If he practises goodwill to others, it is more likely that the higher power will bestow grace upon him through others.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8780 – 5.6.5.34

BN – X – D

If he is to keep his inward peace unruffled he must live above the level of those who have it not. This can be done only if he obeys the practical injunctions of Jesus and Buddha, only if he keeps out of his emotional system all the negatives like resentment, bitterness, quarrelsomeness, jealousy, spite, and revenge. These lower emotions must definitely be outgrown if philosophic calm is to be the supreme fact and philosophic wisdom the guiding factor in his life. When other men show their enmity and meanness toward him, he is to retaliate by showing his indifference and generosity. When they falsely assail his character or enviously calumniate his work, he is to forbear from harsh feelings and not let them forfeit his goodwill. He is not to succumb to the human temptation to retaliate in kind. For he is engaged on a holy ascent, and to succumb would be to slip grievously back. Indeed, out of the base actions of others, he may kindle noble reactions which assist his upward climb.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8786 – 5.6.5.40

B_10 – ZZZ – K1

The man who is no longer disturbed by the presence or working or characteristic of his own ego will not be disturbed by that of others. No negative feeling will enter his attitude toward them.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8788 – 5.6.5.42

BA11 – P – D

As a man advances in inward development, gaining ever richer experience in fresh embodiments, he comes to see that he will gain more by practising co-operation than by selfishly seeking his own isolated benefit alone.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8805 – 5.6.5.59

BN – X – D

Elegance is often found as an accompaniment of refinement. This is not only true of physical things, behaviour, and conduct, but also of character and mind.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8810 – 5.6.5.64

BN – X – DK

Assert the ego aggressively against others and you provoke their egos to assert themselves. Hostility breeds hostility, violence encourages the others to be violent.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8813 – 5.6.5.67

BN – X – D

With each coming of this experience, there is a going of bitterness out of his heart. More and more he sees that people cannot help being what they are, the products of their own past experience and present characteristics, the living milestones of a cosmic evolutionary process. How can he blame, resent, or condemn them? More and more, therefore, does tolerance suffuse his attitude and acceptance mellow his contacts with the world.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8823 – 5.6.5.77

B_13 – ZZ – K

The blood and violence, the fear and suffering associated with the production of meat, should be enough to make kindhearted, sensitive people shun it.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8824 – 5.6.5.78

BN – X – D

When thrown among those who do wrong and practise evil, he will not fall into anger, hatred, resentment, or bitterness, but will use the occasion to rise into patience, detachment, or indifference, knowing that such persons will sometime and somewhere infallibly receive the painful return of what they have given out.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8825 – 5.6.5.79

BN – ZZZ – K

In his upward climb he should slowly learn to drop the emotional view of life and to replace it by the intelligent view. Thus he will show his passage from a lower to a higher level. But it is to be an intelligence that is serene in activity, impersonal in judgement, warm in benevolence, and intuitive in quality. There should be no room in it to hold bias or bigotry, on the one hand, or dead logic-chopping on the other.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8871 – 5.6.5.125

UR_2.4 – ZZ – DEMK

If you can go to a man you greatly dislike and remember that he, too, will one day discover his spiritual identity and express a finer, more lovable self, it will be easier to be calm, patient, just, and at ease with him.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8877 – 5.6.5.131

BN – X – D

He cannot meet hatred with hatred, but only with resignation. His answer to enmity is to condone it. His attitude to opposition is to be tolerant.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8879 – 5.6.5.133

BN – ZZZ – DK

Let him accept others as he accepts himself, with all their and his defects, but with the addition that he will constantly aim at improving himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8887 – 5.6.5.141

BN – X – D

When the actions or words of others provoke us, it is easy to become irritable, resentful, or indignant; it is hard to practise a bland patience and exercise a philosophic tolerance. But that is just what the aspirant must do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8890 – 5.6.5.144

BA12 – P – D

A quarrelsome man carries his enemies with him for he creates them wherever he goes. There is no peace in his outer life because there is none in his inner life.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8910 – 5.6.5.164

BN – ZZZ – DK

When it is not possible for his relatives or friends to share with him the acceptance of spiritual ideas, he should be tolerant, understanding, and patient toward such disagreement.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8911 – 5.6.5.165

BA12 – P – D

If anyone or anything, a man or a book, can contribute to free us from the resentments towards others or the bitternesses towards life which poison feelings, thoughts, and health, he has rendered us a great service or the book has proved its worth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Courtesy, tolerance, considerateness

#8916 – 5.6.5.170

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The refinement of tastes, the improvement of understanding, the betterment of manners—this is the cultural preparation for the path.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8931 – 5.6.5.185

BN – X – DK

Where good manners are sincerely felt and sincerely practised, they represent consideration for other people, abandonment of the self-centered habit we are born with. And what does this in turn represent but a surrender of the ego? This helps to explain why Hilaire Belloc could write: "Of Courtesy it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness, Yet in my walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in Courtesy."

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8933 – 5.6.5.187

BN – X – DEK

Whatever helps to refine character, feeling, mind, and taste is to be welcomed and cultivated as part of the philosophic work.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Spiritual value of manners

#8948 – 5.6.5.202

BN – X – D

There is an interchange of trivialities which too often passes for conversation which is both a waste of time and a degradation of speech.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Discipline of speech

#8971 – 5.6.5.225

BN – ZZ

The more speech and thought are kept free from negative statements about other faiths, other teachings, other persons, and other organizations, and the more we practise courtesy and silence in matters where we do not agree with them, the better will it be for our true development.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Discipline of speech

#8982 – 5.6.5.236

BN – X – D

The only gentlemanly thing to do when the raucous clamour of falsehood grates on the air and the frightful spectre of animosity gibbers at him is to oppose them with silent fact of what he is and leave it at that. It is better therefore that he let personal abuse find like-minded ears and pay it back only with dignified silence. He who understands what he is about and who is conscious of the purity of his motivation can afford to smile at his "critics" and remember the Turkish admonition: "Let the dogs bark: the caravan marches on." His sense of dwelling in the Overself would be of little avail if he reacted to these unpleasant events and unfortunate experiences in the way which personal emotion would persuade other men to react.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8988E – 5.6.5.242

BN – ZEL1/2 – K

It is natural for the egoistic part of him to feel resentment, indignation, bitterness, disillusionment, and even sadness over base calumnies, the personal hatred, and prejudice he has endured. But it is equally natural for the diviner part of him to feel undisturbed, unsurprised, and compassionate over the same treatment. For here there is a perfect understanding that these opponents can only act according to their knowledge and experience, can only view him, because of the limited facts at their disposal and the limited evolutionary character they possess, through the spectacles of ignorance. Karma will assuredly take care of their deeds; his business is to take care that he send them his kindliest thoughts, keeping the devils of separateness out of their relation, holding firmly to the feeling that they are all members of the same grand life.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8988E – 5.6.5.242

BN – ZEL2/2 – K

If an enemy, a critic, or an opponent accuses him of committing a sin or having a fault, he need not get disquieted over the event nor lose his inner calm nor feel angry and resentful nor retaliate with counter-accusations. Instead he should give it his attention, coolly, to ascertain if there is any foundation for it. In this way he disidentifies himself from the ego.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8990 – 5.6.5.244

BA12 – P – D

If he trains himself in thought control as a means to ego control, then neither flatterers nor critics can reach him with their praise or blame.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8994 – 5.6.5.248

BN – X – D

Although he should heed criticisms of himself to sift them for their truth or falsity, he need not be too concerned about them. His real judge is his own Overself, not any human being.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#8997 – 5.6.5.251

B_01 – ZZZ – K

When he feels that unjust criticism is levelled against him, let him remember that it is wiser to keep silent than to stir up a hornet's nest. At such times it is his duty to extend the utmost goodwill and compassionate forgiveness to the parties concerned and to their dupes. For they act as they do through ignorance or misunderstanding. When they begin to love truly, they will begin to understand aright. To the sage, these are pinpricks, for he is not interested in his personal fortunes but in the Quest for truth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9000 – 5.6.5.254

B_14 – ZZZ – K

He trains himself to talk without rancour of those who criticize him, and without bias of those whose ideas or ideals are antithetic to his own. In the face of provocation he seeks to keep his equanimity.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9003 – 5.6.5.257

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

He trains himself to talk without rancour of those who criticize him, and without bias of those whose ideas or ideals are antithetic to his own. In the face of provocation he seeks to keep his equanimity. But such calm, such satisfying equanimity, can only be kept if he does not expect too much from others, does not make too many demands on life, and is not too fussy about trifles.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9003M – 5.6.5.257

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

We shall make the curious discovery that the more men worship their own fallacies of thought and belief, the firmer the conceit that they know the Truth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9010 – 5.6.5.264

UR_2.4 – ZZ – K

One shouldn't brood over fancied wrongs which he believes have been done to him nor dwell on another's faults. The law of recompense will deal with the situation. Emotional bitterness is harmful to both persons. On this path, the student must learn to overcome such feelings; they act as obstacles which hinder his advancement.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Accepting criticism

#9025 – 5.6.5.279

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Some well-meaning moralists who say that the disciple should no longer look for the evil in others, swing to the other extreme and say that he should look only for the good. Philosophy, however, does not endorse either point of view, except to remark that we have no business to judge those who are weaker than ourselves and less business to condemn them. It further says that to look only for the good in others would be to give a false picture of them, for a proper picture must combine the bright and the dark sides. Therefore it prefers mentally to leave them alone and not to set any valuation upon them, to mind its own affairs and to leave them to the unerring judgement of their own Karma.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

B_13 – ZEL1/2 – DEK

When a disciple is forced to have dealings with another man which make it necessary for him to understand the character of the person with whom he is dealing, this understanding must be fair, just, calmly made, impartial, and unprejudiced. Above all, it must not arouse personal emotions or egoistic reactions: in short, he will have to be absolutely impersonal. But it is seldom that a disciple will have to make such an exception. He should refrain from giving attention to the imperfections and shortcomings of others, and he should certainly never blame them for these. He should turn his critical gaze towards himself alone—unless he is specifically asked by others to examine them—and exercise it to correct himself and improve himself and reform himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

B_13 – ZEL2/2 – DEK

He should refrain from giving attention to the imperfections and shortcomings of others, and he should certainly never blame them for these. He should turn his critical gaze towards himself alone—unless he is specifically asked by others to examine them—and exercise it to correct himself and improve himself and reform himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

B_01 – ZZ – DEK

He should refrain from giving attention to the imperfections and shortcomings of others, and he should certainly never blame them for these. He should turn his critical gaze towards himself alone—unless he is specifically asked by others to examine them—and exercise it to correct himself and improve himself and reform himself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9029E – 5.6.5.283

BA12 – ZZ – DEK

Why blame a person for what he does if his higher faculties have not yet awakened and possessed him? He is only doing what he can. Moreover it is prudent never to condemn others. For others will then by karmic law condemn you.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9030 – 5.6.5.284

B_13 – Z – DK

We need not be blind to the faults and lapses of inspired men, but we ought to forgive them. A balancing of accounts justifies this attitude. Those who bring this rare gift with them deserve a wider indulgence than others.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9031 – 5.6.5.285

B_14 – Z

What is the use of reproaching a fly for not being a bird or its inability to travel as far or look as beautiful? Yet this is what they do who deplore others' bad behaviour and spiritual ignorance.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9039 – 5.6.5.293

BN – Z – DK

By blaming other persons, one’s own ego is served by its implied superiority.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9040 – 5.6.5.294

BN – ZZ – DK

It is not for him to judge others, for this would imply finding fault with the divine World-Idea, of which they are a part. He knows well that, in their own proper time, they will unfold their better characteristics.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9046 – 5.6.5.300

BN – ZZ – K

The student should not go about criticizing or abusing others. He should not do so because it is mentally unhealthy and hinders his own progress, because it will one day bring down criticism or abuse upon his own head, because he has to foster a compassionate outlook, and because he ought to understand that everybody on earth is indeed here owing to his own imperfection so that the labor of showing up faults would be an endless one.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9053 – 5.6.5.307

BN – Z – DEK

Such people do not come to hear the truth about themselves or to learn the truth about life. They come for confirmation of their own ideas, flattery about their own character, and endorsement of their own conduct. This is why they will vehemently reject all criticism or correction.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9055 – 5.6.5.309

BN – ZZZ – K

It is stupid to bring into conversation with others beliefs which they are certain to scoff at but which one cherishes as holy.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Refraining from criticism

#9056 – 5.6.5.310

BN – Z – DK

The necessity of forgiving others what they have done to us is paramount. Nay, it is a duty to be constantly and unbrokenly practised, no matter what provocation to disobey it we may receive. Our contact with others, or our relation to them, must bring them only good! never bad.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9060 – 5.6.5.314

