Who am I ?
The existential question that everyone faces at some point, at some stage in life.
We enter the world with a clean slate. We are not born with the concept of “I”. A newborn would feel no difference between himself and any other bit of the universe. But as he grows older, he tries to make sense of things around him. Or he’s made to make meaning out of everything.
People start defining him by the things he does, things he likes, thing he doesn’t like, and so on. From the very first time our teacher asks us to write “5 things about myself”, starts the journey of defining Myself.
‘I’ am the name people call me.
‘I’ like to play/read.
‘I’ am an introvert/extrovert.
‘I’ can do maths easily.
‘I’ like physics.
‘I’ do not like chemistry.
‘I’ cannot dance.
‘I’ cannot paint.
‘I’ cannot sing.
Thus, comes into being the construct of “I”.
‘I’ define who I am. ‘I’ define myself, my image. ‘I’ define my strengths and my limits. ‘I’ define what makes me happy, and it is ‘I’ who defines what makes me sad.
But does that answer Who Am I? Am I the name people call me? Or am I the work I do or the clothes I wear? Or did I define myself to make myself the “I”, I think I am?
Douglas Hofstadter in his book, ‘I Am A Strange Loop’ subscribes to the concept known as the narrative self: the notion that the idea of the self is ultimately a hypothetical construct — a story our brains spin which generates the illusion that there is a single, stable and unified locus of willing, thinking and choosing what constitutes our ‘I’.
Hofstadter argues that the psychological self arises out of a paradox. We are not born with an ‘I’ — the ego emerges only gradually as experience shapes our dense web of active symbols into a tapestry rich and complex enough to begin twisting back upon itself. According to this view the psychological ‘I’ is a narrative fiction — a point that Ludwig Wittgenstein made when he argued that the ‘I’ is not an object in the world, but a precondition for there being a world in the first place. “It is the ‘I’, it is the ‘I’, that is deeply mysterious!” exclaimed Wittgenstein.
Famous Neuroanatomist, Jill Taylor, confirms this by her research. She found out the root cause for this. Left hemisphere of the human brain, which thinks linearly and methodically. It’s logical, it’s all about the past and the future. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you’ve got to remember to pick up bananas on your way home. You need them in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. Most importantly, it’s that little voice that says to us, ‘I am’.
The right hemisphere of a human brain on the other hand, is all about the present moment. It’s all about “right here, right now.” Our right hemisphere thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. We are energy-beings connected to the energy all around us through the consciousness of our right hemisphere. We are not as much “we” as we are different forms of the same energy.
But, as soon as our left hemisphere says to us “I am”, we become separate. We become a single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around us. Separate from the energy-beings around us. The left hemisphere has created this illusionary construct of ‘I’ through logical self referencing.
So Who Am I ?
I am the creator, the creator of me,
I am the creator of the universe around me,
I am you and I am me,
I am smaller than the smallest and larger than the largest,
I am no one and I am everyone,
I am the beginning and I am the end,
I am the good and I am the bad,
I am the truth and I am the lie,
I am everything that exists and will ever exist.
अहं ब्रह्म अस्मिति (Aham Brahmasmi)
I am the infinite reality that exists.
I am the universe.
