Part 4
To practise this kind of Alchemy he will require no books, no furnaces and no tools; for he is himself the alembic, the fire and the substance to be ennobled. There, in his silent laboratory and with doors closed against all vain and carnal desires and selfish thoughts, he may _mortify_ his terrestrial nature by gaining the victory of self-control, so that his higher nature may become _liberated_ from animal bonds by entering into the _resurrection_ from the tomb of ignorance into the light of self-knowledge. To accomplish this he will have to _purify_ his mind and let his soul become _animated_ by the power of the spirit of truth; that which is inert in him must become _sublimated_ in the fire of divine love, so as to rise to heaven in the shape of holy aspirations, while the smoke of sophistry, dogmatism, false science and self-righteousness must be permitted to pass out through the chimney, to return no more. In this way will he be able to find the way of combining {symbol} with {symbol} and thus to make it into substantial gold that will last through eternity.
The above will be sufficient to give a hint in regard to the character of Alchemy and its relation to chemistry. Between these two aspects there is a third one, namely, what may be called “Astral Alchemy.”
_The Alchemy of the Astral Plane._—As the lower Alchemy requires for its practice the faculties of the physical body, and the celestial Alchemy the energy of the spirit having become a power in the body of man: so the practice of Alchemy in dealing with that which belongs to the astral plane requires the evolution of consciousness and perception in the astral organism of man; for in the majority of those who live on the physical plane, the astral form is as unconscious of its surroundings upon the plane to which it belongs, and as ignorant of their nature, as a babe is ignorant of the meanings of things in this world. It is, however, not our purpose to enter into this subject, as this would bring us into the almost inexhaustible realm of spiritism, hypnotism, witchcraft and sorcery: all of which things are superstitions if believed in by those who know nothing about their laws, but realities for those who know the laws by which such phenomena take place.[28] The key to the understanding of these phenomena is in the realization of the truth that the Universe is a manifestation of power upon the three planes of existence. The spiritual plane has its seven states of existence, representing self-conscious intelligent powers, thrones and dominions, angels and archangels, all of these being manifestations of the primordial cause called _God_. The physical plane has its seven states of existence, represented as powers in which consciousness is still latent. In the _middle region_, the astral plane, we also find again seven states of existence in the form of living forces attaining consciousness in the organization of man. There the “seven planets” manifest themselves either for good or for evil according to the nature of the person in whom they become manifest. Thus, for instance, that universal element which is symbolized as {symbol} will become manifested in man as universal love or as selfishness according to his condition. If {symbol} rules his {symbol} he will have self-control; but if his {symbol} rules his love, he will give way to his lusts. If the element of {symbol} in him rules his {symbol}, his intelligence will be of a terrestrial nature belonging to the spirit of the earth; but if his intelligence is master over his earthly elements, he will be capable of high aspirations. If the element of {symbol} rules his {symbol}, he will employ his intellect for the purpose of satisfying his greed, but if {symbol} is the master of his {symbol} he will be of a noble character.
All this is merely said to hint at the sublimity of alchemical science and call attention to the universal truth; that _every principle, in whatever plane of existence it may exist, is not a product of the form in which it develops and manifests itself; but that the form is the field for its development and manifestation_; in the same sense as the universal sunlight is not a product of the bodies upon which it shines, but the bodies are instruments for the development and manifestation of the qualities of light. Thus the life, consciousness, will, virtue, passion, or any other spiritual, emotional, or physical state of a man is not the product of his form, but a manifestation of a universal life principle becoming manifested in him according to the conditions presented by his constitution. Life is only one, manifesting itself in animals as animal life, in plants as vegetable life, etc. Consciousness is only one, manifesting itself as true self-consciousness in spiritual beings, and as instincts in the lower animal kingdom. Love is only one and universal, otherwise it could not manifest everywhere the same qualities; it does not belong to one individual or one country; it is born in heaven; but it becomes manifest upon the earth in men, animals, plants and minerals, under different aspects according to the conditions which it finds. Everything is a manifestation of one primordial Unity revealing itself in a threefold aspect. Man himself is nothing more than a manifestation of the universal power that called him into existence and built up his bodily form. He is not his body nor his mind; but the expression upon a lower plane of a higher individual state of being; one of the letters that constitute the great alphabet of humanity. Being continually deluded by the illusion caused by the apparent isolation of his form and its separation from other forms of existence, he imagines himself to be something essentially separated from other beings, and thus he forgets his own universal nature. Only when man begins to realise what he himself in reality is, can he begin to attain real knowledge in regard to three kingdoms of Nature. The object of science is said to be the recognition of truth, but it is also self-evident that no true science can exist as long as the truth is not recognised and even rejected; for nothing less than by the power of truth in man can the truth be known. No man can have self-knowledge of anything which is not within himself.