BN – X – D

To the degree you keep ego out of your reaction to an enemy, to that degree you will be protected from him. His antagonism must be met not only with calmness, indifference, but also with a positive forgiveness and active love…

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9061E – 5.6.5.315

BA11 – Z – DE

To the degree you keep ego out of your reaction to an enemy, to that degree you will be protected from him. His antagonism must be met not only with calmness, indifference, but also with a positive forgiveness and active love. These alone are fitting to a high present stage of understanding. Be sure that if you do so, good will ultimately emerge from it. Even if this good were only the unfoldment of latent power to master negative emotion which you show by such an attitude, it would be enough reward. But it will be more.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9061 – 5.6.5.315

A250814 – ZZZ – DEK1

Noble indignation and just resentment are on an immensely higher level than grossly selfish indignation and greedy resentment. But in the case of the disciple, for whom the scale of moral values extends farther than for the "good" man, even they must be abandoned for unruffled serenity and universal goodwill. To the definitely wicked and the evilly obsessed he need not give his love. But he must give them and all others who wrong him his forgiveness, for his own sake as well as theirs.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9062E – 5.6.5.316

B_10 – ZEL1/2 – DEK

Every thought of resentment at another's action against him, every mood of bitterness at the other's refusal to do something he wishes him to do, is a crude manifestation of egoism in which, as disciple, he cannot indulge without harming his own self and hindering a favourable change in the other person's attitude towards him. The man who burns with hate against an enemy is, by the fuel of his own thoughts, keeping the fire of the other man's mutual hate alive. Let him remember instead those glorious moments when the higher self-touched his heart. In these moments all that was noble in him overflowed. Enemies were forgiven, grievances let go and the human scene viewed through the spectacle of tenderness and generosity. Only by such a psychological about-turn towards goodwill and forgiveness will he open the first door to abatement of his enemy's feeling.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9062E – 5.6.5.316

B_10 – ZEL2/2 – DEK

Ordinarily it is not easy, not natural, to forgive anyone who has wronged us. The capacity to do so will come to us as understanding grows large enough…

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9063E – 5.6.5.317

B_14 – P – DE

The moral purification involved in casting out all hatred and granting complete forgiveness opens a door to the Overself's light.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9065 – 5.6.5.319

B_14 – P – D

The true mystic harbours only goodwill towards one who chooses to be his enemy, together with good wishes for the other’s well-being and for his coming closer to the higher self, hence closer to the truth.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9067 – 5.6.5.321

BN – X – D

To serve humanity is in the end to serve yourself. This follows from the working of karma. To forgive those who, in ignorance, sin against you is, for the same reason, to forgive yourself.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9068 – 5.6.5.322

B_01 – ZZZ – DMK

In the end the heartlessly cruel punish themselves, though whether here in this life, in purgatory after death, or in some future re-embodiment is another matter.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Forgiveness

#9069 – 5.6.5.323

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Every man whose orbit touches your own is unwittingly your teacher. He has something of value for you, however small it be. Let him perform his mission, then. Do not dim the lesson by covering it with clouds of negative emotion.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Criticizing constructively

#9090 – 5.6.5.344

BN – X – D

Criticism of others should be benevolent, constructive, and suggestive, firm yet sympathetic.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Criticizing constructively

#9093 – 5.6.5.347

BN – ZZ – K

His handling of an uncongenial person with whom he has to live, or work will fail or succeed according to his practice of identifying himself with him when he deals with or speaks to him. If he fails to do this, it means that he persists in identifying himself solely with his own little ego and its personal interests, activities, or desires—hence the irritability, bad temper, and negative reaction to the other's deficiencies. But if, on the contrary, he instantly tries to feel with him, to identify himself with him, to give him temporary intellectual sympathy—that is, to practise love—there will be forgiveness of the other's failings and mistakes, good humoured acceptance of his deficiencies and laughing patience with his shortcomings. Both persons will then make more progress more rapidly.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9101 – 5.6.5.355

B_14 – Z

Try to understand other persons not in order to blame them but in order to understand better the operations of mind itself, the human mind.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9104 – 5.6.5.358

B_13 – ZZ – K

Why should he let resentment drag him into the same error? On the contrary, they offer a chance to deny his ego, to exalt his ethical outlook, and to shift his emotional centre of gravity from the negative pole to the positive one. Let him regard them as his tutors, possibly his benefactors. Let him take these episodes as chances both to do needed work on himself and to refuse to identify himself with negative emotions. They are to be used for present instruction and future guidance. Thus he lifts himself out of his personal ego, actually denying himself as Jesus bids him do.

Emotions and Ethics > Spiritual Refinement > Sympathetic understanding

#9105E – 5.6.5.359

B_10 – ZZ – K

We are not in full agreement with those who attack all success as unspiritual or better living as materialistic. Whoever has realized his early purpose, if he has done so honourably and if the purpose itself is worthy or conducive to society's well-being, is a success. If he receives rewards for his accomplishment, there is nothing unspiritual in accepting them. And whoever appreciates attractive clothes, good quality food, modern aids to efficient comfortable living is—if he develops his self-control alongside this appreciation—taking better care of his physical instrument and making more of his physical environment. He is not necessarily materialistic. The meaning of the word "spiritual" should not be unjustly circumscribed.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9115 – 5.6.6.6

BN – Z

If a man becomes cold, pitiless, impenetrable, if he sets himself altogether apart from the life and feelings of other men, if he is dead to the claims of music and the beauties of art, be sure he is an intellectualist or a fanatical ascetic—not a philosopher.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9119 – 5.6.6.10

BN – Z – K1

We need not become less human because we seek to make ourselves better men. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful will refine, and not destroy, our human qualities.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9120 – 5.6.6.11

BN – X – K1

A temperate self-discipline is certainly inculcated by philosophy, but it does not call for the extreme of rigorous asceticism. A reasoned austerity at certain times and a wise self-denial at other times fortify and purify a human being.

Emotions and Ethics > Avoid Fanaticism > Avoid Fanaticism

#9209 – 5.6.6.100

B_01 – ZZ – K

It is not enough to try to secure peace between the nations. We must also try to secure it between men and animals by ceasing to slaughter them.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9233 – 5.6.7.8

BN – X – D

To take advantage of the helplessness of so many animals when confronted by man's deadly weapons, cruel snares, or powerful contrivances is a sin. The karmic scales of life will read off an appropriate penalty for it. Ordinary human brutality to these creatures is bad enough but scientific brutality by vivisection is worse.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9234 – 5.6.7.9

BN – X – D

I lament the cutting of flowers and the caging of animals: the one because it condemns living things to swift decay and early death, the other because it condemns living creatures to the utter hopelessness of lifelong imprisonment.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9240 – 5.6.7.15

BN – X – D

Why should the last dying days of cut flowers bring joy, happiness, uplift, and inspiration to anyone?

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9241 – 5.6.7.16

BN – X – D

Those who can only find their fun by the wanton killing of harmless animals, show no mercy and, at the appropriate time, will receive none.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues

#9244 – 5.6.7.19

BN – X – D

Justice often demands that force be used in order to implement its decisions. Philosophy sets up justice as one of the guiding principles of personal and national conduct. Therefore philosophy has no use for pacifism or nonviolence.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9250 – 5.6.7.25

BN – Z – K1

Philosophy is essentially realizable hence practical. It uses the idea of nonviolence only under the governance of wisdom. If violent punishment or causing pain will be better in the end than refraining, it will not hesitate. They have their place. But because philosophy combines and balances its wisdom with compassion, with mercy and, if advisable, forgiveness, its violence operates side by side with nonviolence.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9252 – 5.6.7.27

BN – Z

Sir Arthur Bryant: "Christ's injunction to the angry and revengeful to turn the other cheek was addressed to the individual, seeking by forbearance to render unto God, for his soul's sake, the things that are God's, and not to the rulers of society. Christ never . . . bade his followers to turn someone else's cheek to the lawless and aggressor".

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9256 – 5.6.7.31

B_11 – Z

The pursuit of nonviolence in the international field is like the pursuit of politico-economic utopia—a dream. It is laudably idealistic but, unfortunately, it is also ill-founded. The pacifism which preaches a total and absolute nonviolence, applicable all the time and in all situations, fails to recognize what is written all over the universe—the law of opposites. It is their balance which holds all things in the world, all creatures in Nature, together. In human life their conflict breeds violence, and their recession, peace. War can change its form, can lose its brutality, can be lifted to a higher level altogether where words displace weapons, and this will certainly happen. But war at worst, friction at best, will not disappear so long as the ego in man with its negative emotions is his ruler.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9264 – 5.6.7.39

BN – ZZ – DEK

Pacifism is a natural and inevitable consequence of the monkish and mystic view of life. Monks may rightly submit to martyrdom, but philosophers must resist the evil forces and even fight them to the end.

Emotions and Ethics > Miscellaneous Ethical Issues > Nonviolence, nonresistance, pacificism

#9270 – 5.6.7.45

B_16 – ZZ – D

It is inborn in the human mind to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child's curiosity, if it continues into the deeper questions of a scientist's probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy.

The Intellect > The Intellect > The Intellect

#9284 – 5.7.0.1

BN – Z

What was called 'Reason' in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and what was honoured as 'Reason' by the Cambridge Platonists is a mystical plus intellectual faculty and not merely an intellectual one. It is not merely a coexistence but a fusion of the two capacities.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9287 – 5.7.1.3

UR_3.2 – Z – K

True intelligence is the working union of three active faculties: concrete thinking, abstract thinking, and mystical intuition.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9289 – 5.7.1.5

BN – X – K

The intellect ought to work only as a servant, obeying intuition's orders in practical life or filling in details for intuition's discoveries in the truth-seeking quest.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9294 – 5.7.1.10

BN – Z – K

Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this teaching. The first is the lowest faculty of the trio, the third is the highest, the second is the medial one. Intellect is logical thinking based on a partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a union between reason and intuition.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9298 – 5.7.1.14

BN – Z – DK1

He accepts all that mystical intuition can tell him about his own and the universal being. But he sees that it will not be weakened, it will only be supported checked and balanced if he listens also to what the rational intellect can tell him.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9307 – 5.7.1.23

BN – X – D

The intelligence, as something more than intellect alone, can be used to carry one’s thinking to the verge of an intuition which will light up some of our understanding. But such a success requires certain preconditions: a measure of equilibrium in personality, a measure of self-discipline in character, intensive pondering on the truth.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9314 – 5.7.1.30

BN – X – K

Intellect obstructs the light of the Overself.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9318 – 5.7.1.34

BN – X – D

Human thinking can only lead to, and produce, another thought, or series of thoughts. It cannot get beyond itself, cannot rise to any object that is not of the nature of a thought.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9320 – 5.7.1.36

BN – X – D

The dangers of developed intellect are pride and complacency, over-analysis and over-criticism.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9327 – 5.7.1.43

BN – ZZ – K

The intellect can quite expertly give its support to any position the ego desires it to take up. It can become instrumental in the search for truth only as it becomes freed from egoism.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9330 – 5.7.1.46

BN – ZZ – K

But with stronger thinking power there comes also intellectual pride and egoistic conceit. He must offset them by humbling himself deliberately before the higher self. He must not hesitate to pray daily to it, on bended knees and with clasped hands, begging for its grace, offering the little ego as a willing sacrifice and asking for guidance in his darkness.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its value

#9348 – 5.7.1.64

BN – Z – K1

If you are trying to grasp the great Mystery do not make the mistake of unwittingly holding on to the intellect while doing so.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9351 – 5.7.1.67

BN – X – K

For the intellectual type, the essence of his need is to see that he is not his thoughts, that they are but projections thrown up out of consciousness. He is that consciousness, the very knowing principle itself.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9357 – 5.7.1.73

BN – X – D

The work done by original deeply penetrative thinking can go far, can uncover much not yet known; but it cannot solve the mystery of the thinker himself, unless it renounces its right to do so and lets the diviner Self take over in utter silence.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9359 – 5.7.1.75

BN – Z – K1

The silent mind receives spiritual guidance and allows grace to approach; the thinking mind deals with the world and attends to its activities.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9365 – 5.7.1.81

BN – Z – DK

Only when the intellect, after admiring its own massive historical achievement, will turn upon itself and perceive how puny is that by contrast with the still-awaited answer to the question, What am I?—only then will the possibility of higher forces coming to its aid be realizable.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9366 – 5.7.1.82

BN – X – D

If you try to make Mind a topic for analysis, worship, or discussion, it is no longer the unseen uncomprehended Mystery but a projection, whereupon it is at once objectified and becomes an idea-structure. Such an act falsifies it. You honour it more truly if you stay silent in voice, still in thought.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9374 – 5.7.1.90

BN – Z – K

It is not enough to purify the moral nature of evil and sin. It is also needful to purify the intellectual nature of error and delusion. Hence moral discipline must be complemented by an intellectual one.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its limitations

