(3) When men are set free from the womb the primordial spirit dwells in the square inch (between the eyes), but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart. This lower leshly heart has the shape of a large peach: it is covered by the wings of the lungs, supported by the liver, and served by the bowels. This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not eat for one day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it hears something terri ying it throbs; if it hears something enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it becomes sad; if it sees something beautiful it is dazzled. But the Heavenly Heart in the head, when would it have been in the least moved? Dost thou ask: Can the Heavenly Heart not be moved? Then I answer: How could the true thought in the square inch be moved? If it really moves, it is not well. For when ordinary men die, then it moves, but that is not good. It is best indeed if the Light has. already forti ied itself in a spirit-body and its life-force gradually penetrated the instincts and movements. But that is a secret which has not been revealed for thousands of years.

(4) That body again in man is the heart within man, for in it the prânas (which are everything) rest, and do not go beyond.

(5) It is only another name for mastery. One can make the heart move merely by running. Should one not be able to bring it to rest then by concentrated quietness? The great Holy Ones who knew how the heart and breathing power mutually in luence one another, have thought out an easier procedure as a way of helping posterity.

(10) How to use the heart correctly during breathing must be understood. It is use without use. One need only let the Light fall quite gently on the hearing. This sentence contains a secret meaning. What does it mean to let the Light fall? It is the radiance of the Light of one's own eyes. The eye looks inward only and not outward. To sense brightness without looking outward means to look inward; it has nothing to do with an actual looking within. What does hearing mean? It is hearing the Light of one's own ear. The ear listens only within and does not listen to what is outside. To sense brightness without listening to what is outside, is to listen to what is within; it has nothing to do with actually listening to what is within. In this sort of hearing, one only hears that there is no sound; in this kind of seeing, one only sees that no shape is there. If the eye is not looking outward and the ear is not harkening outward, they close themselves and are inclined to sink inward. Only when one looks and barkens inward does the organ not go outward nor sink inward. In this way laziness and absent-mindedness are done away with. That is the union of the seed and the Light of the sun and moon.

(6) In the Book of the Elixir (15) it is said: The hen can hatch her eggs because her heart is always listening. That is an important magic spell. The reason the hen can hatch the eggs is because of the power to heat. But the power of the heat can only warm the shells; it cannot penetrate into the interior. Therefore with her heart she conducts this power inward. This she does with her hearing. In this way she concentrates her whole heart. When the heart penetrates, the power penetrates, and the chick receives the power of the heat and begins to live. Therefore a hen, even when she has left her eggs, always has the attitude of listening with bent ear. Thus the concentration of the spirit is not interrupted. Because the concentration of the spirit suffers no interruption, neither does the power of heat suffer interruption day or night, and the spirit awakes to life. The awakening of the spirit is accomplished because the heart has first died. When a man can let his heart die, then the primordial spirit wakes to life. To kill the heart does not mean to let it dry and wither away, but it means that it is undivided and gathered into one.

(1) IF we consider now the Springing up of the Life, and in what Place of the Body it is where the Life is generated, then we shall rightly find the whole Ground of Man, and there is nothing so secret in Man but that it may be found. For we must needs say, that the Heart is the Place, wherein the noble Life is generated, and the Life again penetrates the Heart.

(17) Although God is Almighty, He can only work in a heart when He finds readiness or makes it. He works differently in men than in stones. For this we may take the following illustration: if we bake in one oven three loaves of barley-bread, of rye-bread, and of wheat, we shall find the same heat of the oven affects them differently; when one is well-baked, another will be still raw, and another yet more raw. That is not due to the heat, but to the variety of the materials. Similarly God works in all hearts not alike but in proportion as He finds them prepared and susceptible.

If the heart is to be ready for the highest, it must he vacant of all other things. If I wish to write on a white tablet, whatever else is written on the tablet, however noble its purport, is a hindrance to me. If I am to write, I must wipe the tablet clean of everything, and the tablet is most suitable for my purpose when it is blank. Similarly, if God is to write on my heart, everything else must come out of it till it is really sanctified. Only so can God work His highest will, and so the sanctified heart has no outward object at all.

(3) Man's heart stands under the fire sign (8). The flames of the fire press upward. When both eyes are looking at things of the world it is with vision directed outward. Now if one closes the eyes and, reversing the glance, directs it inward and looks at the room of the ancestors, that is the backward-flowing method. The power of the kidneys is under the water sign. When the instincts are stirred, it runs downward, is directed outward, and creates children. If, in the moment of release, it is not allowed to low outward but is led back by the force of thought so that it penetrates th& crucible of the creative and refreshes heart and body and nourishes them, that also is the backward-flowing method. Therefore it is said: The meaning of the Elixir of Life depends entirely on the backward- lowing method.

(49) So I will now write of the second Principle, of the clear pure Deity, of the Heart of God. In the first Principle (as I have mentioned above) is Harshness, Bitterness, and Fire; and yet they are not three Things, but one only Thing, and they one generate another. Harshness is the first Father, which is strong, [fierce or tart,] very sharp and attracting to itself; and that Attracting is the [Sting] or Prickle, or Bitterness, which the Harshness cannot endure, and it will not be captivated in Death, but rises and flies up like a strong fierce Substance, and yet cannot remove from off its Place: And then there is a horrible Anguish, which finds no Rest; and the Birth is like a turning Wheel, pulling so very hard, and breaking or bruising as it were furiously, which the Harshness cannot endure, but attracts continually more and more, harder and harder; as when Steel and a Flint are struck one against another, from which the twinkling Flash of Fire proceeds; and when the Harshness perceives mit, nit starts and sinks back, as if it were dead and overcome. And so when the Flash of Fire comes into its Mother, the Harshness, and finds her thus soft and overcome, then it is much more terrified [than the Harshness,] and becomes in the Twinkling of an Eye white and clear. And now when the harsh Tartness attains the white clear Light in itself, it is so very much terrified that it [falls or] sinks back as if it were dead and overcome, and expands itself, and becomes very thin and [pliable or] vanquished: For its own Source was dark and hard, and now is become light and soft; therefore now it is first rightly become as it were dead, and now is the Water-Spirit.

(2) If, when there is quiet, the spirit has continuously and uninterruptedly a sense of great gaiety as if intoxicated or freshly bathed, it is a sign that the Light principle in "the whole bodv is harmonious; then the Golden Flower begins to bud. When, furthermore, all openings are quiet, and the silver moon stands in the middle of Heaven, and one has the feeling that the great Earth is a world of light and brilliancy, that is a sign that the body of the heart opens itself to clarity. It is a sign that the Golden Flower is opening.

(8) When the Heavenly Heart still preserves calm, movement before the right time is a fault of softness. When the Heavenly Heart has already moved, the movement that follows afterwards, corresponding with it, is a fault of rigidity. As soon as the Heavenly Heart is stirring, one must immediately mount with all one's feeling to the house of the creative. Thus the Light of the spirit sees the summit that is the leader. This movement is in accord with the time. The Heavenly Heart rises to the summit of the creative, where it expands in complete freedom. Then suddenly it wants the deepest silence, and one must lead it speedily and with one's whole being into the yellow castle. Thus the eyes behold the central yellow dwelling place of the spirit.

(18) So also the Sound, where the Love is predominant; it brings most joyful Tidings or News into all the Forms of the Birth, as also the Fire in the Love, that kindles the Love rightly in all the Fountain-Spirits, as is mentioned above; and the Love kindles Love in its Essence. When the Love is predominant in Love, it is the sweetest, meekest, humblest, most loving Fountain of all that springs in all the Fountains; and it confirms and fixes the heavenly Birth, so that it is a holy divine Essence or Substance.

