Take away the thoughts and feelings, including the body-thought and the specific I-feeling, and you take away the whole basis of man's personal existence. It is indeed the only mode of his life that he can conceive. After all, the personality is only a series of continuous thoughts, strongly held and centered around a particular body. He who can win the power to free himself from all thoughts, wins the power to free himself from the personal "I"-thoughts. Only such a man has really obeyed Jesus' injunction to lose his life. For what other life has man ordinarily than the personal one? But Jesus also promised a certain reward for successful obedience. He said that such a person would "save" his life. What does this mean? When the thoughts lapse and the finited personality goes, will the man be bereft of all consciousness? No--he will still possess pure consciousness, the deeper life that supports the finited self and sustains its very thoughts.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 5 : Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > # 483
