I believe that seeing is responsible for the prevalent conviction that we shall understand and completely recognize the world when we progress from one form to the next, from one phenomenon to the other. We forget that the motion itself, which leads the eyes from object to object, cannot take place in our eyes. It necessarily precedes and directs their movement.
Today, these observations take on an entirely new importance because our present world of posters, neon signs, movies, and television is based entirely on the reliability of the eyes. It has been said very correctly that we now live in the age of pictures. Isn’t even the process of transmitting thoughts on the verge of being reduced to external pictures? Aren’t we seeking a way to base teaching entirely on visual impressions? That a blind person should speak up and warn the seeing to be cautious about the use of their own eyes, as I am doing, may appear unseemly and even comical. Yet it is not the process of seeing that I attack.
I accuse only a certain idol worship. The idol is the conviction that seeing is the principal activity of the spirit, and sufficient for it.
Naturally, one cannot blame the eyes. On the contrary, they are so good that they should be improved even further.
What simply has to be understood is that seeing is not the work of the eyes alone. The ability to see must exist before its physical instrument, the eyes, can act. As long as men forget this fact, they will ever and again face illusion and failure. They will be impatient. They will want to see ever more and more. And they will no longer know who it is that is confronted with such a flood of impressions and sees them.
All this is known to a blind person. He knows it naturally, not because of an extraordinary gift of intelligence or by his own merit. Deprived of the privilege of the eyes, he measures at the same time his loss and his gain. Most of all, he continues to live and to experience with an irresistible force the wonderful mutual exchange that takes place between the inner and the outer worlds.
This continuity in life is always granted us by God. When we experience a wall, a loss, a misfortune, it is not God who erected this wall, but our spirit. It has stepped outside the everlasting creation. It has preferred to the universal current of power its own current of power, so to speak. There it has stopped.
In reality, there is neither a wall nor a loss. Everything is replaceable and continuous. So it is with the light for the blind.
I listen with ever-renewed surprise when the most earnest people — physicians, writers, psychologists — talk of the terrible “night” into which blindness pushes us. “Night” is the word everyone uses. I must protest against it because this word reveals a strange judgment, a prejudice, or simply a superficial opinion. How is it possible, especially for a physician or a psychologist, not to suspect at least the principally relative character of all perception?
The facts are quite different from everything one generally imagines. To cease seeing with one’s eyes does not mean entering a world in which light has ceased to exist.
What dwells in the head of a blind person is the light. Should we say in his head, or in his heart? Or perhaps even in his eyes? What difference does it make? The light is neither within nor without, but encompasses the whole being and wipes out the barriers we have created out of habit. The light is here! That is the only certainty.
I can foresee the objection that could be raised: Isn’t your experience a deception? Once you could see, knew colors and forms. You could name them. But how is it with one who was born blind?
I admit, this is a weighty objection. It would be even more so if we lacked the testimony of the blind from birth who were healed. All claim, certainly, that the light, as it revealed itself to their eyes, was a surprise to them, a new discovery. But they confess at the same time that before they could see with their eyes they carried within themselves a counterpart of this light.
And so all is light in this blindness; and what is more, this manifest luminosity contains a magnificent lesson. Since my childhood I have been impressed with a phenomenon of surprising clarity: The light I saw changed with my inner condition. Partly it depended on my physical condition, for instance fatigue, restfulness, tension, or relaxation. Such changes, however, were relatively rare. The true changes depended on the state of my soul.
When I was sad, when I was afraid, all shades became dark and all forms indistinct. When I was joyous and attentive, all pictures became light. Anger, remorse, plunged everything into darkness. A magnanimous resolution, a courageous decision, radiated a beam of light. By and by I learned to understand that love meant seeing and that hate was night.
I had the same experience with space. When I became blind, I found out that an inner space existed. This space also changed its dimensions in accordance with the condition of my soul. Sadness, hate, or fear not only darkened my universe, but also made it smaller. The number of objects I could encompass within myself with one glance decreased. In the truest sense of the word, I knocked against everything. Objects and beings became obstacles within myself. Outwardly I could not avoid running against doors and furniture. I was punished very thoroughly and very quickly.
Conversely, however, courage, attention, joy, had the immediate effect of opening up and illuminating space. Soon everything existed in me abundantly: a great many objects, pictures, beings. I saw a magnificent landscape before me. I knew that this landscape could be expanded indefinitely; in order to achieve this, my joy had merely to become even greater. At the same time, my physical adroitness increased; I found my way and moved with assurance.
In short, there were two possibilities: to reject the world — and that meant darkness, reverses — or to accept it, and that meant light and strength.
