The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
state of distress, it is absolutely without importance whether the bottle-imp be
high up or low down; the only thing that matters is to obtain the continuous
perception of his movement, and not to be happy or unhappy, to tremble or to
be self-assured, etc. Above affective preferences, which evidently persist, the
impartiality of intellectual comprehension should be firmly established. In the
same order of ideas it is evident that the way of looking of which we are
speaking assumes the understanding of the equal nullity of the forms of all
our mechanisms. At the beginning the man should analyse his mechanisms in
order to understand in what the inner mechanics consist; but the concrete
inner work assumes that all this has been done and that one has ceased to
attach importance to his complexes. The work of theoretical understanding
should have been done, and well done, before the concrete inner work can be
undertaken.
But an important question remains which we must study. Since, like
every natural man, I have five different manners of thinking, which of these
manners will constitute the most favourable psychological climate for my
efforts to 'see into my own nature'? The reply is simple: there is only one
manner of thinking which is compatible with this perception, that is the
fourth manner, that of the man who adapts himself to the real outer world.
When the variation of my states of existence depend on the non-real and nonpresent
outer world that my imagination creates, that is to say on an
imaginative film that I fabricate outside present reality with the materials of
my reserve of images, at that moment my mental apparatus is entirely
occupied by this fabrication, and it is not available for active perception. I can
only actively perceive my varied states of existence when these variations
depend not on my activity but on another activity than mine, on the activity
of the Not-Self, of the present real outside world. And this activity of the
present real outside world only concerns my psychic mechanism during the
periods when I join myself to this world, when I adapt myself to reality. One
could object that, even at that moment, the variations of my states depend on
a certain activity of my mind; which is true, but reactive activity; re-activity,
not activity. When I adapt myself to the real outside world the initiative of the
mechanisms which will result in my states is outside me, not in me, and it is
that which matters. From the moment that this initiative is outside me my
initiative is available to me for an active perception.
Experience proves to us, better than any reasoning, what I have just
said. If I wish to perceive my state of existence at a moment when I am day-
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