The present Treatise on Revolutionary Psychology is a new Message that the Master delivers to the brothers on the occasion of Christmas 1975. It is a complete Code that teaches us how to kill defects.
Samael Aun Weor
PREFACE
The present Treatise on Revolutionary Psychology is a new Message that the Master delivers to the brothers on the occasion of Christmas 1975. It is a complete Code that teaches us how to kill defects.
Until now the student body has been content to repress defects, something like the military chief who imposes himself upon his subordinates; we ourselves have been technicians at repressing defects, but the moment has come when we find ourselves obliged to put them to death, to eliminate them, availing ourselves of the technique of Master Samael, who in clear, precise, and exact form gives us the keys.
When defects die, in addition to the Soul expressing itself with its immaculate beauty, everything changes for us. Many ask how to manage when various defects come to the surface at once; and to them we answer that they should eliminate some and let the others wait; those others they can repress in order to eliminate later.
Chapter One
Teaches us how to turn the page of our life, to break with: anger, greed, envy, lust, pride, laziness, gluttony, desire, etc. It is indispensable to master the earthly mind and cause the frontal vortex to turn so that it absorbs the eternal knowledge of the Universal mind. In this same chapter he teaches us to examine the moral level of Being and to change this level. This is possible when we destroy our defects.
Every inner change brings about, as a consequence, an outer change. The level of Being that the Master treats of in this work refers to the condition in which we find ourselves.
Chapter Two
Explains that the level of Being is the rung where we are situated on the ladder of Life; when we climb this ladder, then we progress, but when we remain stationary, it produces in us boredom, listlessness, sadness, heaviness.
Chapter Three
Speaks to us of Psychological rebellion and teaches us that the psychological point of departure is within us; and tells us that the vertical or perpendicular path is the field of the Rebels, of those who seek immediate changes, so that the work upon oneself is the principal characteristic of the vertical path; the humanoids walk along the horizontal path on the ladder of life.
Chapter Four
Determines how changes are produced. The beauty of a child is due to the fact that his defects have not developed, and we see that as these are developing in the child, he loses his innate beauty.
When we disintegrate the defects, the Soul manifests itself in its splendor, and this is perceived by people at simple sight; furthermore, the beauty of the Soul is what beautifies the physical body.
Chapter Five
Teaches us how to handle this Psychological gymnasium, and teaches us the method to annihilate the secret ugliness we carry inside (the defects); teaches us to work upon ourselves, in order to achieve a Radical transformation.
To change is necessary, but people do not know how to change; they suffer much and content themselves with blaming others; they do not know that they alone are responsible for the handling of their Life.
Chapter Six
Speaks to us of life, tells us that life turns out to be a problem that no one understands: states are Interior and events are Exterior.
Chapter Seven
Speaks to us of the Interior states, and teaches us the difference between states of consciousness and the exterior occurrences of practical life.
When we modify the mistaken states of consciousness, this brings about fundamental changes in us.
Chapter Nine
ON PERSONAL EVENTS; and teaches us to correct the mistaken Psychological states and the erroneous interior states; teaches us to put order in our disordered interior house. The interior life brings exterior circumstances, and if these are painful, they are due to absurd interior states. The exterior is the reflection of the interior; the inner change immediately brings about a new order of things.
The mistaken interior states convert us into defenseless victims of human perversity; he teaches us not to identify with any event, reminding us that everything passes; we must learn to see life as a film, and in the drama we must be observers, not confuse ourselves with the drama.
One of my sons has a theater where modern films are shown, and it fills up when the artists who work in it have been distinguished with Oscars. One day my son Álvaro was inviting me to a film in which artists with Oscars were working; to the invitation I answered that I could not attend because I was interested in a human drama better than that of his film, where all the artists were Oscars. He asked me: ‘What drama is that?’ And I answered him: ‘The drama of Life.’ He continued: ‘But in that drama we all work,’ and I told him: ‘I work as an observer of that drama.’ ‘Why?’ I answered him: ‘Because I do not confuse myself with the drama; I do what I must do; I am not moved nor saddened by the events of the drama.‘
Chapter Ten
Speaks to us of the different I’s, and explains that in the interior life of persons there exists no harmonious work because it is a sum of I’s; therefore so many changes in the daily life of each of the actors of the drama: jealousies, laughter, tears, rage, fright. These characteristics show us the changes and alterations so varied to which the I’s of our personality expose us.
Chapter Eleven
Speaks to us of our beloved Ego and tells us that the I’s are psychic values, whether positive or negative; and teaches us the practice of interior self-observation; and so we go on discovering many I’s that live within our personality.
Chapter Twelve
Speaks to us of the Radical Change; there he teaches us that no change is possible in our psyche without direct observation of all that set of subjective factors we carry inside.
When we learn that we are not one but many inside ourselves, we go along the path of self-knowledge. Knowledge and Understanding are different; the first is of the mind and the second is of the heart.
Chapter Thirteen
Observer and observed: there he speaks to us of the athlete of internal self-observation, who is one who works seriously upon himself and strives to set aside the undesirable elements we carry inside.
For self-knowledge we must divide ourselves into observer and observed; without this division we could never arrive at self-knowledge.
Chapter Fourteen
Speaks to us of negative thoughts; and we see that all the I’s possess intelligence and avail themselves of our intellective center to launch concepts, ideas, analyses, etc., which indicates that we do not possess an individual mind; we see in this chapter that the I’s abusively use our thinking center.
Chapter Fifteen
Speaks to us of Individuality. There one realizes that we have no consciousness nor will of our own, nor individuality. Through intimate self-observation we can see the people who live in our psyche (the I’s), and whom we must eliminate to attain Radical Transformation, since individuality is sacred. We see the case of schoolteachers who spend their lives correcting children, and so arrive at decrepitude, because they too confused themselves with the drama of life.
The remaining Chapters from 16 to 32 are most interesting for all those persons who wish to come out of the crowd, for those who aspire to be something in life, for the haughty eagles, for the revolutionaries of consciousness and of indomitable spirit, for those who renounce the rubber spine that bends its neck before the whip of any tyrant.
Chapter Sixteen
The Master speaks to us of the book of life. It is fitting to observe the repetition of daily words, the recurrence of things of one same day; all of this leads us to high knowledge.
Chapter Seventeen
Speaks to us of mechanical creatures, and tells us that when one does not self-observe, one cannot realize the incessant daily repetition. Whoever does not wish to observe himself does not wish either to work to attain a true Radical transformation. Our personality is only a marionette, a talking doll, something mechanical. We are repeaters of events; our habits are the same; we have never wished to modify them.
Chapter Eighteen
Treats of the Supersubstantial Bread. Habits keep us petrified; we are mechanical people loaded with old habits; we must bring about inner changes. Self-observation is indispensable.
Chapter Nineteen
Speaks to us of the good householder: we must isolate ourselves from the drama of life; we must guard against the escape of the psyche. This work goes against life; it is something very different from that of daily life.
So long as one does not change inwardly, one will always be a victim of circumstances. The good householder is the one who swims against the current; those who do not wish to let themselves be devoured by life are very few.
Chapter Twenty
Speaks to us of the two worlds, and tells us that true knowledge that can really originate in us a fundamental inner change has as its foundation direct self-observation of oneself. Interior self-observation is a means to change intimately; through self-observation we learn to walk on the interior path.
The sense of self-observation is atrophied in the human race, but this sense develops when we persevere in self-observation. Just as we learn to walk in the exterior world, so also through psychological work upon ourselves we learn to walk in the interior world.
Chapter Twenty-One
Speaks to us of self-observation, telling us that self-observation is a practical method to attain a radical transformation. To know is never to observe; one must not confuse knowing with observing.
Self-observation is one hundred percent active; it is a means of self-change, whereas knowing, which is passive, is not. Dynamic attention proceeds from the observing side, while thoughts and emotions belong to the observed side. Knowing is something entirely mechanical, passive; in contrast, self-observation is a conscious act.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Speaks to us of the Chatter, and tells us to verify—that is, that ‘talking to oneself’ is harmful, because they are our I’s confronting one another. When you discover yourself talking to yourself, observe yourself, and you will discover the foolishness you are committing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Speaks to us of the world of relations, and tells us that there exist three states of relations, obligatory ones: with our own body, with the exterior world, and the relation of man with himself, which has no importance for the majority of people; people are only interested in the first two types of relations. We must study to know in which of these three types we are at fault.
The lack of interior elimination makes it so that we are not in relation with ourselves, and this makes us remain in darkness. When you find yourself dejected, disoriented, confused, remember ‘yourself,’ and this will make the cells of your body receive a different breath.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Speaks to us of the psychological song. He speaks to us of complaints, self-defense, feeling persecuted, etc.—of believing that others are to blame for everything that happens to us, while we take the triumphs as our own work; thus we shall never be able to improve ourselves. The man bottled up in the concepts he generates can become useful or useless; this is not the keynote for observing and improving ourselves. Learning to forgive is indispensable for our inner improvement. The law of Mercy is higher than the law of the violent man: ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Gnosis is destined for those sincere aspirants who truly wish to work and change. Each one sings his own psychological song.
The sad remembrance of things lived ties us to the past and does not allow us to live the present, which it disfigures for us. To pass to a higher level, it is indispensable to cease to be what one is; above each one of us there are higher levels to which we must climb.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Speaks to us of Return and Recurrence, and tells us that Gnosis is transformation, renewal, incessant improvement; whoever does not wish to improve, to transform himself, wastes his time, because in addition to not advancing, he remains on the path of regression, and therefore is incapable of knowing himself; with just reason the V.M. asserts that we are marionettes repeating the scenes of life. When we reflect on these facts, we realize that we are artists who work for nothing in the drama of daily life.
When we have the power to watch ourselves to observe what our physical body does and executes, we place ourselves on the path of conscious self-observation, and we observe that consciousness, that which knows, is one thing, and that which executes and obeys—that is, our own body—is another. The comedy of life is hard and cruel with the one who does not know how to kindle the inner fires; he is consumed in his own labyrinth in the midst of the most profound shadows. Our I’s live pleasantly in the shadows.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Speaks to us of Infantile Self-Consciousness, saying that when the child is born, the Essence is re-embodied; this gives the child beauty; then as the personality develops, the I’s that come from past lives are gradually re-embodied, and he loses his natural beauty.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Treats of the Publican and the Pharisee, saying that each one rests on something he possesses; hence the eagerness of all to have something: titles, goods, money, fame, social position, etc. The man and woman puffed up with pride are the ones who most need the needy in order to live; the man rests only on external bases; he too is an invalid, because the day he loses those bases, he will become the most unhappy man in the world.
When we feel ourselves greater than others, we are fattening our I’s, and thereby refuse to attain blessedness. For the esoteric work, our own praises are obstacles that stand against all spiritual progress. When we self-observe, we can cover the bases on which we rest; we must pay much attention to the things that offend or wound us; thus we discover the psychological bases on which we stand.
On this path of improvement, he who believes himself superior to another stagnates or goes backward. In the Initiatic process of my life a great change was effected when, afflicted by thousands of harshnesses, disillusionments, and misfortunes, I took at home the course of the ‘pariah’; I abandoned the pose of ‘I am the one who gives everything for this home,’ to feel myself a sad beggar, ill and with nothing in life; everything changed in my life, because I was offered breakfast, lunch, and supper, clean clothing, and the right to sleep in the same bed as my mistress (the priestess-wife); but this only lasted a few days because that household did not bear that attitude or warlike tactic of mine. One must learn to transform: evil into good, shadows into light, hatred into love, etc.
The Real Being neither argues with nor understands the insults of the I’s that the adversaries or friends hurl at us. Those who feel those lashes are the I’s that bind our soul; they become entangled and react choleric and irascible; their interest is to go against the inner Christ, against our own seed.
When students ask us for a remedy to cure nocturnal pollutions, we advise them to abandon anger; those who have done so obtain benefits.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Master speaks to us of the Will; he tells us that we must work on this work of the Father, but students believe that it is to work with the arcanum A.Z.F.—the work upon ourselves, the work with the three factors that liberate our consciousness; we must conquer ourselves interiorly, to liberate the Prometheus we have chained within us. The Creative Will is our own work, whatever the circumstance in which we find ourselves.
The emancipation of the Will comes with the elimination of our defects, and nature obeys us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Speaks of the Decapitation. He tells us that the most tranquil moments of our lives are the least favorable for self-knowing; this is only attained in the work of life, in social relations, business, games—in short, in daily life is when our I’s most stand out. The sense of internal self-observation is atrophied in every human being; this sense develops progressively with the self-observation we carry out from moment to moment, and with continual use.
Everything that is out of place is evil, and the evil ceases to be evil when it is in its place, when it must be.
With the power of the Mother Goddess within us, the Mother RAM-IO, we can only destroy the I’s of the different levels of the mind; the formula readers will find in various works of the V.M. Samael.
Stella Maris is the astral subject, the sexual potency; she has the power to disintegrate the aberrations we carry in our psychological interior. ‘Tonantzin’ decapitates any psychological I.
Chapter Thirty
Speaks of the Permanent Center of Gravity, and tells us that each person is a machine at the service of the innumerable I’s that possess her, and consequently the human person does not possess a permanent center of gravity; therefore there exists only instability. To attain the inner self-realization of Being, continuity of purpose is required, and this is attained by extirpating the egos or I’s that we carry within.
If we do not work upon ourselves, we involute and degenerate. The process of Initiation puts us on the path of betterment; it leads us to the Angelic-devic state.
Chapter Thirty-One
Speaks of the Gnostic Esoteric Work, and tells us that it is required to examine the I that is trapped or that we recognize; an indispensable requirement to be able to destroy it is observation; this allows a ray of light to enter our interior.
The destruction of the I’s we have analyzed must be accompanied by services to others, giving them instruction so that they may free themselves from the satans or I’s that hinder their own redemption.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Speaks to us of Prayer in the Work. He tells us that Observation, Judgment, and Execution are the three basic factors for the dissolution of the I. 1st—one observes; 2nd—one judges; 3rd—one executes; thus it is done with spies in war. The sense of internal self-observation, as it develops, will allow us to see the progressive advance of our work.
Twenty-five years ago, at Christmas of 1951, the Master said to us here in the city of Ciénaga, and later he explains it in the Christmas Message of 1962, the following: ‘I am on your side until you have formed the Christ in your Heart.’
Upon his shoulders rests the responsibility of the people of Aquarius, and the doctrine of Love is expanded through Gnostic knowledge. If you wish to follow the doctrine of Love, you must cease to hate, even in its slightest manifestation; this prepares us for the child of gold to spring up, the child of alchemy, the son of chastity, the inner Christ who lives and pulses in the very depths of our Creative Energy. Thus we accomplish the death of the legions of Satanic I’s that we keep within, and we prepare for resurrection, for a total change. This Holy Doctrine is not understood by the humans of this Era, but we must struggle for them in the cult of all religions, so that they may long for a higher life, directed by higher beings; this body of doctrine returns us to the doctrine of the inner Christ; when we put it into practice, we shall change the future of humanity.
REVERENTIAL PEACE
GARGHA KUICHINES
Chapter One: THE LEVEL OF BEING
Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? For what do we live? Why do we live?…
Unquestionably the poor ‘Intellectual Animal’ mistakenly called man not only does not know, but does not even know that he does not know…
Worst of all is the situation so difficult and so strange in which we find ourselves; we ignore the secret of all our tragedies, and yet we are convinced that we know everything…
Take a ‘Rational Mammal,’ one of those persons who in life presume themselves to be influential, to the middle of the SAHARA Desert; leave him there far from any oasis, and observe from an aircraft all that happens…
The facts will speak for themselves; the ‘Intellectual Humanoid,’ although he presumes himself strong and believes himself very much a man, is at heart frightfully weak…
The ‘Rational Animal’ is one hundred percent foolish; he thinks of himself the best; he believes he can develop marvelously through Kindergarten, manuals of etiquette, primary school, secondary school, baccalaureate, university, the good prestige of papa, etc., etc., etc.
Unfortunately, behind so many letters and good manners, titles and money, we know well that any stomachache saddens us, and that at heart we continue to be unhappy and miserable…
It is enough to read Universal History to know that we are the same barbarians of yesteryear, and that instead of getting better, we have become worse…
This twentieth century, with all its spectacularity, wars, prostitution, worldwide sodomy, sexual degeneration, drugs, alcohol, exorbitant cruelty, extreme perversity, monstrosity, etc., etc., etc., is the mirror in which we should look at ourselves; there is therefore no weighty reason to boast of having reached a higher stage of development…
To think that time means progress is absurd; unfortunately the ‘illustrated ignorant’ continue bottled up in the ‘Dogma of Evolution’…
On all the black pages of ‘Black History’ we always find the same horrendous cruelties, ambitions, wars, etc.
Nevertheless, our contemporary ‘Super-civilized’ ones are still convinced that war is something secondary, a passing accident which has nothing to do with their so-trumpeted ‘Modern Civilization.’
Certainly what matters is the way of being of each person. Some subjects will be drunkards, others abstemious, those honorable and these others shameless; there is of everything in life…
The masses are the sum of the individuals; what the individual is, the masses are; the Government, etc.
