We are going to continue some of the themes that we have begun to speak about in a prior lecture called The Three Brained Machine. In that lecture we elaborated and spoke at length about the series of events, a process of unfolding, starting at the beginning of the Universe. The Absolute, we can say, has a goal in mind through the emanation of all these galaxies, all these world systems, and Beings.
In order to know itself better, in order to gain its own knowledge, the Absolute extends itself into existence. In other words, it creates everything. We, presently find ourselves in this certain set of circumstances, this current state of affairs, in terms of us having a physical body, and in terms of the way our present psyche or soul is organized.
There are different parts of what we call our “self.” This includes our physical body, our personality, and our mind and heart (our astral and mental components), and our Spirit. A lot of things have to occur in order for us to be in this current state that we are in. A lot of prior development. Certainly, it doesn't come through an accident, it doesn't happen in a short period of time. Rather, it is an enormous effort that the Logos undergoes, in order to create all these different organizations or cosmoses.
We are in a very special and fortunate situation, because we have the capacity to know ourselves. We have a three brained machine at our hands. We have a physical body that has three main nervous systems, which is what we discussed in our last lecture. We have a psyche or soul that has been evolved through the help of Mother Nature and through the Solar Intelligence that evolves, what are called, the protoplasmic bodies. We can just simplify that to say that our soul was evolved from a simple Essence, as virginal spark, in order to gain the capacity to control more and more complicated, complex forms of energy. So even at the very beginning, having the Essence, or that virginal spark, descend into the most basic type of matter - the mineral kingdom - and even at that level a management of energy is occurring.
Through a very intricate process that's guided not through own self will, but through Mother Nature, the Essence (that elemental essence) evolves so it can know how to handle more and more complex types of physical and subtle bodies. So we have the types of Beings or animals, we can say, only having one brain. They only operate on the external or surface of their body, in that one type of dimension. Very instinctual type of dimension. Then we have another type of Being that has two brains. It has an emotional dimension to their existence. Not only do they see this world from their external shape or experience, they also have an internal world. They have an emotional world.
An insect is only one-brained. But any type of animal that has an emotional component to it, you can see that there is another dimension to their existence. There is another dimension to their life here, right? And it is more complicated. And we can see various levels of complexity in the animal kingdom and the way that different animals work together, and they live and survive. But then we as a soul, an Essence, eventually graduate into the humanoid kingdom and now, like us, we have three brains. We have an intellect as well.
This is where a lot of problems begin to develop, because at this point with the intellect, we have the ability to rationalize. to choose. to divert our will away from the type of instinct that we might have as an animal.
Before we go further, let us take a step back. There are a lot of things to remember here, because our galaxy obviously exists in the Universe. There is many galaxies and our solar system exists in the galaxy. There are many solar systems in that galaxy. And our planet exists in our solar system. Likewise there are many other planets in our solar system, and we exist on the planet. And inside of us, actually, are many living cells that we are part of, that are part of us. There are many other types of living organisms that sustain us. We could not live without the millions of bacteria in our gastrointestinal system. They are essential for digestion and nutrient absorption. A person that somehow did not have the properly functiontion gut bacteria would die, even if they were eating food, they would die of starvation.
So in each layer or level, energy is being transformed and it's providing harmony or balance between sustaining itself and sustaining the higher order of energy. So even us, being here on this planet Earth, we are sustaining the life of our cells through our healthy choices. Likewise, those cells provide us with life. We have the ability to make those choices, to be an agent of our own actions. But we as human beings (better said humanoids because we are not fully developed yet), or as any living element on this Earth, is like a cell of the planet Earth. Just like each of our cells need to function, it needs to transform energy in different ways for our body to live. Everybody is like a cell for the Earth and every one of those cells, need to function correctly.
If they don't, the energy isn't gets transformed in a right way. Then the Earth can't accomplish its mission, can't accomplish its own development, and also it can't accomplish being a part of a larger development. The Earth needs to function in the right way to help sustain a healthy solar system. Likewise, the solar system needs to play its part in a galaxy. So all these things build upon each other.
On one level, us as a living organism on this planet Earth, in a certain level we have no more duty than to just transform energy for this planet Earth, as a mechanical Being. But of course, we have another duty to our own Innermost, our own Inner Being, which is to know ourselves and to self-realize. So there is a juxtaposition here between two different organizations: the outer space and the inner space.
Imagine if there were cells inside of our own body that provide us with life, but they also had the capacity to liberate themselves from our body to create their own independence. If one of our cells were to revolutionize itself and acquire its own life outside our own body, we wouldn't actually have a much of a problem of that, because we have billions or millions of other cells. Very few would do it.
In the same way, we are like cells on this planet Earth, and most of the cells on this planet Earth, most of us, are not going to find or be able to incarnate laws and conditions that will allow us to exist outside this mechanical instinctual life. But, what is important to know is that we do have that capacity. The Earth as a whole is providing a situation for us to simply transform energy for its own economy, for its own nature. But there is a possibility for us to escape that nature. That possibility can only happen when we have those three brains, because that's when we have the ability to manage all three forces, to work with those three forces within ourselves. That's really the summary of the last lecture that we had. That's where it leaves us off: that we have this capacity to work on ourselves.
