The Importance of This Moment

Written by Gnostic Instructor Since we have begun a new year, I felt that it would be beneficial for us to talk about change. In western symbolism, we have an old tradition of representing the change of one year to another, as an old man, representing the former year, handing his responsibilities to a newly born child. Although in recent decades that mythology of western culture has been more and more ignored, it bears in its bosom an important meaning that is derived from ancient esoteric tradition. That is the relationship between the Moon and Saturn. The Moon and Saturn The old man of that New Year tradition represents Saturn, the ancient god whose original name is Kronos, the god of time, the god of death. Kronos is symbolically represented as an old man who carries a scythe. He represents the passage from one phase from another; he represents time and change. He is the seventh of the seven primary planets in esoteric traditions. In esoteric knowledge in many places around the world, there are seven fundamental laws or forces that are symbolised and described in different ways, and those seven end with Saturn. They begin with the Moon. The Moon is a planetary influence that creates, initiates, begins. Physically, the Moon influences conception, birth, creation. This is why in western mythology the Moon is represented as a baby, a new born child. It is interesting that at this time of the New Year we also celebrate festivities related to death and resurrection, specifically the 25th of December, which is a symbolic date in which we celebrate the birth of Christ, not only in the Christian tradition but in many ancient religions. The sun god is born on the 25th of December. That birth that brings light into the world is made possible through Saturn, death. Cycles of Birth and Death We see this cycle of birth and death in everything, a cycle that is inescapable, a cycle that is the very foundation of nature. Death opens the doorway to life, and we see that in the emergence of any living creature. For any living creature to emerge, there must have been death. This is why we gave an entire course about death and its mysteries, so that we can understand that to have life we must have death, and to fear death is to be in ignorance. Death is an important part of the process of living. Through death we have change. As I mentioned in that course, none of us would be alive if it were not for death. The simplest example of this is in order to make it through this day, you must kill. Something must die in order for you to live. You need to take into your organism minerals, water, plants, and perhaps animals, and you will kill them, you will destroy them, you will consume them, and they will die so that you can have life. This is the basis of living: every breath that you inhale, every mouthful of food that you take, every time you chew and swallow, you are killing, you are destroying, you are creating life for your organism. Even by drinking water you are killing the organisms in it. This process is inescapable. To be alive, you must kill, but of course you have to know how to kill in balance with nature, both your inner nature and the nature around you. This is why we must learn to eat responsibly and respectfully. We need to learn how to eat and only take what we need to live, to not take more than we need, this is the ancient way, a way that has been lost by society. We now want to take more than what we need and hoard it or indulge in it or try to make a profit from it. This is why we have a great imbalance not only in our society but in our bodies. This is why we become overweight, we develop gluttony, we develop many health problems because of this tendency to want more than we need. Fundamentally, this comes as a misunderstanding of life and death. In the Gnostic tradition we seek to deeply comprehend the actual nature, the objective truth about life and deathwhat they truly are, not religiously, not philosophically, but practically, right now. Our very moment to moment existence is managed by laws, and in order to sustain our existence, we need to work in harmony with those laws. In the Gnostic tradition we study the laws of nature in our bodies, in our minds, in our environment. Right View In order to accomplish that study we need a particular point of view. We need to have a Consciousness that is able to pay attention and is capable of seeing things as they truly arenot as we want them to be or wish them to be or hope them to be, but as they actually are. This is a rare quality. It is not something that one receives by inheritance; it is a point of view that one has to develop and know how to manage. To begin to develop that point of view, we start here and now, being in the body, reflecting on the nature of the body that we inhabit, and starting to examine the relationship between the perceiver and what is perceived.

Commonly, this is a relationship that we take for granted and we never analyze. We assume that what we perceive is real, true, and valid. We never question the perceiver. We never analyze and study how the perceiver perceives, and this is the cause of our suffering. This is the root of our suffering: our lack of knowledge about perception. Conscious Knowledge In Sanskrit terminology, this lack of knowledge about our perception is called avidya. In most translations of Asian scriptures, avidya is translated as ignorance. But when we look deeper at the entomology of the term avidya, we see something very interesting. First is the letter a. That letter 'a' is a prefix that in Sanskrit, when attached to another word, implies "without" or "lacking." Vidya can be translated in a variety of ways, but in the context of this lecture the most important is that it means "knowledge." Vidya does not mean book knowledge, theoretical knowledge, or philosophical knowledge, it means conscious knowledge, knowledge that one has experienced, knowledge that is irrefutable, in other words dharma, truth, something that is real. Vidya is derived from the ancient Proto-I word also comes the word Veda, which refers to the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. Thus, a-vidya means "without seeing" or "without knowing." So this word avidya is somewhat similar to its English translation of ignorance, because even in ignorance we see a similar construction. We see the prefix I and after that comes three letters 'gno'. That prefix is the same 'gno' that we see in the word gnosis. So that I implies, lacking, something missing, without. So "to ignore" is to lack knowledge. When we say "to ignore," we usually use the word to ignore as something willful, for example "my child is being very irritating so I am ignoring him." That is a willful choice. However, when we use the term avidya and ignorance, we generally, when most people study scriptures and philosophy, we assume that this ignorance is a lack of willfulness. We assume it means a lack of education, a lack of instruction, but in fact, it is a willful lack of knowledge, and we can prove this by analyzing our behaviors today. We willfully avoid seeing the truth. We willfully, intentionally, avoid the facts. This is very unfortunate because truly it proves that ignorance, avidya, is the cause of our suffering. We avoid the facts of our lives and instead we grasp at dreams, hopes, good intentions, fantasies; we avoid the truth, we avoid the facts. We try to cover up what is plainly in front of our face, and distract ourselves away from seeing the fundamental facts. All of us have our own mechanisms that we rely upon in order to avoid facing the true reality of our lives. Some of us utilize our lifestyle. Maybe we claim that we are too busy, maybe we claim that we have too many responsibilities, we have to care for our family, we have to save money or make money, we have to do this, we have to do that, and thus we "do not have the time" or perhaps we justify ourselves by saying the world is already too corrupt and "there is nothing that I can do about it, it is hopeless" or perhaps we justify ourselves by saying "it is all in Gods hands, not mine." We have many excuses, explanations, justifications. We have many behaviors and habits to avoid the truth. Some of us put on a shirt of spirituality and claim we are doing our best, we are "spiritual" people. Some of us put on the shirt of politics, of commerce, and claim that those outfits that we wear are our effort, are our way of trying to approach reality of truth, trying to solve the mystery of reality and life. Some of us avoid the truth outright by engaging in any number of pursuits in life: getting an education, making achievements and accomplishments, accumulating products or wealth. Be honest and sincere with yourself and ask yourself the question: have you truly comprehended that you will die? Does your behavior reflect a genuine cognizant understanding that the moment of death will arrive and it will not be according to your schedule? Do you live your life day to day fully taking advantage of the opportunity of living in order to prepare yourself for the moment of death? Are all of your activities geared towards preparation towards that inevitable outcome? How much of your time and energy is wasted in frivolous and even harmful activity? We do not like these kind of questions, because they reveal places in our lives that we do not want to look, and they reveal habits and tendencies that we do not want to give up, but the fact is: we will die, it is unavoidable, it will happen, and we will not expect it. This is why we gave the course about death, but there is another reason we gave that course. It is not only so that we as individuals can initiate a training in ourselves from moment to moment, but also so that we will be prepared to transform our experience of what is about to happen to society.

The training is to keep our Consciousness in a position in which when death arrives we will not be surprised, we will not be caught of guard, we will be prepared and be able to transform that experience into something positive instead of something terrifying. This is possible. It has been done, it can be done, but one has to be trained. Truthfully, you have to train yourself, no one can teach you that because no one can see all the intricacies of your mind except for you. We learn to be capable of transforming the shock of death by transforming all of our other experiences. We should never be surprised by anything, but always prepared for anything. That training is really, really important, not only for transforming the experience of death, but in transforming the experience of life. Life is not going to go according to our plan. I hope that is not too shocking for you to hear, but those who are a little older are starting to realize that a little more, but the youth have that gift, that wonderful youthful hope, maybe it is a little naivety, but it gives them great energy to try. Whereas the older ones who have tried and failed and faced the challenges of life and the unpredictability of life, often give up and resign themselves to just watching the world in despair. We need to heed the words of our teacher Jesus: And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. - Matthew 24 In order to awaken Consciousness and rise out of suffering, we need to train ourselves in a very specific way. The Training This training to be attentive and present, continually watchful in oneself from moment to moment, not only as a preparation of the moment of death, but as a mechanism, a tool that allows us to transform the process of life. This technique, this skill is becoming more and more important, because life is getting harder and harder, and it will continue to get harder. Life is not going to get easier. The facts attest to this. What we need to understand is that we are not the mind. When we analyze the relationship between perceiver and perceived, we need to see that we are not this body. This is a physical body that we all have and even though there are slight differences among us structurally, physically and psychologically, we have these basic factors that we need to understand and analyze and study and know very deeply how they function, how they work. The first is to be aware that the perceiver is not the body, the perceiver is not the eyeballs, it is not the ears, it is not the thought. You can perceive without thought, you can perceive without eyes, without ears, without taste, without touch; perception is still there. That root perception is Consciousness, cognizance, existence, a state of being, and there are many, many degrees of Consciousness, levels, infinite, not only infinitely narrow and limited, but infinitely expansive and perceptive. Our level of conscious development is very, very small, far smaller than what we assume it is. The Consciousness is more capable than we can even imagine, but without training we cannot realize its potential. Self-Observation

This training begins now, here, in this moment, starting to become aware of oneself, observing the body. Observe the relationship between perceiver and perceived. The body is not the perceiver, because we are perceiving it. Moreover, inside the body there are many, many details and systems, all of its functions. Really, all of that we synthesize as a "brain," and we call it the motor/instinctive/sexual brain. Really, this is a center of activity that has three primary parts: a motor center, an instinctive center, and a sexual center. These are three "machines" that function through the body, that fulfill their roles in order to give us existence. The motor center gives us the ability to walk around, to do things, to talk, to eat, to ride a bicycle, to go to work. The instinctive center manages the basic functions of our lives: to eat, to survive. The sexual center is the center that drives all of the energy in us not only reproductive but spiritual. Our spiritual and sexual life is rooted in the sexual center. So, being aware of being in the body is the beginning of being aware of this center, this brain: how our body functions from the easily observable to the difficult to observe. It is easy to observe oneself walking, using your hands and feet, adopting different postures as you stand and sit, this is very easy, although we do not do it. We are generally unaware of being in the body. We forget the body, and are totally distracted by the mind. SelfObservation must encompass awareness of the body, observation of it. Then, we learn to observe thoughts. We call this the intellectual brain or the intellectual center. So, learn to be aware that thinking is not the perceiver, either because you can perceive a thought. A thought does not perceive. A thought is a concept, it is not a perception. A thought is a record, an image, a memory, a theory, an idea. Now we are observing two brains: the motor/instinctive/sexual brain and the intellect, the brain that is in the skull. There is more to us than that, because we also have emotions, feelings, longings, fears and anxieties, that aren't necessarily connected to physical sensations and aren't exactly connected to logical thoughts, but we sense them and feel them in our heart. So then we have to learn to observe the third brain, the emotional center. The emotional center is not the perceiver, either, just as the intellect is not the perceiver and the body is not the perceiver. Do not take my word for it: observe yourself. Perceive these centers in yourself, and you will begin to see that you are not these three. You are the perceiver. Your true nature is deep inside of perception, but your perception is being clouded by these three. Subjective Perception Your perception is being clouded continually by impulses that arise from your body, from your motor/instinctive/sexual center. Your perception is clouded by the impulses, feelings, and sensations in the body: you feel tired, hyper, hungry, thirsty, you want to lie down, you want to run around, you want to eat, you do not want that food you want this food, you want to have sex you do not want to have sex, you want to survive, you want to die. All these impulses arise almost randomly, chaotically, without any conscious control. This includes many kinds of addictions, like addictions to food, substances, sex, tv, the internet, work, profit, shopping, attention, etc. It includes addictions to psychological process also that become deeply rooted in the body. Some of us become so addicted to certain forms of entertainment that addiction is in the body because the body thrives on the sensation that that type of entertainment produces. For example pornography, soap operas, lots of sports, very violent activities like video games or competitive sports that are quite violent. We might be interested in them in the intellect, we might like the feelings of them in the heart, but the addiction to them is in the body. We become very clouded in our perceptions by the sensation that we experience in the intellect also, by theories, by concepts. We may have been told our whole life the idea or the philosophy that "life is like (this)" and when we start to experience that life is not like that, we have conflict. All of us grew up in a certain kind of culture and receive a certain education to see life in a certain way, and when we experience that life is not that way, we have an internal conflict, and we suffer. We may have been told that life is about getting a marriage partner, a house, kids, a car, a job, a savings package, and when you get to sixty-five you retire and live on the beach, and when this scenario is not happening for us, we suffer. We do not observe this, and we do not realize that "I am suffering because of this idea that life is supposed to be a certain way." We need to comprehend that life is not an idea, and does not conform to our ideas, it conforms to our karma. We also become deluded and confused by sensations in our emotional center, longings and cravings in the heart. A parent loves their child and wants the best for their child and wants their child to be the president, the prime minister, but that child only wants to watch TV and play games, or in school wants to study something other than medicine or law, so that parent suffers in their heart. That suffering is not caused by the true nature of the parent. The suffering is caused by a desire, a longing in the heart that clouds their perception of seeing reality. It may be

that that child's destiny does not correspond with the concept of the parent. It may be that their destiny is to be something totally different, and that parent has to learn to let the child do that. For all of us, perception becomes clouded in the heart. We may feel that we deserve a certain type of life, a certain type of partner, so we suffer. We may feel that we need and want a certain kind of attention from someone, a certain kind of affection, and we do not get that, so we suffer. The Solution In all of these cases we see qualities, sensations in the three brains that cloud our perception and cause us to not see life as it is. This is the fundamental problem that everyone in humanity suffers from. We call it by many names, such as ignorance, avidya, etc. The solution is to observe these three brains and to recognize the difference between perceiver and perceived, to start to establish that distinction in our perception. Let me make that perfectly clear. What I am talking about is not a theory to put into your intellect. It is not a feeling (belief) to build in your heart. It is not a sensation to feel in the body. It is a way of seeing. There are many people who study self-observation, and they understand the theory very well, but they do not observe themselves. There are many people who study self-observation and they feel in their heart that they understand it, but they do not observe themselves. There are many people who study self-observation and build physical habits and tendencies that they believe are self-observation, but they are not observing themselves. Self-observation is an action that originates beyond the three brains. Self-observation is a manner of perception. Self-observation is the most fundamental training to transform your experience of living and dying. There is a reason why I am emphasizing self-observation today. This lecture is not happenstance. I am mentioning this today at the transition from one year to another, because there is a great deal of energy in motion. Our entire world is poised to go through an incredible transformation, and we are not going to like it. I know we all have a lot of beautiful ideas and theories about a coming "golden age" and "maybe with the next election everything will be better" but these are lies we are telling ourselves. We are not willing to see the fundamental reality. We need to see it, because if we do not, our suffering will be increased dramatically. If we begin to see ourselves as we truly are, through that perception not a theory or a sensation but perception we can also start to see the world around us, not for what we wish it was or hope it could be, but what it is. This has extreme significance. To survive the difficult days ahead, we have to be capable of seeing with precision, without interference. To survive, we have to see clearly. In order to completely understand this, to completely empower our Consciousness and grow in self-observation, there is another component that is vital. We begin here: learning to be present, learning to be in the body observing ourselves. That alone can take years of training, because our habits are so deeply engrained. This is the most important foundation. But it is not enough. We talk about many things in this tradition, many concepts, many teachings, many practices, but without this, you will get nothing. You can be transmuting your energy all you want, but if you do not know how to use that energy, you will get nothing. We learn to use energy by directing attention, through managing our Consciousness from moment to moment. Self-Remembering Self-observation is the first step, but to empower that, to take the knowledge that you acquire from selfobservation and properly use it, you also need self-remembering. We can say that self-observation is a somewhat focused energy. It is the ability to recognize and experience that perceiver and perceived are not the same; there is a difference. Now philosophically, this is going to get a little bit confusing, but if you practice this, you will start to understand it, so do not let your mind get caught in it. This first stage is to recognize the difference between perceiver and perceived. The second stage is to realize that they are the same thing. It sounds contradictory, but it is not, because in the second aspect, in self-remembering, you remember God, you remember the Being. When you remember your Innermost, when you remember God, it is not a thought in the intellect, thinking, and we imagine whatever we imagine that God happens to be, in our mind. No, that is not self-remembering. It is also not to experience a sensation in the heart, a love, a longing, an anxiety, a missing, something in the heart, "I love God." That is not self-remembering. It is not to be the type of person who experiences a lot of bhakti or devotion and to feel your heart. This is good, but that is not self-remembering. It is also not to experience sensations in the body, feeling tingling, as if "God is here." That is not self-remembering. Those are sensations in the body.

Self-Remembering is conscious, expansive awareness. It can be said that self-remembering is the awareness, the perception, that absolutely everything is God. Your intellect cannot hold that, your heart cannot hold it, and your body cannot because they are all inside of it. To see it, you have to get beyond the three brains, you have to get beyond yourself. Self-Remembering is an expanded awareness that encompasses self-observation surrounds it, energizes it, fuels it. There are many students in the Gnostic tradition, the Buddhist tradition, Zen, Taoism, who learn to be present but they never remember themselves, and thus their practice becomes dry. To remember oneself is to be actively engaged in perceiving the nature of the perceiver, and this is when you begin to see that what you perceive is not distinct from the perceiver. Philosophically, it sounds contradictory, but experientially it is not contradictory. Even science is beginning to recognize this. If you have studied physics of the last hundred years or so, it is all leading to this, which is something that has been known in spiritual traditions for thousands of years: perception is the basis of existence. How you perceive determines everything. Now, even science states that if there is no perceiver there is no event. The event is only real when it is seen. It sounds like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucius, or Lao Tzu. Yet that is what modern science is realizing. That statement is gnosis, because it is true. Your relationship with what is perceived determines your reality. Your reality is determined by the nature of your power of perception. Do you want to change your reality? Then learn how to see more clearly. This is the fundamental question. How to you relate to what you perceive? By habit? We have only learned to relate to what we perceive through our three brains because we perceive through the clouded interference of our body, heart, and intellect, and we have never learned how to perceive without them, beyond them, controlling attention consciously, without interference. That is what self-observation and self-remembering together will teach you. I cannot teach you that; you have to learn it through practice, through effort, through remembering constantly to do it. Let me give you some example of what will happen if you learn this. Transformation of Impressions The way we are now, with our habits now, if we have a difficult experience we suffer a lot. For example, if someone we love does something or says something that hurts us, it affects our perception of everything, especially if they do something that goes against our will. We want them to do A, B and C, and they do not do any of it, we get really mad, hurt, our heart in pain, our body in pain, we are tense, we cannot sleep, we cannot work, our mind races, "Why did they do this, how did they do this to me, doesn't he know that he should have done A, B and C," and we fight, and we argue. The problem is our perception. We are not observing ourselves, we are not remembering the Divine, and we are not seeing anything in that situation as it truly is. In other words, we have no comprehension, no real understanding of what is happening in that scenario, so we feel hurt. A person capable of self-remembering and self observing will be capable of experiencing that situation in a completely different way. The pain might be there because we might not be getting what we want. We might feel disappointment, we might feel hurt, but we will also feel love, we will also feel comprehension. We will understand that person, and this happening because of karma. Whatever the reasons of that scenario may be, we will understand it. Our judgement will not be clouded by our desires, by our longing to control the other person, and whatever intentions good or bad that we may have. With some self-awareness, we are better able to act for the benefit of others and ourselves, because we are not so blinded by our egos. This is a very simple example to show that you can begin to receive benefit from this training immediately, to begin to transform your experiences of life so that you are not suffering so much all the time. This is more important though, when we put it into the context of society as a whole. This training becomes more important. Spiritually speaking, this training is critical, because we do not understand not only our own karma but the karma of our society. As we are now, we are taking everything for granted. All of us assume that we will live for another thirty, forty, or sixty years, and in that time we can pretty much do whatever we want, and we have the opportunity to acquire as much as we want to acquire, and go wherever we want to go, and do whatever we want to do. That fantasy has nothing to do with reality. It is a fantasy that has been foisted upon us by our culture that is only interested in getting money and more money and keeping us confused so that we will not see what is really going on here. With this training, we start to see what is truly happening in the world, and that knowledge leads us to see how we can help to change it. Karma

