Path of Initiation 01 What is Initiation

A basic explanation of the structure of our psyche and how it is depicted in the Greek mysteries, the New Testament, and Kabbalah. Learn about your inner psychikon and pneumatikon, and how to acquire Telesis: the intelligent effort towards a defined goal, which is union with the Divine.

Lecture quote:

"It is possible for us to experience reality, to awaken our consciousness and see for ourselves that we are all one, without any separation. It is also possible to experience God (Atman, Buddha, Allah, or whatever we call That Which Is) for oneself. The truth of existence is that we are deeply connected with each other, and the Divine is that unitive force. But unfortunately, because of the psyche that our own hands have made, because of our own psychology, we have lost the ability to perceive it. This is because of the nature of the psyche that we have made for ourselves. Our psyche is intensely self-obsessed. Our mind is obsessed with its desires, fears, cravings, aversions. That self-obsessed psyche is what we call “I”, ego, skandhas, samskaras, aggregates. If humanity made the effort to develop the consciousness, the free consciousness, the Buddhata or the tathagatagarbha, then the experience would naturally arise that we are all of us connected. We would feel one another. A spontaneous love would be present in our experience. In that state of consciousness, there would no longer be war. There would no longer be suffering, because we would understand, feel, and perceive the feelings and experiences of others. We would understand the effects of our actions upon others. We would feel what we do to others, and thus we would comprehend what pain and suffering are. We would change our behavior. From this point of view, it becomes evident that we need to understand something about our own psyche, because it is from our own psychology that our experience of life arises."

This is a lecture from the free online course Path of Initiation

Course Description:

Genuine spiritual initiation is not bestowed in the physical world, but in the worlds of the soul, when the soul has earned a new level of Being. The development of the soul is a conscious work, acheived through psychological transformations, and is marked by exact steps that cannot be avoided or skipped.

Telesis [τέλεσις] is a Greek term that means “progress that is intelligently planned and directed.” It means “the attainment of a desired end, by the application of intelligent effort.” This is the work of the soul to become an Initiate, whose goal is to achieve the completion of religion, which comes from the Latin religare, which means to reunite the earthly with the heavenly: to become one with God.

"Initiation is something very intimate to the Soul. The “I” does not receive initiations. Therefore, those who say, “I have so many initiations,” “I have such-and-such degrees,” are liars and fakes, because the “I” does not receive initiations or degrees. There are nine Initiations of Minor Mysteries and five important Initiations of Major Mysteries. The Soul is the one who receives the initiations. This is a very intimate matter; something that one must not go about speaking of, nor something that must be told to anyone. Indeed, all the initiations and degrees that many schools of the physical world confer have no value whatsoever in the superior worlds, because the masters of the White Lodge only recognize the legitimate initiations of the Soul as genuine. These are completely internal." - Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony