The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

SEEING INTO ONE’S OWN NATURE
imagery: the lawsuit between my being and my nullity is pleaded unceasingly
within me and it is influenced by everything that happens to me on the plane
of sensation; according to whether I experience physical discomfort or wellbeing,
I mistrust myself or I have faith in myself, etc. On the other hand it
may seem that I live sometimes only on the plane of imagery; we will see,
however, that it is not so, and we will even realise that the plane of imagery is
based on the plane of sensation, that it depends upon it, that it results from it.
Let us study to that end a case in which the play of the plane of imagery is
nevertheless carried to extremes. A rich financier goes bankrupt and he kills
himself in order to escape from a life curtailed, in which he would no longer
be important. This man destroys his body in order to save his image of
himself; it would certainly appear that such an act is performed entirely on
the plane of imagery and that there is here priority of this plane over the plane
of sensation. But let us look more closely: this man kills himself in order to
avoid a loss of consideration; but this loss of consideration is only unbearable
to him because it is the loss of a consideration on which he placed an
extremely high price. And he only envisaged this price of the consideration of
himself by others because this consideration, this affirmation of himself by
others, represented an alliance of the others with him in his combat against
the Not-Self, a protection of his organism against death. However
paradoxical the thing may seem, this man kills himself in order to preserve
that which virtually protects him against death. In the light of this example I
understand that the plane of imagery is a sort of illusory construction which
my active imaginative mind builds on the plane of sensation; everything that
I like on the plane of imagery, everything which affirms me on this plane, I
see as affirming me because I see it as favourable ultimately to my organism.
I say 'ultimately' because there is no immediate coincidence between my
imaginative affirmation and the organic affirmation from which it derives.
Here, for example, is a powerful business-man who works unceasingly and
becomes very rich; this daily agitation is a negation of the plane of sensation;
he leads, according to the popular expression, a dog's life, nevertheless if he
clings to his position it is because the power that it confers upon him
represents a virtual protection of his organism against death. This man also
kills himself by degrees, in order to maintain and to increase that which
protects him against death. There is no immediate coincidence between the
affirmation that he obtains on the plane of imagery and that which his wealth
procures him eventually on the plane of sensation; it is nevertheless this last
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