15.07: Beware of the spiritual masquerade of the false ego

The notion that we are ourselves God is the false ego’s ultimate weapon. The false ego is the subtlest of all the subtle material elements. It is instrumental in the spirit misidentifying with matter, or in other words, for us, spirit souls, in misidentifying with our material bodies.

Releasing us from the deceptive grip of the false ego and restoring us to the dignity of our true ego as the beloved children of Krishna: this is the essential purpose of spirituality. All our philosophical analysis and all our devotional practices are tools to dislodge the false ego from our consciousness and enthrone Krishna as our Lord.

That’s why, if we start seeking authentic spirituality and devoting ourselves to Krishna, the false ego makes a last-ditch effort to maintain its grip on us by putting on a spiritual masquerade. It tempts us with the ultimate hallucination, the supreme megalomania: you yourself are God. Many intellectual seekers succumb to this ruse, and soon they become converted, even perverted, into mouthpieces of the false ego. These misguided spiritualists use all their intellectual brilliance to misinterpret scripture and misuse logic for marketing the anti-scriptural and illogical claim that we are God. The Bhagavad-gita (15.7) unequivocally declares that we are eternally the parts of God, never God – as do many other scriptures. Further, logic exposes the patent absurdity of this God-claim: “How can God come under illusion? That would make illusion greater than God – and that contradicts the very definition of God as the Supreme Being.”

When we encounter this absurd claim, then we need to be proactive enough to see through its spiritual masquerade and reject it for what it is: the ultimate egocentric hallucination.