What are we?

Q: If everything comes from outside, then what are we? What belongs to us?

In one sense nothing belongs to us. The physical is made up, you may say, of various predispositions: certain energies due to heredity, your past lives (the sum of energies of the past) and what you have acquired in this life. These are ready to act under favourable conditions, under the pressure of Nature, universal Nature which gives the sense of “I”, “I am doing everything.” This “I” and “mine” have no truth in the ordinary sense.

–  Sri Aurobindo