Category Archives: Religious Experience

The Sublimation of Love

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: Why do some people equate love with sex? Isn’t real love spiritual?

A: Many people start out in their experience of love viewing it as Eros, or sexual passion. However, love sublimates through seven levels:

  1. Sexual desire and romance (Eros)
  2. Infatuation, romantic fantasy
  3. Idealization, making your object of love larger than life
  4. Caring and compassion for others (Agape)
  5. Spiritual love and devotion (Bhakti)
  6. Unconditional love of the Soul (Karuna)
  7. The fiery, healing, Divine Love (Shakti)

These seven levels of love express in distinct ways:

In sexual and romantic love, there is primarily a desire for conjugal relations to release and satisfy libidinous passions.

In infatuation, you look to your partner as someone who will fulfill your dreams and complete your life. The popularity of romance novels testifies to the fascination with the dream of finding their ideal partner.

In idealization, you cast the object of your love as a perfect, godlike being. Here you see your partner as an ethereal or spiritual being; someone who is flawless and radiantly beautiful. Those who idealize their partners—but who live with him or her for any period of time—realize their idealization of their partner was a delusion.

In caring and compassion, you respond to another’s needs. This may take the form of parenting, caring for the sick or infirm, or doing volunteer service to assist the needy. This is love in action that seeks to help others and assuage their pain and misery.

Spiritual love and devotion comes from your spiritual heart. To experience this type of love, you need to contemplate your spirit and enter into union with it. Many people are cut off from their spirit, so they never experience this level of love.

Unconditional love streams forth from your Soul. When you are able to tap into this inner fountainhead of love and compassion, it becomes a powerful force for healing and releasing your emotional pain.

The fire of Divine Love—some call it the Holy Spirit, Shakti, or Grace—you send as an attunement to the Soul or spirit in others, and to connect them with the Divine Will, the Illumined Mind, the Loving Heart of God, the healing force within, and to bring remembrance and to reawaken their connection with the Soul. To access this level of love, your attentional principle receives a beam of the Light from an Initiate or Master; you, in turn, send this Light to others through an attunement.

The spiritual love of which you speak requires sublimation of love to levels five through seven:

  • To sublimate your love to level five, you need to tune into the experience of your spirit and regard others from its perspective.
  • Sublimation to level six requires that you gain union with the Soul and allow the Soul’s unconditional love to pour forth through you to others.
  • In order to sublimate love to level seven, you need to function as your attentional principle and be able to receive the Light from your Supervising Initiate.

We teach you how to activate the spirit, Soul, and attentional principle in our intermediate mediation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. This enables you to experience and express these deepest wellsprings of spiritual love within you. Without being able to contact these three immortal principles, you never experience these three highest aspects of love.

We encourage you to study these levels of love within yourself and what evokes that aspect of love in you. You might like to regard another person through these different frames of love and see how you perceive them and relate to them in each perspective.

Reflections on the World as Illusion

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By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: My spiritual teacher says the world is illusion and is evil. Is this really true?

A: There are eight major viewpoints people adopt about the world. In some viewpoints it is evil; in others, it is not:

  1. Hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure) – in this perspective, the world exists so you can experience pleasure; to fulfill all of your desires; and to do, be, and have whatever you want.
  2. Fear and paranoia – in this view, the world is a place where there are good things and bad things; you must be vigilant lest evil people rob you, cheat you, rape you, blackmail you, kidnap you, or murder you. The world is not safe, but there are good and beautiful aspects of the world, too.
  3. Adventure and fun – From this standpoint, the world is a place of mystery and wonder. You want to travel to explore the world and see as much of the world as you can; to learn about the people who live in different nations and their culture and customs; and understand the history of the world. You want to experience fun and adventure.
  4. Compassion and altruism – Through this perceptual frame, the world is a place where many people are suffering due to poverty, societal discrimination, and lack of education, housing, or employment; they may be suffering because of addiction, illness, or disability. You want to do something to help those who are in misery and pain.
  5. Creativity – From this outlook, the world is a place where there is much to discover and learn on the Mental Plane—and out of this learning, there are many ways that you can share your insights and discoveries with others: you can invent new things to improve the lives of others; you can create art and literature to entertain, educate, and inspire others; you can use imagination to visualize new possibilities that lift you out of the limited world of the senses into the more expansive word of the mind.
  6. Self-transcendence – In this point of view, the world is an illusion that the senses and the mind create. You believe that it is your task to transcend the senses and the mind through meditation and gain union with a spiritual essence—your attentional principle, the spirit, a nucleus of identity, or the ensouling entity. Your spiritual teacher tells you that this spiritual essence is your true nature.
  7. Renunciation – From this viewpoint, the world is the devil’s trap to imprison your attention in the matrix of the senses and the mind, and veil the truth from you. You believe that you must remain in perpetual union with the spiritual essence with which you identify, and only follow its guidance and direction—and the commandments of the spiritual teacher who revealed this essence. The world is evil: it is world of temptation or sin that you believe you must assiduously avoid.
  8. Integration – From this vantage point, the world is a place of personal and spiritual growth and actualization. It appears that people pass through each of these stages and eventually arrive at the state of integration that unites appropriate self-discipline, the ability to transcend the Self through meditation, creativity, compassion, and adventure and fun.

