Seeing More Deeply

What is wisdom? The founder of Shanti Sadan once gave a simple, practical, threefold explanation:

Wisdom is to see deeper than with the eye and with sympathy.
Wisdom is to clean the glasses of the mind.
Wisdom is to have an understanding of the I.

All three are relevant to the general idea of seeing more deeply. The first—to see deeper than with the eye, and with sympathy—points to our human disposition, and how we may make the best of it as we share this planet with billions of other human beings. The second point—to clean the glasses of the mind—requires us to see more deeply into ourselves—into our own being, as a field well worth investigating. The last comment—wisdom is to have an understanding of the I—has a universal significance. For it is concerned with seeing beyond and behind the whole world of appearances. As the Upanishad states:

That which is the subtle essence, the whole world has that as its Self. That is truth. That is Self. That thou art.

The individual is essentially not separate from the universal.