THE EGO: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, Category 8
Volume 6, Part 1
When spiritual seekers consider the fundamental question “What am I?” they’re asking, “What is the ego?” and “Is this apparent person all that I am?” In addition, “If I am more, how can I come into consciousness awareness of and union with this greater Self?” A dictionary definition of “ego” is: “The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves.” Paul Brunton gives us a larger perspective.
The ego’s consciousness is a vastly reduced, immeasurably weakened echo of the Overself-Consciousness. It is always changing and dissipates in the end whereas the Other is ever the same and undying. But the ego is drawn out of the Other and must return to it, so the link is there. What is more, the possibility of returning voluntarily and deliberately is also there. [PB 8:1.135 -Category 8, chapter 1, #135]
This narrow fragment of consciousness which is the person that I am hides the great secret of life at its core. [PB 8:1.111]
…the “I” cannot be separated from its thoughts since it is composed of them, and them alone. The ego is, in short, only an idea, or a trick that the thought process plays on itself. [PB 8:2.46 partial]
When it is declared that the ego is a fictitious entity, what is meant is that it does not exist as a real entity. Nevertheless, it does exist as a thought. [PB 8:2.32]
The ego is by nature a deceiver and in its operations a liar. For if it revealed things as they really are, or told what is profoundly true, it would have to expose its own self as the arch-trickster pretending to be the man himself and proffering the illusion of happiness. [PB 8:3.79]
The ego borrows its reality, its power of perception, its very capacity to be aware, from its association with the Overself. [PB 8:1.28]
PB in these notes on Ego indicates that it’s important to understand the nature of ego so that we can begin to objectify it – get some distance between ourselves and this thought and feeling structure built on memories both recent and ancient.
The mind has different layers between the outer surface consciousness and the inner fundamental consciousness. Those intermediate layers do not represent the true Self, and are, therefore, to be crossed and passed in the effort to know the true Self. For instance, some of the layers are conscious and others are subconscious; there are layers of memory and layers of desire; there are layers which are storehouses of the results of past experiences in earlier re-incarnations–they contain the habits and trends, complexes and associations which have come down from those earlier times. There are other layers which contain the past of the present reincarnation with its suggestions from heredity, from education, from upbringing, from environment, and from childhood. There are layers which are filled with the desires and hopes, the wishes and aspirations, and ambitions and passions of the ego. All these layers must be penetrated by the mystic and he must go deeper and deeper beneath them for none of them represent the true Self. He is not to permit himself to be detained in any of them. They are all within the confined sphere of the personal ego and in that sense they are part of the false self. Too often they detain the seeker on his path or distract him from his progress: to know the true Self is to know a state of being into which none of them enters. [PB 8:1.30]
The true self of man is hidden in a central core of stillness, a central vacuum of silence. This core, this vacuum occupies only a pinpoint in dimension. All around it there is a ring of thoughts and desires constituting the imagined self, the ego. This ring is constantly fermenting with fresh thoughts, constantly changing with fresh desires, and alternately bubbling with joy or heaving with grief. Whereas the centre is forever at rest, the ring around it is never at rest; whereas the centre bestows peace, the ring destroys it. [PB 8:1.32]
The Overself-consciousness is reflected into the ego, which then imagines that it has its own original, and not derived awareness. [PB 8.1:33]
Just as the Divine Being is both Mind-in-itself and Mind-in-activity, according to which aspect we look at, as well as Power-static and Power-dynamic, so its ray in man is Pure Being-Consciousness appearing as the mentally-active ego, as well as Life-Force appearing as physically-active body.
[PB 8:1.57]
Neither the body with its senses nor the mind with its thoughts is the ultimate being that I am. The body acts and the mind moves, but behind them is the thought-free Awareness, the Knowing Principle. [PB 8:1.58]
PB indicates that our sense of self has a double nature which consists of an apparent person with various qualities, likes and dislikes, associations, etc., and the light of awareness which knows. Think of the dream analogy: The dream subject believes itself to be the knower and doer, but our waking self understands itself to be the true knower of the dream experience.
Everything remembered is a thought in consciousness. This not only applies to objects, events, and places. It also applies to persons, including oneself, he who is remembered, the “I” that I was. This means that my own personality, what I call myself, was a thought in the past, however strong and however persistent. But the past was once the present. Therefore I am not less a thought now. The question arises what did I have then which I still have now, unchanged, exactly the same. It cannot be “I” as the person, for that is different in some way each time. It is, and can only be, “I” as Consciousness. [PB 8:2.3]
With the body, the thoughts, and the emotions, the ego seems to complete itself as an entity. But where do we get this feeling of “I” from? There is only one way to know the answer to this question: the way of meditation. This burrows beneath the three mentioned components and penetrates into the residue, which is found to be nothing in particular, only the sense of Be-ing. And this is the real source of the “I” notion, the self-feeling. Alas! the source does not ordinarily reveal itself, so we live in its projection, the ego, alone. We are content to be little, when we could be great. [PB 8:2.6]
This is part one of a multi-part investigation of ego and Overself. We’ll continue next e-teaching.
Compiled by Judy S.