According to an established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive
regard to one's own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or
self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the
advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding
those of others."

In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself
and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a
sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the
crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies
the perfect blank. Now, can an occultist be then said to be "selfish"
when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the
writer of the article on the Elixir of Life? It has been said over and
over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after occult
knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all
Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies
himself with the Father in Christian phraseology. For that purpose,
every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a
feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other
words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with
which we are all more or less affected. A study of the Law of Kosmic
Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution, the more does it
tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility of
Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her
purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of annihilation. The
occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal
philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to
attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya.
The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and
Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all