Observations placeholder

From the JCS forum
I tend to have ‘plate-glass’ experiences, it seems, when I suddenly walk into a glass door and stop to recognise that I was experiencing something I’d missed previously.  This happened to me when I was about 8 years old, and was sitting on my bed looking at a glorious sunset  -- I suddenly found myself at the top of a tall, lighthouse-like tower, looking down at the circular floor a long way beneath me.  On it was a small indistinct lump of something.  Just as I thought ‘that’s me’ I found myself rushing down and entering this ‘me’. 

I looked up at the two windows at the top of the tower and thought to myself: ‘Things will never be the same again when I look at the world’ (not in so many words, but the meaning was somehow implicit in the looking). 

Then I was looking at the sunset again, and feeling very very solitary – no one else came into my thoughts at this point – only the question of ‘Why did God make this whole world for me? What does He want me to do?’  ((I was only 8).  That was a little cloud on this glorious sky lying before me.  

And I was wrong – nothing really changed for me in my everyday existence immediately.  However, this came back to me when I was questioning everything in late middle life, and I discovered that not everyone had this really strong visual reaction to the realisation of their selfhood – Galen Strawson said that most people just drift into self-consciousness without recognising it as such. Presumably they do not experience the truly awesome feeling of solitariness either.  Fortunately I was too young to worry about it then!  It’s only now that I’d like to know the physical underpinning of such experiences better......