There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and the death of the world ego is long overdue. No more young people being sent off to die to preserve ancient borders. No more killing of our brothers and sisters whose customs are different in our physical world but who are connected to us in the world of our sacred self. The movement toward the sacred self will make the seductive voice of the world ego less appealing.
We can no longer afford this veil of separateness that the world ego begs us to embrace. The weapons that exist today, if used, will kill even those who use them. We all share the same environment, breathe the same air. To pollute it with radioactivity is the same as firing weapons at ourselves, which is precisely what we do whenever we fire any weapon at anyone. When Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he was begging us to realize that we are one. Your higher self knows this—so too does the highest part of the world collective.
The false part, the ego, insists that we are not only separate but special. In this creed of specialness, ego tries to convince us that we are more favored than others and that the special status is nurtured by following a spiritual master who is our ticket to heaven. This god of specialness hates certain people and loves others depending on their belief systems. The ego uses this kind of thinking to control us.
When you center yourself and find your quiet inner sacred space, you know the loving presence that does not discriminate. You know that specialness is not something bestowed on some and not on others. You know that it is absurd to believe that a Muslim baby will burn in hell because of not having Buddhist or Christian beliefs. You know that Australian aborigines are equal in importance to royalty. Your sacred self tells you this, and so does all of our spiritual literature.
Your personal ego’s message of specialness is echoed and intensified in the collective world. The world ego wants it to be easy to ignore those who have less. Then less industrialized societies that are not as literate can be viewed as “them,” which ego interprets as less favored. They can be considered as not chosen by God. That makes it possible to overlook them or use our superior weapons to eliminate them. This is how it becomes possible for people to watch real bombing and destruction on television and tell themselves that the victims are getting what they deserve.
But the sacred self knows that “Thou shalt not kill” does not have an asterisk. When we kill peasants in the process of overthrowing a dictator, our sacred self knows that we are violating our highest commandments by making some people disposable.
In truth, no one is special. We are all equal and we all share the same spirit. If you believe anyone is special, it means that someone else is not. The world ego will work very hard to keep this idea of specialness alive because it allows the kinds of actions that perpetuate the existence of the ego.
We will move away from that position as we pursue our individual sacred quest. When the loving presence is known, we will be unable to view others as less special or ourselves as more so. This will represent a victory of unselfishness over selfishness in all forms throughout the world.
Tom Brown, Jr., describes this attitude in a wonderful quote taken from his challenging book, The Quest:
Man living in the island of self is living but a small part of what life is all about. Man must transcend the barriers, the prisons of ego and thought, and reach the Creator. All Islands, all circles, must be bridged. Each world must be understood, then finally fused into an absolute and pure “oneness.” Then there can be no inner or outer dimension, no separation of self, just a pure oneness where man is at once all things. It is in this fusion of worlds that man will know all things and live the deeper meanings of life…. Then and only then can man ever hope to touch God.
As you travel the path of your sacred quest you will help to dispel the absurdity of specialness that the ego so assiduously promotes. You will see an end to this kind of thinking in your life and on a world scale as well.
On the world scene at this point in history we see huge conflicts being played out merely to assuage the part of the ego that was offended. When you are easily offended, it is the self-absorbed ego that gets hurt and insists on proving how special and important you are. The same thing happens collectively. This collective ego is at work on the global scale and in our local cities as well.
The world ego is easily offended. When ego is offended, it needs revenge. It needs to retaliate to demonstrate its importance and specialness against whatever is perceived to be the cause of the offense. So, when an ego-dominated nation is offended by the words of a petty tyrant, it redresses the grievance by aggression and killing.
So too are our cities filled with young people who rely so strongly on their egos that they are willing to arbitrarily kill those who do not meet their self-imposed standards. They are convinced that they are special and entitled to everything that proves their specialness. If they do not get it, they are offended and create riots and mayhem, killing and looting.
This represents a gigantic lack of spiritual awareness. We need to put God back into the consciousness of these young people, replacing the deficit with higher awareness. Then these problems will begin to dissipate. When people discover their sacred self, they are no longer offended by what they do not have. Instead, they are willing to give of themselves and are free of needing more or comparing themselves with others. This change in emphasis from ego self to sacred self will eventually eliminate the problems of welfare and war.
