MARK B.
ANSTENDIG
Mr.
Mark Anstendig, President of The Anstendig Institute, is a trained orchestra
conductor and professional photographer who, since 1970, has been engaged in
research on how we hear and see, on how we are affected by sight, sound (particularly
music), and mechanical vibrations, and on problems of natural-sounding sound
reproduction.
BACKGROUND
IN MUSIC AND SOUND
Mr.
Anstendig began studying piano in 1940, at the age of four. In grammar school,
he studied piano, tuba, all percussion instruments, voice and elocution. In
high school, at the Juilliard Preparatory Division, he studied piano and voice
and privately continued his study of percussion, tuba and elocution. For five
summers during high school, he participated in the National Music Camp,
Mr.
Anstendig attended The Juilliard School of Music for five years, from 1954
until 1959. He was one of the six to eight conducting majors under the French
conductor, Jean Morel. As a secondary major, he studied piano and tuba, under
Joseph Bloch and Joseph Novotny. His theoretical studies (literature and
materials of music) were under the direction of the composers Vittorio Giannini and Peter Mennin (the late president of Juilliard). He studied ear
training under Suzanne Bloch. For four summers while at Juilliard, Mr.
Anstendig had scholarships to the Aspen Music Festival, where he was a
conducting major under Hans Schwieger and Izler Solomon. In 1958, he studied conducting privately
with Ernst Maerzendorfer who was visiting
In
1959, Mr Anstendig was awarded a German Government
Grant to study conducting with Professor Maerzendorfer,
then with the Berlin Staedtische Oper.
This grant was specifically reserved for the Juilliard School of Music as one
of ten grants--Dankstipendium--offered to
different schools, each the best in its field. In
From
1959 until 1963, during summers and all vacations, Mr. Anstendig studied with
Nadia Boulanger in
In
1961, Mr. Anstendig was chosen by audition as one of the few Active Conductors
in the Herbert van Karajan conducting practicum. As an exception to their rule,
the German Government Grant was extended for a second time in 1962 to allow Mr.
Anstendig to remain in these courses.
Since
Mr. Anstendig did not have perfect pitch and since a finely tuned ear was
demanded by both Jean Morel and Nadia Boulanger, Mr.
Anstendig studied ear-training extensively, under the finest ear-training
teachers. In addition to attending their regular classes, he studied privately
for four years with Suzanne Bloch, who organized the ear-training department at
Juilliard for William Schumann, and also for four years with Professor Hartig, who taught the ear-training classes for conductors
and composers at the Hochschule. While working
with Nadia Boulanger he also studied ear-training
privately with her assistant, Professor Annette Dieudonne.
While at Juilliard, he studied daily for five years with Michael Charry, a Juilliard colleague who is now an active
conductor.
BACKGROUND
IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND OPTICS
While
in
In
the efforts to make known the possibility of exact focus, Mr. Anstendig was
entrusted with representing Mr. Dahl in his dealings with the press, the
public, and the industry. Among other things, he exhibited the "State of
the Art” of focusing optical lenses on the stand of Arnold and Richter (makers
of the prestigious Arriflex movie cameras) at the Fotokina exposition in Cologne, and in the Berlin
Pavilion of the New York World's Fair, for which he was also commissioned to
make photographs of Berlin landmarks demonstrating the effects of
focal-point-exact focus with all types of lenses, including extreme
focal-lengths up to
Mr.
Anstendig's photographic activities also included
one-man exhibits, fashion and advertising, theater photography, and all the
ADDITIONAL
BACKGROUND
From
1965 until 1969, Mr. Anstendig was privately taken through the stages of the
original Autogenic Training by Dr. Hans Citron, an early collaborator with Carl
Jung and head of
Since 1970, Mr. Anstendig has combined his scientific experience in the fields of sound, photo-optics and autogenic training in the work now continued by The Anstendig Institute. Since the organization of the Institute in 1978, Mr. Anstendig has completed his work in achieving natural-sounding sound reproduction through a use of sophisticated equalization techniques. He has also written and compiled the necessary materials to make known the effects of focal-point-exact focus
MYSTICAL WORK
In 1959, Mr. Anstendig’s move to Europe for a long time was foretold by a psychic who waylaid him. Right afterwards, Juilliard was offered the Dankstipendium (Thank You Grant) for music by the German Foreign Exchange (Austauschdienst) and Juilliard awarded it to Mr. Anstendig to study with Ernst Maerzendorfer in West Berlin who became a close friend.
On his first day in Berlin, Mark attended a performance by Maerzendorfer and had dinner with him. Afterwards, the moment Mark entered a famous German nightclub, the German-born Hungarian Master/Guru Jeno Vincze (http://anstendig.com/Jeno/jeno_index.html) came over to him. Jeno became Mark’s Guru. He opened Mark’s eyes, showing him that, while advanced in sound and music, he knew little about seeing and theater arts, and nothing about higher mystical realities.
Later that year, the German fashion designer, Heinz Oestergaard, took Mark to meet the clairvoyant, Ursula Kardos, who became his closest friend and mentor in Berlin. Until Mark left Berlin, he and Kardos took walks almost every day around the Berlin Lakes. Kardos furthered Mark’s mystical abilities.
When Mark returned to the US, Jeno came to live with him in NYC for almost two years. When Mark moved to San Francisco, Jeno, always the world traveler, visited regularly. After a while, when it became apparent that Mark’s musical training had accelerated his progress, Jeno left him in charge of his people in San Francisco and continued his other activities, remaining always in close touch. In order to live frugally and together with independent like-minded, people, those interested in this mystical work have lived together communally.
The utilization of modern conveniences, etc., has made it possible to greatly speed up the progress of the Path. As of this writing, for the first time we know of, five people have achieved a liberated lung, whereby their lungs breathe independently of the diaphragm. For comparison, it took forty years for the writer of the ancient Book “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, to reach the end of passive meditation and the beginning of the active control of the breathing. That is a very early stage in The Path and a long time before the beginning of the disciplines that liberate the lung, while achieving a lot more than that.