an essay by baba hari dass (rip)
In the search for the Truth the question often arises, Is the world real?”
There is a world and there is the energy of life in the world.
They go hand in hand.
Without life energy, the world is dormant and useless: without the world, life energy has no purpose.
What is that world in which all individuals live?
There is a perceptible world, or true reality, over which a conceptual world or false reality, is superimposed.
The perceptible world is no more than the aggregates of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. (space)
The conceptual world is not visible: it is only the colorings of desires, attachment, and egoism imposed upon the perceptible world.
An example of the conceptual overlaying the perceptible is the way a rope is mistaken for a snake.
The rope has its own reality and the snake has a false reality, but in this case the ego colors the perceptible world with fear and the rope appears as a snake.
Another example: when a man and woman get married, they feel the reality in the relationship of husband and wife. That reality is created by ego, attachment, and desires. However, should they divorce, that feeling of reality in the relationship disappears immediately.
That created reality is no different than seeing the rope as a snake. The snake also disappears when the rope is identified as a rope,
Human life works in that conceptualized world with ego, attachment and desires.
That is the reality of our life, and that is the cause of pain and suffering.
We cannot perceive a life in the world beyond this.
If we want to see beyond our false conception of reality, we first have to find out what the ego is and how it functions in our lives.
Ego has no existence of its own. It is only a sense of *I am” in the mind. “I live,” “I am a parent,” “I have a house.” It is the ego who is experiencing living, parenting, owning.
The ego doesn’t work independently.
As a matter of fact, it has no independent existence; it always works in conjunction with the mind, intellect, senses, and the objects of the senses.
This union of ego with mind, intellect, and the senses gives rise to the experience or the individual self.
Since the experiencer always needs something to experience, desire for objects follows.
When there is a notion of self-existence (the ego), the mind then automatically develops ideas of happiness, comfort, pleasure, and so on, and various kinds of desires start sprouting.
When desires and the objects of desire start playing together, attachment is the inevitable result.
Attachment is the life in all desires.
Desires without attachment are short-lived energies.
For a worldly- minded person who craves the worldly pleasures of name, fame, and wealth, desires without attachment are no fun.
For instance, if a sleepy child eats delicious food, that food is neither enjoyed nor remembered the next day. If that same food is eaten while the child is fully awake, he or she will both enjoy the delicious taste and be happy and satisfied. Then there will be attachment: the child will desire the same food the following day because the memory of the taste is imprinted in the mind.
So for a worldly-minded person, name, fame, and wealth are food to the ego. Without attachment there is no taste to anything.
From where does this ego sense, the experiencer in our lives, arise?
In reality it doesn’t come from anywhere and doesn’t go anywhere. It is always present as a universal “ I sense.”
When that universal “I sense” works through an individualized mind, it becomes an individualized ego.
Just as children playing on the beach fill their buckets with ocean water and then claim it as their water, the universalized mind claims the “I” for its own.
In the outer world, that individualized ego works through the senses only for its own sake.
For example, ears hear sound for the ego’s gratification. Similarly, the other senses work for the ego’s enjoyment: the skin feels, the eyes see forms, the tongue tastes, the nose smells. In every action of the senses the ego looks for its own self-interest.
What relationship does the ego have to the world?
Our ego is the creator of our own world. It is always present in our actions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas. As it always tints everything with a color of self-interest, every individual’s world is made up of colored thoughts, actions, and feelings. These colors make up our conceptual world.
For example, suppose a thought develops in the mind to build a house. The ego colors that thought with the idea “I want a house.” The house is built and the ego becomes the owner of the house, feeling, “It is my house.” The person actually feels that the house is part of his or her life and worries that it may be damaged by a storm or burned down by a fire. The coloring of ownership is deeply ingrained in the mind. But if the person sells the house to someone else, the coloring of ownership is quickly wiped out. The ego immediately disowns the house and doesn’t feel any kind of attachment and doesn’t worry if the house burns down.
In this way, the ego is continuously creating and dismantling conceptualized worlds which cover the perceptible world. We can now understand how the individuals are living in their world colored by their ego. No one is living in the real world. If somehow the world could be identified without the ego and its attachments and desires, then one would be living in the real world.
