Ego - The Disease

The fact that we are here is a clear indication that we are victims of the disease of ego, and the disease of ego will go from us only when we are attached to the Word, to Shabd or Nam. That drives ego from us and creates humility within us. This Shabd or Nam drives out the I-ness from us, what we call I, I, I. Then we just becomes Thou.

For example, when we are in love with someone, we never like to do what we want; but we like to do what he or she wants. We are always in readiness to please the other party, crushing our own views, fighting our own views, adjusting them to the other one. The same principle is in meditation. When we merge into the Shabd, when we fall in love with our meditation, with devotion to the Lord, to the Master, slowly and slowly and automatically this I-ness is being driven out of us. We take pleasure in merging, in blending into him, rather than making him bend to our dictates. This ego is automatically driven out.

Without attachment to him you can never be detached from anything in the world. Attachment to worldly possessions, attachment to worldly faces is ego. First we always look at things and a distinct impression comes in. Then we want to possess them. In order to possess them we work hard. Then we find that we are a slave to them. For example, a spider has woven its own web happily, and when it has woven it so beautifully, it finds that it has become a prisoner of it and cannot escape out of it. And that is what I think we are doing. We are making so many scientific investigations for modern worldly achievements, working hard day and night; we are weaving our own net and ultimately when we get all that, we find how much a prisoner we are of these things. They have possessed us. They have taken us and we have no more freedom. Then we find it difficult to get out of that net. That is ego. We can break that net only by Shabd, meditation or Nam.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II}