What are the origins of the "ego"?

Last night, I was going to bed, and as I was heading towards the bathroom, a strange idea came to my mind: The "ego" is not a thing, a "center", it is a function, the action of surviving, of having security, of achieving, of going "forward". It is the same difference as "a walk" (a thing) and "walking" (a function).

It is not a thing from where an action stems. It is rather the drive that makes thoughts happen, the drive that makes things happen.

And then a question came to my mind quite diffusely, rather difficult to put into words: what is the origin of this drive? And I thought the same drive that makes a thought happen is the same drive that makes the whole universe go forward, exist, expand, be.

So, this universal drive to exist, takes a certain shape in human beings, and we call it "ego". The shape is determined by a particular evolutionary path. That universal drive takes a different shape in other living things, in molecules, in galaxies...

And when I saw this, I understood it might be wrong to "demonize" the "ego", to suppress it, to think it is the source of many evil things, as some religions do. Maybe we can just observe its origins which determine its essence, the evolution which gives it a shape, and its universality......

Today I realized it is just one more example of the "holographic" nature of the universe, that David Bohm was talking about: if the universe has this drive to exist, we have to partake of this drive also.....

(photograps taken by Hubble telescope: top, the Carina Nebula, bottom, Gas Pillars in a Star-Forming Region of the Eagle Nebula. http://hubblesite.org.

Note about the bottom picture (from Wikipedia): This photograph is known as the "Pillars of Creation", a part of the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light-years distant. These columns––which resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern––are composed of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust, which act as incubators for new stars.

The longest of the 'Pillars' is seven light years long, and because of their massive density interior gasses contract gravitationally to form stars. Due to the huge distance between us, the Pillars of Creation may already be gone, and instead a stellar star nursery could have taken its place. In early 2007, scientists using the Spitzer discovered evidence that potentially indicates that the Pillars were destroyed by a nearby supernova explosion about 6,000 years ago, but the light showing the new shape of the nebula will not reach Earth for another millennium.)

(to read more about holography, see http://dialogueglobal.blogspot.com/2009/04/fractals-and-holograms.html)