People who have experienced ego death - why do you keep your money?

[crab12]

The standard thing low conscious people say to the enlightened is: "if you're sooo enlightened and egoless, why don't give all your money to me? Checkmate!" I used to think that that was such a dumb and insulting thing to say and the answer was obvious. But now, a lot of progress later, it got me thinking, well why don't you?

Classic example is Osho, reporters would always ask him "why do you have 92 Rolls Royce's?" and he would deflect the question with something like "because you could ask me LOL". If one saw that he is one with everything and that the best interests of everything else is his best interests as well, then surely 92 luxury cars, just to troll the journalists and outsiders, would seem like a wasteful use of wealth / value.

This is a question to people who have experienced ego death, I don't mean to be insulting, I am genuinely interested, why do you not give your money away to the needy or to some greater purpose? Why do you still care about your "ego" based needs (if you do)?

[NoSelfSelf]

@crab12 Enlightement is not end of your life you still live like before i dont know where do you got the idea that you dont need money etc. Its the same but will lot less suffering...

[purerogue]

3 minutes ago, crab12 said:

The standard thing low conscious people say to the enlightened is: "if you're sooo enlightened and egoless, why don't give all your money to me? Checkmate!" I used to think that that was such a dumb and insulting thing to say and the answer was obvious. But now, a lot of progress later, it got me thinking, well why don't you?

Classic example is Osho, reporters would always ask him "why do you have 92 Rolls Royce's?" and he would deflect the question with something like "because you could ask me LOL". If one saw that he is one with everything and that the best interests of everything else is his best interests as well, then surely 92 luxury cars, just to troll the journalists and outsiders, would seem like a wasteful use of wealth / value.

This is a question to people who have experienced ego death, I don't mean to be insulting, I am genuinely interested, why do you not give your money away to the needy or to some greater purpose? Why do you still care about your "ego" based needs (if you do)?

Depends what ego death you are talking about ,so called "Enlightenment" ego death does not mean ego death in literal sense, you as you are not ego any more, but body is still body , so it still does what it does. 

[fridjonk]

@crab12 Osho had a lot of 2nd chakra stage red shadows, money and sex just to name few. Most enlightened people have some form of shadow lurking in some corner. And you also have to survive in this material plane, enlightened or not. And the thing is, while giving and helping people might seem like the "right thing" to do; it's already perfect as is. You judge it from your human perspective. This creation is perfect.

[Chakra Lion]

Physical Reality is a very demanding place. You can’t find water for a day, and you be toast. Is it ego based because you are trying to avoid death? Isn’t it also ego based to give up everything? For your own peace? Using another persons energy just so you can keep yours? And if you do give it all up, in most of the world today, you won’t make it far. Sleeping in scary homeless shelters if you find one, then spend hours begging, I mean it just don’t work. Especially when you have souls that need you. And oh how you need them.
I like the four life stages of Hinduism. It  provides the opportunity for someone to become an ascetic/hermit or a sadhu/holy man. But like the wheel spins, you must serve/help others if you want to be served/helped.

@crab12 What would you do? Trust?  Thank you for the nice brain teaser! 

[wavydude]

From my understanding enlightement has nothing do with the person ( your character ), it's realization that you are not the character. That said it doesn't change the fact that character still have to eat, sleep, have desires etc.

[crab12]

54 minutes ago, NoSelfSelf said:

@crab12 Enlightement is not end of your life you still live like before i dont know where do you got the idea that you dont need money etc. Its the same but will lot less suffering...

I see, only the perspective changed. Do you feel more altruistic than before? Do you still value luxury and nice things for yourself?

1 hour ago, purerogue said:

Depends what ego death you are talking about ,so called "Enlightenment" ego death does not mean ego death in literal sense, you as you are not ego any more, but body is still body , so it still does what it does. 

I personally see "ego death" as the recognition that there is nothing that is not you (this is on thoughts level only though, without psychedelics and in a non-peak-experience way I can see myself as pure awareness or other times I forget myself as the human I'm supposed to be). I'm interested in whatever way others see enlightenment or "ego death" and how it changed their behavior.

