Ego Does Not Exist

English philosopher Alan Watts suggests ‘You don’t exist’. 

‘I wonder what you mean when you use the word I?’ he goes onto ask.

Alan says we don’t really have an ego. Or rather, it is a hallucination. And also that we can’t get rid of our ego even if we wanted to…

there’s nothing more egotistical than a person trying to get rid of their ego.

This always makes me chuckle.

Hold on hold on back up, I hear you say. First, you tell me I don’t exist, the cheek of it. Then you tell me I can’t even get rid of the very thing that…does not exist? That does not make sense.

Thought experiment. Even better if you can do it for real, though you will need some magnets…

Imagine holding two magnets of opposite poles together. As you can imagine, they instantly stick to each other.

Fine. Ok, now we are holding two magnets of the same pole. This time, as we try to push them together, we are stopped by a powerful force. Just as we’d expect with two magnets of the same pole, right? This invisible force we call repulsion is basically the invisible ego or ‘I’ Alan Watts is talking about.

Next time you see someone becoming defensive or egotistical, think of the proverbial magnets.

Alan spoke about ego or the ‘I’ at a far deeper level, though. He referred to it as the fundamental essence or experience of yourself. Your I-‘ness’ or you-‘ness’.

Modern neuroscience would corroborate this. There is no one given area of our brain for one’s sense of identity, self or 'I'. So technically 'you' - whatever that means, don’t exist.

Brain scans show our identity is instead constructed from something called self-referential processes. In simple language, we come to understand ourselves through the perspectives and reactions of other people. Such processes preside in default mode network (DMN). Our brain’s default or baseline state of activity, across various brain regions talking to each other.

We literally come to know ourselves through other people. And of course, it is a hell lot more complicated than this.

Alan Watts suggests our ego or self is hallucinated. Neuroscientist Anil Seth, examiner of the neuro-correlates of consciousness, suggests reality is essentially a controlled hallucination. In his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, Anil claims the brain is not passively recording reality, but instead continually predicts what is out there, using incoming sensory information only to correct its predictions. Perception is roughly therefore:

Prediction -> compare with sensory evidence -> update prediction

Example:

Prediction: ‘There is probably my white coffee mug sitting on the desk where I left it’

Compare with sensory evidence: Light from the desk reaches your eyes

The brain compares its prediction with the incoming visual signals – is there an object where I expected? Is it mug-shaped? Is it roughly the right size and colour?

Update prediction: If the sensory evidence mostly matches the prediction

Conclusion:

Prediction -> Compare -> Match -> Experience ‘my coffee mug’

The brain is constantly making predictions about the appearance of the world. Reality is therefore a controlled hallucination. Hallucination because the brain constructs experience (rather than passively recording it) and controlled because external sensory input constraints the constructions.

Speaking of hallucinations, what of psychedelics? Can altered conscious states do us justice here? Perhaps.

During psychedelic trips, people report feeling as though boundaries between body or mind and outside world simply dissolve. Could this be ego death? Or being at one with the universe. And the psychiatric equivalent is psychosis or schizophrenia. People having experienced psychosis also sometimes feel as though they have no sense of self, along with a variety of unusual anomalous perceptual experiences.

Coming back to Watts, in another of his lectures, he describes the sensation of ego like muscular strain. Take his example of how people squint their eyes to read something better, or strain to hear a faint sound. Such squinting and straining doesn’t in fact help us see or hear any better, yet we still do it for some reason. And yet believing it does is basically something approximate to our ego experience. A clutching up, straining.

Ok, let’s recap:

You don’t exist

Sense of self, even perception of reality is much more like a controlled hallucination

Ego does not exist, but you still can’t get rid of it! How can you get rid of something that does not exist? Think of it more like strain or two of the same magnets being pushed together, they create an invisible force called repulsion

Ok great, I don’t exist, now what then?

Hm

That’s actually a really good question. This is like one of those aha moments I guess, when you finally realise something that’s been staring you in the face. First, let us think what this is not about.

This is not about getting rid of your ego. It can’t be done, no matter how hard you try – and that trying is the very same ego strain you are trying to get rid of, try getting out of that one!

It is not about being less egotistical. Although this wouldn't hurt.

Perhaps then it is trying less hard to improve oneself, or to become what everyone else expects of you. It might teach us to accept ourselves as we are at the most basic level. Let me throw this over to you and ask

What if your I-ness is indeed non existent, how do you feel about this?

What does ego mean to you?

At the very least, this insight could help us see with greater clarity. Because, if this is indeed so, then this forces us to re-examine all that which we are. At least, that which we think we are. Perhaps this could even be a little terrifying to accept. Magnetic force is strong, but remove the resistance and the repulsion falls away. It is both a very real force yet completely invisible. Ego requires resistance, repulsion to suspend itself, or give it momentum. At its deepest core, ego needs tension. The bottom line is you, I, = a chronic state of tension.

There nothing to be done about this. Realising this changes nothing. It simply lends a perspective.