“Ego Was the Helper, Ego Is the Bar”

Sri Aurobindo’s famous aphorism, cited in the headline above, describes the issue that spiritual aspirants have to resolve as they take up the practice of Yoga. Human individuality was developed to create an apparently independent nexus of observation and action, thus providing a platform for development and progress through the individual that eventually communicates itself to humanity as a whole. Once this individual standpoint has been developed and fleshed out, however, it reaches a point where it starts to become an obstacle to further progress, as it forms a wall or enclosure, so to speak, that limits the action of the greater force that is waiting to manifest at the stage beyond our mental being.

Past practices of Yoga have generally focused on the ego-personality by setting forth specific practices, goals and objectives, primarily for the individual to escape the illusory existence of the exte
al life and achieve some kind of individual nirvana or experience of samadhi and become liberated. In this viewpoint, the ego-personality can help drive the process forward until the seeker reaches a point where it simply falls away as the entire exte
al life dissolves into the experience of the Supreme. There is no focus here on tackling the limitations of the exte
al body, life and mind, or actually bringing about an uplifting and transformation of them, either for oneself or as part of the collective evolution of humanity.

The integral Yoga, however, while it starts from the individual ego-personality it cannot end there. Part of the transformation process, indeed a central aspect of it, is the systematic widening and transformation of the individual ego-consciousness into a pure nexus for the reception and transmission of the higher spiritual force that is in the process of evolving, taking humanity eventually beyond the limits of body-life-mind and bringing forth a new power of consciousness that can resolve the limits, obstacles and resistances of the exte
al nature.

The individual cannot possibly either fully comprehend nor carry out the intensity or the complexity of this task by his own unaided effort. Even those who have long practice and experience in spiritual pursuits eventually find that the greatest strength and intelligence of a human individual are a mere fraction of the energy and insight required to accomplish the complete task of the transformation of consciousness.

In the Taittiriya Upanishad there is a striking chapter frequently called the calculus of bliss. It starts from the measure of bliss of one human individual, blessed with all powers of intelligence, accomplishment and all the benefits that human life can provide. The Upanishad takes us through some 10 additional higher stages of bliss that represent the bliss of beings with accomplishments far beyond, to a measure of “a hundred and a hundredfold” of the prior level. This chapter reminds us of the limits of the human accomplishment and can be applied equally well to the limits of potential yogic achievement by one, fully accomplished, human being.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “However hard the fight, the only thing is to fight it out now and here to the end.”

“The trouble is that you have never fully faced and conquered the real obstacle. There is in a very fundamental part of your nature a strong formation of ego-individuality which has mixed in your spiritual aspiration a clinging element of pride and spiritual ambition. This formation has never consented to be broken up in order to give place to something more true and divine. Therefore, when the Mother has put her force upon you or when you yourself have pulled the force upon you, this in your has always prevented it from doing its work in its own way. It has begun itself building according to the ideas of the mind or some demand of the ego, trying to make its own creation in its ‘own way’, by its own strength, its own sadhana, its own tapasya. There has never been here any real surrender, any giving up of yourself freely and simply into the hands of the Divine Mother. And yet that is the only way to succeed in the supramental Yoga. To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pp. 50-51