Science, Culture and Integral Yoga :: the fractal expressionism of Jackson Pollack

Experimental observations of the paintings of Jackson Pollock reveal that the artist was exploring ideas in fractals and chaos before these topics entered the scientific mainstream

Can science be used to further our understanding of art? This question meets with reservations from both scientists and artists. However, for the abstract paintings produced by Jackson Pollock in the 1940s and 1950s, scientific objectivity proves to be an essential tool for determining their fundamental content. Pollock dripped paint from a can onto vast canvases on the floor of his barn. Although recognized as a crucial advance in the evolution of modern art, the precise quality and significance of the patterns created by this unorthodox technique remain controversial. Here we analyse Pollock's patterns and show that they are fractal. In other words, they display the fingerprint of nature.

In contrast to the broken lines painted by conventional brush strokes on canvas, Pollock used a constant stream of paint to produce a uniquely continuous trajectory as it splattered onto the canvas below. A typical canvas would be reworked many times over a period of several months, with Pollock building up a dense web of paint trajectories. This repetitive and cumulative process -sometimes called "continuous dynamic" painting- is strikingly similar to the way in which patterns evolve in nature.

Nature, chaos and art

Other parallels with natural processes are also apparent. Gravity plays a central role for both Pollock and nature. Furthermore, by abandoning the easel, Pollock allowed the horizontal canvas to become a physical terrain to be traversed, and his approach from all four sides replicated the isotropy and homogeneity of many natural patterns. His canvases were also large and unframed, similar to a natural environment. Can these shared characteristics be the signature of a deeper common approach?

Since its discovery in the 1960s, chaos theory has been spectacularly successful in explaining many of nature's processes. Examples of chaotic behaviour in nature include the Gulf Stream, weather patterns, fluctuations in the human heart and Jupiter's Great Red Spot (see the books by Gleick and Ott in further reading). Could Pollock's painting process also have been chaotic?

There were two revolutionary aspects to the way in which Pollock painted and both have the potential to introduce chaos. The first was his motion around the canvas. In contrast to traditional brush canvas contact techniques, where the artist's motions are limited to hand and arm movements, Pollock used his whole body to introduce a wide range of length scales into his painting In doing so, Pollock's dashes around the canvas could possibly have followed Levy flights: this special distribution of movements, first investigated by Paul Lévy in 1936, has recently been used to describe the statistics of chaotic systems. (In Brownian motion a particle makes random jumps and each jump is usually small: the resulting diffusion can be described by a Gaussian distribution with a finite variance. In Lévy-like diffusion, on the other hand, long flights are interspersed with shorter jumps, and the variance of the distribution diverges. See the articles by Klafter et al. and Tsallis in further reading).

The second revolutionary aspect concerns the application of paint, which Pollock allowed to drip onto the canvas. In 1984 Robert Shaw of the University of California at Santa Cruz showed that the flow of water or other fluid from a dripping tap could be changed from non-chaotic to chaotic flow by making small adjustments to the flow rate (see Shaw in further reading). Likewise it is possible that Pollock could have exploited chaotic flow.

A simple experiment can be designed and built to investigate this possibility. The experiment consists of a pendulum that records its motion by dripping an identical paint trajectory onto a horizontal canvas. When left to swing on its own, the pendulum follows a predictable, non-chaotic motion. However, by knocking the pendulum at a frequency slightly lower than the one at which it naturally swings, the system becomes a "kicked rotator" (see the articles by Taylor and Tritton in further reading). The kick can be controlled very precisely by using, for example, electromagnetic driving coils. By tuning the frequency and magnitude of the kick, chaotic motion can be generated.

Just as Pollock's paintings are built from many cries-crossing trajectories, these pendulum paintings can also be built up trajectory by trajectory through the use of different launch conditions. In figure 1 sections of non-chaotic and chaotic drip paintings are compared with a section of Pollock's painting Number 14, 1948. The similarity between the chaotic drip painting and the painting by Pollock is striking

Figure 1 Painting by numbers

Detail of non-chaotic (top) and chaotic (middle) drip trajectories generated by a pendulum, and a detail of Pollock's Number 14, 1948 (bottom). The similarity between the chaotic drip painting and Pollock's painting is striking.

If both patterns have been generated by chaos, what common quality would be expected in the patterns left behind? Many natural chaotic systems form fractals in the patterns that record the process. Examples include the edges of clouds, river patterns, coastlines and lightning paths (see the books by Mandelbrot and Gouyet in further reading). Nature builds its fractals using statistical self-similarity: the patterns observed at different magnifications, although not identical, are described by the same statistics. The results are visually more subtle than the instantly identifiable, artificial patterns generated using exact self-similarity, where the patterns repeat exactly at different magnifications.

Various visual clues help to identify statistical self-similarity. The first relates to "fractal scaling". The visual consequence of obeying the same statistics at different magnifications is that it becomes difficult tojudge the magnification, and hence the length scale, of the pattern being viewed. This can be seen in nature and in Pollock's paintings (figure 2).

Figure 2 The natural look

Photographs of a 0.1 m section of snow on the ground (top), a 50 m section of forest (middle) and a 2.5 m section of Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950 (bottom). It is difficult to judge the magnification, and hence the length scale, of such "self-similar" patterns. (Jackson Pollock. One (Number 31, 1950). (1950). Oil and enamel on unprimed canvas, (269.5 x 530.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund (by exchange). Photograph © 1999 The Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

A second visual clue relates to "fractal displacement": this refers to the fact that different spatial locations on the pattern can be described by the same statistics. The visual consequence of this property is that the patterns gain a uniform character. The authors have measured a quantity known as the pattern density - the percentage of the canvas filled by the pattern within a 5 x 5 cm square -at various points on Pollock's Number 14, 1948 and shown that it is uniform across the canvas.

Experimental art

These visual clues to fractal content can be confirmed by calculating the fractal dimension of Pollock's drip paintings. The large amount of repeating structure within a fractal pattern causes it to occupy more space than a smooth one-dimensional line, but not to the extent of completely filling the two-dimensional plane.

To detect and quantify this intermediate dimensionality of fractals, we calculate the fractal dimension, D, using the welI established "box-counting" method. We cover the scanned photograph of a Pollock painting with a computer-generated mesh of identical squares, and then count the number of squares, N(L) that contain part of the painted pattern. This count is repeated as the size L of the squares in the mesh is reduced. In this way the amount of canvas filled by the pattern can be compared at different magnifications. The largest size of square is chosen to match the size of the canvas, which can be several metres in dimension, and the smallest is chosen to match the finest paint work: the smallest value of L is typically 0.8 mm. Within this size range the count is not affected by any measurement resolution limits, such as those associated with the photographic or scanning procedures.

Values of the fractal dimension, D, are then extracted front a graph of N(L) versus L, using the relation N(L) ~ L^-D. The validity of this expression increases as L becomes smaller and the total number of boxes in the mesh is large enough to provide reliable counting statistics. In our measurements the total number of boxes ranges from 100 to 4 million (figure 3). If the results are plotted on log-log axes, the gradient of the curve is -D. The straightness of the graph's curve reflects the statistical self-similarity of the pattern, and the accuracy of the method has been confirmed by analysing test patterns consisting of standard fractals of known dimension.

The two chaotic processes proposed for generating Pollock's paint trajectories - his body movements and the dripping fluid motions - operate across distinctly different length scales. These scales can be estimated from film and still photography of Pollock at work (see the programme by Falkenberg and Namuth in further reading). Based on the physical range of his body motions and the canvas size, his Lévy flights over the canvas are expected to cover the approximate length scales between 1 cm and 2.5 m. In contrast, the drip process is expected to shape the trajectories over length scales between about 1 mm and 5 cm. The latter range has been calculated from variables that affect the drip process (such as paint velocity and the height the paint is dropped from) and the absorption of paint by the canvas (such as paint fluidity and canvas porosity).

