"Do People Really Not Understand Ego?"

the ego is a part of the mind it can be observed just like your thoughts just like your emotions you can notice the function of ego it's trickier it's subtler but you can even notice any eye statement that you make is is a thought right and it's being sort of run by the [Music] ego why does everyone talk about the ego as if they're not the ego that's doing the talking everyone seems to refer to the ego as if it's a as if it's separate from the one typing or talking just as a thought arises

so do these words I'm typing as well as the words I speak it's like everyone is trying to transcend this voice in their head or whatever but the voice in the head is what's creating these words I type as well as the words I speak do people understand this or have they just created a super ego that thinks it's separate from the thoughts and words when reflecting upon what they've seen when explaining to me it seems as if the program has realized it's a program but other people seem to think that the words they write

and say are not coming from the from thought SL ego I'm not referring to the awareness or Consciousness that's observing all of this just referring to the seemingly large number of people who think they're not an ego when communicating so if you are confused because everyone's talking about ego but isn't it just the ego that's doing the talking no it's not hey Dr K how do I get my kid to put down the game without it being a fight every single time the problem with gaming is that it tricks our brain into being a sub

substitute for Life once we start to get our psychological needs met through the game that's when we become addicted how to raise a healthy gamer combines the latest in Neuroscience research along with a decade of clinical practice check it out anywhere books are sold so if you all want to understand this it's very simple okay maybe it's confusing but I think it's relatively simple the first is that thoughts and ego are not the same so we're going to use a lot of Sanskrit here because I think Sanskrit is a very very sophisticated language and we

run into this problem here with English because English does not have the language to specify these differences so the first thing is that this person says thought SL ego which implies that thoughts and ego are the same thing right so if you're using like good slash right like that implies and this is precisely this person's problem I according to me is that they haven't understood that the mind has different parts and that different parts can observe and act on each other so let's understand that we're going to use the Sanskrit phrase Anana so Anana is

often times translated as the mind but man is mind such an unsophisticated representation of it so antakarana literally means internal instrument and that is the best definition so if we look at our lives okay there is this physical body we have hands we have eyes we have nose and all of these things are designed to interact with the outside world so I can pick up a pen so that the hand is really interesting because it is a sensory organ and is it it is an organ of action I can affect a willpower change in the

external world with my hands and I can get information from the outside world with my hands the whole body is an external instrument I can taste things from the outside my body will let me know whether this is healthy or unhealthy because I'll get sick or I'll feel good after I eat something so we have this instrument that allows us to connect with the external and then we have this instrument that is internal this is the an this is the mind now let's understand so much like the body has hands feet Eyes Nose we have

five senses we have many organs of action right we can do things with our heat feet we can do things with our hands we can do things with our voice we can affect change in the outside world with many instruments that are part of the body so what are the parts of the antakarana the internal instrument so the first question is thoughts and ego because this is what this person is confused about can I think without having an ego absolutely right so if we look at what is the ego the ego is the sense of

ey so an ego is something that's me mine that's what ego is so even in the west and the East we kind of agree that there is a quality of possessiveness there is a quality of meanus there is a quality of Inus we know there's this part of the brain called the default mode Network which is probably where this part of the Inus lives we also know that the me has a spatial location so I know this sounds kind of weird but you the Unice of you exist somewhere over here you're not in a different

room right now you're where you are right and that sounds kind of weird but we also know that you can electrically stimulate the temporoparietal junction of the brain and you can trigger It Out of Body Experience you can have an eye that is outside of the physical location of your body so there's a certain Inus so you can the the function of thought is separate from the function of ego so ego is identity it's like who I am okay in Sanskrit we have the the word aara which means the sense of ey oress but you

can think about things without ego it is you that's doing the thinking yes but you're not thinking in terms of ego like I can just drink this water there's no ego involved in that right I'm just drinking water and you can say but you're saying you're saying you're drinking water but yeah but that could be unconscious too I could just drink the water so we have thoughts we have emotions and then we have the ego so the ego is anytime you have an eye statement that is the ego so I am good at this I

