Key of SOL
“I am Iod-Havah-יהוה, and-Ain-ואין (the Ain Soph Aur-אין סוף אור) is another, Ain-Elohim-אין-אלהים (Aelohim- אאלהים, whose abode is the Solar Absolute) excludes me: I will bless thee, though thou hast not known me: So that they know from the rising of the sun (Shemesh-שמש), and from the west, because zero (the Ain Soph Aur-אין סוף אור) is exclusive. I am Iod-Havah-יהוה, and-Ain-ואין (the Ain Soph Aur-אין סוף אור) is another. I (from the Ain Soph Aur-אין סוף אור) generate light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I am Iod-Havah-יהוה, doing all of this with Elah-אלה (Goddess).” - Isaiah 45:5-7
Christ is the solar light of the Solar Absolute, the Ain Soph Paranishpanna-परिनिष्पन्न אין סוף or Ain Soph Aur-אין סוף אור, whose solar matter is represented by all the suns of the universe, including our own sun (Shemesh-שמש), which is the center of this solar system, represented by the Logos Michael-מיכאל ("who is like God"). The light of Christ interacts with Michael.
The solar bodies can absorb solar light, emit solar light and transmit solar light. This is why Christ when incarnated in Jesus said:
"I am the light of the Kosmos (Κόσμος): he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." - John 8:12
Just as the full-moon absorbs the solar light, likewise the ego absorbs the solar light of our consciousness and deflects that solar light into anger, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, laziness, and envy causing it to change speed and direction.
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" - Matthew 16:24-26
We have to comprehend that we are asleep, in order for us to awaken.
What is it to awaken? Obviously, this is not referring to the state of our physical body. Clearly, we awaken in our physical body every morning from our sleep. We do this daily, with no effort on our part.
Indeed, our physical body is just a vehicle, and whether that vehicle is awake or not has nothing to do with the consciousness. In order to awaken the consciousness, we have to know that we are asleep.
In the East, in India or China, in Japan, and many other countries, people know they are asleep, consciously speaking. Therefore, they work; well, some of them work hard in order to awaken the consciousness.
In Asia you find many schools, groups, and philosophies with different teachers and gurus that precisely specialize in awakening the consciousness of their disciples. In contrast with the eastern world, in the occidental world in which we are right now, which is primarily related with Europe and America, people think that they are awakened, therefore they do not look for the awakening of the consciousness.
In Asia there are many doctrines related with the consciousness; they study the consciousness not only relating with the individual but also with nature and the cosmos. When we say that they study the consciousness in relation with nature, the cosmos and the individual, I’m saying that they carefully study the doctrines of Gods, the so called polytheism or paganism which frightens the mentalities of the minds of the occidental people, due to the fact that the narrow minded occidental people ignore the relationship of the consciousness with those so-called Elohim-אלהים, Gods and Goddesses.
In the different religions of India, of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism, when some occidentals go to the East to study any of these religions, they do so superficially. They do not get to the bottom of the matter, and so they of course start judging the religions of the East in the wrong way.
Most of the books that we find in bookstores that talk about Buddhism, Hinduism, etc are like 50% wrong if written by occidental person; those books commonly just talk about the symbols or what they call beliefs of the people, ignoring of course the depth of these topics. If the books are written by Asians, then they are about 97% correct.
We, the Gnostics, study not only the occidental religions but also the eastern religions, and indeed all of the religions of the world. We know very well that the people of the East have their polytheism, and what the monotheistic beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are in the West. We understand both, psychologically speaking.
Indeed, if we do not study religion from the psychological point of view, then we are just wasting our time. In order to study religion, psychologically speaking, we have to know what the psyche is and what the Logos is.
The awakening of the consciousness is our goal.
Let us begin by exploring what these terms psyche and Logos represent.
Psyche comes from the Greek ψυχή (psukhḗ), meaning “soul, mind, spirit.” Logos (λόγος) is also of Greek origin, and means, “the Word.” When we say Logos, obviously we are saying "the word" in Greek; it is a Greek word. That is why one of the gospels that was written in Greek.
The gospel of John states:
“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”
This is the beginning with God, the Word. When we name the word Logos, we are naming the Word, the Christ, and psyche is the soul. If we want to study psychology, we have to study the word Logos (the Christ) and the psyche (the soul).
The occidental psychologists say that psychology is the study of the mind, and thus, from the off, western psychologists are approaching this matter from the wrong perspective. The mind is just a vehicle that the consciousness, the psyche, the soul can utilize, if it knows how. Unfortunately, usually, the mind is used by the ego.
What is ego? Ego is a Latin word that means, “I, myself, me.” Also, in Greek, in order to say “me, I” they say εγώ, (“ego”). So, the ego is mental matter, but usually psychologists in the occidental world mistaken the ego with the being, with the spirit, and with the consciousness, which are completely opposite to it.
