(Artificial) Consciousness..An illusion?

(Just a wee bit technical guys but fun i assure u ;) )

This is an interesting thought i jus happened to come across while re-reading one of my favorite books.Prey by michael Crichton.Its about awareness.We are all aware, U ,ME.. we are aware of what and who we are and a few lucky souls even what they must do! Now the question that troubles me an crichton too i guess, Is it possible to create artificial awareness???
I mean can u create a machine or write a program which is aware of itself? Now, by aware i mean it must be conscious of its existence and purpose as a machine or program. Take a break.

Well there is a computing concept called recursion.Recursion means making a program loop back on itself to use its steps to get a result.In simpler terms its what happens in the mirrors of the barber shop.A reflection is reflected an re reflected.But that is an extreme case which will lead to the break down of the program.

Now why am i telling u this? Consider a machine(to simplify things) whose purpose is to be aware of itself and we cal it the "awareness machine".It maybe its sole purpose or one of its purposes to be aware.Let me remind u this is just a hypothesis, an imagination.This has not yet been even conceptualized properly.
Now if this awareness machine were built, apart from being aware of "itself" would it be aware that its purpose is to be aware of itself? or will it be aware that it should be aware that its purpose is to aware of itself...do u follow it?
Here a recursion sets in which is appearantly endless...An i told u what happens to machines that fall infinitely into such recursions.It will simply break down.

But the really big question is going to blow u away!
Isnt our mind just another machine? isnt our mind a machine whose one of the purpose is to be aware?? So why doesnt our mind fall into the recursion that seems to prevent even the mere conceptualisation of aware machines??
So now the new question that arises is are we truly aware then??or are we run by a brain that creates an illusion of awareness beyond which may lay the cosmic truths.Is this what they called hiding in plain sight?
Or is this MAYA???