After we have answered all other questions, the question of questions awaits us. For based on our answer to this one question will depend the validity of all our other answers. It is the first and the last question that confronts man. It is the first question when he comes to birth. It is also the last question when he prepares to exit through the gates of death. But also, from time to time this question repeats itself perennially, especially in moments of crisis when all our planks of support including our own strength is taken away. Therefore it is the question of questions: ‘Who am I?’
Simplest of all yet the profoundest of all is this question. We take our existence for granted and hardly ever question it. We are born in a certain family and country and we adopt that as our identity. We are born in a certain religion and culture and we assume that identity. We strive and succeed or fail; we go to work and assume a title; we study and attach a degree to our names; we get married and have children and we attach ourselves to all these identities. We even make an identity of our dress and the home we live, the name we have and the surname we carry. But we hardly even question who is this ‘I’ behind all these changing appearances? Who is this ‘I’ that was once a child, then an adult and next an old man? Who is this ‘I’ who works and then retires, wakes up and sleeps, is born and dies?
Are we merely mud and clay as we are told by material scientists or a bundle of nerves and genes and chemicals as the biologists or simply the thought and cognition as the psychologists tell us? If so what is the validity of our answers from the simplest and personal questions to the most complex and cosmic ones?
As we grow into a greater and greater awareness, our understanding and our answers change. They do not necessarily invalidate our other answers but add a new dimension to our understanding and that changes the way we relate and connect to the answer, which depends upon where we stand on the scale of self-awareness. As we change and grow, our answer also changes.
