The fundamental questions, "Who am I?" and "What am I?" arise increasingly in the struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. Therapists hear them as explicit queries or in indirect form: "Who is the real me?" or "I don't know what I want -- part of me wants one thing and part of me wants something else. What do I want?" Western psychology is severely handicapped in dealing with these questions because the center of human experience -- the observing self -- is missing from its theories. Yet, at the heart of psychopathology lies a fundamental confusion between the self as object and the self of pure subjectivity. Emotions, thoughts, impulses, images, and sensations are the contents of consciousness: we witness them; we are aware of their existence. Likewise, the body, the self-image, and the self-concept are all constructs that we observe. But our core sense of personal existence -- the "I" -- is located in awareness itself, not in its contents.
The distiction between awareness and the content of awareness tends to be ignored in Western psychology, its implications for our everyday life are not appreciated. Indeed, most people have trouble recognizing the difference between awareness and content, which are part of everyday life. Yet, careful observation shows people that they can suspend their thoughts, that they can experience silence or darkness and the temporary absence of images or memory patterns -- that any element of mental life can disappear while awareness itself remains. Awareness is the ground of conscious life, the background or field in which all elements exist, different from thoughts, sensations or images. One can experience the distinction simply by looking straight ahead. Be aware of what you experience, then close your eyes. Awareness remains. "Behind" your thoughts and images is awareness, and that is where you are.
What we know as our self is separate from our thoughts, memories, feelings, and any content of consciousness. No Western psychological theory concerns itself with this fundamental fact; all describe self in terms of everything but the observer, who is the center of experience. This crucial omission stems from the fact that the observing self is an anomaly -- not an object, like everything else. Our theories are based on objects: we think in terms of objects, talk in terms of objects. It is not just the physical world that we apprehend in that way; the elements of our mental life are similar. Seemingly diffuse and amorphous emotions are localized and observable; they have definite qualities. Emotions, like fluid objects, are entities we observe. Images, memories and thoughts are objects we grasp, manipulate, and encompass by awareness just as we do the components of the physical world. In contrast, we cannot observe the observing self; we must experience it directly. It has no defining qualities, no boundaries, no dimensions. The observing self has been ignored by Western psychology because it is not an object and cannot fit the assumptions and framework of current theory.
Lacking understanding of this elusive, central self, how are we to answer the essential questions "Who am I?" "What am I?" that lie at the heart of science, philosophy, the arts, the search for meaning? To find answers we must step outside the boundaries of our traditional modes of thought.
We seem to have numerous "I"s. There is the I of "I want", the I of "I wrote a letter", the I of "I am a psychiatrist", or "I am thinking." But there is another I that is basic, that underlies desires, activities and physical characteristics. This "I" is the subjective sense of our existence. It is different from self-image, the body, passions, fears, social category; these are aspects of our person that we usually refer to when we speak of the self, but they do not refer to the core of our conscious being, they are not the origin of our sense of personal existence.
Experiment 1: Stop for a moment and look inside. Try and sense the very origin
of your most basic, most personal "I", your core subjective experience. What is
the root of the "I" feeling? Try to find it.
When you introspect you will find that no matter what the contents of your mind, the most basic "I", is something different. Every time you try to observe the "I" it takes a jump back with you, remaining out of sight. At first you may say, "When I look inside as you suggest, all I find is content of one sort or another." I reply, "Who is looking? Is it not you? If that "I" is a content, can you decribe it? Can you observe it?" The core "I" of subjectivity is different from any content because it turns out to be that which witnesses -- not that which is observed. The "I" can be experienced, but it cannot be "seen." "I" is the observer, the experiencer, prior to all conscious content......
However, when we use introspection to search for the origin of our subjectivity, we find that the search for "I" leaves the customary aspects of personhood behind and takes us closer and closer to awareness, per se. If this process of introspective observation is carried to its conclusion, even the background sense of core subjective self disappears into awareness. Thus, if we proceed phenomenologically, we find that the "I" is identical to awareness: "I" = awareness.
Awareness is something apart from, and different from, all that of which we are aware: thoughts, emotions, images, sensations, desires, and memory. Awareness is the ground in which the mind's contents manifest themselves; they appear in it and disappear once again.
