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jesus and nicodemus stained glass

The topic of being born again is one of the more popular prevalent phrases in modern Christianity. When we talk about being born again, traditionally there are two categories of interpretation.

The first type of interpretation is a conversion experience, a transformation or enthusiasm when someone turns towards a spiritual, in this case, Christian doctrine, turning their life toward that doctrine, in which prior to that they were not living in some spiritual way. Something came about which caused them to change and have a firm conviction about a particular sect of Christianity. Now they believe, they profess their belief, because that is how they interpret the scripture: if you believe and speak as if you believe in it you are born again, born again as a new person in the spirit because you are trying to live a spiritual lifestyle.

The second common interpretation (some sects of Christianity combine the two), the second aspect is to participate in some kind of ritual, namely baptism, that if you are baptized with all of the elements of the ritual being present, by the authority of that church, you are baptized, you are member of that church, you are born again in that church and by consequence that now means that you are “born again.”

We are not here to deride any of those things, because rituals can be powerful, they are meaningful, and very good. Having a spiritual enthusiasm is also very good, we can even say necessary. But to simply believe yourself now to be a spiritual person and to even honestly want to live a spiritual lifestyle and you happen to go back to your Christian roots in order to do that, that is also fine, but from an esoteric standpoint this all misses the point.

What we will talk about today is exactly how to understand “being born again” from an esoteric component. In the previous lecture we spoke about the cleansing of the temple, just for some context, we have been going through the book of John interpreting various chapters and verses from the book of John, from an esoteric or Gnostic standpoint.

Last time we had a whole lecture about the cleansing of the temple and the symbolism behind that. The basic gist of that is, whenever Jesus or another person in the Bible is doing something, it is not meant to be read as a simple historical artifact, it is not meant to be read like a newspaper.

People believe today that they will be born again if they accept the stories of the Bible. They say “I believe that Jesus cleansed all he merchants out of the temple. Because I believe that happened I am inspired to lead a spiritual lifestyle.”  The stories of the Bible can be understood in different levels. It is in the most introductory level to look at the stories of the Bible as a type of generic teaching of the past. The real esoteric, inner aspect of that teaching is: within us there is a temple and our own temple is our own soul, our inner psychological activity, but we have a mess inside, we have merchants inside of our own temple and we have to cleanse that.

We talked about the meaning of the cleansing of the temple, that there is a actually a work of psychological meditation and learning how to extract consciousness from our egotistical desires.

Now, talking about being born again is the other half. Cleansing the temple is about death, while our topic today is about birth.

Because within ourselves we have a lot of problems, confusion, darkness, this is why the world is full of all of those things. Contradiction, confusion, darkness, hatred, anger… we do not find tremendous amount of peace, but it is very easy to find the opposite of that. That is all a manifestation, a symptom of what is going on inside of us, in our mind and in our heart. If we see a lot of craziness out in the world it is because there is a lot of that within each of us.

What is important is to look inside of ourselves and see our contradictions. That is one part of it - that is a life of work, it is not a one, two-week process but continually looking, meditating, looking within yourself, introspecting analyzing exactly what is going on inside. You can say that there is a science to that.

Not only do we need to extract or remove these egotistical elements from our soul but on the other half we have to actually develop something new at the same time.  This is the idea of being born again: that what we are presently is not a complete human being, what we are presently is just the embryo of what a real human could be. A real Christian is someone who has completely developed their soul. In truth there are very, very few Christians, and we aspire to that.

These are the two balances, on one side we must remove that which is unhealthy, egotistical, from within ourselves and the other half is to develop something new. We have to take what is presently a seed within ourselves and develop it into a beautiful tree.

We are going to read a couple of slides of where these beliefs came of being born again in the Bible. Then we are going to go back and look at all the symbolism and look at it from an esoteric standpoint.

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly [ἀμήν, amen, אמן], Truly [ἀμήν, amen, אמן], I say to you, unless one is born again [ἄνωθεν, anothen, ‘from above’], he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

5 Jesus answered, “Truly [ἀμήν, amen, אמן], Truly [ἀμήν, amen, אמן], I say to you, unless one is born of water [ὕδατος, hydatos, מים mayim] and the Spirit [Πνεύματος, Pneumatos, רוח ruach], he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 Giving birth through the flesh [σάρξ, sarx, בשר bashar], flesh is. Giving birth through spiritual means, spirit [Πνεύματος, Pneumatos, רוח ruach] is. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again [ἄνωθεν, anothen, ‘from above’].’ 8 The wind [πνεῦμα, pneuma, רוח ruach] blows [πνεῖ, pnei, נפּח nephach] where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

9 Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”

10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? 11 Truly [ἀμήν, amen, אמן], Truly [ἀμήν, amen, אמן], I say to you, We speak what We know and testify [martyria: testify, martyr, עד od] what We have seen, and you do not receive [lambano, קבל kabal] Our witness [martyria: testify, martyr, עד od]. 12 If I have told you earthly [ἐπίγειος, epigeios, הארץ erets] things and you do not believe [pistis: powerful comprehension, based on experience or witnessing], how will you believe [pistis] if I tell you heavenly [ἐπουράνιος, epouranios, שמים shamayim] things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 And as Moses [משה Moshe] lifted up the serpent [ὄφις, ophis, נחש nahash] in the wilderness [ἔρημος, erémos, מדבר midbar], even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes [pistis] in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever has faith [pistis] in Him should not perish but have everlasting [αἰώνιος, aiónios, aeonic] life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

These are the basic verses that all of the theories about being born again is based on. If you read this from a very simple aspect, literal aspect, you would quote John 3:16 a lot, the verse is found all over the place, because John 3:16 says:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever has faith [ pistis ] in Him should not perish but have everlasting [ αἰώνιος , aiónios , aeonic ] life.

People base their entire spiritual doctrine on that, and the interpretation is that: all you have to do is believe, if you believe then you are saved, that is the crux of it. This is why we need to go deeper, because the common interpretation of that is very inaccurate; it is not capturing the essence of the entire Bible. Why would the rest of the Bible exist if that is all we needed to know?

In order to understand exactly what we are talking about, we have to get into a word which sometimes is translated as belief, sometimes as faith in Greek the word is pistis. The common connotation of pistis can mean belief in some context, but here we are talking about faith.

Commonly people use the word faith to mean a religious belief, this is completely wrong. Faith is a type of direct experience related to our activities. One way to understand this clearer is to look at marriage and the way we use the word faithful, or unfaithful. There we can see that does not matter what you believe, you can believe that a marriage is true and honest, the greatest thing, but if that same person is unfaithful to their spouse because they cheated, what does belief matter? The unfaithfulness was an action, the unfaithfulness is an actual thing that happened, it is not related to belief, it is related to what is going on.

That action (unfaithfulness/cheating) is physical. When we talk about the faith in God, you have to look at the actions of your heart, of your mind. To say that you believe in God, you believe in a God, or you have faith but you mind is constantly judging other people, and you mind is going through all sorts of animalistic desires, the mind is very proud, the mind believes it deserves more, jealous (“why that other person is getting the credit when I deserve the credit?”, and so on...). All of these things which we talked about in the last lecture, that is the activity of our heart and mind.

There is no faith in the Lord there. That is actually what is going on in our mind, it does not matter what you believe. Your actions, not just physical actions, I am talking about the activity in your mind, in your soul, within yourself. Unless you actually behave with your heart and your mind, then you don’t actually have faith. You have to look at what is going on, not what you believe in, this is precisely the difficulty. Faith is the substance of your soul (heart and mind).

Surely, we all want, if we come to a lecture like this, we are looking for some spiritual knowledge, we have an aspiration, we are interested, we have an enthusiasm, that is excellent, but that is just step one. Just because you have spiritual enthusiasm, or an interest that means now you are interested in studying more and applying the techniques to purify the contents of your psychology. The beliefs are not what purify your mind: it is what you actually do.

So: “Whosoever has faith in Him”, is whosever cleaned their temple, whosoever has actually maintained or achieved a cognizance of their own inner psychology. Not only do we have to eliminate all of these things that we know are bad within ourselves, but we also have to discover that there is a lot more going on within ourselves than we even consider. It is easy to see some faults that we have, but as we begin to work, we begin to see that we actually have faults, because we have been so spiritually blind, so spiritually disinterested that we never paid attention to all the contradictions that we have.

Easily we see the contradictions of others, but it is very difficult to see the contradictions within our self. Because it is so easy to see the contradictions in others, it is so easy to blame our problems on other people, but we forget that the source of any suffering or pain is never outside, is always within our self. It is a reminder that we need to go within.

Let us look at Hebrews:

“Now faith is the substance [ὑπόστασις, hypostasis] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” - Hebrews 11: 1

Faith is a 'substance'  or hypostasis of something that is now seen outwardly. Faith is not belief; faith is a 'substance' that permates your heart and mind.

Some of the modern Christians also quote Ephesians 2, this is a letter that Paul wrote, he writes:

 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the Gift of God [ Theos Dóron / Donum Dei / מתיה Mattaiah ] not of works, lest anyone should boast." - Ephesians 2:8,9 

This is another quote that people use to say that is does not matter what we do, because our salvation is not based upon works it is based upon the Gift of God. In this interpretation, salvation is a grace that God gives us.  They say it does not even matter what we do, that we are incapable of doing any works that can grant us salvation.

The Gnostic interpretation of this, is saying: being a good person is not enough. I know it seems like a contradiction of what I just said. We need to become a good person, but it is not because we become a kind and charitable person that salvation is possible.

Salvation is possible because of the Gift of God, which in Greek is Theos Dóron, that is where we get the name Theodore from. In Latin it is Donum Dei, in Hebrew it is מתיה Mattaiah, which is the apostle that replaced Judas. The substance of faith is the Donum Dei.

We find that Paul is extremely wise because when he uses the Gift of God, he knows what he is talking about, he is always speaking kabbalistically. If we jump ahead to John 4, we see that Jesus talks about the Gift of God. He talks about the Gift of God to a woman who is sitting next to a well, Jacobs Well, and she is a little distraught, Jesus said,

10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the Gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” -John 4

Jesus is immediately talking about something to do with a marriage, because indeed the Gift of God has something to do with the sex. This is where we diverge radically from other interpretations.

Other interpretations of the Bible, at best, are giving you a type of ethical basis to live a good and decent life, but they are not teaching you exactly what the Bible was really pointing towards, which is a method of spiritual transformation of awakening your consciousness. If you want to awaken your consciousness, what Christianity is really pointing towards is working with those everlasting waters, working with the Gift of God. The Gift of God is something that we all have, we possess the Gift of God, Jesus is telling us, it has something to do with marriage, and we can  say from there that it is related to the sex. What do we find within ourselves that is capable of creating, we know God is a Creator, and we know that we can procreate. The Gift of God is our capacity to create. Before we completely develop that idea, we are going to go back to talk about what Jesus said, and we are going to connect all these dots.

When Jesus says: “Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The word he is saying is not truly, it is in Greek and the Greek word is transliteration of a Hebrew word, and that is the word amen אמן. He is saying “Amen amen I say to you …” then he talks about being born again.

Kabbalistically there is an esoteric meaning in the word amen. There are three letters: Aleph, Mem and Nun אמן. The way the Old Testament was written was deeply knowledgeable; they were very cognizant of the symbols they were putting in there. When Jesus says Amen, he is putting something there, he is telling us something

Aleph is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Aleph is a symbol, because all 22 letters of Hebrew alphabet have a symbol related to it. Aleph א is the first letter of the Alphabet and represents the element air, interestingly the first letter of the Old Testament, the first letter in the book - Bereshith, which is Genesis, is not an A it is a B, Beth ב  – Bereshith בראשית  (in the beginning).

Why is the first letter of the Old Testament a B (Beth ב), which is the second letter, why isn’t it an A, Aleph?  Because in order to speak you have to breathe, and Aleph is representation of breath, of wind. So we are breathing in the Aleph in order to speak. That is why the first letter of the Old Testament is a B. Aleph is related to our breath and the breath or the wind is always related to Spirit.

Aleph itself we can say is composed of three Iods י, Iod is like a little dot, and it happens to be the tenth letter, but the Iod is like, if you had a paintbrush and we put a dot on a canvas and with that paintbrush and move it across the canvas with the iod you can form all the letters. Aleph would be three Iods, one on the top right, another one on the top left and one that goes transversal top left to the bottom right.

