even to attempt this in earnest?

And then the details of daily life, the command not to touch even the
hand of one's nearest and dearest. How contrary to Western notions of
affection and good feeling! How cold and hard it seems. Egotistical too,
people would say, to abstain from giving pleasure to others for the sake
of one's own development. Well, let those who think so defer till
another lifetime the attempt to enter the path in real earnest. But let
them not glory in their own fancied unselfishness. For, in reality, it
is only the seeming appearances which they allow to deceive them, the
conventional notions, based on emotionalism and gush, or so-called
courtesy, things of the unreal life, not the dictates of Truth.

But even putting aside these difficulties, which may be considered
"external," though their importance is none the less great, how are
students in the West to "attune themselves" to harmony as here required
of them? So strong has personality grown in Europe and America, that
there is no school of artists even whose members do not hate and are not
jealous of each other. "Professional" hatred and envy have become
proverbial; men seek each to benefit himself at all costs, and even the
so-called courtesies of life are but a hollow mask covering these demons
of hatred and jealousy.

In the East the spirit of "non-separateness" is inculcated as steadily
from childhood up, as in the West the spirit of rivalry. Personal
ambition, personal feelings and desires, are not encouraged to grow so
rampant there. When the soil is naturally good, it is cultivated in the
right way, and the child grows into a man in whom the habit of
subordination of one's lower to one's higher Self is strong and
powerful. In the West men think that their own likes and dislikes of