Читать книгу Luminous Life - Jacob Israel Liberman - Страница 12
ОглавлениеEach one of you has a priceless treasure: there is light emanating from your eyes, which illuminates mountains, rivers, and the great earth.
— ZEN MASTER CHANGQING DA’AN
Our eyes not only absorb light, but they also reflect and emit it, causing our eyes to literally light up under certain conditions and appear dim under others. Think of the last time you interacted with a baby. Perhaps after you made some cooing sounds or funny faces, you focused on the baby’s eyes and noticed their sparkle. Yet when you look at someone who is in distress or is not feeling well, their eyes seem to have lost their luster. What’s behind this phenomenon? As is often attributed to Shakespeare, the eyes are the windows of the soul.
In chapter 1, we saw that many creatures take part in extraordinary journeys guided by something outside them that is inseparably aligned with something inside them. Our life journey is also guided in the same way by light. When this alignment happens, a state of oneness known as presence arises within us; our eyes light up and the next step of our journey becomes evident.
I first became aware of this phenomenon during my third year of optometric training, when prominent behavioral optometrist John W. Streff visited Southern College of Optometry. At the time, Streff was the director of vision research at the Gesell Institute of Child Development at Yale. He had become known for describing a constellation of visual symptoms that resulted from stress and that is now called the Streff syndrome. Shortly after he arrived, Streff was casually chatting with a group of students and a journalist in the student union when he asked, “Could I have a volunteer?” The journalist, a young man in his twenties, raised his hand.
Dr. Streff used a sophisticated piece of equipment called a retinoscope to shine light into the journalist’s eye so he could observe the reflection (or “reflex”) of light off the retina.
“I want you to imagine that you are playing tennis,” Dr. Streff said.
As the man imagined, Dr. Streff peered through the top of the retinoscope, his face about twenty inches from the man’s eyes. A few moments of quiet anticipation passed. Then Dr. Streff said, “You just hit the ball. . .there, you hit another one. . .and another one.”
He was joking, I thought. After all, how could Dr. Streff know when this journalist was imagining hitting a ball?
“There, you hit it. . .you hit it again,” Dr. Streff continued to announce.
The man began to laugh. We all began to laugh too, although we did not yet know why. Then the journalist exclaimed, “You told me what I was doing just before I did it in my mind!”
Although this may sound strange, in a recently published paper in the journal PLOS Biology, an international team of researchers suggests that a lag exists between seeing something and becoming aware of it. According to the new “time slice theory,” supported by previously published psychological and behavioral experiments, our brains process unconscious information in brief frames of time and then splice the frames together like a movie into what we perceive as a continuous flow of conscious information.
In essence, we do not experience stimuli when they actually occur but much later, relatively speaking, when we become conscious of them. Another way of saying this is that our eyes respond to light well before it is rendered into our conscious experience of life. As we become increasingly more aware of the “just noticeable differences” occurring within us and in the world around us, we respond to subtler and subtler aspects of life, eventually seeing what is invisible to others.
I did not realize it then, but Dr. Streff’s awareness was highly developed, allowing him to notice when the light emitted from his retinoscope fused with the light emitted from the journalist’s eyes, providing him insights the journalist was not yet aware of.
“Let’s do it again,” Dr. Streff said. The journalist continued to visualize a game of tennis.
“That was a forehand,” Dr. Streff said.
“Nice backhand,” he continued. “Oh, you just hit a lob,” and on the commentary went.
Blown away by the demonstration, we all started talking at once, asking question after question. That day it became clear to me that there was an aspect of vision that had nothing to do with eye exams or glasses. I had had many experiences during my life where I sensed something before it occurred. But I could not imagine, at the time, how by peering into someone’s eyes Dr. Streff seemed able to see what another person was imagining. I was so inspired that I offered to drive Dr. Streff everywhere he went during his visit so I could question him.
