Ask yourself: “Who am I?” Only by deeply exploring this question will you find the truth. —Ramana Maharshi
The Many Different Currents of “Me”
Many years ago, I awakened one morning, and “I” was here. I don’t remember exactly when this occurred, for it feels as if I have been here forever. Of course, this feeling of foreverness is not logical (history books tell me a lot went on before I was born). Still, when I woke that morning back at the age of two or three or four, my awareness seemed to coincide with existence itself. I can’t explain this, and the feeling has changed as I have gotten older, but somehow the feeling persists that existence and I are somehow deeply entwined.
This probably has something to do with consciousness, so let’s return to the question: What is consciousness? Galaxies and planets, rocks and water don’t have a conscious “I” (as far as we know). How, then, did my physical self, made from the same atoms, the same building blocks as rocks and planets, begin to think? Perhaps it is because we are “alive.” But how did that happen? What is life? Another great mystery. But we have enough questions on our plate for the moment, so let’s leave that one for another time. For now, the baffling question is consciousness. As Stanford physicist James Trefil put it: “The question of consciousness is the only major question in the sciences that we don’t even know how to ask.”[1]
We humans are composed of the same eukaryotic cells as all other living things, such as worms and robins. How, then, did we start to reason and organize memories into stories, while other creatures did not? (Assuming they didn’t, which is, of course, not certain.)
The existence of this thing called “I” or “me” is truly mysterious. How did it come to be? Where is it located? You can examine as many brain cells as you like under a microscope and you will not find an “I.” In all the brain studies to date, no one has found a trace of it. Or, approach this in a different way, whales and elephants have brains as complex as our own, and bigger: Do they have a sense of “I?” We really don’t know. But whether they do or don’t, no one can tell by examining their brains, or comparing their brains to ours. The human psyche is a wild and mysterious thing, and maybe that of whales and elephants is too, and nobody understands theirs, or ours, at all. Science certainly doesn’t.
Thought Experiment – When did you first become conscious of yourself?
What is the earliest moment you can remember of being consciously aware that you were an independent and separate being who had the power to make choices and create an independent life?
Because it has proven impossible (at least so far) to explore the “I” with instruments, the only way to do so is with consciousness itself—which seems to be where the “I” comes into existence. Without consciousness, there would be no “me,” at least not a “me” that knows it exists. Without consciousness there would be no questions, no philosophy, no science—for there would be no “beings” with the awareness needed to study the world or share the results of their study with others. Consciousness underlies everything we think and experience. Given its importance, it is quite amazing that not one of the great philosophers, psychologists, scientists, spiritual teachers, or wise elders with whom I have talked or studied has been able to give an explanation of consciousness that is broadly accepted. In fact, consciousness is like dark energy in physics: vast, assumed to exist, but no one can give a satisfactory accounting for what it is.
So many unanswered questions: What is included in this “I?” Is it just an isolated monad, fending for itself in a competitive universe, or does its very nature consist of connections and relationships? Is it drifting purposelessly in a meaningless void, or does it include direction and purpose within itself? Does it exist only for a brief time or does its existence somehow extend beyond this temporal body’s duration? After several thousand years of wrestling with these questions, the most we can honestly say is: We don’t know.
William James was highlighting how little we know when he said that consciousness is not static but constantly in motion, always trying to organize the “big blooming buzzing confusion” of sensations, the chaos of pure experience, into meaningful patterns. In A Pluralistic Universe he put the issue sharply: “My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a fringe that shades … into a subconscious more.” We can use three terms or three hundred to describe the whole of consciousness, but words can never capture it, for ultimately it is “all shades and no boundaries.” In other words, there is no way to draw a line between what is part of my consciousness and what is not. What seems to constitute a boundary at this instant quickly takes in what I had thought was outside my consciousness a moment before. In James’ words: “Which part … is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what is out, it already has come in.”[2] Try it for yourself: Can you exclude something from your consciousness?
