One of the risks when writing about spirituality is that familiar questions begin sounding simplistic through repetition. “Who am I?” may be the clearest example.

People encounter the phrase so often now that it can easily register as vague spiritual branding rather than a serious philosophical problem. Yet the more I’ve reflected on it over the years, the more I’ve come to feel that many modern discussions about mental health, identity, meaning and even politics are quietly orbiting this question without naming it directly.

Part of the reason I emphasised it so strongly in Before Religion was because I wanted to move spirituality away from inherited labels and back toward direct human experience. Before someone identifies as religious, atheist, Hindu, secular, progressive or conservative, they are already having an experience of being a conscious self moving through the world. They are already dealing with desire, fear, attachment, suffering, memory and inward conflict. The question is whether we ever pause long enough to examine the structure of that experience carefully.

Modern life makes this increasingly difficult because distraction now arrives continuously. Attention is fragmented across platforms, notifications, entertainment and anxiety about performance. Under these conditions, people can spend years reacting to life without seriously observing the assumptions operating beneath those reactions. This is partly why I wrote the following passage in Before Religion:

“It is incumbent upon the individual to use their intelligence to determine the legitimacy of religious advice and its application to one’s life... Spirituality involves applying our intelligence and accepting responsibility, not giving either up.”

That paragraph mattered to me because spirituality is sometimes presented as passive acceptance rather than inquiry. But the Bhagavata repeatedly pushes against that tendency. It asks people to observe carefully. To examine consequences honestly. To notice whether material pursuits actually produce the fulfilment they promise.

I’ve always found that point psychologically interesting because human beings are remarkably good at ignoring evidence when it conflicts with desire. We repeat patterns that exhaust us, then assume the answer lies in more intensity rather than deeper reflection. A person may spend years chasing stimulation, status or validation while quietly sensing that none of it fully resolves the deeper restlessness underneath.

The difficulty is that modern culture rarely encourages sustained self-observation. We are trained to manage appearance more than awareness. Identity becomes something projected outward rather than investigated inwardly.

And this is where the question “Who am I?” becomes much more demanding than it first appears. Am I simply my thoughts? My roles? My emotional reactions? My achievements? My body? My social identity? My memories?

Most people instinctively answer yes to some combination of these things until life destabilises them somehow. Failure changes identity. Aging changes identity. Loss changes identity. Even success often changes identity unexpectedly. Eventually a person begins noticing that large parts of what they took to be solid are actually highly unstable.

This doesn’t automatically prove spiritual claims, of course. But it does create the conditions for more serious inquiry.

One of the things I was trying to do in Before Religion was create permission for that inquiry without demanding that readers adopt a particular religious identity before asking the question sincerely. In many ways, the question itself matters first. Not because labels are unimportant, but because labels can sometimes arrive too early and close inquiry down prematurely.

The older I get, the less I think spirituality begins with certainty. I think it often begins with careful observation. With noticing. With reflection. With becoming honest about the difference between distraction and fulfilment. With recognising how much of life is lived reactively. With paying attention to consciousness itself rather than only to the objects passing through it.

Perhaps that is why the question “Who am I?” has survived for so long across cultures and traditions. Not because it is easy to answer, but because human beings repeatedly discover that many other questions eventually lead back toward it.