There is the seen and the unseen. The morphogenetic field (www.sheldrake.org) is an example of the unseen. It is that digital database in the ether that interacts with us. It is real and is an expression of the physical reality that surrounds itself. It creates its ‘character’ because of our interaction with this field. We perhaps unknowingly obtain information stored in this field and use it for our work and for our daily use. It is an organic, constantly changing database of past ideas. Like-thinking groups, no matter where they are, have ‘direct connections across time and space’ through this unseen field. 2 groups, of like minded people, who don’t know of each other, working in 2 different parts of the world, are unknowingly influencing each other by their creations through this field. So Art becomes a slow frontline progress of ideas from different parts of the world and it moves forward as one entity.
Then, there is also that secret force of the universe: ‘The field’ (by Lynne McTaggart). She explains after talking to scientist that there is an underlying electromagnetic field that permeates the whole universe and is responsible for holding the universe in place. This field exists even under very low temperatures and is not affected by the happenings around it. It is forever ever will be, just the way it is, unchanging, omnipresent and unseen but always present. Things we cannot see but unknowingly we live by their rules. The science is beginning to open up this unseen world and making it very real for us. It is the same with the mind and how it works and how it interacts with the unseen.
For the artists it is creativity: this is a whole new ‘machine’ of its own. As Sheldrake had pointed out in one of his talks that it could possibly work outside the unseen database only choosing to interact with it if it wants to do so. An independent force responsible for progress and the ‘new’. So, as for ways of seeing: what is awareness? It is ‘looking’ without thinking. It is ‘looking’ without making a judgment. It is ‘looking’ without allowing time to alter its original state. There is no good or bad in this type of looking but only there is. I think artists will already be familiar with this type of looking. They would already have been there at some point: that one-pointedness, stare into the void or canvas, all lost to nothingness and not knowing where you had been when the real world returns. There was no thinking in that zone. But is this possible all the time in the walking-talking non meditative state.
Candice O’Denver says that “the true nature of the mind is infinitely expansive pure awareness”. This awareness is space-like, sky-like, primordially pure and timelessly free. It is uncaused and uncreated, the unchanging basis of all manifestation. “It has never been made into anything.” It is naturally ever-present in every moment, and always at rest. This changeless pure awareness is our true identity, and remains forever free and unaffected by transformations such as birth and death. As the “unchanging basic space of all phenomena”, awareness is that by which everything is known, the fundamental intelligence by which we know we exist. (http://www.greatfreedom.org/)
So how do we live in ‘our true identity’. The cross-legged meditator’s try and bring on this state of awareness by using a mantra to bring the mind to a state of emptiness and hence rest.
The mind is, but it does not think.
The mind now is, but it sees without thinking. There is an underlying energy of looking but without the ‘spikes’ of thought kicking itself up from the calm. To be in a state of awareness is to put away the thought as soon as it ‘spikes’ or bubbles to the surface. Cross-legged awareness is fine for you to know what it feels like, but to LIVE in awareness, is to be walking talking working playing awareness. Cross-legged awareness is a method to get to a way of looking, but walking talking awareness is to live with a true undisturbed state and to work in that calm state.
Not all thinking is good thinking. Psychological thinking is a waste of energy. Nothing comes of it. It ‘burns’ good brain cells for no outcome. He this and she that: psychological thinking (Jiddu Krishnamurti). You put away these unnecessary spikes of thinking and return to the calm base that permeates all, that is omnipresent, and you become part of that force that permeates the universe.
‘Short moments of awareness,
repeated many times,
become automatic!’ (Candice O’Denver)
Creativity, the new, lives here. You get to it through being aware and by leaving thinking out in the cold. Use thinking only when you need it, like crossing the road, look left, then right, or when baking a cake. But living in awareness…….put that thinking spike away when it is not needed. If you swing the dragon by its tail and out into the cold often enough you will find yourself living is a state of blissful awareness. And so what. What do you get by being in this state of awareness: the universe starts to download into your world? It cannot do it with the ‘noise’ of thinking or with conflict in the mind. That is why quiet calm living in awareness is important for the artist so he sees all, is all, not this or that by being forced into a ‘state’ or corner by thinking.
‘awareness is that by which everything is known’
(Candice O’Denver)
And also Jiddu Krishnamurti (Source – Jiddu Krishnamurti Talks in India, 1948).
‘‘It is only creative intelligence, creative understanding, that can bring to you a new culture, a new world, and a new happiness.’
And new ART
(siri 19th feb. 2010)