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If people practise good manners merely and only as a part of their paid job--as, for instance, head waiters in restaurants--that is their affair. But the motivation can also be on a far deeper level even in ordinary social intercourse. Under the finest manners there can be--not hypocrisy, as a Colonial once informed me--but utter sincerity and true feeling. They can express goodwill to all, poor and rich, black and white, servant and superior. If the world all too easily puts them on like a mask, to disguise antipathy or even hate, the quester who has had, or hopes to have, a glimpse of his Higher Self, does not need to wear such a mask at all. Without a hollow, ridiculous obsession with formality and decorum, such as Confucian China eventually fell into and then had to rebel against, he can simply be what he now knows a human being ought to be in his relationship with others.

-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics > Chapter 5 : Spiritual Refinement > # 197