That the real alchemy was concerned with the metaphysical, mystical and religious life is made abundantly clear in the writings of leading alchemists of both East and West who state categorically: ‘Our gold is not of this world.’ All the exhortations to right conduct, purity and religious observances show that the Work was, for the true alchemist, a spiritual matter.
Writing on yoga and alchemy and discussing the legends and references in Tantrism, Eliade says: ‘We have here no pre-chemistry, no science in embryo, but a spiritual technique, which, while operating on “matter,” sought first of all to “perfect the spirit,” to bring about deliverance and autonomy . . . gold is the one perfect solar metal and hence its symbolism meets the symbolism of Spirit, of spiritual freedom.’ This is confirmed by John Blofeld who, travelling in pre-Communist China and visiting Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, received from a Taoist abbot the statement:
Ours is not a religion but a way to the Way . . . our yogas and meditation begin with the generating of tranquillity, that in the stillness of our hearts we may apprehend the Tao within, around, above and below us. We seek to nourish our vitality and prolong our lives in order to gain more time for the refinement of spirit needed for attaining the higher goals. Then comes the compounding of the Golden Pill which some misguided persons have sought to produce by alchemical processes, whereas in truth it can be compounded only within the body and is therefore known esoterically as the immortal foetus. We Taoists are generally agreed that its creation is the means to immortality, but at this point paths diverge, some seek aeon-long immortality, the attainment of a god-like state, as an end in itself; others strive to Return to the Source, an apotheosis identical with the attainment of Nirvana, though conceptions of the inconceivable naturally differ.
In the spiritual alchemy even the pursuit of longevity had its origins in the idea that the longer the physical life, the longer the time for attaining spiritual transformation into the True Man and becoming one with the Tao; to this end the alchemist had to transmute the base metal of the physical desires into the pure gold of the spiritual. From the Shen Hsien Chuan comes the instruction: ‘If you are bent on attaining immortality, begin by getting rid of the body-spirits. As soon as they are gone you will gain fixity of will-power and freedom from passion and desire.’
Waley, in his ‘Notes on Chinese Alchemy’ dismisses the theory that alchemy was a pre-chemistry and pithily expresses it as: ‘Alchemy, on the rare occasions when it has been made the subject of reasonable enquiry, has usually been studied as part of what one may call the pre-history of science. But if, to use a favourite phrase, we are to see in alchemy merely “the cradle of chemistry,” are we not likely, whatever its initial charm, to lose patience with an infancy protracted through some fifteen centuries?’ The true alchemy was, in fact, an applied science or art (spoken of as either by its adherents) in the control of the elements affecting life and Nature and humanity in a spiritual development; it was called, as Taylor puts it, ‘a chemistry of the spirit.’ ‘Let alchemy be called a “chemistry of the spirit” and it will be possible to understand its many aspects and the conflicting views of those who have not grasped its essential features.’ If it were only gold-or-pill making and early science, it is remarkable that as Professor Sivin points out, ‘there were many treatises which give no directions for making anything,’ and if it were merely the search for gold, why the universal reference to ‘our gold’ as being something distinct from the common gold?
The search for gold was the search for wisdom, for the knowledge of the necessary transformation of unregenerate humanity into the Sage or integrated being, expressed as ‘the opaque becomes luminous.’ Roger Bacon said that ‘Nature has always had for an end and tries incessantly to reach perfection, that is gold.’ In Vedic tradition ‘gold is immortality;’ that is, the incorruptible spirit, the illuminated being. The colouring, or tincture, represents the colouring of the unregenerate or base nature with the divine. In Europe Fludd said: ‘Be ye transmuted from mortal to living philosophers' stones . . . Indeed, every pious and righteous man is a spiritual alchemist . . . who . . . understands not only how to distinguish but with the fire of the divine Spirit to separate the false from the true . . . for only this way is unclean lead turned to gold.’ The medieval ‘Rosarium’ says: ‘Our gold is not the common gold’ and ‘the philosopher is not the master of the stone but rather its minister.’ Then yet again, ‘Our gold is not in any way the gold of the multitude, but is the living gold . . . it is wisdom.’
The real alchemy was the search for wisdom; its work was esoteric and on the individual, not in the laboratory, or rather the body is the laboratory in which the knowledge of the Self is gained. That the quest was spiritual, not material, is attested by alchemy's religious affiliations, to Taoism, in particular, in the East; there are also constant references to it in Hinduism and Buddhism and strong associations in the Babylonian and Chaldean civilizations, the Egyptian-Greek hermeticism and, later, in Christianity and Islam. Alchemy is also essentially mystical since its aim is union, the end of duality and absorption in the Absolute. Alchemical terms are used throughout for spiritual processes; the conjunctio is the same as the mystic's union with the One, the loss of individual identity with the limitations of the ego dissolved in the perfect whole, and again the base metal, transmuted by purification and refining, becomes the gold of perfection, of wisdom. The alchemist Ali-pili wrote:
The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know himself . . . therefore let the high enquirers and searchers into the deep mysteries of nature first learn to know what they have in themselves, and by the divine power within them let them first heal themselves and transmute their souls . . . if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee thou will never find it without thee . . . He who desires the primacy among students of nature will nowhere find a greater or better field of study than himself. Therefore will I from certain true experience proclaim: ‘Oh man, know thyself, in thee is hid the treasure of treasures.’