#9392 – 5.7.1.108

BN – X – K

The situation may be summed up thus: If the activity of thinking is directed towards external objects and inspired by the desire to attain or retain them, it binds a man to his spiritual ignorance. If however it is directed towards God or his divine soul and is inspired by the desire to attain it, then it leads him to spiritual intuitions.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9408 – 5.7.1.124

BN – X – D

To understand intellectually is good but to glimpse intuitively is better. Best of all is not merely to look at truth but to enter into it.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9409 – 5.7.1.125

BN – ZZZ – DM

First there must be intellectual understanding of the truth of his real being, then he can advance to the practices which lead to its realization.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9413 – 5.7.1.129

BN – X – DK

The intellect’s finest function is to point the way to this actual living awareness of the Overself that is beyond itself. This it does on the upward path. But it has a further function to perform after that awareness has been successfully gained. That is to translate that experience into its own terms, and hence into ordinarily comprehensible ones, both for its own and other people’s benefit.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9417 – 5.7.1.133

BN – Z – DEK1

Reasoned thinking may contribute in two ways to the service of mystical intuition and mystical experience. First and commonest is a negative way. It can provide safeguards and checks against their errors, exaggerations, vagaries, and extravagances. Second and rarest is a positive and creative way. It can lead the aspirant to its highest pitch of abstract working and then invite its own displacement by a higher power.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9418 – 5.7.1.134

BN – Z – K1

These studies do indeed open up the loftier faculties of human intelligence, faculties which bring us to the very borderland of insight.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9420 – 5.7.1.136

BN – X – D

To learn that Reality is beyond the intellect’s capacity to know it is to learn something about it. To learn what it is not may seem useless to some people but that does prepare the mind, as well as the way, for the positive knowledge of it through insight.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9421 – 5.7.1.137

BN – X – D

Man’s self is not his thoughts but the consciousness which makes those thoughts possible. He stands in somewhat the same relation to them that they stand to the body: he uses them and partially expresses himself through them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9433 – 5.7.1.149

BN – X – D

Most of us move from one standpoint to another, whether it be a lower or a higher one, because our feelings have moved there. The intellect merely records and justifies such a movement and does not originate it.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Its inward vision

#9440 – 5.7.1.156

BN – X – K1

So long as these two faculties of human mind—reason and imagination—are surrendered to its animal side, so long will they prevent the real human being from being born.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9446 – 5.7.1.162

BN – X – D

My use of the term 'reason,' although with a capital 'R' in 'The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga', seems to have been misunderstood by several persons. This forced me to add an appendix to the chapters in order to clear the matter in their mind. Reasoning, in its highest sense, transcends mere logic and welcomes the alliance of meditation; out of their union comes wisdom, peace, balance, and so, blessing. There is a translation from the Sanskrit of the Katha Upanishad made by Professor Mishra of the University of Barcelona, published with a preface by Suresh Radhakrishnan, President to India, who was then lecturing at Oxford University. In this translation there are two verses which use the term. Here is the first: ‘The man whose chariot is driven by reason holding well the reins of his mind, reaches the end of his journey, the Supreme Pervading Spirit.’ And the other verse is: ‘Beyond the senses is the mind, and beyond mind is reason (lost). Beyond reason is the great Self.’

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9454 – 5.7.1.170

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The intellect is not competent to establish the existence of God, which only a higher faculty can know and consequently make any valid assertions about. But neither is it competent to disprove the existence of God since it can disprove only those finite matters which it can deal with: God, being infinite, is outside its reach in every way.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9472 – 5.7.1.188

BA11 – Z – DK

Where intuitive feeling will guide him aright to his best decisions, calculating intellect will not infrequently step in with doubts or fears and rob him of them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9479 – 5.7.1.195

BN – ZZ – K

Where intuitive feeling will guide him aright to his best decisions, calculating intellect will not infrequently step in with doubts or fears and rob him of them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9480 – 5.7.1.196

BN – X – D

The contribution of intellect is indispensable. But it is not enough. It leaves a most important part of the psyche—the intuition—still untouched.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9481 – 5.7.1.197

BN – X – D

The danger of slipping into this overstress on intellectual activity and not retaining the healthy balance between it and intuitional activity, is large and real.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9482 – 5.7.1.198

BN – X – D

The intellect has so dominated the modern man that his approach to these questions is first made through it. Yet the intellect cannot provide the answers to them. They come, and can only come, through the intuition.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9483 – 5.7.1.199

BN – Z – DK

The intellectual knowledge of the Truth is merely its shadow and not the Truth itself. The Truth is a higher state of awareness which leads you out of the little personal and physically materialistic everyday life into a new world of being—the world of your higher self which transcends these things. It is a real experience and not a mere speculation. It brings with it the peace which passeth understanding of which Saint Paul spoke, frees you from anxieties, fears, and all other negative ideas. It reveals to you that God, in the sense of a Universal Intelligence and Universal Power, is actually the basis of all existence.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9487 – 5.7.1.203

BN – Z – DEK

Logical thinking about a proposed course can never be equal to intuitive guidance about it. For the first is limited by the ego's capacity and experience whereas the second transcends them.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9490 – 5.7.1.206

BN – X – D

The intellect cannot know itself; it must have an object; but that which is behind it does know it. That Overself is the only entity which can know itself, which fuses subject and object into one.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9491 – 5.7.1.207

BN – X – D

Only after reason matures to its fullest extent can we look to the dawning of a perfect intuition, or 'insight' as I prefer to call it.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9495 – 5.7.1.211

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

No single human faculty is alone adequate to the search for truth. All must be used, including intuition, and finally crowned by a new one—insight.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9498 – 5.7.1.214

UR_3.2 – ZZ – DMK

Men who have daily experience of a divine presence will not waste their time arguing whether or not a divine power exists.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9499 – 5.7.1.215

BA11 – Z – D

The depth of insight is not to be measured by the length of intellect.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9502 – 5.7.1.218

BN – Z – K

Thought bedims consciousness instead of expressing it, coffins the universal Mind into the narrow ego. Man began to think when he began to forget his Overself. However, the forces of evolution will so work that one day he will learn to remember his divinity and yet use his intellect at will without losing this remembrance.

The Intellect > The Place of Intellect > Reason, intuition, and insight

#9503 – 5.7.1.219

BN – X – DEK

The cultivation of intelligence is one of the supreme duties of man. Fact-fed thinking—hard, deep, rational, and thorough—is what converts vague surmise into unbreakable certainty, blind belief or tormenting doubt into irrefutable knowledge, and native error into new truth.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9504 – 5.7.2.1

BN – Z – K

By forming clearer ideas of the Overself’s activity, he can better co-operate with it, and more effectually remove the obstacles which obstruct that activity within him.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9505 – 5.7.2.2

BN – X – D

All knowledge is beneficial to man in varying degrees. The knowledge of his own soul, being the highest degree of human knowledge, offers the greatest degree of benefit to man.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9507 – 5.7.2.4

BN – Z – D

What the higher self is trying to do in us may be obstructed through ignorance or assisted by knowledge.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > The Service of Intellect

#9510 – 5.7.2.7

BN – X – D

As his conception of the truth becomes clearer, his aspiration to realize it in his life becomes stronger. This is so and must be so.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Cultivation of intelligence

#9514 – 5.7.2.11

UR_1 – ZZZ – DK

The intellectual study of these truths is not without great value. It prepares him for their eventual realization, nourishes his soul, strengthens his higher will, and encourages his finer hopes. Moreover, holy reverence is born of itself as he meditates on the picture of universal intelligence which thus unfolds before his gaze.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Cultivation of intelligence

#9521 – 5.7.2.18

BN – Z – K1

When the aspirant has great devotion to the Overself but little understanding of it, Nature will halt him at a certain stage of his spiritual career and compel him to redress the balance.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Balance of intellect and feeling

#9590 – 5.7.2.87

BN – X – D

The intellectual, the scientist or politician, businessman or professional, who has become cold, dry, materialistic, and insensitive, is unbalanced. Yet he thinks he is so levelheaded.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Balance of intellect and feeling

#9595 – 5.7.2.92

BN – Z

We do not overcome our doubts by suppressing them, we do not meet our misgivings by denying them, and we do not refute falsehood by shirking questions which happen to be inconvenient.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Doubt and the modern mind

#9615 – 5.7.2.112

BN – Z – K1

If you do not know whether God exists do not fall into the error of denying that he does exist. It is an error because it is something which we do not know and to make such a positive statement has no justification.

The Intellect > The Service of Intellect > Doubt and the modern mind

#9645 – 5.7.2.142

BN – Z – K

When intelligence is applied so thoroughly as to yield a whole view and not merely a partial view of existence, when it is applied so persistently as to yield a steady insight into things rather than a sporadic one, when it is applied so detachedly as to be without regard to personal preconceptions, and when it is applied so calmly that feelings and passions cannot alter its direction, then and only then does a man become truly reasonable and capable of intellectually ascertaining truth.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > The Development of Intellect

#9646 – 5.7.3.1

BN – Z – K1

What this age needs to seek is a new intellectualism, a new science, one informed by deeper spiritual feeling and protected by higher spiritual ideals.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > The Development of Intellect

#9657 – 5.7.3.12

BN – X – D

Through the many changes of experience in the many lifetimes on earth—and later elsewhere—the mind grows. It wants to move upward from mere curiosity to actual knowledge. It inquires if there be any purpose in life to be fulfilled—if there be a purpose. It demands to know if there is a God yet doubts the possibility of finding a sure answer.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > The Development of Intellect

#9669 – 5.7.3.24

BN – Z

It is not enough to be a collector of other men’s ideas. He must also be an original generator of his own. He must go into the pure silence to think independently, to analyse problems and consider them for himself, and to pray for enlightenment.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Independence and individuality

#9675 – 5.7.3.30

BN – X – D

Unless one is prepared to part with a wrong habit of thinking, unless one is willing to eradicate all limited conceptions which blur clear-sightedness, unless, in short, one is willing to reorient the mental outlook completely, it will never be possible to penetrate the world illusion.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Independence and individuality

#9676 – 5.7.3.31

BN – ZZ – K

There is a need to develop flexibility by practising the shift of attitudes, to see why others hold their beliefs, and to be able to stretch one's own thought so as to enter sufficiently into theirs. This produces sympathetic understanding, but the opposite—critical judgement—must not be forsaken.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9759 – 5.7.3.114

BN – X – D

Conventional people, fond only of commonplace ideas, may feel shocked at some philosophical statements. They do not see that their thinking is falsified because they have prejudiced their quest of truth from the start, because it is done within the context of conventional attitudes. How few can free themselves from the thick incrustations of prejudice; how many are unable to approach an idea with calm, impersonal, detached open-mindedness!

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9770E – 5.7.3.125

B_05 – EL1/2

Conventional people, fond only of commonplace ideas, may feel shocked at some philosophical statements. They do not see that their thinking is falsified because they have prejudiced their quest of truth from the start, because it is done within the context of conventional attitudes. How few can free themselves from the thick incrustations of prejudice; how many are unable to approach an idea with calm, impersonal, detached open-mindedness! Most people naturally pick out from a teaching those views which please them and reject the others. Only the seeker who has disciplined himself morally and intellectually will be heroic enough to take unpleasing views along with the pleasing ones. Philosophy's teaching will appeal, and can only appeal, to those who have striven to escape from dogmatism, who have shaken off widespread prejudices and outgrown crudely materialistic ideas, and whose minds are sufficiently developed to realize the value of free views and flexible attitudes.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9770E – 5.7.3.125

B_05 – EL2/2

When I meet with certain persons or certain books, I am often reminded of a certain sentence in Roman Seneca’s writings: “There are many who might have attained to wisdom, had they not fancied they had attained it already.”

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Comparison and synthesis

#9777 – 5.7.3.132

BN – Z – DK*

His mind acknowledges no criterion of truth, no convention of goodness, no taste in beauty merely because convention tradition or society supports it. He has to examine it first; he has also to find out what other minds in olden and medieval as well as modern times, in widely differing Oriental lands as well as Occidental ones, thought of these matters; finally he has to consult his own reason and, above all, his own intuition and compare all these views quite impartially and without selfish interest.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Authority and the past

#9791 – 5.7.3.146

UR_2.4 – ZZ – K

If he wants to ferret out what is real in existence he must put himself to some trouble. He must persevere, read and re-read these pages until the meaning of it all dawns suddenly upon him, as it will if he does. The reflective study of these high-grade writings forces the mental growth of the student. The absorption of their spirit elevates him for a while to the spiritual plane of the author.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9855EM – 5.7.3.210

BA12 – P – DX

It is better to look twice at some assertions. Sometimes it is wiser to look beneath the words themselves and scrutinize the character of the writer himself.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9904 – 5.7.3.259

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

The words of the book can carry you to a certain point in consciousness. When this is reached you can go farther and higher only by closing the book! It has served you well but you must turn now to a new source. Let thoughts come into quietude; intuition will take their place: a holy presence will be felt: surrender to it.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9916 – 5.7.3.271

BN – X – D

A continual round of reading may yield pseudo-progress, the feeling of making continual growth, but after all it will only add more thoughts to those he already possesses. Only by thinking out for himself what he is reading—and for this he will need abstention from it—will he be able to add understanding to it.

The Intellect > The Development of Intellect > Books

#9930 – 5.7.3.285

UR_6 – ZZZ – K

Logic is always beset by the serious charge that its so-called truths are fallacious ones. For instance, it insists on the law of contradiction, the law which says that a statement of facts cannot be true and false at the same time. But the careful study of illusions produces conclusions which falsify this law. We do not mean by this criticism to declare logic to be useless. We mean only what we have elsewhere written, that it is a good servant but a bad master.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > Facts and logic

#9971 – 5.7.4.29

BN – Z – K1

If we begin our quest of truth with any assumption, at the end we gain nothing new, nothing which was not already there in the beginning. And when we then remember that we started with a mere belief, we realize that there is and can be no certainty about our final conclusions, no matter how rigidly logical we have been during the journey. We begin with imagination and end with it. This is not philosophy, but poetry. There is no other road for genuine philosophy than to depend on facts, not on presuppositions.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > Facts and logic

#9974 – 5.7.4.32

BN – Z – K

Take karma, for instance: They may mouth this doctrine a hundred times yet, never having thought it out for themselves, they do not understand its far-reaching implications.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > Facts and logic

#9995 – 5.7.4.53

BN – ZZZ – DK

If he is too easily vexed by other people’s criticism, this is because the ego is still upholding his pride and vanity.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > The need for precision

#10027 – 5.7.4.85

BN – X – D

As a rule the wise man will not spare strength to engage in polemical thrusts. But when the inner monitor bids him enter the fray, he has no other recourse than to submit.

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > The need for precision

#10035 – 5.7.4.93

BN – ZZ – K

To such unintelligent objections, we may well answer with old Dr. Johnson, "I have found you a reason, sir—I am not bound to find you an understanding."

The Intellect > Abstract Thought > The need for precision

#10042 – 5.7.4.100

BN – ZZ

Semantics requires us to train ourself in clear communication so that we shall be able to weigh the effect of our words upon people.

The Intellect > Semantics > Semantics

#10076 – 5.7.5.1

BN – Z

Mind and its expression in language are thoroughly interwoven and to improve one is to improve the other.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10095 – 5.7.5.20

BN – X – K

We have begun our studies not by learning new matter but by unlearning the old. So much that we take for granted is not knowledge at all but fantasy. For instance, we assume unconsciously that "B" must exist. The only way to cure ourselves of false assumptions is first to discover that they are assumptions. The only way to clear our minds of false learning is to inquire into all our learning and examine its warrant. And since all thoughts are embodied in words, we can carry out this essential preliminary task only by examining the words habitually used, the terms we have inherited from our mental environment, and to see how far they are justified.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10097 – 5.7.5.22

BN – X – K

The philosopher must ask each word to yield thoroughly a definition which possesses an exactitude that may well terrify the ordinary man. He must become a hunter and wander through the forests of verbal meaning to track down real meaning. He will not rush prematurely into utterance. Words are cheap for the ordinary man but dear for him. His studied hesitation leads, however, closer to truth. This interpretational discipline must be vigorously applied until it leads to a thorough understanding of all concepts which are the essential counters in philosophical research. For when men go astray in their definitions of these highly important terms, they will surely go astray in their thinking, and thence be led astray altogether from truth.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10104 – 5.7.5.29

UR_3.0 – ZZ – K1

There are no words in human language in which Truth can find adequate expression.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10105 – 5.7.5.30

UR_3.2 – ZZ – K

By working on his own consciousness in the proper way he may hope to come to an impersonal state where the words he speaks, the products of his pen, are less coloured by the falsities of his ego, less distant from the egoless truth.

The Intellect > Semantics > Clarity is essential

#10141 – 5.7.5.66

BN – ZZZ

We must not mistake lyrical outbursts in passionate prose for sensible maxims in careful phraseology.

The Intellect > Semantics > The problem with words

#10168 – 5.7.5.93

BN – Z

We need not be afraid to question everything, to doubt everything, even the words we use and our own very selves. We have nothing but falsehood, illusion, and self-deception to lose if we take nothing for granted.

The Intellect > Semantics > The problem with words

#10197 – 5.7.5.122

BN – ZZ – K

The right use of words has brought into being that immense store of recorded knowledge which is one of the most precious heritages man possesses. Today, through the understanding of words, we are able to shake hands with the world's most renowned sages, to have the privilege of a discussion with the distant wise, and to sit at table for an intellectual feast with the dead.

The Intellect > Semantics > The meaning of language

#10215 – 5.7.5.140

BN – X – K

If knowledge fails to reconcile science with religion and philosophy, then civilization will become the victim of a politically directed materialistic scientific knowledge, and end by destroying itself.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10289 – 5.7.6.61

BA11 – P – D

When science leads man to deny his sacred source and to decry all personal testimonies to experience of its existence, science is no longer serving man but seriously crippling him.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10292 – 5.7.6.64

BN – X – D

The mystic, who knows more about the internal world than the scientist, is entitled to a hearing not less respectful than that to which the scientist is entitled because he knows more about the external world.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10301 – 5.7.6.73

BN – X – D

The same education which frees a man from superstition may cause him to miss the subtler knowledge of his real inner being, so that his mind wrongly believes itself to be a product of the body.

The Intellect > Science > When science stands alone

#10310 – 5.7.6.82

BN – X – D

The hope of educated men who understand and appreciate the services of science but who deplore its dangers and recognize its limitations, lies in the investigation and development of consciousness.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10363 – 5.7.6.135

BA11 – P – D

There is but ONE Reality and various forms under which it appears. Therefore the man who perceives this naturally, perceives the ultimate reality everywhere. He does not need to meditate or to go into a trance to find it.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10375EM – 5.7.6.147

UR_1 – ZZZ – K

The materialist who sees only the animal side of human being is usually brutal or sensual, whereas the materialist who sees also the intellectual side is immeasurably more evolved. But both miss the intuitive side.

The Intellect > Science > Science and metaphysics

#10379 – 5.7.6.151

BSG_5 – P – D

Constant reflection on metaphysical and ethical themes reaches a point where one day its accumulated weight pushes him around the corner into a mystical realization of those themes no less surely than meditation might have done.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10390 – 5.7.7.2

BN – X – D

Although every tenet of the metaphysics of truth is worked out with strict rationality and scientific respect for facts, there is a hidden support in transcendental knowledge running right through them all.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10391 – 5.7.7.3

BN – X – K

The whole intellectual structure is supported by a solid core of super-intellectual insight.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10392 – 5.7.7.4

BN – Z – K

One day, if this kind of metaphysical thinking is carried on sufficiently, rightly, and concentratedly, a person’s intellect may overreach itself, even lose itself in that wonderful faculty, intuition, or even slip farther into inspiration. This is a mysterious event where something grander takes over by a process which is certainly not mechanical.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Metaphysics of Truth

#10396 – 5.7.7.8

BN – ZZ – K

The failure of metaphysics begins when it becomes speculation based on imagination, when its ideas are derived from other ideas instead of from observed facts.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10412 – 5.7.7.24

BN – Z – K

The study of speculative metaphysics may chill off religious belief but the study of the metaphysics of truth brings with it deep religious feelings.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10413 – 5.7.7.25

BN – X – K

The unsatisfactoriness of most Vedantic metaphysics is that it limits itself to ontology. The unsatisfactoriness of most Western metaphysics is that it limits itself to epistemology. Both are one-legged creatures. A satisfying full-limbed system must first begin with epistemology and then end with ontology.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10415 – 5.7.7.27

BN – X – K1

Our advice is—study metaphysics to its bottom and then make good your escape from it before you become a mere metaphysician! Once you start using metaphysical jargon you are lost.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10416 – 5.7.7.28

BN – ZZ – K1

But if it is only ordinary metaphysics, then it cannot bring the student to such an experience, although it can give him good intellectual exercise and logical discipline if he wants these things. Ordinary metaphysical thinking is a kind of mental groping about in the dark, whereas that used in metaphysics of truth is like walking along a well-made road direct to a goal. This is so because the system itself is built up after and upon the mystic experience. Metaphysical self-debate for merely logical purposes is not meant here.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10427 – 5.7.7.39

BN – X – K

There are two kinds of knowledge: the ordinary kind which supplies information about a particular thing object or person and the higher kind which leads to wisdom. A man may correctly understand the handling of an electrical appliance and yet be a fool in the handling of his own life.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10428 – 5.7.7.40

BA11 – P – D

The metaphysics of Truth has no recognized place in the academic world, as academic teaching is really based more or less on materialism.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10433 – 5.7.7.45

BSG_5 – P – DK

Metaphysics enables the mystic to make clear and conclusive to themselves the principles on which their inward experience is based. This helps them, not only by satisfying the need for intellectual understanding, not only by supplying weapons to fight both their own doubts and the criticisms of sceptics, but also, by giving directional guidance, enables them to avoid errors in mystical practice.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10446 – 5.7.7.58

BN – X – K

The words we use belong to the limited range of conditioned existence. How then can they be of actual service in describing the Unconditioned? The only service they can render is a symbolic or suggestive one. Reality cannot be expressed in any of the positive terms we know, for there is nothing like it in the familiar world. It may be hinted at negatively.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10455 – 5.7.7.67

BN – Z – K

The metaphysical system may be only a reflected image of the Truth, but still it is as faithful an image as present-day human intellect can show. Therefore, it is most helpful to the seeker who is groping their difficult way and need all the guidance they can get.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10461 – 5.7.7.73

BN – X – K

The modern school of existentialist metaphysics gives too much weight to passing experiences and too little to permanent principles, too much to appearances and too little to the realities, too much to the political economic and social, too little to the moral ethical and spiritual phases of human life. This brings about an unbalance and a half-truthness in its conclusions.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Speculation vs. knowledge

#10467 – 5.7.7.79

BN – Z – K

What is self? What is thought? What is reality? These are accepted by metaphysics as three of its chief problems.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Issues and adherents

#10473 – 5.7.7.85

BN – X – K

For those who have devoted several years to its detailed study, this teaching is not a matter of pious belief or fanciful thinking but a tested fact and demonstrated truth. Nor, for them, does it depend upon the say-so of some bygone man or the tradition of some bygone century. It depends upon procurable evidence and appeals to scientific attitude.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Issues and adherents

#10482 – 5.7.7.94

B_02 – Z

The philosophic student knows that the same thoughts which rear their heads and obstruct the mystic from attaining Thought can be turned round and used to help them attain it. But to achieve this successfully there must be metaphysical knowledge.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10512 – 5.7.7.124

BN – X – K

Those who make philosophical writings their constant study are using life profitably.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10513 – 5.7.7.125

BN – X – D

But let it not be thought that the metaphysical effort is a wasted one. On the contrary, it is essential for training the mind to think correctly about the Overself, for supplying it with the firm conviction that such an ultimate reality does exist, and for encouraging it to take up the practical quest of ultramysticism; whilst after the latter quest has been successfully realized the metaphysical effort again becomes useful when the sage seeks to communicate to others a precise report and accurate explanation of his own grand experience.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10520 – 5.7.7.132

BN – ZZ – K

Once a person begins to bestow their thought upon thought itself, they begin a path of enquiry which, if pushed to its farthest end, will bring them into astonishing discoveries and, if they follow them into practical application, beneficial changes.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10522 – 5.7.7.134

BN – Z – K

If a man will constantly think about these metaphysical truths, he will develop in time the capacity to perceive them by direct intuition instead of by second-remove reflection. But to do this kind of thinking properly the mind must be made steady, poised, concentrated, and easily detached from the world.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10525 – 5.7.7.137

BN – ZZZ – DK1

His conduct will be better, his mind wiser, and his heart happier if he seeks and gains a knowledge of the divine laws governing the universe than if he refuses to do so.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10526 – 5.7.7.138

BN – ZZ – K

The worth of metaphysics to us is relative to the work which we put into it, to the degree of hard thinking which we achieve under its direction. For it demands sustained enquiry into facts, careful assessment of the value of statements, and careful judgement of conclusions.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10533 – 5.7.7.145

BN – X – K

The mystic who has not this clear metaphysical knowledge may attain a limited goal, but even then, because their effort is not a guided one, much of it is lost in blind striving.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10538 – 5.7.7.150

BN – X – K

The study of the metaphysics of truth prepares the mind for mystical revelation, helps it to become mystically intuitive.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10542 – 5.7.7.154

BN – X – K

It trains the mind to move guardedly along the path from reasoned thinking to conclusive judgement, to proceed cautiously and not precipitately when opinions are formed, and to form them not at random but only after sifting factual evidence from idle hearsay.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10544 – 5.7.7.156

B_03 – ZZ – K

There is this to be said for such study, that it brings to us ready for assimilation what others have had to purchase by long experience and arduous research.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10545 – 5.7.7.157

BN – X – K

Metaphysical study lifts a human being into the clear keen air above personal considerations.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10556 – 5.7.7.168

BSG_4 – P – D

Because the metaphysics of truth deals with root ideas, and because in a mentalist universe such ideas are naturally more potentially powerful and more important than materialist ones, the metaphysics of truth becomes the most worthwhile study in which man's intellect can engage. For these ideas provide him with the right patterns for shaping physical existence.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10562 – 5.7.7.174

BN – ZZ – K1

The contemplation of universal laws and metaphysical truth chastens the feelings and elevates the thoughts. This study causes man to forget himself, to turn aside from his little ego, and thus helps to clear a path to discovery of his Overself.

The Intellect > Metaphysics of Truth > Its spiritual significance

#10563 – 5.7.7.175

BN – ZZ – DK

The intellect offers a reality which can never be a felt reality but only a described one. Intellectual work can only paint the picture of reality; we have to verify this picture by realizing it within our own experience.

The Intellect > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself

#10564E – 5.7.8.1

UR_4 – ZZZ – DEK3

Every verbal explanation really fails to explain the Overself unless and until we know it for ourselves within ourselves and as ourselves.

The Intellect > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself > Intellect, Reality, and The Overself

#10565E – 5.7.8.2

UR_4map – ZZZ – DEK

The danger of most pseudo-spiritual paths is that they stimulate the ego, whereas the authentic path will suffocate it.

The Ego > The Ego > The Ego

#10566 – 6.8.0.1

BN – ZZ – K

The best measuring-stick for progress is, in earlier stages, the degree of disappearance of the ego's rule and, in later ones, the degree of disappearance of the ego itself.

The Ego > The Ego > The Ego

#10567 – 6.8.0.2

BN – ZZ – DK

That element in his consciousness which enables him to understand that he exists, which causes him to pronounce the words, "I Am," is the spiritual element, here called Overself. It is really his basic self for the three activities of thinking feeling and willing are derived from it, are ripples spreading out of it, are attributes and functions which belong to it. But as we ordinarily think feel and act, these activities do not express the Overself because they are under the control of a different entity, the personal ego.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10568 – 6.8.1.1

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10569 – 6.8.1.2

BN – ZZ – DK

Is it true that most men suffer from mistaken identity? Normal experience leads a man to identify with his body but he fails to go farther and deeper to ask himself: 'Who is present in the body?'

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10570M – 6.8.1.3

BA11 – ZZZ – DXK

Since the person a man is most interested in is himself, why not get to know himself as he really is, not merely as he appears to be?

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10571 – 6.8.1.4

BN – Z – DK

The ego self is the creature born out of man's own doing and thinking, slowly changing and growing. The Overself is the image of God, perfect, finished, and changeless. What he has to do, if he is to fulfil himself, is to let the one shine through the other.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10574 – 6.8.1.7

BN – Z – DM1*

The ego is after all only an idea. It derives its seeming actuality from a higher source. If we make the inner effort to search for its origin we shall eventually find the Mind in which this idea originated. That mind is the Overself. This search is the Quest. The self-separation of the idea from the mind which makes its existence possible, is egoism.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10576 – 6.8.1.9

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

What he takes to be his true identity is only a dream that separates him from it. He has become a curious creature which eagerly accepts the confining darkness of the ego's life and turns its back on the blazing light of the soul's life.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10577 – 6.8.1.10

BN – ZZ – DK

Once this question—what am I?—is answered, there are no other questions. In the light of its dazzling answer, he knows how to handle all his problems.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10578 – 6.8.1.11

BN – ZZ – DK

This is the amazing contradiction of man's life, that although bearing the divine within himself, he is aware only of, and pursues unabated, its very opposite.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10582 – 6.8.1.15

BN – Z – DM

This is the paradox of human existence: the ego is yourself and the Overself is yourself, yet the first cannot easily contact the second.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10583 – 6.8.1.16

BN – Z – DM

A tremendous surprise comes when the Overself shows him to himself—when, for the first time, the ego can see what it is really like by a diviner light.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10584 – 6.8.1.17

BN – Z – DK

The personal ego derives its own light of consciousness and power of activity from the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10590 – 6.8.1.23

BN – Z – DK

The ego borrows its reality, its power of perception, its very capacity to be aware, from its association with the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10595 – 6.8.1.28

BN – Z – DK

The ego is a passing thing, but its source is not.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10596 – 6.8.1.29

BN – Z – DK

Keep on thinking about the difference between the personal ego and the impersonal Overself until you become thoroughly familiar with them.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10598 – 6.8.1.31

BN – ZZ – DM

The true self of man is hidden in a central core of stillness, a central vacuum of silence. This core, this vacuum occupies only a pinpoint in dimension. All around it there is ring of thoughts and desires constituting the imagined self, the ego. This ring is constantly fermenting with fresh thoughts, constantly changing with fresh desires, and alternately bubbling with joy or heaving with grief. Whereas the centre is forever at rest, the ring around it is never at rest; whereas the centre bestows peace, the ring destroys it.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10599 – 6.8.1.32

BN – Z – DK1

The Overself-consciousness is reflected into the ego, which then imagines that it has its own original, and not derived awareness.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10600 – 6.8.1.33

BN – X – DK1

Why I chose "What Am I": (1) Because I wanted to start with the idea of a non-"I" consciousness instead of their own "I" with which they are continuously occupied; (2) Because the word Brahman is of neuter gender, neither masculine nor feminine. Brahman in us is Atman, the Self—but utterly impersonal. "What" lends itself more easily to this impersonality than "Who"; (3) The answer to "What Am I?" is multiple but it begins with "a part of the world!" and is followed by another question, "What is my relation to this world?" The answer requires the discovery of Mentalism, leading back through the thought of the world, thinker, and consciousness, to Brahman.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10603 – 6.8.1.36

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The answer to the question What am I? is A divine Soul. This soul is related to, and rooted in, God. But that does not make us equivalent to God. Those who say so are using language carelessly.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10605 – 6.8.1.38

BN – Z – DK

The ego must be there, for it is needed to be active in this world; but it need not take sole charge of the man. There is this other, this higher Self too.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10606 – 6.8.1.39

BN – Z – DK

There are other forces at work in us besides those which everyone recognizes. Some are higher and nobler than our ordinary self, others lower and unworthier.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10607 – 6.8.1.40

BN – Z – DM

Ramana Maharshi’s frequent reference to the “I-I” simply means the Unchanging Self (as contrasted with the ever-changing ego).

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10611 – 6.8.1.44

BN – X – DK

Man is like an actor who has become so involved in the interpretation of his role that he has forgotten his original identity. It effectively prevents him from remembering who and what he is.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10613 – 6.8.1.46

BN – ZZ – DK*

Not Descartes' formula I think, therefore I am but the mystic's The Soul is within me, therefore I am. For Descartes' I is relative and changeful, whereas the mystic's is absolute and permanent.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10614 – 6.8.1.47

BN – Z – DK

The "I" knows itself as the Overself when it ceases to limit itself to the individual entity, thereby liberating its will to the full extent at last. Schrödinger's idea of the self is pure consciousness, or "ground stuff" upon which our personal experiences merely collect.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10616 – 6.8.1.49

BN – Z – DEK

The essence of man is perfect, but the ego of man is not.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10617 – 6.8.1.50

BN – Z – DK

One's adventures in self-discovery will only fulfil themselves when he discovers that which is beyond the ego.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10618 – 6.8.1.51

BN – ZZ – DK

What is man's permanent identity? Is it not logical that when a man's mind is full of his "I" to overflowing, there can be no room for that which transcends it, the Overself?

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10619 – 6.8.1.52

BN – ZZ – DEK

There is the personal self within me. There is the impersonal Self or Overself also within me. We can react wrongly through the ego's limited outlook—or recognize the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10621 – 6.8.1.54

BN – ZZZ – DK

Our real Self is not in movement or change or form. We have to identify with this unseen Self.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10622 – 6.8.1.55

BN – Z – DK

Just as the Divine Being is both Mind-in-itself and Mind-in-activity, according to which aspect we look at, as well as Power-static and Power-dynamic, so its ray in man is Pure Being-Consciousness appearing as the mentally-active ego, as well as Life-Force appearing as physically-active body.

The Ego > What Am I? > Egoself and Overself

#10624 – 6.8.1.57

A231220 – Z – K

Neither the body with its senses nor the mind with its thoughts is the ultimate being that I am. The body acts and the mind moves, but behind them is the thought-free Awareness, the Knowing Principle.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10625 – 6.8.1.58

BN – Z – DK

The first great error to be thrown away is a common one—acceptance of the physical body as the real self when it is only an expression and channel, instrument and vehicle of the self.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10626 – 6.8.1.59

BA11 – Z – DK

You have a body but the real you is not physical. You have an intellect but the real you is not intellectual. You have emotions but the real you is not emotional. What then are you? You are the infinite consciousness of the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10628 – 6.8.1.61

BA11 – Z – DM*

The ego expresses desires and preferences, the intellect thinks and remembers, the body's sense organs experience and perceive the world outside. None of these three is the real “I”-ness of a man.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10629 – 6.8.1.62

BN – ZZ – DK

The body in which he dwells is not himself. The intellect with which he thinks is not himself. The consciousness by which he utters "I" IS himself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10632 – 6.8.1.65

BA11 – ZZ – DK

There is something in each man which says ”I.” Is it the body? Usually he thinks so. But if he could set up a deeper analysis, he would find that consciousness would carry him away from the body-thought into itself. There, in its own pure existence, he would find the answer to his question, ”Who am I?”

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10636 – 6.8.1.69

BN – ZZ – DK

This sense, force, or feeling within him, which calls itself I, has its innermost part in that which observes it, the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10637 – 6.8.1.70

BN – ZZ – DK

Everyone can give his assent to the statement that his physical environment is not himself, but it requires great penetration to give his assent to the equally true statement that his thoughts are not himself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10638 – 6.8.1.71

BN – ZZ – DK

We all think, experience, feel, and identify with the ”I.” But who really knows what it is? To do this we need to look inside the mind, not at what it contains, as psychologists do, but at what it is in itself. If we persevere, we may find the ”I” behind the ”I.”

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10640 – 6.8.1.73

BN – ZZZ – DK1

It would be wrong to believe that there are two separate minds, two independent consciousnesses within us—one the lower ego-mind, and the other, the higher Overself-mind—with one, itself unwatched, watching the other. There is but one independent illuminating mind and everything else is only a limited and reflected image within it. The ego is a thought-series dependent on it.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10641 – 6.8.1.74

BN – Z – DK1

There is only a single light of consciousness in the mind’s camera. Without it the world could not be photographed upon the film of our ego-mind. Without it, the ego-mind itself would be just as blank. That light is the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10645 – 6.8.1.78

BN – ZZ – DK

If only he could become aware of his own awareness!

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10646 – 6.8.1.79

BN – ZZ – DK

We must indeed make a distinction between the conscious self which is so tied to the body and the superconscious self which is not got at or grasped by the bodily senses.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10649 – 6.8.1.82

BN – Z – DK

The final ‘I’ is not the ‘I’ of the senses nor of the desires but a deeper entity, free and unattached, serene and self-sufficient.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10658 – 6.8.1.91

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

The ultimate goal is to regard oneself as primarily a mental being and not a physical one, to cease this idolatrous identification of self with flesh, blood, and bone.

The Ego > What Am I? > Body and consciousness

#10663 – 6.8.1.96

BN – Z – DK

How is it that I am—and know that I am—substantially the same man today as yesterday, that I remember the happenings of a year ago? The answer must be that there is a continuous self, or being, or mind, in me, distinct from its thoughts or experiences.

The Ego > What Am I? > I-sense and memory

#10664 – 6.8.1.97

BN – X – DK

Neither deep sleep nor brain concussion prevents us from recovering the sense of I when they end.

The Ego > What Am I? > I-sense and memory

#10665 – 6.8.1.98

BN – X – DK

If we look for the self in this jumble of contradictory instincts and changing tendencies, we find only a jumble. These things are the content of awareness, not the faculty of awareness.

The Ego > What Am I? > I-sense and memory

#10666 – 6.8.1.99

BN – X – DK

Even the shell-shocked soldier who suffers from an almost total amnesia, forgetting his personal identity and personal history, does not suffer from any loss of the consciousness that he exists. Its old ideas and images may have temporarily or even permanently vanished, but the mind itself carries on.

