Who Am I?
‘Who is it that carries this corpse around?’ - Hsu Yun
Although it is obviously central to one’s existence, it seems extraordinarily difficult to look at yourself. In fact, Watts says it is impossible – like trying to touch the tip of your finger with the same fingertip or see your own eyeball without a mirror. You are too close to yourself to see yourself.
“You can’t see your own head. You never get at it. You can’t bite your own teeth or hear your own ears. That which is the knower is never itself the object of knowledge, just as fire doesn’t burn itself.”
“There are certain truths that have to be stood on their heads before they can be noticed at all. In the ordinary way they are so simple that we fail to perceive them, and they have to be complicated in order to presented for thought and discussion.
“Our own faces are an example of this. Nothing could be more obvious and self-evident than a man’s own face. But, oddly enough, he cannot see it at all unless he introduces the complication of a mirror, which shows it to him reversed.
“If this is true of a man’s face, how much more true must it be of his innermost self, his soul, psyche, mind or whatever you like to call it? If the eyes cannot see themselves, how much less can that something which looks through the eyes see itself? The moment we try to lay hold on it, we find ourself in a maze of confusion.
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