The Ego (Ahamkara)...
The ego...
The ego exists because the spirit incarnates in matter. For lovers of Samkhya, it is the meeting of Buddhi, the higher, impersonal intelligence, with Ahamkâra, the sense of ego.
It will be there until our last breath and in no way dies during our life. It is what we might call "yours truly": the gathering of all the qualities of the body, of our energies and of our spirit, which forms "a character".
It will hardly change in a lifetime: a shy or an outgoing person will remain what they are until their last breath, just as a stiff person will never become supple, even after ten hours of Yoga a day.
The confusion around the idea that the ego must die arises from the fact that it can be transcended, and that is what we try to do in a Yoga or meditation practice.
Practice will increase the energies and calm the mind, which will fall silent for a while, longer or shorter.
The mind is memory, history, chronology, the character thinking about itself; it is the body-thought, because thought is tied to the body and not to the spirit or to consciousness.
Practice will then allow us to enter our consciousness and bring it to the foreground, with no further reference to the character, no more thought, no story, no chronology.
The key to the appearance of consciousness lies in perceiving more and more finely what surrounds us, trying at every moment to be aware of the present moment and to settle into it without ever again letting the mind intervene, and finally discovering that consciousness is a great void frantically seeking to fill itself with whatever it can take from its own creation. In this quest, with the addition of the body-thought, space and time, the feeling of existence appears in the illusory separation between inner and outer worlds.
This feeling of existence, which is the deepest feeling of all, must be directed towards something greater than the idea of the character, otherwise everything done in Yoga or meditation will only feed and swell the character, the ego.
The ego then risks swelling out of all proportion by drawing everything to itself, sometimes even the energies of their students, pushing the character towards the "call me master" syndrome, with its very easy-to-spot trait: "I am always right, and when I am wrong I am still right". Galvanised by their practice, their energies and their knowledge, such a person becomes an unrestrained seducer who also causes great emotional suffering around them, often with the sublime excuse of tantrism. Very often these "monsters" are smooth talkers and great manipulators who know better than anyone how always to land on their feet. But once you have seen through this game, you can only laugh at this tragicomic situation when this behaviour appears in them.
So the increase of energies, strength, knowledge of the scriptures, courage, skill, endurance, perseverance, all these sublime qualities must no longer be referred to the character but to something greater than us, something that transcends us, and all of this will make us humble.
Rereading the Yoga Tattva Upanishad, there is a short sentence that says this:
36. Holding his body very straight, the adept will first honour, with joined hands, the deity of his choice; then, with the thumb of his right hand, he will close the right nostril, which is the opening of the Piñgalã channel, and gently draw in air through the left nostril, the opening of Idã...
This little sentence seems quite insignificant, but as always in Indian texts, it is what is hidden or simple that is of crucial importance, because this idea of joining the hands and honouring the deity of one's choice is what will colour the whole practice and leave the practitioner in a true attitude of devotion and fervour.
The whole practice that follows this sentence will take a different direction depending on what is done, and in the name of whom or what?
The fundamental question to ask ourselves in any action, whatever it may be, is:
"What is at work, and for whom?"
When you do a Yoga posture, who or what do you do it for?
- To have a beautiful, supple, slim body?
- To feel good in your head?
- To give yourself pleasure?
- Or to offer all of it?
Here we must honestly ask ourselves the right question and see the reality within us.
Just try one day to do a Yoga session offering it to peace in the world, to love, so that ignorance may disappear from the world, or to God if you believe in a God, and you will see how humble you suddenly become, how your ego can no longer exist, and how this simple yet so fundamental attitude dissolves your ego and opens you to something far greater and more beautiful!
The feeling of existence will then be directed towards this unspeakable reality, and the character will become "blurred" to the point of disappearing into the light of ineffable consciousness. For this light is deep within us, but hidden by our character, by our attachment and our identification with this cluster of matter, energies and consciousness. So it is not a God outside us that we must turn to and honour, which would thereby become a new object, but this omnipresent immensity that we are. For the part of us that thinks of itself as the character is not this immaculate immensity that is our deep nature; the subtlety is considerable!
True qualities will appear in the being, whose thoughts will little by little be transformed, and the light of consciousness will illuminate the mind, which will no longer need to impose external, borrowed moral and ethical codes on itself: these will arise from within the being and become true virtues.
We talk about it here on my forum...
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