Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? For what do we live? Why do we live?…
Samael Aun Weor
Life and the Level of the 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 moreover does not even know that he does not know…
The worst of all is the so difficult and so strange situation 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 to be influential — to the center of the SAHARA desert; leave him there, far from any Oasis, and observe from an aerial ship all that happens…
The facts will speak for themselves; the “Intellectual Humanoid,” although he presume to be strong and believes himself very much a man, in the depth turns out frightfully weak…
The “Rational Animal” is foolish one hundred percent; he thinks the best of himself; he believes he can develop marvelously through KINDERGARTEN, Manuals of Urbanity, Primary, Secondary, High School, University, the good prestige of his father, etc., etc., etc.
Unfortunately, after so many letters and good manners and money, we know well that any stomachache saddens us, and that in the depth we continue being 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 XX (20th) century with all its spectacularity, wars, prostitution, world sodomy, sexual degeneration, drugs, alcohol, exorbitant cruelty, extreme perversity, monstrosity, etc., etc., etc., is the mirror in which we must look at ourselves; there does not exist therefore weighty reason to boast of having arrived at a superior stage of development…
To think that time signifies progress is absurd; unfortunately the “illustrated ignorant ones” continue bottled up in the Dogma of Evolution…
In all the black pages of the “Black History,” we always find the same horrendous cruelties, ambitions, wars, etc.
However, our contemporary “Super-civilized” persons are still convinced that this matter of War is something secondary, a passing accident that has nothing to do with their much-vaunted “Modern Civilization.”
Certainly, what matters is the mode of being of each person; some subjects will be drunkards, others abstemious; the latter honorable, and these others shameless; of everything there is in life…
The mass is the sum of the individuals; what the individual is, the mass is, the Government is, etc. The mass is, therefore, the extension of the individual; the transformation of the masses, of peoples, is not possible if the individual, if each person, does not transform himself…
No one can deny that distinct social levels exist; there are people of church and of brothel, of commerce and of country, etc., etc., etc.
Likewise, distinct Levels of Being exist. What we internally are — splendid or mean, generous or stingy, violent or peaceable, chaste or lustful — attracts the diverse circumstances of life…
A lustful one 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 taverns; that is obvious…
What will the usurer attract? The egoist? How many problems? Prisons? Misfortunes?
However, embittered people, tired of suffering, have the desire to change, to turn the page of their history…
Poor people! They want to change and do not know how; they do not know the procedure; they are in a blind alley…
What happened to them yesterday happens to them today and will happen to them tomorrow; they always repeat the same errors and do not learn the lessons of life even by cannon blasts.
All things repeat themselves 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 rather, we should say: What is our Level of Being?
While the Level of Being does not radically change, there will continue the repetition of all our miseries, scenes, misfortunes, and infortunes…
All the things, all the circumstances that happen outside of us, on the stage of this world, are exclusively the reflection of what we interiorly carry.
With just reason we can solemnly aver that the “exterior is the reflection of the interior.” When one changes interiorly and such change is radical, the exterior, the circumstances, life, also change.
I have been observing during this time (Year 1974) a group of people who invaded a foreign piece of land. Here in Mexico such people receive the curious qualifier of “PARACHUTERS.”
They are residents of the country colony of Churubusco; they are very close to my house, motive for which I have been able to study them closely…
To be poor can never be a crime, but the grave thing is not in that, but in their Level of Being…
Daily they fight among themselves, they get drunk, they insult one another, they convert themselves into murderers of their own companions of misfortune, they live certainly 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, anger, lust, drunkenness, slander, cruelty, egotism, calumny, envy, self-love, pride, etc., etc., etc., he would please other persons; he would associate by simple Law of Psychological Affinities with more refined, more spiritual people; those new relations would be definitive for an economic and social change…
That would be the system that would permit such a subject to abandon the “pigsty,” the filthy “sewer”…
Thus, 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-colored, ignorant or illustrated, etc.) is at this or that Level of Being.
What is our Level of Being? Have you ever reflected on that? It would not be possible to pass to another level if we ignore the state in which we find ourselves.
