The Profound Nature of Self

Imagine you're listening to music. There is a speaker across the room from where the sound is coming. There is something very amazing going on here, which if we just slow down the process becomes quite clear.

So let's start with the science.

The speaker causes air molecules to vibrate, and that travels out as sound waves. Sound waves reach your ears, and in there, there's all these little components which go into action. There's your eardrums, the little bones that vibrate, and in turn cause the liquid in your ear canal to move. And in your ear canal there are hair follicles which are sensitive to movement, and so these trigger off signals to the brain, which are really just charged ions.

These ions get absorbed by neurons in the brain, and then when each neuron reaches a certain threshold it releases its own spurt of ions, causing these chain reactions of brain activity.

But in this entire process, which we've laid out here now, where do you fit in?

See, in the entire process there is no hearing. There's no music.

It's only at the end, the very end of this whole chain, that there's an experience. That brain activity is heard. As music. And it's heard by you.

So what exactly are you anyway?

You're not the air molecules that are vibrating. You're not the components of the ear. You're not the charged ions.

And all those individual neurons, millions of them in this one process, they're not really you either. They're like the hardware on which the electrical activity is happening, and even that activity is of a very different nature than the music you experience.

So there's nothing really in this whole process that you can call me.

But of course, you can't deny your own existence.

You're the one listening to music. Quite clearly.

There is music, and all this stuff happening underneath the hood. And then there is you.

Now, some of you will have heard the philosophy around this: The hard problem of consciousness.

How we don't really know how matter and energy end up in conscious experiences. And those who haven't heard of the hard problem will now probably want to Google it, but hold on! Let's not go down that rabbit hole. We'll cover that some other day.

The way we're framing this question right now is much more intimate. It's not philosophy. It's about your own identity, What you actually are in reality.

And there is an answer.

It's not a theory, because it has to do with you. It is the only possible conclusion to a deep and thorough self inquiry.

So now we're moving from the domain of science to meditation. The wisdom of the sages.

But within this rational framework. We're not looking for anything supernatural, we're looking for an answer to this simple question: what am I?

And on this channel you'll hear about one particular sage quite a bit. A man named Maruti who lived in Mumbai around the 70s and 80s.

Later on he came to be known as Nisargadatta Maharaj. Nisargadatta means 'Nature Itself'. Which is quite appropriate if you read his dialogues in his famous book 'I am That'. It really sounds like he's not really a man that's speaking.

It is Nature describing Itself.

Anyway, so he gave this analogy once that I read, about a fire burning. There's the wood, which is the fuel for the fire. And there's the fire.

And then there's the enjoyer of that fire.

See, the wood is the physical substance; the body in our example where there is music. The brain activity is maybe what you can call the fire. But then that fire is experienced by a sentience.

And that sentience is an entirely different factor to the rest of the process.

In fact if you think in terms of cause and effect, it's not really a cause in any of it, nor is it an effect. But somehow that final effect is noticed by the sentience that is you. As the experience of fire, as music, as warmth, as love.

All these diverse and amazing experiences are being made possible by your very presence. By your very nature. They're made possible by the fact that you are here, and that you are conscious.

That is the very basis of a mind.

That little fact is the basis for the entire world. For all worlds. Because by nature all worlds are subjective, mental, experiential. And at their very foundation is the subject of our inquiry.

You.

So just keep in mind this question. Ponder over it.

What am I?

What am I that I get to experience all this?

What am I?