The Highest Yoga
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Spiritual Practices:
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VisualizationHatha Yoga practice (or other trainings) can be supplemented by exercises, which develop the ability to create 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 reed… Small tender dewdrops are hanging from every leaflet… Fish splashing, sound of duck's wings… Reed warblers start singing their songs… Or we may imagine that we are lying on a beach in the morning sunlight… Warm and tender light pervades our bodies and souls, saturating them with bliss… Or let us visualize ourselves picking mushrooms: cutting and plucking slimy black milk-cups out of wet autumn foliage…, admiring a big and solid cep… We may visualize numerous similar images. They must attune us to subtlety, beauty and bliss. They must teach us sattva. Later on we may make the training more complex in the following way: we may imagine ourselves to 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 be easy for us to invite into anahata a Divine Teacher, Whose Image we know very well from photographs. And He will “come alive” there: He will start smiling and speaking… But it will become possible only if we deserve it: if we keep an impeccable life, become 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 against having a non-critical attitude towards specific recommendations for visualization that one may find in literature or lectures of some ignorant Buddhist specialists. Some authors recommend surrounding the body with images of “wrathful gods”, i.e. devils and demons, for “guard magic” purposes. Such images also “come alive” by getting filled with corresponding hell beings… A 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 having just talked with 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 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 one of a victim’s 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. * * * 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 yourselves to the next stages of spiritual growth. Vladimir Antonov, Ph.D. (in biology) Translated from Russian |
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