The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
sham.' This battle with the personality is not on the plane of form, it is not,
for example, a battle with shortcomings; it is a fight against the mental inertia
which engenders all our formal inner agitation, a struggle against that current
in order to remount it little by little right up to the reintegration of our
consciousness with the in-formal source of our being.
We must now complete what we have said concerning the relations of
compatibility or of incompatibility which exist between the effort to 'see into
our own nature' and our five manners of thinking. We ought further to
enlarge the distinction that we have made between the reactive imaginative
film, based on the present outer world, and the active imaginative film,
fabricated by our mind with the material of our reserve of images. This
distinction is parallel with a distinction that the observation of our concrete
psychological life imposes on us: we live at the same time on two distinct
planes, the plane of sensation and the plane of imagery. Most men, for
example, crave for riches, luxury; they expect from that affirmation of
themselves; in fact the rich man obtains from his wealth affirmation of
himself. But these affirmations are of two kinds. My wealth affirms me on
the plane of sensation by favouring my organic life (good food, good sleep,
refreshing sensory impressions, etc.), and on the plane of imagery 'I feel that I
am "someone" because I have all that.' The plane of sensation corresponds
with physical coenaesthesia, the plane of imagery with psychical
coenaesthesia. Notice at the same time that the plane of sensation is real
while the plane of imagery is illusory; in fact the plane of sensation
corresponds with the man in so far as he is as all other men, that is to say
universal man; while the plane of imagery corresponds with the man in so far
as he sees himself and wishes himself unique, distinct, that is with the
egotistical personal man, who has the illusory image of an Ego. It is illusory
because, if each man differs from every other, it is only in formal factors and
not at all in his specific condition.
The natural man, except when he sleeps deeply, never lives on just one
of these two planes; he lives always on both planes at once. His mind never
limits itself to building up a reactive film (plane of sensation) or even an
active film (plane of imagery); he builds up unceasingly two films at the
same time, one reactive, the other active; his attention shifts from one to the
other of these films and it is only on one at each moment, but the two films
are unceasingly built up together. It is easy enough at first to see that I do not
live on the plane of sensation without living at the same time on the plane of
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