All too often many gurus and workshop leaders use eye gazing techniques as an
alleged intimacy building exercise.
Watch out. It disrupts your capacity for self reflection.
If something had this kind of effect on your computer, you'd be rightfully alarmed
and call for help from technical support.
The danger with gurus and transformation workshops is, we do not understand that this heavy duty staring compromises our cognitive capacities and keeps us
from the kind of self reflection needed for genuine learning.
The only learning supported by this kind of staring is indoctrination - which
serves someone else's agenda, not yours.
Scientology
[www.google.com]
Emphasizing the eyes as a guru technique - Many publicity
photographs for gurus emphasize their dark, soulful eyes.
(This entire page is well worth a peek)
[forum.culteducation.com]
From Scientific American
Eye Contact Can Be Overwhelming
Research shows that maintaining eye contact can make it harder to think
By Victoria Sayo Turner on December 20, 2016
[www.scientificamerican.com]
The final paragraphs of the Scientific American Article give this punchline:
alleged intimacy building exercise.
Watch out. It disrupts your capacity for self reflection.
If something had this kind of effect on your computer, you'd be rightfully alarmed
and call for help from technical support.
The danger with gurus and transformation workshops is, we do not understand that this heavy duty staring compromises our cognitive capacities and keeps us
from the kind of self reflection needed for genuine learning.
The only learning supported by this kind of staring is indoctrination - which
serves someone else's agenda, not yours.
Scientology
[www.google.com]
Emphasizing the eyes as a guru technique - Many publicity
photographs for gurus emphasize their dark, soulful eyes.
(This entire page is well worth a peek)
[forum.culteducation.com]
From Scientific American
Eye Contact Can Be Overwhelming
Research shows that maintaining eye contact can make it harder to think
By Victoria Sayo Turner on December 20, 2016
[www.scientificamerican.com]
Quote
And you may have noticed that thinking deeply can cause someone to drop their eyes. A recent experiment conducted in Japan suggests that eye contact draws on the same mental resources used for complex tasks, so trying to maintain eye contact can impede your reasoning. In this case, the break in eye contact comes not from emotion, but from the need to preserve cognitive resources. Eye contact can deplete your mental bandwidth.
The final paragraphs of the Scientific American Article give this punchline:
Quote
If looking away to think is cross-cultural, then perhaps cultures with less emphasis on eye contact enable deeper thinking during a given conversation, while those using more eye contact might give better social feedback between conversational partners. In our everyday lives, do we talk more fluently about complicated subjects without eye contact, and if so, do we lose something in exchange?
Eye contact is something we prefer from birth, but it is not advantageous in every situation. Back in 1998, researchers theorized that averting the gaze from surroundings aids thinking by disengaging from potential distractions around us. While it remains to be seen which tasks are harmed (and which might be improved) with eye contact, complex verbal tasks seem to be more difficult for people trying to maintain the gaze of another person. So the next time you’re in a polite staring contest with an interviewer, take the time to look out the window while you ponder the hardest questions. They should forgive you the breach of etiquette if you come up with your best answers.
Quote
"A recent experiment conducted in Japan"
[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
Cognition. 2016 Dec;157:352-357. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.002. Epub 2016 Oct 15.
When we cannot speak: Eye contact disrupts resources available to cognitive control processes during verb generation.
Kajimura S1, Nomura M2.
Author information
Abstract
Although eye contact and verbal processing appear independent, people frequently avert their eyes from interlocutors during conversation. This suggests that there is interference between these processes. We hypothesized that such interference occurs because both processes share cognitive resources of a domain-general system and explored the influence of eye contact on simultaneous verb generation processes (i.e., retrieval and selection). In the present experiment, viewing a movie of faces with eyes directed toward the viewer delayed verbal generation more than a movie of faces with averted eyes; however, this effect was only present when both retrieval and selection demands were high. The results support the hypothesis that eye contact shares domain-general cognitive resource with verb generation. This further indicates that a full understanding of functional and dysfunctional communication must consider the interaction and interference of verbal and non-verbal channels.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved