Who Am I?

This is in continuation of the last article on “On Becoming!”…

The most fundamental realization one must comprehend is that thoughts are a self created product of the ‘mind’ and ‘mind’ is NOT who the Being is. In other words, mind is a creation itself. And the separateness of the body and the illusionary attachment to the idea of existence gives rise to fear – therefore thoughts – and therefore memory and time. All is imagination.

There are people who remain oblivious to this realization. They don’t question anything and treat anything at face value. They don’t analyze things and live in perpetual fear. No matter what you tell them, they have already shut their eyes and ears to outside alternative realities.

There are others, who realize the impact of thoughts and the urge to control them. Depending on their ability to control thoughts, the quality of life differs for each.  If we really continue to concentrate on the nature of thought itself, our mind will become still and we may then appropriately be able to create thoughts which are required to shape our lives in a better way.

Lastly, there are those, who have transcended thoughts and have seen that dimension of existence that is beyond the grasp of thoughts – such a dimension which is beyond time, memory, character, social constructs, which has no beginning and no end – which just exists. That dimension is within us – we have tightly covered it with a billion layers of thoughts.

Why is this study important? It is important to those who realize the limitations of existential decisions based on mind, body, context. Nevertheless, “decisions” are to be taken. Swami Vivekananda says that “thought” itself is a decision that generates an action. Noone can escape the effects of this cycle of thoughts and action and consequences. At an existential layer, following things are recommended to control the mind:

1.       Making the mind still by meditation. This takes years. This is a training to realize that thoughts should NOT control you. Thus, to realize the nature of thought (attachment/ ego/ fear) itself and how our senses play a role in it.

2.       Focus – The first step prepares us to command the mind the way we want, without any distraction. As long as we don’t understand the mind fully, we remain distracted or unfocussed.

3.       Selfless work – This is about the intent behind action. Intent should not spring from fear/ego etc., but from a pure dimension.

4.       To think of welfare of all and to be ethically and morally sensitive.

5.       To define simple living  - which means fundamental value driven existence. To understand the role of values that are universal or timeless.

This is the core of thinking or knowledge generation. The question is what is creation? What sort of knowledge should be revealed? And what are the repercussions of this revelation? At the core, is the concern for the nature of knowledge itself and the question of the millennium is ‘Who Am I’?

Just as a cow can act weird and attract a ‘mad cow disease’, we too can act completely weird by our thoughts.