The masses are, then, the extension of the individual; the transformation of the masses, of the peoples, is not possible if the individual, if each person, does not transform himself…
No one can deny that there exist various social levels: there are people of the church and of the brothel; of commerce and of the countryside, etc., etc., etc.
So also there exist different Levels of Being. What we internally are—splendid or mean, generous or stingy, violent or peaceful, chaste or lustful—attracts the various circumstances of life…
A lustful man will always attract scenes, dramas, and even tragedies of lasciviousness in which he will find himself involved…
A drunkard will attract drunkards and will always find himself in bars and saloons; that is obvious…
What will the usurer, the egoist, attract? How many problems, prisons, misfortunes?
Yet the embittered people, tired of suffering, have a wish to change, to turn the page of their history…
Poor people! They want to change and do not know how; they know no procedure; they are in a blind alley…
What happened to them yesterday happens today and will happen tomorrow; they always repeat the same errors and do not learn the lessons of life, not even at cannon-shot.
All things are repeated in their own life; they say the same things, do the same things, lament the same things…
This boring repetition of dramas, comedies, and tragedies will continue while we carry in our interior the undesirable elements of Anger, Greed, Lust, Envy, Pride, Laziness, Gluttony, etc., etc., etc.
What is our moral level? Or better said: What is our Level of Being?
While the Level of Being does not change radically, the repetition of all our miseries, scenes, misfortunes, and disasters will continue…
All the things, all the circumstances that occur outside us, on the stage of this world, are exclusively the reflection of what we carry within.
With just reason we can solemnly assert that ‘the exterior is the reflection of the interior.’
When one changes inwardly, and such change is radical, the exterior, the circumstances, life, change also.
I have been observing at this time (Year 1974) a group of people who invaded another’s land. Here in Mexico such people receive the curious designation of ‘PARACHUTERS.’
They are neighbors of the rural colony of Churubusco; they are very near my house, which is why I have been able to study them closely…
To be poor can never be a crime; but the gravity is not in that, but in their Level of Being…
Daily they fight among themselves, get drunk, insult one another mutually, become murderers of their own companions in misfortune; they live in filthy huts within which, instead of love, hatred reigns…
Many times I have thought that if any one of those subjects eliminated from his interior the hatred, the anger, the lust, the drunkenness, the slander, the cruelty, the egoism, the calumny, the envy, self-love, pride, etc., etc., etc., he would be liked by other persons; he would associate, by the simple Law of Psychological Affinities, with more refined, more spiritual people; those new relations would be decisive for an economic and social change…
That would be the system that would allow such a subject to abandon the ‘pigsty,’ the filthy ‘sewer’…
So if we really want a radical change, what we must first comprehend is that each one of us (whether white or black, yellow or copper-skinned, ignorant or learned, etc.) is at such or such a ‘Level of Being.’
What is our Level of Being? Have you ever reflected on this? It would not be possible to pass to another level if we ignore the state in which we find ourselves.
Chapter Two: THE MARVELOUS LADDER
We must long for a true change, to come out of this boring routine, of this merely mechanistic, tiresome life…
What we must first comprehend with entire clarity is that each one of us, whether bourgeois or proletarian, well-off or middle class, rich or wretched, is really at such or such a Level of Being…
The Level of Being of the drunkard is different from that of the abstemious one, and that of the prostitute very different from that of the maiden. What we are saying is irrefutable, irrebuttable…
On reaching this part of our chapter, we lose nothing by imagining a ladder that extends from below upward, vertically, and with very many rungs…
Unquestionably on some rung of these we ourselves are found; rungs below there will be people worse than us; rungs above there will be persons better than us…
On this extraordinary Vertical, on this marvelous ladder, it is clear that we can find all the Levels of Being… each person is different, and no one can refute this…
Without doubt we are not now speaking of ugly or pretty faces, nor is it a question of ages. There are young and old people, elderly ones who are about to die, and newborn children…
The question of time and years—being born, growing up, developing, getting married, reproducing, growing old, and dying—is exclusive to the Horizontal…
On the ‘Marvelous Ladder,’ on the Vertical, the concept of time does not fit. On the rungs of such a ladder we can only find ‘Levels of Being’…
The mechanical hope of people is good for nothing; they believe that with time things will be better; so thought our grandparents and great-grandparents; the facts have come precisely to show the contrary…
The ‘Level of Being’ is what counts, and this is Vertical; we are on one rung, but we can climb to another rung.
The ‘Marvelous Ladder’ of which we are speaking, and which refers to the different ‘Levels of Being,’ certainly has nothing to do with linear time…
A higher ‘Level of Being’ is immediately above us from instant to instant…
It is not in any remote horizontal future, but here and now; within ourselves; in the Vertical…
It is patent and anyone can comprehend that the two lines—Horizontal and Vertical—meet from moment to moment in our Psychological interior and form a Cross…
The personality develops and unfolds on the Horizontal line of Life. It is born and dies within its linear time; it is perishable; there exists no tomorrow for the personality of the dead one; it is not the Being…
The Levels of Being, the Being itself, are not of time; have nothing to do with the Horizontal Line; are found within ourselves. Now, in the Vertical…
It would be manifestly absurd to seek our own Being outside ourselves…
It does not hurt to lay down as a corollary the following: Titles, degrees, promotions, etc., in the exterior physical world, would in no way bring about authentic exaltation, revaluation of the Being, passage to a higher rung on the ‘Levels of Being’…
Chapter Three: PSYCHOLOGICAL REBELLION
It does not hurt to remind our readers that there exists a mathematical point within ourselves…
Unquestionably such a point is never found in the past, nor in the future…
He who wishes to discover that mysterious point must seek it here and now, within himself, exactly in this instant, not one second forward, nor one second behind…
The two beams, Vertical and Horizontal, of the Holy Cross meet at this point…
We find ourselves from instant to instant before two Paths: the Horizontal and the Vertical…
It is patent that the Horizontal is very ‘tacky’; along it walk ‘Vicente and all the people,’ ‘Villegas and everyone who arrives,’ ‘Don Raimundo and all the world’…
It is evident that the Vertical is different; it is the path of the intelligent rebels, of the Revolutionaries…
When one remembers oneself, when one works upon oneself, when one does not identify with all the problems and sorrows of life, in fact one goes along the Vertical Path…
Certainly it is never an easy task to eliminate the negative emotions; to lose all identification with our own train of life; problems of every kind, business, debts, payment of bills, mortgages, telephone, water, light, etc., etc., etc.
The unemployed, those who through one motive or another have lost their job or work, evidently suffer from lack of money; and to forget their case, not to worry, not to identify with their own problem, is in fact frightfully difficult.
Those who suffer, those who weep, those who have been victims of some betrayal, of an evil reward in life, of an ingratitude, of a slander, or of some fraud, really forget themselves, their real inner Being; they identify completely with their moral tragedy…
The work upon oneself is the fundamental characteristic of the Vertical Path. No one could tread the Path of Great Rebellion if he never worked upon himself…
The work to which we are referring is of a Psychological type; it deals with a certain transformation of the present moment in which we find ourselves. We need to learn to live from instant to instant…
For example, a person who finds himself desperate over some sentimental, economic, or political problem has obviously forgotten himself…
If such a person stops for an instant, if he observes the situation and tries to remember himself, and then strives to comprehend the meaning of his attitude…
If he reflects a little, if he thinks that everything passes; that life is illusory, fleeting, and that death reduces to ashes all the vanities of the world…
If he understands that his problem at heart is no more than a ‘flame of straw,’ a fatuous fire that soon goes out, he will suddenly see with surprise that everything has changed…
Transforming mechanical reactions is possible through logical confrontation and intimate Self-Reflection of the Being…
It is evident that people react mechanically before the various circumstances of life…
Poor people! They always end up becoming victims. When someone flatters them, they smile; when they humiliate them, they suffer. They insult if insulted; they wound if wounded; they are never free; their fellows have the power to lead them from joy to sadness, from hope to despair.
Each person of those who go along the Horizontal Path resembles a musical instrument on which each of his fellows plays whatever comes into his head…
He who learns to transform mechanical relations, in fact, enters the ‘Vertical Path.’
This represents a fundamental change in the ‘Level of Being,’ an extraordinary result of ‘Psychological Rebellion.‘
Chapter Four: THE ESSENCE
What makes every newborn child beautiful and adorable is his Essence; this constitutes in itself his true reality…
The normal growth of the Essence in every creature is certainly very residual, incipient…
The human body grows and develops in accordance with the biological laws of the species; nevertheless, such possibilities turn out by themselves very limited for the Essence…
Unquestionably the Essence can only grow on its own, without help, to a very small degree…
Speaking frankly and without circumlocution, we will say that the spontaneous and natural growth of the Essence is only possible during the first three, four, and five years of age—that is, in the first stage of life…
People think that the growth and development of the Essence always takes place in a continuous form, in accordance with the mechanics of evolution; but Universal Gnosticism clearly teaches that this does not happen so…
In order for the Essence to grow more, something very special must happen, something new must be carried out.
I wish to refer emphatically to the work upon oneself. The development of the Essence is only possible on the basis of conscious works and voluntary sufferings…
It is necessary to understand that these works do not refer to matters of profession, banks, carpentry, masonry, repair of railroad tracks, or office affairs…
This work is for every person who has developed the personality; it is something Psychological…
All of us know that we have within ourselves what is called EGO, I, MYSELF, ONESELF…
Unfortunately, the Essence is bottled up, enclosed, within the EGO, and this is lamentable.
To dissolve the Psychological I, to disintegrate its undesirable elements, is urgent, undeferrable, unpostponable… such is the meaning of the work upon oneself.
We could never free the Essence without previously disintegrating the Psychological I…
In the Essence are Religion, the BUDDHA, Wisdom, the particles of pain of our Father who is in Heaven, and all the data we need for the INTIMATE SELF-REALIZATION OF BEING.
No one could annihilate the Psychological I without previously eliminating the inhuman elements we carry within…
We must reduce to ashes the monstrous cruelty of these times: the envy that has unfortunately come to be the secret spring of action; the unbearable greed that has made life so bitter; the disgusting slander; the calumny that originates so many tragedies; drunkenness; the filthy lust that smells so vile; etc., etc., etc.
As all these abominations are gradually reduced to cosmic dust, the Essence, besides being emancipated, will grow and develop harmoniously…
Unquestionably, when the Psychological I has died, the Essence shines in us…
The free Essence confers upon us intimate beauty; from such beauty emanate perfect happiness and true Love…
The Essence possesses multiple senses of perfection and extraordinary natural powers…
When we ‘Die in Ourselves,’ when we dissolve the Psychological I, we enjoy the precious senses and powers of the Essence…
Chapter Five: ACCUSING ONESELF
The Essence that each one of us carries inside comes from above, from Heaven, from the stars…
Unquestionably the marvelous Essence comes from the note ‘LA’ (the Milky Way, the Galaxy in which we live).
The precious Essence passes through the note ‘SOL’ (the Sun) and then through the note ‘FA’ (the Planetary Zone), enters this world, and penetrates our own interior.
Our parents created the appropriate body for the reception of this Essence that comes from the Stars…
By working intensely upon ourselves and sacrificing ourselves for our fellows, we shall return victorious to the profound bosom of Urania…
We are living in this world for some motive, for something, for some special factor…
Obviously, in us there is much that we should see, study, and comprehend, if we really long to know something about ourselves, about our own life…
Tragic is the existence of one who dies without having known the motive of his life…
Each one of us must discover for himself the meaning of his own life, that which keeps him a prisoner in the prison of pain…
Patently there is in each one of us something that embitters our life and against which we need to struggle firmly…
It is not indispensable that we continue in disgrace; it is unpostponable to reduce to cosmic dust that which makes us so weak and unhappy.
It serves for nothing to inflate ourselves with titles, honors, diplomas, money, vain subjective rationalism, well-known virtues, etc., etc., etc.
We must never forget that hypocrisy and the foolish vanities of the false personality make us awkward, stale, retardatory, reactionary, incapable of seeing what is new…
Death has many meanings, both positive and negative. Let us consider that magnificent observation of the ‘Great KABIR Jesus the Christ.’
‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ Many people, although they live, are in fact dead to all possible work upon themselves, and therefore to any intimate transformation.
They are persons bottled up amid their dogmas and beliefs; people petrified in the memories of many yesterdays; individuals full of ancestral prejudices; persons enslaved to what others will say, frightfully lukewarm, indifferent, sometimes ‘know-it-alls’ convinced of being in the truth because they were told so, etc., etc., etc.
Those people do not wish to understand that this world is a ‘Psychological Gymnasium’ through which it would be possible to annihilate that secret ugliness that we all carry inside…
If those poor people understood the lamentable state in which they find themselves, they would tremble with horror…
Yet such persons always think of themselves the best; they boast of their virtues; they feel themselves perfect, kind, helpful, noble, charitable, intelligent, fulfillers of their duties, etc.
Practical life as a school is formidable, but to take it as an end in itself is manifestly absurd.
Those who take life in itself, as it is lived daily, have not understood the necessity of working upon themselves to attain a ‘Radical Transformation.’
Unfortunately, people live mechanically; they have never heard anything said about the inner work…
To change is necessary, but people do not know how to change; they suffer much and do not even know why they suffer…
To have money is not everything. The life of many rich persons is often truly tragic…
Chapter Six: LIFE
In the field of practical life we always discover contrasts that astonish. Wealthy people with a magnificent residence and many friends sometimes suffer frightfully…
Humble proletarians with pick and shovel, or people of the middle class, sometimes happen to live in complete happiness.
Many multi-millionaires suffer from sexual impotence, and rich matrons weep bitterly the infidelity of the husband…
The rich of the earth seem like vultures in cages of gold; in these times they cannot live without ‘bodyguards’…
Statesmen drag chains; they are never free; they go everywhere surrounded by people armed to the teeth…
Let us study this situation more carefully. We need to know what life is. Each one is free to think as he wishes…
Say what they may, certainly no one knows anything; life turns out a problem that no one understands…
When people wish to tell us gratuitously the story of their life, they cite events, names and surnames, dates, etc., and feel satisfaction in giving their accounts…
Those poor people are ignorant that their accounts are incomplete, because events, names, and dates are only the external aspect of the film; the internal aspect is missing…
It is urgent to know the ‘states of consciousness’; to each event there corresponds such or such a state of soul.
The states are interior and the events are exterior; the external occurrences are not everything…
By interior states we mean good or bad dispositions, worries, depression, superstition, fear, suspicion, mercy, self-consideration, over-estimation of Oneself, states of feeling happy, states of joy, etc., etc., etc.
Unquestionably the interior states can correspond exactly with the exterior events or be originated by these, or have no relation whatsoever with them…
In any case states and events are different. The occurrences do not always correspond exactly with the states akin to them.
The interior state of a pleasant event may not correspond to the same.
The interior state of an unpleasant event may not correspond to the same.
Events awaited for a long time, when they came, we felt that something was lacking…
Certainly the corresponding Interior state was lacking, which had to be combined with the exterior occurrence…
Many times the occurrence that was not expected comes to be the one that has given us the best moments…
Chapter Seven: THE INNER STATE
To combine interior states with exterior occurrences in a correct form is to know how to live intelligently…
Any event lived intelligently demands its corresponding specific interior state…
Yet, unfortunately, people when they review their life think that life in itself consists exclusively of exterior events…
Poor people! They think that if such or such an event had not happened to them, their life would have been better…
They suppose that fortune came to meet them and that they lost the opportunity to be happy…
They lament what was lost; they weep over what they despised; they moan recalling the old stumblings and calamities…
People do not wish to realize that to vegetate is not to live, and that the capacity to exist consciously depends exclusively on the quality of the interior states of the Soul…
It does not matter, certainly, how beautiful are the external events of life; if we do not find ourselves at such moments in the appropriate interior state, the best events may appear to us monotonous, tiresome, or simply boring…
Someone awaits with anxiety the wedding festivity; it is an event; but it could happen that he might be so worried at the precise moment of the event that he really would taste in it no delight, and that everything would turn out as arid and cold as a formality…
Experience has taught us that not all the people who attend a banquet or a dance truly enjoy themselves…
There is never lacking a bored one at the best of festivities, and the most delightful pieces gladden some and make others weep…
Very rare are the people who know how to combine consciously the external event with the appropriate internal state…
It is lamentable that people do not know how to live consciously: they weep when they should laugh and they laugh when they should weep…
Control is different: the wise man can be happy, but never full of mad frenzy; sad, but never desperate and downcast… serene amid violence; abstemious in the orgy; chaste amid lust, etc.
Melancholic and pessimistic persons think the worst of life and frankly do not wish to live…
Every day we see people who not only are unhappy, but also—and what is worse—make bitter the life of others…
People like that would not change even if they lived daily from feast to feast; they carry the psychological illness in their interior… such persons possess definitively perverse intimate states…
Yet those subjects qualify themselves as just, holy, virtuous, noble, helpful, martyrs, etc., etc., etc.
They are people who self-consider themselves too much; persons who love themselves much…
Individuals who feel much pity for themselves and who always seek loopholes to elude their own responsibilities…
Persons like that are accustomed to inferior emotions, and it is obvious that for that reason they create daily infrahuman psychic elements.
The unfortunate events, reversals of fortune, misery, debts, problems, etc., are the exclusivity of those persons who do not know how to live…
Anyone can form for himself a rich intellectual culture, but very few are the persons who have learned to live rightly…
When one wants to separate the exterior events from the interior states of consciousness, he concretely demonstrates his incapacity to exist worthily.
Those who learn to combine consciously exterior events and interior states march along the path of success…
Chapter Eight: MISTAKEN STATES
Unquestionably, in the rigorous observation of Oneself, it is always undeferrable and unpostponable to make a complete logical differentiation in relation to the exterior events of practical life and the intimate states of consciousness.
We need urgently to know where we are situated in a given moment, both in relation to the intimate state of consciousness and to the specific nature of the exterior event that is happening to us.
Life in itself is a series of events that are processed through time and space…
Someone said: ‘Life is a chain of martyrdoms that man carries entangled in his Soul…’
Each one is free to think as he wishes; I believe that the ephemeral pleasures of a fleeting instant are always succeeded by disenchantment and bitterness…
Each event has its special characteristic flavor, and the interior states are likewise of different kinds; this is incontrovertible, irrefutable…
Certainly the interior work upon oneself refers emphatically to the various psychological states of consciousness…
No one could deny that within our interior we carry many errors and that there exist mistaken states…
If we truly wish to change in reality, we need, with maximum and unpostponable urgency, to radically modify those mistaken states of consciousness…
The absolute modification of the mistaken states brings about complete transformations in the field of practical life…
When one works seriously on the mistaken states, obviously the unpleasant occurrences of life can no longer wound him so easily…
We are saying something that can only be comprehended by experiencing it, by really feeling it in the very terrain of the facts…
He who does not work upon himself is always a victim of circumstances; he is like a wretched log among the stormy waters of the ocean…
The events change incessantly in their multiple combinations; they come one after another in waves; they are influences…
Certainly there exist good and evil events; some events will be better or worse than others…
To modify certain events is possible; to alter results, to modify situations, etc., is certainly within the number of possibilities.
Yet there exist situations in fact that truly cannot be altered; in these latter cases they must be accepted consciously, although some turn out to be very dangerous and even painful…
Unquestionably the pain disappears when we do not identify with the problem that has presented itself…
We must consider life as a successive series of interior states; an authentic history of our particular life is formed by all those states…
On reviewing the totality of our own existence, we can verify for ourselves in direct form that many unpleasant situations were possible thanks to mistaken interior states…
Alexander the Great, although always temperate by nature, gave himself over through pride to the excesses that produced his death…
Francis I died on account of a sordid and abominable adultery, which history still remembers very well…
When Marat was assassinated by a perverse nun, he died of haughtiness and envy; he believed himself absolutely just…
The ladies of the Parc-aux-Cerfs unquestionably finished off entirely the vitality of the frightful fornicator called LOUIS XV.
Many are the people who die of ambition, anger, or jealousy; this is well known to Psychologists…
As soon as our will is irrevocably confirmed in an absurd tendency, we become candidates for the cemetery…
Othello, on account of jealousy, became a murderer, and the prison is full of sincere mistaken ones…
Chapter Nine: PERSONAL EVENTS
Full intimate self-observation of Oneself is unpostponable when one is dealing with discovering mistaken psychological states.
Unquestionably the mistaken interior states can be corrected through correct procedures.
Since the interior life is the magnet that attracts the exterior events, we need with maximum and unpostponable urgency to eliminate from our psyche the erroneous psychological states.
To correct mistaken psychological states is indispensable when one wants to alter fundamentally the nature of certain undesirable events.
To alter our relation with determined events is possible if we eliminate from our interior certain absurd psychological states.
Destructive exterior situations could be transformed into harmless and even constructive ones through the intelligent correction of the erroneous interior states.
One can change the nature of the unpleasant events that occur to us when one purifies oneself intimately. Whoever never corrects the absurd psychological states, believing himself very strong, becomes a victim of circumstances.
To put order in our disordered interior house is vital when one wishes to change the course of an unfortunate existence.
People complain about everything, suffer, weep, protest, would like to change their life, to come out of the misfortune in which they find themselves; unfortunately they do not work upon themselves.
People do not wish to realize that the interior life attracts exterior circumstances, and that if these are painful, it is due to absurd interior states.
The exterior is only the reflection of the interior; he who changes interiorly brings about a new order of things.
The exterior events would never be as important as the way of reacting to them.
Did you remain serene before the insulter? Did you receive with pleasure the unpleasant manifestations of your fellows?
In what way did you react before the infidelity of the loved one? Did you let yourself be carried away by the poison of jealousy? Did you kill? Are you in prison?
The hospitals, the cemeteries or pantheons, the prisons, are full of sincere mistaken ones who reacted in an absurd way to the exterior events.
The best weapon a man can use in life is a correct Psychological state.
One can disarm beasts and unmask traitors through appropriate interior states.
Mistaken interior states convert us into defenseless victims of human perversity.
Learn to face the most unpleasant occurrences of practical life with an appropriate interior attitude…
Do not identify with any event; remember that everything passes; learn to see life as a film, and you will receive the benefits…
Do not forget that events of no value could lead you to disgrace if you do not eliminate from your Psyche the mistaken interior states.
Each exterior event needs unquestionably the appropriate ticket—that is, the precise Psychological state.
Chapter Ten: THE DIFFERENT I’S
The Rational Mammal mistakenly called man really does not possess a defined individuality.
Unquestionably this lack of Psychological unity in the Humanoid is the cause of so many difficulties and bitterness.
The physical body is a complete unity and works as an organic whole, unless it is ill.
Yet the interior life of the Humanoid is in no way a psychological unity.
The most serious thing about all this, in spite of what the various schools of Pseudo-Esoteric and Pseudo-Occult type may say, is the absence of Psychological organization in the intimate depth of each subject.
Certainly under such conditions, no harmonious work as a whole exists in the interior life of persons.
The Humanoid, with respect to his interior state, is a psychological multiplicity, a sum of ‘I’s.’
The illustrated ignorant of this dark epoch render worship to the ‘I,’ deify it, place it on the altars, call it ‘ALTER EGO,’ ‘SUPERIOR I,’ ‘DIVINE I,’ etc., etc., etc.
The ‘Know-it-alls’ of this black age in which we live do not wish to realize that ‘Superior I’ or ‘Inferior I’ are two sections of the same pluralized Ego…
The Humanoid certainly has no ‘Permanent I,’ but a multitude of different absurd Infrahuman ‘I’s.’
The poor intellectual animal mistakenly called man is similar to a house in disorder, where instead of one master, there exist many servants who always wish to command and to do what comes into their head…
The greatest error of cheap Pseudo-Esotericism and Pseudo-Occultism is to suppose that others possess, or that one has, a ‘Permanent and Immutable I’ without beginning and without end…
If those who think thus would awaken consciousness, even for an instant, they could clearly verify by themselves that the rational Humanoid is never the same for very long…
The intellectual mammal, from the psychological point of view, is changing continuously…
To think that if a person is called Louis, he is always Louis, turns out to be something like a joke of very bad taste…
That subject whom one calls Louis has within himself other ‘I’s,’ other egos, that express themselves through his personality at different moments; and although Louis does not like greed, another ‘I’ in him—let us call him Pepe—does like greed, and so on…
No person is the same continuously; one really does not need to be very wise to fully realize the innumerable changes and contradictions of each subject…
To suppose that someone possesses a ‘Permanent and Immutable I’ amounts of course to an abuse of one’s neighbor and of oneself…
Within each person live many persons, many ‘I’s’; this can be verified for oneself, and in a direct form, by any person who is awake, conscious…
Chapter Eleven: THE BELOVED EGO
Since superior and inferior are two sections of the same thing, it does not hurt to lay down the following corollary: ‘SUPERIOR I, INFERIOR I’ are two aspects of the same dark and pluralized EGO.
The so-called ‘DIVINE I’ or ‘SUPERIOR I,’ ‘ALTER EGO,’ or something of the sort, is certainly a trick of ‘ONESELF,’ a form of SELF-DECEPTION.
When the I wishes to continue here and beyond, it Self-Deceives itself with the false concept of an Immortal Divine I…
None of us has a true ‘I,’ permanent, immutable, eternal, ineffable, etc., etc., etc.
None of us has in truth a real and authentic Unity of Being; unfortunately we do not even possess a legitimate individuality.
The Ego, although it continues beyond the grave, has however a beginning and an end.
The Ego, the I, is never something individual, unitary, unitotal. Obviously the I is ‘I’s.’
In Eastern Tibet the ‘I’s’ are called ‘PSYCHIC AGGREGATES’ or simply ‘Values,’ whether these last be positive or negative.
If we think of each ‘I’ as a different person, we can affirm emphatically the following: ‘Within each person who lives in the world, there exist many persons.’
Unquestionably within each one of us live very many different persons—some better, others worse…
Each one of these I’s, each one of these persons, fights for supremacy, wishes to be exclusive, controls the intellectual brain or the emotional and motor centers whenever it can, while another displaces it…
The Doctrine of the many I’s was taught in Eastern Tibet by the true Clairvoyants, by the authentic Illuminated ones…
Each one of our psychological defects is personified in such or such an I. Since we have thousands and even millions of defects, patently many people live in our interior.
In psychological matters we have been able to verify clearly that the paranoid subjects, egolatrous and mythomaniacs, would for nothing in life abandon the cult of the beloved Ego.
Unquestionably such people mortally hate the doctrine of the many ‘I’s.’
When one truly wishes to know oneself, one must self-observe and try to know the different ‘I’s’ that are inside the personality.
If any of our readers does not yet understand this doctrine of the many ‘I’s,’ it is due exclusively to the lack of practice in the matter of Self-Observation.
As one practices Interior Self-Observation, one discovers for oneself many people, many ‘I’s,’ that live within our own personality.
Those who deny the doctrine of the many I’s, those who adore a Divine I, undoubtedly have never seriously Self-Observed themselves. Speaking this time in a Socratic style, we will say that those people not only ignore, but in addition ignore that they ignore.
Certainly we could never know ourselves without serious and profound self-observation.
So long as any subject continues considering himself as One, it is clear that any interior change will be something more than impossible.
The so-called 'DIVINE I' or 'SUPERIOR I,' 'ALTER EGO,' or something of the sort, is certainly a trick of 'ONESELF,' a form of SELF-DECEPTION.
Chapter Twelve: RADICAL CHANGE
So long as a man continues with the error of believing himself One, Unique, Individual, it is evident that radical change will be something more than impossible.
The very fact that the esoteric work begins with the rigorous observation of oneself indicates to us a multiplicity of Psychological factors, I’s, or undesirable elements that it is urgent to extirpate, to eradicate from our interior.
Unquestionably it would in no way be possible to eliminate unknown errors; it is urgent to observe previously that which we wish to separate from our Psyche.
This kind of work is not external but internal, and those who think that any manual of etiquette or external and superficial ethical system can lead them to success will in fact be totally mistaken.
The concrete and definitive fact that the intimate work begins with attention concentrated on the full observation of oneself is reason more than sufficient to demonstrate that this demands a very particular personal effort from each one of us.
Speaking frankly and without circumlocution, we assert emphatically the following: No human being could do this work for us.
No change in our Psyche is possible without the direct observation of that whole set of subjective factors we carry within.
To accept the multiplicity of errors as given, discarding the need for study and direct observation of them, in fact means an evasion or escape, a flight from oneself, a form of self-deception.
Only through the rigorous effort of judicious observation of oneself, without escapes of any kind, can we really verify that we are not ‘One’ but ‘Many.’
To admit the plurality of the I and to verify it through rigorous observation are two different aspects.
Someone may accept the Doctrine of the many I’s without ever having verified it; this latter is only possible by self-observing carefully.
To shun the work of intimate observation, to seek evasions, is an unmistakable sign of degeneration.
While a man sustains the illusion that he is always one and the same person, he cannot change; and it is obvious that the purpose of this work is precisely to attain a gradual change in our interior life.
Radical transformation is a definite possibility that is normally lost when one does not work upon oneself.
The initial point of radical change remains hidden as long as man continues believing himself One.
Those who reject the Doctrine of the many I’s clearly demonstrate that they have never seriously self-observed themselves.
Severe observation of oneself, without escapes of any kind, allows us to verify for ourselves the crude realism that we are not ‘One’ but ‘Many.’
In the world of subjective opinions, diverse pseudo-esoteric or pseudo-occult theories always serve as an alley by which to flee from oneself…
Unquestionably the illusion that one is always one and the same person serves as an obstacle to self-observation…
Someone might say: ‘I know that I am not One but Many; Gnosis has taught it to me.’ Such an affirmation, even though very sincere, if there did not exist full lived experience of that doctrinal aspect, would obviously be something merely external and superficial.
To verify, to experience, and to comprehend is fundamental; only thus is it possible to work consciously to attain a radical change.
To affirm is one thing and to comprehend is another. When someone says: ‘I comprehend that I am not One but Many,’ if his comprehension is true and not mere insubstantial chatter of ambiguous talk, this indicates, points out, denotes, full verification of the Doctrine of the Many I’s.
Knowledge and Comprehension are different. The first of these is of the mind, the second of the heart.
Mere knowledge of the Doctrine of the Many I’s serves for nothing. Unfortunately in these times in which we live, knowledge has gone much farther than comprehension, because the poor intellectual animal mistakenly called man has developed exclusively the side of knowledge, regrettably forgetting the corresponding side of Being.
To know the Doctrine of the Many I’s and to comprehend it is fundamental for every true radical change.
When a man begins to observe himself attentively, from the angle that he is not One but Many, obviously he has initiated serious work on his interior nature.
When a man begins to observe himself attentively, from the angle that he is not One but Many, obviously he has initiated serious work on his interior nature.
Chapter Thirteen: OBSERVER AND OBSERVED
It is very clear, and it is not difficult to comprehend, that when someone begins to observe himself seriously from the point of view that he is not One but Many, he really begins to work upon all that he carries inside.
Obstacles, hindrances, stumblings to the work of Intimate Self-Observation are the following Psychological defects: Mythomania (delusion of grandeur, believing oneself a God). Egolatry (belief in a Permanent I; worship of any species of Alter-Ego). Paranoia (know-it-all-ness, self-sufficiency, conceit, believing oneself infallible, mystical pride, the person who does not know how to see another’s point of view).
When one continues with the absurd conviction that one is One, that one possesses a permanent I, serious work upon oneself becomes something more than impossible.
He who always believes himself One will never be able to separate himself from his own undesirable elements. He will consider each thought, feeling, desire, emotion, passion, affection, etc., etc., etc., as different unmodifiable functionalisms of his own nature, and will even justify himself before others, saying that such or such personal defects are of hereditary character…
He who accepts the Doctrine of the Many I’s understands on the basis of observation that each desire, thought, action, passion, etc., corresponds to this or another distinct, different I…
Every athlete of Intimate Self-Observation works very seriously within himself and strives to set aside from his Psyche the various undesirable elements he carries inside…
If one truly and very sincerely begins to observe himself internally, he ends up dividing himself in two: Observer and Observed.
If such division were not produced, it is evident that we would never take a step forward on the marvelous Way of Self-Knowledge.
How could we observe ourselves if we commit the error of not wishing to divide ourselves between Observer and Observed?
If such division were not produced, it is obvious that we would never take a step forward on the path of Self-Knowledge.
Undoubtedly when this division does not occur, we continue identified with all the processes of the Pluralized I…
He who identifies with the various processes of the Pluralized I is always a victim of circumstances.
How could he who does not know himself modify circumstances? How could he who has never observed himself internally know himself? In what way could anyone self-observe if he does not previously divide himself into Observer and Observed?
Now then, no one can begin to change radically while he is not capable of saying: ‘This desire is an animal I that I must eliminate’; ‘this egotistical thought is another I that torments me and which I need to disintegrate’; ‘this feeling that wounds my heart is an intruding I that I need to reduce to cosmic dust’; etc., etc., etc.
Naturally this is impossible for the one who has never divided himself between Observer and Observed.
He who takes all his Psychological processes as functionalisms of a Unique, Individual, and Permanent I is so identified with all his errors, holds them so united to himself, that he has lost for that reason the capacity to separate them from his Psyche.
Obviously persons like that can never change radically; they are people condemned to the most resounding failure.
Chapter Fourteen: NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
To think profoundly and with full attention is rare in this involutive and decadent epoch.
From the Intellectual Center arise various thoughts coming, not from a permanent I as the illustrated ignorant foolishly suppose, but from the different ‘I’s’ in each one of Us.
When a man is thinking, he firmly believes that he, in himself and by himself, is thinking.
The poor intellectual mammal does not wish to realize that the multiple thoughts that cross his understanding have their origin in the various ‘I’s’ we carry within.
This means that we are not true thinking individuals; really we do not yet have an individual mind.
Yet each one of the different ‘I’s’ we carry within uses our Intellectual Center; uses it whenever it can in order to think.
Absurd, then, would it be to identify ourselves with such or such a negative and harmful thought, believing it our particular property.
Obviously this or that negative thought comes from any ‘I’ which in a given moment has abusively used our Intellectual Center.
Negative thoughts there are of various kinds: Suspicion, distrust, ill will toward another person, passional jealousy, religious jealousy, political jealousy, jealousy over friendships or of family type, greed, lust, vengeance, anger, pride, envy, hatred, resentment, theft, adultery, laziness, gluttony, etc., etc., etc.
Truly so many are the psychological defects we have that, even if we had a palate of steel and a thousand tongues to speak, we would not manage to enumerate them in detail.
As a sequel or corollary of what has been said above, it is preposterous to identify ourselves with the negative thoughts.
Since it is not possible for there to exist effect without cause, we solemnly affirm that a thought could never exist by itself, by spontaneous generation…
The relation between thinker and thought is patent; each negative thought has its origin in a different thinker.
In each one of us there exist as many negative thinkers as there are thoughts of the same kind.
Looking at this question from the pluralized angle of ‘Thinkers and Thoughts,’ it happens that each one of the ‘I’s’ we carry in our Psyche is certainly a different thinker.
Unquestionably within each one of us there exist too many thinkers; yet each one of these, in spite of being only a part, believes itself to be the whole in a given moment…
The mythomaniacs, the egolaters, the narcissists, the paranoiacs, would never accept the thesis of ‘The Plurality of Thinkers’ because they love themselves too much, they feel themselves ‘the daddy of Tarzan’ or ‘the mother of the chicks’…
How could such abnormal people accept the idea that they do not possess an individual, ingenious, marvelous mind?…
Yet such Know-it-alls think the best of themselves and even dress in the tunic of Aristippus to demonstrate wisdom and humility…
There is told the legend of the centuries that Aristippus, wishing to demonstrate wisdom and humility, dressed in an old tunic full of patches and holes; he grasped in his right hand the Staff of Philosophy and went through the streets of Athens…
They say that when Socrates saw him coming, he exclaimed with great voice: ‘Oh Aristippus, your vanity is seen through the holes of your robe!’
He who does not always live in a state of Alert Novelty, Alert Perception, thinking that he is thinking, identifies easily with any negative thought.
As a result of this, he regrettably strengthens the sinister power of the ‘Negative I,’ author of the corresponding thought in question.
The more we identify ourselves with a negative thought, the more we shall be slaves of the corresponding ‘I’ that characterizes it.
With respect to Gnosis, the Secret Path, the work upon oneself, our particular temptations are found precisely in the ‘I’s’ that hate Gnosis, the esoteric work, because they are not ignorant that their existence within our psyche is mortally threatened by Gnosis and by the work.
Those ‘Negative and Quarrelsome I’s’ easily take hold of certain mental scrolls stored in our Intellectual Center, and sequentially originate harmful and damaging mental currents.
If we accept those thoughts, those ‘Negative I’s’ that in a given moment control our Intellectual Center, we shall then be incapable of freeing ourselves from their results.
We must never forget that every ‘Negative I’ ‘Self-Deceives’ and ‘Deceives’; conclusion: it lies.
Every time we feel a sudden loss of strength, when the aspirant becomes disillusioned with Gnosis, with the esoteric work, when he loses enthusiasm and abandons what is best, it is obvious that he has been deceived by some Negative I.
The ‘Negative I of Adultery’ annihilates noble homes and makes the children unhappy.
The ‘Negative I of Jealousy’ deceives the beings who adore each other and destroys their happiness.
The ‘Negative I of Mystical Pride’ deceives the devotees of the Path, and they, feeling themselves wise, detest their Master or betray him…
The Negative I appeals to our personal experiences, to our recollections, to our best longings, to our sincerity; and through a rigorous selection of all this, presents something in a false light, something that fascinates—and the failure comes…
Yet when one discovers the ‘I’ in action, when one has learned to live in a state of alertness, such deception becomes impossible…
Chapter Fifteen: INDIVIDUALITY
To believe oneself ‘One’ is certainly a joke of very bad taste; unfortunately this vain illusion exists within each one of us.
Regrettably we always think of ourselves the best; it never occurs to us to comprehend that we do not even possess true Individuality.
The worst of the case is that we even give ourselves the false luxury of supposing that each one of us enjoys full consciousness and a will of his own.
Poor us! How foolish we are! There is no doubt that ignorance is the worst of misfortunes.
Within each one of us there exist many thousands of different individuals, distinct subjects, I’s or people that quarrel among themselves, that fight for supremacy, and which have no order or concordance whatsoever.
If we were conscious, if we awakened from so many dreams and fantasies, how different life would be…
But to the height of our misfortune, the negative emotions and the self-considerations and self-love fascinate us, hypnotize us, never allow us to remember ourselves, to see ourselves as we are.
We believe we have a single will when in reality we possess many different wills (each I has its own).
The tragicomedy of all this Interior Multiplicity is appalling; the different interior wills clash among themselves, live in continual conflict, act in different directions.
If we had true Individuality, if we possessed a Unity instead of a Multiplicity, we would also have continuity of purpose, awakened consciousness, particular individual will.
To change is what is indicated; however, we must begin by being sincere with ourselves.
We need to make a psychological inventory of ourselves to know what we have in excess and what we lack.
It is possible to obtain Individuality; but if we believe we have it, such a possibility will disappear.
It is evident that we would never struggle to obtain something we believe we have. Fantasy makes us believe that we are possessors of Individuality; and there even exist in the world schools that teach so.
It is urgent to struggle against fantasy; it makes us appear as if we were this or that, when in reality we are wretched, shameless, and perverse.
We think that we are men, when in truth we are only intellectual mammals lacking in Individuality.
The mythomaniacs believe themselves Gods, Mahatmas, etc., without even suspecting that they do not even have an individual mind and Conscious Will.
The egolaters adore their beloved Ego so much that they would never accept the idea of the Multiplicity of Egos within themselves.
The paranoiacs, with all the classical pride that characterizes them, will not even read this book…
It is indispensable to struggle to the death against the fantasy about ourselves, if we do not wish to be victims of artificial emotions and false experiences, which besides putting us in ridiculous situations, halt all possibility of interior development.
The intellectual animal is so hypnotized by his fantasy that he dreams he is lion or eagle, when in truth he is no more than a vile worm of the slime of the earth.
The mythomaniac would never accept these affirmations made in the lines above; obviously he feels himself an archhierophant, say what they may; without suspecting that fantasy is merely nothing, ‘nothing but fantasy.’
Fantasy is a real force that acts universally upon humanity and that maintains the Intellectual Humanoid in a state of dreaming, making him believe that he already is a man, that he possesses true Individuality, will, awakened consciousness, particular mind, etc., etc., etc.
When we think that we are one, we cannot move from where we are in ourselves; we remain stagnant, and at last degenerate, involute.
Each one of us finds himself at a determined psychological stage, and we shall not be able to leave it unless we directly discover all those people or I’s that live within our person.
It is clear that through intimate self-observation we shall be able to see the people who live in our psyche and whom we need to eliminate to attain radical transformation.
This perception, this self-observation, fundamentally changes all the mistaken concepts we had about ourselves; and as a result, we verify the concrete fact that we do not possess true Individuality.
So long as we do not self-observe, we shall live in the illusion that we are One, and consequently our life will be mistaken.
It is not possible to relate correctly with our fellows so long as no Interior change is accomplished in the depth of our psyche.
Any intimate change demands the previous elimination of the I’s we carry within.
In no way could we eliminate such I’s if we do not observe them in our interior.
Those who feel themselves One, who think the best of themselves, who would never accept the doctrine of the many, also do not wish to observe the I’s; and therefore any possibility of change becomes impossible for them.
It is not possible to change if one does not eliminate; but whoever feels himself a possessor of Individuality, if he were to accept that he must eliminate, would really not know what he must eliminate.
Yet we must not forget that whoever believes himself One, self-deceived, believes that he knows what he must eliminate; but in truth he does not even know that he does not know; he is an illustrated ignorant.
We need to ‘de-egotize’ ourselves to ‘individualize’ ourselves; but for whoever believes that he possesses Individuality, it is impossible to de-egotize himself.
Individuality is sacred one hundred percent; rare are those who possess it, yet all think that they have it.
How could we eliminate I’s, if we believe that we have a Unique I?
Certainly only he who has never seriously Self-Observed himself thinks that he has a Unique I.
Yet we must be very clear in this teaching, because there exists the psychological danger of confusing authentic Individuality with the concept of some species of ‘Superior I’ or something of the sort.
Sacred Individuality is much beyond any form of ‘I’; it is what it is, what it always has been, and what it always will be.
Legitimate Individuality is the Being and the reason of Being of Being; it is the Being itself.
Distinguish between the Being and the I. Those who confuse the I with the Being certainly have never self-observed themselves seriously.
So long as the Essence, the consciousness, continues bottled up amid that whole set of I’s that we carry within, radical change will be something more than impossible.
If we had true Individuality, if we possessed a Unity instead of a Multiplicity, we would also have continuity of purpose, awakened consciousness, particular individual will.
Chapter Sixteen: THE BOOK OF LIFE
A person is what his life is. That which continues beyond death is the life. This is the meaning of the book of life that is opened with death.
Looked at from a strictly psychological point of view, any day of our life is really a small replica of the totality of life.
From all this we can infer the following: If a man does not work upon himself today, he will never change.
When it is affirmed that one wishes to work upon oneself, and one does not work today, postponing for tomorrow, such an affirmation will be a simple project and nothing more, because in today is the replica of all our life.
There exists out there a vulgar saying that goes: ‘Do not leave for tomorrow what can be done today.’
If a man says: ‘I will work upon myself tomorrow,’ he will never work upon himself, because there will always be a tomorrow.
This is very similar to a certain notice, advertisement, or sign that some merchants put up in their shops: ‘TODAY I DO NOT EXTEND CREDIT; TOMORROW YES.’
When any needy person comes to ask for credit, he runs up against the terrible notice; and if he returns the next day, he finds again the wretched advertisement or sign.
This is what is called in psychology the ‘sickness of tomorrow.’ So long as a man says ‘tomorrow,’ he will never change.
We need with maximum, unpostponable urgency to work upon ourselves today, not to dream lazily of a future or of an extraordinary opportunity.
Those who say: ‘I am going first to do this or that, and then I will work.’ They will never work upon themselves; they are the dwellers of the earth mentioned in the Holy Scriptures.
I knew a powerful landowner who used to say: ‘I need first to round myself out and then to work upon Myself.’
When he fell mortally ill, I visited him; then I asked him the following question: ‘Do you still want to round yourself out?’
‘I truly regret having wasted the time,’ he answered me. Days later he died, after having recognized his error.
That man had many lands, but he wanted to take possession of the neighboring properties, to ‘round himself out,’ so that his estate would be exactly bounded by four roads.
‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!’ said the Great KABIR JESUS. Self-observe today, in regard to the always recurrent day, the miniature of our entire life.
When a man begins to work upon himself today, when he observes his displeasures and sorrows, he marches along the path of success.
It would not be possible to eliminate what we do not know. We must first observe our own errors.
We need not only to know our day, but also the relation with it. There is a certain ordinary day that each person experiences directly, except for the unusual, unwonted occurrences.
It is interesting to observe the daily recurrence, the repetition of words and events, for each person, etc.
That repetition or recurrence of events and words deserves to be studied; it leads us to self-knowledge.
Chapter Seventeen: MECHANICAL CREATURES
In no way could we deny the Law of Recurrence taking place at every moment of our life.
Certainly in each day of our existence there exists repetition of events, states of consciousness, words, desires, thoughts, volitions, etc.
It is obvious that when one does not self-observe, one cannot realize this incessant daily repetition.
It is evident that whoever feels no interest in observing himself also does not wish to work to attain a true radical transformation.
To the height of heights there are people who wish to transform themselves without working upon themselves.
We do not deny the fact that each one has the right to the real happiness of the spirit; but it is also certain that happiness would be something more than impossible if we do not work upon ourselves.
One can change intimately when one truly manages to modify one’s reactions to the various events that befall one daily.
Yet we could not modify our way of reacting to the events of practical life if we did not work seriously upon ourselves.
We need to change our way of thinking, to be less negligent, to become more serious, and to take life in a different way, in its real and practical sense.
Yet if we continue thus as we are, behaving in the same way every day, repeating the same errors, with the same negligence as always, any possibility of change will in fact remain eliminated.
If one truly wishes to come to know oneself, one must begin by observing one’s own conduct in the face of the occurrences of any day of life.
We do not wish to say by this that one should not observe oneself daily; we only wish to affirm that one should begin by observing one first day.
In everything there must be a beginning, and to begin by observing our conduct on any day of our life is a good beginning.
To observe our mechanical reactions to all those small details of bedroom, home, dining room, house, street, work, etc., etc., etc., what one says, feels, and thinks, is certainly what is most indicated.
The important thing is to see then how, or in what way, one can change those reactions; yet if we believe that we are good persons, that we never behave in an unconscious and mistaken form, we shall never change.
Above all, we need to comprehend that we are people-machines, simple marionettes controlled by secret agents, by hidden I’s.
Within our person many people live; we are never identical; sometimes a stingy person manifests in us, other times an irritable person, at any other moment a splendid, benevolent person, later a scandalous or slandering person, then a saint, then a liar, etc.
We have people of all kinds within each one of us, I’s of every species. Our personality is no more than a marionette, a talking doll, something mechanical.
Let us begin by behaving consciously during a small part of the day; we need to cease being simple machines, even if only for brief minutes daily; this will influence decisively on our existence.
When we Self-Observe and do not do what such or such an I wants, it is clear that we begin to cease being machines.
One single moment in which one is sufficiently conscious to cease being a machine, if it is done voluntarily, can radically modify many unpleasant circumstances.
Unfortunately we live daily a mechanistic, routine, absurd life. We repeat occurrences; our habits are the same; we have never wished to modify them; they are the mechanical rail on which the train of our miserable existence runs; yet we think of ourselves the best…
Everywhere abound the ‘MYTHOMANIACS,’ those who believe themselves Gods—mechanical, routine creatures, personages of the slime of the earth, wretched dolls moved by various I’s; people like that will not work upon themselves…
Certainly in each day of our existence there exists repetition of events, states of consciousness, words, desires, thoughts, volitions, etc.
Chapter Eighteen: THE SUPERSUBSTANTIAL BREAD
If we carefully observe any day of our life, we shall see that certainly we do not know how to live consciously.
Our life seems a train in motion, moving on the fixed rails of mechanical, rigid habits of a vain and superficial existence.
The curious thing about it is that it never occurs to us to modify the habits; it seems that we never tire of always emitting the same thing.
The habits keep us petrified, yet we think we are free; we are frightfully ugly, but we believe ourselves Apollos…
We are mechanical people; a reason more than sufficient to be lacking in any true feeling of what we are doing in life.
We move daily within the old rail of our antiquated and absurd habits, and so it is clear that we do not have a true life; instead of living, we vegetate miserably, and we receive no new impressions.
If a person initiated his day consciously, it is patent that such a day would be very different from the others.
When one takes the totality of one’s life as the same day one is living, when one does not leave for tomorrow what should be done today, one really comes to know what it means to work upon oneself.
No day ever lacks importance; if we truly wish to transform ourselves radically, we must see ourselves, observe ourselves, and comprehend ourselves daily.
Yet people do not wish to see themselves; some, having the desire to work upon themselves, justify their negligence with phrases like the following: ‘The work at the office does not allow one to work upon oneself.’ These are words without meaning, empty, vain, absurd, that only serve to justify indolence, laziness, lack of love for the Great Cause.
People like that, although they have many spiritual yearnings, obviously will never change.
To observe ourselves is urgent, undeferrable, unpostponable. Intimate Self-Observation is fundamental for true change.
What is your psychological state on rising? What is your state of mind during breakfast? Were you impatient with the waiter? With your wife? Why were you impatient? What is it that always upsets you? Etc.
To smoke or to eat less is not the whole change, but it does indicate a certain advance. We well know that vice and gluttony are inhuman and bestial.
It is not well that someone dedicated to the Secret Path should have a physical body excessively fat and with a bulging belly out of all eurythmy of perfection. That would indicate gluttony, greed, and even laziness.
Daily life, profession, employment, although vital for existence, constitute the sleep of consciousness.
To know that life is dream does not mean to have comprehended it. Comprehension comes with self-observation and intense work upon oneself.
To work upon oneself, it is indispensable to work upon one’s daily life, today itself; and then will be comprehended what that phrase of the Lord’s Prayer means: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’
The phrase ‘Daily’ in the Greek means ‘Supersubstantial Bread’ or ‘Bread from on High.’
Gnosis gives that Bread of Life in the double sense of ideas and forces that allow us to disintegrate psychological errors.
Each time we reduce to cosmic dust such or such an ‘I,’ we gain psychological experience, eat the ‘Bread of Wisdom,’ receive a new knowledge.
Gnosis offers us the ‘Supersubstantial Bread,’ the ‘Bread of Wisdom,’ and indicates to us with precision the new life that begins in oneself, within oneself, here and now.
Now then, no one can alter his life or change anything related to the mechanical reactions of existence, unless he counts on the help of new ideas and receives Divine aid.
Gnosis gives those new ideas and teaches the ‘modus operandi’ by which one can be assisted by Forces Superior to the mind.
We need to prepare the inferior centers of our organism to receive the ideas and force that come from the Superior centers.
In the work upon oneself, nothing is contemptible. Any thought, however insignificant, deserves to be observed. Any negative emotion, reaction, etc., must be observed.
If a person initiated his day consciously, it is patent that such a day would be very different from the others.
Chapter Nineteen: THE GOOD HOUSEHOLDER
To set oneself apart from the disastrous effects of life in these dark times is certainly very difficult, but indispensable; otherwise one is devoured by life.
Any work that one does upon oneself with the purpose of attaining an animic and spiritual development is always related to well-understood isolation, for under the influence of life as we always live it, it is not possible to develop anything other than the personality.
In no way do we intend to oppose the development of the personality; obviously it is necessary in existence; but it is certainly something merely artificial; it is not the true, the real in us.
If the poor intellectual mammal mistakenly called man does not isolate himself, but instead identifies himself with all the events of practical life and squanders his forces in negative emotions and in personal self-considerations and in vain insubstantial chatter of ambiguous talk, nothing edifying, no real element can develop in him, beyond what pertains to the world of mechanicity.
Certainly whoever truly wishes to attain in himself the development of the Essence must come to be hermetically sealed. This refers to something intimate, closely related to silence.
The phrase comes from ancient times, when there was secretly taught a Doctrine about the inner development of man linked with the name of Hermes.
If one wishes for something real to grow in one’s interiority, it is clear that one must avoid the escape of one’s psychic energies.
When one has energy escapes and is not isolated in his intimacy, it is unquestionable that he will not be able to attain the development of anything real in his psyche.
The ordinary common and current life seeks to devour us implacably; we must struggle against life daily; we must learn to swim against the current…
This work goes against life; it is something very different from that of every day, and yet we must practice it from instant to instant; I wish to refer to the Revolution of Consciousness.
It is evident that if our attitude toward daily life is fundamentally mistaken, if we believe that everything will go well ‘just because,’ the disillusionments will come…
People wish that things turn out well for them ‘just because,’ because everything must go according to their plans; but the crude reality is different. So long as one does not change inwardly, whether he likes it or not, he will always be a victim of circumstances.
Many sentimental stupidities are said and written about life, but this Treatise on Revolutionary Psychology is different.
This Doctrine goes to the heart of the matter, to the concrete facts, clear and definitive; it emphatically affirms that the ‘Intellectual Animal’ mistakenly called man is a mechanical, unconscious, sleeping biped.
‘The Good Householder’ would never accept Revolutionary Psychology; he fulfills all his duties as father, husband, etc., and therefore thinks of himself the best; but he only serves the ends of nature, and that is all.
By contrast, we will say that there also exists ‘The Good Householder’ who swims against the current, who does not wish to let himself be devoured by life; yet these subjects are very rare in the world; they never abound.
When one thinks in accordance with the ideas of this Treatise on Revolutionary Psychology, one obtains a correct vision of life.
The phrase comes from ancient times, when there was secretly taught a Doctrine about the inner development of man linked with the name of Hermes.
Chapter Twenty: THE TWO WORLDS
To observe and to observe oneself are two completely different things; however, both demand attention.
In observation the attention is oriented outward, toward the exterior world, through the windows of the senses.
In self-observation, the attention is oriented inward, and for that the senses of external perception are of no use; reason more than sufficient that observation of his intimate psychological processes should be difficult for the neophyte.
The point of departure of official science on its practical side is the observable. The point of departure of the work upon oneself is self-observation, the self-observable.
Unquestionably these two points of departure cited above lead us in completely different directions.
Someone could grow old bottled up amid the unyielding dogmas of official science, studying external phenomena, observing cells, atoms, molecules, suns, stars, comets, etc., without experiencing within himself any radical change.
The kind of knowledge that transforms anyone internally could never be attained through external observation.
True knowledge that can really originate in us a fundamental inner change has as its foundation the direct self-observation of oneself.
It is urgent to tell our Gnostic students to observe themselves, and in what sense they must self-observe, and the reasons for it.
Observation is a means to modify the mechanical conditions of the world. Interior self-observation is a means to change intimately.
As a sequel or corollary of all this, we can and must affirm emphatically that there exist two kinds of knowledge, the external and the internal; and that unless we have within ourselves the magnetic center that can differentiate the qualities of knowledge, this mixture of the two planes or orders of ideas could lead us to confusion.
Sublime pseudo-esoteric Doctrines with a marked scientistic background pertain to the field of the observable, yet are accepted by many aspirants as internal knowledge.
We find ourselves, then, before two worlds, the exterior and the interior. The first of these is perceived by the senses of external perception; the second can only be perceptible through the sense of internal self-observation.
Thoughts, ideas, emotions, longings, hopes, disenchantments, etc., are interior, invisible for the ordinary common and current senses, and yet are for us more real than the dining-room table or the armchairs of the parlor.
Certainly we live more in our interior world than in the exterior; this is irrefutable, irrebuttable.
In our Interior Worlds, in our secret world, we love, desire, suspect, bless, curse, long, suffer, enjoy, are defrauded, rewarded, etc., etc., etc.
Unquestionably the two worlds, internal and external, are verifiable experimentally. The external world is the observable. The internal world is the self-observable in oneself and within oneself, here and now.
Whoever truly wishes to know the ‘Internal Worlds’ of planet Earth, or of the Solar System, or of the Galaxy in which we live, must previously know his intimate world, his interior life, his particular, his own ‘Internal Worlds.’ ‘Man, know thyself, and thou shalt know the Universe and the Gods.’
The more this ‘Inner World’ called ‘Oneself’ is explored, the more he will comprehend that he lives simultaneously in two worlds, in two realities, in two spheres: the exterior and the interior.
Just as it is indispensable for one to learn to walk in the ‘external world,’ so as not to fall into a precipice, not to get lost in the streets of the city, to select one’s friends, not to associate with the perverse, not to eat poison, etc., so also, through psychological work upon oneself, let us learn to walk in the ‘Interior World,’ which is explorable through self-observation.
Really the sense of self-observation is atrophied in the decadent human race of this dark epoch in which we live.
As we persevere in the self-observation of ourselves, the sense of intimate self-observation will gradually develop progressively.
True knowledge that can really originate in us a fundamental inner change has as its foundation the direct self-observation of oneself.
Chapter 21: SELF-OBSERVATION
Intimate Self-Observation of oneself is a practical means to attain a radical transformation.
To know and to observe are different. Many confuse self-observation with knowing. One knows that one is sitting on a chair in a parlor, but this does not mean that one is observing the chair.
We know that at a given instant we find ourselves in a negative state, perhaps with some problem or worried about this or that matter, or in a state of restlessness or uncertainty, etc., but this does not mean that we are observing it.
Do you feel antipathy for someone? Does a certain person dislike you? Why? You will say that you know that person… Please! Observe him; knowing is never observing; do not confuse knowing with observing…
Self-observation, which is one hundred percent active, is a means of self-change, whereas knowing, which is passive, is not.
Certainly knowing is not an act of attention. The attention directed within oneself, toward what is happening in our interior, is something positive, active…
In the case of a person whom one dislikes ‘just because,’ because it comes into our head, and many times without any motive, one notices the multitude of thoughts that accumulate in the mind, the group of voices that speak and shout disorderly within oneself, what they are saying, the unpleasant emotions that arise in our interior, the unpleasant aftertaste that all this leaves in our psyche, etc., etc., etc.
Obviously in such a state we also realize that internally we are treating very badly the person for whom we feel antipathy.
Yet to see all this requires unquestionably an attention directed intentionally inward toward oneself; not a passive attention.
Dynamic attention really proceeds from the observing side, while thoughts and emotions belong to the observed side.
All this makes us comprehend that knowing is something completely passive and mechanical, in evident contrast with self-observation, which is a conscious act.
We do not wish to say by this that there does not exist mechanical observation of oneself, but such type of observation has nothing to do with the psychological self-observation to which we are referring.
To think and to observe are also very different. Any subject may give himself the luxury of thinking about himself all he wishes, but this does not mean that he is really observing himself.
We need to see the different ‘I’s’ in action, to discover them in our psyche, to understand that within each of them there exists a percentage of our own consciousness, to repent of having created them, etc.
Then we shall exclaim: ‘But what is this I doing?’ ‘What is it saying?’ ‘What does it want?’ ‘Why does it torment me with its lust?’ ‘With its anger?’ Etc., etc., etc.
Then we shall see within ourselves all that train of thoughts, emotions, desires, passions, private comedies, personal dramas, elaborated lies, speeches, excuses, morbidities, beds of pleasure, scenes of lasciviousness, etc., etc., etc.
Many times, before falling asleep, in the very instant of transition between vigil and sleep, we feel within our own mind distinct voices that speak among themselves; they are the various I’s that in such moments must break all connection with the various centers of our organic machine in order then to submerge themselves in the molecular world, in the ‘Fifth Dimension.‘
All this makes us comprehend that knowing is something completely passive and mechanical, in evident contrast with self-observation, which is a conscious act.
Chapter 22: THE CHATTER
It turns out urgent, undeferrable, unpostponable, to observe the inner chatter and the precise place from which it proceeds.
Unquestionably the mistaken inner chatter is the ‘Causa Causarum’ of many inharmonious and unpleasant psychic states in the present and also in the future.
Obviously that vain insubstantial chatter of ambiguous talk, and in general all harmful, damaging, absurd discussion manifested in the external world, has its origin in the mistaken inner conversation.
It is known that there exists in Gnosis the esoteric practice of inner silence; this is known by our disciples of ‘Third Chamber.’
It does not hurt to say with entire clarity that inner silence must refer specifically to something very precise and definite.
When the process of thinking is intentionally exhausted during profound inner meditation, inner silence is attained; but this is not what we wish to explain in the present Chapter.
‘To empty the mind’ or ‘to put it in blank’ to really attain inner silence is also not what we now intend to explain in these paragraphs.
To practice the inner silence to which we are referring also does not mean to prevent something from entering the mind.
Really we are now speaking of a very different kind of inner silence. It is not about something vague, general…
We wish to practice inner silence in relation to something that is already in the mind—a person, an occurrence, our own or another’s affair, what they told us, what so-and-so did, etc.—but without touching it with the inner tongue, without intimate discourse…
Learning to be silent not only with the exterior tongue, but also and in addition with the secret, internal tongue, is extraordinary, marvelous.
Many remain silent exteriorly, but with their inner tongue they skin alive their neighbor. The poisonous and malevolent inner chatter produces inner confusion.
If one observes the mistaken inner chatter, one will see that it is made of half-truths, or of truths that are related among themselves in a more or less incorrect way, or something that was added or omitted.
Unfortunately our emotional life is based exclusively on ‘self-sympathy.’
To the height of so much infamy, we sympathize only with ourselves, with our so ‘beloved Ego,’ and we feel antipathy and even hatred toward those who do not sympathize with us.
We love ourselves too much; we are narcissists one hundred percent; this is irrefutable, irrebuttable.
So long as we continue bottled up in ‘self-sympathy,’ any development of the Being becomes something more than impossible.
We need to learn to see the other person’s point of view. It is urgent to know how to put ourselves in the position of others.
‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’ (Matthew 7:12).
What truly counts in these studies is the way men behave internally and invisibly toward one another.
Unfortunately, even though we may be very courteous, even sincere at times, there is no doubt that invisibly and internally we treat one another very badly.
People apparently very kind drag their fellows daily to the secret cave of themselves, to do with them whatever they fancy (vexations, mockery, scorn, etc.).
To practice the inner silence to which we are referring also does not mean to prevent something from entering the mind.
Chapter 23: THE WORLD OF RELATIONS
The world of relations has three very different aspects which we need to clarify precisely.
First: We are related with the planetary body. That is, with the physical body.
Second: We live on planet Earth, and by logical sequence we are related with the external world and with the questions that concern us—family, business, money, questions of trade, profession, politics, etc., etc., etc.
Third: Man’s relation with himself. For the majority of people this type of relation has not the slightest importance.
Unfortunately people are only interested in the first two types of relations, looking with the most absolute indifference upon the third type.
Food, health, money, business, really constitute the principal preoccupations of the ‘Intellectual Animal’ mistakenly called ‘man.’
Now then: it is evident that both the physical body and the affairs of the world are external to ourselves.
The Planetary Body (physical body) is sometimes ill, sometimes healthy, and so on.
We always believe we have some knowledge of our physical body, but in reality not even the best scientists of the world know much about the body of flesh and bone.
There is no doubt that the physical body, given its tremendous and complicated organization, is certainly far beyond our comprehension.
In what concerns the second type of relations, we are always victims of circumstances; it is lamentable that we have not yet learned to originate circumstances consciously.
Many are the people incapable of adapting to anything or to anyone or of having true success in life.
On thinking of ourselves from the angle of the Gnostic esoteric work, it becomes urgent to find out with which of these three types of relations we are at fault.
It can happen, the concrete case, that we are mistakenly related with the physical body, and as a result of this we are ill.
It can happen that we are badly related with the external world and as a result have conflicts, economic and social problems, etc., etc., etc.
It may be that we are badly related with ourselves, and that sequentially we suffer much from lack of inner illumination.
Obviously if the lamp of our bedroom is not connected to the electrical installation, our chamber will be in darkness.
Those who suffer from lack of inner illumination must connect their mind with the Superior Centers of their Being.
Unquestionably we need to establish correct relations not only with our Planetary Body (physical body) and with the external world, but also with each of the parts of our own Being.
The pessimistic sick, tired of so many doctors and medicines, no longer wish to heal; and the optimistic patients struggle to live.
In the Casino of Monte Carlo many millionaires who lost their fortune in gambling killed themselves. Millions of poor mothers work to sustain their children.
Innumerable are the depressed aspirants who, for lack of psychic powers and intimate illumination, have renounced the esoteric work upon themselves. Few are those who know how to take advantage of adversities.
In times of rigorous temptation, dejection, and desolation, one must appeal to the intimate remembering of oneself.
In the depth of each one of us is the Aztec TONANTZIN, the STELLA MARIS, the Egyptian ISIS, the Divine Mother, awaiting us to heal our aching heart.
When one gives oneself the shock of the ‘Remembering of Oneself,’ a miraculous change is really produced in all the work of the body, so that the cells receive a different nourishment.
Those who suffer from lack of inner illumination must connect their mind with the Superior Centers of their Being.
Chapter 24: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SONG
The moment has come to reflect very seriously upon what is called ‘inner consideration.’
There is not the slightest doubt about the disastrous aspect of ‘intimate self-consideration’; this, besides hypnotizing the consciousness, makes us lose very much energy.
If one did not commit the error of identifying oneself so much with oneself, interior self-consideration would be something more than impossible.
When one identifies with oneself, one loves oneself too much, feels pity for oneself, self-considers, thinks one has always behaved very well with so-and-so, with the other one, with one’s wife, with the children, etc., and that no one has known how to appreciate one, etc. In total, one is a saint and all the others are villains, rascals.
One of the most common forms of intimate self-consideration is the preoccupation with what others may think about oneself; perhaps they may suppose that we are not honorable, sincere, truthful, brave, etc.
The most curious thing about all this is that we lamentably ignore the enormous loss of energy that this kind of preoccupation brings us.
Many hostile attitudes toward certain persons who have done us no harm are due precisely to such preoccupations born of intimate self-consideration.
In these circumstances, loving oneself so much, self-considering in this way, it is clear that the I, or rather the I’s, instead of being extinguished, are then strengthened frightfully.
Identified with oneself, one feels much pity for one’s own situation, and one even takes to keeping accounts.
Thus one thinks that so-and-so, that the other one, that the compadre, that the comadre, that the neighbor, that the boss, that the friend, etc., etc., etc., have not paid one as is due, despite all one’s well-known kindnesses; and bottled up in this, one becomes unbearable and boring to all the world.
With such a subject, one practically cannot speak, because any conversation is certain to wind up at his little ledger and his so-trumpeted sufferings.
It is written that in the Gnostic esoteric work, animic growth is only possible through forgiveness of others.
If someone lives from instant to instant, from moment to moment, suffering for what is owed him, for what was done to him, for the bitterness others caused him, always with his same song, nothing will be able to grow in his interior.
The Lord’s Prayer says: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’
The feeling that one is owed, the pain over the evils that others caused, etc., stops all interior progress of the soul.
Jesus the Great KABIR said: ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing’ (Matthew 5:25–26).
If we are owed, we owe. If we demand that we be paid to the last denarius, we must pay first to the last farthing.
