Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
Man’s deepest difficulty is not simply that he faces pain, loss, conflict, illness, or death. These are conditions of life that occur in one form or another throughout nature. His distinctive difficulty is that he develops an individual mind and then becomes deeply attached to the individuality produced by that mind.
This attachment gives rise to a basic anomaly: a person mistakes what he has accumulated, inherited, learned, performed, or imagined for what he fundamentally is. He does not merely possess a body, a social role, memories, abilities, opinions, and possessions. He gradually comes to be them in his own estimation.
When any of these forms are threatened, criticized, changed, or lost, he experiences the threat as a threat to his very being. Much of human suffering begins at this point.
Individuality and Identification
Individuality is a distinct collection of qualities, characteristics, traits, memories, habits, capacities, preferences, physical features, relationships, social roles, and beliefs. No two individuals have precisely the same collection.
One person may be quiet, analytical, physically strong, proud of family tradition, trained as an engineer, politically committed, and devoted to a particular religious outlook. Another may be artistic, socially expressive, ambitious, sensitive to criticism, proud of appearance, and identified with professional achievement. Each collection forms a recognizable personality.
There is nothing inherently wrong with individuality. A distinct body, temperament, skill set, and history make practical life possible. Individuality permits cooperation, communication, creativity, and responsibility. We need names, roles, memories, and abilities in order to function in the world.
The anomaly begins when the person identifies with these elements as the totality of himself.
To identify means more than to recognize that something belongs to oneself. A person can say, “This is my coat,” without thinking that damage to the coat is damage to his essential being. Identification occurs when the distinction between the observer and the observed disappears.
The person no longer says, “I have a body.” He feels, “I am this body.”
He no longer says, “I perform the role of a parent, teacher, businessperson, or artist.” He feels, “I am only this role.”
He no longer says, “I hold certain ideas.” He feels, “I am my ideas.”
At that point, any change to the body, role, or idea becomes psychologically charged. The person reacts not merely to a circumstance, but to a perceived threat against “I.”
The Body as “I”
A common identification is with the body and its appearance. A person may believe that he is a body that must be attractive, youthful, strong, healthy, admired, or sexually desirable. He may organize his sense of worth around a physical condition that inevitably changes.
Consider a person whose self-image depends heavily on being good looking. As long as he receives praise, attention, and admiration, he may feel secure. But if he ages, gains weight, loses hair, develops an illness, or sees someone more conventionally attractive, he may feel diminished.
The suffering does not arise solely from the physical change. Bodies change by their nature. The suffering arises from the conclusion:
“If this appearance changes, then I am less.”
This conclusion turns a natural physical process into an existential crisis.
Similarly, an athlete may identify so completely with physical capability that an injury becomes more than a practical limitation. It becomes a collapse of identity. The person may think, “Without my strength, speed, or performance, I do not know who I am.”
Yet strength, speed, beauty, and health are conditions of the body. They are not the awareness that knows those conditions.
A person can observe that he feels strong one day and weak another day. That which notices strength and weakness cannot itself be identical with either condition. The body is experienced; therefore, it is an object within awareness rather than the ultimate subject that is aware.
The Role as “I”
A person may also identify with a role that he believes must be successful. Such a role may be that of a professional, parent, spouse, leader, scholar, teacher, religious devotee, public figure, entrepreneur, or citizen of a particular nation.
Roles have practical value. A surgeon must perform surgery well. A parent must care for a child. A teacher must teach. A business owner must make decisions. But when the person’s existence becomes tied to success in the role, the role becomes a prison.
For example, a businessperson may spend decades building a company. He may gradually come to regard the company’s success as proof of his own worth. If the business fails because of a recession, technological change, competition, or an error in judgment, he may experience not only financial loss but personal annihilation.
He may say, “I am a failure.”
But this statement confuses an event with an identity. A business may fail. A plan may fail. A particular attempt may fail. None of these facts establish that awareness itself has failed.
The same confusion can affect a parent. A mother or father may identify with being the parent of a high-achieving child. If the child chooses an unexpected path, struggles in school, rejects family expectations, or becomes independent in a way the parent did not foresee, the parent may experience shame or resentment. The child’s life becomes entangled with the parent’s need to preserve a particular self-image.
