Join author David Cook, who for forty years has taught patients to experience the dimensions of space. Dr. Cook’s lectures have delighted audiences around the globe. Now he shares his expertise with doctors, therapists, and anyone who has a curiosity about how we see the world.
Vision is not something that happens to us, Cook explains, but rather something we have learned to do. We see what we value. Routine eye exams value how little we can see; this book values how big we can see, the heights of perception rather than just the bottom of the eye chart.
We imagine that those standing beside us share our view of the world. Learn how nothing could be further from the truth. How we do vision is the difference between excelling in the flat, close world of books or navigating the depths of winding, crowded roads in the dark of night.
Having read this book, doctor and patient alike will see the world in a new way, a way that truly captures the shape of the sky.
Annotated Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 1
An introduction to the author, eye games, seeing stories, the
importance of seeing nothing, and the shape of the sky.
Chapter 1: The Truths of Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Discovering depth in a flat world. The difference between seeing little (sight) and
seeing big (vision). Distinguishing the big and little varieties of depth perception.
Chapter 2: Seeing Little . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
How little can we see? Eye games demonstrating how the eyechart―
invented at the time of the United States Civil War―still blinds
doctors and patients alike to the potential of vision.
Chapter 3: Doing Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Experience how vision is something we do, a continuum between
exploration and expectation fueled by value and based on agreements
between eye, brain, body, action, word, and world.
Chapter 4: Are Two Eyes Better than One? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Two-eyed depth perception. See how the eyes combine two different perspectives
to create the delight of negative space and a more solid world in three dimensions.
Chapter 5: Time and Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
An introduction to the zone of simultaneous awareness. Learn how seeing a
world with things in it is more than the sum of seeing things in the world.
Chapter 6: Big Stereo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Eye games using 3D glasses and illusions to teach us to control the volume
of depth perceived and prepare us for seeing the shape of the sky.
Chapter 7: The Shape of the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 83
Eye games allowing us to discover the joy of seeing the volume of the shape of the sky.
Chapter 8: Doing Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Mind, spirit, consciousness, and free will―all explored through
eye games. A final seeing story viewing both the visual and human
processes as value’s caress of space cushioned by light.
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100