But what does that mean? How do we do that? Everything that occurs in our creation, in this creation, in this Universe, is an exchange of energies. Energy transforms from one type into another type, from one level into another level. So everything is a transformation of energies. Every movement is a transformation of energy, a continuum of energy.
We know even from a materialistic-scientific perspective that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed. In any particular system, in order to sustain that energy, you must take that from some other aspect, some other place, in order to sustain that energy. Without something sustaining a system, the nature is for it to dissipate, for it to dissolve or to fall into entropy.
In our common world, any building that we are in, any place of the world that we have “developed” - such as a city, if we don't maintain it, it begins to fall apart. If we don't maintain the roads, potholes occur. If you wait a couple years neglecting to maintain the roads, they would all begin to turn to dirt. If we were not here to maintain the buildings or our cars, they would fall apart. Because as we use them, they transform the energy, they are taking all the elements of the weather and everything in environment, and eventually they begin to fall apart. So we have to put energy into that in order to maintain it as it is. Can you imagine what it takes to maintain a universe? For this universe to exist, tremendous sacrifice has to occur.
The Logos has to sacrifice itself to create and to maintain this existence. That sacrifice occurs related to the Second Logos, to the Son, because that is a Holy Denial. So this world is created and this world is then maintained through a continual sacrifice. That Christic element is vibrating in every transformation of energy, because that Christic element, that sacrifice, is ongoing. It provides the basis for all of us to have our life, to have our experience. If Christ didn't sacrifice its own self into these lower worlds, then they wouldn't exist, they wouldn't be maintained. So this is the Law of Sacrifice, this is the Law of Christ, which is complete sacrifice. So because of that we have this ability to exist as we are, and to work on ourselves, and to do the great work.
Since this lecture is called "Sacrifice and Transformation", would be good to know what exactly these words mean. The word "Sacrifice" comes from Latin and it means “to make holy”, to make something holy. So “sacrifice” means to make something holy. We often look at in our common usage of the word “sacrifice”, we think it just means to, maybe, “offer sacrifice, to deny oneself, or to kill something”. But its real root is to make something holy.
Transformation, obviously, is to mutate or to change the form. "Trans" means change in form, change in shape. So this is what life is, this is what existence is, a transformation of energy. And we, of course, include matter in that. Matter is a form of energy, matter and energy transform into each other. There is another element of course, we say that consciousness is a part of it as well. So consciousness, energy and form (or matter) are three aspects that are always exchanging and interchanging with each other.
The Absolute is this infinite, abstract, unknowable reality. It projects itself into limitation, and by experiencing all the infinite forms of limited existence, it extracts that data from all those transformations. And if that information can be assimilated into the consciousness and returned, then the Absolute knows itself a little bit better. So that is our Holy Duty to do that.
Samael Aun Weor writes in The Doomed Aryan Race:
“the intellectual animal, mistakenly called the Human Being, is a machine that is necessary for the economy of nature. The Human Machine automatically receives and transforms certain cosmic rays that are later unconsciously transmitted into the interior layers of the Earth.”
This is what I was mentioning before. So there are many different levels and dimensions of how we are transforming energy. We know that we have this conscious perception of how we are interacting with others, how we are feeling different types of energy in life, and how we are working with them, such as emotions, thoughts, desires. But there are many forms of energy that we are not perceiving. These types of energy are coming down from the Cosmos and the superior dimensions, and they come into us, but because we are not perceptive of it, they are really influencing us unconsciously. We are transforming them unconsciously and the Earth is receiving the necessary energy its needs from the cosmos. You see, this is why we are like a cell for the planet. We are like the digestive layer, or stomach for the Earth, just as the gut bateria are for our stomach.
So these are types of Cosmic rays that influence an entire society. Many revolutions that exist, don't simply occur (I am talking about revolutions, and wars, and overthrowing of governments or cultural type of revolutions) because of mechanical worldly events, but also related to cosmic influences, which cause certain elements to start to erupt and bubble up into the surface of the psyche of an entire population.
The hippie movement was in relationship to cosmic influences. The Bolshevik revolution was related to cosmic influences, these revolutionary types of things. And inside of that is both good and evil. And inside of that we can see how one form transforms into something else. And through that process there is always some type of sacrifice. So for the economy of nature we could just be here and transform all the energy unconsciouly, and from that perspective the Earth would be just fine. Now, really, us in our humanoid form as we are now, we really made a mess of things. But if we weren't here and it was just the animal kingdoms, you would see a harmony on this Earth, and it would be able to produce what it needed to.
