What are you referring too when you say 'I', the body? The mind? The self? All? Or is it something else?

Question

Im not looking for the definiton of the letter I, i'm seeking its location. What are we actually referring too?

apologies for the typo!

To look at it another way round what is it in you that says I am I exist I am here? That gives rise to your point of reference.

Answer 1

This "ME" or the "I" that declares its existence is the bundle of "MASKS" ( personalities ) molded by ignorance about its existence.The one that says "I like or I don"t like" is the essence of the total personal consciousness, conditioned and still being conditioned to be distinct and separate from his environment This me was born from the time the conscious mind interact with its environment. I think this is the most important question in our lifetime and it's the hardest of all the question of the human kind. please bear in mind that the description is not the described, and I humbly tried to answer your question according to what I observed , please this is not conclusive its up to the reader to discover the truth and the false of my descriptions. Thank you.

Answer 2

The Spirit
This is described as having no mass, no wave-length,no energy and no time or location in space except by consideration or postulate. The awreness of awareness unit, (What you are referring to when you say "I".)
The spirit is not a "thing". It is the "creator" of things.
The usual residence of the soul, (spirit, awareness of awareness unit....YOU) is in the skull or near the body.
The soul or spirit can be in one of four conditions.
1. Entirely separate from a body or bodies.
2. Near a body and knowingly controlling the body.
3. In the body (the skull).
4. An inverted condition, compulsively away from the body and unable to approach it.

There are degrees of each of the above 4 conditions.
The most optimum of these from the standpoint of man, is the second.

The Mind
This is a communication and control system between the spirit and it's (his) environment.
The mind is a network of communications and pictures, energies and masses, which are brought into being by the activities and interactions of the spirit with the Physical Universe and other spirits/individuals.
These activities include the operating of a body and the solving
of problems related to survival and existence.
The mind has 2 Parts:
The Analytical Mind. The keynote of this mind is awareness. One knows what one is concluding and knows what one is doing.
The Reactive Mind. This is a stimulus response mechanism.
This mind acts below the level of consciousness. It never stops operating unlike the Analytical Mind which can be less aware or even completely unconscious.

The Body
A carbon/oxygen engine. This can best be studied in such books as "Grey's Anatomy" and other anatomical texts.

Answer 3

Everybody seems to have an opinion on the issue and i have mine. Everything said and done remember these are all opinions and viewpoints, these questions have puzzled mankind for thousands of years and there is no reason why they would not continue to puzzle us for many more years.
I understand that you want the exact location of your 'self'. Has it ever occurred to you that an entity such as the 'self' may exist beyond the dimensions of space and time.
I saw some of the answers which used terms such as 'self' , 'individual' , 'soul'. 'mind' liberally. If you come to think of it
none of these terms have trivial meanings.
If questions such as yours could have been answered in a page or so they would have been answered long back. Some questions have to be thought out for yourself, I cannot give you the location of your 'I' you have to do it for yourself.
I will be interested to know how far you have succeeded.

Answer 4

I answer that question with a personal experience

One day when I was miserable I thought "Who is the self that I cannot live with? Are there one or two? If I cannot live with my self, who is that self?" And then, beyond thought, there was a recognition of the "unhappy me," as I later called it, as being something completely non-substantial and fictional. Then consciousness withdrew completely from identification with that "unhappy me." At that moment the whole structure of the "unhappy me" and its pain collapsed because the withdrawal of identification was so complete. What was left was simply beingness or presence. There was still a moment of fear. It felt like being drawn into a hole within myself, a vast whirlpool, and a realization arose in my chest, "Resist nothing." That was the key. Then resistance was relinquished and I don't know what happened after that.

All I do know is that the next morning I woke up and even before opening my eyes I heard the sounds of birds and it was so precious; everything was so precious. Then I opened my eyes and everything was alive and new and fresh as if I had never seen it before. And I walked around and picked up things and looked at them. I was amazed at everything. There was no understanding of it. I was not even trying to understand anything. It was just so beautiful. Then I walked around the city in the same state, even in the midst of traffic. I was in a state of amazement and it was all so beautiful.

Answer 5

For me, the "I" is all of those and more. "I" refers to the the total being; mind, body, soul. It is both simple and complex at the same time. The simplist way I can describe the location of "I" is that it is located in the physical body, the spiritual body, and the bicameral mind. More than that would overly complicate the matter, more so than it already is.

Answer 6

Good to note that you aren't asking for definition !
When a person is relaxed and casual, he refers to his body as "my body was aching the whole of night , and I couldn't get a wink of sleep !" Notice, in the same sentence he experienced his body as separate from 'he' and yet when it came to lack of sleep, he is emotionally more involved, and at once switches the presence deep into the body and says " 'I' couldn't (sleep)" !
So also when someone causes hurt in a crowded bus, a more emotional person would say "why are you trampling me !", a milder one "why are you stepping on my feet " (both cases the hurt is on feet!).
So, a person experiences the self in the body, mind, or as a witness to both these being established in 'self-awareness' !
And when asleep, he even loses the self-awareness, and at times lands into a make-belief world called dream !
The " I " is limitless by nature, and we experiences it at a level upto which we have evolved, shifting contextual references depending on how deep we are stuck in a situation !

Answer 7

For most people, if you query them long enough in a thorough manner, they would say the Self is what they mean by "I". Going further, results in Self being either "mind" or "body". Since "mind" is unable to exist without "body", we can see that Self is "body".
For a good read, try Daniel Dennett's recent works.

Answer 8

The "I" is something behind the eyes, self-conscious and not material. You might identify the "I" to the mind, although the mind as a reasoning faculty belongs to the "I", as the body does (my body, my mind). I suppose in English you can equate the "I" with the self.

Answer 9

When I say "I", I say "not you, not he, not she, not it, not we, not you (the plural), not they".

Philosophical/scientific answers: "I" means the quantity of Universal energy that lives in this body. "I" is the owner of the body I see in the mirror when I look in one. Therefore, when I say "I have a broken arm." I mean that the body "I" own has a broken arm. It is easier than saying "The body that I live in has a broken arm", though it would be more accurate. Moreover, when I say "I think that Einstein was wrong" the body I own is only partially involved in the process of thinking (the neurons, synapses etc). Or maybe I am just wrong.

Answer 10

there are three parts to the self, i will list them in order of power with the least powerful 1st, the body,(the flesh is weak), the mind or intellect, and the spirit or the essence of the self. the spirit is most powerful casue in includes the body and the mind as well as the essence of the self.