These three Iods are representation of the trinity. That trinity the very beginning of creation, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of that is encompassed by Aleph, related to the air, to the winds.

Mem מ as we have said in many lectures is related to water, in Hebrew the word water is mayim םימ. Mem has value of 40 as a consequence reducing it down to 4. Mem is the waters of Genesis, mem is where things emerge out of, we even have the term: when a woman is pregnant her water breaks. Those are the generative waters, the waters in which things fecundate and develop.

We have spiritual waters within ourselves which of course is related to our sexual nature. Anything that is emerging, if we are developing a concept, if we are developing something within ourselves we can say it is emerging from the waters, because that is where our creativity is.

Finally there is Nun נ, which here, because it is the final letter of Amen, is a Nun Sophit ן, which means the final Nun. Some letters have a derivation; if they are the final letter in a word they look different. Nun is related to the fish, it is the 14th letter, where Mem is is the 13th letter. The fish obviously swims in the waters. Nun represents a principle within the waters that can develop, so we can look at this in different levels.

Obviously it is the nun, the sperm in the ovum within the water that creates. In the same way, if we look at Genesis when God is hovering over the waters, it is obviously fecundating the waters to create.

When we say Amen all of this is being synthesized, all of these cosmic principles are being synthesized every time when we say Amen. We know from Gnostic sources that sometimes they refer to the trinity as the Three Amens. We also have relationship with Amen within us. We can see air and water, because aleph is related to air, mem is related to water, nun is also related to water but is also related to fire because Nun is the activity, the symbol of fire is continually burning active element, it is always moving, the flames are always moving.  So that Nun develops, we can say, out of the water comes fire.

The word water is mayim מים, the word for heaven in Hebrew is shamayim שמים, the letter that is also related to fire is Shin ש. So Shamayim literally means fiery water. When you see heaven in the Old Testament it is Shamayim, fiery-water.

The Nun needs to develop into Shin, it needs to be developed into that fire. Exactly that Nun, which is in activity within us, but is just in an elemental activity, we have to develop that into the fire. You know that God is a consuming fire; you know that Moses saw the burning bush that is the fire, the fire that was on top the apostles in the book of acts, the fire of the Holy Spirit. Within us, that Nun needs to be developed, that Nun really is related to Donum Dei, to that activity within us.

We can see that even the word “being born again” is actually  ἄνωθεν, anothen, which means from above, it actually does not say one is born again, it says – one is born from above. Later on Jesus says: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.” Indicating that something must descend within us, in order for something to ascend within us.

Continuing forward, Jesus is saying

“Amen ,amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water [ ὕδατος , hydatos , מים mayim ] and the Spirit [Πνεύματος , Pneumatos , רוח ruach ], he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

In Greek the water is ὕδατος (hydatos),and in Hebrew is mayim מים and Spirit in Greek is Πνεύματος (Pneumatos) which in Hebrew is רוח ruach. When we see the word Pneumatos we know that this is related to air. Perhaps we are familiar with a type of brakes on trucks, called air brakes, also known as pneumatic brakes. In Greek the words for spirit and air are intermingled. In Hebrew the words for spirit and air are also intermingled.

“Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Giving birth through the flesh, flesh is. Giving birth through spiritual means, spirit is. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.”

Next, the wind is spoken of: “The wind [πνεῦμα , pneuma, רוח ruach] blows [πνεῖ, pnei, נפּח nephach]…”

If you were to go back in to the Greek and into the Hebrew you would think, that, ok now he is talking about some parable about the wind. But this word for wind is pneuma which is the same word for spirit.

“The wind [πνεῦμα , pneuma , רוח ruach] blows [πνεῖ , pnei , נפּח nephach] where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

In other words, we do not comprehend the spirit because we have not been born of the spirit. So, you are not spiritually born just by believing in something. If you are spiritually born, if you are born again you would not be confused all the time, you would not be making mistakes all the time.

Then Jesus says to Nicodemus: “You the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?” The reason why it is there is because Nicodemus is Rabbi and he should have known the kabalistic teachings, but he is not picking up what Jesus is saying so he keeps reiterating it.

Then he says “We speak what we know and testify.” We talked about testify for several lectures, it is the martyria in Greek, which is related to testifying, related to being a martyr. We said that to testify about something means to have the witnesses active within yourself. To have those witnesses active means that you are working with the transformation of energy within yourself. You have to light the menorah within yourself, the candles, which is not an abstract belief but a psychological transformation of energy.  Nicodemus is confused, he is unable to see he is unable to witness, he is unable to perceive things of the spirit, he does not have“believe”.

The word “believe” here is not the right word, it should be faith. Because if you do not witness you cannot have faith, you cannot have faith unless you are actually witnessing things of the spirit. The one who is transforming all their energies develops the fire within themselves, the spiritual firery 'substance' that connects their common ordinary experience with the spiritual type of insight and vision. This is how people can start to develop visions, start to see things. All prophets are having these experiences of heavens opening up to see things of the spirit.  Those heavens were not the heavens outside, but the heavens within their soul.

Jesus says look up, we are using these superior capacities to have internal visions, experiences. Basically said, if you do not have faith then you can not comprehend yourself. You can not witness your own psychology; you cannot witness the things of spirit. Then he says: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven.” What we already have deposited within ourselves is this impulse to live, to breathe, to act… What is it that gets us up in the morning that motivates us to do anything, that despite so many obstacles we still want to survive and we still want to live, we still want to strive despite all of this things? There is still some activity within us that wants to achieve something, that wants to connect with the world, that wants to connect with God, wants to experience love and joy. What is that?

It is the Nun - the firery activity within your waters. That is what is deposited within you, and that is what we have to develop into something superior. This fire of life that you have, is the Gift of God. But we have to know how to take that gift and realize its potential.

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”

This is really the key. When Jesus is getting very kabalistic is when he is talking about Moses. Moses lifting up a serpent in the wilderness. What does that have to do with belief? He is talking about Moses, and Moses did something. Moses did not lift up the serpent because of a belief.

In order to understand this scripture you have to go and understand the Kabbalah in the story when Moses lifts up the serpent, because he is referencing the Old Testament there. We are going to get to that in a moment, first we are going to talk about the three souls. We have been talking a lot about breath, and breathing. Traditionally in Kabbalah there are three souls that are usually spoken about (sometimes they can also talk about five souls, but that is another lecture). There are different ways to understand all of this. Primarily, related to our individuality, there are three souls. All three of these souls can be translated as breath, or wind.

