The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

Chapter Eleven
SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
THE SPECTATOR OF THE SPECTACLE
WE would like to revert to the psychological conditions of satori and
to the necessity of training ourselves to perceive inwardly, upstream
of all form, our impression of existing-more-or-less. There
indeed lies the heart of the concrete inner work aiming at our transformation.
Zen says to us: 'Look straight into your own nature.' Certainly, but I, as
a natural man, realise that I do not succeed in doing so. This way of looking
depends on the 'opening of the third eye', and everything takes place in me as
though this third eye was always closed. I have understood that the third eye
exists in me and that no film covers it; there is nothing wrong with it, it does
not have to be cured; but it is used to remaining shut and I have to do
something in order to get rid of this habit. I ask myself, therefore, how I am
to lose this habit from which spring all my sufferings. I have understood that
there ought to be a certain way of using my two ordinary eyes, that is to say
with my ordinary attention, which should gradually do away with the spasm
of the eyelid of the third eye and enable me one day to see suddenly and
definitively into my own nature. I ask myself then what this way may be.
What is this way of looking which, possible in my present state yet incapable
by itself of giving me the 'vision into my own nature', will nevertheless
modify my state in such a way that it will cease to oppose the 'opening of the
third eye'? I know that the effective effort will not be an effort of contraction
but an effort of relaxation; but I ask myself: 'What exactly is this effort of
relaxation that I must make and which although fruitless in itself—since an
inferior manifestation could not be the cause of a superior manifestation—
will make me subject, ultimately, to the direct action of Intemporal Reality?'
This effort of relaxation consists in a certain glance within. This inward
glance, as we have said, is that which I make towards the centre of my whole
being when I reply to the question: 'How are you feeling at this moment from
every point of view at the same time?' If someone asks me: 'How are you
feeling at this moment from a physical point of view?' I look into myself so
91