The Reality of Ego

Do you deny your own existence? Even if you did, you would have to exist to do so. So that is not what the Master's are pointing to. They are pointing to the reality of ego. The point they are making is that there is no separate existence, that the ego is also That. To know this, Self inquiry is described. Self inquiry is seeing what the ego is when it is not knowledgeable. The ego is only knowledge. But in the end, all turns out to be That and That alone. You are That. I am That, and That is all there is.

When one finds a teacher, one finds a treasure, because who can lead through all of these misunderstandings. The ultimate realization is Silence. It is not however Silence that the ego creates through effort. It is a Silence that is eternal, or always here, which is the source of thoughts, words, actions etc. Statements such as you are not the body, you are not the mind etc. point to two realities. One, that you are not limited, that you are formless and as Presence, always here, and two, that the body, the mind, the world are not as they appear. They appear to be on their own, but they are not. Reality is one unified whole. The statement: there is nothing to realize and no one to realize it is true because everything is the absolute. But this has to be seen.

In the beginning, one thinks the ego is everything. In the middle, one thinks the Absolute is everything. In the end everything is the Absolute. God is all there is, but you have to dissolve the ego to know it. The ego dissolves by seeing its true nature, that is - who the ego is without knowledge.