This is the third in a connected series. You won't benefit from it without reading the previous two.

Anyone who ends up on the rune path, or another path connected with New Agers, is more likely than not to be a fugitive from a Christian chain gang. Well over 98% of all my occult students and conferees since 1955 have been ex-Catholics, still carrying the load of imposed guilt, or ex-communicants of fundamentalist congregations, still carrying the load of imposed sin.

If you are in this group then you are not likely to be comfortable with the Jesus prayer of the Hesychasts. It will have too many bad associations for you. Those who produced that state of affairs will pay for it for a long time to come, so don't blame them, bless them for forcing you out of the fold. You escaped because they were too heavy handed, and they've got IT coming, to the uttermost drop of pay-back for the persecution they gave others, and for using the Sacred Name as their authority. I shudder for them.

However, the PRINCIPLE of Hesychastic practice has been discovered on every continent and religion and throughout the ages. Here is how to accommodate it to your present situation.

To the Desert Fathers the name of Jesus fulfilled the important task of representing the Ultimate power and the Infinite Being. If you are one of the refugees I mentioned then this is probably not true at all for you.

Some of you worship the Ultimate in the form of a Goddess, others as a Divine pair. The important realization to fix on is that the consciousness of the divine IS the divine. The single word you choose to picture the highest level to you actually comes FROM that highest level.

There are three stages in the birth of a word. The word is the final, grossest stage of the three. I may go into that later, but the important thing to get clear is that at one subtle level the word and the thing are the same.

The consciousness from which the word came is the same consciousness that created the thing named. There is a continuous evolutionary spiritual trail from the thing to the name of the thing.

Following the trail that extends back behind the word will lead you to its source. In our case, The Source. Following IS back far enough leads you to the veil behind FA. It's like the arrow a fisherman uses which has the line attached to it. By following the line back from the target fish you will find the bow that shot the arrow. The Consciousness.

A completely investigated, thousands of years old and totally documented, non-Christian example will make it clear without any of the associated problems of the religious bigotry that may have inadvertently given you the gift of this chance at achieving the Highest.

You have all heard of the god Shiva and his consort Parvati. The common religious Shaivite of India, worships Shiva in the form of an ascetic meditator, or as a Cosmic Dancer, or in several forms, using a statue or a picture to convey the form. As I have said several times, the Catholicism of the Jesuit with several doctorates and years of training is not the Catholicism of the Irish peasant.

The highest form of Shaivism from Northern Kashmir, deals with Shiva, as the Consciousness that produced the form of the god Shiva. The consort Parvati becomes the energy, or power of the Consciousness of Shiva. She is then called Shakti.

It is the Shakti that creates the universe as a playful pastime. In her dormant form she is coiled at the base of the subtle spine in every human being. Here she is known, even to New Agers, as Kundalini. The feminine creative principle creates and the masculine meditates. When they merge the whole universe of the Game becomes evident. Shakti goes up the subtle spine to merge with Shiva in the thousand petalled lotus in the white light of the sahasrara.

The two triangles merge in the innermost rune realms. The dew drop slips into the Shining Sea. The flame becomes conscious of the fire of which it is an essential part... and so on. Cosmic Consciousness takes the place of contracted consciousness.

This is true on all the inner levels. The feminine is the creative, and the masculine is the foundation from which she separates in order to create, and into which she merges to become one. There is no difference between Shiva and Shakti, in the sense that you can't have one without the other. Their duality is in itself a union. It is possible to worship and study each separately, just as it is possible to study buying and selling separately in a business course. But you can never have one without the other being present. Two sides of a single coin, so to speak.

The User of the name Shiva in the Hesychastic way gets to the Consciousness of Shiva, which is the Consciousness from which everything came. The devoted user of the name Jesus gets to the same place. In the same way the word Shiva contains in itself the trail that leads back to Shakti, whose energy produced it in the first place. Whichever one you worship, you get the other as a bonus.

So by using his will to sit down and repeat the Holy Name of Shiva, the Kashmir devotee is connecting the highest part of his own universe, his will, with the creative centre from which came all the universes. This is what the Hesychast Fathers did with the name of Jesus. It was the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, that was the Christian version of Shakti, the energy of Pentecost, and the creative energy of the feminine aspect of all the Grail material later. To the Hebrew heretics She was the Shekinah, the Feminine principle of Jehovah, and the Sophia of the Gnostics. And the same applied to her as it does to Shakti.

The image and name of the form of Parvati connects to the formless energy Shakti. The image and name of the form of the Magdalene connects you to the formless energy known to others as the Holy Spirit. The image and name of the form of Jesus connects you to the formless "I and the Father are One." consciousness. It is the same with all the major gods, goddesses and great saints of all religions.

