' The Consciousness of Self '...

This feeling of I-ness may be associated with the body, emotions, and thoughts--whose totality is the personal ego--or shifted in deep meditation to the rootless root of being, which is the Overself; or, it may be associated with both, when one will be the reality and the other a shadow of reality.

The idea of a self first enters consciousness when a child identifies itself with bodily feelings, and later when it adds emotional feelings. The idea extends itself still later, with logical thoughts and, lastly, completes itself with the discovery of individuality.

Descartes' reference in his statement, "I think therefore I am," is simply to himself as a person, a self limited to body emotion and thought, that is, to ordinary experience and nothing higher or deeper than that, a being whose consciousness is unexamined and unexplored.

Ego means the consciousness of self.



-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego >
Chapter 2: I-thought > # 12
Paul Brunton