Man minus self equals God

Very recently my Guru, my coach, my mentor sent me a message which I found very intriguing. He said man minus self equals God and God plus self equals man. On deeply contemplating this, I realized that man is man only because of his ego. He carries his ego in what is called an inner instrument of the mind; the intellect, the ego and the memory are referred to as Antahkarana or the inner instrument. When man removes his inner instrument, what is left is God. Unfortunately, the ego, along with the memory, the mind, and the intellect creates a situation where man believes he is he. When in reality, he is not he. He is a manifestation of God. Now, there can be another discussion on the manifestation of God and how creation came about, but the fact is that when God added the ego to the mind, what was created was man, in the form of the gross body, which is made from the five elements and goes back into the five elements. But it is for man to realize that if man annihilates his mind, memory, intellect, ego, then what is left is nothing but the divine spirit, the atman, God himself. Unfortunately, we lose sight of God because of our ego. So, we have to make a choice: ego or God? What do we want to be?

AiR

Good OP. Shouldn’t this be in the religion forum?

Personally, I would prefer to keep my mind, memory and intellect. I don’t think that I need ego.

If I must give up all those things to become like God, then I would choose to go the way of Sisyphus.

Good ideas. So what is ego? How are its properties mind, memory and intellect?

‘Ego’ seems to be the characterization of ‘self’ as a discrete static object. The ego is separate from all else. It has to be protected. It has to triumph over other egos.

On the other hand, the self is a part of the universe. It is connected to all. It is changing, flowing.

So God has no self? ergo is not a God.

Which is a coincidence because neither have we, nor an ego, these things are merely generalisations used in psychology as a tool. There is no instrument.

When you are 90 yrs old, and life has hammered your every sense of worth and ‘ego’ into oblivion, you will still be the same thing. The only difference is that you will have no strength.

Religious people should ask themselves why they would want to take away peoples strength, when in real terms the loss of that is such a detriment and doesn’t change anything [except cause mental illness, crime etc]. Does your selfless god really want you to suffer even worse by making yourself weak [denying ego/self]?

Did you arrive at that realisation all by yourself, or did a child tell you it.

_

Though Air is not interested in any discussion but only posting his ideas as an OP, yet I think that I should make a post for other posters because both of he and his Guru (assuming that he is interpreting his Guru rightly) got it horribly wrong.

Like me, Air is also from India, and it is almost a spiritual fashion amongst Gurus here to blame everything on the ego/self and presenting it as a master evil, just like Abrahamic religions do to Satan.

But, it is not true. Ego/self is not a villain but a necessary mean for development. Man minus self cannot a God, ever. Forget about the God, he cannot be even a human or animal without self. And also, the God cannot be the God without having some selfism.

The actual isuue is how much self is required to be the God. That is what matters. Being the God means that ones self/ego has been fully materialized/evolved yet in control.

That ideal ratio of the God requires just a hint of selfism/ego. That is the stage of omniscience, evolved from omnipotence. But, the problem is that self is very difficult to control to keep that level. And, none other than but it itself has to learn be in control.

With love,
Sanjay

Ego is not self.

Self is not ego.

Different people tend to define things differently. Yes, self and ego can be defined differently too.

But, Rightly or wrongly, OP used self as an alternative of ego, thus I also went for the same interpretation because I was addressing OP.

With love,
Sanjay

It is not a question of definition.

“I go to the market” - identifies the self but carries no connotation of ego. Therefore, it seems that self and ego are not the same.

On the other hand…

“I got ripped off at the market” -indicates that something suffered a loss. The self (I) is still there, therefore the ego must have lost something.

You are right but OP did not differentiate between the two. Air should have used either selfism or ego instead of simple self.

With love,
Sanjay

The ego is an artificial construct. Take away what is artificial and you are left with Truth (aka “God”).

Thank you for your clarification zinnat, everyone.

I equate the self - as in myself - as an individual.

The ego is a necessary part of the individual.

God has the biggest ego of all. He smit people for blasphemy. What you refer as God is not God but is the Holy Ghost, or soul, or the “nothing” viewer of the material world. The ego is simply a collection of thoughts generated by a machine. If God had no thoughts, yet accomplished intelligent feats, that would make him a non-sentient. So anything without an ego is either not-sentient of what it does, and acts in an unconscious manner, or is completely not sentient at all, period.

Ego, the popular term, that people in yoga clinics tell you to avoid, I define that as a small component voice in brain which tells you what to do. So I take it that is where they derive the notion that freedom is acquired from “egofree living”. That differs from my definition of ego, which is the collective of all thought in your brain that you experience.

However, “freedom” like free-will is a false concept. Freewill is absolutely mechanically impossible on all levels, but freedom can be a valid concept if you label and define the proper parameters in relation to the movement of the objects.

The ego is not artificial no matter what religion you believe. Either we evolved it through natural-selection or God gave it to us. I define the ego as the collective of all thought in your brain that you experience, so removing it would be pointless as you would become a lower functioning lifeform, and there are already plenty of those.

Furthermore, upon further inspection of the colloquial use of the word “ego” we can find references that associate with irrational type thought patterns, usually associated with tunnel vision and temporary blindness of the outside world. For instance, “Mike and his big ego” refers to emotionally centric irrational behaviors without regard to future consequences, or “hurt his ego” refers to an attack on his built up personality. “Ego” led behavoir refers to an inability to view yourself from outside yourself, ie. the inability to view the situation from a third person type frame and inability to distance one’s self from one’s emotional situation. So, colloquial slang defines “ego” as a type of thought pattern unable to extrapolate to the frame of the outside world, and mostly centered in one’s own frame. In this sense, “ego” is only a “wisp”, and not really a “thing” in the sense of a well defined object, but loosely defined and thus I implicate it to be only a certain flavor of thoughts some moderns deem to be unsavory.

How are you defining “artificial” here, James? Or did you mean artifical as being delusional?

Maybe it’s just a question of how we choose to express ourselves.

I might say that the ego is a kind of natural by-product of the mind or thought which comes about as Trixie said through evolution, the influence of the world, our behavior and that of others. Difficult to pinpoint. Without it, we wouldn’t survive.
I might compare it to the scent of a rose. Would you call the scent of the rose an artificial construct? I wouldn’t.

Poor ego - it always gets such a bad rap without being examined and determined according to the situation.

Man + delusion = God.
Man - self = God.
Therefore.
Man + delusion = Man - self.

delusion= -self.

In other words delusion negates selfhood.

Lev,

Man + delusion = God.
Man - self = God.
Therefore.
Man + delusion = Man - self.

delusion= -self.

In other words delusion negates selfhood.
[/quote]
I’m confused. Can you please clarify that for me - go a bit deeper?
Is this just a satire about man and his delusion?

Without the ego, there could not conceivably a you, me, him, or any other. Ego is a word, which was in the beginning, one conceptual differentiation of I/Thou, as Buber has said it. Without that, the
‘problem’ of individual existence could not have
formed in the first place, thus ,not becoming a ‘problem’. God Himself wouldn’t have existed, in the second place. But wait, maybe it’s the other way
around.

Arc, forgive the interjection, but needed to say this, it was a compelling thought. I am sure, Lev wouldn’t mind.