ALCHEMICAL

LABORATORY

BULLETINS

 

 

 

Vol. II, No. 7

1971

 

INDEX

Announcements

Narcotics and the P.R.S.

Coming Changes In the P.R.S.

The Making of an Alchemical Apprentice

Questions and Answers

In the Next Bulletin

ANNOUNCEMENTS

BULLETIN SUBSCRIPTIONS

Our records indicate that the following subscribers have not yet remitted the annual Bulletin subscription fee of $6.00 for the years indicated:

1971:

23, 39, 42, 52, 53, 54, 57, 60, 86, 96, 105, 107, 111, 132, 140, 147, 154, 159, 170, 171, 184, 189, 203, 206, 226, 227, 234, 241, 250, 263, 272, 274, 287, 296, 297, 298, 301, 302, 306, 307, 308, 314, 315, 321, 322, 324, 325, 328, 330, 342, 346, 350, 353, 354, 355, 357, 358, 360, 362, 363.

 

1970-71:

2, 32, 61, 165, 201, 262, 268, 271, 277, 283, 285, 292,294, 309, 310, 341, 34·t.

1969-71:

30, 85, 88, 106, 167, 231, 239, 241, 270.

Your immediate payment of your Bulletin subscription will be greatly appreciated. If you should be unable to make payment but would like to continue to receive the Bulletins please indicate this in writing to us.

REMITTANCES BY FOREIGN SUBSCRIBERS

All Canadian and other foreign subscribers are asked to make their remittances directly to the P.R.S., Salt Lake City, Utah, only by bank draft or postal money order made out in U.S. dollars. Collection and exchange charges are too high to be borne by the P.R.S. New Zealand subscribers please note that all remittances are to be made directly to the P.R.S., Salt Lake City, Utah. Lotus is no longer authorized to act in our behalf.

The Alchemical Laboratory Bulletin is a quarterly publication of the Paracelsus Rsearch Society, P.O. Box 6006, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84106, U.S.A. Annual subscription $6.00. This price includes one complimentary copy to be mailed to an institution of learning or as otherwise designated by the subscriber. Individuals and institutions unable to pay the annual subscription fee may, upon verification of their request, receive the Bulletin gratis. Copyrighted and printed in the U.S.A.

Narcotics and the P.R.S.

We shall be brief. There is little to add to what comes from newspapers, magazines, radio and television about tle damage which narcotics and drug abuse can and does produce.

After the casual inquiry: Why are people using narcotics, especially the young, the almost inevitable answer is: Oh, just for kicks! We dare say that this is not so in the large majority of the cases. What then is the reason? We say: Escape from actuality. Sheer disappointment with what the younger generation faces is the cause. Parents, teachers, the entire environment, presents to the younger generation a world of deceit, lies, and falsehood. What they are taught not to do they see their mentors do. It is the hypocrisy they find appalling. They do not know where to turn or whom to see and confide in because everywhere they face what is to them a generation gap-a gap of an outdated behavior pattern and a refusal to see things as they are. They are told to follow the moral order of previous generations. With the help of drugs and narcotics another world opens up to them, which in their way of thinking, gives them unrestricted freedom. And here lies the danger. Whenever and wherever freedom is abused degeneration sets in. When the mind goes beyond its limitations it becomes overtaxed and degenerates. To the user of drugs artificial stimulus becomes necessary to keep the mind at such a high level of extrasensory perception. Now according to the law of polarity, if such stimulus can be created wih the help of gross material influx it must be possible by sheer inner development to bring about a permanent state of higher consciousness that is selfsustaining. Here is where the difference is to be found.

The first method is the easiest to come by. It is a habit that takes the least effort to begin but requires the most effort to break. Inversely the inner mental stimulus is harder to begin but easier to maintain. How can this be accomplished? By proving the method involved.

