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Post by withinsilence on Oct 16, 2013 15:10:29 GMT
www.alchemylab.com/index2.htmI find this site one of the most knowledgeable in helping guide one interested in the processes of inner transformation.
A few quotes from the site: Purpose of The Site:"It is not the object of these pages to furnish proof to the skeptic of the truth of alchemy, nor to offer arguments so the incredulous may believe in its possibility. To force belief in a thing of which one has no knowledge or experience would be of little real benefit. But those who have had a mystical experience or witnessed the processes of alchemy in their own lives may receive real benefit from working with this material." (Franz Hartmann in Alchemy) Purpose of Alchemy:The Great Work of alchemy is to speed up this natural process of perfection and resurrect the spiritual essence of man that has become trapped in matter. Every human being participates in alchemy, whether in a conscious manner (through the intentional perfection and manifesting of one's higher nature) or through the tumult and suffering of worldly experiences that finally lead to increased spiritual awareness. A Few Axioms of Alchemy:The vessel should be well closed, so that the Water may not run out of it nor the Air escape. It ought to be hermetically sealed, because if the spirit were to find a place to escape, the power would be lost. And furthermore should it be closed, so that nothing foreign and impure can enter and become mixed with it. There should always be put at the door of the laboratory a sentinel with a flaming sword to examine all visitors, and to reject those that are not worthy to be admitted.
The more the Stone is nursed and nourished, the more will it increase. Divine wisdom is inexhaustible; limitation exists only in the capacity of the form to receive it. A Hint:This insight dawned the other day, and so i bring it to the readers attention: the words CAPICITY, CAPACITOR- understand them well and apply them to oneself.
What limits capacity?
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Post by gurthbruins on Oct 17, 2013 20:09:04 GMT
The 'axioms' again remind me of the virtues of secret societies...
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Post by withinsilence on Oct 17, 2013 21:33:19 GMT
secrets, I think, are not virtues. A virtue is that which you freely give one to help them without lording it over them. Yet, to force seeds to grow in uncultivated soil can leave one exhausted and starving for affirmation.
I enjoy some of the alchemical language and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. But to find an immortal elixir for the temporal body or a way to turn base metals into gold, well, I'll leave that for the alchemists of attachments.
I prefer the simple task of spiritual/psychological alchemy, as even with all the gold in the world one still cannot buy their way out of hell.
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Post by withinsilence on Oct 18, 2013 2:17:58 GMT
what is the capacity of a vessel to receive new wine if not the old wine be removed first?
if ones mind is full, is it not stressed?
when is the capacity of ones mind in its most receptive state?
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Post by withinsilence on Oct 23, 2013 18:28:28 GMT
An excerpt from Total Freedom by J. Krishnamurti:
Krishnamurti was an exact embodiment of his doctrine of “choiceless awareness.” Here, the word choiceless might suggest only a mode of subjectivity. On the contrary, choiceless awareness, while reflected in the persona, is in no way reducible to it and so eludes a psychological reduction. Choicelessness is the mind’s equivalent of the silence out of which intelligible utterance arises, of “that emptiness in which the things of the mind can exist but the things are not the mind ... that emptiness has no center and so is capable of infinite movement.Creation is born out of this emptiness but it is not the creation of man putting things together. That creation of emptiness is love and death.” This last sentence points directly and immediately to the character of the instant for both self-awakening and self-misunderstanding. Unless there is a psychological death to our self-identification with memory and upon the same instant a total understanding of need, we remain collapsed into the content of thought and a timely response to the instant eludes us: “When there is a total understanding of need, the outward and the inner, then desire is not a torture. Then it has a quite different meaning, a significance far beyond the content of thought and it goes beyond feeling, with its emotions, myths and illusions. With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire then is a flame and not a torture. Without this flame life itself is lost. It is this flame that burns away the pettiness of its object, the frontiers, the fences that have been imposed upon it. Then call it by whatever name you will, love, death, beauty. Then it is there without an end.”
Some might think it untoward to begin a short introduction to sagely works with a personal anecdote. One thinks of Krishnamurti’s repeated caution to his audiences: “The speaker is unimportant.” Then there is Chuang Tzu’s: “The Perfect man has no self; the Holy man has no merit; the Sage has no fame.” (All three being the same.) True enough and almost never pondered, let alone embodied. Yet to find in such words an invitation to ignore the personal presence of a great teacher (whether in the flesh or remembered) betrays a shallow readiness to try to go beyond where one has not begun. Krishnamurti admonishes us that “Meditation is not something different from daily life ... it is the seeing of what is and going beyond it.” If one has not seen what is, how can one go beyond it? Unfortunately, academic practice shows little or no understanding of “seeing what is” in the context of genuine self-inquiry. Rather, academic life is a journey through the forest of abstractions. Experimental science has the advantage of requiring laboratory demonstration of its theoretical conclusions. Even so, this procedure is pursued within the dual structure of perceiver and perceived. Perception without the perceiver, as in meditation, is unheard of: “This perception is entirely different from seeing an object without an observer, because in the perception of meditation there is no object and therefore no experience. What meaning has such meditation? There is no meaning; there is no utility. But in that meditation there is a movement of great ecstasy. It is the ecstasy which gives to the eye, to the brain, and to the heart the quality of innocency. Without seeing life as something totally new, it is a routine, a boredom, a meaningless affair. So meditation is of the greatest importance. It opens the door to the incalculable, to the measureless.” This ecstatic pointer of Krishnamurti’s so escapes our contemporary mind-set as to be practically unintelligible. Yet it is supremely intelligent. How so? Because it implies a radical distinction between consciousness and awareness. In our time, philosophy and depth psychology have virtually absolutized consciousness. They fail to discern that consciousness is not self-correcting. How can it be so since consciousness is ever tied to change? It is only as awareness has an object that consciousness comes into play. In itself awareness is both independent of objects and changeless. On that account it is the door to the incalculable and measureless. Krishnamurti invites us to begin the most radical self-inquiry since it opens out upon the infinite space of awareness. Self-inquiry begins by asking not what am I but what am I not? Such a no-nonsense question has no need of theoretical structures, the conceptual paraphernalia of our depth psychologies, philosophies, and theologies and belief systems. The question is astonishingly yet frighteningly simple; frightening because it entails the deepest sense of aloneness, since none but oneself can ask the question nor answer it. Yet, with the patience, courage, and radical trust to hang in there without bolting from it one discovers the unlonely aloneness of that “meditation which is absolutely no effort, no achievement, no thinking, the brain is quiet, not made quiet by will, by intention, by conclusion and all that nonsense; it is quiet. And, being quiet, it has infinite space.” Capacity!
The pure act of attention is spontaneous and free; the hearer and the heard, the perceiver and perceived drop away leaving only listening and seeing. “Only when the mind is blissful, quiet, without any movement of its own, without projection of thought, conscious or unconscious—only then does the eternal come into being.”
During this century we have taken in with our mother’s milk the enervating (energy draining) dogma that the hallmarks of human nature are anxiety (angst) and estrangement, a secularized version of the dogma of original sin. But through meditation, as Krishnamurti revealed it, and self-inquiry, one discovers one’s original nature, original innocence and the natural state. Is this, then, the heart of the matter? Yes, since the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
Allan W. Anderson Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies San Diego University
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