Personal Identity and the Self - Essay Example

?Topic:  Philosophy Paper- Personal Identity and the Self Who am I? What am I? Have you ever wondered and kept on thinking about this mysterious question. You would have come across many answers like you are alive because of your brain or you are surviving because of physical existence of your body But does one really think he is just his body, or just alive due to the grey matter situated in the crown of his head. No this seems so absurd, at least for me. I am really convinced that I am only the soul. Soul is that minute particle of energy which is much lighter and smaller than atom and which gives me the immortal life that no death can conquer. I cannot be the brain for the very reason that when my brain stop working my breathe goes on. Same way, when my body is paralyzed I still keep on living. When seeing from both the angle of body and brain, the thing which keep me alive and blissful is my soul, my eternal soul. This concept of soul can be alien to many, but it is one truth which is eternal and divine. It is not right to say that we are body, or we are alive because of brain as these are just instruments which give our soul chance to perform its duty on this earthly plane. Soul is the part of the God, but still separate from God, and has a motive of merging with God at end of its life cycle. We were created from God and have to merge with God after taking birth in different forms and times. Body and brain is nothing but some physical instrument which gives us reasoning and decision making powers. It may be surprising to many, if I tell you that we had to take many forms like plants, animals and human to complete our life cycle and ultimately merge with the divine. Yes, we survived through many years and strayed in many forms and eventually we get enlightened and get salvation. According to (Jerrry,1978,pg .3) “Survival means surviving no more no less. I have no doubts that I shall merge with beings, plants will take root in my remains, and the chemical that I am will continue to make their contribution to life”. This cycle goes on, until the soul in our self gets brightened and purified to join with the divine power. It is our aim, to find God in our self and understand it and nurture it and then surrender it to Divine power. We cannot be the body, how can I be the body? If then if my leg gets amputed then I should cease to exist. Does it happen? No, it won’t. If my whole body gets paralyzed until my neck, I keep on speaking .So what is keeping me alive, yes it is the soul undoubtedly. It is hidden in our body, and can be reached only by long lasting meditation and submerging in ultimate self. It very well cannot be the body, which keeps on changing according to the age and time. One may think what happens to this soul, once the body gets destroyed. Yes! This is a very valuable question and the answer is also valuable indeed. The soul never dies, never get destroyed and it remained as an immortal energy .The body is just a covering, a temple for the soul to reside, it remains there witnessing all the actions of the body and mind. It lies in the body behind the subconscious mind and witnesses all the deeds good and bad. People don’t realize the soul because we are in the illusionary world, and this veil of ignorance keeps us away from the reality. The reality is only experienced when listen to the self and look inwards rather than outwards. If the self was just the body, then there would have been no purpose to this life. It is like we are here just to eat sleep and mating. We just need to give pleasures to the bodily organs and do not even have to look further for happiness and bliss. “A person’s “having a soul” is not, for example, a special form of possession or ownership .What we need to understand is that person’s “having a soul” is not a form of possession or ownership at all”(Rosenberg,1998,pg.58).Soul is the beholder of the body and the mind, and everything we think and do is witnessed by soul and affect the soul. Good deed and bad deed does make the soul pure or impure respectively.   Some people think that human does not possess soul and they function on the capability of brain. This is a very unrealistic thought and does not have any real basis to it. Brain is an internal organ which controls much activities of our body and allows cognitive thinking, reasoning and bodily movements. But this does not mean that brain is everything; there is much deeper and valuable things in this body of us. Then there is mind, then there is conscious mind and the sub-conscious mind .And inner to the sub-conscious mind lays the super conscious soul, which is the real self. As per, (Hare Krishna ,2011)“The life we're living now is not our only one. We've been through many. The spark of awareness within us-- the self, or soul, or whatever you want to call it-- has no beginning and no end. No knife can cut it, no fire can burn it, and no wind can blow it away”. Brain can be studies just like an internal organ of human body, but soul can never be perceived with physical senses. We cannot measure soul, as it is the minutest particle of energy. Nevertheless, it is pervades the whole universe by residing in every living form small and big. It is this energy which makes a human a super soul a super conscious which wander for happiness and bliss. If we were just controlled by brain why would we have reasoning ability and judgmental thoughts? We could have just lived on food, shelter and sex and lived happily ever after. No we are not looking just fro physical pleasures, but we want tranquility, extreme happiness and bliss. This every human look for after he achieve all the material happiness in this world. When one enjoys all the human pleasures, then he look for more that is the bliss the happiness of soul. We go out in look out for more, what we are? what is our real identity? Why we are still unhappy? The answer for all this is that our soul wants us to search for divine, the super conscious. Our soul want us to search inside our self, where lies the soul which is urging desperately to merge with God. One life is only complete when the self attains enlightenment and become immortal by embracing God. It can be well said that, we are neither the body nor the brain, but we are the immortal souls which neither had beginning nor end. “Though the body dies, and when it dies, the soul dies not; it survives the body, and not only lives after it, but lives for ever, it never dies: though the body without the soul is dead, yet the soul without the body is not dead”(Pbministries,2011). Soul keeps on living till eternity and meets with God in the end and falls back to earth when it’s good or bad deeds are finished, that is the eternal truth of life. References Hare Krishna. (2011). You are not your body . Retrieved from http://harekrishna.com/col/philo/phi-karm.html Jerry , J. (1978). A dialogue on personal identity and immortality . Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Pbministries, . (2011). Of the immortality of the soul. Retrieved from http://www.pbministries.org/books/gill/Doctrinal_Divinity/Book_7/book7_02.htm Rosenberg, J.F. (1998). 2thinking clearly about death. 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