I finished my forty hour fast this morning and it was one of the harder ones because middle of the night, at 2AM, I got up because of how hungry I was, and sleep did not come till 5AM.

So, I had a lot of time to think. Times of extremes, like extreme hunger, are good to test theories.

A theory that I have been testing one and off over the last two years is of the unchanging observer posited by Advaita Vedanta.

The claim being that my true self is the unchanging observer forever unaffected, unattached with what happens in the world, just simply observing it all.

There is a song, Come Together, by Nox Vahn and Marsh that features an audio clip by Alan Watts – what Watts says has always intrigued me and lately is seeming like, dare I say it, the truth – “… and soon you will find that the so-called outside world and the so-called inside world, come together. They are a happening, and everything is simply, a happening. And all you’re doing, is watching it“.

observer | əbˈzəːvə |
noun
a person who watches or notices something

The clock glowed red: 2.15AM. My stomach growled, my mind thought about delicious food, my head hurt because of empty glycogen stores and my ear hurt too (from what I now think is a cold coming up).

Through the coming and going of all these sensations, I started understanding that, yes, in all of this change there is a one that remains unchanged.

The one I call me.

My body – That time feeling hungry, and now satiated from a nice breakfast. Once small and weak, now big and strong, later to be frail and old. Constantly changing. Am I this body? No, that is changing I am not.

My mind with its intellectual capability – Once knowing the myriad provisions and technicalities of the Indian Income Tax act but not how to change a diaper, now can confidently change a diaper but not calculate taxes. Am I my intellect? No, it is changing, I am not.

If a dementia patient forgets everything about themselves and their family – hard drive wiped clean – are they somehow not there any more?

The mind with its memories – Friends who names and faces long forgoten, I will pass them by on the street without the faintest recollection that we used to play together once. Am I my memories? No, they are changing I am not.

With the passing of emotions I should pass as well, yet here I am.

The mind with its emotions – Irritated in the night, now at peace. Am I my emotions? No, they are changing, I am not.

The mind and its personality – Once believing that time in leisure was time well spent and now thinking that time is best spent in creating, chasing your passion. Am I my personality? No, that is changing, I am not.

The mind with its ego – Right now drawing a nice line between “me” and “not me”, “mine” and “not mine”. But when I go to sleep I have no idea who I am, the ego shuts down – if I am my ego, do I die each night? And then am I reborn in the morning? But I don’t feel that way, I feel that I went to sleep and I woke up in the morning, and in the middle I may not remember anything but I was there nonetheless. Am I my ego? No, that is changing, I am not.

A new born, if you were to ask them, assuming they could comprehend and reply: “Do you feel? Are you aware of something?”. They’d say, “Yes”.

But if you ask them “Who are you?”, they won’t reply, because there is no ego.

The date of your birth, who exactly was born? Not you as your ego, that came later after a few years. So, should you say you were actually born three/four years later than what it says on your birth certificate?

The birth certificate, then, is for the body. The body was released from the manufacturing facility on that day. But the real driver¹ of the machine came later, right?

Or was she always there? Just that the hardware was in the process of “coming together” over the last three/four years, or indeed the last three/four years AND nine months, or the last three/four years AND nine months AND the eons prior to that.

The matter that would constritute your body and brain moment to moment has been in process of coming together to since the Big Bang.

When the right configuration or hardware is reached then the driver can take the machine for a spin.

And the date of your death, who exactly will die?

That which does not change is the real me.

Advaita Vedanta will call this the unchanging observer – the Atman.

And I think the more I think about it, the more I stay with it, the more I intuitively feel, yes, it makes sense.

Tautologically though it may be defined – in rare flashes of clarity I see that it has to be this way, it cannot be any other way if the world we feel and experience is to exist.

The observer needs to observe something, and in this body-mind complex: through sensory organs it observes this world, through nerves and brain it experiences this body, through the mind it experiences this ego, intellect, memory.

What the observer observes depends on the hardware of the organism, in humans there is much to observe, in primates not so much, in plants even less, and in death nothing.

Death or deep sleep, then, is not the absence of experience for the observer, but the experience of absence.

These worlds and universes, these bodies and minds – they come and go, but the observer remains.

This is not the last time I’ll be writing about the subject.

–

Aviral Prakash