It is even more complicated, according to James. To paraphrase more of his ideas in A Pluralistic Universe: The center of consciousness at any given moment has a point of view, but there are always other points of view on which we are not focused right now, but that are part of who we are. As time passes, the point of view that was in the center of our awareness gives way to others that were in the margin; these other points of view move to the center and become dominant. This is one big reason we have so much trouble understanding ourselves. At any given moment, we identify with whatever is in the center—with the thoughts that are in focus—but our full self, who we really are, is the whole field, which includes many “radiating subconscious possibilities.” We sense the existence of these “subconscious possibilities,” but we cannot conceive them clearly and can barely even begin analyzing them. This is why we are often so confused as to who we really are, for “each part functions distinctly … and tends to draw us into that line.” Running counter to this fragmentation, though, is the fact that “the whole is somehow felt as one pulse of our life, — not conceived so, but felt so.”[3]
Skeptico: So, is James saying that there are many separate currents in me that tug in many different directions?
Wisdom Seeker: Yes.
Skeptico: And the reason it is so hard to know who I am and to make decisions is that I can’t hold all these different currents in my conscious processing at any one time; that at first one is the center of my attention, and then another, and there is no time when I can get them all in a clear relationship to each other.
Wisdom Seeker: Yes. James does give a hint at a broader possibility when he says that at times you can sense the wider picture, can sense the overall pattern of all that you are.
Skeptico: But even if I can sense this overall picture, if I can’t capture all of it at any one time in my thinking process, how do I go about living or making decisions?
Wisdom Seeker: That is exactly the problem with trying to make logical decisions. You have to exclude a lot of the currents in you, focus on some part of the available information to the exclusion of other streams to be able to decide things in an orderly way. Fortunately, though, you do not need to understand all the currents simultaneously or make only logical decisions to live your life. To live and experience life, you need consciousness, but you do not need to decide everything logically, and you do not need to have a theory to explain it all to yourself. Theories are different from experience. To make decisions and move through life, you do not need to understand rationally all the currents that are a part of you. (This is, of course, where intuition comes in—more on that later.)
To continue with James’ thought, and add ideas that Carl Jung borrowed from James and expanded, there are many different currents present in each of us: urges and desires, beliefs and fears, feelings and expectations, anxieties and dreams. All these are part of the whole, and the center of our attention shifts between them from moment to moment. We can be joyous one minute and irritated the next; serious for a while and playful soon after; deeply caring toward a friend and then inconsiderate a moment later.
Speaking from my own direct experience, I can be loving one moment, and then selfish; gentle, and then harsh. Especially fascinating is that most of the time I do not know which current is going to show up in the next moment of my life. For instance, I might be feeling terrible, the phone rings, there is good news, and I am filled with delight. Or I am happy and out of nowhere an old fear pops into my mind, and I feel terrible. Who is in control of this process? Who is making the decisions about what I will think or feel in the next minute or the next hour? Is it random, or do “I” have some input into the process? Perhaps “I” am merely an iPod, playing some preprogrammed playlist. But if so, where does the playlist come from?
Thought Experiment – The playground of your mind
Ask yourself: Do you know what you will be thinking or feeling five minutes from now? In an hour? Tomorrow at noon? How does what you will be thinking or feeling in the future happen? Where do all thoughts and feelings come from? And what role do “you” play in the process?
Feelings are hard to control. So are thoughts. Sometimes we choose to concentrate on something for a while and succeed in doing so. But anyone who has paid careful attention to the mind is aware that thoughts are constantly appearing and then disappearing. Studies have shown that the average person can concentrate on one thing for only a few seconds; after that, another thought breaks in, then another, then another. Sometimes we get back to the previous thought, but often we do not. (This aspect of the mind is one of the things that makes meditation difficult for many.) Our minds proceed through a chain of thoughts, one growing out of another, until we lose all track of where we began. Then, at a later point, we remember some part of the sequence, but have lost the original point that started the process in motion. Or we now have a different relationship in our minds to the original thought.
Given that all this seems to be human nature, a strong indicator of success in life is one’s capacity to concentrate, to return to a chosen topic over and over in spite of the interruptions that are continually trying to break into consciousness. When the ability to concentrate is absent, life is a mess. Personally, when I feel overwhelmed by this internal process, I attempt to clean it up by making lists and organizing myself with schedules, hoping to keep my attention focused on the things that are important. But this, too, is problematic. When I put myself on a schedule, it is because of a decision about what is important to me at that moment. But in the next moment, or next week, the same thing might not seem very important. I change, and what seems important changes—yet to stay on a schedule I can’t reevaluate past decisions every few seconds. But this means I am operating on a schedule that might not fit my current priorities. (This is getting ahead of the story, though. Again, more later.)
