The Identity Question

Welcome to the Mental Models series, where we'll break down metaphysical concepts from Ancient Sanskrit texts...not in Sanskrit.

This is an explainer of who we actually are: a soul having a human experience.

AI is here to stay. After a year of ChatGPT, we can reasonably conclude that not only are large language models not going away, but they're going to become an increasingly bigger part of our lives moving forward. This sucks for anyone doing anything related to writing on the Internet, whether they're The New York Times or tiny little email newsletters/blogs/whatever you want to call Two Feet In The Boat.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

While I do worry about the impact AI is going to have on our existence as humans, I don't think it's causing the Skynet-level war on humanity that pop culture would have you believe - at least, not yet. The reason for this is that I can't imagine that an AI could become self-aware enough to answer this question properly:

"Who am I?"

This is a question that's boggled philosophers, theologists, and every stoned college kid since language was probably invented. The faith-based answer to this question is the existence of something that can't quite be measured but was named after its telltale signs: life itself.

Most identities are defined as affirmations: I am <insert label here>. This is the simplest way to explain who I am, and it's how most of us choose to speak about ourselves or others. We'll use various affirmations according to the situations and the people we're around, and this identity affirmation shapes our worldview and actions. Self-described liberals will rarely view or support more conservative, traditionalist viewpoints - and vice versa.

The labels people choose to present to the world will usually fall under one of 4 types of statements:

• I am something in relation to something else. I am so-and-so's nephew. I am American.
• I am something related to my physical body. I am black. I am a man.
• I am something related to my likes or dislikes. I am a coffee connoisseur. I am attracted to women.
• I am something related to my thoughts. I am a Democrat. I am a Buddhist.

These four types of statements encompass nearly every identity that people will self-describe themselves as. The only one that is missing is the identity that is described for all living beings in the Ancient Sanskrit texts of South Asia: the soul.

The etymology of "soul" is an interesting rabbit hole to go down if you're into that sorta thing: we don't actually really know where it comes from and how exactly it became equated with the animating element in a living being. The Ancient Greeks used the word "animus" to refer to what we would presently call a soul, giving us that very definition: the animating element in a living being.

If you think about it, there's not much that differentiates a dead body and a living being. We can stimulate the brain with electrical impulses and artificially make the heart beat or make the lungs breathe, but bodily or mental functions aren't the things that make us alive. People who have out of body experiences or recover from being clinically dead can attest to the fact that a heartbeat or brainwaves aren't a complete definition for being alive.

Regardless of how the word came about, it has a commonly understood meaning: the spiritual spark present in all of us. In the Sanskrit texts, it's described that there are levels to our existence. The original and deepest layer is the soul, which is our actual identity. It's what gives us life, and is described as full of the thing that make life worth living: happiness.

But that raises a few interesting questions: Where does the soul fit into my conception of identity? Am I a person with a soul? Do animals have souls? And why should I care about this anyway?

Let's start with the first question: Where does the soul fit into my conception of identity? Answering this might be easier with a diagram:

At the top, we have the soul: our original identity. But rarely do people identify with the soul, and instead choose to identify with their intelligence (something related to their thoughts), their mind (something related to their likes or dislikes), their body (something related to their physical body), or some external object of affection (something in relation to something else).

In other spiritual traditions and pop culture in general, the conception of us as humans is that we exist and have a soul like we have a heart or a brain. This model flips that on its head: we are a soul, and we have a heart or a brain. Having this framing allows us to understand - at least theoretically - that every living being is functionally a soul, and merely has a different type of intelligence, mind, body, and objects of affection than we do.

A healthy human experience is one that recognizes the soul as our primary identity, and while giving the appropriate level of care to the other identities, remains identified with the soul. Just because we identify with the soul doesn't mean that we neglect the needs of the body or the mind, but it does mean that we should learn how to use this model in a way that synthesizes all the disparate identities we have.

This framing of identity as a pyramid is useful for this reason: it's evocative of Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, and also provides a framework for how we can keep the "lower" identities in check. If you're not familiar with Maslow's work, here's a good primer.

Maslow's hierarchy does largely correspond to the understanding put forth by ancient Indian scholars: at the lower levels, we find the needs of the body; as we go higher we find the needs of the mind; towards the top we find the needs of the intelligence and the soul. It's also quite analogous to Maslow's work in that we may not be exclusively at one level of the pyramid: rather, we may identify at various levels simultaneously the same way we have multiple needs at the same time.

The difference between Maslow's hierarchy and the identity pyramid is that Maslow focuses on what needs to be done on an external level while the identity pyramid focuses on internals. Just as how the needs in Maslow's pyramid build on each other - you can't get to self-actualization if you're worried about your next meal - the levels in the identity pyramid build on each other. De-identifying with the body and gradually de-identifying from the mind and intelligence allows us to get to the point of solely identifying with the soul.

This is a relatively easy concept to understand theoretically, but it takes lifetimes to understand practically.In an age when there's so much conflict caused by people identifying with various labels, it makes so much sense to go beyond them.

Not only can shedding those labels and identifying with something that unites every living being be beneficial for our own sense of worth, self-esteem, and general happiness, it also contributes to a better society. Like the Sufi mystic Rumi says:

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."