Ego vs Self-Respect
Questioner: Good evening. I am pursuing an M.Sc. in Chemistry at IIT Patna. Sir, my question is: how thin is the line between ego and self-respect? I mean, why can’t we just let it go when someone intentionally or unintentionally hurts our so-called ego? But when I practice letting go, I observe that people don’t take you seriously, and your opinions don’t get enough value.
Acharya Prashant: You said, “What’s the difference between self-respect and ego?” First thing.
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: Okay, so what’s the difference between self-respect and ego? Should I answer that so that we can have the base for the next response?
Questioner: Yes sir, definitely.
Acharya Prashant: Okay, I’ll begin with this one, and then you can pause the rest of your questions.
See, ego is something quite obvious, because we live it. This feeling that you carry that says, “I am, I exist,” that’s called ego. The feeling that I exist, that’s what is called the ego. “I exist.”
See, ego is the very central feeling in every living being that says, “I exist. I am.” That’s the ego. Ego has not much directly to do with respect or disrespect, pride or humiliation. These are not directly related to the ego. It’s just that in popular understanding, ego has come to be synonymous with pride; therefore, we relate ego to self-respect and such things. Otherwise, ego and self-respect are quite different concepts.
Ego is simply “I exist. I am.” And because you just cannot be without being anything, therefore ego completes the statement “I am” by saying, “I am a male. I am a student. I am a professional. I am wise. I am smart. I am handsome. I am distressed. I am suffering. I am happy.” These are all ego statements, “I am X, I am Y, I am Z.” All this is the ego.
What is self-respect? It’s a very hazy thing. What is respect? If respect means to value, if the real meaning of respect is that you value someone highly, then the process of respect involves two things. One, you must know what to value. Secondly, obviously, the object must deserve that value or have that value.
So, do I really know what is important? And the moment I say, “Do I really know what is important?” I’m referring to the ego, right? Because the “I” is the ego. So, does the ego really know what is important? No. One very central defining characteristic of the ego is that, to the ego, only the ego is important. Because the ego is false, little, and insecure, it just does not have the courage to give anything beyond itself much importance.
In some way or the other, directly or obliquely, the ego accords importance only to itself. “I am important.” If I am important, then those who are related to me will become important. If I’m important, then my thoughts will become important, my imagination will become important, my will will become important, my country will become important, my clan will become important, my past will become important, my dreams and my desires will become important.
All these are ego statements, and all these are founded on the mother statement: “I alone am important.” That is ego. The ego just cannot see beyond itself. So whenever the ego gives respect to something, what is it that the ego is respecting? Nothing but itself. Because the ego has no capacity to truly appreciate anything beyond itself. That requires courage, and that requires clarity. The ego has neither courage nor clarity.
Are you getting it?
So when you say self-respect, that merely means that you are looking at your reflection in the mirror and admiring it, irrespective of how you really are or how you look. And that’s the way several people are, don’t you know. Irrespective of the position they are taking, they keep backing their position, irrespective of how foolish their concepts or ideas or dreams or targets are. They keep chasing their dreams. That’s self-respect, a mark of stupidity, if I’m not mistaken.
The word respect comes from the ability to look cleanly and clearly at something. I think the root word is recur, so re, looking at something again. That’s respect: looking at something again and again with the intention to come to the truth. That’s respect.
Respect does not mean offering value to something without even knowing the value.
For example, an elder comes to your place. The elder happens to be not merely an elder, but an elder relative, and you have been taught to offer respect. Have you not been? So the fellow has come, and you do not know the fellow. You do not know how virtuous he is. You do not know how courageous or loving he is, and yet you are supposed to offer respect, right? The fellow comes in, and you offer some salutation. You greet him by saying “sir” or “namaste” or “welcome” or something.
Now, that’s the way of the ego. It does not know itself; therefore, it does not know what to respect. To know the other, first of all, you must know yourself. Correct? Before you can tell how beautiful somebody’s eyes are, you must have the eyes to look at his eyes, right?
But the way of the ego is that it just cannot look. It has beliefs but no vision. It has dreams but no reality. So it respects out of bias, tradition, or influence. It does not respect, that is, it does not evaluate based on merit or clarity. Are you getting it?
