The Ego Unmasked: Insights into Self-identity & Consciousness

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

So, the topic that I have been asked to speak on tonight: The ego unmasked: insights into self-identity and consciousness.

Does that sound interesting or a bit far out or what? Not sure. Let’s see what happens.

So, before we speak, it’s really important to have, or make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of word meanings. So, for instance, ego. Everybody has sort of like some sort of idea of what this word means. Mostly people think of it in terms of a person who is overly confident, and kind of loud. Or, people get into a fight and nobody can give in, it’s kind of like a clash of the egos. People use these kinds of words.

The word ego is derived from Latin, and it literally means I, I meaning the self. That’s the literal meaning of it. But with the introduction of modern psychology by Sigmund Freud, he kind of like, he started out defining it in that sort of a way, in the sense of self, but later he got quite trippy into all kinds of dimensions and used it in other more complex ways. But generally, most people think of the ego as being the way in which we view ourself, or it can be our relationships with others.

Just looking at a dictionary definition: “Someone’s ego is their sense of their own worth. For example, if someone has a large ego, they think they’re very important and valuable. They’d say, “He had a massive ego” meaning he would never admit that he was wrong.” This is so—this is generally the way it’s used.

There is always going to be some difficulty when we use older languages, and we’re talking about other traditions that have different sort of paradigms of how they phrase things and look at things. So, our conversation tonight is really from the yogic, or Vedic, perspective. And it’s sort of like, well, what’s the significance of trying to get a hand on this and understand this? Well, it has a real lot to do with becoming happy and leading a good life. This was the important context. But before we really get into talking about ego, it’s necessary to again show the foundation of these ancient traditions, their—the way in which they approach these questions.

Before speaking about the ego, we’ll just talk a little bit about consciousness. So, consciousness, this word, the way we use it in English can mean one of two things: Consciousness means your state of consciousness, the way in which people—the mood or the mode that they are in. But consciousness also points to awareness, to life. Oh! [looking down as if to an unconscious person] It’s like when somebody was knocked out, and then they come to, or after receiving anaesthesia they often refer to somebody waking up as, “Oh now you’re conscious,” meaning, “Now, you’re aware.”

So, I’m going to just mention consciousness, and the capacity that we have for awareness. In modern science, they refer to consciousness, they have a framework—it’s called the hard problem of consciousness; they speak about it in this way. And the reason it’s, they say it’s a hard problem, [reading] “It is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than non-conscious.” And so you see all these people having debates and talking about, “How does consciousness arise?”

There’s a serious problem with evolutionary biology where, although Darwin never used it in this way, in more modern times they try to ascertain that originally there were just all these chemicals, and then because of interaction of things like lightning or perhaps volcanoes and the mixing of these things in a certain environment, suddenly life manifest. So, this is fundamental materialism, the idea that the only thing that exists is matter, there’s nothing other than matter.

So, this idea is absolutely not supported in ancient Vedic teachings. They speak about two principal energies that we experience within the world, within the universe. These two principal energies: one is matter, the material energy; and the second one is a life energy or a spiritual energy. They say that life is the symptom of the presence of this spiritual energy, that the material energy is never alive, it is only the spiritual energy that manifests the symptoms of life and therefore, of course, consciousness. Consciousness and life are synonymous.

So, when we look at what I’ll refer to as just what—let’s say people or any kind of embodied being that manifesting symptoms of life, it is, the question is where does this consciousness arise from? And the simple explanation is, it arises from the soul; although I don’t like using the word soul because it’s—people have all kinds of different conceptions and misconceptions about this word. The Sanskrit word is atma, sometimes they refer to it as jiva atma. Atma literally means the self, and when I add jiva, it indicates the living self, the living being.

