Transparent eyeball

The transparent eyeball is a philosophical metaphor originated by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The transparent eyeball is a representation of an eye that is absorbent rather than reflective, and therefore takes in all that nature has to offer. Emerson intends that the individual become one with nature, and the transparent eyeball is a tool to do that. In the book Nature, Emerson explains that the meaning behind the transparent eyeball is similar to a scientific standpoint on the Bible.

The idea of the transparent eyeball first appeared in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, Nature, published in 1836. In this essay, Emerson describes nature as the closest experience there is to experiencing the presence of God. To truly appreciate nature, one must not only look at it and admire it, but also be able to feel it taking over the senses. This process requires absolute "solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society" to uninhabited places like the woods where—

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 spaces, — 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.

However, only a "few adult persons can see nature." For most people seeing is superficial. It is light illuminating the eye revealing what is physically evident as opposed to sun "shine[s] into the eye and heart of the child." "Emerson argues that outer and inner vision merge to reveal symbols in the natural landscape. Because of the radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, natural facts serve as symbols of spiritual facts, so the natural world is perpetual allegory of the human spirit—an allegory to which the eye gives access."

"Hello: in the midst of wild Nature, the self becomes one with being and god; differentiation, alienation and struggle cease."

"For Emerson, every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the soul and, while he ardently valorizes the physical eye’s potential to see in a way that discovers symbolic meaning, his most memorable metaphorical image for such potential, the transparent eyeball, posits a vision wherein the eye sloughs off its body and ‘egotism,’ merging with what it sees. It is within this transparent, disembodied state of total union with nature that Emerson claims ‘I am nothing; I see all’. The ‘all’ that Emerson seeks access is not simply harmony with nature or even knowledge, but perception of a deep unity between the human spirit and the natural world."

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