Question: I understand that preparatory to realisation, it is necessary for the ego to die.

Sri Chinmoy: If the ego dies or becomes extinguished, then we get nothing out of it. Only if we transform the ego, do we get something out of it. If we try to kill the ego, it is like taking some animal’s life. This is not the right thing to do. We must tame the ego. The ego says, “I, mine, my husband, wife, children, etc.” That ego is binding. But if we say, “I am everywhere, I am universal, I am God’s son,” this kind of feeling liberates us.

Try to expand yourself, and the more you expand your consciousness the wider will be your vision. Your limited consciousness is your ego, but when it is expanded it becomes universal. Then you are one with the Source totally.

Suppose that you have a knife. With this knife you can come and stab me, but if you use the same knife to cut a fruit and give me a portion, then you are doing the right thing. Similarly, when you can utilise the ego for a divine purpose, immediately it changes its face into a fulfilling reality. Even when your ego is unlit and impure, use it for the service of God and don’t use it to destroy the world. While you are serving God, your ego becomes purified and in its complete purification your expansion of consciousness takes place. In ego’s purification and transformation is man’s conscious evolution and true satisfaction.

You have to know that nothing dies. In the spiritual life death means limitation, nothing else. When a tiny drop enters into the ocean, we think that the tiny drop is lost in the vastness and dies. But if we identify ourselves with the drop and, at the same time, with the vast ocean, we see that the personality of the drop is not lost; it is enlarged into the vast Infinity of the ocean. This is the so-called death of ego and human personality. With our ordinary human eyes we may see it as death; but with our heart’s eye, with our inner eye, we see the transformation of the tiny drop into the infinite ocean.