We present here a description of our courses and other activities. We start with an overview of our general structure. At the end of this section you can find a complete list of our courses. We make beforehand a very general point about our teaching.
Our main interest is to help our students in awakening their consciousness. As we say in the Section "The Gnostic Path",
"We strongly feel, therefore, that what we do at the Centre is merely to facilitate this process, to give the students the tools and abilities to be able to hear and follow their own message from the Being. "
This has consequences in the way we give our teaching. It is necessary to give some factual material, as a kind of temporary framework on which the students can build and interpret their experiences. But this framework has to be, as the students awaken, rediscovered and made to become part of their gnostic knowlege.
An example will illustrate this. In our Short Course on Meditation we have a lecture on Chakras. We give the students their temporary framework on this topic, based on the gnostic teachings of many great masters, giving descriptions of each chakra, their functions, etc. However, we do not consider that the students have completed this part of their course until they have experienced the action of the chakras as they open and the impact of this in their spiritual state, as well as maybe seeing the chakras with their inner eye or even in some cases with their physical ones.
Or, consider the descriptions we give of the "inner worlds", which are really enhanced states of consciousness. These descriptions will help the student at the beginning to identify and make sense of their own experiences; but only these will, in the fullness of time, give meaning to these concepts. We must experience!
When they join us, the students are members of what we call the Exoteric Circle, or the First Chamber. They are people who are starting to awaken - they would not come to us otherwise - and need teaching and support to progress. We estimate that our students have progressed enough when they reach the end of the Cycle B of lectures - it would take something like a year and a half to two years to achieve this stage - to be invited to the Mesoteric Circle, or Second Chamber. The lectures will continue, but there will also be ritual practices, of high mystical content, leading to advanced meditative practices and of course, further, to enhanced consciousness.
Some students prefer not to engage in the ritual practices, and stay thus in the First Chamber. They continue with us, and follow the same complete set of lectures, practices, seminars, etc.
We usually offer two 8-week courses in our Leeds headquarters, one at the end of September, the other at the beginning of February. These courses are normally associated with Meditation. Some students that attend these courses stay with us, moving on to our extensive, long course. News as to the exact dates and orientation of our short courses appear in the Recent News section of the Home Page. These courses follow more or less the lines of the course given in this site, a Short Course on Meditation.
We also offer week-end Seminars in a location a few miles from Harrogate. Such Seminars are usually directed towards existing students, but if we have enough applicants we will be glad to organize one for beginners. If you are interested in attending, please contact us. The teaching is free, but there is a charge for room and board, usually about £40, from Friday evening to late Sunday afternoon.
There are also occasional mini-seminars involving an overnight stay in the Leeds Centre from Saturday to Sunday.
This course consists in more-or-less 100 topics delivered over several years, together with practices. They are divided into three cycles, named A, B and C, and the following are some of the subjects covered:
- Individuation and the building of the Philosopher's Stone.
- Tarot and Kabalah
- Gnostic Anthropology and Cosmology
- Dream Yoga
- Meditation
- Tatwas and elementals. Elemental magic.
- Esoteric Christianity
- The Awakening of Consciousness