Continued from Verse Twenty-Five
26. If the ego is, everything else also is. If the ego is not, nothing else is. Indeed, the ego is all. Therefore the enquiry as to what this ego is, is the only way of giving up everything.
Commentary: Everything is a series of things. Things are objects with boundaries. Boundaries are always set in relation to an observer, the one who feels that “I am.” Thinking “I am” means thinking “I am not those things.”
This “I am” thought is the ego. It is inevitably mixed with the belief that “I am the body and the mind” and various other things. In order to think “I am,” the ego has to implicitly create a sense of what it is, and what it is not. That sense is based on the idea that one is a doing, experiencing person.
Only then can you cognize other things. You perceive them in relationship to this person that you think you are. So everything is only possible if there is an ego, a sense of separation, that then creates a world of names and forms. If that sense of separation falls, the boundary-based world cannot stand. All our language and concepts depend on the egoic distinction of an out there as opposed to an in here, on a not-me as opposed to a me.
So the only way to really give up everything is to look this egoic illusion in the face. It cannot sustain itself, because the I which is observing everything is not actually that which it seems to be. It seems to be a solid core. It is quite clear that if one looks, though, that the observer is not a solid core. It has no boundaries. It isn’t an object.
But if it isn’t an object, then it isn’t “in here,” and if it isn’t “in here,” then the things that are out there aren’t really out there, since they are only out there relative to something that is in here. Names and forms fall, concepts fall, language falls. Everything then is given up, in the sense that it is was never there to begin with.
Inquiry into the ego means to turn attention continuously towards the I, that is, towards whatever is noticing experience. The cardinal rule of self-inquiry is that you cannot be what you are aware of; that in order to be aware of something, there has to be a distance between you and it.
When one tries to do self-inquiry and find the I, one tends to land on another object of experience. This again cannot be you. Then you try to turn towards whatever is noticing that. On and on the inquiry goes this way, until it is seen that more and more of what you thought you were is actually a series of objects. This is then recognized as not you. Pursued to its end, everything is given up.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.