Chapter Seven ~ LEARN TO SEE ~ Pilot No. 7


 

When he was born, George W. Campbell was blind.

"Bilateral congenital cataracts," the doctor called it.

George's father looked at the doctor, not wanting to believe. "Isn't there anything you can do? Wouldn't an operation help?"

"No," said the doctor. "As of now, we know of no way to treat this condition."

George Campbell couldn't see, but the love and faith of his parents made his life rich. As a very young boy, he did not know that he was missing anything.
And then, when George was six years old, something happened which he wasn't able to understand. One afternoon he was playing with another youngster. The other boy, forgetting that George was blind, tossed a ball to him. "Look out! It'll hit you!"

The ball did hit George and nothing in his life was quite the same after that. George was not hurt, but he was greatly puzzled. Later he asked his mother: "How could Bill know what's going to happen to me before I know it?"

His mother sighed, for now the moment she dreaded had arrived. Now it was necessary for her to tell her son for the first time: "You are blind." And here is how she did it:

"Sit down, George," she said softly as she reached over and took one of his hands. "I may not be able to describe it to you, and you may not be able to understand, but let me try to explain it this way." And sympathetically she took one of his little hands in hers and started counting the fingers.

"One-two-three-four-five. These fingers are similar to what is known as five senses." She touched each finger between her thumb and index finger in sequence as she continued the explanation.

"This little finger for hearing; this little finger for touch; this little finger for smell; this one for taste," and then she hesitated before continuing: "this little finger for sight. And each of the five senses, like each of the five fingers, sends messages to your brain."
 

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Then she closed the little finger which she had named "sight" and tied it so that it would stay next to the palm of George's hand.

"George, you are different from other boys," she explained, "because you have the use of only four senses, like four fingers: one, hearing two, touch three, smell and four, taste. But you don't have the use of your sense of sight. Now I want to show you something. Stand up," she said gently.

George stood up. His mother picked up his ball. "Now hold out your hand as if you were going to catch this," she said.

George held out his hands, and in a moment he felt the hard ball hit his fingers. He closed them tightly around it and caught it.

"Fine. Fine," said his mother. "I never want you to forget what you have just done. You can catch a ball with four fingers instead of five, George. You can also catch and hold a full and happy life with four senses instead of five if you get in there and keep trying." Now George's mother had used a metaphor, and such a simple figure of speech is one of the quickest and most effective methods of communicating ideas between persons.

George never forgot the symbol of "four fingers instead of five." It meant to him the symbol of hope. And whenever he became discouraged because of his handicap, he used the symbol as a self-motivator. It became a form of self-suggestion to him. For he would repeat "four fingers instead of five" frequently. At times of need it would flash from his subconscious to his conscious mind.

And he found that his mother was right. He was able to catch a full life, and hold it with the use of the four senses which he did have.

But George Campbell's story doesn't end here.

In the middle of his junior year at high school the boy became ill, and it was necessary for him to go to the hospital. While George was convalescing, his father brought him information from which he learned that science had developed a cure for congenital cataracts. Of course, there was a chance of failure but the chances for success far outweighed those for failure.

George wanted so much to see that he was willing to risk failure in order to see.
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During the next six months four delicate surgical operations were performed two on each eye. For days George lay in the darkened hospital room with bandages over his eyes.
And finally the day came for the bandages to be removed. Slowly

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carefully, the doctor unwound the gauze from around George's head and over his eyes. There was only a blur of light.

George Campbell was still technically blind!

For one awful moment he lay thinking. And then he heard the doctor moving beside his bed. Something was being placed over his eyes.

"Now, can you see?" came the doctor's question.

George raised his head slightly from the pillow. The blur of light became color, the color a form, a figure.

"George!" a voice said. He recognized the voice. It was his mother's voice.

For the first time in his 18 years of Me George Campbell was seeing his mother. There were the tired eyes, the wrinkled, 62-year-old face, and the knotted and gnarled hands. But to George she was most beautiful.

To him she was an angel. The years of toil and patience, the years of teaching and planning, the years of being his seeing eyes, the love and affection: that was what George saw.

