The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that is symbolized in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is a very deep and profound symbol that requires a great deal of patience in order to grasp its real meaning. This is because this Tree of Knowledge, Daath, relates to the very fiber of our Being. It is not something that you can grasp simply intellectually or as an idea.
Daath is concerned with the fire that animates the atoms in your body. Daath is concerned with the energy that is within every thought, the energy that drives every emotion. The substance of every sensation that we experience is related to the Tree of Knowledge, Daath.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that simply by hearing a few lectures or reading a few books that you will comprehend what Daath means. The fact is that this mystery of Daath has been explored by saints and prophets for centuries, and its depths still have not been fully explored—because there is so much wisdom, so much to this science of Daath.
Daath [דעת] is Hebrew and means knowledge. It is spelled with three letters: Daleth [ד], Ayin [ע], and Tav / Tau [ת].
The Tree of Knowledge is one of those symbolic trees described in the myth of Adam and Eve. In order for us to grasp the meaning of Daath, we have to first grasp that Adam and Eve are a myth—not a myth in the sense that it is not true or not real, but a myth in the sense that it is a mystery. Adam and Eve is a mystery—a story that contains and hides the truth.
The mystery of Daath relates to the entirety of what we are as Being. When we look at Daath or the Tree of Knowledge in relation with the Tree of Life, we know from studying Kabbalah that these two trees share their roots, they have the same roots. Those roots are the rivers of Eden—that one river that was parted into four heads.
When we graphically or symbolically represent Daath in relation with the Tree of Life, we imagine Daath as a mysterious sphere just below the topmost triangle on the Tree of Life. Daath is in a void, a great gap or space between the trinity: Kether, Chokmah, Binah—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—between that Trimurti and creation.
When the Solar Logos, the Supernal Triangle, unfolds itself in order to create, that Three-in-One divides itself into two. That dual form is called Elohim; it is God and Goddess, Shiva-Shakti, Abba-Aima, the Father and the Mother who, in their sexual co-operation, form Daath. This is how God creates—through the union of Shiva-Shakti, the Yab-Yum, the Father-Mother. That union is represented as the sphere of Daath. This is the world of creation; this is how Briah and the remaining worlds of Kabbalah come into existence.
When the Tree of Life is superimposed over a man, Daath is at the level of the throat. This has great significance. It is through the throat that God creates. In the Bible it says, “And Elohim said, Let there be light.” Elohim is El plus Eloah to make the plural word Elohim. That union of El (God) and Eloah (Goddess) spells Elohim, which is plural—God and Goddess, the duality, who work together.
Daath, that mysterious sphere, is at the level of the throat. It is from our word that the Logos emerges—Logos is Greek for word. This upper triangle is called the Logos, the Solar Logos. The first Logos, the second Logos, and the third Logos are the Three-in-One. When that Three-in-One unfolds into two and creates the Elohim, from the throat emerges the light, the sun, Horus, the Word of God.
The reason this is important is because Adam and Eve were created in this method. This is why it says in the Bible that God says, “Behold, the man has become as one of us,”—plural—it is not singular—“In our image and likeness.” Adam, the primeval Adam, the root Adam, reflects that duality or male-female.
Adam is later separated to further reflect that duality as Adam and Eve, or Ish and Isha, man and woman. The man and woman were cast out of Eden because of the great mistake. It is not our purpose in these classes to spend much time on the historical or literal meaning; our concern is psychological, spiritual.
We know that we are out of Eden. We are not in Eden, and we want to go back. We want to return to a state of blessedness, a state of happiness. In Eden, humanity was free from suffering and death. When we seek spirituality, we seek that—to be free from suffering, to be free from sickness, from death.
We need to discover the doorway back to Eden. As we discussed, the first letter in Daath is Daleth, which symbolizes a door. How do we reach the door of Eden? How do we return back to Eden? This is the great mystery.
When the man and the woman were expelled from Eden, the Bible says that they entered into the wilderness in order to till the earth and to suffer, and Eve begins to have children. How? Because Adam “knew” her.
And Adam knew his wife and she begat Cain.
To “know,” or Daath, knowledge, is sexual. We know this is true, and we have discussed this in previous lectures at length, but this represents an intimate connection between Daath and the sexual organs, which on the Tree of Life are related with Yesod, the ninth sphere. The ninth Sephirah on the Tree of Life rests over the sexual organs.
Yesod, like every sphere, has many levels of meaning. Yesod relates to Eden. In Hebrew, Yesod means “the foundation, the basis”; it is from here that life emerges. It is the foundation of life: sex. From Yesod, life emerges on every level.
Being on the central pillar of the Tree of Life, it has a profound relationship with Daath. Yesod is Eden, but the lower Eden—the Mayim; and Daath is the upper Eden—the Schamayim. These are the two waters—when God separates the waters from the waters—superior from inferior.
The Mayim are the waters below, which are Yesod, the sexual waters, the great womb, those waters from which life emerges.
The Shamayim, which is usually translated in the Bible as “heaven,” is Mayim plus the letter Shin, which means fire. Shamayim means “fiery waters” and is related with the upper Eden, Daath, at the level of the throat.