The Ego > What Am I? > I-sense and memory

#10667 – 6.8.1.100

BN – X – DK

The personal ego of man forms itself out of the impersonal life of the universe like a wave forming itself out of the ocean. It constricts, confines, restricts, and limits that infinite life to a small finite area. The wave does just the same to the water of the ocean. The ego shuts out so much of the power and intelligence contained in the universal being that it seems to belong to an entirely different and utterly inferior order of existence. The wave, too, since it forms itself only on the surface of the water gives no indication in its tiny stature of the tremendous depth and breadth and volume of water beneath it. The work of the quest is simply this: to free the ego from its self-imposed limitations, to let the wave of conscious being subside and straighten itself out into the waters whence it came. The little wave is thus reconverted into the infinite Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10669E – 6.8.1.102

BN – ZZ – DEK

It is ludicrous if that part of the mind which is only within the personal consciousness, the ego, sets itself up to deny the Mind-in-itself—its own very Source. For the ego is shut in what it experiences and knows—a much limited area.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10670 – 6.8.1.103

BN – X – DK

When it is said that separateness is the great sin, this does not refer to one's relation with other human beings. It refers to having separated oneself in thought from one's higher self.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10674 – 6.8.1.107

BN – Z – DK

Even irreproachable conduct and impeccable manners belong to the ego and not to the enlightenment.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10676 – 6.8.1.109

BN – ZZ – DK1

We draw the very capacity to live from the Overself, the very power to think from the same source. But we confine both the capacity and the power to a small, fragmentary, and mostly physical sphere. Within this confinement the ego sits enthroned, served by our senses and pandered by our thoughts.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10677 – 6.8.1.110

BN – ZZ – DK1

This narrow fragment of consciousness which is the person that I am hides the great secret of life at its core.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10678 – 6.8.1.111

BN – X – DK

Thoughts rise and fall on the surface of consciousness just like waves on the ocean. Both thoughts and waves disappear again into their source. The ego is a totality of strongly held thoughts with a long ancestry behind them. So it too dissolves eventually into the universal mind. Its supporting consciousness is not lost, is this same permanent Mind. The personal self is an individualization of this mind. It did not emerge from nothing and therefore cannot go back into nothing when it dies; it dies into this living Universal Mind, is absorbed by it.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10681 – 6.8.1.114

BN – Z – DEM

The lower part of man's mind which calculates, analyses, criticizes, blames, and organizes is the part which has no understanding of divine principles, and therefore its plannings are frequently futile. Man has no business to limit himself to the lower mind, and when he understands this he will leave his future in the hands of God, and then his real needs will be met.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10684 – 6.8.1.117

BN – ZZZ – DK

It is an irony of life that a man can plainly see the physical ego, but that on which it depends for existence, the Overself, he does not see. Therefore he neglects or ignores the attention it needs and misses much of the opportunity that a reincarnation offers to further his inner unfoldment.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10686 – 6.8.1.119

BN – ZZ – DK

The egocentric view of ordinary men is not final. One day they will evolve to the cosmic view.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10687 – 6.8.1.120

BN – ZZZ – DK

Beneath the little “I” stretches the universal Consciousness.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as limitation

#10691 – 6.8.1.124

BN – X – DK

The ego to which he is so attached turns out on enquiry to be none other than the presence of World-Mind within his own heart. If identification is then shifted by constant practice from one to the other, he has achieved the purpose of life.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10694 – 6.8.1.127

BN – X – DK

What we find as the attributes of the ego are a reflected image, limited and changing, of what we find in the Overself. They ultimately depend on the Overself both for their own existence and their own nature.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10695 – 6.8.1.128

BN – X – DK

However badly we all reflect the Overself in the personality, however tiny broken and distorted the reflected image usually is, still it is a reflection. It is within the capacity of all to make it a better one, and within the capacity of a few to make it a perfect one.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10696 – 6.8.1.129

BN – Z – DK

If we could pin down this sense of I-ness which is behind all we think, say, and do, and if we could part it from the thoughts, feelings, and physical body by doing so, we would find it to be rooted in and linked with the higher Power behind the whole world.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10701 – 6.8.1.134

BN – Z – DK1

The ego's consciousness is a vastly reduced, immeasurably weakened echo of the Overself-Consciousness. It is always changing and dissipates in the end whereas the Other is ever the same and undying. But the ego is drawn out of the Other and must return to it, so the link is there. What is more, the possibility of returning voluntarily and deliberately is also there.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10702 – 6.8.1.135

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Unless the human ego were itself an emanation of the Overself it would be quite unable to identify itself with the sensation of severance from the body during the process we call dying.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10703 – 6.8.1.136

BN – Z – DK

This thing which the Overself has projected in space-time has not lost all link with its source, whatever outward appearances suggest to the contrary.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10704 – 6.8.1.137

BN – X – DK

Just as a shadow bespeaks a light, so the ego bespeaks its source in the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10705 – 6.8.1.138

BN – X – DK

The personality is rooted in the Overself. Hence its own power and movement do reflect, albeit minutely, slightly, and distortedly, some of the Overself's own attributes.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10706 – 6.8.1.139

BN – X – DK

Expressed in more familiar religious language, it may be said that God has put something of Himself into each one of us. But it is there only as a potential; we must make the necessary effort to make ourselves more and more conscious of it.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego as presence of higher

#10707 – 6.8.1.140

BN – Z – DK

The ”I” of the ego is supported by the ”I” of the spiritual being, the spiritual self. Indeed the first derives its reality from the second and the second survives when the first passes away.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10709 – 6.8.1.142

BN – Z – DK

The personal ego has its singularities and particularities, its present aims and past memories, its life within time, its own temperament and special characteristics. All this amounts to this: it is unique. The individuality is the highest, subtlest, and finest, even divinest part of being. It is out of time. It is pure essence, the other is a compounded entity. For it the hours do not pass; for the other there is a constant sequence, a moment-to-moment existence. Sometimes men catch a glimpse of it, this other self which is really their own best self and which is not something to be attained by a progression since it is forever present. It does not have or need thoughts. Every moment which they give to identifying themselves with it is their salvation. If this takes one far from kith and kin, from all speech with all persons, it also carries him into a diviner relationship and communication with them.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10710 – 6.8.1.143

BN – ZZZ – DEK

As egos they are certainly individual lives and beings. Their separateness is unquestionable. But as manifestations of the One Infinite Life-Power, their separateness from It is a great illusion.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10711 – 6.8.1.144

BN – Z – DM

It is what stands behind the individual, and not the individual himself, that really matters.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10712 – 6.8.1.145

BN – ZZ – DK

That which separates a man from others, which makes him a person, an individual being, is his ego.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10717 – 6.8.1.150

BN – X – DK

Outwardly all differ but in the deepest root of consciousness all are the same.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10723E – 6.8.1.156

BSG_4 – ZZ – DEK

Outwardly all differ but in the deepest root of consciousness all are the same. This is the Reality that is hidden in me and you, in the whole universe itself. It acts everywhere and exists eternally.

The Ego > What Am I? > Two views of individuality

#10723EM – 6.8.1.156

UR_1 – ZZZ – DXK

How can man fully express himself unless he fully develops himself? The spiritual evolution which requires him to abandon the ego runs parallel to the mental evolution which requires him to perfect it.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10725 – 6.8.1.158

BN – Z – DK

Despite all the talk disparaging the ego, it is not wrong but praiseworthy to develop the best personality one can and then use it. Its character can be purified, its passions controlled, its weaknesses overcome, its ignorance dispelled. New virtues can be introduced and new power developed. One can then make better use of such a personality—for one's own advantage and for service of others—and one should.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10726 – 6.8.1.159

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

We came to this Earth to understand ourselves, bit by bit. There is really nothing to be achieved here; only something to be accepted—the fact of your own divinity.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10729M – 6.8.1.162

B_01 – ZZZ – DXK

This very egocentricity has prepared the way for its own collapse, and thence for the spiritual mentality which transcends it and which is next to be developed.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10730 – 6.8.1.163

BN – Z – DK

The ego is a part of the divine order of existence. It must emerge, grow, enslave, and finally be enslaved.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10732 – 6.8.1.165

BA11 – ZZ – K

This is the paradox, or irony, of evolution: that first the ego grows into full being through plant, animal, and human form; then it reverses the objective and assents to its own alteration and death.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10733 – 6.8.1.166

BN – X – DK

If he will stop looking at his own life from the shut-in standpoint of his little ego and instead look at it from the wide-angle standpoint of its place in the reincarnationary cycle of development, it will become filled with new meanings, rich with higher significances. To bring his personal idea into alignment with the World-Idea will then become both his duty and his happiness.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10736 – 6.8.1.169

BA11 – P – DK

Is it not ironical that the Overself projects the ego so far that it denies its source, and then waits indefinitely for the ego to give itself back?

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10737 – 6.8.1.170

BN – X – DK

After the physical, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual capacities of the ego have been developed, then it is the correct time to renounce, not before. But the selfishness and indiscipline of the ego may and should be renounced at any time.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10739 – 6.8.1.172

BN – ZZZ – DK

When the ego discovers that it is a part of the whole, it will naturally cease to live only for its own good and begin to live for the general good also.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10740 – 6.8.1.173

BA11 – Z – DK

If the earlier experiences of life are intended to develop the ego from the primitive animalistic to the fully humanistic stage, the later experiences are intended to induce the man to give the ego as an offering to the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10741 – 6.8.1.174

BN – Z – DK

The ego is not in itself evil, but what seems to make it so is its refusal to recognize and then take its subordinate place to the Overself, which it ought to serve.

The Ego > What Am I? > Perfection through surrender

#10742 – 6.8.1.175

BN – Z – DK

It is not so much a matter of destroying the ego as of balancing it with the Overself, for its need of development must be recognized. Such an act will not give it equal power but put it in its proper place, as a child’s individuality needs to be balanced with its parents’.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10746 – 6.8.1.179

BN – Z – DK

Every individual life from the mighty elephant down to the microscopic cell is a self-evolving entity moving through time and space. It has meaning, a purpose, and eventually, a fulfilment here. Why then talk of destroying the one with which you are most intimate—your own ego?

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10748 – 6.8.1.181

BN – Z – DK

The ego will not end its existence but it will end its dominance.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10751 – 6.8.1.184

BN – ZZ – DK

Nothing can annihilate the ego during the body's lifetime, but its function can be reduced to one of mere subservience to the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10752 – 6.8.1.185

BN – ZZ – DK

The highest goal of the Quest is not illumination gained by destruction of the ego but rather by perfection of the ego. It is the function of egoism, which is to be destroyed, not that which functions. The ego’s rulership is to go, not the ego itself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10756 – 6.8.1.189

BA11 – ZZ – DK1

At every stage of this quest, from that of the veriest postulant who has just entered upon it to that of the well-advanced proficient, the need of subduing the ego is ever-present.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10761 – 6.8.1.194

BN – Z – DK

When examined, the ego is found to be a complex of body and thought, physical senses and mental tendencies…

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10763E – 6.8.1.196

BA11 – Z – DEK

There is much confusion about this matter of the ego and much looseness in the use of words concerning it. We are told to eliminate the ego and to eradicate the personal self. But the fact is that so long as he is upon this earth he is using a body and a mind and inheriting a whole combination of factors, tendencies, characteristics which have come down from former lives and together now constitute his personality. They will still be present so long as he is alive. To destroy the ego completely would necessarily mean to destroy the physical body, which is a part of it, and to remove his particular individuality which sets him apart from others. This cannot be done, but what can be done is to render the ego subservient to the higher self, an obedient instrument of the higher will.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10764 – 6.8.1.197

BN – ZZ – DEK

Perhaps one day some bright mind will write a book entitled Inspired Egoism to bring people into the understanding that the ego too has its place in the scheme of things. It is the little circle within the larger one of the Overself, and if it remains conscious of its true relationship to the Overself, it may still rest there and carry on with its functions.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10765 – 6.8.1.198

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego may stay in its proper place attending to the needs and sustenance of his body and intellect, but always as a subordinate to the higher self and obeisant to the higher will.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10768E – 6.8.1.201

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

The ego cannot, indeed, be destroyed so long as we need its services while in the flesh; but it can be subjugated and turned into a servant instead of permitting it to remain a master. When this is understood, the philosophical ideal of a fully developed, mastered, and richly rounded ego acting as a channel for the inspiration and guidance of the Higher Self will be better appreciated. A poverty-stricken ego will naturally form a more limited channel for the expression of the Higher Self than would a more evolved one. The real enemy to be overcome is not the entity ego, but the function of egoism.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10773E – 6.8.1.206

UR_5 – ZZZ – DEK

The real enemy to be overcome is not the entity ego, but the function of egoism.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10773E – 6.8.1.206