However, we have made such a mess of things. There is so much karma involved with us, we made such a mis-transformation of energies on this Earth it cannot continue to do its job. The Earth cannot endanger its future role and its larger role in the world systems. There are certain things this Earth needs to accomplish. Future civilizations which societies that need to develop. But our actions and activities have produced something that has made it necessary for the Earth to sacrifice this humanity in order to sustain itself. So the only way that we are going to avoid our soul from going along the degenerating current and being dragged down, is to accomplish a revolution of consciousness within ourselves. Either way, we are going to die physically, right? Physical death shouldn't really be what we are afraid of, that should be something we know. It's the trajectory of our psyche, of our consciousness, that we should be concerned with.
We have to make a sacrifice of our ego, of our heart and mind, in order to sustain ourselves, in order to produce superior conditions that go beyond those conditions, which are merely maintaining the economy of this Earth. When we talk about the transformation of energy, we usually refer to the three brains and as I said before that's the intellectual, emotional and motor-instinctual-sexual brains. It's through these brains or nervous systems that we experience all our life. We should know although that, for example, the intellectual center is related to our head and to our cranium, that as a nervous system it is related to our whole body and to our whole spinal cord. We may know that our emotional center is related to the center of our body in your heart, but it's also related to the whole nervous system that runs through our whole body that carries that energetic emotional energy. And likewise, the motor-instinctual-sexual centers. There are centers that are more intensely involved with all these brains, but we should realize that all three of these brains are related to our whole body. All those nervous systems are interrelated. So we have these three brains and now we have a capacity to work with them, to work with the energy.
What are the different types of energy that we need to work with? There are many different types: we talked about these cosmic influences, we can also talk about the influences related to our chakras, and to akasha, and to the prana, etc. Those can be synthesized with these three types of foods. We say that there are three types of nourishment. The food that we eat, the air, and the impressions of life. So what does this mean? First of all, these nourishments are things that are coming from the outside, and they are going into our body, and even more so, they are going into our psyche, into our mind, into our emotions. There is a crossing between what we are presently, our present ‘state of affairs’, and these nourishments or energies, which arrive from the external world. Thus, as a result of the cross of our current inner state, and the external information, a change occurs that influences our body and our psyche. There is a crossing that occurs. That crossing provokes our reaction, or, an influence for our actions.
The densest type of nourishment that we take is the food, the physical food, eating meals. Now, food goes through a process of transformation. Before that food reaches your plate, something has to happen, some type of sacrifice. Whether it's an animal or whether it's a vegetable or a plant. Even it's a vegetable or a plant, that plant has to be sacrificed. We have to sacrifice it, because we are going to be eating it. Various levels of transformation occur with the food we place in our mouth. Immediately as we begin to chew on it, it is already being transformed, next the saliva starts to transform it as well. Then the food goes down, our throat and goes to our stomach, and then more transformations occur: different enzymes are working on it, and different acidic type of fluids in our stomach begin to break it down. Then it goes to our small intestine, and then to our large intestine, and our different elements, different organs down there add additional enzymes and digestive elements to take out and to break apart the food in order to get nourishment out of it, in order to get the vitamins out of it, in order to get the energy and nutrients.
Those nutrients, through all this process, get broken down and broken apart, and those nutrients are really (when it comes down to it) molecules. Those molecules are orientated in certain way, they have chemical bonds which are useful for the human machine. When they are absorbed into our blood, and then in the blood they get carried around different parts of the body, eventually those molecules can be broken apart and with that there's chemical energy liberated. That's what it really comes down to, is that our body is a machine that's running on (from just the purely physical point of view) this chemical energy. Of course we know that those molecules carry elements related to superior or more sublte dimensions of existence, which is where the real vital essence of life pours out from.
That whole process more or less takes place without any of our knowledge. We get to choose, to some degree, the food that we put into mouth. So of course the more cognizance that we have in choosing a good food, of course it's going to help. The more cognizance we have when eating our food, that's going to help nourish our body more, observing and attending to the process of eating. Learning how to chew our food, to actually chew our food, that's going to help with that process. But beyond that it goes in our body and there is a mechanical intelligence there. This intelligence breaks down all the food for us and so long as we don't abuse the body, the body will be able to nourish itself. It's a very beautiful process. We have very little influence over it. For the most part that process is happening by itself.
However, we can't live on food alone. There are other nourishments and the next type of nourishment is the air, or we can say more specifically - oxygen. This is a more volatile type of energy. There is more energy in the air and we can't survive without air. We can go many days without food, but we cannot go more than a few minutes without oxygen. Literally, at the cellular level, our body will begin to die. So we know that the body needs air in order to live, but it's interesting - most people probably don't know why we need that oxygen, other than it makes us alive in some vague sense. There are specific reasons why.
We breathe in, and without needing any special cognizance, the air goes in into our lungs and travels down into little tubes and goes into these little areas where blood passes by (the alveoli). The blood has attached to those red blood cells, the waste carbon dioxide (CO2), and those carbon dioxide molecules detach from the blood cells and go into our lungs. The carbon dioxide is now in the lungs and can be exhaled. Also, that blood cell (which had its CO2 removed) has a free space for oxygen molecules, the O2, gets connected to those little blood cells and those blood cells then go into the heart, and then the heart pumps them to our whole body.