We quote from a student's correspondence. "I have ezperienced lasting insight from the use of marijuana, LSD, and other psychedelics. I refer in particular to my experiences with the Wescott and with the Waite translations of the Sefer Yetzirah with specific reference to the descriptions of the thirty-two paths of wisdom. I also admit to periods akin to madness, though I never had a so-called 'bum trip.' I know others who have gained lasting insight through the use of these substances. Will you comment on the possible value of the alchemical preparation of, or alchemical experimentation with majuana, ergot, peyote, the psilocybin mushroom, junsen weed, etc. The dangerous impurities deliberately introduced into these substances obtained 'on the street,' to say nothing of the negative effect of the motives prompting their sale without question."

Our comment: Leave all poisonous and narcotic substances alone. When preparing spagyric preparations do so to help build up what is weak in body and spirit. Then the consciousness will begin to become receptive to higher thoughts. The body will be strengthened and become resistant to impurities. Such results are lasting and not harmful. Oh, how we wish we could shout to all the world that it is possible to gain a deeper insight into reality without escaping actuality. Ways and means are available here at P.R.S. These ways and means should be found in schools, colleges, and universities everywhere. We know that it works! We have the evidence!

We also have been asked: "If you have an answer to this problem of narcotics which the world faces, without resorting to narcotics and drugs, then why are the people not flocking to you?"

Answer: The entire world is trying to find an answer as to how to combat this evil. We can only repeat with a sad heart, what Basilius Valentinus said five hundred years ago: "The worst of it is, they will not be taught."

Coming Changes In the P.R.S.

We are in the second seven year cycle--a cycle of changes. Much has already been changed since the time this cycle became active at about 1967. By 1972 this phase will end and the next seven year cycle begins, when much will appear in a different light, because of the greater impulse that will manifest during that third seven year span. Activity will be more pronounced and an energetic impulse will keep things moving. The last and very important major change of this second seven year cycle will manifest during this year and next. The previous cyclic years were ones of preparation for the P.R.S. to commence undertakings of far reaching consequences whereby mankind as a whole will be affected. All this will start gradually but nevertheless the impact it will have on the future will be only too noticeable. Those who are gradually awakening to this fact will begin to set their houses in order, that when the clarion call sounds forth, each one will be ready and capable of accepting and performing the added responsibilities required to contribute talents and energies to the great work before us. Years of preparation will then show whether we are in a position to heed the call.

We need practical assistance from those who are conscious of the great plan of evolution that has but one aim--to bring everything to its pre-ordained state of perfection. To some of the P.R.S. students this has begun to make sense. Do you belong to this advance group or are you still groping in the semi-darkness of doubt and wishful thinking?

Just as one day follows another for some and each day is just another day, so may one cycle follow another to come. Not so with us. Everyday is a new day with a new challenge. After all, how many such seven year cycles have there been in your life and ... how many do you have left?

The Making of an Alchemical Apprentice

Apprentices are made. One has to choose a field of endeavor in which one desires to become proficient and to excel. Before a person has determined in which direction his career or his life work is to lead him much needs to be considered. The agony of mind and emotion experienced before a final decision has been made may well be envisioned and the result of a wrong choice can well be imagined.

Man enters life as an apprentice and usually departs life as a journeyman. Very few attain to a mastership.

In the following unsolicited letter from a student desiring to become an alchemistical apprentice gives an unusual insight into what such a decision entailed on his part:

"Though you have not asked for one, I am going to give you a short biography, spiritual and material.

"I spent an energyless, miserable childhood, continually sapped by the forces around me, unable to cope with out of the home realities. Considered a "sissy" I was miserable through grade school. Finally I was sent to a small private school. This was fine until during the war it was turned into a military school and my bitterness began again as I drifted along in the lowest ranks until graduation. I was marked out for Princeton University. Through family pressure, I was admitted. Finding myself unprepared in every way for the experience, I was again miserable. In my second semester, I suffered an extremely bitter emotional shock relating to the death of my Grandfather. He died. I was not allowed to attend his funeral. I left: Princeton shortly thereafter.

"At the end of a year, I continued my education at Macalester College, a small, at that time Presbyterian College in St. Paul, Minnesota, my home. I finished at the University of Colorado in January of 1951 with a B.A. in English and Speech (Theater Arts). After several months of dabbling in Little Theater, I went to work in the local TV station where I remained until 1955-56. Though disorderly and uneven I was not unsuccessful in my work. I was a TV director when I left my job in, I believe, 1956.

"During my last years at the TV station I began to read yoga ravenously, starting with Vivekananda. I looked into Aurobindo. Finally I came onto 'Autobiography of a Yogi.' Finding, much to my bitterness, that I had missed Yogananda by several years, I tied up with a local meditation group. For two years I struggled with meditation in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Again, my energies were so incredibly low that I could not find the inner experience that they taught. I became a vegetarian, weakening myself more though it was during my last year that my work began to come up to par in television.

"Finally I quit my job and came to California to 'find God.' When I got here, I found no bed of roses. In retrospect, I believe the SRF people would have taken me in as a renunciate or probationer (what they call it.) if I had pressed the issue. But I was frantic for the inner experience of the Kryia which I felt I had been promised, so I left for India. The trip was disastrous. Swami Atmananda Giri and I set up opposing fortresses. He crashed and crashed and crushed mine until with my dying gasp I walked out of the Baranagar Ashram and stumbled down a dirt road in Dhoti and Punjabi, got into a taxi and found my way eventually to The Salvation Army Hotel in Calcutta. I had been ill for three months of miserable food and miserable monsoon weather and was fair game for the local missionary contingent. A marvelous Baptist missionary got me into the Calcutta Revival Center where I was Saved. I returned through Manila to be bitterly disappointed in Oral Robert's 'great Manila campaign,' which did little to stir the Great Revival all the local people hungered after. I was filled with the Holy Ghost in San Francisco. I had settled in my mind that I would go to Bible School in Missouri. Fate would have it that a friend of my brother was the public relations man for the Assemblies of God in Missouri. I had made application for attendance to the Bible School there and asked him for a job in his publishing house over the summer which he refused for his own good reasons. I made the serious mistake of returning to St. Paul during the summer. I have always blamed that man for the eventual breakup of my experience. Rightly or wrongly. Late that summer in a small church I failed to respond as I thought I ought (as I remember it) and walked out of a meeting to feel as if a hole had been torn in a protective sheaf around me. I began drinking, movie-going ... I began a slow, mad trek back into the world as I had known it.

"In 1958, I was working at the airport here in Los Angeles. I pursuaded Grandmother to back my going to UCLA to get a teaching credential. She did. I began in education but ended up in the Theater Department studying Motion Picture Production. After several false starts and my Father's death, I got an M.A. in Theater Arts in 1966. I used what monies I inherited through my father's death to finance school and years of psycho-therapy which may or may not have been fruitless. On graduation I wandered until I came by some money again through my Grandmother's death and spent six months in Europe, studying German for three months in Passau.

"Since my return, I have been saying that I am an actor and have in fact acted a little or saying I am a writer, though all I have written has been some faltering poetry.

"Five years ago, I began the study of Tai Chi Chuan, a Chinese Karate form, a Taoist exercise for longevity and good health. Three years ago I became active in Subud. It defies description. It was started by an Indonesian Moslem who had been an Indonesian Pun Tak (the Tai Chi Chuan of Indonesia) expert (!). The exercise, called 'latihan,' is said to mediate the Life Force after sufficient 'purification' has been achieved. The result of too much latihan is 'crisis,' or what any psychiatrist would call a psychotic break. The exercise, externally, is an Indonesian version of a Pentacostal Meeting, with singing and dancing and crying, etc. God knows what its real force is. I have not seen any improvement on the part of anyone, yet the latihan has a compulsive fascination.

"I have experienced many of the things this Indonesian who allows himself to be called Bapak (Father) has described in his Susilla Buddhi Darma (his revelation) through drugs and through Tai Chi. Subud's most positive gift to me was drugs! You might say, "Some gift!"