In the eastern world, in Tibet for instance, they understand very well what the ego, the “I” is. They understand what the consciousness is and what the spirit is, and that which is beyond the spirit, which is the Word, that which was “in the beginning,” which in Christianity we call Christ.
Behold here these different topics: the Christ, the Word, the Logos; and the spirit, the individual monad as we also say in Greek. This word monad come from the Greek μονάς (“monas”) which means “unity”; in other words, our own particular unity or individuality, or, our real self, which resides beyond the mind, beyond even the psyche, the soul.
To realize, to comprehend, to experience the word, the Christ, the Logos - what in Hebraic terms they call Elohim-אלהים, Gods and Goddesses, Allah, God, Brahma, and many other names - we need to work with the consciousness, we need to awaken the consciousness.
Of course, the difference between the East and the West is that, here in the West, we tend more towards the intellectual; we would say that Eastern people are more intuitive than the Occidental people.
Here in the school of Gnosticism we want to unite the knowledge that we acquire through books, lectures and many other sources, with the spirit, with the being. For that of course we have to work in a hard, with a lot of discipline, in order to awaken the consciousness. It is one thing to know and another thing is to be.
“To be” is related with the being, the spirit.
In order to be, you have to be awakened. If you are not awakened consciously speaking, you are just a marionette, a puppet moved by invisible forces of nature and the cosmos, even by the forces of the government. In our current state, we really are really puppets or marionettes. For us to stop being marionettes, we have to awaken… But, how are we going to understand this matter of awakening if we do not realize that we are asleep?
If we do not realize that we are a sleeping it is impossible to awaken. That is why I said that in the East, children tend to receive spiritual knowledge from their homes and their different so-called “pagan” religions about the situations of the cosmos, the Elohim-אלהים, Gods and Goddesses, the different dimensions etc. They know that we are in this materialistic world and that we need to awaken; meaning, to be aware of the other dimensions, just as we are aware of being in the physical world in this very moment.
No one can deny that we are in the physical world, but the other world, the invisible world, well we can deny it or accept it, because we are ignorant of it.
The denying of that is, in the occidental world, called “I don’t believe”; the acceptance of this invisible world in this occidental world is called, “I believe.”
When somebody accepts the internal worlds of any religion, it does not matter which, this person says, “I believe.” And, when a person does not believe in that which is beyond the physical, they say, “I don’t believe. I’m an atheist.” When the person says, “I am an atheist,” what they really want to say is: “I don’t want to know anything about that invisible world; not even to hear about it, because I do not understand it, intellectually speaking. I cannot prove it with my five senses, etc.”
Of course, all of us have a special matter or material inside with which we can experience the invisible world, in order for the invisible world to become visible, not for the five senses but for the consciousness.
The consciousness, the soul, the essence, that which in Zen Buddhism they call Buddhatā, the spark of the Buddha is that which we have within that permits us the possibility of seeing into the beyond, into the invisible world. We will say in other words, the essence, the consciousness, is the spark of the spirit, the embryo of Buddha, because the word Buddha itself, a Sanskrit word, means “illuminated one.”
It is obvious that our own particular spirit is an illuminated one, the Buddha. That Buddha wants to control its own essence, its own Buddhatā. But, disgracefully, the Buddhatā, the essence, the soul, the consciousness is bottled up in the ego; that ego that we feel in our heart when someons accuses us of something, that self-esteem, that hurt pride, that anger that we feel in our heart. That ego that we feel when we are lustful, when we are gluttonous, when we are lazy, when we are greedy.
All of those psychological aggregates that we carry within trap the consciousness, that Buddhatā in error, in darkness, in mechanicity. If we investigate those so-called defects, vices, or errors we will see they are related with this physical world; indeed, when we feel that we are “ourselves” what we are normally feeling is attachment to our lower self, our ego, the me, myself, the I.
Many feel the need to accumulate any type of wealth, in order to feel that “they are”; some like to accumulate knowledge in order to feel that “they are.” In other words, to awaken the consciousness is to become a way of being that is not how we are now; indeed, it is the oppose of what we are right now. We have to learn, to understand, to see with honesty the level we are in right now; we have to be honest with ourselves.
In Zen meditation, Zen Buddhism, the disciples have to pass at least 30 years knowing themselves in order to receive the second step, which is to be that to which we are not, an awakened person; meaning, an awakened being in the other dimensions, in the invisible world. It is to be conscious of those subtler, superior aspects of ourselves in the same way that as we are conscious of our physical body in this very moment.
People in the occidental world think that to be aware or to know our selves is a matter that should take one week; or, after a seminar during weekend we should have that, etc etc. Obviously, this is a profoundly mistaken attitude.
First, we have to understand that we have 49 levels in the psyche, in the mind; that is, 49 levels within our consciousness. Further, most of those 49 levels of the mind are subconscious or unconscious levels; we are totally unaware of them. For some of you, this is the first time you are even hearing about these 49 levels, and in that case, let us explore this further.
