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Seeing
and Seeing Sehdev Kumar Abstract Mysticism - as the highest
yearning of the soul for the Divine Being is at the root of all religious
traditions that originated, or blossomed, in India. Amongst these are Hinduism,
Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, as well Sufism, and the sages and seers that
illuminated the spiritual landscape of India for centuries. Indian philosophy, even through its encounters with the
Western philosophy in the last hundred years or so, has remained closely linked
to the mystical spirit and utterances of Indian sages. In fact, in Sanskrit,
the word for philosopher is "Seer." Seeing is at the very heart of the
being of man; Charles Darwin himself was greatly intrigued by the evolution of
the eye. Humans, however, have many kinds of eyes: the seeing eye, the inner
eye, the awakened eye; what one sees through them, and with them, defines the
great spectrum of lights we call man. Three Eyes of the Soul The thirteenth century Italian
Scholastic philosopher, St. Bonaventure - the great Doctor Seraphicus of the
Church, is a favorite philosopher of Western mystics. In both Dante's Paradiso
and Raphael's "Disputa" he appears as the equal of St. Aquinas.
Amongst his many contributions to metaphysics and theology, St. Bonaventure formulated
three modes by which humans attain knowledge. He called them "three
eyes": the eye of flesh, by which we perceive the external world of space,
time and objects; the eye of reason, by which the knowledge of philosophy,
logic and the mind itself is attained; and the eye of contemplation, which
reveals the knowledge of transcendent realities. In his book Breviloquium, Book II, St. Bonaventure
elaborates how all knowledge is a form of illumination. He talks of lumen
exterius and lumen inferius, the exterior and inferior illumination, which
lights the eye and makes the sense objects known to us. Then, there is lumen
interius, which lights the eye of reason and gives us knowledge of
philosophical truths. And above all - as though enunciating a "divine
hierarchy", he says there is lumen superius, the light of transcendant
Being, which illumines the eye of contemplation and reveals the truth of all
things, "truth which is unto liberation." All three worlds; the external, internal and the
transcendental; St. Bonaventure maintained, revealed the presence of the
Divine. In the external world, he said, we find a vestigium or "vestige of
God" which the eye of flesh perceives. In ourselves, in our psyches, in
the "threefold activity of the soul" (memory, reason and will), we
find an imago of God, revealed by the mental eye. And ultimately, through the
eye of contemplation, lighted by the lumen superius, we find the whole
transcendent realm itself, beyond sense and reason - the Divine Ultimate. St. Bonaventure was, in many ways, carrying forward the
ideas - and the words and metaphors in which they were expressed - that were
already in the air for a hundred years or more. Hugh of St. Victorine in the
twelfth century, in his mystical writings, had already distinguished between
cogitatio, meditatio, and contemplatio. Cogitatio, or simple empirical
cognition, is a seeking of the facts of the material world using the eye of the
flesh. Meditatio is a seeking for the truths within the psyche itself (the imago of God) using the mind's eye.
