Who Am I? (Part 2)
Rohan
30 June 2007, 21:25Ramana asked us to continually enquire, ‘Who am I?’ To ask then, ‘Who is it that is asking this, and to whom is it asking?’ which naturally leads back to ‘Who am I?’ So, go ahead, and try to answer that question. Who are you?
Forget the metaphysical, let’s start with the basics. The fact that ‘I am’ itself, is assumed to be true using Descartes’ reasoning, so what we next are aware of is this body. The body is the only part of our world that we seem to ‘control’ directly, and so it’s a central part of our concept of ‘I’.
But what about the involuntary organs? The heart, the digestive system, the nervous system, these aren’t parts of ‘our’ body that we seem to control, and yet we consider them a part of the ‘I’. How, and why is that so?
We are aware of one other thing that involves direct control: thought. Now, because it’s set behind our eyes and since it doesn’t seem to have any other controllable use, we next assume that the brain is where thought takes place and so this is a function of our body. And since it’s a part of our body it’s a part of ‘who I am’. Except for the fact that we’re now not so sure that we are in control of all of the body.
And the muddiness doesn’t stop there. Taking us a little beyond the body, we perceive the rest of the universe. The only problem is we can’t quite trust the organs that we use to perceive the world. They’ve let all of us down at some point or the other, in terms of giving us only part of the information out there and we can’t be sure they’re telling us the truth. But then, we had earlier come to the conclusion that our hands and legs moved under our control through our organs of perception. If we can’t trust them, then maybe these arms and legs don’t actually come under our control? Thought must be a part of us, because without it, well we’re not sure what would happen, but we wouldn’t be able to think about it anyway.
The most interesting of things that we can directly experience is sleep. What happens when one goes to sleep? What happens when we’re dreaming? What is it that is doing the sleeping, and how does it connect in with ‘Who am I’?
If the body is indeed a part of the ‘I’, why is it that we surrender partial control while sleeping? Doesn’t that then mean that the actual controllable ‘I’ is something smaller, possibly within the body? Maybe it’s just restricted to thought, but it certainly seems like the simple idea that ‘I am my body doesn’t work anymore. At the same time, it feels wrong to remove all of the body leaving just the mind when we consider ‘who we are’ simply because it genuinely feels (i.e. we are conditioned to believe) that it is part of ‘I’.
The thing is, debates about ‘Who I am?’ have been going on for centuries. From ancient Sages to Greek Philosophers, Cartesians to Existentialists, it’s an age old debate that seems to be extremely subjective. Or at least, if you ask the question through thought.
Umberto Eco, the eminent Italian semiologist, suggests its impossible to properly answer the question. In his book, Kant and the Platypus, he says that the best, and possibly only way, of completely understanding a system is to be outside it. So, to understand existence, we must go beyond existence, to inexistence or unexistence whatever it may be. But, obviously, that would mean that we don’t exist anymore, and it’s a little hard to do anything then, isn’t it?
What Vedanta and Ramana suggest in reply to this idea, is that their mode of questioning takes you past the usual arguments that have been bandied around for centuries, by transcending thought itself. They are suggesting that thought is just like the body, sometimes and some parts of it we can control, while others are beyond our power. This naturally leads on to an ‘I’ that’s even further hidden away from the mind and thought (or within it), and thus cannot be reached through thought.
And that, as confusing as it is, is the essential point of asking, ‘Who am I?’. Ramana tells us, although many Vedantists disagree, that this continuous auto-enquiry will eventually allow us to go beyond thought, and hopefully get us to that much vaunted goal of Self-Realisation.
And what exactly Self-Realisation means, is answerable only through transcending thought. Just know that to get there, you must first begin with that simple question of Ramana’s Who Am I?
To get a little more insight into Ramana’s ideas, have a look at his famous 40 verses and Who Am I?
You really should have read Part One first
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