His inner discourse seemed to require continual employment of the term 'self' in every one of widely various contexts, and yet he had no idea what it meant or even whether the question of a self made any sense. When that discourse was more reflective it took on the character of an effort to smoke out the understanding of self, justified by the rather shaky deduction that one must always already understand what one is referring to, and that to mention is to reference. To attempt to speak without using the term, or to delay its use, only led to an artificial syntax of the kind he would condemn as self-conscious. Otherwise his experience led to the idea that the self was merely an attribute of the occasion, where it functioned as a filter allowing just so much of this essential and central lucidity to shine through and become the energy behind the movement of thought. The selves could neither own experience nor be owned by it, but were discardable vessels or mechanisms, whose constant change invites barely a thought. Each one is so entirely taken up with whatever is currently present that the unsatisfied promises of a superceded self are of no concern. They earn the name of self only because of what they transmit or allow to manifest, the light itself being serenely invisible.