Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 27.

रूपोद्भवो रूपततिप्रतिष्ठो
रूपाशनो धूतगृहीतरूपः।
स्वयं विरूपः स्वविचारकाले
धावत्यहड़कारपिशाच एषः॥

Born of form, rooted in forms, Living on forms, ever changing its forms, Itself formless, flitting when questioned, Such is the ego-ghost.

The ego was stated to be a subtle formation moving between matter and spirit linking the self with the body. It was characterised as a psycho-physical knot in the material body of the individual. Its true character is described here in the statement that though it is a formation it has no form of its own. As has been already remarked, it is a figure of the Self formed in the subtle being of mind-stuff and life-force, here called the subtle body, and it is ever shifting from form to form, as it is ’born and rooted in forms of mind, which is nothing but an incessant thought-movement, a creation of the conscious-force.

The ego is the apparent self, supported at its root by the light of the conscious self. It is drawn to external objects and is moved to and absorbed in them by the subtle body of ’mind and life with which it identifies itself. In fact it is formed and dissolved in the subtle stuff itself.

Indeed this ego-self ahamkara is called jiva in the preceding verse; but the dissolution of the ego leads to the destruction of ego-life and ego-sense and not at all to that of individuality. The ego, plunging into the abyss of the Self in a serious quest to know itself, makes a deeper stratum of consciousness come to the surface and that is the Real ’I’, the ultimate reference of existence, the supreme significance of self-being, which is remotely reflected and temporarily represented on the surface by the ego or the apparent self, atmabhasa; (cf. 32nd verse. “Then flashes forth another ’I’).

The search for the ego and its total abandonment is an indispensable condition of the conquest.