The Alchemy Of Personal Transformation

By Staff

Let me tell you about an incident that happened during my wandering days in the Himalayan mountains. During my wandering, I met an old naga sadhu belonging to a reclusive sect, which renounces everything material, including clothes. I had been forewarned that they were fierce and violent. Indeed, the sadhu I met looked fierce with his matted hair and wild eyes. He was sitting on the banks of the holy river Ganga. I approached him and started a conversation. He was intent on smoking his pipe, filling it with a form of opium. I felt that he wasn't ready for company and decided to walk off. Then, he did something astonishing. He placed two copper coins inside his pipe and started to smoke.

When he finished smoking, he knocked the pipe on the floor and two gold coins fell out! I followed the sadhu to the market. He sold the gold coins, bought more opium and repeated the process. He did it about 10 times over the next two days. Finally, the sadhu offered to teach me the technique. I said, 'I have no use for gold coins. Please teach me meditation instead.' I was speaking in broken Hindi. The sadhu wordlessly offered me his pipe. I said, 'No sir.' I asked him how he did it.

He replied to me in Tamil, my mother tongue (I had not even told him who I was or where I was from): 'Angam pazhuthal thangam pazhukkum'. If your being is ripe, gold can happen. Then, he playfully blew smoke rings onto my face. For the next three days I was in deep bliss. The process of changing a lower level metal such as copper or iron into gold is called alchemy. The greatest alchemy is the inner alchemy.

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