Is the 'I AM' the ego or the real self?

Question

when you say I AM, in that the ego saying it or the real self saying it. I am confused. I hear that NO SELF is the way, but then why do you assert "I AM"?

Thank you

Answer 1

'No self' sounds like BS to me. It is yet another philosophical parlor game employed to muddy the waters of consciousness. "I am" refers to the essence of self awareness and if we accept self awareness we must accept the real self. Ego is just another way to explain intricate interior structures that some guys with beards feel compelled to quantify. I suspect that our internal architecture, beyond archetypes and language, is quite unique  and this fact lies at the heart of the reason that psychiatry has such a spotty record in dealing with mental disorders.

Answer 2

"I" is the name we give the identity of the thing within us which we call "me, myself, and I." They are each identical with the other except in the context of the syntax of the language.

The ego, according to Freud, is the executive power of that self within us. The ego must act in accordance with the same rules as any executive, that is, it must keep control while still allowing the lesser powers to do their thing. When the ego becomes inflated we are said to be "egotistic." When the ego is acting rationally, we are said to be "egoistic."

http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm

Answer 3

Yes, you're right. "You" is the ego and an illusion. Your real "self" isn't a "self" like an individual, but it's like the "oversoul" that contains all souls as one in it's existence, so that makes every soul really one soul, or God. So if there is only God that exist, you can't say it's a "self" but something that is undefinable, and so the word "soul" is used, which is a mystical way of saying the non-self, or the non-ego, or having consciousness without a center. When Pilot asked Jesus was he God, He said "I am." That's true in the sense that Jesus was both conscious of being God and conscious of being a man, and God who is Everything can't be everything if it doesn't include nothing, so non-existence exist but it exists as non-existence in the only Reality of the only Existence.

Answer 4

The I AM is the the real self, whatever is the meaning of that. The argument is a proof of *being*, it proves the existence of being in the first place, not that of an independent ego.

On the other hand, for reasoning to be able to be happening, there also needs to be a self (ego) that can state its own being as opposed to others. The ego and the others obviously interact and the question about the nature of these interactions is not resolved by the statement. In particular, the question of whether this ego has to be "overcome" somehow. I believe, the ego is part of our existence and we must not deny it. At the same time I believe the ego is only a part of what we are. So we should avoid falling into either of two traps: (1) adore selfishness and a disconnected individual and (2) adore collectivity and the denial of the individual.