Persian Sufi saint-poet wrote: “I came to the Beloved and beheld the door was closed; I knocked at the door and from inside a voice came, ‘Who is there?’ I replied, ‘I am’. The door did not open.
A second time I came and knocked at the door and the same voice asked, ‘Who is there?’ ‘I am so-and-so.’ The door did not open.
A third time I came and the same voice asked, ‘Who is there?’ ‘I am Thyself, my Love’, and the door opened.”
Quoting this in one of his public lectures at Madras, Swami Vivekananda reminds us that our spiritual goal is to drop wrong identities and discover our true identity.
Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour at any point of time stem from our sense of who we think we are – at the conscious and subconscious levels. For most of us, our self-identity is rooted in our body, our relationships, our cultural constructs, our positive and negative life-experiences, our economic, academic, social identities and so on. Vedanta characterizes a life based on such identities as a hypnotized life which is filled with fear and endless bondage-creating activities.
Source – Vedanta Kesari editorial July 2021 Issue