The study of man and Nature cannot be separated. As the alchemist worked on Nature so he could not avoid working on himself. As Hopkins says: ‘To Aristotle organic nature was like man. But to the alchemist all nature was like man; the spiritual overshadowing the material, and reproduction, the greatest of all mysteries, was possible only when the body of the metal was endowed with excess of the spiritual.’ Sendivogius uses the symbolism of the mirror: ‘The Sage sees Heaven reflected in Nature as in a mirror; and he pursues this Art not for the sake of gold or silver, but for the love of knowledge which it reveals.’ The microcosm and macrocosm reflect each other but are one, there is no difference between humanity and the cosmos. ‘The natural world is only an image and material copy of a heavenly and spiritual pattern; that is, the very existence of this world is based upon the reality of its celestial archetype.’ Again, this is the hermetic ‘As above, so below,’ or, ‘In truth, certainly and without doubt, whatever is below is like that which is above, and whatever is above is like that which is below.’ This enunciates the law of correspondences: that all creation is, in fact, a reflection; the phenomenal reflects the spiritual. The hermetic tradition also says that ‘The work . . . is to be found within you and is enduring: you will always have it present, wherever you are, on land or on sea.’
Meditation was an important factor in Chinese alchemy in developing the ‘inner elixir,’ and the sealed vase was the isolated mountain retreat, hermitage, or meditation room, where knowledge of the inner self was attained, where transformation took place and from which the new man was born; hence the constant reference to the foetus or the seed as also symbolically the birth of this new being. There is pre-natal growth in the seclusion of the closed room or retreat, the womb, before the new being emerges from darkness to light, from dependence to independence, into the life of the spirit. A modern Taoist Master called this foetus ‘an incorporeal manifestation of the union of spirit with vitality,’ and a Japanese professor, visiting the Taoist White Cloud monastery in the 1940s, found the ancient values still alive:
Little significance was attached to the artificial, so-called cultural, activities. Taking pride in gathering scraps of knowledge, conducting surveys, doing research—those may be efforts to find some satisfaction or self-understanding in the society of men, but they end, as does life, like the flaring out of a candle. It is better to be embraced in the vastness of Nature, to melt into it. Then there is no wasted resistance to life, no useless conflagration. When one's breathing is in harmony with nature, one becomes identical with its very life-flow.
Alchemists of both East and West state categorically that Nature is their guide and exemplar, that they are working with her and following her laws. In alchemy they may be hastening some of her processes, but never working against her. As a science alchemy aimed at the understanding of the properties and formations of mineral substances; as a spiritual art or philosophy it was concerned with the mysteries of life and the cosmos. It had a cosmological relationship with every aspect of life, human, animal, plant and mineral. One could not go wrong in following Nature. As the Golden Tract says: ‘Nature seeks and demands the gradual attainment of perfection, and a general approximation to the highest standard of purity and excellence.’
The cult of longevity was not considered to be going against living in accord with Nature since she had long-lived creatures whose life span greatly outdid that of the human being; in any case, it would be Nature herself who provided the life-giving plants and substances; the individual had only to find and use them. Moreover, the aim of a long life for the true alchemist was a spiritual one, the gaining of time in the body for the development of the spirit.
Eliade writes that ‘Alchemy represents the projection of a drama, at once cosmic and spiritual, in laboratory terms. The aim of the opus magnum was at once the freeing of the human soul and the healing of the cosmos.’ In ancient India the Master Nagarguna made it clear that the work was a spiritual technique when he said: ‘The mercurial system must not be looked upon as a simple eulogy of metal, for it is our means . . . of attaining the supreme goal, which is deliverance;’ and in an ancient Chinese text he is also reported as answering the question: ‘It is believed that it is possible to make gold from stones; is that not absurd?’ by saying ‘It is perfectly possible in the spiritual sense.’
The whole work of alchemy is summed up in the phrase ‘To make of the body a spirit and of the spirit a body;’ or, variously expressed, it is ‘the spiritualization of the body and the embodiment of the spirit;’ or, again, it is ‘to spiritualize matter and materialize spirit.’ In the hermetic tradition this is enunciated as ‘We receive not only a new soul with this regeneration but also a new body . . . it is more spiritual than the air, akin to the rays of the Sun which penetrates all bodies, and as different from the old body as the resplendent Sun is from the dark earth.’
The goal of the Taoist alchemist-mystic was transformation, or perhaps more correctly, transfiguration of the whole body until it ceases to ‘be’ and is absorbed into and becomes the Tao. The alchemist becomes the True Man, returning to the Source—the Taoist phrase for universal Oneness.