The Level of Being
Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we living for? Why are we living?
Unquestionably, the poor “Intellectual Animal” mistakenly called man, not only ignores, but also ignores that he ignores.
The worst of it is the strange and difficult situation in which we find ourselves; we ignore the secret of all our tragedies and yet we are convinced that we know it all.
Just send a “Rational Mammal,” one of those who claim to be influential in life, to the middle of the Sahara desert; leave him there, far away from any oasis, and observe from an airplane what occurs. Facts will speak for themselves; the “Intellectual Humanoid,” though he boasts to be powerful and believes he is a real man, turns out to be frightfully weak.
The “Rational Animal” is stupid one hundred percent; he thinks the best of himself; he thinks he can develop his potential via kindergarten, good manners, elementary and secondary schools, diplomas, universities, Daddy’s prestige, etc. Unfortunately, in spite of so much education, good manners, titles, and money, we know very well that any stomachache saddens us and deep down we continue being unhappy and miserable.
It is enough to read Universal History to find out we are still the same barbarians of the past, and instead of improving we have become worse.
This twentieth century (when this book was written) with its magnificent wars, prostitution, worldwide sodomy, sexual degeneration, drugs, alcohol, exorbitant cruelty, extreme perversion, monstrosity, etc. is the mirror in which we must see ourselves; there does not exist a good enough reason to boast of having reached a superior stage of development.
To think that time means progress is absurd. Unfortunately, the “Learned Ignoramuses” continue bottled up in the “Dogma of Evolution.” In all the dark pages of “Dark History” we find the same atrocious cruelties, ambitions, wars, etc.
Nevertheless, our “Super-Civilized” contemporaries are still convinced that what we hear about war is secondary, a fleeting accident that has nothing to do with their so vaunted “Modern Civilization.”
Surely, what’s important is the way of being of each person. Some subjects will be drunkards, others will be abstemious, some honest and others shameless; there are all kinds of people.
The mass is the sum of all individuals; the mass is what the individual is; it is the Government, etc. The mass is then the extension of the individual; it is impossible to change people and masses if the individual does not change himself.
Nobody can deny the fact that there are different social levels. There are churchgoing people and brothel going people, farmers, businessmen, etc. In the same way, there are different Levels of Being. Whatever we are internally, munificent or mean, generous or stingy, violent or peaceful, chaste or lustful, attracts the various circumstances of life. The lustful person will always attract scenes, dramas and even lascivious tragedies in which he will become involved. It’s obvious that a drunkard will always attract drunkards and will find himself in bars or saloons. What will the usurer attract? The egotist? How many problems? Jail? Misfortunes?
However, frustrated people, tired of suffering, want to change, to turn the page of their story. Poor People! They want to change and don’t know how; they don’t know the methods; they are stuck in a blind alley. What happened to them yesterday happens today and will happen again tomorrow; they always repeat the same errors and even a loaded gun against their head will not make them learn life’s lessons.
In life all things repeat themselves; people say the same things, do the same things and complain about the same things. This boring repetition of dramas, comedies and tragedies, will continue as long as we carry in our interior all the undesirable elements of Anger, Covetousness, Lust, Envy, Pride, Laziness, Gluttony, etc.
What is our moral level? Or better said, what is our Level of Being?
As long as the Level of our Being does not change radically, the repetition of all our miseries, scenes, misfortunes and mishaps will last.
All things, all circumstances that occur outside ourselves on the stage of this world are exclusively the reflection of what we carry within. With good reason then, we can solemnly declare that the “external is the reflection of the internal.” When someone changes internally and the change is radical, circumstances, life and the external also change.
Recently (1974) I have been observing a group of people that invaded foreign ground. Here in Mexico, such people receive the strange name of “Parachutists.” They are neighbors from the rural colony of Churubusco; they are very close to my home and that is why I have been able to study them closely. Certainly, being poor will never be a crime; the serious problem does not lie in poverty but rather in the Level of Being. They fight among themselves daily, get drunk, insult each other, become the murderers of their own companions that share their misfortunes, live in filthy huts in which hatred reigns instead of love. Many times I have pondered on the fact that if any of them would eliminate from his interior, hatred, anger, lust, slander, drunkenness, cruelty, egoism, calumny, envy, conceit, pride, etc., they would please other people, and by the simple Law of Psychological Affinities, would associate with more refined and spiritual people; these new relationships would definitely bring about an economical and social change. This would be the way out of the “pigsty,” the “filthy sewer” for this individual.
And so, if we really want a radical change, the first thing we must understand is that each one of us, (whether black or white, yellow or copper-colored, ignorant or learned, etc.), is at one “Level of Being” or another.
Have you ever reflected on what’s your Level of Being? It will be impossible to reach a different level if we don’t know the one we are at now.
- THE TWO LINES OF LIFE AND THE MARVELLOUS LADDER
We must yearn for a real change; we must get out of this boring routine, out of this purely mechanical and tiring life.
What we must first clearly understand is that each of us is at one Level of Being.
The Level of Being of the drunkard is different from that of the abstemious, and the Level of Being of the prostitute is different from that of the virgin. What we are saying here is indisputable, irrefutable.
