Ego after illumination

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
- The Upanishads

*note* Paul Brunton was a serious seeker..and he loved to write...here is his,,ego after illumination,, essay,from his notebooks.His ideas are quite interesting,for those whom think(like fools) that enlightenment is about getting rid of the ego.It's about putting the ego(as false assumptions) on the right frame of things,as things are,not as we imagine they should be.That's all.If one doesn't understand this,then one will be tormented by his so-called,,evil desires,,popping up like mushrooms just after he's had his meditation...So I composed this never heard stanza,for the benefit of the  grasshoppers whom might listen:
Behold
Know yourself
Love others as you love yourself
But love yourself first
After you discovered yourself
Not torture yourself like a moron
First..know that your essence is love
Then know your inner state of being
In it's inner manifestation
Then know your inner state of being
In it's outer manifestation
So every time when you don't forgive
Or love the outside people and experiences
Just know you haven't resolved the issues
In yourself..for you will be projecting
And not even know it that you do that
Just look of what bothers you outside of yourself
And know with no doubt..the bothering in yourself
As above,so below... 
For they are One.
So grab the vampire
And steal his wisdom muscle
And become One.
Kisses:)
Thus spokenth the mahayogi to the grasshoppers in the moon-light.
-added by danny-
..................................

Ego after illumination


207
Is the ego totally lost, utterly obliterated in this attainment? I can only say that none of our usual concepts fit the actual result, that it is hard to describe, and that suggestion must here replace description. For the ego and the Overself fuse and unite, yet the union does not destroy the ego's capacity to express itself or to be active in the world. Its own annihilation is a transient experience during the contemplative state. Its resumption of worldly life while permanently established in perfect harmony with, and obedience to, the divine Overself is the further and final goal.


208
If a man could withdraw sufficiently from his ego to stop letting its interests and desires overpower him, he would thereby let peace come to triumph in his heart. The true paradise, the real heavenly kingdom, which has been postponed by an ignorant clergy to the post-mortem world, thus becoming far-off and elusive, is in fact as near to us as our own selves, and as present as today. If we are to enter it, we can and must enter while yet in the flesh. It is not a time or place but a state of life and a stage of development. It is the ego-free life. The ego is not asked to destroy itself but to discipline itself. The personal in a man must live, but only as a slave to the impersonal. These two identities make up his self.


209
If the ego continues to perform its functions, as it needs must even after Fulfilment, it no longer does so as his master, no longer as his very self. For henceforth it obeys the Overself.


210
For the man in that high consciousness and identified with it, the ego is simply an open channel through which his being may flow into the world of time and space. It is not himself, as it is for the unenlightened man, but an adjunct to himself, obeying and expressing his will.


211
At such a stage the ego becomes a mere instrument, put down or picked up at any and every moment by the Overself. No longer are its own thoughts, emotions, desires, or lusts in control; instead, they are fully controlled by the higher power.


212
He will possess the power to dismiss his ego at will.


213
The ego totally ceases to exist and is fully absorbed into the Overself only in special, temporary, and trance-like states. At all other times, and certainly at all ordinary active and everyday times, it continues to exist. The failure to learn and understand this important point always causes much confusion in mystical circles. The state arrived at in deep meditation is one thing; the state returned to after such meditation is another. The ego vanishes in one but reappears in the other. But there are certain after-effects of this experience upon it which bring about by degrees a shift in its relation to the Overself. It submits, obeys, expresses, and reflects the Overself.


214
When he clearly realizes and intensely feels that his ego is non-existent, unreal, and fictitious, how can he assert that he has found God, Truth, or Illumination? For he will then just as clearly see that there is no one to make the assertion. The others who do so, thereby show that they still have an ego; consequently they still remain outside the Truth. Their claim to enlightenment is, by their own words, stamped as false.


215
If he loses his ego utterly and completely so that no trace of it exists at all, he would have to die, for his body is part of the ego. But he lives on. This shows that what he really loses is not the ego-nature but the ego-will. It is replaced by the higher will.


216
The ego lives entrenched in the seeker's inner world. If he becomes a saint, it is lost from time to time in meditation but it is found again whenever he emerges from it. If he becomes a sage, it is lost forever. That is one difference.


217
Yes, the ego as individuality, a separate identity remains. But it becomes reborn, purified, humbled before the higher power, no longer narrow in interests, no longer tyrannizing over the man, no longer selfish in the sense of the word. For as an enlightened being it may remain, harmless to all beings, benevolent to all creatures, respondent to a timeless consciousness enfolding its ordinary personality. The smaller circle can continue to exist within the larger one until the liberation of death. It is no longer the source of ignorance and evil; that ego is dissolved and obliterated. The new being is simply separate in body, thought, feeling from others but not from the universal, mass being behind them. There all are one.