Starting at the lowest type of soul that we have: Nephesh. Nephesh is what we call the animal soul. Everybody experiences this all the time, because Nephesh is our appetites, our instinctual impulses. Anytime we have these urges related to our instinct it is our Nephesh.

Nephesh is also related with the very blood of our organism, to the very foundation of our vitality, of being alive. When we have a strong impulse, not because we are thinking something, not because we are feeling, but because instantaneously we have an instinct, that is our Nephesh, those are our appetites. Nephesh is a very animal type of consciousness. Nephesh is never really satisfied; Nephesh just acts because it is a very basic type of activity. It is a type of intelligence but it is a mechanical type of intelligence. This is precisely the type of activity in your blood, a primal activity. When any animal knows when and how to procreate, it is because Nephesh is working there and activating that animal, knowing that it is time to procreate. All of the activities of the animals have a certain type of intelligence, it is Nephesh. We have Nephesh as well. The problem is we need to go well beyond the activities of the animal soul, because when we do not know how to deal with that, we start developing habits and customs and we start encaging our mind in problems.

Beyond the animal soul we have a thinking-emotional soul called Ruach. Ruach is another type of intelligence; in this case it is usually very subjective, it is related usually to our desires, the way that we commonly use it. When we have a certain type of desire our thoughts and emotions relate with that so that we can achieve the accomplishment of that desire, to satisfy it. What happens is that we have these appetites, and we use our thoughts in order to find better ways to feed those appetites. That causes us to degenerate.

The way Ruach should be used is to learn consequences, to discern and to learn what actions, what activities that we do produce what types of consequences, because that is what ethics really boils down to. We are not saying that we need to be good people just because we said so, but we are saying that there are results. If you perform these types of actions and behaviors, you have these types of results. If you want to progress spiritually there is a requisite that you need as a foundation certain types of conditions, which are results of past behavior. You need to be able to have a stable mind; you need to be able to have peaceful heart, you need to be able to have the vital energies, the vital winds in your body to illuminate your inner world, your inner psychology.

If you are always just being led by your Nephesh then you are going to go wherever your Nephesh wants to go, it is like a taking a dog outside for a walk, that is much bigger, and more powerful than you, and you are just going wherever the dog wants to go, the dog is do all sorts of things that should not do, our instinct is a lot like that. As a matter of fact, Nephesh really feels from moment to moment to be our strongest impulse. We do not have to work at all to feel the pushes and the pulls of Nephesh, it is always there, always active, and it takes a lot of work, psychologically to develop our Ruach so that it has ethical discernment, ethical perception, knowing that “ok my Nephesh is acting in this way, my instincts, my lusts, my appetites but the result is going to be something that I don’t want, so I have to restrain that.

It is not a blunt restraining, it is a retraining as well, you start to extract cognizance at those levels, that you comprehend very deeply, very immediately that such an impulse, such an instinct is actually bad. That is how you end up conquering that. People think that the only way to overcome the instincts is just to repress them and to deny them, the reality is to we have to comprehend them; we do that through meditation, constant reflection. From moment to moment, we do have to repress some instinctual urges, because the only result of that is to get ourselves into trouble. But in the long run we have to comprehend it. Because if we just repress it, it might work today, it might work tomorrow but eventually there is going to be some explosion of bad behaviors.

Anybody who has tried to train their Nephesh usually ends up with some habit that we want to change, we might not want to comprehend it, but we just want to stop doing it, and then one day you find yourself doing that thing you do not want to do anymore. It is powerful, but we must keep with it, we continually work with it. Ruach is related to thinking, it is also related to emotions. Both things can be positive or negative. If we are working well, we have positive emotion, we have an awe, a true generosity of our heart, in very mundane things, we find joy in life. But emotions can be extremely negative, very poisonous, very contagious. If we have a bad attitude, and we say a few words to someone else, and we give a rotten perspective on to a third person… we are just spreading a rottenness to other people, it becomes very infectious, our emotions feed on that.

The superior Ruach is discerning between what is going to be good, and what is going to be bad, and what that discerning does when it is working well, when we are learning how to work with that, is that it brings us a stability of our mind, it brings a stability of our heart. When we have that type of stability then Neshamah, which is our spiritual soul begins to shine, little by little.

Neshamah, is our legitimate spiritual objective perception. Neshamah is the lamp of our soul, it is the light of our soul, it is our stellar orientation, it is our North Star that we should always orientate ourselves towards, it is the light that is emanating from our inner spirit. We have within us a very embryonic level of Neshamah, we always have it, but we do not listen to it because it is such a faint light. It is like having a really loudspeaker playing something bad all the time, and we have a little tiny speaker on the other side that is telling us the right thing to do.

We must learn how to quiet down all of these poisonous activities (instinctual desires stirring the mind), they are always coming up, if we know how to quiet that down then we can listen to our inner spirit, and we work with that little by little. There is no enormous automatic gains that happen here. Neshamah can be experienced in its totality that would be like having a very transcendental experience. Within us, normally we can get little specs of light, little morsels of Neshamah. As we work little, by little, that Neshamah element begins to develop more and more.

Within us we have the descension of energy that is coming from the superior worlds, from heaven. The “Amen,” that Gift of God, comes down within us. However, listen: the way it comes down into us is related to Nephesh. Because within us, if we look at the impulses that we have, they seem to be the most powerful thing, and within Nephesh is our sexual instincts.

Listen carefully: the Gift of God is actually deposited within our sexual instincts because there is where the fire of God resides within us. The fire of God is what illuminates our soul. The fire of God is what causes creation. We know how to use the fire of God how to procreate physically: flesh gives birth to flesh. Yet also: sprit gives birth to spirit. What Jesus is saying is that if you use the fire of God in a fleshly way, it creates fresh, but if you use it in a spiritual way it creates the spirit (“Giving birth through the flesh, flesh is. Giving birth through spiritual means, spirit is.”).

