The origin of the illusion of separateness Press enter or click to view image in full size image by svklimkin on pixabay The ‘I’ seems so obvious … and yet it is so mysterious. In the following, I will describe what it is. „The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.“ (Socrates) I couldn’t find a reasonable definition of the ‘I’ on the internet. Many are about the use of the (lowercase) letter ‘i’ for the imaginary number, ie the square root of minus 1. Others describe the linguistic use of the uppercase letter I as a subjective singular pronoun of the first person. The ‘I’ has to do with consciousness. Therefore, we must clarify consciousness first. Consciousness denotes a knowing, since the term includes the Latin word scire , meaning ‘to know’. An old English word for ‘know’ is witan , which has the root *weid- that means ‘to see.’ Thus, knowing is what someone sees — physically or mentally.…