The ego – and the scheme of things

 

Subject matter: Refining the ego and Realisation. How ego affects balance in the universe and resolving conflict. Why Avatars (masters) are drawn to Earth. How eternity is no thing - but it is is-ness 

Unprepared talk by Gururaj Ananda in response to ad-libbed questions

Session hosted and recorded by the British Meditation Society

 

Satsangs with Gururaj Ananda

From talk number UK78-35. Edited by J Lamb. Words in parenthesis added by editor.

All references to the masculine also include the feminine

 

Questioner:  Gururaj, you said that one should try to develop one's full potential and become a fulfilled individual.  Could this conflict with the goals of losing one's individual ego (while at the same time) devoting enough time to one's family?  And how do you cope with that?

 

Gururaj:  One should fulfil one's potential - one should realise one's totality - and yet at the same time fulfil one's family obligation.  Is that the gist of the question?

 

Questioner: Yes

 

Gururaj: 

 

There is a misconception that one has to get rid of one's ego to fulfil one's potentiality.   It’s not possible.  As long as man / woman remains an embodied being, there will be ego.  In the grosser person, the ego would be expressed in far grosser values and with a more developed person, the ego would be expressed in a far-refined value.

 

What is the difference between a gross ego and a refined ego?  In knowing the answer to this, the various conflicts that the ego might create could be obviated.  So the question does not revolve around the annihilation of the ego.  It doesn’t even revolve around the sublimation of the ego.  We want to use the ego until it is stretched. 

 

By this, I mean stretched to a certain limitation where a great clarity is observed in the ego.  We could use the analogy of a balloon.  As the balloon is stretched, the rubber, that is the make-up of the balloon, becomes fine.  When it becomes fine, greater light penetrates to it.

 

So this means that the ego is not sublimated.  Sublimating an ego might mean pushing the ego aside or giving the ego a different value.  We do not want to do that.  We want the ego to have its original value and not transform it into different values.  We do not want to take a certain item and convert it into a different substance altogether.  But by expanding the rubber that constitutes the balloon, by stretching the rubber so that it could become fine, it becomes more transparent.  And when it becomes more transparent, the greater the light that could shine through.  So the ego is to be preserved and not destroyed. 

 

          When the ego is stretched by means of our meditational practices, and through understandings and realisations we receive, the ego is not destroyed.  It is not sublimated, but it is brought to its greatest potential.  It’s the same ego, brought to its greatest potential in its own refinement. 

 

Man / woman could never exist as an embodied being if they did not have an ego.  Ego is that which gives man a sense of individuality.  And if man wants to live in this body, he has to have a sense of individuality - but individuality at its finest level, where that individuality becomes so refined and transparent.

 

 Ego can be very gross, could be very opaque, where light cannot shine through and the same ego could be so refined and stretched that the fullness of the light comes through.

 

  It is when man discards the mind and the body entirely that only the light would remain.  But for practical purposes as householders, as living, breathing human beings, this is an impossibility.  If any man tells you that 'I am egoless', that is not the truth, for even the highest realised man will still have a trace of ego in a very refined manner - and so refined that the glass is so clear and the entire light of Divinity can shine through. But the transparent glass is there. 

 

         You will notice this in many things where if you put a strong beam of light behind a piece of glass, you don't see the glass.  You must have heard of many people walking through a glass door.  They don't see the glass.  Now that happens in the refinement.  So it is not a question to repeat again of annihilation or sublimation.  Annihilation means destroying the glass.  And when you destroy the glass, you are destroying your entire personality.  You cannot exist here without being an individual being, without being a personal being. 

          So, that does not mean that there is no glass.  And man finds fulfilment in life when the totality of light shines through, in spite of there being a glass.  This means the universal self shines through the individual self because the individual self has been cleansed and refined. 

Now it’s only when the body and mind are totally discarded  - at the time of death - of a realised man, like my guru, that it would all merge away and at that time, the intense heat of that light disintegrates the glass, disintegrates the ego and it goes back into its original vibrations.

 

 The householder has to be conscious of his individual self.  If he is not conscious of his individual self, he will not be able to relate to his environment.  He will not be able to relate to his wife, children, or his beloved or his friends because there the individuality must exist.  Now if individuality does not exist at all in everyone, then the whole purpose of life is lost. 

