My Oriental Vision

As I get ready to travel to Asia I think of a quest that started when I was 17 years old. I had a great English Teacher in High School by the name of Diane Brown. She taught a book in one of her classes called ‘Man And His Symbols’ which is a book dealing with the Teachings of Carl Jung. Jung taught the concept of the Anima and Animus. He believed that each of us carry our other half inside ourselves. A man has the Animus or feminine aspect within just as the woman carries the male aspect within her. For a man the Animus is often his muse, such as in the case of De Vinci’s Mona Lisa. As I understand it, De Vinci worked on that painting for many years and carried it around with him when he traveled. The Mona Lisa represents, in Jungian terms, the connection to the collective unconscious. If you look at this painting you will see that his muse stands in front of a wondrous world. Diane was a tremendous influence on me and was my guide to many books and concepts that started me on the path of esoteric studies. It was during this study that I had an extraordinary experience. I was just waking up one morning when I heard a voice inside say: “keep your eyes closed.” I followed this instruction and suddenly a picture of a beautiful Asian woman appeared on the screen of my mind. She was a painting and yet she appeared alive. She stood in the center of a stained glass window of brilliant white and yellow crystals with an intense light streaming through from behind it. I found the vision breath taking. I then came to consciousness and opened my eyes, to find that this picture remained even with my eyes open. (I have put two images together to try to show a crude version of what I saw. The woman in this painting is the closest I could find to the woman I saw in my vision.) She was very much my Anima; or guardian to the unconscious; beckoning me to enter a greater World. All day long I could see this beautiful Asian woman in my vision whether my eyes were open or closed. It was such a powerful image that I spent many years looking for it in Art books because I felt it must somehow exist in this physical world. Perhaps it does, but a part of me always understood that it was just for me alone. I have looked for this magical vision in the eyes of each woman who has been my lover. And as I travel now to mystical new lands of ancient cultures, I look for her still.