One thing is certain: If I want to significantly affect my experience of life, I need the ability to control my attention for longer than a couple of seconds. Fortunately, this can be done. People who have worked to develop this capacity can stay focused much longer. To do this, however, is not a matter of creating “brain diagrams,” as William James dismissively labelled any idea that leads us to believe that we can control our inner world by attempting to look at it from outside as if it is an objective machine. It isn’t, and we can’t. What is valuable is to work to become as conscious as possible of all the currents. This is where sensing the wider picture comes in. You can learn to work with your mind consciously (through prayer, reflection, and various concentration and meditative practices), and sometimes you will get a glimpse of the broader pattern. As you learn to trust your sense of when you are in touch with the broader picture, you can use such times to decide on and commit to a goal or purpose and set your intentions around those glimpses. Having done that, you consciously develop your will and use it to develop habits that will carry you in that direction. Then, with practice, practice, and more practice, you will be consciously participating in the creation of your life. A warning, though: Don’t assume you have ever gotten it exactly right. Every now and then, reevaluate, make an effort again to get in touch with the larger picture and make further course corrections.[4]
The Continuity of “I”
Let’s approach the inquiry into this “I,” this thing I think of as “me” from a different angle. No one knows what the “I” is or how it came to be. Nobel-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger said in his book What is Life?: “And you will, on close introspection, find that what you really mean by ‘I’ is that ground-stuff upon which [data] are collected.”[5] His point is that all we can do is posit a nebulous term like “ground-stuff” as a way to think about the “I.” It is a vague image of the “I” being something like a mirror upon which the data of the world out there is reflected. With this statement, Schrödinger is suggesting something far different from a scientific theory or a definition based on rigorous logic. There is no explanation for how this mirror takes in or works with the information it receives. Thus, his statement is much more akin to images given by spiritual traditions than by science (which, I think, Schrödinger himself would fully acknowledge).
If we examine our direct experience, we discover that we take in data—information from a world that seems to be outside us—and then select and organize it into narratives in order to give it coherence and find its meaning for us. Then we use the organization of the data we have created, and the meaning we have given it, to make decisions. Thus, one way to think about the “I” is as the place in ourselves where we collect, sort, organize, and work with information, creating stories with it and assigning meanings in relation to it. How much this correspond to the processes going on in any other individual is impossible to know, and obviously different people come to radically different conclusions, sometimes based on very similar information.
All of which leads to the realization that a first step in the exploration of identity is recognizing that no one outside myself can provide answers about who I am. If “I” am the “ground-stuff” upon which my experiences are registered, then my particular “I” is uniquely determined by my experiences, how they are registered on my mirror, and how they are organized, interpreted, and stored. The best path forward for understanding my “I,” then, is to reflect on, to explore my personal experience, to observe myself.
When I do this, one of my first and clearest observations confirms exactly what James and Jung were saying: There are many different currents running through me. There are many different feelings, desires, thoughts, views of myself, and views about the world. But at the same time, at moments I catch a glimpse of recurring themes that create a sense of continuity. I catch a glimpse of the larger picture: I can sense a pattern, but it is very hard to hold on to and work with these glimpses.
For the most part, I did not consciously choose these patterns. They are just there. Just as I do not seem to have a great deal of control over when a particular feeling or thought will show up in my mind, or how long it will stay, I do not have much control over the main patterns or themes that are in me—they tend to pop up and go away of their own accord. With practice, I can learn to exercise some choice, but then I have to deal with the next issue: On what basis do I make these choices? Even if I have developed a great ability to direct my attention, how do I decide what to direct it toward? The range of possibilities upon which I might concentrate at any given moment is vast: Right now, I could read a novel, learn German, watch a television program (but which one?), do my taxes, solve a math problem, play a computer game, email or text a friend (but which friend?), write a book, invest my savings, help someone who is needy, try to invent something, and on and on. Endlessly.
So let’s start again, coming from a slightly different direction. In trying to understand who I am, I focus on my immediate stream of consciousness (to borrow another idea from William James). Examining what I am thinking and feeling, I discover a stream of urges and desires, thoughts and feelings, images and intentions arising one after another. They pour out, overlapping and running into each other, competing for time and attention. One minute I want an ice cream cone, the next I want to lose weight. One minute I want to accomplish great things, followed by an urge to see the latest movie or go to an interesting party. Sometimes I want a relationship with someone who shares my goals and values, at other times the urge is for a relationship that provides great sex—followed by the thought that celibacy would make life easier. At moments I want freedom, and then I get in touch with the value of commitment, loyalty, and a single, long-lasting relationship.
It can begin to seem that who I am is composed of snippets from various soap operas spliced together without any controlling narrative. But the interesting thing is, even though my thoughts and feelings are constantly changing, when I get up in the morning it still feels like the same “me” that went to bed last night. Exploring a typical day, when I wake up, it feels like the same “me” who was present several years ago, the same one who has always been here. My felt experience is that there is a coherent, continuous me. Is this an illusion? Biologists tell me that there is not one single cell present today that was present when I was two years old, or when I was twenty. This means that, if there is a continuous “me,” it cannot be located in any cell or in any specific group of cells. Further, most of my thoughts are different from those when I was two or twenty—so whoever this continuous me is, no one has any idea where it might be located, and it is not constituted by any specific thoughts.
Thought Experiment – Exploring Continuity
Are your thoughts and feelings the same right now as they were yesterday—or last week? Are they the same as they were 10 years ago? 25 years ago? If not, what is the same? What gives you the sense of a coherent, continuous “I-ness”?
As mentioned before, at times I do sense a few patterns in who I am. When I wake in the morning, it feels as if there are tasks to be done—either things I want to do or feel I need to do. But how was this to-do list put together? If I step back for a moment and look at the list, it is organized around goals that seemed—at some moment in the past—important. If, however, they were chosen in the past, which part of me was in charge when the list was created? Was the list determined by my whims, was it created to respond to what others said was important, or did it arise from my own intuition? What if Thomas Merton was right when he reflected on his life, saying: “The things I thought were so important … have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either measure or expect, were the things that mattered.”[6]
As I think about all this, I begin to wonder: Is my to-do list “me?” Does my list control me or do I control it? When should I follow it and when should I change it? Perhaps I should start a new list, right now, in the present moment. But if I decide to select new goals right now, how do I go about doing that, if I don’t know who “I” am? And if I start a new list in this moment, what will keep me from thinking that I should start another list five minutes from now, and another five minutes after that? Don’t I have to stick with one list if I am going to have a life? All this is beginning to feel like a dog chasing its tail, and it highlights the fact that Ramana Maharshi was onto something when he said the first imperative is to explore the question: “Who am I?” Having some sense of who “I” am is central to making decisions and finding the best way to live.
The Experience of Existence
One way to explore who I am is to focus on my immediate and direct experience, the feeling of existence. Everything starts here—with the feeling sense of my existence as separate from the people and things around me. Focusing on this feeling of an “I” that is a separate being is intimately connected to the sense that my I has continuity over time. Thoughts change from moment to moment. Feelings about people and events change. Interpretations change about events that happened in years gone by. Motivations change, as do the things that bring joy and sorrow. The world I perceive “out there” seems to be ever-changing. Through it all, however, there is a continuous sense of “I,” of someone being present to the unfolding events, of someone who remembers while also living the story. That feeling sense of someone being continually present persists. This is the experience of me as a being who remains present through it all like a deep current running beneath the ripples on the surface of a river. This deeper current is one important way I have found to get at who I am: I am the consciousness that experiences an existence over time; I am the direct experience of a separate entity that persists through time.
This thought leads back one major jumping-off point for modern philosophy, Renee Descartes’ core idea, “cogito, ergo sum,” (“I think, therefore I am”).[7] Yet his focus on who I am as only a thinking thing is problematic, for one could just as easily say, “I have feelings, therefore I am,” or “I have sensations, therefore I am.” Having sensations and feelings goes with existing as much as does thinking, yet most philosophers following Descartes focused on the word think in a way that emphasized rationality and logic (although it is not clear this is exactly what Descartes meant). Reason and logic, however, happen only after perception; immediate perceptions happen before we can think. A baby has many sensations and feelings before anything like reason or logic appears, and this goes on for years. By the time reason and logic become important in our lives, we have collected a vast array of sensations, feeling, enculturated beliefs, and opinions. All this is the raw material for the thinking process, and they cannot be separated.
So we could just as easily focus on feelings as the starting point for who I am. David Hume famously said: “Reason is … the slave of the passions.”[8] He was making the point that all our actions start with feelings, with a passion toward or away from something—just as the Buddha emphasized that cravings and aversions motivate human behavior. Both believed that we are enslaved by our cravings and aversions, at least most of the time.
Or we could start with sensations and perceptions. Edmund Husserl, the founder of the school of phenomenology, emphasized that the starting point for all philosophy, as well as for all science, are immediate sensations and perceptions.[9] Sensations and perceptions give rise to a flowing stream of inner awareness that is ever shifting, and it is impossible to define or fully capture that stream in a thinking, logical, or rational way. When we try to think rationally, we are attempting to organize those sensations and perceptions—as well as the feelings, thoughts, and images that grow out of them—into meaningful patterns. But in this view, everything starts with sensations and perceptions, and all attempts to organize them are always partial and incomplete.
But whichever comes first in trying to come to terms with who I am—sensation, perception, feeling, thinking—all involve a sense that there is a separate “I” who is viewing them from a unique perspective, experiencing them as a separate individual, and putting together a story of that unique individual as it moves through time.
Skeptico: You know, you lost me a good ways back there. Can’t you make it a little simpler?
Wisdom Seeker: I’m sorry, but probably not. It is all complicated and confusing. That is why the best minds humanity has ever produced have been struggling with these questions for thousands of years without coming to definitive answers. The best I can do is to say again that wrestling with these questions for yourself might be the point, and that is the only path to any deep understanding of who you are and what life is about will come from trying to work through all this for yourself.
Exploring identity
Circling in from another direction, I clearly remember one mid-afternoon the summer I was 12 years old. I was lying on my back on my bed, vaguely looking at the ceiling. My mother came in and asked: “Are you sick?” When I said, “No,” she quite reasonably asked: “Then what are you doing?” My response, without much hesitation, was: “I am thinking.”
I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I can see what I was doing: I was starting to think about life in a reflective way. But what exactly is this “reflective thinking”? What does it mean that we humans can reflect on our lives, our actions, our decisions? What is this thing called “consciousness” that allows us to be aware of ourselves as distinct entities, separate from others and our environment? And what is this thing called an “identity?”
I am conscious of existing—am aware that I am an individual, a separate human being. But this awareness again brings forward the mystery: What is this “I” of which I am aware? What is this thing called “myself,” or “David,” or “me,” or “ich”? Are they the same? (Ich is the German word for I in English. Freud’s early English translator wanted something sophisticated-sounding, so instead of the appropriate translation of Ich into I, he used the Latin word ego instead. Who could have guessed the consequences, for both good and ill, that would be wrought by this small decision by a translator? To get a sense of the effect, however, simply substitute Freud’s intended word “I” for “ego” in all English writing and discussion.)
But I digress. Back to the issue of “Who am I?” There are many different ways I can think about who I am. Am I my body? But, as mentioned before, all of the cells in my body and brain are constantly being replaced—all of them have been replaced many times over in my lifetime. So my “I” must not reside in particular cells of the body. Nor has it been found in any collection of cells, including the brain.
Or consider the fact that within your body there are trillions of separate living beings (bacteria, viruses, mitochondria) that are much more numerous than the cells of your body—one estimate is that your body contains ten times as many bacteria as cells. All these small living things are constantly interacting with your body as well as with each other—creating a whirling vortex of activity that influences you in complex ways no one understands.
