Qabalistic Paths to the Inner Planes - Class 2

We will start by reading a meditation from the Book of Tokens. The Book of Tokens was received by Dr. Case from the Inner Planes, inspirationally.

I am without beginning, without end, older than night or day, younger than the babe newborn, born, brighter than light, darker than darkness, beyond all things and creatures, yet fixed in the heart of everyone. From me the shining worlds flow forth, to me all at last return, yet to me neither men nor angels may draw nigh, for I am known only to myself. Ever the same is mine inmost being absolutely one, complete, whole, perfect, always itself, eternal, infinite, ultimate, formless, indivisible, changeless. Of all existences, I am the source, the continuation, continuation and the end. I am the germ, I am the growth, I am the decay. All things and creatures I send forth, I support them while yet they stand without, and when the dream of separation ends, I cause their return unto myself. I am the life and the wheel of the law, and the way that leadeth to the beyond. There is none else. I am the fire of mind which divideth itself into the superior and inferior natures and putteth on a robe of flesh to come down. I am the vital principle of all that is. Nothing is that does not live and of that life I am the source. As it is written, first the stone, then the plant, then the animal, and then the man.

But before the stone I am the fire, distributed equally in space, nowhere absent, filling all. And before the fire, hidden within it, I am the pure knowing whence all forms flow forth. Apart from me there is neither wisdom nor knowledge nor understanding. Into every state of knowledge do I enter into false knowledge as well as into true so that I am not less the ignorance of the deluded than the wisdom of the sage for what thou callest ignorance and folly is my pure knowing imperfectly expressed through an uncompleted image of my divine perfection affection. Woe unto them who condemn these my works unfinished. Behold, they who presume to judge are themselves incomplete. Through many a fiery trial of sorrow must they pass, ere the clear beauty of my wisdom may shine from out their hearts, like unto a light burning in a lamp of alabaster I am the doer of all nothing moveth but by my power mine is the healing influence flowing down from consecrated hands mine the venom of the adder's fang nothing falleth but by me and in whatsoever rises mine is the power that lifteth up my presence is the substance of all things I am the virgin snow on mountain heights I am the fruitful loam in valley depths I am the gold and silver of the temple vessels I am the mire on sandals left by the faithful at the temple gate See me and regard me equally in all, O Israel And thou shalt see indeed For seeing thus shalt thou see too that nothing is or can be my antagonist.

All and in all shall I fight myself.

What hath power to limit or defeat the very source of power? Know then that all thy sense of conflict is but the shadow play of ignorance.

Wait with patience on me, thy Lord, and in my appointed time while I make clear what now is dark and show before thee straight and true a path of safety in the very place where now an abyss of terror seems to open at thy feet.

I am the beginning of all beginnings, checked by neither time nor space, held by no bonds of name or form present everywhere centering the full perfection of mine exhaustless power I am thy Lord O Israel and Lord of countless hosts seek me in the Holy of Holies in the heart of the true temple on the holy mountain behold I am with thee always and I never sleep I am the height above all heights my descent Descent reaches likewise below all depths.

Yet am I poised forever between height and depth and perfect balance. Consider me under the aspect of Olith. There shalt thou find both height and depth and the path also which joineth them for descent and return.

Olith and truth am I, the ox of solar fire, whose radiance lighteth all the world, whose life breath ebbeth and floweth in creatures great and small whose power taketh form and all the acts of men of beasts of plants yay and of things which seem inanimate as well all of them I the patient burden bearer strong to carry the heavy load of the manifest all of am I the the eternal worker, by whose might all fields are tilled, and from whose life all seeds derive their growth and increase. Aleth am I the first and the root. From mine unfathomable will the universe has its beginning. In my boundless wisdom are the types and patterns of all things. Before all worlds I was in all worlds I am and when worlds are but a memory I shall be Last Thursday night, the first class of this series, we gave you a very short resume of the tradition behind initiation, of the tradition behind Qabalah, and we tried to show you that there has been, in existence since the beginning of history and beyond, a definite way, a definite plan, a definite method for initiation in order to help man to ascend the evolutionary ladder in ways and means which were known, which have been guarded, which have been carried on from time to time, from climb to climb, without a break, without without a single break in the links of the chain to the present time.

And having, we hope, shown you that this certainly is so, because every true scholar knows that the Holy Bible, that the understanding of true esoteric occultism, is absolutely dependent on the Qabalah since the Bible, you remember, was written by the prophets, that is, those who were trained in the secret traditions of Israel. And this week we are going to start familiarizing you with the tree of life which you see before you. And before we can go into the ascent and the ways, the means, the methods that have been utilized that is that which we can give and we're going to give more than we have ever given before to the public in this particular series before we can show you the way the upward climb is taken in true initiation we will have to give you a short and I'm afraid a very short understanding of the the teachings that have to do with the involution of consciousness, because unless we have some grasp of this, we'll be unable to fully understand and therefore utilize the rest of the work that we're going to take in this very short class series, which as you remember is going to last only through June and July on Thursday evenings.

So let's begin in this manner. Those of you who attended my Sunday morning talk about two weeks ago heard me tell about one of the latest theories in modern science. When I read it I was utterly delighted and I shared it with our Sunday morning people who come to our services and talk. And I do wish to again bring it up here because it has a great deal to do with an understanding of the involutionary aspect of consciousness and therefore the appearance of what seems to be a physical universe.

Now, the latest scientific theory happens to be that in actuality the atoms, you see there have been several theories, there are three schools of scientific thought on this. One school of scientists favored the idea that at one time all the physical matter in the universe was condensed into one very compressed ball and then boom, there was some explosion and the universe has been exploding ever since. And that's how they explain the continuous receding elements that are involved when they examine the universe with their telescopes. And the fact that light seems to travel a great deal more rapidly the farther away it gets from wherever the scientist happens to be who is examining the receding light with his telescope. So this theory is that it was once just one solid atom and it exploded. But of course then they have run into difficulties because they figure if it's in a sense like unwinding itself, what wound it up in the first place?

