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Case 8.0 Vision impairment and even more
 

Preliminary events.

The subject, male middle aged, passed through a life period of several months when he suferred of some kind of anxiety.

He decided to solve it by himself without reccuring to medical help as his experience with these professionals seemed  somewhat deceptive at that time. The period  ended without much damage to the subject reputation and social position as it occured mostly during holydays time and only some closed friends and relatives noticed some strange behavior from his part, and  he managed to make it meaningfull for other observers  with some cover stories and trivial explanations.

During this troubled period he experienced a powerfull and disconforting feeling of being followed by  unknown ennemies, spied, harrassed by tracking and stalking by another persons which he could not see or identify and lived much of this time as in a state of surveyed liberty. For example he observed that in the crowded part of the town in which he lived, he could not enjoy a real privacy in his house as in any corner of it he was in the line of sight of some neighbour sitting on a balcony of a nearby dwelling. These feelings and states of mind vanished in time. He trained and fought against them by trying to locate and specify the external source of his feelings, to relate them to some real social patterns which might be the cause of his trouble or to diminish them by a voluntary decision at the same moment of their appearence, after analyzing the settings and  outer circumstances and the inner sources that could trigger them. He trained himself to travel at night in the streets and in lonely places, first with  company and after alone, as to understand and controll his states of mind and to behave properly and in a reasonable manner.

After remission ,he thought much on what really happened to him during that strange period and concluded for himself that he had not enough information and experience to get a final and reasonable picture of all those situations and circumstances. He tried to share it with  some friends but it seemed to him that everybody saw only a little bit of the truth as it was permited by some previous experience. So the psychiatrist saw the possible neurosys, the detective the  possibility of a real survey situation ,a.s.o.

He recovered almost totally, but the feeling remained, that if that occurs again he had to be more prepared to manage it by a proper control of  himself. But his experience made him to see it, to view it as coming from a real life  situation, not only as a possible period of insanity. He was followed , he was surveyed at that time , it should have been so, it did not happen  any more by now, when he was analyzing it, but it might have been very real, then. So he decided that if it will happen again he must have or create some proper protection of his own. The subject acknowledges to have a deep sentiment of a great need for freedom and even the thought of being surveyed, lacking him from a part of his liberty  makes him feel very unconfortable. So he reasoned not to be enough powerfull to controll the behavior of others. If someone decided to look after him and survey his route and schedule, he could do  not too much to change the behavior of this other one. So he decided to controll this kind of event, beginning with his own behavior. He decided to wear  gray clothes without much colour on them and so being more difficult to be seen in a men crowd in the street. But he meditated more deeply on the subject.  He was acquainted   before with  a lot of philosophical texts on the realm of essence and appearence. He concluded that he is a visible target because he is at first a purpose-carying being. And before carying his purposes all the time with him, he was a person, by the simple fact of being aware of the surroundings. He was defined as a person by his awareness of the surroundings. And in this awareness, the most important  thing was the focus of his attention to some peculiar feature of his surroundings. If he wanted to be aware, to be conscious, to be awake, he had to focus on something. He could not escape of it.

To clarify his reasoning about these events, he decided that he could  manage to remain unobserved or at least heavely detectable if he could avoid to focus his attention to some object. No-focus means no-awareness, no-awareness means no-purpose, no-purpose means no-person, no-person can pass unobserved and consequently cannot be surveyed or followed up easily. But the final remained unsolved, one cannot be conscious without focusing on some object being it external or inner. To solve the problem  he had to avoid the focus but it seemed to be impossible. But the suffering of the previous months was vivid enough to the subject and not easy to forget and it could happen again any time and it was an urge to solve it, to come to an effective solution. So the subject did not want to come back, he had to solve the problem of the focus. But how not to focus, as exactly THIS focus defines you as a person. YOU were the focus. And the focus was accompanied by the focalizing of the eyes on some external object, or the sheer focus of the eyes, even  when an external object was not a purpose of an action and thought.

