The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [10]
I don’t have an ego-bashing agenda in mind here. Ego bashing looks for a villain whose actions keep people from finding happiness, which is the underlying reason why people suffer, why they never find their true self, God, or the soul. The ego, we are told, blinds us with its constant demands, its greed, selfishness, and insecurity. That is a common theme but a mistaken one, because throwing the ego into the dark, making it an enemy, only creates more division and fragmentation. If there is one reality, it must be all-inclusive. The ego can’t be thrown out any more than desire can be thrown out.
The choice to live in separation—a choice no cell ever makes unless it becomes cancerous—gave rise to a certain strain of mythology. Every culture tells the story of a golden age buried in the dim past. This story of lost perfection debases human beings instead of exalting them. People told themselves that human nature must be innately flawed, that everyone wore the scars of sin, that God disapproved of his once-innocent children. A myth has the power to take a choice and make it seem like destiny. Separation took on a life of its own, but did the possibility of one reality ever really go away?
To embrace one reality again, we must accept that the world is in us. This is a spiritual secret based on the nature of the brain, which spends every second manufacturing the world. When your best friend calls you on the phone from Tibet, you take for granted that he is far away, yet the sound of his voice occurs as a sensation in your brain. If your friend shows up on your doorstep, his voice hasn’t gotten any closer. It is still a sensation in the same part of your brain, and it will remain there after your friend leaves and his voice lingers inside you. When you look at a distant star, it too seems far away, yet it exists as a sensation in another part of your brain. So the star is in you. The same is true when you taste an orange or touch a velvet cloth or listen to Mozart—every possible experience is being manufactured inside yourself.
At this moment, ego-based life is thoroughly convincing, which is why no amount of pain and suffering drives people to abandon it. Pain hurts, but it doesn’t show a way out. The debate on how to end war, for example, has proved totally futile because the instant I see myself as an isolated individual, I confront “them,” the countless other individuals who want what I want.
Violence is built into the opposition of us versus them. “They” never go away and “they” never give up. They will always fight to protect their stake in the world. As long as you and I have a separate stake in the world, the cycle of violence will remain permanent. The dire results can be seen in the body, too. In a healthy body, every cell recognizes itself in every other cell. When this perception goes awry and certain cells become “the other,” the body goes on an attack against itself. This state is known as an auto-immune disorder, of which rheumatoid arthritis and lupus are devastating examples. The violence of self against self is based entirely on a mistaken concept, and although medicine can bring some relief to the war-torn body, no cure can be achieved without correcting the mistaken concept first.
Getting serious about bringing violence to an end means giving up a personal stake in the world, once and for all. That alone will pluck violence out by the roots. This may sound like a shocking conclusion. One’s immediate reaction is to say, “But I am my personal stake in the world.” Fortunately, such isn’t the case. The world is in you, not the other way around. This is what Christ meant when he taught that one should attain the kingdom of God first and worry about worldly things later, if at all. God owns everything by virtue of having created everything. If you and I are creating every perception that we take for reality, then we are allowed