Being a follower of G and O myself for many years now, I'm really concerned and struggling.
Did I and maybe others here unknowingly follow The Occult Path?
A special THANKS goes to Jtucker, a Newbie, who introduced me to Mark Probert's material in his Introduction post!
The lecture is called "The Path", copied from this page: _http://www.soulwise.net/yada
So what do you think?
I would like to talk about that which is called The Path. I think any of us who have given any time and serious attention to the inner teachings of life, automatically come to know that the seeking of The Path is, among other things, a rather dangerous pursuit. As necessary as it is for us humans to find our path and to get on it and to get moving on it, nevertheless it has its dangers. We should come to know this before we start out and have it pointed out to us in the beginning, that it is no easy passage for us.
As you were saying here a bit ago, before I came in, you mentioned two gentlemen who are know to be, by their writings at least, sincere and highly educated students of the inner teachings. They took what is called, the Occult Path. This is the dangerous path. The metaphysical path is the best for the beginner. When we seek the metaphysical path first, our chances of losing our balance, mental, physical and moral is much less.
Since coming over here I have done a great deal of studying in what is called The Occult Laws. I first pursued the study of those who took this path before me and I found out that, in almost all cases, those who took only the occult path, who started out on the occult path first, encountered many emotional and mental difficulties with life, in not too long a time.
Ouspensky and his teacher, Gurdjieff, were only two who became mentally unbalanced. They not only studied occultism from the intellectual approach, but they went into rites and rituals and general practice of these laws. One of the functions of breath, for instance, is to help the initiate release himself consciously from his physical structure so that he can move around the universe freely. This is a dangerous practice for most human beings at this point in the evolution of mind which entails, of course, the development of new brain cells, or not necessarily new cells, but the ability to function through brain cells, or brain centers, that have not been used before.
If one does not have, let us say, experience in his consciousness from past lives, of functioning in the occult manner, the occult way, he has no memory pattern for this sort of thing in the life he is functioning in now, in this lifetime, and if he attempts such practices as I have mentioned earlier, it necessitates his forcing himself into this kind of activity, forcing the brain cells to open, forcing himself to accept the experiences that the opening of such senses create within that one. If they are not prepared to meet these experiences with a sense of detachment, they are in trouble, and though Gurdjieff and Ouspensky spent many, many years studying and practicing these occult teachings, they were not prepared to use them, to put them into action though they were highly educated in an intellectual way regarding these functions; they still had no conscious memory pattern of having functioned this way before.
Will they now possess experience the next time they come into some other life experience? Will they then be better prepared to operate in the occult field as a result of this particular experience?
Yes, and they would approach it with a little more caution, with a little more respect. Sometimes, in our pursuit of knowledge we can use, we gain a little of it and then lose our humility and get careless. It is like a swimmer. Many great swimmers have come to a sudden tragic end in spite of themselves because they were so certain, that what they knew concerning the water, concerning their power over water. They get careless.
When I lived in the physical world I heard of these things; I heard of these occult and metaphysical laws, naturally. But I felt they were for the most part, the works of the devil. And it was well that I did. In my state of consciousness I could not have, by any means, approached these laws without having suffered the consequences of my ignorance. So, to this extent, you may say that ignorance was bliss. It is an old story. It is not what we know that hurts, it is what we don't know.
What we think we know.
Yes.
Professor, I was once told that you could not do anything with occult work that you could not do yourself, providing you were developed.
That is exactly so.
So it seems to be a useless thing.
In a way of speaking, it is. Many of the great teachers of occult laws came to know that, but the majority of them came to know it too late.
At the time of Christ there were many occultists, and I think that that is what is meant when he talked of false gods.
I am certain of that.
He did not want the people to do it, not because it was wicked, but because He knew the danger of it.
Of course, of course. You will see where He demonstrated this feeling against anyone pursuing occult practice where He said to His disciples, I speak to you in one tongue, and to others, (the masses) in another tongue, because He knew that to talk to the masses was foolish. It was foolish to try to give the inner teachings to the masses in the language of the inner teachings. After my probationary period with my teacher, after he had given me a wonderful basis to work from, then I was left on my own to pursue some of those inner teachings, things I had thought were the works of the devil.
This, what you are speaking of, is after you had passed over?
Yes, yes, and I discovered - and pleasantly so, my discovery was a pleasant one - that all these laws are natural. There is nothing miraculous about them, nothing phenomenal other than that...
They are not a common occurrence.
That is right.
It appears to be phenomenal to those who are not aware of them being natural.
That is right, as being natural. You see, there are some things that man invents. He brings together certain laws out of these laws that he had discovered as existing, he creates things. But there are laws that he knows nothing about and he can involve himself into great dangers by his ignorance, by his stumbling on to them. Madame Curie and one of her co-workers did not know the laws of radiation; they didn't discover anything other than what was there. They didn't create anything; they simply found an existing law. But through their ignorance, they both suffered, to some extent, from radiation, radiation poisoning.
Today almost everyone knows about radiation and its action upon cellular bodies; yet, you go on throwing those deadly radiations into the atmosphere and they will, eventually, create many cellular changes that will not be very nice for coming generations. In spite of all this talk of dangers and threats to us human beings and our pursuit of life, whether it is physical pursuit, or mental, or whatever, we cannot suppose that we can stop our pursuit of knowledge. We cannot stop and give it all up because of some real or imagined fears and anxieties over what is going to happen to us if we go on. Man has learned by experimentation more so than by any other way. We humans are a curious lot. We cannot stop to be nosey. The softer word is curious. This is our nature.
In the practice of mental dissociation from the body, the danger lies in losing our awareness of being a physical being, of losing awareness of our physical form. We do not, in the beginning, lose this awareness; the feel of not being a physical form comes upon us slowly. It creates, in the beginning, a condition that is called split personality in which you wander around in mind only. Then, if you do not get contact with your physical self again, you are never completely with your physical self. Your psyche is always moving a bit ahead or behind your physical self, as the case may be. You seem all right for a time and even believe you are well integrated; then suddenly, when you least expect it, you lose awareness of your physical self and your body wanders around like a zombie and get into all kinds of trouble.
I sometimes think it best that there are certain things that the majority of us human beings are not ready for. We should leave it alone. But who am I to judge as to which one of us should leave it alone or practice it? Who am I? How can I tell? I can't. I only know that the study of these laws would not have been for me while I was in the physical world. I can, and do, put them into practice in a way. I do put them into practice, this dissociation of one's self, when I move from my world to take control of this man's body, of Mark's body. I have to lose awareness of my actual consciousness, of my other world being, in order to become, to a certain extent, Mark. I have to become physical Mark to communicate with you here in the physical world. I think you get the picture.
Professor, in your state of awareness, is it possible for you to examine the aura, the state of awareness, of an individual, to suggest to them whether it would be wise for them to enter into certain practices?
Of course I can do this, but I wouldn't, because it is your life and these things belong to you.
Is it possible for you to make suggestions and not tell a person to, or not to?
Of course I can do this. I can make suggestions to them that it is possible to practice certain things and feel quite safe in the practice, and another, not so. I can, but I do not like to have to do this. I do not like to tell one to practice this, or that he is capable of practicing these things. I would rather they found it out for themselves.
Sometimes one, in trying to find out for himself, becomes involved in a situation that gets out of hand.
Oh, well if I saw one that I knew that such practices were not for them, I would simply tell them that, but I wouldn't tell one to go into it even though I felt he could go into it. I would tell another that I saw one was not capable of handling such things, not to try it, but I would not tell one who I thought was capable of handling it, to try it.
I know you people don't do this, but you can make suggestions whether a person should, or should not.
Yes, and I would do this after knowing that this person is truly mentally and emotionally capable of handling these practices. I wish to save them from the danger that lies there.
I know that, upon one occasion, Yada suggested to a person that they were not capable of doing certain things, and to another person that they were capable of doing the same thing. This is what I am referring to.
