Our meditation today had three steps. We began with the same foundation that we always use, which is to relax. When the instructions were given, we specifically pointed out the necessity to relax the body first, and then to also relax the intellect; to allow thoughts to subside. To recognise that we can become quiet mentally. Then, thirdly to also relax emotionally. So that body, thought and emotion all become still, quiet.
After that, we practiced a pranayama; that was the first, preliminary exercise. We practiced the pranayama, Ham-Sah. As you may have noticed, that pranayama has three essential parts where the energy focuses: we focus on drawing the sexual energy up the spinal column to the brain, then holding the breath and then we send it in to the heart. So, in this we see the body, intellect and emotion, the same three parts that we relaxed before we began practicing.
With the pranayama, being relaxed already, we are directing energy. You may have heard the statement: “Where the attention goes, energy flows.” That is why we always specify, when we give instructions for meditation, to pay attention to what you are doing. If your body is doing the breathing but your attention is replaying the news in your mind or thinking about work or about problems at home, then your energy is going to those places and not in to the exercise that we are performing.
The next phase of practice was that we relaxed more, and we concentrated solely on this region above the eyes, somewhat between the eyebrows, just above, in that place where we remember things, where we picture things, where we imagine. In that phase of preliminary exercises we vocalised a sound, “IIIIII,” (pronounced "ee" as in "tree") while we imagined a fire, a flame.
This portion of the practice nourishes our capacity to imagine, to remember. It stimulates the pineal and pituitary glands in the brain, which are responsible for our ability to use our imagination. In most of us those glands are atrophied; they are weakened because of misuse, because of loss of energy and because of lots of bad habits. But, that type of exercise—both the pranayama and the vocalisation of the mantra—nourish those glands, give them fuel, give them food so that those glands can recuperate those abilities and our powers of imagination can be restored. If you have ever heard of a mystic or a saint having the ability to have visions, to see god, it is because their pineal and pituitary glands are very healthy, normal; they have a lot of energy and those glands function as they should function in all of us.
So, those were the preliminary phases of our practice today and then we gave you the instruction for the formal practice, in which we simply suspended thought, suspended emotion, let them become passive. We let the body become passive and perfectly still, and we cultivated the feeling of relaxation that we always feel when we are going to take a nap or sleep. We allowed a bit of drowsiness to arise. Then, we began to imagine a temple, using the creativity of our imagination to see any temple that we feel spontaneously the wish to imagine. We gave you the warning to pay attention, that as soon as you begin to imagine something you will have a conflict. Your intellect will contradict, with thoughts... anyone find that is true? As soon as you imagine something your mind says “No, no, no, not like that. That’s not right. It shouldn’t be that way.” Or it tries to make suggestions, “It should be this way or that way”; “It should not be an Asian temple it should be a Greek temple” or, “It should not be a church it should be an ashram” etc. The mind always tries to correct what the spontaneous creative imagination wants to bring.
Likewise, we may feel a conflict emotionally. We may feel a surge of fear or a surge of excitement in the emotional centre. Or, the body presenting maybe obstacles like too much sleepiness or itchiness or discomfort, anybody find that? Obstacles? Yes. That is why we are here today, so we can learn how to deal with that.
That exercise properly prepared for, trained for, worked with, can led you in to some very interesting insights about yourself and it sets the stage for today’s lecture. So, for those of you who are listening to this recording, studying this lecture, I invite you to perform that meditation first. Take an hour, go through each step, practice it. If you are studying this lecture and want to understand what it is about, do this exercise first.
What is a Master?
The subject today is how to find your master. All of you know that in every corner of the world all the spiritual seekers are looking for their guru, looking for their master. They are going here and there, on the internet, looking at books and magazines, looking everywhere trying to find that satguru, to find that great teacher, that master who is going to somehow save us. We are going to talk about that today, how you can actually find your master.
There is this concept in spirituality that we have a kind of special relationship, a kind of affinity or a natural magnetism to a teacher, to a tradition even, or a religion or a linage and there is some truth in that; we do have, each of us, an idiosyncrasy, a quality of being that is best guided according to that quality. So, we have a natural inclination, we have a natural type of interest and a way of understanding things that is unique to us.
Some of us understand terminology, philosophy and concept and belief through the prism of Christianity, some understand through the prism of Buddhism; both are valid, both transmit light. But, each prism shows that light in its own way, according to the psychology of that prism; the light itself is the same. The light is truth, the truth is the same. The sun is one sun its light shines on everyone. But, everyone around the world has different names for that light in their own different language and different names for that sun in their own language and they have their own mythology about that sun, and all of them are beautiful. But, the key thing is not the mythology or the words, the key thing is that, that sun is giving them life, light and heat.
We ourselves are craving light, solar light; not physically, but with the consciousness. It is the light of the sun but not the physical sun, it is the spiritual sun that is behind the physical sun. In Christianity that light is called Christ, in Buddhism that light is called Amitabha or Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig, depending on which school of Buddhism you want to listen to. The light is the same. That light gives the soul, the consciousness, life. We need it. To receive it, we need help, because on our own we are incapable, we are like seeds drifting in the wind, with a great longing to become something. But, we need that seed of ourselves to be planted in the earth, to be given nourishment and protection, so that we can grow. That is what a master provides: nourishment, protection.
The light comes from divinity; the master shows the light, the master points out the light but the master is not the light. The master is a prism that displays light. We have that longing to find the light, and in order to find it we have a sense or feeling to find the teacher, the master, but there is so much confusion about that in the world now. Particularly, because of the condition of the world today there is so much confusion; we mistake appearances for reality.
We have ideas about masters: that they look a certain way, they will do something like perform miracles or give boons; or they will have long hair or a beard or wear white; or there will be big crowds around them or they will levitate; or they will speak sweetly in certain way or they will speak softly to us... we have a lot of concepts and beliefs about masters. There are many masters throughout the universe. There are many beautiful souls, with many levels of development.
We look at this graphic of the Tree of Life, in order to understand the external world. We see that the physical world is here and we see nine heavens and nine hells. All of those regions have beings in them, and in all of those regions we find masters.
So, throughout the heavens all of those beings who have transcended the intellectual animal state, that we are in, and gone beyond being a mere humanoid, have become masters at different levels; there is an infinitude of potential mastery. It is one thing to be a master, and it is another thing to have perfection in mastery or to become a resurrected master, and that is someone who has died and has been reborn in to a new body, a perfect body. Then, there are the Nirmanakayas, Sambhogokayas and Dharmakayas and beyond; many beautiful masters in the internal worlds. All of them share a characteristic which is great compassion, and all of them are doing their part to help humanity, to teach us, to guide us, but they do not teach us in the way we think, and in the way we expect, because we kill masters. We kill them, we imprison them, we torture them, we burn them alive, we put them on crosses... that has not changed today.
Just because we are modern does not mean that we are suddenly going to be different than we were when we crucified Jesus. We are actually worse now than we were back then. So the real masters remain anonymous, they know very well how dangerous we are, they do not go around displaying their powers like peacocks.
The ones that do go around displaying themselves are the ones who love attention and love power, and those are masters in the hell realms, they are black masters. They have a very small amount of power, because their power does not come from divinity, it comes from what they steal from others. Masters in the superior worlds, the more pure they become, the more perfect that they become, the more light they transmit, the light of Theos, divinity. So, the more power they have, but it is divine, it does not have ego; there is no pride, no lust, no envy, there is no vanity in that. It is impersonal. Their power comes from god and it works in the mysterious ways that god always works, in ways that our mind does not comprehend, it does not even see. But, black magicians or black masters, black yogis have the ego very alive, a lot of pride, a lot of lust and those qualities are not necessarily visible physically. They may appear very saintly, very sweet, very wise, very kind, very humble, but behind their sweet smiles is a dagger, and their power comes from hypnosis, manipulation of desires, manipulations of fear, promises of salvation for just a little bit of money or a little bit of allegiance or servitude. Their power comes from what they take from others, so it is limited, but it is bewildering and a beguiling power.
So, they are many masters, but in our condition—being asleep, being poorly educated, and having no spiritual sight—we are utterly unable to discriminate between the two. That is why the multitudes, when they were shown Jesus and Barabbas, choose to sacrifice and crucify the true master Jesus and save the liar, the manipulator, the criminal Barabbas, which happened in the Gospel.
Humanity cannot see the reality. To our mind, and its condition, we see the white magicians as black, and the black magicians as white. We see everything poorly, inaccurately, wrongly, and that is because psychologically humanity is ruled by desire, ruled by pride and vanity. We look to others and when we see them we feel comfortable, and we feel attracted. And, when someone contradicts those qualities, we feel uncomfortable; we do not want to deal with changing our lust and our pride. We want someone who will encourage our qualities, make us feel good about them. You see that in our society today. Our society celebrates degeneration. We do not condemn degeneration in the modern world, we welcome it. We celebrate all the forms of degeneration that, ethically speaking, create suffering. That is why we are incapable of recognising true mastery, because a true master does not agree with degeneration, ever. They are pure, beyond it.
When you study the actual religions, each of them taught to find the light. Now in the process of finding the light we need teachers, we need helpers, we need guides, but that is all that a physical teacher is; they are just a friend, a helper, they are not a god. But, in the modern world we think masters as gods or lords or super divine beings who can wave a magic wand and save us from all our problems and take us to heaven. That is simply not the case.
The Real Master
What we do find in the scriptures is a warning. This notion of masters, that we will find some robed person and be taken on some incredible spiritual journey is simply a way for people to sell books. But the scriptures tell us... what Jesus said for example:
“And behold, one came and said unto Jesus and said; Good master, what things should I do so that I have eternal life? And Jesus said to him; Why thoust call me good? There is none good but One, that is Theos.” —Matthew 19
So Jesus himself is rejecting the notion, that he be called master, or even good, he was pointing towards Theos, divinity. This contradicts how most Christians think about Christianity.
The Qur’an says:
“God does not command you to take angels or prophets as masters.” —Koran 3:9
If you cannot take angels or the prophets as a master, how are you going to take a physical person as a master? That would be absurd.
Samael Aun Weor said:
“Do not accept external masters in the physical plane.”
And yet even the "Gnostics" worship external masters in the physical plane, and they lose sight of the real message of Gnosis, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which is that the master is not outside of you. The true master is inside; it is the divinity in each of us. That is why Jesus said:
“There is none good but One, that is Theos.”
Theos is inside of us; that is where we find our master.
If we say that the real master is not outside of us and we need to look within, if we say that it is too dangerous to look for masters in the physical world because we cannot tell who is a master and who is not, and we need to look within for the real master, then we need to know what to look at, how to find where is it. Is it my thoughts? Is it the impulses that I feel? Is it signs and symbols that appear in my environment? Some people think that God is talking to them through numbers on clocks, or that the way that light comes through a window that makes shape on the wall that, that is God talking to them through shapes. We are so confused, but we do not need to be. We need to be educated. We need to understand the reality of who we are, and that is why the fundamental point of view of all genuine religions is, to know oneself, because everything we need to know about divinity, we find within ourselves, and that is why the Oracle of Delphi said:
“Know thyself, and thou shall know the universe and its gods.”
And that is why Krishna said:
“The fire of self-knowledge burns all karma to ashes.”
It is self-knowledge that gives self-realisation, not knowledge of the external world or following some master or guru that gives self-realisation. Self-realisation is knowledge of self, which is internal, not external.
The role of teachers, of gurus, is to point the way, and that is all. This mistaken notion that we have that, the master is going to save us... when we really look at it, it does not make much sense. In the previous era, in the Piscean age (which has already ended), was a time when people needed to rely on guides. It was the psychological condition of that era. But if we think about it in the modern Aquarian era, which is now, to think that we need a guru physically, and that that guru is going to give us all of our realisation and all of our potential, and all of our power and everything spiritual will come from that guru, is a little bit foolish.
