Ego - the cause of misery

We all talk about the ego and what it means. Most of us think that being proud or arrogant is egotism. But our scriptures give a completely different definition of ego. According to them, to think that ‘I exist’ and to think that ‘I am doing something’ or ‘I have to do something’ or ‘something belongs to me’ or ‘the fruits of actions belong to me’ signifies the presence of ego. As long as we have in us the ego in any of these forms we remain deluded by this divine delusion of God.

The ego deludes us to think that we and God are different; that we are ‘I’/men/women, different and separate from God. As against this Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that all the bodies are embodied by God and all beings are eternal and indestructible fragments of God. In other words God and the being are not different but all beings are forms of God or they are God. Verses 7:4-5 of the Bhagavad Gita reveal that the human form comprising of five gross elements (earth, water, fire, air and ether), mind, intellect and the ego, is the eightfold lower nature of God.

Though all the bodies are embodied by the same God or all beings are forms of God but once in the body the ego deludes the being and it starts thinking that this body is ‘I’; I am performing the actions; everything is happening for me; I have to achieve, I have to succeed, I am the owner of all possessions etc. This ego or the false sense of I-ness deludes us and we fail to know that we all are God and not separate men/women. This ego or the false sense of I-ness is the only cause of all the problems that exist in our lives including death and re-birth.

The true self-realization by the being, who is in fact God, means realization by him that he is God, not ‘I’/man/woman. Until a person is freed from the ego and realizes that he (the being) is God, he has not known and attained God. Due to this only, the famous poet saint Kabir said –

When ‘I’ was, then God was not, Now when God is, I am not.

Till the veil of delusion called ego is within us we cannot know God and till God is known we cannot become free from worries, sorrows, diseases, aging, death and re-birth. This means that the biggest enemy of the human beings is their ego, which does not let us have the self-realization that we are all God. And as soon as the ego is destroyed we get amazing boons in our lives.

Lord Krishna says that the first boon of annihilation of the ego and resultant God-realization is peace and happiness. The next boon of attaining God is freedom from diseases and aging. And the ultimate boon of attaining God-hood is freedom from death and constant changing of the bodies by the being. It means attaining immortality and living forever in the same body. In fact in the end of His discourse in the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna makes the most remarkable statement when he says that when one is freed from ego one becomes fit for attaining the state of God. On realizing that one is God one becomes God and then worries, diseases and old age disappear from life. And to top it all one can then remain in the same body forever, that is, one becomes immortal.

From these words of Lord Krishna it is clear that the ego is the biggest hurdle in our journey towards God and in our endeavor towards peace and happiness and, hence, it should be annihilated. But what is the way of doing so?

For this Lord Krishna has revealed a very powerful and unfailing method through which the sense of I-ness or ego is quickly annihilated. This wonderful practice has been elucidated in a very easy to follow manner in the book You Are God written by Shashi Verma. Just log on to the website www.highestwisdom.com to know more about this way of destroying the ego and becoming God.