Absolute Image Book (unedited draft)
Lawrence Sheaff
P R O L O G U E
That which is unbounded is happy. There is no happiness in the small.
—Chandogya Upanishad 7.23
When I first heard this aphorism from the ancient Vedic Literature of India I was deeply inspired. It challenged me to make my artistic vocation as big and unbounded for myself as possible.
I needed to discover what I found most fascinating about the medium of painting and try to realize what for me would be its highest possible goal. The result has been the series of paintings reproduced here, Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form, and the commentary on them summarized in this book.
As my artistic journey progressed I found myself more and more fascinated with the formal values of painting. ‘Formal values’ means the basic structure and content of painting, i.e. the pure material values of paint and canvas—that is to say the flat, two-dimensionality of the canvas (structure), and the medium’s most basic pigmented graphic elements (content).
The journey began with depicting the physical objects of outer sensory perception and moved on to giving visual expression to inner, more subjective values of experience. The journey finally culminated in the visual rendering of the unbtounded, transcendental value of experience aspired to in Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form.
In other words, this artistic progression began with portraying the outer surface textures of the object, which then progressed to conveying the object’s hidden inner reality, i.e. its own wondrous power to exist, or ‘pure Being’ value. The final stage of the journey was to step beyond the concrete object altogether and engage directly with pure abstraction itself, the transcendent—the Absolute—the ultimate source of all concrete expressions in the universe.
Absolute Image aspires to actualize in its definitive visual form that abstract source of everything in creation. As we shall see, that abstract source of everything is pure consciousness itself, the Unified Field of Total Natural Law, which is nothing other than our own simplest form of awareness at the source of thought within.
The venture began in England in 1990. I had no idea it would eventually lead me to the cornfields of Iowa in the center of America. For here, in the small mid-Western town of Fairfield and its adjacent Maharishi Vedic City, a renaissance of knowledge has taken place. It is the knowledge of consciousness as the unified foundation of everything in the universe. Every aspect of my work as an artist has been shaped by this knowledge of consciousness as the underlying reality of all that exists.
Fairfield is home to Maharishi University of Management (founded in 1971), and Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment (founded in 1987). These educational institutions are based upon the complete knowledge of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science. They have pioneered the use of what is now being celebrated around the world as Consciousness-Based, Vedic Education.
Maharishi Vedic Science and its consciousness-based system of education is bringing an urgently needed new wave of life into the whole of education by adding the one vital ingredient that has been missing so far: the knowledge and experience of pure consciousness itself. Maharishi Vedic Science presents pure consciousness as the very foundation of all knowledge and the innermost reality of everyone and everything—of every teacher and every student.
The word ‘Vedic’ in Maharishi Vedic Science comes from the word Veda. ‘Veda’ means knowledge, the total knowledge of life, the total knowledge of Natural Law. This timeless Vedic wisdom is the world’s most ancient and complete system of knowledge.
UNESCO has declared the Veda and Vedic Literature of India to be the common heritage of all mankind. The Veda and its literature encompass the whole range of existence, the whole field of space, time and causation from point to infinity. It is this timeless Vedic wisdom of life that forms the knowledge-base for the Absolute Image Series of Paintings.
Over the past fifty years His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Vedic sage and the world’s greatest scientist in the field of consciousness, has systematized the Veda and Vedic Literature into a comprehensive science of consciousness and integrated it with the latest findings of modern science. Maharishi Vedic Science is the restoration of the Veda and Vedic Literature to its original completeness. It is the total knowledge of the underlying unified level of existence as well as all its diversified expressions.
This unity and diversity together, this ‘uni-verse’, as described in the Veda and Vedic literature, has been correlated in Maharishi Vedic Science with modern science and its latest insights into the ultimate structure of creation. These include the discovery of the Unified Field of Natural Law by modern quantum physics and the discovery of dark energy by modern cosmology. Because of its systematic integration of both the most ancient and the most modern systems of gaining knowledge, Maharishi Vedic Science presents itself as the total knowledge of Natural Law for our scientific age.
Moreover, its simple, natural Vedic technologies of consciousness give direct access within human awareness to that underlying unified level of existence, pure consciousness, the source of all creativity in Nature. With this, individual human creativity is directly connected with Nature’s cosmic creativity—thus the relevance of this new knowledge of consciousness for every artist, and for the re-evaluation of the visual arts described in this book. (For a more detailed description of Maharishi Vedic Science see Supplementary Note 1, p. 00.)
I would like to clearly state from the outset that if there is anything useful or true in these pages it will have come from or been inspired by, this new science of consciousness and its technologies.
By applying this knowledge, the total knowledge of Natural Law, to the visual arts, all the various concepts and philosophies that surround the discipline of painting were for me cast in a new light. This new and holistic angle of vision demanded new forms of expression. It was my own attempt to meet that demand that gave rise to the Absolute Image Series of Paintings.
I should also make clear that The Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness is not so much an academic study but instead reads more like a personal journal. For a purely academic approach I recommend Anna Bonshek’s two books Mirror of Consciousness (Motilal Banarsidas, 2001), and The Big Fish (Rodopi, 2007).
These books review the history of art and its major themes and philosophies in the light of Maharishi Vedic Science. They explore ancient values of culture as well as twentieth century art and examine in depth Modernism, post-Modernism and beyond. The broad principles of Maharishi Vedic Science that underlie this present book have already been established on a scientific basis by Bonshek along with an abundance of quotes on art from Maharishi’s books and lectures—and all meticulously referenced.
I haven’t felt it my role therefore, to reiterate the content of these books but to merely take these established principles and re-assert them here in relation to my own body of work. My purpose has been to complement that more academic approach to art and consciousness by adding a personal note. The Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness therefore, is a study of a painter’s personal response to the complete science of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science.
It explores an individual artist’s direct application of Vedic principles to the craft of painting with reference to its most basic formal values. It is a journal that records the evolving vision of a practicing painter, a painter seeking to explore the fullest cosmic potential of both the artist and his domain of expression. In short, it records a search for the ultimate foundation or ‘ground state’ of our visual aesthetic reality.
I use the term ‘visual aesthetic reality’ to define a way of seeing that lies beyond the everyday use of the eye to navigate the environment. It refers to our innate sensitivity to resonances of form and color, resonances to which we can profoundly respond physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is these deepest resonances that the Absolute Image Series aspires to address, resonances that are timeless and universal in themselves and therefore, an eternal, inseparable part of our own inner and outer reality.
For me, ‘visual aesthetic reality’ in essence refers to our capacity to register a powerful sensation of wholeness triggered by outer modes of sensory perception. The utility of such an experience is in its integrative power. To me the profound sensation of wholeness, whether momentary or sustained, signals an optimum state of functioning. It signals a perfect integration of all levels of our existence, outer, inner, and transcendental. I see the supreme purpose of artistic expression as a reinforcing of this highest level of integration in individual life and in the cultural life of a national as a whole.
The Veda identifies consciousness as the essential constituent of the universe: it describes consciousness as the be-all and end-all of everything in creation. The forty aspects of the Veda and Vedic Literature as formulated in Maharishi Vedic Science, present all areas of knowledge in the ultimate light of consciousness. It precisely defines all the purest, most complete values of science, philosophy, and art.
This most ancient body of knowledge—the Veda—cognized thousands of years ago by the Vedic Rishis (Seers) of India, because it is both holistic and complete, could be said to anticipates all subsequent known schools of art, science, and philosophy. In a way therefore, we have to defer to the Veda and its Vedic Rishis as the ultimate source of all truly holistic values of human knowledge.
In the past, the unbounded scope of the Veda was not known or understood in our Western hemisphere. The subsequent ‘re-discoveries’ in the West of various aspects of reality made by honored visionaries either in science, philosophy or art from age to age could not therefore, give credit where credit was truly due.
I would prefer therefore, in this discussion of the visual arts, to be referring directly to Vedic wisdom. Rather than referencing our latter-day thinkers who, from time to time, and in different parts of the world, have revived through great personal insight certain isolated facets of knowledge or sets of principles—in referring instead directly to Maharishi Vedic Science, justice will be done to the purest, unified, most holistic value of all knowledge and its source.
By drawing directly on Maharishi Vedic Science, this present re-examination of the visual arts gives that recognition to the Veda and the Vedic Rishis. It gives recognition to the Seers who cognized in a holistic way within their own pure awareness the Totality of Natural Law—the Veda.
The credit for the present complete revival of the eternal Vedic wisdom goes to the greatest enlightened Vedic sage of our time—indeed perhaps of any time—His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The true significance of the Veda was all but lost in our modern age—even in India, the land of the Veda itself.
The Vedic pandits of India revere Maharishi as a ‘Jagadguru’ (world-teacher). They regard Maharishi’s revelations concerning the eternal structure of the Veda, along with the revival of its practical programs for the fullest development of human consciousness, as unprecedented in the whole history of time.
Single-handedly, Maharishi has reinstated the supreme value of the Veda as the ‘Constitution of the Universe’, the total knowledge of Natural Law. Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology therefore, could be said to be the crowning glory of our scientific age. My mission has been to connect my individual artistic vision to this universal knowledge of Natural Law. The Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness attempts to record that process.
In PART 1, Chapter 1, the stage will be set in a general way for the ensuing discussion. I will touch on the latest discoveries in modern science that relate directly to this re-examination of the visual arts as well as relevant key principles from Maharishi Vedic Science.
Following this, in Chapter 2, I will deal in a more personal way with the origins of my artistic aspirations. I will describe in more detail the pathways of thought and feeling that lead me to the Absolute Image Series and the Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness. Chapter 3 reviews in more detail what the Absolute Image Series is and describes the steps of visual evolution that brought the paintings into being.
I explore in Chapter 4 the relationship between sensory experience and intellectual analysis in relation to Absolute Image and the role each plays in connecting the visual arts to their foundation in pure consciousness. Chapter 5 addresses the question as to how a relative image can become ‘Absolute Image’, and does this by identifying eight primary attributes of the Absolute, pure consciousness, and then giving a detailed description of the visual counterparts to those primary attributes located within the Absolute Image Series.
On the basis of establishing these broad principles, PART 2, Chapters 6 and 7, then deal directly with the books culminating theme The Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness, while Chapter 8 rounds out the discussion with a summary and conclusion.
* * *
Like a lot of people today, I have traveled to many parts of the world. In the last decade I have been living in various places in North America. I want to thank those who in my travels, created a place for me to stay and work.
I would like to acknowledge and thank all those along the way who have encouraged and supported the Absolute Image Series and its goal. I want to thank those who have challenged my thinking regarding consciousness and the visual arts and inspired a continuing search for greater clarity. Whether such things came from my immediate family, whether from old friends or new friends, or just a chance meeting on a boat or plane, for me, you are all a part of the Absolute Image Series: again, thank you for helping to shape the adventure and for making it so enjoyable*.
— Lawrence Sheaff, July 2008
*FOOTNOTE: See also Acknowledgements, page 00.
CHAPTER 1
Setting the Stage
1. Introduction
The knowledge of the line is to be known as all comprehensive
—Vastusutra Upanishad, 2.27.
My goal has been to reconnect myself as an artist, as well as the visual arts as a whole, to their mutual, unified foundation in pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is brought forward here as the ultimate constituent of the universe.
I sought to achieve this reconnection through the creation of a series of paintings, Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form (reproduced here). The knowledge-base for this work has been the latest findings in modern science together with complete knowledge of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science*.
*FOOTNOTE: For a brief description of Maharishi Vedic Science see page 00, Supplementary Note 1.
The culturing power of the arts is evolutionary for the whole society. The arts can enhance perception and refine life’s intellectual, emotional, and spiritual content. However, only in maintaining a connection to its root can a tree fully blossom and yield nourishing fruits.
Likewise, in directly connecting both the artist and the visual arts to their common root in pure consciousness, the ultimate reality, the whole range of the discipline’s positive culturing power should begin to unfold. If a unified basis for the discipline could be created, it would provide an unshakable stable ground to support its highest possible levels of achievement.
The two-dimensional arena of easel painting now has to be appreciated in absolute terms. Its power to map out upon its flat surface every possible nuance of human thought and feeling, its power to sound within us an echo of the divine, now needs to be fully comprehended and properly honored. The Absolute Image Series, along with this book about the paintings, investigates on a scientific basis, this fullest cosmic potential of the discipline of painting.
Since visual imagery plays a large role in the transference of both knowledge and experience in our present global culture, any enrichment of that particular medium of expression and its potential becomes highly significant. Any new knowledge in this field should make more potent our visual communicative powers: as more comprehensive levels of knowledge and its expression begin to unfold in the fine arts, then refinements in our ordinary everyday levels of visual communication will inevitably follow thereby making them fuller and more effective.
The quotation above that opens this chapter, The knowledge of the line is to be known as all comprehensive, is from the Vastusutra Upanishad, an aspect of Vedic Literature* that deals with absolute values of form. This aphorism provides the central theme for this book. The premise is that by fully understanding the ‘all comprehensive’ nature of the line both experientially and intellectually, both the arts and the artist can be re-united in their unified foundation in consciousness.
*FOOTNOTE: For a brief description of Veda and Vedic Literature see the Prologue, page 7, and Supplementary Note 1, page 00. The specific place occupied by the Vastusutra Upanishad within the Vedic Literature is described in the footnote on page 138.
My exploration of the line as all comprehensive began in 1995 with the emergence of the Absolute Image Series of Paintings. These paintings—crafted by hand in acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches*—helped me distill the visual arts to their essence. Their continuum as a series represents the culmination of my aspirations as an artist.
*FOOTNOTE: See page 00, Supplementary Note 2, for the significance of the 36 x 36 inch format.
Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form is my personal response as an artist to the total knowledge of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science*.
*FOOTNOTE: See page 00 of the Prologue and page 00, Supplementary Note 3
Through the process of making these paintings alongside the study of Maharishi Vedic Science and the practice of its Vedic technologies of consciousness*, I came to realize that the whole of the visual arts rests upon the ‘all comprehensive’ nature of the line: they rest upon the line as living pulsations of consciousness.
*FOOTNOTE: Again, see Supplementary Note 3, Scientific Research on the Vedic Technologies of Consciousness, page 00.
This understanding arose from the new values of knowledge unfolded in recent decades by both modern science and Maharishi Vedic Science. This new knowledge provided the framework I needed to fathom what seemed to me to be deeper realities within the visual arts.
2. Modern Science / Vedic Science
The two scientific themes most relevant to our discussion are as follows. The unified basis that underlies the surface diversity of creation has now been identified by modern science as the Unified Field of Natural Law. It is the abstract, perfectly balanced wholeness of all possible complementary and opposing values in terms of pure potential. Modern science describes this ultimate wholeness of everything as a perfect symmetry, a super-symmetry.
Ancient Vedic science describes this unified fountainhead of Nature’s creativity, the home of all the laws of nature, as a field of pure intelligence or pure consciousness. Direct access to this field of pure consciousness within human awareness is available through the simple, natural Vedic technologies of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science.
By connecting both the artist and the visual arts to their foundation in pure consciousness, the Totality of Natural Law, I felt that the culturing power of both the artist and the arts could be expanded to their fullest cosmic potential.
These will be the basic themes that inform this discussion. They prepared the way for me to reevaluate my own understanding of the visual arts and locate their ultimate source directly in Nature’s own unbounded creativity.
3. The Search for Absolute Values in the Visual Arts
To further set the stage for this reevaluation of the visual arts, in this first chapter I will be reviewing in brief the most recent, very exciting new discoveries in modern science that find their echo in the eternal wisdom of the Veda. We will see how these cosmic dynamics of Natural Law operate in our own lives, and in particular how they operate within the field of human artistic expression.
All the concrete surface expressions of the arts rest upon underlying abstract principles. These abstract principles are the absolute, unchanging laws that govern the material structure of the medium and the nature of its content. Since the series of paintings reproduced here are titled ‘Absolute Image’ and deal with absolute values within the medium of painting, let me begin with a brief review of absolute values in the visual arts as they evolved during the twentieth-century.
