Active ego and passive ego🔗

The active ego is easy to recognize. People with active ego will behave in a highhanded fashion; they will claim self-importance openly; they will not bend down to people; they will be haughty. This ego is actually easy to deal with, for a master. He just needs to bang on it a few times and it will break!

A small story:

A man lost all his wealth in gambling and got reduced to almost a pauper.

One day, he went to a roadside hotel and sat at the table for breakfast.

The waiter came to take orders.

The man was surprised. The waiter was his old friend who had been as rich as he had been earlier.

He looked at him and said, 'You serve as a waiter in this sort of a hotel!'

The man replied, 'I'm only a waiter. I don't eat here.'

Active ego is very easy to recognize! A person with an active ego will not be willing to let go of it even if all his other defenses like money, wealth etc. are taken away from him. Active ego can be easily pruned.

But passive ego is very subtle and cunning. People who have passive ego will pose to be very humble, lacking courage to face people, shying away from taking credit etc. The worst part of this is, they think they are like this because they are not egoistic! The truth is, they are more egoistic than the other lot! They are so carefully guarding their ego from getting hurt by doing all these humble things.

When you are in deep awareness and understanding, you will be a mere watcher of your ego and in this state, you will automatically be neither humble nor egoistic; you will neither take credit nor shy away from it. And you will not even think or claim that you are neither of these; you simply will be, that's all. When anyone appreciates you or gives you credit, you will simply resonate with Existence and leave it at that, that's all. And there will be no need for any comparison or claim.

So be very clear: Most often, people think that active ego is the only kind of ego ever present. No. There is something called passive ego, which is more difficult to deal with.

People with active ego are like a dried and hard twig. If you bang, they will break. People with passive ego are like a fresh and green twig. Each time their ego is hit, they will bend but they will not break! Their ego is so well safeguarded that it becomes difficult to deal with it. Actually, they work very hard to safeguard it, but in a sweet and passive way. Passive ego is more dangerous than active ego.

For example, you are now with me in this class. So many questions must be arising in you. But do you spontaneously voice all of them? No. You manipulate them inside yourself and finally repress them. You manipulate because you are afraid you will look foolish. You don't want to appear foolish and so you don't ask. You are shielding your ego. If your questions dissolve in my presence, it is a different matter. But here, you are suppressing your questions.

You care so much for others' reactions and opinions about you. This ego is your very anchor point. If it is jolted, you will feel anchorless. So under the pretext of being submissive, you keep quiet. You miss one more opportunity of exposing your ego in the master's presence. You miss one more opportunity in taking a step towards flowering.

Let me tell you one thing: All questions are foolish at the end of the day. Don't for a moment think that some questions and therefore some questioners are wiser than the rest. When deep understanding happens, the questions will dissolve on their own. This is real wisdom. Anyhow, we all play so cautiously to safeguard our ego.

Social ego

There is another, one more play of ego which we all nurture well – what is called social ego.

What is this social ego?

You feel that your life is highly private to yourself and that no one should be exposed to it. Also, there is a social image that you have created for yourself which you safeguard.

For example, people come to me to discuss their child's erratic ways. But they are not comfortable when there are others around. You don't want

Deep understanding happens, the questions will dissolve on their own.

If you can show yourself and your family just as you are, you will be more relaxed because then there will be no pressure to cover up anything.

Of course, you might say, 'Swamiji, the only reason we want to keep these things a secret is, we don't want people to start gossiping about it.' Let me tell you: No one is qualified to talk about another. If they talk, they are fools. Remember this and automatically the power you give to them and their talk will simply disappear. It is you who have given them the power to affect you, is it not? Now, that power will disappear.

Just decide and live like an open book, that's all. By seeing your courage and body language, people will automatically understand that it is not going to help gossiping about you! Drop your social ego and live without any privacy. Is a great liberation.

Because of our social ego, we are all the time so self-conscious also. We are self-conscious because we think that people are looking and talking about us all the time. Be very clear: When you are self-conscious, you are very egoistic. You think that you are a big entity and that everyone's eyes are on you all the time. People actually have better things to do!

If you thought that you were a 'nobody', would you be self-conscious? Only because you think you are a 'somebody' you are self-conscious. And on top of it, you think that you are exhibiting humility by being self-conscious. That is the danger!

When you become self-conscious, you are living and yet not living. It is like a barrier to your beauty and grace. Your beauty does not come forth freely because of this. Look at animals and nature. They flow so beautifully and freely. Why is it so? Because they are not self-conscious. They are simply happy just being one with Existence. The moment you start thinking that people are watching you, ego has stepped in and you lose your natural beauty.

Drop your social ego and live without any privacy. It is a great liberation.

Children are not as self conscious as adults are. If you watch them play, you will see: There will be so much beauty and innocence in the whole thing. Even when you take pictures of yourself, you will notice that pictures taken without you being aware that you are being photographed look much better than the ones taken asking you to pose for the camera!

The moment you are asked to pose, you become self-conscious. Your ego is afraid as to how the picture might come out. The self-conscious ego is all the time calculating the pros and cons in everything. It is all the time weighing others' eyes and opinions and losing out on its own freedom.

Even in our meditation classes, if you see, I tell you to tie your eyes with the eye bands given to you before starting the meditation techniques. But what do you do first? You first see if the other person is tying his eyes properly! Some of you don't do the meditation properly because you are self-conscious of the volunteers and me who have our eyes open! You do the meditation in a restrained fashion and end up losing the very purpose of coming to the meditation camp.

When you stop calculating and start being innocent and open, you will be filled with wonder and freshness all the time. Life will never become dull and restrained for you.

Also, the innocent person never does any harm to anyone because to do harm, they need to calculate. Even if they do harm unknowingly, people will not get hurt because they know that they didn't really mean it. Their very body language will speak out their innocence and stand by them.