Part of my everyday reality is my self-awareness, the sense that I am a conscious being, that parts of my experience are “me” and parts are “not me.” But is my self-awareness an illusion? Apparently scientists are still struggling to understand consciousness, which may be nothing more than the product of complex brain functioning. As a practical matter, whatever they conclude may not make much difference in how I perceive “me” and “not me.”
Sometimes, particularly in science fiction, people play with the idea that we don’t actually exist; we are just figments of some other imagination. Yet I know with absolute certainty that I am not a figment of your imagination. You know with equal certainty that you are not a figment of my imagination. It is only slightly less certain that we are not figments of God’s imagination: I know that I can imagine God. So is it credible that life is really just a zany hall-of-mirrors game in which God imagines me imagining God imagining me imagining God, etc.?
Sometimes people seem eager to think of human beings as battlegrounds for a struggle between Good (”the blessings of the spirit”) and Evil (”the sins of the flesh”). True, the sensuous comfort of a warm cloth on my face is different from the abstract joy I feel during a beautiful sunset. But both experiences are part of me. My pleasure is not exclusive to either my body or my self-awareness, nor is my pain. I can pig out because of the sensual pleasure of eating. But I can also pig out to reward my spirit for getting through a difficult situation. Most people, I suspect, experience body and self-awareness as being inseparable. I can take imaginary journeys, but it is not as if I sense that my body has been left behind. I may be in a deep sleep, but my body can still respond. That’s not to say that my self-awareness couldn’t be separated from my body in a mystical experience or in death. But, without my body, would I recognize myself?
