C C C:
I'm just going to tag a question on the end for anyone that might be able to help. It's to do with extinction of the ego.
Is the ego (and its desire for money, sex, power, status and praise) ever fully trasncended? What I've read is that the ego doesn't actually 'die', but the enlightened person operates without being at all directed by the ego. Instead his actions are directed by Spirit or God because he is in direct communion with It. In this way, an enlightened person is very unlikely to have much sex, and very unlikely to hoard material possessions, but if it's 'God's will' that he behave this way at certain times, then he does. But if he does, his action comes from a totally different place, free from craving and unsatisfactoriness. What would the scholars say about this view?
the majority of my reading of the buddhist texts available is of works in the pali canon and of the more well-known commentaries, and is a selective reading (i am primarily interested in works that have to do with technique and and with descriptions of states of attainment); my reading of hindu works are even more limited. this hardly qualifies me as a scholar, but i have some direct experience of the matter, and while i am not sure of what scholars would say about the statements you put forth or about my reply to them (nor am i particularly interested), here is the latter:
speaking personally, i have no desire for money, sex, power, status or praise - none whatsoever survived the last change in mode of experience i underwent, which i would describe as the total extirpation of any sense of being whatsoever (whether a being that is personal or of the collective unconscious; personal desires as well as primal, instinctually passional drives have vanished completely.
however, i achieved the above through means which i have not found documented anywhere in buddhist or hindu sources (i have only found those means in the actual freedom writings), nor have i anywhere come across a contemporary buddhist or hindu (or otherwise spiritual) practitioner who has afforded me a clear description of their mode of experience as being such continuously and uninterruptedly. the writings i've read and the descriptions from contemporary practitioners i've come across that approximate my experience most closely are the ones that idealise this state; yet, they are not accounts of having lived or professions of living it continuously and uninterruptedly (as they contain admissions of intruding thoughts and feelings which, while only coming and going quickly, and being brief interruptions, are still coming in the first place). the matter of why those interruptions still occur for them but not for me is, i speculate, due to the differences in intent (intent is what drives a practice and determines its methodologies). as chuck said, there is a wide variation in how the development of well-being unfolds, and not a common end.
in further response, i will add that my actions are not directed by Spirit or God and that i am not in direct communion with It - It, or Spirit, or God, went extinct along with the collective unconscious. as far as i can tell (and to borrow a phrase), they, as soul, are, along with the ego, as dead as the dodo. what i experience is only this sensate world, and as such, my actions - as this flesh-and-blood body only - are totally free of craving and unsatisfactoriness, which things don't exist in this world. will (the body's innate intelligence) is what operates here, not drive or desire (either ordinary or sublime). and again, i have not found a similar account in any spiritual writings i've read nor heard descriptions of such from contemporary spiritual practitioners; the ones that do address the topic have claimed, as you wrote, to be in direct communion with Spirit or God. as such, i am not surprised that they claim their desires (for money, sex, power, status and praise, for instance) don't actually die... as the fabric of that communion is the very thing that produces desire.
tarin