Soon after Dr. Streff’s demonstration, a six-year-old girl was brought to the college clinic because she was failing in school and was a bit clumsy. Her parents assumed poor eyesight was to blame. Like Dr. Streff before me, I used a retinoscope to peer into the young girl’s eyes. I watched her eyes as I put different strength lenses in front of them. The eyes of most patients usually reflexively change as different strength lenses change the appearance of the eye chart in front of them, but the eyes of this young girl were nearly static. Her eye reflexes were dull, and her eyes appeared dark, as if no light was getting in or out. She could not see, but there was no biological reason for her poor eyesight. No matter what prescription I tried, her eyes did not respond. It was as if nothing could touch her, and I began to wonder if she might have suffered a trauma that was clouding her eyesight.
Although I was just beginning my third year of optometry school, I had read in one of my textbooks that emotional issues could, at times, produce a temporary loss of vision termed hysterical blindness. It became clear to me that glasses were not going to help her, so I removed my white clinic jacket, sat on the floor, and did something I had never done.
“Do you know your letters and numbers?” I asked.
She said that she did.
“Great, then let’s play a game! I am going to use my finger to write a number on your back. I want you to tell me the number, okay?”
Lightly, with my index finger, I drew a number one. She seemed confused.
I turned around. “How about you do it to me? Draw a letter or a number on my back and see if I can guess what it is.”
By the end of that session I could already see a change. It was as if she opened a door and allowed me into her world. She trusted me because I helped her discover that she could see via her feelings rather than just her eyes. Her eyes seemed brighter, and she was already starting to guess the right letters and numbers. For a few weeks I continued to work with her in this way. By the end of the tenth session, I could draw three-letter words and double-digit numbers on her back, and she could guess correctly most of the time. She could track a ball with her eyes, walk on a balance beam, and see with 20/20 vision. It was obvious that she was seeing the world differently and so was I.
Later during my career, I began asking patients to complete different tasks as I watched their eyes. The patients read. They did math in their heads. They imagined. Initially, as expected, I noticed that the pupil would dilate and constrict in response to light, as if it was actually breathing. Here is what was not expected: I found that whenever people were exerting effort, their pupils shrunk and the light in their eyes became dull. It was as if “trying hard” induced tunnel vision and murkiness. When their efforts stopped, suddenly their pupils expanded and filled with light. It was dramatic, and it happened instantaneously because the pupil also responds to any sensory, emotional, or mental change occurring in the autonomic nervous system.
Having had difficulties with reading my entire life and continually being told to “try harder,” this discovery helped me see that we are designed to function with little or no effort. I was beginning to realize that our potential as human beings hinged on the subtle balance between striving and thriving. The photos below, taken within seconds of each other, illustrate the real-time changes observed in one child’s eyes.
Pupillary reflex during retinoscopy illustrates the difference between exertion and ease
Perhaps this is why the German word for eyesight is Augenlicht — literally, “eye light” — and why in Greek, the expressions “I’m losing my light” and “I’m losing my sight” are synonymous.
Having had the opportunity to work with that six-year-old girl allowed me to discover that a person’s emotional state is intricately linked to their eyes. Good feelings cause pupils to expand, allowing a greater amount of light to enter and exit the eyes. The light expands our view, allowing our brains to receive and absorb more information. In other words, happiness allows us to see, remember, and understand more, expanding the size of the window through which we see the world.
When a patient’s view of life is bleak, their field of vision reflects it and is often reduced to tunnel vision, collapsing their awareness and their ability to perceive and respond to life. Perhaps that’s why the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “Use the light that dwells within you to regain your natural clarity of sight.”
As it turns out, the pupil is the body’s most sensitive barometer of activity in the autonomic nervous system, responding as much to light entering the eyes as it does to light exiting the eyes. But this is not a new idea. In the second century CE, the renowned Greek philosopher and physician Galen said that vision comes from the brain and out through the eyes. In addition, most Islamic scholars in the ninth century also believed that light emanates from the eyes. Perhaps the pupil is indeed the “window of the soul” in that it both receives the light without and projects the light within — the alignment I mentioned earlier.
Since pupillary changes occur without our knowledge, they reveal our deepest feelings. In The Human Animal, zoologist, ethologist, and human sociobiology expert Dr. Desmond Morris writes, “The pupils cannot lie because we have no conscious control over them.” This is why professional poker players frequently wear sunglasses while playing; they do not want to reveal how they feel about their cards.
