When self-consciousness binds us to the illusion of space and time then we are doomed to repeat the karmic cycles of cosmic manifestation. Pain and suffering become the way of life. Subconsciousness is the agency through which egoic personality is transformed. The active agency or power at work is the transmuting force of the fire of spirit. Fire has the power to burn away the old and transform objects from one nature to another. Through this transmuting nature, the power of spirit, one manifests the conscious awareness that human life is more than temporal, it is eternal. Through these classes and the specific training and movement exercises natural man is transformed into a higher species of being. In all accounts of the mystery schools there is always a reference to fire in connection with the experience of the eternal consciousness. Inner heat is the meaning of Shaman. Mystics, Shamanic healers bring their inner heat to every encounter. There is more to this than mystical symbolism.

Through the ages mythological stories have shown the power by means of which liberation is attained, and higher consciousness realized, it is often compared to being pierced by the fang of a venomous serpent. This is because the old man, the old ways, must “die” before the new man, new ways, may be “born.” No one can exercise the higher levels of consciousness and remain an ordinary human being. The first step in reaching higher consciousness is the sublimation of one’s own personal desires, for the one desire and one consciousness. We must be willing to lose our lives in order to find them. In order to be born anew, everything we know on a mental level must die. When you hear someone say I know a lot about this and that, and I want to share this lookout! The mental knowing is a main feature and trap of the ego. We need no more information, we just need to use what we already have.

In the Tales of Harry Potter, Harry’s encounter with the serpent in the depths of the castle represents the inner battle that one must fight with one’s own shadow side, one’s unconscious demons. You must be willing to go into the underworld, face and penetrate to the core your own demons and fears. You must be willing to die to the old way of being, in order to be transformed, reborn, and come back into the normal world with miraculous powers and knowing.

In mythology, the fang of the snake or the tooth of any animal is a sign of that which breaks down forms and begins the process of assimilation. In this image there is a hint of something deeper. He who enters into the perpetual intelligence, eternal Divine consciousness or conscious immortality, finds that he is not so much attained that consciousness, as that his lesser consciousness has been assimilated by the higher order of knowing.

The real actor in this divine event is not the ego, personality, or mind of the man. It is the one and all pervading spirit which is like a devouring fire, consuming the sense of a separate identity that releases us from the bonds of time and space. The consciousness of “I and others” disappears in the perfect unity. This is the final phase of personal consciousness.

When a human being reaches this awareness, his contemporaries suppose he has acquired unusual control over his environment. He knows better. He knows that he has identified himself with the central director or principal of the universe. Because this union has occurred, his every thought, his every word, his every act is an immediate undistorted expression of the conscious energy which administers the laws of nature.

He has not gained power. He simply gives free expression to the one power which is actually the central reality of every human life. He participates in the cosmic government. He is a fully enfranchised citizen who takes an active part in the execution of the laws. Nature obeys him because he expresses that which is both author and Lord of nature.