Hi Rod,
You asked a great question.
"When do we become aware? we are not born aware of ourselves, so when does it happen?"
I won't prattle on again about what I just wrote to 3WD. Object relations theory and Kohut's self theory, as well as studies of early childhood by Margaret Mahler and others address this issue that you have raised.
Hameed Ali critiques the above by challenging how something (a self) can arise from nothing (or just sub atomic particles doing their thing). He takes a similar approach to that which Ken Wilber has adapted from A.N. Whitehead, that it is at the highest levels of complexity (or quality) that reality is best seen, rather than starting with the lowest, the approach that underlies most modern science, and thus causes the ruin of philosophy, as Whitehead said.
Mahler's researchers were often struck by a certain direct intensity in the gaze of even a very young child, which they (and she) had trouble in conceptualising. Either there was an experience there that included some sort of self, or it certainly appeared that way. Given the child did not yet have the maturity of nervous system to support the usual understanding of self, this was hard to describe. Ali argues that the fundamental stuff of the universe incorporates the essential self. That is, that something as complex as 'being' a self is fundamental to all 'being'. Hence a child can experience this level of being, and does not have to wait for a developmental sequence to occur to allow this to eventually emerge. Indeed, what the developmental sequence produces is what the mystics would term the 'egoic self', or self structure, which is what the developmental psychologists also study. To the mystic this is a construction of smoke and mirrors, which is built to compensate against the terrors of unmet needs, pain, loneliness, and so on, which all of us experience. This is the self that the would- be mystic struggles to undo. Hence Ali draws a distinction between the essential self and the egoic self. The mystic path is therefore a via negativa, an undoing of the early childhood construction of an egoic self, therby allowing the re-emergence of the essential self.
I don't know if this makes any sense to you, but it is a useful way for me to think about what is meant by self.
Regards
John B
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