This is the ‘Law of Talion,’ ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ An absurd ‘vicious circle.’
The apologies, the fulfilled satisfaction, and the humiliations we demand of others for the evils they caused us, are also demanded of us, even though we consider ourselves meek lambs.
To place oneself under unnecessary laws is absurd; better to place oneself under new influences.
The Law of Mercy is a higher influence than the Law of the violent man: ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’
It is urgent, indispensable, undeferrable, to place ourselves intelligently under the marvelous influences of the Gnostic esoteric work, to forget that we are owed, and to eliminate in our psyche any form of self-consideration.
We must never admit within ourselves feelings of vengeance, resentment, negative emotions, anxieties over the evils caused us, violence, envy, incessant remembering of debts, etc., etc., etc.
Gnosis is destined for those sincere aspirants who truly wish to work and change.
If we observe people, we can verify in direct form that each person has his own song.
Each one sings his own psychological song; I wish to refer emphatically to that question of the psychological accounts—feeling that one is owed, complaining, self-considering, etc.
Sometimes the person ‘sings his song just because’—without his being wound up, without his being encouraged—and on other occasions after a few glasses of wine…
We say that our boring song must be eliminated; it incapacitates us internally, robs us of much energy.
In questions of Revolutionary Psychology, someone who sings too well—we are not referring to the beautiful voice, nor to physical singing—certainly cannot go beyond himself; he remains in the past…
A person hindered by sad songs cannot change his Level of Being; he cannot go beyond what he is.
To pass to a Higher Level of Being, it is necessary to cease to be what one is; we need not to be what we are.
If we continue to be what we are, we shall never be able to pass to a Higher Level of Being.
In the field of practical life unusual things happen. Very often, any person strikes up a friendship with another, only because it is easy for him to sing him his song.
Unfortunately such kind of relations ends when the singer is asked to be silent, to change the record, to speak of something else, etc.
Then the resentful singer goes off in search of a new friend, of someone who is willing to listen to him for an indefinite time.
Comprehension the singer demands—someone who comprehends him, as if it were so easy to comprehend another person.
To comprehend another person, it is necessary to comprehend oneself. Unfortunately the good singer believes he comprehends himself.
Many are the disappointed singers who sing the song of not being comprehended, and dream of a marvelous world where they are the central figures.
Yet not all the singers are public; there are also the reserved ones; they do not sing their song directly, but secretly they sing it.
They are people who have worked much, who have suffered too much; they feel defrauded; they think that life owes them everything they were never able to attain.
They commonly feel an interior sadness, a sensation of monotony and frightful boredom, intimate weariness or frustration around which the thoughts heap themselves.
Unquestionably the secret songs close our passage on the path of intimate self-realization of Being.
Unfortunately such interior secret songs pass unnoticed by oneself unless we intentionally observe them.
Obviously every observation of oneself lets the light penetrate into one, into one’s intimate depths.
No inner change could occur in our psyche unless brought to the light of self-observation.
It is indispensable to observe oneself when alone, in the same way as when one is in relation with people.
When one is alone, very different ‘I’s,’ very distinct thoughts, negative emotions, etc., present themselves.
One is not always in good company when one is alone. It is almost normal, it is very natural, to be in very bad company in full solitude. The most negative and dangerous ‘I’s’ present themselves when one is alone.
If we wish to transform ourselves radically, we need to sacrifice our own sufferings.
Many times we express our sufferings in articulate or inarticulate songs.
No inner change could occur in our psyche unless brought to the light of self-observation.
Chapter 25: RETURN AND RECURRENCE
A man is what his life is; if a man does not modify anything within himself, if he does not radically transform his life, if he does not work upon himself, he is wasting his time miserably.
Death is the return to the very beginning of his life, with the possibility of repeating it anew.
Much has been said in Pseudo-Esoteric and Pseudo-Occult literature on the theme of successive lives; it is better that we deal with successive existences.
The life of each one of us, with all its times, is always the same one repeating from existence to existence, through innumerable centuries.
Unquestionably we continue in the seed of our descendants; this is already demonstrated.
The life of each one of us in particular is a living film which, at death, we take with us into eternity.
Each one of us takes his film and brings it back to project it once more on the screen of a new existence.
The repetition of dramas, comedies, and tragedies is a fundamental axiom of the Law of Recurrence.
In each new existence the same circumstances always repeat themselves. The actors of such ever-repeated scenes are those people who live within our interior, the ‘I’s.’
If we disintegrate those actors, those ‘I’s’ that originate the ever-repeated scenes of our life, then the repetition of such circumstances would become something more than impossible.
Obviously without actors there can be no scenes; this is irrebuttable, irrefutable.
That is how we can free ourselves from the Laws of Return and Recurrence; that is how we can make ourselves truly free.
Obviously each of the characters (I’s) we carry in our interior repeats from existence to existence the same role; if we disintegrate it, if the actor dies, the role ends.
Reflecting seriously upon the Law of Recurrence or repetition of scenes in each Return, we discover through intimate self-observation the secret springs of this question.
If in the past existence at the age of twenty-five we had a love affair, it is undoubted that the ‘I’ of such a commitment will seek the lady of his dreams at twenty-five in the new existence.
If the lady in question was then only fifteen, the ‘I’ of such an affair will seek her loved one in the new existence at the same exact age.
It is clear to comprehend that the two ‘I’s,’ both his and hers, will seek each other telepathically and meet again to repeat the same love affair of the past existence…
Two enemies who fought to the death in the past existence will seek each other again in the new existence to repeat their tragedy at the corresponding age.
If two persons had a dispute over real estate at the age of forty in the past existence, at the same age they will seek each other telepathically in the new existence to repeat the same.
Within each one of us live many people full of commitments; that is irrefutable.
A thief carries in his interior a den of thieves with various criminal commitments. The murderer carries within himself a ‘club’ of murderers, and the lustful man carries in his psyche a ‘House of Assignations.’
The serious thing about all this is that the intellect ignores the existence of such people or ‘I’s’ within himself, and of such commitments that are fatally being fulfilled.
All these commitments of the I’s that dwell within us occur beneath our reason.
They are facts we ignore, things that happen to us, events that are processed in the subconscious and unconscious.
With justice we have been told that everything happens to us, as when it rains or thunders.
Really we have the illusion of doing, yet we do nothing; it happens to us; this is fatal, mechanical…
Our personality is only the instrument of different people (I’s), through which each of those people (I’s) fulfills its commitments.
Beneath our cognitive capacity many things happen; unfortunately we ignore what happens beneath our poor reason.
We believe ourselves wise, when in truth we do not even know that we do not know. We are wretched logs, dragged by the raging waves of the sea of existence.
To come out of this disgrace, this unconsciousness, the so lamentable state in which we find ourselves, is only possible by dying in ourselves…
How could we awaken without previously dying? Only with death does the new come! If the germ does not die, the plant is not born.
Whoever truly awakens acquires for that reason full objectivity of his consciousness, authentic illumination, happiness…
Whoever truly awakens acquires for that reason full objectivity of his consciousness, authentic illumination, happiness… Chapter XXVI
Chapter 26: INFANTILE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
We have been told very wisely that we have ninety-seven percent SUBCONSCIOUSNESS and THREE PERCENT CONSCIOUSNESS.
Speaking frankly and without circumlocution, we shall say that ninety-seven percent of the Essence we carry within is bottled up, packed in, stuck inside each one of the I’s that as a whole constitute ‘Oneself.’
Obviously the Essence or Consciousness, bottled within each I, is processed in virtue of its own conditioning.
Any disintegrated I liberates a certain percentage of Consciousness; the emancipation or liberation of the Essence or Consciousness would be impossible without the disintegration of each I.
The greater the quantity of disintegrated I’s, the greater Self-Consciousness. The lesser the quantity of disintegrated I’s, the lesser percentage of awakened Consciousness.
The awakening of Consciousness is only possible by dissolving the I, by dying in oneself, here and now.
Unquestionably while the Essence or Consciousness is packed inside each one of the I’s we carry in our interior, it is asleep, in a subconscious state.
It is urgent to transform the subconscious into the conscious, and this is only possible by annihilating the I’s, by dying in oneself.
It is not possible to awaken without previously having died in oneself. Those who try to awaken first in order to die later have no real experience of what they affirm; they march resolutely along the path of error.
Newborn children are marvelous; they enjoy full self-consciousness; they are entirely awake.
Within the body of the newborn child is reincorporated the Essence, and that gives the creature its beauty.
We do not mean to say that one hundred percent of the Essence or Consciousness is reincorporated in the newborn, but yes the three percent that is free, that normally is not bottled up among the I’s.
Yet that percentage of free Essence reincorporated within the organism of the newborn children gives them full self-consciousness, lucidity, etc.
The adults look upon the newborn with pity; they think the creature is unconscious, but they are lamentably mistaken.
The newborn sees the adult as he really is: unconscious, cruel, perverse, etc.
The I’s of the newborn come and go, circle around the cradle, would like to enter into the new body; but since the newborn has not yet fabricated the personality, every attempt of the I’s to enter the new body is something more than impossible.
Sometimes the creatures become frightened on seeing those phantoms or I’s that approach their cradle, and then they cry, weep, but the adults do not understand this and suppose that the child is ill or has hunger or thirst; such is the unconsciousness of the adults.
As the new personality forms, the I’s that come from previous existences gradually penetrate the new body.
When the totality of the I’s has been reincorporated, we appear in the world with that horrible interior ugliness that characterizes us; then we walk like sleepwalkers everywhere; always unconscious, always perverse.
When we die, three things go to the sepulcher:
The physical body.
The vital organic foundation.
The personality.
The vital foundation, like a phantom, disintegrates little by little before the burial pit, as the physical body also disintegrates.
The personality is subconscious or infraconscious; it enters and leaves the sepulcher whenever it wishes, rejoices when the mourners bring it flowers, loves its family, and gradually dissolves very slowly until it becomes cosmic dust.
That which continues beyond the sepulcher is the EGO, the pluralized I, oneself, a heap of devils within which is bottled the Essence, the Consciousness, which in due time returns, reincorporates itself.
It is lamentable that, when the new personality of the child is fabricated, the I’s are also reincorporated.
The lesser the quantity of disintegrated I's, the lesser percentage of awakened Consciousness.
Chapter 27: THE PUBLICAN AND THE PHARISEE
Reflecting a little upon the various circumstances of life, it is well worth comprehending seriously the bases upon which we rest.
One person rests on his position, another on money, this one on prestige, that other on his past, this other on such or such a title, etc., etc., etc.
The most curious thing is that all, whether rich or beggar, need of all and live from all, even though we are inflated with pride and vanity.
Let us think for a moment about what can be taken from us. What would be our fate in a revolution of blood and liquor? What would remain of the bases on which we rest? Woe to us! We believe ourselves very strong, and we are frightfully weak!
The ‘I’ that feels in itself the basis on which we rest must be dissolved if we really long for authentic Blessedness.
Such an ‘I’ belittles people, feels itself better than everyone in the world, more perfect in everything, richer, more intelligent, more expert in life, etc.
It is very opportune now to cite that parable of Jesus the Great KABIR about the two men who prayed. It was said to some who trusted in themselves as just, and despised the others.
Jesus Christ said: ‘Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a Publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted’ (Luke 18:10–14).
To begin to realize one’s own nothingness and misery in which we find ourselves is absolutely impossible so long as there exists in us the concept of ‘More.’ Examples: I am more just than that one, wiser than so-and-so, more virtuous than the other, richer, more expert in the things of life, more chaste, more fulfilling of my duties, etc., etc., etc.
It is not possible to pass through the eye of a needle so long as we are ‘rich,’ so long as in us there exists that complex of ‘More.’
‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’
That your school is the best and that my neighbor’s serves for nothing; that your Religion is the only true one; that so-and-so’s wife is a terrible wife and mine is a saint; that my friend Robert is a drunkard and that I am a very judicious and abstemious man, etc., etc., etc.—all of this is what makes us feel rich; the reason why we are all the ‘CAMELS’ of the biblical parable in relation to the esoteric work.
It is urgent to self-observe from moment to moment with the purpose of clearly knowing the foundations on which one rests.
When one discovers what most offends him in a given instant, the bother that they gave him over such or such a thing, then one discovers the bases on which one rests psychologically.
Such bases constitute, according to the Christian Gospel, ‘the sands on which he built his house.’
It is necessary to take note carefully how and when one despised others, feeling oneself superior perhaps due to title or social position or experience acquired or money, etc., etc., etc.
It is serious to feel oneself rich, superior to so-and-so or so-and-so for such or such a reason. People like that cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is good to discover in what one feels flattered, in what one’s vanity is satisfied; this will come to show us the foundations on which we rest.
However, such kind of observation should not be a merely theoretical question; we must be practical and observe ourselves carefully in a direct form, from instant to instant.
When one begins to comprehend one’s own misery and nothingness; when one abandons delusions of grandeur; when one discovers the foolishness of so many titles, honors, and vain superiorities over our fellows; it is an unmistakable sign that one is already beginning to change.
One cannot change if one closes oneself to that which says: ‘My house.’ ‘My money.’ ‘My properties.’ ‘My job.’ ‘My virtues.’ ‘My intellectual capacities.’ ‘My artistic capacities.’ ‘My knowledge.’ ‘My prestige,’ etc., etc., etc.
That clinging to what is ‘Mine’ and to ‘Me’ is more than sufficient to prevent recognition of our own inner nothingness and misery.
One is amazed at the spectacle of a fire or a shipwreck; then people in despair often seize hold of things that make one laugh—things of no importance.
Poor people! They feel themselves in those things, rest on trifles, attach themselves to that which has not the slightest importance.
To feel oneself through external things, to base oneself on them, amounts to being in a state of absolute unconsciousness.
The feeling of ‘SEINHEIT,’ (The REAL BEING), is only possible by dissolving all those ‘I’s’ that we carry in our interior; before that, such a feeling is something more than impossible.
Unfortunately the worshipers of the ‘I’ do not accept this; they believe themselves Gods; they think they already possess those ‘Glorious Bodies’ of which Paul of Tarsus spoke; they suppose that the ‘I’ is Divine, and there is no one who can remove such absurdities from their heads.
One does not know what to do with such people; one explains to them and they do not understand; always clinging to the sands on which they built their house; always immersed in their dogmas, in their whims, in their foolishness.
If those people self-observed seriously, they would verify by themselves the doctrine of the many; they would discover within themselves all that multiplicity of persons or ‘I’s’ that live within our interior.
How could the real feeling of our true BEING exist in us, when those ‘I’s’ are feeling for us, thinking for us?
The most serious thing of all this tragedy is that one thinks one is thinking, feels one is feeling, when in reality it is another one who in a given moment thinks with our martyred brain and feels with our aching heart.
Unfortunate us! How many times we believe we are loving, and what happens is that another within ourselves, full of lust, uses the center of the heart.
We are unfortunate ones; we confuse the animal passion with love! And yet it is another within ourselves, within our personality, who passes through such confusions.
We all think that we would never pronounce those words of the Pharisee in the biblical parable: ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men,’ etc., etc., etc.
Yet, although it may seem incredible, that is how we proceed daily. The meat seller in the market says: ‘I am not like the other butchers, who sell poor-quality meat and exploit the people.’
The cloth seller in the shop exclaims: ‘I am not like other merchants, who know how to steal in measuring and who have enriched themselves.’
The milk seller affirms: ‘I am not like other milk sellers, who put water in it. I like to be honest.’
The housewife comments on a visit, the following: ‘I am not like so-and-so, who goes around with other men; I am, thank God, a decent person and faithful to my husband.’
Conclusion: The others are evil, unjust, adulterers, thieves, and perverse; and each one of us is a meek lamb, a ‘little Saint of Chocolate’ good to be kept as a child of gold in some church.
How foolish we are! We often think we never do any of those foolishnesses and perversities we see others do, and we come for that reason to the conclusion that we are magnificent people; unfortunately we do not see the foolishnesses and pettinesses that we do.
There exist strange moments in life in which the mind, without preoccupations of any kind, rests. When the mind is still, when the mind is in silence, then the new comes.
In such instants it is possible to see the bases, the foundations, on which we rest.
With the mind in profound ulterior repose, we can verify for ourselves the crude reality of that sand of life on which we built the house. (Matthew 7:24–29); parable that deals with the two foundations.
Chapter 28: THE WILL
The ‘Great Work’ is, above all, the creation of man by himself, on the basis of conscious works and voluntary sufferings.
The ‘Great Work’ is the interior conquest of ourselves, of our true freedom in God.
We need with maximum, undeferrable urgency, to disintegrate all those ‘I’s’ that live in our interior if we really want the perfect emancipation of the Will.
Nicolas Flamel and Raymond Lull, both poor, liberated their will and accomplished innumerable psychological prodigies that astonish.
Agrippa never reached more than the first part of the ‘Great Work,’ and died painfully, struggling in the disintegration of his ‘I’s,’ with the purpose of possessing himself and fixing his independence.
The perfect emancipation of the will assures the wise man the absolute dominion over Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.
