The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
it on the real reactive imaginative film. In short my efforts dissolve my lifeon-the-plane-of-imagery
and purge of it my life-on-the-plane-of-sensation.
The inner work eliminates my psychic coenaesthesis, which is illusory, from
my physical coenaesthesis, which is real; it eliminates my egotistical life,
which is illusory, from my organic life, which is real. I realise that there is in
me a real 'Earth', my organic life with my perceptions, reactive to the real
present, and an illusory 'Heaven', my active imaginative life. On account of
this illusory Heaven I really have today neither my Earth nor Heaven. The
inner work, by abolishing the illusory Heaven will give me back to my Earth;
and this restitution of my Earth will be at the same time the enjoyment of the
true Heaven. Such is the sense of that phrase of Zen: 'The Earth, that is
Paradise.'
This understanding, which re-valorises our organic life and de-valorises
our imaginative life, exposes us to the temptation to devote ourselves directly
to our organic perceptions, to our organic coenaesthesis. Such an inner
proceeding would be sterile and dangerous. It is impossible artificially to
wipe out our imaginative life; we would thus make merely an absurd
pretence. It is not on the dualistic plane where the real and the illusory
manifest that there can be effected the subtle distillation which will eliminate
illusion; our formal inner manipulations are powerless there. Only our
Principle can effect this alchemical distillation, this purification. We have
only to stop opposing this action of our Principle; and it is by means of the
instantaneous total inner relaxation of which we have spoken that we can
learn to stop our habitual opposition.
The progressive dissolution of our life-on-the-plane-of-imagery brings
us nearer to delivery, to our birth in Reality. But, looked at before satori, this
dissolution represents the laborious agony of the 'old' man. Consequently the
inner work carried out in order to 'see into one's own nature' constitutes the
veritable asceticism (of which exterior kinds of asceticism are only
imitations), the veritable purification, the veritable mortification. (Let us
make it clear that the veritable asceticism evidently requires no modification
of the outward manner of living.)
It is important clearly to understand the immensity of what we have to
abandon, in our actual way of looking at things, and at the same time the
perfectly painless character of this abandonment. This plane of imagery that I
am going to lose is more than immense for me today, it is everything; it is the
salt of my life, it gives it all its meaning. It may be the scene of my terrors,
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