Rosicrucian Writings Online
The Mind's EyeBy Bro. William H. McKegg
[From The Rosicrucian Digest June 1931]
This saying is old. Its somewhat vague statement seems purely imaginative. Yet what, after all, is imagination?
Imagination, so it would seem, to judge from the majority, is a rather ridiculous attribute for any grown up person to possess. It is only excusable in a child. "He's very imaginative," a child's elders say, "but he'll grow out of it when he gets some real common sense."
And so another inner, spiritual attribute, freely bestowed upon man, is slowly, but surely, crushed in him before he has time to foster it to his own good advantage, and the benefit of others. Like many spiritual powers crippled by materialism, Imagination is stifled in each child.
There is an ancient story--naturally regarded by the majority as senseless--which states that when the first humans were placed on this earth, man had three eyes. Two material eyes and one spiritual eye in the "center of the forehead." Through his own sin man lost the use of this spiritual eye. Through the lack of use the third eye gradually sank back into the head, and man could no longer see future events.
People constantly refer to the "Mind's Eye." Odd expressions never come from non-existent sources. The oft alluded to Mind's Eye is, after all, nothing else but the spiritual eye of man. The inner eye with which his imaginations are created; the eye with which he can see future events.
Roger Bacon, the medieval alchemist, foresaw the inventions of trains and airships. Indeed, all the mystics of the world have been visionary. They spent hours in meditation, hours in stirring the inner forces of the soul. In his own day Jules Verne was ridiculed for his "over imaginative" writings. Yet Verne only foresaw inventions such as are common facts today. Marie Corelli was likewise branded as a woman with too much imagination. Her books, "A Romance of Two Worlds," "Ardath," and "The Sorrows of Satan" were all in turn declared absurd by those who believe only what every day facts tell them.
The greatest artists, writers, musicians, and actors, from ages past, have fostered and developed their mind's eye. Imagination alone urged them on to the heights. Without that inner urging many would never have been heard of. By essaying to materialize their visions they brought great dreams and beauty and hope to groping humanity. Vast works of art, soul inspiring to others, have been born through the promotings of imagination.
That there is an Inner Eye in the head of each human being has been well established by many. Psychic powers are not the exclusive gifts to a few selected beings on this world. Any person eager for wisdom and light may become the possessor of rare, almost unbelievable psychic powers. Powers that unfold themselves so easily, so simply, that one wonders how one has been able to exist in such previous blindness. And the first discovery the seeker after truth finds is that nothing is more easily deceived than the human eye--the material eye.
William Blake, poet and artist, wrote, "I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it would be a hindrance, and not action. I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning light. I look through it, and not with it."
Creative work, best of all, stirs the imagination, the Inner Eye. An artist sees many shades and colors in an object which seems only one color to the ordinary person. A musician can hear sounds, or rather vibrations, when the atmosphere seems deadly silent to the average man. That master musician Wagner declared he used to walk along the avenues, "picking the harmonies as they floated in the air."
A lady I know very well, who makes no claims to psychic powers, always pays great attention to what she calls "presentiments." She has been a great traveller, on sea and on land. Several times she has escaped death by following her "presentiment." On one occasion, going from England to Holland, she drew back at the last moment and waited for the next day. The ship on which she should have sailed caught fire in the North Sea and went down with every soul on board. She was coming to New York on the "Titanic" when one of her strange "presentiments" caused her to change her mind. Everyone knows the tragic fate of the "Titanic."
During the war, while in Paris, she started out one evening for another part of the city. Walking from the hotel to the underground railway she suddenly stopped. She told me later that it was not a vague vision that came to her mind, but a vivid realization that she must return to her hotel. The subway train on which she would have been was almost completely destroyed when a bomb from a hostile aircraft tore through the road into the underground.
It is said that Sir John Millais, the famous artist, for about a year before his transition, kept repeatedly seeing the figures 1896 on whatever canvas he had before his eyes and was working on. He mentioned this to several of his intimate friends. Sometimes, he said, the figures were irregular, but invariably appeared in the order already stated. Strange to say, 1896 was the year of Millais' passing.
Millais was a good friend of Wilkie Collins, the author, and many of the gifted men of the Victorian age. At the time of the following strange event, Collins had almost completed his famous novel, "The Woman In White." I believe part of the story, the chief part, has to do with the forced imprisonment of a young lady by an unscrupulous man in order to gain her fortune. To further this object he tries to make her out as insane.
Sir John Millais, Wilkie Collins, and another celebrity were walking in the country one day, in a part neither any one of the three had been to before. Collins was relating the main events of his new novel, lying almost completed on his desk at home. He was finishing his outline just as the three reached a gloomy country mansion. A young woman, dressed all in white, rushed out to them.
Her story was almost identically the same as the plot of Collins' "The Woman In White." She said to the three men that she had been kept a prisoner in the mansion by a hypnotist. In an unguarded moment she escaped. She begged the three men to help her. This they did, and the girl was liberated from her gruesome jail.
How to account for such fantastic events?
It has often been stated that a writer develops a second sight. All creative people must stir their imagination. A writer is forced to live in a visionary world of his own. He gradually stirs to life his "Mind's Eye." Is it any wonder, then, that sometimes a writer describes a seemingly fictitious event which may in reality be very real? Perhaps if many beginners gave a little thought to this, they would not be so eager to sue established authors for plagiarism. It has frequently been found that two or more well-known writers have been working on respective books, closely resembling each other.
It is not necessary for a person to be an artist, a writer, or a musician to bring to life his slumbering senses. Any person who desires to develop his inner self, his psychic powers, can do so. A young man I know very well, who became a Rosicrucian student several years ago, proved this possibility to himself. He has remarked that today he can invariably tell just what people he will meet when he goes out. In fact, he can visualize just where he will meet So and So. Just as if a picture flashed into his mind, he sees, or visualizes, coming events. He can also "see" what many people are about to say to him before they utter a word.
If people can see with their Mind's Eye when grown up, it stands to reason that such an organ must be dormant in them since birth. Perhaps it should be said that such an organ is alive, in full functioning in childhood, but is cruelly crushed into uselessness by materialism.
Parents would perhaps do well if they thought twice before ridiculing, or frustrating, their children's imagination. We are all too fond of looking with our eyes instead of through them! It is often that the child can see with his Mind's Eye. In that event, the parent is the blind one.
Young, middle aged, and old people can develop their dormant senses and regain what they have lost. This can not be done instantly. Patience and care must be used. Then slowly, gradually, the vast rooms of the mind, closed and deserted since childhood, are once again opened and the light is let in. The Mind's Eye--that mystic space before the two material eyes--can be put to use once again.
Rosicrucian students have experienced this. To them it is a plain fact. An achievement possible for every human being who desires to gain it. And when we can see with our spiritual eye we are ready to view the wonders of the universe. Then the material eye is used merely to look through.
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