I, Me and Myself

I, Me and Myself

What exists is I, me and myself. Resolve that, and you resolve all the challenges that lie outside.

So who is the I, me and myself that I refer to? It is the notion of the ‘self’ that is crafted so meticulously and protected so assiduously.

In the beginning there was no I, no notion of the ego. The newborn child quickly realizes that it is separated from the ‘other’. Oral sensory reactions now dominate.

According to Erik Erikson, the major developmental task in infancy is to learn whether or not other people, especially primary caregivers, regularly satisfy basic needs. If caregivers are consistent sources of food, comfort, and affection, an infant learns trust- that others are dependable and reliable. If they are neglectful, or perhaps even abusive, the infant instead learns mistrust- that the world is an undependable, unpredictable, and possibly a dangerous place. While negative, having some experience with mistrust allows the infant to gain an understanding of what constitutes dangerous situations later in life. From this arise the foundations of Trust and Mistrust. As the child moves to the next level of motor abilities it learns to experience autonomy (if freedom is provided) else locked with shame and guilt.

(read more about this from Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development).

In essence, all that is I is learnt, as we grow up.  That creates our paradigm about what we think, feel and behave with others and ourselves. The 'I' evolve over time. We do have a continued sense of who we are even though we have moved across time. Yet, each I, at 7, at teenage, in our youth and now are different, yet there is an evolving sense, even though as we browse through an old photo album, the Me may look different. Julian Baggini writes more about this in his book The Ego Trick. He argues that we are a collection of our memories, experiences and these evolve over time. Hence, our essence of who we are changes over time. We need to hold a more 'changing view' of our being and becoming rather than a fixed view of who we are. The individual person we are continues to change over time. As they say, scratch a man or women, and you will find a child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKEr2eotCpQ

The Me, is the one that creates all the representations as it views the world outside. Qualia, is the representation, or the way things seem to us. It refers to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental live. The most central fact about minded creatures is that they are able to represent aspects of their environment, both as they take it to be and as they want it to be, and to be guided by these representations of their environment in their interactions with it. Reality then is not what is outside, but a function of the Participator. The observer is the observed.  Reality exists only where mind exists: reality is but the projection of the mind. Without the observer everything is but infinite potential. 

Bruce Lipton argues that our body can be trained as we retrain our thinking. It is our positive or negative thoughts that influence our cells, and not that DNA or genes influence us, the way we earlier thought.

In eastern psychology, the mind is the antakharana (inner instrument) with four functions:

• the manas or indecisive faculty of the mind
• buddhi - the decisive 
• ahamkara - the mind that 'knows'
• chitta - the mind that remembers 

Antakharana is then the inner instrument that allows the subject know the subject by identification. It is not the SELF, the Atma, who stands as the Sakshi( the witness). Self is the consciousness and this is where western psychology differs. It mistakes this Antakharana with consciousness itself.  

While we have senses that bring stimuli to our brain, Indian psychology refers to an independent element referred to as indriya, which responds to stimuli and which recognises the object or skips over it (as in absent mindedness). In addition to direct knowledge there is knowledge by authority (newspaper reports about an earthquake some place) or inferential knowledge ( smoke must mean fire), which is either inductive or deductive. The only truth (true knowledge) exists when it is eternal, never contradicted, is from a state of samadhi. 

Buddha once responded to a deva

Attraction is wholeness;

repulsion is unwholesomeness;

the most tormenting pain is bad conscience;

the height of bliss is redeemed awakening

Arguably, the obvious question is what happens in each of the four stages: birth, life, decay and extinction. Birth supports the formation of the ego, life our response to the environment and within, decay, the inevitable process, and extinction, that allows for rebirth. While Hindus believe in the soul that migrates and remerges into multiple life, Buddha refers to parts of yourself which is recyclable, quite distinct from a soul.