The Role and Importance of the Ego

If we view the development of the ego through the lens of the evolution of consciousness, we can see the importance that this evolutionary step plays. The process of individuation opens up the potentiality of new, complex interactions, creative development and faster evolutionary change.

The ego’s role, however, is not unlimited. While it will continue to play a role in the development of humanity in general, it has its own limitations and drawbacks, particularly when it goes to the extreme of focusing so intensely on the individual that it forgets its place in the larger oneness of which it is a part. This brings imbalance and destruction into the process and creates tremendous amounts of suffering along the way.

As individuals reach the limits of ego development, and certainly as they begin to experience the down-sides and limitations of the ego, it becomes time, for those individuals, to transition to a new status that integrates the individual awareness with the universal awareness to create a new, balanced, comprehensive relationship that encompasses both diversity, as exemplified by the ego-personality, and unity, as exemplified by the oneness of the creation.

Until the individual is ready for this transition, the role of the ego can and should be recognised and valued for its instrumental role in bringing flexibility, creativity and individuation into the divine manifestation.

A disciple asks: “Ego means what?”

The Mother writes: “I think it is the ego that makes each one a separate being, in all possible ways. It is the ego which gives the sense of being a person separate from others. It is certainly the ego which gives you the sense of the ‘I’, ‘I am’, ‘I want’, ‘I do’, ‘I exist’, even the very famous ‘I think therefore I am’ which is… I am sorry but I think it is a stupidity — but still it is a celebrated stupidity — well, this too is the ego. What gives you the impression that you are Manoj is the ego, and that you are altogether different from this one and that one; and what prevents your body from melting away like that, dissolving in a common mass of physical vibrations, is the ego; what gives you a definite form, a definite character, a separate consciousness, the sense that you exist in yourself, independently of all others, indeed, something like that; if one does not reflect, spontaneously one has the sense that even if the world disappeared, one would be there, one would remain what one is. this is of course the super-ego.”

“Certainly, if one were to lose one’s ego too soon, from the vital and mental point of view one would again become an amorphous mass. The ego is surely the instrument for individualisation, that is, until one is an individualised being, constituted in himself, the ego is an absolutely necessary factor. If one had the power of abolishing the ego ahead of time, one would lose one’s individuality. But once the individuality has been formed, the ego becomes not only useless but harmful. And only then comes the time when it must be abolished. But naturally, as it has taken so much trouble to build you, it does not give up its work so easily, and it asks for the reward of its efforts, that is, to enjoy the individuality.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 3, Becoming an Individual, pp. 107-108