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 error is sifted away, and only the clarified gold of truth remains.
When temptation has culminated in sorrow and deep perplexity, then the tempted one, strenuously striving for deliverance, finds that his thraldom is entirely from himself, and that instead of fighting against outer circumstances, he must alter inner conditions. The fight against outer things is necessary at the commencement. It is the only course which can be adopted at the 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; and the knowledge of the mental cause of temptation leads to the transmutation of thought, and the transmutation of thought leads to deliverance from the bondage of error.
The preliminary fighting is a necessary-stage in spiritual development, as the crying and kicking of a helpless babe is necessary to its growth; but as the crying and kicking is not needed beyond the infant stage, so the fierce struggling with, and falling under, temptation ends when the knowledge of mental transmutation is acquired.
The truly wise man, he who is enlightened concerning the source and cause of temptation, does not fight against outward allurements, he abandons all desire for them; they thus cease to be allurements, and the power of temptation is destroyed at its source. But this abandonment of unholy desire is not a final process, it is the beginning of a regenerative and transforming power which, patiently employed, leads man to the clear and cloudless heights of spiritual enlightenment.
Spiritual transmutation consists in an entire reversal of the ordinary self-seeking attitude of mind towards men 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 obtains universally in mind as in matter, and the force shut 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, it is the Plain of Renunciation. Old passions, old desires, old ambitions and thoughts, are cast away and abandoned, but only to reappear in some more beautiful, more permanent, more eternally satisfying form. As valuable jewels, long guarded and cherished, are thrown tearfully into the melting-pot, yet are remoulded into new and more perfect adornments, so the spiritual alchemist, at first loth to part company with long-cherished thoughts and habits, at last gives them up, to discover, a little later, to his joy, that they have come back to him in the form of new faculties, rarer powers, and purer joys,—spiritual jewels newly burnished, 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; he ads 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 in the attitude of others, he will not pass beyond it, but when he perceives that its cause is in himself, then he will 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, metes 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 it be disturbed and overthrown by it.
It is the conversion, or complete reversal, of this self into Truth that constitutes Transmutation. The enlightened man has abandoned the delusion that the evil in others has 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 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 in 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 is this,— that 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 inflict sufferings 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 the pursuance of 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, and where the negative pole is, there also is 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 round from the negative to the positive; the conversion of the heart from impure desires to pure aspirations; the transmutation of the 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.