Questioner (Q): All reflections are coming from my limited mind. And when you shower pure nectar in every session, it seems my words would just pollute everything. I do acknowledge that I am related or connected to money, family, position, etc. and for me, Dṛṣṭā or Ātman is merely a concept at this moment. I am using my intellect to type this and would like to know, does the ego always shadow the intellect? Whenever I use intellect, is some type of ego always associated with that? Like sāttvika anger, does something like sāttvika ahaṅkāra also exist?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, what is the ego? We are responding to the question, “Does a sāttvika ahaṅkāra exist?” What is ahaṅkāra? What is ego? Ego is a sense of impurity, incompleteness, hollowness. Ego is a longing. Ego is a restlessness. Ego is a continuous tension. That’s what the ego is.
So, the ego says, “I am in danger. I am incomplete. I am not yet settled. I have to reach somewhere.” That’s what the ego says. And man is born with the ego, and to be born is ego. The seeds of ego themselves are born, and every child is carrying the seeds of ego. So, ego is there, which means the sense of incompleteness is there; it is an inevitability. It is necessarily there. So, he is incomplete, he is incomplete, he is incomplete, she is incomplete, she is incomplete, he is incomplete—all, because all are body forms. To be a body form is to have that sense of incompleteness, right? There is a hollow here, there is a hollow here, there is a hollow here, there is a hollow here and there and here (pointing at the listeners in the audience and himself); everywhere there is a hollow.
Now, that gives us a hint. The hollow is common; there are no differences in the hollow. The hollow is the