The eyes not only reflect our innermost terrain, but they also reveal when we are truly connecting with another. In fact, Dr. Morris confirms that during “early stages of courtship the eyes transmit vital signals. Since the pupils expand slightly more than usual when they see something they like, we can tell whether we are ‘being liked’ or not. . . .If, on the other hand, the pupils shrink to pinpricks when we gaze closely at our companion’s face, we might as well give up.”
In a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, researchers found that when we are deeply involved in speaking and listening to each other our pupillary dilations synchronize, as if our two minds become one.
Such findings fueled my early work, confirming that our eyes dynamically reflect our physical, emotional, and spiritual development more vividly than any other part of the body. This was an epiphany for me because, aside from my experience with Dr. Streff, I had been taught that light’s interaction with the eyes was strictly a one-way street. As noted, a number of ancient philosophers, including Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy, believed that light emanates from the eyes, rendering sight as much a projective process as a receptive one.
Trusting Life’s Guidance
The ease with which light traverses the human energy system is an indication of how much we trust our life’s guidance. If we trust life, we live in a state of effortless flow and our eyes and aura appear bright because no light is lost. If we do not trust life, however, we think ahead and try hard, losing the light naturally visible in our eyes. The light in our eyes is a reflection of our light content, a gauge of our congruence and coherence with life, which is a reflection of our state of consciousness. When our eyes appear dull or dim, they indicate a state of heaviness, stagnation, and a lack of life force. When our eyes appear bright, they indicate grace, flow, and vibrancy.
I also observed that our degree of connectedness with life is reflected in our breathing cycle. When our eyes are bright, our breathing is full and vice versa. Since breathing is one of the most fundamental indicators of physiological coherence, as well as a reflection of the rhythmic expansion and contraction associated with the very cadence of life, it would make sense that an inhibition of this flow would impact us on many levels. Yet most of us respire in a shallow, irregular manner. In his book Pathways to Peace, Swami Satchidananda confirms this fact when he asserts, “we use only one-seventh of our lungs in normal breathing.”
When I observed how thinking caused my patients to hold their breath, and that it reduced the light emanating from their eyes, I wondered why. I remembered being taught to “work hard” and “try my best” in school, neither of which led to my ultimate success. I eventually realized that working hard might not be the key to our creative breakthroughs, and that “thinking ahead” is often an attempt to combat our fear of the unknown, which can obscure the very answers we seek. Infants and young children do not “think ahead” or look for anything. In fact, they respond to whatever calls their attention, guided by a flow of knowledge available to us all.
So I began to encourage patients’ awareness of the subtle machinations they performed while facing tasks they deemed difficult. I helped them shine an inner light on the thoughts and concerns that arose, the strategies they employed to “succeed,” and most importantly, whether those strategies worked or not. In the process, they directly experienced how thinking ahead actually kept them behind.
For one of the exercises, I adapted a technique introduced to me by my dear friend and colleague Dr. Ray Gottlieb and originally developed by Dr. Robert Pepper as part of Pepper Stress Therapy. Using a chart with several rows of arrows, each pointing in a different direction, I asked patients to call out the direction of each arrow while simultaneously moving their arms in the opposite direction of what the arrow indicated. As you can imagine, this resulted in confusion (if not panic) — and the desire to “get it right” along with the tendency for them to hold their breath. However, when they discovered this and started breathing again, their brilliance emerged free of charge.
I remember a young woman who attended one of my workshops. I asked her to remove her thick glasses and stand as close to the arrow chart as she needed to see it clearly. Since the arrows were fairly large, she was able to see them from about three feet away. Every time she mastered an exercise, I asked her to take a deep breath and step a bit farther from the chart. Within twenty minutes she was twenty-five feet away and still able to see it clearly. I checked her eyesight after that experience and it had improved by 200 percent.