And since so many scientists are very materialistically inclined, though this is less so, So as time goes on, our physicists particularly are becoming very spiritually inclined due to their studies of the physical universe. At any rate, this put them in a tremendous dilemma because they didn't like to use the word God inasmuch as if a universe is unwinding, it would have had to have been wound up to begin with and this means there would have had to be definite attention and of course this means they'd have to think of something like god horrible thought so of course most of them couldn't stand this and they gave it the term anti-chance they thought that would cover it in other words the universe couldn't have come about by chance so it came about by anti-chance that's how they play with words. Now, then about 10 to 15 years ago, another school of thought appeared on the scientific horizon amongst our physicists and astronomers, and Mr. Hoyle was one of the outmost proponents of this particular idea, and that is that the universe is not an exploding mass from one wound-up atom, that actually matter just appears in space at regular intervals. And the reason the universe is expanding is because if you take a balloon and keep blowing air into it, I give you this analogy why the balloon will keep getting bigger and bigger. And in a sense, just out of nowhere, hydrogen atoms appear. He was quite sure it would have to be hydrogen atoms since this is what most of the universe is composed of. Well now a third theory has come upon the scene in the last few weeks, at least I've only discovered it a few weeks ago, and it's very, very new. It was just given at a scientific conclave in the last month or two, I believe. And this theory is that in actuality, when you consider the way suns and nebulas are formed and you see the condensation of the atoms the condensation is so thorough it makes the nucleus so heavy that there are there happens to be no room then for the actual electrons to whirl about in their interstices around the central nucleus so their theory is that the nucleus nucleus, basically the real building block of the universe, is so fantastically condensed that it's invisible. And so it exists invisibly, and that what makes it visible is the expansion outward or the motion of this condensed invisible nucleus now this incidentally is exactly in accordance with Qabalah now how four or five thousand years ago did these wise ones who have given us this tradition how did they know this indeed how did they know the many things they knew which only now our scientists are catching up with. True, they didn't have the means to prove it objectively, but they knew because they have been teaching it. And here we'll start with the tree, because what I just gave you will help you get a better understanding of the teaching, the ancient traditional teaching about the beginnings of the universe and how this tree works for the evolution of consciousness. And of course this we'll have to take up week by week but to begin with then you see that white point on the tree of life a white circle if you have good eyesight from where you are you can see it says crown well actually there are many names for that point and here's what the teaching actually gives they say that before this white point there are three veils they give it three veils now the veils are not remember all these things have to be spoken of in terms of symbolism because the mind can only cope with certain thoughts through symbols our modern psychologists know this now and of course our wise ones have known it down through the endless ages consciousness as a matter of fact is that which manipulates symbols we could have no consciousness were it not for symbols words are symbols, they're symbols of symbols. You cannot have a thought that doesn't involve a symbol, and therefore in order to evolve your own consciousness you have to understand symbols, and you have to be taught and trained just what they mean and why. That incidentally is one of the ways that you keep from ending behind locked doors and mental institutions when you work in occultism because those people who go haphazardly around trying all sorts of metaphysical or occult techniques without the disciplines of the symbols are like people trying to jump out of airplanes without a parachute they have nothing to hang on to they have nothing to guide or people trying to drive a car without a steering wheel your symbols are the steering wheel of consciousness and then also give you the step beyond the three-dimensional consciousness and into the realms of real and pure being.

Now, let's then consider the idea of the three veils, why they teach that first we must consider the three veils.

You see, unlike most of our modern philosophers, the wise men knew that there are some concepts the human mind cannot deal with. Therefore, if it cannot deal with a particular concept, it's no use wasting time and energy. So they start at the point where they know consciousness can deal with it even if it can't completely understand it so they so they have taught in the Qabalah and this will help you perhaps to understand the story of Genesis a little more fully by the time we're through tonight they have taught that the limitless light this is what they refer the three veils to actually they say first there is the no thing and of course no thing has absolutely no meaning to us and that's why it is deliberately used the mind can't grab or grasp a no thing we have no way to handle that then from the no thing that's supposed to be the first veil then the second veil and mind you this is before the tree the second veil is called just plain light and the third veil limitless light which includes the other two involving the idea of the no thing so before anything was there's the limitless light Now if we try to form a picture of limitless light we can't really form it, can we? And yet we have a symbol. Now this limitless light, they say, let us just use it as a veil. That's why it is called the three veils. Let's use it as a veil. Let's like, let's draw a curtain and against this veil let's try to see what consciousness can find. So the teaching is that the limitless light, which is also called incidentally the womb of the no-thing, concentrates by pressure. What is concentration? Pressure, isn't it? When you concentrate on anything you are compressing your attention to one area so the no thing the limitless light compresses its attention or a part of its consciousness into a point and incidentally doesn't this sound a lot like the appearance especially when I finish explaining this like the appearance of that condensed atom out of nowhere. That is the concentration of the cosmic life into a compressed self-contemplation. Now the action of its own concentration then starts a motion and that is the point, that white circle, the one called the crown. That is the point where we can start dealing to some degree with the concept of beginnings. Not that there isn't a beginning behind this beginning, but we can't deal with it. If you say what caused this and then what caused the thing before it and what caused the thing before it, you can go on and on. You never come to an end. So a disciplined mind, a disciplined consciousness, stops wasting its time and starts where it can.

That's the place that we start then. Not, mind you, that the Qabalists agree with, for instance, Kant and some of the other philosophers who say that the Absolute is forever unknowable. No, the Qabalists say that according to our evolutionary level what is knowable to us now was not knowable, say, a year ago or several incarnations ago and things that are not knowable to us today will be knowable tomorrow or a year from now our consciousness is a growing evolving thing and therefore we can know things we did not know so we cannot just say hard and fast something can never be known it's just that human consciousness consciousness, at this stage of its evolution, certainly cannot know directly the womb of the no-thing. But it can start dealing with the concept of the beginning of the whirling of motion, which is the whirling motion of the limitless light concentrated on a point. And remember please that everything in the universe is in whirling motion the vast nebulas we pointed this out to you last week and we want to remind you the vast nebulas the the billions and billions of nebulas which are universes are all in whirling spiral motion and every atom is really a nucleus with a with one or more electrons in whirling motion, everything that we experience, our own bodies, our chairs, the sky, the tree, everything is in whirling motion.

And what is it that's whirling? The limitless light. So the point to remember is this, in terms of the involution, so that we can get a comprehensive idea of the tree and see our relationship to it. The thing to remember is that that which we call the physical universe is not something different or separate from what we call consciousness, or what we call God, or what we call man. In other words, we experience the physical universe in a special way, but this substance, that is, this whirling motion of the limitless light, is the actual consciousness of the creating spirit or God.

Therefore, even everything in the physical universe certainly can be said to be eternal. It changes it holds certain forms and dissolves forms but again we can go to modern science for verification and we instantly discover that there's there's nothing in terms of the physical universe which can be destroyed it can only be changed in its form it can be changed from an actual form to a radiation but the atoms which compose it the electrons which are part of the nucleus these cannot be destroyed they can only be changed even if you think of an atom bomb you're not destroying matter you're changing its form and the reason it's rather important to remember this is because it It is in our hypnosis regarding the duality of consciousness, this hypnosis which thinks that my consciousness is one thing, but the physical experiences are not something of God. This is what keeps us separated away and keeps us from experiencing directly directly some of the magical, mystical, and glorious things which are experienceable to consciousness, to awareness, if we start thinking of everything as being a condensed, whirling motion of the limitless light which is the substance consciousness of God. This does not mean that what we see physically is God because God is that and more what we're saying is that it is just as much an aspect of God's consciousness and incidentally the whole secret behind transmutation and regeneration is involved in this one particular idea which you will see when we start explaining the initiatory paths as we start rising upward again so in these beginnings of the concentrated center of whirling we can think of it as God concentrating a center of attention upon itself and in and again in a sense think of it looking into itself which is emotion of its consciousness and seeing within itself two aspects of its own being to begin with. Now then, if you look at the tree, you'll see the gray circle and the black circle. Now those three, the white, the gray, and the black, are called the supernal triad. Now the gray circle is assigned to wisdom, you can read that there, the cosmic father, the force side, of the universe that is the energy the the the living vital energy the motion of of livingness cosmic father and the black circle on the other side which balances it this is called the cosmic mother she is called understanding she's called the divine soul she it is who is forever pure and undefiled. This is the point where all the stories of the Virgin giving birth to Saviour, this is where it comes from. This is how it was taught to Jesus. This is how it was taught to Moses, to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah. This is how Pythagoras learned it, all through the same traditional teaching. The cosmic father and the cosmic mother, force and form now mind you it isn't that this cosmic father element and this cosmic mother element or the principle of force and form suddenly came into being remember this is a process of shall we say the absolute or God looking into its own nature and seeing these two aspects of itself and here we have the beginning of consciousness or polarity because look we have light and dark we have day and night we have joy and sorrow we have good and evil but you remember what we read to you from the book of tokens is there such a thing as evil relatively speaking yes but in its real essence in order to be conscious at all we have to have this polarity these opposites otherwise what would there be to be conscious of and so these are the eternal two two aspects of deity, the Cosmic Mother, the Cosmic Father, and it has been taught in Qabalah always, these two are forever conjoined. They are in eternal union. And indeed, from this eternal union, from this eternal love, we are begotten. We will show you on the tree, and of course awakening to this realization this is actually having the christ consciousness you know so from this union and the path that you see that green path that crosses between the gray and the black circle this is the path of conjunction actually and and you notice the empress art in tarot our empress which is assigned to venus and to the whole love aspect of life this is what joins these two forces now then if you will notice the circle going down as rather the path going down the middle from the white to the yellow that is the path of the high priestess and it is also called the intelligence of unity by the Qabalists now that yellow circle is called and this you have heard me tell you often in other talks it is called Adam which means remember generic humanity it is called the savior it is called the messiah it is called the son of God it is called the king and you see this is the begotten son of God here we're showing a certain aspect of the involution although there are many levels which we will not be able to go into here because there are the four worlds in actuality each one of these sefirahs are said to be divine emanations naturally of consciousness and and if you think of a sort of overflow into a receptacle they overflow from one to the other like a lightning flash this is the involution of consciousness into manifestation and in a sense you can call it the expansion expansion of its concentration into the motion of the universe. So that if you will just look at the white circle and think of going over to the gray, then across to that black, then down to the blue, then across to the red, then through the yellow to the green, over the orange to the violet, then down, you have a perfect lightning flash. And it is said that actually the tree comes into being like a lightning flash in other words all the emanations which are different stages of consciousness different ways of divine consciousness in action that these come into being all at once like a lightning flash simultaneously but the outworking of them starts the time and space This has taken place first in the consciousness and always remember that all mystics who experience higher levels of consciousness always report that their time sense has changed.

They don't have the sense of time and space that we have when we're functioning as we function here with our consciousness concentrated on the vibrational element we call the physical universe. It is because they reach a level of the self-knowing of Godhood in which time is not but the outworking that's where we run into our own problems isn't it where we can say oh Lord how long how long and haven't we all said that well the result of the union between the force and form, the Cosmic Mother, Cosmic Father, brings about the further activity and this is all, remember, taking place within the white circle, even though we show it in its outer development. This is all a self-contemplation. It's all the substance of God, self-thinking, self-creating. But But here the creating is not yet taking place in terms of time and space. Because the process of seeing itself as having all wisdom, of having a perfect understanding of all its previous manifestations in previous millennia, shall we say, brings about its memory.

And you notice memory on that blue circle, that's the fourth Sephirah. And so the cosmic aspect of memory, comes up remembering everything it has been and therefore everything that must logically result from what it is and what it has been and what it has created and the logical result brings us over to that red circle which actually is tied up with volition volition everything we feel as will the the drive of will this is our participation in that aspect of divine emanation or divine consciousness and again uh before we go on from that to give you a little understanding of the involutionary uh elements remember you there are what are three pillars you see that on what would be to your right hand, although that isn't the way you meditate on it, on your right hand you notice there's the gray, the blue, and the green circle. Those three sefiris are called the pillar of mercy, named after the central pillar, mercy. That's the memory aspect of God and ourselves by the way as above so below then on the opposite side the black the red and the orange that is the pillar of severity so you have your pillar of mercy and your pillar of severity then in the middle the white the yellow that violet and then that multicolored one below that is called the pillar of mildness and that's the pillar of actual consciousness the The pillar of mercy is the fourth side of God, or shall we say, the masculine principles of the divine, which we all share in.

It is that which has stirred into activity in the past, and therefore it's tied up with the past, because memory is there. Then on the opposite side, it is balanced by the future. Again you have your opposite and everything that has to do with the severity side has to do with the unknown you see that's where we usually experience our fears that which we don't know about yet and so you have your mercy and severity and your balance is the pillar of mildness and this hat with this we will bring up rather often when we explain the changes in consciousness that take place when we go through the opening of the inner areas of our consciousness in terms of the tree so from that volitional will aspect when god in this self-contemplation sees what must come as a result of its own nature it comes through the yellow because remember this is the seeing from the past to the future and we're not dealing with that middle pillar at all as yet except that it receives the influence when we get to this green circle we come to the desire element of life which and you might ask well does god desire god must desire otherwise why did he take so much trouble getting this universe and ourselves around here. In actuality, the basic tradition is that the nature of God is to desire to share the glory and beauty and magic of creativity. And so out of this nature, this desire to share, which is love, that's why you've often heard it said God is love out of this desire come all things and we are begotten because God wanted us now you might not like the idea of God having wanted some of your enemies and you might think that God kind of was not completely on the beam when you think of some of the uh creatures that God created but remember what we read to you from the book of tokens these are just uncompleted images of his divine perfection dr case always used to say that while perfume is being made in a factory if any of you ever went to one you would discover it the smell is just god awful and you could never believe that it's going to come out and and finally develop into something so beautiful so enticing the very reverse is true while the process goes on and it's pretty much the same with the evolution of living creatures if we remember that perhaps then we won't think that God should have called us into consultation before he created a few people we know or have heard about So the desire nature is attributed to that green circle or Sephirah or emanation of divine consciousness which is called victory here.

