Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

Later psychoanalysts developed models of the ego
further and investigated various mechanisms by which
that ego interacts with the world. Those
psychoanalysts would call the ego the self, and talk
about how that self relates to the world and to others.
We can easily see that it was not even necessary
to bother with the ‘I’ thought or an ‘I-object’ in order
to allow functioning in the world. Most functioning in
the world occurs on an unconscious or preconscious
level hardly involving our consciousness itself. For
example: driving a car, riding a bicycle, interacting
with others in private or in a group, washing dishes,
and performing the many functions in everyday life
and work. The existence of an ‘I’ is never required.
However, when a person "really" discovers that
there is no separate ‘I’ internally, huge psychological
changes can take place. At least it was with me. For
many others, it is just an intellectual discovery as they
read texts written by others as to what this no-self, or
no-I discovery means.
For me it was not so much the disappearance of a
separate sense of self, or loss of the sense of being a
doer that mattered. These are rather minor things in
comparison to what happened to me.
For me, when I discovered that there was no
internal "object" to which the ‘I’ word referred, I