Your “I” is your evil ego, lose it, they said; do not think of yourself as an ‘I’. How is that possible, I asked. If I do squish my I into an shapeless mass, devoid of individuality, it is still an I, albeit an amorphous I. Until someday that I transpose viscerally into another perhaps, living or otherwise, I shall remain this very I, and even if I did transpose, the other will now be my I. There is no escaping this I. It is here to stay, said I.
Do not obsess about your I; do good to others, they said, and forget about your “I”. Let your I dissolve into this water nourishing others, they said. Yes, I dissolved my I, but it surfaced in others. What of them, I asked. They are all but I’s, in you and you and you and in him and her and them.
We may give up the little “i” in one to benefit the larger communal I, but the I remains. It becomes even bigger than before, bursting with all the self-righteousness of your selfless deeds. The individual I becomes the collective I.
It is not my I or your I, that we need to lose, if we are to lose the ego, for the ego of one soul is neither different and nor distinct from the collective ego of the species. We need to lose the ego of the race, of being, of existence – of this need for survival of ‘our’ race, ‘our’ species, of this humano-centrism that we are so preoccupied with, of this desire to live out this life, on and on, if we are to truly to find and free ourselves of all I.
I is the thinker and the thought. I is the epicenter of it all. If all is one, one is all, all is I. You, me, I. Every focus of thought is an I – you think you are an I, I think I am I, they think they are each an I, so are we all, all eyes of thought.
Our I’s are but multiple reflections of a singular eye on multiple planes of glass. All scattered in time and space. Rip time, warp space, and you’ll see that there is but one I.
In all. Living or otherwise.
A profound work, as always!
Very much true, inspiring