Retreat September 2017

    Question:  I have difficulty understanding how to remove the ego. I think I’m suppressing the ego, believing I have removed it. Can you talk about what is the essence of removing ego, please?

    Babaji:  Ego happens when we would have imagined about ourselves in a smaller place, like this body. We would have imagined a personality about ourselves and we become concerned about this body all the time to the extent that we don’t want to consider about anybody else in the world. That is how the ego crops up and then it grows, making a person too selfish and too narrow-minded. Everywhere we try to apply that something should be beneficial to our body, our own self, we are thinking of the body as ourselves. So that is how the ego crops up. 

    We don’t have to suppress this ego. Instead we should try to see ourselves in a wider way, understanding that we belong to the space. Or the other example of belonging I have always told in my talks about. In a town where you are asked, ”Where are you from?” you might mention your house number and the street name, but when you go out of the town you would tell that you belong to that town. When you go out of your state you would tell that you belong to that state and when you go out of your country you would tell that you belong to that country. Like that your consciousness needs to expand to overcome that ego. Slowly you have to understand the wider angle of existence of the place to which you belong. Like, if we go to some other planet we would tell that we belong to planet Earth. And everybody on this planet Earth would become like our fellow beings. Like our fellow Earthlings or our own countrymen, our own people. If we happen to meet any person from Earth we will become so happy, as if we are meeting our own brother. Thus, the consciousness expands. 

    If we try to understand about ourselves and that we all belong to a larger space then we can overcome the ego. We will be able to appreciate others when we try to see that as we live others also live, as we need others also need. If we understand this point, like if I am hungry, all of you are also hungry. If I want to be happy, all of you have a right to be happy. Like this if you start thinking in a progressive, matured way, positively you will be able to overcome the ego, the moment you understand how you are just a small droplet on this planet Earth and how vast the space is, how vast the number of people who live here and all their achievements. We start thinking our own achievements as the greatest, but when we try to look into others’ greatness we should be able to appreciate it. Thus we can lose our ego and overcome it without suppressing the ego, we can sublimate such an ego-thought and we start feeling that we all belong to one space and that space is vast. When we understand our home is so big you just cannot measure, so that belonging comes to you, that consciousness.