Emerson reading this morning included his famous (or infamous) transparent eyeball passage caricatured by Boston Unitarian Christopher Pearse Cranch. The passage from "Nature":"Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."
Blessings
1 comment:
We are all part or particle of God, and seen by God's transparent eye-ball, whether we are conscious of that fact or not. Allow me to paraphrase Aldous Huxley and say that facts do not cease to exist just because they are disbelieved. . .
Post a Comment