The Visual Signs of God

Or

THE MEANINGS AND RULES OF THE VISUAL SIGNS OF GOD

Or

HOW GOD LEADS ONE THROUGH THE PATH OF LIBERATION AND ILLUMINATION

By Mark B Anstendig
Copyright September 20, 2009

THE BEGINNING SIGNS

When a person begins trying to do the Path to God (here called The Path of Liberation) with the help of a real teacher or Guru, that person establishes a link or communion with God. If the person, called a candidate, has the right, noble reasons for wanting to do the Path, that link or communion with God contains a visual language of signs that God uses to lead that person through the Path. Those confirmatory signs tell the candidate whether or not he/she is doing things right.

These positive signs always have a quality that is clearly and unmistakably something from God, something that the candidate could not imagine and conjure up from his own frame of reference.

That point is most important: someone who could comprehend even the first stages of the real Path and would choose to pursue it would be an intelligent, discerning, experienced person who could not readily be fooled. Therefore, the signs provided by God, which occur in the candidate’s or Master’s own consciousness, would have to be something beyond the typical beauty encountered in this life on Earth, and something not in the normal frame of reference of a human being. Just for emphasis, clearly the signs of God have to be such that they would truly be recognized as signs of God, and not as something a human being could conjure up.

The first characteristic of the signs is that they never repeat the same way. They are always different, even when similar. That is the first characteristic that no human mind could purposely manage to create. While, ultimately seen, nothing in life remains exactly the same, the mind of the human being is not capable of mastering the formless. The human mind can purposely start out to create things that are similar to each other, but it cannot create something that never ever repeats some pattern/form somewhere. Only the unlimited, pure consciousness of God, it/himself, is capable of that. And it is this lack of repetition of any pattern exactly the same way that is probably the most important proof of the real signs of God.

Over time, as the candidate progresses on his/her Path, the various signs develop in richness and exquisiteness. Ultimately, over a very long time, as the candidate reaches the most advanced stages of the Path, these visual signs develop into a permanent sign of God in the center of the candidate’s vision. These confirmatory signs of God are not in any way arbitrary, but, rather, follow very formal exact rules, which God does not break.

For those skeptical readers, who need some confirmation of this information in past written texts, one of the oldest books known contains descriptions of this visual language of God. That book is a Chinese script called “The Secret of the Golden Flower”. It was brought to the West by Richard Wilhelm during the 1930’s and was published in Wilhelm’s translation, with a preface by Carl Jung. Unfortunately, Jung does not at all understand the text, which was written in the symbolic, space-oriented language of the past Piscean Age and not in the informational, causality-oriented language of our present age (see the paper “HEARING: THE INFORMATIONAL AND THE EXPERIENTIAL” at www.anstendig.org).

Since “The Secret of the Golden Flower” is written in the symbolic-analogy laden language/manner of a past age, it needs some explanations. A clue to the passages on the signs of God is that, when the author speaks of the “circulation of the light”, he is referring to the first confirmatory signs of God, which occur to the worthy towards the beginning of mastering the techniques of the closed eye meditation. The circulation of the light is when the morass of nothing much that is discernable as anything in particular, which one first sees when one closes one’s eyes, begins to change slowly into a blob of golden light in the center of one’s vision. That slowly and slightly pulsating or circulating blob of golden light is the beginning of the confirmatory signs of God, and depends upon one’s correct application of the correct techniques of meditation for God to provide it. If one remains perfectly centered and does not give in to the urges to look at what might be happening in the periphery of one’s vision, that golden light will remain. And, if one is able to continue sustaining the correct techniques in the way one was instructed by one’s teacher, that golden circulating light will progress and further refine itself. As one calms down, one’s breathing becomes slower and shallower, and the distractions of the outside world slowly become less and less and the meditation progresses further and further. Over the course of that meditation and, over time, as one progresses through further meditations, that circulating golden light will slowly change into further refinements of itself, eventually becoming silver light and, ultimately, pure white light. Also, occasionally, at crucial moments in the progress of one’s communion with God, the light in the center of one’s vision can turn into, i.e., develop into, actual images and forms.

The Negative signs:

In order to lead a candidate successfully down the right steps of the Path, God uses both confirmatory signs that tell the candidate when he/she  is right and negative signs that show when the Path is being done wrong. Also, in order to train the person to remain centered and concentrate on the center of one’s vision, God has another, different language of signs/forms and colors that he uses to decorate and construct the visions that occur in the periphery of one’s vision, outside of the center. Those peripheral visions are quite different from those in the center, since one is supposed to ignore them, remain centered, and not fall prey to the temptation to disturb one’s concentration on the center by trying to look at the periphery.

