Material Success and Happiness Through Yoga Principles

by Swami Kriyananda
(J. Donald Walters)

Copyright © 2005 Hansa Trust
All rights reserved.
Lesson Twenty-Six
The Right Use of Ego

The Principles
There is a children’s story—perhaps you know it?—about a mother frog and a little baby frog just out of the tadpole stage. In the baby’s view, its mother was surely the largest creature in existence.
One day the baby frog hopped a little distance from their home pond, and came upon a country lane. There, taking up most of the lane as it lumbered along it, was a cow. In amazement, the little frog gazed for a moment, then hopped and hopped frantically home to tell its mother about this incredible phenomenon.
“You say it was large?” said the mother, not at all liking this demotion to a relatively small size in her baby’s mind.
“Oh, Mummy, it was enormous!”
“Do you mean it was this big?” asked the mother as she inhaled deeply, puffing out her chest.
“Oh, Mummy, it was much bigger!”
“Was it this big?” asked the mother grimly as she took an even deeper breath.
“Oh, it was much, much bigger, Mummy! I can’t even begin to describe its hugeness.”
“Do you mean your monster dared to be . . .” the mother tried to take as deep a breath as she could, but never finished her sentence. Suddenly, there was a loud “POP!”
The mother—or, to paraphrase the title of a Hitchcock movie, the lady—had vanished.
I have written many times in these lessons about the need for self-expansion. An expansion of ego-identity, however, is very different from what I wanted to convey.
Isn’t it curious, the way so many people boast of their accomplishments—when nobody likes a boaster? The phenomenon is self-contradictory: How to explain it? Do people merely dislike having their own egos “crowded to the wall”? Surely it is more than that. Sensitive people, especially, can’t help sensing that there is something wrong about emphasizing one’s own ego at the expense of other people’s. As I have often remarked in these lessons, people are wiser than they know. Many know themselves also to be greater than what they seem, objectively. Intuitively they know that, whatever their human foibles, they have at least the potential for true greatness. As Emerson put it, “Men descend to meet.” When people boast, they—and, perhaps even more so, their listeners!—feel in some way degraded by the self-promotion.
“Who is he to talk like that?” is a normal reaction when others try to set themselves above the common ruck of humanity. Their displeasure is motivated only partly by self-interest. They are also intuitively aware that their hidden greatness defies competition; it simply is.
Where your own work is concerned, remember, Maya will always try to trick you into seeking self-gratification by ego-affirming means. In the process, Maya will carefully avoid the only thing that will ever really work for you: offering yourself into a greater reality. The way to defeat Maya’s ego-narrowing arguments is to remind yourself constantly that happiness and fulfillment come through self-expansion—a kind of expansion that is unattainable by the ego, but that comes inevitably to one who achieves release from the ego.
It is no easy task to overcome the ego! Can anyone really do so, as long as he sees his ego as his own self? The answer is, no, he cannot! The ego is, in fact, indestructible. It can only be transcended in the realization that we are much more—when the little self expands to become, in time, the over-arching, omnipresent, divine Self.
I myself, after meeting my Guru, worked hard to overcome what he described as my tendency toward “intellectual aloofness.” After months of effort, I awoke one morning to the dismaying realization that I was becoming proud of my humility!
On what firm ground can we stand, to lever ourselves up to higher levels of understanding? Archimedes stated, “Give me sufficient leverage and I will raise the very earth!” Is there a “ground” firm enough for the ego?
What, essentially, is the ego? What, essentially, are we? This lesson will address three important aspects of the subject: 1) the unreality of the ego in the context of infinite consciousness; 2) the need to shoulder responsibility for one’s own part in the great “drama” of life; and 3) the desirability of keeping ourselves open, when working, to the inspiration of higher consciousness.
Each of us, considered singly, is infinitesimal compared to the great scheme of things. That fact, however, doesn’t excuse dysfunction on our part. Each of us is important, within his closely circumscribed circle of influence.
There is a story of a Jewish rabbi who, at the Sabbath service in his synagogue, knelt before the altar and cried out in a loud voice, “I am nothing, Lord! Nothing!”
The assistant rabbi, observing this inspiring act of humility, imitated it and, like the rabbi, knelt before the altar and cried out, “I am nothing! nothing!”
The janitor, on observing these wonderful acts of self-abnegation, rushed down the aisle from the back of the hall, threw himself on his knees before the altar, and cried out, “I am nothing, Lord! nothing!”
The rabbi, seeing this (to him) ridiculous display of the janitor’s, declaring what seemed to him an obvious fact, turned to his assistant with raised eyebrows and exclaimed, “So look who thinks he’s nothing!”