William Blake Moses and the brazen serpent

This is the root, this is the esoteric teaching here, of being born again. Within our sexual instincts lies the very seed, the Nun, The Donum Dei, the Gift of God which we can develop into that spiritual fire, into a spiritual intoxication. We need, as we said in the prior lecture, to clean the temple, but we also need to light the candles within that temple, we need to light the menorah within that temple, to illuminate it, to make it perfect.

This is why, Jesus was talking about Moses, we will read the story from the Book of Numbers, chapter 21, Moses is in the wilderness with the Israelites : 

And Moses prayed for the people. And יהוה Jehovah said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent [שרף  seraph], and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live.

And Moses made a serpent of brass [נחשת נחש nahash nahashoth], and put it upon a pole [נס nes: signal, sign] , and it came to pass, that if a serpent [נחש nahash] had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass [נחש נחשת nahash nahashoth], he lived.

Numbers 21: 5-9

This is the fire. We are talking about fiery serpents. First thing that we need to understand about Moses, or Moshe in Hebrew, is that Moses םשה is also made up of three letters:

  • Mem ם - related to wather
  • Shin ש - related to fire
  • Hei ה - represents the womb, hei is also in the holy name of God יהוה Jehovah

Moses literally means: the person who is born of water and fire.

When Jesus is saying, “You must be born again of the water and the spirit”, and then, “You have to raise the serpent like Moses did in the wilderness,” of course he knows that Moses means being born of the water and fire. In this case fire and spirit are interchangeable. The spirit is related to air, but spirit is also related to fire. When the Nun activity is pulled out of our our waters (Mem) and lifted to the heights of Neshmah, then the Nun becomes fire within the air.

The fire has a duality, we have fires within us, the burning fire of lust is the most powerful fire we have, it is filled with much desire. There are many other fires. Those are the activities within us that are motivating us to live, to strive to do something. Ultimately the soul wants to connect and unite with God, it wants that love, and tries to find that love externally amongst other people here.

In truth you can find a representation of that in a marriage. The problem is Nephesh does not know how to use that yearning, and how to use that sexual fire to produce true love, it knows only how to fornicate. It only knows how to create like animals, does not know how to spiritually create.

To spiritually create is to put the serpent on a pole. The Israelites are a symbol. It represent things within us, spiritual archetypes within us. But Nephesh is always complaining. We are very egotistical, and because of our egotistical actions we get bitten by the serpents. We know very well that there is a serpent in the Old Testament that tempted Eve, this is the same serpent that must be placed upon a pole.

The people of Israel died, meaning our spiritual elements are dying because we don’t know how to work with our Nephesh to transform it. We do not know how to work with the bread and the water in the right way. These are all symbolic elements.

The serpent is our own sexual instinct, we get bitten by our own sexual instinct, we feel poisoned by our own sexual instinct, we become beguiled by our own sexual instinct because we do not know how to make use of it. Marriage is full of pain and suffering because of the sexual instinct, because we do not know how to work with it, and we have a lot of problems.

Everyone knows this. There is no question about it. Yet the sexual impulse related to Nephesh does not automatically make it negative. What makes it negative is that we desire it, and we do not know how it results in the poisoning of our own soul. The sexual instinct, when used correctly, transforms the tempting serpent into a brazen serpent, a serpent of brass.

Brass is an alloy of two metals, tin and copper, which are representative of the male and female forces. A serpent of brass represents sexual cooperation in a spiritual marriage. To put that upon a pole… as we have said in other lectures, the pole represents the spinal column. This serpent upon a pole then heals the Israelites. It is this fire that starts at the base of the spine, related to our sexual instinct. If we know how to refine that and restrain the basic animal desire, what is extracted is light and consciousness.

The light and consciousness is like a column or pillar of fire in our spinal column, represented as the emergence of light and fire above the head as a halo. The halo of the saints or the tongues of fire in the Book of Acts, is exactly the extracted and refined Donum Dei, the Gift of God, ascended to the head to the top to where the halo is.

Only that which has descended into the depths and then is reascended is what will return to heaven, nothing goes to heaven except that which is returned to heaven. The God gives us the gift of the capacity of our own self-realization. If we did not have that gift we could not do anything.  This is what it means, when Paul says, “it is not enough to do good works.”  Of course you should do good works, you should do charity, because that will give you a good life, and only when you have a good and stable life can you really apply yourself to do the psychological work. If your life is a chaos because you have been unethical, because you have been lying and cheating and you do not want to expose yourself to people, so you do not really deal with people in a very fair ethical manner or truthful manner, then your life is always chaotic and confused and you cannot get into the depths of yourself to extract what need to be extracted.

You need all of that, but it is only because we have the fire that makes it possible to self-realize. What we have been alluding to, what we spoke in another lectures is sexual transmutation. Our sexual impulse is not in and of itself is not bad. Sexual enjoyment is a right that we all have, that is part of the Donum Dei, the activity of our fires, but you cannot advance spiritually, you cannot develop your inner soul if you are spilling the energy. This is why in the past anybody who is serious would have to go through the phase of being monk or a nun, they would learn a little bit more higher ethics, restrain their desires, and what was supposed to happen was an introduction to the esoteric teachings which would tell them to, then as a monk or a nun, come together in a spiritual marriage. In in such a spiritual marriage is where they would begin to lift up the serpent of Moses within themselves, because that is the fire of God.

Samael Aun Weor writes in his book Igneous Rose:

The apple tree symbolizes the sexual force of Eden. When humanity ate of the prohibited fruit, they were cast out of paradise. […]

The door of Eden is sex. Eden is sex itself.

The human being departed from paradise through the door of sex. Therefore, we can re-enter paradise only through this door.

The entire secret is found in the lingam-yoni of the Greek mysteries.

The great secrets of the universal fire of life are contained within the union of the phallus and the uterus.

There must be a sexual connection, but the semen must not be ejaculated [neither orgasm nor ejaculation of both man and woman].

The refrained desire will transmute the semen into light and fire.

The refrained desire will fill our sacred chalice with the sacred wine of light.

Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

In another book, to reiterate, this is from Christ’s Will:

There must be sexual connection, yet without even one single drop of semen spilling out.

Refrained desire will make our seminal liquid to rise upwardly, towards the head. Thus, this is how our Beings are transformed into omnipotent gods of the universe.

Thus, this is how we lift our seven fiery serpents and set them upon a pole, as Moses did in the wilderness.