The role that was meant to serve life then becomes something that life must serve.
When a person is identified with a role, he may no longer see the people around him as they are. He sees them according to whether they support or threaten his identity. His child becomes “my success” or “my embarrassment.” His employees become “my proof of leadership.” His spouse becomes “my source of validation.” His community becomes “my audience.”
Such possessiveness creates conflict because living beings do not remain fixed in the forms demanded by another person’s identity.
Ideas as “I”
Another powerful identification is with thought. A person may believe that his opinions, philosophy, political position, religious doctrine, scientific theory, artistic taste, or intellectual reputation must be admired and accepted.
Ideas are useful instruments. They allow human beings to organize experience, test possibilities, communicate observations, and make plans. But ideas become destructive when they are treated as the self.
A person who holds an opinion may say, “I believe this is true.” That statement leaves room for inquiry. It permits evidence, correction, dialogue, and learning.
But a person who identifies with an opinion feels, “If this idea is wrong, I am wrong. If someone rejects it, they reject me. If I revise it, I lose myself.”
This makes honest examination difficult. The person may defend an idea long after evidence has weakened it because he is no longer protecting a proposition; he is protecting an identity.
For example, two friends may begin a discussion about politics, religion, education, or philosophy. If each treats his view as an object available for examination, the discussion may be vigorous but constructive. Each can ask, “What evidence supports that?” or “What am I missing?”
If, however, each experiences criticism of his view as a personal attack, the conversation becomes hostile. Neither person is listening. Each is defending the psychological territory called “me.”
This is why arguments about ideas can become more emotional than arguments about practical facts. A disagreement over where to eat may be resolved easily. But a disagreement over a deeply identified belief may evoke anger, contempt, fear, or hatred, because the belief has been fused with the person’s sense of existence.
The mind then treats a challenge to thought as though it were a challenge to life itself.
Possessiveness of Form
The body is a form of matter. Social position, wealth, physical action, and status involve forms of energy and activity. Ideas, memories, beliefs, images, and opinions are forms of thought. A person may become possessive of all three.
He may be possessive of matter:
- “My body must remain attractive.”
- “My house proves who I am.”
- “My possessions show my importance.”
- “My family must reflect well on me.”
He may be possessive of energy and action:
- “My career must advance.”
- “My authority must be recognized.”
- “My accomplishments must endure.”
- “My influence must grow.”
He may be possessive of thought:
- “My beliefs must prevail.”
- “My intelligence must be admired.”
- “My memories define me.”
- “My story must be accepted by others.”
Possessiveness is not limited to physical ownership. It is the demand that a form remain under one’s control and continue to support one’s identity.
A person may be possessive of his pain, for example. He may repeat an old grievance so frequently that it becomes part of his identity. The original injury may have been real, and justice may still be needed. But the mind can become attached to the role of the injured person. Letting go of the grievance may then feel like losing oneself.
Likewise, a person may be possessive of success. Even after achieving security or recognition, he may be unable to rest because he fears losing the form through which he has defined himself. The more he clings to it, the more anxiety accompanies it.
Thus, possession develops into identification, and identification develops into bondage.
Living as the Forms
A person can become so immersed in his identifications that he lives as though he were nothing but the forms with which he identifies. He may not know that he is doing this.
The individual who lives as the body is governed by appearance, pleasure, pain, age, and physical comparison.
The individual who lives as a role is governed by status, approval, duty, success, failure, and social expectations.
The individual who lives as thought is governed by agreement, disagreement, intellectual pride, ideology, and the need to be right.
In each case, life becomes defensive. The person is constantly engaged in maintaining a constructed self. He seeks praise because praise appears to strengthen that self. He fears criticism because criticism appears to weaken it. He resists change because change threatens the continuity of the identity.
This is the anomaly of Man: he uses forms that are temporary, variable, and observable in order to establish a permanent and unchanging self.
But no form can provide that permanence.
The body changes. Roles change. Circumstances change. Possessions come and go. Relationships develop and end. Opinions mature, dissolve, or are replaced. Even memory is incomplete and subject to reinterpretation.
To demand permanence from impermanent forms is to create inevitable suffering.
Inherited and Acquired Identities
Some identifications may be inherited through the biological and psychological blueprint passed down by ancestors. A person may arrive with certain temperamental tendencies: caution, aggression, sensitivity, sociability, competitiveness, anxiety, resilience, or a particular way of responding to threat.
He may also inherit physical features, predispositions, family patterns, and cultural narratives that become part of his initial sense of self.
For example, a child may inherit a tendency toward strong emotional reactivity. If that tendency is reinforced by family responses, he may later identify himself as “an angry person,” “a fearful person,” or “a person who must always be on guard.” What began as a tendency becomes a conclusion about who he is.
Other identifications are acquired through upbringing and society.
A child repeatedly praised for intelligence may identify with being “the smart one.” This can create pressure to appear knowledgeable at all times. Later in life, he may avoid asking questions, admitting uncertainty, or attempting difficult work because he fears appearing unintelligent.
Another child may be repeatedly told that he is troublesome, weak, lazy, clumsy, or disappointing. He may carry that assessment into adulthood as though it were a permanent fact. Even when his abilities change, he may continue to act from the old identification.
Social institutions also provide powerful identities:
- Nationality may become “I am my nation.”
- Religion may become “I am my doctrine.”
- Profession may become “I am my occupation.”
- Class may become “I am my status.”
- Group membership may become “I am my side.”
- Personal history may become “I am what happened to me.”
These descriptions may be factually relevant. A person does have a nationality, background, occupation, and history. The error lies in treating any description as the final answer to the question of being.
The Desire for Continuity
The person experiences these identifications as “I.” Because he experiences them as himself, he wants them to endure forever.
He wants the attractive body to remain attractive. He wants the successful role to remain successful. He wants the admired idea to remain admired. He wants the family name, reputation, possessions, memories, and self-image to continue.
This desire is understandable. The mind seeks continuity because discontinuity appears as death. If the constructed “I” changes or dissolves, the person may feel that he himself is disappearing.
But the constructed self is already changing continuously. Its content is never fixed.
The child, adolescent, adult, employee, parent, student, spouse, leader, believer, skeptic, success, failure, victor, and victim are changing positions in the movement of life. They are real as experiences and practical descriptions, but they are not permanent identities.
The problem is not that these conditions arise. The problem is the insistence that they must remain and that they must define the whole of one’s being.
A person who identifies with youth suffers from aging. A person who identifies with health suffers from illness. A person who identifies with success suffers from failure. A person who identifies with certainty suffers from doubt. A person who identifies with being needed suffers when others become independent.
In every case, suffering is intensified by the attempt to preserve an identity against the nature of change.
Awareness Beyond Identification
The person is not fundamentally any of these identifications. He is, basically, awareness.
Awareness is that by which bodily sensation is known, emotion is known, thought is known, memory is known, and identity itself is known. It is present before the particular thought “I am this,” and it remains present when that thought changes to “I am that.”
A person may remember being a child, but he is not now the child’s body, knowledge, preferences, or social role. Yet there is a continuity in the fact that the experiences of childhood are known. The content has changed, but awareness remains the condition in which the changing content appears.
This does not mean that one must deny the body, reject practical responsibilities, abandon relationships, or stop using thought. Awareness does not require the destruction of individuality. It requires freedom from mistaking individuality for one’s ultimate nature.
A person can care for his body without worshiping it. He can pursue excellence in his work without making success his existence. He can hold strong views without becoming hostile to inquiry. He can love his family without trying to possess them. He can remember the past without being imprisoned by it.
The distinction is simple but profound:
The body, role, and thought are experienced. Awareness is that which experiences them.
Forms come and go within awareness. Awareness need not be defended in the same way that forms are defended, because it is not threatened by the changing content it observes.
The Central Question
For this reason, the most useful question for Man is not:
“What am I?”
That question can become another search for a more refined identity: “Am I a soul? Am I a personality? Am I a body? Am I a profession? Am I a belief system? Am I a special kind of person?”
The more practical question is:
“What am I identifying with?”
This question directs attention toward the actual source of disturbance.
When a person feels insulted, he can ask, “What in me has been threatened?” Perhaps it is his image of intelligence, goodness, authority, attractiveness, social position, or moral superiority.
When he feels fear, he can ask, “What form am I trying to preserve?” Perhaps it is physical security, financial status, reputation, a relationship, a belief, or control over the future.