"Tai Chi Chuan results in a slowly developing awareness of the body. It is here that I began to work with I Ching. My teacher is a paradox. He teaches the form as a fighting art. He is a warrior. We have discussed the heightened awareness of combat. This is what the work is directed towards. Yet the heightened awareness of combat is so acutely close to heightened spiritual awareness that Tai Chi becomes a spiritual exercise. It is the Taoist scholar's exercise. The heart is most important, I am finding now, in Tai Chi too.

"The cross-feed Subud and Tao Chi is interesting. They come out of the same bag, as it were. But the man in Indonesia has not seen this or is concealing this. As I become stronger physically, I see more clearly the benefits of the latihan for me. While others wander in a haze of submission, I find values. As you can see, I question Subud deeply. I have no question of the value of Tai Chi Chuan, however. I have seen and felt what little results I have been also to achieve during the past years.

"My visit with you in Salt Lake City was like a refreshing visit to the high clear air of the mountains. Living Waters. There is no question of what I received. The use of the Mountain Sage has given me a 'high' both permanent and positive. I will not say that I will never use the stronger

herbs or the artificial light of chemical again. It is hard to differentiate between alchemically prepared herbs and so-called drugs, except in that the pure, herbal preparations are balanced and even in effect. As to smoking any kind of herb--never! or, at least, seldom-'never' invokes the Law of Polarity too powerfully. God flows in through the nostrils and flows into the blood through the lungs.

"You opened my heart (or my heart was opened through you if you prefer that way of saying it). I experience my heart as the center of will in Tai Chi Chuan, my body as The Heart, the vessels carrying the blood as more powerful than bodily muscles or nerve tissue or even than the brain,

"I affirm,'The Light of God flows in my heart and lungs; the Light of God flows in my blood and my breath.' I work at Tai Chi with more clarity thanks to proper herbal preparation. I slowly find new balance and energy to respond to inner needs, to spiritual and physical needs. I even find values in that most strange Indonesian spiritual exercise now.

"Is there any way that I can serve you or the work in which you are engaged. I know my weaknesses and the uncertain tool that I am. Knowing the stubbornesses, fears, uncertainties ingrained in my being, yet I offer myself because I know my need to be in such a channel of Grace and Strength. I have a small income which is sufficient if I am frugal. I shall probably never want for money. There will be a time, I am sure, when I can be of service.

"Until that time, I shall watch and wait. In the meantime, I hope it will be possible to find at least one fellow seeker with whom I can work and learn. My laboratory facilities are nil, though my ingenuity is unlimited, apparently. Yet contact with another more experienced than I would be a great blessing.

"I crudely separated the Mercury of some Gallo Burgundy and am watching the purification of the Salt. I am unclear about the use of the Salt of the Suphur. I trapped some of the Sulphur in distilled water. My intention is to slowly evaporate the distilled water containing the Sulphur into the now purifying Salt. When this has been completed, I intend to add the remaining substance to a bottle of the living wine. I have already added the purifying Salt to several herb teas with fine results.

"If I have presumed through an almost pathetic eagerness to drink crystal clear waters, forgive me. Your time is precious, I know. Yet I shall presume further."

Dear Frater:

"So many things! So many!

"Heart! Courage! That element so lacking! Now, through you, through James Wing Woo, our Tai Chi teacher: HEART!

"In reading through from the beginning the past Bulletins we at first felt a sadness at having missed ten years of life. As we read further, those ten years come alive in answered questions, in small openings and awarenesses.

"It is clear that it is not what one knows, but how one knows. It is the proper attunement that is so precious and vital.

"We have never lacked intelligence nor inspiration. The fires burn and have burned mightily and high. What we have lacked is heart, courage, substance. The pathetic bulge has been an unsuccessful, greedy, panicked grasping for substance, strength... heart.

"The heart, the courage, the will was lacking to carry out what we have known again and again and again, and again known and lost.

" It is hidden in that attunement, in that feeling that came and comes and want and goes then in Salt Lake City and now in.... We read Emerson's 'Oversoul' and briefly it comes. We read the line,'My heart is warm and red!' and it comes on a deeper level in a different tone. Heart and blood!

"We affirm: The Word of God sings in our heart! The Light of God illumines our heart! Affirmations grow like plants and have for some years meant much to us. They changed with increased insight and knowledge and wisdom.

"'We' at first seems a deliberate grasping, an affectation. The actor knows what playing a part does to him! The Dual Being knows himself more fully in 'we.'

"It would seem all one needs is two bottles of wine, one to calcine, the other to enliven the ash! One for bread, one for drink! We shall see as the weeks turn into months!

In His Love, Joy and Peace!

Dear Frater,

"We feel compelled to ask your permission to continue writing you for we fear our insistence and intensity may be irritating and exhausting.

"We feel, however, that the absorbtion of what has been received will occur with what may seem amazing rapidity if we are allowed to continue with you. It has occurred to us that The Occult Intelligence expresses its influence through our first house in our chart rectified for time and birth. It has been the case as long as we remember that our hidden potential seldom appears immediately, or conversely, by the Law of polarity, it appears suddenly and surpisingly, immediately--with the danger of waining slowly. 'The seventh path is called the Hidden Intelligence because it pours out a brilliant splendor on all intellectual virtues which are beheld with the eyes of the spirit and by the ecstasy of faith.' This too has been the case. Under proper stimulus, tremendous insight tumbles out, seemingly from nowhere (probably the case!). The problem is fixing the insight, giving it heart and courage for use. We feel we may have found an answer to this problem of fixing increased awareness in alchemy.

"We had a most interesting experience. We had the powerful impression that we must leave Subud, to which we acquiesced, if it were the will of God. Then we experienced something most similar to the test administered the last Saturday of our stay with you in Salt Lake. We reviewed a number of Subud brothers in our mind. The impression was thereafter that it was not necessary to leave Subud. We are willing to leave Subud which we have for three and a half years been involved in. So are we willing to leave the study of Tai Chi Chuan which we have studied for over five years. So are we willing to break relations with PRS, if that unlikely and unhappy, at the present moment, act were to become necessary. We are saying two things: 1) we are capable of remaining with what we begin; 2) we are willing to move on when the time comes, if the time comes. We have taken one oath of secrecy and a rather binding oath of allegiance to SRF. We will do this again--unless it be the will of God. 'Never' is too harsh a word! (You may ask how does one know the will of God!)

"We recognize the channel of Grace we have contacted. We listen with loving respect when you speak with authority as a teacher. We hope we may be your friend when our life has found its proper balance or we begin to recognize that duality of being. We begin to sense the quite distinct difference between our physical personality and our non-physical personality --between our inherited blood-line and our inner, spiritual or mental personality (known in Subud as the'inner'). It becomes most clear that inner must respect outer and that outer must respect inner, each giving the other sustenance. (A whole, a new insight to the theories of the unconscious springs out of this. Stressful antagonisms between inner being and physical being become more lucidly understood.)

"We recognize our needs and present it to you. We recognize there are elements in this new equation, Alchemy, which we do not understand. Yet we presume to ask your permission to continue correspondence on the level which we have begun."

Yours in His Love, Joy and Peace!

"A note on polarity!

"We begin to know ourself as a two-faced, Janus like creature looking in, looking out.

"Yet, if peace is not to be turmoil and friends are not to be enemies, we must listen to the canny old Taoists and look for The Middle Way which must find expression in our heart as Love!

"It would seem (the hypothesis for now!) that at conception, when the sperm and ovum become one, by the Law of Polarity, an insubstantial entity springs into being immediately as a compliment to the substantial entity in the womb. At birth both entities are brought under the impress of the Astral Influences when the first breath is drawn. This suggests to us that the material, flesh and blood, bear the impress of the Planets at the

time of birth. Yet flesh and blood contain within them unique energies not exactly dependent on the Planets; equally true of the insubstantial counterpart.

"Three principles, then: Blood, the insubstantial counterpart; the Astral Influences. Body, Soul, Spirit?

"So entranced are we by the flow of ideas and awarenesses that we forget to thank you for your answer to our letter! Thank you!"

