Who am I and why does it matter

Philosophy · 21 May 2021

What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that its just ain’t so - Mark Twain.

Most of us are into the illusions of knowing who we are, but is it so obvious? Who are we really and why does it matter? It does not matter a single bit if you are happy and satisfied with your life. It also does not matter if you are unsatisfied but only on an intellectual level and you would like to know things only to make intellectual conversations. Most of our inquiries begin with the realisation that we know very little and that we don’t really have any answers and all these things starts to matter all of a sudden. Most of us start looking for answers when we are stuck into some kind of existential crisis. Its hard to define what an existential crisis is since people have all kinds of experiences. For example, people feel the lack of meaning in life and what they are doing and tend to avoid public exposure. In such a state they fervently seek for meaning and purpose to keep on living their lives. Most of the times people end up asking their own identity. But it does not mean that you need to have existentianl crisis to ask this question. Maybe you will have one knowing that what you think yourself to be is an illusion and a mental construct.

So let me get to the point. Who are we really? Let us first delve into the understanding that we have. When we ask ourselves about our identity, the first thought that pops up in our mind is our name and the lineage we belong to. We are so sure of our understanding about ourselves that we seldom question this unless provoked externally. Is this understanding correct? Let me prove to you that your understanding is not correct. Let us first understand the definition of identity and make sure that we agree to the definitions that we are using.

Definition (Personal Identity). Personal identity usually refers to properties to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s personal identity in this sense consists of those properties she takes to define her as a person or make her the person she is, and which distinguish her from others.

This is the identity that most people think of when asked about it. But I am not talking about personal identity here. What I am talking about is existential identity, which is there independent of the external world and is obviated by the fact that we exist. Why should we care about existential identity when personal identity serves us well in our lives? As I said it does not matter as long as you are engrossed in day to day life as personal identity is all you need to distinguish yourself from others. But as you can sniff, personal identity is very vague and does not already give you the sense of identity at the level of an observer because it makes reference to external objects. As we will discover, we cannot define the existential identity as an object of experience. One always has to appeal to certain properties or what is called essence in Existentialism to define existential identity. But then we are faced with an immediate problem, our existence proves that we have some sense of identity (which is obviously not personal identity) but as soon as we are devoid of the essence existentialists talk about, we must vanish into thin air. Thus we conclude that any definition involving an object of experience cannot be our identity. So we make the following definition which is independent of the external world (we will precisely see what we mean by external world).

Definition (Existential Identity). The awareness underlying any first person sujective experience is called the existential identity.

Let us unpack this definition first. What is awareness and what is first person subjective experience? It is best to understand this by an example. Consider tasting the sweetness of suger. You cannot describe what is the taste of suger, sweet is just a label of the experience we have when we put suger on our tongue. Although we cannot describe these experiences in words (think about it!) but we can say with conviction that we had some experience. Moreover any meticulous explanation of the experience by another person cannot possibly lead to the experience that we ourselves have while tasting suger. This characterises first person subjective experience. There are two elements to this experience, one that we have an experience and two we cannot have any knowledge about it without experiencing it ourselves. In this sense, tasting suger gives rise to a first person subjective experience. We can see that first person subective experience is quite common. Now experiences are always accompanied by an experiencer otherwise there is no way to know the experience. This experiencer is said to be the aware of the experience. We now understand the definition of existential identity. So what are we supposed to do with this definition. Now comes the real meaning of the quote by Mark Twain. We have reached a stage when we can say that we don’t really know what are we. So let us go on a tour to discover atleast the nature of the question. Once we understand what we mean then we will see that there are enormous possibilities in life and it is worth living life to find out the answers to these possibilities.

To understand the nature of existential identity, let us follow our instincts and segregate what we are not. We will follow a simple yet extremely powerful principle called the principle of seer and seen.

Principle of the Seer and the Seen: In any first person subjective experience, the experience and the experiencer are different.

This is a very logical principle. For example, when we see a bottle, the bottle and the eyes are different. Let us now apply this principle to the world and ourselves in particular. This is an excercise for each individual and one must follow each step given below and corroborate the conclusion.

Step one: The external world (physical world outside our body) is seen (experienced) by our sense organs namely eyes, skin, tongue, nose and ear. Since the experiencer is on our side (the sense organs are in our body), thus by the principle of seer and seen, we cannot be the external world. This step is easy. We don’t need any principles to conclude that we cannot be trees, lakes, moutains, cars, chairs, tables and what not.
Step two: Our sense organs and more generally our body is seen (experienced) by our mind in the sense that our physical body is an object of experience. By the definition of existential identity, we are on mind’s side and hence by the principle of seer and seen, we cannot be our body. This is somewhat radical. Our body is an object of experience because we know when it aches. We know when our eyesight is deteriorating and the sense become dull. Many people identify themselves with their physical body when they say that I am fat or I am skinny, but its just ain’t so. But most of the people would agree on this point that we are not just the physical body.
Step three: The mind is seen (experienced) by the consciousness (awareness) and hence we are not the minds.

Third step is quite mind boggling. Most of the people would identify themselves with the mind. So here is an explanation of the third step. How is the mind an object of experience? Before we understand this, let us first discuss what is mind. Mind is the collection of all thoughts, memories, feelings, ideas, intellect, reasoning and so on. Thoughts, memories and feelings are gross forms of mental activities. We are aware of them whenever they arise (not so easy though!). But the fact is we can always spot them when they arise in our minds. But then they are objects of experience. More subtle mental activities are ideas, creativity, intellect and logical reasoning. But notice that whenever you perform any of these mental activity, you are consciously involved in thinking and analysing. But you are also aware of these thoughts. Take for example, the mental activity of $2+2=4$ calculation. As soon as you think of this problem, intellect comes into play and analyses the problem. But at any instant you can watch from background the activities of the mind while performing these activities. Hence we see that even the subtlest mental activities are objects of experience and hence we cannot be our mind.

Now at this stage people would start asking am I nothing or what am I then? Then answer is you cannot know. Whatever you know is an object of knowledge and hence cannot be you. Anything is either known or unknwon and you are neither. There is another aspect to this, quite apart from the known and unknown is the knower - the awareness. I will keep silent at this point to the question of our identity but we have realised that our identity is not what we are used to thinking. I am silent to the question because it cannot be expressed in words. Language has the limitation of only expressing what is known to us and unknown things we cannot express anyway. The quest is then to realise our tru nature. This also immediately gives rise to two particularly important questions that could define the way we look at life. I will close the discussion with those questions and some conclusion at the end.

What is death? Do we really die after death?
Is there life after death? If yes then in what form?

In conclusion, we have to realise our real nature which could also lead to the discovery of answer of the above questions. The above questions make sense because what we know about death is that the body and mind of an individual ceases to exist after death. But if we are not our body and mind then how can we conclude that we (as our real self) cease to exist after death. Moreover if we don’t know the answer to this question, then we don’t know if there is life in some form after death. These are the most important questions of humanity. I hope you realise what you are soon and get the answers to your questions soon.