The confirmatory signs are always in the precious colors of God, silver and white and the more delicate mixed colors of fine magentas, cyans and some blue, all with a base of gold, silver or white. There are no pure primary colors at all in the confirmatory signs or visions of God until one has mastered the Path, at which time some judicious red might be added in order to depict threatening or stormy imagery, etc. But this is rare even for those few who have mastered the Path and reached full, uninterrupted communion with God.

Another important clue to the negative visions of God is that there are no naturally occurring straight lines in nature where they can be seen with the naked eye. Straight line in this world are either the work of man, or in things like snow-flakes. Therefore, the visions of God, which one is supposed to look at in the center of one’s vision, nearly always contain a straight line somewhere. But the images in the periphery of one’s vision, which one is supposed to ignore and not be tempted to look at, never ever contain straight lines. Those peripheral images always contain only rounded-off forms, as well as rather garish, unsubtle primary colors.

The psychedelic art of the 60s and 70s was by people who were never correctly taught the art of meditation. They were/are by people who noticed the visions in the periphery of their visual field and did not have the discipline to remain centered. They looked at the periphery and then tried to profit one way or another by painting what they remembered of the fleeting type of visions they saw. Ironically, those peripheral visions go away as soon as one stops concentrating on the center and directs one’s gaze to the periphery, unless one is on a very strong hallucinogenic drug. But even on such drugs, the peripheral images will always be of a fleeting, unstill nature, while the center will form correctly, if one applies the correct, correctly-centered meditative disciplines. But, unfortunately, few are able to control themselves enough while influenced by such drugs to apply such disciplines.

Positive and negative signs in the center of one’s vision are also necessary for God to indicate and confirm when one is doing things correctly and when some things are being done wrong.

Usually, the positive signs are called Yang and the negative signs are called Yin. The positive signs remain in the positive colorings of gold light (lower levels of progress) and silver or white light which designate higher levels of one’s progress. Eventually, as one progresses, the decorative highlighting of images can change slowly into whole new images/visions.

The negative, or Yin signs usually tend toward dark or black tones, with something not quite clear and certainly not brilliant about them. They can actually become/seem outright threatening, under some conditions. Their character is obvious and unmistakable to the relatively pure of heart.

The Confirmatory signs of the Open-eye meditationS

The second type of meditation and visual disciplines is accomplished with the eyes open (see the paper “The Third Eye” at www.pathofliberation.com). When the eyes are closed the tensions of the face, including those around the eyes that cause one to see single, can be released without a problem, because one cannot differentiate whether the eyes are seeing straight ahead (totally relaxed) or seeing single (the muscles around the eyes are in various states of tension depending upon the distance of the subject of one’s vision). With the eyes open, the first phenomenon that one learns is to allow the tensions of the muscles around the eyes to relax. When the muscles around the eyes relax completely, the eyes both look straight ahead and one sees double. The relaxation of all unnecessary key muscle tensions of the body is a prerequisite for achieving the necessary calm of true meditation. Therefore, the tensions of the eyes are allowed to remain relaxed, both eyes look straight ahead, and all images are composites of the two separate images seen by each eye. And, of course, those two images, rather than combining into one single image, remain separate and are displaced by the distance between the viewer’s two eyes. Early on, in the progress of one’s mastery of meditation, the candidate develops the ability to see double all of the time, and makes that a habit, broken only when safety or certain necessary tasks demand seeing single.

It is on these composite images that God then places confirmatory signs that show the candidate whether or not he/she is doing things correctly and progressing as he/she should.

Those confirmatory signs take the form of highlighting and other finely subtle decorations that God places on the images one is seeing. And, as with all other signs of God, they are such that the candidate always recognizes that they could not have been a product of the candidate’s own experience or frame of reference or imagination, but had to have come from God.

The highlighting and, eventually, other decorations, utilize the same color types as the closed eye meditations. They can be in Yin (Negative) or Yang (Positive) types of warning or confirming colorings, forms, and shadings, etc. But here, when people are what the candidate is looking at, the highlighting depends both on the levels of the Path and of the consciousness that the candidate has reached and the levels of the Path and of consciousness that the person one is seeing has reached.

With the classical, open-eye mirror meditation, the highlighting one sees will reflect the candidate’s own progress and stature on the Path. But one can also meditate by gazing at objects, which can eventually be transformed by confirmatory decorations.