Contemplatio is the knowledge whereby the psyche or soul is united instantly
with Godhead in transcendent insight (revealed by the eye of contemplation). The specific expressions - eye of flesh, mind and
contemplation are Christian, but, in fact, similar ideas can be found in
every major school of traditional philosophy, psychology and religion. The
"three eyes" of a human being correspond to the three major realms of
being described by the perennial philosophy, which are the gross (flesh and material),
the subtle (mental and anemic), and the causal (transcendent and
contemplative). Philosophy of Illumination The idea of divine illumination
in the mind occurs in both philosophical and religious contexts through out the
ages and across geographical boundaries. Often it forms one of the links
between the two types of thought, and sometimes it bears strictly religious
overtones even in its more philosophical applications. This is one of the
characteristic features of the theory of illumination in the thought of Plato,
where it played, in its long history, a major part. Plato spoke readily of the
sudden flash of understanding or insight in the mind as a flood of light. Plato
was undoubtedly the father of the philosophical tradition to which the analogy
of light is fundamental. In his Republic, Plato employed the analogy of light and
vision to describe the process of understanding or knowledge in general (Books
V - VIII). The mind's knowledge of the world of intelligible reality, of the
forms or ideas, was held to be analogous to the awareness of material objects
accessible to the eye's vision when illuminated by the light of the sun. In
Republic 507f, Plato developed a detailed correspondence between physical and
intellectual sight, according to which the mind corresponds to the eye and the
form to the physical object seen; an "intellectual light" emanating
from the supreme form, the Good, and pervasive of the whole intelligible world
as well as the mind, corresponds to the sun. Understanding, in this analogy,
depends on the intellectual illumination of the eye and its objects. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the philosophy
of Illumination was widely diffused and incorporated into Jewish and Christian
thought. In the Hellenized Judaic milieu of Alexandria, the divine wisdom was
sometimes spoken of in terms of light, as for instance, the author of the book
of Wisdom, who referred to it as "an effulgence of eternal light,"
which he interpreted as an image of God's goodness (7,26). Over the centuries,
a long and rich future was prepared for the theory of illumination within the
body of the Christian thought. In the works of St. Augustine of Hippo, the theory of
illumination is found in its most highly developed form. Like Plato, Augustine
thought of understanding as analogous to seeing. Understanding, or intellectual
insight, was therefore, he held, conditional on illumination, just as physical
sight was; only here the light was the intelligible light that emanated from
the Divine mind and in illuminating the human mind endowed it with
understanding. The scope of illumination was further extended in the work of
the pseudo-Dionysius. His favorite designation for God, the absolutely
transcendent One, was in terms of light. God is the intelligible light beyond
all light and the inexhaustibly rich source of brightness that extends to all
intelligence. His illuminating activity gathers and reunites all that it
touches; it perfects creatures endowed with reason and understanding by uniting
them with the one all-pervading light (De Divinus Nomnibus, IV, 6). In a more special sense, illumination is the second of
three phases - namely purification, illumination, and perfection - of man's
return to the One. In this more specialized sense the church's sacramental
system and the grades in the ecclesiastical hierarchy concerned with its
administration are agencies of divine illumination. Illumination is the
intermediate stage of approach to God, between initial purification and final
perfection (De Eccsiastica Hierrarchia, V, 1,3). In the work of the
pseudo-Dionysius, the theory of illumination was merged with an inclusive
conception of the spiritual life formulated in the language of light and
illumination. In the thirteenth century, the rise of Christian Aristotelianism
provided the first serious alternative theory of knowledge. In this there was
no place for the intervention of divine illumination as an essential
constituent of knowledge. Knowledge was accounted for entirely in terms of
mental activity and its objects, and no reference to God was necessary to
