Hi Juvenal,You asked: “have you ever read about alchemy?”
Yes, I have and now understand that most, if not all, of the great alchemists of past centuries were actually investigators, practitioners and teachers of non-dual philosophy. In earlier times, in religion-dominated societies, it was often quite dangerous for individuals to openly explore non-dual spiritual teaching, so they were forced to do this under the guise of searching for the so-called philosopher’s stone that would turn base-metal into gold. They knew this stated pursuit would be tolerated and even approved by wealth-seeking ecclesiastics and local authorities who would not then question their researches, collecting of books and travels to other enlightened masters etc. Of course, they had to set up laboratories and ‘experiments’ to keep up appearances, but their real passion was to discover the truth of man’s essential nature and pass their insights on to other earnest seekers.
Naturally, there were many thousands of lesser souls who heard about the lab equipment and thought there was a real chance that someone could create gold out of sheet lead, got in on the act and wasted the rest of their lives on a futile search for riches. The imitators, like the ecclesiastics, never guessed what the real alchemists were up to.
To the true alchemists, the so-called philosopher’s stone was a symbol of the transmuting power of truth when it is known, understood and practiced. They, as we have seen, were not in quest of a magical stone, but That which transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the divine, discord into harmony and mind-made suffering into peace. What they yearned for was found, not by some feat of wizardry or arduous attainment, but by simply seeing that all is Consciousness (or God) and that everything that appears is actually an expression of the divine Source! After this direct inseeing and consequent shift in their understanding of what constituted reality, they had to use symbolic language and codes to record their discovery.
One of the ways they might do this was to write an encrypted book or engrave a tablet that purported to be about turning base-metal into gold, but was really about the ultimate understanding or ‘enlightenment’. They had to be extremely secretive, for if their real purpose was found out, they know they could be put to death for being a heretic or a blasphemer. To the society of their day, the enlightened alchemists were content to be regarded as harmless cranks and dubious scholars.
Awakened or ‘enlightened’ people have never enlightened everyone that came in contact with them. We see this most obviously in the cases of Jesus and Gautama (Buddha). In fact, only a small number of those who encountered these great souls seemed to truly understand their teaching. (many are called but few are chosen.)
Why was this? Well, Juvenal, it’s pretty much the same today. Just as the heat of an oven will soften butter,but harden clay, so conscious awareness or the awareness of truth in a seer will attract those who are ready to awaken and repel those who are not. Those who are fully conscious will help those who are just beginning to wake up spiritually to become more and more conscious, while their effect on spiritually unconscious people will be to drive them further into unconsciousness and mind-conditioned behavior. You will probably be experiencing this to some degree or other right now among your associates in Iraq.
The good news, Juvenal, is that there are still ‘enlightened’ teachers in our midst today, only they are no longer disguised as alchemists, but as fairly ordinary people who wear blue-jeans, drive cars and use computers etc. Through their low-profile work, figuratively speaking, base stuff is being transmuted into gold in the lives of many who stumble upon them and recognize what they have to offer. But this only happens, it seems, when what is Deep in the teacher can reach what is Deep in the seeker. Then “Deep calls unto Deep”, and with the answering, there begins a steady transformation on every level of the respondent’s life-experience. A golden moment indeed!