Now the reason it's called victory is because naturally whatever push or desire God has, it is absolutely certain that it's going to come out victoriously. Can you imagine God wanting anything and not doing it of course I know we've all read that God can't want anything because God is perfect complete infinite ultimate and all these things but you know don't haven't you often thought they're just a lot of words hasn't it left you a little bewildered and certainly confused when you've read in so many metaphysical books that God couldn't really want anything because God is everything and and then they leave us up in the air then why have we got a universe and some of them say well that's just mortal mind whatever that means or that's just carnal mind whatever they mean by that well but who created it then wouldn't you think God must have wanted it or it wouldn't be God must have wanted this kind of consciousness in the process of creating because we can't conceive of anything being except it was intended otherwise if anything is here that god didn't intend to be here including whatever they mean by mortal mind then there'd be a power that was other and greater than god wouldn't there so in this basic tradition desire is thought very highly of and no one is taught to kill it out they're taught to revere it they're taught to learn how to understand it and how to direct it towards fulfillment as you will see when we start explaining the repercussions that come from not looking at desire this way you see only people who can desire with a fullness of heart and an intensity of spirit ever get anywhere you won't study unless you have a desire to study you won't be able to concentrate unless there is interest there which makes the desire for this concentration in fact you can accomplish nothing without the emotion of desire this is the real creating force or power of the universe and after all what is love because you know that's the fear we're talking about is assigned to Venus we'll go into that when we explain the paths between them and Venus is assigned to love remember and what is love isn't that desire to experience the joyous ecstatic rapture of unity whether it be between minds or emotions or lovers whatever level you want to think of it that's what it is so desire is called called victory because this is what keeps the motion of both involution and evolution going into its preordained paths that is for the unfoldment of the perfected man the perfected consciousness now across from the green ones you know see we're going backward here or forward but we're going to start going backward that is traveling back pretty soon the orange circle is assigned to the intellect you see the green is the desire the orange the intellect and actually below that yellow Sephirah which is Tiphareth beauty the son of God the Christ consciousness the true ego seated in the hearts of men below that yellow circle all the powers of personality are expressed although at this point they have not yet come into being God is seeing this process then it It starts growing up into expression from the self-contemplation or the self-seeing of these powers, these elements.

Because in seeing self, you see the Son of God, remember that yellow circle. It is taught in Qabalah that this is not anything separate from God. When God thinks of self in terms of evolving a personality through which to be self-consciousness, then that self becomes the potential individualized self which we attribute to this yellow circle which we call Adam, the son of God, the king. And so you and I, remember, are not anything different in our central awareness of I than that which we're discussing in terms of the cosmic or universal God. We are aspects of that one thing because we have a feeling I.

And that feeling I is that same I that concentrated that center to begin with before there was, or if there ever was a time before there was, a so-called outer universe. And remember that individualized central I that you are is really invisible the compressed core of beingness which is eternal and can never not be this is part of the magic I mean when you come to realize this then and you will then you'll see what must follow from that now the orange circle assigned to intellect. This has to do with the discriminatory aspects and the green and the orange balance each other, balance together in a sense you might say they give birth to the next aspect and in a way each of those pairs on the tree you might call them mates just like the cosmic father and the Cosmic Mother the whole secret of sex incidentally is something that you can get to truly understand when you become fully familiar with this whole system which takes some doing because it takes real study and real desire but if you want to understand the whole secret of sex of creation if you want to understand just what is really involved in the idea of begotten son of God and see it everywhere if you want to understand just what makes the sex urge and what peoples the earth and what brings about the mating of all the various creatures you will understand it and understand it fully when you fully understand this entire system and especially when you have had the privilege of traveling the grades where the inner essence and the inner meanings have been open to you this is something that very few have ever even hinted about in the books that have been written about qabalah though there haven't been too many yet there are some who have mentioned it and we will try to bring it in from time to time to help you have at least a little better understanding of that vital force that force which in a sense you might call the force of the universe we'll try to help you understand it when we get to the proper parts in this series and perhaps you will never again see the idea of sex and unity in the same way that you did before at least that's our intention that you see it in another way that you develop an insight and an understanding uh and therefore an ability to direct direct control and experience your life force because we each have it each and every one of us are part of that whole process and with that life force beget yourselves the true spiritual child which is what of course we're all after now then the violet circle which is called yesed the foundation this is assigned to subconsciousness and this is said to be the pattern of the universe that is where from which all things flow that's why it's called a foundation and incidentally these different parts of the tree are assigned to of all things believe it or not physiological aspects of God and yes it the foundation is assigned to to God's reproductive organs now don't think that's silly because just think this is subconsciousness and just stop to think for a moment how did you know how did you know how to build your vehicle when you were in your mother's womb you were just a single cell to begin with how did you know how to gather nutrients and to keep dividing and organizing your your elements together into a pattern and and then keep dividing parts of yourself and organizing, because you did it.

Did your mother know how? Did she take a course in biology at school and told her how?

She didn't know how.

Although she also did it in her time.

Something knows how.

That something is in subconsciousness.

That's where it is. Subconsciousness knows, and after all subconsciousness is something that you have and I have we all have it we share it and it is in subconsciousness that the whole procreative drive exists isn't it I mean can anyone command these urges no one can command them just like the wind bloweth where it listeth these urges have a life and a will of their own and we have many problems in the world because of that incidentally but we will cover that on the return journey of the tree when we take it step by step but the the reproductive process uh this is the foundation of the physical universe you see and it's also assigned to subconsciousness and incidentally to the astral plane which and we will show and to patterns all the patterns that exist in consciousness reside in that part of the awareness and this all going in this evolutionary flow from self remembering to self remembering finally we come down to the bottom circle which is called Malkuth the Queen the bride it's assigned to the physical universe to actual form now in essence what occurs of course this has been well known the arrival of this uh essence this drive this force this knowingness this memory this volition this desire all these parts we just mentioned about the tree for instance just let me run it down like in the white circle the drive to be the beginning of the whirlings the gray one with the wisdom, the black, the understanding, the blue one, the memory and the mercy, the red one, the severity and incidentally the drive, the volition, and the green one the desire, and the orange one the intellect, and the violet one the foundation, that is the generative capacities.

