Developing Detachment

The quality of detachment may be gradually developed by adopting the suggested viewpoints below:

1. Stop viewing reality as separated into "me" and "others" (i.e. an egocentric view). Rather, see reality as made up of objects (one of which is your body) in an infinite background space (i.e. an objective view).

2. Do not associate yourself with just your own physical body. Rather, identify yourself with the Universal Soul which permeates the infinite background space in which all objects (including your body) exists.

Impersonality or spiritual aloofness may be further enhanced through the regular practice of the exercise given below (attributed to the legendary sage Hermes Trismegistus):

Mind unto Hermes

"...Then, in this way know God; as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself.

"If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him. For like is knowable unto like [alone]. Make, [then,] thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all time; become Eternity; and [thus] shalt thou know God.

"Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all - all arts, all sciences, the way of every life.

"Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth. Collect into thyself all senses of [all] creatures - of fire, [and] water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place - in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, [and] dead, in after-death conditions.

"And if thou knowest all these things at once - times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know God."

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