In Gnosis we always seek to study the laws that govern the expression of the psyche, the soul, of our consciousness. We seek to understand our place, in a cosmological scale, in relation to God and to our current physical existence. It is important to know that γνῶσις gnosis as a Greek term that signifies direct knowledge. It does not mean theory. It does not mean something that is interesting intellectually, or something to debate. It is not a philosophy to be argued for or against. Instead, it pertains to our direct knowledge of fundamental laws within the universe. And so, it is by understanding these laws and how they apply to our physical life, is that we will be able to advance in spiritual life.
Today we’re going to discuss what people typically call “reincarnation,” and we are going to clarify many misconceptions about the term and about how it applies to our present level of being.
We use the terms return and recurrence in replace of what people typically denominate reincarnation. Most individuals believe that reincarnation is the reincorporation of the psyche within different bodies. But in truth, within Gnostic esotericism, reincarnation has a much more rigorous application to spiritual development. Reincarnation means to willingly choose one’s body, to be cognizant of one’s incarnation within a certain physical circumstance or situation. It also refers to the manifestation of Christ, the supreme deity, divinity, the energy of God, within a specific individual or initiate that has fully prepared him or herself through development.
Typically what people denominate reincarnation or the transference of the soul within different bodies, we call that return, because all of us typically do not remember where we came from, because we lack cognizance. We don’t typically have that direct knowledge of who we were in past lives. Instead, we have returned to a new body without any cognizance or remembrance.
In the Greek myth, I believe that’s referenced by the river of Eunoe, in which the souls would drink the water of hell and they would forget what had happened to them. Specifically, if we don’t have cognizance of where we came from, who we were, where we have been, what was our past personality and identity, name, culture, it means that we have mechanically returned to this body. It means that we have not chosen our specific incarnation.
Recurrence is another matter pertaining to cyclical events within one’s physical life: the repetition of circumstances.
We are going to explain these three terms more in depth, in terms of our relationship to these laws.
In synthesis, we have this image known as the Bhavacakra within Buddhism. We have a beautiful course online on glorian.org, which specifically explains this symbol, which is essential to Buddhism. We’re not going to explain all the intricacies of this image because we have a course available and it would take many lectures to explain it.
In synthesis this image is a wheel, pertaining to the cyclical manifestation of beings within different levels of existence. We see that there is a figure gripping this wheel with his teeth. This figure is known as Yama, which means “death.” In the center we have six levels or modes of existence. We have the humans, the demigods, the gods, the animals, the demons, and the hungry ghosts. These are different types of psychology, psychological ways of being. Because bhava means “becoming,” a way of being, a level of being, as we say in these studies. People have typically denominated this image as the Wheel of Samsara, which is mistaken. It is really the Bhavacakra: “wheel of becoming,” because, depending on our psychological state, depending on our attachments, or lack thereof, will determine whether or not we cycle through these different states of being.
These beings within this wheel of suffering, within different states of attachment, cling to a mistaken sense of identity. The essential tenant of Buddhism, which we will explain in relation to this study, pertains to how one’s psychological way of being attracts one’s life. Our psychological state determines our life, for as Buddha taught in the Dhammapada: “Mind proceeds phenomena. We become what we think.” And this determines our life. If we perform good actions, then good results will follow, like the cart following an ox. And if we perform bad deeds then likewise bad results will follow. This is particularly relevant in the doctrine of karma, which we are going to explain.
In synthesis, this image portrays how all of us, all beings within this universe, cycle within this ever-recurring and ever-rotating wheel of becoming. There is no freedom from suffering within these realms. In particular relation to us in the human state, it is easy to determine and look to see how the beings of the demon realm obviously suffer. Human beings with many problems suffer. It’s challenging to understand the other realms of “being,” such as the gods or the demigods, but even they have a type of attachment―attachment to states of bliss, which for them is suffering. To comprehend these states we need to awaken our perception, awaken our consciousness.
Now, all beings within these realms are subject to laws of nature, in which they have no control. Typically, it is our lack of cognizance which produces our suffering. Because whether we are in a humanoid state or we have many blessings―such as the demigods or the gods within our life, because these don’t only represent realms of different universes or realms of being, they also pertain to states of psychology that every person possesses―whether or not we have many blessings, many gifts, or many types of comforts, these in the end will be lost. These in the end will be reduced to dust. Therefore we have to analyze our psychology and really determine what is it that is important to know.
This why we study return, recurrence, and reincarnation, because we seek to understand the laws in which we are subjected. Because if we are ignorant of these laws, then we cannot change our way of being. But if we are cognizant of these laws and experience, and how we, due to our state of mind, cycle within different types or states of being, of suffering, it is by knowing these things that we can change it, that we can transcend this wheel.
As we see in this image, there is a figure of a buddha or a bodhisattva, an illuminated initiate or being that has transcended this wheel, has escaped these different states of being, these levels of being, and has transcended these cycles of manifestation of being and of cyclical existence.
So again, this is not a theory. This is something we need to verify with experience.
Typically when we think of reincarnation or return, we think of Hinduism or Buddhism, and typically do not acknowledge that this doctrine of transmigration of souls has existed even within Western doctrine. Sadly, it has been manipulated or taken out of the scriptures and the teachings of Christianity, especially.
The Greek Mysteries of Transmigration
We find the Greek figure Pythagoras, who is a great master of the White Lodge: those souls that have transcended that wheel of becoming and have entered into a perfect state of peace and cognizance. Some people call them supermen, initiates, bodhisattvas. Pythagoras is precisely such an individual who taught that all beings and all things cycle and manifest in cyclical ways. As a result of that they suffer.
Now what’s interesting to note in this image we have Pythagoras. The name Pythagoras comes from pythios―which means or signifies the name of Apollo. Ἀπόλλων Apollo, in Greek, is “Christ,” a figure of the solar god, the sun deity. Pythagoras also has the name Agora which means “market,” marketplace.
The serpent of the market, we could say, if we have studied German esotericism, we find the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who also knew this science, in which he explained how he tried to give this type of doctrine of the eternal return, which we are going to explain, to the public by teaching in the marketplace. Pythagoras precisely had the wisdom of the serpent in his teaching, the wisdom of sexual alchemy. As we explain, the serpent pertains to the divine Mother Kundalini. He was a great master who taught amongst the markets, teaching and gathering disciples, through the wisdom of the serpent, like Nietzsche did fictionally through his Iranian Prophet in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The word metampsychosis―if we break the word down―comes from the Greek μετεμψύχωσις, metempsychousthai. Meta refers to “after” or “beyond.” And empsychos means “to animate, so that which is beyond our animated form. Anima, in Latin means “soul,” as well. It pertains to how the soul animates different bodies within different existences, before and after one’s current state of knowledge. Meta also related with em, “to be within the soul,” psyche, metempsychosis.
I’ll quote for you some early documentation about the teachings of Pythagoras which elaborates the doctrine of transmigration.
On the subject of reincarnation Xenophanes bears witness in an elegy which begins `Now I will turn to another tale and show the way'. What he says about Pythagoras runs thus: Once they say that he was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said, "Stop, do not beat it. For it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue." ―Diogenes, Laertius 8.36
This is from Diogenes in his book Laertius, Book 8 Verse 36. So this is an early documentation about the teachings of transmigration. And now we’ll be specific to state that metempsychosis or transmigration pertains to the manifestation of the soul within different types of bodies, not just human body to human body. Because that pertains to return, and we’re going to explain more deeply.
A transmigration, first, is how the soul manifests from different elemental kingdoms of nature within different bodies, whether from the mineral state, the plant state, to the animal state, and then to the humanoid state. This cycle of how the soul migrates within different kingdoms of nature, through forces of evolution. It pertains to transmigration: how the soul migrates within different bodies, different types of bodies. Return pertains to how one manifests again and again within a specific type of body, whether mineral, plant, animal or humanoid. So return pertains to one’s return to the same type of body within a specific type of kingdom. We’re going to elaborate about these kingdoms more specifically.
Pythagoras also teaches, or his doctrine was elaborated by Porphyry, in his Life of Pythagoras.
None the less, the following became universally known: first, that he maintains that the soul is immortal; second, that it changes into other kinds of living things; third, that events recur in certain cycles and that nothing is ever absolutely new; and fourth, that all living things should be regarded as akin. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to bring these beliefs into Greece. ―Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 19
Those people who are of the Western type of mentally, who reject the doctrine of reincarnation or return, should study Pythagoras, because as a great master of the Greek doctrine, he explained and firmly taught these laws within nature.
It is interesting that we have this document here. It states that the soul is immortal. Einstein said energy is neither created or destroyed. It simply changes form. Energy becomes matter, matter becomes energy. The soul can change types or states of consciousness and form, but it is never lost. It simply migrates. Second, that it changes into other kinds of living things, like we mentioned. Third, that events recur in certain cycles and that nothing is ever absolutely new. This pertains to the doctrine of recurrence, how, in our life, certain states of being or mentality, our mind, our heart, or physical circumstances around us, constantly recur. In our physical life, we have many things that appear psychically and that we need to become aware of. This is recurrence.
Return pertains to how the soul enters into new bodies within a specific kingdom. Return for us is a return into a new humanoid body. Return for animals is a return into a new animal body, whether it is an eagle or a serpent or whatever variety that exists. Return for plants pertains to animating new plant bodies. Even the minerals have a soul which transmit the vital forces of the earth. They too have physicality, body, within the minerals and metals. We say that the minerals and metals are the nervous system of the planet and that they too, have soul.
You take a look at the Kirlian camera, I believe it was a Russian scientist, photographed how minerals and plants and animals have aura, have light, have an energy. Likewise, it is important to note that minerals have a type of life and soul and that we know them an gnomes and pygmies within different ancient-lore or Irish folklore, different traditions. And that the souls of plants also, or elementals of plants, have life and that they animate those physical bodies that we see as trees or flowers or different plants. Likewise, animals have soul, because the word anima means “soul.” People who affirm that animals don’t have a type of soul like many fundamentalist think, are completely mistaken. They should study the teachings of Pythagoras since Christianity is founded upon Greek dialectics and Greek teachings.
The Four Kingdoms
As we are explaining, there are different kingdoms within the department of nature. We use this image to explain the different kingdoms of elemental consciousness. This wheel or this diagram portrays those different kingdoms that I’ve just mentioned. When the soul first animates a new body, or manifests from the absolute source―we call it the Absolute; we call it the ocean of Christ, the light―the soul emanates down what we call the Tree of Life and Kabbalah, as different stages or degrees of matter, energy and consciousness, also reaching the physical plane, and the physical plane in that soul enters into mineral states.
That soul, or anima, animates mineral states. The minerals are of a very simple type of consciousness. But they are the life force of this planet. This mineral kingdom is needed to sustain our world as we know it, in terms of all the vitality and forces that plants receives, that the vitality of the water we drink relates to how the mineral forces are saturating this planet
The soul transmigrates between these different kingdoms, initially though the force of what we call evolution. Evolution is “progression, development, growth.” The souls that are in the mineral kingdom need to gain experience within that kingdom, learning to transmit forces of Christ within the mineral and metal state for the benefit of the universe and of humanity. Once the soul has developed as a mineral, it can progress and evolve, enter or transmigrate into the plant kingdom, into plant states or plant forms. Likewise, the souls of plants also transmit energies. If we look at the trees or the flowers, how they reach up toward the space, it is because the energies of life are now initiating a return upward towards the source. Plants, the elemental souls of the plant kingdom, help transmit vital forces that are necessary for this planet. Once the soul has evolved and developed cognizance and mastery of the level of the plant kingdom, that soul transmigrates to the animal kingdom. It evolves to that state.
