Why does being ethical matter if ego is an illusion?

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Most people think of illusion as being opposite of being real. This isn’t the case. Illusion means a thing is less connected to reality than other things. A thing may be less connected to reality, but illusory things are always connected to meaning.

If you’re watching TV, you’re watching an illusion. Multiple layers of illusion, in fact. The physical television isn’t actually displaying the actors being portrayed, the actors aren’t actually the characters. The story is a created story.

Calling something an illusion is not the same as saying it doesn’t matter. The physical TV you watch matters in certain ways that pertain to your enjoyment of the experience. The casting, and the story writing also matter. It all comes together in order to create a temporary experience, a conceit, that being can enjoy.

Ego is a patterned, automatic response to things that happen to you. It, like the different components of the television show that we watch, the physical substrate, the actors, the storyline, has a role to play in the construction of self.

But it’s not a very good role. Ego blinds the mind, making it impossible for authentic interaction with others to change the self. In a perfect world, one would be able to apprehend and eliminate ego structures “in real time.”

This, unfortunately, is very difficult. And even if we could do that, ego elimination doesn’t answer the question of “how should we interact with others.” Even enlightened people often had trouble figuring out how to deal with people.

Enter ethics / morals. Moral philosophy attempts to solve the question independently of the vagaries of individual ego or self, precisely because of the illusory nature of them. Morals exist to keep the state of human interaction from falling to the lowest common denominator of spiritual evolution.

Without them, individual liberation, cessation of self and ego, won’t actually produce a better world. It just means that physical determinants of behavior, pure selfishness, will take over and society will simply degrade.

I got to witness this dynamic in the spiritual communities that often surround liberated peoples. As people found out more and more that what was holding them back was an illusion, they’d throw the baby out with the bathwater and just turn into assholes. The need for moral policing was ever greater as people cast off their fetters.