Alan Watts on the Ego

"Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word "water" is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but is not the same as your living organism."

(From: Reality, Play, Ideas of Alan Watts: Buddhism - The Religion of No-Religion. Tuttle Publishing, p. 29.)