Egonaut

The egonaut is the base-level "you" that persists between selves. These selves could either be one life to another or tentum-to-tentum if Ego Divisus occurs.

What is "I?"

The concept of "I" is something most learn from an early age. Our definition of what "I" means at any given moment is forced to expand or contract to fit situations as necessary. Without additional terms or degrees for "I" to provide gradation, we resort to phrases to describe how what we observe diverges from our understanding.

For instance, how do we convey "I" for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia whose "mind is gone?" Those around them may say "they're not there anymore" or that the person they knew "is already gone." This is said regarding people who can still talk, show emotion, and are clearly alive by all other metrics or criteria. Why are they "already gone?" What does that even mean?

The problem results from reducing all of oneself to simply "I" as this concept alone lacks degrees of nuance.

Instead of redefining "I" to fit additional scenarios that crop up like a game of whack-a-mole, different versions of "I" can be defined and have their own term. In this case, egonaut intends to define the most foundational, base-level "I" possible.

To understand what exactly the egonaut is (and what it is not), below are two scenarios:

Egonaut Scenario #1

Imagine you are in the middle of a large field with a scientist and a dog. The scientist has a machine that switches this base-level, foundational version of "you" with the dog while allowing you to remember the experience after.

"This will allow you to experience first-hand what this version of 'I' is, and what it is not." the scientist says, turning the machine on.

→ What happens?

You suddenly aren't looking through your eyes - you are seeing through the dogs eyes. You do not think the colors or the long snout in your view are different because you are the dog. You feel as though you've been this dog your entire life.

You smell a veritable cornucopia of scents. Again, none of this is unusual for you; you've smelt like this as long as you can remember.

You wag your tail while looking at the two people standing in front of you; they flank the lightly whirring machine teeming with little lights and mystery until - wait!

A smattering of moving shapes just fluttered in your periphery. Your head turns turns swiftly and instinctively and - yes, there it is! A squirrel! You dart after it, feeling your legs thrown forward and you lunge towards it - running as fast as you can to catch it!

The machine turns off. "What did you experience?" the scientist asks; what do you say?

"That was incredible! I was the dog! I felt like I had been the dog my entire life!"

What does "I" mean here? It's not your original body - that was the dog's body after the switch. It's not your personality or the memories you carry with you of your life - none of those were transferred to the dog. So what do you mean by "I" when you say "I was the dog!"?

Discussion

While there are many terms for this "I" that you may reach for to describe what you meant - perhaps soul or the Hindu Ātman or Buddhist Ātman - these terms have thousands of years of cultural, religious, and philosophical interpretation and, as such, may not mean exactly what we are describing here depending on how these terms are defined to you.

To avoid redefining something that is already defined, an entirely new word for this base-level "I" that is novel was chosen. Recall above in Egonaut Scenario #1 how it was observed a hypothetical scenario showcasing how this foundational "I" can persist even when traveling from one self to another.

As a result, a term like how "astronaut" was coined from combining the Greek words "astro-" (star) and "-naut" (sailor) to mean "someone who sails among the stars" was created.

This foundational "I" is like "that which sails among selves" or a "self sailor" and thus was termed the egonaut: a compound word from the Greek words "ego-" (self) and "-naut" (sailor).

No matter what you remove from your being, whether it be your sight, or your memories, or your personality, or any other sense or trait, the egonaut is the one thing that remains the same. It is a foundation upon which everything else can be built.

Egonaut Scenario #2

However, the egonaut is ultimately only a pointer: an index that defines the direction of perception, feeling, or experience. Here is another scenario to test out this concept:

Imagine you are again with the scientist in a research lab. There is a machine in the lab that will clone every detail about you down to the atomic and even quantum level to the absolute maximum extent possible - an even more of an exact replica than the villainous Mauler Twins use when cloning themselves in the superhero comic Invincible.

You are blindfolded and moved onto an unknown spot. The machine turns on. Nothing seems to have happened? As you remove your blindfold, you abruptly stop in astonishment as you gaze across at an exact clone of you that is has also abruptly stopped removing their own blindfold in amazement.

The clone is an exact copy in every conceivable way - it doesn't think it's a clone, it is as certain as you that it is the original. It has all of your memories and they feel every bit as real for them as they do for you - despite the clone having never actually been there to experience any of it.

This clone is so exact, in fact, that there is now no way for you to know which of you is the clone and which is the original. Every possible aspect you can imagine is identical between you - everything except the egonaut.

To make the point as clear as possible, the scientist tells you they will flip a coin to determine which of you gets to live a life of luxury while the other will tortured relentlessly. Do you care what the outcome is?

Of course you would, because despite every conceivable detail between you being exactly the same, each of you has a different egonaut and you'd much prefer yours to inherit a life of luxury over one of pain.

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See Also

 ➤ Infinite Journey: Tentum, Ego Divisus

 ➤ Wikipedia: Self, Soul, Atman, Sentience, Cloning