Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

On Having No Head 24Downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminatingsideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfrontterminating upwards in – absolutely nothing whatever! Certainlynot in a head.It took me no time at all to notice this nothing, this holewhere a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy, no merenothing. On the contrary, it was a nothing that found room foreverything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and farbeyond them snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding theblue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.It was after all, quite literally breathtaking. I seemed tostop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it was,this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone andunsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and thiswas the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of“me,” unsustained by any observer. Its total presence was mytotal absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer thanglass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of thisvision, it was no dram, no esoteric revelation. Quite thereverse; it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinarylife, and end to dreaming. It was self luminous reality for onceswept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, atlong last, of the perfectly obvious. It was a lucid moment in aconfused life-history. It was a ceasing to ignore somethingwhich (since early childhood at any rate) I had always been toobusy or too clever to see. It was naked, uncritical attention towhat had all along been staring me in the face – my utterfacelessness. In short, it was all perfectly simple and plainand straightforward, beyond argument, thought, and words. Therearose no questions, no reference beyond the experience itself,but only peace and a quiet joy, and the sensation of havingdropped an intolerable burden.* * *As the wonder of my Himalayan discovery began to wear off, Istarted describing it to myself in some such words as thefollowing.Somehow or other I had vaguely thought of myself asinhabiting this house which is my body, and looking out throughits two round windows at the world. Now I find it isn’t reallylike that at all. As I gaze into the distance, what is there atthis moment to tell me how many eyes I have here – two, orthree, or hundreds, or none? In fact, only one window appears onthis side of my façade and that is wide open and frameless, withnobody looking out of it. It is always the other fellow who haseyes and a face to frame them; never this one.