"How can we carry on with our daily lives without the `I' consciousness?" is a natural and common question. The first answer, and certainly the best one, is supplied by the personal experience of those who have done it in the past and are doing it today. Their testimony to its factuality is worth more than the theoretical objections to its possibility. Think of the great or celebrated names which proffer such testimony, of Jesus and Buddha in Asia, of Eckhart and Boehme in Europe, and of Emerson in America! And there are other names which I know, of men who lived in our own century but who lived obscurely, unknown to all but a tiny handful of seekers--men whom my own line of destiny fortunately crossed and happily tangled with in the period of my wide research. The second answer to the question of possibility is contained in the ordinary experience of awaking from the night's sleep. It is perfectly possible then to carry on with daily living without the consciousness of the self which prevailed in dreams. That self was different from the waking one since he holds thoughts and does things that the latter would never do. It certainly existed, but the morning showed it to be an illusory ego. In exactly the same way, illumination acts as an awakening and shows the everyday consciousness of self to be illusory, too. And just as we no longer need the dream ego to carry on the waking activities, so the illumined man no longer needs the waking ego to carry on his activities.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 5 : Detaching from The Ego (Part 2) > # 444
