Vision: Centralisation and Light

"The eyes are the windows of the soul."
It may be added, "Vision is the mind looking through.",
We see, hear, taste and smell with the mind. If you attempt to study, your attention elsewhere, you learn nothing of your subject. If you attend concert and sit worrying over some problem, the programme is naught but distracting clatter. If you pass through a rose garden, your mind intent on things beyond, you fail to catch the perfume of the blossoms. If you read a thrilling article as you eat, the food is tasteless. The sense organs are merely aids to, their respective brain centres; it is the mind which perceives. If the mind is tense and strains or is temporarily absent, the senses cannot function. Conversely, there is no such thing as eyestrain without first a mental, strain, a mental tension or effort.

It has been proved that if a person with a high degree of myopia or hyperopia looks at a blank surface where there is nothing to interpret, he loses the refractive error. But the moment that marks are put there, mental, strain to identify them takes place and refractive error ensues. Fear is the basis of imperfect vision, fear of not being able to see. This causes tension and strain result in poor or vision. One young applicant for the Air Corps who possessed better than 20-20 vision looked so hard at the test card to read the letters perfectly that he made himself highly astigmatic and,; called most of the letters wrong, confusing E with Z, F with P, O with C, and so on, right through the test; he was rejected and put into the regular army. Fear of not seeing perfectly defeated good eyes.

Conversely, a cross-eyed lad of ten demonstrated how clearing the mind of fear will turn on unexpected vision. The little fellow came to us with one crossed unused eye, extremely low in vision. We -worked with that eye through relaxation and built the vision at six inches, then stretched to, a foot, two feet, four feet, as the weeks went by. , One sunny morning I said, "Jackie, how would you like to stand across the room and read your sentences to-day?" He went into a regular dither of fear, displaying utter panic at the thought of having to face the hazard of distance. "Now, Jack," I coaxed, "if you put no more effort into your look at a distance than you do at the close point, you. will see as well far as near." No," he answered, "I'm just walking up closer mentally."

When, with childish faith, he had walked up mentally very close, he opened his eyes and read accurately all the sentences I put up for him. Unfortunately, it, is not so easy for an adult to banish fear and turn on vision. One with many preconceived ideas has to approach it in more roundabout ways.

Vision is an impulse. Impulses cannot be commanded. You either see or you do not, you feel hunger hunger or you do not, you flare up with anger or you do not. You cannot determine to see, to be hungry, to get angry. You either prevent response to an impulse, subdue it or let it have sway. Each time that response is granted, the impulse is strengthened; each time it is throttled, baffled or defeated, it recurs less vividly and less insistently next time. The visual nerves of the retina respond to impulse. Vision either happens or it does not. The keenest seeing past of the retina, the macula, responds to the impulse of sight or it does not. This is an unconscious procedure. The condition of response is relaxation. When. the eye and mind are relaxed and at ease, the retinal nerves function.