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Yesterday, National Public Radio ran a story “Blind Man ‘Sees’” that was extremely interesting from a psychic perspective.

It took almost 50 years, but slowly, slowly David Stewart went blind.

A former long-time executive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C., Stewart has a hereditary disease, retinitis pigmentosa, which affects the rods and cones in his eyes. In his 20s, his vision narrowed. By the time he hit 80, he was almost totally blind.

But then he discovered that sometimes blindness comes with a bonus.

One day while listening to a book on tape — 1776 by David McCullough — he heard how American sailors helped George Washington sneak cannons and horses across the Hudson River to escape the British.

As Stewart mused about those sailors, very strangely, one of them appeared in his head — not a dreamy fantasy, but a vivid, highly detailed, very real-like hallucination.

“He had on a cap, a blue cap with a polished black beak and he had a pipe in his mouth.” The sailor gazed right at Stewart. Then he winked. Stewart was amazed.

Stewart was, at this point, very blind. He had lost his memory for color — for blues, yellows and reds — and he lived in a black and white world. But when his sailor arrived, “There it was!” he exclaimed. “The first color I had seen for a considerable amount of time!”

After 30 minutes, the image faded, but others would follow. Paintings would come to life. Wallpaper would move. Mysterious curtains would appear. Stewart says he was never frightened, but he wondered what triggered all this.

I recommend you listen to the entire story. It is about 6 minutes long. Follow the Blind Man ‘Sees’ link above to the story and then click on “Listen Now” at the top of the article.

The story goes on to state that David Stewart has Charles Bonnet syndrome.

Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) is named after the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet. In 1760 he described a condition in which vivid, complex visual hallucinations (fictive visual percepts) occur in mentally healthy people. One characteristic of these hallucinations is that they usually are “lilliput hallucinations” (hallucinations in which the characters or objects may be smaller, larger, or regular size). He first documented it in his 89-year-old grandfather, who was nearly blind from cataracts in both eyes but perceived men, women, birds, carriages, buildings, tapestries, and scaffolding patterns.

Most who are affected by this are people with visual impairments due to old age, damage to the eyes or optic pathways. In particular, central vision loss due to a condition such as macular degeneration combined with peripheral vision loss from glaucoma may predispose to CBS, although most people with such deficits do not develop the syndrome.

The National Public Radio story quotes an ophthalmologist that states “it’s very common” and perhaps 10 percent of people who lose their sight develop Charles Bonnet syndrome.

In fact sighted people develop this condition if they wear a blindfold for an extended period of time. See “Visual Hallucinations During Prolonged Blindfolding in Sighted Subjects”.

Abstract:

The authors report the occurrence of visual hallucinations of varying complexity in 13 normal subjects after sudden, complete, and prolonged visual deprivation. The subjects were all healthy individuals with no history of cognitive dysfunction, psychosis, or ocular pathology. They wore a specially designed blindfold for a period of five consecutive days (96 hours) and were asked to record their daily experiences using a hand-held microcassette recorder. Ten (77%) of the subjects reported visual hallucinations, which were both simple (bright spots of light) and complex (faces, landscapes, ornate objects). The onset of hallucinations was generally after the first day of blindfolding. Subjects were insightful as to their unreal nature. These results indicate that rapid and complete visual deprivation is sufficient to induce visual hallucinations in normal subjects.

The audio portion of the Nation Public Radio story goes on quote researchers speculating about the cause of the hallucinations. I have a different idea. I propose that a significant number of the people who have been deprived of sight or hearing are not hallucinating but are receiving sixth sense information through their unused neural pathways of vision or hearing. And I believe these people will be useful to researchers in the future in the studying how psychic data presents itself to the brain.