Friday, May 6, 2016

Money Wisdom #411

"...it is imperative to realise that alchemy is not creating something 'new'; rather, it is ultimately seeking to render the pristine ontology - the nondual ground of being - present to living perception. This underscores a significant point, for in understanding the goal of alchemy as 'perfection', it must be realised that the perfection in question is not teleological, but perennial. That is to say, the originary or primordial nature does not exist in the future, nor should it be confused with the past; it is, in the words of Gebser, ever-present and ever-originating:
Origin is ever-present. It is not a beginning, since all beginning is linked with time. And the present is not just the 'now', today, the moment or a unit of time. It is ever-originating, an achievement of full integration and continuous renewal. Anyone able to 'concretize', i.e., to realize and effect the reality of origin and the present in its entirety, supersedes 'beginning' and 'end' and the mere here and now. (Gebser Gesamtausgabe Vol 2, 15)
Whether the ever-present origin is cast in terms of the Taoist golden elixir (jindan), the Buddha-element of Tibetan alchemy (bud-dha-dhatu), or, in the western alchemical cosmologies, as the logos or potential cosmos subsisting as both initium and telos in the originary chaos, many of the world's alchemical traditions cohere in viewing the 'goal' of alchemy not as the creation of some future perfection, but rendering the present as a pre-existent, eternal incorruptibility. Whether alchemy proceeds by 'progress' or 'reversal', the core of the process must not be understood as reversion or advancement in a rigidly temporal sense, but rather as a process of 'polishing the mirror'. It is a purification of temporal accretions in order to let the boundless existentiating Urgrund shine forth in an unobstructed, uninhibited manner according to its innate, diaphanous nature. "

Aaron Cheak Circumambulating The Alchemical Mysterium in Alchemical Traditions (2013) p.42-43