The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

Chapter Twenty
PASSIVITY OF THE MIND AND
DISINTEGRATION OF OUR ENERGY
WE wish in this study to carry our reflections deeper on the subject of
satori and on the inner phenomena which precede it. It is necessary
first of all to establish a clear distinction between the intemporal
satori-state and the historic satori-occurrence. We have already shown that
the state of satori should not be conceived as a new state to which we have to
obtain access, but as our eternal state, independent of our birth and of our
death. Each one of us lives in the state of satori and could not live otherwise.
When Zen speaks of satori within time, when it says for example: 'Satori falls
upon us unexpectedly when we have exhausted all the resources of our
being', it is not speaking of the intemporal state of satori but of the instant at
which we realise that we are in this state, or, more exactly, of the instant at
which we cease to believe that we are living outside this state.
This distinction between the satori-state and the satori-occurrence is
very important. If I only conceive the satori-state I fall into fatalism. If I only
conceive the satori-occurrence I fall into spiritual ambition, into the greedy
demand for Realisation, and this error enchains me firmly to the illusion on
which all my distress is founded.
The satori-occurrence is an event that is very special in that it ceases to
be seen as such as soon as it happens. The man of satori no longer believes
that he lives exiled from the Intemporal; living in the Intemporal and
knowing it, he no longer makes any distinction between a past in which he
believed himself to be living outside satori and a present in which he knows
that he is living in it. This does not mean that this man has lost the memory of
the time lived before the satori-occurrence; he can remember everything, his
distress, his weaknesses, the inner phenomena which obliged him to act
against his reason; but he sees that all that was already the state of satori,
that nothing has been, is, nor will be outside the state of satori. Past, present,
and future bathing for this man in the same state of satori, it is evident that
the satori-occurrence ceases to exist for him as a particular historical date.
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