art Marcel van Luit
MY HEAD is the centre of the universe.
Everything I see, sense, know is centred in my head (and
in yours, and in the beetle’s).
All are objects in which my head is subject (mediate Subject
as a head, ultimate subject as “I”).
But I cannot see, sense, or know my head, and the inference
of its existence is inadmissible, sensorially unjustifiable.
I perceive no such object, all other objects but not that. My
head alone is not my object.
Of course not: it is subject, and an eye cannot see itself, I
cannot sensorially perceive myself, subject cannot know
itself—for that which is known is thereby an object. Subject
cannot subsist as its own object.
So, all that is object appears to exist;
Subject alone does not appear to exist.
But object cannot exist apart from subject, whose manifest
aspect it is.
Therefore it is apparently inexistent subject that IS, and
apparently existent object that IS not.
Yet, since object is subject, and subject is object, intemporally
that which they are, all that they can be, and all that IS,
is the absence of my head (and of yours, and of the beetle’s),
which is also the presence of everything.
Where, then, am I? Where, then, are you, and the beetle?
We are our absence.
With apologies to Mr. Douglas Harding, whose On Having
No Head should not be held responsible, and which says so much
more so much better.
