Page 114 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 107

mandala and that is patterned on the eye came to stand for the self and
the world is first of all to experience eyes as channels through which a
dual light is cast, that is, as windows on two worlds, as openings on a
luminosity both within and without. What needs clarification is how those
dual experiential possibiUties of eye-light take on the specific symbolic
import that they do in the mandala.
That the language in which the power of the eye is described is
consistently anchored in images of light is readily tied to the original
experience of the eye as an organ of Ught. From the fact that I open my
eyes and it is light comes the possibility of my being enlightened. The
archetypal power of the eye to inform and edify is thus linked to
clarification, to elucidation, and so on. That the metaphoric language in
which the powers of the mandala are described is also consistently
anchored in images of light is an indication of a further symbolic
extension from original experience. This further symbolic structuring is
evident in the equation of light with consciousness. There is, in other
words, a cognate relationship among light, consciousness, mandala, and
eye, eye being the root form. Thus, the language of consciousness is also
the language of light. Furthermore, like the center of the eye that reflects
light and like a luminous consciousness that is a center of light, so also
the center of the mandala radiates Ught Of striking interest in this
context is Husserl's language in describing the Ego. "It is the center,'' he
writes, **whence all conscious life emits rays and receives them'' (italics
added).^ It is emphatically clear from Husserl's descriptive analyses that
Objects as well as the Ego radiate Ught, and that the epistemological
relationship between Ego and Object is simUarly structured in images of
Ught. Husserl speaks, for example, of "two-fold radiations, running ahead
and running back: fi*om the center outward, through the acts toward their
Objects, and again returning rays, coming from the Objects back toward
the center in manifold changing phenomenological characters."^^ Over and
over again, the original source of those two-fold radiations is described
as a center, a center that Husserl says is analogous to the body as center
of aU sensory awareness.^^
Now before continuing with the descriptive analysis of mandalas as a
symboUc extension of the archetypal power of eyes, it is apposite at this

^ Ideas II, 112.
'^ Ibid,
'^ Ibid,