All these powers became involved and started to push a certain condensed part of itself around. And so evolutionary wise what we did each and every one of us as sparks of these knowing never out of God all is taking place remember inside of the one self and as we have often explained before if you find it difficult to think of yourself as being in God and actually an acting element of God and in God try to remember that you are many types of personality depending on who you're with that is on the relationship and this will help you to get more firmly into your minds the basic idea of the one and the many which is important in a full understanding and usage of the powers that involve the the tree of life so if you think of yourself as being a friend and a student perhaps also a teacher a worker and you're a different friend to each of your various friends and so on you're a daughter or a son as well as a sister or a brother and yet all the time you are you in the same way each of us as sparks, sparks of the one individual godhood, the sparks of the eye, came down through the self-contemplation into the purpose of the whole involutionary idea, and that is to push our way back into full self-conscious cooperation with God into the development of not just an eternal individuality, because this, yes, but an eternal individuality that will become just as much a creator even of universes in time. As a matter of fact, each and every one of us are already the creator of our own universe as we shall see but in an even larger sense and so we started first of all pushing through single-celled life and then learning with our consciousness how to manipulate this substance of consciousness the substance of god which is our own substance the substance of mind of universal mind, how to manipulate it into ever more complex forms. And so we lived and we died and we lived and we died down through billions and billions and millions of years. And we learned how to make ever more complex forms. And every time one of us found a new way to bring in a new form out of the memory of God which we share out of the will of God which directs us whether we know it or not out of the intention of God every time one of us accomplished a new form it was shared on the subconscious level with all because we're all one life wave until finally we arrived at the point where we all are now that is as human consciousness and therefore in essence we must remember we must think of ourselves as having already learned how to do everything that's necessary everything that is necessary not only to build a vehicle but how to keep it going because again I will ask you how do you know how to keep your blood pumping pumping through your veins. How do you know how to continue to breathe in and out? How do you know how to send out the carbon dioxide and take in the oxygen? How do you know how to send all the various nutrients into the different parts of your body in order to keep it functioning? You do it, you know. How do you know how? Well, the point is this. You You have learned how.

Otherwise, how could you do it? And if this makes you wonder, why am I not conscious of it? Let's think of this. Let's think of a concert pianist. Somebody's going to go out and give a marvelous, do a marvelous bit of entertaining.

Now, in order to be able to play that piano, in order to be able to toot that horn or whatever, think of the hours of practice when the consciousness had to apply itself to disciplines in order to learn how to manipulate the fingers, the muscles, the development of the understanding of music. Then when it became subconscious, when that person didn't have to think anymore which finger goes on which note, when that person could just look at the music and instantly play it, that's when that person was a virtuoso how about those of you who type if you have to think of each letter and poke it out with one finger hunting around you're not a typist a typist doesn't have to think of the keyboard but why doesn't the typist have to think of the keyboard because the typist learned how memorized that keyboard learned how to manipulate it and therefore it's subconscious doesn't have to think she can look at a letter and without looking at the board without thinking of her fingers the moment she'd start thinking about her fingers you know what would happen you bet and you know what happens the minute we start worrying about our bodies we get sick look at the hypochondriacs you see we don't leave well enough alone we're like the uh that when that centipede was asked to pray which leg do you comes first you know it was able to run around beautiful with what was supposed to be its hundred or thousand legs and the moment it was asked which leg comes first it fell flat on its back and it was helpless because it wasn't letting the proper part of the consciousness do the job so anyway we've just and in such a brief manner without giving you any of the real essence of the involutionary elements we we have at least tried to show the influx of consciousness through a state of concentration and its decision to develop and control and form vehicles through which it could experience certain states of consciousness. Because remember, we're going to have an intermission in a minute, but remember that the kind of vehicle that you have is what determines what kind of awarenesses you have.

The bee, for instance, has a type of vehicle so that it is aware of certain, of the ultraviolet or infrared.

And it lives in a different universe from us. You see, it has other awarenesses. The kind of vehicle you have is what gives you the awarenesses of God's consciousness in a specialized manner. So that you might say God because he wanted to experience certain specialized forms formed himself or we should say itself because my feminist nature objects to himself and I just showed you that God's a he and a she so at any rate this formation is because a dog can't see a star or the fact that a flower is made up of a delicacy of forms with little tassels in the middle and so on every creature experiences the universe in terms of its own senses you see and it's still the same universe and yet it's in the consciousness that the experience comes through the conditioning of the form. So at least that's a beginning on trying to explain to your wife the form part of consciousness is important.

And now, before we have our intermission, I think that the Reverend Persson might want to make an announcement or two.

Then we'll have a five-minute intermission in order to get the blood circulating. Then we'll continue with tonight's class.

All right, now we're going to start getting down to business. I don't know what we've been doing so far.

We reach a point in evolution, actually, where, curiously enough, we are more separated away in our consciousness from the divine source than we have been at any time in our evolution in this manner. This is rather important to understand because then it will show you a little more fully when we take the various paths up the tree in the sefiris there are the stages of evolution which are involved and how work of the kind that we have helps to bring you into a sort of condition which is called like a forcing process you know like when you take plants and put them in a hot house you give them very special conditions and you have your plants attain a growth and a flowering far ahead of the time that could where this could occur if you left the plants out just fighting away with raw nature so to speak and the the traditional initiatory processes of these paths of return really are that.

They are designed to take those few human beings, and few they usually are indeed, who have reached a point where they're able and willing and in fact desperate to take the path of hastening their own self-evolution.

In order to get out of the problems, the trials, the tears, the frustrations, the tribulations, the ignorance. They're not willing to just keep going round and round anymore in this state of unhappiness and separation.

They're, well, just plain desperate. The soul is anyway. And what brings us about? This, again, is still part of the evolutionary process. This. After all, if you will look at Malkuth, which is the bottom, the physical universe or the indications of it, you can see that it's the farthest from the white circle, which is the central one self, which is assigned to a haya, which is in Hebrew, which means existence, I amness, selfness the one the indivisible in the state of consciousness which is down in malkuth through the form there is the greatest separation of awareness and yet qabalah teaches malkuth that is the physical universe is in kether that is the one self the I am and kether is in malkuth but after another manner and here's what actually happens think of a circle just of a plain circle and think of evolution as going down say the left hand side that's the involution consciousness involving itself into ever more concentration remember in order to evolve self-consciousness because never forget that self-consciousness is dependent on a concentration of awareness you know when you walk around in a daydream you're not self-conscious why because the mind is going hither scither yon ambling along and in every awareness and you're not being your self-concentrated itself at that time. If you think of reading a book, your attention is so concentrated, if you're interested in your book, that is, that you're unaware of other things. If you're looking at a very interesting movie or TV program, though that's rather hard to find, isn't it? Your attention can become so absorbed that you become unaware of other things.

