As he went on his way Jesus saw a man blind from his birth. His disciples put the question, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents? Why was he born blind?" "It is not that this man or his parents sinned," Jesus answered, "he was born blind so that God's power might be displayed in curing him. While daylight lasts we must carry on the work of him who sent me; night comes, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." With these words he spat on the ground and made a paste with the spittle; he spread it on the man's eyes and said to him "Go and wash in the pool of Siloam." (The name means "sent".) The man went away and washed, and when he returned he could see. (John 9:1-7)
This healing episode starts with an account of the restoration of sight to a man who was blind from birth. It continues, as in the case of the man who had been paralysed for thirty-eight years, with an encounter with the Jewish authorities who once again objected to the healing because it was done on the Sabbath. The man and his parents were minutely cross-questioned, because most of the doctors of the Law regarded Jesus as a sinner and were already plotting against his life. Eventually in exasperation the man who had been healed says, "All I know is this: once I was blind, now I can see". In the end he was expelled from the synagogue, another example of how the healing wrought by God brings the individual into open controversy where he can no longer be mute, but has instead to take a definite stand in the name of truth.
In this healing miracle the blind man attains spiritual enlightenment as well as physical sight. The religious authorities, on the other hand, sink deeper into spiritual darkness because they refuse to face the light of God, wilfully closing their minds to its impingent rays. They remain spiritually blind even though their physical sight remains unimpaired. Jesus puts this tragedy into stark relief when he says to some Pharisees in his company, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty, but because you say "We see", your guilt remains." In the same context he says, "It is for judgement that I have come into this world - to give sight to the sightless and to make blind those who see" (John 9:39-41).
The portals of our inner vision that looks upon and comprehends a deeper purpose to the manifold changes of each passing moment, are, in our natural state, all too often blocked by the cares and distractions, the material and psychical debris of the world around us. The scales of material striving and emotional desire will continue to occlude our deeper sight so long as we are immersed in worldly consciousness, in which we equate the trees of selfish, individualistic endeavour with the wood of ultimate fulfilment. Often the shadow of an imminent crisis looms so large in front of us that it assumes the proportions of an unscalable mountain, and we retreat in disarray before the menace of the unknown without even having the courage to assess its demands from a distance. Our view of reality is distorted by the narrow range afforded by the ego-conscious vision in which we normally function, and many of the blockages we encounter are created, and certainly magnified, by the uneasy ramblings of an unstable mind. We see in another person often what we project of ourselves on to him; only when we have been liberated from our ego-directed field of vision can we see him as an individual in his own right. Then for the first time we may encounter kindness and consideration in one whom we had previously categorized as cold, snobbish or dictatorial. There can be no healing until we see life truly and of a piece. Then, at last, we can participate in that life in full dedication, giving our own unique essence to it for its greater glory as well as our emancipation from the bonds of selfish desire, whether they be a concern that others should think well of us or the expectation of recompense for our work.
"Where there is no vision the people perish" (Prov. 29:18).
A more modern translation of this famous aphorism substitutes the words "break loose" for "perish". When the mind is not focused on a teaching of high spiritual potency, the entire personality begins to vacillate in its purpose, and it is soon captivated by the glamour of meretricious trifles. Inevitably the person wanders off distracted and proceeds aimlessly; he soon encounters the various monsters that inhabit the dark verges of unfrequented paths. Jesus says, "The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eyes are sound, you will have light for your whole body; if the eyes are bad, your whole body will be in darkness. If then the only light you have is darkness, the darkness is doubly dark" (Mat. 6:22-3). The will itself is of little avail if it lacks guidance. Only the light of God within can be a sure guide into the darkness that confronts us throughout our mortal life. If that light is obstructed - it can never be extinguished - we wander in a trackless waste devoid of purpose and consummated in futility. We read in the prologue of the fourth Gospel, "All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it" (John 1:4-5). The light of God is deeply implanted in the spirit of the soul, and the purpose and end of mortal life is to let that light pervade the whole personality, so that the occluding clouds of sinful desire are dissipated and finally transfigured into a warm glow of concern for the whole creation. This caring commences with our fellow men and extends ultimately to embrace the simplest form of life, even the most elementary particles of matter. God sent numerous religious teachers into the world at various times to enlighten their fellow men about the abundant life, which is ruined by the accumulated psychic burden of evil actions extending from the past. The way to deal with this is one of transmutation by perfect love, as was shown fully in the life of his Son, Jesus Christ. This is our vision also of the life that is perfect in quality: it is the way and the truth that alone show us God as Father, who loved the world so much that he gave his only Son that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life (John 3:16).
