For many years, I have wondered about the nature of mind and self, identity and personality. My story, What’s Left is about a woman who has a brain aneurysm which floods much of the right side of her brain, leaving her with her capacity for math and logic, but no memory of those she loves. The story was inspired by what happened to a couple I knew thirty-eight years ago.
Where did she go? I wanted to know. Her personality altered so dramatically that the couple no longer knew or liked each other and parted not long after her recovery. How could her personality be erased by blood and be replaced by another just like that? Who was she now?
In my twenties, I had a dream where I had been committed to an asylum. I would come to consciousness for fragments of moments and then descend into a restless darkness for interminable periods. At last I broke through to find myself on a bench in a hallway with my sister beside me. I looked at her pitying face and asked her, “Do I live here?” And when she nodded, I wailed in despair only to be sucked back down into a hellish powerless blackness.
I have read and reread many times Baba Ram Dass’s, Be Here Now, wherein he learns from an Indian guru the nature of presence and being. I have spent years sitting in meditation watching my thoughts float by, practicing detachment, witnessing, calm abiding – what my guru calls No-Mind. Perhaps it’s the mind itself that wants answers, wants to know the nature of itself, but these days, with the ever-increasing number of people suffering from Dementia and Alzheimer’s, the question arises again and again, “Who am I?” that “I” can be snatched away in a flash?
In Osho centres and ashrams there is a “course” one can take, called the “Awareness Intensive.” In this three day workshop, the participants pair off and ask the question again and again, “Who is in?” It used to be, “Who am I?” taken from a device used by Ramana Maharshi to help his disciples move deeply into the nature of being and self. Sarovara, who leads this process has this to say about the transition: “This new question is a progress from the traditional “Who Am I?” to make it clear to the seeker to not to get stuck in the layer of personality but to penetrate even deeper, to find the source of consciousness, the centre of our Buddha Nature…”
But what if we lose the mind with which we are questioning it? What if we lose our grip and slide into a morass of confusion and forgetfulness? Are we still pure awareness or are we empty shells, having lost our opportunity to break through the illusions of the ego?
I have had moments of breakthrough, small “satoris” where there is simply a freshness, an openness, a silence that is full and bright, where all these constructs fall away, and for those brief glimpses, “I” am not. But then a kind of panic grabs hold and snatches me back. The ego isn’t too happy about not being in charge and it will do whatever it needs to in order to stay in control. To keep me thinking about mind rather than dissolving into the bliss of no-mind.
Are we our minds? When our minds are gone do “we” still exist? Does it matter, except to those who love us? Sigh. I’d better go sit and let these ideas zoom by like cars on the highway of thought and try not to get into any of them – not even the shiny red sports models.
Intriquing…at the Yoga Shala in Tulum, one of the teachers ended her sessions with “you are not your body, you are not your mind, you are your essence”. 🙂
Yes, and what is that, then – “your essence”? A koan. A meditation in itself… going after the essence – it can lifetimes to arrive there, and I’m told, it can happen in an instant.
I’ve also wondered about the relationship between brain/biochemistry, personality and self, particularly in regards to my daughter, Lorelei. As much as I love who she is, I often wonder about who she would have been had she never been sick. I’ve been thinking about it a lot more lately because the new baby has made me realize that newborns really do have unique personalities. I thought that, barring physical complaints such as colic, they all pretty much behaved in the same manner. I know now that, although Lorelei’s tastes and abilities are related to the brain injury, her basic personality is not. But then how much of personality is really us and how much of it is assumed for this lifetime?
Exactly! I’m sure there have been a zillion scientific studies done on this issue, but it has such a nebulous intangible sense – this whole personality thing – is it who we are? Do we port our personalities through lifetimes, how much does our birth sign determine, and then there’s the whole nature/nurture debate, but all these things kind of deteriorate when the personality goes up in smoke and someone is suddenly someone else… or appears to be.
Deepam: You surely will have read Jill Taylor’s book Stroke of Insight, which has a lot to say about the “executive” mind (ego?) trying to stay in control while the various functions melt away. That is not the recommended way to reach ‘no mind’, but she did it. The fact that she studied the brain was, really, a stroke of luck for us all, for her experience adds , if not to our understanding then to our curiousity about how the mind and the self are entwined. http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
Thank you for this, Bill. I had heard of her, but never looked into it. I’m going to buy the book – it sounds like she experienced just the thing I’m yakking about here from the inside.
I think this is a great message. I lived with my grandma, who has dementia and Alzheimer’s for over a year. All I can say is that I have many, many stories about the ups and downs. You can check them out here:
http://caseykurlander.wordpress.com/category/grandma/
Thanks!
Casey
I find a subject like this as terrifying as trying to contemplate the vastness of the cosmos. It makes me feel claustrophobic. Maybe I’m not “deep” enough or too buried in the logical side of my brain. Or maybe I just don’t like not having the answers.