Egolessness by Ken Wilber

"Precisely because the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of 'egolessness,' a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion.  But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that's a pyschotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with the self.

One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of 'egoless' is that people want their 'egoless sages' to fulfill their fantasies of 'saintly' or 'spiritual,' which usually means dead from the neck down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time.  All of the things that people typically have trouble with - money, food, sex, relationships, desire - they want thier saints to be without.  'Egoless sages' are 'above all that,' is what people want.  Talking heads is what they want.  Religion, they believe, will simply get rid of all baser instincts, drives and relationships, and hence they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it.

In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be 'less than a person,' somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex, pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings.  We expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us!  All the things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us:  we want our sages to be untouched by them altogether.  And that absence, that vacancy, that 'less than personal,' is what we often mean by 'egoless.'

But 'egoless' does not mean 'less than personal'; it means 'more than personal.'  Not personal minus, but personal plus - all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones.  Think of the great yogis, saints and sages - from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava.  They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers - from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries.  They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years.   And they did so, not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness, and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations.  No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) - the ultimate source of their power - but they expressed that power and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all.

The great movers and shakers were not small egos; they were, in the very best sense of the teerm, big egos, precisely because the ego (the functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (vehicle of the causal).  To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm, they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle of that realm.  They were not, however, identified merely with their egos (that's a narcissist); they simply found their egos plugged into a radiant Kosmic source.  The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged intoo the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure Atman  (the pure I-I) that is oone with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God."

p. 31 - The Essential Ken Wilber

I remember when I read this a few years ago and got it.   Got something.  I had just read so much of Joseph Campbell's writings on the history of myth and consciousness, and then read Ken Wilber and saw that Mr. Wilber took the thoughts further.  It takes a certain mind to open up and stand outside itself,  see its own "limitlessness" and yet, its own limitations.   Such a mind, Mr.  Wilber has.  And I appreciate this.  He "knows" what he knows and "knows" what he doesn't know.  But he helps me to understand in words - what I feel to be true.  Thank you Ken Wilber.