Who am I really?

 Robert Anderson BSc(Hons) PhD

4 February 1942 to 5 December 2008

 

There are always moments in our life when the world no longer stimulates us and we feel deeply apathetic, even abandoned. This can be a valuable emotion because it motivates us towards the search for our real nature - a nature beyond appearances.

When we no longer find interest in activities and states, when we no longer feel much pleasure in objects and human relationships, we find ourselves asking, "Is there something wrong with this world, or with my attitude towards it?"

This sort of doubt can lead us to the question, "What is the meaning of my existence?"

"Who am I?”

"What is my true nature?"

Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions and we should look at them closely. We humans have always asked these basic questions that are without doubt the most important questions we ever ask ourselves. I want to share with you some ideas that may help us to understand these questions based on the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Within us, there is the deep-rooted belief-system, based on illusion, that all objects and our surroundings are separate from us, outside us. Yet we identify with the body, senses and mind and create a separate world of you and I.

Deepac Chopra put it beautifully: "We believe we are simply a skin encapsulated ego, enmeshed in a bag of flesh and bones, confined to a prison of time and causation, squeezed into the volume of a body for the span of a life time.”

This is not what we are. What we are, our Self, does not exist in space and time at all. But if we can get a deep experiential (experience) knowledge of who we are, all of these other questions which arise will be solved. So what is our starting point?

We all have in common one thing: consciousness. The only capital, as it were, that a human being has is consciousness - or "I am". I'll try and illustrate this for you.

When we are born the knowledge 'I am' or consciousness is the only 'capital' a sentient being has. Indeed, without consciousness we would not have any sentience - awareness, feeling, seeing, hearing, sensing in the broadest meaning of the word. We became aware that this "me" always seems to be at the centre of things and plays several roles. "I am tired." "I am cold." "I am working."

With open-minded alertness, it becomes apparent that the body feels cold, or tired, or is working, not the "I".  Not the observer.

In the same way when we look at our emotions. "I am depressed” “I am bored” I am identifying myself with these thoughts or feelings.

 What do we become aware of when we enquire into consciousness? In looking at this relation between the "self” and its qualifications it becomes obvious that we are taking ourselves to be this ''ME''.

But this "me" has no continual reality. It is a false conclusion. Because we have mistaken our real Self for this impostor it generates a feeling of insecurity. We feel doubt, a sensation of isolation. The "me" can only live in relation to objects.

 So what do we do? We spend all our energy and time trying to fulfil the insatiable insecurity of this “me.”

We live in anxiety, fear and desire, trying, at one and the same time, to be as individualistic as possible and at the same time trying to overcome this separateness. To live in this way is both frustrating and depressing. It is the major cause of all the loneliness in the world today. This loneliness may be temporarily hidden by activity, but sooner or later our real nature will make itself felt and our questioning will become even more urgent.

 So let us return to our original question - who am I? Who am I really? If we can answer this one basic question, we have the answer to all these other related questions. Where did I come from? Where was I before I was born, and what happens to me, when I die?

 Our minds are constantly involved in a process of conceptualising. On the odd occasion, when we are not thinking, not conceptualising, we may be able to find the answer to who we are.

 How do we realise this? We realise it, only when our mind is still. If you like, we are the tiny gap between our thoughts. In that small space of silence, when the mind is still, the small self communicates with the larger Self. In that gap, the only thing we are conscious of is, I am. What we are, our self, does not exist in time and space.

 On the plane of existence we can speak of living and dying, but they are only images created by the mind - more conceptualising. What we really are is beyond birth and death. This is put poetically by the Bhagavad-gita. ]

 These (others) are merely conceptual ideas. Conceptualisation goes on in consciousness all the time. When it ceases, as it does when we are in deep sleep, what is it that remains? If we can find this out, we may be able to solve our problem.

 When this I-am-ness is not present, as in deep sleep, there is no body, no outside world, and no God. It is evident then that a tiny speck of this consciousness contains the entire universe.

 It should be apparent to us now that the culprit is consciousness. This is the source of all our conceptualising. All existence is an expression of consciousness. When consciousness arises so does existence and with it duality.

 In the ancient Vedic scriptures, this represents the dance of Siva. Up and down, night and day, on and off, evil and good. Without this the universe would be undancing, it would be static.

 So what you are is fundamentally without cause and completely independent. When we take ourselves to be an individual doer, who lives in a world of choice, it is nothing more than an illusion of our ego. When the body wakes up in the morning, our world appears in a flash. It is perceived by the five senses and conceived by the brain. There are infinite forms and names but none of them exist outside our consciousness. Our relations do not exist, and neither does ‘our’ world.

 However, we do have to understand an important point here. Consciousness must have something through which it can express itself. Consciousness cannot exist without a physical body, and since existence of the body is temporal, consciousness also must be temporal. And this is our stumbling block.

 This is our stumbling block. The problem has been created in consciousness and recognized in consciousness, and it is this consciousness itself which is trying to understand its own nature? It is, therefore, impossible for us to understand conceptually who or what we really are?

 Let us try to examine why this is. When we use the word 'really' - what are we 'really'? What do we mean? We use the word 'real' to mean something that is perceptible to our senses. The body is perceptible to the senses, but is the body “really” you? In spite of all their limitations, we must use the words correctly here.

 We have a saying in the West "seeing is believing". If it has existence in space and time, I can see it, touch it, then it must be real. We consider as 'real' anything that is perceptible to the senses and yet every imaginable thing that is sensed must pass through an interpretation by the mind before it is understood.