Samael Aun Weor, Christ’s Will

We get critiqued sometimes about this. People say “You are always talking about sex” and people believe that we are interpreting these things for some kind of agenda. Unfortunately the real inner teachings have been lost, and people now only have been taught a rudimentary level of Christianity. Therefore, many have a hard time understanding that what Jesus was doing was taking the very highest aspect of the teaching and explicating them. Jesus taught something every advanced level, but veiled, because people have not been ready for it. Then it was watered down by those who did not understand the teachings. Now people believe the water down teachings and reject the real teachings.

We can see that the first miracle that Jesus performed is at a wedding, the most important thing to do is related to our sexual activity. It is only because of our ignorance we have completely forgotten that the creative power of God is within us, it does not start within our heart or within our ideas, it starts within our sex.

If we look at what is going on within our sexual impulse and the desires that are related to it, today, we do not see god there, we see a lot of desires, so people relate sex with the filthiness and all that type of puritanical morality of yesterday. Today people reject that, and they just flip to the other side and elaborate all their appetites of Nephesh.

They do not want to reject it, that is wrong, so instead they just accept it and develop all those desires. That is just another path for degeneration of developing your mind in an extremely negative way. In whatever way your sex is moved, however you use it, the consequences are felt in your psychology.

The more you extract the fire of God through sexual indulgences, the more you will become spiritually blind. This is the problem of today, we become so spiritually blind we cannot even tell that there is something within us that we need to save and conserve and transform, we have lost even our faintest intuition at times.

It is not about believing that you need to be born again, it is about working with the fire and the water, and the fire is within your sex. That is the way it is, does not matter what we believe. Actually you do not need to believe, you just need to start working with it. It is a long and elaborate process, but we begin by learning it and then continuing to work with it.

As a single person, you still need to know how to work with your creative-sexual energy. You learn how to meditate, to use types of prayers and mantras and that transforms energy. Any artist who is painting beautiful things, any type of true creativity is transforming that energy as well. A good type of outlet for creativity could be gardening, some artistic endeavor, could be helping in the community. All those things elaborate our creativity, but when we just sit around feeding our Nephesh then we are elaborating the creation of our ego.

Question: How does the word Amen relate to the transmutation of sexual energy?

Instructor: We can see in the word Amen we have the breath, the waters, and we have the seed within those waters. We have breathing techniques which are usually called pranayama (in the East). This discussed in more detail in our next nexture. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but there is connection within our breath and our waters, particularly breathing through the nostrils. When you breathe through your nostrils in certain ways, and combine it with a mantra (or prayer) that breathing helps regulate your waters. In this case the waters would be understood as: when you try to rest and meditate and the mind is crazy it is like having an ocean of waves all over the place. If you learn how to breathe right it calms the waters, and you can learn how to walk on those waters. When you are inhaling you are extracting the Nun activity, the spiritual fire from your waters and giving it some more activity using your breath. So, by doing this, you are transforming your waters, you are extracting those elements from your waters to gain some light, gain some cognizance.

Question: Is that fire the Son of Man that came down from heaven?

Instructor: The Nun is related to the Son. In the book of Joshua - the word Joshua is also the same word for Jesus - in that book often is mentioned “Joshua Son of Nun,” which we can also say is Jesus Son of Nun. Jesus or Joshua is the Son of Nun, and our Nun is our seed. That fiery element, that Christic element is the developing of that Nun, the Son of Nun is that which has come from the Nun. Always Christ is descending, within us that Christic energy is deposited in our sexual waters, and we feel that fire in different ways. We feel it as a sexual force. Unfortunately, we think we need to fulfill our desires when we sense that, but that is just the Nephesh, our instinct. We need pull it out, the Nun, and extract it in a very spiritual way, that is how we develop that inner Christ. That is developed in many, many levels.

Question: ….There is no mentioning of the feminine, of the woman?

Instructor: In this case Nun is the egg or the sperm. So, nun in women is the egg, in this case. There is a word for God, which is Elohim, this is usually translated as “God” in the Bible. Actually, this is wrong, because the word God itself would just be El. That is enough to say God:  El. It is Aleph, Lamed, that is the same Aleph with the Lamed that brings it down.

El is God, and Eloah is Goddess. But, Elohim means Gods and Goddesses. This means that the literal translation of Elohim means masculine and feminine divinities. More appropriately is the Elohim that creates, so it is a combination of the masculine and the feminine divinities that creates the world. Whether we are talking our external world or our inner Elohim there’s always masculine and feminine element.

There are  many other things that we could reference that would have more feminine names, for example that fire of the Holy Spirit can also be called the Shekinah, which in Kabbalah is a feminine word representing that fire. In truth that force is often represented with a female element. We do not deny the feminine aspect of divinity. In truth our inner spirit is both of those aspects. We have both of those aspects within ourselves, we happen to be polarized physically as one side or the other but internally we need to develop both elements, both sides.

Every man and woman has both, masculine and feminine aspect, we have to learn to develop the counterpart, both parts require psychological development. Normally too, the word Neshamah is considered feminine, the soul is usually considered feminine, because it is receiving from the spirit. In truth the spirit is androgynous. It all depends on how we extract the symbols.

Audience: if it has to be “born again” - it has to be born from a woman, it implies the woman there…

Answer: It is true, that whole birth, we say in Gnosticism we have a Divine Mother, and the Divine Mother is absolutely critical for our inner work, she is the one that gave us life, she is the one that will give us our second birth. Only because of her is that we have this capability. We talk about the Divine Mother in other lectures. There are five primary aspects of the Divine Mother, the whole Space itself is only because of the Divine Mother

Question: How critical is the Divine Mother in the way we recognize her as feminine?

Instructor: If a person is not able to see divinity as feminine that is a problem. If you prefer to pray to a visualization, an iconic deity that looks differently, that is not an issue.

Question: Is there a difference on how we visualize it?

Instructor: I would not say that the problem is the visualization, if you have preference that is fine, what matters more is if in your heart you don’t see divinity and femininity being compatible. If you are unable to recognize your inner femininity that is a problem too, because the Divine Mother, as much as she is our confidant, and she holds our hand when we are stumbling, she is always there to console us, she is also the one in a fierce way to kill our ego and she is not afraid to be very blunt or fierce with us. The understanding of the Norse mythology of the Valkyrie, a feminine warrior who is going to battle, that is also feminine. The subjective ideas of what is feminine, or what is masculine, is related to our personality that we have today. We must open up and look the greater understanding.

