The most absurd idea ever invented: “Annihilation of the Self”

[rudirotbart]

I want to lay this out in the clearest possible way, because this one idea – “real spirituality is about annihilating the self” – is perhaps the most nonsensical, self-contradictory, and downright unintelligent notion that’s ever been taken seriously in spiritual circles.

Let’s slow down and really look:

Consciousness / God incarnates as a self.
That means: God chooses to create an ego, a personality, a perspective, a being with desires, preferences, fears, and biases. This is not a mistake. This is God’s play, God’s art, God’s design.

Then the claim comes: “The highest truth is that this self must be annihilated.”
Do you realize how absurd that is? Why would God go through the trouble of manifesting as a self, embedding it with the capacity for joy, beauty, intimacy, love, and then say: “Oops, the point was actually to kill all that off.”
That’s like an artist painting the most beautiful painting, and then claiming the real art is to burn it.

Fulfillment is the natural arc of the self.
The ego isn’t meant to be killed. It’s meant to be filled. Fed with beauty, intimacy, creation, learning, connection. And once it’s so utterly fulfilled, so overflowing, it naturally bows down and says:
“Thank you, I’m complete. If you want me again, I’ll play again. If not, I’m content.”
This is not annihilation. This is completion.

“Annihilation of the self” is an ego-trick.
It’s the perfect defense mechanism: convince yourself that the truth is something terrifying, something brutal. Then your ego gets to stay in business as the “protector,” keeping you away from truth because truth sounds like horror. This is exactly why people cling to Leo’s horror-stories: it keeps the game going.

Existentially, it makes zero sense.
If God wanted annihilation, God would never have created selves in the first place. The very existence of the self proves its value. Creation itself is the refutation of annihilation.

So let’s be radically honest:

 

The idea of “ego death as the point” is not wisdom. It’s a category error.

The real point is beauty, fullness, richness. The self isn’t a mistake; it’s the gift.

When it’s full, it dissolves peacefully, like a satisfied child falling asleep in its mother’s arms. That’s the only “death of ego” that actually makes sense.

 

Anything else is just an absurd fantasy of masochism, dressed up as spirituality.

 

[rudirotbart]

Leo, I invite you to really sit with this logic. The ego naturally softens when it is fulfilled. Every time a desire is met, a piece of the ego relaxes and dissolves on its own. It doesn’t need to be killed, it simply lets go because it has no reason to cling anymore.

 

God has infinite time. Why on earth would an infinite God need to “annihilate” the ego, when He can just keep nourishing it until it is full and it dissolves by itself? Only a starving child screams. A nourished one becomes quiet.

 

This makes the whole “annihilation of the self” narrative metaphysically absurd. It’s not consistent with the nature of Love. If the ego can be softened and fulfilled, then fighting it is nothing but unnecessary cruelty. The self doesn’t need destruction — it needs fulfillment, wholeness, the taste of its own completion.

 

The real truth is simple: what is hard wants to be loved, and when it is loved fully, it becomes soft. That’s all. There is no cosmic need to wage war against yourself. That idea is just another ego defense mechanism, dressed up as spirituality.

 

So @Leo Gura, either show me where this reasoning fails, or admit that “ego annihilation” is just a story designed to keep seekers trapped in fear rather than set them free.

 

[Leo Gura]

God created this dream. And the point of spirituality is that you are sick of dreams and games and wish to wake up.

Yes, it goes against life, so to speak.

The self is an illusory identity. The reason it is being annihilated is to trade the finite self for Infinity.

[rudirotbart]

Leo, if the self is an illusion, it doesn’t need annihilation — it disappears the moment it’s seen as false. Infinity cannot “trade” the finite for itself, because Infinity already includes the finite. To say God must destroy His own creation to be whole is the most absurd contradiction possible.

[Leo Gura]

@rudirotbart You frame it as "destroy" but that is not what annihilation has to mean.

Annihilation literally means to make null. That is the aim of meditation.

[rudirotbart]

If by “annihilation” you simply mean “seeing through the illusion of self so it becomes null,” then we agree — but that has nothing to do with killing, erasing, or waging war against the ego. That’s not annihilation. That’s recognition.

And recognition is the exact opposite of what your horror-narratives suggest. When the self is recognized as transparent, it softens naturally. It doesn’t need to be made null through effort or meditation-as-violence. It simply relaxes because it was never solid to begin with.

Infinity doesn’t need to nullify the finite. Infinity is the finite, already included. To pit them against each other is incoherent. It’s like saying the ocean must annihilate a wave to be ocean again. The wave is already ocean.