I have since used this exercise and others like it with thousands of individuals, including members of the US Olympic Team and world-class athletes. Time and time again it has led to significant improvements in attention, memory coordination, and sports performance, as well as speed, accuracy, and fluidity of response to complex situations. Most interesting was my observation that our systems seem naturally equipped to respond to life rather than direct it. This became the thrust of my later philosophical inquiry.
We excel when we stop thinking and start responding. When we try to anticipate and control what happens to us rather than responding to life as it presents itself, we tighten up and our performance drops. However, when we flow with life, following wherever it leads us, we meet life head-on with our eyes open. This experience allows us to discover a new level of ease and presence without any effort. Acknowledging that the intelligence of life always has the first move inspires an organic and balanced form of collaboration, as we follow life’s invitation toward our greatest potential.
The following story tells of my own “invitation” to explore my potential. In the spring of 1969 I was accepted to dental school under the condition that I complete three summer courses prior to fall enrollment. I contacted the only accredited university in Miami (where I would be spending the summer) and learned that two of the courses were being offered simultaneously, making it impossible to fulfill all three prerequisites before fall enrollment. This meant I would need to wait another year before starting school.
That afternoon, one of my fraternity brothers told me he was going to Memphis to visit his family and asked if I wanted to join. I said yes. After we arrived, my friend took me sightseeing. As we drove down one of the main roads, we passed a college of optometry and I felt compelled to stop there — odd, since I had never considered optometry as a career. “Turn around!” I yelled. He pulled over and I literally ran to the admissions office to ask for an application. Since most of the staff and students were on holiday break, the office was not busy and I received an appointment with the head of admissions the following day.
I told the admissions officer how something inspired me to stop as I passed their campus. I showed him my letter of acceptance to dental school and asked how their course requirements compared. He said they were almost identical and that there was only one space left in their upcoming class; he asked if I wanted to apply. I pulled out the application that I had completed the night before, along with my transcripts. He reviewed them and looked up with a surprised expression. “I’ve never done this before, but if you want the slot, it’s yours!” He then indicated that I was only required to pass two of the three science courses required by dental school.
By the time I returned to the University of Georgia the following week a conditional letter of acceptance was waiting for me. I passed the two courses at the University of Miami that summer and began studies at Southern College of Optometry in the fall of 1969.
Foresight Is 20/20
Many years ago while observing an artist at work, I noticed he periodically stepped back and gazed at his canvas. I asked him what he was looking at. He told me he was not aware of looking at anything specifically but just stood back to see if anything seemed incomplete. As he stood there I noticed that his eyes were randomly scanning and only paused when something called their attention. It soon became clear that the artist’s eyes showed him where more attention was needed on the canvas, in the same way our eyes are drawn to whatever requires our presence in any given moment.
Our eyes are continually responding to the light that catches them. As we discover this subtle yet profound aspect of our makeup, we begin to trust its guidance and follow it without question, heightening our ability to see the inner workings of our lives with greater clarity and acceptance.
During the separation period prior to my divorce in the late 1970s, my life consisted of a series of extremely upsetting events. I kept having recurring confrontations and reacting to them with angry outbursts. One day, after one of these experiences, I recognized why this pattern was repeating itself in my life. After that, the lag time between one of these incidents and my awareness of why it was happening shortened. I realized that consciousness evolves and, at times, I was able to recognize what was happening as it occurred. Immediately I thought, “Aha! I’ve finally arrived!” — but as soon as my ego wanted to take credit, I ended up right back at square one.
After a while, however, I had a magical experience. In the midst of a situation that previously would have disturbed me I felt calm and fully aware. I felt a deep sense of humility, as if I were in a state of grace. Shortly after that experience I was once again stopped in my tracks. An event would occur and I would immediately realize that I had sensed it happening just a few minutes earlier. Was this merely a coincidence or can awareness precede experience? Is it possible that we are inseparably connected with the intelligence of life, guided by a form of precognition?
