Who am I? According to D.Chopra

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Who am I?

1-Nov-2006

Written by: Deepak Chopra

 

 

Vedanta, one of the world's most ancient philosophies, says there are

only five reasons why humans suffer: not knowing who we are,

identifying with our ego or self-image, clinging to the transient and

unreal, recoiling in fear of the transient and unreal, and fear of death.

Vedanta also says that the five causes of suffering are all contained in

the first cause - not knowing who we are.

If someone were to ask, "Who are you?" your response would probably

be "My name is so-and-so. I'm American, or I'm the president of this

company. You may also identify with your body, "This bag of flesh and

bones is who I am." But sensory experience is totally illusory. You may

think you are the body that your senses can locate in space and time,

but the body is a field of invisible vibrations that has no boundaries in

space and time.

How long can we cling to a world of illusion? Is there such a thing as the

color red? Every color we see is a particular wavelength of light, and the

light we can actually detect is a fraction of what exists. An insight that

comes to us from both Vedic science and the Jewish Kabbalah is that

the center of our awareness is the center of all space and time. It is at

once everywhere and nowhere. But my eyes tell me this is not the

case. I am here, you are there, wherever you are.

So maybe we should not trust our senses that much. My eyes tell me

that the ground I am standing on is stationary, but we know that the

earth is spinning on its axis and hurtling through space at thousands of

miles an hour. Sensory experience tells me that the objects of my

perception are solid, but we know they are made up of particles that

whirl around huge empty spaces.

The experience of a material world is a superstition that we've developed

because we've learned to trust our senses. The universe is actually a

chaos of energy soup, and we ingest this soup through our five senses,

and then convert it into a material reality in our consciousness. Our

senses transform massless energy into form and solidity, texture and

color, fragrance and taste, sound and vibration. And our interpretation of

that energy soup structures our reality and creates our perceptual

experience.

Most of the time we do this unconsciously as a result of social

conditioning. This superstition of materialism relies on sensory

experience - what we can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch - as the

crucial test of reality. If information is not available to our senses, we

tend to think it isn't there. And the intellect, with its linguistically

structured system of logic, serves to justify this mistaken perception of

reality.

The essential you, your real essence, is a field of awareness that

becomes both mind and body. The real you, infinite consciousness, is

inseparable from the patterns of intelligence that permeate every fiber of

creation. And yet the intellect divides infinite consciousness into a world

of objects separated by space, time, and causation. As a result, we

lose touch with the true nature of our reality, which is powerful,

boundless, immortal, and free.

We are all prisoners of the intellect. The intellect mistakes the image of

reality for reality itself. It squeezes the soul into the volume of a body, in

the span of a lifetime, and the spell of mortality is cast. The image of

the self overshadows the unbounded Self, and we feel cut off or

disconnected from infinite consciousness, our source. This is the

beginning of fear, the onset of suffering, and all the problems of

humanity.

To one who is trapped in the prison of the intellect, all is indeed

suffering. Ignorance of our real nature causes the inner self to be

obscured. But when ignorance is destroyed, the powerful, unbounded

nature of the inner self is revealed. Once you fully grasp this

understanding, not only will you have the power to accomplish all that

you want, but you will also have true freedom and grace. This means

you will never experience fear, not even the fear of death.

 

 

© 2006 by Deepak Chopra from Power, Freedom, & Grace: Living from

the Source of Lasting Happiness

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