Merpati Putih makes the blind 'see' clearly

Merpati Putih makes the blind 'see' clearly

By Arif Suryobuwono

JAKARTA (JP): Can a man see nothing yet he sees something? Socrates once asked. But the reverse is also true. A man can see something though he sees nothing.

This premise was proved at a special competition for the blind, held by the Merpati Putih pencak silat school in Senayan's eastern parking lot last Sunday. Pencak silat is an Indonesian form of self defense.

The competition, which was held in conjunction with the school's 32nd anniversary, required blind students to walk through a maze of iron rods, without touching them.

They had to find a way through by obeying the traffic signs they met on the way. At the end of the maze, they were required to identify the color of a painted wooden bar, lying about two meters in front of them.

Out of the maze, they had to walk on stilts and ride a bicycle, again in accordance with traffic signs.

Amazingly, they did it, though, of course, not all of them could "see" clearly. Some wandered off the maze; some other knocked off one or two rods, or misinterpreted the signs.

Sensor

For the blind, especially for those who have been blind from birth, identifying color can be said to be an impossible task because color is an abstract concept. But for Merpati Putih's blind students the task poses no big problem.

Mustofa, 25, a contestant from a blind school in Malang, East Java, identifies colors by feeling, "I know a color must be red, for instance, because I sense it from the wave the color emits."

Nyoman Tanggal, 20, who is Balinese and became blind after a childhood illness, perceives colors by his fingers. "To test whether a color is red, I direct my thumb to the color," he said.

"If it is not red, I feel something thick, like a hot current against my thumb. If there is no resistance, I know it must be red," he explained. He claims he can identify colors that way from a distance of up to five meters.

Mustofa and Nyoman said they acquired the ability to identify color after practicing Merpati Putih breathing exercises twice a week, for about one year.

"Students with normal vision usually learn the breathing exercises after mastering our pencak silat skills, given from grade one to grade six," Poerwoto Hadipoernomo, one of Merpati Putih's founding fathers, said.

"But for our blind students, we give the exercises right from the start," the 50-year old chain-smoker added.

Hari Prasetyo, who teaches Nyoman at a blind school in Denpasar, Bali, said that the breathing exercises, which he calls "resonance-producing techniques," generate sensory sensitivity.

This enables the body to be sensorially aware of its surrounding, making it easy to identify things.

"Ideally, the whole body should be able to function as a sensor. But for practical reasons, sensory sensitivity is usually concentrated in the palm of the hand," Hari said.

Spectrum colors

Hari teaches his students only the colors of the spectrum, by impressing the colors' waves into their sensory sensitivity. This implies that if the colors are wrongly imprinted, the students will interpret the colors the wrong way.

And because the students learn only the primary colors, they would be unable to tell color gradation. If there are many colors, they would only be able to identify the predominant color, Hari added.

Merpati Putih has been helping the blind since 1990, according to Ipung Purwanto. He is one of the teachers who trained the school's first blind students in Yogyakarta.

"They made impressive progress within the first three months of training, that is, they were able to walk without a stick," Ipung said.

"But in the following six months, I found it hard to train them. They made progress very slowly. I really needed a lot of patience. But after one or two years of training their sensory sensitivity has been firmly established," Ipung said.

Mustofa and Nyoman said they felt exhausted after exerting their sensory sensitivity. "Fifteen minutes are enough to almost tire me out," Nyoman said.

But Poerwoto said they were exhausted because they exerted all their energy for sensing their surroundings. This might also burden them psychologically and drain their energy.

"If they are fully familiar with the exercises, they won't tire easily because everything will come naturally," he added.

Both Poernomo and his brother Budi Santoso, who established the school with him in 1963, claim that no other country, besides Indonesia, has treated the blind this way.

"Some East Asian countries might claim they have their own techniques, which produce the same effect," Budi said.

"But I think theirs, in which meditation is central, are different from ours. For instance, we cannot ask blind people to meditate on a candle or a picture because they cannot see," he added.

People with normal eyesight can also do what their blind counterparts do, with their eyes blindfolded of course.

In a demonstration, a blindfolded Arianto, a Merpati Putih student of grade seven, read an ID press card correctly, though he halted sometimes and hissed (suggesting the use of a certain breathing technique), while reading.

But for Hari, training blind people, particularly those who were born blind, is easier because they are less demanding.

People who can see or people not blind from birth, often are not ready to accept what he teaches because they always compare it with their sight experiences.

"If I tell them there is a hole in front of them, they would ask whether there is shattered glass in the hole because they are afraid of getting hurt," Hari explained on how he arrived at the conclusion that those who see, or have seen, often have more worries.