So, one of the ancient Upanishads, the Mundaka Upanishad has one verse that describes the existence of a particle of life, the soul, within the body. They describe that in human form and other higher forms, this living particle of spiritual energy, the spiritual being actually is situated within the region of the heart. And it describes how it is floating in five types of air, or prana, that’s circulating through the body, and the consciousness of the living being is imparted to the body through these different channels of prana, or air. So, in this verse it says,

“The soul is atomic in size [very minute] and can be perceived by perfect intelligence…”

I’ll just pause there. When a person has cultivated refined spiritual intelligence, when they have actually become self-realized, they clearly perceive the living being residing within the body. When a person has not cultivated this appreciation, we tend to only look at the body and think that is the person. But the reality is this is not true.

All we have to do is spend a little time, particularly with a departed relative, or even a stranger, when you are in the presence of a body that no longer contains the spirit, the spirit of life, the soul, the atma, it’s a whole different feel. It’s like— it’s instantly it repulses us. We don’t want to draw close. We don’t want to hang out. Right or not? Of course, there’s still affection. We have the memory of the person, and we’re looking at the body, and it still looks like them, but it’s not like we want to bring it into bed and sleep next to it. I’m sorry if I’m being irreverent, but these are the hard realities.

Anybody—I mean I was talking with someone recently who assisted their mother, sitting at her bedside, and speaking compassionate and gentle words, chanting to her, aiding her to cross this threshold known as death. The reality is the soul—you, the living being—never die. You cannot die. You are eternally living and existing. When you are residing within the body, you are the one who lends life to the body, and the body appears to come alive and to act like the person. But as soon as the living being leaves, all of a sudden, wow, what a massive change. This person was saying it’s just astonishing. He was holding his mother, and she breathed her last breath, and it was like instantly it’s like, this is different, this is substantially different from what it was a few seconds ago. Now it is simply an empty shell.

So, the ability to perceive the spiritual content, the person, the spiritual being, you can develop this by cultivating spiritual intelligence. But eventually, you can be gifted with the ability to clearly see.

“The soul is atomic in size and can be perceived by perfect intelligence. This atomic soul is floating in the five kinds of air [and they have technical names for this air, different types of prana] and is situated within the heart, and spreads its influence all over the body of the embodied living entities. When the soul is purified from the contamination of the five kinds of material air, its spiritual influence is exhibited”

So, again this is a little bit technical. But it is understood, with hardly any exceptions, very rare, like a greatly advanced spiritual personality, all others, while in the embodied state they are considered not to be in a purified condition, their consciousness has become muddied. Just like if I have water, and I have a dropper with ink in it and then a glass of water, and I drop three drops of ink into the water, when you look at the water, initially it’s all transparent, but then as the ink enters, and it begins to dissipate, you see it swirling, shwrrr, begins to mix with the water, and then soon the entire water is blackish, and it is no longer transparent, it’s opaque, you can’t see through it. This is an example that I will use, to talk about how the consciousness of the living being becomes clouded by contact with the material energy. Just like the water is still water in that glass mixed with ink; by different processes, filtration, distillation, you can do different things, to separate the ink and the water still, but when it’s mixed together it appears to be—I’ll use the word contaminated.

So, the living being, the spiritual being, is actually covered by two bodies. What?! Two bodies?! There is this one gross physical body that everybody can see. This is called the sthula-sarira.  But there is also a subtle body which is covering the soul. They refer to this as linga-sarira, or a subtle body. This subtle covering is made up of three components: the mind, the intelligence, or the buddhi, and this third component, in Sanskrit it’s called ahankara. Ahankara, literally—aham means “I.” And when you say ahankara it is like a—I don’t know the English word—a designator for the “I.”

So, our appreciation—or maybe what I’ll do is I’ll just read a couple of verses. This one is from the Yoga Sutra, and it addresses this idea of how the spiritual being in the embodied state lends its consciousness or this living energy to the body and to the mind.

“The pure and transcendental consciousness of the atma (or the self) is unchangeable.  When the mind receives the reflection of that consciousness it is able to perceive and appears like the seer.”

