What might it mean that “your body is inside you.” What do you make of that idea?
(It might mean that, while one is inclined to think of oneself as being within one’s body, the body being the seat of oneself, the body seeming the seat of oneself because everything one perceives seems to end there and because everything one projects seems to start there, to arise as it were from this seat; –nevertheless, maybe oneself is actually what is perceived as being oneself, that the image of oneself that others see is one’s true self. And one’s true self does not begin where one feels oneself to be –“within”– but where others see and perceive you, and where one doesn’t feel — “without”– in which case, one’s body could truly be said to be within oneself — that one’s body is within the image it projects.
[…] So: one’s image, like a TV image, like a publicity photo, would be one’s true self, and one’s body would be within that image, within it and making it possible, just like one’s anatomy is within one’s body and making the body possible. One’s body is to one’s image as one’s anatomy is to one’s body, though on reflection I’m not sure that image is quite right, that is the idea that first comes to mind when you say to me “my body’s inside me.”
But then another thought occurs to me, somewhat more obscure, which is this. I normally think of myself as being a sort of emanation of the head. Now, the head is at the top of the body, but “I” am at the top or at the surface of the head. A person looking at me would see my head, and not myself, when looking at my highest point, but I, experiencing myself, experience myself as somehow “being above the head,” as being the thing that is foremost and highest yet still only visible from that most high and foremost spot.
Now, granted that — what if I were to stop thinking of it that way? What if instead of thinking of myself as being on top of my body I were to think of my body as being within myself, that is, as being within my thoughts of myself? My body is something I think, a conception I have, and therefore within me: my body is to me, as far as I may experience it, only my conception of it, and conceptions are of course things inside me, or that I experience as such. To say it again: while I may or may not have a body, which is exterior to me, I can only have knowledge of my body through my conception of it, and conceptions occur only within me. This is an interesting idea to me, which may require further thought. It is the second thing your phrase makes me think.)
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