A man's pride in his own capacity to find truth, gain enlightenment, and achieve purity shuts out the humility needed to let the ego go and let the Overself in.

The Ego > Psyche > Self-idolatry

#11028 – 6.8.3.148

BN – ZZ – DK

Egoism, the limiting of consciousness to individual life as separate from the one infinite life, is the last barrier to the attainment of unity with the infinite life.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11029 – 6.8.3.149

BN – ZZ – DK1

So long as the ego lives in him, so long will all his motives, acts, impulses, and aims be infected with egoism.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11032 – 6.8.3.152

BN – ZZZ – K

Those whose egoism is impenetrable by inspired wisdom or religious injunction must have it punctured by adversity.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11033 – 6.8.3.153

BN – ZZ – K

When his own egoism becomes offensive to himself, and even insufferable, he may regard it as a sign of progress.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11034 – 6.8.3.154

BN – ZZ – K

A man has many burdens to bear at different times during his life, but the heaviest of them all is the burden of his own ego.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11035 – 6.8.3.155

BN – ZZ – DK

The disease of egoitis is neither easily nor quickly cured.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11037 – 6.8.3.157

BN – Z – K

If his egoism is too strong, the highest part of the Overself's light will be quite unable to get through into his consciousness, no matter how fervent his aspiration for it may be.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11041 – 6.8.3.161

BN – Z – DK1

If I love the ego, then I fear other men or the opinion of other men. I will so act as to please them rather than the higher will.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11042 – 6.8.3.162

BN – Z – DK

It is not wrong that we love and serve ourselves—for who else is closer?—but only that we do so by excluding the higher purpose of life.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11043 – 6.8.3.163

BN – Z – DK

From the moment that the lower ego manifested itself, it embarked on a career of ever-expanding separativeness from the other egos and ever-increasing externalization from its sacred source.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11052 – 6.8.3.172

BN – X – DK

The same mixture of egoism and idealism will show in his character through most of the Quest. Only in the more advanced stages will the egoism thin down and down until its final elimination.

The Ego > Psyche > Egoism, egocentricity

#11056 – 6.8.3.176

BN – Z – DK

Our deliverance from the miseries of life hangs solely on our deliverance from the bondage to the ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11057 – 6.8.4.1

BSG_4 – ZZ – DK

One important reason why the great spiritual teachers have always enjoined upon their disciples the need of surrendering the ego, of giving up the self, is that when the mind is continually preoccupied with its own personal affairs, it sets up a narrow limitation upon its own possibilities. It cannot reach to the impersonal truth, which is so different and so distant from the topics that it thinks about day after day, year after year. Only by breaking through its self-imposed pettiness can the human mind enter into the perception of the Infinite, of the divine soul that is its innermost being.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11058 – 6.8.4.2

BN – ZZZ – DK

To all things there is an equivalent price. For awareness of the Overself, pay with the thing that blocks your way—sacrifice the ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11060 – 6.8.4.4

BN – ZZZ – DK

No ordinary man really knows himself. He knows only his idea of himself. The two are not the same. If he wants to know his true self, he must first liberate himself from this false one, this imagined one, this idea.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11062 – 6.8.4.6

BN – ZZ – DK

He identifies himself with all the movements of thought, emotion, or passion—and thus misses his real being.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11063 – 6.8.4.7

BN – ZZ – DM

The ego which gets a man into his troubles is unlikely to get him out of them—unless it reforms, learns, or lets some wisdom in.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11064 – 6.8.4.8

UR_5 – ZZZ – DK

If a man wants continual access to the Overself, he must remember that it is not free; there is a high price to be paid—the price of continual submergence of the ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11066 – 6.8.4.10

BN – ZZZ – DM

Rebirths, memories, occult powers—all these things exist and continue because they perpetuate the ego—the very thing we should try to escape from!

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11072 – 6.8.4.16

BN – Z – DK

Consciousness as ego has cut us off from the Source. But it need not do so forever. Through the quest, we can come closer and closer to the reintegration of a subdued ego with its Source, which will thenceforth act through us.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11073 – 6.8.4.17

BN – ZZ – DK

So long as man is attached to the belief that his ego is real and lasting, or thinks and acts as if it were, so long will he be attached to material possessions and worldly desires. For the one is the root of the other.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11075 – 6.8.4.19

BN – Z – DK

It is not possible for men to live together amicably while the ego rules them. All they can do until this source of all disharmony is itself ruled is to reduce their friction to a minimum by reducing its chief provocations.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11081 – 6.8.4.25

BN – ZZZ – DK

So long as the little self feels itself wise enough to make all its decisions and solve all its problems, so long will there be a barrier between it and the Higher Power.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11084 – 6.8.4.28

BN – Z – DK

A man can hold only one thought at a time. Even when he seems to hold two different ones (by doing two different actions simultaneously), close analysis will show that the ideas are successive but so rapidly as to appear together. Applying this, it follows that it is his holding of the thought of his personal separate ego alone which prevents him achieving identification with the Overself. Is this not said, in another way, by Jesus?

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11087 – 6.8.4.31

BN – Z – DEK

Your handicap is the strong ego, the I which stands in the path and must be surrendered by emotional sacrifice in the blood of the heart. But once out of the way, you will feel a tremendous relief and gain peace.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11089 – 6.8.4.33

BN – ZZ – DK1

Until he learns that his enemy is the ego itself, with all the mental and emotional attitudes that go with it, his efforts to liberate himself spiritually merely travel in a circle.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11090 – 6.8.4.34

BN – ZZ – DK1

We shall discover the truth about what we really are in the measure that we discover the error of believing that we are the ego and nothing more. This discovery will take effect and bring us on the way towards realization and liberation only to the extent that we live it, for philosophy is not philosophy unless it is practised in life.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11096 – 6.8.4.40

BN – ZZ – DK

Man begins his search for the highest Truth with his ego and rises to its higher and higher levels, but in the end he must leave the ego if the Truth is to be found. The manner of finding truth is such that he must leave the ego's limitations and look to its origin, its universal source.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11097 – 6.8.4.41

BA11 – Z – DK

We sit in the ego with all its limitations as in a prison and we do not know that we are prisoners, for we identify ourselves with it and blind ourselves by those very limitations. It is there and it has to be there, but it need not be there to imprison us or to narrow our outlook. The ego imprisons us, for instance, with its memories which keep us steeped in the past when the wisdom of the spirit is to live in the eternal now—which is all we have in reality and which alone is real for neither past nor future possess any reality.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11098 – 6.8.4.42

BN – Z – DEK

The soul’s presence is to be realized, its consciousness is to be attained. But the ego's conceit overshadows the one, its turbulence obstructs the other.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11101 – 6.8.4.45

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego is the centre of conflicts which lead to sorrow. There is no way of liberating ourselves from the latter without prior liberation from the former.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11102 – 6.8.4.46

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

How true is the Bible's metaphorical statement that man shall not look upon the face of God and live. Yes, he, the ego, must die if God is to be present.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11108 – 6.8.4.52

BN – ZZ – DK

So long as his ego asserts its supremacy in everything he does, so long as it arranges everything for him, so long will he be the victim of its own ignorance and blindness.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11111 – 6.8.4.55

BN – ZZZ – DK

There are various obstacles which get in the way of truth but the biggest is the seeker himself—his limitations, his attachment to the ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11113 – 6.8.4.57

B_05 – ZZ – K

No one is keeping him out of this enlightenment except himself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11114 – 6.8.4.58

BN – Z – DK

It is this personal ego which tricks us into believing that it is ourself, our true self, ever grasping and ever desiring, ever creating fresh illusions and false beliefs; it is this ego, with its wily ways, which keeps us from discovery of reality.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11122 – 6.8.4.66

BN – ZZ – DK

While the human entity lives apart from the consciousness of its own real Self, it cannot live in peace. But when it is able to repose completely in that Self, there will be no second thing to draw it away from that peace.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11125 – 6.8.4.69

BN – ZZ – DK

When his various thoughts and feelings begin to appear as objects to his I, it is a welcome sign that he is no longer so bound to his ego as before.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11128 – 6.8.4.72

BN – X – DK

Such is the separative ego's hold on most men that although they carry the divine treasure with them they regard it not.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11129 – 6.8.4.73

BN – X – DK

When the mind is clogged by memories, hoarded from the ego's past experience, it cannot free itself from the ego, and "come home".

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11130 – 6.8.4.74

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The patterns of habit in thinking and behaviour become so rigid with time that the introduction of a new style of life, however desirable it may seem, initiates a long struggle.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11132 – 6.8.4.76

BN – Z – DK

We are prisoners of our ego because we are prisoners of our past.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11133 – 6.8.4.77

BN – ZZ – DK

The ego is caught in its own theories and concepts, held prisoner by its own ideas. These are not necessary to enlightenment.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11134 – 6.8.4.78

BN – ZZ

Most people are prisoners of their own opinions and judgements, their own point of view. The intellectual humility required either to loosen or even to let go what they hold so tightly and often defend so arrogantly or ignorantly, is one of the first qualities they need to cultivate if they are to begin the quest of truth aright. So long as men are so strongly attached to their own personal wills and limited judgements, they cannot be expected to heed the impersonal teachings and intellect-transcending injunctions of the great prophets.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11135 – 6.8.4.79

BN – ZZZ

The constant movement of thoughts and the ego's fascination with itself hide from us the divine Overself, from which both are derived.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11138 – 6.8.4.82

BN – ZZ – DK

Wherever he goes he brings this ego with him, looks at the world with the same eyes, the same desires and limitations.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11141 – 6.8.4.85

BN – ZZ – DK

Even if the highest truth were to appear in all its glorious fullness before his mind, he would be unable to recognize it for what it is—much less understand it—if there had been no preparation or purification for it. He would not even be free to look at it if the ego held him tight in its encircling network.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11143 – 6.8.4.87

BN – ZZ – DEK

The ego gets in its own way and shuts out the truth. It is so immersed in itself that it sees nothing else than its own views, its own opinions. And this is true even when it apparently undergoes a mental change or emotional conversion, for in the end it is the ego itself, which sanctions the newly accepted idea or belief.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11146 – 6.8.4.90

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

His way to the goal is blocked by the ego; his glimpses of truth are subverted by the ego; his aspiration for the Overself is contradicted by the desires of the ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11151 – 6.8.4.95

BN – Z – DEK

Memory creates for us the patterns, traditions, values, and habits by which we live. It is the dominant authority. But it is also the tyrant which keeps us captive and denies us freedom—a deprival which effectually prevents the finding of truth and effectually builds a barrier to reality. Anyone can remember the ego-coloured past in this way, but only the sage can forget it and dissolve all these patterns.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11157 – 6.8.4.101

BN – Z – DK

Every discussion which is made from an egoistic standpoint is corrupted from the start and cannot yield an absolutely sure conclusion. The ego puts its own interest first and twists every argument, word, even fact to suit that interest.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11158 – 6.8.4.102

BA11 – ZZZ – DK1

I am dubious whether anyone can be perfectly sincere if his actions do not come from this deeper source. He may believe that he is, and others may believe the same of him, but since his actions must come from his ego, which is itself spawned by deception and maintained by illusion, how can they achieve a standard which depends on complete truth and utter reality?

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11159 – 6.8.4.103

BN – ZZ – K1

To describe the ego as "little" and the personality as "petty" is to look at it from outside, where it is lost among such a multitude of others; but to look at it from within the man himself is to find it vastly important, dominating his consciousness, a giant holding him down. It is there, and after all the verbal analyses which reduce it to nothing, its presence reasserts itself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11160 – 6.8.4.104

BSG_4 – P – DE

With one part of himself he honestly seeks truth, but with another part he tries to evade it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11162 – 6.8.4.106

BA12 – ZZ – DK

The ego may in the beginning miss a truth, if it is unwelcome and unpleasant, by subconscious aversion to it. In that case it will look anywhere else than the right place if it claims to be a seeker.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11164 – 6.8.4.108

B_05 – ZZZ – K

He tries to avoid recognizing that he is held prisoner in ignorance and in suffering by his own ego, that its condition is unhealthy and unbalanced, and that he must find some way to liberate himself from its thraldom.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11170 – 6.8.4.114

BN – ZZ – DM*

The ego, with its petty conceit and private desires, shuts him in on itself and cuts him off from the universal life, with its truth and reality and power.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11175 – 6.8.4.119

BN – ZZ – DK

It is an old, known fact that the truth can be very disturbing and that is why it is more honoured than practised. Let us ask, To whom is it disturbing? and we shall find that the answer refers to the personal ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11179 – 6.8.4.123

BN – ZZZ – DK

Men are locked up within their little egos. They are in prison and do not know it. Consequently they do not ask, much less seek, for freedom.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its importance

#11184 – 6.8.4.128

BN – ZZ – DK

We have to accept the fact that most people have an immense capacity for being quite comfortable within the limits of the ego, and have no wish to get away from them to a higher level.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Why most people won't do it

#11186 – 6.8.4.130

BN – ZZ – DK

Engrossed as they are in personal and family life, they fail to open themselves to the delicate radiation from their innermost being and live as if it were not there.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Why most people won't do it

#11199 – 6.8.4.143

BN – ZZ – DK

It is perhaps not that the multitudes of people are evil as that they get so immersed in working for a livelihood, rearing a family, finding some pleasures, that the little ego provides their sole being. How much they lose if they attend only to this and never to the supreme question: Why am I here?

