Birth of the Thinking Ego

For me, the function of the ego is to shape the expression of reality. Rather like a gardener who shapes an uncultivated piece of land into a neat garden. Physical reality is just the expression of particular ideas in God’s mind. God’s mind just is. Reality denotes the active expression of God’s mind.

In my view, in the beginning, whenever that was, points of consciousness are created at the highest plane and then descend very slowly down the planes or levels of reality, from higher levels to lower levels. Each point of consciousness is completely impersonal and lives its life as a passive, non-thinking primitive ego that just lives in the moment, without any long-term memory of past or future. Because it is non-thinking, it has no desires. What set-up allows the ideas to be remembered? As consciousness descends down the levels of reality, eventually there comes a time when the ideas in the flow need to be remembered. To enable this to happen, the points of consciousness are then given the asset of memory, and the mind begins to develop.

Each point of consciousness remembers what it found interesting in the flow. These interests create desires, as the mind becomes active. Over time, the memories and preferences and desires consolidate into a point of consciousness that orientates itself around its memories. When this consolidation is fully accomplished, what we have is a new thinking ego.

A thinking ego begins as a point of consciousness with its memories, awareness, and preferences. The ego is now a functional point of consciousness that has desires. The fully-consolidated thinking ego can be summed up in one of the most famous expressions in Western philosophy, the Cogito of Rene Descartes.
I think, therefore I am.

The awareness gives rise to experience that is felt to be related to itself. It learns to like some features in the flow, and dislike other features. So it gradually acquires the ability to make judgements. Overall, experience is judged in order to ascertain its value or its meaning. The memories and preferences that have most importance to the ego evolve traits of character that will shape the ego’s journey as it begins its incarnation on the plane of Earth. Each ego becomes a manifestation of character, beliefs and abilities.

When the ego has exhausted all the potentiality available for it on Earth, then it is enlightened. Enlightenment enables the ego to carry on its evolutionary journey by reversing its previous descent down the planes and instead begin rising up the planes, to higher planes than Earth. But now the ego is qualitatively different and more evolved than the pre-enlightenment ego. The ego is a unit of divine consciousness. It has always been divine, and never loses that divinity.

Form and Structure of the Ego

Overall, within a perspective of theosophy, the primeval consciousness (or God) gradually gave birth to a multitude of egos, which existed on the higher planes of reality, which are the worlds without form. These planes are nebulous and ethereal compared to the plane of physical matter. The ego was an empty form, without any essence. The way that I understand this wonder is to think of the ego as being without any mental structures of any kind. The ego is undifferentiated from the background from which it came, and completely amorphous. It functions primarily on emotional experience (presumably the experiences of bliss and peace), and its mind is inactive since these planes are non-cognitive ones.

Over the course of aeons the ego gravitates down the planes till it comes to the four lower jhanas, which are the worlds of form. Now its mind is made active. Desire appears for the first time. This activity is a fundamental change. The mind creates form by gradually producing a subject-object dichotomy in experience. The ego changes from an impersonal non-dual entity to a personal dual entity of me and not-me. The incessant incarnations force the ego to create patterns to its thinking. Mental structure is created by developing habitual patterns of thinking and responding. This means that the ego is forced to differentiate its intangibility into defined structures in its mind. These structures, these patterns, create the thinking ego’s existence. The ego becomes a creature of habit.

Another way of understanding this perspective is to consider the idea of boundaries. When the ego is first created, its consciousness is nebulous and without boundaries. It is a self-contained unity, a monad, but with no awareness and no thinking ability. Through aeons of reincarnating around the higher planes of existence it gradually descends down to less-refined levels. The higher planes are nebulous and formless, without any boundaries (rather like colour: colour exists but it has no boundaries to it, since boundaries would give it shape). The lower planes gradually become more dense, since we are now in the worlds of form. The life forms in these regions begin to need shapes and boundaries. Finally the physical plane of solid matter (represented by Earth) is reached, and this is the densest of all. On the physical plane, boundaries are really sharp.

So for the ego, as it descends slowly down the planes of reality, boundaries get created as it becomes less nebulous, and consciousness becomes aware of itself. Boundaries bring awareness with them. Boundaries and awareness are the stuff from which the ego can create itself.

From Non-Duality to Dualism

The scenario that I have described explains how God creates a dualistic world from a non-dualistic monism. The key feature that accomplishes this in an automatic way is the mind. In monism the mind of an ego is inactive, so that reality is non-cognitive for it. The ego is just a witness to reality, and does not get involved with what it witnesses. Then as units of consciousness emanate down the levels of reality, a point is reached when their minds are activated. This activation creates dualism.

