THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE EXPLAINED BY FRANZ HARTMANN

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.)