Reflections on Realization

Posted on September 4, 2020 by George Boyd

Q: What brings about Realization? How can I move beyond simply receiving information and truly grasping the essence of what I am taught?

A: We begin the process of Realization through inquiry, or questioning.

Questioning requests an answer from the ensouling entity, when you ask your ensouling entity; from the spiritual Master, when you query him or her; and God, when you invoke Divine guidance.

When you receive information, your first task is to understand it. This process of understanding engages your intellect and your Illumined Mind (Buddhi). As you study new information, you add to your conceptual map of your own nature and the Path ahead of you. You keep revising this map, as you gather more information and have more experiences.

Whereas information layers on the thread of insight and understanding, which we call the Antakarana, experience occurs when you contact one of the ideas referenced in the information you have learned. You do this through focusing your attention, your attentional principle, or your spirit upon this idea.

Examples of these “ideas” you can experience include:

The meaning of spiritual ideas or “seed thoughts”
The content of inner vehicles of consciousness
The inner centers of vehicles of consciousness, such as chakras
The seed atom of a vehicle of consciousness
The movement of energy in a vehicle of consciousness, such as Prana or Kundalini
The array of vehicles of consciousness that your ensouling entity animates
Your attentional principle
Your spirit associated with your ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality
Your spirit in other domains
Your ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality
One of your ensouling entities at another Octave of Being
A personal integration center, such as the ego in the Conscious mind or the Self in the Metaconscious mind
A Superconscious integration center, which we call a nucleus of identity
A universal nexus of consciousness, such as the Holy Ghost at the entrance to the abode of the saints in the First Mesoteric Planetary Initiation, or the Supreme Light of Creation at the top of the Ideational Plane in the First Cosmic Initiation
A form of the Divine, such as the Father God in the First Mesoteric Planetary Initiation, or Brahman in the First Cosmic Initiation

When you experience something, you gain a new perspective on the object of meditation you focus upon:

You gain new information.
You make new connections and correlations.
You begin to fill in the missing pieces of the inner map of the Continuum you are building.

With each new experience, you gain insights, and begin to truly know the essence of the idea you have used to lead you to the object of meditation. So for example, you truly recognize what is your ego, what is the Self, or what is your attentional principle—you truly grasp the essence to which the idea or concept points you.

The next order of processing is Realization, or enlightenment. Realization means that you know something, because you are one with it:

You know your Soul directly, because you are the Soul.
You know your attentional principle directly, because you are the attentional principle.
You know your spirit directly, because you are your spirit.

Realization is not description [information] or attentional union [experience]; it is identity. You know the essence because you are one with it.

As you progress upon the Path, you come to know the nodal points, Subplane and Plane markers, and the forms of the Divine that operate on each level, as your cutting edge ensouling entity actually traverses this terrain—you know each aspect of the Path, because you have taken each step upon it.

Q: What allows you to know what your ensouling entity has realized?

A: The key that allows you to release the Soul’s knowledge, to open its Buddhic capsule, is Samadhi. When you turn the four outgoing streams back to their core, there is an inner explosion of Realization that takes place: this is the Illumination that takes place during Samadhi.

We teach you how to generate Samadhi at the level of the Soul and each higher Octave of Realization in the Samadhi Week Program. Those who complete the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation are eligible to take this class.

So when you can achieve Atma Samadhi at the level of the Soul, you can extend this to higher Octaves of Being. This opens the full spectrum of Realization, which includes your Monad, Astral Soul, Supracosmic Soul, the Soul of the Bridge Path, and each of the ensouling entities of Transcendental Paths one to seven.

Q: What if I have difficulty in experiencing Samadhi?

A: Like any skill, it takes time to master it. If it is important to you, you will devote the time to reach Samadhi.

It won’t come instantly, but in time, you will get it. This will allow you to truly know and realize what you’ve opened on the Path. It won’t be conjecture or speculation; you will genuinely know.

Q: What happens if the ensouling entity I’m meditating upon has been liberated?

