These things that come to us like ghostly voyeurs contain within them directable capabilities. We can move on the instinct of believing a thought that arises, yet its origin is unfamiliar to us. It may be a thought of someone in our locality, and yet we like to take ownership of the concept that whatever conscious event occurs within our consciousness must be ours, in a frantic desire to acknowledge that the thing that happened to us must have come from us or be ours in some sense.

We are fundamental cuckolds of imagination—we steal that which has not been granted to us by nature, whilst nature grants us this dilemma by giving us the option to select that which we choose. So-called, it is a tragic comedy.

Foremost, here I shall mention types of schools of thoughts that shall intrude rightfully on this topic:

1. Buddhist Anattā (Doctrine of No-Self) – Phenomenological Impermanence

• The self is a heuristic fiction generated by the impermanent aggregation of the five skandhas (form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness). Subjectivity is a flux rather than an ontological unity.
• Key figures: Gautama Buddha, Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu.

2. Advaita Vedanta – Metaphysical Non-Dualism

• The empirical self (jīva) is mithyā (illusory), and true identity is subsumed under the singular reality of Brahman. The illusion of selfhood arises from avidyā (ignorance) and māyā (cosmic illusion).
• Key figures: Adi Shankara, Gaudapada.

3. Humean Bundle Theory – Empiricist Skepticism of Personal Identity

• The self is not a substantive entity but a diachronic association of perceptions, lacking ontological grounding. There is no "self" apart from the transient concatenation of mental events.
• Key figures: David Hume, Parfit (modern extension).

4. Sartrean Existentialism – The Self as a Perpetual Nihilation

• The self is an intentional object of consciousness, continuously negating and reconstituting itself. Sartre's pre-reflective cogito reveals a structure where the self is in perpetual ek-stasis, never fully present to itself.
• Key figures: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir.

5. Poststructuralist & Psychoanalytic Anti-Essentialism – The Self as a Textual Construct

• The self is a semiotic construct, produced by discourse, différance, and interpellation rather than intrinsic essence. For Lacan, the ego is an alienating misrecognition in the Imaginary order. For Foucault, the subject is a product of disciplinary regimes and biopower.
• Key figures: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan.

6. Cognitive Science & Neurophilosophy – The Self as a Computational Epiphenomenon

• The self-model is an emergent property of predictive coding and Bayesian inference, reducible to neural representations and sensorimotor contingencies. Metzinger argues for a phenomenal self-model (PSM) that creates the illusion of an integrated subject.
• Key figures: Thomas Metzinger, Daniel Dennett, Antonio Damasio.

7. Phenomenological Anti-Substantialism – The Self as a Dynamic Gestalt

• The self is pre-personal and enactive, arising from embodied intentionality rather than an inner Cartesian theatre. Varela and Merleau-Ponty frame the self as operative intentionality, always constituted in relation to a lived, intersubjective horizon.
• Key figures: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson.

8. Eliminative Materialism – The Self as a Folk-Psychological Artifact

• The self is a theoretical posit akin to phlogiston or caloric, destined for ontological elimination. Conscious experience itself may be an illusion reducible to subpersonal neural mechanisms devoid of an enduring agent.
• Key figures: Paul Churchland, Patricia Churchland, Alex Rosenberg.

Each of these perspectives denies the self in a distinct way—either through metaphysical negation, empirical skepticism, deconstructive analysis, or neuroscientific dissolution.

I would like to illustrate the nature of this so-called individual ownership and how its presence, along with our instinct to own our conscious contents, is really another method of affirming some relevant, urging instinct to claim a sort of self-ownership over something that we desire—be it self-reflection, reason, cognitive flow, or even self-consciousness—all of which need not be there whilst also being there for the security of our own relationship with our inner life. Yet, despite this necessity, we still face some agitated turmoil with the first declaration we impose on these micro-instincts as they emerge.

It must be known to the adult that thoughts are like a river—you may choose and catch the right fish instead of the wrong one. For the thinker, though, we know all thoughts to hold some sort of interest.

However, let us consider the claims that resonate with these given schools. If you can get yourself into a meditative state whereby you allow your full conscious contents to simply happen, you will find dialogues and monologues that you know are not suited to you as an individual. Perhaps you may find that these thoughts would suit another character instead of yourself, and still, we must claim ownership despite not understanding the nature of these ghouls of consciousness.

There is a fine line in noticing which thoughts are truly yours, so to speak, and which are not. In solitary moments, total solitary presence secures the possible witnessing of these strange and alien dialogues that occur within us.

Some thoughts, if followed down, may lead to a deeper understanding of yourself. Again, I do not mean this as a conscious act but rather as the simple allowance of these thoughts to happen spontaneously.