They use this word, the seer. Who is the seer?  I don’t know if you think this is too trippy: it’s kind of like sitting in a movie house, looking at a screen, and I ask, Who is looking at the picture?” And you say, “I am.” Then I would ask, “Okay, if you’re looking at the picture, how is it that you’re seeing the picture?” “Oh, I’m seeing it with my eyes.” The answer is, no, you’re not. The light from the movie screen passes through your eyes; when the light enters it stimulates the photosensitive cells at the back of the eyeball, and that stimulation causes electrical impulses to go up the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the brain and stimulate those cells. So, you’re not actually seeing with your eyes. And the question is where is the picture? Where is the picture that you’re actually seeing? Most people, this is just like, “What?! Let’s not go there! Let’s just keep seeing.”

So, the yogis, they would really examine these physical processes to try and discover the actual nature of the soul, the person that’s actually perceiving. Who is it that’s seeing? It’s not my eyes that are seeing. It’s not the brain that is seeing. And even if this picture is reflected in my mind, who is the looking at it? Who is seeing the picture? So, they would refer to this as the seer, the one within who is actually seeing.

“The mind, being able to perceive due to its reflecting both the atma (the soul) and objects of perception, appears to comprehend everything. And even though the mind has accumulated various impressions (and desires) of various types it is always at the disposal of the atma (or the self), and this is because the mind cannot function without the power of the perceiver.”

So, there is—I’ll just make this point: we talked about death earlier, the body is not the person. The person who is the one who occupies the body, and while the body is alive it lends its personhood.

(Are you guys okay in here or is it too hot?  You, okay? Huh? it’s bit cold? Okay, just checking.)

So, when we—particularly with someone that we know and we are very close to—when there’s the death experience where the living being leaves and what’s left behind is the body, it becomes very apparent, very quickly that the body is not the person. Even with our language we say, “They have left. They have left us.” Don’t people use that language? But the body’s still lying there, how can you say they left? They’re right here. But everybody’s—and so there’s confusion, and the confusion comes from a lack of clarity about what is the real situation.

So, the spiritual being is the person, and when the spiritual being resides within the body, it lends personhood to the body. The energy of that living being makes the mind appear alive and independent, whereas in reality it is not. If the living being is removed from that equation, the only thing left is dead matter.

So, the appreciation and understanding is that the spiritual being is personal, is individual and is eternal. These are the characteristics of the soul itself, not of the body, but of the soul.

We therefore understand that there is a real ego, or self, and there is a false ego, or false self. And this Sanskrit term, when I talked about the subtle body, the ahankara, is the false representation of the self. And the way this manifests, when I say, “I am—” and then I begin to give labels, the labels attached to the body. “I am a man,” “I am a woman,” “I am tall,” “I am short,” “I am fat,” “I am thin,” “I am muscular,” “I am skinny,” “I am beautiful,” I am ugly,” “I am old,” “I am hungry,” all those things attached to “I” are only relating to the body. And what has happened in the material condition there is no awareness of my actual spiritual being and identity, and I have become fully absorbed in the false and wrong idea that this body, and the mind with all its desires, is me.

So, there are some philosophies like Buddhism where they do not accept that there is any self. And so, you will see with Buddhism, and a particular branch of Hindu philosophy, not the original Vedic teachings, but the followers of Adi Shankara, where they say that the concept of self and of individuality is an illusion; but the original Vedic teaching is, no, your individuality and your existence is real, and it is eternal. But when the living being is embodied, and they begin to adopt all these false ideas of what is the self, who I am, they are fully covered by this ahankara, this false ego, the false conceptions of self.

In this world, you know the way the word ego is used, and we mentioned earlier, “Somebody’s got a big ego!” which means, what? Ssomebody else has got a small ego? So, you have different size egos? Really people have this type of idea. And like I mentioned before, people get into a confrontation, and no one wants to back down, they call it a battle of the egos. “You’re just on an ego trip.” People speak in this kind of way. But this type of language and speaking doesn’t really give us an understanding of the real meaning of ego or of false ego.

