GOING BEYOND THE EGO

 

HOW DO WE USE CONSCIOUSNESS?

Your mind has a memory box that covers the entire universe. Every experience in the universe is there in your mind, which you can tap upon and use. By will we mean not only the conscious will by which we think that this is light, and this is a glass, and this is a table, not that will, but that will which like the drop of water has merged into the ocean of the Divine will and when I am merged into the Divine will the discrimination between chairs and table and me. You just cease because I would see beyond the outer form of things. I would see into its very structure, and by visiting into its very structure, I would find that all is but one, and I am none different from the tiny ant that crawls on the floor. It is the same life force that is there.

In the process of evolution, I might have developed a more significant amount of consciousness. But how much is that consciousness helping me? That is the main question. Am I using that consciousness in a negative way, or am I using that consciousness in a positive way? You are conscious of a sharp blade; give that to a loafer, and he will go and kill someone with it but give the same blade to a surgeon, and he will save someone’s life with it. The matter is the same. The knife or the blade is the same, but how are we using it? That is the question.

NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

Because of past experiences, our minds tend always look at the negative side of things. We look at the painful negative side but never at the pleasurable side of things, and we do not do that. Our minds have become patterned and habituated by the forces we have created within ourselves.

This law that says, “whatever you sow you will reap,” can be transcended to a higher level, where you can plant potatoes and say, “look, I want onions to grow,” it will grow because you have known the sameness, the same light, the same energy, that is in the potato is in the onion.

Your little will or little consciousness is so powerful if combined with Divine will or Divine consciousness that there is no such thing as impossible or impossibility. You can plant potatoes and have onions to grow.

GOING BEYOND THE EGO

Our main problem is that little ego-self and how to preserve the ego-self. In trying to keep the ego-self, you are only creating greater and greater misery for yourself. This misery for yourself comes from bondage because you are so attached to the little ego self that you are bound by it, while the path to Divinity should bring about freedom, freedom from one’s thoughts, freedom from the idea of possession, all kinds of attachment.

If you are non-attached to things, it does not mean that you discard the world. As they say, “In the world but yet not of the world.” When you are not of the world, you can enjoy what is in the world and how beautiful it is.

You can never enjoy what is in the world until you go beyond it. Because once you are in the world, you will be in that whirlpool all the time, and you will just shift around energies. Today you are so happy; tomorrow, the opposite occurs. It is the same energy, and it fluctuates up and down because all energy has motion. It is like a pendulum; when it swings to the left, it must swing to the right by its momentum. But there is one beautiful factor when that pendulum swings to the right; it has that moment’s pause before it swings to the left and that moment’s hesitation is what we have to capture. Despite the motion from left to right, that pause gives it the momentum, and if the man can live in that pause, you have known eternity.

WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION WITHOUT A SLIGHT SENSE OF EGO SELF

We cannot control the ego-self; no one can. Even the most realised man, including Krishna, Christ, Buddha, everyone, will always have two percent ego in him because without that two percent of “I-ness,” he will not be able to live in the world. He will just disintegrate; he will not be able to do any of his biological functions. He would not be able to eat; he would not be able to take a bath and things like that. That two percent of “I-ness” will remain before the drop of water sinks into the ocean, and that two percent of that individual drop will disappear when it merges into the ocean, and there is no ego-self left. There is no small I left but the big “I” of the Universe, the big “I” not only of the Universe but the big “I” of that Divine Force, that Divine Energy, only that is left, and from there you view the entire universe.

BEING NON-ATTACHED, YOU ARE BEYOND HURT

You view the entire motion of how the universe is functioning. We do not pursue engendering or keeping up the little ego-self. The more we can get away from the ego-self, the greater happiness will we have? This does not mean that you must not look after your family; you do not need to throw them away or go to live in the forest or jungles. It does not mean that. Live in beautiful mansions and have half a dozen motor cars or whatever you want to do. Buy lovely diamonds, do whatever you want to. But you are not attached to it, and when you find that non-attachment to it, then nothing can hurt you. Because you are non-attached, you are beyond hurt.

Using an analogy – your little child falls down the stairs, you will be hurt because the child has hurt itself, but if someone else’s child falls down the stairs, you will not be hurt so much. You will say, “Oh poor child, I feel so sorry it has hurt itself.” But if it is your child, the hurt will be a thousand-fold greater because you are attached to the child. If you have developed non-attachment, then whichever child falls down the stairs, you will have the same amount of feeling, sympathy, empathy, and love for that child.

