The person can never be ego-free || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: How can one become an ego-free person?
Speaker: A person can never be ego-free.
What do you mean by a person? A person is nothing but a mind occupied by the influences of others. The word person is a technical word. Please appreciate this.
Person means a mind occupied by the influence of others; and hence the word personality flows from the word person . It is the person that has personality. How can a person ever be ego – free? What is the ego? Is it not an agglomeration of all that has come to you from outside? Your concept of yourself supplied to you from outside, from somebody else, right?
Understand this: The *person is full of ego*.
A mind that is dominated by others is an egoistic mind; do you see this? And this is the mind of a person. So, person means ego.
So, if the question is that how can the person be ego-free. My answer is, never.
(Silence )
(In a subtle tone. ) There is another way of being. There is another mind, not occupied by others. It is the mind of an individual. It receives all influences but it does not allow them to dominate. It has its own intelligence with which it looks at the world and itself. And that is what is called being ego-free. Intelligence that does not depend on others, that does not allow theories, ideologies, religions, family, society, books, education, etc. to dominate itself. It receives the information, but retains its independence. It does not become attached to what it receives. It does not become dependent upon external conditions. And never does it start identifying with the external; that is the mind of the individual – self-sufficient, self-contained, free and healthy with its own shining intelligence.
So, you ask how to be an ego-free person? You are an ego free person right now if you are attentive. In attention, there can be no influence of anybody upon you, because your intelligence is shining. That’s what is attention .
You are ego-free right now, but the moment you will allow your mind to be dominated by others, the moment your intelligence goes back to sleep. You will again become a victim of the ego. Are you getting it?
Be watchful. In watchfulness, ego cannot come to you. And the moment you drop this watchfulness, you are a slave of the ego.
Do you understand what is meant by being watchful? You are watchful right now! This is what is meant by being watchful. See how still you are. You are not thinking, you are listening, just listening. This is watchfulness – a particular presence to life. You are not wandering about, you are present, this is watchfulness. And in this watchfulness, you are ego-free. You are completely ego-free. The deeper the watchfulness, the greater the freedom. Are you getting it?
Listeners ( in unison ): Yes.
-Excerpts from a Samvaad session. Edited for clarity.
