Transformation

Such is the potency of the Divine Elixir, which, swift as the twinkling of an eye, transmuteth the souls of men!

...consider the substance of copper...

...the (divine) elixir will, in one instant, cause the substance of copper to attain the state of gold... Could this gold be called copper? Could it be claimed that it hath not attained the state of gold, whilst the touchstone is at hand to assay it and distinguish it from copper?

            Baha'u'llah - Kitab-i-Iqan, paragraphs 164 - 166

 

As some of you may know, a friend and I have been studying the Kitab-i-Iqan for a little while. Well, "a little while" means something like 24 years and counting.

    Aside - Wow. It's been ages since I've had an aside like this. So, back in the day, my friend Samuel and I were sharing an apartment. He was a relatively new Baha'i at the time and asked if, as long as we were living together, we could study the Writings. Naturally I said, "Of course. What would you like to study?" I presumed he would say something like the Hidden Words, or some other short excerpt from the Writings. Nope. "How about the Kitab-i-Iqan?" And so we did. Minimum 2 hours a week, plus any extra time we had in the apartment together. After a few months I ended up getting married, he moved out, and we put our study on hold. When we began again, we realized we had no idea where Baha'u'llah was in His argument in the book, and so we began again. My son was born, so we put it on hold again, and had to start all over again as we, once again, failed to understand where He was in His argument. But this time we decided to keep a record of our study, which you can find here. Anyways, long story short, 24 years later we are still at it, hoping to finish at some point before we are called to the great yonder beyond.

Over the past week, we have been looking at those paragraphs dealing with copper turning into gold. As you can imagine, these paragraphs have been raising a lot of questions, especially as we (humanity) has learned more about what constitutes the various elements. As it smacks of alchemy, many people have outright dismissed it as mere fable, but we've been diving deeper into it.

As you can see from the parts I have chosen to excerpt above, we believe that He is primarily referring to the transformation of the human heart, going from being like base copper to noble gold. You can read more about our thoughts on that in the blog on the Iqan. I am not going to go into it here.

Instead, I want to talk about a thought that occurred to me this morning.

My dear friend Azin made a comment, and asked a question, about the melting points of the two metals, and could this also, somehow, explain what He was referring to. I suspect not, I replied, as heating up the elements to their melting points merely affects the outer electron layers, not the nucleus itself, which is where the transmutation of elements would need to occur.

The nucleus.

The heart.

Hmmm.

    Aside number 2 - As long as I'm putting asides in here, let me just tell a little story about Azin. We were both living in Winnipeg at the time and were standing in the front hall of the local Baha'i Centre, a building chock filled with great memories for me. Anyways, as we were chatting, one of the dear Persian elderly ladies came up to us and, beaming, said how wonderful it was to see "two lions of Faith" talking together. We were both a bit embarrassed as being called such a thing, so I replied, "Yes. Azin is a lion because of his spirit. I'm only a lion because of my hair."

Once again the metaphors Baha'u'llah uses seem to become even more profound the more we dive into them.

It is very easy to make copper look like gold, for a short time. All you need to do is polish it, heat it, or even alloy it. All of these techniques can help. But it will still tarnish. To truly get copper to become gold, you need to add an additional 50 protons and 83 neutrons to the nucleus. Good luck. I mean, we know it's possible, and have even done it in nuclear reactors, but it's difficult. Really difficult. And not worth it, financially.

In other words, superficial changes are easy, but not all that effective or long-lasting.

To really make it change, you need to transform the heart.

And that, dear Reader, is the same for people.

But once the heart has really changed, then it is done. The individual has moved from being like copper, and easily tarnished, to being like pure gold, and ever-shining.

Now I'm also thinking about the tests involved in this, and how a simple chemical reaction is like the everyday tests we all face in our life. But a nuclear reaction is so much more severe, more profound, and I can't even imagine what those tests would be like.

Ah well, that's enough for me to meditate on the rest of this beautiful day, and probably for many more days to come.

I was hoping to end with something witty this morning, but nothing is coming to mind. Sorry. Just pretend I did, smile, perhaps even chuckle a bit, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Oh, and if you have any thoughts of passages for me to consider in this blog, please comment with them. Thanks. :)