History reveals a tremendous current of resistance to the past, a current which is in turn swiftly reclaimed by memory – the new is quickly overlaid with custom which destroys its revolutionary impact. The twentieth century has fortunately given rise to remarkable breakthroughs in psychological knowledge on the one hand and in spiritual knowledge on the other. We aim to build bridges between what are currently relatively closed domains in order to formulate a liberating synthesis. Contemporary authorities offer us new clues to authenticity, but they are as yet not widely recognized and people still willingly prefer to loose themselves by following principles steeped in several centuries of legend which claim to offer us the key today based on a lost heritage. Admittedly, if we abolish the sequence of time we can see that things have not changed and every era, for at least three thousand years, has sought discoveries beyond the disappointing world of the past and its structures. Revolutionary new ideas have even undergone huge expansion in the West in the twentieth century, although the East has already experienced similar things for a very long time, and in the absence of original texts with their difficult or debatable translations we follow dangerous or all too conventional paths. I feel strongly that it is important to separate psychotherapy from the spiritual quest, while emphasizing their similarities, to show that therapy can become an appropriate springboard for a deeper quest and that progressive asceticism - which involves consecration to the mystery of being and divine principles - can benefit from the realizations which therapies produce. There is definitely something to be healed when one ventures towards the ultimate meaning of things aided by the testimony of the ancients. The Greeks told us to heal the soul. I would say heal the mind, if you believe that the mind, our common instrument of higher perception, is not working well – that it is mired in conventional principles, lasting memories and compulsive movements.

Transforming the mind lies at the heart of every religion, gives rise to a need to purge a life devoid of any deep meaning and leads us to question our needs. Every person searching for healing or elevation becomes more and more preoccupied by the possible links connecting the past, present and future as the need for a supreme path emerges. The future is by definition shapeless and built on fantasy. Its virgin substance fascinates us; we project our wishes into it and would like to see it fill us with satisfaction. The past, however, has fixed forms which can pursue us even though they have had their day. The present, which is so dear to us, is as enduring as it is elusive, like water which freezes irreversibly into the ice of memory. In order to move towards the Divine, or towards an authentic life if one prefers initially, one must simply give up trying to go anywhere oneself. Firstly, this avoids crushing the present between memory and expectations. Secondly, we may find along the way that other destinations are worth a detour, since the path is an end in itself. The revelation that only the present exists is not an intellectual one. It is a limitless, extremely gentle feeling which whispers that this eternal moment is all there ever was in the little forgotten child and that it is all there will be in the old man who is drawing closer. The spiritual quest and the process of psychotherapeutic healing share this same paradigm – uncertainty. Opening is experienced as being better than the status quo and highly dangerous and unpredictable territory replaces the best of maps.
Even if we do not know how and when things will change, or if we only assume that change is probable, this has to be better than a dead-end present subject to unbearable repetitive loops which undermine our existence. We realize that the eruption of the unknown is necessary to dissolve outdated structures and fragment blocks of belief and trust without any ulterior motive welcomes the absolute of the day with all its information in order to draw its own enthusiasm from it.

A quest which points in one direction hides other possibilities. One ascribes a domain to the truth and the trick is complete. One then channels curiosity, which is stupid, but only primitive human nature, organizes values, teachers and doctrines into a hierarchy based on insufficient but polite criteria and many more uncouth underground reserves. Our race prefers a well-signposted dead end to a path without any landmarks on which we would have to find clues for ourselves. While each avatar is merely trying to re-establish the one universal religion, humans let themselves get snared by form and context and take advantage of this to feed their old demons, wage war and wreak destruction. Even the best of them turns a blind eye to what is happening at any given moment under the pretext of searching for the truth, if the landscape does not fit neatly into their principles. We have treated ourselves to luxury blinkers, a philosophy, a religion or even a so-called ‘path'which it is difficult to follow without being locked in. On the other hand, with blinkers one is guaranteed not to get lost; one just follows the supposed best path and this may be why officially approved truth, which is a huge con, has so many followers. One will go round in endless circles on a gently curving straight line and one can spend a lifetime going round this circle which always looks like a straight line on account of its size, and find oneself back at the starting point – ignorance. What a fatal strategic error it is to imagine that spiritual fulfilment is subject to a direction.

The impatient among you might ask what they are supposed to do. It is so simple that we cannot see it. If there were something to do it would simply be a case of identifying it, implementing it and waiting for the results. It does not work that way, except for in little things, of course. An aspirin cures the occasional migraine, but does not treat the hidden depression which triggers an inexplicable headache at the slightest setback. As for the crux of the problem - obtaining release, achieving permanent peace of mind, receiving liberation - according to conventional utterances there is nothing to be done in the sense of developing one's decision-making capability in a context, or jumping through all sorts of hoops. It is not a case of changing one's behaviour, replacing one's partner, trying out a new religion or reading one or two books a month bought intuitively in an esoteric bookshop. What we are revealing here is a system which offers a panoramic and vertical vision. The quest to evolve is purely interior, it is a new process which the self carries out on itself, devoted to self-examination which is open and directed towards hitherto unexplored potential with observation referring all our perceptions to our inner requirements. This is where the work is carried out. Then the non-self, i.e. all that is external to us supplies new messages, reveals unsuspected truths, gives rise to unpredictable movements and opens absolutely in the integrity of each moment. Only subsequently can physical, emotional and mental techniques be used to connect the self to the non-self more accurately. One cannot practise anything at all unless the necessary groundwork has been done. The only guarantee of progression is radical inner commitment.

The second analogy between the quest and therapy is technical: both processes invert the movement of the mind. The new process takes control of gasping inner objects. In spiritual asceticism one no longer thinks of God but of what He represents for us, just as therapy asks us to forget the other person (which we think that we do in order to love them or flee them) and truly to draw closer to what he represents for us. This is a Herculean task since the affects locate the other person on the inside but we continue to see them as external. For mystics, the Lord can also only be perceived inside when the self abandons trying to apprehend Him on the outside. We continuously swallow up the non-self to transform it into the self with the mind, emotions and feelings and it seems deceptively like food. We can experience insatiable hunger pangs for the quest for happiness or the Divine, which are difficult to satisfy, just as we can become saturated and unable to bear any form of contact with others or the non-self in certain circumstances. It is not therefore necessary to lose oneself in metaphysical reflections in order to approach a path of some sort. The only question is: what are the links which unite the self with the non-self? The term ‘mind'refers not only to the mental faculty, but to an invisible, holistic organ which connects the whole of our being with the non-self. The mind buries itself in matter and becomes the subconscious and it is its hidden part which plays tricks on us, gives us psychosomatic reactions to emotional harm and dwells in regions that we do not yet know, like the higher chakras, for example. It works alone without our consent below the level of our consciousness using shortcuts which connect it to the emotional and then the physical body and above that through secret processes, some of which take place during sleep such as those which transform our aura, for example, or give us higher intuitions when the brain is accustomed to turning its intellect inward and seeking self-knowledge. Given all the layers which make up the self, ranging from the darkest subconscious to the purest solar wishes, and the diversity of the non-self we must be quite lucid about this to-and-fro movement between the self and the non-self and use it as a driving principle for asceticism as well as for progression in therapy. The mind is in a process of constant high-speed renewal and this allows it to have psychosomatic reactions or to liberate itself at any time very quickly. In my case, it was contact with the supramental which definitively demonstrated to me just what this mind is, whose powers are far wider than humanity imagines. Its rhythm is beyond us. It runs right through us, coordinates the feelings which abandon us to the non-self with a global feeling of selfhood.

