Saturday, February 5, 2011

Selfishness


Most biologists today believe that all life forms here on earth are descendants from one original cell that was formed about three and a half billion years ago.

Multicellular organisms were formed a billion years ago.

Animals and plants were formed five, six hundred million years ago.

The first flowering plants were formed one hundred fifty million years ago.

The dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago.

The first human beings appeared about two hundred thousand years ago.

Single-cell organisms are in a sense immortal because they propagate themselves with cell division. If you kill a single-cell organism, billions of identical individuals live on as if nothing had happened. Death came with the multicellular organisms and their sexual propagation.

A human being consists of about ten thousand billion cells.

Your memories, your ideas and opinions, your fantasies and dreams, your delusions and your sense of I, are created in these ten thousand billion cells.

When you ask yourself, “Who am I, really.” the answer is, the ten thousand billion cells that you consist of.

However, every day fifty billion cells in your body die and are replaced. This means 500 000 cells every second. Every two weeks all the molecules you are made of are replaced. If all the parts of your car were replaced, would you call it the same car?
Moreover, without your parents and your ancestors you wouldn’t have been the one you are. Without other animals and plants, you wouldn’t have had any ancestors. Thousands and thousands of chicken, pigs, lambs and cows have been slaughtered in order to create you.

In addition, without the sun there wouldn't have been any life at all here on earth. In fact, without the sun, there wouldn't have been any planet earth and without the Big Bang, there wouldn't have been any sun. All of us are connected to everybody and everything else.

Some people are extremely selfish. They have to have everything their way. They are ambitious and hungry for power and self-realization. Nothing can stop them. This extreme selfishness looks ugly so they are hiding it. They live under a cover, like spies. They are often outstanding actors, smiling and wonderful.

Some people are extremely unselfish. They always wait until all the others have had their share. They are usually not very successful.

Most people are something in between, sometimes selfish, sometimes unselfish, and sometimes extremely selfish. No one is completely without selfishness, I think. Some people believe that spiritually awakened people have no ego. I believe that this is an illusion.

I believe that egotism, or selfishness, is simply a biologically evolved mechanism, which strives to make sure that the individual survive and are able to reproduce. Ego is nothing you can drop or something that will drop away. It is like a nose or a toe. What is important to understand, though, is that your ego is only a part of you. The fact that you can observe your own ego and your own egotism proves that you are not only your ego.

Life is not only about finding a costume, a role and a few lines to say. There is so much more in life than the ego.