Gnostic Academy of Chicago

The purpose of this course is precisely to understand tools and techniques by which we deepen our relationship with the divine self.

One such technique that we are going to explore is self-observation. If you are familiar with the writings of Gurdjieff, he is an esoteric writer who taught [this method] primarily in Russia a long time ago. This technique is very practical and profound for achieving insight into what in us creates friction within our families, within our relationships, within our communities. We learn how to identify and overcome obstacles between ourselves and acquire direct access to these higher spiritual mysteries that many traditions teach.

All religions we teach that we need to awaken to the truth. But sadly, the techniques are often missing from those teachings. So, we are going to explain in a, hopefully, more secular way, what this is: self-observation, and how to apply it to our life.

New Lecture Transcription!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/observe-your-true-self

You may notice that from this course, we have talked a lot about the Tree of Life, the synthesis of being, the map of consciousness. We also juxtapose this mysterious glyph with another powerful painting of Christ with four apostles and two cherubim with a mirror. This painting represents the Tree of Life in synthesis, and we have talked about מלכות Malkuth, the physical body, יסוד Yesod, the vital energies, הוד Hod, the astral vehicle or emotional state, נצח Netzach, the mind.

The four apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in the Bible represent these four lower qualities and the four Gospels. They also relate to the four elements. The four animals are the holy creatures of Ezekiel: the bull, the lion, the cherubim or angel, and the eagle―earth, air, fire, water.

What is interesting is that these four apostles stand above two children, two innocent, kind, divine souls. In a sense, these two children hold up a mirror, and these children are תפארת Tiphereth, the human consciousness, the Essence, likewise, גבורה Geburah, the divine soul. These two souls, human and divine, are what really concerns us with meditation, because the human soul, concentration, the ability to focus on one thing, is תפארת Tiphereth and that will is augmented by perception, consciousness, גבורה Geburah: the quality to receive information, to focus on one thing and to extract knowledge, real wisdom.

That wisdom is our true being, the mirror. It is our true self. That mirror is חסד Chesed, the inner spirit, the real Being, the real self.

Obviously, these figures, these lower vehicles, are the bodies of Christ, the highest truth: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In synthesis, this Tree of Life can show us, in the lower seven spheres, especially, what are known as the essence or heart or the qualities that we need to develop in relation to each of these spheres, the lower seven sephiroth.

These lower 7 sephiroth, from חסד Chesed to מלכות Malkuth, related to the paramitas.

New Transcription!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/the-great-perfections

“Temptation is fire. Triumph over temptation is light.” ―Samael Aun Weor

What is fire? In a psychological sense, in a s*xual sense, it is desire. It is wanting, attachment, craving: “What I want. What I need. What I crave.” Desire has many forms, whether for food, for drink, for alcohol, for s*x, for drugs. For some people, their desires are for attention, praise, recognition, fame, titles, security, money.

Desire is a fire. It burns. It consumes one’s entire being, the wood of our soul from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, metaphorically, symbolically speaking.

How many of us in our lifetime are driven precisely by desire? By the wanting for something more? Or accumulation? If you examine this metaphor, it directly represents something very profound, how in our striving to fulfill our desires in life, we in fact suffer. The word passion originally means “suffering.” In our Western culture, we tend to ignore this fact. We believe and are taught that by following our desires, we will be happy, and yet we ignore that fulfilling or seeking to fulfill these very drives are precisely what create confusion and pain.

New lecture transcription on the Gnostic Gospels: “The Reality of the Rulers”!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/temptation-and-redemption

A lecture and meditation for anyone to attend on Saturday, September 14th at 1 PM CT. Beginners welcome!

Lecture Topic: Imagine Your True Self

We perceive with more senses that mere sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Rather than exclusively depend upon empirical data, it is possible to explore, with psychological senses, the roots and origins of numerous internal states. While openly denigrated by modern society, the faculty of imagination is actually the means by which to investigate non-physical or metaphysical phenomena such as thoughts, feelings, and desires. Through understanding five forms of imagination, it becomes possible to distinguish reality from illusion, the truth of cosmic being from the clever machinations our own mind. Learn also practical techniques to develop positive forms of imagination for the awakening and liberation of self.

Listen to the previous lectures in this course:

https://chicagognosis.org/to-thine-own-self-be-true.html

Location and Directions

828 Davis St, Suite 5 (Lower Level)
Evanston, IL 60201

There is paid parking across the street in the Sherman Plaza Parking Garage with cheap hourly rates ($6 for 3 to 5 hours).

The 201 and 213 Buses stop across the street at Davis St. and Benson Ave. You can also take the 93, 201, 208, 213, or 250 Bus to Davis and Maple, walking a block East on Davis until reaching our location across from Benson Ave.

