 47. Ego-I |
Individuality and Personality
E. Cayce States:
As with most individuals, the personality and the individuality are not always the same. Personality is that ye wish others to think and see. Individuality is that your soul prays, your soul hopes for, desires.These interpretations are chosen. . . with the desire and purpose that this may. . . enable the entity to analyze and see within the self that (which) may be helpful in meeting this, that is called by some at times, dual personality. It is rather, though, the personality at times giving expression – influenced from sojourns in the material plane – and at other periods the individuality of the entity giving expression – as urged or ruled from the experiences during the interims between the earthly sojourns. . . . personality and individuality should have some analysis, so as to give the entity a concept of what we mean by personality and individuality:
Personality is that which the entity, consciously or unconsciously, spreads out before others to be seen of others. As to whether you will say, "Good Morning" to Jim or John and ignore Susan or not – these are parts of the personality, because of some difference or because of some desire to be used or needed by that others would have to give.
While individuality in that same circumstance would be: I wish to do this or that for Susan or Jim or John, because I would like for Jim or John or Susan to do this if conditions were reversed. One is for the universal consciousness that is part of the soul-entity's activity. The other is the personal, or the desire for recognition, or the desire for the other individual to recognize your personal superiority.
-E. Cayce
Can Thinking Solve Our Problems?
Krishnamurti states:
Thought has not solved our problems and I don't think it ever will. We have relied on the intellect to show us the way out of our complexity. The more cunning, the more devious, the more subtle the intellect is, the greater the variety of systems, of theories, of ideas. And ideas do not solve any of our human problems; they never have and they never will. The mind is not the solution; the way of thought is obviously not the way out of our difficulty. It seems to me that we should first understand this process of thinking, and perhaps be able to go beyond – for when thought ceases, perhaps we shall be able to find a way which will help us to solve our problems, not only the individual but also the collective.
Thinking has not solved our problems. The clever ones, the philosophers, the scholars, the political leaders, have not really solved any of our human problems – which are the relationship between you and another, between you and myself. So far we have used the mind, the intellect, to help us investigate the problem and thereby are hoping to find a solution. Can thought ever dissolve our problems? Is not thought, unless it is in the laboratory or on the drawing-board, always self-protecting, self-perpetuating, conditioned? Is not its activity self-centered . . .? And can such thought ever resolve any of the problems which thought itself has creates? Can the mind, which has created the problems, resolve those things that it has itself brought forth?
Surely thinking is a reaction. If I ask you a question, you respond to it – you respond according to your memory, to your prejudices, to your upbringing, to the climate, to the whole background of your conditioning; you reply accordingly, you think accordingly. The center of this background is the "me" in the process of action. So long as that background is not understood, so long as that thought process, that ego self which creates the problem, is not understood and put an end to, we are bound to have conflict, within and without, in thought, in emotion, in action. No solution of any kind, however clever, however well thought out, can ever put an end to the conflict between man and man, between you and me. Realizing this, being aware of how thought springs up and from what source, then we ask, "Can thought ever come to an end?"