A: You’ll know the Source from which this ensouling entity has emanated—and the complete Path of the ensouling entity, from beginning to end. In this vortex of Creation from which your ensouling entity has originated, you will also intuit the other ensouling entities that dwell at that level, and their distance from the Source.

If you’ll reflect upon these three levels—information, experience, and Realization—you’ll be able to differentiate them. With practice, you will begin to be able to shift between them at will, when it is appropriate to operate at that level.

Evolution of Inner Work

Posted on December 20, 2019 by George Boyd

The ability to do sustained inner work on yourself requires that you first reach union with one of the immortal principles of consciousness within you—the attentional principle, the spirit, and the Soul. You learn this aspect of inner work in meditation.

While psychotherapeutic and hypnotic work requires your ability to isolate your attention and focus it, it does not require that you gain union with one of your immortal principles. The deeper integrative work of psychotherapy leads you to gain union with the Self and to activate its abilities—but excluding transpersonal psychotherapy modalities, activating your immortal essences is not required for these types of psychological intervention.

Inner work typically addresses physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems. The deeper component required to do inner work may also require absorption and focusing of your attention, and experiencing union and identification with one or more of your immortal essences.

This ability to do inner work appears to progress through eleven stages.

Fully embodied egoic stage – You experience physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems, but you have no apparent means of resolving them. You may seek help at this stage, but it may be difficult initially for you to benefit from psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, or meditation, because you may have difficulties focusing your attention on your subjective experiences.
Relaxation stage – You are able to release tension in your muscles. You may have some success letting go of pain in your body. You learn to relax. You may take up stress reduction modalities like Hatha Yoga or Tai Chi.

This ability to relax may take the edge off of your emotional issues, and may make your mental problems seem more manageable. After some practice of relaxation and stress release, you may be able to collect your attention and become established in the state of mindfulness.

Cascade of thinking stage – You are able to process your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems using sustained attention to the selected levels of the Conscious mind where you can become aware of them arising in the present time.

These practices of monitoring the sensations, feelings, and thoughts arising in the present time are called Vipassana—Physical Vipassana monitors the sensations arising within your body awareness center; Emotional Vipassana, the emotions bubbling up in your feeling center; and Mental Vipassana, the thoughts surfacing in your mental center.

You are able to benefit from psychotherapy and hypnosis at this level. You may, however, experience difficulty moving beyond the cascade of body sensations, feelings, and thinking at this level, so you are unable to penetrate more deeply into the levels of your mind beyond these centers of the Conscious mind.

Initial contemplation stage – You are able to move beyond the initial processing of your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems at these levels of your Conscious mind. You are able to consciously direct your attention along the thread of consciousness.

At this stage, you are able to focus your attention at discrete focal points and contemplate the contents arising. At this stage, you have your first experiences of meditative absorption. You are able to enter more profound states of hypnotic trance and clearer insight in psychotherapy at this stage.

Inner awakening stage – As your attention continues to travel along the thread of consciousness, you encounter one of your immortal essences—your attentional principle, your spirit, or your Soul. After gaining union with this essence through repeated meditation sittings, you may eventually come to recognize this essence clearly and identify with it.

At this stage, you come to recognize your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems arise within the strata of the mind—but you discover that who you are, is separate from this content. You cease to identify yourself with illness, emotional complexes, and your problems—you have them, but you are not your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems.

Transformational stage – At this level, you begin to travel through the inner Planes as your attentional principle; open the channels of the Nada as your spirit; and unfold your Soul through transformational meditation. You may learn a variety of techniques to work on your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems as your awakened spiritual essence.
Illumination stage – At this level, you begin to activate your Illumined Mind. You experience a downpour of intuitive knowledge, which enables you to get to the core of your mental problems. You gain understanding, insight, and wisdom.
Compassion stage – At this level, you acutely feel your own suffering and the suffering of others. You are empowered to send the Comforter to heal deep emotional pain and resolve emotional issues.
Healing stage – At this level you have the ability to send the Light of Healing, which helps dissolve physical symptoms.
Inner Guide stage – At this level, you gain the ability to lead the attention along the thread of consciousness to unite with the attention principle or the spirit, and to assist these essences travel along their pathways.
Thaumaturge stage – At this level, you are able send attunements to unfold the Soul, and move it from nodal point to nodal point to Mastery and Liberation.

