The Horizon of the Observer · Temple Contemplations

Do you believe?

A dramatic entrance for a rather quiet question.

Figure 1 · the entrance · and the question underneath it

do you believe?

The question is sitting there at an ordinary volume, which is approximately the volume at which it is usually answered.

Fanfare supplied 0 · Words in the question 3 · Words that changed when it was shouted 0

Belief is strange.

It seems to stand between what is known and what is not yet known. Not quite fact. Not quite imagination. A way of leaning toward reality before reality has answered.

Figure 2 · the lean · taken before the answer

knownnot yet known

Neither end has been reached, which is roughly the condition under which leaning becomes necessary at all.

Quite a fact not quite · Quite imagination not quite · Reality's answer still pending · Leaning permitted meanwhile

And then another question appears:

From what layer are we perceiving the pattern?

iThe Staircase Becomes a Spiral

We notice an event.

Then we notice that several events resemble one another.

Then we call that resemblance a pattern.

Then, if we are paying attention, we notice that the pattern itself depends upon the way we are looking.

And off we go.

The observer observes the pattern.
The observer then observes the observer observing the pattern.

Eventually the staircase becomes a spiral.

Figure 3 · one step back · then another · then whatever that was

Nothing has been stepped back from yet. There is simply an event, and someone noticing it, and no distance between them worth measuring.

A staircase, at first. They always are.

Steps taken 0 · Positions that could not themselves be looked at 0 · Final step not located

Every position from which we look can itself become something looked at.

Figure 4 · four things, and which column they turn out to belong in

doing the looking

…something, apparently, since the column is not finished.

being looked at

Everything on the left is currently doing the looking. That is the claim, anyway, and it has not been tested.

Moved across 0 of 4 · Items that refused 0 · Left in the left column four, provisionally

A thought can be observed. A belief can be observed. An emotion can be observed. Even the sense of I am the one observing this can appear before observation.

So where is the observer?

A note from the TempleThis archive already contains a spiral staircase. It was climbed, it had twelve treads, and it arrived somewhere. This one has the same shape and no landing. The Temple has looked at both and declines to reconcile them.

iiWhy the Horizon Remains

Perhaps this is why the horizon remains.

Not because something has been hidden from us maliciously, nor necessarily because there is some final secret waiting beyond the veil.

Perhaps a horizon simply comes with perspective.

To stand somewhere is already to have somewhere that cannot yet be seen.

A window at dusk, the view through it rendered in intense orange and blue, with trees in silhouette along the bottom edge and a far horizon line beneath the colour. — **Plate i · standing somewhere** A window, which is to say a position. Everything in the photograph is a consequence of where the camera was: the frame, the silhouettes, the line where the colour stops. Move the camera two metres to the left and all of it changes except the thing being looked at. The Temple notes, without drawing a conclusion from it, that the photograph also contains a horizon, and that it is not the edge of anything — only the edge of this.

Figure 5 · walking toward it · with a tape measure

The horizon is over there. It looks, from here, like a destination.

Distance covered 0 paces · Distance to the horizon the same · Land that came out from behind it 0 strips

If an experiencing being knew itself completely — every movement, every possibility, every response, every future interpretation — would there still be an encounter?

Would anything truly arrive?

Or would everything already be contained within certainty?

Figure 6 · complete self-knowledge · and what it costs to keep

Four things are currently not fully known about you, which is one of the reasons anything happens at all.

Known completely 0 of 4 · Encounters available yes · Arrivals possible yes

Perhaps the unknown is not an error in the system.

Perhaps it is what makes experience possible.

For something to experience itself, there may have to remain some degree of mystery between the experiencer and what is experienced.

iiiAnother Shore

The observing principle would therefore have to remain, at least from its present point of view, partly unknown.

Not necessarily unknowable forever. That is a much stronger claim.

Only never completely knowable from the position presently doing the knowing.

Because the moment I make the observer into something known, I am already looking at it. And whatever is doing that looking has quietly moved beyond the object I just described.

Figure 7 · every definition, and the room that appears outside it

An observer. Not yet described, and therefore not yet somewhere behind the description.

Definitions accepted 0 · Observers successfully contained by them 0 · Rooms that appeared outside 0

Another horizon.
Another shore.
Another now what is looking?

A hand reaching into the frame from the left, holding a branch of yellow and green ginkgo leaves above grass. — **Plate ii · the hand enters the frame** For most of the afternoon this hand was the thing doing the looking. Then it reached into the picture, and became part of what was being looked at, and something else entirely took over the looking without announcing itself or asking permission. The hand has not been located since. The leaves are *Ginkgo biloba*, which have been turning this colour for roughly two hundred million years without being observed at all for most of it.

ivSomething Almost Playful

There is something almost playful about this.

Perhaps existence does not require an ultimate purpose imposed upon it from somewhere outside.

Perhaps the capacity to experience expresses itself simply because it can.

Figure 8 · four things that are getting on with it

All four are currently occurring. None of them has been issued a reason.

External purposes supplied 0 · Justifications requested none · Still occurring 4 of 4

Not as an answer.
Just as a possibility.

Sunlight breaking through the canopy of a ginkgo tree, the leaves lit green and gold against a blue sky. — **Plate iii · light illuminates** Filed here as evidence for exactly one sentence. Nobody asked the light what it was for, and it continued regardless; nobody asked the tree, and it is two-thirds of the way through its own slow change of colour. There is a lantern in the lower part of the photograph. It was not lit, and was not needed, and had come outside anyway.

And perhaps what we call purpose sometimes appears afterward, when the experiencing mind looks back upon the path and recognizes a shape.

Figure 9 · the path · and the shape found in it from here

Nine things that happened. At the time, in that order, they did not look like anything in particular.

Shapes found 0 · Points moved 0 · Shape present before it was looked for undecidable from here

A pattern.

Which brings us precisely back to where we started.

vWho Recognized the Pattern?

Figure 10 · three questions · in the order they keep arriving

Three questions. They look like a list. It has not yet become obvious that they are not one.

Questions answered 0 · Laps completed 0 · Questions remaining three

I still cannot see the horizon.

But I am beginning to wonder whether that is precisely what a horizon is for.

Not a boundary telling us:
You may go no further.

But the inevitable edge created whenever something, somewhere, looks out and says:

Figure 11 · the edge · and what it is actually for

A line, at a certain distance, in every direction. It has not asked for anything.

Boundaries enforced 0 · “There is more from here”, said 0 times · Horizon still there

The horizon was never a wall. It was the shape of standing somewhere.

There is more from here.

Two dark grey cat paws folded together, resting on a woven charcoal fabric in very low light. — **Plate iv · a position, occupied** Filed last, and without commentary from the subject. She has never once asked from which layer she is perceiving the pattern, has never stepped back to observe herself observing anything, and is, by every measure available to this archive, the most comfortable participant in the entire enquiry. The Temple has decided not to draw a conclusion from that, while noting that it has been available for some time.

Filed from somewhere. From here, there is more.

Ano'he