What is ego?
We all have the awareness of "I".
It exists naturally within us, and it is pure.
If we leave that "I" as it is,
that "I" is God.
But we always add something to the "I,"
and as soon as we do that
it becomes ego and causes all our troubles.
-Muktananda
The fundamental foundation or principle on which yoga and meditation is based
is that two things exist, subject and object.
Subject is 'I am,' and object is everything other than the 'I',
including the body, the sense, the organs and the intellect.
-Vishnudevananda
When "I" consciousness becomes attracted to other things,
it becomes limited.
-Muktananda
This "I and mine"
causes the whole misery.
-Vivekananda
When we look with the "I"
We dream.
When we look for the "I"
We awaken.
-Anthony Paul Moo-Young, "Mooji"
Is there an "I" which subsumes these multiple "I's"?
And "I" of all others which has mastery over our entire being,
over all our inner beings?
-Gaston Bachelard
The supreme task of education is to take possession
of one's transcendental self,
to be at once the 'I' of one's 'I'.
-Novalis
The one real thing in us is the 'I'
which embraces all existences
and all possible contraries of existence.
-Satprem
For the Divine Spiritual "I," is alone eternal,
and the same throughout all births;
whereas the "personalities"
it informs in succession are evanescent.
-Helena P. Blavatsky
I am not a little exclusive I
but the great inclusive, allied I.
It is the play of stellar electricity in my soul.
-Frank Crane
What we call "I" is just a swinging door
which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.
-D. T. Suzuki
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.
-Juan Ramon Jimenez
If the "I" does not exist,
How can there be the "mine?"
-Mulamadhyamaka-karika
Avoid "I," beyond body be.
-Akha
Burn to ashes all that is not I, bind
The ashes to the fidelity of the wind.
-Farid ud-Din Attar
I liberated myself from my"I"
as a snake sheds its skin.
-Bayazid Bastami
