Stimulating the Power of Vision

            We are discussing ways to mine the gems deposited within the human reality, to spiritually magnetize the talisman which is the human soul, so that we can see spiritual things and things spiritually.  I said that we need power to do this and the first power I discussed was the power of faith.  By faith I meant not a blind belief in some rigid doctrine or unsupported idea, but an open attitude toward life that generates purposeful action.  This post will discuss the power of inner vision.  Now faith and vision work hand-in-hand.

            If faith is the sense that the super-rational, supernatural inner world exists and is the drive to transcend existing conditions in order to progress, then vision is the power that sees into that inner world.  The power of vision can perceive inner reality via the intermediary of symbols, that is, through stories and accounts, principles and poetry, myth and mysteries.  But all symbols conceal even as they reveal.  True vision sees by direct perception and understands without need of rational or logical proofs.  Vision is strongest when one is in a meditative state, when the mind is abstracted from the whirl of sense impressions and freed from the internal ego-chatter that many mistake for thought. Because it sees directly, vision is the source of original and intuitive perceptions.  In vision new possibilities, potentials, avenues of advance and development are seen.  But let us be clear: a visionary does not see things that are not there.  That is either insanity or a materialist’s prejudice. The visionary does not see more in something, but more of it. 

            Great artists and scientists down through the ages have this power to perceive, so to speak, behind objective appearances and the mind’s flux of impressions to some “essence” informing the object, some quality of seeing that makes things, even momentarily, clear and important.  In such moments of heightened, intensified perception objects of perception are transfigured and charged with new intensity.  Subjectively, the usual psychological distance between subject and object is shortened or obliterated and a kind of oneness with the object of perception is attained, a sense of union traditionally described as ecstasy and that carries an electric charge to the mind which we call inspiration.  It is an understanding that “This is the way reality is”: that reality has unveiled itself.

           Vision is not just for artists and scientists.  The authors of the book, Reinventing the Corporation, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, say that vision is becoming an accepted fact in practical business concerns.  They write: “Belief in vision is a radically new precept in business philosophy.  It comes out of intuitive knowing, it says that logic is not everything, that it is not all in the numbers.  The idea is simply that by envisioning the future, you can more easily achieve your goal.  Vision is the link between dream and action.  Only a company with a real mission or sense of purpose that comes out of an intuitive or spiritual dimension will capture people’s hearts.” 

            All children have this power, but most “education” drains it out of them.  This draining is part of what is meant by an improper education depriving us of what we inherently possess.  So, how can we get it back? 

            Vision is seeing what is there in reality.  This takes two forms: seeing behind actuality to reality, and seeing actuality as it is.  An example of seeing behind actuality can be found in a Zen Buddhist koan.  A koan sets a mental challenge in the form of a logical paradox, such as: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”   Meditation on the paradox is meant to rid the mind of its rational veils so it can achieve enlightenment.   But one need not be a Zen monk to startle students out of the automatic pilot many of us operate on most of the time.  However, you might have to trick their slumbering powers into wakefulness by focusing on what is actually there.    

            When I taught in Japan I used the following exercise to get students to look at their usual world differently.  I would ask the students to look around the room and write “what they saw and felt.”  This did not mean to look at a chair and write “chair”.  “Chair” is the name given to a complex experience combining color, shape, past knowledge and use.  Much as a poet does, I wanted them to get their language as close as possible to the actual sensory experience itself.  So, if they see a chair they do not “see” chair, but would, for example, see and feel brown, hard, grey, cold, something to sit on.

            After a few minutes, I would tell them to stop and to share what they wrote with the class.  Inevitably, one of the first students to share would say “blackboard”--kokuban in Japanese.  I would stop the student and ask: “Is it black?”  “No,” he or she would have to admit, because in Japan all the “blackboards” were actually a pale green color.  So I would say: “But I asked you to write what you saw, not the name for what you saw.”  Here and there a light would go on between the temples.  Others would look at me as if I had just landed from Mars.  I used this exercise—which worked every time—not to embarrass anybody, but to demonstrate that often “schooling” is only learning the names of things. However necessary this is, good schooling must go beyond regurgitating learned names and teach students to see a larger reality, to mine their inner gems, to magnetize the talisman with new vibrations, to get off their cozy couches of conditioning.

            Last post I said that faith had two conditions: so, too, does vision.  What we usually describe as vision, seeing behind what is actually there to what is really there, is one experience of vision.  But to really see what is actually there--the hard, pale green writing surface rather than a “blackboard”--is the other form of vision.  The next post is about another spiritual power to mine the gems within, to magnetize the talisman: creativity.