The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

PASSIVITY OF THE MIND
the mobilisation of my energy, but before that; and this is realised when,
instead of seeing the imaginative-emotive processes which are being
produced, I regard the processes which are about to be produced. This is
realised when, instead of being passively attentive to my mobilised energy
and to its disintegrating future, I tend actively to perceive the very birth of my
energy. A new vigilance now superintends the mobilisation of energy. To put
it more simply, an active attention lies in wait for the advent of my inner
movements. It is no longer my emotions which interest me, but their coming
to birth; it is no longer their movement that interests me, but this other
informal movement which is the birth of their formal movement.
This active functioning of my attention, so contrary to my automatic
nature, cannot be in any degree the object of a direct effort, of an explicit
'discipline' effected in view of Realisation. We will develop later this
important idea; we merely wish to point it out now in order to forewarn the
reader against the tenacious and illusory search for 'recipes' for realisation.
First we wish to show that our attention, when it functions in the active
mode, is pure attention, without manifested object. My mobilised energy is
not perceptible in itself, but only in the effects of its disintegration, the
images. But this disintegration only occurs when my attention operates in the
passive mode; active attention forestalls this disintegration. And so, when my
attention operates in the active mode there is nothing to perceive. Energy is
mobilised nevertheless; the female organic consciousness continues its work;
but the energy remains informal, un-disintegrated, non-manifested. Thus is
realised the advice of Zen: 'Awaken the mind without fixing it upon
anything.' we can even understand that, if the mind is awakened in itself
instead of being awakened by the organic energy-reactions, there is not
necessarily anything on which it can fix itself. This phrase of Zen could
therefore be modified thus: 'Awaken the mind in itself, and it will not then be
fixed on anything.'
It is easy for me to verify concretely that active attention to my inner
world is without an object. If I take up, in face of my inner monologue, the
attitude of an active auditor who authorises this monologue to say whatever it
wishes and however it wishes, if I take up the attitude which can be defined
by the formula 'Speak, I am listening', I observe that my monologue stops. It
does not start up again until my attitude of vigilant expectation ceases.
This suppression of the imaginative film will perhaps be feared by
some as a suppression of 'life'. In reality the imaginative film is not life.
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