Against the Pollution of the I

by Jacques Lusseyran

  CHAPTER 3

  WHAT ONE SEES WITHOUT EYES

  How much remains inside you, and how much can you draw upon from your own depths?

  — Meister Eckhart

  A person without an inner life is a person with nothing added: an empty sack which therefore cannot be filled and cannot remain standing.

  — Johannes Tauler

  SOMETHING HAS ASTONISHED ME for a long time. It is that blind people never speak about the things they see. At least I never hear them talk about them to those who see with their physical eyes.

  Rather often, however, when blind people are together, suddenly they tell each other what they perceive. Then why do they ordinarily keep quiet about this?

  I think that basically the reason is rather simple. They keep quiet because of society. To live in society one must at any cost resemble everyone else. Society demands it. In order to adapt to the world of the seeing, blind people are obliged to declare themselves unable to see — and, believe me, I know what I’m talking about, for that has happened to me even when I knew very well that it didn’t correspond to reality and was not true.

  Therefore tonight, excuse me for not saying to you a single time that I am blind. I will not speak to you about blindness, but about its opposite.

  To begin with, I have a very strong memory: something which stays alive for me as an experience every minute, but which presents itself to me, when I think about it, as a memory. It is what happened to me when I became blind at the age of eight.

  I believed — oh, I believed, and with a great dizziness, as you may well imagine, despite my young age — that from the moment I lost my eyes, I would from then on never see again. And then that was not true. What a surprise! I still haven’t forgotten it. I verified immediately and in a concrete way that I had not lost anything, or rather that what I had lost was of a practical order, and only of that order.

  Oh, indeed, I could no longer walk around freely; I had to be accompanied. I was sometimes obliged to ask others for help — those who saw with their eyes, who were passing around me. But the others responded to me. Usually they responded very well. I learned very quickly that this was not very serious. No, truly, I had lost nothing at all.

  What does this mean?

  It does not mean that the situation must be explained in a moral manner or by poetic images — I will adamantly insist on that.

  It means uniquely positive, concrete, and elementary things.

  I had rediscovered inside myself everything which others described as being outside of us: on the exterior. And I verified for myself that they were wrong. They said, “But he can no longer see the light,” or even, “If he says that he sees it, he is actually imagining it or remembering it.” And people spoke to me of the marvelous memories I must have of the time when I could see. Or of the faculty that I possessed, as they put it, to an extraordinary degree: imagination. But, for my part, I was obstinately resolved not to believe them. I knew very well that I was not “imagining things.” I knew that I was perceiving, that I was sensing.

  Inside me was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distances between objects. Everything was there, and movement as well.

  I verified that sometimes the shapes I perceived inside myself were not exactly like those which others described to me. There were slight differences, little divergences. For example, a friend who had eyes told me that a wall at the side of the road was still quite a ways away from us, that it was about ten meters distant. Rather strangely, I felt it much closer. And then, several years later, I understood where the difference came from: The wall was very large and very tall, much taller than the other walls in the neighborhood. So nothing had really changed for me. My blindness did not prevent the wall from being a wall. It didn’t change its being strong, solid, and immobile along the side of the road.

  This is how things went for me right from the beginning, and it was and still is amazing to me.

  From the moment I became blind, I did not enter a world of privations supported by courage, to “see” heroically what others described to me. Not at all.

  I entered a world of enchantment, but an enchantment which supported my life, which nourished me, because it was real. It was not an imaginary fairy-tale enchantment, and I sensed that clearly.

  And now, at the interior of this positive enchantment, I found a small understanding which was immediately a very great prize for me which I treasure to this day: the nature of light.

  I knew very well that most of those who see with their eyes — I hardly dare call them “the seeing,” for there would be an unpleasant ambiguity to that — usually say that light comes to them from the outside, that they catch it like a ball which is thrown to them.

  I know very well that is not true. I know the nature of light is not to be outside of us, but, on the contrary, within us.

  Exactly what is this nature of light? I could not tell you. I don’t know. I only know how it really manifests itself. It is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us. Maybe even more intensely, and in a more stable, better balanced way, inside rather than outside.

  There was this phenomenon that surprised me: I could choose when the light came or went. Yes, I could make it appear or disappear. I had that astonishing power: I could light myself. You heard right: “light myself.” That is to say, I could create a light inside me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes — oh, it was very strange — my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting, just as yours would hurt if you suddenly fixed them on the sun’s ray too attentively. I could in the same way extinguish all, or almost all, light impressions, or at least reduce them, soften them into a monotonous gray, a sort of obscurity, whether pleasant or disturbing. In any case, for me the variations of light no longer depended on external phenomena — do I need to repeat that medically I was one hundred percent blind? — but on my own decisions.

