Waking Up In Order To See Fully

In order to come to a fuller use of the senses, the organism has to be in a state of balance, in a state of rest. At the same time, the organism has to be in a state of alertness. So these two necessary things seem to contradict each other: restfulness and alertness. Restfulness is a state of quiet. Alertness is a state of dynamism, aliveness and receptivity. Restfulness allows the impressions to reach us; alertness allows the impressions to be sensed.

Restful alertness is a natural quality of healthy states of consciousness. These states of consciousness are characterized by absense of strain. This is called effortless being.

Now it happens that in our education we have been constantly admonished: "Pay attention!" "Listen when I talk!" "Look at me when I speak to you!" "Concentrate!" "Make an effort!" And so on. All these demands have brought about an attitude which is very different from the natural and healthy state of sensory awareness. By and by the child comes to believe that it has to do something in order to see, in order to hear, to smell, feel or taste.

This tendency to make even tiny efforts greatly disturbs the possibility of really receiving the full amount of sight, or sound, or whatever we get through our sense perception. At the same time it brings us into a state of constant effort, an effort which is not only completely unnessary, but which robs us of energy, limits our potential, diminishes our vitality and erects a barrier between us and life itself.

Credit: inspired by Charlotte Selver from Waking Up: The Work of Charlotte Selver by William C. Littlewood
    * ISBN-10: 1418493759
    * ISBN-13: 978-1418493752

Many people falsely believe the natural vision improvement methods of Dr. William H. Bates are eye exercises. In fact, Dr. Bates's method is nothing more than the process of letting go of strain by addressing one's state of consciousness.  Here are his words from Chapter X of "The Cure Of Imperfect Sight By Treatment Without Glasses":

Temporary conditions may contribute to the strain to see which results in the production of errors of refraction; but its foundation lies in wrong habits of thought. In attempting to relieve it the physician has continually to struggle against the idea that to do anything well requires effort. This idea is drilled into us from our cradles. The whole educational system is based upon it; and in spite of the wonderful results attained by Montessori through the total elimination of every species of compulsion in the educational process, educators who call themselves modern still cling to the club, under various disguises, as a necessary auxiliary to the process of imparting knowledge.

It is as natural for the eye to see as it is for the mind to acquire knowledge, and any effort in either case is not only useless, but defeats the end in view.

You may force a few facts into a child's mind by various kinds of compulsion, but you cannot make it learn anything. The facts remain, if they remain at all, as dead lumber in the brain. They contribute nothing to the vital processes of thought; and because they were not acquired naturally and not assimilated, they destroy the natural impulse of the mind toward the acquisition of knowledge, and by the time the child leaves school or college, as the case may be, it not only knows nothing but is, in the majority of cases, no longer capable of learning.

In the same way you may temporarily improve the sight by effort, but you cannot improve it to normal, and if the effort is allowed to become continuous, the sight will steadily deteriorate and may eventually be destroyed. Very seldom is the impairment or destruction of vision due to any fault in the construction of the eye. Of two equally good pairs of eyes one will retain perfect sight to the end of life, and the other will lose it in the kindergarten, simply because one looks at things without effort and the other does not.

The eye with normal sight never tries to see. If for any reason, such as the dimness of the light, or the distance of the object, it cannot see a particular point, it shifts to another. It never tries to bring out the point by staring at it, as the eye with imperfect sight is constantly doing.

The eye possesses perfect vision only when it is absolutely restful (yet alert). And this happens only when the mind is in a state of restful alertness, for how can the eye enjoy that state when the mind is agitated?