Description of

Elisabeth Haich’s painting on the cover

If we cultivate spiritual awareness and attain the universal consciousness, we acquire mastery over
the 7 natural forces which, when harnessed to pull in one direction, can carry us to the goal with
incredible swiftness.
The picture symbolizes this state. The figure representing the spirit is standing in the triumphal
chariot. One hand is radiating the power which directs the natural forces. In the left hand is held a
prayer wheel such as is used in Tibet and which symbolizes unity with the Divine. The horses race
with this figure to the goal where we achieve the perfection which Christ intimated to us in the
words: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.”
Elisabeth Haich 1976

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Sexual Energy and Yoga
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By Elisabeth Haich
INIATION
WISDOM OF THE TAROT
THE DAY WITH YOGA
By Elisabeth Haich and Selvarajan Yesudian
RAJA YOGA
YOGA AND DESTINY
YOGA AND HEALTH

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SEXUAL ENERGY AND YOGA

by Elisabeth Haich
translated by D. Q. Stephenson

P.O. Box 573 Santa Fe, N.M. 87504

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© Elisabeth Haich 1982
No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical,
photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a
phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system,
transmitted, translated into another language, or otherwise copied
for public or private use, excepting brief passages quoted for
purposes of review, without the permission of the publisher.
First published in 1982 by:
Aurora Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 573
Santa Fe, N.M. 87504
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 0-943358-03-5
Library of Congress Catalogue No: 74-83158
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I dedicate this book to
those ambitious people who demand the best
of life and of themselves
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ELISABETH HAICH
AND
SELVARAJAN
YESUDIAN
With Mrs. Haich’s
painting and sculpture
Zurich, Switzerland
1981
© Barbara Somerfield
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Contents

Preface by Dr Helmut Speer

Introduction
1 What is Sexuality?
2 Recognition and Being are One
3 The Creative Primal Serpent
4 Sexual Energy in its False and True Light
5 Jacob's Ladder
6 The Judas Betrayal
7 The Magical Pwers of Suggestion, Hypnosis and Mediumship
8 The Seven Rungs of Jacob's Ladder
9 Saint George
10 Urge for Unity and its Corruptions
11 The Sun - Creator and Destroyer of Life
12 The Magic Flower
13 Practice
Conclusion

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 FACTS ABOUT ELISABETH HAICH
Elisabeth Haich, March 20, 1897-July 31, 1994, was the second of
four children born into an upper middle class family in Budapest,
Hungary. Even as a young child, her unique gifts were expressed as
a pianist, painter and sculptress. Her sculptures are exhibited in
Hungary, as monuments and in plazas. She was married and had
one son who later joined her in teaching Yoga in Switzerland. In
close connection with Selvarajan Yesudian, she began giving Yoga
lectures in 1939.
At the end of World War II, she was forced to leave Hungary with
the assistance of Selvarajan Yesudian and resettled in Switzerland
where she lived until the end of her life. In cooperation with
Yesudian, she began the oldest and largest Yoga school in Europe.
In 1953 Elisabeth Haich wrote her bestselling book, Initiation,
which has been translated into seventeen languages with millions
of copies sold worldwide. Her other books include, The Day With
Yoga, Sexual Energy and Yoga, Wisdom of the Tarot and authored
with Selvarajan Yesudian, Self Healing Yoga and Destiny. All of
these titles are published by Aurora Press in English.
Until the end of her life, Elisabeth Haich lectured and counseled
seekers.
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Illustrations

The figure of the god Shiva, who unites the two sexes within himself.
Yin and Yang, the positive pole and the negative pole.
Representation of God in Ancient Mexico.
The first and lowest tarot card.
The last and highest tarot card.
Mestrovic: the eternally crucified Christ: Ottavice.
Rosicrucian view of the role of sexual energy in making the philosopher’s
stone (detail at top left of picture).
St George slays the dragon of sexual energy.
Fifteenth tarot card: Satan as the law of matter.
Rosicrucian view of the twofold role and power of sexual energy.
Rosicrucian representation of a ‘hermaphrodite’, master of sexual energy.
Three exercises described in Chapter 13, ‘Practice’: Headstand; Candle
Posture; Shoulderstand.

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Preface

In theoretical research and psychotherapeutic practice modern depth

psychologists have inevitably been brought into contact with mythology
and religion and have come to see and understand legends and fairy tales in
terms of their discipline. They have likewise extended their research to
include the mysticism and alchemy of the Middle Ages and have also found
many points of contact with eastern philosophies and religions. The
relationship between Yoga and depth psychology is particularly clear.
All the same, the many and various identities between depth psychology
and Yoga have led depth psychologists to different conclusions. Some place
depth psychology and Yoga more or less on a par, others try to understand
experience acquired through Yoga and meditation in terms of the
symbolism of depth psychology, and others again even attempt to explain
Yoga by means of depth psychology.
J. H. Schultz finds many points in common between the highest level of
autogenous training and Raja Yoga. He also believes that a comparison of
their own technique with that of Hatha Yoga is particularly instructive for
practitioners of autogenous training. The passive exercises in the lying and
sitting posture of autogenous training are paralleled by two asanas of Hatha
Yoga, the basic sitting posture and the dead posture. On the other hand
Schultz believes there is no connection between autogenous training and the
Hatha Yoga exercises involving movement and Yoga breathing. Schultz
hopes through autogenous training to annex the actual substance of Yoga
exactly in the same way as, he believes, the actual substance of mystic
magnetism has been annexed by rational hypnotherapy.
Autogenous training, however, is not really a method which has
scientifically pinpointed and evaluated the true nature of Hatha or Raja
Yoga but is rather a Yoga which is incompletely understood. Autogenous
training will be able to annex the actual substance of Hatha Yoga and Raja
Yoga only if it itself becomes Yoga. It must be remembered in this
connection that, although there are various paths of Yoga, that is to say,
various forms of Yoga, Yoga has but one aim.
Even as a half-understood form of Yoga autogenous training is one of the
greatest blessings of modern psychotherapy. What a blessing, then, a fully
understood Yoga would be for depth psychology and psychotherapy!
Langen holds that the highest states of consciousness attained through
Yoga exercises and meditation are forms of hypnosis. We believe it is
perfectly right for Yoga and meditation to be included with due care in the
scope of research in depth psychology. But it would be wrong for
investigators to attempt to explain the phenomena of Yoga and meditation
in terms of depth psychology in its present state. This would lead to false
conclusions. Instead the investigators must first meditate and perform Yoga
exercises themselves for some years and then try to describe what they have
experienced.
After such research the depth psychologists would be in a position to
distinguish between states of expanded consciousness and states of reduced
consciousness. They would also have a clearer understanding of the
phenomena which they all at present ascribe to hypnosis.
At the beginning of the age of depth psychology the existence of the
unconscious mind was denied by many psychiatrists in the light of their
theoretical knowledge. Anyone who at that time had witnessed the power of
the unconscious in himself and in patients could only greet this denial with
a smile. It is rather the same today when we read psychological treatises on
Yoga and meditation. To practise Yoga and meditation for some time is to
realize clearly the difference between the present state of depth psychology
and Yoga. For the highest stages of Yoga exercises and meditation are not
hypnotic states with a reduced or restricted consciousness but states of the
very highest consciousness with a vast expansion of awareness.
Jung called depth analysis in psychology the modern form of initiation.
The inner spiritual processes taking place during analysis are compared by
him to the development a man experiences before and during initiation.
Jung considers that the great eastern philosophers are symbolic
psychologists. The ‘diamond body’ of the East and the ‘resurrected body’
of Christians strike him as curious psychological facts. He also regards the
whole of medieval alchemy as psychological symbolism. Jung speaks of the
self and the way to the self; he speaks of Christ as the archetype.
 Jung is certainly right when he holds that what is called metaphysical
must be accessible to mental experience otherwise it could have no effect at
all on mankind. Jung formulates no propositions concerning the
metaphysical but describes forms in which the metaphysical can be
experienced. For him these forms are the symbols.
It therefore remains an open question whether the self of which he
speaks is the same as the self of Yoga. It remains an open question whether
the ‘archetype Christ’ is the same as the ‘living Christ’.
Jung compares religious and philosophical ideas from the East and West
from the standpoint of psychological symbolism and finds there are marked
differences. For example, he compares the ‘sorrow-laden hero Christ’ with
the ‘golden flower’ of the East or contrasts the ‘historical personal Christ’
with the saying of the Eastern sage Hui Ming King: ‘Without coming into
being, without passing away, without past, without future.’
These comparisons, however, are not just, for Jung has compared forms
of expression from different levels of knowledge. If comparisons are to be
made, the comparisons in East and West must be made at the same level of
knowledge. In a proper comparison the equivalent of the ‘golden flower’ of
the East is the ‘rosy cross’ in the West. The counterpart of the words of Hui
Ming King is then Christ’s saying: ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’
We believe that if legitimate comparisons are made, no difference will be
found between what the East and the West want to say.
The essential difference between Jung’s understanding of the matter and
our own is that we believe that the bounds of the metaphysical accessible to
mental experience are very much wider for the man who practises Yoga and
meditates than for the man whose approach to the metaphysical is through
the concepts of depth psychology.
Yoga and meditation or the exercises of the Rosicrucians open up to
mental experience metaphysical realms which are closed to the depth
psychologist.
The descriptions given by oriental sages of their experience in Yoga and
meditation are not symbols for psychological experience but are the very
experience itself. Neither the ‘diamond body’ of the East nor the
‘resurrected body’ of the Christian West is a symbol for a psychological fact
but is this fact itself. And alchemy is not limited merely to describing the
happenings of depth psychology but describes a process of development
taking place in man’s body and soul which leads in actual fact and not
symbolically to the coming to consciousness of the spirit in the resurrected
body.
Depth psychologists owe Jung an enormous debt for having shown them
the way to oriental wisdom, to Yoga, and to meditation. It simply remains
for the depth psychologists to tread this path themselves.
To avoid misunderstanding let us stress that we do not wish to oppose
Yoga to modern depth psychology. It is simply a matter of maintaining the
correct relationship between the two. In reality Yoga is superordinate to
depth psychology. It is not Yoga that is contained in depth psychology but
depth psychology that is contained in Yoga. Yoga must point the way for
the future research of depth psychologists. For Yoga contains everything
that can be said about the unconscious, the conscious and the
supraconscious. But in investigating these propositions the investigators
must not proceed from theoretical assumptions but acquire experience by
performing the exercises themselves.
It is impossible to perform Yoga exercises regularly and for any length of
time without a confrontation with oneself in the sense of modern depth
psychology. Devotees of Yoga who imagine they can proceed along the
path of Yoga without having to confront their own unconscious mind are
greatly mistaken. Yoga exercises are good for men and women; through
them they become healthier, more vital and capable of greater achievement.
But for everyone who does Yoga and meditates there comes a point in his
inner development where the confrontation with his own personal
unconscious becomes inescapable. If this confrontation fails to materialize,
then even the Yoga practitioner is afflicted by a neurosis.
On the other hand everyone who practises the methods of depth
psychology will one day undergo experiences which transcend the bounds
of the depth psychology we know and are only describable in Yoga.
Yoga and depth psychology both aim to expand the conscious mind. In
the depth psychologist’s treatment of a neurosis unconscious material which
according to the normal circumstances of life properly belongs to the
conscious mind is raised to the conscious level. That is to say, in healing
neuroses by psychotherapy the conscious mind is restored to its normal
condition.
 The performance of Yoga exercises also makes unconscious material
conscious. But with Yoga exercises and meditation the human
consciousness can be extended beyond the normal bounds to a higher state
of consciousness.
Anyone who has learnt in psychological work how to make unconscious
material conscious will already know something about the method of
raising the conscious mind to a higher level of consciousness. The patient
who has been cured of a neurosis by psychotherapy is thus better able to
develop his consciousness than an average person for whom the idea of
growing awareness is somewhat foreign. The experience he has had to go
through in overcoming the neurosis may make a man understand the
process of the gradual development of human consciousness and induce
him to promote this development by a conscious effort.
Here no doubt we find the deeper significance for mankind of the
psychological knot we call a neurosis. And here too is the deeper
significance of the work of the psychotherapist who helps in the
development of consciousness.
In this book Elisabeth Haich shows what sexual energy really is and how
through Yoga this energy can be converted into the highest consciousness.
Sexuality and the highest consciousness are two different forms in which
the one divine creative force, the Logos, is manifested. Sexual energy, the
lowest form of the Logos, can in man become the highest form of the
Logos, divine consciousness.
In the description of this transformation of energies it is quite clear that
Yoga also embraces the spiritual processes which we today refer to as depth
psychology. But at the same time it is quite obvious how far Yoga
transcends modern depth psychology.
Elisabeth Haich warns against trying to skip stages of consciousness. She
shows how the power of sexual energy can be recognized and how sexuality
must first be experienced before it can be transformed. The author also
describes the abnormal reactions and disturbances that may ensue if anyone
attempts to put his consciousness through a process of development for
which he is not yet mature. Here we are confronted with the whole modern
psychology of the unconscious.
The author then goes on to describe stages in the development of
consciousness which are still unknown to depth psychologists. Even the
magical powers acquired through expanded consciousness are discussed
and the nature of these powers is shown.
Reading this book makes us aware that Freud intuitively grasped the true
nature of sexuality. Throughout his life he struggled with the concept of the
libido and continually reformulated it. In his view it was to be understood
not only in the narrow sense of sexuality but also in a much wider and more
comprehensive sense.
Freud also saw that sexuality can be transformed into spiritually creative
power and called this process sublimation.
However, sublimation and the process which Elisabeth Haich calls
transformation of sexual energy are not the same. Freud saw sublimation as
the possibility of being able to deal meaningfully with sexuality without
repression. The sexual energy transformed by Yoga on the other hand will
lead man to the highest form of consciousness.
Even so it was Freud’s genius that saw in the ‘libido’ and ‘sublimation’
the energies and potentialities which are vital and necessary for the
development of human consciousness.
Growing consciousness is the purpose of human life, and the highest
consciousness is the goal of human development. This development
proceeds stepwise from man the creature of unconscious impulses to the
fully conscious God-man.
Modern depth psychology can help us along a part of this path of
development but only Yoga and meditation can bring us to the goal.
H. S.

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Introduction

In writing this book I have felt free to express my thoughts in simple terms
and have therefore retained the old, not yet hackneyed words, without using
new, scientific-sounding ones for concepts already named in the oldest
books of mankind. Thus the primal source of all life, which no scientist can
explain, is designated by the old word ‘God’. If we think of new words in
order to prevent people from clinging to their old erroneous interpretations
of that word, then they will transfer their misconceptions to the meaning of
the new words. To fight against ignorance is futile. Those, however, who
sense a true concept of God behind the so-called modern terms, will also
perceive it in the old word ‘God’. Why should we therefore change the
words? We may be satisfied if, in the very depths of our soul, we can have a
humble, reverent intimation of God. Through rational knowledge we cannot
reach God. Knowledge, recognition can be attained only by comparison
through the tree of knowledge of good and evil — but God cannot be
compared to anything, to anything at all. Therefore we can never recognize
God, we can never know what God is, we can only be God.
Men of science take painstaking care to avoid the use of this concept and
word ‘God’. We sense their fear that in the final analysis it might not sound
scholarly enough if they were to use the simple word ‘God’. This fear,
however, is only common to those who are not real, genuine scholars. For if
Spinoza, Newton or Einstein, for instance, through the science of
mathematics, came to find and accept God as the primal cause of all being,
and to accept his existence as proven, then it is with a good conscience that
the ancient Biblical word ‘God’ can be retained in this book for the ultimate
origin of origins. This word, then, is used here not in a religious-sentimental
sense, but in line with the usage of Spinoza, Newton and Einstein. We are
content if the reader experiences the same deep devotion, reverence and
humility before this word as was felt by these greatest scholars of all time.
In these feelings the simple man meets with the truly great man of science,
just as in the Biblical account the simple shepherds met with the magicians
at the highest level of knowledge. We have therefore attempted to express
matters in such a way that they will be understood equally well by the
simple ‘shepherds’ and by the ‘magician’.
The word ‘love’ also presented me with a problem. Since there are
various expressions in the Hungarian language for the various
manifestations of love, we Hungarians cannot understand how the same
word ‘love’ can be used to describe one’s feelings for God, one’s parents, a
child, one’s native country, sweetheart, neighbour, but also for a dog or a
horse. In Hungarian there are different expressions for all these different
kinds of love, and these clearly show why and whom we love. For the
understanding of this book, however, it is very important that we correctly
understand the various feelings of love. Thus, in order to avoid
misunderstanding I had to clarify these different kinds of love by
paraphrase. As a result, the text became more cumbersome than I could
have wished. But I had no alternative.
Elsewhere too in this book, things will be mentioned for which there are
no appropriate words in a Western language. Let us remember the
difficulties that are involved in the mere accurate description of a dream. In
the depths of the Self there are no dimensions, just as there is no concept of
time, and frequently also no personal feeling. How can one then describe
the experiences which take place in the depths of the soul and which we
experience as pure states of being within us, if no appropriate words exist?
Therefore, it was exceedingly difficult for me to speak of concepts for
which there is no good and apt translation in English or German, and yet
more difficult to explain concepts for which here in the West there are no
words at all. That is why it is impossible to translate, for instance, Sanskrit,
Chinese, Tibetan or Hungarian texts into Western languages. One is
therefore left with the necessity of paraphrase. But in spite of all efforts to
make states of being comprehensible through words, these descriptions
remain only external representations of what happens. They do not become
states of being as long as the reader himself is not able to experience these
descriptions within himself, in his spirit, as a state of being.
What is said here is equally valid for both sexes. Nevertheless, I have
generally only referred to the male, since it would have been too laborious
to repeat the same thing each time for the female. In order not to make the
text unbearably cumbersome, I have chosen the ‘crown of creation’, man, to
discuss the problems of sexuality. So that misunderstanding does not arise,
however, I should like to emphasize that everything said in this book about
sexuality and the development of consciousness, applies as much to the
female as to the male.
This book, like every book on Yoga, only has genuine value if we put
into practice what has been written and try it out on ourselves. No matter
how beautifully we may describe the best and most nourishing foods and
the most refreshing drinks to a hungry and thirsty man, and no matter how
avidly he may read, and only read, these descriptions, he will never be
sated. After reading the most beautiful books he will continue to be hungry
and thirsty and to seek food and drink. Therefore we must practise Yoga
and not only read about it! This is particularly true of this book, since it
tries to reveal the deepest secrets of the higher level of Yoga. This secret of
the higher level of Yoga is the stimulation and use of the latent nerve and
brain centres, which are the seat of the spiritual centres, termed chakras in
the philosophy of Yoga, and the use of the only fuel absolutely
indispensable for this purpose — sexual energy. But we leave it to the
person who seeks and desires to find the ultimate sources of life to put that
secret into practice, to test the truth of it on ourselves, to learn and derive
immense profit from it. The hungry and thirsty must themselves eat and
drink!
My final and perhaps most important point is that this book can only be a
real guide to those people who, moved by an unquenchable thirst for God,
wish to tread the steep path to the kingdom of heaven. Those who take this
path because they lack the courage for the outer and inner struggles of life
cannot profit from my instructions. For those people, too, who for some
reason cannot attain a life in the world — which is what they really desire
above all else therefore for those who have not yet passed through life in
this world, and seek God only out of fear or helplessness, this book can at
best offer curious reading matter or perhaps even an experiment.
Only for those who genuinely seek God does it have supreme
significance, for as long as we cannot be children we cannot become adults.
The childhood that we have not experienced draws us back!
My mother-tongue is an Asiatic primitive language and for this reason,
as said already, many words have had to be paraphrased. My dear friends
helped me to overcome these difficulties with endless patience and here
also I wish to convey to them my most sincere gratitude. I wish to extend
this gratitude in particular to Dr Helmut Speer, who enriched the book with
a preface, and moreover gave me a number of valuable suggestions.

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Chapter 1
What is Sexuality?

In God the two poles rest within each other in perfect unity and absolute
equilibrium. In this state there is no tension but neither is there creation.
Creation begins with the negative pole being expelled from this unity and
the two poles consequently drawing apart and becoming opposed to each
other as force and resistance. Yet be they never so far removed from each
other, the unity between the two poles never ceases to exist; they belong to
each other through all eternity: they can never be completely sundered,
unity continues to subsist between them as a magical tension of infinite
power which draws the two poles back to each other without intermission in
order to restore the original condition of rest between them.
On this tension the whole of creation is borne. Without it no creation, no
life, is possible, for this very tension is life. This means that every living
creature contains these two poles within itself, as its vital self, otherwise it
could not live at all. In man the seat of the positive pole is in the skull, and
of the negative pole in the coccyx at the base of the spine, and the tension
between the two constitutes life.
Life must be propagated in the new living creature, and for a new living
creature to come into being, the two opposed poles must create between
them a new vital tension out of which new life can be engendered. Even
though every living creature, including man, bears this vital tension
between the two poles in its spine, it nevertheless manifests in its body only
one pole, which awaits conjunction with a contrary pole from outside
before it can transmit life in a new living creature. In his physical
consciousness as a human being, man has no inkling that he bears within
his spirit, within his true self, these two poles. He identifies himself with his
body, which under the present order of Nature, manifests only one pole and
seeks completion from outside, from another person manifesting the
opposite pole. The perfect unification of the two poles in the same body is
impossible, for matter isolates, separates and offers resistance. Even so, the
two poles strive for unity in and through the body and they seek a way of
attaining rest in each other and at least of imitating the primal state. The two
poles are manifested in the body in the two sexes by the genital organs
which enable physical unity to be attained sexually for a short time. Since
the repose of the two poles in each other is the primal state of God, of
being, of life, the reunification of the two poles — the encounter of the two
sexes — engenders a new tension, a new life, a new creature in a cell suited
to the purpose. This in turn bears within itself the divine tension of life, but
again manifests only one pole in its body — one sex — through which
earthly life is transmitted by the recurrent union of the sexes. This is
sexuality.
The energy which is manifested through sexuality and which is the link
between spirit and matter and thus possesses the important faculty of
helping a spirit into the body, of impregnating matter with new life, is
called ‘sexual energy’.
But, although man with his consciousness has fallen out of the
paradisiacal primal state in which both poles repose in each other, he feels,
although quite unconsciously, that such a primal state remains a possibility
and, out of his knowledge of the manifested half, he yearns to be restored to
the wholeness which he bears in his spirit, in his own life, which he himself
always was, is, and will be. He does not realize that he can attain this primal
state of conscious wholeness of his own being in his physical, earthly life,
and still less does he realize that the only means capable of helping him to
do this is his own sexual energy. Sexual energy, then, holds for man a secret
which has nothing to do with the procreation of new life. just as sexual
energy has helped man out of his spiritual state into the body, so it can help
him to return in full awareness to his divine primal state of wholeness.
At the same time this secret means that the attributes of sexual energy —
if he does not expend this life-giving and life-creating power but retains it
for his own body — can, on the one hand, replenish his body with life,
enhance his inner vitality, keep him in the bloom of youth or regenerate
him, and, on the other hand, by enhancing his vitality, wake, stimulate and
activate his higher nerve and brain centres and arouse them out of their
previously latent condition. These nerve plexuses and brain centres in the
body serve to manifest and sustain the purely intellectual focuses which
man bears in his spiritual being and which are termed chakras in the
philosophy of Yoga. And if through the action of life-giving sexual energy
which has not been expended but retained for his own body, these focuses
or chakras are enabled to manifest themselves, then man attains mastery
over the forces of Nature in his own being and, through his consciously
developed hypnotic power of suggestion, in every living creature. He
attains divine all-consciousness, he becomes a whole, an illuminate, a man
of magic, a white magician.
This book is intended as an approach to the secret of how a human being
can attain this level of universal consciousness with the aid of controlled
sexual energy and how he can obtain mastery over natural forces. But not
for everyone! For there are two kinds of people on earth. The living who are
already ‘human beings’. And the dead who are simply ‘men’ and ‘women’.
The living, like the dead, carry a body with them — they live in a body
— and since the human body under the present order of Nature manifests
only one half of the whole, only one pole, the living, like the dead, bear in
their body only one half of the whole, one pole, one sex. And so, although
the living also have a body and perhaps lead a healthy sex life based on
love, they are nevertheless aware that sexuality and all the problems arising
from sexuality originate only in the body, belong only to the body and not
to their true being, their spirit, their self. The spirit — the true Ego, also
called the Self — has no sex, and consequently a human being who has
attained consciousness in his spirit, in his true being, a human who is awake
and alive, no longer seeks the half in everything but the whole, the absolute;
no longer the transient, the physical, but the eternal, the divine. His
problems do not stem from the sexuality of the body but, if at all, from the
contrast between the earthly-physical and the spiritual-divine. His goal is to
become conscious in spirit and to obtain complete mastery over the body
and over all the forces at his disposal in his true being. In their
consciousness these people stand above sexuality, above sex, and are
already ‘human beings’ even if at a physical level they perhaps still lead a
sex life. It is their aim to reach what the highest card of the tarot pack
illustrates so vividly: the great Self, the great Ego, which no longer
manifests sex, because it has consciously united the two sexes in itself and
is consequently a whole, and lets the homunculus, which is a physical being
and still belongs to a sex, dance on his hand like a little marionette, as an
agent of manifestation, because its role in the earthly-material world so
wishes.
The ‘dead’, still unconscious in spirit and leading a purely physical
existence, who do not yet live themselves (only their body is alive), are at
first still separate sexual beings and think only in terms of sex. They are still
the tiny marionettes, the homunculi, which dance round on the palm of the
great Ego and play their role. They are still only one half of the whole; they
are first and foremost ‘men’ and ‘women’. For them there exists only sex
and nothing else. Even the other great instinct, self-preservation, exists for
them solely as a servant of sensuality and sex; they eat, drink and indulge in
dainties only so as to be as healthy as they can and to squeeze the last ounce
of sexuality out of their bodies. Earning one’s bread and butter, making
money, succeeding in a career, making contact with other people,
everything they say, tell, write and do, has only one motivating force: the
sex drive. It is their supreme ambition and pride to attain the acme of sexual
potency and amorous success. Of course, since they have never attained
consciousness of spirit, they are left, once over-use saps their bodies, with
nothing but their own infinite emptiness and, as their bodies decay, they are
plunged into ever profounder darkness and senility. At birth their spirit died
to the body and their consciousness lives and dies with the life and death of
the body. Christ calls them ‘the dead who bury their dead’ and Paul says of
them that they are ‘the natural man [who] receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him’. This book was not written
for these people, for they would never understand it and would regard it as
foolishness.
But there are ‘people’ who have seen that those who grow weak and
senile with age are not the only inhabitants of the earth but that there have
been at all times people who, as they have grown old, and often very old,
have not become senile but have, from day to day, grown richer in mind,
wiser, more knowledgeable, powerful and potent, and who, like Goethe for
instance, have even preserved the beauty of their bodies. There are people
who have already seen that there are two kinds of human beings on earth,
let us call them, as we choose, the living and the dead, the wakeful and the
sleepers, the conscious and the unconscious, and who have become dimly
aware of the background of this difference and would like to follow these
examples. It was for them that this book was written. For those who
understand or would like to understand why Paul said: ‘Why fearest thou
Death, thou fool; we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed!’ That is
to say, we do not all lose our consciousness in death. For all those who seek
the path from the bondage of the body to the freedom of the spirit, this book
was written.
We want to pass on to others the crystallized and clarified results of the
ancient philosophy of Yoga and the observations and experience we have
garnered during several decades. This experience was not derived from
books, not affected by the various ingeniously conceived scientific theses
that change every ten years, but, free from all imposed influences, has been
discovered, experienced and felt on our own path through life.
It is important at this stage to stress one point in particular. Just as no two
people are the same, so no two paths are identical. Human destinies vary
enormously, and so do the paths we all follow to the final goal. It is
extremely rare for two people of opposite sexes to come together, for each
to be the complement of the other in perfect harmony, and for both to
achieve a truly gladdening oneness. But it is rarer still for two people who
have captured this wonderful togetherness to maintain it throughout a
lifetime till they are parted by death. And so if two people have been
vouchsafed God’s exceptional gift of a life spent together in such inner
harmony, let them enjoy this rare union and be grateful. If this book should
fall into their hands, they may rest assured it is not meant for them. Yet they
should remember that there are many of their fellow human beings who
perhaps also once found a similar sense of belongingness but, through force
of circumstances, lost it again very soon afterwards and remained alone.
And there are many, very many, who never at any time in their lives have
found such a bond but must lead a life of loneliness from beginning to end,
as if God wanted to show that the answer to their problem must be sought
and found not in personal relations but in some other way. For these and
others who feel a deep inner urge to seek and find God this book may be a
help and a guide.
It is not our intention to wean aspirants to the path of Yoga away from a
healthy human attitude towards earthly life and earthly love. Indeed, the
very opposite is true: what we want to do is to induce such an attitude in
everyone, for our path must and can start only in health. But Yoga is the
healthiest and therefore the shortest path of development by which human
beings advance to the highest goal, to God.
This path, starting from the first awakening, from the deepest, dimmest,
still semi-feral level of consciousness and progressing to perfect self-
knowledge, to divine self-awareness, and true oneness with God, we call
Yoga.
And since the driving force which helps man to tread this path, to climb
ever farther and higher along it, and indeed even impels him, and manifests
itself at its lowest level in the body, where it represents the link between
mind and matter, is sexual energy, Yoga and sexual energy cannot be
separated from each other.
To tread the path of Yoga does not mean that we must embrace an
abstemious life. At the beginning of the Yoga path we must first learn how
to live healthily in every way, with Nature and not against Nature. This
includes healthy eating and drinking and, of course, a healthy erotic life.
Yoga teaches us how one first becomes healthy in mind, in spirit, and thus
in body, and how one lives healthily. How can one give up sex life if he has
never yet known what a healthy sex life means?
The later stages at which one grows out of the body more and more into
the spirit would be attained by everyone in any case as a natural
development of the conscious mind, for this development is inherent in us
just as a plant or flower contains the process whereby it first takes root, then
puts out leaves, produces flowers, and finally reaches the climax when it
brings forth fruit because this goal was always latent in the seed. And man,
too, carries within him like seed the ability to reach the highest goal — God
— and to become a God-man. Following the natural laws, however, this
path of natural development takes a very long time, perhaps thousands of
years; it is laborious and fraught with sorrows, and may need many
reincarnations. But man bears a secret faculty within himself, in his own
sexual energy, by which he can realize this development and evolution in a
much shorter time. Just as one can use artificial means of forcing flowers so
that they blossom much earlier than they would in Nature, so man can
achieve maturity much earlier on his inward path to consciousness with the
various methods of Yoga which quicken our inner development. None of
the stages of development may be omitted but time can be shortened like a
telescope. As the flower needs extra warmth for this process, so man also
needs extra warmth and vitality kindled by the secret fire. And the fuel —
the secret fire of the Rosicrucians — is, as we have said, sexual energy.
Between the natural kind of development and the development quickened
by sexual energy there is, however, a very great difference. It does not
reside merely in the fact that the goal, universal consciousness, is attained
much more quickly but also in the fact that man, during the time he is
learning about this possibility and putting it into practice, is still in
possession of his full sexual potency, and is capable not only of covering
the path of spiritual development much more expeditiously but also, and at
the same time, of laying hold of the vitalizing force latent in sexual energy,
of converting it into divine creative power, and of subjugating it to his ends.
Hence the name of this system: Yoga or ‘yoke’. These powers also endow
man concomitantly with magical abilities which have often been described
and which are familiar to us from the lives of great saints and yogis —
known in the terminology of Yoga as siddhis — such as clairvoyance,
regeneration of one’s own body, miraculous healing, the casting out of
demons, the resurrection of the dead, levitation, telepathy and prophecy, and
so forth.
In one single life this supreme goal is achieved only by those who bring
with them from previous existences a nervous system with the stamina
needed to endure the last and most difficult cycle of the path and the high
frequencies of the ever-mounting tension without cracking under the strain.
We must remember that, for all its resilience and its power to tolerate vast
differences of tension without failing, there are nevertheless limits set to the
resistance of the nervous system. Let us not forget that the difference
between a gorilla and a primitive man is much smaller than that between a
primitive man and a God-man. Just as a gorilla cannot be expected within a
single lifetime to develop into a man because his physical constitution
would be incapable of bridging the gap, so to an even lesser degree can a
primitive man, or an average man who has just been ‘awakened’, be
expected in a single lifetime to become a fully conscious and spiritualized
God-man. The resilience of his nerves would not be adequate to the
purpose.
But if one could tell a gorilla how he could consciously develop his
under-developed brain centres by constant practice, and if he really did
practise, and tried to exercise and learn the letters, figures and other things
which were quite new to him, he would attain human status much more
quickly, although not in his present gorilla life. Let us be quite clear about
this: the gorilla could not develop and change the shape of his head, and
hence his brain, to the extent that he became a man, but he could exploit to
the utmost the possibilities of his gorillahood, and he would then take with
him into the next life a much more developed body and a nervous system to
match. This he would continue to exercise consciously until he had
developed it to the limits of its potentialities. In this way he might in two or
three lives become a human being, albeit a primitive one, but at a very
much faster rate than if he were to pursue the simple path of natural
development over several thousand years. The gorilla does not understand
this conscious development — nor does primitive man — and so they
develop in accordance with the laws of Nature. Eternity is long enough.
The man, however, who has grown out of the restricted consciousness of
average being and is already sufficiently awakened not to be at his ease at
his low level of development for the very reason that he already feels much
greater potentialities astir in him, is accessible to instruction. It is possible
to discuss with him how and by what means he can develop more rapidly
and to a higher level than if he were to wait simply on the natural path until
the resistance of his nerves had been automatically enhanced by the daily
struggles of life. In this way, then, he will gradually be enabled by his
increasingly resilient nerves to experience higher states of consciousness
and to tolerate them without detriment to his health. Our book, therefore, is
addressed to people who already realize that their rate of development can
be speeded up by conscious exercises of the mind and body and who not
only understand this but are also impelled by an ever-growing inner desire
to take the trouble to exercise and consciously develop themselves.
Admittedly there is one thing we must never forget and that is that, however
great our determination to make progress, we can only advance as far as the
potentialities of our body and our nervous system allow when realized to
their extreme. We must not expect to reach the level of a God-man in a
short time. We must rest content if we can realize the highest potentialities
inherent in our body and our being in this life. And so it is also worth
exercising because no human limits can be foreseen to this ‘highest
potentiality’. We normally have no idea of what a man is capable of bearing
and enduring. Only in the dreadful trials brought by war or natural
catastrophe do the unsuspected capacities and the unimaginable resistance
of man become apparent. These capacities and the resilience of the body
are, of course, dependent on the unknown power of the spiritual forces
present. It follows therefore that we must not form any preconceptions of
the limit of our potentialities — on the path of Yoga or elsewhere — or of
the level which we can or cannot attain, for it is in the nature of things that
we cannot know these in advance. Let us not worry ourselves about the
precise rung of Jacob’s ladder we have prospects of attaining in this life. Let
us leave that to God. We should exercise with absolute trust and faith in
God so as to lose no time but to progress as quickly as possible. In any case
we shall take with us at the moment of our deaths the stage of development
we have attained in this life, and in our next life we shall begin with this
highest stage as the lowest stage of our new incarnation. None of our efforts
will be wasted!
We shall not go into the pathology of sex here. Those who are of such a
disposition will understand their condition better if they take the contents of
this book properly to heart and also find the way to liberation. Here we shall
confine our remarks to the stages through which one must gradually pass
from sexual pathology to health and from health to the supreme and
divinely spiritual level, and how and whence the strength for this purpose
may be derived.
We want to show the connections between the path of Yoga the way of
expanding consciousness — and this supremely important, natural and
healthy, but quickened progress in the control of sexual energy, and place
the key to the true and healthy conversion and spiritualization of vitalizing
sexual energy in the hands of the many practitioners of Yoga who come to
our Yoga school and also those who wish to practise Yoga successfully at
home.
A dear old friend, who was nevertheless still in possession of his
youthful vigour, once told me this story. He went for a walk with a good
friend, who was much older than himself. On their walk his friend told him
that although he had lost his virile powers he still enjoyed life to the full
since the pleasures of the mind were infinitely great. He read great books,
often went to the theatre and opera, travelled widely, played golf and so
forth. My friend listened to him for a time and then said: ‘My dear friend,
don’t go on about the delights of your life, for you won’t succeed in making
me want to be impotent!’
Now it is not the intention of this book to make anyone ‘want to be
impotent’. Far from it! Indeed it sets out to do the very opposite: to show
the practitioner of Yoga the way that leads to the source of the very highest
potency. And if along this path one reaches the final goal, the final goal of
all humanity, then at the same time one attains spiritual mastery over all the
powers which are always potentially present in the great divine self of man
and of all living creatures. And once this spiritual mastery has been
attained, it is never lost again, not even as the body grows old, for the
divine-creative powers are not derived from the body but create the body.
And anyone who has recognized and felt them in himself and has learnt to
use them as a key, has obtained conscious control over his body.
The source of supreme potency is God.
And so what this book sets out to do is to show the shortest way to God!

