The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

ON THE GENERAL SENSE OF ZEN THOUGHT
settle itself spontaneously and harmoniously as regards our 'doing' precisely
when we cease to set ourselves to modify it in any manner and when we
strive only to awaken our sleeping faith, that is to say when we strive to
conceive the primordial idea that we have to conceive. This complete idea,
spherical as it were and immobile, evidently does not lead to any particular
action, it has no special dynamism, it is this central purity of Non-Action
through which will pass, untroubled, the spontaneous dynamism of real
natural life. Also one can and one should say that to awaken and to nourish
this conception is not 'doing' anything in the sense that this word must
necessarily have for the natural man, and even that this awakening in the
domain of thought is revealed in daily life by a reduction (tending towards
cessation) of all the useless operations to which man subjects himself in
connexion with his inner phenomena.
Evidently it is possible to maintain that to work in order to conceive an
idea is to 'do' something. But considering the sense that this word has for the
natural man, it is better, in order to avoid a dangerous misunderstanding, to
talk as Zen talks and to show that work that can do away with human distress
is work of pure intellect which does not imply that one 'does' anything in
particular in his inner life and which implies, on the contrary, that one ceases
to wish to modify it in any way.
Let us look at the question more closely still. Work which awakens
faith in the unique and perfect Reality which is our 'being' falls into two
movements. In a preliminary movement our discursive thought conceives all
the ideas needed in order that we may theoretically understand the existence
in us of this faith which is asleep, and in the possibility of its awakening, and
that only this awakening can put an end to our illusory sufferings. During this
preliminary movement the work effected can be described as 'doing'
something. But this theoretical understanding, supposing it to have been
obtained, changes nothing as yet in our painful condition: it must now be
transformed into an understanding that is lived, experienced by the whole of
our organism, an understanding both theoretical and practical, both abstract
and concrete; only then will our faith be awakened. But this transformation,
this passing beyond 'form', could not be the result of any deliberate work
'done' by the natural man who is entirely blind to that which is not 'formal'.
There is no 'path' towards deliverance, and that is evident since we have
never really been in servitude and we continue not to be so; there is nowhere
to 'go', there is nothing to 'do'. Man has nothing directly to do in order to
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