says the Highest Being to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita (IX, 25). The mystic is in the position from the moment of regeneration, to create in himself a new world with laws that he may, to a certain extent, himself select. Fortunate is he who makes a good selection. Every one is the architect of his own fortune. This is most true when after introversion the [pg 350] power of self determining one's own destiny is directed toward the most intensive living. The formation and cultivation of the new earth is a beginning that is rich with significant consequences. The alchemists speak of a maidenly earth or a flaky white earth (i.e., crystalline) as a certain stage in the work. This is probably the stage that we are examining now, the stage of the new, still undeveloped earth that is now to be organized (according to the conceived ideal). The soil is crystalline because the old earth was dissolved and has been freshly formed from the solution. The crystallization corresponds to regeneration. The “white earth” probably corresponds to the “white stone,” which is the first stage of completion after the blacks (first mystical death, putrefaction, trituration, or contrition). In the white earth a seed is sown. We shall hear of it later.
If the work is not to make men unserviceable and is not again to bring them into conflict with the demands of life, so that all the effort would have been fruitless, the new world must be organized in such a way that it is compatible with the demands of real life. In other words, the ideal that regulates the new world must be an ethical one. The mystic who wishes to be freed from contradictions will have to follow his conscience as a guide, and not the unexplored but the explored conscience. He cannot escape it in the long run (the magicians that defy it are, as the legend informs us, finally torn to pieces by the devil); it is better for him to get upon its [pg 351] side and so turn the conflict in his favor. It appears that this manly attitude would have a marvelous inner concord as a result and outwardly, a remarkable firmness of character. It is not my object to decide what metaphysical significance the strengthening through mysticism of the ideal (God in me) may have.
“Take, O soul, not the unworthy and common as a model, for such use and word will adhere to thee finally as a nature opposed to thine own. By this means, however, the strong impulse itself towards union with thy nature and to the return into thy home goes astray. Know that the exalted and majestic Originator of things, is himself the noblest of all things. Take then the noble things as a model, in order by that means to get nearer thy Creator on the path of elective affinity. And know that the noble attaches itself to the noble and the vulgar to the common.” (Fleischer, Herm. a. d. Seele, p. 18.)
What is to be sown in the new earth is generally called love. A crop of love is to arise; with love will the new world be saturated; its laws will be the laws of love. By love a transmutation of the subject is to take place. One alchemist (quoted in H. A., pp. 133 ff.) writes as follows:
“I find the nature of Divine Love to be a perfect unity and simplicity. There is nothing more one, undivided, simple, pure, unmixed and uncompounded than Love....
“In the second place I find Love to be the most [pg 352] perfect and absolute liberty. Nothing can move Love, but Love; nothing touch Love, but Love; nor nothing constrain Love, but Love. It is free from all things; itself only gives laws to itself, and those laws are the laws of Liberty; for nothing acts more freely than Love, because it always acts from itself, and is moved by itself, by which prerogatives Love shows itself to be allied to the Divine Nature, yea, to be God himself.
“Thirdly, Love is all strength and power. Make a diligent search through Heaven and Earth, and you will find nothing so powerful as Love. What is stronger than Hell and Death? Yet Love is the triumphant conqueror of both. What more formidable than the wrath of God? Yet Love overcomes it, and dissolves and changes it into itself. In a word, nothing can withstand the prevailing strength of Love: it is the strength of Mount Zion, which can never be moved.
“In the fourth place: Love is of a transmuting and transforming nature. The great effect of Love is to turn all things into its own nature, which is all goodness, sweetness, and perfection. This is that Divine power which turns water into wine; sorrow and anguish into exulting and triumphant joy; and curses into blessings. Where it meets with a barren and heathy desert, it transmutes it into a paradise of delights; yea, it changeth evil into good, and all imperfection into perfection. It restores that which is fallen and degenerated to its primary beauty, excellence and perfection. It is the Divine Stone, [pg 353] the White Stone with the name written upon it, which no one knows but he that hath it. [Cf. Rev. II, 17. ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat [nutritio] of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.’ Also III, 12: ‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.’ Cf. also XIX, 12, and XXI, 2. The White Stone with the new name is also joined with the new earth. Because of this it is important that the new Jerusalem is ‘prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’] In a word, it is the Divine Nature, it is God himself, whose essential property it is to assimilate all things with himself; or [if you will have it in the scripture phrase] to reconcile all things to himself, whether they be in Heaven or in Earth; and all by means of this Divine Elixir, whose transforming power and efficacy nothing can withstand....” (H. A., pp. 133 ff.)
At the end of the work there ensues the union of sun and moon, typifying God and man. As in the Vedanta the teaching of the holy books of India, the Upanishads, so in alchemy, the difference between the one soul and the All Soul is of no importance. [pg 354] For every one who succeeds in overcoming the fundamental error, in which we are all implicated, the difference vanishes, and the two things previously separated coalesce. In reality there is only the one thing: God.
Irenæus writes: “... The fire of nature assimilates all that it nourishes to its own likeness, and then our mercury or menstruum vanishes, that is, it is swallowed by the solar nature [The soul of man dissolves and is taken up by the divine or All Soul] and all together make but one universal mercury [All Soul] by intimate union. And this mercury is the material principle of the Stone; for formerly, when it was compounded of three mercuries, [namely, when they thought they had to distinguish spirit, soul and body, or some other division in it] then Soul, world and God were, for example, to be thought of, or as they are called in Soeta-svatara-Upanishad V, Enjoyer, Object of Enjoyment, and Inciter.