In this book I am defending the following hypothesis: the mind within us has an independence which is partly beyond our control and this is what governs our existence at certain moments when the self leaves the framework imposed on it by nature. In other words, if we make mistakes the mind automatically begins to malfunction unbeknownst to us, resulting in a spectrum of personality disorders ranging from the psychiatric to the pathological. Between 'madness'and physical illness lie a considerable number of mental disorders which can be tolerated or acknowledged to varying degrees and which keep psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in business. These problems of unknown origin cause people compulsively to seek out inexperienced fortune-tellers, psychics and astrologists. If one believes that the mind descends into the body then this explains the cause of psychosomatic illnesses, and if we believe that it moves upwards to subtle, invisible planes, this explains the insights, illuminations and miracles of the saints. In order to provide a framework for this study we would focus on the following predicate which runs right through our thinking: the mind lets itself to be appropriated by the self up to a certain point. Beyond that point it allows itself to go solo and can destroy the organization of the self and the sense of identity using every means at its disposal: organ and brain disorders, cell dysfunction, imbalances in hormonal fluctuations, depression etc. In our transcendent optic the division between the self and the mind which leads to disorders is intended to re-establish a higher unity, as the atheist psychoanalyst, the holistic psychotherapist and the spiritual master would all agree. The split between the self and the mind causes suffering and since the subject has been pushed to his limits there is an opportunity for him to ask himself without evasion the question taken so seriously by the ancient Greeks and belittled by twentieth century materialists: who am I and where am I going? Some educated people find themselves unable to understand why life suddenly no longer seems to obey them, because their selves are so structured and accustomed to having the upper hand. They had always believed that the mind was at their service, that it was their property to use as they wished. They could not be more wrong!Because they cultivate their feeling of failure it descends into the subconscious, producing a psychosomatic reaction. Mental information has passed into a different jurisdiction, where things happen differently and thought is rendered powerless. A huge force works, gives signals and warnings and triggers disorders and then pathological conditions On the other hand, those who know that there is no success or failure, or who do their best, without stress to coincide with the Whole have fewer psychosomatic reactions. They are not attached to the fruits of their labours as is stated in the Hindu bible, the Gita and while they feel less guilty about failure they are also less vain when they are crowned with success. Their subconscious is less weighed down with dross because they dramatize less. The secret of good health, as the Taoists imply, is perhaps the equivalent of living with a minimum amount of ego. Because the Earth is in an era of transition, the individual in a state of crisis can dissolve his ego at the same time as restoring his health if necessary in order to heal. The turning point in the process of progression is borne of suffering as well as bliss.

Mental disorders force us to retrace our steps, find another place and transform our personality. However the ordinary mind is greedy for the object and has no reason to tire of it without stern warnings. If we do not learn to invert the movement of the mind with the help of a spiritual master, sage, ancient teacher, shaman or therapist, the intellect which animates the mind is underused and it still seizes objects with which it identifies and does not know how to do anything else. We are drawn to what is gratifying. The obsessive little self which bears the legacy of the whole evolutionary chain defends its territory above all else, cultivates its desires and fails to address the source of its fear head-on. It waits to see what it wants to see in what happens. Homo sapiens sapiens wants to choose his reality like a cake in a cake shop. It must be that one and no other will do - this reality and definitely not that one. And what if the universe was just one big a cake shop?
If we let go of objects and abandon greed as Buddha stipulated, then the pure intellect of the moment is limitless.

To be ignorant is to be separated. Separated from what? There is no shortage of theories – separated from one's true identity, from the Tao, the Self, feeling outside the true unity of the indivisible universe of which we are a part, or hemmed in because too many things are beyond us for our perception to be able to reassure us of what we really are, separated from one's dormant inner sun which shines in harmony with the mystic sun, separated from the Truth with a capital T which establishes the foundations of the world in perfect correspondence, separated from one's potential for light. In short - separated. If we knew what the object was from which we are separated, we could run towards it, catch it, seize it and the job would be done in a few months or in two or three years, or as long as it takes to define the missing object and to obtain it. However it is impossible to buy knowledge and non-separation on credit. Two hours of obligatory meditation, after which one returns to normal life, or twelve years of total chastity, the period of abstinence reputed to bring liberation by some age-old doctrines from the Indian subcontinent. Veneration of a master to whom one must bow and scrape - and who knows what else - quickly becomes mechanical.
The root of the problem is that knowledge is not an object — but a state.

Autobiographical aside

As you will agree, it is absurd to pursue an object which does not exist. I pursued the Truth myself like a Canadian trapper camping in the snow to catch a few animals for their fur in order to survive, and it was no walk in the park. I was eighteen years old and I had a nagging feeling that something was missing and I was still on its trail. I persevered in collecting the slightest shred of evidence for Transcendence and the means by which to achieve it. I was like a sleepless police officer on the trail of a serial killer who has already claimed ten victims in three weeks in his very own neighbourhood. In December 1967, I was transported to a different, extraordinary state of consciousness in which everything made sense: it was dynamic, flooded with light and full of answers. It was quite unlike what I had known before. Then after three days it began to fade and four days later I was back to my normal state. By the end of the week there was nothing left. From then on I devoted my whole life to recapturing this state. The following year I was a border at a school preparing students for entrance to the Ecole Normale Supérieure, which trains teachers for higher education. I could not care less about most of the classes, which I could not follow because they seemed so hollow to me. I spent hours at second-hand booksellers near the school. I laid siege to mystery, like a tearful lover unable to eat or sleep who stations himself under the window of the beloved who haunts him day and night. I was like a mother searching for her kidnapped baby who is prepared to take any risk. Shortly after, I even pushed my brain to its boundaries with illicit but sacred substances, having first taken the precaution of reading Henri Michaux, aware as I was that things had not turned out well in the end for Arthur Rimbaud or Artaud either. In short, I looked in every direction, mixing the paranormal the occult, esotericism and traditional ideas in fascinating aesthetic confusion for a while. Bergier's famous work Le matin des magiciens [NB: published in UK as The Dawn of Magic, in the US as The Morning of the Magicians] had just been published in a prestigious series and it showed me the way forward in 1966. I found everything fascinating, and everything was a mystery, nothing was fixed anymore. If I did not go astray, it was because I was already lost. I could either stay lost or find a way out. Like a prisoner with a life sentence who escapes, I had nothing left to lose. This is what saved me. I could not get it wrong again as I was living day and night in total error – i.e. ignorance. When you really know that you are in Darkness, you follow the slightest glimmer of light. I was fortunate to be able to sink so low, to a place where even the bluest sky is hidden, because something was lacking – union, unity and a stage of non-separation. At last, on January 4th 1974, the veil was torn. It was high time. I am not revealing my path as an example or model. Each person has their own inimitable version and now that I am over fifty I am beginning to accept that my early spiritual awakening was an exceptional event and that it is my responsibility to share it with the less experienced. My path serves to reveal paradoxes. Even a sincere individual burning with the fire of truth goes about things in the wrong way. He pursues what does not exist, tries to catch the wind, to name what has no name and to capture something that has no shape. The mind encourages us to create representations, choose values and to dream of an absolute before embracing it. Let's play the game.

Knowledge is not an object and yet we expect to catch sight of it somewhere and cast doubt on ourselves when it eludes us. Masters who persevere in trying to describe it say incompatible things about it – i.e. incompatible when seen from below of course. "It is the absolute and you are that absolute" says the liberated Bombay tobacconist. "It is a huge void containing phenomena" chorus the professional Buddhists. "When you get there, there is nothing more to attain", say the yogis on the banks of the Ganges as they idly read the Upanishads. It is silence, the breath of God, his spirit, says Christian mysticism. "It does not exist" say those who have persevered throughout their lives to find this thing only to lose it in inexpressible peace. "It is what defies all representation" announces Lao Tzu, for whom "the principle characterized is not the immutable Tao". What is knowledge? "It is where no trace of duality exists any longer" says a Chan grand master. "It is what allows us to stop reincarnating" say hopefully those suffering, pious seekers who want to leave the Earth with their heads held high, their eyes firmly fixed on the emergency exit.
We cannot gain possession of knowledge, it is not an object and it has no shape. The enlightened person sees it differently, having passed through the mirror... and is struggling to show the way. Some, but not all, write poems. Dante, Kabir, Rumi, Gibran, Omar Khayyam and a few others have written masterpieces, whether they are from the North, South, East or West. Some show the path and others do not. Some practise chastity, others do not. Some teach ancient Chinese or Hindu techniques, others lecture from their own experience and others simply hide or remain silent. Some dispense totally with psychology, I flirt with it. Knowledge!It is difficult to discuss. It is a state of consciousness which allows the self to be all things at once, which implies that it must also by the same token be nothing. One cannot become Everything if one does not first become nothing. For Nothing and Everything are exactly the same thing. No shape, no objects, no distinctions. No good or evil, suffering or pleasure, just an abyss which renders all things equal, a burning, incommunicable absence. However total absence leads to total bliss. This is obvious. Sri Ramakrishna carried the mark on his back of the lash of the whip given to the ox beside him. Ramana Maharshi was warned that an assassin could no longer commit any misdeeds or that he may even be dead. "Yes, but he was clean", he remarked and he could not help himself from empathising with the man since he was in a sense him. If we fail to understand that that knowledge is another way of perceiving Reality, no transformation worthy of that name can take place. We might as well stay on the mental plane and apply the term liberation to any aesthetic change or poetic flight of fancy. A personal desire for liberation which used to be the hallmark of the path which was termed spiritual is now obsolete. It is the Earth which we must liberate and It is seeking sincere instruments. There have always been seekers of higher egos who believe that they can grasp consciousness by persevering in feats, practices and commentaries, but who are incapable of relinquishing their ambition to seize hold of Reality. Lao Tzu denounced them as early as chapter 55: "walk on tiptoe in order to seem taller, but you will not go far". They become false masters. They corrupt the interpretation of the Scriptures. The only way to avoid them totally is to become one's own master, to practise alchemy.
It is easier to follow oneself since there is no path, by combining psychotherapy and asceticism.

