This advanced workshop is designed to introduce participants to what is known in Theosophical circles as the antahkarana or Rainbow Bridge and show how it relates to the Holy Ideas of Enneagram theory. It will be both didactic and experiential, speculative, yet grounded in texts that participants can easily access in bookstores and online.

In brief, according to spiritual science, the antahkarana (in Sanskrit, “inner faculty or organ of perception”) is the bridge of awareness and aspiration that connects the lower threefold personality (the three centers of intelligence) to the Spiritual Triad (Atma-Buddi-Manas of Theosophy, or the three Higher Centers in Enneagram studies). In the Mystery Schools, building this bridge must occur at a certain point in the journey of the Soul before the major initiations are taken and must be built consciously, out of chitta, or mental substance. It can be conceived of as a living, subtle, thought-form, a subjective thread of consciousness that links what H. P. Blavatsky called the three periodical vehicles: Monad-Soul-Personality.

Carl Marsak, M.A. has graduate degrees in religious studies (NYU) and cultural anthropology (CIIS) and has certified as an Enneagram teacher in the narrative tradition with Helen Palmer and David Daniels. Carl has been studying the Enneagram since 1987 and teaching it since 1998. He has also taught numerous courses in religion, anthropology, ESL, meditation, and the Tarot. Carl has published several articles in the Enneagram Monthly, and is currently working on a book, titled, To Function as a Soul: Initiation, the Enneagram, and the Restoration of the Mysteries. He lived at the Findhorn Community in Scotland from 1983-1985, India from 1992-1994, Iceland from 1996-199, and currently lives in Northern California, where he is the founder and director of The Enneagram Center of Mt. Shasta. His special area of interest is the integration of esotericism and Theosophical understandings with Enneagram studies and practices.