You are then a prisoner, imprisoned in your own selfishness, and therefore are you fearfully crippled in life's noblest battles. This is done by our free will, which is in itself, nevertheless, a divine power or quality. We are part of the energies of the universe, for we are inseparable from it. And when we use these forces wrongly, unrightly, or awry, we employ the colorless forces of the universe, but do it evilly, seeking profit for self. Ignorance is a bane to man.
Ignorance is the greatest foe of man.
And the fruits of ignorance are unhappiness, sorrow, pain, disease, and suffering. Selfishness is ignoble. It is also very unwise, because there is nothing like selfishness to cripple you and to mire your feet in the slough of the lower selfhood. The road to success is the quenching of personality, the becoming impersonal, so that your feet are not mired by the mud, by the clinging dirt, of material existence. A man who thinks of naught but self, me, my plans, my property, my wishes, my thoughts, makes a perfect cocoon of imperfect and ugly selfhood around himself, through which nothing can shine, and which is like an adamantine wall around him more hard and durable than steel.