If we assume that the Ego is by definiton an assertion of individuality, that is, that it is not possible for the Ego to terminate itself, the fact that a person is able to kill him/herself moved by a belief or a cultural norm proves that there is no such a thing as an Ego, which in nondualistic terms means that what we call “I” does not in reality exist as a distinct entity.
The demonstration is simple: such a suicide, which as any other behavior is ego-driven, leaves no room for anything else distinct from those suicidal beliefs that could perform the role of the Ego, therefore there is no Ego since that would contradict the assumption.
In other words, if there were an Ego it wouldn’t be possible to exist a culturaly-driven suicide.
We could generalize the assertion to any suicide regardless of the mobile but this particular case makes it evident that either the Ego can be superseeded by external factors (which contradicts the initial assumption) or it does not exist at all.
This problem is also solved if we assume that the “I” is not the Ego nor anything perishable, which leads to another proposition I made before when I defined consciousness as not a thing but an operation in a crystaline immutable Universe. And this one can be proven in agreement with BOTH cartesian dualism and nondual propositions.
Compliments of the Author 