Who am I?

Can we answer the most essential of all questions – namely, “Who am I?” or more properly, “What am I?” What is my true nature? Why was I born. Why must I die? What is my relation to my fellow man? I think that there appears in the life of every human being one moment when the question “What is life?” comes up.

What is this “I”? Where does this “I” come from? When you die, where does it go? These are the most important questions you can ever ask. If you attain this “I” you attain everything.

I know myself as I am in reality. I am neither the body, nor the mind, nor the mental faculties. I am beyond all these. It comes from the “I” itself. If there was not an “I,” you would not be able to ask the question “Who am I?” So, when you pose the question “Who am I?” you can never find it, any more than the eye can see its own seeing. All that you can find is an object, a thought in space and time. But there is a moment when it gives itself up. It must be a total giving up, and then the asker is the answer.

Throughout my childhoods, local environments refine the brain, taking the jungle of possibilities and shaping it back to correspond to what we’re exposed to. Our brains form fewer but stronger connections. As an example, the language that I am exposed to in infancy (say, English versus Japanese) refines my ability to hear the particular sounds of the language, and worsens my capacity to hear the sounds of other languages. That is, a baby born in Japan and a baby born in America can hear and respond to all the sounds in both languages. Through time, the baby raised in Japan will lose the ability to distinguish between, say, the sounds of R and L, two sounds that aren’t separated in Japanese. We are sculpted by the world we happen to drop into. Over our protracted childhood, the brain continually pares back its connections, shaping itself to the particulars of its environment. This is a smart strategy to match a brain to its environment – but it also comes with risks. 

When you really look at this you see that you are constantly in the becoming process, never in the now. We are constantly past-future, past-future. We prepare the future by the past. When you take note of this, you are brought to ask, “Who am I? What is life?” As long as the student doesn’t come to this point he is not a student. The moment the student asks the question and has no reference to the past, he finds himself spontaneously in a state of not-knowing. In this not-knowing he is in a new dimension. It isn’t even a new dimension because in this, there is not any direction. One must live with the question. By living with the question I mean not looking for a conclusion, an answer, because the living with the question is itself the answer

Were you to ask the average person what he is, he would say, “My mind” or “My body” or “My mind and body,” but none of this is so. We are more than our mind or our body or both. Our True-nature is beyond all categories. Whatever you can conceive or imagine is but a fragment of yourself, hence the real you cannot be found through logical deduction or intellectual analysis or endless imagining.

To be human means to ask these questions, and to be totally human means we must get an answer. Until these questions arise to consciousness, we cover our lives over with all kinds of activities, worldly involvements that leave us no chance to reflect on ourselves. But sooner or later these questions arise, and then there is no escaping them. They burn within us, and intellectual answers give us no peace. We pick up books dealing with the human condition, the meaning of life, and get all these beautiful set-out phrases, these flowering metaphors, but they do not answer the question. Only the gut experience of self-awakening satisfies the gut questioning. Personal experience is the final testimony to Truth. 

I have been often born and have often died. I have been subject to the cycle of rebirths very often. I have had birth and death, again birth and death and again birth. It is said that we take 8.4 million births before we are born as a human being because of our Karmas which keep the soul rotating in samsara. There are 8.4 million types of bodies, out of which the soul assumes a body at the time of death.

From Bhagvad Gita, we can understand that when the body is dead (destroyed), the soul is not destroyed. It leaves the dead body and occupies a new body. The spirit soul is eternal and immortal, i.e. it neither dies nor takes birth (na hanyate hanyamane sarire: Bg. 2.20-27-28)

At the time of death, the soul discards its gross body, and departs with the subtle and causal bodies. God again gives the soul another gross body according to its subtle and causal bodies, and sends the soul into a suitable mother’s womb for the purpose. After the soul gives up one gross body, there is a transitional phase before it receives a new gross body. This could be a few seconds in duration or a few years long. So before birth, the soul existed with the unmanifest subtle and causal bodies. After death, it still exists in the unmanifest state.

We get information from the Padma Purana that the 8.4 million species of life are divided into six groups, namely acquatics, trees, insects, birds, animals and humans. There are nine hundred thousand (9 lakh) types of acquatics, two million (20 lakh) types of trees, 1.1 million types of insects, a million types of birds, three million types of animal bodies and four hundred thousand types of human bodies. These aggregate to 8.4 million.

It means I have lived as a different person in different times. Thus life is a continuous journey from womb to tomb to womb. If so, I must have been born in many hundred thousands of wombs, many breasts might have nursed me and many kinds of food I may have consumed. Similarly all parts of the world have been my place of birth, as also my burning ground in the past.

If we do not understand who we are and what our aim in life is, we will continue to wander towards the edges of this life in search of something that will give us complete happiness, peace, and tranquility. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good. 

The mind may assume that this 'something' could be material like money, property, person or even power. It may also be an object beyond the material realm, something more subtle and spiritual in nature. The question of rebirth, of life after death, has remained an enigma through the ages. Today we have a perpetual demand for concrete evidence, not of solitary prodigies. But if such be the attitude on a profound mystery like the soul’s transmigration, the obvious answer has to be, “Better wait until you die, and then you can conclusively know.” There arises, therefore, the necessity of a cool, rational, dispassionate and impersonal consideration.

