[jimhelm]

from this book

The seventeenthcentury
philosopher Descartes, regarded as the
founder of modern philosophy, gave expression to this primary error with his
famous dictum (which he saw as primary truth): “I think, therefore I am.”
This was the answer he found to the question “Is there anything I can know
with absolute certainty?” He realized that the fact that he was always
thinking was beyond doubt, and so he equated thinking with Being, that is to
say, identity – I am – with thinking. Instead of the ultimate truth, he had
found the root of the ego, but he didn't know that.
It took almost three hundred years before another famous philosopher
saw something in that statement that Descartes, as well as everybody else,
had overlooked. His name was JeanPaul
Sartre. He looked at Descartes's
statement “I think, therefore I am” very deeply and suddenly realized, in his
own words, “The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that
thinks.” What did he mean by that? When you are aware that you are
thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of
consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am.” If there were
nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking. You
would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming. You would be as
identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the
dream.