Samael Aun Weor
Samael Aun Weor, born Víctor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez, was a Colombian-Mexican teacher and author of over sixty books of esoteric spirituality. He formed a new religious movement under the banner of "Universal Gnosticism", or simply gnosis, and taught the practical and esoteric principles purported to "awaken consciousnes" and fundamentally change the practitioner's psychological condition. Many of these teachings are directly sourced, often without attributions, from other esotericists.
He first made a name in the Gnosticism of his native country of Colombia, before moving to Mexico in 1956, where his movement gained increased popularity, and his works became popular among practitioners of occultism and Western esotericism, and were translated into other languages. His doctrine is studied widely to this day.
In 1948, Gómez referred to himself as the name of his being, Aun Weor, which means "the verb or messenger of God." In 1954, after undergoing a ceremony he described as the birth of "Inner Christ," he adopted the name of Samael Aun Weor, which he used until his death in 1977. Samael Aun Weor referred to his teachings as "The Doctrine of Synthesis", claiming to express the existence of the "perennial philosophy, with its highest teleological function apparently being the accomplishment of "Christification" and "Final Liberation".
Biography
Early life
Victor Manuel Gómez Rodriguez was born in Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Republic of Colombia, son of Manuel Gómez Quijano and Francisca Rodríguez de Gómez. He was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, but later rejected the Church of Rome. His childhood and family life are not well known, except that he had a brother, and his father remarried after a divorce.He was sent to a Roman Catholic Jesuit school but soon dropped out, disappointed by religion; he was twelve years old at the time. Instead he said he invested most of his time in the study of metaphysical and esoteric treatises. At the age of 17, he claimed that he was asked to lecture at the local Theosophical Chapter.
He stated that a year later was admitted into the occult society Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua. This was founded by Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, aka “Huiracocha”, a German intelligence agent in World War I, a racist, admirer of Hitler and anti-semite. He claimed that Krumm-Heller consecrated him as a bishop despite his young age, a claim “vehemently rejected by every F.R.A. group”, whilst certain of his followers even claimed that “Samael was the patriarch of the Gnostic Church and Krumm-Heller was the archbishop”.
Early adult life, marriages, and children
Few details of his life are known between the mid-1930s and 1950. He became a spiritual vagabond of sorts, traveling with neither home nor income. At one point he said he had lived with a tribe of indigenous people in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia, and that they had taught him secrets of healing, which he claimed to have shared with the world in his work "Occult Medicine and Practical Magic".It was also during these years that he described his first experience of what he labelled as the Illuminating Void where he claimed to have met his "Inner Being" or Atman whose name he said was "Aun Weor", meaning in Hebrew "Strength and Light".
He was briefly married to Sara Dueños and they had a son named "Imperator". However, in 1946, he met and married the "Lady-Adept" known as "Litelantes" or "Negrita" with whom he lived for 31 years and had four children: Osiris, Isis, Iris, and Hypatia, with his practise of "Scientific Chastity". Samael Aun Weor states that as soon as he met her, this "Lady-Adept" Genie began to instruct him in the Science of "Jinn State", which apparently involved placing the physical body in the fourth dimension. He claimed this was known as Nahuatlism in Aztec religion.
Career as an occult teacher and leader
By 1948 he had started teaching a small group of students. In 1950, under the name "Aun Weor", he managed to publish The Perfect Matrimony, or The Door to Enter into Initiation with the help of his close disciples. The book, later entitled The Perfect Matrimony, unveiled the purported secret of sexuality as the cornerstone of the world's great religions. In it he addressed topics such as sexual transmutation, "white tantra", and esoteric initiation.According to his diary, writing about sex in such a candid manner was met with disdain by the majority of the public at the time. Seen as immoral and pornographic, Aun Weor found himself fleeing angry mobs attempting to silence him through violent means. From March 14 to 19 of 1952 Aun Weor spent five days in jail, allegedly for "committing the crime of healing the sick". An account of his incarceration is recounted in a personal diary he later published as Secret Notes of a Guru.
After March 19, 1952, Aun Weor and some disciples built and lived near the Summum Supremum Sanctuarium, an "underground temple" in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. On October 27, 1954, Aun Weor claimed to have received what is referred to as the "Initiation of Tiphereth", which, according to his doctrine, is the beginning of the incarnation of the Logos or "Glorian" within the soul. He states that in his case the name of his Glorian has always been called "Samael" through the ages. From then on, he would sign his name Samael Aun Weor.
