Who Am I?

The question of who-am-I is a recurring one. Many grappled with it in the past. Some do so now. Many will do so in the future. It is not a prove-it-to-others query. It is more a self-investigation. Is the self real? Is the person forever? Will the conventional self be erased by time and circumstance when fate negatively proceeds?

Who Am I?

Sometimes when doing pranayama breath infusion or even when introspecting or meditating, one finds that the self became fragmented. Stated more precisely the once self is discovered to be a composite of which parts become missing for a time, for moments or minutes. Then miraculously the self is reconfigured. It experiences itself as before.

If the self is permanent how could it may be fragmented or split apart? How could it experience missing parts? What causes some parts to be missing or to be missing and then to be recombined as the self?

Sometimes during breath infusion, when kundalini becomes aroused and enters into the head of the subtle body, some parts of the self, the memory which supports the social identity which one knows as oneself, becomes missing. Then one is in a higher state of consciousness but without the social memory reference like a ship floating without an anchor, with a captain who has no idea of the ship’s registry or of where it is located in the sea.

Such a self which loses memory, is like a nameless, skill-less person who suffers from dementia where he cannot recognize a relative or friend, where his point of reference is indifferent to anything which before was known to him as memory of who he is and what he should do.

Is this really a higher state of consciousness?

The dementia patient who is with others in a nursing home may form new relationships with other inmates and with the employees of the institution but who will the yogi make reference to or form a relationship with in higher states of consciousness? What should he assume, that only he is in existence as a lone unreferenced spread of consciousness?