I know very well what you are referring to. This lady was simply not capable of handling the instrument that she uses and I tried to tell her, and I think my colleague, Yada, did tell her not to use this instrument, not to practice with it; but you see, she went ahead and used it anyway and came to grief.
Professor, the safest path that I have ever come across is the alchemical path. It does not require a great deal of meditation or concentration or anything like that.
It is safe, but it is a very slow path too. The occult practices, as I have said, can be very dangerous. Now, in occult practices, you can learn to project yourself to any part of the universe that you care to go. You can evict another person out of their body, you can take control of it, you can galvanize an empty shell-body where the spirit, the mind, the psyche has departed from it, you can galvanize it into action and use it. You can operate an animal's body - but you have to know what you are doing or all hell will pursue you.
If you want to know what hell is, indulge yourself in long periods of dissociation from your physical self and operate through other bodies, especially animal bodies.
Professor, when one is doing this, what kind of activity does one's own body go through?
Sometimes, if you operate through, let us say, an animal body, in time your physical self will take on the appearances of the animal you have been working through. If you use the corpse, the cadaver to operate through, you get the stink of death upon your physical self.
You spoke a moment ago of leaving your own physical body for quite a long time. I don't know what you mean by a long period of time. Does this mean 1 hr. or
Well, it may be. Some operate for days at a time.
And your physical body?
Just lies dormant. Also, this is what produces what is called by the people, especially in the old country, the vampire, the werewolf.
Is another person coming upon your body likely to think you have gone into a coma, or the state called death? What would one who discovers your body think?
They would come to the conclusion that it was dead.
There is no indication of pulse-beat?
No. When you withdraw, all activities are so closed down that it is like one in a very deep cataleptic state.
The aka-cord is still attached?
It is still attached; but there are some that have the knowledge that makes them courageous enough to not use an aka- cord to function through, to have a complete mental break-away from their physical self. This saves them, if nothing else, from the danger, because they practice certain things that draw the aka-cord extremely thin, and it could break and end their contact with their physical structure.
What do you mean by operating through that?
They have another kind of control over it, a kind of secondary mental control. I would like to express this in more understandable terms.
Could you express it as remote control?
Yes, I think you would understand that term.
Professor, talking of the man known as Iesus, that some call Jesus, in going through his past initiation, it tells of Him going into this cataleptic state and remaining in this state for three days while he was taking other initiations.
This is something again. This body is guarded over by spirit beings and not only by spirit beings, but by master teachers. They create a protective wall around it so that the body stays in good condition for as long as it takes the initiate to go through his higher initiations on the other planes of consciousness.
Then He could dissociate himself completely so that the silver cord is not attached?
No, it is not attached under these circumstances.
It seems that one could forget the pathway back.
They probably would had they not gone through other initiations first that made them capable of keeping some part of their control over that body besides having the protection of the guardians there.
Professor, do these guardians manipulate the body in some way through mental control?
Yes, They keep the cellular structure functioning and in good order, which is very necessary, because the moment life forces, or let us say, the consciousness, is drawn completely away from the body, death begins to set in, decay begins to act. One in a coma, whatever the level of the coma may be, has to be turned around and kept in motion; that body has to be kept in motion of some kind, otherwise deterioration would set in.
Would it be asking too much to ask if Jesus himself took part in keeping his body together?
Yes. You see, we must be in some way responsible for what we are; so the part of our make-up what is involved there, that needs to be taken care of, we must be responsible for it, too.
Would it be asking too much to identify these masters whose consciousness would apparently be greater than Jesus himself. I don't know if we can use the term greater, but I think they are masters in their own right.
More advanced in knowledge.
And they are standing by and help him to attain. The master is one step ahead of the initiate?
Yes.
Have they any particular names that we might identify them by?
There was one that you know about in your world. He is known, among other titles, as Saint Germain. Here, indeed, he has been known by many other names in different centuries. He has come down to the earth, to certain parts of the earth, from time to time, down through the centuries. But so did the man you know as Jesus. He functioned periodically in your times. Jesus, the man you call Jesus, is not his real name; it is only one of his names. And the man called Siddartha, did you ever hear of him?
Yes.
This man has functioned for many centuries consciously. This is what is important in the study of what is called the occult laws of the inner workings of life, the inner knowledge, the higher wisdom. We cannot be masters until we can function consciously on the higher levels, on the inner planes. But, as you have said, sir, by taking the natural path to studying of nature, of life, the approach is not so severe upon the general make-up of the human being.
Professor, you have mentioned the occult and the metaphysical, the occult being a dangerous path, the metaphysical possibly not so dangerous, and the alchemical path has been mentioned as possibly the tamer, or milder path than the others and one that we can function through more naturally.
Yes, You see, the value of this path is in the slowness of it, so that your physical self is not subject to such severe shock.
It can adjust to the changes gradually?
Yes, would you not say so?
Yes, I would. One of the first tasks in alchemy is one of the twelve tasks of Hercules, which is cleaning out the stables.
And this means more mental than anything else, doesn't it? We have to revise our way of thinking and look at things naturally.
That is right. Without fear, without great emotional upheavals and reactions, and all that sort of thing.
Like the Christ said, we have to become as a little child.
That is so, sir. Now I know that you have something to say to me, but if you don't mind, I am going to run away now for a little while and I will be right back.
(Professor Luntz withdraws and returns after an intermission.)
I want to say right now that I have been mispronouncing Gurdjieff's name. I think I said Gurdjieff but it is Gurdjieff. I had to get out of Mark's body and think about it so that I will remember it as it is truly pronounced.
You transposed the u and the r.
That doesn't surprise me. When you function through a machine that is not your own it is bound to be coloured somewhat. Your expressions will be coloured by the understanding and education of the machine you are using.
Gurdjieff, if I remember some of his history, was a russian peasant, yet he was more than this. This is what he appeared to be in this life. The man was highly evolved but, using the kind of body he had to use in this life, a kind which was not evolved enough in the nervous system even as Ouspensky's body was not conditioned, the brain was not conditioned for the continued and highly evolved practice that the man went through.
From what I have heard of the terrible conditions under which the russian peasant lived, he could not clean the stables very well,could he?
Well, you see, there is something else. In the beginning of these occult practices you throw aside all moral training that you had. It creates conditions in the nervous system that demand that you do certain things that are quite outside the pale of general moral laws in a social system. You become somewhat of a sexual degenerate in the eyes of those around you. There are all kinds of practices in the experimental stages of the occult work that I don't think I should go into here.
But this is the path he took.
Yes, and this is the path that almost all of these men took in their pursuit of the inner teachings. There was another man...
Crowley?
Crowley, yes. Now there was a man who had become totally degenerate in the eyes of everyone else, but to him, he did not feel it was degeneracy. It was experimentation with all kinds of things to find out the nature of these things. It is too much to go into here.
In all kinds of such activities as Crowley engaged in and in any time in the past social systems that such men as he lived under - they would have been considered insane. And your laws today would put him, and others like him, away; and I believe both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were put away for a time until they could be moved out, and they were secretly moved out of the country. They did not put themselves away; they were put away in mental hospitals.
Professor, I have bought two books by Ouspensky. Now by what you have said I am hesitant to peruse them. I thought that by reading them I would have more of an insight into the occult.
Of course you would have. You would acquire a certain amount of knowledge intellectually and I hope that you will not attempt to practice any of these things. Limit them to knowing about their existence and that these things are possible. In short, knowing them intellectually and not by practice.
But he mentions Yoga in there and he mentions Christianity and all kinds of things.
Oh, yes.
I know through Yada and through other teachers that it is their advice that it is better for us not to be associated with any one group.
Yes, and there is no reason that I can see why you should not read these books; in fact I suggest that you do read them and also that you read the story of the man Crowley, so that you will know that these things do exist and what they lead to, what the practices of them lead to. You see, if you are going to live, and you have to because you have created a family for yourself and have set yourself more in your society. The more a man creates a family for himself, the more he becomes set in the social system that he is functioning in. To start practicing these things would cause you, in time, to have to withdraw from your social system, and your life would become more painful and disturbed.
