The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE INNER ALCHEMY
of sleep to the state of wakefulness. In this illusory analogy there reappears
insidiously the progressive conception; just as my ordinary awakening seems
to me to be a progress in relation to my sleep, so satori should be a 'super
awakening', a 'veritable' awakening, a supreme progress in relation to my
actual waking state. Just as my ordinary awakening gives back to me a
consciousness which was lacking to me while I slept, so satori should give
me a 'supra-consciousness' which is lacking to me now. This false conception
(it is false since I am from all eternity in the state of satori and since, in spite
of appearances, I lack nothing) entails erroneous ideas concerning the inner
process which precedes the satori-event. Between profound sleep and the
state of wakefulness, I pass by the state of sleep with dreams. The appearance
of conscious activity, in the course of sleep, is in the direction of awakening,
and the more my dream is striking, moving, urgent, illusorily objective, the
nearer I am to awakening myself. In following my false analogy of progress I
begin to think that satori will be preceded by an exacerbation of my
conscious thought, of my imaginative film; I believe that mental
hyperactivity, in extasy or in nightmare, attaining a critical point of tension,
will obtain the bursting of the last barrier and entrance into a state of cosmic
supra-consciousness. All that is in complete contradiction with the 'sudden'
conception of Zen. Let us note how there is found again, in this progressist
chimera, the egotistical identification which entails the illusory adoration of
our consciousness. Our imaginary inner universe, centred on our person,
pretends that it is the Universe; the consciousness which fabricates this
universe is thus assimilated to the Cosmic Mind; and it is not astonishing
after that that we should depend on this consciousness in order to conquer
Realisation.
In reality, whether I sleep or remain awake, I am from this moment in
the state of satori. Sleep and waking are steeped equally in this state; the state
of satori, with regard to sleep and waking, plays the role of a hypostasis
which conciliates them. Steeped in the Intemporal, sleep and waking are two
extreme modalities of the functioning of my psycho-somatic organism,
extremities between which I oscillate. Between profound sleep and the
waking state, sleep with dreams represents a middle stage, the projection, on
the base of the triangle, of its summit. From this the transcendental wisdom
of the dream is derived. The symbolic thought of the dream, in which are
expressed the situations of our personal microcosm, stripped of all the
illusory objectivity of the outside world, is actually the only thought in us
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