To know who and what we really are, we must first of all know in what manner we were created, and in what manner the universe was created.
Let us begin by discussing the second of the points mentioned above: How did God create the universe?
Twice previously in these lessons I have alluded to a statement of my Guru’s in Autobiography of a Yogi. Here I quote it exactly: “The divine eye is center everywhere, circumference nowhere.” The Infinite doesn’t create in the manner you and I do when making things. We can go out and buy the materials for our creation: the stone, the wood, the paints and brushes, the ink and paper we need. God had nothing “on hand” but His own consciousness. In creating, He could only become His creation. Consciousness itself could not be created, for the Spirit already was consciousness! The nature of Spirit is absolute and perfect bliss.
Hence Swami Shankara’s definition of the Supreme Spirit: Satchidananda, which my Guru translated to mean, “ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.” Most translations of that Sanskrit word read more abruptly: “Existence, Consciousness, Bliss.” The words my Guru added, “ever-” and “ever-new,” were appended by him so as to clarify the eternal nature of Divine Bliss, and to suggest that ever-newness is an aspect of the divine nature. He added “ever-new” to emphasize that, in eternity, Bliss never becomes boring or “old hat” (as all things do that we enjoy through the senses). “Ever-new” suggests also that the Spirit, in its own “ever-newness,” naturally “spills over” into the inconceivably diverse manifestations that form the universe. “The Spirit wanted to enjoy Itself through many”: so state the Hindu scriptures.
God’s creation was projected as movement, or vibration: that which the scriptures call AUM, the Amen, the Ahunavar of the Zoroastrians, the Amin of the Moslems. At first, creation was in idea only. Ideation formed the “blueprint” of what was yet to come. After this phase of creation had been projected in its unimaginably vast diversity, its idea-forms were vibrated more grossly to become energy. Divine Consciousness thought energy into being. Thus, energy was the second phase of creation. It was an appearance, only, for everything actually exists only in consciousness.
The first phase of creation—that is to say, the first outward manifestation of God’s consciousness—is called the ideational, or causal plane. The ideational plane, or causal universe, cannot be conceived of in terms of size, for time and space at this stage of manifestation are not yet well-defined realities.
The second phase, the astral universe is—so my Paramguru Swami Sri Yukteswar explained—“hundreds of times” larger than our material universe, which, to our understanding, is itself incomprehensibly vast.
The third phase, the material universe, is the last stage of creation. Why is it the last? Because nothing can become more solid. Everything in existence manifests what it has ever been in essence: consciousness, whether silent or vibratory. There can be no opposite to absolute consciousness. The appearance of solidity, therefore, can be only that: a mere seeming.
These truths can be declared openly nowadays, since science has discovered that energy is the key to matter. Matter, in other words, is energy, which in turn—so the wise have declared—is a vibration of ideas, which are vibrations of absolute, motionless consciousness. What appear to be hard rocks, metals, and crystals are only energy in gross rates of vibration. Nowhere in creation is anything really solid. In cases where material forms manifest consciousness—the brain, for example—consciousness manifests through those forms: it cannot be created by matter. Not even the most wonderfully constructed brain could produce genius. It is man’s consciousness, manifested through the brain, which sometimes reveals genius. A great actor displays his extraordinary skill out of his subtle awareness. No gesture or expression, merely imitated by another actor, could ever reproduce the same level of genius. Consciousness can manifest itself effectively through matter, but nothing material can possibly, in itself, ever create consciousness.
Thus, the ego is not created with human birth. Rather, the ego is only an “element”—my Guru used this word—of the astral body. The ego is that consciousness of individuality which spins a “cocoon” of energy about itself. Only in the astral or energy body does an entity become clearly differentiated and individual.
The causal body contains the essence of our individuality, but its state of awareness is so subtle that it is also deeply conscious of its oneness with all existence. Separate existence, at that level, is only an idea: a thin veil lightly covering the soul.
In the astral body, the veil of separateness is thicker, or denser. Energy and the multi-colored expressions that energy manifests, determined by various states of consciousness, creates the illusion of a definite and separate individuality.
Finally, on the material plane, the physical body in its apparent denseness is so clearly differentiated from everything else that the indwelling ego cannot easily see everything as merely a manifestation of the unifying consciousness of Spirit.
Paramhansa Yogananda described our apparent individuality with the illustration of countless tiny slivers of glass, each of us being one sliver. The light reflected from the sun of Spirit seems, in every sliver, individual. It is only a reflection, however, of the one sun. As the sun sets for us here on Earth, the slivers of glass grow gradually dimmer and, with nightfall, become invisible.
Every sliver of glass, considered individually, seems distinct and separate. The less light is reflected in it, however, the more clearly its unique form becomes visible. Each sliver, when not reflecting any light, can be seen as wide, narrow, thick, or long, and in other ways as uniquely contoured. What makes it attractive to our eyes is the light reflected in it. As a rule, no sliver will be, in itself, beautiful.
If, moreover, you pick up a sliver of glass and examine it closely, it may cut you. Similar is the case if you examine your ego too closely. Self-absorption may cut you—or cause you in some way to suffer—owing to your indifference to other, broader realities. The secret of a happy life is—well, not exactly self-forgetfulness, but a minimum of self-preoccupation.
The more we manifest the spiritual light from within, the more, in a sense, we lose our egoic individuality. No analogy is perfect, of course. As individuality becomes less and less centered in the ego, a deeper sense of who we really are begins to manifest. Every apparently separate point in God’s creation, though all reflect His consciousness, is unique. No two snowflakes, so science tells us, are exactly alike. No two egos, similarly, are completely alike. Every one of us, throughout eternity, is different from every other. Even stripped of the koshas, or sheaths, within which human consciousness is enclosed, every soul is uniquely itself.
Human egos, generally speaking, undergo countless similar experiences through all their incarnations, but no two lives are ever exactly alike. You and I may have been pirates in the past, or emperors, or warriors, or lowly street sweepers, but never have we played any role as anything other than ourselves. Always, we’ve been our own special kind of pirate, emperor, warrior, or street sweeper. We have even gone through what may have seemed identically the same experiences as other egos, but we’ve gone through each of them in our own way. It is a mistake—indeed, one might almost call it a slight upon God’s ingenuity!—to reduce anyone, as astrologers often try to do, to a type.
The intricacies of the cosmic “show” are amazing, and seemingly they are never ending. Every atom manifests itself from its own center. Any change that it undergoes is outward from that center. Certain realities never change, however. All of us must, for example, cooperate with cosmic law; we cannot safely ignore it. Anything that will help us to expand our consciousness, rather than narrow it in egoic self-importance, will bring us the happiness and fulfillment we all crave. Anything, on the other hand, that shrinks our awareness into a narrower identity squeezes upon our happiness, deprives us of the fulfillment we dream of, and increases our suffering.
It is quite normal for businessmen and for anyone striving for success in life to feel a need for self-esteem. Low self-esteem is an obstacle to success, obviously. If, however, a person wants true happiness, it is also necessary for him to eliminate any relish in his self-importance.
I suggest that the modern-day emphasis on self-esteem be changed. Self-respect, surely, would be a better concept; it is less susceptible of misunderstanding. The problem with self-esteem is that it blocks higher creativity. The highest kind of creativity flows down to us from the superconscious. In that context, high or low self-esteem are no different from each other: both of them arise from excessive ego-consciousness.
When I was nine or ten years old, living in Bucharest, Romania, I made a trip from Teleajen to Bucharest with a few American businessmen. Their very voices conveyed vibrations of self-importance. Mere child that I was, and certainly only that in their eyes, I was more or less ignored. The car windows were tightly closed. The men puffed on thick cigars the whole way. As for me, I suffered in silence. At last, however, the air was so suffocating I could bear it no longer. In desperation I rolled down my window and leaned out, gasping for air.
“Shut the window, son,” said the man seated beside me. “You’ll catch cold.” I wonder now, in retrospect, if he didn’t treat everyone under him at the office with similar lack of concern. That ride lingers in memory even today, seventy years later, as one of the worst experiences of my life.
Most people equate the word ego with arrogance. A friend of mine once announced to me, “I have no ego.” I wondered how he, an intelligent man, could make such an absurd statement. And then it occurred to me that all he could have meant was, “I am not arrogant.” He corrected his own statement later, when we talked again. Arrogance had indeed been his true meaning.
It is important to understand that those two words, arrogance and ego, have very different meanings. Arrogance means to have a superior opinion of oneself. I remember with amusement someone once saying to me, “I’m not conceited: I’m just aware!” To be “aware” of one’s own superiority to others is not genuine awareness: it reeks of delusion. The more competent one actually is, the more his pride in the fact, if he feels it, disturbs his mental equilibrium. For, as I shall explain shortly at some length, ego-consciousness is centered in the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. Creative energy needs to flow freely up the spine, through the brain, becoming focused at the point between the eyebrows. When that flow is blocked in the medulla, the seat of ego, a strong energy-flow may cause the mind itself to become unbalanced.
