To confirm the fact of central fixation, one may reverse the process described above and do one’s best to see every part of a large letter, or every feature of a friend’s face, equally clearly at the same time. The result will be an almost immediate sense of strain and a lowering of vision. One cannot with impunity attempt to do the physically and psychologically impossible. But that, precisely, is what the person with defective sight is perpetually doing when he peers with such an anxious intentness at the world around him. Once you have convinced yourself experimentally of this fact, and of the other, complementary fact that good vision comes only when the eyes and mind make innumerable successive acts of central fixation, you will never again be tempted to stare, to strain, to try hard to see. Vision is not won by making an effort to get it; it comes to those who have learned to put their minds and eyes into a state of alert passivity, of dynamic relaxation.
CHAPTER XIII, The Mental Side of Seeing
The eyes provide us with the visual sense impressions, which are the raw materials of sight. The mind takes these raw materials and works them up into the finished product—normal vision of external objects.
When sight is sub-normal, the defect may be due to causes belonging to one or other of two main categories, physical and mental. The eyes, or the nervous system connected with them, may suffer accidental injury, or be affected by disease—in which case the supply of the raw materials of vision will be cut off at the source. Alternatively, the efficiency of the mind, as the interpreter of crude sensa, may be impaired, owing to any one of a great number of possible psychological maladjustments. When this happens, the efficiency of the eye as a sensing apparatus is also impaired; for the human mind-body is a single unit, and psychological mal-functioning is reflected in physiological mal-functioning. With the impairment of the physiological functioning of the eye, the quality of the raw materials, which it furnishes, falls off; and this in turn increases the inefficiency of the mind as a worker-up of such materials.
Orthodox ophthalmologists are content to palliate the symptoms of poor sight by means of “those valuable crutches”, artificial lenses. They work only on the sensing eye and ignore completely the selecting, perceiving and seeing mind. It is a case of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Obviously and on the face of it, any rational, any genuinely aetiological treatment of defective vision must take account of the mental side of seeing. In the method of visual re-education, developed by Dr. W. H. Bates and his followers, due attention is paid, not merely to the provider of raw materials, but also to the producer of the finished article.
Of the psychological factors which prevent the mind from doing a good job of interpretation, some are closely related to the process of perceiving and seeing, while others are not. In the latter category we must place all those negative emotions which are so fruitful a source of mal-functioning and, finally, of organic disease in every part of the body, including the eyes. To the former belong certain negative emotions specifically related to the act of seeing, and certain mal-functionings of the memory and imagination—mal-functionings which lower the mind’s efficiency as an interpreter of sensa.
To treat of the methods by which negative emotions may be avoided or dispelled is beyond the scope of this little book. I can only repeat in different words what was said in the opening section. When the conscious “I” is afflicted to excess by such emotions as fear, anger, worry, grief, envy, ambition, the mind and body are likely to suffer. One of the important psycho-physical functions most commonly impaired is that of vision. Negative emotions impair vision, partly through direct action upon the nervous, glandular and circulatory systems, partly by lowering the efficiency of the mind. It is literally true that people become “blind with rage”; that fear may make the world “go black” or “swim before the eyes”; that worry can be so “numbing” that people cease to be able to see or hear properly, and are therefore frequently involved in serious accidents.
Nor are the effects of such negative emotions merely transient and temporary. If they are intense enough and sufficiently protracted, negative feelings such as worry, disappointed love and competitiveness, can produce in their victim serious organic derangements—for example, gastric ulcer, tuberculosis and coronary disease. They can also produce lasting mal-functioning of the seeing organs, mental and physical—mal-functioning that manifests itself in mental strain, nervous muscular tension and errors of refraction. Anybody who wants normal vision should therefore do everything possible to avoid or get rid of these pernicious negative emotions, and in the meanwhile should learn the art of seeing, by means of which the disastrous effects of such emotions upon the eyes and mind can be completely or partially undone.
This seems to be all that can be usefully said, in this place at any rate, about those mental obstacles to normal vision, which are not immediately connected with the act of seeing. For a full discussion of negative emotions, and for methods of dealing with them, one must turn to the psychiatrists, the moralists and the writers on ascetical and mystical religion. In a brief introduction to the art of seeing, I can only mention the problem, and pass on.
We have now to consider those mental obstacles to normal vision which are intimately bound up with the actual seeing-process. Certain negative emotions, habitually associated with the act of seeing by people with sub-normal vision, have already been discussed. Thus, I have described the fear of light, and the means by which that fear may be cast out. I have also mentioned that greed for vision, that over-anxiety to see too much too well, which results in misdirection of attention and in mental and physical staring; and I have dwelt at great length on the procedures, by means of which these bad habits may be changed, and the undesirable emotions, responsible for them, dispelled.
We have now to consider another fear, intimately connected, in the minds of those suffering from defective vision, with the act of seeing, and responsible in some degree for the perpetuation of visual mal-functioning. I refer to the fear of not seeing properly.
Let us trace the genealogy of this fear. The art of seeing in a normal and natural way is acquired unconsciously during infancy and childhood. Then, owing to physical disease or, more often, to mental strain, good seeing habits are lost; normal and natural functioning is replaced by abnormal and unnatural functioning; the mind loses its efficiency as an interpreter, the physical conformation of the eye is distorted and the net result is that vision is impaired. From sub-normal vision there springs, in most cases, a certain chronic apprehension. The person who is used to seeing badly is afraid that he will see badly next time. In the minds of many afflicted men and women, this fearful anticipation amounts to a fixed, intense, pessimistic conviction that, for them, normal seeing is henceforth impossible.
Such an attitude is paralyzing to the minds and eyes of those who entertain it. They go into every new seeing-situation afraid that they won’t see, or even convinced in advance that they can’t see. The result, not unnaturally, is that they don’t see. Positive faith enables a man to move mountains. Conversely, negative faith can prevent him from lifting a straw.
In seeing, as in all other activities of mind and mind-body, it is essential, if we are to do our work adequately, that we should cultivate an attitude of confidence combined with indifference—confidence in our capacity to do the job, and indifference to possible failure. We must feel sure that we can succeed some time, if we use the proper means and exercise sufficient patience; and we must not feel disappointed or annoyed if in fact we don’t succeed this particular time.
Confidence untempered by indifference may be almost as disastrous as the lack of confidence; for if we feel sure that we are going to succeed, and are distressed and affronted every time we fail, confidence will only be a source of negative emotions, which will, in their turn, increase the probability of failure.
For the person whose sight is sub-normal, the correct mental attitude may be expressed in some such words as these. “I know theoretically that defective vision can be improved. I feel certain that, if I learn the art of seeing, I can improve my own defective vision. I am practising the art of seeing as I look now, and it is likely that I shall see better than I did; but if I don’t see as well as I hope, I shall not feel wretched or aggrieved, but go on, until better vision comes to me.”
CHAPTER XIV, Memory and Imagination
The capacity for perception depends, as I have shown in an earlier chapter, upon the amount, the kind and the availability of past experiences. But past experiences exist for us only in