The Marvelous Stairway
We have to long for a true change, to come out of this boring routine, of this merely mechanistic, tiresome life…
What we must first comprehend with complete clarity is that each one of us — whether bourgeois or proletarian, well-off or middle-class, rich or miserable — finds himself really at this or that Level of Being…
The Level of Being of the drunkard is different from that of the abstemious one, and that of the prostitute very distinct from that of the maiden. This that we are saying is irrefutable, irrebuttable…
Arriving at this part of our chapter, we lose nothing by imagining a stairway that extends from below upward, vertically, and with very many steps…
Unquestionably, on some step of these we find ourselves; steps below there will be people worse than us; steps above there will be persons better than us…
In this extraordinary Vertical, in this Marvelous Stairway, it is clear that we can find all the Levels of Being… each person is different, and this no one can refute…
Indubitably we are not now speaking of ugly or pretty faces, nor is it a question of ages. There are young and old people, the aged who are now about to die, and newly born children…
The question of time and of the years — that of being born, growing, developing, marrying, reproducing, growing old, and dying — is exclusive to the Horizontal…
In the “Marvelous Stairway,” in the Vertical, the concept of time does not fit. In the steps of such a scale we can only find Levels of Being…
The mechanical hope of the people serves nothing; they believe that with time things will be better; thus thought our grandfathers and great-grandfathers; the facts have come precisely to demonstrate the contrary…
The Level of Being is what counts, and this is Vertical; we find ourselves on a step, but we can rise to another step…
The “Marvelous Stairway” of which we are speaking, and which refers to the distinct 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 ostensible — and anyone can comprehend it — 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 deceased; it is not the Being…
The Levels of Being — the Being itself — is not of time; it has nothing to do with the Horizontal Line; it is found within ourselves. Now, in the Vertical…
It would be manifestly absurd to seek our own Being outside of ourselves…
It is not superfluous to establish as a corollary the following: Titles, grades, promotions, etc., in the exterior physical world in no way would originate authentic exaltation, re-evaluation of the Being, passage to a superior step in the Levels of Being…
Psychological Rebellion
It is not out of place to remind our readers that there exists a mathematical point within ourselves…
Unquestionably, such a point is never found in the past, nor either in the future…
Whoever wishes to discover that mysterious point must seek it here and now, within himself, exactly in this instant — not one second ahead, not one second behind…
The two beams — Vertical and Horizontal — of the Holy Cross meet at this point…
We find ourselves, therefore, from instant to instant before two Paths: the Horizontal and the Vertical…
It is ostensible that the Horizontal is very “trite”; along it walk “Vicente and all the rest of 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 pains 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, businesses, debts, payment of bills, mortgages, telephone, water, electricity, etc., etc., etc.
The unemployed — those who for this or that motive have lost their job, their work — evidently suffer for lack of money; and to forget their case, not to preoccupy themselves, nor identify themselves with their own problem, results in fact frightfully difficult.
Those who suffer, those who weep, those who have been victims of some betrayal, of an ill payment in life, of an ingratitude, of a calumny, or of some fraud, really forget themselves, their Real Intimate 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 the Great Rebellion if he never worked upon himself…
The Work to which we are referring is of a Psychological type; it concerns itself 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 is desperate over some sentimental, economic, or political problem has obviously forgotten himself…
Such a person, if he pauses for an instant, if he observes the situation and tries to remember himself, and then strives to comprehend the sense 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 comprehends that his problem in the depth is no more than a “flash in the pan,” a fatuous fire that soon is extinguished, he will see suddenly with surprise that everything has changed…
To transform mechanical reactions is possible through logical confrontation and Intimate Self-Reflection of the Being…
It is evident that people react mechanically before the diverse circumstances of life…
Poor people! They usually always become victims. When someone flatters them, they smile; when they are humiliated, they suffer. They insult if they are insulted; they wound if they are wounded; they are never free; their fellow men have power to take them from joy to sadness, from hope to desperation.
Each one of those persons who go along the Horizontal Path resembles a musical instrument, on which each of his fellow men plays what comes into his head…
Whoever learns to transform the mechanical reactions, in fact enters into the “Vertical Path.”
This represents a fundamental change in the Level of Being — extraordinary result of the “Psychological Rebellion.”
Complementary Diagrams
Vertical line of the level of Being — The present instant, Here and Now.
Horizontal Line of life (of time) — Past — Future.
Mercury (creative sexual energy).
A higher level of Being is immediately above us from instant to instant.
The impulse arises from sacrifice for humanity.
The height is reached with Spiritual birth.
The base for ascending is given by psychological death.
The ascent in the level of Being is achieved with work in the three factors.
However, embittered people, tired of suffering, have the desire to change, to turn the page of their history… Poor people!