So, it is understood that all, not some or most, all suffering and unhappiness in this world arises from the false conceptions of self, the false ideas. When I cling to the body as being the self, I cannot experience anything other, eventually, than misery. Number one, the body is not eternal, but I, the spiritual being, am eternal and so when I cling to the body as the self, I desire, this desire to be eternal. I want everything to last: “…and they lived happily ever after.” We desire this eternality. We desire happiness (which is a desire that rises directly from the soul itself), but when I try to fulfill the desire for happiness only with material experience, is it fulfilling? No. All forms of material happiness are temporary, and they are limited, and they do not give us the taste for which we truly desire.

So, this is a big problem with adopting this false ego, the false concept of self, and trying to live out what are actually spiritual needs and spiritual desires only through the agency of the body. Like love—everybody desires to both love and to be loved. This desire originates from the soul itself; this is a spiritual desire. But when I seek to try and fulfill it through material personalities, it does not fulfill me. It doesn’t give me what it is that I truly seek and what I truly desire.

So, from the Vedic perspective, what people would call the big ego people, that may be extroverts, and then you’ve got, on the other hand, introverts, who are all kind of mousy and quiet, they may even tend towards having depressive personalities, possibly, from the Vedic perspective, both of them are the same. It’s both the opposite sides of the same coin. It is the same problem that is being experienced, where we are not in touch with our true spiritual identity and who we truly are.

So, I’ll just read a quote from the Bhagavad Purana:

“When the soul is under the spell of material nature and false ego, identifying one’s body as the self, the person becomes absorbed in material activities, and by the influence of false ego one thinks that they are the proprietor of everything.”

So, the actual Sanskrit terminology for this is a lot deeper than what people would think from reading that.

We have this sense of importance. I see everything in relation to me, what I like and what I don’t like. I see everything that way.  I live in a world that is utterly self-centred. Don’t react to the word self-centred negatively, just, it means where I’m at the centre of everything. I think and I—relationships, food, experiences, job, everything, I see in relation to me. I see myself at the centre of my world. I see myself at the centre of the universe. This is considered to be an unfortunate condition, and it is because of the influence of the false ego, the false concept of self.

I’ll just read one more:

“One who is enlightened in self-realization, although living within the material body, sees himself as transcendental to the body, just as one who has arisen from a dream gives up identification with the dream body. A foolish person, however, although not identical with his material body but transcendental to it, thinks himself to be situated in the body, just as one who is dreaming sees himself as situated in an imaginary body.”

So, what’s being referenced there? Can you remember the last time you had a vivid dream? Some people dream a lot; other people don’t dream very much. But when you have, when you have a vivid dream, you see what you would call “yourself,” in different situations. Sometimes you can be in dangerous situations, and there is violence involved, or there falling from some high place, or being chased by someone—all different varieties of experiences. And it can become so intense a person has what they call a nightmare, where they’re starting to [miming nightmare] “Oh, no, no…” They actually start calling out and everything.

You can get situations, particularly with someone that’s suffered from PTSD, and I don’t mean what people often refer to as PTSD, but we’re talking about people that have been to war and experienced people being blowing up next to them, and your friend’s brain splattered all over the side of your head, and experiencing absolute horror. And then they can come back, and then they just have these reoccurring nightmares, and in that condition, they can be sweating, they can be shouting out, and someone, a friend, a partner, a wife or husband, whatever, waking them up.

And as soon as a person wakes up from one of those experiences like [shuddering indrawn breath]—and there’s an instant recognition that was a dream. And while I’m still having a physiological and psychological reaction to what was going on in my mind, my heart may be beating fast, I may be even trembling and everything, but the moment that sleep is broken, it’s like [acting gasping air] and then immediately everything starts to calm down, that there is this recognition that what I experienced was a dream. It wasn’t physically occurring, although I thought and I felt like it was, it wasn’t actually physically occurring. It was a dream state. And now that I’m woken up, I’ve kind of shaken off that experience, I’ve shaken off that body and what was happening to it. Sometimes people are being devoured by an animal, or who knows what, and it’s kind of like, “No, I’m shaking that one off.” And now I have clarity.

So, this verse that we just read speaks to this experience, that for a person who has actually experienced what is self-realization, where one becomes free from the influence of the false ego and the false conceptions of self, in that state, they are able to shake off and leave aside this temporary and fleeting existence, and actually experience the reality of their eternal spiritual being.

