Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

TRANSMUTATION OF LOWER QUALITIES INTO HIGHER

This is a spiritual process which takes place in the soul by slow degrees, as evolution proceeds on the lower planes. Transmutation is effected by the Higher Self acting through buddhi-manas on the lower qualities as they arrive at a state of preparedness for being raised to a higher condition. It is the function of the Holy Spirit, atma-buddhi, to transmute lower intohigher, and this is the meaning of white magic and alchemy. There is a transfer of impressions from the astral to the buddhic plane. Love-passion on the astro-physical plane is gradually transmuted into pity and compassion the buddhic plane. Power exercised is transmuted into dignity; ambition into aspiration; greed into zeal industry; knowledge is turned to Wisdom; varied experience to Love.

"Tauler teaches : First of all, the senses must be mastered by, and absorbed in, the powers of the soul. Then must these very powers themselves-all resonings, willings, hopings, fearings, be absorbed in a simple sense of the Divine presence.... These powers of the soul must cease to act, in so far as they belong to self; but they are not destroyed: their absorption in the higher part of our nature is in one sense a death; in another, their truest life. They die; but they live anew, animated by & principle of life that comes directly from the Father of lights. . . . They are, as it were, the glorified spirits of those powers. They are risen ones. They are in this world, but not of it. Their life has passed into the life which by slaying has preserved and exalted them." - VAUGHAN, Hours with the Mystics, Vol. I. p. 293.

"While the emotions of the senses hinder the mind in the activity peculiarly suited to its being, and alone resulting in true satisfaction, and so make it unhappy, it is by the 'heroic emotions' of an endeavour directed towards the true, the beautiful, and the good, that the spirit is raised to blissful freedom from sensuous impulses, and from the chances of the sensible world. By the stages of perception, representation, understanding, and reason, the heroic spirit is raised to the intellectual contemplation of God, and therewith the soul, as Bruno expresses it, changes itself entirely into God, and becomes at home in the intelligible world; divine Love, which is the Deity himself, becomes now the dominant emotion in the soul, and thus the latter overcomes the iron law of necessity, which bends only before love, and extends the endeavour after its own self-perfecting to the blessed labour for the general perfecting of all, in which lies the fulfilment of the divine purpose in the world." - PFLEIDERER, Phil. of Religion, p. 28.

"Mine eye discerns this eternal life and motion in all the veins of sensible and spiritual nature, through what seems to others a dead mass. And it sees this life forever ascend and grow and transfigure itself into a more spiritual expression of its own nature.” – J. G. FICHTE, Destiny of Man.

"God does raise up the dead and quicken them in marvellous and miraculous fashion, but you cannot. God is daily taking of that which belongs to plane of being, and making it live and function on another and higher; but such an achievement is surely his alone, it is beyond all human power to do the like." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., The Creatorship, etc.

See Also

ALCHEMY
BARSOM
BLASPHEMY
BOAT (wisdom)
BUDDHI
DEATH
DHARMA
EVOLUTION
HAETUMANT
HEALING (Dead)
HEIR
INTERCESSION
KALLIOPEIA
KILLING OUT
MAGIC
METEMPSYCHOSIS
MULTITUDES
PRÂNA
PROMISES
QUALITIES
STEWARD (unjust)
VAHISTO
WORDS of power