You can use the form as a cellular phone to connect with the central office. By connecting to the Centre, you are automatically connected to the rest of the universe. But the phone is the instrument, not the universe itself And you MUST go through the central switchboard to be able to contact anywhere you like.

So what you can do is this. Find the word you will use to do this work. If you are a devotee of Odin, use the word Odin by all means, BUT realize that what you are doing is connecting with the Consciousness that produced the word Odin in the first place, which is the Consciousness from which the form of the god Odin emerged. You will be on the path of IS which leads through the veils of mundane consciousness into the Consciousness behind it all.

By doing this you will automatically contact the feminine source of the creative energy behind the name, even if you don't know its name.

If you are a devotee of a goddess, do the same. The same applies. The apparent femininity of the goddess is a pale reflection of the femininity from which she emerged in the first place. Everything is masculine compared with the ultimate femininity of Shakti, just as everything is feminine compared to the ultimate masculinity of Shiva. I'm using these names as examples only. The principle applies wherever you apply it, and whatever names you use.

At the Ultimate level there is no femininity or masculinity. This is the One that divides, becoming two for the Game. And the two seek each other and keep separate for the joy of being two.

Ramakrishna was a devotee of Mother Kali. Through worshipping her as we have described, he went beyond her to a non-dual consciousness. But for love of her he came back one level to play the game of duality consciously. Lalleshwari merged with Lord Shiva, but she came back one level from the One for the joy of being two, herself and Shiva.

Krishna missed Radha so much that he thought about her all the time until he forgot who he was and became Radha. As soon as he became Radha, he became conscious that Krishna was missing and the cycle began again. This story shows how we can oscillate just for the fun of it, after reaching the highest point. But don't think about that too much. Get to the highest point first.

A devotee came to the Buddha and asked him if it was true that even the blades of grass would eventually become Buddhas. "Are you enlightened yet?" asked the Buddha. "Has your work borne such fruit already?" The devotee admitted that he had a long way to go. "Do that first, and speculate later." was the gist of the Buddha's reply.

All of you know the kumquat pie of finding out just one more thing to do before I do this or that. Great, if you know exactly when you are going to leave this time, and how much time you can spend on idle curiosity before the forgetting. But not otherwise.

All the answers to such intellectual creations become clear at the point where intellect is superceded. Wait until then. Now really, is the time to work. You have a great chance this time. Don't let it blow away completely as we all have done many times. This way will get you to the next point in human evolution, which happens to be non-human. Grow or go.

Sorry to sound like a nag but I’m getting on in years and 2012 is approaching fast. This may be my last chance of nagging you in your present form, or mine, so bear with it.

This road has been mapped out for eons by spiritual explorers in every country and religion. It is not the exclusive domain of any religion. But people who get to the borders of this domain do so by having been woken up to some extent by their own self application.

The Armanen runes are the way that I have found works across all kinds of occult paths and systems and religious beliefs, to bring people to the point where this makes some kind of sense. Other teachers use other ways, with equal success or failure. And while we're on that subject— I have a friend who is totally ignorant of the most elementary spiritual matters. He threw out spirituality with the bath water of the religion that oppressed him.

He tries to use the vocabulary occasionally, just to be friendly, and he calls me a guru. It isn't possible to explain to him that he's talking nonsense, but you should know the distinctions for your own information and protection.

I am at the moment acting as a teacher. So in that sense I am a teacher. A teacher agrees with the student to have a relationship that will expose the student to important information that the student wants and needs to know, in a manner that makes it easier to understand than if the student went ahead on his own. Many people called teachers are merely instructors. A digitally vocalized encyclopaedia could do as well, or as ill.

So a teacher shows the way and by reason of having been around the track a few times, leads the student gradually and carefully to the place where he can carry on alone with confidence. I am a teacher. I accept the responsibility of this relationship and all it entails with any student I accept. It is always MUCH more than the student realizes, as possibly some of you already know.

The guru is a totally different creature. The teacher shows the way. The guru IS the Way. The form of the guru, if kept in mind like the Sacred Name, is enough to lead the devotee to the attainment of the guru, no teaching required.

It has been known for example, that a low caste would-be devotee made a statue of a guru who would not accept him as a student because he was the guru of royalty. By worshipping the statue AS IF it were alive, the guru's Shakti was made to enter the statue and the devotee gained more from the guru statue than the royal students did from the living guru, including secret knowledge that only the guru knew.

A teacher would have to teach that knowledge. A guru can bestow it. A good student can meditate on the teacher's teachings and attain secret knowledge too. In this case the body of teaching is temporarily raised to the status of guru and the Shakti of the student energizes it to a higher level.

When the Indian devotee worships the guru's form he appears to the Westerner to be bowing to a human being in a rather abject way. He is doing nothing of the kind. The pranaam is a technique to bring the head centre lower than the heart centre. He is bowing to his own Inner Self, embodied in a human form that he can easily see and reach.

