The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
affirmation, however virtual it may be, which determines and supports the
first.
The natural man lives, then, unceasingly on these two planes at once.
These two planes correspond with the two domains, somatic and psychic, that
we studied in another chapter. Let us recall that every episode of our lives
results ultimately in concomitant reactions in us in these two domains, but
that the contacts with the outside world which will release these reactions in
the two domains together come to us via the one or via the other. I am
touched by the outer world either on the plane of sensation (the outside world
effectively present), or on the plane of imagery (the outside world
recollected), but I experience each of these two contacts at the same time on
the two planes.
If the natural man lives unceasingly on the two planes at once we have
said that he only pays attention to one of them at each moment. When a man
dreams, when he day-dreams, and when he meditates, his attention is fixed on
the plane of imagery only, on the active imaginative film only; the reactive
imaginative film is developed alongside it, but the attention is not on it. It is
only when he adapts himself to the present outside world that a man
experiences his life at the same time (thanks to the rapid alternations of his
attention) on the plane of sensation and on that of imagery. If I observe
myself well I realise that I day-dream always a little, and very often
enormously, at the same time that I adapt myself to the real present in order
to join myself with the outer world and use it. Knowing that, we can now
reconsider more exactly the compatibility which exists between the fourth
manner of thinking and the inner task. Theoretically this compatibility is
absolute; concretely everything happens as though it was not absolute
because I am never unreservedly in the fourth manner of thinking. My
attention alternates incessantly between the fourth manner and the third, I am
astride these two manners of thinking. The aim of the inner task is precisely
to install myself some day, by means of satori, entirely in the fourth manner
of thinking, to adapt myself at last really to the outside world, to reach
Reality by the elimination of the dream.
Experience demonstrates it to me. As soon as I begin to make the right
kind of efforts in order to perceive my instantaneous state of existence I
realise that these efforts curb the active imaginative film which is in me and
which is incompatible with these efforts. More exactly these efforts have a
solvent effect on my illusory film, by taking my attention from it and placing
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