The physical body itself has 7 levels, and when we study these teachings and the Tree of Life, we know that our inner being, our spirit, has 7 bodies, of which the physical body is just one. If we want to know ourselves, truly, we need to become aware of these 7 bodies, in their depth, because right now, we are scarcely aware of our physical body. We have to create and to develop the consciousness in each one of them.
Each body has 7 levels, this is called the theosophical structure of the Zeir Anpin who according to kabbalah begins in Chesed-חסד, who inhabited the upper Eden, since the garden of Eden is Malkuth-מלכות, our physicality. Many schools talk they about the 7 bodies, but who is conscious of them, who is using them? That is the question... Many people study many lectures, read many books about the 7 bodies, but most of the time the people talking about those bodies do not know anything about them, consciously speaking. To be conscious of the 7 bodies is to utilize them just as we utilize the psychical body. The Zeir Anpin emantes from the Theosophical triad. Master Samael Aun Weor explain about this as follows:
"Beyond the Theosophical triad exists a ray that unites us to the Absolute. This ray within the human being is the resplendent dragon of wisdom, the internal Christ, the Sephirothic Crown; the Kabbalah describes it as follows:
Kether: The Ancient of Days
Chokmah: The Son, the Cosmic Christ
Binah: The Holy Spirit
The Sephirothic Crown is the first triad that emanates from the Ain Soph.
In the final synthesis, each one of us is nothing but an atom of the abstract absolute space, the Ain Soph, which is found secretly related with the pineal gland, the Sahasrara chakra or church of Laodicea.
We must make a specific differentiation between the Ain Soph and the Ain Soph Paranishpanna: in the Ain Soph, interior realization of the Self does not exist, but in the Ain Soph Paranishpanna interior realization of the Self does exist.
Any Mahatma knows very well that before entering into the Absolute, the solar bodies must be dissolved. The day in which we will be liberated we will leave, we will abandon all of the vehicles.
For what purpose do we build the solar bodies? With which purpose do we descend into the Ninth Sphere if we must abandon the solar bodies? With what purpose do we build something that we are not going to use? An atomic seed from each one of these Christic vehicles remains when they are dissolved. It is clear that in these vehicles four atomic seeds remain. It is indubitable that these atoms correspond to the physical, astral, mental, and causal bodies.
It is obvious that the four atomic seeds are absorbed within the super divine atom, the Ain Soph Paranishpanna, along with the Essence, spiritual principles, laws, and the three primary forces. Afterwards comes the profound night of the mahapralaya.
The Ain Soph without intimate realization of the Self does not possess the four atomic seeds; it is just a simple atom of the absolute abstract space with only the three primary forces, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, within.
The Paranishpanna atom of a Master that has been liberated is very distinct from the Ain Soph atom that is without realization of the Self. In the aurora of a mahamanvantara, a Self-realized master unfolds his bodies by putting their germs into activity. He possesses his solar bodies; he can restore them at any moment that he wishes. The fact of having built these bodies gives him autonomous cognizance.
The Ain Soph that possesses the atomic seeds can reincarnate at the hour that It pleases, and It remains dressed with Its solar bodies. When the Ain Soph wishes to manifest itself, it emanates those solar atom seeds and appears at any given place in space." - Tarot and Kabbalah by Samael Aun Weor
For instance, if we know how to utilize the ethereal body consciously, we can enter into the Akashic records. Someone who has a solar astral body can travel with it. If they have a solar mental body also can travel with it, in the world of the mind. The body of will of conscious will, also called the human soul, if somebody has developed that body, they can fly or visit many regions in nirvana.
Nirvana is a word which is often repeated. Many people talk about nirvana, just as many people talk about karma, reincarnation and many such things, but they are not conscious of that. They think because they have read 100 books about karma and 200 about reincarnation that they already know what reincarnation is. What we need is to be conscious of that, to awaken the consciousness.
So, how then do we awaken the consciousness?
In order to awaken the consciousness, we have to learn to be here and now, present, attentive, and we have to learn how to use what we call the Key of SOL.
What is the Key of SOL? Well, we know that esoterically speaking, Sol is the name for the Sun, but in this context, SOL stands for: subject, object, location. If we want to develop the consciousness, we need to learn to place our awareness in these three, from moment to moment. Let us investigate in more depth what it is to work with the Key of SOL.
First, we have the subject; commonly the subject is always asleep. The subject has to be conscious in the moment. The subject is obviously ourselves; we have to learn to be conscious of ourselves from moment to moment. In my case, as an example in this very moment, I have to be conscious of what is talking, even the gestures that the subject is doing when talking.
The subject has to feel itself within the body. If the subject is not aware that he is inside the body, obviously he is sleeping, consciously speaking. The body might be awakened, the eyes wide open, but if the subject is not there, present, he is not awake, he is somewhere else.
