Remember, I have been playing with seeing the optic flow of the environment and with the motion parallax for a few days, even though the motion parallax is not yet automatic, and I have to remind myself to see it. Directly or indirectly, those two things seem to induce a sense of being "in" the environment. I first had this sensation on Friday after the Thursday when I have been playing with a ball. I was walking through a small park in the morning. The trees were going high above, their crowns interconnected, and I was inside this magical land that they created by merging their branches above my head. I was still seeing people, birds, grass, bushes, yet the trees shaped the whole view and the whole experiences.
Similarly, as I went to the tango event described in the previous post, I had a few times a feeling that I was "in" the room. This means that I was looking at different people, or couples, or furniture, yet I was still somehow aware of the room, and I could see the ceiling and the walls, and where inside those walls those people or couples were. I suspect that this is much closer to what Peter calls "panoramic vision" or "peripheral vision" than merely whatever is sensed by the rods outside the fovea. (I assume that those two concepts are the same or close enough.) Being in my flat mindset, I had assumed that increasing or widening the peripheral vision was simply about seeing another ring of visual information outside the circular area used at some given moment. However, since we see in three dimensions, and we would like to see things that we consider interesting, not just colored pixels, "another ring" is not particularly useful.
Seeing the room all the time or seeing the trees merging above seems to be related to the ways in which I am shifting the gaze and to focusing versus over-or under-focusing. When I am shifting my gaze from an object to another object, even if I am not doing it along the diagonal from a point to a point, like I had used to, I still have a tendency to first stop seeing or disconnect from the first object, then shift, then start seeing or reconnect. When I am shifting my gaze like that, it usually feels that the very process of shifting the gaze is more important than whatever it is that I am looking at.
I found that when I am able to look with this new panoramic vision that includes the whole room or the trees above, I am still able to do some kind of soft focus. This focus is probably still perceived by others as binocular focusing. However, the key is to keeping it soft. Once the focus becomes stronger, not so soft, then I have to disconnect from my vision in order to shift the gaze - or to soften the focus before shifting the gaze. However, it seems that when I change a soft focus to a stronger, harder focus, I become able to see the object under focus better than before. The amount of highlighting that is present every time the eyes focus on an object is larger when the focus is harder and smaller when the focus is softer. Also, I can sense some physical changes in the eyes when this quality of the focus changes. When I am looking with a soft focus, I see shades moving over the object, suggesting to pick this object and focus on it. As I focus harder, the eyes open wider and take in the object. If I shift my gaze from this state, I feel a little lost, probably because the room or, in general, the environment was outside the field of my attention.
When I was practicing shifting my soft focus from object to object without disconnecting from the environment, I realized, informed by the idea of the optic flow of the environment, that it should feel like the objects are moving in the direction, opposite to the direction of my eyes. So if I am shifting my eyes from an object on the left to an object on the right, it should feel that the object that was on the left moved further left, the object that was on the right moved into focus, and I guess, it could also feel that the gaze did not move at all, like when I was running and felt that I was running in one place, but everything else was moving. As I started thinking about it, I immediately realized that Bates was writing about this phenomenon, in the context of shifting the gaze from a letter to another letter: feel how the letters are moving in the direction opposite to the direction of the gaze.
Similarly, as I went to the tango event described in the previous post, I had a few times a feeling that I was "in" the room. This means that I was looking at different people, or couples, or furniture, yet I was still somehow aware of the room, and I could see the ceiling and the walls, and where inside those walls those people or couples were. I suspect that this is much closer to what Peter calls "panoramic vision" or "peripheral vision" than merely whatever is sensed by the rods outside the fovea. (I assume that those two concepts are the same or close enough.) Being in my flat mindset, I had assumed that increasing or widening the peripheral vision was simply about seeing another ring of visual information outside the circular area used at some given moment. However, since we see in three dimensions, and we would like to see things that we consider interesting, not just colored pixels, "another ring" is not particularly useful.
Seeing the room all the time or seeing the trees merging above seems to be related to the ways in which I am shifting the gaze and to focusing versus over-or under-focusing. When I am shifting my gaze from an object to another object, even if I am not doing it along the diagonal from a point to a point, like I had used to, I still have a tendency to first stop seeing or disconnect from the first object, then shift, then start seeing or reconnect. When I am shifting my gaze like that, it usually feels that the very process of shifting the gaze is more important than whatever it is that I am looking at.
I found that when I am able to look with this new panoramic vision that includes the whole room or the trees above, I am still able to do some kind of soft focus. This focus is probably still perceived by others as binocular focusing. However, the key is to keeping it soft. Once the focus becomes stronger, not so soft, then I have to disconnect from my vision in order to shift the gaze - or to soften the focus before shifting the gaze. However, it seems that when I change a soft focus to a stronger, harder focus, I become able to see the object under focus better than before. The amount of highlighting that is present every time the eyes focus on an object is larger when the focus is harder and smaller when the focus is softer. Also, I can sense some physical changes in the eyes when this quality of the focus changes. When I am looking with a soft focus, I see shades moving over the object, suggesting to pick this object and focus on it. As I focus harder, the eyes open wider and take in the object. If I shift my gaze from this state, I feel a little lost, probably because the room or, in general, the environment was outside the field of my attention.
When I was practicing shifting my soft focus from object to object without disconnecting from the environment, I realized, informed by the idea of the optic flow of the environment, that it should feel like the objects are moving in the direction, opposite to the direction of my eyes. So if I am shifting my eyes from an object on the left to an object on the right, it should feel that the object that was on the left moved further left, the object that was on the right moved into focus, and I guess, it could also feel that the gaze did not move at all, like when I was running and felt that I was running in one place, but everything else was moving. As I started thinking about it, I immediately realized that Bates was writing about this phenomenon, in the context of shifting the gaze from a letter to another letter: feel how the letters are moving in the direction opposite to the direction of the gaze.
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