WHO ARE YOU?

Every philosopher who ever lived searched for the answer to the question of who he was. No doubt every person who ever lived, at some time or another has pondered this same question. If all the answers that people have come up with were laid end to end, they would no doubt make many round trips between Earth and Pluto. Yet, by and large, man is no closer to a resolution of this problem now than he was twenty thousand years ago. Maybe the reason for this is that the very word “answer” has caused man to look in the wrong place. Man has busily looked at the physical universe, at energy, at gravity, at masses, at solar systems, at behavioral patterns, at the core of the earth, and at mathematical equations. The search has always been to look “out there”. If you send out a question, you ask the question of something out there. You expect to get an answer back from out there. But therein lies the fallacy of this approach.

If physical universe is made up of spaces and energy and masses, then the only thing you can ever get back, the only thing you can ever see or observe from the physical universe, is more space, energy, and mass. Experiences are made up of communications through these things. Freud was very interested in studying childhood experiences. He thought that the meaning of life could be fathomed by studying sexual and interpersonal relations. But when he looked at these experiences all he was really seeing was more energy, masses, and spaces. Socrates thought that life should be logical, but logic is just an association of one space or energy or mass to another similar or contrasting space, energy or mass. Plato thought that people were so fixed into actions or energies that some would be forever good, some forever better, and some forever worse. The nuclear physicist is trying to find the smallest particle he can, but somehow there is always a new, smaller particle.

It seems that there are always answers to questions. In fact, there are an infinite number of answers. But all answers seem to be in terms of more matter, more action or energy, and more space: “You need to behave this way.” “You need to be doing righteous acts.” “You need to think right thoughts.” Somehow these things are never enough. The more you do, it always seems the more there is to do. The more you see, the more there is to see. The solution to the conundrum of life lies not in answers, but in the questions. If all these answers are in terms of energy and matter and space, then do we find that the question is being asked by matter or energy or space? No. No one has ever heard a rock ask a question. No physicist has ever been quizzed by an atom. Deep space has never asked an astronaut a single question. So whatever it is or whoever it is that asks questions must be something other than energy and matter and space. Yet whatever it is or whoever it is that asks these questions must be able to experience, i.e. come in contact with and communicate with matter, energy, and space. So the real question becomes, “What is not energy or matter or space?” and “What doesn’t have shape or size or speed or location?” And since all matter and energy and spaces seem to be located in time, whatever asks this question must not have any time. It must not be located in 1542, 1988, 1 million B.C., or 2000 A.D. What we’re talking about here is something that is non-material and non-physical. Whatever it is that the physical universe is made up of, this non-material entity is not that. On the other hand, this non-material entity must be able to consider the physical universe, otherwise, how could it ask about it? If you can’t imagine something you won’t ever ask about it. If you take a little kid and you never expose him to any classical music, he is probably not going to ask very many questions about Beethoven. The more he is exposed to Beethoven, the more he will become interested in the subject. Therein lies the trap that all philosophers have fallen into. They have continually looked at the physical universe to find out answers about who they were. And the more they looked at the physical universe, the more they asked and thought about the physical universe, rather than who was asking the question and who was considering the physical universe.

We take children and we send them to school so that they will learn acceptable ways to act and react when faced with different conditions of matter or energy. Children are taught to be polite, not to speak when their elders are speaking. They are taught when their body is hungry, how to get food into it. When faced with a column of figures to add, how to get the same number of zeros at the end of their answer as everyone else gets. Kids are taught that the apple will always fall from the tree at a certain rate. School is really a training ground for getting beings to believe that the physical universe is consistent, powerful, and important. And that all the answers are “out there”. So naturally philosophers and others, when asking the question, “Who are you?.” Have looked to the physical universe for the answer.

But the real answer to the question is the question itself. Or, more accurately, the asker of the question is the answer to the question. The answer to an itch isn’t a scratch. It is to no longer create the itch, but philosophers just keep going on scratching. Looking at the physical universe for the answer to the question of who are you is just letting the physical universe scratch you, and allowing yourself to become dependent on the physical universe to do your scratching. Politicians are superb scratchers. When they say that there are homeless people on the streets in poverty who can’t afford a place to live, politicians aren’t saying they want to get rid of poverty. After all, if everyone were rich, money would have no value. They just want to scratch, i.e. move those homeless people somewhere so they won’t be visible in the streets. All politicians say the want peace, but they scratch the itch of peace with bigger weapons in the form of peacekeeper missiles. They use more force, more energy, more mass to answer the questions about peace.

People are easily satisfied with the consideration that the physical universe will answer all questions. Therein lies the trap into which man has fallen. Considering that the physical universe exists, does not make a being part of the physical universe or the same as the physical universe – more symbols, thoughts, mechanical parts, chain reactions just make one more the effect of outside forces. The more one considers that he needs answers, the more the answers will become important to him, and the more he will be affected by them.

Conversely, man can realize that he is the asker of the questions and the one considering the answers, and that he does not have to accept the same answers and the same old tired traps that most others have fallen into on this planet when searching for who he is or where he gets meaning in life. Once a being realizes that he already has all the answers within himself, he gains the insight and will to improve himself and his environment.

The Guide To Unconditional Personal Freedom has drills addressing this subject.

© 2008 SEEKERS LLC