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In god the two poles rest within each other in perfect unity and harmony, in
absolute equilibrium. Indian philosophy of religion depicts this truth in the
figure of the god Shiva, who unites the two sexes within himself.
(Reproduction by courtesy of the Rietberg Museum, Zurich.)

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OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 2
Recognition and Being are One

It has been the trend of human development for us to work less and less
while allowing external forms of energy, like light, heat, electricity,
magnetism, radio-activity or nuclear energy to do our work for us more and
more. We take this for granted. These kinds of energy we use every day and
life is hardly imaginable without them. But if we wish to know what they
really are, what comprises their true substance, and study the books of the
greatest contemporary scientists, we come to the conclusion that we can
only observe and know these various forms of energy, as indeed all things,
from outside. We can only describe the behaviour of substances which have
been heated, electrified, magnetized, radioactivated or ionized. But we do
not and cannot ever know the real and true nature of this energy or of
anything else. It is impossible for us because we ourselves are not this
energy or any of the things of this world. That is to say, our state of being is
not identical with that of all these things.
Each thing could alone know and tell what it essentially is, whether it is a
form of energy or a living creature such as a cat or dog, for only forms of
energy or a cat or a dog could know and tell what a form of energy, a cat or
a dog is, simply because they are what they are, but only if they could
speak, and what is paramount, if they were conscious in themselves!
But that is impossible. Impossible, because everything that has been and
will be created is naturally what it is — the different forms of energy, the
elements, plants, animals and finally man in his unconscious state — all
these are what they are, yet they do not know of themselves what they are,
because they are not conscious in themselves.
Man alone is capable of attaining complete self-knowledge, complete
self-awareness, and only the awakened man, who has become completely
conscious in his true being, with not one particle of the latter remaining
unconscious, only he knows of himself what he is. And when a man has
attained this perfect state of self-awareness he will be in a position to know
of a single force of energy in the entire creation — but here again he
experiences the essential nature of this energy not from without, but from
within, in a state of being. And this is his own vitality in all its
manifestations, from the lowest materialized form, known as sexual energy,
to its highest form, the divine creative power, for the true nature of this
energy is simultaneously his own true nature: he is it itself! In the first
person: I am it!
The attainment of this knowledge is the final goal of his path! For man
also began his career as an unconscious living creature, and at the lowest
level of his humanity he has only an outward-looking consciousness, like an
animal. And so long as his self-awareness has not awakened and after long
development, perhaps over eons, become one in a state of being with his
own self, in its entirety, man too cannot — and does not — know what his
true being is, what he is in reality. And in this unconscious condition it is as
impossible for him to know what he is as to know what electricity, radio-
activity, nuclear energy or other forms of energy are, and what the essence
of the energy is that gave him his own life and that enables him to pass on
life, that is to say, he does not know what sexual energy is.
In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul the Apostle clearly expresses
the truth that each thing can itself alone know what it is, and nothing else,
since it can only be in a state of being with itself:
But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth
all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things
of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of
God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not
the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is God; that we might know
the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak,
not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy
Ghost teacheth: comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness
unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is
judged of no man. (I Cor. 2:10-15.)
 In modern language we might formulate it thus: If we ourselves were not
human, we could not know the nature of a human being. If we did not
embrace the Spirit of God, we could not even know that there is a God, or
what God is. But we have received the Spirit of God and have become
conscious in it; therefore we have knowledge of divine things. The
unconscious man - or as Paul calls him: ‘the natural man’, does not yet
know what lies behind his consciousness, hence he regards spiritual truths
as foolishness. The man who has attained consciousness knows, however,
that as a human being he embraces the Spirit of God, and thus he stands
above all earthly, worldly things.
Man at the first and lowest level of his humanity is still nothing more
than an animal plus reason. He confuses his ‘self’ with his consciousness.
He believes that in saying ‘I’ he has designated his whole self. In fact he
has only designated with the word ‘I’ that small personal part of his self
which has already become conscious in himself. He does not know the
unconscious part of his Self, therefore he does not recognize it or even
suspect its existence. His unconscious assumes the guise of external beings;
this is how concepts such as ‘devil’ and ‘angel’ have arisen. At this low
level he does not know that these fictive beings are in reality also powers
from his own unconscious, that is that they are himself. He still has no idea
whatsoever that there exists behind his primitive consciousness, although
for the time being inaccessible to him, an infinitely greater part of his self
in a totally unconscious state. How could he then know the nature of his
whole true being? How could he know that God himself dwells within him,
that he is in reality a divine being, if he knows neither God nor his true Self,
nor that this true Self is God!
People who have attained complete consciousness in their total Self - in
God, who have attained universal consciousness, were, and still are, very
rare on earth. Nevertheless, the sole aim of all our lives, of our
reincarnations, is to attain this complete consciousness, and to become one
in a monistic state of being with the Creator who rests in the profound
depths of our souls, as i am!
But how can unconscious animal man become aware and attain this goal
if he is ignorant of it? Born the first time as a human being on the lowest
rung of the great Jacob’s ladder of consciousness, how can he ascend step
by step from this state, elevate himself to divine self-awareness, to the
perfect fulfilment and resurrection, if he is unaware of the existence of this
goal and of his own ability to attain it? What helps him, what impels him
suddenly to direct his outward-looking consciousness inwards for the first
time, to become ‘converted’, and to rise from the first awakening, from the
first faint glimmer of self-awareness to universal consciousness, to the
divine and radiant celestial being which is inherent within him, and to attain
release, liberation and resurrection?
What urges him to do this, and to raise himself, is none other than his
own sexual energy!
This gigantic energy is latent in every living creature. It first helps a
human being through his parents to be born into matter, into a body, and
when he has reached physical maturity it gives him the ability to endow
further beings with a body. The unconscious man, however, still does not
realize that this very energy not only enables him to beget children, but also
that it is the only force, the impulse which helps, indeed compels him to
raise his consciousness stage by stage to the divine state of self-awareness.
Sexual energy forces human consciousness in an upward direction and
drives it ever higher. It goes without saying that, until he reaches the highest
stage of self-awareness and self-realization, a human being cannot know
that as such he can become familiar only with this energy, and this alone, in
its true being. But he can, and indeed will, make this energy conscious in
himself, for it is his true being, it is himself.
Sexual energy helps man to rise above sexual energy! Has this not been
decreed with infinite wisdom?
If we ever experience this truth ourselves, then we can understand why
the initiated used the scorpion as the symbol of sexual energy. The scorpion
is the agent of its own destruction, and in the same way sexual power
destroys itself because it compels the unconscious man and aids the
conscious man to transform sexual energy into higher energies and to come
to self-awareness in this energy — to be this very energy! But it is then no
longer sexual energy; it has destroyed itself as such.
Let us attempt to penetrate the mystery of sexual energy that we might
recognize it in ourselves and obtain mastery over it. How can this be done?
We shall answer this question in the following chapters.

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Chapter 3
The Creative Primal Serpent

The Gospel according to St John opens with following words:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things
were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was
made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light
shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
How admirably do these few words elucidate the mystery of the creation!
But we could only properly understand and appreciate these words if we
could read the Bible in the Greek original. The translation is, alas, not
always a correct one. The English language lacks the words for an exact
rendering of the Greek text. There is no word which means the same as the
Greek word logos, and so Luther translated logos with ‘word’, which
completely fails to render the meaning of logos. It would have been better
to take ‘verb’ because it expresses more adequately the birth of the first
motion, the first stirring of creation. In Greek, logos means the creative
principle, the power of God, the instrument of God which executes his will
and animates the creation, as, for instance, a man’s hand, which is at the
same time himself and his instrument, which is active. When logos was still
in its latent primal state, before anything, even before God’s very first
revelation, the creation of vowels and letters, ‘the word’ which is composed
of letters likewise could not have existed. That is an essentially later phase
of creation. And apart from this there is an added difficulty in
understanding this text correctly. Each individual has his own interpretation
of many of the words according to his lower or higher level of
consciousness. The word ‘God’ means something different to each person.
It is true, and can be verified in the Greek original, that God created man
‘on’ the mould of his image just as the glove is drawn over the hand, and he
continues to do so today; it is equally true that man reciprocates this by
creating God in his own human image. Moreover, the words used in
Luther’s time are no longer suitable to express certain things. If we then try
to render the meaning of these sentences according to the Greek original
with modern words, it would run something like this: In the beginning was
logos, the will that brings forth the deed, the power that animates and
realizes creation, still with God in a latent condition, as God’s potency. God
was and is this power himself. Essentially, God and his creative principle,
his creative power, are one and the same thing. All things were created by
God through logos. God is being, is life itself, and everything that exists can
only do so because the creative principle, the creative aspect of God,
namely, logos, creates, animates and sustains it. God, eternal being, life,
moulded man too — according to the original text — on himself, on his
own image. Therefore the true Self, the very essence of man is God himself.
But man in his unconscious condition is still in darkness and does not
comprehend God’s light within himself. He is unaware and has no inkling
that God, that is, his quintessential Self, dwells in his unconscious.
Life is therefore the creative power, logos, and everything that was
created was created by logos. Everything from the rarest spirit to matter was
and is created, animated and sustained by logos. But at the seventh and very
highest level is the spirit of God, God himself in a perfectly balanced state
of repose. From here, God, as his own creative principle — for logos is God
himself — creates the entire scale of creation. From infinite space, from
every point of the universe, from everywhere, life flows. At first purely
spiritual forms of energy of the highest frequencies arise and take effect,
then the frequencies gradually slow down, the waves become longer, and
the forms of manifestation continue acquiring density and substance till the
lowest level is reached, that of the so-called ‘dead’ matter, which is,
however, not dead, for we know that matter is simply another form of
energy. In the atom of matter, just as in the solar and astronomical systems,
God’s creative power circulates, life circulates. It is in every rung of Jacob’s
ladder which reaches from heaven, from the kingdom of God, down to the
material world, to earth.
We human beings bear all forms of creative energy within us. We are the
microcosm in the macrocosm. Our spirit, our true Self, is God, as Paul has
already stated. Then logos, the creative power of the Self, descends deeper
into us as in the universe, forms our ideas, creates the emotional and
spiritual levels and finally the necessary resistance to these, the bearer of all
higher forms of energy, our physical body. Just as logos, beyond man, and
at all levels of creation, manifests and creates itself as different forms of
energy, so do we human beings bear the whole Jacob’s ladder of logos-
manifestations, that is, entire creation as the various aspects of our own
Self. And as logos is active at each level of creation in the macrocosm, so
man emits and manifests in his microcosm at each level of his being,
through the organs corresponding to the various frequencies of the creative
power, the outward forms of the same divine, creative energy, that is to say,
of our own Self.
If we draw the human spine with the brain and its extension the spinal
cord, we observe the form of a serpent. This serpent is by the same token
the image of the manifestation form of the logos in the macrocosm, and in
man, the microcosm. It is also the image of the resistance to the logos, of its
locus in man: the spinal cord. This ‘spinal serpent’ created from she finest
ethereal matter is the bearer of the divine creative power, of our own life.
The power emanates with gradually increasing frequencies from seven
spiritual centres, by way of suitable organs which sustain the creative power
as resistance.
In Ancient Egypt the initiated wore a band of gold on their headdress,
which symbolized a serpent with erect head. To be ‘initiated’ meant that a
man had become conscious at all seven levels of self-revelation or self-
awareness, and therefore in the logos-serpent as a whole. There was no
longer an unconscious element and so he was a man who had attained
universal consciousness.
The erect Aesculapian serpent drinking the elixir of life from a shallow
goblet also represents the creative life-force serpent in the human spine. It is
the absolute wholeness, therefore health, and consequently also has the
power to heal all diseases — that is to say, all forms of degeneration.
We find the same ‘serpent’ in India, there known as ‘Kundalini’. As long
as man remains unconscious with his higher nerve centres still in a latent
condition, the serpent rests coiled up in the lowest centre of energy which
has its seat in the terminal vertebra, the coccyx; that is, in the negative pole
of vital tension! As man gradually becomes conscious and his energy
centres are activated in the process, the Kundalini serpent slowly uncoils
itself and stretches up and up, lays hold of and animates each succeeding
nerve centre, and ascends to the very highest centre, which has its seat in
the uppermost part of the head, in the skull. There it unites with the positive
pole which lies in the seventh energy centre. Then it stands as erect as the
Aesculapian serpent.
The philosophy of Yoga lays great stress on the difference between the
vital current and the resistance, namely the physical organs and nerve
centres by which the current is borne. Creative power, the vital current,
forms seven energy centres in man’s being, and each energy centre, known
in the terminology of Yoga as chakra, has the effect of a transformer which
transforms the divine creative power to a lower tension corresponding to the
next centre of manifestation. Thus, proceeding from the uppermost centre,
creative power is transformed six times and there are as a result seven
energy centres, seven chakras.
Since we human beings have become familiar with this energy from the
earthly, material level, we start counting the energy focuses, which are at
the same time the levels of manifestation, from the bottom upwards. The
Yoga terms for these seven centres are Sanskrit words as follows:
The first and lowest chakra is called: Muladhara (Mula means ‘marrow’);
its seat is in the negative pole, which rests in the coccyx in a latent
condition.
Second chakra: Svadisthana; its seat is in the nerve plexus above the genital
organs.
Third chakra: Manipura; its seat is in the solar plexus.
Fourth chakra: Anahata; its seat is in the nerve centre of the heart.
Fifth chakra: Vishuddha; its seat is in the nerve centre of the thyroid gland.
Sixth chakra: Adjna; its seat is in the centre of the forehead, between the
eyebrows.
Seventh chakra: Sahasrara; its seat is in the uppermost part of the skull,
which is also the seat of the positive pole. Through the activation of this
brain centre man attains divine all-consciousness.
 In the Bible, day or light means: consciousness. Night or darkness
means: unconsciousness. According to this metaphor, as Moses the great
initiate says in the Bible, God creates every ‘day’ at all levels of
consciousness with the vibrations pertaining to the levels, but at the seventh
level of consciousness, on the seventh ‘day’, he does not create, but rests in
himself. In this state there is no tension from which a creation could be
evolved, because the two poles, the positive one and the negative one, are
resting reconciled in one another in perfect balance and absolute oneness.
Man can only experience this in a state of ecstasy as pure consciousness,
otherwise it would mean physical death.
In the works of some Western scholars we read that the Indian yogi in
the ecstatic Samadhi is unconscious. That is a great error! The opposite is
true: he is in the state of complete consciousness, therefore of universal
consciousness. He appears to be unconscious from outside only because he
has no physical consciousness. Whoever has himself experienced the
Samadhi state will know that, during it, the yogi is completely conscious
and fully awake.
From this we may observe that there is only one truth and that the core of
every religion is this sole truth. St Francis of Assisi, St Theresa and other
great saints experienced the divine presence in an ecstatic state just as the
Indian yogis in Asia have experienced it as ‘Samadhi’ and are still doing so.
We human beings experience these various levels of the logos
manifestations and various frequencies as various states of consciousness.
Accordingly, we give them various names.
The energy form of divine power, which links mind and matter at the
first level in the lowest centre, we experience in our conscious mind as the
instinct for the preservation of the species, as sexual, physical urge and
desire, and in fulfilment as purely physical gratification. This we call sexual
energy.
At the second level we experience it as the manifestation of the self-
preservation instinct, as metabolism; in our conscious mind as hunger and
thirst, and in fulfilment as repletion.
At the third level divine power emanates as will-power and we
experience it in our conscious mind as the urge towards volition.
At the fourth level divine power prevails through the heart centre, the
feelings and emotions. In our conscious mind we experience it as
sensibility, as feelings; we experience the whole scale between hate and
personal love which are mirror images.
At the fifth level divine power manifests itself as our concept of time and
space. Its instrument is the thyroid gland which connects us with the finite
world; it links us with time and provides our time rhythm. This centre
determines the fast or slow tempo of our thoughts and movements, whether
we find a period of time long or short, whether we are always in haste or
take things at an easy pace. Consequently this centre exercises a decisive
influence on the tempo of our life-rhythm, and thus on the temporal
duration of our life.
At the sixth level the logos-energy manifests itself as intuition. It flashes
into our conscious mind the lightning, as it were, of spiritual light, which
provides us with new ideas and insights. As a state of consciousness we
experience this intuition as all-pervading spiritual light, spiritual meditation
and, identical with this, as all-embracing universal love. We feel a sense of
oneness with the whole universe, we understand the language of Nature and
the symbolic content of every line and form.
At the seventh and highest level, through the centre in the uppermost part
of the skull, we experience divine creative power as a purely spiritual state
of being; this appears in our conscious mind as the profoundest self-
knowledge, as supreme ‘individual consciousness’ which we experience in
ourselves as ‘i am that i am’. Here there are no longer unconscious feelings
or thoughts, no longer outward-looking perceptions. I am no longer happy
and content, because ‘I am’ these things, all feelings, all thoughts, the
radiant light of consciousness — ‘I myself am’ happiness, ‘I myself am’
bliss and peace! I am a radiant, all-embracing, all-penetrating self-
awareness.
During excavations in Mexico symbolic representations of God were
found. They give apt and clear illustration of this truth and of these various
forms of divine manifestation at the different levels of creation. At the base
there is a serpent or sometimes a dragon, that is sexual energy: Kundalini.
On it stands a man’s figure which symbolizes the body — sustaining,
emotional, mental and intuitive manifestations, and at the very top, above
the man, is a radiant face, the face of God, the symbol of pure spiritual,
divine self-awareness: God! How could one have better depicted the truth
of the various manifestation forms of one and the same deity?
 Man alone is capable of attaining consciousness at all levels of creation
and of embracing all the manifestation levels in a divine universal
consciousness. This is because man alone has in his body the organs
corresponding to the various forms of creative energy. These organs are
able to bear, as the matching resistance, the different vibrations and
frequencies of the various forms in which the universal, creative energy is
manifested. Just as the organs are suited to receive these vibrations and
frequencies from the universe, so, on the other hand, are they also capable
of emitting these creating energies. These organs are the most important
nerve and brain centres which transmit the vibrations of the various creative
energy forms to the corresponding glands closely linked to the centres in
which the transformation takes place. In the man who is at the lowest level
of his humanity the majority of these nerve and brain centres are still in a
dormant condition. His degree of consciousness is accordingly low and
primitive. The path of his development lies in mastering and activating each
succeeding centre until all the nerve and brain centres have been activated
and man has made the whole scale of creation, including the Creator,
conscious in himself.
The fuel with which man can heat and activate his latent nerve and brain
centres, somewhat like a radio valve, is the sexual energy which he bears in
his body. As long as man remains at a low level of consciousness he is not
master of his sexual energy, but rather its servant. He is still completely its
slave and at its mercy. Therefore he never even suspects that this energy
embodies a secret, that his own sexual energy can open the door to spiritual
power, that with the help of this energy he can attain consciousness in his
divine Self and in God and thence acquire immortality, ascendancy over
matter and over the whole of Nature. Through this he has found the secret
key to the philosopher’s stone, he has become a white magician.
The medieval alchemists, the Rosicrucians, who were great initiates,
repeatedly point out in their curious writings, in which the naked truth is
always avoided, that the substance from which the philosopher’s stone can
be made is very easily found and all human beings are in possession of it.
They wished to protect their knowledge from the vulgar who even then
would have turned everything to mischief and out of sheer ignorance
abused the secret of sexual energy for depraved perversions. At the same
time, however, they wished to pass on the key to this secret only to such
people as were sufficiently mature not to abuse it. They wished to direct
men of intelligence to the right path where they should look for the secret in
the hope that some would find it. It is quite clear from their writings that the
substance for the philosopher’s stone is to be found in man himself. Merely
this harmless clue led to dreadful cruelties. We know from medieval court
records that lords who wanted to make the philosopher’s stone regarded
human blood as the secret substance, for they interpreted the Rosicrucian
writings to mean that the stone was to be formed out of a human being.
Thus with unbelievable cruelty they slaughtered their serfs wholesale in
order to obtain the substance from their bodies. In their ignorance these
lords, like the Apostle Paul’s ‘natural men’, the unaware, ignorant ‘dead’
people, never realized that the matter was much simpler than they thought.
They should only have remembered that the source through which all
earthly life is transmitted is sexual energy. The source of life, the famous
elixir of the Rosicrucians, is therefore something we bear within us! From
this source flows a current, life itself, ‘which is fire, but flows like water’.
What better definition could they have found of the kind of energy that
flows like electricity or water into our nervous system, yet is not water but
fire; therefore as literally stated in the Rosicrucian writings, ‘a fiery water,
the watery fire’ is ‘a current of fire, which flows like water’. The ignorant
man uses this ‘individual source’, usually his sexual, vital energy, in the
pursuit of erotic pleasures and without desire to procreate. He does not
realize that if he were not to expend the vital current which flows from his
‘individual source’, but to preserve it for his own body and to use the life-
source for himself, he could kindle and activate his higher energy centres,
the chakras, and thereby obtain mastery over them. If he were to use the
vital current for his own body, as the will demands, he could then endow his
body with new life, regenerate it and even attain the immortality of the cells
known to the Rosicrucians as transmutation. Through the higher spiritual
centres he could creatively use sexual energy, converted into creative
spiritual power, to serve himself and at the same time share in the labour of
spiritualizing our world. In order to possess himself of this secret, it is
absolutely essential that a man has a superior morality and attitude to life!
And since these are exceedingly rare, the ‘alchemists’, the Rosicrucians and
other initiates spoke only in symbols or not at all.
 Today, in contrast to that age, we have reached the stage where these
things must be discussed in order to awaken man’s morality. And this not
for reasons of sentimental religiosity, but rather for general, human ones,
since God so created the spiritual constitution of man that if he resists the
inner moral laws inherent in all men he will inevitably bring misery, despair
and spiritual darkness upon himself. Men have misunderstood and
misinterpreted certain truths discovered by great psychiatrists. And, what is
worse, confused by the errors which semi-ignorant charlatans disseminate,
they abuse their sexual energy by treating it more and more as a merely
physical phenomenon and employing it almost exclusively for erotic
pleasures. This attitude is fraught with such great danger that we wish to try
and arouse the attention of those seekers and in particular of the young
people led astray by the erroneous interpretation of ‘repression’, ‘liberation
from spiritual and physical inhibitions’ and of ‘freedom from inhibition’.
We do this even though we know for certain that many people will again
use the secret of sexual energy for degenerate perversions. It must be said
quite frankly that sexual energy can be used for much higher purposes than
merely relieving with erotic experience the boredom arising from one’s own
infinite emptiness. Sexual energy is divine creative power itself. It can be
used for heaven or hell. But if it is used for hellish purposes it strikes back
and plunges its abuser inexorably into hell.
Perhaps there will be some among the many misled young people and
adults who will lend an ear and, perhaps at first out of sheer curiosity, risk
an experiment for at least a certain time. In the course of these experiments
they will garner such profound experiences that they will once and for all
set foot on the path of truth and never again swerve from it. And there will
certainly also be many people, indeed there are already, who will undertake
this labour out of a true sense of longing for God. If only a few are thus led
to the right path, this book will have fulfilled its purpose.
In order to conduct the experiments properly and to form any idea at all
of what they are about, we must first make ourselves familiar with a few
things and turn them over in our minds. For this book also sets out to show
the way of tried and proven practice. Christ prophesies in the Bible that a
time will come when the mysteries of truth will be proclaimed upon the
housetops. There are a number of striking indications that this time has
come. The point has been reached where the truth about sexual energy must
be disclosed. What men make of it depends on their moral maturity. After
all, nuclear energy can be used for better purposes than the making of
weapons man plans to use for his own annihilation! In the same way it is
possible to use sexual energy for heaven or hell since it is the divine
creative power or logos, the essence of man himself. When man has taken
hold of spiritual, magical power and thus attained supremacy, it rests with
himself whether he becomes a black or a white magician!

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Chapter 4
Sexual Energy in its False
and True Light

In Revelation (5: 6) we read how logos in the guise of a Lamb with seven
horns and seven eyes sets out to embody itself in matter, to animate and
spiritualize it and trace it back to God:
… and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain [in
matter, in the body, the spirit feels as if it had been slain]; having seven
horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into
all the earth.
And: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.’
(St John I: 29.) ‘Taking away the sin of the world’ means for the spirit to
assume the burden of the attributes of matter. For the body, which is matter,
the attributes of matter are not sin; for the spirit, they are. The attributes,
namely the laws of matter, are diametrically opposed to those of the spirit.
In his Epistle to the Galatians (5:17-18) Paul says:
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh: and
these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things
that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law [of
the flesh, of matter].
The laws of matter are contraction, cooling, stiffening, hardening and
solidification. The laws of the spirit are fire, warmth, heat, expansion and
radiation. Therefore it is sinful for the spirit to manifest the attributes of
matter. And in the same way it is sinful for matter to manifest the attributes
of the spirit. The Lamb of God is spirit, and if it embodies itself in matter it
must subject itself to the laws of matter and accept the attributes of matter,
which for the Lamb are sin. Only in this way can logos spiritualize matter
and trace it back to God.

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Representation of God in
Ancient Mexico: at the base is
a serpent, symbolizing sexual
energy; on it stands a man’s
figure which symbolizes the
body-sustaining, emotional,
mental and intuitive
manifestations; at the very top
is the incorporeal, pure
spiritual and radiant self-
awareness: god.