am good at that that requires a judgment of a an identity compound anytime we make a comparison involves the ego because I cannot say that you are taller or shorter without me being taller or shorter so you can make comparisons to non-p people that's not ego but anytime you make a comparison to someone else that involves the ego because you can't say that you're taller or shorter unless you have an identity and so the ego is a part of the mind it can be observed just like your thought thoughts just like your emotions you can

notice the function of ego it's trickier it's subtler but you can even notice any eye statement that you make is is a thought right and it's being sort of run by the ego and we know that we can exist with egoless States so really good example of an egist state is if you ever jump into a body of water that is a little bit cold for a moment you're just pure existence you're not fat or thin you're not silly or smart you're not successful or a failure you're not poor or Rich for a moment you

just jump into the water and then you exist fully in that moment you're not not paying attention you're not thinking about video games or distracted or anything like that you're fully present right there for just a flash of a second but you have no sense of identity if you really pay attention you'll find this and so this is the ego and it's not the same as thought it's not the same as emotion and then we sort of get to this this ultimate idea which the person kind of alludes to in in their post right which

is um I'm not referring to the awareness or Consciousness that's observing this that's what's ultimately at the end of it okay is that there is a Consciousness the act of witness observation or experience is ultimately like what's even beyond the antakarana so the antakarana or the internal instrument or the mind has thoughts it has emotions it has ego has two other things some scars like memories and it's got a a location of sorts called the chitta it's got a space where all these things interact and then beyond that is pure Consciousness and so when this

person says it seems to me as if the program has realized it's a program it's not the program that realizes it's a program it's the Consciousness that realizes that there is a program running so you have a witnessing capability which can witness your thoughts can witness your emotions and can witness your ego but the witnesser itself is doesn't have any ego qualities because it is just the screen on which everything else is projected right so I don't know if this makes sense but like you know you can have a lot of pixels on the screen

but the TV itself doesn't change everything all of the images that are projected on the screen can change a lot your thoughts can change your emotions can change but that Which experiences has never changed that's the you your body has changed your mind has changed but you have not changed what makes you you what makes you you is you're the one who experiences every moment of your life this is why it's so hard for other people understand you because they don't experience the other parts of your life if everyone could share experiences everyone would understand

each other the whole challenge in life is you're the only one that experiences your life and yet you are always experiencing it you don't get a break from it for even moment this quality of experience is the most fundamental thing and that is what observes the ego it isn't the ego observing the ego and there's a very simple way to understand this so when someone is behaving egotistically do they know they are behaving egotistically not at all y'all get that the more of their head that someone has up their ass the less aware they are

the ego dominates the mind it is dominates the antakarana and as it dominates the anara you lose awareness narcissists don't know their narciss that's the whole problem how do you demolish narcissism you raise awareness as they become more aware the narcissism reduces literally if we look at things like dialectical behavioral therapy which is regarded by many as the best evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder which is a cluster B personality disorder and the cluster B personality disorders also include narcissism so what do BPD and narcissism share they share a very unhealthy ego that's the root

of it unhealthy in different ways and so mindfulness helps both so the more we move away from the ego the more that the symptoms of these clinical illnesses improve and so ego doesn't observe itself okay and now if if y'all are really paying attention some of y'all may ask the question okay but you know what is it so if if the witness or the experiencer can observe the ego what is it that observes the witness and the cool thing is people may say is there a witnesser Beyond witnesser right so I witness my life but

is there something beyond that is there something beyond that is it basically like turtles all the way down and the answer is no there is an end of the road and the witnesser is the end of the road but you can't understand that until you get really good at looking beyond the anara to your awareness until you learn how to move past emotions thoughts and ego to what it what is experiencer and then you try to look beyond that you can keep looking and then you'll find the answer it makes sense once you find it

right there's just one it's not like the TV is pixels on another TV which pixels on another TV right so this is what it kind of looks like but no this it it it isn't infinitely regressive so and the way that we know that is because if you actually get rid of the antakarana if you stop all thoughts all emotions and all ego and you are just witnessing in a raw way there's nothing Beyond it that's full it feels complete it's you have to experience it but by all means go looking for something Beyond ego

and I mean beyond the witnesser and prove me wrong go for it right this is just once again the ego of me oh my God my experiences must be generalized to everybody I could be wrong I could be an idiot in fact I am an idiot so check it out for [Music] yourselves