61. *The ego of knowledge*

Let us move to another important form of ego – the ego that comes with knowledge.

As you grow, you collect judgments and data about several things by reading books and talking to people. These two together make up your knowledge, your whole mental set-up. Anything that you see, you see through this mental set-up.

Anything that you see becomes merely a support to your already formed conclusions. There is no scope for any growth. You are all the time looking through a glass of a particular colour – a colour that you have painted! You miss a lot in this wonder filled world because of this.

A small story:

A man was telling his friend, 'Do you know, I really made a fool of myself.'

The friend asked, 'Why, what happened?'

The man said, 'I replaced ten cracked windows in my house and then discovered that I had a crack in my glasses!'

If we just look inward for one moment, we will understand that we are the common factor in all that we see. But somehow, we never look in. We never doubt our own mind. We feel we know everything; there starts the problem. Our mundane knowledge doesn't give us a chance to evolve.

The most dangerous thing in this is, you feel you are solidified with just your knowledge. You feel you have become a solid character by virtue of your knowledge. Little do you know that you have only become a burden on your being.

Your being is a river and you have made it stagnate with the socalled knowledge. Real knowledge is in knowing how to drop the knowledge that comes your way and live like a child, flowing with spontaneity. You need to move from ego to spontaneity.

We are ready to categorize and label all that we see in our lives. In the event, we simply rob life of its beauty. We categorize people, places, situations, everything that comes our way.

A small story:

A man once went to a movie theatre to watch a film.

The film started with the caption of a famous international studio, which had produced that film.

The man said to himself, 'Oh! I've seen this movie before!' and got up and walked away.

Every movie of that production comes with the stamp of that particular studio and the man concluded that he had seen the movie before! He missed it, that's all.

This is how we all are; grown-ups especially. Children are not like that. They see everything with freshness. They are so full of life; they are not dead like us.

When you go to the beach, just watch the children, how excited they are. Whereas when you go to the beach, you feel you know the beach already. The incomparable freshness and beauty of nature comes through your tinted eyeglass. The beach simply becomes yet another place. Understand, if at all you feel you are not enjoying life, it is because of your mind, because of your solid ego; not because life is not beautiful.

A man went to Switzerland for a holiday and returned after a month.

He met his friend one evening and decided to go out for a meal.

The friend asked him, 'So did you enjoy the beautiful scenery in Switzerland?'

The man replied, 'Yes, kind of. But the mountains kept coming in the way.'

We are so insensitive to Nature! And we complain that there is nothing to enjoy.

The capacity to enjoy is within you. As a child, you enjoyed everything around you. What happened after that? You became

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serious and forgot how to enjoy. You got dulled by your so-called knowledge.

As I told you earlier, people often ask me, 'Swamiji, how is it that with all your knowledge you seem like a child. Every time you crack a joke, you laugh so spontaneously and we look at you with awe! When you start telling a joke, sometimes we've heard you say it before and so we don't laugh, but you enjoy it so much as if someone else were telling you the joke for the first time!'

You see, this is exactly what I mean when I say you've lost your spontaneity and capacity to enjoy. You acquire a 'know-all' attitude with your knowledge.

Now that I have told you this, let me tell you a story that I repeat very often in my talks and which makes me laugh every time I narrate it!

In my native place Tiruvannamalai in South India, during the yearly temple festivals, there will be a temporary stage constructed in the open, where famous drama troupes will enact plays, mostly scenes from the great Hindu epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

I used to go and watch those plays.

On one such occasion, they were enacting the scene from Mahabharata where Dusshasana attempts to disrobe Draupadi and she is ultimately saved by Lord Krishna.

The Draupadi character was played by a man dressed in a saree¸an Indian costume.

As per their plan, he would wear seven sarees, one on top of the other and Dusshasana would pull them out one after the other keeping a count.

When the seventh saree was reached, Draupadi would scream to Lord Krishna for help and Krishna would appear. Somehow…the Draupadi character missed out one saree while getting dressed, and wore only 6 sarees.

On stage, Dusshasana started pulling and suddenly when the 6th saree was being pulled, Draupadi realized the mistake!

