What am I? Where am I? - 13/06

What am I? Where am I?

I have dwelled on this questions before. If someone chopped of my legs and hands, I would still call myself, myself. If someone chopped of all my limbs, I would still know and call myself, the same. I would think myself, the same. Mine would be a sad story, but it would be MY store nonetheless. If they replaced my heart with the heart of a donkey, I would still be the same. 

But, what if I met an accident? And wake up forgetting everything? Then who would I be? I won't remember my story. I wouldn't remember by name, my parents, my upbringing, my college, my dreams and my female fancies, my joys and my disappointments. Who would I be then? 

I would be still be here though, wouldn't I? 

Not the same, but different. I would be here, but without any baggage, any tags, fresh, a nobody. So the conventional 'I', is a trail of memories. Is a continuous story. But there is another 'I', that which emerges from just consciousness. Consciousness of surroundings, through the senses, of the world, of the wind, of the sounds and the sights, and consciousness of consciousness itself, seated perhaps, in the centre of the mind. 

I am, at this moment, aware of the light from the study lamp, the writing on the blog, the breeze blowing across the room, the distant noise from the road and of all the objects that surround me. I am also conscious of the thoughts streaming in the mind, before they enter the blog. What else am I conscious of? 

So again, what am I? Is the I the experiencer? Or is the I, the experiencing? Can an I exist, beyond experience? 

What if all my sense shut down? What if, I turned blind, I turned deaf, my skin turned plastic and tongue turned to waste? Then would 'I' still exist? It could, only if there were thoughts. Only if mind knew language, could there be the experience of thoughts? Would there be an I, if not for thoughts? 

The I would perhaps, disappear. I is language. I is also an expression of......? 

 I is the center of all thought. Thought creates the thinker, the center and the object of thought. 

So do I even exist? Yes the body is there, yes the mind is there, perhaps even a soul. But what makes it distinct, unique? If the uniqueness ceases with the mere end of thought, then to hell with the body. 

What a grand experience! What a great magic this all is!

At the center of all this grand experience, all such great objects, emotions and constructions, lies something so nebulous! Something so inexplicable. Can that, which is beyond thoughts, beyond sensory experience, be put in words! 

I sit here trying to imagine, a life without senses, thoughts, and all I can see is endless nothingness. Almost a scary nothingness. There is nothing, there is only emptiness at the heart of all this experience? The I is simply, the echoing of sounds in a hollow void. Is this the Sunyata?