BSG_4 – ZZZ – DEK

It is both true and untrue that we cannot take up the ego with us into the life of mystical illumination. The ego is after all only a reflection, extremely limited and often distorted, of the Higher Self… But still it is a reflection. If we could bring it into correct alignment with, and submission to, the Higher Self, it would then be no hindrance to the illumined life. The ego cannot, indeed, be destroyed so long as we need its services while in the flesh; but it can be subjugated and turned into a servant instead of permitting it to remain a master. When this is understood, the philosophical ideal of a fully developed, mastered, and richly rounded ego acting as a channel for the inspiration and guidance of the Higher Self will be better appreciated. A poverty-stricken ego will naturally form a more limited channel for the expression of the Higher Self than would a more evolved one. The real enemy to be overcome is not the entity ego, but the function of egoism.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego subordinated, not destroyed

#10773 – 6.8.1.206

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK1

Is the ego totally lost, utterly obliterated in this attainment? I can only say that none of our usual concepts fit the actual result, that it is hard to describe, and that suggestion must here replace description. For the ego and the Overself fuse and unite, yet the union does not destroy the ego's capacity to express itself or to be active in the world. Its own annihilation is a transient experience during the contemplative state. Its resumption of worldly life while permanently established in perfect harmony with, and obedience to, the divine Overself is the further and final goal.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10774 – 6.8.1.207

BN – ZZ – DEK

If a man could withdraw sufficiently from his ego to stop letting its interests and desires overpower him, he would thereby let peace come to triumph in his heart. The true paradise, the real heavenly kingdom, which has been postponed by an ignorant clergy to the post-mortem world, thus becoming far-off and elusive, is in fact as near to us as our own selves, and as present as today. If we are to enter it, we can and must enter while yet in the flesh. It is not a time or place but a state of life and a stage of development. It is the ego-free life.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10775E – 6.8.1.208

UR_3.2 – ZZ – DEK

The ego is not asked to destroy itself but to discipline itself. The personal in a man must live, but only as a slave to the impersonal. These two identities make up his self.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10775E – 6.8.1.208

BA11 – ZZZ – DEK

If the ego continues to perform its functions, as it needs must even after Fulfilment, it no longer does so as his master, no longer as his very self. For henceforth the ego obeys the Overself.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10776 – 6.8.1.209

BSG_4 – ZZ – DK

For the man in that high consciousness and identified with it, the ego is simply an open channel through which his being may flow into the world of time and space. It is not himself, as it is for the unenlightened man, but an adjunct to himself, obeying and expressing his will.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10777 – 6.8.1.210

BN – ZZZ – DK

If he loses his ego utterly and completely so that no trace of it exists at all, he would have to die, for his body is part of the ego. But he lives on. This shows that what he really loses is not the ‘ego-nature’ but the ‘ego-will’. It is replaced by the higher will.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10782 – 6.8.1.215

BA12 – ZZZ – DK*

The ego fades away into a kind of non-entity, subsides like a wave into the ocean of universal life.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10786 – 6.8.1.219

BSG_4 – Z – K

Yes, the ego is there and must be there if we are to live on this plane. But it can undergo a spiritual rebirth and no longer be a tyrant who denies us our spiritual birth right and our spiritual consciousness but rather a channel serving that consciousness.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10789 – 6.8.1.222

BSG_4 – ZZ – DM

The ego will always have its problems. By always, one means from birth all through the years until death. This is true of every human being, although a superior human being will deal with them in a superior way.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10790 – 6.8.1.223

BN – ZZ – DK

The "I" is still here, not the old familiar petty uncertain creature but another "I," a gloriously transformed one.

The Ego > What Am I? > Ego after illumination

#10795 – 6.8.1.228

BSG_4 – Z – DK

That part of man which is within the physical world, the ego, must in the end come to recognize and revere his higher individuality, unseen and unknown though it may be. This requires a growth through time, through many rebirths.

The Ego > What Am I? > Renunciation

#10797 – 6.8.1.230

BN – Z – DK

It would be an error to believe that it is the Overself which reincarnates. It does not. But its offspring—the ego—does.

The Ego > What Am I? > Renunciation

#10799 – 6.8.1.232

BN – Z – DK1

"My Emanation far within/ Weeps incessantly for my sin." How wrong was William Blake when he wrote these lines!

The Ego > What Am I? > Renunciation

#10800 – 6.8.1.233

BN – X – K

This is the ego that we falsely think of as being our real self. This is the ego to which memory ties us. This is the illusive part of our dual personality; this is the known part of our being, a mere shadow thrown by the unknown part which is infinitely greater. This moves from one earthly body to another, from one dream to another through the phantasmagoria of existence without awakening to Reality.

The Ego > What Am I? > Renunciation

#10801 – 6.8.1.234

BA11 – X – DK

The entity which lives in the spirit world after death is the same ego that dwelt on earth, emanating from and sustained by the same Overself. In this relationship, they are still distinct and separate entities, even though as intimately connected as parent and offspring.

The Ego > What Am I? > Renunciation

#10803 – 6.8.1.236

BN – X – DK

How senseless it is to demand permanency and immortality for an ego which has already undergone countless changes of inner nature and outer form, only the resolute truth-seeker, unwilling to live by illusions, can perceive.

The Ego > What Am I? > Renunciation

#10804 – 6.8.1.237

B_05 – Z – K

What we commonly think of as constituting the "I" is an idea which changes from year to year. This is the personal "I." But what we feel most intimately as being always present in all these different ideas of the "I," that is, the sense of being, of existence, never changes at all. It is this which is our true enduring "I."

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10807 – 6.8.2.1

BN – X – DK

Everything remembered is a thought in consciousness. This not only applies to objects, events, and places. It also applies to persons, including oneself, he who is remembered, the I that I was. This means that my own personality, what I call myself, was a thought in the past, however strong and however persistent. But the past was once the present. Therefore I am not less a thought now. The question arises what did I have then which I still have now, unchanged, exactly the same. It cannot be I as the person, for that is different in some way each time. It is, and can only be, I as Consciousness.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10809 – 6.8.2.3

BN – X – DK

All that a man really owns is his "I." Everything else can be taken from him in a moment—by death or destiny, by his own foolishness or other people's malice. But no event and no person can rob him of his capacity to think the "I."

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10811 – 6.8.2.5

BN – Z – K

With the body, the thoughts, and the emotions, the ego seems to complete itself as an entity. But where do we get this feeling of I from? There is only one way to know the answer to this question: the way of meditation. This burrows beneath the three mentioned components and penetrates into the residue, which is found to be nothing in particular, only the sense of Be-ing. And this is the real source of the I notion, the self-feeling. Alas! The source does not ordinarily reveal itself, so we live in its projection, the ego, alone. We are content to be little, when we could be great.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10812 – 6.8.2.6

BN – X – DK

That which claims to be the "I" turns out to be only a part of it, the lesser part, and not the real "I" at all. It is a complex of thoughts.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10813 – 6.8.2.7

BA11 – ZZ – DK

When the "I" is thought to be the body, appearance has replaced reality.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10814 – 6.8.2.8

BN – ZZ – K

This feeling of I-ness may be associated with the body, emotions, and thoughts—whose totality is the personal ego—or shifted in deep meditation to the rootless root of being, which is the Overself; or, it may be associated with both, when one will be the reality and the other a shadow of reality.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10815 – 6.8.2.9

BN – X – DK

The idea of a self first enters consciousness when a child identifies itself with bodily feelings, and later when it adds emotional feelings. The idea extends itself still later, with logical thoughts and, lastly, completes itself with the discovery of individuality.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10816 – 6.8.2.10

BN – X – DK

If we analyse the ego, we find it to be a collection of past memories retained from experience and future hopes or fears which anticipate experience. If we try to seize it, to separate it out by itself, we do not find it to exist in the present moment, only in what has gone and what is to come. In fact, it never really exists in the NOW but only seems to. This means that it is a phantom without substance, a false idea.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10820 – 6.8.2.14

BN – Z – DK1

His first mental act is to think himself into being. He is the maker of his own "I." This does not mean that the ego is his own personal invention alone. The whole world-process brings everything about, including the ego and the ego's own self-making.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10821 – 6.8.2.15

BN – X – K1

Our attachment to the ego is natural. It arises because we are unconsciously attached to that which is behind it, to the Overself. Only, we are misled by ignorance wholly to concentrate on the apparent “I” and wholly to ignore the unseen, enduring self of which it is but a transient shadow. The “I” which trembles or enjoys in the time-series is not the real “I.”

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10824 – 6.8.2.18

BN – X – DK

What is the most immediate of all experiences? It is the ”I.” For all others are experiences of an object, be it a thing or a thought—the body, the world, or the mind; but this is their subject, the first identity in life, the last before death.

The Ego > I-thought > I-sense and I-thought

#10830 – 6.8.2.24

BN – X – DK

The ego is nothing more than a shadow. Its stuff and reality are merely that transient ever-changing play of light and colour. It exists—a word whose very meaning, "to be placed outside," is also metaphysically true. For he who immerses himself in its consciousness places himself outside the consciousness of Overself.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10835 – 6.8.2.29

BN – X – DEK

Constant remembrance of the Overself's presence becomes a way to counter the much more evident presence of the body and the world―that is, the illusion of matter. The term "illusion" here used must not be read as meaning that the human being and the world do not exist. It means that they exist, yes, but that they do not exist as other than a transient appearance. They are not fundamentally 'real'.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10836M – 6.8.2.30

BSG_1 – ZZZ – DXK

There is no real ego but only a quick succession of thoughts which constitutes the ÓIÓ process. There is no separate entity forming the personal consciousess but only a series of impressions, ideas, images revolving round a common centre. The latter is completely empty; the feeling of something being there derives from a totally different plane—that of the Overself.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10837 – 6.8.2.31

BN – Z – DK

When it is declared that the ego is a fictitious entity, what is meant is that it does not exist as a real entity. Nevertheless, it does exist as a thought.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10838 – 6.8.2.32

BA11 – Z – DK

If he identifies with the ego as a real entity by itself, and not as the complex of thoughts and tendencies which it is, he is caught in the net of illusion and cannot get out of it.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10839 – 6.8.2.33

BN – ZZ – DK

The practice of the impersonal point of view under the guidance of mentalism leads in time to the discovery that the ego is an image formed in the mind, mind-made, an image with which we have got inextricably intertwined. But this practice begins to untie us and set us free.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10840 – 6.8.2.34

BN – ZZ – K1

The ego is a collection of thoughts circulating around a fixed but empty centre. If the habits of many, many reincarnations had not given them such strength and persistence, they could be voided. The reality—MIND—could then reveal Itself.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10843 – 6.8.2.37

BN – Z – DK

It is not only that man does not know his spiritual nature but, which is worse, that he holds a false idea of his own nature. He takes the shadow—ego—for the substance—Overself. He takes the effect—body—for the cause—Spirit.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10845 – 6.8.2.39

BN – Z – DK

When he is conscious of himself he is conscious only of his idea of himself, the fantasy which the ego has made for him.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10850 – 6.8.2.44

BN – ZZ – K

The ego is a structure which has been built up in former lives from tendencies, habits, and experiences in a particular pattern. But in the end the whole thing is nothing but a thought, albeit a strong and continuing thought.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10851 – 6.8.2.45

BA11 – ZZ – DK

If we have written of the ego as if it were a separate and special entity, a fixed thing, a reality in its own right, this is only because of the inescapable necessities of logical human thinking and the inexorable limitations of traditional human language. For in FACT the "I" cannot be separated from its thoughts since it is composed of them, and them alone. The ego is, in short, only an idea, or a trick that the thought process plays on itself.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10852 – 6.8.2.46

BN – Z – DEK1

Because this emanated consciousness of the Overself ties itself so completely and so continuously to the thought-series, which after all are its own creations, it identifies itself with the illusory ego produced by their activity and forgets its own larger, less limited origin.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10853 – 6.8.2.47

BN – Z – DK

All our thoughts necessarily exist in the successiveness of time, but the thought of the ego is a more complicated affair and exists also in time and space, because the body is part of the ego. Whatever we do, the ego as such will continue its existence. But we need not identify ourselves with it; we can put some distance between us and it. The more we do so, the more impersonal we shall become, and vice versa.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10855 – 6.8.2.49

BN – ZZ – DK

From childhood through adulthood, man passes from one change to another in himself—his body, feelings, and thoughts. The idea of himself, his personality, changes with it. Where and what is the I if it has no unbroken integrity?