Well, Professor, since I am not the only one in this particular situation, is there a path, let us say, for the common man or those of us who are intensely interested in becoming more self-aware? Is there something that can lead us to this understanding and yet in moderation or according to the system in which we have to function?
Yes, I think so. By the study of some of the students of psychology and I would suggest Jung as being the greater of those I have known.
The alchemical path starts with simple psychology.
Why, certainly.
Ouspensky seems to think that the psychological factor between art, religion, and science is important and this is really what he is trying to explain.
You don't have to bother yourself with explaining those things; you don't have to bother with it at all.
I suggest we take the path that is more comfortable in relation to our society, our present state of civilization and the laws that we are involved in there. In studying psychology the student must eventually make his own psychology. Study the works of many teacher and then contemplate what you have studied and then create and inject your own thoughts that arise from your feelings over what you have studied. In this way you will be creating your own psychological path, the one that is more suited for you. I think this makes sense.
Study it in a moderate way, I guess we may as well say in balance, for we must maintain balance.
Yes. You see, in your Christian Bible it mentions that the man, Jesus, went down into hell for several days before He arose into heaven.
Yes.
In the study, you see, he took the occult path. He was so advanced in every way, emotionally, mentally, in every way, that He could do this safely. But, you see, He went down into hell and, as I said a little bit ago, on the occult path one must go down into hell before he can rise into heaven or a perfect state of mental balance and it is a bitter, horrible experience that tears at the very foundation of your make-up, the human make-up.
But all these experiences are of the person's own making.
Quite so, quite so, but in taking the occult path you will find the hell of you, and you can't imagine the depth of depravity that this other side of you can sink into.
And the higher you go, the worse it is.
That is so. The higher you are to go, the deeper into hell you must go.
This applies to everyone, even Jesus, but this is not given to the laity to understand.
Exactly so, and it is well. If you think the world is a madhouse now, let us suppose it was for the masses to take up such practices.
It is known on the Tree of Life as the Qlippoth.
Yes.
It is the plane below the physical. It is the bottom.
The bottom is right, and if you are not capable of handling this sort of thing you will go through that state called The-Ring-Pass-Not beyond what is called the Ring Chaos, and into the pit of no return.
Where you are disintegrated and go into unmanifestation with no individuality.
No individuality. It is the true death, the true death that we bring our souls into, if I may use the word souls. I think you understand what I mean by using that word.
Yes.
It is a good thing about nature, it seldom permits us to do more than we know how.
(Professor Luntz withdraws and, after an intermission, Yada takes control.)
I was listening with great interest to the dissertation on the metaphysical, the occult and all such subjects given by my colleague, Professor Alfred Luntz, and I thought, in the asking of the questions that you asked of him, that perhaps I could do a little bit different than what he would give, and so I have come to take his place. It is, perhaps, presumptuous of me to think that I can do better than someone else, but one must presume. If one is going to try to express oneself, one must presume one can.
We would become stagnant if we didn't.
There must be some jumping-off place as it were and if we are going to learn anything we must, in our minds, know that we can.
Now let us first go to what my colleague, Prof. Luntz was talking about, the occult path. Of course, like you say, the occult path is largely given to practices of, and association with, the spirit world and with other forms of life that can be called upon which are not conscious of themselves,but we can make them conscious, we humans, by giving them consciousness by calling upon them, in using sounds, mantrams that are most appealing to these sleeping forces. This awakens their awareness because, in truth, these sleeping forces are not something external to us. They are, indeed, a part of our own make-up, our own nature, our individual nature.
Through the senses and the use of certain sounds, certain tones that are built into the Great Mind, the mind of creation, and the awareness that certain sounds meant certain things, and through long practice of these sounds and by long association, there had been a sort of psychological condition built up that certain sounds are attached to certain gods, certain devils and, in other words, certain forces of life. And so today, centuries, centuries, centuries later, by using these sounds you can still call up so-called gods or forces that these sounds have been associated with. Would you not say so?
Yes. It is as you said a number of years ago; in the spirit world there are many characters that appear in Shakespeare, but they were made by man.
Exactly so.
These gods are made in the same way.
To the lay mind this sounds disturbingly strange because your present day psychology, where the unlearned one is concerned, strictly concerns itself to the material way of living, so the layman and psychologists know nothing apart from the matter-world and the psychology belonging to the matter-world.
Certain irritations act upon the inner make-up, the unconscious self. The same kind of things that irritated me, let us say 500,000 years ago or if I lived in a closer time, by association of memory patterns, these same kind of things create a specific kind of irritation in me which reaches down into my unconscious self and calls up the so-called devils in me. These devils in me are called rages - emotional frustrations that take the form of violence. They are hot. By using that expression hot, I mean their activities on the physical body are burning - they dry up the mouth, they cause trouble with the stomach, a burning desire to throw up, and they can lead to heart attacks, kidney trouble. These are the devils from hell. In some people, when these negative forces, these violent forces, are called upon, they cause to manifest, to materialize a fiendish, insane being.
Now a true sensitive can see these beings closely around and inside the auric egg as you were speaking of a little while ago, of individuals that are not, at the moment they are being observed, angry or disturbed outwardly. But these devils, the imps of our own darkness, our own ignorance, have been created there down through the ages of having them called up. What we are doing is creating them. In calling them up we are creating them, we are bringing these beings, these unconscious parts of ourselves to consciousness. Do I make myself clear?
You are drawing them out.
Yes, and you are making them. You are giving them life, giving them consciousness so that, after a time, they eat on you or me, eat on our physical self and therefore on our mental self. Even when we have no cause to call them up they eat there and we, in our own minds, are quite unaware that they do still exist there. We have given them so much of our consciousness, made them aware, and they thrive on the energies of our physical body.
By occult practices you can call these out and command them to do your bidding. There are certain rites and rituals that you must go through to make them living expressions, but you will regret this if you do it, because you may give them more and more of your consciousness, more of your life forces than you desire to and you may not be able to get rid of them and they will get rid of you. They will destroy your physical self.
Think of what great beings we are, what great, wonderful creators we are. When I say wonderful, I mean of tremendous ability.
It is too bad we do not know what we are doing.
True. Only when we are conscious creators can we be safe, because then we know what we are doing and we know how to get rid of anything that we create if we find it not in keeping with our present environment and general conditions.
In calling these up, in calling anything up, it necessitates the use of your own bodily vital forces. These things are clothed with your own cellular energy, for anything that is called into the world, that is in any way projected into the physical world, is physical. It must become physical, and the only way it can do this by using physical energies. This is why we say, my colleagues Professor Luntz and I, that we put ourselves in great danger when we practice the occult practices. There is a safer way.
The mystical path leads you to the knowledge, to the knowing of what lies behind the facade of your own physical being, without having to face the danger. The metaphysical path is a kind path. It creates the awareness of the beauty and the balance of existence. It does this only by the existence of what you call the etheric world, or, if you care to, call it the spirit world. One side of it is very wonderful because it is through this world that the physical world can exist. The physical world functions through this great sea of spirit. It is kept, every living body is fed, by a continual stream of vital forces.
It is not kept in existence by will-power?
Of course.
And when the will-power is withdrawn it disappears?
It disappears, yes. What a wonderful word, the word will, will-power. The will to create in balance and to keep creation in balance.
Could you see, with another eye, what is going on between these worlds, you would be most astounded at first, and last, perfectly at peace with yourself. You would see that all is in order. Everything is safe as it is. Then this knowledge would keep us from tearing in and cutting up form to see what it is. The world that you move in, called the physical world, would be at peace. Everything would be safe, but you see, the ignorant imp of darkness, meaning ignorance, does not let us live this way and it is well in many ways because it forces us into action and it is only through action that we can truly learn. Only by experience because our experiences create individual attitudes within us about life and about our being. This, our attitudes, it is incorporated into our deeper self. This is called learning, for we never forget. We may forget our experience but we never forget our attitude toward an experience.