Throughout this study we shall demonstrate that we personify forces which manipulate us. However they are not really us, and they are not you - liberation is possible. Non-conventional psychology, astrology updated for the twentieth century, psychoanalysis, the traditional vision of René Guenon, the principles of Lao Tzu and, crowning them all, allusions to a new progressive path proclaimed by Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Satprem – these are the tools I use to dissect nature and restore it to the Mind. This may seem to be an odd assortment, but is indicative of my aspiration to liberate all my conditioning. The aim of spiritual alchemy is to find a pure identity, experience the life of the self and to collaborate in a transparent deep-cleaning exercise on our mechanisms of perception – this even includes answering those questions left unanswered by our ancestors, those questions without answers which create disruption in certain organs. Everything must be transformed and that is the price of our survival or that of our grandchildren. Never before in historic memory have progressive and regressive forces been engaged in such warring manifestations. We are entering an era of double or quit, winner takes all, all or nothing, divine instrument or persevering monkey.

Archaic powers can sometimes contrive to use their wiles to strike down our faith, wound our sincerity and stifle our aspiration. However, I believe that one can always climb back by a mysterious process after having touched rock bottom, and this may well prove to be the progressive strategy par excellence – one which does not invent anything before it is required. When we touch rock bottom we see the superfluous past as it really is, on pain of death. After failure, the mind can open to a more harrowing, but also more free form of questioning which will take it into the inner maze of the self hitherto locked by habit.
The impasse is the major progressive fact which forces us to seek out new strategies, unknown or abandoned paths.

Since Freud, modern psychology has established that we are justified in acknowledging existential dissatisfaction if it arises. On the analyst's couch we discover what the intellect which is subjected to the self wants to avoid seeing – the bad times, a father's inappropriate sexual molestations, a mother's screams of sexual pleasure interpreted as pain, especially as father sometimes scolded mother during the day until she cried. Let's keep things simple.
The non-self can sometimes be unpalatable.
While the stomach is able to vomit, the mind can only repress and pretend to forget. Since the mind is designed to be conscious its attempts to push aside painful perceptions leave their mark in the workings of the brain. This is a crude and direct method of interpreting things, but it sums up everything. The neocortex wants to prevail by being aware of everything and to progress through realizations. The neocortex accepts all kinds of information and will use this to learn facts detrimental to the self, even the very worst ones. However some processes in inferior brains find it more practical to hide anything frightening, to avoid deep-seated wounds and to conceal those dangerous case files in order to survive. We cannot digest everything and so what is indigestible resurfaces later. Children who were never shown much physical affection or love struggle to find their place. In adulthood sudden separations fragment the self because it has merged and become one with the other person who belongs to the non-self even though we have swallowed them through our feelings. Some parents never recover from the death of a child and some divorcees take ten years of separation to recover, ten wasted years, whereas the lucky ones get away with just three. These facts demand not only that we observe them, but that we understand them and by understanding them we can see that we cannot control time. Not only does the past leave traumatic scars from shocks and bitter disappointments, but it also gives rise to nostalgia if it was better than the present. Hence the inappropriate sequences which cause disruption in the present. As for the future, to avoid being afraid we must to court it assiduously. Duration, the supreme means of access to the non-self cannot really be manipulated and all our efforts to appropriate it by our own means are foiled at certain times.

Those of us who are awakened always repeat the same thing: the self can identify with the non-self so why not yield to the whole universe and accept the non-self as an absolute partner at the price, which some may consider exorbitant, of truly distinguishing what we are from what it is. The price to pay is respecting the mind by letting it observe the emotions and granting it the right to ascend towards the solar wishes of the being. Thus rampant and inevitable, down-to-earth identification with territory and fetishes which are characteristics of the human race are replaced by knowledge through identity. Even if the process between gaining progressive awareness and experiencing its first results is slow, it is the cosmic process par excellence, the next step in the progression. To be everything, without being identified with anything – the supramental is able to produce this type of consciousness. The ego takes a beating, but the supreme intellect is at work within us because we open the door. If we do not open it wide immediately with the intention of going right through to the end and becoming a sage as they say, then let us leave it ajar for therapeutic purposes.
The essential process lies in guiding the mind towards what it does not wish to see.

Ever since the 1960s, Americans, who have always been more pragmatic than European practitioners who are hampered by their culture, have developed new treatments to overcome certain compulsions (uncontrollable negative repetitions) without even discovering their cause - much to the horror of Freudians. One can sometimes discern a ritual, magic quality in behavioural therapies developed in Palo Alto, as if rational psychiatrists had unintentionally stumbled on traces of the effective methods of former traditions!Furthermore, the results can sometimes be fast. In fact, using simple techniques they manage to get the subject to look in an exterior and psychological direction which had become taboo by circumventing barriers!I was stunned by the concept of finding effective processes which did not even take into account the precise details of the past in order to treat its obscure persistent legacy. I was still stuck in symbolic thought based on psychoanalysis and Jung, yet Watzlawick and his colleagues were following another path which dispensed with all that analytical baggage which is quasi-sacred to Europeans! After giving this a great deal of thought, I am convinced that one can use all sorts of means and stratagems to direct one's gaze in that forbidden direction from which the mind has turned away to protect itself after an accident or a series of repetitions of the same harmful event. The mind is infinitely fluid. Whether one forces it to look at what was forbidden on pain of opening old wounds to promote better healing subsequently (the symbolic method of traditional psychology), or whether one makes do with empirical methods to re-establish trust in an area in which it has been lost after a series of traumas - the key is to release potential for progress and to stop the broken record. Unbeknownst to us, the self, which is involuntarily structured by events which bury themselves in the subconscious, creates intrusive means of perception. Since we are all in the habit of over-structuring the mind, i.e. treating it as a closed circuit instead of leaving it to its own devices, it becomes suffocated.
Hence the appearance of malicious programs which reject realities which we find disturbing or impossible to understand in order to work in economy mode, as if air were scarce. We are all subject to intrusions from false reactions in certain sectors or subjective projections in others. However if we access a more authentic present which is less burdened by thoughts and emotions, then the mind can breathe, and if it has been suffocated it can draw the strength to want to continue to free itself.

I found my own personal study of psychology fascinating and I was expecting to gain insights which would help me in my practice as a (humanist) astrological counsellor, which I began in 1985. I thought that this study was necessary to gain an in-depth understanding of diagnostic materials and of the correspondences between planetary positions and psychic tendencies. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Rudhyar, a pioneer of astropsychology, whose works I devoured, especially as he concurred with me in viewing Sri Aurobindo as the wise teacher of the future. I needed a complete set of maps to which I could refer each individual case as defined by the their birth chart. I was satisfied with astrological systematization, whose use requires superior intellectual abilities, since all material in life can be arranged in a precise hierarchy by simply calculating a horoscope. It is a joyful, deep exercise requiring the patience of a Greek philosopher and an unusual love of thought. I was particularly interested in the idea of exonerating the individual from his weaknesses by blaming the dynamic oppositions naturally creating conflicts in decision-making which surfaced from reading the chart - by pitting the conscious and the unconscious against each other.
Rather than blaming the individual, I wanted to make nature responsible for their personality and to invite a deeper self to take responsibility for transforming psychological tendencies.

Just being born in itself carries with it the inherent risk that the mind will become disenchanted and attack the self under certain circumstances. Modern culture shrugs off this truth as it needs to believe that man is not vulnerable, as if this could in some way confer extra strength on him. However, since not everybody in Europe is all that happy, we have been forced to acknowledge the reality of psychic problems, while blaming upbringing and context as factors which coerce and penalize us. Traditional culture, through Hinduism and Buddhism in Asia, justifies existential problems initially by blaming the karma, then the samsara, a life filled with the illusion of desire, fear and death. In reality, human beings are vulnerable because they are subject to the laws of balance. Vulnerability motivates, accompanies, inspires and assists them. It forces them to adapt constantly. Human beings do not have thick skin like a rhinoceros.

Four independent factors combine to create a variety of connections between the conscious and the unconscious. Firstly, during early childhood when the brain, mind and self are loosely formed, what one receives from the moment itself predominates. Whatever the event itself might be, its repercussions, interpretation and consequences are largely formed by the character found in the astral signature, i.e. the energies of the universe at the moment the subject was born. The horoscope does not contain the whole character as this is partly defined by genes and at the moment we have no way of evaluating the relative proportions of these two factors. We would be right in thinking that the end phase of existence, from about the age of fifty-seven, enables us to carry out some fundamental work on the mind of which we are the custodians and to skim the surface of karmic content to be corrected. Categorical proof that genetic conditioning is very powerful is found in genetic diseases which appear at a later age, around forty, when time-bombs go off and diseases affect a previously healthy body. New studies and scientific disciplines appear every day which show that the mind retains ancestral information.
The present work emphasizes more particularly psychological tendencies which form a seven-year cycle identical to that used in astrology, which is governed by the solar function, since it is this factor over which we have the most leverage in the end.