The Davis Purple Line stop is half a block away. When arriving, go South on Benson Ave straight ahead to our location on Davis St.

There is also the Davis St. / Evanston Metra Station, whereby you can walk South on Maple and East on Davis.

When you arrive, enter through the front. Go down to the lower level via the stairs to the left or the elevator to the right. We are located in Suite 5.

Please RSVP on meetup.com/chicagognosis if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

New Lecture!

Ever wonder why New Year’s resolutions don’t work? While we might will something, it may not come to fruition because we lack energy, enthusiasm, and consistency for accomplishing it. Likewise, without proper spiritual force, we will not have the inspiration, comprehension, and zeal for overcoming resistance. Learn how to conserve and harness energy for the awakening of your spirituality, specifically through exercises of pranayama, chakra work, and sacred s*xuality.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/empower-your-true-self

A lecture and meditation for anyone to attend tomorrow, Saturday, August 31 at 1 pm CT. Beginners welcome!

Lecture Topic: Empower Your True Self

Ever wonder why New Year’s resolutions don’t work? While we might will something, it may not come to fruition because we lack energy, enthusiasm, and consistency for accomplishing it. Likewise, without proper spiritual force, we will not have the inspiration, comprehension, and zeal for overcoming resistance. Learn how to conserve and harness energy for the awakening of your spirituality, specifically through exercises of pranayama, chakra work, and sacred s*xuality.

Listen to the previous lectures in this course:

[To Thine Own Self Be True](https://chicagognosis.org/to-thine-own-self-be-true.html)

Location and Directions

828 Davis St, Suite 5 (Lower Level)
Evanston, IL 60201

There is paid parking across the street in the Sherman Plaza Parking Garage with cheap hourly rates ($6 for 3 to 5 hours).

The 201 and 213 Buses stop across the street at Davis St. and Benson Ave. You can also take the 93, 201, 208, 213, or 250 Bus to Davis and Maple, walking a block East on Davis until reaching our location across from Benson Ave.

The Davis Purple Line stop is half a block away. When arriving, go South on Benson Ave straight ahead to our location on Davis St.

There is also the Davis St. / Evanston Metra Station, whereby you can walk South on Maple and East on Davis.

When you arrive, enter through the front. Go down to the lower level via the stairs to the left or the elevator to the right. We are located in Suite 5.

Please RSVP on meetup.com/chicagognosis if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

7 new videos from the Sufi Principles of Meditation course!

https://chicagognosis.org/videos.html

“A clear vision of the fundamentals of religion comes about through the application of their derivative principles, and the derivatives are corrected by comparing them against their original sources. There is no way to the station of contemplation (mushahidah) of [internal] states except by esteeming as great the means and principles that God has esteemed to be great.” ―Al-Jurayri in Al-Risalah: Principles of Sufism by Al-Qushayri

The science of meditation is founded upon universal principles and laws. Just as physical nature develops in accordance with specific causes and conditions, likewise our true, spiritual nature is realized through precise actions and methods, since everything in the cosmos is established through the law of causality.

Meditation is a means of acquiring information about ourselves and why we suffer, so that we can radically transform negative internal states. By removing psychological conditions we have created within ourselves that trap our true potential and fill us with affliction, we can access the essential nature of reality, free of illusion, speculation, doubt, or theory.

​Countless practitioners throughout the world have verified the results of meditation, which are characterized by the following psychological qualities: serenity, peace, insight, compassion, cognizant love, altruism, profound concentration, comprehension, purity, and happiness for others. While these qualities are natural and inherent to the consciousness, they are dependent upon specific causes for their realization.

This course explains the principles of meditation through the literature of Samael Aun Weor, Al-Qushayri, Ansari, Hujwiri, Rumi, Ibn ‘Arabi, and other Sufi mystics / masters, due to the clarity, simplicity, universality, and depth of their teachings. We invite students of any religion, tradition, or system to realize the true purpose and realities of meditation within him or herself.

Learn how to astral project and maintain psychological wellbeing through four new videos, two for Dream Yoga and Astral Travel, and two more for Spiritual and Mental Health:

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/how-and-why-do-we-astral-project

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/mantras-for-astral-projection

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/practical-methods-for-inner-balance

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/energetic-and-psychic-hygiene

If you have benefited from this knowledge, follow, like, and subscribe to our channel. Donations are tax-deductible and support the creation of new videos, lectures, podcasts, in-person classes, and websites. We could not make this happen without your support!

Since their discovery, the Gnostic Gospels have challenged millennia-old beliefs, assumptions, and theories about Christianity’s foundations. Gnosticism, the esoteric or hidden knowledge of Christian dispensation, offers revolutionary perspectives for understanding Christ and the role of personal, experiential knowledge of divinity. Learn how to approach these enigmatic scriptures and interpret their cryptic symbolism through the codes in which they were written: Kabbalah and Alchemy. ​

New video with accompanying transcription, PowerPoint, and podcast!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/the-esoteric-christian-tradition

Learn to defend yourself in spiritual warfare. New video with transcription and accompanying podcast!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/psychic-attacks-and-their-remedies

The Master Jesus, more than just embodying a figure to worship or to follow, represents something very deep within our consciousness. This is why in our Gnostic studies we explain the physical personages of the past, from diverse religious traditions, came to represent principles. They lived in their flesh and bone a state of being that we need to cultivate. Therefore, Christ as the human individual represents in us the principle of the inner Christ, our inner divinity, that light which can shine within the depths of our very heart, to illumine the mistakes of our past and the state of our suffering.

Our focus today is to learn how to develop that principle in us, to understand what it means psychologically, and to know how to apply methods to develop greater insight in our daily life, especially in terms of how we approach problems, how we cultivate virtue, and also how we conquer vice.

We will learn how to awaken, develop, sustain, and expand the intelligence of the heart, the wisdom of the heart, the ability to understand, very deeply, how to negotiate and navigate the great crises that are afflicting our contemporary humanity.

We will also learn that the heart must learn to balance the mind if what we really seek is genuine peace.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/christ-love-the-seal-of-compassion

The paths to spiritual mastery and beyond.

New Lecture Transcription on “The Voice of the Silence”:

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/liberation-and-renunciation

It is important to understand that real knowledge is of the heart. Real wisdom is what we live. Real knowledge comes from experience, and more importantly, that experience of higher realities comes when we investigate our own heart, our own mind, our ways of living, and to look, not to assume that we know, “I am of this race, this culture, this religion, this belief system, these politics, this upbringing.” It means to really look at what is inside in terms of our emotions, our impulses, our will.

This active looking is precisely what every tradition teaches about meditation: to look, to observe, to acquire new information―not to assume that we already know who we are, but to be open and to watch in a state of stillness, of observation, of clarity. It is that inner discrimination of ourselves that really helps us to distinguish right from wrong. It is our heart, our conscience, that tells us what is right and what is wrong. We may have traditions that tell us these things, but what do we know in our being about what to do? ― especially when we are faced with situations that are so complex that we are baffled. We are confused. We are overwhelmed, like you heard in Carmina Burana. When fate hits, the hammer of karma, of hardship, strikes, and we find all of those things that we typically ignore come to the surface of our mind, things we may neglect or fail to look at.

New Lecture Transcription!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/the-heart-doctrine

The particular beauty of this scripture, The Voice of the Silence, is that it is practical. It teaches a very profound mystical science of acquiring information for ourselves, not merely with the senses of our physical experience, but with the consciousness. Some people have called that consciousness soul: the ability to perceive and to understand.

In our last lecture, we talked about the stages of meditation, the principles outlined such as in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which are also correlated within Buddhism, as well as Blavatsky’s scriptures, or her translation of it.

More importantly, what we want to understand in this talk today is the spiritual path known as initiation. It is a path in which by meditating, the consciousness develops its true potential and is able to understand mysteries beyond the senses, beyond physical experience, and beyond our common daily life.

New Lecture Transcription!

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/the-seven-sounds

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” ―Matthew 6:24

​Examine your life. Whom do you serve most from moment to moment? Is it your unconditioned consciousness, or desires? By understanding our psychological states, it becomes possible to intuitively choose what superior actions to embody and follow. In this way, we willingly engage in selfless behaviors for the well-being of our communities.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/serve-your-true-self

How to evoke, recall, and commune with our inner divinity.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/remember-your-true-self

*xperience

A zoom only lecture tonight at 7 PM CT for anyone to attend. Beginners welcome!

Lecture Topic: Remember Your True Self

All religions and mystical traditions speak about divine reality. But how do we experience it? Likewise, how do we cultivate it daily, from moment to moment? Discover the basis for remembering divinity, what it entails, and how to cultivate such a relationship through practical techniques.

Listen to the previous lectures in this course:

https://chicagognosis.org/to-thine-own-self-be-true.html

Join Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81686283563?pwd=f2FFMZevo6xRGCk4RzUCbbo9j9EZXC.1

Please RSVP on meetup.com/chicagognosis if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

As dream yogis develop familiarity with astral projection, dream recall, and awakening consciousness, there remains the difficulty of interpreting experiences. Practitioners must know how to discriminate what they perceive, the spiritually real from the illusory ego, through three spiritual parameters: Imagination (perceiving a dream), Inspiration (recognizing dream symbols), and Intuition (comprehending their meaning).