So, it was kind of like an interesting topic, and I—we’re just scratching the surface. There’s actually a lot more deeper things that could be discussed and depths plumbed in this topic, because the great yogis and transcendentalists dealt with this subject in a very amazing way. Their—the knowledge that is shared in the Vedas is very extraordinary.

The important takeaway—and before I go to this, I’ll just give you an example. I’ve mentioned before in some other talks, you know, we used to run programs in the prison, and one of the things I try to teach guys is not to become victims of their emotions. Emotions occur within the mind. You don’t have to follow them, and you don’t have to be swept away. Like anger: anger is the most useless thing, with very rare exceptions. It’s useless because it doesn’t really accomplish anything, and it just makes your life worse.

And so, I tell people, when you have a sense of becoming more emotional about something, a heightened emotional state, don’t speak, don’t say anything, don’t act, don’t decide, or commit to any action. What you need to do is go away, take some deep breath, maybe do some chanting, calm down, and when you’re on a very even keel, consider how should I respond to this situation? How should I respond in a way that benefits me, doesn’t make it worse?

Isn’t it that almost everything someone says in a moment of great anger is regretful and hurtful? It doesn’t build wonderful relationships, it doesn’t make anything better, it doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t change anybody’s mind. It just becomes this venting that actually makes things worse, and it has a tendency to build up, build up, build up. Then the next time we run into a confrontation, I immediately go back to all this stored residual anger and bad feelings, and I haul it out, “Yeah, but what about you, you!” And it’s kind like, oh my God! It’s so unproductive and so stupid.

So, when you learn how to not engage just because you’re being swept away by some emotional state, you learn to step away, disengage, calm down, and then think about what should be the course of action I should take, and how should I respond or deal with this person or situation—so just as you can do that in relation to your mind, coming to understand how deeply we are controlled by this false ego, all these false conceptions of who we are that instil within us fear and anxiety and insecurities and emptiness, if I understand that such a mechanism exists, and there is this covering of the soul known as the false ego, it gives me the ability to then contemplate: Oh, that wasn’t good that I got swept away by those thoughts and ideas, that I reacted this way. I need to get a grip, and before I get carried away next time, to bring it to a halt, to stop going in a bad direction, because in my life the actions that I undertake result in what I’m experiencing in my life.

Wherever you are in your life now, it is the result of actions that you have taken, thoughts that you have had, desires that you have cultivated, and it’s led to this. It’s led to where you are today. And learning how to make really good decisions in life, informed decisions, spiritually guided decisions, will result in your life being wonderful, that the time that you have allotted to you between now and your eventual what’s called death, when you have to leave this body, it can be a wonderful experience. But you need to be in control of it, not that the mind and the emotions and the false ego is what’s driving the bus. You need to be the one with your hands on the steering wheel, directing how your life is going and where it’s going.

I’m deeply saddened by the introduction of political and social philosophies, particularly over the last five, six years—it actually goes back later, over the last 35, 40 years, but have become really prominent, where everybody is fixating on identities. Everybody’s unhappy with their current identity, and we want to have another identity. We want to become more immersed in another form of material identity. From a spiritual perspective, this is simply a formula for unhappiness and is considered ignorant.

You are an eternal spiritual being. If you become overly absorbed in your body and external temporary material identities, you will never experience fulfillment, complete happiness, and peace. You cannot. And so, understanding this—what was the title here again? Unmasking the ego? The ego unmasked. It’s actually really appropriate. This is not just philosophical ideas. These things are really practical and to do with our life, and developing the skills, to learn how to take charge of your life and not to be overly affected by things that are not you, like your mind and emotions and the false ego, false concepts, is so important.

This—what’s going on now is just like, oh my God, you’ve got this epidemic of mental—what they call mental health issues. But at the same time, what are we seeing? We’re seeing that, particularly over the last 20 years, there has been this philosophy that your feelings are so important and so sacred, and they need to be coddled and addressed and everything, and there’s no understanding that my mind can be going on a rampage, my mind can be misleading me, my emotions can be misleading me.

