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With regard to the emotions, the path is a crucifixion of the personal ego. The aspirant's heart must be searched and searched until it is free from all reservations and utterly surrendered to the higher self. It is impossible to pass through such a process without undergoing the terrible ordeal of crushing some feelings and surrendering others. The adept is indeed the man who has triumphed over his emotions, but it would be an indefensible and inexcusable error to think he lives in a complete emotional vacuum, that he is a man without feeling or sensibilities of any kind. Bulwer Lytton has pictured for us in his brilliant novel Zanoni a character of this type, the Rosicrucian adept Mejnour. This picture is close to reality in certain respects but it is far from reality in other respects. Let us not make the mistake of believing that the adept does not know the meaning of the words affection, sympathy, compassion, joy, enthusiasm, and even ecstasy. He does, but he knows them all within the higher self, which rules them. The only emotions he does not know are those lower ones, such as anger, resentment, hatred, prejudice, bitterness, lust, pride, and intolerance. Yes!--the philosophical life does not lack emotional content but it is not the kind of narrow, selfish, vacillating emotion so many human beings are accustomed to.

-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics > Chapter 3 : Discipline Emotions > # 173