Ultimately, at later stages of the Path, the person or objects can be transformed by God into visions. With the mirror meditation, or when meditating into someone’s else’s eyes (sitting or standing opposite them), one’s own reflected image, or the image of the person one is looking at, can change into other people during the course of the meditation. With this phenomenon, the rule is that the person seeing the images only gets to see images of people who have or had the same level of consciousness as the person who is looking at the images. When meditating into the eyes of someone else, the rule is that the faces one sees are of people who have the same level of consciousness as the person one is looking at. So, if one is advanced enough to see these images and confirmatory signs of God and wants to meditate with someone else, one should choose that person very carefully.

Once more, for those who like to have some kind of confirming example in respected available publications, a description of these images of God occurring during open-eye meditative experience can be found at the end of Herman Hesse’s famous novel “Siddhartha”. In that novel, the hero is offered instruction by the Buddha, himself, but declines because he feels he can find illumination all by himself. A big mistake, because, on his own, Siddhartha finds nothing. Everything of any value that he does find is the result of being taught it by someone else, who is, essentially, his teacher for that subject. But he never does find enlightenment or the real experience of God. Then, towards the end of his life, he happens upon a body of water, which he cannot pass. And his final teacher appears in the form of a boatman, who offers to ferry him across. And as he becomes more and more calm and conscious on this boat ride, the boatman shows him the open eye meditation. And as he looks into the water, Siddhartha finally sees the visions of God. And, in that instance, the images take the form of his own face turning into all the faces of those people past, present and future, who possess the level of consciousness with which he is looking at the image of himself in the water. In other words, he sees images of other people as wise as he had become. Of course, the irony and tragedy of the story is that, had he gone to the Buddha, the Buddha would have saved him a lot of time and led him much more quickly through all the experiences necessary for this level of consciousness. And he would have had lots of time to utilize, enjoy and do something with the illumination he finally achieved much too late.

The Lord is my Shepherd

As one progresses into the most advanced, upper levels of the Path to God, when the breathing has become permanently calm and smooth, when one is permanently centered and one’s angle of vision has widened substantially, and one’s further progress has gone correctly, the confirmatory signs slowly and inexorably develop into a permanent confirmatory sign of God in the center of one’s vision. For the last, Piscean, age, that sign was that of a magnificent, finely burnished silver medallion, that has many similarities to the old Masonic medallion, but is much more exquisite. For the present Aquarian age, that sign is that of the gleaming, shimmering light one would see on a complexly faceted clear white diamond. And that shimmering light never ever repeats the same pattern of light. It can under excellent circumstance, develop into something quite spectacularly impressive in form.

These eventually earned confirmatory signs of God remain permanently in the center of one’s vision, only moving or disappearing for an instant, when it is necessary for the candidate to see something that covers the whole center of vision, and returning immediately when that need is satisfied. They never go away as long as one remains worthy. And they almost always are positioned exactly where the electrical energies, which that person’s body is radiating, are focused/pointing.

When one walks or otherwise moves, that sign is always present in one’s center and, at times, can lead one.

It is these signs, which ancient masters have known, that gave rise to the idea/concept in the Psalm The Lord is my Shepherd. Those truly accomplished, morally pure religious masters, always had their sign of God in front of them. Whether or not it led them anywhere is unimportant, since its main purpose was their communion with God, and not any purposeful power that they could harness. And, by that advanced stage in their progress, such people were also sensitive to many other signs of God that can lead one through life. But, of course, over time, many who did not achieve these stages of progress heard about them by word of mouth. And many such people tried to act like they had experienced them, talking about them, or trying to describe them in order to impress others. Eventually, like with the whisper-around-the-circle party game, the second-hand descriptions of these phenomena took on wrong meanings. Over time, among other wrong ideas, the wrong concept that there was some kind of power attached to these levels of attainment that could be used for personal benefit or influence on people crept into the description. But, in reality, there is no power involved in real self-development. God has full control over his creation and can get anyone to go anywhere or do anything He wants them to do, all by Himself, without the use of His signs or His holy people.

REVIEW/SUMMARY:

The true visual signs start in the center as an unstill blob of pure golden light (the circulation of the light).

As one progresses on the Path, the light slowly turns to silver light and then, ultimately, to white light.

Eventually, images are added, which always contain a straight line that can be seen somewhere in the image.

The vulgar, primary-colored, rounded-off shaped images in the periphery of one’s vision are there to train us to remain centered and not allow anything to tempt our gaze outside of the center of our field of vision.

Vulgarity, either in the rounded-off forms of psychedelic art or in the ugly colors of that art, or any other kind of vulgarity, does not exist at all in the real visions of God.