The World is the Ego’s Projection

We are entering a new phase now, the last phase of Kali Yuga, before the collapse, and it is essential now for Sat Yogis to attain the realization of nonduality.

And this is not so easy, because the ego-mind cannot grasp nonduality. And it cannot be adequately taught with signifiers, with language, because language is embedded in duality.

And so, although there is a great deal of very sophisticated, philosophical discourse, that attempts to prove the truth of advaita, nonduality, those words, even when one reads them deeply, do not tend to lead to the realization of nonduality. And because of the subtlety of the arguments that are involved in recognizing the falseness of maya, of this illusory world, are so inherently ambiguous—they can be interpreted in a number of ways, which is why there are many schools of advaita, let alone other schools of nonduality in the Buddhist traditions, and even in the Jewish and Christian traditions. And the Daoist of course, etc.

But nonduality is not a discourse, not a philosophy. It is the realization that only is attained when the mind—the thought-producing mind—which is embedded in duality, stops functioning.

But stops functioning while the consciousness that has been employing and identifying with language, with thoughts, remains alert, awake and attuned to that which is real, that emerges in consciousness when the thoughts fall away.

And so, although there is a wide variety of philosophies, and discourse of nonduality through the different traditions, the practice of yoga is the same. The practice of silencing the mind while remaining in natural, wakeful, naked awareness, as the Buddhists would, at least the Tibetan Buddhists, would tend to refer to it, or that state which is the Atman, the Self that is not an object of thought, and that perceives what the ego calls “the world”, as itself. As not separate from itself.

The Buddhist formula: nirvana is samsara, samsara is nirvana—but that formula is still in duality, because there is no samsara, and no nirvana. And as the great sages always emphasize, liberation from maya is not actually attained, it is just that ignorance drops away. The ignorance that obscures the fact that we always already know all of this because we are all this, and there is nothing but this.

But the discourse of the ego produces an obscuring of the truth of what we are. The truth of the Real.

What we discover if we analyze the nature of the situation from a psychological perspective, is that when the ego-mind is created in infancy, even in the intrauterine state, a proto-ego is already present, that imbibes the subconscious mind of the mother, even in the fetal state, and the energy field, and the relation of mother and father, and the family system, all of that is already in a nonverbal way in place, and then once language is acquired, the signifier become attached to those original affects, so if one was extremely traumatized, one’s thoughts will then be connected to those traumatic feeling states, and the kinds of thought patterns that will tend to repeat in the program of the ego, will tend to keep one in a state of fear of the Real.

Because the original encounter in the womb or during birth, if birth was traumatic, or in early infancy, or whenever in childhood an event comes that cannot be accommodated, that stops the going on being, and stops the ability even to suture the shock of an unexpected violation, or abandonment, or rejection or whatever the trauma consist of, produces a kind of glitch in the program, in which one cannot get beyond that point at which one defines oneself in relation to that trauma. And perhaps as “I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t exist, I’m not loveable”, or “I’m this” or “I’m that”—and the ego becomes afraid of the Real, and we call the Real at the level of ego, Real 1.

Because Real 1 is that level of the phenomenal plane that can’t be avoided; but can’t be dealt with adequately with language or with normal kinds of reactions. It is that aspect of Real 1, the physical reality, that is inherently traumatic. Such as physical pain, and bleeding, and vomiting, and dealing with all the various aspects of Real 1 that are extremely unpleasant; including illness and various other kinds of either disgusting or just unbearably horrible painful indigestible aspects of physical reality.

And then defenses and buffers get created against that, that produce the kind of personality strategy, and the kind of defenses and avoidances, and repressions that produce a particular form of ego structure.

It takes a long time, once a traumatized ego begins to develop higher layers of mentation, that can function beyond the glitch of the repressed trauma, and it tends to then want to live in a symbolic world, that is imaginarized. It wants to produce an imaginary form of enlightenment. Even an imaginary form of spirituality. Imaginary relationships to an imaginary God, in religious terms.

And it will cling to those, because it can produce hallucinatory satisfactions and gratifications, but that remain within the ego construct, and that the ego can then use as a discourse to support its justification of itself, its sense of goodness, its ability to relate in a way that it can feel that it fits in, that it’s acceptable, even that it’s loveable. But there is a terror underneath this, a terror that is never really eliminated, because the terror itself is so unbearable, that it creates a secondary feeling of shame, that it has such terror.

And then that kind of shame—and the shame is just about having a body, and being a body, that is subject to such horrific and embarrassing and ridiculous and horrifying Real 1 phenomena. And, of course, school children make fun of many of these Real 1 phenomena, and try to deal with them through ridicule and bullying, and all the other various ways that children can be cruel to one another.

But that, of course, increases the shame, and the sense even of guilt then, if one participates in those kinds of violative actions, that produce such a defense against getting to the deepest core of the ego’s rejection of the Real, let’s say, that it produces screen fears, that are not the real fears. It pretends to be afraid of other things. I can pretend to be afraid of a mouse, I’m not really, or a spider, or whatever else—and those things, although “I can get hysterical about them”, somewhere “I know I’m not really afraid of those things”, but those phobias then will produce a screen defense against what one is really terrified of.

And then of course, one creates also screen desires, to try to keep moving away from the feared objects, and the anxiety that is object-less, because it’s the Real itself that the ego becomes obsessed, and it moves towards objects that are always illusory forms of projection of a kind of rescue, from reality itself. But of course, it is doomed to failure.

So the ego cannot—once it is formed around this defensiveness—it cannot love in the real sense, because it cannot open its heart and release the defenses, because along with love will come the shame and the terror.

And so it tends to play with those feelings, but not to enter fully into divine love, which we would say is love of the Real, because the Real itself is the source of one’s terror.

As one becomes more sophisticated in one’s ability to analyze, or psychoanalyze, one’s own condition, one is able to gradually deconstruct and open up various of the layers that are producing the suffering, that is always a byproduct of the defenses and the closed-heartedness, and the imaginary relationship to reality.

But the ego can never open itself up totally, because the one doing the opening is always not going to open its own internal knot, that contains the core of the trauma. And thus, its own unconscious core, the censor, will always make sure that whatever is understood does not get too close to that ultimate barrier, against the fear of just completely depersonalizing and going into psychosis, because of an inability to cope with the affects and the energies.

But they will reappear in one’s life, in the form of rejection, and various other forms of suffering, and anxiety, which can reach very heavy duty levels, and of course karma, which can produce attacks upon one’s reputation, one’s goodness, one’s sense of wellbeing and acceptance in the world, and at the same time there can be nightmares and various forms of intrusive fantasies that come from these deep levels that one can’t keep out, and intrusive affects.

So people are suffering from these phenomena without understanding them. And because the ego itself is constructed out of these illusory thought forms and images, and fantasy structures that are based on the fear of the return of the Real, the ego produces its world. OK?

And that’s why in a certain sense, the Eka Jiva Vada that is often spoken about in advaita, which, in a way, you could say is solipsism, to use a Western term, phenomenologically is accurate. Because the ego only sees its own projections.

And its world becomes the projections writ large, coming back to it.

Audio File: The World is the Ego’s Projection – Audio File.MP3