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Why most people won't do it

#11201 – 6.8.4.145

BN – ZZZ – DK*

They are so accustomed to thinking in terms of the ego that it seems impossible (to them) to think in any other way.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Why most people won't do it

#11202 – 6.8.4.146

BN – ZZZ – K

If we succeed in detaching ourselves from the claims of past memories and the anticipations of future results, we succeed in detaching ourselves from the ego. This is a practical method of reaching the goal, a veritable yoga-path.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11206 – 6.8.4.150

BN – ZZZ – DEK

To surrender the ego is to surrender the thought of it, and this is done by stilling the mind whenever, in daily life, one becomes self-conscious. This silenced, ego vanishes…

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11207E – 6.8.4.151

BSG_4 – P – DEK

Until it is brought to his attention, he may not know that the idol at whose feet he is continually worshipping is the ego. If he could give to God the same amount of remembrance that he gives to his ego, he could quite soon attain, and become established in, that enlightenment to which other men devote lifetimes of arduous effort.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11209 – 6.8.4.153

BN – ZZ – DK*

Whatever helps to lead him out of the ego's tyranny, be it an idea or a situation, an induced mood or a particular service, is worth trying. But it will be easier, and the result more successful, to the extent that he releases himself from his past history.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11211 – 6.8.4.155

BN – ZZ – DK

If he could stop being in love with his ego and start being in love with his Overself, his progress would be rapid.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11213 – 6.8.4.157

BN – Z – DK

There is a useful technique to help attain this purpose. It is to refuse to identify oneself, one’s “I,” with the personal ego. This calls for frequent, if momentary, awareness of thoughts, emotions, and the body. It can be done at any time in any place and is not to be regarded as a meditation exercise.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11215 – 6.8.4.159

BN – Z – DK

The more he tries to fight the ego, the more he thinks about it and concentrates on it. This keeps him still its prisoner. Better is it to turn his back on it and think about, concentrate on the higher self.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11217 – 6.8.4.161

BN – Z – DK

A man begins to come into his own the day he rejects the ego. His rejection may not last more than a minute or two, for the false self is strong enough to reclaim its victim. But the process has started which will bring it to an end.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11218 – 6.8.4.162

BN – Z – DEK

It is more prudent to be habitually suspicious of his own ego, and its motives, than not.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11220 – 6.8.4.164

BN – ZZZ – DK

The amount of energy he pours into sustaining the ego and holding to illusions to his own detriment could just as well be poured into sustaining a quest of the Overself to his own gain.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11221 – 6.8.4.165

BN – Z – DK

The ego has enthroned itself. It asserts its supremacy in all matters. This situation may be allowed for ordinary people in the ordinary affairs of everyday living but it cannot be allowed for truth-seeking people in the graver issues of the quest. The seeker must indeed cultivate the habit of looking on his ego as his enemy, must resist rather than flatter it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11225 – 6.8.4.169

B_05 – ZZZ – DK

The actual change-over from being the ego to becoming the watcher of the ego is a sudden one.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11228 – 6.8.4.172

BN – ZZ – DK

It is much easier to identify with our own ego than with the Overself. This is why incessant return to these ideas and exercises is needed.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11231 – 6.8.4.175

BN – Z – DK

My dear Ego: "It is obvious that in this world I cannot live without you. Your presence is overwhelming, fills every instinct, thought, feeling, and action. But it is also obvious that I cannot live with you. The time has come to adjust our relationship. So I have one request to make of you. Please get out of my way!".

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11232 – 6.8.4.176

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

We cannot help living in a human ego and feeling its wishes and desires, for most of us are infatuated with it. But it can be put in its place and kept there, first through a profound understanding, next through a lofty aspiration to transcend it, and third through a following of the Quest until its very end.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11233 – 6.8.4.177

BN – ZZ – DK*

In analysing ourselves we are helping to crush the ego. But this is true only if analysis is unbiased and if it is balanced by the Short Path attitudes. Otherwise there is excessive and morbid preoccupation with oneself, which suits the ego very well!

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11234 – 6.8.4.178

BN – ZZZ – DK

In all situations he must strive to distinguish and follow the lead of the Soul, subduing the clamour of the ego. The former will so guide him that all things will work out for the best in his spiritual welfare, the latter may merely make bad situations worse.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11235 – 6.8.4.179

BN – Z – DK

What is in your heart? Ramakrishna's was full of the Divine Mother, as he called God. Before long he found her. Saint Francis of Assisi gave humility highest place in his own. He became the humblest man of his time. Fix an ideal in your heart. That is the first step to finding it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11236 – 6.8.4.180

BN – Z – DK

The work begins by removing whatever obstructs the mind from viewing the truth, those qualities and conditions which made it impossible to see Reality as it is.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11242 – 6.8.4.186

BA11 – ZZ – DK

Those who feel frustrated because of the absence of mystical experience in their lives, needlessly depress themselves. For their progress to higher values, their rise above egoism to principle, their choice of true well-being over mere pleasure, show their response to the Overself and mark their real advancement better than any transient emotional experience.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11245 – 6.8.4.189

BN – Z – DK

We have to learn to recognize the individual self, the person, the ego, as a mind-made thing and therefore to withdraw from it, away from it, to put space between ourselves and it, and to detach ourselves more and more and more from it. As this process develops we come more and more into the Truth, the enlightenment.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11246 – 6.8.4.190

BN – ZZZ – DK

The more we try to put impersonality into our thought and life, the less we are likely to identify ourselves with the ego. This makes way, makes room, gives place for that which is behind the ego to begin to manifest itself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11247 – 6.8.4.191

UR_3.2 – ZZ – DK

That Consciousness which men seek so variously in ecstasy or despair is already there but covered up, suffocated by their own little self-consciousness. Day and night they stay only in the narrow, the personal, be it again in ecstasy or despair. They run to others, to gurus or gods, begging to be liberated. But in the end they have to liberate themselves.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > As genuine spiritual path

#11249 – 6.8.4.193

BN – ZZ – DEK

The tightness with which we hold on to the ego and thus separate ourselves from the Overself’s life and the tenseness with which we shut ourselves in the old miserably limited existence are the results of habit. If we are to escape from it into the free creativity of the greater life, we will have to break its vicious circle. This may be enforced upon us by the shock of drastic events, or it may be made possible for us by the grace of an illumined human being, or it may be achieved by us through the determined arousal of a desperate will. Whichever way it happens, it will be the beginning of the end for the ego and the beginning of the best for ourselves.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11250 – 6.8.4.194

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

"Blessed are the poor in spirit" said Jesus. What did he mean? To be "poor" in the mystical sense is to be deprived of the possession of the ego, that is, to become ego-free.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11252 – 6.8.4.196

B_11 – ZZ – DK

It was a wise teacher who said to me: ‘Do not demand from human beings a selflessness they are not capable of giving; demand only that they understand this is the direction toward which the divine World-Idea is pushing them. Through one way or another, they will come in the end to suffer attrition of the ego until it is finally reduced to complete subservience to Overself’.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11253 – 6.8.4.197

BN – ZZZ – DK

He will advance most on the Quest who tries most to separate himself from his ego. It will be a long, slow struggle and a hard one, for the false belief that the ego is his true self grips him with hypnotic intensity. All the strength of all his being must be brought to this struggle to remove error and to establish truth, for it is an error not merely of the intellect alone but also of the emotions and of the will.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11254 – 6.8.4.198

BA11 – ZZ – DK1

When all of a man's thoughts are put together, this total constitutes his ego. By giving them up to the Stillness, he gives up his ego, denies his self, in Jesus' phrase.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11256 – 6.8.4.200

BSG_4 – ZZ – DK

"Lose yourself if you would find yourself", said Jesus. Lose the false conception that the self is something by itself, able to stand separate and alone, capable of being regarded as an object knowable by you, the subject. Let this untruth go, and you will find the truth. Cease this identification with the personality, and you will find the Overself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11259 – 6.8.4.203

B_11 – ZZZ – DEK

The ego will 'always' strive to preserve itself, using when it must the most secret ways, full of cunning and pretense, camouflage and deceit. It takes into itself genuinely spiritual procedures and perverts or misuses them for its own advantage.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11263E – 6.8.4.207

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

It is a matter of changing his self-image, of moving over from the picture of a personal ego to the non-attempt to form any image at all, remaining quite literally free from any identification at all. It is not an active work of negating ego but a passive one of simply being, empty Being! For the ego will 'always' strive to preserve itself, using when it must the most secret ways, full of cunning and pretense, camouflage and deceit. It takes into itself genuinely spiritual procedures and perverts or misuses them for its own advantage.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11263 – 6.8.4.207

BN – ZZ – DEK

No one else can do for a man what Nature is tutoring him to do for himself, that is, to surrender the ego to the higher self. Without such surrender no man can attain the consciousness of that higher self. It is useless to look to a master to make for him this tremendous change-over within himself. No master could do it. The proper way and the only way is to give up this pathetic clinging to his own power, to his own littleness, and to his own limitations. To turn so completely against himself demands from a man an extreme emotional effort of the rarest kind and also of the most painful kind. For to surrender the ego is to crucify it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11267 – 6.8.4.211

BN – ZZZ – DEK

"The truth shall make you free", promised Jesus. What kind of freedom was he talking about? The answer can only be—from the ego! And this is corroborated by his own statements, uttered at other times, concerning the need to die to oneself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11268 – 6.8.4.212

B_11 – ZZ – DK

If he is willing to give the intuitive forces mastery within himself, then he will have to exert his will against the egoistic ones.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11271 – 6.8.4.215

BN – ZZ – DK

Those who are unable or unwilling to destroy the ego's rule from within must suffer its destruction from without. But whereas the first way brings emotional suffering and mental perturbation, the second brings that along with troubles, disappointments, sicknesses, and blows in addition.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11272 – 6.8.4.216

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

Before we can cultivate the best in us, we must crucify the worst in us. The ego must be hung and nailed by degrees if the Overself is to be resurrected in our consciousness. This is why it is so important to cleanse our emotions and correct our thoughts. The desires and the negatives must be overcome to make a way for the Truth, the Beauty, and Goodness.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11276 – 6.8.4.220

B_01 – ZZZ – DK

To die to the ego means that he will free himself from the thought-grooves that usually dominate his life.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11278 – 6.8.4.222

BN – ZZ – DK

What he must do is to renounce the ego with all its pride, its greed and passion, and learn to understand his dependence on the Overself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11279 – 6.8.4.223

BN – ZZ – DK

The desire to continue life in the ego contains all possible desires. This explains why the hardest of all renunciations for which a man can be asked is that of his ego. He is willing even to suffer mortifications of the flesh or humiliations of his pride rather than that last and worst crucifixion.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11284 – 6.8.4.228

BN – X – K1

When his own ego becomes intolerable to him with increasing frequency, he may take this as a good sign that he is moving forward on this road.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11285 – 6.8.4.229

BN – Z – DK1

If this abnegation [of this unbalanced interest in the lower activities of this world] leads to the extreme point of withdrawal from the world then they must even be willing to obey and to take the consequences. But since it is fundamentally an inner thing, it does not necessarily lead a man to take this extreme step—so long as he keeps his inner life and being inviolable even whilst trafficking with the world.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11286E – 6.8.4.230

B_11 – EL1/2 – DEK

Such an achievement [the abnegation of this unbalanced interest in the lower activities of this world] may seem very far off from human possibility and indeed we find in history that not many have either cared, or been able, to realize it, for it is far too painful to the ego. But the metaphysical truths of successive rebirth on earth and of the unreality of time should give some comfort here. The first teaches a great patience while men labour daily at the task of remaking themselves. The second teaches that the Overself is even now ever present with all, that in the eternal Now there is no futurity and that theoretically the possibility of its realization does not necessarily belong to some distant rebirth.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11286E – 6.8.4.230

B_11 – EL2/2 – DEK

If there is any single secret of development which the successful mystic can offer us, it is that the ego must go out of us and we must go out of it!

