WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

The ego

12 January 1955

Mother, here Sri Aurobindo has spoken of "the formation of ego-individuality". Ego-individuality means...?

There are individual egos and collective egos. For example, the national ego is a collective ego. A group may have a collective ego. The human race has a collective ego. It is bigger or smaller. The individual ego is the ego of a particular person; it is the smallest kind of ego. Oh, there is of course a vital ego, a mental ego and a physical ego but these are minor individual egos. But this means the ego of a particular person.

One has many egos inside oneself. One becomes aware of them when one begins to destroy them: when one has destroyed an ego, that which was most troublesome, usually it creates a kind of inner cyclone. When one comes out of the storm, one feels, "Ah, now it is over, everything is done, I have destroyed the enemy inside me, all is finished." But after a while, one notices that there is another, and another still, and yet again another, and that in fact one is made of a heap of little egos which are absolutely a nuisance and which must be overcome one after another.

Ego means what? [new p. 12]

I think it is the ego that makes each one a separate being, in all [old p. 12]possible ways. It is the ego which gives the sense of being a person separate from others. It is certainly the ego which gives you the sense of the "I", "I am", "I want", "I do", "I exist", even the very famous "I think therefore I am" which is... I am sorry but I think it is a stupidity--but still it is a celebrated stupidity--well, this too is the ego. What gives you the impression that you are Manoj is the ego, and that you are altogether different from this one and that one; and what prevents your body from melting away like that, dissolving in a common mass of physical vibrations, is the ego; what gives you a definite form, a definite character, a separate consciousness, the sense that you exist in yourself, independently of all others, indeed, something like that; if one does not reflect, spontaneously one has the sense that even if the world disappeared, one would be there, one would remain what one is. This of course is the super-ego.

Certainly, if one were to lose one's ego too soon, from the vital and mental point of view one would again become an amorphous mass. The ego is surely the instrument for individualisation, that is, until one is an individualised being, constituted in himself, the ego is an absolutely necessary factor. If one had the power of abolishing the ego ahead of time, one would lose one's individuality. But once the individuality has been formed, the ego becomes not only useless but harmful. And only then comes the time when it must be abolished. But naturally, as it has taken so much trouble to build you, it does not give up its work so easily, and it asks for the reward of its efforts, that is, to enjoy the individuality.

Even the physical formation is an ego?

Yes, I tell you. What can it be due to if not to the ego?

Just now you were asking why there is an individual ego...

There is a family ego, and it is very interesting because it is the family ego which makes all the members of a family resemble [new p. 13]each other in some way or other; they are not the same [old p. 13]but resemble one another. One knows that they belong to the same family and if one goes far back to the ancestors, one sees that there is a similarity all down the line. Well, it is the family ego, which is much more lasting than the individual ego; and there is a national ego. And the families which are not much intermixed, you see, which have remained without intermixing very much, as for example, in the time of the aristocrats, the aristocracy did not mix much, they remained in one lineage, well, the characteristics of the ego are very clear; for instance, the Bourbon families, the families of... in France it is like that; from top to bottom, we find them very similar among themselves in their appearance. Naturally, as soon as races, species, nationalities intermix, it produces a mixture of egos. And then the horizon begins to widen. It is as when one tries to widen his mind, to understand many different things, study many languages, the knowledge of many countries and ages, one widens his ego very much, one begins to grow less narrow-minded. Naturally, with yoga one can overcome all this consciously.

Does the collective ego depend on the individual ego of the individuals who form the collectivity?

Yes. Usually collective egos are inferior in quality to individual egos. Instead of being a multiplication or even an addition, it becomes a diminution, usually. Psychologically it is a well-known fact. Take men individually, they show common sense. But put them all together, it makes a stupid human mass.