The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

ON THE IDEA OF ‘DISCIPLINE’
We will neglect, to begin with, the examination of this famous and
illusory 'Will-power', and we will use this word in its usual sense in studying
'self-control'. The control of self can be control of the outer behaviour—
'good' deeds or 'good' abstentions (asceticism); or control of the inner
behaviour—'good' sentiments or 'good' thoughts or mental exercises to
achieve a 'good' manner of making the mind function (concentration,
meditation, mental void, etc.). If one analyses deeply what happens in the
course of such efforts, one always finds, as an initial mechanism, the
voluntary mental evocation of an image or of a system of images. That is
evident when it is a question of meditation (even if the mental image evoked
is that of the absence of images); and it is the same if it is a question of
external action since the decision governing all action is controlled by the
conception of its mental image. All self-control consists therefore essentially
in a voluntary mental evocation, an imaginative manipulation in the course of
which there is actualised my partiality for one image to the detriment of all
other possible images. This partiality for such and such a form of my
manifestation, and consequently against the opposite forms, prevents the
control-of-self from working towards a synthesis of all my manifestation; I
can only 'do' thus by refusing what I do not do; no unification of my being is
then possible. The preferred images are samskaras as much as the refused
images. This method cannot modify the imaginative-emotive process as a
whole; the forms fabricated by the process alone are modified. The preferred
samskaras are reinforced; they tend to become encysted; imaginative habits
are acquired. I can thus train myself to feel sentiments of love for the whole
Universe at the expense of my aggressiveness. A form has been modified but
there can be no passing beyond form, no transformation.
We have already said that these kinds of training are not in themselves
an obstacle to the obtaining of satori. The reinforcement of certain samskaras
to the detriment of others should not be able to make man's inner situation
worse with regard to an eventual transformation. That which does not work
for satori is limited to not working for it; but nothing should be able to work
against it. Ignorance has no active reality against the Intemporal nor against
the eventual realisation of the Intemporal. It is merely time that is lost with
regard to the satori-occurrence.
An objection offers itself: the correct inner gesture of letting-go is
carried out under a general authorisation given to no matter what image; it is
no longer a question, therefore, of evoking a preferred image; there is no
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