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The first and lowest tarot card represents the human beings who are still
‘dead’, still unconscious in spirit and who lead a purely physical existence.
They are at first still separate human beings — ‘man’ and ‘woman’ — and
think only in terms of sex. These are the tiny marionettes, the ‘homunculi’,
which dance round on the palm of the great sexless Ego as their earthly role
desires.
The creative principle, logos, the Lamb of God, says of itself in another
passage of the Bible: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me.’ (St John 14: 6.) Thus the life that I myself am,
in the very words of the logos, is itself the path by which we come to the
Father. For this purpose life first embodied itself in matter, out of it formed
a suitable shell, a body, and built into this body organs capable of begetting
ever further bodies. The divine current of life flows uninterruptedly through
these bodies, forming ever new shells, which become ever more able to
bear and to manifest the vibrations of the spirit as resistance. And while the
material, living and yet unconscious shell, the person, lives his shadowy
existence, he is being wrought, indeed tormented, out of his unconscious
mind by life, which in its materialized form is sexual energy, in order that
his consciousness may be roused. In the individual, still unconscious part of
his material being, primitive man’s higher Self, logos, constantly impels
him by means of sexual energy to become conscious in himself, in his
material body, and to come to know the essence of his deepest being, God,
that is to say, to attain self-knowledge. As long as man remains
unconscious, he experiences God within himself as sexual desire. When he
has become conscious, he experiences God as his own Self, as his own true
being, as I am! — God is for man the absolute state of self-awareness.
In this way life, the eternal being, God, helps itself to grow more
conscious in matter, in the body, till such time as the greatest miracle has
been wrought: one and the same divine self-awareness embraces the
opposing spiritual and material laws, matter is spiritualized, and in this
spiritualized body the creative principle, logos, the Lamb of God which
died into matter at birth, is at last resurrected after eons of development, and
has again become itself, God. The Lamb and his wife, logos and the
consciousness of the physical being have become one. The heavenly,
mystical marriage has been performed!
Misunderstanding of the Scriptures and incorrect religious instruction
have led Western man to regard the procreation of ever-new generations,
without which life would cease, and the physical enjoyment and sensation
of pleasure associated with this, as the work of the Devil. He has allowed
the concept of ‘original sin’ to be imprinted in his mind, and indeed to this
very day regards the physical organs requisite to procreation as sinful and
obscene. How admirably pure and divine is on the other hand the
conception of some ancient and contemporary Asian peoples who regard
the male genital organ, the Lingam, as sacred, and worship it as the outward
material form of the divine, since its very purpose is to manifest and
propagate the supreme: life, eternal being, God, through matter, through the
body. It is naïve to a degree to suppose that the Orientals’ worship of the
Lingam involves worship of the merely physical male organ. Do they still
believe in the West that antiquity and the Orientals who have achieved the
supreme culture were and are so foolish as to worship a specific member of
the body? The Orientals do not and have never worshipped matter or the
body as such, but rather the godhead manifesting itself through the material
form! Their entire philosophy of religion, their absolute disparagement of
the physical clearly show this exalted mentality. Similarly, Western man is
quite misled in seeing no more than mere pornography in the noble
representations of the sexual act which adorn the majestic sun-god temples
in Konarak, Bubaneshvar and other Indian temples. The inspired Indians
who created these breathtaking, magnificent works of art did not regard the
sexual act as obscene but as the imitation of the primal state of God, as the
image of life, in which the two poles rest within each other and in which a
new life, a new incarnation is made possible. They regarded the sexual act
as the very deity which manifests itself through matter, separated into two
halves, into two sexes but also reunited through the sexes to propagate
earthly life in matter, so that the great aim may be achieved and realized, to
spiritualize matter, to attain divine self-awareness in matter, to experience
the resurrection of human consciousness in God!
It is a mystery how the white race has come to regard the sexual act
which has given life to us and to our children as obscene and
unmentionable. If it is something to be ashamed of why do the people who
hold such views continue to perform it? And why then did God so create
the world, according to these people, that this wicked act is absolutely
necessary for the procreation of living creatures?
What a vast difference there is between the Eastern and the Western
conceptions. On the one hand the Lingam is regarded as the embodiment of
the forces of life and in it the divine is worshipped in order to beget
children; on the other hand, the genital organ has been severed from the
perfect, classical representations of Greek and Roman gods and the
damaged parts covered with a vine or fig-leaf (It is as if one had wished to
attract even more attention to them.) Men who act in such a way betray
their own sexual pathology. Instead of regarding the sexual act as an exalted
fulfilment of the desire for oneness, for love, as a life-giving act in imitation
of God, affording real contentment and happiness, they regard it as a brutish
end in itself, good only for wanton and depraved sensual enjoyment, which
has nothing whatever to do with love and true happiness. If these people
thought differently, they would have no reason to cover up the genital
organs as something obscene. By their own primitive mentality they cast the
shadow of obscenity over the genital organs. These people drag the divine
down into their own impurity. The fault lies, however, not in the divine,
vitalizing force and sexual act, but in the attitude of those who so pervert
these things that they have real cause to be ashamed. No wonder that the
time had to come when the pendulum swung from prudery in the other
direction. As a result there are today many pathological people who, on the
one hand, attach excessive importance to sexuality by seeking a sexual
cause for every mental disorder and, on the other hand, make light of sexual
energy by provoking uninhibited sexual intercourse at every opportunity. As
if sexual union were a cigarette to be smoked and then thrown away and
forgotten! These people do not know that sexual energy is a manifestation
of the being of man himself, and that there can be no sexual intercourse
without conscious or unconscious self-surrender. The partner, whether male
or female, is not an object to be used and discarded, but is a living creature
and also has a human soul. This is true even of prostitutes! These misguided
people try to satisfy their longing for happiness and mental stability by
means of purely physical, sexual intercourse. People yearn for love, but not
for purely physical gratification.
It is a dangerous error to seek love in soulless sexuality and to try to
replace love by sexuality. It is natural enough for, say, women who are
never given the slightest expression of love by their lifeless, uninteresting
and uninterested ‘dead’ husbands to believe that the tokens of tenderness
shown by a husband interested in his wife during the brief period of sexual
excitement constitute love and therefore to want to have sexual intercourse
with their husbands as often as they can. This is not because they are
primarily interested in sexual intercourse as such, but because they long for
‘a little bit of love’. If the husband fails them, and if an opportunity arises
which it nearly always does! — they then try to get love from another man
and to experience sexuality to the full. In most cases they do not really do
this out of physical frustration. The body desires sexual gratification far less
often than one imagines! Men long for women to look up to them and
admire them as the highest manifestation of God, as man. If a man does not
get this recognition at home, he will certainly meet another woman who
pays him the tribute of admiration and afterwards it usually looks as if he
had only wanted sex. The man as well as the woman looks for ‘love’ from
his or her lover but they are wrong to believe that this is received from this
‘other’ partner. They meet secretly and, because they always expect sexual
intercourse, in a state of sexual excitement. And sexuality mimics love. It
compels tenderness and embraces, it forces the lovers to hug one another, to
allay one another’s pain through the revelations of sexuality, as when true
love is exchanged. What follows such experiences? Disappointments, a
bitter after-taste, mutual accusations or bleak loneliness, and, in the case of
women, usually a desperate feeling of exploitation and defilement. Neither
of the two gave true love but only expected to receive it, therefore neither
received it! Love can never be replaced by empty, purely physical sexuality!
And humanity yearns, languishes for love! These countless poor young
souls, who are still little more than children and who, largely because the
‘civilized’ way of life is no longer conducive to love, perhaps went short of
love from their parents, give themselves up to sexual adventures and
excesses because they are searching for love! The many soul-sick people,
young or old, can be healed only by love and not by cheapening sexual
intercourse or by wishing to free them from sexual inhibitions and
persuading them to lead a dissolute, promiscuous and indiscriminate sex
life. How many of these people, young and old, seek advice on how to
regain their lost physical and spiritual purity after such irresponsible
psychic treatment. And if one shows them only a little love and
understanding, they return to life healed and ready to become useful
members of society. We have not come across one of those people who
suffered ‘repression’ or ‘trauma’ from the purity enjoined on them. By
‘purity’ is meant of course not only a continent love-life, but also a healthy
one based on love.
After the swing to extreme, indiscriminate ‘permissiveness’ and false
conceptions of sexual ‘freedom’, caused by ‘repression’ and ‘trauma’, let us
try to settle the pendulum in the middle and come to a normal conception of
sexuality.
We should follow the example of great initiates who do not regard sexual
energy as a malignant force but understand its secret and know that it is the
sole means by which we human beings can attain the final goal — God.
Here again the infinite wisdom with which entire creation is decreed reveals
itself. Just as our ignorance alone brings us knowledge,1 so it is sexual
energy alone which brings us liberation from itself, from sexual energy.
Sexual energy frees us from the very sexual desires to which it gives rise
again and again and leads us from mortality, from death, to redemption,
resurrection, to life.
1
cf. Elisabeth Haich: Ein paar Worte über Magie.
The medieval alchemists, the Rosicrucians, depicted this process of
development very cleverly: the sage makes the philosopher’s stone by
placing his tree of life in a washing-trough filled with the elixir of life. This
is constantly heated by the fire of the dragon, sexual energy, to make the
tree blossom.
Let us not therefore despise sexuality or regard it as the malignant force
which reduces man to an animal, nor let us make of it such a force.
Let us look upon sexual energy as the key which opens the door for us
between spirit and the world of matter, from the higher to the lower but also
from the lower to the higher. Let us regard it, then, as the divine impetus
which enables us to create further generations, to propagate life from above
downwards in the body but also to transform man upwards out of his ferity
into a spiritual man and to help to conquer death. We must be grateful that
sexual energy, used properly, gives us so much happiness on both paths. On
the downward path it is brief and transient, on the upward path it is eternal
happiness.
Let us use its fire to make our tree of life flourish and blossom. Let us
remember: primitive man is still at the lowest level of his consciousness. In
his animal egoism he lives within himself completely isolated and
immured; his heart is still dead and he still has no inkling of the meaning of
love. Sexual energy, that elemental fire, is alone able to warm his dead heart
for the first time. And even if during the brief spell of sexual excitement he
can experience and express only an inkling of love, it is notwithstanding the
first glimmer of divine love. Through sexuality he first becomes acquainted
with the happiness derived from giving. And although his dawning love is
still no more than an animal desire, a passion, his excitement is, even if only
quite unconsciously and briefly, already an urge towards oneness, towards
love! Even if at first he experiences this urge towards love only in the body
and hence can only look for physical gratification, it is nevertheless the first
reflection of spiritual oneness in the great Self, which man is unconsciously
seeking and which, after long development, perhaps over eons, he will find
because he is destined to do so. Sexual energy causes us inner unrest which
never allows us to stand still. It continually spurs us on and compels us to
find the inner path after many wanderings. In an unexpected moment,
among the animal impulses, in the ‘night’, in the darkness of
unconsciousness, our self-awareness is born, just as the Holy Child was
born in a manger, among animals, in the ‘night’, in darkness. And man sets
out on the great path, he decides to journey from the first awakening of
consciousness in the Self to the paradisiacal universal consciousness, to the
goal. And as he gradually grows conscious in himself on this long path, so
there unfolds within him the ability to control creative energy in all its
manifestations and to use it in accordance with his will. If he once reaches
the highest level, the source of divine power, he will be able to transform
the lower forms of energy of divine creative power into their higher forms
and with the higher spiritual forms of energy he will be able to control and
guide the lower forms and to manifest all of these energies through the
corresponding nerve centres. Let us come to know this divine power, let us
try by its help to climb higher on Jacob’s ladder, and by so doing, help
sexual energy to transform itself into its higher vibrations, into spiritual
power. Where there is consciousness, creative power is at work.

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Chapter 5
Jacob’s Ladder

Those who set out on the path of Yoga with the intention of renouncing
sexual energy and suddenly want to lead an abstemious life betray that they
are not only ignorant of the divine origin of this energy but even of the
energy itself! And how is a man to gain control over something, to renounce
it with neither sacrifice nor denial if he has not first thoroughly acquainted
himself with it and come to terms with it?
As long as one suspects yet untasted potential pleasures in sexuality one
cannot and should not renounce one’s sex life. One would then live in the
belief of having missed or lost something; and however erroneous it may
be, this misconception will again and again lure one into sexual
experiences. He alone can reach God who has become thoroughly familiar
with sexuality and tasted it and all its potentialities to the full, either in this
life or in a previous one. Otherwise, if he is ignorant of sexuality, God too
will be beyond his reach. Sexual energy is the bearer of life, therefore also a
manifestation of God, albeit in the form of matter and at the lowest level! If
our aim is to reach God we must start our ascent of Jacob’s ladder from the
lowest rung (Gen. 28:12). None of the steps can be omitted, and how could
one give something up and go on to climb the next step before becoming
thoroughly familiar with the previous one?
If I want to extirpate my sexual energy without first having come to
know it, then it will turn against me with all my own power because I am
this energy myself, even if only unconsciously! For this very reason its
strength is exactly equal to my own! On no account can I destroy it, for that
would mean destroying myself. We cannot destroy sexual energy, we can
only transform it! We can only be it!
I must go through the experiences, I must become so thoroughly familiar
with sexual energy, with all its vexations and pitfalls that no aspect of this
form of creative energy remains hidden to me. It may be that a person has
already acquired this experience and was born with it into this life. He does
not need to acquire it again. But he must feel this certainty in himself. We
can observe that those even at a higher level of spiritual development start
their human life as a sexual object, at a lower level in puberty. But then they
take only a very short time to pass from adolescence to adulthood, whereas
primal man requires perhaps millions of years for the same development.
The unicellular organisms take millions of years to ascend through the
stages of reptiles, birds and mammalia to man as we know him, while the
human embryo passes through all these phases of development from
conception to birth in the compressed period of nine months. Thus a man
who has attained a higher level can accomplish all the stages of
development of sexual manifestation during the brief phase of youth, from
the adolescent’s most primitive urge to discharge his pent-up sexuality to
the superior adult’s highest spiritual sense of belongingness founded on
love. Naturally there are many exceptions owing to the countless variations
of development and differences of levels attained.
If therefore a person has gone through his experiences of sexual energy,
either in the past or present life, he will release himself from its bondage,
exercise control over it and use it as creative power. If, on the other hand, a
man who does not know sexual energy and is unable to transform it
preserves it by living an abstemious life, then this primal energy will be
thrust down into the unconscious and suppressed so that it manifests itself
in a perverted way. With incredible cunning it causes people often the most
serious physical and mental disorders, illnesses and troubles. It is not
usually realized that these are due to repressed and curbed sexual energies.
It is particularly dangerous when a married couple, or sometimes even only
one partner, suddenly decides to lead an abstemious life. Indeed, it is
suspicious that this should even be desired. It is advisable to ask oneself
first very honestly why one suddenly feels like leading a continent life. It
often emerges that the real reason is not so much a strong desire for God, as
rather the unfulfilled yearning for love and understanding, a general
incapacity for life and, stemming from this, also frustrated sexual desires or
unpleasant disappointments. Many people are not sufficiently honest with
themselves, they have no wish to accept the true reason, they repress it into
the unconscious and say that in order to reach God they want to renounce
‘everything’. How do these people conceive of ‘God’ that they want to
renounce ‘everything’ for him? Does this then mean that sexuality is for
them ‘everything’? So it seems, for this is usually all it amounts to. If they
really want to renounce ‘everything’ then let them, to be consistent, live in a
cave. But again they do not want this, only in their imagination. Or perhaps
in a centrally-heated cave with bathroom?
Let us therefore beware! As long as anyone sees continence as ‘total
renouncement’, as ‘total sacrifice’, this is the very reason why he should not
renounce ‘everything’, why he should not wish to give up everything but
should first get to know what ‘everything’ is. With his married partner he
should try to experience a sublime devotion based on love and live a
healthy, fulfilling, clean sex life. In so doing he must on no account suggest
to himself that a healthy sex life is something degrading or defiling! If he
does, his attitude is obviously pathological. Nor on the other hand must a
continent life be motivated by unconscious revenge on one’s partner or on
oneself! Revenge due to disappointment, frustration or failure.
If one has a healthy attitude towards sex life it is in itself never
degrading or defiling. The Bible tells us not to set up bounds and then feel
ourselves to be sinners when we transgress them. It is not sexuality that
degrades and defiles man, but man who makes of himself an animal and
instead of leading a healthy sex life based on true love and togetherness,
deliberately distorts it to a brutish, depraved, even perverse end in itself. He
defiles himself and degrades both himself and sexuality.
Whoever has set out on the path of Yoga and wants to progress along the
inner path, will not distort sexuality to a brutish end in itself. In marriage, in
physical union he will not seek the gratification of animal desires, but rather
the manifestation of a higher, spiritual union. Giving himself physically
will neither degrade nor defile him for his act is motivated by a deeper,
spiritual desire for oneness, for love. Why then is he expected to begin Yoga
with continence at the very outset? If he is not yet able to transform sexual
energy, then a forced abstemious way of life can result in extreme
nervousness, disharmony, quarrelsomeness, indeed even in a broken
marriage, because sexual energy has not yet been able to find the way to the
higher nerve centres. Married people should bear in mind that it is not
chance which has led them to marriage, to their particular marriage. They
have been brought to this union by their karma and so it is this very
marriage which quickens their progress. Their karma will indicate when
they are mature enough and the time has come to lead an abstemious life
and to proceed, hand in hand, in supreme love and mutual understanding. In
this way marriage will not be an unbearable burden but will mean mutual
assistance and happiness. Should, however, marriage become a heavy
burden, an enslavement and an obstacle to progress, then when the karmic
time has elapsed and the karmic debt is paid, it will fall from man, like a
used garment. Running away from an oppressive situation is never a
solution. The problems have to be solved or else they keep by our side!
Once we have obtained an inner release from such painful unions, there is a
transformation in the outer world too and quite unexpectedly the door to
freedom is opened. A marriage is not in itself an obstacle on the path of
Yoga. Many great saints in the West as well as in India who were married
achieved the highest aim. One of the greatest masters in India, Rama
Krishna, lived with his wife Sarada Devi till he died, and both became very
great yogis. Equally one might list countless holy men and women in the
West who, although married, attained the highest degree of holiness, divine
all-consciousness, as for instance St Monica, the mother of St Augustine,
and many other saints as well as initiated Rosicrucians.
Man sheds physical desire when he reaches maturity. He has got to know
the witchery of sexuality and now he sees through it. This power in its
lowest form, as sexual energy, continues to interest him only as a link, as a
catalyser between spirit and body, as an auxiliary drive towards progress.
But he ceases to maintain that he would have to renounce ‘everything’ in
order to reach God. There is no need for man to ‘renounce’ or ‘forego’
anything! As soon as he is able to transform sexual energy into its higher
form, he preserves it, and in a higher and much more valuable form. He
loses nothing but gains all. For the happiness which man experiences, or
rather hopes to experience, in sexuality remains with him once and for all at
a much higher level. Since he does not expend his energy but preserves it, it
continues to dwell in him! We do not lose it, we no longer experience it as
very transient, short-lived sexual pleasure, but now exclusively in the
higher form of a mental and spiritual beatitude, which is ours for ever and
cannot be lost because: i am it. Tat tvam asi! That is you! in the words of the
Vedanta philosophy.
We cease to experience creative power in the body as sexual energy, as
sexual desire and drive, which is no sooner gratified than it vanishes. Now
we experience it directly as creative power itself, as creative joy at an ever
higher level of consciousness, as an ever mounting, enduring, eternal state
of being. I no longer possess happiness, I am no longer happy, I am
happiness itself! How can happiness cease to feel happy if it is itself
happiness? It is entirely a question of consciousness: if I have not yet grown
conscious in the logos, in life itself, I experience being as sexual energy, as
sexual drive which is at work in my body and is life-giving for a third
person. If I am at a higher level of consciousness, I experience logos, life,
within me as love, manifested in my soul as a higher emotion. If I have
grown conscious in the logos, in life itself, I experience it in the spirit, in
my Self, as a state of self-awareness, as myself: i am it!
If, however, I have become logos itself, life, I have at the same time
received an indescribable feeling of deep contentment, which never fades,
which never can fade! We have found what we have been seeking with
infinite longing since the first awakening, the first dawning of
consciousness. We experience the perfect fulfilment, release and
resurrection! I am unshakeable self-reliance and translucent self-awareness:
I know no fear, dread or uncertainty!
According to the level of consciousness attained, the outward form, the
name, the experience, the inner state, change. But the essence of this power
remains what in reality it always was, divine-creative power, logos, which
is our own life, our individual Self; it is that within me, which, when I have
grown conscious I experience as myself, as i am. How can death have
power over me if I am life itself? How could life die?
When we are able to mobilize from their latent, dormant condition the
nerve and brain centres which bear the higher vibrations as resistance — for
the higher the state of consciousness, the higher the frequencies and
vibrations active in the body — then we are also able to direct creative
power higher or lower on Jacob’s ladder as we please and to use it at our
discretion. The higher the manifestation, the higher the frequencies and
tension and the greater the beatitude. The high tension lifts our
consciousness in ever-mounting states, nearer and nearer to God. We can
only experience God as ‘I am that I am’; as Moses the great initiate who
spoke face to face with God said, the name of God is: ‘i am that i am… .’
Unfortunately people fail to understand what he meant by that.
 Let us bear in mind that our models, in the West the great saints and in
the East the great masters, the rishis, would never have been so foolish as to
discard, sacrifice and renounce sexual pleasures if they had been real and
lasting pleasures. They attained the goal, divine consciousness, and with it a
thousandfold higher happiness and supernal fulfilment! The question is
simply whether we are seeking a very transient or an eternally lasting
happiness. For the pleasures of sex are inevitably subject to time. We know
beforehand that we shall in any event lose this happiness and these
pleasures sooner or later, whether we like it or not. The greater the
happiness, the greater the loss when the time has run out. If, on the other
hand, I do not expend this energy through the body, but become conscious
in it, since I myself am it, if I can attain the state whereby I can again be
sexual energy, then I shall no longer lose this happiness, for I am it! And the
‘Self’ is eternal and does not fade with the decay of the body. It has merely
projected and manifested itself in the body as sexual energy and withdrawn
again. But if in my consciousness I become identical not with the
projection, the manifestation, but with that which projects, with the
manifester, which is my own true being, then I consciously bear life within
me. I am it! And the Self is eternal. Thus the joys of the Self are also
eternal!
A person who cannot experience life, logos, with his conscious mind
because these maximum frequencies would still be too much for his nerves,
that is to say, someone who is in the transitional period of gradual
development, should certainly lead a healthy sex life based on spiritual
oneness. Through sexual union two people can afford each other much love
and happiness, even if it is a very transient happiness. It in no way degrades
them and indeed helps them to build up an intimate relationship and to
share in true and sublime experience. And Nature exploits their yearning for
love and fulfilment, bewitches them with her spell and promises them the
highest happiness through sexuality in order to create further generations. If
two people have sought sexual union out of true love and an inner spiritual
affinity, and tasted it to the full, then togetherness and love still remain as
consolation after sexual fulfilment. For how long? That is another question.
For whenever they yielded to the sexual desires, giving them full rein, they
found that in the very moment of physical gratification, when they thought
that ‘now’ the promised happiness was coming, it suddenly slipped from
them and was gone. And what is more, they expended their own energies
for this self-deception. In most cases people seek a sexual relationship not
because of a desire for inner union, but for sensual pleasure and physical
enjoyment. Afterwards they are left with nothing but a vast emptiness and a
feeling of boredom, as we can observe with many couples, young and old.
But Nature requires progeny for the propagation of life, and man in his
loneliness and forlornness seeks understanding and love in sexuality. Again
and again he falls into Nature’s trap as long as he does not realize that that
is not what he was really seeking, and that sexuality cannot give him what
he longs for. Only then, perhaps hand in hand with his life-partner, will he
turn ever more attentively to the spiritual path.
Enlightened men have become aware of all this. They have seen through
the sham pleasures of sexuality and know that man can constantly bear the
ultimate joy, ecstasy and beatitude as a lasting state of self-awareness, that
he himself can be this, provided he does not expend sexual energy but uses
it to stimulate, wake and activate the nerve and brain centres still resting in
a latent condition. It enables man in his true being to become conscious in
God, to attain divine all-consciousness. As the drops of water that are in the
sea, that are the sea, so man may rest in God, be conscious in God, be God
himself. Did not Christ say: ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are
gods?’ (St John 10:34 and Psalm 82:6.)

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Chapter 6
The Judas Betrayal

As we have stated in the previous chapter, an abstemious life only makes

sense if it does us no harm and we can profit from it. Only the person whose
valve to the higher nerve centres is open, thus enabling sexual energy to rise
up into the higher centres, is capable of a healthy and happy abstemious life
without the ill-consequences of repression and can enjoy the exceptional
rewards and inestimable values of this way of life. Repression is precisely
what he avoids, he rather uses his power in a higher, spiritual form which
yields incomparably greater happiness than if he were to expend it
physically as sexual energy.
A person of such high spiritual standing can also manifest physical love
of a very ardent nature. He — and he alone — is able to give free rein to the
higher frequencies, not only through the already activated spiritual centres
as high spiritual frequencies, but also passionately, by way of the body,
through the lower centres in a high tension as sexual energy. He can,
however, also expend them through the lower centres in a state of high
tension with the physical passion of sexual energy. The sexual tension of a
rooster is not to be compared with the high tension of a thoroughbred
stallion!
But only the highly developed person runs the risk of lapsing into a
dissolute life. The danger inherent in acquired knowledge and capacity is
that the conscious abilities can be used in two ways — rightly or wrongly.
The person who possesses knowledge wholly or in part is liable to error.
Instead of converting sexual energy into its higher form, spiritual-creative
power, he can use it like black magic, that is to say, he transforms the
spiritual powers into sexual energy, he directs them downwards and
identifies them with the body. For this reason it is important that the higher
centres are stimulated and activated in stages, for only then is there a
development of a person’s moral power that is parallel to, or let us say, in
balance with, his creative-spiritual powers, thereby protecting him from all
aberrations.
Certain paths of Yoga involve this danger. Among them, for example, the
so-called Kundalini and Tantra Yoga. In these forms the higher nerve and
brain centres are wakened by drastic methods, ignoring the possibility of a
gradual organic, spiritual, mental and physical development, which is
somewhat slower but all the safer for that. That is why a genuine guru — an
initiated spiritual teacher — is always very cautious with his disciples. Only
a charlatan meddles unscrupulously with these higher, irresistible, all-
pervading creative-magical powers.
We call a person a ‘white magician’, a ‘God-man’, if, by a steady
development along the path of Yoga, he has become conscious at the
highest divine level, and, having reached the highest rung on Jacob’s ladder,
is master of the entire scale of revealed creative power but only in a lawful,
divine-moral way and therefore completely impersonally and selflessly, as
the instrument of God. He also transmits his high powers into the body,
since he lives in a body, but his consciousness does not leave the source,
God. His consciousness is one with God and never identifies itself with the
body. He consciously remains what he is in reality, in his true being, life,
logos, God himself.
The black magician on the other hand, who is at a level of consciousness
artificially upgraded by the use of magic, but still completely self-centred
and morally underdeveloped, acts in just the opposite way to the white
magician: he uses the divine powers to satisfy his personal-egoistic ends
and his lust. He identifies his consciousness not with God but with the body,
and directs the divine powers downwards from the spiritual to the sexual-
physical centres. As soon as the spiritual-creative power, which should
likewise be put to spiritual-creative use through the activated higher nerve
and brain centres, is directed downwards and abused for personal, physical-
egoistic ends, one acts as a black magician.
The fundamental difference between a ‘white’ and a ‘black’ magician is
that a black magician has command over the divine powers, while the white
magician puts himself at their command; they use him as an instrument.
The white magician has become completely impersonal and thus can no
longer act as a person. His person no longer exists! Rather, since his
consciousness is identical with God, the divine will acts in him and through
him.
The black magician with his personal-egoistic way of life devotes
himself to the passions and pleasures of the body. In so doing he squanders,
betrays and kills divine power, logos, his divine self. He too could work
miracles with his high powers, but by betraying them, his own true Self—
God — he finally destroys and kills himself. Black magicians always suffer
a dreadful death! The Bible describes this betrayal in the story of Judas.
In order to understand the Judas story correctly, we must first know that
the Bible is full of allusions to the cosmic implications, therefore to
astrological truths. Already in the Old Testament we find references to
astrology, as for instance in Ezekiel’s vision in one of the most important
passages of the Bible. Ezekiel beholds the universe as a vast, square linen
cloth spread out, and he sees the four ‘animals’ at its four corners: the lion,
the bull, the cherub and the eagle. These are the four corners of the
universe, the four most important signs of the zodiac: Leo, Taurus, Aquarius
and eagle.1 In its lower form the latter is termed Scorpio. We find the same
four signs of the zodiac in the symbolic representation of the four
Evangelists: St Mark — Leo, St Luke — Taurus, St Matthew Aquarius and
St John — eagle, in its lower form Judas—Scorpio. In his First Epistle to
the Corinthians (15: 41), Paul too speaks of the effects produced by the
radiation of the celestial bodies: ‘There is one glory of the sun, another
glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from
another star in glory.’
1
cf. Elisabeth Haich, Initiation, Allen and Unwin.

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The last, highest tarot card, the great Self, which is sexless because it unites
the two poles in its consciousness, makes the homunculus, which is a
physical being and belongs to a sex, dance on its hand like a little
marionette, as an agent of manifestation, in accordance with his role in the
earthly-material world.

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Mestrovic: the eternally crucified Christ: Ottavice. The unconscious man
does not know that god, who is in reality his true, higher Self, dwells in his
unconscious.

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 The rays, the frequencies of the zodiac sign Scorpio, correspond to the
frequencies of creative power, which is represented in its higher octave, in
its spiritual form, as a soaring eagle by John the Apostle, who has his head
on Christ’s breast. In its lowest form as sexual energy, as the self-
destructive scorpion, it is symbolized by Judas. Christ — logos —
prophesies of Judas: ‘He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel
against me.’ And: ‘One of you shall betray me… . He it is, to whom I shall
give a sop, when I have dipped it.’ Sexual energy, the bearer of life, Judas,
who ‘bath a purse’, is nourished by the creative principle, Christ, ‘and when
he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot’, and Judas betrays him
with a kiss: ‘Jesus said unto him, Judas betrayest thou the Son of man with
a kiss?”Kiss’ is an erotic act, that is, sexuality. The man of black magic who
is already in possession of his creative powers — of the ‘purse’ — and
nevertheless identifies himself with the body, that is to say, directs his
spiritual powers downwards, expends the spiritual powers converted into
sexual energy in physical pleasure, as end in itself, expends his Christ —
his creative-magical logos powers — he betrays him, he surrenders, him to
the level of matter. Judas sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver — these are
the thirty degrees of the zodiac sign Scorpio, which has the same vibration
as the sexual organs and for this reason symbolizes the sexual organs and
sexual energy. At the moment when the divine, betrayed and expended by
Judas, dies on the Cross (the Cross symbolizes the world of matter), Judas
must of course also die, but by suicide. As is written in the Bible: at the
moment of Christ’s death on the Cross, Judas hangs himself and dies also.
In killing creativeness he killed himself too, for both the divine-creative
energy and sexual energy are logos itself, and hence identical with one
another. If a man betrays his creative power by dissolute living, by sexual
excess and abuse as a means of pleasure, sexuality dies also. He loses his
potency, loses his central, suggestive power, he becomes a weak character
incapable of resistance; he is shattered, destroyed by the manifold
influences of the external world and becomes a prey to his greatest enemy,
fear.
Judas killed himself and the creative principle — Christ — and goes on
killing it today in every person who abuses his higher qualities and uses his
reason to direct his thoughts continuously into the sexual organs; in every
person who rouses his senses and sex glands with stimulating foods and
drinks, and also with mental aids, pornographic literature, films and plays
and who expends his sexual energies in excesses and abuse. And, of course,
alcoholism and other addictions go hand in hand with such habits.
Experience shows that people who live like this, and also those who
squander their creative powers with excessive masturbation, sooner or later
unfortunately rather sooner than later — decline into irresoluteness,
spiritual annihilation, darkness and fear. (The occasional masturbation of
adolescence does not necessarily have this detrimental consequence. We are
talking here only of perversely excessive masturbation.)
The simple person with an average level of consciousness is not, and
cannot be, a Judas. The possibility of a transformation of energy does not
even occur to him. He can direct his energies neither upwards nor
downwards, nor can he transform them. If such a person yields to his sexual
desires and leads a normal, healthy sex life, he does not sin against the
creative principle dwelling in his unconscious, for the simple reason that a
healthy sex life is not a sin! He does not draw any divine powers down into
the body, he does not identify his higher Self, of which he is not yet
conscious, with the body and consequently he cannot approach his higher
Self, far less abuse it. Therefore he simply expends physical-sexual powers
in a normal way, and not creative-spiritual ones.
Man’s nerve and brain centres are constituted in such a way that they
gradually manifest the logos energies in a steady development at each stage
in the growth of consciousness. Earthly life, however, does not always
allow these centres to awake and become active in a regular progression
from the lowest to the highest, but in certain cases (unfortunately nowadays
in very many cases as a result of civilization), it causes some of the higher
centres to emerge from their latent state and become active before the lower
centres which should be activated first. This irregularity causes all kinds of
mental and physical abnormalities, which can, and alas do, lead to serious
disintegration of the ego! The effects of two world wars, the various
technical discoveries which man is not nearly mature enough to use, and the
great gulf between man and Nature result in our day, as always when great
civilizations fall in decay, in the latent nerve centres of an alarming number
of people becoming activated out of their proper order, a process which
threatens to grow worse and affect not only the white race but also the
Asian and African peoples. This is plain to see. Sick-minded people
suffering from inferiority complexes and megalomania, who have never
developed beyond adolescence, who are still at a very low level of
consciousness, but who nevertheless already possess hypnotic magical
powers of a high order, occupy positions in which they rouse the masses
with their activated, electrifying, high-frequency energy and do untold harm
to their own and other nations’ political and economic life, till another
person, equally primitive and warped in development, yet possessing
magically pervasive energies, ousts them from their position and inflicts, if
possible, still greater harm on the community. No wonder that throughout
the world conditions of absolute chaos prevail, that people run amok for no
apparent reason, and virtually preclude the natural and happy life for which
God has given us ample opportunity on earth. Fear, unrest, impotence and
misery prevail throughout the world today. Through the Judas traitors who
place the supreme spiritual creative powers in the service of their lowest
impulses, man has almost completely lost himself.
These are the dangers of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil! A
person who has acquired knowledge without a parallel development of his
moral power, who has not yet expanded the sphere of his Self to embrace
the community, and has thus not yet converted his egoism into universal
love, runs an inherent risk of using his higher powers inversely, directed
downwards, unnaturally — as a black magician — and to the great harm of
humanity. Only ‘knowing’ people who have not preserved the balance in
developing their nerve and brain centres could place the higher spiritual
manifestations of the Self, such as literature, theatre, film, art, music, in the
service of the lowest powers, in the service of unscrupulous demagogy, or
sensuality, eroticism, lust, obscene sexuality and pornography. Animals
cannot sin through sexuality. When they are roused by the healthy power of
Nature they expend it perfectly naturally, breed offspring and also enjoy the
pleasures of healthy sexuality. For them that is all there is to it. Man,
however, on the one hand still underdeveloped, on the other, already half-
aware, uses his reason to think out all kinds of methods of rousing his
sensory organs, even against their will, and of titillating them merely for the
sake of enjoyment and perverse lust. The healthy organs thus grow weak
and degenerate, for they have to keep on supplying pleasures beyond their
healthy powers. Naturally, the denizens of the underworld exploit human
weaknesses for the most sordid kinds of business such as drug dens and
other low underworld establishments. Those who, for reasons of
unhappiness or addiction to pleasure (which is also rooted in unhappiness),
direct their vital energy into their sexual organs which demand ever
renewed gratification as a result of constant titillation, have less and less
energy for the functions of the higher organs which serve spirituality. The
result of this is weakened will-power, constant feelings of apprehension,
mental and physical weakness, lowered resistance, inactivity and an
incapacity for life. Thus man forfeits his higher spiritual abilities, lapses
into senility, and is snuffed out.