Now in the animal kingdom, something unique happens. In the animal kingdom, the souls of the animals are given instinct. They receive a new type of psychology. They’re engrained with a type of instinctual force, given to them by gods, the angels or Elohim, that the Bible speaks of. This is a necessary stage within the evolution of the soul, because there are certain forces that are transmitted by the animals that are necessary for the planet. And now animals, they learn in this kingdom to perform what we call fornication. Fornication is the expulsion of the sexual energy. So in animals, that is natural. They obey the laws of nature. When they feel excited sexually, they copulate with their partner in order to procreate the species. This is a very natural tendency amongst animals. Now animals, they do so and they propagate their species and they gain experience within their consciousness, at that level.
Now once they have finally progressed and gained a higher degree of consciousness within the animal kingdom, they can then enter or transmigrate into a humanoid body.
Now what’s interesting to note is we don’t call this the human kingdom, as ironic as that might sound. We say humanoid, because really, all of us are animal souls that have reincarnated into human bodies. Again, remember that the word anima is “soul.” The special gift that the humanoids receive is the intellect. Now the intellect is a machine or vehicle that will allow us to learn to differentiate between good and evil. Animals, plants and minerals don’t know that difference. They don’t have intellect. They have a type of mind, a type of understanding or perception. But it is not intellectual. There’s no rationalization there. There’s no thesis/antithesis, theory/anti-theory, concept/anti-concept. That is a specific demarcation, the demarcation between the humanoid kingdom with the previous kingdoms. It is precisely that we have that intellect, and this a gift, that we need to learn how to use for divinity.
That is why Samael Aun Weor, the founder of this tradition, stated, with clarity, that really, we are intellectual animals. Meaning: we are souls with intellect. We have not yet entered into what we call the “Human Kingdom.”
If you look in this image, we find a diagram or a path leading upward from the humanoid kingdom toward what we call “the heavens,” the superior kingdoms, represented as the Tree of Life as we have in this book available here. Now, the word hum-an is interesting. The word hum is “spirit.” The word man is “manas” or “mind.” Being refers to divinity. So a human being is an individual that has incarnated into their being, has incarnated God, a mind that is fully united with hum, the spirit, divinity.
As we are now, we are not that. It is necessary to recognize this fact because, if we mediated, examined our mind, what we will find are a lot of disordered thoughts, worries, preoccupations, fears, frustrations, anger, resentment―negative psychological elements which had emerged initially from the animal kingdom.
Now animals, due to the active fornication, the active expelling of that energy, the sexual force, in order to procreate, they develop what we call ego. But to a very minor degree. They develop a type of psychological element, sense of self, as a result of that act, because the sexual energy is creative. It needs to, in animals, it is used to create life, physical life. Likewise, this energy creates animal mind, or ego to a minor degree.
The problem is once we have entered into the humanoid kingdom, we carry these animal tendencies within our psyche. Notice that in the Bible when Adam and Eve, symbol of primordial humanity, were in the garden, they were told specifically, told by Jehovah Elohim, in Hebrew meaning the Tetragrammaton of Gods and Goddesses, the Holy Spirit, “In this Tree of Knowledge you shall not eat, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die. The trees of the Garden you may freely eat from, the Tree of Life.” Symbolically, it is representing how the soul on that level initially knew God and experienced the entire Tree of Life, representing the human being in his totality, reflecting the light of God. But humanity, using the intellect to justify animal passion, did not obey that commandment given by divinity towards that ancient humanity, which is lost within our memory within these times, but is well documented within ancient traditions.
Humanity indulged in that forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which we precisely state is the sexual energy, the most powerful force that we carry within our psyches, and within our bodies, in our spirit, in our mind. This energy, which has been evolving progressively through the inferior kingdoms, has complicated itself and manifested itself finally into a humanoid body, in which the souls have finally entered into humanoid state. The problem is that with the intellect, human beings have used it to justify animal passion, as I stated, which is the expulsion of that sexual energy. This in itself fortifies those animalistic elements called ego: anger, pride, vanity, laziness, lust, etcetera. The human beings of the superior kingdom, the angels, the Elohim, obey the sixth commandment of Moses, “Though shall not fornicate.” Meaning: to use that energy in purity. The angels told that ancient humanity, “Well, previously you used that energy to procreate as animals. Now you can’t do that anymore if you want to enter into the higher kingdoms.”
Evolution and Devolution: The Mechanicity of Nature
Notice that evolution, as a process or development of the soul, takes the soul and transmigrates from these different kingdoms to the humanoid state through the process of evolution, meaning: there’s no effort involved. It is mechanical. It is a way that’s taking one up like a wheel, or a ferry ride, or a Ferris wheel. At the top, the soul has a choice: to follow superior laws or to continue with animal passion, to indulge in those negative psychological elements and fortify them. As we see in this image, we have a devolving current, meaning a retrogressive descent, back into those inferior kingdoms.
The force of devolution pertains to destruction, or disintegration, retrogression: to go backwards. Those souls that don’t enter into the human kingdom, the kingdom of the angels, let themselves be swallowed by the devolving forces of nature, because if those souls do not want to enter the kingdom of the human beings, the angels, if they don’t willingly want to destroy their defects by working with tantra and alchemy, to ascend inward and upward, to God, unfortunately they have to be disintegrated in the process known as hell.
Now hell refers to not only to a place, but a state of suffering. What religions call hell is really a type of, we can call, recycling plant, as a type of analogy. It’s not an eternal place of damnation where no one ever escapes. That is a ludicrous interpretation. Instead, it’s a retrogressive decline back into animal bodies, into plant bodies, into mineral bodies as the soul transmigrates back down towards the interior of the earth. This is known as the submerged mineral kingdom, or the abyss, hell, Avitchi, Tartarus, the infernos, given different names in different traditions. That’s in order that the soul can be liberated from the ego that has swallowed it, that has encapsulated it, because ego takes the soul and conditions it in a shell.
This is the meaning of the Genie of Aladdin’s lamp. You break the shell, you break the lamp, you free the genie, which is the soul that can produce miracles. But sadly, those who don’t want to disintegrate their ego, well, actually as an act of compassion by divinity, those souls are retrogressively sent down into the inferior kingdoms, descending down into the interior of the earth, in order to be disintegrated. We’re going to elaborate on this further. But that’s in order that the ego can be destroyed. That’s in order that those negative psychological elements can be eliminated so that the soul, the genie, can be liberated, and released back into nature.
Now this is a cycle that I mentioned to you. Many souls, they ascend through evolution up the different kingdoms and achieve a humanoid body, but choose to follow the devolving path, to let themselves be swallowed by nature, and therefore they retrogress and go back towards these inferior kingdoms until entering into the abyss or hell to be disintegrated. When the soul is liberated, it enters again into a mineral state and the cycle continues. This is a type of repetition or transmigration that we need to be aware of, not just intellectually, but from experience.
The Path of Revolutionary Self-Transformation
Now, we study the laws of the superior kingdoms. If we are in these studies, or interested in these studies, it is because we are tired of suffering, of repeating cyclical events in life. And deep down in the soul, we yearn not to be swallowed by nature, to be disintegrated in the inferior kingdoms, or the kingdoms of the abyss. Now to escape that, we need to follow the commandments of Jehovah Elohim, which is in the Bible, “Thou shall not fornicate,” and to willingly work on ourselves with the practices given in this tradition so that we can ascend towards heaven, through our practical work.
Now, this teaching was also given by the Sufi initiates such as Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi, or simply known as Rumi in the West. And many Sufis are not aware, not many individuals are aware, that we find this even in Middle Eastern doctrine, the esoteric teachings of Islam. Rumi explained this:
I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
Then he elaborates that if we want to ascend towards God, we need to transcend the state of the humanoid person, the humanoid, in order to become an angel. This path that we discussed previously is the path of revolution. It means that it takes a particular effort on our part in order to actualize divinity within us and to develop it.
Yet once more I shall die as Man, (or humanoid, human person) to soar with angels blest; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
We are interested in becoming angels, and the angels are interested to coming closer to God, but that’s another level and would take other lectures to discuss. But here we’re just discussing how we want to transcend this wheel of return―transmigration, better said. And later Rumi says:
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence (meaning the absolute from which we emerged, that great source of divinity from which the gods emerged) proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return (which is a very famous teaching in Islam). ―Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
Ego, Essence, and Personality in the Bible
Now, in the next graphic we have what we denominate the three aspects of gnostic psychology, which we’ve been discussing already. It is important to understand what in us returns into new bodies and what in us needs to be worked on and eliminated if we want to unite with divinity. The Bible talks about three principle characters, which are essential to understanding our psychology.
As I’ve been mentioning, we have the ego, which we can call Cain, in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. From what happened in the original story was that Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, meaning they abused of that sacred sexual power and did not use it for divine purposes and therefore, they were expelled.
Literally the word Eden means “bliss.” All the many theologians and philosophers have argued that it was God who expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden. The truth is that we expelled ourselves. Literally there is an expulsion of energy, the expulsion of the energies of bliss, when there is an orgasm, when there is the abuse of the sexual power. So willingly, as a result of following our animal passion, we continued along the path of procreation as animals instead of using that energy to create the soul within.
When Adam and Eve were expelled, we had this excerpt from the Book of Genesis, chapter 4 verses 1-2.
And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from יהוה (Jehovah, Allah, the Lord). And she again bare his brother Abel (Habel). And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. ―Genesis 4:1-2
So “Adam knew his wife.” This means, to have knowledge of one’s wife is to engage in the sexual act, whether as animals or as angels, because the angels are born from sex, the same way that a physical body can be born from sex. The soul can also be created through that energy, and this is the teachings of tantra. Now if we abuse of that energy, we create Cain. So, these are not just people who live in the past, but archetypes: symbols of elements within our interior that we need to understand. Through the act of fornication, of abusing the energy, we heavily fortify the mind, the intellect, and strengthen animal passion.
So, Eve said, “I have gotten a man from Jehovah” because יהוה Jah-Chavah is sexual energy. The power of Christ is within the sexual matter. She said, “I gave birth to Cain as a result of my energy.” And she again bore his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of the sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Now it is important to know that within alchemy Adam is not just representing man within the past, but refers to the brain. Eve, or חַוָה Havah, literally means “mother of the living.” It refers to the sexual organs, whether in man or in woman. So, Adam and Eve represent aspects of our physiology and our psychology, the mind, Adam, and Eve, Havah.
It is precisely through this energy, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, because it was Eve that took fruit from the tree, meaning the sexual organs indulged in passion, in lust, and expelled that energy: ate from the forbidden fruit. She then gave it to Adam, to the brain, and said, “This feels wonderful. Taste this. Taste the orgasm.” So the brain is the one that received the effects afterward and then justified, “Oh this is a good feeling.” However, they realized that they were naked, meaning: they lost their connection with their divinity and they felt the absence of God within them. This is the esoteric meaning of Genesis. So later, I mean they were expelled by Jehovah Elohim, by Jehovah. Then Adam knew his wife again, Eve. And through that energy again, created Cain.
Cain is the type of mind that we have in these times, which is solely based on the senses, is very materialistic. This is what it means to be a tiller of the ground: only concerned with physical things, our job, our money, our career, our family, supporting ourselves physically, being identified with the senses. All of us are tillers of the ground. We are occupied with physical things.
We are typically not keepers of sheep. Sheep, in esotericism refers to, “the lamb of Christ”―sheep, lamb, ram. Jesus is referred to as the sacrificial lamb. To be a keeper of sheep is to work with the energy known as Christ. Those of us who entered into these types of studies, we work with mantra, and if we’re married, we work in alchemy, conserving the energies in order to become keeper of sheep, to develop those principles of Christ within us.
If we remember the story, Cain killed Abel. This refers to how our own ego, our own anger and pride and vanity and lust, kills the soul. Whenever we identify with any negative element in our mind, our heart, our body, we kill our soul. We destroy our consciousness. We deepen our suffering. We feed our consciousness and trap our soul within the cages of the ego, the mind. It is important to understand these principles, because our ego is the shell that cages our soul and prevents us from knowing God. Likewise, we study these principles because it is the ego and the Essence, or the ego and the soul, Cain and Abel, that constantly reincorporate into new bodies.