When Yogananda was a young man, he applied to the Maharajah of Kasimbazar for help in founding a boys’ school for the all-rounded spiritual, mental, and physical education of the young. The maharajah decided to put the young yogi to the test, first, in order to see how competent he was to teach spiritual truths.
He called in several pundits, or scriptural scholars, to conduct the test. My Guru told me many years later what happened next.
“I saw,” he said, “that they were prepared for a spiritual bull fight. So I blocked their intention by stating at the outset, ‘Let us base our discussion, not on scriptural authority, but on direct experience. Knowledge,’ as I reminded them, ‘is not the same as wisdom, which may tell us, among other things, what to do with knowledge.’
“Well, it was obvious to me that none of them was Self-realized. My approach put them at a disadvantage from the start! Their knowledge of scripture was limited to what they had learned intellectually, and consisted of passages they had memorized.
“I then said to them,” my Guru continued, “‘The scriptures tell us there are four divisions of human consciousness: mon, buddhi, ahankara, and chitta (mind, intellect, ego, and feeling). They also say these four divisions, or aspects, have their corresponding centers in the body. Can you tell me where those centers are located?’ I knew they would not be able to answer, for that answer isn’t contained in any scripture.
“‘Can you describe those locations?’ they demanded.
“‘I can indeed,’ I replied, ‘and from experience. Mon (mind) is centered at the top of the head. Buddhi (intellect) is centered between the eyebrows. Ahankara (ego) is centered in the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. And chitta (the feeling aspect of consciousness) is centered in the anahat, or heart region.’” The Master finished his story with the declaration, “I got my school!”
Here I should explain the way these different divisions function. My Guru’s guru explained it in this way:
Mon (the mind) is like a mirror: it merely reflects what is perceived through the senses. Mind alone, therefore, has no discrimination. If one sees reflected in a mirror the image of a horse, his first impression, if he doesn’t know what it is, will be only of that image.
Next what is needed is buddhi, intellect, to discriminate among the various known objects to determine, “That’s a horse.”
Ahankara (the ego) then steps in, perhaps to say, “That is my horse.” So far, delusion has not yet entered one’s consciousness. For even the realization that it is your horse doesn’t necessarily bind you with attachment. So masters, too, need to be aware, in order to function in this world, of those things for which they are responsible. That knowledge need not create in them the slightest attachment.
Then, however, what appears on the scene is the faculty of chitta (feeling), which at that point may cry exultingly: “How happy I am to behold my horse!” Because feeling is primarily that aspect of consciousness which binds us to delusion, Patanjali defined yoga (as I’ve mentioned before) by the words, “Yogas chitta vritti nirodha (yoga is the neutralization of the larger vortices and smallest eddies of feeling).”
Mon (mind) is the most difficult to locate in the body, for few have any direct experience of it.
The location of buddhi (intellect) is easier to recognize. For example, notice how, when you think deeply, you tend to knit your eyebrows. Men’s intellects are uppermost; their feeling quality is somewhat in abeyance. They often have what I call, in humorous allusion to my own forehead, a “Neanderthal ridge” beneath their eyebrows. They also have a somewhat square, “no-nonsense” forehead. (In women, on the other hand, feeling is uppermost, and intellect, somewhat in abeyance).
Ahankara (ego-consciousness), being centered in the medulla oblongata, reveals itself as physical tension when there is an excess of energy in that region. Proud people tend to draw their heads back, seeming to “look down their noses” at others. The man who, during that car ride to Bucharest, told me to shut the window spoke with his head habitually tilted back a little. That position alone would have been enough to reveal his sense of self-importance. Notice also how public performers—actors, pop singers, and the like—often toss their heads left and right as if wanting to say, “Look at me. Listen to me. Aren’t I good?”
Chitta is centered in the heart. Women’s breasts grow in that region instead of in the lower abdomen, like the udders of lower animals. The feeling quality in women is, generally speaking, more developed than in men. Indeed, women’s breasts serve not only the function of giving milk. From the same region also the feelings radiate outward—whether in emotional excitement, or in calm intuition. Because of this location, women’s breasts serve a further purpose apart from that of giving milk: they also indicate sensitivity of feeling.
Men who are somewhat spiritually developed—saints and yogis—also develop slight breasts—rather like the small, still-forming breasts of a young adolescent girl. Men give no milk, obviously; they are not mothers. Even so, small breasts may appear beneath the nipples of those who are saintly in consequence of having more sensitive feelings. The feeling quality in saints is an expression of divine love and devotion. In men who have reached this level of development, the feelings are not emotional, but calm and dispassionate.
