Realising Self

Self means our I or our Me. It's very essential to know the real nature of our I. Unless we know about our I, we can not understand the true meaning of our life.

Almost all religions and spiritual schools has termed our I as Atma, spirit, soul, self etc.

We understand our life through a series of experiences. So to realise self we must understand each and every stage of our process of experience.

When we experience anything, first our sense organs capture images of experience, they forward those images to the brain, and the brain stores images into the memory. Then the memory reacts to announce about the experience and makes an announcement about the experience. The response of the memory is the series of thoughts. One thought separates itself from other thoughts and acts as an announcer. This thought of an announcer is our real I, is the real Me. It is the fact that the response of the memory is our real self. The moment one realises this, he becomes free from all false concepts created by religions and spiritual schools.

There is always some time delay between actual experience by senses and it's response from memory. Each time when our I understand any real time experience, it is always after a few moments. Our understanding of our daily life experiences are always in the past. Our I and his ideas and concepts are always part of memory and never real. Hence they always creates illusions.

Why do we think?

Thoughts are an essential part of our life to protect us from danger, making arrangements for our survival needs and also for reproduction. Thoughts are not harmful but essential for our Survival and reproduction only. But thoughts want to continue, they want pleasures so they creates many other psychological concepts just to remain there all the time.

To remain always alive in a waking state, our 'I thought' further creates thoughts of fear and security. 'I thought' creates many concepts like family, society, religions, nations for psychological security. 'I thought' itself is a division between our thought process, this division always creates conflicts among its ideas. That's why there are always conflicts in our family, in our society, religions and nations.

One who understands the real nature of I, will stop living in illusions created by 'I thought'. He or she will avoid following ideas and concepts of I and instead will live a natural way of life.

In a natural way of life there is no fear, no anxiety, no sorrows but abundant love, compassion and an intelligent life.

Self is part of past knowledge, self is response of memory, self is part of an experience, self is both seer and scene, self is both observer and observed.

• Based on teachings of Jidu Krishnmurti