Chapter Four

Tierney had been researching the shape of the soul for two decades. His studies led him to some deeply mystic assumptions and conclusions that could not be held in common by the world at large. Even the majority of professional philosophers and theologians could not hold together the two opposing natures that Tierney had joined. It was the simple, broken sages who understood.  Tierney’s magnum opus confounded all not on the edge.  On the edge of it all.

“The soul has a physical matrix. It begins at the tale of the spine and it grows up the spine through the heart, into the pineal gland or third eye, and it blossoms into eternity through the top of the head.  But, it is invisible energy”, his earlier writings told.

“The role of the soul is to help people desire and to will. Then, the soul is to project desire and will forward; transmuting desire and will into the very object of desire. The soul grows desire into attainment.

“Longing is meant to produce.” This synopsis early on earned Tierney a diagnosis of full-fledged lunacy in the eyes of most thinking people.

His studies had led him into the tomes of all great religious thought. The standard religious texts were second nature to him. Esoteric wisdom was also a matter of course. Kabbalah, Hermetic texts, alchemy and interior prayer were the bread and butter of his inner life. They were in his blood.

He was lucid and fluent in any and all the texts, and could apply principles in one strain and tradition to another strain and tradition without giving pause to translate notions. He knew the connecting cells that held it all together — the gluon.

It was in his blood. Satori held sway and equal position in him with Nirvana, Unification Consciousness, Samadhi, and Hesychia. The Perennial Philosophy was his breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Shaktipat is no different than the fire of Pentecost.  Meditation no different than prayer.  Kundalini the same as the Inner Light.

But the matrix thing eluded him. He had spent a number of years searching for a locus of the soul in all the great traditions. He longed to know if any mystic tradition had found the placement of the soul in the interface of the body. There had been a few offerings, but he found them void of any really feel for the truth.

Nowhere could he find an accurate understanding on the placement of the soul. None of the thinkers seemed to have it completely right. He did not feel they had unearthed the fullness of truth. Some had shards of the whole, but they had not been able to corroborate anything that modern science would be able to sink their teeth into.  The ultimate unveiling of all failures was when thinkers and traditions denied all other seekers having any of it right.  They believed only their truth was alone true.  They believed ALL others were wrong.

Some believed the transformation took place at the base of the spine, but did not understand the paradigm shift that this matrix and its opening would produce and how. Some believed in the possibility of this type of transformation, but had not experienced it or observed it in others. Observation and documentation of these transmutations were really lacking — at least in the fullness and obsessive-ness the information age has come to expect.

As time passed he found that the understanding of the soul and the philosopher's stone were clearly linked. No one had been able to produce one. Either.  There was a lot of talk, but no soul.  There was a lot of talk, but no stone.

And, that was important to Tierney. The final seal of approval on the notions of intuition hunches that poured forth from the great and ancient visionaries and mystics needed to come from the medical/scientific community. They could test the stone.  They could test the soul.  It was this group that would give the nod to the placement of the soul in the body. It would come from them because they could perceive the movements of energy within the body with their vast array of scopes and meters.  They could prove the efficacy of the stone’s transformation of matter.

Tierney knew that when the medical/scientific community found the soul that they would have no idea what they had discovered. But, he also knew that their descriptions of role and function would click and sound true to the inner master. Modern man could interpret the texts of the ancient sages, but the medical community, the scientific community would produce the document that modern men would digest easily and elevate to sacred status.

For centuries the pineal gland was believed to be the house of the soul. This did not resonate with Tierney. It may be a stop along the journey, but not the destination.  His gut instinct led him to believe this was inadequate. It wasn't quite right. The pineal gland was too close to rational skills to be able to be the soul — at least that is what Tierney felt. As time went on, these historic theories about the seat of the soul were dropped because of the presence of neurobiology disputed them.

Neither was the heart the destination. Again, for centuries the heart was believed to be the seat of the soul. It had some feel for relation to the seat of the soul, but it was not the true or complete seat of the soul. It somehow lacked the umpf that the soul needed or should have. The heart held emotion and compassion, but it did not hold the will. The energy for this creature was more basal than the refined mammal tenderness of compassion.  Again, it was a stop along the journey, but not the destination.

The soul needs to feed all aspects of consciousness. It needs to fabricate energy; the heart could not do this. The soul needed to be the spark of energy between what was called Divine and what was called human. The soul is what passed into the flesh from the realm of the spirit. The soul had to be the primal, guttural groan that set people on edge.

