The primal Question and the primal Answer

'We have found the first question, the question with which philosophy begins. The answer to that question we have not found in abstract thinking,  not dubious anymore, but as an inevitable fact, founded on experience in internal, supra-subjective and supra-objective thinking. This has given philosophy a solid foundation.

The answer is the becoming aware of the I as the initiator of thinking. This I lives in a source of power, out of which thinking streams forth as the metamorphosis of the I. But with this ultimate answer we live in a world in which we seem to be grasping thin air. We can develop our will in thinking to the utmost, we can want thinking completely and we do get to know it through and through. But we have no content that we could think in our inner activity that is averted from the senses, apart from ourselves. Everything we think, there we are again.

Only a total inner change can release us from loneliness. The human being lives in his active thinking in the answer. The self-awakened thinking is the answer through and through, it is the primal-answer. Having arrived at this point, we must now silence this answer, reform it into the primal-question, into questioning itself.

The living thinking what we are must turn into a living question, a complete holding back. Thus our I turns into a questioning, not a questioning about this or that, but the question as the expression of yearning. In the words of Novalis: “The most beautiful gift which has been offered to man  is the yearning of his soul”.

The achievement of this state of mind that becomes a solid event in living thinking – the whole soul becomes a yearning question in patient expectation – is the fulfilment of philosophy: the human being is wholly love for Sophia. Not only is  there not a single thought in the soul any longer, there is also no longer a single answer; the whole soul, in full awareness, is but a questioning yearning.

Thus the human being kneels, not with the body in the pew, but with his now powerful I in his silent soul and becomes prayer.

To the eternal wisdom of God,
To the mirror without stain,
Which the cherubim and all blessed spirits with eternal Wonder gaze upon,
To the light which enlightens
All men who come into the world,
To the inexhaustible fountain and the primal spring of all Wisdom,
Ascribe and direct once more to these
This small droplet,
Mercifully drawn from their great ocean.
A being with ceaseless longing
To look upon you,
The ever dying Johannes Angelus’
(Angelus Silesius, Application to “The Cherubinic Wanderer”)

From: Mieke Mosmuller, Seek the Light that rises in the West. Epilogue.

The primal Question and the primal Answer by Mieke Mosmuller