Enlightenment is the greatest disappointment of the ego.
This is a quote from Ram Dass’ that really hits home.
Before delivering it, Ram Dass warns his audience that it will probably not feel ‘right’ when they hear it. It certainly was the case with me.
It felt weird, clunky, forced… ‘How can something as “pure” as enlightenment be a disappointment for the ego?’ I thought, and carried on with my day.
But the quote stayed at the back of my mind, slowly working its way into my worldview. Months and years passed and I continued with my practices and my study.
One day, probably listening to the same episode of his Be Here Now podcast, there it was again. However, this time, I knew what he was talking about. ‘How can the ego, the ultimate ‘separator’, be ‘ok’ with its own disappearance? After all, its function is to make me feel important, unique, special so I can survive and procreate. Of course it would not go down without a fight, of course it would avoid becoming ‘disappointed’
I believe that those of us who have experienced ‘ego death’ can relate to this. In one of my more intense explorations with holotropic states of mind, I experienced this phenomenon in all of my perceptive fields. I felt fear, disgust, shame and distrust of the experience in my body, I saw and heard ‘machine tentacles’ that wanted to drag me into whatever ‘being’ was their owner, I tasted and smelled rotten, metallic, acidic flavours that I can’t remember having come across anywhere else. I know now that this is common in such states, and have experienced it any times.
The ego is constantly doing everything in its power to prevent its fragile and illusory constitution from being destroyed. Although this is not always the case, the moments before we experience the perfect release of the actual death of our egos can often be excruciating, desperate and… terrible.
Enlightenment is the greatest disappointment of the ego because the ego knows that it brings its end. As Ram Dass also said many times, an enlightened being is a being that has ‘died in themselves’. There is no one ‘in there’ anymore, no ego to will, want, need, intent, suffer, enjoy.
Related
- Ram Dass, Be Here Now podcast series
- Grof, S. & Grof, C. (2010). Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy. State University of New York Press.
- De Francesco, M., Marraffa, M. & Parrini, A. (eds.) (2013). The Self and Its Defences: From Psychodynamics to Cognitive Science. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura.
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