Reflection 145

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The Powers of The 1st Person Singular

Forgetting what I'm told and imagine, what society with its common sense and the science of the object tell me to believe, and at last daring to look for myself and to take seriously what I find - well, what do I find? I find surprise upon surprise, beyond my wildest dreams. I see that what I had believed to be true of me and of the world is a pack of lies!
    
Take just a few instances out of the unlimited range available. I notice that I annihilate and re-create the world, while people merely close and open their eyes. I hush the world; they stop their ears. I spin the world; they pirouette. I transmute the world, turning legs into grass, into trees, into hills, into sky; people bend down and straighten up. I go up to the stars and toss the constellations around; people turn their faces to the night-sky. The toy chair, the wedge-shaped road, the dolls' houses, the mole-hole road tunnels - all swell to accommodate me, and shrink to nothing when I have no further use for them; people are obliged to shrink and swell to fit their surroundings. At will, I can turn one orange into three and back again, see through a spoon, invert a cup without spilling the tea, squash a plate without touching or breaking it, get clean through a keyhole, transpose mountains, turn a house round. I can confer upon anyone or anything the supreme honour of being the focal point, the end-product and meaning, of the universe - and demote him or it again, instantly.
    
Such are the powers of the 1st Person singular, the royal prerogatives of the shy King - the King who doesn't wish to know he is a king. His kingdom, the 1st-Person universe, surpasses everything he had imagined. (Douglas Harding. The Science of the 1st Person.)


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