Page 112 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 105

kinetic nature and potentialities of vision itself. In precisely this sense,
they are archetypal aspects of animate form. While we might have a
shallow and momentary glimpse of the power of vision and its capacity
to lead us to an experience of inwardness as we merely watch an animal
carry on its activities—buzzing from flower to flower, building a dam,
chasing a ball—that faint and fleeting experience of the power of vision
is apprehended—arrested, as it were—^when we actually meet the eyes of
another animal with our own and dwell in those mystic circles which
speak to us of the being of another. Inwardness is reflected back to us
by those archetypal organs we call eyes, eyes that are not simply receptor
organs but morphological aspects of animate form.
The eye indeed is a mystic circle. To put this biological fact of
experience in much closer historical perspective, and to flesh it out
further in the direction of a phenomenologically-informed philosophical
anthropology, I would like to consider the eye as it has been cross-
culturally understood at two extremes: the mystic circle which is the evil
eye and the mystic circle which is the reverential or sacred eye. The
former can be traced back to pre-Semitic Sumerian cuneiform texts.^^ The
latter has been symbolized cross-culturally for millennia and is readily
exemplified by the mandala.^ In fact, I have space here only to consider

^^ It can also be traced back to the Book of Proverbs in which one reads: "Eat
thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye." (Proverb 23.6)
^ Although in general, and as mandala scholars Jose and Miriam Arguelles
point out, "literature concerning the Mandala is not extensive," cross-cultural
evidence demonstrating the universality of the mandala is not lacking. (Jose and
Miriam Arguelles, Mandala [Berkeley: Shambala, 1972], 20.) Mandalas are circular
drawings common to Navajo Indians, for example, as well as to Buddhists. Moreover
the Aztec stone calendar was drawn in the form of a mandala. In addition, there
are ancient architectural constructions that have a notably circular form. Stonehenge
is a well-known example. The rounded barrows believed to have been constructed
by King Sil (or Zel) in England during the Bronze Age are further cases in point.
With respect to these burial or treasure barrows, the "Great Round" that is Silbury
Hill is an extraordinary formation. (Regarding "The Great Round," see Erich
Neumann, The Great Mother, translated by Ralph Manheim [New York: Pantheon
Books, 1955], BoUingen Series, Vol. 47). The significance of its rounded form, as
Michael Dames describes it, has striking parallels with the psychocosmological
significance of mandalas as explained in the present text. (Michael Dames The
Silbury Treasure [London: Thames and Hudson, 1976]. Clearly what is lacking is not
cross-cultural evidence demonstrating the universality of the mandala but a
phenomenologically worked out concept of the mandala. The Arguelles's say as
much when they write that "most of [the literature] deals with the Mandala as a
sacred art form of the Orient, and although some thinkers—such as Eliade and