Inner vision

“ Let me then take the case of the man who has trained his eyes, or rather whose vision has unconsciously trained itself, to look at every face he meets, to find in most cases something, however little, of the person's inner life. ”

“ If the eye and ear set in the body are not used as a means of opening the inner vision and of unstopping the inner sense of understanding, human life cannot rise higher than animal life. The eye and ear set in the material body are primarily intended as the means of developing the inner, human faculties that beasts have not. When the inner eye of mental vision is opened and the inner ear of understanding is unstopped, the material senses become not rulers, but servants. ”

“ Our capacities for sensation, for example, are less intimate possessions, so to speak, than our emotions and desires; our intellectual processes are less intimate than our volitional decisions. The more active-feeling states of consciousness are thus the more central portions of the spiritual Me. The very core and nucleus of our self, as we know it, the very sanctuary of our life, is the sense of activity which certain inner states possess. This sense of activity is often held to be a direct revelation of the living substance of our Soul. ”

“ Thoughts regarding the human brain, and the central point of view in which man stands with regard to the whole universe; glimpses of pre-vision from this sun and point of sight through an infinite expanse into the realms of all life, are predominant in my soul. Shall I ever be in full possession of myself, ever fully possess the world of thought which flashes through my soul? ”

“ I ask the doubters of my vision to penetrate a little into the mystery of their own thoughts and dreams before they cry out against me, who for many years travelled far and came upon lovely and inhabited regions to which I would also lead them. I know that my brain is a court where many living creatures throng, and I am never alone in it. You, too, can know that if you heighten the imagination and intensify the will. ”

“ I perhaps to build on had some little gift of imagination I brought with me into the world, but I know others who had no natural vision who acquired this, and by sustained meditation and by focussing the will to a burning-point, were raised above the narrow life of the body. ”

“ When once, by the bold synthesis of reason and sensation with those other attributes of the complex vision which we name instinct, imagination, intuition, and the like, the soul itself comes to be regarded as the substratum of personal existence, that desolating separation between humanity and Nature ceases to baffle us. ”

“ The mental vision is outward rather than inward, and sees things near or remote tinted by glowing, joyous colors, as through a prism. This mental outlook never implies profound insight, or deep thought, or conscious indwelling. ”

“ The mountains, let us say, which the eye beholds are the objects of its vision. In the same way the passions, sensations, "states of mind," &c., which the man is, or may be, conscious of, are the objects of his consciousness, of his conscious self. But no one ever supposes that the fact of vision is the same as the objects of vision. ”

“ The Brain is a center of consciousness with avenues of perception and impulse and departments that by aggregation, separation or association, enable the Individual Intelligence to determine the relation in time, or duration, force and orderly relation of perceptions, desires, motives, actions (or thoughts and feelings) as to sequence or results.
This whole conscious realm is the Mind. It is the inner chamber of the Soul. It is in no sense an entity. The actor, the real entity, is the Individual Intelligence. ”

“ For the organ of vision, it is plain, is merely material; and consequently, like every other material substance, is utterly incapable either of seeing or feeling. You must look then to some other source within yourself, before you can discover the wonderful faculty of vision, or that astonishing power which enables you to admit into yourself all the glories and beauties of external nature for your comfort and edification.—And what can this other source be but mind? Yet what is mind, but a substance and form capable of receiving life from its GREAT CREATOR ”

“ All these terms we bring in to explain the different details, or the different stages of development, or the different stages of experience through which we have to pass.
In order to be able to understand the inner consciousness, we must know it in its relation to the outer consciousness. The light can be understood only in its relation to darkness. ”

“ And this something, although impossible to be analysed, must be regarded as existing within that mysterious medium which is the uniting force of the universe. The soul must, in fact, be thought of as possessing some sort of "spiritual body" which is the centre of its complex vision and which, therefore, expresses itself in reason, self-consciousness, will, sensation, instinct, intuition, memory, emotion, conscience, taste, and imagination. All this must necessarily imply that the soul is within, and not outside, time and space. ”

“ The eyes are the third great gateway of the psyche. Here the soul goes in and out of the [78] body, as a bird flying forth and coming home. But the root of conscious vision is almost entirely in the breast. ”

“ Things which are brought to our consciousness from the exterior world and in a direct manner—through our senses—may be said to be of a material nature; while those which come to us indirectly—through our inner consciousness—may be said to be of spiritual origin. The clearness of our visions naturally depends upon the clearness of the impression still remaining upon the tablets of the brain. The more stirring the event in the first instance, the deeper and more lasting, of course, the impression. ”

“ He has found the eyes, the cars, and the understanding of the supra-self, and by suspending his surface mind through concentration and meditation he can enter any sphere of thought at will and be in the land of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and in the astral and atmospherian, or pass farther out and register in his surface brain the wonders and laws of etherian, and celestial worlds. He is at one with the world of the sensitive, the impressionist and the medium, and in the deeper states of vision he can see and read the memory tablets of the universe. ”

“ From that maxim of Life as the end of life, followed, as a practical consequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of inward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing and exercising one’s self in them, till one’s whole nature became one complex medium of reception, towards the vision—the “beatific vision,” if we really cared to make it such—of our actual experience in the world. ”

“ Concentrate your mind on the one whom you wish to heal, then build a mental vision of him; see him in consciousness just as whole and perfect as if he was really radiant with health. Make believe that he is standing before you a perfect picture of physical perfection, work on your vision until you can produce and hold the most beautiful idealized picture of human beauty of flesh, form and character. Never forget to illumine your perfect thought-patient with a divine light of spiritual radiance. ”

