From the Book: Art? No Thing!: Analogies Between Art, Science and Philosophy—By Fre Ilgen

There is only one way that can lead you to understand life and reality: your own way.

Trusting your intuition, experience and theory helps you find your way. Artists find their way through making works of art. Painting, sculpting, etc. is their thinking on life and reality. Theory and knowledge of other fields enhance the understanding of their own way.

The experience of art will enhance your intuition and acknowledgment of life and reality as it is.

Fre Ilgen

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This time I have a specific reason for going to Blackwells. Richard Dawkins had been plugging his book, ‘The God Delusion’, on television recently (September 2006), and the gist of what he says is that there is no God. And that the concept of God is propagated by the meme gene, that wireless gene. This gene is completely separate from the Double helix replicator gene that we know. The meme seemingly is created as an idea is passed on from one person to another. The idea is hardwired as it is passed on through conversation, literature, film, etc. The meme can be seen to play its part in different cultures being created, and sustained in its form, in the world. A certain type of culture of ideas sustains itself by this gene. The idea is sustained and hardwired as the idea gels itself in each person and hence in each type of population. The Bible, the Koran and all the other holy books are excellent tools for mainting the God meme gene. It sustains the idea through literature. Not all ideas are memed. Only those that has the power to intrigue takes hold. The idea of a God or someone looking over you plays on the feeling of fear and security and the idea catches on and takes hold in the gene pool. The meme is lost in death in an individual and is not passed on in replication, but it already exists in others as the idea does not die with the creator of the idea. The idea has already been hardwired in others still alive. So the double helix is not the only driving force of the form. In fact it is suggested that the meme might be a more important gene in creating the future than the double helix. The double helix is just responsible for creating the vehicle that carries the magical process. So what else do we not know! If you drop the science, then what tools do we have to see the Truth of things. The mystics have been doing very well without the science. Awareness, observation, allows one to see the workings of all the hardware in the human form without having to know the science. Art is one of those tools that opens up the spirit to ‘watch’ the process. It is a dialogue between the spirit and the living walking form.

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Karen Armstrong from ‘Buddha’

That is why the Buddha always refused, in the years following his enlightenment, to define or describe Nibbana: it would, he said, be “improper” to do so, because there are no words to describe such a state to an unenlightened person. The attainment of Nibbana did not mean that the Buddha would never experience any more suffering. He would grow old, get sick and die like everybody else and would experience pain while doing so. Nibbana does not give an awakened person trance like immunity, but an inner haven which enables a man 01 woman to live with pain, to take possession of it, affirm it, and experience a profound peace of mind in the midst of suffering. Nibbana, therefore, is found within oneself, in toe very hearl of each person’s being. It is an entirely natural state; it is not bestowed by grace nor achieved for us by a supernatural savior; it can be reached by anybody who cultivates the path to enlightenment as assiduously as Gotama did. Nibbaha is a still center; it gives meaning to life. People who lose touch with this quiet place and do not orient their lives toward it can fall apart. Artists, poets and musicians can only become fully creative if they work from this inner core of peace and integrity. Once a person has learned to access this nucleus of calm, he or she is no longer driven by conflicting fears and desires, and is able to face pain, sorrow and grief with equanimity. An enlightened or awakened human being has discovered a strength within that comes from being correctly centered, beyond the reach of selfishness.

Once he had found this inner realm of calm, which is Nibbana, Gotama had become a Buddha. He was convinced that, once egotism had been snuffed out; there would be no flames Artists, poets and musicians can only become fully creative if they work from this inner core of peace and integrity.

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This exhibition does ask the question: in what state our minds are when we make art and how much of the Truth is manifested from a troubled mind.

 

—Karen Armstrong from ‘Buddha’

Artists, poets and musicians can only become fully creative if they work from this inner core of peace and integrity. Once a person has learned to access this nucleus of calm, he or she is no longer driven by conflicting fears and desires, and is able to face pain, sorrow and grief with equanimity. An enlightened or awakened human being has discovered a strength within that comes from being correctly centered, beyond the reach of selfishness.

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LIVING IN TRUTH

From the book, “The Limits of Thought”, Discussions between Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm.