But it is not easy. The ego appears in multitudes of faces; in all of our negative actions such as anger, hate jealousy, fear, dishonestly; in all of our positive actions such as love, compassion, forgiveness, non-violence. In all of these, it is just the ego showing its different faces.
To understand how one of the faces of the ego shows itself, imagine yourself walking through the woods at night, frightened. When you see a bush, you think it looks like a ghost. As you walk further you start seeing the ghost coming towards you. Then you hear the ghost whispering, “I will get you.” But the bush was always a bush and never a ghost; it never moved from its place, never whispered. We create ghosts out of simple bushes due to our fear.
Fear is one of the faces of ego.
Due to ego, we live in this world causing our own pain and pleasure, attachment and aversion, likes and dislikes. We fight and defend our ego: and we expand our worldly desires and attachments. This is our world, and it is beginningless and endless. It is beginningless in the sense that it doesn’t come from anywhere, just like the snake that is projected onto a rope that is lying on the ground. That snake was never born from a real snake and because it was never born, it is beginningless: because it can never die, it is endless.
Likewise our own world is endless until we can identify it without ego.
Now it is clear that the conceptualized world is created by the union of ego attachment, and desires.
Ego is the experiencer of the world; and attachment and desires are the means through which the ego expresses itself.
Desire and attachment are within the nature of the mind and the senses. The ego uses the mind, intellect, senses, and the objects of the senses as instruments to relate to the outer world. In this way, all individuals function in their conceptualized worlds.
Each conceptualized world is very real to the individual who creates it. This reality takes place due to ignorance. Ignorance means to identify the unreal as real.
As soon as the ego creates its own world, attachment to that world strengthens its reality. Attachment means to join two separate objects together; it is simple a feeling that joins the experiencer and the object experienced. Because the very root of the conceptualized world is ignorance, or false identification, so our lives in the world are based on ignorance.
How can we get out of this falsehood and live in the real world? First we have to understand how the ego weaves its own trap and thus goes through all kinds of pain, pleasure, miseries, etc.
The ego uses its instruments, the senses, to reach out to the objects in the world. It expresses interest and then attachment to those that it likes; rejection and then aversion (another face of the ego) to those that it doesn’t like. This process creates more desires and more attachment.
When the desires are not fulfilled or are obstructed, anger fear, hate, jealousy, all kinds of negative faces of the ego rise up in the mind.
In that state the mind gets completely deluded and cannot discriminate between what is right and what is wrong. This loss of discernment leads to many evil action, and the ego, with its various evil faces, gets completely involved in those actions.
The ego doesn’t come from anywhere and it doesn’t go anywhere. In ignorance it is experienced as the “I sense” falsely identified with the mind, intellect, senses, and objects of the senses.
All of our efforts to seek for the real world can therefore be reduced to one thing, singling out the ego from its association with the mind, intellect, senses, and sense objects. Only in this way can the ego’s coloring activity be stopped.
The ego rediscovers its real and fundamental nature, the Self or the pure Consciousness principle, only when it is separated and becomes aloof from everything.
No matter what method we use in our spiritual practices, be it prayer, worship, mantra, meditation, pranayama, austerities, rituals, devotion to a form of God, or selfless service, these methods will bring their positive result only when the ego is separated from its field of activity and it’s instruments which contact the outer world.
How can we separate out the ego?
The finite mind cannot experience the infinite reality or the Self. To achieve that experience, the finite mind must be transcended.
Because life in the world functions with ego, attachment, and desires and we have to live in the world, we have to live in society, it may seem that we will never be able to find this real world where we can live in eternal peace.
But it is not so. You start from where you are. Simply watch the various faces of the ego in all your actions, thoughts, and feelings, and don’t let the ego take over your life and color your world.
Live a disciplined life, which will eliminate the burning desires for sense objects.
Try to keep the mind equipoised in the pairs of opposites, and perform actions without egocentric desires. This will purge the mind of attachment to objects.
When the attachment is purged, the seeker of Truth can move among the objects of the senses without getting affected by them.