QUESTIONS crnd ANSWERS

QUESTION NO. 48--A herb is separated into its three parts and purified. It is then recombined and subjected to more heat. Are the resulting crystals the "Seeds of the Herb"?

Answer: No.

QUESTION NO. 49--Why does one wish to stay alive?

Answer: This question has often arisen during classes. Answers of some students might be of interest. We quote from such answers: a. Because mostly I feel that it might hurt to die.

b. Why to stay alive--because we just want to. But offer this: if there is a reason, to find out what it is.

c. To enjoy life at its most.

d. It is my wish to stay alive that I may progress as much as possible toward the perfection that is my ultimate goal.

e. To be able to accomplish as much to my progress or mission in life and to become nearer to God. f. To travel on the road to become humane.

g. Because there is no other choice.

h. There are things to do.

i. I don't know.

To which we may add: All answers indicate to us that "one's self" has not been discovered, because if life is without end throughout the universe then life is everlasting and life will keep on pulsating, whether we want it to or not.

QUESTION NO. 50-The statement "Within the 4 elements will be found the 3 essentials produced by Nature"-they will always reveal themselves by the Law of Polarity." Do we have this statement worded correctly?

Answer: The law of polarity will reveal itself within the three essentials that will be found within the four elements wherein is found the quintessence which is not one of the four but one of the three.

QUESTION NO. 51--Explain the statement "Out of the plant comes 2, alcohol and tincture; separate the tincture and there is 3.

Answer: The plant yields the mercury and sulphur as a unit, namely its tincture. The other unit is the plant from which the tincture has been extracted. Separate the first unit into mercury and sulphur which make two and add to the second unit (salt from the plant) and you have three.

QUESTION NO. 52--There is something not quite clear to me in regard to the vegetable stone. When the stone is finished and immersed in an herbal tincture it is supposed to attract the three essentials and cause them to float on the top where they can be scooped off. How can his be? Would the stone not dissolve in the tincture if it is immersed in it?

Answer: The stone would not dissolve so easily. It is of an oily nature having a considerable amount of the alchemical sulphur (oil) thoroughly amalgamated with its mercury and salt.

QUESTION NO. 53: You said you would let us know if you could find a source for buying unicorn. Have you found one?

Answer: Yes.

Herb Products Co., Inc.

11012 Magnolia Boulevard

N. Hollywood, California 91601

In the Next Bulletin

Yoga and the P.R.S. and more of your questions and answers.

Extra Special

MEN AND THE CYCLES OF THE UNIVERSE

This portfolio is now available in the English and German language editions at the special offer price of $5.85. Hardbound copies of the English edition of the booklet accompanying the cycle charts are available at an additional price of $1.00 if ordered with the portfolio, at $2.00 if ordered separately. We will pay the postage if your check or money order is included with your order.

What is Alchemy?

 Alchemical Research
of the Paracelsus Research Society does NOT
constitute an attempt to delve into antiquated
arts or sciences, with an objective of rejuvenating
outmoded and outdated pseudo-scientific
postulations.

 Alchemical Research
of the Paracelsus Research Society DOES consist
of attempts to reinvestigate all scientific en-
deavors ancient, medieval or contemporary,
that may not have received considerations
which they deserve, due to the then prevailing
circumstances.

 Alchemical Research
of the Paracelsus Research Society has revealed
that Alchemy is not a pseudo-science or the
forerunner'of present chemistry alone. In-
stead, Alchemy has been established as the
fountainhead of all arts and sciences. Alchemy
has been found to be the way of evolution
encompassing noumena and phenomena on
terrestrial and supra-terrestrial planes of aware-
ness.

 Alchemical Research
of the Paracelsus Research Society deserves
impartial support and recognition alike from
both scientist and laymen, who seek for the
noumena of all phenomena.

 Alchemical Research
of the Paracelsus Research Society helps to
awaken potentials lying dormant within man.
Sincere investigators participating in this fasci-
nating research will be able to produce the
evidence in the laboratory and within them-
selves.