How to overcome the ego? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker: Avinash is asking, ‘How do we overcome ego?’ Avinash, you do not overcome anything if you don’t understand it. You don’t overcome anything without understanding it. No problem can be solved if you don’t understand the question. Am I right?
Listeners(everyone): Yes, Sir.
Speaker: If you don’t understand the question, can you get the answer?
Listeners(everyone): No, Sir.
Speaker: I want to make certain changes in the design of this projector (pointing at a projector) . Can I make those changes without understanding how this projector works?
Listeners(everyone): No, Sir.
Speaker: So, the first step is to…?
Listeners(everyone): Understand.
Speaker: Very good. Understand. Now, do we understand what is the ego? Before we ask that how to get rid of ego, do we understand it? And if we do not understand, then why have we decided that we must get rid of ego? If I do not understand then how have I decided that ego is something that should be gotten rid of? Probably because everybody else have been telling me. Please listen to me what I am saying. Avinash asks that how to get rid of ego. I am asking that how can you get rid of anything when you don’t understand it. If I don’t understand it then why am I adamant that I have to get rid of it? After all Avinash didn’t ask, ‘Sir, what is the ego?’ What did he ask? ‘How to get rid of ego?’
Am I right? If you ask that how to get rid of ego, then that means that you have already decided that ego is harmful and we need to get rid of it. But, ‘I don’t understand what the ego is still I have decided to get rid of it’, this exactly is called as ego. ‘I don’t know, yet I am doing things’, this is ego. ‘Just because somebody has told me so I am proceeding with life based on beliefs given by others’. Now Avinash surely you are asking this question because your teacher has conducted an entire session on ‘Ego’ which makes you feel that ego is dangerous and you must get rid of the ego, but surely you didn’t understand. This is a good demonstration of ‘What ego is’. Somebody tells me something and I accept it without understanding. I have not known it but because somebody has told me so I have accepted it. Now what all do we accept without understanding?
You see when we are a kid there is so much which is given to us that we just take. We are given a religion, a nationality, all kinds of beliefs, views about how the world is, views about how the life is, and we take all these without understanding them. Because we are small, because we are helpless, we cannot do much. Additionally there is one more thing which we take from others without understanding and that thing is very, very powerful.
What is that?
Listener 1: Identity!
Speaker: Wonderful! Not only we take our religion, our nationality from others but we also take ‘identities’ from others. This taking of identities from others is called as EGO.
Are you getting it?
‘I don’t know who I am, others have provided me a ready-made answer and I have accepted it’.
Ego is the image of you coming from the others.
You don’t bother to understand how your mind functions. Who you are? But you very conveniently, in a lazy way take your identity from the others. Your whole self concept, your whole image about yourself is not yours but given by somebody else. So somebody comes to you and says that you are brilliant, what do you start believing?
‘I am Brilliant’
This is the statement of…?
Listeners(everyone): Ego.
Speaker: Ego! Because you have not known it for yourself whether you really are brilliant and what the world ‘brilliant’ means. You have not investigated, you have not known. Somebody just came and told you that you are brilliant and you just accepted it. What would be the result? The same fellow can come later and tell you that you are stupid, so you will have to accept that as well. You will always have a fear. A fear that your image can be destroyed because this image has been provided by somebody else. What has been given by somebody else can be taken back by that person.
Ego means a second-hand life. How do I get rid of it?
Simple, by seeing that my identities are coming from outside. The moment you understand that what I am believing to be mine, it has been supplied to me by somebody. And I have eyes of my own, I have intelligence of my own. I can look at myself and find out who I am, what I am. I need not be dependent on others. The moment you realize this, in the same moment you are free of ego.
How to implement it?
When someone comes and says a few good things about you, be little more alert. Do not start feeling good. In fear, do you know what you are doing? You are internalizing his view of yourself. You are making his opinion as your opinion. Now this is development of ego. He said that you are handsome and you have internalized it and said to yourself, ‘I am handsome’. Become alert at this moment. At the same time when somebody comes and says a few hurtful things about you, do not start feeling offended immediately. He may have said that you are an idiot but that doesn’t make you an idiot. To be hurt implies that you have accepted what he has said.
These are the moments you must watch out. You must be careful in these moments. When you are working you must not work for the sake of others. If you are working just for the sake of appreciation from others, be careful what you are doing. What are you doing? You working so that, that fellow may say that you are nice, you are capable, you are hardworking. So all your work has been aimed at one thing. What? Development of a favorable self-image from somebody else. We are not cautious at those moments, we are not careful. We forget.
Are you getting it?
It is in these moments that we should remain very-very cautious. When your results are declared, don’t seek appreciation in the eyes of others. Have you seen how people rush and tell everybody if they get a nice result? Now can you look sharply at what they are trying to do? They are trying to generate the image of you in the eyes of…?
Listeners(everyone): Others.
Speaker: This is Ego. Have you seen people when they shiver and shrink into a corner when they don’t get a favorable result? They avoid meeting people, they close themselves up. Do you see this as ego? Both are aspects of ego.
To announce to everybody that I have gained a wonderful result and also to hide from everybody when you don’t get a favorable result, both are Ego. In fact this very desire for result is ego. Are you getting it?
So Avinash, if you are careful at these moments then you are your own master, otherwise you will become the slave of others.
You deserve to be your own master.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