So just as you offer your respects to the other one in a blind way, equally people keep respecting themselves, or sometimes even disrespecting themselves, in a blind way. So self-respect, as a prerequisite, needs self-knowledge.
If I say I respect myself, I must be asked, “Who respects what?” You say you have self-respect. So that would mean you respect yourself, correct? Then I must ask you, “Who respects what?” Do you really know yourself?
There can be no self-respect without self-knowledge. And we have been repeatedly saying that the ego survives only in lack of self-knowledge. The less you know yourself, the more dense and crystallized your ego is.
Self-respect is nothing but self-awareness. The more you know yourself, the more you realize who you are not, and that brings you to who you are. That is real self-respect, knowing oneself.
But knowing oneself is not a direct or positive process. Knowing oneself can happen only through the route of discarding all that which is not you: “This is not me. This is not me.” You keep rejecting all that, and that brings you to the real self. And that is self-respect.
Basically, that means that people who do not know themselves are the ones who greatly disrespect themselves. And that is quite interesting, because if someone comes and says a few abusive or coarse words to you, you feel hurt. You say, “The fellow disrespected me.” But this disrespect is nothing compared to the disrespect that we heap on ourselves by remaining ignorant of ourselves all lifelong.
You live for 80 years without ever thinking deeply about yourself, your life, your relationships, your dreams, your hopes, your regrets, your suffering, your phobias. You never think about these things, and you live for an entire 80 years, and then you die. That’s the deepest disrespect towards the self: to not to know oneself. And this disrespect towards the self is also called ego, because ego is another name for self-illusion. I do not know who I am, yet I keep saying “I am.” That’s the ego, and that’s disrespect.
Now come to the next part of your question. What are you saying?
Questioner: I mean, sir, why can’t we just let it go when some people intentionally or unintentionally hurt our so-called ego? I mean, when I try to let go of things and people who hurt my ego or self-respect, I observe that after a period of time people don’t take you seriously, and your opinions. I mean, I’m a little confused between being a humble person or a person having attitude. Because attitude makes you look confident and attractive and gets you respect in this society.
Acharya Prashant: The important thing is to first of all be assured of who you are and what you have. You must be confident of your own truth in the first place.
You are carrying a textbook of advanced calculus, and a class 4 student starts spitting at it and says, “This is all nonsensical. And what is this integration sign? Is this some snake or something?” Would you feel disrespected, humiliated, dejected? How would you feel? But if you yourself are like that class 4 student, then your self-esteem will take a beating. You will say, “Oh my God, my book has been dishonored.”
How are they able to bother you with whatever they are doing? How are you not assured of what your Truth is? And if you are assured, how can you take them seriously? A class 4 student who knows nothing about anything comes and starts debunking a PhD thesis, should he be taken seriously, given some importance?
Questioner: No, because he doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Acharya Prashant: The thing is: do you know what you have, what you are saying, what you are? When you are assured of yourself, then what the world is saying does not matter too much. But when you are yourself half here, half there, uncertain, then anybody can influence you.
Humility, that’s a word you used. Should I be humble or should I not be humble? What is humility? Humility is about knowing that your default identity is the ego. That’s humility. Humility is to know how vulnerable to mistakes you are, because that’s the nature of the ego. It can survive only in mistakes. Those are not even mistakes; those are egos compulsions, because without them it cannot survive. That’s humility.
So when somebody attacks you and you feel hurt, humility lies in looking at yourself and smiling and saying, “See how vulnerable I am. They are tossing nonsense at me, and yet I am giving it importance. What they are saying has no ground, no foundation, and yet I’m taking it seriously. See how stupid I am.” And this is humility.
You must be able to always recognize your own weaknesses. And when you recognize your weaknesses, you do not say, “They are my weaknesses.” You just say, “Oh, they are systematic. They are biological. They’re social, these weaknesses.” And when you say this, then you can smile at them with detachment. That’s humility.
Humility does not lie in surrendering to others or bowing down to others. Someone who cannot call a spade a spade is not humble. The humble person is one who can call illusion as illusion. That’s what humility is about, to call illusion as illusion.
Anything else on this?
Questioner: No sir, all has been clear. Thank you, sir.
