The Experiencing Self

Abstract

First of all, I am going to talk to you generally about the title for this lecture. And while I do this, I want each one of you to participate with me in an effort to grasp the meaning of what I am trying to say and to apply it to yourself. If you do this with me, we shall have a kind of dialogue in thought, so that my thoughts communicated in language will give you thoughts that parallel mine. You become then not my audience, but my collaborators in this conjoint effort to reach some understanding of what is central to our being, namely the experiencing self. An attempt will be made to see how far we can answer the question : What am I? This is a question which each of us can ask ourselves, and which is quite unashamedly a looking within ourselves—an attitude which is called subjective and introspective.

This is the text of a lecture delivered to a large student audience on January 12, 1968, at Gustaphus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota. This Fourth Annual Nobel Conference was on the theme, “The Uniqueness of Man.” The original lecture form of the text has been retained, and the text is almost identical with the Conference publication (Eccles, 1969 a).