True self-consciousness, a self that is keenly attentive to its-self, will necessarily struggle with questions of the self’s origin, telos and purpose. The quest for the self’s origin, telos and purpose necessarily entails a looking-beyond-the-self, a self-reflection that must lift its gaze beyond the self for answers – in other words, true self-consciousness must transcend its-self in order to answer questions about its-self. And if self is understood in the Heideggerian language of a dasein, then the self is already a self-in-the-world. Therefore, the transcending beyond the self, is necessarily a gazing beyond the world in which the self is a ‘self-in-the-world’. If all human knowledge making endeavours through both empirical science and rational thought, are able to work only within a dasein’s world, or a self-in-the-world, then these endeavours will necessarily not be useful in making knowledge about what is beyond the self-in-the-world. Thus any knowledge of the self in its world must necessarily come through a lifting up of one’s eyes to the hills, beyond and transcending, to the world of the gods. However, every gazing-beyond cannot escape its existential grounding of the self in its world, therefore will only be an extension of its horizon. It will be a seeking beyond of only what is already there, unable to unshackle itself from its-self. But the transcending quest, that extends the horizon of the self beyond its everyday world is a prerequisite for going beyond and gazing up to the hills with the expectation that this gazing beyond the hills opens up unusual and extraordinary sensory functions that is agile to touch transcendence, and yet the shackling. This self-shackling within one’s horizons necessarily needs a breaking in, a reaching within from the beyond. This reaching in from transcendence is the giving of the gift that truly entails a revelation of one’s self. If we give this to be a possibility then every giving of the gift by the transcending transcendence, appropriated and received by the self is transcendence’s giving of Its-self into the world of the self-in-the-world, so that the world of the self is penetrated in and through by the glory of the gods. If such an infusion of the transcendence into the world of the self be the case, enabled by the self’s transcending gaze that pulls in the gods to its world, then the self-in-the-world, in its-self is impregnated by the gods themselves. If this then be the nature of the dasein, in that the self-in-the-world is both divine and human, where the lion and the lamb walk in friendship, then the knowing about the self requires an entanglement of both an inward as well as an outward gaze – both the scientific enquiry as well as the questing-beyond become mutually necessary to know about the origin, telos and purpose of the self. And if such an enquiry be done with all rigour and authenticity, then not only will the self be able to make knowledge of its self but also perhaps make knowledge of the transcending transcendence in its incarnated worldliness? And yet may the self not be able to climb the transcending ladder to step into the world of the gods to inhabit the mansions prepared for those who quest?