Our fantasies about life keep us in a state where we do not realize and recognize the undeniable fact that we will die. At that moment of death every action that we have performed is calculated mathematically in order to determine what will happen to us next. Good intentions do not fit into that equation, only our actions. What we did or did not do is reduced to a sum, and that sum propels us forward to our next scenario, whatever that scenario may be. Our current scenario was derived through the cumulative actions we have engaged in up till now. What will happen to us later today, tomorrow, the day after that, will be determined by everything that we have done up to this point. So when we analyze that, we recognize this fundamental state in which we are constantly being fooled by our perceptions of our mind, of our heart, of our body. We are always being manipulated by our sensations, by our fears, by our pride, by anxieties, by our lust and gluttony and greed. From this understanding we can easily determine that the outcome of actions produced under those influences will be more suffering. We have behaved in ways that produce suffering. We have behaved through ignorance and desire, only focused on our wants and needs. This is why we suffer now, and this is why we will suffer tomorrow. That accumulated series of actions and consequences produces a stream of energy in nature. Some people like to call it "soul," thinking that it is their real identity, but this stream of accumulated action is not the soul; the soul has to be created. In some traditions they call it "mind stream." Really, it is a stream of karma that our Consciousness is trapped in. Let us imagine a stream of energy moving through space on a horizontal plane. That stream of energy is our energy. It is the accumulated actions and consequences of everything that we have ever done in every lifetime. All of that is condensed and synthesized in this exact moment right now. All of that is defining who you are, where you are, and everything that is confining and binding you, everything: the type of body you have, the type of mind you have, the type of culture you have, your interests, fears, longings, anxieties, skills. Everything that you experience as "myself" is really just a stream of energy that is condensed right here and now. Everybody wants to know about their past lives, and they want to go to another person and pay them money to find out about their past lives. You do not need to. If you seriously examine who you are now, and learn to meditate and analyze who you are today, that meditation process will unlock the keys of who you have been, because who you were determined who you are now. It is quite simple. But, we ultimately do not want to see the truth of who we are (just as we do not want to see the truth of who we are now) because we were not John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, or Joan of Arc. We weren't Jesus's sister, mother, daughter or whatever saint. We were people like we were now, blind and foolish, perhaps with good intentions, but without real knowledge. We made a lot of mistakes, and that is why we are still suffering. We had a lot of pride, and that is why we are still suffering. We had a lot of arrogance and a lot of anger, and that is why we are still suffering. Observe your mind, your heart, your body; see it for what it is. That observation here and now, observing what is happening here and now, is a doorway, a key that can unlock everything that exists in nature, everything. The Greek oracle said, Know yourself and you will know the universe and its gods. That knowledge of self is not theoretical, it is not intellectual, it is not a belief, it is not a theory, it is not a sensation. It is not in the three brains, it is in the Consciousness, it is in perception of the truth. Of course, we do not remember much of our true past. When we imagine the stream of energy that made us what we are today, we really do not remember that much, it is hard for us to imagine that flow of forces. It is even hard for us to really remember were we were and hour ago, and what we exactly thought and felt just an hour ago, we have to make effort just to remember that. "What was I doing precisely sixty minutes ago, was I standing, sitting, what was I thinking and feeling, what was I doing?" We cannot remember. We cannot remember what was happening three hours ago. We cannot remember what we were doing when the body was asleep this morning. We cannot remember much of yesterday or last week or last month. So, this is why no one remembers their past existences. How can we remember something that happened many years ago, if we cannot even remember recent events? We have a very fragile, weak memory, and there is a primary reason why: it is because we do not pay attention. We are distracted. From moment to moment, we are either of thinking about random things and barely paying any attention to the moment, or we are of indulging in our feelings random things. Or we are distracted by sensations in the body: hunger, discomfort, pleasure, etc. We are never fully present, conscious of what we are seeing and doing, observing our three brains and our environment. On occasion, such as in a shocking situation, our Consciousness can become fully present and receptive. When something really unusual happens, sometimes we become fully aware, and the result is a strong impression filled

with details that we will never forget. This was a moment in which we were actually awake. We should be like that all of the time. Some of us have such moments in childhood, at seemingly random moments, but that produce indelible impressions in us. But, since we have not been trained to maintain that state, we fall asleep, hypnotized by sensations, thoughts, and feelings, and go through our lives not really living, not seeing anything of states and events: our psychological state in relation with our external events. We never really pay attention. So, in the evening when we look back at our day, we have big gaps in our memory. We think, "I cannot remember what happened when I got of that bus. I guess I walked to work. Somehow I got to work,because I was at work but I do not remember. Yesterday did you call me? I do not remember." We do not remember because we do not pay attention. This is proof. If you really observe yourself and remember yourself, you will remember everything in detail, and it will be overwhelming how much you remember. If you really want to remember your past lives, if you really want to be awake in the astral plane and be able to go to visit temples and talk to masters, you need this skill of being awake here and now in your physical body. If you cannot be awake here and now within your physical body, then you cannot be awake here and now in the fifth or sixth dimension. To be awake in the internal worlds, you must first be awake here. So develop this skill here. Regardless of how extensive our memory is, if we can only remember bits and pieces of our current life, at least through analyzing that flow of energy we can start to surmise its potential momentum forward from this moment. In other words, imagine this horizontal line. We are here in this moment, and everything that we ever did throughout all of our previous lifetimes is that stream of energy behind us, leading to this exact moment. Where will this energy go now? What determines it is not your boss, it is not your spouse, it is not your children, it is not the city you live in or the country you live in or the language you speak. Its momentum is not determined by your education or how much money you have in the bank. Your movement forward in life or in evolution is determined by your perception, by how you see and what you see, it is determined by your state of Consciousness. In any situation, you cannot guide your direction if you cannot perceive yourself and your environment. Similarly, your evolution depends upon your ability to see. In other words, if you continue the way you have always been, barely aware of anything, just being pummeled by the forces of life, driven here and there like a leaf in the wind, then your life going forward will be exactly the same, with the exception that all of a sudden at a given moment you will be dead, but you will not know it, and you will be acting the same way in limbo, propelled by the karmic forces of all your previous actions, and you will enter into a new womb or pushed to devolve in nature. This is the most likely outcome for the vast majority of humanity, because the collective karma of the entirety of humanity is too heavy, because all of humanity is conditioned this way: asleep, propelled by desire, driven by lust and pride, compelled by sensations and addiction to materialism. Thus, the entirety of humanity is on the precipice of a tremendous transformation. It has already begun, and it is going to get worse. I know we do not want to see that, we do not want to hear that, we want to believe things are going to get better, but the facts indicate otherwise. Consider this imaginary line to be the collective actions of the entire race on this planet, an accumulation of centuries of momentum. Look also at how that stream connects with the psychological condition of humanity at this moment: how much greed there is, how much violence, anger, lust, pride, gluttony, envy, and fear. Consider how difficult it is to find Chastity, temperance, patience, humility, happiness for others, selflessness, respect for the divine, etc. Look objectively at the entire planet, and we see how the stream of energyactions and consequencesis moving. How can you possibly entertain the theory that things will get better, when month to month, year to year, they are getting worse? We do not want to see it. We want to distract ourselves with TV, music, sports, culture, technology, fashion, politics, and video games. We do not want to face the fundamental objective reality, which is that our suffering is getting worse, poverty is expanding, and pollution is worsening. Worldwide, it is harder and harder to get clean water, clean air, and pure food. There are more wars, there is more slavery, there is more rape, violence, and killing than there ever has been. Life on this planet has never been so threatened by so many problems. And we originated them! Many so-called scientists reject this notion, claiming with their theories, charts, figures, and data that life on this planet is better than ever, but what science rejects today it accepts tomorrow.

In our hearts, we all know that humanity is on the precipice of destruction. We feel it, and we do not want to deal with it. This stream of energy of humanity, thus stream of cause and effect, is bearing consequences that are starting to bear fruit. The consequences are happening; they are emerging; nature is fighting back. Nature always seeks to balance energy in order to preserve itself. Nature does not care about us. Nature does not care about civilizations or species, it kills them to preserve itself. It has happened before, and it is happening again. As a humanity, as a race, we have unbalanced nature on this planet with all our atomic testing, nuclear blasts, pollution, with our raping of the land, the raping of the earth, with the destruction of the oceans, our killing of life forms worldwide. We have infected the entire planet with our illness, and the planet is revolting against us. Psychological Death The planet is on a different time scale than we are. The planet is a living organism, a conscious being that has compassion, who has love, but who also acts in accordance with the law. This planet has already destroyed four civilizations before ours, and it will destroy ours, too. It is only a matter of time. This imaginary line that we have been talking about is the Line of Time. It ends in death. It always does, it always has, it always will. This line applies to our individual life. Our body will die. This line applies to our societal life. Every civilization in history has died, and so will ours. The question is, who will be prepared to take advantage of that death, to transform that death consciously and utilize it for the benefit of everyone? Even Jesus died in order to resurrect. The Buddha died in order to resurrect. Every great master dies in order to have the resurrection of the spirit. Humanity must die in order for a new age to emerge, for a new humanity to be born. Humanity cannot go forward with all of its pride and anger and lust. Humanity in its current condition is a grotesque creature. Humanity is bound by impurities that cannot rise to heaven, and the only way to remove those impurities is through death. A shepherd who cares for a flock will kill an animal that is filled with infectious, noxious disease, because that one sick animal can kill the entire flock. Humanity is a sick animal, and cannot be allowed to infect the others in our region of the galaxy. The sickness is psychological. Our sickness is our pride, lust, greed, gluttony, envy, laziness, avarice, etc. As individuals, we have a choice: we can engage in that death consciously, willingly, actively engaging in killing the ego in ourselves, pursuing our anger and killing it, pursuing our pride and removing it, pursuing our lust and eradicating it. We can consciously choose to do that. That is a psychological death, and through that psychological death comes a psychological resurrection: the soul is born, the spirit is born, a master is born, a Buddha, an angel. The only way to make a Buddha, a master, or an angel is through a psychological death. That is why in all the great stories of all the great masters they die. They are beheaded, they are crucified, they sacrifice themselves for the benefit of all. Unfortunately, humanity does not want to cast the ego aside. Humanity wants to take the ego to heaven, and go to heaven with all of their lust, anger, and pride, and this will never happen, it cannot. The only way to those superior levels is for those aspects of our psyche to die. Nature is participating by helping to resolve the karma, our karma, in helping us to suffer so that we can pay what we owe. "No man knows the hour save the Father," but the hour will come. Then, this planet will undergo a great transformation. In the coming days, all of us will witness many painful things. We will experience events the likes of which have never been seen before. We have a choice. We can avoid it and bury our heads in the sand, and watch television and debate politics and stay with our addiction to frivolous materialistic things, or we can learn to transform the experience, learn, and change. It is extremely likely that in the coming days our lives will be dramatically changed, and the life of comfort and ease that we have longed for and wanted will be denied to us. It is highly that the comfort and ease in which we go from day to day will be gone, and we will have to suffer and struggle simply to get by. In that process, we have a choice. Shall we handle it by the guidance of our habits and defects, or by the guidance of the divine? This training that I have been explaining to youto self observe and self rememberhas a supreme significance, because it is the doorway to developing a truly spiritual life. The doorway to real spiritual advancement is not in the future. It is not in the projected line of life going forward from this moment. Your spiritual advancement is not in the future, it is available not tomorrow, it is not possible after you finish your big project, it is not possible after

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you get your degree or after you get married. Your spiritual future is not in the future. Your spiritual future is not found after you find a good school or church to go to, or after you read that book, or after you have learned this or that skill in meditation or self-remembering. It is not there in the future. The doorway to spiritual advancement is here and now, right now, and it will always be here and now. It will never be in the future. It will never be dependent on any external circumstance. It is always dependent on your state of being right now. Your state of Consciousness determines your spiritual life. You Choose Your Life You choose in this moment whether you are deluded by your thoughts, deluded by your feelings, deluded by sensations and impulses in the body. You choose. It is a choice. When you decide to sit down and be hypnotized by the TV or the computer screen, you have chosen to be hypnotized. When you choose to experience and indulge in your fear of the future and you worry about what will happen, you have chosen that fear and clothed yourself in it. When you experience longing for material security, craving for wealth, for a sense of being safe, you have chosen a delusion and wrapped it around yourself; you have chosen to be asleep. The entrance to a real spiritual life is to choose to be free. That is a choice. It is a choice you make here and now continually; to be free, to free your heart and mind and body from the delusion of the internal and the external. You choose with your conscious will to have your perception free or jailed. It is up to you. In each moment, you choose how to respond. If you continue by habit, asleep, then your life of life will continue to flow downwards into suffering. Yet if you choose to respond consciously, transforming your experience of each moment with sensitive awareness, you can respond to every challenge with the best of yourself. If difficult times, those who are conscious of themselves will be capable of responding with the best of themselves. Conversely, in difficult times, those who are asleep will deepen their suffering dramatically. Learn now, in each situation, to be awake, choosing to respond consciously, with your best qualities. This is how you can prepare for the difficult times to come. Face your difficulties now with patience, acceptance, and humility, so that you are prepared for your future difficulties. The one who has their Consciousness jailed is like all of us. That person suffers because they are caged in their fear, anger, pride, lust, envy and greed, and that is all they know. The one who chooses to be free refuses to be bound by any thought, by any feeling, by any worry, by any sensation, and instead observes them, does not fight them, does not resist them or indulge in them, but is in balance, conscious, aware, not reactive, observing, conscious, continual. That person experiences something completely different, because that person experiences the actual nature of time, the reality of time, this line of time, because in reality that line does not exist. That "time" that we all worry about, "I do not have enough time, I'm running out of time" is an illusion. We all think "I have only so much time to build my soul, to create the solar bodies; I have only so much time until I die." You do not know how much time you have. "I only have so much time to get my degree, and go to college, and get a house, and a wife, and a boat, and a car, to build my career, to get famous." This is an illusion. The Vertical Path Time is not real. Time is a way of perception that is rooted in desire. The one who truly self observes and self remembers escapes time. In other words, they open the door to a vertical path. The vertical path emerges from this moment, right now. It is not in the future. The vertical path is the path of the Being, the path of the Consciousness. That path goes two ways: upwards and downwards. Learn to observe yourself, to be in the present moment, to be in your body, to be here and now, to observe thoughts but not indulge in them and not resist them, to observe emotion and to not indulge in it and to not repress it, and to observe sensations in the body and to not be driven by it and to not avoid it. In other words you achieve Tao, to be in the middle, the middle path between aversion and craving, neither craving nor avoiding, neither chasing nor running away, but just being. When you learn that, you are truly learning to observe the three brains objectively, and to not be victimized by them, to not let them control you, so your thoughts will come and go and your feelings will come and go. When you are conscious of yourself and a person says a mean word to you, you may feel pain in your heart but do not react; you watch the pain arise and then pass away, and then, it is like nothing happened, because you did not indulge in it, you did not react to it, you did not respond to hurt the other person so that they would feel what you felt. In other words, you comprehended. You remain serene. In this way,

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you strengthen your Consciousness and avoid creating harmful consequences. You acquire wisdom and experience. You learn. The same is possible with sensations in the body. You may feel the impulse for the orgasm, but, conscious of yourself, you do not indulge in it, and the sensation goes away and you no longer want it; you have comprehended something. Sensation, thought, and feeling are impermanent. Truly, ultimately, they do not exist. What truly exists is the perceiver. That is our true nature: the Consciousness that sees. When we envelop our Consciousness in the fascination with any sensation, we condemn it to suffer. We have lost knowledge of our true nature because (for example) we grasp at a false sense of self defined by a sense of security in our intellect, wanting people to think of us a certain way, and to think of ourselves a certain way so we are safe. Or we want a sense of security in the heart, that we feel a certain way so everything will be fine. Or we grasp at a sense of security in the body, that we get the sensations that we want. That is all a lie, because it will all die. People's opinions of us will change like the weather. Why rely on something that is unreliable? We cannot rely on how we feel, because our feelings changes like the whether. We cannot rely on sensations, we cannot rely on a house, a car, a spouse, an education, we cannot rely on a president, a prime minister, a king, queen, or a priest. We cannot rely on anything outside, because it is all impermanent and subject to karma, and will all pass away. You cannot rely on money in the bank; you cannot rely on your children, on your parents, on your friends. You cannot rely on anything, anywhere, but one place, your true nature, which is perception, which is the Being. To learn that now will aid you a lot in coming months and years, because humanity is going to suffer a lot. All of these games that humanity is playing with politics and media and money will be revealed to be what they are: fruitless, useless, impermanent, and unreliable. We suffer because we rely on things that cannot be relied on. All of us want to rely on money in the bank, our political system, our education system, our children, our family. They will all pass away sooner or later, and the moment they are taken, we suffer a lot, by our own fault, because we invested our sense of security in those things. We chose those things to make us feel safe, and that was a mistake. The process of approaching this teaching is to recognize that. To not put our trust and faith in things that cannot be trusted, and do not last, but to invest our time and energy and our spirit and Consciousness into something eternal and permanent, and that is Consciousness: the perceiver, which is inside. The Two Ways Why is this so important? It is because this line, the vertical path, goes two ways. From this very moment, when we talk about time and we talk about energy, we are all making a choice how we use our energy, how we use our Consciousness, how we pay attention. When we clothe ourselves in our pride, and we feel ourselves, "I am good" or "I am bad" we have chosen to invest energy in that pride. We have chosen to be hypnotized, we have chosen to sleep. In other words, we have moved down the vertical path, because we have trapped Consciousness in a false entity. When we indulge in the sensations of lust, we have invested Consciousness in that animal desire, and we become trapped in that and have stepped down the vertical path. The same is true of envy. When we see what someone else has, we want that. We have invested energy in envy, and trapped our Consciousness in it, and then that envy will pursue us with thoughts and impulses, like "Remember that thing that you really wanted? Remember? You really want that, right? You really want that. Now you have to get a job or go and make money or get money from somebody to get that thing that you want." That desire incites you constantly. We think it will make us happy and secure, but we are wrong. The sooner we begin to realize that, the sooner we will begin to change our suffering. Every time we indulge in those desires, we step down on the vertical path, we descend, and that is why the entirety of humanity is descending. To ascend, we need to liberate the Consciousness from every kind of desire: every kind. To not be bound by any desire. To not be bound by anger, pride, lust, laziness, gluttony, greed, envy, fear. The one who is able to accomplish this is liberating the Consciousness from the ego. They are retrieving their soul, saving it from the abyss. We train ourselves to do this from moment to moment, from day to day, through our daily experiences. When someone criticizes us, we need to be aware and question ourselves, "Do I indulge in this anger? Or do I comprehend the criticism? Maybe they are right, maybe what they said is true. If it is not true, why should I get

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upset, because it is not true? If it is true, why should I get upset, because it is true?" So if you are upset, you are fighting reality, you are denying something, you are avoiding something. When you are upset, something in your mind is in conflict with reality. In order to solve pain, we always try to change the outside, and we always fail. That fundamental nature of every problem is found with our perception, inside. If I know who I am, and I know what I did, and I did the right thing, anybody in the world can say I did the wrong thing and I will not care, it will not bother me at all, because I know in my Consciousness that I did the right thing, and no one can take that away from me. Trust in God That is the authenticity of the Consciousness, of the Being. That is the type of certainty and serenity that we need to face what is coming. There will be wars, there will be death, and there will be disasters. This world is going to change, sooner rather than later. Purge from your mind the illusion that things are going to improve. Do not look to the future for something that does not exist. Look to yourself, here and now. Analyze who you truly are and change for the better. Learn to know your Being. Whatever happens, whether it is at your house, or down the street, or in the next country, you can handle it if you remember your self. If you forget your Being, you will suffer a lot. But if you remember your Being and trust your Being, if you can be present here and now, not putting the mind in the future or the past, not getting identified with your longings and fears, your cravings and desires, but being here and now, listening to your intuition, you can be aided, you can manage. You can survive. Let me give you an example. If a dramatic situation happens and someone is terribly injured, and the crowd of people around that person is in a compete state of panic, how are they going to help that person if they are all scared, afraid, and panicking? No one will have a level head, and there is a good chance that the person will die or their suffering will get worse. In order to help that suffering person, there needs to be someone there who is not identified, who is not emotionally engaged, who is not afraid, but is able to be calm and skillful and solve the problem. Similarly, we need that to deal with our life. If our mind is confused, conflicted, and trapped in desire for security, for wealth, for fame, for an escape, we will be in conflict and will be unable to see the reality for what it is. We will not be able to solve our problems. We suffer from that right now. All of us have problems that we cannot solve because our mind is in conflict, because we are identified with our problems. If we learn to not be identified, to accept what God gives us and to work for what we deserve, then we would not have this problem and this suffering. Therefore, in the coming days, we will need the ability to remain serene while facing terrible adversity. Serenity is a quality of free Consciousness. Only a serene person will be capable of managing the forces that will be in motion. The Rights of Canchorrita There is a guarantee given by the Divine to all of those who faithfully serve their Innermost, and that guarantee is given in every religion by different names. Samael Aun Weor called it the rights of Canchorrita. This right is also in the gospels and is explained by Jesus. These rights are also explained in Tantra by the great master Padmasambhava. No matter how bad it gets, even if the entire world is plunged into warfare, disease, starvation, and suffering, those who are truly committed to fulfilling their responsibilities to their Innermost will always be protected and will have the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, and shelter. You might not have a fancy car, you might not have an internet connection, you might not have electricity, but you will have an opportunity to continue your spiritual work, and really, that is all you need. Of course to acquire that, to earn that, to receive that right, you have to do your part. You have to be faithful to your Innermost, to your Divine Mother, which means you have to be working daily to free your mind from its cages and prove your faithfulness to the Divine. We have to abandon our faithless habits. Truly, we are faithless. We make a commitment and then in the next minute we break it. We all do this, continually. To earn the rights of Canchorrita we have to become faithful, consistent, committed, unwavering, serene. Questions and Answers Audience: Since karma is not fixed, in the Buddhist tradition they have practices to clear karma. Does the Gnostic tradition have practices like this?

