3. Spiritual Blindness and Delusion
World Scripture
The unbelievers… are like the depths of darkness In a vast deep ocean, Overwhelmed with billow, Topped by billow, Topped by dark clouds: Depths of darkness, One above another: If a man stretches out his hand, he can hardly see it! For any to whom God gives not light, There is no light! Qur’an 24.40
Blind is this world. Few are those who clearly see. As birds escape from a net, few go to a blissful state. Dhammapada 174 (Buddhism)
This vast universe is a wheel, the wheel of Brahman. Upon it are all creatures that are subject to birth, death, and rebirth. Round and round it turns, and never stops. As long as the individual self thinks it is separate from the Lord, it revolves upon the wheel in bondage to the laws of birth, death, and rebirth… The Lord supports this universe, which is made up of the perishable and the imperishable, the manifest and the unmanifest. The individual soul, forgetful of the Lord, attaches itself to pleasure and thus is bound. Svetasvatara Upanishad 1.6-8 (Hinduism)
On a certain occasion the Exalted One was seated in the open air, on a night of inky darkness, and oil lamps were burning. Swarms of winged insects kept falling into these oil lamps and thereby met their end, came to destruction and utter ruin. Seeing this, the Exalted One saw the meaning in it and uttered this verse of uplift, They hasten up and past, but miss the real; a bondage ever new they cause to grow. Just as the flutterers fall into the lamp, so some are bent on what they see and hear. Udana 72 (Buddhism)
To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted. Titus 1.15
The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. 2 Corinthians 4.4
Fools dwelling in darkness, but thinking themselves wise and erudite, go round and round, by various tortuous paths, like the blind led by the blind. Katha Upanishad 1.2.5 (Hinduism)
The soul is only able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance. Philosophy sees the terrible nature of her confinement, and that the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity. Plato, Phaedo (Hellenism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Are any among you caught in the abyss of despair? You have no connection whatsoever to the ideal world. Are you in such darkness that you cannot distinguish front from back, left from right, up from down? Amidst your confused, turbulent and disorderly lives, you have forgotten the center and continue to violate Heaven’s laws and principles. As long as this is the case, you cannot make any connection with God’s ideal Garden. (2:246, June 9, 1957)
The world has become a wretched place, far from God’s presence. Yet humanity to this day lives in ignorance of this. People are deluded into believing that the lineage of the enemy is the lifeline upon which the world depends. This is the wretched truth about humanity descended from the Fall. That is why we refer to this world as hell on earth. God views humanity’s tragic situation with a heart full of pain. (September 12, 2005)
Most of the six billion people in the world are blind. Though they appear normal, they cannot see even an inch in front of themselves. But this does not keep people from acting as though they are philosophers and theologians who understand the truth of Heaven. It has been this way throughout history, and it has caused God much grief. (May 1, 2004)
With the Fall of the first human ancestors, human beings were cast into a hopeless hell from which they cannot escape by their efforts alone. They should have become true owners, true parents and true kings and queens, who communicate directly with God through their five spiritual senses and freely exercise dominion over all things through their five physical senses; thus they were to be God’s representatives to both the spirit world and the physical world. But due to the Fall their five spiritual senses became largely paralyzed. They fell into a state similar to that of a blind man whose sightless eyes appear normal to an observer. Forced to live mainly by their five physical senses, they became only half human. They could not see God, or see Him only dimly. They could barely hear His voice or feel His touch. So how could they experience His love as their own Parent or know His suffering heart? (January 27, 2004)
The greatest sorrows of humankind are: our inability to form a relationship with Thy love, the loss of our original conscience, which could communicate with Thy heart, and our inability to harmonize our minds and bodies, which would enable us to live in accordance with our conscience and Thy heart. Because of the Fall, the sensibility by which we could communicate with Thy heart left us, and the mind which could love all things through experiencing Thy heart is no longer with us. (6:298-99, June 14, 1959)