No, ego is not caused by anything. Sri Ramana never said that "free will" is the cause of ego. The reference is falsely interpreted by you. In fact Bhagavan stated that ego is uncaused and its origin is a mystery! One could say that ego rises due to vasanas, however both are not truly real and have no origin, the paradox of ego.

@@cheddarfiend-acrylicpourin9570 it would be proper to say that ego seems to exist because of avichara or self forgetfulnes, same as rope only seems to be snake as long as we dont take a good look at it. In the same way ego only seems to exist but is ever non existent.

In the same way at night when we dream we seem to be person in that dream. But when we wake up, we know that never was any person in a dream, because whole dream, and everything in it is false. Just like mirage in the desert.

John is right, even Bhagavan dont have answer to question about why ego seems to exist but he always said: first find ego and then we can talk about how he came into existance. I guess the trick is that we can never find something what does not exist.

You are forgetting that not ego is picking the karma for this life (that you have created in all of your past lives) but Bhagavan. And Bhagavan picks only karma which is the most helpful for your spiritual progress. By the way, "harmony in nature" is as much a dream and an obstacle for freedom as working and living in an industrial hellhole.

Ego (noun) a false sense of self arising from taking credit for what you do. In short, it is the delusion of free will. Eradication of the delusion of free will typically by surrender to God (god takes all credit) is what removes the ego.

You are talking about "God's mind", "God" does not have a mind. There is also not "us" and "God", that is well explained with the snake/rope analogy. There is no union or "becoming complete", only being. Those who practice self-investigation with the aim for union or completion do not properly practice self-investigation. That is very important. One cannot transcend duality with the dual idea of "becoming" or "union".

@@johnmcdonald260 The term "God's mind" is figurative. I realize there is not "us" and "God," but only from ego perspective. I realize we are complete, but from ego perspective, we are seeking completion. We do not need to "transcend duality" to become or to unite -- just to quiet the mind to experience it. Is that language okay with you, John? We appreciate your guidance.

@@Gil_Gamesh What I am getting at is that with the practice of atma-vichara there is *NO* ego perspective, that is all. By the way, it is not "quieting" the mind, that is not enough! The phantom mind needs to be annihilated, no trace can be left, and that is transcending duality my friend.

@@johnmcdonald260 So since we seem to be experiencing a person, a body, and separation from others (ego perspective), could you please explain how to approach the practice (of no ego perspective) from this assumed limitation (ego perspective)? Michael says we have to love our Being to the exclusion of all other things, and Chris asked him about what this love is (the love to turn inward). In response, Michael first talked about absolute love vs relative love. Then he says "we can hold onto to our Being only to the extent to which we have love to hold onto our Being," and the more we hold onto our Being, we are cultivating that love. Then he talks about the vasanas. He says that we strengthen our Sat vasana, (to be aware of nothing other than our Being), by focusing all our attention on our Being. But how to "attend only to our Being," when our awareness is assumed within the ego perspective? (Some might think that "attending to ourself more & more" would be attending to our ego thought system.) Then at 1:40:00, Chris says that to attend to our Self is the highest expression of love from the standpoint of ego. Michael responds that we are trying to wean ourselves off a love for things other than our Self. That is why I responded saying that ego is trying to seek completion, whereas our Self is completion. (Ego does not, and can not, know what the True Self is.) Michael says "our Self is our Being." He further explains that it is like a small snowflake falling in the ocean (of love), and we are nothing other than the water that constitutes the ocean. That implies that we release the form of the snowflake and dissolve into our true nature (the water) and expand (into the completion of the ocean) without limitation. However, isn't there a fear of ego to release itself, and that is why we clutch onto a body etc.? So, John, how would you say that we approach this practice of atma-vichara? Thanks.

