If it could be both that which is observed and the observer itself for a single second then surely the two mental conditions would instantly annihilate each other. The task is as hard and as foredoomed to failure as trying to look directly at one's own face. Thus the inherent impossibility of such a situation stands revealed. There is only one last hope for success in such a quest and that is to abandon all attempts to know it by the ordinary methods of knowledge. What would such an approach necessarily involve? It would involve two factors: first, a union of the personal "I" into the hidden observer, of which it is an expression, although the merger must not be so absolute as to obliterate the ego altogether; second, an abandonment of the intellectual method which breaks up consciousness into separate thoughts.
-- Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 4 : Detaching from The Ego (Part I) > # 171