When the collective ego is offended, the world becomes embroiled in destruction. When the higher self is consulted, there is nothing to be offended about! One only sees what has to be done and begins to live out of the love that the inner silence proclaims. Consider this statement by the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard:
The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked my advice I should reply Create Silence.
Indeed, by going within and teaching all of those who are so eager to redress their grievances to do likewise, we would see a major shift in consciousness and much more compassion and tolerance. Ultimately, we’d see the peace that all of us on this planet want so desperately.
The higher part of ourselves that I have written about throughout this book reflects a vision that is infinite. This is assuredly not the vision of the ego. The ego is just as cowardly on a collective scale as it is on an individual basis. The world ego is frightened of a mass appeal to overcome our spiritual deficit.
When people face inward and embrace a more loving perspective, the power of the sacred self will create change not only in the community but in the entire world as well. The world ego will do all that it can to prevent this kind of inner approach. It will ridicule those who promote meditation, peaceful demonstrations and the love of God as a way out of the morass of social evils. The ego wants conflict.
Ego’s vision is ensconced in the material world, and it endorses a kind of taking up arms against those who propose improving life by opposing ego. Ego is cowardly in that it fears the celestial light of God. This system is sustained exclusively by habit and fear of the higher self. Let anyone suggest that there is a spiritual deficit that needs love, peace, kindness and compassion to be incorporated in the curriculum of life, and they are scoffed at as unrealistic or childish. What the ego-based system encourages is more spending and more separateness.
A shift in consciousness will surely melt the old system in which an unholy alliance exists between a few powerful, well-entrenched bureaucrats and the powerlessness of the masses. In the old system, bureaucrats provide themselves with benefits that are denied to those who pay the bills for the bureaucrats, then hide under the guise of special privilege when confronted with their cowardice. This is where the cowardice of the world ego shows its shameless face over and over.
The collective ego insists that we cannot afford to make too many changes; that we cannot afford to provide everyone with the same privileges as those who are in power; that
those who buck the system are troublemakers and need to be silenced.
The higher collective spiritual awareness knows better. It knows we have nothing to fear as long as we are operating from love rather than a desire to serve ego. Sacred self knows that genuine power is within the self, not in the institutions that we have created which distance the masses from those who have amassed power. The collective ego is cowardly, yet it will fight to maintain the influence that it has over so many who are victims of the entrenched system.
As you begin to consult your higher self, you will affect the collective consciousness and force those who are hanging onto the ego-based system to relax their hold. The ego always fears the light and therefore operates in secrecy and dark rooms. When the motivation for all of those in charge is based exclusively upon the principles of higher awareness, then the collective ego dries up and withers away.
The primary emphasis of the collective ego is power. This power is measured usually in monetary terms. The more money you have, the higher degree of specialness you are awarded, and the longer you get to stay in charge.
Thus the world ego loves to spend money, particularly your money. You will be told how important it is for us to spend billions of your earnings on an unworkable system that will protect us from outer space missiles, and sure enough the money will be appropriated. You are told by the ego system that we need more sophisticated weapons so that we can conduct warfare from inside air-conditioned fortresses where we can press a button and wipe out thousands of people and all of their possessions, without ever even having to witness the suffering we are creating.
The fact that a commandment has been violated and that we have participated in the mass murder of our brothers and sisters is not a notion that the ego entertains. Those are enemies, ego reminds us. They are bad, and we need more and more money to be able to kill them with more sophisticated means of destruction.
The collective ego convinces itself that money makes it special, and thus it will throw dollars at any problem and pride itself on the undertaking. Consume, consume, consume. More is better. The more you accumulate, the fancier your toys, the bigger your shopping malls, the more petrol that you use in your automobiles—the more successful you are. It is a push away from peace toward a style of consumerism and capitalism that is defended as the way of civilization.
Yet your higher self knows that there is no peace in more-is-better. It is just as true on the collective level as it is on the individual plane. The higher self urges you to simplify and to avoid contributing to anything that hurts others or increases the separation from your spiritual source.
As you listen more closely to your sacred self and transcend your ego, so too will the world ego be shifted away from power, control and money back to the basic virtues of higher awareness—back to peace, beauty, love, purity, tolerance, patience and compassion. This does not mean that the benefits of technology cannot be enjoyed. It means that the ego will not be the motivating force in our lives. What we truly are as a people is a force that craves peace and simplicity.