True meditation emerges at stage four. The ability to move your attention and contemplate is prerequisite to inner awakening.

You awaken your spiritual essences at stage five. This level marks the point where you shift from becoming identified with physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems—and realize you are a conscious spiritual essence.

Conscious inner work becomes possible at stage six. At this point in your inner journey, you discover can work on your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems without relying upon others to guide you in working with them. You gain the ability to initiate process meditation to work on your emotional issues, to modify limiting and dysfunctional beliefs through affirmation, and to use autohypnosis to promote healthy behavioral change.

Stage six also marks the beginning of transcendence meditation, where you start to transform and awaken the powers of the Soul. When you embark on this deepest level of work, you actively accelerate your spiritual evolutionary potentials and ascend to Mastery and Liberation.

In stages seven through eleven, you become empowered to give attunements that resolve your physical symptoms, emotional issues, and mental problems; facilitate attentional absorption and awakening of your immortal essences; and support inner work and transformation.

We teach stage four in our introductory meditation class, the Introduction to Meditation Program. We review the technique of attentional movement and contemplation in our intermediate meditation classes‐the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and our by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—and additionally teach you core stage five and six methods.

Access to stages seven though eleven of inner work, which enable you to utilize the higher levels of attunements, inner guidance—and ultimately, Thaumaturgy—occur as a result of transformational meditation. Transformation activates all of the dormant powers of your Soul and progressively leads you to spiritual Mastery.

Considering Illumination in Religion

Posted on May 31, 2019 by

Q: Is genuine Illumination possible through religion? Or is additional spiritual training required?

A: Religion generally conveys two aspects of spiritual development, Indoctrination and Theology. To reach Illumination, most individuals go through the stage of Mysticism before they can achieve Illumination.

In Indoctrination, you are taught beliefs and values that your parents and clergy ask you accept without questioning. They introduce you to moral rules, which you expected to follow—when asked about these rules, you are told that these have the authority of the scriptures, so you are simply to obey them to please the Divine. You may be asked to attend religious ceremonies, perform specific prayers, or participate in certain religious rites, but you are not given any reasons why you must do these things.

In Theology, you study the scriptures of a faith, the history of a religion, and read the writings of its learned and holy saints and teachers. You may be asked to think about what you have read and come to any understanding of what these scriptures mean, and how you can interpret the teachings of this faith for the current time. Many who study Theology go on to a role of ministry or teaching within the religion.

In Mysticism, you consciously experience the spiritual agencies that operate through that religious tradition. You may have dreams, visions, or revelations that angels, saints, and even the founder of a faith communicate to you deep truths. You typically enter an altered state of consciousness through prayer or meditation and commune with these spiritual agencies.

In Illumination, the Soul travels through the band of the Continuum where the archetypes of the Religion dwell, and your Soul has an intuitive prehension of core truths.

In your family and in your religious organization, you are indoctrinated. In religious studies, you are taught to gain conceptual knowledge about the faith.

In mysticism, you actually go within to visit the levels of the Great Continuum where the religion dwells. You do not simply follow tradition and re-enact time-honored ceremonies, but you learn something new, you discover something, something is revealed or shown to you.

In Illumination, the synthesis of your Soul’s learning and realization is impressed upon your higher mind, which has been called the Illumined mind, Buddhi, or Bodhi. In this state, you maintain a continuity of consciousness for all that you have experienced in the inner worlds, and you are able to communicate that through your intuitive thought stream, through speech as teaching or satsang, or as inspired writing.

It is good to gain an intellectual understanding of your faith, but to gain the greatest value, it is important to have a direct experience of the truths that your religion has anchored in the Plenum as great ideas or archetypes. To do this, you need the tools of meditation.

In our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or they by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program, we teach you the specific skills that enable you to have mystical experiences, to tap into your Soul’s native Illumination, and to transform the Soul.

