Meditation: The Science of Awakening | Introductory Information

Teachings

Meditation: The Science of Awakening

Meditation is an open doorway within the human being, that opens the way to personal knowledge of any phenomenon in nature. Through the scientific and practical technique of meditation, one no longer needs to believe in anything: one can know.

Physical masses exist that are above and below all of the limits of external sensory perceptions. Those masses are invisible. We can perceive them only with clairvoyance [the ability of the consciousness to see other matter, like in our imagination or dreams].

Matter is condensed energy. When its vibration is very slow, its mass is beneath the limits of external sensorial perceptions. When its vibratory movement is very fast, then the mass is above the limits of external sensory perceptions. With the telescope, we can only see worlds whose degree of vibration is active within the limits of external sensory perception.

Above and below the limits of external sensory perceptions there exist worlds, solar systems, and constellations populated by many types of living beings.

The so-called matter is only energy that condenses into infinite masses.

The senses of external perception only reach a fraction of what is perceivable. - Samael Aun Weor, The Initiatic Path in the Arcana of Tarot and Kabbalah

Meditation is an exact science based on real and tangible energies that are natural to the human being. That which gives us life is the consciousness. By awakening the consciousness, we activate all of the possibilities of the human being.

Meditation is a psychological technology that opens the doors of senses that are now dormant. Modern science tells us that we use only a small fraction of our brain and our endocrine system. Meditation harmonizes and actualizes the full potential of these vehicles of perception.

Meditation is a scientific method to harness and access the most powerful areas of the human psyche. When fully developed, the human psyche becomes a radiant source of peace, wisdom, and conscious action. Meditation facilitiates and empowers these qualities.

Meditation is a set of tools that provide entry to states of consciousness that anyone, anywhere, can enter, if they know the steps. The steps cannot be altered or skipped. They cannot be improved upon. They cannot be avoided. To learn how to meditate does not require money, membership, allegiance or servitude. To learn how to meditate only requires self-analysis, exact science, and a willingness to abandon theories and beliefs in exchange for the experience of the truth.

Meditation is the means to awaken the consciousness in order to perceive the objective truth, without the interference of the mind. The obstacle to truth is our mind. By comprehending the true nature of our mind, we revolutionize it, converting it into a useful tool that can be of great service to humanity.

By means of the science of meditation, any person can have the experience of reality.

To arrive at the experience of reality is only possible when all thoughts have ceased.

The eruption of the Void allows us to experience the bright light of pure reality.

That ever-present knowledge, which in reality is empty, without characteristics or color, devoid of condition, is the true reality, the universal compassion.

Your intelligence, whose true nature is the Void—which must not be seen as a void of nothingness, but as that very intelligence without shackles: brilliant, universal, and happy—is Cognizance, the Buddha, universally wise.

Your own empty cognizance and that brilliant and joyful intelligence are inseparable; their union forms the Dharmakaya, the state of perfect illumination.- Samael Aun Weor, Fundamentals of Gnostic Education

Meditation Methods

When the esotericist submerges himself into meditation, what he seeks is information. - Samael Aun Weor

In every ancient religion, spiritual aspirants were instructed in the method to awaken their consciousness so they could perceive the Divine. Whether organized as the steps of Raja Yoga (Hinduism) or presented as stages of contemplative serenity, such as by the Early Church Fathers (Christianity), or described in abstract symbolism (such as in Ch'an or Zen Buddhism), the phenomena described by these systems are universally available to any human being. Whatever the words and descriptions, the actions and results are available to anyone who makes the effort.

The Gnostic student studies every meditation tradition in order to understand the phenomena they describe. Therefore, in Gnosis you will encounter Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Tibetan, and Latin terms. By understanding these traditions we become empowered to wisely navigate the heights and depths of the human consciousness, and emerge from such experience a wiser, more conscious being.

Unfortunately, in modern times, the ancient methods have largely been abandoned or forgotten. The arrogance of modern humanity reveals itself in the presumption that we in this "advanced age" can improve upon the meditation techniques of our ancestors. We believe that we can invent machines or pills that will render obsolete the knowledge that created the tremendous civilizations of the past. This is a fallacy, and only leads the foolish into deeper suffering. We must recognize that nature never makes leaps: everything must grow and develop according to certain laws. You cannot force a tree to grow faster. We try, and it shows our arrogance and our foolishness. We try to improve nature, and the result is a disaster. The same applies to meditation. There are rules and there are laws; if we understand the rules, we can move directly to our goal. If we ignore the rules, we will get nowhere and we will instead become disillusioned or confused.

Many nowadays are using chemical or mechanical tools to attempt to force states of consciousness. They may enter altered states of consciousness; but this is not meditation.