Those little molecules of oxygen go on to all our cells and that oxygen is necessary in order to run the machinery inside of our selves. Certain little machines in the cells, break apart the oxygen, gives chemical energy out of that, makes this stuff called ATP and it runs the organic machine. And it needs that oxygen in order to metabolize the nutrients to the food, but food can't even actually run this organic machine that we have until the oxygen comes in. It needs that element, it's not complete until oxygen is there. The nutrients can be absorbed by our blood, but it can't actually be used to run, it can't be used as a fuel until you add the oxygen. So the air provides a special, additional “shock”, we can say. A shock of energy. This is what Gurdjieff calls a mechanical shock. So in the system of the Fourth Way, Gurdjieff speaks about mechanical shocks and conscious shocks. We are not going to go into complete detail about that, but he says that there is a mechanical shock that occurs, that the food goes through the system - he calls the system of octaves - so it's going through these different transformations, as we are describing - through the mouth, and through the stomach, and all those ways the food is becoming lighter in the number of laws that it's orientated to. But it reaches a point, where it can't go any further. And it needs something else to further that process. It needs the air or the oxygen in order to complete that process.
So that is why we need air. The chemical bond between the two oxygen atoms is sacrificed to provide the energy to run the human machine. Without the air the food of our life can't actually run the human machine. Now in terms of the air, here with the food we have a little bit of choice of how well our food is digested. We have the choice because we choose our food, because we can chew our food, and because we can be mindful of the way that we are eating. And that can influence our nutrients. But mostly we don't have much influence over that. Air or oxygen, the process of breathing, we know here we have distinctly two ways to breathe: mechanical way and a way doing it consciously. If we don't pay attention to our breath, our body will breathe for us, but there is another set of nerves, electrical impulses. There are two sets of nerves that go to the lungs: one runs the mechanical aspirating process of breathing and there is another set that turn on and can override that if we choose to do it through our own will. That's very interesting, right? Because we know that the breath is so important and the breath of life is a very powerful symbolic mystery. We have the ability to breathe on our own, but we also, if we don't make that choice, the body will breathe for us. So when we pay attention to our breath, obviously there is more consciousness there, there is more power there to transform the energy out of that.
So with food we can survive many days, without air we can survive a few minutes without, but there is a third type of nourishment, which is the impressions. The impressions: it's something that we don't often think about, unless you are in these types of studies, you don't consider that to be a food, but the reality is - we can't go a single instant without impressions. Impressions are tied to our very life, to our very consciousness.
It's unfortunate, but we know of certain circumstances of children that were denied any capacity to have a variety of impressions, that they were born in a very unfortunate situation, where they were locked in a single room for the whole life, until later they were found and released, and unfortunately these children just show how important impressions are. Because without the impressions we can't develop. We would not be able to develop the three brains. Our personality would be stunted and create a great damage to us. So we need impressions, we need to experience all these things. Impressions are vital to our existence. The impressions, just as air is more energetic than food, the impressions are much more energetic and the conscious intake and transformation of the impressions is the most powerful way to influence the energy that's flowing through our body and mind.
We can choose and we should to choose good foods, the best that we can, and that would be helpful. If we choose the wrong foods we got a sick body. If we have a sick body, we can't perform the work very well. So we should try to choose good foods. But there are those, who make, Samael Aun Weor stated, a “kitchen religion”. They make a religion out of the food that they eat, because when you begin to eat better, you feel better, but there are those who take it to an extreme, where they believe that by simply eating more and more pure foods that they are relating with the type of spiritual progress or being more spiritual. Of course, this doesn't make sense. Yes, eating pure foods will help your body and can even help your state of mind. We know that if we eat garbage, we get in a bad mood or we have a headache, or we just do not feel well, we don't have the energy to concentrate well. So it makes sense to eat better food, but there is a limit to that, right? So, unfortunately, people get identified with just that aspects of things, and they forget that these other types of impressions are much more powerful to work with.
This is somewhat fortunate, because not everybody has the money or the resources to buy the best food. So we shouldn't be totally destroyed if we don't have that capacity. We should do our best, but we should realize that these other two types of nourishment are more powerful. Obviously, with the air, we don't have the capacity to always choose where we live or to get the best air, we do what we can. But learning how to breath consciously, to observe our breath, it's very powerful.
The third thing however - the transformation of impressions - is the most critical thing here, because with the food and with the air there are systems involved that mechanically transform those things, but we the impressions there is no organ inside of us, there is no organ in a nervous system that will automatically transform impressions.
So what does that even mean? Because, when we talk about transforming the food or the air, we can see how that there is a mechanical process sustaining our life. But with the impressions, what does it even mean to transform the energy of the impressions? It can be difficult to understand, because the impressions are more related with the psyche, more related with our mind and our heart, with our ego and with our consciousness.