If you think about it this way you will understand what I mean: think about a professor at a university. That professor has hundreds of students, maybe more. How many of those students will go out and become an expert in the same field of that professor? Probably very few, maybe a handful. And when those handful of students become experts in that field, will it be because of that professor, is that achievement of becoming a doctor, an engineer or a scientist, whatever, solely because they had that teacher in university? No, that would be absurd, because that student had hundreds of teachers, isn’t that true? From the time they were child, to the time they go in to their working life they have had many teachers, but can we say that one of those teachers was the sole reason that person became successful in their career? No, you cannot say that.
So, who is responsible? Why does that person become successful in their career? Because they worked hard. They brought out what was within them. It is their skill, it is what they are good at. No teacher gave them that, it is in them. All the teachers do is guide them, give them education, give them tips, give them help, point the way. Your spiritual life is exactly the same.
Anything you have ever achieved spiritually will be because of your own effort. No master, no God can give you that. If it were possible for some divinity outside of you to give you mastery, it would not be mastery. Think about it...
What is Mastery?
To be a master is to be an expert. It is to be skilful, it is to know what you are doing and to be very good at it.
Observe a master musician: they are not skillful because of their teacher. They are skillful because they practice a lot.
If you want to have mastery, you have to work; you have to earn it with your hands, with your heart, with your mind, and your body, but most of all, with your consciousness. Every part of you has to be engaged in that effort. So we need to study ourselves, and that is why we study the Tree of Life.
We need to understand spirit, consciousness, ego, personality, vital body, physical body and more. We need to know what these are, we need to be able to discriminate between them and recognise them in the way they influence our experiences from moment to moment. If you cannot tell me clearly and definitively what these things are in your daily life, then you need to study, because your daily life, your spiritual life, your spiritual well-being and your spiritual future are defined by these, you must know them. I cannot give you that knowledge, you must earn it, and you earn it by observing yourself. You study the doctrine, you practice the doctrine; you study the scripture, the terminology, the philosophy, the concept but then you put it in practice and you observe yourself, and you compare what you see in yourself with what you are studying. That is how you develop mastery, skill. You start to understand.
Where is the master in us? Not the body, not the vital body, not the personality, not the ego, not the consciousness. The spirit in us is our master. The great teacher Helena Blavatsky said:
“There are as many fathers in heaven as there are people on earth.”
Each of us has our own inner Atman, Paramatman, Brahma or Parabramha, our own Yidam. These are words from different traditions that point out exactly what the Christians call the “Father,” our own inner divinity, Theos or if you want, God. That is related here on the Tree of Life as Chesed. which is a Hebrew word that means “mercy.” In the Old Testament it is called Abraham, and who is Abraham? The father of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He is the father of humanity, the progenitor.
All these symbols point at the same thing, which is what we simply call Innermost, spirit, our being, the divinity in us that is particularised to us. We do not know about that because our spiritual eyes are blind, and our heart is closed; we are hypnotised by lust and pride, vanity and envy and when we try to pray we do not listen, instead we shout our desires out in to the darkness. That is why we do not hear God, because we are not listening. For us prayer is “give me.” To discover divinity requires that one knows how to listen.
Jesus explains how to find your master. He says:
“You shall love the Kyrios (Lord) your Theos (God) with all of your kardias (heart) and with all of your psyche (soul) and with all of your dianoia (mind) and all of your ischys (strength)." —Mark 12:30
“You shall love the Kyrios your Theos.“ In English, those of you who know a little bit of Christianity know that this is usually translated as, “You shall love the lord your god.” Unfortunately modern people, especially those with some Christian heritage, read right past these words lord and god. We just have these lazy assumptions about what these words mean; we do not actually understand them.
In Greek the word “Kyrios” can be translated as “lord,” but it implies something that is lost on the modern Christians. That word Kyrios implies the “head of the household,” the “one who is in charge.” In western culture we used to have lords and ladies, and the lords and ladies were the aristocracy who were in charge of the lands; they were responsible for the well being of everyone who lived in their domain. In its original inception that was a sacred duty, to be the one in charge of the well being of all of those who rely upon you. But, of course, humanity flipped that around and the lords and ladies became parasites sucking the life out of the populace instead of providing life to them.
This word “Kyrios” also means “master.” A true master in the heavenly worlds is a lord in the sense that they are responsible for providing the well being for those who are in their domain; it is their responsibility, it is a sacred duty. They are not there to take praise and money and followers and to heap it upon themselves like some sort of vestment that they wear boldly, that is not the role of a master. The role of the lord, of a master is to provide, to give, to protect; that is what a guru is supposed to do, a teacher, to give protection and nourishment, food.
Here, however, we are talking internally. “Kyrios your Theos” your inner divinity is supposed to be the lord or master of your household; not your physical house, your spiritual house, which is your mind. But, let me pose a question to you, if you look in to your mind and you reflect on your thoughts, your feelings and your impulses that you have had over the last few days, who is in charge of that? Who is directing that? Who is saying, “You thought! Go in to that house! Manifest in that house, thought! And you, emotion! Go manifest in that heart as emotion”? Who is bringing these thoughts and feelings and impulses to you? Who is the master of your household? Contemplate that! Because Jesus says; “You should love the Kyrios your Theos with all of your kardias.”
In a previous lecture called “what is the soul” we talked about this word kardias; obviously it is Greek, and in English it is usually translated as heart, but in reality it has a much more subtle meaning, more beautiful. Kardias can mean heart, but it can also mean mind, and it can also mean appetite. In Kabbalah, those qualities are what we call “Nephesh,” the animal soul.
Jesus continues: “and with all your psyche.”
Psyche is another interesting word in Greek. In modern times we think of psychology as simply about mind, but in Greek it simply means intellect, what you think with. Psyche also means life force, soul.
The phrase continues; “and with all your Dianoia.” Another interesting word. Usually translated as “mind,” it means “understanding.”
“You shall love the Kyrios your Theos with all of your understanding.”
That is interesting. It closes with; “and with all of your ischys.” In the bible that is usually translated as strength, which is somewhat accurate, but “ischys” means more, because it also means “force, power, vitality, will.”
So, this is a very compelling statement that Jesus gave. These terms - kardias, psyches, dianoia, ischys - point out everything about us, psychologically speaking and spiritually speaking: our mind, our heart, our body, our energy, our power, everything we have... “you shall love the master, your god, with everything you have.”