We go to what is called the Yoga path. Again we learn by practice, by rites and rituals, but it is mostly associated with what is called the metaphysical and if we do not go too far with the practice, especially with the use of breath because this practice creates phenomena and the student invariably gets lost in the area of phenomena, magic. He is only excited about what he can do and not the purpose back of what he is doing, the causes. The Yoga path is especially good for the physical body, for the welfare, for the development of the physical body and if the physical body is healthy and strong, it is natural that the mind will be so also and will come into better balance.
We quiet the sleeping beast in us by the use of certain kinds of drugs, but we can also stir up those beasts if we do not know what we are doing. By Yoga practices we are taught to keep the inner body clean. The intestinal tract is a notorious center of death in the human body if it is not kept clean. The practice of breath for the benefit of the body, when we know how to do them, clears the toxins out of our system and most important, we come to know what not to put into our bodies, and what not to poison ourselves with, and what is living substance.
We come to no longer hanker after these things because the body has been so cleaned out that there is no irritation and therefore is no demand for these irritations to be satisfied, for irritating substances to be put into the body.
Today you use all manner of irritating substances to bring you rest, or what you thing brings you rest, like the use of tobacco, the use of alcohol, the use of drugs. Even your mild drugs, what you call the sedatives to put you to sleep, sedatives to wake you up and to keep you awake, while these are mild drugs they are still deadly if the use of them is prolonged. These practices of Yoga quiet the nerves. They are the best kind of sedatives. We learn the great wonder of the relaxation of the entire body. Every organ, every muscle becomes relaxed. In becoming relaxed, all the vital energies start flowing smoothly through the nervous system which then feeds the glandular system in a manner which relaxes them. This brings us a longer, happier life. The physical world is hell for man as he walks in ignorance of the nature of his own body and he blames this hell on the world, failing to understand that the only real world is himself.
I do not tell another that he must do this or that. This is foolishness. This is vanity because we all will do what seems best for us to do, no matter how deadly it may be, and others know it is deadly for us. To us it does not seem deadly. One walking in filth soon loses himself in filth and is unaware that it is filth. In the same way one walking in balance soon becomes aware that he is in balance and therefore he is not longer aware of the word balance as meaning something different than what he is in. To hear the rushing of the wind and nothing else, we soon become deaf. Is it not so?
The psychological path! I think it is a wonderful path, especially for the first step, for it is through psychology, the study of it, that we get a road into our own psychological nature. And in so doing we lose our fears. We see what our fears are made up of, we see how they get started, what they are made from, and they vanish.
Again it brings us to that vital thing called relaxation. You see, my friends, why is a person, in some cases made suddenly and seemingly miraculously well, cured of some virulent disease when they were in prayer? It is because they have relaxed. In that moment they have attained a point of relaxation so high, so great, so deep that they have lost themselves in the act of prayer. They have lost themselves in what is called God, or the Great Consciousness, and this God, or this Eternal Light of Consciousness, is this God or Eternal Light of Consciousness sick? Do you see?
Let us go to what is called Christian Science. The majority of the pursuers of this particular path of life are not aware of how they were cured because their teacher has told them that God cured them, and so they do not think any more about it. They are not concerned with the mechanics; and it is just as well that they are not. Can we have balance and unbalance at the same time? Can they exist in the same space at the same time. No more than can two physical objects in the same space at the same time.
In reality, Yada, there is no such thing as unbalance. It is only our attitude toward the thing.
So therefore, it is whatever approach we may make to it. You see what you say is true because as we think, so is it. Now thinking - and by this I do not mean the kind of thing you do with your brain in everyday life; that is not thinking - thinking is creating new ideas, and in order to do this, one must lose ones awareness of ones self. Have you not used the expression when someone comes to you and they see your eyes are looking off into space, and they get your attention again, they do what is called bring you back, you have said, oh, I was lost in thought. What a wonderful truth that is! Is that person, at that moment, suffering any of his pains? No, because his Christ-self, the God-self, whatever you wish to call it, is what he is in; this perfect state of balance. It knows nothing. There is no awareness of unbalance.
What you say is true. There is no unbalance but that which we humans create. Life becomes your choice. The conditions you live in are of your own making. You may say, oh, no, or you may say yes, I agree with you, but what am I going to do, how am I going to change this condition? By the process of learning to think differently, to step aside from your recalling to thinking, and thinking requires concentration, a form of meditation.
It has often been know for a person in the midst of prayer to rise off the ground. The body seems to defy the law of what we call gravity, but in this state of consciousness, this state of awareness, gravity does not exist. The consciousness works upon the molecular structure that it creates a kind of counter- gravity. It does this by arranging forces equally on all sides of the body, mental forces on all sides of the body at one time. This kind of pressure, or relief of pressure, is done by the cells that go to make up the entire body. The work of this causes a different motion, not necessarily of a higher form, but simply of a different character of motion that releases the body from the laws of gravity. You are not defying the law; you are simply creating counter laws. Would you not think so?
Yes. It seems that, at those moments, the person's consciousness is above the level of consciousness at which gravity is effective.
This is so. Now regarding yourselves. I find among you not very many that are trying to discover the nature of their inner being. They are in a hurry. This is natural. This is always the approach of the beginner - impatience.
In taking the first step on the Path which we hope will enlighten us as to our inner nature, the first thing that happens to us is, we become aware of the minute amount of time, relatively speaking, that we, as individuals have in which to learn in the physical world. It sometimes panics us and fills us with despair, especially when we look upon the endless road that seems to lie ahead of us. How many inches have I moved in 500,000 years? How many inches to my goal? I really do not know because I have not been able to see that far enough ahead to see my goal. I know it is there, but just where? How many inches, how many yards? How many miles?
Something like going to the horizon, the farther you go, the farther it is to the goal.
Yes, and you should be grateful for that.
Because if you ever got to it, that would be the end.
That would be IT! You would, as you Americans say, have had it.
It would be total extinction.
Many people think, and it is kind of them, because they do not know this truth, they think that I, Yada, have attained knowledge of life in toto. Now, would I be coming here to communicate with you if I had?
Yada, when you ask that question, I wonder what could be greater than the service to mankind?
Of course. This is what I am coming for; this is my goal and this man's goal. Service in love, which is simply understanding; service in understanding. This takes all before it, all the anxiousness, all the worries out of me.
You can't stop being active in some form.
No, because if you do, you are dead.
Is there any greater action that you could be going through, other than what you are doing now?
Whatever I am doing at any one moment of my self-awareness, I am doing the greatest thing possible to do.
Then there is no one action greater than another.
No.
Only becoming aware of what you are doing is the important thing.
Yes. Now there are certain things that one can become involved in that are more enlightening for that one than certain other things, and that is all; but as for the goal, the goal is in our immediate actions. The ultimate of our being is in now actions.
But we have to go a long way on the Pathway, truly aware that this is so.
Yes, we have to learn many other things before our individual self awakens and everyone awakens at a different time, and no one can say when one is going to awaken. Not even I, in my own progress through life, in my own moving through life, can say when I will be awakened. Why? Awaken to what? Awaken to the meaning of my own actions.
It will be the ninth hour, the hour of completion.
Yes, yes, that is the truth.
That is in the Bible but few recognize it.
Because few understand it.
In the story of the Crucifixion, the ninth hour.
Of course, yes. Santaya Kwantiya, the ninth action, the ninth hour.
Can you elaborate on this?
The Attainment. The conscious attainment of my own being.
Why do you call it the ninth hour?
Because there is no tenth.
It goes to one again?
Yes.
It takes three points to make the triangle and three triangles to make the cycle.
Thank you very much. You see, as we go along things come out that could not otherwise come out. Taking part in this conversation here this evening are certain things that belong to this conversation; that belong to this kind of thinking. They are brought out.
Each thing in its time and place.
This is so. I think it is getting late for you. I have been most honored to come and talk with you and I know my colleague, Professor Luntz, is very pleased that he has had this opportunity to communicate with you.
Goodnight.
Did I and maybe others here unknowingly follow The Occult Path?
A special THANKS goes to Jtucker, a Newbie, who introduced me to Mark Probert's material in his Introduction post!
The lecture is called "The Path", copied from this page: _http://www.soulwise.net/yada
So what do you think?
I would like to talk about that which is called The Path. I think any of us who have given any time and serious attention to the inner teachings of life, automatically come to know that the seeking of The Path is, among other things, a rather dangerous pursuit. As necessary as it is for us humans to find our path and to get on it and to get moving on it, nevertheless it has its dangers. We should come to know this before we start out and have it pointed out to us in the beginning, that it is no easy passage for us.
As you were saying here a bit ago, before I came in, you mentioned two gentlemen who are know to be, by their writings at least, sincere and highly educated students of the inner teachings. They took what is called, the Occult Path. This is the dangerous path. The metaphysical path is the best for the beginner. When we seek the metaphysical path first, our chances of losing our balance, mental, physical and moral is much less.
Since coming over here I have done a great deal of studying in what is called The Occult Laws. I first pursued the study of those who took this path before me and I found out that, in almost all cases, those who took only the occult path, who started out on the occult path first, encountered many emotional and mental difficulties with life, in not too long a time.
Ouspensky and his teacher, Gurdjieff, were only two who became mentally unbalanced. They not only studied occultism from the intellectual approach, but they went into rites and rituals and general practice of these laws. One of the functions of breath, for instance, is to help the initiate release himself consciously from his physical structure so that he can move around the universe freely. This is a dangerous practice for most human beings at this point in the evolution of mind which entails, of course, the development of new brain cells, or not necessarily new cells, but the ability to function through brain cells, or brain centers, that have not been used before.
If one does not have, let us say, experience in his consciousness from past lives, of functioning in the occult manner, the occult way, he has no memory pattern for this sort of thing in the life he is functioning in now, in this lifetime, and if he attempts such practices as I have mentioned earlier, it necessitates his forcing himself into this kind of activity, forcing the brain cells to open, forcing himself to accept the experiences that the opening of such senses create within that one. If they are not prepared to meet these experiences with a sense of detachment, they are in trouble, and though Gurdjieff and Ouspensky spent many, many years studying and practicing these occult teachings, they were not prepared to use them, to put them into action though they were highly educated in an intellectual way regarding these functions; they still had no conscious memory pattern of having functioned this way before.
Will they now possess experience the next time they come into some other life experience? Will they then be better prepared to operate in the occult field as a result of this particular experience?
Yes, and they would approach it with a little more caution, with a little more respect. Sometimes, in our pursuit of knowledge we can use, we gain a little of it and then lose our humility and get careless. It is like a swimmer. Many great swimmers have come to a sudden tragic end in spite of themselves because they were so certain, that what they knew concerning the water, concerning their power over water. They get careless.
When I lived in the physical world I heard of these things; I heard of these occult and metaphysical laws, naturally. But I felt they were for the most part, the works of the devil. And it was well that I did. In my state of consciousness I could not have, by any means, approached these laws without having suffered the consequences of my ignorance. So, to this extent, you may say that ignorance was bliss. It is an old story. It is not what we know that hurts, it is what we don't know.
What we think we know.
Yes.
Professor, I was once told that you could not do anything with occult work that you could not do yourself, providing you were developed.
That is exactly so.
So it seems to be a useless thing.
In a way of speaking, it is. Many of the great teachers of occult laws came to know that, but the majority of them came to know it too late.
At the time of Christ there were many occultists, and I think that that is what is meant when he talked of false gods.
I am certain of that.
He did not want the people to do it, not because it was wicked, but because He knew the danger of it.
Of course, of course. You will see where He demonstrated this feeling against anyone pursuing occult practice where He said to His disciples, I speak to you in one tongue, and to others, (the masses) in another tongue, because He knew that to talk to the masses was foolish. It was foolish to try to give the inner teachings to the masses in the language of the inner teachings. After my probationary period with my teacher, after he had given me a wonderful basis to work from, then I was left on my own to pursue some of those inner teachings, things I had thought were the works of the devil.
This, what you are speaking of, is after you had passed over?
Yes, yes, and I discovered - and pleasantly so, my discovery was a pleasant one - that all these laws are natural. There is nothing miraculous about them, nothing phenomenal other than that...
They are not a common occurrence.
That is right.
It appears to be phenomenal to those who are not aware of them being natural.
That is right, as being natural. You see, there are some things that man invents. He brings together certain laws out of these laws that he had discovered as existing, he creates things. But there are laws that he knows nothing about and he can involve himself into great dangers by his ignorance, by his stumbling on to them. Madame Curie and one of her co-workers did not know the laws of radiation; they didn't discover anything other than what was there. They didn't create anything; they simply found an existing law. But through their ignorance, they both suffered, to some extent, from radiation, radiation poisoning.
Today almost everyone knows about radiation and its action upon cellular bodies; yet, you go on throwing those deadly radiations into the atmosphere and they will, eventually, create many cellular changes that will not be very nice for coming generations. In spite of all this talk of dangers and threats to us human beings and our pursuit of life, whether it is physical pursuit, or mental, or whatever, we cannot suppose that we can stop our pursuit of knowledge. We cannot stop and give it all up because of some real or imagined fears and anxieties over what is going to happen to us if we go on. Man has learned by experimentation more so than by any other way. We humans are a curious lot. We cannot stop to be nosey. The softer word is curious. This is our nature.
In the practice of mental dissociation from the body, the danger lies in losing our awareness of being a physical being, of losing awareness of our physical form. We do not, in the beginning, lose this awareness; the feel of not being a physical form comes upon us slowly. It creates, in the beginning, a condition that is called split personality in which you wander around in mind only. Then, if you do not get contact with your physical self again, you are never completely with your physical self. Your psyche is always moving a bit ahead or behind your physical self, as the case may be. You seem all right for a time and even believe you are well integrated; then suddenly, when you least expect it, you lose awareness of your physical self and your body wanders around like a zombie and get into all kinds of trouble.
I sometimes think it best that there are certain things that the majority of us human beings are not ready for. We should leave it alone. But who am I to judge as to which one of us should leave it alone or practice it? Who am I? How can I tell? I can't. I only know that the study of these laws would not have been for me while I was in the physical world. I can, and do, put them into practice in a way. I do put them into practice, this dissociation of one's self, when I move from my world to take control of this man's body, of Mark's body. I have to lose awareness of my actual consciousness, of my other world being, in order to become, to a certain extent, Mark. I have to become physical Mark to communicate with you here in the physical world. I think you get the picture.
Professor, in your state of awareness, is it possible for you to examine the aura, the state of awareness, of an individual, to suggest to them whether it would be wise for them to enter into certain practices?
Of course I can do this, but I wouldn't, because it is your life and these things belong to you.
Is it possible for you to make suggestions and not tell a person to, or not to?
Of course I can do this. I can make suggestions to them that it is possible to practice certain things and feel quite safe in the practice, and another, not so. I can, but I do not like to have to do this. I do not like to tell one to practice this, or that he is capable of practicing these things. I would rather they found it out for themselves.
Sometimes one, in trying to find out for himself, becomes involved in a situation that gets out of hand.
Oh, well if I saw one that I knew that such practices were not for them, I would simply tell them that, but I wouldn't tell one to go into it even though I felt he could go into it. I would tell another that I saw one was not capable of handling such things, not to try it, but I would not tell one who I thought was capable of handling it, to try it.
I know you people don't do this, but you can make suggestions whether a person should, or should not.
Yes, and I would do this after knowing that this person is truly mentally and emotionally capable of handling these practices. I wish to save them from the danger that lies there.
I know that, upon one occasion, Yada suggested to a person that they were not capable of doing certain things, and to another person that they were capable of doing the same thing. This is what I am referring to.