  All my childhood was sustained by these experiences and inclined — as you already must understand — toward joy. Not toward consolation — I have never needed to be consoled — but toward joy.

  By all this, I learned at the same time that we should never give way to despair, that no matter what brutal and negative events occur in our lives, just as quickly the same sum of life is given back to us; that actually everything in the universe adds up to continuity. I no longer saw with the eyes of my body, as men of letters say, but with the eyes of my soul.

  To tell the truth, I hardly need to involve my soul, because for me it was something much more direct, a great deal more physical, and quite simple.

  Yes, there was continuity: I had lost nothing. I had been given as much as I had had taken from me, perhaps more.

  When one realizes that, when one knows it from the age of nine or ten, I assure you it is not difficult to believe in God, because God is there. He is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, nor intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive. And that is an extraordinary support for all the rest of life. I would sometimes forget that — I forget it even today — but that support remains alive. And when I do remember it, I have exactly the sensation of someone taking my hand, or that a ray of light — it is exactly this way — comes toward me and touches me. If I know what the ray of light is, I no longer have any problems.

  Since becoming blind, I have paid more attention to a thousand things, and that this has allowed me to discover all sorts of aspects of the world that I probably would never have known otherwise. And these aspects are very comforting. They give life to everything. I’d like to give you some examples.

  First of all, I perceived that sounds were not produced just by vibrating objects, but more generally, by all objects which make up our world, even those that we deem immobile or lifeless.

  I observed, fo
r example, that the wall which is here behind me also produces a sound. I say: “produces a sound.”

  Is it really a sound that I perceive in placing my attention on the wall? I’m not completely certain. But it is, if you wish, a shaking, something very light, but something repeated endlessly. I would say that it repeats as long as the wall stays behind me, exerting some force on my body.

  Thus, the most apparently lifeless objects carry with them a potential for life as great as those which whirl and vibrate a lot — or are the most human.

  What difference is there between a human voice and a tree’s voice? Very slight, unless you have acquired the habit of understanding the human voice more rapidly than a tree’s voice. But both are one voice.

  I remember this experience. I’ve retold it often to my friends, it’s so pleasant.

  I discovered as a child that different species of trees don’t have the same presence. In particular, I did not experience the same sensations when I passed along a street shaded by an oak tree that I did going down one shaded by a fir tree or an acacia.

  During vacations in the country, when I had made friends with the landscape during the long weeks, I could distinguish the tree under which I passed by its volume, its configuration, the distinct sound of its shadow.

  That’s only one detail. But there are a number of details like that. And that’s why, when I found myself in the presence of an unknown mountainous landscape, when I was still hundreds of feet or even a few miles away from the neighboring summits, I could give a general indication of their silhouettes! It was as if I saw them: I saw far beyond me the great outlines and shapes of the mountains. How did I know what they looked like? I knew absolutely nothing about them. Nonetheless they appeared to me — or, more precisely, I verified them within myself, exactly as I verified the presence of light.

  Once again: I did not have to leave my armchair, I did not have to move, because things were inside me.

  I began to verify that most of the particular sensations that I experienced and that I attributed just now to hearing, touch, or smell, always related essentially to the same sort of sensation.

  I’m about to give it a name, which may not be a very good idea: a sensation of pressure.

  The universe had weight and was always pressing against me. Which is to say that it presses equally against you.

  All the objects in the universe seem to be masses of energy located somewhere, and it doesn’t matter much where, except on the level of mechanics pure and simple: physical relationships.

  Therefore, these masses of energy exist somewhere and draw near or far, making an impression on us, the whole affair being one of perception for us.

  I mention again the example of the walls of this room.

  The four walls of this room lean against me. Their life consists — to the extent that their life concerns me — of leaning on me from a certain distance.

  Or preferably: I also lean on them. Yes, I lean on them by the simple fact, for example, that I think about them.

  I think about the four walls of this room, simultaneously of these four walls. It is as if one of my hands were propped up against that wall on the right, and the other against the wall to the left, and two more against those in front of or behind me. It is as precise as that.

  And it still seems that the walls exist as a point of encounter between these two pressures: that coming from them and that coming from me.

  It seems almost that the walls are the conjunction, the union of these two forces, their equilibrium; I almost want to say their reconciliation.

  I think that you feel to some extent that these remarks of mine are, if not surprising, at least difficult to express. Well, that’s because we have the habit — and a very bad habit — of believing things are outside of our control, that they either come to us or don’t, that they are stubborn as mules, that we will never be able to make them do what we want. Translation: that we are poor unfortunates, creatures forgotten by the universe, and that we — free, generous, and heroic beings — cannot obtain the responses from things which we feel are our due.

