There is a way to fall into the eyes of another.
Some call it a method. In truth there is no method for the one that falls-into—hereafter referred to and known as the ‘spark’ to those in-the-know—no technique, no skill that can be learned or sharpened, not even an instinctual acumen. Some argue there is method in the possessor of the eyes, the party hereafter referred to and known as the ‘observatory’ in the technical vernacular of those in-the-know. (Those in-the-know regarding this field are, fortunately for themselves and unfortunately for persons desiring contact with tangible knowledge, far too in-the-know to be sane, stable, or even intelligible.) Following through with the philosophical intricacies of the matter will reveal, as it always does, that the answer is a paradox. The only method of the observatory is the state of being unaware of any method.
Regardless of there being or not being some active process which instigates the falling-into (which is not an action but an event as has been demonstrated; an event hereafter referred to and known as ‘passage’ in the technical vernacular of those in-the-know), passage does take place.
Some believe they have calculated that passage occurs thousands of times a second and is in truth the medium of events (ocean) which allows time to move with such stunning precision and elegance (waves), or at least allows the illusion of time to remain consistent (wavelengths). These experts are of the opinion that our experience is defined by its motion, and therefore by its motion against what they call ‘the other’ being any entity outside the reference frame of you, literally you, the observer (not the observatory). They believe that all things are eternally apart, that all events are governed by chance, and that nothing can be proven.
On the other end of the spectrum is the theoretical camp holding that passage is a once-in-a-lifetime event, a sort of spiritual transcendence akin to grace, nirvana, catharsis: nothingness and wholeness in absolute harmony. The moment of passage is in truth the only moment that is. All temporal experience is flirting with the single moment, passage itself, the only event in which beings finally touch with Being. These experts believe that life and observation are defined by the state of completeness, when all images and ideas merge into reality which is one infinite engaged in a single moment of introspection. They believe that all things are eternally one, that all events, or rather the event, is governed by chance, and that nothing can be proven.
The divergence between the two theories on passage can be traced to the origins of their thought systems. One assumes a myriad of consciousnesses forever divided, the other assumes a whole, united universe on a plane underneath comprehension.
Both theoretical camps believe that both theoretical camps are correct. Both theoretical camps also believe that the two camps can never be unified. Both theories leave room for the endless struggle between wholeness and fragmentation, because it was plain to the architect of both theories that reconciliation of these concepts is a paradox, possible only in reality and not within thought itself. For the universe to continue to be, it follows that the heartbeat of that universe must be one that never has a goal or a reason to cease. The answer to the question must be the same question for the question to continue to ask itself. The paradox must be recursive for there to be a ‘stable’ reality. Fragmentation and wholeness are necessary to each other.
One desires two out of loneliness, two desires one out of love.
There is (stepping gracefully out of the historiography of the phenomenon in question) a way to fall into the eyes of another.
Passage can occur at any time, in any location, between any spark/observatory pair. The only stipulation is that both spark and observatory must possess consciousness. (Whether or not a tree, or at the greatest extreme a stone, possesses consciousness is still in question.) There must also be some form of contact, often realized in, though not limited to, but at the least analogized as, eye contact. ‘Falling into the eyes of another’ is how passage is defined in both spiritual and scientific realms, but eyes are not explicitly necessary for the event to occur. (Assuming that somethings known as ‘events’ actually ‘occur’ is also an inherent flaw in any description of passage or any description of any process, but is an assumption ingrained in our language, being as it is one of the principles of the lesser conceptual entity known as the objective reality.) Passage occurs by chance: when specific times, specific glances, specific beings and specific circumstances align in such a way as to facilitate transcendental movement of the self.
There is no formula, there is only the event.
Vital to any understanding of passage (as much as passage can be understood), one must first possess an understanding of a few underlying theories of consciousness held by perendologists (experts in the field of passage, word derived from the latin root for ‘through’ and the greek root ‘within’, a word as linguistically confused as the entire genre of study is existentially).
There exist more consciousnesses than we are conscious of, within the minds we consider our own. Where many pray for a simplistic world in which our selves are the delicate amalgam of mind, body and the tenuous soul, passengers (those who were once sparks during passage) must trust in the existence of complex relationships between things and groups of those things that allows for the event of passage. In other words, the self that is the spark is only a concept, an interpretation of the interconnections among a multitude of elements, such as the cells in the body, the molecules within those cells, the pulses of electricity that echo through the nervous system, peristaltic spasms in the gut, vibrations in the vocal chords, philosophies. All the elements that compose not only a consciousness, but a consciousness at a specific singularity in time.