In this matter of awakening, we say that the subject has to be divided in two. Why? Because the subject ignores a lot of himself or herself. You cannot deny that you ignore a lot of yourselves, unless you think like certain superficial people who they think that they are the physical body. Such people believe that when they die, they go to the grave, and that is it; that death is some ultimate end. To think in that superficial way is very sad. If we know the law of re-incarnation, we understand that and why some people are dumb, and others are not, according to Allah.
Let me tell you how ignorant we are of ourselves: the Master Samael says that, in this day and age, the common person has 3% free consciousness, and that 97% of our consciousness is trapped in conditioning, in desire, in ego. This means that we have awareness of 3% of our psyche, and we are ignorant of 97% of ourselves.
So, if we want to awaken 100%, if we want to be truly, completely aware of what we are, we have to observe ourselves. How are we going to know ourselves if we do not observe ourselves?
If you want to be a movie critic, and you want to review a film, well, first you have to go and observe the movie, watch the movie. Then, you can give your comments. It is the same thing with ourselves. If you want to review yourself you have to observe yourself.
Most of the time people talk about themselves in the context of certain dates. They say when I was 3 years old or 5 years old I was in this or that place, or I was working in this area, I had this friend and I met this other friend. They narrate their lives only in exterior world. They ignore about the psychological situation of the different events of their lives.
To know ourselves is to know what I am feeling, thinking, what my impulses are, in this moment and every moment in which I am! That is what it is to be conscious of the subject.
But, how am I going to know what I am thinking, what type of thought or images are coming to my mind in the very moment, when I am teaching you? How can I be aware of what I am feeling while I am teaching you? For instance, am I feeling hot or cold? Well, how could I know any of that if I am not observing myself, if I am not aware of myself?
First, we have to know that we are here, then we have to observe ourselves. That is why we say that the object… I mean the subject has to be divided in two. Do you realize that? I said object, and I immediately came back into myself and said to myself, “What am I talking about? I’m talking about the subject.” So, that is an example of self-observation of what I’m saying.
In the East, in Zen Buddhism, in order for a monk to be conscious of himself, 24 hours of the day, he suffers a lot because it is very easy to forget and to stop observing oneself, very easy. A single instant is all it takes for a man to see a very beautiful woman walking in front of him, for him to forget himself and to be driven by lust… It is not the consciousness that acts in this manner, it is the consciousness trapped within the ego.
We have to state that which is the being, the spirit. The being has nothing at all to do with that which we call the ego. The being is the real, the reality within each one of us. But what is reality if we are always consciously asleep, if we are always out of ourselves, not present, not observing ourselves? How then are we going to know what is reality?
The being is the reality. In order experience the being, God in itself, we have to be here, awakened.
People believe in God because they are asleep. An individual who is awakened does not need to believe in God, such an individual knows the reality; only sleeping people believe, or do not believe in God. The atheists are snoring, consciously speaking. If they were awakened, they would not dare utter such statements as they do regarding divinity, because they would be denying themselves, denying the reality which they know, that the being is the superior part of the soul.
The soul is there but the blind are not, and cannot be aware of it. The blind say: “I do not believe in that which is my superior part. I believe that I am just the physical body.” And, as a consequence, they start to create stupid theories, such as the dogma of evolution or, they start believing in the bible or any sacred book in the blind way, without knowing the depth of it or the psychological part of it.
So, observe yourselves, that is what it is to be awakened.
Listen, to possess only 3% awakened conscious makes being present and observing your mind very difficult. This is why we have to work very hard in order to develop the capacity to use and maintain our awareness. There is a saying in Buddhism that can be synthesized as, “You are what you think.” Well, this is because everything that comes from inside is what we are. What types of thoughts are we having? Stupid thoughts. Observe your mind and the type of thoughts that you have: this is what you are, in the 49 levels of the mind.
The mind will always attempt to justify everything; this is how the mind protects itself from honest introspection. However, when we learn to observe ourselves consciously, we also learn to not judge that which we see, just observe. When we learn to observe ourselves, we also have to learn to not justify, to condemn or be complacent with that which we see. We have to be honest with ourselves, we need sincerity. It is impossible to know oneself, if one is not able to see oneself honestly. We have to learn to observe ourselves as if we are watching a movie, with a sense of detachment.
When we observe our heart then we will observe many foolish things. Many times, we think that we are feeling something “good” but in reality, there is ego hidden there. Sometimes, we might convince ourselves we are feeling compassion, but it is just an ego masquerading as the being. To know what compassion is, is to go inside the being of God; it has nothing to do with selfishness or fear.
So, in order to be here and now, to really be compassionate, we have to have no fear at all, no fear. Fear should not exist because fear is the root of many negative feelings, thoughts, actions. Fear can only exist where ones connection to the being, to ones inner divinity is weak. Take for example the fear of losing what we think is ours: my wife, my husband, my children, my parents, mine, mine, etc etc. We feel it here, in the heart. We feel fear because we are afraid of losing what we have, losing that foundation of what we are. We have our psychological foundation, our sense of self in superficial things. In our real Being fear cannot exist because God is eternal.
