Our Mysterious Visual Ray

 A collection of articles and book extracts on a mysterious ability  of our eyes which may be the key to understanding the nature of sight  and provide keys to our higher abilities. 

Compiled and edited by Thomas Joseph Brown 

The first comprehensive theory of vision was the “emission theory”  which was propounded by the wealthy Sicilian-Greek scholar Empedocles, a  philosopher, physician and poet born circa 494BC. Empedocles is also  considered the originator of the Four Element theory, though one may  suspect that this idea had its origins in far distant antiquity. 

Empedocles believed he was divinely inspired to reveal the properties  of light and nature. He thought that we see because light streams out  of our eyes and touches that which we see, like a lighthouse where gaze  brings things into view. Objects give off effluences and our eyes give  off effluences, it is the interaction of these which causes vision. 

Euclid, Ptolemy, and other ancient Greek scientists believed in this  emission theory. In contrast Aristotle and Galen were both early  propagators of the “intromission theory”, that vision is caused solely  by an effluence leaving objects and entering the eyes. However, the  emission theory was the fundamental basis for Greek philosophers &  scientists such as Euclid who used Empedocles theory to reveal what is  considered one of the most astounding breakthroughs in the understanding  of light. 

Euclid understood that the ray traveling from the eye to a distant  object must follow a straight line. Therefore the properties of light  and vision could be explained and predicted through the geometry of  straight lines and triangles. This transformed navigation which could  then be based on the position of the sun and stars, and was fundamental  to the expansion of Greek culture. 

Greek science was transmitted to the West through scholars of Islam  such as Ibn al-Haitham Al Hazan, born (c. 965-1038), referred to as  Alhazan. Alhazan was one of the great pioneers of optical science and  made significant discoveries on light and vision. In an earlier phase of  his life he made his living copying and selling Euclid’s works on  geometry. He is credited with building the first camera obscura amongst  his many advances. 

Alhazan appeared to resolve the argument between the emission and  intromission theories by claiming that vision was the result of  illuminated rays reaching the eye. He reasoned that since the moon and  stars are so far away, it is impossible for a ray from the eye to reach  them to illuminate them. He further reasoned that due to the pain of  intense sunlight striking an eye that has been adjusted to the dark the  sunlight must be entering the eye, as the eye could not cause itself  such pain. He postulated that light rays emanated in straight lines, in a  spherical direction, from every point of a luminous object. And light  reflecting off objects and entering the eye caused vision. His work made  the modern science of optics possible, through his refining of the  theories of reflection and refraction, based on definite mathematical  laws. 

And so the emission theory of vision caused by rays leaving the eyes  left the general considerations of the developing science of the West,  which in a large part was based on Islamic works. However, Empedocles  theory is not lost, as one may experience this ray leaving the eye for  themselves. There was real scientific research on this in the early  1900s. 

My first introduction to the visual ray was through Trevor James  Constable’s Cosmic Pulse of Life in the mid 1980’s. Trevor Constable,  amongst his many accomplishments www.rainengineering.com  was until retirement the Chief Radio Officer for Matson Lines plying  his trade on their flagship the SS Maui. Not long after reading Cosmic  Pulse I spoke with several people in the Merchant Marine who told me  about Trevor’s legendary ability to see other ships over the horizon,  before they came into radar range. 

While my eyes have never been perfect, with experimentation I was  able to familiarize myself with the visual ray. I would stand on a hill  overlooking the ocean and run my eyes along the horizon back and forth.  After a while I could start seeing ships way out to sea, definitely  beyond my normal visual abilities, and as my ray ran over them my  sinuses would tingle and cause me to sneeze, just as one sometimes does  when sunlight strikes the eye. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself! 

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FINDS A NEW FORCE IN THE HUMAN EYE

English Scientist Demonstrates Invention Which Registers the Power in a Glance. 

DISTINCT FROM OCCULTISM 

Dr. Charles Russ Tells Oxford Congress Optical Influence Is Akin to Heat and Light. 

Copyright, 1921, by The New York Times Company. 

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. LONDON. July 8.—A new physiological force has been discovered after  three years of patient research by Dr. Charles Russ M.B., M.R.C.S.,  L.R.C.P., who has invented an instrument which shows that there lies in  the human eye certain definite power which is quite distinct from the  supposititious influences of will power or occultism. This was the  announcement made today at a meeting of the Oxford, Ophthalmological  Congress. 

