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What we commonly think of as constituting the ”I” is an idea which changes from year to year. This is the personal ”I.” But what we feel most intimately as being always present in all these different ideas of the ”I,” that is, the sense of being, of existence, never changes at all. It is this which is our true enduring ”I.”
6.8.2.1Everything remembered is a thought in consciousness. This not only applies to objects, events, and places. It also applies to persons, including oneself, he who is remembered, the I that I was. This means that my own personality, what I call myself, was a thought in the past, however strong and however persistent. But the past was once the present. Therefore I am not less a thought now. The question arises what did I have then which I still have now, unchanged, exactly the same. It cannot be I as the person, for that is different in some way each time. It is, and can only be, I as Consciousness.
6.8.2.3With the body, the thoughts, and the emotions, the ego seems to complete itself as an entity. But where do we get this feeling of I from? There is only one way to know the answer to this question: the way of meditation. This burrows beneath the three mentioned components and penetrates into the residue, which is found to be nothing in particular, only the sense of Be-ing. And this is the real source of the I notion, the self-feeling. Alas! The source does not ordinarily reveal itself, so we live in its projection, the ego, alone. We are content to be little, when we could be great.
6.8.2.6That which claims to be the “I” turns out to be only a part of it, the lesser part, and not the real “I” at all. It is a complex of thoughts.
6.8.2.7This feeling of I-ness may be associated with the body, emotions, and thoughts—whose totality is the personal ego—or shifted in deep meditation to the rootless root of being, which is the Overself; or, it may be associated with both, when one will be the reality and the other a shadow of reality.
6.8.2.9The idea of a self first enters consciousness when a child identifies itself with bodily feelings, and later when it adds emotional feelings. The idea extends itself still later, with logical thoughts and, lastly, completes itself with the discovery of individuality.
6.8.2.10If we analyse the ego, we find it to be a collection of past memories retained from experience and future hopes or fears which anticipate experience. If we try to seize it, to separate it out by itself, we do not find it to exist in the present moment, only in what has gone and what is to come. In fact, it never really exists in the NOW but only seems to. This means that it is a phantom without substance, a false idea.
6.8.2.14Our attachment to the ego is natural. It arises because we are unconsciously attached to that which is behind it, to the Overself. Only, we are misled by ignorance wholly to concentrate on the apparent “I” and wholly to ignore the unseen, enduring self of which it is but a transient shadow. The “I” which trembles or enjoys in the time-series is not the real “I.”
6.8.2.18What is the most immediate of all experiences? It is the ”I.” For all others are experiences of an object, be it a thing or a thought--the body, the world, or the mind; but this is their subject, the first identity in life, the last before death.
6.8.2.24The ego is nothing more than a shadow … It exists—a word whose very meaning, to be placed outside, is also metaphysically true. For he who immerses himself in its consciousness places himself outside the consciousness of Overself.
6.8.2.29,There is no real ego but only a quick succession of thoughts which constitutes the ÓIÓ process. There is no separate entity forming the personal consciousess but only a series of impressions, ideas, images revolving round a common centre. The latter is completely empty; the feeling of something being there derives from a totally different plane - that of the Overself.
6.8.2.31When it is declared that the ego is a fictitious entity, what is meant is that it does not exist as a real entity. Nevertheless, it does exist as a thought.
6.8.2.32If he identifies with the ego as a real entity by itself, and not as the complex of thoughts and tendencies which it is, he is caught in the net of illusion and cannot get out of it.
6.8.2.33The ego is a collection of thoughts circulating around a fixed but empty centre. If the habits of many, many reincarnations had not given them such strength and persistence, they could be voided. The reality--MIND--could then reveal Itself.
6.8.2.37It is not only that man does not know his spiritual nature but, which is worse, that he holds a false idea of his own nature. He takes the shadow--ego--for the substance--Overself. He takes the effect--body--for the cause--Spirit.
6.8.2.39The ego is a structure which has been built up in former lives from tendencies, habits, and experiences in a particular pattern. But in the end the whole thing is nothing but a thought, albeit a strong and continuing thought.
6.8.2.44…The ”I” cannot be separated from its thoughts since it is composed of them…
6.8.2.46,Because this emanated consciousness of the Overself ties itself so completely and so continuously to the thought-series, which after all are its own creations, it identifies itself with the illusory ego produced by their activity and forgets its own larger, less limited origin.
6.8.2.47All our thoughts necessarily exist in the successiveness of time, but the thought of the ego is a more complicated affair and exists also in time and space, because the body is part of the ego. Whatever we do, the ego as such will continue its existence. But we need not identify ourselves with it; we can put some distance between us and it. The more we do so, the more impersonal we shall become, and vice versa.
6.8.2.49From childhood through adulthood, man passes from one change to another in himself--his body, feelings, and thoughts. The idea of himself, his personality, changes with it. Where and what is the I if it has no unbroken integrity?
6.8.2.54The tendencies and habits, the physical and mental activities which we have brought over from our own past, settle down and congeal themselves into what we call our personal self, our individuality, our ego. Yet life will not permit this combination to be more than a temporary one, and we go on changing with time. We identify ourselves with each of these changes, in turn, yet always think that is really ourself. Only when we still these activities and withdraw from these habits for a brief period in meditation, do we discover for the first time that they do not constitute our real self, after all. Indeed, they are then seen to be our false self, for it is only then that we discover the inner being that is the real self which they hide and cover up. Alas! so strong is their age-old power that we soon allow them to resume their tyrannous ways over us, and we soon become victims again of the great illusion of the ego.
6.8.2.56When all thoughts vanish into the Stillness, the ego-personality vanishes too. This is Buddha's meaning that there is no self, also Ramana Maharshi's meaning that ego is only a collection of thoughts.
6.8.2.57The ego of which we are conscious is not the same as the mind by which we are conscious. He who perseveres until he can understand this, opens the first door of the soul's house.
6.8.2.65The body is in reality an object for the mind, which is its subject; and not only the body, but also whatever the ego thinks or feels becomes an object, too. It is less easy to see and even more necessary to understand that this ego, this subject, is itself an object to a higher part of the mind.
6.8.2.67We understand correctly our relation to external possessions like chairs and carpets, but not to possessions like hands and thoughts. Here our understanding becomes confused. Our habitual speech betrays this. We say, “I am hurt” when it is really the body that is hurt, or “I am pleased” when a thought of pleasure arises within us. In the first case the body still remains an object of our experience, despite its closeness. In the second case, thinking is a function performed by us. Both are to be distinguished from our being, however interwoven with our activity.
6.8.2.68To the real person, the consciousness, body, nerve, and sense organs are only objects being used as mediums and channels.
6.8.2.71Wherever human consciousness exists, wherever there is a thinker, there are also his thoughts. Subject and object join to make conscious existence of an ego, an ”I,” possible, both in waking and dream states.
6.8.2.72The ego is an object. The mind knows only objects. Therefore man does not know himself when he knows only ego.
6.8.2.74
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