| Eye of the Soul
"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime within man is the soul of the whole."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
Opening the Inner Eye
by Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg
Though Emerson was alive as the modern age was reaching its zenith, his words ring as true today in this postmodern age as they did then. By Emerson's time, modern science and technology—the foundations of modern civilization—had already staked their claim upon the human mind. Over a century and a half later, they still hold sway over the minds of virtually everyone educated in the scientific worldview and trained to see the world "in parts, in particles."
In our time, however, we have come face to face with the limits of the scientific paradigm—the view of reality based on information gathered from the visible, measurable, observable world. Our time has also been called "the information age" and yet, paradoxically, we are drowning in a glut of information while experiencing a growing sense of uncertainty. The result is still another epithet for this period, "the age of uncertainty." We have learned that it is possible to have all the information in the world at our fingertips (quite literally, through the Internet) and still lack the framework to comprehend the churning wave of change that marks this transitional time.
For 19th century American Transcendentalists, the problems of the modern age stemmed from the way that human beings learn to process information. "We see the world piece by piece," writes Emerson, "as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul." The soul, he was saying, is the organ of consciousness that perceives the whole, and sees the parts in the context of the whole. The soul is aware of the inherent unity of all souls in "the one Over-Soul," as Emerson put it, and of the relationship of all living entities to "the eternal One."
Because the human soul has the capacity to knit together all the seemingly separate parts and pieces of our world, it could fairly be said that our future rests upon it. The spiritual awakening that has accelerated since the start of this millennium signals a new era of possibility based on a paradigm of wholeness. It forecasts a world order fundamentally different from the present one, now unraveling. The growing tide of fragmentation we are witnessing conjures up the famous lines of the poet W.B. Yeats: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
And yet through the eye of the soul, a new vision emerges. With every soul that awakens to a higher reality there is added potential for the creation of a new human civilization and culture. The process begins with the opening of the inner eye, untrammeled by the boundaries of the visible world. By its very nature the conscious soul sees the whole of things, realizing that the challenges faced by humanity are inextricably linked. Through the eye of the soul, the myriad intractable problems of our time are seen as interrelated facets of one indivisible whole that is the life of our planet. And through the lens of wholeness, the search for solutions takes on a completely different character.
To better understand the nature of the soul's inner eye, we might begin by contrasting it with the physical eye and what the outer eye sees in the normal course of daily living. According to esoteric science, the "science of the soul," the physical eye is designed for navigating the world of form. It is the sense organ through which we visually perceive objects of a material nature. To the physical eye, geared to the material world of form, all objects appear to be separate from one another, like Emerson's parts and particles. We see sun, moon, animal, and tree as separate, unconnected, unrelated forms.
The reason for the appearance of separateness is that the physical eye sees only the outer form of things. To this "outer eye," all people and objects appear distinctly separate from one another. The physical eye belongs to the biological apparatus that has allowed us to adapt to life in the concrete world of outward appearance during the long phase of human evolution that has led to this pivotal moment. What it sees in the concrete world of form is the "container" of energy, as opposed to the life energy that vitalizes and pervades all forms—a sun, a human being, a subatomic particle.
Interestingly, while the physical eye endows all human beings with the same capacity of observation, we do not all see in the same way. Each of us can observe that different forms have different qualities and characteristics, but none of us sees with pure objectivity. Though the organ of sight is itself a neutral instrument, what we perceive through its lens is colored by our emotions and thoughts, our desires and ambitions—a point indelibly made by the popular film What the Bleep Do We Know?
The reason why no two people see things exactly alike is attributable to the fact that what we see is influenced by the content of our individual personality, with its unique experience and history. This phenomenon has been demonstrated for nearly a century by the Rorschach inkblot test, still widely used in psychological testing. Our view of the world is filtered through the mental, emotional, and physical energy patterns that comprise our individual personalities. Only when we learn to break personality patterns and transmute the energies of the persona does the spiritual eye begin to open, allowing us to see things as they truly are. (See Transformative Path)
Hidden within the soul, during long cycles of experience, is the knowledge that all of life is one. This knowledge becomes conscious as the soul awakens, the heart opens, and the seeker finds his or her way to the path of self-transformation. The focus of life shifts from the outer realm of form to the inner realm of subtle energies where there are no borders, barriers, divisions, or separations. There is instead a growing awareness of a unitary Life—a pulsating sea of vibrant energy that contains all the seemingly separate lives on our planet. This is the lens through which the revelation of wholeness gradually makes itself known to the eye of the soul—the eye of wisdom shared universally by all who tread this path.
This is the introduction to a series of articles on viewing these times of transition through the "spiritual eye"—the eye of the soul.
© 2008 Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg
Symbol of One Humanity
Synchronicity
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