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11288 – 6.8.4.232

BN – ZZ – DK

Even when no longer afraid of others, a man should yet be afraid of himself—so one of the thinkers of old Rome advised. Until the ego is thoroughly conquered, vigilance will always be necessary.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11291 – 6.8.4.235

BN – ZZ – DK

The wisdom of Psalm 46—”Be still and know that I am God”—may be tested by experiment. For in the ego's silence there will be whispered the revelation we await.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11292 – 6.8.4.236

BN – X – DK

The man who has enough respect for himself to realize that he could (and should) become a better man will find that the line of self-improvement stretches all the way into infinite distance. At what point is he to stop? For in the end, however much he polish and perfect the ego, it must give itself up to the Overself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11293 – 6.8.4.237

BN – ZZ – DEK

Give up the outer illusions and gain the inner reality. Give up considering the body as the self and gain the awareness of Overself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11294 – 6.8.4.238

BN – ZZ – DK

Once the work of purification has advanced sufficiently far, the work of divesting himself of his egoism must begin. It is to be carried on as much by reflection as during action, by meditation as through watchfulness.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11295 – 6.8.4.239

BN – ZZ – DK

Every time he resists the impulse to angry action, or the urge to bitter scolding, he resists the ego. The cumulative result of many such disciplines is to thin down the ego and draw nearer the hour of its final destruction.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11297 – 6.8.4.241

BN – ZZ – DK

This injunction of Jesus meant that he was to give up the old self in order to find the new one, to leave himself as a thinking animal in order to find himself as an intuiting illumined being.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11301 – 6.8.4.245

B_11 – P – K

What is the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son except that he is Man gone away from himself and feeding on the husks of earthly life when the bread of the Overself is being offered him?

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11303 – 6.8.4.247

BN – X – DK

The pushing aggressive will of the personal ego is to be replaced by the passive surrendered will of the overruled ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11307 – 6.8.4.251

BN – Z – DK

We all seek to fulfil ourselves, each in his own way. Let us not seek blindly, but in an awareness as complete as we can muster let us strive to see what we do from a more than personal standpoint.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11312 – 6.8.4.256

B_06 – Z – K

Every attempt to disassociate himself from his ego, to observe it in thought and action, to unbind himself from its desires and lusts will be successful only as it is merciless.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11316 – 6.8.4.260

BN – ZZ – DK

A time must come, whether in this birth or a later one, when the ego must give up the struggle, which is both with itself and the Higher Power at the same time.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11317 – 6.8.4.261

BN – Z – DK

Each experience in this tumultuous world is a chance to get farther from our habitual egoism.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Surrender is necessary

#11318 – 6.8.4.262

BN – ZZ – DK

For all that is talked and written about it, very few ever succeed in making the full mystical surrender of their ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its difficulty

#11319 – 6.8.4.263

BN – Z – K

Only the deepest kind of reflection, or the most exciting kind of mystical experience, or the compelling force of a prophet’s revelation can bring a man to the great discovery that his personal ego is not the true centre of his being.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its difficulty

#11321 – 6.8.4.265

BN – Z – DK1

Should he attempt to repudiate what is the strongest part of himself—the ego—he is likely to find how strongly attached are his desires. He has transferred the object of his attentions from the worldly sphere to the spiritual sphere, but the ego is still active. When his meditation comes to the threshold of Truth, he stops, terrified by the feeling that he is losing his very self. His little personal world is the subject that really interests him.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its difficulty

#11327 – 6.8.4.271

BN – Z – DEK

He believes he is surrendering to his higher self when all the time he is only surrendering to his own ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its difficulty

#11331 – 6.8.4.275

BN – ZZ – 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 > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Its difficulty

#11340EM – 6.8.4.284

BA11 – ZZZ – DXK

The ego is cunning, subtle, insidious. Even when the aspirant has long left a grosser kind of life behind him, it inserts itself into his prayers and meditations alike, and enters most of his inner work.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11344 – 6.8.4.288

BA11 – Z – DM*

The ego easily masquerades as an earnest spiritual seeker.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11345 – 6.8.4.289

B_05 – ZZ – K

If the ego cannot keep him any longer through his animal instincts, it will masquerade as his higher self, flatter him for his lofty aspirations, insert itself into his intuitions, and seek to deceive him as he bends in prayer or sits in meditation.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11349 – 6.8.4.293

BA11 – Z – DK

The ego can take shelter under many lies, illusions, or pretexts, and this of a spiritual as well as worldly kind.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11351 – 6.8.4.295

BN – Z – DK

Messages from his higher Self, messages of guidance and of warning, of instruction and of inspiration, may come frequently to the seeker; and yet he may not receive them aright. If his emotions do not interfere with them, his intellect may do so; if his desires do not interfere, his reasoning may do so. But behind all these interferences stands the ego, sometimes open and obvious but at other times hidden, secretive, and difficult to detect. It lies in wait for every intuitive message and deliberately seizes it during the very moment of manifestation, striving to falsify and to mislead the seeker.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11354 – 6.8.4.298

B_05 – ZZ – K

How easily can the ego clothe itself in false altruism or hide behind high-sounding speech! How quickly can it exploit others to its own advantage! How smoothly can it lead a genuine aspiration into a side-path or, worse, a trap!

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11360 – 6.8.4.304

B_01 – ZZZ – DK*

The ego is sitting at his side waiting to deceive him subtly into making wrong decisions and false interpretations, if they will hinder his growth into truth and thus preserve its own life.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11363 – 6.8.4.307

BN – Z – DK

He would be more prudent to suspect the presence of the ego even in his most spiritual aspirations, reflections, and experiences.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11364 – 6.8.4.308

BN – Z – DK

It is to be expected that the ego will protect itself, even if that has to go so far as engagement in a quest which apparently ends in its own utter abasement.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11365 – 6.8.4.309

BN – Z – DK

He will not escape easily from the ego. If he transfers his interests to the spiritual plane, its imagination will transfer itself there too and flatter him with psychic experiences or visions.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11368 – 6.8.4.312

BN – Z – DK

The ego will creep even into his spiritual work or aspiration, so that he will take from the teaching only what suits his own personal ends and ignore the rest, or only what suits his own personal comfort and be averse to the rest.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11371 – 6.8.4.315

BN – ZZ – DK1

Although the ego claims to be engaged in a war against itself, we may be certain that it has no intention of allowing a real victory to be achieved but only a pseudo-victory…

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11372E – 6.8.4.316

BA11 – P – DEK

Although the ego claims to be engaged in a war against itself, we may be certain that it has no intention of allowing a real victory to be achieved but only a pseudo-victory. The simple conscious mind is no match for such cunning. This is one reason why out of so many spiritual seekers, so few really attain union with the Overself, why self-deceived masters soon get a following whereas the true ones are left in peace, untroubled by such eagerness.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11372 – 6.8.4.316

B_05 – ZZ – DEK1

The ego constantly invents ways and means to defeat the quest's objective. And it does this more indefatigably and more cunningly than ever when it pretends to co-operate with the quest and share its experiences.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11373 – 6.8.4.317

BN – ZZ – DK1

That crafty old fox, the ego, is quite capable of engaging in spiritual practices of every kind and of showing spiritual aspirations of every degree of warmth.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11375 – 6.8.4.319

BN – X – DK1

The ego not only obligingly provides him with a spiritual path to keep him busy for several years and thus keeps him from tracking it down to its lair; it even provides him with a spiritual illumination to authenticate that path. Need it be said that this counterfeit illumination is another form of the ego's own aggrandizement?

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11377 – 6.8.4.321

BN – ZZ – K1

When men mistake their own desires or their own surmises for the will of God, the ego has simply transferred the sphere of its activity from the animal to the pseudo-spiritual.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11383 – 6.8.4.327

BN – Z – DK

However fine the virtues which it cultivates may be, they are still ego-chosen and ego-grown, still self-centered—which may help to interpret Jesus' pronouncement about all our righteousness being as filthy rags to God.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11384 – 6.8.4.328

B_12 – ZZ – K

The ego sits in the saddle all the time that he is travelling the Long Path.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11391 – 6.8.4.335

BN – Z – DK

What he has done is to transfer the ego, with all its self-seeking greed, its arrogant complacency, its colossal ignorance of its own source, from his worldly activities to his spiritual activities. The ego will do everything possible to preserve its existence and devise every possible means to secure its future. This is why the man himself rarely wakes up to what is happening, and why the fates may crush him to the ground to destroy his sleep. If this event takes place while is still comparatively young, when his powers are strong, and not at the close of life, when they are feebler and less effectual, he is indeed fortunate, although he will certainly not think so at the time.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Ego corrupts spiritual aspiration

#11398 – 6.8.4.342

BN – Z – DEK

He knows that it is his duty to look beyond his little ego, to devise withdrawals and enter retreats from the continuous immersion in his own personality. If, in such short periods, he can achieve impersonality and attain anonymity, the result will be beneficial out of all proportion to the time given. And even though it will make him humbler in society, it will lift him to a higher place in heaven.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Humility is needed

#11404 – 6.8.4.348

BN – Z – DK

When a man can forgive God all the anguish of his past calamities and when he can forgive other men and women for the wrongs, they have done him, he will come to inward peace. For this is what his ego cannot do.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 1) > Humility is needed

#11405 – 6.8.4.349

B_14 – ZZZ – DK

The weariness of life which shows itself in the desire not to be born again at all, in the yearning for Nirvanic peace, may come from having endured too deep suffering. But it may also come from having saturated oneself with experiences of all kinds during a series of reincarnations far longer than the average one. It is then really a desire to extinguish the tired ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11409 – 6.8.5.353

BN – ZZZ – DK

How trifling all his earthly successes must seem to a dying man! It is both the irony and tragedy of life that we use up its strictly limited quota of years in pursuits which we come later to see as worthless and in desires which we find bring pain with their fulfilment. The dying man, who sees the cinema-film of his past flash in review before his mental eyes, discovers this irony and feels this tragedy.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11411EM – 6.8.5.355

A250930 – ZZ – DXK

It is both the irony and tragedy of life that we use up its strictly limited quota of years in pursuits which we come later to see as worthless and in desires which we find bring pain with their fulfilment. The dying man, who sees the cinema-film of his past flash in review before his mental eyes, discovers this irony and feels this tragedy.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11411 – 6.8.5.355

BN – ZZZ – DK

When he finds that he has been following his own will even at those times when he believed he was following the higher self’s will, he begins to realize the extent of the ego’s power, the length of the period required for its subdual, and what he will have to suffer before this is achieved.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11412 – 6.8.5.356

BN – ZZ – DK

One day he will feel utterly tired of the ego, will see how cunningly and insidiously it has penetrated all his activities, how even in supposedly spiritual or altruistic activities he was merely working for the ego. In this disgust with his earthly self, he will pray for liberation from it. He will see how it tricked him in the past, how all his years have been monopolized by its desires, how he sustained, fed, and cherished it even when he thought he was spiritualizing himself or serving others. Then he will pray fervently to be freed from it, he will seek eagerly to dis-identify himself and yearn ardently to be swallowed up in the nothingness of God.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11413 – 6.8.5.357

BN – Z – DEK1

All his longings to escape from the prison of the ego and to reach the I AM in himself reflect themselves in his experiments with drink, drugs, sex, adventure, or ambition.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11416 – 6.8.5.360

BN – X – DK

The impulse which impels men to seek truth or find God comes from something higher than their ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11417 – 6.8.5.361

BN – Z – DK

His quest has reached its end when the ego, by the Overself's grace, has come at long last to desire fully and attain successfully its own extinction rather than, as before, its own aggrandizement.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Longing for freedom from ego

#11418 – 6.8.5.362

BN – ZZ – DK

It is not to be expected that anyone can dissociate himself from the false identification with the ego before he has fully become convinced of the ego's unreality.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11422 – 6.8.5.366

BN – Z – DK

"Give up thyself" is the constant injunction of all the great prophets. Before we can understand why this was their refrain, we must first understand the nature of the self about which they were talking. There is in every man a false self—the ego—and the true one—the Overself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11424 – 6.8.5.368

BN – Z – DK*

The ego stands in the way: its own presence annuls awareness of the presence of the Overself. But this need not be so. Correct and deeper understanding of what the self is, proper adjustment between the individual and the universal in consciousness, will bring enlightenment.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11425 – 6.8.5.369

BN – Z – DK

To know what his real I is not, is a first and most important step toward knowing what it really is. Indeed, it has a liberating effect.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11428 – 6.8.5.372

BN – Z – DK

The ego’s rigidity must first be overcome: it shuts up consciousness within itself. If he can become aware of his imprisonment, this will be the beginning of finding freedom from the tendencies and impulses which largely compose it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11429 – 6.8.5.373

BN – ZZ – DK

He must mentally rectify the errors of those instinctive egoistic reactions which the philosophic discipline will make him aware of—an awareness that may come quite soon after they happen or much later.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11430 – 6.8.5.374