Beneath these surfaces lie many characters with whom these thoughts align. As we know, personality is broader than the one we intentionally live with. From the global and cultural evolution of mankind, we arrive at the topic of “past lives” and the recurring sentiment of "we’ve been here before." Here, our all-too-human stupidity steers us toward illusion, despite initially seeking something of meaning.

This topic of meaning is a diabolical one. Mainstream alignment with the aforementioned ideas can allow for—and through infiltration, maintain—the ability to pick up thoughts that may belong to those around us, perhaps even to our local village civilians. Yet the ownership of these externally prepared faculties is a ridicule to the self.

I truly believe that the thoughts we experience are a collective product of every social conversation our psyche has endured—listening, gathering key components, and following indications from the speaker’s personality through rational and logical reasoning. In this process, I, or we as listeners, inevitably acquire fragments of another’s soul and life.

Some thoughts, of course, we can claim as our own, particularly those tied to events that happen strictly to us. But there is always the lurking illusion of following a path already taken by someone else who has experienced the same event. Deciding what is authentically our own decision becomes yet another problem, as the origin of this intuition lies beyond articulation.

Therefore, we are infinitely deluded by our own reason. For at its foundation, reason itself is a delusion to begin with.

This part of us that listens, even while we are engaged in some other activity and seemingly disconnected from the noise of the environment, is still acquiring knowledge—be it phonetic, instrumental, linguistic, or social. As the mind hopelessly and uncontrollably wanders, it gathers these fragments, which we may later claim ownership of, though not in the present moment. If, however, we were to immediately express our vocal and sensual understandings of these microcosms of conscious experience, we would be perceived as descending into sheer madness or schizophrenia.

Thus, we find ourselves trapped within a barrier we are truly terrified of. But in terms of truth, who is to say that acknowledging and addressing these hearings is not the most genuine demonstration of acquiring truth? So to speak—publicly addressing the people within the environment, as if on a stage or in a karaoke manner, like a musician or a public speaker.

Of course, doing so would mean invading all conversations and facing the brunt of their ignorance and disgust at what they deem an immoral transgression. Yet again, this is merely an encounter with the dark side of human nature—the true side of it—as a reaction to the bare facts of what is happening to us all, infinitely and in the present

Is this not the ultimate harmonious desire we intend with our value?

The value of communicating this specific truth to one another?

Our psyches acquire these impressions, yet we fail to deliver them as intended. The barriers in place are not due to the herd, nor to the individual who is aware; rather, they arise from the very nature of consciousness itself—moving through a matrix of possibilities, where our physiology creates energetic doors that are both limited and limitless simultaneously. This leads to the dilemma of responsibility over these perceptive doors—where we place our ownership, only to disregard it further down the line when asked to "address ourselves" or "express our experience."

In essence, the proposition is that we follow instincts and thoughts that are not of our own origin. Yet, because they emerge from our own kind, they pass through as essentially ours, by virtue of their relation to the future, past, and present positions of our species. In some cases, it is both a duty and an honor to engage with such arrivals. However, we weaken this by our instinct to be individually preoccupied with our own present activity—an activity that, paradoxically, we hold in the highest regard, despite treating it as secondary.

Empaths live within this domain. They embody precisely the proposition I am laying out: their attunement to the environment is so intensely committed to searching that they sacrifice themselves for the collective, driven by obsessive compassion and an instinct to merge their well-being with another’s path through life—an impossible pursuit. This could extend even to a stranger, whom the empath "takes on" as part of their own existence.

Let us look at such evidence below for further illustration:

Split-Brain Cases & Cognitive Biases: Empirical Evidence on the Illusion of Self

1. Split-Brain Cases: The Divided Mind and Confabulation

Split-brain research provides some of the most compelling evidence that the self is not a singular, unified entity but rather a post hoc narrative constructed by the brain. These studies emerged primarily from the work of Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga in the 1960s and beyond, studying patients who had undergone a corpus callosotomy—a surgical procedure severing the corpus callosum (the structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain) to treat epilepsy.

Key Findings:

• The Interpreter Phenomenon:
  • When stimuli were presented to the right hemisphere (via the left visual field), the left hemisphere—responsible for speech—often confabulated explanations.
  • Example: If the right hemisphere was shown an image of a shovel and the left hemisphere an image of a snowy landscape, the left hemisphere, unaware of the shovel, might say "I need to shovel the snow" when asked why the subject picked the shovel.
  • This suggests that our brain constructs rationalizations for actions it doesn’t fully understand, implying that the self is largely a narrative construct rather than a singular, conscious agent.
• Dual Consciousness:
  • Some split-brain patients exhibited contradictory behaviors, with one hand buttoning a shirt while the other unbuttoned it, or one hand trying to pick an object while the other resisted.
  • This supports the idea that consciousness is not a monolithic entity but a collection of semi-independent processes.