The search for absolute values in the medium of painting was first initiated in the early nineteen hundreds by artists such as Malevich, Kandinsky, and Mondrian—and following them, Rothko, Newman, and Agnes Martin, among others, continued the exploration. These artists worked with the primary, underlying formal values of painting. This means the material structure of the discipline itself and its most fundamental graphic elements.
The Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) perhaps created the most complete and consistently coherent body of work in the Western tradition of painting. What he called ‘Neo-Plasticism’ explored the basic components of our visual aesthetic reality reducing the content of the visual image to simpler and simpler values of form.
As mentioned in the prologue, ‘visual aesthetic reality’ is the phrase I use to refer to a way of seeing that lies beyond our every-day use of the eye. It relates to our innate ability to be profoundly moved emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually through resonance with certain organizations of color-form, either in Nature itself or within the visual arts. The experience in essence is associated with a particularly vivid sensation of wholeness.
The initial seeds for Mondrian’s working concepts could perhaps be traced back, albeit tenuously, through Goethe to Plato and Aristotle. It is thought by some that the Greek philosophers had access to ancient Vedic principles. Mondrian’s brief association with the Theosophical Society must also have exposed him to ancient Eastern systems of knowledge, though perhaps in a somewhat fragmented from.
Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism is, in principle, the distillation of all color to its essence in the three primary values red-yellow-blue and their complement the three non-colors white-gray-black. It reduces all form to geometry, and seeks to capture the essence of all geometry purely in the opposing values of the horizontal and vertical line.
As an aside, it could be noted that Mondrian liked to make a clear distinction between these principles of Neo-Plasticism and the practical realization of them in his series of paintings. In the same way, I like to make a distinction between the broad, formal principles of the Absolute Image Series and the practical realization of those principles in the paintings themselves. In other words, theory should never dictate to the holistic process of making art. Theory should only be there to support the spontaneous flow of creative expression and never inhibit in any way its natural progression to fuller and fuller values of aesthetic wholeness.
The clearly stated objective of Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism was to present the Absolute in visual form through these primordial values of resonance. He sought to define the Absolute both in terms of concrete visual experience as well as abstract aesthetic principle by orchestrating his images in terms of what he called ‘dynamic equilibrium’.
As it happened, this procedure of reductionism ran parallel with the reductionism of modern science, which was itself uncovering more and more fundamental structures and functions in Nature. Through this process, modern science was seeking to realize Einstein’s dream of a unified foundation underlying the infinite diversity of the universe. Thus, through its own reductive procedures the visual arts were in search of that same underlying unity of life, the Absolute level of reality, aspired to in modern physics.
Now, with the latest findings in modern science, along with the complete science of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science, we have in our possession a fully rounded vision of the structure of reality. We have in our possession the complete knowledge of the absolute level of reality, the total knowledge of Natural Law—the unified foundation underlying the diversified universe.
The scientific verification of an absolute level of existence both objectively by modern science and subjectively by Maharishi Vedic Science provides a solid knowledge-base for fully uncovering absolute values in the visual arts. The search now becomes not only truly legitimate but the realization of it practical and, therefore, achievable.
To bring this search to fruition became my own central mission as an artist. As I stepped into this project in the early months of 1995, I began to see that the threads of research into absolute values initiated by artists in the twentieth could now, with the advent of new scientific knowledge, be woven into a larger, and perhaps more complete value of wholeness.
Although the Absolute Image Series has arisen within the Western traditions of painting, its aspirations are universal in nature. The fullest realization of Absolute Image should free it from the confines of any localized values of time, place or culture—Eastern or Western, ancient or modern*.
*FOOTNOTE: This aspired-to universal nature of Absolute Image obliges me to describe the relationship they may have with the traditional Vedic images of mandalas and yantras. Also, because of the use of fundamental geometries within the Absolute Image Series, it would be good to also describe their relationship with the Maharishi Vedic Observatory. Supplementary Note 4, page 00, addresses all these issues.
In other words, the paintings are not so much concerned with expressing purely surface nuances of feeling—even though such values of feeling have there place within Absolute Image. Instead, the Absolute Image Series primarily address the universal foundation of all forms and all functions equally present everywhere in the universe including within all artists, within all viewers, and within the medium of expression itself.
These paintings want to strike at a level of experience beyond the fluctuating modes of our surface levels of experience. Absolute Image seeks to by-pass our notions and concepts, our feelings, moods, and emotions, and the like, and instead sound an echo of the eternal unchanging foundations of all existence, the Totality of Natural Law—the Absolute itself that lies deep in the awareness of everyone and everything.
These paintings are my own best bid to propel my art towards that great unboundedness of things. To whatever degree it has been achieved, my wish has been to articulate absolute values in the discipline of painting and create a unified, stable foundation both for the artist and the arts based on the universal nature of pure consciousness as defined in Maharishi Vedic Science.
In connecting the artist, the arts (and through them the viewer), to their common root in pure consciousness—the ultimate source of the entire creation—both the total potential of the artist and the total potential of the arts could be fully awakened. Such full awakening would mean nothing less than art practiced in the light of Total Natural Law.
4. What is Natural Law?
Modern science, through its own empirical means of gaining knowledge, has systematically explored deeper levels of Natural Law—from the superficial, classical levels to the fundamental, quantum mechanical levels of Nature’s functioning. This inward exploration of modern science—from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic, from the molecular to the atomic to the nuclear to sub-nuclear levels of Nature’s functioning—has culminated in the discovery of the Unified Field of Natural Law at the foundation of the universe.
This discovery of the Unified Field is the fulfillment of modern science. It is the discovery of a single, universal, unified field of intelligence at the foundation of the universe, and the principles through which the universal Unified Field sequentially gives rise to the increasingly diversified laws of nature found governing the nuclear and atomic and electronic and chemical forces—governing the vast universe from its unified source in the Unified Field at the foundation of the universe, revealing the secret of how Nature simply and effortlessly governs the vast, complex universe from the field of utter simplicity, the field of utter unity at the core of existence.
—John Hagelin, Ph.D. quantum physicist
Excerpt from an international press conference, 2003
It is obviously important to take time to describe what the ‘Totality of Natural Law’ means if I am presenting my paintings as articulating that reality in its ultimate localized expression. If Absolute Image is to be described as the Absolute itself in visual form, it will first be necessary to at least establish the existence of an absolute level of existence in sound scientific terms.
This is doubly important since the art world in recent decades has rejected the existence of any such absolute level of existence. The existence of the Absolute has been understood as purely conjectural and impossible to verify. Because of this seemingly speculative nature of the Absolute, more recent trends in art have largely dismissed the attempts made in the past to articulate the Absolute within the discipline of painting.
These endeavors to articulate the Absolute were no longer taken seriously and were discredited as fantasies, as a dream that can only exist in the imagination. They were thought therefore, to have no connection with the reality of life because life was understood to be purely material in nature: life was understood to be purely relative with nothing absolute about it.
However, as we will now see, this is not the whole truth of life. There is an abstract, absolute, non-material, transcendental level of organizing power in Nature. This absolute, unmanifest level of reality while remaining eternally unchanging in itself, yet gives rise to the ever-changing, seemingly material reality of the manifest universe. It has been verified objectively now by modern science and subjectively by Maharishi Vedic Science.
This understanding opens a whole new chapter for human life. With the advent of this new and complete scientific knowledge comes the promise that the world can now begin to finally free itself from all the limitations of the past.
‘Natural Law’ or the ‘Totality of Natural Law’ means the eternal laws that give rise to and maintain ourselves, our world, and our ever-expanding universe. It means the functioning together of the innumerable laws of Nature, the functioning together of the unchanging laws that govern in perfect order, all values of change.
Both modern science and ancient Vedic science identify two ultimate extremes of Natural Law, smaller than the smallest, and bigger than the biggest. The whole manifest range of Natural Law, the whole range of creation, lies between these two. Physics describes the smaller than the smallest, the microcosmic level of creation, as the Unified Field of Natural Law. With respect to the bigger than the biggest, or the macrocosmic level of creation, modern cosmology has recently identified the ‘quintessence’, or the so-called ‘vacuum energy’ or ‘dark energy’ of universe.
Quantum field theory, in its probing of smaller and smaller structures in the material universe, has brought together as one unified whole all the force and matter fields of physics. This state of Super Unification takes place at sub-Planck scales of the universe (this means less than 10–33 centimeters). Beyond this level is the Unified Field of Natural Law itself, the unmanifest, smaller than the smallest level of existence.
Complementary to this, modern cosmology has discovered the bigger than the biggest level of our manifest universe by identifying the presence of vacuum energy or quintessence. This vacuum energy pervades the entire universe. Only recently identified by modern cosmology, this all-pervading vacuum energy is neither matter nor force, is neither particle nor energy: it is something transcendental to all these. Cosmology defines this vacuum energy as an unmanifest all-pervading reality that was present before the ‘Big Bang’ (before the inception of creation itself).
These two ultimate extremes of Natural Law, the smaller than the smallest and the bigger than the biggest, are now seen by modern science—in rigorously mathematical terms—to be one and the same thing. Some scientists, having taken their cue from Maharishi Vedic Science, are now beginning to see this unmanifest structure of Natural Law as an abstract field of pure intelligence or pure consciousness, that gives rise to the manifest universe and still governs and propels its ever-continuing expansion*.
*FOOTNOTE: As we have seen, in modern scientific terms this universal state of existence and its infinite organizing power is called the Unified Field of Natural Law or vacuum energy. Coincidentally, the religions of the world also like to rejoice in an infinite organizing power that governs the whole universe that they call the ‘The Will of God’.
5. How Big Is the Universe?
What is the relationship between our observable, or physically measurable universe, and the Totality of Natural Law, i.e. the fully expanded value of the universe in its entirety?
The difference in scale between these two is enormous. The difference in scale between a single particle of sand and the Gobi Desert as a whole comes nowhere near describing it. Instead, let us first imagine the relationship between the scale of a sub-atomic particle and the scale of our observable universe. The scale of a sub-atomic particle is 10–33 centimeters (or one billion, trillion, trillionth of a centimeter): the scale of our observable (physically measurable) universe is a sphere with the Earth at its center whose diameter is 27 billion light years (162 billion, trillion miles).
This scale differential between the 10–33 centimeters of a subatomic particle and the 27 billion light years of the observable universe is identical in proportion to the scale of the observable universe to the total universe. In other words, the differential between a single particle and the size of our localized universe is the same as between our localized observable universe and the universe in its entirety—the Totality of Natural Law.
It would seem that this unimaginably vast scale of the total universe would lie far beyond all our faculties of comprehension. However, modern brain neuroscience is beginning to confirm the reality of the famous Vedic aphorisms, “The individual is Cosmic”, and “I am the Totality”.
There are immense potentials yet hidden within the human brain and its hundred billion neurons. The possible connections between these hundred billion neurons exceed the number of atoms in the universe. There is now a large body of scientific evidence to suggest that these hidden capacities begin to unfold in a natural way through the Vedic technologies of consciousness contained in Maharishi Vedic Science*.
*FOOTNOTE: See Supplementary Note 3, Scientific Research on the Vedic Technologies of Consciousness, page 00.
The Veda declares that when the potential of the human psychophysiology is fully unfolded in higher states of consciousness, the Totality of Natural Law can be directly comprehend. We will explore this proposition in more detail in the following section.
As an extension of this reality however, the Absolute Image Series proposes that that same cosmic potentially lays hidden within the discipline of painting itself—that such potential indeed lays at the very heart of the material structure of its two-dimensional arena.
Although the Totality of Natural Law itself on its own fully expanded cosmic level of existence lies far beyond all our ordinary outer modes of sensory perception, nevertheless Absolute Image proposes that both the artist and the art of painting itself has the capacity to arrest that cosmic value of wholeness—that both the artist and his or her creations can display that absolute level of reality in a localized form. Thus, Absolute Image seeks to make that Cosmic Totality available to us as a direct outer sensory perception in relation to our visual aesthetic reality.
Absolute Image wants to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. It wants to take the incomprehensible vastness of the unbounded universal ocean of wholeness which, on its own cosmic level stands far beyond our ordinary modes of perception, and make that cosmic wholeness a direct outer sensory experience.
Through an aesthetic expression on an intimate human scale, Absolute Image seeks a resonance with that Totality of Natural Law. Achieving this takes the individual level of human creativity long-celebrated in the Western traditions of art, and places it on the threshold of the cosmic level of creativity eternally enshrined in the wisdom of the Veda.
By aligning individual creativity with Nature’s cosmic creativity, Absolute Image aspires to sound an echo within the viewer of that same eternal cosmic value of wholeness—the all-pervading pure peace and pure bliss that the Veda declares is the very essence of both our inner and outer reality.
Thus, the Absolute Image Series of Paintings and this book about them explores all the major facets of the structure of consciousness as defined by Maharishi Vedic Science and relates them directly to the laws that govern the easel-painting domain. The ongoing Absolute Image Series therefore, presents a research project into the discipline of painting.
It is an individual painter’s exploration of the fundamentals of his craft and its formal material constraints in the light of the complete knowledge of consciousness. As has been said, the goal has been to transform those material constraints into an unbounded, universal expression that reflects both the fullest cosmic potential of the artist and the fullest cosmic potential of the visual arts as a whole.
There is yet another practical utility in creating a resonance between the pure abstraction of the Absolute and the concrete material values of the easel-painting domain. The complete articulation of such an image and its own irreducible structure of fullness should finally establish the foundation or ‘ground state’ of our visual aesthetic reality. The fullest articulation of these principles in painting, together with the intellectual understanding of their relationship to the structure of consciousness in the light of Maharishi Vedic Science, would make the knowledge of our visual aesthetic reality complete.
When this absolute level within the visual arts is established in principle and practice through the complete knowledge and experience of consciousness, it will re-animate the cosmic dynamics present within all modes of visual artistic expression. This will not only re-empower the artist, but also elevate the relevance of the visual arts as a whole and, as has been suggested, permanently secure for them a unified foundation—a foundation that can support their ever-continuing and meaningful expansion for the enrichment of society as a whole.
Indeed, the truth is that unless the artist hits at that level of reality there can be no real value of life in his or her creation. That is to say, without that life, without that cosmic level of reality having a lively presence in a work—and the possibility for this lies in all modes and styles of human artistic expression—then one is left only with the flickering ghosts of purely sensory experience.
Unless that absolute ingredient has been awakened in a work it will have no real substance: we will have been given only that which is insubstantial. This means (in terms of experience) one would be left only with the superficial material structures of the universe where everything we try to grasp—because of its ever-changing nature—just dissolves through our fingers.
On the other hand, in arresting that underlying absolute Totality of Natural Law in a work, the effect upon us would be that of a great affirmation. It would become an affirmation of our own truest inner existence: this would be an all-nourishing experience that would strengthen us and enhance our overall sense of wellbeing.
This is because a work made lively in that cosmic dimension of Natural Law helps to integrate our inner and outer realities. It does this by connecting the outer modes of sensory perception through the resonances within the work of art, to the Absolute within us. If the content of a work displays a resonance with the eternal Totality of Natural Law already present deep within our awareness, that work of art should sound an echo of that Totality within.
Later, in Chapter 5, eight of the most basic structures and functions of the Absolute itself, the Totality of Natural, are identified and their corresponding visual counterparts within Absolute Image described in detail (p. 00). These eight are: 1) Total Autonomy (self-sufficient, self-referral), 2) Perfect Symmetry, 3) Infinite Silence together with Infinite Dynamism, 4) Absolute Sustainability, 5) Complete Fullness, 6) Unboundedness, 7) Unmanifest (beyond time and motion) and, 8) Infinite Bliss.
However, the most direct and systematic means of connecting both the artist and his medium of expression to that Absolute Reality, the Totality of Natural Law within, is described in the next section.
6. Vedic Science and the Direct Experience
of Pure Consciousness
In terms of modern science this ultimate, unified source of everything, the Absolute, the Totality of Natural Law, remains a theory only, with no known practical utility. Maharishi Vedic Science on the other hand, through its Vedic technologies of consciousness, brings that absolute level of existence, the cosmic level of Nature’s creative intelligence, directly into the sphere of every-day human life and living.
The revival of these Vedic technologies of consciousness in their original purity, along with their practical application in the world in recent decades, has already expanded the nature and range of human creativity. Because the Absolute Image Series of Paintings were inspired by the impact of these technologies it will be important to take a moment to describe them here.