 

          So to be able to live responsibly, the ego factor in man, the personality of man is necessary.  Firstly, if you undergo the destruction of the ego, then your whole personality would be destroyed.  Your mind would be destroyed.  Your thinking ability would be destroyed.  You would become mind-less and body-less and only the spirit would exist which is the universal spirit and you become one with the universal spirit, not requiring mind and neither body.  Then what is the purpose of having the body and the mind?  That comes at a very final stage when you merge away into Divinity, into that voidless void, where you become so universal without personality, without any trace of ego and you become the entire universe.

 

But you are part of mankind. And your one great gift is the ability to clarify - refine - that ego, stretch that rubber so beautifully that the entire universe shines through you. Then there is perceived a co-existence between universality and individuality. This co-existence is so enhanced, so beautiful that you are not conscious so much anymore of the individuality and the greater emphasis is placed upon universality, yet without the distraction of the ego.

 

There is nothing in this universe, not even a single thought, that could ever be destroyed.  There is no destruction.  And if you try and sublimate, you are only pushing away the ego.  That little individual self, you are just pushing it apart, away.  By doing that, where is the appreciation of Divinity?  So in the final analysis the ego must remain.  It remains as a very fine current through which the universality flows.  A very fine wire, like a radio wave, a current there all the time through which this universality flows.  

 

In all spiritual practices, in all the practices we do, the goal and aim would be to refine that ego to its subtlest aspect, to its subtlest limit, so that the full force of Divinity shines through and that, for the individual, is self-realisation.  That means that although the small self is there, the big self is forever shining through it.  And the small self assumes, takes on the qualities of the big self and there is the God-man on earth.  And this is the case with great men like Christ and Buddha and Krishna and Rama.

  Those are the mechanics.  Because as soon as you try to destroy the individual self - which is of course a misnomer - you will destroy the entire universe, which is impossible because the entire universe is composed of all the little individual selves that make up this whole.  And Divinity cannot exist without relativity and relativity cannot exist without Divinity.  In other words the absolute becomes a nonentity if there was no relativity and relativity becomes non-existent if there was no absolute.

 

In clearing away our dirt we lead ourselves to the deeper and deeper subtler and subtler and finer and finer values of life so that you reach a stage of development when all your actions becomes spontaneously good.  People try to be good. There is some value in that, but the trying must be got rid of.  Trying must be taken away from goodness. In the beginning stages, we try to be good. That's fine.  But we reach a stage where goodness remains on its own without trying. That is the aim. In this path, in this progress, one reaches the subtlest level of oneself where entire Divinity just shines through.

 

When it comes to a great teacher, an Avatar, an Incarnation who has come to teach the path for people to reach this level, he has willingly taken upon himself this individuality. If you can picture to yourself an ice cream cone, from the broad end where he exists, he brings himself to the narrow end of the cone to assume, to take unto himself, this individuality. And individuality necessarily has ego.

 

Now ego is a very good word but so, so misunderstood. The ego that people normally talk about is the grosser ego and not the refined ego. The refined ego is on the level of super-consciousness where its constituent is Sattvic force, pure force, the force of light.  That still does not alter the fact that it is an ego. It is still an ego. But ego at its subtlest level of the superconscious mind is in direct contact with absolute.

 

In other words it is the clearest reflector of the absolute and that light is reflected to the world.  So the Avatar or the Incarnation, by will, can merge away into unity, into the absolute where nothing remains of him. But because of the need of the universe, because of the need of the world, he very consciously assumes form. And that is why the great Sages have come in the forms of Christ and Krishna and Buddha etc. 

 

When one proceeds to the finer and finer levels of the ego, then conflicts automatically resolve themselves. By trying to resolve a conflict, you are creating a greater conflict. The very idea of the resolution of a conflict is the seed of another conflict because two things are required to create a conflict, to create this friction. The friction itself is a conflict.

 

Firstly, two objects are at opposition to each other and with the two objects coming in touch with each other, it creates a friction. Friction is another conflict. Now the friction produces around itself or attracts round itself all the dust of the two pieces of wood, metaphorically speaking, that are rubbed together. This interaction engenders more and more conflicts. The only way out is to refine the ego through spiritual practices and through self-help. Then, if those two things are done, Gurushakti is there, automatically on its own.  It comes running without asking. Open the window, the fresh air just enters. You do not need to invite it. That is how conflicts are solved.

 

            So, this means that to be able to erase conflicts, it is not necessary to annihilate the ego because the ego is beyond the level of annihilation. And in the refinement of the ego, leading us to its finer levels, the grossness that was there is never destroyed too, but it is discarded so that that grossness goes out and meets up with a similar kind of grossness. That is how the ego self purifies itself.  Purification is the discarding of the grossness.  It is not a question of annihilation. 

