The pride of the ego is its ability to compensate for pain. If it comes to a point where it can no longer master a pain with its means, then it goes into anger and hatred. If, despite this, the pain becomes overwhelming and its cause cannot be destroyed or controlled, then the consciousness can reach humility. It is then in a state characterized by fear on the one hand – for it is still in the realm of pain – and humility on the other. When the consciousness feels humility, it has necessarily attained a certain degree of soul knowledge. If the pain is relieved – however this may have taken place. Through compensation or through the experience of soul unity. – the consciousness, because it is still arrested in fear, goes again out of the state of humility and again into the state of acting and thus of the ego’s pride, the compensation of pain. It can only remain in permanent humility if it is able to detach itself from fear. If it detaches itself from fear, ego dissolves. So to be in humility is to be without ego. To be without pain, which would have to be compensated.
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