The Eye with which I see God | A contemplation on Meister Eckhart's realization

If God is watching, how exactly would He be watching?

There's an amazing answer to this, which is lost on almost everyone, religious or irreligious. It comes from the mystic's view of what God is. I'll be going step by step through a quote from Meister Eckhart that expresses this understanding quite beautifully.

But first, consider how in life there come these key moments, sometimes when the mind is stressed, when you're having to dig deep for courage, trying to deal with some major event in your life. There is this urge to seek help from some 'Higher Power' that is watching over you.

Whether you believe in God or not, the mind has this tendency to turn to some 'Power' other than the person, other than what you consider the self. Toward some 'Higher Self' that somehow knows of your trials and travails. Knows intimately the state of your mind.

You may put this sense of being witnessed to your faith or upbringing, but really across all cultures and religions there is this common idea: God is watching.

So, consider, how would God be watching? Through what means?

It wouldn't be through a device, or some piece of technology. Not looking in some magic mirror.

How God watches must be the most natural way to watch.

In nature, what is this process of witnessing? Of seeing, and hearing, and sensing, and feeling?

As soon as the underlying activity takes place, the knowing takes place. It is most natural. There's no additional criteria, no additional instrument required.

The intellectuals are still confused about this. They say, maybe it's the brain that is conscious. Or something about the brain produces this 'consciousness'.

But to the mystic it is quite clear.

Whatever the activity takes place on, is just the apparatus; the instrumentation. The brain is just the material on which the activity takes place. And if the activity produces an experience, it is what is being known. There's nothing conscious that is part of this process.

As soon as the criteria for an activity to be experienced is met, it is experienced. It is a law of nature.

There's nothing Supernatural or magical about it. Except that it is so incredible that this is our Reality, the Reality you are living in.

And so if God is watching you, how would he be watching? If God knows your thoughts, and intentions, and feelings, this is the way to watch. Not by looking from the outside.

If God is watching you, He can't be watching from a distance. Because then He would not know what is in your heart or mind.

And so we come to the quote.

"If my eye is to perceive color, it must be free of all color.

If I see a blue or white color, the sight of my eye which sees the color, the very thing that sees, is the same as that which is seen by the eye.

The eye with which I see God, is the same eye with which God sees me.

My eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, and one love."

Let's take this step by step.

"If my eye is to perceive color, it must be free of all color."

This is quite simple.

To see color, you cannot be the color. You are the one seeing.

To hear sound, you cannot be a sound.

To feel emotion, you cannot be an emotion.

You are feeling everything in this moment, simultaneously. The sight, the sound, the sensations, the feelings, the thoughts.

To know all this, you cannot be described in terms of all this.

You are not a sight, or a sound, or a sensation, or a feeling, or a thought.

So, what's left then?

Nothing.

Nothing that words can describe. Nothing that can be conceived of. The Unseen, and the Indescribable, but most definitely real.

That's what's left.

Doesn't that sound like a definition of God?

Now, consider the second part.

"If I see a blue or white color, the sight of my eye which sees the color, the very thing that sees, is the same as that which is seen by the eye."

What this is trying to express is that the 'sight' and what is 'being seen' is nothing apart than the seeing.

When you see a color, let's say the color purple, the human eyes can only detect red, green and blue. And when you see purple over there, that is after a lot of brain activity has taken place. And somehow that color is seen 'over there', outside the head, outside the body.

What is seen is not a separate thing, but the seeing itself. It is Consciousness given form. Color, and shape, and sound, and texture, and feeling.

And since all these different forms, the seeing, the hearing, the sensing, and feeling, they're appearing simultaneously to you who cannot be described in terms of these forms, how can God know you?

If God knew you as one thing among many, among even the trillions of life forms on this one planet, that is not truly knowing you.

To know you, to know your exact experience in this moment, is to become you — to be you.

If God's gaze did not see you in this way, that is then just looking at you as a thing. Which is not what you are — that is not truly knowing you.

"The Eye with which I see God, is the same Eye with which God sees me.

My Eye and God's Eye are one Eye, one Seeing, one Knowing, and one Love."

This is the Realization to be had.

The Capacity through which you know of being conscious, through which you observe this whole realm of consciousness, is the same Capacity that knows you — what you have considered to be you.

This whole life; every moment, every experience, the same Eye, the same Seeing, same Knowing. The same loving, affectionate, Aware-ness.

God is not watching in the way everyone imagines.

There is only one Seeing.

When you started going to school, you would have been taught this definition of 'living things'. Things that move, and eat, and sleep, and reproduce, and so on.

What a weak definition! You fell for it.

Life cannot be described from the outside!

This is life.

The hearing, the seeing, the sensing, the feeling, the knowing.

You cannot be observed from the outside. The Seeing is always from the inside. The phenomena are always known only by the Noumenon.

"That man who is a established thus in God's love, must be dead to self and all created things, paying as little regard to himself as to one who is a thousand miles away.

That man abides in likeness, and abides in unity, in full equality, and no unlikeness enters into him.

This man must have abandoned self and all this world."

Doesn't sound like your standard Christianity, does it?

This is the end of Christianity, the end of Buddhism, the end of the Vedas. This is the Realization at the end of all religion. The end of all thought.

That there are no separate things. No separate living things, no separate selves.

There is only a Unity.

Which is found just by looking into the nature of your experience — your direct experience.

Simply by looking Within.