Who Am I?
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 3 years before Oct 31, 2016
MiBeloved 3 years ago
This is a question which has haunted human beings even in prehistoric times. Sometimes an ape thinks along these lines and is baffled by it. The human might solve out this puzzle. Buddha thought that at least he was not the mass of afflictions which plague human life. He wanted to have nothing to do with trauma or trauma as potential outcome. So who am I? Does the rest of existence give a damn if I can figure that out or not? Will history, advance, reverse or remain the same if I were to figure that out?
Email Inquiries:
If one is successful neutralizing memory, then what would that person become without access to their memory?
For example what if someone like you, an advanced yogi, got amnesia, what would that mean? Who would you be?
What if the brain could not gain access to the memory bank?
What would this mean in regard to the bare self....?
MiBeloved's Response:
The self is not its memory. The self is not its intellect. The self is not even its current sense of identity. It would go on existing if it was disconnected from any of these psychic adjuncts.
If I got amnesia, it would mean that I was disconnected from my current stockpile of memories from this current life. I would still continue to exist but without that convenient information. The same thing might happen say if I was deported to say Russia. There my benefits as a citizen of the US would be irrelevant. I would have no access to that. I would go on existing but without that.
Would that bother me? Sure it would especially if I do not have any comparable privileges in Russia. But if on going to Russia, I lost my memory of my life in the US then I would not be bothered.
This happened to me recently, where I took a new body without connection to my memory from any past life. I became ambitious to achieve many things and worked enthusiastically to achieve those things. Actually the truth is that some of these things I had before. If I could remember my past accomplishments, I would feel ripped off knowing that I had to work to achieve those things all over again.
Imagine me, going to college for 6 years to be a dentist, and then at the end of it, I am told by the medical people that my certification is bogus or that it is cancelled for some reason. They then tell me that I have to do the 6 years all over again and I must also pay the relevant fees again.
From this it is appreciated that we forget past lives. How would it be if I remembered a past life and recognized the house I built before and the business I established before which is run by somebody else now, who rakes in all the profits and who is even using my previous name on their letter head?
It does not matter that I am a yogi, I am still subjected to the same harassments by providence. I am disadvantaged all the same. It is just that I have some information about how the system really works.
During World War 2 some persons who were taken to concentration camps had the idea that they were going to a good place where they would be given an opportunity to work and make a decent living and care for their family, but some others knew that this was untrue and that the Nazis were going to gas them to death.
So a yogi is like those who know what is going to happen. One does not become exempt from being killed merely because one knows what is going to happen.
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Inquiry:
Should one contemplate what it would be like to lose the senses?
I can imagine losing the senses, i am not my senses, but when i got to the elimination of the dominance of memory and having it go away, i wondered, well then who am i? Who are any of us? We may not remember past lives, but what if we got in a situation where we couldn't remember this one?
MiBeloved's Response:
What if?
What if?
Yes, what if?
But it already happened when you took this body and lost memory of the past life, so your question is answered by your current experience.
You might lose a sense or two of a physical body but the subtle body will retain its sensual potential and when again it has another body which affords the expression of that sensual potential you will again be able to use that lost sense.
Besides the senses however there is the sense of identity or your deep interest which is invested in the senses. That is the real thing for the self.
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Inquiry:
Would you, as advanced as you are, be able to override the brain in terms of retrieval or interpretation of memory? Or would you be lost?
MiBeloved's Response:
Anyone who is disconnected from this-life memory chamber will lose it in terms of this life. This has happened to us and that was our condition in infancy and childhood.
It does not matter if one is a yogi or not.
Sometimes we gain these experiences during astral projections where we find the self in an adjacent parallel world, without the current memory, with no specific type of memory and then people who live in that other place, begin to tell us to do this and do that.
Wherever you go you will fit in, in some way or stated more precisely, those people who are already there will put you to use, give you a social role, cause you to fit in and you won’t be concerned with who you were in the previous existence.
In this life you are situated now and you do not care who you were before as to whether you were a ruler or an underdog?
devaPriya Yogini 3 years ago
Swamis Sivananda and Vishnu-devananda sing a sweet little song i learned at the ashram:
I am not my body, my body is not mine.
