“Let us reduce till we reach the stream of consciousness. In reflexion every cogitatio on being carried out takes the explicit form cogito…The Ego appears to be permanently, even necessarily there, and this permanence is obviously not that of a stolid unshifting experience, of a ‘fixed idea.’ On the contrary, it belongs to every experience that comes and streams past, its ‘glance’ goes ‘through’ every actual cogito, and towards the object. This visual ray changes with every cogito shooting forth  afresh with each new one as it comes, and disappearing with it. But the Ego remains self-identical” (156).

If I’m not mistaken, much of the criticism directed against Husserl has to do with presence and self-identity. But it seems to me, that presence and self-identity are not the foundation for streaming consciousness, but that streaming consciousness is the shifting foundation of presence and self-identity. In either case, absolute consciousness or pure Ego as understood by Husserl has nothing stolid, finished, or fixed about it.

Also consider this. In “pure experience,” the I, “I the man,” has been suspended no less than the world. “Apart from its ‘ways of being related’ or ‘ways of behaving.’ It is completely empty of essential components, it has no content that could be unraveled, it is in and for itself indescribable” pure Ego and nothing further” (214), but one that “conceals meaning within itself,” or rather what Husserl called “the gift of meaning,” as opposed to bundles of meaningless sensations (231, 232, 236).