Given these two different length scales we would therefore expect the fractal analysis to reveal two different values of the fractal dimension, D, in the two different ranges. And this is what we find (figure 3). We call these different values the drip fractal dimension, D_D, and the Lévy flight fractal dimension, D_L . Systems described by two or more values of D are not unusual: examples from nature include trees and bronchial systems.

Figure 3 A detailed look at a Pollock painting

Pollock's painting Blue Poles: Number 11 was analysed by covering a scanned photograph of the painting with a computer-generated mesh and counting the number of squares, N, that contain part of the pattern (lower inset). When N is plotted against L, the size of each square, on log-log axes, the data fall on a single line (the black line): the fractal dimension of the painting is given by the gradient of the line. Like many of Pollock's paintings, Blue Poles contains layers of different colour: the graph shows N versus L for the aluminium layer. There are in fact two gradients, and hence two fractal dimensions: 1.63 at short lengths (red line) and 1.96 at longer lengths (blue). (The fractal dimension of the whole painting is 1.72 at short lengths and 1.98 at longer lengths.) The two gradients can be related to Pollock's drip technique and to his movements around the canvas. The upper inset shows a plot of pattern density (the percentage of the canvas filled by the pattern within a 5 x 5 cm square) versus position across a 43 x 43 cm section of the painting Number l4, 1948.

One consequence of having more than one value of D is that each value can only be observed over a limited range of scales. In 1998 David Avnir and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel compared the fractals measured in a variety of physical systems, and found that the average range over which fractal behaviour was observed was approximately one order of magnitude (Science 1998 279 39 40). In their survey, Avnir and co-workers looked at all the papers reporting experimental evidence for fractal behaviour that were published in the Physical Review series of journals between 1990 and 1996. In reply to this work Benoit Mandelbrot of Yale University in the US stressed that so-called "limited-range" fractals are no less fractal than ones observed over many orders of magnitude (Science 1998 279 783-784).

The range of lengths over which the drip fractal dimension, D_D, applies was measured to be between 1.1 and 1.3 orders of magnitude, depending on the painting being analysed. The Lévy flight fractal dimension, D_L was found to be valid over 2 orders of magnitude. The length scale that marks the transition between these two regimes typically occurs at 1-5 cm. These ranges are consistent with the values calculated above from the films and photographs of Pollock at work and from the physical properties of the paint and canvas.

Our measurements on Pollock's painting Blue Poles: Number 11 gave a value of D_D = 1.72. For comparison, we note that typical values of D for natural fractal patterns such as coastlines and lightning are 1.25 and 1.3. Our analysis also shows that Pollock refined his dripping technique, with D_D increasing steadily through the years (see Taylor et al. in further reading). Untitled: Composition with Pouring II, one of his first drip paintings from 1943, has a D_D value close to 1. Number 14, 1948; Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950; and Blue Poles: Number 11, which was painted in 1952, have values of 1.45,1.67 and 1.72 for D_D. In each case the value of D_L was higher than D_D (and quite close to 2), indicating a more effficient space-filling fractal pattern at the larger scales.

Beneath the surface

How did Pollock construct and refine his fractal patterns? In many paintings, though not all, he introduced the different colours more or less sequentially: the majority of trajectories with the same colour were deposited during the same period in the painting's evolution. To investigate how Pollock built his fractal patterns, we have electronically deconstructed the paintings into their constituent coloured layers and calculated the fractal content of each layer. (Indeed, the data in figure 3 are for the aluminium layer of Blue Poles: Number 11.) We find that each individual layer consists of a uniform fractal pattern. As each of the coloured patterns is reincorporated to build up the complete pattern, the fractal dimension of the overall painting rises. Thus the combined pattern of many colours has a higher fractal dimension than any of the single colour layers.

The first layer in a Pollock painting plays a pivotal role - it has a significantly higher fractal dimension than any of the subsequent layers. This first layer essentially determines the fractal nature of the overall painting, acting as an anchor layer for the subsequent layers which then fine-tune the fractal dimension. Pollock's Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 and its black anchor layer are compared in figure 4.

Figure 4 Pollock: back to basics

A comparison of the black anchor layer (left) and the complete pattern consisting of four layers (black, brown, white and grey on a beige canvas) for the painting Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (right). The complete pattern occupies 47% of the canvas surface area, while the anchor layer occupies 32%. The fractal dimensions are D_D = 1.66 and D_L = 1.93 for the anchor layer, and D_D = 1.67 and D_L = 1.94 for the complete painting. Pollock painted this work, which measures 2.66 x 5.30 m, in 1950. (Jackson Pollock. Autumn Rhythm (Number30, 1950).The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George. A. Hearn Fund, 1957.(57.92) Photograph © 1980 The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Pollock's legacy

Pollock died in 1956, before chaos and fractals were discovered. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Pollock consciously understood the fractals he was painting. Nevertheless, his introduction of fractals was deliberate. For example, the colour of the anchor layer was chosen to produce the sharpest contrast against the canvas background. This layer also occupied more canvas space than the other layers, suggesting that Pollock wanted this highly fractal anchor layer to visually dominate the painting. Furthermore, after the paintings were completed he would remove regions near the edge of the canvas where the pattern density was less uniform.

Pollock also took steps to perfect the "drip and splash" technique itself His initial drip paintings of 1943 consisted of a single layer of trajectories that, although distributed across the whole canvas, only occupied 20% of a relatively small canvas (0.35 m²). By 1952 he was painting multiple layers of trajectories that covered over 90% of much larger canvases, some as large as 10 m². This increase in both the canvas size and the density of the trajectories was accompanied by a rise in the fractal dimension of the patterns from close to 1 to 1.72. Indeed, because the fractal dimension follows such a distinct evolution with time, fractal analysis could be employed as a quantitative, objective technique to both validate and date Pollock's drip paintings.

Pollock's contribution to the evolution of art is secure. He described nature directly. Rather than mimicking it, he adopted the language of nature - fractals - to build his own patterns. In doing so he was, in many ways, ahead of his contemporaries in art and science.

Further reading

P Falkenberg and H Namuth 1998 Physics, Fractals and Pollock. This was part of a TV documentary series called Quantum made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. See also Namuth's article in Pollock Painting ed Barbara Rose (Agrinde Publications, New York, 1980)

J Gleick 1987 Chaos (Penguin Books, New York)

J Gouyet 1996 Physics and Fractal Structures (Springer, New York)

J Klafter, M F Shesinger and G Zumofen 1996 Beyond Brownian motion Physics Today February pp33-39

EG Landau 1989 Jackson Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London)

B B Mandelbrot 1977 The Fractal Geometry of Nature (W H Freeman, NewYork)

E Ott 1993 Chaos in Dynamical Systems (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

R Shaw 1984 The Dripping Faucet as a Model Chaotic System (Aerial Press, Santa Cruz)

R P Taylor 1998 Splashdown New Scientist 25 July pp30-31

R P Taylor, A P Micolich and D Jonas 1999 Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings Nature 399 422

D Tritton 1986 Ordered and chaotic motion of a forced spherical pendulum Euro. J. Phys. 7 162

C Tsallis 1997 Levy distributions Physics World July pp43-45

Posted to:

.. Rich Carlson

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Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by ronjon on Sat 23 Dec 2006 02:35 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Physicists Refute Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings
December 6, 2006

An article recently posted in Nature [444, E9-E10 (30 November 2006)] apparently refutes Taylor's claim for finding fractality in Jackson Pollock's paintings.

Science Daily — Can mathematics explain the art of Jackson Pollock? Can it be used to authenticate paintings of uncertain provenance? Case Western Reserve University physicists address these questions in next week's edition of Nature.

Case physics doctoral student Kate Jones-Smith first encountered these questions in December 2004 when preparing for a weekly astrophysics seminar . Jones-Smith performed a Google search that linked her to research by University of Oregon physicist Richard Taylor and collaborators, who claim that Jackson Pollock's famous drip paintings, are fractals. Fractals are complex geometric shapes that have been studied by mathematicians since the 1970s.

