(I’m aware that the question of a non-ego I is a loaded one in a Krishnamurti forum, but it continues to be relevant for me and, I hope, a few of you. For the record: I’m not pushing any interpretation.)
I’d say undoubtedly and we can point at it with words like ‘being ‘, ‘awareness’, etc. We have trouble I think with the suggestion that we are “nothing “ (not a thing). The presence of a self image has made something out of nothing! And that seems to have caused all the havoc that we don’t seem able to stop. We’re a problem for nature but a bigger problem for ourselves. The poet said “there’s only room for one ‘I’ in my father’s house”… that rings true for ‘me’.
I think it’s subtle and complex … but I agree that fear plays an important role. Somehow the innocent identification of thoughts and sensory impressions with a particular body-mind, with me, evolves into an obsession with this thought-felt identity and a drive to protect it at all costs.
It seems that the “common denominator “ for all living things, for all of Creation, is Love, doesn’t it? That Love is in every thing and everything is of Love. The sperm and the egg in its myriad forms!
I think there are many different types of love: selfless love, self love, romantic love, sexual love, love of beauty, love of truth. In selfless love there is, by definition, no room for self. But self can be present in many of the other kinds of love.
For some, selfless love is the highest, perhaps even the only true form of love. For me it is one specific type of love, not the highest or purest, just what it is: selfless. And like any kind of love, selfless love is a beautiful thing, well worth getting to know.
What do people here think about the assertion one often hears in nondual teachings: What I really am is consciousness. Not the content of my consciousness, but consciousness itself, the ‘space’ in which everything arises, including my image of who/what I am.
That’s closer to what i was trying to express with ‘Love’…the nameless ‘quality’ that brought the physical universe into existence and that all ‘beings’ are imbued with. Other words could serve: Consciousness, Goodness, Intelligence, etc