Your spiritual teacher beholds the world from perspective seven, renunciation. In this viewpoint, it appears that the world is an evil place, which the webs of illusion pervade.

But you may find that your spiritual teacher, whose worldview is anchored in renunciation, might still practice some form of meditation for self-transcendence and express some type of creativity.

Others who dwell on the platform of renunciation will also engage in self-transcendence and will act out of compassion in service to others.

So, recognize that even though your spiritual teacher is established in renunciation, he or she may still exhibit partial integration through incorporation of other viewpoints.

Q: At what perspective do those who have evil characters operate?

A: It is a perversion of hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure. Some find pleasure in ways that do not harm others and themselves; others seize what they desire through intimidation, coercion, threats, deception, and violence.

Q: Why does full integration not include hedonism and fear and paranoia?

A: The individual who reaches the stage of integration finds pleasure in the world, but his or her motivation is not embedded in the desire matrix of the ego. The individual at the integration stage may still enjoy a good meal, a massage, a hot shower, or the pleasure of lovemaking, but he or she is not identified as the ego—which is perpetually engaged in pursuing desires and chasing ephemeral moments of happiness.

In the same way, the individual who abides in integration recognizes there is evil in the world. He or she uses wisdom to stay away from places where there is danger. He or she does not frequent places where there is contact with criminals, drug dealers, and those who demonstrate evil character traits.

Through deep reflection, the individual who reaches the shores of integration uproots evil within his or her mind. He or she recognizes these evil tendencies in others. He or she avoids engaging with those who perpetuate evil in the world.

Reflections on Ancestors

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By George A. Boyd ©2022

I attended a West African ceremony on October 31, 2022—a day called Halloween or Samhain in different cultures—that was in honor of people’s ancestors. I was asked to give a short talk on this topic. This is the text of that talk that I gave:

There are many levels on which you can interface with your ancestors:

  1. Physical – your living relatives of former generations and the bodies of those who have died and are buried or cremated
  2. Etheric – the lives of your ancestors recorded on the Akashic Records
  3. Astral/emotional – the emotional attachment bonds you have to departed relatives
  4. Mental – the experiences you have had with these relatives and what you have learned about them and from them
  5. Higher mental – your intuition about the essence of your departed relatives
  6. Genetic – the DNA you have inherited from your ancestors
  7. Phylogenetic – the forms of your ancestors you encounter on the Phylogenetic Subplane of the Biophysical Universe; you recapitulate these forms during tantric sex
  8. Noetic – you directly encounter the attentional principle of your ancestor with your attentional principle
  9. Spiritual – you encounter the spirit of your ancestor in full consciousness
  10. Ontological – you behold the Soul of your ancestor
  11. Reincarnational – you trace your ancestors back through their former incarnations and you note their new incarnations that succeeded the incarnation when they were your ancestor
  12. Cultural – the rites practiced to remember and revere ancestors, and to ask for their blessings

On the phylogenetic platform, we can appreciate our human ancestors connect through the pre-human species all the way back to the first cell that is the original progenitor of every living organism in the worlds of protists, fungi, plants, and animals.

On the spiritual platform, you can communicate with their immortal essences.

Let’s explore your relationship with your ancestors with some evocative questions:

  • In which of these ways do you know and appreciate your ancestors?
  • What have your ancestors contributed to your life?
  • In what ways do you draw strength and encouragement from your ancestors?
  • What aspects of genetic and psychological karma do you derive from your ancestors?
  • What do you need to communicate to your ancestors?
  • What do you feel you owe your ancestors for giving you their seed essence and for transmitting their knowledge and wisdom through the generations? How will you honor them in your life?
  • What is your synthesis of your experience of your ancestors? What will you take from this and make a part of your life?
  • In what ways are you part of the collective world of the ancestors? In what ways do you have the unique experience of your Soul, individuated from the collective? In what ways do you function in each perspective?

