The eye with which you look at God

 The eye with which you look at God

Hello everyone and welcome:

Through a wonderful musical composition I have come to know one of the most unknown theologians, Master Eckhart: born in Thuringia in 1260, he was a German Dominican, known for his work as a theologian and philosopher, creator of what would later be known as Rhenish mysticism. I would like you to hear it and read the lyrics because it is worthwhile. Here is the link:

What has led me to write this short article is his thought that says: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye.” Apart from the profound metaphysical and religious implications that this phrase has, as you know that I am passionate about the world of consciousness, neuroscience and everything that surrounds it, this phrase led me to ask myself a question: when we face the sacred, the spiritual, is the way we do it capable of molding this world that is beyond the material? And if so, then can we say that there are various types of spiritual worlds but with a common base?

Within the hypotheses of consciousness, there is still a kind of “somersault” that continues to create problems for us: the so-called difficult (or hard) problem of consciousness: how is it possible that each of us is capable of having really different experiences from the same sensory inputs? What makes an experience pleasant or unpleasant depending on how it is seen?.

Imagine that you and your best friend are watching a football match (let's think live, because watching it on television is another post): each of you supports a team: the fact that one wins and the other loses makes the same match create totally different emotions in you and your friend. How is that possible?

However, there is something that is common to many cultures, and that is that most of them have a very special way of connecting with the spiritual world, and that way is through music. To see each one, let's start with the Hindu world, which for many represents perhaps the first union between the spiritual and material worlds: I would like you to please watch this short video about a Hindu melody, and keep it in your head for a moment:

I am sure that it will have produced a sensation of serenity and relaxation, brief but intense. It seems that there are certain notes that make our consciousness immediately disconnect from the continuous noise: it is as if we were taking a moment. But if you allow me, I am going to go a step further, and we are going to another spiritual world: now I ask you to listen to this one:

Yes, you got it right, it is Gregorian chant: again, it is as if a parenthesis is put in the “worldly noise”: this type of music brings us back to a state of introspection, where in a certain way we are able to reject external stimuli. As we see, it has a lot in common with Hindu music when we refer to its effect, but let’s go one step further: let’s go to zikir:

It is one of the most impressive Sufi ceremonies: through repetition and breathing, the participants enter into an altered state of consciousness, which again separates them from the material world and brings them into communion with God (Allah in this case). But we are not done yet: I am going to put, if you allow me, an extract from a film, which I think you all know, here it goes:

Although this is a film (and what a film!), we return to the same thing: music exerts a certain effect that consists of isolating the person, avoiding the stimuli of the world that we could call material so that he comes into contact with divinity, or at least, with that spiritual side that is normally prevented from being accessed by the flow of information that is constantly being generated by the sensory apparatus. And now, as it could not be another point, comes the twist on the anomalous perception or integration of information coming from sensory data.

Perhaps we need this silence to be able to access that “spiritual” world (for now I can’t find another way to define it), but it may be that certain people have the ability to recognize within the great flow of information that part that is present but is hidden by the material sensory noise: perhaps it is what is called sensitivity, which for some is artistic, and for others it is of a more complicated and unknown type, which is sometimes difficult to describe for those of us who do not have that ability, in the same way that it is very difficult for you to describe the color red to a person born blind.

I hope I have not bored you too much and that little by little we will expand the complexity of what consciousness itself is.