The Release from the Ego

The formation of a mental and vital ego tied to the body-sense was the first great labour of the cosmic Life in its progressive evolution; for this was the means it found for creating out of matter a conscious individual. The dissolution of this limiting ego is the one condition, the necessary means for this very same Life to arrive at its divine fruition: for only so can the conscious individual find either his transcendent self or his true Person. This double movement is usually represented as a fall and a redemption or a creation and a destruction,—the kindling of a light and its extinction or the formation first of a smaller temporary and unreal self and a release from it into our true self’s eternal largeness. For human thought falls apart towards two opposite extremes: one, mundane and pragmatic, regards the fulfilment and satisfaction of the mental, vital and
physical ego-sense individual or collective as the object of life and looks no farther, while the other, spiritual, philosophic or religious, regards the conquest of the ego in the interests of the soul, spirit or whatever be the ultimate entity, as the one thing supremely worth doing. Even in the camp of the ego there are two divergent attitudes which divide the mundane or materialist theory of the universe. One tendency of this thought regards the mental ego as a creation of our mentality which will be dissolved with the dissolution of mind by the death of the body; the one abiding truth is eternal Nature working in the race—this or another—and her purpose should be followed, not ours,—the fulfilment of the race, the collective ego, and not that of the individual should be the rule of life.

Another trend of thought, more vitalistic in its tendencies, fixes on the conscious ego as
the supreme achievement of Nature, no matter how transitory, ennobles it into a human representative of the Will-to-be and holds up its greatness and satisfaction as the highest aim of our existence. In the more numerous systems that take their stand on some kind of religious thought or spiritual discipline there is a corresponding divergence. The Buddhist denies the existence of a real self or ego, admits no universal or transcendent Being. The Adwaitin declares the apparently individual soul to be none
other than the supreme Self and Brahman, its individuality an illusion; the putting off of individual existence is the only true release. Other systems assert, in flat contradiction of this view, the eternal persistence of the human soul; a basis of multiple consciousness in the One or else a dependent but still separate entity, it is constant, real, imperishable.

Amidst these various and conflicting opinions the seeker of the Truth has to decide for himself which shall be for him the Knowledge. But if our aim is a spiritual release or a spiritual fulfilment, then the exceeding of this little mould of ego is imperative. In human egoism and its satisfaction there can be no divine culmination and deliverance. A certain purification from egoism is the condition even of ethical progress and elevation, for social good and perfection; much more is it indispensable for inner peace, purity and joy. But a much more radical deliverance, not only from egoism but from ego-idea and ego-sense, is needed if our aim is to raise human into divine nature. Experience shows that, in proportion as we deliver ourselves from the limiting mental and vital ego, we command a wider life, a larger existence, a higher consciousness, a happier soul-state, even a greater knowledge, power and scope. Even the aim which the most mundane philosophy pursues, the fulfillment, perfection, satisfaction of the individual, is best assured not by satisfying the narrow ego but by finding freedom in a higher and larger self. There is no happiness in smallness of the being, says the Scripture, it is with the large being that happiness comes. The ego is by its nature a smallness of being; it brings contraction of the consciousness and with the contraction limitation of knowledge, disabling ignorance,—confinement and a diminution of power and by that diminution incapacity and weakness,—scission of oneness and by that scission disharmony and failure of sympathy and love and understanding,—inhibition or fragmentation of delight of being and by that fragmentation pain and sorrow. To recover what is lost we must break out of the walls of ego. The ego must either disappear in impersonality or fuse into a larger I: it must fuse into the wider cosmic “I” which comprehends all these smaller selves or the transcendent of which even the cosmic self is a diminished image.

But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind. The subordination of the ego to the progress and happiness of the human race is now a governing idea in the world’s thought and ethics; but this is a mental and moral and not a spiritual ideal. For that progress is a series of constant mental, vital and physical vicissitudes, it has no firm spiritual content, and offers no sure standing-ground to the soul of man. The consciousness of collective humanity is only a larger comprehensive edition or a sum of individual egos. Made of the same substance, in the same mould of nature, it has not in it any greater light, any more eternal sense of itself, any purer source of peace, joy and deliverance. It is rather even more tortured, troubled and obscured, certainly more vague, confused and unprogressive.