With hindsight we can liberate our childhood and we shall perhaps be able to transform our DNA, especially with supramental energy. We can, with some difficulty, find our karmic dross, but we have full control in the area of the energetic structure of incarnation, as is symbolized by the horoscope.
Further analysis uncovers evidence of amazing organization. Each psychological tendency corresponds to a particular organ, hence the intuitive revelation for the alchemist that there is a high chance that defective psychological tendencies (which we will learn to characterize later) will reveal themselves through disease in the corresponding organs. From a traditional point of view there is nothing startling or new about these ideas, but I would ask you to reflect on these simple sentences for practical purposes, with the aim of practising evolutionary alchemy. We are made up of layers, each of which has a degree of independence. The conscious part of our perception does not comprise the whole of what our mind is processing - a parallel process is at work which is responsible for our health, emotional state and physical condition. The mind only explores a small proportion of the interactions and information going between the self and the Whole. Hindus say that the prakriti, the natura naturans binds the witness - purusha or Self - tightly in the bonds of life, samsara the repetitive vital energy with its twin sources of fear and desire.
I wanted anybody leaving one of my consultations who was still in the grip of a difficulty or challenge to feel on the one hand like a victim (under the yoke of the senses, as it says in the Gita) in order to lighten the burden of guilt. On the other hand, I wanted them to be committed to putting an end to what they were enduring using the tools which I had given them, since lead turns to gold as soon as the moon is placed at the service of the sun. I had to convince them that they were made up of multiple parts and that without greater vigilance they would not find the centre, unity, the enduring self before being torn apart in a range of psychological tendencies linked by subterranean, obscure and supreme pacts characterized by their commanding authority.

Improving my knowledge helped me in practical terms, but I was surprised to experience a transformation of my own vision of subjectivity and objectivity and to see that there were many intermediary states and nuances. We all distort reality in certain areas, hence the necessity for correction through psychotherapy or in the freedom offered by asceticism. Tradition has always stated that is necessary to adjust in order to escape our animal legacy, but what has changed today are the reasons for doing so. The Earth is evolving rapidly and needs conscious individuals to enable it to go through an unknown evolutionary phase. Many human beings want to improve because they are akin to the incarnation. The notion of saving one's soul and discovering the truth seems so distant when one is deeply aware of the dangers which currently threaten the Earth. It is the current urgent need for rescue that calls for the measures which are emerging: rapid spiritual progress for those who love the Earth, deep regression for those who hanker after obsolete material, defence of territory and the subjective straitjacket of religion or philosophy which are immune to change. I am sharing these discoveries with you since you may well be experiencing conflict between the subjective and the objective. If we accept the subjective without renouncing the objective at all a new form of intellect of the self and the non-self is revealed and fearlessly explores our behaviours and psychological structures. This is the only way in which we can continue to trust emotions, which we suspect are responsible for a number of ills because they are too subjective or because they often manifest themselves without the consent of the self. We must welcome them when they manifest themselves, but it is a mistake to cultivate them. Pure emotion ends of its own accord once it has delivered the information it bears.

Every author, whatever their discipline, turn situations to their own advantage. The psychological universe is so huge that everyone can find rules which fit what they are looking for, believe or are attempting to demonstrate. I have even amused myself by drawing up astrological birth charts for Freud, Jung and Adler, only to realize that you find in psychoanalysis what you bring to it and thus it reflects the intellectual outlook of its founders. This was a fascinating experience, as if Freudianism were largely a projection of the energies of Freud's birth chart, and this was also the case with his two accomplices. As the inner sphere had not been the subject of investigation in the Western world, or at least in secular terms, very different men made their own subjective contributions, each discovering a few deeply divergent objective rules. The sexual theory to which Freud wanted to reduce everything is already contained in his own vision of the world which is highly influenced by his dominant Taurus/Scorpio axis, the axis of instincts, as if the instant of his birth with all its particular energies had somehow been regurgitated by its custodian in intellectual form, with both its intellectual genius and corresponding blind spots. This astrological experience continued to encourage me to reflect on our ability to draw real objective truths from our particular way of being. Can we find a way of viewing things which prefers to see them as they truly are, rather than as we would like to believe or expect them to be?

We suffer because we are using preconceived scales for interpreting results. Events are judged on the basis of success or failure, yet at the time at which we experience them they constitute only one of many possible ways of being connected to the non-self. Success and failure are not facts, but closed interpretations coloured by euphoria or resentment. Failure does not cut us off from the world to the extent to which we imagine and success is not a cure-all. It is a mistake to tie them down to their emotional repercussions. We ought to suffer purely provisionally from having missed something and this feeling should then pass quickly, without breaking rhythm with the vital movement. We should know how to accept failure intellectually, especially as its cause can easily be understood, and pass this information down the line to ease the emotional hurt. This is what we ought to do, it would be much less painful, but it is wishful thinking as the human race as a whole does not know how to do it. The Taoists know how to do it, along with a few others who reflect deeply on their experiences and their being and play at no longer confusing them.

How can realizations take place if the framework for representation conforms to the past, if everything is labelled as failure or success, gratifying or non-gratifying, when events are a law unto themselves and may convey thousands of other meanings and stances?


Progressive opening transforms the moment into a paradoxical, quantum situation – one is and is not what one believes oneself to be at one and the same time, since each piece of data can either contradict or correct everything which we thought that we had acquired. The mind surfs continuously on the wave of the present without falling backwards into the past or plunging forward on the breaker which is the future. This is the method used in supramental yoga (in which experiences are fast, uninterrupted, unexpected and contradictory) and one should get used to it from the outset.

I would also recommend straightaway that state of perfect receptivity where the moment can invalidate what we were expecting without it disturbing us. This is an objective state which is so far removed from the mechanical state of projection that few human beings experience it. They are unanimous in stating that absolute receptivity is a prerequisite for awakening. It is a remarkably flexible state which refutes prejudices and avoids repetitive reasoning. Prejudices are based on lack of information, misunderstandings or unfounded expectations, which are very common at the outset. For example, it used to be a crime not to earn enough money and we were afraid of being short. Now we know that this fear was instilled in us by our parents who did not have enough money for food during the war, and that nowadays we can live a full life without being rich. We settle ourselves firmly in the present and that is enough to no longer experience that fear of the future which may even be deeply rooted in our genes. The Whole is a magic universe in which nearly everything is beyond us.

Blind spots do not just disappear because we persist in denying that everything is beyond us; this merely encourages the supreme heresy of placing our trust in control.

Although total opening is extremely rare, it enables us to transform the present into food which is always fresh, which allows us to accept what is beyond us while remedying it. Otherwise each new day cannot bring its complement of new truths, solar trails, non-separative progress and shooting stars if the self remains too structured, too yang, too sure of itself. However, without spiritual alchemy it is always tempting to close the breach as soon as we are satisfied with a few little excursions towards the truth, with our progress like a thinking ape, which we find stunning. Now that we are already sated, having opened the doors and windows and taken a big breath of fresh air, we rebuild our territory on new foundations. We progress at cruising speed. Our critical faculties become less acute in respect of ourselves, while naturally increasing towards others. This sort of stubborn pride which feeds on its progress towards humility is irresistibly funny and pretentious; it is a subtle but highly effective monster which is common among spiritualists and those who claim to know what is what. Having escaped from the generic environment, we create a made-to-measure sphere and defend it with as much enthusiasm as the old territory which was abandoned, just because it is a territory. We believe our tradition to be better than other people's, our own teacher superior to any other, our own spiritual lineage to be the only authentic one, our own approach more sincere and our warnings more well-meaning – even though they are only threats. The new gold-plated self stands proud over the past but does not really offer itself to the heavens. Why does the ascension stop here for most people? We have to acknowledge this spiritual failure. How many awakened ones and teachers are there per thousand seekers? Not to put too fine a point on it - why is so much effort wasted in activities which claim to serve the truth and which create individuals who are just slightly more conscious than others, despite their spiritual efforts, practices and the copies of Lao-Tzu on their bookshelves?

The best solution is to get rid of this problem by recourse to the karma - this is the theoretical point of view. It is easy and doubtless partly true. If we approach the problem from a practical angle it matters little why so many lives are (virtually) wasted in efforts which yield nothing or nearly nothing. What we see here is the sacrifice of the Divine Himself, rising unhurriedly towards fulfilment and Omniscience through individuals. While nobody can be blamed on the one hand, on the other hand the only appropriate response is to make awakening more accessible. There is no better solution than combining one's quest with a therapy which is able to liberate the ego by clearing out memories.

