Spirit Eyes

The Spirit Body is unlike the physical or the psychical. It is not an etherealised earthly body, yet it resembles it in one point—it manifests the real man in various ways. We manifest ourselves by speech and look and perceive others by the touch and the ear. So the spirit has its spirit vision, hearing, speech, etc.

Spirit vision is that true, deep, spirit intuition into the realities of things—that piercing eye of the soul which lays bare the roots, the deep foundations of things.

Spirit vision always looks to the roots of things; below the righteous action, it looks for truth; below the generous, for justice and below all for love, which is life in its highest manifestation.

The physical sees the sun and stars and perceives that the sun gives heat and life, day and night, etc.

The psychic sees the laws, which govern these suns and knows that they are good.

Spirit vision sees the life, which produces the laws and causes them all to be and to be perfect.

Again—the physical sees the rich man pulling down his barns and building larger ones and perceives that it is that he may have room where to bestow his goods.

The psychic sees why he does this; that he may say to his soul—Eat, drink and be satisfied.

The pneuma perceives that the spring of these actions is injustice—the man not being perfectly just (or rather justice not being perfectly manifested in him), fears to trust himself to nature—fears that he will suffer real loss in the stress of life or in the pangs of death and hopes that he may by his own lower powers get to himself more than others a shelter from the forces he fears instead of trusts. He does not know that he is endowed with a birthright, as son of God, of which nothing can possibly deprive him.

Spirit vision, like a circle, holds all things within itself and its gaze pierces equally to the distant or the near, to the past or the present. We remember the past and memory and imagination can reproduce it in a more or less broken manner but the spirit sees the past as we do the present, as really and as truly. All things are within its range, that is, the whole of the psychic life of the ego. The future is still a sealed book, though greater powers of intuition enable it to read even that more clearly than before. 

Elisha must have had the psychic vision when he saw Gehazi on his deceitful errand but Christ had the spirit vision when from his intimate knowledge of the character of Judas he said—“This is he who shall betray me.”

The physical sees the besieged city with the prophet within its walls; the psychic sees the chariots and horses of the Lord encircling it in the hour of danger, to leave it when that special need is past—the spirit sees the love and pity, the just and abiding care that is forever around—not only that city but the army of the besiegers and the whole world.

The spirit eyes, then, see the spirit forms and the world in which they dwell but it sees far more than this—it sees Reality under Appearance and Truth beneath any veil.

Nor is there any confusion arising from this vast field of vision, for the harmony of the spheres is so great that the eye takes in all or a part, as easily as our eyes take in an extended landscape or a minute object.