The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SENSATION AND SENTIMENT
is in fact a reaction to abnormal images since the formation-centre of these
images is not the real centre of the Universe.
We have clearly distinguished these two emotive responses, to the real
film on the one hand and to the imaginary film on the other. But, with the
human-being after earliest childhood, at no moment does the emotivity
respond only to a real film; an imaginary film is always there at the same
time. The emotions are never pure, there is always an emotive state
coexisting, and all the more if the subject is endowed with a need of the
Absolute, with a craving to 'be', with 'idealism'. The very young child, in
whom the possibility of inventing an imaginary film does not yet exist since
its intellectual function is insufficiently developed, still has an emotivity that
is nearly pure, quite fluid, without spasm, unstable. But in the degree that the
intellect develops, the spasms of the emotive states appear. With the adult,
very well endowed with a need of the Absolute, the emotivity presents, under
contractions sometimes very unstable, spasms of a slow rhythm; if this man is
well able to observe himself he will recognise this duality of rhythm in his
emotivity. It will seem to him that he has two distinct emotivities, one which
tends to flow and the other to stay put (dreams often contain allusion to this
state of things: I want to move, I need to move, and at the same time I remain
stuck where I am).
There are, then, two kinds of imaginative film, two kinds of emotive
response, and in practice, in our inner phenomenology, two emotivities: one
authentic emotivity in response to the real film, and one illusory or false
emotivity in response to the imaginary film. The authentic emotivity
corresponds with the plane of sensation (sense-perceptions of the outer
world), the false emotivity corresponds with the plane of images (imaginary
perceptions). The authentic emotivity, that of the child, operates according to
a mobile unstable rhythm and it is quite irrational (it is unrelated with the
importance that our reason accords to the images according to our scale of
values). The false emotivity operates with a slow rhythm and it is more or
less rational (except that at moments of fatigue, a certain instability can be
seen there also; but this instability is not a healthy absence of fixity, it is only
failure of a spasm which is exhausting itself). This emotivity is in relation
with the ideal image that I make of the world and of myself, with my desire
to see myself in attitudes that are 'beautiful-good-true' and with my fear of
seeing myself in attitudes that are 'ugly-wicked-false'. My authentic reaction
to a given circumstance scoffs at the 'ideal', it depends only on my vision of
140