Romancing The Stone
Chapter One
The young lad who stood before me was no more than twenty-three years old. He had in his eye that eager glint, that heady mix of innocent vitality and enthusiasm in the face of the mysterious unknown.
The question he had asked me rolled around my head as it had done many times. If I had a penny for every time I had been asked this…
“I want to be a yogi and master the practice of alchemy,” said the boy. “I feel I am ready. Will you teach me?”
I smiled to myself. Gone were the days when a yogi toiled for his knowledge and sweated to breathe life into it, today they want their cookies now!
“Have you any idea what you ask? What do you know about the four great elements?” I asked the young boy.
“Well I have been practicing the meditation on the four elements for three years now. I think I know them quite well.”
“Then you will know by now how the great work of the alchemist is done. So be gone with you and get on with it. And don’t trouble me with your tiresome requests till it’s done.”
“But that’s just it. I am asking you to teach me how to make the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“It is made out of mastery of the four great elements and consciousness itself. Are you not a master of these after three years? No? Then be gone, and get on with your work.”
“Is that it then?” said the boy, “Just mastery of the four great elements?”
“Indeed.”
“And how will I know when I have mastered them?”
“When the Philosopher’s Stone appears.”
“And when might that be?”
”When you have finally let go all desire for it.”
“Huh?”
“Four times the world comes into being and is destroyed. Four cycles of folding and unfolding make the four ages of our world system. The cycle of Earth, Water, Fire and Air. When you have seen and understood clearly the coming into being of things and their undoing in each of the four cycles of Earth, Water, Fire and Air…When you have bellowed your furnace through each of these ages and when the elements are revealed to you in their final undoing, then you will know how to make the Philosopher’s Stone. Now in my reckoning an Aeon is the time it takes for the world to arise and settle, bring forth life and undo itself, and this undoing is done by each of the four elements in turn with the degeneration of the consciousness that vitalises it. So if I am not wrong that is four Aeons. Now you have three years under your belt and your fire is not yet lit; I suggest young man you have work to do.”
And so it is. We live at the culmination of an age in which the efforts of man have turned tirelessly towards the ever swifter acquisition of the objects of his desires. Gone are the days of real toil in the pursuit of what is precious, to the point where little is valued and where the most precious of spiritual gifts is placed alongside one’s material desires on the list of “Things I must have”. Today it seems that we give up little to acquire what we seek. The days of making sacrifices to win our heart’s desire are long gone. We are so used to being able to gratify our desires with the simple purchase of their object that the idea of a lifetime’s work, or many for that matter, in the pursuit of our aspirations is an alien concept to the minds of most.
I have been asked many times to teach the healing arts and the alchemical process to my students of meditation. I do not believe I am stingy with the teachings I share, I offer them up freely to everyone. They need only ask. But perhaps in doing so I have done them an injustice, for I have failed to instil in them the true sense of the road that is travelled on the way to spiritual knowledge.
We live in the West in a society lacking a culture of spiritual cultivation. Religion long ago took the place of genuine spiritual endeavour, and when even religious faith became too much of a commitment, intuition became the new god, giving everyone access to whatever truth suited their ideas of the world. It is hardly surprising therefore that an aspiring yogi such as this lad would believe that the mastery of spiritual knowledge is something that can be taught like a university degree. “Sign up for the three year course in Spiritual Truth. The graduate study of the way of things.” I can imagine such courses appearing in the syllabus of colleges before long, but reflect if you will on the chasm that lies between information and knowledge.
There is no map that can tell us what even the simplest of journeys may entail. It can merely hint at the way. Only the testimony of those who have walked the road can tell us what we might expect to encounter upon it, and even then we will not know how it is, until we walk the road ourselves. For some journeys a map may well suffice, but there are others of an entirely different kind, for which the call of the heart is the only pointer to the way. Some journeys we are cast upon against our will, others we may or may not choose. But there is one journey that calls out to all of us, and that is the one that leads us out of the lowlands of bondage, doubt and fear to the high-plains of freedom, trust and love. And though it has called to each one of us since we first arrived here upon this earth, many of us may never find the courage to set out upon the way.
For man is a creature who likes his comforts and will strive hard in search of them. Yet he does not often step back from his comfort zone and question his impact upon the world until he is threatened with his very life. Without the threat of global warming we would push inexorably towards the exhaustion of our resources, in our search for comfort, until life became finally unsustainable. There is truth in the claim that it was over when Eve stole the apple from Eden. Blessed with everything we could ever need we decided for ourselves to take more; story over. It is not the force of evil at work; it is woven into the fabric of what we are. Our pioneering nature will stop at nothing while there is still more to be gained. It is the way to progress itself, and at the same time the way to our own demise. Whose right is it to the oil of Siberia or Iraq? Left to the Inuit and the Kurds it may well have seen them through another millennium, and given them time to work out their own way home. But in the hands of those with will and power it won’t even last another generation. This is the paradox. We reached our age of material comfort and failed to turn our hearts to nobler endeavours, deciding instead to push the boundaries of our physical existence and leave behind the essence of our being. Twenty years after the Second World War most of us in the West already had more than we could ever need. But were we content? Some, it is true, started the quest of more meaning, but were forced to do so on the fringes of our society when they should have become its bedrock. And so the wave of empty consumption in the name of comfort rolled on and on to this day.
So here is my story. It is for those of you who honestly wish for more time, whose hearts long to walk the road home. Consider this. To gaze upon a landscape unspoiled by man, to see the light change and the mist rise at daybreak and feel the world wake from its sleep. To glimpse such a thing for an instant is enough to justify the nine months of becoming in the womb. Oh that you had any idea how rare and precious is this world and your human existence. Then you might savour each timeless moment as it is and not seek to consume yourselves with anything more than this. When a moment such as this is all the intoxication you will ever need, then you are ready for the knowledge that such a moment contains. In the gap, the silence, the space from which such beauty arises is the truth your hearts yearn for. It is for you, who can taste in the wind what I speak of, that I write this book, in the hope that it may open your heart to the way.
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