Monday, November 20, 2017

Blindfellen

Yesterday, members of Rotary Eye Bank of Goa joined ‘Walk in the Dark’ initiated by India Vision Institute. To raise awareness about avoidable blindness, we walked blindfolded guided by a visually challenged person. An enthusiastic participant spoke about it being akin to the act midbrain activation and I realised he was blindfellen!

‘Midbrain activation’ is a practice that claims to activate the ‘midbrain’ and trigger off super-normal abilities. The promoters insist that once the ‘midbrain’ is activated, a blindfolded person can read as well as do all things normally. Many parents are paying huge amounts of money to activate the ‘midbrain’ of their children.

This pseudoscientific practice has no acceptance in the mainstream science and is certainly a scam. No feats of midbrain activation have been demonstrated under a controlled environment to eliminate the possibilities of trickery. Rationalists have exposed the scam but the gullible continue to be blindfellen.

Helen Keller said, ‘a worse thing than not having sight is to not have vision’. The visually challenged overcome their difficulty by harnessing vision through imagination as well as identification of signals received. But many of us choose to be fooled. It is only thinking that helps vision. For that the brain should not be blindfellen!

Think without being a blindfellen fool…
Open your mind using the vision tool!


~ Pravin Sabnis

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