Before we can understand, will or feel, we have to be sure that we exist. This certainty of the fact of our existing as an individual is the activity of the ego. The word ego gets translated in various ways. When we generally speak of an egoistic person, we mean thereby a proud person, for instance. But the ego does not and need not necessarily mean pride .
Pride is only a gross outer expression of it.
Its essentiality is something subtle, far more invisible than the outer expression as the so-called pride of the individual. The ego is a sense of individual being, our confidence that we exist as an individual independent of other individuals. The conscious confidence in us that we are isolated individuals, quite different, in every way, from others, is the ego-principle in its essentiality. It is a consciousness of our individual existence, isolated from other individuals. And this self-assertiveness concretises itself in various levels of our life.