The individual is in this respect greater than the mass and cannot be called on to subordinate his more luminous possibilities to this darker entity. If light, peace, deliverance, a better state of existence are to come, they must descend into the soul from something wider than the individual, but also from something higher than the collective ego. Altruism, philanthropy, the service of mankind are in themselves mental or moral ideals, not laws of the spiritual life. If into the spiritual aim, it enters the impulse to deny the personal self or to serve humanity or the world at large, it comes not from the ego nor from the collective sense of the race, but from something more occult and profound transcendent of both these things; for it is founded on a sense of the Divine in all and it works not for the sake of the ego or the race but for the sake of the Divine and its purpose in the person or group or collective. It is this transcendent Source which we must seek and serve, this vaster being and consciousness to which the race and the individual are minor terms of its existence.

There is indeed a truth behind the pragmatic impulse which an exclusive one-sided spirituality is apt to ignore or deny or belittle. It is this that since the individual and the universal are terms of that higher and vaster Being, their fulfillment must have some real place in the supreme Existence. There must be behind them some high purpose in the supreme Wisdom and Knowledge, some eternal strain in the supreme Delight: they cannot have been, they were not created in vain. But the perfection and satisfaction of humanity like the perfection and satisfaction of the individual, can only be securely compassed and founded upon a more eternal yet unseized truth and right of things. Minor terms of some greater Existence, they can fulfill themselves only when that of which they are the terms is known and possessed.

The greatest service to humanity, the surest foundation for its true progress, happiness and perfection is to prepare or find the way by which the individual and the collective man can transcend the ego and live in its true self, no longer bound to ignorance, incapacity, disharmony and sorrow. It is by the pursuit of the eternal and not by living bound in the slow collective evolution of Nature that we can best assure even that
evolutionary, collective, altruistic aim our modern thought and idealism have set before us. But it is in itself a secondary aim; to find, know and possess the Divine existence, consciousness and nature and to live in it for the Divine is our true aim and the one perfection to which we must aspire.

Author: Aurobindo Ghose in The Synthesis of Yoga

A Gift for You: The 13 Volumes of Mother’s Agenda

In 2002, Ghis discovered Aurobindo Gose and The Mother through Satprem’s book The Mind Of The Cells. After reading many of their writings, she realized that these pioneers of the supramental consciousness came to the same conclusions she did:  human beings are a transitional species between animality and the supramental being, the equivalent of what Ghis calls the sovereign being – personocratia. Ghis had the feeling that she had met “old accomplices”; she was not alone anymore. They all concur with the inherent reality of being perfectly healthy, physically immortal, omnipotent, omniscient… and insist that the Divine is not in heaven, but deep inside matter. On the path to human transformation, reading Mother’s Agenda is indispensable. You can download the 13 volumes of Mother’s Agenda in French and English following this link: http://mother-agenda.narod.ru/index.html

“This tremendous document — 6,000 pages in 13 volumes — is the day-to-day account over twenty-two years of Mother’s exploration into the body consciousness and of her discovery of a “cellular mind” capable of restructuring the nature of the body and the laws of the species as drastically as one day the first stammerings of a “thinking mind” transformed the nature of the ape. It is a veritable document of experimental evolution. A revolution in consciousness that alters the laws of the species. And it’s the question of our times, for whatever the appearances, we are not at the end of a civilization but at the end of an evolutionary cycle. Are we going to find the passage to the next species… or perish? As scrupulously as a scientist in his laboratory, Mother goes back to the origin of matter’s formation, to the primordial code, and there, “by chance,” stumbles upon the mechanism of death — upon the very power that changes death — and upon a “new” Energy which curiously parallels the most recent theories on the subatomic nature of Matter. The key to Matter contains the key to death … and the key to the next species.

Mother (Mira Alfassa): Born in Paris on February 21, 1878, in a very materialistic, well-to-do family, she completed a thorough education in music, painting and higher mathematics. A student of the French painter Gustave Moreau, she knew well the great Impressionist artists of the time. She later became acquainted with Max Théon, an enigmatic character with extraordinary occult powers who, for the first time, gave her a rational explanation of the spontaneous experiences she had had since her childhood. He taught her occultism during two long visits to his estate in Algeria. In 1914, she visited the French colonial city of Pondicherry in India, where she met Sri Aurobindo, who had sought refuge there from the British. She returned permanently to Pondicherry in 1920 via Japan and China. When Sri Aurobindo withdrew to his room in 1926 to work out a new power of evolution in matter, she organized and developed his Ashram, and tried in vain to awaken the disciples to a new consciousness. In 1958, after Sri Aurobindo’s departure, she in turn withdrew to her room to grapple with the Problem — the change in the cells’ consciousness: the great Opening. From 1958 to 1973, she slowly uncovered the Great Passage to the next species and a new mode of life in matter, and narrated her extraordinary exploration to Satprem. This is the Agenda.”