To many students of contemporary Psychology it will seem exaggerated what we affirm in the lines above with regard to the sovereign power of the emancipated will; yet the Bible tells us marvels about Moses.
According to Philo, Moses was an Initiate in the land of the Pharaohs on the banks of the Nile, Priest of Osiris, cousin of the Pharaoh, educated among the columns of ISIS, the Divine Mother, and of OSIRIS our Father who is in secret.
Moses was a descendant of the Patriarch Abraham, the great Chaldean Magus, and of the most respectable Isaac.
Moses, the man who liberated the electric power of the will, possesses the gift of prodigies; this is known to the Divine and the human. So it is written.
All that the Sacred Scriptures say about that Hebrew leader is certainly extraordinary, portentous.
Moses transforms his staff into a serpent, transforms one of his hands into a leper’s hand, then restores life to it.
The trial of the burning bush has put his power in clear evidence; the people understand, kneel, and prostrate themselves.
Moses uses a Magic Rod, emblem of royal power, of the sacerdotal power of the Initiate in the Great Mysteries of Life and Death.
Before the Pharaoh, Moses changes the water of the Nile into blood; the fish die; the sacred river is left infected; the Egyptians cannot drink from it; and the irrigations of the Nile pour out blood over the fields.
Moses does more; he causes millions of disproportionate, gigantic, monstrous frogs to appear, which come out of the river and invade the houses. Then, under his gesture, indicator of a free and sovereign will, those horrible frogs disappear.
But as the Pharaoh does not free the Israelites, Moses works new prodigies: he covers the earth with filth, raises clouds of disgusting and unclean flies, which afterward he gives himself the luxury of dispersing.
He unleashes the frightful plague, and all the cattle except those of the Jews die.
Taking soot from the furnace—say the Sacred Scriptures—he throws it into the air, and falling on the Egyptians, it causes pustules and ulcers.
Extending his famous Magic Staff, Moses makes a hail rain from the sky that inclemently destroys and kills. Next, he makes the flaming lightning burst forth; the terrifying thunder rumbles; and it rains frightfully; then with a gesture he returns calm.
Yet the Pharaoh continues inflexible. Moses, with a tremendous blow of his magic rod, causes clouds of locusts to arise as if by enchantment; then come shadows. Another blow with the rod, and all returns to the original order.
Well known is the end of all that Biblical Drama of the Old Testament: Jehovah intervenes; causes all the firstborn of the Egyptians to die; and the Pharaoh has no other recourse but to let the Hebrews go.
Subsequently Moses uses his magic rod to part the waters of the Red Sea and cross them on dry foot.
When the Egyptian warriors hurl themselves there pursuing the Israelites, Moses with a gesture causes the waters to close again, swallowing up the pursuers.
Unquestionably many Pseudo-Occultists, upon reading all this, would like to do the same, to have the same powers as Moses; yet this turns out to be something more than impossible so long as the Will continues bottled up amid each and every one of those ‘I’s’ that we carry in the different sub-grounds of our psyche.
The Essence packed inside ‘Oneself’ is the Genie of Aladdin’s lamp, longing for freedom… Such a Genie, free, can perform prodigies.
The Essence is ‘Will-Consciousness,’ unfortunately processed in virtue of our own conditioning.
When the Will is liberated, then it mixes or fuses, integrating itself with the Universal Will, becoming for this reason sovereign.
Individual Will fused with Universal Will can perform all the prodigies of Moses.
There exist three kinds of acts:
Those which correspond to the Law of Accidents.
Those which pertain to the Law of Recurrence, deeds always repeated in each existence.
Actions determined intentionally by the Conscious-Will.
Unquestionably only people who have liberated their Will through the death of ‘Oneself’ will be able to perform new acts born of their free will.
The common and ordinary acts of humanity are always the result of the Law of Recurrence or the mere product of mechanical accidents.
Whoever possesses truly free Will can originate new circumstances; whoever has his Will bottled up amid the ‘Pluralized I’ is a victim of circumstances.
On all the biblical pages there exists a marvelous display of High Magic, Clairvoyance, Prophecy, Prodigies, Transfigurations, Resurrection of the dead—whether by insufflation or by imposition of hands or by the fixed gaze upon the base of the nose, etc., etc., etc.
The Bible abounds in massage, sacred oil, magnetic passes, the application of a little saliva on the ill part, the reading of others’ thoughts, transports, apparitions, words from heaven, etc., etc., etc., true marvels of the liberated, emancipated, sovereign Conscious Will.
Sorcerers? Witches? Black Magicians? They abound like weeds; but those are not Saints, nor Prophets, nor Adepts of the White Brotherhood.
No one could attain ‘Real Illumination,’ nor exercise the Absolute Priesthood of the Conscious Will, if previously he had not died radically in himself, here and now.
Many people write to us frequently complaining of not possessing Illumination, asking for powers, demanding from us keys to make them Magi, etc., etc., etc.; yet they never take an interest in self-observing, in self-knowing, in disintegrating those psychic aggregates, those ‘I’s,’ within which the Will, the Essence, is bottled up.
People like that are obviously condemned to failure. They are people who covet the faculties of the Saints, but who in no way are willing to die in themselves.
To eliminate errors is something magical, marvelous in itself, which implies rigorous psychological self-observation.
To exercise powers is possible when one liberates radically the marvelous power of the Will.
Unfortunately, since people have their will bottled up within each ‘I,’ obviously it is found divided into multiple wills, each of which is processed in virtue of its own conditioning.
It is clear to comprehend that each ‘I’ possesses, for that cause, its own unconscious, particular will.
The innumerable wills bottled up within the ‘I’s’ clash among themselves frequently, making us for such reasons impotent, weak, miserable, victims of circumstances, incapable.
The 'Great Work' is, above all, the creation of man by himself, on the basis of conscious works and voluntary sufferings.
Chapter 29: THE DECAPITATION
As one works upon oneself, one comprehends more and more the necessity to eliminate radically from one’s interior nature everything that makes us so abominable.
The worst circumstances of life, the most critical situations, the most difficult facts, always turn out to be marvelous for intimate self-discovery.
In those unsuspected, critical moments, when we least expect it, the most secret I’s always emerge; if we are alert, we unquestionably discover ourselves.
The most tranquil epochs of life are precisely the least favorable for work upon oneself.
There exist moments of life so complicated that one has a marked tendency to identify easily with the events and to forget oneself completely; in those instants one does foolishness that leads nowhere; if one were alert, if in those very moments instead of losing one’s head one remembered oneself, one would discover with amazement certain I’s of whose possible existence one never had even the slightest suspicion.
The sense of intimate self-observation is atrophied in every human being; working seriously, self-observing from moment to moment, that sense will develop in a progressive form.
As the sense of self-observation continues its development through continual use, we shall become more and more capable of directly perceiving those I’s about which we never had any data related to their existence.
Before the sense of intimate self-observation, each one of the I’s that dwell within our interior really assumes this or that figure secretly akin to the defect personified by it. Unquestionably the image of each one of these I’s has a certain unmistakable psychological flavor by which we apprehend, capture, instinctively trap its intimate nature and the defect that characterizes it.
In the beginning the esotericist does not know where to begin, before the necessity of working upon himself, but is completely disoriented.
Taking advantage of the critical moments, the most unpleasant situations, the most adverse instants, if we are alert we shall discover our outstanding defects, the I’s we must urgently disintegrate.
Sometimes one can begin with anger or with self-love, or with the unhappy second of lust, etc., etc., etc.
It is necessary to take note above all of our daily psychological states, if we really wish for a definitive change.
Before going to bed it is fitting that we examine the events of the day, the embarrassing situations, the loud laughter of Aristophanes and the subtle smile of Socrates.
It may be that we wounded someone with a loud laugh; it may be that we made someone sick with a smile or with a look out of place.
Let us remember that, in pure esotericism, everything that is in its place is good; bad is all that is out of place.
Water in its place is good, but if it flooded the house, it would be out of place, would cause damage, would be bad and harmful.
Fire in the kitchen and within its place, besides being useful, is good; out of its place, burning the furniture of the parlor, it would be bad and harmful.
Any virtue, however holy, in its place is good; out of place it is bad and harmful. With virtues we can damage others. It is indispensable to place the virtues in their corresponding place.
What would you say of a priest who was preaching the word of the Lord inside a brothel? What would you say of a meek and tolerant male who was blessing a band of assailants attempting to violate his wife and daughters? What would you say of that kind of tolerance carried to excess? What would you think about the charitable attitude of a man who, instead of bringing food home, distributed the money among beggars of vice? What would you opine about the helpful man who, in a given instant, lent a dagger to a murderer?
Remember, dear reader, that among the cadences of verse, crime also hides itself. There is much virtue in the wicked, and there is much wickedness in the virtuous.
Although it may seem incredible, within the very perfume of prayer, crime also hides itself.
Crime disguises itself as saint, uses the best virtues, presents itself as martyr, and even officiates in the sacred temples.
As the sense of intimate self-observation develops in us through continual use, we shall be able to see all those I’s that serve as the basic foundation to our individual temperament, whether this last be sanguine or nervous, phlegmatic or bilious.
Although you may not believe it, dear reader, behind the temperament we possess, hidden among the most remote depths of our psyche, are the most execrable diabolical creations.
To see such creations, to observe those monstrosities of hell within which our very own consciousness is bottled, becomes possible with the ever-progressive development of the sense of intimate self-observation.
So long as a man has not dissolved these creations of hell, these aberrations of himself, undoubtedly in the deepest, in the most profound, he will continue being something that ought not to exist, a deformity, an abomination.
The serious thing of all this is that the abominable one does not realize his own abomination; he believes himself beautiful, just, a good person, and even complains of the incomprehension of others; laments the ingratitude of his fellows; says they do not understand him; weeps, affirming that he is owed, that he has been paid with bad coin, etc., etc., etc.
The sense of intimate self-observation allows us to verify by ourselves and in direct form the secret work through which at a given time we are dissolving such or such an I (such or such a psychological defect), possibly discovered in difficult conditions and when we least suspected it.
Have you ever in life thought about what most pleases or displeases you? Have you reflected on the secret springs of action? Why do you wish to have a beautiful house? Why do you wish to have a latest-model car? Why do you wish always to be in the latest fashion? Why do you covet not to be coveting? What is it that most offended you at a given moment? What is it that most flattered you yesterday? Why did you feel yourself superior to so-and-so or to such-and-such in a particular instant? At what hour did you feel yourself superior to someone? Why did you become conceited in relating your triumphs? Were you unable to keep silent when they murmured about another acquaintance? Did you accept the glass of liquor out of courtesy? Did you accept to smoke perhaps not having the vice, possibly out of the concept of education or of manliness? Are you sure you were sincere in that conversation? And when you justify yourself, and when you praise yourself, and when you tell your triumphs and relate them repeating what you previously said to others, did you understand that you were vain?
The sense of intimate self-observation, besides allowing you to see clearly the I that you are dissolving, will also allow you to see the patent and definite results of your inner work.
In the beginning these creations of hell, these psychic aberrations that unfortunately characterize you, are uglier and more monstrous than the most horrible beasts that exist in the depths of the seas or in the deepest jungles of the earth; as you advance in your work, you can verify through the sense of inner self-observation the outstanding fact that those abominations are losing volume, are gradually shrinking…
It is interesting to know that such bestialities, as they decrease in size, as they lose volume and shrink, gain in beauty, slowly assume the infantile figure; at last they disintegrate, become cosmic dust, and then the bottled Essence is liberated, emancipated, awakens.
Undoubtedly the mind cannot fundamentally alter any psychological effect; obviously the understanding can give itself the luxury of labeling a defect with such or such a name, of justifying it, of passing it from one level to another, etc., but it could not by itself annihilate it, disintegrate it.
We urgently need a flaming power superior to the mind, a power that is capable by itself of reducing such or such a psychological defect to mere cosmic dust.
Fortunately there exists in us that serpentine power, that marvelous fire which the old medieval alchemists baptized with the mysterious name of Stella Maris, the Virgin of the Sea, the Azoth of the Science of Hermes, the Tonantzin of Aztec Mexico, that derivation of our own intimate being, the Divine Mother within us, symbolized always by the sacred serpent of the Great Mysteries.
If after having observed and profoundly comprehended such or such a psychological defect (such or such an I), we beseech our particular Cosmic Mother—for each one of us has his own—to disintegrate, to reduce to cosmic dust, this or that defect, that I, motive of our inner work, you may be sure that it will lose volume and will slowly be pulverized.
All this implies naturally successive works of depth, always continuous, for no I can ever be disintegrated instantaneously. The sense of intimate self-observation will be able to see the progressive advance of the work related to the abomination we truly want to disintegrate.
Stella Maris, although it may seem incredible, is the astral signature of the human sexual potency.
Obviously Stella Maris has the effective power to disintegrate the aberrations that we carry in our psychological interior.
The decapitation of John the Baptist is something that invites us to reflection; no radical psychological change would be possible if we did not first pass through decapitation.
Our own derived being, Tonantzin, Stella Maris, as electrical power unknown to entire humanity, and which is found latent in the very depth of our psyche, patently enjoys the power that allows it to decapitate any I before the final disintegration.
Stella Maris is that philosophical fire which is found latent in all organic and inorganic matter.
The psychological impulses can provoke the intensive action of such fire, and then decapitation becomes possible.
Some I’s tend to be decapitated at the beginning of the psychological work, others in the middle, and the last at the end. Stella Maris, as igneous sexual potency, has full consciousness of the work to be performed, and accomplishes decapitation at the opportune moment, at the adequate instant.
So long as the disintegration of all these psychological abominations has not been produced—of all these lasciviousnesses, of all these maledictions, theft, envy, secret or manifest adultery, ambition for money or for psychic powers, etc.—even though we believe ourselves honorable persons, fulfillers of the word, sincere, courteous, charitable, beautiful in the interior, etc., obviously we shall be nothing more than whitened sepulchers, beautiful on the outside but within full of disgusting putrefaction.
Bookish erudition, pseudo-wisdom, complete information about the sacred scriptures, whether of the East or the West, of the North or the South, pseudo-occultism, pseudo-esotericism, the absolute certainty of being well documented, intransigent sectarianism with full conviction, etc., serve for nothing, because in reality there only exists in the depths what we ignore: creations of hell, maledictions, monstrosities that hide themselves behind the pretty face, behind the venerable countenance, beneath the most holy robe of the sacred leader, etc.
We must be sincere with ourselves, ask ourselves what we want, whether we have come to the Gnostic Teaching out of mere curiosity, whether truly it is not to pass through decapitation that we are desiring; then we are deceiving ourselves; we are defending our own putrefaction; we are proceeding hypocritically.
In the most venerable schools of esoteric wisdom and occultism, there exist many sincere mistaken ones who truly wish to self-realize but who are not dedicated to the disintegration of their inner abominations.
Many are the people who suppose that through good intentions it is possible to attain sanctification. Obviously so long as one does not work intensely on those I’s we carry within, they will continue existing beneath the bottom of the pious gaze and good conduct.
The hour has come to know that we are villains disguised with the tunic of sanctity; sheep with the skin of a wolf; cannibals dressed in gentleman’s attire; executioners hidden behind the sacred sign of the cross, etc.
However majestic we appear within our temples, or within our halls of light and harmony, however serene and gentle our fellows may see us, however reverend and humble we may seem, in the depth of our psyche all the abominations of hell and all the monstrosities of wars continue to exist.
In Revolutionary Psychology the necessity for a radical transformation becomes evident, and this is only possible by declaring on ourselves a war to the death, pitiless and cruel.
Certainly we are all worth nothing; each one of us is the misfortune of the earth, the execrable.
Fortunately John the Baptist taught us the secret path: TO DIE IN OURSELVES THROUGH PSYCHOLOGICAL DECAPITATION.
In the most venerable schools of esoteric wisdom and occultism, there exist many sincere mistaken ones who truly wish to self-realize but who are not dedicated to the disintegration of their inner abominations.
Chapter 30: THE PERMANENT CENTER OF GRAVITY
There not being a true individuality, it is impossible that there be continuity of purposes.
If the psychological individual does not exist, if within each one of us many persons live, if there is no responsible subject, it would be absurd to demand of anyone continuity of purposes.
We know well that within one person many persons live; then the full sense of responsibility does not really exist in us.
What a determined I affirms at a given instant cannot carry any seriousness, because of the concrete fact that any other I may affirm exactly the opposite at any other moment.
The serious thing about all this is that many people believe they possess the sense of moral responsibility and self-deceive themselves affirming they are always the same.
There are persons who in any instant of their existence come to the Gnostic studies, shine with the force of longing, become enthused with the esoteric work, and even swear to consecrate the totality of their existence to these questions.
Unquestionably all the brothers of our movement come to admire an enthusiast like that.
One cannot but feel great joy on hearing persons of this kind, so devoted and definitely sincere.
Yet the idyll does not last long; any day, due to such or such a motive, just or unjust, simple or complicated, the person withdraws from Gnosis, then abandons the work; and to straighten out the tangle, or trying to justify himself, he affiliates with any other mystical organization and thinks that now he is going better.
