The simplest way of explaining what visualization is, is that it is a pictorial rather than a verbal way of thinking. It is said that children think in pictorial terms. To visualize is to recapture this ability which is natural to you before the shades of the prison house began to dim your imagination. Visualizing does not mean thought building, your mind must also be trained to create images that seem real not only in visual terms, but in terms of other senses as well. Thus an imagined stalk of carnations must both 'look' and 'smell' real. Likewise if you have sufficient experience, you decide to visualize a sea-shore, you must also 'hear' the waves beating on it, 'feel' the cool spray on your face and 'taste' the tang of brine around your lips. However, unless you are gifted with an uncommonly vivid imagination, this ability is one that can be acquired through strenuous and, occasionally, wearisome practice.
When yopu decide to start your mental training you must set aside a few minutes each day for visualization practice. Fifteen minutes is quite long enough, and as little as five will do. It is far better to keep up five minutes each day than have much longer but irregular sessions. If you can, use some quiet room where you can meditate without being disturbed. Make yourself as comfortable as possible.
Having settled down in the most comfortable position, be it lying down or sitting on an armchair, you must now endeaver to liberate your body from all tensions. To do this some experts suggest a thing called Moon breathing which involves repeating the word 'Aum'. A more down to earth method is to start deliberately relaxing every muscle in your body from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. If with the best will in the world you still cannot relax, then try lying flat on the floor. At the same time close your eyes and picture yourself in a dark and silent void. When at last you feel completely relaxed, avoid the temptation to start daydreaming. Instead, will your brain and body to adopt a state of alertness. On this few occasions this may cause you to tense up once more, in which case you must start again from the beginning. A wise precaution against this is to breathe very slowly and deeply while you are trying to relax, accelerating once you wish to effect a transition to a state of alertness. The quicker rhythm, while preserving your body from renewed tension, should induce the mental and nervous alertness you seek. At no time in your training, however, should you alter your breathing habits too drastically, since the increased oxygenization of your blood, though beneficial in the long run, can also have some alarming side effects if it occurs suddenly.
The nest step is to get down to image-building, start by studying a simple two-dimensional diagram, and then with your eyes closed form a mental reproduction of it. Do not be afraid to open your eyes to check the real thing against any portion of your mental picture that may be insufficiently clear, and keep checking until the diagram held in your mind corresponds exactly with that drawn on the sheet of paper. Once you are able to perform this type of exercise without difficulty you are ready to graduate to three-dimensional objects. Again your aim should be to form a mental picture like the original. You may find that it helps at first if you project your image of the object on to an imaginary lighted screen inside your mind. A variation of the exercise, which will test your powers of memory is to look for a minute or so at some small objects arranged at random on a tray and then with your eyes closed give a detailed description of each object. Another fascinating challenge, once you become fairly expert at visualization, is mentally to examine the object visualized from several points of view. Let us suppose that you have visualized an empty match box. your minds-eye sees the box exactly as it earlier presented itself to the physical eye. Now visualize the same match box from various other angles - above, below, etc. Whatever the viewpoint, the match box should be as clear and detailed as the original mental 'photograph', which in turn should be as clear and detailed as the match box that was physically observed. From here some people are able to go one step further and actually transfer their conciousness to inside the match box, or even visualize it from all points of view at the same time. If this proves beyond you at this stage, a slightly easier exercise is to project your conciousness to different parts of the room you are in, so that you can get a completely different view from the one presented to your physical vision. You could possibly try this experiment next time you find yourself at a dull party or lecture. It may even help pass the time on a tedious journey, provided, of course, you are not in the driving seat.
In view of its importance in magic, colour must be visualized with special ease, and this too requires practice. Start by visualizing one of the primary colours, say red. For the purpose of this exercise do not visualize neat little rows of red pillar boxes or tins or red paint, simply flood your mind with the colour itself. When your mind is a sea of red, allow the colour to change slowly to orange. Again do not visualize orage objects, but the colour itself. When you have filled your mind with orange, let that colour change to yellow to green to blue and so on. The absence of form to visualize makes this one of the more difficult exercises to master.
There still remains the task of involving the other senses in your thought-building. Fortunately, some of the visualization exercises can be adapted for this purpose. Smell and taste, for example, may be reproduced by visualizing suitable images - a good hot curry is an excellent one ti start with. You can then go on to develope the sense of touch by imagining yourself soaking up the warm sunshine on a Mediterranean beach. As for hearing, a useful way to begin is to strike a tuning fork and then continue the note in your mind for as long as possible. Or you could play the tune of yuor favourite song in your mind down to the minute tonal inflections & drum beats. From here you can progress to more ambitious things.
Up to now your image-building will have been entirely subjective, and as such scarcely differs from the type of concentration taught in many schools of meditation. The secret to magical visualizaton, however is that the chosen image is not locked away inside the mind, but is 'projected' into the real world. This 'projection' is a knack which, like learning to swim, will be acquired all of a sudden, but you should not attempt it untill you have perfected subjective visualization. When you are ready, open your eyes while still retaining your mental image in all its detail. Eventually you will discover that because of a subtle collusion between your mind and your vision, you are able to 'see' the surroundings. One thing to guard against, however, especially in the first flush of success, is the tendency for such mental images to impose themselves on your everyday vision without your willing them to. Involuntary hallucinations belong to the realm of mental illness, not magic.
By the time you can objectify mental images of such clarity that they appear to possess an empirical rality of their own, you will be well advanced on the way to magical attainment. Exercises are always a chore, but in this case they are very necessary if you are later to derive benefit from your magical operations. But of course, magic would scarcely be magic if it did not provide some little assistance to lighten the burden. What it offers, however, is not a short cut but merely a crutch to help you along what can, at time, seem an arduous path.