Abstract

1. We are unknown to ourselves, we knowing ones, we to our own selves, and for a good reason. We have never sought ourselves – so how could it happen, that one day we would find ourselves? Someone once correctly said: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”;1 our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are always on the way to finding it; as winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit, we truly care for only one thing from the heart: to “bring something home.” Whatever else concerns life, the so-called “experiences” – who among us has enough seriousness for them? Or enough time? In these matters we have been, I fear, somewhat distracted: our hearts have not quite been in it, and not even our ears! More often, like some divine scatter-brain absorbed-in-himself into whose ear the bell has tolled the twelve strikes of noon at full power, who then suddenly wakes up and asks himself, “What was really just struck?”, just like that we rub our ears afterwards and ask, completely amazed, completely embarrassed, “what did we really experience?” and further, “who are we really?” and afterwards, as said, count the twelve trembling bell-strikes of our experience, our life, our being – ugh! and miscount them . . . We necessarily remain strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must get ourselves wrong, for us the saying “Each is furthest from himself” holds for all eternity – we are not “knowing ones” with respect to ourselves.