Ego (spirituality)

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, the human being is often conceived as being in the illusion of individual existence, and separated from other aspects of creation. This "sense of doership" or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it is the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in the world, is ultimately unaware and unconscious of its own true nature. The ego is often associated with mind and the sense of time, which compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing its own self and the present.

The spiritual goal of many traditions involves the dissolving of the ego, allowing self-knowledge of one's own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world. This is variously known as Enlightenment, Nirvana, Presence, and the "Here and Now".

Eckhart Tolle comments that, to the extent that the ego is present in an individual, that individual is somewhat insane psychologically, in reference to the ego's nature as compulsively hyper-active and compulsively (and pathologically) self-centered. However, since this is the norm, it goes unrecognised as the source of much that could be classified as insane behavior in everyday life. In South Asian traditions, the state of being trapped in the illusory belief that one is the ego is known as maya or samsara.

Descriptions of the ego

Many writers, from the Buddha onwards, have written about the ego from a spiritual viewpoint. Eckhart Tolle's book on the subject, A New Earth, looks at this too:

"Listen to people's stories and they could all be entitled 'Why I Cannot Be At Peace Now'. The ego doesn't know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now. Or maybe it does know and is afraid you may find this out. Peace, after all, is the end of the ego."

"The extent of the ego's inability to recognize itself and see what it is doing is staggering and unbelievable. [...] To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one. All you need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions - as they happen. This is not really a 'doing' but an alert 'seeing'. In that sense, it is true that there is nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and even thoughts become depersonalized through awareness. Their impersonal nature is recognized. There is no longer a self in them. They are just human emotions, human thoughts. Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your sense of identity. You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions."

The Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, as well as the self-described Gnostic writer and teacher of occultism Samael Aun Weor, posits that the ego is inherently constituted by many "I's":

"One of man's important mistakes," he [Gurdjieff] said, "one which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I. "Man such as we know him, the 'man machine,' the man who cannot 'do,' and with whom and through whom everything 'happens,' cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago.

"I am going to read a newspaper," says the "I" of intellect. "To heck with reading," exclaims the "I" of movement, "I prefer to ride my bicycle." "Forget it," shouts a third ego in disagreement, "I'd rather eat, I'm hungry."

Weor used the terms "Being" (equivalent in meaning to Atman in Hinduism) and "ego", drawing the distinction that the two states possible are that of Being, which is "transparent, crystal-clear, impersonal, real and true", and that of the 'I', which is "a collective of psychic Aggregates that personify Defects, whose only reason to exist is ignorance". He characterized this distinction:

"Superior and inferior ['I's] are a division of one organism itself. The superior 'I' and the inferior 'I' are both the 'I'; they are the whole ego. The Intimate, the Real Being, is not the 'I.' The Intimate transcends any type of 'I.' He is beyond any type of 'I.' The Intimate is the Being. The Being is the reality. He is what is not temporal; He is the Divine. The 'I' had a beginning and inevitably will have an end, since everything that has a beginning will have an end. The Being, the Intimate, did not have a beginning, and so He will not have an end. He is what He is. He is what has always been and what always will be."

See also

• Self (spirituality)
• Ego death