constellation of mechanisms

"Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body - the 'me' inside me - is compelling and inescapable. This is how we interact as a social animal and judge each other's actions and deeds. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances. Rather than a single entity, the self is really a constellation of mechanisms and experiences that create the illusion of the internal you. We only emerge as a product of those around us as part of the different storylines we inhabit from the cot to the grave. It is an every changing character, created by the brain to provide a coherent interface between the multitude of internal processes and the external world demands that require different selves." 

I discovered this blurb for The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood on Amazon. It's an interesting formulation of words, representing the slow nudging of material science towards an acceptance of the universality of self, the logical outcome of an acceptance of the social self  - which has enormous repercussion for notions of individual free will. It's nowhere near an acceptance of the transcendent self, the formless absolute of spiritual understanding, but it prompts questions about what constitutes sentience and consciousness that should challenge the notion that we are individual beings operating separately in space, somehow independent of the process that formed us. 

pic from here