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So although it is an extraordinary and consequential truth that we know ourselves from inside, it is an even more consequential truth that what we know is largely not material. I am not directly aware of my brain as a material object, nor of my skeleton, heart, stomach, lungs, kidneys, intestines, and all the other material things that go to make up me. Not even by an act of will can I make myself aware of most of them. Far from knowing them well, I do not know some of them at all, and have little idea how they function. I scarcely know where some of them are, still less what they look like. I am fairly sure I would be startled by the appearance of many of them, and would find the sight of them alarming, if not disgusting. A lot of people—children obviously, but many adults too—have little idea of the organs that go to make them up. In fact, the truth is that this is not what human beings think of themselves as being. I have been living in or with my body for more than eight decades now, but it has never occurred to me to think of myself as it. I own it and am in it, as a driver owns and is in a car; and in the same way what happens to it can kill me or injure me. It exerts all sorts of influences on my life, from the important to the trivial. But I am not it. At least, I have never supposed or imagined that I am.
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