Ahamkara
Ahamkara is the I-Maker. It is the part of you that identifies things as yours. Ahamkara is useful to the body because it provides a unifying force for the cells. The cells can all work together because Ahamkara identifies them as part of the whole. Ahamkara can become misused however. If you begin to identify something that isn’t yours as yours, you bring it in and make it part of you. Food is like this. In fact, in the case of food, the actual physical objects that make up the food do become a part of you. But, it is the same with objects, plants, animals, and intelligent beings. God is within us all. We are made in the image of God. We are surrounded by God.
Whatever we identify with becomes part of ourselves. Ahamkara controls what we are now and what we will become.
“”"
Nature told them that first exists Pure Existence, The One Without a Second.
When within Pure Existence a desire for Manifestation arises Consciousness and Will Appear.
These two mate together. Their offspring is Intellect, the power of discrimination.
Intellect then individualizes itself into Ahamkara, the “I-former.”
The universe fills with numberless little individual bundles of intellect all searching for a means of expression.
According to their innate predilections these ahamkara-bundles manifest as:
waves of kinetic energy known as Rajas
material particles of potential energy known as Tamas
and the subjective consciousness known as Sattva.
“”" [1], page 13.
References
[1]. Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution. Dr. Robert E. Svoboda.
[2]. Countless other texts, lectures, experience.