It will be clear that this subject is so vast as to render it impossible, in a work of this kind, to do more than merely skim over the surface, and a thousand things have to remain unsaid which ought to be explained; but it is not our purpose to enter into the details of the science of the _Astronomy of Life_ or the _Chemistry of Life_, or to discuss at length the highest problems of _Occult Philosophy_. The object of the present work is merely to remove existing misconceptions, and to throw out seeds, which, if they fall upon a fruitful ground, will grow and bear fruits, such as ripen not in the outer shell of Nature, but within her inner temple, in the higher regions of thought.
IV. THE VIRTUE OF THE PHYSICIAN.
“Virtue” means _power_; it is said to be derived from _vir_, Man, and means manly power, efficacy, strength. Man being somewhat more than a physical body or an animal, it means a superior, spiritual, substantial power, such as becomes manifested as nobility of character, purity of heart, clearness of mind, strength of will, firmness of decision, quickness of perception, penetration of thought, benevolence, kindness, honesty, truthfulness, unselfishness, modesty. This virtue is something infinitely superior to the common “virtuosity,” which consists in an outward appearing of being virtuous and pious for fear of exposure and dread of criticism, and it is also infinitely superior to what is called “morality” by the moralists; a thing praised as the highest attainable object; but being in fact nothing more than a conforming to certain customs and views. There is not necessarily any self-sacrifice in practising morals, but it is more often a means for gratifying one’s vanity. The word “moral” comes from _mores_, manners. What is according to the manners and customs in one country, and therefore regarded as “_moral_” there, is immoral in another place where different manners exist. A morality without spirituality is of no real value. The same may be said of “ethics,” derived from _ēthos_, custom, and which seems to be one of the terms that have been invented for the purpose of creating confusion, and avoiding calling spiritual things by their right names.
The _virtue_ which, according to Paracelsus, is the fourth pillar of the temple of Medicine, has nothing to do with shams; it means _the power resulting from being a man in the true sense of this term and being in possession of not merely the theories regarding the treatment of Disease but of the power to cure them oneself_.
There are at present thousands of medical practitioners, whose only merit is and ever will be, that they have succeeded in passing an examination and obtaining the title M.D.; but the title “doctor” means merely an academical degree; the diploma merely certifies that the examiners believe the student to have fulfilled all that the regulations require, and although such a title may involve the right to poison and kill without being punished for it, the conferring of such a degree does not constitute a physician. The true physician as well as the real priest is ordained by God. Paracelsus says in substance as follows:—
“He who can cure disease is a physician. Neither emperors nor popes, neither colleges nor high schools can create physicians. They can confer privileges and cause a person who is not a physician to appear as if he were one; they can give him permission to kill, but they cannot give him the power to cure; they cannot make him a real physician if he has not already been ordained by God. The true physician does not brag about his cleverness or praise his medicines or seek to monopolize the right of robbing the patient; for he knows that the work must praise the master, and not the master the work. There is a knowledge which is derived from man, and another knowledge which is derived from God through the light of nature. He who has not been born to be a physician will never succeed. A physician should be faithful and charitable. He who loves only himself and his own pocket will be of little benefit to the sick. Medicine is much more an art than a science. To know the experience of others is useful to a physician; but all the learning of books cannot make a man a physician, unless he is one by nature. Medical wisdom is only given by God.” (Comp. “Paragranum,” i. 4.)
This virtue which constitutes the true physician cannot be created by colleges, nor can it be conferred by anyone personally upon himself. No one can confer upon himself a thing which he does not possess, or without the aid of any higher influence make himself better than that which he is; because, as has been explained above, the power exercised by any form is not the creation of the form, but an eternal principle, entering into objective existence in forms and becoming manifested in and through them by its own power. Neither truth nor wisdom can be manufactured; they exist independently of all opinions, observations, speculation, and logic; they may be hidden from our sight like the sun on a rainy day; but as the sun is independent of our being aware of his presence, so the truth exists eternally whether or not it is acknowledged by us. If the whole generation of mankind at present walking this earth should turn into idiots, the truth would not therefore cease to be, but would become manifested again as wisdom in a more enlightened age.
Nothing can rise to heaven but what has descended from it, we can only by overcoming that which is false render ourselves receptive for that which is true. _Eckhart_ says:—“Divine Wisdom is to God what the sunlight is to the sun; it is one with Him, a necessary activity, a never dying fountain, having its source in the heart of God.”
This brings us back again to a _religious_ basis (if we are permitted to use this ill-treated and misunderstood term), and to the necessity that he who makes it his profession to employ the laws of nature and treat the body of man should know the position which man occupies in nature and the position which nature occupies in regard to the origin from which it originates.
