Page 104 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 97

on inwardness, the initial darkness begins to dissipate. We begin seeing
into the darkness. The space within becomes luminous. What was initially
dark is no longer dark. It is as if the Ught that is normally cast upon the
open eye continues inward to the point that the eye no longer either
searches for one of its customary objects or illuminates afterimages. The
flutterings of the eye subside. The light within is felt rather than seen.

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When our open eyes meet the open eyes of another, the experience
of eyes as mystic circles is potentially as great. This is because the eyes
of others are the locus of their mystery as persons. We know in a
thoroughly intuitive way that we have the possibility of experiencing them
as entrance to a tactile-kinesthetic world similar to our own, a world each
of us calls "my body." What is the nature of this possible experience of
another? Again, I ask you to verify a brief descriptive analysis, this time
by actually meeting the eyes of another person with your own.

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The eye of the other is a circle, the first circle we experience. We
endow the visual—the circle that we see—^with a tactile-kinesthetic reality.
We meet the eyes of another and immediately apprehend a rounded
form leading to that inside space which is another person. Our own sense
of inwardness that is immediate upon closing our eyes is the ground upon
which the inwardness of the other is appresented. Correlatively, we see
reflected in that same experience the nature of our own bodily being.
Transferring onto our own body the visual form that we perceive before
us, we apperceive the circular form as part of ourselves. We thus endow
the tactile-kinesthetic with a visual reality. We appropriate circles as part
of our own bodily being, circles not as mere geometric forms but as
bodily forms resonant with the mystery of life. Our eyes, like the eyes of
others, are apperceived as circles of light, circles leading to insides.
Of course the eyes we see can also be in and of themselves semanti-
cally potent. The eyes of another can stop us in their tracks; they can
pierce us; they can magnetize us; they can invite us. They can do all of
these things because the mystic circle is itself alive. Indeed, that it moves
and has tactile values is part of its mystery. It constricts, glistens, hardens,
widens, turns vacant, flits about. Though I do not actually see the circles