Thus have I heard…
Ego, Egoism, & Egotism
“The gross body, I am not. The five cognitive sense organs, I am not. The five sense bases, I am not. The five vital airs, prana, etc., I am not. Even the mind which thinks, I am not. The nescience too, which is endowed only with residual impressions of objects and in which there are no objects and no functioning’s, I am not. After negating all the above mentioned as “not this, not this,” that Awareness which alone remains—That, I am.” -Ramana
And just this is the answer. The problem is that to human beings this is totally unsatisfactory. Insisting that we must be something we are not, despite being unable to prove it. Misunderstanding the nature of Nature, thinking that everything within Nature must possess its own particularized ontology. Well, it does not. Still, we must ask: “What then is the nature of this Awareness?” Ramana replies, “Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.” The bliss part is simply included as a kind of gauge. All one need do is realize that existence exists, and this is literally all it takes to be happy. If it is not blissful, it is simply because one is trying to make existence be something more or other than what it is. Absurd, the illusion of separateness we cling to is not valid because it is not blissful? Outrageous!
Somehow, we cannot be content with having no ideas at all concerning ourselves or our gods, and we are sure of it. Actually, the only thing we are sure of is how to remain discontent. The only thing we seem to have accomplished successfully with our infinitude of names, notions, and intellectual pigeonholes, is produce millions of tumults and turmoils. We would rather be miserable and believe anything than believe nothing and be happy. “Rather know nothing than know many things by halves! Rather be a fool on one’s own account than a wise man on other folk’s approbation!” In this way we support each other’s erroneous individual misperceiving’s and reinforce long standing social mis-apperceptions. As T.S. Elliot suggested, one falsely believes himself to be a fixed entity, a permanent witness of the flux. He does not perceive in himself that the person who left the station, who sits on the train reading his paper, who arrives at any terminus, are not the same person.
In Latin, per means through, sonus means sound. That mask which the sound passes through; the persona put on by an actor. The actor in himself is conventionally real. But in our way of thinking, the person is the real deal, the real thing, and the actor has become quite the suspicious character. We can never tell whether he is being himself or if he is imitating, merely pretending to be himself, or to be someone else. It would be quite illogical to deny that we exist, but we presuppose that this implies we must therefore also be real. But what do you mean when you say I? What are you referring to in truth? To question who I am, is either seen as too foolish because who could not know that, or too dangerous because who could know where that might end up. Probably, though, it is far more foolish and dangerous not to question the validity of this I I say is me. At least, until one either feels that he knows, or knows that he does not know, which are essentially the same thing.
Elsewhere it says, “The ego, in psychoanalytic theory, is that portion of the human personality which is experienced as the ‘self’ or ‘I’ and is in contact with the external world through perception.” Actually, ego is not a portion, it is more like a poison, it is a human consciousness which defiles, dilutes, or deludes itself by means of its own ignorance. Ego is a powerful conviction that there is an experience of a self or I when there is not. The illusion itself is factual, but what it stands for is not, which is of course what makes it an illusion. There is form, there is consciousness, there is feeling, there is perception, there are volitional formations. However, these do not constitute anything as such or vice versa. Senses and sense bases originate by means of interdependent relationship but are not held together by a possessor nor operated by any agent of action. Look for a thinker aside from thought and it is not there. Search for doers as distinct from deeds and you can never find them. Doing so both necessitates psychology itself and fulfills the need for it.
Psychology is the science of the activities of mind, not mind as such, and examines the mental processes or characteristics of a person’s thinking. If psychology were the science of mind, then theology is the science of God, and astrology is the science of divination and prophecy, but no one believes that. We can study thought, even though we have no idea how it originates, whence it comes, or whither it goes. If psychology were the science of mind, real Mind that is, it would struggle profusely in finding some way to remain credible after admitting having no clue what mind is, where mind is, how mind is, whether fundamentally we control it, or it controls us. I cannot find my own mind regardless of how hard I search. I cannot stop thinking regardless of how hard I try. I should consequently realize that this I has never had any more function or reality than what an inch, an hour, or a line of longitude does.
