Beyond

Today, decide that you will look beyond you will look beyond your own point of view. Say to someone, “tell me more about how you see things.” It’s easy to find a time to do that- just wait until you think you have the most important thing to say, then stop and let someone else speak instead. The soul takes all points of view, and the more you imitate that habit, the more spiritual your life will become. Baba* had a good way of explaining this.

“Do you know the story of the blind men and the elephant?” he asked

I did, in India every child is told the fable of how six wise men tried to describe an elephant, but  each was blind. The first blind man felt the elephant’s side and said” I know what an elephant is, it’s very much like a wall.”

The second blind man felt the elephant’s tusk and said” No, an elephant is very much like a spear.”

The third blind man took hold of the trunk, so to him an elephant was much like a snake.” and so it went on. The tail felt like a rope, the ear like a fan, the leg like a tree. None of them got it completely right, so there’s a moral: If you know only a little about something, you don’t really know it at all.

“That still leaves a riddle, though” said Baba.
Why do you suppose they picked the number six? Why not seven blind men or three? Six stands for the five senses and the mind. We use these six senses to figure out what the universe is like. For the universe is the elephant, and the real moral of the tale is that you cannot trust your senses to tell you what is real, no matter how hard you think about it. It takes something else- the eye of the soul- to truly see the elephant.”

Sponsored by Deepak Chopra
From his book,
Fire in the Heart

*In India, Baba is a term of respect that is given to someone who is considered a wise or holy man.