News arrives sometimes. I recognise it because of its manner of arrival – a surging from within, something that has no words until it arrives at the surface, and I am gasping for words like a diver coming up for air. Something I could not have known, far less invented, that arrives through me, from, in some sense, beyond me. Call it inspiration, call it revelation – it arrives from those levels and has those qualities – but don’t try to fix or define it.
What is the message? It went something like this: Solitude is not an absolute aloneness. Aloneness, when no other person is close by and I am by myself, sometimes reveals my closest companion. Martin Buber, the renowned mid-20th-century theologian, spoke of the ‘I-Thou’, our deepest comprehension of our real self, our real being. ‘Thou’ is an old word for ‘you’ that was equivalent to tu in French or Du in German – the familiar, intimate, affectionate mode of address to another person. Shorn of Thou (who may be unfamiliar or rarely sensed), the self is limited, local, more an ego, and that is indeed what most of us experience and identify with in everyday life. So who or what is Thou and what is this expanded identity that Buber calls the I-Thou?
This belongs in the realm of pure experience. As far as I am aware there is no scientific or philosophical formula for the Thou, no psychological phenomenon that can explain it (and thus take away its valence, its meaning). So in a sense it is hidden, but in another sense it is protected from attempts to interpret or reduce it. Perhaps then it is pointless trying to talk about it. Yet the Thou, and more particularly the I-Thou, is the core of our human experience, so it is worth at least trying to point towards it.
We mentioned solitude. This is perhaps where Thou is most laid bare to us. Yet it remains the same in all situations. The deep, interior Thou can mirror itself effectively when I am in company with other people. Other people – a tangible plurality of ‘thou’ – can point us to our own interior Thou. Only in acute states of loneliness is our Thou hidden from us, which is when we seem irremediably alone and suffer the consequences. But even then, Thou makes itself known to us, if only by its seeming absence, rather as a loved one comes to my mind although he is not here.
The I, the self, my self – is it one-dimensional? Does it exist by itself, floating through inert space, merely exchanging pleasantries with other independently existing selves (or ignoring them altogether)? Or is it rather that all of us have a common origin and a common reality, for all that we appear here as separate, diverse, unique? I ponder these questions and try to run mental models of both. I know which I prefer, but the mind is capable of multiple paradigms.
But it is when the news arrives – that I mentioned at the start – that I have a trustworthy answer and the Thou becomes distinct. It (he, she, thou) is wholly interior, like an extra part of my soul that has made itself known to me. But it transforms everything. Now ‘I’ is not alone, not self-standing, not one-dimensional. Not inferior or superior to other selves. I is in relation to Thou, who is – and I am reduced to scrabbling for names for it – the one I have always sought, my Father, my Beloved, my Lord, my own Secret, my Son, my Origin, my Purpose, my Intention, my Essence, my Destiny, my Destination. It (he) remains completely inner, wholly imaginal. But imaginal is not imaginary. It is not a fabrication; it is something revealed to me from my innermost point, known in the heart without explanation.
Not only, moreover, does Thou open himself up to me as my deepest self and deepest desire, but there is a sense that the ‘I’ is necessary to ‘Thou’ as much as Thou is to I. Without I, there would be no Thou. Thou, as a conscious point within being, would be poorer without any instance of I. And Thou is unique for each person who approaches it; it is not something fixed or abstract but is unique to the makeup and disposition of every mind, every person who apprehends it.
The sense of self changes from here on. I am no longer the broken, hurt, failed idea of myself I hitherto believed, but am a real part of something greater, integral and – dare I use this word – loved. The Thou is not just a fantasy or some sort of comfort but my deepest and truest reality. Likewise, how I interact with others – even how I perceive inanimate objects – is transformed.
I cannot hold on to this experience forever. It tends to come and go, and is more often not felt. I have then to remember it and desire it again, to trust to it, invoking whatever it takes – even imagination (‘as if you saw him’) – to keep the memory alive. And to trust that it remains true and will show itself again.
The notion of I-Thou, or I and Thou, is worth exploring a little further. It suggests a compound, a multi-dimensional state of being. Perhaps we recognise this in remembering that ‘I’ on my own is not all that I am; I am marked and shaped by those I love, those around me, those I belong to. So ‘I’ is never (except in extreme cases of loneliness or madness) one-dimensional, it is always informed by others (Thou). Yet the I remains in a sense singular – it is, if you like, the sum of self and others, summed into a greater identity. This is the larger I.
The same is true for the deep recognition of the I-Thou. In fact one can recognise three elements here: (1) I, (2) Thou and (3) their relationship (here shown as a hyphen or the word ‘and’). It has been said in various wisdom traditions that the lowest ‘real’ number is 3, that 2 is unstable and that 1 is not really a number at all. Singularity, as the 12th-century Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi wrote, is formed of a trinity. This can be seen, for example, in the case of love: for love (a singular quality) to be expressed, three elements are necessary: the lover, the beloved and the love itself. If any of these is missing, love cannot find expression.
This can be developed much further, but needs someone cleverer than me to do so. For now, though, I cherish the news of Thou, my unique companion and secret, knowing that this Thou can be known by anybody, uniquely to them. And I begin the task of seeing the world through the eye of the I-Thou, the holy trinity, which is the start of my redemption and the world’s healing.
In Martin Buber’s book I and Thou, and others that followed, every sentence has the charge of a line of poetry. It is visionary in manner as well as content:
Union with Thou can only happen when all means (obstacles) are removed. It cannot happen by my efforts, but it requires me there.
As I become I, I say Thou.
All life is meeting.
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