Philosophy of Self-awareness

Knowing one’s self is knowing oneself and knowing oneself is delving deep into one’s self. But that depth is so elusive and far-fetching to our cognitive selves that we feel like getting lost into its deceptive subtleties. Deceptive and subtle it is, we are drawn and drowned into that depth as if our élan vital is camouflaged in its web of meandering synapses, the impulses of which remain firmly grounded even without our knowing till the last breath of our life. We realise it and we realise it not. It is very much there in us, yet it seems like we do not have that optimum capacity to look intently at our very selves to be aware of our selves. The quest of this awareness is actually realised if we can measure our life in spiritual dimension albeit in a prophetical manner by harkening our inner voices as if by emptying our mind of the worldly knowledge and, on the other hand, in equal measure it has more to do with our beings of existence.

So, what is ‘self’ as such? Is it worthwhile to drag it into the quagmire of interdisciplinary perceptions? Had it been so easy a meat to be cognisable like other knowledge-objects, we could dissect it in our circle of reasons in a way that we objectify things of phenomenon. Our rational beings fail here to categorise it in a fulcrum of science. As it is not cognisably perceptible in our senses, we have to look back elsewhere in the domain of metaphysics to get its downside upwards by some metaphorical semblances. Otherwise, there is no chance to avail of its metaphysical nuances – a feeling of sorts that inheres in our very essences of life, a generic feeling that tends to be transient and tends to dissociate from our beings of existence. And as we exist in this material world, our material existence cuts across this antithetical feeling in more of a pathological disregard.We exist but for whom or for what we exist? And lastly, where we exist? All these are of epistemological values and all converge in a unique whole of metaphysical domain. When we dissociate ourselves from our beings of worldly existence, a sense of aloofness drags us into that unique whole – a transient feeling that transcends us could be metamorphosed into the realm of our so-called ‘self’ in a way that is more formidably guided towards the centre of gravity of our beings and existence. At those decisive moments of transcendence, we feel like possessed of some oracular divinity, I-ness of our beings tends to loom like a silver streak as if the subdued consciousness of our beings is out to see the light of wisdom and to say yes to our self’s potential. That potentiality apart, the evolution of ‘I-ness’ is historically more important than the technological evolution of mankind.Erich Fromm has said rightly that "In the development of human race the degree to which man is aware of himself as a separate self depends on the extent to which he has emerged from the clan and the extent to which the process of individuation has developed." (Sane Society) Through the evolution of developed society and civilization from ‘We-ness’ to ‘I-ness’ extends over the spiritualisation process of feeling being in oneness with oneself or a feeling a sense of being revealed to onself – without the development of societal state, that could happen in remote possibility. As man learns to ask himself and doubt about the physical reality of his existence in metaphysical inversion or perversion, inversion of being to becoming one unique whole of selfness – as if man is born to be in perpetual quest of knowing himself vis-à-vis others around him.In relation to others or in relation to oneness confronting otherness, the individuation of man is the formal understanding and assertion that every one exists as an individual whole in unique leitmotif purporting to be a separate identity epistemologically so far as his potential integrity is concerned. This awareness of identity of self is dislocated ("non-positional" as Sartre’s version) from the point of view of otherness in particular categorisation of self-consciousness construed to be self-awareness, a preoccupation with oneness with oneself. This feeling of uniqueness is largely a function of perception and observation tantamount to getting to the height of enlightenment (Tao Tzu). That is, when one’s self-consciousness gets the better of surrounding hangovers, one is poised to discover himself as an enlightened being preoccupied with soul-searching quest for his inhering potentiality which remains dwarfed while seeing the world from others’ points of views.Moreover, the evolution of human beings is just not the idea of human beings evolved as Machiavellian Primates who are physically positioned in the material world with the burning desires of worldly weal and woes, rather it is that humans are the most evolved in gradual progression from the world of thinking and feeling to a heightened world of spiritual dimension where selfishness is primordially sacrificed at the expense of selfness. This dichotomy of the self is a mighty sensation. Turning back to Erich Fromm again we get that idea when he says that as long as man remains rooted incestuously in nature and the human world, he is blocked from developing individually and becomes a helpless prey of nature never feeling one with her inasmuch as his consciousness begins when he happens to detach his self from the surrounding environment.

That detachment, so to say, is a firm step towards gaining his independence as a progenitor of human evolution of selfness. Socrates too believed in abandoning everything else in persuasion of the enlightenment of the soul in an empire reigned by the prophets of self-knowledge and his ‘knowing thyself’ is targeted towards absolving oneself of the ghostly soul. Soul actually lies in the parameters of the phenomenology of spirits whereas ghostly soul never exists when the bodily encumbrance is transcended through spiritual knowledge of the self. Selfness is as such the awareness of one’s spirit with its introspective and intuitive assertion of the self. H. S. Sullivan says that lack of this is a pathological phenomenon by which one is submerged into the abyss of nothingness, a sense of void where in dwell the modern man’s anxiety and conflicting identities and thus losing his fulcrum of independence.

So, what am I? The answer is I am what I am because of my liberatory feelings of selfness and I know I have discovered my self and that is why I know what I am. When one knows himself, he knows the summum bonum of his self. One’s selfness first doubts of his summary judgment of mere existence, hence he thinks by investing his soulful capital to appropriate the contingency of his existence in excess of the worldly weal and woes and as it exposes itself to the extent of its potentiality, he thinks like he exists. And he exists to the potentiality of his selfness. Otherwise, he exists but does not know himself.