BN – ZZ – DK

He must begin by learning that the ego is very much the lesser part of himself, that it must be kept down in its place as an obedient servant, its desires scrutinized and disciplined or even negated, its illusions exposed and removed.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11434 – 6.8.5.378

BN – ZZ – DK

We begin by understanding the ego—a work which requires patience because much of the ego is hidden, masked or disguised. We end by getting free from it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11435 – 6.8.5.379

BN – ZZ – DK

It is easy to recognize some of the attachments from which he must loose himself—the greeds, the lusts, and the gluttonies—but it is not so easy to recognize the subtler ones. These start with attachment to his own ideas, his own beliefs; they end with attachment to his own ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11436 – 6.8.5.380

BN – ZZ – DK

The self-image which he holds may continue to keep him tied or help to set him free.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11438 – 6.8.5.382

BN – X – DK

Both Shankara and Ramana Maharshi blame identification with the body as ignorance, which the first says results in "no hope of liberation" and the second says is "the root cause of all trouble." What they say is unquestionably so. But what else can happen in the beginning except this identification? It is the first kind of identity anyone knows. His error is that he stays at this point and makes no attempt to inquire further. If he did—in a prolonged, sustained, and continued effort—he would eventually find the truth: knowledge would replace ignorance.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11440 – 6.8.5.384

B_13 – P – D

Charity, service, helpfulness, character-building—all such activities are good, but they take and leave the ego as a given fact. They are willing to curb, discipline, correct, reform, polish, or purify the ego, but its permanent and real existence is accepted not only as true but as a part of things as they are in nature.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Knowledge is needed

#11441 – 6.8.5.385

BN – X – DK

So long as we persist in taking the ego at its own valuation as the real Self, so long are we incapable of discovering the truth about the mind or of penetrating to its mysterious depths. It is a pretender, but so long as no enquiry is instituted it goes on enjoying the status of the real Self. Once an enquiry into its true nature is begun in the proper manner and continued as long as necessary, this identification with ego may subside and surrender to the higher.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Tracing ego to its source

#11442 – 6.8.5.386

BN – X – DEK

The ego is always in hiding and often in disguise. It is a cunning creature, never showing its own face, so that even the man who wants to destroy its rule is easily tricked into attacking everything else but the ego! Therefore, the first (as well as the final) essential piece of knowledge needed to track it down to its secret lair is how to recognize and identify it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Tracing ego to its source

#11447 – 6.8.5.391

BA11 – ZZ – DK

When the great battle is over, the Overself will give him back his ego without giving him back its dominance.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Tracing ego to its source

#11448 – 6.8.5.392

BN – ZZ – DK

Each person's life is coloured by his individual attitude. This is shaped by the ego and limits both his experience and his understanding of life. At every stage of the quest, the seeker must try to track the ego to its lair, but only at the final stage can he force it into the open, to be seen at last for what it really is. It had deceived him all along into believing it was the true self.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Tracing ego to its source

#11450 – 6.8.5.394

B_05 – ZZ – DK

The ego knows that if profoundly concentrated attention is directed toward ascertaining its true nature the result will be suicidal, for its own illusory nature would be revealed. This is why it opposes such a meditation and why it allows all other kinds. >>When the ego is brought to its knees in the dust, humiliated in its own eyes, however esteemed or feared, envied or respected in other men's eyes, the way is opened for Grace's influx. Be assured that this complete humbling of the inner man will happen again and again until he is purified of all pride (8.4.430). >>Out of this ego-crushing, pride-humbling experience he may rise, chastened, heedful, and obeisant to the higher will.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Tracing ego to its source

#11452 – 6.8.5.396

BA12 – Z – DEK

Being what it is, a compound of higher and lower attributes which are perpetually in conflict, the ego has no assured future other than that of total collapse. The Bible sentence, A Kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, is very applicable to it: this is why the aspirant must take heart that one day his goal will be reached, even if there were no law of evolution to confirm it—as there is.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11453 – 6.8.5.397

BA12 – ZZ – DK

The journey of life is both an adventure and a pilgrimage to our essential being. All the reincarnations which are necessary to the unfoldment of our character and capacities must be lived through. We pass from body to body to collect experience. The fruit of experience is Enlightenment: the established awareness of the essential being's presence, the Overself or soul. The aspirant must take heart that one day the goal will be reached, even if there were no law of evolution to confirm it—as there is.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11453EM – 6.8.5.397

B_01 – ZZZ – DEK

In this strange experience when his life passes before his mind’s eye like a pageant but he does not feel that the figure he is watching is really himself, he learns the truth—or rather has the possibility of learning it—that even the personal ego is also a changing transitory appearance.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11454 – 6.8.5.398

BN – ZZ – DK

Detachment from the world is not necessarily withdrawing from it. Getting rid of the ego does not mean destroying its existence (for metaphysically it is non-existent, a whirlpool of water) but destroying its dominant power.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11461 – 6.8.5.405

BSG_4 – ZZ – K

We ascribe permanence and bestow reality on the ego, a mistake which leads to all the mistaken thoughts, attitudes, courses, and acts that follow as its effects. But the fact is that no ego can be preserved in perpetuity and that all egos are made up of ephemerally joined together activities. One of the first consequences flowing from this fact is that any happiness which depends on the ego's keeping its united state must break down with its further changes or disunion. Moreover, since the cosmic law dooms all egos to eventual merger in their higher source, a merger which must be preceded by their dissolution if it is to take place at all, their egoistic happiness is likewise doomed.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11462 – 6.8.5.406

BN – ZZ – DEK

All those thoughts and memories which now compose the pattern of his life have to be put aside if he is to deny himself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11464 – 6.8.5.408

BN – ZZ – DK

So long as these varied thoughts hold together, so long is the sense of a separate personality created in the mind. That this is so is shown by mystical experience, wherein the thoughts disappear and the ego with them, yet the true being behind them continues to live.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11466 – 6.8.5.410

BN – ZZ – DK

The subjugation of his ego is a Grace to be bestowed on him, not an act which can be done by him.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > "Dissolution'' of ego

#11469 – 6.8.5.413

BN – X – DK

In that last battle when he comes face to face with the ego, when it has to put off all its protective disguises and expose its vulnerability, he must call upon the help of Grace. He cannot possibly win it by his own powers.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11470 – 6.8.5.414

BN – X – DK

Each person is stuck in his own ego until the idea of liberation dawns on him and he sets to work on himself and eventually grace manifests and puts him on the Short Path.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11471 – 6.8.5.415

BN – X – DK

There would be no hope of ever getting out of this ego-centered position if we did not know these three things. First, the ego is only an accumulation of memories and a series of cravings, that is, thought; it is a fictitious entity. Second, the thinking activity can come to an end in stillness. Third, Grace, the radiation of the Power beyond man, is ever-shining and ever-present. If we let the mind become deeply still and deeply observant of the ego's self-preserving instinct, we open the door to Grace, which then lovingly swallows us.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11473 – 6.8.5.417

BN – Z – DK

The senses which tempt him to go astray from his chosen path of conduct may be subjugated in time by right thoughts. The thoughts which distract him from his chosen path of meditation may be subjugated by persistent effort. But the ego which bars his entry into the kingdom of heaven refuses, and only pretends, to subjugate itself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11474 – 6.8.5.418

BN – Z – DK

That which keeps us busy with one kind of activity after another—mental as well as physical—until we fall asleep tired, is nothing other than the ego. In that way it diverts one's attention from the need of engaging in the supremely important activity—the struggle with and destruction of the ego itself.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11477 – 6.8.5.421

BN – ZZZ – DK

This whittling away of the ego may occupy the entire lifetime and not seem very successful even then, yet it is of the highest value as a preparatory process for the full renunciation of the ego when—by Grace—it suddenly rises up in the heart.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11478 – 6.8.5.422

BN – Z – DK

It is as hard for the ego to judge itself fairly, to look at its actions with a correct perspective as for a man to lift himself by his own braces. It simply cannot do it; its capacity to find excuses for itself is unlimited—even the excuse of righteousness, even the excuse of the quest of truth. All that the aspirant can hope to do is to thin down the volume of the ego's operations and to weaken the strength of the ego itself; but to get rid of the ego entirely is something beyond his own capacity. Consequently, an outside power must be called in. There is only one such power available to him, although it may manifest itself in two different ways, and that is the power of Grace. Those ways are: either direct help by his own higher Self or personal help from a higher man, that is, an illumined teacher. He may call for the first at any time, but he may not rightly call for the second before he has done enough work on himself and made enough advance to justify it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11480 – 6.8.5.424

BN – ZZZ – DEK1

The ego may have to be broken to bits, if necessary, to let the Grace enter in, to open a way through passivity replacing arrogance.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11481 – 6.8.5.425

BN – ZZ – DK

Virtue and compassion thin down the ego but do not confer enlightenment.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11482 – 6.8.5.426

BN – Z – DK

The destruction of our egoism must come from the outside if we will not voluntarily bring it about from the inside. But in the former case it will come relentlessly and crushingly.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11483 – 6.8.5.427

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

When the ego is brought to its knees in the dust, humiliated in its own eyes, however esteemed or feared, envied or respected in other men's eyes, the way is opened for Grace's influx. Be assured that this complete humbling of the inner man will happen again and again until he is purified of all pride.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Grace is needed

#11486 – 6.8.5.430

BN – ZZ – DK1

Who is the seeker on this Quest? It is the ego. And who undergoes all the experiences and develops all the ideas upon it? It is also the ego. Let us not therefore be too hasty in denigrating the ego; it has its place and serves in its place.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Who is seeking?

#11488 – 6.8.5.432

B_05 – ZZ – DK

What or who is seeking enlightenment? It cannot be the higher Self, for that is itself of the nature of Light. There then only remains the ego! This ego, the object of so many denunciations and denigrations, is the being that, transformed, will win truth and find Reality even though it must surrender itself utterly in the end as the price to be paid.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Who is seeking?

#11491 – 6.8.5.435

BN – ZZ – DK1

The attrition of the ego will come out of this incessant struggle against it, but the atrophy of the ego will not. For who is the struggler? It is the ego himself. He will not willingly commit suicide, although he will deceptively allow a steady grinding-down of his more obvious aspects.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Who is seeking?

#11493 – 6.8.5.437

BN – ZZ – DK

The deep realization of the unreality of ego leads at once to sudden enlightenment. But only if this realization is maintained can the enlightenment become more than a glimpse.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11498 – 6.8.5.442

BN – Z – DK

Although the price of attainment, which is the gradual giving up of the lower self, is agonizing because the lower one is the only self we know ordinarily, there is for every such surrender a compensation equal in value at least to what is given up, and actually of more surpassing worth. This compensation is not only a theoretical one, it is a real experience; and at the last, when the whole of the lesser self is surrendered, the only description of it which mere words can give is blissful peace. Since agony of mind cannot coexist with peace, the agony falls away and only the peace remains. The warning must be given, however, that the Higher Self never yields its compensations until the requisite surrender is made. If this is done little by little, which is usually the only way it can be done, then the lovely compensation will follow also little by little.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11499 – 6.8.5.443

BN – Z – DK

When the ego has dwindled away into nothingness, the Overself takes over.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11502 – 6.8.5.446

BN – Z – DK

Not until the ego is completely deflated and falls into the Void will he know, feel, and fully realize the blissfulness of salvation.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11503 – 6.8.5.447

BN – X – DK

As a highly personal "I" competing against other "I"s, there can be only endless friction and intermittent anxiety. As impersonal I-ness, dwelling in the eternal Now, there are none to compete against and nothing even to compete for.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11504 – 6.8.5.448

BN – ZZZ – DK

The selfish interests, which prompt man's action or guide his reflections, are destroyed root and branch in this vast transformation which attends entry into the Overself's life.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11505 – 6.8.5.449

BN – ZZ – DK

A correspondent wrote concerning an experience during meditation: "It was wonderful not to be limited to the personal self—joyful, peaceful, secure, satisfied. It was a revelation that this feeling of "I"-ness which makes one think one is the personal self comes from Reality itself but narrowly restricted down. It is this restriction that must be thrown off, not the I-ness feeling, and then the kingdom of heaven is found."