The self that is the spark, the self of a passenger, has no substance. It is only an alignment.
Passage is the process of the transference of that alignment from one order of elements to another. When passage occurs, the consciousness within the observatory inherits the alignment that is the self within the spark. The spark remains the spark, and the observatory remains the observatory, but the self that is to become the passenger is transmitted via the impossibly involuted combination of instants that emerges when one consciousness becomes aware of another (one example being eye contact).
The poetic definition of ‘falling into the eyes of another’ emerged from and is perpetuated by the association of a certain sensation commonly associated with the event (only in relation to human/human passage), wherein the self, during the (infinite) moment of becoming passenger, slips out of the spark via the eyes and finds itself both reflected and divided within the eyes of the observatory. The self follows the invisible spatial ray formed between origin (spark’s means of perception, often eyes) and destination (observatory’s lens, often eyes). The gravitational sensation interpreted as falling is a result of the undefined distance of the ray. Rather than assuming the length between the two portals (spark’s and observatory’s means of perception) the ray passes through a variety of dimensions, none of them being in any conceivable fashion related to the spatial distance in physical ‘reality’.
The ray goes on forever. The ray ceases instantaneously. The self experiences a sharp rushing, an acceleration toward a speed analogous to terminal velocity, then a feeling of weightlessness as the alignment or self exists in two places at once and no place at all. When the infinite/instantaneous period of time has elapsed, and the event has taken place, the self can be said to have fallen into the eyes of another.
Falling is the best analogy available to poet and ontologist alike, because there is no active force applied on the self. It is only by natural accident that the self is released and the alignment transferred, and the moment of the observatory’s consciousness reassembled into the alignment of the previous self.
Therefore, in one sense, passage can be interpreted as coincidence.
All experience is relative to the self that is the subject of the experience, and therefore it can be said that the spark has become passenger within the observatory and the observatory remained observatory without any contradiction in terms. Consciousnesses can remain as ‘whole’ as ever they were, and selves can still be tossed between them.
Passengers are therefore chance geometries found within a consciousness that was not their origin. The realization that one was or is a passenger manifests itself in hundreds of ways. Often it begins as a slight uneasiness with the seeming constancy of things, is perpetuated by the discovery of paradoxes within/between thought and being, and ends in the barbaric rejection of truth.
There have been theories hinting at eternal passage. They revolve (quite literally) around the definition of being as the endless reproduction of alignments. They incorporate the hypothesis that true organisms are not found in the physical realm but are in fact these constantly shifting selves, or orders, or arrangements, or alignments of things-that-are that would be incapable of interacting with one another without intense creative conceptualization. In this model, passage both holds the world together and holds it apart.
There have been other theories suggesting that passage is a recursive event, meaning that the observatory is also spark and spark also observatory, all in the same instant. The difficulty of this theory lies in the conclusion lurking within: for passage to occur, for spark and observatory to exchange their respective alignments simultaneously, the alignments would have to be originally identical. Selves in spark and observatory would have to be the same self. Thus, acceptance of this theory proves that passage occurs, and that the universe has but one alignment, and that alignment is repeated endlessly, each permutation differing from the one preceding and the one following only by means of the consciousness subject to the awareness that the alignment is present. The the deepest imaginative layer of thought shares a form identical to the grandest embodiment of the physical.
This ultimate alignment manifests itself as chaos in the perception of beings. Yet, for Being to become, the alignment must be recursive. The alignment must exist in the smallest mote of matter and on the grandest cosmic scale. The alignment must exist beyond the physical, existing in the most quiet dreams and the most complex philosophies. Infinite numbers of the alignment must form the alignment, just as the alignment contains infinite echoes of itself. In a word, it must be a fractal. The alignment must be silent and invisible (it is no mistake that the cradle of all life is transparent and tasteless), and yet must draw all beings together and hold all beings apart.
There is no way to determine when passage occurs or whether it occurs at all. The self that is a passenger exists only for the instant of passage, which is eternal; then never again, until infinitely over again.
If passage occurs, passage must never occur. If passage never occurs, passage must occur. If both these rules are not true, passage shall not occur. Passage is therefore beyond the realm of logic, and all attempts to classify it or theorize on it are fallacious by virtue of the fact that it is possible to do so.