ALCHEMY OF LIFE

        The human body is made up of a complex array of organic molecules, principally- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and a vast variety of other major and trace elements. Our tissues are by far more resistant than so many other organic framework of other species that we are able to manipulate, stretch to extreme limits and do many wonderful things with these finely knit C-H-O molecules.

 Of the four kinds of food (that which is chewed, that which is sucked, that which is licked and that which is drunk), which a man takes, the chyle fluid is converted into three parts. The best part (or the finest extract of food) goes to nourish the subtle body (the seat of force). The second or middle part goes to nourish this gross body composed of seven (humors).

 The third or the most inferior part goes out of the body in the shape of excrement and urine. The first two essences of food are found in the Nadis (nerves), and being carried by them, they nourish the body from head to foot.

 When the Prana (air) moves through all the Nadis, then, owing to this Prana (air), the fluids of the body get extraordinary force and energy. 

 Below is an excerpt from The Bhagavata Purana about the creation of world and senses:

   "During the initial phase of his creation, Lord Brahma created the Mahattatva first of all. After that he created the three types of Ego from the MahatTatva--- Satva, Rajas and Tamas. These three types of Ego are the origins of all the five sense-organs, organs of action and all the five basic elements--space, water, fire, air & earth.

An enormous egg came into existence with the permutation and combination of these five basic elements. Within this egg exists the whole universe including the mountains, islands, oceans, planets, deities, demons and the human beings. The layers of water, fire, air, space and darkness envelop this enormous egg. These elements are once again covered by the 'MahatTatva', which in turn is enveloped by the 'Prakriti' (nature). Lord Vishnu himself does creation in the form of Lord Brahma and also takes various incarnations to protect the mankind. At the end of the Kalpa, it is only He, who annihilates in the form of Rudra. After the end of Kalpa, he takes rest on the back of Sheshnag for the full period of deluge."

The Philosophy of astral connection of senses had been a favorite topic of discussion for ages and various extra sensory perceptive feats and performance of mediums make us wonder whether indeed such a connection is possible scientifically, rather than the claims by sacred relics.

 THE DROWNING MAN'S MEMORY (Isis Unveiled- H.P.Blavatsky)

    "Many of the inferior animals have the ability to look with inner sight into the astral light, and there behold the images of past sensations and incidents. Instead of searching the cerebral ganglia for "micrographs of the living and the dead, of scenes that we have visited, of incidents in which we have borne a part,"* they went to the vast repository where the records of every man's life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all Eternity!
  That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a drowning man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life -- as the landscape is revealed to the traveler by intermittent flashes of lightning -- is simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted in imperishable colors.
  The well-known fact -- one corroborated by the personal experience of nine persons out of ten -- that we often recognize as familiar to us, scenes, and landscapes, and conversations, which we see or hear for the first time, and sometimes in countries never visited before, is a result of the same causes. Believers in reincarnation adduce this as an additional proof of our antecedent existence in other bodies. This recognition of men, countries, and things that we have never seen, is attributed by them to flashes of soul-memory of anterior experiences. But the men of old, in common with mediaeval philosophers, firmly held to a contrary opinion.
  They affirmed that though this psychological phenomenon was one of the greatest arguments in favor of immortality and the soul's preexistence, yet the latter being endowed with an individual memory apart from that of our physical brain, it is no proof of reincarnation. As Eliphas Levi beautifully expresses it, "nature shuts the door after everything that passes, and pushes life onward" in more perfected forms. The chrysalis becomes a butterfly; the latter can never become again a grub. In the stillness of the night-hours, when our bodily senses are fast locked in the fetters of sleep, and our elementary body rests, the astral form becomes free. It then oozes out of its earthly prison, and as Paracelsus has it -- "confabulates with the outward world," and travels round the visible as well as the invisible worlds. "In sleep," he says, "the astral body (soul) is in freer motion; then it soars to its parents, and holds converse with the stars." Dreams, forebodings, prescience, prognostications and presentiments are impressions left by our astral spirit on our brain, which receives them more or less distinctly, according to the proportion of blood with which it is supplied during the hours of sleep. The more the body is exhausted, the freer is the spiritual man, and the more vivid the impressions of our soul's memory. In heavy and robust sleep, dreamless and uninterrupted, upon awakening to outward consciousness, men may sometimes remember nothing.

