Living Dangerously - Issue 39

At the mental and spiritual level -- that is, at the level of your head or your mind, according to Schwartz-Salant -- you hear pain, fears, unvoiced desires, in yourself and in the other person. You can hear when someone really doesn't want to be with you and is turning off everything that you suggest, even though she invites you to suggest more and more until you feel as if you are going crazy. You can cocreate a terrible space in which you feed off each other's fears.

When you listen for what is unconscious and what is unarticulated, you enter a space between mind and matter in which, alchemically, you can create something that didn't exist before. You can mold the relationship. You can turn the base metals of confusion and missed opportunity into the gold of circumstance and hope.

"Life occurs between people as well as within them," says Schwartz-Salant. When people understand the "subtle body" that they create when they interact -- almost like the creation of a baby -- they deepen their relationship from one of power to one of respect. They learn to see through the eyes rather than with them, to achieve a nonordinary kind of perception.

Schwartz-Salant's alchemy in his deeply intriguing book, The Mystery of Human Relationship: Alchemy and the Transformation of Self (Routledge, 1998), is dangerous. It deals with Schwartz-Salant's discovery of "the mad parts of sane people." He shows that chaos is not in the environment but in each of us. "People get frightened of having a mad part, a part in which they are out of control," he says. "They don't like to embrace it, because it means embracing one's extreme limitations." But those parts are the arenas in which people can be the most creative, given the right conditions.

The best metaphor to deal with the mad parts of sane people is alchemy because of its emphasis on chaos. "Alchemy is a thousand-year-old system of thinking that is primarily interested in the transformation of things rather than in the linear cause and effect that one thing does to another thing," Schwartz-Salant says. "There are many other forms of relationship between things. One develops a finer understanding of dynamic processes: How does a leaf grow? How does one discover a new idea?"

In every act of listening, in every moment of a relationship, Schwartz-Salant says, "You're creating something out of nothing. You're opening your mind to a dimension of reality that had been hidden. You are creating that dimension and discovering it at the same time. Shifting to a different kind of awareness allows that to happen. I took the experience that alchemists had and that is no longer magical or scientific thinking, but that is instead a movement toward a different kind of consciousness. I'm interested in perception that is not ordinary, that involves seeing behind something."

How do you play in this interactive field, in this third realm? "It's a matter of intentionally letting go of your focus, of your sharp focus, and of letting yourself see with your imagination," Schwartz-Salant says. Alchemy goes beyond "getting to yes," or getting an upper hand in a negotiation by zeroing in on someone else's weaknesses. Alchemy is "getting to and" -- which means getting another person to trust you, to open up to you, and to get you to open up to him. You learn to speak a language upon which you both can build an intensely collaborative relationship. Such a relationship forges a deep human connection that discovers and creates at the same time.

Why does the mysterious science of alchemy work? Because there is a dark side to each of us. At the moment when we think we are in control, that's when we are out of control the most.

In a conversation, if you concentrate too much on the words that are being spoken, you begin to "select," to mistake the part for the whole -- and so, as you try to find clarity, you lose meaning. Instead, try listening for opposites that come up -- for love and hate, for freedom and confinement, for optimism and pessimism. Listen for intense swings that happen from moment to moment. In one breath, your friend encourages you to try something, and in the next, she tells you why your effort likely won't work. By acknowledging the presence of ambiguity, you have a chance to create a situation of trust. That kind of listening will open up your friend's heart -- and make alchemy happen.

I want to know about the tattoo on Schwartz-Salant's arm: two snakes entwined. I don't ask. Instead of searching for clarity, I lean into the image: Don Juan would wear snakes. The snake is one of the oldest symbols of power and of the wisdom of the unconscious. Wisdom is a risky venture; it is more than knowledge. Snakes are the creatures most unlike us. Connecting with them psychologically is difficult. According to biographer Frank McLynn, Jung liked to say that it is possible for zoologists to make a rapport with any animal, but that it is not possible with snakes. Jung would then tell a story of a man who reared a python and fed it by hand until one day, without warning, it wrapped itself around him and nearly killed him. It loosened its coils only when the man's friend hacked it to death with a hatchet. You can't control snakes or tame them -- or know them. You can only hope to live in harmony with them.