Many vertical seekers have good aspiration, a brilliant esoteric frame of reference, but they lack access to transform the unconscious. Conversely, some people, women in particular, know how to progress by cleaning up the past, adopting a new approach while anticipating the satisfying feeling of being superior and more authentic. However, they lack a clear vision of the transcendent principles which govern the holistic approach. This is the point at which one should encourage progression and warn of the dangers while praising the benefits of obstacles which aid revelation. My aim is to make your sadhana, quest or therapy clearer and more focused.

We are constantly going to draw closer to obstacles to progression and the outlook may seem gloomy. We do not know how to achieve an in-depth transformation and I am simply demonstrating just why it is difficult. As soon as men have conquered something, they start to crow about it and the ape in them resurfaces. As soon as a women win, they shift from foot to foot. Our vital energy strokes the mind in a quasi-erotic fashion while a heady or at the very least simplistic sense of satisfaction takes hold of the self and instils in it a sort of superior smugness. This is rather common.

What the Earth which loves the Heavens asks of us and can offer us is perpetual progression made up only of stages, where as soon as each aim is achieved another step is revealed. It is not a case of consulting a doctor, teacher or psychiatrist.

A prison is a prison and Bob Dylan was right:

when God is on our side,

we forget that He is

also on the side of all the others

– of all the other messiahs

of good and bad disciples.

Autobiographical aside

What I ended up feeling after several consecutive months in India was that a whole number of separate perfect things form total chaos. Nothing works well because everybody is convinced that they are doing exactly the right thing by following the rules. Each person has their own absolute area of competence, but is oblivious to all else and does not step outside it. Priests do exactly what is necessary, but they sleep; parents do what is necessary, everyone does what is necessary, while racking their brains to find their form of religion, but nothing is working anywhere. Everyone does exactly what they have to do, but there is no communication. Krishnamurti complained about this towards the end of his life. He saw his native India becoming attached to the letter of the law and losing its depth and generosity of spirit and abandoning its spiritual courage. We can get lost in forms, procedures, labels, politeness, rituals, rules, castes and sub-castes, castes among the Untouchables, which is the absolute limit, in clearly demarcated areas of responsibility, but chaos is ever-present in ordering which is as precise as it is superficial, because everybody is obeying things which they respect without understanding, checking or experimenting. Everyone is looking after their own little speciality. Even the spiritual quest is artificial and forced. Reappraising yourself is easy when you have learned to do it for generations for a ceremony or when a saint or teacher comes to visit. However it is just a show, a performance. Self-reappraisal is a habit; it goes unheeded and is an obscenely smug ritual. It is the supposed three-thousand year-old sacred process after which you carry on exactly as before the very next day. In India you can challenge everything without any sincerity as it is simply a custom and custom is a cradle which rocks us to sleep, except in the case of true initiation. Gurus are indispensable and they alone can enable one to distinguish between a token reappraisal which is certified as authentic and socially acceptable and the real process of self-confrontation which aims to strip the individual bare and brings insecurity.

Once the mind has been opened and some benefits have been accrued, it is a common ploy to close it again and this is the most widespread cause of lack of spiritual progress, of endless analysis or dubious therapy. One pretends to continue to advance or, from a technical point of view: the further down one goes into the archaic layers, the more difficult it is to free oneself from them. The whole aim of this study is intended to enable us to sink lower in order to rise higher i.e. to explore the subconscious while letting the Supraconscient [NB:traduction utilisée dans la version anglaise de The Integral Yoga, qui serait traduit par le mot supraconscious en anglais en dehors de ce contexte précis] manifest itself. This is the fruit of the supramental experience. One cannot take place without the other: ascending enables one to descend and vice versa. The great news, which it has taken us several centuries to understand, is that the Divine can now do the work for us – when we have dragged ourselves up to him. Let us meditate on Sri Aurobindo's vision. Yes, it is possible to clean up the ashvatta, and that is what is necessary today. We are going to climb down the evolutionary tree, encounter the mechanisms of nature, interference and a sort of ancestry which is still hidden in our frail organs – but the supramental is not afraid of any of this. We shall encounter personal interference - malicious code hidden during unbearable events, and discover genealogical interference - our descendents'negative states of mind which certain circumstances can invoke like ghosts. Finally we shall catalogue generic interference, walls of disturbed energy which are common to all of our species and which rise up in front of the Supramental – a stage which is of particular concern to the individual who receives divine energy into his body and lets it ‘work'in his cells. The Supramental drills away slowly, unhurriedly and reveals everything which evolution has swept under the carpet. It can be unbearable one second and marvellous the next. Life-matter is thoroughly pulverized. Divine power is present there and it is huge.

A large proportion of mental disturbances requiring analysis and therapy and which are not technically pathological diseases since the body remains perfect, are caused by interruptions in the process of psychological maturation. The patient has placed himself in a position which prevents him from moving forward and from which he cannot extricate himself and is asking for help. The self and the non-self no longer interlock; since this is a deep, natural, automatic process where the pegs have locked themselves together over the course of time and fused into one, the only way to change tack when necessary is to reverse the process. For patients, retracing their steps this seems like walking towards the future backwards. This is not the case if an impasse occurs.

We crystallize things without suspecting that order cannot last without regular metamorphoses.

This is what the Chinese discovered and preserved in Taoism, what the Western world learned from Heraclitus but does not apply and what Sri Aurobindo confirms when he says that knowledge becomes an obstacle if it prevents us from moving forward. Living is a mutual process of adaptation between the self and the non-self and between the non-self and the self. We get bogged down on principle in beliefs which freeze the self and ambitions, which paralyze our relationship with the non-self. We accumulate things to throw away and signpost our territory. One day the speed of time catches up with us, makes us jettison the dead weight and tramples on our carefully delineated borders. We then suffer from depression, diseases, malaise – the whole jumble of things which will enable us to reconnect with the real movement, but which we had wanted to appropriate, keep within the self, fix into our structures and lock in the closet.

Every natural hierarchy is permanently made up of new heterogeneous elements which it tries to homogenize, disposing of dated material. This is how life works. The body works in this way too, without seeking our permission, using catabolism and anabolism, but the conditioned self prevents the mind from aligning itself with this model. The mind therefore suffers and exacts its revenge. It spills out of the conscious self and reacts by sending signals to the body which cannot be ignored. Beyond this point willpower is ineffectual and disturbances and diseases occur which cannot be overcome through autosuggestion. The body questions the mind and the self must make amends.

It is this form of psychological constipation which drives so many people into therapy or analysis and which those aspiring to spirituality want to rid themselves of using their own initiative by renewing their values and perceptions and by dialogue with their self-image - that ray of sunshine which acts as a reference point. Admittedly a few fanatics are ill because they are tortured by the opposite complaint - mental diarrhoea. They cultivate exasperation and so they do not retain anything from the passage of time and are lost in each instant. However they represent a small minority, whereas those suffering from psychological constipation beat a path to analysts'offices, psychics and psychotherapists. They want to live with their memories intact, preserve the past; they complain about what is over even if it caused them suffering, they cherish their suffering with pride, making them feel like exemplary victims deserving of a medal. They would like to be somewhere else without leaving their present location. They want to accumulate privileges without any of the accompanying inconveniences, because they are afraid of shortages in old age.

Chaos embraces order and stimulates it to renew itself. These are in fact one and the same thing, a permanent movement which destroys some arrangements and creates others, but we rarely see these orders collapsing as we tend to arrive after the event. The same could be said of love, which withers if we do not pay attention to the other person, or of a spiritual doctrine which we still believe we are following even though its practices and principles have become habitual, mechanical, and inoperative. We would argue that time passes too quickly for us to follow its permanent revolution. What we are experiencing therefore is not time, but sequences. We become chameleons, change colour, activity, role, but the self at the centre of all this is too weak to go along with this game. Centrifugal force draws the subject towards activity, haste and ever greater adherence to events – right up to the inevitable point where he is torn apart and admits that he has lost something which cannot be found.

One of the factors which can motivate us to undergo therapy or to take the plunge towards awakening is the recognition that all areas are functioning, but that they are not communicating sufficiently between themselves. The holistic tendency is frustrated and the self is ill at ease, even though it is satisfied with the way in which it has managed successive activities in its diary, and is competent in each particular sector. When it asks itself what it really is, in a timeless sense, the only reply is the shriek of its constantly reshuffling identifications which tell it that it is nothing. We have filled every moment and collected them all together, but we do not know what to do with them. The involuted supraconscient mind is perhaps fed up with being repressed to this extent.

