Chapter VII: Alchemy and Eternal Symmetry

“Whoever seeks Me finds Me.

Who finds Me shall come to know Me.

Whoever knows Me likes Me.

Whoever likes Me becomes obsessed in (loving) Me.

Whoever loves Me I love them too.

But whomever I love, I kill (overwhelm).

And to whom I kill, I owe redemption.

I am the redemption!” Divine Narration attributed to Allah, the Exalted

“Whatever purifies you is the right path, I will not try to define it.”Jalaluddin Rumi

“They who search after the Philosopher’s Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life.”Isaac Newton

Mystics, in their spiritual journey, may achieve various levels of realization, and the Sufis endeavor has always been to attain comprehensive perfection, through extensive training and purifying their hearts and cleansing their souls to eliminate all mortal desires and exterminate all attachments with this lower world. Similarly, the Alchemist’s goal is to adjust the properties of imperfect elements in order to transmute them into their most perfect state, normally via an agent called elixir, that is capable of removing all residuals and purifying and refining the metal and balancing it, and then ultimately converting it into Gold, which is the perfect state of metals.

Elixir is a unique hypothetical substance with countless extraordinary properties and capabilities, other than changing base metals into Gold. It can be used, for example, to cure all diseases, prolong life and youth, and realize celestial knowledge and divine wisdom. For this reason it is also called “the great elixir of life” or “the philosopher’s stone”, among other numerous names and attributes.

The word Alchemy is derived from the Arabic root “kam”, meaning “quantum” [II.270.15], so it can be regarded as the true unnoticed origin of Quantum Mechanics, or indeed Quantum Field Theory, not only because the names are similar, but Alchemy is the most fundamental science that manipulates the discrete elemental quantities that are far more essential than atoms and elementary particles. These elemental quantities are the four elements of Nature: earth, water, air, and fire, that are the four basic structures of space-time geometry, so they are ”quantum fields” from which all other corporeal and incorporeal structures are composed. The classical four elements of Nature are actually the ground states of those four basic space-time structures and all other physical and psychical objects are their excited states, as we explained in chapter V. Therefore, by manipulating these elements, it is possible to control not only the physical and chemical properties of metals, but also the psychical and spiritual worlds. That’s why consciousness is an essential part of Alchemy, as it is in Quantum Mechanics although the latter has not yet discovered its full potential.

Therefore, elixir is not a simple material that can be entirely synthesized from other ingredients, or obtained by ordinary chemical reactions, but it also requires special spiritual, and even divine, intention, and it also involves exclusive knowledge of astrology, numerology and other sacred sciences, which explains the fact that Gold is still precious metal. In fact, elixir is too scarce to the degree that it would not be even efficient at all for someone who obtains it to use it simply for transmuting cheap metals into Gold; especially that some of the requirements, for any successful attempt to make this agent, is honesty and sincerity in involving one’s spiritual intention, away from typically illusory and misleading material gains.

Therefore, all projecting attempts to obtain this supernatural material proved unsuccessful and they were fruitless, and eventually this whole science of Alchemy totally declined in the 18th century, to be replaced by the modern industrious chemistry that is based on pure rational materialism.

Nonetheless, Alchemy was evidently an influential tradition in most ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians, the Chinese, and the Egyptians, and it may be accounted for their profound supremacy and proficient power that produced many gigantic monumental structures, such as the pyramids and other megalithic temples, which can’t be explained based on the primitive tools they are said to have used.

Moreover, in more recent history, attributing supernatural powers to some spiritual and religious figures is extensively evident in numerous sacred texts which describe, for example, how Jesus performed various miracles including healing the blind and resurrection of the dead. Prophet Muhammad also performed several outstanding miracles, such as splitting of the Moon, food and water multiplication, and the most famous miracle of the Night Journey and Ascension.

Even if we want to denote these rare occurrences as exclusive miracles performed only by prophets, we still have countless well-documented and undeniable supernatural encounters by many pious followers, especially the Sufis, throughout the previous centuries and up to the present time, albeit the great majority are deliberately concealed and can only be observed by close students. Perhaps less creditable, but the Internet is full of various media documenting supernatural accidents which happened with regular people or animals.

In fact, Sufis, and other mystics in general, don’t like to display their divine favors, and they often prohibit their students from broadcasting their frequent supernatural encounters with them, simply because this contradicts their practical method that led them to this subtle mystical realization. Another reason, why they don’t allow their students to expose their mystical encounters, is because the public are mostly unprepared, due to their innate materialistic experience, and they often will not recognize such supernatural activities even if they witness them directly, so they may accuse the Sufis with magic, deviation or even heresy. Moreover, most of these mystical encounters are normally personal and extremely delicate that they can’t be easily expressed to the outsiders. The author has personally encountered many such supernatural stories, but the Skeikhs have clearly requested not to speak about them. In the book on the Biography of Sheikh Ramadan Deeb, we were only able to mention few common stories that can be undeniably recognized by other people who may have met him or know at least a little about him, and they surely know that he is an exceptional sage.

One of the most notable Muslim alchemists was Jabir Ibn Hayyan al-Sufi, who learned the art from his master, Jafar as-Sadiq to whom most branches of Sufi Paths are chained. His Alchemy is grounded on numerology, where the properties of elements are defined through numeric values assigned the Arabic the letters of their name. This science is related to the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic systems in which everything had numerical relationships.

At the end of the first short introductory chapter of the Meccan Revelations, in which Ibn al-Arabi speaks “on knowing the spirit that I took from the details of his composition what I have written in this book and my secretive encounters with him”, he says that “the first line I read, and the first secret of that line I learned, is what I am going to mention in the second chapter”. Then in the following long chapter he started talking “on knowing the ranks of letters and diacritics”. Therefore, as it had been explained in the preprint version of my draft translation of Volume I of the Meccan Revelations, the “Science of Letters” is one of the most mysterious sciences in Sufism.

This science is deeply related with physics and cosmology because the letters, both as the voices pronounced through speaking or the characters inscribed in writing, are parallel with the fundamental particles. The main reason for this interrelationship is because Allah created the Perfect Human on His Image, and He taught him speaking [55:4], and the world is the Letters and Words of the All-Merciful, as we explained at the beginning of chapter IV, so the Universe is like a book, and just as normal books are composed of volumes, parts, chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, words, letters, delineations, diacritics, etc., so the Universe is composed of clusters, galaxies, stars, planets, stones, atoms, particles, etc.. Although it is not so clear and well defined yet, the comparison is accurate down to the finest details.

However, we shall see that although Alchemy is an amazing spiritual science, and the extraordinary properties of elixir are so amazing that it can purify Gold itself more than a thousand times, yet for the Sufis it is only the first step in logging into celestial science and divine wisdom. Even if this is possible, they never use elixir for transmuting base metals or obtaining Gold. Along the way, of course, there had been many swindlers and magicians who claimed that they could do such supernatural things.

The work in this field, however, requires complicated interdisciplinary introductions and connections which are beyond the scope of this short chapter, that may be developed into a separate book in the future, as it was originally planned.