St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth these words: “So we fix our eyes not on what  is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”  (2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV)  Somehow we know-it-all human beings entertain the conceit that only what we see exists.  If we can’t see it and identify it, then it’s not real.  It’s only a figment of the imagination.  So our intransigent materialism tends to flatten our world, making  it two-dimensional, eliminating the supernatural.

I can think of two analogies that oblige me to challenge that perspective.  These word-pictures capture my attention and captivate my imagination.  The first involves the visible color spectrum.  With our eyes we can see the reds, blues, yellows, indigoes, violets, oranges, and greens all around us.  We might imagine that these colors, and their combinations, are all that exist.  But they are not.  The human eye cannot perceive ultraviolet and infrared; yet  they’re very real and very present.  It’s just a case of “The seen and the unseen”.  

The second analogy involves an electric fan.  Picture a floor fan standing  in front of a wall.  On that wall there is a framed document . When the electric fan is in the “off” position, you are unable to read the document  behind it.  In fact, all you can see are the motionless steel blades of the floor  fan in front of it, blocking your view.  Now, if you turn the fan to “low”, the blades begin to turn slowly.  You still are unable to read the document behind it.  All you are able to see is the slow rotation of the fan blades.  But  if you switch the fan blades to “high”,  and the fan blades now rotate at a very fast speed, you can see right through the blades, as if they are not even there, and read “the handwriting on the wall”.  Again it’s an illustration of “The seen and the unseen”.  

The electric floor fan symbolizes our perception of the world.  The ordinary person doesn’t see all that  is really there.  The supernatural and the natural inhabit  the same place at the same time, but we are typically unaware of their co-existence. The mystic sees beyond.  The mystic is operating on a different frequency and is able to perceive the Unseen.  Approaching my own death, I see only the cold steel blades.  The  visionary sees right through to what lies beyond.