Ahaṅkāra or ego, is an aspect of mind that produces the function of thought related to self awareness, self-identity, and self-conceit (the personal pronoun ‘aham’ means I, and ‘kāra’, the doer). Ahaṅkāra is the aspect of the mind that causes notions of I-ness and my-ness: “I am a man,” "I am a woman" “I am happy,” "I am sad" “I know,” “This is mine", etc. Ahaṅkāra delimits awareness and refracts it to fit into the contours of the particular body and mind within which it finds itself. It is because of ahaṅkāra that the awareness of an ant is limited to the range of the ant’s senses and the conceptual structure of its mind, while the awareness of an elephant has a larger range, and that of a human an even larger range. This restructuring of the lens of ahaṅkāra, so to speak, is the result of specific sets of saṁskāras (imprints from present and past lives), relevant to any particular form - bug, dog, or human - activating at the appropriate time.
From the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Prof. Edwin Bryant (Advaita Das)
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