Who am I Part 1

  Who am I? What is the purpose of existence? What is my role in the same? How best can I play this role? For the last six years, day and night these existential questions play in my system whether meditating, thinking, reading, working or discussing.... I presume that this must be true for many.

Answers and understandings of these issues have come to me in meditation with great vehemence and clarity. I must have examined these understandings thousands of time from all scientific and logical angles, but have not been able to change a millionth of its fraction. Since the time I have got these answers in meditation, I have used the mind for verification, validation, searching for the right words (however inadequate),explanation and logic to explain to myself. I am not a grammarian - I cannot create arguments, refute others nor quote scriptures, philosophers or religion. In short, I am not a wordsmith, not someone who could write a brilliant recipe book - but one who has tasted and experienced the truth, as I understand it.

Is this megalomania? Is this perversion of the mind? Is this some fanciful notion of thoughts playing in my mind as it does in everyone's mind - converted into "my" variety of truth? Am I playing mind games? Does my understanding stand up to the beacon of rationality and logic? Are these profound understanding or some kind of bullshit masquerading as one? Am I crazy?

These questions and more of its ilk grapple all the time and I look for answers in religious books like the Bhagawad Gita, Vedas, Upanishads, the Darshanas and philosophers like Sri Aurobindo, J Krishnamurthy, Osho, Swami Vivekananda and religious leaders like Paramahans Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Sant Dnyaneshwar, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, new found thinkers like Sadhguru, Maharishi Yogi, along with scientific understanding with Fritjof Capra, Roger Penrose, Ken Wilber along with findings of quantum physics and such.

So, over a series of blogs - I intend to share my thoughts on these 4 crucial questions - with critical analysis of the variants of current thought process.

For example on the question of "Who am I?" there are three broad philosophical strands.

1. Materialism - understands everything in terms of material terms. Believes that the universe is a complex machine with only physical parts, subject to certain laws, therefore everything is based on the theory of Evolution. It has some drawbacks but is the genesis of great scientific progress.

2. Religion - a dualistic viewpoint of existence with a physical benevolent God being the creator and existence being the creation. Some have messengers and books as go-between Creator and creation. Has some amazing advantages in the devotion tradition but source of immense violence, separation, competition and exploitation.

3. Spiritualism - a non - dualistic thought process which looks at each and every element of existence as being part of creator. Which deals with the energy / spirit of every being and works for inner clarity to discover the relationship between all forms of existence. Quantum physics has validated many of its worldview.

The next blog will talk about these three broad strands in details and try to answer the key question "Who am I?". Do write in your thoughts.