The Opportunity of Blindness

Depending on the person being questioned, blindness is considered an opportunity; an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to live, or an opportunity to be stronger. The varying strengths of the people who become blind decide how the person, and their mind, deal with the injury. Sabriye Tenberken is a blind woman that has traveled all over Tibet working with blind people and creating a Tibetan Braille. She gradually went blind at the age of 12 but has always had a special predilection for colors; different numbers and words trigger specific colors, these colors are organized into pies in her mind. Once blind, her synesthesia intensified. When she wants to recall what happened on a particular day, the color of the day will pop into her head then its location in the pie. This attribute helps her visualize landscapes and rooms. She used her gift to compensate for her blindness, while her blindness allowed her to improve her gift. Blindness is seen as an opportunity because it opens the mind, allowing it to investigate the other senses and further advance them.

Zoltan Torey was blinded in an accident when we was 21 years old. Instead of focusing on heightening his other senses, as Hull did, Torey tried to develop an “inner eye-his powers of visual imagery”.

“And it enabled him to think in ways that had not been available to him before […] to grasp by visual thought and simulation (complemented by all the data of neuroscience) the complexities of that ultimate system, the human brain mind” (A Neurologist’s Notebook, 3).

Torey took a different route in regard to his blindness. His strong desires to maintain a visual world made it able for him to do so. Torey used his potential to preserve his visual life. His blindness evolved so that he was able to multiple four-figure numbers in his head. In this case, blindness opened the mind to new functions. Torey was able to do math as on a blackboard, in his mind. The complexity and strength of his visual mind advanced due to his blindness. Torey’s mind opened up to so many different possibilities. He could do math and visualize childhood vacations. His visual mind strengthened because of his blindness. The human mind in all its complexity can re-grow and recover. Torey’s mind compensated for his loss of vision by improving his visual imagery. Though blindness is not ideal, the mind finds ways to surpass this obstacle to find better ways of living. The strength of the mind is astounding and with the right practices and precautions can compensate for impediments.

Blindness not only heightens a person’s awareness to his surroundings, it heightens the senses. At the age of 48, John Hull became completely blind. In Hull’s experience with blindness he lost his visual imagery and memory. At this point in his life he could no longer visualize what the number 3 looked like without tracing it in the air with his hand. Because of his loss of vision, and eventually