Tortuga Philosophy Cafe 2: The Self
Ego death, transcendental egos, spiritual personalities
Success
The first meeting of the Tortuga Philosophy Cafe was a great success. We had a good turnout of thoughtful and intelligent people, wonderful discussions, and I am excited to see what the future will bring.
Many of our participants were not interested in discussing the nuances of various theses put forth by philosophers in a dialectical way but rather sought more direct forms of participation and knowing. This is very much in line with my own way of doing philosophy, and much of what I am trying to do here is to provide you all with an intellectual framework that can help facilitate these excursions into the depths of reality. It’s not just that we want to know the “correct” propositions about the world; we want to see its true fullness and experience its mysteries.
There is much to cover over the coming months. Count, Videō has given me some material on systems theory, Sirius White has proposed we investigate certain esoteric phenomena, and others want to know more about our philosophical heritage, about the Stoics, Nietzsche, Buddhism and many other things.
Views of the Self and Ego Death
In an effort to prepare the ground for these topics, I have decided to do our next session on consciousness and the self. This is not some dry summary of theories of “personal identity” but an investigation into the different types of consciousness that could ground the self, which will allow us to go deeper when we investigate certain views in more detail over the coming months.
It seems to me that this is one of the main themes that concerns the questions of man, which is something Cassirer (our reading from this week) mentioned. Man is defined by his consciousness. But what does this mean?
Many traditional philosophers and religious thinkers have held that man is a spiritual being. Some, like Leibniz, have thought that the human being is the monad, the microcosm reflecting the universe; others that man just is the universe, that we are all perspectives of God and possess no genuine individuality. Often this requires a distinction between different types of consciousness—between the mental and the psychological, say, or between something like the Greek nous and psyche.
Related to this ontological question is the actual status of the self. Is the self an ego—perhaps a transcendental ego?—or is it something more mysterious? Maybe there is no self at all and the whole enterprise of self-knowledge is a fool’s errand.
These are complicated questions, but they are important. To give but a single example, many people today talk about ego death, but there are at least two kinds of ego-death depending on your view of the self:
Where the false ego is shattered, revealing a connection to the true, higher self which is spiritual in nature. Here ego death coincides with the recognition of a superior form of identity. Man exists as the glittering apex in Nature’s aristocracy or as an ontologically superior being. 1
Where the ego is dissolved and we sink back into a unity with nature, destroying the veil of maya and realizing a pantheistic oneness with all of creation. Man exists as a manifestation of the eternal flux of nature and such moments reveal this truth with utter clarity.
These two kinds of views describe different things, but I seldom see the distinction made. Those of the first camp often see the latter as a lesser form of ego death, perhaps even a dangerous one. There are also some (certain Christians, for example) who would identify any ego death as a bad thing because the ego itself is part of the immortal soul. Supposing ego death is a good thing, what does it mean and why is it good?
I find all these nuances very interesting, and it’s rather rare to find discussions on such broad topics. Since I intend to cover many views over the coming months, this should give us a firm foundation.
For our next session, we won’t have any required readings.2 I’ll just be giving a short presentation on a variety of possible views, showing how they can each be understood within a certain framework.3 Attendees are encouraged to encouraged to research a position that interests them—for example, a Buddhist or Nietzschean or Orthodox Christian conception of self—and we can talk about it in more detail. But this isn’t required.
Save the Date: November 22
On November 22 at 2pm EST we will reconvene to discuss these ideas. I’ll give a brief summary of the various kinds of views people have taken with regard to these topics and go over certain big questions. For example, does the realization of Nirvana coincide with a simple recognition of our transitory nature or does it reveal the presence of an unobjectifable unity? Can we hope for a kind of higher existence or is the best way forward a kind of “sinking back” into nature and our animal drives?
These are interesting questions, but they also form the base for a more personal investigation into one’s own consciousness. A hundred years ago psychologists had to be trained how to think, not just to memorize theories. It required an active, personal, intuitive knowledge of oneself. It seems that the members of the Tortuga Philosophy Cafe are of a similar mind, which is why in the future I will be sharing some “psychic techniques” that can facilitate this kind of personal exploration. It’s important to have a basic understanding of these things before jumping into that right away, however.
If this sounds interesting, then I suggest you join us. You can sign up with Stripe here, or with PayPal. We also now have the option of purchasing 6 sessions for $50 & of course, Tortuga Members get in for free.
As always, feel free to DM
for more details.-Krug
Jung’s account is phenomenologically similar to these theories, even though he gives a more psychological explanation.
But if you want the previous ones, I will be happy to send them.
I will also be explaining these two different kinds of ego death in more detail, as well as different theories of transcendence and enlightenment.