Women saints, on the other hand, retain a woman’s normal forehead, the bone structure being unsusceptible of alteration, but they reveal their balance of feminine and masculine qualities by their firm tread and decisive gestures. Saint Teresa of Avila was once described by a Catholic bishop as a “bearded man”—not because she had hair on her face, but because she displayed a decidedly masculine style of behavior when discussing business matters.
How many novels, plays, and short fiction of our times depict the typical lives of individuals as pathetic or degraded! On the one hand, we recognize ourselves in those pitiless exposures. On the other hand, we reject them as false and unfair. What are we, really? Are we great, or mean? The soul intuits a divine greatness which the ego rejects in its search for merely competitive self-importance.
People, again, see the stars in the vastness of space, and marvel at that immensity. Some people see it as reducing them in significance. Others, wiser than most, recognize themselves as participants in that vastness and recognize themselves as actually enhanced by it, not belittled. For the latter group, infinity is like the sounding board of a musical instrument. As wood is built into a piano, violin, or guitar to enhance the volume of the strings, so the great reality to which all of us belong enhances the meaning of our own lives: it doesn’t render human life petty or without meaning, as modern scientists often insist. If we will allow our awareness to expand beyond limitations of our egos, infinite consciousness itself will lift us, giving us the power to reach out and embrace the universe.
When people first contemplate the vastness of the universe—though one wonders how many of them ever indulge that thought seriously—their first reaction may well be to think, “How tiny I am!” When they first contemplate the great deeds of human beings in history, their first reaction may well be similar: “I could never do that!” When we refer this greatness back to ourselves, we may feel helpless. But when we expand our consciousness and think rather of impersonal greatness than of greatness referred back to our littleness, we think, “What can I myself ever accomplish?” Many religious people do in fact become passive in depending supinely on God. How much, they ask, should man seek to accomplish on his own, and how much should he leave to God to accomplish? This has been a dilemma, through the ages, in all religions.
Confronted with an awareness of infinity—an awareness that modern science is constantly expanding—how ought we to react? Is it even worthwhile to ponder our own littleness? Even if we can forget how puny we are compared to the greater, divine realities, the plain fact is, we have to begin somewhere. Tiny or not, we are responsible for that little atom which is our own ego. If we don’t use will power and energy to act, we’ll accomplish nothing. Our minds, when we contemplate the universe, are exalted, but we need also to act, ourselves. The best way to do so is, while acting, to expand our consciousness from our inner center by those acts.
Ego is the subject of this lesson. Ego-consciousness is not the same as arrogance, which is perhaps the ego’s least attractive manifestation. Because many prominent people, however, are arrogant, let us consider pride first, as a negative aspect of ego-consciousness.
Many people desire to seem important in the eyes of others. It pleases them to look down aloofly on their fellow creatures, and to treat them slightingly. Those who have this tendency focus more on things than on people. Those “things” include their own position in the world. Snobs enjoy anything that feeds their sense of self-importance. What this lesson teaches is diametrically opposite to that all-too-common failing. People whose focus is especially on themselves will often seek justification for any weakness by saying, “After all, I’m only human.” The truth is, they view themselves as better than human! The answer they deserve, however, is, “No, you are not yet human!”
Lalla Yogishwari, a woman saint, lived as a hermit centuries ago in Kashmir. She wore no clothes, a fact which caused some people, scandalized, to ask her why she didn’t display enough feminine modesty to wear at least something.
“Why should I dress?” she retorted. “I see no men around!”
One day word reached her that a famous male saint was coming to see her. Hastily, then, she clothed herself, exclaiming, “At last I’m to see a true man!” According to her rather drastic point of view, no one deserves full consideration as a human being until he has realized the fullness of his human potential!
Never excuse yourself with the words, “I’m only human.” Failings that are common to the human herd do not belong to man’s higher nature. As the adi (first) Swami Shankara said, “It is very hard to reach the human level. Don’t pass over that great blessing!” I quote Shankara, as my Guru did, but I feel a little hesitant in doing so for the word “hard” suggests effort, and self-effort begins only at the human level. “Hard,” however, also means hard experience—in other words, suffering, which living creatures experience again and again at every level of existence.
If you yourself balk at the idea of ego-transcendence, I have no choice but to defer to your free will. In that case, indeed, I must tell you, “Go right ahead! Become quite as self-important as you desire. Seek name, fame, a surfeit of riches, and overweening power—if those baubles still attract you. They attract most human beings. Seek those ‘satisfactions,’ therefore, until you grow sick of them—as you certainly will do, someday!”
