getting mystical, a case for the Other

Thinking along the lines of energy, Teresa Brennan (1992) suggested that attention is energy. More exactly, to receive attention from others is a source of energy. But I suggest that the idea of the Big Energy implies that we receive energy of a different kind when we receive through giving attention to the other. (187)the distinction between two states of consciousness: the one in which we immerse or float or allow ourselves to be carried by association of ideas and one in which we have a definite intention. And correlative to this distinction is the one I already mentioned, the difference between external or objective self-awareness and subjective awareness, to use Sheldon Bach’s (1980) terms. (188–89)In any dialectical vision, in any version of complexity, Opening requires its friendly opposite, Closing. The anxiety of authorship lies not only with the critic as gatekeeper, with the fear of judgment or exposure, though that fear can be quite powerful. The idea of fearing the inner critic is a simplification. That the gatekeeper also serves as organizer, that she is needed, suggests that the issue is how we relate to self-consciousness, whether we enlist it to avoid anxiety or help contain it. Where should I put this thought, I ask, as the ideas rush in pell-mell? Centrifugal force must be countered by centripetal force. (193)Reason, as Schiller (cited in Freud, 1900) called it, or reality in Freud’s schema, is actually a metaphor for a container that offers security at the price of constricting, the satisfaction of the little energy at the price of enervating, which requires performance but denies power. (195)My image of thirdness is based on a musical metaphor, an image of two or more people following a score, not one they have already read but one that reveals itself only as they go along. Indeed, as they play their notes, the score is being written, becoming what it is, realizing itself. This image is meant to capture the intersubjective process by which two people cocreate or follow a pattern, an interaction in which neither person leads and neither simply reacts. (197)there is a point when the split between self-consciousness and subjective awareness is momentarily suspended. Thus, surrender, or the place of thirdness, can be seen as transcending the split between immersion and self-consciousness. That is, thirdness can allow self-consciousness in without having it impinge, or wreck, the attention to the object. That is where the Big Energy enters, in the open space of the third. If we think in terms of the opposition between oneness–union and twoness–difference, then in thirdness these two states come together and these dissonant elements are momentarily resolved. And the momentary is good enough, for as we know, each new resolution, like each new repair of breakdown, must be dissolved again; tension must build through the break into opposites or manifold. It is the process of breaking down and recreating that we commit to, itself a pattern or third that begins to unify the different, disparate moments. This process is the Big Energy in action. (197–98)Movement is what makes it possible to hold a tension, like that between subjective and objective awareness. To draw an analogy, in psychoanalytic process we have often been torn between meaning and implicit procedure, between the detail and the music of the exploration—but in the flow or movement, this distinction between wave and particle, energy and matter can become moot. (198)Paz cites Plotinus, who said, “The One is perfect . . . and being perfect, it overflows, and thus its superabundance produces an Other. . . Whenever anything reaches its own perfection, we can see that it cannot endure to remain in itself, but generates and produces some other thing.”If I may speculate about the subjective state that underlies such a description of the One, it seems to me that such an image of divinity and creation must reflect the subjective state of overflowing being that has to find itself in something other before it can be returned to itself. It is not possible (even for God) to simply contain multitudes (or, differently put, excitement, arousal) without creating something other than itself. As the artist experiences the light, the originary unified source underlying all manifestations, he or she can bear to receive it only by re-turning attention, as DiPrima following Keats put it, to some very specific detail, some “fine, isolated versimilitude,” some piece of the variety and plurality that incarnates this unknowable force or energy. This return might be seen as the movement from the One to the many. It is also a statement about the necessity of the other, the manifold being, to the existence of the self—the other is not simply necessary as the one from whom we receive (let us say, the child from the mother) but the one to whom we give, who receives from us, who allows us to externalize the self.The act of creation demands of the creator: How far do the strings that tie you to the One stretch? How far out can you lean? How centrifugal you can be and still feel the elastic tension of the energy that pulls you back to the One? This elasticity of tension is what I am equating with thirdness, a space of immersion in which the connection is not lost, we do not swing from one side of consciousness to the other, and we have the confidence, as we always do when listening to Bach, that, no matter how far out he swings, he will always return us to his theme. (199)