Most people take themselves to be a body — an entity with various organs such as the brain, heart, limbs, etc. that come together coherently to function as a whole. They consider their personality to be a combination of genetics that form the body, and the state of the brain based on whatever they have experienced and learnt throughout life. Some people add a mind into the mix, but most consider the mind to be a phenomenon of the brain and not an independent entity. Some even add a soul into the mix and consider themselves to be an embodied soul but their identification with the body still remains. This identification is so instinctive that most living beings, irrespective of where they are in the evolutionary process, take themselves to be a body and live accordingly. Most of their actions are optimized towards the well-being of their body, which includes the brain and the mind. What is the cause of this innate identification with the body?
Let’s analyze our experience to understand the cause. At any given time, our experience consists of three different types of things: sights, sounds and sensations. Sights include things we see, sounds include things we hear, and sensations include touch, taste and smell. Tastes and smells are included within sensations as they are just a special form of touch. An object touching the tongue produces a taste sensation and very tiny fragments of an object entering the nose and touching the insides of it produce a smell sensation. Moreover, both external and internal forms of touch are included within sensations i.e. sensations produced by something touching the skin externally and the sensations produced by our organs internally like joint pain, heartburn, headache, etc.
Along with the sense perceptions, the other important part of our experience is thoughts and emotions, and they are also in the form of sights, sounds and sensations. Thoughts are in the form of imaginary sights of things we are thinking about, or the imaginary sound of a commentary going on within the brain, or both. Emotions are special thoughts that are accompanied with sensations in the body. For instance, anger is a series of violent thoughts accompanied with sensations of a heated-up brain, strained muscles, palpitation, heavy breathing, etc. Love is a series of beautiful thoughts accompanied with nice sensations throughout the body. Such is the case with all emotions and, since they are accompanied with the feeling of various sensations, they are also called feelings.
So, in a nutshell, our experience is nothing but a permutation and combination of different sights, sounds and sensations, or of their absence during sleep. And out of all the objects we experience, the one and only object we get identified with is our body. The only difference between our experience of our body and the other objects, including other bodies, is that we experience the sensations of our body but not of other objects. That is to say, even though we experience the sights and sounds of many objects including our body in a similar way, we experience the sensations of only one object i.e. our body. Even when another object is touching our body, we only experience the sensations produced in our body due to the touch and not of the touching object. This fundamental difference in our experience is the cause of our identification with our body and not with anything else. Furthermore, since sensations are of two types, pleasant and unpleasant, most of our actions and reactions get optimized towards wanting to experience pleasant sensations and not wanting to experience unpleasant sensations in our body. We develop likes and dislikes towards things that are instrumental in us experiencing pleasant and unpleasant sensations, respectively. And then certain sights and sounds, including both thoughts and sense perceptions, automatically lead us to experiencing pleasant and unpleasant sensations because of the way we feel about those things based on our past experiences with them or things similar to them. As a result, we start leading a very reactive life without much control over how we feel and act, and our exclusive experience and care for the sensations of our body is the cause of all of this.
Imagine what would have happened if we had been experiencing the sensations of other bodies too. We would have gotten identified with those bodies as well. Now imagine what would have happened if we had not been experiencing the sensations of any body, not even the body we call ours. We would not have identified with anything at all and would have experienced a sense of total freedom as well as equanimity towards all. So, even though we cannot stop experiencing the sensations of the body, if we only stop caring for them so much, we can still experience the freedom and equanimity. We are currently living at the mercy of these sensations and are bound to them. We need to break free through a sense of dispassion towards the different sensations and through dedicated practice of maintaining peace and equanimity that is not disturbed by the different sensations. Pleasant sensations should not be able to excite us and unpleasant sensations should not be able to depress us. We should just be able to calmly watch them come and go. Of course, if the sensation is due to an injury or a health issue or a potential danger to the body (like the burning sensation of a fire) or a survival need (like the sensation of hunger), we can pay heed to it and do the needful, but without losing peace and equanimity.