Well, the concentration, that is the compression which we spoke about at the beginning, which begins all things, this compression, remember, is an essential part of becoming self-aware.

It's just like you, if you get compressed down hard enough, you know, you start screaming.

It makes you something distinct. Distinct. And that indeed is the reason for the whole compression element, to become distinct self-conscious co-creators. But again, as I said, think of involution as going down the side of the left-hand side of a circle. Think of the consciousness of God, of knowing who and what you are as being at the top of the circle and then as you come down that side think of it as being first the elements then uh say plant life plant consciousness then keep going downward and then think of it as being animal consciousness then keep going downward until you come to the very bottom of the circle in your mind and think of that as being human consciousness having attained its full individuation or self-consciousness you will notice then that at the bottom of that circle consciousness as is the most separated from the top that is the God consciousness in other words animals even primitive men and women plants and all those things they're closer to God than we are can you see that and yet we are more highly evolved than they are why because we don't stop at the bottom that now mind you this is just analogy but it gives you the idea we start traveling our consciousness continues to travel to the other side of the circle that is it starts starts coming back to God. But having added to itself, remember, all the experiences, the self-experiences that it's been through.

So if you ever wonder what makes people you-know-whats so often, remember it's because they're very unhappy and insecure. They're separated. And that has to do with most of us, too. There's a sense of aloneness. There's a sense of loneliness.

Because the process of becoming individuated and self-conscious is rather painful. The concentration of the consciousness, that part of our consciousness, which we call I, and yet it is not different from the God I. It's right in God I, but going through certain self-experiences. That part has been so concentrated and is so concentrated in the experience of its form element that just like when you're lost in a book, when you're lost in a story, you and I have been lost in the unfolding story of manifestation. So lost in just what happens, you know, does he love me, does she love me? No, they don't, they did that. We're so lost in the interrelationships and experiences. Does my boss appreciate me? I'm afraid not. Am I going to lose my job? We're we're focused in one area of self-experienced livingness and because we're so focused we it's like a hypnosis in a way a self-hypnosis and necessary up to the point but in order to develop that pressure that drive to find that which will take away the loneliness to find that which will make us feel secure to find that which will give us the kind of serenity which cannot be lost.

Because I wonder how often, through how many incarnations, you and I have tried to find our security in other people, or in conditions, or in money, or in things, and each time have suffered bitter disillusionment, because all things in the motion part of the manifested universe universe, they are in motion, so nothing can remain the same. So we can't hang on to people, we can't hang on to our children, they'll grow up and leave us. We can't hang on to even our husbands and wives, no matter how much we love them, because one or the other sooner or later is going to go off into the astral and there are the different levels of unfoldment.

I mean, we keep trying to find something for security, and we come to a point where we know we're going to have to discover the secret of it somewhere other than the places we have sought.

And that's usually the time when we start, really start, on the evolutionary path, or the path of return. And of course this path of return involves many factors. We could go through through several incarnations, where we remain strictly, say, on a mystical path. We may even have experiences of cosmic consciousness, and yet this still isn't the answer, because we could have an experience of cosmic consciousness. How long is it going to last? It doesn't last too long. Just read your literature on the subject, and we'll still find ourselves in our personalities, having to live the personality life. It will inspire us, it will encourage us, but we'll find it is not yet the answer. As a matter of fact it has been very little realized by most aspirants that, for example, the attaining of certain states of mystical consciousness or what in the Eastern thought has often been called illumination and really is not that it is having a touch of something but it isn't the true or complete illumination because we are destined for far more than that incidentally far more it has been very little realized that that is merely one of the steps in the evolution of humanity that as a matter of fact those who stick strictly to the various mystical paths and these are good because we need them and I'm sure most of us have had that in past incarnations that the time still comes when we have to become masters of the vehicle we have to become masters of the processes of thought and emotion because that is the what we're here for and the various different types of paths that aspirants follow at various times in their evolution these go through many incarnations but finally comes the time when they are ready to follow the path of complete integration that is they cannot and will not be just mystics they cannot and will not be just occultists they cannot and will not just be new thoughters you know just learn how to think right and everything will be all right and you know if only I you know just don't think so negatively and and you'll sing and you'll walk along in paradise well it only works so far and then we find that it isn't quite that way because we're still part of the whole process of the mass humanity and we cannot get out of it and that is where we need to develop the spiritual strength and the integrity of selfhood. That is where and when the lords that be, the powers that be, guide the aspirants to something like builders of the adytum. Because this then becomes a time when you have become desperate enough, really desperate enough, so that you're going to be willing to undertake a truly disciplined self-evolution and what does it involve that is what we're going to cover through this whole series as you know and explain to you what aspects of our consciousness are uncovered awakened and why and just what the relationship is because if you look at the tree of life again and you'll notice that there are these 10 sefiris actually also called remember the ten divine emanations which are the ten stages of consciousness you must surely realize that we must develop all of these stages we cannot escape any of them we really cannot we are going to do it with self-intention or we'll be taken bloody and dragged through thorns and heavy rocks those who determined to do it and go go the way with the help of those who have gone before those who are determined to truly apply themselves are the ones who not only attain something rather extraordinary and rare but these are the ones that all humanity is leaning on because as you've heard said so often many are called and few are chosen truly it's because few are willing to undertake the kind of study that's necessary and the self-direction that's necessary in order to attain what is necessary just think for a moment well actually no let me tell you about an experience of mine Now, before I met Dr. Case and before, therefore, I found BOTA, I had been quite determinedly traveling my own idea of the path of return.

I was a sort of lone wolf. I didn't like organizations and I didn't like lecturers and I had no use for ritual and symbols were for stupid fools, not for me. Me. So that's the way I felt and yet curiously enough I seem to be doing all right I thought. My very first attempt at serious meditation I was very young I assure you I instantly after it took one hour I experienced Cosmic Consciousness just like that my very first serious attempt and yet I had enough analytical ability to know that there must be more than that because although it became very easy for me almost at will to bathe in that infinite rapture and ecstasy and it was very easy for me still it didn't do anything to my personality of the important things I wasn't aware of it of course but it was when I met dr case and we had an explosion of an instantaneous recognition of each other naturally not from this incarnation and I immediately started to work with him and And only because of my own awareness of his very amazing adepthood and his amazing spiritual level, it was because of what I saw in him that I was willing to try the disciplines of working with tarot and learning things that seemed to me very foolish.