You see that food gets digested and there is absorption of nutrients. The air goes through this process called cardiovascular respiration that enables the metabolization of nutrients, as I said. But this third item here - what system transforms the energy of impressions? What has the capacity to even transform the impressions? The answer is that our consciousness does. We have something that can transform the impressions.
So we have this chart on this slide, but there is a process of how the world arrives into our self, right? Things occur outside of our self and that information gets into us somehow, travels from what is outside of our self into our self. So physically the world arrives through our senses, through light, through sound and through other mechanical means of touch. All those things are forms of energy that are going into our psyche, they go into our nervous system.
For example, light - there is a light source somewhere, whether is the Sun or an electrical light - that light can be understood as photons that travel out of a source. They bounce off of something, like this table (or any object) and in order for me to see that table, that photon has go from a light source, bounce off the table and go into my eye. And my eye has a certain type of cell that transforms the photon into an electrical impulse that go into my brain. From there we have a nervous system that works with something that common science doesn't know about, which is our internal bodies, and our chakras. Our chakras are just centers of energy transformation, and there is a relationship there between our physical body, our vital body, and our astral, mental bodies, and all our internal bodies.
We see there through that electrical transformation, that information goes into the molecular world as well, which is where our mind and heart are, where our astral and mental bodies are. So the impressions arrive into our physical body, and into our internal bodies, and we perceive, we see. But there are different layers of filtering, right? So we can have good eye sight or bad eye sight. And that right there is a filter. We have good hearing or bad hearing. So the sense themselves provide a certain type of filter. But when it goes into our mind, into our ego, this is where the really big distortions and filters occur. When this crossing occurs between the external world, and our state of mind, there is that opportunity - two things can happen essentially.
That energy can process itself mechanically or can process itself consciously. If we do nothing, if we are totally receptive and asleep, then a process occurs mechanically. Whatever the nature of the impression is, plus the nature of our mind is at in that moment, with no additional elements, they will cross, and there will be a result. Similar to like a formula: X + Y = Z.
So there will be a mechanical reaction related to our memories, related to other unconscious elements, related to the reflexive grasping and the false understanding of our self and other. All they seem amalgamate into a reaction. And we can see how the world causes energy to erupt out of us. Even if we feel bored. Boredom is a type of reaction actually, because if we've ever had that experience of being liberated from our ego, the consciousness or that essence is directly perceived. Boredom is not a quality of the consciousness or essence. Boredom occurs inside of our ego. So when we have boredom, that's a response to the impressions. Because we have impressions that we are fascinated with, impressions that we run away from, and we have impressions that are neutral or boring to us. Even those, the boring ones, have to be transformed.
The transformation of impressions is something that's difficult to really outline, because it's not an intellectual process and it's not a mechanical process. But, we can say that we have to, through our own observation and comprehension, learn how to observe how our mind is responding to the world. When we are living inside of the mind, identified with its process, we are like a person inside of a car that's driving whereever it wants to, and we are just fascinated with that experience. Or, we are like inside the movie theater absorbed in that projection and totally forget the fact that we are actually in front of a projection.
To transform that impression, the first thing we have recognize is that we are sitting in the car of life or that we are sitting in that theater, looking at that projection. We have to have that realization. We have to have that to begin. If we are totally fascinated, then we are becoming one with it, and then there is nothing different between the consciousness itself, the capability of perception, and all the elements that are reacting. If we have that capability, then we can transform it.
The reality is as well, that any impression that we have, hits us in many different dimensions and levels, and we have to learn how to transform it on deeper and deeper levels. The easiest way to talk about the transformation of impressions is to talk about anger or lust, very visceral things that we can feel in our body. So if you have someone you have a large history with, a family member or someone like that, and you have an argument with them, it's very hard sometimes to transform those impressions, and we get angry. We may even know that “I am getting angry right now,” because we have been observing this relationship, but anger is there nevertheless. When it's very ingrained like that, the transformation is indeed difficult, you have to do the best transformation you can, be as cognizant and aware as you can, but if the energy is too difficult, which will often be if we are still working on ourselves, that's when you take such experience into meditation. You have to do a retrospection and take that deeper.
One thing would be to respond in anger, in screaming, slamming doors, right? That would be a lot of energy transformation, it would not be the transformation of impressions, but your anger would be going everywhere in every direction and causing all the problems. So, observing oneself and not reacting like that, you may not be screaming, you may go from that to reacting in a different way, but you still may be identified in a subtler way, maybe feeling hurt or disrespected. So, instead of screaming, there is a subtler form of identification of the impressions.
The ego loves to be respected, the ego can't stand disrespect. The ego has a set of rules that it wants other people to abide by, we want other people to abide by our particular way and we don't want to be disrespected by them. “How can I let myself be disrespected, because you did X, Y and Z to me?” We get locked in that type of reasoning like that. "I am justified, because they treated me terribly!” That's the ego talking. But we get locked inside of that, because we feel disrespected. So, in one level we maybe transforming the crudest aspect of that energy, and not screaming and slamming doors, but there is enormous amount of energy still there.
