Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

Arabic influences upon Indian alchemy are presumed, but the latter certainly predates these. Even
older are the sophisticated alchemic–sexual magic experiments of the Taoists. For this reason, some
important Western scholars of Asia, for example, David Gordon White, Agehananda Bharati, and
Joseph Needham, are of the opinion that China could be considered a possible origin for both the
“high art” and Indian Tantrism. On the other hand, European alchemy of early modern times (16 th to
18 th century) has so many similarities to the symbolic world of tantric-alchemic India, that — since a
direct influence is difficult to imagine — one must either posit a common historical, most probably
Egyptian, origin, or must assume that both esoteric currents drew upon the same archetypal reservoir
of our collective unconsciousness. Most probably, both are the case.
In the West, the close relationship between occidental alchemy and Tantrism has been thematized by,
among others, the religious studies scholar Mircea Eliade and Carl Gustav Jung, the depth
psychologist. Jung more than once drew attention to the parallels between the two systems. His
introduction to a quasi-tantric text from China with the title Das Geheimnis der goldenen Blüte [‘The
Secret of the Golden Flower’] is just one example from many. Mircea Eliade also saw “a remarkable
correspondence between Tantrism and the great western mysteriosophical [sic] current ..., in which at
the beginning of the Christian era gnosis, hermetics, Greek/Egyptan alchemy and the traditions of the
mysteries flowed together” (Eliade, 1985, p. 211). Of the more modern authors, it is primarily David
Gordon White who deserves mention; he has exhaustively studied the close link between alchemic
ideas and experiments and the Indian Siddhas (sorcerers) and their tantric practices. Without doubt,
Tantrism and alchemy, whether of Indian or European provenance, share many fundamental images
with one another.
Just like their oriental colleagues, the occidental alchemists expressed themselves in a twilight
language (sandhabhasa). All the words, signs, and symbols, which were formulated to describe the
experiments in their obscure “laboratories”, possessed multiple meanings and were only
comprehensible to the “initiated”. Just as in some tantra texts, “secret” practices were represented by
“harmless” images in the European treatises; this was especially true of the topic of erotic love and
sexuality. This strong link to the erotic may appear absurd in the case of chemical experiments, but
the alchemic world view was, just like that of Tantrism, dominated by the idea that our universe
functions as the creation and interplayof a masculine and a feminine principle and that all levels of
existence are interpenetrated by the polarity of the sexes. “Gender is in everything, everything has
masculine and feminine principles, gender reveals itself on all levels”, we can read in a European
treatise on the “great art” (Gebelein, 1991, p. 44).
This was also true for the sphere of chemical substances and compounds, the metals and elements.
Both the tantric and the alchemic writings are therefore maps of the erotic imagination and anyone
with a little speech psychology can recognize the pervasive sexual system of reference hidden in a
hermetical text from the 16 th century. At that time people did not have the slightest qualms about
describing chemical processes as erotic events and erotic scenarios as chemical fusions. They behaved
in exactly the same manner in the West as in the East.
Let us now examine tantric alchemy a little more closely. The Tibetan lama, Dragpa Jetsen, for
example, distinguishes three aspects of the royal art: the “Alchemy of life: he can make his life last as
long as the sun and moon[; the] Alchemy of body: he can make his body eternally be but sixteen years
old[; and the] Alchemy of enjoyments: he can turn iron and copper into gold” (quoted by Beyer, 1978,
p. 253). These three experiments, then, primarily concern two goals: firstly the attainment of