The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE MECHANISM OF ANXIETY
unconciliable in the inner state of this man; they are unconciliable because
they are situated in two compartments separated by an unbridged gap. And
this man preserves the necessary feeling of his inner unity by means of a
mechanism of defence which blinds him to the theoretical refusal of his
temporal state (mental scotomy). He makes himself believe that he accepts,
that he is a 'philosopher', that he is 'reasonable'; he acts the part and succeeds
in deceiving himself. The 'reasonable' discourse which he holds is indeed
rational, is in accordance with the real order of things in the cosmos. But this
man is wrong to be right, his rightness in that premature way is a pretence
founded on two lies: he cheats in withdrawing an instinctive pretention which
continues, in an underground manner, on its original course; and he cheats in
declaring that he withdraws his pretention because it is reasonable while in
reality he withdraws it in order to avoid seeing himself repudiated by the Not-
Self. He is playing the angel, but he is not one.
If the word of the animal part were 'no', that of the abstract part is 'yes'.
But this 'yes' is not the absolute 'Yes', it is only a relative 'yes'; it is not the
'Yes-noumenon', but only a 'yes-phenomenon', quite as illusory, from the
absolute point of view, as the 'no' of the animal portion. The 'Absolute Yes' is
to be attained ulteriorly by the union, in a ternary synthesis, of the relative
'no' and 'yes'.
Ignoring all that, the man congratulates himself on his 'yes', he sees it
as proof that he is master of his animal portion, master of himself, whereas he
is nothing of the kind. He thinks that he does right in saying this 'yes' more
and more often, he believes that he is adapting himself to reality whereas he
is only playing with himself the comedy of this adaptation. He splits himself
into two personages: the 'yes' personage, the 'angel', has all his preference; he
becomes as conscious of it as he can; he says that this is the personage which
is he. During this time the 'no' personage, the 'beast', is despised and driven
back; the man obscures, as much as he can, the consciousness of it which he
is in danger of obtaining; and when he cannot avoid seeing it he says that that
is not he. He says: 'I do not know what has come over me; that was stronger
than I am.'
This 'no' personage, alone in situ at the very beginning, when the little
child was becoming conscious of the opposition Self─Not-Self and rejected
the Not-Self with the whole of his being, loses ground thereafter little by little
in the measure that the mechanisms of adaptation are built up and
consolidated. He is driven back more and more deeply, covered with layers
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