What is Alchemy

Alchemy is a word that is often used casually, but it’s worthwhile to have a precise and rigorous definition.

On the one hand, alchemy is a description of processes that you could say, transforms a base material into a pure and refined material, for example, lead to gold.

Or you might say it’s a sequence of processes that is simply a purification, where we are removing impurities to arrive at the essential core purity, at the base of being.

The English word comes from the Egyptian tradition. We use it to translate the Chinese words NeiDan 内丹. Dan means cinnabar, literally. We take it to mean elixir. Cinnabar is this bright red substance that has some real world attributes, but is also symbolic of pure Yang. The elixir is the presence or the presence-ing of the original pure Yang in the body. Nei 內 means ‘inner’, so we are talking about Inner Alchemy, Inner Elixir. External alchemy, WaiDan 外丹, is a different discussion, and we will leave that for another time. My interest, practice, and teaching is concerned with Inner Alchemy.

The Stages of Inner Alchemy

Inner alchemy is traditionally said to have four or five stages, depending on how you count. ‘Foundation’ may or may not include the first stage, but either way there is a restoration and then a transformation of Jing Essence. This is the most material level.

Secondly, the Jing Essence joins with Qi Energy, and thus we start to move up the spectrum between materiality to immateriality. You can also see this in terms of purification.

Thirdly the Qi layer merges with, or transforms into Shen Spirit, which is the most immaterial layer that still is at least somewhat individually distinct. It is on one hand, Spirit, and on the other hand, it is also *your* spirit.

Beyond that, we transform Spirit, or merge, with Emptiness.

And finally, Emptiness merges with Dao.

This is the progression:

Jing → Qi → Shen → Emptiness → Dao

Material → Subtle → Immaterial → Empty → Totality, Unity

This is the process — what is the practice to which it refers?

Internal Medicine and External Medicine

Li Daochun 李道純 in the 13th century organized it well into separate processes — one for what he calls ‘internal medicine’ and another for ‘external medicine’.

In my view, alchemy proper really just refers to the internal medicine process. And this process begins at the Shen Spirit to Xu Emptiness stage of the process.

Now, depending on cultural contexts and one’s location in a grand cycle of human relationship to spirit (which is described in great detail in the Indian articulations of the yugas and described in lesser detail in the DaoDe Jing, and which proceeds from dark and coarse times to bright and refined times, Golden Ages wherein all being are Enlightened). Depending where you are in that great cycle of existence, different tools are needed.

Importantly this understanding includes the understanding that the model is nested and fractal such that, in any given time, there will also be a spectrum along which the individual is located. Some people will need coarser methods, and some people will need only the most refined methods.

The Age of Accelerated Revelation

In my view, we’re in a transition from the ending of a coarse time of conflict and delusion, entering a time in which things are moving the other way, moving toward refinement and purification and enlightenment of all sentient beings. I sometimes refer to it as the Age of Accelerated Revelation.

It could be a limited historical view, but I hope it is a broadly perceived, accurate view. We shall see. It’s my view that people are opening to spirit, to initial recognition, faster and faster and in greater and greater numbers.

With this in mind, I think it’s relevant to focus on the higher level alchemical teachings. Outwardly, this is apparent in this historical moment the emphasis within spiritual teachings on going direct to the non-dual teachings in whatever tradition, whether it’s Dzogchen or Advaita Vedanta or, in the Daoist case, *WuWei* 无为 - the doing-non-doing, the clear, still, non-action approach to meditation and realization of practice.

The Internal Medicine Framework

The internal medicine framework for internal alchemy starts at this point of recognition. Either via the transmission of a master or via the accidental encounter in the turbulence of being, one suddenly has direct experience, direct encounter of a timeless, spaceless non-being with the understanding of its essential nature to all being and all-encompassing nature with respect to all being.

So this is not enlightenment. We can more productively relate to it as the initial awakening - it is recognition, but it is the beginning of the process.

Even though we have moments, glimpses in meditation and in life of no-self, of radiant emptiness, of a state of being without qualities or characteristics, there is subsequently a process in which one allows that recognition to work through all the aspects of being. It massages out the aspects of your understanding, your processing of sensory experience, that are not in alignment with that direct understanding of reality.

The Path: Recognition, Decision, Faith

In the internal medicine path of internal alchemy, we begin with this recognition. Then we set the orientation - the orientation of our compass. We set our intention, associated with Yang Earth, and Wu 戊 in Li DaoChun’s diagram. Earth is associated with self, integrity, vessel, and most importantly, center.

We establish this intention with great decisiveness - to become fully enlightened, to follow the consequences of this recognition to its ultimate endpoint. This decision, this clear “decide once and never revisit” choice, is very important. It’s essential.

These are the three ingredients:

1. Recognition

2. The decision - setting the intention

3. Faith and confidence

In order to maintain the decision, the intention, which includes remaining, to the best of our ability, in that stateless state perpetually, 24/7, we must establish faith and confidence in our recognition and shore it up with faith and confidence that this process leads to complete, total realization - complete reality, as we say. The completion of realization.

Alchemy as Non-Doing

So that’s alchemy, from my perspective. It begins with recognition. It is impelled by choice, intention, decision. It is sustained by faith, confidence, and this is a path of non-doing. This is the WuWei 无为 of LaoZi and the DaoDe Jing. This is, in Daoism, the highest path.

Alchemy is a framework for holding this understanding, for holding the practice, and for passing it on.

That’s all for now. It is a topic that deserves many returns.