609 July 11 26 Do you exist without an ego?

Do you exist without an ego?  A Zen perspective. 

The answer depends entirely on which lens you look through. If you talk to a Zen practitioner,  a Western psychologist, or a neuroscientist, you will get 3 completely different answers.

To make sense of it, it helps to first separate the two terms, because we often use them as synonyms all the time.

The Ego: Think of this as our "  mental identification of our personality" that constructs our intellectual, emotional, and social identity based on our experience, thoughts, feelings, memory, labels, social, and professional roles.

The Self: In philosophy it usually refers to the core of your being, the fundamental sense of awareness that exists before any ego-driven self-made mental identification gets attached to it. 

There are 3 approaches:

1. Western Psychology (The Functional View)

In psychology (starting with Freud and moving into modern frameworks), the answer is  no  for a practical reason. Both Self and Ego do exist but as one single unit.

In this view, the ego is a vital mental identification of the self. Without your ego, you wouldn't function physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. Therefore, a functional human "self" requires an existing ego to navigate the physical, mental, and societal world.

2. Eastern Philosophy (The Non-Dual Zen View)

In traditions like Zen Buddhism our personal self or our ego do not exist as solid permanent, independent, separate, self-sustained entities. However they do exist as transient, and interconnected living entitties. The feeling of being a separate "Self" looking out at the world is considered an illusion / delusion created by the ego in the first place.

Zen considers that the ego is the main source of our suffering produced by desires, aversion, and illusion.

Buddhism teaches the concept of Anatta (non-self*). 

When you quiet the mind entirely through deep meditation, you hit a state of  “no-self” or "no-mind" or “ True Self” that is  pure awareness witnessing current reality.. In that state, the ego (the self-made identification of who you are) vanishes. 

Remember : *No-self means that the self does not exist as a separate entity but as an interconnected entity with the environment.

3.Neuroscience (The Brain View)

Neuroscience points to something called the Default Mode Network (DMN) 

Diffuse neural activity or DMN is activated when 1)  you are day-dreaming, 2) have negative feelings, or 3) thinking about yourself. They are  the biological feeding grounds of our ego. 

When people take psychedelics or engage in decades of intensive meditation, activity in the DMN drops significantly. At this point, people experience what is clinically called "ego dissolution."

[Normal Waking State] --------> High DMN Activity ------> Strong Ego/Narrative

[Deep Meditation/Psychedelics] -> Low DMN Activity -------> Pure Awareness (No Ego).

When the DMN goes quiet, the mental story of  “I, me, myself, mine " disappears, but consciousness doesn't turn off. Instead, people report a profound sense of pure, unattached presence—

an "limitless self" that is interconnected with everything rather than being trapped inside a skull or self-image.

The Takeaway of all of this.: 

Western psychology & neuro science approaches. The " Little self" is our unique individual narrative. Personality, mental, emotional  and behavior cannot exist without the ego. 

Eastern view: The "True self" is pure consciousness that is an active awareness that observes current reality, our thoughts,feelings, behavior. Not only it exists without the ego—it is only fully revealed when the ego steps aside and disappears completely.

SO:

Do you exist without an ego? Yes as a functional mental entity and NO replies Zen as a living entity.