Maharishi Vedic Science has made a one-to-one correspondence between the formulas of modern quantum physics that describe the Unified Field of Natural Law and these same structures of Natural Law as they are described in the Veda and Vedic Literature.
It is interesting to contemplate that since time immemorial therefore, the ancient Vedic wisdom of India has known about this unified, unmanifest reality, a reality only recently uncovered by modern science. The Veda describes the nature of this absolute, unmanifest reality in great detail and explains how it gives rise to, and governs, everything in creation.
Modern science now very accurately defines the inception of our present universe as beginning 13.73 billion years ago. But where is it all going? Does it ever end: and if it does, how and when? Modern science remains incomplete if it cannot answer these questions. However, the Veda, being complete knowledge, does answer them.
The Veda describes different magnitudes of the cycles of time that take place within the greater cycles of evolution and dissolution of the universe as a whole. The Veda precisely defines these lesser cycles as well as the unfathomably vast spans of time in which these super-cycles of the creation and dissolution of the universe as a whole operate. These super-cycles go on forever: they always were, they are now, and they always will be.
The Veda itself declares (as modern science now has in our present time) that the smaller than the smallest is the bigger than the biggest: that these two ultimate extremes of existence are one unified reality, and moreover, that this unified reality is the field of pure consciousness, the one transcendental absolute field of pure intelligence.
Most importantly of all however, the Veda declares this field of pure consciousness to be the innermost Self of every human being, the innermost Self of everyone and everything. Its Vedic technologies of consciousness provide the means to connect human life directly to this central switchboard of Nature’s own organizing power. Thus, the individual is made cosmic. According to the Veda, every human being is designed to be the living, breathing Totality of Natural Law in localized form.
7. What is Consciousness?
The word ‘consciousness’ as it is used in Maharishi Vedic Science simply means the faculty that allows us to be conscious of something. Since things can only exist for us at any given moment through our being conscious of them, it is obvious that when we speak of consciousness we are dealing with something absolutely fundamental to existence itself, something absolutely fundamental to life.
We see things around us exist. We also see that things change and evolve. We also see that there is order in evolution—an apple seed will only grow an apple tree, etc. Thus it is obvious that existence is endowed with the quality of intelligence: existence breathes life by virtue of intelligence
Consciousness is wakefulness, unbounded alertness, pure intelligence, pure existence, self-referral fullness, all-knowingness—the self-sufficient and unmanifest source, course, and goal of all creation. Those who practice Transcendental Meditation experience these qualities of consciousness in their own Transcendental Consciousness.
—Maharishi (Maharishi Vedic University Introduction, 1994, pp. 57-58)
‘Pure consciousness,’ or ‘Transcendental Consciousness’ means content-free consciousness in its simplest state. Maharishi Vedic Science equates pure consciousness with the Unified Field of Natural Law of quantum physics. As has been said, according to Maharishi Vedic Science, pure consciousness is the inner reality of everyone and everything: it is the reality of the both artist’s and the viewer’s own inner Self.
If everything that exists is nothing other than the living pulsations of consciousness, then this includes the work of art itself. I began to understand that consciousness offers the ultimate unifying paradigm: this means not only for all values of human artistic expression, but also for every area of human life.
8. The Vedic Technologies of Consciousness
The practical question that naturally arises is how do we experience this unbounded field of pure consciousness in a consistent and repeatable way and thereby make it our own? As has been said, this need is fulfilled in the simplest and most reliable way by the applied technologies of Maharishi Vedic Science. At the core of these Vedic technologies of consciousness is the Transcendental Meditation technique, which provides the direct inner subjective experience of pure consciousness, the Self, or ‘Atma’ in Vedic terminology*.
*FOOTNOTE: ‘Know thyself’ comes down to us from all the great traditions in the world.
Transcendental Meditation is practiced for twenty minutes morning and evening sitting comfortably with eyes closed. During Transcendental Meditation thoughts, feelings, and concepts in the mind—the vibrating values of consciousness—spontaneously settle down to non-vibrating consciousness, or pure consciousness—pure silence.
The active thinking mind is like the waves on the surface of the ocean, and the practice of Transcendental Meditation is a simple, natural way to dive below that active surface to the deepest, most silent level of consciousness within. Maharishi Vedic Science describes pure consciousness as our own simplest, most settled state of awareness at the source of thought.
‘Pure consciousness’ means consciousness free of all content. It means consciousness, rather than being conscious of some other thing such as a thought, or a feeling, or a physical object, instead it is conscious only of its own pure, independent state of existence.
It is the self-referral state of consciousness free of all other content and instead fully awake to its own pure unbounded nature, its own unified, pure unbounded silence. When experienced subjectively during the Transcendental Meditation technique it is experienced as a field of pure peace, pure bliss—a state of pure unbounded Being—Transcendental Consciousness.
In its self-referral state, or transcendental state, consciousness knows itself alone: as such it is the knower of itself. By being the knower of itself it is also the object of knowledge and the process of knowing. Thus in its self-referral state, consciousness is the unified state of knower, knowing, and known*. — Maharishi (pp, 5)
*FOOTNOTE: For a more detailed description of this three-in-one structure of consciousness—the togetherness of knower, knowing, known—see page 00, Supplementary Note 5.
Scientific research has shown that pure consciousness, or Transcendental Consciousness, is a forth, major state of human awareness distinct from the other three major states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Research has indicated that the regular experience of pure consciousness seems to be as vital for our well being as are the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states of consciousness. This is perhaps why so many of the ancient traditions of knowledge in the world advocate the process of transcending through meditation and present it as a natural part of our daily routine.
Recent brain research has also shown that the experience of this forth, major state of consciousness, pure consciousness, or Transcendental Consciousness—the self-referral state of consciousness—is the only experience that engages the total brain. This enlivenment of total brain functioning correlates with an expansion in all areas of human creativity (for a summary of scientific research on Maharishi’s Vedic technologies of consciousness, see page 00, Supplementary Note 3).
Also, the completely secular nature of this simple, universal technology of consciousness, the Transcendental Meditation technique, means that it can be practiced by anyone of any cultural or religious background. Over 600 studies in independent research institutes around the world have consistently shown that Transcendental Meditation is unique in its ability to systematically give, in a natural and effortless way, the direct subjective experience of pure consciousness.
Because the field of pure consciousness is the source of everything in creation, it is not surprising to find that the benefits that result from consciously contacting this field within human awareness are holistic in nature. This explains why research shows that the regular practice of the Transcendental Meditation program improves all areas of life. It improves physical health, mental wellbeing, and enhances the natural coordination between mind, body and the environment for greater success and fulfillment in life.
I know when I learned the technique more than forty years ago, all aspects of my life improved in such an easy and natural way: more happiness, better health, more energy, more creativity, clearer thinking, and much more.
Transcendental Meditation is an invitation to step into the unbounded field of all possibilities that lies deep within the awareness of every human being. For an artist it is an invitation to directly re-enforce his or her own individual level of creativity with Nature's unbounded level of creativity.
With the regular experience of pure consciousness our creativity increases. With this increased creative intelligence the creative process itself becomes more and more fluid. This fluidity indicates that a greater appreciation or empathy with ones chosen medium of expression also naturally develops.
When the artist's inner vision is sharpened and begins to effortlessly find expression in this way, in my own experience, two things happen. The sense of joy in ones work increases and this in itself strengthens and energizes ones creative powers. Secondly, this adds a power to the work of art itself and brings greater satisfaction to artist and audience alike.
9. The Cosmic Potential of the Artist
and the Cosmic Potential of the Discipline of Painting
The knowledge and experience of consciousness offered in Maharishi Vedic Science shone a completely new light for me on the discipline of painting. In the early 1990’s it triggered my search for absolute values within the visual arts.
By 1995 this search had reached its culmination in the Absolute Image Series of Paintings. As has been said, the purposes of these paintings was to define the foundation of our visual aesthetic reality and thereby help connect the artist, the viewer and the visual arts as a whole to their ultimate source in pure consciousness.
For me, this new science of consciousness confirmed the cosmic potential of both the artist and the arts. It confirmed the unbounded scope of the easel-painting arena and, therefore, its legitimacy as a discipline of knowledge.