Question: [A question about the ego]

Instructor: A lot of people say that the ego is very necessary so you need to maybe work on some defects, but you need your ego to go around and do things for you, as if you cannot have no ego. This is because people do not understand that we a true soul and spirit, which is our true our identity. Because we are so blind that we do not know what lies beyond our personality and our desires, and our ego.

The true spiritual teaching says, yes you must eliminate the entire ego. What lies beyond that is who we truly are. But we look at our body, our personality, what we think that is our true self. When we are thinking something, we think that is who we truly are, but tomorrow we might be something completely different. Today we might believe in something, have a strong conviction and the next year we believe the opposite. So, all these things which at the moments seem to say, “this is who I truly am,” end up changing.

If we contemplate a little bit more they (thoughts) can’t be who we truly are, because they are just these vehicles that are changing, and if our stream of thoughts aren’t who we truly are, and if our stream of emotions is not what we truly are, even if we look at our impulses and appetites, that is not our true self either. Then we start to inquire what/who am I then? The deeper you go into that, the more you will be less concerned whether you will be obliterated when your ego is away. Because beyond the ego is a true type of existence: true continuity of our consciousness and true continuity of will. In that sense we are very radical. This is what the esoteric teachings are saying, we must get rid of all of the merchants in the temple. The thing is, those merchants are us, and we love the merchants of the temple. We like to satisfy our material desires; we like to feel good about our “self” – yet, we do not even know what that self is.

Perhaps we feel bad, and we want someone to make us to feel good, or we are feeling lonely, so we want the other person to give us attention.  We want to do a favor because they will like us, but maybe they did not give us the right compliment back, so now we are angry at them. It is a constant jumping from lily pad to lily pad of trying to prop up this idea of who we are. We go through all our life running from this basic notion and most of us have no conception of what is beyond all of that. Unless you sit down, and let all that stuff rest, like waiting for all of the snowflakes in the snow globe to finally come to rest, then you see clearly, a clarity, you see the Neshamah, the inner light, then you realize: that is what I am.

Question: We are ever evolving beings, right? There are a lot of issues in the world that need changing too, and we evolve in how we deal them.

Instructor: We cannot forget about our practical life. We talk about initiation, which is a spiritual development. Initiation is life itself so we should not have the idea that we need to run away from practical life. There are a lot of complicated systems in this world. What we do say though, is never forget what is primary and yes, we live in a very chaotic world and there are all sorts of injustices going on, but the power that we have is this Gift of God, if we forget that then everything else we do is meaningless, that is our perspective.

It is not that you just forget about the world, if you have situations in life, you feel compelled to help, or to be politically active etc., do what is right, but do not forget your inner God, do not forget your inner spiritual work.

Politics today are extremely complicated. There is a lot of confusion, a lot of hatred, a lot of negativity, and people develop this big resentment against the system, against the people. That is all representation of our ego. We have been incapable of learning how to live as a society. Laws and rules and regulations can help to some degree, but the psychological ego within every single person is what is causing all these problems. The only person we can truly be responsible for is our own self. If we can transform ourselves, not in a selfish way by transforming ourselves into a "spiritual ego," but rather by eliminating our ego, we can become a positive benefit for society. Everybody has a different field of life, things that they are interested in doing. Do as you wish but never forget what is going to happen when you die. Every single person here is going to die, what then?

Question: So what happens when we die?

Instructor: Depending upon the condition of your soul is before you die, it is going to be the same essential condition after you die. If you fall asleep, and you have no cognizance of what happens when your body is asleep, then when your physical body dies that will be the level of cognizance that you will have. You will not know what is going on, there is a lot more to it than that, but the basic notion is you will not be a fundamentally different person because your body dies. So if you are confused and if you have pains and sufferings today that will continue but it also might get much worse.

Comment: …because energy never dies it only transforms.

Instructor: According to our teachings, the fact that we are in a human body, the fact that we even have the ability to have the leisure to come here to listen to these teachings, it means that we are very fortunate. We need to make the best use of that time as we possibly can. God has its grace, its charity to help the souls but there is also a limitation.

In Gnosticism we understand that we have multiple returns, it is not just one life, so the way our life started out, and the way our life is today is a reflection or continuation of our previous life. Some people are born in worse conditions, some people are born in better conditions. If we continue to not better ourselves, our ego will just grow forever, so that is the whole reason for the world of hell, is to eliminate those things. Hell can eliminate those things through a lot of pain and suffering, but once again our inner Essence, our inner soul cannot actually die but it will suffer a lot and eventually other cycles of humanity will occur. It is very big picture.

Question: What about love?

Instructor: We need to have complete charity, compassion, and love for mankind, for everybody, regardless. We teach, we give the doctrine, “this is” what you need to do to transform your condition, in order to awaken your consciousness, “this is” what need to happen. If you want to follow it (the doctrine) that is good, if not that is ok, regardless we should have compassion for everybody.

Question: How are the sexual mysteries able to have been hidden so long, for thousands of years? Were the spiritual authorities of that time aware, were they willfully keeping them from the public, or were they not even aware of this, like Nicodemus, was he not initiated in these teachings?

Instructor: Nicodemus represents a teacher who is not initiated. There is always an order to the creation of humanity, of a planet. We have talked about that in other lectures; it is a very long lecture. There is always amongst civilizations, a beginning, and then the four seasons of a civilization. By the end it is the age of “winter,” degeneration. Then another year occurs, another cycle occurs, cycles within cycles. In the beginning there is a lot of reverence for the Divine and the teachings are very public but as the civilizations, the humanities degenerate it becomes more closed off.

The reason partly for that is that you cannot develop consciousness without knowing the difference between good and evil. In order to know the differences of good and evil, you have to have the ability to choose good or evil, to choose bad consequences vs. good consequences. Otherwise we are always left at some type of ignorance and elemental state of consciousness where we don’t know the difference; we don’t know how to discern.

