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Starting Gnosis
Once a week I attended the Gnostic classes, something in it rang a bell for me, but I kept a skeptical approach as I wasn't prepared to fall into a belief.
A lot of the more esoteric things went over my head, but I liked the exercises of self-knowledge, for the first time I could actually see what was happening inside me with self-observation, although in the beginning it was like looking into pea soup as I tried to spot my emotions and their related thoughts as they arose. Finally with self-observation I was given a tool where I could actually see what was happening inside me psychologically, what caused me to feel the way I did. I could be my own student of myself and thereby could change myself.
I had wondered how anyone could achieve mystical states, I saw what they were not (the egos) and previously had some inkling of being in the present moment, but now I could actually practice being aware of the world through the five senses. By so doing I discovered in consciousness, a stillness, an awakening to a whole new way of living that offered me the potential to progress and develop, by developing awareness and removing the psychological entrapments of the egos.
Gradually the numbers in the group dwindled until I was the only one left, but this gave me the opportunity to have an individual teaching. Since I was only interested in what I could prove I asked them “don’t give me any ‘fairy stories’ (referring to the esoteric teachings) just give me practices.”
So the theoretical part was cut out, I was given a practical teaching each session, and I spent the whole week diligently trying them out, when the weeks study was done I would bring my results from what I had discovered through my own practice, we would talk about it, study some aspect of the teaching, be set a homework and in this way I would explore myself and the teaching each week.
Anchor exercises which Edith had made where you are aware of yourself doing simple tasks such as washing, eating, tying shoelaces, etc were a very useful start, and reminded me to think about being aware at other times.
At work I used every possible break to go alone to a quiet spot with some trees to practice awareness; I would walk around the same small area again and again, every day, in every break. I would sit alone at lunch and just concentrate upon what I was eating, I didn’t care what people thought of me I wanted to learn how to be aware in the present moment and to see what was happening within me.
My girlfriend at the time was a devout Christian, it was obvious that we were going in different directions so we set a date to finish and parted, never to see each other again.
I decided that I was going to see if the Gnostic teaching actually worked or not, and to do it I knew I would have to be dedicated enough to get results, so I gave myself nine months, in which time I would put in a full effort and see what happened.
At the centre I asked for another evening to attend, as one session didn’t feel enough, this was difficult as the teachers were based in the London centre and I was in Cardiff, over three hours away. Edith had been traveling all that way to teach each Friday after work.
The solution was for all the advanced students to travel from London each weekend; they stayed at the centre from Friday evening and returned on Sunday. This was given the approval by Rabolu, the international coordinator of the organization which was called the Universal Christian Gnostic Movement of the New Order, he told the London teachers who were making the efforts “You are an example to the world”.
It had been six months since I first attended the classes and now I would spend each weekend at the centre exploring the practices, still without much theory. There were only two books available by Samael Aun Weor in English at the time and they were both on psychology, but at the centre we started a new exercise – astral projection.
In the first attempt everyone went to a practice room and had to be as aware as possible, we would then go into another room and try to project into the practice room where a teacher would place an object; we had to tell the teacher in the morning what the object was.
As we went to the practice room my awareness was particularly good, as I had been training myself regularly, it just ‘beamed’, it felt so strong that as I faced the wall I could see who was coming in behind me. I maintained this awareness as I carefully went to the other room, got into my sleeping bag and concentrated on my heart. Within seconds a powerful tingling sensation came over me and I lifted up into the air about two feet above my body. It was terrifying, like nothing I had experienced before, I involuntarily shouted “Help! Help!” repeatedly, but still managed to look into the room. I could see everyone sleeping apart from the teacher, the affable Reynaldo Herrera who was sat, and a gentleman standing close to him, the Master Rabolu, who I recognized later from his picture.
The fear sent me back to my body, I merged back into it, sat up and looked around; everyone was asleep, they didn’t hear me shouting, eventually I fell asleep, when I woke up the next day I spoke to Reynaldo, I asked “Did you see that gentleman standing next to you?” He replied “Yes it was the Master Rabolu, the practice was so strong that it brought him from Colombia to investigate”. I told him “There was no object placed in the room” “Yes that’s right” he replied. I had discovered that through intuition and polyvision.
With that success I began to try astral projection at home, I had more success initially in the afternoons where I had an opportunity to lie down and practice.
I lay down on my bed on my back, relaxed my body and began to concentrate on my heart beat, as I concentrated on it I felt as though I began to move with the beats of the heart, I was amazed to find that it kept getting stronger and stronger and I lifted more and more with each beat, the tingling sensation went through my body along with a high-pitched noise until finally I was raised out of my body.
I wasn’t afraid this time and I calmly looked around the room, it was exactly as it had been in the physical world, with the only difference being that colours and everything looked more intense and that I was hovering above my body. A thought came to me that people say it's possible to create your own reality when in the astral; I wondered how this worked and how real it would be, so I imagined a pink toothbrush, to my surprise it appeared there in the room like a real object. I moved around a bit, looked around to see if it would be gone, but it was still there, as bright and as real as everything else, I wondered what else I could imagine, I started thinking but began to lower down and merge into my body, waking up back into the physical world.
A day or two later I lay down to try to project, only this time as soon as I tried to relax the tingling sensations began and I lifted up out of my body, this time it seemed to be almost involuntary. It was the same lifting out, but as I looked around to my great surprise I was in my room, but the room was exactly as it had been when I was a boy in the 1960s, I was a bit dumbfounded, I heard the sound of the front door of the house opening and my parents coming in, my mother called my name and started to come up the stairs, her voice sounded younger, I was startled and merged back into my body. This was a projection into the akashic records of nature, where everything from the past is recorded; when I opened my eyes in the physical world my parents had not come into the house.
A few days later in another afternoon, I had another obe, this time I was feeling down about an inner state that I was trying to understand and overcome but couldn't, I lay down feeling a sense of defeat, even desperation, almost as soon as my head hit the pillow I was lifted up into the air accompanied by the obe sensations, this time I got up, sat on the edge of the bed and looked in the mirror. The astral plane had its luminosity and I looked at myself in the mirror, the reflection that came back was me but with changes due to the inner state I was working on, it showed in symbolism how that state affected me, but it showed it in a profound way, a way that I could never have grasped here.
As I turned around I saw a figure on my bed, he had two horns on his head, just as I’d imagined the Devil to have, but he looked serene and good, I decided to attack him, but as I did he taught me more about that inner state. I merged back into my body totally bemused, how could that Devil figure be good? Later I learned that was Lucifer, something completely different to a demon, it was the light bringer, a part of the being that is our psychological trainer, the particular difficulties I had been facing in life were part of his training and my learning.
Although it’s the out-of-body experiences that usually stand out the most in an account like this, it was actually the self-knowledge that I put the most effort into; observing myself during the day, being aware and in the evening or for longer sessions in the centre – analyzing the different inner states, to get more knowledge of them, I loved how I could at last change and see all these things that had trapped me for so long, and held me back in so many different ways, now I had a way to be free of them potentially and to be aware in the present moment, when my consciousness, through sustained attempts would be aware and in silence, perceiving the present moment, watching the thoughts and breaking out of them.
The group obe exercises at the centres continued on the weekends and many other obe’s took place in that first year of Gnosis, they helped me to confirm that they were real experiences and that there were other, superior intelligences out there that were not human as we know them and that Rabolu was, or had something in him, that was of a superior nature.
Nine months after starting the first course I became a teacher, a month later I ran the Cardiff centre alone and financed it myself, I really wanted to keep to my resolution of giving a hundred percent for a period of time, but what I was seeing and discovering was growing ever more convincing, I had begun to tap into a vast depth of knowledge that was accessible from within.
After eleven months I was voted the chairman of the national board of the organization in the
A month later I decided to open a group in a city about an hour away, Bristol, I found a hall and started a small group there, I ran the Cardiff centre as well and went on the weekends an hour and a half away to another city, Birmingham, where someone had started a group. The weekend gatherings shifted to there to help it to build up. Things were getting busy.