When we look at this psychologically and discover how Cain comes to be, we remember that Adam and Eve are symbolic. We have to look at Adam and Eve in this myth in relation with our own psyche, with our own selves. In this way we know that Eve is related with sex; Eve is related to the sexual organs. Eve is related with that energetic serpent on the caduceus of Mercury, related with procreation, with the ether of life, with the energies that push the organism to reproduce, to create. This is Eve, in us—and Adam relates to our brain.
When Eve tempts Adam, this represents how the sexual organs tempt the brain. The serpent, which is that fiery force of Lucifer, tempts the sexual organs to eat the fruit of Daath. Eve, being tempted, fails, and eats of it and takes that fruit to Adam (the brain) who likes it, and indulges in pleasure and sensation. Thus, Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden, because they break the covenant of sex. They break the covenant, the agreement, between Jahovah Elohim and man, between us and God. That covenant is:
Thou shalt not fornicate.
When that covenant is broken, we as a psyche leave Eden and the result is that Eve gives birth to Cain. Cain and his brother Abel are the result of Adam and Eve (brain and sex) leaving Eden.
Cain and Abel
In other words, as our psyche has developed, through the abuse of the Tree of Knowledge we lost the innocence that we once had as Adam and Eve. What emerges in us is a conflict between Cain, the mind that likes to fornicate, and Abel, the innocent soul.
In the Bible it says that God preferred the sacrifice of Abel over Cain—that Cain, the mind, brings as his sacrifice the fruit of the soil, the earth, which represents materialism, worldly things. This is what Cain, our mind, thinks is of value.
Abel brings the first choice of his flock. The flock represents spiritual aspirants, the sheep who follow the shepherd, in other words the students of the way, of the doctrine. Abel is related with the soul, the consciousness, and what he offers to God are the fruits of his labors—Abel offers his spiritual work. God prefers that clearly, but Cain, the mind, becomes jealous of the soul and complains to God. So God says:
“Why are you annoyed and why has your countenance fallen? Is it not so that if you improve it will be forgiven you? If you do not improve, however, at the door sin is waiting and to you is its longing, but you can rule over it.”
When it says sin, what it is actually saying is, in Hebrew, Ra, which is the evil from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Ra does not mean sin in the way that we usually think of it, as infractions of moral rules; Ra means the impure spirit, pollution. Specifically, as we discussed in the last two lectures, Ra refers to fornication.
In other words, God warns Cain that it is up to Cain (the mind) to choose his path. God says, “...at the door, sin waits.” Ra is waiting at the door. What is the door? Daath. Knowledge. Sex. Cain (the mind) must make a decision how to act.
This is us; through Gnosis, we have the knowledge of what Daath means. But sin, Ra, the impure spirit, is within us, and is waiting at the door to tempt us and to cause us to continue to make the mistakes that we have always made.
God tells Cain, “You can conquer it.” But what does Cain do? Cain spoke against Abel, his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother and killed him. This is how our mind, because of jealousy, because of pride, because of envy, because of attachment, because of lust, kills the soul.
Cain is our own mind. Cain and Abel have nothing to do, in this context, with history. We do this everyday; our own inner Cain slays Abel every day, every moment that we listen to the impure spirit (Ra), which is at the door of the consciousness.
Ultimately, that door is in sex, but that door also is within the senses—because Cain is the mind, the sensual mind that takes his information through the senses. He is that mind that is attached to sensation, who wants praise, who wants pleasure. Cain is the child of Adam (the brain), and Cain works through the brain. Cain is the child of Eve, because Cain is born and nourished through sex.
After the death of Abel, the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” And he said, “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?” This is how the mind is. The mind says, “I don’t know anything about the soul—I have nothing to do with the soul; I am innocent,”—even though the mind is the one that always betrays the Lord. This is Pilate from the Gospels, the traitor who washes his hands of any guilt.
God says, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the earth.” When the soul is killed by Cain, the blood is spilled—the energy, the essence, the light, the life force. The power of being alive flows into the earth, absorbed into the earth, and sinks into the earth. The voice of Abel is heard crying from the earth. This is because the soul becomes trapped in hell, becomes trapped in death; and we know this is true.
When we abuse sex, when we fortify our pride, when we indulge our envy, we suffer; our consciousness suffers. Our conscience—we know in our heart of hearts when we do wrong, but we do not want to admit it. Our Cain says, “I didn’t do anything wrong—everybody else is doing it—it must be o.k. All the books say it is o.k.; the priests and rabbis say it is o.k. for me to fornicate, for me to sleep around, for me to steal and to lie.”
Our Cain says all these things about killing Abel, our soul. The result is that our soul has become trapped below the earth, which means in Klipoth, in Hell, in Sheol—the infernal worlds, our own sub-consciousness, unconsciousness, and infra-consciousness—very deep levels where our soul, where our own beauty, our own potential is trapped. Thus Cain is cursed.
We know this is true because our own mind is cursed. Cain is sent out of the presence of God. Our mind cannot know God—we all try; everybody in the world is trying to reach God through the intellect—with theories, with beliefs, with dogmas, with movements and groups—trying to reach God through materialism. But remember, God does not like the sacrifice of Cain—materialistic things; God wants the sacrifice of Abel, the soul, which is related with the sheep, the shepherd, the Christ.
The Wives of Adam
It says in the Kabbalistic tradition that when this happened, Adam left his wife. Adam became distraught, hypnotized, seduced. He left Eve and began to have other wives. Two of these wives are called Lilith and Nahemah (or Naamah); these are two demons—seductive, psychological elements that seduce the brain.
The interesting thing about Lilith and Nahemah and the other creatures that Adam becomes entranced by, is that as a result of their cohabitation, there emerge into the world many elements, many creatures, many beasts, that before had never been seen. These are creatures that exist in an intermediary state, that cannot be seen with the physical eye, but that exist in more subtle levels of nature. In Latin they are called incubi and succubi, and these are the product of when Adam, the brain, fornicates through fantasy.
You see, Adam “left” his wife, the sexual organs. The brain began to fornicate in the mind, through fantasy, with Lilith and Nahemah—mental effigies, tempting forces in the mind. The result is that the brain creates incubi and succubi, which are half-existent sort of creatures, created by the brain and Lilith and Nahemah. These creatures exist only to suck the life from their creator. They do this by inciting the brain to fornicate through fantasy and masturbation.
These creatures have been known for centuries, but nowadays people think it is a joke. It is not; they are real. Everyone who indulges in mental fantasy, in masturbation, in fornication and adultery, creates these effigies because they utilize the sexual force in the mental world through lust. That power, that sexual force, creates, but in the mind. Stated simply: when we utilize our imagination and charge it with sexual energy, we create mental formations.
The result is that people become addicted to their fantasies. Fantasies can never be satisfied. Those fantasies always call for more energy, tempting us to feed them with more sexual forces, which we provide through fantasy and fornication. Those elementaries, as they are called by Paracelsus and others, are hungry for the energy that gave them life: the sexual energy. They always appear to Adam (the brain), and ask for food—sexual energy. They push the person to fantasize, to masturbate, to use pornography, to sleep around—because those mental formations want food, energy.
This is our situation; whether we are single or married, all of us have made this mess in our mind. All of us have these creatures, these lustful elements, either masculine ones or feminine ones in the mind. All of us have this raging sexual urgency that arises periodically because these elements want food; they want to be fed. These elements are our own children of the mind; they are false children, they are liars, they are demons—they are incubi and succubi, and they must be dissolved.
This is why it has become so difficult for us nowadays to approach the door of Daath, because Ra, the impure spirit, waits there to tempt the brain. In other words, that impure spirit that we ourselves made, through masturbation, through fornication, through adultery, through lying, through deceit, through pride, is hungry.
Cain, the mind, can conquer the impure spirit (Ra), if we know how. In the Kabbalah it is said that Adam eventually realized his mistake. Fortunately for Adam, the Kabbalah states that he still retained within him some goodness. In other words, he had not yet completely become absorbed by Ra, evil, the impure spirit; there still remained in him some speck of Tob, goodness. In other words, our brain this has a small connection to goodness. That goodness relates to Chesed, Geburah—our own spirit, our own Inner Father—and that is the root or the source of that little pure spark of consciousness or conscience that we still have.
This is that quiet voice inside, that when you are about to do something wrong, tells you, “you shouldn’t do that—you really shouldn’t do that.” That is the conscience that is showing you that you still have that spark of goodness struggling to stay alive. But if you ignore your conscience and instead you listen to your friends and the tv, and to all the music and bands and movies, then you will continue to drink, to fornicate, to commit adultery, to do drugs, and to do all the things you can to destroy your body and to fortify Cain. Eventually, the voice of Tob will be dead; there will be no conscience at all. What will remain is a mind (Cain), that simply loves pleasure, and that is it—no conscience, no sense of right and wrong, no regret, no guilt.
Classically, a person who has reached this stage is called a “demon.” In the strictest terms, a demon is someone who has been divorced from their own Inner God. They can be recognized very simply: they have no conscience. They do not recognize goodness for what it is, they do not care about it, and instead love to follow Ra, the impure spirit within them.
Such a person has received a psychological seal, a mark, discussed in the Book of Revelation. The end letter of Daath is Tav, which means seal or mark, but there are two ways we can be marked: with the mark of the beast or with the Seal of the Living God.
The Seal of the Living God is the Star of Solomon or Star of David, which is the symbol used to represent Daath. It is made of two intersecting triangles that represent the union of male-female, the union of Elohim. Those who are true to the own inner Elohim can receive this seal.
If we kill Abel (the soul) completely and kill our longing to return back to the path of goodness, we receive the mark of the beast. That seal indicates a soul that can no longer ascend back to Eden; that soul is condemned to be purified by nature through what is called “the second death.” The second death is how impure souls are recycled by nature, through fire, through pain—in order to clean that soul of all of that impurity.
This process is what we hear about as Hell or the Averno or Avichi. It is not eternal; the fire of Hell, the place of Hell is eternal—but punishment is not. Punishment, or time spent in Hell, is relative to the crime. If God put us in Hell for all eternity, God would be a tyrant; but God is not a tyrant, God is love. If we do not do our part to free ourselves from Ra, God will help us, and cleaning us in the fire is the final alternative.
