Seeing Others See God

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A couple of years ago, I came across a song by musician Ryan O’Neil titled Sight. Although I had enjoyed the song when I heard it, I forgot about it for a while, until we started talking about the sense of sight in class. Sight is about both being able to see God and wishing to be able to see God. One of the lyrics that stuck out to me was “You see you Holy Ghost in broad daylight / And I see the reflection in your eyes.” To me, this really explains the sense of sight within religion. Seeing others worship or have a sixth sense type experience with a higher power helps others believe. I remembe
r being in church when I was younger and watching someone pray. They were staring reverently at the tabernacle with this intense gaze, and had this peaceful and joyful expression I had never seen before that point. I remember thinking “I want to see what they are seeing”. Another time, I was invited by friends to attend a gamelan performance. The instruments within the gamelan have a connection with the gods, so the musicians do not step over them. To get to their instruments, the musicians maneuvered around the others with a level of reverence and respect that really struck me. Like the lyrics in the song suggested, seeing others see or experience their higher power deeply affected me.
This is kind of an odd blog post I suppose, because it is about seeing others experience the sixth sense. But for many people, seeing others see the gods has a profound effect on they view and approach religion. People learn to pray by first watching others pray. To learn what is sacred, we must first see others treat the item in a reverent way. We see others handle holy books with care, and learn that the words they contain must be important. In Diana L. Eck’s book, Darsan: Seeing The Divine Image In India, Eck discusses the importance of sight in Hinduism. Eck quotes E.M. Forster, who says “Study it for years with the best of teachers, and when you raise your head, nothing they have told you quite fits.” Through reading and speaking to people, we can learn about religion. But if we do not see and experience the religion for ourselves, we will never learn the spiritual and emotional aspects, arguably one of the most important parts of religion. Noticing the way in which others interact with and around god and seeing others see god can teach us things about god we would never begin to understand otherwise.

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