alanbwt on Nostr: “Ordinarily we think of self-consciousness as the subject’s awareness of itself. ...

“Ordinarily we think of self-consciousness as the subject’s awareness of itself. We would be far less confused if we saw that it is the subject-object’s awareness of itself. For the knower is what he knows in somewhat the same way as the seemingly two surfaces of the Möbius strip are one. Pushing the analogy a little further, conscious experiencing seems to be a field which, like the strip, twists back upon itself. It is not, then, that I know both other things and myself. It is rather that the total field I-know-this knows itself.”

— Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman