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Barclay Powers is an author and futurist filmmaker. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies from Columbia University and has an extensive background as an independent scholar. He has studied Chinese, Tibetan and Indian meditation, yoga and martial arts traditions for more than 30 years. Powers is currently releasing multiple media projects worldwide in film and print, related to the evolution of consciousness based on his studies with numerous masters of ancient wisdom traditions. His most recent film, The Lost Secret of Immortality, based on his book, won best spiritual/religious/Christian film at the Great Lakes International Film Festival, 2012, the Silver Palm Award at the Mexico International Film Festival, 2012 and best spiritual documentary at the New York International Film Festival, 2011. See his website at www.lostsecretofimmortality.com for information on the book, graphic novel and film.

SEE MORE ESSAYS WRITTEN BY BARCLAY POWERS

The Rediscovery of
the Philosopher's Stone

Barclay Powers

The Philosopher's Stone is the ultimate narrative linking art, science, philosophy and religion, both East and West, when correctly translated.

There are major conflicts between religious and scientific myths of origin and human potential. Conflicts on a collective level cannot be repressed but emerge in many forms. Modern culture is essentially expressing these conflicts in a mixture of ways through popular media and entertainment genres, which do not generally recognize the unconscious levels of the psyche.

The unconscious, using Jonas Salk's concept, is a meta-biological evolution seeking greater justice, meaning and purpose in a quest for wholeness, both individually and collectively, by balancing, harmonizing, and integrating solar and lunar aspects of the psyche. 

In the 21st century to liberate these primal forces of nature from how cultures historically have usually labeled solar male and lunar female we need to take this gender stamping off. By doing so we can access the primal solar and lunar within each gender as nature's mirror or what quantum physics calls the wave and particle nature of light. Taking the historical gender bias off acknowledges these primal energies of life with integrity. Then solar and lunar complementarity become modes of consciousness within each gender rather than energies that are defined as opposites by gender.

The ultimate prize, the object of the Grail quest, is authenticity in the form of the primordial yang self, which is dormant within the human reproductive system. The Indian medical version is the Kundalini. The Chinese medical version is the Embryo of Enlightenment. The original Western medical version is Infans Solaris, The Philosopher's Stone, all expressions of solar and lunar aspects of the psyche.

It may be inevitable that the new field of contemplative neuroscience eventually discovers the goal of meditation, tai chi, yoga and qi gong is the Coniunctio (union of solar and lunar), the original goal of inner alchemy worldwide. The Jungian explanation of the Coniunctio is psychological because vitalism is not recognized by Western science as the basis of inner alchemy. The real Coniunctio is the union of solar and lunar, pre-birth and post-birth subtle bodies, although the psychological model is also valid but not complete. The Kundalini or Embryo of Enlightenment is not merely the unconscious; it is a living dormant enlightened structure of prenatal consciousness. 

Western translations of Hermetic, Buddhist and Taoist systems of consciousness evolution have not understood the union of pre-birth and post-birth solar and lunar subtle bodies as the highest goal of classical medical systems in many civilizations. Qi gong, meditation, yoga and Tantra are all inseparable from the vitalist medical systems of Chinese and Indian civilizations. The vision of inner science, which now includes psychology, psychiatry, and neurology, is the Philosopher's Stone when it is correctly translated and defined in the 21st century. 

The popular model of meditation, yoga, qi gong and Tantra does not include the Coniunctio because it is rare, and has not been translated accurately by Western researchers. The Rosarium Philosophorum clearly shows knowledge of Hermetic sexual yoga in Germany, 1550. Definitely the church would convict you of sorcery for this so it was concealed by metaphor and then lost. Chinese and/or German alchemists loved creating written works that proved that they had achieved the true Coniunctio, but concealed the real process using poetry and code. 

The vision of a scientific 21st century explanation of the Philosopher's Stone may eventually heal the mass consciousness, and in particular the split between science and religion as this true narrative re-emerges. Science cannot handle questions of meaning, purpose, or authenticity, which are philosophical. The Philosopher's Stone means that the story of the divine spark or prima materia within everyone is true. The Embryo of Enlightenment means that the world's greatest alleged myth, the secret of immortality, may be eventually restored as a living narrative of ultimate human potential. This completely changes our cultural definition of ourselves for the better in the 21st century. 

Jung said, “I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work is proof, empirically, that the pattern of God exists in every man, and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all his energies for transformation and transfiguration of his natural being. Not only the meaning of his life but his renewal and his institutions depend on his conscious relationship with this pattern in his collective unconscious.”

The Golden Elixir [or Philosopher's Stone] is another name for one's fundamental nature…there is no other Golden Elixir outside one's fundamental nature. All human beings have this Golden Elixir complete in themselves: it is entirely realized in everybody. It is neither more in a sage, nor less in an ordinary person. It is the seed of the Immortals and the Buddhas, the root of the worthies and the sages. –Liu Yiming, 1734-1821.

The Golden Elixir has always been the classical description of the Chinese Philosopher's Stone, the Embryo of Enlightenment. Please visit http://goldenelixir.com for more information about the Golden Elixir.

To more deeply understand the revolution of taking gender labeling off of solar and lunar and seeing them as the primal energies of life please click on Howard Teich's description of the rediscovery of the Philosopher's Stone in his talk with an introduction by Dr. Robert Moradi at the C. G. Jung Institute in Los Angeles, CA, November 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9D3ECZ3By0:

Also, please visit http://solarlunar.com for more information about Howard Teich's work.