The meaning of “I”

Please bear with me on this blog entry.  It might very well make your head hurt.  But it’s worth the time and energy.  Get a bottle of aspirin ready if you need to.

What is the self?  Who am I?  Or perhaps more profoundly, is there even an “I?”  Have you ever reflected on what it is that makes you, you?

René Descartes famously put forth, “Cogito ergo sum.”  “I think, therefore I am.”  Or more literally, “I am thinking, therefore I exist.”  Let’s consider this statement more deeply.  Stop for a moment.  Start thinking.  Think about anything.  A stream of consciousness is occurring.  Now go inside your head and observe this thinking.  Watch it happen.  Consider the thoughts that spontaneously stream through the mind.  Somehow you can actually observe this process.   So, if you can observe the thinking that is taking place, are you the thinker or the observer?  You must be the observer.  Your self is something higher, above, or outside the thoughts.  The self must be something more because it has an awareness, or knowledge, that is not contained within the thoughts.  Therefore, I am not my thoughts.

But if I am not the thinker, then what or who is creating the constant dialogue inside my head?  Perhaps thoughts are merely chemical reactions and molecular movement within some physical presence (the body) that is processing sensory stimuli.  It is the body that is creating thoughts through its experience.  My thoughts are of my body.

OK, now let’s shut off the external stimulus.  Imagine your body has absolutely no sensory data.  None.  Will the mind continue thinking?  Yes, because the mind has created knowledge obtained from previous sensory inputs and experiences.  But is this knowledge entirely dependent upon this sensory input, or can it exist in the absence of any prior physical experience?

Suppose you suddenly lost all senses: sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, etc.  Would you continue to think?  Yes, because your body would still have previous data upon which to process as thoughts.  Great, that seems to make sense.  But imagine a baby is born without any physical senses and can therefore not receive any external data?  Does this child think?  How can it think, if it has no information to process?  If the child can not think, does the child have a self?  It must because the child does exist.  It follows there must be something of the self that is not of the physical world, something separate from the body.  I am not my body either.

I am more than my body and my thoughts.

That’s enough for now…take your aspirin…more on this topic later.