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Chapter 7
The Magical Powers of Suggestion,
Hypnosis and Mediumship

In this book frequent use has been and will be made of expressions such as
‘magical’, ‘suggestive-magical’ or ‘hypnotic-magical’ abilities and powers.
These and similar expressions require closer definition, for they have been
and continue to be used by a number of people with such a variety of
meanings that their contours have become indistinct and vague. It is
therefore necessary to say something about the meaning of these words in
order to avoid misunderstanding.
What is meant by suggestive or hypnotic powers, we have all been able
to experience and observe. We know there are people who can impose their
will on others — even on animals. We know that this transmission can be
effected through methods ranging from simple influence by persuasion,
through suggestion, to deliberate hypnosis, by which the ‘other’ person is
subjected to the extraneous will. He becomes an unconscious tool in the
hands of the hypnotist, and, completely at his mercy, carries out his will like
a marionette devoid of ego and spirit.
Whoever can transmit his will to others is a magical-suggestive or
magical-hypnotic person. On the other hand, whoever carries out the will of
this ‘magician’, of the hypnotist, is the medium.
If we observe such transmissions of will merely from the outside, we can
perceive only the outward effects. And even if we observe these very
closely, we can ascertain nothing save that such phenomena really exist.
What renders them possible, and what the powers of the suggestionist, the
hypnotist and the medium are in reality can be learned and known only by
someone who has experienced and observed these transmissions for
himself, in full awareness, either as the magical-hypnotic transmitter — that
is, as the hypnotist — or as the recipient — as the medium. We lay
emphasis on the conscious experience, for most people who possess and
work with these powers may have become world-famous hypnotists or
mediums, but nevertheless had, and have, no inkling of the nature of their
own powers. They can describe the phenomena and the laws of these
powers which take possession of others merely from the outside, because
they have and use these powers not consciously, but unconsciously. They
see and observe the effects, but they are ignorant of the power itself and its
functions.
It is not in itself easy to gain conscious knowledge of these powers and
to observe them. To do so, an innate ability is essential. It is still less easy,
once we have attained a fully conscious experience of these phenomena, to
explain them in words to those who can have no share in such direct
experience. It is as difficult as explaining to a blind man that, although the
intellect comprehends certain vibrations as ‘vibrations’, it cannot perceive
them as such but that they can be ‘seen’ quite simply and directly with the
eyes. It would be still more difficult to explain that it is not the ‘vibrations’
one sees — ‘vibrations’ are invisible — but that we see ‘light’ without
being aware that it is actually made up of measurable vibrations.
The same is true of every mental experience. Only through our
individual, direct experiences and states of being can we perceive it and
make it conscious within us. The intellect can only understand something; it
can never perceive, see, hear, taste or feel and thus experience directly. Yet
only by its assistance is it possible to pass on the inner mental experiences,
for the intellect alone is able to create and comprehend words and to give
insight into what is not direct experience. Only the intellect is able to bridge
the gap between ignorance and knowledge. On the basis of direct
experience, then, a rational explanation will be attempted of what is meant
by suggestion, hypnotism and mediumship.
We know that man receives various rays from the universe and his
environment. In the same way he himself emits various energies, being an
independent centre, an ‘ego’. He has seven main energy centres — the
chakras — through which he receives the energies emitted from the cosmos,
transforms them and transmits them in seven forms of energy to his body,
his surroundings and the outer world. Since these energy centres are
generally not yet in an activated but still in a more or less latent condition in
men, their function varies according to a man’s particular level of
development. It therefore stands to reason that the quality and quantity of
the total radiation of different people also varies widely. This depends on a
man’s individual level of development.
We know from scientific wave theory that the waves of the various
radiations may reinforce, weaken or even neutralize one another, depending
on the relationship between the type and length of the waves. If different
waves are superimposed so that their frequencies coincide, they have a
mutually strengthening effect; if their frequencies are opposed, however, the
effect is weakening or neutralizing because a gap occurs in the continuity.
These points of neutralization are scientifically termed ‘interference’.
The individual radiations of men naturally work on the same principles,
for everything is analogous. Hermes Trismegistus said: ‘As above, so
below.’ They have an effect on their environment and outer world, no
matter whether plants, animals or humans are present there. It is a fact that
in the presence of loving people everything is animated; plants are fresher
and thrive with greater profusion, children and animals reared by such
people grow healthy and strong, and all adults near them become healthier,
livelier, stronger, indeed happier. On the other hand, there are others in
whose presence all plants wither and die and children and animals grow
weak and ailing. Avoided by their fellow-men, these people become
increasingly lonely and isolated.
Born doctors, nurses, masseurs, gardeners, as well as people in other
walks of life, clearly illustrate this beneficial effect. It may be the father of a
family, or a mother, a nanny who has grown old with the family, sometimes
an ‘uncle’, a friend or a professional colleague, who is everyone’s favourite
because he or she has a strikingly animating, beneficial radiation. Such
people attract all living creatures and are everywhere the cherished life and
soul of their spheres.
What is the secret of these people?
It is this: the higher the frequencies and the shorter the waves which a
person emits, the closer they approach certain frequencies, vibrations and
rays which cannot be detected scientifically, although we experience them
directly and simply call them ‘love’. The frequencies of love represent the
very shortest waves, the very highest frequencies; they are so penetrating
that they pierce through, permeate and even transform all other forms of
energy.
 Nothing and no one can resist these frequencies, nothing can isolate itself
from them. They are the highest, divine frequencies, for love is God!
People also emit lower frequencies, for each state, feeling, thought,
spoken word and deed has a lower or higher radiation and effect.
Accordingly, the effect of these manifestations is to attract or repel,
strengthen, weaken or destroy, to give or take.
There are people who can perceive these radiations as distinctly and
directly as all living creatures see rays of light with their eyes. We can only
explain this rationally, by analogies and similes, as telepathy, for instance,
can be explained by analogy with radio or television.
A person, like every living creature, therefore emits combined energies
and is surrounded by them, just as a lamp is surrounded by its own kinds of
radiation — light, heat and so forth. This composite radiation differs with
each individual, and the more conscious a man has grown in his true Self,
the more powerful the effect of his radiation on his environment, on plants,
animals and people. Just as a lamp radiates light and the stronger that light,
the greater the luminosity round the lamp, so man is surrounded by his own
radiation, and the limit of this is the limit of his mental vision and also of
his will. Just as the big lamp shines through the small lamp, but the small
lamps are unable to penetrate the big ones, so the man of greater self-
awareness illumines less conscious men — he sees them — without their
being able to illumine and see him. The history of mankind supplies
numerous instances where men of genius have illumined their fellow-men
with their spiritual eyes and recognized them clearly, but they in their turn
have neither seen nor recognized these giants, indeed they have even
frequently abused such men, and sent them to the stake or some other form
of death.
Thus the great man sees his fellow-men, but they do not see him. Just as
the radiation of the greater man penetrates the lesser man, and his
frequencies encounter the other’s waves, thereby strengthening or perhaps
weakening them, so in the same measure will the other man find him
likeable, disagreeable or repulsive. This also holds good when people of the
same level of development meet and influence each other. It may happen
that, in spite of being at the same level of development, the one is more
developed in one direction but has fallen behind in another in which his
fellow-man has advanced farther. Consequently, the sum total of their
development may be equal, yet depending on their composition, they may
have a strengthening, weakening, or — as a result of interference repelling
effect on each other. Mathematical laws operate in man’s being, as in the
whole of creation, for man is also created in accordance with these laws.
For this reason we find each other likeable or disagreeable, if not actually
repulsive.
If a person of a higher level of development exerts an influence on an
inferior human being, it can happen that the frequencies of the stronger man
meet those of the weaker one in such a way that they greatly strengthen
certain of his frequencies, causing them to dominate in the weaker man. In
other words: the qualities already present in him, which may have been
unconscious and weak, if not actually latent, suddenly become alive,
conscious and strong, through the analogous radiation of the stronger
person. We then say that the stronger person has ‘influenced him by
suggestion’. When such an influence is exerted on a subject, he does not
lose his own will-power, he remains himself since his frequencies also
remain what they have been, they remain his own emanations. Only certain
components of his frequencies have been emphasized, intensified and made
conscious by the synchronized vibration of the stronger person. Thus his
will-power has not been weakened but roused by the other. There can
therefore be no question of his being possessed. Possession, that is to say,
the state of hypnosis, obtains only when the stronger person penetrates the
weaker one with his frequencies, and through the vibrations which can be
reduced to a common denominator in both cases, reaches the weaker man’s
innermost being, possessing him to such an extent that his will-power
dwindles and he yields more and more to the extraneous power, to the
stronger person’s will. This can go so far that the stronger person, the one
who has become the hypnotist, possesses the weaker one, the medium,
through the common frequencies so completely that he also forcibly
changes the remaining frequencies of the medium, which are not common
to both, and remoulds them, as it were, in his own image. The medium is
thereby ultimately forced to receive so many extraneous frequencies that his
own consciousness is suppressed and reduced to a latent condition. There
are various stages of this state ranging from simple suggestion by verbal
persuasion to total hypnosis and total possession.
 Suggestion is therefore a state in which the subject still retains his right
of self-determination and accepts the will of the suggestionist in full
consciousness.
Suggestion becomes mild hypnosis if the effect of the suggestionist is
gradually to weaken and suppress the subject’s will until he unconsciously
surrenders his right of self-determination, blindly adopts the will of the
suggestionist, who has now assumed the full role of hypnotist, and becomes
his passive instrument.
In total hypnosis the extraneous vibrations of the hypnotist, forcibly
imposed on the medium, have penetrated him thoroughly and taken
possession of him, thereby yielding him up in an unconscious state to the
hypnotist. In his power the medium becomes a pliable tool, for his
consciousness has been forced down to the deepest levels of his
unconscious and he automatically executes the hypnotist’s will. It is a well-
known fact that while this condition of the medium can be used
beneficially, say for healing, it can also be used for evil ends.
At this point a very important question arises. We have seen that the
stronger person, namely the more conscious one (for a person’s strength
always depends on the extent to which he has grown conscious), can instil
his will into the weaker person by suggestion, indeed he can even subjugate
him completely to his will, that is to say, he can hypnotize him. But how
does it happen that a very conscious, and therefore a very powerful,
individual may exercise little or no influence over his fellow-men, while
there are plenty of people who, although neither very conscious nor highly
developed, nevertheless have a strong, suggestive and hypnotic influence
over others? There are plenty of examples of great geniuses, both past and
present, who have exercised no suggestive power whatsoever, still less any
hypnotic power, over their fellow-men, while on the other hand, average
men of moderate abilities have frequently acquired and exploited hypnotic
power over vast numbers of people, or they have become famous hypnotists
effecting countless cures by means of their hypnotic gift. Again others have
influenced weak characters in a criminal way.
The answer to this question is provided by mathematics.
We do not intend to discuss here in detail the theory of numbers or magic
of numbers. Yet if we wish to understand better the inner laws of the human
being, the simplest way is to make use of numbers, since man — like the
whole of creation — is created in accordance with mathematical laws.
We know that in the series of natural numbers, infinitely many are
divisible not only by the number one and by themselves but also by other
numbers. But we know too that there are infinitely many numbers — even
large ones exceeding millions — which are divisible only by the number
one and by themselves and no other number, that is, they are indivisible. In
the theory of numbers these are known as ‘prime numbers’.
As mentioned before, men, just like any energy centre, emit different
vibrations and frequencies. These have a definite frequency which
characterizes the person. Since men manifest endless variations of
character, their frequencies are likewise so innumerable and varied that they
can just as easily belong to the category of the factorable — divisible —
numbers as to that of the non-factorable indivisible — prime numbers. If we
remember the law that the waves of various frequencies can only influence
one another if they share certain affinities, similarities or even identities, we
shall understand that a stronger person can only exert influence upon
another — a weaker person — if the frequency of the stronger person is
divisible by that of the weaker one.
Now we can understand that a person at a lower level of development
than another may have a much greater measure of suggestive power than
other men — he may even have hypnotic power because his frequency
belongs to the numbers divisible by many others. Let us take, for example,
the number sixty. It is not a big number in the infinite series of numbers and
yet it can be divided by twelve numbers — by one, two, three, four, five, six,
ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty, and by itself. Thus, a person whom we
could characterize with the number sixty can have a suggestive or hypnotic
influence on twelve different types of people. If, however, we take as our
example the number 257, we find that although more than four times sixty,
this number contains only the number one and itself without a remainder,
but no other number by which it could be divided. It is therefore an
indivisible prime number. A person characterized by this, or another even
greater prime number, cannot exert suggestive or hypnotic power over
anyone, at however high a level he may be. He remains isolated and
powerless among his fellow-men, because his energies do not correspond
with others and are therefore blocked.
 There are plenty of other examples where, in contrast to a highly
developed person, another at a much lower level of development — a
simple, primitive man — emits great suggestive and hypnotic power
because the highly developed man is characterized by, say, the number
65,537 and the primitive man, for example, by the number 12. Although
65,537 is a relatively high number, it is still an indivisible prime number,
and thus has no access to others. On the other hand, the number 12, low
though it may be, has access to six numbers, for it is divisible by six
different numbers (half of itself!). Hence, this person has suggestive power
with regard to six types of people — at a lower level of consciousness than
himself, of course. In general, the average person is not at a high level of
consciousness. So we can see why it is possible that superior geniuses
should frequently stand solitary and alone, without any contact or
suggestive power, while undeveloped people of limited intelligence — alas
very often a simple fortune-teller — exercise mysterious power. Naturally, a
person on a high level whom we could characterize, for instance, with the
number 30,240 can exert legitimate power over great multitudes of people,
often quite unintentionally. Everywhere he will meet with sympathy and
support because very few people are able to escape from his penetrating,
suggestive and hypnotic powers. Multitudes of people will vibrate in
harmony with him, whether they wish to or not, because the number 30,240
is divisible by ninety numbers This person will have access to ninety types
of people and will thus command vast hypnotic power. In the same way it is
understandable that some people will hate him from the bottom of their
hearts! Yet this number is still less than half that of our previous example,
65,537!
If we look at exceptional men such as Moses, Buddha, Confucius and
Jesus, we can imagine what high frequencies these ‘white magicians’ must
have had, and with how high a frequency, if we had the means to measure
it, we should have to characterize these and all other great teachers and
masters! The works of these greatest of men were influential not only in
their time and sphere when and where they lived — but have continued to
reverberate in the atmosphere of the whole world, through time and space,
down to the present day and in all eternity.
I omit instances of black magicians intentionally.
 And now the question arises: what is the difference, with regard to the
numbers, between superior highly developed people whom we call ‘white
magicians’, and those who are their mirror image, also superior and highly
developed, but who practise black magic, who have always existed and still
exist in our time?
Any person who suppresses the right of self-determination of others or
even deprives them of it in order to use them as puppets in the service of his
selfish ends, is already a black magician. Each man can, and should, fight
with human weapons; but not with magical powers and certainly not with
the vast magical power acquired by the transformation of sexual energy. A
superior person may use these powers only in the interest of the great whole
in which — as he must know — all of us, himself included, are only one
minute cell. If a person develops steadily, if his latent energy centres are
activated in the correct sequence, then, even before he is able to use his
highest energy centres, his inner spiritual eyes will already be open to this
truth, and he will have no desire whatsoever to use his magical-hypnotic
power egoistically, for his personal ends, out of power-mania. Not because
he is, or wants to be, ‘so selfless’, but because he feels completely at one
with the great whole and out of sheer egoism has regard for its good and
serves this end with all his magical powers. For there is only one kind of
love: selfish love. The sole difference is who and what I incorporate into the
sphere of my selfish love. It can include a person, an animal, a family, any
social group or association, any nation, the whole earth or the universe.
Then people call this same ‘selfish love’ selfless love’, because I have
extended the circle of my self-love to include the whole universe. But the
love has not changed at all, it has only developed. At first I love myself,
then finally I love the whole universe like myself, better expressed, as
myself, because I have developed and in the course of this my love has also
developed and I recognize that I am the whole universe! — Tat tvam asi!
The ‘white magician’ will therefore never wish to suppress another
man’s consciousness, to assert his own will over him and to enslave him.
Quite the contrary. He will even help to develop the consciousness of other
men so that they will then voluntarily enlist themselves in the service of
divine intentions and plans. The white magician remains at his own centre,
but from there, from within himself, he radiates animating powers of love
and thus life itself. He also allows the other person to remain free and
uninfluenced within his centre so that he not only preserves his right of self-
determination, but with the help of the white magician develops to an even
higher level.
The black magician on the other hand, out of sheer power-mania, uses
his creative energies to lure people under his spell and to use them as
slaves. Through suggestion or hypnosis he seizes the other person’s centre
and makes him serve his personal, selfish ends as a satellite in orbit around
him, regardless of whether his victim is mentally or physically destroyed in
the process.
The white magician remains within his own centre, radiating from there
to the whole outer world the divine-magical power of love. The black
magician intrudes into the other man’s innermost being, eats himself into
his soul, penetrates him with his will, destroys him and makes of him an
unconscious automaton dancing attendance upon him.
However high the frequencies emitted by the white magician, he remains
with his consciousness within the number one, within the number of God,
which is itself indivisible, but which can divide all numbers ad infinitum.
He exerts his influence on every living creature through the number one,
with the most irresistible radiation and power of love. As we have said, the
white magician remains with his consciousness within the number one and
radiates from there to infinity. Thus he is completely impersonal. The black
magician steps out of the undivided whole into plurality, he attains the very
high number of knowledge and power and identifies himself with the very
high number of his own, personal frequencies, thereby becoming a super-
individual concerned solely with the promotion of his own, personal
interests. That all the evil wrought by a black magician finally rebounds on
himself, and that he comes to a dreadful end, stands to reason.
The number one is the number of God. Without the number one there is
no other number. This number is the beginning, just as without God there is
no beginning, no creation. The number one cannot be divided. All other
numbers are divisible by the number one, because every number contains it
without a remainder and is penetrated by it. Even the highest prime number
must submit without resistance to penetration by the number one, just as
God penetrates the most isolated man with his irresistible power of love,
infuses him and destroys the isolating crust with his fire.
 God is contained without a remainder in the whole of creation, from the
smallest to the greatest creature, because God is the father of the whole
creation. In the same way the number one is the father of all numbers!
The number of God is the number one. Yet there is a number which
transcends the understanding of the human, finite intellect, which is the
reflection of the number one in the infinite. Just as the number one is the
starting-point of the entire creation, so this unimaginable number is the
fulfilment, the end of creation. Just as every number can be divided by the
divine number one, so this number of fulfilment and the infinite can be
divided by every number. No scientist can calculate this number, because it
is the number of the infinite and yet it exists as the all-embracing, infinitely
great reflection of the number one. Just as no number can exist without the
number one, so by the same token, there can be no number that is not
contained without a remainder in this unimaginable number of the infinite.
God is love, and the frequencies of love are so high that they can be
expressed only by this number: it contains all other numbers in itself and is
therefore the number of the infinite. Just as eternity is beyond the limits of
time, yet can be expressed only through time, which belongs to the finite
creation, so we can surmise the infinitely great number of God’s
frequencies — of love — only through knowledge of the limited finite
numbers. Eternity itself is not subject to time, yet time is part of eternity.
Thus we find the infinitely many finite numbers in the infinite, in eternity,
which does not know the finite and fragmentation: in God.
While the number one is the number of God and expresses his
invariability, indivisibility and eternity, it still forms every number ad
infinitum. In the same way as God is omnipresent, creating and animating
all things without being touched by his creation, so the number one forms
all numbers, indeed is prerequisite for their existence, without being
touched by them and their compounds. And as the number one, the creator
of all numbers is the starting-point, so its reflection is the number of the
infinite and fulfilment, which contains all numbers in itself, the end of all
creation and the finite. At this point there remains only nothingness, from
which the universe has emerged and into which it will be absorbed and
disappear. Our ego is God, the number one in us. But in fulfilment this
number one extends to the number beyond human understanding, the
number of the infinite. Man’s path leads from the number one, from the
birth of consciousness to the number of the infinite, where we embrace the
whole universe in one consciousness.
Just as the first primal sound of the creation itself created all remaining
sounds by its own harmonic tones, and just as we hear only this single,
great primal sound with its all-pervading power when we simultaneously
sound its harmonics, so we shall become the number one, the one, single,
divine Self permeating the whole universe by animating all existing
frequencies. And it will come to pass that all men, all living creatures, the
whole of creation will be penetrated, kindled, animated, wakened and called
to a new eternal life in God by the all-penetrating power of the primordial
number one.

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At the top left of this picture the sage creates the philosopher’s stone by
planting his tree of life in a tub filled with the elixir of life. This is
constantly heated by the fire of the dragon — sexual energy — in order to
make the sage’s tree of life blossom. (Rosicrucian representation.)

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St George has attained all-consciousness and conquers the dragon sexual
energy. But he does not slay him, for he needs the fire, the strength of the
dragon, in order to reach god. (Brother Kolozsvari, Hradcany Castle,
Prague.)

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Chapter 8
The Seven Rungs of Jacob’s Ladder

As long as man is still an unconscious creature, his logos-powers operate in

him at an unconscious level, automatically and in accordance with the laws
of Nature, as in the case of animals. His sexual energy manifests itself
within him as a purely animal-physical urge, driving him to rid himself of
the unpleasant nervous tension caused by accumulated potency.
Accordingly, his state of consciousness is nothing but an animal urge for
release. He has no inkling of love, for he is still unable spiritually to
experience and manifest his unconscious, dormant desire for it. His higher
centres are still in a latent condition, his heart is dead. From this apparent
death he is awakened by his sex urge. In a state of physical excitement,
stimulated by his sexual energy, he instinctively seeks a partner. Nature
deceives him. For sexual excitement serves the sole purpose of procreation,
of propagating the vast current of life in order to attain the great goal, the
spiritualization of the earth. Primitive man is ignorant of all this. He pursues
his sexual desires for gratification. Usually, however, the laws of human
civilization and general moral codes prevent gratification immediately the
sex drive makes itself felt. Whether he likes it or not, he is compelled to
postpone fulfilment for some time. Even among the primitive Negro and
bushman tribes, the young men who have just reached maturity must
restrain their healthy sexuality till the great ceremony. Only then are they
initiated into the secrets of sexuality. Whether in other parts of the world or
with the white races of the West, it is a fact that man must first wait with his
urge till he eventually finds an opportunity of gratifying his sexual desires,
while an animal assailed by sexual desire seeks a suitable partner and
usually finds one straight away. Man is required, then, to wait some time.
During this waiting period the tension mounts within him and, since it does
not find immediate release, this energy tries to discharge itself in another
way, through the nerve channels. The unreleased tension builds up and thus
man is charged with ever-quickening vibrations and frequencies. If,
however, the frequencies of an energy increase, the energy is also no longer
what it was previously. Thus the first transformation of sexual energy,
however small, has already occurred!
The new tension, increased by accumulation, with its higher frequencies
now no longer operates solely on his sexual organs, but also on his higher
organs which are able to sustain and manifest the increased frequencies.
The drive has the added effect of rousing his intellect, he racks his brains
for an idea, a solution. Physical desire wakens his consciousness and thus
the first glimmer, however faint, in the dawn of awareness has been
achieved. Sooner or later he also finds the chance to release his sexual
desire, so he is not required to repress it, and yet, at the same time, the first
step in the transformation of sexual energy has been taken. Of course, this
does not happen as simply and quickly as appears from this description, and
although the effect too varies with each individual, the result is the same.
As has been said already, man can develop certain pathologically
nervous, often very dangerous inner states, known in modern psychiatry as
‘repressions’. This happens when his higher nerve centres have not yet been
activated and he is consequently still unable to transform his sexual
energies into creative power, yet leads a continent life. But if in the same
state of development he restrains his sex drive only for a short period and
then gives it free rein, he will not cause repression. In his yet unconscious
state he has taken the first steps on the path of transforming sexual energy,
quite unintentionally. What compelled him to do so? Unsatisfied sexual
energy. We can therefore say that the very sexual energy within us helps to
transform — sexual energy. Through the very lack of gratification it has
heightened its tension, and by a mental effort has already elevated and
expanded the consciousness in some small measure. In this way, whenever
a person is unable to fulfil his sexual desires on the first impulse, he climbs
the next rung on the ladder of growing consciousness. He ascends step by
step till he reaches the stage where he becomes inwardly conscious, not
only of his physical desire, but also of his Self. Yet the driving force does
not cease to work in him; it urges him on with its ever-recurring, heightened
tension, assisting and compelling him to experience by degrees
correspondingly higher states of consciousness. Gradually he will reach the
level, where, in a state of sexual excitement, he will not feel a purely animal
desire to spend himself, but will experience and manifest the first intimation
of a human togetherness, even if it is merely in the still primitive form of
physical devotion. Even though this may be no more than impassioned
possessiveness and subjection, there nevertheless exists a new human
relationship between himself and the partner whom he has got to know
more closely through sexual intercourse. The first tokens of tenderness, the
first symptoms of love appear. Thus his dead heart is in time warmed
through and wakened. The purely sexual urge gives way to the desire for
fulfilment at a higher level, at the second level of manifestation — that of
being in love. And since, moreover, he begins to emerge from the
nondescript masses as an individual, he is thus also no longer
indiscriminately content with any partner, but seeks one more suited to him
and to his developing taste. Several lives may pass during the course of this
development from an uncouth, unconscious, primitive man to the
attainment of this level. Eternity is long enough… .
The primitive man, still trapped in the prison of slow, natural
development over eons, may start at the third level of consciousness only in
some future life. Then he no longer gratifies his sex urge indiscriminately.
He becomes more selective and also tries to please his partner. His
relationship to the member of the opposite sex changes to a mixture of
sexual desire and sense of togetherness coupled with possessiveness, which
although primitive and selfish, is already an inferior form of love. His
originally purely sexual urge has turned into amorousness, which ties him to
a particular person.
This amorousness is further fanned by the fire of his sexual energy,
which through waiting has intensified. On the other hand, his sexual desire
is heightened by the hope of winning this one person of his choice. Such
sexual energies, having been raised to a higher level, act with an intensified
effect on the higher centres if, in discharging, they encounter obstacles. We
could list numerous instances from the history of mankind which prove
what ingenious and cunning feats lovers can be made to perform by their
frustrated sexual desires if, in spite of all obstacles, they are determined to
win the unattainable partner. Frustrated sexual energy has a very stimulating
effect on the higher centres, above all on the intellect. The kindled intellect
promises the lovers the highest happiness through gratification of their
sexual desires. Thus their amorousness is further enhanced, and for reasons
of love, if nothing else, they get married. If a man has attained his goal and
married, sexual energy finds its outlet free of restraint. Usually, however,
sharp-witted heroes and heroines of love then turn into satisfied, boring
philistines, till such time as providence compels them to renewed
transformation of energy. The husband — caught in Nature’s trap begins to
think more about his work in order to ensure a better life for his family, if
not entirely because of the pleasure work affords him. He seeks to achieve
more. In so doing he is impelled to direct more energy into the higher
channels, through which he discharges a greater proportion of these creative
energies. Thus the average man is compelled by his sexual energy and his
amorousness to direct part of his driving force to the intellectual level and
to convert it into mental effort. He gradually comes to know the pleasure of
creative work, and thus, for the first time, he experiences a kind of self-
confidence. His self-awareness grows and expands. Time and habit
transform his possessiveness and lust for his life-partner, who by this time
has become the mother of his children, into a spiritual-human bond, a
loving, domestic harmony, an already higher, more selfless form of love.
Thus unconsciously, and without noticing it, he directs his sexual
energies increasingly into higher centres, and gradually attains the next, the
fourth level in the development of consciousness. He begins to receive and
emit ever higher frequencies. These rouse and open still other higher nerve
centres; he begins to think even more, and no longer merely about how
better to gratify his impulses and how to obtain yet further sensual-sexual
pleasures and delights. He also starts taking an interest in higher things. He
seeks to give his life more substance, he gradually becomes more
individual, he knows that in physical love, too, only an understanding
partner with whom he shares a spiritual affinity can give him gratification.
He looks for, and expects from his lover a similar way of thinking and
similar taste. But his increased demands in love narrow the choice of
suitable partners, and thus too his chances of full sexual gratification. The
more refined his taste, the less easy his gratification. His frustrated and
pent-up sexual energies force his consciousness to climb faster, even higher,
and also to perceive higher frequencies. In so doing, he activates the next
highest nerve centre. His interest turns to knowledge! Thus he reaches the
fourth level and grows into it. He begins to study, to learn, he wishes to
unravel the mysteries of the world. His mental horizon widens. His creative
powers no longer manifest themselves solely through the body as sexual
energy, but as emotional and intellectual powers and as strengthened will-
power. He ‘gets on’ in his career, he may hold a leading position, he stands
out from the masses. Through carrying a higher vital tension, and becoming
conscious at higher frequencies, he also directs higher vibrations into his
sexual organs, causing a correspondingly large increase in his physical-
sexual potency! The higher his level of consciousness, the higher and more
powerful the energies which man is also able to direct to his lower nerve
centres and organs, and correspondingly greater the pleasures of sexual
union! For this, however, he requires a partner as superior as himself. In his
love-life he seeks an understanding, exceptional woman who is his equal,
and with whom he can form a close spiritual and intellectual relationship.
He already has the experience, and knows that perfect gratification of mind
and body and the joy of genuine happiness are only possible with a worthy
and equal partner. She must have the ability to follow him into the greatly
increased frequencies, and, fired by a passionate yet sublime love, to
reciprocate these with her whole being! He is already aware of the vast
difference between quantity and quality and also lives accordingly, because
he can no longer live in any other way!
It is extremely sad indeed if a person of a higher level of development is
capable of expending and imparting very high tensions in loving and yet his
partner is unable to follow him. How dreadfully alone such a person feels!
On the shore at low tide one finds countless mussels lying around, which
have been washed up by the waves and dried by the sun. As a child I used
to try and piece these halves together to make them one again. There were
many simple ones, quite smooth and with a smooth, flat rim. Even if two
halves did not belong to the same mussel, they were usually a good match
and I could close them. Less common were the mussels which were not flat,
but corrugated on the outside and the rim. They were much more beautiful
and individualized. I could only put these together properly if the two
halves were of the same mussel, only if they belonged together. They did
not harmonize with the half of another mussel… .
People, too, are like this. The primitive man could find many partners
with whom he could share a peaceful life. The husband earns the living, the
wife looks after husband and children, together they bear the burdens of life
in peace. Habit, their children and the family unite them, but without deep
spiritual harmony, for the very reason that they are not yet spiritual, not yet
individual. The more spiritual, the more unique and individual a person
becomes, the more important it is for him that his marriage-partner matches
his level of development in every respect. The more defined a person’s
character, the less possible it is for him to live together with a lover who
does not suit him, and there can be no peace between the two. The higher a
man’s level, the more essential it is for him that his partner’s intellectual
level, her intelligence, way of thinking, taste, right down to every detail of
their love-making, indeed her whole nature, suit him perfectly. Only with
this woman can he also have a pleasurable, gratifying sexual encounter, in
which both parties experience perfect oneness in mind, soul and body.
Thus man slowly grows into the fifth level. At this level of
consciousness he has reached the point where he can manifest his creative
powers in the form of sexual, as well as spiritual, mental and intellectual
energies, and beyond that, as ever-increasing iron will-power. He radiates
his powers, partly already in a purely intellectual, partly in a spiritual and
partly in a physical form, in the direction of his current interest, according
to his state of consciousness. He has activated his nerve and brain centres
which are capable of bearing higher, purely intellectual energies and high
tensions. The resistance of his nerves and body has so increased that he can
sustain the high intellectual frequencies without detriment, and also
manifest them as sexual energy through his body. He is passionate in his
love — it emanates from an inner, spiritual harmony. His sexual organs,
powerful and resistant from birth, are also correspondingly capable of
manifesting high, passionate tensions. He has become creative; all the
valves at five levels, from intellectuality to physical manifestations, are
open. Only two further brain centres, which will at some time in the future
bear and manifest the very highest, divine frequencies, remain in a latent
condition.
If a person radiates all his powers uniformly, then there has automatically
also been a uniform development of his organs of manifestation, and
consequently, a supremely intellectual person lives in a beautifully formed,
healthy, strong body. This is the level, at which for the first time — if he so
wishes — man is able to give up his sexual manifestation without resulting
harm, pathological nervousness and other difficulties, because he is able to
manifest his power at the higher levels free from restraint. Wherever he
turns his interest, that is to say, his consciousness, his high creative power
manifests itself through corresponding nerve or brain centres and through
the suitable organs. He can manifest his sexual energy and experience it as
love, he can beget children, or, if he turns his interest to the world of ideas,
he can manifest supremely intellectual, creative-suggestive thoughts and
scatter them as fertile seeds. He has become intuitive and suggestive, his
hypnotic-magical abilities unfold and come into play. We have only to
remember those great geniuses who were not only sexually very potent and
experienced passionate love, but also penetrated the whole of mankind with
their high, creative ideas born of inspiration. They begot intellectual
children with mankind, they created new worlds and altered the course of
history, just as they could give a woman happiness with their physical
powers and beget children with her.
We know from history that during creative work great geniuses have
often abstained from manifestations of love for many months. They
expended all their energies in intellectual manifestation; afterwards,
however, they again manifested passionate love and devotion with
unchanged potency. These men, at the fifth level in the development of
consciousness, already experience creative power as a state of being. They
experience it as pleasure in work, as existence, and their influence is
magical-creative in every respect. It does not matter whether such a man
manifests his energies as a scholar, politician, statesman, ruler, philosopher,
or as a performer, composer, painter, sculptor or author. The impact of his
influence is the measure of his greatness. It is of no consequence where and
when these men lived and worked — or are living and working at the
present time. They are above time and space! Their work shines as divine
light over the whole earth at all times, and this light diffuses its brightness
over the world of finiteness and transience. An Aristotle, a Pythagoras,
Plato or Plotinus is as much above time and space as a Spinoza, Leibniz,
Kant, Shakespeare, Goethe, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian,
Rembrandt, Rubens or a Beethoven, Mozart, Bach or a Galileo, Edison,
Marconi, Paracelsus, Hahnemann and other titans of this world. They
looked into creation, brought down to us and revealed what they had
experienced at the higher levels. ‘There is no greater happiness than to
approach the Godhead and bring it down to men,’ wrote Beethoven in a
letter to the Wegelers. How great his spiritual love that for him the highest
happiness was to bring down happiness to men!
Many of these great geniuses experienced physical love and enjoyed it to
the full. It is, however, neither necessary nor possible to list here the
number of titanic men who have transformed human love into divine love. I
recall for instance Plato — it is after him that we term ideal love ‘Platonic’
— and Dante, who created an image of pure, heavenly love in Beatrice, in
his Divine Comedy. We observe too that many of these men were deeply
religious — without bigotry — and yearned for God. And we know that
many of these giants could abstain from manifesting sexual energy over a
long period and remain harmonious and healthy, free from repression.
Beethoven was once asked why he did not marry: ‘How could I write my
music if I were to expend my energies in conjugal life,’ was his reply.
Man just cannot serve two masters. He must decide whether to direct his
creative powers into the higher or the lower centres. Truly great men have
never lived licentiously. On the other hand, incarnations of The Rake never
have, nor will, become great men. We find this truth very graphically
symbolized in the biblical account of Samson: Samson possessed
incomparable and invincible magical power, which radiated from his higher
brain centres, thus from his skull, like a thick mane of hair. This power,
which also endowed him with his legendary physical strength, vanished like
shaved hair when he directed his magical-creative powers into the lowest
centres and used them up in sexual intercourse with Delilah. At the same
time he was ‘blinded’, he lost his spiritual vision and spiritual freedom: he
was put in ‘prison’, locked up in himself and isolated. Because he found the
way back to himself in ‘prison’, and retained his energies for himself, he
was able to transform them once more into creative-magical powers which
the reactivated higher centres once again emitted. His strength-giving hair
began to grow again, grew long, and he once more became capable of
superhuman feats and was able to destroy the royal palace — the
identification of consciousness with the realm of matter. In this way he was
released from his suffering.
Thus human consciousness gradually raises itself to the sixth step of
Jacob’s ladder. At this level we find the prophets, the saints, the great
teachers of the West and the great masters and rishis of the Orient. They
have become familiar with creative power at each level and obtained
complete mastery over it. They know that to expend this divine power in
the body would undeniably be a sad loss to those who use vital energy as
creative power and are consequently able to know and experience the joys
and happiness of the spirit. Sexual desire has fallen away from them like a
ripe fruit from a tree. Their sexual organs are as strong and healthy as those
of other men, since it is the spirit that builds the body, and the power of the
spirit reveals itself in a perfect body. Since, however, the body obeys the
spirit, the sexual organs work for their own body, providing it with the
hormones necessary to maintain its health and strength and keep it supplied
with ever-renewed energy. In the bodies of these people sexual potency is in
a state of dormancy. The energies which would stimulate these organs to
procreation are directed into higher nerve and brain centres and expended in
a divine-creative way as spiritual energies. These men give up human-
creative activity, they neither write literary works nor compose music for
the public, nor do they strive after glory or worldly success; instead, they
radiate their creative energy purely as divine-spiritual intelligence, as
universal, divine love. This is the highest, most irresistible, all-penetrating
power — the power of God. The sole activity of earthly prophets is to show
the way to liberation and resurrection to those people who still dwell and
suffer in the darkness or semi-twilight, and who are already fighting with all
their might to escape from their suffering. These men are the servants of
God. Most of them already have a vocation when they come into the world.
But there have been, and will be, many others who attain this level only in
the course of their lives. There have been, and still are, many such great
men among us. In the West we call them saints, mystics, prophets, in the
East, great masters, rishis. It is difficult to find them, for in appearance they
are no different from other men, and they are recognized and understood
only by those who are at the level immediately below their own. Others may
worship them because they feel their greatness, but they cannot understand
them. Some even hate them because they feel their greatness and
imperviousness to all temptation, and therefore feel inferior and
insignificant beside them. And yet he who seeks God from the depths of his
heart finds these men, for ‘by their fruits ye shall know them …’ (Matt. 7:
20).
At the seventh level man has developed his consciousness to such an
extent that he is able to control all these forms of energy of creative-divine
power from the highest frequencies, and can use them in each form without
descending to the lower levels with his consciousness. He experiences life
consciously within him, that is to say, in his consciousness he is life itself.
In perfect self-recognition, in a divine state of self-awareness, in an absolute
state of being, in which not an atom of his being has remained unconscious,
he has become consciously identical, consciously one, with God. He
understands, and can himself say what Moses said, because he too spoke
face to face with God, that the name of God is: ‘i am that i am’.
God is eternal being. And if in reality I am — the part of the verb ‘to be’
in the first person — thus, in my consciousness I have become being itself,
God.
This is the very highest level of consciousness, at which man and his
Creator cease to face each other as separate entities and the human Self
becomes one with God in a monistic universal consciousness. Those who
have attained this level, we call God-men.
That is why the God-man best known but least understood in the West,
says of himself: ‘I and my father are one’ (John 10: 3o).
God-men live in a state of all-consciousness, of divine consciousness,
and all their manifestations spring from this divine consciousness, from
God himself. From time to time a God-man is born into this world to show
that the attainment of this state of consciousness is within everyone’s grasp.
He shows us the path to God, to our heavenly father, who awaits us in our
unconscious, he shows us the path of the prodigal son, who one day awakes
from the state in which he does no more than tend his bestial appetities, and
says: ‘I will arise and go to my father …’ (Luke 15:18). And he comes to a
decision and sets out on the long path of growing consciousness. He begins
the great journey back to paradise, to the once deserted, heavenly home of
the loving father, who comes towards him — us with open arms, takes him
— us — in his arms, presses him to his fatherly breast and in the sublime
state of divine consciousness becomes one with him — with us.

