Noted author Ayn Rand in her bestselling work The Foutainhead had written that a man’s ego is the fountainhead of his progress. The contention cannot be generalised without context. Ego can be the fountainhead of the individual’s progress but only when it is reasonable. For all other situations, a man’s ego is the fountainhead of his problems. Sometimes this can create problems for others also. From mythologies to histories, this has been proved time and again. Be it the Ravana in the Ramayana or Duryodhana in Mahabharata, they all led their people and kingdoms to disaster.
The history of the Roman kings also tells the same story. In fact, ego is a part of every human personality. From the Psychoanalytic Theory of Sigmud Freud to the more recent Transaction Analysis Approach of Thomas Harris, all acknowledge the presence of ego in the human personality. But on its own, ego is not the problem.
Rather it is a cause of action. It is responsible for the intensity of involvement of a person in the goal. It gives the driving energy. It is the motivation for action, the positive ego. This ego is the aham, which in Indian philosophical thought is the self-identity that gives self-confidence and which the psychologists call self-esteem.
In the Upanishads, it is this ego that is referred to in the famous Vedantic canon Aham Brahmasmi. It fills a person with energy and confidence to do something, to achieve. It is referred to in psychological theory as the n-ach, an abbreviation for need for achievement that creates great entrepreneurs and performers. It certainly is the fountainhead of progress.
However, there is another side of the ego or aham that is the ahankara or vanity. It is this ego that is the root cause of a person’s problems. The obsession with I, me and myself. The extreme form of narcissism or self-love which creates a bloated ego and gradually turns a person into a megalomaniac. This is the negative ego. It is the ego that makes one misread the mirror. This ego has to be tamed, because if not properly handled, it makes people go wild. It gives people a false sense of power. It is this power that is referred to in the cliché, ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. This power gives the pride that always leads to a fall.
So what needs to be realised is that too much of obsession with oneself is dangerous. It completely weakens a person’s ability to handle the negative ego and blunts the ability to see reason, the ability to be objective. Why kings turn despots, why leaders get inebriated with power and why they finally meet their nemesis is not far to seek. It is under the influence of the negative ego or the ahankara.
The question is how to tame this negative ego. There is but a simple prescription. See the big picture. Realise that you are just a small part of the big whole which is the world. That you just have a temporary existence in this eternal world. Understand that whatever you do or achieve was because of the divine grace. It is the God that is the prime mover, not you, who gets consumed in that capital ‘I’. The tragedy is that from great leaders, to even great scholars, all find it very difficult to resist this temptation of the capital ‘I’.
The writer teaches management at Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com