The provisional ego...

"To avoid inaction on the one hand and pride of action on the other, it is necessary for the aspirant to construct in the following manner a provisional and working ego which will be entirely subservient to the Master.

Before beginning anything, the aspirant thinks that it is not he who is doing it, but the Master who is getting it done through him. After doing it he does not tarry to claim the results of action or enjoy them, but becomes free of them by offering them to the Master.

By training his mind in this spirit he succeeds in creating a new ego which, though provisional and working, is amply able to become a source of that confidence, feeling, enthusiasm and "go" which true action must express.

This new ego is spiritually harmless, since it derives its life and being from the Master who represents Infinity, and since, when the time comes, it can be thrown away like a garment.

There are thus two types of ego—one which can only add to the limitations of the soul, and the other which helps towards emancipation.

The passage through the limiting ego of the worldly man to the egolessness of the infinite life lies through the construction of the provisional ego generated through wholehearted allegiance to the Master.

The construction of a new ego which is entirely subservient to the Master is indispensable to the dynamics of spiritual advancement."



Meher Baba
_Discourses_
San Francsico: Sufism Reoriented, 6th. ed., 1967, vol. 2, pp. 179-180
The Dynamics of Spiritual Advancement