Now, let me ask you a question; how are you going to love someone that you have never seen? How are you going to love someone you have never met? Can you? How do you love something that you have no experience of? So, who is Jesus talking to? He is giving the instructions, but it is implying something very significant: “You shall love the Kyrios your Theos, the lord, the master, your inner divinity with everything you have.” This is the greatest commandment. Are we anywhere close to even the beginning that commandment? We are not. Even those that call themselves spiritual, how many of us have seen our inner Kyrios-Theos? Have spoken to our inner Kyrios-Theos? How many of us have that experience? So how can we claim to love god if we have no experience of god?
Well, let me tell you, some of us do have experience, and that means all of us can have it. When you have had that experience you will understand this very profoundly, because the experience of directly seeing, perceiving with all of your senses the divinity that is inside of you, it changes you; it is an experience that is so powerful and provides so much insight and comprehension of the reality of our situation, there is no concept, no word, no scripture, no class can convey that, only the experience can.
The way you have that experience is by studying what these terms really mean, studying yourself, what these things are in you. This sentence gives you the clue, of how to find your master. So you have to work with these forces, these parts of yourself, we study them as the three brains.
The Three Brains
This is where the work begins: here and now, right now, looking at yourself, studying these aspects of yourself. We have been talking about them all day: your intellect, which we call the intellectual brain; your emotions, which we call the emotional brain; and the motor-instinct-sexual brain, which are in the body. You need to learn about these, not just conceptually, but through observation, through experience.
Right now, humanity ignores this. Humanity does not teach us about this, our culture does not teach about it, our parents do not teach about it, our schools do not, so we do not really get this. You can look at this and sort of get it conceptually, intellectually it is not hard to understand. “Sure, we have thoughts, we have emotions, we have a body with impulses. That is easy, I got it!” No you do not! You do not get it from getting the terms, that is not understanding, that is just intellect, that is just thought, it is a concept; its fine, we need that, we start from there. But, when you get the concept in your head, the idea of something, ideas are managed by the intellectual brain. The intellect is where we learn names, and words, and definitions, and terminology, and concepts... and of course, you know nowadays, we love the intellect. Modern society believes that the intellect is the pinnacle of humanity, that our greatest power is in the intellect, and we worship and adore the intellect and its dizzying powers of logic and reasoning. There is no denying the intellect is a very useful tool, but in esotericism we understand that each of these brains is simply a machine, each one has a given ability, but cannot do nothing beyond that.
So if you compare them with basic technology, you have a hammer, and a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, if you know about tools, so they are all different, each has a function, each has a use. Individually, they can do a little bit, but the real power comes when you learn to combine them, use them together.
If intellect is where we have conceptualisation and reasoning, the emotional brain is where we process our feelings about things: likes and dislikes, emotion, attraction and repulsion, love and hate, happiness and sadness, all the different types of moods that we experience. That is very easy to understand, but the emotional brain has a terrific amount of intelligence or capability to process information, more than the intellect. The emotional brain is much more sensitive than the intellect and it is much faster; it is 30,000 times faster.
Then we have the body with its motor-instinct-sexual centres. The motor centre which corresponds to where the spine reaches the physical brain in the head, we have a magnetic and a nervous collection of elements there at the base of your head in the back, and we call it “motor” because that is where we learn and develop the capability of the body, to walk, to run, to cook, to talk, to perform all the actions that we need to learn when we are growing up; driving a car, cycle a bicycle, play sports, manoeuvring the body and using it for all the different functions that it provides, that is related to the motor centre of that brain.
At the base of the spinal column related with the cauda equina, the coccyx, the root area of the spinal column we have the instinctual centre, and this part of the nervous system is where we are most ruled by those instinctive behaviours, the basis of survival for example. We have extraordinarly rapid processing of information to keep us alive.
Now, these are all inter related; motor-instinct-sex, they are tightly integrated with each other and the third part of them is the sexual centre which handles everything related with the sexual energy, the endocrine system, hormones, procreation, all of them. Those three parts, motor-instinct-sex, are very beautiful balanced in us and they require no management on our part, they simply work. The have a beautiful harmony. That is why we depicted a triangle with three parts, because those three parts, motor-instinct-sex, have no flaw in their mechanical function. When we are threatened instinct takes over; when we need to perform a task the motor skill takes over; when procreation is an opportunity the sexual centre takes over... those are the mechanical habits, mechanical behaviours that the body process on its own, it requires no conscious intervention to function. So in terms of nature, those are functioning as a beautiful representation of the Law of Three, which is the power of creation in nature but the intellect and emotion do not have the same situation.
If you study yourself, you will discover that you probably have a habit related with one of these three parts. Some of us are very intellectual habitually; the way we interact with the world, the way we deal with each other and with ourselves is through the intellect, reasoning, and logic. We think logically if; A is A then A is A, and that is it for us. We are all about logic, and our way of dealing with our life is logical.
For an emotional type of person, they deal with their life through their feelings about things: their likes, their dislikes, the way it makes them feel in their heart. So, they may not have a reason, they may not be able to explain it logically, but their heart moves them to behave, to act, to do things. Now you can imagine that if one person in a marriage is intellectual and one person in the marriage is emotional they are going to have a lot of difficulty understanding each other.
But then you have a third type of person who is more or less instinctive, impulsive, they act before they have a chance to feel or think. So we have three tendencies among people that influence or behaviour and we all suffer from this.
One of the first things we have to learn in genuine spirituality is about our three brains; studying how they work in us, all of the time, studying our thoughts, our emotions, and our impulses. Now when you are doing that, to clearly observe them all, if you are trying to study your emotions with your intellect you are going to have a problem, because emotions are not intellectual. And, if you are trying to study your impulses with your emotions, you are going to be struggling to understand them, because impulses are not emotional, and they are not intellectual, they are just impulsive.
