Heraclitus= “Nature loves to hide.”
The secret side of things shrinks away from the objectified scrutiny that Martin Buber calls I — It, nor does it open up to the self-expression of unfettered subjectivity. The interiority in everyone and everything only opens to the genuinely inter-subjective dialogue which is I — Thou. This dialogical connection between person and world, and between person and person, reveals both to each other, as no other stance – objective or subjective — ever can.
Marcus Aurelius [121–180 AD], the Roman emperor-philosopher=
“The soul attains her perfectly rounded form when she is neither straining out after something nor shrinking back into herself; neither disseminating herself piecemeal nor yet sinking down in collapse; but is bathed in a radiance which reveals to her the world and herself in their true colours.”
[p 144, ‘Meditations’, book 11, 2004].
Rumi [1207-1273 AD], the Turkish Sufi poet=
“There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorises facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the centre of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.”
[from ‘The Essential Rumi’, trans C. Barks, 1995]
When people do not love, their intelligence about life departs.
The nous and the soul are conjoined in Eros.