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Chapter 9
Saint George

Whoever practises Yoga in order to accelerate his progress on the great

Jacob’s ladder of growing consciousness must become thoroughly
acquainted with sexual energy, which is the sole means of helping him from
the lowest to the very highest step. He must make it completely conscious
in himself and subjugate it to his spirit, that is to say, he must convert sexual
energy into spiritual-creative energy.
As we have already seen, sexual energy, that universal force, is the
creative principle — logos — and whether or not we are already aware of it,
this energy is man’s true being, his own Self, his own Creator himself, in
the first person: am it!’ For this reason sexual energy cannot be destroyed,
since this would mean that man destroys himself. We can only transform
sexual energy, only be it! And if a person has attained complete self-
awareness with the help of this energy and has thus become his own master,
he has also at the same time become master of sexual energy, the most
magical of all magical powers, since he is this energy itself! The fully
conscious man calls sexual energy ‘I’. Such a man can work miracles and
create new worlds around him with the sexual energy which he has
converted into divine-creative power. He has obtained mastery over the
whole realm of Nature with all her forces and all her creatures, he has
become a white magician, a God-man.
The well-known representation of Saint George depicts this truth very
vividly. The great saint, the all-conscious man, conquers the dragon —
sexual energy — but he does not slay him, he merely pins him down with
his sword. For its fire and its strength are absolutely indispensable to him if
he is to reach God, if he is to be God. He must not destroy his own driving
force, he merely subjugates it. For if he were to destroy the dragon, he
would destroy himself and would no longer be able to heat his higher nerve
and brain centres with the dragon’s fire and radiate sexual energy as divine-
creative power. If we wish to attain our goal — God — we are in dire need
of sexual energy, subjugated to our ends and converted into creative power,
in order to use it as the driving force for spiritualization, release and
resurrection!
Those who have set out on the path of Yoga have usually a few steps
from previous lives behind them and bear the experience, be it
unconsciously, that the sexual energies may not be abused. They no longer
wish to be caught in the snares of Nature, but to escape from them. But they
too once had to acquire their experience of sexual energy, since the latter is
equally God’s manifestation of creative power, only, at the lowest level, the
level of matter, manifested as spiritual power concentrated in matter,
therefore as materialized spiritual power. If we spend this energy healthily,
in accordance with the laws of Nature, this is not a sin. It only becomes so
— if this concept is at all valid — when sexuality is abused for the purpose
of dragging down the higher, spiritual energies by expending them without
any inner harmony, as ends in themselves, in an exaggerated and unnatural
way, through the glands stimulated by perversities and artificial means. This
process robs man of both his will-power and suggestive power and greatly
weakens his sexual organs. Everything that is performed by abnormally
overstimulated organs in excess of normal, natural desires, as craving for
pleasure as m end in itself, generally reduces man’s vital energy, his mental
powers and his character. On the other hand, he is entitled to expend
sexuality in a healthy, normal manner. We know from the history of
mankind down to the present day of many highly developed men who have
possessed high spiritual powers and yet indulged energetically and with
passion in the physical manifestation of love, without lowering and
forfeiting their intellectual powers. They simply made proper and normal
use of their creative energies in accordance with divine, natural laws. They
experienced physical love and devotion based on healthy affection,
therefore they expended physical energies physically. They did not
transform spiritual, divine-creative energy into physical powers and use it in
the opposite direction, nor did they drag it down to perversities and empty,
purely sensual lust. At no time were they weak-willed sensualists at the
mercy of sexuality.
On the contrary, they were masters of themselves and of sexual energy.
Nevertheless, it is certain that however great they were, these geniuses who
loved passionately were unable to become prophets, white magicians, saints
and God-men, as long as they did not renounce their love-life. In spite of
their human greatness, they were still identical with their sex, they were still
human beings. Even if in the course of creative work they were elevated to
the height of the divine spirit — which is sexless! — and during this time
were identical with their genius, when the work was over, their
consciousness sank again to a lower, human level, where they became
sexual beings once more. In other words, they were not yet a ‘ whole’ , they
were only on the way to becoming a whole.
A saint, a God-man has gathered all this experience in previous
existences and Nature can no longer lure him into her trap. He has ceased to
spend creative power through the sexual organs, but preserves it for his own
body, without identifying himself with matter, with the body. He is
conscious and remains so at the source of divine potency; he himself is this
source as his own ‘ ego’ and no longer declines from this state of
consciousness to the sexual, material level. Thus he directs the sublime,
high frequency energies into his body, which is so completely transformed
by them that the substance of the body of a saint or a God-man differs
fundamentally from that of an average man. The spiritual powers destroy all
bacteria and viruses, and so the initiated are immune against all illnesses.
These powers preserve the body in a youthful condition, because the body
cells are continuously regenerated by the high frequencies and high tension
of the spirit. The hormones of the sexual glands are present not merely in
order to endow the human body with the ability to procreate; instead they
play a far greater part in the accumulation and preservation of youthful
energies for their own body than is generally realized. Sexual energy is vital
energy itself, the link between mind and matter. Not only can it transmit life
in a new living creature during sexual union, but it can also continuously
charge one’s own body with new vitality, if one preserves it for oneself and
knows the secret of its transformation. A saint, an initiate, does not despise
the body, on the contrary, he esteems it highly as a wonderful agent of
manifestation providing man with the only suitable driving force to climb
the great ladder of Jacob. But since the initiate is conscious in his own
divine Self — which is sexless — he requires no complement — whether
physical or spiritual. In his consciousness he has become in every respect a
whole. Thus he can preserve and use his vital energy for his own body, as
he pleases, although his body continues to manifest quite normally and
healthily one side of the whole, one sex, one pole.
As has been frequently emphasized, sexual energy is the link, the catalyst
between mind and matter. If a man is unable to manifest sexual energy, if
his organs of manifestation are missing or undeveloped, old or impaired,
then he can no longer establish a direct link between his spirituality and his
body — his spirituality and Nature. He can certainly attain the highest
spiritual level in his consciousness, but he cannot transmit the magical
power of the spirit to his body or to the body of other human beings. He can
attain high spiritual awareness — this is possible even on one’s death-bed
— but he cannot acquire magical abilities, known as siddhis. He can
become an illuminate, a saint, but not an initiate or a magician. There is no
fire without fuel. There must be oil in the lamp when the bridegroom
comes, the Bible tells us.
That should not, however, discourage readers who think they have
already forfeited their sexual abilities. For man can never know when he
has finally become impotent. We know of cases where old men who had
considered themselves totally impotent for years suddenly experienced an
unexpected resurgence of potency. And this is less exceptional than might
be thought! On the other hand, we may ask the question: is it of such vital
importance to each man to be able to regenerate his body, to become
clairvoyant, to float above the earth and to acquire yet other magical-occult
abilities? Is it not enough to be able to experience the highest states of
consciousness, speak face to face with God in one’s mind, live with an
infinite peace in this world, and when time has run out on the cosmic clock,
to depart this life? The fates of men are various! And each man must know
himself what God wishes of him. If a person feels called upon by God to
follow a certain path, he will then acquire all the possible means to find that
path. Not only the laws of Nature, but also the divine laws are inflexible
and insuperable. Everything depends on what we wish to achieve! For
whatever we do wish to achieve — what our deepest conviction urges us to
do — shows the measure of our maturity. Those who do not yet wish to
give up their sex life, and those too who are sexually impotent, must take
into account that, although they may indeed attain very high levels in the
mind, the transformation of sexual energies into creative powers — that is
to say, the expectation that they may become an initiate — must be reserved
for some future life. At some time all men will reach the very highest, the
divine level, and then they will also want no more than to be the divine Self,
which is precisely what all this amounts to. But what we have not yet
learned from experience and tasted to the full will always draw us back. For
all that has not been experienced in man would have it so. Therefore do not
let us resist, but let us try to experience as soon as possible, and leave
behind us, all the things we have not yet experienced, if possible even
before our ‘individual source’, ‘the oil from the lamp’ has dried up. And we
ask ourselves: do we wish to remain slaves of matter, of the body, or do we
wish to become master of the world of matter, of Nature, of our own
bodies? Do we wish to attain the knowledge and power of the ‘whole’ and
enjoy eternal peace in God? Do we elect to go on being mortals or to arise
and become ‘living’ people?
The divine laws seem inflexible to us only as long as we have not
experienced them personally. If someone has the courage to try out these
laws and possibilities on himself, and also to live according to them as a
believer in God, then he will make the surprising discovery that these laws
only appear to be ‘inflexible’ in the imagination of ignorant people. Man in
his blindness is afraid of being at the mercy of these laws and of losing and
missing something that in his limited conscious being — seems of the
utmost importance to him. He neither considers nor knows that this
‘inflexible’ God is himself, that in his unconscious he is the self that he
calls ‘God’, but which in reality is his own, true, still unconscious being.
Personal experience inevitably brings the great surprise that our true being,
which as long as we are unconscious we call ‘God’, never takes anything
away from us without affording us immeasurably greater happiness and joy
in return!

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Satan is the law of matter which has come alive through the spirit. He
separates the two sexes from each other — solve — in order to drive the
two halves eternally together like slaves — coagula — without their being
able to reach each other in the original divine unity. (Fifteenth tarot card.)
OceanofPDF.com
This was how the Rosicrucians depicted the twofold role and power of
sexual energy: it leads either to the ‘mercy-seat’ — to divine self-awareness
and bliss — or to the ‘pit of fire’ — to the decline of self-awareness, to
spiritual gloom, fear and destruction.

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Chapter 10
Urge for Unity and its Corruptions

God is eternal being — life — and God fills the whole universe. God,
eternal being, life — where the two poles still rest within each other is a
unity which does not know duality. Neither God, nor being, nor life is
divisible. This absolute, divine, single and unique unity is manifested in
every living creature as its Self, which, in order to be manifested, has
constructed the material form, the frame of the living creature, round itself
and for itself. Thus there is only one single, indivisible limitless, infinite
Self: God! And the innermost being of every living creature is this single,
indivisible, divine Self. Paul the Apostle says: Tor God who commanded the
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts . . (II Cor. 4:6); Tor
by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body …; and have been all made
to drink into one Spirit’ (I Cor. 12:13); ‘And whether one member suffer, all
the members suffer with it… . Now ye are the body of Christ [logos], and
members in particular’ (I Cor. 12:26, 27). In the language of today: the Self
of God is the spirit and the whole creation, the visible universe, his body.
We human beings are the cells of this gigantic body, capable of manifesting
the sublime, just as the brain cells in our body manifest the sublime in our
microcosmic being.
Every living creature therefore bears within him in his unconscious —
where it is a whole — the unity of the Self, and this unity manifests itself in
him through its unconscious urge to re-merge with the whole universe and
all its living creatures and to become one with them. The Self, which
requires the propagation of life for the spiritualization of matter, exploits
this urge for unification, manifesting and fulfilling it in living creatures
through the two great instincts: preservation of the self and preservation of
the species. Both are therefore different manifestations of the urge for
oneness.
 In the first of these, the instinct of self-preservation, logos urges living
creatures to become one with each other, in order to preserve life in one and
the same material form — in one and the same body. In the second, the
instinct for preservation of the species, living creatures are made to transmit
life in other, subsequent living creatures, thus in other material forms, in
another body, and thus to preserve the continuity of life in every possible
way.
The instinct of self-preservation causes the larger living creatures to
devour the smaller ones in their urge for oneness. Nature exploits this urge
in order to nourish her creatures at the same time. Living creatures,
however, feel this urge for unity even when they have no appetite. Anyone
who has watched how a cat, having caught several mice and therefore by no
means hungry, races after another mouse with passionate greed and devours
it feverishly, only to vomit it again shortly afterwards, must certainly realize
that behind the hunger and the gluttony a greater force, namely the urge for
oneness, is at work. Living creatures have the urge to unite completely, to
acquire an identity with others without sexual union. And since the mouth is
the opening to the inside, they want to become one by the shortest way,
hence they take their victim into their mouth, eat and swallow him. Animals
yield to this urge and literally eat one another up. We human beings do the
same thing, only we first cook or roast our victims. The tiger too yields to
this urge when he races after the antelope and devours him, and all animals
who bite into and devour one another do so out of the same unconscious
desire for oneness. Human beings also know this urge, especially in cases
where sexual intercourse is out of the question. The infant puts everything
in its mouth although it is not hungry, and we adults say to a person of
whom we are very fond, ‘I love you so much that I’d like to eat you up.’
And when one loves, one has the urge — which cannot be realized — to
press the other person to one’s bosom, to bite him, to force one’s way into
him. Unconscious urge for unity!
The instinct for preservation of the species causes living creatures to
manifest the urge for oneness by imitating the unity of God, in which the
two poles rest within each other, with the aid of the sexual organs.
There are also cases in Nature, where the urge for unity manifests itself
through both these instincts, as for instance with the female spider and the
praying mantis, which devour their mates immediately after sexual union.
 How wisely has it been decreed that the urge to realize the unity of God
compels living creatures through both instincts, on the one hand, to preserve
life — to nourish the body, to eat — and on the other, to transmit life in new
living creatures, to engender new life!
Since, in the divine-spiritual primal state, the two poles of creation, the
positive and the negative, the giving and the taking, force and resistance,
rest within each other in perfect equilibrium, there are, at the spiritual level,
no separate male and female sexes, there is only the complementary unity
of both. The spirit is one and complete in itself! Christ says in the Bible:
‘The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection
from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they
die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of
God, being the children of the resurrection’ (Luke 20:34, 35, 36).
In the creation of the world of matter, the negative pole is expelled from
the unity: thus they fall into duality and stand opposed as God and Lucifer,
as force and resistance, as man and woman. But the unity between the two
never ceases. It continues to manifest itself when they are separated, as
tension drawing the poles towards and into each other. At the spiritual-
divine level the poles fuse together and repose in each other, and physical-
sexual union is the self-reflecting, imitating image of this divine unity. But
fulfilment in the material body is impossible, for matter isolates, separates
and keeps the two poles apart, in spite of the recurrent, desperate urge and
attempt to attain true unity. The sexes try to unite, but fall apart again, and
this occurs over and over again ad infinitum. A true unity at the level of
matter is therefore impossible. Of all living creatures, however, man alone
can experience the union of the poles within himself as a purely spiritual
state of consciousness, although his body, if healthy, manifests only one sex
in accordance with the present laws of Nature. For in the spirit the two
poles have never separated, they rest within each other, and man bears this
unity within him as a state of consciousness, if he becomes conscious in the
spirit.
The separation of the sexes exists therefore only at the level of matter, in
the material, isolating world which offers resistance, in the body. The body
manifests only one half of the wholeness of God and tries to reproduce the
unity, not inwardly, as in the spirit, but outwardly, with an outside body,
belonging to another being. Thus originates the creative, life-giving act of
procreation.
The oldest playing-cards in the world, from which all other playing-cards
derive — originally they were not ‘playing’ cards but part of the holy
scriptures of the Jews, the cabbala, and represent the alphabet and the
various levels of consciousness of man — this ancient tarot pack gives a
witty and expressive depiction of this truth in its fifteenth card. Satan, the
reflection of God — Christ calls him ‘the prince’, the law, ‘of this world’
(John 14: 3o) — who has become through the spirit the living law of matter,
separates the two sexes (on his right arm is inscribed ‘solve), only then to
reunite them with his left arm (which bears the inscription ‘coagula’); but
not in their primal state, in the spirit, inwardly, but in the body, outwardly.
The two sexes, male and female, which belong to each other by the inner
unity of God, he chains outwardly together. Thus he forever drives the two
sexes like slaves physically together, without their being able to reach each
other in the original, divine unity. For the material outer world is the world
of isolation, of separation, the world of good and evil, of giving and taking.
To produce unity in the outer world is impossible. With our conscious
minds we must step out of the finite, where our body belongs, and what we
cannot do in the outer world, we must seek, attain and experience in the
inner world, in the mind, as a state of consciousness. For only in our inner
being, in our Self, which is God, can we spiritually find the complementary
halves united in harmonious repose in each other. Man can unite the two
poles in his conscious mind.
In the highest, spiritual state of consciousness, we experience the urge
for inner, divine unity and its fulfilment as a very strange feeling. This
feeling is not strange to average people, because they all know it and bear it
within them, or do so because they at least desire to receive it from others.
They have grown so accustomed to it that they take it as a matter of course
and do not stop to consider that it is by no means so natural, but extremely
odd. And those who have not yet made it conscious in themselves are for
this reason incapable of understanding what and why it is! It has nothing
whatsoever to do with the body. We call this feeling love. In order to
prevent misunderstanding, let us call it universal love.
Naturally, every man conceives of this differently according to his level
of consciousness. Regardless of this, if we wish to analyse what love is, we
could speak of it roughly in these terms: we have a pleasant, warm
sensation in our hearts. It cannot be measured with a thermometer, and yet
we feel it as ‘warmth’. We radiate this warmth quite involuntarily. These
rays are invisible, immeasurable and their existence admits no proof, yet we
feel this radiation of love from ourselves, as from other creatures, so
distinctly that no one can deny it. It radiates spontaneously, and under its
effect we have the desire to unite our being with the whole universe or with
something that we ‘love’. We know the expression: ‘I am so happy that I’d
like to hug the whole world!’ It is an urge for unity without physical
reaction. This feeling has nothing to do with sexual desire, nothing
whatsoever to do with the body, for we certainly have no sensual-sexual
desire towards the whole wide world, and yet the feeling is there: a purely
spiritual feeling, a purely spiritual state. One would like to melt into the
universe, to be absorbed by it, to become one with it as a raindrop becomes
one with the ocean when it falls into it. Only the superior man who has
activated his higher nerve and brain centres and can therefore sustain purely
spiritual high frequencies, is capable of this purely spiritual love. The
inferior man with his undeveloped consciousness projects divine love into
the body and makes of it a sexual attraction. He is not yet able to bear
spiritual frequencies, nor therefore comprehend them with his intellect.
Hence the spiritual level does not show what a man knows — for one can
have a brilliant intellect without a high spiritual level; nor does this level
depend on whether a person is charitable, for one can be charitable with
one’s intellect by outwardly imitating a person who is full of love. The
spiritual level manifests itself in the wealth of love a person bears within
him!
That is why Paul says:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And
though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all
knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all
my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and
have not charity it profiteth me nothing. (I Cor. 13: I, 2, 3.)
 With people at the lowest, still unconscious level, the urge for unity of
the Self is also manifested. Since, however, their consciousness is still
identical with the body, the urge manifests itself in the great, corrupting
fallacy of wanting to experience and manifest spiritual unity, the urge to
merge with the whole world, in the body. They want to offer their body to
anyone with whom there is a possibility of physical union, and they do so
indiscriminately. A very sad consequence of this is that these people — who
basically are also looking for love, if in quite the wrong way — degrade
themselves, give up, lose their human dignity and prostitute themselves.
The laws of the spirit are opposed to the laws of matter, of the body. If,
therefore, the laws of the spirit are divine at the spiritual level, then, at the
level of matter, manifested through the body, they are satanic. The reverse is
also true: the laws of matter, manifested through the spirit, are also satanic.
Paul says: Tor the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the
things that ye would’ (Gal. 5: 17).
It is understandable that prostitutes the world over are despised by those
people whose consciousness is slightly more developed. Those labelled here
as prostitutes, include not only the official prostitutes, for among these are
very often people whose degradation is due to indescribable poverty. For
our purposes, prostitutes are those who offer themselves more or less
indiscriminately to anyone, without the pressure of destitution. Anyone who
has once had a heart to heart talk with prostitutes — male or female — must
have witnessed their sad feeling of neglect, worthlessness and hopeless
ruin, their utter despair and self-contempt. When asked why they go on with
such a life, they almost invariably give the desperate reply: ‘I am looking
for a little love.’ These poor souls do not realize that it is precisely what
they are doing which makes them betray the very love they are seeking,
betray their own Christ with a ‘kiss’, they expend love, lift up their heels
against it, kill it, because their deed does not spring from an inner harmony
which binds two people together. It is particularly sad in the case of women,
who should guide their husbands on the long path to God, to divine
consciousness. God says to the serpent: ‘And I will put enmity between thy
seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head … (Gen. 3:15).
A person of a very low level of development, who experiences physical
union as a mere sexual discharge, devoid of any inner affection, selection or
feeling of spiritual love towards his or her partner, sooner or later falls prey
to dreadful fear and emptiness. Unconscious people do not know how very
deep a bond sexual union creates between man and woman. They each
absorb a part of the invisible being of the other. We have only to think of
how a person can irradiate and charge a lifeless space, a room, the
compartment of a train or a theatre stage with his presence, so that it is felt
long after he has left. He leaves his radiation behind and thus charges the
walls, pieces of furniture or perhaps the armchair in which he sat, in such a
way that a dog for instance, but also sensitive people, recognize and feel his
radiation long after he has left the room. How much more powerful the
mutual influence of people who experience sexual intercourse with each
other! How frequently we can observe the way in which people, through
persisting in a sexual relationship with a partner unsuited to them, gradually
change, transform their own nature, their character, often for the worse,
sometimes also for the better, and acquire certain qualities of their partner.
If two people share their love-life, or even if they have had only a single
sexual encounter, they are mutually affected by vast invisible forces, for
sexual energy is creative, it is man himself! And however strong a person’s
conviction that the powers and radiation of an ‘uninteresting’ or
‘insignificant’ being — as one often hears — have no effect on him, these
nevertheless leave an imprint, the depth of which he does not suspect.
In Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, this truth is aptly
depicted: in one section of Hell Dante sees a multitude of souls which have
grown together in couples, flying around in despair, in untold suffering,
because all their most strenuous efforts to separate from each other are in
vain. During their mortal life they were bound only by physical love
relationships, not however by true love and togetherness. Animal passions
for their own sake and crude sensuality were the cause of their encounter.
Therefore they are now inseparably and eternally bound together by their
own deified, spiritual aura, and also by the continued, inextinguishable
memory of their deed.
The sullying of man’s invisible being, however, does not result only from
his experience of sexual intercourse with inferior beings. It will also occur
whenever people who are not necessarily bad, characterless or impure, but
simply ignorant, have sexual intercourse with a large number of partners,
indiscriminately and at random, today with one, tomorrow with another. We
can put the most beautiful colours on a palette, and yet we obtain a hopeless
mess if we mix them all together. The once beautiful colours lose their
character completely and are no longer recognizable. Therefore we can
understand why prostitutes all have their typically hopeless, impure
radiation, why they have completely lost their individual, human character,
so that they are recognized from afar as prostitutes.
It is even more tragic when young girls of decent, good families degrade
themselves out of sheer ignorance and boredom by having sexual
intercourse indiscriminately with the first chance comer whose
acquaintance they have just made, and a day or a week later repeat this with
a second, then a third or a fourth.
How much patience, trouble and love, and how much time is required
before the bad impressions, all the impurities and the dreadful inferiority
complex are removed from such a broken young soul and self-respect is re-
established! And anyone who has not had the chance of observing these
circumstances for himself would simply not believe that the partners, male
or female, through whom these desperate people feel lowered and neglected
on account of their sexual experiences together, have taken away with them
the same degrading impressions. It was therefore not one person who
degraded another, as neither of them was an unclean being, but the sexual
intercourse as such, which they experienced indiscriminately and devoid of
love.
Contemporary civilized life is so degenerate that men no longer have the
opportunity to achieve something heroic, entirely on their own merit, which
would allow them to have a sense of their own worth, to ‘feel great’. Young
people go into a cinema and watch enraptured how the great cowboy or
detective excels and triumphs over all the others with his superhuman
abilities, while they themselves have no chance of accomplishing heroic
deeds and of displaying their own outstanding abilities. What remains for
them? For some, the answer is sport. For the great mass of young people,
however, there remains nothing else but to assert themselves through sexual
conquests, and thereby to experience higher tensions. Out of boredom, out
of a hopeless feeling of emptiness and thwarted achievement, they are
driven to sexual experiences and other addictions. Thus they have a
mutually defiling and degrading effect on one another. Most of them are
unwilling to admit this profound effect, because they are unable to
recognize what takes place not in their conscious mind but in their
unconscious. Because their conscious mind is not aware of and does not
experience a phenomenon, they refuse to believe that it nevertheless
concerns them, that in spite of their unawareness, something has happened
to them. And precisely because it has taken place in the unconscious, the
effect is a thousand times greater than if they had been able to digest it in
their conscious mind. In the unconscious, things remain undigested and
therefore often have a poisonous effect on men. Nevertheless, people feel,
even if unconsciously, the poisonous effect of sexual intercourse with an
unworthy partner, and try to protect themselves by instinctively leaving the
whole matter to the body, and withdrawing the conscious mind ‘as much as
possible’ during sexual intercourse of a degrading nature. In this way a
person cannot experience healthy and gratifying fulfilment, even physically,
simply because he is not totally involved! And the consequences are mental
and physical disturbances which can lead to apparent impotence.
Mind, soul and body are an indissoluble entity. For as long as man lives,
they cannot be separated from one another. The body comes last: it is the
manifestation of the spirit which is furthest removed in the scale of creation,
but it is nevertheless part of it, it has grown together with the mind, and
they consequently form a unit. It is a great mistake to believe that the mind
can experience a thing without the participation of the body, without the
body sharing the experience — and vice versa; everything that happens to
the body reacts upon the mind, the mind shares the experience, since it is
the mind which builds the body, vitalizes it and experiences everything in
and through the body itself. Without the mind the body is an inanimate
corpse. Consequently, everything that happens to the body is felt and
experienced only in a man’s mind, in his Self, in his consciousness. If
consciousness is switched off — as for instance during narcosis — man has
no perception whatsoever of what is happening to his body and what his
body is experiencing. Therefore there are no separate physical and mental
experiences and perceptions, there are only mental experiences! And this is
true even if these experiences project themselves into the body. We
experience only what our consciousness — which is purely mental —
perceives.
It is the same with our sexual experiences: however convinced a person
may be that he accomplishes and experiences sexual union only out of
purely physical desire, it is nevertheless impossible for his experience to be
purely physical, for the ‘experience’ in itself is possible only in the mind,
only in consciousness. In the case of a woman it may happen that only her
body participates in a sexual union — of course completely passively —
that is, if she is drugged or anaesthetized. With a man, however, this is
unimaginable. And with a woman, such a case cannot be regarded as
‘participation’ or ‘experience’.
If, in physical union, a person tries to withhold his mind, because his
sexual act does not manifest itself and grow out of spiritual oneness, then a
split, a gap, occurs in his being, whether or not he knows or acknowledges
it. Conscious men feel this and refrain from such physical release.
Unconscious men, however, imagine that they can have sexual union out of
purely physical needs, without involvement of their mind. And that is a
great mistake. For, regardless of whether a man has been gratified or
frustrated, if he is secretly worried about, or even ashamed of his behaviour,
he has already participated in the union. For ‘being frustrated’, ‘ashamed’,
or ‘worried’ are also inner states of consciousness, but not physical
reactions. Sexual energy is man’s being which manifests itself in the body
— logos itself. And so it is also impossible to want to experience sexual
union without the true Self. It need be explained no further that man can
only speak of true, physical joy, of physical fulfilment and the sexual
happiness of lovers, if physical oneness grows out of true love, true spiritual
harmony, and he can abandon his whole being to the feeling of sexual
happiness without subsequently having to feel shame.
The primitive man is content with any partner of the opposite sex’ who
physically answers his simple taste. He attaches no importance to a
‘spiritual’ inner union, since he himself is not yet spiritual, awake and
conscious. But a man with more developed consciousness, with more
pronounced individuality, can experience the real joy of love and true
gratification—physically and spiritually—only with one partner, who above
all harmonizes with him in spirit, and reciprocates love of every kind with
love.
We only feel at ease in shoes and clothes which have been made to our
personal measurements. This is really a purely physical matter, and yet it
has an influence on one’s whole state of mind. How much more important it
is that a man finds the partner who is suited to him in every respect, in
mind, soul and body, who is in every way his complement, whom he can
really love, in whom he can really trust!
As we have seen, it is frequently the case that young people as well as
adults engage in sexual intercourse with the first person who comes along;
this leads to man’s making an animal of himself. But man is not an animal!
Let us not forget that. These words are not the product of sentimental or
religious false morality, but of the experience acquired over three decades
with a very large number of young people and also adults, who in their
mental and physical distress sought help and have continued to do so in an
ever-increasing number. The West, too, has discovered that sexual
repressions can give rise to serious mental and physical disturbances.
Consequently, the pendulum has swung to the left, and many people want to
rectify all mental disturbances by giving free rein to sexual desires —
whether real or imaginary — without moderation or discrimination, and by
trying to overcome inhibitions, which have often a purely psychic cause,
with sexual excess. But the time is near when the pendulum will again
swing to the other side, and men will be led back from artificially bred
animality to a clean humanity. Many despairing people return from a dead-
end, from a total abnegation of life, indeed even from the urge to commit
suicide, to normal life, through an uplifted way of thinking and way of life.
Misguided people mistakenly believe and teach that the one and only
salvation from the different forms of mental distress is to lead a licentious,
sexual life and to squander one’s energy indiscriminately. But men seek
love — and they seek it also in sexuality, even if erroneously. Anxiety and
existential problems can never be solved by sexuality.

