We are born as physical bodies, then gain an
awareness of what we are lacking. All self-conscious awareness is a synthesis
of these feeling of inadequacy and occasionally, of feeling fulfilled. Theres hunger, the desire to breathe, thirst, sex, maybe an instinct to kill. Having never experienced any of these desires, our bodies would have no
awareness of themselves as such.---- Since self-
consciousness is the same quality that religions call the soul, and its existence is precipitated by the birth of a physical body, it is reasonable to say that when the physical body dies, awareness that is connected and a product of it dies too. The German existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche meant this when he wrote that self-consciousness (identical to what is called soul), is casused by an internalization of instinct.