I am aware of a relative 'me' which I regard as a reflection of 'I am' in the deforming time-mirror. Essentially separate from that relative 'me' though emanating therefrom, I observe a purely artificial personality, an apparent artifact, built up by memory of all my reactions to my environment since birth. In this structure I am aware of no reality: I look upon it* as discontinuous, impermanent and multiple, that is divisible into different and often conflicting elements or 'me's. Whenever, or as long as, my relative 'me', which, being relative, is based on reality and, on the phenomenal plane, is what is most really myself, is identified with my personality, which is an artifact of the imagination, I am a mechanical being and I suffer. If I were able to break that identification and to realise the fundamental identity of my relative self with my real self on the plane of Reality, which is at the same time Cosmic Mind, I should be free and know bliss. For it is evident that suffering is only possible owing to the dualistic circumstances of conflict on which and by means of which the personality appears to exist, and within the limitations which belief in it imposes upon my mind.
Suffering, in short, is exclusively confined to the ego, and I can only suffer in so far as I am identified with that.
*(Ed. Note: i.e. the artificial personality)
