Love, Ego and The Purpose Of Life

By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

---

The ego is not a substance, it is a non-substance

---

What is the purpose of life? What is the end product that we want to see in our life? What do we want? Some say the purpose of life is not to come back to this planet again. Others say love is the purposes in life. Why would someone say they don’t want to come back? Because they find there is no love here, or when there is love, it is very painful.

When someone is pained and troubled, they don’t want to come back. If this place could be so wonderful and full of love and divinity, then the desire not to come back would drop naturally. When we see the purpose of life from all sides, from every angle, then the end product that we want in life is a love that doesn’t die out, a love that doesn’t cause pain, a love that grows and stands forever.

Suppose you could have all the success in the world, even become the richest person or the most famous person, but have no love in life. Then life would not be a success. Life would appear to be barren. From every angle we come to the same point, that all we aspire for in our life is love, a divine love, a love that is ideal. The purpose in life is to flower and bloom in that ideal love.

Now the question really is, how to get there, how to have this, how to find out what obstructs this in our life? We have to see that what is really obstructing us from that innocent love is our ego. What is ego? Ego is like a dream. A dream exists until it doesn’t exist. You can’t call a dream real, but you cannot call it unreal either, because you have the experience. Ego is simply being unnatural. If the ego is so unnatural, why does every human being have an ego? The reason we have the ego is because it is necessary in some way for our growth in life.

A seed has a covering or shell over it, and when you soak it in water, it sprouts and then the covering drops. Like that, the ego is a necessary unnaturalness that develops in you when you are two or three years old. Before that, you are in a state of total, innocent, blissful love. Then the ego comes as a covering. What knowledge does is uncover this shell from you and make you again like a child—natural, simple, and innocent. When you are natural, simple and innocent, there is no ego.

The ego is not a substance, it is a non-substance, like darkness. Darkness is only a lack of light. There is nothing called an ego that has substance. You could say it is just a lack of maturity or a lack of pure knowledge. How can the ego be overcome? Through observing oneself, by understand oneself better, and by going deep into one’s self in meditation.

In the Bhakti Sutras (a spiritual text written by the sage Narada thousands of years ago) there is a phrase, a sutra that says, “Knowledge is one of the aids to discover the naturalness.” Half knowledge brings the ego in the first place. When knowledge is full, when knowledge has matured, the ego drops and simplicity dawns. Ego is just a lack of total development, a lack of total understanding. That doesn’t mean it should not have been there from the very beginning. The ego has been necessary, but now you can grow out of it.

People are all aging, but their mental age, their maturity, gets stagnant at certain particular times in life. Some people’s maturity is stuck in the twenties, some are stuck in the thirties, and some are even stuck at the teenage level. Their thoughts, their desires, everything is viewed from only that angle, from that level of maturity, and there is not much awareness, awakening or openness.

Knowledge is an aid to develop the innermost of you, which is love. In your innermost, you are love. Everyone is made up of a substance called love. Why then do we have so many problems? Because the shell that is ego is covering our essence, that love, just like the seed is covered by a shell. To uncover the ego we can do practices such as yoga, meditation, and breathing practices such as Sudarshan Kriya®. The powerful cleansing effect of Sudarhsan Kriya dramatically opens people up in just a few days of practice.

When this knowledge about life is known, what is there to be worried about? What is the reason to get so worked up about a relationship or some event? Just turn back and see how many times we have had the same type of patterns going on in our life. We worried about this and worried about that. The worry goes on and on. When the awareness comes that allows you to take a look deeply into life, you will become very natural, simple, and innocent. You will keep a smile on your face after that.

Why do people make mistakes if they are full of love? This is because of stress and strain, the tension and ignorance. This ignorance we call ego, this darkness that is not substance. When the light comes, darkness just vanishes.

The purpose of knowing, the purpose of every civilization, is to facilitate the opening of love. Some people are of the opinion that knowledge alone can do this. Through understanding and through meditation, you get over these barriers and become simple, natural, and innocent and this leads to the love. Others are of the opinion that only when love dawns, then complete knowledge comes. Both are true because they are interdependent.