  That’s true: we are in a battle against things. But it’s not the things’ fault. It would be so simple to catch them where they live and not somewhere else — and that place where they live is not outside.

  What role does blindness play in this affair?

  The answer is so simple that it’s right under our nose. Blindness leads us to perceive more clearly, more immediately the connections between objects and the universe at large. Then we make some big discoveries.

  So, as I was saying, objects exert pressure on us. We exert another pressure on them, or at least it seems that that’s the way it is. And the world — of real spectacles, real images — is produced by the encounter of these two movements, at the same time.

  When one knows this fact, when one thinks about it a little, the proportions of the universe change. One perceives a solidity, a new resonance.

  There are echoes everywhere. There are presences everywhere. There is a rather marvelous exchange going on: between the concave and swollen, the full and the empty, between the explosive and the responsive. One doesn’t have to touch a statue with one ‘s fingers or the palm of the hand to know the statue.

  That is what I want to say.

  You know that your eyes are a very useful sense organ, for with them you can travel in an instant to numerous places, to numerous points on the surface of objects.

  You can go very quickly, with your eyes. You can glide. Excuse me; I don’t want to scold or insult you, but I am obliged to say to you: you glide too quickly.

  This ends up becoming a frightening temptation for you.

  Fingers don’t glide.

  With my fingers I can know this table. I am obliged to feel my way around it. That is to say, I make my fingers explore all its parts, one after another, until at last I know it all, completely. For indeed, if I have touched a smooth part on the left side of the table, I cannot yet know if I am going to find a big hole in the middle of the table. Why not? Maybe there is a hole. I will know it only when I come into tactile simultaneity with it. The touch gives the proof.

  But it is possible, without eyes, to apprehend a part of an object and to know it immediately, instantaneously, in its entirety.

  It is possible for a blind person to hear the voice of a man or woman speak just three words to recognize that man or woman as if they had been speaking for hours. How is that possible?

  Is it really necessary that the blind person be a first-rate psychologist in order to have this facility, or have made long and detailed studies of human mechanics? Do you think so? It is sufficient, as always, to be attentive.

  The part is equal to the whole. The hand conveys the arm. The arm conveys the whole body. The body conveys the past, present, and future actions of whoever inhabits it.

  There is another thing to which the blind person becomes habituated very quickly, if you want to so much as give it a thought.

  And what does it prove, this brief experiment, if not that things and people are not outside of us to discover and explore, but on the contrary that we already carry things inside of ourselves. They are there in advance. We require only a little shock, a very brief opportunity — just a flicker of movement or the sound of their voice, in order to perceive their presence.

  All these things are naturally true for those who see, just as for those who don’t see.

  All that is a question of attention — and a question of the direction taken by us inside ourselves.

  Basically blindness gives a great force, that of discovery that the inner life is not at all what people imagine it to be.

  When people speak of the inner life, they irresistibly — and one must add bizarrely — think of I don’t know what construction, what imaginary fabrication: perhaps, a novel. That’s the simplest word of all. Indeed, there are certainly some very good novels. There are those which give the illusion of reality and those which don’t do that at all
. There are good craftsmen of the inner life — and bad ones. That is what the majority of people believe — and they take you for a great rogue if you seriously say to them that you have a real inner life — “Ah, well, that fellow, he invents things! He comforts himself as best he can! He is rather clever!” At the very least they laugh at you, which happens very often, and accuse you of not adapting to the modern world.

  Well, it’s not that way at all.

  It is incontestable that certain inner lives are entirely fabricated, unfortunately. These are fictitious lives, and God knows what there is to them.

  The true inner life either is or is not.

  If it is, it is not absolutely different from external life. It does not oppose it. It is not in battle against the necessities of positive existence: it contains exactly the same things as external life. Only this time they are seen and perceived from within.

  I have said here at least a good dozen times, “within us” or “within me.”

  So what does that ultimately mean?

  For as long as one merely uses the expression, one is still in the world of language: with a meaning that is banal, loaded.

  What is the “inside” that is inside us? And consequently, what is this “inner” of inner life?

  Is it necessary to represent things as if we were a husk, a large shell which, like all shells, has at its center a space which is more or less empty or full?

  And is it true that a blind person very often sees things as if he were lightly separated from them, as if only one part of them were available to him, the other parts remaining on the surface, which can only be scratched or grazed, not penetrated?

  Sensations like this exist.

  But to a very perceptible degree, this sensation of the husk or shell disappears.

  And things are there, without space.

  Yes, “without space.”

  You ask me: Is that possible? Have you found the recipe for inner life?