What is the Path?

Q: What is the path to evolutionary enlightenment and what are the obstacles to it?

A: There is only one obstacle to enlightenment: ego. If we want to be free, if we want to be enlightened, we have to pay the price, and that price is the same as it was five thousand years ago—ego death. In evolutionary enlightenment it is no different: if evolution is actually going to unfold through us, then our attachment to ego has to be transcended. And that is what the path is all about.

Q: Can you explain what you mean by ego?

A: The word “ego” is defined in different ways. In the psychological definition, ego is the self-organizing principle in the psyche. And obviously, this is not the ego we want to transcend, or we're going to be in big trouble! But in the spiritual sense, ego can be simply defined as narcissism, a deeply compulsive fascination with one's own image and sense of oneself as a unique individual. This translates into an unwholesome emotional and psychological enslavement to a profoundly self-centered relationship to life. Narcissism is the postmodern disease, and as long as we are lost in it we will be unavailable, unable to truly respond to the spiritual impulse and its imperative to evolve. Indeed, we are so concerned with the image that we have of ourselves in the mirror of our own awareness that it makes it difficult to have any authentic relationship with the vast and extraordinary life-process we all are a part of. Because of this, too many of us end up spending most of our lives just treading water, not evolving at all. So you see, in this vast context, ego is seen in a very different light than it usually appears: as literally an anti-evolutionary force. And if we have recognized how important our own liberated participation in this whole process is, then we see how essential it is to wrestle this part of our self to the ground and keep it very much under our own control. Why? So that it won't in any way inhibit our availability to participate wholeheartedly in the evolutionary process.

Q: What is the self beyond ego?

A: Well, there are different levels of who you are, of what the self is. The deepest part of you is the self absolute, which abides in and as the unmanifest realm beyond time and form. It can be consciously experienced in meditation and in moments of spontaneous peace and ecstasy. When you experience the self absolute, you experience the part of yourself that has never been born and will never die. It is the ground of being itself, the empty void out of which this whole evolving mass of energy, matter, and consciousness emerged. But this ground, while it is the source of ultimate peace, bliss, and fullness, is not involved in the life process, because it has never become anything, including you.

Then there is what I call the authentic self, which abides between the ground of being and the ego. The Authentic Self is the manifestation and expression of the first cause, or the creative principle, in the awakening human. It is the part of your manifest self that is already free from ego. It's the most wholesome, life-embracing dimension of who you are as an incarnated human being.

And as I said, it is already free! This authentic self doesn't need therapy or spiritual practice to enable it to let go of unwholesome conditioning. It's a part of the self that has never been hurt, wounded, or traumatized. Why? Because it emanates from a more subtle level of manifestation, a level that can be seen in this world but is not of this world. It cares passionately about life and truth and evolution. And its manifestation is always spontaneous. While the ego is an expression of the personal and historical dimension of the self, the authentic self is an expression of the evolutionary impulse in consciousness, which is always impersonal and universal. When awareness, due to ignorance, is trapped in the gross realm by the ego's fears and desires, it is impossible to experience the peace, bliss, and fullness of the self absolute or the ecstatic life-affirming passion of the authentic self.

Q: So how do we go beyond ego?

A: Through the experiential discovery of the authentic self. Most people never awaken to the authentic self and therefore they don't even understand why ego is such a problem. It's only through the experience of the authentic self that you can begin to see what an obstruction ego actually is and find the all-important strength and inspiration to transcend it. When you taste that part of yourself in which ego has never existed, and experience the untainted love of life and unbounded passion for its evolution, you will want, at times even desperately, to free your self-sense from any attachment to ego and its endless distractions. So the only way to go beyond ego is to want to go beyond ego more than anything else.

What's so important about the awakening of the authentic self is that through it you spontaneously experience an emotional connection with the vast evolutionary context that we've been speaking about. And in this, you discover what could be called a moral imperative in relationship to the need to evolve. It arises from the depths of your own soul—I must evolve for the sake of evolution itself. Consciousness can only evolve through me, and it won't happen unless I wholeheartedly and unconditionally give myself to that process. And what's significant here is that this is not imposed on you from anywhere outside yourself; you actually awaken to it. When the awakening human discovers this moral imperative to evolve, then a new path has been found. Why? Because one has literally discovered within oneself the very reason for being a human being.