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Chapter 11
The Sun - Creator and Destroyer of
Life

If a practitioner of Yoga feels the need to lead an abstemious life in order to

make faster progress on the path, then he should first examine himself
thoroughly to find out whether he — or she — is mature enough for this.
He should not act like the fox who finds the grapes too sour because he
cannot reach them and therefore does not want to eat any. He should be
ready and able to digest higher nourishment because he has eaten so many
of the ‘grapes’ that he knows them and does not need any more. He can be
given advice on how to live abstemiously without incurring danger. For an
abstemious way of life only makes sense if it is profitable and not harmful.
At this point it is again necessary to speak of patience. For it takes time
to activate the higher nerve centres through a completely continent life. Nor
can one make an adult of a child if its time has not yet come, and if one
were nevertheless to take away its toys and compel it to behave like an
adult, it would still not grow into an adult but would become mentally ill.
Thus we must wait patiently until the higher nerve centres indicate that they
are becoming active, and that the transformation of sexual energy into
higher forms of energy has become possible. This does not happen
overnight. Therefore, if we have reached the stage where we feel
sufficiently mature to lead an abstemious life, and we arrange our life and
practise accordingly, we must even then not be impatient and expect higher
results immediately. We may be satisfied if initially there appears a striking
love of life, cheerfulness, a bright suggestive shine in the eyes and
increased working energy.
Our long experience shows that with those who are mature enough,
living abstemiously can generate and accumulate so much vital energy that,
if it is applied in the right way and directed consciously, chronic illnesses
which have lasted for years are suddenly cured and serious neurasthenic
symptoms disappear. The posture becomes youthful and elastic, the mind
grows bright and clear, even severe depressions disappear. The power of
concentration increases in unsuspected measure, one begins to acquire the
power of suggestion, the body is filled with new vitality. We have often
been able to witness that through abstinence, white-haired practitioners of
Yoga have regained their original hair colour, that shrinkage of the gums
and other symptoms of old age, which nowadays occur too early in men,
have disappeared, and some could even read again without spectacles.
If a man transforms sexual energy in the right way, he can be sure that in
the course of time, sooner or later, higher spiritual benefits will not fail to
accrue. Man suddenly discovers talents which he never in the least
suspected within him. They were already present, as they are in every
person, but still in a latent condition. If we erect a dam in front of the sexual
energies, they then accumulate, initially causing tensions and unrest. If, in
spite of this, we stand firm, these energies look for new paths and we
become capable of gradually converting them into higher powers. Sexual
energy that has been directed upwards first of all stimulates the secretion
glands, thus renewing and strengthening the body, then stimulates the
higher nerve centres, which until now were only capable of manifesting
potentially present creative powers as different talents. That is to say, the
nerve centres which would have been capable of manifesting these talents
lacked up to that point the corresponding resistance and were in a latent
condition. How often we come across historical cases of men who, after a
dissolute way of life, suddenly for some reason or other began, or were
forced to begin, to lead an abstemious life, and shortly afterwards
manifested outstanding talents, in particular an exceptionally strong
magical-suggestive power, the existence of which no one, least of all they
themselves, suspected. We may mention here only the instance of Ignatius
Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, who, as the result of an accident,
had to lie for some time in his father’s castle, and out of sheer boredom
experimented with secret exercises because he was forced to lead an
abstemious life. In the course of these experiments he made such
unexpected discoveries that he completely altered his conduct; together
with friends he founded the Jesuit order and in the space of fifteen years
acquired power over the whole world — as far as China! He himself
claimed to have achieved his renowned magical-hypnotic will-power
through an abstemious way of life and secret exercises.
At this point it is again necessary to note that an average man can only
grow into a superior being in possession of magical-suggestive powers by
leading an abstemious life, if he has progressed so far in experience,
development and maturity that he is able to sustain and endure the irritation
of the retained sexual energies on the higher nerve and brain centres with
calm nerves, imperturbed and without pathological irritability. The best
support in achieving this can be gained from some particularly appropriate
Yoga exercises to be discussed at length.
If a person is still insufficiently mature for a transformation of sexual
energies, that is to say, if his higher valves have not yet been opened and his
consciousness is therefore still very limited, and if, in spite of this, he is
forced to lead an abstemious life for any reason — be it a physical,
congenital abnormality, disturbance or anything else of that nature — then
he will fall ill. Usually, overstrain first affects the thyroid gland, which may
cause heart disorders, but inevitably causes an intolerable flight of ideas,
anxiety states and still other, more serious disturbances. In such cases the
roused sexual energy does not find a valve for itself. Nor does it find the
way to the higher centres through which it could manifest itself as higher,
spiritual energy, and it causes pathologically excessive irritation, which
involves very great danger for the nerves, because it is continuously
inflamed from within. This danger may cause a serious nervous breakdown,
indeed it may even give rise to a yet more dangerous condition, which in
modern terminology is known as ‘schizophrenia’. Anyone who has had the
opportunity of studying schizophrenic patients in a mental home must have
noticed that almost all of them without exception have experienced some
obstacles or disturbances — no matter whether of mental or physical origin
— in expending their sexual energies, and that they very often possess an
astonishing intellectual level and high abilities. They often have insight into
the highest spiritual realms and glimpse very high spiritual truths, while, on
the other hand, they are still undeveloped, unequal to this high intellectual
level and unable to withstand, digest, or adapt themselves to the high
tension of superior intellectuality. They cannot make any use of it, and their
nerves cannot sustain this high tension, this split condition, since they have
no opportunity for release. There is an undeniable connection between
manic attacks and the frustration of sexual energy. A person who deals with
the mentally ill and who himself leads an abstemious life — therefore
having the benefit of personal experiences and observations — has no
difficulty in understanding the condition of these patients. Unfortunately,
however, these observations are not all that is needed to help them, even
though the insight is of the clearest. My reason for referring to these
illnesses in the course of this discussion lies elsewhere. The work with these
patients produced a strange discovery: most of them had not intentionally
withheld from sexual life, on the contrary, they would have liked very much
to lead a sensual-lecherous, perverse and licentious life, if they had not been
prevented from doing so by physical or psychic reasons. Now certain of
these patients who were intelligent enough to understand the truth about
sexual energy, went as far as using their sexual inhibitions, quite
consciously and deliberately, to lead an abstemious life, for the sake of
transforming this energy. In these cases there was quite a marked
improvement in their condition, which gradually led to their becoming able-
bodied, useful members of society. The voluntary abstinence of these
patients had to be coupled with the change to a morally superior mentality.
They had to be led back to God! This is not so easy to achieve with such
patients and therefore in only a few instances was an improvement possible.
But those cases where there was such a vast improvement that one could
really speak of a cure prove the deep link between schizophrenia and the
sexual energies unintentionally and involuntarily dammed up. They also
show the possibility of recovery through belief in God, or at least through a
morally cleansed mentality together with deliberate abstinence, in which
case there can be no question of repression since the process is a conscious
one. On the other hand, we have never seen a cure attributable to
unrestrained and indiscriminate enjoyment of sexuality, only decline and
ruin!

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The Rosicrucians called a man who attained all-consciousness, thus making
the two poles conscious within him, a ‘hermaphrodite’ — composed of
Hermes and Aphrodite — and depicted him with two heads. He is master of
sexual energy, of the dragon, the ‘lord of this world’ ; he stands on the
dragon, who in turn rules the earth. The all-conscious man uses the dragon’s
fire to stimulate and keep active his higher nerve and brain centres.

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 Headstand Candle Posture

Shoulderstand

A man can only be helped by himself, for one cannot intrude into another
person’s consciousness and put it into order. At most we can indicate the
path that leads to it — if we ourselves know this path! Alas, it appears time
and time again that most of those who want to help these patients are
themselves still very far from having recognized creative energy in each of
its manifestations in themselves, and from being able to direct its course.
This just cannot be learned at a university or from a book, but only from
personal experience! One rarely finds a professional psychologist or
psychiatrist who has experimented with sexual-creative energy in himself
and acquired his own experience. If a certain period of abstinence was
prescribed, purely as an experiment, at universities, Western psychiatry
would be plagued by fewer misconceptions!
Experienced sportsmen have long since discovered that we can store a
great amount of energy through abstinence. Competitors are forbidden for a
minimal period of six weeks to drink alcohol, to smoke or have sexual
intercourse. It would be highly instructive to introduce such periods of
abstinence into the study of medicine and particularly of psychiatry so as to
provide personal experience.
However incredible it may seem, the following incident is true: we were
acquainted with a very well-known and distinguished doctor. After he and
his excellent wife had brought five handsome sons into the world, he chose
to adopt an abstemious way of life, which, in his own words, allowed him
to preserve all his energies and to concentrate much more on his patients, to
achieve much higher accuracy in his diagnoses and to find instinctively the
best method of curing his patients. And his attractive, healthy and highly
intelligent wife was in complete and loving agreement with her husband,
who felt nothing but charity for his fellow-men. Such things do occur and,
thank God, not just as rare exceptions.
The Bible says:
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s
womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men:
and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
(Matt. 19:12.)
All this had to be said in order to explain why a person who has taken the
trouble to gather his own experience, not from theory but practice, will
always say here or in the East that an abstemious life is not suitable for
everyone but only for spiritually mature men, to whom it brings beneficial
results. Such a man has realized how one can direct the creative powers
upwards or downwards and use them as one pleases. But he has also
realized the dangers involved in the transformation of sexual energy. If a
person is firmly resolved and is afraid of nothing, then he may attempt the
process. But even then, he may do so only if he does not endanger a
marriage partner who is not yet mature enough for this. This remark is
certainly not intended to frighten off those people who wish to progress on
the divine path of Yoga. For we have in our hand the best weapon against
all dangers: our own consciousness! If we always cling to it, that is to say, if
we are always awake, if we are always conscious here and now, then no
harm can come to us!
Infinitely more dangerous than the attempt to lead an abstemious life, are
certain Yoga exercises affecting the spinal cord which at the present time
are propagated by ignorant and unscrupulous men. For against the danger
involved in abstinence there is the very simplest protection, namely, to give
it up immediately, should it be the cause of discomforts such as pathological
nervousness or excessive irritation. We must realize that creative energy is
no trifle, and that these matters are to be taken quite seriously. Those of us
who have had the opportunity of repeated investigations in convents and
monasteries know what sad consequences may ensue if immature men and
women are forced to renounce sexuality and sacrifice ‘all’. As long as we
regard that as a sacrifice, we are not mature enough to make it. God
demands no sacrifices of men. They are very, very few indeed who have
already acquired spiritual maturity and can transform sexual energy into
divine-creative power. Many are the ‘called’ and few the ‘chosen’! But the
chosen have existed and will always exist, in the monasteries as well as
outside, throughout the whole world, here as in the Orient! Therefore let us
progress with courage on our path!

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Chapter 12
The Magic Flower

There is really no point in talking about transforming sexual energy,

because mere words are to no avail. It has to be done! In doing it we gain
personal experience and all words on the subject become superfluous.
Therefore we can say very little, but if this ‘little’ is put into action, it
becomes everything!
For what is meant by the transformation of sexual energy into spiritual-
creative power? To use sexual energy as the link between spirit and body,
not in order to create matter from spirit — to beget children — but, on the
contrary, to obtain spiritual energies from the body. Not to spend sexual
energy through the body but, instead, to open the higher centres through
which it manifests itself no longer as sexual energy but as spiritual and
creative-magical energy. How do we open these centres? Through control
of the body with the exercises of Hatha Yoga, by mental concentration and
meditation, abstinence and work! That is really all that needs to be said.
Yet, we shall try to say a few guiding words in answer to the numerous
questions posed by our practitioners of Yoga with reference to this subject.
We are aware that not all questions can be answered satisfactorily. Since the
subject touches on very delicate matters, it is not possible to speak frankly
about all the relevant details. In this case only one thing can help the
practitioner of Yoga: to acquire his own experience! What surprising
discoveries we make then, which not only answer all questions instructively
but also bring us experiences hitherto unimagined and unexpected.
Experience will then reveal to us further secrets which have always been
latent in man — and the human body — while we have remained unaware
of their possibility, that is of their existing in reality and not only
symbolically. We shall therefore attempt to describe the first steps on this
path and also how to advance on it. The further, higher steps, however, will
be deliberately only touched upon. Those who take this path seriously and
practise will themselves see the continuation of the path before them, and
will know how to proceed, just as a person holding his small lamp before
him in the darkness sees where to take his next step.
Those, on the other hand, who are only prompted by curiosity to know
these things, but do not make the effort to do something, do not require to
know even theoretically how, and by what means, man can unshackle and
employ his creative powers — powers inherent in all men. That there have
always been, and still are today, powerful magicians — let us call them
what we will — the greatest of sceptics cannot deny. We therefore try to
hand on the key to the door of the secret chamber, but each man must open
the door himself. What treasures will be found there, and how they are to be
used — there is no need to say more about that. Each man will know
himself, without further explanations… .
If we wish to climb up Jacob’s ladder, we must above all have one thing,
without which there is no progress, and that is patience! The spirit, the Self,
is above time. The spirit is timeless. Patience is the state of timelessness.
Hence, if our goal is to awaken spiritually and achieve spiritual
consciousness, we must first of all adjust our minds to timelessness. And if
the devil of impatience tries to take hold of us, we must at once console
ourselves with the thought: in eternity there is time enough! Just as a
Chinese or Indian painter never works on his timeless masterpieces while
thinking: ‘I must hurry to get this finished on time’ — otherwise he could
never accomplish these breathtaking works of art — so, too, must the
practitioner of Yoga renounce all notion of time with regard to his inner
progress. Even if, by using the method for quickening the growth of his
consciousness, man shortens the way to divine self-awareness by thousands
of years, this process of development takes time. Eternity is long enough
and God knows exactly how much time we require to follow our path to the
goal. We do not need to worry about time. Only the person lives in time, in
the finite; our spirit — which is the spirit of God — does not know time and
space. Let us do everything to shorten this way as much as possible, but let
us never think of how much time we shall take to do so. This thought would
paralyse us and make us feel the lashes of time on our back. The spirit is
timeless, and whenever we think of time we crucify our own spirit, our own
Self. That is why we become so nervous if we have to rush, if others hurry
us on impatiently. For the Self — Christ-logos — is crucified on the two
great beams of time and space, and if we do that with our own Self — with
our own Christ — we lose the strength and courage of the spirit which we
so sorely need.
The fact that he does not notice his own progress is the greatest test for a
practitioner of Yoga. Just as a child does not perceive when he grows into
an adult, so a man does not notice — or only rarely so — when his
consciousness expands, rises and he becomes more aware. Just as someone
who gets into a lift on the ground-floor, locks himself in and ascends, does
not notice what height he has reached, since he was always ‘there’, with
himself in the small cage, and can only estimate it when he gets out at the
top and looks down, so the practitioner of Yoga does not notice when his
consciousness expands and how many rungs he has already left behind him
on the great Jacob’s ladder. Only if he now and then casts a backward
glance, does he see what ignorance and darkness, compared with his present
state, he has emerged from.
Therefore we must not be impatient, for each moment is precious and
affords us a new, interesting experience, however uninteresting and boring
it may seem at the time. Everything, each experience, however small, helps
us along the path. There are no relapses, at most, apparent relapses. People
who have trod the long path before us, who have reached the goal and want
to help us, describe the landmarks of progress to us and the milestones we
must leave behind us one by one. They also describe how we can leave
them behind us! Just as in the lift we are helped by the number on the wall
sliding past, which shows us the floor we have reached, so, with the help of
the masters who have gone before us, can we ascertain which step we have
reached. We recognize the milestones and can proceed on our way with
courage and hope, and when we have reached the summit of the mountain
and have a strong foothold, we can help those climbing up behind us.
An accelerated development — whether of flowers or of the human
consciousness — always involves certain dangers, because, after all, it is
not the way of Nature. These dangers can, however, be avoided, if we know
them and arm ourselves against them from the outset. One can ascend the
steepest rock-faces to the summit of the mountain provided that one is
properly equipped and knows where particular care is required. Many
people conquer the mountain with an experienced guide; others, again, like
the first conquerors, reach the summit without a guide. But once they have
got there, they are both equally at the top! Therefore we must know the
dangers of a quickened transformation of our sexual energies, and learn
how to proceed in safety from the example of our precursors.
By far the best, and the surest weapon against danger of any kind, is
never to lose hold of one’s consciousness. That is to say, that the
consciousness must always be identical with itself, here and now, that it
must not drift away and become identical with external things. We must
hold on to our own consciousness, never let it go, therefore we must always
be awake, always here! The consciousness is the magic flower which leads
the prince on the path to the top of the mountain where his bride lives, and
which saves him from all the dangers of darkness, threatening him in the
form of evil spirits and gnomes, but also of enchanting fairies who want to
lure him on wrong paths. He holds the magic flower before him and the
supernatural light which it radiates shields him from the evil spirits, the
gnomes and dangerous fairies, chases them away and lights up the path so
that the prince cannot lose his way. The light of the magic flower is our
consciousness! We must constantly examine our every feeling and thought
and penetrate each one with the light of our consciousness. We must notice
the slightest stirring of our soul, of our mind, and immediately examine its
source and its unconscious motive. The mask concealing many an urge,
many a feeling which arises from the unconscious, but which we do not
wish to acknowledge, must be relentlessly torn down. There are dangers
which disguise themselves as our benefactors, which dress up in the guise
of sublime faith or piety. Let us find out what lies behind this. How often
are errant sexual desires, sensuality and perversities hidden under the mask
of charity, of so-called altruism, or even under the guise of the highest
religious ecstasy and ostensible mysticism. We must know that the higher a
person’s consciousness rises, the simpler, more modest and temperate, more
awake and calm he becomes. But let us beware: our simplicity and modesty
should not be a part to be played, a put-on show. If a person wants to be
simple and modest, he is still far from actually being simple and modest.
Feelings and waves of emotion indicate the wrong path! What is outside is
not inside! How often do we find falsely ‘pious’ faces and gestures masking
the most vulgar personal vanity. This shows the desire to be acknowledged
already as a selfless ‘saint’ — and particularly important — to be ranked
higher than other, ‘ ordinary’ mortals. The higher we are in our
consciousness, the more natural and simple we become. Not because we
play the part, but because we are as we are! We already understand and
know why Christ replied to the young man who addressed him as ‘Good
Master’: ‘Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is
God’ (Matt. 19:16, 17). If, then, a person has a good thought or word, or
does a good deed, then God is in that person, manifesting himself through
him as that which is ‘good’. The superior man is never complacent and
arrogant, because he is not puffed up. He is never amazed at his own
‘greatness’ and ‘goodness’; he finds it natural that he has these qualities,
and never thinks of himself as ‘great’ and ‘charitable’. In his consciousness
he has ceased to be the superficial mask, the person, he has become the
core! And if a person is conscious all the time, his inner eyes will open and
for him the ‘two sides of the tree of knowledge of good and evil’ will fuse
together. For him, concepts such as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ will cease to exist. He
sees only the tree, which is one. He no longer knows anything that is good
or evil. Such words denote appearances only. The illuminate, however, sees
through appearances; for him, such differences disappear. There is nothing
that is ‘good’ or ‘evil’, there are only the manifestations of God, which are
all good; only if unconscious men use and expend them wrongly, by
mistake or out of ignorance, do they appear to be ‘evil’. Everything is good,
only in use can a thing become satanic. There are no ill powers, only
powers put to ill-use! ‘Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so’
(Hamlet II: 2).
If we are continuously on the alert, if we do not permit ourselves the
slightest emotional stirring without being conscious of it, repression or any
other harmful effect of an abstemious life will be prevented.

OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 13
Practice

The transformation of sexual energy is quite easy, and for that very reason
may seem difficult to some. One is reminded of the anecdote about the
apprentice alchemist who had received the infallible formula for making
gold and proceeded to try it out. The most important requirement was that
on no account should he think of a hippopotamus while preparing and
boiling the mixture. The following morning, when asked by his master how
he had got on, he answered thoroughly depressed: ‘I followed all the
instructions and did everything correctly, and it would have been all right.
But now, although I had never known before what … a hippopotamus was,
when I was not supposed to think about it, a whole herd raced round in my
head. And so my mixture did not turn into gold!’
Provided that the disciple’s mind is in a constant state of timelessness —
patience — then our first advice on this path is that the disciple, who is
moved by inner conviction to lead an abstemious life, must on no account
whatever make a vow! For if someone believes that he is really mature
already, that he will never again think of sexual desires, that he has risen
above them and that his body obeys him, and he then takes a vow, the Devil
will seize him immediately and strike terror into him. He will believe that
‘all’ has now been irrevocably lost. Henceforth he will — he must — think
continuously of his vow, he will be unable to think of anything else,
whether he wants to or not, as if all the devils had been let loose and
descended upon him. These devils are nothing else but ‘the animal in us’ as
Paracelsus called this power of the body or, ‘the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit … so that ye cannot do the things that ye would’ (Gal. 5: 17), as Paul
described this power. And since the thoughts are turned to sexuality again
and again, the sexual organs are irritated, and the candidate will keep
having sexual desires and sexual fantasies. All at once he will understand St
Anthony in the Sahara Desert who for forty years continuously saw highly
erotic scenes, naked women tempting him and so forth, and had to fight
these visions. Of course, ‘the devils’ conjured up these images for him.
Today we should say that his ‘unconscious’ projected them, but the result is
the same — it is only a question of designation. Finally, after forty years, St
Anthony did manage to conquer the devils. But in vain! For behold, they
are still alive today, they have even increased in number and all descend
upon the poor ascetic who has made a vow.
The making of vows is therefore not advised!
Once more, however, we recommend that one should give up abstinence
and lead a sex life based on true love if intolerable torments have to be
fought against. That is neither a disgrace nor a sin. In this way too progress
can be made, albeit more slowly.
If, however, anyone perseveres in order to reach the higher stages as
quickly as possible, our advice to him is that he should completely forget
the vow and every possibility of one, and at the same time also whatever his
vow was. He should totally forget sexuality and all that is connected with it.
Very simple, isn’t it? If only the devils did not exist! For, even if we have
seen through Nature’s deception completely, and find the whole business of
sex with its eternal repetition very boring, the surest formula for unbearable
sexual desires which suddenly spring up and rouse the corresponding
physical reactions, is for the intellect to be preoccupied with sexuality,
which we really wish to conquer. Thus we learn how the negative pole
manifests itself and acts on us from our unconscious as the spirit of
resistance. It is not surprising that in religion it is called the Devil. And it is
not so easy to deal with this “Devil, since I am it. i am it, taught in the
Upanishads as: Tet Tvam Asi, Tat Tvam Asi,— Thou art that.”
Apart from the devil of the unconscious, the body itself for the time
being allows us no peace. Until now the body has been adjusted to a sexual
life, the glands continue to demand release, and as long as sexual energy
does not find the way to the higher centres of manifestation, it accumulates
in the sexual glands. Later, when sexual energy has found the way to the
higher nerve centres through appropriate Yoga exercises, and can manifest
itself there already as a higher form of creative power, the transformation is
much easier. Then one also has much more peace. The initial period is the
most difficult, precisely because sexual energy, unable to find an exit,
irritates the sexual organs even more. Thus, at the outset, man has a twofold
difficulty to overcome: on the one hand, his imagination, his intellect allows
him no peace, on the other hand, the retained sexual energy stimulates him
physically still more than before. But that is exactly what is needed! For this
excessive stimulation gradually reflects upon the higher nerve centres,
irritates them, and this irritation wakens them from their latent, dormant
condition, as the prince wakens the Sleeping Beauty with his ‘kiss’ (‘kiss’
being a sexual manifestation). If one has therefore struggled through the
first difficulties, if one has resisted and overcome the mental and physical
irritation, then the transformation is very much easier — by way of reward.
It is also very important, however, that we allow the upsurging sexual
energy to manifest itself through the higher nerve centres, to pour out
through them. What is our best help here?
Yoga exercises, concentration, meditation and work! Physical and
intellectual work!
The first of the Yoga exercises is pranayama, that is to say, control of
breathing.
We can only really grasp the importance of breath control if we realize
the fact that every sexual union imitates breathing, that is to say, the
rhythmical union of the breath with the lungs. Every breath we draw is an
act as life-giving as the encounter of the sexes. Breathing gives us renewed
life with every breath, while sexual union gives life to a new being. That is
why correct breathing gives a fulfilling, pleasurable sensation akin to that of
sexual union.
Pranayama and the physical exercises — known to the Indians as Hatha
Yoga — serve to invigorate and spiritualize the body in general, thereby, of
course, making and keeping it healthy. These exercises have been described
in detail in the book Yoga and Health which I have published together with
my colleague, Selvarajan Yesudian. The present book is really a sequel.
Hence, I shall mention here only the Yoga exercises which are particularly
suitable for those practising abstinence. These exercises make the blood
flow from the lower to the upper part of the body and the head, thereby
calming the sexual organs and rousing the higher centres. Then follow
descriptions of the special exercises for the transformation of sexual energy
into spiritual energy, and of the exercise which enables us to control and use
vital energy as animating, magical fire.
 candle posture (sarvangasana)

The effect of this exercise is to bring the blood from the legs and abdomen
into the head, the brain centres, neck and shoulders. We thereby strengthen
the organs of the brain, which are the source of our memory and power of
concentration. We also strengthen the thyroid gland which has its seat in the
neck, which directs our intellect and heart and provides our sense of time.
Thus pressure on the heart is reduced and its activity regulated by
counterbalance.
Technique: lying on the back, we press our arms extended parallel to the
body with the palms facing downwards on the ground. We breathe out
calmly and deeply, and slowly and carefully raise the stretched legs until
they are vertical. Then we raise the trunk, supported by both hands in the
kidney area, until it is in a straight line with the feet. We breathe with the
stomach and hold this position until strain is felt. Then we return slowly,
first with the trunk and stretched legs, and lie for a few moments on the
floor breathing quietly and regularly, which restores the blood circulation to
its normal course. In performing the exercise there must be no abrupt and
jerky movements, which may damage the heart.

shoulder stand (viparita karani)

The effect of this exercise is similar to that of the Candle Posture, but the
execution is simpler.
Technique: lying on the back, hands parallel to the body, we breathe out and
slowly raise the legs. Supporting the hips with the hands the legs are
brought down slantwise behind the head. In this the exercise differs from
the Candle Posture. Also, the hips and not the trunk are supported by the
hands. Breathing calmly with the stomach we hold this position for as long
as possible without strain. Then we return slowly and controlled to the lying
position and calm ourselves with gentle, and at the same time, controlled
breathing.

headstand (Sirshasana)
The effect is similar to that of the Candle Posture, but the highest brain
centres, in a latent, dormant condition in the average man, are more
powerfully affected. These centres are activated through the exercise (also
through complementary exercises in concentration). We thereby gain access
to the consciousness of the creative power within us, our memory is
stimulated and higher mental powers awakened.
Technique: in the starting position we kneel on the ground and sit on the
heels. The hands are cupped with the backs to the ground. Then the head is
bent down and approximately the upper crown placed in the cupped hands.
The elbows are on the ground, pointing not too far out from the body. Now
the trunk is raised and the legs stretched. When we have found our balance
we raise and straighten both legs until they are vertical. We may raise first
one leg, then the other, or both together. The position is held, with regular
and calm breathing, for as long as possible without undue strain.
This posture occasionally presents initial difficulties. If this is so, we
begin the exercise in the corner of a room or in front of a divan, which
allows the raised, vertical legs some support if necessary.
In returning to the starting position we bend the legs and proceed to the
kneeling position, sitting on the heels. In this way we experience a sense of
peace for a few moments. On no account may we fall out of the headstand
or make other abrupt movements.

transmutation (ojas)