He started screaming, 'Hey leave it! Hey leave it!'

Dusshasana thought that Draupadi was playing her role so beautifully and continued to pull!

Finally, Draupadi was standing on the stage with just half trousers and a blouse, with make-up of a woman!

But he had good presence of mind, and he screamed, 'Oh Krishna! How gracious you are; you changed my gender to save me from shame!'

Even now if I think of that scene, I can't stop laughing!

So understand that having knowledge is alright, but don't use it to solidify yourself. Just encounter every moment with openness. Don't have any preconceived notions. If you live with this openness, nothing will be mundane to you. You will then see that even your own wife with whom you have been living every day is fresh and enjoyable!

When this becomes your attitude, there is every possibility that the other person feels the openness in you and he or she also opens out to you in more enjoyable ways. It then becomes a positive cycle where you move from freshness to freshness every moment. Then there is only freshness everywhere; nothing is stale!

Ego is living without paraphernalia

When you live with ego, you need some paraphernalia, some support, some people around you all the time. This support is what gives you your identity. Without that, you are nobody. A king is a king only when he has his kingdom. On the other hand, a Paramahamsa, an egoless being, is a king unto himself. He needs no kingdom! He sleeps when he stretches his leg and eats when he stretches his hand! He simply follows the flow of Existence. He is a realized soul.

But when you become a Paramahamsa, a great kingdom will automatically form around you, and you will be neither touched nor tainted by it. Only the weak ones create a kingdom for themselves and derive their support and strength from it. Only the weak need the status to support them, their ego to support them. For a Paramahamsa, his 'state' will do everything for him; he will be untouched by the status that surrounds him.

You search for paraphernalia because you feel life is too empty and mundane otherwise. And you feel life is mundane because you are searching for miracles all the time. The greatest miracles of Existence are happening every moment in front of your eyes. But you are so pre-occupied with your ego that you are missing it!

Your own body is a miracle. It is greater than any supercomputer that can ever be invented. The millions of cells and the thousands of synchronized activities that happen in your body is the greatest miracle on planet earth. If you know how to drop your mind and live in tune with Existence, you will understand that what you search for in the name of miracles is nothing but the natural synchronous events that happen in Existence. Your ego simply makes these things look ordinary, that's all. Your knowledge reduces it to mundane logic.

This is a nice question! When we have the choice to live happily, why do we choose suffering?

You see, you don't know your Self, your being, which is actually your real identity. Over time, you start relating with the outer world and create a pseudo identity for yourself. With this pseudo identity, you can relate with the outer world. This pseudo identity is your ego. It is purely made up of the labels that others paste on you. You don't know who you really are.

Suppose I ask you who you are, what will you say? You will say, 'I am the father of so and so,' or 'I am the sister of so and so,' or 'I am a doctor,' or something else similar. But what are all these identities? They are only your relationships and professions. You are daughter to your father, wife to your husband, mother to your children. But what are you to yourself?

You currently exist only in relationships and professions. Your ego is built up on this. Your identity is only through this. That is why there is always a danger of losing your identity. It is a man-made fragile thing and so it may break at any time. That is why you need to work so hard in maintaining it.

Your inherent nature is actually 'being alone'. When you were in your mother's womb, you were alone. You are actually enough unto yourself. This is your individuality. Over time, this individuality is taken over by what you call personality. Individuality is natural; personality is societal.

It is like this: A parcel moves from one place to another and at every place, it starts getting stamped with various details. The parcel is actually not these stamps but the stuff inside it, is it not? In the same way, you are not the stamps that people put on you; you are the stuff inside yourself.

With time, your ego is built on these stamps and you need more and more people to feed it. That is why you will observe that you are totally unable to be alone, with yourself. When you are with yourself, you don't hear the voices of the others feeding your ego. Your ego goes unfed. So what do you do? You at least turn on the television and watch!

A small story:

A man belonging to a long-standing political party was dying.

His friends came to know that he had switched his loyalties to the opposition party at the time of his impending death. They were astonished and asked him why he did that. The man replied, 'Oh! I'd rather one of them die!'

