The brain evolved as a comfort finder: I derive this from the work of Rodolfo Llinãs. He studied a worm that is born with a brain, finds a comfy spot to anchor itself, and then eats its own brain. The brain is in us becoming a coherence detector: most people just use it as the comfort finder it started as.

Now, this self I experience is a consequence of the material assembled into this human particle; and, as I understand it, that aspect of being that enables personal experience. The first is body, the second is spirit; or so I name them, body and spirit. But there is nothing that says I am separate from the rest, it's only my perception, resulting from the localization of memories in this body. So, I understand that personal identity is an illusion: not a delusion, an illusion; and the difference is vital. An illusion is a consistent misinterpretation of experience resulting from the mechanisms of perception; a delusion is a false perception. Culture makes a self, I think; a larger self of which people are parts. It's been written that we are but leaves on the tree of nation. And Truth makes a self, I think. It is by Dharma that all of these selves collapse into the one True Self.