' There's nothing there '...

THERE IS no real ego but only a quick succession of thoughts which constitutes the "I" process. There is no separate entity forming the personal consciousness but only a series of impressions, ideas, images revolving around a common centre. The latter is completely empty; the feeling of something being there derives from a totally different plane—that of the Overself.


NG: Suppose someone can recognize that process to some degree. Is PB saying that when you reach that emptiness, you then have a feeling that there is something there despite the emptiness? Or is he saying that you recognize that your daily thoughts are really about nothing, and still you have, in that daily life, the feeling that there is really someone or some-thing and that feeling comes from the plane of the Overself?


ANTHONY: I think you said the right thing. When you investigate, when you're looking at your thoughts, you analyze and you see there's nothing there. You understand the illusory nature. You understand that fundamentally the ego is of an illusory nature. There's no reality there. But nonetheless there is the experience that you are real, that there's something real. And there you could, of course, distinguish between two things. On the one hand, existence, and on the other, the fundamentally "illusory" nature of the ego.


-Anthony Damiani from Standing in Your Own Way