Poppers has given a beautiful and eloquent description of our "true self" as being that which is conscious awareness, without the constraints of ego-identity. There is seeing, there is tasting, there is feeling, there is hearing, there is smelling, our true experiential awareness is who we really are?
Although seductive and difficult to argue, I want to throw a monkey wrench into this but Narkissos has beat me to it somewhat with his post.
Now who/what is observing "that which observes everything" and comes back to tell about it within the constraints of language -- if not a separate, dualistic, language-based mind?
And by calling "It" "Con-sciousness" hasn't this mind sneakingly ascribed "It" its own complex co-gnitive structure, only reversing it as a mirror image (which in this case may imply the denial of complexity, otherness, separateness, antagonism)? If slightly more subtle, is this process, in depth, any less "anthropomorphic" than the old mythmaking by which man made deities after his own image (however equally denying what he disliked in it, i.e. finitude, weakness, transience and mortality) in order to construe himself as the image of a somehow better Other?
Having a background in nursing, I have seen many patients whose cognitive function and awareness has broken down and deteriorated to a very large degree. They may have lost sense of sight, sense of smell and taste, sense of hearing and even sense of touch due to the degeneration of their nervous system/brain. Perhaps they have severe dementia and have lost all conscious awareness of reality. Perhaps they had brain damage to the language centeres of the brain and can no longer understand or use language. This is due to the actual physical deterioration of the complex cognitive structure and its delicate processes. Yet, the are still alive. They still exist. I'm not talking about patients kept alive artifically on respirators or feeding tubes. I'm referring to those who still breathe on their own without a respirator. Their physical bodies function on some level. They may swallow mush to sustain themselves while half asleep and not even tasting. Some may even be in a coma, not aware on any conscious level. So who are we when our neural and cognitive processes have broken down to such a degree that we have lost conscious awareness? We have lost all our senses that feed our experiential awareness? We are still alive. A breathing, eating, expelling, living organism.
Seeing living examples of the breakdown of the brain's processes made me question if this "conscious awareness" of all, that we experience is the true self? Is this idea of our true nature just another artificial construct of our language based mind, as Narkissos has pointed out? When we are no longer consciously aware, when we can no longer understand or use language, when we can no longer sense the world around us, yet we still exist, who are we then? What is our purpose then?
Cog
