Liquid Gold: Elixir of Immortality
It is important to draw a distinction at this point to make it clear how the fruit of this process functions. In the past, western alchemists whose work was solely to produce physical gold were given the derogatory nickname "The Puffers," because of the bellows they used to create the fire for their experiments. There is a sense of pushing, pushing to make the alembic chamber hot; the image of someone constantly working the bellows conveys this almost mechanical pursuit of heat. The Puffers were solely interested in producing gold from lead for their own self-aggrandizement. This is not the way of alchemy. True alchemy is not merely a mechanical formulaic pursuit of a chemical transformation. It is an inner exploration and systematic inquiry that leads to an epiphany and a healing between a seeker and their world.
For the true alchemists, alchemy is a path of synthesis; as such the results or fruit of one's development manifest simultaneously within the seeker and within the seeker's environment. From this perspective, the fruit of the process was not merely the valuable metal, gold; it was the manifestation of the "Philosopher's Stone:" a wish-fulfilling jewel that could transform into anything and everything. The stone is symbolic of the ultimate expression of triumph over appearances and total harmony made manifest in form; it is an outer manifestation of the transcendent vision of the alchemist: his wholeness has transformed his experience of all phenomena beyond conflict or lack. There is a sense of energy and activity as being unobstructed and limitless for the one who holds this Stone, and so it is described as the triumph over humankind's greatest fear: death. This is why the fruit of the alchemist's path is described as the attainment of the "Elixir of Immortality;" because the deathless state that is beyond the vagaries of change is the uncorruptible reality: a reality where we are more free than we could ever know.
If we are to connect with practitioners of these alchemical disciplines, practitioners that still exist in many parts of the world to this day, what we may find is that what is written here may not be just some fairy tale. It is not something that we are just imagining; as we start to take a look at the bounty of the elements we might find this elixir really does have potency, but only if we are participating in an inquiry into what we truly are. Then our work along the way becomes potent with the power beyond life and death; then we find this elixir begins to connect us to the deathless state, the state of our true nature.
Along the way, it may seem at first to be something extraordinary we are drinking. But eventually on this path, the elixir might seem to be the blood flowing together in our veins, the flow of energy in our body, the flow of thoughts experienced with clarity and intention, the flow of teachers we find in our everyday life. And at some point this elixir may eventually appear as it did to the Mahasiddha Khanaripa when his teacher Nagarjuna handed him the bowl. When there is no sense of lack, no notion of being incomplete, the elixir gives us its final gift: a mirrored surface that shines with the reflection of our own innate wholeness: the deathless state was hidden within us all along.