If you will have the sun, then leave the earth and its clouds. The great heresy and the only real heresy is the idea that anything is separate, distinct, and different essentially, from other things. It is this sense of separateness that is the cause and root of all evil. And it is the sense of personal separateness, imagining that one is utterly separate from all others, utterly different, that prevents one from becoming that inner god within. Selfishness is the root of all evil, and therefore of weakness of mind, of lack of faculty, of lack of power, of lack of judgment, of lack of discrimination, of lack of a feeling heart.
Selfishness is therefore the fertile cause of all misfortune and pain.
Everything that cripples the native faculties of the human constitution arises out of selfishness. It brings about a deplorable and evil-working view restricted to your own little circle of thought. 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.