Eyes

While "eyes" is a common English word, in this esoteric context, it functions metaphorically. It signifies an advanced spiritual faculty, akin to the "third eye" concept, representing a higher form of perception. The term’s usage here draws from the symbolic language of spiritual awakening and cosmic awareness.

Tlie "eyes'' the Lord Buddha developed in him at tile twentieth hour of his vigil when sitting under the Bo-tree, when he was attaining Buddhaship. They are the eyes of the glorified Spirit, to which matter is no longer a physical impediment, and which have the power of seeing all things within the space of the limitless Universe. On the following morning of that night, at the close of the third watch, the "Merciful One" attained the Supreme Knowledge.

Blavatsky's description of the Buddha's "eyes" speaks to a profound transformation of perception, a common theme in mystical traditions. It echoes the alchemical notion of the oculus spiritus, the spiritual eye that sees what the physical eye cannot. Mircea Eliade, in his studies of shamanism and archaic religions, often points to the visionary capacity as a hallmark of the sacred, a direct conduit to otherworldly realities. This is not mere clairvoyance, a heightened physical sense, but a fundamental shift in consciousness, akin to what Carl Jung described as the integration of the psyche, where the unconscious becomes accessible and its archetypal imagery is apprehended.

The "limitless Universe" perceived by these awakened eyes suggests a dissolution of spatial and temporal boundaries, a state of being where past, present, and future are simultaneously accessible, and the vastness of existence is held within the scope of awareness. This resonates with the Sufi concept of fana, annihilation of the self in God, leading to a state of baqa, subsistence in divine consciousness, where the individual soul perceives with the divine eye. In Buddhism, this is the realization of emptiness (sunyata), not as nothingness, but as the absence of inherent, independent existence, revealing the interconnected web of dependent origination. The attainment of "Supreme Knowledge" is the direct consequence of this expanded vision, a knowing that arises not from intellectual deduction but from immediate, unmediated experience. It is the seeing of the essence, the noumenon behind the phenomenon, the spiritual blueprint that underlies all material manifestation.

RELATED_TERMS: Third Eye, Gnosis, Samadhi, Nirvana, Clairvoyance, Intuition, Spiritual Vision, Cosmic Consciousness