What We Call as Ourselves

from a recent email by Sri Aurobindo Society forwarded to me:

What We Call as Ourselves

...what we are now
or rather what we perceive as ourselves and so call
is only an ignorant partial and superficial
formulation of our nature.

It is not our whole self,
it is not even our real self;
it is a little representative personality
put forward by the true and persistent being in us
for the experience of this brief life;
we not only have been in the past
and can be in the future
but we are much more than that in the
present secret totality of our being and nature.

Especially, there is a secret soul in us
that is our true person; there is a secret self
that is our true impersonal being and spirit.

To unveil that soul and that self
is one of the most important movements of Yoga.

-Sri Aurobindo