It is actually important to note that the sensations are not a problem in themselves as they have been designed by nature for the preservation and propagation of life. Anything that is conducive to these factors generally produces a pleasant sensation otherwise it produces an unpleasant one. For instance, fresh natural food is good for the body so it has a pleasant smell and taste whereas rotten food does not, or a burn from a fire is not good for the body so it feels unpleasant whereas pouring cold water on a burn feels pleasant, and so on. Things only turn problematic when we start letting the sensations govern our actions. Instead of just using them as one of the inputs to be taken into consideration while deciding our actions diligently on the basis of what is righteous or not, we start acting and reacting primarily on the basis of what is pleasant or not without considering the ramifications. It is important to notice this behavior of ours and to break out of it.
It is also helpful to note that, of all the sensations we experience, we seem to primarily care for sensations within the head region i.e. the sensations in the brain and the surrounding muscles and tissues. If we pay close attention, we will notice that a desire or craving for a pleasant sensation like wanting to engage in some sort of sense pleasure starts with an unpleasant sensation in the brain, like a strain or a heaviness. If we are successful in fulfilling the desire, the strain is temporarily removed through the release of certain feel-good hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. The pleasant sensation of this strain-free, light and relaxed state of the brain is what we call happiness, which only lasts for a short time as it is soon replaced by the strain of another desire. We are even willing to experience unpleasant sensations in the rest of the body as long as we experience pleasant sensations in the brain, like experiencing the bitter and unpleasant taste of alcohol because it generates pleasant sensations in the brain. Sometimes unpleasant sensations in the body can be inevitable, like falling sick or getting injured, but they generally make up only a part of the problem. A bigger part of the problem is our reaction to the problem in the form of negative emotions, like worry, anxiety, irritation, etc., and the accompanying unpleasant sensations in the brain.
So how to maintain peace and equanimity through various types of sensations? The answer lies within an important observation that we are not actually identified with the body. We only get attached to the body (and other things associated with it) for the sake of the sensations, as the body is the only object in the whole universe whose sensations we experience. In fact, if it somehow becomes possible, we will gladly replace the body with a better one that can make us experience more pleasant sensations more often without any of the unpleasant sensations, which shows that we don’t particularly care for this specific body. Moreover, as long as the sensations are pleasant, or at least not unpleasant, we don’t particularly care for any specific sensation either. What we really care for is the one that is experiencing these sensations as that is what we actually are. We are none of the objects that are being experienced (including the body), we are not even the experience of these objects i.e. the various sights, sounds and sensations, but we are the experiencer of these experiences. And the only thing we care for is that the experiencer, which is what we really are, experiences pleasant sensations and does not experience unpleasant sensations.
Who or what is this experiencer? Since we seem to primarily care for the sensations in the brain region, it is easy to jump to a conclusion that the brain is the experiencer. That is what most people think anyways as the general assumption is that the brain somehow produces consciousness that enables it to know and experience things by the way of thoughts and sense perceptions. An alternate assumption is that we are an embodied individual soul which is conscious and is the experiencer. But both of these assumptions are wrong. The real experiencer is actually consciousness itself and that is what we really are. Even though consciousness experiences various sights, sounds and sensations, it is never affected by any of them and always remains unattached. Just like light reveals the clean and unclean equally without getting affected or attached to any of it, consciousness reveals the pleasant and unpleasant equally without getting affected or attached. After realizing this truth about our real nature as everpure, unattached and unchanging consciousness, the brain (or the mind) is also able to maintain peace and equanimity under different circumstances more easily because it doesn’t worry about the body so much anymore. It continues to do what is needed for the maintenance of the body, but doesn’t run amok trying to experience pleasant sensations and avoiding unpleasant sensations, thereby maintaining its peace and equanimity.
You can learn more about why the aforementioned assumptions about the experiencer being the brain or an embodied soul are wrong and what is the true nature of consciousness — the real experiencer and the real you — in the video titled “It is Impossible for the Brain to Know or Experience anything”.