A young man living among the gangs of New York City told a woman I met later in California, “It gives me a real feeling of power to carry a gun when I walk the streets of New York. I know, then, that nobody can mess with me!”
That man I’ve described in that car ride to Bucharest exuded a consciousness of power and self-importance. Had I told him it was a mistake to feel that way, he’d only have laughed and called me crazy.
The daughter of another prominent businessman went years later to Vassar College. When she returned to Scarsdale for a vacation, she saw herself as a queen. At a party I attended she made a show of pulling elbow-length velvet gloves from her arm, lingering impressively on the movement until she’d released all her fingers. If the thought of impressing others appeals to you, join the hordes who see nothing better in life. I doubt in that case, however, that you’d have come as far as this with these lessons!
A man who was on the board of directors of my father’s company boasted to a family friend of ours concerning the many oil discoveries he’d made. Our friend retorted humorously, “Why, M——, you must be just about the greatest geologist in the whole world.”
“Oh, no,” replied the other with hastily assumed modesty. “In oil, maybe.”
People don’t realize the extent to which self-importance invites gentle mockery from others, and doesn’t by any means attract their awe and respect! The essence of yoga principles is to emphasize the need for transcendence over ego in oneness with infinite truth. If people want egoic self-importance; if they want power over others; if they hunger for name and fame; if they hope to radiate self-esteem to everyone around them; and if they like to manipulate others—they might do well to study Nicolò Machiavelli’s classic book of self-help, Il Principe. It has, I understand, been well received. Hitler kept a copy of it on his night table. Napoleon had a copy, discovered in his carriage after the Battle of Waterloo. The only trouble with Machiavelli’s principles, and with the delusions I’ve briefly described here, is that they never fail to disappoint their votaries in the end.
If, on the other hand, you equate success with happiness for yourself and others, and not with the ability to exert power over anyone, then know that self-importance, power over others, and a desire to manipulate are delusions—dreams that are eventually succeeded by a rude awakening. The awakening may take time, owing to what my Guru called “the thwarting crosscurrents of ego.” When retribution comes, however, it no longer awaits us in some dim future: It is very much right here and now—this very minute.
It is more difficult for those who are in fact great in the eyes of the world to ponder their own insignificance before the universe. Emperors, generals, and people who have achieved worldly fame or other kinds of success are more inclined to preen themselves on their importance than to reflect on how little they are before the cosmic verities. Their objective circumstances soon condition them to the assumption of a smug downward gaze upon the human “canaille”—“the great unwashed” in seething masses beneath them.
Most people, however, gaze on ambitious, struggling, sweating humanity about them and think, “Am I so different in my ignominy?” Unless they, like that mother frog at the beginning of this chapter, want to inflate themselves and look bigger than all the other beasts of pond and meadow, the very fact that their lot is so similar to that of most others can hardly fail to awaken in them a sneaking suspicion: “Are we not all poor, stressed toilers in the field—wholly insignificant?”—and then the thought, “No, it can’t be true! I’m small, yes, but I am in fact more than I seem.”
Even as individuals we are more than we seem.
The nature of duality provides for everything a compensating opposite. Power and self-importance become balanced out, in time, by nullifying impotence and disgrace. Even you yourself may—according to something my Guru wrote many years ago—have a dual balance to your own being which, in this case, increases your reality. In one of his commentaries on the Bible, Paramhansa Yogananda wrote that everyone has a soul mate. Unity with that other being, the compensating half of ourselves, must come before completion can be achieved in God. One reason people are drawn to marriage is that they feel a subconscious need for unity with some one other. The soul-union must be on a spiritual level, however. Paramhansa Yogananda wrote in that article that the union can take place in the form of a vision—even with someone inhabiting another planet.
A final, and seemingly supernal, objection to overcoming ego-consciousness is a thought that comes naturally to everyone: “I don’t want to cease to exist! If cessation of my own individual existence is the goal of yoga, I consider that no fulfillment at all!”
Paramhansa Yogananda explained a final, supremely inspiring point in the endless debate between the advantages and disadvantages of ego-consciousness: The ego, he said, is never destroyed. Indeed, nothing can be destroyed except attachment to ego-limitation!
What happens, he explained, is that, once the soul achieves Self-realization, it discovers that God alone was, in fact, the only Actor of every role the ego ever played. In divine omniscience, once it is attained, there remains the memory of all one’s prior, individual existences. In cosmic memory, then, your own ego itself will continue to exist forever. You will also be able to re-manifest yourself whenever the need arises—if ever, for example, someone prays to you for your blessings. In such cases, it is not that the Infinite Consciousness recreates something resembling you: It will be you, yourself, who re-manifests—that very ego with which your being was once identified.
