This should lead to an absence of pride (māna), pretense (dhamba), or even arrogance (darpa). Someone who lives in anahaṅkāra expects and needs nothing from the world, especially no respect or validation. A great relief. It yields a free, independent, self-sufficient position, because I understand that what I have achieved in life is nothing. I also understand it belongs to īśvara.

A certain sense of ahaṅkāra is natural, because the body needs food and shelter, by the grace of prarābdha karma. There’s a kind of biological need for the body to live, nothing wrong with that. However, the knower of the self sees this “I” experience as an object, a movement in the mind. In anahaṅkāra, there is no identification (abhimāna) with the ego. Abhimāna is the delusion (mada) of thinking that I am truly the “I” feeling that belongs to the mind-body: identification (tādātmya) with the importance (māna) of the ego.

This is, of course, due to the ignorance in the individual case, which causes consciousness to seemingly “assume” a body-mind.