Before giant waves slammed into Sri Lanka and India’s coastlines in December 2004, wild and domestic animals seemed to know what was about to happen and started shrieking and fleeing to safety. As a result, very few animals died when the waves hit — yet more than 150,000 people were killed.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, experts believe that animals possess a sixth sense that enables them to recognize imminent danger long before humans do. But humans also possess this sixth sense. The only difference is that we have been taught to question what we instinctively “know” and to trust what we “think.” We believe “hindsight is 20/20” because most of us become aware of things after they occur. But what if we are designed to perceive things before they occur? What if foresight is actually 20/20? In Jungian psychology, intuition is the psychological function that allows us to sense what will occur before it happens. Many artists are “ahead of their time,” trusting their intuition to guide their visionary work.
Seeing the Invisible
In 2010 I was elected president of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM), an organization of scientists, physicians, and wellness practitioners interested in the impact of consciousness on health and well-being. Three weeks after our annual conference, I had an extraordinary experience.
After falling into a deep sleep one night, I became aware that I was observing myself sleeping in bed. I noticed the rise and fall of my chest and the sounds of my breath. I was also cognizant that my sleeping body was dreaming, as I was able to see the dream.
In the dream, two people were introducing me to a large audience at the 2011 ISSSEEM conference — one was my daughter and the other a close friend. I then proceeded to deliver the presidential address, after which I received a standing ovation.
A couple months after the dream my daughter called and asked if I thought her partner at the time could submit a proposal to speak at the 2011 conference. I agreed, but since he led safaris in Africa I could not imagine what he would present that would be pertinent to the focus of the group.
In early October the Program Committee met in California to finalize their list of presenters. When we began discussing applicants, my colleagues were excited about a proposal from this fellow who wanted to discuss conscious human contact with animals in the African wild. I listened quietly. Within minutes the committee had agreed to invite him to speak. I had never told them that he was my daughter’s boyfriend.
As it turned out, my daughter attended the 2011 conference with her partner. When a former ISSSEEM president who was slated to introduce me became ill at the last moment, my daughter and close friend Brian ended up doing it, and following my presentation there was indeed an ovation. I had not been dreaming after all.
This experience was fascinating for many reasons, including the fact that everything I had previously learned about sleep described deep, dreamless sleep as unconsciousness. Yet consciousness was obviously awake and aware, pointing to the ever-present nature of awareness.
As an example, a 2013 study published in the journal PLOS ONE found that experienced meditators who claim to be aware during deep sleep exhibit brain activity typically seen during waking consciousness. To further confirm this, a recent meta-analysis published in the December 2016 issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences suggests that consciousness does not turn off when one enters deep sleep. According to Evan Thompson, professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the paper’s authors, “Consciousness, in the sense of sheer awareness or feeling of being or existing, continues in deep sleep, even when ordinary mental activity (thoughts, emotions, mental images) has quieted down or stopped.” The evidence presented in these studies along with my direct experience led me to believe that, like light, consciousness is all-pervasive.
An Ocean in a Drop
Years ago while spiritual teacher Ram Dass was visiting Maui, I invited him to sit in with a men’s group I had been part of for many years. During our sharing, one of the members asked Ram Dass to speak about presence.
“Presence,” he said, “is like baklava — it includes everything. . . the nuts, the honey, the phyllo dough.”
It was a funny way to describe presence. Yet it was so true. Presence is pure awareness and includes everything, even those times we do not think we are being present. Most of us think of being present in relation to others, our feelings, or a specific situation. But that is based on the idea that we are living life separately from one another rather than recognizing that we are life, inextricably linked to every living thing.
In any given moment everything and everyone is intimately connected to and collaborating with everything else. The same force that moves the tides and changes the seasons also animates the beating of our heart. So when an insight or a feeling suddenly imprints on our awareness, it is not an accident. The intelligence of life is looking for us, effortlessly directing us toward the next step on our journey. There is nothing to think about, consider, or choose. Just observe, and we will be guided to where we need to be and what we need to do.
Awareness and experience are seamlessly linked. When that becomes clear, the drop that we think of as our individual self merges with the ocean of oneness, creating waves of presence that expand infinitely in all directions. When the light within us merges with the light illuminating our awareness, we are effortlessly moved toward our source, in the same way that a flower is moved toward the sun.
