Friday, November 20, 2009

Consciousness and Ego

(Published at Ezine Articles.com - Click on the logo on the right panel)

Consciousness and Ego – based on these two, the life-drama is played out

If mind were a house, then the ego is its tenant. If mind were a tree, the ego is an inhabitant bird in it—they both are born together, they live together, and they die together. There is a third entity within the mind: the witness. The witness is that awareness which witnesses the mind and the ego. And finally, there is the Consciousness, which powers them all, and it (the consciousness) acts as a medium through which the God (the creator of all phenomenon) watches and executes His will. The consciousness has two aspects: Vyakt and Avyakt (tangible and intangible—i.e. subjective and universal). The mind-body is the medium through which the subjective consciousness realizes its will. The Creator’s (God’s) wish ‘to be’ is realized by the universal consciousness by becoming a subjective consciousness and further through the medium of a mind-body combine. The mind-body combine is a Vyakti (a human)—one who has become tangible. The Creator’s (God’s) wish to ‘continue as continuum’ is realized by the perpetual motion of matter-energy-life (the phenomena) within which an individual plays out the role of generating the continuous activity under the command of a restless ego.

The human connection with universal consciousness becomes possible only after the subjective consciousness first becomes identified with the witness. When it becomes clear to the witness (the person) that the subjective consciousness and the universal consciousness are fundamentally the same, the fear of death disappears (the death itself does not disappear). The witness becomes fearless of death, because the meaning of birth and death become clear to it—it comes to know that the tangible (Vyakt) and the intangible (Avyakt) are two sides of the same coin. The fear of death is linked to the ownership of mind-body combine, owned by the ego. As long as the ego is the owner, the fear would be intact.

We know that we could not have created our own sentience. Unmindfully we might like to assign sentience’s ownership to your ego. Conversely, unmindfully the ego sense might like to claim the ownership of our sentience (as ‘my’ sentience), but we always know that the claim is baseless. However, one cannot blame the ego, because the ego is filling a void of ownership because consciousness chooses to remain invisible and non-claiming.
All ideas of relationships, ownerships, stances, endeavors, efforts arise from a restless mind—a mind wanting to reach somewhere. The restlessness creates activity to get satisfaction—a satisfaction that is incomplete always. From the Creator’s (God’s) point of view, this system which we call life, is made this way on purpose, so that the ‘life drama’ may continue in perpetuity. Full and lasting satisfaction could bring all activity to a stop, therefore, by default; restlessness of mind is an essential element for life-drama to continue.