The Fathomless Essence of the Noumenon

About this poem

In this poem, “The Fathomless Essence of the Noumenon,” I have described the Noumenon as “The Non-perceivable Source,” suggesting it to refer to “a Hidden First Cause,” as in the Middle High German word, *quelle, etymologically derived from the Proto-Germanic *kwello, kwellana, and subsequently from Old English cwiella, cwylla, referring to a “spring, well, or fountain,” something ever-flowing but whose ultimate source is hidden, out of sight, rising up or surfacing before us (experienced as “phenomena”) from deep underlying structures (qua, “the noumenon”) that, as a “Ding an sich” (a thing of its own nature) provides the very “source” of that which gives meaning to all appearances. Interestingly enough, and as a side remark, the word “source” or “quelle” has inlaid in its meaning the notion of the hypothetical, of that which essentially remains unproved, or “not proved with certainty.” As example, in New Testament theology, the Q Source (from German Quelle), is a hypothetical written collection of sayings or “logia,” and part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, presumably and with uncertainty drawn from oral gospel traditions of the early Christian Church in the First Century of the Common Era. The point here is that whenever we strive to examine intellectually the Noumenon, we find to our experience, it behaves with great measure as an enigma, similar to that of the physicist Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle; as that which, although interacting with us, remains “out of sight,” hidden from us, and hence truly an enigma or mystery that we sense, nevertheless, as underlying all human experiences. As the TAO informs us, our calling something “fathomless” does not bring us any closer to fathom the fathomless; and therein lies the enigma of the Noumenon, that forever remains in essence “The Nameless.” more »