This science requires not mere words, but self-knowledge. Wisdom can only be taught by Wisdom itself; but a science based upon a recognition of truth disperses the clouds which prevent the light of the truth from entering into the heart and becoming incorporated and manifested in man.
III.
THE FIVE CAUSES OF DISEASE.
If we inquire from modern medical science: What are the causes of diseases? we shall probably be answered:
1. _Age._ 2. _Heredity._ 3. _Intermarriage._ 4. _Sex._ 5. _Temperament._ 6. _Climate and locality._ 7. _Town or country._ 8. _Hygienic conditions._ 9. _Occupation._ 10. _Air._ 11. _Previous disease._ 12. _Mental and moral conditions._ 13. _External physical conditions._ 14. _Poisons._ 15. _Temperature._ 16. _Diet._ 17. _Epidemic disease, contagion, malaria, parasites and growths._[29]
We will forbear to pass any remarks upon this classification of the causes of diseases, which merely enumerates certain conditions in which diseases may arise, and we will pass on to the classification of the causes of diseases given by Paracelsus; but as this subject has already received attention in a previously published work on the doctrines of Paracelsus[30], the following is intended merely to supply additional food for thought.
Paracelsus says:
“_All diseases have a beginning in either of the three substances;[31] Salt, Sulphur, or Mercury_; which means that they may take their origin either within the kingdom of matter, within the realm of the soul, or in the sphere of the spirit. If body, soul and mind are in perfect harmony with each other, no disharmony exists; but if a cause of discord arises in either one of these three planes, it communicates itself to the rest.”
Before proceeding further we will inquire about the nature of these _three Substances_:
SALT {symbol}, SULPHUR {symbol}, AND MERCURY {symbol}, which may be translated as Matter, Energy and Intelligence. They are in fact not three essentially different things, but only three modes of activity of one and the same thing; for everything is substantial, each contains a latent or active force, in each is the potentiality of consciousness, if it has not already become manifested therein. Everything exists, therefore, by reason of these “three substances,” and if we for the sake of forming some idea of their nature look at the world as a manifestation of _electricity_ (which must necessarily be substantial, as there could be no force without substance), we may compare them as follows:
{symbol} to electric resistance.
{symbol} to the tension of electromotive force.
{symbol} to the intensity of the current.
No one would ever think of these three measures as being separate entities, which like “substance, energy and intelligence” are merely three aspects or conceptions of one universal life; but these distinctions are necessary for the purpose of forming a conception.
“Nothing can be thoroughly known without a knowledge of its beginning. Man is placed into _three substances_, in each of which he has a beginning; and each thing has its substance, its number and measure (constituting their harmony). From (the state of) these three substances originate all causes, origins, and also the understanding of diseases. These three substances, _Sulphur_, _Mercurius_, _Sal_, give to everything its corporeality, each substance having its own qualities. If these qualities are good (in harmony with each other) there will be no disease but if they enter into opposition to each other, disease (disharmony) will be the result. (_Paracelsus_, “Paramirum,” _Lib._ I., 1, 2, and 3).”
Within these three kingdoms disorders may arise from either of the following _five causes of disease_:
1. From the _Ens astrale_; namely from surrounding conditions in external nature.
2. From the _Ens veneni_; meaning from poisons and impurities.
3. From the _Ens naturæ_; including causes inherited from the parents.
4. From the _Ens spirituale_; especially those caused by an evil will or morbid imagination.
5. From the _Ens Dei_; to which belong the ills arising from evil _Karma_ acquired during this or a previous incarnation; in other words, the result of _divine justice_.
We will now attempt to define the meaning of these five beginnings.
I.—ENS ASTRALE.[32]
_Diseases arising from external influences_; whether from physical nature or from deeper causes; the planet upon which we live being itself an _astrum_ (star), having a physical and ethereal body, a life, a soul, a mind and a spirit.
“The stars on the sky do not form a man. Man grows out of two beginnings; the _Ens seminis_ (the male sperm) and the _Ens virtutis_ (the reincarnating spiritual monad). He has therefore two natures, a corporeal and a spiritual nature, and either of these two requires its _digest_ (_matrix_ and nutriment). As the womb of the mother is the world surrounding the child, from which the fœtus receives its nutriment, so is terrestrial nature from which the terrestrial body of man receives the influences acting in his organism. The _Ens astrale_ is a thing which we do not see, but which contains us and everything that lives and has sensation. It is that which contains the air, and from which and in which live all the elements, and which we symbolize as M (_Mysterium_), (“Paramirum,” _Lib._ I.)
