The Exorcist-Burying The Ego-Part III

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The clear focus in Ramana's teaching is on the fact that the ego has no independent existence. He compares the ego to a ghost, because it has no form of its own. Though it is born of forms it is always changing its form and takes to its heels when searched for. Due to play of shadows one might, while walking at night, feel that a ghost is dogging his footsteps. But on closer examination he would find out that what he took to be a ghost is only a lamp-post or a tree.

Ramana would say that the ego's case was comparable and so long as one does not enquire as to its nature it continues to give trouble. A search for it would reveal that no such separate entity exists. This 'revolutionary' approach of Ramana needs closer examination. Can it be that the arch enemy of our spiritual progress is a mere phantom, a mere myth? If so how can one explain its stranglehold on us? Ramana himself has thrown light by holding the 'ego' in clear focus.

Ramana explains that the sense of separate individuality, the ego, has its daily birth on waking. It disappears in sleep. This appearance and disappearance being a daily phenomenon, we ignore it. However, this rising and subsidence which is characteristic of the ego, its hall-mark, is a pointer to us of the need to enquire wherefrom this ego originates. What is its source? To prevent our getting bogged down in wrong theories, Ramana himself supplies the answer. It rises and merges in 'consciousness' which shines without a gap. So one cay say that ego is a wave in the sea of consciousness, and its numerous forms are only like the innumerable waves on the surface of the sea.

We have to deal not with these endless forms of the ego but look at its source, its birth place. Ordinarily we are aware only of the wave while watching the sea. To see thus would be to have a partial view, a view which ignores the substratum, the sea on which these waves are formed. Right perception would be to pay attention to the vast sea and the waves. Ramana gives frequently the analogy of gold and the ornaments made from it. Ornaments have no separate existence apart from the gold of which they are made. So too ego.

The sense of individuality is a mental wave on the sea of consciousness and it is not a separate entity. The truth about the ego is discovered only if one questions about its source. Such questioning merges it back in its place of origin, consciousness. On such merging consciousness alone remains and the ego vanishes. Hence the importance of enquiry 'Whence am 'I'?'. In Ramana's method the final question is the only one and it is raised from the very beginning. There is only one question and this silences the questioner himself.

For tracing the ego back to its place of origin Ramana's constant inner guidance is necessary. When the devil is exorcised the magician bottles it up in a Yantra (a magic contrivance) and buries it underground so that it may not rise again. Our efforts at self-enquiry are weak and half-hearted. So there is the constant danger of the ego-ghost catching hold of us again. It is only the grace of the guru which can buttress our efforts and afford constant protection against relapsing into the old egoistic ways. The guru alone can help to exorcise the ego ghost completely and to bury it. Unaided by grace the delusive limitation cannot come to an end. When effort backed by grace culminates in the merging of the ego in its source, a joy which cannot be put in words opens up.