In articles that appeared in scientific journals and news magazines including Nature, Physics World and Scientific American, Taylor and coworkers also claim that fractal analysis can be used to distinguish Pollock's drip paintings from imitations.

Intrigued, Jones-Smith began to examine Taylor's articles, but quickly found that the work was seriously flawed She showed that doodles that she could make in minutes using Adobe Photoshop were as fractal as any Pollock drip painting, vividly refuting Taylor's claim that Pollock was able to generate fractals by hand only because he had attained a mastery of chaotic motion.

Jones-Smith presented a pointed critique of Taylor's work to Case astrophysicists and was encouraged to write up her critique for publication. But since Taylor's original work had appeared in Nature five years earlier, she thought interest in the topic had waned.

That changed this February when Taylor was invited by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to determine the authenticity of paintings recently found by Alex Matter, son of the late photographer Herbert Matter. According to Matter, a close personal friend of Pollock's, the paintings are the work of Pollock, but Taylor used fractal analysis to pronounce them inauthentic.

Convinced now that her work might still be of interest, Jones-Smith developed her critique into the article, Revisiting Pollock's Drip Paintings, co-authored with Harsh Mathur, Case professor of physics.

A key element of the paper is a painting called Untitled 5 that Jones-Smith created in a matter of minutes in Photoshop. Untitled 5 depicts a field of stars and looks like the kind of drawing the proud mother of a three-year old might stick on a refrigerator door, says Jones-Smith. But, according to the fractal authentication criteria that Taylor has made public, it is an authentic Pollock.

Jones-Smith adds, "I found I can make paintings at will in Photoshop that meet all the criteria he has made public."

A defining feature of fractals is their self-similarity: They look the same if magnified. Sometimes the self-similarity is visible to the eye, as in the famous Koch snowflake, which is composed of a hierarchy of ever smaller equilateral triangles. More often the self-similarity is statistical and can be detected only by computer analysis using a technique called box-counting.

In their Nature article, Jones-Smith and Mathur show that Pollock's works lack the range of scales needed to be considered fractal in the sense of box-counting analysis. This is because typically the smallest marks of paint are only a thousand times smaller than the entire canvas.

The researchers show that considering Pollock's paintings to be fractal actually leads to mathematical contradictions and inconsistencies. "Not only does Taylor state Pollock's paintings are fractal," said Jones-Smith, "but he goes further and says such things as this is why Pollock is such a master—that he had mastered the language of nature."

The Case researchers' findings, particularly their painting Untitled 5, do not support this contention. Jones-Smith and Mathur also note that Taylor has analyzed only 17 out of more than 180 drip paintings made by Pollock. Aside from the other problems with his analysis, the Case physicists contend that 17 paintings are too small a sample to provide an adequate basis for some of Taylor's inferences.

Adding to the unfolding drama of this research is that while Jones-Smith was preparing for her December 2004 seminar, on the other side of campus- unbeknownst to the physicists- Ellen Landau, Case professor of art history, and one of the world's foremost experts on Pollock, was studying the paintings discovered by Alex Matter. Jones-Smith and Mathur learnt about Landau's work only this February by reading about it in a newspaper article. Immediately they contacted her to tell her about their research.

"Once Harsh contacted me, I collaborated with him and Kate, providing them with in-depth information on Jackson Pollock and his working methods useful to their project," said Landau. "I am pleased they have successfully refuted Richard Taylor's thesis and that it will be published in Nature. Irrespective of whatever determination is ultimately made on the authenticity of the recently found Matter paintings, fractal analysis should not be considered a foolproof technique for authenticating works by Pollock. The fact that Taylor has refused to fully share his testing criteria casts further doubt on the credibility of his claims."

Jones-Smith concurs, noting that the main implication of her work for the Matter paintings is that fractal analysis should not be part of the debate regarding their authenticity.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Case Western Reserve University.
____________
Taylor's response to the new critique is here.

Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by RY Deshpande on Sun 24 Dec 2006 06:19 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Scientific fractal or no fractal, I wish to understand, and enjoy, the spirit of beauty in a creative art, of whatever kind that be. Whatever be the technique and whatever the means of execution, form has to express inner beauty and harmony of the thing; it can even attempt the expression of the formless--as we have the infinity of calm on the sculptured statues of Buddha in the Ajanta-Elora caves. Can someone please look into it from that point of view and evaluate Pollock's paintings? Thanks and

Merry Christmas

to everybody.

RYD

Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by Rich on Sun 24 Dec 2006 03:36 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Pollock's painting perhaps retains an influence of the automatic writing which inspired early 20th century
European surrealist and also perhaps due to the growing popularity of psycho-analysis sought to express the pure spontaneity of the unconscious process underlying creativity. Perhaps one can view in his work the coming into being of certain subtle physical realities or perhaps they just reflect the chaotic state of Pollock's own unconscious
influenced by his bouts of manic depression and alcoholism.

Of course his work can also be viewed according to the emerging trends in the arts of the time, which were themselves influenced by the devastation of civilization triggered by the World War, which shattered any idea that evolution was progressive and driven by and central organizing ideal of rationality.

His canvas like some modernist literary works or contemporary atonal music of the time lack a defined center or focal point. The entire canvas is both center and periphery. This is an idea which of course has spilled over into the postmodernist worldview. His earlier works however are influenced by American heart land artist Thomas Hart Benton, (an artist I much admire)- and demonstrate that he could also beautifully portray form in a classical sense.

also a merry christmas to all, and hope to see everyone in Pondi in Jan.

rich

Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by rakesh on Sun 24 Dec 2006 05:48 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

don't know much about art but

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.

Someone can suggest some good introductory books
to understand art.

Thanks,

rakesh.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by Rich on Mon 25 Dec 2006 10:33 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Hi Rakesh

I am putting a link to a good site I found about art history. I think Debashish is the best person to give a reference for a book, The History of Art by Janson maybe one choice on Western Art and Art History by Marilyn Stokstad also focuses on Western Art but also studies in some detail art outside the western tradition.

Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by RY Deshpande on Sun 24 Dec 2006 08:16 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Even if you assume these conditions, can you tell anything about the success Pollok achieved through his paintings? Did he succeed in getting or revealing what surrealism was posited for, was attempting to do? Could he deliver a solacing message to the War-torn civilisation, that its wounds could be healed by it? Or it was just a naked show of those ugly things and happenings which kill all our sensibilities? Have the subtle physical realities shone out in his creations in any deeply satisfying manner? If he has an element of mysticism, of whatever kind it be, did he realise that there is something else also than the ideal of rationality in evolution driving it and making it progress? Define a yard-stick and measure him with it. Aesthetic values are always subjective, but there is a universality as well that comes from the regions of this spirit or the soul. How far did the subjective become universal in him? Otherwise the work will greatly lose its significance.

Take the boutique paintings. The colours floating on the surface of water can at times elicit situations when some invisible eye starts seeing the wonders of creation from the depths below. The veil is penetrated and at once shines out the face of the indefinable. From the dark ocean of inconscience, salilam apraketam of the Rig Veda, a new world seems to take birth. This is what at times Champaklal achieved in his boutique paintings.

“Modern Art opines that beauty is functional! that is, whatever serves its function or serves a true purpose is artistic and beautiful—for instance, if a clerk produces a neat copy of an official letter without mistakes, the clerk and his copy are both of them works of art and beautiful!” This is from Sri Aurobindo writing in 1935. Apropos of surrealism, it acquires meaning and value if it can go deep enough in its dream-experience, almost touching the soul-state, the inner bordering the psychic. If from that state can spring up an artistic expression, it at once becomes convincing and fulfilling. Does it happen in Pollok? He need not have anything spiritual in a direct sense, but the evocations do matter. Should we not assess him for that?

Creativity based on the unconscious process can be dangerous. The danger is of entering into the Dangerous Intermediate Zone so dreaded by the spiritual aspirants. And remember there is always a Mephistopheles waiting there to entice the gullible soul of man. To be a Mystic of the Unconscious can be self-glorifying, the lure of becoming important. But see how disastrous it turns out to be even for the accomplished. I will just quote a passage from Sri Aurobindo vis-à-vis the theosophists.

“From one point of view I cannot find praise warm enough to do justice to the work of Theosophy; from another I cannot find condemnation strong enough to denounce it. It has forced on the notice of an unwilling world truths to which orthodoxy is blind and of which heterodoxy is afraid or incredulous. It has shown a colossal courage in facing ridicule, trampling on prejudice and slander, persisting in faith in spite of disillusionment, scandal and a continual shifting of knowledge. They have kept the ﬂag of a past & future science ﬂying against enormous difficulties. On the other hand by bringing to the investigation of that science—not its discovery, for to the Hindu Yogin it is known already—the traditional European methods, the methods of the market-place and the forum, it has brought on the truths themselves much doubt and discredit, and by importing into them the forms, jugglery and jargon of European mystics, their romanticism, their unbridled imagination, their galloping impatience, their haste, bragging and loudness, their susceptibility to dupery, trickery, obstinate error and greedy self-deception, Theosophists have strengthened doubt and discredit and driven many an earnest seeker to bewilderment, to angry suspicion or to final renunciation of the search for truth. They have scattered the path of the conscientious investigators, the severe scientists of Yoga who must appear in the future, with the thorns and sharp ﬂints of a well-justified incredulity and suspicion. I admit the truths that Theosophy seeks to unveil; but I do not think they can be reached if we fall into bondage even to the most inspiring table talk of Mahatmas or to the confused anathemas and vaticinations hurled from their platform tripods by modern Pythonesses of the type of Mrs Annie Besant, that great, capacious but bewildered and darkened intellect, now stumbling with a loud and confident blindness through those worlds of twilight and glamour, of distorted inspirations, perverted communications and misunderstood or half-understood perceptions which are so painfully familiar to the student and seeker. If these things do not satisfy me, what then do I seek? I seek a light that shall be new, yet old, the oldest indeed of all lights.”

We have to have vibrancy, another vision of things, a gaze looking into the luminous spaces of spiritual calm that alone supports the expression of love and joy and sweetness and and beauty and happiness of form, even its assertive dynamism. That gives a real push to evolution.

O T Ravindran, an Indian painter of plants, once wrote about a cactus. “Plants, especially the natural ones (as opposed to those artificially made) have a vibrancy of their own. They only need our help to bring out the beauty in them. Even the weed growing unnoticed in the thicket is strikingly beautiful. Plant them, sketch them and arrange them and they become pieces of fine art. Art, whatever man may claim it to be, is nothing but his sincere effort to imitate the unattainable perfection that is Nature.” Imitate, ...well! But at least imitate it well!

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa quotes Kabir: The formless Absolute is my Father, and God with form is my Mother.

That’s it.

RYD

Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by Rich on Mon 25 Dec 2006 10:18 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Did Pollock succeed? Well as one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism he certainly did. In my opinion some of his canvases express the subtle worlds behind our own, but some of them also just express the chaotic state of his wanderings through the intermediate zone. Does his canvases succeed in expressing a certain subtle truth of the time period he inhabited (which in some ways invoked the intermediate zone). Well I think for the most part they do

While I certainly agree with Sri Aurobindo's that the highest expression of art is to reveal spiritual truth. I also do not think that we can use that as the sole criteria for pronouncing judgment on a work of art. ( and I have also had this conversation with my brother a staunch catholic) Artistic expression may also express the soul of a certain time period (as I think Pollacks does) it may be offered in a form of social critique, irony, satire, to awaken the viewer to certain social truth or it may simply express ones own creative response to ones own particular experience of being in the world. Now to the extent ones creative response can be universalized to awaken in the observer a sense of recognition and allows them to also internalize the experience the artist intends maybe used as one of the criteria for the success of the work.

I also agree with Sri Aurobindo's comments on Theosophy however I think that two artist who were influenced in part by Theosophy were among the most successful of European painters of the 20th century to express if not always spiritual truth then certainly a vision of the loftier planes of being. One of these artist is Paul Klee and one is Wassily Kandinsky.

The interesting thing I find in non-representational art (e..g. abstract) is that it appears on the scene about the same time when the arrival of photographic and cinematic images begin to saturate human consciousness with an endless array of images which mirror and reproduce the lifeworld we inhabit. Although this trend begins with the Impressionist in the last half of the 19th century. Its almost as if at the advent of the 20th century when new technologies emerge which can accurately mass produce the images of the world, a new medium of artistic expression (Expressionism) evolved
which forced the viewer to contemplate the world hidden behind the one we perceive with the senses.

rich

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by RY Deshpande on Tue 26 Dec 2006 05:11 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Rich: While I certainly agree with Sri Aurobindo's that the highest expression of art is to reveal spiritual truth. I also do not think that we can use that as the sole criteria for pronouncing judgment on a work of art.

It is not necessary that revelation by the artist of the spiritual truth alone will make art great. Shakespeare had nothing spiritual in him, neither in his person nor in his wonderful art which was with any number of murders. But what an expression of the spirit of life that his is! Somehow he was able to come in intimate contact with the living beings and forces of the life-world, of a certain type, and speak for them in its own forceful and rushing impetuous language, language so perfect for the occasion, to serve the purpose as if it was designed for it. It became an authentic expression of the joy of the life-spirit itself, in spite of the crudeness of human nature and the “barbarous” strength of his presentation. He could tap that life-energy and create a vibrant world with its own charm and with its own power, casting a strange but desirable spell of aesthetic experience on us. The effect is such that the fearful Lady Macbeth turns into the archetypal and, paradoxically, takes away all the fear that is there in it, all the repulsion our sensibilities are prone to. The highest expression of art can come from any of the sources, mental, vital, physical, psychic, mystical, overhead, spiritual, and ablaze with one or more than one sun of the spirit. When that happens it becomes great.

And let us also note that the reverse is not always true. We may have spiritual contents in a piece of literature or art, but that does not necessarily make it an outstanding art. If we have to give an example it could be of AE and Yeats: one was a great mystic and the other an artistic seer, with the other part remaining behind.

About Shakespeare Sri Aurobindo writes: “…his is not a drama of mere externalised action, for it lives from within and more deeply than our external life. This is not Virat, the seer and creator of gross forms, but Hiranyagarbha, the luminous mind of dreams, looking through those forms to see his own images behind them.” And again: “Whatever Shakespeare may suggest, it is not holding up a mirror to life and Nature, but a moved and excited reception and evocation.” It looks as though the flesh and blood in his characters have such capacity that hey can become real in some other world, achieving another kind of quintessentiality far beyond the power of abstraction.

If there is the soul of abstraction, which ought to be there if it has to have contents and significance for us, then this art must bring it out, its laughter and its weeping, its colours and its musical richnesses, its warmth and repugnance, its reality that is the impersonal behind the personal, form of the wonderful formless. Does that happen? Does the art of Pollock see the images of the one it is imaging? see the reality of the abstract behind the abstraction it is making?

RYD

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by Debashish on Tue 26 Dec 2006 10:41 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Pollock's drip paintings have their precursor in 15th c. Japanese Muromachi "splashed-ink" paintings or even earlier 8th c. Chinese Tang dynasty drip creamics, a nodal point in the socialization of the art of accident or the accident of art. I find Pollock's paintings beautifully textured, layered if decentered patterns which express the dialectic between order and chaos. The process of their creation is a closeness to universal creative processes. In this lies their profundity and "message of their time" (as RC has accurately described) to me. Japanese Zen and Zen-influenced painting also aimed at this closeness or identification in a variety of ways. That he was an alcoholic makes little difference here since several of the best Zen painters of Japan also often created under states of heavy sake inebriation - eg. Uragami Gyokudo or in modern times, Munakata Shiko, both of whom imho stand out as giants in the art legacy of the world.

DB

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by RY Deshpande on Wed 27 Dec 2006 02:14 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

From a professional point of view what you are saying might be impeccable and perfectly satisfying. But I wish to look at things from an Aurobindonian point of view, the authentic spirit of aesthesis speaking about these matters in the possibilities of expression which is an aspect of progress and manifestation. If there has to be a future art, where would this fit in? Please opine.

RYD

Re: Art and Spiral Dynamics

by ronjon on Wed 27 Dec 2006 04:00 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

I'm wondering if Don Beck's 'Spiral Dynamics' might be useful in this discussion? (See his comments in the SCIY article, The Challenge of Our Moment: A Roundtable Discussion with Don Beck, Brian Swimme, Peter Senge, & Andrew Cohen.)

E.g., Beck's comment re habitats:

"...when I talk about habitats, I mean the social, political, and economic habitats or life conditions that will facilitate new levels of psychological emergence in individuals and cultures. The system of Spiral Dynamics uses the image of a spiral to describe the underlying developmental process through which individuals and cultures progress, with each upward turn representing a meme—the worldviews or value systems within us that form in response to changing life conditions. [For more information about Spiral Dynamics, see www.wie.org/spiraldynamics.] My late colleague Clare Graves identified eight memes or levels of development through which both individuals and whole societies pass, and we use colors to differentiate these stages in the Spiral Dynamics model. These fundamental core patterns, although expressed in different ways in various cultures and subcultures, are common themes across humanity, all over the planet. And only by understanding these deeper value-system currents does it become possible to develop more realistic big-picture views and craft practical and appropriate solutions to real problems.

The idea would be that we gently, if possible, and sometimes with tough love when necessary, assist humans to emerge through these layers and levels. A good example of how this can work would be Singapore, where they built a pretty rigid authoritarian system (blue), which most of us would see as unnecessarily punitive. But that's how those folks are dealing with their life conditions, which include five volatile ethnic groups (purple-red) that need that structure. And now they need to move to the next level and create a more scientific, rational system (orange)—in other words, create "Singapore, Inc." and begin to compete more openly in the global economy. So you can begin to see how, as the life conditions problems are solved at one level, the next political/social/economic package becomes necessary, which then makes possible a movement to the next level. And because different cultures are at different levels on the spiral, there are different futures for different folks. What's next for Singapore would be something that's history for us. And the future of the third world will have to be second world Singapore-type authority before either first world autonomy or postmodern sensitivity become an option. ..."

Would applying the principles of Spiral Dynamics perhaps be relevant in this discussion re the value of different levels of art to the spiritual evolution of humanity?

~ ron

Re: Re: Art and Spiral Dynamics

by Rich on Thu 28 Dec 2006 03:16 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Ron

personally I think spiral dynamics is a white male european social construction with little redeeming qualities. I read there book few years ago. These are the guys who called Colin Powell and Norman Schwartzkopf spiral masters for bombing the hell out of Iraq in the 1st war, and following them Ken Wilber called Tony Blair the most enlightened western leader before the 2nd gulf war, He was yellow in their color scheme.
In short I think this is a worthless grand theory which tries to explain everything but ends up explaining nothing

Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by rakesh on Wed 27 Dec 2006 07:45 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

RYD says: "Creativity based on the unconscious process can be dangerous. The danger is of entering into the Dangerous Intermediate Zone so dreaded by the spiritual aspirants. And remember there is always a Mephistopheles waiting there to entice the gullible soul of man."

I would like to know what these Dangerous Intermediate Zones are? What are their influence on spiritual aspirants
and how to understand their influence and protect oneself?

If you can provide some more information about these zones that would be helpful.

Although irrelevent to this art discussion I felt the need to know.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by RY Deshpande on Thu 28 Dec 2006 03:20 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Here is something from Savitri, p. 494. The reference is made at other places also.

Here in Life's nether realms all contraries meet;
Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes
And Ignorance is Wisdom's patron here:
Those galloping hooves in their enthusiast speed
Could bear to a dangerous intermediate zone
Where Death walks wearing a robe of deathless Life.
Or they enter the valley of the wandering Gleam
Whence, captives or victims of the specious Ray,
Souls trapped in that region never can escape.
Agents, not masters, they serve Life's desires
Toiling for ever in the snare of Time.
Their bodies born out of some Nihil's womb
Ensnare the spirit in the moment's dreams,
Then perish vomiting the immortal soul
Out of Matter's belly into the sink of Nought.

RYD

Re: Physicists Refute Fractal Analysis Of Jackson Pollock's Paintings

by Kim on Thu 28 Dec 2006 01:10 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Although most artists, including Pollock, would likely be amused at the dissection and elaboration of their work to the degree that Taylor/Micolich/Jonas have done in their “Fractal expressionism” article, and, while Kate Jones-Smith provides a welcome counterpoint to the Fractal Analysis theory, and speaking as someone who has been privileged to work with many of what the western world would deem great artists, and who, with some arrogance by comparison proclaims the moniker for herself owing to a life-long association with the sometimes fractious Muses Euterpe and Thalia, I am more interested not in analyzing these works of art - the final form speaks for itself - but in how and from what source the creativity manifests in the first place, how it shapes itself into the works of beauty or confrontation that touch us, move us, inspire us, elevate us. What in the end defines “Conscious Art”? The process is certainly beyond mind, and often doesn’t involve the mental or the conscious at all.

In the case of Jackson Pollock, his preferred method of working was to stand over a canvas, walk around it, approach it from all sides so that he could better enter into it, become part of it, the artist one with his creation. He also listened to jazz while he worked, so perhaps the playing of Count Basie, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton further inspired him, a co-creative collaboration of sorts.

Yves Klein, a contemporary of Pollock's and an artist and sculptor who is known for his blue monochrome paintings among other things, is quoted as saying,
"Lying one day on the beach I began to feel hatred towards birds, which were flying in my beautiful, cloudless sky, as they were trying to make holes in the biggest and most beautiful of my works".
As amusing as this is, it also gives some insight into the artist’s process.

Realizing that there can be a much lengthier discussion on the subject, and that others have raised similar questions here about the creative process, Sri Aurobindo describes what can be applied to the artist’s undertaking in “The Nature of Supermind” from “The Synthesis of Yoga”. The complete chapter is posted below.

**************************

The Synthesis of Yoga

by Sri Aurobindo

Yoga of Self-Perfection

Chapter XIX

The Nature of Supermind

http://intyoga.online.fr/ysp_19.htm

The object of Yoga is to raise the human being from the consciousness of the ordinary mind subject to the control of vital and material Nature and limited wholly by birth and death and Time and the needs and desires of the mind, life and body to the consciousness of the spirit free in its self and using the circumstances of mind, life and body as admitted or self-chosen and self-figuring determinations of the spirit, using them in a free self-knowledge, a free will and power of being, a free delight of being. This is the essential difference between the ordinary mortal mind in which we live and the spiritual consciousness of our divine and immortal being which is the highest result of Yoga. It is a radical conversion as great as and greater than the change which we suppose evolutionary Nature to have made in its transition from the vital animal to the fully mentalised human consciousness. The animal has the conscious vital mind, but whatever beginnings there are in it of anything higher are only a primary glimpse, a crude hint of the intelligence which in man becomes the splendour of the mental understanding, will, emotion, aesthesis and reason. Man elevated in the heights and deepened by the intensities of the mind becomes aware of something great and divine in himself towards which all this tends, something he is in possibility but which he has not yet become, and he turns the powers of his mind, his power of knowledge, his power of will, his power of emotion and aesthesis to seek out this, to seize and comprehend all that it may be, to become it and to exist wholly in its greater consciousness, delight, being and power of highest becoming. But what he gets of this higher state in his normal mind is only an intimation, a primary glimpse, a crude hint of the splendour, the light, the glory and divinity of the spirit within him. A complete conversion of all the parts of his being into moulds and instruments of the spiritual consciousness is demanded of him before he can make quite real, constant, present to himself this greater thing that he can be and entirely live in what is now to him at the best a luminous aspiration. He must seek to develop and grow altogether into a greater divine consciousness by an integral Yoga.

The Yoga of perfection necessary to this change has, so far as we have been considering it, consisted in a preparatory purification of the mental, vital and physical nature, a liberation from the knots of the lower Prakriti, a consequent replacement of the egoistic state always subject to the ignorant and troubled action of the desire soul by a large and luminous static equality which quiets the reason, the emotional mind, the life mind and the physical nature and brings into us the peace and freedom of the spirit, and a dynamical substitution of the action of the supreme and universal divine Shakti under the control of the Ishwara for that of the lower Prakriti, - an action whose complete operation must be preceded by the perfection of the natural instruments. And all these things together, though not as yet the whole Yoga, constitute already a much greater than the present normal consciousness, spiritual in its basis and moved by a greater light, power and bliss, and it might be easy to rest satisfied with so much accomplished and think that all has been done that was needed for the divine conversion.

A momentous question however arises as light grows, the question through what medium is the divine Shakti to act in the human being? Is it to be always through the mind only and on the mind plane or in some greater supramental formulation which is more proper to a divine action and which will take up and replace the mental functions? If the mind is to be always the instrument, then although we shall be conscious of a diviner Power initiating and conducting all our inner and outer human action, yet it will have to formulate its knowledge, will, Ananda and all things else in the mental figure, and that means to translate them into an inferior kind of functioning other than the supreme workings native to the divine consciousness and its Shakti.

The mind spiritualised, purified, liberated, perfected within its own limits may come as near as possible to a faithful mental translation, but we shall find that this is after all a relative fidelity and an imperfect perfection. The mind by its very nature cannot render with an entirely right rightness or act in the unified completeness of the divine knowledge, will and Ananda because it is an instrument for dealing with the divisions of the finite on the basis of division, a secondary instrument therefore and a sort of delegate for the lower movement in which we live. The mind can reflect the Infinite, it can dissolve itself into it, it can live in it by a large passivity, it can take its suggestions and act them out in its own way, a way always fragmentary, derivative and subject to a greater or less deformation, but it cannot be itself the direct and perfect instrument of the infinite Spirit acting in its own knowledge. The divine Will and Wisdom organising the action of the infinite consciousness and determining all things according to the truth of the spirit and the law of its manifestation is not mental but supramental and even in its formulation nearest to mind as much above the mental consciousness in its light and power as the mental consciousness of man above the vital mind of the lower creation. The question is how far the perfected human being can raise himself above mind, enter into some kind of fusing union with the supramental and build up in himself a level of supermind, a developed gnosis by the form and power of which the divine Shakti can directly act, not through a mental translation, but organically in her supramental nature.

It is here necessary in a matter so remote from the ordinary lines of our thought and experience to state first what is the universal gnosis or divine supermind, how it is represented in the actual movement of the universe and what are its relations to the present psychology of the human being. It will then be evident that though the supermind is suprarational to our intelligence and its workings occult to our apprehension, it is nothing irrationally mystic, but rather its existence and emergence is a logical necessity of the nature of existence, always provided we grant that not matter or mind alone but spirit is the fundamental reality and everywhere a universal presence. All things are a manifestation of the infinite spirit out of its own being, out of its own consciousness and by the self-realising, self-determining, self-fulfilling power of that consciousness. The Infinite, we may say, organises by the power of its self-knowledge the law of its own manifestation of being in the universe, not only the material universe present to our senses, but whatever lies behind it on whatever planes of existence. All is organised by it not under any inconscient compulsion, not according to a mental fantasy or caprice, but in its own infinite spiritual freedom according to the self-truth of its being, its infinite potentialities and its will of self-creation out of those potentialities, and the law of this self-truth is the necessity that compels created things to act and evolve each according to its own nature. The Intelligence - to give it an inadequate name - the Logos that thus organises its own manifestation is evidently something infinitely greater, more extended in knowledge, compelling in self-power, large both in the delight of its self-existence and the delight of its active being and works than the mental intelligence which is to us the highest realised degree and expression of consciousness. It is to this intelligence infinite in itself but freely organising and self-determiningly organic in its self-creation and its works that we may give for our present purpose the name of the divine supermind or gnosis.

The fundamental nature of this supermind is that all its knowledge is originally a knowledge by identity and oneness and even when it makes numberless apparent divisions and discriminating modifications in itself, still all the knowledge that operates in its workings,, even in these divisions, is founded upon and sustained and lit and guided by this perfect knowledge by identity and oneness. The Spirit is one everywhere and it knows all things as itself and in itself, so sees them always and therefore knows them intimately, completely, in their reality as well as their appearance, in their truth, their law, the entire spirit and sense and figure of their nature and their workings. When it sees anything as an object of knowledge, it yet sees it as itself and in itself, and not as a thing other than or divided from it about which therefore it would at first be ignorant of the nature, constitution and workings and have to learn about them, as the mind is at first ignorant of its object and has to learn about it because the mind is separated from its object and regards and senses and meets it as something other than itself and external to its own being. The mental awareness we have of our own subjective existence and its movements, though it may point to, is not the same thing as this identity and self-knowledge, because what it sees are mental figures of our being and not the inmost or the whole and it is only a partial, derivative and superficial action of our self that appears to us while the largest and most secretly determining parts of our own existence are occult to our mentality. The supramental Spirit has, unlike the mental being, the real because the inmost and total knowledge of itself and of all its universe and of all things that are its creations and self-figurings in the universe.

This is the second character of the supreme Supermind that its knowledge is a real because a total knowledge. It has in the first place a transcendental vision and sees the universe not only in the universal terms, but in its right relation to the supreme and eternal reality from which it proceeds and of which it is an expression. It knows the spirit and truth and whole sense of the universal expression because it knows all the essentiality and all the infinite reality and all the consequent constant potentiality of that which in part it expresses. It knows rightly the relative because it knows the Absolute and all its absolutes to which the relatives refer back and of which they are the partial or modified or suppressed figures. It is in the second place universal and sees all that is individual in the terms of the universal as well as in its own individual terms and holds all these individual figures in their right and complete relation to the universe. It is in the third place, separately with regard to individual things, total in its view because it knows each in its inmost essence of which all else is the resultant, in its totality which is its complete figure and in its parts and their connections and dependences, - as well as in its connections with and its dependences upon other things and its nexus with the total implications and the explicits of the universe.

The mind on the contrary is limited and incapable in all these directions. Mind cannot arrive at identity with the Absolute even when by a stretch of the intellect it conceives the idea, but can only disappear into it in a swoon or extinction: it can only have a kind of sense or an intimation of certain absolutes which it puts by the mental idea into a relative figure. It cannot grasp the universal, but only arrives at some idea of it through an extension of the individual or a combination of apparently separate things and so sees it either as a vague infinite or indeterminate or a half determined largeness or else only in an external scheme or constructed figure. The indivisible being and action of the universal, which is its real truth, escapes the apprehension of the mind, because the mind thinks it out analytically by taking its own divisions for units and synthetically by combinations of these units, but cannot seize on and think entirely in the terms, though it may get at the idea and certain secondary results, of the essential oneness. It cannot, either, know truly and thoroughly even the individual and apparently separate thing, because it proceeds in the same way, by an analysis of parts and constituents and properties and a combination by which it erects a scheme of it which is only its external figure. It can get an intimation of the essential inmost truth of its object, but cannot live constantly and luminously in that essential knowledge and work out on the rest from within outward so that the outward circumstances appear in their intimate reality and meaning as inevitable result and expression and form and action of the spiritual something which is the reality of the object. And all this which is impossible for the mind to do, but possible only to strive towards and figure, is inherent and natural to the supramental knowledge.