If we only believe in God, it is just a belief in the mind; it is not a truth for the consciousness. The body that experiences God has no fear. He already knows what God is and what is going to happen. To observe the heart is precisely that, to observe that because here in the heart is what feel we are, I am what I am
If the awakening of the conscious is what we want, to be 100% conscious, then we have to observe ourselves so that we can start knowing about how foolish we are.
Sometimes, when you observe yourself and you see the different feelings and thoughts and sensations that come from inside you, you laugh at yourself, “I didn’t know I was so stupid.” Sometimes we think that it is a good, good, good virtue that we’re observing. Then, we go into meditation to observe that carefully, and we realize we were mistaken; that what we thought was good was actually garbage. As I said, Zen monks endure 30 years in order to know themselves, and when they know themselves, they discover that which we call the “particular psychological characteristic.”
"Awakening is only possible by destroying the “I,” the ego. We have to recognize with complete clarity that each person has his own Particular Characteristic Psychological Feature (PCPF), which we have spoken about many times before. Certainly, each person has his own particular characteristic psychological feature, this is a fact. Some will have lust as their characteristic feature; others will have hatred; for others it will be covetousness, etc. The feature is the sum of several particular characteristic psychological elements. For each PCPF, a definitive event, a precise circumstance, always occurs. What if a man is lustful? There will always be circumstances of lust in his life accompanied by specific problems. These circumstances are always repeated. We need to know our PCPF if we want to move on to a superior level of the Being and eliminate from within ourselves the undesirable elements which constitute our psychological feature." - Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic
What is the particular psychological characteristic? It is the primary defect upon which our lower self, the ego is built. Each of us is different; from this point of view, this psychological point of view, we are different in a very bad way, of course. Some people will be lustful, others will be greedy, and others still will be angry or proud, vain. Each one of us has a different feature.
It is in accordance with our own particular feature that we attract the situations, events of our life. When we observe ourselves we also observe what type of situations we are attracting into our individual particular universe or cosmos, because we are a microcosmos.
So, what type of friends do we have? Observe your friends because, if we reflect, we can see through the kind of company that we keep what some of the aspects of our psyche are. If we have a particular fondness for this or that person, we can ask ourselves, “What am I seeing in this person that I like a lot? What is that that I like in this person?” You have to know that. If every time I see this person it made me feel sick, why? What are the characteristics of this person that make me feel sick? What is this person showing me that I have inside, that I ignore? We have to discover that. This is how you start to understand yourself.
This knowing of yourself is what the Lord Jesus Christ is talking about in the gospels:
"And why beholds thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considers not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” - Matthew 7:3-5
In other words, stop criticizing your neighbor; go back into yourself with more attention and observe. Why am I feeling disgusted with this person? What do I have inside that leads me to feel that? Is it because I feel that I am more perfect than this person? It is that I feel so important that I cannot tolerate their deficiencies? That I have no tolerance because I feel self-important? The being has nothing to do with self-importance.
The reason of the being of to be is the being itself... but, we justify the many defects that we have. We always protest against the negative events in our life. “I suffer too much in this life. Everybody treats me in the rotten way.” Why? Why are we attracting those types of situations? What is that that we have inside that acts as a magnet for that type of iron? The drunkard bemoans that he is always sick and is littered with pain and that he is always being robbed close to the bar. No one likes him. Well… the problem is that there is an ego inside of him that likes to drink. When he goes into those bars, he meets other people, other people that are always thinking about stealing in order to have money to drink. So, if he changes, he can learn to put himself in better situations. But, for that, he has to observe himself; if he is not observing himself, how is he going to know about the aspects of his mind that keep him in suffering? And he has to start right now by feeling that we are inside of the body and observing what type of level we have, the level of the being, the conscious level.
When we truly grasp something within our psyche which we know is negative, and that we want to be free of, then we have to apply death to that which is not good inside of you. When death arrives, something new comes.
Psychological death is not what ordinary people think of, when they think about death. If I die physically speaking, how could I hope I will go to heaven with all of this garbage that I have here? With all of my anger, lust, pride, vanity? What we really want is to survive with all the garbage that we have inside. So, we are always looking for any religion to in the hope that we can be saved without changing. It does not exist. There is no heaven for the ego. We have to change, and to change we have to psychologically die.
We have to learn to change, for no other reason that we need to. As a simple example: if we have not showered for a week, and we smell ourselves, we will know that we need to clean ourselves, right? So, when we shower, and we scrub ourselves, our intention is simply to clean ourselves. In other words, there is no ulterior motive. When you shower, are you expecting something new? No, you want just to be clean, right? However, there many who, when they enter these teachings, who work on themselves and develop self-knowledge, do so in order to become clairvoyant, to gain powers. Greed. Too much greed, and greed is no good.
