The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE FIVE MODES OF THOUGHT
The thought of waking-with-reveries is intermediary between the
dream thought and the thought of man adapted to the real external present. It
can be very near the dream thought, with the same apparent absurdity. It can
also be constructed no longer in the symbolical style but in the realistic style
such as we shall see in the fourth mode.
The realistic thought of man adapted to the real external present is
composed of images which are no longer content to suggest meaning without
containing it within themselves. These are concrete images which claim to
have a real immediate meaning that is adequate for the concrete reality. The
meaning of this thought lies less behind its expression than within it. We do
not say, however, that the meaning of the thought does not lie at all behind its
expression; indeed the meaning, which is the relative truth of the thought, is a
manifestation of inexpressible primordial Truth; and this thought would be
meaningless, would not even exist, if it had no meaning behind its form; it is
by virtue of this latent meaning that the form contains a certain manifest and
relative meaning.
Pure intellectual thought, in the man who reflects, who meditates, is no
longer constructed in the realistic style but in the pure intellectual style. Its
images are abstract and, in contrast to what applied to realistic thought,
correspond with nothing that the sense-organs can perceive. The Hindus
regard the mind as the sixth organ of sense; this view is very defensible, in
the sense that the mind, like the sense-organs, transmits nothing that is not
relative; but the mind differs in another respect from the sense-organs in that
it alone transmits perceptions that are abstract and general. In this mode of
thought the images pretend to much more than in realistic thought. Rejecting,
categorically this time, the modest role of indirectly suggesting the truth, they
claim to contain in themselves a meaning of general import. Formal
expression is at its apogee, the substance behind the form is at its minimum.
Considering these five modes of thought spread out serially, we
necessarily ask ourselves what hierarchy there is among them. Current
opinion sees in the succession from the first mode to the fifth a progression;
it rates the state of the man who deals with external reality above the state of
the man who sleeps, and it rates the state of the man who meditates on
general laws above the state of the man who deals with concrete reality.
This opinion is partially correct. But we will see first wherein it is
wrong, wherein the Vedânta is right in regarding the state of deep sleep as
superior to the state of sleep-with-dreams, and this as superior to the waking
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