There is only One Consciousness. The Westerner thinks that every body he sees has a different consciousness. It is easier for the beginning devotee to bow to his Self as the guru, than it is to bow to his inner Self within his own consciousness.

If the devotee meditates day and night on the guru's form he eventually acquires in full measure the inner guru. All the inner attainments of the guru are his too. This happens too when you use the name as a Hesychast would do. The Inner Consciousness behind the whole phenomena becomes your consciousness and the mere smear human vanishes from the inner scene.

Jesus was speaking as a guru to his devotees, when he said "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light." He wasn't talking about the man Jesus at the time. He wasn't being a teacher. What a screw up the thèologians have made of things just for the sake of being cleverer than the next theologian.

The Jesus prayer of the Hesychasts was using the older knowledge of the guru as the Way. The simplest person could do it in the first couple of centuries of our era. Now hardly anyone except a few Eastern Orthodox Christians have the method totally available because of all the crap that the literalists have heaped on the whole matter.

You can see how difficult it would be to explain that to a spiritual ignoramus. I hear what my friend says and non-is it as I hear it, just as one day you will look at the apparency of a situation and non-is it, by virtue of your knowledge of the real situation behind the apparent one.

OK, back to your practice. You have chosen the word to use, either by thinking, by intuition, by previous experience, by consulting an oracle such as the Crystal Mandala, or your uncle Fred.

For the periods of starting meditation on the Name there are few absolute requirements. You should sit on or in something that allows you to sit upright. The lighting should be minimal, darkness if possible. An electric light flickers at 120 cycles, and your subconscious is aware of that, and the flicker does interfere with your mental work in the meditative aspects. The same thing applies to candlelight, in a different way. If you are in a draught free room a candle is OK. If it's going to blow about don't use one.

Now sit in your upright position with your back as straight as you can comfortably hold it. If you need a support in the small of the back to accomplish this that's fine, it won't interfere.

"But," say my yoga freaks, when I tell them this, "What about the peacock, and the headstand and the dog pose? Aren't the yoga poses better for this sort of spiritual activity." My reply is always this, and I'm giving you these asides just in case you hit these problems one day twenty years from now when I'm somewhere else doing different work.

There are 84 Hatha Yoga positions taught by the Lord of Yoga, Shiva himself. The classical Sanskrit work (Hatha Yoga Pradipika) on these positions is by a gentleman named Svatmarama. He says that of those 84 there are four that are the best. They are, for your reference only, siddhasana, padmasana, simhasana and bhadrasana. All of these are sitting positions. None of them is one of the fancy, see how supple and skinny I am poses.

If you can sit comfortably in them then padmasana and siddhasana are wonderful. Simhasana however, is the one where you glare ferociously and stick your tongue out as far as possible. This will not make it easy to repeat words if you want to do that. Bhadrasana is the butterfly pose, which I don't recommend as being as good as the first two either.

These poses are often meant to put the body in a position where the practitioner finds it easy to manipulate his prana, energy obtained from breathing. For this they are wonderful but that isn't what we are doing. The energy stuff happens automatically using the Hesychast system, and you don't get stuck in pride in your physical body identity either.

So you sit comfortably, set your timer, (don't be ambitious at first) and observe your breath. When you can do that without trying to control it, which may take two or three days, then say the Sacred Name mentally three times on the in-breath, pause and three times on the out-breath. Use the breath as the measure, not the other way around. If your in-breath is shallow and fast then speed up to get the three names in. If you have steadied, as you eventually will, then extend the three names to fit the breath.

Just say it until you are comfortable, maybe first try, maybe fourth or fifth, DON'T RUSH IT. Then say the name more and more softly until after a while you cannot hear your own whisper and you start hearing it internally.

Basically that's all there is to it. The results of this simple (not easy) practice, extended over years are absolutely cosmic in extent and can only be experienced. Whatever you hear or see while you are doing this, don't stop! After you have done it for a while and your subtle body begins to get cleared out you will see or hear or feel things that will make you want to sit and wallow in the ecstacy or pleasure of the moment. Don't do it. It's kumquat pie. It's stuff that you are getting rid of, flashy garbage. Keep going.

There are a few fine tuning things you can do, that don't get into the books very often. Here are two, and these are often told only to initiates of the method after some time. It is my instruction to you that you do the simple way for at least two weeks before you apply either of these two enhancers. This is so that you develop the subtle awareness of what actually is enhanced. First it is faster and deeper if you hear the name intoned on a single extended note, like part of a chant. Keep to one note and extend the name. You will immediately feel a difference in the lightness of your breathing. Continue using this enhancement for the rest of the incarnation.

Secondly, and this is a very esoteric piece of advice, the reason for which I cannot give you for reasons of initiatory promises, listen to the inner sound with your right ear. Concentrate your attention to the right side.

There, that's it. You are to repeat the name without emotion, without thought, without contemplation. Just repetition of the name is to be used during your meditation periods. If you have a mala, or an old rosary or a garage sale necklace you can use it to help you concentrate. Slip a bead past your finger and thumb every time you hear your trio of names. Sometimes your mind will seem to stop dead and you will wonder what the hell you are doing.

The feel of the bead will tell you to move one bead further and hear the Sacred Name three more times. Eastern monks use a prayer rope with knots in it, because it makes no sound when compared with a metal and bead rosary for instance. Wooden beads on an Indian type mala with the beads in groups of nine with small beads between the groups, is very quiet, so are Shiva's tears, rudraksha beads. But a piece of string with knots in it works too.

How does this ridiculously simple technique work when so many power techniques with bells and whistles, quartz bowls and incense made from the fourteenth leaf of an acanthus that was sat on by an arthritic camel, don't work.

Well, the repetition of the name in time with your breath fills the Name with your own urthin, prana, shakti, mach, pneuma, chi, ki, etc., etc. The Sacred Name then acts like a drill bit and bores through the four layers of stuff holding back the immediate perception of the world from you.

Eventually it comes up against the diamond hard millionth of a second time barrier. This is the barrier between you, the world, and your perception of it. It is the time it takes for the mind to interpret what you perceived and feed it to you as tree, dog, Metra train, and so on. This barrier is impassible by almost any method except meditation. It is thin as a piece of silk, but it may just as well be a million miles of lead.

The work you have done with the first left half circle of runes or your other spiritual path, has been designed to make you strong enough to back the drill when it starts going through, and fearless enough not to freak out when you find that there's only one thing there, where you thought there was a multiverse.

You will see the level of consciousness just before a word arises. You will see the word arise and connect with an object. You will see clearly that what you thought was a rational reaction to a situation was orchestrated so that you made the situation fit the reaction and not the other way around.

You will see that EVERY strong emotional response is a device to prevent you seeing something, and so cleverly done that you think that you had the emotion after the event.

You will see that the whole shooting match is a game, a play of consciousness, and that consciousness is the consciousness of the god you have been worshipping, and it is your own inner consciousness.

This divine consciousness is in all beings, but only those who do the sort of thing you are doing will encounter the consciousness and identify it. Everyone else is involved in the game and its infinite theatre. The bliss of union with the Self is the end of the process and then you can come back into the most horrendous situations and laugh because you can see right through them and you know it's just a public dream. You are beyond time and place and the limitations of the game as played by humans on Earth. You are the producer and director of the play, as well as an actor and you know everything all at once.

This process is what the Hesychasts call theosis, divination, in the sense of becoming the divinity that you had forgotten that you were. It is the only thing that gets you OFF the wheel of reincarnations and the making of one life and forgetting of another, and identifying with all the crap that seems to be going on.

It is the original meditator's original thoughts of becoming many that are returning to the original meditator whose meditation produced the multiverse.

This was the Red King in Alice. Everyone was very quiet around him because their life was due to the fact that he was dreaming them and if he woke up they would cease to exist. That is what happens to the world you see and hear and feel. It ceases to exist in the way that it has always existed and you see it as it really is, without a little black box screwing things up for you. A bit like Neo seeing the world for the first time after getting out of the grip of the Matrix.

Do not take my description as the clue you need to know what is going on. The end product of this process is outside the mind and vocabulary. You will know it when you get there. But until then, and after, keep up the repetition of the Sacred Name.

Your first level of attainment I can tell you. You will be able to hear the name going on all the time as a gentle background. You will read a book and the name will be going on gently in the background. It will not interrupt your worldly life. It will make you MUCH more effective in whatever you do. This is because the repetition beats any useless and negative mind wandering to the punch.

You will find that after the repetition there comes a state of what can only be called silence, and this silence is the silence of a mountain with a gentle rain falling. The silence cleanses your mind of limitations as the gentle rain of the name keeps falling.

When your body sleeps the name goes on, and eventually you follow it to the point where your body sleeps, but you don't. Your consciousness never sleeps. You become awake. There is nothing that life can slip past you because of your constant guardian and protector. Do it. There is no religious barrier because all religions emanated from the consciousness that is your inner Self.

And when you become established in the divine consciousness and you watch with interest while your body finishes its karma for the life in which this happens, you will be entering the god and goddess world as a bona fide candidate for promotions that are beyond humans with their duality soaked minds to comprehend, so don't think about it.

We’ll stop there for the moment. Next time I’ll deal with ways of getting rid of the relationship problems of religious upbringing and familial programming to enable you to walk the path of IS without dragging along a ball and chain that someone else put onto you before you could do anything about it.