DIVISIONS ARE MANMADE

All these problems in this world, all this hatred, the cruelties, the wars, hot wars and cold wars, are created by this sense of ego. You have a personal ego; then you have an ego of the city, my beautiful Victoria. After that, you say, “Ah, my wonderful British Columbia,” and then you say, “Ah, my beautiful Canada.” You want to preserve this all the time, and that is what America is doing; that is what Russia is doing, preserving when there are no divisions. You look at the map. There are no divisions at all. It is all one mass.

There is water in between, and man makes all those demarcations you would find, and any Divine agency does not make them. We create these divisions, including our little ego selves, and that is why we suffer because we divide up the indivisible whole. There is only one, without a second, and that one is Divinity, and with our tiny minds, we try to divide that which cannot be dividable. This is the whole problem with the ego-self, and this is the cause because its main characteristic is attachment. It attaches itself to things.

I might have told you this story before where this significantly older man of eighty-four, eighty-five, was dying; he was just on the verge of death, so his family gathered around him. He asked his wife where is John? So, she said John is standing on the right side of the bed. Where is Jack? He is standing on the left side of the bed. Where is Jean? She is standing at the foot of the bed, and suddenly he got a bit of strength to sit up, and he says, “If all of you are here, who is minding the store?” And this we are doing every day. Here a man is just about to take his last breath, yet he is worried about his shop.

He could take his shop with him, by the way, into another dimension. You can take your house away with you into a different size when you die, but are you strong enough? Meditation and spiritual practices give you that strength. Because all that you see and observe around you is nothing else but a mental projection, and if that mental projection is strong enough in you, you will find what you want to in the other dimension because it is all thought-forms. When you pass away, those thought forms empowered by your Spiritual Self goes with you, and those forms can be made to act and react. So, if a person tells you that you cannot take anything with you, do not believe it. I have tried it many times, and I have taken many things on the other side and brought them back because I need them here.

YOUR EGO SELF IS A MENTAL PROJECTION

Here we come to the crux that your ego-self is also a mental projection. Do you see the falsity of it and the non-endurability of it? Because it is all but mental predictions all the time, and whatever you think happens will materialise itself. When you get up in the morning, just think, “Oh, I am feeling so ill, so ill, so ill”, and you will feel ill. That is for sure. If you are sick and wake up and say, “I am feeling better and better,” you will feel better. That proves that everything is a mental projection, and once we realise that it is all mental projection, we will see the value of the mental projection.

Mental projections are essential if they are egoless. If they are selfless, these mental projections are crucial. You can project beautiful thoughts to the world around you, bringing so much peace and joy to others. You can enter people’s hearts and open them and unfold them, and that is what I do every day. Last year I was nine months out of twelve on the road teaching, teaching, teaching. Project that from your inner Self, from your Spiritual Self so that people you are with will feel uplifted, they will find some little peace, maybe if they can carry on with their spiritual practices, that peace will continue. Otherwise, like everything else, even the fairest flower fades away. If there have to be mental projections, let them be positive for selfless reasons, and you will find that they will come back to you a hundred-fold.

DO FOR THE SAKE OF DOING

I always like to speak of experience. I have observed thousands of people whose lives are transformed in every way you can imagine, health-wise, economically, but first, become deserving before you demand. That is the secret of it. Once you have that, you will find that whatever your heart desires without selfishness will come to pass, and you will gain it all back because you have been selfless. If you put ten cents in a poor box, I promise it will come back to you somehow or the other. Because here you are being selfless. Do not do it because you feel sorry, no, then this ego again,’ I am sorry, I am sorry. Do it for the sake of doing it, finish.

You would have that little sorrow for the poor man who might be blind or crippled sitting begging on the road, you might feel sorry, but that should not be the main idea behind it. He needs it, so let his needs be fulfilled to buy a loaf of bread, and I am not doing it; I am the instrument of Him that is doing it. That means selflessness.

DIMINISH THE EGO, AND IT WILL BE REPLACED BY GREATER JOY

When mental projections or thoughts, if you wish to put it that way, become more and more selfless, that is how your ego will diminish, and when the ego diminishes, it is replaced by greater joy. For nothing in this world can remain a vacuum, nothing. Even in this room, you think there is space there, and there is not; there are billions and billions of atoms all floating around there. Nothing can remain a vacuum, and neither can your mind remain a vacuum.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang CAN 1984 – 02