 

Every wrong thought that a person thinks is never destroyed. It floats away in the atmosphere. It would go and attach itself to a similar negativity. When a good thought emanates in a man's mind, it is never destroyed too. When you come to a far more refined way of thinking, then the good thought, forever existing in the universe, attaches itself to its similar kind. So look at the help man receives when he brings his ego-self or his mind-self to a far purer subtler level.

 

            Did you know that for every pure thought you think, the energy of ten other pure thoughts are being attracted to you and strengthens the purity that you by effort have brought upon yourself? This whole universe is so composed that everything helps everything. Even the human body, if you cut your finger, you'd find the various corpuscles rush to the wound to help to heal; an automatic process.  Your mind has not called upon the white corpuscles to come and heal.  No, it has not, but without even you knowing, they rush to the troubled spot and helps.  Similarly in everything in the universe this is happening. In this universe there everything strives to a balance, to a balance all the time.

 

In this world there could never ever be more than seven self-realised people.  If there were more than seven self-realised people, this whole world, this whole universe would go into imbalance. And too much good is also an imbalance, not in man himself but in the universal self. So, the whole universe as the individual self is forever trying to preserve a balance. And that balance in very simple terms is called tranquillity, tranquil waters, where the waves and the ripples have subsided.

 

When the waves and the ripples subside, conflict ceases because one wave is created by the momentum of another wave. They are there all the time. If you look at the sea very carefully, or superficially first, you'd find the wave moving from over there to over there reaching the shore.  That is not really happening, you know. The waves are just there all the time, they are not moving. They are just going up and down, up and down, up and down, giving the illusion that that portion of water is moving from there to there. Similarly, that is what happens in this universe.  There is motion all the time. The motion is there, but the motion is self-contained there on the spot - now and here.

 

So, when it comes to resolving personal conflicts, one has to make effort to take the ego or the mind to a more subtle level and the problem gets resolved.  And the best and the easiest way to take ourselves to the subtler level of the mind, to the refined section of the ego, is through our spiritual practices (meditation, mindfulness - which is ‘conscious effort’ – breathing techniques and unconditioning remedies).  That’s the easiest way. The conscious effort is what makes the process become smoother and easier. 

 

It is the action of man that brings his consciousness to the troubled areas of conflict.  And that is the royal road - to get rid of conflict. If a man tries consciously to get rid of his ego, he is strengthening the ego, he is deluding himself. But what is deluding what? The ego is deluding the ego because the ego too, as the mind, has various sections. The ego too as the universe, as Divinity combined to relativity, is nothing else but a continuum from the grosser to the subtler.

 

So the whole reason for life is to reach the subtlest level of being.  And when this is reached, you do not need to seek being.  You are being.  In other words after this whole journey (when you can just be) then you will find that this whole journey has been no journey. From silence we come and to silence we reach again. Where have you gone? Nowhere. ‘From whence cometh thou my friend and where goest thou?’  Nowhere.  Nowhere. 

 

It is only the dross, the dirt accumulated over the centuries, as that atom progressed and swirled through the universe, that picked up all the dust because it combined itself with all various elements in the universe. And having the free will, each could have at that time discarded the elements that clouded his vision. But no, he did not. Some of them were very pleasurable. So all the pleasure found has to be repaid in some way, in conflict. 

 

Every pain you have, remember for sure, that you will have an equal amount of pleasure in some way or the other. Pain cannot exist alone. It has to be accompanied by pleasure. The rise of every wave will have its trough.  Yes. It will always be there. And it is only the refined ego or the realisation of the deeper levels of the ego that will make us feel all the pleasures less intensely, and all the pains less intensely. So there too we come to an equilibrium.

 

That is the secret - to find equilibrium between pain and pleasure. And when that equilibrium is found, there is no conflict. Because really speaking conflict is the clash between pain and pleasure. One part of oneself thinks of a certain pleasure, the other part would think of its opposite. Always.

 

            So the whole universe functions on the principle of creating a balance. Sometimes it occurs when there is a disturbance in the balance. And then because of the disturbance in the balance, a force is attracted that comes age after age, as the Gita says, to bring about the balance. And that too is never lasting. That is why these Avatars have to come again and again. A momentum is set up. A balance is created. But that too, because of man's nature, man's warring nature - not with nations, that is not so important - man's warring nature within himself that creates the imbalance. And then again after a few thousand years, he comes again and brings a balance, gives it a push up, gets rid of a lot of conflicts, produces new understandings of what conflict is all about. And then again the wave goes down the trough, more conflicts to be raised again.

