Who do you Think you Are?

 Who do you think you are?

If you were asked the question, “who are you?” Most of us would answer by giving our name, and our profession, or perhaps describe ourselves physically. But, is that all we really are? Am I only Krishma Arora? Woman; wife; mother; teacher; Indian, Sikh, a resident of Upper Brookville, an American?  

I am not my name or anything that identifies me to society. I could’ve been born a man or animal for instance in a completely different country or religion, and raised by wolves for all that matters. The point is that “I” cannot be defined by the experiences of my life because then it would be susceptible to my changing circumstances and the world. The “I” being discussed is not the conglomerate of situations that a person experiences, and that somehow defines their existence. I’m talking about a much more higher level of the “I” which is beyond the ego.  

“I” am not a sum of my physical or mental parts. So, I the physical body of a woman in her thirties who is 5’9 does not define who I am. My body is only the vessel that allows “me or the I” to have physical function in the world. 

Years ago, in a debate with our Philosophy Professor at NYU about the mind and the brain and if they were one and the same? I argued that “I” could not possibly only be my brain, because “I” had the power to trick myself. Furthermore, I could observe the mind at work. So, “I” could not be my mind, and therefore, the brain, in my opinion could not logically be the mind nor define who “I” am. So, if I am not my mind, and or brain, and I am not this physical body that the “I” travels in, then who am I after all, the soul? 

Some people deny the existence of the soul, but I specifically define it as the essence of our existence. It is that part of us that makes us alive. Yogi’s have often described the third eye as the seer of oneself. It is that third eye of which I am speaking. “I” is precisely the observer of all the other parts mental and physical that I described. “I” actually has no attributes at all. “I” is the eternal consciousness that is within each of us. The “I” can be equated with the eternal universal force infinite and unchanging from which our “aliveness” stems from. What is missing from the dead’s body if their organs can be revived elsewhere? It is the “I” that is missing. “I” is what makes us all one and equal. That is who “I” am. An iota of the universal, eternal consciousness.