Discourses (Meher Baba) - The Nature of The Ego and Its Termination

The Nature of The Ego and Its Termination

The use of the term Ego in the Discourses does not follow strictly the Freudian definition, although generally it refers to the same concept and many parallels can be drawn. Baba makes no mention of the Id or the Super-ego, but only the distinction between the implicit and the explicit ego. The latter finds manifestation in consciousness, whereas the former remains in the subconscious mind. Isolated subconscious tendencies stored in the implicit ego must come to the explicit side to take part in a conscious process. Yet the explicit ego is very intricately organized and has self-protection mechanisms that act as a repressive barrier to subconscious tendencies. Since spiritual progress requires all subconscious tendencies to gradually pass through the conscious part of the mind and become refined and eventually eliminated, the explicit ego has to be weakened, under certain conditions, to permit this to happen.

Evolutionarily, the ego is formed by the inherent nature of living beings to store, integrate and evaluate experience around a central mental point. The organized mental structure of experience eventually takes over the sense of "I" and starts considering itself as the central identity of the individual. This creates various erroneous assumptions from the ego's side, such as identifying itself with the physical body, the psychological functions or the mind of the individual, or endowing external objects and events with values that don't really belong to them but that it projects on them. Generally the ego is the central cause of all mental conflict. Its presence during the evolution of consciousness is of instrumental importance, but from a certain point on it starts acting as a hindrance to the further development of self-consciousness. A lot of spiritual effort has to be made to weaken the ego's dominance on self-consciousness and as the effort moves deeper it becomes increasingly difficult to proceed. The individual can get indefinitely stuck in some stages and therefore help from outside becomes very important. The final emancipation of consciousness from the ego is practically impossible without the intervention of a perfect master or sadguru.

Self-consciousness and the consciousness of the apparent universe do not end after the dissolution of the ego and several chapters of the book are dedicated to the states of consciousness gained by those who have transcended the ego. Also, most chapters of the book get into particular practices for the emancipation of consciousness from the ego, qualities that have to be developed by the individual, and examine important issues that have to be confronted in the process.