What are you? Not “who”, but what.

The Materialist Point of View
You are a human being. You consist of two parts: the “human” and the “being.” The human part is your body and your human identity. However, that is a very minor part of all that you are. The “highest” part of you is not your body, but that which experiences your body, your Being. Your BEing includes your mind and your emotions, and which controls them, your will and consciousness.

When you say “I”, what exactly are you referring to? What is the essence of you? Are you a body? Are you a mind? Are you emotion? Are you consciousness? Where do we draw the line between “I” and “my”?—between what you are and what you have?

To find out, let’s start with the body and see if you are a body. Let’s take away parts of the body and see when the essence of you is lessened or no longer there. Imagine that you lose a finger. Is your “I”, now lessened? Are you less a person? Is your sense of self less? I think you will agree that your sense of self, and what and who you are remains unchanged.

Now imagine that you lose a leg or even both legs. Are you still there? Have you lost any part of the real you? Yes, you have a loss of physical function, but are you as a person, a character, a personality in any way lessened? Is your will lessened? Is your consciousness lessened? Is your mind and intelligence less?

Is a quadriplegic amputee (a person who is just a trunk, no arms, no legs) any less of a person for that? Is he less conscious, less willful, less intelligent for that? Is a person who can’t see, or hear any less a human being for that? Was Helen Keller less of a person than you with all your senses intact?

If you had no body at all, but were still a consciousness, had all your memories, could still think and feel emotions, and could communicate telepathically with other minds, would you say that you still exist? Without a body, you might not be able to perceive or manipulate this physical universe, but would you still exist? I can tell you from my own experience that you continue to exist. I have been out of the body and out of the physical universe many times. For me it is very clear that I am a non-physical being temporarily residing in a physical body that I use to operate in a physical universe.

On the other side, we sometimes have a healthy body without the essence, without will and consciousness, as in a coma and in deep sleep. What good is such a body without that essence? If there is a person there, why do we call a body in coma a “vegetable”?

What is the essence of a human being, of you: your body or your will and consciousness – that obviously do not depend on the body.

We can conclude that you are not your body. You HAVE a body; you are not your body.

Let’s take away the body entirely and see what remains of you. We can identify four experiences or phenomena that do not depend on the body: emotion, thought, will and consciousness. These are all non-physical phenomena. They cannot be detected, weighed or measured with physical instruments.

Thus the essence of you is non-physical. A non-physical life entity is the definition of “spirit”.

These 4 phenomena divide very neatly into 2 areas: will and consciousness, and thought and emotion. Let’s examine each one.

Are you your emotions? Obviously, no. First of all, you don’t always have an emotion; much of the time you are emotionally neutral. Secondly, you don’t say “I-Emotions” as if you and emotions are the same thing. You say “my emotions” which shows a clear distinction between you and emotions. There is that which possesses: “I” —and that which is possessed: “emotions”.

You also try to control your emotions, almost as if they were wild horses. So there is a “controller” and there is that which is controlled—again, a clear separation of entities. Emotions are something that you have, energies that come and go and swirl around you, much as clouds and storms come and go across the sky. You have emotions; you are not your emotions.

So are you your thoughts? Many people do indeed think that they are their thoughts—but that is only another thought. Examining thoughts as we did emotions, we can see again that you say “my thoughts” highlighting that you make a distinction between “I” and “thoughts”. You talk of your thoughts and ideas and memories as things, as possessions, just as you do of your emotions and your clothes and your house. You say “my idea”, “my memory”, “my beliefs”. And like emotions, you try to control your thoughts, to think “good” thoughts, and avoid “bad” ones. Again, there is a “controller” and that which is controlled: two separate entities. So, in a stringent analysis, “I” is not thought. You have thoughts; you are not your thoughts.