The Illusion of Identity, the Transparency of Self, and the Return to Essence
In modern psychology and ancient spiritual traditions, the self is not what it seems. Over the past few decades, we’ve learned that the “you” you think you are—your personality, your memories, your story—is not something you were born with but constructed over time. Yet many spiritual teachings go even further, not just exploring how the self develops, but questioning whether the self—at least in the way we usually experience it—has any ultimate reality at all.
So we ask: Who were you before you were you?
And perhaps more radically: Is there even a “who” before the self arises?
The Making of the Self
Developmental psychology shows that infants begin life not with a fully formed self, but with a fluid, undifferentiated experience of being. As Margaret Mahler describes in her separation-individuation theory, the earliest stages of life involve a kind of symbiosis with the caregiver, no distinction yet between “me” and “not-me.” Only gradually, through bodily sensation, mirrored emotion, and language, does the child form a sense of self.
Daniel Stern outlines this progression in stages: from a “sense of emergent self” to a “core self,” and eventually to a “narrative self”—the autobiographical identity we usually refer to as “me.” Antonio Damasio distinguishes between the proto-self (a basic sense of bodily coherence) and the autobiographical self (a storied, memory-based identity).
In early life, there is no “who” in the personal, reflective sense, there is experience, response, and sensation, but no central knower or defined subject.
Which leads us to the ontological question:
Is there a who without a self? Or is “who” already a product of the very structure we are trying to examine?
From Who to What
In most nondual spiritual traditions, the self is not simply a product of development—it’s a veil. In Advaita Vedanta, it is maya, illusion. In Buddhism, it is anatta, not-self. In Sufism, it is the nafs, the ego that obscures union with the Real. Even in Christian mysticism, there is often a call to “die before you die”—to surrender the self entirely to divine being.
So when Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, or A.H. Almaas invite us to ask “Who am I?” the purpose is not to locate a new identity. It is to deconstruct the entire edifice of self until only Being remains.
“Who am I?” is not a quest for more refined content.
It is a dismantling.
A peeling back.
A recursive implosion of the questioner itself.
When you ask this question deeply—over and over, not answering it but being with it, you begin to sense its hidden function: to bring the self to the edge of its nonexistence. The point is not to find the “true you.” The point is to discover that what you took as “you” is a thought, a pattern, a conditioned mirage.
And yet—something remains.
Something before the personal.
Not a who, but a what.
Not an identity, but presence.
The Transparent Self
While many traditions focus on the dissolution of self, the Diamond Approach® articulates a more nuanced possibility. According to A.H. Almaas, the self as it ordinarily exists is indeed constructed—but that doesn’t mean it must be destroyed. Instead, it can become transparent.
Transparency means the self no longer operates as a dense, defended identity. It no longer filters reality through reactivity and distortion. Instead, it allows the deeper layers of Being—what Almaas calls Essence—to manifest directly into experience.
In this view, the question, “Who am I?” leads not only to the emptiness of ego but also to the fullness of Essence. Within essence exists what Almaas refers to as the essential self—a direct, felt sense of “I” that is not built from memory or roles but emerges from presence. This is identity grounded in Being, not biography.
Further, as the self becomes transparent, it gives rise to the Personal Essence—a unique, embodied expression of Being that is individuated and inseparable from the whole. This is not the ego’s specialness, but the soul’s preciousness: a luminous sense of value and reality that is not constructed, but discovered.
From Searching to Seeing
So, what is the purpose of spiritual self-inquiry? It is not to “find yourself” in the modern therapeutic sense. It is to see through the illusion of the one doing the searching. Paradoxically, when that illusion drops, what arises is not absence but radiant immediacy.
Before the narrative self, there was this.
Before you had a name, there was experience.
Before the mind could grasp, there was Being.
The question Who am I? is a gateway. Not to a new answer, but to the end of seeking. And what it reveals is not a “who,” but a what that has never left:
still, silent, awake—
not yours,
but what you are.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach teacher, Enneagram guide, and human development student whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.