The 'I' in the Womb

In the womb, there is no language, no memory, and no sense of a separate ego. There is only a bare, unified feeling of existence. This shows that the sense of being is prior to the sense of separateness.

The ego develops only as sensory experiences accumulate and create a division between 'me' (the body-mind) and 'other' (the world). Separateness is a learned boundary.

The infant's experience before separating 'self' from 'world', representing a natural non-dual state that is later veiled by the structures of language and memory. It is a state of open, uncontracted being.