(8) Observe now the Depth of the divine Birth; they see well enough. there is no Sulphur in God, but it is generated from him, and there is such a Virtue or Power in him. For the Syllable P H U R is [or signifies] the most inward Virtue or Power of the original Source or Spring of the Anger of the fierce Tartness, or of the Mobility, as is mentioned in the first Chapter, and that Syllable P H U R has a fourfold Form [Property or Power] in it, as first Harshness [or Astringency,] and then Bitterness, Fire, and Water: The Harshness is attractive, and is rough, cold and sharp, and makes all hard, hungry, and full of Anguish; and that Attracting is a bitter Sting or Prickle, very terrible, and the first Swelling or Boiling up exists in the Anguish; yet because it cannot rise higher from its Seat, but is thus continually generated from beneath, therefore it falls into a Turning or Wheeling, as swift as Flash, as if a Steel and Flint or Stone were strongly struck together, and rubbed one against another.

(27) If we now search into the Life of Man in the Mother's [Womb or] Body, concerning his Virtue [or Power,] Speech, and Senses, and the noble and most precious Mind; then we find the Cause why we have made such a long P Register concerning the eternal Birth; for the Speech, Senses, and Mind, have also such an Origin as is above-mentioned concerning the eternal Birth of God, and it is a very precious Gate [or Explanation.]

(1) For that heart there are five gates belonging to the Devas (the senses). The eastern gate is the Prâna (up-breathing), that is the eye, that is Âditya (the sun). Let a man meditate on that as brightness (glory of countenance) and health. He who knows this, becomes bright and healthy.

(12) According to another tradition, know the heart is like So every moment a fresh purpose occurs to the heart, Not proceeding from itself, but from its situation. Why, then, are you confident about the heart's purposes? Why make you vows only to be covered with shame? All these changes proceed from the effect of God's will; Although you see the pit, you cannot avoid it. The strange thing is, not that winged fowl Fall into the deadly snare without seeing it, But that they see the snare and the limed twig, And yet fall into it, whether they will or no;

(28) Thus much established, we may return on our path: we have to discuss the seat of the passionate element in the human being.

Pleasures and pains- the conditions, that is, not the perception of them- and the nascent stage of desire, we assigned to the body as a determined thing, the body brought, in some sense, to life: are we entitled to say the same of the nascent stage of passion? Are we to consider passion in all its forms as vested in the determined body or in something belonging to it, for instance in the heart or the bile necessarily taking condition within a body not dead? Or are we to think that just as that which bestows the vestige of the soul is a distinct entity, so we may reason in this case- the passionate element being one distinct thing, itself, and not deriving from any passionate or percipient faculty?

Now in the first case the soul-principle involved, the vegetal, pervades the entire body, so that pain and pleasure and nascent desire for the satisfaction of need are present all over it- there is possibly some doubt as to the sexual impulse, which, however, it may suffice to assign to the organs by which it is executed- but in general the region about the liver may be taken to be the starting point of desire, since it is the main acting point of the vegetal principle which transmits the vestige phase of the soul to the liver and body- the seat, because the spring.

But in this other case, of passion, we have to settle what it is, what form of soul it represents: does it act by communicating a lower phase of itself to the regions round the heart, or is it set in motion by the higher soul-phase impinging upon the Conjoint , or is there, in such conditions no question of soul-phase, but simply passion itself producing the act or state of anger?

Evidently the first point for enquiry is what passion is.

Now we all know that we feel anger not only over our own bodily suffering, but also over the conduct of others, as when some of our associates act against our right and due, and in general over any unseemly conduct. It is at once evident that anger implies some subject capable of sensation and of judgement: and this consideration suffices to show that the vegetal nature is not its source, that we must look for its origin elsewhere.

On the other hand, anger follows closely upon bodily states; people in whom the blood and the bile are intensely active are as quick to anger as those of cool blood and no bile are slow; animals grow angry though they pay attention to no outside combinations except where they recognize physical danger; all this forces us again to place the seat of anger in the strictly corporeal element, the principle by which the animal organism is held together. Similarly, that anger or its first stirring depends upon the condition of the body follows from the consideration that the same people are more irritable ill than well, fasting than after food: it would seem that the bile and the blood, acting as vehicles of life, produce these emotions.

Our conclusion will identify, first, some suffering in the body answered by a movement in the blood or in the bile: sensation ensues and the soul, brought by means of the representative faculty to partake in the condition of the affected body, is directed towards the cause of the pain: the reasoning soul, in turn, from its place above the phase not inbound with body-acts in its own mode when the breach of order has become manifest to it: it calls in the alliance of that ready passionate faculty which is the natural combatant of the evil disclosed.

Thus anger has two phases; there is firstly that which, rising apart from all process of reasoning, draws reason to itself by the medium of the imaging faculty, and secondly that which, rising in reason, touches finally upon the specific principle of the emotion. Both these depend upon the existence of that principle of vegetal life and generation by which the body becomes an organism aware of pleasure and pain: this principle it was that made the body a thing of bile and bitterness, and thus it leads the indwelling soul-phase to corresponding states- churlish and angry under stress of environment- so that being wronged itself, it tries, as we may put it, to return the wrong upon its surroundings, and bring them to the same condition.

That this soul-vestige, which determines the movements of passion is of one essence with the other is evident from the consideration that those of us less avid of corporeal pleasures, especially those that wholly repudiate the body, are the least prone to anger and to all experiences not rising from reason.

That this vegetal principle, underlying anger, should be present in trees and yet passion be lacking in them cannot surprise us since they are not subject to the movements of blood and bile. If the occasions of anger presented themselves where there is no power of sensation there could be no more than a physical ebullition with something approaching to resentment ; where sensation exists there is at once something more; the recognition of wrong and of the necessary defence carries with it the intentional act.

But the division of the unreasoning phase of the soul into a desiring faculty and a passionate faculty- the first identical with the vegetal principle, the second being a lower phase of it acting upon the blood or bile or upon the entire living organism- such a division would not give us a true opposition, for the two would stand in the relation of earlier phase to derivative.

This difficulty is reasonably met by considering that both faculties are derivatives and making the division apply to them in so far as they are new productions from a common source; for the division applies to movements of desire as such, not to the essence from which they rise.

That essence is not, of its own nature, desire; it is, however, the force which by consolidating itself with the active manifestation proceeding from it makes the desire a completed thing. And that derivative which culminates in passion may not unreasonably be thought of as a vestige-phase lodged about the heart, since the heart is not the seat of the soul, but merely the centre to that portion of the blood which is concerned in the movements of passion.

(9) Seeing therefore that this is the weightiest Article, and cannot be apprehended in such a Way, we will describe the Dying of Man, and the Departure of the Soul from a Body, and try if it might so be brought to Knowledge, that the Reader may comprehend the [true] Meaning of it.

(18) Understand [or consider] it right; it is the Source- spirit [or working Spirit] out of the Gall which kindles the Heart, whereby the Life was stirred, which is choked as soon as the Tincture in the Blood of the Heart is extinguished. The right Soul has no Need of such Going-forth, it is much more subtle than the Brimstone- spirit, though (in the Life-time) it is in one only Substance.

(29) When the Will thus draws to it, then it becomes inwardly and outwardly impregnated, and is darkened; the Will cannot endure this, viz. to be set in the Dark, and therefore falls into great Anxiety for the Light; for the outward Materia [or Matter] is filled with the Elements, and the Blood is choaked [checked or stopped;] and there then the Tincture withdraws, and there is then the right Abyss of Death, and so the inward [Materia or Matter] is filled from the Essences of the Virtue, [or Power,] and in the inward there rises up another Will, out of the stern Virtue of the Essences, [that it might] lift itself up into the Light of the Meekness; and in the outward stands the Desire to be severed, the Impure from the Pure, for that the outward Fiat does.