“All this and much else besides is merely a form of identification. Such considering is wholly based upon ‘requirements.’ A man inwardly ‘re-quires’ that everyone should see what a remarkable man he is and that they should constantly give expression to their respect, esteem, and admiration for him, for his INTELLECT, his beauty, his cleverness, his wit, his presence of mind, his originality, and all his other qualities. Requirements in their turn are based on a completely fantastic notion about themselves such as very often occurs with people of very modest appearance. Various writers, actors, musicians, artists, and politicians, for instance, are almost without exception sick people. And what are they suffering from? First of all from an extraordinary’ opinion of themselves, then from requirements, and then from considering, that is, being ready and prepared beforehand to take offense at lack of understanding and lack of appreciation. Fragments: Eight
“In ordinary life the concept ‘conscience’ is taken too simply. As if we had a conscience. Actually the concept ‘conscience’ in the sphere of the emotions is equivalent to the concept ‘consciousness’ in the sphere of the INTELLECT. And as we have no consciousness we have no conscience. Fragments: Eight
“It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the way of the monk, which do not require any INTELLECTual development, remain open to him. But the methods and the means which are possible for a man of a developed INTELLECT are impossible for him. Thus evolution is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man. A cultured man lives far from nature, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life, developing his personality at the expense of his essence. A less cultured man, living in more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his personality. A successful beginning of workwork on oneself requires the happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the greatest assurance of success. If essence is very-little developed, a long preparatory period of work is required and this work will be quite fruitless if a man’s essence is rotten inside or if it develops some irreparable defects. Conditions of this kind occur fairly often. An abnormal development of personality very often arrests the development of essence at such an early stage that the essence becomes a small deformed thing. From a small deformed thing nothing else can be got. Fragments: Eight
“It has already been said that the higher psychic centers work in man’s higher states of consciousness: the ‘higher emotional’ and the ‘higher mental.’ The aim of ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ was to reach man’s higher centers, to transmit to him ideas inaccessible to the INTELLECT and to transmit them in such forms as would exclude the possibility of false interpretations. ‘Myths’ were destined for the higher emotional center; ‘symbols’ for the higher thinking center. By virtue of this all attempts to understand or explain ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’ with the mind, or the formulas and the expressions which give a summary of their content, are doomed beforehand to failure. It is always possible to understand anything but only with the appropriate center. But the preparation for receiving ideas belonging to objective knowledge has to proceed by way of the mind, for only a mind properly prepared can transmit these ideas to the higher centers without introducing elements foreign to them. Fragments: Fourteen