Speaker 1: Transmutation. Midway between the hell of passion and the heaven
of peace is the purgatory of transmutation, not a speculative
purgatory beyond the grave, but a real purgatory in the
human heart. In its separating and purifying fire, the base
metal of air is sifted away, and only the clarified
gold of truth remains. When temptation has culminated in sorrow,
in deep perplexity, then the tempted one, strenuously striving for deliverance,
finds that his moral servitude is entirely from himself. Instead
of fighting against outer circumstances, he must alter inner conditions.
The fight against outer things as necessary at the start.
It is the only course which can be adopted at
first because of the prevailing ignorance of mental causation. But
it never of itself brings about emancipation. What it does
bring about is the knowledge of the mental cause of temptation.
This knowledge of the mental cause of temptation leads to
the transmutation of thought, and the transmutation of thought leads
to the deliverance from the bondage of error. The preliminary
fighting is a necessary stage in spiritual development, just as
the crying and kicking of a helpless babe is necessary
to its growth. But as the crying in kicking is
not needed beyond the infant stage, so the fear struggling
with and falling under temptation ends. When the knowledge of
mental transmutation is acquired. The truly wise man, he who
is enlightened in concerning the source and cause of temptation,
does not fight against outward allurements. He abandons all desire
for them. Thus they cease to be allurements, and the
power of temptation is destroy at its source. But this
abandonment of unholy desire is not the final process. It
is the beginning of a regenerative and transforming power, which,
when patiently employed, leads to the clear and cloudless heights
of spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual transmutation consists of an entire reversal
of the ordinary self seeking attitude of the mind toward
people and things, and this reversal brings about an entirely
new set of experiences. Thus, the desire for a certain
pleasure is abandoned, cut off at its source, and not
allowed to have any place in the consciousness. But the
mental force which that desire represented is not annihilated. It
is transferred to a higher region of thought, transmuted into
a purer form of energy. The law of conservation of
energy prevails universally in the mind, as it does in matter,
and the force cut off in lower directions is liberated
in higher realms of spiritual activity along the saintly way
towards the divine life. The midway region of transmutation is
the country of sacrifice, the plaine of renunciation. Old passions,
old ambitions, and thoughts are cast away and abandoned, but
only to reappear in some more beautiful, more permanent, more
eternally satisfying form. Valuable jewels, long guarded and cherished, when
thrown tearfully in the melting pot, are remolded into new
and more perfect adornments. Likewise, the spiritual alchemists, at first
reluctant to part company with long cherished thoughts and habits,
at last gives them up to discover a little later,
to his joy that they come back to him in
the form of new faculties, rarer powers and purer joys,
spiritual jewels, newly polished, beautiful and resplendent. In transmuting his
mind from evil to good. A man comes to distinguish
more and more clearly between error and truth, and so
distinguishing he ceases to be swayed and prompted by outward
things and by the actions and attitudes of others. Instead,
he acts from his knowledge of truth, first acknowledging his errors,
and then confronting them with a searching mind and a
humble heart. He subdues, conquers, and transmutes them. The early
stage of transmutation is painful, but brief, for the pain
is soon transformed into pure spiritual joy, the brevity of
the pain being measured by the intelligence and energy with
which the process is pursued. While a man thinks that
the cause of his pain is the attitude of others,
he will not pass through it. But when he perceives
that its cause is in himself, then he will soon
pass beyond it into joy. The unenlightened man allows himself
to be disturbed, wounded, and overthrown by what he regards
as the wrong attitude of others towards him. This is
because the same wrong attitude is in himself. He indeed
doles out to them in return the same actions, regarding
as right in himself that which is wrong in others.
Slander is given for slander, hatred for hatred, anger for anger.
This is the action and reaction of evil. It is
the clash of selfishness with selfishness. It is only the
self or selfish elements within a man that can be
aroused by the evil in another. The truth or divine
characteristics in a man cannot be approached by that evil,
much less can be disturbed and overthrown by it. It
is the conversation or complete reversal of this self or
selfishness into truth that constitutes transmutation. The enlightened man has
abandoned the delusion that evil in others has the power
to hurt and subdue him, and he has grasped the
profound truth that he is only overthrown by the evil
in himself. He therefore ceases to blame others for his
sins and sufferings, and applies to himself to purifying his
own heart. In this reversal of his mental attitude, he
transmutes the lower selfish forces into the higher moral attributes.
The base ore of error is cast into the fire
of sacrifice, and there comes forth the pure gold of truth.
Such a man stands firm and unmoved when assailed by
outward things. He is self's master, not its slave. He
has ceased to identify himself with the impulses of passion,
and has identified himself with truth. He has overcome evil
and has become merged with good. He knows both error
and truth, and has abandoned error and brought himself into
harmony with truth. He returns good for evil. The more
he is assailed by evil from without, the greater is
his opportunity of manifesting the good from within, that which
supremely differentiates the fool from the wise man. As this,
the fool meets passion with passion, hatred with hatred, and
returns evil for evil, whereas the wise man meets passion
with peace, hatred with love, and returns good for evil.
Men inflicts suffering upon themselves through the active instrumentality of
their own unpurified nature. They rise into perfect peace in
the measure that they purify their hearts. The mental energy
which men waste in pursuing dark passions is all sufficient
to enable them to reach the highest wisdom when it
is turned in the right direction. As water when transmuted
into steam, becomes a new, more definite and wide reaching power.
So passion, when transmuted into intellectual and moral force, becomes
a new life, a new power for the accomplishment of
high and unfailing purposes. Mental forces, like molecular have their
opposite poles or modes of action. Where the negative pole is,
there is also the positive. Where ignorance is, wisdom is possible,
where passion abounds, peace awaits. Where there is much suffering,
much bliss is near. Sorrow is the negation of joy.
Sin is the opposite of purity. Evil is the denial
of good. Where there is an opposite, there is that
which is opposed the adverse. Evil, in its denial of
the good, testifies to its presence. The one thing needful, therefore,
is the turning around from the negative to the positive,
the conversion of the heart from impure desires to pure aspirations,
the transmutation of passional forces into moral powers. The wise
purify their thoughts, They turn from bad deeds and do
good deeds. They put error behind them and approach truth.
Thus do they rise above the allurements of sin, above
the torments of temptation, above the dark world of sorrow,
and enter the divine consciousness, the transcendent life,