Identity and Personality

[Guest guest]

Identity and Personality

 

 

Dear Devotees and Friends:

 

Please accept our humble dandavats.

 

Hare Krsna.

 

–Satsanga MP3– Satsanga, August 10, 2008 is now uploaded.

 

      In the Satsanga a scientific discussion is presented

about “Identity and personality†and thus a platform is proposed to help

distinguish the human being from that of other form of living beings exist in

the universe.  

 

 

 

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Morality/Speciesism/MirrorMirror\

Evidence.htm 

 

 

—————————————————————————

       

        

     Thinking is an activity. Knowing is an activity. That means

consciousness is also an activity. Hegel said that the “I†is pure

restlessness, pure activity, or pure negativity. Activity means change. And

whatever changes must negate its present situation in order to change or appear

in another situation. For a flying arrow its present position in space must be

negated in order to move to a further position in space. The tensed bowstring

imparts the force to the arrow for its movement or its negation of place to take

occur. But in the case of thinking, what is the force that is activating it?

According to Aristotle, thinking moves itself. It is self active or spontaneous.

For him, thought thinking itself is God. This must not be misconceived as our

thought or finite thought, but the Infinite or Pure Thought of the Absolute,

from which all other finite movement comes.

When thought reflects upon itself, i.e. when thinking thinks about thinking,

this self-reflection is what is called I. So we can understand why Aristotle

called this God. The “I†also means identity. When I ask what is my real

identity, I am asking, “who am I?†When someone wants to establish your

identity, they want to know who you are.

      Identity is generally thought to refer to a numerical unity or one.

However, that is not the case, because identity is a comparative term. In other

words two things are required. Identical twins refer to two bodies. Even

self-identity requires thought as subject, dealing with itself, its own thought,

as object. So it apprehends itself by dividing itself. Or it reflects upon

itself, i.e. makes itself object to itself as subject. In this way we say

“I.â€

     Consciousness is subjective and has an object of consciousness. But

consciousness can also be conscious of itself. In that case it is called

self-consciousness or Ego. Consciousness can also take different forms or

shapes, such as knowing, thinking, feeling or willing. In that case it is called

Mind. It can also take the form of a sensuous object. In that case it is called

sentient. Behind or implicit to all these different forms, however, is thinking,

although it may not be explicit to the consciousness when it is in its different

forms.

     Depending on the different forms of consciousness an individual may not

be able to access all the other forms of consciousness. Some may not be able to

access their mathematical intelligence, or others their literary intelligence,

or linguistic intelligence, etc. Some may not be able to access their artistic

ability, and different forms of life, such as animals, are not able to access

their thinking capacity. They are able to feel, and usually have strong

feelings, and senses, but thinking is not accessible to them, even though it is

there implicitly even in animals. Thus Man is called a rational animal. He is

distinguished by his ability to think, and not merely act instinctively.

     For knowing, what is the necessary requirement? Knowing that an object

is there is one requirement, but it is also required to know what the object is.

These are not the same thing. Knowing that something is there refers to its

being, but knowing what is there requires a determination of its being or

determinate being. And what does that require? Determination requires thought or

the explicit thinking aspect of consciousness, which we have explained is

constituent of consciousness. Thinking, or the content of thinking, is what

constitutes our personality, or the person. In order to be a person, there must

be consciousness, but more significantly, when we say, ‘I,’ we must be

thinking, as Descartes claimed.

     When the true knowledge or consciousness of the self or ‘I’ and our

relationship with God are unknown or we are unconscious of that, then the

individual in ignorance identifies with a limited or vitiated form of

consciousness, and that is called the false ego.

     We can understand that there is a restricted (or conditioned) and

unrestricted (or liberated) sense of self. In the unrestricted or universal

sense, the ‘I’, exists in all the instances, circumstances, or arrangements

of my body. I call myself ‘I’, whether I am sitting, standing, eating,

running, thinking, whatever. Whatever the body is doing, ‘I’ remains the

same. The body may be young, old, or middle-aged. The body keeps on changing -

the situations of the body keep on changing, but ‘I’ remains the same. Just

like the river Ganges, sometimes it overflows, sometimes it even changes its

course, sometimes it has less water, sometimes more water. The water is always

moving, changing, but still the flowing river is always identified as the

Ganges. This means that the Ganges is something universal, i.e. it is an idea

that is not associated merely with some particular sensuous experience.

Similarly, the body is particular, the mental

state is particular: sometimes we are happy, and sometimes we are unhappy. The

mind is changing, the body is changing, but the ‘I’ remains the same.

     So the ‘I’ is of a different categorical nature than the situations

that the ‘I’ identifies with. Thus we can categorize ‘I’ as a universal

entity that is, moreover, not an entity or thing, but pure activity, as we

explained before. However the ‘I’ is also not infinitely universal.

