I was watching Shelly Kagan’s lectures on Death. It raised questions in my mind about who I really am.
Am I a soul? my brain? My personality?
I can feel 3 kinds of things existing inside me. First, I see my current thoughts and feelings.Then I see my memories. beliefs, attitude etc which are the building blocks of my personality.
There’s something else of course. The witness/ watcher.
Without this entity in me, I wouldn’t even be aware of my current thoughts and feelings.
I guess this is what Eckhart Tolle calls presence and other teachers call consciousness.
My first inclination is to regard this ‘watcher’ in me as the real me.
This part after all, has been the single most consistent thing that exists withing me.
My thoughts are random and often contradict each other. Same characteristics apply to my feelings. My personality on the other hand has changed at least 3 times since I have been alive. Only the watcher is untouched.
But, what differentiates my awareness with your one? We all have this awareness but isn’t it the same for all of us?
If I have a head trauma and lose the continuity of my experience, the watcher is still there.
But, my thoughts, feelings and personality will be drastically different. In that case, is it still me?
I am unable to answer that yet. I seem to feel like my awareness is me as long as there is continuity of experience. If my brain loses all of its memories then that will be the death of me. The watcher that used to identify with me will now serve someone else’s experiences.
But even that explanation sounds wrong. How can my awareness ever be someone else? If all about me is my personality then I could be extracted as data and uploaded to the cloud. But, is all that data (memories, beliefs etc) me? That doesn’t sound right!
RaihanRiad 