Needleman - I Am Not I

A mong the great questions of the human heart, none is more central than the question, Who am I? And among the great answers of the human spirit, none is more central than the experience of I Am. In fact, in the course of an intensely lived human lifea normal human life filled with the search for Truththis question and this answer eventually run parallel to each other, coming closer and closer together until the question becomes the answer and the answer becomes the question.

The present book seeks to unpack these seemingly obscure assertions through a literary form suited to the contemporary psyche, starved as that psyche is for the feeling of Truth.

Not long after I began my career as a professor of philosophy, I discovered that there exists in many people a hidden yearning for metaphysical thought, for ideas about reality and human life that bring the hope of discovering a great purpose in the universe and, correspondingly, in ones own given life.

Again and again I witnessed the remarkable effect that certain kinds of philosophical ideas and questions can have on the state of mind, not only in my students, but in men and women of all ages whom I happened to meet outside of the academic setting. The effect of such ideas and questions was unmistakablein the light in the eyes, and often in the way the individual suddenly adjusted his or her posture. Something unique was awakening in the mind.

At first, I attributed what I saw mainly to the great ideas themselves, which stimulate the mind to ponder questions of ultimate meaning and purposequestions that the current scientific worldview delegitimizes through its materialist standards of logic and evidence. It troubled me to see how so many contemporary explanations of higher human facultieslove, art, religious feeling, and even scientific thought itselfreduced these faculties to mechanically evolved automatisms, serving such goals as meaningless physical survival and meaningless physical or egoistic pleasure. It troubled me to see the dominance of toxic ideas and concepts that offer no hope for the attainment of the transcendence that is the unique possibility written into the very essence of human consciousness. Such toxic ideas and the worldview they engender cannot help but have a dark effect on the aspirations and morals of entire peoples, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I was especially concerned about how this situation plays out in the education and development of the younger generation of men and women, as represented by my students at the university. They come to my classes immersed in habits of thought and explanation that flatten both their perception of the world and their sense of identity. It is so even when they show up already intensely interested in philosophical questions, or great works of art and literature, or the astonishing discoveries of modern science. And it is so even when they come achingly hoping to help this world or even just to make sense of the heartbreaking storms of injustice, human suffering, and corruption raging throughout our civilization. Always, in almost all of these young men and women, their entrenched standards of thought and understanding, shaped by a toxic tangle of ideas about the universe, human nature, and Great Nature itself, have locked their minds in an airless reality devoid of intrinsic meaning and purpose.

And here they are in front of me, notebooks or laptops at the ready. On the screen in front of them or within easy reach is their assigned reading.

The text could be a selection from the Dialogues of Plato, with its profoundly scripted drama of the conversations of Socrates, compelling us to ask ourselves: Is it actually true that we human beings, including I myself, live our lives within the dim caves of illusion, never to be aware of genuine truth and goodness? And is it true that there are rare individuals quietly reaching down to us from another level of understanding, calling us to searchwith their helpfor our own real mind and heart? Could all this be actually true of ourselves now and here, and not merely an ancient or academic question?