explain it. Nevertheless, the lumen intellectuale of the mind was held to be a
participation in the lumen divinum of the divine mind, since God was present
everywhere, in the mind no less than in other things. Despite this new theory of knowledge, light and
illumination have continued to be the most pervasive metaphors and concepts in
mystical literature to this day. Seeing and Seers The Divine Ultimate, the truth
which is unto liberation, transcendent realm, and alike, are still abstract
and abstruse concepts, worthy of philosophical discourse or a theological
argument. However, "seeing" - whatever its nature - has a certain
fleshiness to it. I see the light that sees the light... O my Lord, it is
miraculous, cries the man in ecstasy as he glimpses the Ultimate. Simple
people imagine, Mister Eckhart wrote in the thirteenth century, "that
they should see God as if He stood there and they here... The eye with which I
see God is the same eye with which God sees me... The knower and the known are
one ... God and I are one in knowledge." In India, seeing and the yearning to be a seer-like, is
the central motif in all Hindu worship. The Sanskrit term used is "Darsan",
which means both attaining a glimpse of the Lord and being glimpsed by Him. The
"sacred perception" - the slow opening of the third eye - is the
ability truly to see the divine image; it is a gift bestowed on the devotee by
God, just as the great warrior Arjuna in the battlefield is given the eyes to
see the Virat Rupa - "the Cosmic Self" of Krishna in the theophany so
eloquently described in the Bhagavad Gita, 11.8. Jan Gonda, in his
detailed monograph Eye and Gaze in the Veda, has enumerated the many ways in
which the powerful gaze of the gods was imagined and expressed even in a time
before actual images of the gods were crafted. The eyes of Surya or Varuna are
powerful and all seeing. Siva and Ganesha are often depicted with a third
vertical eye, set in the center of the forehead. Brahma, inheriting the name of
"Thousand Eyes" from Indra, is sometimes depicted with eyes all over
his body. In the later Hindu tradition, when divine images began to be made,
the eyes were the final part of the anthromorphic image to be carved or set in
place. Even after the breath of life (prana) was established in the
image, came the ceremony in which the eyes were ritually opened with a golden
needle or with a final stroke of the paintbrush. This is still the common
practice in the consecration of the images, and today shiny oversized enamel
eyes may be set in the eye sockets of the image during the rite. In a Hindu temple when devotees stand on tiptoe and crane
their necks to see the image of Krishna, or Kali, or Hanuman, they wish not
only to "see," but also to be seen. The gaze of the huge eyes of the
image meets that of the worshiper, and that exchange of vision lies at the
heart of the Hindu worship. Art historian Stella Kramrisch describes how seeing is a
kind of touching in the Hindu context: Seeing, according to Indian
notions, is a going forth of the sight towards the object. Sight touches it and
acquires its form. Touch is the ultimate connection by which the visible yields
to being grasped. Not only is seeing a form of "touching," it is
a form of knowing. According to Brahmanas, "The eye is the truth (satyam)."
In Vedic India, the "seers" were called rsis - men of insight
and vision. In their hymns, collected in the Rig Veda, "to see" often
means a "mystical, supernatural beholding," or "visionary experiencing."
Later on, the term darsana was used to describe the systems of
philosophy, which developed in the Indian philosophy. However, it has been
argued that it is misleading to think of these as "systems" or
"schools" of philosophical thought. Rather, they are "points of
view" which represent the varied phases of the truth viewed from different
angles of vision. We
notice a certain universality in the use of light, seeing and illumination as
metaphors for a kind of spiritual "enlightenment." "There may be,"
Goethe said, "a difference between seeing and seeing; so that the eyes of
the spirit have to work in perpetual connection with those of the body."
And Carlos Casteneda, in his book A Separate Reality, expresses the same
process of "seeing" through the eyes of Don Juan: "Once you learn, you can
see every single thing in the world in a different way." "Then, don Juan, you don't
see the world in the usual way any more." "I see both ways. When I
want to look at the world I see it the way you do. Then when I want to see it, I
look at it the way I know and I perceive it in a different way." "But ... what's the
advantage of learning to see?" "You can tell thing apart.