    But the impressions of scenes and landscapes which the astral body saw in its peregrinations are still there, though lying latent under the pressure of matter. They may be awakened at any moment, and then, during such flashes of man's inner memory, there is an instantaneous interchange of energies between the visible and the invisible universes. Between the "micrographs" of the cerebral ganglia and the photo-scenographic galleries of the astral light, a current is established. And a man who knows that he has never visited in body, nor seen the landscape and person that he recognizes may well assert that still has he seen and knows them, for the acquaintance was formed while traveling in "spirit." To this the physiologists can have but one objection. They will answer that in natural sleep -- perfect and deep, "half of our nature which is volitional is in the condition of inertia"; hence unable to travel; the more so as the existence of any such individual astral body or soul is considered by them little else than a poetical myth. Blumenbach assures us that in the state of sleep, all intercourse between mind and body is suspended; an assertion which is denied by Dr. Richardson, F. R. S., who honestly reminds the German scientist that "the precise limits and connections of mind and body being unknown" it is more than should be said. This confession, added to those of the French physiologist, Fournie, and the still more recent one of Dr. Allchin, an eminent London physician, who frankly avowed, in an address to students, that "of all scientific pursuits which practically concern the community, there is none perhaps which rests upon so uncertain and insecure a basis as medicine," gives us a certain right to offset the hypotheses of ancient scientists against those of the modern ones.
  No man, however gross and material he may be, can avoid leading a double existence; one in the visible universe, the other in the invisible. The life-principle which animates his physical frame is chiefly in the astral body; and while the more animal portions of him rest, the more spiritual ones know neither limits nor obstacles. We are perfectly aware that many learned, as well as the unlearned, will object to such a novel theory of the distribution of the life-principle. They would prefer remaining in blissful ignorance and go on confessing that no one knows or can pretend to tell whence and whither this mysterious agent appears and disappears, than to give one moment's attention to what they consider old and exploded theories. Some might object on the ground taken by theology, that dumb brutes have no immortal souls, and hence, can have no astral spirits; for theologians as well as laymen labor under the erroneous impression that soul and spirit are one and the same thing.

  But if we study Plato and other philosophers of old, we may readily perceive that while the "irrational soul," by which Plato meant our astral body, or the more ethereal representation of ourselves, can have at best only a more or less prolonged continuity of existence beyond the grave; the divine spirit -- wrongly termed soul, by the Church -- is immortal by its very essence. (Any Hebrew scholar will readily appreciate the distinction who comprehends the difference between the two words ruah and nephesh.) If the life-principle is something apart from the astral spirit and in no way connected with it, why is it that the intensity of the clairvoyant powers depends so much on the bodily prostration of the subject? The deeper the trance, the less signs of life the body shows, the clearer become the spiritual perceptions, and the more powerful are the soul's visions. The soul, disburdened of the bodily senses, shows activity of power in a far greater degree of intensity than it can in a strong, healthy body. Brierre de Boismont gives repeated instances of this fact. The organs of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing are proved to become far acuter in a mesmerized subject deprived of the possibility of exercising them bodily, than while he uses them in his normal state.
  Such facts alone, once proved, ought to stand as invincible demonstrations of the continuity of individual life, at least for a certain period after the body has been left by us, either by reason of its being worn out or by accident. But though during its brief sojourn on earth our soul may be assimilated to a light hidden under a bushel, it still shines more or less bright and attracts to itself the influences of kindred spirits; and when a thought of good or evil import is begotten in our brain, it draws to it impulses of like nature as irresistibly as the magnet attracts iron filings. This attraction is also proportionate to the intensity with which the thought-impulse makes itself felt in the ether; and so it will be understood how one man may impress himself upon his own epoch so forcibly, that the influence may be carried  through the ever-interchanging currents of energy between the two worlds, the visible and the invisible -- from one succeeding age to another, until it affects a large portion of mankind.
  How much the authors of the famous work entitled the Unseen Universe may have allowed themselves to think in this direction, it would be difficult to say; but that they have not told all they might will be inferred from the following language:
"Regard it as you please, there can be no doubt that the properties of the ether are of a much higher order in the arcana of nature than those of tangible matter. And, as even the high priests of science still find the latter far beyond their comprehension, except in numerous but minute and often isolated particulars, it would not become us to speculate further. It is sufficient for our purpose to know from what the ether certainly does, that it is capable of vastly more than any has yet ventured to say."
  One of the most interesting discoveries of modern times, is that of the faculty which enables a certain class of sensitive persons to receive from any object held in the hand or against the forehead impressions of the character or appearance of the individual, or any other object with which it has previously been in contact. Thus a manuscript, painting, article of clothing, or jewelry -- no matter how ancient -- conveys to the sensitive, a vivid picture of the writer, painter, or wearer; even though he lived in the days of Ptolemy or Enoch. Nay, more; a fragment of an ancient building will recall its history and even the scenes which transpired within or about it. A bit of ore will carry the soul-vision back to the time when it was in process of formation.

  This faculty is called by its discoverer -- Professor J. R. Buchanan, of Louisville, Kentucky -- psychometry. To him, the world is indebted for this most important addition to Psychological Sciences; and to him, perhaps, when skepticism is found felled to the ground by such accumulation of facts, posterity will have to elevate a statue. In announcing to the public his great discovery, Professor Buchanan, confining himself to the power of psychometry to delineate human character, says: "The mental and physiological influence imparted to writing appears to be imperishable, as the oldest specimens I have investigated gave their impressions with a distinctness and force, little impaired by time.

  Old manuscripts, requiring an antiquary to decipher their strange old penmanship, were easily interpreted by the psychometric power. . . . The property of retaining the impress of mind is not limited to writing. Drawings, paintings, everything upon which human contact, thought, and volition have been expended, may become linked with that thought and life, so as to recall them to the mind of another when in contact."
  Without, perhaps, really knowing, at the early time of the grand discovery, the significance of his own prophetic words, the Professor adds: "This discovery, in its application to the arts and to history, will open a mine of interesting knowledge."*
The existence of this faculty was first experimentally demonstrated in 1841. It has since been verified by a thousand psychometers in different parts of the world. It proves that every occurrence in nature -- no matter how minute or unimportant -- leaves its indelible impress upon physical nature; and, as there has been no appreciable molecular disturbance, the only inference possible is, that these images have been produced by that invisible, universal force -- Ether, or astral light.
  In his charming work, entitled The Soul of Things, Professor Denton, the geologist,* enters at great length into a discussion of this subject. He gives a multitude of examples of the psychometrical power, which Mrs. Denton possesses in a marked degree. A fragment of Cicero's house, at Tusculum, enabled her to describe, without the slightest intimation as to the nature of the object placed on her forehead, not only the great orator's surroundings, but also the previous owner of the building, Cornelius Sulla Felix, or, as he is usually called, Sulla the Dictator. A fragment of marble from the ancient Christian Church of Smyrna, brought before her its congregation and officiating priests. Specimens from Nineveh, China, Jerusalem, Greece, Ararat, and other places all over the world brought up scenes in the life of various personages, whose ashes had been scattered thousands of years ago.

  In many cases Professor Denton verified the statements by reference to historical records. More than this, a bit of the skeleton, or a fragment of the tooth of some antediluvian animal, caused the seers to perceive the creature as it was when alive, and even live for a few brief moments its life, and experience its sensations. Before the eager quest of the psychometer, the most hidden recesses of the domain of nature yield up their secrets; and the events of the most remote epochs rival in vividness of impression the flitting circumstances of yesterday.
Says the author, in the same work: "Not a leaf waves, not an insect crawls, not a ripple moves, but each motion is recorded by a thousand faithful scribes in infallible and indelible scripture. This is just as true of all past time. From the dawn of light upon this infant globe, when round its cradle the steamy curtains hung, to this moment, nature has been busy photographing everything. What a picture-gallery is hers!"
    It appears to us the height of impossibility to imagine that scenes in ancient Thebes, or in some temple of prehistoric times should be photographed only upon the substance of certain atoms. The images of the events are imbedded in that all-permeating, universal, and ever-retaining medium, which the philosophers call the "Soul of the World," and Mr. Denton "the Soul of Things." The psychometer, by applying the fragment of a substance to his forehead, brings his inner-self into relations with the inner soul of the object he handles. It is now admitted that the universal ether pervades all things in nature, even the most solid. It is beginning to be admitted, also, that this preserves the images of all things which transpire."
 

(Isis Unveiled, H.P Blavatsky. Vol.I, Page 179-183; Project Gutenberg Collection)