You have to be able to recognise when and in what circumstances it’s our ego or, if you like, our false self. It is only false if we take it to be true, if we are deluded by it or mastered by it. Otherwise it is simply there. It serves a function. The ego serves a function – it’s a vehicle. In Sanskrit the word closely related to ego is ahamkara which comes from two words or two senses, one of which is ‘I am’ aham, and the other is kara which gives us the word ‘carriage’ or ‘car’ or ‘vehicle’. So the ego you could say is the vehicle, the carrier, the platform for delivering the true self until we are ready, until we are more mature. We have to see ourselves as a work of maturation in progress. So the ego has a function.
( Finding Oneself 1 Laurence Freeman )
