Ego Explained

Ego Explained

Every experience comes to us from outside, via our senses; they don’t arise from within.

When you were born, you were born fresh with uncontaminated, pure consciousness.

Your first outside knowledge ( experience ) was your mother.

Psychologists say that is your first and very deeply seated impression.

At that point, she is all you know.

And that is why we are all so bonded to our mothers.

At around age three, as your brain matures, you start realizing the separation between the body called ‘mother’ and another body right in front of you.

That’s when you start adopting this closer body as “I”, just so that you can fit in the world of “I” and “you” ( Sansar ).

So, your “I” experience was also an external event; you were not born with it; it arose in you much later, by external influence.

It is only a piece of knowledge required to live in Sansar, but also very deeply seated.

Based on this, the whole empire of our ego is built up in our lives.

From then on, every time any experience happens, you start attaching “I” to it.

I had tried this with my grandson when he was 2 1/2 by asking, “ Whose toy is this?” and he replied, “It’s Nikhil’s toy.” ( as if he wasn’t Nikhil; His “I” had not taken a shape in his psyche yet ).

So, the Sansar ( which is full of ignorance itself) “creates” that “I” for you.

It is not intentional, of course, but the nature of Sansar is ignorance; it can only give you what it has. ( A mango tree can only give mangoes, not bananas ).

After that, YOU start attaching that “I” to every single experience you go through.

We are even told that you were born on such-and-such date, and we accept it; we have to accept it, as we were not aware of our birth.

Our memories start at around three.

No one has memories of any events before that.

Why?

Because the “I” wasn’t there, we just allowed all the events to happen, and we, as the expanded state of consciousness, didn’t even care.

Only when “I” was created, our expanded consciousness contracted down to our body level.

And since then, we have been living in suffering.

Spirituality is all about regaining our innocence by recognizing everything we know at this point (including “I-ness” – Ego ) as sanskaras (external imprints) and reconnecting with our original state of pure, uncontaminated consciousness.

We were all born in ignorance; let’s not die in it.

There is only one solution for ignorance – knowledge, and it is only within; outside “knowledge” is outside knowledge, and of no value.

Inner ignorance can only be fixed by inner knowledge, not by external means.

Asatoma Sadgamay ( take me from untruth to the truth )