The five-year-old boy and his parents were shocked beyond words when the doctors told them that the child’s eyes could not be repaired and he would have to live life of a blind. But then, as if adding a prophetic solace, the doctor said, in effect, “My boy, one does not see only with one’s physical eyes. One also has inner eyes. You can live by those.” Those words made the difference. The boy took the doctor’s words very seriously. What followed has been a life of tremendous enlightenment.

 

The boy learned by heart the Bhagwad Geeta in just 15 days, followed in quick succession by ancient texts such as Upanishadas or Ramayan and Mahabharat and then Vedas. This is the story of the iconic Jagadguru Swami Rambhadracharya whose scholarship of Sanskrit and ancient knowledge and spirituality are matters of legend. It was he who stood before the honourable court and narrated verse after verse from the Ramayan and other texts to prove to the judges existence of Lord Ram as part of history. That clinched the case in favour of Shri Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. Vidarbha has had the legendary Saint Gulabrao Maharaj who became blind when he was a toddler, but wrote as many as 117 books on spirituality and science in different languages in his short life. But if there are people who defeat physical blindness and live by their inner vision, there are people who do not realise the worth of the gift of eyes and spoil their health in sheer recklessness. There also is another type with their eyes intact, but no insight into life and its nuances. Such people, too, may be described as impaired, to say the least.

 

The difference, thus, is made by sight and insight. The story of human refinement is enriched by the concept of insight, of the person’s ability to see deeper into things, to see the unseeable, to read between lines, to realise the unstated meaning of a word ...! Insight a person earns into various aspects of life and living is the actual point that differentiates one person from another. This insight comes from reading, contemplating, thinking, meditating, looking for invisible angles of a situation or event. But then, this ‘insight’ business is quite dicey, so to say. For, many times, many individuals get misled into thinking that they have developed a special insight about thing. However, others realise that those people are confusing opinions with insight. In opinion, there is something definitive, rather non-negotiable. In insight, the core element is contemplative, reflective -- with a willingness to alter a view-point if something gets added to it by way of value. Insight, therefore, is an open-ended thinking about anything. It is insight that scholars, academicians and finely-cultured people value beyond words. Civil societies have often made a clear distinction between people with insight into life and those who have sight but no insight. n