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Instructor: Yes, since karma is not permanent, many traditions give practices in order to clear karma, such as in Buddhism they have many mantras, rituals, prostrations and other types of exercises. Also in Hinduism there are exercises that are given to students in order to work on karma. The fundamental basis of those exercises is to guide the student to engage in an activity that is not selfish. Unfortunately, we tend to engage in all of our activities in a very selfish way. For example, a practitioner in Buddhism who learns to do prostrations is given the exercises to do a certain cycle of prostrations everyday. They are given that so as to engage in that activity to purge certain types of karma and these are all effective, good exercises but they are not deep. They do not penetrate into the reaches of the mind. The causes of our suffering are deep in the mind. In order to change suffering, you have to change the behavior that causes it, and you cannot change that behavior if you do not identify it and understand it. It would be somewhat like having a deep rooted cancer and taking an aspirin. The aspirin can help you and the painkillers can help you a little bit, but they cannot cure the cause of the disease. In Gnosis, we focus on curing the disease. To cure our karma we have to purge the mind of all of its diseases and there is only one way to do that, through deep investigation in meditation. Nonetheless, we have many practices that aid us to deal with our karma. Audience: What you said, there is no time, to the Innermost everything is timeless, we've lived all our lives, according to the Innermost its all happening at once, so is there for the Innermost when something is comprehended on this level is it also comprehended on the past life and the future life, is it kind of like, is the future life kind of converging in how they express. Doesn't it kind of know what is going to happen being that there is timelessness? Instructor: It is an interesting question. To answer the question about time and its relationship with the Being, we need to understand what Einstein explained in a very superficial way, and that is that time is relative, and it is always relative to space. That is why in science we do not talk about time as a separate entity, we talk about spacetime. You cannot separate space from time. The point of view of the Being is very different from our point of view, because the Being is beyond the limitations of the space-time that we are in at this moment. The Being is here, but we are unaware of that, yet the Being is very aware of us. Furthermore, what is happening in other parts of the being is unknown to us because we are so asleep. For that to become known to us, we have to awaken. That process of awakening begins to reveal the timelessness of the Being. It also begins to reveal how one can know the past and the future. The implication is that by escaping the confines of time, you can see the past, you can also see the future. There is a great flexibility or impermanence and relativity to the nature of that perception, but it explains to us how we have certain prophecies, how we know certain things will happen. All the great scriptures have predicted the times of the end, and in relation to this class today we have chapter 24 from the book of Matthew, quoted above, in which Jesus explains in his words what I explained to you in the lecture. What he explained is that everything that we see is going to be destroyed, and we do not know when, but we know it will happen, and if you are asleep, if you are distracted by your frivolous activities, you will be caught of guard and will suffer the consequences. That is really the synthesis of what that chapter says. Jesus is saying pay attention, be present, work on yourself, it is going to happen. Likewise, we have had many other teachings on that matter, for example from the masters that I have already mentioned like Samael Aun Weor and Padmasambhava. Both gave prophecies. Their prophecies are coming to pass, now! It is happening. Likewise, many other teachers and instructors in this tradition and other traditions have seen that these events will come to pass, and it is precisely because they are engaged in the work, they are engaged in escaping the confines of the mind, which is the confines of time, and through that have gained perception of reality. Part of that is being able to see what will come. Audience: The biggest obstacle to me has been an inability to agree with the statement, "We are in extreme suffering." Why do I feel that our life here is a blessing and I cannot get past gratitude and appreciation? Can you help me reconcile it? Instructor: That is a beautiful question, feeling gratitude and that life is beautiful is a wonderful virtue. Truly we should feel very grateful for these moments. Life is a precious gift and we need to take full advantage of it. We need to be grateful for that. Honestly speaking, truly speaking, we have received an incredible extension in these times. The Third World War was already supposed to have happened, to state it bluntly. It should have happened already and it has not. That is a gift from the gods. There are beings who are working very hard on our behalf in order to extend this time so that those of us who are seriously making effort can take full advantage of it, because

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once the war happens, it will be extremely difficult to work. Our time, our energy, our resources will be much more limited. So we should be very grateful. We should take full advantage of the moments we have to work. We should be grateful and we should show that gratitude by working seriously on ourselves and helping others to do the same. Regarding suffering, understand that so long as we do not experience the Divine, we are suffering. We are in extreme suffering, because through our mistaken actions we have separated ourselves from our true nature. Truly, we have no understanding of the reality of our situation. Audience: You spoke about the Tao and the middle path, always watching the left and always watching the right. Is the key then when it comes to eliminating an ego to do it with equanimity? Is not the act of going down and recognizing that you have these problems, is not that kind of like going to one side or the other? Instructor: In order to achieve true equanimity in the mind, true equanimity in meditation, one has to escape all forms of duality. The mind or the intellect is very dualistic and it is comparing option A and option B, opposites. So the mind or the intellect says, "Well if there is serenity one hand there must be chaos in the other hand." This is an intellectual perception, but it is actually unfounded. What is it that allows both of those to exist? What is it that provides the ground in which that duality can be there? It is the Tao, and it is beyond both extremes. So that is what we have to experience in meditation. It is not a concept, it is a experience. The only way you can experience that is to disengage from that process of comparison of opposites. When the mind reaches a state of rest, then you can experience that state of nonduality. As long as the mind is engaged in comparing and contrasting, trying to understand intellectually, it cannot grasp it. Really, the process of meditation is not related to the mind. It doesn't have to do with the intellect. It is really about seeing what is beyond the intellect. So a bit of advice that I was given once in which I like to share with the students is: if you really want to understand what meditation is, try to see what is between those thoughts. Look between them. Instead of focusing on thoughts and what the thought contains, what happens between the thoughts? It is in that window that you can find the answer to your question. You can only do that through meditation, not through intellectual analysis. Audience: The rights that you have mentioned, where can I read more about those rights.? Instructor: I've pretty much have said everything that there is to say. The rights of Canchorrita are talked about in the gospels, in the sermon of the mount when Jesus explains: Observe the lilies o the field, the birds of the air. Samael Aun Weor explains the rights of Canchorrita in numerous books, such as in Christ's Will. Audience: We always talk about how to extract a virtue from learning and comprehending an ego. So we are actually, I do not know if you could call it dualism but there an analysis there so how should we act in that situation. There is an analysis you could call it? Instructor: We need to analyze our behaviors and analyze the ego, but what we ultimately need to do is not become confused by the process of analysis. In the process of analysis, what can happen with students is that we get caught in the terms and structures of our analysis and we begin to think, "What is I, what is self, am I this, am I that." The attempt to answer these questions can cause conflict, because ultimately, we are the perceiver, we are the process of observing; you can put any kind of labels and descriptions you want on that, but it is all intellectual, it is philosophical, it is all vapor and dust. The true way to comprehend the ego is to see it for what it is, not what our analysis says, not the names and labels we give it in the intellect and not the feelings we have in the heart or the way we sense it in the body. It is to see it as it is; redemption comes through perception. The process of perception is not dual, it is integral. It can see duality, and it can see beyond duality, and that is why we use the different tools, because different tools apply in different contexts. To the intellect the practice is confusing. To the students, it is confusing, because we sound like we are contradicting ourselves. We say on one hand, "separate observer and observed" and on the other hand we say, "there is no difference between the two." Ultimately, the point is you can never comprehend this with the intellect. The intellect can never comprehend anything; all it can do is compare. It is not a tool of comprehension. Comprehension can only be acquired through the heart, and that is when it is conscious, cognizant. That is when the Consciousness is awake, it sees something for what it is and comprehends it in the heart and something clicks, something happens, you just know it, you cant explain it and if you try to explain it it wont make any sense. Comprehension is like that. It is in the heart. Not the emotional brain, and this is the other difference. When we talk about the emotional brain, we talk about the three brains, they have levels especially in the intellect and in the

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heart, they have levels. The way we experience our heart and intellect now, it is completely caged in subjectivity, in the sense of self that we have, in ego. If you learn to awaken Consciousness and learn how to use the tool of Consciousness free of ego, you can also begin to experience the superior aspects of the intellectual and emotional centers. The superior aspects are related with the spirit, with our divine soul. Those are forms of thought and emotion that do not have a sense of self like we have here and now. It is different, it is a knowing, it is knowledge, it can be a thought, it can be a feeling but it is not terrestrial, it is not selfish, it doesn't have your name and your longings and desires. It is something else, and it is mysterious an it is beautiful. It is something that we used to all have, but we lost. Audience: How can we approach sexual activity without desire? Instructor: We have to approach sexual activity as we are now, and learn about that. The only way you can approach sex without desire is when you have no desire left, and that state is only reached when all the desire has been comprehended, and to reach that level is a long path. Right now, we have a lot of desire, so we approach sexuality and we observe ourselves as we are, and we learn to control and comprehend that, to not let the desire control us, but to control the desire, and start to comprehend it and remove it, to understand it. That is the only way. There are many who say you have to go into sex without desire, but that is impossible so long as you still have desire. We are consumed by desire. We are trapped in it. We have no choice but to deal with it. This is true with each defect. How do you go to work without pride? How do you go to shop at the store without envy? How do you go into that rich neighbourhood without envy? You cannot, because you have a lot of envy, you have a lot of pride, you have a lot of anger, so, rather than trying to be what you are not, be sincere with yourself, and deal with it. Do not repress it, do not avoid it in yourself, but look at it and comprehend it. Look closely and perceive it for what it is. See how it functions, see how it acts. See how it impels you to act certain ways, and see the consequences of those actions. Pride causes suffering. Lust causes suffering. Envy, gluttony, greed and laziness all of these cause suffering, but you'll never understand it as long as this remains intellectual or a belief. You will only understand it when you see it in action in yourself. Having said that, even though the moments that are coming are going to be very difficult and painful, and we truly, sincerely wish that there was another way, it is going to happen. So, when it happens, let us learn. It is sad to say, but the truth of this humanity is we really only learn when we suffer. It is sad that we are that far declined, but it is true. As long as we are getting what we want, we do not learn anything, we just want to keep getting what we want. It is when we get smacked down that we realize, "I shouldn't really have done that." When we are wounded and bleeding, suffering, we realize, "That was a stupid thing for me to do." It is really the only time we learn. Unfortunately, most of humanity is going to be learning that way, because we are that far gone. So, when these events happen, let us learn from it. When you see people suffer, do not turn away. Learn, because it could easily be you in their shoes. Everyday we hear in the news about people suffering terrible things and we just brush it off. If we were really conscious of our moment in time and space, if we were really present and aware of what is happening on this planet, all of us would be in tears, we would be in tears, because all of the people who are suffering now are people who we have been related to before. When you understand the science and you understand the cycles of transmigration, you understand that mathematically it is quite logical that through our many lifetimes we had many parents, many siblings, many wives and husbands, many very good friends, and they are all over the planet now, people who we have loved dearly. They are suffering, they are dying, they are starving, and in pain, and we do not care. We just want to buy new clothes, to go shopping to get this and that, we want to get that promotion at work and we do not care about those people "over there." That shows our level of development; it is very low. Someone who is awakening Consciousness feels others in themselves. They feel the suffering of others. That is a sign that you are awakening, positively, when your compassion begins to emerge. If you have a cold heart, you are asleep. You might feel sympathy; you might feel bad for people from time to time. That can be empathy or sympathy, and that is good. Compassion or bodhichitta is a very specific quality of an awakening mind, of an awakening Consciousness. That is what bodhichitta means, a Consciousness that is awakening and perceives reality and perceives suffering for what it is and feels a lot of compassion and spontaneously renounces actions that causes suffering. We need that. Humanity needs that. Humanity needs a lot of help. Even though there is going to be a lot of suffering and a lot of pain, a lot of good can come of it if we learn to transform it and help others. Audience: In regards to self-observation. There is some question in regards to it. Is it truly more of a natural state and also how do we self remember? Do we have to experience it or can you explain it for us?

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Instructor: Self-Remembering is a state of Consciousness that has to be experienced to be understood. It is elusive to the intellect because the intellect is not the Consciousness, but we try to put it into terms that you can understand so that you can learn qualities or approaches to it so that you can identify it for what it is. Self-Remembering at the beginning is a remembrance of being here and now, of being in the body. It is to remember oneself, to be aware of oneself. That is the most fundamental, basic aspect of self remembrance, but it is far more than that. When that remembrance of self is deepened and made continuous, it begins to embrace much more than oneself. Really, it becomes bodhichitta. Not only is it connected with our divine spirit, our inner Buddha, that is one aspect of self-remembering, it is a sense. It is not a thought, not a sensation; it is a sense, it is to sense divinity. Right now, we do not sense that, but we can. If we want to develop that, to sense that, we have to develop the ability to sense it, but we cannot force it. For example, in order to see, you have to open your eyes, and light pours in, and those photons are transformed into images by the brain. This process happens automatically. In selfremembering, you also have an organ that sees, but it is in the Consciousness, it is not physical. It has nothing to do with the body, it is Consciousness. It is not bound by the intellect, by the heart, or by the body. That organ is atrophied. It is not like your eyeballs that you are born with. It is an organ that has no energy and no development. It takes fuel and a process in nature for that organ to be energized and develop itself. It does not happen overnight, it takes patience, but the more you are present here and now in your body observing yourself, the more the sense of self-remembering grows. It grows in tandem with self-observation. That is why we describe them separately. They really are one thing, ultimately. It is the presence of Consciousness that is observant here and now. We talk about it separately because self-remembering is an expansion that is connected with the divine that perceives, that is here and now and present, but it is not mere self-observation. If you do not understand that, keep working and observing yourself. One technique that helps many students is that in the process of observing yourself, is to use your imagination. This can rapidly develop self-remembering. To use your imagination like this. Be aware of yourself, do not change anything, just observe, be aware of everything you can, feel your body, feel all the sensations, maybe there are some feelings maybe not, maybe there are some thoughts, maybe not. Be aware of listening, be aware of seeing, be aware of touching, everything that you can sense both outside and inside; this takes a lot of effort. You have to willfully do it. This is important to understand: it doesn't happen automatic, you have to be paying attention. This is the first part; this is self-observation, to be here and now, aware of everything. The second part is to use your imagination. If you cannot feel god directly, use your imagination to imagine god is here and now with you. Be creative, because really, god is formless. Divinity has no form. You can imagine that divinity as the energy of everything, as the light of everything; you can imagine that divinity is in the form of your Divine Mother or a great Master that is standing right behind you or sitting with you and is always with you. It can be a great Buddha, a great angel who is with you constantly, with you always, helping you, protecting you, observing you, measuring what you do with his energy or her energy. That process of imagining empowers the Consciousness and it starts to reach out and realize, "Wait a minute, I cannot just behave like I am by myself all the time, because God is here, too." That will very quickly help you to develop self-remembering.

The Knowledge of This Moment

Written by Gnostic Instructor In the previous lecture we were describing the importance of this moment, and in that lecture we introduced some important subjects related to Consciousness. In general, when we talk about any kind of spiritual teaching, any type of psychological teaching, we need to understand this core term, which in English is "Consciousness." In every religion or psychological tradition, we study we find different words that are used to describe something about experience, about perception. In this tradition of Gnosis, we use many words, including from other languages, precisely because the English language is very limited in its ability to convey true conscious knowledge. The English language does not have the terminology to accurately expresses knowledge of Consciousness. So we use terms from other languages in order to understand it. If the terminology seems overwhelming, just remember when you were in kindergarten or first grade and all the terminology seemed overwhelming, but now you do not even think about that anymore. The same is true about the terms we use in this tradition. Once you grasp what the terms point to, you no longer worry about the terms, but instead penetrate the meaning.

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So in the previous lecture we explained some terms; in particular we talked about two terms that are very important in any religious or psychological pursuit, and those terms are self-observation and self-remembering. As you can see, these terms quite obviously begin with the word "self." If you have any familiarity with the history of philosophy, undoubtedly you will have encountered the teaching of the Oracle of Delphi, who said, "Man know thy self and thou shalt know the universe and its gods." Who is that self? Those without an education in the deeper meanings of any genuine religion or mystical pursuit assume that self is "me, myself, my body, my thoughts." We assume that also in self-observation and selfremembering. Everybody believes That the self that we seek to "self-realize" is this terrestrial identity that has our name, our memories, our likes and dislikes. Actually, we are wrong. The reality is that the terrestrial self that we experience as the "me, myself," what we call "I" is not fundamentally real; it is not the real self. It is an illusion that we perpetuate because of our ignorance. Ignorance Ignorance has the word ignore inside of it. As we look at the etymology, it begins with the letter "I" and then "gno". That "gno" comes from ancient roots and has relatives in many ancient languages. In particular we look at Greek. That "gno" has to do with knowledge. Sometimes that "g" could be a "k" in the same way that we say "to know." That "kno" is the same as the "gno", to know. "Diagnosis" is to examine to acquire knowledge. That "gno" in diagnosis is the same root component. That "gno" in English is the equivalent of "jna" in Sanskrit. That "jna" means to know. It doesn't mean to know with the intellect. It means to know through perception. The Greek "gno" also means to know through perception, to know from experience. knowledge: from Old English cnawlece "acknowledgment of a superior, honor, worship;" which is from cnawan to perceive related to Sanskrit jna When we say "to ignore," that "I" in the beginning means "to lack, to not have." So really, the word ignore means "to lack perception." We use the word ignore incorrectly in many cases. We say someone is ignorant to imply that they lack an education, but really we use the word improperly in that case. We use it correctly when we say, "I am ignoring him." That is a correct use for the word, because we are avoiding the perception of him. So when we talk about ignorance, we are talking about a lack of perception. If you have studied Buddhism or Hinduism, then really you would know that these ancient teachings state that the cause of suffering is ignorance: not a lack of study, a lack of education, but a lack of perception. The perception of what? What the real self is. Both Buddhism and Hinduism state that our suffering is caused by a deluded sense of self. We suffer the illusion of self, and do not see the real self. Therefore, in psychology, when we talk about selfobservation or what other people call mindfulness or watchfulness, really what we are talking about is the effort to perceive our true self, not merely to be aware of the movements of our body and our hands, not to merely be aware of thought and emotion, but to see for ourselves what is the reality. That is only possible if we open our eyes: not the physical eyes, the eyes of Consciousness. The Consciousness is not dependant on physical senses, it is beyond them. Real Consciousness-which all of us have to some degree-is not even the self. Consciousness is mere perception. It can perceive the self, but it is not the self. This philosophical conundrum can only be understood through experience. When we talk about self-observation and self-remembering, what we are really talking about is a state of conscious perception without assumptions, without projection, but is instead purely receptive; it sees without filters. The Two Lines of Life In the previous lecture we were explaining how that type of perception works, and we explained a simple diagram that we call the two lines. There is a horizontal line, an imaginary line, that we visualize and imagine that represents the line of time that goes behind us through the past and ahead of us to the future. That line of time represents life, the progression of change, and most of us only experience that change as what we call time. We explained in that lecture that there is also another line that bisects this line, but moves vertically, and we call this line the line of being. This line measures Consciousness. Consciousness is an energy in nature; it is infinite. It is the same thing as light. Consciousness is an energy that is the power of perception, and it has infinte heights and infinite depths.

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In the infinte heights, we discover those realms that are traditionally called "heavens" and can also be called "nirvana." In those heights we find Consciousness that is unfiltered, that sees the truth. The higher you ascend in those levels of being, the more pure your vision, your perception, and the less clouded. At the very heights of those levels of being on this line of being, on this line of Consciousness, we find the most rarified, pure levels of existence. We call those levels Ain Soph, the Absolute, sunyata, Adhi-buddha, Samantrabadha, Brahma. Depending on your religion, there is a name for that level. That level of existence some call a state of non-existence, and this would be true. It is a primordial unmanifested level of existence, which is in the heart of all things. In every atom we find the Absolute, what can also be called Uncreated light. At the polar opposite of this energy of the line of being we find the hell realms, what we could call samsara. These are levels of increasing density in which the Consciousness becomes more and more conditioned. On this line of being, we see every creature that exists on every level of existence. At the highest levels we find the most profound gods, and below them the Demi-gods, the angels, the Devas, and below them the elementals, and below them, demons. You see, on these levels of the line of being, we find every kind of being, and they are at those levels relative to the conditioning of their Consciousness. A Buddha, a master, an angel, has freed their Consciousness from all conditions, is not bound by anything, is completely free, thus experiences absolute happiness. Their experience of life is unconditioned, with absolute freedom, pure joy, peace, with a profound brilliant intelligence and wisdom. At the other end, we find those beings that are deeply conditioned, subject to ever-increasing numbers of laws, who are kept in those realms due to the consequences of their own actions. Beings in the lower levels are those who have acted in ignorance of the laws of nature, and have thus created consequences that they must bear. Every action has a consequence; this is called karma: cause and effect. Real Change In all those levels of the line of being, there is perception, but perception is different depending on the level in which you exist. Knowledge is the key factor to change our position in the line of being: knowledge, comprehension, understanding. Those beings that are conditioned, who are trapped in the effects of their previous actions, are conditioned by those actions. For example, when you cause pain, you are pained. When you hurt others, you receive hurt in return. Everything we do bears a consequence for ourselves. When we steal, things are taken from us. When we lie, we are lied to. When we express anger, we receive anger. This is a very simple mechanism in nature, but unfortunately, we lack knowledge of it. All of our suffering is due to this lack of knowledge or perception. So all those beings that live in those realms like our own and below us, suffer because of causes they have produced. If any being including ourselves becomes cognizant of the cause of their suffering, they will stop producing that suffering, and therefore they will become free from it. It is quite simple. A drunkard may have been told, may be able to say and express the concept that alcohol is bad and harmful and causes suffering, but nonetheless the drunkard continues to drink because that drunkard lacks cognizance, conscious knowledge of the effects of the alcohol. Likewise a Gnostic student, a religious student who has taken vows in Tantra, for example, may know from the scripture, from the teaching that lust is harmful, but they continue to indulge in lust. Thus, they do not have cognizance of the effect of that action, and thus they continue to produce suffering. A glutton may know very well in his intellect, in his heart, that to eat too much or to eat harmful food, impure food, is bad and creates suffering, but continues to eat too much or to eat the wrong things and thus is not cognizant, does not have conscious knowledge, does not have comprehension of that action. We say, "I know that I shouldn't smoke that cigarette" but we do it anyway. We do not know, we have no gnosis of that, just a concept of it. What we have is ignorance; we ignore willingly, lacking perception of the truth. We willingly lack conscious knowledge of that. All of us suffer from this problem and that is why suffer. As we explained in the previous lecture, to resolve it we need to understand how perception functions. The way we get out of this problem, the way that we transform our experience of existence and acquire real knowledge, is to learn how to perceive, to learn how to become cognizant and conscious. That potential does not exist in the past or the future on the line of life. The potential for change, real change, is right here and now in the present moment. It is where these two lines intersect- the line of life and the line of being - and that is right now.

