Ego at higher spiritual planes

Q: Some sadhaks say that as one enters into higher planes one meets with a greater ego, ignorance and falsehood. How can this be?

It is because they go higher and higher in the same plane of consciousness as before and do not rise beyond — e.g. higher and higher in the realm of vital-mental formations — not higher beyond mind into the planes that lead to the full supramental.

Q: Before or while rising to the higher spiritual ranges, often we imagine that the ego has been dropped altogether. But we must not be careless. For it cannot completely disappear before the Overmind border is crossed.

Even if there is no consciousness of ego in the higher parts where oneness of all things has been realised, it does not follow that in the lower parts ego has been abolished. It can on the contrary become very strong and the action can be very egoistic even while the mind is thinking “I have no ego”.

– Sri Aurobindo