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The sense of reality and the sense of delight with which the student aspiring to create concentrates upon the cloud determines its efficacy. In alchemy, as in all things, doubt and negation destroy; faith and happiness sustain.
Man must come to recognize that space and time are necessary subdivisions of one sole reality, that the limitations which they embody, providing necessary boundaries, can become ladders to boundlessness and a veritable means whereby any electron in space can become a universe or the universe can become any electron. The drawing-in of the sustaining breath of the Holy Spirit and the expelling thereof creates an eddying of consciousness in concentric, rapidly moving rings expanding out to the farthest periphery of manifestation.
The finite mind may find it difficult at first to grasp this principle. To make it easier, let us explain that the consciousness of God that sustains the universe is also within man. Now, if the consciousness of God that sustains the universe is within man, is it unreasonable to suppose that man can also be within the consciousness that sustains the universe?
In the macrocosmic-microcosmic interchange, in the great flow of life, of delight, of boundless joy, man senses the unity of all that lives; and he recognizes that his role as a receiver of benefits from the universe entails the necessary conveyance of benefits from his own creative consciousness back into the universe. There is joy in the construction of the temple of life, for templed order and templed service create in the individual a sense of building when all around him there is a tearing down of values, morals, and faith. But in the temple he finds his constructive role midst the roles of destructivity men have elected for themselves.
Many say, "Let us destruct that we may construct." Let them remember that before they can construct wisely and rightly, all destructive tendencies must be removed from their consciousness; for creative law, as it expands the reality of God into the framework of the natural order, automatically wipes out their imperfect images.
There is no need to hold in consciousness a destructive sense or even a sense of condemnation. Beloved Jesus said, "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."1 The secret of the Tree of Life is to be found, but the seeker must first surrender his personal sense, his sense of separation from God and from life, so that the universal consciousness can flow into him. Thus the breath of the Great Alchemist shall become his own.
It is not, then, the personal "I" that doeth the work, but the Father in me that worketh hitherto, and I work.2 The Father that worketh hitherto is the creative effort of the universe that enhances the vision of life's perfection for an onward-moving humanity. The "I" that works is the conscious individuality yoked with the I AM Presence of universal Reality. It is the Son working with the All-Father to produce in and for every man the summation of the glory we knew together before the world was.
If imperfect manifestations defraud the functions of cosmic law, then let it also be remembered that Spirit enhances the quality of life. Through the beautiful bonus of man's acceptance of the reality and the flow of life, he becomes wholly identified with the formless Spirit. He is then able in the form manifestation to create a relative perfection as Above, so below.
As the great Master admonished his disciples, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,"3 so we would disabuse the minds of the would-be alchemists of the idea that form cannot be perfected within a relative framework.
While we acknowledge that according to the patterns of evolution, forms and ideas do transcend themselves in life's great cosmic ongoing, we also see that within a transcendental universe scientists have been able to perfect their methods and inventions through the historical epochs. Thus the dispensations of science have been ordained in the hopes that in relieving mankind of their drudgery, they would use their free time and energy to develop the Christ consciousness that overshadows and transcends the mortal mind and being of man.
The Great White Brotherhood is aware of how destructive trends in music and art can exert enormous influence on young minds. Many of the youth of today have no standard by which to judge that which is fed to them, simply because from early years they have been enmeshed in a web of darkness which seems to them to be a creation of light.
It becomes difficult, then, to extend the wings of the Spirit to these young souls, for the human intellect inciting their rebellious egos has convinced them that free form and the absence of all restrictions is the means through which they will achieve self-realization.
Nothing could be further from the truth, for self-discipline is the requirement of the hour. But these untamed souls would not surrender their human will for anything or anyone, and so it is easy for the prince of darkness to find disciples from among those who have been subverted from their earliest years.
The highest alchemy is the precipitation of the Christ consciousness, and all to whom the breath of life has been given have a solemn obligation to pass on the precepts of holy wisdom before passing the torch of responsibility to the next generation. The ancient proverb "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" becomes, then, life's injunction to all humanity. Seeking a means of improving the strain and the quality of life, they should consider and reconsider its mandates until they are effectively interwoven into the whole structure of striving toward the future.
Immorality, greed, selfishness, and dishonor have never provided for any age any recompense except the destruction of the spirals of the future. Only light can rise, whether in civilization or in individual man. Only light has the power to endow our cloud with the understanding that it is our own future, woven today from the controlled energies of our beings and determinedly endowed with our highest vision and our richest faith, that will produce the fruit of givingness to the universe in the highest creative God-quality.
As I prepare you for more advanced efforts made on your behalf and on behalf of humanity, it is essential that I endow you to the best of my ability through spiritual means with the vision of what God is. Even in our higher octaves, it is impossible for us who are yet in a lesser individualized state to realize the fullness of who and what the Greatest Alchemist is. But we can approach the Holy of Holies; we can draw nigh by transcending ourselves even as he is ever transcending himself, being changed from glory unto glory by the one universal Spirit.
We are never bored and never tired by the changeless effort to change, for we are aware that with each step we take, an infinite leap occurs in the highness of us all. God identifies so beautifully with every part of life that there is a gladness in all creation when the Higher Self makes the giant leap. In the words of the Christ to his disciples of old, "I go before you into Jerusalem."4
The City of God, the City of Peace, the cosmic parliament of man - these are the outgrowth of the Father's love, of the idea of the Great Transcendentalist, of the Eternal Alchemist, the Great Spirit, God the Father, Christ the King. He who brings down the mountains and raises the valleys, he who puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts them of low degree,5 does all things in order to produce the summum bonum of ultimate reality for every part of life.
His givingness is beyond reproach, and if his precepts had been heeded in any age by any society, the thorns of that age would have been blunted and broken. The fragrances of the rose would have surrounded the age. The highest learning, culture, and beauty would have manifested. Pain and suffering would have ended in a relative sense and, through understanding, the golden arch would have been seen by all within the scope of their immediate realization. The golden door would have ope'd wide, and the heart of purpose would have been perceived behind it all.
Nature and nature's God conspire to produce universes worlds without end, the great diurnal magnetism, the universal endowment that, as male and female, as positive and negative, as Spirit and Mater, are designed to produce the wonder of life. Its glaring and awesome beauty may be everywhere, but to some it is a garish movement from which they shrink. To others it is a universal hymn of purpose.
But to those of us who love nothing more dearly than to guide humanity by word and deed, it is the opportunity of the eternal Buddha, the opening bud of the flower of joyous reality whose fragrance is everywhere. It permeates the quality of life; it removes the odors of darkness; it encompasses all. It reveals the meaning and purpose of love that in sacrificing itself is re-born. What more shall I say as we stand on the threshold?
I say, I kindle a blaze within your being. Be the flame tiny or great, may it ever expand and help you to make for yourself and for the glory of the Great Alchemist a life full of interest in taking dominion and in being one with the Great Exemplar.
Oh, let us love together! Let us be together, and let us see together the far-off movement that yearns to draw nigh.
[Taken from the book version, Saint Germain On Alchemy]