It is important to understand and appreciate the role your ancestors play in your life, but also to actualize your individual personal and spiritual potentials.

Those who wish to learn how to actualize your personal and spiritual potentials may wish to take one of our intermediate meditation courses: the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail or online Accelerated Meditation Program.

 

Themes in Christianity

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By George A. Boyd © 2021

Q: There appears to be widely varying ideas of what it means to be a Christian and what is the aim of the church. Are there some common themes that these different varieties of Christian faith share?

A: At the core of Christian religious life is a recognition of changes in character that take place as the result of the ministry of the church and the work of the Holy Spirit within the human heart. These appear to fall into three major stages: the sinner stage, the conversion and traditional religious stage, and the mystical stage.

In the sinner stage, the ego is dominant and resists the influence of other people, rebels against authority, and rejects religion. Some of the markers of this stage include:

  • Violence towards others, acting out hatred
  • Hating others
  • Blaming others
  • Justifying oneself
  • Defensiveness

At the conversion and traditional religious stage, the individual gains the conviction that he or she has followed the wrong path, and has gone astray. There is a turning to God and a new willingness to change. This character change transforms the individual’s behavior, beliefs, values, and identity. Identity shifts from ego to the Moon Soul or Christ Child nucleus of identity. This character change appears to follow several steps, which ultimately leads to leadership roles in his or her congregation.

  • Telling the truth to oneself about what one has done
  • Confession to others about what one has done
  • Repentance, deciding not to act that way anymore
  • Choosing to live a new life
  • Living according to new values
  • Living a more virtuous and prosperous life as a result of living these new values
  • Teaching these principles to others
  • Anointing to play a role in the church: pastor, priest, prophet, evangelist, or a church leadership position

In the mystic stage, the individual becomes absorbed in an inner journey of prayer and meditation, which ultimately moves the Moon Soul into the Presence of God. This stage of the journey occurs over a long period of time.

  • Opening the gate to the mysteries, which might appear as Pandora’s box, a closed door, or a sealed entrance to an ancient temple
  • Entry into the life of revelation and inspiration
  • Sanctification and drawing closer to God
  • Anointing as a saint

In Christianity, this inner change comes about as a result of turning towards God and allowing Jesus Christ to minister the Light to reform character and inculcate a new way of living. This inner change appears to be the common theme among different denominations.

In other religious traditions, there is a similar re-orientation from an ego-centered life to relationship with the Divine, as God can be known in that faith. The religious faithful in these other religious groups learns to live by new precepts and adopts new values, beliefs, and behavior—similar to what happens in Christianity.

We suggest you study these different markers of these stages of character reformation and sanctification that occurs in the Christian tradition—or other spiritual tradition to which you belong— and notice to what degree this process has occurred in you.

Those who wish to learn more about the dynamics underlying the transformation religion can effect in human values, belief, and behavior, you may enjoy our book, Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing?

On Communication of Spiritual Teachings

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By George A. Boyd © 2021

Q: Why are spiritual teachings so hard to understand?

A: It depends on what level a spiritual teaching is being given. There are seven major levels at which a spiritual teaching can be communicated:

