Questioner: Sir, is the root here the ego? And if the ego is without any support, how can it still continue to nourish samsara (world)?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, you could say the root is the ego.
Then you are saying, “If the ego is without any support, how can it still continue to nourish samsara?” It’s a very good question—please answer it. How do you manage to live? It’s almost like asking, “Why was I shrieking in the dream?” Because you were in a dream. It’s only now that you can say that the dream was a dream. In the dream, you hardly took the dream as a 'dream'.
When you are with an Ashtavakra, when you are sending over questions to me, then you come up with the fantastic revelation that the ego is without any support. But look at your dream like day-to-day life, there do you realize that the ego is without any real support? And in your dream, all appears so real; in your everyday life, all that the ego creates appears so real. The ego itself appears to be the foundation of your world. That is why the world stands. Otherwise, having seen that the foundation is non-existent, your world would have collapsed. The very fact that a personal world stoutly stands erect for you testifies that for you its foundation is not unreal. You are inhibiting that world; you are living in that building.
Would you ever live in a building if you fully well knew that it has no foundation? But not only do you live in the building of your samsara, you invest a lot in it, you decorate it. In that same building is your house and your office. Would you build your house and your office in a building that has no foundation? No. But you have done that. And if you have done that, what does it prove? That you assume that the building has a very solid foundation. So now you are saying that the ego has no support. But look at your actions and your decisions—they prove that you think that the ego has a lot of support. What is the ego? Please tell me. The ego is your sense of yourself.
