Much has been written about the immanent evil of pride in human personality. We have heard numerous lectures and videos, and read thousands of textual passages deprecating the evil of pride. Often, or mostly, it is given the name of EGO.
It is a personality defect so much in evidence today that you can find elements of it in a large majority of persons, young and old alike. The English dictionary gives it parallel names—haughtiness, superciliousness and arrogance. Given the very fact that this negative trait appears almost ubiquitous today, it begs a deeper discourse.
Let us analyse the subject of pride from the spiritual perspective after giving it a mundane exposition. Pride is an emotional element in the human being which makes him feel superior to others in any respect—looks, beauty, intelligence, liquid bank balance, ownership of properties and other monetary assets, wisdom, knowledge, erudition, religious faith, race, class, caste…. anything. This feeling of superiority or ‘holier than thou’ attitude gives him a positive emotional kick and makes him feel elated.
The above-said state of elation is what brings the downfall of a proud person. The sense of elation distorts the personality of the individual. His behaviour becomes condescending.
He looks down on others. People start distancing from him. Cracks develop in personal relationships. Cooperation, collaboration and camaraderie suffer. Pride is the opposite of humility. Humility opens up and expands vistas for understanding, learning and cooperation. Arrogance works for the opposite.
In the realm of spirituality, pride is the result of ignorance and illusion. As per classical Vedic literature and texts like Yogasutra derived from it, the soul identifies itself as a distinct animate entity through the material element of ego-self. All material elements in the human being have the three primal attributes of satogun, rajogun and tamogun. The ego-self gets puffed by an imbalance of rajogun, which gives the individual a false sense of superiority.
This makes the person swollen-headed and vitiates his intellectual faculty. Thus, in the high emotional state of arrogance, the person is unable to think rationally, and perform right and fruitful actions. He gives in easily to anger, which exacerbates the problem.
The human being needs to keep a healthy balance of satogun, rajogun and tamogun in him to maintain sound health. Here, health denotes the health of the body, mind and intellect.