are products of the temporally conditioned consciousness and thus
deviate attention from the primal essence of consciousness. Chan
Buddhism is well known for insistence on detachment from conceptual
views in order to "perceive essence and attain Buddhahood."
3. Generally speaking, references to points or periods of time in alchemical
literature refer not to clock or calendar time but to psychological time.
Intense condensation of experiential time is also characteristic of mental
concentration in the alchemical process. In his classic Understanding
Reality, Chang Po-tuan writes, "Changing hours for days is the pattern of
the spiritual work." Liu I-ming explains, "Developed people, emulating
the image of the sun and moon
meeting, place thirty days within one day, and also place one day within
one hour: in one hour activating strong energy, they use the human mind
to produce the mind of Tao, use the mind of Tao to govern the human
mind, produce real knowledge by conscious knowledge, and purge
conscious knowledge by real knowledge; they gather the undifferentiated
primal energy for the mother of the elixir, and follow the spiritual
mechanism of the transformations of yin and yang as the firing process."
4. Empowerment refers to the stabilization of the higher consciousness so
that one can turn the light around at will in any and all circumstances. This
may require a period of special effort, represented by the hundred days
setting up the foundation.
