Page 17 - BECOMING AWARE

- 16 -

associate yourself with your given name.

Around this time, if you were to have been sat

down in front of a mirror, you would have

pointed to your reflection and identified it as

‘me’. Or, to put it another way: you as a baby

would have become self-conscious. What was

previously a one-dimensional entity, known by

name to others but not to itself – had now

become divided into two – the fact of your

existence as a separate human being, and your

perception of that fact:

‘I’ has now begun to realise that it has a

separate, dual presence as a physical (and

therefore mortal) ‘not-I’ in the real world.

So far, so good. But as this duality - as the

child that from this time onwards answers to

its given name - you had at the very least