When we ask ourselves, well, what is it that returns to a new humanoid body? It is our ego and our soul, constantly returning to new bodies. Whenever we enter a new body, or have entered into new bodies, we develop what is called a personality. Personality pertains to one’s customs, language, name, heredity, culture, things that are extrinsic, particularly relating to physical things. That develops typically within the years four to seven within a child, and it is by developing a personality, which the Latin word persona means “masks,” we relate to the world. That’s how the ego can reincorporate. The ego needs its personality in order to manifest in the physical body, which is explained in books like Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology. But in synthesis, we talk about ego and essence and personality.
Now in the Bible, personality pertains to a figure known as Nimrod. Now Nimrod was the one who built the Tower of Babel, or we know it as the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel represents all the gibberish that we find in our planet, whether in politics, systems that state that they promote freedom and equality for all, but in fact are degenerate and destructive. We find this type of babble and incoherence within religions that teach that one is easily saved without having to work on oneself. We find this type of babble in the personality, in all the wars that have existed on this planet with our humanity.
The reason why, or let me explain further, in the myth, Nimrod was building this tower of Babel to heaven. And God, indignant, confounded humanity, and humanity then separated into different languages, and customs, and types of people, groups. Because in the past, it was stated in the Bible that “Humanity spoke one language.” When humanity was pure, they spoke only the language of God, called the “Pure Golden Language.” As a result of entering into fornication, the mind, or one, creates anger and all of these negative psychological elements, the ego. That in turn, creates division, and later manifests and propagated itself within different groups and cultures, where people began to experience a greater sense of separation. Different languages developed. Different customs and culture developed. That’s personality. Personality is a type of energy, and its crystalized within our body, within our psyche, within ourselves, here and now, so that we learn how to interact with the world.
Either the soul or the ego can use the personality. Now we want to use our personality, our ways of dealing with the world, our customs, our job, our language, in a conscious way, using it with the soul. But typically what happens is that our ego complicates things, fortifies things. Therefore, the personality becomes very degenerated as well. And really, we create our own towers of babble. In each life that we enter into, we create new problems for ourselves, just in a different language, maybe or a different type of culture, a different type of existence.
We have here in this, the book of Genesis, Chapter 10 verses 8 through 10:
And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before יהוה: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before יהוה. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. ―Genesis 10:8-10
So what does it mean that Nimrod, the personality, is a mighty hunter? It means that with our personalities we are always constantly hunting after things. People, comedians, politicians, have very strong personalities and people feel attracted to that. Now, the personality is something that is born in one life and is disintegrated when that soul disincarnates. That soul reincorporates into a new body. The personality is something that is not immutable. It is something that is transient. People who are very clairvoyant and who look in graveyards, they often will see the personalities of the dead, mistaking them as the soul, or consciousness, or ghost of that person. They see the really the energy of that person, which is the personality. When that personality is very strong, it can even move physical things. Many people have documented this type of phenomenon. But a personality is born in life and then it dies in the grave, basically. The personality does not return. There’s always a new building. There’s always a new Tower of Babel that we create in each life, which creates problems for ourselves.
The doctrine of return was taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. He explained in the scripture how it is really the ego, and the soul, the consciousness or Essence, that reincorporates into new physical bodies. Now in these studies we teach that we are granted 108 opportunities within humanoid bodies, in order to perform this work that we call self-realization, to enter the path of tantra, to follow the commandments of Jehovah Elohim, so that, like in the Bible, we can create Seth.
So if you remember the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve begot Cain and Abel. Abel was killed and later Adam and Eve, Adam knew his wife again, and begot Seth. Seth is an archetype referring to working in alchemy, but it would take another lecture to explain the meaning of that.
Zodiacal Influences
But here we are discussing how the soul and the ego reincorporate and that we have 108 opportunities within humanoid bodies. The reason being is that we have 12 zodiacal signs. We incorporate within each zodiacal sign 9 times. 9 refers to, in Kabbalah, the secret teachings of alchemy, or Yesod, the foundation, the sexual energy. In order for us to gain experience with different types of personalities, learning about different ways of being, we are born 9 times within each zodiacal sign, so that we gain experience and become more rounded as a psyche. The problem is that we typically are not aware of where we came from or where we’re going. Therefore, we need to learn to meditate, so that we can comprehend where it is we came from. Yes?
Question: I have a question. What about this esoteric astrology? Where do they say that, at least in this incarnation, a competent astrologist says, think Steiner said it “This is the math of the soul”?
Instructor: These are certain tendencies that are manifested within certain horoscopes. I don’t suggest, as you know, the pop-horoscopes that people propagate. But esoteric astrology, which is very profound, there are certain tendencies we can learn about the type of personality that we develop in relationship to the zodiacal sign of which we belong. That will guide us to certain understandings of how to relate to the world.
Question: What happened in a previous incarnation? Is there a link there?
Instructor: The truth is, say for instance, if we’re in the sign of Libra, it probably means that we’ve already been in that sign many times. So, we have the zodiacal influences within ourselves here and now. We’re just not aware of it. It just happens to be that in this current incarnation, we are manifesting a specific tendency. So it is important to understand what is that chief characteristic, tendency, that we’re manifesting through the zodiac in which we are born in this life. It does relate to our past lives, because we’ve all developed under different zodiacal signs and they all relate. And we need to comprehend them. Yes?
Question: Isn’t it true too that, regardless of what your suns sign is in a particular life, in the books they talk about “your ray,” one of the seven, and that’s the continuous thing. Is that what you belong to?
Instructor: Yes, and we talk about in these studies the seven rays, which relates to God. Here we’re talking about the personality, which is transient. We develop many personalities. We discard them in each life. The spiritual way pertains to our inner divinity within, which is eternal.
Question: So are you saying that the zodiac sign influences your personality, or your ego? Or both?
Instructor: It pertains to our personality, but also, certain egos relate to certain tendencies in the personality. Because when we are all masked at a party for instance, I’m not sure if you studied Shakespeare, but there’s a certain play where characters were dressed in masks and they’re playing a role as a result of the mask that they wore. So they were exhibiting certain tendencies as a result of the performance they’re doing. Persona is the mask of the personality in how we relate to others. It does relate to certain egos that we have. Also, there’s certain positive influences in the zodiac that pertain to the soul. In the book Practical Astrology, the soul can manifest certain tendencies which are superior, relating to a zodiac. So it relates to all of that, but for us, we want to know how that relates to our personality, because our personality is very centered on the negative influence of our zodiac.
Comment: Just want to add to that. People say “I’m this” and that’s a big generalization. People have studied these prominent astrologies. There’s so much to it. I mean, what they call aspects, what they call planet in the sign, how it relates in the sextiles―and it gets complicated. So the sun sign is general. Then they’ll have what they call the moon sign, which is very important. Then the rising sign. Those are key. From what I read, I’m just giving you a consensus to what they’re saying. But then when you get into what they call the aspects, the good things, the negative things in other words, in math, that’s why these competent astrologers, they take some time. It gets involved. That’s all.
Instructor: And it’s a deep science, which would take many lectures. It would take a whole course to explain it. But in terms of our personality, and our ego, and our essence, the zodiac― we are born in each zodiac. We need to study our zodiac, because its just going to tell us about our personality, certain tendencies that we have. Now in each life, we return to a certain zodiac and we’re granted, as I said, 108 lives―opportunities―in order to enter the path of self-realization.
Return in the Bhagavad-Gita
So, the Master Krishna spoke to our Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, teaching this:
18. These bodies of the embodied Self (Atman, the Innermost Being, who is our own Father within), which is eternal, indestructible and immeasurable, are said to have an end (meaning the bodies are said to have an end). Therefore, fight, O Arjuna! 19. He who takes the Self to be the slayer and he who thinks He is slain, neither of them knows; He slays not nor is He slain. ―Bhagavad-Gita 2
He is giving a teaching here about the need to enter the path of self-realization, because the body will die, but the soul and ego will continue on. If we don’t develop our consciousness by working on the ego, by disintegrating it through meditation, by working with sexual energy, whether in mantras or working in a matrimony, we cannot enter into that straight path mentioned by Jesus, the path of revolution of the consciousness, to return to God and ascend to the higher kingdoms.
Krishna continues with atman, the spirit, our inner God:
20. He is not born nor does He ever die; after having been, He again ceases not to be. Unborn, eternal, changeless and ancient, He is not killed when the body is killed, 21. Whosoever knows Him to be indestructible, eternal, unborn and inexhaustible, how can that man slay, O Arjuna, or cause to be slain? 22. Just as a man casts off worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so also the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters others that are new (so like Rumi said, “Why worry?” in a sense. People are terrified of death, physically. They ignore that they may be given an opportunity to return to a new body depending on karma).
23. Weapons cut It not, fire burns It not, water wets It not, wind dries It not. 24. This Self cannot be cut, burnt, wetted nor dried up. It is eternal, all-pervading, stable, ancient and immovable. 25. This (Self) is said to be unmanifested, unthinkable and unchangeable. Therefore, knowing This to be such, thou shouldst not grieve. 26. But, even if thou thinkest of It as being constantly born and dying, even then, O mighty-armed, thou shouldst not grieve! 27. For, certain is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; therefore, over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve. 28. Beings are unmanifested in their beginning, manifested in their middle state, O Arjuna, and unmanifested again in their end! What is there to grieve about? ―Bhagavad-Gita 2
And as I said Rumi mentioned the same thing: “When was I less by dying?”
What is important, this teaching by Krishna, if we don’t constantly work to destroy our defects, then nature will come and swallow us, because in order to be saved in Christian soteriology―the doctrine of salvation―we need to eliminate our defects so that we can return to God. This is the path of the cross taught by master Jesus. The other option is to allow oneself to be swallowed by nature. At the end of one’s 108 humanoid bodies, if one still has not made any effort to change, then there is no other choice but for that soul within the ego to be disintegrated, or the ego, that person, to be disintegrated by nature.
Disintegration within Hell
As representative in The Divine Comedy, the Inferno, where Dante, taken by his master Virgil, descends through the different inferior spheres of the Klipoth―the interior dimensions of the earth. This doesn’t mean that physically there are people in the earth suffering, but within the interior dimensions of nature, there are different beings that suffer.
If you remember the image of the Bhavacakra we showed, there are the hell beings who are trapped within that realm, being disintegrated by their own passion and by the forces of nature, which are exerting themselves, which are like the earth crushing coal in order to eliminate its impurities to produce a diamond, the liberated Essence.
Dante here in this image, is with Virgil looking at the lost souls with the ninth sphere. So there’s nine heavens and nine hells we say in the Kabbalah. In the ninth sphere, we see souls that are disintegrating within the interior of the earth. They’re frozen at their neck up, or their bodies are lodged in place being destroyed, and the forces of nature are slowly disintegrating their ego.
We didn’t mention previously, but we elaborate that in relation to the development of the soul within the forces of evolution, upon entering the mineral kingdom, the soul receives certain bodies. Now, not only does the soul receive a physical body as a mineral, but also what we call internal bodies, or lunar bodies. These are gifts of nature that allow that soul to exist in superior dimensions, known as heaven, which we can access in the dream state. The souls develop within their lunar bodies, those vehicles that belong to nature, in order to progress up the different kingdoms. Those lunar bodies develop and grow as a result of those forces. Even upon entering the humanoid kingdom, we have the lunar bodies. And the problem is that our soul manifesting in those bodies, if it does not make the effort to change, the ego really integrates with those lunar bodies and nature, in a sense, swallows her own children, as in the law, “To eat or be eaten.” Those forces take those bodies, along with the soul, down into the interior kingdoms to be disintegrated. So what we see here are the souls within their lunar bodies being disintegrated. These are vehicles for the soul to manifest.
Question: Does that have anything to do with, Saturn devoured his children or something?
Comment: Kronos. Yes Saturn is Kronos too.
Question: That’s the same analogy you’re making here?
Instructor: Saturn is death. Really we can say that mother nature really attempts to swallow her own children. This is the meaning of the Goddess Kali in Hinduism, the inverted aspect of Kali, which is the one who devours her children. Shakespeare had a play called Titus Andronicus, and which, if you’re not familiar with it, a man gets revenge on this woman, his enemy, by secretly killing her children and then feeding it to her. Symbolically hidden in that is that she represents Kali eating her own children, eating her soul. Now, this path devolving and entering into inferior states, those lunar bodies are disintegrated along with the ego, by the forces of nature.
Comment: You said right now that Dante, in some of the books, was translated in the Italian language, it’s the same thing though when you translate it. It’s kind of really depressing. He was a little more graphic the way he described it in this book. A dry comedy. It was a sign, a cave with fumes coming out, and over the top was written in Latin: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Instructor: Right. But there’s hope for us. The truth is even the souls that really want to change can be helped. Even though it says “abandon all hope,” well, there are many who are completely lost. But there are some that can be saved. As evidence, if you read a book called The Revolution of Beelzebub, a prince of demons repents. So even demons can change.
Question: Is the 108 lives strict, or if someone was really trying to change and ran out of time, is there any mercy for people
Instructor: Yeah, there’s mercy. The law of karma is mercy and severity. There’s always opportunities if the soul is working. If they reach their 108th life and they’re showing, they’re demonstrating they want to continue on the path, they’re going to get another body. They’re going to be helped. Also, the soul is granted extra help by creating the solar bodies too, particularly in the relationship with the solar astral body, which we are going to explain.
Now Homer said:
It is better to be a beggar upon earth than a king in the kingdom of darkness. ―Homer
And Samael Aun Weor, states the following about this path of transmigration in his book The Magic of the Runes:
Therefore, the descent into the tenebrous worlds is a backward trip through the devolving path. It is a downfall into an always increasing density, within obscurity and rigidity. It is a return, a repetition of the animal, plant, and mineral states, in short, a return into the primitive chaos. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
And that chaos is within the interior of the earth, in the inferior dimensions, in which we find precisely, the soul is disintegrating as in this image, where lost souls are being dissolved, such in the lake of the ninth sphere, the frozen lake where they’re being disintegrated.
To continue:
The souls of the abyss are liberated with the Second Death. These souls receive the token for their freedom when the ego and the lunar bodies are reduced to dust. The souls who are coming from the interior of the earth, who are marked by the frightful subterranean trip and covered with dust, convert themselves into gnomes of the mineral kingdom, then later into elementals of the plant kingdom, further into animals, and finally they reconquer the lost human state. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
So the second death mentioned in the Book of Revelation, pertains to when the lunar bodies and the ego are disintegrated in the ninth sphere. But it doesn’t mean, like religion says, that there is eternal damnation, that one is in hell forever. It doesn’t mean that. It refers to eternity. Eternity is a circle, and that eternity has its own sense of temporality, of time―not linear, but circular. To suffer eternal damnation means to suffer within eternity. It doesn’t mean it is punishment without end. That would be ludicrous, because divinity is merciful.
The second death is necessary to free those souls from the hell realms, so the souls can evolve again up the elemental kingdoms.
This is the wise doctrine of Transmigration taught in foregone times by Krishna, the Hindustani Master. Millions of souls who died within the inferno are now playing as gnomes upon the rocks. Other souls are now delectable plants, or are living within animal creatures and longing to return to the human state. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
The Aeneid and Roman Esotericism
It should not be surprising, that this teaching should not necessarily be for scholars of religion, something that is unusual. Because we find this teaching of return, or reincorporation, of transmigration, and the descent into the inferior kingdoms explained in many cosmogonies and theologies, especially within The Aeneid by Virgil, which is probably one of the most well-read documentations of Latin literature.
In the poem―describing Aeneas, the Trojan paladin who escapes the burning of Troy in order to found the kingdom of Italy, or Lavinium, to propagate his people―it represents how the soul is entering into the superior path, performing the exodus, we could say, like Moses, ascending up back to the Promised Land of Jehovah, the Tree of Life. In the poem, Aeneas comes upon an island where they’re ripping off the branches to perform a ritual, a ritual ceremony for fire, one of the trees starts to bleed and a voice cries out from it. The soldiers and Aeneas are alarmed when they hear this proclamation from this soul within the tree.
Why do you tear my poor flesh, Aeneas? Take pity now on the man who is buried here and do not pollute your righteous hands. I am not stranger to you. It was Troy that bore me and this is not a tree that is oozing blood. Escape, I beg you, from these cruel shores, from this land of greed. It is Polydorus that speaks. This is where I was struck down and an iron crop of weapons covered my body. Their sharp points have rooted and grown in my flesh. ―Virgil, The Aeneid
In this image we have, again, a picture from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The tree, the people who are the souls that are trapped within the bodies of trees, are suffering in these forms, tormented by the harpies―which are, what we say “witches” or “sorceresses” who take on the form of birds. With their humanoid faces intact, they are inflicting suffering on these souls that are devolving within these trees, within these elemental forms, within hell. Samael Aun Weor states the following in The Magic of the Runes:
Since the ancient times of Arcadia, when worship to the gods of the four elements of the universe and to the deities of the tender corn was still performed, the old hierophants, with their hair growing white with wisdom, never ignored the multiplicity of the “I.” Is it then rare, perchance, for any one of these many entities that constitute the ego to seize itself to life with much obsession and to be re-born in a tree? ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
The ego is not singular, but multiple. Each negative emotion in itself is an ego, a sense of self that can either reincorporate into new bodies, or as a gift of divinity, can be sent down into the infernal kingdoms to give help to the soul to which the ego belongs.
The ego is multiple, and when we examine our mind, each negative type of thought or feeling or emotion is separate. It’s a different type of entity. As taught by the great masters, we have this understanding that the ego is multiple and that, as a gift of grace, not all of our egos will manifest within the same body that we have. Sometimes, when reincorporating into a new humanoid body, certain egos are lost. Certainly, the most perverse egos are sent down into the inferno to be disintegrated as a gift of mercy.
This particularly relates to the myth of the centaurs. Now, we have in this image, I believe it’s Athena or Minerva, her Romanized name, soothing or trying to ease the suffering of a centaur. A centaur is half human half animal. That’s really us. We are half humanoid. We have, really, the physical body of a human, but our mind is animal.
Another meaning of centaur is a being that has divinity within, has created what we call the solar bodies, but still has the ego to eliminate. A centaur is really a split being. We call them hasnamussen, beings with a split-polarity, one with development in God, but still the ego has not been fully eliminated.
So, Minerva is offering grace to this being. Certain beings are given that, really, I would say all of us are given, that help. When we’ve reincorporated into a new body, certain egos are lost, and the less perverse egos are given into our body in order for us to work on them. Samael Aun Weor states the following in The Magic of the Runes, elaborating on the points we made:
Another case comes into my memory, that of Pythagoras and his friend who was reincorporated into a poor dog. But, is it not perhaps true that the centaurs are assisted? What are the legends of the centuries telling us? These epic warriors (centaurs) who fell bleeding among the helmets and bucklers of those who gloriously died for the love of their people and their country, receive a well-deserved extra help when they return into this world.
It is written with tremendous words that the centaurs, before returning into this valley of tears, eliminate part of themselves, part of their beloved ego. The law for centaurs is as follows: what is decisively criminal in them must enter the crematorium of the infernal worlds, and what is less perverse must be reincorporated into a human body. The old laurel-crowned Florentine Dante found many centaurs in the abyss. Let us remember Chiron, the old tutor of Achilles and Pholus, who was so frenzied. It is said with frightening and complete clarity in the great book of Nature, written with flaming embers, that before returning into this world, many parts of the ego are lost. Many psychic aggregates of the “itself” reincorporate into organisms of beasts, others are desperately seized (as the case of Polidorus) into the branches of trees, and finally, certain subjective elements of the “I” continue their devolution into the submerged mineral kingdom. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Magic of the Runes
It’s an act of mercy, really. If we really had all of our egos, especially the worst ones, manifesting in our psyche at the level in which we are, we would be suffering a lot more. In many cases, really, we are given help. The centaurs, those initiates who develop the solar bodies or the superior vehicles of the soul, have received a special grace. Lunar bodies pertain to bodies given by nature. Solar bodies signify what is meant by Jesus to “be born again,” precisely through tantra, the path of the cross, to create spiritual vehicles that can manifest divinity within which relates to reincarnation, that we’re going to explain.
Recurrence and Karma: The Infallible Law of Causality
In this image we have the wheel of fortune, the wheel of the centuries, the wheel of karma. Everything we’ve been explaining pertains to transmigration, or return: how the soul migrates into different bodies, into the different kingdoms. Now we’re going to talk about the laws that relate to our current physical life, pertaining to karma, which we also call recurrence. The law of recurrence pertains to karma.
In this image, we have the wheel of fortune, which can also be equated with the Bhavacakra, as well. In this image we have fortune that is blind, is rotating the wheel of destiny, in which the poor are elevated and the rich are denigrated, they descend.
Carl Orff beautifully represented the suffering of this mechanical wheel in his Carmina Burana, a great initiatic work of art. It is a choral piece.
People often think fortune is some blind law that is controlled or managed by some outside external being, some external entity. They say, “Well, Justin emis blind. God is blind. It is causing my suffering and it is ignoring my pain and has no mercy.” This is an ignorant perspective to take, because the one that is blind in this image is us. The truth is we all have power over our own destiny if we take control of it. As Hamlet stated in, or as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them” (Hamlet Act III, ll. 57-61). Either to be swallowed through nature, devolving into hell or to revolt against those forces, in order to unite with God―to be or not to be. All of us are constantly receiving the results of our past actions, whether in this life or in previous lives. Recurrence pertains to the cycle or manifestation of events that have their roots in past lives and past actions, as well.
कर Karma in Sanskrit literally means, “deed.” Coming from the root word क kri, which means “to do, make, cause and effect.” The word karman means “to act.” It refers to cause and effects, causality. It does not mean a blind law in which we suffer a lot as a result. It refers to the equilibration of forces as a result of our past actions.
So, if we were evil in a past life, we will receive the results of our actions of that life. If we inflicted harm on another person, that person will return and come back in our life as a recurrence and will inflict that same harm on is. This is the law of the Talion.
Now typically, we identify too much with our situations, the recurrent themes of our life, and we have many psychological songs in which we justify our suffering. We all have that to a degree. The thing is to realize that we are the ones responsible for our own actions and therefore we can receive superior results if we learn to fulfill what we call Karma Yoga, helping others do good deeds, so that we can cancel out our past karma, and also recurring events that are negative in nature. This law is fundamental even within Christianity, Judaism, and a Islam, not just Hinduism or Buddhism.
Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ―Galatians 6:7.
So recurrence pertains to, say for instance, if we committed adultery in the past, in a past life. When meeting that partner again, karma will be in action and that individual may commit adultery against us as a type of equilibration of forces. If we did evil, we have to receive evil. Whatever we do we receive the result. Therefore, if we are not in control of our own mind, as we stated in the beginning about the Dhammapada, “mind precedes phenomena, we become what we think.” If we don’t comprehend this law in action, then we are always going to suffer as a result of our mistake and actions.
Question: What about your thinking?
Instructor: Exactly. What we are internally determines our life and also attracts our life. Events constantly repeat themselves so long as the ego is there. The ego that is responsible for certain crimes or conflicts in our lives, relating to past lives, is constantly fulfilling its own, enacting itself according to its own conditioning. Now, if we let ourselves be controlled by our mind, then we receive the results. The ego is an actor.
Samael Aun Weor states in Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology how we are constantly playing the same dramas, tragedies, comedies, etc., on the screen of life. If you kill the actor, the drama is over. If you kill the actor, there’s no more comedy. Instead, you have a superior way of life. So, we need to comprehend the ego and annihilate it, so we cease to repeat life in a mistaken way.
The Three Eternals
The Buddha said that there are three eternal things in life that pertain to this doctrine of recurrence, and karma, as well as cosmological teachings. There is the law, karma, which is eternal; there is nirvana; and then there is space. These are eternal things within nature.
The law pertains to the law of equilibrium. Scientists call it “invariance,” in which any energy that is enacted from a certain point of origin must always return to that point of origin in order to balance itself. Therefore, psychologically speaking, we need to understand how this applies to us, because if we constantly argue with our friends, our family, our spouse, feeding our anger, that energy that we expel outward is going to come back at us. Therefore, we have to receive the results of our actions.
Now what we need to understand is nirvana, because nirvana in Sanskrit means “cessation.” Cessation pertains to the elimination of the causes of our suffering, which is heaven. Heaven is a state of being. It is also a place, the superior dimensions of nature. But more importantly, it refers to here and now as a psychological state. We need to understand cessation and the causes of our suffering, according to Buddhism, if we want to enter a superior way of life.
Then there’s space, which is the eternal root origin of our Being. We call it the Absolute. We call it the emptiness: shunyata. We call it Allah. We call is Christ, the source of all creation of all beings. It’s emptiness is not an abstract nihilism, nor is it a complete negation of all things. Instead it is a type of being that can only be comprehended through meditation and experience.
In relation to this Buddhist doctrine, understanding the impermanent nature of phenomena is how we learn to comprehend our ego, because when we see how our egos’ physical sense of self is transient, how anger emerges in concurrence with causes and conditions and then disappears, how certain emotional states come and go, how they recur, how they repeat themselves, it is by comprehending this relationship to external phenomena that we comprehend that our internal states are really empty, and that anger is not eternal. It’s a transient emotional state, a mistaken perception of self, which traps our consciousness and makes us suffer. When we comprehend that it is intrinsically really empty, that no ego is independent of anything else, there’s nothing eternal about it. There are certain causes and conditions, certain karmas, that propel and enact that ego to manifest within a certain situation. We understand that that sense of self is really empty, and this is how we learn to comprehend the ego―comprehending that no defect is intrinsically existing of itself. There’s always causes and conditions upon which is depends.
Spiritual Creation through Liberated Will
Nietzsche, who was a German initiate at one point, explains this teaching in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra, precisely the concepts we’ve been discussing. In this image we have the Iranian Prophet, Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, holding in his right hand the staff of the initiates with a golden orb and serpent rotating around it. That serpent is the power of the Divine Mother and the staff represents the spinal column upon which the Kundalini rises in the teachings of alchemy, as we teach. What is interesting is that in his with his left hand, he’s performing in Buddhism what’s known as the vitarka mudra. Nietzsche is very famous for postulating in his book, the Doctrine of the Eternal Return, which we are going to be explaining.
Now, in Buddhism, this mudra, hand posture, is supposed to represent the transmission of a teaching from the Buddha, or from any buddha really. What is interesting is that we have a circle formed by our index finger and our thumb, which relates to the cycle of recurrence, or return. Then, with the three fingers, representing the three primary forces of nature, the power of Christ: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Or in Kabbalah: Kether, Chokmah, Binah. The trinity is the light of God that manifests from the Absolute, and it is through this trinity that we learn to create a spiritual life. These are not people, anthropomorphic figures, but energies. In order to overcome the wheel of samsara, or the wheel of becoming, the eternal return in the circle, we need to work with the three primary forces, which is what we do when we practice alchemy. Man and woman united, masculine, feminine, affirmative force, negative force, and then the sexual act, reconciliation, the synthesis, are the three forces in action. That is how we create spiritually. Nietzsche talks about this very beautifully in his book, particularly in the section called, “Upon the Blessed Isles”:
Creation―that is the great redemption from suffering and life’s growing light. But that the creator may be, suffering is needed and much change. Indeed, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators. Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
Creation is redemption from suffering. Meaning: to create the soul precisely through alchemy in the higher stages of the path. It is also “life’s growing light.” We generate light precisely by working with our sexual energy to create spiritually. But in order for the creator to be, we need to suffer, meaning, we need to willingly take on and be responsible for our own suffering, the causes of our own afflictions, to take responsibility for what we did in the past, in order to recognize our faults. Karma comes back at us for past actions, whether in this life or in previous lives, and we learn to take it with a sense of rectitude. Instead of complaining about it, we use it to see those egos that manifest within a given psychological circumstance, so that we can die in those defects. Indeed, “there must be much bitter dying in your life.” He didn’t say that the path to salvation is easy. Instead, we need to suffer a lot so that ego emerges that’s causing our suffering, and comprehend it in meditation so that we can annihilate it.
“Thus are you advocates and justifiers of all impermanence.” So the doctrine of impermanence― same thing Nietzsche is teaching here―is how nothing is stable in this universe. Everything is dependent on something else, and it is by recognizing the empty nature of phenomena that we cease to be so attached to external phenomena, so that our ego has less power over us. It is in that way, by comprehending the ego, that we annihilate it, gradually.
To be the child who is newly born, the creator must also want to be the mother who gives birth and the pangs of the birth-giver. Verily, through a hundred souls I have already passed on my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth pangs (people who see that Nietzsche was an atheist at one point are mistaken. This is really teaching that, well, he’s been in many bodies, has been through many cradles and birth pangs). Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heart-rending last hours (because at one point, before he deviated, he was developing a lot of understanding in himself. He remembered his past lives and was explaining these teachings about the return of all things). But thus my creative will, my destiny, wills it. Or, to say it more honestly: this very destiny―my will wills.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
So what does this mean, “my creative will”?
Creation pertains to the trinity above. So the Kabbalah, if you look in this diagram, we have ten spheres, ten sephiroth. Above is the trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. In the middle, in the center of the Tree of Life, we have the sphere known as Tiphereth, which is willpower. Creative will pertains to how Christ manifests within the soul, within the heart. Because if we take this image and transpose it on a human being, the middle sephirah, or sphere, relates to the heart, Tiphereth. So creative will, he’s speaking Kabbalistically, how the trinity, the will to create manifests within the soul, within the human psyche.
This is important to understand in relation to his teaching, “Thus, my creative will, my destiny wills it.” The fact is that he is entering this path, “Or, to say it more honestly: this very destiny―my will wills.” Most of us talk about destiny as its some kind of outside thing that is influencing us. Few people have really exemplified how with their own willpower they can create their destiny. Karma is not a blind law. It can be overcome. It can be reconciled if we are working in the right way.
Question: What’s the relationship between the two again? There must be a relationship. You talked about willpower and the heart, which sounds like mantra.
Instructor: In sexual knowledge, sexual alchemy.
Question: But it’s also, mantra would originate here?
Instructor: The word is gestated from the throat. In alchemy, when we combine, when we sexually unite with our partner, we pronounce sacred mantras. Our own Yesod, our own Tree of Knowledge, when a man and a woman are united forming the cross―Yesod, the energy of God, ascends up the spinal medulla as we find in this staff of Zarathustra, and the serpent is ascending as result of working with those fires. With mantra we work with our willpower and our heart, following the creative will of God, the trinity above, in order to create spiritual life. So that’s a Kabbalistic relationship to the body. It is working in this way that we overcome our destiny, our karma. We pay our karma with good deeds, by dying in those egos that are responsible for our mistaken actions.
Whatever in me has feeling, suffers and is in prison; but my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and liberty―thus Zarathustra teaches it. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
So how do we overcome our suffering? With our willpower, we take arms against a sea of troubles, meaning: we fight against our ego. We cease to be cyclically recurring and reenacting all those tragedies, dramas, and comedies of the past. We try to initiate a new way of life. Not living life mechanically, but transcending that wheel of suffering.
Willing no more and esteeming no more and creating no more―oh, that this great weariness might always remain far from me! In knowledge too (in Da’ath, in Gnosis) I feel only my will’s joy in begetting and becoming; and if there is innocence in my knowledge, it is because the will to beget is in it. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
So, what does it mean “In knowledge too, I feel only my will’s joy in creating”? Meaning: in alchemy, in tantra, in the sexual act, using it for purity, using it for God. One feels only the joy of creating the soul, “and if there is innocence in my knowledge,” meaning if there is innocence in Da’ath, “if there’s innocence in me working in alchemy, to perform the sexual act without lust,” “it is because of my joy of begetting and becoming.” The wheel of becoming, you know becoming is bhava, as we mention in the Bhavacakra. This is a way of becoming in a mechanical means, but we can also become something spiritual by transcending that wheel. Nietzsche says something also very interesting and controversial, like many things:
Away from God and gods this will has lured me; what could one create if gods existed? ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Upon the Blessed Isles”
In us, God is not active. God is not manifested in our bodies. God is not incarnated, or better said, reincarnated. Instead, we have to create God within us. We have to create the development of the soul so that God, the Superman, can be creating through us.
Question: How do you reconcile that? I believe someone said it, perhaps you said it, we are all, since we’re part of God, which we’re sparks of the divine plane. The spark is still there!
Instructor: That’s the spark, but it’s not the bonfire. So that spark can be fed and developed into a bonfire. That bonfire is the lord, Christ. And so how can “one create a god if a god existed already?” And said, if you want to create a higher level of being, you need to develop that spark so it becomes a giant flame.
Question: So either you nurture it, or if you’re going to ascend, or if you destroy it, then...?
Instructor: Then that fire is extinguished in hell. We need to transcend this wheel of suffering, and in this next graphic we are going to talk about the solar bodies. In this image, we have an angel or Malachim. מלכים Malachim in Hebrew means “angels.” Malachim are kings. So, a king of nature is one who has conquered the animal state, the mineral state, the plant state, and even the humanoid state. What we are interested in these studies is to overcome our defects and the recurring cycles of life wherein we suffer mechanically, as a result, so that we can transcend those karmic situations and reconcile our past. That way we can initiate a new way of being.
Comment: That can be tricky too. I think in a way you have to analyze. You have to find your defects, but most of use at one point or another, we have certain desires. Then you have to qualify it perhaps as being not a good desire, and there’s a line.
Instructor: And its language. Desire, we say, is typically ego. But longing is the soul. Longing belongs to Habel, Abel, who follows the way of God. Cain is the desire of the mind to till the earth, and to fulfill material things. But in a poetic sense, we can say the soul has desire for God, like the Sufis teach. Now, we want to transcend our karma and enter into the path of what we call epigenesis. The ability to originate new circumstances because as Gurdjieff taught us, “Man does not know how to do.” Instead, we just repeat actions from the past. We don’t do anything new. We are like a train on a train track going one direction. But with effort we can divert that, and it is precisely by developing conscious will, to be in harmony with Christ, the trinity, is how we become, to beget, like Nietzsche says.
Epigenesis and the Solar Bodies
So we’re going to talk about the solar bodies, which I mention to you as the vehicles by which God can manifest and express. These pertain to the Tree of Life, Kabbalah, and pertain to what we call the astral body, the solar astral body, the solar mental body, the solar causal body, or solar emotional body, which can manifest superior emotions of God; solar mental body, that can manifest the abstract concepts and understanding of Christ; and the solar causal body, which is the body that can express the will of God, that can originate new causes. Samael Aun Weor states the following in Cosmic Teachings of a Lama:
It is clear, obvious, and manifested that the clairvoyants from some pseudoesoteric and pseudo-occultist systems also become lamentably mistaken about this body [the causal body or body of conscious will]. This is due to the fact that they confuse the Essence with the causal body (so the Essence is the soul, but the causal body is the means by which the soul can act. Don’t mistake the person for the car, in synthesis).
