Taken from "World as Lover, World as Self,"
"Who is Knowing?
Reality appears to be so organized that consciousness of it is hampered to the extent that the distinctions between knower and kown are reified. Who, then, is knowing? It is no entity we can isolate, for as soon as distinguished, it is the known, not the knower. Unable to locat ean agent, we are driven , in the last resort, to accord that function to the universe itself, which appears to be organized in ways that enable it to observe and know itself."
Compare with this excerpt from the wonderful Diary of Anais Nin ( a French writer , in the times of Henry Miller)
We read this definition in Arnaud Dandieu's book on Proust: Le temperement schizoide peut s'exprimer par une fuite dans l'action aussi bien que par une fuite dans le reve. Le Docteur Minkowski a tres bein montre qu'un des symptomes les plus clairs de la perte de contacte avec la realite etait la perte du sens de repos."
The schizoide temeperament manifests itself either by flight into action or into the dream. Dr. Minkowski proved that one of the clearest symptoms of the loss of contact with reality was the loss of ability to relax. (feeling of relaxation) .
So she continues a bit later..." Yesterday I went to Elizabeth Arden's to shed my fatigue. I was lying down with cotton over my eyes. This induced a half sleep state, a kind of half dream such as Proust described so well.I saw both outer realism and inner realism of the subconscious, saw how they could be fused or alternate harmoniously as they do in life.
Thus in reading this excerpt of Anais Nin, we realize how some people are just able to magically do this. They are in touch with this process, and in writing about it, it is as if she knows it is relevant ot other things. SHe writes as if it could solve world matters as well. Thus, I wonder why in the other context, the first one, has this sense of frustration that nothing can be known. It seems more ocncerned with the everythign is moving so facst you can't keep up..which is every eastern ,and true to an extent, and thus they live with this perception. Thus you see circulation and other things to do with fluidity of movement and not stoppage, as real values in those societies, such as China and Japan. However , in French society you see that the process of resting of going to a spa and then pulling together your thoughts to write is like ok. it's like what it is. they don't question it , but they do. AS we see, Anais Nin is quetioning it, but liek she foudn a certian response.
She goes on: "The state of passing from fantasy to realism, from reverie to action, that was what I wanted to do. In our life, they are interwoven. In literature, they were treated as different activites. I began to monologue about my father. I rushed home to my typewriter and swiflty wrote five pages about my father's feet and the drama of projection."
so anywya, jsut want ed to make that commentary.
