“Two persons, one in Krishna consciousness and the other in material consciousness, working on the same level, may appear to be working on the same platform, but there is a wide gulf of difference in their respective positions. The person in material consciousness is convinced by false ego that he is the doer of everything. He does not know that the mechanism of the body is produced by material nature, which works under the supervision of the Supreme Lord. The materialistic person has no knowledge that ultimately he is under the control of Krishna. The person in false ego takes all credit for doing everything independently, and that is the symptom of his nescience.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita, 3.27 Purport)

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“I like how the science of self-realization has a numerical component to it, when explaining the makeup of the individual. There is the single person, who is atma. They are spirit soul. They are not two or three. They are one person, and that individual is different from another individual. We have proof of this based on the limitation in perception. My experiences are my own. You are not privy to them, unless I share. Unless I communicate, you have no way of knowing. The same applies to your experiences. Bhagavad-gita kindly applies names to the distinctions. We have kshetra, which is the field, and we have kshetrajna, which is the knower of the field.”

श्रीभगवानुवाच
इदं शरीरं कौन्तेय क्षेत्रमित्यभिधीयते
एतद्यो वेत्ति तं प्राहु: क्षेत्रज्ञ इति तद्विद:

śrī-bhagavān uvāca
idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya
kṣetram ity abhidhīyate
etad yo vetti taṁ prāhuḥ
kṣetra-jña iti tad-vidaḥ

“The Blessed Lord then said: This body, O son of Kunti, is called the field, and one who knows this body is called the knower of the field.” (Bhagavad-gita, 13.2)

“One particular enumeration I like is the detail to the gross body. I am spirit soul, atma, and I am different from my body, deha. That deha consists of five gross elements and three subtle elements. One of the subtle elements is ahankara. The commonly applied translation is ‘false ego’. The other two elements are easier to understand. At least to me, mind and intelligence are obvious in their influence, their capability, and their overall presence. But what exactly is ego? More importantly, why is it false?

“Well, without delving further into the study, in accessing the teachings of the acharya, it is easy to notice the presence of an inflated ego. You know, when someone is puffed up. When you talk to them, they go on and on about how great they are. They make sure to put others down. They compare themselves to a higher personality; perhaps an elder within the family. It is obvious for an outsider to notice, but often times the person suffering from that ego has no clue.

“The false part of it, therefore, makes sense. The person in question fails to acknowledge the help they receive. They do not give credit to other people, who may not be as capable, but who are at least trying. They gloss over the obvious blemishes from the past, the mistakes that were made. At the same time, this inflated ego is what motivates them to work. It is what guides them towards risky endeavors. They can accomplish great things precisely because of this false ego. Wouldn’t you say that is a positive, then? How can the world operate unless individuals have confidence in themselves? Even if that confidence is misplaced, at least these people are out in the arena. They are not afraid to try.”

If there is a false ego, there must be a condition which corresponds to the removal of the qualifier. In other words, how does a person behave when they have knowledge? When they acknowledge the true source of strength, when they correctly understand their helplessness in this world, just how do they behave? Do they take shelter in a remote area, too afraid to try? Do they have the lowest self-esteem in the world, such that they are so sure of failure that they refuse to stand up?

प्रकृतेः क्रियमाणानि
गुणैः कर्माणि सर्वशः
अहङ्कार-विमूढात्मा
कर्ताहम् इति मन्यते

prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
kartāham iti manyate

“The bewildered spirit soul, under the influence of the three modes of material nature, thinks himself to be the doer of activities, which are in actuality carried out by nature.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 3.27)

The teachings pertaining to the influence of ego in mistaking the individual as the doer can be found in Bhagavad-gita. This is like a transcript of a conversation that took place one time. The setting is a battlefield. The person leading the discussion is the chariot driver. He is the acknowledged authority figure. The person on the receiving end, who asked for assistance in the first place, is the bow-warrior seated on that chariot. In other words, the servant turned into the leader, and the leader turned into the servant. This shift is sanctioned given the true nature of the driver.

Arjuna learned about the individual as spirit soul. Arjuna heard about the distinction between field and knower of the field. Arjuna took in the knowledge about gross and subtle elements of the body. If anyone were to have their false ego removed, in a kind of surgical procedure involving words of wisdom, it would be Arjuna. Acknowledging that reality, Arjuna makes an ideal case study in seeing how someone would behave in the absence of false ego.

We see that Arjuna returned to the position of bow-warrior. He proceeded in a military conflict. He was successful in that operation. He lived up to his name of Savyasachin. He was accurate in the release of arrows from his bow. He was not timid. He was not shy. Arjuna ended up winning; if you could say there was a triumph in that conflict, given the mass casualties. How was any of that possible? Without a false ego, how did he get to work?

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explains that there are two designations a person can carry into their work. They can be influenced by the false ego, as discussed above. But they can also be conscious of Krishna, who is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The external vision of the work might appear to be the same in both cases, but the difference is in the ego. Someone like Arjuna is not in illusion. He understands that nature determines the outcomes to work and that Krishna is ultimately the source and creator of nature. A person working for Him carries a purified sense of ego, wherein they understand their role as part and parcel of the complete spiritual energy. They try their best to carry out their work in that spirit, such that the dangers of false ego will stay far away.

In Closing:

Like precious cog in the wheel,
Not inflated to feel.

By ego otherwise illusion to command,
But rather on proper footing to stand.

And not from humility to balk,
Where afraid to move or talk.

This body temporary but vibrant now,
Thinking to please Supreme Lord how.

Categories: questions

Tags: ahankara, dailyprompt, ego, hare krishna, poem, poems, poetry