But how is the focus of the mind achieved. By an inner attitude of giving importance to the  object at which you are looking. You look at an object but in the same time you value it. The reverse of this is made clear when you meet a person and have a conversation. You may look at that person but with an absent look. That person will notice very soon your lack of interest. But what are you doing meanwhile, not being attentive to that person, you are again focusing to some inner thought.

So the subject decided to escape of the focus trap. He analysed and concluded that to                                                           focus to something means at first to give importance to that thing. You have always to give importance to something, you only change the object. And the subject analysed further.

You focus. You give importance to one thing. You give importance to ONE thing. You can focus only to one thing. To not focus means to pay attention to no one thing. Not to give attention to one thing. Not to give a special attention to one thing, not to bring importance to this one thing.

To make it more  clear, let us vision a room full of objects. Sitting in this room the attention will be automatically solicited by the objects from the room. Furniture,carpets,pictures, colours.You look at them, one after another, valueing them as your eyes are directed to them.  Some objects will sollicit more the attention, you will look more at a jewel than at a pencil. But let a person enter the room. Objects will vanish, now the person becomes the important thing. Let the the second person come in. Again one of them will become the most important thing for one moment,a.s.o.

But the subject wanted to go further, no back. So he decided that he had to train as not to focus and to be able to treat the surroundings giving the same importance to all objects around him without discriminating.This was his solution to avoid focus.This seemed to be a task very hard to achieve in full, but he exercised on it from time to time, when the rememberance of his recent sufferings told him that he had to be prepared to controll the events. In order to achieve it he develloped a technique of using the eyes in such a manner as not to focus purposefully at any object, and accompanied the eye technique by an inner attitude of treating any feature of the pattern he saw as equal in importance. Afterwards when he shared his experience with a friend, this one told him that a technique similar to that  one may be found in the romans of Carlos Castaneda, as being taught by Juan Matus, a  yaqui indian from Mexico, a traditional brujo, or sorceller.

To obtain better results he made another philosophical considerations.To be a person

,i.e. visible as such, he had to behave with a need of acquiring information, knowledge. He was doing it all the time. The information acquired  all the time, gave him the consistency and defined him as a person. Of course it was a very poor definition but he needed not complete theories then, he needed some theoretical device to help him to achieve  this very concrete desire, to pass unobserved when he wished so.To proceed further with the analysis he felt that if he acquired much information, having more interests he became somehow more and more a important and so, a more easily observable person.  He asked himself if the reverse was not possible, if  the momentary reduction of his interests, of his intellectual linking to the world would not produce the contrary, to diminish the person and diminishing it, to become in some way more heavily detectable for an outer observer.He trained and gradually achieved an attitude toward himself and the outer world so as, when he desired it, to reduce at most his interests, thoughts, but remaining aware and effective as usual, only with this protection device in function, as  suplementary to his ordinary attitudes. He added this to his training in passing unobserved.

There is another fact to be mentioned as making part of the topic presented.

The subject used every bit of information to achieve his goal as he had not a previous

experience and he would not know from before which way to go or which ingredient to

use for his purpose. So he observed the people during that training period , with his goal in mind and gathered all  the information  what it seemed to him that could be used in some way for his goal. So he copied  by imitation a face without expression  from a person accidentally met as he felt that it may be a step toward his desire. Also he met somebody which he would describe as a living agnostic, from which he copied a lot from the attitude here presented. : "Nothing is to be absolutely believed. Nothing is to be  taken for granted. To not believe something only because others believe it." From this he made his own steps as follows. To not believe in the world image as presented and agreed and practiced by other people.  Not meaning by this  to deny everything, but not thinking only by agreed standards. For every feature of the world there is no a unique and definite explanation and image, but alternate views may be taken into account. To live i.e. to make living a meaningfull experience is  to look for  this new views. To get them, means at first to be free to observe them. All these considerations was not very clear and definite at that time, but it made a background of his feelings and thoughts which gave him an inner freedom and a psychical background which permitted to happen what follows.

Another ideas of his own prior to the events were also  that insanity might be a heuristical path.  He discovered afterwards a way of thinking close to his own about this subject in "Zen or the art of motorcycle maintenance " by R..M. Pirsig, a Bantam edited book.. to Also the communication between humans at a distance without recurring to normal means was suggested to him in a prior period by a person which inspired him a high esteem then. .Also that period of his life was marked by a hard desire of being creative.

 All these were the preliminary facts for the events presented here down.   

After about three months in which a lot of training was done by the subject to achieve the states of mind which he considered to be needed to get a controll of himself, the next events happened.

One evening he accompanied  accidentally a girlfriend to an evening walk in a forest near the town, to see the sunset from a watchtower used by hunters. The sun set and disapeared under the horizon line  and now the scene became illuminated by the light of evening sky. They began to return home on the trails on which some joggers were doing their evening exercise. They felt the need of hiding from the others, the site  having the reputation of not being too safe, so they left the usual foot pass to enter in the virgin forest and were walking through the bushes and trees in a more faint light. He realised that they were yet somewhat visibles because of having some white stripes or patches on their clothes or on the their boots. In the bushes or in the grass there were a lot of invisibles tiny animals, litle frogs, worms or insects, felt only by the little sounds they were making, but not seen because they had camouflage colours on them and the light was too dim now. The forest ended and now the town was  close and to approach it, they had to stretch an open zone in the suburbs of an district of the town with a very bad reputation. As they paced  in this open zone he felt his wellknown feeling of anxiety invading him again and handicapating him. He had the experience of his trainings and now fresh in his mind the vivid example of the tiny creatures from the bushes who passed unobserved helped only a little by the faint light.

It was the first time when the anxiety came really and intensely back after a long time and he thought that he had to controll it this very moment by his own means. He thought that the presence of the girlfriend was good to witness and to test what  would be his new acquired potential of hiding from an observer. He asked the girl to go a litle aside at a short distance as to see him entirely and to look at him. No other comment was made on what would follow. He concentrated himself and applied the mental technique he has developped so as to be able to pass unobserved. The girl noticed that she could not see him any more. His face looked as it disappeared in a shade made by gray and dark points as on a tv screen with a blurred image. The image of his body disappeared too. He wore a training coat with some vertical white stripes on it.These stripes  became to move and multiplied and produced a large pattern and his body disappeared behind it .He thought at first that the remaining light of the  sunset and his position in this light could create an illusion and he asked the girl to change place with him as to eliminate this possibility. He concentrated again and he realised again the same vision of himself as it was told by the girl before. They entered in the town and after about half an hour he repeated the same performance now under the light of a street lamp.

He repeated the same exploit after several days on a desert spot in the town also after

sunset, now having two invited friends to assist. One of him reported after, that he experienced a special anxiety before  and during assisting and said that he wants not to be any more involved. The girl refused to continue the experiment at any other time.

The subject lost gradually interest to  further experiment  the domain as other more mundane priorities retained his attention and energy. He ascertain that in order to achieve it he needs a state of mind not easy to compose and not easy to attain without the external motive being present. If he feels secure he does not need this protection device, and this performance does not come. Though he used several times in a more mild manner, as described above.

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Case 8.1 VISION IMPAIRMENT

 

The subject was visiting a colleague in a hospital in the morning when visitors were not permitted and at the time when the medical staff examined the patients sitting in the beds. The subject decided that he will make the visit even so, at that inapropriate hour. He entered in the hospital building, and paced in the main corridor. All the doors were open, and all the patients were looking outside their rooms waiting the medical staff to come and to asses their problems. The room of his colleague was at the end of the corridor and his bed was in front of the door and he saw his colleague looking along the corridor to see the doctors coming. The subject decided that this time he wanted to pass unobserved as if he would encounter the medical staff, disturbing them by his presence, he would not be permitted any more to enter the building at unusual hours. So he moved along the corridor aplying his technique of stalking. He arrived at his colleagues bed and said hello. The friend asked  him where did he come from. Through the corridor, of course, was the answer. But, how, because the friend looked all the time at that corridor and the subject could not pass unobserved. ( Text is continued on the next page).

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