Two worlds stand close together but are kept apart by a barrier. They each face a great wall; windows and portals guarded by the wall’s master allow various travelers to peer into the world on the other side. On one side of this wall, the spirit who dwells there communicates with language that cannot be purely understood through speech. It conjures images mixed with emotion, intuition, inspiration, and imagination. Its words are mysterious, but in the mystery it begins to see its world clearly. It freely watches outside the wall from above in the wall’s towers.
On the other side of this wall the landscape is rich with vistas, music, art, great orations and books, logicians, scientists, and craftsmen. This world with its creations and men possess great knowledge and wisdom. Yet, the men in this world also find something fascinating beyond the wall; a world never completely knowable. In their spying of this world, they begin to understand that within themselves, such a wall also exists and another world entirely behind it. They perceive it to lie in the place that hides behind their own face.
Our own face, which we observe at least every morning and evening, holds an entire world behind it. The world of the mind has been an object of imagination to philosophers for many millennia. It is the place where the Truth of the world around us comes to make sense. The spiritual world becomes clearer to us there, as our inner world is by no means hermetically sealed. It is the great window of a man’s inner world, yet nobody can fully know what lies behind it even when one lives in it themselves. Even so, it reveals a great number of clues to the observer.
The face acts as a confluence between the inner world and the outer world. The expressions we display consciously reveal a desire from the inner world related to intention. This can be well meaning, yet it does not always reveal the truth of what our inner world really thinks or believes. When one is in love with someone, a blush, involuntary by nature, reveals affection and desire. A real laugh prompts a smile that cannot help but to reveal the mirth we feel. Our frowns, skeptical glances, squints, eye movements, and focus all uncover something about what happens inside of us to others.
The faces of two given people may be incredibly similar or different. When two faces meet, two inner worlds are engaging in communication. Hostility, indifference, friendliness, and love come to the fore during this posturing. We cannot truly know a person without this. Parasocial behavior, where one person feels a relationship with someone who does not know them, usually comes to the fore when one knows the face of another but themselves is unseen. We possess a capacity for relationships so profound that we can imagine the faces of characters in books and then feel as though we know them personally. Even so, we rely upon the embodied presence of the face for true relationships.
We know from the unfortunate years of 2020-2021 that just seeing a face on a screen does not fulfill the necessary requirements for a fulfilling relationship, for a functional work relationship though it may suffice. Like people on the platform previously known as Twitter tend to display through their wild comments, internet mediated communication lacks a very core element of humanity. Surely, Zoom meetings with coworkers or friends was better than nothing, but the lack of embodied presence of the face leads to the feeling of being known remaining absent.
Even when the person stands before us, hiding or masking the face also creates alienation and a feeling of distance. Alienation and loneliness naturally come forth when the complete window into the inner soul hides from view. When the face remains covered, we lose a massive part of our perceptive toolkit to understand what another person is thinking or feeling. Words alone do not satisfy the desire to know another person. A text message is nice; we see what someone might think. A phone call is a bit better; we hear how someone says those things. The best being able to see the person in front of us and taking in their body language, facial cues and hearing their words. It is much easier to love something real. When we experience a full person’s presence, we cannot easily deny their humanity.
The simple beauty of the face can be seen in Rembrandt’s art. The people are not particularly handsome or stunning, yet the humanity in their features shows itself profoundly. As one ponders the face, we should consider that it acts as a translator to a mysterious world that we can never fully know. Even as you observe your own face, do you see the thoughts within you changing your expressions? The mirror does not fully reveal what lies beyond the face, even as you know there is more there. Our own reflection often prompts criticism – too much face fat, not enough beard, too much beard, eyes too puffy. We may get lost in the superficial by practicing this way. While these things reveal some things, they fail to illuminate too much of the inner world.
“Remember that you can know yourself, and with that you know enough. But you cannot know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself, or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself. That is his limit." Carl Jung
I will dispute that we cannot know ourselves completely and we can begin to understand part of a person, but Jung is correct here in saying that we cannot fully know others. We rely on the face and the whole person to give us a glimpse however. What a loved one reveals to you is a gift. As we are not our own, we naturally meant to share parts of ourselves around us. That great barrier between the inner and outer world is something we should cherish as a great insight into both our own person and those around us.