And anything that is thus understood is, as we have shown, only an appearance in the consciousness of the observer.

 Now, this concept is very hard to grasp so I will try and explain using a simple analogy. Let us examine our perceptions. I see a rose. How does this knowledge come to me? What the philosophers call "the-thing-in-itself' or the 'Truth' of the object is unknown to me. I can never know this in my ordinary state of consciousness. The rose acts on my mind and the mind RE-ACTS.

 Now the mind is like a lake. When I throw a stone into the lake, a reactionary wave comes towards the stone. This wave is nothing like the stone at all; it is a wave. The rose is like a stone which strikes the mind and the mind throws up a wave towards it.

 This wave is what we call the rose.

 If I look at you. You, as a reality are unknown to me. You act upon my mind, the mind throws a wave in the direction from which the impact comes. And that wave is what I call you. There are thus two elements in perception:one coming from outside and one coming from inside. The combination of these two makes our external Universe. In other words, all our knowledge is by reaction.

 Let us apply the same analogy to ourselves. The real self within me is also unknown. Let us call it big S. When I know myself as Bob Anderson, it is 'S' + my mind. That 'S' strikes a blow on my mind. Our whole world is some unknown 'S' + mind. Thus the idea of being a person, is nothing other than an image held together by our memories. The personality is nothing other than a projection. It is a habit created by memory and nourished by our desires.

 By asking ourselves the question "Who am I" and lucidly observing the questioner, we see they are all forms that appear and disappear within this consciousness of "I am”. This is the ever-living background against which everything occurs.

 Let us go further back to the state that prevailed prior to the appearance of this physical form, prior even to the conception of this body. If I were to ask you to tell me something about yourself before you were conceived, your answer would most probably be "I don't know." This 'I' who does not know that state. In fact, the "I" who knew nothing until consciousness appeared is what we really are.

 When we talk of birth, we mean the birth of the ego, of the me. By death we mean death of the ego. Once this identification with a supposed separate entity takes place, the concept of duality is born. This gets broadened and the conditioning becomes stronger and stronger as we grow into adults. The separate subject-entity then sets itself up to analyze and judge. The entire scheme of inter-related opposites comes into existence: good and bad; big and small. It provides scope for judging and condemnation. It may be easier to express this in the following way.

 If consciousness is time-bound, there is no 'entity' to do anything. We experience ourselves objectively as the body and subjectively as the mind.

 Here, it may help us if we look more closely at the concept of time and space. Why are they necessary?

 Space is needed for objectifying and time to measure the duration of this extension in space. Without space, how could objects have a form and become visible? Without time, duration for the appearance, how could they be perceived?

 How is time experienced? What is this thing we call time which causes aging, entropy and death? Time is simply a movement in consciousness. Consciousness is always in movement, this is the nature of consciousness. Even when we sleep, consciousness is moving towards waking. If we could 'realize' or I should say apperceive this knowledge we would be able to see exactly how and where all our illusion arises.

 This word apperceive is important. It is a term we normally don't use. The dictionary defines it as, "a transcendental process of psychological assimilation and simultaneous experiential understanding of a truth."

What a mouthful! In other words, not using the mind to get there. "A kind of wisdom leap in understanding."

 Having made this leap in understanding, it is instant and irreversible. Let us go slowly through what we have said. We will find peace when there is apperception of this Truth. What we are searching for 'in the normal' sense of the word, cannot be found, for the very simple reason that, that which is searching and that which is sought are the same. Or, as all ancient scriptures have told us, the seeker and the sought are one.

 What do we mean by that? It means that we can never know our real nature. We can only know what we are not. Knowledge of the world of shapes and forms is not true knowledge. Objective knowledge is only superimposed perception or concept. True knowledge is knowledge of the Self. The body and the mind have no reality in themselves. They are entirely dependent on consciousness. They change constantly.

 It is this changeless background that allows us to realize this. The body and the mind come into existence only when we think of them. Thus they are seen to be discontinuous. Any question we might ask ourselves about our true nature springs from the feeling of being, otherwise we could not even imagine this question. As that great mystic, Meister Eckhart, once explained it: "God is seeking Himself."

 Of all the things we can teach each other, the prospect of realization of our true nature is the most important. We can give sustenance, food or shelter to our fellow travellers, but the prospect of realization is the greatest. Once attained, no one can take it away from us. Your true nature transcends the mind and the body. This is why the question "Who am I?" can never be answered. Living is to be found in the timeless "now”. So how can we benefit from this knowledge?

 We do not need to accumulate more things. We do not need to learn new ways to meditate or relax. All this accumulation of techniques and states merely feeds the vanity. Conflict and problems all derive from the mind as it tries to justify its existence. When you see this suddenly, in the utter conviction of total awareness, you become conscious of what you have never ceased to be: the unfathomable bliss of the self. The wave has sunk back into the ocean. You have returned home.

 

Robert Anderson BSc(Hons) PhD

 Robert Anderson was a Quaker, teacher, writer and a Theosophist. He was a Trustee of Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility, a member of Amnesty International, and a campaigner for peace and disarmament. He believed everyone has the right to equality and respect, freedom of speech and religion He lectured on many subjects to meet the public's right to be independently informed on issues of science, the environment and social justice. He was passionate about making this world a better place for the generations to come.

Enquiries about books written by Robert Anderson should be addressed to naturesstar@xtra.co.nz