Ego, Ahamkara, and the Open Secret (Part 1)
In current Western popular culture, the term “ego” conjures up that inflated, prideful, selfish, and overly sensitive component of one’s personality – part of our mind that vacillates between “I am great” and “I am worthless.” We tend to have primarily a negative view of this rascal. However, the ego masks the great open secret of our ever blissful, steady, indivisible Self – the Self of all that is. Vedanta clarifies this in many ways.
“Ahamkara” is the Sanskrit word translated as “ego” in English. Ahamkara is a philosophical and technical term that means the sense of a separate “I.” Without that, speaking cosmologically, the subtle and gross worlds of name and form could not evolve. According to the Sankhya system, the gunas* become more distinctive and active with the presence of Ahamkara. From sattvic ahamkara evolves all the individual principles (tattvas) for knowledge-gathering: manas (dual mind), 5 cognitive senses, and 5 active senses. From tamasic ahamkara come the more insentient principles that evolve into the objects of the senses: 5 tanmatras (subtle elements), and 5 great elements. These make up the world of objects we experience in dreaming and waking states. Thus, Ahamkara, is necessary cosmologically, and in that sense, there is certainly nothing pejorative about the term. *(see November 14, 2011 blog: “The Gunas in Vedic Cosmology and Psychology”
One may, and should ask what this process has to do with ego, or the sense of “I”? From a western point of view, the only thing in that list that might feel the sense of ego is the manas, dual mind. The point here is very subtle and often overlooked. If one is familiar with the chain of evolution described by Sankhya (see attached chart), one will eventually notice and begin to realize that the whole of the evolutionary process is contained in Mahat, the Great Mind; everything is involved in it, from intelligence (Buddhi) to a blade of grass (earth). Ahamkara/ego, which evolves from Mahat and Buddhi, permeates the creation, running through mind, senses, and objects. Those three are actually one in Ahamkara before they manifest, and due to the desire for objective experience, they evolve outward for the purpose of experience. Is there ever an experience without an Experiencer? (see last Blog, “Axioms of Advaita from Sankhya”)
As discussed in the last blog, the Self/Purusha exists for no other entity, and everything evolved out of Prakriti is insentient. So even Ahamkara is insentient and simply a vehicle for the Self, who is the sole Experiencer of experiences. Thus, ego is a covering over the true Self/Atman. The sense of “I” that really belongs to Atman gets attributed to the ego. Next, since the Ahamkara/ego permeates the evolutionary process, we find that there are other coverings as well with which this sense of “I” gets identified.
From the Upanisads, Vedanta philosophy culled the teaching of the Five Koshas, or coverings over the Atman, the true Self. These five are ahamkara/ego, intelligence, mind, vital energy, and body. Each sheath gets progressively more dense until we come to the sheath of the physical body. Atman, free of time, space, and causation, and therefore infinite and indivisible, is first covered (apparently) by the Anandamaya Kosha, the sheath of Bliss. This sheath corresponds to the sense of “I.” When the ego is the cause of so much pain, why would it be associated with the Sheath of Bliss? The Anandamaya Kosha is the most subtle of all sheaths. It is the translucent veil separating the apparent individual from pure Existence, Awareness, and Freedom. But as a sugar cube can only be sugar but not taste itself, the Anandamaya Kosha provides the apparatus of separation that allows the Ineffable Self to taste Itself manifesting as both an individual and masquerading as all the objects of experience. Now, it is true that Vedantically speaking, we view this Kosha with caution, because it is still the final barrier to complete Freedom. But the denser koshas are where the deeper obstacles to freedom lie, and where the ahamkara/ego can become truly problematical. We will take those up in the next entry.