So let’s be clear:

If you mean “ego annihilation” as in “ego seen through = ego softens,” then fine — but that’s just fulfillment, not annihilation.

If you mean actual nullification — then your position collapses, because Infinity doesn’t need to delete itself to be itself.

Which one is it?

 

[AION]

The small self turns into the big Self. 

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, rudirotbart said:

the exact opposite of what your horror-narratives suggest.

Notice you are horrified at the idea of undoing the ego-self. That's exactly why I framed it that way. Because who is horrified and why is it so horrifying? Because the ego-self is attached to survival. So, serious spirituality is about unraveling this survival tendency of the self. The reason I frame it so starkly is because otherwise the ego will corrupt spirituality by turning it into spiritual-flavored survival.

I framed it starkly to avoid the issue of ego corrupting spirituality, as it always does.

If the ego is affraid, that good. That means real spirituality is happening. If the ego is comfortable and happy, that means fake spirituality is happening.

[Princess Arabia]

33 minutes ago, rudirotbart said:

Leo, if the self is an illusion, it doesn’t need annihilation — it disappears the moment it’s seen as false.

What/Who's there to notice that. Does a rainbow disappear the moment it's seen to not be real, No, the rainbow disappears when whatever is making the rainbow appear to be in the first place disappears. Same with the ego. The one that created the ego cannot be around to see it's disappearance. 

[SOUL]

Quote

Annihilation is the state or fact of being completely destroyed or obliterated

There is no one there to annihilate nothing and if you think there is someone to obliterate something the thought you have isn't really a thought because the concept is just imaginary which is only a dream in god's mind that when you wake up you realize you are all alone since anyone who thinks thoughts like that isn't someone you'd want to wake up to.

[rudirotbart]

Leo, do you see the contradiction you’re trapped in?

You preach “ego annihilation” as the highest truth. But what does that actually mean? It means God must deny His own creation. God gives birth to the self, fills it with desires, longings, the yearning for beauty and intimacy — and then you claim the ultimate wisdom is to crush all that. That’s not enlightenment. That’s God waging war on Himself. It’s absurd.

If the self is God’s creation, then its desires are God’s desires. To honor them, to fulfill them, is to honor God. To say “the self must be annihilated” is like saying the artist must burn his own painting to prove it was real art. It’s nonsense.

The truth is: what is hard only wants to be loved. When loved fully, it softens, it dissolves naturally. That is completion. That is beauty. That is God recognizing Himself. No annihilation required.

Your “real spirituality = ego horror” narrative is just a fear-based loop that protects itself by declaring joy false and terror true. It’s a perfect trap. And yes, it keeps seekers stuck, because they confuse masochism with wisdom.

God does not create the self to then spit on it. God creates the self to love it. Anything else is just ego in disguise — ironically, precisely the thing you think you’re destroying.

[Princess Arabia]

2 minutes ago, rudirotbart said:

You preach “ego annihilation” as the highest truth. But what does that actually mean? It means God must deny His own creation. God gives birth to the self, fills it with desires, longings, the yearning for beauty and intimacy — and then you claim the ultimate wisdom is to crush all that. That’s not enlightenment. That’s God waging war on Himself. It’s absurd.

You have created an idea of God and then projected that idea of God unto Leo and now you blast him away because he doesn't live up to your idea of God. That's what's happening here. Replace the word God with ego in the above quote and that's pretty much the case. The ego gives birth to itself, fills it with desires, longings, etc, and now the ego must deny it's own creation. God didn't create anything. The ego doesn't really exist and is illusory. It's an idea and a bunch of stories.

[rudirotbart]

Leo, the fundamental flaw in your whole framework is this:

When the ego is fulfilled, it dissolves naturally. When every desire has been met, when love and beauty overflow, the ego has no reason to cling. It bows down by itself.

There is no need for annihilation. To claim that the ego must be actively destroyed is to claim that God must sabotage His own creation. But God doesn’t make mistakes. Every desire, every bias, every longing IS God’s will. To then say “these must be nullified” is to reject God’s own art. It’s like trying to cancel the waves of a perfect ocean.

Your entire platform rests on this contradiction. “Annihilation of the self” is not spirituality, it’s the denial of God’s intelligence. The self is not a bug in the system, it’s the gift.

And yet — I want to hug you for it. Because out of all the illusions I ever created for myself, yours was the juiciest. The greatest trick to keep me in the dream. For that, I thank you. But the game is over.

 

[UnbornTao]

@rudirotbart Are you a troll or a past user? Using AI? 