  1. Popular – This approach breaks down the teaching into very simple examples. It uses analogies to explain concepts. It gives key ideas without complex elaboration. You would find this level of teaching in “popular psychology”—magazine treatments of meditation and spirituality.
  2. Academic – This teaching level uses religious and scholarly citations to structure its presentation, which may be given as a lecture, a seminar, a scholarly paper, or a journal article. It constructs models to visualize the interrelationships between concepts. It comments on the meaning of the ideas presented in the scriptures and core texts of the teaching. It may compare and contrast these ideas with those presented in other religions or spiritual groups. It defines terms it uses in its exposition. It is based on established scholarship. This may require that you learn theological language to comprehend the teachings as they are presented at this level. Theologians and religious commentators communicate at this level.
  3. Metaphysical – The terminology used refers to essences and principles that can be readily understood and accessed, but an experience of the idea is necessary to fully grasp the meaning. Aspirants access these ideas through hypnosis or guided meditation. These essences and principles can be found in the Subtle Realm (“Pagan,” Wiccan, Magical, and Occult groups), the Biophysical Universe (Native American spirituality); Abstract Mind Plane (Process Meditation, Self-Hypnosis, Coaching and New Thought groups); Psychic Realm (Spiritualist, UFO groups, and channeling circles); Wisdom Plane (Forgiveness and 12-step groups); and First Exoteric Initiation (interpreting scriptural texts, symbols, and archetypes in Christian and Jewish sects). Many of the New Age, Christian and Jewish spiritual traditions tap into this style of teaching, where they will present an idea, elaborate upon it, and have those who are receiving the message contemplate upon it.
  4. Mystic – The languaging is designed to lead you into immersion in an altered state of consciousness. It cannot be understood intellectually. It is Gnostic: it can only be known through ineffable and wordless experience. It may be expressed through poetry. Christian and Jewish mystics, Sufis, Zen Buddhists and Taoists, and those who give Knowledge (initiation into the seventh Transcendental Path) convey their teachings in this way.
  5. Esoteric One – Here, the general narrative is understandable, but specific terms are not defined, so it is not possible to penetrate the teachings without initiation into the experience of the essence awakened in that Path and impartation of the Path’s core teachings. Buddhist and Hindu teachings, as well as many Paths established in the Cosmic, Supracosmic, or Transcendental bands of the Continuum utilize this style of teaching.
  6. Esoteric Two – The teachings are veiled in cryptic, arcane language and complex symbols. Only those with extensive training in the symbolic keys can fathom these teachings. This type of transmission of hidden knowledge typifies the Mystery School teachings, Kabala, and Theosophy.
  7. Esoteric Three – Only Masters or Initiates and their intimate disciples can penetrate this level of teaching. It is often shared as a telepathic impress, as a wordless glance, or spoken in the sacred Senzar language—the language of the Soul and of the angels. It is completely unintelligible outside the circle of initiation; this knowledge is not disseminated to those whom are not initiated—or to those whom are not highly advanced on the Path, who have not undergone the requisite preparation and spiritual development to understand these most profound spiritual insights.

Popular and academic treatments do not penetrate to the depths of a spiritual teaching. They can explain concepts, but they can’t provide an experiential means of fully grasping what is taught.

Metaphysical teachings span from the Subtle Realm to the First Exoteric Initiation. While they can share some experience of the idea they have explicated, but they can’t explain ideas that are outside of their narrow band of the Continuum.

Mystic spiritual teachings bypass intellectual understanding and opt for direct immersion in Mystery. This leads to mystification. But when you do have experiences at this level, it is timeless and ineffable.

Buddhist and Hindu teachings typically use the esoteric one approach, as do many other traditions anchored in the Cosmic, Supracosmic, and Transcendental Spheres. While you may follow part of what they are saying, you get stuck on the terminology they use and have no experience of the essence they indicate in their writings or oral teaching. Unlike metaphysical level teachings, the levels where these principles and essences dwell are at profound depths of the Continuum, so those who have not been trained in how to unite with the essences with which they do Pathwork, cannot be readily access this material. Only after initiation into their Path—and with study of books and scriptures and attendance at inspired discourse events—could you begin to grasp the meanings of the terms used in these teachings.

Esoteric two requires in-depth immersion in the teachings to understand the “secret code” that enable you to understand these highly abstruse teachings. Highly abstract meditations like Gematria, working out anagrams, unraveling complex symbols or figures that represent esoteric concepts, decoding ciphers and encryption, performing Pathwork on arrays of archetypes, finding correspondences, and penetrating to the esoteric meaning veiled in scriptures and other writings that the uninitiated cannot understand. Systems like Tarot, astrology, and numerology have derived from these deeper concealed systems of knowledge.

Esoteric three is the language by which Masters and their most intimate disciples communicate among themselves. It is not anything you might understand unless you have reached these same heights and entered the Sublime Abode where the Masters dwell.

Mudrashram® teachings, like many other teachings sourced in the Transcendental Sphere, are currently disseminated at the esoteric one level. While we provide an extensive glossary and articles going into greater depth on many of the concepts we present, you still cannot truly grasp what we teach unless you learn to meditate with us and awaken the three immortal principles—attentional principle, spirit, and ensouling entity—and truly experience what we describe at the seven stages of the Path.

You can learn these methods in our intermediate meditation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program, and build upon this foundation in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Perhaps some intrepid ones will attempt to popularize Mudrashram® teachings in the future, through producing basic introductory materials written at the popular and metaphysical levels, so beginning aspirants can grasp them. As Mudrashram® becomes a larger movement, this might spur some academic researchers to study our novel teachings and attempt to integrate them into a larger rubric of related spiritual teachings.