15.10 – Is our sight causing us to lose sight?

When we see a blind person struggling to find the way with a stick, we often feel compassion for that person’s condition. We consider our capacity to see to be so natural, so essential, so invaluable that we may shudder at the mere thought of losing it.

Yet might our sight (our capacity to see) cause us to lose sight (mental perception) of life’s invisible realities? This is the bold assertion of the Bhagavad-gita (15.10) that indicates how those obsessed with the visible (the vimudhas) miss the spiritual because of its invisibility.

We get so emotionally and functionally caught in the visible world with its forms and pleasures that we almost never think of anything beyond the visible. We equate the invisible with the non-existent or the irrelevant, and so lose sight of it.

When saintly people see us sweating and slaving for material enjoyment in life’s journey, they look at us the way we look at a blind person struggling to find the way. They see that we have lost sight of the unlimited happiness that lies hidden in our own heart.

They know that our spiritual blindness is not an incurable condition. That’s why they urge us to cure ourselves by practicing devotional service to Krishna. This process enables us to revive our spiritual love for Krishna and thereby regain the infinite happiness within. And this process is so encompassing that it doesn’t ask us to reject the visible for the sake of the invisible. Instead, it enables us to connect the visible material world with its invisible Lord, Krishna, so that we see his beauty and glory manifested here too.

When we regain such a devotional vision, we gain a double sight: sight of the spiritual, and a deeper and richer sight of the material.