So, to truly understand oneself, you have to learn to see all three of these as simply machines that process information, each and in their own way; each is useful, but you need to be conscious of them. This implies a fourth factor, intellect, emotion, action in the body, but the fourth factor: awareness, consciousness, to be aware of all of this. To be capable of seeing thoughts as the arise and not simply reacting to them; of being aware of emotions as they arise and not simply reacting to them and acting upon them; and seeing and experiencing impulses in the body but not acting on them, but being aware of oneself and being in control of your psychological house.
Putting the Inner House in Order
To be in control of your psychological house you need to be present, to be attentive, to be here and now, watching; not mechanical, not on autopilot, but watching yourself with a sense of indifference, a sense of distance from the “play” you are observing. What you will discover is that these three brains are like elephants, and you will see that in this graphic of meditation we use an elephant as one of the primary symbols.
This elephant symbol has a lot of interesting significance, but for today's purpose, we just want to talk about how each brain in us is an animal power, like an elephant: very powerful, very capable, but wild. Who is in charge? Why does the intellect run, and run, and run... if you really think that you as a soul, as consciousness, are in charge of your thoughts then stop thinking right now. Don’t have a single thought!
Who had a thought? Who had anxiety because you had a thought? Disappointment, frustration, those are emotions. Who got tense? The body. We are not really in charge of our three brains, we need to be in charge.
If we want to be a king or queen in our kingdom, we need to gain control of our kingdom. Someone who is a genuine king or queen of their kingdom can shut these down, at will, suspend them. It is like turning off your computer at home: you know how to do it, you just turn it off. We do not know how to turn thoughts off, we do not know how to turn off emotion, and we do not know how to turn of instinct and sexual impulse and motor impulse, because the truth is, as a consciousness, a soul, we are not in charge of our house, and we do not know who is. I will give you a hint though, when you fall asleep tonight, listen, that is it. When you go home, and you go to bed, and you fall asleep, I want you to listen, not to the external sounds, but to the voices in your head. Listen to them, see how many you can identify, how many different and distinct voices you hear in the moments before you fall asleep. Tell me next time you come to the lecture.
The one who is serious about learning about the truth of spirituality, the truth of their soul, and meeting their real master must gain control of themselves, of these three brains. To gain control of the body is relatively easy, on a superficial level. For an example; when we sit to meditate what is the first instruction we give? Relax. Sit down, take a posture, and relax.
So let us say for example you are having a conflict, you are having a big problem and you are suffering, and the way you are dealing with it has not solved the problem, it is intensifying and you need to fix it. I am going to give you some free advice that you can apply when you face this situation: step one, sit down and relax, or lay down; in other words take control of the body. Put it in a rested posture, for meditation or lay on a couch. Relax completely. Pay attention only to the body and relax it fully, go from muscle to muscle, starting at any part of the body and go very carefully through every muscle of the body, being aware of it and then relaxing it. And this should take you some time: it can take you a half an hour or an hour to do that. If you do that with full attention, the end of that hour or half hour you will be very relaxed.
Then, switch to the intellect and observe it. If it is not still yet then you need to observe it patiently, calmly, without responding to any of its thoughts, and wait and relax it, in the same way you relax the body; you simply observe it and allow it to run itself out, until it becomes still. And, it will.
Eventually the body will be rested, the mind will be quite, but then you have the hardest one, which is the emotion, because you know, when you have a problem, the emotional part is the hardest part. Yes, when you have a problem you have physical stress, you have the impulse to run around and try solve it. You also have an intellect that is running around non-stop “how do I fix it? What do I do? Maybe I should do this, maybe I should do that!” And the mind goes one after another, bouncing around like a ping pong ball, trying to find an answer. And it never does, but we have the habit of trying.
In this exercise you put the body at rest, you put the intellect at rest, but then you got the emotional part, which is the hardest part, because when you have a problem your emotions are churned up, you have anxiety, and fear, perhaps anger and frustration, and those are very difficult to control but the secret, is in that picture of the elephants.
You see, if you put your body to rest: still, silent and relaxed; and the intellect is still, silent and relaxed, it is like these two elephants on the either side of the one in the middle. You see in Asia, when they want to train a wild elephant or an elephant that is really upset, that is unable to control itself, they tie it between two calm ones. They go about their activities, and that one in the middle is forced to calm down; it has no choice because it cannot run wild. The influence of the calm ones allows it to settle down. Not through violence, not through drugs, not through any kind of external chemical or any other person like we always run to our friends, or we run to the guru, or we run to the internet to try to solve our problems, no! We use the tools that we have on hand: we relax the body, we relax the intellect, and we keep the emotion between them. And, if we are patient, the emotion calms, it settles, it becomes relaxed.
When all of that is relaxed, we have clarity, and then it is possible to solve the problem, when the mind is calm. When the mind is agitated and the body is full of stress we cannot solve anything, we are only going to make it worse, so to really solve a problem that is how you can do it.
The Three Traitors and the Antichrist
Going deeper, we need to grasp that as much as we need these tools, intellect, emotion and motor-instinct-sex, in reality, in their current condition, they are traitors, because they function negatively in us. They cause suffering, because we are not in charge of them. That is why, in all the different religions, the three brains are symbolised as three traitors. In the gospels related to Christianity, the intellect, which is always reasoning and using logic, appears very honourable, very reasonable, but uses that reasoning to wash his hands of his crimes: “I did not have any choice. You guys, the population, chose to sacrifice and crucify the Christ, not me, Pontius Pilate, I just did my duty as the governor of Rome.”
You see we have put the intellect in charge of our little kingdom, we do not realise that the intellect is Pilate, the one who betrays Jesus and sends him to the crucifixion, because the populace demands it. Who does the populace represent in us? All of the egos that we have: our pride, our envy, our lust, our fear, all of that in us that hates Christ, hates divinity because divinity is opposed to the existence of the egos, and our egos do not want to die. So, that is how our intellect becomes Pilate: it uses logic and reasoning to betray the inner master. It always justifies itself, and it appears very honourable in doing so.
In our emotional brain is Caiaphas the high priest. Caiaphas represents the traditional religion, belief in god, the old ways, the heritage that we brought with us from our forefathers, that wants to do things in traditional ways, and hates Christ because Christ wants revolution and Caiaphas does not.
