The Illusion of Self

Good evening, everyone. We've come together again tonight for episode 8 of Circle Talks; today we're going to talk about the self, about egoism. Our first topic is this: what is the root, the source, of each of us feeling disconnected from the rest of nature and from one another?

The reason is actually our nature. I read recently that ants and bees have no individual life; they have a more collective life and they're aware of one another. They all work for the colony, they do everything for the community, they have no individual interest. No ant has a desire like "let me become something in my own individuality," but humans do. In society there are individual desires like "let them remember me, let me become a great scientist, know everything, become a great artist," and these keep us from functioning well. We're not a successful community like an ant colony. Do ants have ideological divisions? This isn't only about intelligence; it's about our disconnection. What we need to learn from such integrated creatures in nature is this: real cooperation is something different. There is something in our nature that blocks that cooperation, and that's the source of the problem.

The reason we feel disconnected from each other is egoism, which keeps growing from generation to generation. Human nature is hardware that runs on the desire to receive pleasure for itself; its software is egoism. A human is a primitive creature that thinks about itself every hour of the day. As long as we stay within this nature, we'll drift apart from each other at an ever-increasing speed. And the source of all our problems in the world is that people are disconnected from each other.

So why does a person become disconnected? Because they always think of themselves and always want to take everything for themselves. The ego grows, keeps growing, and as it grows a person becomes cut off from nature too. Because nature wants to give everything; in nature everything forms a whole by giving to each other. Humans, though, only want to receive for themselves. If it goes on like this, what will happen?

I'll exist in pain without understanding why. "Why do I feel like this?" I get up today and suddenly feel terrible; tomorrow maybe I'll feel good, the day after bad again. I don't even know what it depends on. It happens to all of us: sometimes we wake up to a great day, the sun is out; sometimes we feel awful when nothing is going on. Sometimes something good happens to us and ends badly; something that looks terrible turns, a year or two later, into something we say "I'm glad it happened" about.

Not being able to make sense of our lives is what harms us most. So we need to sit down and understand: instead of the "I felt good, I felt bad" cycle, how can I exist in a balanced way? Like a piece of a puzzle, how will I fit into that picture so I can find peace? That's our whole concern: to be at peace. All our running around is to find that place in the puzzle where we can fit.

That is our peace and our happiness too. A person becomes happy in the bond they form with others, when they find a place in society, when they have a family. Frankly, they sustain their very life through their connection with people. Everything a person has, from the language they speak to the clothes they wear and the spoon they eat with, depends on their connection with the society they live in; they owe it to that society. As long as we remain inside this egoistic nature called the desire to receive, we'll feel even more disconnected. Because egoism grows from generation to generation, world history is in fact a history of disconnections and wars. Because the law of nature is this: everything is connected and interdependent. If for whatever reason we don't connect with each other, nature brings us to connection through slaps, wars and suffering. But a connection built through suffering has no meaning.

Yes, in fact everything comes down to connecting. As egoism increases, these disconnections will happen; we'll either connect through war or consciously. What matters is connecting; nature is trying to make us connect.

Most of us have experienced connecting through bad things. We've wanted something very much, desired it intensely; then we've said, "I wish I hadn't wanted anything; from now on I'll love everyone, I won't get into such silly desires." I'm sure everyone has gone through these feelings, because that's really how it feels. At the same time, a person's ego is never satisfied. Whatever it desires stays in its hands like a ghost; in the void it can't truly touch anything.

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Our second question is related: what actually is this egoism we've been talking about? We call it the desire to receive, we call it egoism. What is egoism's intention, what exactly does it want?

Our ego wants to be happy for itself; everything it wants is for itself. So what's the problem here? Is wanting to be happy a bad thing? It's bad in this way: if I don't care at all what happens to others, that is the cause of all suffering. I do something for my own happiness and I don't care whether something happens to someone else. In every area of life: I got in somewhere through connections, I got somewhere by taking someone else's due, I cut in line, I paid a bribe. Society considers all of these bad. Why? Because they're felt as acts done without thinking of others. Morality changes: in more conservative families, dressing very revealingly is considered immoral; in more secular families it isn't. In a society in Africa everyone walks around naked and it isn't immoral. But even there, someone doing something without thinking of others is immoral. This is something written into our genes; that's why we can understand why it's bad. When I do something for myself without taking others into account, the whole world feels how much harm I've done. It's very instinctive; everyone from a child to an adult can feel it with common sense alone. This is the biggest cause of the world's suffering, from wars to relations between neighbors. If it were the opposite, if everyone did things thinking of one another, we can't even imagine what kind of society it would be. The world would be a dreamlike place.