When he feels envy, he can ask, “What identity do I think another person possesses that I lack?” Perhaps another’s beauty, wealth, recognition, talent, status, or apparent happiness has exposed an identification in himself.
This inquiry does not deny the reality of practical problems. A financial loss may require action. An illness may require treatment. An injustice may require correction. But clear action becomes more possible when it is not distorted by the desperate need to defend an imagined self.
Neti, Neti
The Vedic exercise neti, neti offers a direct method for loosening identification. The phrase means, “Neither this, nor that,” or more personally, “I am neither this, nor that.”
It is not a statement of indifference toward life. It is an exercise in discrimination between awareness and the objects appearing within awareness.
A person may observe:
- “This body is present, but I am not merely this body.”
- “This sensation of fear is present, but I am not merely this fear.”
- “This memory is present, but I am not merely this memory.”
- “This role is present, but I am not merely this role.”
- “This belief is present, but I am not merely this belief.”
- “This success is present, but I am not merely this success.”
- “This failure is present, but I am not merely this failure.”
The exercise does not require replacing one identity with another. It asks the person to see every object of identification as an object: something known, something that appears, something that changes.
Suppose a scholar receives harsh criticism of a book he has written. His first reaction may be anger, shame, or defensiveness. Rather than immediately attacking the critic or collapsing into self-condemnation, he may pause and examine the experience:
“There is a thought that my work must be admired. There is fear that I will be seen as inadequate. There is anger toward the person who challenged me. But I am neither the praise I sought, nor the criticism I received, nor the thought that I must be admired.”
This does not mean that the criticism is automatically correct or that he should abandon his work. It means he can evaluate the criticism without being wholly governed by an injured identity.
Likewise, a person facing illness may use neti, neti not to deny the illness, but to avoid reducing himself to it:
“The body is ill. Pain is being experienced. Fear may be present. These require care and compassion. But I am not exhausted by the description ‘an ill person.’”
This creates inner space. Within that space, there can be practical action without total psychological bondage.
Resolution of the Anomaly
The resolution of the anomaly of Man is not the elimination of individuality. Individuality is an instrument of life. It provides a particular body, perspective, capacity, history, and field of action.
The resolution is the withdrawal of false identity from the forms of individuality.
A person can say:
“I have a body, but I am not confined to bodily appearance.”
“I have roles, but I am not limited to their success or failure.”
“I have thoughts, but I am not identical with any thought.”
“I have a history, but I am not imprisoned by the past.”
“I have qualities and traits, but they do not exhaust what I am.”
When this understanding becomes more than an intellectual statement, possessiveness weakens. The need for constant approval diminishes. Criticism becomes more tolerable. Change becomes less frightening. Other people become less useful as mirrors for one’s identity and more visible as living beings in their own right.
The person can still act, love, create, learn, succeed, fail, and participate fully in the world. But he no longer needs every event to confirm that he exists.
This is the freedom toward which neti, neti points. It is discussed further in Chapter 11 of Postulate Mechanics, where the exercise serves as a practical means of separating awareness from the changing forms with which it has become identified.
The fundamental movement is from possessiveness to observation, from compulsive identification to conscious participation, and from the fragile self-image to the awareness in which all self-images arise and pass away.
The Main Ideas
- Man has an individual mind that is deeply attached to individuality.
- Individuality is a distinct collection of qualities, characteristics, and traits.
- A person identifies with these qualities, characteristics, and traits.
- So, a person may think he is a body that should be good looking.
- Or he may think he has a role that should be successful.
- Or he may think he has ideas that should be admired.
- Therefore, he is possessive of these forms of matter, energy and thought.
- He may become so possessive that he may live as those forms and not know it.
- Such identifications are the basic anomaly of Man—the source of all his sufferings.
- Some identifications are likely inherited from the blueprint passed on to him by ancestors.
- Other identifications are acquired as he grows up in a family, and lives within a society.
- These identifications he senses as his “I” which he wants to exist forever.
- The person is is none of these identifications—he is basically awareness, which is there forever anyway.
- The question for Man is not “What am I?” But, “What am I identifying with?”
- The resolution lies in Vedic exercise “neti, neti” meaning, “I am neither this, nor that.”
- This exercise is described in Chapter 11 of the book Postulate Mechanics.
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