So strong is our pseudo-identification! It has become such a solid reality to us that it blinds us from seeing anything else. Even at the time of death, we find it difficult to drop our prestige! We live and die unconsciously.

The fear of losing your personality, which is your only anchor point, causes you to behave in the ways that you behave. That is why we say your ego is playing up. The whole of spirituality is all about losing this personality, this pseudo identification.

This can happen when you start watching. When you start watching, you will understand that you are the stuff inside the parcel and not the labels on it. When this awareness happens, you need no lecture, no sermon, no teaching or preaching.

Q: If we surrender to you, our master, will our ego be taken care of?

First of all, if you really surrender, you will become enlightened. There is no question of 'when I surrender' etc. But for argument sake, if you decide to allow me to work on you, I will prune your ego and keep it like a bonsai tree until such time you totally lose it and become enlightened.

You will have enough ego to run your business, and do your daily activities, not to hurt other people and yourself. Your ego will be like roasted seeds that do not grow any more.

Understand that a man who is not yet enlightened has ego in him in some form or the other. But whether you have active ego or passive ego, the more you start being the observer, the more your ego will dissolve. That's enough understanding for now.

406 With ordinary people, you can easily shield your ego and get away with it. With a master, you can never deceive him. You can only deceive yourself into thinking that you have deceived him. However deeply hidden and well covered you keep your ego and cunningness, they will be simply bare under the master's gaze. While you struggle to shield it, the master tries to heal it. Only he knows what a cancerous disease ego is.

Let me tell you a few things from the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita was Lord Krishna's teaching to the world.

When the Bhagavad Gita starts, Arjuna is confused.

He says, 'Oh Lord! I don't know what to do in life. Please guide me.'

Krishna explains to him the Sankhya Yoga – the way to reach the soul.

He then explains the Karma Yoga, then the Bhakti Yoga, then the Karma Sannyasa Yoga, then the Gnana Karma Sannyasa Yoga, then the Raja Vidya Yoga and so on.

He explains different meditation techniques through 700 verses in 18 chapters.

At the end of it Arjuna says, 'Krishna, I am more confused than what I was when you started explaining. Which technique do I follow? Which is the technique that is best and the quickest? Which is the shortcut method, the ultimate technique?'

Krishna replies to this in the concluding 18th chapter.

With any master, the words that he concludes with, are the final, firm and ultimate truth.

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Krishna says, Sarva dharman parithyajya mamekam sharanam vraja, aham thva sarvapapebhyo mokshayishyami ma suchaha.

This line that he says is such that if we imagine all the religions, philosophies and spiritual books to be a pot of milk, this is the butter extracted from it all.

He says, 'I have explained all the forms of justice to you. Simply surrender everything to Me. Surrender to Me and I will take care of you. I will free you from all your sins and lift you to liberation.'

Krishna is actually making a beautiful promise in this stanza.

Through this stanza, Krishna shows the world that surrender, is the final, firm and ultimate technique – the shortcut to the egoless state, to liberation.

Another beautiful story about Krishna and Arjuna:

One evening, Krishna and Arjuna were spending time together.

Krishna suddenly pointed out to a crow and said, 'Arjuna, look at that green crow!'

Arjuna looked in that direction and said, 'Yes Krishna, I see it!'

A few minutes later, Krishna exclaimed, 'Arjuna, see that black crow!'

Arjuna said, 'Yes Krishna, I see it!'

Krishna asked just to test Arjuna, 'Arjuna, how idiotic you are! There is no green crow ever. How could you have seen it in the first place?'

Arjuna replied, 'Krishna, when you said it was a green crow, I saw it as a green crow.'

Arjuna's very senses had surrendered to Krishna. Surrendering the senses to the master is the most difficult surrender ever. The master is Existence itself; he is the formless in form. When your senses perceive only what the master says, you have reached the highest point in surrender.

What is surrender? The word surrender has a very deep meaning. If we don't understand it correctly, we will misunderstand it! We will be committing a grave mistake. We will be misunderstanding deep truths.

