and the I-less I
A collection of quotes from artists, philosophers, scientists and sages:
I look and listen without using eyes and ears.
– Lieh-tzu
When the Zen master Satcho was asked where the demarcation line lies between this vale of tears and the earthly paradise of fulfillment and peace, he answered: “The eye is the demarcation line.”
Paradise … is accessible now and here, for it is our everyday world, but perceived by the awakened eye.
– Frederick Franck
However hard you may search for it,
You will never be able to grasp it.
You can only become it.
– Ikkyu
The field of vision is something open, but its openness is not due to our looking.
– Heidegger
The eye altering, alters all.
– William Blake
I am, as it were, an eye that the cosmos uses to look at itself.
The Mind is not mine alone; the Mind is everywhere.
– Rudolf Rucker, The Fourth Dimension
Become vision itself.
– Plotinus
Real vision is eyeless.
– Anandamayi Ma
Only God has seeing, hearing.
– Al-Arabi
Become seeing, seeing, seeing!
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Thou art not that body: thou art this spiritual Eye.
– Rumi
The Soul of Rumi
– Coleman Barks
It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
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The eye is the candle of the body…
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Jesus said to them: When you make the two one… then you will go into the Kingdom.
– Gospel of Thomas
Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me – I am part or parcel of God.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Tao of Emerson
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
By what means do this body or mind perceive? Can they perceive with the eyes, ears…?
No. Your own Nature, being essentially pure and utterly still, is capable of perception.
– Hui-hai
It is the Unborn which sees and hears, eats and sleeps.
– Bankei
There is no seer but Him, no one to hear but him, no one thinking, no one aware but Him. He is the Self, the Ruler within, the One Immortal.
– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Seeing truly is not merely a change in the direction of seeing, but a change in its very center, in which the seer himself disappears.
– Ramesh S Balsekar
Duet of One:
The Ashtavakra Gita Dialogue
– Ramesh S Balsekar
Of inconceivable power am I;
without eyes I see; without ears I hear.
– Kaivalya Upanishad
Partly sourced from www.headless.org with gratitude.
the awakened eye 