The only way to develop that wisdom, to see like the Elohim is to develop the knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil. That is why there is always an allowance to let humanity to into degeneration, it is not that God wants us to suffer, it is that God wants us to achieve greater happiness, but in order to have that you need to have the possibility of choosing wrongly, we have to analyze our own actions. It is a very big cosmic system in that sense. The teachings are always protected if someone tries to divulge it wasn’t appropriate for that time, then the Law takes care of that, will divert them or the person will end up having some unfortunate  circumstances.

Comment: So Divinity would step in is if someone were to harm it?

Instructor: In one way or another, yes, the Law, Divinity. In ancient times if you divulge the knowledge inappropriately, you would be immediately executed because the information was only for people who are prepared for it. It is like giving the nuclear codes, you don’t want to give that to anybody because in reality these teachings of  learning how to work with your sexual nature, very easily you can divert it and just work with it in a way to develop your ego even faster, they are very dangerous at the same time.

Question: There are teachings that promote sex without climax that aren’t related to the breath, like we teach it here. They are mainly focused on couples strengthening the relationships, or for the well being of the mind, teachings like karezza?

Instructor: We are familiar with a lot of other teachings that talk about sexuality, sex refraining from spilling. The whole gamut of good and bad and everything in between is out there in the world. Karezza in particular, Samael Aun Weor mentions karezza briefly in one of his books, that essentially is a good teaching. But it is incomplete in terms of the full doctrine. In terms of walking the path it is incomplete. Any man or women who unite in a loving marriage and refrain from spilling the energy, that is the essence, the core teaching. If they are developing love in that relationship, it is going to be good, it is going to be positive.

If they use that to develop their desires, even though they refrain, they can still develop desires, that is going to impact their mind in a negative way. Yes, we talk about the core principle of sexual transmutation and we talk about the path and all the philosophy, the epistemology, the nature of mind, and all this other things that help guide the person who is practicing so they don’t get confused. Because it is easy to get confused with different philosophies or different ideas, and then you mix one thing with another, which can be very bad. Therefore, we are always giving you a huge breath of teachings that say that they are all pointing towards the same thing.

It all depends, there is a lot of group out there, they teach to refrain but then they do not teach that you need to be in a committed relationship, so they go with whatever the person of the day is. They think because they are refraining from that, and they are transmuting, that it is enough for them to ascend their energy, but it is not. The energy needs to be connected to its opposite, in a committed relationship, to develop those fires continuously over years, over ones spiritual life. So, when you are mixing the fires you are mixing elements and if you are in a chemistry lab, you know that you need to keep everything (in order), you only want to mix the elements that are required. If you mix too many elements, psychologically, it does not work that way. Therefore a committed relationship is also necessary.

Question: What is your interpretation of committed?

Instructor: Two people that love each other, that want to be with each other and are not making any other plans for anything else. We like to say marriage, but marriage is just a legal thing today, so it does not really matter whether that person is legally married or not according the government. Sexual connection, and two people that are faithful to each other and are not looking or behaving in another way sexually with anybody else.

Question: What about celibacy?

Instructor: Celibacy is an intermediate state. This is a major difference between exoteric Christianity and esoteric teachings. The way it was meant to be was like this: when someone wanted to become serious, they become priest, monk, or a nun and they would be required to be sexually inactive, celibacy. That was a preparatory period. Celibacy is a preparatory period to help work with your motivations, to clean your ego, to prepare yourself to properly enter into the sacrament of spiritual marriage, and spiritual marriage would always take place in secret. Hisotrically, they would not publicize that because people don’t understand what that means to connect sexually for spiritual means. People only understand sex for having children or to develop desires.

Normally after you go through the period of celibacy you are supposed to keep your chastity. Chastity means a lack of sexual misconduct. Chastity is proper sexual conduct. Celibacy, on the other hand, just means no sexual contact. Celibacy is ok, if we learn how to transmute the energy through breathing, through pranayama, or through spiritual devotion, that also transmutes it.

A major problem with modern groups that practice celibacy is that they have lost the methods of sexual transmutation. Since they do not have sex, and they do not transmute, pscyhological problems develop over the course of many years.

Historically, the point of celibacy is to prepare for the next step: spiritual marriage. Today, because of the environment of the world, we do not need to do it that, we can go directly to spiritual marriage. The problem today is that a lot of priests do not know how to transmute, they are attempting to be celibate, or are celibate, but they don’t move the energy, they don’t transmute the waters. So, their Nun, their fire which should illuminate them is staying stagnant so they start developing really bad habits.

In the past, all the priest knew that they had to transmute, they transmuted through real spiritual devotion, but through time the rituals became more mechanical, the prayers became more mechanical and all this terrible outcome of pedophilia amongst the Catholic Church, for example, is exactly the outcome when you have celibacy without transmutation. When you have celibacy without transmutation the result is a rotten mind. This is the outcome, when you understand how these things work it becomes obvious. Obviously, all those problems are the outcome of not knowing this inner doctrine, that at some point through the years, through the ages, they lost it, they forgot it. It is a big problem; it is also why we are so blunt when talking about this.

We have to be blunt today. We have to cut through all this history, all these teachings, and get straight to the core of it, and just teach exactly as the esoteric lineage has said it.

Question: When does the spiritual union, spiritual marriage occur (after celibacy)?

Instructor: In the past it was in accordance with whatever system or group they were a part of. They would decide when a person is prepared, a couple is prepared, and they would start that. But today it is with anybody who wants to take up the teachings, the doctrine for you to do so. That is the difference between the different ages, in the prior age everything was closed off now we are in this humongous age of information, everything is open. But in age of information, you have good and bad information so you have to pick the needle out of the haystack, unfortunately.

Question: So, you just pick a partner and decide?

Instructor: Well, you do not just pick randomly. You must fall in love with somebody in the most natural of ways. It is difficult sometimes… some people have a lot of difficulty, they want to have a partner, they want to work, but they do not seem to see that person coming up in their life. God provides in accordance with our works and our efforts. A lot of times we do not want to hear it, but sometimes it is good for us to be single to work spiritually before we get the opportunity to work with a couple. You must find a compatible partner. Each of us has our own issues, our ego, and we find a partner who has a matching type of ego. The ego must die of course. When a couple is working together, they eliminate their ego in cooperation. The cooperation can be difficult! Some say marriage is “hell” (in jest) – but actually in part that is true because we all have our issues. We must do our work in hell (our psychological issues). But, when we succeed, in the end it is like honey.