What follows deals with the power of vision; but it must be understood that whatever is said is applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the other powers of the soul, or internal senses and their physical organs. In the late Professor Bowman’s discussion of the ‘Person in the eye there are many confusions. He quotes Max Miller to the effect, ‘the sun owes its origin to the eye’, and asks ‘whether it could really have been maintained in all seriousness that a minute organ of the human body can create an object of such cosmic proportions as the sun’; he tries to explain how this could have been imagined.
The misunderstanding is profound. It is true that in RV. x. 90.1 3 we find ‘the sun was born of (his) sight’ (caksoh suryo ajayata), and in AA. 4.1.7 ‘by (his sight were emanated. sky and sun’ (caksusasrstau dyaus cadityas ca). But the visual power (vibhuti) referred to here is by no means that of the ‘minute organ of the human body’; but that of the Primordial Person, God himself, whose eye is the Sun, or whose eyes are Sun and Moon, RV. passim. At the same time microocosmically, the eye does not originate the sun, but the Sun the eye. ‘The Sun, becoming vision, entered into the eyes’ (adityas ca caksurbhutva aksina pravisat, AA. m. 4..2. ‘The Self originated (svayambhu) pierced the gateways (khani, of the senses) outward, therefore looketh forth, not at the Inner Self’ (KU. m. s). He who is hidden (guhampravi’sya) within us looketh forth in all creatures (KU. m. 6, cf. AV. m. iz.2); the only seer within us, himself is unseen (BU. III. x.23). Accordingly, ‘whoever sees, it is by His ray that he sees’ JUB 1.28.8). This is, indeed, the traditional theory of vision. So in Plato we find that ‘of the organs, they (the Gods instructed by Zeus) constructed first light bearing eyes . . . So whenever the stream of vision … flows out,like unto like … and) the fire from within collides with an obstructing object without … (it) brings about that sensation which we call “seeing”‘ (Timaeus, 45B). And just as KU. iv.1 goes on to point out that if we are to see the Seer, our seeing must be turned round (avrtta caksus), so Plato says that to apprehend the form or idea of the Good we ought to cultivate all those ‘studies that compel the soul to turn its vision round towards the region wherein dwells the most eudaimonic part of reality, which it is imperative that I should look upon’ (Republic, 526E). If someone is looking out of a window, it becomes a matter of the simplest logic to point out that in order to see him, one must look in at the window.
But if the room is dark, and the external glare intense, we shall see nothing but our own reflection in the window. So it is when we look into another’s eyes, and only see therein a tiny image of ourself, as if in a mirror. The material image and the optical mirror being coincident, the same name applies to both; and that we are dealing with a widely diffused and very ancient formula will be evident at once if we note that the ‘apple’ or ‘pupil’ (lat. pupilla, little girl) of the eye is not only in Skr kanina or kanina, kaninaka or kaninaka (mannikin or little girl) or kumaraka (little boy) but also in Gk. on (maiden), in Hebrew bath(daughter) and iyshown (dim. of iysh, man), and in Chinese tung (Giles 21,308, a combination of the characters for ‘eye’ and ‘child’,). Chinese has also mou (tiles 80,46) proverbially, the mou of the eye is the best clew to character; it cannot deceive. Other connotations of the various words for ‘child’ are those of virginity or purity, and that of something ‘darling’, in which sense we say ‘apple’ (a corruption of pupilla?) of the eye.
In the traditional symbolism the ‘pupil’ of the eye, as reflected image, stands for what is best and highest and most intelligible in the seen, and for what is best and highest and most intelligent in the seer. We find this in Plato, Alcibiades, 1.132F ‘the face of one who looks into another’s eye is shown in the eye over against him, as if in a mirror, and we call this (mirror or reflection) the “pupil”, because it is a sort of image of the one who looks … So one eye looking at another, and at the most perfect part of it, with which it sees, will see itself … And if the soul, too, is to “know herself “, she must surely look at soul,and at that region of the soul in particular in which the virtue of the soul subsists … the seat of knowledge and thought, the most divine part, that is the most like God; and whoever looks at this, and comes to know all that is divine, will best “know himself”. Similarly Philo (1.15) God ‘made man, and bestowed upon him the superior Mind (nous), the Soul of the soul, the pupil of the eye … the “eye of the eye”.’ In other words, ‘1’oeil que, en se mirant dans un autre oeil, arrive a la connaissance de lui meme et en meme temps a la connaissance de Dieu’.(The image seen in a mirror has always seemed to possess, as it were, a certain magical quality of revelation; compared with the corporeal object reflected, it is relatively immaterial and intangible, like the mental image by which the object is known mentally. Stress is always laid on the cleaning of the mirror; it must be free from dust. So, for example, “Just and men in the world behold their bodily form (rupa) in an uncontaminated mirror, so the Self behold itself in the pure intellect (visuddhi-buddhi).”