This exercise is the most important and most effective for the
transformation of sexual energy. I sit in Padmasana (Lotus Posture), breathe
with perfect Yogi-breathing, and with activated imagination I visualize that
I myself — therefore my consciousness, my spiritual Ego — descend to the
coccyx with every inhalation, and from there with slow exhalation ascend
in the spine, that is to say, in full self-awareness I slowly ascend to the skull
which is the seat of the Sahasrara chakra. The description of this exercise is
quite simple, and yet it enables us to deflect all irritation away from the
sexual glands to the higher centres where we can store sexual energy as
creative power — provided that we do this exercise correctly. It is therefore
the most important transformation exercise of all, for it helps us to conduct
sexual energy upwards to the higher centres in order to manifest and use it
through these centres in its converted form as creative-magical power.
Our first task must be, with the help of sexual energy, to increase the
resistance of the organs, in which until now creative power has lain
dormant. The resistance must be raised to a level which allows creative
power to emerge from its latent condition and become active. It no longer
manifests itself as sexual energy, but as spiritual — magical power.
Progress then depends on learning the next exercise: to conduct the spiritual
power, which I myself am, everywhere in my body, that is to say, to
penetrate everywhere with my Ego, and to send my radiation into my whole
body. For it is not sufficient to transform sexual energy, my own
materialized Self, and at the same time to conduct it up to the higher
centres, but rather, with the help of these same higher centres, our highest
goal is to radiate and use vital energy as magical power. It is not enough to
make the philosopher’s stone. We must know how and to what purpose it
can be used. Otherwise it is useless to possess a magic wand; if we cannot
use it, then we are not magicians.
This exercise is really very simple. It amounts to redirecting the
consciousness in a way which enlists the aid of creative-magical power,
thus becoming a magical and vitalizing act. What has made it take on these
qualities? — The fact that I myself have consciously become this power.
The ‘I’ is life, and where I consciously am there is also life. Wherever I
consciously penetrate, everything becomes vital and life-giving. Anyone
who considers these two sentences and understands them correctly knows
all the secrets of life and death.
The technique of the exercise is as follows: with the perfect breath
control of Yoga we take a very deep breath and inhale deliberately to the
apices of the lungs. Then, with the exhalation which must be slow and
somewhat withheld — we direct our consciousness first to the tips of the
feet, that is to say, I myself go there with my Ego. We shall feel distinctly
how a current is generated in the feet, as well as an initial warmth, which,
later, when we are more practised, becomes a fiery heat, a hot prickling
sensation. We practise in this way for about five to ten minutes at the
beginning, later prolonging the period, for under no circumstances can
exercise be harmful. We need not look at the clock. During the exercise we
shall know exactly when our concentration gradually begins to fail and we
can then stop.
Without perfect concentration, that is to say, if we are not totally
involved, there is absolutely no point to the exercise. The best position for
performing it is lying on the back so that the blood can circulate evenly in
the body. In time, one can feel the feet being charged with the higher
frequencies of concentrated consciousness, and a tingling warmth gradually
rising in the body. Accordingly we can then raise our consciousness
together with the irradiation, and charge the legs with higher vital energy.
Then we can begin to irradiate the hands, first the right, then the left and
then both simultaneously, until they too feel the warmth and prickling. We
can extend the process to the whole trunk, to the body, so that we have a
general feeling of enhanced vitality as of tingling warmth, even as of heat.
In the whole body we become awake! The body receives this radiation like
an open vessel and begins to live much more intensely. The whole body
from top to toe, to the tips of the fingers begins to live and be awake
everywhere with such intensity and vitality that one feels it is filled with
light, with intense rays of light.
This is more than just a sensation. It indicates the fact that with this
exercise we develop an ethereal body woven of light. Some mystics call this
invisible luminary ‘diamond body’. The Bible describes it in the Gospels.
Christ appeared to his three disciples on the Tabor mountain in his
‘transfigured body’: ‘And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John
his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. And was
transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment
was white as the light’ (Matt. 17: 1-8). ‘And his raiment became shining,
exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them’ (Mark
9:2-3).
Just as we can make a piece of ‘dead’ metal magnetic — alive by means
of electricity or another magnet, so through this exercise can we make the
human body magnetic, alive. Just as magnetism is a magical power, so the
human body becomes capable of manifesting and emitting human-magical
powers and energies. Thus we attain mastery over the magical-creative
energies. It is true that this can only be achieved with transformed sexual
energy.
 Just as sexual energy can give life to a new living creature, to a child, so
this life-giving energy can create a new living creature in us, can direct the
vital energy of a new living creature into our own body. Thus the old mortal
‘Adam’ becomes the new, resurrected and immortal ‘Christ-man’. From the
energy of the higher, enhanced consciousness grows an increased vitality,
whose high frequencies tolerate no bacteria, no viruses. This explains the
immunity of God-men to all illness. Even if one has not yet become a God-
man, one can already use the extra powers of increased consciousness,
according to the individual level, at first, then in a modest way, then in an
ever higher and more spiritual manner.
If there is a disorder anywhere in the body, we can focus this irradiation
with full intensity on that place. And we shall discover with astonishment
that, through the focused vital energy, pains disappear — often quite
suddenly — and catarrh and other physical disorders are cured. The
frequencies of consciousness are incomparably higher than the so-called
short-waves, X-rays or radium rays. Naturally the effect, too, is
incomparably greater.
We can produce miraculous effects not only in our own body, but, if we
are skilled in the direction of consciousness, we can guide these high
frequencies also into other living creatures. In so doing we establish order
in their bodies. At this point one hesitates to go on. If we consider how
mischievously these matters are abused by ignorant, inferior vain people,
then we understand why it is better to keep silence. Great magicians such as
Mesmer, du Potet, Marquis, Puysegur and others have spoken frankly on
the subject. The inevitable outcome, then as now, is that ignorant people
start playing with these powers. Usually out of vanity, they want to
aggressively ‘magnetize’ others who have no desire for that whatsoever. In
so doing they transmit their own impure radiation to other suffering people,
who, as a result, then become really ill or worse than they had been before.
Therefore let us restrict our ambition to acquiring increased vitality for
ourselves, and learning to direct and use it properly. Let us make our bodies
alive and — awake!
A person who does these exercises out of true desire for God will have
inner experiences of such a novel kind, so many hidden doors will be
opened to him, that, sooner or later, out of real love — and not in order to
be admired — he will want, and indeed will be able, to help others. At this
level he no longer needs to learn from other people how and to what
purpose his own, higher radiations can be used and applied. Nor did
Ignatius Loyola, Father Barre or Valentin Greatrakes learn from anyone
how to cure maniacs and other seriously ill people. That is why we shall not
pursue the subject.
Let us therefore practise with an iron will, and the key to the
transformation of sexual energy into creative-divine powers will be placed
in our hands.
However, I should like to repeat one piece of advice. During the Yoga
exercises we should never think that we are practising because we wish to
still our sexual glands in order to be able to lead an abstemious life. For the
Devil never sleeps, and if we turn our thoughts to the sexual organs, they
are irritated and roused by the direction of consciousness. Therefore, when
we practise Yoga, let us think of health, peace and balance, but in particular
let us try to awaken, experience, and put into practice, the sense of
wholeness. Let us try to experience within, the sense of perfect
independence. Let us arouse in ourselves the assurance that in no respect do
we require a complement, need help from outside, expect love from others,
but that we give, that we have and are everything — everything — within
us. I am a whole!
This feeling gives us unshakeable self-confidence, fearlessness and
courage! It becomes a state of being which we constantly have within us.
We are always content, because we have everything within. This state helps
most of all against any sexual desires. For sexual desire stems from a
feeling of deficiency, from the search for a complementary half which we
lack, without which we feel alone and forsaken. If, however, we have found
everything in ourselves, if we are a whole, what more do we require? What
can we lack?
The general beneficial effect of the Hatha Yoga exercises can be further
reinforced by physical activity. In the same way as the Hatha Yoga
exercises, physical work helps us to direct our thoughts and the excess
blood-flow away from the sexual organs. Sexual energy is the vital energy
which man can retain for his body. A good means of achieving this is
physical work together with the performance of Yoga exercises. Work not
only occupies the body and distributes the blood evenly through the
muscles, but also engages the intellect, thereby preventing the thoughts
from wandering off in the wrong direction. Apart from their spiritual
pursuits, monks and nuns work in the fruit and vegetable garden or in the
various workshops of the monastery. We can do other kinds of physical
work or go in for sport. However, it may happen in the course of purely
physical activity that the intellect repeatedly slips off in the wrong direction,
while we are hoeing potatoes, rowing, playing tennis or whatever we may
be doing. We are tempted again and again to think that the purpose of our
work is to direct the sexual energies into new channels so that the flow of
blood to the sexual organs is prevented. This in turn directs all the thoughts,
the whole consciousness, and as a result, the entire blood-flow, to these very
organs. Strange to say, already from these first struggles we gain the very
useful experience that it is not the body that causes sexual desire, not the
body that disturbs us, but the intellect! Against this it might be argued that
sexual desire influences the intellect from the unconscious. Granted — but
only till such time as sexual energy finds the way to the higher centres. For
if one has progressed so far in one’s own experience that transformed
sexual energy can be manifested as creative power, then it is no longer
repressed into the subconscious and no longer acts from there like a poison.
Even then if one wishes, sexual energy can be conducted back to the sexual
organs and expended as sexual energy, with the help of the intellect. The
intellect is capable of turning the steering-wheel wherever the
consciousness commands. And already at the start of our struggle with the
creative energies we realize the magnitude of the task the intellect has to
perform on our way to God. How blessed is this serpent which by its
‘coiling’ not only leads our vital energy downwards, but equally also
upwards, to God — if our consciousness is master over it!
We are well aware that in puberty the body makes itself felt with
elemental force. The vital tension is high and the sexual energy very
powerful. That is why the young adolescent, if he controls his sexual energy
and converts it into spiritual-creative power, can make the quickest progress
on the spiritual path and attain to God! A young person has the fuel richest
in calories to stimulate the higher centres! We see, however, that with
sexually powerful animals, sexuality plays a much smaller part in their life
than with those people who with the help of the intellect frequently increase
and augment their sexual reactions. The unsuspected importance of one’s
mental attitude with regard to the sexual glands is shown by experiences
people have had in situations of danger.
After the siege of Budapest in 1945 many men and women who had
witnessed this terrible blood-bath became impotent through unutterable fear
of death. How did the sexual organs know that the person carried the fear of
death in his consciousness! How does the genital organ of each man and
animal know that progeny must not be begotten in time of mortal danger?
Natural scientists are very familiar with the high wisdom of Nature which
manifests itself in disasters. Fear of death in Budapest caused many women
to miss a period and men to become impotent. On the other hand, we know
the case of a man whom a female enemy soldier wanted to seduce by force,
and since he showed no desire whatsoever, she tried to compel him at the
point of a gun. The man, who at that time was very alarmed at the apparent
total loss of his potency — he had been impotent for some time —
suddenly, out of pure fear of death when threatened with the revolver, in
spite of his dislike of the strange aggressive woman, became capable of
gratifying her desire. In this case fear of death had exactly the opposite
effect, it restored potency.
We could list further instances which prove how a person’s mentality
affects the sexual organs, and thus the sexual desires too. But the way in
which Nature can react with resistance — the basic principle of
homoeopathy — is shown by another case. A man who had been impotent
for years determined at least to exploit this condition in order to become
‘holy’, since he had to lead an ‘abstemious’ life in any case. Curiously
enough, the moment he made this decision, his body reacted by manifesting
hitherto unsuspected potency! Therefore in this case, too, the obstacle was
not presented by the body, but by the mentality, the cast of mind.
Thus at the very outset of abstemious life we discover, quite consciously,
the unimaginably effective power of the intellect and thought! And with that
we have made the first great discovery and experienced it personally. The
first, the most difficult step of all has been taken!
We can, therefore, with the help of physical work deflect the energies
from the sexual organs, but this is only effective if by a parallel process we
then divert, silence the arch-enemy — the primal serpent: the intellect, our
thoughts —and keep on doing this until we have gained mastery over
sexual energy. The best way to achieve this is to occupy the intellect with
something else. ‘Two things cannot be in one and the same place at the
same time’, therefore, we must expel all sexual thoughts from the intellect
by replacing them with thoughts of a different kind. We have said that an
abstemious life should not be embarked upon as long as sexual desire does
not fall away itself like a ripe fruit from a tree. The question now arises: if a
struggle is still necessary, why should we engage in it at all?
Firstly: There is no such things as a ‘should’, a ‘must’. We give this
advice only to those who wish to practise Yoga in order to make the fastest
possible progress, because they feel in themselves the insatiable desire for
God. One thing, however, we must not forget: anyone who has progressed
so far in his inner being that, out of conviction, he wishes to renounce
sexuality and use sexual energy merely as fuel for the stimulation of his
higher nerve and brain centres (a rough comparison would be the warming
of radio valves by electric current) still has ‘an animal in himself’ as
Paracelsus puts it. Even then that person has a body and in it the glands
which were previously used for regular sexual gratification. Since the
glands are unable to understand why their possessor suddenly wishes to
engage in abstinence, they continue to demand release from the tension
caused by accumulated sexual energy. Nature, however, is very elastic! And
in the same way as the glands have grown used to regular release, one can
gradually get them out of this habit with the help of the consciously
controlled intellect and of appropriate Yoga exercises. Of course it takes
time, longer in some cases than others, until the person — of whatever sex
— is able to adapt his glands and assert his will also in the body. He will
learn in the process how to liberate himself from the bondage of the body
and be master in his own house. He will be aided by the closely linked
spiritual and physical Yoga exercises which we have mentioned before, and
by — creative activity. For we can only open the higher centres if we give
them the chance to emanate creative power.
The exercises which help us in the transformation of our energies are
chiefly of a spiritual nature. The physical exercises are of help in
conducting creative power up to the higher centres; the spiritual ones, on
the other hand, in using creative power. We must learn how to control the
thoughts and the intellect and how to direct them where we wish. We must
learn to think about what it is we want to think about and not about the
random subjects which our thoughts introduce to the mind and compel us to
reflect on. How much this is discussed and how few are those, even among
ardent practitioners of Yoga, who take the trouble to try and put it into
practice! Most people expect the physical Yoga exercises to improve their
concentration without their own inner effort. Exactly the opposite is true:
we can only perform the physical Yoga exercises properly and effectively if
we focus all our attention on directing our concentration inwards. The only
possible way to learn concentration of thought is precisely by
concentrating. There are no magical charms which allow lazy people to
concentrate without their own inner effort! Through physical Yoga
exercises we can increase the supply of blood to the brain centres thus
making them more powerful and vital, therefore able to obey and serve us
better. The brain centres, however, can only obey if there is something there
to command and use them properly. And once more this ‘something’ is
nothing other than ourselves! Who and what else? Let us therefore
command our brain centres, send a great amount of energy to the brain and
think what we want to think and in the manner we want to think of it, not as
the thoughts themselves suggest. For this we can take the converted sexual
energy, which we have not expended but retained for ourselves. Of course
the power of concentration can also be increased and high spiritual levels
attained without an abstemious way of life. But we get incomparably faster
results, and a noticeably stronger effect, if we retain the fire of life for
ourselves. Sexual energy is a form of manifestation of my own Self — I am
it, even if unconsciously so. We shall therefore understand that if I do not
expend sexual energy — therefore myself — through the body, but preserve
it in and for myself, I strengthen myself, therefore my will-power and my
magical, suggestive radiation. I can therefore greatly increase my ability to
be myself.
We must strengthen our hold on the body. If the glands are irritated and
project sexual fantasies and desires on the screen of the consciousness, then
we do not let ourselves go, but ask ourselves: ‘Who is stronger: I or the
sexual desire of my body? I am of course!’ and we immediately occupy
ourselves very intensively with something else that attracts our attention.
We have learned that two things can never be in the same place at the same
time, and we push all sexual thoughts out of the intellect with other
thoughts. And — here is the surprise — the body obeys and sexual desires
are silent. Whether we then go for a walk and watch the birds flying,
whether we go fishing and concentrate until a fish bites, whether we stay at
home and practise Yoga or read an interesting book, whether we play the
piano or another musical instrument, whether we do gardening or train our
dog or quite simply attend to our daily work … it is entirely up to the
individual. No two people have the same interests, no two people have the
same fate. Each and every one must and can feel in himself where his
talent, inclination and chance lie, and what interests him so intensely as to
make him forget sexual desires. It makes no difference how we divert our
attention from sexual desire, the main thing is that we divert it!
How does the body react at this level? As long as we are completely
absorbed in creative activity, the body does not react at all. It enjoys being
charged with higher frequencies whereby it becomes healthier and shares in
the illumined state of the ego. It may happen that, on completion of a
continuous piece of work followed by a few days’ rest, the body announces
itself, at first by erotic dreams during sleep, and then also when we are
awake. Obviously, we are therefore not yet at the level where we are always
consciously able to direct the body, that is to say, the current of life. Thus
we continue to practise the special Yoga exercises and start working again
with all our strength and concentration.
If someone can use his energies in creative work and still has insuperable
difficulties with his body, we advise him to pacify his body with a normal
sex life. Indeed the body desires sexual gratification much less frequently
than is imagined by those people who do not leave their glands in peace, but
rouse them with highly spiced food, stimulant drinks, erotic reading matter,
films and other such excitants. This only overtaxes the glands, weakens
them prematurely and condemns them to ageing. Animals illustrate how
rarely Nature desires sexual intercourse.
Everything depends on what we desire. Desire is the supreme power and
it takes us exactly where we wish to go — where we wish to go with our
whole being! In this connection we advise one thing in particular: to refrain
from praying to God for his help in overcoming the sexual urge. Let us not
forget that God dwells in us, behind our human consciousness in the great
unconscious, and he himself — God — wants to advance our progress
along the path of development. Therefore he helps us in any case — usually
he even forces us — much more than the unconscious man suspects, for
God himself wishes to become conscious in us and through us.
 However, in order to pray to God to remove our sexual desires (which,
alas, many people do quite apart from the fact that such a thing is childish)
we again concentrate on sexuality, turn the intellect afresh to the sexual
organs — and hell is let loose! Let us not beg God to help us overcome our
sexual desires, let us, rather, help ourselves! Anyone who wishes to attain
the supreme, divine stage and whose yearning for God is so intense and
profound that he is interested in nothing else, will be led by his strong
desire to the path on which he can turn away from sexual thoughts and
desires without torment and devote himself with calm nerves to the
transformation of his energies without begging for help. If, however,
someone who is already at a higher level now and then yields to his sexual
urge, that is neither a disgrace nor a sin! He is still a human being of flesh
and blood and no one has forbidden him to enjoy his sexuality. And
precisely for that reason he must not make a vow at the beginning of his
path, so that there will be no cause for shame should he once nevertheless
yield to his sexual desires: shame, not because he has enjoyed his sexuality,
but because he has broken his vow. What is past cannot be helped, and if he
has once had physical union with his loved one, honourably, out of true
love, with inner devotion and healthy physical desire, he must on no
account regard himself as a weak, fallen and sinful man. Why should he?
God has erected no barriers before us and does not lay down that we must
lead an abstemious life. Therefore do not let us dictate to ourselves, but ask
ourselves, what it is we want to have. And if the desire for freedom is
greater than the power of the body, then whatever we do is done of our own
accord!
And so, we continue to practise. One day we shall succeed in calming the
glands through constant diversion of our thoughts and they will trouble us
no further. We can continue our journey along the path of spiritual
development. As far as men are concerned, this point is a new test. For men
feel, even if unconsciously, that sexual energy is of much greater
significance for their own being than is the procreation of a new generation.
Deep down in themselves they feel that sexual energy is man’s being. That
explains why men — already in childhood — protect their sexual organ,
which they identify with sexual energy, with painstaking care and shield it
from all possible danger. They have the feeling, and quite correctly, that
something irrevocable, terrible would happen if they were to lose the organ
of their virility, and with it their potency. The male feels instinctively that
through the loss of his sexual energy in its material manifestation, he
himself would be destroyed.
The following characteristic incident may illustrate and help us to
understand this test: we had a very valuable, spiritually superior friend, who
had become a monk in order to be able to devote his whole life consciously
and sincerely to the search for God. He was a powerful and spirited man.
Night after night he could not sleep at all because his body allowed him no
peace. He did everything which might have helped him but the Devil had
apparently not yet done with him. One day our friend came to us obviously
in despair: Just think,’ he said, ‘suddenly I can sleep very well, I can
concentrate on my work undisturbed, my body has stopped reacting, it does
not bother me at all. Goodness me, do you think I have become impotent?’ I
had to laugh aloud: ‘Listen,’ I said to him, ‘for a long time you have been
practising with a great deal of effort to calm your glands so that you can
freely devote yourself to your spiritual progress. And new that your efforts
to lead sexual energy to higher centres have been crowned with success, are
you alarmed that you have succeeded in what you so earnestly sought and
wished for? Don’t worry, you have not become impotent. On the contrary.
You have come near to becoming the source of all potency.’
Man is like that — even such a resolute, strong character as our friend
the monk! These are the ‘children’s ailments’ which man has to come
through before he has gained experience if he has not been born as one
already ‘anointed’ or ‘chosen’. And there is no disgrace in getting these
ailments. ‘Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life…
.’ (Matt. 7: 14), said Christ, and he knew what he was talking about. He too
struggled for the kingdom of heaven and fasted in the desert for forty days,
and just when he changed from Jesus of Nazareth into Christ, the Devil’s
temptation was stronger than ever. Naturally, the ‘Devil’ does not spare us
either, but we must remember this great example and know that victory is
possible!
Of course, even then if we have reached the stage where our glands do
not trouble us, it may happen that, for instance, if there is a south wind, they
reawake and project erotic thoughts in us. In that case, we practise the Yoga
exercises and continue to occupy ourselves with physical and mental
activity, all of which repeatedly and ever more effectively helps and calms
us. Even if the doors to the higher centres have opened for sexual energy,
for a time it still flows back to its lowest exit of manifestation where it acts
as physical-sexual energy. The old path, once made broad and easy, still
lures and draws the current of life to itself.
The next step affords us already much greater joy. Our struggle is no
longer solely to calm the sexual organs and to gain control of our thoughts,
but rather we begin to use the sexual energies directed away from the sexual
organs, transformed, as spiritual powers. The first great step has been taken
— the doors, hitherto closed, to the higher centres of manifestation have
been opened. How can we now apply these spiritual powers?
This reminds us of the great wisdom spoken by an owl to the magician in
a Walt Disney film. The magician wants to explain to a child which feathers
a bird uses in order to rise off the ground, and which he uses to keep his
wings moving in the air. The owl listens for a while and then says, irritated
and full of contempt: ‘Fancy trying to explain about learning to fly. One
learns to fly simply by flying!’ How wise, how true! One learns also to
transform sexual energy simply by transforming it. Let us be quite clear
about this: what is meant by transforming sexual energies into spiritual
powers? Is there an apparatus in men where the vibrations, the frequencies
of the energies can be transformed and changed into different forms of
manifestations? Yes. There are several. They are the chakras which not only
send out rays, but also function as transformers. We know this, however,
only with our intellect. If I use the nerve centres, the seat of the chakras, I
experience the various vibrations not as ‘vibration’ or ‘frequency’, but
directly as conscious states of being. I take as an example the ears, that is to
say, the auditory nerves which receive all the vibrations of sound and impart
these to my consciousness. Although I have learned with my intellect that
the sounds are vibrations and that the different sounds have different
frequencies, my consciousness will not perceive them as different
vibrations, but I shall hear them quite simply as different sounds. I shall be
unable to notice the number of vibrations, more or less, of one sound
compared with another, but, I shall hear them as lower- and higher-pitched
sounds.
So it is with creative power. In its lower vibrations I shall be unable to
notice how they vibrate, but rather I shall feel and notice them in my body
as sexual urge. In its higher vibrations — in my soul — I shall feel them as
love, as the spiritual urge for unity. Even higher, as the urge for creative
manifestation, as natural talents, as intuition and creative ideas. In their very
highest frequencies, I shall be them, as a purely spiritual state of being — as
i am.
Just as the ears and auditory nerves enable me to hear sounds, so that I
am aware of the sounds but not the ears and auditory nerves, so I am aware
of creative power with the various organs of manifestation and the chakras
as the sexual urge, as feelings and as direct states of being. I feel the
activation of the higher nerve and brain centres only to the extent that I
suddenly become intuitive, that I have creative ideas and an inclination for
creative work, that unsuspected talents come to light, that there is a
remarkable increase in my will-power and power of concentration, that I
become self-assured and I notice by my effect on other people that I have
acquired suggestive powers and as a result have become the centre of
attention. Therefore I must not expect that the chakras and their seat, the
higher nerve and brain centres, announce themselves by any kind of
feelings or other signs, when they go into action. I notice the ears, auditory
nerves and other sense organs, as also the higher nerve and brain centres
and the chakras, only if they are not quite in order and perhaps cause pain.
As long as they function healthily I am not aware of their existence.
I shall be as unable to gauge the frequency differences as — to remain
with our example — the ears are to gauge the vibration differences of
sounds; they transmit them to my consciousness as lower or higher pitched
sounds, which I then simply hear.
It is only as various states of consciousness that I can feel directly,
experience, or in the highest form, become identical with the various
frequency differences of the various forms of creative power. And if I call
these forms of manifestation lower or higher, I do so for the same reason
that I call a sound lower or higher because I hear it like that — lower or
higher! If we explain what a sound is, then we can give as detailed a
description as possible of the vibrations and frequencies of sounds, and yet
we shall be totally unable to make a creature that has no ears understand
how we hear a sound, or indeed, what it even means to hear. I should be
still less able to explain that a sound may be ‘lower’ or ‘higher’, and least
of all what the difference in sound is, for instance, of a flute, a violin or an
organ. If this creature once tried to hear — and managed to do so — then it
would hear from personal experience, instantaneously, directly and without
need of further explanation.
A further example: we cannot explain the taste of a chestnut to someone
who has never eaten chestnuts even if we were able to give a perfect
scientific description of the frequencies of this taste, or even write books on
the subject. That person will have no idea of the taste of chestnuts until such
time as he tastes one himself All that is going on and all that is stored in our
brain is only outside and is not a conscious state of being. I am not identical
with it. The taste of the chestnut will only become a conscious state of
being when we taste it with the tongue and experience it. The tongue and all
the other sense organs can transmit their perceptions to me as a state of
consciousness; the brain, the intellect can never do that. We see how
difficult it is to give explanations about the transformation of the creative
powers. It is absolutely futile to explain rationally. We can only know the
nature of things through direct experience. I can experience nothing through
the intellect, precisely because it is incapable of being anything Once we
have understood these matters correctly and wish to experience them, we
must transmit them from our intellect to our being, as a state of being, and
through our direct knowledge, experience being identical with them. We
shall then learn to become ourselves the taste of the chestnut when we taste
it and experience its taste within us.
Explanations about the transformation of sexual energy can only be
given in as much as one shows how to do it. All these things will then be
directly experienced and understood. As long as we do not make the effort,
we shall never be able to understand the nature of the bliss, fulfilment,
absolute contentment and self-confidence which we experience as a
conscious state of being if we have become able to transform creative
power from its sexual form into its higher form, and can say, I am it. How
can a mineral solution know and apprehend what is happening when it is
crystallizing? The molecules automatically fall into a crystalline lattice,
which only this mineral solution can produce, because it is it!
Thus each one of us will only be able to be what he is, and that cannot be
explained in advance, because each person is an individual manifestation of
God, and is therefore different from the next person. Just as the mineral
solution began to do something and could do nothing else but become — be
— itself, its own characteristic Self, and manifest its being in a crystallized
form, so we, too, must do something, and we shall be unable to do anything
else but become ourselves and manifest ourselves in crystallized form. In
this way we shall experience the secret of creative power directly and
understand it through being. Only those who already understand it because
they are it, can give advice. Each one of us must learn to be through his
own experience.
How do we begin? With intellectual, creative work. And with what
work? Let us not ask that. We shall in any case only be able to do what we
are. And what we want to do is what we are. We shall do, then, something
for which we have a talent and an inclination, and pursue it according to the
time at our disposal beyond our normal working hours. For so many men,
so many fates, so many paths.
To those men or women who have their regular jobs, which scarcely
leave them time to further their progress on the spiritual path, we
recommend the practice of meditation during a quiet time of the day.1 If
anyone has begun to lead an abstemious life, he will notice that meditation
is infinitely easier than before. It has already been explained that retained
sexual energy accumulates, vital tension increases and this heightened
tension acts on the spine as a strong irritation, as a powerful stimulus. Thus
the higher nerve and brain centres are automatically heated, roused and
activated like the valves of a radio. This state is manifested in man’s
consciousness by his becoming more awake. He begins to live! Only now
does he notice that hitherto he has hardly lived. He did not live, he merely
vegetated, his life was a farce. He breathed, ate and drank, even worked, but
he always had the feeling that he did not participate in life — that he had no
share in it — everything seemed to him like a dream, usually like a bad
dream. He was not there now. He was not awake.
1
cf. Yesudian-Haich, Yoga and Health, Allen and Unwin.
Now man begins to come alive, to grow conscious, to liberate himself
from time and space. He feels the fire of life within him, he begins to
become himself. Now he suddenly understands what Christ meant when he
called some people ‘dead’ and some ‘living’.
It is in fact as impossible to describe these states as it is to describe the
taste of the chestnut. One can only speak in similes: expressions like: ‘being
awake’, ‘growing more conscious than hitherto’, ‘to come alive’, and so
forth, are substitutes for a nonexistent, more adequate vocabulary. The best
way of putting it is perhaps as follows: however convinced we may be that
we were awake, conscious and living, we nevertheless only awake through
the higher frequencies of creative power, and see then that we have been
neither awake, conscious nor living, but that we have vegetated and led an
unreal life. Just as, while we are dreaming, we are convinced that we are
‘awake’ and ‘living’ in our dream-visions, and we only realize that we have
been dreaming when we ‘wake up’ to our normal consciousness, in the
same way we only realize that we have hitherto led a dream-life — a
shadow-life — when we gradually waken through the effect of the ‘dragon-
fire’. How superbly Andersen describes this state in his fairy-tale ‘The
Shadow’ and Gustav Meyrink in his great book Das Grüne Gesicht.
When we experience this ‘awakening’ we cannot understand how we
ever believed that we were awake and living. A much greater vitality has
wakened in man, but its activity is not in the body, no heat whatever is felt
(as some expect), but in the consciousness, in the spirit, we feel a fire within
us, a light! A great many people who long for this ‘awakening’ try to
experience it inwardly and make the great mistake in meditation of wanting
to experience some mystical state physically. This is an error! Every one of
these states is exclusively a state of consciousness. That is to say, that I
myself am the light of consciousness, and the body is only involved in this
inasmuch as it too begins to grow much more intensely alive. It is charged
with new vitality, it grows younger and healthier. It becomes a submissive
and obedient servant of one’s own Self. We live in an intensified and
sublime state. This state is not one of hysteria and paroxysm. On the
contrary, we are in an intensified, clear, lucid, spiritual state of
consciousness, and are much calmer than before. In a paroxysmal state we
let ourselves go, losing control over our nerves and ourselves. In the
spiritually elevated state, our calmness, control and objectivity are
incomparably greater than previously in the normal state. Precisely because
we are ‘here now’, we are ‘with ourselves’ to a much greater extent than we
would ever have thought possible. In the spiritually illumined, awake state
we are calmness, self-control itself. We are our own master, our own Self.
That is true presence of mind, which we can sustain continuously as normal
consciousness beyond the period of meditation. In this state we have no
conscience, because we have become the conscience itself.
 Meditators occasionally expect ‘visitations’ or ‘visions’, or they doze off
perhaps in the belief that in meditation the higher Self will penetrate their
consciousness like a strange being and provide them with another Self,
another consciousness. They labour under a great misconception and in so
doing reveal that they have no idea of true meditation — of self-realization.
The truly spiritual states are very easy: one is simply here now! And
completely awake, as awake as the clear light of the sun! This bright light is
experienced in a perfectly clear, transparent conscious state of being as: i
am! We do not even think these two words, we are that without thinking
words!
This state can also be achieved in work. Work absorbs man’s attention,
helps him to be ‘here’ and ‘now’, to be ‘awake’. To the young man who
asked him what he should do to be blessed, Christ replied simply: ‘Watch
and pray.’ With that he said everything. And also when we work we awake
and become ever more awake, if we devote ourselves to it with full
concentration, full consciousness but without thinking that we are
‘conscious’. What kind of work ought it to be? Any kind. For the important
thing is not what we work at, but how we work. Any kind of work, and that
may include all kinds of sport or acrobatics, activities which require
mastery of the mind over matter, the body. Anyone who has pursued a sport
with full concentration and has gradually improved his performance will
know the fervent and joyous states of mind which accompany mastery of
the body. When a circus acrobat performs superhuman feats during his act,
he experiences high spiritual rapture and joy. It is a well-known fact that
some acrobats who risk their lives and those of their assistants during their
act live ascetically like monks.
The pleasure and thrill experienced in their performances is infinitely
greater than in a brief sexual encounter. They even risk their lives for this
higher kind of happiness. (Something that a man would hardly do for a
sexual experience.) Those who are friendly with circus people know that
there are many among them who could say like Beethoven: ‘There is no
higher happiness than to achieve a victory over the body, or over wild
animals and to demonstrate this victory of the mind — of the ego - to men.’
Those whose work leaves them free time, or who are engaged anyway in
an intellectual activity, can use this work for themselves as a ladder of
consciousness — as Jacob’s ladder. We should choose for ourselves
whatever we have a liking for, what really interests us from the bottom of
our hearts. It does not matter whether we sketch, paint, model, weave
carpets or work Gobelins, play a musical instrument, go in for handicrafts
or gardening, write poetry or books. One thing, however, is necessary, and
that is that we must never content ourselves with average achievements, but
always aim at perfection. There is nothing like creative work to facilitate
progress and to help transform sexual energy into creative power and to
radiate it as spiritual energy. Let us, then, work at something, whatever it
may be. If we do so, we no longer need to worry about how to ‘divert’ our
thoughts. They are absorbed in work, without the petty, personal awareness
of the self. One is so closely bound up with the present that the thoughts,
always linking past with future, cannot penetrate this continuous present.
One automatically disconnects oneself from time and space. We direct
sexual energy automatically and instinctively into the higher centres, where
it operates as creative-magical powers. If we practise any kind of art, we
must not worry about gaining recognition and fame. The source of this
ambition is the little ‘I’, the person, who, although vain, at the same time
lacks self-confidence and looks for acknowledgement, recognition from
outside. We must not work in order to become ‘recognized’. The work is the
most essential thing, for we develop with it. Work for work’s sake, for the
sake of development, hastens our progress. The most important thing of all
is to concentrate fully on our work — whatever it may be — to be
completely absorbed by it, and to enter into it heart and soul and not to be
easily satisfied, even if it is no more than simple housework. The true artist
works for work’s sake, he is happy while he is creating; for him the work
itself is the highest reward because while at work he is in an exalted,
illumined state. To someone who throws himself wholeheartedly into his
work, it makes absolutely no difference whether he is very gifted or starts at
a lower level, for everything is merely relative. We must try to rise from the
stage we are at. That is the most important thing of all. To rise. The greatest
artist alive also had to start once at the lowest level, both as man and as
artist, though this may have been a great many incarnations ago. If we lose
no time and try to do our work as perfectly as possible by making every
effort and applying our utmost concentration, then we shall learn that talents
can grow quite unbelievably. Let us not be satisfied with inferior or
mediocre work. Let us try to carry it out with even greater perfection and
thoroughness so that we can bring out the most subtle nuances. Let us try to
know our material thoroughly and to bring it under our yoke — which in
Sanskrit is Yoga. We shall find that there is no limit to our powers of
concentration. If we have been concentrating completely on our work until
now, we discover on the next day that we can concentrate even more
intensely and in the course of work fresh possibilities come to our
knowledge, which previously had eluded us. We discover the nature of
work and new, even more beautiful mysteries which we were hitherto
unable to see, because we have again reached the next step in our
development and our concentration has increased accordingly. New and
wider worlds open before us, of which until now we knew as little as many
other people. And yet all the time we were living in the midst of these
worlds, but our eyes were still closed, still blind. Now, during work, we
penetrate the innermost worlds right to the essential core of things and at
the same time, also to the core of our own being. Outside our work, too,
new worlds open before us. We suddenly begin to understand with great
clarity writings of great men and prophets, which until now we had not
understood properly, which we had found obscure and enigmatical. We are
filled with unspeakable joy, we find new brothers, new friends, who speak
to us from past centuries and millennia across time and space, to us,
because we understand them, because we have become one with them.
And so we continue our work, especially on ourselves. We taste of the
purely spiritual joys and raptures which are not to be compared with brief,
physical pleasures. The undescribable delight of doing creative work fills
our whole being with unutterable ecstasy both during the work and when
we rest. Creative power continues to be active in us. We can scarcely wait
to get down to work again, for we feel that only during work do we really
live. Something within us has opened. Through the ever-increasing creative
powers the joy of freedom and boundlessness has started to blossom. We
have a strange feeling as if it were not we who are working, but something
within us that knows everything, that takes us and shows us the way in
which we can achieve and manifest perfect harmony, indeed, even
perfection in our work. This something and I are completely one. And we
understand what the Zen-Buddhists mean by ‘Zen’, and also the
significance of the mystical marriage — unio mystica of the Rosicrucians
and the great mystics — because we have experienced it within us during
work and experience it still. I and the creative principle — logos — are one!
I — and I — are one!
A fever grips us, we forget the whole world, we are no longer a person
who has a name somewhere in the outer world, for we have become a drop
in the infinite ocean. We participate in God’s creation and create new
worlds, however small our own world, but we feel, we know, that we have
the ability within us to reach, in our little sphere, a creative perfection
comparable to that of God in the universe. The door to the inner world
opens even wider, time and again we glimpse new worlds, new splendours.
I discover new truths, I receive new ideas. Where from? From within
myself, where there is an inexhaustible source — from God. What is the
difference? Is there one at all? These are all mere words. The ideas which
become conscious in me are light like the shining light of God, and by this
light I see everything, all the truths of heaven and earth, wherever I direct
the reflector of my consciousness. This light fills me with unspeakable
happiness and unutterable joy. The body also shares in these pleasures: in
my heart, my breast, my head, the crown of my head and in every fibre of
my nerves, I feel new, animating life which gives me vitality, courage, self-
confidence — life itself — so that I can no longer be afraid of anything, of
anything at all. Not even of death. Divine, imperturbable peace prevails in
me, i am myself this peace and self-confidence. I neither need nor expect a
reason in order to be ‘happy’, because I am myself happiness. What else,
then, could make me happy? I am the source from which happiness
radiates. Am I conscious — or unconscious? What kind of words are these?
What do they mean? These states stand above such concepts. i am! Is not
that enough? Indeed it is. I am in reality! I live! I am life! Why should my
consciousness also need to perceive that rationally and to register it? If I
have become the chestnut itself, why write a dissertation on its taste — my
taste — if I myself am it? Do I need to think or talk about that, when I am
alive as I have never been alive before? Is it not enough that I myself am joy,
happiness, being?
I do not need to ponder on that any longer, or even to think about it.
Words such as the ‘unconscious’ or the ‘conscious’ are just words, but they
are not what they are. The words are outside, in the outer world, external to
my Self, somewhere in my brain. In my inner world there is only myself.
And I do not think this either, and if I am doing so now it is only in order to
write it down, to make it comprehensible, to put it into words for the people
who are troubled by this question. I am in the inspiration of being, I myself,
without thinking it, without puzzling over it. There is nothing else that
could entice me out of my being. Time … space … these are concepts of the
outer world. For me there exists only the absolute existence —being itself
… because i am it.
We are as unable to describe and make others comprehend the state of
being, as we are to explain how to hear a sound, to smell a perfume, taste a
flavour, to see a colour or a shape. Those who have already experienced
these things smile sympathetically because they know what one is talking
about. The others can only do one thing: experience it themselves. Thus it is
with the transformation of sexual energy into spiritual-divine powers.
Anyone who has experienced it can smile sympathetically, and this smile is
the well-known smile of the Buddha, who knows everything, who knows
the highest truth, who knows the highest truth about God — about eternal
being… . If we have not experienced it we cannot understand what it is in
the transformation of sexual energy that yields such deep contentment as to
make the effort worth while. How can one, for instance, explain to a
creature born without sexual organs what makes a sexual experience so
pleasurable that men are capable of the highest heroism as well as of the
greatest madness for the sake of sexual intercourse with one particular
person? One can only advise people who have not personally experienced
the transformation of sexual energy, and who sneer with scorn and
contempt, not to pass judgement or to make it the subject of bad jokes.
They should first try to experience the transformation. They should consider
why all the great men who have ever wanted to explain to us the divine
truths about the way of man’s liberation from the bondage of matter to the
omnipotence of the spirit, have without exception preceded us on this path.
These titanic minds have taught us that the attainment of consciousness in
the highest centres where we do not reflect on something, but become, are
something, is the highest, divine state. And the driving force helping us to
this state is sexual energy which has not been used up in sexual experience
but directed inwards and transformed into creative-divine energy. The
serpent which bites its own tail! ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear’
(Mark 4: 9).
 And the body? Will sexual desires never again be roused in the body?
How do the glands react?
One thing we must not forget: the body only has sexual desires if I am
within. The body itself does not have sexual desires. These are the physical
projection of my urge for divine unity. A corpse does not have sexual
desires. If I have attained divine unity — the unio mystica — in my
consciousness, that is to say, if I have become one with my spirit, my being,
thus forming a whole, then I no longer project sexual desires in the body.
The innermost, true being — the spirit — is sexless. My body calms down
like a tamed animal obeying my every command, and yet, it lives with much
greater intensity and has much greater potency than the body of a man who
is still in the grip of sexuality and expends life-giving energy. With each
sexual union living creatures die a little. Again and again they spend their
own vital energy, whether or not the aim of giving life to a new creature is
achieved. If we have become a whole, all our vital energy remains in the
service of our own body, since we use and radiate spiritualized sexual
energy, creative power, also through the body. Each small fibre of our
nerves is charged with this highest of divine-magical currents. Thus we can
understand why the majority of the great men who have preceded us on the
long path to the goal, had very healthy bodies and lived to an exceptionally
great age. We shall mention only two well-known examples: at the age of
ninety, St Anthony begins to till the soil in the Sahara and harvests so much
corn that henceforth he can live on it. At the age of 104 he visits St Paul,
who is now 112. Anthony had to go on foot for more than two days in order
to reach Paul. These are historical facts which the then Bishop of
Alexandria had recorded. We could list many authentic examples of how
great men who practised total asceticism remained healthy and capable of
work right to the extreme limits of the human life-span. The important
thing, however, is not to live long, but to live healthily. We need to look
after our body only to the extent of keeping it healthy, in absolute
equilibrium, in heavenly peace. Just as the sun pours its rays evenly into the
room, so we, helped by the directing of consciousness, must radiate the
energy, which is my ego, which i am, through all the nerve centres. For let
us not forget that our sexual glands are intended not only for preservation of
the species but that they also have the above-mentioned important part to
play for our own body. They bear the vital tension in our body and the
youthfulness of the latter is dependent upon this tension. Equilibrium,
harmony, confidence and peace in my body — and I am master in my
house. And man’s greatest enemy, fear, cannot lay hold of me any more
than darkness can lay hold of light.
Just as the spirit is a thousand times stronger than the flesh, the body, so
too the happiness and joy attained by this way of life is a thousand times
greater. The spirit is the cause, the body the effect. The body is a mere
reflection of the spirit, and sexual enjoyment, even the highest sensual
pleasure, is only a pale reflection of the joy, fulfilment, and bliss
experienced through sexual energy converted into creative power — logos
— and retained as a state of consciousness — since i am it. This happiness
we do not expend only in order to let it build up and then to expend it again
and again till the body is worn out, exhausted and impotent. We retain inner
divine joy, we bear it within us all the time, we ourselves are this joy. And
what is more, it keeps growing from day to day, just as in the fairy-tale the
golden apple of love grows larger and larger the more one eats of it!
Creative power, increased by concentration of the mind, keeps growing
until we consciously reach the boundlessness of the divine Self. And the
body participates in this heightening of the creative powers. It grows ever
healthier from the higher frequencies of the expanding consciousness, it
becomes ever more the submissive servant of the spirit. It rests with the
individual how he uses his creative powers, expends them, administers
them. Now we understand why those who reached the highest level, the
prophets, the sibyls, the God-men, refrained from expending their creative
powers as sexual energy. They were not foolish people who discarded a
source of pleasure and enjoyment. They experienced the other pole
consciously within them and therefore did not need to look for a
complement outside. They complemented themselves, what had been a half
became a whole. Consciously, by themselves, they became the creative
power — logos — their own divine Self.
That is the transformation of sexual energy into spiritual, divine-creative
power. That is the resurrection from death to eternal life. And the secret of
sexual energy is this: to begin with, as the link between the world of matter
and the spiritual realm, it helps the human spirit to be born into a material
body — afterwards, however, it compels and helps man in his own efforts,
using sexual energy as fuel, to stimulate his higher nerve and brain centres,
thereby raising his consciousness to divine universal awareness, while still
in the body. That is why we must take the opportunity during our earthly
life, while we still live in the body, of attaining the ultimate goal of every
living creature — God.
Let us use a simile: a piece of firewood yearns for the fire. It is cold, stiff
and lifeless and longs to be warmed through. It longs to live, to be exalted.
It longs for the divine fire. Then one day it is set alight, it starts burning and
thus the wood becomes one with the fire which heats it, animates it and
exalts it. But precisely because the fire heats it, and makes it alive, the wood
burns up, turns to ash and dies. The wood does not realize that there is
release from this death and the possibility of resurrection. If it made use of
the time when it was alight to transmit its consciousness from itself to the
fire, in order to become conscious in the latter, to become one, identical
with the fire itself, when the wood died, its consciousness would not have to
die also. In that case it would not matter to it whether the fire which it has
now become burns further pieces of wood or not. As fire, it would have the
chance to go on existing in its invisible, non-manifest, spiritual form even if
the fire burnt nothing. With the fire, the consciousness of the former wood
could then continue to exist in its new-born, resurrected true being, as fire.
Our path is the same. If we human beings realize that we do not
inevitably die with the material body provided that we use the time and
opportunity during our life, while we burn with the fire of the spirit, to
transmit our consciousneSs from our human substance to the spirit, the
burning fire — to life — then, when the body perishes, the consciousness
will not die. As Paul says: ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed’ (I Car. 15:51).
We must, then, make use of the time and the opportunity so long as we
live in the body, so long as the spirit quickens us and burns within us and
our body is still in possession of its full potency. The spirit gives us life.
Hence, if we consciously become identical with our fire, our spirit, while
we still burn — while we still live — then we shall awake in life itself,
grow conscious at a new level, that is to say, we shall become life itself,
which can never die for the very reason that it is life. At this point we
ourselves have become the fire— the spirit — life — logos — which creates
all things, animating and preserving them by its fire. In fact this is what we
have always been except that our consciousness has fallen out of the
spiritual, paradisiacal state into the ‘wood’, into the body, becoming
identical with it. If, however, a person is not conscious in his true being,
then his consciousness dies with his body and he is truly dead. If, on the
other hand, he becomes conscious in his higher Self, in his spirit, during his
earthly life, during his incarnation — as long as he burns with the fire of the
spirit — then his consciousness does not die with the body. Instead, it
remains conscious and lingers on like a drop of water in the ocean, in a state
of universal consciousness, in God. The Christian definition of this is
resurrection, the Oriental definition is nirvana. All the great prophets, sibyls
and God-men who have lived in this world, have taught men that the
attainment of this state of consciousness — the identification of the
consciousness with life, with eternal being, with God — is the supreme
goal, but one within our reach. This is the release from the laws of matter,
of the body, the redemption from death and from the crucifixion of our
spirit on the two great beams of time and space. This is the dawning of
consciousness, the awakening in life itself, in God himself, redeemed from
the unconscious spirit in the body. This resurrection in the new
consciousness is the teaching of Christ, of the Eastern philosophies of Yoga
and religion, of the medieval alchemists, the Rosicrucians, of all past and
present religions and of every great initiate. This is the core of every
religion, for there is only one truth and one secret of our being. All initiates
have seen and taught the very same truth, even if in accordance with race
and climatic conditions of their particular country they have concealed the
essence of their doctrines in the most varied disguises. Through the variety
of religions we have also been taught various paths conditioned by the
disposition and nature of the individual peoples. The shortest path to God,
however, namely stimulating the higher nerve and brain centres with sexual
energy as ‘fuel’, and thereby laying hold of the magical powers which can
only be developed from a youthful, virile body, was taught in Europe in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the so-called alchemists, the
Rosicrucians. The Crusades were the real occasion for their acquiring the
knowledge of the Oriental initiates about the philosopher’s stone. They
spoke of an athanor, in which the fire had to burn continuously and steadily
in order to produce the philosopher’s stone. From their writings and
ingenious illustrations, it is perfectly evident that they produced this stone
out of man himself. The athanor is the human body, the dragon is the
creative power which works in the body, and the dragon’s fire is sexual
energy directed upwards through an abstemious way of life and used as
fuel. The philosopher’s stone is the divine universal consciousness and its
magical-spiritual power over the whole of Nature. And the elixir of life is
the ‘fire which flows like water’, ‘the fiery water’, that is to say, the high
frequencies of divine self-awareness which we can conduct into the body
and radiate as conSciously as we can conduct electricity and magnetism
into a piece of metal, thus charging it and making it magnetic. Christians
call this current ‘the blood of Christ’, the Rosicrucians call it the ‘elixir of
life’. This is the vital current of the logos, of life, of the divine Self.
The great initiates, prophets, sibyls, high priests and priestesses of the
great peoples of the past, and the God-men who from time to time have
appeared on earth, were and are not foolish people. They would not have
thrown away the sexual pleasures which very many people regard as the be-
all and end-all of life, if they had not received in exchange something a
thousand times more valuable. They merely exchanged the ‘wood’ for the
fire. As initiates, they calmly sacrificed these physical, very brief, transient
pleasures for the source of all joy and happiness, for the eternal and
everlasting being of all potency, which is the giver of bliss, freedom and
omni-
potence. What is our preference? The geyser that shoots up now and
again, or the volcano bubbling in the bowels of the earth, which is the
source and cause of all geysers and volcanic eruptions?!
The mystical marriage, also described in the Bible in the Song of
Solomon and in the Apocalypse, is the union of the human consciousness
with the true Self, with the divine spirit, through the help of spiritualized
sexual energy.
In the classic fairy-tale of Sleeping Beauty, we find the same truth. The
Sleeping Beauty (the sleeping consciousness) is wakened to eternal life
through the power of love (through the fire of sexual energy) by the prince’s
kiss (by the fiery touch of the spirit, of true being).
The Siegfried legend has the same meaning. Siegfried conquers the
dragon with the sword of consciousness, then bathes in the dragon’s blood,
which gives him eternal life and magical-supernatural powers. Then he
steps through the ring of fire surrounding the sleeping Brunhilde, and with a
kiss - like the prince in Sleeping Beauty - wakens her to eternal life and
everlasting union. The two poles find each other, to rest again within each
other in absolute equilibrium.
We could quote many more symbolical tales and legends which relate the
same secret of the awakening of the human consciousness to eternal, divine
universal awareness through the fire of retained sexual energy. But that
would take us too far. The fact is that man has this potential within him,
even if he is totally unaware of it. God dwells in man’s unconscious, and, as
already mentioned, the two poles rest within each other in God. Man thinks
and lives sexually only as long as he identifies his consciousness with his
body. If, however, he awakens in God with his consciousness, then the
sexual mentality and concept of the sexes ceases to exist in him. In himself,
in the revealed, and as a result, now conscious unconscious (which in this
state is precisely no longer an unconscious), he finds the other pole - his
own complement, which had always been there, but in a latent, unconscious
condition - and he becomes one with it. Now, since everything has become
conscious in him - in the first person - in me, so that I no longer have an
unconscious, the other pole has become conscious in me, and I realize that I
myself-am it as well. In the partner of the opposite sex with whom I felt an
inner unity and tried to experience and realize this also in the body, I sought
this complement — which like the Sleeping Beauty was latent and dormant
within me — of my absolute, true Self, in which both poles have always
rested and will continue to do so to all eternity, because they belong
together, because i myself am both parts. When we have attained the divine
unity of complete universal consciousness, we are conscious in the absolute
androgynous state.
The Rosicrucians called a person who had achieved this state, a
hermaphrodite. The word is composed of the two Greek names Hermes and
Aphrodite, and means that the person has realized the two poles in his
consciousness. In the depiction of this, the Rosicrucians showed the
‘hermaphrodite’ with two heads, because he has achieved his illumined
state through mastery of sexual energy, used as fuel, and they placed him on
a dragon, the ruler of this world, of our earth. For sexual energy rules on
earth.
All of man’s various holy writings speak of this androgynous or
hermaphroditic primal state. In the Bible it is represented in the story of
Adam, who, to begin with, was an androgynous creature, a man-woman.
Not until Adam fell into a deep sleep — that is to say when he had lost his
divine state of consciousness and become an unconscious creature — did
the negative pole, the female principle, leave his body. Then God made
‘coats of skins and clothed them’ (Gen. 3:21), that is to say, their spirit
clothed itself in a material body, which manifests only one sex, and thus
they also acquired sexual awareness. They imagined themselves to be man
and woman and forgot that their Self is spirit and a whole.
The present order of Nature does not allow us to attain or realize
physically the androgynous primal state. This is only possible in the
spiritual state, in the primal consciousness. We can achieve and experience
this divine primal state in which the two poles rest within each other, in our
consciousness as a state of consciousness.
It is necessary to stress that a man’s body continues in the same way to
belong to a sex when he has already reached the very highest level. If,
through Yoga exercises, we render conscious the other, latent half of our
being and realize our complement within us, our body still remains male or
female and on no account a man-woman, a physical hermaphrodite. Under
the present order of Nature that would be an abnormal, pathological
condition of the body. The Rosicrucians, then, used the expression
‘hermaphrodite’ only with reference to the consciousness. All the stateS
which we experience in the course of our development are purely states of
consciousness. And when we have made the other sex also conscious in
ourselves, this nevertheless remains a purely mental state. The body is only
involved inasmuch as it no longer has sexual desires. Desire is not in the
body — as we have said already, a corpse does not have sexual desires —
but in man’s state of consciousness, as long as he identifies himself with the
body. At the time of conception, the spirit falls into the body, builds the
body for itself in its image and makes it alive. Since matter isolates and
does not admit the light of the spirit, the latter loses its spiritual
consciousness, becomes a physical being and imagines itself to be a body.
As a result, it projects its search for the lost unity into the body, thereby
giving rise to sexual desire in the body. For the glands are stimulated and
work also through the effect of the spirit, of life. When the spirit regains its
spiritual consciousness in the body and becomes aware of being spirit, it
then becomes a whole in its conSciousness, and sexual desire ceases in the
body as well. That is the secret which explains why men who are awake in
the spirit, in their true being — the saints, prophets, sibyls and God-men —
no longer have sexual desires, although their bodies also manifest only one
sex, and it explains why they are able to lead an abstemious life without
pathological repression, restlessness and difficulties. To avoid any
misunderstanding, let me emphasize that through becoming a ‘whole’, these
enlightened men did not become impotent, no matter how often ignorant
people may claim the contrary. Those who have reached the goal have
become the source of all potency, they use their energies as they please, and
the door to every manifestation and that includes sexual manifestations —
is open before them. They are, then, not impotent, but balanced,
harmonious, perfectly calm and controlled men. Each one of us carries
these truths and laws in his unconscious.
We seek the absolute. We cannot accept compromises. And why not?
Because we already bear this ‘absolute’, this ‘whole’, within us, because we
ourselves have been this since primeval times and still are. Our ‘ego’ is
pure spirit, for which there exists no kind of division, separation and
splitting into the two sexes. When we have grown conscious in our true
Self, all sexuality falls from us like a ripe fruit from a tree, just as the child,
when it is grown-up, gives up playing with tin-soldiers painlessly and
without sacrifice. And the body obeys us, since sexual energy no longer
irritates the glands. It is used as creative power through other, higher
centres. Each man can experience these facts himself if he tries to progress
on the path described here, which is the shortest one.
We must never be afraid that God would take something away from us
without giving us something much greater in return. he lives in us as our
innermost being, as our true Self, it is his wish to realize himself in our
mortal humanity. As long as we are unconscious living creatures, God lives
in our immeasurably great, boundless unconscious. And if we have grown
completely conscious within ourselves, God lives in us as our own divine
ego.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith … to him that
overcometh will i give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of
the paradise of god … be thou faithful unto death, and i will give thee a
crown of life (Rev. 2: 7, 10).