This _Ens Astrorum_ is therefore evidently the _Akâsa_, which forms the basis of all material things in physical nature, and if the close relation between man’s physical nature and the physical nature surrounding him were better known, it would become more comprehensible how the states of the all-penetrating ether, changes in temperature, heat and cold, electric and magnetic conditions in nature, come to affect the physical nature of man, acting internally by inducing corresponding changes in his microcosm, even if he is protected against the direct action of rain, storm, moisture, cold, heat, etc., etc. A sudden change of conditions in the outside air can affect a patient imprisoned in a room where no such change is perceptible, and a cloudy day produce a melancholy effect even upon a blind person. There are no end of diseases which for want of a better explanation are attributed to “catching cold,” etc., while in fact it is the existence of certain conditions in the all-pervading ether, which induces similar conditions in the body of the patient. Thus, for instance, changes of the moon, or the position of the moon, or the magnetic currents of the earth, produce certain effects in certain persons, even if these persons know nothing about these laws, for it is a fact well known to the ancients, but which has almost been lost sight of by modern medicine, that man, apart from the order in which his organs are arranged, is essentially a counterpart of nature, an image of the world on a smaller scale, a _microcosm_ within the macrocosm. An atmospheric pressure in outside nature produces an atmospheric pressure in him; if nature rejoices in the sunlight of spring, his heart rejoices with it; if storms rage on the outside, similar storms may be aroused in him, etc., etc. He is, in fact, only a laboratory in which the universal forces of nature are performing their work. To this chapter also belong all miasmas and contagious influences, with all the bacteriæ, microbes, amœbæ, bacilli, etc., etc., which are the pride of modern discoverers, but whose characteristics, if not the forms of their bodies, were well known to Paracelsus, who describes them under the names of _Talpa_, _Matena_, _Tortilleos_, _Permates_, etc. He says:
“God has caused living creatures to exist in all the elements, and there is nothing empty of life. That which becomes manifested in the visible kingdom has come into existence by being generated in the upper regions. Without such a generation above, it could not have become manifested below.” (“Lib. Meteorum,” I. 4.)
Since the modern discovery of the cholera, tubercle bacilli, and other micro-organisms spreading contagious diseases, it has been the opinion of many, that the presence of such microbes was the only and fundamental cause of such diseases; but still more recent investigations have shown such that the presence of these microbes does not constitute the whole cause; for they have been with impunity introduced into the human organism, and have also been found to exist in persons who had fully recovered from such a disease. This surely shows that there must be an influence causing the microbes to come into existence, after which they can spread and multiply if the conditions are favourable, and the fundamental cause of such epidemics is therefore not the presence of the microbes, this being merely a symptom, but the influences which cause them to come into existence, producing _states_ of which the bodies of these organisms are a product and expression and which appears to proceed from causes situated deeper than visible physical nature, if we do not mistake the form for the “spirit” of which the form is the symbol.
“Human science knows how to philosophize about the things that come within its external observation; but Wisdom shows what is contained in the _Prima Materia_, which is a greater and higher knowledge than that of the _Ultima Materia_ (the physical plane).” (“Meteorum,” I. 4.)
This “higher region,” from which such injurious influences originate, causing the growth of miasmas and microbes, is the “_astral plane_,” or the soul of the world, and as the evil states in the soul of the world are caused by the evil states of the human mind, it becomes comprehensible how epidemic diseases, pestilence and plague, no less than wars, are the ultimate results of disharmonies and depraved spiritual states in the soul of humanity. The greatest truth if seen through a perverted mind appears distorted as a caricature and superstition; it can be seen in its own light, only if properly understood.
The astral plane is the plane of desires, emotions, and passions; that is to say, the plane of those influences (forms of the universal will), which become manifested as desires, emotions, and passions in the animal organism, and if we were to enter this subject, it would bring us within the realm of the supersensual but nevertheless actual kingdom of living elemental powers belonging to the soul of the world. If our eyes were opened to the perception of thoughts, it would be seen how a continual thought-transference is taking place among individual minds, influencing and determining their actions, even if they are not aware of it, causing not only individual moral diseases, insanities, obsessions and crimes, but whole epidemics of such kinds. There is an immense field for investigation for the psychologist; not for that kind of “psychologists” who imagine that insanity is under all circumstances a disturbance of the functions of the brain from physical causes, but for those who can realise that the functions of the brain may be disturbed by the disordered action of the mind; for although in many cases of brain disease it is as difficult to determine whether the disorder of the mind or that of the brain existed first, as it would be to answer the question, which existed first, the hen or the egg? nevertheless a lesion of the tissues of the brain does not take place without a cause, and this cause in the majority of such cases comes from the sphere of the emotions and thoughts.