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In none of this have I spoken of O except in so far as the horizontal axis of the Grid implies the existence of an object that ‘uses’, and the vertical axis implies the existence of an object that ‘possesses’ something to use.
My theory would seem to imply a gap between phenomena and the thing-in-itself; all that I have said is not incompatible with Plato, Kant, Berkeley, Freud and Klein, to name a few, who show the extent to which they believe that a curtain of illusion separates us from reality. Some consciously believe the curtain of illusion to be a protection against truth which is essential to the survival of humanity; the remainder of us believe it unconsciously, but no less tenaciously for that. Even those who consider such a view mistaken, and truth essential, consider that the gap cannot be bridged because the nature of the human being precludes knowledge of anything beyond phenomena save conjecture. From this conviction of the inaccessibility of absolute reality the mystics must be exempted. Their inability to express themselves through the medium of ordinary language, art or music, is related to the fact that all such methods of communication are transformations which deal with phenomena, and are dealt with by being known, loved or hated – K, L or H. Transformation then is intermediate between O and T xβ. We must therefore consider further the gap between O and knowledge of phenomena and transformations of O.
The gap between reality and the personality, or, as I prefer to call it, the inaccessibility of O, is an aspect of life with which analysts are familiar under the guise of resistance. Resistance is only manifest when the threat is contact with what is believed to be real; there is no resistance to anything believed to be false. Resistance operates
because it is feared that the reality of the object is imminent; O represents this dimension of anything whatever – its reality.
It is not knowledge of reality that is at stake, nor yet the human equipment