The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

LIBERTY AS ‘TOTAL DETERMINISM’
apparently disordered laws of partial determinism. If I suppose myself to be
liberated by Realisation I ought not to imagine my organism escaping all
determinism, but as being conditioned at last by the total determinism of the
Supreme Principle which is my 'own nature'; I ought not to imagine my
organism no longer obeying any cause, but as obeying at last the First Cause
which is its own Reality. In short my liberty does not reside in the absence of
all causation geared onto my organism, but in the perfect equivalence in me
between that which is caused and that which causes it, between that which is
conditioned and the Principle which conditions it. If, at the moment at which
I attain Realisation, I cease to be constrained, it is not because that which was
constraining me has been wiped out, but because that which was constraining
me has expanded infinitely and has coincided with the totality in which Self
and Not-Self are one, in such a way that the word 'constraint' has lost all
sense.
Failing the understanding of that, the natural egotistical man fatally
envisages an act of free-will as an act of fantasy, gratuitous, arbitrary,
connected with nothing, and he ends up thus at absurdity, at that which no
longer has any meaning. This illusory liberty, which is on this side of partial
determinism, and not on the other side, chimerically excludes our organism
from the rest of the cosmos and thus contains an internal contradiction which
wipes it out. In a book on Zen that appeared recently a Western author
affirms that the man liberated by satori can do anything in any circumstances;
but this is radically contrary to a true understanding, for the man liberated by
satori can only perform one single action in a given circumstance. He can no
longer do anything but the action that is totally adequate to that circumstance;
and it is in the immediate, spontaneous elaboration of this unique adequate
action that the enjoyment of the perfect liberty of this man lies. The natural
egotistical man, activated by partial determinism, elaborates in a mediate
manner one of the innumerable inadequate reactions to the given
circumstance; the man who has attained Realisation, activated by total
determinism, elaborates with absolute rigour the unique action that is
adequate.
On this side of the adequate act of free-will there exists a whole
hierarchy of actions more or less inadequate according to the narrowness or
the amplitude of the partial determinism which rules it. Right at the bottom of
this hierarchy it is purely reflex action, without any reflection, in which we
see come into play a spontaneity on this side of reflection. Then, reflection
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