Before we end this chapter, let’s try a little exercise. Picture yourself in a completely dark room. It is so dark that you cannot see a thing. It is completely silent; there’s not a sound, not a smell, not even something to touch. It’s an empty, dark space. And you remain in that space for so long that you forget you ever had any senses at all; you even forget that such sensations exist.
All of a sudden, an odor arises. It grows stronger and surrounds you, but you cannot quite pinpoint it. Gradually, new scents join the first, some strong, some weak, some sweat, some sour. Now that you smell many scents, you realize that they come from different places, and you are in a space that contains directions such as right, left, above, and below.
Then, without warning, sounds appear from all around you, all kinds of sounds. Some are like music, some like words, and some like plain noise. Using the sounds, you can find your way in the world more easily. Now you can estimate distances, and guess the source of the smells and the sounds you are receiving. Now you have a whole world of smells and sounds.
After some time, you discover a new sensation as something touches your skin. Shortly after, you feel the touch of more things. Some are cold, some warm, some dry, and some moist; some are hard, some are soft, and some you can’t decide. When some of these objects touch your mouth, you feel an odd sensation: they have a distinct flavor.
Now you are living in a world filled with sounds, scents, sensations, and flavors. You can touch other objects, and can learn about your surroundings. When you didn’t have these senses, you couldn’t even imagine that such a rich world was there the whole time.
This is the world of the blind-at-birth. Had you been in their shoes, would you feel that you needed the sense of sight, as well? Would you even know that you don’t have it? Not at all.
In a sense, you may say that we don’t feel the spiritual world for a similar reason, because we do not have a soul. We are living our lives without even knowing that there is a spiritual dimension that we are not sensing. We don’t miss it. Our present world is quite sufficient. Day-by-day, year-by-year, and generation-by-generation we are born, live, enjoy, suffer, and eventually die. And through it all, we are not aware that a whole new dimension of life exists out there, a dimension of spiritual life.
And we would continue being unaware of it had it not been for the emptiness, the lack of meaning, and the apathy that have begun to surface within us. We no longer settle for realizing our desires because something else is still missing. Life as we know it and everything it offers is gradually becoming unsatisfactory. It is actually quite depressing, and so we choose to suppress these feelings. After all, what can we do? Everyone lives this way.
Actually, these sensations stem from the awakening of a new desire—a desire to enjoy something higher, sublime, above all that is around us, from a source unknown to us. If we really want to realize the desire that is now awakening in us, we will discover that this is a desire for something beyond this world.
The awakening of such a desire among many of us, as well as the growing sense of emptiness that accompanies it, are in fact natural steps, preordained in Nature’s plan. This desire creates in us a sense that there is something beyond the familiar, and we are curious to find it. If we let this desire lead us and listen to the voice in our hearts, we will wake up to the real reality [19].