The False Self

All doing belongs to nature. The self merely imagines itself to be the actor.”
— Ramana Maharshi

The false self—also called the ego—resembles those little children sitting behind the steering wheel of their toy car.

They agitate the wheel left and right, imitate the sound of the engine, activate the plastic horn… and delight in feeling like kings on the road.

Who cares that they were never actually driving, since someone else was pushing and guiding the car all along behind them?

The false self thrives on believing it is in control.

It reinforces this belief not by blaring the horn, but by constantly seeking support and approval for its ego-based narratives.

That is why it is constantly striving for what it perceives as positions of advantage—whether in the material, intellectual, moral, or spiritual realms—all of which are nothing but its own projections.

In reality, the ego can’t do anything on its own.

It is merely a story, a phantom born of imagination.

Whether life expresses itself in one way or another, there is not—and never was—a “me” in charge.

It’s all a spontaneous unfolding.

To fully understand this, thought can only help only up to a certain point—as some sages have said, like using a thorn to remove another thorn.

Anyone, provided they are open-minded, will quickly find cracks in the story of an independent doer—simply because that story doesn’t make any logical sense.

Yet it doesn’t belong to thought—now hijacked by the ego as its main instrument of self-validation—to fully accept this as reality.

The person, which is but a construct made of thought, can never truly experience its own absence. 

A thought is an image. As such, it cannot do or experience anything. 

Something else can happen. The absence of a personal “self” can be directly experienced, beyond thought.

But whether or not this will happen is, of course, not in anyone’s control.

See if this resonates with something deeper within you:

There is no one who “has” a life, and there is no one “in” life; there is only Life itself.

Life is One, complete and whole.

It alone is in charge of everything that happens, completely free to express itself however it wishes.

IMF - La Cathedrale Verte, Lausanne 20 June 2025