The man with one-pointed vision, the two eyes focused on a single point at a time, is symbolic of the person who has consecrated himself, his soul and body, to the service of his fellow creatures. When that service is dedicated to God's honour and glory, that person is a sacrament of the risen man in Christ. Now indeed the life he lives is more than merely his own life, but is also the life that Christ lives in him. In this respect, when we consider the implications of this insight of St Paul in Galatians 2:19, it is important to understand that our personal life is not summarily disrupted by the invasion of Christ into it, so that he forthwith takes it over for higher service. It is to be seen much more as an enrichment of our lives by the invitation of Christ to enter into our private home and bless its contents. He stands outside the gate of the soul, knocking to enter but waiting patiently to be admitted to what is, in effect, his own true domain. Though he is the true centre of the soul, the spirit - the life that is the light of man - until he is acknowledged with the totality of the personality, he remains outside our sanctuary. In this respect the saying of St James to the effect that even if a man keeps the whole Law apart from one single point, he is guilty of breaking it all (James 2:10), finds its positive application: until every aspect of ourself acknowledges Christ and lives according to that recognition, we fail to accept the full Christ into our lives, even though we may affirm his teachings with our mind and enter into his ministry with our emotions. The man whose spiritual eyes are sound and single in attention is filled with the light of Christ, and he is transfigured into his likeness, from splendour to splendour, such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).
But, to return to Galatians 2:19 once more, the full life of Christ in the soul follows the experience of crucifixion with Christ. This means that all demands and expectations of the ego have to be put into their rightful place of subservience, if not total oblivion, before Christ can come into his own in the soul, now cleansed of the incubus of personal desire. This does not mean that desire in itself is reprehensible - Jesus himself said, "How I have longed to eat this Passover with you before my death!" (Luke 22:15) - but that it becomes limiting when it is enclosed in personal ends devoid of a more communal concern. Jesus continues, in the passage quoted above, to prophesy that never again shall he eat the Passover until the time when it finds its fulfilment in the kingdom of God. At that time, which is the Parousia (the full coming of Christ in glory), the spiritual sight of all who participate in that meal; which commemorates the liberation of the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery, will be raised to envisage and enact the liberation of the whole created universe from the shackles of sinful self-regard to the freedom of self-expression sufficient to offer up everything to God in heaven.
This is the unobstructed vision that finds its end in a true healing, that one sees no longer "puzzling reflections in a mirror, but face to face", with fullness of reality, as St Paul envisages in 1 Corinthians 13:12. This vision leads us on to the offering of our life to God's glory and our own resurrection. It is not a vision of happy repose and blissful comfort; on the contrary, it is one in which we have to experience death in the prospect of new life, a life as yet unknown but nevertheless fertile in promise of fulfilment. In the ministry of Ezekiel, the prophet both anticipates and participates in the sufferings of the exiled Jews - and therefore all Israel - by his own misfortunes. These are a sudden deprival of speech so that he is struck dumb for a considerable period of time, and the death of his beloved wife, whom he is forbidden to mourn openly. These are symbolic gestures of destruction of the whole nation, but the prophet does not merely carry out a mime, as in so many other rituals. Here his heart has to bleed in solidarity with a wicked people in their tragedy. But then comes the denouement: the promise of a regenerated nation portrayed by the marvellous vision of the valley full of bones that are resurrected to the stature of an immense living army. "Prophesy, therefore, and say to them, These are the words of the Lord God: O my people, I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and restore you to the land of Israel, You shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from them, O my people" (Ezek. 37:12-13). As the people revive, so does Ezekiel's speech return, and his prophecy ends on a triumphant note of the restored theocracy that is to herald a reformed Judaism, a Judaism inherited and fulfilled by Jesus some six centuries after Ezekiel's own ministry.
The experience of unobstructed vision occurred also in the life of St Paul, a man with a single mind even in his youth. He was so jealous for God's glory as an ardent Pharisee that he moved heaven and earth against the early Christian groups. He acquiesced in the stoning of Stephen as a dangerous force of subversion of the true faith, but during this whole period the Holy Spirit was working an inner revolution in his soul. When he was on the Damascus road, hot in pursuit of the Christians in that city, he was suddenly struck blind. The one-pointed vision of the past was not merely dimmed, it was completely obliterated. Now he laboured in complete darkness, in a cloud of absolute unknowing, as the risen Christ revealed himself and showed the former persecutor what he had to do with the remainder of his life. He was the one to be sent, the apostle, to the gentiles to bring them into a new relationship with God as revealed in Christ. Before Paul's spiritual vision could be cleared and redirected, his physical sight had to be temporarily dimmed so that he could experience the helplessness of a little child once more and receive healing at the hands of the disciple Ananias three days later. We remember once more the words of Christ in respect of the man born blind whom he had healed, "It is for judgement that I have come into this world - to give sight to the sightless and to make blind those who see" (John 9:39-41). In the instance of St Paul the second action had to take precedence, for only in the darkness of complete incomprehension could his proud intellect and intolerant heart turn like a child to a new revelation of God. This revelation did not so much supplant his previous understanding of divine reality as bring it to a universal fulfilment. This fulfilment, this summing up of the Law as he was later to affirm, was based on the principle of love (Rom. 13:10), a particular quality that Paul was slowly to acquire in the course of his acquaintanceship with the risen Christ and the sufferings he was to endure in his service to him. Vision brings us all to a confrontation with what is eternal in each passing moment so that we can at last begin to devote our energies to the things that outlast the sensations of that moment.
