Yeah yeah yeah I know what Freud says - but what do the people in this thread mean by it? It seemed that fresco, for example, was using the word to refer to the mind as a whole.
Actually, fresco's use of the word fits the Freudian model.
What I mean when using the term "ego" is the sentient-beings notion of if itself as a separate entity from the surrounding world. Ego is the dominent personality trait that is influenced by the Id and Super-Ego components described by Freud. None of these components has any real existence at all, though all of them combined tie us to the illusory world ... largely through our emotional attachment to self/ego.
Alright alright, so by "ego" everyone actually means ego, fine.
I still don't see how it's intuitive to believe that our "self" is not separate from the rest of the world. What are the assumptions that lead one to believe that?
It IS intuitive to believe that we exist in a world of multiplicity, of time and space. It is counter-intuitive to believe that the perceptual world is illusory and without substance. Why do some folks, often Buddhists, take such a contrary position?
Well, it is because we either ourselves have had an experience that leads us to believe in the world as illusion concept, and/or
We believe that to be the case because others whom we respect have been reporting such experiences for over two thousand years in many cultural sets, and/or
We see the possibility that things are not what they seem because of some set of equations, or scientific theories, that adopt that position to explain the nature of things.
Kickycan, I appreciate your persistence. If what we are saying is true it IS very important, is it not? So if you do not grasp the meaning of no-self, you would be organizing your life around an illusion. But in fact, Fresco, Tywevel, Asherman and I DO live most moments of our lives AS IF we are distinct things within a world of distinct things. In fact there are only processes which our language forces us to "freeze" as static beings. There is, however, only becoming or process. Be that as it may, you CAN see through the useful fiction of EGO, of a self separate from and surrounded by everything "outside" of ego. How do you do that? Well Tywvel has been insisting, correctly, on the absurdity of a self as an empirical entity. But if you meditate with sincerity and persistence; if you just sit and passively look without thinking (because thinking is full of inherited cultural assumptions that will distort your actual direct experience--your "imaculate perception", for the Catholics) at whatever is going on in your field of experience you will eventually see ego coming and going, serving a function but having no substance. You will see "through it" as it were. You will see that there is no little man behind your eyes to which perceptions happen. You will see that you actually ARE those perceptions. They ARE you, not happening TO a 'you.' The Hindu saying "That art thou" (Tat Tvam Asi) refers to that. It overcomes the dualism of subject (ego)-object ("thing" perceived). The Zen Buddhist have an equivalent phrase, "All things enlighten me", meaning IMO that every experience I have is of the REAL me. I AM the field of experience of each moment. It's a great feelling when you are meditating to actually see (intuitive perception) that you ARE the context of the room and anyone else who might be meditating with you. But normally we take for granted, because of conditioning--a conditioning that has real survival value for humans, but it spiritually costly--that we are isolated (by our skin) from the world IN WHICH we live. We ARE that world. But to realize that, not just to believe it, requires some de-conditioning.
