The Self

You inside the brain

When we look at the course of evolution, wherein we have been promoted from biological machines to self-aware beings, capable of observing and dissecting the patterns of our own existence, it would almost seem as if this was the plan all along. While evolution has no goal in itself, the idea that we have been made self-aware to come to a point where we are now able to understand the true nature of what we are seems rather compelling and inspiring.

It would then follow that, considering our ingrained biological drive to understand ourselves, we would be naturally eager to make sense of and moreover adopt any new relevant scientific understanding of what we are.

The reality, however, seems to be strikingly different. Far from being a moment of jubilation, most people’s reaction upon hearing or reading about the notion that we are an ever-changing feedback loop of experience is one of apathy and absent-mindedness. They can often logically acknowledge the significance and scientific accuracy of what they’ve just discovered but still find themselves in a state of placid confusion, often wondering if this understanding is supposed to make them fundamentally rethink who they think they are or if it is just a particularly interesting insight that does not necessarily call for a change of paradigm.

Interestingly, this ineptitude to recognize the reality of our true self does not seem to be rooted in narrow-mindedness or dogmatism, but rather on a fundamental misunderstanding regarding consciousness that we are deeply conditioned with. A fallacy that most of us never verbalize or are even aware of and that sits at the heart of our misconceptions regarding our experience.

We believe there is a 'me' inside the brain. Even as you read this book, you've most likely concluded at least subconsciously that there is still a 'you' in the ever-changing feedback loop of consciousness. That while we are an unfathomably complex and rich phenomenon of continuous information processing and near infinite iteration and transmutation, that somehow at every instant and in every loop, a defining part of a single, unified self survives.

We believe this even though each second, the music, the consciousness that emerges from the grey matter mechanisms behind our eyes is different - sometimes unrecognizable so - from what it was a second before. We are never the same, not even for an instant, and yet our experience of the self, of an essential entity at the core of our existence, of an individual inhabiting a body, is so compelling, so inescapably real, that we cannot help but to succumb to its power. Sometimes we manage to get distance from it - while meditating or in those moments of complete awe -, but the feeling soon dissipates as the self triumphantly recoups and retakes our awareness, clouding once again our ability to experience ourselves for what we are.

Throughout the course of our life, we might have come to fixate on a faulty concept of what we are, on stories of a phantom that we define as the self, but we don’t have to keep perpetuating the delusion. In the next topics, we will begin by empirically defining the concept of our true self, proceed by explaining why is our experience of the self so compelling and conclude by revealing how, despite what might seem like an insurmountable feat, we can all develop an awareness where our self-image is in line with what we truly are.

Environment is part of us

As we've thoroughly explored by now, we are the end-product of what seems like infinite loops of neural processes. While, from a neuroscientific point of view, this definition is quite accurate and in line with our empirical observations, it is still nevertheless far from illustrating the grand complexity of what brings us about. To do so, which is to meticulously and scientifically define our true self, we need to consider that each manifestation of what we are is much more than a mere expression of our brain's neural activity - it is also the culmination of all the interaction that led to its emergence.

Consciousness does not emerge from the brain like a genie from a bottle. In fact, without any influence from society, in cases where children grow up in isolation, not raised by humans but among animals, the brain does not adapt to the use of language in its early phases and becomes forever incapable of speaking or even conceptually thinking in the ways we constantly do. So much of what we tend to label as intrinsic personality cannot even exist on a basic level without sufficient interaction.

Likewise, we cannot overlook the major influence that our close groups and the specific cultural setting we happen to be raised in have in defining the particular signatures of our neural activity. We will often learn values and adopt all kinds of different beliefs from our family and friends and be also susceptible to absorb cultural norms based on our gender, class or race, not to mention the many subliminal messages from social media, religion, books, and movies persuasively depicting how we should look like and behave. All of these influences leave their footprints in our nervous system, ultimately determining the kind of person that we become.

When defining the true scientific nature of what we are, we cannot, therefore, neglect our environment. By doing so, we experience a deluded disconnection. Consciousness emerges from the vast interplay of stardust becoming aware, eons of genetic mutation, thousands of generations laying the groundwork of language and culture necessary to form complex thoughts and finally, our current society's conditioning, education, social influences, and parental guidance. All elements combine to generate electrochemical fireworks inside our neurons to eventually create these instances of experience. All of it is interconnected.

There are no limits or borders in what is a part of our existence. Nothing is external. Even from a basic neurological perspective, everything takes place within our consciousness. This has been perhaps best illustrated by accounts of patients who, even after weeks (and months) of having one of their arms surgically removed, still reported experiences of pain, itches, and sensations of warm and cold in a region that was no longer there. These sensations were obviously not taking place in their actual physical body. They were instead being generated in the spatial representation of their body mapped within their brain circuits, suggesting that everything that we experience, whether that is body sensations, emotions or what we see around us, is not really happening externally but is instead a surreptitious creation of our mind.