Jesus says, "You must work, not for this perishable food, but for the food that lasts, the food of eternal life" (John 6:27). This food, the Gospel goes on to explain, is given by Christ, upon whom God the Father has set his seal of authority. This seal is the Holy Spirit, who works the miracles that Jesus performs. What one sees with one's inner eye as a direct vision of the work ahead of one is articulated inwardly and interpreted by the inner ear as one's vocation. God calls each of us to some special work for the coming of his kingdom on earth. This does not mean that we all are called to some ministry, one which will direct us away from our mundane concerns into the arena of pure spiritual discipleship. It means rather that we have work to do here and now in forwarding the purpose of Christ on earth. While we are about our daily business, whether at home or doing some more specialized work in the larger world, we have a constant opportunity to spread God's love among those with whom we toil day by day. As we carry out God's business faithfully - as Jesus was about his Father's business even when he disputed with the teachers at the Temple when he was only twelve years old (Luke 2:41-51) - so we lose concern for ourselves and are filled increasingly with the Holy Spirit. To repeat 2 Corinthians 3:18, "Because for us there is no veil over the face, we all reflect as in a mirror the splendour of the Lord; thus we are transfigured into his likeness, from splendour to splendour; such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit". The vision complemented by the inner call brings us to a full confrontation with the Holy Spirit, and our healing is now accelerated and consummated in God himself.
Each apparently menial task now assumes something of timeless heroism in the face of the uncomprehending darkness and blank apathy of those around us. Though they have eyes, they do not see; though they have ears, they do not hear - any more than did we before our inner vision was cleared and the inner voice became audible to us. The idols that the Prophets of Israel condemned so frequently also had the outer appurtenances that passed for sensory organs but lacked the living means to discern any stimulus. Man in his unredeemed state bears too close a resemblance to idols of wood and stone for any of us to be sanguine about his future. When, however; he is touched by the Spirit of God in a healing relationship, his outer organs of perception are not merely freed to do their proper work, but are also directed inwardly so that the spiritual content of their vision may be accepted, reflected upon and used constructively for the sake of the world. The call of God is to glorify him in whatever work we are doing amongst our brothers, so that the labour and its fulfilment may be a sacrament, leading us forward and inward to Christ himself. Jesus is conventionally portrayed as a carpenter who worked in Joseph's shop. I personally like to feel that he never lost contact with his trade even during the final period of his ministry among his brethren. Whatever he touched, he glorified. So too whatever is handled by a person imbued with the divine vision is consecrated to God's glory and the benefit of those who use it. The light of God transfigures material substance to spiritual essence, and all who partake of it are lifted up to God; it becomes a healing sacrament.
When Jesus performed his three resurrection miracles - the raising of Jairus' daughter, the widow of Nain's son, and Lazarus - he brought all three from death's shadow to a fresh vision of life, so that we may be sure the remainder of their days on earth were devoted to the things of eternity in a way that would previously have been inconceivable to them. We have all in due season to quit the physical body and enter into the life beyond death; this must surely have happened also to the three people whom Jesus raised. But their remaining life on earth was already an experience of resurrection. As St Paul puts it, "When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has gone and a new order has already begun." (2 Cor. 5:17). He goes on to say: "From first to last this has been the work of God. He has reconciled us men to himself through Christ . . .. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:18-19). Christ, in fact, by assuming men's sins, redeemed humanity from the bondage of sin, so that a new life of unobstructed vision was now possible, nothing less than the vision of God. When a person offers himself in openness of trust to God in Christ, he is cleansed of his past sinfulness, and the uncreated light of God can penetrate his whole being. This clears the portals of vision, so that now the person can discern and follow the light of God. This light, though of unfathomable radiance so that it blinds the mortal eye, as it did St Paul's eye in his experience on the road to Damascus, once it is accepted and accommodated by the soul, becomes a beacon of direction and a support of warm love. "I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall wander in the dark; he shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). The light is not only the medium of spiritual vision, it also opens the spiritual eyes to the perception of eternal truth, and so is the way, the truth and the very life of the one who knows Christ and lives by him. The unobstructed vision sees the truth that sets us free, and it informs the will so categorically that we start to move in the direction of that truth. The basis of the truth that sets us free is its property of leading us away from a selfish, sinful mode of existence to a knowledge of the eternal life in God. In other words, when the truth of Christ directs a person, he ceases to live a narrowly personal, acquisitive life, but instead enters a transpersonal mode of existence in which he lives for his neighbour's good also. The neighbour, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan tells us, is anyone in his proximity at any time and in any place. This was the life Jesus lived, and he has not inappropriately been called "the man for others". Jesus' teaching about the life of vision, the transpersonal life, is direct and in harmony with the great mystics of all ages and traditions.
Anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine must leave self behind; he must take up his cross and come with me. Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake and for the Gospel, that man is safe. What does a man gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true-self? What can he give to buy that self back? (Mark 8:34-7)
It is of interest that six to eight days after giving this teaching, Jesus was transfigured in the sight of Peter, James and John. It was the vision of the three chosen disciples that was cleared and intensified by this event; for Jesus, who had always lived on this level of intimacy with the Father and love for his brethren, it was a presage of the resurrection later to follow. When one's vision has widened sufficiently to see one's neighbour as oneself, one has passed from the narrowly private personal existence we all guard so intensely to the transpersonal life in which the stranger is also a member of one's family. And that stranger then shows himself as the risen Lord, as he did to the travellers on the Emmaus road.
The measure of a truly spiritual healing is the steady transformation of the person's character so that he ceases to live for himself alone, but gives himself ever more unreservedly to others. His vision of fulfilment is no longer limited by the desire for personal gain. Instead the desire is for all people to gain a knowledge of God, in whom alone there is eternal life. As a person is healed spiritually, so he gives healing to others that in the end the whole world may be transfigured from dross to spiritual radiance. When Elisha prayed that his disciple - who was alarmed at the size of the enemy force surrounding them - might have his eyes opened so that he could see the angelic powers supporting them against their foes (2 Kings 6:17), he was anticipating the time when there would be such a general raising of consciousness amongst people that the invisible might be made fully visible. But spiritual vision is even more glorious than this enhanced psychic awareness; it articulates hope in the midst of desolation, and it energizes the faith that is a prerequisite for all fresh attempts in the future. It sees victory in apparent defeat, and it reckons that all things work together for good for those who love God (Rom. 8:28). That vision can never be obliterated, for it comes from God himself; it was the vision, already mentioned, of Ezekiel in the valley of bones that were resurrected to the strength of an immense living army. This vision can sustain us and empower our faith even during periods of terrible suffering and attrition.
A person is unlikely to relapse into past selfish ways of thought so long as his mind is imbued with the vision of progress, of growth, and ultimately of God himself. As St Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: "No wonder we do not lose heart! Though our outward humanity is in decay, yet day by day we are inwardly renewed." This inner renewal is effected by a fresh vision of the immortal splendour of God even when the earthly frame ages and perishes. "Meanwhile our eyes are fixed, not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are unseen: for what is seen passes away; what is unseen is eternal" (2 Cor. 4:18). The unseen reality is sensed by the soul even in an unregenerate person, but as he is delivered from the slavery of his lower nature by the acceptance of Christ's unconditional love, so the doors of his inner perception are opened and widened. Then at last what he had vaguely felt in his depths now becomes a living reality. And the proof that the vision is real and not merely a comforting illusion is found in trusting it and following its illuminated path. It leads one to a full actualization of one's personality so that for the first time in one's life one can really see where one is going and co-operate joyfully with the process. The path is towards sharing in the very being of God (2 Peter 1:4) by entering mature manhood, measured by nothing less than the full stature of Christ (Eph. 4:13). The full humanity is not merely individualistic, it involves the whole body of believers who will in due season include all humankind, indeed all creation. But it starts with the person who has passed from the death of purposelessness to the new life of hope revealed by the unfading vision of God's love.
And so it comes about that the congenitally blind man whom Jesus healed is a sacrament of the soul newly entered into divine knowledge where spiritual vision matches the gift of physical sight. While the intellectual giants may remain as spiritually blind in their conceit as ever, the humble soul who receives the gift of God's grace with the eagerness of a little child attains the vision of eternity. Indeed, it was well written, in Isaiah 11:6-9, that a little child will lead all the reconciled animals to the heavenly peace of the second Eden when the Messiah will have entered into his glory.