Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?

[Angrboda]

It seems to me that Buddhists in particular, but ascetic mystics of many traditions, have arrived at this conclusion, and followed this path.  I mean, I've seen a Buddhist book directly entitled "Meditations on the Nature of Emptiness."  And yet they are almost universally mocked as agents of "woo" by those of us who haven't divested ourselves of the pleasant illusions and delusions of ego.  I wonder, which party is most capable of science, by which I mean the clear-minded observation of reality?

The problem is that such people have attained a certain result by the practice, but have adopted fanciful explanations for what that result is and why it is. The fact that different brands of woo layered on top seem not to matter one whit to the result suggests that the woo is an extraneous imposition — the woo doesn't matter, it's the practice. But the woo has become embedded in our culture(s) to the effect that the explanation that the practice rids you of ego — which is part of the woo — is the reality. It's mistaking metaphysics about the practice, which is likely wrong, for the nature of the result. The explanation — which is just religious horse hockey — has come to be mistaken for the reality.

I'm interested in meditation because of the possible effects on the brain. But those effects are unlikely to be as the mystics describe them. What the actual brain / psychological effects are is still largely unknown. I don't think adopting a woo filled explanation of it gets us any closer to that goal, except as a descriptive report of the subjective experience.