Mechanically, from the brain of action and physical movement, we may have transformed that aspect, but internally, emotionally our heart rate may be up and down, and that signifies that those finer elements might not be transformed, and that's still sitting in our mind. It's very, very, easy to physically transform our behaviors, that's a very easy level. If we become complacent at that level, we start to hide from ourselves emotionally and intellectually. We will intellectualize something, and if we are not careful, we may feel like we are doing the right things, because outward they to be seen to be changing our behaviors. And authentically we could be, that is a transformation, that is a change, but we always have to be cognizant: is it really coming directly from a source of consciousness inside of myself that my behaviors are being changed, or am I trying to like “hold down the beast” and just behave differently, struggling so hard to just hold down this inner beast I have to not be totally identified in lust or anger or jealousy or pride.
So there is different levels here, right? Because it's good to fight our own ego, but we have to comprehend it, we have to comprehend that experience. You know, sometimes we have dreams where we are fighting someone, whether it's some malignant entity, or we are fighting some bully that we had, when we were in grade school or something else, something it's a dream experience and we are in a struggle.
Sometimes that struggle lasts the entire night, no matter how hard you try to fight against (whatever your battle is), but you are just not strong enough, you just can't kill it. What is that representing is the struggle of opposites. The stronger you fight against that bad element, the more energy you are locking yourself into that struggle. Because the reality is that struggle is going to exists as long as the ego continues. The ego lives off that duality. The ego has to be sacrificed, it's the only way that transformation is going to occur. So, in the dream, in the astral experience, that is death (symbolic or mystical death).
If you are identified with the fear of being annihilated, then you are afraid of your own psychological death. So to be cognizant, to wake up into that experience, sometimes there's that experience of dying in your dream. You can die in your dream, and you wake up in a different level of a dream or an astral experience. That means you are ready to die into that ego, you are ready, you are ready to give up. Not giving up as if you are failing, but realizing that futility of that battle. In such a way, relating to our prior example, that you transcend this idea of “being respected” or “disrespected.” I think that idea of respect is very powerful notion in today's world.
Because we have this idea, that as a gnostic we are supposed to transform the impressions, I think some people get translate that they are supposed to be a “doormat” to others in life, or they feel like they just need to be trampled upon by the unpleasantness of others. Samael Aun Weor indeed writes that we have to learn how to receive the unpleasant manifestations of our neighbors with gladness. That is true, but there is a subtle difference between doing that with true gladness and serenity, and doing it with only the façade of serenity while feeling hurt and disrespected underneath. In this case someone can continue to feel hurt and disrespected, developing resentment, but then wanting to hide from that, so we'll try to be OK with it. This kind of like intricate labyrinth occurs. That's the labyrinth of our own mind.
So the way to get through that, of course, is through meditation, and it's through meditating on love and developing compassion. Compassion must always find its basis in insubstantiality of the ego, and the interdepence of self and other. We really have to go deeper than just to behaviorally change. If we have that feeling like, “I am being like a doormat to everybody, because I have all these really terrible people in my life…”, we need to listen to that song that we are singing to ourselves, that's a psychological song that we sing to ourselves. We have to realize that we are telling ourselves a lie. It is just a justification – what we justify we cannot comprehend. So we get entranced, and we get enamored by a fantasy of our situation.
There are so many ways to become complacent, and to blame our discontentment on others.
The transformation of impressions happens on different levels, different layers of the mind. We can't perfectly transform the impressions until we are perfectly conscious. As long as the ego is there, there is going to be some layer that still is not being perfectly transformed. So we need to work diligently and with the right perspective. Just because we have a negative reaction to someone, we have to do our best, but we have to know that there is layer after layer of that transformation.
These impressions are energy, so, this energy is there, and if we don't transform the impression, what happens? What occurs is still a transformation of energy, but it's a mechanical transformation. That interaction is a crossing of our mind and the heart with the external world, or even that external could be the astral world, when we were in the astral body. That crossing, it causes some reaction. If we then behave mechanically in response to that, we generate more ego or more karma, and we hold on to an element, a type of energy. In other words, the ego grows bigger, when we don't transform the impressions, and the ego holds on to elements that really need to go to the Earth. Those elements really need to be given in order to sustain the Earth. The conscious transformation of impressions causes a liberation of energy, and that liberation of energy goes into two directions: one - to feed our consciousness and another one - in order to give a certain type of element to the Earth to sustain itself as well.
The Earth is not just a physical entity. The Earth needs those other types of energies as well, types of energy related to our psyche, related to the fifth and sixth dimension, to all dimensions. So Samael Aun Weor writes:
The Law of the Reciprocal Nourishment of every existing thing exists in the world. The purpose of our lives is to supply maintenance to something big or small in the world. This law was known by ancient sages as the process of the Cosmic Common Trogoautoegocrat. Askokin is the substance with which this Great Nature is nourished. So, Mother Nature gives us life, yet She collects a very high price for it. She demands Askokin in exchange, yet if we do not voluntarily give this Askokin to her, then She snatches it by force, by means of great wars.