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11506 – 6.8.5.450

BN – ZZ – K

The degree of ego-attachment which you will find at the centre of a man's consciousness is a fairly reliable index to the degree of his spiritual evolution.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11508 – 6.8.5.452

BN – Z – DK

The egoistic way of viewing life is a narrowing one. It keeps him from what is best, holds him down to what is base, and prevents him from working with the miraculous forces of the Overself. The farther he moves himself away from it and the nearer he moves into the impersonal and cosmic way, the sooner will he receive the benediction of more wisdom, better health, smoother relationships, and grander character.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11509 – 6.8.5.453

BN – Z – DK

When he can look at his life-experience as something that seems to happen to somebody else, he will have a sure sign of detachment.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11512 – 6.8.5.456

BN – Z – DK

When we can release ourselves from the ego's tyranny and relate ourselves to the Overself's guidance, an entirely new life will open up for us.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11513 – 6.8.5.457

BSG_4 – Z – DK

Everything seems lost to a man when he surrenders his own personal will deep in his heart to the higher self, when he abandons his personal aims, wishes, and purposes at its bidding. Yet the truth is that only then is everything gained.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11514 – 6.8.5.458

BN – ZZZ – DK

To nullify the ego is the only way to perceive and identify his real being.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11517 – 6.8.5.461

BN – Z – DK

The unawakened ego submits passively to the lower influences which come to it out of the shadows of its own long past and to the sense-stirring suggestions which come to it out of the surroundings in which it moves. But when it has found and surrendered to the Overself in the heart, this blind, mechanical responsiveness comes to an end and an aroused, enlightened, fully aware, inner rulership replaces it.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11519 – 6.8.5.463

BN – ZZ – DK

Remove the concept of the ego from a man and you remove the solid ground from beneath his feet. A yawning abyss seems to open up under him. It gives the greatest fright of his life, accompanied by feelings of utter isolation and dreadful insecurity. He will then clamour urgently for the return of his beloved ego and return to safety once more—unless his determination to attain truth is so strong and so exigent that he can endure the ordeal, survive the test, and hold on until the Overself's light irradiates the abyss.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11521 – 6.8.5.465

BN – Z – DK1

The illusion of the ego stands behind all other illusions. If it is removed, they too will be removed.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11522 – 6.8.5.466

BN – ZZ – DK1

Only when a man is dispossessed of his ego's rule and repossessed by the Overself's can he really attain that goodness about which he may have dreamed often but reflected seldom.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11524 – 6.8.5.468

BN – Z – DK

The test of spirituality is not to be found in how long a man can sit still in meditation, but in how well he has denied his ego.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11525 – 6.8.5.469

BN – ZZZ – DK

In the hour when the ego falls away from us, there is a feeling of a heavy burden being dropped, a sense of release from a condition now seen to be undesirable. This is naturally followed by a quiet satisfying joy.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11527 – 6.8.5.471

BN – ZZ – DK

To the degree that we loose ourselves from the ego's grip, to that degree we loose ourselves from its mental anxieties and emotional agitations. As its power wanes, our care-free peace waxes.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11531 – 6.8.5.475

BN – ZZ – DK

When we are wholly absorbed in watching a cinema picture to the extent that we forget ourself and our personal affairs, the ego temporarily disappears and ceases to exist for us. This too means, if it means anything at all, that the ego exists only by virtue of its existence in our consciousness. If we exercise ourself in withdrawing attention from the ego, not to bestow it upon a cinema picture but to bestow it upon our own inner being, we may succeed in getting behind the ego and discovering the Witness-self.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11532 – 6.8.5.476

BN – ZZ – DK

If he will have the courage to let the ego-illusion die out, a new and real life will come to birth within his being.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11534 – 6.8.5.478

BN – ZZ – DK

The automatic, constant, and undisciplined thought-movement comes at last to an end. It is the central part of the ego which has surrendered.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11536 – 6.8.5.480

BN – ZZZ – DK

He brings his personality into his thoughts and acts, as everyone does; but even in the next and higher stage, where he becomes a spectator of that personality, it still happens, although in a subtler and diminished way. There is a further stage where ego becomes entirely subservient and consciousness is centered on a still deeper level.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11538 – 6.8.5.482

BN – ZZ – DK

Take away the thoughts and feelings, including the body-thought and the specific I-feeling, and you take away the whole basis of man's personal existence. It is indeed the only mode of his life that he can conceive. After all, the personality is only a series of continuous thoughts, strongly held and centered around a particular body. He who can win the power to free himself from all thoughts, wins the power to free himself from the personal "I"-thoughts. Only such a man has really obeyed Jesus' injunction to lose his life. For what other life has man ordinarily than the personal one? But Jesus also promised a certain reward for successful obedience. He said that such a person would "save" his life. What does this mean? When the thoughts lapse and the finited personality goes, will the man be bereft of all consciousness? No—he will still possess pure consciousness, the deeper life that supports the finited self and sustains its very thoughts.

The Ego > Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > Results of dethroning ego

#11539 – 6.8.5.483

BN – ZZ – DEK

A time comes when he has to exist by himself, when aids, supports, and guides are withdrawn. This happens in meditation, dying, or between births.

From Birth to Rebirth > From Birth to Rebirth > From Birth to Rebirth

#11540 – 6.9.0.1

BN – Z

Whether you ascribe the secrets of happenings in your life to karma, to fate, to other people, to blind processes of Nature, or to any other cause, leave some space for the X-factor, the unknown and unknowable which does not belong to anything which you can measure or comprehend.

From Birth to Rebirth > From Birth to Rebirth > From Birth to Rebirth

#11541 – 6.9.0.2

BN – ZZ – K

Life-in-Itself is infinite and unchanging, but there 'is' an end to the kind of experience undergone by the living entity in its finite human phase.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11542 – 6.9.1.1

A250930 – Z – K

Just as sound goes back into silence but may emerge again at some later time, so this little self goes back into the greater being from which it too may emerge again at another time.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11543 – 6.9.1.2

A250930 – Z – K

We worry ourselves through the days of an existence which is itself but a day. A profound sadness falls on the heart when it realizes the transient nature of all worldly things and all human being.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11544 – 6.9.1.3

A250930 – Z

If decay and disintegration were not present at some stage, if our life spans were extended to say double their present length, then the old would outnumber all other sections of society. Stasis would overwhelm culture because the bodily slowdown would reflect itself mentally. The World-Mind had a better idea.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11545 – 6.9.1.4

A250930 – Z

It would be a curious state of affairs if the sole purpose of life were to be death, a cessation of all interest in all the activities included under the heading "human existence." Has the divine intelligence nothing better to offer us?

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11547 – 6.9.1.6

A250930 – ZZZ

Even stars must die one day, more violently and dramatically than most human beings, for even they come under the law that whatever had a beginning must also have an ending.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11548 – 6.9.1.7

A250930 – Z – DK

It is not so much because death deprives man of his possessions and relations that he dreads it, as the possibility that it deprives him of his consciousness—that is, his self, his ego.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11550 – 6.9.1.9

A250930 – Z

Those who deplore, lament, or wail at the inevitability of death are viewing it in a very narrow, short-sighted way. The more mature ought to be thankful that we humans are not condemned to remain forever confined to a single body: this would indeed become a source of anxiety, if not of hopelessness.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11551 – 6.9.1.10

A250930 – Z

The more they enjoy the world the more they suffer when they leave it—unless they have learnt to put detachment behind the enjoyment.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11553 – 6.9.1.12

A250930 – Z

No force can be destroyed; it can only be rechannelled. Life is a force; death is its rechannelling.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11554 – 6.9.1.13

A250930 – Z

The innermost being of man, his mysterious Overself, links him with God. It does not change with time nor die with the years. It is eternal.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11555 – 6.9.1.14

BN – Z – DK

Electrical fields have been detected by the use of newly developed micro-volt-meters around all living things, but there was no field around a dead man. Many years ago in the 'The Quest of the Overself' the existence of an electromagnetic connection between the photograph of a man and the man himself was revealed, and its disappearance on his death was also recorded. Thus science begins to offer a basis for a part of our original statement.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11556 – 6.9.1.15

A250930 – Z

We are tenants in this rented house of the body. We have no certainty of possession. There is no lease on parchment paper with a government stamp to guarantee even a single year's holding.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11557 – 6.9.1.16

A250930 – Z

Individuated life is forever doomed to die whereas the ALL which receives the dying can itself never die.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11558 – 6.9.1.17

A250930 – Z

The voyage of a man's life always ends in the port of death. Let him not forget this when tempted by fortune into undue elation or tossed by misfortune into undue misery.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11559 – 6.9.1.18

A250930 – Z

This dismal fact is the mark on all things, and creatures: that they pass away, have a transient existence, and in this absolute sense lack reality. They appear for a while, seem substantial and eventful, but are in truth prolonged mirages. If this were all the story it would be melancholy enough. But it is not. 'That' whence they came, to which they go back, does 'not' pass away. That is the real, that is the consciousness which gave the universe, of which 'we' are a part, its existence. Out of that stems this little flower in each life which is the best, highest self. If we search for it and discover it, we recover our origin, return to our source, and 'as such' do not pass away. Yes, the forms are lost in the end but the being within them is not.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11560 – 6.9.1.19

A250930 – ZZ – DK

Ordinarily, the date and even the place where one is to die is preordained.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11561 – 6.9.1.20

A250930 – Z

Dying into annihilation is one thing but dying into another form of consciousness is quite different. It is the latter which happens at the passing away of the life-force from the body.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11562 – 6.9.1.21

A250930 – Z – DK

If the thought of death horrifies so many people, the thought of the void—of the utter annihilation of ego, of the abandonment of everything and of the cessation of suffering, frustration, and anxiety which belong to life in the world—is a welcome idea for those who think more deeply. But since life is only partly suffering, since there are also joys and satisfactions in it and positive values which ought not to suffer destruction, a better balanced view is provided by philosophy and that is that consciousness, real consciousness, cannot die, but only returns to its ultimate source.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11563 – 6.9.1.22

A250930 – Z

A better balanced view is provided by philosophy and that is that consciousness, real consciousness, cannot die, but only returns to its ultimate source.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11563E – 6.9.1.22

UR_5 – ZZZ – K

We ought to be glad that we do not live forever. It is a frightening thought. If there were no death we would go on and on and on, captives in the body, having tried all experiences which promised much but in the end yielded nothing. No, it is good that in the end we are released from the physical tomb, as Plato called it, and will be able to enjoy a period of dignified rest until we plunge back again into the next re-embodiment.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11564 – 6.9.1.23

A250930 – Z – DK

What man undergoes in his physical life seems so real, so lasting, and so intimate—yet it is only a brief episode in the immensely larger span of his cosmic cycle.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11566 – 6.9.1.25

A250930 – Z – DK

Since death is the certain future of all men, being an unalterable feature of the World-Idea, and since life would be intolerable if they were not given such pauses to recuperate from its demands, and lastly since there is nothing they can do to avoid it, they might as well discard the negative but common way of looking at it.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11567 – 6.9.1.26

A250930 – Z

The sadness of a withered flower, its head wilted, its stem shrivelled, its leaves dry corpses, is a sober reminder of beauty's fragility and our own fatal destination.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11569 – 6.9.1.28

A250930 – Z

Why talk only of rebirth? Do we not experience death just as often?

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11570 – 6.9.1.29

A250930 – Z

The end of life, as of journeys, is contained in its beginning.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11571 – 6.9.1.30

A250930 – Z

The pillage of time can be avoided by no one. It takes his years, and in the end his life.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11574 – 6.9.1.33

A250930 – Z

The confrontation with death is not a pleasant prospect for anyone who is not in a condition of extreme suffering of some kind, emotional or physical. The thought of being parted from everything and everyone seems hideous. And yet, in the event itself, there may happen a beautiful, smooth passing-out.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11575 – 6.9.1.34

A250930 – Z

So long as man listens to his little ego alone, and lets the voice of the Overself remain unheard and unknown, so long will all his cunning and his caution avail him little in the end when the body has to be left and the mind must return to its own proper sphere.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11576 – 6.9.1.35

A250930 – ZZ – DK

The inner work of philosophy results in liberation from the fear of death—whether the death which comes naturally through old age or that which comes violently through war.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11577 – 6.9.1.36

A250930 – ZZ – DK

A time comes when the prudent person, feeling intuitively or knowing medically that he has entered the last months or years of his life, ought to prepare himself for death. Clearly an increasing withdrawal from worldly life is called for. Its activities, desires, attachments, and pleasures must give way more and more to repentance, worship, prayer, asceticism, and spiritual recollectedness. It is time to come home.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11578 – 6.9.1.37

A250930 – ZZZ – DK1

Nobody has to teach us to hold on to life and to be repelled by the thought of our death. Why?

