Spiritual teachers discuss the concept of the identity of ‘I’ in the human context as to whether it is the gross body, the mind, the intellect or the soul etcetera.
The common refrain is the example of a person calling the parts of his or her body as ‘my body’,’ my hand’, ‘my face’ ‘my lungs’ and so on signifying that he or she is the possessor of, but not the body or its parts referred to. For clarity the example is given of ‘my house’, ‘my dog’ to show that the use of ‘my’ makes it very clear that we are not the body but we are something other than it.
The argument is perfectly valid. However let us take the example of someone saying “I ran’, “I walked”, “I kicked”. In this case what does one mean by it? No one says ‘my legs ran’ or ‘my hands slapped’ and so on. In other words whatever the body does or the mind conceives or feels is expressed by using the word “I”. In other words the totality of the body with all its systems and supports is the “I”. This is one way of thinking. Some say that there is a witness in us which is a part of us that is ever present from birth to death, before and beyond birth and death that is the soul which is indestructible.
The best thing is to leave it by saying that God only knows what it is all about and we are not provided with the ability to go beyond the limitations of our sense organs of touch, taste, sound, smell and sight.
