An Evening Discussion With a Professor: Who Am I?

Its hard for me to imagine today that of all the places on Earth and out of all the people I knew, I chose to have a serious Metaphysical discussion with a completely indifferent professor, in his cabin, in my Engineering college. I had gone to him to submit a presentation PPT file for review concerning the Linguistics course I was pursuing under him. While discussing the complicacies of La Langue and La Parole with him, I asked him, "Sir, who am I?"

Plainly, he replied, "Who do you think you are?"

I was taken aback. I was not expecting him to ask this. I took a pause and replied meekly, "This body can't be me, because it mine. These hands and legs are mine. Its organs are mine too. Then what is it that I can say is me?"

"Carry on", he replied.

Referring to the subject matter, I replied, "Perhaps this definition is not in any language I know and maybe that's why I can't comprehend this matter."

"Maybe", he said, again indifferently, "Maybe not. You are not thinking hard enough. Read some research articles about it."

Then we continued looking at the PPT and making improvements. I left after that.

 

'Heart...Brain...Mind...Soul....' I thought about them later. Heart and Brain seemed too physical. 'My Heart...My Brain...' Consciousness stems from some part of the brain I know, the Cortex and the Frontal Lobe are responsible for decisions and consciousness. Still, I believe, these physical and chemical processes in the brain are controlled by some higher order non-physical entity. So I set out to define what mind and soul are.

 

Even though I am still perturbed by the question even today, I believe there is no one answer. I am a combination of my mind and soul. More so, I am my soul because it is possible for me to control my mind to some extent and assign some function to it, it is the soul that is hard to imagine in some form and its hard to assign a function to the soul. Even when I construct some sentences using the concept of 'my soul', they feel either of the deepest connection to my inner feelings or feel entirely wrong.

 

Even if I am a bit satisfied by this thought, some bigger questions emerge. How do we explain what the mind and soul are? What is the extent of their capabilities?