It confirmed its power as a traditional mode of expression to make manifest the Totality of Natural Law in relation to our visual aesthetic reality and thereby sound an echo of that Totality within human awareness. These themes are central to this discussion and prepare us for the book’s main topic, the line as living pulsations of consciousness.
The scientific reality now established by Maharishi Vedic Science that the universe is structured from the same substance as our own consciousness, and that because of this human awareness is open to the total knowledge of Natural Law, is the momentous revelation that has inspired this quest—that has inspired and guided this quest for the ultimate foundation of our visual aesthetic reality.
Having set the stage for our discussion in this first chapter, in Chapter 2 I will be describing in more detail the pathways of thought and feeling that lead me to the Absolute Image Series, and The Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness.
CHAPTER 2
Origins
1. The Role of Music in Shaping the Theme of this Book
Interestingly, the central theme of this book, the line as living pulsations of consciousness, really began for me with music.
My father, Bernard Sheaff, was a professional musician. He performed in London’s major concert halls and his music was heard weekly on BBC radio. In the 1940’s he was considered a virtuoso of the most popular stringed instruments of his day, the zither banjo, the mandolin, and the guitar, and highly sort after as a teacher and an arranger. However, none of his six children where destined to be taught music by him.
I was the youngest of the family, and when my father passed away at forty-nine I was ten years old. Right from the beginning I always thought of myself as an artist. Ever since I could remember I seemed to be drawing and painting. My interest in playing music didn’t begin until 1953 when I was thirteen. Suddenly at that time, everyone all over the UK was learning to play the guitar (including myself), and by the 1960’s it was a global phenomenon.
In 1964, while still completing a BA in fine art (painting and lithography), a turning point occurred in my life. I became a founding member of the free-improvisational group AMM Music (see page 00, Supplementary Note 6, for a review of AMM Music). It was the experience of working with this group that opened the way for the single most significant event in my life: in 1966 I learned the Transcendental Meditation technique.
Other founding members of AMM who, along with myself, emerged from The Mike Westbrook Band* were Keith Rowe and Lou Gare:
*FOOTNOTE: The Mike Westbrook Band was a ten-piece modern jazz orchestra.
Dan Warburton: How did AMM come about?
Keith Rowe: There was Eddie [Prevost], Lou [Gare], Lawrence Sheaff, the bass player, and me . Cornelius Cardew came later. We were visual artists who also played musical instruments. We wanted to move on from what jazz was about. We were inspired by what black American musicians had done, but we found the jazz form terribly limiting. AMM was based on a philosophy whereas free jazz was based on performance of music. We knew what we wanted to do. Invent a music that would be ours—AMM Music (excerpt from an interview, Paris Transatlantic Magazine, 2001).
AMM had no pre-set musical framework of any kind. For me, playing with AMM was the exploration of the purest reality of sound and silence. It became a means of tracing the very origin of music; for me, each group performance was a collective probing into the nature of sound and its emergence from the ever-present, all-pervading silence.
AMM’s utter lack of any pre-set cyclic repetition of sound-forms completely freed both players and audience alike from predictability, from anticipation—from limiting preconceptions. During performance it made sharply potent the uniqueness of each unfolding moment. AMM was an invitation to musical convention to expand into new territories of both grammar and syntax.
It helped extend the scope of all accepted norms of musical judgment to incorporate a larger world of auditory vibration, including the richness and spontaneity of every-day environmental sounds. AMM provided a set of conditions for a whole new range of sound-experience to be consciously attended to in a sustained way. Just like the sounds and silences themselves that AMM spontaneously brought forth, one’s faculty of judgment during an AMM performance had to be re-made anew each moment from the substance of immediate sensory input.
It was this prolonged inward-reflective activity naturally promoted by AMM’s style of playing that led me directly to Transcendental Meditation. Through Transcendental Meditation I connected to Maharishi Vedic Science and eventually, beyond that, to the Absolute Image Series of Paintings and finally to this book, The Line as Living Pulsations of Consciousness.
In researching background material for his biography of Syd Barrett (lead singer of Pink Floyd), author Ron Chapman recently asked me to recall my own experience of the forming and performing of AMM. The section that follows is based on my answers to the questions he posed. I understand that much discussion has grown up around the AMM phenomenon in the intervening years. What follows is purely my personal response to AMM from the vantage of hindsight. It is not meant to be definitive. The views of other members of the group may well be entirely different.
The following therefore, records in brief my journey from the world of painting and music to the knowledge of consciousness in Maharishi Vedic Science, and from there, as I have said, to return again to painting and the eventual creation of my Absolute Image Series.
Rob Chapman: April, 2008
Hello Lawrence,
Here are some areas I want to cover. I'm always best at outlining general thematic areas I want to explore, rather than asking direct questions. More than anything I hate applying the memory test to people—asking them unreasonably to summon up cognition relevant to events that happened over half a lifetime ago—although it is not totally avoidable of course, but always bear in mind that, as a general rule of thumb, its the themes and the creative/emotional/philosophical landscape I'm interested in, as much as the mere details. (I am aware though that, as the saying goes, 'God is in the details'.)
Rob Chapman: THEME ONE: Art school: in AMM you were all, I believe, products of the art school. Can you sketch out briefly your art school training, the where, when, what, and why of it all? Also, was there any correlation conceptually between what you'd learned/applied/practiced as a painter and what you learned/applied/practiced as a musician.
Lawrence Sheaff: It was the 1960’s. The American painters had center stage: Jackson, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Kline, Newman, Kelly, Rothko, Stella, Warhol, Litchenstein, Johns. They covered everything. It seemed to be a separating out of all the facets of painting from their wholeness together, and making each part larger than life for a closer examination. The world of art was moving out into more and more rarified idiosyncratic values of expression. It was a new and revitalizing wave of celebration in the arts: a new celebration of life’s enormous possibilities.
But it didn’t tell us where it all comes from. On this the world of art seemed mute and, for the most part, still is. I guess I wanted to know where it all comes from. All the surface possibilities had been laid out both in painting and similarly in music: so what was left? I could only foresee more and more rarified sub-divisions of the sub-divisions—and if you got that picture, where to go from there?
‘In’ was where to go. Not ‘out’ any more, but ‘in’. For me AMM was a way to go ‘in’: to cut beneath the surface of things in a natural way. For me, a great, silent-whisper of a question was hanging behind every performance, ‘where does it all come from?’ For me, AMM wasn’t really about playing ‘music’ in the conventional sense; it was an examination of, a reveling in, a fathoming of, the nature of sound and silence itself, and the relationship between the two.
AMM, its performances and its discussions, helped bring the ‘where does it all come from?’ into sharper focus for me. More than that, it gave a taste of the experience. Coming out of a two, or sometimes three, or even four-hour performance with AMM, there could be a lingering impression that you had somehow, in all innocence, touched upon that origin of things. I pay homage to other the members of the group for the opportunity to share with them in that exhilarating experience. It was an honor and privilege to be surrounded with such integrity, to be surrounded with such a deep commitment to both life and music.
RC: THEME TWO: The mid-sixties: I get the impression that during the period you were working with AMM the barriers were down briefly between different art forms and between so called high and low art; the territory was up for grabs. The fact that you played on bills with Pink Floyd, Cream, etc. the fact that Pink Floyd’s future management funded your debut album, is this how it seemed then or is it just a convenient retrospective viewpoint.
LS: Although each of us in AMM was pursuing his own inner vision, there was a natural unity of purpose in the group, which was uncompromisingly defined from the start. Thus, AMM was able to successfully navigate the general music environment and its whole jungle of influences without loosing its own unique value of focus. Like any performing group I suppose, we ourselves were the number one audience. Just as we were the primary makers of those sounds and silences, we were the primary listeners too.
AMM was always an entirely self-sufficient and self-referral phenomenon. All of us were playing because we absolutely had to. I felt the group was helping me define something more real, something more ‘true’. Of course, to survive professionally one needs to garner a listening audience. Even so, the principle was maintained that each individual member of AMM Music was not required to defer to an audience or indeed required to defer to any other member of the group with regard to determining musical content.
When performing, the existing atmosphere of the venue would naturally help shape how things came out. Having lots of other people there (audience) would be one kind of atmosphere: having no one else there would be another kind of atmosphere. AMM was always about things as they are right now.
I remember once in the early days, an audience—it was quite a large one—threw pennies at us in disgust. We played on. Later, audiences began to connect more.
Sometimes in a performance, the music would just come to a stop. No one could play. It was impossible to make any kind of sound. Even the hum of the amplifiers had to be turned off. The silence was so thick, so many times bigger than any of the sounds we had been making that the whole audience would sit there with us, not wanting to move: unable to move. Sometimes those silences could last for twenty minutes. It was a lively, tangible silence, a perfectly natural silence and full of ease. You could be in it forever. No group that I ever heard of could create silences like AMM.
And those silences couldn’t be contrived. Nobody thought: Hey! This is a good place to have one of those long silences. It wasn’t on that level. It could never be real on that level. It just happened by itself. Like all great AMM performances, it happened independently of the individual members of the group—and also it seemed to me, even independently of the group itself.
One never went to a session thinking, I hope one of those fantastic silences comes up tonight. The joy of AMM was in the immediate-immediate. An AMM performance had no other purpose, had no other intention—no other choice even—but to manifest the sounds and silences unique to that specific place during that specific moment in the unfolding of ‘the big-everything’. What was so thrilling about AMM is that it could make one feel so much an intimate part of that largest of all performances.
RC: THEME THREE: As a unit AMM seems to have been incredibly theoretically rigorous, analytical, idealistic, utopian even. Is this a fair assessment? Also, I notice in the sleeve notes to the AMM Music 1966 re-issue that you left the band after a gig at the Commonwealth Institute early in 1967 where you didn't play a note during your final appearance. Is this true? Can you elaborate?
LS: Yes, the story is true, and I’ll elaborate on it in a moment. Meanwhile, I think the ‘incredibly theoretically rigorous, analytical, idealistic, utopian even’ captures the atmosphere of those intense beginning days of AMM. But remember whatever the content of discussion, all that was thrown away when we played.
That was the joy of AMM. The wholeness of things took over in performance. ‘Life’ took over: Life, with all its wondrous, unfathomable nuances. Theory is just an after event to ‘Life’.
If any contrived values were introduced into a performance, it would be so immediately obvious: it would stand out like a bad joke. Lou Gare once asked a very famous musician who was sitting in to stop playing. The guest’s contributions, though skillful, were too tied to a pre-ordered convention and this was impeding AMM’s natural tendency for inward progression.
After a while, those inappropriate kinds of surface values didn’t happen any more within the group. As the group matured, when we performed together we always seemed to start way below the surface and from there, to just go deeper and deeper. How did that feel in terms of experience? There are innumerable instances that could be used to describe this, but let me give just one example.
But perhaps before doing so I should make clear that it was an agreed-upon group policy not to use any kind of mind influencing substances—at any time. Everything had to be in favor of an increasingly natural clarity of experience.
In one particular session, a layered texture of sound had gathered momentum and was moving along purely under its own volition. It was at quite a high level of volume and made up of continuous rumblings from Cornelius’ prepared piano together with masterfully extended rolls on the snare drum from Eddie.
Alongside these were a rich variety of beautiful, rapidly iterated clangings from Keith’s guitar—sounds one knew to be the product of that hour and that circumstance alone and never to be heard again—and Lou’s tenor saxophone was holding full-toned extended notes. I was busy marking this color-filled cacophony with occasional short, sharp, metallic punctuations.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, it all came to a halt—but just for one single moment—and then immediately carried on. In that surprise momentary gap of silence Cornelius, with lightening speed, played a single note on the piano. It was a simple pure note one octave above middle C. With this I burst into a loud peel of laughter.
Why? Because that note was the funniest sound I had ever heard. In that moment it was the most hilarious experience in the world. No one else in the group or the audience heard it in that way. My sudden very voluble laughter therefore, took everyone, including myself, by surprise: particularly Cornelius, whose face registered a perfect blend of concern and dismay.
There was never an opportunity to explain this unexpected outburst because, although we discussed general philosophy as a group, we preferred not to discuss the content of any one performance or our responses to that content. Besides, at that time I had no way to explain such an experience. I had no idea how to explain this sudden eruption of hilarity in the middle of what was otherwise an intensely focused and serious performance.
However, I think I may now have a better understanding of what was happening. I see these kinds of experience in AMM occurring as the result of naturally settling into deeper, more expanded levels of the mind in the process of performance.
The laughter therefore, was in no way frivolous. It was as if, in that moment, I had suddenly been shown the play of the universe itself: it was the universe in terms of pure delight. Dramatically contrasting with this universal value was the acute specific-ness of specific action.
In seemed to me in that moment that the whole universe was revealing its nature in this one specific note. In that moment, Cornelius’ life was seen to be an intimate part of the fun of the universe. Here he was, his whole life as it were, preparing him to play that exact specific note at that exact specific time.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by the magnificent, ridiculous, joyful specificity of everything that exists, and I could only respond to it with a burst of laughter. The laughter therefore, was a compliment to Cornelius: it was a compliment to his amazing alertness in performance—that he was there, awake, ready to strike that wonderful note in that wonderful instant, and thereby manifest what was for me, such a profound experience. It was just one simple note but its jewel-like lucidity has remained etched in the memory ever since: it is as if it happened only a moment ago—how mysterious . . .
Compared with that power, compared with that ethereal mystery of things, how clumsy all these words of explanation seem: how many words it has taken to convey even one tiny instant in performance. This is why the group usually avoided discussing these things. In such moments, in one tiny instance of time, a vast array of implications can be compacted together as one holistic experience.
As I understand it, such experiences feel more profound and real because they are closer to the primary nature of reality itself. This means the reality where the juxtaposition of disparate values is forever held together in one great value of wholeness.
The linear value of experience where things appear to us as separated out into isolated packages is a more superficial mode of perception. These deeper experiences, where a mass of opposing values can be held together in a single moment are therefore, more true: they are closer to the ultimate unity of all reality.
AMM, in a purely natural way, set the initial conditions for these special moments of insight. I’m sure it was the desire for these more expanded kinds of experience that gave rise to AMM in the first place: these unique windows into a deeper world must have been the reason why the audience for AMM Music also began to grow.
In a way, the same principle was operating when conventional musical form might suddenly momentarily reappear during a session. Musical convention was never categorically banned—AMM didn’t like to exclude anything. Such conventional forms might therefore, recur at any moment in the early days of AMM. However, if they did, and when they did, because of the context, they were completely transformed.
Whether conventional musical forms were suddenly voiced by a live performer or emerged from a transistor radio, the context of AMM converted them into something completely new. The unexpected projection of those familiar forms onto the deeper level of awareness structured by the group in its process of performance made the hearing of those conventional sounds into something new and extraordinary.
The tone and natural concentration of AMM's group awareness during a performance could light up anew the reality of things in this way. It allowed you to see something, or hear something as if for the very first time—and for the very first time see it or hear it for what it really was. As I have said, in AMM everything had to be natural. Everything had to be in favor of a greater, sustainable clarity of experience.
RC: THEME FOUR: Post AMM. What did you do musically after AMM and what was the route (philosophically, geographically, artistically) that led you to TM and your current art output.
LS: As I have indicated, AMM provided the first glimmerings of inner experience. This was enough to connect me to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation program, which for me made the inner experience complete. I began the regular practice of TM in 1966 while I was still a member of AMM. By 1967, a year later, the experiential and philosophical frameworks that had been operating in the group began to make me feel a little uncomfortable. I felt at odds with them.
The strict egalitarian nature of AMM’s structure meant that one’s individual ego had to always be expanding to encompass the whole group. I think this posed a continuing challenge to each member, all of whom were strong personalities. I think this challenge increased subjectively with the stronger formation over time of individual sensibilities, and it increased objectively as the group as a whole gained greater external recognition.
Larger than both these things however, and recognized by everyone, was the power of our collective performance. When the unified functioning of the group was fully actualized as a living flow in performance, it was invincible. Nothing could deny the authority of its uncompromising wall of sound.
