The question has been asked:
What is the Philosopher's Stone?
Is it something entirely spiritual, or has it a material aspect?
The ancient Alchemists and
Rosicrucians speak of that “Stone,” as if it were something substantial or
material, by means of which “base metals,” such as lead or copper, could be
transmuted into pure gold, and there have been a great many people during the
mediaeval age who spent their life and fortune in search of that Philosopher’s
Stone, for the purpose of gratifying their greed for the possession of gold,
and ultimately became insane about it.
We now know that these ancient
philosophers used a symbolical language for the purpose of hiding sacred truths
and protecting them against being desecrated by the profane.
The Philosopher’s Stone of which
they spoke is wisdom and fortitude of character, by means of which the energies
which give strength to our animal desires and passions and intellectual
faculties (symbolized as “base metals”) are employed on a higher plane, for the
purpose of attaining real knowledge. In this way the lower intellectual
faculties were transmuted into the “pure gold” of divine wisdom.
Wisdom is real knowledge, the realization
of truth, the perfect union of the knower with the known and the knowledge, as
it is represented by the symbol of the equilateral triangle. Perfect spiritual
self-knowledge or consciousness is attained only by the union of the
self-conscious spiritual self with the spiritual object of which it is to become
conscious in the power of the spirit, and the object of that knowledge is the
spiritual self.
Man, therefore, has to become
spiritual, if he desires to enter that state of spirituality, and if he attains
it, he is no more anything different from the object of his knowledge; subject and
object are one; in himself the unity of his spiritual self with the spirit of
the object has been established in the power of spirituality. Thus, if a man has
attained real spiritual self-knowledge, he has found the Philosopher’s Stone.
Man is therefore himself the
Philosopher’s Stone, if he has found his own real Self and become united with
it, and as his real Self belongs to the realm of divinity, his union with his divine
Self endows him with divine power.
But our own real Self is not a
mere spirit or airy nothing. We are at present clothed with a visible so-called
“material” body which perishes when the spirit has departed from it. Spirit without
a form is without individuality; it needs an organized body for its
manifestation as an individual being.
The Incorruptible Body
Our visible physical body, as it
is constituted at our present state of evolution, is not yet capable of
exhibiting the divine powers which belong to the spiritually regenerated divine
man. To come into conscious possession of such powers it is necessary to
develop within oneself that glorified form of which the apostle Paul speaks as
the “incorruptible body” and whose germ is sown within our corruptible physical
form.
He describes it in his first
letter to the Corinthians (C. xv. 35 to 50) as the celestial body of the
resurrection; but it may be added as an explanation, that the spirit of man,
after having left his corruptible body, will not be in possession of that incorruptible
one, if man has not become regenerated during his earthly life and that
glorified body become developed in him.
This incorruptible body and its
powers is also described in Patanjali’s Yoga Philosophy as incorruptible,
indestructible, transparent (and therefore invisible to our eyes), light and
glorious.
Everything in the world consists of vibrations of what we will call
“ether” in different states or degrees of condensation, and what seems to us
material and visible may be invisible and appear immaterial on other planes of
existence.
Thought-forms, for instance, will
seem to be very material on the mental plane and physical objects form no
obstacles to the penetration of thought. According to the philosophy of the
sages there is nothing real but God and all that appears is illusion (Maya). What we call “matter" is in its
ultimate state nothing substantial; it has no existence of its own.
The old Indian sage also describes
the different bodies of man in his Tattwa-Bodha,
or “knowledge of being,” and the same subject has been taken up by many theosophical
authors.
In the unregenerated this body
dissipates after death; it is the corruptible body, whose external expression is
the physical body, which disintegrates with it after the soul has
departed. In regenerated man this
ethereal body becomes consolidated and firm; it is the vehicle of spiritual powers
and can express and manifest them by means of its union with the physical form.
There is a school of philosophy
which teaches that this ethereal body was the true physical body of
man in his original “paradisiacal” state. This body was light, elastic, and
luminous; but owing to the injurious influence of certain hostile forces with
which it came into contact in the course of evolution, man was stripped of this
physical body and deprived of its protection.
This left his elementary sensitive
body subject to the actions of the elements and consequent suffering, and now
his object ought to be to regain this protecting covering, the incorruptible body,
and thus attain physical immortality upon this earth.
This view seems to me very selfish
and egotistical, but however that may be, it is certain that man on whatever
plane of existence he may be, cannot act without an organized body of some
kind, and that therefore the true Philosopher’s Stone is not a nebulous ideal
thing, but has its material aspect.
Man is only a perfect being when
he is in conscious possession of all his powers, physical, psychical, intellectual,
spiritual and divine, having also the organs and means for their expression.
The Alchemy
However, I have no doubt that
there exists also a physical aspect of Alchemy, by means of which certain
transmutations can be made, and I have witnessed some such experiments, but
would not recommend anybody to try them unless he is an adept and capable of
controlling the spiritual influences which on such occasions enter into action,
much against his will.
Unlike chemistry, which, by its
recently attained discoveries regarding the constitution of atoms and its use
of electricity, has made a step towards Alchemy, spiritual alchemy deals with
the spirit of physical substances and with “spiritual electricity” or the power
of the spiritual will; for, as has been stated above, “matter” is merely
appearance and in its ultimate aspect everything is made of “spirit.” By applying
the processes of Alchemy the spiritual foundation of substances is liberated.
Spirit is life and consciousness,
and as like attracts like, by such experiments influences of a certain kind are
attracted from the astral plane, which are likely to be of an inimical or
mischievous kind, seeking to hinder or destroy the work, and if the operator
has not sufficient moral power, mental fortitude and spiritual self-control to
resist such influences, he runs great danger of having his utensils overthrown;
he may even become obsessed or insane and tempted to kill himself; for no one
will be able to control the elemental spirits surrounding him, if he is not able
to control these same elementals within himself.
Instances of such cases are not
rare, and some of them have come within my own personal knowledge.
(The Occult Review, August 1910,
p.102-104)
(These cases
that Franz Hartmann knew, he narrated them in another article that you can read
here: the danger of
experimenting in occultism.)
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