HOW THE NORMAL EYE BEHAVES: SHIFTING

The normal eye shifts seventy times a second or faster. It is estimated that Lord Mac an lay's eyes

shifted 10,000 times a second because he could read, proofread and remember 500 words per

second. That means he could read every word at that speed as he turned the pages of a book.

One of my pupils challenged this statement, but on second thought, he remembered that his

friend, a prominent government figure, could do the same thing. Another man recalled that in his

class at school there had been a little girl who memorized a twelve verse poem so fast that the

teacher accused her of having known it before. This the child denied and, as proof, memorized it

backwards in a very few moments.

These phenomenal achievements were due to streamlining the vision, letting the eyes shift

unhindered at their maximum speed. The so-called shift is not a wiggling of the eyeballs but a

vibration of the retinal nerves deep within the eye, particularly the center of sight and its keenest

group of nerves, the fovea. These nerves cannot be vibrated consciously. They vibrate themselves

if and when relaxed. So learn to keep your eyes relaxed while they rest and while they work.

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