Spiritual transformation allows your Soul to progressively deepen its penetration into the mysteries of religion, uncovering them where these dwell on the Great Continuum of Consciousness. If you want something more profound than the intellectual understanding of theology, or scholarly study about religion, we invite you to learn the tools from us to enable you to have these more satisfying spiritual experiences that can only come from entering the realm of mysticism and Illumination.

How You Can Become Illumined and Enlightened

Posted on May 24, 2018 by

Q: What is Illumination? How do I become enlightened?

A: To understand how you do this, you need to understand something about the levels of mental functioning. To become enlightened, you have to move your attention to the core of your mind and unite with your Soul. But before you do this, you have to move through the other strata of mental functioning. So beyond the firing of neurons in your brain that instruments can measure, there are seven additional layers of mental functioning:

Reason – At this level of the Conscious mind, the faculty of reason enables you to use analysis, deductive and analogical reasoning. With your reason, you are able to “test reality” to detect if a statement is true or false. You use this level of the mind when you investigate something or gather evidence to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
Intellect – At this level of the Metaconscious mind, you are able to utilize problem-solving strategies to arrive at a solution to a problem. The intellect is capable of inductive, dialectical, and synthetic reasoning.Reflective and Receptive meditation – When you activate this connection to your Soul through the intuitive thread (Antakarana), you can ask the Soul questions and receive answers. So if you ask your Soul, “What is the purpose I am alive?” The Soul will give you an answer if this cord that connects your intellect with the Soul is functioning. You can also “sit in the silence” and passively receive guidance from your Soul through Receptive meditation.
Psychic intuition – This type of knowing operates in your vehicle of consciousness in the Psychic Realm. Depending on your state of spiritual evolutionary development, this aspect of intuitive knowing allows you to read the “ethers”—the chemical ether (comprising molecules, atoms, and the subatomic unified field), the information ether, the resonance ether, the life force ether, the desire ether (e.g., the Law of Attraction), the thought form ether, and yet higher ethers up to the presence of the Soul. This form of knowing allows you to gather information about other people, so you can do “psychic readings.”
Revelatory intuition – This type of knowing begins to operate in the First Planetary Initiation. It ostensibly reveals the meaning of scriptures, gives correspondences to metaphysical ideas, and constructs a philosophical framework through which you can understand the world. With sufficient acquisition of this knowledge from this source, you can begin to teach and counsel others about metaphysics and spiritual subjects.
Illumined Mind downpour of knowledge – This aspect of the mind functions when you awaken the “Buddhic capsule,” the inmost mental stratum around your Soul. You can awaken this capsule through deep Raja Yoga or Kundalini meditation. When it is activated, there is a continuous downpour of intuitive knowledge, which shows you the content of every level of the mind, and reveals the Soul at the core of the Superconscious mind. This igniting of this deepest aspect of the mind is called Illumination or Samadhi. The discerning wisdom that operates at this level of the mind is called mandalic reasoning.
Gnosis – This state dawns on the mind when you know the Soul from the Soul’s perspective. In Gnosis, you become the Soul. This state is also called Enlightenment.

Most people are familiar with layers 1 and 2—you use them at school and at work. Some people can also access layer 3, so they are able to ask a question to their Soul, and the Soul will give them guidance.

Usually people begin to tap into layer 4 when their Soul journeys onto the Psychic Realm; layer 5 appears when the Soul enters the First Planetary Initiation; and layer 6 dawns with the Soul takes the Fourth Planetary Initiation and it migrates onto the Buddhic Plane. There are spiritual practices that can enable people to prematurely activate layers 4 and 5—this typically results in distorted and confused information being disseminated.

You can learn ways to safely activate layers 3 to 6 in our intermediate meditation classes, in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We explore the deeper aspects of gaining illumination (layer 6) and experiencing Gnosis (layer 7) in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

We encourage you to acquire techniques from intuitive meditation (Jnana Yoga), so you can begin to access the deeper layers of your mental functioning. We teach these techniques in our intermediate and advanced classes to help you reach the states of Illumination and Gnosis.