THE ILLUSORY SELF - ECKHART TOLLE
The word “I” embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth, depending
on how it is used.
In conventional usage, it is not only one of the most frequently used
words in the language (together with the related words: “me,” “my,”
“mine,” and “myself”) but also one of the most misleading.
In normal everyday usage, “I” embodies the primordial error, a misperception
of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego.
This illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep
insights not only in to the reality of space and time but also into
human nature, referred to as “an
optical illusion of consciousness.”
That illusory self then becomes the basis for all further
interpretations, or rather misinterpretations of reality, all thought
processes, interactions, and relationships.
Your reality becomes a reflection of the original illusion.
The good news is: If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves.
The recognition of illusion is also its ending.
Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality. In the seeing
of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself.
So what is the nature of this illusory self?
What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are.
By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are
is confused
with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of “I” in your mind
and whatever the “I” has identified with.
So what do the usual “I” and the related “me,” “my,” or “mine” refer to?
When a young child learns that a sequence of sounds produced by the
parents’ vocal cords is his or her name, the child begins to equate a
word, which in the mind becomes a thought, with who he or she is.
At that stage, some children refer to themselves in the third person.
“Johnny is hungry.”
Soon after, they learn the magic word “I” and equate it with their
name, which they have already equated with who they are.
Then other thoughts come and merge with the original thought.
The next step are thoughts of me and mine to designate things that are
somehow part of “I.”
This is identification with objects, which means investing things, but
ultimately
thoughts that represent things, with a sense of self, thereby deriving an
identity from them.
When “my” toy breaks or is taken away, intense suffering arises. Not
because of any intrinsic value that the toy has – the child will soon
lose interest in it, and it will be replaced by other toys, other
objects – but because of the thought of “mine”. The toy became part of
the child’s developing sense of self, of “I.”
And so as the child grows up, the original Ithought attracts other
thoughts to itself: It becomes identified with a gender, possessions,
the sense perceived body, a nationality, race, religion, profession.
Other things the “I” identifies with are roles – mother, father,
husband, wife, and so on – accumulated knowledge or opinions, likes
and dislikes, and also things that
happened to “me” in the past, the memory of which are thoughts that further
define my sense of self as “me and my story.”
These are only some of the things people derive their sense of
identity form. They are ultimately no more than thoughts held together
precariously by the fact that they are all invested with a sense of
self.
This mental construct is what you normally refer to when you say “I.”
To be more precise: Most of the time it is not you who speaks when you
say or think “I” but some aspect of that mental construct, the egoic
self.
Once you awaken, you still use the word “I,” but it will come from a
much deeper place within yourself.
Most people are still completely identified with the incessant stream
of mind, of compulsive thinking, most of it repetitive and pointless.
There is no “I” apart from their thought processes and the emotions that go with
them.
This is the meaning of being spiritually unconscious.
When told that there is a voice in their head that never stops
speaking, they say, “What voice?” or angrily deny it, which of course
is the voice, is the thinker, is the unobserved mind.
It could almost be looked upon as an entity that has taken possession of them.
--
Thanks and best regards
J.Suresh
New No.3, Old No.7,
Chamiers road - 1st Lane,
Alwarpet,
Chennai - 600018
Ph: 044 42030947
Mobile: 91 9884071738
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