 

This has been going on eternally. Where do we stand in it? We are the entire universe. An eternity is always in a state of flux. And if anyone dreams of bringing the whole world to the age of some kind of enlightenment, where they will just be peace and peace and more peace all the time; that is a pipe dream. I wonder what they used in the pipe? (Gururaj laughs).

 

The whole problem of eradicating conflict lies with man himself in his individual capacity. And if it lies within himself in his individual capacity, then ego is necessary because ego is that which produces consciousness. If the ego was not there, you would not be aware of conflict. And the whole constitution of the universe is made up of conflict and that is why the universe keeps on going.

 

Any law of mechanics will tell you that there has to be opposing forces to make the wheel go round. So this will always be there. So what do we do? We use the ego and we refine it.  We make it pure or we make it more transparent until the light shines through it completely and not only enlightens us, but enlightens all that which is around us. The lamp burns not for its own light, but more so to cast light around itself. 

 

The sun shines because it is its nature to shine, but it gives heat and warmth and comfort to those that are cold. The beautiful Banyan tree grows to give shade to the wayfarer that is weary. Make use of that. Because it is by rest that conflicts too are resolved. And that rest is provided through our practices, where we feel a certainly tranquillity without annihilating the ego, without trying to perform that which is impossible.

 

There are certain laws that are there. Water runs down a hill and not up a hill. These laws are there. They are eternal laws. The ego is there. (It is another natural law). After all, what is the ego, but a manifestation of Divinity that just got mixed up (in evolution)?  That's all.  And then of course comes karma and its various ramifications for it being mixed up. So if the Manifestor is eternal, then the manifestation must be eternal too, however it is modified, however it is mixed up. So what we have to do is to unmix the mixing.  And that is called refinement of the ego.

 

Questioner:  So the ego must be eternal?

Gururaj:  Yes.  True.  It is. 

Questioner (Cont’d):  So, we’re saying that an individual is reabsorbed into the universe, becomes the universe?

Gururaj:  Very true.

Questioner (Cont’d):  So what is universal ego?

Gururaj:  Isn't this question about what happens to the ego of a self-realised man when he dies?

Questioner (Cont’d): Yes.  That's what I'm asking.

 

Gururaj:  A self-realised man merges away into the absolute. Now to be able to merge away into the absolute, there has to be no trace of the individual 'I', never mind how refined it is. So in the heat of the absolute - this is using the word poetically, of course - in the power and the heat of the absolute, the finest trace of the ego disintegrates. And it disintegrates and joins itself up with the various other elements at its own level. That’s it. Because when the mergence takes place, he becomes the universe. 

 

When we talk of the total refinement of the ego, that ego is so extended that it is as vast as the universe. When mergence takes place, total mergence with the absolute, then to the absolute there has been no ego. The universe is a dream. For the purposes of relativity, the universe is real. But when we reach the absolute, nothing else exists but the absolute. You see?

 

So it depends from what angle we look at it.  Now this can only be appreciated fully if one has reached the absolute. Until then we are still swimming round in the sea of relativity. Some people have reached finer levels, finer limits of it, but it is not the completeness of it. By refining the ego to the extent where one encompasses the entire universe, you have only reached to the level of the totality of the universe. Some people call it the Personal God.  Some people call it Christ consciousness. Some people call it Krishna consciousness. And yet the Impersonal God is beyond all consciousness, because consciousness too is limiting.  Consciousness too is within the realms of relativity, while the absolute just is.

 

Consciousness requires to be conscious.  Even the purest consciousness requires to be conscious of itself. And immediately consciousness becomes conscious of itself, ripples start at the finest level of the ego, while the absolute is beyond the ego and beyond the finest level of the refined ego. It is beyond the level of consciousness where it does not need to be conscious of consciousness. It is just an 'Isness'.

 

The electricity current that burns in these lights (in this room) is not conscious of itself as being electricity. It is only the usage of it that tells us this light burns because of electricity. So, you see, it’s a realm beyond human conception and one who has not realised it can only know about it (as a learning).  And that's what the Universities do. They tell you about a thing, but not what a thing really is. Because that 'Isness' has to be experienced and it is experienced by itself, for itself, without having the experiencer.  And that is what is meant by 'Isness'.  You just are.  ‘I am that I am’, - no qualifications, no adjectives.  That's what it is.  That's what it is.