And at first I thought, oh my God, things like all the symbols and stuff, well, that might be okay for beginners, but I'm way beyond that all I have to do is take a deep breath and say poof or something and off I am into a cosmic uh infinite uh beginningless endless rapture why should I need that silly stuff uh you see humility was not one of my uh virtues and yet because of how I felt about Dr. Case because of what I saw in him I decided to try it just to try it and I was not one of the individuals who took to it quickly some people get something from it immediately it took me a longer time because I had a lot of bigotry in me it held me back but what I discovered after two years and this staggered me I discovered when I looked back to what I had been personality-wise two years previously, that the change, and it had been so subtle I had hardly been aware of what was happening, that the changes in my personality, the changes in my outlook, my perception, my insight, my understanding of human hearts, that these had increased so tremendously that it just absolutely staggered me. I realized that though I had been able to experience cosmic ecstasy at will, that I had not been working on the most vital of all jobs, and that was perfecting my personality and developing the powers of the personality in order to be able to help others with these powers, and in order to be able to manipulate the universe as we're supposed to manipulate it for god and under the direction of the divine will this is what I realized and that is why I know that it isn't enough to be able to experience high mystical states I know it because I've been there and this is why it has made me so sad when I have seen so many people think that they they've just really made the grade just because they've been able to have an illumination or an experience of cosmic consciousness.

And this to me was just practically second nature. So I knew and I know that this is not what we should be working for, though this comes. This comes. You can't keep it from coming when you are ripe for it. But the trouble is that when people have just the mystical nature and aren't out to really develop the disciplined powers which the traveling of the paths with the through the true initiatory processes what they really do if they are talented at mystical experience what they do is use this as an escape it's cheaper than a morphine needle and of course it costs a lot less than alcoholism but it if people stop there and most of them have a tendency to do it or try to teach other people to go to these stopgap areas that really is one of the dead-end streets and this is one of the great mistakes that aspirants have made because of so much of the literature that's been read in thinking that this is what we're after it would be like saying well what I'm after is a ability to hold on to a an everlasting cosmic ecstasy well that's impossible because if you became were in an everlasting cosmic ecstasy you would be unaware of everything else and you'd stop being a functioning conscious center for a movement of life so we learn to accept both sides of that tree both pillars we learn through developing enough discrimination insight and understanding well the time does come we said when you are directed or led or guided to a group like ourselves now we don't say that we are the only true training center on this planet but we do say say we are one of the very few and very few who have the real essence. It is our responsibility to give you what has been put in our care for you. We did not dream this up. This is a tradition that has come down through the centuries and centuries and centuries, and Always there have been the few who have been given the responsibility of keeping it alive and giving it on to those who are ready.

Now during this period more, untold numbers more, are ready. You know the increase of the population on this planet. This is a very vital time in the cosmic evolutionary scheme.

And that is why so much that has been esoteric is now going to be given exoterically and has been given although we have much that cannot ever be given uh in any way except esoterically and it is our prayer that you through these classes through the lessons you take through pranayama will prepare yourselves uh to take the full esoteric route because remember what I told you last week there is there or there are several divisions in Qabalah there is the unwritten the unwritten Qabalah also called the oral Qabalah and this is the part that you cannot receive except you prepare yourselves for it that means except that you learn what you need to learn just like the chemist must learn what he must learn to become a chemist and the mathematician must learn what he must learn to be a mathematician and so on you must learn what we give in the lessons and you must go through the the part of the work which is involved with a familiarizing of the tarot keys their meanings their meditation and the tree of life because if you're going to prepare yourself to travel that tree first you have to know the root and the lessons are that root and then in pranayas what we do in pranayas which incidentally is the first part the beginning of the real ritualistic intensification. In Praneas you are put through a very special type of ritual which links you with the forces of the hierarchy because as we explained last week these forces are go from levels to levels and it is just right there on the tree it is indicated and you will understand it before we're through with this class because for instance in the chapter you have what is called the first order and that involves the levels of consciousness that deal with the bottom Sephirah called malkuth that's the grade of 110 and called the zelotor that's where you have to really start learning how to be zealous in a special occult way and then you are you go through these paths there are certain rituals and ceremonials you later in the proper times advance are advanced to the grade of 2.9 which is called the oricus and this is where you're trained in certain types of theory and also incidentally have your subconsciousness stirred but really good so that the patterns the old patterns which we call the clippeth and Qabalah the sort of shells of the dead all the old patterns that have been holding you down with all this inertia they get stirred up for you and thereby you are aided in throwing over your old false foundations we'll go into those in detail as we take each of the grades and from that it's all a backward tread and each of the uh paths are involved but the first order involves those four sefiroth below the yellow one you see there are those four grades in the chapter now and then the yellow the red and the blue sefiroth are involved with the second order and that has to do with attaining some fair degree of adepthood by the way in certain areas of consciousness and then the upper three, the supernal divine triad, these are called the third order and the masters of wisdom work from that level. And you see the pouring of the energies, the holding of the line, the intensification of the nature of each initiate who's traveling with us, it comes down right from the heart of that or whoever happens to have attained that complete knowledge of selfhood through the grades of those various individuals down through the second order down through the first order down through the pranayama and then out into the rest of the work so the members of pranayama have a one step beyond the general outer work where they receive this influx of intensification from the special ritual now you might ask why ritual why ceremonial well actually remember what we said to you last week the and we mentioned it again this evening the consciousness is such that it cannot deal with certain concepts except through symbol. Now ritual, we've given several talks on ritual. Ritual really happens to be a sort of symbolism in motion. It's a reinforcement of symbolism. Everything in life is in motion.