Since divinity communicates through the language of parables, interpreting dreams also requires a profound, practical understanding of the cosmic laws upon which they are based: philosophical and contrary analogies, correspondences, and numerology. By meditating upon these factors in combination with the psychological impression of a dream, one acquires insight into its significance.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/how-to-interpret-dreams

Our current psychological state is not unitary, but aggregated within varying levels of density. Another analogy is a spectrum or gradient marked by two extremes. The lowest qualities of being are attributed to affliction, confusion, pain, ignorance, and a whole constellation of destructive behaviors, characterized by complexity, problems, and all their concomitant sufferings. As hinted by the great mystical traditions of antiquity, superior states of being relate to spiritual awakening, serenity, and religious experiences of divine reality. Discover how to identify, discriminate, and understand various forms of perception through four states of consciousness: sleep, dreams, wakefulness, and spiritual illumination, so as to master one’s complete potential.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/awaken-your-true-self

“The waking and dreaming states do not exist independently side by side as real units. Dreams are nothing but a reflection of our waking experience in a new form.” ―Swami Sivananda, Philosophy of Dreams

Ever wonder why we experience dreams and how to interpret them? Learn how through two new Dream Yoga and Astral Travel lecture transcriptions with accompanying audio and PowerPoints:

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/why-do-we-dream

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/analyzing-dreams-through-meditation

Have you benefited from this knowledge? Help us to help humanity by making a tax-deductible donation at:

https://chicagognosis.org/donate.html

Your donations make it possible for this wisdom to reach more people. Donations also help us to produce more content via our podcast, website, lectures, transcriptions, and live in-person classes.

We thank you for your support!

Gnostics utilize kabbalah for its profundity, accessibility, and synthetic power. When consciously utilized, kabbalah becomes incredibly practical for interpreting diverse religious symbolism, creation stories, and the development of the soul. Contrary to popular assumption, the tree of life is not merely a Jewish paradigm, but an essential, eternal, and universal representation within all cosmologies and mythologies. A continuation of Kabbalah: The Legacy of the Initiates, this lecture will explore the mystical significance of divine life in the kabbalistic tree, the ten sephiroth (spiritual emanations), and how specific Hebrew letters, words, and names relate to aspects of being, Hinduism, Arthurian legend, Nordic runes, Ta***ic Buddhism, and much more.

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/kabbalah-the-universal-tree-of-life

A lecture and meditation for anyone to attend this Saturday, July 6 at 1 PM CT. Beginners welcome!

Lecture Topic: Remember Your True Self

All religions and mystical traditions speak about divine reality. But how do we experience it? Likewise, how do we cultivate it daily, from moment to moment? Discover the basis for remembering divinity, what it entails, and how to cultivate such a relationship through practical techniques.

Listen to the previous lectures in this course:

https://chicagognosis.org/to-thine-own-self-be-true.html

Location and Directions

828 Davis St, Suite 5 (Lower Level)
Evanston, IL 60201

There is paid parking across the street in the Sherman Plaza Parking Garage with cheap hourly rates ($6 for 3 to 5 hours).

The 201 and 213 Buses stop across the street at Davis St. and Benson Ave. You can also take the 93, 201, 208, 213, or 250 Bus to Davis and Maple, walking a block East on Davis until reaching our location across from Benson Ave.

The Davis Purple Line stop is half a block away. When arriving, go South on Benson Ave straight ahead to our location on Davis St.

There is also the Davis St. / Evanston Metra Station, whereby you can walk South on Maple and East on Davis.

When you arrive, enter through the front. Go down to the lower level via the stairs to the left or the elevator to the right. We are located in Suite 5.

Please RSVP on meetup.com/chicagognosis if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

Finally, after years of work and sacrifice, we present to you the final transcription of our Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah course. A special thank you to all volunteers, transcribers, and donors who’ve contributed to this project and allowed this work to be made available for a wider audience!

Arcanum 22: The Return

All scriptures and spiritual traditions allude to the longed-for goal of Self-realization: the return to divinity through conscious works. However, such references remain elusive to the animal intellect, which only understands literal interpretations and blind adherence to the dead letter. Without applying practical techniques for the development of the soul, aspirants close the doors to the complete actualization of religion (from the Latin religare: “reunion”; or the Sanskrit yug, the root word for yoga).

The spiritual path has also never been revealed to the public in its entirety, but was only demonstrated through the profound symbolism of scripture: the internal language of divinity. This lecture concludes the twenty-two major arcana with an explanation of the three mountains: the distinct stages of the path of initiation; and exegeses of the Qur’an, the Bible, and the writings of Samael Aun Weor. You will also learn how the gnostic esoteric work is sealed through the succession of the prior arcana and the mysticism of the Hebrew letter ת Tav, allegorized by the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad: the Seal of the Prophets (Khātim an-Nabīyīn).

https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/arcanum-22-the-return