Caiaphas is a high priest, dresses in spiritual robes, appears very mystical and holy, very beautiful, but is a demon, and they call it the demon of evil will, because even though he appears very saintly and beautiful, he is the one who demands the crucifixion of Jesus, the assassination of divinity. That symbol from ancient times represents our emotional centre, the beliefs we have about ourselves... we believe we are holy and spiritual people, we believe we are inherently this and that, all of that is Caiaphas, who does not want change and resents god for demanding change. So Caiaphas always seeks to assassinate Christ.
Finally the most famous, Judas, who represents the motor-instinct-sex. Judas the former disciple of Jesus, betrays him and turns him over to the authorities so eventually he is crucified. Judas sells his master for silver, and that represents how he sells the solar light, for a lunar payment, and to be a lunar payment means it belongs to mechanical nature. So even though Judas was a disciple of Jesus, he betrayed his master, the solar light, for a vain pleasure, that fleeting pleasure. Rhat is what our motor-instinct-sex does in us. That motor-instinct-sex brain says: “I can fornicate a little, I can look a pornography, I can orgasm a little, I can do this, I can do that, I can follow these old habits I have from the past. I can take pleasure and enjoy it for myself.”
That is how our inner Judas betrays the inner Christ.
So, those are the three traitors. If you study your three brains, you see that each one is very mechanical; it is just a machine that process information and in us it is processing information in an egotistical way, because the consciousness is not in charge.
They are not very organised. There is a lot of chaos, and that is why in our experiences of life from one moment to the next, and one days to the next, we are in so much confusion all of the time. Our intellect does not agree with our emotion, and neither agrees with the impulses in the body, and so our internal house is in a state of disorder. We think logically we should do this, but our emotion wants to take us in another direction, and our impulses wants to take us in a completely different direction. So we are always confused, meaning, we are stuck. We do not have unity in our house, we cannot move forward, we cannot move in any given direction in a sustained way, because as soon as we start walking one way one of the brains says: “Oh no! We should not go that way we should go this way!” And so we start shifting and then, “Oh no! What about that over there!” And we get distracted, constantly bouncing from one thing to another. This applies to everything: relationships, careers, religions, spirituality, simple tasks even during the day, constantly distracted. Who stirs that up? Who benefits? Who profits from the state of humanity? God does not, we do not. The Pilate, Caiaphas and Judas in us are mechanical, egotistical, flawed functions that ultimately must be destroyed, either by us or by nature; but, they are constantly being manipulated, influenced by the antichrist.
If there is a Christ, if there is a light that gives life to all things, what is the shadow of that? What is the opposite of that? The bible calls it antichrist, and in Greek it is Theros.
So that is the nature of the world, the nature of our modern society. It is all the black magicians that are profiting from that. It is all the demons, and devils, and witches that we think are fantastical, that actually exist and that profit from us being stupid, and uneducated.
When our intellect justifies our desire for fornication, or adultery, or to act with envy, we perform that action and we gain a brief momentary pleasure from it, and we accrue a karma from it, but we do not see that there are other entities around that action that benefit from us committing those actions; those who inspired us to do it, the ones who influenced us to do it, the ones who wanted us to do it, both inside of us and outside of us.
The egos themselves benefit because they get fatter, they get bigger. Every time our anger demands that we act on anger, we strengthen the anger. Every time our lust demands that we act on lust we strengthen the lust. Not only that, but any external forces, people, powers, that are also influencing that lust in us are also benefit, they receive power over us.
We are not in a little bubble. We are not isolated in our tiny little sphere completely separate from everything else; we are not. We are surrounded all of the time by forces that are always trying to influence us, both good and bad, and we are completely ignorant to it. We think “I feel angry” and we think that anger is just because of us and we do not realise that there may be someone around us who likes to have us angry, and they provoke us, because that anger feeds them, they benefit from that anger, or our lust... lust, anger, fear, envy, are the most common forces that are manipulated by others in us.
All of that as a whole is antichrist. The bible talks about an antichrist and people nowadays think that it is a person, it is not! Antichrist is the human psychology of today, because it is opposed to Christ. It is the multitude that crucifies Christ in every era, and it is alive in us.
The Way to Direct Knowledge
So to find our true master, we need to tame all of that. The steps are simple: learn about your three brains, make them passive and receptive, no longer projecting, no longer active and out of control but restrained and under control. If you can put the intellect, the emotion, and the motor-instinct-sex in to a passive receptive state, your mind and body will be serene, and what is active there? It is consciousness, soul; no desire. It is content, insightful, present, serene, and capable of whatever life throws at it, without being disturbed. That is what is displayed on top of that graphic of meditation, the monk; serene, having achieved serenity, and can then gather real information and approach their real inner master and receive teachings from that master.
Stated another way: if your intellect, emotions and motor-instinct-sex are completely agitated, they trap and condition the consciousness within them, and that is how we all feel all of the time. Thoughts constantly raging, emotions constantly raging, and impulses in the body raging, and all of it in conflict; none of it unified in a single direction but always scattered. And, in the midst of that, we are trying to find god, but we are in a chaos in our inner house.
There is so much noise in our inner house, in our inner temple, we cannot hear divinity because we are making a ruckus. Our mind is screaming and shouting all of the time, our emotions are screaming and shouting all of the time, and the impulses in the body.
When we learn to meditate, and we learn to self-observe, this is what you need to learn: intellect, emotion, motor-instinct-sex and personality must all become passive, they must stop; meaning, they need someone to train them: the consciousness. Remember the guys riding the elephants? You are the guy on the elephant, but you do not just have one elephant, you have a team of elephants and they are all wild. You have a big job! But listen: you will not fulfil it unless you start.
Yes, it is daunting, it looks overwhelming, it looks impossible, but it is not impossible. It is only a bad situation because you allowed it to get out of hand. If you start exercising your will as a consciousness, not with violence, not with ferocity like being cruel to yourself, no! These brains and the personality are necessary, but they need guidance, they control, they need to be trained, they need to learn to work properly. When they become trained and they work properly they become tools, tools that we need in order to advance in the work.
