2. Consciousness in Sleeping and Waking States
And this is what we find: When we are awake—we need only to register what each one of us is conscious of—we look at the world around us and perceive it. And we will be able to say that when we are in the day- waking state, we cannot observe our own inner life as we do our surroundings. I have often called your attention to the fact of what a crude illusion it would be if we were to conceive of the study of anatomy as leading to observation of the inner man. Only what is external in us, though it lies beneath our skin, can be studied by material anatomy; our inner aspect cannot be studied during ordinary waking consciousness. Even what a person comes to know of himself while he is awake is the world's outer aspect, or, more exactly, that aspect of him that belongs to the external world.