第33章

To the true Alchemist there can be no mystery surrounding the wonderful phenomena mentioned in the work we have quoted, in plants extracting from the same rocks, soil, and air, qualities so manifestly different--deadly poisons, healing balsams, and pleasant aromas, or the reverse, from the same identical plant foods.Nothing is more wonderful or mysterious, than, the same alchemical processes, which, are hourly being enacted within our own bodies.From the same breath of air and the same crust of bread do we concoct the blood, the bile, the gastric juice, and various other secretions; and distil the finer nervous fluids, that go to build up and sustain the whole of our mental and dynamic machinery.It is the same ancient story of the atoms; each part and each function endowing the same inorganic chemicals with their own spiritual, magnetic, and physical life-qualities, by what appears, to the uninitiated observer, a miraculous transmutation of matter, but which is, in reality, the evolution of organic form from inorganic materials, in obedience to the Divine law of spiritual progression.Who could stop with exact science? For, when we come to consider the apparent mysteries of life and growth by the aid of this alchemical light, the shadows flee, and all the illusions of Nature's phenomenal kaleidoscope vanish before the revelation of the underlying spiritual realities.We know that the plant, being the physical expression upon the material plane of a more interior life, endows its outward atoms with their peculiar qualities.THESE QUALITIES ARE NOT DRAWN DIRECTLY FROM THE SOIL; the soil only becoming the medium for their complete or incomplete expression, as the case may be; i.e., supplying the necessary inorganic atoms.Hence, the deadly qualities of aconite, and the generous life-sustaining qualities of the nutritious vegetable, BEING SPIRITUAL LIFE ENDOWMENTS, conveyed to thematerial substance, abstracted from the soil and withdrawn from the atmosphere, are no mystery; their effect upon the human organism being exactly that, which is produced by their spiritual affinity or antipathy, as the case may be.And this also shows and explains, why purely inorganic chemical atoms, though they be exactly the same as the organic substances, from a strictly scientific standpoint, YET FAIL TO SUPPORT LIFE, because such chemical equivalents lack the organic spirituality of the interior life, which alone, gives them the power and function to support the same.They fail to fulfill the requirements of the alchemical law of life for the support of life--in other words, biogenesis.

And, too, this inorganic life may be parted from the plant or vegetable, if it be too long severed from the medium which transmits the spiritual life, from the inorganic world to that of organic matter.Vegetables, fresh from the ground, or parent stem, retain this life if at once prepared for food, if not overcooked, which is so often ignorantly done.This is the secret of sustenance from foods.Nature's perfected fruits and vegetables are overflowing with the life-giving essences, and, if eaten direct from the tree or parent stem, that life is not lost, but transmitted to our organisms, and replenishes the wasting system with a living life.Much less of such food is required to completely satisfy and nourish the body than if the life had partly departed or been destroyed.

Briefly stated, then, everything within organic Nature is the expressional symbolic manifestation of spirit; every form being a congregation of innumerable atoms of life, revealing their presence in material states; each organic form, or, rather, organism, evolving under the central control of some dominating Deific atom or soul, which, by virtue of past incarnations and labors in its cycle of evolution, from the mineral up to man, has achieved the royal prerogative to rule within its own state.Man being the highest representative form--the grand finale in the earthly drama--sums up and contains within himself everything below, and THE GERMS OF EVERYTHING BEYOND, THIS STATE.He is truly amicrocosm, and represents in miniature the grand Cosmic Man of the Heavens.Every living force beneath him corresponds to some state, part, or function, which he has graduated through and conquered, and which, inhim, has now become embodied, as a part of his universal kingdom.Consequently, all things are directly related to him, in the grand universal unity of spiritual life.

This cannot be realized and comprehended by the physical man, nor conveyed to his outer senses by the physical sciences.He must bring into active use the inner man, the real being, which inhabits and controls the outer organism, and through its instrumentality, understand the interior source and workings behind the phenomena of manifested being.So we see that, exact science cannot take us far, yet, it is a mighty factor, in the evolution of the microcosm Man, and in consciously relating him to the Infinite Macrocosm--God, Spirit, All.