We have to learn to imitate St. Francis of Assisi. He possessed so many powers that he had to hide from people, because when he was praying certain forces of nature would act and he would be seen doing things physically, like floating in the air, and he did not like to show that.
If something like this happened to us, if we possessed such powers, we would call our parents, relatives, friends, “See how I float in the air! look how wonderful I am!” Right? We are vain, and we are always coveting powers… for what? To celebrate ourselves, our ego?
When we observe ourselves, we realize that we are filthy, so we take a shower. That shower symbolizes the analysis we must perform on that which we observe in ourselves, in order to comprehend with patience, this or that particular defect, or vice or error that personifies us.
Then, with thanks to God, we can annihilate that in order to be a better person, in order to gradually become closer and closer to who we really our, our true self, our being, the I am.
The being is that which is, it is God within, it is the spirit, which is inside, so when that which is the spirit comes, it just appears, it is who he is, or what she is, for I don’t like to name that which is God a he or a she, because God is not a he or a she but both forces.
How do I know that? Well, by experience, of course. We have to experience that.
With the being all attributes are seen as so-called powers. In this very moment, for instance, we see, we smell, we hear, we touch, we taste. We do not need to show that, right? We do not need to feel proud because we are seeing, because everybody sees, everybody smells, everybody hears right? But, when we do something that the common people do not do, then we are proud, vain, conceited and that is bad.
The senses of the inner being come to us easily, when we are deserving of them, and there is nothing marvelous about them. Everybody has the potential to possess those powers. What happened is that we have developed that because we are working with it, because we want to be an awakened person.
To be an awakened person has nothing to do with pride, or with vanity, or growing your hair and beard and wearing robes... We need to be like St. Francis of Assisi. If we acquire powers, good, but do not let the acquisition of such define who we are.
St Francis suffered sicknesses in his life, and he was trying to find a doctor to help him, meanwhile he was healing others illnesses. He was not trying to proclaim himself as a healer, but rather his being, the Word in other words, was acting through him. There is no way to experience God if we are vain, proud, conceited, self-important. No way, because this is exactly the opposite. Humility is what we need, which is that which is contrary to what we have a lot of inside.
So, we have to die, we have to psychologically die and for that we have to observe ourselves.
In order to atone for our crimes, we have to comprehend the defects that lead to them, in their depth. If we want to truly overcome a defect, we must learn to see how it not only affects ourselves, but those around us, and the suffering that it causes. There are some traditions that state that, if you go to church on Saturday and confess your crimes, then you are absolved of them. But, in such a scenario, nothing has truly been comprehended, and so the defects remain in the psyche. So, after having confessed and been ‘freed’ from this problem, we go out and perform the same action all over again. It is a vicious circle. True change can only occur with psychological death. So, we don’t have to go in a vicious circle.
What we need to do, is to sanctify Saturday, to make it holy. Astrologically the seventh day is Saturn, Saturn, which is death, the annihilation of one’s ego.
The Christ says, “If you want to follow after me, deny yourself.” That implies a lot! How are you going to deny what you are, if you do not know what you are? And how are you going to know what you are if you don’t observe yourself, if you are sleeping? You have got to be conscious of your many egos! That is the first step.
(Mirror from Vulgar Latin *mirare "to look at," variant of Latin mirari "to wonder at, admire")
It is important to remember, that the effort to be conscious of the subject is not merely limited to self-observation. In fact, self-observation is really only one half of the effort that we need to make, in order for us to be conscious of the subject. We have already said in this lecture that the being is our reality; in other words, our being is our true self. It is the being that we seek union with, and so it is the being, our spirit, our innermost, that we must become conscious of, and this effort to become, and to maintain, awareness of our spirit, our innermost being, is called Self-remembrance.
"Behold how difficult is to remain with the consciousness awake from instant to instant, from moment to moment, from second after second; however, if one has true longings for becoming fully awakened - this is the beginning - one must not forget oneself, not even for a moment. Yes, one must keep remembering oneself wherever one walks - in any living room, or whichever street one goes around by walking, jogging or riding a car, whether it be at night or at daylight; wherever one might be, at work or in the shop, anywhere, one must remember oneself while in the presence of any beautiful object, or while before any window-shop where very beautiful things are being shown, etc., in other words, one must not become identified with anything that one likes or is captivated with." —Samael Aun Weor, The Key of SOL
If the self of self-observation is the psyche, the soul, the mind, the ego, then the self of self-remembrance is the being, the innermost, the spirit. To remember the being, and to observe the self are two side of a single coin. We can say that the remembrance of the self is more of Eastern-minded action, whereas the observation of the self is more of Western minded action. We always say that the East has its spiritual foundation in mysticism, which is the disappereance of the soul into the spirit, the being. However, in the West, occultism is the foundation of the spiritual tradition, which is the effort to bring the forces of divinity down into us, here and now, and is the activity of the sensorial, Western type of mind. It is in the intelligent, conscious combination of these two actions, these two efforts that the middle path is walked.
