how-the-ego-invents-god

Projection and Awakening: How the Ego Invents God

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The difference between entitized projection and enlightened embodiment

đŸ”č Preface: The Setup

What sparked this inquiry into the ego, religion, and projection

“The Father” vs. Buddhahood—Misused Metaphors
In Christian myth, “the Father” is portrayed as the supreme divine source—a being.
But in truth, “the Father” is a metaphor—a placeholder for the unconditioned absolute.
So why not call it Buddhahood?
Because Christianity emerged from a patriarchal, tribal, and Romanized structure.
Buddhism names the highest state not as a father or deity but as awakening itself: Buddhahood.
The metaphor changes—the truth does not.
One locates salvation in hierarchy.
The other locates awakening in the self.

Response:
“So true.”

Commenter:
“The latter two—Christianity and Islam—have brought nothing but misery to the planet, while Judaism avoids proselytization.”

Follow-up Reflection:
Just because Judaism doesn’t actively proselytize doesn’t mean it’s ethically superior or functionally different. The absence of conversion campaigns doesn’t absolve it from the same core structures that make religion dangerous.

Judaism is the ROOT.

It introduced the anthropomorphic god as a tribal authority figure—jealous, vengeful, male, and chosen.

Christianity codified that god into a divine hierarchy: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Islam reinforced it, merging tribal obedience with the totalization of law.

Buddhism did none of this.

It names the highest state not as a father or a deity but as awakening itself.

The metaphor changes—the truth does not.

Judaism birthed the metaphor of divine patriarchy.

Christianity and Islam scaled it into empires.

Buddhism bypassed the metaphor and aimed directly at the mind.

But beneath the names, They share one function.

They all serve the same metaphysical role, i.e., the “One True God” is the entitized demiurge—a projection of consciousness that renders inner archetypes into outer authority.

It is not God in any absolute sense. It is the psychological interface between higher thought and physical reality.

It projects your beliefs into structure.

It shapes your world according to those inputs.

It perpetuates a false sense of separation between creator and creation.

But this function—like a browser rendering code—has no inherent divinity.

It is not a being.

It is a mechanism.

So why do people worship it? Because the ego entitizes the interface.

It mistakes function for form.

It fears the formless—so it wraps the unknown in identity. And then it bows to its own projection.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are built around that projected identity.

Which is why they all command obedience, not awakening.

And Buddhism?

Buddhism bypassed the projection.

It never entitized the metaphor.

It went directly to the mind, where all gods are born and all delusions undone.

The metaphor changes—the truth does not.

Judaism birthed divine patriarchy.

Christianity and Islam scaled it into empire.

Buddhism pointed to the tathatā (suchness), not the symbol.

Absolutizing this god (making him the only god), they created the template for monotheism. That way, there is

No more pantheon.

No competing domains.

Just one will, one law, one truth.

This became the seed of control systems later adopted by Christianity and Islam—with even more entitization and hierarchy.

The Hebrews didn’t invent Yahweh from scratch. They assembled him from pre-existing regional ARCHETYPES, then forged him into an authoritarian mirror of tribal struggle to maintain identity, obedience, and spiritual morale.

So why did they do it? Because fear, identity, and power demanded it.

The tragedy is that millions still believe this PROJECTION, an externalized image of divinity created by the ego—a mental construct that takes the formless, unconditioned reality (the source, the field, Buddhahood, consciousness itself) and turns it into

A personified being (“God the Father,” “Yahweh,” “Allah”), with a will, preferences, and emotions (jealousy, wrath, favoritism) who demands obedience and devotion and operates outside the self.

This projection is anthropomorphic, made in man’s image; hierarchical, above you; authoritarian, commanding your behavior; and illusory, existing only in thought and belief, not in metaphysical reality.

So you might be wondering why this ego-shaped reflection, entitized through fear and tradition that is not a metaphysical being, would project inner archetypes as outer authorities?

🟧 The Ego and the Projection of God

Religious Archetypes as Psychological Substitutes

Because the ego, trapped in duality, cannot reconcile its own contradictions.

It craves order, yet fears annihilation.
It longs for meaning, yet cannot generate it independently.
So rather than integrate the unknown, it projects it—casting its internal tensions into the sky and naming them as gods.

But these aren’t abstract virtues like “love” or “clarity.”
They are religious archetypes—mythic constructs built to resolve existential instability:

  • The Lawgiver (Yahweh): wrathful, jealous, exacting—a projection of fear transformed into divine command
  • The Redeemer (Christ): martyred, merciful, sacrificial—a projection of guilt reshaped into cosmic forgiveness
  • The Sovereign Judge (Allah): singular, unchallengeable, supreme—a projection of uncertainty reified into submission

None of these are metaphysical beings.
They are functions—rendered external by an ego that cannot tolerate the formless nature of truth.

🟹 Not Gods, But Functions

The Contrast Between Projection and Enlightened Embodiment

The ego, bound by duality, projects these functions outward and entitizes them into gods.
The awakened mind, grounded in nonduality, realizes those same functions inward—and expresses them as life itself.

In Buddhist practice, this distinction is not theoretical.

The Gohonzon does not display a pantheon of external rulers. It reveals archetypal functions of enlightenment—aspects of Buddhahood that emerge when the internal cause is activated:

  • Ashuku (Aksobhya): the unmoving wisdom that overcomes delusion
  • Fukƍjƍju (Amoghasiddhi): the fearless accomplishment of enlightened action
  • Hƍshƍ (Ratnasambhava): the boundless generosity and equality of the Buddha nature
  • Taho (Prabhutaratna): the eternal presence of the Law verified through time
  • Fudƍ Myƍ-ƍ (Acala): the unshakable force that cuts through illusion
  • Dai Bishamon-tennƍ: the guardian of dignity, courage, and protective strength

These are not gods in the Abrahamic sense.
They are functions of enlightenment—emergent properties of a reality that does not split itself into creator and creation, heaven and earth, saved and damned.

đŸŸȘ Inheriting the Law, Not Seeking a Ground

Why the Function of Awakening Replaces the Need for Metaphysical Essence

So while the ego builds a system—fear at the root, obedience at the top—and calls it sacred, the Buddha recognizes the field itself as sacred, without hierarchy, without projection, without a second.

The religious mind entitizes.
The awakened mind embodies.

And this is why the projected God is not a source.

Not because there is nothing,
but because there is no fixed essence to grasp.

In Buddhism, there is no “ground of being” as some ultimate metaphysical base. That notion belongs to theistic systems that require a creator or substrate. The Buddha taught something more radical: that all phenomena are empty of inherent nature (ƛƫnyatā). There is no fixed substance behind appearances—only function, relation, and the ceaseless arising of conditions.

What exists is not a source to be worshipped, but a Law to be inherited.

To awaken is not to find a ground, but to inherit the Law already active within one’s life.
This is not discovery—it is recognition.
To realize that one’s life itself is the heritage of the ultimate Law.

In this view, what some traditions call “God” is merely a projection onto what is, in truth:

  • Suchness (tathatā): reality as it is, free of distortion
  • The Dharma realm (dharmadhātu): the total field of interdependent phenomena
  • Dependent origination (pratÄ«tya-samutpāda): the functional law of emergence
  • Buddha-nature: the capacity to awaken to this, present in all life
  • Emptiness (ƛƫnyatā): not nothingness, but the openness of all things to arise in relation

To awaken is to perceive this—not as something received from outside, but as something already inscribed in the function of your own life.

🟩 The Collapse of False Dualities

Subjective and Objective Buddha, Esho Funi, and the True Object of Worship

Consciousness may appear interconnected—its forms shaped by memory, language, and environment.
But the Dharma realm is interdependent—not a space where a subject perceives an object, but a field where what perceives and what is perceived arise together.

This is not the collapse of a Western subject-object split.
It is the realization of the oneness of subjective and objective Buddha—the life within, and the mirror without, functioning as one.

The Gohonzon, as the object of worship, does not stand apart from the self.
It reflects the true nature of one’s life—not a god to be obeyed, but the Law to be activated.

This is the oneness of self and the environment (esho funi).
Not metaphor. Not abstraction. A dynamic principle of causality—where inner intent (ichinen) and external conditions arise together, shaping reality.

As the traditional image of the two cranes suggests—one with its mouth open, the other closed—this is the silent and spoken Law united.
The function of voice and the function of realization.
The chanting of daimoku and the silent working of Myƍhƍ.

There is no division between the self and the Law.
No separation between the life that seeks and the life that is sought.

To awaken is to see that what you worship is your own potential reflected back—and that the object of worship is nothing other than the enlightened function of your own mind.

đŸŸ„ The Tragedy of Projection

What Was Forgotten in the Worship of False Gods

And so, the tragedy isn’t just that we projected gods onto the sky.
It’s that we forgot we were never separate from suchness,
never apart from the Dharma realm,
never distant from the function of awakening already present in our own Buddha-nature.