Who am I?
Try this: let an answer to this question arise spontaneously. Then ask: Who is aware of this answer? And repeat, several times. Notice how it affects you. Sense the impact on your sense of presence of repeating the question in this way.
This question Who am I? is the Atman Vichar, the method of self-inquiry, or contemplation and sensing of the 'I-amness' of my existence, my being-here, my here-ness. It was recommended by the revered Indian Guru Ramana Maharshi as the most direct, simple and powerful path to self-realization.
The traditional Indian spiritual answer to the question 'Who am I' is Soham: I am That.
This answer doesn't say much, of course, unless we ourselves taste directly the 'that' -- the 'isness', the suchness, the beingness of who we are.
Who am I? What is 'that'? What is the isness, suchness, beingness of our true nature?
One possible taste (= direct realization, not a theory) we may have of an answer to this question is that I am the ultimate reality of existence itself. I am the experiencer of all experiences, I am beyond all experiences, or I am even the source of all experience, including the experiencer himself/herself/itself. I am not something that can be experienced. I am, in my true identity, more like space, like a nothing, like emptiness, like non-being. I am pure, empty Being itself, Being before all specific beings. Empty, boundless, infinite and mysterious. An experience beyond experience, an experience of the cessation of all experience. Mystery! In this realization, in the taste of this, there is wonder, tremendous peace, tremendous freedom.
In spiritual traditions, this is in various ways referred to as The Absolute. About the Absolute, the spiritual teacher A.H. Almaas writes: "As we explore the nature and the very substance of these nondual dimensions, as we consider their sense of nothingness, emptiness, and absence, that opens the door for true nature to manifest itself in a way that reveals degrees of freedom that we haven’t even imagined possible." (...) "Consider the highest, deepest experience of consciousness you have had, the most fulfilled and blissful condition. Now imagine a state a million times more satisfying and liberating. That is the Absolute."
And: "This black mystery is an awareness so absolute that it possesses no ground to look back at and be aware of. It cannot be an object of perception, for it is the absolute subject. It is absolutely nothing, so there is nothing for it to be aware of when it is aware of itself. It is absolutely being the awareness."
On the other hand I can be completely IN the world of manifestations, of experience, so much so that I become ONE with my experience, and discover that there is no separation between the experiences and myself. They are the same. I am one with the manifestations in the world, one with the world. There is only oneness, in the multiplicity of forms. There is no separate me, no separate self, no separate doer of actions, no experiencer: there is only this oneness of myriads of forms. This oneness can be experienced as love.
The Buddha says, in the Bahiya Sutra, in describing a state of self-realization and describing a practice for self-realization: "In the seen, there is only the seen, in the heard, there is only the heard, in the sensed, there is only the sensed."
Almaas writes: "It is living the true human life which allows the possibility of the arising of the perception of oneness. You have to live a life that is conducive to the experience of oneness, a life that doesn’t resist that perception. You need to live a life that doesn’t depend on separateness, but on oneness, although you might not yet experience the oneness."
Oneness involves a melting of my boundaries, my defenses, my holding on to the separateness of my own individuality. This involves saying a big YES to vulnerability. In this allowance, vulnerability can open to the invulnerability of oneness, and to a state of no fear.
Almaas writes: "When you are aware of oneness, when you see that you and everyone else and everything else are completely one, the vulnerability will not be seen as a disadvantage at all. The moment your vulnerability is complete and you are aware of oneness, there is no fear. When you are completely vulnerable, completely not separating yourself from anyone or anything, when you know that you are the oneness, that your very nature is the unity, is the supreme reality, then you know that in your deepest, most intimate, absolute nature and identity you can't die --nothing can happen to you. You are one-hundred-percent invulnerable."
And: "Oneness is not something you are going to accomplish one of these days; the oneness is already you; it always has been, and it always will be. What is needed is to wake up, to see things the way they are, instead of viewing them through distorting lenses. Oneness is absolute freedom, absolute release, absolute delight. It is a newness that is ever new. So wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you see, you see yourself. Whatever you touch, you are touching yourself. Whoever you talk to, you are talking to yourself."
The unity within the duality of emptiness (formless, unmanifest, space) and form (myriads of manifestations, all the content of the universe) is expressed in this quote from Nisargadatta Maharaj:
Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
Between the two my life flows.
In the above quote, which was part of an answer to a student, Nisargadatta also said: Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.
So: Who am I -- really? What and who is my true reality, my true identity, and what is the deeper reality of reality itself, and what, if anything, is the difference?
The whole universe is made available, shows itself, lights up through experience. Take away one sense at a time, and finally we are left with --- nothing. Nothing there at all. The great nothing. The great mystery. This nothing, can we grasp it? Can we experience it? If so, how can we experience it when we are without any means of experience?
And everything we sense, all the forms of the world, what are they without an experiencer of them? How can they be said to exist separate from the experience of them? But WHO and WHAT is the experiencer? Where is the experiencer to be found?
And IN the experience of the forms in the world, how can one form be clearly separated from other forms? Does any form exist as an independent, separate entity? When we explore this question, we discover that in fact it is impossible for any form to exist as independent and separate from other forms. Every form exists interdependently with all other forms, as a unity, as a oneness.
To see the world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
(William Blake)
When we inquire like this, it becomes clear that the universe, experiences, the experiencer, forms and the formless are all inextricably linked, and that what holds it all together, or is the source and ground of it all is a Great Mystery -- that we can be directly in touch with. That somehow is who we truly are.
And we may sense, in this form of inquiry, that we are more important than we think in enabling the existence of the universe itself. We are not merely random items who happen to be thrown into existence by existence itself. We may be co-creators of the magic and mystery of the universe and of Being itself.
We may be the eyes with which the universe and Being and Spirit sees itself, we may be the eyes with which the divine (or God, or Being, or Spirit) exists and experiences itself.
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
― Meister Eckhart