Shall we be able to realize, on a higher plane, alchemy's old dream of psychophysical unity, by the creation of a unified conceptual foundation for the scientific comprehension of the physical as well as the psychical?
Wolfgang Pauli, physicist
In my previous book, Mind into Matter, my goal was to show that within your own mind and body lies a majestic story filled with drama, pathos, humor, intelligence, fantasy, and fact. While it is certainly your own story, it is also the story of the entire universe, its creation, transformation, and ultimate purpose. I showed how this story called “you” unfolds into a panorama of life, literally a “you-niverse.” I explored how the basic operations of what I call the new alchemy—thinking, sensing, feeling, and intuiting—form and shape the primary material of our conscious and unconscious life. And we saw that reshaping this primary material gives rise to forces that transform the world and us, namely creation, animation, resistance, vitality, replication, chance, unification, structure, and transformation. The ultimate goal of all this being the transmutation of information into matter; matter arises from mind—a vast field of influence commonly envisioned as the Mind of God.
You may consider Mind into Matter, then, to be an introduction into what the ancients called the “great work” of new alchemy. And now having introduced you to the new alchemy, much remains to be explored. We might ask ourselves, for example, How do I use the tools presented in Mind into Matter to change myself ? How do I realize these transformational forces? How do I live a more creative and fruitful spiritual life?
Realization of the new alchemy brings novel forms of the creative transforming forces into play. While the mind-to-matter transformation deals with primary or archetypal images and how these images become material, the next phase of the great work is the transformation of the newly-formed matter into feeling. This is where we begin to feel life in our bodies, as real living tissue. And this applies to all living beings, as all living beings feel. Feeling goes beyond the senses and can be imagined as the fundamental awareness out of which all of the other senses develop. Feeling results from the incessant “hum” of life itself.
In Mind into Matter I brought forward the notion of Adam Kadmon—the universal and archetypal human. This Adam, unlike the original Adam of the Bible, is capable of realizing at once spirit, matter, and full powers of transformation. What makes Adam Kadmon differ from the biblical Adam can be summarized into one word: feeling. The Adam of the Book of Genesis seems almost an automaton, incapable of any real feeling, except perhaps for the feeling of shame when he and Eve are thrown out of Eden. Adam Kadmon, on the other hand, is capable of feeling deeply all of the transformational possibilities embedded within him. So we can say that Adam represented the first phase of the transformation—mind into matter—while Adam Kadmon represents the second phase— matter into feeling.
As with Mind into Matter, Matter into Feeling is divided into nine chapters, each framed by the nine letter-symbols of the Hebrew alphabet, or “aleph-bayt.” In Mind into Matter we dealt with the archetypes spirit, represented by aleph (
, 1), through structure, represented by tayt (
, 9). Now we will be concerned with their development—their transformation from seeds into young sprouts. This is accomplished in Qabala by multiplying each letter-symbol by the number ten. Since the letter-symbol for ten in Hebrew is yod, meaning existence, we see that multiplying by ten each of the nine archetype lettersymbols actualizes them, brings them into existence, or as I put it, brings matter into feeling.
Thus aleph (), representing number 1, transforms into yod (
), number 10; bayt (
, 2) becomes khaf (
, 20); ghimel (
, 3) becomes lammed (
, 30); dallet (
, 4) becomes mem (
, 40); hay (
, 5) becomes noon (
, 50); vav (
, 6) becomes sammekh (
, 60); zayn (
, 7) becomes ayn (
, 70); hhayt (, 8) becomes phay (
, 80); and tayt (, 9) becomes tsadde (
, 90). In each chapter opening I will review these transformations and explain in more detail what they mean.
The advancement of the letter-symbols points to experience, life, reality, and so on, with the symbols coming alive, as it were. Matter into Feeling, then, looks at the continual movement of the nine mental/material seed archetypes into living symbols, literally a transformation of matter—already embodying mind—into life, the feeling and awareness of matter.
Note, too, that when we put two letter-symbols together, indicating a transformation from the former to the latter, they occasionally spell out a Hebrew word that symbolizes that transformation. In ancient Hebrew there may have been more examples of a matching between ancient words and the sacred meaning of the letters. Short of that, by going through a typical modern Hebrew/English dictionary I came up with words, shown below, that typify the transformation. In those cases where no word seemed to exist, I used the Qabala definition of the symbols:
island—the movement to self-identity
bayt to khaf ( to ; 2 to 20)
birth—the movement from dream to reality
ghimel to lammed ( to ; 3 to 30)
wave—the movement from wave to feeling
dallet to mem ( to ; 4 to 40)
blood—the movement of the trickster
hay to noon ( to ; 5 to 50)
curve of life—the movement toward balance
vav to sammekh ( to ; 6 to 60)
menses—the movement of sexual energy
zayn to ayn ( to ; 7 to 70)
observation—the movement of the universe
hhayt to phay ( to ; 8 to 80)
purity—the movement from self to soul
tayt to tsadde ( to ; 9 to 90)
structure of love—the movement of life
In bringing mind into matter we had to deal with resistance and the trickster element. Now, similarly, we must deal with the conflicts and resistance we face in our lives as we attempt to make sense of the world, and learn to put up with our material demands, our addictions, our ups and downs, successes and failures. For many of us on the spiritual path, the great work gets trapped here—we live and die never realizing that other phases of transformation are even possible. In other words, we get fooled by our appetites.
To make the leap, to realize the remaining phases, requires understanding that the “stuck” life is only a phase, much as a child throwing a tantrum is merely “going through a phase.” The movement of matter into feeling is the second phase. And my goal with Matter into Feeling is to help guide you through it.
The Book of Genesis presents the timeless, metaphorical battle of matter with spirit—the continuing story of man acting against God. This story resonates through a number of biblical scenarios, including Adam and Eve's willful ignoring of God in the Garden of Eden, Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and God's refusing Moses entry into the new world.
The Hebrew alphabet provides letter-symbols of this war of matter with spirit: aleph, representing unembodied spirit, and yod, representing spirit contained and limited in matter that in its pride fights against the very thing that brought it into reality. And thus the transformation of aleph to yod is symbolized by the word island —the movement to self-identity.