The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE COMPENSATIONS
compensations that the subject does not succeed in using in his life, is of the
same nature as the distress felt in the compensations that are lived-with when
these exhaust themselves without comprehension. In the two cases there is
'de-compensation', but the happy issue of these two kinds of crisis is
different. For the man who lives in accordance with his compensations it is
desirable that he should come out of this stage; for the man who cannot live
in accordance with his compensations it is desirable that he should enter this
stage.
When a man succeeds in living his compensatory life the functioning of
his psycho-somatic machine is harmonised, made flexible thereby. The man
who thinks he has found Reality in one thing or another—whether it be
money, or honours, or power, or any kind of exalting undertaking—possesses
a point of orientation which allows his life to be efficiently organised. The
apparent concentration of Reality on an image confers on the man an
apparent inner unity by means of simplification of his dynamism. This
simplification, which assumes the putting to sleep of a part of the world of his
tendencies, clearly should not be confused with the simplicity of the man of
satori in whom all is united without distinction in a total synthesis. But they
resemble one another as the plane projection of a volume can resemble that
volume. If a compensation of the 'adoration' type is pushed to a very high
degree of subtlety, the inner simplification which it entails can actualise, in
the psycho-somatic machine, rare powers which seem to be 'supernatural'
(such as thought-reading, clairvoyance, psychic influences upon others,
unconscious actions exactly adapted, power of healing, etc.).
The well-compensated man is, in the exact sense of the word, an
idolater in the measure in which he 'believes' that the harmonising effects of
his compensation come from the compensating image itself, the measure in
which he identifies this image with Reality. This belief, which renders
objective the subjective value of an image, evidently drives the idolater to
think that all men ought to see as he does. If the idolater is of a positive type
this results in proselytism, in apostleship, in a mission; if he is of a negative
type it results in intolerance, in the persecution of unbelievers. The belief in
the Reality of a form also entails the need of formal manifestations; the rite,
which in reality is only a facultative means of expression, becomes where the
idolater is concerned a constraining necessity.
Compensation forms an integral part of the period of human
development which stretches from birth up to satori. Until satori, man is in
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