And this is only the complexity at the level of your physical self. Additionally, your thoughts, understandings, and interpretations of the meaning of experiences have changed continually throughout your life. Another way you can understand who you are is as part of a family, tribe, team, club, community, or nation. Since you came into the world, you have been enmeshed in many ever-changing social systems, and all have dramatically influenced your self-understanding. Yet how all these forces coalesced to create your sense of an individual identity is unknown and mostly unknowable.
Still another way to think about yourself is in relation to the roles you play or have played within all your social groups. If I look at my own roles through the years, they include writer, entrepreneur, investor, workshop leader, business executive, rebel, seeker after wisdom, a loving person, an ambitious and striving person, and on and on. For most of us, our identity shifts many times through the years, and it even shifts from moment to moment as we wrestle with our unending choices and decisions.
All the above simply emphasizes this great mystery: Within the incredible scope of the universe, amidst the swirling flux—a world where energy, particles, fields, social forces, and cultural patterns are constantly changing, interacting, and intermingling—somehow within all this change I think of myself as having an individual identity. And so do you. During each person’s lifetime the body, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, relationships, goals, and understandings change continually—yet, somehow, we each experience ourselves as a unique self that has persisted through it all. But what is this self, this “I”? This has been a great mystery to the wisest among us for thousands of years, and it is no less so today.
Watching Consciousness
Let’s return to the recognition that there is an “I” who experiences, who has perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. I can observe that I have impressions of people and objects: I hear sounds, touch physical objects, register smells and tastes. At the most basic level, “I” seem to be this awareness, a screen or mirror upon which these impressions land. Many wise people have noticed that these impressions do not register randomly on the screen of my mind. Rather, as Immanuel Kant made vividly clear, my mind organizes the disorderly chaos of impressions it receives into intelligible patterns. To say this in a different way, my mind takes an incredible number of impressions and selects and organizes them into stories that provide a framework for understanding myself and the world. Further, this process started early in my life, before I was conscious of what I was doing. Early on, a character showed up in these stories, a character called “David,” and he became a big part of the movie of my life. In fact, he took on the central role: sometimes hero, sometimes villain, but most of the time the central character. I do not remember, however, creating this character; he has been around for a very long time. If I pay close attention, however, I can see that he was not the first thing to appear. Before his arrival there was a flux of sensations, impressions, and feelings. “David” came into being when this flux began to be organized into stories; David was created to serve as the central character in the stories.
If I pay very close attention, I notice that, with regard to the movie of my life, the everyday “I,” this character named “David,” is not the one watching the movie. David is playing the lead part in the story of my life, but whoever is watching, it is not David. Whoever is watching can focus on him, but can also choose not to focus on him and simply be aware of the direct experience of the flow of perceptions and thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, when “I” am absorbed in music, or nature, or passion, “David” does not seem to be present at all. Paying close attention, I see that the flow of thoughts and feelings is being organized into patterns, and that I can choose which impressions to focus on and make choices as to how they will be organized. But it is exceptionally difficult to look behind the screen and catch a glimpse of who or what is doing the organizing and making choices.
Saying this in a slightly different way, if I stop writing and focus on my primary experience right now, I am aware of the computer in front of me, trees and flowers out the window, and a mountain in the distance. These are the first things I notice, all coming from my senses. Quickly, however, my mind, freed from the concentration of writing, creates a cascade of thoughts: What am I going to do this afternoon? What will I have for lunch? Do I need to make a phone call right now?
As this goes on, if I let my mind drift for a little while, more and more thoughts with attached expectations, anxieties, hopes, ambitions, and fears present themselves. Rather than letting this random process continue, though, I can choose to focus on a pleasant experience from the past, on a positive feeling about a friend, or on any number of things. Whether I choose to focus or let my attention wander, however, there is always a sense that the same me is present. Yet this me is not “David.” If I organize the impressions into a pattern, into a story, David assumes the primary role, but if I simply let impressions arise, David fades away. Still, “I” seem always to be there. Thus, David, who I usually think of as “me,” and my deepest sense of existence do not appear to be the same.
Thought Experiment – Focusing on consciousness
Focus your attention on some object you can see and concentrate on it for a moment. Now shift your focus to a part of your body, looking at it intently. Next, turn your attention to a person you know who is not present. Now concentrate on an event that happened a few days ago. Next, focus on a sensation inside your body. Now focus on something you like. Then turn your attention to a plan for tomorrow.
Having done these things, can you turn your attention to the part of you that was able to direct your attention, to move it around so quickly? Who or what is that?
Some aspect of me can choose to focus my attention, can pick one thing from among a thousand possibilities upon which I will concentrate. Then, in a split second, it can change its focus. Yet if I try to turn and look at who or what is doing this, if I try to focus on the part of me that is capable of making choices about where to focus, I cannot find anything there. I am left with a will-o’-the-wisp, with words like “ground-stuff” and “mirror.” Who is this “I” that is choosing where I will place my attention?
Why is all this important for you and me?
Since my mother asked that question more than sixty years ago, when I was gazing at the ceiling rather than doing chores or playing games or studying, I have been aware that I am a thinking being. I could choose another figural moment for my personal starting point, but right now, I identify that day as the day I became aware of entering into a conscious, individual human life. And ever since I have reflected on what this might mean, and its significance.
Perhaps you have never thought about these questions. If not, this can only be so because you adopted a set of answers from others without thinking them through for yourself. If you do not see the relevance of the issues I have raised, it is because you are operating within an unconscious act of faith around which you organize your life as you decide how you spend the remaining time and energy of your days.
This is not necessarily bad—it is what most people do. If you feel your life is all it can be, if you feel happy, complete, and content, then there is no reason to think about these things at all. If at times, however, you feel there might be more to life than you have currently discovered, if a nagging sense keeps arising within you that your life is not yet fulfilled and is not on track to bring complete fulfillment, then the first corrective step is to recognize that you have put your act of faith in the views of other people—and they might be wrong.
To get a sense of this possibility, simply consider for a moment how people who are quite different from you are living, people in faraway places or in cultures close at hand that seem strange or mistaken to you. You can see that the views these people hold are different from yours. But how did they arrive at their beliefs? Most of them simply accepted the views they were taught. But if that is what you are doing, how can you be sure what you were taught is not misguided—after all, you are doing exactly what the people you disagree with are doing. At a minimum, you are making an act of faith that you got very lucky and were born into, or just happened by chance to encounter the “right” belief system among a new set of friends. But how can you know this, except through a naïve assumption about your good luck?
Of course, some people in every culture make an effort to work through the beliefs they were given and come up with their own views and understandings. Just making this effort, however, does not insure getting it right. Far from it. Anyone who has embarked on such a journey has quickly discovered that answers do not come easily, and the partial and false conclusions you can see that many people have come to make vivid the difficulty.
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
In response to this dilemma, some people decide the deep questions are a waste of time and simply throw themselves into enjoyment: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die.” The problem with this approach is that it is not so easy to “be merry.” Unless you know, at a deep level, the things that will make you truly happy and fulfilled, you end up spending your precious time frivolously, and before long you discover you are sad, empty, and depressed—while still furiously trying to “be merry.” For proof, simply look at all the people in the modern world who seem to have it all but who drink too much, take too many drugs and medications (both legal and illegal), use food as an escape rather than nourishment, and indulge in all kinds of unhealthy distractions, all in an attempt to feel better. Along this path, most end up feeling worse, while developing habits and lifestyles that cause ill-health and early death, not to mention the many harmful effects on the people around us, or the growing incidence of suicide.
What now?
So what to do? Although science and philosophy have had a rough time trying to answer the questions posed by existence, consciousness, and identity—all is not lost. The great wisdom traditions of the world have always used these questions as raw material for their endeavors—as the starting point for their inquiries into life and its meaning. In the best of the traditions, the goal has not been to find fixed and rigid answers but to use the questions themselves as springboards in search of the possibilities for a precious human life. The various traditions do suggest specific answers, of course, and some of these formulations are fixed and rigid answer systems, asking adherents to adopt specific beliefs and to mindlessly follow narrow prescriptions for living. In the wisest of the traditions, however, what is offered are the reasons a person should try to discover for themselves how to live a fulfilling life, with suggestions about how one might go about accomplishing this task. As Henry David Thoreau summed up his own quest, it was: “To drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.”
