Whoever practices asceticism is the ascetic, that is, one who is dedicated to Ascesis, which means: exercise, rules of life suited to achieve the suppression or absolute, full dominion of the passions, desires, physical tendencies, so as to obtain that purification (catharsis) of the soul which allows one to give oneself wholly to the spiritual and contemplative life, to proceed towards the spiritual union with the divinity. As the human being is made up of organic matter and spirit, the exercises are, of necessity, physical and spiritual.

Archeosophical Asceticism is something more than asceticism in general because it takes Man beyond the mystical states which are limited to the contemplation of God: it pushes him to the initiatic states, and therefore, to the true welding with the Creator.

 

Archeosophical Asceticism is the necessary prerequisite to create the instruments for a development of those natural resources of the human being, needed to realize the qualitative leap by which it is possible to go beyond the human condition, supported by grace, which puts into effect the saying of the Master: “…the kingdom of the Heavens is taken by force and the violent take possession of it….” (Matthew, 11:12).

 

Well, one of these instruments to violate the heavens is the art of breathing , because with control and education it is possible, or better, it is certain, to obtain command of and direct the subtle energies which secretly circulate in the body and to allow the I (which we are) to enter into contact with the Lord of All, lucidly passing through four modalities of consciousness:

1)- the daytime or waking consciousness;

2)- the consciousness of sleep with dreams;

3)- the consciousness of sleep without dreams;

4)- the cataleptic consciousness.

Tommaso Palamidessi

excerpt from "ARCHEOSOPHICAL ASCETICS AND PREMISSES OF THE SCIENCE OF RESPIRATION"

of the 13th Booklet