The Yantra and flowing forms in art

[Guest guest]

Hello-

 

The Sri Yantra is an image that fluctuates according to how it is

viewed. One can see the wholeness of the large triangle forms or one

can see the smaller triangle forms. However these are intertwined in

such a way that there is a shimmer illusion as one so easily shifts

into the other. One can also see a movement coming from the center and

again moving towards the center, and those practiced can see both. This

image about being coming into existence in the plane of time and space,

the plane of opposites. But the opposites, unity and multiplicity,

advancing and retreating, are depicted as merged while still remaining

separate. This simultaneous view of perspective has an affect on the

viewer designed to resemble, and moreover can be used to induce, an

ecstatic experience.

 

I have had some experiences of shifting or missing reference. I am sure

some of you can relate to this. Perhaps size loses its meaning and one

cannot feel something to be large or small, and the mind in its

disorientation at its loss of reference sees it as both. Or it could be

other things like a reference of direction disappearing so up and down

have no meaning. This not something that you forget easily when it

happens to you. And sometimes there is the notion that a glimpse of a

greater reality has been had. I leave it aside whether it has or not

been had, but such are the ruptures of perspective of a rapturous state

that lead people to many and differing spiritual pursuits.

 

There is another experience of an ecstatic nature that I have had which

is hyper associative. The view of things is intensely rich and

simultaneous aspects and meanings are experienced, not just thought of.

This is like being thrown into a mythic world, a waking dream, where

appearances affect less than the associated thoughts that come form it.

Rather than a loss of reference like noted above there comes a

multitude of reference and the reference is what is important.

 

For most of my life I have been drawn to art that attempts to merge

opposites. Max Ernst who would depict near and far on similar planes,

Escher's interlocking forms optical illusions, Samuel Beckett whose

characters will give opposing responses in the same sentence, and of

course Margritte's fabulous work. I was also always taken by Marc

Rothko. There is low lit room in the Tate Modern which has a series of

larger works from late in his career depicting fields of red and black.

The forms look like doors but the colors and the delineation between

them make the doors become portals as the foreground and background

shift. I find this shift of perspective to be about a spiritual theme

and the scale of the images can help to create an experience which can

be called spiritual in nature. I don't have any thoughts of artists

whose works show hyper association, but the forms of mythic traditions

with the simultaneous multiple aspects of a united divinity would

certainly be of this nature.

 

The two that are one, the one that are two, things don't appear as they

once were as you are passing in and through. I have never lost my sense

of self in any of my experiences, but certainly I have entered into

areas where there is a collapse of my standard perspective, a

perspective we all seem to be referencing when we talk. I don't know

about enlightenment or total union with the All but I know about the

compelling quality of my ecstatic experiences. Just on this side of the

one where the experiences of a witness may be difficult to describe

some of the forms of that experience can be rendered into something

suitable as art. And I believe that much the impetus of sacred art,

mythic stories and ritual have been informed by this attempt of the

depiction of these wayfaring experiences. And in doing so these

artifacts generate experiences compelling to those who have not been

blessed with first hand experience those states. Nor even by those who

may recreate these forms in a future tradition.

 

Which begs the question, if there is one, what is the necessity of this

art in a continuing culture?

 

Bret

[Guest guest]

I don't have any thoughts of artists

whose works show hyper association,

 

@@ Your Art does Bret. @@

 

 

Which begs the question, if there is one, what is the necessity of this

art in a continuing culture?

 

@@ Sometimes it is just for the artist who MUST paint or create as they must

breathe. Other reasons are that the artist like you is awakened and is infusing

Shakti into the painting activating all who can tie in to what is being shown.

The Divine is the place where the K draws its breath, love and creativity is the

exhalation imho. As long as there are people being activated, and it is an

endless procession as more come into the reception frequencies daily, hourly

etc. there will be, from the artists among us, the reflections of the divine and

of the sacred in the exalations of beauty that bless our lives, cups of

Kundalini, the sacred elexir, allowing us to know the one that is two and the

two that are one, Art like yours Bret, - chrism @@