Meditation & Ego

Where there is meditation ego is not and where there is ego meditation is not. Any religion or spiritual path must be leading the follower to egoless state, if that religion or path is practiced in its real sense. Whatever form of religions we are witnessing today might be the outcome of following images created by these religions rather than practicing the religions. (Probably, the term ‘religion’ needs to be understood in right context)

Meditation is possible when the mind reaches a standstill state– Standstill with respect to thoughts. This is the point where the mind is extremely sensitive to any thing and every thing. With this sensitivity, the mind can recognise all noises sensed by ear, all light sensed by eyes, all smells sensed by nose, all sensation of our skin and even the sensation of all nerves in our body, but react to none of them. Only when the mind is free from thoughts and being aware of such a thoughtless state, at least for a short duration, it can understand the possibility of such a sensitive mind. Meditativness is having such sensitivity and awareness. Any religion, if we look into the core concept, must be aimed for helping human beings to progress towards such a state of mind where the sensitivity of mind is at its peak and hence the awareness. Any philosophy must be for transcending the fluctuations of mind by understanding existence by means of logic.

Ego is the originator of thoughts. Whenever there is a domination of “I” or “Me” or “My” within mind space, the ego is active and the activities of mind are centred at this ego. At this point, the mind loses sensitivity towards any of its activities other than that support the ego. It is clearly evident from simple observation of people around us. As the people are more self cantered, they least recognise the problems of others, they least recognise the discomfort caused by them to others, they least recognise any thing about even themselves which are not supporting the existence of their ego. On the contrary, they are highly sensitive about any thing which supports the growth of their ego. They are very sensitive in reading between lines and words, if the lines and words are affecting their ego in any way. In other words such people have lost their sensitivity about any thing else other than their own illusionary ego, or they have lost sensitivity towards any thing real in this vast world. Almost every one of us is in such a state (possible with very, very few exceptions). We are sensitive to only the images. We lost sensitivity towards real. Meditation happens only when we have at least some sensitivity towards real, which is possible only when we understand our current sensitiveness is only towards images or illusions, which is nothing but insensitivity.



One will be able to forgo ego only when one is aware of this entity called ‘ego’. In this regard, the current state of materialistic evolution can be considered as an evolution towards recognising ego. Until a couple of generations ago, at least in our social set up, social mind played important role than individual mind. That is the social ego is dominant than individual ego. This must be mainly due to the need for dependency for physical survival. Now with the establishment of governments and, law and order, we no more have such dependency with others for physical survival. Hence the social structure is undergoing a revamping, incorporating this independency. That is, slowly the individual ego is overtaking social ego. This is more evident with population in cities where the social dependence is very minimal and where the social dependencies can be replaced by economical or financial dependency. Even though there are some social egos are active with respect to religion, caste, language, region, country, etc. they can be easily overridden by individual ego due to least dependency with such entities for our survival. Any body over emphasis on these entities are still deeply depending on these entities for their survival at the psychological level, and politicians exploit these psychological dependencies for their physical dependency.

The next step in evolution of human being may be recognising this ego within oneself. Probably, it will happen slowly over many generations after we become and tiered of being extremely selfish due to our ego, if we still not destroyed this earth out of our selfishness!

One must be selfish, if one wants to be free from ego. The desire to be free from ego may be the king of all desires. Any desire is out of selfishness. Even the desire of helping others is due to selfishness as one finds self-satisfaction out of this helping. Same is the case with desire to be free from ego! Also need courage to pursue this selfishness. If one is away from selfishness, this desire and longing might dries up and hence the ego is still there. But that cannot happen. As long as the component of ego is present, the component of selfishness is also there. Only with awareness of this ego and selfishness, one will be able to transcend ego/selfishness. Once the ego is dissolved, there is no self and hence no selfishness. In other words, the selfishness disappears along with ego but have to be selfish to dissolve ego and be aware of this selfishness! Meditation, when it really happens, takes away ego and selfishness. At this level, whatever one does, the component of selfishness may not exist there.