There are several practical ways of expanding your consciousness even while living and working in this body. These methods can be practiced anywhere. I shall try in the next section to offer a few.

The Application
1) Tell yourself that anyone who works under you is working with you. He is your co-worker in the same enterprise.
2) Share with others the credit for any success you achieve. Resist the temptation to call attention to any part you played in that success.
3) Try not to defend yourself against people’s accusations. Accept them silently, instead, with good cheer. The ability to bear the negative opinions of others against you will be a feather in your cap. That very thought will make you aware of a growing freedom and happiness within.
4) Try not to create a mental image of yourself that you will then feel that you have to defend.
5) Don’t meet praise with denial. To do so might be construed by others as impugning the other person’s good taste! Instead, say, “You know, we all have within us a power, if we keep ourselves open to it, that will work with us. God alone is the Doer. I appreciate what you’ve said, but the credit really belongs only to Him.”
6) When circumstances prove you to have been right in some matter, never announce smugly, “I said so, didn’t I?”
7) Don’t point out to others their flaw of ego-centeredness, unless you can do so with wisdom. To challenge others is to expose yourself to their almost-inevitable counter-challenge: “You are the one with the ego problem!” That, of course, might not be a bad thought to ponder. Inviting it, however, can bring harmful consequences to yourself: Negative reminders can become negative affirmations in your own mind.
8) In answer to anyone who criticizes you, never justify yourself by quoting favorable remarks made by others about you.
9) Never say, “Everyone says so” in justification of any statement of yours that others have rejected. Since most opinions have little value anyway, try rather to seek justification by emphasizing the good sense of any proposal you make.
10) Give to God everything you do, even if the profits of that action accrue to you, personally. In this practice lies the secret of “Nishkam karma”—action without desire for the fruits of action. That advice of Sri Krishna’s leads to liberation and perfect fulfillment.
11) Whatever happens to you outwardly, remain inwardly non-attached and even unaffected. Remember, nothing can touch the eternal YOU, which is your soul.
12) When people accuse you of anything for any reason, whether fairly or unfairly, don’t let your feelings become ruffled. If those people are in the right, don’t be ashamed. Shame will only affirm your ego-consciousness—which is usually in the wrong, anyway! (After all, your ego, like everyone else’s, is under the sway of delusion.) And if others are in the wrong, ask yourself: “What does it matter, anyway?” Yes, their opinions may matter in the effect they have on your work, but you will win a better opinion from others if you take their accusations cheerfully, and reply with a smile, “I’ll try to do better next time.”
13) If someone sets himself up as your rival at work, don’t respond with antagonism. The petty, competitive spirit others may demonstrate cannot be avoided; it is part of the “play” of life, which becomes actually enjoyable once one learns non-attachment. Remember the saying, “What comes of itself, let it come.” You will always be the gainer if you offer everything up to God.
14) Office politics are simply power games. Avoid them whenever possible. The best “power game” of all is to befriend everyone. What need have you, after all, to judge anyone? Everyone’s karma is his own. The responsibility for working it out is his also.
15) Be truthful, sincere, and ever kind.
16) Don’t hesitate to say “I can,” if you think you might succeed at some task. It is no sign of humility to tell others, “I can’t do that.” Remember: God, through you, can do anything!
17) Ambition can be a fault if it is harbored for personal ends. If your ambition is for a project, however, or if it is to help others, or to serve God, it may be considered a virtue.
18) People often try to manipulate others, or the circumstances around them. Live, rather, by that oft-stated principle, “What comes of itself, let it come.” You will find that, if you can reject completely the tendency to manipulate others, things will somehow flow well and smoothly for you.
18) Laugh with people, never at them.
19) Never call anyone—particularly never a subordinate—“stupid.” Even if you feel so inclined, remember that non-judgment will help to release you forever from ego-involvement.
20) That victory is best which is won through the use of will power, and through having faith in goodness as a greater power, ultimately, than evil.

Meditation
Visualize a ray of the infinite light flowing into you from behind, through your medulla oblongata (at the base of the brain). Let it flow into your body and activate everything you do and say.
God, remember, is in all things the real Doer. Meditating on this thought will help you to realize its truth. Feel the divine ray flowing into and through your body. Concentrate especially on the forward flow of that energy to the point of superconscious awareness between the eyebrows. Then imagine it flowing out to the world through the spiritual eye, blessing others, blessing your surroundings, blessing the whole world.

