The Blind Man

The Elephant Speaks, Part I

With her highest powers the soul touches God, and so she is formed after God.

—Meister Eckhart, Sermon 52

On more than one occasion, in the past, I've brought up the parable about the blind men and the elephant.

The esoteric point of this parable is not that each of the blind men “sees“ the elephant differently because of their limitations. That’s the natural, earthly gist of the parable. The spiritual heart of the story, however, lies in the fact that the blind man have to become intimate with the elephant in order to even begin to understand it.

Elephants are huge and powerful creatures, very intelligent—and when they’re aroused and angry, incredibly dangerous. They need to be approached with awe, respect, and care, even if one can them. It takes great courage to approach an elephant, especially a wild one. And it takes even greater courage if one is blind – perhaps, even, an unlimited amount of courage. Any blind man, with even a shred of intelligence would approach an elephant in terror in order to touch it, to feel it, and to try and understand it.

Yet this group of blind men do. They’ve agreed amongst themselves that it's necessary to understand the elephant – and they’re willing to risk their lives to do so. They already do so knowing that the elephant can only be known in a fragment by each of them. But we can presume (and this isn't talked about in the folk tale, although it hovers in the background as a concept) that they’ve already agreed they will put their knowledge together to try and assemble a whole picture of the elephant.