And so this idea of identifying with my feelings and desires that doing that is “being true” to oneself, and it has to do with finding your real self is, from the Vedic perspective, is a false idea. Your real self is not this body, it’s not the mind, the content of the mind, the desires of the body. You are an eternal spiritual being, and when you discover your actual true spiritual identity, that is amazing transformation. This is called liberation, to be actually to become free.

Identifying with false identities in the mind, this is called ignorance, and results—there’s a little formula: ignorance equals pain and suffering. The degree to which you are feeling unhappiness and pain and suffering in your life, to that same degree you will be embracing untruth, things that are not actually true. And in clinging on to them, it will result in a lack of fulfillment, even great despair, deep emotional distress, all kinds, heartbreak.

Okay? That’s it.

Question:  What degree of, for—dealing with the senses of the body and the spirit [indistinct] you were saying, give it to the spirit, but we’re in this. So, what percentage of the day are we to go into… [Acd: Okay, I’ll] we can’t, not get away from it and so…

Acharya das: Okay, I’ll answer in a bit more detail in a bit. But I will give a little bit of an answer now because it—just, we can wrap things up. And just so you know, during the dinner that they serve, if you’ve got questions, and you want to ask stuff, please feel free to do that. Everybody is super welcome to ask. And there’s no dumb questions. All questions are important.

So, we’re existing in an embodied state. This was understood. There is a pathway that is sometimes described as karma yoga, which means the yoga of action, where one learns to integrate their life, infuse it with actual spiritual purpose and meaning, and be able to live in a way that would seem to everybody else to be like you’re living an ordinary life, but your purpose for doing things, your intent for doing things has all changed. You’re seeing things from a different perspective. And so, learning how to integrate things is of great importance.

Just as one shouldn’t go to the gymnasium and decide, I want to build some massive legs, thunder thighs and massive calves and everything, and I go there, and I decide, okay let me just start working on one leg first. I’m just going to hammer this until this sucker is just like amazing, then I’ll work on the other one. And even when I go out and move around, I’m hopping on one leg so I can really work it out, and the other one just withers away in the meantime. A person that did that that would be nuts. They got a problem. It’s weird.

But that’s how we are living, because we are eternal spiritual beings, and we do nothing about what I will call food for the soul, spiritual nutrition. Our whole life and time and focus is spent on just catering to the body and the mind, that which we will leave behind at some point and move on. And I’ve dedicated what 60 years, 80 years, 90 years to just serving the body and the mind, and then that it ends up in a grave or in a crematorium? That’s kind of like not very smart. The need to find balance in life where you are engaged in spiritual activity as well as the necessities of taking care of business, taking care of things (we are not blind to these realities) is important.

So, in the beginning you can start off in even simple ways, small things, like I so much encourage people to develop a personal meditation practice, even if it’s only for 10, 15 20 minutes. But to be done daily. The regularity is more important than the amount of time, and as one engages in this regularity, then one begins to experience transformation and change. Life starts, you know, whoow, you start calming down. There’s—you have a more settled heart, and your mind becomes more, more peaceful, little bit by little bit. When you continue in this way, you actually develop a taste for spiritual activity. And other things that were chaos in your life and noise and clutter and all the so-called excitement begins to be less and less attractive. And we begin to experience, in this inward journey, something amazing and act actually really wonderful.

So, we have to find a balance. And in the beginning, it’s not like you have to do, you spend all day meditating. We’re not talking like that. We’re talking about engaging in a process that causes the fog to lift and make it so that gradually we will have more and more clarity, and our relationships will all change, my view of others, of the world, of myself will actually undergo a massive amount of change over time.

So, it’s a journey, and we do it incrementally, one step at a time. But we have a clear idea of where it is that we want to head. Okay? So, we want to go further with that? Or we can do it after this?

So, since we’ve promoted the idea of meditation, we are going to do that.

So, we will chant a little, and then, as I said, if you would like to ask questions later, please feel free to do that.

So, I’ll chant, here we go, Aum Hari Aum