Alternatively, if we try to describe a diet for time - a balanced diet involves paying attention to the self and the non-self in equal proportion and reconciling the two sides of the brain. We must agree to structure, organize and choose on the one hand and on the other hand we must agree to let go, lose things, jettison ballast and simply feel what is happening without looking for meaning.

What happens and what we want can sometimes be identical, similar, or compatible with a few accommodations. But what happens when the occasion and the will do not have any point of correspondence? The self sinks into the non-self through desire, attachments, the affects and will; the non-self sinks into the self through emotions, constraints, duties and demands. This intertwining can be amorous and then come unravelled and sometimes the principles draw apart or even fight. Realizations which can stem from crises are only virtual and are not recorded anywhere. For a long time professionals thought that uncovering the cause of a serious psychological disease would enable one to free oneself of it. Psychoanalysis had as its aim to bring key events to the surface which could be shown to have turned the identity away from itself by pinning it to compulsions, deficiencies and complexes which give rise to inhibitions and false representations. However many patients, despite going back to the origins do not heal, or heal so slowly that it does not really prove the effectiveness of the system and so it tends to be replaced by countless forms of therapy which pursue other trails. Investigations have continued to diversify since Freud and the main trends bear the hallmarks of their founders, who project their own principles into their approach. A psychologist who retains his own ego can never use a therapy of the type practised by Roberto Assagioli in order to bring the spiritual being to the surface. Similarly a psychic convinced of the determinism which he detects, as his name indicates [supprimer? pas vraiment le cas en anglais], in every event, will give a very different consultation from a spiritual visionary also using synchronicity (astrology, I Ching, geomancy) to guide his client beyond things which will happen. Objective elements surface in subjective approaches as there are not many of them. Can one infer universal laws from specific cases?

Just for fun, let us draw a map of a territory in which the mind does as it pleases, using every possible means, including radical opposition which requires us to change our values.

Everybody, from Freud right through to Laing, has churned out their hackneyed version of the intimate relationship between desire and feeling, the astrological Mars/Venus pairing, without exploring the issue from every angle, while giving a passing nod to the fact that women naturally try to join the two while men distinguish between them if need be. Rank challenged Freud by stating that desire is personified, i.e. that the sexual urge does not seek out any object with which to become involved, but that it operates on the basis of well-known, deeply subjective preferences, although this is naturally a generic function which therefore applies to the whole human race. Desire and feeling are polar opposites: desire expresses feeling and the self moves towards the non-self; feeling absorbs desire and the non-self penetrates the self, but they are sufficiently independent to be opponents at times.

Anyone with any shred of intellectual honesty rejects broad generalizations in the social sciences in the knowledge that each individual is unique and has huge scope for manoeuvre in the way they live out their generic tendencies. It is specifically this individual scope for manoeuvre which interests us, because it is so broad and so unpredictable that each individual's could not be more different from their neighbour's. No two people will ever be in total agreement about something. There are therefore only two solutions: either they agree that it does not matter and base their relationship on something else such as the heart, or one brings everybody into line and dictates the mandatory truth. The latter concept has been played out unsuccessfully in many forms ranging from religious imperialism to totalitarianism and fundamentalism, incorporating inquisition and flame-throwers along the way.

When astrology is properly understood it reveals an infinite variety in its scope for individual manoeuvre, which justifies domestic disputes, divorce and war by the same token. The ingredients of our psychological tendencies are all the same, but the recipe varies. We are all strikingly psychologically distinctive and yet we form one single race. Evolution tries to form a homogenous race, while respecting each person's own uniqueness. This may seem impossible, but that is wrong. We can universalize the psychological functions within us which correspond to the planets, sun and moon, by freeing them from their obscure animal roots. We must understand that they obey the same laws as in the solar system and support each other. Each individual can then use them as they will, but at a higher level, liberated from the compulsions of our race.

The sun and moon, which are obviously complementary in the physical world, are radically opposed and totally complementary in the psychological sphere. The lunar function acknowledges the systems on which the self depends (ranging from emotion to sensitivity), whereas the sun tries to homogenize the self by favouring it, even if that means freeing itself unduly from the non-self in order to from a stable identity. If we push this concept to its limits then the moon leads straight to dependency factors and is sometimes swamped by them, whereas the sun leads to autonomy, integrity and independence, even if that means having a narrower scope and being much too inward-focused. If we transpose things, then the will, which must always oppose something, is solar, and abandonment, which incorporates things by absorption is, lunar.

The huge domain of Saturn opposes Jupiter, the moon and sun equally and is a universe of rigid rules which acts in isolation, causing deep crises. Saturn represents authority and one's personal value system, including blame, rejection, deep denial, and cultivated obsessions. It represents the basic structural principle underlying the values of the self, which organizes beliefs and behaviours into a hierarchy and permeates every layer of the psyche from repression to the superego. It represents the father figure in childhood. I imagine it in symbolic terms changing water into ice, revealing magnificent harmoniously arranged points on a hexagonal snowflake - the most perfect geometric pattern of its type. Saturn crystallizes then fossilizes. It partly manipulates the mind which permanently creates crystals by linking psychological tendencies into a chain. Each one works for itself and for the whole at the same time in what one might term an instant, fragile equilibrium – the equilibrium required by the tightrope walker over whom Saturn holds supreme power.

The final astrological signifiers – Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Chiron – which we shall mention later, allow one to construct a complete spiritual alchemy. They reveal History in its contemporary energetic framework and it is on this basis that I feel the future and condemn the past. The whole Earth is experiencing an era of unprecedented evolutionary acceleration. I personally feel spontaneously before everyone else what is truly obsolete in the Manifestation, since it is specific to the Supramental, through isolated experiences which I will not describe here, but which have been a major source of inspiration. Just as Sri Aurobindo revealed the limitations of traditional teachings, divinely inspired by the Supramental which transcended them, so I too experience forces which must disappear and which I expose to the influence of the Supramental - an experience which enables me to establish the true evolutionary conditions of the human race and to condemn certain psychological processes to death.

Of course, I respect the sadhana as described by Sri Aurobindo, which can disregard astral forces without even listing them in the knowledge that we can liberate ourselves by a correct approach to opening to the Divine. Within the framework of this study in which we present the scope for manoeuvre of divine aspiration as a force which opposes determinist materials in order to transform them, naming the obstacles which impede us, examining them and welcoming them enables us to draw up a map and to practise more easily.

Using metaphors, we can understand that the moon plays tricks on the sun (emotion sometimes harms our identity or overwhelms it), Mars destroys what Venus builds (desire and feeling can rarely coexist happily for long), and finally, Saturn shows us our limitations without worrying about our ability to acknowledge and overcome them, at the risk of condemning us to drowning in depression or guilt. Jupiter makes us to want to develop, to enrich ourselves, to expand our territory, but his methods of defending our interests can sometimes be rather archaic and mundane. Saturn can therefore show him, by being persistent, the path towards that huge expanse - the sky, in order to free him of his material attachment to his environment. These events relate to psychotherapy, the conflicting interplay between the self and the non-self whose mechanisms we simply amuse ourselves by dismantling. It is the complementary interplay between the self and the non-self, the positive side of the picture, which characterizes sadhana, or consecration to awakening.

With reference to just a few categories of symptoms and tendencies, which I will list in outline here, real-life experience systematically shows the same essential content as lying at the root of all inappropriate behaviours. Therapists, spiritual teachers or instructors and experienced psychologists always all come back to the same factors forming the basis of the rift between the self and the non-self –

fears, disappointments, expectations, shocks, involuntary strategies, (the natural repertoire of the subconscious) and their mental and physical symptoms.

The same patterns repeat themselves.

We had known this since Freud and the advent of psychogenealogy confirms it. There are ruts on our path which could not care less about our ‘free will', deep ruts, psychological family furrows, which at a given point keep us going along in a direction which was not of our choosing or, more subtly, which we chose without being able to do otherwise; which we believed that we had chosen when in fact we could not go anywhere else. I would ask you to re-read the previous sentence very slowly – it is very important.

This paradox is brimming with lessons and is one of the deepest subjects for reflection that we can identify – a puzzle. Pascal and Nietzsche nearly drove themselves to distraction by labouring over the issue of free will. With hindsight, if we link up all the causes, Becoming seems to stem exclusively from the past, like a film played backwards – depriving us of any choice in favour of obligatory alternatives. Admittedly, it is a mind game which would drive you crazy, and the only thing you can infer from it is to be supremely wary of explanations, all of which are equally relevant when you are sailing up the river of the past on vessels of criteria which are not watertight.

