One alchemist teaches: “Consider well what it is you desire to produce, and according to that regulate your intention. Take the last thing in your intention as the first thing in your principles.... Attempt nothing out of its own nature [then follow parables that grapes are not gathered from thistles, etc.]. If you know how to apply this doctrine in your operation as you ought, you will find great benefit, [pg 344] and a door will hereby be opened to the discovery of greater mysteries.” Actually there is a greater difference between one who seeks what he seeks as an end, and one who seeks it as a means to an end. To seek knowledge for riches is a very different thing from seeking riches (or independence) as an instrument of knowledge. In the study in question the means and the end must coincide, i.e., the truth must be sought for itself only. (H. A., p. 238.) In the book, “De Manna Benedicto,” we read: “Whoever thou art that readest this tractate, let me exhort thee that thou directest thy understanding and soul more toward God for the keeping of his commandments, than toward love of this art [sc. its external portions], for although it be the only, indeed the whole wisdom of the world, it is yet powerless in comparison with the divine wisdom of the soul, which is the love towards God, in the keeping of his commandments.... Hast thou been covetous, profane one? Be thou meek and pious and serve in all lowliness the glorious creator; if thou art not determined to do that, thou art employed in trying to wash an Ethiop white.”
Desire is, as some ancient philosophers think, the root of all affects, which manifest themselves in pairs. Joy corresponds to desire fulfilled, sorrow to the obstructed or imperiled fulfillment; hope is the expectation of fulfillment, fear the opposite, etc. All the pairs of opposites are in some degree superficial, something that comes and goes with time, while the essential remains, itself invisible and without relation [pg 345] to time—a perpetual activity, an ever enduring conation as it was formerly called. (It is the libido of the psychoanalysis. In its manifestations it is subjected to bipolarity, as Stekel has named the inevitable pairs of opposites.)
The pairs of opposites have been noticed in the Hindu doctrine of salvation exactly as in alchemy. Alchemistic hieroglyphics we know are rich in [ambiguous] expressions for a hostile Dyas (couple), with whose removal a better condition first commences, although at the outset it is actually requisite for the achievement of the work. In the Bhagavad-Gita the pairs of opposites play a great part. The world is full of agony on account of the pairs of opposites, which are to be found everywhere. Heat, cold; high, low; good, evil; joy, sorrow; poor, rich; young, old; etc. The basis of the opposites is formed by the primal opposition Rajas-Tamas. To escape from it in recognizing the true ego as superior to it and not participating in it, is the foremost purpose of the effort toward salvation. So whoever has raised himself above the qualities of substances is described as having escaped from opposites.
“Contact of atoms is only cold and warm, brings pleasure and pain,
They come and go without permanency—tolerate them O Bharata.
The wise man, whom these do not affect, O mighty hero,
Who bears pain and pleasure with equanimity he is ripening for immortality.” (II, 14 ff.)
The spirit, the true ego, is raised above the agitation of the qualities of nature:
“Swords cut him not, fire burns him not,
Water wets him not nor does the wind wither him.