Philosophical Implications:

• If consciousness is divided yet still functional, it challenges the idea of an indivisible, unified self.
• Daniel Dennett builds on this with his “Multiple Drafts Model,” arguing that consciousness is not a central executive but a decentralized, constantly updating process.
• Thomas Metzinger takes this further, positing that the self is a phenomenal self-model (PSM)—a representation rather than an actual agent.

2. Cognitive Biases: Systematic Distortions in Self-Perception

Cognitive biases further demonstrate that our sense of self and agency is often illusory. Below are a few biases particularly relevant to the discussion of self-ownership of thoughts and actions.

A. The Illusion of Control

• People overestimate their ability to control external events, even in random scenarios.
• Example: Gamblers often believe they can influence dice rolls by throwing harder for high numbers and softer for low numbers.
• Implication: Our brains retroactively ascribe intention to actions that may have been random or externally influenced, similar to how we claim thoughts as “ours.”

B. The Introspection Illusion

• We believe we understand the origins of our thoughts and behaviors, but in reality, we frequently construct post hoc explanations.
• Example: Subjects primed with words related to aging (old, gray, Florida) walked more slowly down a hallway, but they denied being influenced when asked.
• Implication: Much of what we think of as self-generated is actually the product of unseen external influences.

C. The Choice Blindness Effect

• People fail to notice when their own choices are altered and often rationalize the manipulated choice as if it were their original one.
• Example: In an experiment, subjects were asked to pick a face they found more attractive. When researchers covertly swapped the chosen image with another, many subjects still justified their preference for the swapped image, unaware of the change.
• Implication: We frequently confabulate justifications for decisions we never actually made, reinforcing the idea that the self is a storytelling device rather than an autonomous agent.

Empirical Data Undermining the Notion of a Unified Self

Both neuroscientific split-brain studies and psychological research on cognitive biases indicate that the self is not an indivisible essence but a fragmented, emergent phenomenon. If thoughts and decisions can arise outside our conscious awareness, and if we frequently fabricate ownership over them after the fact, then the idea that we are the autonomous creators of our inner world collapses.

Here we could suggest that the internal life is not at all autonomously pursued. Though meditation may silence this argument.

What are these ghouls that I speak of?

Notice yourself in social situations—observe the peculiarities that emerge: finishing another's sentence, acknowledging the atmosphere without words exchanged, making a decision to act despite never consciously arranging to do so. The influence we have upon one another runs far deeper than we acknowledge.

Here are some additional strange and subtle phenomena that emerge between humans in social environments:

• Collective Silence: A group falling into silence simultaneously, as if responding to an unspoken cue.
• Shared Laughter Without Explanation: Laughing together at something that wasn’t explicitly funny but was felt in the air of the moment.
• Emotional Contagion: Feeling an unexplained shift in mood because of the emotional state of someone nearby.
• Mirroring: Unconsciously adopting another’s posture, gestures, or speech patterns in conversation.
• Simultaneous Speech or Thought: Two people saying the same thing at the same time or one person verbalizing a thought the other was just about to say.
• The Unspoken Understanding: Knowing exactly what someone means with just a glance or subtle facial expression.
• Sudden Group Synchronization: A room full of people shifting their attention or actions at the exact same moment, as if responding to an unseen force.
• Unconscious Role Adoption: One person assuming a leadership role, another playing the listener, without any explicit agreement.
• The Energy Shift When Someone Enters/Exits a Room: Feeling a tangible difference in atmosphere when a specific person arrives or leaves.
• Unexpected Agreement in Decision-Making: A group converging on the same idea or decision without needing explicit discussion.
• Telepathic-Like Anticipation: Knowing what a friend or loved one is about to say before they say it, often experienced in long-term relationships.
• Social Momentum & The Inertia of Groups: Feeling compelled to stay in a social setting or continue an activity simply because everyone else is, despite having a personal desire to leave.
• Invisible Social Borders: Unspoken agreements about where people stand, sit, or move in a space, often noticed when someone disrupts the arrangement.
• Instantaneous Social Judgment: Feeling the collective approval or disapproval of a group without anyone verbalizing it.

The arrival of these phenomena indicates the imprisonment that perception perpetuates for us, in our self-understanding of what is truly at the bottom, driving this vehicle we know to be ours. Only in solitary space can you witness these conversations and patterns occurring in your mind without directing them.

And so we find ourselves in this strange entanglement, where what we claim as ours has already passed through a thousand unseen hands before reaching us. Individuality becomes a flickering hesitation in the tide, a brief pause before we are swept along once more. To notice this is to teeter on the edge of something unbearable—the realization that we are vessels for something larger, that what moves through us was never ours to begin with. And yet, we go on, instinctively claiming, instinctively forgetting, caught in the ceaseless flow of these ghostly transmissions.