Notwithstanding all this, I myself began to have concerns about the specific influence of AMM’s unique sonic content. The question was, how to take the measure of those sounds purely in terms of their vibrational effect?
With a growing understanding of the immense power of sound I needed to know what effect it was having on the subtler aspects of the nervous system. I needed to know truly what the impact of our music was on ourselves, our audience, and the extended environment. Was it purely positive or was there an unwanted negative element? And, as I say, whether positive or negative, how could those values be meaningfully assessed?
In short, I felt the need for more knowledge. I thought the group yet lacked the knowledge to ensure that its value judgments in the process of performance would spontaneously remain purely on the positive, evolutionary side of things.
This vision hit deep because it questioned the very core of our group activity. It was very difficult therefore, to give expression to it at the time. The unbounded freedom of AMM was so central to its nature, and so addictive creatively, that I hesitated to voice something that might seem restrictive to that freedom.
I was already taking a more inward direction and felt therefore, that I should just try to resolve these things within myself. I thought the group perhaps might take a more inward direction too, and with that things could be resolved. It didn’t happen.
In fact, after I left AMM I understand it may have taken a more outwardly active socio-political direction. The founding members of the group all came from a modern jazz background. After a while AMM began to attract new members like the renowned, classically trained musicians Cornelius Cardew and John Tilbury. I think it may have been Cornelius who inducted socio-political concerns into the group, or at least helped give emphasis to them.
There was for me a unique and truly creative power in AMM’s formative expressions. The challenge that always follows such a spontaneous flowering is how to sustain that freshness and innocence throughout a lifetime of making music.
Although I retain a concern for its sonic content, I deeply appreciate the continuing and purposeful dedication of the members of AMM to their chosen work. There is something heroic in continuing to openly embrace all manner of sound come what may; it takes a good measure of courage and inner conviction to pitch one’s creative will against such odds in a public arena and to turn it to positive, meaningful expression. There is a virtue in seeing beauty everywhere: this power to thus modulate all things is one of the marvels of human creativity.
I think at the time though, the ethos of the group sensed my discomfort, and that ‘ethos’ in turn felt discomfort with me. When that discomfort came to the surface it seemed to be to do with personalities. But it wasn’t really. In thinking and playing so tightly together for so long we had become family.
This is not to say there were not any personal issues. We all have our strengths and many of us have areas that need to radically change. I was aware that many things needed to change within myself. But I was hopeful because I could see that these were beginning to naturally be addressed by my practice of Transcendental Meditation: I only needed to continue regularly with the practice. For me then, my feeling of being at odds with the group was on a much deeper level than mere personality traits.
As it happened, individual members began laying claim to certain territories of sound. Rightly or wrongly, this signaled to me a predominant concern in the group with the textures of sound in themselves. This seemed to contrast with my concern, which was more and more to do with the source of those sounds, or the ‘Being’ aspect of sound.
It seemed to me at the time that this ‘territories of sound’ phenomenon suggested that some members of the group were still identifying themselves closely with the ‘becoming’ aspects of things. That is to say, identifying with the outer forms of expression rather than with the source of those expressions in the absolute reality that underlies them.
Although I was unable to effectively articulate it at the time, my concern had become centered on that underlying reality. This means the absolute value or pure Being value of existence. It was this pure Being level that the process of Transcendental Meditation was now allowing me to experience effortlessly and in a regular way. I could mention here that later when I returned again to painting, it was my continuing concern with absolute values that motivated my work and eventually gave rise to the Absolute Image Series.
It was the emphasis, as I saw it at that time, on the ‘becoming’ aspect of things in the group, which in the end and possibly more than anything else, forced me to move on. I do realize now however that the ‘sonic territories’ phenomenon is certainly meaningful in its own right. Specialization enhances clarity of expression and naturally fosters a richer sense of interplay in performance. It has always been a fundamental feature of all music.
Thus, even in aspiring to absolute freedom in relation to expression, values of order inevitably begin to assert themselves, for without them no modes of action can be clearly articulated or progressively sustained. There can be no freedom without order and visa versa. Wisdom, I have come to understand, is gaining a natural state of balance between the two.
However, at that moment the ordering of sonic territories within AMM seemed contrary to its basic tenets. It seemed to me to be beside the point. If there was to be a concern about the sounds AMM was making it was the influence of those sounds on the human nervous system that was now most important to me. Again, rightly or wrongly I read this new tendency to impose values of order therefore, as restrictive in the wrong kind of way.
I mentioned earlier that I would elaborate on my final performance with AMM at the Commonwealth Institute in London. Due to these continuing concerns regarding the group’s general direction, my last contribution, as was mentioned—and prophetically perhaps—was a sustained value of silence.
I discovered there was nothing more I wanted to say, or could say. It wasn’t a critical gesture against the group. It was just that my active contributions had come to a close, that’s all. Like all things AMM, that’s just the way it was.
Somehow, one doesn’t ever leave a group like AMM. Perhaps I have just represented its silent element throughout all these years—and after all, the story is not over yet. I foresee enormous transformations ahead in all spheres of life, including music. This is 2008. There is a global awakening. Change of an unprecedented kind is in the air. Deeper, more positive values of knowledge are on the rise. Destructive values are on the wane.
For example, attempting to maintain order and progress in society through fear and violence will soon be seen globally for what it is: totally counter-productive. It is a misnomer: an out-dated, completely bankrupt philosophy.
It will soon be universally understood that it is incoherence in the collective consciousness due to increasing levels of stress that are the root causes of crime and war. Dropping bombs creates more stress, thus, in the past, the cycles of fear and destruction continued. As has been said, at this moment new, more constructive values of knowledge are beginning to emerge. The desire for this quality of knowledge is a global phenomenon and finding expression everywhere.
This includes a growing appreciation for new technologies that dissolve stress in a natural way both individually and collectively and thus eliminate the root cause of crime and war—the Transcendental Meditation technique being accepted as the most thoroughly researched, and most natural and effective of these techniques by far. By the time this book is published, all this will be old news. All of us will be changing one way or another. All of us will have to change—we are already changing. It will all seem very natural.
A major change was happening for me in AMM at that phase of my life. There was no other choice but to withdraw from active participation in the group. It was absolutely the right thing to do even though, as it turned out, I was never to play music again. Instead, I plunged into the knowledge of Transcendental Meditation. I became a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in 1971 and following that worked and studied for 25 years on the international level of Maharishi’s global movement.
What is the relationship between Transcendental Meditation and my present work as an artist? Transcendental Meditation has behind it the vast tradition of ancient Vedic wisdom. As I went deeper into Maharishi’s Vedic Science I discovered it to be exactly the knowledge for which I had been seeking.
The simple, natural practice of Transcendental Meditation and its advanced techniques, the TM-Sidhi program including Yogic Flying, are the revival in their purest form of the ancient Vedic technologies of consciousness. ‘Veda’ or ‘Vedic’ means pure knowledge, the total knowledge of Natural Law. The Veda and Vedic Literature as a body of knowledge is regarded as the ‘Constitution of the Universe’.
It is the knowledge of consciousness itself, the ultimate constituent of creation. It has been revived in its completeness by Maharishi over the past fifty years and integrated with all the disciplines of modern science. Maharishi Vedic Science is being offered to the world as the holistic knowledge of Natural Law for our scientific age.
I think initially, painting and playing music had been merely a means, a tool if you like, for me to explore the nature of reality. In studying Maharishi Vedic Science a more complete vision of the structure of reality seemed to be unfolding. I was not prepared to work with painting or music until a greater familiarity with those finer creative impulses of Natural Law had been attained. From there, the competence to give them proper expression would need to grow. It wasn’t until 1995 that I felt the beginnings of that—just the faintest beginnings—with the emergence of my present ongoing series of paintings, Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form.
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The above questions and answers describe in brief the threads of thought that eventually wove themselves into the Absolute Image Series and finally into the content of this book. In the next chapters I will describe in more detail what the Absolute Image Series is and how the paintings began. Following this, in Part 2, these steps of development will come to a conclusion. They culminate in the vision of the line as living pulsations of consciousness at the very foundation of our visual aesthetic reality.
EXCERPT FROM BOOK (PROLOGUE, AND CHAPTERS 1 AND 2) ENDS