Yoga of Perfect Sight

Imagination Essential to Sight

Vision is a process of mental interpretation. The picture which the mind sees is not the impression on the retina, but a mental interpretation of it. To the mind objects seen appear to be in an upright position, but the picture on the retina is upside down. When the sight is normal the margins and openings of black letters on a white card appear whiter than the rest of the card, but this, of course, is not the fact, the whole background being of the same whiteness. For example, look at the white centre of the letter 'O' and compare the whiteness of the centre of 'O' with the whiteness of the rest of the card. The whiter you can imagine the centre of 'O' the better becomes the vision for the letter 'O'. The perfect imagination of the white centre of 'O' means perfect imagination of the black, because you cannot imagine the white perfectly without imagining the black perfectly.

When the vision is imperfect the imagination is also imperfect. The mind, in short, adds imperfections to the imperfect retinal images. A great part of the phenomena of imperfect sight is, therefore, imaginary and not in any way to be accounted for by the derangement of the visual apparatus. To a patient of imperfect sight the letter of the Snellen test card may appear gray or blue or with white spots over it; or, it may be, the size of the letter may be seen smaller or bigger, or a distorted shape may appear. Many persons with defective vision see floating specks before the eyes especially when they look towards some bright surface.

It is a great relief to patients to learn that these appearances are imaginary, and it helps them to bring the imagination under control. As it is impossible to imagine perfectly without perfect relaxation, any improvement in the interpretation of the retinal images means an improvement in the conditions which have led to a distortion of those images. Hence relaxation is the cure for most eye troubles. There is no more effective method of improving the sight, therefore, than by the aid of the imagination, and wonderful results have been obtained by this means.

When the mind is able to remember perfectly any phenomena of the senses, it is always perfectly relaxed. The sight is normal, if the eyes are open; and when they are closed and covered so as to exclude all the light, one sees a perfectly black field. If you can remember the ticking of a watch, or an odour or a taste perfectly, your mind is perfectly at rest, and you will see a perfect black when the eyes are closed and covered. If your memory of a letter or an object is according to the reality, you would see nothing but black when the light was excluded from your eyes. When this imagination is maintained while the eyes are open, the vision is quickly improved.

A schoolboy with a high degree of myopic astigmatism could see only two lines of the chart from 10 feet distance. By the aid of his imagination he could read the normal line within a fortnight. He could imagine a small letter of the chart with eyes closed as well as eyes open.

A college student used to see floating specks before the eyes most of the time during the day. When it was demonstrated that they were unreal, he was completely cured with the help of relaxation.

A student had myopia and was using glasses from the age of ten. Somehow the strain in the right eye increased so much that the colour, size and form of objects regarded altered. The straight things appeared curved and distorted. It was explained to him that most of the imperfection in his eyesight was due to eye strain, hence imaginary. He got great relief from these imaginary imperfections as soon as he learnt how to control the mind by eye education and mental relaxation.

In fact most of the blindness amongst civilized people is due to eye strain and mental strain and much of it is curable by the proper use of the eyes and mental relaxation.