Continued from Verse Twenty-Four
25. It comes into being equipped with a form, and as long as it retains a form it endures. Having a form, it feeds and grows big. But if you investigate it, this evil spirit, which has no form of its own, relinquishes its grip on form and takes to flight.
Commentary: The form or vehicle of the ego is the mind-body. This mind-body assumes an identity and relationships, and then has desires and fears based on that identity and relationships. This entangles it in more and more thought, and this thought increasingly obscures the fact that this ego is merely an imaginary thing. The movement of thought seems to create the sense that the ego is doing things, much like, as is stated in an ancient scripture, a torch being whirled around seems to create a circle of light. A more modern metaphor might be how two stereo speakers create an illusion of a three-dimensional soundstage and a band.
If this ego is investigated — namely, by slowing the thoughts down and trying to find just who is watching the whole show — it suddenly recedes, because the illusion cannot be sustained if you see its background. The illusion is based on separation, and the separation is a trick of misdirection. As long as you’re consumed by desires and fears, then mind moves endlessly, and doesn’t actually investigate who the “I” is who has all of these desires and fears. Start looking, and suddenly it becomes elusive who the I is. The I, which watches, and which cannot be what is watched, cannot seem to find or locate itself. That immediately starts to break up the desires and fears, since they are all premised on the idea that I want this and I fear that. But if you can’t find yourself, then obviously those desires and fears then become less compelling.
But stopping there is not enough. The one who cannot find the I is itself the I that is being looked for. That I must be pursued relentlessly, and as it is pursued, concentration, peace, and the desire for liberation generally increase and attachments tend to decrease, though there may be spectacular bouts of fear and passion as the usual identity struggles to hold on to itself.
This goes on until the Background of the Mind is finally and inevitably noticed, and the conceit that the mind-body is independent is no longer sustainable.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.