Understanding Memory, Intellect and Identity

I am a Doctor, I am Pilot, I am actor, I am so and so....etc... once someone assumes such an Identity in their life whats next ? The Fashion industry for example is ever changing and its completely dependent on identity, people also wear cloths as per their identity and the industry targets Identifiable groups to market. A Doctor for example can be identified by their cloths, same with a Pilot but what when are not being a Doctor or Pilot say during holidays? Does that mean they will not defend if someone talks nonsense about Doctors or Pilots? How about Identities that are not dependent on what you wear like being an "Indian" or "In the 30s"? How about other non professional Identities such as "Women" or "poor" or "religion"? More often than not any person will tend to protect their "Identity" at any cost.

So how does this all work naturally for humans? why not for rest of animal world try to protect their Identity? As per the Patanjali's Yoga shashtra, the human mind can be divided into 4 major categories Manas(Memory), Budhi(Intellect), Ahamkaar (Identity) and Chitta (Consciousness) and by examining the relationship between the first 3 one can try to derive at some conclusions. See the simple flow below.

The information acquired by an individual from birth and its accumulation from the five senses, new information from the media/outside world, DNA the genetic memory, subconscious memory like breathing, all experiences put together form the "Manas" like a memory storage device. The "thoughts" that come in regularly come from within the "Manas", As these thoughts flow, it creates sparks of emotions as one would have experienced. Neuroscience research shows different networks in the brain can create the same emotion, It is the way our brain gives meaning to bodily sensations based on past experience using its Limbic System. Different networks all contribute at different levels to feelings such as happiness, surprise, sadness, fear and anger etc.

"Budhi", the Intellect which is the decision maker uses all the data from the "Manas" along with emotions to decide next actions, this creates opinions on the processed information. The more often the similar information is processed the opinions transforms into Beliefs which at this point the human being tend to avoid alternative thoughts and also start searching for more proofs for the belief, this loops back to your emotions which get stronger day by day. The more evidences we find, the more stronger the beliefs become, the stronger the emotions towards that belief, again transforming this into a conviction. At this point a person completely rejects any alternative or out of the box information because the Intellect has absolute clarity on the decision making. The conviction eventually becomes the identity itself "Ahamkaar", to defend any other alternative narrative or information at any cost. While this entire process happens, the memory "Manas" is kept updated with all the information.

When a person identifies himself/herself with multiple of such identities which may eventually form intersections and unions of identities, slowly the Intellect finds difficult to take decisions due to conflict of interest. From clarity of having a single identity to having no clarity with multiple identities is a constant struggle for every human being. For example being a "Mother", "Wife", "Doctor", "Indian", "women" etc.. you could imagine the conflict of interests that can be impedance for many day to day decision making.

This entire process is independent of whether its negative or positive thoughts, it follows a same approach, but the quantity of negative or positive thoughts may vary largely from person to person obviously based on what they have in their accumulated memory "Manas" and what they newly experience using their senses from outside world like media, public etc..

So how about clarity in decision making? where to control or draw the line? as we can see some points of control could be

• controlling senses/thoughts/emotions

• controlling opinions/beliefs or conviction

• controlling your identity itself

It is always easier said than done, but by practicing mindful experiences of the five senses, one can significantly control the five senses affecting your thoughts. It has to be clearly noted that a same negative thought of a person could be positive thought to somebody else and vise versa, nevertheless at the same time there could be a thought which both person assume positive as well. The ideal way to define a positive or negative thought could be "if any thought that might work against your own self and against a larger humanity they can be termed as "negative" and rest is "positive", but which again is arguable with a radical mind, for example someone may think "positive" about doing "suicide bombing" killing themselves and others for a greater good cause for humanity.

One solution to we might have is purposefully not making immediate judgments on anything that you feel, see, hear touch or smell can contribute to overall balance in the thoughts. "Vipasana" or western understanding of Mindfulness is a wider accepted technique to achieve this mindset. When one fixes the issue at the start you may very well avoid the issue becoming bigger, so fixing the first entry points on thoughts is something achievable more easily. Media is a great contributor to this overall process, with global becoming local in the world of internet, the significance of how people use media and how media projects information would matter hugely on an individuals wisdom & development, eventually to his/her country and to rest of the world. The negative thoughts that arise from the past memory can only be suppressed over a period of time and continuous practice of various meditation techniques so that it becomes part of your subconscious mind. Emotions are directly linked and proportional to the thoughts and hence similar techniques may be used to get control over emotions as well.

How about someone is unable to control thoughts and emotions, so it has become an opinion or belief ? this stage is a significant stage where it becomes difficult in accepting alternatives to the opinion and easy to rejecting information on the opinion. First thing at this stage, people tend to search for additional proofs, be too happy if the opinions fall inline or too sad/angry if opinions or beliefs are against. While Vipasana can still help here, various "Meditation" and "breathing" techniques can help the mind to stay relatively balanced and neutral. This however difficult may be but achievable by consciously reducing the immediate reactions & emotions towards the opinions/beliefs that are both in-line or against, but reducing the reactions need not necessarily be quantifiable, hence postponing the reactions to a later time or taking a pause, slowly & Steadily would build greater capacity of the Intellect to dissect the information rationally eventually leading to balanced mind.

Lastly conviction is the start of the "Identity" process, its most difficult phase to reverse where it become highly impossible for one to accept alternative opinions or beliefs. It is important to understand that all the thought, opinion, belief and conviction need not necessarily be the reality or truth itself. "Identity" plays a very signification role in ones own personal development, well being, wealth, success, unity , larger human cause, economics, countries development, world as a whole and lot more. On other side "Identity" also has negative aspects too which at certain threshold can create unnecessary arguments, even wars, exploit nature, bring havoc, where in certain rational thinking might be compromised in the name of survival and future. A perfectly wealthy, hardworking, humane individual could one day assume the identity of a "Powerful" and do what ever havoc to the world, history has seen thousands of such individuals at every point in time.

So is De-identifying a Solution & is it a practical approach? May not be for almost all sane human beings, Identity is required for survival, progress, achievement, growth and reproduction to continue the life cycle and for overall human existence. In the last few centuries, "Identifying" with a political ideologies or religion or Nation, has resulted in vast destruction of nature, exploitation of humans, animals and nature at large, but at the same time there have been significant progress in understanding the outside world, science, technology, globalization, wealth, health etc..

Although there are multiple techniques in Yoga or Buddhist techniques to achieve the state devoid of any Identity, absolutely no thoughts stage called "Samadhi", these techniques require prolonged years of practicing the techniques. The next great leap forward in humans would probably be to understand the self within, a collective human progress as to when to use "Identity" and when not to use. If achieved in this 21st century would mean having a well formed overall human consciousness and a perfect gift to the later generations.