The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

ON AFFECTIVITY
of the global image that I have of myself). The painful excitation can reach
me either in passing by my gross aspect (plane of sensation), or in passing by
my subtle aspect (plane of images or of sentiment). So, on the side of the pole
'painful excitation', our materialistic thesis is applicable; it is always my soma
which is painfully excited in part or in whole. If we go on now to the pole
'consciousness of pain' our 'spiritual' thesis is applicable: it is always my
mind which is conscious of the pain, whether the painful excitation has
affected my soma in part or in whole.
Let us now envisage these two poles 'painful excitation' and
'consciousness of pain' by asking ourselves in which of these the pain resides.
The difficulties begin again: in fact I cannot make the pain reside in the
painful excitation alone without consciousness of the pain; but neither can I
conceive a pain which is pure consciousness, without painful excitation.
Where then does the pain really reside? This question in its 'spatial'
expression, is the form in which is translated, according to our space-time
perspective, the question 'What is the reality of pain?' or, still better, 'What is
the cause of the pain?' since the cause is the reality of the effect. The painful
excitation is causal in relation to my consciousness of the pain; my mind is
affected because my soma is affected. But the affection of my soma is itself
the effect of a cause. This cause is not the outer world as one might suppose
at first sight. Indeed the affection of my soma is reaction to the action of the
outer world; if the action of the outer world can be called the immediate
cause it cannot be called the efficient cause. The efficient or real cause of the
reaction of my soma is in my soma itself, not outside it; it is in my vital
principle, in the source of all my manifestation, that is to say in the Absolute
Principle in so far as it manifests in me. We find then, in the genesis of
conscious pain, three stages: the Absolute Principle first; next my somatic
aspect which, activated by the Absolute Principle, develops what we have
called 'painful excitation'; finally my subtle aspect which, prompted by the
painful excitation, develops the consciousness of pain. The Absolute
Principle corresponds to the fundamental Unconscious; the painful excitation
corresponds to the 'subconscious' (my suffering, during my distraction, was
subconscious); the consciousness of pain corresponds to the conscious.
We see then that pain, in its ensemble, is an uninterrupted flux of
energy which disintegrates from the universal centre towards the individual
periphery. Reality, or the primary cause, of all this phenomenal current
resides in the fundamental Unconscious. In other words the reality of
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