Psymatic Self: Geometries of Consciousness

 

"Psymatic Self: Geometries of Consciousness" 

28" x 14" 

Oil on canvas, 2012

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“The individual is an aperture through which the universe becomes aware of itself.” - Alan Watts

“The world is full of vibrations originating in the manifold dynamics of dissipative self organization.” - Erich Jantsch

 "Thermodynamics shows us that we have the same entropy-producing function as other naturally occurring matter-cycling systems that grow in regions of available energy. Although life has been identified as, and reduced to, its genetic architecture, its capacity to chemically copy itself, this ability is ultimately secondary to its energetic function." - Dorion Sagan

“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” - Carl Sagan

"If you have the idea that you are something with form, that you are limited by this body, and that being within this body you have to see through these eyes, God and the world also will appear to you as form. If you realize you are without form, that you are unlimited, that you alone exist, that you are the eye, the infinite eye, what is there to be seen apart from the infinite eye? Apart from the eye, there is nothing to be seen. There must be a seer for an object to be seen, and there must be space, time, etc. But if the Self alone exists, it is both seer and seen, and above seeing or being seen." - Ramana Maharshi

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This piece is connected to a long interest in exploring the notion of "What is the Self?", mainly in relation to the issue of the mind-brain or subject-object dichotomy, and the intrinsic unity. The Self seems to be a complex unity of both organism and environment, individual and collective, of the transcendent/mystical and immanent/scientific-material, the infinite and the finite, and of energy and matter. In this I wanted to visualize how this apparent duality could be seen or explored symbolically through geometric relationships. 

With the piece on the right I'm trying to show how the brain is a processor for energy, matter, and information coming in from an environment outside but inherently and dynamically connected to it, and from four directions, or in four dimensions expanding outward. In a way the brains bio-interactive cyclic feedback loops of various sorts. its various brain wave states, or cymatic-like frequencies of consciousness, create the emergent sense of the central Self, that can also open into expanded states, and to a kind of cosmic identity that reaches out into larger and larger horizons of Self knowledge and awareness of extended environment, and with the universe as a whole.

The piece on the left is kind of like the view from the inside of this process, or the intangible interior subjective dimension of an individuals mind, or the "I" in the eye of the beholder. 

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