By contrast, it is certain that our actions have corresponding consequences, whatever the reasons for our choices. False healing leads to relapses, false new hopes lead to inevitable true disillusionment, bad decisions trigger lacklustre results and lies do not transform the truth, but merely betray it. If we are condemned to reproduce a family pattern then things will happen in roughly the same way as for our parents or ancestors and the accursed line will never be broken. Alchemists stress corresponding causes and effects: "although all seeds produce fruit, do not expect to produce philosopher's gold if your raw material is not good. Discover your materia prima and all you will have to do is heat it. I have already said too much".

What is needed is a systemic vision which allows you to slot small realities into larger ones, to show the colour of a psychological tendency, and, at a higher level, to show the inconsistencies, turbulence and mixtures which form new hues in which the base colour will be lost. All we need to add to this system is a horizontal interference meter in order to obtain all the possible variations. Our psychological tendencies have an overall given configuration which can be stimulated by personal events surfacing from a traumatic past, then by recorded family events, i.e. ancestral memories, followed by very deep collective events, indescribably obscure generic memories.

This systemic thought is much used in the physical sciences, quantum mechanics and doubtless also in electronics to create new programming languages. Social sciences have not yet used it to build representations or directories for the very good reason that the mind is so homogenous that we will always be dubious of the merit of conventions which attempt to represent it. It cannot be cut into pieces and it is impossible, for example, to claim that a patient's suffering is imaginary since his pain is real. We do not know where physical illness begins, since different criteria define it and physical symptoms may not be present in psychic disturbances. In general terms, materialist society is forced to acknowledge a multitude of manifestations of malaise whose origins it struggles to discern and which it perseveres in treating without any in-depth knowledge.

Only Supramental culture, which is still embryonic, reveals the true dimensions of the mind, as it is always present in one form or another in feeling, emotion and of course thought, while also operating secretly in physical matter through the nerves. What happens when the mind doodles away and the self is divided? Life never matches up to our expectations, or very seldom, and this makes it all the more favourable for putting in place adaptive processes and encountering evolutionary obstacles which stimulate our consciousness. Did Antigone have a choice? We shall never know, but as far as our own personal conduct is concerned, we can make the decision to explore our mind. It is fluid and mobile; it perceives duration as its own territory and thoroughly enjoys collecting a few fabulous memories which it polishes constantly, or cultivating a few dreams or plans which it takes exquisite pleasure in modifying. It moves about so well and so easily that it find it unacceptable to be ordered to stay still. Absolute constraint throws it into a panic. Urgency traumatizes it. Memories and wishes are as real to it as observing the present moment.

Professional counsellors assimilate this truth better than others. Doctors, therapists, analysts and astrologers, ranging from the greatest charlatans to the most initiated, fortune tellers ranging from the most enlightened to the most manipulative, are dealing with urgency and they know that time is not the uniform substance which the calendar divides into homogenous segments. Time is elastic. Brief moments can go on for ever and long periods can seem short. Minute instants can point a whole life in one direction through decisions, opportunities or accidents, just as routine can rattle around in a closed sphere.

The ancient Greeks were already contrasting passions with wisdom: the quality of immediacy which wants to perpetuate itself deliciously with total impunity and the pearly quality of distance, seeking balance, stability and calm equality. Psychological functions within us are ready to discuss all sorts of sacrifices -

those which the future must offer the present,

those which the present is willing to concede to the future.

Life exerts a fascination which can draw the subjective faculties into excessive experimentation. To use our terminology: the moon and its emotions, Venus and its feelings and Mars and its desires will form a chain and stimulate each other mutually. The body quickly pays the price for what went on earlier. Sexual excess weakens the kidneys, alcohol ruins the liver and the blood, and smoking damages the lungs. When Mercury tries to look like the top dog, intellectual overwork, which seems all the more noble in our culture for being perverse, surreptitiously attacks the nerves and accentuates the mental ego. The slow vibrations of higher spiritual waves cannot penetrate it any longer to enable the brain to undertake new intuitive processes. Excessive food intake, to which women, the yin, are often prone, produces intellectual laziness under the auspices of the moon and problems throughout the body. Men, who continue to think about work while eating an appropriate diet, develop cardiovascular disease, as if their hearts were compressed and crying out for help. If we abandon ourselves to permanent structuring and checks, our mind, which is unnaturally rigid, unfailingly causes bone or joint diseases, variable degrees of backache and a few manias. One could even go into more detail and say that exuberant, cultivated emotions will eventually affect the stomach, chronic fear will affect the kidneys and endless sadness the lungs.

In a society whose principal activity consists of generating new needs in its members, psychotherapy can teach us to free ourselves from our fascination with the object and is developed through the intuitive quest. In the outside world, you run the ridiculous risk of being thought of as a person who likes to waste their time when you free yourself from utilitarian behaviour and when the pleasurable intensity of meditating, reflecting, contemplating nature and taking physical exercise complements one's interest in the testimony of those who have accepted the progressive breach.

In his work The Instinct to Heal [titre complet: The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress without Talk Therapy], Dr David Servan-Schreiber specifies that the loss of the body's natural feeling, which is essential to the profit ideology that alienates us at work, causes a large number of diseases which could be avoided using simple means such as proper diet and regular exercise. The consequences are simple. Objects which fascinate us make us ill. Our attachment to money, pleasure, work and even happiness when it is considered as a biddable slave - everything which monopolises the mind - harms it, compresses it and encloses it. The mind wants to be free, to embrace the sky, support the body and love the Earth. It passes through our higher mind and chances on intuitions which in the space of a few seconds resolve difficult or incomplete reasoning. It animates our contingent mind which is always in the grip of decision-making and alternative choices and even hides in the physical mind in a form of conscious death, which the Supramental yogi finds by sinking ever deeper and which it is useless to try to describe. We can only learn about it through experiencing it. It is this power which is the most difficult, the most unconscious and probably the oldest of all, which the Divine tries to transform in order to render Matter divine and free it from death. Subconscious powers work in a number of modes – operative, functional and opportunist. Mistakes must be paid for, even though they are not faults. We are full of good will and intentions which are not our own, which are living memories, energy processes, interference, living fragments of semi-consciousness and yet at the slightest rift they set to work and send us tests, challenges and emphasize the limitations of our will through a feeling of impotence. Evolution is the only path.

A deliberate, yang attitude enables us to create areas dedicated to personal development, devoted to recharging our batteries and to the path, in which the mind will find respite. It will be established that the moment, the only intermediary between the self and the non-self, will be freed from its petty purposes. Once they have been created, these playgrounds will provide an opportunity for in-depth receptivity. It can be difficult to find spaces in which to really let go, but once they are established what develops on the inside is that we abandon personal prerogatives in order to learn to listen, to see and to feel without ulterior motives, without seeking for results, to learn to unlearn, as Lao-Tzu was already saying.

The overall movement aimed at freeing oneself from control can be shared in a group or take place in moments of solitude. Letting go enables mental, emotional and psychic energies to circulate better and reconciles the two sides of the brain. The Chinese are familiar with these techniques where only the impulse is voluntary and the resulting gestures draw on non-muscular energy or consciousness of the physical body. Yoga requires a lot more practice to achieve the same results because control is much more important. At a level of mastery which is rare and difficult to attain, the positions should come of their own accord and confer states which an unpractised body cannot know. Many sports requiring a looser sort of skill such as long distance walks, swimming, and snorkelling in warm seas can also lead to positive exchanges between the different parts of the being and in certain cases can even trigger natural, regenerative meditation without the slightest technical effort.

Large-scale housing developments prevent people from having a healthy lifestyle, hence the exponential rise in healthcare costs in Europe and the popularity of chemists, because we are losing our natural immunity to a worrying extent and are getting rid of all sorts of symptoms which are alarm bells with mind-numbing chemicals. In this way we put off the corrections suggested by the global mind which manipulates the subconscious to warn us. This cultural state of affairs stems from the 18th century mind and still persists, grasps History and believes in the fragmentation of Reality – without realizing that if you keep cutting a large jigsaw into smaller pieces then the chances of putting it back together get slimmer. By contrast, the Chinese vision of the world, the only truly holistic vision since the dawn of time, as certain western doctors are finally daring to establish, offers acupuncture. This cares very little about endless examinations, but is capable of sensing loss of balance or homeostasis, and re-establishing it by simple means.

