The Permanent Solution – 21 (A philosophical short book)

Another major obstacle in seeking divine happiness is ego. Ego too, is one of the fantastic creation of mind itself, which is pampered through out in your pursuit of happiness. Ego tries to develop feeling of self importance. Many times ego defies all sorts of logic just out of fear of loosing importance and deprives you of having the pleasant experience which you could have had otherwise. Any spiritual aspirant, even materialistic person for that matter, has to control his egoistic whims through excellent reasoning. As you will discover if ego projects itself directly in opposition to life, knowledge, power etc., it usually gets defeated.

Here is an illustration. Consider a patient approaching a doctor. He bows to all the conditions that doctor imposes on him, without having his ego hurt. He thinks he is acting most sensibly by not allowing ego to refrain him from obeying to doctor. He”ll never be cured otherwise. His life is at stake.

You must, therefore, decide firmly that ego is your slave serving you in your attempts of seeking happiness and not your master to hold you back from acquiring something that you want to, especially when it is divine. The places where you should allow ego first place are the ones where it prohibits you from getting engaged in sinful and criminal acts on the basis of thinking like, “O! I worship God. How can I get indulged in such libidinous and ravenous acts? These actions are sub standard. O! I who preach philosophy of divine love, I who practice spiritual exercises regularly, I who wear saffron clothes, I who keep lord’s images in my house and in my office, I who wear necklace which holds picture of God or saint, cannot associate with actions that will take me away from my Lord.” Ego, then, when comes to you from association with God, compels you to accept your short comings, doesn’t permit you to indulge in fault finding, opposes mayic ego that stands in your way against acquiring eternal happiness. If ego induces you in exactly opposite thinking, it must be crushed down with all force. This, as you will notice, is one of the diversions of thinking from material to divine area.