One moment I'm happy, the next I'm angry. When I think, "I am happy," or "I am angry," I identify myself with either a happy one or an angry one. We can say that a person considers themselves something they are not. Misidentification (tādātmya bhrānti). In tādātmyam, "this" is perceived and confused with that (ātma, self). The innate misidentification is with body and mind. Wrong.

In reality, I am identical (tādātmya) with brahman, consciousness.

So we can say: jīva brahma tādātmya: The living being (jīva) is identical with brahman, consciousness. Hence, unity, non-duality.

People want to assume an identity because they want to be something, and feel that they don't know what they are. This isn't so strange. Abhimāna, a kind of self-awareness, a sense of self, shines through our entire being. That we all know, and that points directly to our true identity sat, cit ananda. Superimposed on that is the figure with all its identities. Hence the search.

It's actually quite funny what people don't do, especially these days with the identity business. An example: I recently looked at three faces, and you could see that they'd been significantly altered. I thought: Are these people who've had plastic surgery because they want to identify with something they find more beautiful? Or are these faces that perhaps initiated gendered identity changes? I couldn't guess, and I wondered if they were just winging it or making very conscious choices in their identity changes. And whether they had a vision of what they wanted to be, or were just experimenting, hoping for the right identity or something. But as I just said, that's how it goes for most people. I'm happy, I'm unhappy, what am I? Now I want to be this, now I want to be that.

And one thing is certain, an older person can no longer Identifying with the youth they used to be, even though people try to do that: "I'm still a child inside," you hear.

We don't have control. The law of karma is impeccable. Even on a relative, empirical level, it is what it is, no matter how much we'd like to be something else. I wasn't born this way for nothing.

Tādātmya is often synonymous with sāyujya, although sāyujya refers to connecting (yujya) with the divine, which isn't an act of connecting, because the connection is already fully established.