Shin and Tav: Seth
It is related by Kabbalah that Adam had not completely been absorbed by Ra. Even though the brain, Cain, or the mind, Cain, had killed Abel, there was still some purity remaining in Adam. This is symbolized in the Zohar, the book of Kabbalah; when Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, God took the mysteries away from them, took away the secret doctrine which is symbolized in the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Because Adam still had a spark of goodness within, God left to Adam the last two letters of the alphabet. Those two letters are Shin [ש] and Tav [ת]. Tav (22) is the seal, the mark; Shin (21) means fire. These last two letters remained in the hands of Adam as the way back to Eden. They represent the potential to return to Eden.
After that period of time where Adam was committing the mistake of sexually mixing with Lilith and Nahemah, and creating these other effigies or entities, he realized his mistake and wanted to return back to God, back to Eden. It is written in Kabbalah that he returned to his wife and joined again with her. She then has a son and that they name Seth.
Seth is spelled with Shin and Tav. The name of Adam and Eve’s third son is spelled with the last two letters of the Hebrew alphabet—Shin and Tav—as a recognition of their mistake and their commitment to return to God.
Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the last letter of the word Daath. It is the last letter of the word truth and it is the last letter of the word death. So Tav is a duality; it can seal or mark two paths: the path of life or the path of death. It depends upon how it is used.
Shin is the 21st letter, and it has three points. Those three points represent the three forces of the Trinity: Kether, Chokmah, Binah. Those three points become one thing: a three-in-one. The shape of it is like a fire, a flame—and this is the great blaze, the fire of God, the fire of the Holy Spirit. Shin is a very important letter. When you put these together, Shin and Tav, “Fire and Seal,” it is the name of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, but it also, is a word that means “seat,” it means “foundation,” it means “basis,” and it means “a pillar”—erect, upright, and high.
We are not in Eden. If we have a spark of goodness still in us (conscience), God grants us Shin and Tav. We do not have any of the other letters of the alphabet to use to return to Eden. We have Shin and Tav and thus the potential to make Seth—to establish a basis or a foundation, to set up a pillar.
The name Seth has a very ancient history. If you know Egyptian mythology, you know that Set (Seth) is a very important god in the Egyptian pantheon. In early days of the Egyptian civilization, Set was a great God, highly venerated and worshipped—a Solar God, related with the sun, with fire, whose symbols are a serpent and a pillar. Whenever you see the name Seth written in Egyptian, it is always next to a stone—a picture of a stone, or a representation of a stone or a pillar.
The name Seth in Hebrew means pillar, basis, foundation, and is related with Daath and Yesod, the central pillar on the Tree of Life.
Later on in the Egyptian pantheon, the story of Set began to change, and he was seen as having a duality—two faces, two aspects. When Osiris the great God was to be enthroned as king, his twin brother Seth became jealous and killed him. Seth, the serpent, killed Osiris. It is the same story as Cain and Abel.
Seth can become inverted, negative. In other words, Shin and Tav have a polarity that can ascend or descend; it can be good or evil, Tob or Ra.
It says in the Zohar that if we want to repent and return back to Eden, that God will forgive us. When the world was created, God established a covenant—a law or an agreement. When Adam broke the covenant by eating of the fruit, the whole universe wanted to dissolve because it was such a heinous crime. This is psychological in relation with us; it means that when our own Inner God gives us the empowerment to exist and we break the covenant by eating of the forbidden fruit through fornication, our whole psychological and spiritual universe wants to withdraw because the crime is so horrible against God. This is that crime mentioned in the Gospels: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven. The Holy Spirit is Binah, which is the Logos, and to blaspheme is to misuse the energy at the throat—Daath: fornication.
However, if we want to repent, that covenant still exists and we can return to it—and it is hidden. In the Zohar it says:
Said Rabbi Hezekiah: "The Holy One remitteth and forgives everyone who confesses his sins and wrongdoings. Observe that when the world was created, the Holy One made the covenant upon which it continues to exist. We infer this from the word Brashith which should be written thus, bara, shith: meaning 'He created the foundation' or the covenant, symbolized by the letter Iod (I) in the middle of the word shith which though the smallest of the alphabetical letters, nevertheless represents the covenant through which all blessings come to mankind.
The covenant is symbolized, it says in the Zohar, by the letter Iod in the middle of the word Shith, which, although the Iod is the smallest letter, nevertheless represents the covenant through which all blessings come to mankind. The Iod is that little dot, which is the same little dot at the top of the Shin—the three Iods. The Iod is the tenth letter and relates to the ten commandments, the covenant, the law.
When a son was born unto him, Adam confessed his sin and was forgiven by the Holy One, and therefore he called his name Seth, having the same consonantal letters as Shith without the Iod, symbol of the covenant he had transgressed. Furthermore, the Holy covenant is also symbolized by the letter Beth (B) which became incorporated with S and Th when the children of Israel stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and thus formed the Sabbath (S B T), of which it is written, 'Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath (or covenant) throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant.' It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever.'" (Ex. xxxi., 16). - Zohar
At that time, symbolically, we arrive to Mount Sinai, we receive the entire covenant, the rest of the letters of the alphabet. This is related with Moses and the Exodus.