All your prayers will be heard, your meditation will bring you peace, your selfless service will remove your discontent, and your devotion to God will fill your heart with divine love.
A seeker of the truth, who is liberated from the conceptualized world, automatically finds the real world in the Supreme Self, Universal Consciousness, Peace of God. That supreme state is unknowable because it is without the distinction of know and knowledge. It shines by its own light.
Questions and Answers….
Q. Where does the Self abide. Does the ego watch the mind turn?
A. Yes, the ego is a conscious principle in the mind-body complex.
Q. So we say that they separate, but they exist because of each other; they are not independent entities.
A. Ego pervades the mind, body, and the sense organs. All the actions or thoughts which are in the mind-body complex are colored by the ego consciousness. Now, say you are able to separated the ego from its fields of activity: the mind-body complex will still work due to prarabdha, residual karmas which are ripe and are giving their fruit.
Q. How is the ego formed?
A. When the Supreme Self reflects in the intellect, the consciousness that arises is “I”. That “I” when associated with any object or mind, becomes the ego. If a person is able to understand “I am not the body senses, and mind,” then the only thing left is the ego. But if the ego is separated from the mind, then the ego rediscovers its essential nature which is the Self. That is how we say God is in everybody.
Q. Would you explain how the cause of suffering is the misidentification of the Self with nature.
A. God is within every living being, but veiled by the ego. The ego is very strong, but it doesn’t accept the existence of God within. It only knows “I am.” How does it happen? When purusha and prakriti unite, it creates a cosmic intellect. In that intellect the first individuality starts, which is “I.” That I consciousness takes the shape of anything in which it reflects. So it reflects on the intellect, and the ego rooted in the intellect expresses itself in the world through attachment and desires. It is the desires and attachments which veil the purity of the mind and bring all kinds of pain and suffering.
Q. Sometimes I get the sense that the mind colors the ego, but you are saying that the ego colors the mind. Or does it happen both ways?
A. The mind doesn’t pervade the ego. The ego owns the mind.
Q. So it’s the link that binds?
A. The coloring.
Q. When the ego and mind separate, the coloring ceases?
A. The coloring of self-interest. When the mind is not colored by self-interest or ego, it is pure. Compassion is the quality of pure mind.
Q. When the ego has separated from the mind there are no binding samskaras created because that is just purity moving on its own. And from the ego side, there is an awareness somehow of that, so it doesn’t try to pick up anything.
A. Ego, when removed from its instruments, loses its I-am-ness. It remains only “I” consciousness. That is a universal consciousness.
Q. It seems the ego is afraid because you’re doing sadhana. And it knows that in maybe a million lifetimes it we be eradicated. For me, the fear seems really strong around that.
A. Is it a fear of turning into a vegetable?
Q. I think it’s a fear of the ego losing control.
A. The ego will lose control of creating illusory reality. When the illusion is removed and true reality dawns, then there is eternal peace. Every person wants peace. We can’t buy it, we can’t get a pill of peace, we have to achieve it. How do we achieve it? Removing negative qualities is the first step. When the mind starts getting pure, the second step is reflection or vichara, thinking or pondering what is happening. That turns into concentration. But it cannot happen if there is no dispassion for the world.
Q. What does dispassion mean?
A. Dispassion is a state of mind in which objects of the senses lose their reality in the mind.
Q. How to remove ego and purify the mind?
A. Human life works with ego, attachment, and desire. Ego can’t be removed because it is life. Ego expresses itself as desire and attachment. So we start from desires and attachments because we can see, feel, understand, and then put limitations on them. Its effect is to put a limit on the ego. Ego works through the instruments of the mind, intellect, and senses. So we control our desires and attachments by purifying the mind and intellect. The methods of purifying are meditation, pranayama, intellectual understanding, selfless service and devotion to God.
Q. So we need to experience the world through higher consciousness and not through the senses.
A, The world is experienced by the ego, attachment, and desires. Ego is the experiencer. Desires are the experience. Attachment gives reality to all experiences. If attachment is removed, the desires are only in the present and do not create any samskaras (prints in the mind).
Q. Is pure ego a purpose for being.
A. It’s like a seed. Its purpose is to grow, become a tree, give fruit. The fruit rots and the seed again drops on the ground. Experience and getting liberation from the experience – this is the purpose. Pure ego gets polluted by experiencing the world. That experience is the cause of pain and misery. And the pain and misery give rise to dispassion. Dispassion is the cause of liberation. This cycle is eternal.
Q. Is it a false pretence that we are making by saying that we are not egotistical?
A. Ego means “I am,” this idea of individuality. It is neither good nor bad until it relations to an object. “I am” is a pure state. “I am angry, I am sad, I am happy” this is impurity. The ego doesn’t work alone. It’s identified by the mind and it works through the mind. When we say egotistic, it’s ego working through the mind. The mind is feeling that state.
Q., What is the root cause of attachment?
A. The ego of individuality. The ego expresses itself by desire and attachment. Ego by itself doesn’t’ do anything. It works through the mind, intellect, senses, and sense objects. If we separate the ego from it field of activity, then we attain enlightenment.
EGO (I –sense)
Mind Intellect Senses Sense Objects
Field of Ego’s Activity
Q. You said that once we understand the nature of attachment, then we can be free of it. How can we understand that?
A. By doing karma yoga, by meditation, and by keeping Gods presence in the heart.
Q. How do we distinguish between whether a desire is coming from the will of God or coming from our attachment?
A. The desire is the ego who says. “I exist.” But what is that ego? It is not this mind; it is not this body, it is not the senses. But it uses all these things as instruments to express itself in the form of desires and attachment. How does this ego originate? The pure consciousness equals God or Self. The ego consciousness is impure consciousness because it can work only through the mind and intellect. If that ego consciousness is separated from the mind, intellect, etc. then it is the Self or God. When we say, “ I desire” it is impure. The mind is the instrument. When the desires are instinctively working, that is pure.
Q. As long as I think that it’s my body, I am preserving it. But I still have to go through the same actions. I would still need to take care of the house and take care of my body, but without the idea of attachment? That’s my question. The action would be the same?
A.{nods} Attachment is a mental condition. It has nothing to do with the action. You can be very affectionate to a child without attachment. When the mind understands the nature of attachment, then one can function without attachment. We have to see how attachment binds by creating pleasure and pain, or by simply conditioning the mind with the sense of ownership.
Q. Here in the West, we have grown up attached to many objects. But in India many of the yogis go to the extreme of renunciation to attain liberation. Is it really that easy, amongst all or objects, to break our attachments?
A. Attachment to a kingdom for a king is no different that attachment to a waterpot for a renunciate. The Gita explains the conditioning of the mind. Here you have many things, but when you buy a new TV set, you are not attached to the old one. So you know the meaning of attachment and non-attachment. It’s actually a feeling.
Q. How do you take child, wife, or husband without attachment?
A. Duty and non-attachment are two different things. Non-attachment doesn’t mean no responsibility, no duty, or no caring. You only remove that conditioning of the mind that creates reality in impermanent things. Child, wife, and property are not permanent. By understanding impermanence, the feeling of non-attachment develops, and one can perform one’s duties and be in eh world peacefully.
Q. Is it possible to achieve the highest realization without total renunciation of the world?
A. What do you mean by the world?
Q. Attachment to the world.
A. Ego, attachment and desire should go. It doesn’t mean you should become numb in your feelings and actions and live in the woods. When you identify them as separate from you, then you are simply an actor on the stage of the world.
Q. Could you say some more about surrendering one’s ego? I’m still not clear.
A. First you have to understand what ego is. Pure I-consciousness is universal consciousness. When it creates a sense of individuality by expressing itself through the mind and intellect, it is ego. All of our actions, thoughts, desires, feelings, and emotions are experienced by the ego. You say, I am angry,” “I am happy,” “I am worried” “I am” is that ego. The Ego splits into two branches, desire and attachment. Now you are trapped. You desire an object, you get attached to the object, and when the object is removed, you get pain. This is called bondage in the world. As soon as the mind is separated from the ego, the ego goes back to its pure state, the pure consciousness, the Self.
Q. How do you know if you have found that pure ego?
A. It is always there. Just identify with it.