The Essence in itself is just a fraction of the human soul that is incarnated within ourselves. This Essence is bottled up within the ego; it is engulfed within the lunar bodies. It is unquestionable that the homunculi mistakenly called human being is submitted to the law of recurrence. He is not capable of originating anything new; he is a victim of circumstances. ―Samael Aun Weor, Cosmic Teachings of a Lama
It is enough to really analyze our life to see if this is true. I mean, do we have control over whether we’re going to get yelled at or someone in the street is going to honk at us? Or are we going to get upset, by simple daily things that we think we have control of, but we don’t?
Each time that the ego returns into this valley of Samsara it repeats exactly all of the acts of its previous lives, sometimes in elevated spirals, sometimes in lower spirals.
In this day and age, within the cheap pseudo-occultism, much is spoken about the law of epigenesis, the capacity for originating new circumstances (this is when Nietzsche talks about creative will, to create something new within oneself).
It is obvious that only the authentic human beings with conscious will can modify their destiny and originate a new order of things. The intellectual animal has not built the body of conscious will, the causal vehicle. The wretched, rational homunculi is always a victim of the eternal laws of return and recurrence... We need to create the causal body if what we sincerely want is to incarnate the Being (God within). Only the Being is capable of doing. Only He can modify the circumstances and exercise with mastery the law of epigenesis. ―Samael Aun Weor, Cosmic Teachings of a Lama
We say that in order to escape, we can say, the limitations of 108 lifetimes, or humanoid existences, we can create the solar astral body, in a marriage, in alchemy, so that we are submitted to superior laws. Therefore, we’re not necessarily limited to having 108 existences to do this work. Instead we transcend that law.
Reincarnation: Divine Manifestation within the Consciousness
In order to incarnate God, we need to create the solar bodies, the causal body, specifically. This is beautifully represented in the life of Jesus. You’ll see in this next image we have John the Baptist, baptizing the master Jesus, the Christ. So really, reincarnation, we can say in context, in this lecture, pertains to when God manifests in the soul, to incarnate. It does not mean entering into new bodies. That is return, but reincarnation is an act of will, an act of creation, in which God, decidedly, decides to perform a mission within a certain human being and enters into that soul that has created those bodies.
Think of the solar bodies as a type of electric circuitry that can manifest high voltage. If you have poor wiring and you send a tremendous volt of energy through that circuitry, it’ll fuse. It will break. Christ is an energy and can only manifest in the circuitry of a human being that has those vehicles, because if the Being were to try to enter into a person with just the lunar bodies, with a lot of ego involved in it, that human being would be annihilated instantly, because Christ is the energy of life, the cosmos.
So in order to reincarnate the Being, we need to work on initiation. We need to work on sexual alchemy, which is described in The Perfect Matrimony and The Mystery of the Golden Flower. Samael Aun Weor states the following in The Mystery of The Golden Flower:
Reincarnation is a feat accomplished only by the great illuminated souls, in which they consciously choose to be born in a particular time and place… (in other words, they choose to incarnate the Being in a new physical body. Only beings with conscious development can do this).
The word reincarnation is most demanding, it must not be used carelessly: No one would be able to reincarnate without first having eliminated the ego, without truly possessing sacred Individuality. Incarnation is a very venerable word, signifying in fact the re-embodiment of the divine in a man. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Mystery of The Golden Flower
And we find this scripturally stated in Book of John, Chapter 1 verse 14
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. ―John 1:14
Then, the book of Matthew:
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. ―Matthew 3:16-17
The waters refer to the sexual waters, in which the Holy Spirit can baptize the energy of God. So the incarnation of Jesus, the Christ within Jesus, is an act of reincarnation, but also many masters have incarnated the Christ. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus was the only one. Because in fact, Muhammad, received the Qur’an upon Jabal al-Nur, the mountain of light in the Muslim tradition. He received the teachings from Gabriel, meaning he incarnated his inner law, his inner Qur’an [Arabic for “recitation,” the Word] from the Angel Gabriel, and Gabriel relates to procreation, the forces of the moon, the sexual energy. But also, Krishna also incarnated with Arjuna within the Bhagavad-Gita.
Question: What about Buddha?
Buddha is a great master who incarnated Christ. Zarathustra, many masters, they incarnated that fire because they entered into initiation and developed those bodies. Here we have the Bhagavad-Gita, where Arjuna, who represents the solar causal body, is speaking to the Christ, Krishna. There’s a couple more things we’ll explain in relation to the nature of these paths as we discussed, in accordance with Hinduism.
I would like to give you two phrases, first, specifically, explain two paths as we’ve been mentioning. Krishna stated the following to Arjuna:
The Being is not born, does not die, nor does it reincarnate; it has no origin; it is eternal and changeless; it is the first of all, and does not die when the body passes away. ―Bhagavad-Gita 2:20
Now this would seem to contradict the following statement:
…As one sets aside worn out clothes and puts on new ones, so the embodied Being leaves its spent body and enters other new ones. ―Bhagavad-Gita 2:22
Now what is interesting is that they seem to contradict. The Being doesn’t incarnate, but it does incarnate within certain beings.
What is not explicitly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita, or at least clearly, esoterically, is how when one follows a path of initiation, one incarnates the Being. But in lunar people, people with lunar bodies, they do not incarnate the Being. Those two paths are open there. The solar path, extending up the path of revelation to God, or the lunar path of being swallowed by nature. Now actually, the Bhagavad-Gita does explain this, but it elaborates upon this point:
Upon leaving the body, taking the path of the fire, of the light, of the day, of the luminous lunar fortnight and of the northern solstice, those who know Brahma, go towards Brahma. Upon death, the yogi who takes the path of smoke of the dark Lunar fortnight and of the southern solstice, reaches the Lunar sphere (the astral world) and is then reborn (returns, re-embodies). These two paths, the luminous and the dark, are considered permanent. Through the first, one is emancipated, and through the second, one is reborn (returns).” ―Bhagavad-Gita 8:24-26
So in the solar path we incarnate God, but in the lunar path we continue to rotate in samsara, in synthesis.
When the Lord (the Being) acquires a body, or leaves it, He associates with the six senses, or abandons them and passes like the breeze which carries with it the scent of flowers. Directing the ears, the eyes, the organs of touch, taste and smell as well as the mind, He experiences the objects of the senses. The deluded do not see Him who departs, stays and enjoys; but they who possess the eye of knowledge behold Him. ―Bhagavad-Gita 15:8-10
Those who are not familiar with reincarnation, should study the Bhagavad-Gita. Specifically, I’d like to quote for you what reincarnation really means, as according to the Hindu gospel, we can say:
The supreme personality of God (which is Vishnu, or Krishna, speaking to Arjuna) said: “Many, many incarnations both you and I have passed. I can remember all of them, but you cannot, O subduer of the enemy! (Meaning: subduer of his own egos). Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I incarnate dominating my Prakriti and appear in my original transcendental form; serving my self of my own maya. Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion―at that time I descent Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to re-establish the principles of Religion, I advent Myself millennium after millennium. One who knows the transcendental nature of my appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My external abode, O Arjuna! ―Bhagavad-Gita 4:5-9
So Christ only incarnates within an initiate. Reincarnation only occurs within the Gods. People, we, common human persons, human beings, we can say out of polite and respect, we just return. We don’t reincarnate. We don’t remember where we came from or where we’re going.
Question: Do we have lunar bodies?
We have lunar vehicles and we are subjected to the laws of nature, but we need to develop the solar bodies so that we can transcend this wheel of suffering.
Those who incarnate God are not recognized as God we can say. Those who incarnate the Christ, people don’t see the Christ, even though many times we may have walked past such a being. The first stage in the Bhagavad-Gita, when the Lord, the Being, acquires the body, or leaves it, he associates with the six senses, or abandons them and passes like the breeze, which carries with it the scent of flowers, directly in the ears, the eyes, the organs of touch, taste, and smell, as well as the mind. He experiences the objects, the senses. The diluted do not see him who departs, stays and enjoys. But they who possess the eye of knowledge, gnosis, Da’ath, only they behold him.
Nietzsche’s Eternal Return
We need to incarnate the Being if we want to be liberated from suffering, if we want to attain a higher state of perception. We’ve been explaining what reincarnation means in context in terms of return and recurrence, studying the Pythagorean teachings, as well as the Muslim teachings of Rumi, and a little bit of Nietzsche. I’d actually like to conclude with the teachings of the eternal return as given by Nietzsche. I think its especially relevant to this discussion, since just as we mentioned the teachings of the Hindustani master, Krishna, the very same things that the German philosopher Nietzsche talked about are in the Bhagavad-Gita, or taught by Pythagoras, or taught in Buddhist doctrine, and the points that he makes are very poetic and beautiful. I think they will be very beneficial for you to hear. I’m going to read for you exactly what Nietzsche taught in his book about the eternal return, accompanied next to Jesus, of course. In this chapter, I’m not going to read the entirety. It is called “On the Vision and the Riddle,” where the fictional Zarathustra, the Iranian prophet, is speaking to a group of sailors about a vision he had, meaning: an astral experience.
Not long ago, I walked gloomily through the deadly pallor of dusty―gloomy and hard, with lips pressed together. Not only one sun had set for me. A path that ascended defiantly through stones, malicious, lonely, not cheered by herb or shrub―a mountain path crunched under the defiance of my foot. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
Now a mountain in esoterism refers to initiation, to ascend up the mountain, the path that leads to God, the Superman. It is only attempted by those who are defiant, meaning: his step is crushing the stones defiantly in order to go up, seemingly against the forces of gravity
Striding silently over the mocking clatter of pebbles, crushing the rock that made it slip, my foot forced its way upward. Upward―defying the spirit that drew it downward toward the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch enemy. Upward―although he sat on me, half dwarf, half mole, lame, making lame, dripping lead into my ear, leaden thoughts into my brain (this is the ego telling us we can’t enter into initiation. It’s always telling us things).
“Oh Zarathustra," he whispered mockingly, syllable by syllable, "You philosopher’s stone! You threw yourself up high, but every stone that is thrown must fall.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
So what he’s talking about is the philosopher’s stone. The stone relates to alchemy, the secret of Yesod, the foundation stone of Solomon’s temple, which is the sexual energy, our body is the temple, and our stone is the sexual energy.
This is talking about how, like many initiates, he tried to throw his stone up, to take that stone up the mountain, to return it to God, so that he can finally unite with the Being, the Superman. But the ego is always there saying, “You threw your stone up high. You can’t follow this path. You’re going to drop your stone like Sisyphus.” Meaning: you’re going to let yourself fall sexually, fall to animal passion, desire.
“Oh Zarathustra, you philosopher’s stone, you slingstone, you star-crusher. You threw yourself up so high; but every stone that is thrown must fall. Sentenced to yourself and to your own stoning―O Zarathustra, far indeed have you thrown the stone, but it will fall back on yourself."
Then the dwarf fell silent, and that lasted a long time. His silence, however, oppressed me; and such twosomeness is surely more lonesome than being alone (So being alone with our own negative mind, thoughts, is really more lonely than being alone, we can say―being with other people).
I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought; but everything oppressed me. I was like one sick whom his wicked torture makes weary, and who as he falls asleep is awakened by a still more wicked dream. But there is something in me that I call courage; that has so far slain my every discouragement. This courage finally made me stand still and speak, "Dwarf! It is you or I! […] But I am the stronger of us two: you do not know my abysmal thought. That, you could not bear.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
What does it mean abysmal thought? The fact that he wants to descend into his own hell in order to take the stone up the mountain, because our soul is trapped in hell. We need to liberate it through our creative will.
