“What Am I — Qualia, Brahman, Neurons, or just Nothing?”
Deconstructing the narrative self by studying complete amnesia, showing that when personal biography, concepts, and language are wiped clean, the mind reverts to its baseline womb-like state, leaving raw conscious being untarnished.
If you were to suffer total memory loss tomorrow, you would forget your name, history, concepts, and even language. All stories that made 'Shivom' would vanish instantly. Yet, would you be dead? The immediate sense of being and experiencing would remain completely alive, demonstrating that consciousness is prior to memory.
Without memory and concepts, the intellect cannot run. You are like a newborn with a blank slate. This state is a reversion to the original baseline state of the womb—the state that allowed for 'Shivom' as an identity to be formed. It demonstrates that the biographical identity was never a fundamental reality.
What remains when all narrative labels, past associations, and future projections are taken away is pure, contentless presence—the silent Witness. This presence does not need a name, history, or memory to exist; it is the ever-present, self-luminous ground of being.
Recommended research papers, debates, and lectures