DISCOURSES Volume II - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

THE NATURE OF THE EGO AND ITS TERMINATION: I 61journey of the soul. The ego is not meant to be a permanenthandicap, since it can be transcended and outgrown throughspiritual endeavour; but the phase of ego-formation mustnevertheless be looked upon as a necessary evil, which has to comeinto existence for the time being.The ego thus marks and fulfills a certain necessity in thefurther progress of consciousness. But since the ego takes shelterin the false idea of being the body, it is a source of much illusionEgo-centred integrationbased on illusionwhich vitiates experience. It is of theessence of the ego that it should feelseparate from the rest of life by contrastingitself with other forms of life. Thus, though inwardly trying tocomplete and integrate individual experience, the ego also createsan artificial division between external and internal life in the veryattempt to feel and secure its own existence. This division in thetotality of life cannot but have its reverberations in the innerindividual life over which the ego presides as a guiding genius.While always striving to establish unity and integrationin experience, the ego can never realise this objective.Though it establishes a certain kind of balance, this balanceEgo becomes a seatof conflictsis only provisional and temporary. Theincompleteness of its attainments is evidentfrom the internal conflict which is neverabsent as long as experience is being faced from the point of viewof the ego. From moment to moment the mind of man is passingthrough a series of conflicts. The minds of great and distinguishedpersons as well as the minds of common people are seen to beharassed by conflicting desires and tendencies. Sometimes theconflict with which the mind is faced is so acute that the personconcerned yields to the psychic pressure and there is