I know very well what you are referring to. This lady was simply not capable of handling the instrument that she uses and I tried to tell her, and I think my colleague, Yada, did tell her not to use this instrument, not to practice with it; but you see, she went ahead and used it anyway and came to grief.
Professor, the safest path that I have ever come across is the alchemical path. It does not require a great deal of meditation or concentration or anything like that.
It is safe, but it is a very slow path too. The occult practices, as I have said, can be very dangerous. Now, in occult practices, you can learn to project yourself to any part of the universe that you care to go. You can evict another person out of their body, you can take control of it, you can galvanize an empty shell-body where the spirit, the mind, the psyche has departed from it, you can galvanize it into action and use it. You can operate an animal's body - but you have to know what you are doing or all hell will pursue you.
If you want to know what hell is, indulge yourself in long periods of dissociation from your physical self and operate through other bodies, especially animal bodies.
Professor, when one is doing this, what kind of activity does one's own body go through?
Sometimes, if you operate through, let us say, an animal body, in time your physical self will take on the appearances of the animal you have been working through. If you use the corpse, the cadaver to operate through, you get the stink of death upon your physical self.
You spoke a moment ago of leaving your own physical body for quite a long time. I don't know what you mean by a long period of time. Does this mean 1 hr. or
Well, it may be. Some operate for days at a time.
And your physical body?
Just lies dormant. Also, this is what produces what is called by the people, especially in the old country, the vampire, the werewolf.
Is another person coming upon your body likely to think you have gone into a coma, or the state called death? What would one who discovers your body think?
They would come to the conclusion that it was dead.
There is no indication of pulse-beat?
No. When you withdraw, all activities are so closed down that it is like one in a very deep cataleptic state.
The aka-cord is still attached?
It is still attached; but there are some that have the knowledge that makes them courageous enough to not use an aka- cord to function through, to have a complete mental break-away from their physical self. This saves them, if nothing else, from the danger, because they practice certain things that draw the aka-cord extremely thin, and it could break and end their contact with their physical structure.
What do you mean by operating through that?
They have another kind of control over it, a kind of secondary mental control. I would like to express this in more understandable terms.
Could you express it as remote control?
Yes, I think you would understand that term.
Professor, talking of the man known as Iesus, that some call Jesus, in going through his past initiation, it tells of Him going into this cataleptic state and remaining in this state for three days while he was taking other initiations.
This is something again. This body is guarded over by spirit beings and not only by spirit beings, but by master teachers. They create a protective wall around it so that the body stays in good condition for as long as it takes the initiate to go through his higher initiations on the other planes of consciousness.
Then He could dissociate himself completely so that the silver cord is not attached?
No, it is not attached under these circumstances.
It seems that one could forget the pathway back.
They probably would had they not gone through other initiations first that made them capable of keeping some part of their control over that body besides having the protection of the guardians there.
Professor, do these guardians manipulate the body in some way through mental control?
Yes, They keep the cellular structure functioning and in good order, which is very necessary, because the moment life forces, or let us say, the consciousness, is drawn completely away from the body, death begins to set in, decay begins to act. One in a coma, whatever the level of the coma may be, has to be turned around and kept in motion; that body has to be kept in motion of some kind, otherwise deterioration would set in.
Would it be asking too much to ask if Jesus himself took part in keeping his body together?
Yes. You see, we must be in some way responsible for what we are; so the part of our make-up what is involved there, that needs to be taken care of, we must be responsible for it, too.
Would it be asking too much to identify these masters whose consciousness would apparently be greater than Jesus himself. I don't know if we can use the term greater, but I think they are masters in their own right.
More advanced in knowledge.
And they are standing by and help him to attain. The master is one step ahead of the initiate?
Yes.
Have they any particular names that we might identify them by?
There was one that you know about in your world. He is known, among other titles, as Saint Germain. Here, indeed, he has been known by many other names in different centuries. He has come down to the earth, to certain parts of the earth, from time to time, down through the centuries. But so did the man you know as Jesus. He functioned periodically in your times. Jesus, the man you call Jesus, is not his real name; it is only one of his names. And the man called Siddartha, did you ever hear of him?
Yes.
This man has functioned for many centuries consciously. This is what is important in the study of what is called the occult laws of the inner workings of life, the inner knowledge, the higher wisdom. We cannot be masters until we can function consciously on the higher levels, on the inner planes. But, as you have said, sir, by taking the natural path to studying of nature, of life, the approach is not so severe upon the general make-up of the human being.
Professor, you have mentioned the occult and the metaphysical, the occult being a dangerous path, the metaphysical possibly not so dangerous, and the alchemical path has been mentioned as possibly the tamer, or milder path than the others and one that we can function through more naturally.
Yes, You see, the value of this path is in the slowness of it, so that your physical self is not subject to such severe shock.
It can adjust to the changes gradually?
Yes, would you not say so?
Yes, I would. One of the first tasks in alchemy is one of the twelve tasks of Hercules, which is cleaning out the stables.
And this means more mental than anything else, doesn't it? We have to revise our way of thinking and look at things naturally.
That is right. Without fear, without great emotional upheavals and reactions, and all that sort of thing.
Like the Christ said, we have to become as a little child.
That is so, sir. Now I know that you have something to say to me, but if you don't mind, I am going to run away now for a little while and I will be right back.
(Professor Luntz withdraws and returns after an intermission.)
I want to say right now that I have been mispronouncing Gurdjieff's name. I think I said Gurdjieff but it is Gurdjieff. I had to get out of Mark's body and think about it so that I will remember it as it is truly pronounced.
You transposed the u and the r.
That doesn't surprise me. When you function through a machine that is not your own it is bound to be coloured somewhat. Your expressions will be coloured by the understanding and education of the machine you are using.
Gurdjieff, if I remember some of his history, was a russian peasant, yet he was more than this. This is what he appeared to be in this life. The man was highly evolved but, using the kind of body he had to use in this life, a kind which was not evolved enough in the nervous system even as Ouspensky's body was not conditioned, the brain was not conditioned for the continued and highly evolved practice that the man went through.
From what I have heard of the terrible conditions under which the russian peasant lived, he could not clean the stables very well,could he?
Well, you see, there is something else. In the beginning of these occult practices you throw aside all moral training that you had. It creates conditions in the nervous system that demand that you do certain things that are quite outside the pale of general moral laws in a social system. You become somewhat of a sexual degenerate in the eyes of those around you. There are all kinds of practices in the experimental stages of the occult work that I don't think I should go into here.
But this is the path he took.
Yes, and this is the path that almost all of these men took in their pursuit of the inner teachings. There was another man...
Crowley?
Crowley, yes. Now there was a man who had become totally degenerate in the eyes of everyone else, but to him, he did not feel it was degeneracy. It was experimentation with all kinds of things to find out the nature of these things. It is too much to go into here.
In all kinds of such activities as Crowley engaged in and in any time in the past social systems that such men as he lived under - they would have been considered insane. And your laws today would put him, and others like him, away; and I believe both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were put away for a time until they could be moved out, and they were secretly moved out of the country. They did not put themselves away; they were put away in mental hospitals.
Professor, I have bought two books by Ouspensky. Now by what you have said I am hesitant to peruse them. I thought that by reading them I would have more of an insight into the occult.
Of course you would have. You would acquire a certain amount of knowledge intellectually and I hope that you will not attempt to practice any of these things. Limit them to knowing about their existence and that these things are possible. In short, knowing them intellectually and not by practice.
But he mentions Yoga in there and he mentions Christianity and all kinds of things.
Oh, yes.
I know through Yada and through other teachers that it is their advice that it is better for us not to be associated with any one group.
Yes, and there is no reason that I can see why you should not read these books; in fact I suggest that you do read them and also that you read the story of the man Crowley, so that you will know that these things do exist and what they lead to, what the practices of them lead to. You see, if you are going to live, and you have to because you have created a family for yourself and have set yourself more in your society. The more a man creates a family for himself, the more he becomes set in the social system that he is functioning in. To start practicing these things would cause you, in time, to have to withdraw from your social system, and your life would become more painful and disturbed.