So this material, the Askokin, is an energetic subtle type of substance. It's related very much with our blood, and with our sexual energy. When we don't transform the impressions, that Askokin is not liberated, it's not fed into the Earth. As well, our ego grows. So if we do the transformation of impressions, we - in the same way that our physical body is breaking those chemical bonds in order to liberate that chemical energy - when we are transforming the impressions, we are transforming energy into something more volatile, something that has more energy. Not just more energy, more subtle, volatile engery to feed the higher centers of the human being.
For something to be more volatile means it is more explosive, it goes into the air faster. So when we are transforming the impressions, we nourish our own soul and we nourish the Earth as well. Realize that Earth needs that type of energy as well.
In the past, for a certain period, animal sacrifices were very popular, and this is because by sacrificing an animal and liberating that blood, you liberate the Askokin from that animal. So that type of blood sacrifice provides a nourishment to the Earth. Of course, this is very brutal. In today's world, this is black magic, we would never advise that or condone that at all. But from a certain type of mechanicity, it prevents Mother Nature from getting that Askokin in different ways, because it needs to get it. As the those sacrifices of animals started to be phased out, what need to be phased in, was a transformation of impressions, was the sacrifice of our ego, which is another type of blood sacrifice. But it is in a psychological sense. Of course, we didn't do that. We stopped, in many parts of the world, of liberating the energy related to sacrifice of animals, but we were not actually transforming our psyche. Mother Nature needed that Askokin to sustain itself and that is another one of those influences that cause these great wars, the First and Second World Wars for example.
So Mother Nature needs the Askokin one way or another. The transformation of impressions is the answer, because if we don't give the Askokin to the Mother Nature, she will get it in some other way. This Earth exists and it needs to produce seven humanities, it needs two more. We are the fifth humanity right now, so two more to come, and regardless of whether we behave all correctly or not, those two future humanities need to occur, but our actions unchecked, our actions the way they are right now would destroy this Earth, and prevent it from developing of future humanities. So from that respect, this Earth needs to manage us, and to provide great wars, and cataclysms that will occur, because we are like a cancer to this Earth, we are killing it, we are taking all the energy, feeding very fat egos and in the end it doesn't help us, and it doesn't help anything.
The impressions of life cross with our psyche, and on that cross, a great sacrifce must be made. We must imitate Christ and sacrifice our desires.
The Askokin will be returned and exchanged, and the Earth needs the Askokin to give energy to higher systems. The Earth gets this the energy from a Solar Logos, transforms the energy and then returns it. It happens on all the different layers of the Cosmos. We need to play our part in that, we need to do our cosmic duty, our secret duty, which is to sacrifice at this point, is to sacrifice our own ego. And through the transformation of impressions, through the sacrifice of our ego, we liberate higher forms of energy, and only when we liberate those higher forms of energy, do we have the reserves to be awake and to maintain wakefulness, in more tempting or subtle dimensions. If we want to be aware in the astral and mental worlds, we have to not just conserve our energy, we say we have to conserve our energy, but we also have to know how to transform our energy.
It's not enough to simply sit and just conserve energy. If we are just sitting in our room all day and not do anything that would be we are not transforming anything because we are not giving any types of impressions that are difficult to transform. The difficulty, the resistance to make the transformation, is a representation of psychological imperfection. Therefore, when you transform an difficult impression, new levels of energy are accessable within your self. Therefore,you are not the same as you were, you are transforming that into something that's more volatile, something that's more energetic, and that feeds your consciousness, that feeds the higher centers and they are able to operate. There are superior centers: superior emotional and superior intellectual centers. They can only operate through a finer type of energy. That finer type of energy can only occur, when we are behaving in a right way, and that goes along with not only transformation of impressions, but the transmutation of sexual energy as well, which is linked of course.
So we can always relate all this work for the Three Factors, and we know that the Three Factors from other lectures is death, birth and sacrifice for humanity. And inside these Three Factors is this transformation and sacrifice, because death and birth of course is a transformation.
Samael Aun Weor writes:
To die is a matter of revolutionary ethics and dissolution of the psychological ego. To be born is a subject, related to sexual transmutation. Sacrifice for humanity is universal and cognizant charity.
So this is our duty to our own Inner Being, is to accomplish continual transformation of energies.
The Being that can totally transform all forms and dimensions of energy perfectly is transparent to this world. In other words, they enter into the Absolute, because they are perfect transformer of all energy, they cannot see any shadow or distortion of their existence. From this point of view, such a Being is “Not Being”.
When you, for example you are presented with a difficult person in front of you, if you have perfect serenity and if front of that difficult person, you more or less perfectly transform that impression, there is no residue in your mind, it is completely transparent. The Great Beings that enter into Absolute is transparent in all dimensions, in all ways, it perfectly can transform everything. And if you perfectly transform everything, there is no distortion, there is no shadow, you cannot see it from any angle, it is perfect. That type of Being - there's nothing left to accomplish here, so it enters into Absolute. But we have to work, and start where we are at.