The error in theoretical psychology is that it is founded on the presupposition that the person is a real entity. And there is nothing falser than trying to be a real person, whatever that means. The concept the individual has, i.e., that he is a person who suffers, is exactly what prevents him from solving the problem of there being a person who suffers from suffering. Psychology basically says; “Suffering is both a cause and an effect of the catastrophic cognitions and distressing emotions associated with chronic afflictions.” Completing the diagnosis with a magnificent platitude; “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” It is contrariwise. To say that suffering is self-originating or self-perpetuating implies that it is permanent and eternal. But if the problem of suffering possessed such characteristics, it could then neither be created nor destroyed, and would exist without any possibility for cessation. And, in reality, “Pain is an idea; suffering is inevitable.” Or, it will be, so long as the individual continues to believe that personhood, perpetuity, and pleasure, are the marks of his existence.
So, the person is left with several insoluble problems. First, he gets himself psychoanalyzed which is enormously costly. He is inevitably informed in the long run at great expense, not only in terms of finance but also time and energy, that he is the problem. This is effectively true but does not help him. He may be given some guidance on how to go about improving the way he lives. But after many years of therapy, he ends up right where he started. Basically, it is believed his thinking is the root of the problem. Apparently, this is the reason why he is miserable, why he cannot change his conduct, or live a more purposeful life. But he himself and his thinking were never the real problem. If they were, they must also be the source of possible solution, but proper solution rarely can be found. Why is it so? He was not informed from the start about the nature of suffering. He was not told that suffering is due to desire. Rather he was misinformed about the nature of himself, the self which is not there. Thus, he attempts in futility to discipline his ghostly essence into a happy well purposed Casper.
Actually, Casper the ego requires only one one-hour session to receive all the instruction it needs. Because, after all, not even a million hours of psychotherapy can help someone who does not want to correct his own errors in judgement. Casper must be offered insight which can be realized, rather than information that can only be remembered. The moment a thoughtful person is instructed to try eliminating desire itself, he soon discovers that desiring not to desire is an impossible double bind. He says he cannot do it; he is asked why he would want to. At this point he begins to realize he is the double bind, or his Casper is. But if he does not, he is forever stuck in the same hopeless position: In contact with that for which he feels aversion and separated from that for which he feels attraction. He starts to understand what Will really is, that it is another term for Law, but not our regular idea of law. To the degree that that which moves does so according to its own nature, to that extent it is Lawful, or fulfilled by Law.
The more Casper is brought back to center, the more he sees that the suffering itself and the one who suffered were the same thing all along. That chronic un-satisfactoriness is the result of doing everything always in his own way, which has a double meaning. Furthermore, this is due to chronic reification of things, objects, nouns, or ideas, that are neither truly real nor permanent, and do not evoke pleasure but unavoidable misery. That which is dependently arisen, i.e., everything not possessing a permanent essence, is unceasing, unborn, unannihilated, not permanent, not coming, not going, without distinction, without identity, and free from conceptual construction. When these views are incorrect or absent, one develops tremendous attachments to gross and subtle forms, as well as the words, symbols, and ideas one binds them to.
The individual wrongly envisages his I as an entity locked within a skin container, rather than a process. Seeing things or objects the same way, not as concepts, not as nouns, not according to their nature as becoming, or being in constant flux, but as existing and not existing absolutely. Fools and reificationists who perceive the existence and nonexistence of objects do not achieve pacification of objectification. We are not saying in conventional speech that things do not exist. That is not it at all. As stated earlier, for an organism which must exist in order to state that it does not exist is ridiculous. We can play the game, “This statement is false.” Even Pinocchio knew best not to utter the phrase, “My nose will now grow.”
When a person forms an emotional bond to something, he is not actually attached to his object of desire, neither physically nor spiritually. How could he do that? He is attached to his own concepts concerning things and events, his convictions supporting these ideas, his misestimations regarding their relative importance, and an improper sense of values. He vitalizes this self or I-ness by nourishing his notion with his emotion. What he is truly bound to is his own sentiment. Aristotle stated the same things differently, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Also, “It is better to own too little than too much. For the more a man owns, the more he becomes the slave of his own possession.”
Okay, how does all this relate to the problem of ego? If one reifies phenomena, including such things as one's own self, characteristics thereof, or external objects, and if one thinks that things either fail to exist or exist absolutely, one will be unable to attain any peace. For one will thereby be subject to ego-ness, the overvaluing of oneself, of one's achievements, and of material things. He will not appreciate the possibility of change, and the impermanence and non-substantiality of himself and of his possessions. These are the seeds of clinging and grasping, the roots of ego, and the origins of suffering. The alternative, and the path to liberation, is to see oneself and other entities as non-substantial, impermanent, subject to constant change, and thus inappropriate as being objects of such passionate craving.
