Man has no individual 'I'. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small 'I's, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, 'I'. And each time his 'I' is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.
One of the strongest motives for wishing to work on yourself is the realization that you may die at any moment - only you must first realize this.
Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. There is a war going on at the present moment. What does it signify? It signifies that severals of sleeping people are trying to destroy severals of other sleeping people. They would not do this, of course, if they were to wake up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep.
One of man's important mistakes, one which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I. Man such as we know him, the 'man-machine,' the man who cannot 'do,' and with whom and through whom everything 'happens,' cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago.