how to get a hold of the I?

“The I that man says he is, cannot be the I, if not in living thought”

BEFORE my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world.

—Helen Keller, The World I Live In¹

How to get a hold on the I? Of course, it cannot be done because the intention behind the attempt is a vehicle of that very thing one is attempting to capture. It is possible to strike a table with the palm of one’s hand but it is not possible to strike the impulse to strike. Teeth cannot bite themselves. In the same way, it is possible to think of the “I,” or “the self,” or “the soul,” or anything at all. It is possible to think the thought of “thought” itself. But in no case can the object of perception take hold of the power by which it is apprehended as object. The thoughts always look away from their origin. Hence, Scaligero begins his notorious text:

The I that man says he is, cannot be the I, if not in living thought.²

Anything that can be perceived, ipso facto, cannot be this thing and this power by which we are perceiving and conceiving and which we are attempting to take hold of. Everywhere I turn,³ I find everything but the one thing I seek. Thoughts, currents of intentionality, rays out before me like light from the sun, but their source is always behind the eye that seeks to behold them. “Withdraw into yourself,” Plotinus counsels, “and look.”⁴ This vision cannot be got behind of. But the vector of its seeing can be retraced.⁵ The task is, however, strenuous, as attempting to counter the current of a river, or to defy the action of a centrifuge. At the slightest lapse in attention and effort, one will be cast again into the outer darkness. Still, if the task is persisted with, the I will find itself backed into a corner against which it can back no further and from which his vision emanates as light from its origin. It seems impossible to “turn” further.

But if someone is able to turn around ... he will see God and himself and the All….when he has nowhere to set himself and limit himself and determine how far he himself goes, he will stop marking himself off from all being.⁶

When the I finds nowhere further to turn, backed into a corner into which it can back no further, then it has landed “in the bosom of the Father.”⁷ “No man has seen God at any time,”⁸ because God lends the power by which we see.

No man hath seen God at any time, save the only begotten Son [who] hath declared him.⁹

No one can know the Father except the one whom he hath sent.¹⁰ “If you would know God…you must be the Son yourself.”¹¹ The I is Christ in us, but to see this, it must be this for the reason indicated above. The eye cannot see itself and neither can the I. The eye sacrifices itself to see. In the same way, must the I sacrifice everything it thinks it is including every one of its self-conceptions and theories and prejudices and everything it knows about Christianity and all other things because, in each of these things, “we see through a mirror, darkly.”¹² To be Christ, the I must “put away childish things”¹³ and die to everything that prevents it from being this. Then it can see this. Everything has been revealed, even “things hidden since the foundation of the world.”¹⁴ As the Apostle sayeth:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.¹⁵

The wedding tables have been furnished and we alone make pretenses and arguments and rationalizations and all the while remain without.¹⁶

Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

1. Helen Keller writes in The World I Live In (XI):

BEFORE my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.

My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death.
…
When I wanted anything I liked, ice cream, for instance, of which I was very fond, I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I “thought” and desired in my fingers.
…
Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of “I” and “me” and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me.

2. MASSIMO SCALIGERO: TRATTATO DEL PENSIERO VIVENTE. UNA VIA OLTRE LEFILOSOFIE OCCIDENTALI, OLTRE LO YOGA, OLTRE LO ZEN (MILAN, 1961). Translated by Mark Nazzari Willan, France 2001.

3. the Evangelist’s account of Mary in the garden (John 20):

¹¹ But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

¹² And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

¹³ And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

¹⁴ And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

¹⁵ Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

¹⁶ Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him…Master.

4. Enneads I.6:

Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that the makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you, until you see ‘Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat.’”

5. in a sort of Ascent of “Diotima’s Ladder of Love,” as in Socrates’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, or as Augustine writes in Confessions:

I asked myself why I approved of the beauty of bodies, whether celestial or terrestrial, and what justification I had for giving an unqualified judgment on mutable things, saying ‘This ought to be thus, and that ought not to be thus’. In the course of this inquiry why I made such value judgment as I was making, I found the unchangeable and authentic eternity of truth to transcend my mutable mind. And so step by step I ascended from bodies to the soul which perceives through the body, and from there to its inward force, to which bodily senses report external sensations, this being as high as the beasts go. From there again I ascended to the power of reasoning to which is to be attributed the power of judging the deliverances of the bodily senses. This power, which in myself I found to be mutable, raised itself to the level of its own intelligence, and led my thinking out of the ruts of habit. It withdrew itself from the contradictory swarms of imaginative fantasies, so as to discover the light by which it was flooded. At that point it had no hesitation in declaring that the unchangeable is preferable to the changeable, and that on this ground it can know the unchangeable, since, unless it could somehow know this, there would be no certainty in preferring it to the mutable. So in the flash of a trembling glance it attained to that which is. At that moment I saw your ‘invisible nature understood through the things which are made (Rom. 1:20).

6. Enneads VI.5.7.3-16, Eric Perl’s translation from Theophany

7. John 1:9

8. John 1:9

9. John 1:9

10. Cf. John 6:29

11. Meister Eckhart, Sermon 6. also:

The Father begets his Son like himself in eternity. “The Word was with God and God was the Word.” It was the same in the same nature. I will say more: he has begotten him in my soul. Not only is it with him and he with it alike, but he is in it. The Father begets his Son in the soul in the same way as he begets him in eternity, and not otherwise.

12. 1 Corinthians 13

13. 1 Corinthians 13

14. Matthew 13:35

15. Galatians 2:20

16. Luke 14:

¹⁶ Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:

¹⁷ And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.¹⁸ And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.

¹⁹ And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.

²⁰ And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

²¹ So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.

²² And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.

²³ And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

²⁴ For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

²⁵ And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,

²⁶ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.