When someone has balanced these elements and has made the consciousness active, they are changing their state of being. Their whole way of being is different!
Look at all these terms on this page, all of these are passive and receptive except the consciousness which is active and receptive. When you look at yourself, and you see that your intellect is active and projective, it means what? That the intellect is spouting thoughts, concepts, talking about this, talking about that, constantly running, projecting itself. It is like a non-stop chaos, they call it a stream of consciousness but that is not consciousness, it is a stream of garbage, because if you really study your thoughts, really, be honest, most of your thoughts are utter nonsense, most of them are completely useless, most of them are repetition, thoughts that you already had, you think things you thought yesterday. So what are you gaining from that? Who is benefiting?
Contemplate this, because a thought uses energy, that is why when you use your intellect a lot, like if you work in an intellectual type of job, or you have to think, and think, and think, and figure things our logically, you become tired. First the intellect becomes tired and then when you have to keep working, let’s say you have to keep working until eleven or twelve o clock, and your intellect is already tired from so much thinking, then you start stealing the energy from your other brains. You are in a great disequilibrium because of that. That intellect, so desperate to keep its processing up, starts to steal energy from other places, and that is why we become so exhausted and that is why we develop psychological problems, huge disequilibrium’s; depression, psychosis, all kinds of things that emerge out of abuse of these brains.
It is the same for the emotional brain, some people have jobs that abuse the emotional centre, like someone that has to greet customers all day long and has to be happy and cheerful all of time, even when the customers are mean, you just have to be nice and just be kind, and it is fake because you are lying, they are being mean to you and you are being kind to them but in your mind you want to hurt them. That takes a lot of energy, moreover it is making you a liar, you are not being honest, and so you become exhausted, and when you become exhausted in the emotional brain you start to steal energy from the other centres, and everything becomes out of balance.
Then you have people who have motor or instinct type of jobs, labouring or running here and there, doing lots of manual tasks, they also become exhausted and they start to steal energy from the other brains. You see ideally, you would use each one of these a little bit every day, and then rest; you would use them in balance. So yeah, a little bit of intellect, a little bit of emotion, a little bit of instinct, and rest so that you are in balance, you do not abuse any of them, but our modern life does not make that easy.
The main thing is, what I was getting at is, if the intellect is projective, constantly pushing thoughts out, and emotion is constantly projective, constantly pushing emotions out, if the body is always projective, pushing out impulses, that is energy, a lot of energy, and on top of all that is the personality, which is our name, and our face, and our history, and our culture, it is that mask that we use to talk to others. That Is also very projective because we are also trying to “be cool”, talk in a way that people will like us, using the right language for each person that we meet... for this type of person we got to talk this way, like street slang with this person or educated level type of talk with this type of person, that is personality. We change our appearance and behaviour to project an image of ourselves, it is projective.
When these are projective they are expending energy. Every day you have a little quantity of energy, and each one requires its own particular quality of energy. When you expend it, and you start stealing the other types of energy, you run at a deficit, you run at a loss, which if you know in any type of system is harmful. If you run constantly at a loss the system will break down, it cannot sustain that, it will be destroyed, and that is what is happening to humanity.
So our job, to be happy, to solve problems, to be contented, to achieve serenity, and then from that platform to gain knowledge of our true master, we have to make all of these passive and receptive except in the moments they are needed.
When you are driving your car, you do not need to think, you do not need emotion, you need your motor centre, and a little bit of instinct, but that is it. But, you notice when you are driving your car you’re blasting the music, bringing all the emotions out, or you will talk on the phone, intellectually or emotionally... we are always using all these brains, but without awareness of it. So, we waste their energy, we make them very projective, and then when we get home to meditate we are exhausted, we have no energy, everything is depleted, and we are so exhausted that we fall asleep, we cannot meditate. It is not complicated; tone it down.
If let all of these become passive and receptive, it means that instead of the intellect churning out thought after thought, it listens. Instead of the emotion surging with all kinds of qualities of like and dislike, it is simply listening. And, instead of the body being impulsive and wanting to run here and there and being active, it is simply still and awaiting instruction. The personality: silent. Consciousness? Also receptive, listening, but it is active in the sense that it is on, it is actively listening. This is how you meditate.
If you can do this, what you have done is, you have made the energy in the body rests, the energy in emotion rests, the intellect rests; soul, active, listening, not projecting a desire, “please god give me” no! Listening. And what is that listening to? Everything. Everything that comes in to its field of perception it is observing. It is observing the body, the intellect, the emotion, the personality and everything it can perceive, and if that state of listening and observation is sustained, and all of those remain passive and receptive, this (the consciousness) can perceive God.
Look what is right next to Tiphereth: Chesed, the being, Abraham, Atman, the spirit. They are directly connected to each other. If you want to hear the voice of god, if you want to meet your master, if you want to know the reality of divinity, centre yourself in the consciousness, free of all of those restrictive brains, and egos, and desires, and elements; put them all to rest. And, you cannot do that meditating ten minutes a day, or once a week. You have to live this, constantly, learning to be in charge of your three brains and your personality, and your consciousness all of the time.
If you want to awaken in the internal worlds and perceive god, you must awaken here first, and this is how you do it, you must love the Kyrios your Theos, your inner master with all of your power, which is this, everything you got.
If you have questions please ask.
Questions and Answers
Audience: The first time I came here is asked you, I said; how does someone do this when living a normal life?
Instructor: Well, let’s talk about faith. Today people talk about faith as belief, as a concept that you have an emotional attachment to. The concept of Jesus, or Buddha, or Krishna, that those followers have, is a picture in their mind, and a concept with a label; Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and so they have stories associated with that concept, and they believe in that, that creates an emotional quality of connection, security. They call that faith... that is not faith. It is belief. That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, and that is something that is important in different stages of our journey. Faith is something else.
