1.1.12 The Seed of Nirvāṇa

“The Dark Night of the Soul comes just before revelation.”

In this chapter, we explore how the initial stages of alchemical transformation contain within them the seed of ultimate realisation. Like a lotus growing from muddy waters, the darkest aspects of spiritual work paradoxically hold the potential for enlightenment. We’ll examine how the Nigredo phase, though characterised by difficulty and confusion, plants the essential seed that will eventually blossom into transcendent awareness. Understanding this relationship between darkness and light is crucial for the aspiring alchemist.

The alchemist only really becomes an alchemist when they find the stone of the philosophers. Once they discover it, they must refine it. This seed starts off as raw material. What does this mean?

The raw material is the subjective awareness of the trainee alchemist, which in many ways, is beyond control and often comprehension. This becomes the material with which the alchemist works.

This is an important concept to grasp.

What is reality? Reality is the experience one has that appears real. All reality is subjective; objective reality is a myth of science. No one reality can be the same, but thinking reality is really objective, nobody challenges this. So every reality is solipsistic — absolutely created around and for the awareness it serves. Of course, in a manic state, people kind of get this but miss the point, thinking existence itself is solipsistic.

There can be no normal, and recognising this, the alchemist starts playing with the edges of reality.

There reaches a point of awareness, either reached through tranquillity practices like samatha (focused) meditation, or through either brilliant insight or terrifying experience when consciousness finds an absolute neutral point, and for two or three moments, a breakthrough to world-transcending awareness is possible.

To find this point oneself is reasonably tricky, but a genuine guru with skill can bring those who are ready close enough to allow for a breakthrough. Typically, unless the alchemist is learning from a Master, this breakthrough is achieved only through the exhaustive process of the Dark Night of the Soul.

Reality is a dynamic between how the world reacts to us, and what we think this means. The alchemist learns that through modifying meaning, one’s experience of reality changes. Whilst early in their career the alchemist may not realise this, once they experience the breakthrough to transcendental awareness, this experience, even though it literally lasts only a single moment of realisation, and then two or three experiences of the consequences of this realisation, forever changes their perspectives.

This breakthrough experience is so profound it cannot be forgotten. In fact, it forever changes the individual. This experience acts like a new position of internal observer. But this observer is transcendental, and can always offer a viewpoint detached from personal need. One tends to become naturally moralistic and one’s wisdom increases through this truly impartial guidance.

Whilst the experience of this breakthrough is never subtle, it is momentary, and often it can be some weeks or months until the alchemist experiences both a lightening of mood and the benefit of changing one’s moral outlook.

It can also be sometimes confusing. This breakthrough reduces the attachment to material gains and prestige. Previous goals and aspirations can become meaningless. Sometimes this breakthrough occurred as part of an intoxicating high — drugs can give a temporary but unstable access to jhāna, a kind of super-normal awareness. Achieving jhāna and then a breakthrough to transcendental awareness can result in big changes of personality that get caught up in addiction.

This seed of transcendental awareness slowly transforms the morality of the alchemist, gradually allowing the fetters of self that bind awareness to conditioned existence to be sequentially challenged. We will cover these later.

This Breakthrough is the start of Albedo or whiteness. At this moment the raw material is largely normal, yet, somewhere deep within is the seed of the deathless, or Nirvāṇa. The transcendental experience, although it happens only for the briefest of moments, is beyond time and therefore always available. This godly and neutral position tends to reduce self-interest and the need for volition. This naturally decreases karmic influence and whilst the moral character of the alchemist is now destined to improve, they become more and more indifferent to the world at large.

I hope, as ever, that was interesting.

This is the end of the first part of Nigredo. I’ll flesh out the experience from another three viewpoints, before we then move into exploring Albedo.

This text is excerpted from the book Nigredo: A Course in Modern Alchemy. The complete book includes additional study guides, resources, and appendices. View the full book here.