Eyeball to eyeball

Here's another spooky Doublequote from the Hipbone master:

Without getting into the immediate Eckhart context, that passage summons up a visceral fear: the re-use of a body part.  Think the Hands of Orlac, or phantom eye (ex: this 2002 film).  Plus there's the spooky, intrusive stare within.   

This quotepair reminds me of that fine Blue Oyster Cult song about eyes:

 

Specifically,

Harvester of eyes, that's me

And I see all there is to see

When I look inside your head

Right up front to the back of your skull...

The Infocultish elite will also recall Videodrome (1983).  Here's looking at you, Barry Convex.

Comments

[Andy Havens]

Ah, "Videodrome." Saw that in like the 10th grade, and was unable to watch TV for days afterward.

Great flick.

[Bryan Alexander]

Now now, Andy: that's the kind of movie best experienced on tape, not tv.

[Charles Cameron]

I guess my impression is that the Nietzsche quote is expressing an oppressive, prisoner-in-a-panopticon-style paranoid dismay, which I could roughly paraphrase as "if you stare into the horror long enough, you'll find the horror has taken up residence inside you" -- whereas I see the Eckhart quote as saying something very different, expressing a blissful rather than abysmal insight, that (in mystical terms) the seeker is the sought, the lover is the beloved.

That's an idea that's found in many traditions, tat tvam asi (Thou Art That) in the Chandogya Upanishad for instance, and I'm reminded of the 9th century Irish saying addressed to pilgrims:

Coming to Rome, much labour and little profit! The King whom you seek here, unless you bring Him with you you will not find Him.

Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, A Celtic Miscellany, #121, p. 136

Which IMO only makes the formal parallelism between the two quotes all the more intriguing...