The Ultimate Alchemy🔗

What is alchemy?

Let me start with a real incident.

I met an old sadhu (an ascetic), during my wandering days. He had no clothes on; he was a naga sadhu; ascetics who go about without clothes. I had been told that these sadhus are violent and they do look fierce with matted hair and wild looks. He was sitting on the banks of the river Ganga. I started talking to him. He was smoking ganja (a form of opium). As I was about to walk off, he placed two copper coins inside his pipe and started smoking. When he had finished smoking, he emptied the pipe and two gold coins fell out. He sold the gold coins, bought more ganja and repeated the process of producing gold coins. He did this about 10 times in the next two days.

The sadhu offered to teach me the technique. I asked him to teach me meditation instead, and said that I had no use for gold coins. He wordlessly gave me his pipe. I refused it. He then playfully blew smoke rings into my face. After this for 3 days I was in deep bliss.

At the gross level of metals changing, the process of changing a lower level metal such as copper or iron into gold is alchemy.

I asked him how he did it. He replied in Tamil without my ever telling him who I was or where I was from: angam pazhuthal thangam pazhukkum; if your being is ripe enough then gold will ripen.

At the subtle level when our being is ripe, lust changes to Love; a base feeling transforms into the highest emotion we are capable of.

This is the ultimate alchemy that can happen to us!

Ramana Maharishi, the enlightened Master of Arunachala recounted this incident:

'A bank manager asked me, please give me the power of performing miracles. I told him, 'You can not handle even whatever power you have now; why do you ask for more?' The man asked in reply, 'What power do I have?' I told him, 'You are a manager; you can hire people; dismiss people and do many other things. Are you handling these well now? If you are, you will not be stressed. You will already be at peace. What you need is intelligence, not power.'

Be very clear…inner transformation is the ultimate alchemy you need! Transform from being a mere animal and discover that you are God…travel from lust to love!

What is lust?

We only know how to reproduce, we do not know lust. When animals copulate, they experience pure lust. They enjoy themselves without any previous impressions of lust coloring their thoughts. Our lust is taken from imagination, from movies, from books, it is not natural. From early on we form ideas about how our 'would be' should be. This contaminates the relationship.

We relate to a person in our imagination, not the person next to us. The real husband or wife becomes a poor substitute to what is in our mind, our cerebral layer. This leaves a feeling of being cheated. Males feel they are deprived. On the other hand, females feel exploited, used and disrespected. Men operate out of their Muladhara Chakra (the first of the 7 main energy centers in the body), out of contaminated lust and greed. Women receive them through their Swadishthana Chakra (the second energy centre in the body) with fear and insecurity. Your lust and the very act of sex are contaminated with the dirt of imagination. You relate with your partner only mentally. The Shiva Sutra says, 'In bed you are four, not two. Each of you is accompanied by the other's fantasy of yourself.'

In ancient times, because they had the capability to enjoy their pleasures fully before 40, lust and sex left the householder when they entered the state of Vanaprastha(the fourth stage of retiring to the forest in the four stages of life). How many of you understand the mantras chanted during marriage? These days only the priests or purohits get married, not the couple they marry as only they understand the meaning of the chants.

During the S*aptapati* ritual (the seven steps taken by the bride and groom together around the fire), which is most essential part of the marriage, the wife tells the husband, 'Become my eleventh son' and the husband tells the wife, 'Become my eleventh daughter.' In the eleventh year their intimacy is so great that they become each other's child. This level of deep intimacy leads to a wonderful relationship unimaginable today. These words are not mere poems to be read by the priests during the marriage ceremony; they are living guidelines to be put into practice by the couple who have taken the marriage vows.

Nowadays marital relationship has been reduced to a business, for security or material benefits. Couples live in the same home, yet not in a homely way.

