Depressingly impossible thought of the week:

We assume that every human we see around us-- our friends, family, kids, adults-- experience the same sort of self awareness and sense of existence as we do. In other words, for all 6 billion people on the planet, there's a soul in the driver's seat for each and every one of them.

And most of us also assume belief in some supreme being or beings, so even when all else fails... you at least know there's something out there bigger than you imposing some sort of reason on your existence.

But what if, in actuality, your awareness is the one and only in the entire universe? Meaning everyone else you see isn't a complex and rich personality, but rather is an empty shell that just coincidentally happens to exhibit behaviors that would seem to suggest a soul.

This is not unlike saying the entire universe as you perceive it is nothing more than a lengthy dream, only more life-like than anything else you've experienced simply because you haven't "woken up" yet. This isn't entirely unimaginable because everyone has had a dream of waking up thinking a dream was over, only to wake up again-- realizing you were having a dream within a dream.

Another way to state this idea is to say that your interaction with external events is isolated-- everyone else exists not in the same sense that you do, but rather just in the sense that your perception of the universe imposes their existence.

Could this really be the way things are? Is the universe completely populated by soulless caricatures of intelligence, and you're the only one single awareness that exists and will ever exist?

I really hope not, or it would be one lonely, lonely universe.