Our brain receives a huge number of pulses every second from all of the senses. The cerebral cortex, "going crazy" trying to compile this noise. The result of it work becomes a stream of "processed" information. Most of the information is processed on a subconscious level (which is also "subjective" in its work, as the subconscious lived and developed together with you). The mind gets already heavily distorted result, and it is only source to build your world view. But our subjective view of the world is absolutely not true.
I will not even talk about, is there the world that is perceived by our senses, or information for our consciousness is generated in some other way. I will not assume how to change the world for the mind and whether it is the same if the unconscious metamorphoses to something else. In any case, it is clear that for the universe such a thing as the smell, color, and sound, just the way to interacts with us as long as we exist. And we could accept all very different if we are having other senses.
Sometimes it seems that all the senses, the ability to remember, to experience emotions and other enjoyable capabilities of the protein existence, granted to the core of the consciousness only for its development. And the world is created so that we could cultivate and miraculously balanced on the extremes of spiritualism and materialism. But most of our existence seems not even a trick of the Supreme mind, but only a happened statistical error in the vast cold universe, where random inanimate matter, through an incredible metamorphosis had the opportunity to realize this fact. And no one is responsible for that.
The senses organs are explained as biological sensors that convert wave radiation into electrical impulses. The unconscious level can be explained as a set of pre-programmed commands, created by the life experiences and heredity to carrying out operations of cleaning and consolidation of information. But how to explain the core of consciousness that is aware of itself and makes the final choice?
Consciousness - is a multi-dimensional polyhedron, filled with curly curved mirrors (memory, reflexes), having a plurality of openings in its structure (the senses). Imagine that the light of varying intensity falls through these openings into the polyhedron, and that creates an infinite number of a mirror inside the polyhedron. Somewhere at the intersection of the light beams is born and dies "I". The very shape and form of mirrors - not constant, so the intersection of light flows constantly changing. Or consciousness - is a kind of body composed of different kinds of matter (the memory of all kinds of feelings, reflection), and as any kind of body, it has a center of gravity, the center of mass is the "I". The body is not constant, it changes the weight, shape, and composition, so the center of gravity is constantly shifting. "I" - is so small that lives as if under the laws of quantum mechanics: it is determined only at the time of observation, all the rest of it is in a "superposition" state.
Perhaps, understand, find, identify, describe, catch the "I" is impossible, since it phenomenon is not from here. In fact, any phenomenon of this world can be defined through endless range of frequencies, going to both sides of a two-dimensional scale. What if our senses, being the only sensor that converts a narrow range of frequencies to "language" comprehensible to the central nervous system, onward various sections of the central nervous system, processing, analyzing, comparing this data, converts and transmits them to the "I", which is not even here. "I" - being the generator of the primary pulse and the final recipient of all information, even have no any memory, nor any identifying features. The uniqueness of the individual is the only distortion of signal by processing the first impulse coming from the "I" in the central nervous system at all levels, the uniqueness of which is made up of the features of their formation and development.
The presented results of their attempts to explain the main question are in some way opposed to each other and both located on one side of an infinite number of options for the range.
A newborn human or persons affected by some type of dementia, have no sufficiently complex structure of internal mirrors, the light streams are scattered and do not have any center of their intersection, in the second case, the body has lost the integrity, so lost its center of mass. So, there is no the "I", and there is no one who would be able to realize it.
- Who is actually a man, one who realizes oneself "I" or the very "I".
- When a person starts / stops being those who fear the death of the "I"?
- As far as the "I" itself is constant? "I" is an event or a continuous chain?
- "I" is a set of feelings, body, habits, preferences, memory? If something of the above, or even all removed from the formula, is the "I" stay the same? What is the core of the "I"?
- The death of the "I" is a highway crossing or termination? And is there a difference between these concepts?
- Man grows, develops, studies, gets a job, a career, a family, buys expensive things, increases their social status, but all this time he was referring to his "I" but only to compare it with the generally accepted standards of "right life, "he has always acted on the instructions and templates, and never asked oneself the question of what is actually his" I ". But then, is he exist ever at all, or he was only a reflection without oneself 'I'?
Finding answers to these questions - is the destination for work of the mind.
During the searching, and attempts to explain the "I" inevitably comes to explaining the phenomenon of the "I" through death, although it is possible, that death is the cause of searching "I" as the salvation of self-consciousness from the termination of the process of self-consciousness. It is a vicious circle and the root cause is looped in itself, like everything in the universe. And so - death: the worst thing that can happen with the thinking being or intelligence that aware of itself, is the end of this process, the process of thinking. And although we do not aware ourselves every second, but only when something causes us to it, still, the realization of the full and irrevocable end of this process, as well incomprehensible to the perception, as the infinite universe. Death: no senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight, etc.), no memory (of the past, the present, the preference, of choice), but most importantly, there is no one who could understand it.
PS: Mind - the amazing phenomenon, a self-developing system able to realize an experiment above oneself. The man identifies itself permanently in the particular case of the infinity of time, space, dimension, race, society. In a single, infinitely small point of self-identifying, against the backdrop of infinite boundless "all", our existence really seems pointless, but the desire to expand this point - is the goal of intelligent life.
Memory - is our instrument and our curse. Through memory, a person is able to fully realize itself in space and in time. A person without a memory (experience) of the past, cannot think about the future i.e. will not be able to make an inner journey through time. He can live only in the present, but happy. However, our belief in a cause-and-effect link between an event in reality, is nothing more than the faith that comes from our previous experience, but we have no sufficient grounds to claim that our experience is the final reality. No one knows what the objective reality is, but subjective reality is what our brain builds based on sensory information, overlaying it to the templates, obtained during of its formation, this whole process occurs in complete physical isolation from the outside world.
There is not specific center of consciousness, the appearance of a unity is, in fact, each of these separate circuits being enabled and being expressed at one particular moment in time. All the different parts of the brain become active and inactive, interacting without a core. Mirror neurons control the “flash” of "I", through comparing the current awareness with external stereotypes. This system is essential for the coexistence of intelligent life-forms. Side effect is the creation of visibility of the individual. We cannot determine ourselves (express ourselves) without society - the system via which we can express ourselves, in other words, we really create the world we live in. Yet the illusion of the self is so strong that we don't even realize just how easy it is to change “who” we are. In a sense, all of our identities are virtual identities. If to ponder deeper, all our definitions of own "I" is virtual. We may think that the "real" we are who we are in the physical world. In fact, we've constructed an identity that we're comfortable with, it generates a perception of stability and predictability in the world and you rely upon this to wake up in the morning and get some shit done.
The theme of science fiction movies often found in of taking possession of the human body by something alien mind, resulting in the replacement of "I" of it. However, we are seeing it in real life through propaganda, brainwashing, advertising (which is essentially the same thing). Ego – initially is the virus settled in the body of a living organism. The main problem of the Ego, beyond a fear of its own nonexistence - dependence on the assessment of others. herewith, the value of assessment is based on the opposite to common sense ideals: "Relative values, more important to a human than absolute..." ("the Black Obelisk" Erich Maria Remarque); the preferential attachment mechanism (the desire to unite in groups, craving for fashion), and other cognitive traps. Only trying to abandon to associate yourselves with products of every second awareness of projection body and social status on the memory and representation of the probable future, through the observation of this process from the side – perhaps understanding the mechanism of "I".
During the process of person body development in accordance with growing up, the core of our consciousness is overgrowing by complicated neural connections based on the environment (mainly social) forms a stable reaction, habits, patterns. In this state, any external stimuli, even the most insignificant and objectively safe, capable, in accordance with current templates to repeatedly increase and send to consciousness an irritation in an attempt to get a response. Because all this complex network is not able to solve the problem without kernel intervention, it can only process in accordance with the "program" (the template). If you realize that your patterns are in fact products of the crowd and you feel ugly and closely in your own head, then you are ripe for the next stage of development and learn how to go beyond your templates: to observe the work of received mechanisms from the sidelines to find errors in their work.
Thus, occur conclude is that a person is not an individual unit, but only a part of a global network. And by all appearances, unconscious part. Why is the nature created observer? The observer is the only way for universe aware of itself. Without an observer, space and time will haven’t value and meaning. Beyond our narrow range of perception of reality, there is an infinite field of information on all sides of a multidimensional scale. So without an observer, there is no notion of the present, future or past, but only a continuous stream of waves from infinitely small to infinitely large frequencies and full of uncertain probability. For consciousness requires a network of independent processors, but not a linear sequence of complex algorithms. The same as the structure of the atom resembles the structure of the stellar system, so the neural network of our brain resembles society network. So, the question is - if the neurons of the brain are involved in the formation of our consciousness, in the formation of who's consciousness participates we as a neural network? As in the human brain, neurons accumulate, structured, form of communication, and gradually or simultaneously flashes the self-consciousness, maybe the noosphere of the planet act in the same direction - accumulate the structures psychounit in anticipation of the birth of a common consciousness.
Buddha made a big splash by claiming that there really is no such thing as “the self,” that it’s all imagined and arbitrary. He said that what we perceive to be “us” is just an attachment to a bunch of temporary objects and experiences that our brain tricks us into thinking actually represent something. Denying the integrity of an identical substance in man, Buddha does not deny the integrity of the stream of successive states, of which life is formed. Life is a continuous sequence of states, each of them depends on the preceding conditions and, in turn, generates the next state. So, the integrity of the evolution of life is based on the causal link, covering all stages of its development. Thus, the concept of the soul is replaced by the concept of continuous stream of consciousness. Because this state of consciousness inherits its characteristic features from the previous state, the past exists in the present. Memory, therefore, can be explained without admitting the existence of the soul.