To emphasize again, the reason questions about existence, consciousness, and identity are crucial for your life and mine, for every person’s life, is that what we believe about these things significantly affects how we will live, what we will see as important and find meaningful. These questions are always circling around when we reflect, so wise teachers have turned them into tools for edification—as exemplified by Ramana Maharshi when he suggested to those who came to him that they simply ask, over and over: “Who am I?” Ramana’s radical point was that it is only necessary to pursue this one question to its ultimate conclusion, to its core inside you, in order to discover not only who you really are, but also to understand the mysteries of existence.
Plotinus, the great Neoplatonist of the third century AD, was saying virtually the same thing—asking us to discover our own deepest nature—when he said, “Withdraw into yourself and look.” The words of Mencius, the best-known successor to Confucius, are an even earlier hint in the same direction: “Who knows his own nature, knows heaven.”[10] The great Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, is also saying it in this passage: “To get at the core of God at his greatest, one must first get into the core of himself … for no one can know God who has not first known himself.”[11] Isn’t this what Jesus was suggesting when, in Luke 17:21, he said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Socrates was certainly making this point when he insisted, as mentioned before, that it was not only crucial to “know thyself” but that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” And the modern Sufi, Hazrat Inayat Khan (who was instrumental in bringing Sufism to America), was mining the same vein when he spoke these words: “I looked for Thee on earth; I searched for Thee in the heaven, my Beloved, but at last I have found Thee hidden as a pearl in the shell of my heart.”[12]
These quotes, and many similar ones from wise people of every age, make clear that exploring the nature of identity, as well as consciousness, has been at the heart of the human search for a fulfilling life since the dawn of history. Although this inquiry has not provided final answers one can simply take off a shelf and wear out of a philosophical or spiritual store, this questioning has radically shaped those who have undertaken it. Perhaps, in fact, this is the main reason for such questioning—to provide an ever-deepening experience of what it means to be conscious and alive, and ultimately, to provide a glimpse of what lies beyond the individual self and one’s individual identity. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke was suggesting as much when he advised a young man to “have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and … try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.” In the end, according to Rilke, it is through living the questions fully that one can gradually, “without even noticing it, live into the answers.”[13]
All this clearly suggests that in considering the most important questions about life, and especially its meaning and fulfillment, one good place to look is toward the great wisdom traditions that have been developed and handed down to us through the centuries, which we will do later. But first, let’s turn to the second core mental ability that creates who you are, memory. What is human memory, how does it happen, and how is it related to living a fulfilling life?
[1] James Trefil, 101 Things You Don’t Know about Science and No One Else Does Either, p. 15
[2] William James, A Pluralistic Universe, Lecture VII: The Continuity of Experience (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). This whole paragraph is a paraphrase of several thoughts in this lecture, especially pages 288-289.
[3] ibid
[4] William James has a valuable discussion of these topics in “The Energies of Man,” Science 25, 1907, (No. 635), 331-332. It was the presidential address he gave to the American Philosophical Association and is also reprinted in the Philosophical Review (January 1907). All the suggestions in these two paragraphs are not directly from James, but are thoughts that grew up for me from thinking about what he has said about these things.
[5] Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 89.
[6] Thomas Merton, ed. Lawrence Cunningham Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1992), 111.
[7] Rene Descartes, first appeared in Discourse on the Method written in French in 1637 and later in Latin in Principles of Philosophy in 1644.
[8] David Hume, ed. Sir Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge, A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, Book 2, section 3: The Influencing Motives of the Will (Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1839), 413.
[9] Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2005).
[10] Mencius, quoted by Rodney Leon Taylor and Howard Yuen Fung Choy in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism: A-M, from the definition Chin ch’i hsin (Fully Realize the Heart-Mind), 81.
[11] Raymond B. Blankney, Meister Eckhart (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1941), 146.
[12] Hazrat Inayat Khan, Gayan: Song, Ragas: The human soul calling upon the beloved God, On-line, https://www.hazrat-inayat-khan.org/php/views.php?h1=1&h2=1&h3=7
[13] Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M. D Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton and Co.), 27. This is the fourth letter from Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus in Worpswede, Germany on July 16, 1903.