The False Self, From Finding Oneself 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB, Meditatio Talks 2017 C
To lose self means to lay aside those layers of identity which we call false, because they are impermanent. They are false only if we attribute permanence to them or we attach ourselves to them – I’ve got my rights; I’ve got my identity; I’ve got my position; treat me with more respect. That often comes out of the false self, a sense of self we are trying to defend or assert. That is part of our human, psycho-logical development.
The ego appears at a very young age, at two years old, and causes the parents tremendous suffering, and joy, until adolescence when it causes mere suffering. It has to be tolerated, and it can be tolerated because we can see it as part of an evolutionary emergent process. Where it cannot be tolerated is if this two-year-old ego self is still operating at the age of 70, as it can be, or at any stage in between. Then it is no longer charming.
So you have to be able to recognise when and in what circum-stances 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.
It allows us to differentiate, separate from our parents, from the womb, from our mother’s love; and separates us from the insti-tutions that would otherwise control us and create us as nationalists
or bigots or prejudiced people. So the ego allows us to detach from what we have become attached, and in that process we suffer pain.
All separation causes pain, but at the same time it sets us free. When a child separates from its parents and leaves home, it is very painful. When parents drive the child to the university and drop the child, they know they have lost the child in a way forever. At the same time, they are happy for that; and of course the relationship continues because the child comes home. But that separation is necessary for a proper relationship, just as detachment is necessary in the new relationships that we build, because we now have a sense of self, a sense of who I am. We still have to be careful that we don’t fall back into the childish patterns of attachment – marry our father, marry our mother – and just want to create that kind of womb-like security again. So all this is human psychology, isn’t it? This is the self that we are trying to lose, it’s the attachment to temporary or transitional manifestations of our identity.
As we learn to lay them aside –the most efficient way of doing that I think is meditation – life presents us with innumerable oppor-tunities to do it. Meditation is our choice to do this. And of course, once we have got used to doing it in meditation, it becomes easier to do it in daily life. We are able, for example, just to recognise what is taking over, what is controlling us with fear, with anger, with jealousy with bitterness, with whatever, the desire to control or possess. So we notice that and we say, ‘Ah I see that going on in my mind; I have to control it, I have to recognise it, and I have to bite my tongue, or I have to not send that email immediately, or I have to wait before I have that discussion.’ That’s self-control, which is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, fruits of meditation. If we can’t control the ego, then the ego will control us.
From The teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in his Own Words:
Consciousness is the Self of which everyone is aware. No one is ever away from the Self and therefore everyone is in fact Self-realised; only – and this is the great mystery – people do not know this and want to realise the Self. Realisation consists only in getting rid of the false idea that one is not realised. It is not anything new to be acquired. It must already exist or it would not be eternal and only what is eternal is worth striving for.
Once the false notion ‘I am the body’ or ‘I am not realised’ has been removed, Supreme Consciousness or the Self alone remains and in people’s present state of knowledge they call this ‘Realisation.’ But the truth is that Realisation is eternal and already exists, here and now.”
