Words from the Master

But Swamiji, I was thinking till now that claiming self-importance is the only manifestation of ego!

No! Ego comes in various forms - active and passive, which we have been discussing till now. That is why it is such a tricky element to discern.
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:

One 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.”

(Laughter!)

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 what we just discussed, and this is more difficult to deal with.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.