@@Gil_Gamesh First let me say that Michael explains this all very well, I gained through him many insides. However the language describing non-duality and the non-dual practice of atma-vichara (itself an oxymoron since a practice per se can never be non-dual since a practice assumes a doer of sorts) is never sufficient and must cause confusion to all who do not have first-hand practical experience with "I am". I.e. you quote Michael saying, "we strengthen our sat vasana, (to be aware of nothing other than our Being), by focusing all our attention on our Being." "We" obviously means ego (who else could it be) who "focuses" attention to being. Now that is not really correct unless one understands this as a pointer to being. Why? Because ego cannot really focus on "I am" since ego and "I am" are mutually exclusive. The initial step to being comes from ego like "oh, I am attending to this and that, let's go back to being" but once the attention went to "I am" or being *ego is not involved anymore* , how could it? There is also no "focusing" going on since simple being does not need anything including "focusing". I am coming back to this later. You say that, "our awareness is within the ego perspective". No, what we experience is a mix of awareness' and that is pure awareness (or "I am" or "being") and ego awareness (phenomena, thoughts, likes and dislikes, this world etc.). Now only pure awareness is real, the ego awareness is a mysterious uncaused and unreal phenomenon which feeds on itself. Most aspirants due to the extreme attachment to a body and a personality totally ignore the reality we are and therefore assume "ego needs to attain self". However it is smarter to accept that we are actually here and now *also* pure awareness/self and all what is necessary is to "lose" the unreal baggage of ego, we as this person. We need to "starve" ego in withdrawing attention to all what ego represents (everything we perceive) and attend instead to "I am". Why are we attached to this body and phenomena and so on? Because for a very long time we attended to this body and phenomena and all this attending feeds ego and makes it bigger and bigger, more solid, slight imaginations grow to fears like phobias and what not. The simple solution is to attend to the pure awareness we already are and always has been, that simple being. And here is where love comes into play. Love is a different word for "attention" and it may explain it more succinctly why we seem to be in this predicament. Because now we have become addicted to this body, our likes and dislikes - we ignore our true being. That's why love to our being is so important because would we ever choose to attend to "I am" instead to sex, a movie, our loved ones, our diseases, and so on? No, we need to love self or "I am" more than anything else. In fact Bhagavan illustrated how much we need to love "I am" in order to realize self: It's like somebody is pushing our head into a lake and the desire to breath air after a few minutes will become so strong that nothing else is left in our mind but to breathe air. Likewise we need to have that same intensity of love/desire for self with nothing else in mind than "I am". Only then we will realize self. There seems to be a "process" since we are only able to slowly wean off all of our addictions to phenomena and likes and dislikes, however we do not have to be concerned about that, to simply be takes care of everything else. It may take a number of life times but even that is just a thought and therefore ego or illusion. How to properly practice atma-vichara? There cannot be any manual like for other meditation practices, do this and that, or a "guided meditation" as some suggest, it is a trial and error process. One needs to keep doing it and eventually with the grace of Bhagavan we get it right. When Bhagavan was asked how to investigate self he answered, "don't you know your own home?", pointing to that mere sense of existing *everybody* does/is (inattentively though). For Bhagavan it must have sounded silly since nothing is easier than just to be. Important though is that we practice without any goal or expectations, if we do we won't progress. We need to be for the love of being itself and not because we do not want to suffer anymore or we want to be happy or anything else.

According to Bhagavan, life (that what is ordinarily understood as life) is not consciousness, it is rather a mental fabrication, that what is "alive" like plants, animals, human beings are a projection/creation by ego. It is fictitious, it seems to exist only as long as ego exists. When ego is gone there is no life.

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⁠@@johnmcdonald260​​⁠ I talked about the state of not knowing. What you see as variety is just the same unknowable from the point of view of the intellect. There is only this immeasurable, which is beyond expression. I am not talking about what is ordinarily understood as "life". I am using the word "life" as synonym of "existence", "being", as you can see in any good dictionary. "Unself-conscious existence is a contradiction in terms. It is no existence at all. It is merely attributed existence, whereas true Existence, Sat, is not an attribute, it is the Substance itself. It is the Vastu. Reality is therefore known as Sat-Chit, Being-Consciousness, and never merely the one to the exclusion of the other." Ramana Maharshi

​@@domingosmsande9153 What you talk about are just concepts, even "state of knowing" or the "immeasurable" are concepts. These are words mind has read and is regurgitating from memory. What only counts is atma-vichara. It is the path and simultaneously the goal. Without first-hand knowledge of "I am" with actually practicing atma-vichara the prattle of concepts will go on endlessly (Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi).