The conditioned self takes very little account of all the constraints which bind us to nature and which determine the necessary conditions for good health. The physical body demands more attention than our upbringing claims and at the end of the day repressing our emotions in order to save face in every circumstance proves to be a stupid strategy which induces psychosomatic reactions. When we reject intuition in favour of Cartesian thought and experimental proof, we mutilate an entire part of the brain. It would therefore seem to be accepted that it is necessary to examine the forces on which we depend much more closely, in order to respect their work, understand it and to avoid sudden reversals caused by stress and false conceptions of the self or the non-self. This is an unsettling undertaking at first. Seeing that we are made up of several aspects is disturbing and realizing that we are no more or less than biological shelving and that each shelf wants to cultivate its own objects of desire drives us towards a season in hell. Then it is party time. The competing selves seduce each other and confront each other. The centre identifies the self who never wants to take the plunge, the one who wants to stall, the one who always wants more, the one who abandons and gives up and the one who sorts things out by twisting them to suit himself. The evolving self wants to welcome fragile, but desirable, transformations which will be rejected or put off in the lower stages, such as affects, emotions and addictive habits.

This is a new paradigm which therapy and the path have in common: both approaches identify several inner players. Agreeing to watch their interplay is no more dangerous an attitude than suddenly being subjected to catastrophic conflicts or reactive behaviours which take us where we do not want to go, when realizations have been deferred for too long. We are a real rainbow. Identity is not just will, thought, living memories, feelings, organized sensations and emotions – it is a whole made up of multiple functions. We are now going to familiarize ourselves with the materials of spiritual alchemy, the psychological powers corresponding to the principle bodies in the solar system, and this list can both provide clues to carrying out one's own therapy or to clarifying one's ascetic progress. Different movements arrange themselves, complement and rival each other in order to seize the moment – we are now up against the wall.

Let us name the psychological tendencies symbolized by the bodies in the solar system. Let us keep the same ones to make things simpler. The Mars tendency wants solutions which are fast, resolvent, frank and direct. It rushes ahead and clears the way, sometimes brutally. It is yang. Muscleman is easily bored because he has an answer for everything, as long as he keeps moving. He would rather do too much than too little. He does not stop to think and he would rip apart packaging which is difficult to open at the risk of damaging the contents. The lunar tendency tries to keep us in contact with the non-self at any price. It is the adhesive principle which dictates that it is not very easy to put an end to an emotion which disturbs us, to build a strong wall between a desired person and oneself, or to leave the fridge door closed when we are anxious. The moon is yin. She transforms a sunset into mystical ecstasy if Venus helps her out when she scents a sea breeze. We could call her Mrs Superglue and throw her out when she really lays it on a bit thick, but she has a habit of climbing back in through the window, or even just going ahead and digging tunnels, if she has not been dismissed in the right way. She constantly reminds us of our territorial consciousness and sets us back in context using emotion, complaints, needs and physical sensation. The Saturn tendency is somewhat separate, because it is complementary and opposed to both the moon and sun and to Venus and Jupiter. It is a subtle, flexible yang, quite different from Mars'cutting, trenchant yang. It would even like to slow everyone down, on the pretext of checking their direction at every instant. It brings chronic melancholy, worships unachievable perfectionism, sees the tiniest scratch on the bodywork of a new car and wants to kill the culprit. However, Saturn is highly commendable in his own area of influence. He is extraordinary in abstract things – it is just life which disturbs him. What suits him down to the ground is arranging things, hierarchies, channels of communication, vision which works in stages, maps which dispense with the need to go out into the field. This consciousness-energy reaches a peak when asking himself what to do. If we want to imagine Saturn as a person, he is a dry old man. He is never sad on his own. He lives in caves and does not need any form of entertainment. Perhaps he patiently counts stars, remembering the sectors he has already memorized in his head, to avoid making mistakes and having to start all over again. It would be out of the question to forget to count one, or to count one too many, in a section of sky. Unlike Mars, who dreams of seizing them through desire, he has plenty of time. They do not come much more serious than him. He finds jokes offensive and feels soiled by them. If he has taken control, he sometimes tries to drive everybody away and he ejects inner characters one by one. He depicts duration as an omnipresent monstrous maw. Mr Structure is very powerful and he lurks at corners and derives a certain degree of pleasure from showing you everything which you are incapable of doing. If you call on him, he can help you, otherwise he just twists the knife in the wound. He forces us to acknowledge the authority of the Whole. He is a fierce adversary, but he pledges allegiance when faced with a powerful sun. After all, Saturn loves you by putting as many obstacles as possible in your path. Perhaps he wants to make you a champion of life, a connoisseur of laws against your will, but he will only allow you to rise that high if you have some merit. I am avoiding describing that darling Venus as I could go on for ever. She constantly repeats the mantra: the world would be a better place if everything there were as beautiful as me. She is quite right because she is really seductive, beautiful, attractive, spontaneous and highly imaginative. She adds beauty to what is already beautiful and is therefore frustrated by ugliness which she does not know how to deal with. She reproaches it for existing. What is gratifying reassures her and she cannot live without it, but she requires it to be aesthetically pleasing and in this respect she is far more refined than Mrs Superglue. She flirts with duration, seduces it and strokes it; she loves the non-self, colours, music. She only fears black and does not like large amounts of red. She feels very deeply that life is a gift; she can give and receive and easily accepts that that the self and the non-self must marry. Because she is very sharp, she knows that the marriage between the self and the non-self depends on the quality of the moment and so she seeks a present worthy of that name which is light, beautiful, charming and free of suffering. It pains her to see evil. She knows how to forget, but she is nevertheless quite easily disconcerted when the non-self changes appearance and becomes ugly or sombre. She is very appreciative and grateful, sometimes without even knowing why. She is perhaps a bit emotional.

Here then is some material which portrays our condition with its impulses, questions, and its weather forecast with the blue sky of «desire/pleasure» and the «thought/duty/constraint/clouds» which herald variations in the weather as well as some inclement weather, in highly schematic form. I should of course complete the picture with Jupiter, that well-meaning, opportunistic, tubby fellow, who is not the same in the different storeys of the house of the self. Up there on the terrace he has taken a shine to the stars because his own territory merges with the expanse. He is generous, unconcerned with material things and full of higher impulses which encourage him to learn and organize better things and to travel to spread the good news. On the ground floor he likes to conduct business and knows exactly how to buy at the best price, as his territory becomes more mundane. He is reassured by prosperity and he likes to spend without stinting himself. However down in the cellar of the house he gets drunk, lets go and swells up to get pleasure by any means because he abandons himself basely to the non-self. Jupiter looks for our place by taking our abilities into account and by encouraging us to improve them – like a true coach.

After all, why should we not carry in our energy baggage all the tricks used by evolution to survive? These tricks complement each other – compulsive Jupiter wants everything, compulsive Saturn wants to die or to control everything, the compulsive moon complains and makes a mountain out of a molehill, the compulsive sun is jubilant, compulsive Venus drowns in feelings, compulsive Mars boasts then smashes everything in a towering rage, compulsive Mercury imagines things. What a merry bunch, believe you me!In fact when we understand that these powers do not have the same interests, this encourages us to balance them. To this extent inhibition is never far from stimulation, adhesion to the non-self always sees distance, thought, detachment, doubt and procrastination in the background and the mind dances in the shimmer of the different possibilities, juggling with balls and cubes, yeses and noes.

Fear, seduction and opportunism all lie within us. The stake in spiritual alchemy, which combines a therapeutic approach with evolutionary aspiration, is to discover the extent to which underground forces work on the surface. The claws of the fearful old beast still lurk beneath our fingernails, whereas the angel nests, as it were, in the pineal gland. What is pure on the surface is less so down below, with all the memories which cling to matter. Obviously, what is heavy will fall and our resistance lies below, not in the conscious part of the mind, but in the material zone of the body subject to gravity and to territorial laws. Astrology, that chasm of knowledge which quantum mechanics is just beginning to reveal, models our behaviours and catalogues our tendencies with the same range of uncertainty as runs through Heisenberg's physics. A saint or a swindler can be born at the same instant with the same birth chart and I would particularly like to emphasize this straightaway so that it is understood that this treatise on spiritual alchemy is quantum too. What it reveals may well be true, but you have to commit yourself to the experience to test it. Once a map has been drawn up and some landmarks established, the jungles may be located using compass points, but it is up to us to cross them. A compass is all that we have, but it does not scare off wild animals or mosquitoes. Everything is still to be explored: the past, the present, the self, the era and the non-self. Abandoned temples must be revisited, the naïve faith of our virgin childhood, quickly damaged by lack of love, and crushed by sorrow, mourning, or disappointment which cannot be effaced by time.

Les sanctuaires abandonnés sont à revisiter, cette foi naïve de l'enfance encore vierge, bientôt froissée par un manque d'amour, terrassée par un chagrin, un deuil, une déception imprescriptible.

Like a wild beast, time scratches
the soft, loving self
a wound appears
to teach it to heal

The moment can nourish us like fresh water. Duration stimulates the areas of influence of the self with their different expectations. These brief caricatures of psychological powers are sufficient for us to begin spontaneously to get our bearings, to see the connection between an object and what it re