providence, and by means of His Word, works constantly to keep it from being
stolen; and to enhance and deepen it.
Then, when we come into the next world, the angels will be able to identify
us clearly, and the hells will have no hold on us.
(WEO)
learning to see
In a book about the brain (Incognito by David Eagleman) there is an account of
a man who had lost his vision in early childhood and then had it restored by an
operation in middle age. A photographer was present to record the dramatic
scene when the bandages were removed and he saw his children’s faces for the
first time, but the moment turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. His
surgically repaired eyes worked fine, but he couldn’t actually see his children.
Instead of faces, he just saw lines and planes of light and color. It took a couple
of weeks before he learned to recognize things for what they were, including
faces.
The point was that it isn’t the eye that sees, but the brain. How do we see
light, for instance? It’s dark inside your skull; the light that enters your eye does
not flow into the brain as light flows through a window into a room. Rather, it
is converted into electrical signals which are communicated by the optic nerve
to the brain, which interprets them to create the images we see.
The inverted images of the natural objects received by the eye’s retina are
turned right side up by the brain, and assembled into forms we can see and
comprehend. An animal’s eye is similar to a human’s, but the human rational
mind enables us to see a world of meaning in things which are virtually invisible
to the animal, because, although their existence is seen, their significance is
not.
The way natural vision works illustrates the further lesson that all natural
knowledge must be interpreted in the mind for us to discern its spiritual
significance – that is, how it relates to God and the spiritual realities of human
life. The facts of nature, and the knowledges we gain from the letter of the
Word, that enter into the natural degree of the mind, must be ordered and
illuminated by the life and light of heaven flowing in through the higher,
spiritual level of the mind. Only then can the spiritual reality they represent
be seen.
As the optic nerve carries the electronic signals produced by natural light
entering the eye from without to the brain, so the rational mind (when fully
functional) connects knowledge that comes into the memory from the natural
world with the spiritual mind’s “interpretive program” (as we might call it).
Then, little by little, as the formerly blind man gradually came to see his
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