--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "brontebaxter8" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So what is the ego, an I or a Me? "Me" is something that things are > done to. "I" is a doer.
>snip > Yes, Vedic philosophy seems so > unlimited. It speaks eloquently of the Unlimited. But it teaches you > that to live the Infinite, you have to give up your personhood. I > have found out from experience that simply is not true. In order to understand the ego it is first useful to understand what the soul is, as the ego usurps it's identity from the soul much like Duryodana usurped the kingdom (awareness of spirit) from the Pandavas in the Bhagavad Gita thru a rigged game of dice (symbolizing the illusion of material existence it's not real it's a 'game'). The soul is a pure reflection of God called the Jivatma, when in the beginning when it was tempted by Lucifer (maya/avidya) in the Garden of Eden (pure innocence) it was warned not to eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and evil or surely it would die (be subject to the wheel of samasara/reincarnation). Because it disobeyed and identified itself with material creation (i.e. the flesh) it became trapped due to attachment, the product of this identification is the 'ego' or the pseudo-soul. Evolution is the process of shedding this identification with illusory matter (maya/avidya) and reestablishing the reign of soul (pure spirit) or put another way enabling the Pandavas to regain there lost kingdom from the wicked Kurus (sense tendencies resulting in attachment & identification). Ref. MMY Flower analogy.
