I, THE EGO
I am nothing, only the Self exists, the body is a piece of inanimate matter with a heart pumping from the energy of the matter that it consists of. Being attached to such an object means distancing oneself from the wider universe that is the Brahman (which ia the only live entity) and instead going with its guna-consciousness attributes that the Self is still attached to. I do not exist; I being the ego, still deriving information from the brain which is the inanimate matter.
Brahman is Created by what we call God, and that God lies dormant in our psyche most of the time forming this Self in Brahman that on losing all one’s attachments to ego the mind as atman accesses yet carries on fully aware of the nuances of Brahman in its guna-consciousness interactions. What then happens is purely Self-preservational, not self-preservational as the ego. For the Self cannot be destroyed by the components of Brahman as being the Creator of Brahman.
When one talks about the vyvaharika (the visible and experiential reality) being an illusion, this is what is meant: the distance between the ego and the Self. Only when the mind becomes the Self is Reality perceived. When the ego through atman becomes the Self, we have advaita or non-dual existence. Since the Creator is the Self in Brahman, it is Vishista-aadvaita, and hence we have the philosophy of Vishista-advaita Vedanta. Vishist-aadvaita is only a religion in acknowledging the Self as the Om element of the Creator, and in this acknowledgment incorporating dharma in sanatan dharma in which one’s thoughts and actions are all nonchalant, spontaneous and unpremeditated when union is attained with the Self. It is automatic, so there is no explicit dharma of any responsibilities, or right actions or wrong actions of any kind, such as lies, deceit, ahimsa (killing or not), smoking and drinking alcohol which are effectively suicidal actions, or animal welfare considerations in relation to non-vegetarianism and killing laboratory animals, etc. No morals therefore exist. For ego has vanished from the psyche. The Self being Om just goes about with the flow of Brahma-Nature in its guna-consciousness interactions. This is the sanatan dharma as defined within Vishista-advaita Vedanta. For duties and responsibilities are attachments to to the ego which is still directing the self in taking those guna-consciousness interactions seriously for one’s actions and reactions which then become karma as another type of religion. Karma is not intrinsic to Vishista-advaita. Vedanta because karma means that one is then vulnerable as one is attached to materials with objectives, aims, plans, missions, hopes, anticipations, expectations and desires, which is anathema to Vishista-advaita as disrupting the rhythm of the mind of freedom and liberty. Further, one is not hoping or anticipating that the God Creator lying dormznt in one’s psyche will actively act as a doer to protect, guide and preserve the universe in any of its components that is its Creation Brahman. That is not Vishista-advaita Vedanta in total non-dual existence unattached to matter and unattached to the Creator, to the extent that a Personal God is not even acknowledged in one's day to day living.
So when one attains the Self, one is preserved in body, mind and spirit.