If I was to ask you, “Who are you” how would you respond?
The common response to such a question would be to give a name. Say your name is “Bob”. There are many people who answer to that name, who are not you. Okay, so, what if you were the only one to answer to that name? As Shakespeare asks, “What is in a name?” Is the name you? We answer to our names all the time. But we know that names are just labels; just ways of referring to us. If it is just a way of labeling you, then who is the you being labeled?
We each have many thoughts that define us on some level. Are you your thoughts? If so, then which ones? All of them? Your thoughts come and go and yet that which is you continues to be. Are you your emotions? Emotions regularly contradict themselves. One moment we are in love with someone, the next we are angry with them, or even hate them. So, then which emotions are you?
Are you then your physical body? What is it then that gives this body life and intelligence, the ability to ask these questions? What about our actions? It’s been said that you know a person by their actions. Does this mean you know who a person is by their actions? How is this possible without knowing the intentions behind the actions, which brings us back again to thoughts and emotions.
Are you your concepts of self, those concepts that form your personality?: Are you American, Iranian, patriotic or embarrassed by your country, partisan or non-partisan, a man, a woman, Christian, Muslim, accountant, dancer, etc.
It could be said that you are all these things – your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, your physical body, your ideas of self…Yet none of these things really persist in an of themselves. Thoughts come and go, emotions rise and fall, personalities can change, nationality can change, opinions can change, even the physical body regularly changes on a cellular level and eventually dies. Yet there is something within all of this that persists, that draws it all together into a you that is perceiving, that is experiencing it all.
This is the you that we are going to be looking at…that consciousness that persists throughout all of the experiences of thought, feeling, action, personality shaping, etc.
So, the question, “Who are you” is quite literally asking what is it about you that has being, that is no matter what – regardless of circumstance. That which is, what you are has actual existence. In some way it is, has always been and will always be. This then is not your thoughts, not your feelings, nor your physical body, which we know are all ever-changing and impermanent. It is the awareness behind any thought, any feeling, any sensation. It is the perceiver of all these things.
To be clear, we may have two different thoughts. One thought is about what day it is. This thought has a beginning with the consideration of what day it is. And it has an ending with the conclusion that it is Saturday. Another thought may be about whether or not I have to work that day. This thought has a beginning when it wonders about work. The same thought has an end with the realization of ‘no’ I don’t work on Saturday. Neither thought has existence in and of itself. That which does have existence is the awareness that is perceiving these thoughts, the awareness behind these thoughts. The thoughts themselves only have existence based on the perceiver. In Gnosis we refer to this awareness as Consciousness. Consciousness utilizes the mind to process thoughts, but it is not the thoughts themselves…it is the perceiver of the thoughts.
As it is not uncommon for people to believe that they are their thoughts and intellect, let’s explore this idea a bit further. There are several theories that people turn to when choosing to believe this. For instance, some people would say that my “self” is based in the activities of my brain. After all, the brain is the only physical organ that when removed also removes “me”. Even such vital organs as the heart and kidneys have been successfully replaced in their functions by machines without the person losing his sense of self. However, remove or replace the brain and the “self” is gone.
For this, let’s take a look at the case of a woman who lost all of her brain function in the left hemisphere of her brain. This actually happened to a woman named Jill Bolte Taylor who wrote a book about it. When she had a stroke and lost the function of her left brain she lost many aspects of herself that gave her a sense of self – such as long-term memories, knowledge of language, her name, her job (ironically) as a neuroscientist, relationships, etc. At first glance this would support the argument that the self of any person is based on the activities of the brain. However, when you look closer you find that she never lost the experience of self through all of this. She merely lost concepts of self associated with learned behaviors and memories of personal experiences. Yet she remained aware of herself as having beingness, existence. In fact, according to her accounts she became even more aware of this beingness as the result of not having that awareness clouded by the concepts of self, these concepts…again…built upon learned behaviors and the memories of personal experiences. She was a very intellectually developed person before her stroke, a very left-brain person. But when that intellect was completely lost she did not lose her awareness. In fact, she states that her awareness became even more enhanced.
Keeping this in mind, imagine a bicyclist losing the front half of her bike – meaning the front tire, the handles for steering and the gear-shifts. Upon losing all of these more sophisticated aspects of the bike that make it more manageable, she is now left with a seat, back tire and pedals – essentially a unicycle. With the right effort, she can still effectively use the machinery that is there to get around. But a person riding a unicycle must become much more aware of her relationship to a bike when there is less apparatus separating them. We see this demonstrated in the story of Miss Taylor. As the conscious Awareness that rides the machine of the intellect, when that machine of the intellect was removed she became more aware of herself as the self that is operating it, the “ghost in the machine” so to speak. And she was still able to use the machine with the right effort.
As an intellectually based person she experienced the horror and the grace of having the intellect removed, only to discover that she still existed. And she also became much more aware of the back tire of the bike that she previously took for granted – her emotions.
Those who consider their “self” to be based in the intellect often consider it ridiculous to think that they may not be their intellect, but are actually their emotions. Yet, experience proves otherwise…that they are in fact motivated by their emotional states. For instance, it is a common understanding that an otherwise capable driver can become dangerous behind the wheel when angry or upset – his mind swayed by his emotional state. Another clear example…?
Anyone who has ever worked in sales or in marketing knows that people make buying decisions based on their emotions, not on their intellect. So, if you believe that you are your thoughts then you have the rest of the free world, the free market proving you wrong every day. In fact research has shown that not only are we motivated by our emotions, but emotions are the deciding factor in the choices we make. Based on this information wouldn’t it make sense that we are our emotions and not the intellect?
To be clear, this is not what I am actually suggesting. Nor do we have the time to address all of the possible philosophical stances of people whom choose to believe that the truth of self is limited to the intellect. One of the advantages and traps of a capable intellect is that it can argue any point. Any concept of the intellect may be debated by another antithetical concept. So, really, the purpose of this exercise is merely to illustrate the following point:
…that the intellectual mind is a tool of Consciousness. Even though people tend to think of Consciousness as an intellectual process, the Consciousness of which I speak is not an intellectual function. The intellect can be a vehicle for the intelligence of Consciousness. But the intellect itself is not intelligent. It is a tool. It is a machine that requires conscious Intelligence to operate.
In the same way a person has a thought he can have a car. When he gets into the car and drives it around then he appears to be the car. But at any time he can get out of the car and leave it behind, the separation demonstrating that driver and car are two separate things. The relationship between Consciousness and the intellectual mind is the same as the relationship between the person and his car. At any time the Consciousness may utilize its mind to perceive thought. While the Consciousness is using the intellect it can appear to be the intellect. But the Consciousness is the driver, while the intellect is the machine being driven. In fact, the Consciousness is the driver of the entire Human organism – of which the intellect is only a part.
The intellect is just one tool of the Consciousness. In Gnosis we refer to it as the Intellectual Brain. The thought processes of this Brain are associated with the physical brain that is found in the head.
