Questioner: Sir, I want to ask, Robot doesn’t have ego. So, now what is the intersection between the urge towards freedom and your ego?
Acharya Prashant: You could say, the robot does have an ego planted into it by its designer. Therefore, the ego of the robot is totally in bondage and, therefore choiceless. You could either say, “the robot has no ego.” And, that would be perfectly correct or you could say “the robot has an ego. A sense of I. “What is ego?” A sense of I. The robot has an ego that cannot choose.” We utter ‘I’, we utter ‘I’ exist “I am” and this “I amness” could either be robotic or real. It is robotic, when your “I amness” is dependent on others.
And, if you feel threatened that, if the other disappears or withdraws, the ”I amness” itself will disappear. That’s the slave ego. For example: “I am rich.” What is the ego? “I am” thing is the ego. And, if the ego says, “I am rich.” And, if the riches vanish for some reason, some reason, a stock market crash let’s say, the fellow says, “Oh my God, I’m gone.” Because, who was I? “The rich one.” And the riches have gone. “So, I’m dead.” “I am rich.” now strike out the word rich, what remains nothing. That’s false ego, but most of us choose to live in this kind of false and dependent ego.
Real ego is self-dependent, free! It does not find it necessary to identify itself with something; it does not experience a kind of vacuum, that it must compulsorily fill up with something, anything, some trash. Many of us, for example; might be finding it difficult to just sit silently and listen. Because in the moment of silence, you have to say, “I am” in fact you don’t even say, “I am”, there’s just silence and that’s a threat to the ego. Because the ego must say something, “I am X,” “I am Y.” So, the ego chooses to say, “I am gossiping.” Now gossip makes the ego feel alive. “Oh, I exist!” Otherwise, there is the danger of inner death, obviously a false death. No real danger actually. Do you get this?