I use the word 'awareness' to mean the ground of all experience. Any attempt to describe it ends in a description of what we are aware of. On this basis some argue that awareness per se doesn't exist. But careful introspection reveals that the objects of awareness -- sensations, thoughts, memories, images and emotions -- are constantly changing and superseding each other. In contrast, awareness continues independent of any mental contents.
Experiment 2: Look straight ahead. Now shut your eyes. the rich visual world has
disappeared to be replaced by an amorphous field of blackness, perhaps with red
and yellow tinges. But awareness hasn't changed. You will notice that awareness
continues as your thoughts come and go, as memories arise and replace each
other, as desires emerge and fantasies develop, change and vanish. Now try and
observe awareness. You cannot. Awareness cannot be made an object of
observation because it is the very means whereby you can observe.
Awareness may vary in intensity as our total state changes, but it is usually a constant. Awareness cannot itself be observed, it is not an object, not a thing. Indeed, it is featureless, lacking form, texture, colour, spatial dimensions. These characteristics indicate that awareness is of a different nature than the contents of the mind; it goes beyond sensations, emotions, ideation, memory. Awareness is at a different level, it is prior to contents, more fundamental. Awareness has no intrinsic content, no form, no surface characteristics -- it is unlike everything else we experience, unlike objects, sensations, emotions, thoughts, or memories.
Eastern mystical traditions use meditation practice to experience the difference between mental activities and the self that observes. For example, the celebreated Yogi, Ramana Maharshi, prescribed the exercise of "Who am I?" to demonstrate that the self that observes is not an object; it does not belong to the domains of thinking, feeling or action (Osborne, 1954). 'If I lost my arm, I would still exist. Therefore, I am not my arm. If I could not hear, I would still exist. therefore, I am not my hearing.' And so on, discarding all other aspects of the person until finally, 'I am not this thought', which could lead to a radically different experience of the "I". Similarly, in Buddhist Vipassana meditation, the meditator is instructed to simply note whatever arises, letting it come and go. This heightens the distinction between the flow of thoughts and feelings and that which observes.
Attempts to integrate Eastern and Western psychologies can fall prey to the same confusion of "I" and contents, even by those who have practiced Eastern meditation disciplines. Consider the following passage from The Embodied Mind, a text based on experience with mindfulness meditation and correlating Western psychological science with Buddhist psychology.
".....in our search for a self....we found all the various forms in which we can be aware -- awareness of seeing and hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, even awareness of our own thought processes. So the only thing we didn't find was a truly existing self or ego. But notice that we did find experience. Indeed, we entered the very eye of the storm of experience, we just simply could discern there no self, no "I" (Varela et al., 1991)."
But when they say, "....we just simply could discern there no self, no 'I'", to what does "we" refer? Who is looking? Who is discerning? Is it not the "I" of the authors? A classic story adapted from the Vedantic tradition is relevant here:
A group of travellers forded a river. Afterwards, to make sure everyone had crossed safely, the leader counted the group but omitted himself from the count. Each member did the same and they arrived at the conclusion that one of them was missing. The group then spent many unhappy hours searching the river until, finally, a passerby suggested that each person count their own self, as well. The travellers were overjoyed to find that no one was missing and all proceeded on their way.
Like the travellers, Western psychology often neglects to notice the one that counts. Until it does, its progress will be delayed.....
Knowing by being that which is known is ontologically different from perceptual knowledge. That is why someone might introspect and not see awareness or the "I", concluding -- like the travellers -- that it doesn't exist. But thought experiments and introspective meditation techniques are able to extract the one who is looking from what is seen, restoring the missing center.
Once we grant the identity of "I" and awareness we are compelled to extend to the core subjective self whatever ontological propositions seem appropriate for awareness. If awareness is non-local, then so is the essential self. If awareness transcends material reality, so does the "I". If awareness is declared to be non-existent, then that same conclusion must apply to the "I". No matter what one's ontological bias, recognition that "I" = awareness has profound implications for our theoretical and personal perspective.
From: 'The Observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy' and 'I' = Awareness' by Dr. Arthur Deikman, both of which can be found in their entirety here:
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