are also developing something in the intermediate mind where it is related with belief, related to emotion, related with enthusiasm.

The development of these two will vary because we all have our own psychological idiosyncrasies; some more intellectual, some more emotional. Some are more physically orientated, where they just do the practices and not understand why. That process of incorporating the teachings into yourself takes years, it is a long process and it is a process of constantly trying to find your balance, where you have to learn through that process, to learn to balance your three brains using your consciousness as your equilibrium. And you grasp the teachings intellectually, to your capacity, and you develop some devotion or belief to your capacity, and you practice with your motor-instinctive-sexual brain to your capacity, and in your circumstances, but the guiding principle that balances those three is your awareness; we call that psychological equilibrium, where we are learning to balance the three brains and the consciousness, no longer controlled by the three brains but being in control of them.

See, the person who achieved that has reached a different state of consciousness, a different state of being. That does not mean they have memorized the teachings intellectually, it does not mean that they are the greatest devotee emotionally. If they are too intellectual or too devoted emotionally, they are a fanatic and a fanatic is not balanced in the three brains. A fanatic does not have psychological equilibrium. To avoid being a fanatic, and to develop balance, it is necessary to open the inner mind. That is a process of knowing yourself. It is not a process of somebody approving of you or of your earning something externally, it is a process of you learning how to manage your three brains consciously. In that balance, you start to become centred, aware.

The key to accessing the inner mind and going through these different stages of consciousness is to get the "I" out of the way. The inner mind is opened by the death of the ego, that is the only way it is opened.

As long as the ego is alive in us, the inner mind cannot open. So, it opens in proportion to the death of the ego. When we have pride, when we have envy, when we have ambition, we have fear, those qualities prevent us from accessing the inner mind. So, in any given experience, we always have to be very aware of that and even when we feel spiritual or we feel awake or feel connected, watch out for the ego, and as long as we have not reached resurrection and the ultimate and complete death of the ego we can be fooled whether from inside or out.