I and Not I

Two pre conditions to experience are the experiencer and the thing experienced. Thus experience verifies the existence of duality in the world we live in. ‘I’ have been continuously experiencing the world around me through my senses. I am strolling in a garden and when I see a ‘snake’ I experience the ‘snake’ through my eyes, may be smell etc.. Similarly, when I am sitting on seashore I experience cold breeze across my face. My skin lets me experience the cold breeze. This is a proof of my ‘separation’ or ‘distinctiveness’ from cold breeze and the snake. For when I am a thing I cease to experience the thing. When i am outside the ‘whole’ I can experience the whole but when I become part of the whole (‘dissolve’) I am the whole and so I cease to experience the whole. I was born with inbuilt tuners which always let me experience the world around me. Even if I had not grown up in a civilized society I can still experience the things around me and may call them by different names.

The key point being I was not naturally born with an ability to cease experience which I am experiencing continuously since my mind began perception of things. Will I ever be able to cease my ‘experience ‘?

I had posed this question because advaita teaches me to dissolve in Brahman (whole of the universe). If at all I do loose my experience it means ‘I’ becomes ‘everything’ . I am the soil, rock, pebble,air,space, vaccum, shit or piss or flesh or other human or animal or gold or machine and anything and everything. It could also mean ‘I’ cease to be a distinct entity. The fundamental principle of identity or ego or Jeevatman is – ‘ he is what he is and not anything else.’ As long as I experience the world around me I am a distinct entity which is not the thing being experienced by me. But the moment I become everything I violate the principle enunciated in the preceding sentence. I become what I become and everything else. Experience is a function of experience and the thing experienced. In otherwords, it is a process applicable to duality of the world (I and not i).

I experiences not I through process of experience facilitated by senses. When there is only I and no not I then there is no thing to be experienced. Moving away from the individual perspective, if the whole universe is a sub set of other smaller things can each of these subsets be individual things and also the world at the same time? Can a monitor of a laptop be a monitor (part) and also a laptop (whole) at the same time? If a laptop is a union of monitor, keyboard, harddrive and ram and other constitutent parts then can a laptop be a laptop without the monitor or key board or any of its parts? Can a drop of water added to the ocean be still a drop of water or does it becomes the ocean? Can there be an ocean (not referring to existence) if ocean is nothing but a pool of individual drops of water? Can an elephant be its trunk and at the same time the elephant? This question goes to root of what we think a thing is.


If I see a new being with two legs and 10 heads and two tails and with changing face and I name it ‘x’ is it right to call the same being ‘x’ when I separated one of the tails of this being? If I do think it is right to call it ‘x’ even after the removal of its tail then am I not self contradicting my own definition or description of what a thing is? Anyway, the question which remains is can a thing be a thing and also some other thing at the same time? If it can will it be able to experience the other thing?