I do not believe that my explanations contain anything particularly new, unless one takes into account the experimental, concrete, and sense-transmitted character of the facts described. The discovery made possible by blindness is undoubtedly the experience of the existence of an inner life. From numerous meetings with blind persons, and numerous questions put to them, I have learned that others have had similar experiences. Yet most do not talk about them.
In order to describe these experiences, certain technical faculties are required. It is necessary to master a certain language, that of psychology, and to practice a certain kind of analysis. But that is not of great moment, and many blind persons have this knowledge at their disposal.
We all know to how great an extent our experiences, especially inner ones, depend on language. Language, however, is first of all a collective tool. It may be said that it is the tool of the majority.
The words the blind use are the words of the seeing. They have borrowed them all, and the seeing do not take it too kindly that the blind make such positive use of their words. The seeing are given to intolerance.
A blind man is disabled; he is infirm; he is excluded from society and not counted a full person. He is accorded compassion, even help, but nearly everyone prefers to hear him complain about, rebel against, and accuse his being different, rather than to hear him describe with assurance the world he carries within himself. The blind often feel very painfully the doubt and lack of faith with which their personal experience is received.
The blind, therefore, either withdraw from the world and lead a life filled with strange habits, thereby widening the gap between themselves and the world of the seeing even more, or they direct their efforts toward making others forget their blindness. Rarely, very rarely, do they present themselves as blind, and as wishing to carry out their function as blind persons.
I believe that blindness has its own function. It has the tasks of reminding us that the despotism of one sense, sight, is unjust, and of cautioning us against the form of perception prevalent today. And, further, it is the task of blindness not only to recall to memory the origin of all knowledge, but also to remind us of the wonderful gift that permits a mutual exchange between other forms of perception and perceived pictures.
The blind know from direct experience that t
he act of seeing has priority over seeing in the usual sense, outer seeing. I consider it important that they do not hide this knowledge.
I consider it especially important that the blind and the seeing compare what they see. They should get together before they pass judgment, before they establish an order of rank for inner and outer seeing; they should compare their experiences, become aware of their mutual wealth of experience. And they should, one as well as the other, accept their limitations. I am convinced that this comparison would accomplish valuable work. I am convinced that after such an exchange of thoughts, the limits of both kinds of perception, limits that should be known, will stand out in new clarity. Let us hope that this dialogue will be candidly carried out someday!
I believe, however, that even today a preliminary listing of the gifts of the blind is possible. It is generally said that the loss of seeing immediately causes the other senses to develop further, that a compensation takes place. This is true. It is true that the blind hear better than the seeing. Sounds make it possible for them to perceive distances and even figures.
The shadow of a tree on the road is not only a visual phenomenon. It is also audible. The oak, the poplar, the nut tree have their own specific levels of sound. The tone of a plane tree is entered like a room. It indicates a certain order in space, zones of tension, and zones of free passage. The same is true of a wall or a whole landscape.
All differences in light have corresponding differences in sound. What I hear, while leaning out of my window under a gray, overcast sky, is sluggish. Sounds have become weak. They move in disconnected small groups. They circle in a single plane of space. What I hear when the sun shines has a much more intense vibration. Real objects emitting sounds begin to appear. The sounds go where they may, meet in accordance with their affinity, and combine into forms.
A blind person hears better, and that is as it should be, because he hears what he does not see. A blind person has a better sense of feeling, of taste, of touch. He should be told how much his senses keep in reserve for him. But first of all, it seems to me, it is necessary to point out to him the condition that leads to such a widening of the senses.
This condition isn’t simply not seeing anymore. Neither does it mean that a new structure is given to the remaining senses. The necessary condition is much simpler: one has to be attentive. A really attentive person could understand everything. For this understanding he would need nothing that is tied to the senses. Neither light, nor sound, nor the shape peculiar to every object would exist for him, but every object would reveal itself to him in all its possible facets. In other words, he would enter completely into its inner world.
The senses would continue to exist, because their role as natural intermediaries has been established by the order of creation itself. But they would no longer work independently, separated from each other, as we have wrongly assumed they must.
From just this “total attention” the seeing are constantly diverted. So are the blind, but not to the same degree. For them remaining attentive is a practical necessity, and this simple fact constitutes the first of their gifts.
Hearing, sense of smell, sense of touch! Truly, I hesitate to make these differences because I am afraid they are arbitrary.
Does a blind person really know what he perceives when, walking along on the sidewalk, he suddenly indicates that he has recognized a gap in the wall or building? Or when he stops a few inches before reaching an obstacle, without even having brushed against it? Can he put into words what he has experienced? I think not. He will say, when asked, that he heard something: less resonance, a movement of the air, like the very slow approach of an object. But this explanation is only a concession to the generally used language.
He did not hear. He touched. Perhaps hearing and touch are the same sense perception. His ability to indicate the gap in the wall means that the free area of cement or stones had already taken possession of his whole body; with the whole surface of his body he had experienced its shape and power of resistance. It even means that he had already passed through the gap.
All our senses, I believe, join into one. They are the successive stages of a single perception, and that perception is always one of touch. Therefore hearing can replace seeing, and seeing can replace touch. Therefore no loss is irreparable.
At this point I ask myself whether what we call attention could be the psychological form of this fundamental contact, a form based on feeling as well as intellect. In other words, could attention be a kind of touch?
A blind person is in a room; a man enters, sits down, and does not talk. Can the blind person come to know him? Common sense will say no. But I am not sure that common sense is right. The blind person can strain his attention. He can open himself to such an extent that this unmoving person comes closer. By and by, quietly and without moving, he can remove all the inner obstacles that separate him from the other until he begins to absorb the man’s appearance.
I know that such an experience verges on the limits of cognition. I know that it almost never takes place consciously. Yet I believe that every blind person has had it, whether he was conscious of it or not.
How can this be explained? Has the blind man developed a higher faculty? With the help of the spirit has he transcended the normal conditions of perception? I believe one should simply say: He touched.
I used a blind person as an example. I could equally well have spoken of a seeing person, because — to repeat — the special merit of blindness is not that it creates a different experience, but that it leads us by necessity toward a heightened experience.
Some have called this fundamental touch “a sense for obstacles.” They have even tried to assign to it a certain part of the body. Some, in accordance with the tradition of esoteric physiology, have placed it in the region of the forehead, in the “eye of Shiva.” Others, following a purely rational hypothesis, have spoken of cooperation of a mixture of elemental sense impressions of a visual character, located primarily in certain parts of the skin. This is the famous thesis of Jules Romains, laid down in his memorandum on “para-optical seeing,” or “the sight that takes place outside the retina.”
I, for one, would rather confine myself to a more direct observation.
What the blind person experiences in the presence of an object is pressure. When he stands before a wall he has never touched and does not now touch, he feels a physical presence. The wall bears down on him, so to speak. An effluvium emanates from that wall. Conscious perception takes place the moment it meets another effluvium, which originates in him.
Perception, then, would mean entering into an equilibrium of pressure, into a force field. As soon as we pay attention to this phenomenon, the world comes to life in a surprisingly different manner. No single object, no single being remains neutral. The oneness of the world is experienced as a physical event.
The pressure I have spoken of assumes all forms: absorption, transference, cooperation. Everything enters into an intimate and active relationship with ourselves: the window, the street, the walls of the room, the furniture, the slight movement of the air, living creatures. Finally, even thoughts take on weight and direction.
This is the experience of the blind, but — of this I am convinced — it is also a common experience. Seeing persons also experience these pressure effects, but they do not permit them to enter their consciousness. Yet it seems to me they could throw light on a great many rather vague but important states of mind: sympathy, antipathy, the feeling of being ill at ease, goodwill, the wish to stay or flee, opposition, devotion.
These conditions are always explained psychologically: I consider them to be much simpler.
I said “pressure.” I said “effluence.” I could also have expressed myself differently and talked about “a field of vibration.” It is this basic vibration, which shapes objects and reveals beings, to which we are led by blindness.
To carry this analysis further does not seem desirable, because we have entered the realm o
f personal experience. When we wish to make our experiences known to others, the only way to do so is to explain and explain again, in complete detail.
I wished to call attention to the strangely one-sided character of our psychology of perception. The prejudice that arbitrarily elevates seeing to its all-powerful position has hidden from most thinkers that which makes possible seeing, as well as all other sense perceptions, and, more generally, our relationship to the world.
For all these reasons a blind person has the right to say: Blindness changed my sight, but did not extinguish it.
And now I hope that you will find it easier to accept my paradox, the confession of faith I made in the beginning: Blindness is my greatest happiness! Blindness gives us great happiness. It gives us a great opportunity, both through its disorder and through the order it creates.
The disorder is the prank it plays on us, the slight shift it causes. It forces us to see the world from another standpoint. This is a necessary disorder, because the principal reason for our unhappiness and our errors is that our standpoints are fixed.
As for the order blindness creates, it is the discovery of the constantly present creation. We constantly accuse the conditions of our lives. We call them incidents, accidents, illnesses, duties, infirmities. We wish to force our own conditions on life; this is our real weakness. We forget that God never creates new conditions for us without giving us the strength to meet them. I am grateful that blindness has not allowed me to forget this.
I should like to have this attitude called “optimistic,” though optimism is not regarded highly today. This is my wish because I cannot admit that an experience is worthless because it is a happy one.
The blind see in their own way, but they do see. This is a fact that entails just as many risks and obligations for the blind as seeing does for those who are able to use the light of their eyes.
Against the Pollution of the I Page 4