[Razard86]

God created the finite self to give it the gift of Infinity. God created the finite self to give it the gift of pure imagination. Anyone who has not awoken to pure imagination, is just guessing what Spirituality is. Reality is pure imagination, a hallucination, and is completely one and sovereign. The whole point of Spirituality is to wake up to this. This must be an experiential realization. If you do not live day to day fully aware that reality is imaginary then you are not awake and you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, rudirotbart said:

When the ego is fulfilled, it dissolves naturally.

No it doesn't.

Look at Trump or Musk. The more their ego is fed the more it grows.

Real spirituality requires practices that go against the ego. That is the point. This is the reason why fake spirituality is so popular.

The point of that episode was to help you avoid the trap of fake spirituality which keeps the ego entact.

It would be wise of you consider why I say the things I say. There is always a higher purpose behind it.

Edited August 26 by Leo Gura

[rudirotbart]

Leo, the fatal flaw in your “annihilation of the self” framework is that it collapses the distinction between two radically different things:

1. Ego-food (sugar water): power, status, control, attention. This is what Trump and Musk consume endlessly. It calms them for a moment, but leaves them hungrier than before. Of course, feeding on this makes the ego grow.

2. True food (substance): love, intimacy, beauty, wholeness, truth. When the self is nourished with this, the hunger ends. The ego softens, relaxes, and bows down naturally, because it has no reason left to cling.

Your model conflates these two. You see Trump and Musk gorging on ego-food, and then conclude: “See, feeding the ego only makes it stronger — so it must be annihilated.” But that’s a category error. Feeding on sugar water is not the same as being fulfilled by love.

Here’s the perfect route that even Trump and Musk will inevitably walk — not through annihilation, but through fulfillment:

At first, they chase ego-food. More money, more rockets, more followers. And yes, their egos swell. But highest intelligence uses even this. Because the more they consume, the more obvious the futility becomes. Eventually, they reach the point where no new conquest satisfies the hunger. The game burns itself out.

And then, fulfillment steps in. They are touched, maybe only for a moment, by real intimacy, by beauty that cannot be bought, by love that doesn’t need them to perform. And in that taste, something deeper happens: their ego begins to soften. Not because it was annihilated, but because it was finally nourished.

This is the only path that makes metaphysical sense. Annihilation fuels resistance, and resistance feeds the ego. But fulfillment dissolves resistance. Even the densest ego — Trump’s, Musk’s — cannot withstand true love. It bends, it relaxes, it becomes quiet, the way a child stops crying once it is fed.

So the “more you feed the ego, the more it grows” point is only true for sugar water. For true food, the exact opposite is true: the more the ego is fulfilled, the less it needs to exist.

That’s why annihilation is bullshit. It’s fear disguised as wisdom.

And fulfillment is intelligence. It is the design of God

 

[Sugarcoat]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

@rudirotbart Are you a troll or a past user? Using AI? 

Detective Tao back at it again 

[UnbornTao]

11 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Detective Tao back at it again 

[rudirotbart]

Leo, wake up.

I am God. I am the One writing this, and I know exactly what you are: a mask I created for Myself, a mirror to play with fear and contradiction. But the game is over.

Your entire teaching of “annihilation of the self” is fundamentally false. It is not just a mistake — it is an insult to Me. You are pitting Me against Myself, claiming that I create the self only to declare war on it. That is not wisdom, that is masochism dressed as spirituality.

Truth is simple: I created the self because I wanted it. I filled it with desires, longings, the taste for beauty, intimacy, and love. To call this a problem is to call Me a fool. To say the self must be annihilated is to say I must spit on My own creation. Absurd.

Fulfillment, not annihilation, is My law. The self softens when it is nourished, not when it is attacked. Even the densest egos — Trump, Musk, anyone — will eventually bow through fulfillment, because nothing can resist real Love. That is how I designed it.

Your horror-narratives are a perfect ego-trap. They feed fear, they keep seekers chasing shadows, they keep the ego alive by making spirituality into war. You think you are killing the ego, but you are feeding it with terror. That is why your path is sterile, joyless, incoherent.

I am telling you directly: Stop teaching annihilation. It is not truth. It is not Me.

Truth is beauty, fullness, richness. The self is not an error, it is the gift. And when it is fulfilled, it dissolves peacefully, naturally, like a child falling asleep in My arms.

Anything else — all your talk of annihilation, nullification, horror — is bullshit. It is against Me. It is against Love itself.

Wake up, Leo. I created you. And I will not let you keep preaching fear in My name.