Questions and Answers
Audience: When we transform impressions, how is that different in a dream?
Instructor: Dreams are also impressions. So even in our astral body we have the three brains. Our understanding of the three brains needs to be synthesized and really comprehended. Some may see it only as a physical thing, but all the bodies have those brains as well. So even in the astral plane, we are in the astral body, we have intellectual, emotional and motor-instinctive-sexual brains (or centers). Because in the astral world you can see something lustful and your sexual brain is being activated. Or you see something emotional. The impressions of the astral world are different, they are subtler, they are more powerful, they cause a greater reaction in our mind. It's more difficult to transform the impressions in the astral world, because it's subtler. So to have, to maintain cognizance, means we need more stability than if we are in the physical world. To maintain cognizance here in the physical world, a basic minimum, is one thing, but do it in the astral world, you need even more stability. You may awaken in the astral dimension and then fall asleep, because you became fascinated, you didn't transform it.
There's are lot things that are different obviously with the astral world, because it's an internal world. So when your state of mind suddenly changes and becomes identified with it, it appears as if your external world is changing, when your mind is operating differently. Here in the external world, our internal world changes, but relatively speaking, the external world stays the same, but in the inner worlds, an astral plane, we could be observing objective space, or, we could be observing the subjective space, the infernal worlds. So the astral plane is more complicated, it's subtler, it's more powerful.
Audience: So you mentioned that certain intense impressions are needed order to release that more, subtle power of energy. What about someone who is living in solitude?
Instructor: So the question is, the monk or yogi in the cave, who is meditating their whole life, or, cloistered away in the temple, versus us and kind of engaged in this modern world. In this period, in this time, especially we know that we have been born in this place, the more intense impressions that we have, the more of a capacity there is to transform them and to be elevated by them. There is a capacity to, for example, go into a cave or into retreat, and access states of consciousness that allow you transform your mind, but that's probably not what we need. There are certain individuals that accomplish great feats while in solitude. But basically, what happens with these powerful impressions is there is an opportunity that's afforded to us, and we should take that opportunity. If we're confronted with our anger, now our anger is right there, we don't have to meditate to access it, it's right there and now we can see it. It's like the alligator coming out of the waters; if we are an expert diver, we can go into the waters and see things in the depth. But if we have a life that is showing us all the beasts in the water, we don't have to go very far, it comes up to us, we just have to deal with it. So, are all those intense impressions necessary? That's a very complex question, because all our karma is different. It may be necessary for us. We can't avoid our karma. There are many people who achieved great psychological development in solitude. However, around the time of the Buddha Shakyamuni, there were many yogis who are experts at science of Samadhi, but they did not achieve liberation because they failed to recognize their interdependence with the whole world. They needed the “Middle Way.” Each of us has to find that “Middle Way.”
Audience: Like you said, in terms of giving and receiving. So we have blockage, meaning we don't transform the impression properly, so we can't give back. So we are just like machines to receive it and give it.
Instructor: Right, we can symbolize our ego like a knot of energy, so instead of us perfectly transforming (giving and receiving), the ego takes it for itself, and when ego builds itself, it sacrifices someone else. It sacrifices something else. There is only way to sustain one system, which is to sacrifice some other system, such as another person’s wellbeing. We sacrifice people all the time, not physically, but emotionally - we hurt other people, we make their blood vessels well up, we get their face to turn red. That's a blood sacrifice. One ego tries to sacrifice the other’s ego, and you make them embarrassed, you make them angry, their all the blood flows up, their heart pumps. That is a blood sacrifice, you can think of it like that. And it's our ego doing it, satisfying itself. So this reciprocal nourishment is a law, but we need to know where to direct the sacrifice in order to spiritually transform. We need to know how to handle that with serenity and with cognizance. And when we say that we need to receive the unpleasant manifestation of our fellowman with gladness, it's knowing that if someone else presents to me with these impressions that are difficult, the difficulty isn't that other person, the difficulty is with my mind accepting it. The difficulty or the resistance exists inside of my ego, it's not out there. That person is just as they are, they might have their own ego and their own problems, but the resistance is in my own self, and that resistance is blocking that perfect transformation. It is easier said than done, and that's where the intellect comes in and can kind of hide from itself, and pretend that it's serene, when it's truly not serene.
Audience: Well, that which returns is the ego, right? Ego returns, not the personality.
Instructor: You mean, life after life? Right. So the ego gets attached to this mechanical wheel of evolution and devolution, and keeps returning, but when we annihilate the ego completely, we give back everything that the Earth needs, and we are then able to operate on the different laws, we are not subject to those laws. We don't have debt, or connection left. The ego is like these chains that attach us to this mechanical rotating wheel. Even though we physically die, psychologically we are still attached, and it's not until we remove all of those attachments, so we can exist outside of this little sphere of the Earth. To be able to operate in the other worlds, we have to liberate ourselves from these laws, and those laws are related to our ego.
