Inner Voice

... we are so in the habit of identifying ourselves with the thoughts that come to us that we invariably assume we have made them.  A&A BW 175

Let him know that man’s greatest treasure is to be found within man, and not outside him. From him it goes forth inwardly … whereby that is outwardly brought to pass which he sees with his own eyes. Therefore unless his mind be blinded, he will see, that is, understand, who and of what sort he is inwardly, and by the light of nature he will know himself through outward things.” The secret is first and foremost in man; it is his true self, which he does not know but learns to know by experience of outward things. AION 163

It is not for nothing that our age calls for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the inescapable grip of the collective and save at least his own soul, who lights a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from that fatal identity with the group psyche.  

   Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality; but if he succumbs to it he will be swept away by the blind flux of psychic events and destroyed.  That is the great and liberating thing about any genuine personality: he voluntarily sacrifices himself to his vocation, and consciously translates into his own individual reality what would only lead to ruin if it were lived unconsciously by the group.   TDoP 180

 The inner voice is the voice of a fuller life, of a wider, more comprehensive consciousness.  That is why, in mythology, the birth of the hero or the symbolic rebirth coincides with sunrise, for the growth of personality is synonymous with an increase of self-consciousness.  For the same reason most heroes are characterized by solar attributes, and the moment of birth of their greater personality is known as illumination.   TDoP 184

   The fear that most people naturally have of the inner voice is not so childish as might be supposed.  The contents that rise up and confront a limited consciousness are far from harmless, as is shown by the classic example of the temptation of Christ, or the equally significant Mara episode in the Buddha legend.  As a rule, they signify the specific danger to which the person concerned is liable to succumb.  What the inner