01
The Deep Sleep Argument
When the mind, personal identity, and relationships vanish in dreamless sleep, we do not experience unaliveness. Something remains to witness the absence of objects, showing that awareness is prior to the mind.
Scope of Investigation
Shivom's Inquiry represents a deeply subjective, modern phenomenological approach to the limits of identity. It uses thought experiments—such as congenital sensory impairment and total amnesia—to question whether a personality or intellect can exist without sensory data, isolating what remains in their absolute absence.
Diversified Subroots
02
Congenital Sensory Impairment
If a person were born completely blind, deaf, and senseless, no intellect or personality could form because there would be no sensory data to learn from. Yet, would they be dead? What is the core that remains?
03
The 'I' in the Womb
Exploring the bare sense of existence in the womb, prior to the development of language, memory, and the subject-object division. It points to a unified, pre-egoic feeling of being.
04
The Memory Loss Argument
If all personal memories, language, and social roles were completely stripped away, who or what remains? It deconstructs the narrative self to expose the silent Witness.
Recommended Readings
Prior to ConsciousnessNisargadatta Maharaj
Subjectivity and SelfhoodDan Zahavi