Seeing with the heart

ὀφθαλμὸς ἄρʼ εἰ μέλλει ἰδεῖν αὑτόν, εἰς ὀφθαλμὸν αὐτῷ βλεπτέον … ἆρʼ οὖν, ὦ φίλε Ἀλκιβιάδη, καὶ ψυχὴ εἰ μέλλει γνώσεσθαι αὑτήν, εἰς ψυχὴν αὐτῇ βλεπτέον, καὶ μάλιστʼ εἰς τοῦτον αὐτῆς τὸν τόπον ἐν ᾧ ἐγγίγνεται ἡ ψυχῆς ἀρετή, σοφία

So if an eye is to see itself, it must look into an eye … Then, dear Alcibiades, if a soul too is to know itself, must it not look into a soul, and above all into that region of it in which the soul's excellence, wisdom, comes to be? ✦AI

Alcibiades I 133b · Greek: Burnet, Oxford 1900–07 (public domain), Perseus TEI (CC BY-SA) ↗

Socrates' image for self-knowledge: an eye cannot see itself directly, only reflected in the pupil of another eye. So a soul knows itself by looking into a soul, at the place where wisdom arises. Seeing oneself takes a mirror, and the mirror is another seer. ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Alcibiades I 132d–133c (Burnet's Greek, Jowett and Lamb in the reader). The lines 133c8–17 ('the god is the finest mirror') are not in Plato's medieval manuscripts: Burnet prints them from Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica XI.27.5, and his apparatus reads 'om. B T (sed talia fere legerunt Iulianus Stobaeus)' (Platonis Opera II, 1901, at 133c: archive.org/details/platonisopera02platuoft/page/n362). Stobaeus, Anthologium III.21.24 (ed. Hense, vol. III, 1894, p. 576.4–11), has a version of them at a different point, after 133c18–19. The reader marks them ⟨ ⟩, as Burnet does.

οἷον εἰ ὄμμα μὴ δυνατὸν ἦν ἄλλως ἢ σὺν ὅλῳ τῷ σώματι στρέφειν πρὸς τὸ φανὸν ἐκ τοῦ σκοτώδους, οὕτω σὺν ὅλῃ τῇ ψυχῇ ἐκ τοῦ γιγνομένου περιακτέον εἶναι, ἕως ἂν εἰς τὸ ὂν καὶ τοῦ ὄντος τὸ φανότατον δυνατὴ γένηται ἀνασχέσθαι θεωμένη … τέχνη ἂν εἴη, τῆς περιαγωγῆς … οὐ τοῦ ἐμποιῆσαι αὐτῷ τὸ ὁρᾶν, ἀλλʼ ὡς ἔχοντι μὲν αὐτό, οὐκ ὀρθῶς δὲ τετραμμένῳ οὐδὲ βλέποντι οἷ ἔδει

Just as the eye could not turn from darkness to the bright except together with the whole body, so the faculty must be turned around, with the whole soul, away from what comes to be, until it can bear to look at what is and at the brightest of what is. … There would be an art of this turning around: not of putting sight into it, but for one who has sight but is not turned the right way and does not look where he should. ✦AI

Republic VII 518c–d · Greek: Burnet, Oxford 1900–07 (public domain), Perseus TEI (CC BY-SA) ↗

Education does not put sight into blind eyes. The organ is already in the soul; teaching is the art of turning it round, with the whole soul, toward what is. ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Republic VI 508b–509b (the sun analogy), VII 516a–b (the cave), 518c–d (the turning), all in the reader (Burnet's Greek, Jowett); compare 533d.

τὸ γὰρ ὁρῶν πρὸς τὸ ὁρώμενον συγγενὲς καὶ ὅμοιον ποιησάμενον δεῖ ἐπιβάλλειν τῇ θέᾳ. οὐ γὰρ ἂν πώποτε εἶδεν ὀφθαλμὸς ἥλιον ἡλιοειδὴς μὴ γεγενημένος, οὐδὲ τὸ καλὸν ἂν ἴδοι ψυχὴ μὴ καλὴ γενομένη. γενέσθω δὴ πρῶτον θεοειδὴς πᾶς καὶ καλὸς πᾶς, εἰ μέλλει θεάσασθαι τἀγαθόν τε καὶ καλόν.

The one who sees must make itself akin and like to what is seen before it turns to the sight. No eye would ever have seen the sun had it not become sunlike, nor would a soul see beauty had it not become beautiful. So let each first become wholly godlike and wholly beautiful, if he is to behold the Good and the Beautiful. ✦AI

Ennead I.6.9 · Greek: Volkmann (1883–84) via First1KGreek, CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗

Plotinus closes his treatise On Beauty with a rule of sight: like is seen by like. The eye could never see the sun unless it had become sunlike, and the soul cannot see beauty unless it has become beautiful. So the work comes first on the seer, not the seen. ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Ennead I.6.9 (the closing chapter of On Beauty; Volkmann's Greek, MacKenna, Guthrie and Taylor in the reader). Plotinus is reworking Republic 508b, where the eye is 'the most sunlike' of the sense organs.

ἀλλὰ κατὰ παρουσίαν ἐπιστήμης κρείττονα. … μέχρι μὲν γὰρ τῆς ὁδοῦ καὶ τῆς πορείας ἡ δίδαξις, ἡ δὲ θέα αὐτοῦ ἔργον ἤδη τοῦ ἰδεῖν βεβουλημένου.

…but by a presence better than knowledge. … Teaching goes as far as the road and the journey; the seeing is already the work of the one who has wished to see. ✦AI

Ennead VI.9.4 · Greek: Volkmann (1883–84) via First1KGreek, CC BY-SA 4.0 · read it in the reader ↗

The One is not grasped by knowledge, which is discourse and therefore many, but by presence. That is why it is 'neither spoken nor written', Plotinus says, with Plato ('he says') in mind, most likely the Seventh Letter. Words can only send the reader toward it, like someone pointing out a road. ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Ennead VI.9.4.

فَعُلِمَ انَّ فِي قَلْبِ الانْسَانِ عَيْناً هَذِهِ صِفَةُ كَمَالِهَا وَهِيَ الَّتِي يُعَبَّرُ عَنْهَا تَارَةً بِالْعَقْلِ وَتَارَةً بِالرُّوحِ وَتَارَةً بِالنَّفْسِ الانْسَانِيِّ

So it is known that in the human heart there is an eye whose perfection is this; it is the one that is sometimes called intellect, sometimes spirit, and sometimes the human soul. ✦AI

al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār ¶11 · Arabic: Cairo 1343/1924 edition (public domain) · read it in the reader ↗

He gets there by listing what the outer eye cannot do. It sees others but not itself; not what is too far or too near; not what is behind a veil; the outside of things, not their inside; some things, not all; the finite, not the infinite; and it errs, seeing the large as small and the moving as still. An eye free of these seven defects has the better right to be called light. He names it intellect, and declines to argue over the word. ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Mishkāt al-anwār ¶10 (the seven defects) and ¶11.

وَكَانَ يَعْرِفُ الْأَلْوَانَ وَحْدَهَا بِشُرُوحِ أَسْمَائِهَا وَبَعْضِ حُدُودٍ تَدُلُّ عَلَيْهَا . ثُمَّ إِنَّهُ بَعْدَ أَنْ حَصَلَ عَلَى هَذِهِ الرُّتْبَةِ فُتِحَ بَصَرُهُ … فَلَمْ يَجِدْ أَمْراً عَلَى اخْتِلَافِ مَا كَانَ يَعْتَقِدُهُ

He knew the colours only by the explanations of their names and some definitions that pointed to them. Then, having reached this rank, his sight was opened … and he found nothing contrary to what he had believed. ✦AI

Ibn Ṭufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān ¶9 · Arabic: ed. Aḥmad Amīn, Cairo 1952 (medieval text, public domain) · read it in the reader ↗

Ibn Ṭufayl's parable for tasting (dhawq) against reasoning from premises. The blind man's knowledge was true; sight adds no new facts, only two things: more clarity and brightness, and great delight. His first state, Ibn Ṭufayl says, is that of reasoners who have not reached sainthood (wilāya). ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Ibn Ṭufayl) ¶8–10: ¶8 sets dhawq against inference, ¶9 the colours known 'by the explanations of their names', ¶10 'more clarity … and great delight'.

أَنْتَ لَاتَغْفُلُ عَنْ ذَاتِكَ وَمَا مِنْ جُزْءٍ مِنْ أَجْزَاءِ بَدَنِكَ اِلَّا وَتَنْسَاهُ أَحْيَانًا … فَاَنْتَ وَرَاءَ هَذِهِ الْجُمْلَةِ

You are never unaware of yourself, yet there is no part of your body that you do not sometimes forget … so you are beyond this whole. ✦AI

Suhrawardī, Hayākil al-nūr ¶3 · Arabic: Cairo 1335/1917 edition (public domain) · read it in the reader ↗

Suhrawardī's starting point for knowledge by presence. You can forget your hand, your heart, any part of the body, but you are never absent from yourself; so you are not the body. Self-awareness is not a fact learned about oneself: the self is simply present to itself. ✦AI

Read it in the reader →On: Hayākil al-nūr, temple 2, ¶3.

«إِنَّ فِي ذٰلِكَ لَذِكْرَىٰ لِمَنْ كَانَ لَهُ قَلْبٌ» لتقلبه في أنواع الصور والصفات ولم يقل لمن كان له عقل، فإن العقل قيد فيحصر الأمر في نعت واحد والحقيقة تأبى الحصر في نفس الأمر

'Therein is a reminder for whoever has a heart' (Q 50:37), because the heart turns through every kind of form and attribute. He did not say 'for whoever has an intellect', for the intellect is a fetter: it confines the matter to one description, while reality refuses confinement. ✦AI

Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, Faṣṣ Shuʿayb, OpenITI line 1752 · OpenITI, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 ↗

The doctrine rides on a pun: qalb, heart, and taqallub, turning. A heart that turns with every form can receive the Real in every form of belief; an intellect binds Him to one. The passage goes on to the believers who 'declare one another unbelievers and curse one another': the god of one belief, he says, has no power over the god of another's. ✦AI

Read it at the source ↗On: Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam ch. 12, Faṣṣ Shuʿayb (ʿAfīfī I:119–123), OpenITI lines 1752–1760.

بأن نفرغ قلوبنا من النظر الفكري ونجلس مع الحق تعالى بالذكر على بساط الأدب والمراقبة والحضور والتهيؤ لقبول ما يرد علينا منه تعالى حتى يكون الحق تعالى يتولى تعليمنا على الكشف والتحقيق

…that we empty our hearts of reflective thought and sit with the Real, in remembrance, on the carpet of courtesy, watchfulness, presence and readiness to receive whatever comes to us from Him, so that the Real Himself takes charge of teaching us, by unveiling and realization. ✦AI

al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya, OpenITI JK009237, lines 4602–4605 (vol. I p. 134 in this edition) · OpenITI, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 ↗

Faced with the Quran's hard sayings about God, some interpret by reason and some accept without asking how. Ibn ʿArabī describes a third way, that of 'a group of our companions': empty the heart, sit on the carpet of courtesy, and wait to be taught. He grounds it in the verses he quotes in the same breath. Besides these three verses he cites the closing phrase of 2:282, 'be mindful of God, and God will teach you'. ✦AI

Read it at the source ↗On: al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya, introduction (OpenITI lines 4590–4614). Two OCR slips corrected in the quotation (يتلوى → يتولى, التهئ → التهيؤ). The MIAS reading-group handout cites it as I, 89.26–30, presumably the Būlāq pages (not checked).

性命不可見，寄之天光；天光不可見，寄之兩目。……金華即光也。……回光之功，全用逆法，注想天心。天心居日月中。

Nature and life cannot be seen: they are lodged in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen: it is lodged in the two eyes. … The golden flower is the light. … The work of turning the light around goes against the current throughout: fix your thought on the heart of heaven. The heart of heaven lies between the sun and the moon [that is, between the two eyes]. ✦AI

Lü zu Taiyi jinhua zongzhi, ch. 1 天心 'The heart of heaven', leaf 1 (Qing woodblock print, Tianjin Library; scan on Wikimedia Commons) ↗

A Daoist manual of inner alchemy. Its whole method is in one phrase, huiguang 回光, turning the light around: the light by which we see and think is turned back toward its source, 'the heart of heaven' between the eyes. Like Republic 518c–d it gives no new faculty; it turns one that is already there. That likeness is a resonance: no contact between these traditions is claimed. ✦AI

Read it at the source ↗On: Lü zu Taiyi jinhua zongzhi, ch. 1 天心 (leaf 1) and ch. 3 回光守中 (leaf 5), read on the Tianjin Library's Qing woodblock print (National Library of China scan on Wikimedia Commons, pdf pp. 2 and 6). Punctuation ours. The zh.wikisource transcription (marked 50% proofread) follows the same recension but differs in places (e.g. 一位 for the print's 一味).