The dualism is vague at first and alternates with non-dualism as each ego uses its mind in dualism and after a while goes back to the non-cognitive state: the ego cycles between cognition and non-cognition (or we can say that the ego cycles between personality and impersonality). With repeated incarnations, each ego uses its mind more and more, and goes back to non-cognitive states less and less. Finally when it reaches the Earth plane the ego is fully functioning in its mind, and so the Earth plane is a fully-cognitive experience for humans.

The switch from non-duality to duality is a gradual switch, as each ego learns to handle its mind over a time period of numerous incarnations.

Overall, in non-duality the ego is passive and just a witness, functioning only on emotion. It can be understood as being impersonal, since the mind is inactive. When its mind becomes activated, then desire is aroused, and by using desire it can participate in reality. Now it can pursue personality.

The participation in reality creates anxiety, and this underlies every desire, thereby producing egotism. Egotism means the ego with anxiety. When the mind is activated, anxiety is automatically produced as well. There is no anxiety in non-duality. The function of anxiety is to drive evolution; anxiety prevents a life form from attaining permanent contentment and happiness (which would stop evolution completely). I assume that it is only the form worlds that evolve, not the formless worlds. For the spiritual seeker to return to non-duality, he or she has temporarily to get rid of all anxiety and all desire.

Whilst it is necessary to get rid of egotism (which is a psychological state of mind) before non-duality is again experienced, it is impossible to try and get rid of the ego (which is a state of being).

Mind is primary in dualism, and emotion is primary in non-dualism. Whether the person experiences dualism or non-dualism, there is no barrier to overcome. It all depends on whether the focus is on mind or on emotion. If you focus on emotion, you can remember that you had a good time, but you cannot remember details. To remember details, you need to activate the mind (and hence dualism), since memory only exists in an activated mind. When I enter the psychic mind, sometimes I focus on the mind and sometimes on emotion, so I slide effortlessly between dualism and non-dualism. When I experience non-dualism, I often prefer to focus on feeling the combination of mellow bliss and divine love. Its wonderful, and much better than either mellow bliss or love alone.

The Impersonal World

Non-duality is pure consciousness with no personality. The natural ego is consciousness held together by will power, not mind (since mind is latent). This creates an impersonal ego. When the ego is given memory, its mind becomes active. Now it can create identities: the personal ego is “born”.

Consider the emanation of the ego down the jhanas. Initially its mind is pure mind, since it has no personal identity. Hence the ego is impersonal, in a non-dual world. When it descends to jhana-3, the ego starts occasionally using its mind. Now it becomes a personal ego, in a world of dualism. When it withdraws back into “non-mind”, it becomes again an impersonal ego. So, gradually, the ego oscillates between being non-personal and personal as it slowly learns to use its mind.

Reality is non-dual, which means that there are no personal egos in it. The absence of personal egos means that Reality is beyond cause and effect. An impersonal ego does not create any cause and does not suffer any effect. Therefore Reality is beyond good and evil. Hence there is no morality in Reality.

The impersonal is non-moral. There is no anxiety in the impersonal. Therefore, there is no excitement in the impersonal. The personal world is a world of play, anxiety and punishment, whereas the impersonal world is a world of observation and no judgements.

Summary

Non-cognitive reality is a non-dual world, without the activity of any mind in it. Hence all egos in it have quiescent minds. When an ego’s mind is activated, it creates a dualism of subject and object. Hence the mind creates dualism. When the mind rests and becomes inactive, the ego returns to non-duality.

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Ian Heath
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.	The Metaphysical Origin of the Ego When I began entering the flow of ideas on a regular basis, several times a month, it changed my ideas on the nature of the ego. The ego and its nature have always been a difficult topic for thinkers. What impressed me was the Buddhist idea that most of the higher planes of reality are non-cognitive and formless ones. On these planes, nothing is cognitive and nothing has any form. I was able to use this idea to give a coherent account of non-duality. From the psychic level of mind I can look on all the suffering that I’ve been through, and know that it doesn’t matter. All psychological suffering is unimportant at the psychic level. This fact has been interpreted by many seekers to mean that they lose the identification with the ego. That is, at the psychic level the seeker no longer needs to identify with the ego. Is this belief correct? If so, what is the point of having an ego?
Sub - Headings
Form and Structure of the Ego
From Non-Duality to Dualism
The Impersonal World
Summary