The Secret of the Golden Flower
The Secret of the Golden Flower is a Chinese guide to inner alchemy, meditation, and spiritual growth. Written around the late 17th century, it weaves together Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian concepts. The material came about through a method called âfuji spirit-writing,â brought forth by two separate groups both belonging to the school of Pure Brightness(Jingming Dao). This school was dedicated to one of the 8 Immortals, LĂŒ Dongbin. Starting in 1688, LĂŒ and other intermediate spirits began to transmit the "Instructions" to seven people who had made a commitment to receive what was believed to be perhaps forever forgotten wisdom. With words supposedly coming from a what was described as a "flying spirit pencil," we are looking at perhaps one of the earliest and most prolific "channeled" texts of all time. These 7 devotees were the only ones exposed to the experience, able to ask questions and refine their understanding with the unseen forces they were in communion with. Over days and weeks, they received clarifications on the immortal beingâs transmission of wisdom, and eventually put together a volume of all they learned. Supposedly, these 7 individuals then died, unable to finish what they had started. It was picked back up by another group in 1692 and finished. There are 6 versions of the text, none being seen as the âone and onlyâ, each differing slightly and acting as a foundational piece within different lineages of Taoism. It's influence, however, is clear. Min Yide, 11th generation successor of the Longmen/Dragon Gate school made it a central part of their canon claiming itâs importance as the "blueprint for healing of the world."
Richard Wilhelm's 1929 German translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower, accompanied by a commentary from Carl Jung, introduced the text for the first time outside of China. Carl Jung, a pioneer of analytical psychology, considered this to be a key work in his exploration of Eastern philosophies and their relation to psychological concepts. The textâs description of inner alchemy, and the resulting transformative effects it has on consciousness, resonated with Jung deeply. This encounter led him to shift his focus significantly away from the personal explorations documented in his Red Book, which he was already 14 years into. Could this ancient Eastern wisdom, perhaps channeled(at-least according to legend), be considered fertilizer for Jung's developing ideas, and thus, have deeply affected the world of modern psychology?
âThe Secret of the Golden Flowerâ emphasizes the integration of consciousness and the unification of disparate elements within the psyche. Carl Jung took this and ran, and with his idea of autonomous complexes, he laid the groundwork for the Western understanding of the multiplicious nature of the Self. Internal Family Systems seems to embody an evolution of this understanding. From ideas about the collective unconscious, to the concepts of extraverted and introverted personalities, and of archetypes, Jung revolutionized the worlds understanding of the mind.
The Secret of the Golden Flower, a practical manual for clarifying the mind, emphasizes the integration of consciousness and the unification of disparate elements within the psyche. Jung, who had already developed his concept of autonomous complexes, encountered in this ancient text a powerful Eastern parallel to his ideas. The texts focus on the blossoming of the "golden flower"âa symbol for the awakening of the real self and its hidden potentialâmay have further illuminated Jung's explorations into the process of individuation.
A great amount of the material is focused on Inner Alchemy, also known as Neidan - the art and science of gathering, storing, transforming and circulating energy within the human body. Carl Jung himself was a dedicated student of alchemy, possessing an extensive personal library on the subject(perhaps one of the largest in the world). He recognized in Neidan a powerful parallel to other traditions and his own theories of psychological transformation. Opposed from the typical idea one may have when thinking of alchemy, creating magical potions through a specific combination of special ingredients, the inner alchemistâs ingredients are the primary components of the human experience. Itâs not instructions from some crazed medieval chemist stooping over arcane books trying to create gold from lead, but a metaphor for transforming the base elements of our consciousness into spiritualized form.
Referred to in The Golden Flower as turning the light around, the beginning of the work is the reversal of oneâs awareness from external attributes of the physical world to the internal aspects of the mind. Reverting the outward flow of consciousness inwardly allows for one to develop the inherent potential that is obscured by ordinary cognitive processes. When the light is turned around, the energies of heaven and earth, Yin and Yang, all solidify within oneself creating wholeness. This way of thinking is called refined thought, or pure energy/pure thought. Accomplishing a form of non-being while being, one is able to observe where the light(one's spiritual power/inner-being) is leaking through their mental activity, and then consciously halt that which is of a lower nature, focusing it on the higher knowledge of inter-related oneness. We can only see things that our eyes are directed at, including the unity of all things, otherwise the minds natural tendency is to separate. By turning the light around, looking with the internal âthird eyeâ, we are becoming conscious of our unconscious nature. Bringing aspects of mental activity to the light of our awareness, we are integrating all parts of ourselves and stepping into the wholeness of our being.
The teaching recommends an important period of 100 days, during which one is dedicated to consistent meditation, harnessing consciousness inwardly through breath. This period is seen as a time of intense inner work. They say that after this period the light shows up sporadically. The light developed connects one to their higher qualities, and enhances the quality of life by infusing it with spirit. This was blocked previously due to energetic leakage from oneâs misuse of the mind/body and therefore the constant spillage of the subtle energies necessary to develop and maintain a connection to God, aka the Holy Spirit. Purifying oneself from the earth bound âyinâ nature of the Po soul, one is able to dissolve these lower energies and allow for the emergence of the pure yang energy, the higher self or original spirit, known as the Hun soul. The yin energy, as it is refined, accumulates into a ball of light, a seed of sorts, that blossoms as one develops for themselves an immortal spirit-body, aka, the Golden Flower, the essence of true consciousness. Negative aspects of ourselves are not discarded and thrown away, but instead transformed and renewed, our lower behaviors are fertilizer for future growth. The âGolden Flowerâ is a metaphor for the realization of oneâs true nature and the awakening of spiritual consciousness (ultimately to the oneness and shared unity of all things). It symbolizes the culmination of the inner alchemical processâthe transformation of the base human spirit into an enlightened, immortal essence - achieving the golden light-body, the cultivation of pure Yang energy. The âseedâ we are trying to grow, which is fed through the process of reversing the light, can be looked at and understood as the embodiment process our potential for spiritual growth is actualized through. At this point you are the seed. Zooming out from the micro of our inner world into a perspective which allows us to view ourselves as a plant within Godâs garden, achieving self realization and then the process of actualizing that which we know ourselves to be is our journey from germination, to growth, and then finally flowering. Seed formation and seed dispersal could be seen as our contributions back into the collective.
The Hermeticistâs developed their own form of this same process, internal alchemy, stemming perhaps from Arabs of the Middle East before becoming popularized in early Europe. Itâs interesting how two different cultures developed very similar models for self transformation with no perceivable connection to one another. This supports the idea of philosophia perennis, which proposes that the recurrence of common themes across world religions illuminates universal truths about the nature of reality.
"I am the light of the world" Â John 8:12
With our modern understanding of neurobiology, itâs now made clear why this 100 day period is so crucial and important. You are literally wiring in, through the process of mind management, and rounding up/getting to know your internal parts, a dendritic thought tree connected to your higher nature. By doing the difficult work of installing optimal thought routing programs, the âmental messesâ which we may be left with from our day to day lives will have schemas orchestrated to clean things up automatically. This allows us to escape the clutches of our lower nature, characterized by base instincts, desires, and attachments that are seen as impediments to spiritual growth.