Mystic Mantra: Let’s expand our vision

There is a story of two frogs who spent their whole life in a well. One day one of the frogs jumped out of the well and disappeared. He was gone for several days, and when he returned, the other frog asked him where he had been.

“There is a big world out there beyond the well,” said the first frog, and he began to describe everything he saw and heard.

“You must be making all this up,” said the second frog. “There is nothing but this well. You are imagining all the things you have told me. If there were all those things you describe, then surely they would be here in the well. I have not seen them. They cannot possibly exist.”

Often we are like that second frog. We may think that because we have not seen all there is to see, that nothing else exists. We may think this world is all there is to creation, instead of realising the possibility that there is more than this physical universe. We close our mind like the frog in the well. With experimental mentality we would say, “Maybe there is more to life than what I see. Let me experiment for myself to find out if I am more than my body and mind.”

There was a time when people believed the world was flat, until explorer proved the world was round. There was a time when scientists believed the Earth was the centre of the universe and the Sun revolved around it, until they discovered this view on universe was false. There was a time when we thought the matter was solid, until we discovered that within the atom are many subatomic particles that, at their core, are dancing packets of energy. The findings of the last few centuries should tell us that what we formerly believed to be the nature of the world and our physical reality may not be so at all.

Throughout the ages, there have been people with vision who discovered their soul. They left behind accounts of their experiences in the form of scriptures and oral traditions, which were then recorded by their students. We are the beneficiaries and we can try these techniques for ourselves. With some practice, we can expand our inner vision. We just need to learn the technique to do so.

We need a burning desire to find out who we really are. We need a yearning to know our true selves. We know that when we want something intensely, we can become so one-pointed that we can block out other distractions. When the desire to know our true self awakens, we can put our time and attention into finding it. All the other distractions begin to fall away.

When we desire to awaken our soul, the soul responds and its faint callings can be heard. Its own power starts to stir and our attention can no longer ignore it. The stronger the cry, the more our attention is drawn to it. With time, the call of the world can become fainter as our attention is pulled irresistibly towards love, music and the bliss of our soul.