Seeing, Hearing and Understanding

In his famous “call” chapter, Isaiah tells of speaking with the Christ Spirit after the Seraphim had cleansed his guilty lips. The Lord tells him to tell his people that they will see but not see, hear but not hear, and not understand. Every Gospel, the book of Acts and Paul’s letter to the Romans all quote and emphasize this passage. Paul again speaks of it in Hebrews, saying there is “much to say [about Melchizedek] which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.” And Isaiah is told that this condition of darkness will prevail for a long time. It is true, as Isaiah foresaw, that a great light would be seen by the people who dwelt in the deep darkness. But it would be a light so great that it would not be fully comprehended for a time. Christendom has wrongly assumed that the veil was fully pulled back for it at Christ’s Resurrection. The veil of the temple, the human body, was then pulled back, but only as to the body of Christ who enabled it in time for every human soul. Christ came at the depth of humanity’s “valley of the shadow of death.” And just as one does not enter a long valley precipitously, so also is the journey out not a short, steep one.

Isaiah’s prophecy can be understood only by coming to realize that there are two types of seeing and hearing. One relates to our earthly mineral/physical seeing and hearing; the other to a seeing or hearing in the spiritual world. At that point in human evolution that we call “the Fall,” there commenced an ever so gradual darkening of human perception of spiritual beings. Clairvoyance and clairaudience were faculties possessed by all who were to become human. Humanity’s descent from “the Garden” involved a densification and hardening, and as this proceeded over ages and stages these perceptive faculties faded as the more sensitive human components drew within the mineral/physical body and intelligence increased. Only by these components can we perceive in the spiritual world, and we lose this ability as they become “veiled” by the flesh. In the Bible, over and over again it is referred to as God’s “hiding his face.” Had Christ not come at just “the right time,” hardening would have continued beyond the point of no return. But salvation was made possible for all humanity and indeed for all of creation by the Christ Event.

When it is said that one must become “blind” in order to see, it means that one must become blind, so to speak, to the illusory mineral/physical world if one is to see into the spiritual reality that stands behind it. It was primarily in this sense that Homer was termed “the blind poet.” And just as the progressive development of each of our five senses of the outer world is reflected in the biblical account of the Fall, so also will the human soul develop new organs of perception in its reascent into the spiritual world from which it came. The rending of the veil of the temple by Christ meant the eventual rending of the veil of the mineral/physical body so that spiritual reality could again be seen, but in a higher, transformed way.

The start toward a more complete understanding of what lay ahead for humanity had to await two millennia from the initial unveiling by Christ, for the time would not be right until then. There is a parabolic symmetry to the descent and reascent of humanity. The new understanding opened to humanity at the end of the second millennium is the mirror image of the accelerating descent into brain thinking that commenced with Abraham two millennia before Christ. The story of the Prodigal Son has its highest application as it reflects the journey of the fallen son, Adam, and the Father’s sacrifice of what belonged by right to the higher Son, Christ. It applies to every human being in that every soul makes the entire journey from beginning to end. This is vividly expressed in the middle of the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, when the message of the book of Job becomes clear. We shall come back to Job in a little while, but for now the following portions of the chapter should give us a clear hint of this reality (my emphasis):

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ... “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth ... when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? ... Have the gates of death been revealed to you ... ? ... Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great!”

The book of Job is the story of humanity, but in order to have meaning for any human being it is also at the same time the story of every human being. It is meaningless otherwise. Neither Christ nor the Psalmist could have referred to us as “gods” if it were not so. Each of us was born ages ago before the gates of death began dimming our spiritual consciousness with the Fall and the Tree of Life began to be replaced by the Tree of Knowledge. Before the Fall, our consciousness extended to spiritual beings and was continuous. Death was unknown. Death began to develop with the Fall, so that our consciousness was interrupted—but only our consciousness, not our essential being. And over long ages the spiritual beings progressively “hid their face” as the Bible tells us over and over.

As the wise sage said, “There is no remembrance of former things,” and for that reason do we eat, drink and make merry.

If Christendom is to be able to comprehend the Bible’s deeper meaning, it must jettison some concepts and open its mind to others, else the revelation cannot come. It will continue to see and hear in an earthly and material way but not see, hear or understand in a spiritual way. One can see a close parallel between the way the ecclesiastic authority interpreted scripture in the day of Christ and the way it interprets it today. This is always a danger when the frozen written word prevails over true intuitive prophecy. In ancient time there was no need for writing, and the major prophets, relied upon by Paul, have told us that this day must come again. The Bible is sacred, and is literally true, but only if it can be understood in its deeper prophetic sense. The day for understanding it otherwise is past. Our times are demanding new comprehension.