“ A simple instance will bring home to us how the boundaries of our consciousness are crowded with unknown impressions — unknown, because not attended to; but yet in some inexplicable way a part of our consciousness, since an effort of attention serves to bring them, any one of them, clearly into mental vision. ”

“ Was it that our eyes reveal all they are capable of revealing at a glance, in an instant; that at a glance we see all that we wish to see; but that they do not and cannot reveal our inner self, the hidden things of the soul ”

“ When the frame is cold and eyes closed, all the forces of the body and mind rush through the brain, and by a series of pictures the whole life just ended is imprinted indelibly on the inner man not only in a general outline but down to the smallest detail of even the most minute and fleeting impression. ”

“ Let us, then, now treat of the visions of corporeal substances, received spiritually in the soul, which come after the manner of bodily visions. For, just as the eyes see bodily visions by means of natural light, even so does the soul, through the understanding, by means of supernaturally derived light, as we have said, see those same natural things inwardly, together with others, as God wills; the difference between the two kinds of vision is only in the mode and manner of them. For spiritual and intellectual visions are much clearer and subtler than those which pertain to the body. ”

“ Is it the shining of the Psyche we perceive within ourselves when through aspiration the body becomes filled with interior light and consciousness is steeped in a brilliancy of many colours while the eyes are closed? ”

“ The external senses in their different degrees, especially sight and touch, give us the knowledge of objects that are extended and figured. The body I grasp with [Pg 83] the hand or survey with the eye has limits, outlines, angles, surfaces—that is, it has more or less EXTENSION. The inner sense gives us the knowledge of the changes and successions of our mental life. ”

“ We look down on our merely animal experience, on our sensations, perceptions, our memory, and our intellect, as something belonging to us, but not as constituting our most inward and eternal self. Our senses, our memory, our intellect, are like the lenses of a telescope. But there is an eye that looks through them at the realities of the outer world, our own rational and self-conscious soul; a power as distinct from our perceptive faculties as the sun is from the earth which it fills with light, and warmth, and life. ”

“ Let us now consider whether by this reference to body, feeling becomes any the more a source of general knowledge concerning matters of fact. As we have seen, if we identify the real with feeling simply, its distinction from ‘bare vision’ disappears. This difficulty it is sought to overcome by distinguishing feeling as merely in the mind from actually present sensation. ”

“ It is not the vibrating ether—it is not the external eye—that sees. It is the soul using the eye as an instrument, and light as a condition. Prove once that sight can exist without the use of light, sensation, or any physical organ of vision, and you prove an abnormal, supersensual, spiritual faculty—a proof which puts an end to the theory of materialism, and which, through its affinity with analogous or corresponding facts, justifies its introduction as part of a scientific basis for the spiritual theory. ”

“ For my own part, I declare that I can no more avoid perceiving, with my mental vision, the evidential marks of purpose in the structure of the body, than I can help seeing with my open eyes, in broad daylight, the objects that stand before my face. ”

“ Just as the sense of bodily sight which views the dirt beneath our feet is the same sense which contemplates the blue sky, so the inner sense of sight which perceives an electron, an ideal, or a hypothesis is the same sense which sees God. ”

“ Sensation by a Medium.—Objects, as we have just seen, are necessarily apprehended as without us; and in general, as removed from us by a great or small distance. Yet they affect our bodily senses; and this leads us irresistibly to the conviction that they are perceived by means of something intermediate. Vision, or hearing, or smell, or the warmth of a fire, must be communicated to us by some Medium of Sensation. ”

“ The reason for this is that corporeal vision, or feeling in respect to any of the other senses, or any other communication of the most interior kind, if it be of God, produces its effect upon the spirit at the very moment when it appears or is felt, without giving the soul time or opportunity to deliberate whether it will accept or reject it. ”

“ If this is the case in the physical life, it is evidently the case with the life of the emotions,—the imagination, the sensibilities, all those fine and delicate formations which, with the marvellous recording mechanism of the brain, make up the inner or subtile man. ”

“ What is that self which perceives the actions of the five roots of mind, touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing? What is that which is active in the two ways of motion, in the hands and in the feet? The problem of the soul appears in the expressions 'I say,' 'I know and perceive,' 'I come,' and 'I go' or 'I will stay here.' Thy soul is not thy body; it is not thy eye, not thy ear, not thy nose, not thy tongue, nor is it thy mind. The I is the one who feels the touch in thy body. ”

“ The truth is that in this ultimate revelation of the complex vision we are confronted with an inevitable triad, or trinity, of primordial aspects. We are compelled to think of a plurality of living souls of which our own is one; of certain ideal companions of all souls whose vision gives to our vision its objective value; and of an external universe which is the creation of this vision. ”

“ By this analysis of the ultimate duality of emotion we are put in possession of a basic aspect of the complex vision, which must largely shape and determine its total activity. The soul within us, that mysterious "something" which is the living and concrete "person" whose vision the complex vision is, is a thing subject at the start to this unfathomable duality, the emotion of love and the emotion of malice. ”

“ What the senses convey to us alone builds up our mental content, from mere sensory perceptions upwards to the most abstract ideas from the simplest psychical elements up to the most complex ideas, concepts, and conclusions, to the most varied imaginative constructions. And in the development of the mental content the “soul” itself is merely the stage upon which all that is acquired through the senses crowds, and jostles, and unites to form images, perceptions, and precepts. ”