Visualization

Hatha yoga practice (or other trainings) can be supplemented by exercises, which develop an ability to create clear visual images. This will prepare one for mastering the highest forms of meditation as well as create prerequisites for attainment of clairvoyance.

We can start with simple things: let us imagine a tomato, an apple, a juicy pear, then let us imagine that we examine them, smell them, bite them, enjoy their flavor and swallow them with great pleasure…

Let us get carried to the morning silence of a lake: in a boat, surrounded by wet reeds… Small tender dew-drops are hanging from every leaflet… Fish splashing, whistling of duck wings… Reed warblers start singing their songs…

Or we may imagine that we are lying on the beach in the morning sunlight… Warm and tender light pervades our entire body and soul, saturating them with bliss…

Or let us visualize ourselves picking mushrooms: cutting and plucking black slimy milk mushrooms out of wet autumn foliage…, admiring a big and solid sep…

We may visualize numerous similar images. They must attune us to subtlety, beauty and bliss. They must teach us sattva.

Later on we may complicate the training in the following way: we may imagine ourselves to actually be some imaginary sattvic object — a sweet juicy pear, a strawberry, a tender fragrant flower, or a caressing sun. We may learn to place these images filled with our own consciousness, with our self-awareness, into the chest — into the anahata chakra.

When this ability is well developed it will not be difficult for us to invite an image of our beloved Divine Teacher, which we know very well from photographs, into anahata… And He will “come alive” there: He will start smiling and speaking… But it will become possible only if we deserve it: if we lead an impeccable life, established in sattva, study the Teachings of God intensively, and transform ourselves in accordance with them.

Work with images has another name — “visualization”, which was borrowed from Buddhism. But it is important to warn the reader from non-critical attitude towards specific recommendations for “visualization” that he or she may find in literature or lectures of some ignorant Buddhist specialists: as we have also discussed there is a great number of sects and schools within Buddhism that deviated from the true Path.

Some authors recommend surrounding one’s body with images of “wrathful gods”, i.e. devils and demons, for “guard magic” purposes. And those images also “come alive” by getting filled with corresponding hell beings.

A once famous mystic and doctor from Saint Petersburg who was not “overburdened with intellect” and possessed grossest ethic vices, while being a good extrasensory diagnostician, started to study these “black magic” methods with a group of his students. The effect was that people were getting sick after just talking to him. And when that entire gang visited other esoteric groups to stare at people practicing — students were fainting there.

Coarsening of him as a consciousness reached a tremendous level, and he turned into a devil in the flesh, but he continued to teach extrasensory healing and to “heal”. Although it is clear that people like this cannot really heal anyone, they can only do harm by “putting an evil eye” on people.

He ended up becoming a knife-victim, murdered in his own bathroom. It was most likely one of the victims of his “healing” or some of his or her friends.

But hell is not what we need! We prepare ourselves to becoming God, not devils! Therefore, seeing this sad example of spiritual degradation as someone else’s tragic experience, let us turn away from it and go to the abodes of Purity, Light, Tenderness, and Love — in order to attune to them and to become one with them.

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If you already possess some skills, which could be of use to other people, — gather some of your friends and teach them what you know. Your knowledge, abilities, and efforts will combine, and you all will grow together, preparing yourself to the next stages of spiritual growth.