The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

ON THE IDEA OF ‘DISCIPLINE’
identification with the preferred tendency (transfer of my 'being' onto the
tendency that I see as 'being').
Here as elsewhere the mistake does not lie in the identification with
such a tendency but in the exclusive character of this identification, in the
disavowal of the opposing tendency. We may remark that this inadequacy of
identification in my microcosm is in relation to the inadequacy of my
identification in the macrocosm. As soon as I am identified with the Self
while excluding the Not-Self, I cannot be identified with the whole of Self;
my microcosm is divided in its turn into Self and Not-Self, for example, in
tendencies that I make my own and in tendencies that I regard as foreign. One
can break up indefinitely the loadstone; each fragment will always have two
poles. Every dualism engenders unlimited dualisms.
This identification with a tendency, with disavowal of the opposite
tendency, is revealed by the fact that the subject has the impression of himself
struggling against the disavowed tendency. The subconscious composition of
forces has given place to their conscious opposition. The complementary
character of the dualism has disappeared, there only remains the antagonism.
The two forces can no longer operate as belonging to a harmonious whole;
partiality makes them work as though they belonged to two different wholes.
'As soon as you have Good and Evil confusion results and the spirit is lost.'
The illusory notion of a 'will', such as man habitually understands it,
'will' representing a special inner power, distinct from the tendencies and
capable of exercising a kind of police supervision over them, results fatally
from the identification with a preferred tendency. Let us take up again our
example of the man who fasts in order to slim. He identifies himself with his
aesthetic tendency, and so he ceases to become conscious of this tendency. If
he has failed to stick to his diet he does not say 'My greed was stronger than
my wish to be beautiful'; he says 'My greed was stronger than I was.' In the
opposite case he will say 'I have triumphed over my greed.' As the tendency
which has triumphed has then ceased to exist for this man, and as he feels
clearly nevertheless that a force has conquered his greed, he calls this force
his 'will'. Sometimes one observes a more complex case which in the end
comes back to the same thing. Such and such a man, proud to have seen his
'will' triumph or ashamed to have seen it defeated, conceives the desire to
have more and more 'will-power'; thus is born a partiality for the tendency to
counteract the action of no matter what other tendency. The ambition for
'self-mastery' is nothing else. One might say that to control the working of
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