We want that deeper awareness that comes with the sanity of the higher self. It is insane to continue believing that we are a collection of tribes, each with a separate identity and a special mission. It is insane to believe that anyone who does not fit into our particular tribal mentality is a potential enemy.
We know that there is not a separate God for each of us, or even for each of our tribes. We know that there is a universal divine intelligence that flows through all of us, and in that sacred space within us we are all one and the same. We know that we are spiritual beings trying to learn how to be human. We know that the best within us is love, kindness and compassion.
Yet our egos, both individually and collectively, have campaigned long and hard to promote a false idea. How sane is it for people to be killing each other over disputes that ancient egos created long before we arrived? How sane is it for us to believe that some of us deserve to eat the food that God provides and that others do not deserve it by virtue of their geographic location? How sane is it for us to pump up our youth with the philosophy of the free ride by leading them to believe that if they want something they deserve it? How sane is it to show our children pictures of violence as entertainment and allow them to adopt the ego belief that it is human nature to hurt others as a way to defend a right to be special and separate?
As our higher selves begin to triumph over ego in the daily decision making of our lives, we will truly be making progress on the path of the sacred quest for all of humanity. You must banish all doubt about your ability to facilitate such a quest and begin to know that you are both the microcosm and the macrocosm.
There is a universe within you—a unified field of all possibilities that you can reach as you become the compassionate witness. Be silent and shut down the inner dialogue. Most important, transcend the false self that we call the ego. That is when the healing will occur.
The world ego is destined to be restrained as more individuals look within and consult the highest part of themselves. The doubts are vanishing and the spiritual revolution is well under way. Moving toward an egoless world is not some far-fetched idea, any more than the disintegration of the Iron Curtain was a far-fetched idea. To those who heard such talk a few years before it happened, it did indeed seem absurd. But ideas, thoughts and inner knowing are powerful instruments for the disintegration of the false self.
One of the simplest and most powerful ways of doing this is taught by Eknath Easwaran; writing in his book Meditation, he advises us to spend thirty minutes every morning in meditation repeating the Prayer of St. Francis. In saying this prayer we both transcend the ego and invite the sacred self to guide us throughout the day. I invite you to join me in this daily prayer as we share the path of the sacred quest.
THE PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.
If you have the same knowing about your world, dramatic changes will take place as we collectively put to use the greatest force in the universe—the force of love.
It seems only fitting to quote my spiritual teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj as I close this book. He reminds us of the simplicity of creating a society that is based on spiritual principles:
My stand is clear; produce to distribute, feed before you eat, give before you take, think of others before you think of yourself. Only a selfless society based on sharing can be stable and happy. This is the only practical solution. If you do not want it, then—fight.
I want it. I encourage you to do the same. God bless you!
Index
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
Abelar, Taisha, 139, 150
acceptance, 254, 282–84, 286, 292, 319, 329. See also approval, need for
addictions, 156–58, 322–24, 331–33, 335. See also specific addiction
Adventure of Horseback (spiritual odyssey), 21
advertising industry, 266
Aivanhov, Mikhael, 55
alcoholism, 17, 75, 76, 156
aloneness, 76, 292
analyzing, and inner dialogue, 99, 169
anger, 58–59,
86, 141–42, 218, 219, 254, 283
animals, 9
appearances
examples of the pursuit of, 264–66
and fears, 250
going beyond the world of, 259–60
ideas for transcending, 269–73
and the libido, 319–22
and peace, 259–60, 262, 263
and purity, 319–22, 327, 328, 337
and rewards for the ego, 267–68
and striving, 266–67, 286–87
and tolerance, 312
See also approval, need for
appreciation, 14–15
approval, need for
and fears, 103, 138, 250
and God, 276
and peace, 209
and purity, 324, 335
and self-awareness, 16
and truth, 224–26, 231–34, 235, 236–37, 239, 240
Aristotle, 257
The Art of Dreaming (Castaneda), 65, 85
attachment. See connectedness; detachment
awe, 14–15, 273, 284, 293
Bach, Richard, 42
Be As You Are (Maharshi), 52
beauty, 14–15, 27–28, 56, 67, 169, 321, 358
behavior
and peace, 206–12
purifying, 331–34, 337
See also specific behavior
Being-in-Dreaming (Donner), 21–23
beliefs, 126, 193, 251, 291, 318, 351
and doubts, 90, 95–96, 101, 113
about dreams, 83–86
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