In a recent service at First Parish in Concord, I shared this image with the children. I asked my husband Peter Bowden to draw it after the classic illustration by Christopher Cranch. “What do you think this drawing is?” I asked the children. They laughed and cried out, “An alien!” “A monster!” “A mutant!”
I explained that it is actually an illustration of a spiritual experience. When we become a “Transparent Eyeball” as Ralph Waldo Emerson described in his famous essay “Nature”, we have a sense of oneness with everything that surrounds us. When we open our senses to the natural world, we can experience connection with all of creation of which we are a part.
As Emerson wrote in 1836, “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.”
This coloring page is free for you to use as an educational tool or just for fun!
Download: Transparent Eyeball Coloring Page (PDF)
The idea of the transparent eyeball first appeared in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Nature, published in 1836. This illustration by Peter Bowden is based on a drawing by Christopher Pearse Cranch, ca. 1836-1838.
Amy Freedman 