The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE FIVE MODES OF THOUGHT
speaking, let him beware; there are a thousand ways of believing that one has
it, whereas one has it not; in any case the mistake is the same and consists in
one complication or another which comprises forms; one is not simpleminded
enough. In-formal and immediate perception of existence is the simplest kind
of perception there can be. Correctly carried out it can be obtained in the
middle of the most intense external activity and without disturbing that; I do
not have to turn away from what I am doing, but rather to feel myself existing
in the very centre of the formal world of my activity and of the attention that
I pay to it.
The natural man, as we have said above, is loath to envisage a
diminution of his emotions. He resembles a caterpillar that can become a
butterfly if it passes through the stage of a chrysalis. The caterpillar only
moves along the ground. It cannot fly, or profit by the height dimension; but
at least it moves; compared with this movement the immobility of the
chrysalis might seem to it to be horrible. Nevertheless the temporary
renouncement of an imperfect movement procures him ultimately a superior
movement. Emotions are like the movement of the caterpillar; it is not flying
but it resembles it and, with imagination, one succeeds in mistaking it for
that. Man holds onto the bright sparks of his inner short-circuitings, and he
has to reflect long and honestly in order to understand that these simple
fireworks could never lead to anything. There is no real renunciation as long
as one continues to attach value to that which one renounces.
We will take up again now, in another way, the whole problem studied
in this essay.
That which popular language calls 'physical' and 'moral' corresponds
with two domains which co-exist in us and which appear to us to be clearly
different. The impressions by means of which I feel myself to be living, I
range in my somatic or in my psychic life; for instance when I feel my life
negatively, when I feel it is menaced, attacked, that may be through physical
pain or through moral suffering. It is as though my 'being' presented two
faces to make contact with the outside world, one somatic, the other psychic,
and penetrated by the constructive or destructive influences of the outside
world.
My impressions are released by the outside world, but I feel them wellup
in myself; my physical pain may be due to a blow, but I feel that it springs
from my body; my moral suffering may be due to any external event, but I
feel that it takes its rise in what I call my 'soul'. If I try to see from where, in
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