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11579 – 6.9.1.38

A250930 – Z

The ordinary human attitude towards death pushes its very thought as far from oneself as possible, prefers not to consider it; the unpleasantness and distress, possibly the pain, which too often accompany the crossing-over are too unwelcome, if not unbearable.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11581 – 6.9.1.40

A250930 – Z

Even a little perception of, or faith in, the World-Idea redeems the littleness of so many human lives, and at their end, in dying moments, becomes tremendously important.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11582 – 6.9.1.41

BN – X – DK

If we have all had many many previous lives on earth, we have also had many many previous deaths on earth. The actual experience of dying must leave some residual lesson or meaning or message behind in the subconscious.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11584 – 6.9.1.43

A250930 – Z

We who find ourselves in old age with brittle bones and shrunken flesh, with wrinkled face and greyed hair, may find this a depressing experience. But like every other situation in life there is another way to look at it—perhaps in compensation for what we suffer. And that is to sum up the lessons of a lifetime and prepare ourselves for the next incarnation so that we shall better perform the necessary work on ourselves when that comes.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11585 – 6.9.1.44

A250930 – Z – DK

It is not pleasant to think of the decay which overtakes the faculties of so many persons who live into their seventies or eighties, yet it is a necessary thought for those who are only half that age or less to entertain. It may act as a reminder or even as a spur to quicken their pace upon the Quest.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11586 – 6.9.1.45

A250930 – ZZ

It was a man very shrewd, very intelligent, very well educated, a lawyer by profession who, while he was convalescing from a heart attack, said to me, "I have been very ambitious, but I failed in my ambitions; only now however do I see that all that, the ambition and the work and the efforts which followed it and depended on it, was futile activity, mere agitation, a filling up of time." He died a year or two later, not a happy man. He had not been without spiritual feelings and intuitions, but his weaknesses, his sensuality, and his ambition overcame him until it was too late—until the shadow of death became his tutor.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11587 – 6.9.1.46

BN – Z

Life is a preparation for death, just as death is a preparation for re-entry into life.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11588 – 6.9.1.47

A250930 – Z – DK

There is a part of himself which cannot die, cannot pass into annihilation. But it is very deep down. The sage encounters it before bodily death and learns to establish his consciousness therein. The others encounter it during some phase in the after-death state.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11590 – 6.9.1.49

A250930 – Z – DK

Much confusion has been caused, and much atheism generated, by the very limited knowledge and very large ignorance of many expounders of popular religion and spiritualistic cults. They teach that the human being, after a first short appearance on this planet for an insignificant period (for what is seventy years or so against the millions of years which geology proclaims as its history?) will pass into a post-mortem state wherein it will dwell forever, that is, for all eternity. That the little ego with all its attributes and qualities, will keep the personal identity and the personal existence of that brief appearance on earth unchanged, congealed into permanency, outliving the earth itself, reunited with family and friends, finding itself among primitive people of the Iron Age and among the cave-dwellers, is a ridiculous notion. It is so utterly unscientific an idea, so appallingly opposed to real religion, as to be ludicrous.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11591 – 6.9.1.50

A250930 – Z

The multitude are brought up to be pleased with the prospect of living (after death) in eternity (as egos). But a remnant who have pondered long and deeply on what this really means shudder at the same prospect.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11592 – 6.9.1.51

A250930 – Z

The eternity which we are supposed to enter after death, one where a particular form and ego are supposed to be preserved forever, is absurd. But there is a true eternity where form and ego, time and space, are transcended.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11593 – 6.9.1.52

A250930 – Z

Since the Overself is outside time it is also outside events. Nothing happens in it or to it.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11594 – 6.9.1.53

BN – Z – DK

This little bit of existence which is mine will not last. The consciousness will be removed from this world, the body will be destroyed, the relationships will be slowly or abruptly severed.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11597 – 6.9.1.56

BN – Z

With death, consciousness takes on a new condition but does not pass into mere emptiness, is not crumbled away with the fleshly brain into dust. No! It survives because it is the real being of a man.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11598 – 6.9.1.57

A250930 – ZZ – DK

The same destiny which brought us to birth will bring us to death. And just as a drama of different phases of consciousness unfolded itself after birth, so a drama of changes in consciousness will unfold itself after death. It is not annihilation that we ought to fear, for that will not happen, but rather the evil in our own self, and the pain that follows in the train of that evil as a shadow follows a man in the sunlight.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11599 – 6.9.1.58

A250930 – Z – DEK

The shadow being which emerges from the body at death, which resembles the body and lives for a while an independent existence in the world of spirits, is doomed to decay and die in its own turn.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11600 – 6.9.1.59

BN – Z

Whoever has been freed from the demands of his earthly self, and from the desires of his ignorant self, does not need to return here after passing into the disembodied state.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11601 – 6.9.1.60

BN – Z – DK

Life between incarnations consists of a dream-like state followed by a period resembling deep sleep. There is, however, no remembrance of one's former birth upon emerging from this state.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11602 – 6.9.1.61

A250930 – Z – DK

The difference between life as we ordinarily know it and as it appears between incarnations is that here we have an apparent mixture of two worlds, the mental and the phenomenal, whereas there only the former exists.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11603 – 6.9.1.62

A250930 – Z – DK

We pass through the dream and deep sleep states after death just as we do before it.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11604 – 6.9.1.63

A250930 – Z – DM

With the understanding of life in the body comes the knowledge of what life is without the body, that is, death. Both are existences in Mind, which is their reality.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11605 – 6.9.1.64

A250930 – Z – DK

When the decreed time comes the body is discarded but the mind remains. It passes through varied experiences and finally sleeps them off. After a while it awakes deeply refreshed. Then the old propensities slowly revive and it returns to this world, putting on a new body in new surroundings.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11606 – 6.9.1.65

A250930 – ZZZ – DK

Concealed behind the passing dream of life there is a world of lasting reality. All men awaken at the moment of death but only a few men are able to resist falling at once into the astral dream. These are the few who sought to die to their lower selves whilst they were still alive. These are the mystics who enter reality.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11607 – 6.9.1.66

BN – Z – DK

Whole scenes out of the years from childhood to the present unwind themselves during the post-death experience before the spirit's mental gaze.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11609 – 6.9.1.68

A250930 – Z

Every unfulfilled desire acts as an attractive force to draw us back to earth again after every death.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11610 – 6.9.1.69

BN – X – DK

So hard are the lessons which earth-life forces us to learn, so hard its sufferings, that it is only fair to say that the bliss to which we shall emerge after leaving it, or even now in mystic states, is not less in any way.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11612 – 6.9.1.71

BN – Z – DK

I am sorry to say that the theosophy of latter days has over-emphasized the value of individuality in contrast to the theosophy of Blavatsky, who knew the truth. Let me tell you that the so-called astral plane is equivalent to the dreamworld and nothing more. Hence the after-death state is just like a very vivid dream, after all. Therefore in the true esoteric school we do not pay much attention to such matters but concern ourselves with life here and now, on this earth, with which we have to deal whether we like it or not.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11613 – 6.9.1.72

A250930 – Z

Our troubles are but transitory, whereas our spiritual hopes survive the incarnations and bridge the gaps between births.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11614 – 6.9.1.73

BA11 – ZZ – DK

This dream-like progress after death is not valueless. It acts as a reminder during each pre-birth of the true purpose of life.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11616 – 6.9.1.75

A250930 – ZZ – DK

If you kill a man, the Law of Consequences (Karma) compels you to carry that man's corpse with you wherever you go. At first you do it in memory pictures that create fear of punishment, but after death you will 'see' the victim and 'hear' his cries all over again.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11618 – 6.9.1.77

A250930 – Z

How short a time does an animal need for the rest period between its births by contrast with that needed between human births! In its case just months, in the human case, more years than it lived on earth.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11620 – 6.9.1.79

BN – X – DK

The sense of time between incarnations varies. Five minutes to one is a hundred years to another.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11621 – 6.9.1.80

A250930 – ZZZ – K

We leave the body with the first death and the ego with the second death. But this is not the end. In the Overself we find our final being.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > Continuity, transition, and transformation

#11623 – 6.9.1.82

BN – Z – DK

When the end of life comes, and we go out of it like a candle in the wind, what then happens depends upon our character, our prevailing consciousness, our preparedness, and our last thoughts.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11624 – 6.9.1.83

BSG_4 – Z – DK

I have witnessed some advanced souls going through the process of passing to another sphere of consciousness, the process we call death, who spread mental sunshine around so that the bereaved ones gathered at the bedside felt it as a consoling counterbalance to their natural human grief. The truth made some kind of impression upon them that this universal event in Nature can actually be a change to brighter, happier, and freer existence.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11625 – 6.9.1.84

BN – ZZ – DK*

The anonymous young airman who wrote to his mother just before he was killed in battle: "I have no fear of death; only a queer elation," possessed something more than mere courage. For the time at least he had passed over from self-identification with the body to self-identification with the mind.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11626 – 6.9.1.85

BN – X – DK

The aspirant whose efforts to attain inner freedom and union with the Overself while living seem to have been thwarted by fate or circumstances, may yet find them rewarded with success while dying. Then, at the very moment when consciousness is passing from the body, it will pass into the Overself.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11627 – 6.9.1.86

BN – Z – DK

If there is any loss of consciousness during the change called death, it is only a brief one, as brief or briefer than a night's sleep. Many of the departed do not even know at the time what has really happened to them and still believe themselves to be physically alive. For they find themselves apparently able to see others and hear voices and touch things just as before. Yet all these experiences are entirely immaterial, and take place within a conscious mind that has no fleshly brain.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11629 – 6.9.1.88

BN – ZZ – DK1

The dying man should cross his arms over his chest with interlaced fingers. He should withdraw the mind from everything earthly and raise it lovingly in the highest aspiration.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11630 – 6.9.1.89

BN – Z – K1

This is the way a man may best die—while resting on a chair or couch or sleeping in a bed, a peaceful expression on his face as if seeing or hearing something of unusual beauty, a pleased expression around the mouth.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11631 – 6.9.1.90

BN – Z – K1

It is a teaching in both India and China that by concentrating his thoughts during his dying moments on the name of his spiritual leader with full faith, undivided ardour, and sincere deep attention, a man saves himself some or all of the post-mortem purificatory torments that he would otherwise have to undergo. It is also written that if he prefers to concentrate on the kind of environment in which his next birth is to appear, he contributes toward its possible realization.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11632 – 6.9.1.91

BN – X – DK1

Death is the great revealer. In that vivid but dreamlike experience which follows it, each man is shown what he has 'really' done with his earth-life, what he 'should' have done with it, and what he failed to do with it.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11634 – 6.9.1.93

A250930 – ZZ – DK

Just when life is ebbing fast away, when death is vividly in attendance, the long-sought but little found state of enlightenment may arise and accompany the event.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11635 – 6.9.1.94

BN – Z – DK

The process of dying may become a fulfilment of long years of aspiration for the quester or a veritable initiation into the soul for the ordinary man.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11636 – 6.9.1.95

BN – Z – DEK

There is a particular moment while a person is dying when the Overself takes over the entire process, just as it does when he is falling asleep. But if he clings involuntarily and through inveterate habit to his smaller nature, then he is only partly taken over; the remainder is imprisoned in his littleness.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11637 – 6.9.1.96

BN – Z – DK

The act of dying has no suffocating feeling connected with it other than during the momentary swoon. On the contrary, it is genuinely a liberating process.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11639 – 6.9.1.98

A250930 – Z

Deep into the centre of his being does a man's mind withdraw as he passes out of this life, if his karma or his aspiration, his stage of development are not obstructive.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11640 – 6.9.1.99

BN – Z – DK

There was in the dying man's room such an air of supernatural forces at work, such an awareness of the presence of another world of being, that almost no one failed to notice it. Even the attending physician, hardened agnostic in religion, a mild sceptic of survival, confessed to these strange feelings.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11641 – 6.9.1.100

BN – Z

I have written of the benign peace which death may bring, but not to all. Some enter it with panic, others with fear, yet others with resentment.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11642 – 6.9.1.101

BN – Z

I have seen upon the face of certain dying or just-deceased persons, an expression of joyous inner calm that reassures the sensitive onlooker not only about their inner condition at the time but also about death's aftermath.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11643 – 6.9.1.102

BN – Z – DK

Dying can be a dull experience or a thrilling one. That depends on the person, on his pre-history and his inner history.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11644 – 6.9.1.103

BN – Z

When he was dying, Heisenberg said to von Weizsäcker, "It is very easy: I did not know this before." At another moment he said, "I see now that physics is of no importance, that the world is illusion." He passed away in peace.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11645 – 6.9.1.104

BN – Z – K

The tremendous event of dying and leaving the body does not interrupt the Quest.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11647 – 6.9.1.106

BSG_4 – P – DK

When the time for exit from this world-scene duly comes, he will approach it with trust—feeling that the power which supported him in previous crises will not desert him now.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11648 – 6.9.1.107

BN – Z

In these closing hours of life with its lengthening shadows, one seeks to collect oneself and be ready for the final passing. How well it is to gather those reserves and foster those perceptions which now support one with, may I humbly say, a wise divine passivity. The end will come but it will be a transformation of form and a passage to a freer higher state.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11649 – 6.9.1.108

BN – ZZ – DEK

The process of dying is one to study. It is full of significance. So many things and interests to which the dying person has been attached are now to be left behind, so many persons to whom he has been tied with bonds of affection or repelled by feelings of dislike are about to disappear.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11650 – 6.9.1.109

