“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Last week I received from our current optometrist (whom I’ll call John Smith) his standard notice that two years have passed since my glasses were changed. I told myself to ignore it, yet began to feel a sense of strain whether or not I wore the glasses. I thought the power of suggestion was operating. Because of a cancellation I got a quick appointment to see John this afternoon—and received a very pleasant surprise, for his examination revealed that my vision has improved since the last prescription. The glasses I now have are getting to be too strong. Out of habit, I’d thought the opposite was the case. John too was surprised; he double-checked his figures to make sure he was right before ordering the weaker lenses. Once John had assembled his pheropter, or lens unit, the test lenses making up the new prescription, my vision checked out at 20/15—better than the so-called normal 20/20. That score is a considerable improvement over anything I’d ever achieved before, with or without glasses.

1. In a simplified account: When I was a youngster my mother took me to see our family optometrist. My parents had known him for years. With the best of intentions, that kindly gentleman put bifocals on me. They weren’t very strong—but once the habit was set I wore glasses without protest for the next 40 years or so. It wasn’t until Jane began coming through with the ideas embodied in the Seth material that I began to question my “need” for glasses. Without being concerned about what I was doing, I began to stop wearing them constantly. The glasses got in the way when I wrote and painted. I had to wear them when driving, though, because my driver’s licence bore an “x” opposite “corrective lenses.” Other than that, I usually put them on only when I felt tired. At the same time, I avoided giving myself the negative suggestion that my eyes still weren’t perfect, even with my improving beliefs.

(A note added later: On my last New York State Visual Acuity Report, which he filled out in May 1983, John Smith wrote that I passed the test for driving without wearing glasses [combined Snellen test score 20/30]. However, when the postman delivered my new driver’s license—good for four years—that “x” was still there opposite “corrective lenses.” I haven’t yet taken the time to straighten out that bureaucratic tangle.)

[...] He’d stopped by on his way home to give me my old lenses, since he’d forgotten to do so at his office four days ago, when I’d had them replaced in my favorite old frames by the new, weaker lenses. [...]

[...] Moreover, when the new lenses were assembled in his machine for me to check my vision, I was able to read 15-20 [or 20-15?], another improvement over the normal 20-20.

[...] They are themselves part of the camouflage, but they are like lenses over your natural inner perceptions that force you to “see” an available field of activity as physical matter; and so they can be relied upon only to tell you what is happening in a superficial manner. [...]

[...] A stout man who either wears glasses, or has worn them, with pale eyes; or the lenses of his glasses are extremely pale. [...]

[...] Contact lenses impede that responsiveness, to a greater extent than glasses. [...]

Now some of you who read this book will immediately and intuitively grasp what I am saying, for you will have already suspected that you are viewing experience through highly distorted, though colorful, figurative lenses. [...]

[...] Inner invisible relationships are allowed to rise, the acknowledged recognized reality viewed through the lenses of these emerging relationships. [...]

[...] Instead he measured her for new reading glasses, and these alone evoked an enthusiastic response from Jane, since she could see to read much better with the test lenses. [...]

Adams mentioned that actually Ruburt’s eyes responded rather quickly to the various lenses. [...]