As a rule we do not give any thought to how objects appear to our consciousness. Nor to how conscious acts appear to our reflection. Objects never emerge from their silence. They merely evoke lukewarm passions. And yet it is this immediate rapport with the surface that enables us to become familiar with things, to render our experiences fluid, to make us see eye to eye with others, to establish a continuum between present and past. It is a relationship which is hardly ever compromised, except for variations in vigilance or the outbreak of events with a highly charged emotional content, which may also be independent of external situations. Reflection can only exert a minimal influence on this primary consciousness, showing just how all pervasive it is. That is all. Only the will can act on this archaic experience.
Generally speaking the meaning we project onto things is constantly changing. Things can prove to be more opaque or more transparent, more extraneous or more familiar. Sometimes, however, even what is closest to us can be an obstacle. A change in the relationship with things affects two aspects of everyday life: the stream of consciousness and our harmony with others. It is not a question of making a different value judgement but rather of attributing a different sense to things and other people. In these circumstances the meaning of things distances itself from our consciousness. Subject and object grow further and further apart. New judgements and categories give rise to a different system of values. Our existence gains in profundity but becomes removed from everyday life, which becomes dense with fantastic meanings and categories. The fault line between what the subject feels it is and what it has to be becomes increasingly evident.
Then there are experiences which can tend towards a radical inner metamorphosis (in the schizophrenic sense), deviating the flow of consciousness into obscure byways and suspending every achievement of meaning. In this climate of profound ambivalence, of radical inability to surpass oneself, it is impossible to re-connect and participate in past events. A radical crisis of presence ensues. The instigation of the “as if” modality – i.e. the urge to explain what can no longer be experienced – reveals all the ambiguity of an experience which is incapable of going any further.