In the ancient times, when someone was called to face a tribunal in the court of justice, and they were called as a witness, do you know how they would give their testimony? They would say; “I give faith that this is true.” Very serious thing, because in that use of the term it means; “I witnessed it.” That is what faith is; it was experienced, it was factual, it was real. That is faith, that is how you do it. You work with what you have got, and you develop experience that confirms or denies, so you start here. Study yourself, you study: “Do I really have an intellectual brain? And if I do, how does it work?” And as you study it you will realise: “Wow, this thing that they call intellect, that our world says is the best thing that we have, is actually the stupidest thing we have out of all of these!” You know why? The intellect is the slowest and the dumbest, because the intellect only believes what it was already told. If your parents told you something, or your teachers in grade school told you something, and that was the first time you heard it, you will believe that that is the truth. And, when someone comes along later and says; “No, no, no, it is not like that!” you will fight, and fight to prove them wrong, because you believe in the first thing you were told, you have an attachment to that.
That is why the intellect is dumb, because the intellect cannot see past its own reasoning. Reasoning is a vicious circle, logic, concrete logic, it runs in circles and it chases its tail, and you want the truth of that? Watch two intellectuals argue, they go nowhere, they run in circles trying to outdo each other, and neither can win, because anytime you present one concept, you can always present an equally compelling opposite, and the conflict between them can never be solved by the intellect. That is why the intellect is dumb!
It is also the slowest center. The emotional brain is 30,000 times faster, the motor brain is 30,000 times faster than emotion, instinct is 30,000 times faster than motor, and sex is 30,000 times faster than instinct. So you see as you go deeper, things get faster, and faster, and faster, and more and more beyond our current capacity to perceive or control.
So here is an example: Brain, when I say the word you have a concept related to that term right? You picture this grey cloud looking thing that you saw in grade school or you saw in a jar somewhere: a brain. But, if someone says a hurtful word, lets say a racial slur, or a derogatory word, the pain you will feel emotionally from being accused of something will hit you first before the intellect can interpret what the word was. If you do not believe me, then watch next time when somebody offends you. You will see; “wow the emotions are much faster than the intellect.”
If you get in a fight with somebody, you will be so overcharged and angry, before you even realise what you are fighting about. Intellectually you cannot even say; “we are fighting about this and that” you do not even know, you are just mad, anybody experience that? Yes? That is because emotion is a lot faster than intellect.
Motor skill is faster than both of them. If you put an intellectual in a car without much driving experience they are going to be logically trying to think of everything they should do, their motor skills are not well developed yet. But someone who has a lot of experience of driving with their motor skill, they will be skilful at it; they do not think about, the motor skill just does it. Instinct is even faster, while the sexual sense is even faster then that.
When you meet somebody, and you have a sexual affinity, your sexual brain will know it before you are even in the same room; you will know it before you will even see them, because the sexual centre radiates very far beyond the body and can sense people at great distances, and it will know; “there is a target!”
Your sexual centre targets, at a great range, people that have a sexual affinity to you. Those people who are very impulsive will follow that, like donkeys after a carrot. They will just chase it, they will be fascinated by that sexual affinity then they will get themselves in to a huge mess, because they do not control their three brains!
The sexual centre is the fastest of all of these, but it is not the fastest sense that we have. Consciousness is faster than all of them, but in a sense it is almost wrong to say it is faster. We experience our three brains here in Malkuth, in the physical world, in our physical body. The motor-instinct-sexual brain is related to Malkuth and Yesod. The emotional brain is related with Hod, in the astral body. The intellectual brain is related with Netzach, in the mental body. Tiphereth is related with consciousness. When you study the Tree of Life, the higher you ascend, the closer you are getting to reality, and the fewer conditions they are and fewer laws, which means things are faster, more immediate, beyond time.
Time exists here in the physical world, yet in the higher levels there is no such thing as time. Consciousness is rooted in that which is not of time. It can perceive without the interference of time, or without the interference of the three brains.
Someone who is awake, meaning the consciousness is awake, active, receptive, can perceive things before the personality, motor-instinct-sex, emotion, or intellect, and that perception is on many levels. It can be intuitive, it can be visual, it can be auditory, it can be spatial, it depends on the degree of awakening of that person. But, consciousness is beyond time.
So, as fast as these brain can be, the consciousness can perceive far faster, because it is not limited by time. So that is how when someone is developing consciousness and awakening, they know things before they happen, and that occurs in levels, there are degrees and different levels in which that happens. More questions?
Audience: I think the question I was really trying to ask was, without the application of the ego there is nothing we can do.
Instructor: There is a passage in the New Testament that says:
“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” Romans 12:3
Part of learning and being passive and receptive in the intellect, emotion, and impulse, is acceptance.
We, psychologically, are constantly fighting, and fighting with ourselves. We have a problem and our intellect is fighting, and our emotions are fighting, and our body is fighting... we need to stop. It sounds counter intuitive or contradictory, but you know how you solve a problem? You stop thinking about it. When you had a big problem and you have talked about, and nobody has got a solution, then one day you are taking out the garbage, or you are taking a shower, then Ding! The answer comes, and it is so obvious! The answer is so obvious all along, but you could not see it because you mind is such a chaos. And, in the moment when your mind was calm, and you were doing some simple thing, the answer is right there, obvious, right in your face the whole time.
Most people have had some experience like that to know what I am describing. The intellect, emotion, and motor-instinct- sex in us have been overrun by our fear, and by our anger, and lust, and all of that, all of that has to be put under control, made passive, made quiet. But, if you go to your friends on the internet, or go looking for some master to give you insight, they will just confuse you more, and they will take your money on the way.
Samael Aun Weor wrote:
“In this day and age it is very dangerous to simply follow someone, what is best is to seek the inner master. The best thing is to follow our I Am, the best thing is to learn how to travel in the astral body in order to visit the temples of the white lodge, and to receive the teachings directly in the temple. This is why we advise our disciples not to follow anyone. Let our disciples follow their own self. Each one of the disciples has to follow their splendid and luminous inner being, each one has to adore their I Am. We beg, beseech our disciples not to follow us, we do not want henchmen or followers. We have written this book so that, you, our friends, may find your own internal master, your splendid I Am. The innermost is your master, follow him.”
If you would like to learn more of what was described in this lecture, we advise to read very carefully the book, Major Mysteries by Samael Aun Weor.
