Before knowing who I am, it is important to know what I am not. The Self—I—is nothing but its own self and everything else that we can see, taste, smell, touch, hear, think and experience. I plus objects of knowledge is a constant combination in existence. When the objects are negated, I alone remains.
Sri Adi Sankaracharya in the Vivekachoodamani gives an elaborate description of what is not I, so we are able to identify it first. The list is long, but the basics are simple. The body, senses, the vital airs, the limited notion of I are all changing moment to moment.
The body is born, grows, stabilises, withers and eventually gets dropped. The senses are sometimes sharp, sometimes dull, sometimes gloomy and sometimes bright. The mind is now bored, then cheerful, then brilliant, then becomes lazy and sometimes active. Even what we call I changes—I am angry, I am hungry, I am happy, I am sad, I am glad, I am bad or I am mad! All these different states of the body, energy, mind and intellect are objects of our experience. So are our feelings of joy and sorrow, heat and cold, praise and censure.
Everything that changes is not I—the Self. So what gets out in this equation? All the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space and the objects made out of it, the whole universe that is in front of us, and the three qualities of brilliance, dynamism and inertia are all not Self. In one stroke of the pen, all that we know and experience around us have been erased.
So what next? It is important to understand the play of illusion and its effects. Everything from the collective ego or individuality of each one living being up to the body is a product of the cosmic illusion called Maya. It is not the reality. Its essence is not the Self, and know that it is just a mirage in the desert promising to have water.
Why is this knowledge of illusion important? We go out into the world of objects seeking joy and we think they can fulfil us. It is like chasing a mirage to quench our thirst. It will never happen. It is necessary to know that the mirage is only fake water. The idea that happiness exists in any of the visible and invisible objects mentioned above is only fake. There is no essence, basis, reality or truth to that. The earlier we know this, the more time we will have in pursuit of truth.