BN – Z

In the case of violent or accidental death, there will be a period of unconscious deep sleep for an ordinarily good person, but of being consciously earthbound for an evil one.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11652 – 6.9.1.111

A250930 – Z

If he accepts the decree of destiny quietly and obediently, if he is willing to pass, without rebellion and without fighting, out of this world when the ordained hour arrives, he achieves that peace of mind which the prophet Muhammed called "Islam"

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11653 – 6.9.1.112

BN – Z

It is paradoxical that the moment of his death should automatically bring to life again all of a man's past. He has to repeat it all over again, this time from a different point of view, for the selfish, coloured, and distorting operation of the ego is absent. Now he sees it from an impersonal and uncoloured point of view. In other words, he sees the real facts for what they truly are, which means that he sees himself for what he really is. His brief experience over, he then begins to live like a man in a dream. His own will is not responsible for what happens to him as a dreamer and it is just the same with what happens to him as a spirit. He does not personally and consciously choose, decide, and predetermine the course of his spirit life any more than his dream life. It flows on by its own spontaneous accord here as there. This is more vividly brought home to him, if he is an evil man, when the after-death experience turns into a nightmare.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11654 – 6.9.1.113

A250930 – Z – DEK

It would be wrong to say that the pictorial review of life experience when dying is merely a mental transference from oneself … to those persons with whom one has been in contact during the life just passed, as the pictures unveil before him. What really happens is a transference from the false ego to the true Self, from the personal to the impersonal. It is a realization of the true meaning of each episode of the life from a higher point of view.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11655 – 6.9.1.114

A250930 – Z – DK

All possessions are left behind when a man makes his exit from this world. Every physical belonging, however prized, and even every human association, however beloved, are taken abruptly from him by death. This is the universal and eternal law which was, is, and ever shall be. There is no way to cheat or defeat it. Nevertheless there are some persons who, in a single particular only, escape this total severance. Those are the ones who sought and found, during their earthly life, the inspiration of a dead master or the association with a living one. His mental picture will vividly arise in their last moments on earth, to guide them safely into the first phase of post-mortem existence, to explain and reassure them about the unfamiliar new conditions.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11656 – 6.9.1.115

A250930 – Z – DEK

As the soul prepares or begins to pass out of the body, one of two things may happen. Depending upon the direction and strength of its attachments or desires, it is pulled away from them into unconsciousness, a kind of sleep. Or it recognizes places and persons connected with it, and if knowledge or experience are present, co-operates with the passing and moves out to a higher plane for a blissful sleep. After a while both must awaken to live again.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11658 – 6.9.1.117

A250930 – ZZ

We may deplore our foolish behaviour in life, our stupid errors or our fleshly weaknesses, but in those moments of dying we have the chance to die in wisdom and in peace. Yes, it is a chance given to us, but we have to take it by keeping our sight fixed on the highest that we know.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11661 – 6.9.1.120

BN – Z – DK

Death can open out higher possibilities to the man who leaves this existence in faith, who trusts the Overself and commits himself to its leading without clinging to the body which is being left.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11662 – 6.9.1.121

BN – Z – DK

It is better to pass out of the physical body in possession of consciousness rather than in a state of drugged anesthesia. This applies more particularly to spiritual aspirants. But where there is great pain, local anesthesia may be unobjectionable.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11663 – 6.9.1.122

A250930 – Z – DK

Only in those last few days or hours or minutes do most men find out the truth that as one kind of life leaves both them and their flesh, another opens up to them.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11664 – 6.9.1.123

A250930 – ZZ – DK

When he lies almost dying he may receive verification of the belief that a dying votary will see his god or guru or saviour come to take or guide his soul to the higher world.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11666 – 6.9.1.125

BN – Z – DK

Drowning persons who were saved and survived have told of the feeling of time slipping backward and their whole lifetime being replayed. This is an experience which is not theirs alone; it happens to all who pass through the portal of death.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The event of death

#11669 – 6.9.1.128

A250930 – Z – DK

The best way to minister to a dying person depends on various factors: each situation is different and individual. In general it may be suggested that the first thing is not to panic but to remain calm. The next is to look inwardly for one's own highest reference-point. The third is then to turn the person over to the Higher Power. Finally, and physically, one may utter a prayer aloud, or chant a mantram on his behalf—some statement indicating that the happening is more a homecoming than a homeleaving.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11671 – 6.9.1.130

BN – Z

The student has learned that the death of the body is extrinsic to the consciousness, which lives on unchanged in itself. But when death claims the body of someone he loves, his faith will be put to test. At such a time, he must remember that the loved one has actually evolved to a more highly developed phase of life.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11674 – 6.9.1.133

A250930 – ZZ – DK*

The passing away of a loved one is a heavy blow—one for which most people are improperly prepared, because they are not yet willing to face the inescapable fact that all life is stamped with transiency and loss and sorrow. Only by seeking refuge in the immortality of the Overself and in discovering the truth and wisdom of the Divine Purpose, can we also learn how to endure the suffering on the ever-changing face of life. "Letting go" is the hardest of all lessons to learn; yet it is the most necessary for spiritual advancement.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11675 – 6.9.1.134

A250930 – ZZZ – DEK

Although it is painful to lose our loved ones, this is often the only way by which we learn of our deep need to form some inner detachment, as well as the unalterable fact that worldly life is inseparable from suffering. Such bitter lessons are instructive; they make us aware that we must turn to the spiritual Quest if we are to find contentment and enduring happiness.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11676 – 6.9.1.135

BSG_4 – Z

Loss, as in the case of death of a wife or husband, has been known to be a principle cause of the necessary receptive state of mind with which one has approached philosophy. This is significant to the student on the Quest.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11677 – 6.9.1.136

BN – Z

The passing of a loved one is usually a major experience, and one's reaction to it shows the degree of development attained. He must remember that sometimes it is best for a loved one to pass away if in doing so he or she is rid of a serious and painful bodily disease. He must also be happy in the thought that the loved one has now gone on to a sphere of existence where happiness, bliss, comfort, and rest can be found as can only be imagined but not found here. He may be assured that the loved one is really in a better world where only the beautiful side of life can penetrate and where ugly and base things can never find lodgement. He may help best at such a moment by an occasional loving remembrance during the peak point of meditation.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11678E – 6.9.1.137

BN – ZEL1/2 – DEK

The passing of a loved one is usually a major experience, and one's reaction to it shows the degree of development attained. He must remember that sometimes it is best for a loved one to pass away if in doing so he or she is rid of a serious and painful bodily disease. For the sensitive aspirant, such an experience as seeing death face to face as it were, is always a great one. It should mark the beginning of a new period, of a more vivid evaluation of the transient character of earthly life, and result in a powerful aspiration to wrest something of an enduring character from the comparatively few years spent on this space-time level.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11678E – 6.9.1.137

BN – ZEL2/2 – DEK

To someone who believes that life continues beyond the body's death, a funeral seems a useless affair. But it compels the mourners to remember and think of, for a few hours, what they ordinarily forget—that they too must go, that all personal matters come to an abrupt end, and that the person himself must part from every one of his possessions. Such a ritual, otherwise boring and tedious, is a salutary reminder.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11679 – 6.9.1.138

A250930 – Z

One hopes that those bereaved by the death of fine young men in the war may have begun to feel some of time's healing touch. It is a source of great grief to lose someone young and brilliant at such a time. One cannot answer the question so often asked as to why such a man died when he was living so useful a life. This is a mystery of the kind we must leave to the Will of God, with faith. However, this faith is not the same as blind faith, for there is certainly Divine Wisdom underlying the event. These young men still live and will live. They have passed into a brighter and happier world and there is no need to grieve for them.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11680 – 6.9.1.139

BN – Z

We must bear with resignation and acceptance the coming of this inevitable visitor, Death, to those we love. It is useless to rebel or complain against a law of life which has been such since time began.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11681 – 6.9.1.140

BN – Z

He who has had the good fortune to have a loving companion in marriage should not rail at Destiny when this helpmate is taken away. The same karma which brought the two together has also severed the relationship. But this is only temporary. There is really no loss, as mind speaks to mind in silent moments. Love and companionship of high quality will act as an attractive force to bring them together again somewhere, sometime. Many feel this in the inner understanding.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11682 – 6.9.1.141

A250930 – Z – DK

When death is properly understood, and the immateriality of being is deeply felt, there will be no more mourning funerals. If the deceased has had a long and full incarnation, his passing will be accepted philosophically. The bereaved person faces the problem of adjusting himself to a new cycle of the outer life. During the transitional period, he may feel lonely and uncertain of the future. At such a time, the inner meaning of both this period and the coming cycle should be sought.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11683 – 6.9.1.142

A250930 – Z

Cremation is a definite and emphatic challenge. If one really believes that the soul of man is his real self, or even if one believes that the thinking power of man is his real self, then there can be no objection to it, but, on the contrary, complete approval of it. The method of burying dead bodies is fit only for one who believes that this thinking power is a product of the body's brain, that is, for a materialist.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11684 – 6.9.1.143

A250930 – Z – DK1

I recommend the process of cremation to dispose of the body of a deceased person. An interval of three days should take place between the death and the actual cremation, because that is the transition period which makes complete the passing out of the spirit.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11685 – 6.9.1.144

BN – Z – DK

The honour that is shown to a corpse by attempting to prolong its form is misplaced. It is a glaring contradiction to accept the credo of survival and then give to dead flesh what should be given to living soul. A rational funeral would be a completely private one. A rational funeral service would be one held to memorialize the memory of the deceased, and held not in the presence but in the absence of the corpse. A rational disposal would be cremation, not burial. The psychic and spiritual health of a community demands the abolition of graveyards.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11686 – 6.9.1.145

A250930 – ZZ – DEK

Why some are taken away by death at a young age and with a lovely soul is one of those mysteries which we must leave unexplained with the laws of destiny and recompense. Despite the natural feeling of being grievously wounded, the bereaved person should resign himself in trust to the will of God and in faith that the departed will be taken care of wherever he is by the Father of us all.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11688 – 6.9.1.147

BN – ZZ

The passing away of a loved one and what the personal loss means to the bereaved is, of course, beyond the reach of any external comment which can be made. Words seem cold and useless at such times; all one can do is to accept, and humbly resign himself to, the Higher Will.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11689 – 6.9.1.148

BN – Z

He or she who has lost a loved one should concentrate on 'realizing' that distance in no way alters real love, that the mental presence of the beloved must be made as nearly real as the physical presence as he can make it, and that he must rise to the ability of finding satisfaction from these meetings in the mental world. Finally, there is always the old talisman of remembering the Universal and to keep on remembering it; this in time has a curious power, not only of helping to endure the maladjustments of fate but gradually of correcting them.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11692 – 6.9.1.151

BN – Z

The death of the body does not mean the death of the mind. Where there is deep love there can be interludes of mental communion between the so-called dead and the living and there may be meetings from time to time when each is conscious of the other. These meetings take place in a reverie-like state. But some practice in meditative stilling of the mind is necessary, as any emotional excitement would prevent this communion. Nature, however, does not permit a continuous relation, only an intermittent one. For spirits have their own higher destinies to work out.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11695 – 6.9.1.154

BN – ZZ – DEK

The death of the body does not mean the death of the mind…

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11695E – 6.9.1.154

BA11 – ZZ – DEK

I hold with Spiritism that the ego, the personality, does survive the death of the flesh body, but I do not hold with Spiritism that this survival is a most desirable and marvellous thing. Immortality is infinitely superior for it is the true deathlessness, but it can only be had at the price of letting go the ego. Nor would I encourage anyone to use the methods of Spiritism in its attempts at communicating with the "dead," for they are dubious and dangerous.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11701 – 6.9.1.160

BN – Z

Those who feel pity for a person who kills himself feel rightly. But when this feeling is not balanced by reason, it may degenerate into sentimentality. For the suicide needs, like all other human beings subject to the process of evolution, to develop the quality of strength and to unfold the feeling of hope. His failure to do so leads to this sad consequence. That some suicides occur from other causes does not displace the truth of the general statement that most of them occur from weakness and fear.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11702 – 6.9.1.161

BN – Z

The desire to kill himself may really be a desire to terminate the ego's life, but the man is unaware of this. In such cases, which are in a minority, the quest will be consciously adopted later.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11703 – 6.9.1.162

BN – Z

It was not considered by several ancient peoples nor by the Essenes of Judea and the Jain monks of India that suicide was a criminal act if it were performed for valid reasons. These were: a hopelessly crippled condition; an advanced age accompanied by physical helplessness; a grave, chronic, or incurable disease.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11704 – 6.9.1.163

BN – Z

It is understandable, when life becomes unbearable, that a man may commit suicide. But that he should use violence when doing so, is not.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11705 – 6.9.1.164

