The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

EMOTION AND THE EMOTIVE STATE
In order to be clear we have, to begin with, thus established our
distinction by means of words of approximate exactitude. We can now be
more precise. The phenomenon 'emotion' represents a short-circuit between
the psychic pole and the somatic pole of our organism. One should not speak
in connexion with emotivity, of psychic contraction or of psychic spasm, but
of contraction or spasm of our psycho-somatic organism; the emotional
centre is half-way between the intellectual (or psychic or subtle) centre and
the instinctive (or somatic or gross) centre. Similarly if we spoke at the
beginning of emotions and the emotive state released by images, that is by
psychic, subtle, excitations, we must not forget that our emotivity can equally
be released by somatic, gross, excitations. A somatic indisposition can be the
releasing cause of my gloom, which is an emotive spasm of my psychosomatic
organism. In any case, whether the releasing cause has been psychic
or somatic, the spasm that results always affects both the psyche and the
soma; a certain muscular spasm (of my muscles striated or non-striated)
always accompanies my psychic spasm based on a subconscious image and
vice versa.
Coming back to the idea that emotivity in general represents a shortcircuit
of energy between the intellectual and the instinctive poles, let us see
how, from this point of view, dynamic emotion (we will call it simply
'emotion' in future) is distinguished from the static emotional state (or
emotional state for short). Making use of an electrical comparison one can
say that emotion corresponds with a spark uniting the two poles. This spark
can last for a certain time, but it is not static, for the reason that the contact
which it establishes between the separated poles is a contact in continual
repetition, a contact which shifts; the spark does not simply fly from one pole
to the other, it also flies in a lateral direction. The emotive state, on the
contrary, can be compared with a passage of energy which occurs between
the two poles when they touch one another directly along a surface that is
more or less considerable.
This comparison already shows us one of the factors which renders the
emotive state more dangerous than emotion. Emotion, because it shifts, is
visible, conscious; the subject is made aware of it by his inner sensibility; on
account of that diverse defensive mechanisms come into play at once, which
succeed in reducing, then in interrupting, the short-circuit that eats up energy.
On the contrary the emotive state does not give the alarm quickly enough to
the defensive mechanisms; it only gives the alarm tardily, when its
122