circumstances.
5.9 Watching the graspings of the mind
Get ready for eye contact (section 5.2). Remember that you are too
far from each other if the palm of your hand cannot reach your
partner's nose.
Do a reconnection (section 5.3) for 2 or 3 minutes.
Practise eye contact as described in section 5.4:
- Become aware between the eyebrows. Use your focus in the eye
to become completely motionless, and to blink as little as possible. - Instead of looking at any of the details of the image in front of
you, become aware of the fact of seeing, or ‘seeingness’. (If
seeingness is not yet clear, just ‘feel the image’ instead of looking
at it.)
The natural tendency is that the physical image gets altered. The
outlines become blurry, new colours appear, and all kinds of
modifications of the image take place, as described in section 5.7.
As you go on practising, a mechanism of prime interest can be
observed. From time to time, something seems to retract inside
yourself. Suddenly, the (non-physical) colours or faces are lost, the
outlines become sharp again and you are back in the physical
image. It is as if something pulls you back, like a part of yourself
that cannot cope with the expansion of the vision. In a split
second, you are back into your usual mode of perception of
physical reality. The halos have disappeared and the contours have
become clearly delineated again.
Now you don't have to close your eyes but you need to relax, go
back into the eye, and start the process again. Build up the
motionless focus in the eye, become aware of the fact of seeing...
and slowly you shift back into the ‘non-mental’ mode of vision:
the image becomes blurry again, halos and/or colours reappear.
Another interesting finding is that when you are in the expanded
mode of perception (the ‘non-mental’ blurry image), your vision
becomes peripheral and embraces the whole field in front of you.
You see much more of what lies on each side of the image. But as
soon as you are brought back into the sharp clear-cut image, your
vision becomes selective again. Your perception becomes limited to
some details in the middle of the image, and you lose sight of
what is on the sides. You are only in touch with a fraction of the
field.