Then something happened that made me lighter, for the dwarf jumped from my shoulder, being curious; and he crouched on a stone before me. But there was a gateway just where we stopped.
“Behold, this gateway, dwarf!" I continued, "It has two faces. Two paths meet here; no one has yet followed either to its end. This long lane stretches back for an eternity. And the long lane out there, that is another eternity. They contradict each other, these paths; they offend each other face to face; and it is here at this gateway that they come together. The name of the gateway is ascribed above: ‘Moment.’ But whoever would follow one of them, on and on, farther and farther―do you believe, dwarf, that these paths can contradict each other eternally?” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
So, Krishna said there are two paths: the solar path that leads to Brahma, and the lunar path that leads down, backward. These are the two paths that Nietzsche is talking about, and that eternally they go on. This constant drama of souls within the universe is always repeated, is eternal.
Question: Is he using the force of Tiphereth to carry Hod?
Instructor: Yes, and that’s willpower. Zarathustra is willpower. He says “my courage is what conquers. My creative will. My destiny wills it.”
"All that is straight, lies.," the dwarf murmured contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is circle.” (Albert Einstein said our illusions of linear time are illusory. Time itself is a circle. Eternity is a circle. Nothing goes on from one trajectory to another. It’s really a cycle, cyclical).
“You spirit of gravity," I said angrily, "do not make things too easy for yourself! Or I shall let you crouch where you are crouching, lamefoot; and it was I that carried you to this height.
“‘Behold," I continued, "this moment! From this gateway, Moment, a long, eternal lane leads backward: Behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can walk have walked in this lane before? Must not whatever can happen have happened, have been done before, have passed by before? And if everything has been there before―what do you think, dwarf, of this moment? Must not this gateway too have been there before? And are not all things knotted together so firmly that this moment draws after it all that is to come? Therefore―itself too? For whatever can walk, in this long lane out there too, it must walk once more.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
This is referencing to the fact that many individuals have walked the path of initiation before but they fell. Though they are trying to rise up again, they had crushed their star, were “star-crushers,” meaning: they killed the perfection of their Ain Soph Paranishpanna, their supra-atomic star, within themselves. So they have walked this path many times before. It happens.
“And this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things―must not all of have been there before? And return and walk in that other lane out there, before us, in this long dreadful lane―must not we eternally return?” ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
If we are in this type of classroom, it means that we’ve probably studied this science before. I remember having an experience with my Innermost in the astral plane. He told me, “97% of the people you meet you knew them before.” This is because 97% of our psyche is ego, according to Samael Aun Weor, so this is something I verified.
Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts. Then suddenly I heard a dog howl nearby. Had I ever heard a dog howl like this? My thoughts raced back. Yes, when I was a child, in the most distant childhood: then I heard a dog howl like this. And I saw him too, bristling his head up, trembling, in the stillest midnight when even dogs believed in ghosts―and I took pity: for just then the full moon, silent as death, passed over the house; just then it stood still, a round glow―still on the flat roof, as if on another’s property―that was why the dog was terrified, for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard such howling again, I took pity again. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
So, what is the moon referencing? The lunar path, the path of devolution, the path of the destruction of the soul within hell. So, it haunts us. Those who are really seeking to know God, to set up the path to Christ, we suffer because the moon is always haunting us.
Where has the dwarf gone now? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming then? Was I waking up? (Or: “Was I experiencing these things directly in meditation?”)
Among wild cliffs I stood suddenly alone, bleak, in the bleakest moonlight. But there lay a man. And there―the dog, jumping, brisling, whining―now he saw me coming; then he howled again, he cried. Had I ever heard a dog cry like this for help? And verily, what I saw―I had never seen the like. A young shepherd I saw, writhing, gagging, in spasms, his face distorted, and a heavy black snake hung out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much nausea and pale dread on one face? He seemed to have been asleep when the snake crawled into his throat, and there bit itself fast. My hand toward the snake, and tore in vain; it did not tear the snake out of his throat (What is this snake afflicting the shepherd, the initiate? It is the devolving serpent of hell that is our own sexual animal passion, which pushes us to fornicate, to be like animals).
Then it cried out to me: "Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!" Thus it cried out of me―my dread, my hatred, my nausea, my pity, all that is good and wicked in me cried out of me with a single cry.
(Zarathustra was then speaking to the sailors):
“You bold ones who surround me! You searchers, you researchers, and whoever among you has embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas. You who are glad of riddles. Guess me this riddle that I saw then, interpret me the vision of the loneliest. For it was a vision and a forseeing. What did I see then in a parable (in an astral experience, you could say)? And who is it who must yet come one day? Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake crawled thus? Who is the man into whose throat all that is heaviest and blackest will crawl thus? ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
So it is that shepherd, Christ.
Nietzsche didn’t use the term Christ, because Christianity is degenerated. People worship a statue and not the terrible reality of the Intimate Christ, the Rebel Christ, the Superhuman. He talks about Superman. A Superman is an individual who has fully perfected God within, manifesting the three sephirah above: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, within the heart, the human soul. A shepherd, like the keeper of sheep, pertains to the one who is walking the path of initiation. But this is the Superman who takes on our own evil to annihilate it.
Question: That’s Abel, right?
Instructor: Habel relates to that, but this is even beyond Habel. This is Christ.
The shepherd, however, bit as my cry counseled him; he bit with a good bite (meaning with the mouth, or with the throat, the science of Da’ath, we kill the snake that is leading us into hell. We conquer animal passion).
Far away he spewed the head of the snake―and he jumped up. No longer shepherd, no longer human―one changed, radiant, laughing! Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed. Oh, my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter... (meaning because it was a superhuman laughter, God, terribly divine, beyond good and evil).
...and now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that never grows still. My longing for this laughter gnaws at me; oh, how do I bear to go on living? And [yet], how could I bear to die now?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra. ―Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Vision and the Riddle”
He’s talking about how Christ, the Superman, really, incarnates in the human being, to fully eliminate the ego. That is the path of reincarnation.
Questions and Answers
Question: That symbolism is really something else. I would wonder what Carl Jung, I don’t think he was mentioned anywhere, and he’s very much into symbolism, the subconscious mind… I wonder if that scenario, so to speak, that scenario you just were talking about, I wonder if Jung had made any?
Instructor: Well, I don’t know too much about Jung, but I know that many of the German initiates knew each other. Rudolph Steiner was the disciple of Nietzsche. Nietzsche was the disciple of Richard Wagner, who is a great master. They were all interrelated, and they all knew each other. They taught the doctrine of the Superman.
In conclusion, we seek to escape the laws of return and recurrence by developing our will in harmony with Christ, so we can kill the snake that tempts us into sin, which is our own inverted sexual fires, which we need to tame like Moses did, or we need to work with the positive serpent―the cross, as mentioned in Exodus, the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness.
Question: That was the negative serpent you are talking about?
Instructor: The negative serpent that the shepherd bit, that was the inverted aspect, the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve.
Comment: It is interesting, its like a sign, from when I read from Scorpio, they talk about the good and the eagle, which is sacred. They refer to the serpent as the negative one: “Get out of the way!”
Instructor: It is dual like the serpent Kundalini that Moses raised on the staff in the wilderness. The cross of man and woman, or the bronze serpent, the two metals of copper, representing woman, and tin, representing man, sexually united, and when that serpent is controlled, the energy is harnessed. The bronze serpent rises up the spine and can heal the Israelites. The serpent then that Nietzsche talks about is in the negative aspect. But in the beginning, and many times in that book, he mentions the positive serpent that works with the eagle―the serpent that rises up the spinal column, Kundalini, and the eagle’s wings flourish and take one up to the Absolute.
Question: So the bronze serpent, or I’ve always heard that Moses just healed the Israelites, but what about being bit by serpents?...
Instructor: Yes, exactly, thank you for bringing that up. The other serpents, there were fiery serpents that were biting the Israelites and causing them pain. Those fiery serpents are all of our animal passions that afflict us: anger, pride, vanity―as we’ve been mentioning, the ego, the inverted fire. And the only way to heal that ailment is to work with the solar serpent, the bronze serpent, in order to heal the Israelites. The Israelites are not just, in the Bible, a reference to people in the past, in the Middle East. It refers to archetypes, symbols, parts of us that we need to liberate and free. The same serpents that were biting the Israelites were biting the Superman, but the superman just bit it up, spat it out, and laughed. That is something only a god can do. And we all have God within―we need to reincarnate Him within us, to escape the return and recurrence of all things. Any questions?
Comment: Just a comment on epigenesis, the ability to change ourselves. It can be correlated to physicality, too. You know, in the medical community, there is compelling evidence, that through, one example, physical activity versus drug ages, we can change our genetic expressions. If someone has a pronation toward some disease, that can be halted, inhibited. Now, this was always possible, but as I was listening actively and such, I’m thinking Jesus and Moses could’ve had smartphones, but they were just not at that point in time where it wasn’t known, or you know the laws were not exact in such a way, or realized in such a way, that they couldn’t have smartphones. It was just impossible.
Instructor: They had much better communication than our smartphones. I mean, if you meet a Superman like that in the internal planes, really, they are incomprehensible to us. But it is true that genetically our actions can affect our genes, and our genes are the inheritors of karma. The very physical body that we have, our tendencies, our habits, our illnesses that reoccur cyclically, are in our genes. And those genes are formulated as a result of our karma, our past actions. Now we want to perform positive action in order to rectify that. That is a good point because it is by changing ourselves psychologically that we change our genes. We have many practices in this tradition where we work with energy, like alchemy, in which the genes change. The genes of an intellectual animal is what we are. We can change into the genes of a Superman or superwoman, basically.
Comment: Bruno Gröning, not sure if you have heard of him, but he is from Germany. Died in 1953. But he talked about an agent. It was Heilstrom, he called it. It is the prana and everything. That is what they were emphasizing. If you could get a nice state away, you could bring this force into your body through the bread. They have had healings, and this group is international. I went to one of the meetings. It was packed. It was on River Road. They had a German interpreter and a lot of Polish people were there. He says its not that complicated. It’s spiritual. We were talking about spirituality, but they were doctors by the way, that were there from Europe. It was getting in that state… you mention the genes. They’re doing something, where they had healings. If they were able to get into that relaxed state, it was like prana basically. Heilstrom is what the Bruno Gröning calls it. But vital force, if you could concentrate it somehow…
Instructor: The greatest healing is to work with alchemy, in sexual union. But we have many methods in this tradition that work with healing methods as well, such as in a book called Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic. There are many other schisms and teachings and things that work. Some of the teachings that we work with are ancient, older than this universe really. They’re eternal.
Comment: I’ve reflected a little bit on what you said a minute ago, in regards to time and evolution of technology and things like that. The real technologies is regeneration and development of faculties. Because if you actually paid attention to the New Testament, where its talking about the life of Jesus, he’s going around telepathically understanding what people are thinking, saying, “I saw you over there in the bushes with that woman, and you’re not going to stone her to death today,” and that sort of thing―communication. So, something like cell phones, would be completely irrelevant, obsolete. Because if someone had developed the kind of faculties like Jesus had, you wouldn’t need something like that. So time frame and time relevant, it’s something that ancient history had better technology than we did and we just don’t understand that fully yet.
Instructor: And I remember one of our other instructors mentioned, we have a technology better than Google inside. That’s meditation. We can investigate anything we need to.
Question: Going back to what you were saying, with karma. If a couple, the woman, had been an adulterer, then in the next life that same couple, that man would do the same thing? I’m just so confused by what, and I’ve already talked to you about this, by what in the person who was the victim the first time, what in the next life makes them know that they should do that? And then are they following God’s will by doing that?