A small story:

One night, 2 drunkards were walking down a street past a halogen lamp.

One of them saw it and exclaimed, 'Look, the sun has come out for us!'

The other replied, 'No, it is nighttime; it is the moon.'

The first one continued, 'It is yellow in colour and therefore it is the sun.'

A third man who was drunk, walked past them.

They asked him, 'Sir, please tell us whether this is the sun or the moon.'

The man replied, 'I am new to this neighborhood; I do not know.'

So, when you ask someone who does not know, you will either not get an answer or you will get the wrong answer.

Only those who have experienced can explain clearly. If you ask the meaning of surrender to a person who has not experienced it, he will say, 'Just give everything to God, that's all.'

That is not surrender.

I replied, 'Yes, if you truly surrender everything to God, everything will be alright.'

He returned after 3 days and told me, 'Swamiji, I have surrendered everything to God.'

I was happy and asked him, 'Where are you going now?'

He replied, 'To the bar.'

He continued, 'Whatever I do, God is only responsible from now on.'

This is actually a method of fooling oneself. If he has really surrendered, he would have surrendered the drinking habit also. He would not have even been able to drink any further.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the enlightened master from India beautifully says, 'When real surrender comes from your heart, God will guide you in every step of your life and you can never do wrong.' When surrender does not blossom from inside you and is only at the lip level, you will fool yourself and others.

Surrender will keep you thinking of Existence all the time. You will slowly lose your own identity, your own ego. In the Bhagavatam, an ancient Hindu epic, there is a verse wherein a Gopi (name given to a group of ardent female devotees of Krishna) says, 'I am not able to think of anything other than Krishna. I have surrendered my mind to Him. If I have to think of anything else, I will have to take back my mind from Him. How can I?'

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa suffered from cancer during his last days.

He had healed many people of many diseases.

Someone asked him, 'Why can't you keep your mind on your own disease for a moment and heal it?'

He replied, 'I have surrendered my mind to the infinite energy. How can I take it back to keep it on my disease!'

This is true surrender.

The cosmic energy will take care of us. You might ask, 'Will this cosmic energy take care of all my problems if I surrender?' In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna beautifully answers or rather promises, 'Without any other thought, when a man thinks only of Me, I will take care of his gifts as well as retention or enjoying of them. For those who surrender with commitment to Me, I will take care of their income as well as their prosperity. Their problems will dissolve.'

Commitment and maturity of mind are needed for real surrender to happen. You need not surrender to God or any master. You can surrender to anything. Surrender itself is a virtue and has a great power in itself. When you surrender, you are acknowledging that there is a life force greater than your ego, that's all.

Actually, God is only an excuse for you to surrender. The act of surrendering is what is important. God is not the goal; surrender is the real goal. When you surrender or when you lose your ego, you are no longer a separate entity from Existence; you merge with Existence or God. You will then understand that there is no God sitting above. There is only Existence that fills everything in this universe including you!

A small story:

A man decided that he was going to surrender but did not know to whom to surrender.

He decided that he would go to the forest and surrender to the first person who came his way.

He went and waited in the forest.

The first person to appear was a burglar who was escaping from policemen.

The man caught his feet and declared that the burglar was his guru and that he had surrendered to him.

The burglar was perplexed and did not know what to do.

He replied hastily, 'Alright, if it is so, then close your eyes and remain here until I come back,' and he ran away.

The man was a very committed person and remained there without food or sleep for a very long time.

The story goes that just by seeing his commitment, the Lord appeared before him and gave him liberation!

It is not important to whom you surrender; it is the thought of total surrender that has the power to change your life into a blissful one. When you surrender, you become a possessor of the inexhaustible energy that is Existence, and you handle anything that comes your way.

You become strong and unshakeable, come what may. People around you will find you to be a pillar of strength. They will be able to feel the invisible hand of Existence through you.

If you have not surrendered, it means that your ego is still holding you back from merging into the infinite and you automatically become finite in your resources and energy.

A master is a device to help you surrender. Surrender does not mean that you are dependent on someone. It simply means that you are taking that person's help in dissolving your own ego, that's all.