Sri Mother talks about "Ego" - From the book Questions and Answers

Q:  Mother, here Sri Aurobindo has spoken of “the formationof ego-individuality”. 

Ego-individuality means...?

The Mother's Answer:

There are individual egos and collective egos. For example, the
national ego is a collective ego. A group may have a collective
ego. The human race has a collective ego. It is bigger or smaller.
The individual ego is the ego of a particular person; it is the
smallest kind of ego. Oh, there is of course a vital ego, a mental
ego and a physical ego but these are minor individual egos. But
this means the ego of a particular person.

One has many egos inside oneself. One becomes aware of
them when one begins to destroy them: when one has destroyed
an ego, that which was most troublesome, usually it creates a
kind of inner cyclone. When one comes out of the storm, one
feels, “Ah, now it is over, everything is done, I have destroyed the
enemy inside me, all is finished.” But after a while, one notices
that there is another, and another still, and yet again another, and
that in fact one is made of a heap of little egos which are absolutely
a nuisance and which must be overcome one after another.

Q: Ego means what?

The Mother's Answer:

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 of course is 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.

- From the book Questions and Answers - 1955

VOLUME 7
COLLECTED WORKS OF THE MOTHER

Tags: Sri Aurobindo. AuroMere Meditation Center, Pallikaranai, Chennai, Sri Mother, Annai, Audio Version, Book Reading, Online Audio, Mother, Mother's Consciousness, ஸ்ரீ அன்னை, அரவிந்தர், அன்னையின் கருத்துக்கள், ஆரோமெர் தியான மையம், qUESTIONS AND ANSWERS book Collected Works of the Mother பள்ளிக்கரணை சென்னை, திரு. கர்மயோகி, பாண்டிச்சேரி மதர் சர்வீஸ் சொஸைட்டி  Sri Mother & Aurobindo's Principles