218

In this mysterious new relationship he is not stopped from being aware of the ego, even though the Overself now directs him. But there is a unity between them which was absent before.


219
The ego fades away into a kind of non-entity, subsides like a wave into the ocean of universal life.


220
If the individual merges into pure Being, what is the ego which ceases to exist? For the physical body still remains and must be included in a man's consideration. This is one reason why even the highest mystical attainment must be naturalized, integrated even with his normal life as householder, professional, or intellectual. He then functions on three levels--animal, human, and angelic--but they fit together in harmony like a mosaic tiled wall. Whoever thinks otherwise is confusing two different situations, is superimposing the seeker upon the fulfilled man. If, for instance, he grants the possibility to monks alone, then he puts a limit on the Limitless and narrows the area of its presence. For the man who is established in the Light will act from within and by it, no matter whether he be engaged in the world's work, no matter whether married or not.


221
The proof that most mystics contribute something from their own personal self to their mystical experience, something from their own ego, lies in the fact that the vast majority of Christian mystics do not generally have inner experience concerning any spiritual leader other than Jesus Christ. Similarly, the vast majority of Indian mystics do not have such experiences except concerning Indian spiritual leaders, such as Krishna. This is because the religion which they hold, the faith in which they believe, the ideal saviour or guru to whom they direct their prayers or worship, is constantly held in their mind; he becomes the dominant thought, since it is by his Grace, they believe, that the experience has come to them. If they get a mystic experience they expect it to be associated with their own particular faith and so this is what has happened. But the interesting point here, psychologically, is that the ego is present in some way, either just before the experience or just after it--before in expectancy and after in interpretation. Then what happened between these two moments when the experience actually occurred? Well, if thoughts went into abeyance at the time, if all thoughts were lulled, then the thought of the saviour or guru was lulled too; but it was lying there on the very fringe of the experience at the beginning and at the end and it was the very first thing they picked up when they began to think again. It is however a rare occurrence for thought to be utterly stopped, for that state is equivalent to what the Hindus call nirvikalpa samadhi. They have another state, not so far gone, which they call savikalpa samadhi, where thoughts subsist inside the mystic experience and the thinking goes on but is held, so to speak, by the higher experience. This is what usually happens in the majority of cases of the mystics. The traits of character, the tendencies of the mind, may vanish during the experience and he emerges from it as if he is a new being, utterly changed; but then the effect of the experience gradually fades and with it he discovers he is still the old being. The ego has not vanished in his normal life because he is using it in order to attend to his affairs of waking consciousness. If in addition to the practice of meditation he has undergone the training in philosophy, then real changes take place in the man's character and the negative side of the ego gets less and less, the higher and positive side gets more and more until his character reaches a point where he is called selfless and egoless; but such terms are misnomers. They are correct perhaps if used in the moral sense, but not in the psychological sense. He is an individual and an individual he remains throughout life.


222
Yes the ego is there and must be there if we are to live on this plane. But it can undergo a spiritual rebirth and no longer be a tyrant who denies us our spiritual birthright and our spiritual consciousness but rather a channel serving that consciousness.


223
The ego will always have its problems. By always, one means from birth all through the years until death. This is true of every human being, although a superior human being will deal with them in a superior way.


224
If the ego is not there, something else is; some agent which does what it is presumed to be doing.


225
The differences between persons are differences of bodily and mental tendencies. In their totality these belong to the ego. Even the spiritually enlightened man has them still although they no longer tyrannize over him. It is not correct to say to an aspirant that they must be gotten rid of, killed, and destroyed. Rather they have to be transcended. For even the enlightened person still uses the ego to direct his body's activities, whether simple ones such as taking a meal or complicated ones such as solving a problem. His ego, having become a channel because it is transcended, does not get in the way. The ordinary man and his activities are ruled by it.


226
Body is part of ego; the vital body (etheric double) and astral emotional body are also a part of it; the mental body of thoughts is part of ego, too. All these bodies continue to exist even after realization since they are necessary to human life; to say there is then no ego is NONSENSE. These bodies are to be purified and surrendered.


227
The illumined man is still conscious of his individuality but it is a different, a transformed individuality.


228
The "I" is still here, not the old familiar petty uncertain creature but another "I," a gloriously transformed one.


229
The ego, the person, is there still; whoever denies its existence, must deny the body's existence, and with it all his physical experience. Would it not be better, less muddled, to admit the ego to its proper place, and deny it any reality above that of an idea?

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin. Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill. Man's pains and pains' relief are from within. Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !." - Tamil Poem-