Well, Professor, since I am not the only one in this particular situation, is there a path, let us say, for the common man or those of us who are intensely interested in becoming more self-aware? Is there something that can lead us to this understanding and yet in moderation or according to the system in which we have to function?
Yes, I think so. By the study of some of the students of psychology and I would suggest Jung as being the greater of those I have known.
The alchemical path starts with simple psychology.
Why, certainly.
Ouspensky seems to think that the psychological factor between art, religion, and science is important and this is really what he is trying to explain.
You don't have to bother yourself with explaining those things; you don't have to bother with it at all.
I suggest we take the path that is more comfortable in relation to our society, our present state of civilization and the laws that we are involved in there. In studying psychology the student must eventually make his own psychology. Study the works of many teacher and then contemplate what you have studied and then create and inject your own thoughts that arise from your feelings over what you have studied. In this way you will be creating your own psychological path, the one that is more suited for you. I think this makes sense.
Study it in a moderate way, I guess we may as well say in balance, for we must maintain balance.
Yes. You see, in your Christian Bible it mentions that the man, Jesus, went down into hell for several days before He arose into heaven.
Yes.
In the study, you see, he took the occult path. He was so advanced in every way, emotionally, mentally, in every way, that He could do this safely. But, you see, He went down into hell and, as I said a little bit ago, on the occult path one must go down into hell before he can rise into heaven or a perfect state of mental balance and it is a bitter, horrible experience that tears at the very foundation of your make-up, the human make-up.
But all these experiences are of the person's own making.
Quite so, quite so, but in taking the occult path you will find the hell of you, and you can't imagine the depth of depravity that this other side of you can sink into.
And the higher you go, the worse it is.
That is so. The higher you are to go, the deeper into hell you must go.
This applies to everyone, even Jesus, but this is not given to the laity to understand.
Exactly so, and it is well. If you think the world is a madhouse now, let us suppose it was for the masses to take up such practices.
It is known on the Tree of Life as the Qlippoth.
Yes.
It is the plane below the physical. It is the bottom.
The bottom is right, and if you are not capable of handling this sort of thing you will go through that state called The-Ring-Pass-Not beyond what is called the Ring Chaos, and into the pit of no return.
Where you are disintegrated and go into unmanifestation with no individuality.
No individuality. It is the true death, the true death that we bring our souls into, if I may use the word souls. I think you understand what I mean by using that word.
Yes.
It is a good thing about nature, it seldom permits us to do more than we know how.
(Professor Luntz withdraws and, after an intermission, Yada takes control.)
I was listening with great interest to the dissertation on the metaphysical, the occult and all such subjects given by my colleague, Professor Alfred Luntz, and I thought, in the asking of the questions that you asked of him, that perhaps I could do a little bit different than what he would give, and so I have come to take his place. It is, perhaps, presumptuous of me to think that I can do better than someone else, but one must presume. If one is going to try to express oneself, one must presume one can.
We would become stagnant if we didn't.
There must be some jumping-off place as it were and if we are going to learn anything we must, in our minds, know that we can.
Now let us first go to what my colleague, Prof. Luntz was talking about, the occult path. Of course, like you say, the occult path is largely given to practices of, and association with, the spirit world and with other forms of life that can be called upon which are not conscious of themselves,but we can make them conscious, we humans, by giving them consciousness by calling upon them, in using sounds, mantrams that are most appealing to these sleeping forces. This awakens their awareness because, in truth, these sleeping forces are not something external to us. They are, indeed, a part of our own make-up, our own nature, our individual nature.
Through the senses and the use of certain sounds, certain tones that are built into the Great Mind, the mind of creation, and the awareness that certain sounds meant certain things, and through long practice of these sounds and by long association, there had been a sort of psychological condition built up that certain sounds are attached to certain gods, certain devils and, in other words, certain forces of life. And so today, centuries, centuries, centuries later, by using these sounds you can still call up so-called gods or forces that these sounds have been associated with. Would you not say so?
Yes. It is as you said a number of years ago; in the spirit world there are many characters that appear in Shakespeare, but they were made by man.
Exactly so.
These gods are made in the same way.
To the lay mind this sounds disturbingly strange because your present day psychology, where the unlearned one is concerned, strictly concerns itself to the material way of living, so the layman and psychologists know nothing apart from the matter-world and the psychology belonging to the matter-world.
Certain irritations act upon the inner make-up, the unconscious self. The same kind of things that irritated me, let us say 500,000 years ago or if I lived in a closer time, by association of memory patterns, these same kind of things create a specific kind of irritation in me which reaches down into my unconscious self and calls up the so-called devils in me. These devils in me are called rages - emotional frustrations that take the form of violence. They are hot. By using that expression hot, I mean their activities on the physical body are burning - they dry up the mouth, they cause trouble with the stomach, a burning desire to throw up, and they can lead to heart attacks, kidney trouble. These are the devils from hell. In some people, when these negative forces, these violent forces, are called upon, they cause to manifest, to materialize a fiendish, insane being.
Now a true sensitive can see these beings closely around and inside the auric egg as you were speaking of a little while ago, of individuals that are not, at the moment they are being observed, angry or disturbed outwardly. But these devils, the imps of our own darkness, our own ignorance, have been created there down through the ages of having them called up. What we are doing is creating them. In calling them up we are creating them, we are bringing these beings, these unconscious parts of ourselves to consciousness. Do I make myself clear?
You are drawing them out.
Yes, and you are making them. You are giving them life, giving them consciousness so that, after a time, they eat on you or me, eat on our physical self and therefore on our mental self. Even when we have no cause to call them up they eat there and we, in our own minds, are quite unaware that they do still exist there. We have given them so much of our consciousness, made them aware, and they thrive on the energies of our physical body.
By occult practices you can call these out and command them to do your bidding. There are certain rites and rituals that you must go through to make them living expressions, but you will regret this if you do it, because you may give them more and more of your consciousness, more of your life forces than you desire to and you may not be able to get rid of them and they will get rid of you. They will destroy your physical self.
Think of what great beings we are, what great, wonderful creators we are. When I say wonderful, I mean of tremendous ability.
It is too bad we do not know what we are doing.
True. Only when we are conscious creators can we be safe, because then we know what we are doing and we know how to get rid of anything that we create if we find it not in keeping with our present environment and general conditions.
In calling these up, in calling anything up, it necessitates the use of your own bodily vital forces. These things are clothed with your own cellular energy, for anything that is called into the world, that is in any way projected into the physical world, is physical. It must become physical, and the only way it can do this by using physical energies. This is why we say, my colleagues Professor Luntz and I, that we put ourselves in great danger when we practice the occult practices. There is a safer way.
The mystical path leads you to the knowledge, to the knowing of what lies behind the facade of your own physical being, without having to face the danger. The metaphysical path is a kind path. It creates the awareness of the beauty and the balance of existence. It does this only by the existence of what you call the etheric world, or, if you care to, call it the spirit world. One side of it is very wonderful because it is through this world that the physical world can exist. The physical world functions through this great sea of spirit. It is kept, every living body is fed, by a continual stream of vital forces.
It is not kept in existence by will-power?
Of course.
And when the will-power is withdrawn it disappears?
It disappears, yes. What a wonderful word, the word will, will-power. The will to create in balance and to keep creation in balance.
Could you see, with another eye, what is going on between these worlds, you would be most astounded at first, and last, perfectly at peace with yourself. You would see that all is in order. Everything is safe as it is. Then this knowledge would keep us from tearing in and cutting up form to see what it is. The world that you move in, called the physical world, would be at peace. Everything would be safe, but you see, the ignorant imp of darkness, meaning ignorance, does not let us live this way and it is well in many ways because it forces us into action and it is only through action that we can truly learn. Only by experience because our experiences create individual attitudes within us about life and about our being. This, our attitudes, it is incorporated into our deeper self. This is called learning, for we never forget. We may forget our experience but we never forget our attitude toward an experience.