@@johnmcdonald260 Oh, you put obstacles to yourself. If you investigate, you will see that knowledge is always incomplete. Science is measurement. Any theory, at any time, is incomplete. There can never be complete knowledge. See this, understand this. So, the state of not-knowing is evident! To think otherwise is due to lack of understanding. In one word, ir's due to ignorance. It becomes clear that the "immeasurable" is what you are and what all the phenomena is. Ask "who am I?" and do not resort to any answer from knowledge, from thought, from memory. What happens? Find out.

Self-investigation is a non-dual practice since reality and pure awareness is non-dual, that means that nothing else than pure awareness exists. The usual terms for self-enquiry or self-investigation is that "we" attend to "I am". What does that mean? "I am" refers to our sense of existing, "I am", we know that we exist, we do not have to think about that, it is obvious because if we would not exist we could not even say, "I do not exist". Most who come here however have no idea about that "I am" because it is so extremely simple that mind cannot really believe, "that's it!" We always are, we always exist, there is no effort or any action or thought necessary to know that - that is self or as some like to say, "enlightenment". It is extremely simple. We are already that! There is nothing fancy to be enlightened, nothing truly changes but our attention to phenomena. Then why do we need to practice? Because instead to just be what we truly are, we attend to that what we erroneously believe to be, a person with a life. As long as we entertain this fiction via thoughts with giving attention to thoughts, phenomena, this world and other people, we do not simply BE. What we need to do is to just be, and that is no action nor anybody doing it. Remember, we know that we exist, we do not need a reminder for that. What we need to do is to stop attending to thoughts and phenomena and just BE "I am". That's it. That sense of existing is not an object - we ARE it, what we are not is that what seems to cloud it. We, self BE self. There is no "watching" or "observing" with self-enquiry, only simple being. Now for mind that is extremely difficult since one can only truly BE without an [active] mind. Mind will soon get restless or "bored" and other mischievous things or telling itself "this is stupid" and other things. And yet, being "I am" without the attention to anything else is only needed. Only ego/mind attends to other things, without ego/mind there is only being, "I am".

Who then does action of basic nature body needs after self realization.

@@markocvrljak3681 The body, as all phenomena like this world, does not really exist. That means after self-realization self is aware only of self or pure awareness. After self-realization ego/mind is totally gone and since a body and a world only exists with a mind/ego what is left is "I am" or self, pure awareness, our simple sense of existence/being. We cannot imagine that since we see things from the viewpoint of mind. Nobody knows how things are without mind .... The only glimpse we get is through proper practice of atma-vichara. That what we truly are, even now, is formless.

the ego tries to look at itself but finds nothing. ones attention then rests in that space of 'nothing'

@@whatthebosh That is not quite correct, the attention does not rest in that "space of nothing", it rests in "I am". It may seem for mind as "nothing" since mind cannot fathom "I am" since it is not an object and subsequently judges it as "nothing" or "empty". However the more one becomes familiar with "I am" through atma-vichara, the more it becomes clear that "I am" is not nothing at all. One can only really know that with diligently and correctly practicing atma-vichara for quite awhile. All those who talk about "nothing" and "emptiness" have never properly practiced atma-vichara and they just regurgitate what they have read somewhere,

@user-xk7mz9ds7e, you obviously mean 'Bhagavan' and 'Michael'. 😵‍💫.

@@josefbruckner7154 Yes,thank you for pointing out the error of spelling.However I hope you are not caught up with the names and forms.although it is important for communication it doesn't really exist,what really exist is pure consciousness ,that is your own nature🙂 ,thank you

@@user-xk7mz9ds7e, letting the mind write sloppily is not a good training to focus keenly inwards.😌