Question: Could you please tell us the best way to conquer the ego?

Sri Chinmoy: The easiest, best and most effective way of conquering the ego is to feel constantly not only that we are in God, with God and, at times, for God, but also that we are of God. In God and with God: this is very easy for us to feel. Also, we can easily say that we are for God. God is good, so we are for God. But the moment we can say wholeheartedly that we are of God, that we are made of God as something is made of paper or wood or some other material, then immediately our consciousness is changed. If we are of God, we are not helplessly or hopelessly bound by earthly human limitations. We feel that naturally we will have Peace, Bliss, Power and all divine qualities at our disposal. And when we feel that these divine qualities are within us and we are of them, then our immediate feeling is one of expansion. Light cannot remain without expanding. Peace cannot last without expanding. The very nature of divine Peace, Light, Bliss, Power and other divine qualities is to expand, expand, expand. So if we have the conscious feeling of our oneness with God, the feeling that we are of God, immediately we will feel the automatic expansion of our limited selves into unbounded Peace, Light and Bliss. Then we can go beyond the earth-consciousness and transcend our limited ego-bound selves. We go beyond the creativity, beyond the manifestation of the earth-plane.

We have to feel every day, if not every second, that our body, vital, mind, heart, soul and everything is of God, and that God is not something vague, but something real. To a seeker, God is the only Reality — not a reality, but The Reality. So, when we are crying for The Reality, we shall see that this Reality is all-pervading, all-fulfilling and at the same time, all-transcending. This Reality is God and if we feel that we are a part of it, if we can have our conscious place in the lap of the all-pervading, all-transcending and all-fulfilling Reality, then we can easily conquer our limited earth-bound ego. At that time we will feel that God is not only here on earth, but everywhere. He is the vast universe and again, He is beyond, far beyond the universe.

Ego is our earth-bound consciousness. This earth-bound consciousness tries to limit us. My and mine, it says. My family, my house, my friends, my children — everything my and mine. When we think of earth, immediately we think of possession. Earth has all our friends and relatives; earth has its own joy, suffering and so forth. The very function of ego is to bind us and also to make us want to bind others. We are bound by the earth-atmosphere and, at the same time, we are binding earth because we are unwilling to aspire. We are constantly in desire, but not in aspiration. When we desire, we try to possess and be possessed.

But the consciousness of our aspiring soul makes us want to transcend, expand. When we expand, we transcend; and when we transcend, we expand. When we aspire, at that time we consciously enter into our own infinitude, divinity and plenitude. We came from Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. When we aspire, we enter into them consciously, but not with a sense of possession. We cannot possess anything — certainly not Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. But we can consciously, on the strength of our aspiration, re-enter our Homeland whence we came. We have every right to go back home with our conscious aspiration. To make a journey back home on the physical plane, we need money. In the spiritual life, our constant inner aspiration buys our return ticket to our eternal Home. Desire is pulling and pushing. Aspiration is just letting ourselves be carried back to our eternal Home.

If we live in the world of aspiration, ego is bound to be conquered because the fire of aspiration will purify the ego. It will not kill the ego, but it will purify it; and when purification takes place, realisation is bound to dawn. At the end of the road of purification is realisation. The more our outer nature is purified, the closer we are to God. And the quicker we are purified within, the faster is our realisation of the Ultimate Goal. Ego can be conquered, must be conquered and will be conquered only through constant aspiration.

Aspiration is the inner flame that is glowing all the time and spreading its flames all around, within, without. Aspiration is bound to carry us to the land of our origin. Here there is no ego, but only all-pervading Oneness — all-embracing, all-fulfilling, all-illumining Oneness. In this Oneness there is a constant sense of divine fulfilment, boundless fulfilment. In boundless fulfilment, there can be no limited ego, no limited bondage. Nothing limited, nothing imperfect, nothing obscure, nothing destructive, nothing binding can last there. It is all Infinity, all Reality. There Reality grows in the soul of Infinity, and Infinity grows in the soul of Reality.