In addition, what we call egoism, the desire to receive pleasure for itself, constantly wants to fill itself. To fill itself, it's willing to exploit and hurt others. And it does this not so much instinctively as on autopilot. The interesting thing is that at the other levels of nature, in animals, in plants, at the inanimate level, there is no egoism; there's no desire to receive pleasure for oneself. An animal doesn't deliberately harm another animal to fill its own desire. But humans exploit, hurt and crush others for the sake of filling their own desire to receive. Why? Because humans haven't yet completed their development. The inanimate, vegetative and animal levels have completed their development, which is why they have no egoism. Human development will eventually be completed like those levels.

Yes, humans are developing; we haven't completed ourselves, we're completing. Of course, for that we have to pass through egoism. Egoism wants to be superior; it wants to use everyone to take everything, to exploit everything. But humans will understand that they can't live like this in the future, and they'll begin to connect consciously and give to one another.

Actually there isn't much time; we can already feel this more or less. Looking around, we can see nature pushing us to connect by force. But that's not good, because it's temporary. When a crisis breaks out we come together; when things return to normal, everyone goes back to thinking of themselves. Do we really need to fight a war of independence to come together? But if we recognize egoism consciously, understand what it wants and how to change it, and move in that direction by conscious choice on a good day, without needing a crisis, a very different world awaits us. Otherwise, after we take the slap, when things return to normal everyone will go on stealing and harming others. We can only change this consciously, through education.

We saw this in the earthquake in the southeast too: some looters showed up and got beaten; I saw a video of it. While people were under the rubble, in the harshest conditions, someone was thinking not of them but of robbing something from there. This seems horrifying to us. But if you look at how it works, big or small makes no difference. Because this was a big event, it drew a big reaction; but the small things you do with the same intention, small thefts, are just as bad. Because if you could, you'd have looted in the earthquake too. So all of us have this in us. A person can't stop themselves with moral explanations. If you're starving, can you say of the food in front of you, "I won't touch it, I won't steal it"? At that point reason goes out the window. The clearest example of this is addicts. I've listened to many, especially young people: "Since becoming addicted I've been doing things I said I'd never do. I was never this kind of person, but for that substance I deceived my mother and father, I lied." All of these come out one by one. You were a good person and that substance didn't corrupt you; you were always like that, the substance only revealed it. Because this is our nature: there's a capacity to swindle your mother, your sibling, your family, your loved ones for a tiny pleasure. That potential is there. That's why we need to work on it and educate ourselves before something happens to us.

We need to work on it before something comes. Does a war have to break out for us to help one another? Nature always pushes us to be responsible for each other. On one side, human nature is egoistic, the desire to receive pleasure; on the other, it depends on other people. A human life passes between these two. What's inside this desire to receive pleasure that we call egoism? Food and drink, family, sex, making money, being famous, being respected, and also knowledge, the desire to know. A person spends their whole life chasing these desires to fill them for themselves. And there's a law of nature: the moment you satisfy that desire, the pleasure you feel and the desire cancel each other out. That's why humankind is like a hamster running in a cage, like a little mouse running in vain. As things stand, a person cannot be happy within their own egoistic desire to receive pleasure, unless they want to change this nature through education.

Yes, only through education, through understanding, by becoming aware of this nature. When egoism discovers that it can no longer be happy receiving for itself, that it will only be happy by giving to others, then everyone will be able to connect.

This requires awareness, but it's not very hard. Let a person look into what they want: they want to be happy, they want their needs met. If we examined a person's daily life, they really have very simple needs. If they lived in a world where all their needs were met and they had no worries about themselves, what would be different from today? Nothing; except that everyone would strive not for themselves but for society. In such a reality a person would still reach everything they reach today and still feel happy; they'd lose nothing and gain a great deal. Maybe, as we're doing now, we need to start sitting down and talking about how this could happen, and teach it to people. It's not hard. When a person thinks of someone else, it feels as if something will be taken away from them. That's not the case at all. If they sat down and did the math intelligently, rationally, even egoistically, they'd realize that thinking of others is still to their own benefit.

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Let's talk about this change, if you like: how can a person bring this self, this egoism inside them, to a state where it can serve the whole?

This is hard. Serving the whole, serving society, is something we don't want. But we see that it's also the cause of our pain; it's both something painful and something I don't want. What is this like? Like going to work or to the doctor. It's necessary, but I don't want to. We can only do this through understanding, by slowly giving ourselves an education. Right now I'm listening to you, you're listening to me; we're listening to each other, and people are listening to us. Here, no one is actually teaching anyone anything; everyone is learning. There's no one teaching from above; it's as if everyone is teaching each other something. For such an environment to form, everyone has to be truly directed toward that goal. We need to see where the actions we take without thinking of one another have led us, and act on that understanding in life. Like going to work: I go to work because I have an understanding. Or I go to the doctor: I've been told I have cancer and I'm going to get chemotherapy. I don't want it at all; it's a very painful process. But in the end, do I have to get it? I do. We need to see our personal development the same way. Because unfortunately humans are sick. However much we resist, we see it in society and we will see it: we have a sick nature and we need treatment.

