3. MEANING, BETWEEN I AND THOU

 

The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth often in my trivial conversation with my neighbours, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.   (Emerson)

 

Something marvelous happens between people. Mere words have a tremendous effect in changing our respective worlds. Martin Buber wrote about “the ‘I-Thou’ relationship, wherein there is openness, directness, mutuality and presence; the inference taken being that when friends (old or new) truly meet and communicate, Divinity informs itself – the participating dialoguers ‘feasting’ on the miracle of their union”. Marvelous also that in ‘good’ dialogue, 95% of the conversation is new-born: as though by the act of coming together and intending to share insights, new realizations manifest from between the communicators, realizations from which the participants jointly ‘feast’. Perhaps this is why one is often compelled to speak with another – to bring out of oneself that which is within, but otherwise unknown – so that the speaker may himself know what is coming through him into realization.

 

The phenomenon of therapeutic hypnosis as pioneered by Milton Erickson and Ernest Rossi and now practiced world-wide attests to the power of focused dialogue between people to alleviate suffering and to bring about profound personal change. Further, in the area of physical pain relief, a very spartan study by John Stern and his associates (Stern, Brown, Ulett, & Sletten, 1977) compared the effectiveness of seven different pain-challenging agents -- hypnosis, acupuncture, placebo acupuncture, morphine, aspirin, diazepam, and placebo pill -- against two kinds of pain in a within-subjects design that entailed a total of 280 pain trials per subject. Analysis of the subjects’ cold-pressor pain ratings showed that hypnosis was superior to all other challenging agents, especially for those subjects who were highly hypnotizable. [Interestingly, only hypnotic analgesia was correlated with hypnotizability.] Similar findings were obtained for ischemic (suppression of blood-flow) muscle pain.

 

  

http://www.institute-shot.com/laboratory_research.htm

           

-and, as the reader may have inferred, the phenomenon of hypnosis, aka the healing-word-phenomenon occurs not just where a professional is present, but in normal conversations wherein the respective parties ‘in-form’ – that is to say – implant new forms of reality within each other. And in some manner the seer within is always vigilant and on the lookout for the new and the true. Where one is vitally interested, the necessary truth will be felt somatically. Even when a person is deeply anaesthetized, current surgical room procedures require attending staff to refrain from making negative observations as to a patient’s prognosis – even when unconscious, at some deep level the patient hears the commentary, and recovery may be affected. Now, in normal conversation, whether or not what is picked up by the unconscious can be made conscious depends on how well one can get out of the way of one’s own ego, or ideology, or preference, and truly listen. This was Erickson and Rossi’s main teaching – that to truly learn about what is being said by the other (as the precursor step in affecting another in therapeutic dialogue) it is essential to set aside oneself and one’s prejudgments – to be ‘transparent’). And thereafter the marvelous happens.

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Now, by analogy, the same thing that happens between ‘I-Thou’ occurs within one’s solitude when one thinks. Again, to quote Buber - “Plato has repeatedly called thinking a voiceless colloquy of the soul with itself. Everyone who has really thought knows that within this remarkable process there is a stage at which an ‘inner’ court is questioned and replies.” In other words, there is a normal conversation which goes on within one’s parts similar to that between two people, but further, depending on intensity and need, a deeper knowing is felt, and one’s question is answered from beyond one’s normal voice dialogue. New information – similar as to what occurs between ‘I-Thou’ when conversing with the trusted friend. Sometimes we even catch a shadow of this type of thinking -

 

- when we do look into our own eyes in the mirror we have the inescapable impression, so powerful and astonishing, that someone is looking back at us –– that experience of being looked back at sobers us immediately –– someone looks back questioningly, serious, alert and without intent to comfort; and we feel more depth in the eyes looking at us than we ordinarily sense in our own eyes as we stare out at the world. How strange! Who could it be that is looking at us? We conclude that it is another part of us, the half that we don’t allow to pass out of our eyes when we glance at others – and that darker and more serious half looks back at us only at rare times.                                                      (Robert Bly)

 

Professional theologians would relate that sensed presence to God/Allah, etc – a supranatural Being. One wonders though. At the time that this page is being written, our world is in dread of an imminent US/Iraq war. President Bush Jr. was recently admonished by the Pope that such a war by the US would be neither morally nor legally justified. The Pope also questioned the President's habit of making statements invoking God's name as justification for the invasion. “God is a neutral observer in the affairs of man,” the Pope said. “Man cannot march into war and assume God will be at his side.” A NEUTRAL OBSERVER, yet! So if even the Pontiff sees that God is a Neutral Observer, what then is this sensed presence that one sometimes feels, and to which is attributed order and direction?? –

Michael Ventura, acclaimed author and syndicated columnist, commented on -

 

THE WATCHER - that sense of a constant companion, who is you yet more than you, and who seems always with you, watching from a slight distance --- always a bit older than you, usually silent, features indistinct - not actually passive but rarely active. Its action is to watch. It’s outside of you (glimpsed in the mirror sometimes). Anyone who travels alone is aware of this companion - the sense of being in the company of oneself, - the presence from which comes the mood of your solitude. It is necessary to befriend one’s Watcher - not make an enemy of it, nor a judging ‘conscience’. Then despite one’s own dislike of oneself (for one’s tabooed actions and thoughts) your Watcher will be calm, non-judgmental and a friend to one’s solitude.

Notwithstanding the lack of formal recognition for the ‘Watcher’ entity as a cultural concept, the sense of it is so common that it is taken as a given. During bad times one’s relationship with one’s Watcher is critical. It may be all one has then. The Watcher does not appear to care about society or morality or the idea of good or evil. The Watcher cares about YOU, and if it’s on your side to begin with, it’s all the way on your side.                                                                                           

 

Perhaps then - to paraphrase Emerson - Jove is immanent, within one and sustaining one; and this Higher Self is one’s truest friend and must be listened to as such, so that all our parts are in harmony for insight and creativity to be realized in good times, and to be there as one’s sustenance and support in bad times. In his writings, the noted physicist and monist idealism philosopher Prof. Amit Goswami points to CONSCIOUSNESS itself as being the ultimate reality; and that it is CONSCIOUSNESS which lives through - and sustains - its created forms. In this view, “the play of consciousness is one of ever-increasing revelation of new possibilities manifested by creativity. In the case of humans, creativity is individualized. When the individual organism ceases to involve itself in creativity, consciousness begins to withdraw. Inertia may carry the body-mind for some time, but eventually the withdrawal culminates in death”. The individual soul is simply a context, not a thing, through which CONSCIOUSNESS engages its eternal creative play in an infinite diversity of contexts.

 

 

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