If you really love something, you want to know more about it. If you love your self, you want to know more about yourself. You want to go deep into yourself. Wanting knowledge of that which you love is very natural. And when you have knowledge of anything in its totality, you will certainly love it. There is a saying, “familiarity brings contempt.” This may be true, but it is only familiarity, not total knowing. If you are just familiar, then contempt might occur, but if you are thoroughly acquainted, if you know something extremely well, then love arises because deep in everything, there is love.

Love is the core of the entire existence. That is why Jesus said, “Love is God.” Love is omniscient and permeating everything, like God. He drew the synonym. Love is God. Divinity is present everywhere. There is one single love that also manifests as fear, as hatred. As anger, as all the different emotions.

In all our relationships and dealings, there are only two perspectives, either there is love or there is indifference. There is no third perspective When there is indifference, there is no anger, there is no hatred, there is no fear. A distorted form of love is anger, hatred, fear and other emotions. We see all theses happening in life. Love becomes distorted because of a lack of knowledge. Knowledge helps love to flower, and love, in turn, brings complete knowledge.

Fear is due to lack of knowledge. The unknown creates fear. Something you have wrongly known creates hatred in you. Hatred is a mistaken notion of what the reality is. Hate happens because someone does this or that thing that was wrong or hurtful. Why they did something wrong does not interest the person who is doing the hating, they don’t look into the details. When someone hurts you, you hate them. Why did they hurt you? Because they are hurting. They have lots of wounds and hurts inside and all they could do is hurt others. Why do criminals commit crimes? Because they are in pain, because they need healing, because they are not normal, they are sick. They have no understanding or clear perception of themselves.

When you see what is going on inside them, your hatred will fall off. You will only have compassion. If you see somebody agitated, angry, have you ever felt compassion for them? Feeling that way is not pleasant for them. No one ever likes feeling agitated or angry. If we don’t feel compassion when we see others’ mistakes, we are bound to get angry ourselves.

The cause of anger is the lack of total knowledge of what is happening inside that man or that woman. Showing anger itself is not wrong, but being unaware of your anger only hurts you. Sometimes you can show anger purposefully. There is a difference. You may get angry with your children. You can act tough or maybe shout at them if they put themselves in danger. There is a place for showing anger, but when you get angry yourself, what is happening to you? You are shaken completely.

Are you ever happy with the decisions you have made or the words you have spoken when you are angry? No, because you lose your total awareness. If you are completely aware and you are acting angry, that is fine. The type of anger that turns into fear and hatred comes when we do not know the situation totally, when we don’t put ourselves into the other person’s shoes.

I am not saying these emotions are good or bad, right or wrong. We are looking at what the consequences are. In fact, when anger comes, what can you do? You may think a hundred times, “Oh, I shouldn’t get angry,” but when the mood comes, it comes like a thunderstorm. You are unable to control it. All your presumptions, your notions, and your promises simply go in vain. They do not stand, they do not hold You are swept by your emotion. Emotions are 20–30 times more powerful than thoughts and promises you make.

Understanding this mechanism opens your heart. In fact, anger is an instrument. Anger is essential when you are able to be in control of it, when you are able to know it, how to use it, where to use it and how to apply it. That takes skill. The art of handling your own might. Knowledge and anger are mutually dependent. Knowledge and love are mutually dependent.

This knowledge gives a possibility for you to be flowering in life at any moment, anywhere, anytime. Maybe you are walking on the beach, suddenly you are in love with the whole entire universe, sun, moon, stars, the sunset, the waves on the beach, and the wind in the trees. Everything appears to be very lively to you. So alive that you become that moment, and it stirs something inside you.

Simultaneously there is an awareness in you, and there is love flowering. Our capacity to love depends on how deep and open we can be. In a small pond, a small stone can put a big ripple in it. The capacity to love can be increased by knowledge, by depth, by diving deep into oneself. When the capacity to love is greater, then the ability to know and understand also becomes greater.

---

His Holiness, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar will be coming to Chicago May 12-16 for a series of courses and a public talk. Please see the ad and calendar listings for details.

---

Next Article

Return to This Month's Index

Go to the Home Page