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From the point of view of Consciousness, there is no past, there is no future, there is only right now. It is to be present, to be, to be here and now, to perceive, to see what is. Not to project, not to imagine, but to see the facts as they are, without filters, without changing them, to open the eyes of Consciousness, to be awake. None of us arrive at this state automatically. It is not a form of autopilot. It takes willpower. It takes the effort to remember it, to actively perceive. Unfortunately, we do not do this. We lack the training, we lack examples in our lives, we lack knowledge, but if we can learn to train ourselves not only to perform the action of conscious of perception but to become cognizant of its effects, then we can open up the door to real change. We can transform our experience of life. We can change our level of being. Raising our Level of Being Our level of being is completely dependent on a single factor: our perception. Our level of being is determined by how and what we see. If we are not capable of being here and now, then our level of being is in decline. If we are capable of being here and now, then our level of being can rise. In other words, the more capable we become of perceiving the reality we are facing, without filters on our perception, the more our level of being can rise. The problem is this: we do not want to see reality. We claim that we want to see the truth, but really we only want to see what we believe and desire. We all act and present ourselves that we are good people, we tell ourselves that we are good people, we try to maintain the image of being a good person but sincerely, honestly, we are not, and we are unwilling to see the truth of the situation that we have created for ourselves. None of us are willing to see ourselves as we truly are, we do not want to see how we lie to ourselves and others. We do not want to see our greed, our laziness. We especially do not want to see our lust. We do not want to see our envy, our fear, we do not want to face it, we want to ignore it. We want to not see it. That is what this word ignore really means: to not see, to ignore. This is a very difficult habit to break. When we come to religion, mysticism, spirituality, what we really want, if we are honest with ourselves, is someone to make us feel better, we want promises of a better future, we want assurances that we will come out of suffering. We want an insurance policy that says "if you agree with this and this and this you will go to heaven. If you pay a certain amount of money or if you join a certain group and make certain vows and commitments then you will go to nirvana." Those are lies; they are not honest. No genuine teaching or religion presents such offers. That is because complete religions teach that there is only one way for liberation from suffering, and that is to remove the causes of suffering form with ourselves. The causes of suffering are in our minds. The causes of suffering are psychological, even the causes of our physical and emotional suffering are psychological; they are inside of us. Death does not change them. We carry those causes from lifetime to lifetime. Beliefs and theories do not change our suffering. Conscious Perception To fundamentally change our suffering, we need to change the nature of our psyche. That begins with seeing the truth. Let us begin right now, with Self-observation and self-remembering. The action of being present, here at the crossing of these two lines, is here and now. So be awake. Open your Consciousness to perceive what you can perceive right now. What can you perceive? Are you relaxed? Are you feeling all of the sensations that are happening in your body? Consciously perceiving them uncomfortable feelings, comfortable feelings, or indifferent ones. Are you aware of everything that is happening in your physical body from moment to moment? Are you consciously controlling your physical body? Many of us fidget, itch, scratch, move around without any Consciousness of doing it. Are you cognizant merely of the physical body? Be aware here and now in your physical body, and notice that when you make the effort to be here and now, it feels different. You feel different. We need that. Wherever you pay attention, you send energy. When you pay attention to yourself, you keep that energy; that energy can help you, it can nourish you, it can heal you. Most of the time, we are not aware of where our attention is going, therefore we do not know where our energy is going, and that is why most of us are so tired all of the time. We always need coffee and those "special drinks" people are trying to sell to us, because we waste all of our energy all the time. If you can be aware of your physical body and everything that is happening in your physical body, also be aware of what is happening with your emotions, and what is happening with your thoughts. Be watchful, not on autopilot, experiencing what is happening and not paying much attention to it; instead, actively observe it. Now let's ask a question. In this state of perception, being present here and now, not being distracted by past or future but being here and now, ask yourself this question, "What can I affirm is true? What is true? What is real?"

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If you can keep this kind of questioning with yourself in all of your experiences in life, a lot of your suffering will stop, because a lot of our suffering is just projections of the mind, misinterpretations of what we have heard, of what we have been told, what we would like to be believe or what we are afraid is true. If we try to manage our attention with this question, "What can I affirm through my perception as truth?" A lot of that ephemeral nonsense in our heads is cut away. For example, we know being here and now in the body we could state that we are alive, we could state that we have a body, that we have perception, that we have thought and emotion, that we experience sensations. In other words, through our perception we can confirm the existence of our three brains. These three brains being the physical brain which is the body, the emotional brain in the heart, and the intellectual brain that is inside of our head. We could say with some degree of certainty that these things are true, but if we are serious in maintaining this present perception and we make constant, continual effort to be here and now, to be present and watchful and to be checking to see if the things around us are actually real and true, that behavior will extend into the time when our physical body is sleeping, and when we are out of our physical body in the dream state we will also be asking these questions. "Is what I am seeing true? Is it real? Can I confirm it? Can I validate it?" Then we will discover that things are not as we thought. We may even discover that we are in the dream world. We may even discover that we are dead and did not realize it. The only way to acquire this types of knowledge is to perceive in this way, and not assume that what we see is real and true, but to question it. Maintain a distinction internally between the observer and the observed. That distinction is simply this: knowing that the perceiver is not the perceived. Knowing that perception is its own energy and it is distinct. Through that we can start to acquire real knowledge. Knowledge When we look at the root of the word knowledge in English, we find that it is from an ancient old English word that means "to perceive." In other words, can we say that what we have read or what we have been told is true? Can we sincerely stand before the presence of reality, the truth, God, Buddha and state what we have been told is true? That what we have read in a book or read on the internet or seen on TV is true? What can we say is true, honestly? We may have read a book about how wonderful things are in France, and we may believe it, and we may be very enthusiastic about everything about France, and tell everybody about how great France is, but if we have never been there, we are a liar. The same is true of our opinion about God. If we have never met God, our Innermost, our inner Buddha, if we have never perceived with our Consciousness the reality of the divine, and yet we talk about it and affirm it and explain it and recommend everybody to get involved with it, we are a liar. We do not know until we have seen it, experienced it. Until then, we do not have real knowledge. There are many who teach psychology, religion, spirituality, mysticism, kundalini yoga, astral travel, about the chakras, about the tarot, about the Kabbalah. They may be wealthy from teaching, they may have millions of followers, and they may be great liars who have never experienced what they teach. Are we a liar when we argue about politics or about a politician that we have never met, who we do not know personally, intimately? We all make many statementsfilled with convictionabout people we have never met. We are liars because we have not perceived it for ourselves. In reality, those people may not even exist! We may have seen images of them on TV, but nothing on TV is real. We may have read it in a book or a magazine, but those are just opinions of other people who probably do not know anything either. Most grave of all of this most so-called "knowledge" about religion and spirituality that we have read and been told and believe in, but really, we do not know if it is true. We may have argued about it, fought about it, supported it for years and years, and dedicated a lot of time in our lives supporting teachings and concepts and schools that were really all just lies. Whose fault is that? We would like to blame to leaders of those religions, the writers of those books. We would like to blame the politicians for our problems. We would like to blame those in charge of the media, the government. The one who is at fault is ourselves, because we have affirmed what we do not know. We have believed what we have not confirmed. Real knowledge, genuine knowledge, can only be acquired through our own perception, through our own experience, especially when it comes to religion. We need to see for ourselves. The Sanskrit word "jna" means "to know through perception of reality," and this is were we get the word gnosis. The Greek and Sanskrit here are in complete agreement on this term, and even though the so-called experts might disagree, all the knowledge of the Greek and all the knowledge of the Hindus came from the same place. It came from the Consciousness itself, which is far older than any of these civilizations or traditions.

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There is knowledge that you can acquire on the line of being that is older than any atom on this planet. There is knowledge that you can acquire through your perception that is older than this universe. You cannot find it in any book, or from any teacher, or from any library or temple. You find it through awakening, through perceiving the truth. Anyone can acquire that, if you awaken. Moreover, anyone can acquire the experience of God, divinity. This word jna or gnosis is used in a religious sense. Jnana yoga is a type of yoga related to knowledge in Hinduism, knowledge of god. Yoga comes from yug which means "to unite, to bind" and that is the same as the root in English of the word religion which is the Latin religare, which means "to reunite, to return, to bind again what was broken." Many foolish people (because of their own spiritual traumas and lack of experience with the divine) interpret religare to mean that the word religion is bondage; this misinterpretation is only because they have a spiritual trauma, because they have been lied to for centuries. It is understandable that they are angry. They have been lied to by those who also lack knowledgeperception of the divinebut have presented themselves as spiritual authorities. The real root of the word religion means "restore, to reunite what was separated." We have been separated from the divine, not by the divine, but by our own actions. We have become entranced by illusions, and have walked away from the truth, and we continue to do it everyday. People say, "Why can't I see God? If god is real, why can't I see God? God should come stand here before me and prove that he exists." The very statement reveals why it won't happen. The divine will never bow to pride, to anger. The divine exists in realms that are unconditioned and unbound. That is which is bound and conditioned cannot perceive what is unconditioned. When you are angry, you can only see through your anger. Reflect on a moment when you became angry with someone that you love. Everything that person does irritates you, because you are angry, even when that person tries to be sweet and patient, it only makes you more angry. Your Consciousness is filtered by that anger, thus your Consciousness can only see what the anger sees. In the exactly same way, you cannot see the divine as long as your Consciousness is filtered by that which opposes the divine. That means any ego, any defectpride, envy, gluttony, greed, fanaticism, fear. A fearful person cannot see god, an arrogant person cannot. A lustful person cannot. An envious person cannot, because the Consciousness is filtered, conditioned by those defects. Perceiving Harmful Action That is why I suggested to you: be present here and now, see what is, not what you want, not what you crave, not what you avoid, but see what is. Learn to see without filters. Without the interference of your anger, pride, craving, fear, lust, gluttony, greed. Learn to see without desire. With that type of perception, you can start to see what is. If you are having a fight with your loved one and you are feeling angry, it is very difficult to let go of the anger and see things as they are, because the anger has a lot of power. When you are enflamed with lust, it is very difficult to see without the influence of the lust. When you are infected with envy, it is very difficult to see without the envy, but we have to learn. Learn by first seeing the condition itself. When you become angry, when you become lustful or envious, perceive it, become aware of it, do not avoid the perception of it. See it for what it is. Not only that, but observe its effects. Consciously become aware of how those perceptions affect your experience of life and the experience of others. When you become lustful, proud, arrogant, or afraid, when these emotions cloud your heart and influence your thought and stimulate sensations in your body and the impulses to act, become aware of it. When you observe yourself and you catch yourself being sarcastic, saying something cruel, do not just avoid your perception of that. Do not just say, "I didn't mean it, I'm sorry" and walk away from that perception. Observe, watch what your words do. Look into the face of the one who heard what you said, and see the pain, recognize it, because if you do not, you will repeat the mistake in the future. When you experience the emotion, the sensation, and the thought of lust, and you have heard these teachings and you say to yourself, "No, no, I can't allow lust" and you avoid it, you are also avoiding the acquisition of the knowledge of lust and its consequences. Thus, when those desires arise in you, learn to observe them, and moreover, observe their effects. Observe how those experiences of lust in your psyche exhaust your energy, color your perceptions, filter your perceptions, drain you of vitality, cause a great deal of negativity to arise in your heart and minda lack of respect for others, a lack of love, the arrival of animality, cruelty, selfishness. Observe the consequences of your psychological states and you will start to acquire knowledge of them. The reason humanity is in the suffering it is in now is because we lack knowledge of the consequences of our actions, and we lack knowledge of the divine. We lack knowledge of the divine because we cannot see the divine if

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we are conditioned by psychological defects. To see the divine, free yourself from psychological conditioning. When you are free of psychological conditioning, you naturally perceive reality. Atma Bodha There is a scripture that illuminates some of this. This scripture is called Atma Bodha. It was written by a master named Shankaracharya. He is also called Adi Shankara or just Shankara. The very first line of this scripture states: "I am composing the ATMA-BODHA, this treatise of the Knowledge of the Self, for those who have purified themselves by austerities and are peaceful in heart and calm, who are free from cravings and are desirous of liberation." This scripture was written almost two thousand years ago. The author only lived a little over thirty years but he changed the history of Asia, the whole continent, because he knew how to see. He was awake. Shankara is a great master. He translates the title Atma Bodha in this first passage as meaning "self knowledge." As I was explaining in the beginning, we talk a lot about selfself-realization, self-observation, self-remembering. As I expressed to you, that self is not really this terrestrial self. It is Atma. Atma is a Sanskrit word literally that translated means "self" but it is not our terrestrial self. This title Atma Bodha or "self knowledge" means "direct perception of the Being, of the Innermost, of Chesed (in Hebrew). It is the direct perception to know our inner Buddha or Self. We all lack that knowledge until we have experienced it for ourselves. So, let us be sincere, let us be honest; if we really want to change, we need to begin with that: with being honest. Have we experienced our true Self, our real Being? Do we have knowledge acquired from that perception, or do we just have a lot of beliefs, a lot of longings? The Practice of Austerities This first sentence says that he composed this scripture for those "who have been purified by the practice of austerities." So we can all see that we are all not qualified to read this scripture, because we have not been purified. The practice of austerity means that one has renounced desire. That renunciation is to not merely take a vow, and stop wearing blue jeans and to wear robes, and it doesn't mean that one shaves ones heads and carries around some beads, or joins a certain group or goes into the mountains for meditation. The real practice of austerities is a psychological practice in which we manage our attention and do not allow it to indulge in impurity. We do not allow our psyche to persist with its pride, resentment, envy, fear, lust, anger, gluttony, laziness. The practice of austerities genuinely truly brings about purification of the psyche. Such a person no matter what religion they may claim to belong to what continent they come fromnaturally begins to raise their level of being, because they are no longer creating karma that is producing suffering. This type of austerity is psychological. When you stop engaging in harmful thought, harmful emotion, harmful action, you stop producing harm and you rise. It is quite simple; it is cause and effect. Being sincere and looking with conscious perception at ourselves, we can see that we are not accomplishing this. The way we live our lives from day to day is the opposite. We continually, from moment to moment, indulge in our pride, affirm our pride. We are always telling ourselves that we are right and that others are wrong. We always indulge in our resentment, we always believe that others have wronged us, have stolen from us, but we do not see our own crimes. We always indulge in our envy. We feel that we deserve what others have and we are not grateful for what we do have. We see that someone else has something that we want, it could be material thing, it could be a position in society, it could be a spiritual title or a throne and we want that. We feel we deserve that. We may feel that they took it from us or that we should take it from them. That is envy. That is impure. We indulge in our anger; we believe our anger is justified. We believe that life has been unjust, that our parents have mistreated us and done us wrong, that our co-workers and our employers do us wrong, that our government does us wrong, that our friends do us wrong and our anger is acceptable. These are all lies. Anger is impure. No Buddha, no Angel, no Master has anger. Peaceful In Heart We need to be purified through the practice of psychological austerities. The natural consequence of this is that we become what he states next: those "who are peaceful in heart." Our hearts are not at peace. Our hearts are tumultuous: tumultuous with desireslustful desires, arrogant desires, fearful desires. We want security, physically, financially, spiritually. We have a lot of fear spiritual fear, political fear, economic fear. Our hearts are not at peace. We do not accept what we have, we are not grateful for what we

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have. We want something different. We are always caught in that pendulum from craving to aversion. Our heart swings wildly from one side to the other constantly. Our thoughts racing, our heart surging, our body filled with tension. If our heart was truly at peace, our body would be relaxed. We would not have any tension anywhere. We would not have a mind that is in tension or chaos either. We would be relaxed, serene, we would smile, we would not look like death. If you observe the face of people nowadays, it is very rare to see serenity, very rare, especially on television, especially in big cities. What we see on the faces of people is rampant desire, the desire to be accepted, to be praised, to be worshipped. This is what we see. We see it in the mirror also, if we are sincere. All of us want to be loved by society, praised by society, envied by others. We do not comprehend that all those things are illusions. As high as your station in the physical world may be, you will not take any of it with you when you die,. When you die, all you will take is the level of being you reached, whether it is high or low. That is all you take with you. Liberation from Suffering Those who have been purified through the practice of austerities become peaceful in heart. They become free from cravings, and their only craving, their only desire, we could say, is for liberation, liberation from suffering. Liberation from suffering cannot be acquired from any master, book, school, teacher; no one can liberate you but yourself, and you cannot do it in the future. Many say, "Once I acquire a certain amount of money in the bank then I will get serious about my spiritual life." Or, "Once I have read a certain number of books...," or "Once I have gotten my degree...," or "Once I have gotten my education...," or "Once I have gotten married..." We have a lot of excuses, a lot of reasons, a lot of justifications. Liberation does not exist in the future. Liberation begins now, with how you use perception. Liberation is only acquired through your ability to perceive reality and to free yourself from conditioning. The one who in this doorway of this present moment frees themselves from conditioning begins to rise. This is a law of nature. It does not happen in the future. It happens here and now. It happens in a matter of how you perceive. You have to fee your Consciousness from its bondage. That bondage is psychological, it is self-imposed. Our bondage was made by ourselves. In other words, your physical circumstancesrich or poor, educated or not, married or singleare irrelevant in relation with awakening. We need to awaken in every moment, in every circumstance. There is no circumstance in existence that excuses us from awakening here and now. So this scripture Atma Bodha in this first line is explaining that, and this is only the first line. This scripture is very deep. Like any scripture, if you analyze it deeply it can reveal a lot to you, but it can only reveal in proportion to how awake you are. If you read it the way you read a newspaper or a magazine, you will gain nothing. If you read it and put it into practice through your perception, you will gain a lot. Knowledge and Liberation The second line states: "As fire is the direct cause of cooking so knowledge and not any other form of discipline is the direct cause of liberation. For liberation cannot be attained without knowledge." Over the centuries, some people have read this and have interpreted it to mean that unless you have read scripture or have been taught rituals or religious practices, you cannot acquire liberation. That is false. We do need some intellectual knowledge and study, but that is not the knowledge that liberates. What this passage is explaining is very simple but it contradicts our intellect. It contradicts our beliefs. This line is only explaining the line of being, very clearly. When we understand that the line of being is the line of energy, of Consciousness. Your position on that line in nature is relative to the conditioning of your Consciousness. If you are suffering, your Consciousness is conditioned. Only those who have a free Consciousness do not suffer, and those are great masters. The only way to be liberated is through knowledge, but knowledge of what? That is what we have been explaining. Knowledge of what caused the suffering, and knowledge of what is free of suffering, two parts of one thing. Both are knowledge of Consciousness. Firstly, we need knowledge of what is suffering. How do you suffer? In how many ways? What do we want liberation from? Stress, pain, uncertainty, anxiety, poverty, loneliness, a lack of fulfilment, a lack of belonging, feeling inferior, feeling abandoned, feeling oppressed, etc. The only way to acquire liberation from suffering is to first know what that is. That knowledge is not intellectual, it is not a belief, it has to be perceived. Thus, observe your suffering, do not avoid it, do not indulge in it, see it for what it is. When you experience it, look at it, really experience it, but we want to avoid it. We do not want to see our pain, we want to avoid it, we want to ignore.

