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Consider the process of cooking and
eating a meal - the raw food is transformed as it becomes a meal and is
eaten. But after the eating, the subsequent evolution of the food is through
transubstantiation: it becomes bone, muscle, blood, nerve, automatism,
and (if the breath is connected properly) sensation, consciousness, creativity,
etc.
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Similarly, there is a transformation
that takes place when we "come into the Work." People who are completely
identified with false personality are not able to have the kind of experiences
that the Work involves. But once we are "in the Work," there is no longer
a need for transformation: indeed, the continued fixation on harmony through
conflict is like going round and round through a revolving entrance door.
Fixating on Harmony Through Conflict/Transformation, we keep circling from
the lobby to the street and back again, never realizing that something
entirely different is required to go further. When we stop forcing ourselves
through a useless process of transformation, we can open ourselves to the
possibility of transubstantiation. At the same time we can begin to facilitate
the process for other people who are "in the Work" and are open to possiblity
of exchange.
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If the Work were a process of transformation, then one would expect the Shivapuri Baba, for instance, to have a form that is different from a normal human body. He did not: the form is not changed. On the other hand, consider the story of St. Theresa of Avila, whose body did not decay and smelled like roses. Or Paramahansa Yogananda, about whom the same story is told. Or the "rainbow body" stories heard in Tibet. Or the observed heart warmth and lack of rigor mortis in the body of one of Sogyal Rinpoche's teachers, as reported by the nurses and doctors in the Western hospital where he died. These phenomena indicate a process of transmutation or transubstantiation in which the form remains the same but the substance is changed.