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10860 – 6.8.2.54

BN – X – DK

The tendencies and habits, the physical and mental activities which we have brought over from our own past, settle down and congeal themselves into what we call our personal self, our individuality, our ego. Yet life will not permit this combination to be more than a temporary one, and we go on changing with time. We identify ourselves with each of these changes, in turn, yet always think that is really ourself. Only when we still these activities and withdraw from these habits for a brief period in meditation, do we discover for the first time that they do not constitute our real self, after all. Indeed, they are then seen to be our false self, for it is only then that we discover the inner being that is the real self which they hide and cover up. Alas! so strong is their age-old power that we soon allow them to resume their tyrannous ways over us, and we soon become victims again of the great illusion of the ego.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10862 – 6.8.2.56

BN – ZZ – DK

When all thoughts vanish into the Stillness, the ego-personality vanishes too. This is Buddha's meaning that there is no self, also Ramana Maharshi's meaning that ego is only a collection of thoughts.

The Ego > I-thought > Ego exists, as series of thoughts

#10863 – 6.8.2.57

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego of which we are conscious is not the same as the mind by which we are conscious. He who perseveres until he can understand this, opens the first door of the soul's house.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10871 – 6.8.2.65

BN – Z – DK

All your thinking about the ego is necessarily incomplete, for it does not include the ego-thought itself. Try to do so and it slips from your hold. Only something that transcends the ego can grasp it.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10872 – 6.8.2.66

BN – ZZ – K1

The body is in reality an object for the mind, which is its subject; and not only the body, but also whatever the ego thinks or feels becomes an object, too. It is less easy to see and even more necessary to understand that this ego, this subject, is itself an object to a higher part of the mind.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10873 – 6.8.2.67

BN – X – DK

We understand correctly our relation to external possessions like chairs and carpets, but not to possessions like hands and thoughts. Here our understanding becomes confused. Our habitual speech betrays this. We say, “I am hurt” when it is really the body that is hurt, or “I am pleased” when a thought of pleasure arises within us. In the first case the body still remains an object of our experience, despite its closeness. In the second case, thinking is a function performed by us. Both are to be distinguished from our being, however interwoven with our activity.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10874 – 6.8.2.68

BN – X – DM

To the real person, the consciousness, body, nerve, and sense organs are only objects being used as mediums and channels.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10877 – 6.8.2.71

BN – X – DK

Wherever human consciousness exists, wherever there is a thinker, there are also his thoughts. Subject and object join to make conscious existence of an ego, an ”I,” possible, both in waking and dream states.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10878 – 6.8.2.72

BN – X – DK

The ego is an object. The mind knows only objects. Therefore man does not know himself when he knows only ego.

The Ego > I-thought > Subject-object

#10880 – 6.8.2.74

BN – Z – DK

The ego is like a repression which must be dug out of the subconscious mind, seen and understood for what it is, and then let go until it vanishes, losing all its secret power thereby.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10882 – 6.8.3.2

BA11 – X – K

The ego, although itself a projection, draws from its creative source enough power to project in turn its own small world.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10884 – 6.8.3.4

BN – X – DK

The ego has two sides to its nature: a dark and a bright one, an animal and a human one.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10886 – 6.8.3.6

BN – X – DK

The ego is the shadow-self accompanying the light-self, or Overself. The ego holds all that is dark in the man’s character.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10895 – 6.8.3.15

BN – X – DK

The persona, the mask which he presents to the world, is only one part of his ego. The conscious nature, composed of thoughts and feelings, is the second part. The hidden store of tendencies, impulses, memories, and ideas—formerly expressed and then reburied, or brought over, from earlier lives, and all latent—is the third part.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10897 – 6.8.3.17

BA11 – Z – DK1

Inside ourselves there is not one ego but several. We live in a condition of recurring feelings that successively contradict one another, deny each other, or shame each other. The “I” is really torn into pieces, each claiming ascendency but none holding it permanently. The animal, the human, and the angel jostle elbows in our hearts. We are degraded today, elevated tomorrow. The quest seeks to integrate all these different egos.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10898 – 6.8.3.18

BN – X – DK

A man is made up of several different factors: what he has inherited from his parents; what he has picked up from his surroundings; what he has brought over from previous reincarnations; what he thinks, feels and does; what his reactions are to other people. It is the combination of all these elements which make one man.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10901 – 6.8.3.21

BN – Z – DK

The sum total of our past actions and thoughts, and especially of our tendencies, constitutes our character and makes us what we are today.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10903 – 6.8.3.23

BN – X – DK

The ego moves from childhood to old age, from waking to dreaming, but it moves round in a circle. It does not move toward freedom, reality, or peace.

The Ego > Psyche > Ego as knot in psyche

#10904 – 6.8.3.24

BN – Z – DK

There is really no subconscious mind. There is only the thinking mind and the still centre behind the mind.

The Ego > Psyche > The “subconscious''

#10908 – 6.8.3.28

BN – X – DK

Jung thought he had found, in what he called the unconscious, the source which twisted, negated, or opposed the ego's ideals. This source was the shadow. He needed to go farther and deeper for then he would have known the shadow to be the ego itself.

The Ego > Psyche > The “subconscious''

#10909 – 6.8.3.29

BN – X – K

Men suffer from various illnesses, for which they flock to physicians, clinics, and hospitals to find a cure. But they ignore the only illness which is more deeply rooted than all the others and which never leaves them. It is the ego's octopus-like hold upon every atom of their being.

The Ego > Psyche > The “subconscious''

#10912 – 6.8.3.32

BN – ZZ – K

At every chance of a forward step he will be tricked, deceived, misguided, or even driven back by the ego—if he will not be alert enough to recognize the endeavour.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10917 – 6.8.3.37

BN – ZZ – DK

The ”I” gets angry when someone provokes it, then remembers it must gain self-control, and thus forms a higher and calmer state for itself but one which is still within the personal ego-sphere. It has not escaped from itself but only replaced a negative emotion by a positive feeling.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10920 – 6.8.3.40

BN – X – DK

It is natural for the ego to react negatively to its experiences when these bring loss or opposition. But this is so only when, as is most common, man is still unawakened, untaught, uncontrolled, and unable to enter into higher states of being.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10922 – 6.8.3.42

BN – X – DK

If the ego can keep your energies entangled in its psychical doings, or your time absorbed in developing its occult powers, it will keep you from devoting them to seeking the Overself and thus preserve its own existence.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10924 – 6.8.3.44

BN – Z – DK

There is no limit to the ego’s pretensions. It will pose as the humble pupil today but as the pontifical master tomorrow.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10931 – 6.8.3.51

BN – Z – DK

The ego knows well enough how to protect itself, how to prevent the seeker from straying away from its power over him.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10934 – 6.8.3.54

B_05 – Z – DK

The ego is just as powerful whether it is condoned or condemned, for in both cases it keeps the man engaged on a self-centered quest.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10935 – 6.8.3.55

BN – Z – DK

Every move made by the ego has as its basis the desire of its own survival, its own self-perpetuation.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10936 – 6.8.3.56

BN – Z – DK

The ego is perfectly capable of making all sorts of compromises or truces with itself—moral ones with its conscience, logical ones with its intellect, spiritual ones with its aspirations—and perfectly capable of all sorts of dodges, quibbles, evasions, and disguises, whether dealing with matters on the highest or lowest level of reference.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10937 – 6.8.3.57

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The ego poses as being the only self, the real self, the whole self.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10940 – 6.8.3.60

BN – Z – DK

The ego can find many dodges and give many pretexts to prevent him from making the first humiliating gesture of mental surrender. They are intended to protect its own life or power and to keep him, through pride, from making any space for the Overself’s entry.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10945 – 6.8.3.65

BN – ZZZ – DK

The ego uses all the cunning of its logical intellect and all the seduction of its pleasure-loving nature to keep a man away from the quest.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10951 – 6.8.3.71

BN – Z – DK

The ego is defiant, cunning, and resistant to the end.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10958 – 6.8.3.78

BN – ZZ – K1

The ego is by nature a deceiver and in its operations a liar. For if it revealed things as they really are, or told what is profoundly true, it would have to expose its own self as the arch-trickster pretending to be the man himself and proffering the illusion of happiness.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10959 – 6.8.3.79

BN – Z – DM1

Everyone is crucified by his own ego.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10960 – 6.8.3.80

BN – Z – K1

The ego is arrogant, haughty, conceited, and self-deceived.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10961 – 6.8.3.81

BN – ZZ – K1

If the ego can trick him into deviating from the central issue of its own destruction to some less important side issue, it will certainly do so. Its success in this effort is much more common than its failure. Few escape being tricked. The ego uses the subtlest ways to insert itself into the thinking and life of an aspirant. It cheats, tricks, exalts, and abases him by turns, if he lets it. Anatole France wrote that it is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown. It is a constant habit and an instinctive reaction to defend his ego against the testimony of its own activity's unfortunate results. He will need to guard against this again and again, for its own powers are pathetically inadequate, its own foresight conspicuously absent.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10962 – 6.8.3.82

BN – Z – K1

Behind a self-deceiving facade of pretexts, excuses, alibis, and rationalizations, the ego is forever seeking to gratify its unworthy feelings or to defend them. The ego lies to itself, lies to the man who identifies himself with it, and lies to other men. The ego offers bitter resistance all along the way, disputes every yard of his advance, and is not overcome without incessant struggle against its treacheries and deceptions.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10963EM – 6.8.3.83

BA11 – ZZZ – DXK

The ego lies to itself, lies to the man who identifies himself with it, and lies to other men.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10963 – 6.8.3.83

BA11 – ZZZ – DK1

So long as the ego's rule is preserved, so long will the karmic tendencies which come with it be preserved. But when its rule is weakened they too will automatically be starved and weakened. To start this process, start trying to take an impersonal detached view.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10964 – 6.8.3.84

BN – ZZZ – DK

True altruism of a philosophic kind is not done by the self but through the self, not by the ego but by the Overself using the ego. Few make this grade. Most practise their altruism by blending it with selfish motive or, in other cases, by masking that motive entirely so as not to upset their own or other people's illusion.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10965 – 6.8.3.85

BN – ZZZ – DEK

The Overself is there but the ego intercepts its communication.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10972 – 6.8.3.92

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego is soon appeased by flattery, soon bruised by criticism; but the man who transcends its tyranny is able justly to evaluate both.

The Ego > Psyche > Trickery, cunning of ego

#10976 – 6.8.3.96

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego, which is so quick to complain about other people's bad treatment of it and so slow to confess its own bad conduct, is his first and worst enemy.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10984 – 6.8.3.104

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

The ego will always seek, and find, ways to excuse itself. It will do anything else it can rather than honestly confess its own vileness or weakness or erroneousness. It will cling stubbornly to them rather than admit the need for a thorough change.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10986 – 6.8.3.106

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

When the ego sees a danger to its own continued existence in any proposed move or decision, it creates fears, invents false hopes, and exaggerates difficulties in order to prevent it.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10988 – 6.8.3.108

BA11 – X – DK

If the ego were as prone to condemn itself as it is to justify itself, or to justify others as it is to condemn them, how quick and easy would the quest be.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10992 – 6.8.3.112

B_13 – ZZ – DK

So strong and deep is the hold which the ego has over him, that the flattery which condones that hold is accepted smilingly, whereas the criticism which weakens it is rejected irritably.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10993 – 6.8.3.113

BN – ZZ – K

The ego's cunning endeavour will be to persuade him to ascribe his irritating troubles to anything but the correct primal cause—within himself—and to anyone but the correct primal person—he himself.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10994 – 6.8.3.114

BN – ZZZ – K

The ego knows well how to cover up its ugliest activities with the noblest self-justifications.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10996 – 6.8.3.116

BN – ZZZ – DK

The more he advances intuitively, the more will the ego’s sophistries seek to lure him astray.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#10998 – 6.8.3.118

BN – Z – DK

Alas! the ego pursues him wherever he goes. This is bad enough but when he fails to recognize it and blames other egos only for his troubles it is pathetic and even saddening.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#11002 – 6.8.3.122

B_13 – ZZ – K

The ego senses the peril in which it is placed and resorts to tricks, deceptions, and subterfuges to save itself.

The Ego > Psyche > Defense mechanisms

#11010 – 6.8.3.130

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego's self-flattery keeps out most suggestions that its motives may be tainted, its service not so disinterested as it seems, and its humility a pretentious cloak for secret vanity.

The Ego > Psyche > Self-idolatry

#11023 – 6.8.3.143

BN – ZZZ – K1

The ego's self-love is so strong, its attachment to old attitudes so tenacious, its justification of wrong or foolish deeds so blind, that the likelihood of vanquishing its rule is a thin one. All this shows how absurd is man's complacent self-righteousness and smug virtue.

The Ego > Psyche > Self-idolatry

#11026 – 6.8.3.146

BN – ZZZ – K

It is the ego's self-love which makes us try to defend ourselves in every situation where we are plainly at fault. It is done to justify our actions where consequences have shown that they are grievously wrong.

The Ego > Psyche > Self-idolatry

#11027 – 6.8.3.147

BN – ZZ – K