The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE MECHANISM OF ANXIETY
with a depressive somatic condition. The loss of organic energy without
counterpart (for there is then no exchange with the outside world) tends
evidently in the direction of death; and so the unpleasing images have an
inner taste of death and are perceived as external aggressors tending to kill
me. Therein dwells the mirage of which I am the victim. I perceive assassins
coming in my direction, and I am persuaded of their real existence; yet they
do not exist at all, any more than the lake on the horizon of the desert. That is
what Zen calls the 'cave of the phantoms'.
Let us remember that, where anguish is concerned, it is the 'head' which
leads the way, and takes the initiative in the process. Doubtless an organic
depression of physiological origin favours the appearance of anguish (our
humour can be gloomy all day as a result of having slept badly); but, even in
this case the anguish depends on the mind, for if I shift my attention onto
'feeling' I only feel tired and not distressed.
The man suffering from anguish has his attention turned towards the
screen of his imaginative film by which he tries to escape from the dangerous
and real Not-Self; and the anguish assails him from behind, coming from the
direction towards which he is not looking, on which he turns his back. The
inner gesture of which we have spoken above, and by which I shifted my
attention from my 'thinking' onto my 'feeling', is a radical volte-face, of one
hundred and eighty degrees, by which I turn my back on the imaginative
screen and look in the direction from which came the anguish a moment ago;
I say 'came a moment ago' because, during the moment at which this volteface
is accomplished, when the image-making mind which holds the initiative
of the process is annihilated, the anguish ceases and there only remains from
it a certain mental fatigue. The spectre only exists illusorily as long as I turn
away my eyes from the place where I suppose it to exist; as soon as I dare to
look at this place I see that there is nothing there.
All this does not lead to an immediate remedy for anguish. One of
man's errors is to search for an immediate remedy for his anguish, for this
symptom, without bothering about the cause of the symptom. Nevertheless
the theoretical understanding of the mechanism of anguish is useful for the
intemporal realisation which alone can save man from his illusory sufferings.
I am not able to consecrate myself to the task of realisation if I have not first
perfectly understood the character, equally illusory, of the two affective poles
'pleasure-pain'.
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