It is easy to see how the ego dream creates problems in our lives and is such a destructive force in the world. However, it has also served a purpose. Not that it had to be a plan that was followed to bring about this purpose. Life needs no plan. Its very nature is to create and it is propelled into ever more complexity. It is all very simple if one sees it from its core. Which is not that difficult considering we are at its core; we are just too lost in our dreams to see this fact most of the time.
So how has a purpose been fulfilled by the development of the ego? If we go back in time and see how we as intelligent apes lived, we see there was no recognition of being anything other than what we were. Our lives were driven by our need for nourishment, sex, physical security and the subconscious drive to keep the species going. As the ego developed and brought with it the capacity to separate itself into a seeming being separate from the rest of life, an individual, it also brought about the possibility of the awakened individual realizing their oneness with all Life.
Animals are aware and conscious of their suchness. They do what they do automatically from instinct. They don't have the problems caused by ego but they also do not have the ability to see beyond the limits of their being. There is no need for them to. It serves no purpose for them to know anything other than their actions and their relationship with their kind and the local environment.
As we evolved and developed the capacity to use abstract knowledge, we were also helping to bring into being a form of reality not seen on this planet before. If we had not developed the capacities we have, we would not be able to consciously realize our oneness with all life. Life is total creativity, it is pure awareness, and it is all energy, yet it was not conscious before the development of a mind such as ours.
One of the first insights that came my way was the fact that we are always dealing with mind. Not just the mind as ego and conditioning, but Mind, which is all creation. We think we live in a physical universe but in reality it is Mental. Not with the limits of a brain, which is basically a conduit for intelligence to flow through and a library of conditioned thinking. No, this Mind is far beyond all that yet includes it all.
Once this mind opened to see the mentalness of life, and found freedom from the limits of old beliefs, things started to show me that the insight was right, as insights usually are. I started having precognitive experiences, intuitive knowing of many things that could not be explained by the old model of reality. I would know who was calling me on the telephone before I answered it. I would see events before they took place, sometimes weeks before. And many other capacities that showed clearly that all was Mind started happening. Keep in mind that I am not a psychic. These things happen and I let it go. I don't try to do them.
One evening about 12:30 I woke up and was just lying in bed. I saw this woman I know lying on her side with a wonderful soft glow of light on her. She was up on one elbow. I just watched for a while then remembered my eyes were closed. When I opened them, of course, she was not there. The next day I called her and asked what she was doing at that time? She said she was lying on her mat on one elbow looking out the window at the full moon. She lived on the second floor of the apartment house. So my awareness was about 16 feet off the ground looking in from outside. It was as clear as if I was there, which part of me was. I did not try to see my friend, it just happened.
One time I was driving down the road at about 45 miles an hour when I could just see the front of another car pulling out from behind some bushes where they could not see me. I had no time to even reach my horn button to warn them, but my horn beeped. I did not touch the button at all. The other car stopped just in time and I zoomed on by.
One time I was driving through this town and saw a man and a boy hitch hiking. I pulled over to pick them up. Just as the man came to the door, I knew he was going to be my former wife's next lover. They had not met at that time. About 3 months later I got a letter from my wife telling me she had met this man, the same fellow, and they had become lovers.
There was a woman missing in my area. A friend of mine was a friend of the missing woman. She asked me to see if I could see where her friend was. I told her I would try. That night I just sat quietly with no thoughts. I saw a wooded landscape with a low depression in the foreground and a large redwood tree with the top broken off by wind. I knew she was dead and in that area. I also saw it wasn't far from a golf course. I told my friend what I had seen. I had never seen that area before. About two months later I had a dream where I looked up at this tall redwood tree and on top of it was a carving of a woman and two hawks standing on it. One hawk was pure white, the other black. The white hawk flew down towards me. I reached up and caught it in my hands. I held it for a while feeling great love for it and marveling at its beauty. Then I let it go and it flew up and out of sight. The black hawk was looking down at me. Its beak was sort of pushed in. Then I awoke and knew they would find the woman's body that day and they did. I watched the evening news on TV and they showed a picture of where they found the body. It was the scene I had seen months before. And it was over a few hills from a golf course. Then they showed her husband, who had killed her, and his nose was pushed in just like the black hawk's beak had been. I had never seen him before.
I could go on telling you stories of experiences I have had for hours. From healing to distant viewing to precognitive dreams and insights, but for now I just wanted to point out a few things that have shown me the nature of mind. However, it is not the experiences that are important. It is what they point to. This includes a deeper understanding of time and space, which I hope to go into in a later.
Without going into a lot of detail now, I just want to point to where I think we are heading in our evolution as human beings. When you see how we do live in a mental universe you can start to see how the development of ego was a way of starting to create a creative individual who will be capable of expressing his/her being without the need of a physical universe. Not that it will be empty of seeming things, but we will know we are dealing with creative Mind; we are this creative process. What happens to us helps create new forms of expression.
The ego is just a misunderstanding that distorts our view of what is real. When we awaken to see that it has all been a dream, a phantom, then the ego is understood and we can just drop it. However, we are still this wonderful creative process called Life. There is no end to this process. Although it is beyond the personal, it is real.
As we have developed, so has the non-physical side of our being. The closer we come to expressing that being the more seemingly strange events will take place. This scares many people and they back off. They are not ready for it and they may think they are losing their minds. If this has happened to you then let go and just let it happen. There is nothing to fear.
All through history there have been people having these experiences. It is not at all new, but they usually carried some religious, cultural or ritualistic overtones. It is time to see this is just the normal evolutionary next step for humans. We are becoming free. There is no limit to what can be done. However, if we evolve without awakening, then we could do great harm to life. One doesn't have to be awake to do these things. In fact one of the problems with the New Age movement is they are too often trying to gain some power without a deep understanding of their relationship with all life. Thinking they are somehow special can keep them from awakening. The ego loves all this because it gives it a false sense of security. It can never be secure, so it keeps those who believe in a separate self under stress.
I have just barely touched on this subject. I just wanted to let those who see the death of the ego in a negative way know the ending of the ego is not the ending of this wonderful creative life we all share. I am writing this with the hope that the ego doesn't just use it for a sense of security. It is all-important to go beyond the dream and be free.