That all of the religions could say so much about the soul and not know its whereabouts was a problem for Tierney. He felt they were speaking about shades and specters  if they did not know its locus and seat of origin. Without a map or diagram of the soul, they had no place to begin in fact. Castles in the sky — that is all they had discovered. But, then again, he knew how much this view of his was influenced by his post-modern placement in the scheme of things.  They each had pieces of the full meaning, portions of the tremendum.

Ultimately, his search for the stone and for the soul would merge. He would hit that one line — that textual mantra — that would resonate within him and set him free to realize that the soul and the stone were one. The stone and the soul were tied together with the cord of human freedom and willful choice.

"If we knew where the soul resided, we could then move ahead with postulations and understandings of how the soul functioned through its vessel: the body. Without this knowledge, we could only clamber for resemblances and notions. " Tierney felt, " We could have more than clamberings and notions. We should have more than clamberings and notions."  On and on went the scribbles of his earliest writings. On and on he ambled. 

"Besides which, the soul is not some sweet pie in the sky angelic body. The soul is the dark, dank, muddy-wet swamp of creation. The groan of cosmic orgasm is held in the soul. Freedom empowers because the soul is capable of longing. Groping and unmitigated, and unquenchable hunger and thirst are the soul's constant companions.

Tierney was able to find the soul's seat, he believed, because his desire to find it enabled him to dream. His craving to find the unity produced the unity. His notion that fact was revealed in the dreams of desire is what enabled him to hold the two conflicting pieces together. And, he physically had a dream that revealed to him the seat of the soul.

Others had not felt the union because they had not dreamed their desires. Others fell short of the goal because their passion had been dried up or averted either by obsessive detail or politics. Others did not have Tierney's dream. Others feared the power of longing and desire and walked away before the soul could open.  Others wished to wield the truth as a weapon of dividing.  But later, later came a deepening.

"This longing is the thing. Passion is a key to the soul.  There is a sort of hungering electrification throughout the whole.  A grand yearning that rides up the axis of the spinal cord, out of our body at the crown of the head, and out into the cosmos.  Longing is our axis of meaning and realization."  Tierney had a sneaking suspicion this was true. He was right. It was from his place of passion that Tierney longed for finding the soul. From that place, Tierney found what he was looking for.  From that place he entered the ALL; he entered the Mystery.

That was the first page to the hermetic map that Tierney found within himself. That notion was the first step of a thousand steps on the journey Tierney had begun. He had to take his dreams and his hunches to the mat and prove them again and again so modern man could again believe.

Tierney's dream told him that Rumi had the answer. Rumi had been the one who appeared to him in his dream and said, "I have found the source of the Great Work (magnum opus). The source of the change is longing. Yearning is the stone; it is the soul. The yearning begins in the base of the spine, it grows through the dimensions of the heart, and is finished in the third eye, blasting through the crown into the BIG SKY MIND."

Tierney woke from his dream and began to tear apart the writings of the Persian mystic. He did not rest until his hunger had produced a morsel. And, there it was.

What triggered the hunch and passion was a small dream. What abated the hunger was a small and obscure line from Rumi. The line said, "This longing is the thing". These five little words threw him into chaotic revelation. Tierney became an ecstatic that day. He had never been able to speak the truth because he had not heard it. But, that day the lips of wisdom where opened to speak because the ears of understanding had heard.

"This longing is the thing."

It was these words that sealed the vault of his hunches. He knew his notions to be true when the phrase emerged. The soul was the stone. The soul and its' longing and hungering were the mystic mineral that changed one thing into another. The transmutation occurs because transmutation is longed for.

He could not stop repeating the phrase over and over and over to himself. "This longing is the thing. This longing is the thing. This longing is the thing." Every time he stopped repeating it, the intensity of his ability to understand it waned. And so, he was left, to repeat it endlessly and cause himself to trip out on the ecstatic profundity of the message itself.

He drooled as he chanted his mantra. He dreamed in the place that mantras take you, and there his dream uncovered deep longing. The answer to the quest was simply that the questing was all there was. In the yearning to find is one's finding.  You make one thing become another by allowing the longing for this attainment grow itself into the attainment itself. Madness.

“This longing is the thing.  Passion is the key to the soul.”

by, N. Thomas Johnson-Medland   © 2015 All Rights Reserved