In the Light of Theosophy
[This article appeared in the October 2018 issue of The Theosophical Movement. For more articles published in this excellent magazine follow this link: http://www.ultindia.org/previous_issues.html ]
When you look at your reflection in the mirror, you are aware, who it is that is looking back at you. The sense of self is unmistakable. Self-awareness is one of the biggest mysteries of the mind. How did it arise, and what is it for? Besides human beings, there are a few animals, which recognize themselves in the mirror. Self-awareness may have evolved in the brightest animals with the biggest brains. If so, then it represents peak of mental complexity – the highest form of consciousness. However, though the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror is generally taken to be an indicator of self-awareness, that idea is being challenged. For instance, developmental psychologists argue that it does not necessarily reveal an awareness of self that extends beyond the here and now.
“Many psychologists and anthropologists hold that there is a hierarchy of consciousness that corresponds with increasing brain complexity.” Animals with simple nervous system and involved in raw sensory experiences, are considered to be at the base of the hierarchy. Few minds are sophisticated enough to experience the world differently – through an introspective lens, and even these may have a limited sense of self. “Only at the peak of mental complexity do we find minds able to construct a lifelong narrative of experiences centred around an abstract concept of ‘self’ – these are the elite. This difference in the size and complexity of the brains must have been based on the differing evolutionary demands that the animal has to meet in order to survive….There is one particular demand that seems to have led to the evolution of complex brains and could also have created the conditions for a sense of self to arise. That challenge is dealing with minds of others – be they prey, competitors or other members of your social group.” To achieve this, the brain needed to evolve from being simply a thing that experiences sensation to becoming their observer.
Self-awareness may be an apparently complex phenomenon that emerges from the brain. Mind can glean the echo of billions of neurons responding to each other with electrical signals. The signals flow along different set of connections, but some paths are well trodden. In humans, the predominant connections seem to be those used to contemplate the minds of others – the same connections used to contemplate ourselves. What emerges from this is a pattern that seems constant. To you, that is your sense of self. Thus, our brain conjures up the sense of self. Self-awareness is not the pinnacle of consciousness, it is just an accidental by-product of evolution, and a figment of our minds, writes Sofia Deleniv, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford. (New Scientist, September 8, 2018)