Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

On Having No Head 28my nonentity here, he were to turn round (looking out with meinstead of in at me) he would again find what I find – thatthis vacancy is filled to capacity with everything imaginable.He, too, would find this central Point exploding into anInfinite Volume, this Nothing into the All, this Here intoEverywhere.And if my skeptical observer still doubts his senses, hemay try his camera instead – a device which, lacking memory andanticipation, can register only what is contained in the placewhere it happens to be. It records the same picture of me. Overthere, it takes a man, midway, bits and pieces of a man; here,no man and nothing – or else, when pointed the other way round,the universe.* * *So this head is not a head, but a wrong-headed idea. If I anstill find a here, I am “seeing things,” and ought to hurry offto the doctor. It makes little difference whether I find a humanhead, or an asse’s head, a fried egg, or a beautiful bunch offlowers|: to have any topknot at all is to suffer fromdelusions.During my lucid intervals, however, I am clearly headlesshere. Over there, on the other hand, I am clearly far fromheadless: indeed, I have more heads than I know what to do with.Concealed in my human observers and in cameras, on display inpicture frames, pulling faces behind shaving mirrors, peeringout of door knobs an spoons and coffeepots and anything whichwill take a high polish, my heads are always turning up – thoughmore-or-less shrunken and distorted, twisted back-to-front,often the wrong way up, and multiplied to infinity.But there is one place where no head of mine can ever turn up,and that is here “n my shoulders,” where it would blot out thisCentral Void which is my very life-source: fortunately nothingis able to do that. In fact, these loose heads can never amountto more than impermanent and unprivileged accidents of thatouter” or phenomenal world which though altogether one with thecentral essence, fails to affect it in the slightest degree. Sounprivileged, indeed, is my head in the mirror, that I don’tnecessarily recognize myself in the glass, and neither do I seethe man over there, the too-familiar fellow who lives in thatother room behind the looking-glass and seemingly spends all histime staring into this room – that small, dull, circumscribed,particularized, ageing, and oh-so-vulnerable gazer – as theopposite to every way of my real Self ere. I have never beenanything but this ageless, adamantine, measureless, lucid, andalto-