Misdirected idealism sets traps for the young, the naïve, the inexperienced, and the ill-informed in political circles as much as for the aspirants or the seekers in spiritual circles, takes pleasant sounding, attractively suggestive words like "harmony" and "unity" or phrases like the "brotherhood of man" and uses them as if they could become realities. This is just not possible in human relations, not in any full, adequate, or lasting sense. Not only so, but it has never been possible in the past--despite the myth of an imagined golden age--nor clearly is it possible in the present. Everywhere we see that even where such idealism seems to be successfully realized, it is only on the surface and vanishes as soon as we probe beneath the surface. We see religions, old and new, well-known and hardly known, divided into sects, groups, or factions which oppose each other. Nor are the ashrams and monasteries very much better, as they are supposed to be. In the world at large, where little wars and rebellions are being fought with savage ferocity, where political success is achieved by attacking, denigrating, or besmirching others, a semantic analysis of present conditions shows up the self-deception of the idealists and utopians. The lesson has not been learned that because egoism rules men, brotherhood is not possible, and that because no two minds are alike, unity is not possible. Harmony can be found only inside man himself, not in his relations with other men, and then only if insight is developed enough to track the ego down to its lair, expose it for what it is, and live in the peace of the Overself. But other men will continue to live in and from egoism.
-- Notebooks Category 3: Relax and Retreat > Chapter 4 : Retreat Centres > # 150
