Know Thyself

Shall I ask wealth or power of God, who gave
An image of himself to be my soul?
As well might swilling ocean ask a wave,
Or the starred firmament a dying coal,-----
For that which is in me lives in the whole.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Gnothi Seauton"

Much remains beyond the reach of our current sensory apparatus. The idea that we could somehow understand the entirety of what is going on in the universe seems so incredible that one might, in a more conservative mindset, call such a striving hubris. Nietzsche makes a relevant comment in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, saying that "if we could communicate with a midge we would hear that it too floats through the air with the very same pathos, feeling that it, too, contains within itself the flying center of this world." Certainly the wavelengths of sound and light that we perceive are limited to those which can be received by the eyes and ears, and interpreted by the brain, and the same could be said for the variety of sensation experienced by any organism.

Image by Abstruse Goose

 The illustrator of the above image added their own caption noting that "we are all pretty much blind and deaf." It a a rather frank manner of speaking, but it is not too far off when you consider, for instance, the immense amount of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are simply not designed to take in. We are really no different than a midge or ant in that each of us relates what we perceive to our unique and limited overall experience and memory. Yet we are capable of imagining what this different experience might seem like. For instance, even though we are not ants, with our tool-set of language we can in abstracto conceptualize the way that an ant comes to a bent flower stem and sees it as a walkway or bridge to get where it is trying to go. Yet while we may imagine and come up with words to describe imagined differences, much remains unknown.

Now, to expand this exploration beyond mere sensory perception and into deeper matters of our very thoughts, I think it would yield some insight for us turn this exploration to the modern psychological idea of the "unconscious." Many people nowadays suppose that there is a sphere of being which remains unknown and  mysterious: that part of every person which seems to operate behind his or her awareness and deciding. Alan Watts discusses this unconscious, claiming that the ancient mystic traditions understood it in terms of gods and demons. He refers to the ancient maxim to know thyself as an encouragement that  a man realize "that his being was not a simple unit but a pantheon of gods and demons." I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Hesse's Steppenwolf: "The breast and body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor five, but countless in number. Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads." I find the use of the metaphor of a texture made of many threads to be quite insightful, for if we look into the etymology of the word "context" we find it to mean a weaving (textus) together (con-). So every context in which we find ourselves or consider ourselves to be in is actually made by us, like picking and choosing a few colorful strands from the infinitude of threads, and weaving them together into the tapestry that is our life story. In this sense, life is like a work of art, and here I refer to the even older sense of "texture" which comes from the Ancient Greek "techne," meaning "art" in the sense of a craft, and from Sanskrit "taksati," meaning "fashions" or "constructs."

Watts reflects on this truly immense myriad of mystery, which we may in a religious tone call a pantheon, and says that "when people started talking about the unconscious as though it were just a repository of repressed sexuality, the occultists laughed outright, knowing that it contained far more divinities than libido, who was just a little imp dancing on the surface." The whole point of this discussion of his is to get at the point that people try to impose simple rules on themselves, aligning their lives to some sort of reasoned purpose or identity, when the truth is that there is much of what we are is mysterious and unknowable. Just as far as the expanse of the universe we cannot sense or even comprehend extends in every direction, so within the depths of consciousness there lies an unknown just as infinitely great, and just as powerful.

It is in this sense that I think comes the true force of the inscription on the arch anyone had to pass under in Ancient Greece when they went to visit the Oracle at Delphi: "γνωθι σεαυτόν" it read, (pronounced "gnothi seauton"). When one went to visit the Oracle, one was getting a communication from the gods—from beings who were supposed to be beyond our mere ability to comprehend through reason. Socrates is famously known to have said "I know one thing: that I know nothing." This is sometimes called the "Socratic paradox." The phrase is perhaps most well-known in Plato's Apology, wherein Socrates claims that when he visited the Oracle, the Oracle told him that "Socrates is the wisest in all of Athens." Socrates interprets that the Oracle must have said so because unlike most others, Socrates knows how little he truly knows, and in that rests the wisdom the Oracle spoke of. Perhaps this was merely a rhetorical device used by Socrates to encourage others to have dialogues with him, but whether it actually happened or not, the point of the story sticks.

It is from this base understanding of the limits and vastness of consciousness that we can begin to see how "God," which some may call "gods and demons," while others may call it "Tao," while still others may just call it "all of creation," rests within the moment of consciousness, where we all live now. With sharp discernment, Watts notes how "too many would-be mystics and occultists try to follow the rationalist technique of imposing a discipline upon themselves without first understanding the nature of the thing to be disciplined."

Saint Matthew said (7:15) "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." I find it is equally true to say "Take heed of thoughts in sheep's or wolf's clothing, but inwardly they are shining gods." Regarding the words inscribed on the arch at Delphi, Eckhart Tolle provides a valuable interpretation. "Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind.  Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind" (A New Earth, 186). For indeed, to be lost in the mind is to lose that expansive eternity from whence the mind is born, from whence the mind is constantly dying and being reborn.

Ah, it looks like we have arrived at another paradox. For while it would seem that we cannot bend our thoughts to comprehend the vastness of all of creation, at the same time, it turns out that all of creation is contained within our minds. How mysterious that while we conceive of the incomprehensible vastness of eternity, we also find that now is the time where we conceive of eternity. Alan Watts says of this eternity: "that infinitely small and therefore infinitely great point of time is called the present moment." How mysterious: "infinity" is a concept that denotes what is so vast we cannot in thought comprehend it, and yet we are the ones who thought of "infinity."

Inspiration and Enthusiasm

“I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music.” -Hafiz

Have you ever watched someone who is truly in love with an art, such as dance, or music, seem completely carried away by what they are doing? For them, in that moment, what they are doing is everything, and the past and future do not matter. I have known such moments, when music moves to dance like a reed in the wind, or the ocarina flute is played in a frenzy.

Arthur Schopenhauer writes of what he calls "genius," and while he thinks some people are born with a predisposition to be geniuses, he also thinks that almost anyone can potentially have a "moment of genius." The Latin word genius can refer to a type of guardian deity or spirit. Schopenhauer thinks a moment of genius is very much like a “rapture,” an old word which means "being seized and carried off." Genius, then, is not merely some kind of person—it is something that takes possession of someone, in a sense akin to the way that Ancient Greeks viewed artistic inspiration as coming from the Muse, which was a divine spirit or goddess that worked through artists. Homer began his epic poems with the phrase: "Sing, oh heavenly Muse...," invoking the divine spirit to speak through him.

The root of the word “enthusiasm” in fact comes from the Ancient Greeks. The word is constructed with the prefix “en-“ attached to “theos.” One is literally “enthused,” or filled with the spirit of the Muse or inspiring god or goddess (theos), which enters their body and acts through them. The relevance of Schopenhauer's opinion is that he characterizes the work of genius as a work done not as a means to some practical end, but as work which is an end in itself. In other words, it is not the kind of work done to fulfill some purpose, but it is work which is itself fulfilling. But then, it would seem the more appropriate word here would not be work in our usual sense, which we tend to correlate with drudgery and tasks, but rather, the work of a genius seems also like some sort of play. 

The word "inspiration"comes from "in-" + "spirit," and "spirit" comes from "spirare," which meant "to breathe." The word "inspiration" is constructed in such a way as to mean not simply breathing in, but rather a being breathed into. If we look at the oldest known root of the word "spirit," we find the Proto-Indo-European word "(s)peis-" which meant "to blow," a term which is similarly derived in the form of "pisto" which would be translated today as "to play a flute." From the idea of blowing into a flute, then, is where we get the sense of "blowing" in "inspiration." To make things even more interesting, another fact is that the oldest instruments archaeologists have discovered are flutes made from rocks, branches, or bones. It would seem that the very word "inspiration" can be traced back to the earliest forms of music.

A prehistoric bone flute. Photo by José-Manuel Benito Álvarez

 So, then, it seems that the inspired creator which we might in a broad sense call "genius" does not do work, but the divine work is done through them. The inspired creator does not so much play, but they are played. It is often said that such creations are immortal.

But how could he or she who writes now know if his or her work will become timeless as the plays of Shakespeare? How can he or she who plays now know if his or her song will be timeless as the symphonies of Mozart? As much as we may treasure and cherish the works of these geniuses and call them “timeless,” these works, too, are ephemeral. Each step in the inspired dance is over as soon as the next one begins, and the notes of a heartfelt solo may be heard by none but the player, and even if that tune is recorded and played for millions, billions to hear, it too will dissipate with the passage of time. But then, what is timeless, immortal, about an immortal work? Perhaps just that it will come again in the passing of infinite time, and every time we hear it, play it, dance it, we are out of time, and in eternity, the eternal moment, which Alan Watts calls "that infinitely small and therefore infinitely great point in time." The eternal moment—what’s that? The moment that has no past or future? But these moments, even the eternal ones, seem like they end so quickly… Ah, sometimes we have such fun we wish the moment could never end. But you see, the catch is—it will never end.