The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

LIBERTY AS ‘TOTAL DETERMINISM’
intervening more and more, we see this inferior spontaneity disappear little
by little; the action becomes adequate to an ever-wider aspect of surrounding
circumstances. After satori reflection is left behind and the action finds quite
a new spontaneity at the same time that it becomes perfectly adequate,
adequate to the spatial and temporal totality of the phenomenal universe.
In the range of this intermediate hierarchy there is a direct proportion
between the discipline of the act and the inner impression of liberty which
accompanies it. The more the rigour of the determinism increases, the more
the action is felt inwardly as free. If, for example, someone asks me to name
any substantive, I feel uncomfortable, a confusion of which I am prisoner; I
do not know what to say. If someone asks me to name a musical instrument
of any kind I like, I feel a lesser degree of discomfort and I reply more
readily. If someone asks me to name the smallest instrument of a quartet, the
confusion of which I was prisoner disappears entirely; by naming the violin I
experience within an impression of liberty which is bound up with my
certainty of being able to reply adequately. According to the degree in which
my possibilities of reply are restricted, in which my exterior liberty of reply
decreases, in the same degree my impression of interior liberty increases; in
other words, my mind is freer in the degree in which that which I have to
elaborate is more rigorously defined.
The modern evolution of art is a striking illustration of the disorder
which seizes the human spirit when it rejects all discipline. In refusing to
accept limitations man deprives himself of the impression of liberty which he
feels when he is within accepted constraints; with this impression of liberty
he loses a tranquility of which he has need in order to receive the message of
his deeper inspiration. And so the artist who refuses all discipline, and who
even makes a virtue of outraging it, cuts himself off from his deeper source
and no longer succeeds in expressing himself; he mumbles and even ends up
by feeling himself impotent, restricted by his exterior liberty.
A discipline which we accept spontaneously is necessary in order that
our life may not be a suicidal chaos. But let us admit, on the other hand, that
if it is dangerous for our temporal life not to have discipline, this discipline
constitutes at the same time an obstacle to Realisation. Indeed it procures us
an impression of interior liberty; but, before satori, we are not really free at
all. This impression of liberty is illusory and it constitutes a palliative, a
compensation for our dualistic condition that is not yet conciliated. The
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