Break Free from the Ego’s Trap

Acharya Prashant

9 min
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Break Free from the Ego’s Trap
The ego does not need an entire purpose of life. It's so much in pain and so full of immediate distress that it's enough for it to pay attention to its immediate surroundings. And the most immediate to the ego is itself. So words like ultimate mean nothing to the ego. The ego is like a patient on a ventilator. That fellow is looking forward to the next hour. Will I see the next day? Will I survive the next hour? That's the ego so much in distress that even the next one hour is difficult to to predict or see through or navigate. This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

Questioner: Namaskar. So,everything is dead and everything is basically molecules that are just in a default arrangement. So can we say that Prakriti has induced us into a falseness that there are these biological senses and these compulsions that we have of our emotions. So does observing these emotions and observing these compulsions and avoiding them; is that a first way to move towards being truly alive?

Acharya Prashant: Yes, observe them but without blaming Prakriti or anybody. Nobody has brought you to this condition. You wanted to exist, therefore you gave yourself a condition. Anything that exists; exists in some condition, right? So you want to exist. So sometimes you give yourself a good condition, sometimes a bad condition. Just observe. Yes. The entire purpose of life is to just observe and then not be swayed away by it.

The ego does not need an entire purpose of life. It's so much in pain and so full of immediate distress that it's enough for it to pay attention to its immediate surroundings. And the most immediate to the ego is itself. So words like ultimate mean nothing to the ego. The ego is like a patient on a ventilator. If you talk about life after 10 years to somebody who is on a ventilator, assuming that he is able to talk, it's quite meaningless. That fellow is looking forward to the next hour. Will I see the next day? Will I survive the next hour? That's the ego so much in distress that even the next 1 hour is difficult to to predict or see through or navigate.

Questioner: It's fascinating how all this relates to evolutionary biology like so much of it.

Acharya Prashant: You cannot appreciate ’Sankhya Yog’ if you do not appreciate evolution. Entire ’Sankhya Yog’ is evolutionary but unfortunately so much of religion has been about creation not evolution. Religion says man came through a process of creation and who was the creator? Some god. Now the fact is in ’Sankhya Yog’, there is really no place for any god. You call it one of the ’Aastik Darshans’ but in reality, in the ’Darshan’ itself there is no god. There is no god in ’Sankhya Yog’ and there can be no god in ’Sankhya Yog’ because ’Sankhya Yog’ is continuously about evolution.

Questioner: Evolution.

Acharya Prashant: If things are evolving, how can there be a creator? If one thing evolves into another thing, show me where is the creator then? When you say creation, you mean there is somebody who just made this thing into what it is? But the fact is that the thing did not become what it is in one go, in one stroke. It has continuously been evolving. So that's the great contribution of ’Sankhya Yog’. And that's also what ’Yog’ borrows from ’Sankhya’ that's also what ’Vedant’ owes to ’Sankhya’ That's also what Buddhism owes to ’Sankhya’.

The thing that entire existence is a flow, everything is a process, everything is ever changing that’s ’Sankhya’. And the very common tripartite division of Prakriti into ’Sat, Raj and Tam’ - today, we take that as common place but all that comes from ’Sankhya’.

So yes, that's the reason why I continuously say evolutionary biology is so important. When I say evolutionary biology is important, actually what I'm saying is ’Sankhya Yog’ is important. But if I just say ’Sankhya Yog’, you know, this generation might not appreciate that. So I say evolutionary biology.

Questioner: Yeah. So my question revolves around the statement that you said that we all actually don't exist and even our consciousness is also false. And if I look at Arjuna at that moment then even Arjun is being driven by his bodily tendencies only. So even he is dead right? So to whom Shri Krishna is teaching at that moment. So what is still alive inside Arjuna at that moment even after being dead inside out?

Acharya Prashant: The dead man walking is the dead man suffering. He needs to be cremated. That's what the instruction is all about. You are already dead. Why do you continue to walk and suffer? Let's put you to rest. Let's cremate you. That's the Bhagvad Gita. The ego is the dead man walking dead, still suffering, rather suffering exactly because it is dead. So, that's a delicate thing to appreciate. You are not yet you insist that you must be. You forcefully insist that you must be and in that you create yourself. But your creation is needless. Therefore, you suffer.

It's like a car already packed full of five passengers. And those five are sufficient. They can deliver the goods. There is a nice network, a perfect equilibrium that those five passengers or five elements very ably served. Then a sixth one tries to barge in. He says I must fit in. I must fit in. I'm needed. Now this sixth one is outside Prakriti but he forcefully enters the car. What does he do? He creates suffering. He's not needed. He's coming in and he creates suffering. Everything is proceeding very nicely and then something happens. An unwanted intrusion.

That's what the ego is about. A needless thing and therefore a thing that causes suffering obviously only to itself. We said today that it's a belief and I'm fond of often saying the ego is the most fundamental superstition. So it's a thing of the mind. You remember the Abrahamic story about the origin of everything. So there is God and there is Adam and to give Adam some company there is Eve and that's Adam Eve and the great garden. Appreciate the symbolism.

There is Adam, there is Eve and there is a great garden and they are just roaming about happily and God has instructed them there is that particular tree and there's that apple. Do not take that apple. And that's the apple of knowledge. And then this mischievous snake comes and says, you know, there's a special apple that God is probably reserving for himself and you must have it. So it was needless.

Needless knowledge is ego and it results in suffering. That which you need not know but in a spell of mischief you start knowing. That's ego. What is that needless knowledge? Belief. Useless knowledge. Needless knowledge. Just superstition. Something that you should have never believed in. But now you have taken it in. Now you have taken it in and it cannot be just ejected out. So God says now that the two of you have done this, all right, go to earth and breed kids and you know the entire human will proceed from there. And these two were really in a state of bliss.

’Sahajata’. ‘Egoless Sahajata’. These two were in an ‘Egoless Sahajata’. You know it is said that the moment they ate the apple they became conscious of the ‘I’ which is called self-consciousness. Conscious of the ‘I’. Self conscious. So what did they do?

They covered their genitals. They became ashamed, conscious of the ‘I’ because the ‘I’ sprung up. There was no ‘I’. That false belief gave them the ‘I’. So they became self-conscious. So they covered their body parts. They covered their body parts. And then God banished them from the garden of bliss. He said, ‘You go now. You go out.’ You have defiled your own ‘Prakritic Purity’. You have violated my instruction. There was no need. You go. So needless.

Everything is all right. Everything is already all right. And the ego comes and says, ‘No, something extra is needed.’ The ego is the fifth person in the car. Somebody extra who is not needed at all. The ego is a kind of overpopulation. Tonight itself, I have like got, we can publish a mini book of the number of definitions we have accorded the ego.

Questioner: So sir, what we call consciousness is also a part of my ego itself.

Acharya Prashant: What you call as consciousness is just material reactivity. When you say, ‘You are conscious of something, you are just reacting to that thing.’ It's like we said, ‘Iron being conscious of the magnet.’ Just as iron experiences the magnet, similarly we experience the world in very, very predictable and pattern based ways.

There is no real wisdom or realization in that and the test of that is iron cannot ‘not’ react to the magnet. Iron cannot ‘not’ react to the magnet and that's what is called compulsive reactiveness. Man cannot ‘not’ react to the abuses. Women cannot ‘not’ react to men. That's a compulsive magnet and iron relationship. There is no real life in that. Spirituality is about bringing life by putting the dead to death.

Questioner: Okay, thank you.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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