I am not my mind, my mind is not mine.
I am not these emotions, these emotions aren't mine.
I am not this intellect, this intellect is not mine..
so then I can add when i'm singing it...
I am not these memories, these memories aren't mine...?
Once one makes it to the higher astral planes or spiritual world one does not remember all the lives the core self witnessed in the material or lower material worlds?
They are irrelevant at that point or what?
Sorry if these are juvenile questions, i just keep thinking about this today and im starting to get it from your response but not fully.
Alfredo 3 years ago
There are some esoteric people that have tried, entertained, to answer the question of "Who am I?" from a unique principle of "oneness".
But first, Maharshi Ramana, was, perhaps, the one who re-coined that term as of recently, when he, by way of sign language and pictorials (he has been in silence for almost 10 years then) on the sand in front of Virupaksha Cave in Arunachala, dictated to a certain Madrasi named Shivaprakasham Pillai, his famous "Who am I?" (in original Tamil "Nan Yar"?). The Maharshi used a rehearsal of the Adwaitin's practice of Vichara or inquiry into the Self, helped by the tool of "neti, neti" (not this, not this). Please check this most tremendous short treatise which I just posted in the file section! (Who am I?) (apologies for the red highlights, they are mine, I have reviewed this through the years).
But these other esoteric people I mentioned say that we are God, but caution! In a very unique and different way. They say the Transcendent Principle from which God was created is not affected by this manifestation, but that when God created this manifestation, He was very, very simple, and then evolved within for the sake of playing inside - Lila. Verily like in a matrix. So there are some rules that have been set from the onset.
So, individuals, they claim, cannot have free will. None. But God does, and since each individual is God looking out...then why not?
Is His creation perfect? Hell no. Look around. As Acharya Ji once said on LinkedIn...a drunk God? That he could accept that, ha, ha.
You can only change and evolve within the mind of God.
Want to leave the Universe?..Stop playing the game, that's all, or win it. Otherwise you are anchored here until the end of time.
Stop fretting, for you are not responsible for your shortcomings, really? Or are you?
MiBeloved 3 years ago
devaPriya Yogini query:
Once one makes it to the higher astral planes or spiritual world one does not remember all the lives the core self witnessed in the material or lower material worlds?
They are irrelevant at that point or what?
MiBeloved's Response:
In the higher astral planes or spiritual world, there is no recall of the life on earth for most persons who are there. A few persons there do have a dim somewhat remote recall which if they access it, they are expelled immediately from those places and find themselves in lower dimensions forthwith.
Both King Mahabhisha and the Goddess Ganga were summarily expelled by the deity Brahma when Mahabhisha got sexually attracted after seeing the goddess in sheer clothing and partially nude. If this could happen to a goddess then what can be said about the status of others.
I was once in Brahma’s residence but there my form was that of a boy of about 8 years of age. If I am fortunate to get back there, then I would still have a compressed form of my memories of these physical births but I would have to keep that memory sealed for all the time I am there. If by chance I would open that memory container just a little, then I could again disappear from there and would be drawn into a physical body again. A greater degree of psyche control is required for those persons who are in Satyaloka and who have had earthly births. Any slip, just slightly even, is a sure down ride to the material world.
The reason why memories from earth existence are irrelevant in higher world is that those places have no struggle for existence. Hence the skills which we developed here to make an income and to survive the social tussle, have no use there.
What does a warrior do with his weapons if he is transited to the land of no conflict? What use is there for munitions there?
The culture we develop here has value potential if there are to be other lives in this or in a similar type of environment. Like say a fish which was evolving for the last 10 million years, so now it has this swimming skill like the dolphins. It is a master of the sea. But suppose it was transferred into the womb of a mother-insect or some other land creature like a mother-monkey, then what is the value of those swimming skills. They become irrelevant. A similar thing happens with our social skill from this time-set where these have no value in the supernatural and spiritual places.
If I am in an existence where when I think of something it appears before me, then what would I do with my job skills and livelihood means there.
chris_hall1951 3 years ago
Very first class response devaPriya Yogini!