We go to what is called the Yoga path. Again we learn by practice, by rites and rituals, but it is mostly associated with what is called the metaphysical and if we do not go too far with the practice, especially with the use of breath because this practice creates phenomena and the student invariably gets lost in the area of phenomena, magic. He is only excited about what he can do and not the purpose back of what he is doing, the causes. The Yoga path is especially good for the physical body, for the welfare, for the development of the physical body and if the physical body is healthy and strong, it is natural that the mind will be so also and will come into better balance.
We quiet the sleeping beast in us by the use of certain kinds of drugs, but we can also stir up those beasts if we do not know what we are doing. By Yoga practices we are taught to keep the inner body clean. The intestinal tract is a notorious center of death in the human body if it is not kept clean. The practice of breath for the benefit of the body, when we know how to do them, clears the toxins out of our system and most important, we come to know what not to put into our bodies, and what not to poison ourselves with, and what is living substance.
We come to no longer hanker after these things because the body has been so cleaned out that there is no irritation and therefore is no demand for these irritations to be satisfied, for irritating substances to be put into the body.
Today you use all manner of irritating substances to bring you rest, or what you thing brings you rest, like the use of tobacco, the use of alcohol, the use of drugs. Even your mild drugs, what you call the sedatives to put you to sleep, sedatives to wake you up and to keep you awake, while these are mild drugs they are still deadly if the use of them is prolonged. These practices of Yoga quiet the nerves. They are the best kind of sedatives. We learn the great wonder of the relaxation of the entire body. Every organ, every muscle becomes relaxed. In becoming relaxed, all the vital energies start flowing smoothly through the nervous system which then feeds the glandular system in a manner which relaxes them. This brings us a longer, happier life. The physical world is hell for man as he walks in ignorance of the nature of his own body and he blames this hell on the world, failing to understand that the only real world is himself.
I do not tell another that he must do this or that. This is foolishness. This is vanity because we all will do what seems best for us to do, no matter how deadly it may be, and others know it is deadly for us. To us it does not seem deadly. One walking in filth soon loses himself in filth and is unaware that it is filth. In the same way one walking in balance soon becomes aware that he is in balance and therefore he is not longer aware of the word balance as meaning something different than what he is in. To hear the rushing of the wind and nothing else, we soon become deaf. Is it not so?
The psychological path! I think it is a wonderful path, especially for the first step, for it is through psychology, the study of it, that we get a road into our own psychological nature. And in so doing we lose our fears. We see what our fears are made up of, we see how they get started, what they are made from, and they vanish.
Again it brings us to that vital thing called relaxation. You see, my friends, why is a person, in some cases made suddenly and seemingly miraculously well, cured of some virulent disease when they were in prayer? It is because they have relaxed. In that moment they have attained a point of relaxation so high, so great, so deep that they have lost themselves in the act of prayer. They have lost themselves in what is called God, or the Great Consciousness, and this God, or this Eternal Light of Consciousness, is this God or Eternal Light of Consciousness sick? Do you see?
Let us go to what is called Christian Science. The majority of the pursuers of this particular path of life are not aware of how they were cured because their teacher has told them that God cured them, and so they do not think any more about it. They are not concerned with the mechanics; and it is just as well that they are not. Can we have balance and unbalance at the same time? Can they exist in the same space at the same time. No more than can two physical objects in the same space at the same time.
In reality, Yada, there is no such thing as unbalance. It is only our attitude toward the thing.
So therefore, it is whatever approach we may make to it. You see what you say is true because as we think, so is it. Now thinking - and by this I do not mean the kind of thing you do with your brain in everyday life; that is not thinking - thinking is creating new ideas, and in order to do this, one must lose ones awareness of ones self. Have you not used the expression when someone comes to you and they see your eyes are looking off into space, and they get your attention again, they do what is called bring you back, you have said, oh, I was lost in thought. What a wonderful truth that is! Is that person, at that moment, suffering any of his pains? No, because his Christ-self, the God-self, whatever you wish to call it, is what he is in; this perfect state of balance. It knows nothing. There is no awareness of unbalance.
What you say is true. There is no unbalance but that which we humans create. Life becomes your choice. The conditions you live in are of your own making. You may say, oh, no, or you may say yes, I agree with you, but what am I going to do, how am I going to change this condition? By the process of learning to think differently, to step aside from your recalling to thinking, and thinking requires concentration, a form of meditation.
It has often been know for a person in the midst of prayer to rise off the ground. The body seems to defy the law of what we call gravity, but in this state of consciousness, this state of awareness, gravity does not exist. The consciousness works upon the molecular structure that it creates a kind of counter- gravity. It does this by arranging forces equally on all sides of the body, mental forces on all sides of the body at one time. This kind of pressure, or relief of pressure, is done by the cells that go to make up the entire body. The work of this causes a different motion, not necessarily of a higher form, but simply of a different character of motion that releases the body from the laws of gravity. You are not defying the law; you are simply creating counter laws. Would you not think so?
Yes. It seems that, at those moments, the person's consciousness is above the level of consciousness at which gravity is effective.
This is so. Now regarding yourselves. I find among you not very many that are trying to discover the nature of their inner being. They are in a hurry. This is natural. This is always the approach of the beginner - impatience.
In taking the first step on the Path which we hope will enlighten us as to our inner nature, the first thing that happens to us is, we become aware of the minute amount of time, relatively speaking, that we, as individuals have in which to learn in the physical world. It sometimes panics us and fills us with despair, especially when we look upon the endless road that seems to lie ahead of us. How many inches have I moved in 500,000 years? How many inches to my goal? I really do not know because I have not been able to see that far enough ahead to see my goal. I know it is there, but just where? How many inches, how many yards? How many miles?
Something like going to the horizon, the farther you go, the farther it is to the goal.
Yes, and you should be grateful for that.
Because if you ever got to it, that would be the end.
That would be IT! You would, as you Americans say, have had it.
It would be total extinction.
Many people think, and it is kind of them, because they do not know this truth, they think that I, Yada, have attained knowledge of life in toto. Now, would I be coming here to communicate with you if I had?
Yada, when you ask that question, I wonder what could be greater than the service to mankind?
Of course. This is what I am coming for; this is my goal and this man's goal. Service in love, which is simply understanding; service in understanding. This takes all before it, all the anxiousness, all the worries out of me.
You can't stop being active in some form.
No, because if you do, you are dead.
Is there any greater action that you could be going through, other than what you are doing now?
Whatever I am doing at any one moment of my self-awareness, I am doing the greatest thing possible to do.
Then there is no one action greater than another.
No.
Only becoming aware of what you are doing is the important thing.
Yes. Now there are certain things that one can become involved in that are more enlightening for that one than certain other things, and that is all; but as for the goal, the goal is in our immediate actions. The ultimate of our being is in now actions.
But we have to go a long way on the Pathway, truly aware that this is so.
Yes, we have to learn many other things before our individual self awakens and everyone awakens at a different time, and no one can say when one is going to awaken. Not even I, in my own progress through life, in my own moving through life, can say when I will be awakened. Why? Awaken to what? Awaken to the meaning of my own actions.
It will be the ninth hour, the hour of completion.
Yes, yes, that is the truth.
That is in the Bible but few recognize it.
Because few understand it.
In the story of the Crucifixion, the ninth hour.
Of course, yes. Santaya Kwantiya, the ninth action, the ninth hour.
Can you elaborate on this?
The Attainment. The conscious attainment of my own being.
Why do you call it the ninth hour?
Because there is no tenth.
It goes to one again?
Yes.
It takes three points to make the triangle and three triangles to make the cycle.
Thank you very much. You see, as we go along things come out that could not otherwise come out. Taking part in this conversation here this evening are certain things that belong to this conversation; that belong to this kind of thinking. They are brought out.
Each thing in its time and place.
This is so. I think it is getting late for you. I have been most honored to come and talk with you and I know my colleague, Professor Luntz, is very pleased that he has had this opportunity to communicate with you.
Goodnight.