The subject, here and now, has to be divided in two; we have to feel that we are inside and to observe what we say, what we think, what we feel, actions, movements, everything, and we must be making the effort to remember our being! And, while we are doing that, maintaining that effort, at the same time comes the second factor. We have to add another mirror for our self-reflection, our self-observation.
The first mirror is to remember ourselves, to remember that we, as consciousness, are inside the body. The second mirror involves being conscious of what is in front of us; in other words, the objects then we put in front of another.
In doing so, we expand the consciousness without losing the first mirror, as the second mirror conducts the light, and reflects from all of them.
So, the second effort is to observe people, things, objects, that which is external to our psyche. It is necessary for us to be able to maintain conscious attention both inwardly and outwardly, because if you are only remembering and observing yourself but are not aware of the objects in your environment, you can cause great harm to yourself. For example, if you are not paying attention while you are walking down the street, and a bus is hurtling towards you and you unconsciously cross the street, then you go to the other side, right to the grave.
So, you have to be conscious of the objects around you. There are many things there are around you which could be dangerous, or not, but we cannot recognize the danger of something if we are not paying attention to it.
When we observe ourselves, we must always pay attention to ourselves, remember ourselves, divide ourselves in two: the observer and the observed (it is like a light that is reflected when two mirrors are facing each other).
Then, add a third mirror, that is, observe the objects all around you. Then, if you are able to maintain that consistently, then you will realize that sometimes when you are out of your body, in other words, when your physical body is snoring in the bed, you take that take that state of awareness, of consciousness into your dreams. You will be in another dimension, call it the dream dimension, because in order to call it another name you have to be conscious of that. We can call it the astral plane, but are we really aware of it? Are we really conscious that we are in the astral plane? Do we know for sure?
So, when we are there in that dimension which is not physical, sometimes you see very strange things, pink elephants for instance, or a lion. Did you ever dream that you were in someplace where suddenly you saw an object which was an animal, a tiger, a crocodile? Sometimes you see things there, animals which are not common in the physical plane. If you are accustomed to observing the objects around you, then, if you are observing yourself, you will ask yourself, “What happening here? Why am I seeing this lion here?” Suddenly you jump, you jump like the incredible hulk, big jumps, so what is going on here? You observe: “Why am I jumping so high and so long? I am not the incredible hulk, but I am doing it! Oh! This is not the physical world.” And then, you can take advantage of being awake in the internal planes.
If you are awake in the astral plane, you will always find very weird things, always. But, if you are not accustomed to observe the objects around you in your daily life, you will still go to the dream world as you sleep, but you will remain asleep. If there are weird things going on in your dream, you will not question them, because you are not accustomed to questioning the world around you. But, if you are able to be conscious in your dreams, then you realize, well, it would be silly to dream or to project dreams, let us investigate things here in this dimension. And you will discover things like, I know in this dimension I can fly because there is no gravity, so let us fly consciously.
Anytime we are physically sleeping the soul is out. If the soul is not aware, that soul is sleeping. But, it is enough for the soul to realize that the body is sleeping in order for it to awaken whilst in the dream world. When a person says, "I know that I’m out of my body," that person is not dreaming, he is conscious. If that person keeps remembering to himself that he is outside of his body, he will maintain that conscious state. Then, he or she can investigate the mysteries of life or death out of the body. But, as it is, we are accustomed in this physical plane to being asleep; we do not observe.
So, as we are, firstly we do not observe ourselves; secondly, we do not observe the exterior world. Things happen around us and we do not know, we do not register it. We are always asleep.
To observe objects is to be awakened, but if we don’t observe objects like Sherlock Holmes whilst remembering that we are here, observing our thoughts and feelings, it won’t lead anywhere.
First, we have to feel that we are in the body; second, we have observe and remember ourselves; third, the objects as the light I repeat is reflecting from the three mirrors. But also, that light has to be reflected in another mirror, a fourth mirror, which is location.
In what location am I? Which place is this? These are the conscious inquiries that we have to have, so that the consciousness can expand.
We have to learn to consciously trace around us the location in which we are, without losing the observation of the objects and without losing the observation of myself and without forgetting that I am here. That is the expansion of the consciousness to be awakened. If we make that effort, to maintain that awareness in all of those components, then we will see how everything will change around us, because we are always cognizant.
When we talk about location, we have to learn to think about place in terms of the dimensional aspect. We are in this house but in which dimension are we? Are we perhaps in the 5th dimension, the astral plane, the world of dreams? Are we sure that we are here with the physical body? Did you ever have a dream and in the very moment you were having a dream out of your body, you would swear you were in the physical plane? And, that the thing that was happening was really physical, and suddenly you awoke in your bed and said thank God that was a dream but was horrible I was killing somebody? Are we sure we that we are in the physical plane? Maybe this is a dream?
