In Western culture, the phenomenon of vitreous floaters (or muscae volitantes) is primarily understood in line with modern ophthalmology as “vitreous opacities”. The review of visual arts from former and non-Western cultures representing mythical and spiritual ideas, however, discloses abstract symbols that resemble the typical structures of eye floaters. This suggests that floaters have been widely interpreted as a mythical or spiritual phenomenon; and that there might be a perceptual dimension of floaters that modern ophthalmology fails to see. This article provides a trip to the visual worlds of Pharaonic Egypt and suggests that vitreous floaters have found their way into the art and imagination of this ancient civilization. Please login with user name and password:
A reader’s advice to get rid of floaters – love them!
Titel des Blog: „Love Eye Floaters“.
Enck not only
refers to existing theories and interpretations – some
of them drawn from my own book and website –, he also
provides new surprising and challenging examples and reflection to explain
characteristics of floaters, physiologically as well as culturally and
spiritually. However, beyond linking floaters to New Age theories and
non-Western cultural and religious traditions and philosophies, his
understanding of the nature and meaning of floaters seems rather materialistic
and conservative so far: He mainly addresses the people who experience
their floaters as disturbing opacities and try to get rid of them; he
adopts the ophthalmological explanation of floaters; and finally, he
proposes the well-known psychological approach to cope with floaters
by locating the problem of floaters (not the floaters themselves) into
the observer’s mind. I do agree with Enck that to love eye floaters
solves the problem of feeling disturbed by them. I agree that trying
to feel love for whatever disturbs us may be part of our consciousness
development and, by all means, preferable to surgery. But whether floaters
really fade or, quite the contrary, get more luminous and brighter in
the process, is a question to be answered only individually –
in my experience, they light up. To me, the real work with eye floaters
is about deeper insights and consciousness development; it starts as
soon as we accepted – or even love – our eye floaters. It
seems, Enck points into that direction just to make it easier to “love”
and, therefore, become able to ignore floaters. Besides, if it’s
really possible to ignore what you actually love is another question
mark to me. Anyway, I’m curious to follow Enck’s further
thoughts and insights …
Eye floaters and their meaning were interpreted differently depending on the time, culture and personality of the observer. We learn a spiritually meaningful perspective about floaters from Nestor, the seer, with whom I have studied and whose teachings I recorded in the book „Mouches volantes – Eye Floaters as Shining Structure of Consciousness“. In this category, a particular statement from the book on floaters shall be presented and explained.
From: Mouches Volantes – Eye Floaters. The Shining Structure of Consciousness, p. 219. (source)
The idea of the “path in the basic structure” is a central element in the teaching of Nestor. The seers use it to address the long-term changes that we possibly find in our floaters. According to this teaching, we are all oriented towards a particular sphere which we don’t recognize from the beginning. This sphere, also called the “source”, is thought to contain pure consciousness and to be the passage into another state of being. The energetic consequences of our actions decide whether we approach this sphere or dissociate from it: Binding or taking energy from the picture keeps us at a distance to our source sphere; releasing pure ecstatic energy into the picture brings us closer. Nestor asserts that the effects may be directly seen: a forward movement is realized when the dots and strings become bigger or “get closer”. Nestor’s teaching compares to the reports of people with near death experiences. These often include a movement toward a bright shining sphere before experiencing more complex and figurative scenes. In my opinion, these “extreme situations” confirm the knowledge of the seers: the visually perceptible forward movements of the consciousness are experienced in ecstatic situations, i.e. states of consciousness which include – like in dying – the release of a lot of psychophysiological energy directly and freely from the body. If consciousness can be maintained in that situation, it is not a process of “dying”, but “crossing over”. As anticipated by the seers, this crossing over is the culmination of the “path in the basic structure”.
Literature:
The
category "Quarterly Picture" introduces realistic, artistic
and/or spiritual/religious representations from different cultures
and times which could show entoptic phenomena, or be inspired by it. Since
the earliest days of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt civilization
(from 2800 BC), the sun was due to its life-giving warmth
and its regular cycle understood as the manifestation of a deity,
the god Ra (or Re). Represented in form of a concentric circular
disk or sun disk called “Aten”, the sun was mostly depicted
in combination with gods in human or animal form and other sacred
symbols. Under the rule of Amenhotep IV (a.k.a. Akhenaten or Echnaton,
14th century BC), the solar disk became, for a short time, the only
approved deity of Egypt. It was regarded as the essence of the forces
of all the gods, as well as the luminous source of all being with
which man can become one.
The Egyptian sun’s visual characteristics, as well as its mythic significance, raise the question whether the sun depictions were actually inspired by the visual perception of the sun, or whether there are other possibilities. If we consider the sign not as stylized and simplified form, but as realistic depiction of something actually seen, then the vitreous floaters could be the source of that perception. Like the sun, they are often seen at the sky and radiate a brilliant light. Besides the concentric circles, there are other characteristics in ancient Egyptian’s depiction of the “sun” that rather resembles floaters than the sun: The contrast between the surround disk and the core disk is often made clearly distinct by using different colors or patterns; and the proportions of the surround and the core are different in each case, as shown above – this corresponds to the two types of floaters and their different states of concentration (Lead article “In-depth observations on eye floaters” in Holistic Vision 2/11). Last but
not least: The Story of the Egyptian sun is a Christmas story
as well. Historically, quite a lot of ancient Egyptian mythology
and art was adopted by the Greeks and Romans that occupied Egypt from
4th century BC to 4th century AD. Via these civilizations, the symbolism
of the sun eventually found its way to Christianity: God and Jesus
have been associated with metaphors of light inspired by the Egyptian
cult of the sun. In the religious visual arts of late antiquity and
medieval Europe, many depictions of the divine – like God as
concentric circle (Holistic
Vision 4/09), or the halo of saints – resemble
the Egyptian sun disk. You will find this and other pictures in the gallery. Do you have drawings of eye floaters or other entoptic phenomena (flying corpuscles, afterimages etc.)? Do you know of realistic, artistic and religious representations of such appearances? Then send me the picture or give me the tip; I would like to publish it in the newsletter and/or in the gallery.
Publications by Floco Tausin You’ll
find a complete list with all previous publications in German
and English (monographs, anthologies, magazines) at Website. Vitreous
opacity vs. nervous system - Do eye floaters arise from the visual
nervous system? Published:
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