You can see them for what they really are." The Awakened Eye The great Gautama, after his enlightenment,
declared himself "Buddha": he was now "awake." Time and
again, the mystical tradition refers to this new experience as a form of waking
up from a long and deep slumber. "If the doors of perception were
cleansed," wrote William Blake, "everything would appear to man as it
is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks in his cavern." Kabir, the
great poet-sage of fifteenth century India, sang in this state: O Kabir In a
dream God and
His creation Seem all So
fragmented But ah,
in the light Of the
day, One
sees the unity Of all
things! This new awakened state has been described by the sages
as being of supreme bliss. For centuries this state has also been the spring of
spiritual poetry and the utterances of great wisdom. In this state, for
instance, the nineteenth century sage Sri Ramakrishna, as the priest of the
Kali temple in Calcutta, did things that intrigued and offended the other
worshippers. He was once seen to feed a cat with sacramental food that was to
be offered to the Divine Mother. But the Master was seeing everything full of
Consciousness, as the embodiment of the spirit. The idol was consciousness, the
altar was consciousness, the doorsill, the marble floor, he himself - all
consciousness. "I clearly perceived that Divine Mother Herself had become
everything - even the cat." In this exalted state, when he intended to
offer the Mother a flower, he found his own hand coming towards his own head
and placing the flower there. For the sadhak - the spiritual aspirant - this
awakening reveals a new reality, The Reality, which is not causally related to
the phenomenological reality. His knowledge of this Reality is a knowledge
apart and his experience wholly other. Behind the "veil of illusion"
- the Maya, below the surfaces, underneath the masks, there must be another
universe accessible only through the "eye of the spirit," the Inner
Eye. When this eye is opened, the great sages say, what one sees is the unity
of man and God. Whatever the land, whatever the age, the Awakened Eye discovers
the oneness of all creation, the presence of One Element that permeates
everywhere: I...me...mine What
illusions The
mind creates! O
Master These
fragments Are all
part of you; In
offering them back To you Nothing
do I lose Except
myself! "The drop is submerged into the ocean," says
Kabir, "And the Ocean is submerged in the drop. So who can tell what is
what!" In this state of oneness, the Hindu mystics tell us, all
distinctions between the seeker and the sought, between man and God, the
animate and the inanimate, the matter and the spirit, and the sacred and the
profane are obliterated. In this undifferentiated unity, there are no more I
and thou, or the bride and the groom, the lover and the beloved, the subject and
the object; they are all one. There is a new presence of an ever-evolving,
eternally still, "ever-distinct , yet ever united," integrated,
whole, the One: I am Like a
pitcher of clay Floating
in the river, Water
inside, water outside; Now
suddenly With
the touch of the guru The
pitcher is broken! Inside Outside O
friends, It's all One! According to an Indian legend, the swan - the hans
- is endowed with a special gift of separating the milk from water, and thus
discerning the real from the unreal. And though in appearances a hans is
not very different from a bagula, a crane, when the waves of the ocean
strike against the shore, it is said that the swan dives in to search for the
pearls while the crane is content looking for the fish. In the history of Hindu
mysticism, a spiritual seeker is a hans in search of the pearls, always
sifting the real from the illusory. In spite of many differences on the
surface, the search and knowledge of such a seeker are remarkably similar in
different lands and traditions. A mystic's language is not of a philosopher,
but of a poet. It is invariably laced with metaphors and fables. It has images
rather than formulations. It makes allusions; it arrives at no conclusions.
Asked about his experience of oneness, the samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna
replied: I feel like a fish released
from a bowl into the water of the Ganga... In samadhi, I lose outer
consciousness completely, but God generally keeps a little trace of the ego in
me for enjoyment of the divine communion. Enjoyment is possible only when
"I" and "thou" remain. Again, sometimes God effaces even
that trace of "I". But what remains when God completely effaces the
ego cannot be described in words. I get into that state now and then. A salt
doll went to measure the depth of the ocean, but before it had gone far into
the water, it dissolved. It became entirely one with the water and the ocean.
