Magic. Turn evil to good. Turn an impure life into a pure one. Turn animal into god. Create change in accordance with desire. Strong wisdom and knowledge enables this, through causality, but this causality hopefully will produce a good desire, and not a bad one, because the manifestation of a bad desire can turn a good person into an evil one. Be careful what you wish for, magic is real, and you might have it.

Ancient mystic alchemists were searching for the philosopher’s stone to turn lead into gold. The philosophers stone is metaphorically truly much greater than this, it’s the knowledge of the power to turn nothing into diamonds, to turn a bad life into a good one, to become virtuous from lack of virtue, to become wise from a state of ignorance. The ancient teachings of the world’s greatest minds and noble spiritual teachers each have had a piece of it, the accumulation of all their acquired wisdom, mixed with an individual input, experience, understanding and insight is the final piece to put the whole stone together.  To be good, simple, content, ego less, self less, content with the present, understanding reality, accepting that no one knows everything and everything isn’t worth being known, certain things are more important than others, and what’s unknown in those fields is what should be strived for. Being a good person when no one is watching, causality, turning the other cheek, loving your neighbor, the noble Eightfold path, learning, living, loving, and ultimately destroying suffering and living in peace.

This is white magic, this ability to achieve this state of mind is potentiality, to which in relation to the potential, the actualizing is the philosophers stone. While complete possession of it is surely impossible, the noble pursuit towards its actualizing was worth pursuing in ancient times, just as, if viewed correctly, it is worth seeking out in our own lives. Philosophy, psychology, knowledge itself, is all pieces of the stone, but the realization after practice with understanding of the teachings, the practical wisdom in the accumulation of experiential knowledge as it refers to the mode of being from which the most optimal solutions arise in response to any situation, is the stone itself. Immortality, lead to gold, these are archetypal, metaphorical comparisons for the wonder that internal discovery and mastery of what we have to work with, our minds, to the highest level, can achieve. Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Mohammad, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Einstein, they all have had pieces, all have had glimpses and intuitions regarding this concept, some more than others, but none of them had all of each other’s pieces. They just had their own, and they contributed their findings to the world for our benefit. In today’s age we can compile all their knowledge into one language, and if our brains are hardware, we can download this knowledge like software onto it, with our own unique operating system of prior experiences to differentiate each person from another, and add our own input. As they did, we should do, seek to provide at least part of the stone, a part that wasn’t there, a bit of truth, a bit of virtue, to leave the those who come after us in better relation to the totality of the stone.

The philosophers stone isn’t something simple to put together and contain, or a place we can easily get into, or in other words the perfect life, enlightenment, Nirvana, paradise, or heaven isn’t easily achieved, if anything good in life takes hard work, the best of life takes the hardest work. We can’t merely hear the knowledge, read the scriptures, or see the holy life at work within another. We must experientially work towards our development of our character, we must turn our gaze towards the improvement of the mode of being from which our actions manifest from. It takes work, intellectually, physically, philosophically, scientifically, it cannot be handed down and it cannot be given out. The desire and manifestation of results of the striving, is the magic which was spoken of. It is the uncover of what is hidden, and the revelation of what was found. It is desire turned into achievement of desire, and potentiality transmuted into actuality. We must put forth the effort ourselves, we must work, and through diligently striving along the path to greatness, attain that greatness which we seek. It is never an end point that we will reach, it is in the striving that we accumulate pieces of the stone. The stepping off the shoulders of those who come before us can afford us the grace of knowledge not deserved, and in our debt, we must work to create something useful for others to step off of.

Call it magic, the philosophers stone, wisdom, holiness, we all are capable of achieving inner peace, we all are capable of learning what’s going on, and saving the world, our own world, we just have to learn, practice, and realize it. We are all capable of moving closer to it. It isn’t a matter of achieving the philosophers stone, it is merely a metaphorical representation of the goal we should be aspiring towards. We can move towards it, and become incrementally better at “being”.  Seek the truth, paradise lies within. There’s always hope for a lost soul, give peace a chance, get better everyday, virtue, and happiness. Knowledge is power, and power is responsibility. All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. All that arises is subject to change. As above, so below.