All this coming and going, all this incessant changing of schools, sects, religions, is due to the multiplicity of I’s that within our interior fight among themselves for their own supremacy.
Since each I possesses its own criterion, its own mind, its own ideas, it is barely normal this change of opinions, this constant fluttering from organization to organization, from ideal to ideal, etc.
The subject in himself is no more than a machine which as readily serves as a vehicle for one I as for another.
Some mystical I’s self-deceive themselves; after abandoning such or such a sect, they resolve to believe themselves Gods, shine like will-o’-the-wisps, and at last disappear.
There are persons who momentarily look in upon the esoteric work, and then in the instant that another I intervenes, abandon definitively these studies and let themselves be swallowed by life.
Obviously, if one does not struggle against life, life devours him; and rare are the aspirants who truly do not let themselves be swallowed by life.
There existing within us a whole multiplicity of I’s, the permanent center of gravity cannot exist.
It is barely normal that not all subjects intimately self-realize. We know well that the intimate self-realization of being demands continuity of purposes; and since it is very difficult to find someone who has a permanent center of gravity, then it is not strange that very rare is the person who reaches profound interior self-realization.
It is normal that someone become enthusiastic about the esoteric work and then abandon it; what is strange is that someone not abandon the work and reach the goal.
Certainly and in the name of truth, we affirm that the Sun is performing a very complicated and terribly difficult laboratory experiment.
Within the intellectual animal mistakenly called man, there exist germs which, conveniently developed, can become solar men.
Yet it does not hurt to clarify that it is not certain that those germs will develop; the normal thing is that they degenerate and are lamentably lost.
In any case, the cited germs that have to convert us into solar men need an adequate environment; for it is well known that the seed does not germinate in a sterile medium; it is lost.
In order that the real seed of man deposited in our sexual glands may germinate, continuity of purposes and a normal physical body are needed.
If the scientists continue making essays with the glands of internal secretion, any possibility of development of the mentioned germs may be lost.
Although it may seem incredible, the ants already passed through a similar process in a remote archaic past of our planet Earth.
One is filled with amazement on contemplating the perfection of a palace of ants. There is no doubt that the order established in any anthill is formidable.
Those Initiates who have awakened consciousness know by direct mystical experience that the ants in times that even the greatest historians of the world do not remotely suspect, were a human race that created a most powerful socialist civilization.
Then they eliminated the dictators of that family, the various religious sects, and free will, for all of that subtracted power from them, and they needed to be totalitarian in the most complete sense of the word.
Under these conditions, with individual initiative and religious right eliminated, the intellectual animal hurled itself down the path of involution and degeneration.
To all said above were added the scientific experiments: transplants of organs, glands, essays with hormones, etc., etc., etc., whose result was the gradual shrinking and morphological alteration of those human organisms, until at last they became the ants we know.
All that civilization, all those movements related to the established social order, became mechanical and were inherited from parents to children; today one is filled with amazement on seeing an anthill, but we cannot but lament their lack of intelligence.
If we do not work upon ourselves, we involute and degenerate frightfully.
The experiment that the Sun is performing in the laboratory of nature, certainly, besides being difficult, has given very few results.
To create solar men is only possible when there exists true cooperation in each one of us.
The creation of the solar man is not possible if we do not first establish a permanent center of gravity in our interior.
How could we have continuity of purposes if we do not establish in our psyche the center of gravity?
Any race created by the Sun certainly has no other objective in nature than to serve the interests of this creation and of the solar experiment.
If the Sun fails in its experiment, it loses all interest in such a race, and the latter is in fact condemned to destruction and involution.
Each of the races that have existed on the face of the Earth has served for the solar experiment. From each race the Sun has obtained some triumphs, harvesting small groups of solar men.
When a race has given its fruits, it disappears progressively or perishes violently through great cataclysms.
The creation of solar men is possible when one struggles to become independent of the lunar forces. There is no doubt that all these I’s we carry in our psyche are of an exclusively lunar type.
In no way would it be possible to free ourselves from the lunar force if we did not first establish in ourselves a permanent center of gravity.
How could we dissolve the totality of the pluralized I if we have no continuity of purposes? In what way could we have continuity of purposes without having first established in our psyche a permanent center of gravity?
Since the present race, instead of becoming independent of the lunar influence, has lost all interest in the solar intelligence, unquestionably it has condemned itself to Involution and degeneration.
It is not possible for the true man to arise through mechanical evolution. We know well that evolution and its twin sister involution are only two laws that constitute the mechanical axis of all nature. One evolves up to a certain perfectly defined point, and then comes the involutive process; every rise is followed by a fall, and vice versa.
We are exclusively machines controlled by different I’s. We serve the economy of nature; we do not have a defined individuality, as many pseudo-esotericists and pseudo-occultists mistakenly suppose.
We need to change with maximum urgency so that the germs of man may give their fruits.
Only by working upon ourselves with true continuity of purposes and full sense of moral responsibility can we become solar men. This implies consecrating the totality of our existence to the esoteric work upon ourselves.
Those who have hope of reaching the solar state through the mechanics of evolution deceive themselves and in fact condemn themselves to involutive degeneration.
In the esoteric work we cannot give ourselves the luxury of versatility; those who have wavering ideas, those who today work upon their psyche and tomorrow let themselves be swallowed by life, those who seek evasions, justifications, to abandon the esoteric work, will degenerate and involute.
Some postpone the error; they leave everything for a tomorrow while they improve their economic situation, without taking into account that the solar experiment is something very different from their personal criterion and from their well-known projects.
It is not so easy to become a solar man when we carry the Moon in our interior. (The Ego is lunar.)
The Earth has two moons; the second of these is called Lilith, and it is found a little farther away than the white moon.
Astronomers usually see Lilith as a lentil, for it is of very small size. That is the black Moon.
The most sinister forces of the Ego reach the Earth from Lilith and produce infrahuman and bestial psychological results.
The crimes of the Red press, the most monstrous murders of history, the most unsuspected misdeeds, etc., etc., etc., are due to the vibratory waves of Lilith.
The double lunar influence represented in the human being through the Ego he carries in his interior makes us a true failure.
If we do not see the urgency of giving the totality of our existence to the work upon ourselves with the purpose of freeing ourselves from the double lunar force, we will end up swallowed by the Moon, involuting, degenerating more and more within certain states which we could very well qualify as unconscious and infraconscious.
The serious thing of all this is that we do not possess true individuality; if we had a permanent center of gravity, we would work truly seriously until attaining the solar state.
There are so many excuses in these questions, there are so many evasions, there exist so many fascinating attractions, that in fact it tends to become almost impossible to comprehend for that reason the urgency of the esoteric work.
Yet the small margin of free will that we have, and the Gnostic Teaching oriented toward the practical work, could serve us as a foundation for our noble purposes related to the solar experiment.
The wavering mind does not understand what we are saying here; it reads this chapter and afterward forgets it; then comes another book and another, and at the end we conclude by affiliating ourselves with any institution that sells us a passport to heaven, that speaks to us in a more optimistic form, that assures us of comforts in the beyond.
That is how people are—mere marionettes controlled by invisible threads, mechanical dolls with wavering ideas and without continuity of purposes.
Chapter 31: THE ESOTERIC GNOSTIC WORK
It is urgent to study Gnosis and to use the practical ideas we give in this work to work seriously upon ourselves.
Yet we could not work upon ourselves with the intention of dissolving such or such an ‘I’ without having previously observed it.
Self-observation allows a ray of light to penetrate our interior.
Any ‘I’ expresses itself in the head in one way, in the heart in another way, and in sex in another way.
We need to observe the ‘I’ that at a given moment we have caught; it is urgent to see it in each one of these three centers of our organism.
In relation with other people, if we are alert and vigilant as the sentinel in time of war, we self-discover ourselves.
Do you remember at what hour they wounded your vanity? Your pride? What was it that most annoyed you in the day? Why did you have that annoyance? What is its secret cause? Study this, observe your head, heart, and sex…
Practical life is a marvelous school; in interrelation we can discover those ‘I’s’ we carry in our interior.
Any annoyance, any incident, can lead us through intimate self-observation to the discovery of an ‘I,’ whether of self-love, envy, jealousy, anger, greed, suspicion, calumny, lust, etc., etc., etc.
We need to know ourselves before being able to know others. It is urgent to learn to see another’s point of view.
If we put ourselves in the place of others, we discover that the psychological defects we attribute to others, we have in abundance in our interior.
To love one’s neighbor is indispensable; but one could not love others if one does not first learn to put oneself in the position of another person in the esoteric work.
Cruelty will continue to exist on the face of the earth so long as we have not learned to put ourselves in the place of others.
But if one does not have the courage to see oneself, how could one place oneself in the place of others?
Why should we see only the bad part of other persons?
Mechanical antipathy toward another person whom we meet for the first time indicates that we do not know how to put ourselves in the place of our neighbor, that we do not love our neighbor, that we have the consciousness too asleep.
Is a certain person very disagreeable to you? For what reason? Perhaps he drinks? Let us observe ourselves… Are we sure of our virtue? Are we sure we do not carry in our interior the ‘I’ of drunkenness?
Better would be that on seeing a drunkard performing clownishness we say: ‘This is me; what clownishness I am performing.’
You are an honest and virtuous woman, and therefore a certain lady is unpleasant to you; you feel antipathy toward her. Why? Do you feel very sure of yourself? Do you believe that within your interior you do not have the ‘I’ of lust? Do you think that lady, discredited by her scandals and lasciviousness, is perverse? Are you sure that in your interior there does not exist the lasciviousness and perversity that you see in that woman?
Better would be to self-observe intimately and, in profound meditation, to occupy the place of that woman whom you abhor.
It is urgent to value the Gnostic esoteric work; it is indispensable to comprehend and appreciate it if we truly long for a radical change.
It is indispensable to know how to love our fellows, to study Gnosis and bring this teaching to all the people; otherwise we shall fall into egoism.
If one is dedicated to the esoteric work upon oneself but does not give the teaching to others, one’s intimate progress becomes very difficult for lack of love for the neighbor.
‘He who gives, receives; and the more he gives, the more he will receive; but from him who gives nothing, even what he has will be taken away.’ That is the Law.
Better would be to self-observe intimately and, in profound meditation, to occupy the place of that woman whom you abhor.
Chapter 32: PRAYER IN THE WORK
Observation, Judgment, and Execution are the three basic factors of dissolution. First: one observes. Second: one judges. Third: one executes.
With spies in war, first they are observed; second they are judged; third they are shot.
In interrelation there exists self-discovery and self-revelation. Whoever renounces coexistence with his fellows also renounces self-discovery.
Any incident of life, however insignificant it may seem, undoubtedly has as its cause an intimate actor in us, a psychic aggregate, an ‘I.’
Self-discovery is possible when we find ourselves in a state of alert perception, alert novelty.
Any ‘I’ discovered in flagrante must be observed carefully in our brain, heart, and sex.
Any I of lust could manifest in the heart as love, in the brain as an Ideal, but on paying attention to sex, we would feel a certain unmistakable morbid excitement.
The judgment of any I must be definitive. We need to seat it in the dock of the accused and judge it pitilessly.
Any evasion, justification, consideration must be eliminated if we truly want to become conscious of the ‘I’ that we long to extirpate from our psyche.
Execution is different; it would not be possible to execute any ‘I’ without having previously observed and judged it.
Prayer in the psychological work is fundamental for dissolution. We need a power superior to the mind if we really wish to disintegrate such or such an ‘I.’
The mind by itself can never disintegrate any ‘I’; this is irrebuttable, irrefutable.
To pray is to converse with God. We must appeal to the Divine Mother in our Intimacy if we truly wish to disintegrate ‘I’s’; whoever does not love his Mother, the ungrateful son, will fail in the work upon himself.
Each one of us has his particular, individual Divine Mother; she in herself is a part of our own Being, but derived.
All the ancient peoples adored ‘Divine Mother’ in the most profound part of our Being. The feminine principle of the Eternal is ISIS, MARY, TONANTZIN, CYBELE, RHEA, ADONIA, INSOBERTA, etc., etc., etc.
If on the merely physical plane we have father and mother, in the very depth of our Being we also have our Father who is in secret and our Divine Mother KUNDALINI.
There are as many Fathers in Heaven as there are men on earth. The Divine Mother within our own intimacy is the feminine aspect of our Father who is in secret.
HE and SHE are certainly the two superior parts of our intimate Being. Undoubtedly HE and SHE are our very Real Being beyond the ‘I’ of Psychology.
HE unfolds in HER and commands, directs, instructs. SHE eliminates the undesirable elements that we carry in our interior, on condition of continual work upon oneself.
When we have died radically, when all the undesirable elements have been eliminated after many conscious works and voluntary sufferings, we shall fuse and integrate with the ‘FATHER-MOTHER,’ then we shall be Gods terribly divine, beyond good and evil.
Our particular, individual Divine Mother, through her flaming powers, can reduce to cosmic dust any of those many ‘I’s’ that have been previously observed and judged.
In no way would a specific formula be necessary to pray to our inner Divine Mother. We must be very natural and simple in addressing HER. The child who addresses his mother never has special formulas; he says what comes from his heart, and that is all.
No ‘I’ dissolves instantaneously; our Divine Mother must work and even suffer very much before achieving the annihilation of any ‘I.’
Become introverted, direct your prayer inward, seeking within your interior your Divine Lady, and with sincere supplications you can speak with HER. Beg HER to disintegrate that ‘I’ that you have previously observed and judged.
The sense of intimate self-observation, as it gradually develops, will allow you to verify the progressive advance of your work.
Comprehension, discernment are fundamental; yet something more is needed if we really want to disintegrate ‘OURSELVES.’
The mind can give itself the luxury of labeling any defect, of passing it from one department to another, of exhibiting it, of hiding it, etc., but it could never alter it fundamentally.
A ‘special power’ superior to the mind is needed, a flaming power capable of reducing any defect to ashes.
STELLA MARIS, our Divine Mother, has that power; she can pulverize any psychological effect.
Our Divine Mother lives within our intimacy, beyond the body, the affections, and the mind. She is by herself an igneous power superior to the mind.
Our particular, individual Cosmic Mother possesses Wisdom, Love, and Power. In her exists absolute perfection.
Good intentions and their constant repetition serve for nothing, lead to nothing.
It would serve for nothing to repeat: ‘I will not be lustful’; the I’s of lasciviousness will continue existing in the very depth of our psyche regardless.
It would serve for nothing to repeat daily: ‘I will have no more anger.’ The ‘I’s’ of anger would continue existing in our psychological depths.
It would serve for nothing to say daily: ‘I will be no more greedy.’ The ‘I’s’ of greed would continue existing in the various sub-grounds of our psyche.
It would serve for nothing to depart from the world and shut ourselves in a convent or live in some cavern; the ‘I’s’ within us would continue existing.
Some cave anchorites, through rigorous disciplines, attained the ecstasy of the saints and were taken to the heavens, where they saw and heard things that human beings are not given to comprehend; yet the ‘I’s’ continued existing in their interior.
Unquestionably the Essence can escape from the ‘I’ through rigorous disciplines and enjoy ecstasy; yet, after the bliss, it returns to the interior of ‘Oneself.’
Those who have become accustomed to ecstasy without having dissolved the ‘Ego’ believe that they have already attained liberation; they self-deceive themselves believing themselves Masters, and even enter Submerged Involution.
We would never pronounce ourselves against mystical rapture, against ecstasy and the happiness of the Soul in the absence of the EGO.
We only wish to put emphasis on the necessity of dissolving ‘I’s’ in order to attain final liberation.
The Essence of any disciplined anchorite, accustomed to escaping from the ‘I,’ repeats such a feat after the death of the physical body, enjoys for a time the ecstasy, and then returns like the Genie of Aladdin’s lamp to the interior of the bottle, to the Ego, to Oneself.
Then he has no other recourse but to return to a new physical body, with the purpose of repeating his life on the carpet of existence.
Many mystics who disincarnated in the caverns of the Himalayas, in Central Asia, are now vulgar, common, and ordinary persons in this world, in spite of the fact that their followers still adore and venerate them.
Any attempt at liberation, however grandiose it may be, if it does not take into account the necessity of dissolving the Ego, is condemned to failure.
About the Author
Samael Aun Weor
The V.M. Samael Aun Weor is the founder of AGEACAC (Gnostic Association of Anthropological and Cultural Studies, A.C.) and of the International Gnostic Movement.
He left a great teaching that synthesizes the path man must follow to attain the complete awakening of his consciousness and his self-realization. The V.M. Samael was an anthropologist, sociologist, spiritual guide, and author of over 70 books, and he gave more than 300 conferences.
He dedicated his life to deepening the great truths that the various civilizations have bequeathed to humanity in diverse forms of manifestation: philosophy, religion, art, and science.
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“The new era of Aquarius is approaching. Let us raise our cup and toast to the Gods, drinking the wine of light.”
— Samael Aun Weor
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He left a great teaching that synthesizes the path man must follow to attain the complete awakening of his consciousness and his self-realization.