We like to believe that we understand this world, this life — yet how much do we truly know? From birth to death, we fill the time with worries, intentions and with hopes to uncover the path that was meant for us. When you were young, you were told to build a career, to climb the ladder. The focus was always on reaching higher, never on questioning whether the summit was even worth reaching. Decades slip by, work piles up, a pension awaits—yet all that remains is the quiet contemplation of a wall, and the unsettling question: What, in the end, has it all meant?
But what if the greatest quest is not the search for success, but the search for meaning? What is this life really about?
Some say we are nothing more than intricate machines — born of self-assembled cells and expanded by evolution into complex biological systems. Humans are mere accidents in the vast indifference of a meaningless natural world. We are a product of a series of random interactions of molecules in the past, now unfolding in a universe that does not care whether we exist or not. This habit of thinking gives the illusion of explanation, as it relies on the extraordinary circumstances of the incredibly distant past.
Then there are those who claim we are nothing more than computer simulations, created by an unseen, advanced civilization. Our reality is nothing more than a sophisticated illusion. Or perhaps we are simulated by our future selves. This may seem plausible, since we create similar computer games all the time. But what is the purpose of all this?
Others speak of a god or gods who breathed life into us — beings of infinite, eternal essence, beyond this world. He or they possesses boundless wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and ultimate truth. The human sense of the extraordinary is shaped by cultures into religions — systems of dogmas that often emphasize faith over inquiry. Sacred texts of our ancestors affirm the spirituality of living. In such traditions, the focus is less on answering questions and more on the act of belief itself.
Yet who are we, truly? What are we? Can we ever uncover the truth before stepping into the unknown?
None of what we believe ourselves to be may even be real at all. Maybe it was all the habits of our thinking. Reality itself could be far more mysterious, slipping beyond the reach of any concept the mind can construct. The truth may lie well beyond every idea we attempt to hold onto. Each time we try to define what we are, or what this world is, the trail fades and our certainty dissolves.
This life is like a dream — a mystery so vast that its meaning and origin elude any attempt to capture them in human words or concepts. You may sense it, perhaps even feel its presence for a short moment — but the instant you awaken, it slips away, as if it could never be conveyed by our language at all. The dream was there, undeniably a spectacle. But who is the creator of it — and who are the players? Was it you? Perhaps… but not entirely. It was something far greater — something that folded into you, into your ego, in that precise moment when you stirred from your dream.
Or are we part of God? But then consider this: each of us has a unique personality—why is that so? Yes, each of us has an ego, with its own sense of self-importance. Here is a story from Eastern wisdom that offers insight into the very question of who we truly are.
There once lived a monk who spent thirty years alone on a remote island, in a small and weathered hut. Day after day passed in silence. No voices, no footsteps, no eyes to meet his own. Spending day after day in peace and solitude, without seeing a single person, he completely forgot about his ego. For the ego to exist, the presence of other people is necessary. How can the ego live if there is no one around? After all, what is the ego without others? It feeds on recognition, comparison, and opposition. In the absence of “you” or “they,” what becomes of “I”? Who is there to admire you, to challenge you, to contradict you? Without others to oppose, there is no longer need in defending truth or resisting falsehood. To know that you hold the truth, there must be a falsehood expressed by others. Truth can live in solitude forever. But lies can appear and disappear. They cannot exist alone; they require multifaceted support. Only in this way deceptions appear, and maintain their viability.
So, this monk lived alone in a remote place. He had forgotten about his own 'I', because there was no 'he', ‘she’, 'they' or 'we'. Thirty years is a long time. The monk became very calm and peaceful.
One day, a small boat arrived. Monks from a distant monastery had come, having heard of the hermit who lived in perfect peace. They bowed and said, “Brother, would you honor us by joining our prayers?” The monk thought that joining other monks in their prayers wouldn't hurt, since his ego had disappeared, and it wouldn’t bring any harm. This is how the mind deceives us many times: it insists that, since the ego has disappeared, communication with people doesn't harm.
So, the monk came to the monastery and joined the prayer. But none of the other monks knew the monk, who had withdrawn to the isolated hut in a remote island many years ago. When the monk was making his way through the monastery, someone stepped on his foot. The monk grabbed the stranger by the neck and shouted: 'Don't you know who I am?'
Thus, thirty years of solitude were erased in an instant. In the blink of an eye, the remote island, the calmness, the disappearance of the ego, and the appearance of God, whose day is everything, vanished like smoke. In a split second, all the efforts disappeared as if they had never been.
After a moment, realizing the shamefulness of the situation, the monk said: “I had forgotten about the existence of the ego, thinking it had disappeared forever. I was mistaken”. He apologized, asking for permission to leave, and then, after some thinking, he said: “I will not return to my island. On the contrary, I will go to the village, to the monastery, where I will live among people. What I failed to realize in thirty years of solitude, here, among you, was understood in the blink of an eye. I will live, trying to understand whether I exist or whether I do not. Thirty years were spent in vain. I was wrong to think that my ego had disappeared”.
God, too, is all-knowing and infinite, yet He seeks to discover Himself through others. He tries to escape the solitude of holiness. Because “I” makes only sense when there is “They”. Because “you” can only exist in the eyes of others. For truth does not have meaning without the presence of falsehood, and the self cannot be known without its reflections in others. Light needs shadows made of darkness to trace the contours of holiness.
Think about this: Like in our story about a monk, God must branch into a multitude of beings: learning, making mistakes, arguing, laughing and loving. Each of them is distinct, but springs from the same source. By; fragmenting Himself into countless parts, into egos scattered across the Universe, He comes to know His own nature.
That vibrant chaos of selves is what we call humanity. And you have always been part of it. Always. An extraordinary dance of serpentines of souls: emerging from nowhere, caring for one another, falling in love, and fading again. Like any dance, the spectacle never truly ends; it simply shifts its scenes and trades one applauding audience for another.
written by S.V.Chekanov for the Video: Ego, God and the Habit of Thought
This is the full transcript of the YouTube video created by the Designed World channel in the style "Scientific Neo-Romanticism" using the book “The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond”, by Dr. Sergei V. Chekanov, 466 pages, ISBN: 9798990642836; Hardcover 9798990642843, eBook ISBN 9798990642829; Book webpage: https://ermislearn.org/designed-world/