All literature regarding eyes in a fine frenzy, rolling or darting  glances of compelling love, or quelling by a look the blood-thirsty  villain or the savage beast, will now have to undergo scientific  revision. 

Poetry and romance have been full of the power of the eye. That there  is a scientific basis for belief in that power has now been proved  indisputably, according to the report made to the Ophthalmological  Congress and supported by an actual demonstration. 

Dr. Russ, who is an electrician as well as medical man, has given all  his spare time during the last three years to experimenting on the  theory that the human eye gave forth some ray or radiation which was a  distinct influence, something different from anything hitherto observed  by physiologists, a force that might possibly have some analogy to light  or heat. 

Powerful Eyes in History

Dr. Russ often wondered, to quote his own words, “if it were not true  that some force or ray or invisible searchlight were not pouring out  from the eye some force which might account for those delightful  sensations of the Romeo and Juliet type of vision or, on the other hand,  for the sinister power that the glances of Nero or Napoleon must have  conveyed.” 

His various experiments culminated in the idea of a brass cylinder in  which he hung a delicate spiral of fine copper wire. This solenoid was  wound upon a cylinder of celluloid and was suspended by a fiber of  unspun silk contained within a long glass tube. A small magnet held the  solenoid in position, and the apparatus was electrically earthed by a  connective wire. 

Dr. Russ observed that if he gazed steadily through the window slot  at one end of the suspended body it would start into motion away from  his observing eye. When he looked at the true centre it stopped, and if  he gazed at the opposite end. it moved in the reverse direction. 

Denies Any Occultism

Dr. Russ deprecates any suggestion that these results are connected with  any so-called function of telepathy. No scientific instrument exists  which can record telepathic influence, or, in other words, the passage  of a thought ray, and even in regard, to hypnotism, which is a  recognized medical fact, there is no instrument capable of indicating  the hypnotic state either in the operator or in the subject. 

By the instrument which he had invented Dr. Russ claims that the  influence exerted by the human eye can be and is actually registered. To  put it in another way. Dr. Russ asserts that when one person looks at  another there is an actual transmission of power. This power, or force,  or influence, is susceptible of measurement by his apparatus. 

Various methods have been employed by Dr. Russ and other scientists  to test the apparatus and eliminate the possibility of the movements in  the solenoid being due to heat or the vibration of air currents, or any  other accidental condition. 

Dr. Russ’s discovery is still in its embryonic stage. Its application  has as yet hardly been considered, but just as the telephone and the  gramophone developed out of the knowledge that sound caused the  vibration of matter, so it is contended it is possible that science may  find the means of putting to practical usage this hitherto unknown force  that resides in the eye. 

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Mysterious Rays from Human Eye Move Solenoid

Dr.  Russ’ apparatus consists of a double glass jar containing a solenoid  that is free to turn when the vision is directed through the slit. 

Popular Science January, 1922 

WILL science soon reveal the nature of a mysterious power of the human eye more amazing than sight itself? 

Probably every one has experienced an almost intolerable sensation under the prolonged stare of another person’s eyes. If one person looks into another person’s eyes, one of them must at last avert his gaze. 

Dr. Charles Russ, an eminent British bacteriologist, has constructed a  device which he believes conclusively proves that the human eye  possesses an invisible energy, powerful enough to move objects. 

A delicate solenoid of fine copper wire wound on a celluloid cylinder  is sus­pended from an unspun silk fiber fourteen inches long. The upper  end of the silk is attached to a cork placed in the end of a long glass  tube and the lower end is fastened in a metal yoke near a small  electromagnet. The object is to bring the solenoid to rest after it has  been set in motion. 

The entire system is enclosed in a double glass jar, covered with  metal leaf. The space between the jars is filled with water or paraffin  lest the bodily heat of the experimenter should influence the result. 

On each side of the vessel the metal coating is scraped from one  small spot. These openings are faced by insulated metal plates connected  with a Leyden jar, which places an electrical potential across the air  space inside the double vessel. Another opening is made for the eye. If  the experimenter looks at one end of the solenoid as soon as the plates  are charged, it will turn away from him, says Dr. Russ. If he looks at  the other end, that end will move away. No motion results if the eyes  rest on the center. To enable the observer to more easily watch the  effect, a pointer hung from the solenoid moves over a dial graduated in  degrees. 

