There are different accounts of the Indian rope trick in circulation, but apart from minor changes in the settings and the participants, the basic trick remained the same as described below.
In the simplest version of the trick, the magician would hurl a rope into the air. The rope would not fall but stand erect. His boy assistant would climb the rope and then descend.
A more elaborate version of the trick would find the magician (or his assistant) disappearing after reaching the top of the rope, then reappearing at ground level.
The "classic" version of the trick, however, was even more detailed: the rope would seem to rise high into the skies, even disappearing from view. The boy assistant would climb the rope, and soon be lost to view. The magician would call back his boy assistant, and on hearing no response, would become furious. The magician then armed himself with a knife or sword, and he would also climb the rope and disappear in the thin air. An argument would be heard, and then human limbs would start falling on the ground, presumably cut from the assistant by the magician. When all the parts of the body, including the torso, landed on the ground, the magician would be seen climbing down from the erect rope. He would collect the limbs and put them in a basket, or simply collect all the limbs in one place and then cover them with a cape or blanket. Soon the magician’s boy assistant would appear, miraculously restored.
Descartes originally claimed that consciousness involves an immaterial soul, which observes a representation of the world in the pineal gland of the brain. Under this notion, the soul plays the role of a homunculus, a creature with self-directed will power.
Dennett says that, when the dualism is removed, what remains of Descartes' original model amounts to imagining a tiny theater in the brain where the homunculus, now physical, performs the task of observing all the sensory data projected on a screen at a particular instant, making the decisions and sending out commands. And all that is left is a Cartesian Theater. Who's driving the car?
Professor Daniel Dennett's - Lecture on consciousness.