The third characteristic of the supermind arising from this difference, which brings us to the practical distinction between the two kinds of knowledge, is that it is directly truth-conscious, a divine power of immediate, inherent and spontaneous knowledge, an Idea holding luminously all realities and not depending on indications and logical or other steps from the known to the unknown like the mind which is a power of the Ignorance. The supermind contains all its knowledge in itself, is in its highest divine wisdom in eternal possession of all truth and even in its lower, limited or individualised forms has only to bring the latent truth out of itself, - the perception which the old thinkers tried to express when they said that all knowing was in its real origin and nature only a memory of inwardly existing knowledge. The supermind is eternally and on all levels truth-conscious and exists secretly even in mental and material being, surveys and knows the things, even obscurest, of the mental ignorance and understands and is behind and governs its processes, because everything in the mind derives from the supermind - and must do so because everything derives from the spirit. All that is mental is but a partial, a modified, a suppressed or half suppressed figure of the supramental truth, a deformation or a derived and imperfect figure of its greater knowledge. The mind begins with ignorance and proceeds towards knowledge. As an actual fact, in the material universe, it appears out of an initial and universal inconscience which is really an involution of the all-conscient spirit in its own absorbed self-oblivious force of action; and it appears therefore as part of an evolutionary process, first a vital feeling towards overt sensation, then an emergence of a vital mind capable of sensation and, evolving out of it, a mind of emotion and desire, a conscious will, a growing intelligence. And each stage is an emergence of a greater suppressed power of the secret supermind and spirit.

The mind of man, capable of reflection and a coordinated investigation and understanding of itself and its basis and surroundings, arrives at truth but against a background of original ignorance, a truth distressed by a constant surrounding mist of incertitude and error. Its certitudes are relative and for the most part precarious certainties or else are the assured fragmentary certitudes only of an imperfect, incomplete and not an essential experience. It makes discovery after discovery, gets idea after idea, adds experience to experience and experiment to experiment, - but losing and rejecting and forgetting and having to recover much as it proceeds, - and it tries to establish a relation between all that it knows by setting up logical and other sequences, a series of principles and their dependences, generalisations and their application, and makes out of its devices a structure in which mentally it can live, move and act and enjoy and labour. This mental knowledge is always limited in extent: not only so, but in addition the mind even sets up other willed barriers, admitting by the mental device of opinion certain parts and sides of truth and excluding all the rest, because if it gave free admission and play to all ideas, if it suffered truth's infinities, it would lose itself in an unreconciled variety, an undetermined immensity and would be unable to act and proceed to practical consequences and an effective creation. And even when it is widest and most complete, mental knowing is still an indirect knowledge, a knowledge not of the thing in itself but of its figures, a system of representations, a scheme of indices, - except indeed when in certain movements it goes beyond itself, beyond the mental idea to spiritual identity, but it finds it extremely difficult to go here beyond a few isolated and intense spiritual realisations or to draw or work out or organise the right practical consequences of these rare identities of knowledge. A greater power than the reason is needed for the spiritual comprehension and effectuation of this deepest knowledge.

This is what the supermind, intimate with the Infinite, alone can do. The supermind sees directly the spirit and essence, the face and body, the result and action, the principles and dependences of the truth as one indivisible whole and therefore can work out the circumstantial results in the power of the essential knowledge, the variations of the spirit in the light of its identities, its apparent divisions in the truth of its oneness. The supermind is a knower and creator of its own truth, the mind of man only a knower and creator in the half light and half darkness of a mingled truth and error, and creator too of a thing which it derives altered, translated, lessened from something greater than and beyond it. Man lives in a mental consciousness between a vast subconscient which is to his seeing a dark inconscience and a vaster superconscient which he is apt to take for another but a luminous inconscience, because his idea of consciousness is confined to his own middle term of mental sensation and intelligence. It is in that luminous superconscience that there lie the ranges of the supermind and the spirit.

The supermind is again, because it acts and creates as well as knows, not only a direct truth-consciousness, but an illumined, direct and spontaneous truth-will. There is not and cannot be in the will of the self-knowing spirit any contradiction, division or difference between its will and its knowledge. The spiritual will is the Tapas or enlightened force of the conscious being of the spirit effecting infallibly what is there within it, and it is this infallible operation of things acting according to their own nature, of energy producing result and event according to the force within it, of action bearing the fruit and event involved in its own character and intention which we call variously in its different aspects law of Nature, Karma, Necessity and Fate. These things are to mind the workings of a power outside or above it in which it is involved and intervenes only with a contributory personal effort which partly arrives and succeeds, partly fails and stumbles and which even in succeeding is largely overruled for issues different from or at any rate greater and more far-reaching than its own intention. The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead as much as they illuminate. His mind is an ignorance striving to erect standards of knowledge, his will an ignorance striving to erect standards of right, and his whole mentality as a result very much a house divided against itself, idea in conflict with idea, the will often in conflict with the ideal of right or the intellectual knowledge. The will itself takes different shapes, the will of the intelligence, the wishes of the emotional mind, the desires of the passion and the vital being, the impulsions and blind or half-blind compulsions of the nervous and the subconscient nature, and all these make by no means a harmony, but at best a precarious concord among discords. The will of the mind and life is a stumbling about in search of right force, right Tapas which can wholly be attained in its true and complete light and direction only by oneness with the spiritual and supramental being.

The supramental nature on the contrary is just, harmonious and one, will and knowledge there only light of the spirit and power of the spirit, the power effecting the light, the light illumining the power. In the highest supramentality they are intimately fused together and do not even wait upon each other but are one movement, will illumining itself, knowledge fulfilling itself, both together a single jet of the being. The mind knows only the present and lives in an isolated movement of it though it tries to remember and retain the past and forecast and compel the future. The supermind has the vision of the three times, trikaladrshti; it sees them as an indivisible movement and sees too each containing the others. It is aware of all tendencies, energies and forces as the diverse play of unity and knows their relation to each other in the single movement of the one spirit. The supramental will and action are therefore a will and action of the spontaneous self-fulfilling truth of the spirit, the right and at the highest the infallible movement of a direct and total knowledge.

The supreme and universal Supermind is the active Light and Tapas of the supreme and universal Self as the Lord and Creator, that which we come to know in Yoga as the divine Wisdom and Power, the eternal knowledge and will of the Ishwara. On the highest planes of Being where all is known and all manifests as existences of the one existence, consciousness of the one consciousness, delight's self-creations of the one Ananda, many truths and powers of the one Truth, there is the intact and integral display of its spiritual and supramental knowledge. And in the corresponding planes of our own being the Jiva shares in the spiritual and supramental nature and lives in its light and power and bliss. As we descend nearer to what we are in this world, the presence and action of this self-knowledge narrows but retains always the essence and character when not the fullness of the supramental nature and its way of knowing and willing and acting, because it still lives in the essence and body of the spirit.

The mind, when we trace the descent of the self towards matter, we see as a derivation which travels away from the fullness of self, the fullness of its light and being and which lives in a division and diversion, not in the body of the sun, but first in its nearer and then in its far-off rays. There is a highest intuitive mind which receives more nearly the supramental truth, but even this is a formation which conceals the direct and greater real knowledge. There is an intellectual mind which is a luminous half-opaque lid which intercepts and reflects in a radiantly distorting and suppressively modifying atmosphere the truth known to the supermind. There is a still lower mind built on the foundation of the senses between which and the sun of knowledge there is a thick cloud, an emotional and a sensational mist and vapour with here and there lightnings and illuminations. There is a vital mind which is shut away even from the light of intellectual truth, and lower still in submental life and matter the spirit involves itself entirely as if in a sleep and a night, a sleep plunged in a dim and yet poignant nervous dream, the night of a mechanical somnambulist energy. It is a re-evolution of the spirit out of this lowest state in which we find ourselves at a height above the lower creation having taken it up all in us and reaching so far in our ascent only the light of the well-developed mental reason.

The full powers of self-knowledge and the illumined will of the spirit are still beyond us above the mind and reason in supramental Nature.

If the spirit is everywhere, even in matter - in fact matter itself is only an obscure form of the spirit - and if the supermind is the universal power of the spirit's omnipresent self-knowledge organising all the manifestation of the being, then in matter and everywhere there must be present a supramental action and, however concealed it may be by another, lower and obscurer kind of operation, yet when we look close we shall find that it is really the supermind which organises matter, life, mind and reason. And this actually is the knowledge towards which we are now moving. There is even a quite visible intimate action of the consciousness, persistent in life, matter and mind, which is clearly a supramental action subdued to the character and need of the lower medium and to which we now give the name of intuition from its most evident characteristics of direct vision and self-acting knowledge, really a vision born of some secret identity with the object of the knowledge. What we call the intuition is however only a partial indication of the presence of the supermind, and if we take this presence and power in its widest character, we shall see that it is a concealed supramental force with a self-conscient knowledge in it which informs the whole action of material energy. It is that which determines what we call law of nature, maintains the action of each thing according to its own nature and harmonises and evolves the whole, which would otherwise be a fortuitous creation apt at any moment to collapse into chaos. All the law of nature is a thing precise in its necessities of process, but is yet in the cause of that necessity and of its constancy of rule, measure, combination, adaptation, result a thing inexplicable, meeting us at every step with a mystery and a miracle, and this must be either because it is irrational and accidental even in its regularities or because it is suprarational, because the truth of it belongs to a principle greater than that of our intelligence. That principle is the supramental; that is to say, the hidden secret of Nature is the organisation of something out of the infinite potentialities of the self-existent truth of the spirit the nature of which is wholly evident only to an original knowledge born of and proceeding by a fundamental identity, the spirit's constant self-perception. All the action of life too is of this character and all the action of mind and reason, - reason which is the first to perceive everywhere the action of a greater reason and law of being and try to render it by its own conceptional structures, though it does not always perceive that it is something other than a mental Intelligence which is at work, other than an intellectual Logos. All these processes are actually spiritual and supramental in their secret government, but mental, vital and physical in their overt process.

The outward matter, life, mind do not possess this occult action of the supermind, even while possessed and compelled by the necessity it imposes on their workings. There is what we are sometimes moved to call an intelligence and will operating in the material force and the atom (although the words ring false because it is not actually the same thing as our own will and intelligence), - let us say, a covert intuition of self-existence at work, - but the atom and force are not aware of it and are only the obscure body of matter and of power created by its first effort of self-manifestation. The presence of such an intuition becomes more evident to us in all the action of life because that is nearer to our own scale. And as life develops overt sense and mind, as in the animal creation, we can speak more confidently of a vital intuition which is behind its operations and which emerges in the animal mind in the clear form of instinct, - instinct, an automatic knowledge implanted in the animal, sure, direct, self-existent, self-guided, which implies somewhere in its being an accurate knowing of purpose, relation and the thing or object. It acts in the life force and mind, but yet the surface life and mind do not possess it and cannot give an account of what it does or control or extend the power at its will and pleasure. Here we observe two things, first, that the overt intuition acts only for a limited necessity and purpose, and that in the rest of the operations of the nature there is a double action, one uncertain and ignorant of the surface consciousness and the other subliminal implying a secret subconscient direction. The surface consciousness is full of a groping and seeking which increases rather than diminishes as life rises in its scale and widens in the scope of its conscious powers; but the secret self within assures in spite of the groping of the vital mind the action of the nature and the result needed for the necessity, the purpose and the destiny of the being. This continues on a higher and higher scale up to the human reason and intelligence.

The being of man also is full of physical, vital, emotional, psychical and dynamic instincts and intuitions, but he does not rely on them as the animal does, - though they are capable in him of a far larger scope and greater action than in the animal and lower creation by reason of his greater actual evolutionary development and his yet greater potentiality of development of the being. He has suppressed them, discontinued their full and overt action by atrophy, - not that these capacities are destroyed but rather held back or cast back into the subliminal consciousness, - and consequently this lower part of his being is much less sure of itself, much less confident of the directions of his nature, much more groping, errant and fallible in its larger scope than that of the animal in his lesser limits. This happens because man's real dharma and law of being is to seek for a greater self-aware existence, a self-manifestation no longer obscure and governed by an ununderstood necessity, but illumined, conscious of that which is expressing itself and able to give it a fuller and more perfect expression. And finally his culmination must be to identify himself with his greatest and real self and act or rather let it act (his natural existence being an instrumental form of the expression of the spirit) in its spontaneous perfect will and knowledge. His first instrument for this transition is the reason and the will of the rational intelligence and he is moved to depend upon that to the extent of its development for his knowledge and guidance and give it the control of the rest of his being.

And if the reason were the highest thing and the greatest all-sufficient means of the self and spirit, he could by it know perfectly and guide perfectly all the movements of his nature. This he cannot do entirely because his self is a larger thing than his reason and if he limits himself by the rational will and intelligence, he imposes an arbitrary restriction both in extent and in kind on his self-development, self-expression, knowledge, action, Ananda. The other parts of his being demand too a complete expression in the largeness and perfection of the self and cannot have it if their expression is changed in kind and carved, cut down and arbitrarily shaped and mechanised in action by the inflexible machinery of the rational intelligence. The godhead of the reason, the intellectual Logos, is only a partial representative and substitute for the greater supramental Logos, and its function is to impose a preliminary partial knowledge and order upon the life of the creature, but the real, final and integral order can only be founded by the spiritual supermind in its emergence.

The supermind in the lower nature is present most strongly as intuition and it is therefore by a development of an intuitive mind that we can make the first step towards the self-existent spontaneous and direct supramental knowledge. All the physical, vital, emotional, psychic, dynamic nature of man is a surface seizing of suggestions which rise out of a subliminal intuitive self-being of these parts, and an attempt usually groping and often circuitous to work them out in the action of a superficial embodiment and power of the nature which is not overtly enlightened by the inner power and knowledge. An increasingly intuitive mind has the best chance of discovering what they are seeking for and leading them to the desired perfection of their self-expression. The reason itself is only a special kind of application, made by a surface regulating intelligence, of suggestions which actually come from a concealed, but sometimes partially overt and active power of the intuitive spirit. In all its action there is at the covered or half-covered point of origination something which is not the creation of the reason, but given to it either directly by the intuition or indirectly through some other part of the mind for it to shape into intellectual form and process. The rational judgment in its decisions and the mechanical process of the logical intelligence, whether in its more summary or in its more developed operations, conceals while it develops the true origin and native substance of our will and thinking. The greatest minds are those in which this veil wears thin and there is the largest part of intuitive thinking, which often no doubt but not always brings with it a great accompanying display of intellectual action. The intuitive intelligence is however never quite pure and complete in the present mind of man, because it works in the medium of mind and is at once seized on and coated over with a mixed stuff of mentality. It is as yet not brought out, not developed and perfected so as to be sufficient for all the operations now performed by the other mental instruments, not trained to take them up and change them into or replace them by its own fullest, most direct, assured and sufficient workings. This can indeed only be done if we make the intuitive mind a transitional means for bringing out the secret supermind itself of which it is a mental figure and forming in our frontal consciousness a body and instrument of supermind which will make it possible for the self and spirit to display itself in its own largeness and splendour.

It must be remembered that there is always a difference between the supreme Supermind of the omniscient and omnipotent Ishwara and that which can be attained by the Jiva. The human being is climbing out of the ignorance and when he ascends into the supramental nature, he will find in it grades of its ascension, and he must first form the lower grades and limited steps before he rises to higher summits. He will enjoy there the full essential light, power, Ananda of the infinite self by oneness with the Spirit, but in the dynamical expression it must determine and individualise itself according to the nature of the self-expression which the transcendent and universal Spirit seeks in the Jiva. It is God-realisation and God-expression which is the object of our Yoga and more especially of its dynamic side, it is a divine self-expression in us of the Ishwara, but under the conditions of humanity and through the divinised human nature.

Sri Aurobindo

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in "The Synthesis of Yoga" - Part 4: The Yoga of Self-Perfection
SABCL Volume 21
published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
or
Lotus Light Publications U.S.A. - Pages 754-768

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