She conceives of the I in Husserlian terms as a standing-streaming.

She conceives of the I in Husserlian terms as a standing-streaming. For her, the ego on its own is empty and needs to be filled from without (FEB, p. 344). The divine being on the other hand has no contrast between ego-life and being. Stein says that Husserl calls the self that is immediately given in conscious experience: the ‘pure ego’ (FEB, p. 48) which in itself has no content. This is rather like a point from which streams come out. It is the pure I of Husserl.

But there is, also following Husserl, a fuller more concrete ego. This ego is alive and we can speak of different degrees of Lebendigkeit . As Stein writes: The pure ego is, as it were, only the portal through which the life of a human being passes on its way from the depth of the soul to the lucidity of consciousness. (FEB, p.