Many of us are ashamed of our body, we hate it. All body pains and chronic skin diseases arise out of low self esteem and disrespect to our own body. We would like to be someone else. We would like to shape our body and dress like someone else. We start looking at role models of supermodels, or movie actors start the hellish process of morphing our physical selves and matching it that idea of physical beauty as dictated by society. We do not stop at this…we also go the extent of imagining our future partners to also be like them. Now imagine what will happen when you get married and find out the partner is not what you imagined and vice versa. Hell breaks loose in the mind!

I say remove the imagination and dreams from lust; both about the partner's body and one's own.

Another common trait in us is that we start staying within our boundary. Whenever we hear our name, we think of our face, not our whole body, because we are not comfortable with our body as a whole and therefore identity ourselves only with certain parts. We have been conditioned mentally right from childhood, not to think of our private parts as a comfortable part of the body. We have never been comfortable with it and if at all someone is…society ensures that guilt is felt.

Understand that when we copy someone else artificially and not accept ourselves fully, we can at best be beautiful but never graceful. Remember…grace comes from within!

For the next few days get into the mode of watching your body after a bath with love…start feeling comfortable with it. Understand that our body oozes bliss all the time. Sadly however, we feel only the pain. If we are relaxed with our own body, our mind will not wander. It is very common that when we are at home, our mind is in the office, and when we are working in the office, we wish we were at a party.

Talking of grace, Tulsidas, the saint poet who rewrote the Hindu epic Ramayana, said of Sita, the heroine in that epic, 'When Sita entered Janaka's court all the rishis including Vashishta, the royal sage and her own father stood up to pay their respects to this young princess, such was her overwhelming grace.' That was the great level of comfort that Sita had with her own self.

During the Tantra meditation instructions are to touch ones body, at every point with deep love first thing in the morning after waking up. The purpose behind this is to allow the subtle body to settle into the gross physical body.

Very often we love someone as long as that person does whatever we say or rather obeys us. A mother says, 'I loved my daughter very deeply. But she married someone not of my choice. I don't feel that much love for her anymore. How could she go against my wishes?' Is this love? As long as the daughter was an extension of mother's personality she felt love. It is nothing but slavery to one's own ego!

Be very clear…as of now your lust is mere violence, deep rooted violence; to own another person; to conquer another person while there is resistance. It is war. What is needed is that we add friendliness to our relationship. Don't just accept but welcome the partner just as they are. Don't stop there…welcome and accept your own mind, body and Being as it is.

Let us ask ourselves this question. Are we friendly to ourselves? The honest answer to this would be, no, we are not. If we watch carefully, we disrespect and abuse our body. We stay up and watch TV even if our body cries out for sleep. We gorge ourselves with food even if our stomach is full. We smoke even if our lungs cry out. We drink ourselves to unconsciousness. Our body is a garbage dump. We are like pigs which shove their noses into filth and no longer able to smell the filth start enjoying it.

We torture our body in the name of enjoyment!

We are so bothered about the terrorism that happens outside. We ignore violence at home and violence against our own body. Sadism and masochism do not bother us, terrorism does. We are torturing ourselves with guilt; we torture others through our perfectionism.

A man once told me, 'My wife is a lawyer.' I asked, 'Does she go to the courts?' He replied, 'No master, she argues at home.'

Drop your imagination and dreams now! Add friendliness towards yourself and others, towards your body and their body, mind and Being. Carry with you words that heal others. Carry your body in a way that heals others. Carry friendliness with you always. This is a spiritual process. Carry the grace and goodwill of Goddess Lakshmi with you instead of undergoing fasts and performing endless pujas (elaborate rituals for external worship of God).

The first time around when you approach others with your friendliness they may not receive you openly because of your past behavior. Persist and persevere. Do not stop even if others do not reciprocate. Carry on until others believe you and reciprocate.

I repeat drop the imagination about your body, mind and Being and also that of others. Add friendliness towards yourself and others…persevere in this and Lust will turn to Love…your being will be in eternal Bliss.

I pray and bless you all. May all of you have this eternal bliss…Nithya Ananda. May you all undergo the ultimate alchemy and transform from mere lust to divine love!