The more mature and adjusted to reality the ego becomes the weaker and more rigid it becomes, and the more subject to the charismatic influence of those 'shiny' egos that have managed to arrest their development at an earlier stage, the earlier the better. This points to the fact that the psychological ego is mostly unconscious and hence timelessly at one with all of its earlier incarnations; the mature ego is the conscious tip of the iceberg and hence always faintly ridiculous. Truly mature living requires a different centering principle than the ego, and a different kind of integration with the timeless.