The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

ON AFFECTIVITY
residing in my gross aspect (my organs) nor in my subtle aspect (my images),
where then does it reside?
The study of sensibility, when it started from the distinction between
soma and psyche, started badly; it started from an artificial discrimination
and it is not surprising therefore that it was not able to arrive at any result. I
am going to take it up again in another way, in a way which concerns my
physical sensibility as much as my psychic.
Instead of studying the manifestations of sensibility at the end of their
development we are going to study this development itself; to that end let us
start with a very banal experience. One day I feel, in my arm, a rheumatic
pain of moderate intensity; a friend comes to see me, engages me in a
conversation that interests me, then leaves me. After my friend has gone, I
feel my pain and realise that I had ceased to feel it during the conversation;
and I tell myself that my pain was certainly always there during the
conversation; it was there but I did not feel it because my attention was
distracted from it. If, instead of a rheumatic pain I experience some moral
suffering of moderate intensity, as a result of a vexation which saddened me
before the visit of my friend, the same phenomenon can arise. The distinction
to be drawn here is no longer between two sorts of sufferings developed, but
between two stages of development of the suffering whether this suffering be
somatic or psychic. What was happening while my attention was distracted?
Can I really think that my pain was there but that I was not conscious of it?
Certainly not; I cannot state that a pain 'is there' if I do not feel any pain. I am
nevertheless not mistaken in thinking that there persisted, during my
distraction, something or other which afterwards gave me back my suffering.
But what then? I am led to establish a distinction which will explain my
experience; it is the distinction between the painful excitation and the mental
consciousness of the pain. While I was distracted the painful excitation
persisted but the consciousness of the pain ceased. This distinction once
established, I see how I can recover correctly the distinction between soma
and psyche; for the painful excitation is a somatic phenomenon whereas the
consciousness of pain is a psychic phenomenon. And the two attempts,
'materialistic' and 'spiritual', which failed a moment ago, are now going to
turn into something that is valid. The painful excitation is a phenomenon
which effects the soma, either partially in so far as it is an aggregate of
organs (physical painful excitation) or totally in so far as it is a totality
(painful excitation called 'psychic', touching the totality of the soma by means
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