To this day he treasures his first visual picture: the sight of his mother. And, as you will see, he learned an appreciation for his sense of sight from this first experience.

"None of us can understand," he says, "the miracle of sight, unless we have had to do without it."

Seeing is a learned process. But George also learned something that is very helpful to anyone interested in the study of PMA. He will never forget the day he saw his mother standing before him in the hospital room, and did not know who she was or even what she was until he heard her speak. "What we see," George points out, "is always an interpretation of the mind. We have to train the mind to interpret what we see."

This observation is backed up by science. "Most of the process of seeing is not done by the eyes at all," says Dr. Samuel Renshaw, in describing the mental process of seeing. "The eyes act as hands which reach 'out there' and grab meaningless 'things' and bring them into the brain. The brain then turns the 'things' over to the memory. It is not until the brain interprets in terms of comparative action that we really see anything."

Some of us go through Me "seeing" very little of the power and the glory around us. We do not properly filter the information that our eyes give us through the mental processes of the brain.

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As a result we often behold things without really seeing them at all. We receive physical impressions without grasping their meaning to us. We do not, in other words, put PMA to work on the impressions that are sent to our brain.

Is it time to have your mental vision checked? Not your physical vision that is a matter for the medical specialists. But mental vision, like physical vision, can become distorted. When it does you can grope in a haze of false concepts . . . bumping and hurting yourself and others unnecessarily.

The most common physical weaknesses of the eye are two opposite extremes nearsightedness and farsightedness. These are the major distortions of mental vision, too.

The person who is mentally nearsighted is apt to overlook objects and possibilities that are distant. He pays attention only to the problems immediately at hand and is blind to the opportunities that could be his by thinking and planning in terms of the future. You are nearsighted if you do not make plans, form objectives, and lay the foundation for the future.

On the other hand, the mentally farsighted person is apt to overlook possibilities that are right before him. He does not see the opportunities at hand. He sees only a dream-world of the future, unrelated to the present. He wants to start at the top rather than move up step by step and he does not recognize that the only job where you can start at the top is the job of digging a hole.

They looked and recognized what they saw. So, in the process of learning to see, you will want to develop both your near sight and your far sight. The advantages to the man who knows how to see what is directly in front of him are enormous. For years the people in the little town of Darby, Montana, used to look up at what they called Crystal Mountain. The mountain was given this name because erosion had exposed a ledge of a lightly sparkling crystal that looked something like rock salt. A pack trail was built directly across the outcropping as early as 1937. But it wasn't until the year 1951 14 years later that anyone bothered to stoop down, pick up a piece of the sparkling material, and really look at it.

It was in this year 1951 that two Darby men, Mr. A. E. Cumley and Mr. L. I. Thompson, saw a mineral collection displayed in the town. Thompson and Cumley became very excited. There in the mineral display were specimens of beryl which, according to the attached card, was used in atomic energy research.

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Immediately Thompson and Cumley staked claims on Crystal Mountain. Thompson sent a specimen of the ore to the Bureau of Mines office in Spokane, together with a request to send an examiner to see a "very large deposit" of the mineral. Later that year the Bureau of Mines sent a bulldozer up the mountain and scraped off enough of the outcropping to determine that here indeed was one of the world's greatest deposits of extremely valuable beryllium. Today, heavy earth-moving trucks struggle up the mountain and work their way back down again, weighted down with the extremely heavy ore, while at the bottom, virtually waiting with dollar bills in their hands, are representatives of the United States Steel Company and the United States Government, each anxious to buy the highly valued ore. All because one day two young men not only observed with their eyes, but took the trouble to see with their minds. Today these men are well on their way to being multimillionaires.

A mentally farsighted person could not have done what Thompson and Cumley did if his mental vision were distorted. For he is the man who can see only far-off values while the advantages that lie at his feet go unclaimed. Are there fortunes right at your doorstep? Look about you. As you go about your daily chores are there small areas of irritation? Perhaps you can think of a way to overcome them a way that will be helpful not only to yourself but to others. Many a man has made a fortune by meeting such homely needs. This was so of the man who invented the bobby pin and the one who devised the paper clip. It was so of the man who invented the zipper, and the metal pants-fastener. Look about you. Learn to see. You may find Acres of Diamonds in your own backyard.

But mental nearsightedness can be just as much of a problem as mental farsightedness. The man with this problem sees only what is under his nose, while more distant possibilities go unclaimed. He is the man who does not understand the power of a plan. He does not understand the value of thinking time. He is so busy with the problems that immediately confront him that he does not free his mind to range into the distance, reaching for new opportunities, seeking trends, getting the big picture.

Being able to see into the future is one of the most spectacular accomplishments of the human brain. Down in the heart of the citrus belt in Florida there is a little town called Winter Haven. The surrounding country is farmland. Certainly it would be considered by most people as an area entirely unsuited for a large tourist attraction. It is isolated. It has no beach, no mountains, only mile after mile of gently rolling hills with little lakes and cypress swamps down in the valleys.

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But to this region came a man who "saw" these cypress swamps with an eye that others had not used. His name was Richard Pope. Dick Pope bought one of these old cypress swamps, put a fence around it, and just the other day turned down an offer of a million dollars for the world-famous Cypress Gardens.

Of course, it really wasn't as simple as that. All along the line Dick Pope had to "see" opportunities in his situation.

For instance, there was the question of advertising. Pope knew that the only way he would be able to draw the public into such an isolated place was through a barrage of advertising. But ads cost money. So what Dick Pope did was quite simple. He went into the popular photography business. He set up a photo supply house at Cypress Gardens, sold his visitors film and then taught them how to take spectacular shots of the Garden. He hired skilled water skiers. He put them through intricate performances while over a loudspeaker he announced to the public exactly what camera settings they should use in order to catch the action. And then, of course, when these travelers went back home, the very best trip pictures were always of Cypress Gardens. They gave Dick Pope the very best kind of advertising there is word-of-mouth recommendations, with pictures I

This is the kind of creative seeing that we all need to develop. We need to learn how to look at our world with fresh eyes-seeing the opportunities that lie all about us, but simultaneously looking into the future for the chances that are there.

Seeing is a learned skill. But like any skill it must be exercised.

See another persons abilities, capacities, and viewpoint. We may think we recognize our own talents; yet in this respect we may be blind. Let's illustrate with an example of a teacher who needed to have her mental vision checked. She was both nearsighted and far-sighted. For she could not see either the present or the future potential abilities and capacities of her students, or their points of view.

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Now everyone the great and the near great had to have a starting point. They weren't born brilliant and successful. As a matter of fact, some of our greatest men were regarded as quite stupid at times during their lives. It was not until they grasped a positive mental attitude and learned to comprehend their capabilities and envision definite goals that they started their climbs to success. But there was one young man, in particular, whom his teachers thought "a stupid, muddle-headed blockhead."

The youngster sat and drew pictures on his slate. He looked about and listened to everybody else. He asked "impossible questions" but refused to reveal what he knew, even under the threat of punishment. The children called him "dunce," and he generally stood at the foot of his class.

And this boy was Thomas Alva Edison. You will be inspired when you read the life story of Thomas A. Edison. He attended primary school for a total period of less than three months. The teacher and his schoolmates told him that he was stupid. Yet, he became an educated man after an incident in his life prompted him to turn his talisman from NMA to PMA. He developed into a gifted person. He became a great inventor.

What was that incident? What happened to Edison that changed his whole attitude? He told his mother about hearing the teacher tell the inspector at school that he was "addled" and it wouldn't be worthwhile to keep him in school any longer. His mother marched off to school with him and told all within range of her voice that her son, Thomas Alva Edison, had more brains than the teacher or the inspector.

Edison called his mother the most enthusiastic champion a boy ever had. And from that day forward he was a changed boy. He said, "She cast over me an influence which has lasted all my life. The good effects of her early training I can never lose. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never misunderstood or misjudged me." His mother's belief in him caused him to view himself in an entirely different light. It caused him to turn his talisman to PMA and take a positive mental attitude regarding studying and learning. This attitude taught Edison to view things with deeper mental insight, that enabled him to comprehend and develop inventions winch benefited mankind. Perhaps the teacher didn't see because the teacher wasn't genuinely interested in helping the boy. His mother was.

You have a tendency to see what you want to see.

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To hear does not necessarily imply attention or application. To listen always does. Throughout Success Through a Positive Mental

 Attitude we urge you to listen to the message. This means: to see how you can relate and assimilate the principle into your own life.

Perhaps you'd like to see how you can relate the principle of the following experience into your own life:

Dr. Roy Plunkett, a DuPont chemist, made an experiment. He failed. When he opened the test tube after the experiment, he observed that it apparently contained nothing. He was curious. He asked himself, "Why?" He didn't throw the tube away as others might have done under similar circumstances. Instead, he weighed the tube. And, to his surprise, it weighed more than a tube of like make and design. So, again, Dr. Plunkett asked himself, "Why?"
In searching for the answer to his questions, he discovered that marvelous transparent plastic, tetrafluoroethylene, commonly known as Teflon. During the Korean War, the United States government contracted for DuPont's entire output.

When there is something you don't understand, ask yourself: "Why? I Look at it more closely. You may make a great discovery.
Ask yourself questions. Asking yourself or others questions about things that puzzle you may reward you richly. This very procedure led to one of the world's greatest scientific discoveries.

A young Englishman, while vacationing on his grandmother's farm, was relaxing. He was lying on his back under an apple tree and engaging in thinking time. An apple fell to the ground. This young man was a student of higher mathematics.

"Why does the apple fall to the ground?" he asked himself. "Does the earth attract the apple? Does the apple attract the earth? Does each attract the other? What is the universal principal  involved?"
Isaac Newton used his power to think and he made a discovery. To see mentally is to think. He found the answers he was looking for; the earth and the apple attracted each other, and the law of attraction of mass to mass applies to the entire universe.

Newton discovered the law of gravitation because he was observant and sought the answers to what he observed. Another man, because he exercised his powers of observation and acted upon what he perceived, found happiness and great wealth. Newton asked himself questions. The other man sought expert advice.

He became wealthy because he accepted advice. In Toba, Japan, in the year 1869, when he was just eleven years old, Kokichi Mikimoto continued his father's business as the village noodle maker.

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His father had developed an illness that prevented him from working. The youngster supported his six brothers, three sisters, and his parents. In addition to making the noodles daily, young Mikimoto had to sell them. He proved to be a good salesman.

Mikimoto had previously been tutored by a Samurai who taught:

Exemplification of true faith consists of acts of kindness and love for one's fellowmen, not mere formal prayers uttered by rote.

And with this basic PMA philosophy of positive action, Mikimoto became a doer. He developed the habit of converting ideas into reality.

At the age of twenty he fell in love with the daughter of a Samurai. The young man knew that his future father-in-law would not bless his daughter's marriage with a noodlemaker. Therefore, he was motivated to harmonize with this known power. He changed his occupation and became a pearl merchant.

Like many persons who achieve success in any part of the world, Mikimoto kept searching for specific knowledge that would help him in his new activity. He, like the great industrialists of our day, sought help from a university. Professor Yoshikichi Mizukuri told Mikimoto of a theory of one of the laws of nature that had never been proved.

The professor said: "A pearl is formed in an oyster when a foreign object, like a grain of sand, is stuck in the oyster. If the foreign object does not kill the oyster, nature covers the object with the same secretion that forms the mother-of-pearl in the lining of the oyster's shell."

Mikimoto was thrilled! He could hardly wait to get the answer to the question he asked himself, "Can I raise pearls by deliberately planting a tiny foreign object in the oyster and letting nature take its course?"

He converted a theory into a positive action once he learned to see.

Mikimoto had been taught to see by that university professor. And then he used the power of his imagination. He engaged in creative thinking. He used deductive reasoning. He decided that if all pearls were formed only when a foreign object entered the oyster, he could develop pearls by using nature's laws. He could plant foreign objects in the oysters and force them to produce pearls. He learned to observe and act and he became a successful man.

Now a study of Mikimoto's life indicates that he employed all the 17 success principles. For knowledge doesn't make you successful. But application of the knowledge will. Action!

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Many of the ideas which come to us as we learn to see with fresh eyes will strike others as bold. These ideas can either frighten us or, if we act on them, make our fortunes. Here is another true story of pearls. This time the hero is a young American, Joseph Goldstone. He sold jewelry to Iowa farmers, door-to-door.

Then one day in the heart of the Depression he learned that the Japanese were producing beautiful cultured pearls. Here was quality, and it could be sold at a fraction of the cost of natural pearls!

Joe "saw" a great opportunity. In spite of the fact that it was a Depression year, he and his wife, Esther, converted all their tangible assets into cash and set out for Tokyo. They landed in Japan with less than $1000-but they had their plan and lots of PMA.

They obtained an interview with Mr. K. Kitamura, head of the Japanese Pearl Dealers Association. Joe was aiming high. He told Mr. Kitamura of his plan for merchandising Japanese cultured pearls in the United States, and asked Mr. Kitamura for an initial credit of $100,000 in pearls. This was a fantastic sum, especially in a period of depression. After several days, however, Mr. Kitamura agreed.

The pearls sold well. The Goldstones were well on their way to becoming wealthy. A few years later, they decided they wanted to establish their own pearl farm, which they did with the help of Mr. Kitamura. Once again they "saw" opportunity where others had seen nothing. Experience proved that the mortality rate of oysters into which a foreign object had been artificially inserted was over 50 per cent.

"How can we eliminate this great loss?" they asked themselves.

After much study, the Goldstones began to use on the oysters the methods employed in hospital rooms. The outside shells were scraped and scrubbed to reduce the danger of infection to the oyster. The "surgeon" used a liquid anesthetic that relaxed the oyster. Then he slipped a tiny clam pellet into each oyster as a nucleus for the pearl that was to be formed. The incision was made with a sterilized scalpel. Then the oyster was put into a cage, and the cage was dropped back into the water. Every four months cages were raised and the oysters were given a physical checkup. Through these techniques, 90 per cent of the oysters lived and developed pearls, and the Goldstones went on to acquire a fabulous fortune.

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Time and again we see how men and women have become successful after they learned to apply mental perception. The ability to see is much more than the physical process of taking light rays through the retina of the eye. It is the skill of interpreting what you see and applying that interpretation to your life and the lives of others.

Learning to see will bring to you opportunities that you never dreamed existed. However, there is more to success through PMA than learning mental perception. You must also learn to act on what you learn. Action is important because through action you get. things done.

Don't wait any longer. Read The Secret of Getting Things Done in the next chapter and move another rung up the ladder of success through PMA.

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Pilot No. 7
THOUGHTS TO STEER BY
 

1. Learn to see Seeing is a learned process. Nine-tenths of seeing takes place in the brain.

2. Four fingers instead of five: this was the symbol whereby George Campbell, the blind boy, could catch and hold a full and happy life.

3. Seeing is learned through association. George Campbell's first sight of his mother became meaningful to him only when he recognized her voice.

4. Is it time to have your mental vision checked? When it is distorted, you can grope around in a haze of false concepts, bumping and hurting yourself and others unnecessarily.

5. Take a look a good look and recognize what you see. There may be Acres of Diamonds in your own backyard!

6. Don't be nearsighted look to the future. Cypress Gardens became a reality because Richard Pope saw it as a definite future objective.

7. See another person's abilities, capacities, and viewpoint. You may be overlooking a genius. The story of Thomas Edison is a good example.

8. See how you can relate and assimilate the principles in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude into your own life.

9. Learn from nature. How? Ask yourself some questions, as Isaac Newton did. If you don't know the answers, get expert advice.

10. Convert what you see into reality by action. Mikimoto converted a theory into a fortune in pearls. Goldstone related the methods used in hospitals to save human lives to the cultured pearl industry.

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BE WILLING TO RISK
FAILURE IN ORDER
TO SUCCEED