Aun Weor stated that this union of Samael with Aun Weor is the Maitreya Buddha Kalki Avatar of the New Age of Aquarius. Upon being asked exactly what such a title meant, he replied:
He went on to say that term Maitreya does not refer to an individual, but to any being who has "Christified" themself. However he also stated that his specific "Inner Being" was the "Maitreya" or "Kalki Avatar" of the "Age of Aquarius". But although he would declare himself as the true Kalki Avatar many times throughout his works, he seemed to reject idolization:
Living in Mexico City
In 1956, he left Colombia and went to Costa Rica and El Salvador. Later in 1956, he settled permanently in Mexico City, where he would begin his public life.Before 1960, he had arguably published 20 more books with topics ranging from endocrinology and criminology to kundalini yoga. He founded numerous Gnostic Institutions and created Gnostic centers in Mexico, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. A "triangle" relationship was established between the Universal Gnostic Movement founded by Samael Aun Weor, the South American Liberation Action in Argentina headed by Francisco A. Propato, Ph.D., and the Sivananda Aryabarta Ashram directed by Swami Sivananda in India.
In spite of its success, the development of the Gnostic Movement was not without dramatic setbacks, according to its followers. By the time of publishing the revised edition of The Perfect Matrimony, the movement had fallen apart. Aun Weor wrote that "those who did not leave the Gnostic Movement can be counted on the fingers of one hand." However, by the time of his death, Samael Aun Weor believed that he had completely re-established the broad international reaches the movement previously held, even claiming:
Into the 1960s, he continued to write many books on topics, such as hermetic astrology, flying saucers, and the Kabbalah. However, he also wrote sociopolitical works such as the Platform of POSCLA and The Social Christ. Topics such as the "false" doctrines of Wall Street materialism, atheism, and particularly Marxism-Leninism are discussed. POSCLA's motto was given as, "All for one and one for all," and its method, the conscious practice of ahimsa.
Final written work
In the last decade of his life, he penned works such as Parsifal Unveiled, which details the esoteric symbolism of the Wagner opera, and Gnostic Anthropology in which he heavily criticized the theories of Darwin, Haeckel, "and their followers", claiming for example that monkeys "devolved" from humans. The books The Great Rebellion, Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology, and The Revolution of the Dialectic explain his theories on esoteric psychology and Dialectic. During this time, he was preparing the The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, in which he gave a verse-by-verse commentary on the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia.Death
By 1972, Samael Aun Weor wrote that his death and resurrection would be occurring before 1978. In the chapter entitled The Resurrection, in his work The Three Mountains, he stated that the eight years of ordeals within the Trial of Job would occur between his 53rd and 61st birthdays. Furthermore, in the same work, it is stated that this ordeal occurs prior to resurrection, and the one going through it is "deprived of everything, even of his own sons, and is afflicted by an impure sickness." By August 1977 he had developed stomach cancer. During this time he continued to speak to both his students and the general public, giving radio and television interviews while touring Mexico. Eventually he was forced to stop, due to debilitating stomach pain. As his condition steadily worsened, he would mention to those at his bedside, "Don't cling to my battered body, instead cling to my doctrinal body." Aun Weor died on December 24, 1977.Years before his death, he declared he would adopt the use of a duly prepared ancient Egyptian "mummy" as a vehicle for further work, a vehicle better prepared than his own "physical body". Many of his followers expected him to return publicly shortly after his death, as he had claimed to have undergone a ceremony of "Resurrection" and thus be capable of immortality. According to his own statements he planned to remain incognito for a certain time so that “the leaven will ferment.”
Doctrine of Synthesis
The Doctrine of Synthesis is a term Aun Weor used to describe the teachings he delivered through his books and lectures, because it is an amalgam of an extensive variety of teachings. Critics suggest that his work contained large amounts of plagiarised material.Although Samael took many of his teachings directly from Blavatsky and Gurdjieff, these are considered by Gnostics to be only a conceptual foundation in Aun Weor's teachings, as preparation for the real unveiling of occultism or gnosis that he taught. He drew extensively on Blavatsky including her own idiosyncratic explanations of Buddhist philosophy, and the core of his teachings, such as the doctrine of multiple "I's" and the idea that the present state of the earth comes from a mistake by the archangels "Looisos" and "Sakkaki", comes directly from Gurdjieff.
Aun Weor suggests that his doctrine is experiential, and must be put into practice for it to be of any value to the student. Throughout his works there are hundreds of techniques and exercises that are said to of help in the development of psychic powers, for example leaving the dense physical body at will, in order to be taught in the schools of the "Higher Worlds." The techniques include the combination of Aun Weor's techniques of "meditation" and "sexual transmutation". These may not have obvious effect; it is taught that the perfection of such powers may take more than one lifetime. The meditation techniques bear no similarity to those of Tibetan Buddhism, despite Samael having claimed to have been a member of the "Sacred Order of Tibet"
It is stated that if a student is successful in "awakening consciousness", he or she will eventually experience a continuous state of vigilance not only during the day but also while the physical body is sleeping, and most importantly after death. This is significant because Aun Weor states that those who have a sleeping consciousness are not aware of their postmortem condition, just as they are not aware when they are physically sleeping.