Some people can improve their eyesight and eliminate the need for glasses.  Many people can reduce their dependency upon glasses but that for me is not the issue.  The issue is to recognize that eye glasses are a tool, not a crutch.  Use them when you need them, not all the time.  Our whole approach to prescribing glasses doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. 

Very few people who can read when there’s no light.  So we assume that’s the problem with our eyes but maybe it’s just a problem of the light.  That’s one thing.  Can everyone benefit from doing these things?  Absolutely.  The book “Take Off Your Glasses and See” wasn’t about throwing away your glasses.  It was about removing your glasses and seeing what happens, begin to notice what’s going on.  Now when people remove their glasses the first thing they notice is that they want to put them back on.  They realize how habituated or addicted they are to them.  They notice they can’t hear as well and they can’t see as well.  When I asked them how do they feel they said well I can’t see you.  How do you feel?  Well I feel uneasy.  I feel out of control.  I feel scared.  What happens when you put your glasses back on?  Feelings are gone.  When did you first get your glasses?  Oh I was 11 years old.  What was going on in your life at that point?  Well my parents moved to a different city.  I lost my grandmother and had to find new friends.  How did you feel?  Pretty lousy.  I was scared.  I felt out of control.  And then all of the sudden you realize that the glasses become a drug.  We use the glasses to avoid feeling the state that lies just underneath the skins surface. 

So “Take Off Your Glasses and See” was an experiment.  Remove your classes and notice whatever you notice.  In the process you gain insight about your nature and then that opens up some doors.  Some people can improve their eyesight and eliminate the need for glasses.  Many people can reduce their dependency upon glasses but that for me is not the issue.  The issue is to recognize that eye glasses are a tool, not a crutch.  Use them when you need them, not all the time.  Our whole approach to prescribing glasses doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.  We spend our days outside but we do the exam in a long thin dark room behind an instrument that blocks out all of our peripheral vision and we ask people to look at tiny letters at 20 feet away as though that means anything.  It has nothing to do with life itself.  When I use to be in that field I had windows in my office.  Everything was done in daylight with full spectrum lighting.  You’re talking about 1974/75.  So our way of looking at things is not clear and so that makes it very difficult to see.  We’re going to have more myopia, not less. Part of my project right now, brining new vision to the world, is about sharing with people the technology that deals with exercising their eyes, which is not about anything other than recognizing the enormity of vision, that everything we do is visually guided, every single step we take. 

So people think about vision and they think oh I can see the eye chart, or I can’t  or I need glasses, or I don’t, what they don’t realize is that they’re whole attentional process is based upon their vision.  Ninety percent of their learning is all about their vision.  Their ability to drive, play sports, whatever, everything is visually guided.  So my project deals not so much with eyesight, that’s a side effect, it deals more with gaining insight.  It deals more with recognizing that, well in a way it’s sort of like trying to get a person to sub-bond, to have an experience of their own feeling so that they can begin to know themselves in a greater way and so that they can begin to accept the way they are, just totally accept the way they are.  We spend our whole life trying to become something or to change something or to eliminate this or to, and after spending more than 30 years of my life doing that.  So many of the deep seeded problems seem to disappear when, through a miracle, I found myself unconditionally accepting just the way I was.  It’s interesting how there isn’t something to fix when there’s nothing to fix.