The Ego

Hindu (ॐ) depiction of
Mahakali (महाकाली) sitting on a Lotus

The Ego |
Wednesday – August 19, 2026

Ego or Egos? According to some it would be quite appropriate to refer to the egos, the many egos, unless one seeks to combine the many egos into one superego, read "Theory of Mind". The etymology of the term ego traces back to ancient Greece, where Ego Emis (ἐγώ εἰμι) mean something like "I exist", and of course the latin term for it did keep the same meaning, something that puts the focus one the self, me.

    Now, allowing ourselves to go back to psychology and modern spiritual confusions, modern psychology more specifically I must add, ego did also acquire a different meaning under the guise of Dr. Sigmund Freud, and according whom the ego was an integral part of the "Theory of Mind", really that it was quite possible to describe the ego as some kind of human bridge or connector between the subconscious/unconscious and primal and the rational, or the preconscious mind, but of course what this scheme forgets is the suprarational mind, and by forgetting or missing out on the suprarational, the fact that the this integral part of the human body stands above reason and the corporeal world, one cannot truly access knowledge, and instead what this scheme does manage to produce is nothing but a vast confusion, a topic that I covered the other day. Now, some other recent people apart from Dr. Freud took another approach entirely to the ego, proclaiming and asserting such things as the superiority of the dead ego in the supposed "ego death", meaning something like forgetting and really becoming released from all primal urges and remaining in a state of pure potential, really a nonstate. While this conception of the "ego death" may sound quite alluring, one must not confuse this with true enlightenment, read "My Views on Bodhicitta" and true wisdom, for the people who assert "ego death" are never capable to actually attaining anything else but radical living in the moment, really a kind of stasis and inability to cope with time, but this inability to cope with time still does not liberate these people form the effects of time, read "The End of History". It is perhaps also too easy to say that one may just live in the moment without any regard for the "substantial side of the moment"*, which means that while you can claim to be someone who depends on nothing but the moment and wherever the flow takes you, you must still admit that you are guided by something beyond yourself, but that this something is capable of affecting you. I suppose that what I am trying to say is that most people who claim to only "live in the moment" actually are just lying, for it seems that either they are not actually just living in the moment, or they have deluded themselves.

    But all of these points aside, what is the ego really? Again, according to the ancient Greeks the ego is you, or rather the person and the thing that you experience as yourself, but according to modern and profane science there are multiple levels of the ego, just as there are multiple levels of the mind, and I suppose we must accept the idea that the mind and the ego are separated in this instance, by this I mean to say that the ego is a part of the mind but the mind encompasses much more than the ego. To return to the concept of "ego death", is this never called for? First of all, we must understand what "ego death" actually means beyond all the talk of "living in the moment": the death of the ego would actually be quite impossible for most people, at least not if they seek to maintain their sanity and their identity, read "What is Mental Illness?", for ego death can likely be said to manifest in two ways: either you undergo a complete transformation, a kind of qualified transfiguration; or you undergo a complete intrapersonal disintegration, read "Qualification", something that psychoanalysis calls for, and something that is really very dark and devastating. Now, doubtless I suppose it would be true that most people believe that they are actually trying to reach a kind of qualified station by attempting all of these misguided things, which is a symptom in and of itself. Of course, it can be fully understandable why some people would like to pursue a kind of death of the ego in our material world, but again these people are far too often misguided and they have been misguided by this inversion of materialism, but again they have also been misguided by themselves.

    Then we have the matter of egoism, which itself is also something quite impossible, if by "egoism" we mean the exaltation of selfishness, as if only living for yourself would somehow work in reality; of course, it is impossible and the proposition would collapse under most circumstances, even if we only concern ourselves with the animal kingdom, but among the animals, only the most primitive of animals actually live this way, passive filter feeders etc. It may seem strange if you believe in "progress" that modern humans, read "Modern Civilization", should fancy themselves sea sponges and plankton, which also ties back to the concept of radical living in the moment; again, this outlook may still make sense, without working in practise of course. Besides, egoism and its proponents, egoists, often call for some kind of reasoned living, which also means that they believe themselves to be more evolved than most other people; they believe themselves to actually be free and independent from the "old world". Again, we have seen these people and their children in the past, but they are actually quite an amusing lot. Could a child raise itself? Is a child completely independent from his parents? If you think that, then I can understand why you would strive for a more primitive form, or really for a more disfigured form, read "The Primordial Body".

    At the end of the day, whether or not we accept the ego, we must understand the self as an integral part of the mind, but then again the self is never separated from the mind, despite the moderns many attempt to sever this connection. Again, most of these things are harmless because they are impossible to achieve, but nonetheless the danger lurks in the shadows and will expose itself whenever people expect it the least.

Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – August 19, 2026.

Footnote(s)

* What I mean by "substantial side of the moment" has all to do with the potential of the moment, but not with the revelation of the moment, for all moments in time reveal something about us.