Who am I?
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n all the reflective processes we undertake and undergo, there is a constant nagging thought that someone or something must be doing all this thinking and reflection. Not only that: Sages like Sri Ramana Maharshi even advocated a meditation method of inquiry into oneself in the form of asking oneself repeatedly the question of “Who am I?”, which is a process of exclusion of all the contents of the mind or consciousness that present themselves as objects of awareness and arriving finally at pure consciousness, the non-dual awareness, which is our true ‘self’. But, unfortunately, even if we arrive at a stage of meditation, it being a state, none of that lasts forever. We must descend into our thought processes eventually, and then we are back in the world of duality. Unless this is a final realization when one transcends totally the world of duality, one is bound to return to the thinking process and worldly life and start asking the questions of who am I and where do I come from, or what will happen to me when I die, and so forth.
Spiritual teachers, whether it is Ramana Maharshi or UG, may say that this is a state where questions will disappear finally, never to occur again. But then what is not clear in their teachings is how one operates in day-to-day living still using thinking processes, which seem inevitably to lead us to questions like the above. One possibly could attain a permanent outlook on life from which one could view oneself and the world around sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity), to borrow Spinoza’s phrase, i.e. each as part of one whole being. At least this is one way one could understand non-duality. But short of such a realization, those of us who still labor under the illusion of duality (if it is indeed an illusion), are bound to keep asking such question.
Until the doctor arrives: The questions ultimately boil themselves to duality itself: What exactly does this mean? There is the opposition or division between me and the rest of the world. The question of ‘Why is anything there in the first place’ is bound to occur at some stage or other. Or to put it more concretely, ‘Why is that there?’, as the ‘I’ is the ‘I’ only in relation to or contrast to the ‘that’. But unfortunately, this can only be asked upon the premise of duality. To pick something as the ‘this’ or ‘that’ is itself separating it from ourselves.
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As soon as I ask the question: ‘Who am I or what is the self,’ I seemed to be bogged down by the problem that whatever answer I give, I seem to only hit the ‘objective’ aspect of it. Looking into myself as to where is my self, or what is the self that is thinking all these thoughts, can never give the right answer. It only presents, at best, something like consciousness, or an assembly of neurons which have the property of self by virtue of its consciousness and so forth. Or to take Hume or the Buddha, the self seems to be nothing but a bundle of impressions, or an aggregate of Skandhas[1]. Or even the idea of a person, which again is expanded only in terms of something objective, seems to miss the point.
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Why ask the question of ‘Who am I?’? What exactly is the question or questions that one could ask about the self? Why am I so concerned about the question of the self, in the first place? The first answer that comes to mind is the fear of death: You can treat it as a mere thought (or emotion, if you will), but there is the question of why the thought of death causes so much fear? That leads to the immediate answer is that it is the loss of self or oneself that one is afraid of – you imagine that there would be no such thing as ‘I’ when you are dead. There would, of course, be neither the world nor you to look at it; nor would there be an ‘I’ presiding over your death (or funeral). Also, there is the fear that there will be a permanent loss of consciousness, although we indeed lose our consciousness temporarily, whether in sleep or anesthesia or even simply when you are lost in an emotion or conversation or a task[2].
Thus the question arises as to who or what is this ‘I’ or self I am afraid of losing or not being there. Then we ask the question of who am I in the scheme of things, as if any answer would satisfy me. But would it? Such as that God created me, or matter evolved into me, and so on. Let alone the question of why is there anything instead of nothing, there is this fundamental question of who am I is not satisfied by any answer, because why am I, or why am I here always remains, in the form of ‘Why that?’ to any answer supplied -- the killer ‘whys’! Simply to say, as UG would, that we will never want the question to go away, will not do, because that would imply the loss of the self which is not wanting itself to go away. That simply begs the question of who am I, I am afraid. Only if I know, in the first place, what my self is, can I be worried about whether I am afraid of this ‘I’ getting lost.
The possible answer is that my ‘self’ is all the things I am identified with, perhaps, as UG would say all the experiences I have had. But unfortunately, that too begs the question: who is the identifying entity? None of the answers seem to fit the bill.
You can just say simply the question cannot be answered because any answer that is supplied leaves the subject (the ‘I’ side) of the question out of the equation.
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The Self Comes and Goes: A possible satisfactory answer seems to lie in just simply dying (psychologically or ‘clinically’ as UG would say). That happens sometimes anyway. But UG says that the self is always there, even in deep sleep (this was part of a conversation I had with him in front of a camera in Mill Valley a long time ago). Then how can UG simply be without the ‘I’ or the self? Or is it that it comes and goes from time to time, as he says happens in his own case. (As he says, “it’s millions of years old, it won’t die!”). He says he lives in two frames at the same time: the ‘I’ and the ‘not-I’. How is that condition different in you and me? If he lives like that, what indeed constitutes the freedom from the stranglehold of thought (which generates the self or the ego)? Is it just his ability, then, to move from one situation or thought to another without a drag (from the previous situation or thought to the present one)?
So no matter which way I look at it there seems to be no satisfactory answer. The only possibility seems to lie in being in states of consciousness free of thought at times when it is possible or when one could achieve them.
[1] The five aggregates (heaps) are: form (rupa), sensations (vedana),
perceptions (samjna), mental activity or formations (sankhara),
and consciousness (vijnana).
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