The Oriental ideas about the spiritual goal and methods of spiritual practice as they appear in most Buddhist and many Hindu sects are not likely to appeal to Occidental seekers. For they seek the dissolution of human personality, either through merging into an inconceivable Unity or through disappearance into an indescribable Nirvana. As a rolling wave dissolves in the sea, as a wisp of smoke vanishes in the air, so does the separated human life enter its ultimate state. Few Westerners are prepared to renounce their own identity, to sacrifice their inborn attachment to personality for the sake of such a vague goal--one moreover which seems too much like utter annihilation to be worth even lifting a finger for! To most Westerners it is unpleasant and terrifying to look forward to such an end. For who gains by this goal? The man himself certainly does not. The absolute Unity remains what it was before; so it does not gain either. If we enquire why the goal is acceptable to the East but objectionable to the West, the answer will be partly found in the latter's religious history.
By seeking to perpetuate for all eternity the same human personality in the spirit world, too many orthodox church interpreters of Christ's teaching have misinterpreted it. For Christ taught in several clear sentences the giving up of self, the denial of personality. These theologians reduced this preachment to the practice of charity and unselfishness but kept the ego as something precious, whereas Jesus asked not only for these moral virtues, but for the immeasurably more important metaphysical-mystical virtue of rooting out the ego itself. The moral improvement of character is thus substituted for the metaphysical destruction of ego.
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 5 : Comments On Specific Religions > # 21