Meditation is the science of activating the dormant consciousness that resides in the psyche of every human being. To activate this consciousness is to open one's inner perception, to see what cannot be seen with the physical sight. The method to arrive at this experience is the same no matter what meditation tradition one studies: to develop inner perception, you must first control your perception of here and now.

In the Gnostic tradition, you will find hundreds of meditation techniques, each with a specific function and appropriate use. Yet, all of them depend upon a single basis: the moment to moment awakening of the consciousness. The development of a robust and effective meditation practice depends entirely upon a rigorous and consistent effort to be continually in a state of conscious awareness of oneself. For this, we have to study our mind.

The world is nothing but an illusory mental form that inevitably will be dissolved at the end of the Great Cosmic Day.

Myself, your body, my friends, your things, my family, etc., are (in their depth) what the Hindustani call Maya (illusion): vain mental forms that sooner or later must be reduced to cosmic dust.

My affections, my most beloved beings that surround me, etc., are simply forms of the cosmic mind. They do not have real existence.

Intellectual dualism such as pleasure and pain, praise and slander, triumph and defeat, wealth and misery, constitute the painful mechanism of the mind.

True happiness cannot exist within each one of us while we are slaves to the mind.

To ride the donkey (the mind) in order to enter into the heavenly Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is urgent. Disgracefully, nowadays, the donkey rides us, the miserable mortals of the mud of the earth.

No one can know the Truth while being a slave to the mind. That which is Reality is not a matter of suppositions but of direct experience.

Jesus, the great Kabir, said, “Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” [John 8:32] However, I tell you that Truth is not a matter of affirmation or negation, of belief or doubt. The Truth must be directly experienced while in the absence of the “I,” beyond the mind.

Whosoever liberates the self from the intellect can experience, can vividly verify, can feel an element that radically transforms.

When we liberate ourselves from the mind, then this mind is converted into a ductile, elastic, and useful vehicle with which we express ourselves in this conscious world.

Superior logic invites us to realize that liberating, emancipating ourselves from the mind, releasing ourselves from all mechanicity, is equivalent in fact to the awakening of the consciousness, to the termination of automatism.

That which is beyond the mind is Brahma, the uncreated eternal space, that which has no name, the Reality.

But let us study the facts: who is the one that wants to release himself, to liberate himself from the mortifying mind?

It is easy to answer this question by saying that the consciousness, the Buddhist interior principle, that part of the soul that we have within us, is what can and must be liberated. Indeed, by itself, the purpose of the mind is only the bitter-ness of our existence.

Authentic, legitimate, real happiness is only possible when we emancipate ourselves from the intellect.

However, we must recognize that an inconvenience exists, as well as a capital obstacle and impediment in order to acquire that longed for liberation of the Essence. I am referring to the tremendous struggle of antitheses.

The Essence, the consciousness, even when of a Buddhic nature, disgracefully lives bottled up within the exaggerated intellectual dualism of the opposites: yes and no, good and evil, high and low, mine and yours, like and dislike, pleasure and pain, etc.

By all means, it is illuminating to deeply comprehend that when this tempest in the ocean of the mind ceases and the struggle between the opposites finishes, the Essence can escape and submerge itself within that which is the Reality.

What is very difficult, laborious, arduous, and strenuous is the achievement of absolute mental silence in all and each one of the forty-nine subconscious departments of the mind.

To reach, to obtain quietude and silence in the mere superficial intellectual level, or in some of the subconscious departments of the mind, is not enough, because the Essence continues to be bottled up within submerged infraconscious and unconscious dualism.

A blank mind is something extremely superficial, hollow, and intellectual. We need serene reflection if we truly want to achieve the quietude and absolute silence of the mind.

The Chinese word “Mo” signifies silence or serenity, and the word “Chao” signifies to reflect or to observe.

Consequently, Mo Chao can be translated as “serene reflection” or “serene observation.”

However, it is important to comprehend that in pure Gnosticism, the terms serenity and reflection have much more profound meanings and therefore should be comprehended with special connotations.

The sense of serenity transcends that which is normally understood as calmness or tranquility. It implies a superlative state which is beyond reasoning, desires, contradictions, and words. It signifies a situation that is beyond mundane noise.

The sense of reflection in itself is beyond what is always understood as contemplation of a problem or idea. Here this word does not imply mental activity or contemplative thought, but rather a type of objective consciousness, clear and reflective, always illuminated within its own experience.

Therefore, serenity signifies the serenity of no thought, and reflection signifies intense and clear consciousness.

Serene reflection is the clear consciousness within the tranquility of no thought. When perfect serenity reigns, true, profound illumination is achieved. - Samael Aun Weor, The Gnostic Magic of the Runes