"What is the difficulty in awakening?" poses Shunyamurti, the spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. "The problem is this: The ego is a PDF file. PDF meaning, Projections, Decisions, and Fixations. And it developed in that order. There was a pure consciousness?without identification?and your parents projected on it. . . . And then you took on a decision to accept those projections, or modify them somewhat, or do something with them?but you made a decision based on those projections. And then that decision got repressed into the unconscious and became a fixation."

Then, reveals Shunyamurti, "Once it became repressed you could no longer change it because your thinking capacity would begin with those projections and decisions as the basis of your thought. And so the ego?whoever you believe yourself to be?is the product of that logic?and that ego cannot change itself." And liberation, or awakening, though the ultimate cure cannot be achieved because the ego bases itself on an inferiority complex: "I'm unworthy, therefore I exist. This is the new Cartesian signifier."