The Ego is a unique and unprecedented contribution to the literature of self-realization. It goes to the root of the most fundamental and immediate problem facing those who would live with unfailing self-integrity. It confronts this problem at an existential, rather than merely a psychological, level. As a result, the very reading of this material becomes a profitable spiritual exercise.
To make best use of the opportunity for lasting breakthrough which this section offers, the reader should recognize from the outset that this material abounds in information that the ego does not want its captive to hear. Further, every effort should be made to avoid premature judgements based on associations with other systems, especially psychological systems, where the word "ego" is used differently than here. Relentlessly probing and exploring, this section covers a broad range; its content is not readily reducible to a neat, tidy structure within which the ego-mind can feel comfortable. From high praise at one extreme to utter denigration at the other, it offers many viewpoints, explores many facets of the complex ego's origin, nature, and destiny. In its entirety, it leads masterfully beyond ordinary intellectualizing and into the intuitive realm of paradox where kernels of deep spiritual realization are lodged.
In structuring this material for publication, we found that any linear structure we came up with had serious limitations. The integrated wholeness of the insight behind this material demands being seen intuitively if it is to be seen clearly at all. The best approach we have seen is the one used by Anthony Damiani, a close and lifelong student of P.B. When first studying this section, he put individual paras on separate cards. He would read each one, then shuffle the "deck" randomly and read them all again. Reading in this way, he said, forced his mind to seek out and dwell in the insight behind the individual paras rather than in the associations his ego would construct between them.
What is true in general for reading The Notebooks, then, is especially true for reading the material in The Ego. The natural associative activity of the lower mind--its tendency to look for and make connections between independent thoughts--should be resisted, even suspended if possible, for the first few readings of the entire material. Individual paras should be meditated upon in and of themselves. The reader should compel his or her ego to let what is being said be heard.
Only after the entire range of viewpoints, the 360-degree perspective, has been assimilated will the radically transformative truths underlying surface contradictions gradually seep into the psyche and explain themselves. The reader's task for the present should be to savor each para, to take in each one as fully as possible. The inability to see readily how they can all fit together should not become a cause of anxious frustration. Careful study of the material will lead eventually to an integration, through Grace, of understanding at a deeper, now unconscious, level. In the meantime, we hope that the tentative structure we have provided for the purposes of publication in book form will at least not interfere with the working of the reader's intuition.
Editorial conventions are the same here as stated in introductions to Perspectives and The Quest. Likewise, (P) at the end of a para indicates that the para also appears in Perspectives, the introductory survey volume to this series.