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When we feel pain, we look for our tranquilizers. Some of us find our tranquilizers in going out with our friends because they make us feel better. We run to our pets because they love us unconditionally (we think). Some of us run to shopping, to the internet, to play games, to watch television, to go to the movies. We may run to our hobbies. We may run to fantasizing about going on a vacation. We avoid. We do not want to look in the face of what makes us suffer. We do not want to look into the face of what causes us pain. We want to avoid it. When a family member says something hurtful to us, we want to avoid them. When a loved one, a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend does something hurtful, we want to avoid it, we break up, we walk away, we leave, we may attack but we want to avoid what hurts us. So long as we do not face our suffering, we will never understand it, we will never escape it, we will never overcome it, because we are willfully avoiding it. "As fire is the direct cause of cooking, so knowledge and not any other form of discipline is the direct cause of liberation." Knowledge is perception of the truthconscious knowledge, cognizant perception, to see it for what it is. When someone spreads gossip about us, we generally want to reply in kind, we want to attack them back. We want to say, Oh yeah, I know this and that about them. They may have said things about me but I know worse things about them," and we want to spread all that gossip and hurt them back. We do not want to look at the pain in us and what is hurt, and analyze that, and dissect it. What is hurt is our pride. Our pride is the cause of suffering, not the gossip, not the other person: the cause is our pride. The gossip only caused it to be activated. When we get passed over for a promotion, when we do not get hired for a job, when we do not win a competition, we become angry, hurt, we blame others, we blame conditions, we blame this and that. We do not want to look at the cause of our suffering, which is our pride (embarrassment). We do not want to analyze that our pride is the problem. That is why we suffer. If we want to be liberated from that suffering, we need knowledge of it. Retrospection That is the first part; to look at what suffers and to get to know it, to not avoid it. This naturally requires meditation. This observation cannot be successfully done while you are doing other things. You cannot comprehend and understand your suffering while you are doing other things. You need to sit, close all of your senses, and analyze consciously the cause of the suffering, and see it for what it is. This is why we learn a practice called retrospection. Everyday we learn to sit everyday at the end of the day and review our experiences of the day, and to pick out those moments that we need to understand better: something we did, something that happened to us, something we thought or felt. Somewhere where suffering was caused. We just sit and we reflect on it. This is very difficult, because the mind wants to change the memory. We play the scene in our mind and our imagination and the mind wants to change it, to justify ourselves and to make the other people seem even worse. This is why we suffer! We cannot trust our own mind. We cannot trust our own perception, because it is filtered, and even when trying to review the event, we are still trying to filter it. Our perception is conditioned. It takes enormous awareness to maintain purity of perception. It does not happen automatically. It is very difficult to see things as they are, especially in the beginning. Nonetheless, to be free from suffering, we need knowledge of the cause of suffering, thus we have to train ourselves to see reality. The second part of that knowledge is to see that which does not suffer. You cannot understand that anger is suffering, that lust is suffering, that envy is suffering, until you understand what it is to not have them. That Which Does not Suffer All of us think that the life we have now is normal, and that is just the way it is, and we just have to make the best of it and just get as many materialistic things as we can and have as much fun as we can until we die. This is a deep form of ignorance. Life now is not the way it should be. This is not the way life should be. It is possible to have life without suffering, but unfortunately, we have never experienced that, so we lack knowledge of it. Through this training, you can experience that which does not suffer, and that knowledge teaches you more than any book, more than any school, more than any religion can ever teach you. You acquire that knowledge through meditation. To experience that part of you that does not suffer, you have to abandon the suffering parts. For us, this is only possible through meditation. That part of us that does not suffer is the Being, the Innermost. Everyone has this within. It is what we call Self, Atma. In Kabbalah, it is called Chesed or Gedulah. In Buddhism, it is called the Buddha, the "awakened." When you have the perception, knowledge, experience of that which does not suffer, then you can understand how to truly be free from suffering.

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What I am explaining to you is not something that will happen in the future. It is not something you can buy or wait for. It is not something that you should be sitting there thinking, "Please God give me that experience, where can I find it?" Then you think, "Maybe I should go to India, or Mexico, or Egypt, maybe I can find it there." Or we want to go to different temples or religions. Let me be clear: it is not in any other place. It is not in the future or the past. It is here and now, inside of you. You can experience that which does not suffer, here and now, if you merely open your perception to see things as they truly are. God is not anywhere else. God is right here, right now. You simply do not have the eyes to see or the ears to hear, because you are asleep. Awaken, right now, and keep awakening, and you will see. When you have fully become trained in that ability of perception without filters, without conditioning, awake, cognizant, something that formerly would have hurt you terribly does not hurt you at all. It passes through you like a wind. For example, you lose your job or are ridiculed. When fully awake and present, remembering the divine within you, those criticisms or terrestrial "tragedies" are experienced for what they truly are: illusions, like passing clouds. When you experience that, your experience of life will change dramatically, because you will understand that all suffering and happiness are dependent solely on our perception. This is the essence of what Padmasambhava taught in the Tantras. He stated quite simply that the only difference between samsara and nirvana is perception. It is in the moment, how we see. All of us are in samsara, conditioned by our psyche, to suffer. Nirvana just means "cessation." You can experience nirvana here and now, in your body, in any circumstances, in any place, whether you are rich or poor, whether you are sick or healthy, whether you are a man or a woman, old or young. Those are all just circumstances that are completely irrelevant. What is relevant is your perception. Are you awake, are you free of psychological conditioning? That is what produces liberation. Knowledge Alone Destroys Ignorance That is why we find in the third line of this scripture; "Action cannot destroy ignorance for it is not in conflict with ignorance. Knowledge alone destroys ignorance as light destroys dense darkness." This has been a very controversial passage of this scripture and deeply misunderstood by many religions for centuries. This is because people read it literally and do not awaken their Consciousness and do not understand that genuine spirituality, yoga, religion, is about awakening Consciousness, not about wearing robes and going to temples. Real yoga is about awakening, whether you are a pauper, a rich person, a Nun, a laborer, or a lay person, it is all irrelevant. What is relevant is awakening. "Action cannot destroy ignorance." Now we have all heard for centuries in our respective religions that we must do A, B and C to be liberated. That there are given actions that we must perform or else we cannot be liberated. This passage does not contradict that. Action is the basis of everything that exists. Even when there is no manifested existence, there is still action. In the level of the Absolute, there is still cause and effect. In the highest levels, manifestation emerges because of causes. Those causes originate from the unmanifested, thus action is everywhere and in everything, but it is not action like we have action here. It is different. There are actions that we must perform and there actions that we must avoid, but no matter what our actions are, whether they are harmful or beneficial, action alone cannot destroy ignorance. In a simple way, in a visual way, we can understand this passage when we look again at these two lines and we understand that the line of life that moves horizontally is the line of action. As we move through time we act, but the line of being is not subject to time. The line of being is perception. What this means is, we can be living our life on this line of time and we can be doing all of the actions that our religion says we must do. We can be at church or temple on time, and wear all the right clothes and do all the right prayers and do all the right mediations, go to all the rituals, have read all the books and scriptures, and have tried to maintain a pure life, but yet not destroy an atom of ignorance. In fact, we may have acquired more. Why? Because in all those actions we were never cognizant, awake, aware. We acted and acted and acted, but never to acquire genuine knowledge of the truth. This planet is filled with people like that. What may appear as a contradiction is that we may have been a great criminal and done a lot of harmful action, not a single religious ritual, not a single mantra. We may have hurt a lot of people, but from different experiences have had cognizance of the effects of those actions, and in the end, realized it. In the end, such a person can actually develop a higher level of being than the person who followed all the religious precepts perfectly. How is that?

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On the basis of action alone, these two a very different; one is a criminal and the other is a religious person. The criminal though becomes cognizant of the harm of their actions and thus raises their level of being. Such a person will naturally renounce those crimes and will start to do good, will start to help others. There are many examples of this. The one in my mind now is Milarepa. The Tibetan Milarepa killed people. He used black magic for revenge against people who hurt his family, and he killed them. There were many people in his community that were good religious people, who followed every precept, but he was the one who become the greatest awakened master of his age, because he understood his mistaken actions. He became conscious of it. That is how he acquired liberation. That is what this passage is stating. Liberation is not determined by our actions, but by our knowledge. Remember, knowledge is not from books, but from perception of the truth. This knowledge is not the knowledge of scripture or of ritual or mantra. It is the knowledge of suffering, and what does not suffer. It is the knowledge of Consciousness in oneself. Ultimately, it is the knowledge of the being. "Knowledge alone destroys ignorance as light destroys dense darkness." Nowadays, when people are caught committing crimes, they never admit it. We also never admit it. We always justify ourselves. We say, "I was abused when I was a kid, I did not have anything, people beat me, I was poor," and all of this is supposed to justify our crimes. Or, we say, "I didn't mean to hurt anybody," when in fact we did. The habit of justifying ourselves is what continues our suffering. To really be free from ignorance, we need knowledge. Knowledge of what makes us suffer and knowledge of what is free from suffering. So we start here and now learning about ourselves; self knowledge, self observation, self remembering. I already explained that self is not the terrestrial self. Our real self, our real Being is not our terrestrial me, but the only way we can get to know our real self is to first know the self that is here and now. To know that which does not suffer we need to start by knowing that which suffers. We suffer, so we start here and now, by looking in the face of our suffering and seeing it for what it is. I will give you a hint: most of our suffering is needless and self-produced. Most of our suffering is just a bad habit. We suffer because we have too much self-esteem, too much self -love, too much selfishness. We just have a lot of bad psychological habits. When you can learn this form of perception, a lot of that gets cleared away and you can start getting at the roots of your suffering. The Three Brains We study the three brains. We have the motor/instinctive/sexual brain which is related to the body, habits of movement, sensations to act physically. We have the emotional brain related to the heart, related to feelings, urges and impulses that are emotional. We have an intellect where we experience thought. None of these are our self. We think they are, but we are mistaken, and we need to understand that with our cognizance. We think that the body is our identity. We think that what we feel is our identity. We think that what we think is our identity. We think that we are the music we like, they music we do not like, the clothes we wear. We think that we are the education we have, the city we live in, the language we speak, the memories, the conditioning that we have through our whole life but that is all just false. We think the body is our self. It is not. You cannot know that until you begin to observe these three things. Until you begin to acquire conscious knowledge of them will you understand that you are not your thoughts. If you are your thoughts, then stop thinking, completely. If you are that, then you should be able to stop. Do not have any thoughts. The fact is, you cannot control it. You cannot control the sensations in your body. If those are you, then shouldn't you be able to control them? If those are yourself then shouldn't you be in charge? Are you in charge? Who is in charge of your psychological house? Of your physical house? Who is in charge? Shouldn't it be your self? If you were really in charge of your thoughts, you should be able to stop your thoughts and you should be able to think on what you want to think. Instead, the truth is that when you are sincere and you observe yourself, thoughts come of their own volition. Thoughts have their own will, their own desires, their own intentions, and as much as you fight them, you cannot stop them. Why? Because those thoughts are psychological factors that arise from deep levels of our psyche. Karma. Those thoughts are the voices of trapped Consciousness. Next time you lie down to sleep, listen to those thoughts, listen to the voices that emerge in your head, and try and see if they really are who you are. You will hear voices that have voices of men, of woman, different accents, different cravings, different desires, things that do not make any sense. Who are they? Who are all those thoughts,

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where are they coming from? What about all those feelings, what about all those sensations? Who is the self in all of that? Meditation Moreover, to really understand who you really are, you have to learn to meditate. You do not have to call it meditation, it can have other names. What I mean by meditation is a state of Consciousness in which you have serenity, bright inner perception, clarity of vision inside, and a lack of conflict, no tension, no tension in the body, no tension in the heart, no tension in the mind, but perceptive awareness, awake, receptive. In that state you can access and experience who you really are. In that state you can experience that you are not thought. Thought happens. Thought also can stop happening. You are not emotion. Emotions arise and they pass away yet you are still there perceiving. In the body, sensations arise and pass away. You can even abandon they body and still perceive that you are not the body. That experience can only be had through meditation. Through that experience you learn. "I am not the body. I am not emotion. I am not thought. I am perception." That is cognizant knowledge. When that can be established and maintained, you can acquire liberation. So to establish that, you have to study yourself here and now; learn to see the distinction between perceiver and perceived. In learning to see, to experience, to know that you can perceive without the body. You can perceive without emotion. You can perceive without thought, thus you are beyond all three. You are not the three brains, you are something else. That begins to open real knowledge. That requires that you are here and now. That is mapped in this diagram if this tree of life of Kabbalah. The Self on the Tree of Life Malkuth is the bottom sephirah of the tree of life, and represents the physical body, the motor/instinctive/sexual brain. We think we are the body. When you become cognizant, perceptive you can see that you are not the body. Yesod, the ninth sphere, represents vital energy, the vital body, or the ethereal body. It is a body of energy or chi. Through this exercise, through this perception, you can learn that you are not vital energy. Likewise successively up the tree of life, you can learn to perceive that you are not Hod, the astral body, emotion. You are not Netzach, the mental body, the intellect; you are not Tiphereth, the casual body, the essence, the Buddhata. You are not even Geburah, Consciousness, or Chesed,spirit. The more you awaken, the more you open your perception, the closer you get to the truth. The truth is that all of these sephiroth are all like layers of an onion. They are layers that go all the way back the Absolute. The word "self" is relative; it is not fixed and permanent. It is relative. We can say "my self" when we talk about our body, but it is not really ourselves. The body only exists and is functional because of all these other forces that exist and act through it. If you kill the body, you do not kill your existence, you just kill the physical part. We will all die that is, the physical body will die, but our Consciousness doesn't die, it just moves on according to its karma. Similarly, we are not the astral body, the body of desires or Kama Rupa. When we are in the astral body, we can say "this is my self," but that is relative, it isn't really true. The same is true of the mental body, the body of thought. In the fifth dimension, you can have an awakened experience using your mental body, travelling through different realms of nature, and say "this is my self," but it isn't true, it is relative, as what makes that mental body active are all these other levels that are flowing through it. Likewise, you can abandon that level and ascend into the sixth dimension related to Tiphereth in the tree of life, what we call Buddhata or Tathagatagarbha, the soul. We can have an experience there, awake in the sixth dimension, in heaven, and say "this is my self," but that is only relative, because that self is only there and existing because of the forces that flow through it from above. Tiphereth is not the ultimate level of "self." Likewise, successively, this is true all the way up the tree. Who is the real self? Even Chesed, Atman, that many religions state is the "real self" is really the Spirit, what we call our personal inner Father, our Buddha. We can say that that is "our Self," that our inner Buddha is our Self, but even that strictly speaking is not fully true, because that Buddha has his own inner Buddha, has his own Self, which is above him. Therefore, not even Chesed / Aman is our ultimate Self. He is part of our self, but he only exists because of the Self in him, the light in him, which is the trimurti above, the trikaya: Dharmakaya, Nirmanakaya, Sambogokaya. ANd those only exist because of Adhibuddha, Brahama, the Absolute. So who is the real self? What of self have you perceived? Have you perceived and experienced any of that we just described? Or have you only experienced your physical body with a few random flickers from time to time of emotion and thought? If that is the case, you are quite low in the level of being.

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A lot of us have what we call "knowledge" but we do not have real knowledge. Real knowledge is knowledge of the truth, knowledge of reality. Here, we call it gnosis. It is the knowledge of god, not intellectual but experiential, to have seen it, to have experienced it. That is jnana, that is gnosis. That is only possible by freeing the Consciousness from its conditioning. We do not have that; we do not have any real knowledge at all. We barely know that we are alive. If we really knew that we were alive, we would also know that we are going to die, and we would use our life well. Instead, we waste our life, we waste our energy on frivolous things, on stupid things; thus we have no knowledge of life. Vijnana What we have is vijnana. This Sanskrit word vijnana has "jna" but it also has this "vi" at the beginning. "Vi" in Sanskrit is a diminutive. It reduces the term that follows it. So vinjnana means "little knowledge, inferior knowledge, small knowledge." Vinjnana refers to the knowledge we get in books, the knowledge we get from our traditions, beliefs, families and friends, country, education. In other words, it is all the knowledge that we get in the line of life. We have been alive, we have had many bodies, and we have had many existences for countless ages. If we had real knowledge, we would remember it. Jnana, real knowledge, is in the Consciousness, and you do not forget that. Vijnana is little knowledge, not important; it is forgotten. Liberation comes through acquiring Jnana, gnosis, real knowledge, conscious knowledge. When you experience the divine, that experience becomes part of you. When you experience something consciously in life, it becomes part of you, it becomes part of your soul, part of your identity. It is something that no one can ever take from you. So the knowledge of this moment is up to you. If you want to know they divine, if you want to know the truth, it is up to you to awaken and see it. Open your Consciousness and see. The Four States of Consciousness For that reason, we study four states of Consciousness. Sanskrit / Greek 4. Turiya / Nous 3. Jagrata / Dianoia 2. Svapna / Pistis 1. Susupti / Eikasia For us here and now, the most important of those four states is a state in Greek that is called dianoia and in Sanskrit is called jagrata. That term means literally "awake." The acquisition of real knowledge, of Jnana, can only be acquired, can only enter into us, if we are here and now, present, watchful, awake. If you want to see God, if you want to experience the truth, be present, analyze everything, do not assume anything is true until you have perceived it for yourself. That is one of the hallmarks of the state dianoia. It can be defined as "a revision of beliefs, a revision of concepts." That revision is that we do not assume or accept anything, neither do we reject it until we know it is true for ourselves anything, but especially spiritual knowledge. You may have heard for your entire life that a certain person is a great master, a great spiritual leader, but until you have met the person, talked to the person, seen the person in action, you will never know if it is true. You will never have actual knowledge. To state what you have never experienced is a lie. In the same way, we have to revise all of our thoughts and concepts and beliefs about ourselves, about others, about life, about this planet. Not accepting or rejecting anything, but seeking to confirm it. This is pure science. What is science? Its purest form is to only accept what is proven. Science nowadays does not do that. Modern science believes a lot of things that are not proven, and rejects many things that are true. Worse, modern science fights and fights to affirm what is says is a fact, then suddenly has to say it is false, but never admits of the mistake. How many products are released as completely useful and safe, only to poison and kill the naive? How many medicines, chemicals, inventions, has "science" unleashed onto us because of their unwillingness to verify the truth? The same is true of all their theories and doctrines they hold as sacred. The vast majority of so-called "modern science" is mere beliefs and theories that no one has the ability or willingness to verify through their own experience. Worse, most of their efforts only feed the war machine and the greed of corporations. The Gnostic path is a path of pure science: not accepting, not rejecting, but proving through ones own experience. Until one knows, one does not say yay or nay, but suspends judgement. Questions and Answers Audience: How can the experience of nirvana be permanent?

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Instructor: Firstly, we need to understand what nirvana is. Translated literally, the word nirvana means "cessation." There is a place called nirvana, we can call it "heaven," and there are many heavens, just as there are many hells; there are many levels. Those places are not permanent, they are all impermanent. Our residence in them is also impermanent. Our life is impermanent. We have life briefly, and then it is taken, and if we are lucky we may get another one. Nothing is permanent except the divine, karma, and space. Everything else changes. We can experience nirvana and we can sustain that experience, but it is dependent on laws. We experience this level of lifewhatever our level happens to bebecause of the conditioning that we are in; it is self produced. We experience our life according to what we deserve. If we are suffering, we have produced the causes of that suffering, thus if we want to escape suffering and experience nirvana, we have to produce the causes for that. Those are actions, but the liberation to those levels is not caused by action, it is caused by knowledge. Performing the action is not enough; we have to understand the action and its effects. The understanding is the knowledge that brings liberation. In other words, the action we need to engage in is to stop causing harm and to cause benefit. We summarize that in three ways. Firstly, there is death. Everything that causes harm must die in us; we call that the ego. Secondly, we need birth. What causes benefit must be born. In these two, we see that our selfish behaviors, wrong perceptions, have to be cleansed and purify, and there must emerge real perception and purity, perception of the truth, and behaviors and qualities that are in harmony with nirvana, with those levels of existence. The third factor is sacrifice for others, to help others. You cannot stay in those levels if you are selfish and only concerned for yourself. You can rise a little bit, but you cannot sustain it and you cannot rise very high. So we have these three factors: birth, death, and sacrifice. Learn to apply those three now in your moment to moment perception of all things: look at things to see what is impure in yourself and do not empower it any longer so that it can die. Likewise, empower what is pure in yourself. Then, seek always what is best for others. In other words, exchange your anger for love, and in that you are dying, being born, and sacrificing for others. Exchanging your lust for Chastity and in that you are helping others, serving others. Exchange arrogance for humility and in that you serve others, not yourself. The truly humble person is not serving themselves. If they were serving themselves they would be arrogant. The humble one does not think of themselves at all. They think of others. So we see those three factors unified in a way of perception, how we see not only ourselves but others. In that way, from moment to moment, not only are we producing different actions, beneficial actions, but we are acquiring knowledge of those actions, and thus we naturally raise our level of being. This is natural. In the end, little by little, depending on the effort we make, we rise and we can sustain being in nirvana. Audience: Is any experience of nirvana in our hands or a gift from God? Instructor: Truly it is both, because you can experience nirvana only if you yourself have done actions to earn it, to deserve it. So in this way we can say action is related, but at the same time if God or your karma does not allow it you will not have it. This is why I was explaining that we need to be acceptant for what we do have and be grateful for what we do have and when we get something, be grateful. Sometimes God makes exceptions for , and manages our karma so that we can get things that really we do not deserve. Getting access to these teachings is often that case. A large percentage of humanity truly does not deserve access to this knowledge, because they have never produced the causes to enter. Most of humanity only wants sex and money; they do not want liberation from suffering, but by the grace of God, humanity is being exposed to the real knowledge, which is good. Similarly, God can give us experience in Nirvana as inspiration to the soul, to encourage the soul to work. So it is both. God can give you experiences in nirvana to encourage you, to inspire you even when you do not deserve it. It can happen. Audience: I would like to know if this stuff here has been experienced by the teachers? Instructor: It would be very disingenuous and duplicitous for me to tell you these things if I had not experienced them. It would make me a liar. I cannot say that I have experienced everything in the teaching, because I have not, but I have experienced enough of it to know that it is true, and I have experienced enough of it to know that there is more that I need to know. I have also experienced enough of it to know the causes of my suffering, and that is why I am explaining it you, so you can also examine the causes in yourself. I cannot speak for any other instructor. I do not know if other instructors from other schools and traditions have experienced gnosis; only they know. I know from my experience that some instructors that I have seen and know

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are liars, because some affirm things that are not true, and some affirm things they have not experienced, but that is ok, they are just liars like all of us. They are trying to help people, which is good, but they need to be aware of what they are saying and why, and they need to acquire experience for themselves of what is true and what is not, so that they will no longer be liars. Audience: How does Chastity help others? Instructor: How does Chastity help others? We could write books and books about that. The simple answer is that lust is a cause of suffering in the universe and you can only experience that when you have experienced the benefits of Chastity also. Lust is a psychological habit that consumes and devolves enormous amounts of energy. It converts what was and what should be a pure energy in nature into something impure. A simple example is to observe the incredible beauty of a flowernot just to think of a flower or to look casually at a flower, but to sit and meditate and to contemplate the incredible beauty of a flower, its fragrance, everything about it is so pure and beautiful and that is an example of Chastity but only at the level of a plant. A far greater degree of purity is possible in a human being. We call them angels or masters. A real angel or master is incredibly beautiful because of their Chastity, because all that energy is pure, it is not infected with desire, craving, animalism. It is pure, a reflection of the creative powers of God, and you cannot understand that unless you've seen it, experienced it. You can experience that with your own experiments with this science. Firstly, through working towards achieving Chastity, transforming your sexual energy and cleaning it. You will experience the benefits of that on every level of yourself; physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, consciously. Then when you have an experience face to face in person with a master who is pure, who does not have lust, you will be so ashamed of yourself and humanity whilst you are also in awe of the incredible beauty that is possible in a human being that you will realize what Chastity truly is. People now on this planet think that Chastity is a form of bondage, that to be chaste is to suffer. It is not, Chastity is to be free. To be in Chastity is to be free of lust, the bondage of lust, the suffering of lust, to be free of it. To be a perfect expression of the divine. Chastity does not mean repression. It means pure sexuality. A chaste being is a sexual being, but free of lust. A chaste being is a being that has sexuality but no animalism, actually a human being. Such a human being is incredibly beautiful, and you cannot put it into words. No painting, no art on this planet has ever captured the beauty of Chastity, ever. It cannot be transmitted through any kind of art; it has to be experienced and seen, and when you see it, you will never forget it. Chastity helps others through influence. A chaste person inspires others to abandon desire. The fragrance of Chastity stimulates the Consciousness to long for freedom from the slavery of lust. Chastity also frees the energy of lust that was feeding suffering. When we are filled with lust, our lust affects others. When we free that energy, we no longer affect others with our lust. Audience: The innermost Chesed is created by the trinity, this is a two part question, so it's a duality is that correct? Instructor: What do you mean by duality? Audience: It uses the physical time and experience to gain so it is kind of in duality or is that because it is a tool of Ain which is all possibilities at the same time emptiness so is it that Ain is uses the duality of Chesed? Instructor: Sure, your question is, is Atman, Chesed dual? I will answer you with this. Is the light from a fire dualistic? It is the same thing. Atman, Chesed, is the light of the fire. Atman is not dual. There is no duality there; it is just the light of the fire. Everything else that emerges on the tree of life are like lenses that focus that light until we get down to the hell realms were those lenses are very twisted and clouded. What we see is still transmitted by light but is extremely twisted. In the lower realms, we do not see reality. To see reality we have to remove all the lenses, all of them, even going beyond Atman, to see the ultimate truth. That is why the Buddha Shakyamuni taught the doctrine of Anatman, "no self." He did not disagree that Atman exists. What he disagreed with was that theory that Atman was permanent and the ultimate level of Self. Atman is an expression of the Absolute. It comes through the trinity. There is no duality in those levels. They are just greater extensions of the same energy. Audience: At any of the levels at any point in the tree? Instructor: Ultimately yes. Audience: It's an appearance of duality?