Maybe you are dreaming during this lecture too. Somebody might have invited you to come to this lecture, you came in the world of dreams, but your physical body is sleeping and you are going wake right now physically… are you sure that this is not the case?
The psychological matter of becoming familiar with the dimensional aspect of location takes study, experience. First, physically speaking, we utilize our consciousness: the law of gravity exists in the three-dimensional world. However, the law of gravity does not exist outside this physical world. If I am out of my body, and I jump, I will float, because there is no gravity. But, I have to do it; I have to be awake enough to intuit that I might be out of my body, so that I can jump.
A story regarding Master Samael Aun Weor the founder of this association comes into my mind. He told us that he was in a certain place, and he was always working with events, the three factors of the awakening of the consciousness, and suddenly he saw on the desk of this lady which he was talking with, two butterflies made of glass. But, the glass butterflies were moving their wings like real butterflies, and he said to himself, this isn’t possible, these are artificial butterflies meanwhile they are moving their wings. Then, he observed the location and place: “This is not a place I am familiar with; what I am doing?”
He immediately realized he was not in his country. Then he said to the lady, please, can you excuse me for a while? The lady agreed, and so he went out and when he saw there was nobody, he jumped and he was floating in the air.
He returned to the lady knowing for sure that “I am here in the astral plane, the world of dreams, my body is sleeping.” When he talked again with the lady, he told her that they were in the astral plane, called the world of dreams and your body is sleeping in the bed, but the lady was looking at him with her consciousness asleep. She was thinking that he was crazy.
So, he realized he was wasting his time. This lady wasn’t awake because she was not working with her consciousness. So, he turned away and walked to another place to investigate other things instead of wasting his time there. The same thing could happen to us.
Sometimes we dream that we are in another country. Your family for instance is in California and we dream that we are in California... we have to realize that if we do not recognize the place that we find ourselves in, you can ask another person, excuse me what is the name of this place, this country or city? Then you will realize, “Oh, strange. I am not in the physical plane.”
If you become suspicious that you are not in your physical body, and you really want proof, you have to jump! Why? Because, as we said, if you are not in the physical plane, the law of gravity does not apply; so, if you jump when you are out of your body, and you float, you can be sure that you are not in the physical plane. And, if you find yourself in a situation where it might be inappropriate to jump, then you can try pulling your finger; out of the body, the consciousness is elastic, pliable. Thus, if you pull your finger it will stretch. But, if you try to pull your finger here on this physical plane with all your strength, you might break your finger, but it certainly will not stretch. These are two powerful tools for awakening the consciousness in the dream world.
Related to this, one day I remember that I was traveling in a bus. I have always the custom of observing my thoughts, and then observing people who are around me. While I was on this bus, I was asking, “What am I do here? Maybe I am dreaming? I cannot jump here because I’m inside this bus...” So, I decided to push my finger into the seat that was in front of me, because I know that matter in the astral plane is elastic, what you can also call plastic.
So, I pushed my finger in, and my whole hand passed through. In that moment I knew that I was in the astral plane, so I kept passing through the wall of the bus, until I was outside of the bus, floating in the air. Obviously, in the astral plane there is nothing that is unusual about this.
Another example that comes to me is when I was with a Master, and this Master was showing people who were in the second sphere of hell, and how I had to do something in the physical world for them. Immediately I was looking at this cavern and said, “Yes, this is the second level of hell.” But, because of observing everything, I was conscious of it. Then, we approached this couple of people who did not know that they were in hell, because they were asleep. I was showing them how I was able to put my hand into a rock. “Do you see? Do you realize that? That we are not in physical bodies right now?”
You can do all of that, and many other things as well, when you are out of the physical body. But, if you are not accustomed to doing that here, if you are always sleeping, always identified, identified with the physical world, you will not have these types of experience. Your consciousness will not expand.
In the temple of Delphi there is this statement that says Nosce Te Ipsum, which translated means, “Man know thyself, and you will know the universe and all the beings of that universe and the Gods.” Of course you start knowing that, and you realize what the scriptures of the holy religions like Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity are. Then, you stop criticizing religions like ignorant people do. People who criticize the holy religions because they are polytheistic, or pagan, or whatever reason they have for disliking this or that religion, or people who think that this or that religion is worthless, that only they know the true religion and have the true God… this is all born of ignorance.
All the religions are holy. All of them. But, all the religious are unholy, because this is what we are, unholy. In order to understand any particular religion, other than our religion, we have to study ourselves psychologically. This is the only way. We have to awaken because we are asleep! We just criticize. That is why it is said: the expression of ignorance is a lie. Yet, some people lie without knowing that they are lying, because they think they know the truth!
So, that is the first step: awaken the consciousness with the three factors that we gave you. If we experience that, if we practice with it, we will awaken, we will be conscious of all the mysteries of the universe. But, if we do not do that, we will forever remain as we are right now!
Thank you very much!
