I AM
When I hear a dog bark or the song of a bird, it appears to be a declaration of “I am”. All of us are busy proclaiming our existence to others all the time. I and my, are the most frequently used words in any language. Often we hear of some wise men discussing “who am I?” This perennial quest remains the concern of the wise philosophers till we find time from our worries of earning our livelihood and discharging our duties and meeting our basic needs. Our basic needs have been accepted as food, shelter and sex. These are the basic needs of all animals. It is obvious that there must be something that differentiates us from animals. That something is self awareness. All animals are aware of their surrounding but human being alone is aware of himself. It is from this awareness that “I” is born. From this self awareness are born our desires, fears, smiles and tears. Animals do exhibit some signs of love for their off spring and sex partners but it is all instinctive. Instinct is natural and inborn. Fear and instinct for survival is inborn. Some form of self expression to attract a mate is inborn. Even the use of some resources to build nests and shelters are inborn to ensure the continuation of species. Evolution of species is natural way of ensuring the continuation of drama of greater and greater complexities. No animal has been known to be so aware of itself as to have a desire of self expression. Imagine, if lions and tigers had acquired the skills of self expression as we humans have, would we be here today? This awareness of self thus is what differentiates us from animals. Being human is unique in nature. We alone are capable of desiring. We alone are capable of modifying our environments. We alone have the capabilities to alter nature. Therein lies our strength and our suffering. Animals enjoy their instinctive lives. We, being self aware, have desires that transcend instinct. We are animals but conscious and self conscious animals. This Consciousness of the self, I, differentiates us from mere seekers of food, shelter and sex. Our search for “Self “is a lot more than the bark of a dog or the song of a bird. We are continuously searching our self and trying to expand it. That is where our desires are born. Anything that obstructs our desires causes us to get angry or transcend that obstruction. Therein lies our unique humanness and search for happiness.
Hunger and thirst for food, sleep and sex for rejuvenation and survival may be our common heritage but the need for self expression and self awareness leads us unwittingly to pursuits that other animals cannot conceive. Our physical evolution may be complete at human level but a higher level of mental, moral and spiritual evolution begins at this stage. It is at this stage that we learn to rise above body consciousness. Our bodies are the temples we choose to live in. The deity of self consciousness and happiness is our next destination. It is that deity who continuously says I am, I am, I am. It is the only subject for whom the entire cosmos is an object. It is the only one who can know itself, the only one upon whom the rest of creation depends for its existence. This self conscious entity seeking bliss in itself and its environments has addressed itself by many names as gods and goddesses, as saviors and sons of god or as his messengers. It is this I who is the one without a second that is extolled and prayed to in Vedas and all the religions since times immemorial. And yet it is expressed in just two words “I am”.
This ‘I am ‘ is a seeker of happiness. It seeks happiness from every object that it comes across. Its search for happiness begins from the first breath on birth or may be, even before birth and continues till the last breath. The ingenuity of this search is unique again. It searches for happiness in objects as diverse as chocolates and cocaine. From a virgin to a prostitute, from a devoted wife to a harem of concubines, from a bottle of milk to a bottle of wine, the search goes on endlessly in diverse ways in a variety that is limited only by imagination . It seeks happiness in climbing mountain peaks and diving in oceanic depths. In the Himalayan caves and in suffocating discos the search goes on. It is a never ending search. Or is it really never ending? Some wise men like Buddha did succeed and tried to goad others into following him. A few millions did follow him but only up to a point! Later they expanded their search into way that even Buddha could not have conceived. With what result?
They say, musk deer keeps searching for the source of that wonderful fragrance till the end of his life without ever finding it. Are we not similarly deluded into believing that our happiness and its source lie outside us? We are that bliss that we search in objects. Our infinite capacity to look at objects of this world as the sources of that happiness comes to an end the moment we realize, as the great masters had realized before us, that we are that bliss, that source of eternal happiness that has been our quest for ages past. It is only because we have given too much value to this wonderful body that is as perishable as the world from which we seek that elusive commodity called permanent and infinite happiness. We fail to see the obvious. We see the snake and not the rope because of dim light of our dimness. Without the rope, the snake would not have been there. But the rope has no snake in it! The Reality is the rope. The world is only a superimposition upon IT. Yet we see the world and its objects expecting happiness from them. It does not occur to us that happiness lies in the subject ‘I’ and not in any object of this world. God grant me that vision that I see what needs to be seen and experienced as Real ‘I AM’ and not the phantom called my EGO.