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Instructor: Exactly. This is were you can get into a lot of philosophical difficulties because the intellect simply cannot understand. This is the great problem that has emerged in all the followers of Shankaracharya, the teacher that I was mentioning. Shankara demonstrated that Buddhism and Hinduism are the same thing. That is what his scriptures did. He accomplished that in less than thirty years. He was thirty three years old when he left. He managed to show in that time to the entire Asian continent that Buddhism and Hinduism are the same. An amazing accomplishment, that everyone has forgotten since then. His primary teaching was simply that: there is no duality. Ultimate existence is non-dual, but you cannot understand it with the intellect. Unfortunately, his followers do not awaken Consciousness, and if you get engaged in conversation with them, they will trap you in a hundred different logical tricks that they have learned, none of which reveal anything, and only complicate the mind about duality and non-duality. "If this exists and that must exist. That means its dual and it doesn't exist." Its garbage, the lot of it, because it is just an intellectual game. What those people need to learn is to meditate and experience reality. They will understand what is expressed in the Prajnaparamita Sutra. "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." There are two truths: the relative and the conventional. You can only say is true what you have experienced is true. So for us, we experience duality, and until we can see the non dual, we are wasting our breath talking. Audience: Is Consciousness a thought form? Instructor: Consciousness is beyond thought. You can experience Consciousness without thinking. The entry levels to that are Dharana or Pratyahara or Dhyana. These are levels of serene mind in which Consciousness perceives without the interference of thought. The more established that becomes, the closer you get to entering into samadhi. Samadhi is an experience of Consciousness free of any filters. It is Consciousness liberated temporarily. That is not thought. It is beyond thought. Audience: Where is the self on the tree of life? Instructor: On the tree of life, where is the self? The entire tree is the self, but it is all relative. The tree of life is a map of our psyche, of our soul. Every level is related to our Consciousness. Right now, we are here in the physical body, that is related with our self. It is the bottom of that tree. There are also levels below the physical level. We call it subconsciousness, unconsciousness; hell. That is all of the submerged parts of our mind. That is all part of our quote "self" but trapped in suffering The whole tree represents our self, but where is the ultimate, true nature of self? The Absolute. Audience: Can one be disconnected by nature and be broken away? Instructor: They are disconnected by nature because of karma. Our situation is like that. We do not experience those higher levels because of our own actions, because of karma. We do not experience the sixth, seventh dimensions consciously because we do not have access to it because of our conditioning Audience: Is each sphere like a person? Instructor: No, it's just a glyph that represents symbolically levels and dimensions in nature. Audience: Where is the location? Instructor: It is here. It is here and now. All you can confirm is true is here and now. What the map shows, what the Kabbalah shows, is how to understand different experiences of here and now. For example, can you confirm without any question that you are not already dead? If you have an experience out of your body while you are alive, you can find dead people who do not know they are dead. They think they are still alive. This is the difficulty we have now, and incredible importance of this map. When you have studied it and understood it and how it relates to the Consciousness, you can start to change your fundamental relation to living. This means that as you start to acquire conscious experience of different states of being, you can understand them in relation to each otherthat is what the tree of life is for. You can understand experiences in the hell realms, experiences in the physical realm, and in the fifth dimension, sixth dimension, seventh dimension. They are all mapped here. They have all been described by all the saints and prophets throughout history. The value of the teaching of the Kabbalah is that it helps you organize it conceptually so that when you experience them you won't be confused. It acts as a guide and it underscores every religion in the world. It can be organized in different ways because it is not a fixed model. It is relative. It is beautiful. It is very deep. It is as deep as creation. So if you can image how hard it is to understand all of life, that is how hard it is to understand Kabbalah, because it is life.

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Audience: I had trouble discussing this with people. When I am trying to talk about the orgasm they say that is natural and so if we are these intellectual animals and part of us is animalistic and that is natural then are we asked to do something that is not natural? So in this case is natural not good? Instructor: What is natural for an animal is natural for an animal. What we have to understand is our position in the flow of the development of the Consciousness. In every level of existence there are different laws that apply. Anyone is free of their own will and their own choices to use their energy in anyway they see fit. This is part of how nature functions. If you want to gain access into higher levels of existence beyond the animal state, you have to use your energies in a different way, not an animal way but a human way. You can only know the truth of that through experience. It cannot be explained it can only be experienced and known. What I try to advise people is to ask them, "If you have not experienced what Gnosis affirms, then how do you know it is false?" Some people simply do not have the inclination, the path to follow that instruction and apply it, and that is their right. Some people just want to live for pleasure, and they have the right to do that, and nature allows them to do it, and God allows them to do it, and they are free to do so. Gnosis is for the ones who have experienced the unpleasant consequences of indulging in pleasure, and the ones that have the spiritual inquietude that feels something isn't right about desire. There is something more to life, to sex. Those are the ones who are prepared to receive the instruction, and that is not a lot of people. Most of humanity is really not interested. So we need to understand that. We need to give the teachings to those who want it and need it and use it. And, the ones who do not want it, we need to respect them. That is fine, it is their choice. It is hard and painful, especially when we are dealing with people we love. Audience: How do you convince them? Instructor: You cannot. We have to respect the will of everyone. Ultimately, we can barely change ourselves. Audience: Should you give up on someone then? If you were speaking with someone and they got into an agreement with Tantra and Alchemy and there like pushing for the orgasm and you are transmuting. I do not know if I have heard a lecture of yours or his were its ok to be with someone who is not transmuting as long as you're doing it. Instructor: What we have to learn is to love everyone, to not change anyone's will but to just love them. To love everyone no matter what. Audience: But if they are giving you a hard time about it saying "oh your making it harder for me to experience pleasure because you are not...." Instructor: Yes, that is a painful situation. That happens a lot. Ultimately, you need to acquire your own sense in your heart to handle that situation with that person, to walk that fine balance, to love but to also hold true to your principles. That is not easy. There is no easy answer. Ultimately, we need to be behave with respect with everyone, but without compromising our relationship with our inner Being. That is not easy. So I cannot tell you what to do that is something you need to find on your own. All I can tell you is that there are many couples suffering and struggling with that problem, and that is part of our karma. There are many things in this work that are painful and difficult to deal with. That is part of why I gave the lecture. We need to be able to look into the face of our difficulties and understand them. To understand the other people, to understand ourselves and find the way. Something that Samael Aun Weor taught that has helped me a lot in all these types of difficulties is that: "A mind that is in conflict can never resolve a problem." When we have a problem that is causing intellectual or emotional conflict, the only way we will solve it is to first find some serenity. Generally in my experience that means I have to meditate. It means I have to observe myself. I have to relax, but I also have to stop trying to change something I cannot change. Sometimes it is another person, sometimes it is a situation and I have to accept it. Audience: To fall from experience is it a part of the journey or is it due to wrong action? Instructor: What do you mean by fall from experience? Audience: To stop having spiritual experiences. Instructor: There are many reasons why we could stop having spiritual experiences. Sometimes it is because we are not making effort in the right way. Sometimes it is because the experiences we were getting were a gift from God, and God gave us enough, and he wants us to work now. Sometimes it is karma. We have to analyze ourselves. We pass through spiritual days and nights. There are times in which we acquire lots of insight and experiences spiritually, and there are other times in which we get nothing, and that is part of the path. Life is like that. Ultimately, no mater what life brings us, we need to be the same person: centered, awake, aware, serene.

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Whether we are having difficulties or ease, praise or blame, wealth or poverty, acceptance or rejection. We have to learn how to be the same person in all situations, remembering God, being here and now. What inspired me to give this lecture and the one before was precisely that. Spiritual experiences are not a measure of spiritual advancement. Experiences come and go. What measures our spiritual advancement is the quality of our Consciousness. If we are impatient, demanding experiences, disappointed, frustrated, angry, irritated, then right there are many qualities we need to meditate upon. I mentioned in the previous lecture that we will experience a lot of difficulties, that life not only as individuals is going to be hard but as a world, and the only way we can get through it is if we have this ability to be the same one, to be serene, to not let ourselves be so manipulated and impacted by external events but to always be able to manage our psychological house, to be here and now. Things always change, nothing is permanent except the Being. If you really want security, safety, happiness, serenity, remember God. No matter what is happening in your life, you will still have access to that serenity. When you have that ability to be here and now, and be perceptive inside, you can comprehend a lot about yourself, about the world, and you can make a big difference in the lives of others.

The Illusion of this Moment

Written by Gnostic Instructor We are going to continue talking about the scripture by Shankaracharya called Atma Bodha. In the previous two lectures (The Importance of This Moment and The Knowledge of This Moment) we were explaining how this scripture from Hinduism presents the philosophy of Vedanta, which is one of the most important philosophies of Hinduism. The important thing to remember about Vedanta is that it is not a philosophy like a Western philosophy: something designed to be played with in the intellect. Real Vedanta or any philosophy from the genuine Asian traditions is the root knowledge or theory that should accompany practice. It is not something to just sit and think about or debate. So when we study this scripture Atma Bodha, remember it is written for those who are putting into practice the principles that it describes. The Two Truths In order to understand Atma Bodha, we need to understand that there are two truths in life. This is the core foundation for all Asian philosophy, to understand that there are two truths, not one. Some philosophies tend to approach their exposition seeking a single truth. Even in the Gnostic tradition, we say there is one truth and one reality, but in its practical manifestation, it reveals itself as being dual, having two fundamental truths. This seems to contradict the message of Vedanta, which says that there is no duality, there is only unity. This apparent contradiction is not a contradiction at all. It is an appearance that clouds our perspective. It is an appearance that happens because of our mind. The reality is that these two truths are one. The first truth is the ultimate reality, the ultimate nature of all things, what we call "the absolute," it is the ultimate truth. It is the ultimate nature of all things. It is visible to the Consciousness; it is visible to someone who is awake. But to us, it is invisible, unknowable. "The Absolute is beyond conditioned life. It is beyond that which is relative. It is the Real Being; It is the Non-Being because It does not keep any concordance with our concepts, but the Absolute is the "Real Being." This is why we do not intellectually comprehend It, because for us the Absolute is like Non-Being; nonetheless, It is the Real Being of the Being. [...] The Absolute is not a God, neither a divine nor human individual. It would be absurd to give form to That which has no form; it would be nonsense to try to anthropomorphize space. Indeed, the Absolute is the Unconditional and Eternal Abstract Space, far beyond Gods and human beings. The Absolute is the Uncreated Light which does not project a shadow in any place during the profound night of the Great Pralaya. The Absolute is beyond Time, Number, Measurement, and Weight; beyond Causality, Form, Fire, Light and Darkness. Nonetheless, the Absolute is the Fire and the Uncreated Light." - Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah That is the first truth: the Absolute, the ultimate nature of all things. In Hinduism, in Vedanta, this is called Brahma, or Sat-chit, "absolute existence." The second truth, that appears to contradict the first, is what we call "reality." This is conventional truth, or what we seem to perceive as true. These two truths appear to contradict each other: the absolute reality and conventional reality. They appear to conflict with each other.

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Through our vision, through our hearing, through our sense of taste and touch and smell, we can perceive only a limited range of what is perceivable, and yet we call that perception "truth," not understanding that we are not perceiving everything that exists. We are only seeing a small fraction. Even in visible light. Visible light is only a fraction of the energy that is perceivable, and even using all of our most advanced tools, we still only perceive a fraction of what is there. Someone with an awakened Consciousness, with a sufficient degree of awakening, can perceive both truths at the same time: the absolute nature of a thing, and the conventional nature of a thing. There is no contradiction, they see both sides, they see all of it. The reason this is important is that when we study philosophy, especially Vedanta or Tantric Philosophy that is very similar to Vedanta, the presentation of truth is given in a very specific way. If we do not understand the two truths and the nature of our own perception, we will not understand the philosophy, and we will make mistakes. The Perception of Atman Understanding that, we look at the third or fourth line of Atma Bodha, which states that: "Atman appears to be finite because of ignorance. When ignorance is destroyed, Atman, which does not admit of any multiplicity, truly reveals itself by itself, like the sun when the clouds pass away." Atman is a Sanskrit word that means "self." The bulk of Hinduism is about coming to know the true self, the real self. We do not see that self, because or vision is clouded by our so-called perception of reality. That perception is our assumption that conventional reality, what we perceive through the senses, is what is real. We do not understand that when it comes to our perception, we are in a state of ignorance. We do not see the truth; we do not see the actual reality. Perception of the absolute reality is only possible when our perception is clean, when there are no filters clouding our ability to see. This perception is not just physical perception. It is perception beyond the five senses. So what Atma Bodha is saying here as written by Shankaracharya is that Atman appears to be finite because of ignorance. We think God exists according to our ideas. Everybody has there own ideas about divinity and "self." The atheists think that self is their way of thinking and their way of believing. The Christians think that the self or god is an old man up in the clouds, and that we are a soul that is required to bow and sing praises to this old man up in the clouds. The Buddhists think that there is no self, but there is a Buddha that is a god somewhere in the universe. The Muslims think the way they think, and the Daoist's think the way they think, and all of us are mistaken, because Atman cannot be perceived through our clouded perception. Our mind creates that finite appearance, in other words, our perception is created by our state of ignorance. As we have explained previously, ignorance is a lack of knowledge, a lack of knowing, a lack of seeing, and we have explained the word knowledge comes from the root that means "to perceive, to see for oneself." Because we do not see our Innermost for what it is, we are in a state of ignorance, and we think the Innermost exists according to our ideas. Many spiritual people nowadays think that the Innermost is themselves. We think that the Innermost is a superior I, that our true self is "master so-and-so" or that it is a Goddess or that it is an angel clothed in a white robe. Whatever our particular religious fancy happens to be, we project that idea and put god in that box and think that our true self is in that box, and we are wrong. The fact is we have not perceived Atman in ourselves, and thus we do not know what Atman is. Knowledge of Atman comes through perception. To perceive Atman, we have to remove the ignorance that impedes that perception. That ignorance is in us, it is in our psyche. We have to change how we see in order to see the truth. Atman is Not multiple The second part here says, "When ignorance is destroyed, Atman, which does not admit of any multiplicity, truly reveals itself by itself." Atman is not multiple. Yet, we are a great multiplicity. As I have been recommending through these lectures, when we are sincere and watching our own mind, watching what we can perceive constantly, it is inevitable that we will arrive at the conclusion that we are filled with contradictions. We are a complete multiplicity. From one moment to the next, we contradict ourselves. We are filled with competing desires. Atman does not have that. Atman does not contradict itself. Atman is pure, eternal, Consciousness, bliss, wisdom, knowledge, serenity, love. In Hebrew, the names that we use to describe Atman are Chesed and Gedulah, and these mean love and mercy. Atman is one. Atman is a light that comes out of the trinity. Atman is an expression of god, of the divine.

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So when certain philosophers study Vedanta, Buddhism, or Hinduism, they repeat what the scriptures say, which is "I am." Tat Tvam Asi ( ): "Thou art that." - Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 "That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings, who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless beingI am that." -Amritbindu Upanishad "That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahmanthat thou art." - Sankaracharya Vedanta states that we are Atman. Followers of Vedanta and similar philosophies firmly believe this, and affirm it constantly. These people are mistaken. We are not That so long as we are trapped in multiplicity. Atman does not have multiplicity. If we find multiplicity in ourselves, we are not that. That is our true nature, but we are out of touch with It. When ignorance is destroyed, Atman is revealed. This is a very critical phrase in this scripture. This phrase explains the basis of liberation and it explains why the followers have been mistaken for so long. Many of the followers of Shankaracharya and other philosophies that are similar mistakenly believe that merely by having the concept of the philosophy of Vedanta in their heads that they can be liberated. They mistakenly believe that because they have studied the scripture and they know the concepts of it, and they can debate it, that is leading them to liberation; they are wrong. Only one thing leads to liberation: the destruction of ignorance. How is ignorance destroyed? It is destroyed through perception of Atman. That is the only way. Knowledge of Atman destroys ignorance, knowledge of reality, and that reality begins here and now in ourselves, knowledge of the truth. Not what we want to be, not what we would like to be, not what we have been told we will be, but what is. To see what is. That begins here and now in ourselves. To look at ourselves and see ourselves as we are: impure, suffering, and trapped in ignorance. Only by seeing that for what it is and our own role in perpetuating it, can we eliminate ignorance. In that process, Atman becomes revealed naturally, in the same way the sun is exposed when the clouds move away. The clouds are substances, constructions in our own psyche, inside of us. The only thing that prevents us from seeing the truth of the divine is our own mind, nothing else. The only obstacle we have is our own mind. Cyclic Existence In the next passage it is written: "Cyclic existence which is full of attachments, aversions is like a dream. It appears to be real as long as one is ignorant but becomes unreal when one is awake." This phrase "cyclic existence" in Sanskrit is samsara. Samsara is a state of suffering. It is the state of Consciousness of any being that has ego. Even a small fraction of ego creates that small fraction of samsara, cyclic existence, thus even the gods suffer in samsara at their level. This is why when we study the bhavachakra or what is called "the wheel of samsara" we see six realms. One of those six realms is the realm of the gods, the heavens, in which there are beings that are much purer than we are, but they still suffer, because they still have attachment. The axis of the wheel of samsara is ignorance, attachments, and aversions. Attachments are those psychological phenomena that we chase, that we want. Aversions are psychological phenomena that we want to avoid. This dynamic between craving and aversion is what puts the wheel of samsara in motion. That wheel of samsara is our own psyche. It is not outside of us, it is inside, it is psychological. It is the repetition of psychological habits. Chasing after our cravings and attachments and trying to avoid the things we do not want. That is what creates suffering or samsara. It is a state of ignorance. As it states here, it is like a dream. To Question Perception We think we are awake. We think that what we are experiencing is fundamentally real and true. This scripture is telling us that it is not. This is one level of our ignorance. We do not question what we perceive. We assume that what we experience is true and real. Due to the fact that we are in a state of a lack of knowledge, a lack of perception of truth, we believe that what we see is true. We do not question it. We are not there at the gateway of our senses doubting what we see, analyzing what we perceive, questioning it, investigating it. We assume that what we perceive is real and true. In fact, this condition has become so pervasive and strong that now we can stare at a tiny little screen and believe that the images we see on that screen are true, and become completely hypnotized by it. We can watch a movie or a video, a game, and we believe so much in what we are seeing that our body is reacting, chemicals are being produced in the body. If we are watching a violent movie, we react with fear. If we are watching something lustful,

