“What Am I — Qualia, Brahman, Neurons, or just Nothing?”
Exploring the state of awareness in the womb and as a newborn, prior to the accumulation of memory, concept acquisition, and the development of the separate ego.
In the womb and in early infancy, there is no language, no memory, and no sense of a separate ego. There is only a bare, unified feeling of existence. The child has not yet separated 'self' from 'world', representing a natural, uncontracted non-dual state of presence prior to identity.
The separate ego (e.g., the identity of 'Shivom') is a learned model. It develops only as sensory experiences accumulate, memory begins to trace a story of a localized body-mind actor, and language overlays a conceptual boundary of 'me' vs 'other'. The ego is a template built on top of awareness.
By looking back at the pre-birth state, we realize that the biographical identity was never fundamental. Awareness was present before the biography began, and this original, unconditioned state remains the silent ground that allows for any identity to be formed in the first place.
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