In other words, to receive the covenant once more, we need to unite the Shin with Tav. When we unite Shin with Tav, we create that Covenant, we re-establish that Covenant. The Shin is sexual fire, the Tav is the mark. When we incorporate that with Tob, the path of goodness, we bring Beth, and we make the word B’reshit, and the word Shabbat. There is a lot hidden in the combination of these terms, but these are the root terms of the entire Christian and Jewish traditions. It is the Covenant between God and his children.
The methodology to return to that Covenant is to once again respect the Tree of Knowledge. It is to understand Daath and to follow the law, to respect the Covenant. That law in encoded in that Iod. The Iod [י] is the tenth letter—related with the ten commandments. But the Iod, as the tenth letter, is related also with the tenth sphere, which is Malkuth, which is us—the man and the woman. The Iod also represents the phallus; when you take the word fire and you put the Iod in the middle, you spell Ish, man. There are mysteries hidden within these letters upon which we should meditate and reflect.
If we are a single person, we need to undo the mistakes of our brain (Adam) and clear the mind (Cain) of Ra—to train Cain to conquer that impure spirit that awaits at the door, Daleth (Daath), which is sex. Even if we are a single person, not in a relationship, we have sexual energy and it is active in us every day. That sexual energy works through our spinal column, through our nervous systems, through our endocrine system, throughout our entire physiology and psychology, and is utilized by our will. How do we use it? This is the question. How do we use our will? How do we use our consciousness?
If from moment to moment and day to day we are indulging in lust—enjoying the fantasy of imagining sexual scenes or sexual acts with other people, then we are becoming slaves of Ra; we are enslaving our consciousness to Egypt, to the Pharaoh, to Ra, to the impure spirit. Thus little by little, we are entering into hell. Those desires that we fortify and build only grow. Did you know that in one of the oldest documents on the planet, the Laws of Manu, it says that desire cannot be conquered when it is fed. It is like trying to put out a fire by putting fuel in it. If you are sincere with yourself you will see the truth of it. People who begin to experiment with pornography, only go deeper; they become addicted, they can never get enough. People who begin to sleep around cannot get enough, because they ignore the conscience and they listen to the tempting serpent.
As a single person there is a lot of work that can be done in order to rectify one’s mistakes and prepare oneself for the greater work, which is through sexual cooperation. This is the Holy Alchemy of Daath or Tantra, which is the sexual cooperation between a man and a woman—in other words, the Sacrament of Marriage.
In this sacred act of marriage, male and female become the reflection of the Elohim: Abba and Aima. By respecting the law, by not indulging of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, those forces and energies are returned to God and empower Abel, the soul. The result is that husband and wife, Adam and Eve, create a new son. This is symbolized in the Zohar when Adam repents and returns to his wife, Eve.
And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and she named him Seth, for God has given me other seed, instead of Abel, for Cain slew him. - Genesis 4:25
In the Kabbalah it is stated very clearly in ancient times, that Seth is a reincarnation of Abel.
Said Rabbi Jehuda: "He was called Seth because he was a reincarnation of Abel, as it is written, 'For God hath appointed me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain slew' (Gen, iv., 25). - Zohar
This is a very interesting statement, but this can only occur in a matrimony. It can only occur when a male and a female are united in the holy sacrament of alchemy or marriage and those forces, instead of creating physically, create spiritually.
Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve is the reincarnation of Abel, the innocent soul who was slain. In other words, when the couple unites in alchemy and begins to transform the sexual forces of Daath, Abel starts to leave Hell; Abel starts to come out of Hell. This is how the couple starts to return into Eden, by rectifying the mistake. They start to undo the mistake of Cain.
This is the narrative of the generations of man; on the day that God created man, in the likeness of God He created him.
Male and female He created them, and He blessed them, and He named them man (Adam) on the day they were created.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and he begot in his likeness after his image, and he named him Seth. - Genesis 5:1-3
The Bible says that Adam lived 130 years and he begot in his likeness after his image, and he named him Seth. This is an exact replica of how Adam himself was created by God—in the image and likeness of the Elohim. So Adam, now, is beginning to manifest and demonstrate the power of the Elohim to create through Daath; but that creation only happens after 130 years.
These numbers are symbolic, not literal, and we are not talking about Adam, a person. We are talking about our own inner Adam, the Being, the Adam Kadmon. In this context we are not talking about the brain. We are talking about our progenitor, our Innermost, who creates the soul when we give him the forces with which to do it.
The ages in the Bible are esoteric. Someone who has acquired 100 years of age has completed the first initiation of Major Mysteries, which is related with Malkuth, the physical body. From there, there are thirty-three vertebrae for that fire of the Holy Spirit to ascend up the pillar of Seth, the spinal column, in order to complete the second initiation of Major Mysteries related with Yesod, the vital body. Adam had 130 years, which means he had completed the first initiation of Major Mysteries and was at the 30th vertebrae of the second initiation of Major Mysteries, related with the vital body, related with Yesod, Eden.
If you look at your spine, it has 33 vertebrae, counting from the bottom to the top. Where is the 30th? At the level of the throat—Daath. You see, Adam created in his image and his likeness, Seth, through Daath.
Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi) refers to Seth as the ancestor of Noah and hence the father of all mankind. According to the Zohar 1:36b, Seth is "ancestor of all the Generations of the Tzaddikim." The Tzaddikim are the righteous ones, those who follow the path of Tob. The ancestor of all the generations means: generations—generate—creations—to create. Seth is the beginning of the creation of the soul.
When the couple who works in matrimony raises the first serpent upon the rod as Moses did in the wilderness, this is the serpent of Kundalini related with the physical body, the first of the seven serpents. When the couple working in alchemy or matrimony raises the second serpent on the rod, this is the second serpent of Kundalini, related with Yesod, the ethereal body, or vital body. Likewise this continues successively through the astral, mental, and causal bodies, in order to create the soul, the Mercabah, the chariot of Ezekiel, what in Greek is called To Soma Heliakon. In Egyptian it is the Sahu, the soul, the bodies of the soul.
The beginning of the creation of the soul or to establish the temple of Solomon, the new Jerusalem, begins in Yesod, with Seth. There is a great deal of significance here: in Hebrew Seth means “the basis, the foundation,” and is the foundation of the soul; Seth is the pillar, the cornerstone upon which the soul is established. Seth is the beginning of the ethereal man which Samael Aun Weor explains very well in The Pistis Sophia Unveiled: the ethereal man is the Bodhichitta; the embryo of conscious love, within which the bodies of the Being are perfected.
Unfortunately, this positive Seth does not immediately eliminate the negative one. Cain is that negative Seth. Cain (the mind) is what happens when that fire of Seth is polarized in the negative way—and instead of awakening the consciousness and creating the soul, that sacred fire is polarized through lust and creates in Hell. So instead of creating an angel, a Tzaddikim, a righteous one, it creates through Ra something called Seth, a demon.
The Negative Seth
In us, the negative Seth is very alive; Seth is the ego (Cain). The name Seth has these two letters, Shin and Tav—in each case, whether positive or negative, Seth represents a polarization or a utilization of the fire of the Holy Ghost, the fire of Binah, Shakti, the creative fire of God. If we are still being tempted by Eve, by sex, the fire of Shin polarizes negatively, and our Cain kills Abel, and that fire—instead of creating in Heaven—creates in Hell.
This is why we talk about the triple dominion of Seth—Seth, in his negative aspect, is threefold. He is:
- the demon of the mind: Pilate (Bible)
- the demon of evil will: Caiaphas (Bible)
- the demon of desire: Judas (Bible)
The three traitors exist in us. These are the three traitors of Buddha, Moses, Chiram, Osiris, and more.
These are the three ways that Seth (Cain) fools us. Cain always washes his hands and says: “I didn’t do it; I don’t know where Abel is. I have been here the whole time minding my own business.” This is what Seth says as Pilate. As Caiaphas, he plotted his brother’s death. As Judas, he sells his master for silver, for pleasure. Our mind does this—our Cain, our Seth—everyday. Everyday that we continue to fortify our pride, to fortify our resentment, even resentment against God, resentment against ourselves, resentment against our family.
All of that is how Seth in his triple dominion rules our mind and continues to push Abel into the earth (Klipoth) in order to completely kill him. Seth or Cain is triple: three traitors that work through our three brains:
- intellect
- heart
- motor-instinctive-action or sex
—through the body, through our feelings, through our thoughts.
Through the three brains, Seth appears as seven, those seven capital sins that we ignore that we have within—sins like anger, greed, jealousy, envy, gluttony, laziness. None of us like to admit that we have these things, yet we have them in abundance. We like to think that we are good people, that we are near sainthood, especially once we have acquired a little bit of knowledge about this teaching; we start to think that we are really a great person. This is exactly how Seth wins—by fooling us with these kinds of games in the mind.
But Seth as three and as seven, is far more than that. We do not have one pride or one element of lust; we have a multiplicity. We have some lust that likes to lust for others and we have lust that likes to be lusted for. We have lust that likes to cause pain, lust that likes to cause pleasure, and we have lust that likes to be indifferent. Each ego is multi-faceted and has many, many formations and manifestations—so many that it would be impossible to diagram them or chart them out.
All the prophets, including Samael Aun Weor, stated very clearly that the mind, the ego is a mess; we have thousands of defects, not just one or two.
The problem is that our consciousness is asleep. Abel is unaware; we sleep. Instead, we listen to Cain comforting us and telling us that everything is going to be better when we get a new ipod, or when we graduate from school, then we will start making money and everything will be better then.
Cain-Seth does his best to keep us out of the present moment. Cain-Seth always tempts us through fantasy about the future and through memories about the past, through longings for something we do not have and for resentments against the things that we do, or cravings to keep the things that we have. In other words, through many illusions, just as the three traitors of the Buddha, the daughters of Mara, tempted him, these traitors are very active in us.
The triple power of Shin which is in Seth, receives the mark of the beast, if we kill Abel completely. This is how our own inner Seth takes is to Hell; this is what Revelations is talking about. If you read the book of Revelations it is very clear: idolaters, murderers, fornicators, adulterers, thieves, blasphemers, go to the second death; and we have all of that in abundance in us.
