Ego and Its Dissolution

"The wisdom of the great spiritual masters is neither ancient nor modern; it is eternal and beyond time. It’s mistakenly presumed impracticality and obsolesce are nothing but artifacts of our egos built upon the fragments of worldly realities created by our schizophrenic minds. The spiritual masters knew well that the ego was essential for bodily survival and worldly living. However, they also realized that the bodily survival alone marred with the inescapable suffering and death was not the ultimate purpose of human life.

Hence, to achieve a total potential of being human and to realize the ultimate reality of the universe while living the bodily and worldly life, self-realization via a total dissolution or transformation of the ego into the universal consciousness is essential. Their insight was very scientific in realizing that just like physical measurements are required to observe the material reality, introspection or inner awareness (similar to the thought experiments of Einstein) was essential to witness the un-manifested reality.

Dissolution of the ego or egoless-ness is one of the conceptual and philosophical stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter. It doesn't fit well with the Judeo-Christian belief in the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition. If there's no self, then who has faith and who does the service; there remains no purpose of a spiritual life.

In Christian theology, the concept of “Kenosis” comes close to the concept of egoless-ness or Nirvana as George Ellis states:

“The view I wish to defend encompasses both these facets (high value of human life and tolerance) in a deeper claim: it is that the central moral feature is kenosis, or self-emptying and giving up of one’s own wishes on behalf of others. Thus the suggested foundational line of true ethical behavior, its main guiding principle valid across all times and cultures, is the degree of freedom from self-centeredness of thought and behavior, and willingness freely to give up one’s own self-interest on behalf of others.”

The dissolution of the ego is often misunderstood by many as a suicide or death of the self. However, it really means dissolution of the confining boundaries and opening the mind to the universal awareness or consciousness or free will with no confinements. Ego dissolution is not the dissolution of the self, but its release from the shackles of the man-made beliefs, convictions, morals, cultural values, and codes of conduct etc. More correctly speaking, dissolution of the ego means its transformation to the energy of the free will or consciousness or awareness. Ego signifies living with confined, constrained, or limited awareness. Egoless-ness signifies living with full awareness or free will. Ego is the inertia while consciousness is the kinetic motion or energy of the extreme kind.

To some people, the ego-death very much sounds like pure death. The often used phrase of ego-death misrepresents the dissolution or transformation of the ego. Ego dissolution is not bodily death or suicide but dissolution of the imprisoned mind. The spiritual masters have said that one has to be reborn, i.e. first die –ego death (not bodily death), and then reborn again or start living again with the totally aware mind or consciousness. The concept of a Reborn Christian is no different than first dying thru the mind or dissolving the worldly acquired ego while bodily living and then begin living again like Christ with total awareness. A Reborn Christian or an enlightened person following an ego-death is a living and fully aware person with a dead or fully dissolved ego. A bodily suicide, on the other hand, is not the ego death but a bodily murder committed by a desperately failed ego that had no hope left to fulfill any of its burning desires. A bodily suicide is the desperate act of the failed ego, while the ego death or dissolution is the victory of the free will or consciousness within.

The egoless state is achieved or realized while living. It is nothing but a state of expanded consciousness or vision that witnesses reality beneath, beyond, and deeper than the worldly reality. The memory of the mind expresses the life experiences in the worldly language and forms as best as it can. The masters, who got enlightened, described their enlightenment experience in words, poetry, and writings in scriptures, because they realized the egoless state not after bodily death but while living. What they described was what they were witnessing. It was not their fancy, whim, or hallucination because it vindicated the actual behavior of the universe and its laws. A fully enlightened master feels hungry, eats, walks, has emotions, and performs all bodily functions similar to an unenlightened person. The difference is that while an unenlightened person has limited his/her awareness to only the worldly phenomena, the enlightened person witnesses the universal phenomena including the immeasurable or invisible phenomena of consciousness below Planck’s scale and beyond the far distance of the visible universe.

The complete dissolution or transformation of the ego can be done only via an internal resolve of the free will while being alive. What Einstein, Masters, and Holistic Relativity reveal to us is that in the egoless state wherein the mass, space, and time are fully dilated there only remains One Wholesome Continuum, which is pure consciousness being aware of everything that there is. The living organism remains alive and not dead, like a spiritual master, with a total awareness or consciousness that includes all states of being from body to mind to consciousness. Ego death is not the physical death of the organism. Bodily living is necessary for the ego as well as its dissolution or death.

In summary, while ego is necessary for worldly living and survival, in order to live a purposeful and meaningful life free from the adversities and suffering, the root cause – the ego itself has to be eliminated. The boundary walls of the ego act as prison captivating our consciousness and keeping it from achieving a full realization of the potential of human life. A wholesome life consists of an integrated wholesome living encompassing the whole spectrum of consciousness states from ego to egoless-ness. Egoless-ness is an expanded or unrestricted (free-willed) self living with a full awareness. It is no different than the selfless love of Jesus, Nirvana (kenosis) of the Buddha, self-realization (Nij Ghar) of Guru Nanak, and selfless action (Nishkam Karma) of Krishna.

Guru Nanak summarized the rewards of dissolving the ego or egoless-ness as follows:

“Jeh prani homei taje, karta Ram pachhan; Kaho Nanak woh mukat nar, eh man saachi Maan”

- A person, who dissolves the Ego, finds the Truth or God. Nanak says that person is totally free and his mind is fulfilled with the realization of this ultimate universal Truth."

~Avtar Singh