Then who was to come back and tell the ocean's depth? I have come to the final
realization that God is the Whole and I am a part of Him, that God is the
Master and I am His servant. Furthermore, sometimes I feel that He is I and I
am He. Jalaludin Rumi,
the 12th century Sufi mystic, expresses this sense of the union with the One in
an allegory: Someone knocked at the door of
the Beloved and a voice from within enquired: "Who is there?" He
answered, "It is I." And the voice said, "This house will not
hold me and thee." So the door remained closed. Then theΈ lover sped away
into wilderness and fasted and prayed into the solicitude. And after a year he
returned and knocked again at the door and the voice again demanded: "Who
is there?" And the lover said, "It is thou." The door was
opened. Parallel to this is the experience of Kabir, Mira, Dadu
and Paltu in the Indian mystical tradition. "The path of love is much too
narrow. Two cannot walk here, only one," says Kabir. "The palace of
love," says Dadu, "has no room for two." Though scholars have tried to distinguish between the
mysticism of various religious traditions, there are nevertheless certain
abiding metaphors and images that are seen and heard in the mystical utterances
across the ages and across the cultural and religious traditions. The
utterances of Kabir, Rumi, Eckhart and Ramakrishna express an experience, which
speaks of God and the seeker as one. Such assertions have always had, as is
well known, a certain aura of heresy about them. Not only do they sound
supremely bloated in their claim, they disturb our sense of the omnipotence of
God that most cultures have come to associate with the idea of Creator and the
Almighty. Defending those who claim to be one with God not as arrogant but as
infinitely humble, Rumi wrote: Take the famous utterance,
"I am God." Some men reckon it as a great pretension; but "I am
God" is in fact is a statement of great humility. The man who says "I
am the servant of God" asserts that the two exist, one himself and the
other God. But he who says "I am God" has naughted himself and cast
himself to the winds. He says "I am God": that, "I am not, He is
all, nothing has existence but God, I am pure non-entity, I am nothing!"
In this the humility is greater. In the same
vein, Kabir sings: I am in
all, and all are in me, There
is none else but I! I
reside in the whole universe. Birth
and death are part of my play! Without
a form, without a contour, I
myself called myself Kabir, I
revealed myself As
myself! Once the veil of illusion has been removed, and once the
face of the One has been illuminated by the light of the soul, what one sees
has been variously described by the mystics as The Father, The Mother, The
Lover, The Bride, The Bridegroom, The Radiant One, The Holy Child, The Ground
of Our Being. Perhaps even these expressions are only a feeble attempt. What
they all say is "unnameable." "On this plane of reality,"
as 14th century Flemish mystic Rysbroeck observed, "we can
speak no more of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but only of One
Being," who is, in the words of Kabir, "beyond both the limited and
the limitless... The Pure Being." O men! O
Brothers! Why
don't you see That
the Creator Manifests
Himself In all
His Creation, And the
entire creation Is the
embodiment Of the
Creator? From
one Light All has
come to be! What is
good? What is
bad? These
are mere Phantoms
of you Own
mind! References: 1.
Arberry, A.J., Discourses of Rumi, New York,
1977. 2.
Blake, William, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Oxford University Press, London, 1975. 3.
Castaneda, Carlos, A Separate Reality, Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1971. 4.
Clark, J.M. and J.V. Skinner, eds., Meister Eckhart:
Selected Treatises and Sermons, London, 1958. 5.
Eck, Diana L., Darsan-Seeing the Divine Image in India,
Anima Books, Chambersburg, PA, USA, 1981. 6.
Gonda, Jan, Eye and Gaze in the Veda,
North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969. 7.
Kramrisch, Stella, The Hindu Temple, 2 vols.,
Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1976, reprint ed. 8.
Kumar, Sehdev, The Vision of Kabir, 2nd. ed.,
The Third Eye, London, Canada, 1996. 9.
Kumar, Sehdev, The Lotus in the Stone, Alpha
& Omega Books, Concord, On, Canada, 1984. 10.
Otto, Rudolph, Mysticism : East and West, New
York, 1959. 11.
Swami Yogeshananda, The Vision of Sri Ramakrishna,
Madras, 1973. 12.
Underhill, E., Introduction, Songs of Kabir, tr.
Rabindranath Tagore, New York, 1074. 13.
Underhill, E., Mysticism, Image Books,
Doubleday, New York, 1990. 14.
Whinfield, E.H. tr., Teachings of Rumi: The Masnavi,
E.P. Dutton, New York, 1975. 15.
Zaehner, R.C., Hindu and Muslim Mysticism,
Schocken Books, New York, 1972. Dr.
Sehdev Kumar is Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Author of The Vision of Kabir and The Lotus in the Stone, he was awarded a
prize by Templeton Foundation for lecturing on Science and Religion.
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