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The Riddle of the Self

Does self-understanding lie in the search itself?

Issue 57, 10th August 2017
| Novelist and winner of the Orange First Novel prize.
1,260 words
Read time: approx. 6 mins

What is the self? How might we know it and how might we describe it? Is it wine in a bottle, to be drunk by the years (D H Lawrence, parodying philosophers)? Is it mind on one side and body on the other, discrete substances communicating somehow via the pineal gland (Descartes)? Is the mind like a computer, potentially fathomable by neuroscience? Is the self a delusion, fostered by Mother Nature in order that we survive and procreate? (Though this begs the question of who, therefore, is Mother Nature?) Furthermore, how might we understand the self from within the self?

The quest for self-knowledge recurs throughout literature, philosophy, science, theology and myth. In the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the eponymous hero leaves the city of Uruk and travels into the great wildness of life, in an attempt to understand the meaning of his life and to contend with the knowledge of death. In the Upanishads all creation originates with the emergence of the self - ‘I am!’  - and reality is the creation of mind. In the materialist tradition, this distinction is maintained and yet reversed - the tangible, unyielding world precedes and succeeds the finite self.  

Joanna Kavenna
Issue 57, 10th August 2017

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Abraham Joseph 12 August 2017

Hi Joanna, Appreciate! Almost all issues on 'self' has been covered.
This writer has the view that, similar to the smart plan behind devising the Atom, Nature must have had a similarly smart design, plan behind the dynamics of human self too! As Science doesn't believe in other kind of organizations than Physical, there is this difficulty in explaining its structure. When man has the ability to conceive that, he has a self, he can conceive its structure. He has the facultis to 'sense' its veracity too, as described at the following blog:http://thesparkleofhumanreason.blogspot.in/2016/07/sense-organs-of-man-are-they-natures.html

You might agree that, what Darwin proposed about Evolution was also basically a plan of Nature. So it is very sensible to go into details of this plan behind her planning the dynamics of human self too. As this writer have few very specific blogs on the formation and working of self, he takes the liberty to share them with you here: http://anatomyofrealities.blogspot.in/2013/08/thinking-understanding-it-as-internal.html

http://unrecognizedobjectsofthemind.blogspot.in/2017/05/the-physics-behind-birth-of-human-self-i.html

http://metaphysicsofthehumansoul.blogspot.in/2015/05/more-on-dichotomy-of-ego-and-soul.html
The present tradition of scholastic writing is, that it compiles various points from different authors, and a paper is prepared. Nothing beyond it or prior to it! It ends there! This tradition has no avenue to notice new buds of thoughts or idea in any field. So, such propositions cited above will be like unfamiliar food offered before animals; they simply sniff at them, and then reject, as they are not FAMILIAR! Knowledge simply gets STUCK at this tradition, whether philosophy or Science! It will be matter of exceptional LUCK of the author that, if it lands in the hands of a well established scholar, and if he is OPEN ENOUGH to suggest it for further studies and attention of others! We claim, knowledge field is open, but sadly, it is closed like the knowledge in the hands of any religious fanatic!!

Most sad feature is that, no author these days respond to this kind of communication! He/she simply feels, it is a challenge to the authority of existing knowledge structure!! Can you claim otherwise?Can you be different and respond to the different proposition on SELF submitted?