Affirmation
“Thou, Lord, art the Doer. Energize, and, 
through energy, magnetize everything that I say and do.”

Points to Remember

1. The ego can only be transcended in the realization that we are much more—when the little self expands to become, in time, the over-arching, omnipresent, divine Self.
2. As individuality becomes less and less centered in the ego, a deeper sense of who we really are begins to manifest. Every apparently separate point in God’s creation, though all reflect His consciousness, is unique. 
3. Anything that will help us to expand our consciousness, rather than narrow it in egoic self-importance, will bring us the happiness and fulfillment we all crave. 
4. The highest kind of creativity flows down to us from the superconscious. In that context, high or low self-esteem are no different from each other: both of them arise from excessive ego-consciousness.
5. Ego-consciousness is centered in the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. Creative energy needs to flow freely up the spine, through the medulla and the brain, becoming focused at the point between the eyebrows. 
6. Because feeling is primarily that aspect of consciousness which binds us to delusion, Patanjali defined yoga by the words, “Yogas chitta vritti nirodha (yoga is the neutralization of the larger vortices and smallest eddies of feeling).”
7. If we will allow our awareness to expand beyond limitations of our egos, infinite consciousness itself will lift us, giving us the power to reach out and embrace the universe.
8. Paramhansa Yogananda said: The ego is never destroyed. Indeed, nothing can be destroyed except attachment to ego-limitation!
9. There are several practical ways of expanding your consciousness even while living and working in this body: 
• Tell yourself that anyone who works under you is working with you. He is your co-worker in the same enterprise.
• Share with others the credit for any success you achieve. Resist the temptation to call attention to any part you played in that success.
• Try not to defend yourself against people’s accusations. Accept them silently, instead, with good cheer. 
• Don’t meet praise with denial. Instead, say, “I appreciate what you’ve said, but the credit really belongs only to Him.”
• Give to God everything you do. This leads to liberation and perfect fulfillment.
• Whatever happens to you outwardly, remain inwardly non-attached and even unaffected. Remember, nothing can touch the eternal YOU, which is your soul.
• Remember the saying, “What comes of itself, let it come.” You will always be the gainer if you offer everything up to God.
• Avoid office politics whenever possible. Befriend everyone. 
• Be truthful, sincere, and ever kind.
• Don’t hesitate to say “I can,” if you think you might succeed at some task. Remember: God, through you, can do anything!
• If your ambition is for a project, or if it is to help others, or to serve God, it may be considered a virtue.
• That victory is best which is won through the use of will power, and through having faith in goodness.

Workbook Ideas
by Joseph Bharat Cornell
Expand Your Self-Awareness

A rabbit and beaver were looking at a huge concrete dam when the rabbit, greatly impressed, asked the beaver, “Is that your work?” “No,” replied the beaver, “but it was based on an idea of mine.” 
The ego’s tendency is to refer everything back to itself to inflate its own importance. Yet the more we feel separate from others, the smaller and unhappier we are. The secret to fulfillment lies in expanding our consciousness, not narrowing it in egoic self-importance. 
During the early years at Ananda Village, a few friends joined together informally in a club they called “The Great Life Society.” They encouraged each other to look at life expansively and not to be trapped in egoic preoccupation. A member caught by self-interested thinking, for example, would immediately direct his attention away from himself to expand his perspective and sympathies.   
Attuning to a larger reality harmonizes us with God and the rest of creation. Our ability, then, to receive inspiration, manifest ideas, and work with others is tremendously enhanced. The key to a successful life—and the central theme of this course—is being expansive at all times.   

Action Item
Practice the following exercise: 

1.	Ask yourself often during the day: “Where is my attention?” 
2.	If you find that you are thinking too much about yourself: Go on a “self-involvement” fast. 
3.	Vow to live in greater awareness. Remind yourself constantly that happiness and fulfillment come through self-expansion.
4.	Center yourself in the spine. Relate from your center to the center of the people around you (or the project you’re working on). This practice will help you appreciate the realities of others. 
5.	Keep your awareness expansive by asking: “How can I give to this situation, to this person?”
6.	As you give to others or to your work, feel God’s love and energy flowing through you. 

Action Item
Take advantage of small quiet moments to center yourself and affirm your desire to live expansively. Begin by telling your mind firmly to be quiet—right now. Feel a sense of deep stillness within and all around you. Become aware of things in your environment that you haven’t noticed before. Experience yourself living and moving in them. Enjoy the contrast between being self-absorbed—and embracing a larger world.