Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
THE FUNCTIONS OF VISION are both marvelous and wonderful. It is indeed remarkable that an organism should be so constructed as to be able to perceive the forms which exist in the external world. The eye is a small camera, more perfect than any that has ever been constructed by human hands. Upon the retinal film are implanted pictures of objects and landscapes which surround us, and the mind perceives them. Millions of people simply wonder that they see; even the scientists are unable to explain how it is that the mind takes cognizance of external things.
There is a great deal more about the science of optics than the modern world has ever dreamed of. Until men understand the processes of vision they cannot correctly interpret what they observe. It is a false interpretation of visual impressions that has given rise to fallacious conceptions concerning the form of the universe. Though art insists that the horizon of the sea is the vanishing line of lateral vision, the modern astronomers hold that it is the earth's offing—that is, a circle of the points where lines of radiating vision contact the water's convexity. We maintain that a scientific interpretation of a retinal picture of an extended water-scape, leads the mind invariably and inevitably to the conclusion that the water's surface is concave.
The Koreshan science of vision differs radically from the old school of optics and physics. The entrance of light through the pupil of the eye, and the formation of pictures upon the retina, constitute but one factor in the functions of visual perception. It is not enough for the retinal impressions to be conveyed to the brain. The brain must respond to these impressions in and through the generation of energies, and the radiation of these energies from the eye to the objects perceived; and there must return from the objects before us, the results of the tangible contact of the radiating visual substance and the objects themselves. This means simply that we see by sending out from the eye a finely attenuated nerve force, which takes hold of the objects and senses their forms, colors, and distances, as actually as in the processes of touch we sense the forms of objects through the nerves of the skin. Likewise we hear by an auditory energy radiating from the ear. Man is related to the external world through the ordinary senses.
There is a beautiful analogy existing between the eye of man and the eye of God. The divine Eye is he through whom the Almighty reaches the external world. Jesus was the eye of God. He was the eye of light; therefore he was the light. The world of darkness has a dark eye, an evil eye, and the whole body is full of darkness. An eye is an opening. The science of the functions of vision could not be termed optics unless the eye were an opening.
In the processes of vision there is attention. The word attention is derived from a Latin prefix ad, to, and teneo, to stretch; and related to teneo are tenius, which means thin; ten sum, which means stretched or rigid; and even tenet, an opinion. Visual substance radiates from the frontal focus of vision, but there is an axis of attention, a projected line of greatest visual tension. It is where such a line or axis contacts objects before us that we see most clearly. We can even fix our attention upon the most minute objects. We maintain that in giving attention to things we see, we actually fulfil all the conditions which the word attention implies—that is, a stretching forward to the object of the substances of vision.
When the Almighty paid attention to the world 1900 years ago, he sent out from his great Eye the substances of the divine perception. He radiated the Holy Spirit from that Eye, and there has been a central line of attention, a central line of transmission of the divine life through the Christian dispensation. The eye of the physical cosmos is the projected sun, and that eye radiates the substances of cosmic vision into the great hollow world. It radiates sunshine, and the direction of the greatest activity or attention of that eye is vertical. We perceive objects in the light of the solar orb; and we perceive truth in the light of the projected Sun of divine Being. The analogy and correspondence existing between the human eye and the eye of God, and the eye of the physical cosmos, are complete; they are striking and satisfactory to the student of Koreshan Science.
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The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the periodical's argument and reported observations without presenting its conclusions as independently established results. The claims remain attributed to The Flaming Sword.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 20, No. 11 · 21 Aug 1906 · PDF p. 10