Visualization—It’s Just a Name

One of the questions I often receive asks for help with visualization. People tell me they just can’t see anything when they try visualization. In this post I want to give some suggestions.

The key to the problem is the name. Visualization. Visual. It must have something to do with seeing things, right? Well, not exactly. It’s more accurate, in my opinion, to think of the term “visualization” as if it were simply a name or a title. It’s like “Egyptian Cotton,” which actually is a native American species of cotton. Although introduced to the U.S. by a man with from Egypt, it is not grown there. In ancient Egypt they made clothes from linen which comes from flax, not cotton plants. Some of you reading this may remember the deep voice of Ricardo Mantalbán describing “rich Corinthian leather” on car seats. “Corinthian” was an invented name. The leather had nothing to do with the city of Corinth, nor did it have any special qualities.

Visualization is actually a term commonly used to mean a particular practice of what I’ve called “mental magick.” The idea is based on a simple set of concepts:

1) There is another, non-physical plane of existence. This plane goes under a variety of names, most commonly the “astral plane.”
2) Everything on the physical plane has a version of itself on the astral plane.
3) In actuality, it is the astral version that comes first. That is, something must exist in an astral form before it manifests as a physical form.
4) The essence of mental magick is to create something on the astral plane so that it will eventually manifest on the physical plane.
5) The most common name for a simple process of creating a desired thing or event on that astral plane is “visualization.”

So visualization is simply a name for the process of creating something on the astral plane with the eventual result that it will manifest on the physical plane.

Although the astral plane is not physical—therefore it cannot be measured with any physical device—it can be experienced through what I call “astral senses.” Just as we have astral bodies, so, too, do we have astral senses. Sometimes, they spontaneously link to our minds. Perhaps you’ve heard a sound or smelled something, neither of which were around and nobody around you heard or smelled the same thing. In these cases your astral senses of hearing and smell made a link to your mind.

With visualization we attempt to control these links to our astral senses so we can make use of them when we wish. The fact is, we get most of our sensory input through our eyes. As an experiment, the next time you listen to a full orchestra playing music (live or recorded), listen first with your eyes open, then closed. You will find when you close your eyes that each instrument will become more clear and independent as your mind works with your other senses.

Being able to use your astral vision is a great advantage for visualization, but it is not necessary. If you know—not hope or wish or dream or think, but really know—that you have created something on the astral plane, and that it will manifest on the physical plane, your visualization will be successful whether you can see anything or not.

As I wrote, however, being able to see on the astral plane can be a great advantage, and you can train your visualization abilities. I’ll describe that in my next post.