Everything is swirling for a purpose, for a pattern. And these rituals that have been handed down through the ages, that have been participated in, they are like a group vehicle they become an influx like they are like a a center of intensified force because the individuals who participate in them have had certain elements awakened in them through the initiations through the advancements through the openings of centers within themselves because of the participation always with those who have gone or already stepped into that area and then on up as we said again that whole hierarchy of force and it is through the ritual through the ceremonial and we don't mean any ritual or any ceremonial it's because this has gathered to itself has held a certain force a flame a motion it has a concentration because the communication of consciousness on the higher levels this is done incidentally this is done through symbol and ceremonial uh so often we have had people come to us who haven't taken any of our work but have come to inquire about it and they have started to relate certain experiences sometimes psychic sometimes spiritual and started to mention inner experiences that had to do with actual inner memory of certain ritual ceremonial initiation and several times we have had people come and give us an almost exact description incidentally of a special grade involved in our work and this has instantly told me where they were in their evolution in this incarnation and has been able to help me to guide them this is what it gives this is the indication when a person can tell you about such an experience but most of us don't remember it and it isn't necessary to remember it the important thing is to prepare ourselves to be able to go through it to be able to participate in this group uh grace of god type of force so that we will become awakened expanded centers able to handle our own consciousness in ways that we have been unable to do before. So we do have the pranaeus and from that those who have achieved the proper amount of study and this is very essential they have to know the background before they can be taken into the laboratory. They have to know what they're going to mix so that they'll be safe in the laboratory and again in pranaeus it's important to have functioning there because you see no one can come into chapter just because they've learned things they we are able to study them we are able to see whether these individuals are truly aspiring or whether they are just power mad or place-seeking whether they have a tendency to gossip whether they commit mental emotional murder by tearing down somebody else because they don't like the shape of their nose or or the or the kind of language they use or because because maybe they like to wink at a girl or a boy.

In other words, they are watched subtly, quietly, for a long period in order to determine that they can function harmoniously with a group where such tremendous forces are utilized. And the forces of initiation and growth on the paths are tremendous indeed. Now the initiation into chapter naturally we cannot give what the forms are this is part of the obligation of of silence but the initiation into chapter actually starts not only an intensification which is the first thing that occurs but it links very completely and incidentally very permanently even as the person should fall by the wayside later that subtle inner link that was made through the forces of initiation being performed by those who have already gone through and attained certain of the other levels which we will go into in the next from now on the actual linkage is permanent and those who break their obligations they usually bring a lot of extra problems to themselves but these are good too if they do break their obligations because then it just teaches them a little more discrimination and in their next incarnation they're going to be brought right back because once you've taken the oath to persevere through trial and test in order to attain the christ consciousness and have done it through the group hierarchy with the wonderful forces and aid you are on the way and you are absolutely assured that you're going to reach it though with most aspirants it takes three incarnations some do it in this one depends on the potential so that's the way it starts now we're uh next week we're going to cover the we hope we'll manage the first two grades of the chapter because we want to be able to cover each of the grades of consciousness and the paths which link them and remember the paths between are the subjective states of consciousness that we have reached the sefiroth are the actual stages of evolution attained and we'll go into the details now of from each to each to each starting next Thursday night and now we'll have to we have time for just two or three questions and that's all question yes Yes?

This has bothered me quite a while. Once again you mentioned the mortal mind. Can you tell me the difference between the mind, the spirit and the soul? Or is there a difference? The difference between the mind, the spirit and the soul? Or whatever is in the power. Well, you see, that's where so many aspirants become confused. Used actually in qabalah soul is applied to two places on the tree the black Sephirah the cosmic mother is called the divine soul and this is your divine soul and mine we all partake of it that's the part of our soul which is forever pure and undefiled no matter what we do no matter how many gutters we drag through there's that part of us which is the forever pure and beautiful but you see the violet circle the one right above malcus the one called foundation that is called the vital soul or the animal soul and we share that with all living creatures and that is a part of the nature that's such a problem because it's also subconsciousness it's the astral world it's the place where all the patterns the habit patterns of the past all the things the troublesome some emotions have registered like our own and the mass minds akashic record so you have two ideas of soul right there in the qabalah itself in actuality people shouldn't be so concerned about what is soul what is mind and what is spirit but I know that people do get that way because they get so confused due to all the literature on the thing in a sense you might put it this way The spirit is naturally that part of us which is God, let us say the divine spirit, our I.

Now when that I or divine spirit is functioning on the level of thought and creating with consciousness, it can be thought of as mind, but there's just one mind, it's the cosmic mind within which we dwell, and our thinking is the using the same process we're like each a cell in the cosmic mind and are that mind itself as a matter of fact and then the idea of soul well when that one spirit when that one mind is functioning as the divine love we could think of it perhaps then as the soul so if we just think of it as the one thing functioning today this way or next minute the other way perhaps it won't be so confusing huh yeah well I've been very confused myself I can tell you that and I imagine a lot of people are back there first and then you dear yep yeah our definition of faith faith is knowing and not having to just believe we'll go into faith more through this series there's a lot of misunderstanding about that word faith is not like that cute little story I've told before of the woman who was told about faith she went home and she was going to test it so she you know she had been told faith can remove mountains and so she got busy and all night long she just prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and then she ran out and looked out the window when the dawn came and she looked to where the mountain had been it was supposed to be as she cried I knew it I knew it it's still there that she had faith that it would still be there. Yes, you're next, dear.

When the Orthodox, or the religious, speak of faith in the soul, do you know what they mean? I don't know. You don't know, you're so part of the divine process. But what do they mean actually? Do you know? Can you tell us what they mean?

Must I now become an interpreter for orthodox religion well they have taken the bible literally they have interpreted cabalistic sayings literally and they're just using a lot of words and gobbledygook so that if we were to try to explain to you what orthodox religion means when it says save your soul we would have to be sure that you're all thinking on the same level that they do and that is that if you believe that Jesus came and died to save you if you believe that then you're going to go to heaven and your soul is saved and if you don't believe it you're going to go to hell because you your soul is not saved sometimes your soul has your soul can't be saved if it's another religion you might believe in your soul can't be saved unless you had certain mortars sprinkled on you and were given a special name and a special church otherwise you're doomed for all eternity and indeed the basic thought is you're just doomed for all eternity unless you believe exactly what that particular church or religion tells you and of course there are people who think they get a little bit weary yes well are you sure we should say that should we really be honest yes dear no I think sleep teaching has some very fine helpful elements in it but you see truly raising the consciousness is a matter of really gaining self-conscious awake control of a consciousness and I've known lots of people who've tried it and a few have thought temporarily they were getting somewhere but I haven't seen any results and it's not in accordance with basic esoteric thinking because the idea is we're here to become self-conscious co-creators with god to have the powers of control and direction and although in sleep very powerful things do happen to us they happen as a result of what we're doing awake what we're thinking awake what we're concentrating on awake that is what works itself into every cell and muscle and sinew you know and this is what makes or unfortunately sometimes breaks us our habitual awake thinking one more question then we'll have to say good night well then we'll say good night without the question good night my darlings