Dr. Russ believes there is a ray of force propelled from the eye in  the act of vision, which produces a tiny electric charge on the swinging  solenoid. Of the nature of this energy he is not certain, although,  since no effect is ob­tained in the dark, he thinks that the “emanation”  is a refraction or a concen­tration of some unknown ray in light. 

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Activating Your Visual Ray

Excerpts from  Probing the New Reality, Chapter 4 of  The Cosmic Pulse of Life by Trevor James Constable

In Rudolf Steiner’s writings, the role of the ether body in all the  processes of perception is described. Departure of a ray of energy from  the human eye is an integral part of the process of vision. In Man or Matter,  Dr. Ernst Lehrs calls this eye beam the “visual ray”. This term is  appropriate because the visual ray acts similarly to a radar beam, going  out into space from the human being and extending consciousness out  into space. Each eye emits energy, but one eye is the “master eye” and  controls and dominates the whole process. Through the visual ray, the  living energy in you makes contact with external objects, reaching out  and grasping those objects, as if were. 

The visual ray has a direct connection to consciousness. The visual  ray is also under the direction, in a mechanical sense, of the exquisite  human ocular apparatus. Brief reflection reveals why old conceptions of vision are no longer adequate. 

Standard notions of human vision are mechanistic, and in their  descriptions of the anatomy and physiology of the eye, perfectly valid  as far as they go. Decades of dedicated investigation were necessary to  assemble these mechanistic interpretations of vision, but in a fashion  typical of such notions they fail at a crucial point. The unsolved  enigma is: how do the pictures get into consciousness? A dead man may  have had 20-20 vision on his deathbed, but sees nothing after the  cessation of his heartbeat. His visual ray has withdrawn. His fingertips  no longer emit rays. He no longer has an etheric double. 

Seeing for the living human is a function of his etheric forces. The  mechanical conception of sight is not sufficient, now that we know about  this radiation. We are forced, by what we have observed and experienced  of this energy surrounding and leaving the person, to entertain the  conception of the visual ray. We do this now in highly practical  fashion. 

Lie quietly in a darkened room, and allow yourself to be come  accustomed to the environment. Shut off all radio, TV and distracting  sounds from any source. Remember that you are trying to bring into  function and into your own awareness, faculties and endowments of your  organism that have been beaten down by the daily assault of civilized  living. You have also been brainwashed by mechanistic thought that such  things do not exist. Give the grander realities a chance to live in you  and to show you their wonders. 

Hold your hands up in front of you in the dark, palms facing you.  Remember that the visual ray is a subtle beam of energy that leaves your  eyes like a radar beam. Attempt now to feel your own visual ray. Swing  your eyes back and forth across the spot in the dark where your hands  are. Do it slowly, carefully, persistently. Extend your touch out  through the visual ray. Unless you are an especially insensitive  individual, or one determined not to succeed, you will, after a time,  feel the gentle passage of the visual ray across your hands. You will  find its gossamer subtlety a new experience in feeling. 

Persist and your sensitivity will improve. Focus all your faculties  of touch into the visual ray and send it out into the darkened room to  feel all kinds of protuberances. If there is a Venetian shade in the  room, run the visual ray up and down over the slats. Once you have  developed a little sensitivity, the effect is akin to running the teeth  of a comb over your fingertips, but immeasurably more subtle. 

Paper forms directly responsive to the visual ray, complete with  cutouts for immediate assembly, are contained in John P. Boyle’s The Psionic Generator Pattern Book. Published  by Prentice hall, of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey U.S.A., this document  will significantly assist private researchers in this field. You may demonstrate the presence and the power of your  visual ray to yourself in the meteorological realm. This direct proving  is overwhelming. Once again, you do your proving by participating. 

You  may dissipate clouds with your visual ray by following a simple  procedure. Do not attempt short cuts, variants or modifications until  you have performed exactly in accordance with these requirements:  

1. Choose a day when you have numbers of small, discrete clouds that are approximately the same size.
2. Select one cloud to be dissipated. Have a friend take a Polaroid  photograph of the scene, and mark your selected cloud before you begin  dissipating it.
3. Resolve inwardly that you are going to dissipate that cloud, drawing the energy down your visual ray into yourself.
4. Concentrate on the cloud and slice your visual ray back and forth  across it. Then bore into it. Then slic back and forth. Then bore some  more.
5. Within five minutes the cloud will have begun to disperse after  clearly having lost cohesion Surrounding clouds of comparable size to  the selected cloud remain essentially unchanged. A friend with a  Polaroid will objectify it all for you.
6. Concentration upon fragmenting portions of the cloud will secure their final dispersal.

Arguments and intellectualizing about this procedure are no substitutes for participation. Go out and do it,  and leave the mechanistic skeptics to verbalize themselves to death.  The proof and the changed cognition that comes with it will belong to  you thereafter, and no one can ever take these things from you. 

The most important thing to bear in mind when attempting this for the first time is that there is always a delay between the application of the bioenergetic stimulus of the visual ray  and the manifestation of gross physical efforts, i.e., the visible  dissolution of the cloud. Allow for this inherent bioenergetic delay.  You are no longer dealing with mechanical things in a mechanical  fashion. You are entering the realm of the living. 

You will find that your whole ocular apparatus becomes strongly  stimulated by visual ray cloudbusting. This stimulation is due to the  orgone energy that binds the moisture in the cloud being drawn down your  visual ray into your organism in accordance with the Law of Orgonotic  Potential. Suffice it to say for now that orgone energy is negatively  entropic and sweeps away the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a universal  law. All you need to know right now is that if you are aware of your  visual ray and use it as described, you can produce tremendous physical effects at a distance. 

With the unaided human organism, one may not bust clouds  indefinitely. Once the organism is charged bioenergetically to capacity,  it cannot absorb more orgone energy from the clouds without discharge  of that energy, either into water or through the sex organs.  Cloudbusting is repeatable within these limits, with the visual ray. 

Construction of a multilayered orgone accumulator will enable you to  further verify the presence of the orgone energy to yourself. When you  stare at the outside of the accumulator from the other side of  the room, you will find your eyes will start to sting gently as the  energy travels back down your eye beam and fuses with the fluid on your  eyeball. There is no commercial or battery power connected with such an  accumulator. Here again, to participate is to know. 

Another convincing proof of the visual ray, as a bioenergetic  emanation from the human being, is to observe carefully your reactions  and sensations when you see an image in a fun house distorting mirror,  or look at the world through glass that has been physically bent at a  sharp angle. Wrap around windshields on 1955-58 vintage cars provide  such surfaces. A sharp sensation of strain communicates itself to the organism as a result of the bending of the visual ray. 

This inner sensation of discomfort, and sometimes of pain, has  nothing whatever to do with viewing a distorted image as such. Study a  photograph of an image from a distorted mirror. This does not produce  the sensation of inner discomfort that arises from being present  physically, and therefore involved bioenergetically, in the actual  distortion process. Careful self-observation is an important part of  this new kind of work. 

That reality lies in your own orgone energy field, and with new,  basic understanding of human vision an active dynamic understanding that  supplements and vitalizes the purely passive, mechanical concepts of  human sight that are now current. The mechanist always likens the human  eye to a fine camera, and he is right. To this we now add that from what  we have experienced, we know that the eye with its visual ray also closely resembles a radar set. That is how we intend to use our eyes empirically. 

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Seeing in the Dark!

While discussing these concepts with a friend as I was compiling  this, he commented that when younger & into geology and caves, he  once came upon the entrance to a new cavern chamber while exploring. He  had to jump across a stream and didn’t see an overhand before jumping.  He seriously banged himself right in the center of his forehead breaking  the skin, in the so-called “third eye” area where he still has a small  scar, and lost his light which went out in the water. Coming up out of  the water and looking into the new area, for about 15-20 seconds before  his friends caught up to him to get him out for first aid, he could see  the entire cavern network in front of him in the dark. He went back in  with a light at a later date after recovering and was amazed that it was  all as he had seen it before in the dark. 

This amazing experience indicates the very real possibility that we  have inherent within us the presently undeveloped ability to see in the  dark… I would like to think that there must be some easier way to  activate it. Perhaps experimenting with the visual ray is a good place  to start. 

As this information is presented as the basis for further research in  this area I look forward to comments, experiences and further  information on this subject. 

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Update: 

New confirming research by Colin Andrew Ross M.D. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Psychiatrists-Research-Finds-iw-2733973438.html?x=0&.v=1 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123310535/PDFSTART 

Copyright 2010 Thomas Joseph Brown / from my site http://thomasbrown.org/mysterious-visual-ray/