The eye, however, that does not ‘know itself’ will see nothing but itself (this man, So and so) and not the ‘self’s immortal Self’ (MU. 6.7), Philo’s ‘Soul of the soul’. The image actually seen in a physical mirror by the eye’s intrinsic faculty is of my accidents, not of my essence. Nevertheless, our self is a reflection of the Self in a likeness that, however imperfect, is perfectible. That the symbol must not be substituted for its referent is very clearly brought out in CU. VIII. 7 ff., where Prajapati tells his pupils, Virocana and Indra, that ‘the Person in the eye (yoksini puruso drsyata, caksusah purusa) or in a mirror is ‘the Self, the immortal, the fearless, Brahma’. Told to look at themselves in a bowl of water, Virocana is satisfied that the Self is this bodily self that is reflected, but Indra realises that this cannot have been Prajapati’s meaning; the perishing psychophysical self seen in the looking glass image cannot be the ‘immortal’ Self. He learns to distinguish this immortal from the bodily self and that “where vision is lost in”space” (Akasam anuvisannarn caksus), that is the Person in the eye, (whose) means of vision is the eye … mentation (mano) is His divine eye, it is with that eye of mind, indeed, that he sees and determines values’.
This will still be obscure unless we understand ‘space’ (akasa). In the context the immediate meaning, as rightly explained by Sankara, is ‘the black star’ (krsna tara), i.e. pupil, of the eye, considered as a’hole in the body’ (deha chidram). As such it corresponds to the opening or hole in the sky (divas chidram), like the axle hole (yathakham) of a wheel (JUB. 1.3.6,7); the Sundoor, that is, normally concealed by his rays, but visible when these are withdrawn, as at death.(17) As one might see through the Sundoor into the Brahma loka, so through the eye one might see the immanent Person whose outlook it is.
More generally, akasa (or kha) as quintessence is the origin, locus and end of all phenomena (CU. 1.9.1 etc). All this universe was akasa in the beginning, and is so still; akasa is the Sun, because when he rises all this universe is shown (akasate); akasa is Indra, the seven rayed Sun (The person in the eye is often identified with Indra, the immanent breath, after whom the “Breaths” [powers of the Soul, vision,etc.] are called indriyani. In several contexts (BU 4.4.3; SB x.5.2. 9.12) Indra is more specifically the Person in the right eye, and ‘wife’ Viraj (Vac), Indrani the person in the left eye; their meeting place is the hearts-space [hrydyasya akasa CU 8.3] from which they ascend to pass through the Sundoor at our death) and Person in the eye (JUB. 1.25.1, 1. 1.28.2). The root, alike in akasa and in caksus, eye, is kas,to shine or see. Thus akasa is rather image bearing light than physical space as such; it is the prima substantiarum. As akasa is distinguished from vayu, the Gale (BG. XII. 6 etc.) Akasa, indeed, as being light,is better rendered by ‘aether’ than by `space’; is a principle that burns or shines, and just as it can be identified with God (Aeschylus Fr.65A), so akasa, or its equivalent kham (‘vacuity’, ‘plenum’) is identified with Brahma (BU. 4; CU. III. 12.7, 4. 10.4) and all that is contained in this aether objectified is contained subjectively in the aether of the heart, the seat of Brahma (CU. VIII. 1.3). So ‘lost in “space”‘ means ‘lost in God’, in a light space that cannot be traversed, and of which the objective realms of light are only a projection; His eye creating what it sees, and what ‘we’ also see by means of his light ray for which ‘our’ eyes are windows microcosmically, as the Sundoor is his window, macrocosmically.
It is not by looking at these eyes, but through them, that He can be seen; who is the Self that sees nothing but itself (BU. m. 3.23), itself in all things, and all things in itself (BG. 4.29); the Self of which nothing can be affirmed (neti, neti), and that ‘never became anyone’. This is the distinction of the Sun whom ‘not all know with the mind’ from the sun ‘whom all men see’ (AV. x. 8.14), the distinction of Apollo from Helios. The natural man is spiritually blind. Hence it is a necessary part of the ritual of initiatory rebirth that his eyes should be anointed, so that he may see with the eye or eyes of the Sacrifice, the Sun,rather than with his own which he will only resume when, at the close of the sacrificial operation, he becomes again ‘who he is’, this man So and so. ‘His eye for mine, what a goodly recompense’! (Rumi, Mathnawi 1.922) The symbol participates in its referent.
Accordingly, the vision of ourselves that we see in another’s eye is a symbol of the Self seen Self in the Speculum Aeternum. The whole construction is not psychological, but metaphysical. In Meister Eckharts words, “the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye, that is one eye and one vision, one knowledge and one love”. Professor Bowman is right in saying that the final conclusion is that the true Self is “not the person seen in the eye, but the person who sees with the eye”. But I am not quite sure he realizes that this “person is the unseen Seer… other than whom there is no seer” (BU 3.7.23) and of whom it is said that when the eye sees, when the mind thinks, and so on, “These are only names of His acts” (BU 1.4.7) not ours.
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