Who Am I?

I’m trying to make sense of we’d call in my philosophical training, “the problem of personal identity” as it’s rendered in the Hindu spiritual tradition; (get in line, Dave, behind scores of seekers way more experienced and sophisticated than you; but anyway…)

Swami Prabhavandanda describes the distinction made between the self (small “s”), the incessant change of sensations, emotions, images, thoughts, fancies, and so on that we observe when we look within, and the Self (big “s”), something “behind the tumult, apart from it, superior to it…a silent and constant witness”— the Atman, as it’s referred to in the Upanishads.

On the one hand, I get it; in a sense, it’s trivially true: obviously, none of us are really the fleeting impressions flowing through our minds; what we typically refer to as “I” when we introspect is just a bunch of memories, sense data, half-formed ideas, and unreflective preferences; there’s no homunculus in there we can identify as “me.” No less a leading light in the Western analytic philosophical canon than the 18th century British Empiricist David Hume made this almost oddly Buddhist observation.

And sure, it’s obvious that we are all One; like the Beatles said: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together;” we’re all made up of the same atoms; we’re just star-stuff; the distinction between my self and even Donald Rumsfeld is specious; there’s no denying it, hard as one might try.

But.

It sure doesn’t seem that way. And I’m not even sure I want it to.

For me to make sense of this life, (and maybe that’s the problem right there), I’ve got to believe in individuality, and agency, and personal responsibility, including (gulp) free will (or at least sort of limited human freedom compatible with a deterministic universe.)

When I get up every morning to do yoga, it’s my practice, in my body, housing my mind, fluttering about with all my concerns and issues; it's me on the mat, with all my memories, experiences, personal history, both good and bad, for which I can (and should) be held accountable; maybe I’m actually the Atman, but if this self who moves (sometimes so clumsily) through the world has no practical connection to that Self who’s witnessing all, then it seems sort of like saying that, I dunno, (let me cadge an analogy from the film High Fidelity), the Stevie Wonder of the insipid “Ebony and Ivory” is still the Stevie Wonder of the brilliant “Superstition,” even though there’s no tangible connection between the two.

Plus, if we’re all one, howcome I can’t do Karandavasana like all my real Selves in the Intermediate class?