This is How the Ego is Kept Alive - 12th August 2016

The ego has two very strong legs—not really strong, but seemingly strong legs. They are two 'D's. First, we know very well, which is doership. But maybe the stronger one is this: desire. What is desire? Basically, the mantra of the ego is 'What's in it for me?' It comes into every situation in life saying, 'Okay, what's in it for me?' 'What's in it for me' is catering to 'me,' which basically is non-existent. We cannot find the 'me,' but we continue to cater to it.

In one of the silent intensives, we invented this guy called Rajan. He said that we hear this voice; it says, 'This is what you must have for lunch. This is what your next one hour should be. This is what you must find.' You see, we hear this voice with our thoughts through our mind, and we said, 'Okay, let's call that Rajan's voice.' Rajan—we just gave it a name, I don't know why that name came, Rajan just invented. So this is Rajan's voice, and Rajan is saying, 'Do this, do that. Don't do this, don't do that. Say this, don't say that.' But the prime motivation is to cater to this one. So the 'What's in it for me' is catering, for most of us in humanity, catering to this one that we cannot really find.

So we've gone from place to place, things to things, money, relationship, body—we keep searching. And the same way, we search for something called freedom. So even freedom is about 'What's in it for me?' because I have heard that the final bliss or the final joy or the final happiness will come once I get something called freedom. I try all the other things. Mostly those who come to satsang usually have tried a lot of the other things and they come, isn't it? So then we come saying, 'Okay, this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this doesn't work. I thought money would make me really happy; it doesn't. I thought to get the perfect partner, man or woman, would make me really happy; it doesn't. I thought that keeping the body healthy, that would make me really happy; it doesn't.' This thing which is unfulfilled.

Then we've heard in books and other teachers say, 'Find freedom and that is your Amrit, your final goal of bliss, never-ending nectar of immortality.' But even this is motivated by 'What's in it for me?' Now what happens is that in satsang here, which is so direct, we look for this. We look for this 'me.' Who is this 'me'? All the evidence we have for this 'me' is this voice: 'This is what I want. This is when I'll be happy. Almost there. I'm getting there. I'm making progress.' It keeps reporting, this voice. Now, with a little bit of investigation, it becomes quite clear that there is nobody like that here. Just represented by this lawyer, but we cannot find the client. The voice is saying whatever the voice is saying, so hear this, but who is it representing that we cannot find?

And it has some very simple answers. So it'll say, 'Oh, but it is the body.' Actually, it is the body. Body is unconcerned with how much money is there in my bank account. A body is unconcerned with the fight I had with a neighbor, my manager at work. So body is not concerned about that. Body is not concerned with the quality of relationships. So who is this one that is concerned? That is the one that we look for. And we very quickly, most of us, we find that it is just fiction. It is just imagination. So then this impulse to cater to this 'me' sort of lightens. It's not so heavy. We're not going... we meet life as it is then, not meeting every situation saying, 'Okay, what am I learning here? What is in it for me?' The base, the presumption itself, we started to question that there is an individual 'me' here.