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we react with lust or desire. If we are watching something that we want for ourselves, we react with envy, and the body produces chemicals and reactions. When someone is threatened in the movie, we get chills, get scared and jump, we cry out. When we see something sad, we shed tears. All we are looking at are images, images that are fake, images made by actors who are lying to us, who are saying something and acting like something that is not true, but we believe it is true. Even if our mind says, "I know they are actors, I know it is just a movie, I know it is not real, it just a game, I am only playing." Our Consciousness does not think that. We become hypnotized, and the proof is in the reaction that we experience in our three brains. So if we cannot question our perception of what is on the computer screen or on the video monitor or on our cell phone or iPod or whatever device we use, then how are we questioning the reality around us that we perceive from moment to moment? We are not even questioning things that we tell ourselves we know are fake. Then how are we even questioning the reality happening with our family and friends and our co-workers? We do not, and this is our problem, this is why we suffer. Everything that we perceive truly is like a dream, because we are asleep, and we have this dreaming state throughout our daily life, thus we have it when our physical body sleeps too. When we awaken here and now, we start to see the unreality of all of these things, and this is the training that we undergo: to begin to question what we perceive, to be awake, to see it for what it is. You can watch TV, but when you watch, look at how it is all fake, it is all lies, it is all designed to sell you something: an idea, a product, a belief. It is not real. The same goes in your daily life. What of what you see is actually real? We have to learn to question that, and start to awaken. The Four States of Consciousness In studying that, we look at some terms. It is interesting to discover that these states of Consciousness that we are describing are structured the same way in two of our most important traditions: in the Hindu tradition and in the Greek. Now naturally, we know that the ancient Indians and the ancient Greeks had a lot of exchange of ideas and commerce, but this philosophy of Consciousness is far older than both the Greeks and the Hindus. The state of Consciousness that we are describing here is called Susupti in Sanskrit. It is a state of very deep hypnotism, a complete lack of self-awareness. It is the lowest possible state of Consciousness. It is the state of Consciousness that all of us are in most of the time. In Greek, its equivalent is Eikasia, a state of Consciousness defined by animal instinct. Honestly, sincerely, when we watch ourselves and we observe the behavior of people, we see that most of our behavior is purely guided by instinct and desire, impulse, with very little cognizance. It is a state in which there is absolutely no self-awareness and not even any interest in Consciousness. It is a complete state of ignorance that is lacking all awareness of God, of the being, of the Buddha, whatever name you want to put to Atman. A little bit better than that is the second state of Consciousness. This state in Hinduism or Sanskrit is called Svapna, and its equivalent in Greek is Pistis. This word Pistis has different functions and different uses. We are talking about it now in the context of state of Consciousness. This degree of Consciousness or the second degree is characterized by dreaming. In fact, Svapna in Sanskrit means "dream." This is a state of Consciousness in which it is not purely instinctive and animalistic, it is a little better. There could be little flashes of conscience, a little bit of awareness of "if I do this, somebody might not like it" or "I might get into trouble" or "it may not be good for me to do it, maybe there is a cost to it." Still, this is a state of psychological sleep, a state of ignorance, only slightly better. This is a state in which you might remember what you did, maybe. In the first state Susupti or Eikasia, we generally do not remember these times at all, since we are completely asleep. If you think back over the last seven days, can you remember every moment of what you were doing, for moment to moment, for seven full days? I do not just mean during the day light. I mean when your body is asleep, too. None of us can, because we are asleep. Those periods of time when we have absolutely no memory correspond to Susupti or Eikasia: a complete lack of Consciousness, zero Consciousness; we are completely mechanical, doing whatever we do, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent. In the second stage, Svapna, we are dreaming, we are in a dream state. Our physical body can be active, doing whatever we do everyday, but we are dreaming. We are not aware of ourselves, we are not aware of God, we are not aware of anything other than the projections of our mind. This is a dream state, and we keep this state during the night and during the day. This is the state in Greek that is called Pistis. Yes, we are dreaming all day, too. We are distracted. Our Consciousness is floating in a vague, sleepy state, marked by fantasies, daydreams, hazy perceptions.

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The Third State of Consciousness Those that have received a bit of training learn about a third state. You cannot experience this state mechanically, accidentally. You cannot experience this state by chance, although everybody thinks that they are in this state all the time. The third state of Consciousness in Sanskrit is called Jagrata, and in Greek, Dianoia. This is a state of awakened Consciousness. Jagrata means "awake." In this state of Consciousness, one is aware of oneself, conscious of ones actions, thoughts, and feelings. Conscious of what one sees and does. dinoia: understanding, discrimination; from di, "thoroughly, from side-to-side," which intensifies noi, "to use the mind," nos, "mind" "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy psych, and with all thy dianoia." - Matthew 22:37 "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us dianoia [understanding], that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, [even] in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." 1 John 5:20 It is possible that at stages in life, like when you are a child, you may have flashes of dianoia at this time. When you are a baby, you exist in this state that is Jagrata. Babies are awake, but as the ego incorporates into the personality, as we grow older and we develop a lot of habits,we lose it, and after that, it is very rare to experience it, because of our layers and layers of bad habits, and because of our deep state of hypnosis or ignorance. It may be possible in near death experiences, in very shocking experiences to have glimpses of being awake, but it is not possible to sustain it unless one is trained, unless we know how to do it, and do it by will. Jagrata means "awake" and this state of Consciousness is characterized not only by the perception of what is outside of us, but by the simultaneous perception of what is inside of us. In other words, our attention is not unidirectional. In the state of Jagrata, one perceives in all directions. It takes energy in the Consciousness to do that, and it takes training to know how to do that. Dianoia comes from di, "thoroughly, from side-to-side." To experience this state, we either need training or to have eliminated enough ego that that state is already ones natural state. On this planet, such a person is extremely rare, and to be at that state, they would have had training in a previous life. To have that ability to be continuously conscious depends upon a certain percentage of Consciousness being freed of obscuration. In other words, a certain amount of knowledge already had to be acquired. Remember, knowledge is not intellectual knowledge. It is perception of truth. It is perception that is not clouded by ignorance. So this is the third state of Consciousness. In all of these lectures that we give, in all of the books that we study, this is the state of Consciousness we are attempting to perfect. A state of Consciousness being awake. You can sustain an awakened state even if the ego is very strong in you. It can be done, it just takes willpower. Many people say it is too difficult, "I am just a beginner, I cannot do it." These are excuses. These are mechanisms that the ego uses in order to enforce its control. A state of awakened perception can be sustained by anyone, but it is not easy, especially in the beginning, it takes al lot of willpower, a lot of energy, a lot of effort. Turiya The fourth state in Sanskrit is called Turiya. That word literally means "the fourth." Its equivalent in Greek is nous. There are many people who believe that once they have studied some philosophy and they have learned a few practices, that they can establish the state of Turiya in themselves easily, and even adopt that as a name, calling themselves "Turiyas." They are liars to themselves and to others. People who establish this level of Consciousness are quite rare on this planet. Turiya is a state of absolutely pure Consciousness: that means that the ego has been completely removedno ego, none. Such a being is a perfect being. They have no lust, no anger, no envy, no fear. Some Turiyas you can look to for examples are Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses. These are Turiyas. That is the level of Consciousness of the fourth state. That is the level of Consciousness of the fourth state. It is very high. A Turiya sees all things without any contradiction in their perception. They see the two truths simultaneously. They perceive the conventional reality that we all see, and they see ultimate reality at the same time. They see it with no contradiction, with no filters, with no obscuration, and no ignorance. Many think that when studying these levels of Consciousness that to reach the level of Turiya or nous must be really boring and must be a kind of torture. This is because they study the scriptures that say we need to renounce

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desire and we have to overcome pleasure and we have to renounce all the enjoyable things in life. People think, "Why would I want to be like that, having nothing, renouncing everything?" What we do not grasp is that the levels of Consciousness of the third or fourth state are levels of Consciousness that are coming closer and closer to the root of being itself, the root of life, the root of existence. They are actually getting further and further away from suffering, not deeper into suffering. The third and fourth states are states of freedom, blissfulness, knowledge, understanding, insight, happiness. This idea "to renounce is painful" is an idea of the ego that doesn't want to give up attachment. This idea that we should "give up the orgasm and give up our wealth and renounce worldly things and materialism" sounds painful to the ego, and because we do not have perception of the absence of attachment, we assume that it must be horrible. We are attached and we love our attachment and we are ignorant of the suffering that attachment produces. We do not realize that even in that state of Jagrata or Dianoia, when you are awake, you are free, relative to your degree of awakening. The more awake you become, the freer you become. Someone who reaches the level of Turiya or Nous is completely free from all kinds of bondage. In other words, they are experiencing perfect happiness, contentment, joy, love. You can translate these terms Turiya and Nous as "ecstasy" or in other words the state of Eden, which in Hebrew means "bliss." This is the bliss of the Consciousness. So these levels of Consciousness are inside of us, but we do not understand what they mean, because we have not experienced them for what they are. That is why when we begin these types of studies, we emphasize repeatedly: study yourself, watch yourself, look at what you experience, analyze it, try to put it in perspective. We need to see through the illusions that we ourselves sustain. Maya Anyone who has studied Hinduism has heard this term Maya. We are not talking about the South American Maya. We are talking about the Sanskrit word Maya. Most people say Maya means "illusion," and it does. Yet, the meaning of Maya is far deeper, very compelling, and very important. It is one of the most important concepts in Hinduism. Maya comes from the root in Sanskrit "ma." This root term "ma" means "to measure." It also means "mother." In most languages in the world when you say "ma" or "amma" you are saying mother. Mom in English. Additionally, that root "ma" also means "not." When you look at this word "ma" in the context of Maya, literally translated, Maya means "not that." So if you study Hindu philosophy or any tradition that is based on Hindu philosophy, like Buddhism, like Theosophy, you need to understand that Maya means "not that." So throughout the Bhagavad-Gita for example, or the Shri Devi Bhagavatam, or the Upanishads or Mahabharata, it is also talked about: "do not become a victim of Maya. We have to free ourselves from Maya. We have to see through the veil of Maya." Illusion: where does it come from, what is it? What is Maya? Just as "ma" can mean "not," it can mean "mother." So if "ya" is "that," it can mean "mother, that." Maya is the mother, the great mother, and translated directly, Maya can mean "enchantment, illusion or appearance." Maya is also the name of the Divine Mother. Lakshmi is called Mahamaya, and that is also the name of the mother of Buddha Shakyamuni. Furthermore, Maya is the name of a demon, a goddess called Mayasura. Even the Gods exist because of Mahamaya So all together, this term Maya has become an excuse of some philosophies to reject woman, claiming that woman are Maya, that woman are "demon goddesses that weave webs of illusion." This is a misunderstanding of what the teaching is stating. The teachings about Maya are very deep and profound, and very difficult for the intellect to understand. The mother creates all things. Everything that exists comes from the womb of a mother. Physically, we know this true of our physical body. It is also true of a universe and all the worlds. Everything that exists comes from the womb of Prakriti, "matter or mother." Everything that exists has two aspects: conventional and ultimate. Our body is Maya, illusion. Our physical body has its conventional reality, but because of our lack of knowledge, we ignorantly assume that this body is ourselves. We ignorantly assume that this body is all we will ever be, and we live in this continual state of Maya, illusion. We believe that the appearance of the body is real and important. So we dress the body up. We adorn it with fashion, with makeup, with postures, with language, with hair styles. We do this all to create an appearance, Maya, an appearance to fool ourselves and to fool others. It is all lies.

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Our body is Maya, "mother, that." It is a mother, physically, whether we are male or female, we create "children"the results of our actions. Our body is a womb. Out of our body will come whatever we create in this life. We are the child of our own deeds. Our body is Maya: "not that." Our body is not Atman. Our body is not the Absolute. Our body is not our self. It is "not that." This term Maya has very great significance. We do not perceive reality, we only perceive illusion, Maya, and we need to see through that, see it for what it is. The Two Lines To do that is as we explained: to be here and now, awake, looking. We study these two lines: the line of being and the line of life. Perception of truth cannot happen in the future and it cannot happen in the past. It happens here and now, being present, being cognizant of what one sees, not only with the eyes, but with all of our senses, especially the sense of self-observation, the sense of self-awareness. So be here and now, be here in the body, and observe the body, and look at it as it is, Maya, "not that." When you are in your body remembering yourself, you are not the body. The body is not Atman. The body is not perception. The body is not Consciousness, it is just the body. It is just a vessel that we utilize, but it is "not that," it is "Maya." That perception, although it is inside of the body, although it is inside of what we would call "ourselves," is still projected outwards from where Consciousness emerges. Consciousness or perception emerges out of our pineal gland, in relation with the pituitary gland. This is what allows us to perceive, not only through our five physical senses, but through other senses that we are scarcely aware of. Nonetheless, as deep inside of this body that that perception can be felt, it still projects outwards, it is still perceiving outwards. So even if are in your body, being aware of your body, and you are feeling your heart beat, and you are feeling your digestion, and you are feeling your breath, the flow of your attention is still moving from your pineal gland out. You can see that for yourself, you can feel that, you can experience that. Everything that you perceive in that way is Maya, everything from the pineal gland out, as far across the universe. That means your pineal gland, your brain, your head, your neck, your chest, your arms, your legs, your body, your neighbors, your house, your room, your bed, everything that you can perceive is "not that." No matter if you look to the past or the future, everything that you can perceive is Maya and has to be seen as such: "not that," not Atman. If you want to see God, you have to look the other way, towards were Consciousness is coming from. So, feel that: invert your perception. Not the perception of eyes and ears, tongue and sensation in the body. Perception itself. Look back into where perception comes from. That is were you can begin to sense Atman. Consciousness comes from Atman. That can only be found at the intersection of these lines, exactly here and now, in this moment, looking at all things as Maya, "not that" and looking for that in all things. Self-observation So we do this by analyzing and being aware of our three brains, looking at the bodythe motor/instinctive/sexual impulsesand remaining aware of what they are, and seeing them for what they really are. Experiencing them for what they really are. Not being hypnotized by them, nor being attached to sensations, or avoiding sensations that are happening, but experiencing them for what they are: Maya, "not that." When we have discomfort, when we have hunger, when we have pleasure, these are natural, normal, they happen. Our problem is we believe they are real. We become attached to them, or we try and avoid them, thus we become hypnotized by them and we forget ourselves. We believe that what we see is the reality, and we do not question it. We are asleep. To be in Jagrata, Dianoia, means to analyze what we see, and to see it for what it is, and to be cognizant of that. That means when we experience discomfort or hunger or thirst or pleasure, we just experience it, we deal with it practically, realistically. If the body needs to eat, we feed it; if the body needs water, we give it water. If we experience a pleasant sensation, we experience it. We do not indulge in it, or avoid it. If we are in discomfort or pain, we deal with it, but we do not make a big deal out of it, not let it take over our life and let us fall asleep. I had a friend recently who told me just after eating a meal, "My stomach is full, but I am still hungry." My friend had no awareness of the fundamental importance of that statement. "I am full but I am still hungry." The body was already fed. It was the mind that was hungry. We are that way in all things!

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Oftentimes, it is not the body that wants sex, it is the mind that wants it, and we do not realize it. We say, "I need this, I need that." It is not that. It is an ego that wants, that craves, but we have no cognizant perception of all these impulses that arise in our three brains. They arise, and we immediately begin to try to satisfy them. The state of Jagrata, Dianoia, is a state of revision, in which one revises and analyses everything that emerges in the psyche: theories, beliefs, impulses, cravings, attachments, urges, whether those urges are physical or emotional or mental. The state of Jagrata is a state of awakened Consciousness that sees ourselves for what we are, and seeks to be responsible, to no longer be a victim of circumstance or driven by impulse. It is not easy to do, but it can be done. The Tree of Life So for this, we study the tree of life in relation with our three brains. Our three brainsintellect, emotion and bodyare perceivable if we look. We are not going to see a brain in our heart. When we look for that brain of emotion, we look for how emotion processes in us. How do feelings and emotional impulses process? That is to observe the emotional brain. The same applies for with the mental processes and the physical processes. On the tree of life, we map this all out in increasing degrees of subtlety. We begin here in the body analyzing our body. What is Maya? What is real? What is true? We look at our physical presence. We look at the sephirah Malkuth, which means "kingdom." This is our kingdom, and we seek to be aware of that. To become aware of the physical body is a good step and to sustain awareness of the physical body is a good step. We scarcely do that. Furthermore, to go deeper, we have to start becoming aware of our vital energy. This is the energy of the vital body or ethereal body, which corresponds with the sephirah Yesod. How do we experience that energy? How do we perceive that energy? By looking, by looking by questioning, by analyzing what we see and what we experience and understanding what the vital body is. In the previous lecture by the other instructor, we heard about the four ethers of the vital body. We need to know these ethers and be able to examine them and study them, because they affect us every moment. Those four ethers are really important; it is not just a theory to post in your notebook. They are something that you can see and experience for yourself. Not with your physical senses, but with your Consciousness, in observation of yourself. You need to be able to see the four ethers and understand how they function, what they do. In synthesis, they are an intermediary between the physical body and the other bodies. The ethers conduct energy, not only chemical energy, vital energy and energy that illuminates and activates the physical body, but energy of Consciousness. Everything you see through your physical body was reflected though your vital body through the luminous and reflecting ethers. Everything you perceive while you are in your physical body passed though your vital body. The quality of those perceptions is determined by the quality of your vital body. This is why people who fornicate and abuse their energy cannot see anything clearly, because the ethers of their vital body are depleted, they are impure, very dirty. Someone who transmutes their energy begins to cleanse, restore, and nourish the ethers of the vital body, which in turn brighten our perception. It is much like polishing a mirror. And, when someone has risen the kundalini of the vital body, that cleansing and that transmission of energy is even greater. This is very important. If you want to see the truth, you need your vital body to be very clean, and for that energy to move very easily as it transmits energy from inside to outside and outside to inside. Yesod (the vital body) acts as a boundary between the physical realm and the internal realms. Your memory from dreams depends on your vital body. Your memories from meditation, from astral projection, depend on your vital body. Going deeper, we analyze from moment to moment the content of emotional impulses that move us, and these are a reflection of the sephirah Hod, the astral body. Furthermore, we analyze from moment to moment the content of our mental impulses, thoughts, which are related with the sephirah Netzach, the mental body. And then further, we look at willpower, our human Consciousness, related with Tiphereth. All these psychic aspects can be seen and experienced while we are in our physical body. They can be analyzed, measured, experienced.

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We do not have to take as mere belief these studies of Kabbalah. We can experience them. We can see how the all relate when we start to observe ourselves. We start to experience the energy and how they function. All of this becomes easy. Avidya Shankaracharya stated: "Avidya indescribable and beginingless is the cause which is an upadhi superimposed on atman. Know for certain that the Atman is other than these three conditioning bodies. In its identification with the five sheaths the immaculate Atman appears to have borrowed there qualities upon its self as in the case of a crystals that appears to have gather onto itself the colors of its vicinity." Here Shankaracharya reveals that he knows Kabbalah. He does not call it that, but it is the same teaching. This passage starts: "Avidya indescribable and beginingless is the cause which is an upadhi superimposed on atman." So let us understand that sentence, because without that the rest will make no sense. Avidya is ignorance. A-Vidya"a" means "without or lacking." Vidya is knowledge. Vidya is a deep term that has a lot of implications, but avidya is essentially translated as "ignorance, a lack of perception, a lack of understanding." "Avidya indescribable and beginingless is the cause." The cause of what? Suffering. It is the cause of us not seeing Atman. Then he says, "which is an upadhi superimposed on Atman." Upadhi means "conditioning object, obstacle, filter." When you put something in a sack, the sack is upadhi. We are in our upadhis. The physical body is an upadhi. It is a limitation, it is a container, it is a filter that is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. The problem is that we do not see the upadhi for what it is. It is superimposed on Atman like a crystal. When we look at a crystal or a diamond, we see the light, we look at the colors, we do not see the thing itself. We put onto the object the attribute that are superimposed on it. We put on our perceptions superimpositions. We see the conventional reality, not the truth. For example, all of us are seeing, but none of us are aware of our eyes. Yet, our eyes filter what we see. They make it possible, but they also do not show us everything. So what he is describing here is that we should know that the Atman is other than these three conditioning bodies, the three conditioning upadhis. So let us go back and see what he is talking about here, the three conditioning bodies that condition our perception of Atman. As we explained previously, Atman is related to Chesed on the tree of life. Chesed is a light, an intelligence that emerges from the trinity above. Chesed is our spirit, our Innermost, our inner Buddha, our Atman, our self. That light descends and fills the vessels, giving life, what we experience as being alive. Those vessels are our bodies: the physical, vital, astral, mental, causal bodies, and even the Buddhic. When Shankaracharya says "the three conditioning upadhis," this is a standard element in Vedantic philosophy. Those three conditioning upadhis are: the physical body what is called in Sanskrit the subtle body, which is the mental, astral and vital bodies considered as one the causal body These three upadhis or conditioning factors are like a crystal that reflects light. The light is Atman. Unfortunately, ignorant people study the philosophies, and think "I am Atman. My physical body is a reflection of Atman. My vital body, my astral body, my mental body, my causal body are reflections of Atman. So I am that." This is wrong; we are not that. Atman is Atman. The rest is Maya, "not that." Whatever experiences you have in your physical body is Maya, because we are asleep. Only when one is awake, Jagrata or Turiya, does one see that: Atman. When one is asleep, it is all Maya, "not that." The Five Sheaths In the next passage, he explains the five sheaths. "In its identification with the five sheaths, the immaculate Atman appears to have borrowed its qualities upon itself." We look inside and we think what we see is a reflection of God. This is especially a danger for people who study spirituality and learn how to meditate and get out of their bodies and experience their astral and mental bodies and travel in their vital body or causal body. They begin to think in the same way we do with our physical bodies. We think here and now in our physical bodies "I am me. I am what I see I am that, it is real." This is wrong. Then we become spiritual, we learn to meditate and go in the astral plane or the mental plane, we have an experience in

