More than meets the Eye

[Boromir88]

Raynor's correct, Tolkien uses 'The Eye' as a symbol and a metaphor not as an actual physical presense (as Jackson portrays in the movies).

In literature the symbol of 'The Eye' is used to show this all-watching, all-seeing, and always present force. For examples...

In George Orwell's book 1984, the symbol of Big Brother is a giant eye...and Big Brother is the dominating government that knows everything and sees everything within it's country of Oceania.

The Freemasons use the 'Eye of Providence' to symbolize God watching over and his protection. Also the Eygptians 'Eye of Horus' is similar to this.

So the Eye can be associated not only with evil (dominating, all-seeing and control) but also with good (as in the form of protection). Tolkien actually first gives the symbol of the Eye to explain Morgoth:

’It is true, of course, that Morgoth held the Orcs in dire thraldom;for in their corruption they had lost almost all possibility of resisting the domination of his will. So great indeed did its presure upon them become ere Angband fell that, if he turned his thought towards them, they were conscious of his ’eye’ wherever they might be. ......

This servitude to a central will that reduced the Orcs almost to an ant-like life was seen even more plainly in the Second and Third Age under the tyrrany of Sauron.~Home X; Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed

So, In HoME X, we see that the symbol of the Eye first is given to Morgoth and then under Sauron's power of the 2nd and 3rd ages the domination and tyrrany of Sauron intensifies.

So, Sauron does have a physical body during the War of the Ring, and The Eye is used as a symbol and metaphor. And when 'The Eye of Sauron' is mentioned it's used in passing to describe Sauron's omnipresense and control (and I think there is one time when Frodo had a vision of 'The Eye of Sauron'). But a vision isn't always reality.