kriyayogamalaysia

Open the Eyes of Your Soul

By Rudra Shivananda

Rudra Shivananda

Most of us have been so dazzled by the lesser lights of the universe that we have forgotten about the great Light of our True Self – this is the human condition. We first closed the eyes of our souls in order to enjoy the sensory delights from our physical eyes. Over time, we developed an I-ness or ego-sense which has helped to condition us to keep our soul-eyes closed such that we have lost the ability to open them. We are like blind men and women blundering into each other – we only see the external features but not the true nature.

This brings to mind a parable that you might find interesting: Imagine a great brilliantly lit hall filled with people who have closed their eyes for so long that they have lost their ability to open them. They socialized by moving around but since they cannot see, they keep hitting and rubbing against each other, liking some and disliking others; becoming angry at some for hitting them and loving some for kissing them. Sometimes they would knock against a wall or fall down and hurt themselves. Everyone went through times of happiness and suffering.

There were some people at different times in different parts of the room, who managed to open their eyes and see the brilliant light. Once they could see, some looked for the doors, opened them and left the room – they escaped. Some decided to stay in the room and moved around easily avoiding collisions with others. These were enlightened because the light gave them such clarity that they clearly saw everybody around them moving about and all of their misconceptions about what others were actually doing disappeared. They no longer harbored any ill-feelings for
someone hitting them. They continued to be hit by some people, but they could better understand what was happening, because they could see.

Some of those with opened eyes started giving guidance to others. Some gave directions on how to go to less crowded and more pleasant parts of the room – those who followed these directions felt like they were in heaven. Some gave directions on how to open the eyes and those who followed them and made the effort achieved success. There were those who ignored the importance of opening their own eyes and instead developed fascination and admiration for those with open eyes and started following them blindly. But they got lost while trying to follow, because they could not see. When their enlightened teacher left the room, the followers started arguing about which way to go. Being unable to see, they were all naturally wrong in different ways. Instead of trying to open their eyes, they kept running here and there
with closed eyes and arguing with others on where to go.

A few determined ones spent a lot time and energy convincing others to walk along with them and felt proud of forming the largest groups and called themselves and religion – a binding together. These large groups would call those who were following different ways and crossed their paths by bad names and even tried to hurt them or even kill them.

Some learned blind folks recognized that various people may have seen the same light though their descriptions were in different words. They realized that everyone will and can see that same light if they opened their eyes. These learned ones identified correctly recognized the closed eyes as the problem. But lacking any practical experience, they grossly underestimated the difficulty in opening their eyes after keeping them closed for too long. They kept telling others that they just had to open your eyes and then there will be brilliant light. A few even imagined that their eyes were open and that they were seeing a bright light.

Some sincere folks recognized the role of effort in opening their eyes and kept trying to pull the eye lids apart consciously every day. However, they had such wild imaginations that together with their desires for experiences that they were carried away and could not focus their energy on actually opening the eyes. They ended up hallucinating that they were seeing brilliant scenes that they had imagined in their dreams.

There were even those who used up their energy on unimportant aspects of the best approach to opening the eyes. They would argue about how to wash the hands before trying to open the eyelids and how much force to use to and what angle to pull them apart. Of course, their eyes remained closed.

Some of them succeeded in opening the eyes a little bit and the flash of brilliant light startled them. Having been in darkness for too long, they could not keep their eyes open for more than a split second. They closed their eyes again, but became proud of
their achievement. They assumed that the light could be seen only for a split second by anyone and that they had achieved what the enlightened had talked about. They started erroneous schools of teachings.

Of course, some of them did not complicate things, did not get distracted and tried sincerely using the best method they could think of and managed to open eyes and see light.

I hope you liked this parable which you can add to and develop as I’m sure you can think of a lot of other antics that spiritually blind folks get up to.