The ego (sense of self) as a parasite

[Raze]

Language is common among all humans, appeared relatively recently in evolution, and has no analog in any other species. It seems to have appeared suddenly in humans, and caused a huge explosion in creativity and growth that we are living in now. The way language functions in humans is very strange and mysterious phenomenon, it doesn't work like other systems in the body, it's almost like a computer program.

The way humans use language, deny death, have a sense of self, and human consciousness all seem deeply linked, or perhaps they are different aspects of the same thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bImdyQn43s8

Enlightenment, is returning to a state without the ego, which is why you need a silent mind (no thoughts), and to look for the 'I' (a paradox), perhaps to short circuit the ego.

But what exactly is the ego and where did it come from? It might be some kind of parasite. The human body is made up of many different cells that are almost like their own life form working in a symbiotic relationship with one another.

https://www.livescience.com/61627-ancient-virus-brain.html

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According to two papers published in the journal Cell in January, long ago, a virus bound its genetic code to the genome of four-limbed animals. That snippet of code is still very much alive in humans' brains today, where it does the very viral task of packaging up genetic information and sending it from nerve cells to their neighbors in little capsules that look a whole lot like viruses themselves. And these little packages of information might be critical elements of how nerves communicate and reorganize over time — tasks thought to be necessary for higher-order thinking, the researchers said.

Though it may sound surprising that bits of human genetic code come from viruses, it's actually more common than you might think: A review published in Cell in 2016 found that between 40 and 80 percent of the human genome arrived from some archaic viral invasion. [Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones]

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But the new papers take things a step further. Not only is an ancient virus still very much active in the cells of human and animal brains, but it seems to be so important to how they function that processes of thought as we know them likely never would have arisen without it, the researchers said.

The Arc gene

Shortly after a synapse fires, the viral gene known as Arc comes to life, writing its instructions down as bits of mobile genetic code known as RNA, the researchers found. (A synapse is the junction between two neurons.)

RNA is DNA's messenger and agent in the world outside the cell's nucleus. A single-strand copy of code from DNA's double helix, it carries genetic instructions to places they can be useful. (And, interestingly, viruses tend to store their genetic code in RNA, rather than in DNA.)

Following the Arc RNA's instructions, the nerve cell builds "capsids" — virus-like envelopes — around it. Those envelopes let it travel safely between cells, and it does just that, entering neighboring neurons and passing its packet of genetic information along to them, according to the studies.

It's still unclear what that information does when it arrives in a new cell, but the researchers found that without the process functioning properly, synapses wither away. And problems with the Arc gene tend to show up in people with autism and other atypical neural conditions, the researchers said.

In a companion article, two experts who were not involved in the 2018 papers (the same two experts, in fact, behind the 2016 review) wrote that this process offers the best explanation yet for how nerve cells exchange the information necessary to reorganize themselves in the brain over time.

"These processes underlie brain functions ranging from classical operant conditioning to human cognition and the concept of 'self,'" they wrote. (Classical and operant conditioning are simple forms of reward and punishment-based learning in animals and humans.)

Bizarrely, Arc seems to have made the jump from virus to animal more than once. The researchers found that Arc genes in humans and other four-limbed creatures seem to be closely related to one another. The Arc genes in fruit flies and worms, however, seem to have arrived separately.

The next step for this research, the outside experts wrote in the companion article, is to bring experts in neuroscience and ancient viruses together to work out the mechanisms for just how Arc arrived in the genome, and exactly what information it's passing between our cells today.

 

Edited November 6, 2020 by Raze

[How to be wise]

@Raze Yes the ego uses language as a main tool to stay alive and stay identified. Once you have sufficiently melted your ego, words will affect you much less. What once offended you could now sound amusing. This is the power of consciousness work.

[Breakingthewall]

All the human languages follow the law of pif. The most used word is used double of times than the second, and the second double of times than the third. Look like it's genetically programmed

[Spaceofawareness]

You could say the ego is parasitic on experience, it piggybacks off it.

[Raze]

6 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

All the human languages follow the law of pif. The most used word is used double of times than the second, and the second double of times than the third. Look like it's genetically programmed

Language is genetic, but because we see nothing like it in anything besides humans, and it appeared so suddenly, it may have worked similar to a mutation.