On reaching this section of our chapter, we lose nothing by imagining a ladder that extends vertically upwards, consisting of many rungs. Unquestionably, we find ourselves on one of these rungs. On the lower rungs will be people worse than us, and on the higher rungs, persons better than us. On this extraordinary Vertical, on this “Marvelous Ladder,” it’s clear that we can find all the Levels of Being. Each person is different; this is something that no one can dispute.
Undoubtedly, we are not talking about pretty or ugly faces, nor is it a question of age. There are young and old people, old people about to die as well as newborns. The question of time and years, of being born, of growing, developing, marrying, reproducing and aging is exclusively of the Horizontal Line.
On the “Marvelous Ladder,” on the Vertical Line, the concept of time does not fit in. On the rungs of such a scale we can only find Levels of Being.
The mechanical hope of people serves no purpose; they think that with time things will get better; our grandfather and great grandfathers thought that way; facts have demonstrated, precisely, the opposite of this.
The Level of Being is what counts. And this belongs to the Vertical line of life. We are on one rung but we can climb to another rung.
The “Marvelous Ladder,” of which we are talking about and which concerns the different Levels of Being, certainly has nothing to do with linear time. A higher Level of Being is directly above us from moment to moment. It is not in any remote horizontal future, but here and now within our very selves in the Vertical line of life.
It is ostensible and anyone can understand that the two lines, Horizontal and Vertical, meet, from moment to moment, in our psychological interior and form a Cross.
Personality develops and unfolds on the Horizontal line of Life. It’s born and dies with its linear time; it’s mortal; there’s no tomorrow for the personality of the dead person; it is not the Being.
The Levels of Being, the Being itself, is not of time, has nothing to do with the Horizontal Line; it is found within our own selves now, on the Vertical.
It would be obviously absurd to look for our own Being outside of ourselves.
It is not futile then to establish the following as a corollary: titles, ranks, promotions, etc. in the external physical world, cannot in any way, originate authentic exaltation, reevaluation of the Being or a move to a higher rung in the Levels of Being.
- PSYCHOLOGICAL REBELLION
It is not unnecessary to remind our readers that a mathematical point exists within our very selves. Unquestionably, such a point is never found either in the past or in the future. Whoever wants to discover that mysterious point must look for it here and now within himself, at this exact moment, not a second earlier, not a second later.
The two, Horizontal and Vertical lines of the Holy Cross meet at this very point.
Therefore, from moment to moment, we find ourselves before two paths: the Horizontal and the Vertical. It’s ostensible that the Horizontal is very pretentious; it is tread by every Tom, Dick and Harry. It’s evident that the Vertical is different; it’s the path of intelligent rebels, of revolutionaries.
- Negative Emotions
When one remembers One’s self and works upon Self-Development, when one does not become identified with all the problems and sorrows of life, it’s a fact that one is traveling along the Vertical path.
Certainly, it is never an easy task to eliminate negative emotions, to lose all identification with our trend of life, with all types of problems, with business, debts, loan payments, mortgages, telephone, water and power payments, etc.
The unemployed, those who have lost their position or job for one reason or another, evidently suffer due to lack of money and for them to forget their situation and not worry or identify themselves with their own problem, becomes terribly difficult.
Those who suffer and those who cry, those who have been victims of some betrayal or injustice, victims of ingratitude, calumny, fraud, really do forget themselves, forget their Inner Being; they identify themselves totally with their moral tragedy.
The work on One’s self is the fundamental characteristic of the Vertical path.
Nobody would tread the path of the Great Rebellion without work on Self Development. The work that we are referring to is of a psychological nature; it deals with a certain transformation of the present moment in which we find ourselves. We need to learn to live from moment to moment.
For example, a person who is desperate about some sentimental, economical or political problem has obviously forgotten his/her Self. If such a person would stop for a moment, observe the situation and try to be in Self-Remembrance, then he would try to understand the reason for his/her attitude… If such person would reflect a little and think everything passes away, that life is fleeting, illusory and that death reduces all the vanities of the world to ashes… If he/she would understand that the problem in reality is nothing more than a worthless flame that soon dies, then the person would suddenly see, with great surprise that everything has changed.
It is possible to transform mechanical reactions through logical contrast and the Intimate Self-Reflection of the Being.
It is evident people react mechanically when faced with the diverse circumstances of life. Poor people! They usually become victims. When flattered they smile, when humiliated they suffer. They insult if insulted, they hurt if they are hurt; they are never free; their fellowmen have the power to drive them from happiness to sadness, from hope to despair. Each of these persons traveling along the Horizontal path is similar to a musical instrument on which each of his fellowmen can play the tune he desires.
Whoever learns how to transform mechanical reactions is in fact entering the Vertical path. This represents a fundamental change in the “Level of Being,” an extraordinary result of the “Psychological Rebellion.”
Samael Aun Weor
Practice:
While resting on your bed, dorsal decubitus (on your back, facing up), relax all of the muscles in your body, from the tip of your feet until the top of your head and make your mind blank for ten minutes. Afterwards, imagine that through your pineal gland (located almost exactly in the middle of your brain), the fire of the Holy Spirit descends from heaven and enters into your body and revitalizes the marvelous Chakra of this gland. Imagine that this Chakra shines with its twelve central golden petals, an infinite number of multicolored petals are in the background, multicolored rays of light, petals of a marvelous lotus flower that moves from left to right (clockwise), as in a fiery whirl.
- Practice from the book Christic Aztec Magic chapter II
