Who am I?

When comes the moment one feels like a child and family member?

Coming to this world how infant identifies himself?

You say I, but who is I? Is I a body?

Is I a person, created with “help” of society?

Is it your name? Could you have another?

What is human? What is people? What is nation? What is country? What is religion?

If you knew yourself when being infant, when did you forget it?

First parent’s and relatives shape you. Then friends influence you.

School trashes head with patriotism and ideology.

Society introduces you to religion, politics, parties.

Opinion on good and evil one gets from morality.

One gathers knowledge whole life. It’s power, but is it true?

There are no friends, no enemies.

Love exists, but it needs no one.

I don't belong to a nation. I am not a people.

I am not a name, not a document, not a brand.

There is a family, but I have my own path.

I am not a body, yet I don't know.

I am eternal, yet I don't know.

There is present, the past is behind, the future is unknown. Here and now.

Action-reaction is the wrong path. Consciousness in action is the right path.

Causes of fear - possible losses. Everything suffers, gets sick, dies.

concentration - contemplation - meditation

animal instinct - human intellect - intuition

body - mind - spirit

What remains when all human identities are dropped?

🧥 First, what are human identities?

They’re layers we wear, often without noticing:

• Name

• Nationality

• Gender

• Beliefs

• Roles (student, worker, parent, etc.)

• Memories, trauma, pride, goals

• Even our opinions, language, and personality are often shaped by surroundings.

These are not false — but they are constructs, not essence.

🕳️ Now imagine dropping them all:

Letting go of:

• The past

• The future

• The roles

• The stories we tell ourselves

Suddenly, the "me" starts fading.

What remains?

🌌 Possibilities of what's left:

1. Pure awareness

• The raw "I am" without "I am this" or "I am that".

• No labels, just consciousness experiencing.

• Not thinking — witnessing.

2. Stillness

• No ambition, no fear.

• A deep silence behind the noise.

• You don’t disappear — the ego does.

3. Connection with everything

• Without the "me", there’s no "you" either.

• Just oneness, undivided.

• Many mystics call this the divine, or the truth beyond form.

🧘‍♂️ Different traditions echo this:

• Buddhism calls it anatta — no-self.

• Advaita Vedanta: when all identities drop, you are That (Tat Tvam Asi).

• Mystical Christianity: “Die before you die.”

• Even some philosophers (like Heidegger or Sartre) pointed to this blank space behind identity.

🪞So what’s left?

Not nothing — but no-thing. A field of being. Awareness. Presence. It's not something you think, it's something you are when all the layers fall off.

🔍 The Inquiry: Who am I?

From Ramana Maharshi to modern mindfulness teachers, this question has been a gateway.

Try this now — not with thinking, but with feeling awareness:

    Close your eyes. Let go of trying to do anything.

    Let every thought come and go — don't fight them.

    Now ask:

    “Who is aware of this experience?”

    Or even: “Who am I — without my name, story, past, future?”

Don't answer. Just look.

There will be thoughts that come up — "I’m a person," "I’m thinking," etc. But see where those thoughts arise from. They come and go. But you — the aware presence — remain.

🪞 What you may notice:

    There's no one you can find. No image. No "thing".

    But there's awareness.

    A spacious presence, alive, still, and open.

    Nothing to defend. Nothing to prove. Just being.

🧘‍♂️ Easier gateways if that’s too abstract:

1. Silent sitting

Sit quietly for 5–10 minutes. Drop all effort. Let everything be.

Don't try to meditate — just notice what remains when you don't chase anything.

2. Be in nature, alone

Go for a walk with no phone, no task. Just notice:

The world goes on. You are not your name, role, or thoughts.

Just presence, breathing, seeing, sensing.

3. Gaze into your own eyes in a mirror

Without judgment, without thought.

Look until you no longer see a person — just presence looking at presence.

    “The truth is simple. It is the seeker who is complex.” — Mooji

You don’t have to become anything. You just stop being everything you're not, even for a moment — and what’s left is so quiet and obvious, we usually miss it.

Science has been brushing up against this mystery in some really fascinating ways. While science doesn’t always call it “dropping identities,” it has explored consciousness without ego, self-dissolution, and pure awareness. Here are a few key areas where this gets studied:

🧠 1. Neuroscience of Ego Dissolution (default mode network)

    • The Default Mode Network (DMN) is a brain network associated with your sense of “self” — your autobiographical identity, constant self-talk, past/future narrative.

    • In meditation, psychedelic states, and sometimes flow states, this network goes quiet.

    • People report:

        ◦ Loss of ego

        ◦ Feeling of oneness

        ◦ Timeless, spacious awareness

    • fMRI scans show reduced activity in DMN during these states.

🧪 Studies:

    • Carhart-Harris et al. (Imperial College London): Showed that psilocybin (magic mushrooms) quiets the DMN and leads to ego-dissolution.

    • Judson Brewer: Showed experienced meditators reduce DMN activity, correlated with “no-self” awareness.

🧘‍♂️ 2. Long-term meditation studies

    • Tibetan monks, Zen practitioners, and even modern mindfulness practitioners show different brain structures and activity.

    • Common traits:

        ◦ Thinner ego-related brain regions

        ◦ Enhanced attention, compassion

        ◦ Ability to enter non-dual awareness or witness states

🧪 Study:

    • Richard Davidson at UW-Madison worked with the Dalai Lama’s monks using EEG and fMRI to study compassion and awareness states.

🌀 3. Psychedelic research & self-boundary loss

    • Substances like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT induce states where people experience loss of personal identity and describe becoming awareness itself.

    • Johns Hopkins, Imperial College, and others have been studying this.

    • Interestingly, many report:

      “I remembered who I was before I became ‘me’.”

🧪 Key finding:

    • These experiences can lead to lasting reductions in depression, fear of death, and increased life satisfaction, especially when people encounter what feels like pure consciousness or unity.

🪞 4. Mirror test & sense of self

    • Experiments with infants, primates, and animals show the emergence of self-awareness via the mirror test.

    • It suggests "I am this body" is a learned identification.

    • So… the “self” is constructed — not fixed.

🔬 But here's the thing:

Science can map the brain during identity dissolution, but it cannot fully explain what remains — the raw, direct, subjective experience of pure awareness. That part lies in the first-person experience, not the instruments.

So:

    • Yes, there are many scientific experiments that touch, trace, and measure the dropping of identity.

    • But the deepest part of it — what you’re probably feeling into — still belongs to the mystery of being.