There's a sick society and it needs treatment. Suppose this society wanted the treatment. How does egoism serve the whole within this society? Everyone has their own desire to receive; even our talents actually lie in our desires. Whatever a person truly desires to do, that's what they should do; they'll do it well and with love. When we think about how egoism serves the whole, it's like this: there's a community, and one person in it is so egoistic that they're very stingy. You put that nature of theirs in charge of the community's finances. There you go, we've used their egoism to serve the whole: they'll save a lot and won't let anything go to waste. Everyone's desire holds something of their own that will serve the whole, something no one else has. That's why a person should do what they truly desire within a society.

Yes, they should do what they desire. On one hand egoism receives for itself, but past a certain point it will understand that it won't find happiness in that. Then it will necessarily start serving society, giving to the whole. This can happen in two ways: either consciously, by realizing it in advance; or by reaching the end point, where it can no longer get pleasure from receiving for itself. After that it begins to give, to serve the whole.

Actually, if we look at the level of actions, everyone is already serving the whole; they're just not aware of it, or their intention is directed at themselves. The neighborhood butcher, the grocer, the teacher, the doctor: as a requirement of the system, without meaning to, they serve society. In return they get a salary and buy things with that salary; that's how the system works. But while doing all this, their intention is directed only at themselves. When the intention is self-directed, they don't hesitate to harm others while doing these things; they can harm easily. The example we always give is animals in nature: an animal gets hungry, hunts a deer and eats it. It has no calculations like "let me stock up a bit and sell it at a higher price next winter." Unfortunately we do have such calculations. But if we kept doing everything we do the same way, if the teacher stayed a teacher, the doctor a doctor, the butcher a butcher, if everyone kept doing their own job and we only changed our intention, the whole world would actually have changed. How will we come to this change? As right now, through education. We have preparations for this too. As Genç Pusula, we want to hold these circles, these conversations about life, not only among ourselves but together with the young people who watch us. We have preparations for this and we'll do it. We'll see that everything is actually in our hands; changing things really is in our hands. There's no need to say "that's life, geography is destiny." We'll see how that power comes from society.

This power comes from society. Even to be able to serve the whole, you need a society. To realize themselves and to make their egoistic nature serve the whole, a person needs a community in any case.

When we look at society, everyone is actually giving to each other. The taxi driver takes someone somewhere, the butcher prepares the meat; one does this, another does that. But everyone does it for money, to fill their own pocket. What's missing is the intention. If we carried out our egoistic desire to receive pleasure with the intention of serving other people, egoism would serve the whole. Everyone acts according to their desire; if the intention is to give to others, they serve the whole this way.

For that intention to change, everyone, the whole society, has to come to awareness. How will this awareness happen? A person will no longer be able to get pleasure from working for themselves, from receiving for themselves; they'll be unhappy; there'll be disconnection. In the past, this disconnection was lived through wars. In war, human nature sees its own evil, suffers from its own ego, and because it suffers it wants to give to society. In that suffering it lives through the ego of the whole world together, sees evil together, and after the war it gains a consciousness. Maybe without wars too, by finding no pleasure in disconnection, that intention can change and that awareness can form.

Actually, I'm sure most of us know that evil is bad and goodness is good; if a person examined and analyzed themselves, they'd realize it. People just say, "The system is like this, all people are like this, we can't live any other way." There are also movements that constantly impose the exact opposite on people: "You can't survive like this; to survive you need to crush others, be egoistic and strong." People are aware of everything; they just don't dare: "Others are like this; if we're good, these things will happen to us." But we also see that it can't go on like this. That's also why we make these broadcasts: to tell people that goodness is a good thing and that, within the right society, it's something that can be learned, lived and experienced. We'll keep building on this. Everyone who watches us can get in touch with us through our social media channels; we'll keep doing different programs, different conversations. If you say "we're at such-and-such university," we'll come and talk with you there. If you want to be part of a society where you can act on what's within you, what you know and want to practice, against the idea that "if we choose goodness, if we think of society, we won't get anywhere," we're building that society together.

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Let's end the circle talk here. Now let's share general impressions; they can be about anything. We can go in the same order.

It's good to be with you. These Circle Talks by Genç Pusula are an example, first for Turkish youth and then for all of Türkiye, of how to talk together as a community around one topic. We're a community here too, after all. Our hope is to raise the Turkish nation to the next level in terms of social relations.

Yes, our aim is to be useful to the Turkish nation and to raise consciousness and awareness. With these Circle Talks we're actually learning together. Thoughts pass into one another, blend together, a whole forms, and we learn from it; we learn from each other. The Circle Method makes this possible. Our aim is to raise both our own awareness and the awareness of our nation.

To raise this awareness we'll keep producing content on social media, both with these Circle Talks and with other concepts in the future; there may be different events too, we're open to everything. If you have an idea or suggestion about this, you can reach us through our social media channels. Thank you all; thanks also to the viewers for their time. See you next week.

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