The Place of the Ego in Nature
July 27, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9781315122649-7 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the human mind is a self-regulating system within nature and that the ego disrupts this natural regulation, creating conflict and duality by dividing the mind into two. The author proposes that this division corresponds to longstanding dualistic concepts such as Plato's rational mind and passions, Augustine's divided soul, Hegel's Master and Servant, Freud's Ego and Id, and Jung's Ego and Self, and introduces the nonduality of the egoless mind. |
Abstract
Chapter 7 opens with a narrative description of the predation tactics of wolves as they hunt caribou, and establishes that the wolves and caribou are an example of the self-regulatory systems of which nature is composed. It then moves on to a broader exploration of how nature is a cascade of systems within systems, like Russian dolls. This analysis culminates in the insight that the human mind is simply one of nature’s self-regulating systems. This insight leads, in turn, to an understanding of the place of the ego and the stream of consciousness in nature. Further analysis then shows that the ego disrupts the natural self-regulatory processes of the mind, and that in so doing it creates conflict and duality within the mind by artificially dividing it into two minds: the two minds that were called the rational mind and the passions by Plato, the divided soul by Augustine, the Master and Servant by Hegel, the Ego and Id by Freud, the Ego and Self by Jung and so forth. The chapter ends by introducing the reader to the nonduality of the egoless mind—the mind that has not been cleaved in two by the ego.