Ego & Living

Ego is the cause of all our psychological suffering. Ego is an illusionary entity and so is our suffering. This means, we ourselves are illusionary entities living an illusionary life. In other words, we are real but create an illusionary entity called ego and following/living a life of that illusionary entity and calling it as our life. In this following, we forget or fail to recognise our real self and hence the real life.

So, what looks like a real life? Can we imagine a life where we don’t have any thoughts centred on the “I” or “Me” or “My”. One possibility is that we may see total psychological emptiness with out ego. This emptiness may be so vast that the real time events keep on flowing into this emptiness, still it remains as emptiness without ego. In other words if we can comprehend this emptiness, the reality keeps unwind itself within our mind space or with in that vast emptiness. Another possibility is that we see our mind with out ego as completely filled and active. This fullness does not need any thing from outside. It is self encompassing and remains as active as sun, glowing till the last drop of fuel remains. Both of these possibilities may be just our imagination or primitive expressions of a life without ego depend on how we perceive our own mind. And such an expression could be any thing else.

A real life is one where there is no mismatch or conflict between the way we are living and the way we want to live – the thoughts. In other words, a real life is when we perceive life as it is with out the influence of thoughts. When there is a conflict between the two, we are not actually living, but our life is dragged by the forces which are beyond our control and hence there is a constant conflict. In this conflict, we never recognise living, but recognise the conflict and our fight to overcome this conflict. We may be having very few moments of recognising living, but that is overshadowed by our thoughts about conflicts.

We can live our life only when the conflict between real and what we want to be are minimal. When this conflict is minimal, thoughts in our mind also are proportionally minimal. When thoughts are minimal, the boosting-up of ego is also minimal. When the activity of ego is minimal, there shall not be any additional wants to be. In other words, the wrapping over ego starts unwind itself as the conflict between real and what we want to be are minimised. When we start moving away from our life of illusion to real life, the ego also becomes thinner and thinner. Knowledge (yet free from knowledge) is essential to free the illusions in our life. More specifically, for logical minds and materialistic minds, knowledge is the tool. In our social structure almost all the individuals are with logical or materialistic mind. There may be a very few exceptions. Hence in general, knowledge is a key factor to free oneself from illusionary life. Knowledge should be used as the toll at least to the extent one transcends the logical or materialistic component of mind. With out transcending this component of mind (if exists), there is no way of tasting real life.

We will be able to understand the existence of ego only when we are educated in real sense, only when we are learned. Learning is understanding life. Education is the process of understanding life. The academic education is far away from true learning, academic education seems to be just take care of our earnings. To understand ego, one must learn the life very deeply. It is very easy to read the learning of others, understand it as a concept and consider this conceptual understanding as our learning. It is not learning - it is just copying or conceptualising. Possibly we can consider the learning of others to speed-up our own learning. But copying or reflecting the learning of others can never become our own learning. In fact such conceptualisation drags us away from reality.

When we are really learned, we will be able to understand the functioning of mind – the boon for human being which has become a curse to major part of human population. We understand that living is a function of mind. Physical body is just existence, but living is a function of mind. The living can be either real or illusionary. When the ego disappears, the living approaches real living. In either case, unless we are learned, we can not distinguish between a real and illusionary life. If there is a question arises, we never consider our life as an illusionary one. In fact, we do not know it. But it could very well be a starting point for enquiry.

If we are really learned, the learning process itself reveals the existence of ego with in our mind space. Living is also with in same mind space. When ego is dominant with in mind space, it takes away the space for living and when we are actually living, ego disappears from mind. Hence the path for spirituality now seems to be open ended. That is by means of knowledge eliminate ego, living remains in mind space, or live actually by some means, ego disappears from mind space and living remains in mind space. And possibly approaching spirituality from both the ends may be easier to achieve!