No Ego No Demons

This book is about the basics of escaping prison, beginning by showing where the bars are. Not some actual cage, but one of self-delusion, a mental fabrication superimposed upon appearances. With colored eyeglasses on, the interrelated nature of the process underlying reality is filtered out. Understanding (sophia, prajñā) and experientially and existentially “seeing” (gnosis, jñāna) reality’s disposition ends the confusion about “I” and “other,” breaking the irons put on oneself, taking off the spectacles, liberating self-slavery. The contraction of consciousness by the ego binds it to a single, monolithic outlook defined by the duality between this grasping “I” and the objects possessed, between a knower and a known, between a grasper and what is grasped. As a result, the unbounded groundless ground of sentience condenses to finite, limited dyadic forms of identity. This needs to be overcome.