Yesterday I talked to you about stereotypes. Today I will talk about the science of grafting as a means of correcting and controlling your faults, passions and baser tendencies.

Two different methods
Stereotypes and grafts are two different methods which you must learn to use. Old stereotypes have to be replaced by new ones, but grafts are different, they simply have to be added on to what is already there. As you know, fruit-farmers can graft a slip from a cultivated pear tree which gives sweet, succulent fruit, onto the stock of a wild pear tree which, although it is healthy and vigorous, produces only hard, inedible fruit. The cutting will benefit from the vigour of the wild tree and produce delicious, juicy pears.

Do you see, now, what I mean by a graft? All the great Initiates have had to perform grafts in order to bear sweeter, more flavourful fruits, and they did this by allying themselves with the most exalted, sublime Beings.

One sees so many distinguished people: scientists, famous writers and artists, philosophers and statesmen, all in the grip of some vice or passion and incapable of freeing themselves from it. So many artists of talent—of genius even—drank, took drugs or ruined themselves at the gaming tables or with women. If they had only known the rules for doing grafts they could have grafted all kinds of qualities and virtues onto their weaknesses.

Now, how is this done?
Suppose, for instance, that you have a very loving nature, but that your love is very sensual. You can look on it as a great strength, a tall, vigorous tree whose energies can be harnessed and used to nourish and strengthen a cutting grafted onto it from another kind of love, one that is pure, noble and disinterested.

The sap produced by your lower nature will rise and circulate through the new branches, that is, through these new stereotypes, the new circuits etched into your brain, producing magnificent fruit, the fruit of a prodigious love which will enrapture and inspire you in ways you never thought possible. Instead of making life unbearable for you, your sensuality will become a generous reservoir of forces capable of raising you all the way to the divine Mother and the heavenly Father.

And if you have a tendency to vanity or have a violent temper these can also be transformed and sublimated so you become a valiant servant of God, an invincible soldier of Christ. Instead of creating havoc and laying waste all around you, your Martian energies can be used to build something positive. All you have to do is find a cutting to graft onto them.

Where to find a cutting?
You may say, ‘I have read about such and such a hero, saint or prophet who lived in the past, and I find their life tremendously inspiring, or  a human being who is still alive – a friend, a renowned philosopher or artist, for instance – and whom you admire greatly. Do you think they could provide me with a graft?’ It is quite possible.

But there is someone who is infinitely more intelligent, more loving, more powerful and more generous than anyone you could ever find on earth, and who has a storehouse full of cuttings which are ideal for the grafts you need: and that being is the sun. He is the one you have to go to for your cuttings.

Ask the sun, everything I know has been revealed by the sun
From now on, when you are in front of the rising sun, speak to him and ask him for the grafts you need: ‘Oh, Sun, my friend, there are so many things I’d love to understand, but my intelligence is so limited. But you who are all light, you who give light to the whole world, I know how generous you are: please give me a few little cuttings from your immense intelligence.’

Several of you are wondering if I’m making fun of you: and the answer is, ‘No, absolutely not!’ I am perfectly serious about this for I have used these methods myself, for years, and I can assure you that they are very effective. In fact there are many other things I have not told you about grafting, but what you don’t learn from me you will learn directly from the sun. Everything I know has been revealed to me by the sun. You may be astonished to hear that the sun can reveal things to human beings, but it is true, nevertheless.

The sun’s rays are capable of doing away with all that is worn out and dirty, all the dark, impure elements within you. But if you want this to happen you have to learn how to open yourselves to their action. If you open wide your hearts, the rays of the sun can begin to work on you and everything will be transformed and transfigured: all your thoughts, feelings and acts will be changed.

Three indispensable conditions for success
Unfortunately, many people who enjoy marvellous sensations when they are eating and drinking, smoking or making love, feel nothing at all when they watch the sun rising. This is because their vibrations are at too low a frequency: the lowest kinds of sensations make an impression on them, but the sun’s rays leave them cold. But once a disciple begins to advance and evolve they become more sensitive to the sun’s rays and they receive all kinds of revelations and raptures—truly heavenly sensations.

As I say, if you don’t know these things you can never really improve very much. However, it is not enough to know, you also have to love these great truths; you have to love them and desire with all your heart to put them into effect, and you have to have the undaunted determination to persevere in your efforts. These are the three indispensable conditions for success: knowledge, love or desire and the power that comes from unswerving resolution.

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Izvor book 221, True Alchemy or the Quest for Perfection
Chapter 7, Grafting