Instructor: It is not God’s will. It is our own self will. The one that commits adultery and decides to do that is the ego. Particularly, the ego in a person, or, typically in our case, we’re compelled by so many egos and forces that we have no cognizance of the fact. We don’t see how we are just performing the same dramas, comedies, tragedies, that we’ve been doing for many lifetimes. It’s not God’s will. God does not say to us, “Okay, now you have to commit adultery to the other person.” This superior law, in fact, that person, if the couple is Gnostic, knows this science and is working, when those egos emerge that are of an adulterer’s nature, and that will happen with every couple―where certain karmic recurrences happen where partners from a past life come to one’s forefront in order to test us and tempt us. The law is testing us, is saying, “Do you want to follow the superior path or the inferior path?” If we give into our adulterer’s ego and we commit adultery, then we fail. But the couple that’s working Gnostically speaking, takes advantage of those circumstances in order to gain comprehension. Then those egos are annihilated and there’s greater love in the couple. It’s an ordeal Samael Aun Weor calls the Direne Ordeal in the book called The Three Mountains.
Question: Well, it is because you said that it has to do that to reach equilibrium. So say a Gnostic couple experiences that and that had happened in a past life, and then the woman transcends that, and does not act on that ego, are things out of whack?
Instructor: No, things are reconciled. In terms of balance, there’s an inferior way and a superior way. If we try to relate it to physics, if you punch a punching bag, it is going to move, then it will come back at you. So that force has to come back. Now, whether we decide to continue punching and foiling at it, that’s the problem. If you just punch it once and the force comes back to you, you grab it, and can hold it still. You comprehend that, well, you are too tired to keep up the monotony of hitting the bag and want to stop. In the same way, you realize that you can’t continue feeding those egos. When you comprehend that, you stop propelling that karma.
Comment: Because if you did punch it again, then it would have to come back and repeat the same thing over and over.
Instructor: Exactly. It is going to repeat, and to do that is to suffer and continue along that cycle of samsara.
Question: I have a question. You mentioned at the beginning of the lecture, a little bit about how, as you said, teachings on return, recurrence, reincarnation, sort of the whole subject matter here is taken, maybe not so much Western, but Christianity. Are there any examples of that you can elaborate or allude to? The only thing I can think of offhand is years ago, when I read the Old Testament and Book of Job in particular, and other scant places, in the Old and New Testaments, but particularly in the Book of Job, certain passages, led me to sort of see the possibility that Job, or the ones he was associating with had a notion of God…
Instructor: Yeah, that relates to recurrence. I’m speaking specifically about the doctrine of transmigration: the soul entering into different bodies. Now we have remnants of that in the Christian doctrine where the man who is possessed by many devils, those taking place in the souls of the bodies of pigs. It refers exactly to what I was referring to in relation to when we reincorporate into a new body, certain egos that are definitely criminal have to be taken out of us and put into different bodies like trees, animals, plants, cats, or dogs, or different beasts, to enter into devolution, as a type of mercy. The one who does that is Christ.
Also, Christ referred to John the Baptist as the return or reincarnation of Elijah (Matthew 11:13-14). You can also reference the return of Elijah in Malachi 4:5-6.
Comment: I rarely think of it in that context, because we think of casting out of demons and going somewhere else, on another level that’s like talking to…
Instructor: On one psychological level, it pertains to how we need to clean our temple. On another hand it talks about how certain psychological elements can reincorporate into animals. And its in the Bible, but people don’t really read deeply into it. Now, in Christianity, we find that a lot of things were taken out of the Bible, like Mary Magdalene’s role with Jesus as his wife―things of that nature―that he practiced alchemy with her.
Question: Not long ago I studied some of that with my father.
Instructor: Yeah, in the Bible a lot of things were edited or taken out. But you find it more common, the doctrine of transmigration, you find a lot in Buddhism and Hinduism. I wanted to point out how Pythagoras, how even Nietzsche, talked about the same thing. But many scholars of Nietzsche are saying, “No, he didn’t talk about reincarnation or reincorporation.” But in esotericism it is very clear.
Comment: Context.
Instructor: Exactly. So, a lot of those scholars they don’t know anything about an esoteric doctrine. They interpret things in a very literal manner.
Comment: Just as an aside, in India, they use the cow, I think for healing too, where they bring people to the cow and they touch the cow.
Instructor: The cow represents the Divine Mother. And there even was a five-legged cow that was found in India that Blavatsky wrote about. Now the cow is a sacred symbol of the Divine Mother Kundalini. Even in the second surah of the Qur’an, you have Al-Baqarah, which means “The Cow,” which is the longest surah of the Qur’an, which traditionally, in the Muslim tradition, one would sing the Qur’an, to recite. Qur’an means “recitation.” The cow is really the power of the verb, the Divine Mother. The cow, like in the myth of Mithras slaying the bull, he stabbed the bull in the throat, meaning to conquer the animal passion you have to work with Daath, sexual alchemy to kill that beast, that devolving serpent. Also, the way we do that is with the cow, the Divine Mother. Now traditionally, they would say the cow was supposed to have five legs. There was a cow found with five legs, literally, in India. There are five aspects to the Divine Mother that I mentioned in the books that we have, which you can read more about. But the cows relates to Devi-Kundalini [see the lecture The Divine Mother from Beginning Self-Transformation].
Comment: The healing also…
Instructor: Exactly. And the way that we heal is by working with our cow, by mantralizing, by working with that sacred power, and like Mithras, killing the animal ego so that we can unite with God. Yes?
Comment: As I’m listening, don’t know if anyone has a frame of reference, preacher Dan was quite a famed Jesuit priest, based on Catholic order, known for his metaphysical pendants. I happen to get offered two tapes of his from his retreat, and its pretty profound. I mean back in 1955 on Easter Sunday, and its really good. The reader was saying how he was inhibited by the hierarchy of the church, that they actually did not want him to go and speak of these things because of the truth. Maybe they didn’t even know, I don’t know. But he was really held back and inhibited. And he had a message and here it is. Like in some cannon of knowledge somewhere, and I buy this tape, you know, about the cosmos and such.
Comment: Have you ever heard of Giordano Bruno? They burnt him to a crisp, the so-and-sos in the Vatican. This was during the Renaissance. He traveled all over Europe, and it was right along the same lines with this tape, same thing, only he was lucky. He was born 500 years before they would have burned him. They burnt Giordano Bruno and they burnt Savonarola.
Instructor: A lot of times, these were people, there were many initiates who had to keep silent about these things about return and reincarnation, especially within Christian doctrine, for fear of the Inquisition. It is a science that is well documented. Many of us don’t accept this at face value, but really investigate this understanding of our past lives, really investigate within meditation, but also in the astral plane. I remember, for instance, I was with the Master Samael Aun Weor in the astral plane, where I was trying to get help from him, and he kept telling me, “You need to remember your past lives.” And I was complaining, I was kind of whining that I don’t remember, and this was years ago. He said it doesn’t matter. You need to know your past lives now because it is going to tell you about your current situation. Everything we have physically now is a result of our relationship to the past. Yes?
Question: You said, alchemy must be completely absent of lust, but with so much ego isn’t it really hard to not even have like a lustful thought pop up?
Instructor: We want to strive to not have lust in the sexual act. In the beginning that is the way it is because we’re 97% ego.
Question: Is that a waste of energy then? When you avoid the fornication but you do have lustful thoughts that pop up?
Instructor: We have to work at our level. Wherever we’re at, we have to work at, we have to understand that we’re not going to be pure. We’re not going to perform the sexual acts like saints. We gradually train ourselves to do it like that. So in the beginning, yeah, there is a lot of lust. I would say practice in short increments to train the body and the mind. Then prolong the act so long as one can retain the energies.
Question: Do you have to be at the same level, spiritually, mentally, and spiritually? Because if one is more inclined to, you mentioned, the erotic order, then there’s no balance there. You have to be on the same…
Question: You mean the two people?
Comment: Yeah.
Comment: Because I was asking about that, and about a master who practiced with a non-believer and he rose. And she saw how he was glowing and said now I want to do this too. But I don’t think they need to be equal.
Instructor: What is important is that one has the potential to rise to the same level. But at the same time, we are at different levels of being. You can be very high up and your partner can be struggling. There are many stories about that with different initiates, but it really depends on our creative will, how we want to work on alchemy. If our partner is against it, but there’s still love there, we can work. And then by our example, the other person can want to rise to our level. Whether or not one is compatible that is another thing, capable of rising to the same level, basically speaking.
Question: We can save our partner through alchemy, right?
Instructor: Yes. This is exactly what Paul of Taurus has taught in the Bible. Disbelieving husband, how do you not know that your disbelieving wife can be saved? Or, wife, how do you not know that your disbelieving husband will not be saved? (1 Corinthians 7). It is by being a good example, by working with our creative will, is how we are going to change that.
Comment: And that’s a loving couple too.
Instructor: It’s a path of sacrifice. Of course, people think that alchemy, when people get married, “Oh, it’s going to be perfect and there’s going to be no problems.” People want to think like that, but it’s a crucifixion, one in which we can redeem ourselves.
Question: Well, then along with that, with sexual energy, she was talking about how if you practice all day and then go watch TV, you’ve wasted all the energy you’ve cultivated. So there’s a lot of other ways to waste that energy too, right?
Instructor: It depends on our psychological state and how we invest our energy into certain projects. So you can save a lot of energy in alchemy, but within a moment of anger, you say something really hateful, you lose all of that. It’s possible. The thing is to conserve the energy and restrain the mind. Because if we don’t restrain the mind, if we don’t have ethical discipline, then all the energy in the world is not going to save us. In fact, it will make us more destructive, which is symbolized by the centaurs who are in hell. They built solar bodies. They are half human, but have a lot of animal. They didn’t kill their ego entirely, so they fall there. It is very common.
Question: Is this from Nietzsche?
Instructor: Yeah, from what I know that happened with Nietzsche. He let himself fall intentionally.
Comment: That’s why he went crazy.
Comment: I was just going to say Rudolph Steiner, wrote about the centaurs, said they were highly intelligent and the natural science was ridiculous.
Instructor: The centaur is a symbol.
Comment: He said they came out of the universe and they made it with the daughters of men or something like that.
Instructor: He’s speaking symbolically, for people who don’t know kabbalah. When centaurs mated with daughters of men, it means certain initiates with solar bodies were mating with the ancient humanities, ancient phenomena that Samael Aun Weor talks about. Any more comments or questions? We’ll conclude.
Question: I have one. You mention briefly about spouses or someone you care about that’s suffering, and maybe they need more help. In eastern traditions there’s a lot of stories like in Buddhism, where a family member always burned incense for the Buddha or God or something like that, and then gave a special blessing for the person who, you know, was knee-deep in debt and that cleared a lot of it. There’s always certain things that can be done in that sort of thing, right?
Instructor: Well you know, we can say burning incense is helpful for our mental and emotional state. It doesn’t absolve karma. There are some people who think that doing certain things is going to liberate us, “Oh, if you sing this mantra a million times, 101 times, you’re going to absolve your karma.” It doesn’t work like that. It will help you adjust your mental state so that you can face your karma with more strength.
Question: Don’t the gods derive a great deal of ecstasy from being around that? Master Samael talks about having incense in your room and things like that. It draws the masters…
Instructor: Yeah, it attracts superior forces. I think it was mentioned in The Way of the Bodhisattva. We’ll conclude on this point, The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva. Anyone who begins to walk this path of initiation, who is developing the soul within, the gods [buddhas] look at that and they favor that. They hail that individual, “Finally, another soul is entering into the stream of nirvana.”
Many times I have had experiences where I was with certain masters and they were pleased. Lighting incense helps with that. It accentuates. It strengthens one’s prayer. It is something you can verify internally that they’re helping. As soon as you’re working with sexual energy and you’re trying to restrain your mind, they come to you and they will guide you, internally. If there are no more comments and questions we will conclude. Thank you all for coming.