BN – Z

When suffering reaches its zenith or frustration is drawn out too long, when the heart is resigned to hopelessness or the mind to apathy, people often say that they do not wish to live any more and that they await the coming of death. They think only of the body's death, however. This will not solve their problem, for the same situation—under another guise—will repeat itself in a later birth. The only real solution is to seek out the inner reality of their longing for death. They want it because they believe it will separate them from their problems and disappointments. But these are 'the ego's burdens'. Therefore the radical separation from them is achievable only by separating permanently from the ego itself. Peace will then come—and come forever.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11713 – 6.9.1.172

A250930 – ZZ

The temptation to antedate the journey out of the flesh is sometimes irresistible.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11714 – 6.9.1.173

BN – Z

Is life worth living? Even if there is little reason for satisfaction with one's existence, there is equally little reason for bringing it to an unnatural end. Surely the brevity of life should settle the matter anyway.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11715 – 6.9.1.174

BN – Z

There are the visible living people and the invisible living ones. None are ever lost to existence or destroyed in consciousness, but only their bodies.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11717 – 6.9.1.176

A250930 – Z – DK

An immortality which does not purify, exalt, and transform his life, which does not give him the new, spiritual birth, will prove as unsatisfactory to the disembodied man in the end as it is already to the embodied thinker.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11718 – 6.9.1.177

BN – Z

So materialistic has the religious understanding of many men become, that they will only accept as the highest—if not the only—proof of life after death, the appeal to their gross senses and not to their fine intuition or rational intelligence. That is to say, the bodily form of a dead person has to materialize in front of their own or someone else's eyes to convince them that he has not perished after all.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11719 – 6.9.1.178

A250930 – Z

This lesson, that a man is not his body, will be learnt in modern times through his reasoning intelligence as it was learnt in former times through his believing feelings.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11720 – 6.9.1.179

A250930 – Z – DK

Every person maintains his or her individuality during and after the perishing of the body-thought.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11722E – 6.9.1.181

UR_5 – ZEL1/6 – DEK

The inequalities and injustices, which trouble many, are all balanced sooner or later by the law of recompense (karma). Each person receives in return precisely what he or she gives out; thus there is justice in the world, despite appearances to the contrary…

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11722E – 6.9.1.181

BA11 – ZEL2/6 – DEK

When others ridicule the idea of immortality, the aspirant should not be upset nor allow his own faith to be weakened; he must remember that these people are merely expressing their own opinions, not passing on knowledge. The fact that many persons are not too happy about the idea of physical annihilation—and fail to take into consideration the fact that the "I" endures—has, of course, coloured their personal tastes. Their opinions are, however, incompatible with truth.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11722E – 6.9.1.181

B_13 – ZEL3/6 – DEK

The superstition that a childless person cannot reincarnate is nonsense.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11722E – 6.9.1.181

BN – ZEL4/6 – DEK

There are two kinds of immortality (so long as the lower self dominates consciousness): first, the "endless" evolution of the ego, gradually developing through all its many manifestations; and, secondly, the true immortality of the everlasting, unchanging Real Self—or Overself—which forever underlies and sustains the former.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11722E – 6.9.1.181

UR_5 – ZEL5/6 – DEK

My reference to not clinging to the ego simply means that the aspirant must learn the art of releasing what is transitory in himself and in his existence—that which can survive only temporarily. The Real Individuality—the sense and feeling of simply Being—can never perish, and is the true immortality. No one is asked to sacrifice all interest and appreciation in "things": one may continue to appreciate them—provided their transiency is understood and one does not deceive himself into overvaluing them. The prophets merely say that the eternal life cannot be found in such things.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11722E – 6.9.1.181

UR_5 – ZEL6/6 – DEK3

We must find heaven this side of the grave; we must understand that heaven and hell are deep inside the heart and not places to which we go; and we must know that the true heart of man is deathless.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11723 – 6.9.1.182

BN – X – DEK

The personal man will survive death but he will not be immortal. The "I" which outlives the fleshly body will itself one day be outlived by the deeper "I" which man has yet to find.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11724 – 6.9.1.183

BN – X – DK

If death is the price of dwelling in this space-time world, then a spaceless and timeless world where there is no "here" and no "there," no "then" and no "now," no change from one stage to another, would also be an immortal one; and if death is the price of being associated with a separate individuality, then an existence which mysteriously embraces the whole world-system in unity must be imperishable.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11725 – 6.9.1.184

BN – Z – DEK

The man who has studied these teachings does not believe that death can bring him to an end even though it must bring his body to an end. It is both a logical and biological truth for him that his inner personality will survive, his mind will continue its existence.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11726 – 6.9.1.185

BN – X – DK

The life that is in us goes at death into the life that is in the universe. It is as secure there as it was in us. It is not lost. Thereafter it reappears in another form, another body.

From Birth to Rebirth > Death, Dying, and Immortality > The aftermath of death

#11728 – 6.9.1.187

A250930 – Z – DK

The wheel of life does not stop for long—soon it will turn again and pass from the point of death to the point of life.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11729 – 6.9.2.1

BA11 – Z – DMK

The thought of the body, of being identified with it, guarantees that a dying person will come back here again.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11730 – 6.9.2.2

BA11 – Z – DK

Better than being born to wealthy parents is being born to wise ones, for then the child will not only be taught spiritual values but will see them demonstrated before his eyes.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11737 – 6.9.2.9

BN – ZZZ – DK

A child is born into a family not by mere chance but as the resultant of forces set agoing in the previous births both by the newly born and by its parents.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11739 – 6.9.2.11

BA11 – ZZZ – DK

Parents may do what they wish to encourage the good and discourage the evil in the characters of their offspring, but in bringing them into the world they took a chance. For the children brought their own characters with them from previous incarnations.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11740 – 6.9.2.12

BN – ZZ – DK

None of us is thrown into this world against his will. All of us are here because we want to be here.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11742 – 6.9.2.14

BN – Z – DK

We reincarnate in part through the pressure of accumulated karma and in part through the pressure of habitual tendencies.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11743 – 6.9.2.15

BN – Z – DK

All men come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind's bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Rebirth and Reincarnation

#11745 – 6.9.2.17

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The tendencies brought over from past births, the experiences and contacts made then as well as in the present one, explain his acting as he does, and his being what he is.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11746 – 6.9.2.18

BN – ZZ – DK

He excuses his weaknesses by complaining against nature, which has provided him with instincts and passions leading to them. But that which he calls nature is really the inheritance of his own tendencies from former lives.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11747 – 6.9.2.19

BN – ZZ – DK

At any given moment, a man thinks and acts according to, and as a result of, his whole mental and physical experience of life and his whole character and nature. These cannot be limited to the single short life on earth he now knows, for that will not explain many of his tendencies and traits. They must include all his previous lives.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11748 – 6.9.2.20

BA11 – ZZ – DK

All things contribute to the making of man—the history of his past and the climate of his land, the people among whom he is born, and his own particular tendencies. The most important is his karma.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11749 – 6.9.2.21

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The complexes and tendencies pre-existing the present birth and hidden deep in his subconscious mind, must sooner or later come through to the surface mind.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11758 – 6.9.2.30

BN – ZZ – DK

In the final accounting it is less what a man receives from education than what he receives from former lives that matters most. His education may help to bring it out and round it out but his innate stock will largely be the measure of his assets.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11759 – 6.9.2.31

BN – ZZ – DK

The traits and tendencies which a man receives from the preceding births constitute in their totality the personal self which he knows as ”I.”

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11761 – 6.9.2.33

BN – ZZ – DK

What a man brings over from former births are the fixed ideas in his consciousness, the habitual direction of his feelings and the innate impulses of his will.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11762 – 6.9.2.34

BN – ZZ – DK

What a man is, needs, or has done puts him just where he is.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11764 – 6.9.2.36

UR_4map – ZZZ – DMK2

The ego inherits the tendencies, the affinities, and the antagonisms which have shaped themselves in a long series of births behind the present one.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11766 – 6.9.2.38

BN – ZZ – DK

The innate tendencies of his mental life give rise to the natural compulsions of his active life. He cannot behave differently from the way he does—that is, if he is not on the quest and therefore not struggling to rise beyond himself. His own past—and it stretches back farther than he knows—created the thoughts, the acts, and the conditions of the present.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11767 – 6.9.2.39

BN – Z – DEK

Men are not separated from each other by the yards between their bodies alone, but even more by the inequality of their characters and the discord between their attitudes. Men do not become neighbours merely because their bodies live near to each other, but because there is affinity between their characters and harmony between their attitudes. Two loving friends are near each other even though their bodies are in separate continents; two hating enemies are far from each other even though their bodies are in the same room.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11773 – 6.9.2.45

BN – ZZZ – DEK

We automatically try to repeat the old patterns of behaviour created in former lives whether they are beneficial or injurious to us. This happens because we can hardly help doing so.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11778 – 6.9.2.50

BN – Z – DK

Tendencies, habits, and desires inherited from past lives may be worth following. But they may also be harmful, or negative and not easily dislodged.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11783 – 6.9.2.55

BN – Z – DK

What we were in the past is not important. What we are now is important. What we intend to make of ourselves in the future is vitally important.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11785 – 6.9.2.57

BN – ZZZ – DK1

A man can respond to events or to prophets, to demands or to experiences, only on the level of his own capacity and mentality. We have no right to ask that he shall be better or wiser.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11786 – 6.9.2.58

B_13 – ZZ – DK

The pathetic thoughts of what might have been torment him. But are they futile? If they show how actions could have been improved and decisions bettered, they sow seeds for the next birth.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11788 – 6.9.2.60

BN – Z – DMK

We come into birth as distinct persons—even babies begin to show their individual differences with characters formed already in previous existences. This is one reason why some amount of tolerance, some acceptance of one another as we are, is necessary if we are to live peaceably together.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11790 – 6.9.2.62

BN – ZZ – DK

The essence of countless experiences and states through which he has passed is here and now with him as the degree of character, intelligence, and power which he possesses.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11792 – 6.9.2.64

BN – X – DK

He who has taken many births has a great wealth of total experience behind him. This manifests itself naturally in wiser decisions and better self-control.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11793 – 6.9.2.65

BN – Z – DK

Memory is a spiritual faculty inasmuch as it gives us the chance and means to extract teaching wisdom and guidance from the past. It enables us to visualize past experience and make it either a guide or a warning in dealing with present problems.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11794 – 6.9.2.66

BN – Z – K

That a truth which is so clear to their own minds could be so obscure to other minds, is easily explicable by the grading processes of reincarnation. Each man's present state and views are the outcome of his past experiences in past lives.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11795 – 6.9.2.67

BA11 – ZZ – DK

The man who finds his mind suddenly illuminated, but does not know why it came about, may find his answer in the doctrine of "tendencies"―prenatal and karmic―reappearing from former lives and held hitherto in the deeper mental levels.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11801 – 6.9.2.73

BSG_5 – Z

It is easy to despise as stupid those of obvious inferior intelligence, but it would be well to remember that we were once at the same level. The notion of rebirth teaches patience, tolerance.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11805 – 6.9.2.77

B_01 – ZZZ – K

The man who finds his mind suddenly illuminated, but does not know why it came about, may find his answer in the doctrine of ”tendencies” —prenatal and karmic— reappearing from former lives and held hitherto in the deeper mental levels.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11809 – 6.9.2.81

BN – ZZ – DK

It is easy to despise as stupid those of obvious inferior intelligence, but it would be well to remember that we were once at the same level. The notion of rebirth teaches tolerance.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11810 – 6.9.2.82

BN – ZZZ – DK

When intuitive recognitions of truth, swift flashes of understanding, come on hearing or reading these inspired statements, this is a sign of having been engaged in its quest during former reincarnations.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > The influence of past tendencies

#11813 – 6.9.2.85

BN – ZZZ – DK

There is no direct and incontrovertible proof of reincarnation, but there is logical evidence for it. Why should there be certain abilities almost without previous training? Why should I be possessed at an early age of the mental abilities of a writer, or someone else of a musician? Heredity alone cannot account for it. But it is perfectly accounted for if we consider them to a subconscious memory. I am unwittingly remembering and using again my own capabilities from a former birth. This is possible only because I am mind. Mind alone can continue itself. Capacities in any field cannot appear out of nothing. The individual who shows them forth is repeating them out of his own deeper memory. There is the evidence of Nature. When I wake up in the morning, I pick up all that I had the day before. I remember my own individuality and use the same literary talents as before. Otherwise, I could never write again, or someone else could never sing. The basis of this reminiscence is not a physical occurrence, but a mental one.

From Birth to Rebirth > Rebirth and Reincarnation > Reincarnation and Mentalism

#11817 – 6.9.2.89

BN – ZZZ – DEK1