Lindsay asked:

I just want to know that if there is no 'me' in this world, where do my mentality and my feelings go?

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There are several possible answers to this, but whether any of them are credible to you depends very
much on what you choose to believe. You may take the hints I'm about to give you as an incitement
to follow up with some research of your own; there are few things more important than this if you have
the slightest inclination to keep prodding things for an answer to their enigma!

First, then, there is the quasi-scientific view, according to which the neurosystem, over several stages
in your growth, 'switches on' the various neurophysiological modules that give you a sense of
selfhood. When you die, these modules, the source of the energy by which you, your mentality and
your feelings are maintained, are 'switched off' and all your mentality is extinguished. The body's
matter falls apart, having reverted to the dead-matter state; but whether the psychic product of their
work, while alive, has the capacity to survive is answered in the negative by science and in the
affirmative by religion. But neither knows.

Secondly, there us the view which forms the basis of Schopenhauer's philosophy. What I've just
called 'psychic energy' is, according to him, a pervasive force in the universe. It is everywhere, but
formless: mere potential (echoes of Aristotle). This force becomes attached to matter and gives it
form as well as the power to act — something like electromagnetic gravity which we suppose to
inhere in every clump of matter. It also becomes attached to biological substances and
accommodates itself to their special nature. Organisms, being living things, on acquiring this force,
find themselves endowed with the will to live and to assert themselves. The more complex organisms,
in particular those with a nervous system and a brain, absorb more of this force and then it manifests
itself as a manifold of psychic strands, apt to generate the illusion of individuality and personality —
but (Schopenhauer maintains), it is still just the one will, that one pervasive force of which a fraction is
alive in us. Because he was a passionate (!) atheist, he doesn't have much to say about this will that
is good and comes down heavily on the side of those moralists who have always preached that
selfhood is the source of all evil in the world, even though he castigates them too, for their nave belief
in God as the source of the human will. His whole philosophy is a kind of negative imprint of Leibnitz's
conception of this world as the best of all possible worlds, for Schopenhauer doesn't mince words
about regarding the products of the will as the cause of the worstof all possible worlds!

Between these two, together with religions, the matter has been pretty well carved up; and in the last
20-odd years, there has been a huge spate of books devoted to brains and minds. But it would be too
sanguine to believe that we've made any real progress on answering something as apparently simple
as your question. All that can reasonable be said in view of our limited knowledge of mentality, is this:
it appearsto be the outcome (emergent property) of the complex organisation of neurons in the brain.
Not their quantity, but the way they are interconnected. In other primates which are occasionally
proposed as also having a mind, this appears not to be the case. This complexity and its emergent
property depend in turn on the sensitivity of the neurons themselves; for although to a microscopic
view they all look the same, studies in embryology have shown at least that neurons differ among
each other as much as all living creatures do. This again is an evolved trait, for evidently the
'program' for the manufacture and connection of these neurons is transmitted through the generations
by their genetic encryption. where your mentality and feelings disappear to when you die can only be
guessed at. It is probably not so much an unanswerable as a wrong type of question, because it
assumes that the notion of a 'self', of 'mentality' and of 'feelings' identify something 'real'. But they
may identify something that is simply 'being', i.e. a state or phase of the universe which is not
attached to objects like humans, but generatedby them.

To put it into a somewhat far-fetched metaphor: a picture by Rembrandt can be used as (a) bits of
canvas and timber suitable for burning on a cold winter's night; (b) a memento of once living people,
who lacking cameras had no other recourse to perpetuating their image than a painter's brush and
skill, (c) as a resource in, say, a computer data base, of imagery suitable for all manner of occasions,
(d) as part of the 'autobiography' of western civilisation, (e) as the spiritual record of a man and his
era, the painter laying down in coloured images whatever concept of visual truth he wished to
communicate. Now the sense of (d) and (e) in my metaphor is just the sort of criterion that cannot be
quantitively evaluated, it depends crucially on there being some mentality in the world which is
expressed in and capable of being deciphered from the clues in those pictures. But to a visitor from
Mars, (a) might be the only criterion to apply to it. What this implies is, that human mentality is not a
possession 'for keeps' or some force creeping into our skin from another dimension, but a force inside
us which, owing to certain special conditions prevailing, is transformedfrom its neutral phase of
animal consciousness into a specific 'force' of selfhood, emotional awareness, cognitive
consciousness etc. Here is 'being', but not 'existence', more or less as Heidegger taught. The 'you' in
the creative act is, literally, self-created. Necessarily it must go when your body dies. But it lies as a
potentialin every human being born, so although your specific selfhood and mentality must die along
with you, yet there is (partial) continuity of even yourself in the fact that half of your genes go into any
baby you procreate.

But this is where I must leave you to it, though I hope that something in this answer might induce you
to pursue the topic on your own. It is probably the single most fascinating course of study there is!

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney