The end of the Ego; The Awakening by Eckhart Tolle

**BabaRa** · 8th February 2014, 05:24

Very short video - 5 minutes or less.

He says that ego is the identification with thoughts.

And we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEc5-hVZ1CA

**modwiz** · 8th February 2014, 05:38

That was well worth five minutes.

**Seikou-Kishi** · 8th February 2014, 05:55

Excellent video! It reminds me of that famous criticism of Ren�e Descartes' system of global doubt. As you know, Ren�e Descartes believed it was possible to move to a place of absolute and global doubt, find one idea which was certain and true in itself, by its very essence, and build upon that all knowledge required.

You will remember that Descartes decided, once he had denied everything else, that he was a thinking thing, saying the famous "cogito ergo sum", a phrase from his Discourse on the Method while most of this comes from his Meditations on First Philosophy. He assumed that he was a thinking thing because doubt is a type of thought and if he were a doubting thing, he must be a thinking thing.

Well, Nietzsche, who was a linguist before he was a philosopher, observed that Descartes was assuming there was a "thinking thing", when all that the doubt proved was that doubt existed. To Nietzsche, who scoffed with characteristic disdain at Descartes' attempts, Descartes had without basis assumed that he and his thoughts were connected. He assumed that because there were thoughts with which he identified, it proved he existed too.

Nietzsche said that Descartes should merely have accepted the existence of the thoughts, and not assumed they had any relation to a Descartes whose very existence was not established.

That may be the first time in Western philosophy that the idea of humans and their thoughts being separate was ever articulated. To my mind, it is very like the meditative practice of calming the mind by observing but not engaging with the thoughts. So thoughts exist, it doesn't mean they're yours — even if they're in your head.