Page 36 - NAMAH-Jul-2018

Notes on counselling

The ‘I-Am’ Experience

Dr. Soumitra Basu

Abstract
The ‘I-Am’ experience is an important psychotherapeutic tool. Existentialists shifted the ‘I’ from the
mental ego of Descartes to the ‘sense of being’ that was different from the ego. In the consciousness
perspective, the ‘I’ can be shifted still behind to the universal ‘I’ and finally to the True Self or Person
giving a radical view to existence.

Descartes’ famous aphorism cogito ergo philosophical nuances, one thing stands out
sum —‘I think therefore I am’, hounds the — the primacy of the human mind and its
inquisitive intellect even today though it was attribute of thinking that makes the human
antedated by Augustine’s Fallor ergo sum — being the crown of creation. ‘I’ as a unique
‘I am deceived therefore I am’. It supported human entity would lose its superiority if it
the Cartesian dualism where one could have was linked not with thinking but with sensory
doubts about the physical world but have perception or sense-linked hedonism. ‘I’ as
invincible faith on the idea that mind existed a unique entity stands out because the mind
as an entity different from the physical world can cognise, introspect, doubt, judge and
though they were casually connected. exert will-power.

A lot of controversies about the Cartesian These properties of ‘I’ are a fact of daily
dualism exists. Descartes himself proceeded existence and have helped mankind to
by doubting everything and concluded that dominate the world. What if there are other
the very act of doubting was itself an act of experiences supporting other world-views! If
consciousness. One could doubt anything one world-view can be accepted due to being
on earth but could not doubt that one had experientially perceived, another experiential
the capacity to doubt! This naturally led world-view could also be accepted.
to the position: I cannot doubt that I think;
and if I think, there must be a thinker; it At the level of the outer being or surface
thus follows that ‘I think therefore I am’ or personality , the supremacy of the mind in
cogito ergo sum (1). While not entering into the designing life is unquestionable. The problem

36