OceanofPDF.com
Conclusion

Let us try to summarize what has been said in order to put it into
perspective.
There is only one creative energy — logos — which manifests itself from
its lowest form, sexual energy, to the supreme spiritual-divine power, to all-
consciousness, through the whole scale of creation at all levels of the great
Jacob’s ladder, in the macrocosm, in the universe, as in the microcosm, in
man.
Man has the inborn ability to consciously manifest creative power in all
its forms, at all levels of creation, since creative power logos — is his own,
true Self and he has in his body the organs capable of radiation which
correspond to the various forms of energy.
Earthly life normally urges man to raise his consciousness ever higher, to
ever more spiritual levels, to grow ever more aware till he finally attains
divine all-consciousness. This is the purpose of his life, of his incarnation.
Yet, this normal course takes a very long time, it is laborious and fraught
with pain and sorrow. Man, however, carries within him, in his body, a
secret. Once he has realized that, he will be able greatly to shorten the long
path to consciousness and to quicken his development, so that he is capable
of achieving this goal in one single life. The secret is, that in order to reach
the highest goal, he can accelerate the stimulation and activation of his
nerve and brain centres, already built into the body, but still in a latent
condition, by a living fire. The living fire is his own sexual energy. This
energy is the link between mind and matter, through it a living body
emerges from matter, because it helps the spirit into matter. In the same
way, however, sexual energy allows the spirit the opportunity while still in
the body of rising from its physical, graduated consciousness and returning
again to God, to divine all-consciousness. Sexual energy bears within itself
the faculty of quickening the development of the human consciousness to
resurrection, to immortality, to divine all-consciousness. Sexual energy
itself is transformed into creative-spiritual power, and man experiences this
transformation within himself as continuously increasing, purely spiritual
states of conSciousness. He becomes ever more awake, alive and conscious.
He becomes completely alert. At the same time, higher, spiritual-magical
abilities develop in him.
The secret of sexual energy, therefore, is not only that it is capable of
begetting new generations, but that it has a second function of much greater
importance for man: to lead his consciousness step by step up the great
Jacob’s ladder of consciousness to God. In so doing, sexual energy, which is
the creative principle itself logos — is transformed into its original primal
state. This transformation of creative energy from its lowest form, sexual
energy, into its very highest form, into spiritual-divine vitality, can be
consciously accelerated by man with the help of sexual energy. This is
because sexual energy alone can help him to increase the resilience of his
higher nerve and brain centres, still resting in a latent condition, to such an
extent that they can tolerate the highest frequencies of divine self-awareness
without detrimental effects.
Man experiences within himself the lowest form of creative power —
called sexual energy — as an unconscious, physical-sexual urge for release;
at the very highest level, as a purely spiritual state, as divine-universal love
and as divine all-consciousness — as i am.
From the lowest level at which man is still an animal plus reason, to the
highest, divine-spiritual level, to universal consciousness, man ascends the
seven rungs of the Jacob’s ladder of consciousness. These are:
First level: man is still an unconscious creature, blindly driven by fate. His
sex life is an animal, indiscriminate urge for release.
Second level: first dawn of consciousness, first awakening. In his sex life,
search for a partner physically suited to him, already involving selection.
Third level: consciousness in emotional life. Search for activity suited to
him emotionally, and in his sex life, for a partner suited to him spiritually,
emotionally but also physically. Urge and yearning for a family unit.
Fourth level: consciousness at the intellectual level, thirst for knowledge,
urge to study, search for intellectual occupation and work. In sex life, search
for an intelligent, understanding partner suited to him in every respect,
whom he marries for love.
Fifth level: awakening of the magical, suggestive powers, accordingly,
creative activity and superior, suggestive effect on other people. Self-
control and mastery of destiny. Search for embodiment of the complement
present in the unconscious, for the partner suited to him intellectually,
spiritually and physically. On the one hand, complete freedom from all the
bourgeois conventions and laws of society, on the other, a morally superior
outlook and way of life, motivated by an inner urge, and obeying inner,
divine laws of conscience.
Sixth level: universal love, prophetic, priestly vocation, purely spiritual
manifestations as a whole. A spiritual unity — mystical marriage — with
one’s own higher self, with the whole living world.
Seventh level: universal consciousness, unio mystica — man’s
consciousness unites with his true bring — the Lamb and the new
Jerusalem have become one. Consciousness in being, in God: ‘I and my
father are one.’
In one human life man cannot pass through all these stages from the
lowest to the highest. For his nerves could not tolerate the vast difference of
tension between the lowest and highest states of consciousness, although
they have an unsuspected resilience. Man requires a very long time to cover
the lower levels in order to increase the resistance of the nerves by degrees;
to do so, he must have many reincarnations. But from the middle level, at
which he is already awakened and wishes to progress consciously, to the
highest level, he is capable of developing in a single human lifetime. With
the help of the sexual energy present in his body, he can reach this level at a
quickened pace, in a much shorter time than if he develops naturally. As
soon as he ceases to expend sexual energy, retaining it instead as living fuel
for himself, in order to stimulate and activate his nerve and brain centres
still resting in a latent condition, he attains mastery over the spiritual-
magical powers and obtains the goal of his life, all-consciousness in God.
He is helped to this goal on the shortened path by the deliberate
performance of appropriate Yoga exercises handed down to us over
thousands of years, and by sexual energy, which has not been expended, but
used as inner fuel.
The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon
me: I found trouble and sorrow.
I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me… . The Lord is
on my side; I will not fear… . The Lord is my strength and song, and is
become my salvation.
Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with
thee.
For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and
my feet from falling.
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is
broken, and we are escaped.
I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living (Psalms 116-124).

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 INITIA
TION
ELISABETH HAICH

W ritten at the request of her advanced students, Initiation is an

illuminating autobiography that connects the twentieth century European
life of internationally beloved teacher Elisabeth Haich and her lucid
memories of initiation into the hidden mystical teachings of the priesthood
in ancient Egypt. A compelling story within a story emerges detailing the
life experiences that catalyzed her spiritual path.
In an earlier life in ancient Egypt, a young woman is prepared for initiation
into the esoteric secrets of the priesthood by the High Priest Ptahhotep, who
instructs her step-by-step, consistent with her development, in the universal
truths of life. Throughout this extraordinary book, Elisabeth Haich reveals
her in depth insights into the subtle workings of karma, reincarnation, the
interconnectedness of individual daily life choices and spiritual
development Elisabeth Haich shares usually hidden truths that only a few
rare individuals in any generation, seek, find and communicate to others,
enabling the reader to awaken within the essential understanding necessary
to enlighten any life no matter what events manifest.
In twentieth century Europe, from childhood to adulthood, through war and
remarkable meetings, she demonstrates the power of turning the searchlight
of one’s consciousness inward and using every life event towards
expanding consciousness.
Initiation is a timeless classic communicated in modern terms inspiring
generations of spiritual seekers globally. Whether read as an
autobiographical novel unveiling mystical truths or as a unique glimpse into
Elizabeth Haich’s exceptional journey to initiation, the personal impact on
the reader is profound.
To read Initiation is to be part of the initiation itself.

ISBN:0-943358-50-7 Paperback 5½x8½ 376 Pages $19.95

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 THE DAY WITH YOGA
Inspirational Words
To Guide Daily Life

Elizabeth Haich

T hrough her best selling books —

Initiation, Sexual Energy and Yoga, and
Wisdom of the Tarot—Elisabeth Haich is
internationally famous for her ability to
assist others on their paths of spiritual
unfoldment.
A unique creative energy is available each day of the week. Nature, all
living creatures, plants, and human beings are deeply influenced by these
subtle variations. We all bathe, float and are affected by the power operating
that day.
Each Day is related to a specific planetary energy:
Sunday—The Sun Wednesday—Mercury
Monday—The Moon Thursday—Jupiter
Tuesday—Mars Friday—Venus
Saturday—Saturn
The Day With Yoga, is Elisabeth Haich’s personal collection of meditation
quotes. Each has been carefully selected to inspire and attune us to the
vibration of the day, and to release a deeper level of harmony and inner
peace into our lives.

ISBN:0-943358-12-4 Paper 4x7 104 Pages

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 SELF HEALING,
YOGA & DESTINY
Elisabeth Haich &
Selvarajan Yesudian

T hrough her best selling books, such as

Initiation, Elisabeth Haich has become
world famous for her profound
understanding of the human soul. The
Yoga schools she set up with Selvarajan
Yesudian, have become internationally
renowned. Designed to reconnect you
with the Divine, the concepts in this book
explain the attitudes necessary for the
path back to one’s self. Based on many
years personal experience, the authors create an understanding of how to
realize the essential source of life.
Learn Elisabeth Haich & Yesudian’s personal views on:
• Love • Accidents
• Suffering • Karma
• Destiny • Black & White Magic
• Illness • Self Healing & Transformation
A wealth of insightful information is contained in this book to help you gain
an expanded view of your life and consciousness.
“When we look about us in our daily living, we see how greatly
people suffer in the chains they have forged for themselves, even
 when they are filled with longing for freedom. Is there any way for
man to be free? To be free is to be free from the deceptive magic of
the material world.”
HAICH AND YESUDIAN

ISBN: 0-943358-06-X Paperback 5 90

½x8½ Pages

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 WISDOM OF THE TAROT

W isdom of the
Tarot relates the
path to higher
consciousness
through the color,
shape and symbolic
forms on the
twenty-two Tarot
cards. Detailed
study and
meditation of each card may release internally all that is involved with each
level encountered on the journey towards the Light. These cards may be
used in conjunction with the text or separately for meditation. When studied
individually, a card can reveal the necessary steps that need to be taken to
actualize one’s potential.
Tarot cards, or symbolic representations of the truth have always been used
to help man relate not only with the mind, but internally, through the
feelings invoked by the colors and forms. The nature of these cards is that
they can produce a strong awakening of one’s unconscious forces. They are
like a spiritual mirror in which we can recognize and examine ourselves.
We can then understand that the reasons for our fate lie within ourselves,
and changes by the mere fact that we begin to react differently to everything
that happens to us. These cards with the text are a valuable key to
understand our present state, our past and in a deeper sense, how we create
our future. Included within the book are pages of five color Tarot cards.
“Elisabeth Haich has produced a masterly work of initiation into
the secrets of life. Out of a deep understanding of being and her
own intimate experience of union with her genius, she has
 illustrated the process by which man becomes man by his insight
into the pictures of the twenty two rungs of the ladder of divine
ascent, on which each rung is an experience for the next rung in
accordance with the individual’s plan of life.”
DR. EWALT KLIEMKE

ISBN: Paperback 6x9 174

0- Pages
943358-
01-9
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 The
Planeta
rizatio
n
of
Consci
ousness
by Dane
Rudhyar

The Planetarization of Consciousness is Rudhyar’s major philosophical and

psychological work, the concentrated outcome of a lifetime of thinking concerning the
most basic problems of human existence and the meaning of the radical social-cultural
and psychological crisis mankind is experiencing. Rudhyar has been for years an
apostle of world integration based on the interpretation of Eastern and Western
concepts and attitudes to life. He sees emerging a global society, and through the
worldwide interaction of all cultures, a new type of “planetary” consciousness which
for the first time will reveal in its fullness the potential of man.
“The holistic world-view which I present here is meant to be an incentive to think
greater thoughts, to feel deeper, more inclusive feelings, and to act as “agents” for the
Power that structures human evolution—however we wish to image this power.”
The Planetarization of Consciousness is essentially an act of faith in Man. Man
as a microcosm of the universe, Man as a reality that transcends the physical organism,
all localisms and nationalisms, and in whom spirit and matter can unite in a “Divine
Marriage” productive of ever new and greater creative tomorrows.
Rudhyar, an accomplished and innovative painter, composer, poet, astrologer and
philosopher has actualized a “humanistic” yet deeply spiritual approach to existence.
Paper 320 pp.

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