Be Vigilant about Spiritual Ego (Silent Retreat) - 15th Oct. 2015

For some of you, the mind might come with some proclamations just about now, saying that 'This is it, I've got it.' And you must not even believe this one. And if it does get your belief, then we must inquire, because the last stand of the ego is the spiritual ego—the pretending person claiming to be the enlightened person. It is spiritual ego. How do we know this is spiritual ego or not? It manifests with the messaging that 'There is something special about me. I am something different from everyone else.' There are many, many, many beautiful awakening experiences which are then again pulled back into personhood because of this spiritual ego. If there is such a thing as a strong adversary to the voice of the Truth, if there is such a thing, then it is this spiritual ego.

This is illustrated very well in the Ramacharitmanas, where Ravana is a representation of the spiritual ego because he knew everything, all the scriptures. He was a great pundit. What was his message? It was that 'Why should I bow down to Ram? If He is God, I am also God.' So he was saying all the right stuff. Saying all the right stuff, but still coming from the sense of specialness, personal specialness. We find that those who are caught up in this spiritual ego then are almost impossible even to get through to, and you just have to let Grace do the work. And even the Ramayana says that Ram had to chop off the head ten times. So phenomenally, ego is just one chop. We say 'chop the head.' So this head had to be chopped ten times because it comes from a place where it is speaking the truth.

You tell the spiritual ego, 'It's good if you do some self-inquiry.' What is the response? 'I'm not the doer.' You cannot argue with it, you see. 'Who am I?' It says, 'Who's asking the question?' Yes, it is closed, you see. 'It's good, did you go to Arunachala?' 'I just go wherever God takes me.' So all this fancy language was still smelling of person. It's a good spiritual ego. Nisargadatta Maharaj says very nicely, he says that all the words which you could be saying could be true, but you are still being a jerk. The sense of specialness, that 'Now I am something special.' And all of us in Satsang will experience some traces of this. You can testify strongly to them. So the good news is that life knows, Grace knows, and suffering will squeeze this ego out of us.

So just like love and fear cannot coexist, specialness and gratitude cannot coexist. This is a nice way to check because many times we don't know whether we are afflicted by the spiritual ego. A good check is: Is there gratitude? Because specialness usually exhibits itself in a way that is unworthy. It will almost assume, because it will say things like, 'Oh, now you know, my Guru and I were just buddies. We're the same.' Any arrogance is useful to hear him for some time. This is this kind of just... the ego is very nice, very fun. The mind is very smart and it will use Advaita itself as a very solid defense for the ego.

You find any of these people, especially on the streets of a town like Tiruvannamalai, they've picked up this Advaita. They're great concepts, but it is all still coming from a more personal perspective, from a perspective of specialness. And you can smell it in their presence, because there is nothing wrong with the content of the words. It is only that you can smell that it is not accompanied by the fragrance of love, peace, and joy. That is why I feel that a very worthy prayer, the prayer which is often repeated here also, is to say that if there's any arrogance here, if there is any sense of specialness which is perpetuating here with lies, slap it out of here immediately, right now. In the name of Ram, listen now. Make this clear. And they'll testify it clearly works very fast. I'm happy for them.