The Mystery of Self Awareness

By James Donahue

Everybody experiences a sense of “me” that is, in itself, a mystery. Even more interesting is that this self-awareness appears centered in the brain, right behind the eyes, from where we look out at the world.

That the ears are located on each side of the skull, within inches of the eyes, creates a three-dimensional reception of the sights and sounds around us. This, and the fact that the nose and mouth give us the sensations of taste and smell, puts the final touch to this sensation that we exist inside this head.

We go through our lives believing that we are the body in which we live. That we cling to this belief is perhaps one of the reasons we fear death. If we are the body we reason that we may no longer exist after the body dies.

And this, in turn, is one of the reasons religious belief systems like Christianity hold us by such a grip. It promises “life after death” because the scriptures promise that these bodies will magically rise up from the grave when we are called home by God in the end times.

This is all snake-oil being hawked by the religious teachers from their ornate soap boxes packaged in every community throughout the world. Those who learn in their lifetime the trick of leaving the body and traveling through the astral know that the only thing that glues us to our bodies is the fear of not being able to return.

The irony of this is that most people are regular out-of-body travelers when they dream. We all go flying in our sleep, and many of us do it on the job, in the classroom, or at the kitchen table when we go into the mental state we refer to as daydreaming. Chances are if we are thinking of being at some particular place in that day dream, the spirit that is us has left the body and really gone to that place.

So the unanswered question is just what is that personal awareness of ourselves that leaves the body and does this traveling? Is it our spirit? Is it the soul? How can we define and understand this self-awareness?

Whatever it is, the magical awareness is not limited just to humans. Animals have shown to also be self aware. Studies of apes, dolphins and other animals have shown that just putting marks on their bodies and then placing them before a mirror brings remarkable results. The animals will spend time studying the mark, knowing that this is something new placed on their bodies.

We had a pet housecat that was dying of old age and losing his fur. A bald spot appeared on his neck. One day we observed him standing before a floor-length mirror carefully examining that bald spot on his body. It was a sad thing to watch.

So just what is it that gives us this sense of “me?” A recent study of the Seven Planes of Existence tuned up a clue.

It seems that in the Sixth Plane, which is a library of all the laws of creation, can be found the law of illusion. And this law, while impossible for us to fully understand, is the thing that makes us believe we are in our bodies.

It seems that everything we see and every sensation we perceive during our existence on this third dimensional world is nothing more than an elaborate illusion. It is as if we are living within an elaborate hologram. Nothing is real. Because this law of illusion cannot be bent or altered, we seem to be bound to remain in this state until the body dies. It is only then that we can move on, perhaps returning to the spiritual world from where we came.