(No) Every man is an island entire to himself.

The famous English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest John Donne was so very mistaken, when he notably had said, “No man is an island entire of himself”, in his poem – No man is an island.

The recent research in human brain goes to prove something starkly opposite – every human is in a solitary journey. No one is with her. She is all alone, deep in the recesses of her consciousness. One’s experience, feelings and way of comprehending the objective world out there, is very unique. This perception is based on many factors, which positions each individual in a very special, private and unique position. A human mind is mathematically incapable of positioning itself in the same context of another mind. Certainly with more and varied experiences the degree of this handicap varies. But the other’s position cannot be exactly comprehended but by being the self who is experiencing her own consciousness. 

Your own consciousness is not simply that it belongs to you, as, say, your car or your legs belong to you, by virtue of being under your control; it is that it is absolutely private. There are no doors between one consciousness and another. Everyone knows directly only of his or her own consciousness and no one else’s. One cannot fathom the exact perception of another person to the same scheme of things in the physical world. Nothing else in the world is private in the same way that conscious experience is. Everything else in the world joins up in the four dimensional space-time manifold that basic physics says is sufficient to describe the universe. But consciousness, it seems, is essentially different. Each individual’s consciousness is as much a world apart, on its own plane of existence – a universe in itself – quite different from the other.

Complemented to what I have tried to explain in my previous essay – “The Love Affair”-
http://criativ-mind.blogspot.com/2011/08/love-affair.html, it is very important for you to appreciate yet another dimension of human consciousness – its unique position – its privacy. The kaleidoscope of the love affair – the tapestry of the personal reality woven by a person, is always unique and different from the other. The point is not only about the uniqueness. But also more importantly about the inability of another mortal to even grasp that tapestry, to its entirety! 

Effectively  every human is set out in her solitary journey of existence in the limited period between her birth and death, into this world of magical illusions. What interests me further, is the deep seated aspect of humans to be social! We yearn to be understood, to be loved, to share, to care, to collaborate, and team up! Like minded people form their own circles. They group up and create things of wonder! All this is certainly delightful. But this coherence is in the meta-level. There is a deep seated solitude inside the consciousness of each of the link in the team. That solitude gives their special uniqueness – their special differentiation, which wonderfully integrates to form a complementary team – creating  a social network which is much more than just integration of the conscious units involved!

The creation looks like a sparkling collage of precious gems – each of different color and shape. And the most intriguing part is each gem is blind to the other’s true radiance. Only what is visible is the macro mesmerizing mosaic of colors giving a sense of dreamlike magic charm.

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