Without exception, all of us murder each other in our mind, commit adultery in our heart every day, steal from each other from moment to moment—stealing energy, stealing attention, stealing ideas. We forget God; we worship Cain. If we persist, we will receive the fulfillment of Seth: the negatively polarized Shin with the mark of the beast—Shin-Tav. We will go to the second death and we will suffer. If we think suffering is bad now—this is a cakewalk compared to what awaits for us to completely pay off our crimes.
Yet, if we choose to take the Covenant seriously, the Tav, we can return to Daath. If we work seriously to conquer Cain-Seth, we can utilize that power of Shin, and that triple aspected power becomes the triple aspected soul:
- the Solar Astral body
- the Solar Mental body
- the Solar Causal body
These are these three spheres above Yesod:
- Tiphereth
- Netzach
- Hod
This is why Seth is the foundation. Seth, the positive Seth, is related with Yesod, the ethereal body. Upon this foundation stone rests the Temple of God which is Tiphereth, Netzach, and Hod: the soul, the Mercabah. Once that has been created, we are back in Eden; we have re-established ourselves as a true man. We have fulfilled the Covenant, and instead of that mark of the beast, we receive the Seal of the Living God—so that Shin, which is upright, is combined with the Tav of the Seal of the Living God. Then, we have returned to Eden.
When that happens, we have fulfilled this seal, the Tav at the end of the word Daath; this is how we return to Eden. In this way we create the child of Seth. Seth has children too; his first child is Enoch. Enoch means ‘he who sees’ or ‘the anointed.’ ‘He who sees’ is the one who has the letter Ayin awake. When we receive the seal of the Tav of the Living God, we receive the Ayin, Enoch, and we have entered the doorway, Daleth, back to Eden.
Audience: I am a little confused …. Egypt from one point of view, is a civilization that has a vast amount of knowledge that has permeated throughout the ages, and on the other hand also seems to be civilized as a negative thing as a totalitarian kind of state of control…
Instructor: You find the same symbolism with Israel in the Bible. Sometimes Israel is representative of the Kingdom of God and all the righteous ones and other times Israel is all the unbelievers that must be punished by God. Egypt is the same—symbolic. Both can be used interchangeably.
Audience: When you say fornication, you are not just referring to the act of sex are you..
Instructor: The word fornication we went into in depth in the last lecture. Specifically, to fornicate is to spill the sexual energy through the orgasm; it is to release that force, to indulge in that. That is what it means to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
When that energy is harnessed, when it is kept, when it is controlled by will—this is called White Tantra or Alchemy. This is how that fire is contained and transformed into the soul. In very simple terms, that spark of energy that most people expel and experience a little bit of physical pleasure—when that energy is saved and transformed it produces the ecstasies of the consciousness that we call Samadhi or Nirvana. It is the same force, yet polarized in two different directions.
Audience: Is there another form of this teaching…?
Instructor: There are many forms of this teaching; so there are some positive and some negative. There are, broadly speaking, three classes of schools that address the sexual force.
What we are teaching you here belongs to White Tantra, which is a tradition found world-wide within every religion, but traditionally are only entered secretly. White Tantra teaches three factors. The first factor is chastity, which means the use of the sexual energy in the pure way, to not fornicate. The second is sanctity, which means purity, the death of the ego. The third is charity or sacrifice for others, conscious love.
There are also “grey” schools who teach similar concepts but allow occasional orgasm. Inevitably, such schools go nowhere. They are symbolized by Sisyphus, the man who tried to roll a stone up a hill but kept having to start over.
Then there are “black” schools who encourage the orgasm. These are the most common; you can find them everywhere, like weeds. This is because it is very easy to follow those schools and accomplish what they promise. Why? Because our own Abel is 97% already trapped in the negative Seth. There is only two or three percent free— if you go into those schools and learn to utilize their methods to use sexual energy and combine it with lust, you will awaken consciousness and fast, but as a demon—yet you will not know it. You will think you are having ecstatic, beautiful experiences; you will think you are seeing God—but you are seeing as a diviner—someone who does not have God, but sees through the ego. This is what we talked about in the first two lectures related to the letter Ayin.
Audience: Cain slays his brother and he dies, where I am confused is, by him committing that act that buries mankind’s 97% Cain, 3% Abel...why would he just let him do that? It is like condemning 97% of the world’s population…
Instructor: God is not a tyrant. God has established laws and functions in nature and respects our will; we are able to follow our will. It is the same reason that God allowed Lucifer to fall, it is the same reason that God allowed—
Audience: Preventing a major catastrophe doesn’t make you a tyrant…
Instructor: God sets up the law but respects the law; in fact, God has to answer to the law. You see everything in nature—everything—is managed by karma, cause and effect. Even the most superior levels are managed by cause and effect. The gods themselves have to answer for their actions. No one is free.
Audience: Who does God answer to?
Instructor: That requires meditation in order to understand what God is and that is not an easy thing to answer.
Audience: Can you explain that, that every God, every Angel, every Archangel was a demon at one time…
Instructor: Every God, every Angel, every Elohim, has to know good and evil, but that does not mean that they were demonic, that they entered into Hell and became fully fledged demons. There are levels. By a full demon, we mean a creature that is divorced from the Spirit. Not all beings become that. In order to know good and evil, one must know evil. Yet, one does not have to divorce the Spirit. Only the most perverse ones go so far. Historically, humanity needed to have the experience of evil, but not become evil. But there were Angels who decided to take the path of Ra and become fully fledged demons. This is explained in the Book of Enoch and a little bit of Genesis. When they did that, they tempted humanity to come along for the ride. Those Angels become true demons. That does not happen on every planet; it happened here. Not every Angel or every Elohim becomes like that.
Audience: When we talk about to fall, to gain more intelligence, that is what I am talking about…
Instructor: Well, that is another subject. When you look at the Tree of Life, it maps all the levels of consciousness—but this tree is really simplified; it is like kindergarten. On all those levels are levels of conscious development. Just because it is possible to descend into the bottom of the Klipoth does not mean that it is required. It is not required, but some choose to go that way, to take the path of death. God respects that choice, but you have to pay for your actions. You can take it, but you will pay.
Audience: The red demons of Seth…
Instructor: Yes, the red demons of Seth are all the egos.
Audience: Why aren’t these demons burned and cleansed as all humans are…
Instructor: They will, they are—that is the whole purpose of going through the second death—those demons are purged from the soul. Through pain they are purged.
Audience: Are you saying this is the place where you get purged?
Instructor: We are in hell already.
Audience: So we are getting purged now?
Instructor: That is why everyone is suffering and it is getting worse because the world is descending more and more.
Audience: So you are saying we are in the first level of Hell, and another level after…
Instructor: Depending on where you are in the world, yes. New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Delhi, London—these big cities where a lot of people are gathered—if you come from the country to the city you feel the difference; things get really complicated and that is because as you descend on the Tree of Life, there are more and more laws.
It should be that in the physical world, we are managed by 48 laws. So if you go out in the country, you have a simple life, you are not around a lot of complexity—that is more or less what it should be like for everyone. When you come to the city it is not like that—it is very complicated, very difficult, very painful; people suffer a lot in the city and that is because those cities are descending. The psychological level of that group of people is bringing it down. That is Hell.
Audience: Adam reached the age of 130… when the western patriarchs like Methuselah lived up to the age of 900, is it referring to his level of consciousness?
Instructor: Yes. Those hundreds of years relate to these spheres on the Tree of Life. If you count upwards to nine you can see the level of development that prophet had—very high. So, those patriarchs are patriarchs for that reason, because they reached those very high levels..
Audience: Is it possible to reach the thousands?...
Instructor: Thousands goes beyond. Beyond Kether is a whole other level—there is work there that we cannot even comprehend.
Audience: So you are saying God could just be the first level for all – to comprehend but you can obey some other people at other levels who are even higher?
Instructor: More or less. The thing is that there is not a thing that we think of as God, as a person.
Audience: …just a big rule book…
Instructor: Well, in a sense, it is but it is like cause and effect, like gravity. To be here in the physical world you have to understand how gravity works and if you do not you hurt yourself a lot—you could walk out of a top story window and get killed. All these laws are the same; if you want to ascend, you have to know how to do it.
Audience: On the path we have to start with sex; does sex help with all the levels of this work?
Instructor: It is the beginning. It is not everything, but it is the beginning. Creation is sexual and to enter the path we have to create. We have to create Seth and his children; we have to create the soul. However, once the soul is created, then an initiate has a choice: to continue on the wet path, the sexual path, or the dry path, the path of Brahmacharya, where they do not practice the sexual act physically. There are choices that can be made depending on the path that one chooses.
Audience: If throughout the lifetime of the soul… if they abused their sexual powers, would sex be the first doorway for that person to enter into higher consciousness or should they retrain from having sex then?
Instructor: The greatest power that we have as a human being is sexual power; it is the greatest responsibility that we have. When we misuse it we can dramatically change, not only our lives, but the lives of other people.
It is the single most influential, most powerful force in nature, the sexual power. There is nothing that influences us more than that. So, given that, someone who has harmed themselves sexually, the best medicine for them is to heal themselves sexually. It is said in Asian and indigenous traditional medicines, that the cure can be found in the ailment. This is true. It is especially true sexually.
Most of the illnesses that we suffer in these times are sexually rooted—and I am not talking about simply physical illnesses. Emotional illnesses, mental illnesses, spiritual illnesses—the majority of them are sexual in nature, because of sexual abuse either in this physical body or a previous one. So to heal those illnesses, the greatest medicine is to provide that powerful energy in the body which can heal it. To recycle those hormones—those hormones that created the body in the first place have the power to heal it.
Audience: So you are saying committed love doesn’t matter..
Instructor: It does matter; of course it matters. God is love. If there is not love, God is not present. Only God can heal us, and we know God through love.
If you are a single person and you transmute your sexual energy, you can be healed if it is the will of God, if it is in accordance with cause and effect: karma.
Audience: Is zero equal to two?
Instructor: Zero is related to two in the context of the sign of infinity: infinity is a zero twisted into two halves, and that is the sign of the Elohim.
As well, the zero or the infinity, the Ain Soph, comes into existence and leaves existence through the number two, which is Beth from B’reshith. All creation comes from Beth, the second letter. So yes, the answer is: two is equal to zero.
