Peter Baumann & Michael Taft: The Illusory Ego
Tami Simon speaks with Peter Baumann and Michael Taft. Peter began his career as a member of the acclaimed band Tangerine Dream, and went on to found the Baumann Foundation, an interdisciplinary think tank dedicated to exploring what it means to be fully human. Michael has been a professional writer and researcher for more than two decades. With Natural Enlightenment Press, distributed by Sounds True, Peter and Michael have co-written the book Ego: The Fall of the Twin Towers and the Rise of an Enlightened Humanity. In this episode, Peter and Michael speak about the conceptual revolution that took place 50,000 years ago, the positive evolutionary potential of this particular time in history, and why we may be in the midst of an “enlightenment revolution” right now. (70 minutes)
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Wow! I love this. The question that comes to mind, though, is – what is personal responsibility? If my ego is a construct that is continually unfolding and responding, and emotions are a neuro-physical response, then who/what is in charge, and who/what is responsible?
Comment by Lavinia — September 14, 2011 @ 10:40 pm
Found your observation of the ego as a construct interesting but am having a hard time reconciling it with comments made by Caroline Myss when she was interviewed in this programme by Tami.
“One of the reasons that people have to pray is that evil is real, and we’ve done the darkness a great service by saying it doesn’t exist. That’s the best thing that we could do in service of evil, is deny that it’s there. Nothing is a greater asset to evil than what we’ve done and given it, which is to say it doesn’t exist. We could not have become a greater ally to the dark side than we have been in these last 30 years, than by denying that it exists.”
If the ego is nothing more than a construct that we can choose to identify with or not, and if the organism that is bigger than us is making the choices.Than where do I put the very real unpleasantness that is experienced as evil? Dont know if I am being clear…
Comment by vivienne — September 16, 2011 @ 5:11 am
Thank you for a wonderful podcast. I’m not an American and from the outside, it seems to me that Americans in particular are very much driven by ego, nationalistic ego, I might call it, which of course, is not to say that most humans aren’t, most of us really love our country and feel proud of it. When the ego of the people who perpetrated the horrific attacks of 9/11 was mentioned, I wondered if Tami and Peter and Michael were aware of the ego in them reacting to the ego of the terrorists. Of course, there was a small call to recognizing our own ego during the conversation, but I wonder if Americans will ever find it in their hearts, in their consciousness, to forgive, even if that’s the right word, but rather to see how the terrorists’ and the American egos are basically the same construct, with very different manifestations. What happened in 9/11 was devastating, and even for myself, a foreigner, to visit the site was overwhelmingly painful, seeing the news that day brought tears to my eyes and even today, watching on tv the 10 year anniversary specials, feel quite sad, so I am not advocating in any way terrorist acts, but I am writing this comment to leave you with a call to look inside and recognize how the ego (and our unawareness of it) can make any of us a monster. Thank you.
Comment by Elder Wand — September 22, 2011 @ 1:26 pm
Elder Wand makes some interesting observations. I too am not American, and I notice the almost disturbing ‘ethnocentric’ approach Americans take to viewing world events. Their media speaks of the world changing after 911 and often refers to a pre/post 911 world. Take a look beyond your own country and you will see that other nations have gone through far worse attacks than 911. I love visiting the US, and have nothing against American people but why must the rest of the world suffer your country’s ego?
Comment by Jane — November 15, 2011 @ 6:41 pm