Almode asked:

Is it possible for one to know oneself? to be aware of all the processes?

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It depends on what you mean by "know oneself". You can know yourself to a very great extent, if you
make the effort, in the sense of knowing a lot of your motivations, emotions, etc.

In the sense of knowing "all" the "processes", for example, the processes underlying your reading this
sentence, understanding the words, etc... or the processes involved in speaking the same sentence...
no, it is not possible to be aware of those processes. In fact there are enormous research programs
attempting to find what those processes are.

The situation seems to be that when you are first learning something, you are aware of a great deal,
but probably not all, of the processes that are involved. After you learn it, you lose awareness of
those processes, and in addition they change as your skills increase. Also, usually, when you learn
something like reading or walking, you are too young to be completely aware of what you're learning,
or to remember those details later.

Further, if you think about it, it would be extremely disconcerting if you had to reconstruct all the
mechanics every time you took a step, for example. So doing most things unconsciously is an
advantage which more than offsets the loss of awareness.

Steven Ravett Brown

On the whole, and without delving into great depths, it is not only possible but mandatory for each of
us to 'know' ourselves. But this 'knowing' is an incredible complex faculty, and it would be idle to say
that anyone truly understands what's involved. I've been studying the subject for 15 years now, but
the best I can report in the interim is that I have learnt only to comprehend the vast extent of the
problem, without being able to say at the same time, I can see where it ends!

We are not, however, aware of all processes. Awareness is different from being aware of processes.
Awareness is part of the process.This is one of the greatest obstacles to researching the subject of
mind and brain. And I would say that there is good reason for this enforced ignorance on our part
(and indeed part of the set-up is to keep 'us' out of it). A body is an incredibly fine-tuned aggregate of
billions of organisms; we are in a sense a huge living planet ourselves, where all these organisms
(cells, bacteria etc) ply their trade, and if we were aware of their work, we might unwittingly interfere
and cause large-scale disruption. We do this, of course, any time we take drugs; but on the whole,
this affects only the machine-like aspect of our somatic existence and usually the body has ways and
means of exercising its own control and effect compensations (or say 'thank you' if we're sick and
take drugs to assist with 'germ warfare'). Anyway, I could go on forever, but I prefer to recommend
some light, yet informative reading to you: Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fireand Damasio's The
Feeling of What Happens.These are state of the art reports on brain, body, mind and emotions, but
they are written with non-expert readers in mind, so you'll get a lot out of them, including answer to
what we can at present know about your questions.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney