OPEN SECRET : 16





Seeing

I


How can there be a 'seeing'? Surely the 'seeing' is false; the object is not over there, it is at home 'here'. I am it, it is I. How, then, can I 'see' it? There is no object there: therefore there cannot be any subject here.

All my eye! My eye and whatever lies behind it.


II


Once More


The conclusion is simple and evident. There is no one to 'see' and no 'thing' to be 'seen'; the 'seen' is the 'see-er' and the 'see-er' is the 'seen', and that is a definition of noumenon. This applies to each of the senses by means of which phenomena are cognised.

'Noumenon' has no more existence than 'phenomena' since each is merely a concept of divided 'mind', itself the sixth sense, interpreter of its fellows. And all that each is is neither 'there' nor 'here' nor any 'where'.

No name, nor any description, can ever be given to what remains, for that is by definition no object, because as ultimate subjectivity it could not see itself which is therefore no 'thing' other than objectified as every 'thing', i.e., all phenomena.

Therefore 'it' is ultimate and absolute phenomenal absence and the absence of that concept of 'absence', which is absolute presence.


Note: Phenomena are noumenon objectifying itself, or Noumenon is subject objectifying itself as phenomena.



(© HKU Press, 1965)
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