1.10 Visions as an internal, autonomous form of self-tuition.

The second subjective process, commonly experienced as you progress towards the purifying and clarifying state of samadhi, is the phenomenon of visions. These are seen by the inner eye and heard by the inner ear, in a manner of speaking. The experience is startlingly realistic: it is as if, instead of watching a film as an observer, you were to suddenly find yourself in the midst of the events portrayed.

Visions are not mere imaginings of the mind: they are experienced spontaneously and autonomously. Visions can relate to past, present or future; their material can be of a personal or a general nature, encompassing any aspect of reality. Visions are a genuine reflection of significantly related aspects of reality, in, and for the benefit of, an individual consciousness.

As with memories of earlier incarnations, you are unlikely to find any objective confirmation of a vision. You should resist the temptation to rely on visions as prophecies of the future: a mind developing towards the clarity of the final stage of enlightenment must learn to live in and for the here and now, never in or for the past or the future. Visions are best understood as an internal, autonomous form of self-tuition.

Visions function as a means of drawing to the attention of a developing consciousness aspects of reality which, from the point of view of that consciousness, are significantly related. Typically, the central message you are being taught is refined through an iterative series of partially repeated, constantly developing visions. The important point is to transcend the detail of the vision, and grasp intuitively what it is trying to teach you about yourself.

At first the experience of visions, like recollecting the latent traces of past lives held in memory, is exhilarating, breathtaking and wonderful, or perhaps fearful and terrible. In time, as the practice of meditation advances and the individual consciousness becomes aware of the relatively illusory nature of individuality, the importance and relevance of all such phenomena will fade away. They are in the end no more than educational experiences along the way.