There are perhaps several other conditions worth mentioning which may contribute to the fallacy of misplaced concretion. Language and symbols have enchanted us from the beginning. We confuse the money for the wealth, the map for the territory, symbols for realities, and meanings for want of context. A friend once called me a plarjenfloup. Immediately, I exclaimed he was a rubber boot, and he immediately knew what that meant. It took me five years to invent a very flaky image of what a plarjenfloup might be. Still, I do not know, I let it go, and long ago. For I knew that if I persisted resolutely in forcing plarjenfloup to signify something, I could easily end up making everything signify anything I want. Remain indifferent to words. Otherwise, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will always hurt me. This is how we take the Ineffable, name it, make it fit our ideas, then argue and fight wars interminably to defend our overarching insecurities regarding our own symbols.
Another part to this equation of ego-ness is general societal pressures. These involve role playing, vocation, recreation, reproduction, social tiering and status, and the desire to fit in somehow without losing all sense of individuality. When we meet someone, we do not ask where or what are you because no one knows. We ask who or how are you, as this allows one to describe what he presupposes to be his self, according to whatever mental image he has painted as himself. But the paradox remains concealed because the true Self, Over-self, Oversoul, or World Soul, is the One which no one can get at. Like trying to see your own face without a mirror. The persona is constructed largely by one selecting those parts of the universe favored most by him and attributing himself to them. The personality is then invariably built upon possessions and not principles, what he holds and not what keeps him, what he likes but not what loves him eternally. What he is called, what he has, and what he does, but not what he is.
This image resides in memory, and because he is that image, he is that memory. Memory itself is possibly the greatest problem of all. Verily, memory is the Devil’s advocate as its very function opposes what is happening by constantly concerning itself with what is not. Nothing is ever remembered or recalled perfectly and is never recorded without prejudice, evaluation, or analysis. Rather than storing factual information it is clinging to biased attitudes and opinions concerning disinformation. Redemption, or the redeeming of proper mental function, means the ending of the mind's fascinated identification with the dead and unchanging image of what it was. It is a complete reversal of the natural order of things. Salvation is by redemption, which in turn comes by repentance. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia, meaning precisely a turning-around-of-the-mind. Thence mind no longer faces into the past, the land of the shadow of death, but into the Eternal Present. So long as the mind is captivated by memory, feeling itself to be that past image which it calls I, it can do nothing to save itself. Its sacrifices are of no avail; its Lore gives no life.
A further thought regarding egocentricity is education, or miseducation right from birth. Because we have not been instructed correctly, or at all, we remain relatively ignorant concerning these things. Namely, general objectification, reification of language and symbols, role playing, memory as image of self, and noneducation. We thus maintain an unbroken infinite regress where one generation always passes this ignorance on to the next, and so on. If a ten-year-old asked its parents, who am I, had they possessed better understanding they may have expressed it thus: “My dear you are nothing whatever. But this is a very special, rather incredible kind of Nothing. When you say I, it has no real meaning, and it is not you. The term I refers to one’s position and not an essence. You exist, of course, but this you which we talk of is just awareness itself. So next time you ask yourself and wonder, who am I, just know, That I am, and the What cannot be put into words. To learn who and what you are simply means learning how to live well. Ask no more, accept no less, and you will always be at peace.”
It would be rational for oneself to think, even if some of this appears to make sense, I do not feel that way. I really feel like I am here. I feel like I am a kind of sensitive core, a center point by which I
live and move and have my being. Well, what is it that one feels, how can one be certain that that which he feels is really his own self, selfhood, entity, or essence? Paraphrasing Mr. Watts here, as it cannot really be expressed any better anyway, what one feels is what he called the problem of an illusion married to a futility. The illusion, as discussed above, that is, the mental image or idea of oneself, married to the futility of a subtle yet chronic sense of muscular strain, tension, or discomfiture. Thus, to say I feel, is merely saying, the body is tense or uptight. For there are no feelers of feeling, thinkers of thoughts, doers of deeds. There is feeling, thinking, and doing, but these do not need to be perceived, practiced, or performed by a strawman. It is just what is so of itself.
Freud’s interpretation of the problem at hand is also perfectly unhelpful. It addresses the primordial dilemma of Man which has always been there, whether we divide him or not. Here we find the Superego, Ego, and Id. That is, he can choose to be Good, all of the time, some of the time, or none of the time. And there it is. To say there is a higher self is simply an easy way for a lower self to continually evade itself, preventing itself from realizing its own illusory nature. On the other hand, one might instead say, “I must do something about my lower self, for if I got rid of it, I would be better, happier, and more secure.” And nothing strengthens the delusion of there being a lower self more than that. Who knows, maybe one day psychologists might start reassembling the egos, rather than maintaining the schizophrenia by keeping the human psyche divided. A normal person is just a fascinated, enchanted, neurotic human being. But providing he knows how to behave himself most of the time he never becomes much of a problem, either to himself or to others.
I have consistently noticed when talking to different persons about the subject of ego that nearly always, the individual believes their ego is something which they possess. In these conversations I’ve had, and in general speech, psychologically the person is inevitably referring to their ego, rather than from it. Thus the personality ends up splitting itself, as well as adjusting and adapting itself to fit and fill whatever voids a particular situation may ask of it or allow for. And regarding differences between ego, egoism, and egotism: The ordinary person knows his I exists, that is ego, and his attitudes and behaviors are labeled as egotistical when they go a bit too far out of bounds. Really, though, he cannot be anything but egoistic or egotistical because that is how an ego-ness thinks. It is a state of consciousness under hypnosis having delusions of selfness, it thus performs egoisms and egotisms.
Let us say that an acrobat is one who performs stunts. It is the tricks he performs which classify him as acrobatic. If he thinks he can be an acrobat without performing, or can perform acts without being an acrobat, then he has become confused. If he is confused and then injures himself, he usually becomes disillusioned. If he takes it all as a matter of course and eventually forgets that he is an acrobat, whether he is or not, or forgets that it was only for work or for show, then he has become a real person. People have written books on how to be a real person. I can assure you that this requires no effort at all, it is practically automatic.
According to other sources, egoism is the concept of ethics that composes self-interest as the substance of morality. And or the conviction that one was not created to aid or help others and has no compulsion to do so. While egotism, on the other hand, is the practice of talking about oneself exceptionally because of an unjustified sense of narcissism. Either way, these all relate to attitudes and intemperance’s which are simply ordinary functions of ego-ness. When an individual believes that he is a self or has a self, regardless of what constitutes his idea and what it represents, he cannot help being selfish and self-centered. I do not necessarily imply this in a negative sense. It does mean however that when he attempts not to be selfish it is always somewhat artificial or false. His own idea of himself rests on the conviction that he is separate from the world, with self and other being entirely different things. This necessitates the differentiation between selfishness and selflessness.
Personality, basically, is the notion of categorizing human temperaments, inclinations, tendencies, habits, prejudices, preferences, and so on, and placing these into a basket called a person. In other words, it refers to one unit or representative of the general human pattern. Ego is not something that can be fixed, changed, removed, replaced, relinquished, or transcended in any way. It is spurious. There is no lower self or higher self, why should there be, and whether they are veridical or not, even the soul or ego only need exist if one so insists that they must. For the same reason that no one can control their own minds, no one can transcend their own ego. By whom would it be transcended, by whom? That is the question.
The fact that the world’s majority believes something or even many things that are untrue is not the main problem. Most Buddhists are just as stuck on the idea of non self as the rest of the world are stuck on the idea of self. It is the same dilemma. The ego, personality, soul, self-image, character, whatever, simply stops being a problem for anyone who cultivates complete inner sufficiency, control, strength, discipline, virtue, integrity, and Value. Some of the most kindly, compassionate, gentle, and thoughtful people, or human beings, have been those who have dedicated their lives simply to serving that which is right and Good. They know nothing about religion, yet they are always honest. They know nothing about meditation, yet they are always peaceful. They know nothing of philosophy, and yet they are always wise.
There is no way of holding on to existence because there is nothing to cling to. And in any case, try as one may, but there is no one there to hold on in the first place. Nature thus inevitably achieves total and utter letting go-ness for us. It helps greatly when those illusory hands grasping at smoke decide finally to go with the wind rather than into it. With correct wisdom, consciousness extirpates the underlying tendency to the conceits of mind; “I am such, I have, and I want.” It is living every day according to one’s own highest values, ideals, convictions, and integrities, without deviation. Technically, everyone is already a Jivanmukta, Christ, or Buddha anyway. It is only those individuals conducting themselves as such who bring to realization that which has always been known.
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