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our astral body, and we think, "this is me, this is my self." That is wrong, that is a lie. The same goes all the way upwards until we experience the causal body in the sixth dimension. Those experiences also need to be questioned, because they are also Maya, "not that." All these bodies are real in the conventional sense, but in the Absolute sense, they are Maya. Annamaya Kosha We study these five sheaths in detail to understand how to perceive what is fundamentally true. We begin here physically with Annamaya Kosha, the name of the physical body in Vedantic philosophy. Kosha means "body, sheath, vessel, container, treasure, collection," and is interchangeable with another Sanskrit word, sharira, which literally translated means "that which is dissolved." Our physical body is not fundamentally real. Conventionally, it exists for a brief period of timehow many years we are able to survive in this bodybut ultimately, from the perspective of Atman, the physical body is very temporary very impermanent, and Atman can see through it, does not abide in it, does not depend on it, and is not it. Our physical body is Maya. So you see the name Anna-maya Kosha. In Sanskrit, anna means "food." So literally translated Annamaya Kosha means, "food-body, not That." Also, annama can mean "that which is measured out by food." The physical body is sustained only because we eat. What we eat creates the body. If we eat poorly, the body is weak, sick. If we eat well, the body is healthy. This is very basic, but we do not comprehend it, because we like to eat bad things. We like to put in the body things that it should not have. Nonetheless, we can all analyze, observe and experience this Annamaya Kosha, the sheath of the physical body, which is Maya, "not that." It is not Atman. It is not self. It is temporary. We can all verify through our experience that we can experience and perceive without this body. If you have had a dream, then you know it. You have experienced that. You have experienced a sense of self outside of the physical body, thus you know the physical body is Maya, "not that." Not the self. Pranamaya Kosha The next sheath is Pranamaya Kosha. Prana means "life force," vital energy. Even the vital body is Maya, it is Kosha, sharira, "that which is dissolved." Kosha can be translated as sheath or body, but really it means something that is not fundamentally real, something that is impermanent. It will exist briefly and then die. If we seek immortality, then we must first begin to recognize what is not immortal, and begin to realize what is immortal. If we have attachment and dependency on the physical body, we will suffer when the physical body is taken. We know this is true when anyone we love dies. We built attachment to the body, and we suffer because that body is taken and we have the ignorance of thinking, of believing that that person is taken from us forever, and that is wrong. We do not see reality. We have just too much attachment. Manomaya Kosha The next Kosha is Manomaya Kosha. This Kosha means or this term means that which discriminates. Manomaya is a derivative of the same root of Maya, ma. Mano comes from manas which means "mind or discriminative factor, cognizant factor." It comes from ma or man, "to think," from ma, "to measure." Manomaya Kosha refers to the astral body, related with hod. It is that part of us that discriminates, measures, based on like and dislike. It is emotion, feeling. It is not intellectual, but discriminates. If you read traditional interpretations of scripture, most Hindu philosophers call this "the mental body." They talk about mental traveling and mental projection, and really it is the same thing we talk about now when we talk about the astral body or astral projection. It is just a different word, but we are talking about the same thing. Remember, in most Asian philosophy, mind and heart and considered one thing. Only in the West has the difference been emphasized. Vijnanamaya Kosha The intellectual body or mental body is Vijnanamaya Kosha, which is related with Netzach on the tree of life. This is what we call the mental body. So do not be confused if you study vedantic philosophy and how they talk about mental body and intellectual body. It is just a different use of terms. Vijnanamaya Kosha refers to Netzach. Vijnana means "small knowledge, little knowledge." You could also translate it as "information." The mental body is the intellectual aspect of our psyche. Anandamaya Kosha

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Then we have the fifth sheath related with Tiphereth, which is called Anandamaya Kosha. Ananda means "bliss." So we can translate this directly as "the body of bliss." Of course everybody thinks this is wonderful. If you analyze this in comparison to Kabbalah and you understand how this works in relation to the human soul and the causal body, then it all makes sense. Anandamaya Kosha, the causal body, is derived from the sixth dimension. In the sixth dimension, there is none of what we would call ego. The ego is limited to the fifth dimension and below. That is why Anandamaya Kosha is called the body of bliss or ecstasy. Experiences of the causal body are experiences of samadhi. It is a state of Consciousness in which the ego is no longer clouding perception. It is the bliss of free, clear perception. That bliss is not the orgasm, or chocolate. It is not that kind of bliss that people assume. There are a lot of people studying yoga now that think that they only want to get to Anandamaya Kosha so they can have a lot of bliss, but they do not know what that means. Ananda is the bliss of Consciousness. What is very interesting to observe here briefly is that as I mentioned in the beginning that Maya is the name of the mother of the Shakyamuni Buddha. The divine mother Maya Devi gives birth to the Buddha Shakyamuni, who is Chesed, Atman. The chief disciple of Atman, Chesed, the Buddha is Ananda. So you see, the story of the Buddha is symbolic and is kabbalistic. Buddha is Chesed. Tiphereth is Ananda, the chief disciple of Chesed. Tiphereth, Ananda, is our human soul, the Consciousness that should be the disciple of our inner guru, our inner Buddha, Atman. The Nature of the Five Sheaths Shankaracharya was pointing out that these five sheaths reflect the light of Atman, but are not Atman. We think they are. What do we think? We think the physical body is our self and everything we do in our physical body we think is our own self, because we are hypnotized. We do not question our perceptions or analyze the physical body as being Maya, illusion that will be dissolved. Further, we think that the impulses and energies related with our vital body are real, and are our self. Sexual impulses, memories, images that we project in the mind, desires and other types of phenomena that we perceive whether physically or in our imagination are all related with Pranamaya Kosha. They are illusionary energies that will be dissolved. Furthermore, with the astral body, Manomaya Kosha. We think that our feelings, that our discriminatory perceptions between like and dislike, are real. Moreover when we are out of the physical body when we are dreaming, traveling in Manomaya Kosha and Vijnanamaya Kosha, we think what we see is real. That is why when we dream and we see all the images of our dreams we do not realize we are dreaming. We think it is real. We do not question what we see. We assume what we see is true but we are wrong. We are hypnotized. Even people who think they are awake in the internal worlds are just fascinated by the experience, therefore, they are still asleep, entranced by Maya. Furthermore, in Anandamaya Kosha. Even someone who is awakening Consciousness, eliminating ego having experiences with the Being, with Atman, begins to believe they are that, and becomes hypnotized through their perceptions, thinking that what they see and experience is real, and is their self, and they are wrong. It is Maya, illusion, "not that" and they fall into mythomania, and they fall into pride and attachment. Discriminative Self-analysis This is why he writes: "Through discriminative self analysis and logical thinking one should separate the pure Atman from within the sheaths as one separates the rice from the husk and bran etc that are covering it." "The Atman does not shine in everything although he is all pervading. He is manifest only in the inner equipment, Buddhi just as the reflection in a clean mirror." Buddhi directly translated means "intellect" but it does not mean our intellectual brain. Buddhi is a discriminative perception and ability in the Consciousness to define what is perceived. Buddhi on the tree of life is related with Geburah, which is right next to Chesed and Tiphereth. Buddhi is an aspect of spirit, an aspect of Atman. It is like the container that transmits the light. It is like as Blavatsky said when she was quoting scripture: "It is like the lamp that the light comes from" It is the glass or crystal that projects it. Buddhi is an aspect of our Consciousness. It is not separate from us, but it is very subtle, from our perspective of being asleep. It is hard for us to sense it or see it or understand what it means. Buddhi is the ability of the pure light of Atman to be reflected. What this means is that here in our physical body, being confused by everything that we see, and taking everything that we see as real, we do not see anything for what it is. We do not look inside to question our perception, or to see where our perception is coming from, thus

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everything we see is related with these kosha's, flowing through our three brains, and we do not question it. We do not realize where it is coming from or what it means. Through meditation, we can learn. Through awakening Consciousness, we can learn. As he explains, by discriminative analysis, we can learn. That discrimination has to begin here and now. Studying ourselves here and now, what we see and how we see, not just with our eyes, but with our imagination. What are we seeing in our head? What are we seeing in our hearts? Questioning that and learning how to discriminate. That is Dianoia or Jagrata. It is to be awake and to question what we perceive. This is the basis of the exercise SOL. Whatever we see: Subject, Object or Location, we question it. We step back and look at it like we have never seen it before, and we continually look at things as though we have never seen them before, and we study them. We not only study what is outside, but what is inside, and not only seeing what is outside and what is inside, but seeing the relationship between them. Also not only seeing that relationship, but how we see it. You cannot do that automatically. You cannot do that unless you are aware that you are doing it. The Tree of Life So we study this tree of life. We are here in this third dimension. Everything that we see here is third dimensional, but we are seeing the reflections of other dimensions. We can experience the impact of other dimensions here, and you can acquire experience in those dimensions if you awaken. Here in the third dimension, in the physical body in Annamaya Kosha, we can see our thoughts and feelings. We can see impulses that are emerging in our body. Those do not come from the physical world. Impulses that are in the physical body, thoughts and feelings in the mind and heart, are reflected into us through the vital body, which is in the fourth dimension. We can eventually directly perceive that vital body, but at the moment we can infer its existence when we analyze perspective, our perception. Memories: where are they? From your own perspective, actually looking, not theorizing, but watching memories when they come up. Forget what you were taught in school, or what you teachers told you: look at your own experience. Where are memories? Were do they come from? How do they get there? Where are they? They are in the fifth dimension. They are in the mental-astral aspect of our psyche. How do we see them? Not with our physical senses. We see them with our vital body, which reflects their contents into the brain, and the brain distributes that information, and our body even reacts. When we have disturbing memory our body can react. Some people can remember a trauma and throw up. Some people can remember a sexual experience and get aroused. How does that happen? It is because we are perceiving things and not questioning them, we are not analyzing them, we believe they are real, we do not see that they are Maya, and we do not see that they get reflected into us. We think all of this is our self and it is not. It is all an illusion but we believe it is real. Liberation from suffering begins by seeing the truth. Seeing what is real and abandoning illusion. We do not want to do that. We want to hold onto the illusions. We get confused by all of our memories, desires, wants, longings, memories, cravings, aversions, attachments, our envy, our pride, our lust. All of the images we project in our mind and try to project outside are all lies, it is all Maya, it will all be dissolved because its all modifications of koshas, upadhis. By analyzing the contents of our psyche from moment to moment, and trying to see the reality in them, we also need to be seeing how we see it. Due to the fact that we are unaware of how we perceive, we fall asleep. We lose self-awareness, self-cognizance. As such, we are not capable at this stage of seeing what Buddhi is and what Atman is. To see Atman and the light of Atman that reflects through Buddhi, you have to be awake, but that does not only happen in the sixth dimension. It can happen physically, not only in a waking state during your daily activities by being very self-aware and cognizant, but through meditation. In meditation, we seek to shut down the koshas so that those perceptions of the koshas no longer filter our perception. A proper session of meditation is one in which the physical body is put in a complete state of relaxation and no longer interferes. We are no longer concerned with the Maya of sensation emerging in the body. Likewise, we relax the vital body. When the physical body relaxes, the vital body relaxes. When then relax our emotions and our mind, so that all of this, all of these koshas, become very calm, serene, relaxed, and we are no longer identified with those perceptions. In the end, a proper meditation state is where we become pure perception, and in that purity of perception, we extract that perception from all of these sheaths until we are using just the human Consciousness, what is properly called manas in Sanskrit, Anandamaya Kosha, the body of bliss. This is a state of samadhi. Even then, in a state of

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samadhi, without any ego, we have to see that experience as Maya, "not that." From that perspective, one can then experience what Buddhi and the Atmic body are. The reality of them, the truth. As I stated, that experience can be had in the physical body while you are active if your Consciousness is trained, if you know how to access it. It is what we would call a state of samadhi. It is an experience of the perception of reality at the same time you perceive conventional truth. Atman is Always like the King This is how we start to see the truth, what is real, and this is why Shankaracharya wrote: "One should understand that the Atman is always like the King, distinct from the body, mind, senses and intellect. All of which constitute the matter and is the witness of here functions." This phrase is what has confused people for centuries. Many people who have studied Vedanta have read this and thought, "So whatever I see is Atman. My perspective of seeing is Atman. I am the witness, I am Atman and whatever I see is Atman." They are wrong; that is not what is stated there. What is stated here is that that perception emerges from Atman, and in that state of perception, we can see what Atman is, and we can experience what Atman is, but until we are completely purified of all ignorance, we are "not that," we are Maya. The Eye of Wisdom There is a great chasm in this philosophy that you have to be cautious with. He states further, "Although Atman is pure Consciousness and present everywhere yet is perceived by the eye of wisdom alone. The one whose vision is obscured by ignorance he does not see it as the blind do not see the resplendent sun." The eye of wisdom is awakened Consciousness that is not obscured by desire any desire but is awake. This quote explains our case right now. The light of Atman is shining inside of you, but you do not see it because of ignorance, your own ignorance. So when we study this kind of scripture, we have to look at it in that way. We are blind. Our vision is obscured by our own ignorance. It is not anyone else's fault. We do not need to go out into the street and try to convince everybody about this philosophy and say this philosophy is beautiful and it will help us, no: we need to clean our own ignorance, not proselytize, not convert, not debate. We need to clean our perceptions. We need to see the truth, inside and outside. Questions and Answers Audience: So Maya is illusion but is not it the illusion like you are seeing it from the second truth, so those that see it from being a Turiya see it from the first truth, the ultimate truth. So the body as when seeing it from the sidewalk is the ultimate reality but when seeing it from the second truth it is conventional? Instructor: The perception of Turiyas or people who see the two truths simultaneously is very difficult for us to understand, but they see the two at the same time simultaneously and there is no contradiction. This is what is written in Prajnaparamita sutra: "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." It is that. So in a way that we can understand that is similar to if you are a person who has had a very difficult and very powerful experience. Say for example you went to war and you experienced war. You will have a way of looking at things that other people will not share unless they have had that experience. Everything will look different to you. The way you see is different. The way you understand is different. So to a much greater degree, Turiyas are like that. They see what we see, but it means something completely different that the rest of us do not get. Now on that point, let me point out something really critical that I set up in the beginning but have not brought into this yet. There is another misinterpretation that is made in this type of study, and generally it is a misinterpretation made those studying in the sutrayana (introductory) levels. They believe that through the application of these types of philosophies, once you have gained the vision or perspective of someone at the level of Turiya, then you abandon all beings because you see the fundamental unreality of all things. So in their philosophy, they state at that level, since you see the ultimate truth of all things, you see that suffering is an illusion, and you are awake, and that is it. They are wrong. That is a misunderstanding of people who have not studied the entire range of teachings. A real Turiya sees the conventional and ultimate reality simultaneously. They see reality like we do, but they also see the cause of sufferingnot only that, they realize that they need to act in order to help us see that we produce our own suffering. So a real Turiya does not abandon the world and become a god in some distant place and forget about us. They do not. They become even more concerned about us. Audience: You talked about how we can perceive the four ethers of the vital body. Can you elaborate; am I just supposed to look at it?

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Instructor: To experience for yourself the ethers of your vital body really you have to get out of your physical body, but in your physical body you can experience their effects so you can infer their existence. That is first by studying what they are intellectually. Study the four ethers: there is the ether of chemical nature, the ether of life, the reflecting ether and the luminous ether. Study those four ethers; understand their functions, and as you analyze and observe yourself, you can start to see how they affect you, and how they play a role in your ability to live, and be, and perceive. That is where you start. To actually directly experience that vital ethers, you have to go in consciously to the fourth dimension or you have to awaken the ability to see it from here, which is a type of clairvoyance. Audience: So you talked about the story of the Buddha and his mother being called Maya; so in other words the Buddha is born in the illusion of the distinction of those two realities? Instructor: Yes, that is right, that is one of the mysteries. Buddha is born because of Maya, but has to see Maya for what it is in order to become the Buddha. Audience: So it's essential? Instructor: Absolutely. Audience: Like you said it's by having nothing you have everything? Instructor: That's right. It sounds contradictory but that's how it works. Audience: Maya is the mother of Buddha so the Buddha nature is in every kind of mind so everybody has the inclination? Instructor: Yes everything has Buddha nature. Audience: Everything is Maya so is there a relation? Instructor: It is a cycle: Maya and Buddha. Audience: How can we develop compassion now so that if we do happen to awake so that we will not be seduced by staying in nirvana? Instructor: The way you do this is by approaching the path in the way we do in the Gnostic tradition: we study all three paths simultaneously. That is, we study Sutrayana, Mahayana, and Tantrayana together. In the Sutrayana level we study impermanence and death: that we will die, that all things are impermanent; and we study karma, cause and effect, and that everything we do has an impact. Then we apply that in the Mahayana level, and we study how everything we do affects others. We should be very careful about what we do because it affects other people. Furthermore, we should seek methods that harness the powers of our actions. That is the Tantrayana level where we learn to harness energy, all forms of energy for the benefit of others. We have to do this in our own way, at our own level, according to our own understanding, and seek to improve upon that. It is a constant revision of our ignorance. In synthesis, what this means is that means you apply the technique of self-observation and self-remembering, and you are constantly working to be cognizant of yourself, you have to always do that, not only remembering Atman, but also remembering others. To not let your teaching and your path and your understanding be selfish. Ultimately, the ones who become the selfish gods and become seduced by the nirvani's are those who have not eliminated self-obsession, self-esteem, self-love. Begin by working on having awareness of others and your impact on others, and you can sustain that all the way to the top; it is not easy but it can be done. So that is why we study those paths united. Audience: Impure thoughts and feelings come from below in klipoth or is it kind of jus out there. Does the Consciousness that is descended kind of reach up...? Instructor: Where do impure thoughts and feelings come from? Let me answer that by looking again at this chart of the tree of life that shows all the dimensions, and let me explain that this chart that everyone studies in Kabbalah and that has everything arranged in a very structured and kind of linear way is not accurate. It is just a map. A map is not accurate of the place itself. In the same way, this is not accurate of the experience itself, it is jut a guide. The reality is all of these sephiroth are here and now united, and they have distinct qualities, and that is why we have them mapped out like this, but in our experience here and now, these are all interpenetrating each other. It is a question of what do we have the capacity to see and experience and recognize?

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Where do impure thoughts come from? They do not come from this map, they come from inside of us, from our mind but where? We do not know, because we do not observe ourselves. If you search in yourself and analyze yourself, you can answer that question. Where do they come from, how do they get there? I can give you a long explanation but it will just get stored in your intellect. It is better for you to start to analyze in your own experience how your thoughts and feelings emerge and sensations. What triggers it? Does anything trigger it? Does it happen randomly or are there causes are there conditions? I will tell you all of it is true. Sometimes it is random, sometimes it is triggered. It is only through analyzing the contents of the psyche can we understand the causes of our suffering and thereby deal with ignorance and ultimately liberation. The reason I am presenting it to you in that way is because unless you see for yourself you will not be liberated. It is impossible. You can memorize all of these teachings but unless you experience it and perceive it in yourself nothing will change. The doorway to liberation is right here, right now, in yourself, to be watching, analyzing, discriminating, starting to try to figure out, "what do I see, is it real? Why do I have to listen to these impulses? Where is Atman?" You can see Atman; you can experience Atman anytime, if you look. The problem is we never look. Even vedantic philosophers and practitioners do not look. We get caught up in philosophy and beliefs and debates and believing things and telling ourselves things and trying to project images, and we do not look at the projector. Audience: Does the Divine Mother help us in this work? How can we call upon her now so that she can show us what needs to be done? Instructor: Yes, the Divine Mother does help us in this work, and the simplest way to call your Divine Mother for help is to remember her. Remember her presence and speak with your heart. There are a lot of prayers and mantras, and those are fine, and she likes those, but ultimately she is like any mother: she just wants our well being, our happiness, and she sees that we are producing our own suffering. So when we remember her and act in remembrance with her, we connect with her immediately. The same is true of Atman, as a matter of fact. The remembrance of divinity establishes a connection. Unfortunately, we do not remember, and that is why we are in ignorance, and that is why we suffer. Audience: When you are quieting your vital body in meditation, should it be empty or radiant? Instructor: You should let it be what it is. In the case of any sensation that we experience in meditation, we should not be identified. If the physical body is in discomfort, let it be. If your vital body is agitated, if your energy is agitated, if your heart is serene, agitated, or uplifted, your mind is calm, sweet, or angrywhatever it iswe have to learn to let it be what it is. Consciousness is separate from all of these, and we do not realize it, and that is why we cannot meditate. When you learn, as it is stated in the scripture here, to separate the Consciousness from the husks that surround it, the action, quality, or characteristic of the husk no longer matters. This is really beautifully told in several of the books in Samael Aun Weor where talks about the meditation practices of different Chinese masters. Coming into my memory now is the Chinese master of Cha'an Buddhism working with his mantra; even though he had dysentery, he did not get up. I do not know if know what dysentery is, but it is a very afflictive illness. It involves very powerful diarrhea and discomfort in the body, and it can kill you. He did not get up from meditation in spite of that. He sat with serenity and continued to meditate, undisturbed. This shows us how weak we are. We get a little pin prick of pain in the knee or we feel a little bit anxious in our heart and we stop practicing meditation with that as our excuse. It is really because we do not want to meditate, and we use those excuses. This is understandable, because we have yet to acquire genuine experience in meditation, genuine knowledge. When you actually have genuine experience in meditation, an experience of Atman, an experience of samadhi or reality, it gives you great energy to meditate, and enthusiasm. Until you have that experience, it is hard to be consistent and have enthusiasm, but it is necessary. We need willpower, we need consistency, we need seriousness, but most of all, we need to be not identified. So if a difficult experience comes in any of the sheaths, we have to learn to not be identified with them.

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