21 Aug 2004
Living With Lies
'I' or 'ego' or 'self' is fiction. It's a mere construct of thought. There is no such entity as 'I'. What makes me think so? The absolute fact that nothing survives death suggests me that 'I' is mere fictional entity. Invented by mind out of insecurity. And the whole life just becomes a mind-game; perpetually keeping one in illusion! Naturally, the desire for its permanence forces one to entertain beliefs in after-life, punishment/reward after death, and God. To make it more sound, the same is projected backwards, in that one believes this human life is a result of good deeds in previous life.
Such a waste of time! It's the most harmful lie man has told himself. 'I' makes the illusion of division more credible. It divides not just man and man, but it divides him from the rest of cosmos. Curiously, the whole invention of 'salvation' and 'God' intends to make him 'unite' with 'the Other'! Man's life, thus, is a journey from illusion to illusion, all the while blinding himself to reality that's always with him!
Death ends everything. The consciousness and the entity that had been breathing, feeling, seeing, thinking... is gone! It simply vanishes into nothingness. It defies human comprehension, and thus he attaches mystery to that. And the root of this is fear, the most dreadful fear that pervades the collective consciousness and spreads from one generation to the next. No wonder, religion is such a massive industry. It demands extraordinary clarity to 'see' that nothing has actually gone, for there was no such entity in the first place!
There is no 'my consciousness', but only 'consciousness', and it is not a special faculty gifted to man but it is the very nature of life. There's only life. 'My life', 'your life', etc is utterly illogical. Of course, for convenience of communication, it is proper to use 'you' and 'I', else identification becomes unnecessarily complicated. It is the assumption that 'I' is an independent entity that is harmful. It is based on fear and insecurity, so it is false. One may ask, "then who the hell is perceiving all this?" The fact is - there is only perception. No entity that is perceiving. The entity enters in only when mind enters into perception. Anyone can find out this upon careful observation. There is only perception. Then mind enters and says, "I like this", or, "I do not like this". It is at this moment that 'I' enters and distorts the perception. It forces a division between 'the observer' and 'the observed', to borrow from JK. While the fact is - 'the observer is the observed'. 'I' is mere fiction, a lie that we live our whole life with!
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By Vj
23 Aug 2004, 11:45am [ Reply ]
hi JLU
well, yes, i could quite be wrong. let's take ur point - that 'i' verily exists and is valid as long as the individual is alive. i don't pretend to have answers, but it does hit some questions - is this assumption/conclusion a fact, or r we conditioned to believe this as true? perception is a fact, right? perception is in the very nature of life; it is in the nature of eyes to see, ears to hear, etc. breathing is involuntary, for it is in the nature of life. imagine me in a state of coma. perception is affected, yet the other processes still go on. all these r facts. death is a mere result of wear-and-tear and thus a transformation from one form to another. all this can verily go on even without the sense of an 'i', as in case of animals. right? 'i' comes in only when thought comes in. 'i' in the sense of an entity that is perceiving. there is no 'i' when there is only perception and no intereference of mind. it is not an imaginary state in romantic imagination, but a fact. all of us have such 'egoless' states - when we walk and walk uphill and come upon a breathtaking landscape smeared by the tender light of the sun just about to set. or, for that matter, a fantastic waterfall or a beautiful face. so, 'i' comes in only when one stops perceiving with clarity and give way to thinking. so, it appears to me that 'i' is a mere invention of the mind, that has been traditionally accepted and became so embedded in human consciousness that it is taken as a fact. and, interestingly, all religion advises 'transcending' or 'dissolving' the 'i' - either by prayer or practises. but then, is it not a mind-game where 'i' is pitted against itself!? 'i' itself is trying to control 'i'! 'i' starts with mind, ends with mind. life goes on.
By JLU
21 Aug 2004, 11:18pm [ Reply ]
There must be some truth in what you say about God, after/before lives etc. But still..... why is 'I' or 'ego' non-existant just because we has a definite life time? It exists and is valid as long as the individual is alive. But it's true that it clouds vision - preventing us from seeing the surroundings as they are, but instead playing before us a visual created by its perceptions. Hence the talk about overcoming the ego, it's influence on behaviour etc etc.