55 minutes ago, fridjonk said:

@crab12 Osho had a lot of 2nd chakra stage red shadows, money and sex just to name few. Most enlightened people have some form of shadow lurking in some corner. And you also have to survive in this material plane, enlightened or not. And the thing is, while giving and helping people might seem like the "right thing" to do; it's already perfect as is. You judge it from your human perspective. This creation is perfect.

Interesting, from the human perspective then, do you do things because you judge them as being non-perfect or what is your motivation to do things from the human perspective? But from the absolute perspective, you would do nothing, because everything already is perfect? Lol, that sounds like some kind of a riddle, but humor me on this.

[Nahm]

@crab12 You’re conflating. The absolute “perspective” can’t be deduced from the relative perspective. It’s important to note the mixing for the sake of clarity...noting the flip of the reference to “you” in the questions. It flips from “you all that is” to “you are a person” in your perspective, rather than “in the world”. The ego isn’t something ‘found in brains’, it’s the universe. It is like a riddle answered by there being no riddle.

[Applegarden]

1 hour ago, fridjonk said:

@crab12 Osho had a lot of 2nd chakra stage red shadows, money and sex just to name few. Most enlightened people have some form of shadow lurking in some corner. And you also have to survive in this material plane, enlightened or not. And the thing is, while giving and helping people might seem like the "right thing" to do; it's already perfect as is. You judge it from your human perspective. This creation is perfect.

This is interesting because he also did it for the meme - to break alot of useless prejudices in our culture, thats why the royces and con-artristry, and the other, he did not run his organization. Yes there is also information that his favourite drink was pepsi.

[Lento]

There are a couple of ways to answer this question;

1. Because it doesn't matter what you do with the money.
2. Because an enlightened person is usually highly moral and more developed than the average person. So, putting money to their use would be a more intelligent idea. In this specific case, it's like taking money away from kids and putting it in the parents' hands. Surely, the parents know better.
3. Because they may be foolish enough to fall asleep again. Money is tempting, and not everyone is capable of controlling themselves when the opportunity shows itself. Some people are weak and can fail to be selfless when need be even if they want to be.
4. Because they may be selfish. Ego-death does not automatically make you compassionate. Compassion is a learned quality.

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, crab12 said:

The standard thing low conscious people say to the enlightened is: "if you're sooo enlightened and egoless, why don't give all your money to me? Checkmate!" I used to think that that was such a dumb and insulting thing to say and the answer was obvious. But now, a lot of progress later, it got me thinking, well why don't you?

The squirrels in my yard collect and hoard nuts. These squirrels are egoless. Why don't they give all their nuts to the squirrels in my neighbor's yard?

[purerogue]

59 minutes ago, crab12 said:

I personally see "ego death" as the recognition that there is nothing that is not you (this is on thoughts level only though, without psychedelics and in a non-peak-experience way I can see myself as pure awareness or other times I forget myself as the human I'm supposed to be). I'm interested in whatever way others see enlightenment or "ego death" and how it changed their behavior.

It does have change in behaviour, but that is not a point, point is that the state they are operating from has no intervention from them, it is just character speaking and all people running after it thinking that they can get something from this character, you are not interacting with part that got himself free from  ego, just character who  does what it does. 

Edited February 24, 2020 by purerogue

[crab12]

@Chakra Lion It would be highly impractical and a burden to others, or a burden to yourself, as an enlightened being would see this.

50 minutes ago, Chakra Lion said:

@crab12 What would you do? Trust?  Thank you for the nice brain teaser! 

From the human perspective, I would not give my money away because I don't want to (I agree with your reasoning that it would be impractical, though I think in the end it boils down to my personal free will choice of I don't want to do it). But if I finally experienced oneness in a stable way and saw that other is me then perhaps this would change what I wanted to do, this is what I'm curious about.

49 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@crab12 You’re conflating. The absolute “perspective” can’t be deduced from the relative perspective. It’s important to note the mixing for the sake of clarity...noting the flip of the reference to “you” in the questions. It flips from “you all that is” to “you are a person” in your perspective, rather than “in the world”. The ego isn’t something ‘found in brains’, it’s the universe. It is like a riddle answered by there being no riddle.

Ahhh okay, so the absolute perspective of “you all that is” is not true. Closer to reality would be just the universe or everything, as there is no personal "you", just what is, the personal is the ego. Did I get that right?

[fridjonk]

1 hour ago, crab12 said:

Interesting, from the human perspective then, do you do things because you judge them as being non-perfect or what is your motivation to do things from the human perspective? But from the absolute perspective, you would do nothing, because everything already is perfect? Lol, that sounds like some kind of a riddle, but humor me on this.

From the absolute, there is nobody to do anything, expect god who is and does everything at every moment that ever was and ever will be. (That's from what I know, which may be "correct" or not ). But even saying anything about the absolute or god, will never do it justice as this language is finite af. 

59 minutes ago, Applegarden said:

This is interesting because he also did it for the meme - to break alot of useless prejudices in our culture, thats why the royces and con-artristry, and the other, he did not run his organization. Yes there is also information that his favourite drink was pepsi.

Yeah, he was one complex dude.   With that kind of fame and fortune and people treating you like a grand wizard, you're inevitably going to have some shadows bubble up. 

[fridjonk]

25 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

The squirrels in my yard collect and hoard nuts. These squirrels are egoless. Why don't they give all their nuts to the squirrels in my neighbor's yard?

@Serotoninluv Would you not say survival is part ego? 

[crab12]

30 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

The squirrels in my yard collect and hoard nuts. These squirrels are egoless. Why don't they give all their nuts to the squirrels in my neighbor's yard?

I think that in their perspective, it is not in their best interest to give their nuts away, and outside mating season / reproduction they don't care about the well-being of other squirrels. But what is this "ego" that humans have and squirrels don't, in your opinion?

[Forestluv]

13 minutes ago, fridjonk said:

@Serotoninluv Would you not say survival is part ego? 

There are lots of constructs we can create of an "ego". If we create an egoic construct that includes survival, then every biological organism would have an ego - since every biological organism has a survival dynamic. I suppose we could define the term "ego" in this way. Yet based on the common use of ego, it would be odd to say that organisms like bacteria and trees have an ego. 

9 minutes ago, crab12 said:

what is this "ego" that humans have and squirrels don't, in your opinion?

I think that is a great question. The term "ego" is often used to describe a sense of self. Squirrels clearly have a sense of self, yet I don't think most people would say a squirrel has an ego - yet we certainly could say this, the idea of ego is very fluid.

To me, it seems like most people use the term "ego" to generally refer to self-centered thought stories that appear in the mind. A human might think "I want a fancy car, so I will be popular with the ladies and get respect from the men". Yet there is also a lot of subconscious activity taking place. In this sense, squirrels would also have egos - for example, similar to humans, male squirrels behave in a manner such that they will be popular with the ladies and get respect from the other male squirrels (such as defending their territory). 

What would a biological organism that was "egoless" look like? It depends on how we define "ego". 

 

[Nahm]

20 minutes ago, crab12 said:

 

From the human perspective

Ahhh okay, so the absolute perspective of “you all that is” is not true. Closer to reality would be just the universe or everything, as there is no personal "you", just what is, the personal is the ego. Did I get that right?

In the sense, meaning arises in you. Whatever “absolute perspective”, “the human perspective”, “universe”, “reality”, “ego”, “personal you”, “right”....mean to you, is only what it means to you. Nonduality would imply there is not a you and a meaning. There is learning what a word means, like cup, and there is ‘learning’ it was never “a cup”, as “cup” was a word you learned.

[fridjonk]

@Serotoninluv Fair enough, definitely makes it less messy. 

[NoSelfSelf]

@crab12 It all depends in the state of conciousness you are in altruistic behaviour could come or not you still value nice things but you dont depend on them like others...