“The effort which creates this ‘shock’ must consist in work on the emotions, in the transformation and transmutation of the emotions. This transmutation of the emotions will then help the transmutation of si 12 in the human organism. No serious growth, that is, no growth of higher bodies within the organism, is possible without this transmutation. The idea of this transmutation was known to many ancient teachings as well as to some comparatively recent ones, such as the alchemy of the Middle Ages. But the ALCHEMISTS spoke of this transmutation in the allegorical forms of the transformation of base metals into precious ones. In reality, however, they meant the transformation of coarse ‘hydrogens’ into finer ones in the human organism, chiefly of the transformation of mi 12. If this transformation is attained, a man can be said to have ‘achieved what he was striving for, and it can also be said that, until this transformation is attained, all results attained by a man can be lost because they are not fixed in him in any way; moreover, they are attained only in the spheres of thought and emotion. Real, objective results can be obtained only after the transmutation of mi 12 has begun. Fragments: Nine

“The enneagram is perpetual motion, the same perpetual motion that men have sought since the remotest antiquity and could never find. And it is clear why they could not find perpetual motion. They sought outside themselves that which was within them; and they attempted to construct perpetual motion as a machine is constructed, whereas real perpetual motion is a part of another perpetual motion and cannot be created apart from it. The enneagram is a schematic diagram of perpetual motion, that is, of a machine of eternal movement. But of course it is necessary to know how to read this diagram. The understanding of this symbol and the ability to make use of it give man very great power. It is perpetual motion and it is also the philosopher’s stone of the ALCHEMISTS. Fragments: Fourteen

“Alchemists who spoke of this transmutation began directly with it. They knew nothing, or at least they said nothing, about the nature of the first volitional ‘shock.’ It is upon this, however, that the whole thing depends. The second volitional ‘shock’ and transmutation become physically possible only after long practice on the first volitional ‘shock,’ which consists in self-remembering, and in observing the impressions received. On the way of the monk and on the way of the fakir work on the second ‘shock’ begins before work on the first ‘shock,’ but as mi 12 is created only as a result of the first ‘shock,’ work, in the absence of other material, has of necessity to be concentrated on si 12, and it very often gives quite wrong results. Right development on the fourth way must begin with the first volitional ‘shock’ and then pass on to the second ‘shock’ at mi 12. Fragments: Nine