Mathematicians know that there are different types of infinity, some larger than

others. In other words, I can know from a first person perspective what is going

on with my body, but not what is going on with yours. So the universality of my

‘I’ is limited. ‘I’ is a universal, but it is a limited universal. So

the proper term would be infinitesimal, as our infinity is limited.

     Human beings are special among all the creators of the universe,

because they have developed thinking to a very high degree of abstraction, and

due to that they can understand a concept like ‘I’. Non human creators

can’t say ‘I’, because their thinking is not so exclusively developed.

Thus it is not possible for them to think: “Why am I suffering?†They must

simply suffer their fate, unhappily, no doubt.

 

 

     

     What is the influence of the negative activity or the activity of

thinking on the positive activity of the body and vise versa? We can’t say

“positive†if there is no negative. There is relation; one can’t exist

without the other. They are related although they are totally opposite. In

electricity we have negative and positive charges, and in a magnet north pole

and south pole, but they are complete opposites. Thinking can’t be detected by

the senses. But if what we think about is a sensuous object then it has a

positive significance to us. We call the experience of the sensuous or empirical

field positivity. But we also experience thinking, and since it is not sensuous

experience we can call it negativity.

 

 

     The negative is always related to the positive, and positive is always

related to the negative. For example an object, say, a dog is here and a cow is

there. From a sense point of view the dog and cow can be felt, seen, smelled and

so on. But thinking or making the judgment that, here is the dog, there is the

cow is not a sense activity. The determination that what is in front of me is a

cow is not a sense determination, it is a judgment. I see some black, some

white, some long, some big, some different qualities. I am seeing, but the

judgment of what that I am seeing, that is coming from another place and not

from the senses.

     There are so many things in this world that are black, white, small and

long. However, this information is not enough to say that, that thing is a cow.

Senses can only detect the qualities of the thing like color, the shape, the

weight, the hardness and the softness. But to determine what that thing is,

requires another principle that is a non sensuous principle. Thus it is above

the senses.

     The word cow, the idea cow doesn’t come from the senses. It comes

from the mind or the thinking. That is called judgment. To say ‘this is’ and

then give it a name means to judge what this is. When we say ‘this’, we

utter an ‘indexical’ or referential word - an abstract thing. ‘This’

refers to everything and thus ‘this’ is indeterminate. To determine what

‘this’ is requires a judgment or determination. Determining of ‘this’

means thinking is involved. To think what ‘this’ is, to give some definition

to this, is called determination or thought.

     So from where does the thought of cow come? The word or idea is coming

from thought. From where the thought of cow is coming we don’t actually know.

That may not be the word cow, it may me ‘go’ in Sanskrit. ‘go’ and cow

are the same word actually, they sound the same, they come from the same word.

The original word was ‘go’ and in English it came down to cow. But from

where the original word ‘go’ came from we can’t say.

 

        From all of this, I hope we can see that identity is a very

important idea. Scientists don’t know much about it. They use it, but like

“cow†and so many other words, they don’t know much about what they are

saying or what they are doing. Still, identity is a very fundamental concept for

them. For example, scientists think only in terms of atoms and molecules. For

them identity means the atom. The atom, in chemistry, generally retains its

identity regardless of whatever situation it is in. For scientists the atom or

molecule is the basic principle of identity. They are the things that maintain

their identity throughout time and throughout different circumstances or

situations.

     The identity of the carbon atom remains throughout all its occurrences

in chemistry. Of course in physics, from the nuclear principle it is different.

Carbon can be broken down into neutron, proton, electron and all those subatomic

particles become the principle identities. But otherwise, the carbon atom is the

same in a rose and a caterpillar. How can we distinguish the carbon which is

present in both rose and caterpillar? Scientists can’t speak about what

distinguishes the carbon in a rose and a caterpillar, because their focus for

identity is based upon atoms and molecules only. This is foolishness. They are

not realizing that they are invoking the category of identity at a very low

level, or one specific level. But the idea of identity exists at the grass

level, at the caterpillar level, at the cow level, at the man level, at the

level of a planet and earth. We can find identities at all levels, and they

cannot all be encompassed at the

level of the identity of atoms.

 

 

 

You can hear this Transcendental Nectar of Satsanga at

http://www.mahaprabhu.net/satsanga/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/10_August_2008_HH_\

BMPS_BI_Weekly_Satsanga.m3u

 

 

You can browse year/month wise Streaming Satsanga MP3s at: http://mahaprabhu.

net/satsanga/ .

 

 

Timing of weekly Satsanga: 6:00 PM India time, Every Sunday.  

 

 

You may visit http://mahaprabhu. net/satsanga/ about/ to know the details about

joining process for the online “Weekly Satsangasâ€.

  

All Glories all Sadhus, Guru and Vaisnavas.

  

Thanking you.

 

 

Your humble servants

Purushottama Jagannatha Das &

Sushen Das

 

 

Get your own website and domain for just Rs.1,999/year.* Go to

http://in.business./