KRISHNAMURTI: Where shall we start, sir?
DAVID BOHM: Do you have any ideas?
KRISHNAMURTI: Lots of them. If truth is something totally different from reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? Can we talk about that?
DAVID BOHM: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: One would like to or one should or one has to_act in truth. The action of reality is entirely different from the action of truth. Now, what is the action of truth? Is that action unrelated to the past, unrelated to an idea, an ideal? And therefore out of time? Is there ever an action out of time, or are actions always involved in time?
DAVID BOHM: Can you say that the truth acts in reality? That is, although reality may have no effect on truth, truth has some effect on reality?
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. But one would like to find out if one lives in truth, not in the truth of reality, but in that truth which is not related to reality. Reality is a process of thought, of thinking about something that is real or reflected upon, or distorted, such as illusion
So what is action in truth? If it is not related to reality, if it is not an action in the movement of time, what is action then? Is there such action? Can my mind dissociate itself from the past and from the idea of ‘I shall be’, or ‘I will be’, or ‘I must be’ or ‘I should be’, which are projections of my own desires? Is there an action that is totally separate from all that?
DAVID BOHM: Perhaps we are going very fast. I think ordinarily the action is related to the fact.

“The Limits of Thought” Discussions

J. Krishnamurti And David Bohm
ISBN: 0-415-19398-2

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This painting is a portrait of a Sikh. The turban, together with 4 other items that he carries on him is meant to remind him of the natural state that he should aspire to become. ‘In keeping these items on him, he is keeping the form intact.’

• Kes/Kesh
  Uncut hair and beard, as given by God, to sustain him or her in higher consciousness.
• Kanga
  A wooden comb to properly groom the hair as a symbol of cleanliness.
• Kara
  An Iron bracelet. (Not Gold, nor Steel) worn on the wrist, signifying bondage to truth and freedom from material and aesthetic entanglement.
• Kachara/Kaccha
  Modest and specially designed cotton undergarment
• Kirpan
  The sword with which the Khalsa is committed to righteously defend the fine line of the Truth.

This topic is especially interesting to me because as painters we deal with the form to bring across certain content. Here the Sikhs wear their form as a reminder. A walking living piece of artwork. The artist who literally carries his work on him. He is an artist because he needs that sense of perception, that kind of looking that a painter would require to consolidate his form on his canvas. Here a Sikh wears his form and uses it to bring his spirit home to the Truth. There is that action of reality or that action of Truth that Krishnamurti and David Bohm were talking about in the book ‘Limits of Thought’.

Here the Sikh tries to live the Truth. So in this painting, I celebrate that fact that the Sikh lives his Art. He is Art in the way he thinks. In his holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, in the first few lines, it points out that immensity of the whole and how the logical mind cannot comprehend the whole Truth. How that mighty whole is omnipresent, unchanging, an unthinking intelligence, was always present even before man. It describes something mighty and all-encompassing. The Sikh form is to remind him of his purpose in trying to be part of that unseen intelligence. In this painting, I tried to capture that wholeness that he aspires to become.

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There is a relationship I sense between creating Art and creating the Self. The processes seem to run parallel to each other. It is almost as if Art is a vehicle to understand the self and illuminate itself. They both seem to be two sides of the same coin. Art shows you how your mind turns (or does not turn) from the work and how it moves, and this, as a result, shows up the process of living. My main interest is how it is all one. I am interested in this more subtle purpose in art. Of course, the work has to turn up with its content and focus and title as is required of us and yet it has to maintain the process that has gone into making the painting, including its mistakes. To remain loose and free in creating the work, yet focused enough to bring the work to its conclusion.

My main requirement in a painting is that it has something new in it. Something new personally to the artist, yet more importantly, in a larger context to art itself and in that front-line of Art that there is something new in the work. This contributes to the big picture of Art, so the content of its past with its present, moves to the future of art history.

The chase of the new in Art will also reveal the new in the self and the process in creating the self and also the limitations of the mind. The content in a painting and its title is almost incidental as if to say, within the limits of making this piece, its composition, its peculiarity, its colour, its form, to place it in one’s own history of self, and to say, this painting came into being. To see how your mind had to turn with the New. And how as a result, you, the self, enters a new space because of the painting.

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