The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

OBEDIENCE TO THE NATURE OF THINGS
established by itself; our inner manipulations are powerless to establish the
slightest real harmony in us. For our Principle, which is the only artisan
qualified for this Great Work, to operate in us it is enough that we think
correctly, or more exactly that we cease to think wrongly.
In order to understand more clearly what has been said above we can
use a symbolical illustration. Man, in his development, may be compared
with a balloon-figure progressively inflated. At his birth he is like a little
balloon very slightly inflated, without many indications of form, a little
spherical mass. Then, the Principle inflating the balloon, it increases in
volume; at the same time its form departs more and more from the simple
form of the sphere; reliefs and hollows appear; a figure develops whose
structure is unique in its particularities. It is the development of what one
calls the character, the personality, of that by which I am 'I' and nobody else.
That corresponds to the development of the human machine, soma and
psyche.
If man's ignorance did not intervene to counteract his normal evolution,
this is what would happen. The balloon, at the moment at which the human
machine is fully developed (towards puberty, when the somatic machine is
complete with the appearance of the sexual function and when the psychic
machine is complete with the appearance of the impartial intelligence,
abstract and generalising), the balloon then is fully inflated and it attains in
surface an extension which it can no longer exceed. But Principle continues
to inflate it; and this brings about a state of hypertension. Under the influence
of this hypertension the inextensible surface will be deformed so that its
content may increase, that is to say that it will flatten out its folds, reduce its
reliefs and its hollows, progressively become spherical, since the simple form
of a sphere corresponds to the greatest possible capacity for a given surface.
Little by little the irregularities of the balloon-figure disappear. Finally the
perfectly spherical form is attained; no increase of contenance is any longer
possible. The Principle still inflating, the balloon bursts.
In the course of this normal evolution one sees three phases succeed
one another. The little sphere at the beginning, little spherical bundle of the
balloon as yet uninflated, that is the phase which is up-stream of man's
temporal realisation, up-stream of the development of his personality, of his
Ego. One might say that the small child is still spherical. The second phase,
that of the developed personality, corresponds to the figure endowed with
particular contours, complex and personal. In the third phase, which precedes
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