ART & ORGANISM
Spiritual Dimension
notes
The artist sacrifices and What is the reward? The consciousness of inspiration only! I think art gives a new faith. I think –all jesting aside– that could I create something I felt to be sublime, I should feel also that the Unknowable had selected me for a mouthpiece, for a medium of utterance, in the holy cycling of its eternal purpose; and I should know the pride of the prophet that had seen God face to face.—Lafcadio Hearn[i]
Spirituality can be viewed as our deep utilization of cognitive resources we are usually unaware of. We can be forgiven for believing that … “Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect….We are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape. As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our own human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of the collective, ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born.” –Julia Cameron
The spirit is so-called because it is incorporeal … like breath, which in its ancient meaning referred to”life-force” to originate (and be withdrawn) by transcendent forces–its centrality to life yet seeming lack of substance imbued it with power and awe. It is a “first responder” to emotional experience, to changes in stress levels (increased oxygen is a demand of increased metabolism and the ability to cope with real or perceived challenges to meeting one’s biological needs)
return to Art & Organism page on Extraordinary experiences of creative artists
Spirituality and art are closely related by virtue of their deep phenomenological basis. While physiological correlates can be detected and often mapped, the paths between the environment and one’s mind or from one’s mind back and forth to the environment are only partly understood.
IF “all truths dwell in all things,” as Whitman puts it,
“does spirituality inhere in all creation?”
now Visit Science and Spirituality
Science and Spirituality: an overview and syllabus for ORICL class
[i] (From The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elisabeth Bisland NY, Houghton Mifflen 1906. p.238)