Unless we find the answer to our true identity, our goal, and the means to acquire it, a void will remain inside us. No matter how much you feed the senses and the mind with all the material pleasures dispensable to us, a feeling of emptiness hangs heavy within, that life remains unfulfilled.

Therefore one who is really intelligent understands the futility of all the activities that one carries out during his lifetime, the results of which will be finished at the time of death. Therefore he tries to understand the real purpose of human life and when he makes such an inquiry, the Supreme Lord, Who is seated within his heart, guides him on the transcendental path, where he understands that one has to get out of this cycle of 8.4 million species of life.

We suffer the painful process of birth, crying helplessly. Then as babies, we have needs that we can’t express, and so we cry. In adolescence we have to grapple with bodily desires that make us suffer mental anguish. In married life, we endure the idiosyncrasies of the spouse. 

When we reach old age, we suffer from bodily infirmities. All through life, we suffer the miseries from our own body and mind, the behavior of others, and inclement environment. Finally, we suffer the pain of death. 

For example, if we put our hand in the fire, two things happen—the skin starts getting hot and eventually will burn, and the neurons create a sensation of pain in the brain. The burning of the skin is a bad thing, but the sensation of pain is a good thing. If we did not experience the pain, we would not extract our hand from the fire, and it would suffer extensive damage. The pain is thus an indication that something is wrong, which needs to be corrected. Similarly, the pain we experience in the material realm is God’s signal that our consciousness is defective and we need to progress from material consciousness toward union with God. 

All this misery is not meaningless; it also has a purpose in the grand design of God. It gives us the realization that the material realm is not our permanent home. It is like the reformatory for souls like us who have turned their backs toward God. If we did not suffer misery here, we would never develop the desire for God. 

But God says those who become God-realized get released from the cycle of life and death, and reach the divine abode of God. Thus, they do not have to take birth again in this material world, which is a place of suffering. 

Ultimately, we get whatever we have made ourselves worthy of through our chosen efforts. Those who remain with their consciousness turned around from God continue rotating in the wheel of birth and death; and those who achieve exclusive devotion to God attain His divine Abode.

What I am every moment is determined by the sum total of the impressions on my mind. What I am just at this moment is the effect of the sum total of all the impressions of my past life. This is really what is meant by character; each man's character is determined by the sum total of these impressions.

If good impressions prevail, the character becomes good; if bad, it becomes bad. If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions; and they will influence his thought and work without his being conscious of the fact. In fact, these bad impressions are always working, and their resultant must be evil, and that man will be a bad man; he cannot help it. The sum total of these impressions in him will create the strong motive power for doing bad actions. He will be like a machine in the hand of his impressions, and they will force him to do evil. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good; and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good even in spite of himself. When a man has done so much good work and thought so many good thoughts that there is an irresistible tendency in him to do good, in spite of himself and even if he wishes to do evil, his mind, as the sum total of his tendencies, will not allow him to do so; the tendencies will turn him back; he is completely under the influence of the good tendencies.

When such is the case, a man's good character is said to be established. As the tortoise tucks its feet and head inside the shell, and you may kill it and break it in pieces, and yet it will not come out, even so the character of that man who has control over his motives and organs is unchangeably established. He controls his own inner forces, and nothing can draw them out against his will. By this continuous reflex of good thoughts, good impressions moving over the surface of the mind, the tendency for doing good becomes strong, and as the result we feel able to control the Indriyas (the sense-organs, the nerve-centres). Thus alone will character be established, then alone a man gets to truth. Such a man is safe for ever; he cannot do any evil.

Freedom of the soul is the goal of all Yogas, and each one equally leads to the same result. By work alone men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Jnani, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by both of them. The difficulty is here. Liberation means entire freedom-- freedom from the bondage of good, as well as from the bondage of evil. A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron one. There is a thorn in my finger, and I use another to take the first one out; and when I have taken it out, I throw both of them aside; I have no necessity for keeping the second thorn, because both are thorns after all. So the bad tendencies are to be counteracted by the good ones, and the bad impressions on the mind should be removed by the fresh waves of good ones, until all that is evil almost disappears, or is subdued and held in control in a corner of the mind; but after that, the good tendencies have also to be conquered. Thus the "attached" becomes the "unattached". Work, but let not the action or the thought produce a deep impression on the mind. Let the ripples come and go, let huge actions proceed from the muscles and the brain, but let them not make any deep impression on the soul.

Prof (Dr.) Kanayalal Raina specializes in teaching spirituality besides providing management consultancy services. His strategic plans are being used for obtaining funding to run various senior programs conducted by NFP nonprofit and business organizations. He strengthens NFP and business organizations through education, empowerment of leadership and mentoring. Areas of expertise are Govt. funding and preparation of Business Plans, Strategic Plans, Marketing plans, Sales and Pricing Plans, Balanced Scorecard, and Business Performance Management.