Questioner: Ego has a function and we will never get rid of it, but can we not develop our internal witness so that, instead of the ego driving the car, Consciousness is in charge?

Richard: The ego or I-sense appears to us in layers and the first layer, which we most certainly can get rid of, is the childhood ego that is created out of past conditioning. The second layer of ego is the one that posits a subject in relation to an object. Thus I love you rather than love is here binding us together. When this layer of ego is relinquished we are enabled to enter into a period of spiritual preparation in which more subtle layers of ego-delusion may be released through relaxing the ego-contractions. In this way the soul is born into the spiritual domain for eternal devotion and at this point again increasingly subtle energetic forms of ego-investment are dissolved.

What I call the ego-compromise is a popular idea, but it is spiritually incorrect. It is the idea that popularly supposes that I can retain my ego and make peace with myself and follow a spiritual path of some sort. The reality of spirituality stands firmly in the integrity of spiritual truth. Thus an ego-intended spirituality is simply incorrect. It is not that ego is relinquished in some magical way or through supposed awakening "experience" enabling us to be, act, and practice spirituality, rather it is that passing through the stages of psycho-spiritual work toward the intense period of spiritual preparation that is demanded of the initiate, certain aspects of human illusion have to be shed.

If you are following an authentic spiritual path (and for the foreseeable future for mostly everyone authentic psycho-spiritual path) these processes of ego-attachment will fall away naturally. Thus it is not something that you do, but rather one of the things that take place as a result of your engagement with the unfolding path of the heart.

The Witness or witness-consciousness is not an ego-compromise, neither is it an alternative to shedding the ego. On the contrary, the witness in the ancient Vedas (Sakshi in Sanskrit) is the observer or the Supreme Being. Sakshi is the pure awareness that observes the worlds without becoming affected or involved, thus there is no ego-tendency in Sakshi. Sakshi occupies the total universe and is beyond or prior to experience or the experiencer. So you see it is not some light alternative to dropping the ego; it has no involvement with ego whatsoever.

The Witness is beyond awareness itself, since awareness is observed by the Witness.

And finally, "Consciousness is in charge," you say, but of what? Consciousness is another word for the more traditional God, Brahman, the noumena. As such it is a label or a term for what can never be labelled. How do you address  All and everything? It is impossible! Consciousness is neither in charge, nor not in charge. Consciousness merely IS.

Richard Harvey welcomes your questions here for further BLOGS.

BLOG entry #25