Part IV — The ego's reality

Question: How can I silence my ego?

Sri Chinmoy: How can you silence your ego? Now, the ego that you are speaking of is your little ego, but there is another ego called the big ego. The ego that binds you and the ego that wants to bind others is called the little ego. “I, my, mine, my family, my relatives, my intimate ones” — that is the little ego. You are speaking of that ego. But instead of thinking of that ego, think of the other one. The big ego says, “I am universal. I am God’s daughter. I am God’s chosen daughter. God is universal, so if my Father is universal, then I am also universal. It is beneath my dignity to confine myself to any individual or to a few people. I shall devote myself for the use of humanity; I shall serve God in humanity. I can only do the divine thing. Anything that is undivine I cannot do, because for me there is only God and God is all divine.”

The more we think of that ego, the easier it becomes for us. Actually we don’t call it ego; we call it our conscious oneness with the Highest, the Supreme, the Absolute. When we are consciously one with something vast, then the little ego automatically disappears. With this conscious oneness, every day think of yourself as a child of God. If you are a child of God, it means that what God has, you also have. You have inherited everything from God, but right now you are not mature so you cannot use it. A child who is four or five years old knows that his father is a multimillionaire and he knows that when he grows up his father is bound to give those millions of dollars to him. Right now the child cannot have the money because he is not mature enough; he will squander it. So you also have to feel that since you have entered into the spiritual life, infinite Peace, Light and Bliss are not vague terms. They will eventually be at your disposal. Then the little ego that wants to be satisfied with a penny or a nickel will automatically go away. When infinite Peace, Light and Bliss dawn on you, at that time you will not try to possess anything and at the same time you will not want to be possessed by anything. You don’t want to possess and you don’t want to be possessed by anyone else: this is called the true knowledge.

So give up your little ego and feel always your oneness with the Supreme, your universal oneness. You can call it divine ego or you can use any term you like, but only remember that when you say “big ego” and “little ego” it is like a friend and an enemy. Two individuals are right in front of you. One is your friend and the other is your enemy. You mix with your friend, not with your enemy. Naturally you will mix with the one whom you think to be divine. So that is oneness with God, which you can call the divine ego.