The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist
The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist
The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist
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EMOTION AND THE EMOTIVE STATE<br />
sentiment. Everything happens as if I were conscious of the Images which<br />
form part of my sentiment and as if my sentiment were conscious of me.<br />
But this way of looking at it corresponds with the illusory perspective<br />
of the natural man, according to which he considers his surface consciousness<br />
as constituting him, as being himself. In reality my surface consciousness is<br />
not 'me', it does not constitute the principle of all these phenomena by means<br />
of which my psycho-somatic organism creates itself, principle which alone<br />
can be called 'me'; it is only a certain plane of these phenomena which<br />
manifest my principle. Instead of saying that my sentiment seizes my<br />
consciousness, I should say then that my subconscious seizes my surface<br />
consciousness. My subconscious is still 'me'. If I feel this seizure of my<br />
consciousness by my subconscious as an alienation of my liberty, that is not<br />
because that which seizes my consciousness is foreign to me, but because that<br />
which seizes my consciousness (and which is still 'me') is asleep, and that,<br />
because of this sleep, my subconscious acts under the complete determination<br />
of the outside world. Everything happens as though, in my sentiment, the<br />
outside world seized me. However the outside world confines itself to<br />
determining the modalities of the play of my sleeping subconscious, but the<br />
real motive-force of this play is not foreign to me, it is my own principle, it is<br />
'me'. In my sentiment I have been acted upon, certainly, but only because as a<br />
result of my actual sleeping state I allow myself to be acted upon.<br />
Arrived at this point of understanding I realise that what I have called<br />
my 'subconscious' is illusory, that it forms a part of the dream of my sleep of<br />
man-before-satori. That which seizes my surface consciousness and moves it<br />
is my first and only motor, my principle, the Absolute Principle which moves<br />
me as it moves all created things. This Principle, anterior to all consciousness<br />
since it engenders all consciousness by manifesting itself in it, we ought to<br />
call here the Fundamental Unconscious (No-Mind or Cosmic Mind of Zen).<br />
That which I have called my subconscious is only the illusory manner in<br />
which I represent to myself, imaginatively, the action which the sleeping<br />
centre of my mind exercises on the superficial phenomena, alone actually<br />
awake, of this same mind, that is to say the action which the Unconscious<br />
exercises on my surface consciousness. In fact the subconscious, this<br />
intermediary stage, has no reality; the Unconscious has an absolute reality<br />
(noumenal), the surface consciousness (imaginative film) has a relative<br />
reality (phenomenal), but the subconscious has only an illusory reality; it is<br />
only an intermediary and hybrid representation which, if one regards it from<br />
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