E-Mail Us

Summer Quarter Essay — May 2005

Seeing, Vision and Spirit

What is the difference between Seeing and Vision?
Seeing involves the eyes; Vision involves the whole spirit of being alive.

Some years ago I purposefully spent three days as a blind man. It was part of a personal curriculum I had designed for myself to explore the nature of seeing. Before rising from bed on the appointed day, I tied a well-designed mask over my eyes. From that moment forward and with the help of a few friends, I carried on as many of my routines as I could---dressing myself, coping with unseen plates of food, moving around the house, taking terrifying walks, and hardest of all, learning to trust others to help me at those moments when I was totally disoriented.

I took off the mask on the evening of the third day, startled by the visual presence of a circle of friends all-eager to debrief me. I noticed that their questions carried the kind of awed reverence with which one might address an astronaut just back from the moon. And indeed, I felt like a kind of 'intronaut', overwhelmed by my sudden re-entry into the world of light, with much to ponder as well as with great relief to be safely 'back'.

So what did I learn? A few observations and examples.

1. My very resistance to even doing the experiment revealed how much I identify my very existence with my ability to see. How interesting, I thought, how we speak of the dark as 'the dark side', or as 'afraid of the dark', or as 'I was kept in the dark'.
2. Being blind slowed me down, big-time. At first there was relief in not having to respond to the constant flood of visual stimuli in daily life. Without eyes I realized how tyrannical the visual world can be--such as having to read, comment or process everything in sight just because it's there. At the same time, I experienced heightened sensitivity to other avenues of awareness, like touch, smell, or even a 'sense' of presence.
3. As I was having my first blind breakfast, I stopped eating when I was full, neither knowing nor caring if there was more on my plate. Dieters and sex addicts take note: A lot of 'seeing' may stimulate us in inappropriate ways.
4. For an artist/teacher who is trained to explore the visual world, my three blind days revealed to me that 'seeing' operates from a much deeper place than the activity of my eyes. I now refer to this deeper kind of seeing as vision.
5. While 'seeing' registers a presence, vision connects me with it. For example, sitting outside and sightless on my first morning, the warmth of the desert sun on my face felt as if what we call 'light' literally entered into me, and not only through my eyes but through my skin, in the form of heat. That insight is now in every drawing I make, because I now know that until I 'feel the heat' of what I see entering me physically, I'm not completely connected.
6. My eyes are but one step in the perception process. One afternoon there came a startling surprise when a hunk of something landed in my lap. A small flash of panic at an unidentified (i.e. non-visual) object quickly transformed itself into my cat Dudley who had arrived for his morning massage. But this time, as he surrendered to my touch, I 'saw' the nature of our relationship for the first time, a daily communion of trust that has informed my drawing of cats ever since.

And one more example: A friend approached me on the third day (I could tell who it was by now, by his footsteps) and said "here I have something for you; hold out your hands", and into them deposited a small something, the size of a small chamois coin purse, except it contained a tiny rapid heartbeat. In my darkness, for just a few moments, I had the pulse of the universe resting in my hand. I was swept away with tears by the miracle of life-that life IS, at every moment and in every speck of the universe. Only then did I recognize the tiny guest in my hand, and gave the lively little toad back to my friend.

Don't get me wrong, I was very relieved to take off my blindfold and return to the visual world. Indeed, for the next few days I would often find myself transfixed in wonder at the face of my wife, or the shadows changing on the desert mountains, and more than once I was filled with the privilege of 'seeing' a bowl of apples, glowing with light and color on our kitchen table.

Years later, I still often close my eyes in the middle of a drawing session, sometimes to connect myself with my subject, or to settle myself more deeply into my experience, or sometimes to recover myself in the middle of a session when my attention has wandered.

To connect with one's vision through drawing takes time and the cultivation of inner patience-time, because when you are working you are changing, and your subject is changing too; and inner patience is necessary to the practice of being attentive without forcing a result.

I consider a successful drawing not just a moment in a freeze frame of seeing, but one that reflects your relationship with your subject from the inner resources of your vision. Because when you are connected with your vision, you connect us all with our own.

©2005 Andrew Rush. May not be copied or reproduced in any form without permission